October 4, 2021

Alabama spends $670k/yr on a Confederate memorial while Black history museums struggle.

MOUNTAIN CREEK, Ala. — Down a country road, past a collection of ramshackle mobile homes, sits a 102-acre "shrine to the honor of Alabama's citizens of the Confederacy."

The museum’s exhibits explain what the White Alabamians who took up the cause of the Confederacy felt was on the line — Alabama was 10th of the then 33 states in the value of livestock, seventh in peas and beans, and second in cotton production. The only hope to save its economic position, the exhibit quotes a former state governor as saying, was for it to secede from the union, and though not mentioned directly, maintain the bondage of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans. On a recent morning, there was just one visitor on the property and he didn’t enter the museum.

There are a number of museums that tell those stories spread across Alabama, but the Confederate Memorial Park is different. It is the only museum in the state that has a dedicated revenue stream codified in the state’s constitution. So while other museums struggle to keep their doors open, search for grants for funding and depend on volunteer staff, the Confederate Memorial Park is flush with cash. In 2020 alone, the park received $670,000 in taxpayer dollars. That’s about $22 per visitor and more than five times the $4 admission price for adults.

The fight over how to fund Alabama’s museums comes as state lawmakers debate what and whose history should be taught and promoted. In August, the Alabama State Board of Education passed a resolution that banned the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework that examines the role of race and racism in the crafting of American laws and social norms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/alabama-spends-more-than-a-half-million-dollars-a-year-on-a-confederate-memorial-black-historical-sites-struggle-to-keep-their-doors-open/2021/10/03/77953f7e-222a-11ec-8fd4-57a5d9bf4b47_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F34df4dc%2F615b29e59d2fda9d41fb49d9%2F5bc97fa5ae7e8a50f8217d42%2F38%2F74%2F615b29e59d2fda9d41fb49d9

September 9, 2021

California QAnon believer indicted on charges of killing his 2 children with a spear fishing gun

Source: NBC News

A California father who said he was enlightened by QAnon to kill his 10-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son with a spear fishing gun in Mexico was indicted by a San Diego federal grand jury Wednesday.

Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, is charged with two counts of foreign first-degree murder of United States nationals, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.

Coleman, a surfing instructor from Santa Barbara, could face the death penalty.

A criminal complaint filed last month accuses Coleman of killing his children "by shooting a spear fishing gun into their chests."



Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-qanon-believer-indicted-charges-killing-his-2-children-spear-n1278802

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QAnon believers should be labeled a terrorist organization. They are a danger to our country.

August 17, 2021

The Atlantic: Biden was Right

The president made a difficult but necessary choice.

By Daniel Silverberg

In 2017, I arrived at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport as part of a congressional staff delegation. Even though the U.S. embassy stood a mere four miles away, safety concerns necessitated our helicoptering from a recently constructed multimillion-dollar transit facility instead of traveling by road. As we flew over Kabul, I realized that the Afghan security forces, backed by thousands of U.S. personnel, could not even secure the heart of Afghanistan’s capital.

Kabul was not lost yesterday; the United States and our Afghan partners never truly had control of the country, nor of its capital. Once the Taliban had secured an agreement that the United States would be pulling out and that forces would be reduced to minimal numbers before Joe Biden’s presidency began, they merely had to wait.

The dozens of congressional briefings I attended over 14 years of working on Capitol Hill underscored this dynamic. The intelligence community would commence each briefing with a stark assessment regarding the fragility of conditions in Afghanistan. Senior defense leaders would then provide a far more optimistic view, one that often gave a sense of progress, despite the Herculean challenge with which they had been tasked.  

...
Some critics also argue that the United States should have preserved a residual force in Afghanistan, much as we have in South Korea. There are any number of ungoverned spaces today, however, which pose as great a threat, if not greater, to U.S. security as Afghanistan, and few are calling for U.S. deployments to those areas. There is a cost—financial and military—to tying forces down in a project that was ultimately doomed to fail.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/biden-afghanistan-taliban-reality/619776/

August 15, 2021

Stabbing at Proud Boys anti-vaccine protest at LA City Hall

A man was stabbed outside L.A. City Hall after a fight broke out during an anti-vaccine protest on Saturday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The protest was held to push back against the recent vaccine mandates and requirements, according to the Los Angeles Times.

LAPD responded to the scene where a man was stabbed. The victim was treated by the Los Angeles Fire Department and remains in serious condition, according to the LAPD.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/1-stabbed-at-los-angeles-city-hall-protest-lapd/




Lots of posts from people furious that LAPD apparently stood there and let this violence happen:

https://twitter.com/PplsCityCouncil/status/1426669000608468994?s=20

August 12, 2021

There Is a Problem With California's Recall. It's Unconstitutional.

The most basic principles of democracy are that the candidate who gets the most votes is elected and that every voter gets an equal say in an election’s outcome. The California system for voting in a recall election violates these principles and should be declared unconstitutional.

Unless that happens, on Sept. 14, voters will be asked to cast a ballot on two questions: Should Gov. Gavin Newsom be recalled and removed from office? If so, which of the candidates on the ballot should replace him?

The first question is decided by a majority vote. If a majority favors recalling Mr. Newsom, he is removed from office. But the latter question is decided by a plurality, and whichever candidate gets the most votes, even if it is much less than a majority, becomes the next governor. Critically, Mr. Newsom is not on the ballot for the second question. By conducting the recall election in this way, Mr. Newsom can receive far more votes than any other candidate but still be removed from office. Many focus on how unfair this structure is to the governor, but consider instead how unfair it is to the voters who support him.

Imagine that 10 million people vote in the recall election and 5,000,001 vote to remove Mr. Newsom, while 4,999,999 vote to keep him in office. He will then be removed and the new governor will be whichever candidate gets the most votes on the second question. In a recent poll, the talk show host Larry Elder was leading with 18 percent among the nearly 50 candidates on the ballot. With 10 million people voting, Mr. Elder would receive the votes of 1.8 million people. Mr. Newsom would have the support of almost three times as many voters, but Mr. Elder would become the governor.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/california-recall-election-newsom.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[Great legal opinion piece written by Erwin Chemerinsky and Aaron S. Edlin. Chemerinsky is the dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the forthcoming book “Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights.” Mr. Edlin is a professor of law and of economics at Berkeley.]

July 24, 2021

Conservative radio host, former vaccine skeptic ill with Covid-19

A conservative radio host in Tennessee who expressed skepticism about Covid-19 vaccines and was unvaccinated is hospitalized in critical care with the disease, his station announced Friday.

Phil Valentine, who hosts a show bearing his name on WWTN-FM in Nashville, contracted the coronavirus a little more than a week ago and is battling pneumonia, his family said in a statement posted on Twitter.

“He is in the hospital in the critical care unit breathing with assistance but is NOT on a ventilator,” the family said. “Phil would like for his listeners to know that while he has never been an “anti-vaxer” he regrets not being more vehemently “Pro-Vaccine”, and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he is back on the air, which we all hope will be soon.

"Phil & his family would like for all of you to know that he loves ya’ll and appreciates your concern, thoughts & prayers more than you will ever know. Please continue to pray for his recovery and PLEASE GO GET VACCINATED!”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/conservative-radio-host-former-vaccine-skeptic-ill-covid-19-n1274889

July 21, 2021

Top U.S. Catholic Church official resigns after cellphone data used to track him on Grindr and to ga

Source: Washington Post

The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after a Catholic media site told the conference it had access to cellphone data that appeared to show he was a regular user of Grindr, the queer dating app, and frequented gay bars.

Some privacy experts said that they couldn’t recall other instances of phone data being de-anonymized and reported publicly, but that it’s not illegal and will likely happen more as people come to understand what data is available about others.

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill has since last fall been the general secretary of the USCCB, a position that coordinates all administrative work and planning for the conference, which is the country’s network for Catholic bishops. As a priest, he takes a vow of celibacy. Catholic teaching opposes sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage.



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/20/bishop-misconduct-resign-burrill/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3433384%2F60f84b259d2fda945a1005ab%2F5bc97fa5ae7e8a50f8217d42%2F29%2F70%2F60f84b259d2fda945a1005ab

July 21, 2021

Anti-LGBTQ activist who tried to stop vaccine distribution dies of COVID-19

A rightwing, anti-LGBTQ activist who tried to stop her state from distributing coronavirus vaccines has died due to complications from COVID-19.

Linda Zuern of Bourne, Massachusetts passed away last week at age 70 at a hospital in Boston. She had to be flown to the hospital due to her severe case of COVID and was in a coma at the end of her life, breathing through a ventilator. She was not vaccinated against coronavirus, according to people who knew her.

Zuern went to South Dakota to visit her mother and, when she was returning to Massachusetts, both she and her mother developed COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother survived.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/07/anti-lgbtq-activist-tried-stop-vaccine-distribution-dies-covid-19/

July 18, 2021

Amazon Rainforests Are Now Releasing More Carbon Than They Absorb

For generations, Amazonia, which spans more than two million square miles, was a reliable carbon sink, meaning that it naturally absorbed high levels of carbon dioxide from the air, and it played an important role in keeping the global environment stable.

Findings from the nearly decade-long research project, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggest that deforestation and fire, among other factors, have dramatically undercut the Amazon's ability to absorb heat-trapping carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

"The Amazon is a carbon source. No doubt," Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research who led the study, said in an interview with environmental news site Mongabay. "By now we can say that the budget for the Amazon is 0.3 billion tons of carbon per year [released] into the atmosphere. It's a horrible message."

Gatti said that were it not for the emissions from man-made fires, the southeastern part of the Amazon could have continued to be a "carbon sink," meaning it absorbs more CO2 than it lets out. The region is now at a "tipping point," Gatti said. But when faced with the question of whether these disastrous effects could be reversed if we started now, she answered, "I don't know."
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016469317/parts-of-the-amazon-rainforest-are-now-releasing-more-carbon-than-they-absorb

July 14, 2021

Daily Covid Cases Triple Across Southern California

COVID-19 is rebounding across Southern California, swelling the numbers of infections and hospitalizations and prompting fresh calls for residents to get vaccinated.

While their overall numbers remain relatively low compared with the pandemic’s earlier high-water marks, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties have all seen their daily case averages more than triple over the past two weeks — mirroring a trend in Los Angeles County, data compiled by The Times show.

Fourteen days ago, Orange County was reporting a weekly average of about 48 new cases per day. Now, the figure is 150. During that same time, averages grew in San Diego County from 92 cases per day to 344; in San Bernardino County from 55 cases per day to 215; and in L.A. County from 298 cases per day to 983.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/covid-19-cases-and-hospitalizations-rebound-in-o-c-other-socal-suburbs/