Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
I am increasingly disheartened when I have to go back and find something in this here blog thingie and discover along the way that nearly all the YouTube videos I linked to have disappeared. I know the nature of the Internet is to be both ephemeral and forever, but c’mon guys…
That’s why I’ve started saving the videos and linking to them locally.
“It’s the only way to be sure.”
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The Daily Beast reports:
Paul Manafort is going to jail. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday morning to revoke his bail, meaning the president’s former campaign chairman will be incarcerated until his July trial. The move came after Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s team moved for the judge to change the terms of Manafort’s bail. Mueller’s team alleged that Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnick—a former Manafort colleague of Manafort’s who the special counsel recently indicted—tampered with witnesses in the months after being charged with a host of crimes.
Hopefully his trial will be delayed a very. long. time.
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From NBC News:
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The Trump administration has selected Tornillo, Texas, for the construction of tents to house the overflow of immigrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under a new “zero tolerance” policy, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
The Department of Health and Human Services will erect a “tent city,” full of large tents whose walls touch the ground, that is estimated to hold 450 beds for children, say the sources.
It will not be the first time the U.S. government has erected tent cities to house immigrants. U.S. Customs and Border Protection used tents to house an influx of immigrants in 2014 and at the end of the Obama administration. But now the overflow of a particular immigrant population — in this case, children — is a government-created problem.
The increase of children who are alone and in need of care at the border is the product of a new Trump administration policy that on May 7 began criminally prosecuting all adult migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security separates any children traveling with those adults before prosecution.
One shelter in Brownsville, holding nearly 1,500 boys aged 10 to 17, opened its doors to reporters on Wednesday. NBC News was among the first to tour the facility, which closely resembled a jail and allows children outside for only two hours per day.
The overflow of children at HHS facilities has caused backup at border stations, the first stop for immigrants crossing into the United States. As of last week, over 570 unaccompanied children were in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, and nearly 300 of those had been held for more than 72 hours, the limit for holding an immigrant of any age at a border station.
Ron Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told MSNBC on Thursday that about 1,500 immigrants are being arrested each day for crossing the border illegally. Vitiello said the policy is meant to deter families of immigrants from coming to the U.S.
“If you apply consequence to illegal activity you get less of it,” he said in defense of the policy. “They are only in these shelters long enough to be reunited with their family members. That’s the purpose of them.”
The facility in Brownsville is holding children for 52 days on average. They are sometimes sent to foster homes if relatives in the U.S. cannot be found.
“HHS is legally required to provide care and shelter for all unaccompanied alien children referred by [the Department of Homeland Security], and works in close coordination with DHS on the security and safety of the children and community,” a spokesman for HHS said in a statement.
I don’t mind telling you that after hearing of this news yesterday I had a knot in my stomach that still hasn’t gone away.
This is what America has become.
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Chicago: Chicago X (1976)
This was the go-to soundtrack for my first semester of college. Of course, it didn’t help that you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing If You Leave Me Now.
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Okay heads up for all Americans eligible to vote:
The Supreme Court just issued a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.
This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.
What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and you will need to register again.
They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.
And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.
This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:
If you are a registered voter in a red state at this point, please please please do not take your registered status as assumed. Check on your registration status, look up all relevant voter registration deadlines for your state and district, CIRCLE THAT SHIT ON YOUR CALENDAR, and check your registration status AGAIN right before those deadlines pass, so you can be sure of it before its too late to do anything about it til the next voting cycle.
Here’s a Twitter thread with resources for voters in every state to check on their registration status: https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1006221580458790912
Make sure you check it periodically because the newest voter roll purges likely haven’t happened yet.
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…to learn it’s not the Orange Shitgibbon illegally occupying the White House or the fact that he and his cronies are dismantling long-standing American principles in real-time before our very eyes. It’s Prilosec and my high blood pressure medication that’s causing this depression!
Nor is it stupid bullshit like this!
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Carpenters: A Song For You (1972)
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Such a tease.
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That’s the only way I can describe my core emotional state for the last eighteen months.
On edge. Anxious. Can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep since election night. And yet, no matter what new horror or dismantling of a sacred American principle is brought about by the illegitimate occupier of the White House or his minions with each passing day, that feeling of dread never goes away. It’s never that other shoe; there’s still something more, something worse ahead. It’s that gnawing feeling that we haven’t sunk as low as we’re going to before this nightmare ends and the cancer that is eating away at this democracy is eradicated. (At least I still have that hope.) What’s even more depressing is the knowledge that the 15-20% of Americans who constitute Trump’s core base will be cheering every step as we descend into that darkness, even if it consumes them in the process.
I’m convinced that if bombs start raining down on us, the cognitive dissonance instilled by Faux News and its ilk on his base will guarantee that they’ll go to their graves secure in their belief that it all Obama’s fault…or Hillary’s…or the “damn Liberals,” never once accepting that it was the Orange Russian Wig Stand in the Oval Office and his malignant, sociopathic narcissism that brought about their destruction.
Is this what PTSD feels like? Seriously, I’m asking. The anxiety, the difficulty sleeping, this general feeling of doom that some days just permeates everything. And it’s not just me…from the few discussions I’ve had at work, I’m starting to think that 80-85% of the country must be going through this in varying degrees.
As I’ve written before, until November a year ago, I used to enjoy Twitter. Now I can’t stand to be on the platform for more than a couple minutes before I want to either start smashing heads with a metal folding chair or just sink into deep depression at the absolute stupidity displayed by my fellow humans.
And yet I still manage to find joy and peace in things both large and small: my husband, our doggies, music and the machines I use to listen to it, photography, leaving work in the afternoon, WestWorld and a dozen or so other entertainments…
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Going solo, not going to Solo (a movie, despite my Star Wars fandom, I’m in absolutely no hurry to see).
Ben is in El Paso with his friend Barry for the weekend, and I had no plans other than in his absence to give this place a thorough cleaning and decluttering. To that end, Friday evening I got the living and dining room swept, dusted (including the top of the bookcase, something I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t touched in over a year) and decluttered. I spent the rest of the evening enjoying music on my new old stereo.
Today the dogs let me sleep in until nearly 6am. After getting up, feeding and letting them out to do their business, we all went back to bed for a couple more hours.
The rest of the morning was taken up with laundry, cleaning the bathroom, mopping the floors, and finally clearing out crap from under the kitchen sink. (Every time we look under there Ben and I look at each other and say, “We really need to…”) Some of the shit down there dated from Denver and was long past any reasonable expiration date.
After making myself lunch (it was already 103℉ outside by that time and I had no desire to venture into that just to grab lunch), I called it quits for the day and the dogs and I laid down for a much deserved, cool afternoon nap.
Tomorrow my plans are to finish up laundry, dust and sweep the bedroom, and then head to the coffeehouse for a few hours to relax and then run to Target for the weekly shopping.
Not as fun a weekend as Ben is having, but I do take a degree of satisfaction in knowing “This house is clean!”
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Photos that speak: Fuck your fountain. Fuck your tree. Fuck voter suppression. Fuck your labels. Fuck your stereotypes. Fuck your hatred. Fuck your restaurants. Fuck that dude. Fuck police brutality. Fuck white supremacy.
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