Trump: ‘We should just cancel the election’ and declare me the winner

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

The apparently lighthearted comment falls against the backdrop of Trump’s repeated and serious questioning of the legitimacy of the presidential election in recent weeks as he has tumbled in the polls.

Trump has called the election “rigged,” argued that the media and establishment politicians are conspiring to sink his campaign and warned supporters that the presidency could be stolen from them due to voter fraud — instances of which are extremely rare.

Trump: ‘We should just cancel the election’ and declare me the winner – CNNPolitics.com

Sigh….

Here lie the unwanted of Calais – an indictment of us, not them 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,Leave a comment

People who wanted to find new lives. Instead they lie like cocooned caterpillars, desperately hoping to wake up to a different world. Others sit on the rubbish-strewn pavement, hunched in blankets. They too are rubbish, or so it would seem, according to widespread attitudes that have in recent weeks seen calls for children to undergo dental inspections to determine their age. 

…Give me words to make this picture real. …But this is an age of unparalleled harshness. Pictures of suffering pass us by. We narrow our eyes and close our souls. 

…There’s no bed to go to and no destination in sight. A camp that provided some kind of desperate community is being demolished. The people here are falling into a gap in the modern world. They look like they are bound for a homeless future. These are the people we have decided we have no space for, no interest in and no compassion towards. This is the result – people mingling with discarded plastic bottles in the streets of abandonment. For human beings don’t disappear, unless you actually kill them. They stand around, slump in blankets, lie wrapped up and trying to dream of somewhere better. Here they are – the unwanted.

…If history has taught us one thing it is that fear of the other is always irrational. There is no case in history when a wave of hatred was justified or grounded in fact. Yet such waves of fear and loathing can be so forceful and widespread that they appear completely sane to those affected, and are hard to resist. 

There was no rational basis for the antisemitism that made Rothko’s family flee Russia. Labour MPs who think the left needs to accept the current anti-migrant mood are utterly wrong because such moods can and do thrive independently of fact. Here’s the question: should liberals and socialists in the 1930s have recognised there were legitimate reasons for popular antisemitism?

So look, and weep. Not for them. For us.

Here lie the unwanted of Calais – an indictment of us, not them | Jonathan Jones | Opinion | The Guardian

Jeezus…

Episcopal Church Executive Council stands with Standing Rock

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Religion,, The Americas,Leave a comment

[Episcopal News Service – New Brunswick, New Jersey] The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council asked Oct. 22 that law-enforcement officials “de-escalate military and police provocation in and near the campsites of peaceful protest and witness of the Dakota Access Pipeline project.”

…The Rev. John Floberg, council member and supervising priest of the Episcopal churches on the North Dakota side of Standing Rock, told the council’s Joint Standing Committee on Advocacy and Networking for Mission Oct. 21 that the way the protest has been conducted has been “the most powerful experience I have had in my 25 years on Standing Rock.” And, yet, he said, he has been shaken by the racist responses that the protest has generated elsewhere in the state.

… The resolution asks the Episcopal Church at all levels to prayerfully and financially support the planned winter encampment, which it says is the Sioux Nation’s “right for peaceful assembly and protest.”

On the closing day of the meeting, Floberg presented to the Archives of the Episcopal Church housed in Austin, Texas, the now-tattered Episcopal Church flag that flew over the Oceti Skowin Camp in North Dakota for months. The flag, he said, was the only Christian church flag among the 300 flags of tribal nations that flew over the peaceful-protest encampment.

…The Episcopal Church’s entry into the protest is rooted in its 2009 repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery, Curry said. “Part of that action was to say we have got to find more just, equitable and fair ways of being in relationship with our brothers and sisters in the Native communities in our country,” the presiding bishop said.

Episcopal Church Executive Council stands with Standing Rock

hmmmm

I’m Indian, I’m dark, and I don’t care. 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Race,, Southern Central Asia,Leave a comment

I love being an Indian, truly I do. With the country’s powerful history, one of a kind culture, and to-die-for food, how could one simply not? 

But behind India’s beautiful face, there is a growing disease that our society continually fails to recognize- colorism.

Colorism is a term coined by author Alice Walker, and is defined as a discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone among people of the same racial and/or ethnic group. Also know as, internalized racism.

I’m Indian, I’m dark, and I don’t care. – aswathithomas

hmmmm

Police, Officials Resign After Small Missouri Town Elects First Black Female Mayor 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Gulf Coast Region,, Local Interest,, Race,Leave a comment

Most of the police force and several officials resigned after the small town of Parma, Missouri elected its first African American woman as mayor,

Police, Officials Resign After Small Missouri Town Elects First Black Female Mayor | Huffington Post

In other news outlets the former chief is shrilly screaming up and down that he is not a racist. He cries about how as a public official whose contact info and residence are public information as if this is a new development instead of a condition of his career.He makes slyly disparaging and blatantly racist generalization about the mayor’s family.

In other words, this little piggie cried, “weh, weh, weh,” all  the way to his indisputably bigoted home.

Trump Finally Pissed Off the Wrong Women. All of Them.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Elizabeth Warren swirling the word “nasty” around in her mouth like a sommelier enjoying a fine wine only served as the latest reminder to a certain Trumpy flavor of man that, at this point in the 2016 campaign, women don’t need their approval to exist, or even to succeed. In Tina Fey’s 2011 memoir Bossypants, the comedy maven recounted an exchange between former SNL castmates Jimmy Fallon and Amy Poehler. The story goes that Amy told a dirty joke, and Jimmy fired back that he didn’t like it. Amy responded, “I don’t fucking care if you like it.” [emphasis: mine] Fey advises all women in the workplace to conduct themselves similarly: do what you want, fuck ‘em if they disagree.

The world has coddled Donald Trump into believing that women who have somehow failed to meet his antiquated standards of femininity should feel chastened. Men like Trump expect women to feel like failures when a man calls them anything less than pretty, sexy, pleasant, nice. But the world outside of Trump Tower has been moving at a much faster pace than the creaky machinery between Trump’s ears. In the voting booth, compliance is optional. Deference to the whims of men is unnecessary, if not undesirable.

Trump Finally Pissed Off the Wrong Women. All of Them. – The Daily Beast

hmmmm

Fleeing ISIS’ assault on girls and women 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Middle East,, Modern Parenting,Leave a comment

Things had been getting worse for women in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, [emphasis: mine] the rise of sectarian strife and fundamentalist Islam. But in the summer of 2014 came the biggest blow when ISIS enforced its extreme ideology in northern Iraq.

…Tales of rape and other horrific abuses of women had spread across Nineveh; of the capture and enslavement of non-Muslim women from Yazidi and Christian communities, acts that ISIS claims are justified in the Quran.

So Zainab, who is Muslim, was married off at 16 to save her from ISIS. Three months ago, she became pregnant. In the madness of escaping her ISIS-held town, she lost her baby. She says little about it except there was a lot of blood.

…But what happened to her is also an assault. She was a child still and robbed of her freedom, her life’s trajectory altered because of an ideology that does not value her worth as a woman. Early marriage for girls has emerged, sadly, as a coping mechanism under the militants.
…I ask about her journey from Mosul, why she fled in her condition. Her initial answer is wholly expected: “I was afraid for my daughter.”
She continues: “But I was afraid as much for my son. He would have been brainwashed by them and one day forced to join their ranks.”

…The prospect of a military victory over ISIS in Mosul offers glimmers of hope for a better future, but the women are unsure if life can ever be the same again.

How long, they ask, will it take to reverse the damage that has been done; to undo a perverse way of thinking that does not see women as human beings? How long before they can walk in the streets without constantly surveying their surroundings?

Fleeing ISIS’ assault on girls and women – CNN.com

Arrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhh!

Violence apparently escalating on both sides of Dakota Access protests 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

“From dog attacks, to local women being stripped naked and left that way in jail overnight, to arrests used as a tool for intimidation — these reports are very disturbing,” WDN President Donna P. Hall said. “The DOJ must act immediately to investigate local North Dakota police and hold them accountable for any abuses of power.”

Violence apparently escalating on both sides of Dakota Access protests – UPI.com

The fact that the Justice Department is not there already is a crime in itself.

Behind Temple attacks, rage often comes with exclusion

On By peanutgallerynhIn Local Interest,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

…For more than a decade, on whip-thin streets with names like Sydenham and Colorado, longtime community residents and their children watched white men from other places come in to build new rental housing. That same community sought jobs on those worksites, but contractors who required union labor and unions that were largely white and male excluded community workers. Then community members were forced to watch as Temple students were welcomed into that same new housing by landlords who used various methods to exclude community residents from renting them.

…”From the point of view of the longtime residents that were still there, there were some pluses and minuses: improved amenities, sometimes the university police patrols the area so community residents feel like they have extra security, retail options and grocery stores and stuff like that. But they also feel that there’s noise; the students don’t respect them, don’t understand them, don’t respect the neighborhood. Some longtime residents feel they’re not as comfortable in the neighborhood as they were.”

And therein lies the problem.

In a city where poverty is concentrated outside the universities, we can’t truly expect the poor to watch jobs and wealth and excess pass them by without any reaction at all.

…Temple University, my alma mater, has reached out to the community with scholarships for local youth, according to spokesman Ray Betzner. They’ve put reading programs in place, tutored high schoolers and even talked to their own students about respecting longtime community residents. But Temple would be wise to reach out into the community with an eye toward creating stronger relationships and greater opportunities for the young people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.

Behind Temple attacks, rage often comes with exclusion

hmm

Defense Secretary Ash Carter asks Pentagon to suspend Guard bonus collections – CBS News

On By peanutgallerynhIn Military,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Efforts to collect the erroneous re-enlistment bonus payments to thousands of soldiers stopped due to “unreasonable burdens on service members”

: Defense Secretary Ash Carter asks Pentagon to suspend Guard bonus collections – CBS News

Not nearly enough. This is total bullshit. All debts of these kinds should 100% forgiven. Any responsibility for paying it back should fall squarely and solely on the backs of those who gave out the money in the first place.

Shaking down veterans… Disgusting and immoral!

Iraqi forces evacuate 1000 civilians from Mosul front lines 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Middle East,Leave a comment

Special forces Maj. Gen. Haider Fadhil said the residents of Tob Zawa and other nearby villages were taken to a camp in the nearby Khazer region for their safety. The International Organization for Migration said at least 8,940 people had been displaced since the operation to retake Mosul began on Oct. 17.

Over 3,300 displaced Iraqis sought help from the government on the ninth day of its offensive to retake Mosul, the AFP news agency reported on Wednesday, which was the highest number of any day so far.

Iraqi forces evacuate 1000 civilians from Mosul front lines – CBS News

hmmm

Newt Gingrich accuses Megyn Kelly of being ‘fascinated by sex’ 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Newt Gingrich accuses Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly of being “fascinated” by sex during interview.

US election: Newt Gingrich accuses Megyn Kelly of being ‘fascinated by sex’ – BBC News

Fascinated? Unlike the guy who had an affair and hid it while holding impeachment hearings on a guy who had done the exact same thing?

This coming the guy who paralyzed government for ages while the American public was forced to endure scrutiny of every minute detail of the President’s sex life? The public had private affairs forced on them for literally years but the GOP Congress. It was an assault on the senses and soul of the American public and this guy takes issue with the news media talking about sex? Forcing the media to focus on sex for months at a time was the hallmark of this guy’s career!

The G.O.P. needs to stop project their own perversions onto everyone else and take some responsibility for being morally stunted and sexually deviant in their perverse obsession with reproductive organs and reproductive acts. It’s beyond gross. It’s beyond embarrassing. IT’s emblematic of how unfit they are to hold elected office.