Readers may have heard that Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, was one of those people whose homes were flooded by the torrential rains that fell on Louisiana and flooded parts of Baton Rouge and other areas. The FRC is one of those evangelical organizations that have an anti-LGBT mission, though like many Christian groups, they claim to “love the sinner and hate the sin”.
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Needless to say that I was startled to read in the news that Donald Trump would be going to Mexico today to meet with that nation’s president Enrique Pena Nieto, prior to his much publicized speech on immigration in Arizona later in the day. News reports say that the invitation came from Nieto and that Trump would be accompanied by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions.
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Jean-Baptiste Frederic Isidore Thielemans, more widely known as ‘Toots’, died last week. The Belgian-born musician played and popularized the jazz harmonica and could well claim the title of the musician whose work people in the US recognize the most while knowing the performer the least.
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I am not a big fan of sweets (I have never been able to get used to the word ‘candy’ that is the term used in the US) and even then I only like a very few, like Cadbury’s milk chocolate bars or Kit Kat. Leigh Morland is annoyed at what is happening to chocolate bars.
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Discussions of the value of trade agreements have been quite prominent in the current election campaign. Supporters of the neoliberal economic model are strong advocates of so-called ‘free trade’, extolling the benefits they claim it provides, while critics have said that the only ones who really benefit are the oligarchs who get greater freedom to move capital and production around the globe is pursuance of greater profits, leaving behind abandoned workers.
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Gene Wilder was a funny, funny actor, someone who could evoke laughs with seemingly little effort, combining to great effect his wide eyes, frizzy hair, and impeccable comic timing. I cannot even begin to list all the films that he made that I have enjoyed over the years and so it was with considerable sadness that I learned of his death today at the age of 83.
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I did not watch much of the Olympics though I did catch some glimpses of some of the sprint events when I was in a home where the TV was on. In general, I like it when countries that are not traditional sporting powerhouses do well and so was pleased to see that the countries of Southeast Asia had their best Olympics ever.
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As some readers may know, recently FreethoughtBlogs called for people who were interested in blogging for the site to apply. As a result we have a crop of interesting new people (see the sidebar) and Marcus Ranum’s Stderr is one such addition. But this week there was an interesting development. Someone sent in an application yesterday but less than ten hours later followed up with another email:
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There is a war being waged against public schools. There are people actively seeking to make them fail or at least look as if they are failing. This is a strong statement that I substantiate in my book The Achievement Gap in U.S. Education: Canaries in the Mine published back in 2005.
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