Sunday Sacrilege: Expanding Minds & Inspiring Service

found online by Raymond

 
From PZ Myers:

I haven’t done one of these in a while — it’s a dispiriting time to be an atheist — but I was inspired by a sign near my house. This is a truly excellent motto.

Expanding Minds & Inspiring Service

That would be a great theme for an atheist community, but of course, that sign was posted outside the Campus Lutheran Ministry Christus House, which is cause for some reservation. Religion does not expand minds, but instead narrows them. You would not go into the Campus Lutheran Ministry and find the pastor explaining how you should question everything, explore the wide world of ideas, and be reluctant to accept dogma, because their mission is to get you to accept their peculiar, limited, tightly circumscribed interpretation of Jesus Christ. The place where you’ll get your mind expanded is a few blocks north, on the campus of the University of Minnesota Morris, a secular institution.

I’m not going to accept the literal truth of that part of the sign. It’s a nice ideal, though. Too bad they don’t implement it.

The second part of the sign, though, “Inspiring Service”, is more legit. I remember from my church-going days that that was a serious and important message. Some of it was self-serving: service meant volunteering for the church or donating money to the church. Some of it was well-intentioned but horribly harmful: we were regularly exhorted to support missionary efforts in Africa. There was also, however, real good that was done. There were food drives to help the poor, visits to shut-ins, call for donations to help those who had fallen sick, requests to assist the elderly. I mowed the lawn of one little old lady who would invite me in afterwards to say a little prayer and praise the Lord. I went along with it, to be nice, and because she definitely didn’t need an argument.

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Trump Praises Kim on Immigration: “No One Is Trying to Get Into Your Country”

satire found online by Raymond

 
From Andy Borowitz:

NORTH KOREA (The Borowitz Report)—Setting foot in North Korea for the first time, on Sunday, President Donald Trump praised that nation’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, for his efforts on immigration, telling Kim, “No one is trying to get into your country.”

After crossing into North Korea from the Demilitarized Zone, Trump remarked to the North Korean leader, “Your border is amazing! There are no people whatsoever trying to get in. You should see our border—it’s a complete mess.”

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Stonewall!

found online by Raymond

 
From Max’s Dad:

Out of the closets and into the streets! 50 years ago the Stonewall “riots” occurred when the NYPD did what the NYPD did best at the time, acted like assholes and raided a bar called the Stonewall Inn. Some of the patrons of Stonewall had had enough and did what others had done in other parts of the country before, they fought back. It was about time.

The Stonewall Inn is generally regarded as the beginning of the gay rights movement because every rights movement has to have a starting point. Oh I know that other gays fought back before 6/28/69, and I know Rosa Parks wasnt the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat, and I know that there were other women before Susan B that fought back, but we need a start. Lets not get too deep into the woods here. Thats the problem with people too close to movement, they know too goddamned much and cant wait to let you know. Democrats take note.

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Trump Obsessing About Losing Popular Vote

found online by Raymond

 
From News Corpse:

Still Obsessed with Losing the Popular Vote, Trump Babbles Incoherently About Winning It

Trump’s raging ego and self-exaltation has been demonstrated time and time again in the two and half turbulent years that he has occupied the White House. He cannot admit mistakes even when the evidence is unarguably documented. He incessantly brags on his own behalf for “accomplishments” that don’t exist. Those include “resolutions” of problems that he created himself like a firefighter moonlighting as an arsonist. And he has repeatedly forced his subordinates to sit around a table and utter slobbering tributes to him in a perverse spectacle of supplication and sycophancy.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump continues to be plagued by one particularly humiliating failure. His historic loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election gnaws at him like a famished piranha. He can’t stop thinking about it, or lying about it. And that fetish reared its ugly head again in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Sunday morning.

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Awkward Video Goes Viral
as AOC Rips Ivanka Trump

found online by Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rips Ivanka Trump Over Viral Video of Awkward Conversation with World Leaders

On Saturday, a BBC reporter posted French government video of a candid moment between French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde that was presented as if Ms. Trump injected herself into the conversation.

Lagarde, in particular, appears irritated in the clip, although she also tweeted praise for Ivanka.

The clip went viral, and led to a tidal wave of internet mockery, which AOC joined in on Saturday night. Retweeting the viral clip, AOC wrote “It may be shocking to some, but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification.”

“It hurts our diplomatic standing when the President phones it in & the world moves on,” she continued, adding “The US needs our President working the G20. Bringing a qualified diplomat couldn’t hurt either.”

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Vagabond by Wolfmother

Music I happen to like
– Aria

 
I have liked the music from the time I first heard it about 10 years ago. A high pitched male voice singing about freedom. It was a departure from the band’s usual motif.

Eventually, I listened to the words. I laughed at the humor of a bad sales pitch.

A friend tells me this is about innocence lost.

I think the words are about responsibility aversion and resulting loneliness. It’s an attempt to seduce without commitment. A one night stand being kind of brave and noble, all about freedom.

I still like the music, and the funny words.

A band member was interviewed by Billboard Magazine.

“I made an effort to make it positive cause I thought, ‘If this ever takes off I’m gonna be singing this every night, so I don’t want to be drawing negative energy to myself or projects’…”

“If you listen to the first record it’s all pretty positive imagery. I just want people to be uplifted from the record, feel energized from listening to it. So lyrically I can relate to it.”

Want to see the words?
Continue reading “Vagabond by Wolfmother”

Supremes, Gerrymand, Dark Money, Migrants, Race, Both Sides, Kamala

  • Green Eagle reacts to a Supreme Court decision that may become as much an attack on democracy as is the ongoing subterranean campaign by Putin’s Russia.
     
  • Subversion of democracy takes other forms as well. Bribery can work in a lot of ways. One involves campaign finance. Vote for bills that will benefit me and I’ll buy a lot of ads for you. Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara hears the argument, sort of, and is having none of it. It’s about free speech. And, after all, “Each of us is free to consider the issues and candidates before we vote.” Since dark money has no effect, why object to it? No harm, no foul.
     
    I don’t quite buy it. If dark money has no effect, what is purpose of providing it? Why hide it? And what is the harm in discouraging it through full disclosure?
     
  • Interesting account at Scotties Toy Box. Twenty years ago, Anthony Breznican meets a friendly, low key photographer who does exemplary work. He discovers the man once saved a life after taking a tragic photo that changed the world and may have saved countless more lives.
     
    Two decades after finding that his brief companion was THAT photographer, he sees another horribly tragic photograph that we can only hope performs that terrible task again, saving other lives once more.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz tells us, convincingly, compellingly, how America would be looking at migrants if they were white. I believe the record tells us exactly how those who represent us would react. And why.
     
  • At Blue in the Bluegrass, Yellow Dog explains why both sides are the same. I suspect satire.

Continue reading “Supremes, Gerrymand, Dark Money, Migrants, Race, Both Sides, Kamala”

Iko Iko – The Dixie Cups

Music I happen to like
– Aria

 

I liked this song ever since I heard it in the early 1960s. The Dixie Cups made it a hit, then other groups picked it up. Its popularity kept getting bigger.

Until this week, I never knew the real story behind the song, or the brutality that took the songwriter out of circulation.

In the early 1950s James Crawford, with the stage name Sugar Boy, was already a local success in New Orleans. Native American rituals were the source of parts of city culture. He combined a couple of native chants he had heard and put the result to music. His group was invited to record the song. The record was a minor hit for a short time, then faded.

In 1963, his little group was headed for a gig in North New Orleans, when they were spotted by the Louisiana State Police. There was no infraction or reason for suspicion. The officers saw an expensive car driven by a young black man and knew that was just not right. During the stop, Crawford was insufficiently obsequious.

One state police officer didn’t like his attitude and beat him to a bloody pulp.
Continue reading “Iko Iko – The Dixie Cups”

Springtime for Hitlers

found online by Raymond

 
From nojo:

We thought we understood fascism.

The American kind, anyway. The kind that almost consumed the country in the 1930s, as it had consumed others. The kind rooted in economic depression, in desperation, in opportunistic leadership. The kind rooted in fantasy, a quick fix to an unsolvable, unendurable crisis.

We thought we understood that.

We thought we understood that all problems are economic, when you cut through the bullshit. Healthy countries — economically healthy countries — don’t have these problems. We all get by, we all get along. We all have a roof over our heads.

We wuz wrong.

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