rmrd Notes & Opinions

    By rmrd0000 on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 3:34pm |

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    WOKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER

    By rmrd0000 on Tue, 02/23/2021 - 12:11pm |

    Bret Stephens has a NYT opinion column that attacks the Woke because the food magazine apolized for a reciple that altered a traditional Jewish cookie recipe. The complaint occurred six years after the recipe appeared in Bon Appetit. Stephens invokes Orwell and opines that the Woke are a great threat.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/bon-appetit-cancel-culture.html

    Today on planet earth, there are Congressional hearings into the Capitol insurgency. Members of the Capitol police are suspended while an investigation into their behavior during the Capitol riot and interactions with domestic terrorists is investigated. A large number of Republicans in Congress refuse to certify the election of Joe Biden. QAnon believers have been elected to Congress. This all goes on and I am supposed to view the person who complained about a 6 year old cookie recipe as a big threat to democracy?

    Bret Stephens fans the flames. It dawns to me that Stephens tried to cancel a George Washington University professor, because the professor published a "mean tweet" about Stephens.

    https://www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20834957/bret-stephens-bedbug-meltdown-dave-karpf-new-york-times-explained

    I'm sorry, I don't see the Woke as the big threat. AOC was Woke when she came to the aid of Texans. The GOP is working overtime to suppress the vote.


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 3:38pm

    OPINION: CHILDREN IN DISTRESS AREN’T CRIMINALS. STOP HANDCUFFING THEM.

    submitted by rmrd0000 18 hours ago

    Police officers responding to a “family trouble” call in Rochester, N.Y., last month handcuffed, pepper-sprayed and violently subdued a 9-year-old Black girl — actions caught on video that went viral. As the officers shoved the girl into a squad car, one yelled, “You are acting like a child!” The girl replied, “I am a child!”

    Read the article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/24/children-distress-arent-criminals-stop-handcuffing-them/


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 3:43pm

    OPINION: REPUBLICANS DON’T GET TO TALK ABOUT BIPARTISANSHIP

    submitted by rmrd0000 5 hours ago

    Jennifer Rubin the the WaPo

    If Republicans such as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — who complains that the administration has not entered into endless negotiations with a group of Republicans who have yet to recognize the magnitude of the crises facing the country — were truly interested in being bipartisan, they would be acting very differently than they have since President Biden won the election.

    Read the article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/25/republicans-dont-get-talk-about-bipartisanship/


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 3:45pm

    OPINION: THE GOP IS NOT EVEN TRYING TO DISGUISE ITS RACISM ANYMORE

    submitted by rmrd0000 45 min ago

    This week, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) played up White victim mentalityduring the confirmation hearing for attorney general nominee Merrick Garland. Kennedy took issue with Garland’s use of the term “implicit bias,” arguing that it meant he (and presumably his supporters) were being called racists. Garland patiently explained that implicit bias is endemic in the human condition.

    In retrospect, Garland’s right response may have been: If the shoe fits, senator.

    Read the article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/25/gop-is-not-even-trying-disguise-its-racism-anymore/


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 02/25/2021 - 3:47pm

    BLACK POLICE OFFICER IS REINSTATED, 121 YEARS LATER

    By rmrd0000 on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 8:51pm |

    In 1889, Robert William Stewart became one of the first Black police officers ever hired in California.

    He had traveled far to get there. Mr. Stewart was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1850 and was freed after the Civil War. He worked his way across the United States before joining the Los Angeles Police Department, which had never hired a Black officer before.

    Despite frequent harassment, Mr. Stewart stayed on the force until 1900, when a white teenager accused him of sexual assault. He never regained his badge during his lifetime, even after a jury acquitted him.

    But last week, the Los Angeles Police Commission voted unanimously to reinstate Mr. Stewart, recognizing the injustice of his termination and naming a room after him at Police Headquarters.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/los-angeles-black-police-officer.html


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 1:58am

    SELMA BRIDGE CROSSING JUBILEE TO HONOR 4 CIVIL RIGHTS ICONS

    By rmrd0000 on Sat, 03/06/2021 - 9:22pm |

    This weekend marks the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the peaceful march of more than 500 demonstrators who walked from Selma to Montgomery across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were met with brutal violence by Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965.

    For over a decade, the Bridge Crossing Jubilee has recognized this day and the fight for voting rights with a weekend-long commemoration and a march across the bridge. The event normally brings out 50,000 people each year. This year is very different, however. In 2020, four civil rights icons died: Congressman John Lewis, who helped lead the march, Southern Christian Leadership Conference founder Joseph Lowery, minister and Martin Luther King Jr. confidant C.T. Vivian and attorney Bruce Boynton. This year’s celebration, which is virtual due to COVID-19, will honor them.

    Drew Glover, who is the coordinator of this year’s Selma Jubilee, told HuffPost that it was significant to still find a way to host the event and honor the civil rights giants, despite the pandemic. 

    “The very real significance that it plays not only in the importance of commemorating the work of Congressman Lewis and the other great civil rights leaders, I think one of the main goals and roles that the Jubilee plays is this annual commemoration and reminder of the struggles that people had to experience to be able to allow us the right to vote,” he said. 
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/selma-bridge-crossing-jubilee-honor-civil-rights-icons_n_6042a555c5b613cec15da004


    by rmrd0000 on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 1:19am

    STACEY DASH APOLOGIZES FOR PAST CONTROVERSIES: ‘I WAS THE ANGRY, CONSERVATIVE, BLACK WOMAN’

    By rmrd0000 on Thu, 03/11/2021 - 10:44am |

    Trying to find her way back to get an invite to the cookout

    “Clueless” actor-turned-controversial political pundit Stacey Dash has apologized for her past offensive comments, claiming she’d “lived her life being angry” but “that’s not who Stacey is now.”

    Dash, who frequently stirred outrage with her hot takes during her two-year stint as a commentator for Fox News, acknowledged in an interview with Daily Mail TV released online Wednesday that her opinions often were “arrogant and prideful and angry.”

    “But that’s not who Stacey is now,” she declared. “Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy.” 

    Dash was an early endorser of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. She sparked outrage for using the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre to boost the then-presidential hopeful and for suggesting Black History Month should be eliminated. In 2017, she backed Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” response to the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was tweeting pro-Trump posts with the #MAGA hashtag until 2019.

    Fox News suspended Dash in 2015 for claiming then-President Barack Obama “didn’t give a shit” about terrorism. It reportedly decided not to renew her contract the following year.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stacey-dash-apologizes-donald-trump_n_6049ec32c5b60e0725f52c4a


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 03/11/2021 - 12:20pm

    MEGAN THEE STALLION: WHY I SPEAK UP FOR BLACK WOMEN

    By rmrd0000 on Sun, 03/14/2021 - 5:08pm |

    "I was recently the victim of an act of violence by a man. After a party, I was shot twice as I walked away from him. We were not in a relationship. Truthfully, I was shocked that I ended up in that place.

    My initial silence about what happened was out of fear for myself and my friends. Even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment. The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted.

    After a lot of self-reflection on that incident, I’ve realized that violence against women is not always connected to being in a relationship. Instead, it happens because too many men treat all women as objects, which helps them to justify inflicting abuse against us when we choose to exercise our own free will."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/opinion/megan-thee-stallion-black-women.html

    • 52 reads

     

    Why this now? Didn't we all see/discuss this in October?

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/man-who-shot-megan-stallion-charged-32672


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 03/15/2021


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 03/15/2021 - 6:59am

    Comparing past student activity at college campuses, the Woke are nothing new

    1818

    Student fights at Harvard

    Professors were mocked

    At Yale, things were rougher. Between 1843 and 1858, students carried arms, stabbed tutors, built barricades, engaged by the hundreds in town-gown brawls, and shot two New Haven firemen to death.

    https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/harvards-long-ago-student-risings/

    Cornell 1969

    Early in the morning of Parents' Weekend, 40 years ago this Saturday, 11 fire alarms rang out across the Cornell campus. At 3 a.m., a burning cross was discovered outside Wari House, a cooperative for black women students. The following morning, members of the Afro-American Society (AAS) occupied Willard Straight Hall to protest Cornell's perceived racism, its judicial system and its slow progress in establishing a black studies program.

    The events that were to prompt decades of social, cultural and political change on campus were in play.

    At 9:40 a.m., in an attempt to take the building back, white Delta Upsilon fraternity brothers entered the Straight and fought with AAS students in the Ivy Room before being ejected. Fearing further attacks, the black students brought guns into the Straight to defend themselves.

    https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/04/campus-takeover-symbolized-era-change

    The Cornell battle had changing material being taught as a core message.

    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 8:43am

     

    So you link a bunch of food fights back when college really was a small privileged elite 160-250 years ago, and then segue to a 50-year-old non-woke seemingly justified response to a cross-burning outside a black women's coop, i.e overt racial harassment

    So, uh, yeah, there was very occasionally lunchroom violence at 2 universities long long ago (as memorialized by Bluto in Animal House?), plus a non-woke response to a racist provocation in the 60's in early integration days  (why does that not surprise me).

    How exactly does any of this relate to the topic, free speech in academia??

    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 9:06am


    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 9:08am

    Biden is doing a real world test of the ideas expressed by Ungar-Sargon, If the idea of the United States is not flawed, but in need of a few repairs, we should see change coming from the obstructionists on the Right. If the system works attempts to suppress votes should fail and opposition to providing health care should fall by the wayside.

    The multiple states putting forward bills to make it harder to vote will cease their efforts. Infrastructure will be dealt with in a bipartisan manner, etc. If the Woke are correct, nothing but obstruction to voting, infrastructure, and health care is our future. Biden offers the best opportunity to determine which of the opposing views seems to be in play. Pessimism or Optimism. 

    Regarding the 1619 Project, critics don't seem to be silenced. It is very easy to find articles or posts finding fault with the project. I don't see suppression of thought.

    Edit to add:

    After four years of Biden/Harris, we can judge if the loyal opposition makes it impossible for Democrats in Congress to legislate. If the idea is that the Woke believe that the government cannot be saved as it currently stands, the Woke may be proven correct if the Republicans won't budge. Ungar-Sargon suggests that a more equal society can be created. The Woke are said to believe that a transfer of power from the oppressor to the oppressed. The first term of the Biden Presidency will aid in telling us if we are becoming more equal.

    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 10:17am

    Sorry, don't see this as relating to Ungar-Sargon, Critical Races Theory, etc. - PP


    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 03/17/2021 - 10:32am

    MENTHOL CIGARETTES KILL MANY BLACK PEOPLE. A BAN MAY FINALLY BE NEAR.

    By rmrd0000 on Mon, 03/22/2021 - 9:42am |

    The banning of menthol cigarettes, the mint-flavored products that have been aggressively marketed to Black Americans, has long been an elusive goal for public health regulators.

    But Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have put new pressure on Congress and the White House to reduce racial health disparities. And there are few starker examples than this: Black smokers smoke less but die of heart attacks, strokes and other causes linked to tobacco use at higher rates than white smokers do, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 85 percent of Black smokers use Newport, Kool and other menthol brands that are easier to become addicted to and harder to quit than plain tobacco, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

    ...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/health/methol-smoking-ban.html


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 03/22/2021 - 11:48am

    Opinion: Tim Scott: Let’s set the record straight on ‘woke supremacy’ and racism

    Scott tries the cleanup

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/23/tim-scott-woke-supremacy-intolerance/

    Senator Scott whines about the names that he has been called because he is a Black Republican.

    He says he did not directly compare Wokeness to racism, which he did.

    Scott says that Republicans have done great things for the Black community.

    He leaves out Republican voter suppression, the statements of Ron Johnson and others, etc.

    Scott blames Democrats, not Trump, for the January 6th attack

    https://www.yahoo.com/now/sen-tim-scott-says-trump-220500303.html

    Scott managed to wrangle a Presidential pardon for his cousin

    https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-pardon/

    Of course Scott received Trump's endorsement for reelection 

    https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article249638233.html

    Republicans like Scott are a gift from heaven for the Woke.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/23/2021 - 10:49am

    NYC forms commission to address structural racism

    The mayor announced on Tuesday the formation of a Racial Justice Commission that will be empowered to make policy recommendations that he said would be designed to “dismantle structural racism for all New Yorkers.”

    The 11-member commission could propose bold policies like a jobs guarantee for all residents, or reparation payments to Black residents. The commission is expected to make its recommendations this year, the last of Mr. de Blasio’s eight years in office; some of the proposals could go before New Yorkers next year as ballot measures.

    The idea is modeled after reconciliation commissions in countries like South Africa, Canada and Argentina that have addressed legacies of racism and violence.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/nyregion/nyc-racial-justice-commission.html

    Recommendations could include baby bonds, job guarantees, and reparations.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/23/2021 - 11:49am

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