The flood of rape, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment accusations against prominent people in public life has made it hard for anyone to keep track of who is accused of what and by whom. Via Rusty Blazenhoff I learned about something called The Creep Sheet that has compiled a list of all the accusations, sorted into categories like Entertainment, Politics and Government, Media, and so on.
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When Republicans win elections, they go hard right in the policies they push, even more than they campaigned on. Even when they win with the slimmest of majorities or even after they lose the popular vote (in the cases of George W. Bush and Donald Trump), they immediately claim to have a mandate and push the most extreme policies. In the case of Trump, someone who is by any definition an East coast elitist, he now governs like a conservative evangelical fundamentalist, pursuing policies on contraception, abortion, and LGBT social issues that you can be sure that he and the people in the social circles he moved in before he became president were opposed or indifferent to.
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I stopped watching the Star Wars films after seeing episode 1 titled The Phantom Menace which, as all aficionados know, was the fourth film is the weird sequencing of that franchise. (Q: Why did episodes 4,5,6 get made before episodes 1,2,3? A: In charge of production, Yoda was.) So I had not planned to see the latest episode (I don’t know what number it is) titled The Last Jedi. But this review by Kate Aronoff surprised me because she says that this film takes a side in the class war.
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As the holiday season kicks into gear and people get to spend time with friends and loved ones, I too would like to wish everyone an enjoyable time.
Although Donald Trump has now made it safe for people to say “Merry Christmas”, I much prefer to say the more inclusive Happy Holidays or Reason’s Greetings from Baxter the Wonder Dog and me. (The photo is not actually of Baxter but he does look a lot similar.)
How do you know if your computer has been tampered with while it was temporarily out of your sight, say when you left it in a hotel room? The Freedom of the Press Foundation has issued a press release about a new open-source privacy and security app called Haven that a team led by Edward Snowden have developed that will alert you if anyone tries to do so. Haven is currently in its beta phase and they looking for testers to improve it.
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It turns out that not all the evangelical leaders who have aligned themselves with Donald Trump and agreed to serve on his evangelical advisory board sold their souls in exchange for access to Trump. One of them, A.R. Bernard, the pastor of the Christian Cultural Center megachurch in Brooklyn, New York, decided after two meetings with Trump that the whole thing was a sham and quit, with Trump’s awful response to the Charlottesville events being the last straw.
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At this time of year, we get holiday cards from friends and relatives, though fewer each year since some are now choosing to send electronic versions. We usually place them on a sideboard until the holiday season is over. But there has been an increasing tendency for businesses to send cards to their customers and that poses the question of whether they should be accorded the same status as the others by being placed among them.
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Tennessee senator Bob Corker gained some fame in liberal circles when it seemed like he was objecting to the recent tax giveaway on principle (a commodity that has long ceased to exist among Republicans), because he has long stated that he opposes increasing the debt. But he then made a sudden switch and voted for the bill after it turned out that the bill writers inserted a provision at the last minute that greatly benefited those who had real estate business like him and Donald Trump. I showed a chart earlier with those who profited the most and by how much and, Lo!, Bob Corker’s name led all the rest.
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