Well said Michael. I hope more people would understand the republicans do not care about the country nor do they want to govern for the people. They want power, they want to rule. If it takes making the entire country suffer and causes great harm to the public they don’t care as long as they can’t shift the blame to the democrats. Hugs
Carusone: “It’s one of the few weeks we’ve had in a while where there’s almost uniformity. Whether it’s Fox News, or talk radio, or Alex Jones, they’re all saying the same thing.”
**if the video doesn’t show please visit the site to watch it, Thanks. Hugs **
CitationFrom the August 5, 2023, edition of MSNBC’s American Voices With Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): With me now, Angelo Carusone. He is the president of Media Matters. Angelo, if you watch right-wing media, if that is what you consume in any form, what is it that you believe happened this past week?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT & CEO, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA): You believe that the deep state, which the — not just the extremists on the right, but the mainstream Republicans now believe that, that this was sort of the next step in their plan to persecute Donald Trump. And not just Donald Trump, but then that they would then come after you next. That’s what you believe. It doesn’t matter what part of right-wing media you watch. It’s one of the few weeks we’ve had in a while where there’s almost uniformity. Whether it’s Fox News, or talk radio, or Alex Jones, they’re all saying the same thing. And that’s what you believe. You believe this was just another step in a big plot to come at you.
…
MENENDEZ: OK, so I’m so sorry to ask our viewers to watch that. But I think it is important because what you see at the end there is this mainstreaming of the idea of retribution.
CARUSONE: That’s it, revenge. And that’s sort of the fuel that’s here.
…
Because that wasn’t just Jesse Watters at Fox News, that was a very big narrative all across the right-wing echo chamber, was that this is it, this is why you have to get out there and vote. Because Donald Trump is going to be your mechanism for revenge against all of these people. And so, and that I think is a really powerful motivator. So, they’re not just spinning all these lies and conspiracies. You heard about the damage of disinformation. They’re also giving people a call to action. And the call to action isn’t immediately violence, but they are priming that pump as an ends justify the means.
…
So you put that poison into the system, and let’s not forget they have a delivery mechanism. It’s not just the right-wing media. They have all these QAnon figures and all these individuals that are spreading these ideas by word of mouth. They’re just putting the poison into the system, and one by one plucking off the individuals on the margin because there are no antibodies in the system against this type of misinformation, this type of disinformation. And the process that led up to January 6 is playing out very similarly right now in the right-wing media. I’m not trying to be alarmist about it, but this is just a reflection of what we’re seeing every single day.
The article link is from Ali, thank you Ali. The court ruling was all about racism, returning the more affluent whites back to the preferential position while denying underprivileged people of color a higher education. The end result is classes of mostly or all white people going on to lead businesses or large law firms leading to political power and people of color being regulated to lower income labor servitude jobs. The 1950s all over again. It is an attempt by racists to make a white power nation continue. Hugs
The right-wing activist behind SCOTUS’ Affirmative Action decision is now attacking a venture capital fund that supports Black women-owned small businesses.
ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 07: (L-R) Tobey R. Sanders, actress Keisha Knight Pulliam, and Arian Simone attend the “Festival of Laughs” tour at Philips Arena on April 7, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Wednesday, the nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against an Atlanta-based venture capital fund that supports Black women and other minority-owned small businesses. The nonprofit was founded by none other than right-wing crusader Edward Blum, who has made it his mission to destroy affirmative action.
The lawsuit filed against the Fearless Fund alleges that the fund is “operating a racially-discriminatory program” in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The Fearless Fund was founded by three Black women — executive Ayana Parsons, actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, and entrepreneur Arian Simone.
As their website notes, less than 2.2.% of all Venture Capital funding goes towards women-founded businesses, and less than 1% of total funding goes towards businesses founded by women of color. And yet, for some reason, folks like Blum are convinced this number should be even lower.
It’s worth noting that Blum and his team are clearly riding high from Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. In fact, they cite it at the top of their lawsuit.
Even before this lawsuit, conservatives were looking for ways to weaponize the Supreme Court’s decision in the workplace. In July, 13 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter demanding that Fortune 100 companies stop their affirmative action programs.
Amalea Smirniotopoulos, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior Policy Counsel, says that these Republican attorneys general are trying to make the Supreme Court’s affirmative decision about something it’s not.
“This was another attempt to chill completely lawful efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion by corporations,” says Smirniotopoulos. “By really trying to stretch the meaning of the decision in the Harvard and UNC cases and frankly by also restating things that have always been true about discrimination law and employment.”
“This letter is a scare tactic,” says University of New Mexico Constitutional and Employment Law Professor Vinay Harpalani. “And unfortunately, it’s a pretty good one.”
Although the Supreme Court decision didn’t touch on hiring practices, Harpalani says that conservatives will certainly try to use it as a basis for challenging race in employment. “The law, as it is now, allows affirmative action in employment,” says Harpalani. “But if the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’m not at all confident that they would continue to allow it.”
The immediate threat is that companies begin to back-away from DEI programs, said Justin Hansford, Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University.
“Some of these companies weren’t really doing that much anyway… and what they were doing was done only under pressure,” says Hansford. “This could be an excuse for some companies that already didn’t want to push the envelope on diversity to start walking things back.”
As for the lawsuit against Fearless Fund, an obvious concern is that it could scare off investors who might otherwise want to similarly invest in women of color. However, it’s still too soon to say (especially in this climate) whether the case has legs.
Well said / written. It lays bare the hypocrisy of those desperately trying to create some kind of equality and outrage between the very real attempt to overturn a valid election along with other crimes done by trump with a rarely ever charged crime of failure to fully pay taxes which was paid after and a firearms form that is never prosecuted. All to protect Mr. trump while trying to smear President Biden using his son. Hugs
Video: It’s so hot in Arizona that beehives are melting
CNN —
As deadly, unrelenting heat scorches Arizona, some entomologists are growing concerned about theincreasing number of dead honeybees – a species vital to our ecosystem, especiallyfood production.
Temperatures in Phoenix hit 110-plus degrees for a record-breaking 31 consecutive days from June 30 to July 30, part of what was the hottest month on record for anyUS city.
This unprecedented heat has bee experts across Arizona sounding the alarm bell.
“It’s a very major concern,” Shaku Nair, an entomologist with the University of Arizona, told CNN, “Honeybees can forage up to 113 degrees. As of July, we’ve had many days over 113 degrees, so bees are taking a bad hit right now.”
This month is the planet’s hottest on record by far — and hottest in around 120,000 years, scientists say
Phoenix-based beekeeper Cricket Aldridge, who now spends many of her days saving bees from the heat, told CNN “bees’ homes are being melted” and “other bee colonies are attacking honeybee colonies due to food scarcity.”
According to Dan Winter, President of the American Beekeeping Federation, it requires very extreme heat and no water for beehives to melt because they use evaporation to cool down.
Arizona honeybees battle the relentless heat by using water and their wings to cool down the hive, Nair explained, and to keep the brood alive, they must maintain a hive temperature between 92 and 104 degrees. However, with temperatures so high, there’s only so much they can do.
“We are seeing dead bees around hives,” Nair says, “That is because of the heat – it’s too hot in the hives and bees won’t let[other bees] back in.”
Cricket Aldridg
A bee colony being moved in Arizona.
When honeybees leave the hive to forage for food, options are scarce, according to Nair. Weeks of nonstop heat in Phoenix have wilted flowers and killed saguaro cactuses, important food sources for honeybees.
Nair warns that humans could see the impacts of more dead honeybees for many years to come, and a drop in pollination could lead to a disruption in food production. Foods like melons, citrus fruits, zucchini, coffee and chocolate all depend on bees.
Phoenix’s record heat is killing off cactuses
Unfortunately, heat is just another added stress on honeybee populations that are already in danger. Last year, beekeepers in the US lost an estimated 48% of their managed honeybee colonies, according to Beeinformed.org.
Winter said bee populations are on the decline due to rising threats from pests and threats to their nutrition and habitat. Winter told CNN that humans have put bee habitats in jeopardy with monoculture, which “is a big problem because it doesn’t leave a lot of nutrition for bees.”
Bee experts have a message for regions dealing with extreme heat – put out water for bees and maintain more native plant species. “Bees usually do well as long as they have water,” Winter said.
Tonight, a judge ruled in favor of the 15 women who sued Texas after the state’s abortion ban put their health and lives at risk. Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum issued a temporary injunction that will stop the law from being enforced against doctors who provide abortions using “good faith judgement” that a pregnancy is unsafe for the pregnant person, or that a fetus is unlikely to survive.
Texas will definitely appeal; but for now, people in the state with dangerous or doomed pregnancies should be able to get care.
I am so grateful for the women who laid their pain bear in public for the chance to change this law just a little—but so distressed that they had to fight so hard to be given this bare minimum of humanity. It makes me feel a bit ill, to be honest, that these are the kinds of ‘wins’ we have to hope for.
The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, required women to relive the horrors they were forced to endure because of the state’s abortion ban. One woman, Samantha Casiano—who was forced to give birth despite the fact that her baby had anencephaly and was missing parts of her brain and skull—ended up vomiting while recounting her experience. She said that talking about what happened “just makes my body remember and it just reacts.”
Lawyers defending the state, meanwhile, were extraordinarily cruel. One attorney said, “Plaintiffs simply do not like Texas’ restrictions on abortion.” Another not only frequently interrupted as the women spoke about their experiences, she also asked each one individually if Attorney General Ken Paxton had personally denied them an abortion. Plaintiff Amanda Zurawski, who nearly died after being denied an abortion, said, “I survived sepsis and I don’t think today was much less traumatic than that.”
There is a reason Texas tried to stop these women from telling their stories: there is no arguing with their experiences, no turning away from the horror these laws have caused. As happy as I am for the people in Texas who might be able to get the care they need as a result of this decision, I keep thinking about Terry—the young woman I spoke to in June—and how this ruling came too late to help her:
An American Nightmare: Young, pregnant & living in Texas
I love the rational well thought out response to this guy, who was so stunted early in his mental growth by religion, who claims it is more scientific and less magical to say god created the entire universe per the biblical creation, rather than in his view that the idea of the big bang which calls pure magic. Hugs
Today, we look at a video from a podcast in which Matt Powell debunked us all. So it’s time to give up and go home.
01:32 – Source: CNNVideo: It’s so hot in Arizona that beehives are meltingCNN —
Scottie's Playtime 