I don’t disagree with the Seattle Times editorial board on this headline:
Wash. Republican congressional delegation, stop Obamacare opposition
It’s just that, you know, if congressional Republicans are on the opposite side of the board on almost every issue, maybe it’s time for the board to stop endorsing Republicans for Congress. Just sayin’.
– Well looks like we’ll probably have a transit package with full funding for ST but a stupid carbon thing
– Fox News just fired one of its hosts in the most vicious & humiliating way imaginable
– I wonder if Metro could steal the color scheme idea from SWIFT. If the actual buses are different colors (I couldn’t tell from the post, but I’d bet not), it might be a problem on the C and D lines, but otherwise, it’s doable. Also, holy cow, SWIFT 2 looks like it’ll be pretty great.
– JEB!
Proverbs 16:18
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Discuss.
Mental Floss: What did the original colonists sound like?
Maddow: RNC distributes confusing fake primary ballot:
The Ever Expanding 2016 Clown Parade:
Jon Stewart is soooooo SICK.
Forgotten Assholes of History: The Christian Killing Emperor.
Burning Flag:
Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.
Farron Cousins: CIA engaged in human medical experimentation.
A SCOTUS Rainbow:
A new kind of climate movement.
Obama honors the life of Reverend Clementa Pinckney.
Mental Floss: 27 weird world records.
Oops…I Did it Again:
Congressional hits and misses of the week.
Sam Seder: SCOTUS upholds the real meaning of the Fair Housing Act.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Immundly Ugly!
SCOTUSCare?!?
White House: West Wing Week.
David Pakman: How FAUX News uses black people to say racist things.
Minute Physics: How to detect a secret nuclear test.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Didn’t have time for longer commentary this week, just a note about the scope of these roundups. When I initially started this, I didn’t intend to follow incidents involving government interventions over parenting. This tends to be a difficult area with respect to things like vaccines and extreme religious beliefs. In some of those cases, I fully support government intervention if there’s a clear public health justification. And in some cases, I can be convinced that a person’s religious beliefs cross the line into the abuse of a child.
But the recent incidents involving arrests over merely allowing young kids to play or walk alone go way beyond the line of what should be acceptable for the state. I plan to track incidents like these as well, as I think they warrant importance and belong in the same category as the other things I write about and link to here.
News from the past two weeks:
[Read more…]
– Congrats to all future married gay couples! (video loaded automatically for me)
– Even though I mostly agree with this fact-check about the rainbow flag crosswalks, how about just a little joy and whimsey is good enough?
– Even though it’s obviously based on bullshit, I suppose I support the GOP call for Roberts’ ouster, as long as Obama is still president.
– I’m looking forward to the First Hill Streetcar whenever it eventually gets going.
– Bristol Palin’s politics are awful, but her pregnancy really isn’t my business.
Anyone active blogging locally here in Washington is probably familiar with Angie in WA State. She was an early commenter on my first blog (blogspot seems to have taken down the comments from that era, but if memory serves, she was the first person who I didn’t know personally to comment there). She is most active as a diarist and commenter on Daily Kos, but she is all over. In recent years, her Twitter has been an inspiration to read.
Anyway, this is preamble to say that she’s running for Congress in the 3rd, against Herrera Beutler. She’d make a hell of a great Congresswoman, and I bet she’d make a hell of a great candidate too.
I hope you’ll consider a donation, or volunteering to walk a precinct. I don’t know if the Democrats are actively running anyone down there, but I can’t imagine there’s anyone I’d prefer to see in Congress from the area. She’s going to try to run a grass roots campaign more than a money-focused one, but all campaigns need money.
Good luck!
– Good for gender neutral city bathrooms in Seattle.
– So wait, there’s a cost to inaction on climate change?
Please join us tonight for a summer solstice edition of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Stop by for an evening of informal conversation over an ice cold beer.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by earlier for dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And the Spokane, Woodinville and Kent chapters meet on Thursday.
There are 190 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.
– Nothing can ever be politicized.
– Anyone else find #CharlestonSyllabus helpful?
– You guys, crows are awesome, but also crows are the worst
– 18 Missing Link victims will go to the hospital by the time the trail study is complete
1 Corinthians 7:9
It is better to marry than to burn.
Discuss.
Thom: Texas rejects a woman’s right to choose.
“Holy Encyclical, Batman!”
David Pakman: Paul Ryan falls apart (again) on FAUX News…has no plan to replace ObamaCare.
Congressional Hits and Misses of the week.
WTF? Another Right-Wing Extremist Mass Shooting?!?
Mental Floss: 14 facts about parasites.
Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) gets a jump on Father’s Day
Young Turks: What woman should appear on the $10?.
Pap and Sam Seder: GOP trash economics sends Kansas back to the dust bowl.
VSauce: Dinosaurs.
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about famous stories.
The 2016 Clown Parade—“Even More Clowns” Edition:
Mental Floss: Why do we blush when embarassed.
Farron Cousins: The death of another Republican talking point.
Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.
Thom: How big money is undermining voter rights.
Racial Identity Politics:
White House: West Wing Week.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
They’ve taken the tweet down and changed the headline, but for most of yesterday, The Seattle Times had headlined their story copy of an AP soty and tweeted “Concentrated evil” or “sweet kid”: Details on the suspect in Charleston church shootings. Ansel at Slog gives some context to the harm done by various attempts by the media to humanize these killers. And that’s an important thing to say.
That context is important, but this case it’s ugly enough on its own. We’re talking about a racist crime. We’re talking about terrorizing a community. We’re talking about a man who committed the grossest of acts. And it doesn’t matter if you can find some friend’s parent who vouched for him at some point “sweet kid” is disgusting.
Look, I’m all for finding out all about how the people who knew him felt about him before. If it’s in the wire story, I guess run it. But The Seattle Times chose to highlight that. And it’s a fucking disgrace.
My ancient laptop is acting funny so no links. Will try to do something on the commute home, but no promises.
To the TV and radio hosts, the columnists, the leaders of White churches, to the parents of White people: You really have to take the lead in teaching our community not to murder Black people. There is a sickness in the White community where we excuse police, where we excuse people who saw an unarmed Black kid with Skittles, where we excuse anyone who says they’re scared of Black people killing them. While each time it’s horrendous, last night, we saw as the toxic racism of our culture that hardly bothers to condemn the murder of Black people came to a head in a Black church in South Carolina.
Yes, sure, there is more to deal with than looking for every excuse after a Black man or woman gets killed by the police or by someone with a gun. Yes, we need to deal more specifically with the toxic aftereffects of slavery, and of Jim Crow, and of redlining. And we need to end the pay gap between Black and White people. We can deal with the school to prison pipeline. We can take Black people seriously when they talk about their own lives. We can cut the micro-aggression bullshit. But we can at least start with condemning it when Black people are killed in this country. We can at least not look for excuses.
All of that has to start with White people. A white person bought Dylann Storm Roof a gun in the first damn place. White people are the ones whose paranoid fantasies give space for this sort of thing. We’re the ones who make excuse after excuse after goddamn excuse.
We’re the ones who after the fact say selling loosies should have been a death sentence. We’re the ones who say being put in the back of a police van should be a death sentence. White people, and especially those with a platform need to confront the deadly racism in our community. As long as we keep making excuses, there will be more.
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!