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hueymahl
hueymahl's Journal
hueymahl's Journal
July 8, 2023
So what's really going on in San Francisco?
Any residents have first hand experience? Is the media blowing it out of oroportion re drugs, crime, etc?
April 23, 2020
Sweden resisted a lockdown, and its capital Stockholm is expected to reach 'herd immunity' in weeks
Source: CNBC
Unlike its neighbors, Sweden did not impose a lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The strategy — aimed at building a broad-base of immunity while protecting at-risk groups like the elderly — has proved controversial.
But Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has said “herd immunity” could be reached in Stockholm within weeks.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html
February 3, 2019
"Yesterday I took responsibility for content that appeared on my page that was clearly racist and offensive. I will not excuse the content of the photo. It was offensive, racist and despicable. I was seeing it for the first time. I was unaware of what was on my page. I was appalled that they appeared on my page," Northam said at a lengthy press conference at Virginia's Executive Mansion.
"I believe now I am not either of the people in that photo. It is disgusting, offensive, racist," Northam said.
. . . .
President Donald Trump took multiple shots at the Democrat on Saturday night, tweeting, "Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, 'I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.' This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on 'super' late term abortion. Unforgivable."
Trump and most of the DU community agree on something, sadly
"Yesterday I took responsibility for content that appeared on my page that was clearly racist and offensive. I will not excuse the content of the photo. It was offensive, racist and despicable. I was seeing it for the first time. I was unaware of what was on my page. I was appalled that they appeared on my page," Northam said at a lengthy press conference at Virginia's Executive Mansion.
"I believe now I am not either of the people in that photo. It is disgusting, offensive, racist," Northam said.
. . . .
President Donald Trump took multiple shots at the Democrat on Saturday night, tweeting, "Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, 'I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.' This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on 'super' late term abortion. Unforgivable."
November 6, 2018
Polls are Packed in Georgia!
In 30 years I have never seen my polling place so packed for ANY election. I’m in Georgia’s 6th in a location that has been transitioning from red to purple. 30+ min lines in the rain when normally there is no wait.
I AM LIKING WHAT I AM SEEING!!!
October 8, 2018
When the Louisiana State Militia finally arrived at the Colfax courthouse on April 15, 1873, all it could do was bury the bodies. Two days earlier, a large force of white supremacists had taken control of the courthouse from the mostly black faction protecting it. J. R. Beckwith, the U.S. attorney for New Orleans, told Congress that in the aftermath the ground was “strewn with dead negroes,” their bodies plundered by whites who had come to watch the bloodshed. The dead remained “unburied and mutilated,” Beckwith said, until federal troops arrived days later to shovel them into a mass grave.
Seventy-two men were ultimately indicted for their role in the Colfax massacre, charged under the Enforcement Acts of 1870, which were passed to help the federal government suppress the Ku Klux Klan. But their convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which concluded that the federal government lacked the authority to charge the perpetrators. Justice Joseph Bradley, a Grant appointee, wrote that the United States had not clearly stated that the accused, in slaughtering more than 100 black men, had “committed the acts complained of with a design to deprive the injured persons of their rights on account of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had, argued the Grant-appointed Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, because the Fourteenth Amendment’s powers did not cover discrimination by individuals, only by the state. “The only obligation resting upon the United States is to see that the States do not deny the right,” Waite wrote. “This the amendment guarantees, but no more. The power of the national government is limited to the enforcement of this guaranty.”
The article then illustrates the direct line from this decision, to Plessy v. Feurguson to the decisions to allow internment of the Americans of Japanese descent, to the current Muslim immigration restrictions just recently allowed to stand by the Roberts Courts, echoing the same absurd "facially neutral" analysis used by the court in its darkest days to uphold racist policies of the executive and legislative branches.
This, combined with the vast disenfranchisement of voters, has allowed a minority party to once again impose its will upon the oppressed.
We are at yet another turning point in our history. It is easy to brush this off and say our democracy will survive, as it always has, but this ignores the sacrifices and pain and death our ancestors had to suffer every time the Republicans and their founders sought to subvert justice and liberty.
Do two things. Read this article and pass it along. Then Vote. If you can only do one, Vote.
The Supreme Court Is Headed Back to the 19th Century
So I have tried to keep to the posting rules of limiting my excerpt to no more than 4 paragraphs (on edit - I couldn't do it - five paragraphs below). Please go read the whole thing. It is far more powerful as a fully conceived thesis. Warning, this deals with a violent and disturbing part of our history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption-court/566963/
When the Louisiana State Militia finally arrived at the Colfax courthouse on April 15, 1873, all it could do was bury the bodies. Two days earlier, a large force of white supremacists had taken control of the courthouse from the mostly black faction protecting it. J. R. Beckwith, the U.S. attorney for New Orleans, told Congress that in the aftermath the ground was “strewn with dead negroes,” their bodies plundered by whites who had come to watch the bloodshed. The dead remained “unburied and mutilated,” Beckwith said, until federal troops arrived days later to shovel them into a mass grave.
Seventy-two men were ultimately indicted for their role in the Colfax massacre, charged under the Enforcement Acts of 1870, which were passed to help the federal government suppress the Ku Klux Klan. But their convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which concluded that the federal government lacked the authority to charge the perpetrators. Justice Joseph Bradley, a Grant appointee, wrote that the United States had not clearly stated that the accused, in slaughtering more than 100 black men, had “committed the acts complained of with a design to deprive the injured persons of their rights on account of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had, argued the Grant-appointed Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, because the Fourteenth Amendment’s powers did not cover discrimination by individuals, only by the state. “The only obligation resting upon the United States is to see that the States do not deny the right,” Waite wrote. “This the amendment guarantees, but no more. The power of the national government is limited to the enforcement of this guaranty.”
The decision in Cruikshank set a pattern that would hold for decades. Despite being dominated by appointees from the party of abolition, the Court gave its constitutional blessing to the destruction of America’s short-lived attempt at racial equality piece by piece. By the end, racial segregation would be the law of the land, black Americans would be almost entirely disenfranchised, and black workers would be relegated to a twisted simulacrum of the slave system that existed before the Civil War.
The article then illustrates the direct line from this decision, to Plessy v. Feurguson to the decisions to allow internment of the Americans of Japanese descent, to the current Muslim immigration restrictions just recently allowed to stand by the Roberts Courts, echoing the same absurd "facially neutral" analysis used by the court in its darkest days to uphold racist policies of the executive and legislative branches.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, however, did not go to waste. As the Republican Party abandoned its black constituency in the South, it became more dependent on, and shaped by, its corporate benefactors, which profited handsomely from being granted rights and protections denied to black Americans. As the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written: “The Court increasingly used the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect corporations from state regulation rather than the civil rights of persons.” In case after case, “the U.S. Supreme Court had come to embrace the logic of corporations,” Painter wrote in Standing at Armageddon, her history of the Gilded Age. “These decisions outlawed virtually any attempt by states to limit maximum hours of work, of unions to strike, and of the federal government to curb or regulate monopolies or to curb the accumulation of vast fortunes.”
This, combined with the vast disenfranchisement of voters, has allowed a minority party to once again impose its will upon the oppressed.
With Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, there is no discriminatory voting restriction the justices will be unable to sanction, no immigration law born in animus they will be unable to approve, no expansion of corporate power they will be unable to accept, no grant of presidential immunity they will be unable to uphold, no financial or environmental regulation they will be unable to strike down, no religious objection to an antidiscrimination law they will be unable to recognize, no worker protection they will be unable to repeal, no limitation on abortion they will be unable to allow, and no abuse of power by law enforcement they will feel compelled to restrict. While the Roberts Court will never explicitly endorse a white man’s government in the way the Redemption Court did, in pursuit of other cherished ideological goals it will be asked to pave the road for a white man’s government by another name.
We are at yet another turning point in our history. It is easy to brush this off and say our democracy will survive, as it always has, but this ignores the sacrifices and pain and death our ancestors had to suffer every time the Republicans and their founders sought to subvert justice and liberty.
Do two things. Read this article and pass it along. Then Vote. If you can only do one, Vote.
May 8, 2018
. . . .
. . . .
Long form article, interesting read. Reminds me a lot of DU!
Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.htmlHere are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And we’re in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered “dark.”
I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.
I was meeting with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist; Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and managing director of Thiel Capital; the commentator and comedian Dave Rubin; and their spouses in a Los Angeles restaurant to talk about how they were turned into heretics. A decade ago, they argued, when Donald Trump was still hosting “The Apprentice,” none of these observations would have been considered taboo.
. . . .
What is the I.D.W. and who is a member of it? It’s hard to explain, which is both its beauty and its danger.
Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.
Most simply, it is a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now. Feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets, they are rapidly building their own mass media channels.
. . . .
But they all share three distinct qualities. First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.
Long form article, interesting read. Reminds me a lot of DU!
March 2, 2018
How to Buy a Gun in 15 Countries
Really interesting article in the NYTimes today about what it takes to buy a gun in different countries. I'm on the record for supporting your right to buy a gun but adding a lot more oversight and regulation for the protection of society. In this article, I particularly like the approach Japan takes, with some changes (I would strike item 1, increase the frequency of of the classes in item 2, strike item 5, and I don't understand item 7):
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/02/world/international-gun-laws.html
Japan 1) Join a hunting or shooting club. 2) Take a firearm class and pass a written exam, which is held up to three times a year. 3) Get a doctor’s note saying you are mentally fit and do not have a history of drug abuse. 4) Apply for a permit to take firing training, which may take up to a month. 5) Describe in a police interview why you need a gun. 6) Pass a review of your criminal history, gun possession record, employment, involvement with organized crime groups, personal debt and relationships with friends, family and neighbors. 7) Apply for a gunpowder permit. 8) Take a one-day training class and pass a firing test. 9) Obtain a certificate from a gun dealer describing the gun you want. 10) Buy a gun safe and an ammunition locker that meet safety regulations. 11) Allow the police to inspect your gun storage. 12) Pass an additional background review. 13) Buy a gun.
February 14, 2018
There were 14 school shootings in January, 2018 (https://www.madisondodgeronline.com/opinion/2018/02/09/fourteen-school-shootings-have-happened-as-of-february-1st-2018/). I do not know how many have happened so far in February.
NRA: "But now is not the time to talk about school shootings" (said after every school shooting).
Deputies respond to active shooter at Florida high school
Source: NYPost
CBS 4 Miami texted with a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — near Fort Lauderdale — who said they’re hiding in the closet.
“All of a sudden there was a really loud noise… people are crying in the closet,” the student wrote to CBS 4.
The outlet reported a number of people could be seen from their newscopter being loaded into ambulances on a stretcher.
Coral Springs police advised students and teachers in the locked-down school should remain barricaded until officers reach them.
Read more: https://nypost.com/2018/02/14/deputies-respond-to-reports-of-active-shooter-at-high-school/
There were 14 school shootings in January, 2018 (https://www.madisondodgeronline.com/opinion/2018/02/09/fourteen-school-shootings-have-happened-as-of-february-1st-2018/). I do not know how many have happened so far in February.
NRA: "But now is not the time to talk about school shootings" (said after every school shooting).
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Member since: Mon Sep 24, 2012, 12:07 PM
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