1. #35056
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Wisconsin Lawmakers Attempt To Ban Words Like ‘Woke,’ ‘Systemic Racism’ and ‘White Supremacy’ From State School Curriculum

    But it's Qpublicans who whine non-stop about liberals practicing "Cancel Culture". Here's the proposed list:

    Last edited by WestPhillyPunisher; 10-24-2021 at 01:38 AM.
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  2. #35057

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    "We're going to ban all the words that we pretend they're using that trigger us for reasons we only understand that we'll assure you aren't for promoting an environment systemic white supremacy".


    Side note: If anyone were to tell me thoughts like these are a product of some sort of "white guilt"...
    I'd rather think that's an better thing to have as opposed to "the irrational white fear that minorities are trying to replace me".

    Then again, I'm not susceptible to Fox News and/or Tucker Carlson's bulls***.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 10-24-2021 at 02:02 AM.
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  3. #35058
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    "We're going to ban all the words that we pretend they're using that trigger us for reasons we only understand that we'll assure you aren't for promoting an environment systemic white supremacy".


    Side note: If anyone were to tell me thoughts like these are a product of some sort of "white guilt"...
    I'd rather think that's an better thing to have as opposed to "the irrational white fear that minorities are trying to replace me".

    Then again, I'm not susceptible to Fox News and/or Tucker Carlson's bulls***.
    They're not a product of white guilt. They're a product of the need for white blamelessness.

  4. #35059
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    A possible scenario in a Wisconsin high school classroom if that ridiculous bill passes:

    A teacher sees one of her students looking sluggish and asks: "What time did you wake up this morning?"

    The student yawns and replies, "I woke up around 7 a.m."

    The teacher turns red from anger and snaps at him, "Go to the principal's office! Right now! You used a banned word!"
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  5. #35060

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    On this date, in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of former six-term Georgia Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, , who is perhaps most famous for passionately campaigning for bills he wrote to recognize the Ten Commandments in all public schools and courtrooms (which isn’t constitutional). He was later interviewed by Stephen Colbert during his “Better Know a District” series, and was asked to name the Ten Commandments he loved so much, and could not. Rep. Westmoreland’s press secretary later claimed that the segment was edited to make him look bad, and said that he actually successfully named SEVEN of the ten. He’s also been known to be controversial on matters of race, having campaigned against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act as far back as 2006, and having referred to the first African-American president and first lady as “uppity”, only to be shocked when the media informed him that the term was racially charged. He has since had the decency to only refer to Barack Obama as “our enemy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”, which is somehow an improvement in discourse. He’s also lambasted the media for having the nerve to report stories about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi (which he also thinks Obama should be impeached over) that indicate she committed no wrongdoing, and demanded investigations to prove that her top aide, Human Abedin, was not a secret operative for the Muslim Brotherhood. Westmoreland retired in 2016,

    It was on this date in 2017 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled A.J. Kern, a failed candidate for Congress from Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in the 2016 elections whose career would best be described as “Monetizing Islamophobia”, as she is one of many known bigots in the state who spread as many lies as thy can about Muslims, which have led to an increase in attacks upon Somali immigrants in the state. Perhaps her most insane rant is against “female gential mutilation” being performed by Muslims, in spite of there being no edict in the Quran about such a thing. When she doesn’t do that, she claims Somali immigrants are driving up state and federal budget deficits because they somehow (she’s not clear on her math) exploit government assistance programs. Kern also agreed with Ben Carson during his 2016 presidential campaign, he stated his belief that the United States should never have a Muslim president. Apparently, she felt like Congressman Tom Emmer hadn’t hated Muslims enough, or that he was too busy being a homophobe to be a good enough Islamophobe, so A.J. Kern decided to challenge him for what was once the seat in Congress held by FRED Hall of Famer, the bats*** Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. A.J. Kern managed to snag 26% of the vote in the GOP Primary in 2016 and 18% in 2018, which should tell you a lot about the modern Republican Party, that a person whose resume amounts to “dedicated bigot” could get over a quarter of their votes. She has returned to just giving hate speeches around Minnesota and isn’t currently running for elected office.

    On this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Jim Newberger, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Minnesota to challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar here in 2018, who cut his teeth in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2012. Perhaps Newberger’s most infamous moment in his six years as a state legislator was back in 2015, when Minnesota Democrats were discussing expanding their own light rail out past the St. Cloud prison (no stops in that neighborhood, we would guess), and Newberger chimed in, saying, "Right on the edge of St. Cloud, maybe a half a mile, a quarter-mile, from the rail tracks is the St. Cloud State Prison.... Boy, wouldn't that be convenient, to have that rail line going from that prison to North Minneapolis…" For those not in the know, Northern Minneapolis is also the most diverse community in the entire state, and is where most of the Somali immigrant population of the United States has settled. So… immediately after Newberger blurted that out, he was raucously booed by his colleagues, and immediately tried backtracking before putting out an insincere apology. And no, that xenophobia wasn’t a one-off, as during his campaign, Newberger has been calling for a block on all refugees being resettled in Minnesota, warning of the “rise of Sharia Law” and Muslim “no-go zones” in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (neither of which are happening). But if supporting the kind of bigotry that Newberger does wasn’t off-putting enough, he is also a defender of climate change, instead offering the incorrect scientific theory that the Earth is somehow moving closer to the sun. This stupid theory is debunked on NASA’s home page, suffice to say it shows a great deal of ignorance on Newberger’s part. Newberger’s voting record shows him consistently voting against minimum wage increases and workplace protections, supporting transphobic bathroom legislation, and voting against the legalization of same sex marriage. Newberger failed miserably in his attempt to unseat Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the 2018 elections and has yet to re-emerge in politics

    On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Courtland Sykes, a 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri whose campaign strategy was to try to win over Republican voters by being the most sexist candidate in the race. When asked in a forum about your stance on women’s rights, he answered, “I want to come home to a home cooked dinner every night at six. One that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives. Feminists push an agenda that they made up to suit their own nasty snake-filled heads. I hope my daughters don’t go on to be career obsessed banshees who forgo home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the top of a thousand tall buildings they are think they could have leaped in a single bound — had men not been ‘suppressing them.’ It’s just nuts.” Needless to say that the press took attention to this misogynistic lunatic, and were wondering, “WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY?” after he opened with that rant… and they were left with more questions than answers. Sykes apparently just moved to Missouri from Arkansas, where he worked as a defense contractor, and prior to that, he was a Congressional aide to Arkansas Congressman Bruce Westerman. Big surprise, he was anti-abortion. Also not shocking… he supported Donald Trump’s stupid idea for a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border. The only other political stance that could be found from Sykes was that he attacked the media for being too “liberal”, and claiming it was “fake news” like Trump, and that he was a fervent defender of Roy Moore. Courtland Sykes ended up finishing 9th out of 12 possible candidates in the GOP Primary for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat, getting only 2.1% of the vote and has thankfully disappeared from view.
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  6. #35061

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    On this date one year ago, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, first profiled the sitting Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, who was first elected to office in 2018 after serving for six years in the Alaska State Senate. It was about six months into his term as governor that the people of Alaska realized how deep they stepped in it by electing him when he started trying to defund anything that didn’t agree with his hyper-partisan point-of-view, including the University of Alaska, and the Alaska Supreme Court, who he was annoyed with for daring to uphold funding to Planned Parenthood. Because, y’know, spitefully defunding your own state Supreme Court is a normal thing that happens, right? But those two budgetary vetoes are but the tip of the iceberg for what he wants to trim funding off of.

    This sparked a recall effort the next month in July, and gathered twice the required number of signatures, but sparked a legal battle over the past year and change where the Republican Attorney General of Alaska, Kevin Clarkson, has tried invalidating the recall effort by claiming that Gov. Dunleavy has not done anything wrong that would warrant a recall. The Alaska Supreme Court ended up having to rule that yes, the recall could go forward, but the effort again required more signatures to be gathered. After getting that high bar cleared… during a PANDEMIC… the Alaska Board of Elections tried to declare there wasn’t sufficient cause to have the recall election, only to be overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court in July of 2021. Governor Dunleavy might not even get to finish his four year term, at this point, let alone have a serious chance at re-election.

    But we’re not going to simply label his abuses of power as the reason we’ve dropped a profile on him, as he’s also quickly becoming the latest in a long line of high profile Republicans who are best described as “Covidiots”. After several local reporters in Alaska noted Gov. Dunleavy was flouting mask guidelines and appearing maskless in public at fundraisers, days later, they’re reporting on how a number of people within his governor’s office have begun testing positive for Covid-19. But at this point, the only thing hampering more signatures being gathered to boot Dunleavy from office is the recall effort heeding public health guidelines. But Dunleavy won’t have Kevin Clarkson around to protect him, as he resigned after getting busted for sexually harassing a subordinate and sending her hundreds of uncomfortable text messages. Dunleavy might help him survive until the 2022 elections, but they might not be patient enough to wait that long, given that the state has seen wildfires, earthquakes, and a pandemic hit Alaska, and the governor seems clueless on how to do anything that isn’t simply, “help oil companies get rich”.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 10-24-2021 at 02:52 AM.
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  7. #35062
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    A possible scenario in a Wisconsin high school classroom if that ridiculous bill passes:

    A teacher sees one of her students looking sluggish and asks: "What time did you wake up this morning?"

    The student yawns and replies, "I woke up around 7 a.m."

    The teacher turns red from anger and snaps at him, "Go to the principal's office! Right now! You used a banned word!"
    In high school I took an intro class to basic economics (things like how the Stock Market worked, and so on). Equity, one of their banned terms, is used often in finance. "Equity represents the value that would be returned to a company’s shareholders if all of the assets were liquidated and all of the company's debts were paid off."

    Okay, and there is Colorism, a word that can be is used in art classes. Even if teacher started talking about colors, that might be close enough to get them in trouble. Whiteness can also be used in art classes.

    Intersection, a word used in math classes "The intersection of two sets has only the elements common to both sets."

    I mean the whole thing is insane and very anti-democratic. Once you start making free speech illegal, then what's next?
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  8. #35063
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Where Facts Were No Match for Fear

    Ms. Grulkowski had just heard about a years-in-the-making effort to designate her corner of central Montana a national heritage area, celebrating its role in the story of the American West. A small pot of federal matching money was there for the taking, to help draw more visitors and preserve underfunded local tourist attractions.

    Ms. Grulkowski set about blowing up that effort with everything she had.

    She collected addresses from a list of voters and spent $1,300 sending a packet denouncing the proposed heritage area to 1,498 farmers and ranchers. She told them the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said.

    None of this was true.
    From the vantage point of informed democratic decision making, it’s a haunting tale about how a sustained political campaign can succeed despite — or perhaps as a result of — being divorced from reality.

    “Misinformation is the new playbook,” Bob Kelly, the mayor of Great Falls, said. “You don’t like something? Create alternative facts and figures as a way to undermine reality.”

    The dispute has split communities, become a wedge issue in this fall’s political campaigns and left proponents of the heritage area flummoxed at their collective inability to refute falsehoods once they have become accepted wisdom.

    “We’ve run into the uneducable,” Ellen Sievert, a retired historic preservation officer for Great Falls and surrounding Cascade County, said. “I don’t know how we get through that.”
    Congress and President Ronald Reagan created National Heritage Areas in the 1980s as a partnership between the National Park Service and local boosters, who are required to match federal investment with funds raised locally. The 55 existing heritage areas, in 34 states, recognize, among other histories, metropolitan Detroit’s automotive background, Utah’s Mormon pioneers and Tennessee’s part in the Civil War. They collectively receive about $21 million annually — a pittance in the park service’s $3.5 billion budget — and have no impact on private property rights, a finding confirmed in a 2004 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office.

    The proposal for the Big Sky Country National Heritage Area, encompassing most of two central Montana counties that are together roughly the size of Connecticut, was the brainchild of Jane Weber, a U.S. Forest Service retiree who spent a decade on the Cascade County Commission.

    Beginning in 2013, Ms. Weber teamed up with local preservationists, formed a nonprofit, enlisted local businesses and raised $50,000 for a required feasibility study. In 2014, the Great Falls City Commission included the heritage area as part of its official growth policy.

    The proposal would take in four National Historic Landmarks: Lewis and Clark’s portage route around Great Falls; Fort Benton, a pioneer town along the Missouri River that was the last stop for steamships heading west from St. Louis in the 1800s; the First Peoples Buffalo Jump, a steep cliff over which Blackfoot hunters herded buffalo to their deaths; and the home and studio of C.M. Russell, the turn-of-the-century “cowboy artist” whose paintings of the American West shaped the popular image of frontier life.
    But when pressed, Ms. Grulkowski, too, was unable to identify a single instance of a property owner’s being adversely affected by a heritage area. “It’s not that there are a lot of specific instances,” she said. “There’s a lot of very wide open things that could happen.”

    That somewhat amorphous fear was more the point.
    One thing Ms. Grulkowski does not do — because she refuses to pay — is read The Great Falls Tribune, the local daily. It’s not what it once was, with just eight journalists, down from 45 in 2000, said Richard Ecke, who spent 38 years at the paper before the owner, Gannett, laid him off as opinion editor in 2016. He is vice chairman of the proposed heritage area’s board.
    In the paper’s place, information and misinformation about the heritage area spread on Facebook and in local outlets that parroted Ms. Grulkowski. Last winter, a glossy magazine distributed to Montana farmers put the subject on its cover, headlined “Intrusive Raid on Private Property Rights.”

    Ms. Grulkowski badgered supporters of the heritage area to withdraw financial backing. She raised the money to plaster the “Just Say No!” message on billboards along Interstate 15 and on Highway 87 into Fort Benton, and on bus-stop benches in Great Falls.

    Three of the heritage area’s board members quit in frustration. Ms. Weber herself resigned from the Cascade County Commission last December after her fellow commissioners voted to oppose the heritage area.

    “It’s very easy to take fear and mistrust and make it work for you. It’s very hard to fight back against all of that,” Ms. Weber said. “It’s kind of like trying to convince someone to get vaccinated.”
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  9. #35064
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    Decades after a Missouri town seized a Black doctor’s home, his relatives sought to reclaim his land — and his story

    CREVE COEUR- At the end of a winding road in Creve Coeur, just west of St. Louis County, a park now bears the name of Dr. Howard P Venable, the Black ophthalmologist who purchased the land as his own more than 60 years ago. Until this year, the park did not bear his name, but the name of the white mayor who took the property away.

    In 1956, nine years before the Voting Rights Act and two years after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Venable and his wife, Kate, bought two plots in the Spoede Meadows area. Several other Black families at the time were doing the same. They faced pressure from their new white neighbors, and the city of Creve Coeur itself, to sell their properties and move.
    Venable, who was 45 years old when he purchased the land, not only went through years of medical training, but was also a musician who played with legends like Duke Ellington. His surviving relatives say he was a man of principle who was not going to back down to a system built to discriminate against him. So while his other Black neighbors left, he refused to sell.

    But eventually, as shown through court documents, news coverage from the time and stories from the family, Creve Coeur’s government, led by then-mayor John T. Beirne, seized the Venable family’s land using eminent domain. The city took the portion of the house he started to build and turned it into a clubhouse, while turning the rest of the land into a park. Adding insult to injury, the park was named after Beirne.
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  10. #35065
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    China is removing domes from mosques as part of a push to make them more 'Chinese'

    XINING, China — The Dongguan Mosque has adopted some very different looks in its nearly 700 years in China's northwestern city of Xining. Built in the style of a Chinese imperial palace, with tiled roofs and no domes, and adorned with Buddhist symbols, the mosque was nearly destroyed by neglect during political tumult in the early 20th century. In the 1990s, authorities replaced the original ceramic tiles on the roof and minarets with green domes.

    This year, provincial authorities lopped off those domes.
    "The government says they want us to 'sinify' our mosques, so they look more like Beijing's Tiananmen Square," says Ali, a Muslim farmer selling pomegranates outside the mosque. He requested that NPR use only his first name because residents have been ordered not to speak about the dome removals. "I think the mosque looks good either way, but what say do we have anyways?"
    China is removing the domes and minarets from thousands of mosques across the country. Authorities say the domes are evidence of foreign religious influence and are taking down overtly Islamic architecture as part of a push to sinicize historically Muslim ethnic groups — to make them more traditionally Chinese.

    The campaign comes amid rising Islamophobia in China and growing religious restrictions, touching off a discussion across the country among scholars, ethnic policy regulators and historically Muslim Chinese communities about what exactly should be considered "Chinese" to begin with.
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  11. #35066
    Mighty Member 4saken1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by babyblob View Post
    Here is a question Lets say the GOP takes control of the Senate back in the mid terms. and that they control the Senate in 2024 . When it comes time to certify the election if Trump loses if he runs again and the Dem wins what happens if the GOP Senate refuses to certify the election?
    I think the only thing that might prevent that from happening is if somehow McConnell (assuming he's still alive) realizes the affect it will have on the market when it becomes clear to half of the U.S. that we no longer live in a Democracy.
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  12. #35067
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    If I was going to create a ranking for politicians based on a democracy to autocracy scale, what woudl I be looking for?

    For example, Congress, House and Senate, would I use voting history such as voting for or against voting rights legislation? And/or should I use outside activities and speeches and comments, such as if they showed support for the Jan 6 rioters or if they show support for the Jan 6 Commission?

    What ways are there to tell if a Politician leans towards preserving the US democratic/republic form of government or if they lean towards some form of authoritarianism?
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  13. #35068
    Ultimate Member Gray Lensman's Avatar
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    It looks more and more like Xi has read American history, and thinks the most shameful parts form a great "How To" for China to follow, and exceed.
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  14. #35069
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tami View Post
    If I was going to create a ranking for politicians based on a democracy to autocracy scale, what woudl I be looking for?

    For example, Congress, House and Senate, would I use voting history such as voting for or against voting rights legislation? And/or should I use outside activities and speeches and comments, such as if they showed support for the Jan 6 rioters or if they show support for the Jan 6 Commission?

    What ways are there to tell if a Politician leans towards preserving the US democratic/republic form of government or if they lean towards some form of authoritarianism?
    I would look at both what they say and their voter record. Like do they speak out against what happened on the 6th and then vote against the commission to investigate it? Did they speak out against oppression and racisms then vote for voter restrictions? Do they speak about public safety then yell about mask and vaccine mandates? Do they talk about personal choice then vote for super restrictive abortion bills?

    But to be honest at this point we know who really leans towards authoritarianism.
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  15. #35070
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    Quote Originally Posted by babyblob View Post
    I would look at both what they say and their voter record. Like do they speak out against what happened on the 6th and then vote against the commission to investigate it? Did they speak out against oppression and racisms then vote for voter restrictions? Do they speak about public safety then yell about mask and vaccine mandates? Do they talk about personal choice then vote for super restrictive abortion bills?

    But to be honest at this point we know who really leans towards authoritarianism.
    We know those who are the most outspoken, but there are others who have been keeping their heads down. I figure if I can come up with a fair and factual based assessment, it might be interesting to compare them.
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