Month: January 2018

 
From Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass:

Yet another repug seat ripe for the taking. From the Herald:

A Kentucky lawmaker who signed a secret sexual harassment settlement along with three fellow Republican legislators said Friday that he won’t seek re-election in 2018.

According to the Bowling Green Daily News , Rep. Jim DeCesare of Bowling Green didn’t mention the settlement in his announcement and didn’t return the newspaper’s phone calls about the decision Friday.

Seriously, people, they’re dropping like flies. And the ones hanging on are the walking dead. Democrats can take back the Kentucky General Assembly this year, but we’ve got to have candidate names on those ballots.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Many people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election said they did so because he was a successful businessman.

They were half right.

He was a businessman alright, but if you’d been paying attention, there were plenty of better fitting adjectives to go around: unscrupulous, irresponsible, incompetent, crooked—and failed.

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From jobsanger:

The question is — why has Congress not acted to address the issue? They have done nothing, and the public is not happy about that. In the chart above, we can see that by a 42 point margin (25% to 67%) the public thinks Congress has not done enough, and should do more to curb gun violence.

Americans want stricter gun laws by a 23 point margin (59% to 36%). And 95% of all Americans want it to be required that anyone trying to purchase a gun must have a background check. It has been suggested that politicians are afraid to pass stricter gun laws, because they think they might be punished by the voters for doing so. That’s ridiculous, especially when it comes to background checks, where over 90% of every group wants that to happen.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Detroit News reports that the 43rd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness is out.

The list and description:

• Unpack – Misused word for analyze, consider, assess. Concepts or positions are not packed, so they don’t need to be unpacked.
• Tons – Refers to an exaggerated quantity, as in tons of sunshine or tons of work. “Lots” would surely suffice.
• Dish – As in to dish out the latest rumor on someone. Let’s go back to ‘talks about’ and leave dishes in the cupboard.
• Pre-owned – What is so disgraceful about owning a used car now and then?

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From Frances Langum:

If a constituent asks you to work on a bill that will diminish violence against women, and you wind up telling another constituent during your answer to “shut up”….

…then you are Congressman Joe Barton of Texas.

You might recall that Joe Barton is the one who apologized to the CEO of BP during a congressional hearing into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Because of how impolite people were being!

And yes, Barton’s year, and probably his congressional career, ended with some nude photos of him surfacing like an asphyxiated porpoise onto the public stage.

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From Eva Posner at The Moderate Voice:

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” –Ernest Hemingway

2017 hurt.

It hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways. For most of us, the pain started in 2016. Many people sang the praises of 2017 as the new year, hoping for a reprieve. I was not one of them. All I could think this time last year was, “You guys know it’s just going to get worse, right?”

And it did.

2017 made things worse for families. For children. For seniors. For immigrants. For women. For national parks. For scientists. For government employees. For poor people. For communities of color. For students. For LGBT folks. For patients. For journalists. For religious minorities. For animals. For small business owners. For refugees. For workers. For victims of natural disasters. For members of the military. For small farmers. For criminal justice reformers. For homeless people. I’m sure the list goes on and on.

2017 hurt a lot. But I cannot explain everyone’s pain. Only mine.

2017 made me raw. Made me vulnerable. Made me face demons head-on in a way I did not expect. The disbelief and soul-searching that came out of the 2016 election gave way to genuine and constant discomfort on Inauguration Day.

I watched as a rapist took the oath of office.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.