There is an awkward, long-standing, and frequently occurring problem of how to refer in the third person to someone whose gender is unknown. The use of ‘he or she’ or ‘him or her’ is the traditional option but as anyone will attest, this is cumbersome and inelegant for both the writer and the reader. It also does not address the question of people whose gender identification does not fit into the binary category.
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Charles and David Koch are billionaire industrialists who have used their vast wealth to launch major campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels to influence (read ‘buy’) legislators so that they can get legislation passed that advances their own interests. They do this by contributing to contributing to candidates directly or through Super PACs, creating and supporting so—called think tanks that advance their interests, funding lobbying groups that work ceaselessly on their behalf, and in any other way that they can think of.
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The last segment of The Nightly Show features the evening’s guest joining Larry Wilmore and a selected panel of (usually) comedians to discuss a current issue. The weakness of the segment has been that the topic often had no connection to the background or expertise of the guest. But last week Wilmore had Bernie Sanders again on his show and they had an extended discussion on the issues that Sanders is addressing and it was an informative discussion, funny and yet serious.
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Today marks the fourth anniversary of my blog as part of the Freethought network, though I had been blogging on my earlier university site since January 2005. I truly never thought that I would keep it up for so long and still enjoy it. It has been the lively and enthusiastic response of the readers that has contributed to the enjoyment, in addition to being a learning experience for me.
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There are mixed reports coming out of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon where a group of armed people have taken over the property in the name of the ‘people’, to ‘restore the constitution’, ‘fight government tyranny’ and all the other things that get right-wing paramilitary groups get all fired up. Tim Dickinson has been following events closely and gives us some background on some of the members of this group.
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People make a lot of jokes at the expense of women about how some of them seek to own many pairs of shoes. The person who carried that to the extreme was the infamous Imelda Marcos, wife of the former autocratic leader of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos who, when he was ousted in 1986, fled with her husband to Hawaii, leaving behind around 1,000 pairs of shoes and 800 purses.
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I often succumb to the temptation to mock, or relay the mocking by others, of the efforts of the extreme right wing fanatics who speak with such a loud voice in US politics. Matt Taibbi, while also laughing at the antics of the armed people who have taken over a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon as a stand against government tyranny, addresses the question as to whether this is a good thing.
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Religion is playing a major role in this year’s Republican primary race, as it generally does in almost every recent election. Nancy T. Ammerman studies the role of religion in politics and has catalogued the religious affiliations of the various candidates and their degrees of dedication to taking past in formal religious observances.
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Needless to say, there has been a lot of negative reaction from the Republican party and Fox News to president Obama’s modest proposals to curb gun violence. Part of the reason is that they and others are in thrall of the gun lobby. But part of it is undoubtedly because they simply hate Obama and have gone all out to discredit him and oppose anything that he advocates, unless it benefits the oligarchy. This time they focused their ire and poured scorn on, of all things, the tear that he shed when talking about the deaths of elementary school children in Newtown.
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