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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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Reeking of desperation here in Michigan, my Michigan and in Arizona. I'm glad the Republicans here are scared. They should be after all the crap they pulled over the past 8 years, especially the mangling of the Flint water crisis. That mess is ALL on them and it is something diabolical enough that people will remember it at the voting booth even if they aren't all that politically involved otherwise.
By Helen Holmes @ Observer.com, Oct. 26
An annual report from GLAAD has determined that we are is in the midst of a significant upswing when it comes to depicting LGBTQ characters in series regular roles on television [....]
Quote from that report (PDF)
GLAAD and Harris Poll’s Accelerating Acceptance study shows that 20 percent of Americans 18- 34 identify as LGBTQ, a key demo for networks. They now have enough options for inclusive TV programming that they can actually pick and choose what to support in a way that we’ve not been able to do in the past.
By James La Porta & Chantal Da Silva @ Newsweek.com, Nov. 1 (with PDF docs)
[...] In a powerpoint presentation from Saturday, the Joint Force Land Component Commander Threat Working Group prepared an intelligence assessment for Pentagon officials as they begin to carry out Operation Faithful Patriot, the interagency operation with the Department of Defense and led by the Department of Homeland Security, that started Tuesday.
The presentation is marked as “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO//LES,” meaning, the documents are for official use only and are law enforcement sensitive. Newsweek obtained the operational planning documents earlier this week from two different Defense Department sources that have direct knowledge of U.S. Northern Command's mission on the southern U.S. border. The documents take a detailed look at the four-point of entry locations spread across the southwest border and assesses where the caravan might travel [....]
The assessment underscored news reports that combatant commanders might encounter unregulated militia members along the southern border in alleged support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
“Estimated 200 unregulated armed militia members currently operating along the southwest border. Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments. They operate under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP [Customs and Border Protection] primarily between POEs [Points of Entry],” according to the documents.
The documents go onto highlight historical protests that support immigrants crossing the U.S. border. Those protests in some cases have shut down points of entry controlled by Customs and Border Protection, but the assessment concludes that protests are “normally peaceful unless extreme right or left groups attend.” [....]
Knife or axe-attacks on children are distressingly common.
By Robert Foyle Hunwick @ NewRepublic.com, Nov. 2
Americans have gotten uncomfortably familiar with the periodic tragedy of the mass shooting; in China, it’s the stabbing spree.
Last Friday, a 39-year-old knife-wielding woman burst into the playground of a kindergarten in Chongqing, southwest China, managing to slash 14 children as they were finishing their morning exercises, before she was wrestled to the ground by shocked onlookers. The following day, the United States suffered its worst anti-Semitic attack in history when a man shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 and wounding six others.
The consecutive attacks recall a similarly grisly coincidence from 2012 [....]
By Gregg Easterbrook @ TheWeeklyStandard.com, Oct. 30
[....] Now here’s the punchline: ESPN pays twice as much for bad games as NBC pays for good ones. ESPN sends the NFL a check for $1.9 billion each year, while NBC sends $950 million annually. Yet every year at schedule-release time, NBC receives a better slate of games than ESPN, even though NBC gets to air the Super Bowl every third year and ESPN never does. What’s going on?
A primary factor here is that the NFL’s feudal-elite owners really hate ESPN. They are jealous of its prime real estate on cable [....]
The owners think that without the NFL, ESPN would be much less appealing to cable carriers. They’re right. But ESPN also was first to the idea of national cable sports. The NFL wasn’t there first. ESPN also had the basic idea of treating sports as entertainment—adding humor and commentary—back when the NFL took itself oh-so-seriously. ESPN’s money and success at sports drive the feudal-elite NFL owners crazy in a way they aren’t about NBC, which existed long before cable and whose primary business is not sports.
NFL Network was launched in 2003 [....]
Young people making what my hero Rep.John Lewis might call good trouble.
Robert Barnes and Brady Dennis, WaPo online, 2nd most popular politics item as I write.
I once thought he was a lousy pick to play Trump on SNL, but maybe I was wrong.
Same old same old Bolton, not even a new evil number:
By Dave Lawler @ Axios.com, 3 hrs ago
President Trump is going on the offensive against the oppressive regimes in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua — and he sees Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro as an ally in that quest, national security adviser John Bolton said in a speech today in Miami [....]
Bolton's Manichean vision for the region included an "Axis of Evil" equivalent for the Western Hemisphere — the "Troika of Tyranny.” It was also among the most thorough statements of the administration's Latin America policy to date [....]
Here's where Trump's inability to follow any advice might come in handy? Tends to be especially quixotic and fickle in his choices of best foreign friends.
By Elizabeth Dias @ NYTimes.com, Nov.1, with excerpts with photos
[....] With just days left before the midterm elections — two years after President Trump won the White House with a record share of white, evangelical support — we asked young evangelicals to tell The Times about the relationship between their faith and their politics.
Nearly 1,500 readers replied, from every state but Alaska and Vermont. Hundreds wrote long essays about their families and communities. They go to prominent megachurches as well as small Southern Baptist, nondenominational and even mainline Protestant congregations. Some said they have left evangelicalism altogether.
We read every submission and spent many hours interviewing respondents. Here’s what we learned:
Young evangelicals are questioning the typical ties between evangelicalism and Republican politics. Many said it had caused schisms within their families. And many described a real struggle with an administration they see as hostile to immigrants, Muslims, L.G.B.T.Q. people, and the poor. They feel it reflects a loss of humanity, which conflicts with their spiritual call [....]