The University of Iowa has been looking for a new president. You might be wondering how a university president gets that position: they are appointed by the Board of Regents, which in this case is appointed by the Republican governor, Terry Branstad, and led by a prominent Republican, Bruce Rastetter. You might be having presentiments of trouble already, since the GOP is never a friend to higher ed.
This is unexpected — I thought fines were forthcoming, but Kim Davis is apparently also going to jail.
Federal District Judge David Bunning held Kim Davis, the county clerk who has become a national symbol of anti-gay animus for her resistance to marriage equality, in contempt of court on Thursday. According to Dan Griffin, a reporter for local news station WSAZ, she was led out by U.S. Marshals. The judge reportedly said that financial sanctions were not enough to ensure her compliance with the law.
Also, while she’s absent from office, other county officials have the power to issue marriage licenses. So her obstruction is at an end.
It’s a clear, simple explanation for why we’re seeing all these refugees erupting out of Syria: a combination of disruptive climate change and tyranny.
My news is full of one picture: a toddler, drowned, lying face down in the surf on the shore of Turkey. He was one of a great many Syrian refugees fleeing their country in desperation, and dying in the process.
It’s a shocking image. It’s heartbreaking. It tore me up to see it, so I’ll spare you all. Instead, I’ll show you another image that popped up in my newsfeed that is, in many ways, even more terrible.
We need to remember that our friends, our enemies, and the innocents in between are all human beings, and all deserve to live. Remember when we vote to give politicians the right to launch missiles into cities, and when we stand by and watch and do nothing as the suffering grows.
Donald Trump declares his intent to build a wall along the US-Mexican border. Scott Walker one-ups him, and additionally declares that he will consider building a giant wall along the Canadian border. I will beat them all.
I notice we also get brown people drifting onto our shores from those balmy islands to the south. I propose we also build a colossal Caribbean wall, from Texas to Florida. We can also use it to prevent storm surges from hurricanes along the Gulf coast — New Orleans is saved!
We won’t stop there, either. We will extend that wall along the East coast, to connect up with the Canadian wall. There will be no sea level rise along that shore while I’m in charge. Also no Africans or Europeans.
The next frontier is the West coast. A wall along that shore will not only block the Yellow Peril, it will end the danger of tsunamis.
Finally, I’ll take a bold step no other candidate will consider: walls between the states. Wisconsin is a failed region, thanks to Scott Walker, so we’ll build a wall between Minnesota and that terrible place. That will inspire other construction projects — the Mason-Dixon Line will become the Mason-Dixon Wall. Californians are all jerks, so we’ll quarantine them with a wall. Utah can isolate itself with a Great Wall of Mormon.
There is no downside to any of these projects, except for one: the only party that will be impressed by the extent of my proposals is Republican. I don’t think I could join that party — I have some standards, you know.
Anyone else remember the John Birch Society? I had relatives wrapped up in it — they were dangerously nuts and full of evil ideas that even I, as a young kid, could tell were demented and destructive — and that last article brought back ugly memories. They seemed to have declined rather precipitously in the 90s, but I should have known…they were just going underground. They’ve risen from the dead now, as the Tea Party.
Here’s an account by a woman who grew up in a John Birch family. I only saw these jerks tangentially, on the fringe of my family, but I can tell you that this story rings true, and I agree — life in that kind of society would be hell.
I recognized the anti-government rhetoric and the unlimited money and I realized that Tea Party had locked arms with libertarians, big business, the religious right and the John Birch Society. This was a potent coalition of ideology, money and power—a coalition fifty years in the making.
Most Americans have no idea that these “new” ideas are the same “old” ideas that the John Birch Society preached fifty years ago.
I do.
I lived in the heart of radical right-wing extremism. I left the movement when I realized that living in a Birch society, libertarian America would be hell.
Here’s a treat: a congressman who has been in office since 1989, and is on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
@fullofbalogna claiming Global Warming they create powerful Global gov. Claiming tooth decay they mandate chemical fluoride in our water
— Dana Rohrabacher (@DanaRohrabacher) August 30, 2015
claiming Global Warming they create powerful Global gov. Claiming tooth decay they mandate chemical fluoride in our water
He’s a Republican, of course.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate. Frank Luntz (I know, he’s horrible and not to be trusted) reported the results of a survey of Republican voters.
There’s a whole planet out there — we need a place to talk about other political affairs than the narrow domain of the United States, and Beatrice will be curating the discussion about politics that aren’t centered on the US.
The paper leaves no room for ambiguity.
Note that there’s nothing at all wrong with this — the use of fetal tissue in these kinds of experiments, and many more, is ubiquitous, and it is not obtained by magic, but by the ethical donation of fetal material from abortions and miscarriages and stillbirths. I don’t object at all to Carson having participated in this kind of research.
I do object to him now declaring that it is unethical in all circumstances.
