Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Time magazine reports in great detail on all the last-minute maneuvering that went on before the Twitter announcement by Donald Trump of his selection of Mike Pence and the latter’s Tweet of acceptance, and the process was even more chaotic than previously suggested.
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As the Republican convention gets underway tomorrow in Cleveland and the Democrats the following week in Philadelphia, expect to see a lot of images of elephants and donkeys during the two events. In Sri Lankan politics, all political parties have an associated symbol that they choose for themselves. The symbols can be animals or inanimate items like a chair. These are prominently displayed at all party functions and are even present on ballot papers next to the party candidate’s name. This serves a practical purpose for voters who might be illiterate because they can identify whom to vote for by the symbol alone.
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It now turns out that the initial speculation that Donald Trump’s botched announcement of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running was due to him not being sure he wanted him seems to be correct. Usually, such an announcement is made with great fanfare in the hope of gaining positive coverage for the ticket. But yesterday Trump made the choice on Twitter and Pence accepted the same way, a low-budget affair if there ever was one, just the kind of thing Trump hates.
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The Republican party platform is shaping up to be one of the most right-wing in the history of the party. Tierney Sneed writes that in past years, the nominee and party establishment tried to curb the excesses pushed by the base so that the party could appeal to at least some moderate voters in the general election.
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Those who follow media coverage of the RNC convention may be able to help me with the monitoring of the media. In particular, I am looking for the following things:
• Use of police force and to what degree
• Crowd control techniques (mounted police)
• Dispersal orders
• Police/reporter interactions
• Acts of civil disobedience
• Use of: pepper spray, tear gas, wooden bullets, rubber pellets.
If you see any of those things in the media, it would help me if you could jot down the following information and email it to me.
1. Date:
2. Time:
3. News Outlet:
4. Any comments or observations:
Thanks!
The line up of speakers for the Republican National Convention has been announced and they seem to be a pretty dreary lot. Donald Trump had promised a big change from what he called the boring conventions of the past, and promised that there would be various celebrities and sporting figures among them to make it a great show.
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There are moves to pass a contempt of parliament motion against former UK prime minister Tony Blair in the wake of the revelations in the Chilcot report, and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who voted against the Iraq war, will likely support it.
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My attention was caught by this article about the unbelievable amount of $10,000 per month spent on the hair of French president Francois Hollande. This news was released by the satirical publication Le Canard Enchaine but is supposed to be genuine.
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With each new incident where the police have killed someone, the past events get shifted to the background and even forgotten by those of us who have no personal connection to the events or are not activists. On the program Here and Now host Jeremy Hobson went through a list of nine recent high profile episodes of police killings of black people and the aftermath, with no action being taken against the police in almost all of the cases. You can read the transcript but I strongly recommend clicking on the link and listening to it even though it takes longer because it is so very powerful. There is something about the unemotional reading up of one case after another, accompanied by audio of the events, that carries great weight and makes you realize how awful things have become.
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