I got up at 4 am. All day I have been setting up posts and helping Ron make a grand TDay dinner. But as I went out to help him, I came back to find my blogging computer had restarted. No problem, as I have a setting that simply reloads the pages from the last 3 days. But … No. For some reason I can not explain everything I had done for the last 3 days was wiped out. I can’t explain it. If it happens again I will have to dump the computer. But really I can not think of anything that could have caused it. But I will try to resurrect the important anti trans post I was writing. Hugs
This is the hyper Fundamentalist Christian who is radically against trans people and the entire LGBTQ+. He has made it his mission in political life to push bigotry and hate to anything he thinks the Christian god hates while trying to promote Christianity as a state religion at every turn. So here he is trying to shut down a homeless shelter. Really what Jesus would ask his followers to do, right? No this is not based on religion or faith, this is about profit and who gives him money. He pushes religious stuff because his main benefactor and political protector is a billionaire fundamentalist Christian preacher who thinks the government should force every person to be a Christian with his views. And what about the homeless shelter … Well local business don’t like the look or the congestion so more donations to remove them … Get the point. The point is the wealthy people who support this … Ultra Christian simply don’t like the poor around. They want them to go away and never be seen. Hugs.
In this June 22, 2017, file photo, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at a news conference in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to shut down an Austin, Texas, homeless center, calling the charity a public nuisance.
The Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center says it’s the largest provider of homeless services in Travis County. According to its website, the center provides a number of services, including physical and mental health care, substance abuse care, harm reduction, housing interventions and benefits enrollment. The center has received over a $1 million from the city of Austin, according to Paxton’s complaint.
“In South Austin, a once peaceful neighborhood has been transformed by homeless drug addicts, convicted criminals, and registered sex offenders,” Paxton says in the complaint, filed in Travis County District Court. “These people do drugs in sight of children, publicly fornicate next to an elementary school, menace residents with machetes, urinate and defecate on public grounds, and generally terrorize the surrounding community.”
In his complaint, Paxton notes the center’s location across the street from an elementary school. The Texas Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on the lawsuit that the school has been forced into lockdown repeatedly due to violent behavior from people receiving services at the center.
Paxton also takes issue with the center allowing a clean syringe distribution program on its property, which he says amounts to facilitating drug use. Part of a “harm reduction” philosophy, clean syringe programs aim to help people who are already using intravenous drugs do so more safely. In Texas, such programs operate in a legal grey area, as they are not authorized by the state and Texas law criminalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia.
“Drug activity and criminal behavior facilitated by this organization have hijacked an entire neighborhood,” Paxton said in a statement. “By operating a taxpayer-funded drug paraphernalia giveaway next to an elementary school, this organization is threatening students’ health and safety and unjustly worsening daily life for every single resident of the neighborhood. We will shut this unlawful nuisance behavior down.”
Paxton seeks an injunction requiring the center to close for a year and prohibiting it from conducting operations within 1,000 feet of a school, playground or youth center. But in a statement, the center’s executive director Mark Hilbelink said the services will continue.
“It is regrettable that Attorney General Paxton took this route, especially during the week of Thanksgiving, but Sunrise intends to keep offering services to people in our community who need them,” Hilbelink said in a statement. “We are committed to being a good neighbor. We will continue to work, every day, to support Joslin Elementary School, our neighborhood, and our entire community.”
He also noted the center is a ministry of Sunrise Community Church and is therefore protected by the First Amendment, the U.S. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“These laws have been tested in court on multiple occasions, always with the same result: churches are protected to do work that is an expression of their religious practice,” Hilbelink said.
Green lacewings have babies that are prized as pest control. But before they can mate, they have to vibrate their bodies and sing to each other, making noises like purring cats or growling stomachs.
Sneezy: Why is his left hand in a different plane of existence than the rest of everything? Are push-up bras in fashion again? Where did her legs go? Are those flying jellyfish? Inquiring minds want to know
Shana: I wish more covers incorporated flying jellyfish.
Sarah: I too am most curious about the glowy flying jellyfish! Like, are they buddies? Do they follow the Cursed One around like little night lights?
Shana: Something is wrong with their bodies but I can’t put my finger on what…
Elyse: They look like mannequins.
Sarah: The one on the right has a very very long sternum.
And the hand on the shoulder seems detached? Not touching anything?
Katee Roberts quoted someone when I interviewed her saying that looking for AI in a cover is like trying to see the fae.
That’s how this feels.
From Kareni: Here is a cover to consider for cover snark. Frankly, I have a difficult time figuring out what I am looking at.
Sarah: WHEEEEEEEE!
Elyse: Does he have to pee? Is that why he’s pulling on his pants?
Twice on other travels a wolf stood on the periphery of lamplight. Our eyes intensified in the silent distance between sanctity. There is one who appreciates secondhand revelations of wolves.
Sparrow hawk waves fast hinges of small capture in its apex of watch. Where are the absent coyotes of Willamina? Winter-sleepy mice are slow.
The salmon pass the fishers’ drift into deadline. The count is a button pushed in the rapture of instinctual homing. An eye squint records the shrapnel glimpses of Chinook.
Our river’s low, as manly winds blur the edges of inland clouds. Aspiring rain is a sleepy feminine whisper. Grasses sweep patterns of mock celestial visitations.
Otter pelts feel soothingly moist in the rich depth of velvety pelage Small bare edged ears are symbolic of ocean’s chill. One secret otter strip is owned for future weaving.
Otter woven into a 1Ravenstail robe is royal and tide riddled. The otter dances on prominent lineage hidden through survival. Copper light resumes ceremony from absence to embrace our shoulders.
1. Tlingit weaving and a form that nearly died out.
November 28, 1891 Early IBEW delegates The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (now International, the IBEW) was founded when 10 men met at Stolley’s Dance Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. Their goal: the joining together of electricians in a common organization to make a better life for all. The original logo adopted at the First Convention. Read more
November 28, 1905 The political party Sinn Fein (meaning “we ourselves” in Gaelic) was founded in Dublin by Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. Its objective was to end British rule in Ireland and seek national self-determination as a sovereign state. Sinn Fein’s story of its origins
November 28, 1991 The U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Threat Reduction Act (the Nunn-Lugar legislation), which provided up to $400 million to assist with the destruction of Soviet nuclear and chemical warheads. The legislation was initiated by Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).
The Texas committee that examines all pregnancy-related deaths in the state will not review cases from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after Texas’s near-total abortion ban took effect, leaving any potential deaths related to abortion bans during those years uninvestigated by the 23 doctors, medical professionals and other specialists who make up the group.
Leaders of the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee said the change was made to “be more contemporary” — allowing them to skip over a backlog of older cases and review deaths closer to the date when they occurred, and therefore offer more relevant recommendations to policymakers. At least three women have died in Texas because of delays in care related to the abortion bans, according to reporting from ProPublica.
The original logo adopted at the First Convention.
Scottie's Playtime 