BY JEROME PUGMIREUpdated 12:46 PM CDT, July 28, 2024Share
PARIS (AP) — Paris Olympics organizers apologized to anyone who was offended by a tableau that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” during the glamorous opening ceremony, but defended the concept behind it Sunday.
Da Vinci’s painting depicts the moment when Jesus Christ declared that an apostle would betray him. The scene during Friday’s ceremony featured DJ and producer Barbara Butch — an LGBTQ+ icon — flanked by drag artists and dancers.
Religious conservatives from around the world decried the segment, with the French Catholic Church’s conference of bishops deploring “scenes of derision” that they said made a mockery of Christianity — a sentiment echoed by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. The Anglican Communion in Egypt expressed its “deep regret” Sunday, saying the ceremony could cause the IOC to “lose its distinctive sporting identity and its humanitarian message.” (snip)
The ceremony’s artistic director Thomas Jolly had distanced his scene from any “Last Supper” parallels after the ceremony, saying it was meant to celebrate diversity and pay tribute to feasting and French gastronomy. Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps was asked about the outcry during an International Olympic Committee news conference on Sunday.
A Texas constable spent two years working to bring criminal charges against school librarians for distributing books he felt were obscene. KXAS’ Scott Friedman reports.
I want to thank Ten Bears for the link, his link will be below because WordPress messed up blogging like I do to the max. But for those who do not follow Ten Bears he posts grand links that you can choose to follow or not, and he labels them well enough that some of them get my interest, like the one below. In this one it is about how the die hard center / lean right democrats are not giving up just because the entire public seems to want Kamal a more progressive candidate. No they insist the public really wants a center / leans right one like Old Joe used to be in the old days. Maybe a split ticket of Kamal and a Joe Manchin type is what they are hinting. What they say is right wingers don’t lose hope at the convention a centrist will rise up to challenge her and win over whelming support. These guys just don’t get the 1980 – 1990s are gone. The right had it last brief gasp of power, but the country is moving forward, not backward to the 1950s. Hugs. Scottie
Many pundits are sad today because the Democratic Party won’t have a mini-primary to choose Joe Biden’s replacement on the presidential ticket. But how do Democrats feel? Morning Consult has done some polling:
A Morning Consult survey conducted after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign found that 65% of Democratic voters support Harris to lead the party’s ticket, more than double the level of support she had in a hypothetical look at the same question late last month following the first presidential debate.
Democrats and Democratic leaning voters were given a list of 10 names of possible Democratic candidates for president instead of Joe Biden and asked who they would most like to see win the Democratic nomination for president.
Vice President Kamala Harris tops the list with 45 percent support, California Governor Gavin Newsom receives 12 percent support, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg receives 11 percent support, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer receives 7 percent support, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear each receive 4 percent support, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly receives 3 percent support, and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Colorado Governor Jared Polis each receive 1 percent support.
Vice President Kamala Harris raised $81 million in the first 24 hours since announcing her bid for president, her campaign said, a record-breaking showing as Democrats welcomed her candidacy with one of the greatest gushers of cash of all time.
Future Forward, the flagship super PAC blessed by President JOE BIDEN, received $150 million in new commitments from major Democratic donors in the 24 hours since the president announced he would step aside from the race, Elena Schneider reports.
The fundraising boon … gives VP KAMALA HARRIS, Biden’s endorsed successor, an enormous boost as the Democratic Party reorients to a new nominee.
Sounds as if Democrats are very satisfied with Harris as the candidate. And that should be no surprise. Go to FiveThirtyEight’s collection of 2024 Democratic primary polls. When you get to the bottom of the list, keep clicking “Show more polls.” Long before Biden dropped out, in every national poll that asked respondents about a field without Joe Biden, Kamala Harris won, usually by double digits. When Harris’s lead was only in single digits, it was because her closest rival was Michelle Obama, who has made it clear she’ll never run for office.
Here are three typical polls, all posted on one day late last month (click to enlarge):
Survey USA: Harris by 27 over a field including Newsom, Buttigieg, Whitmer, Shapiro, and Wes Moore. Morning Consult: Harris by 10 over a field including Newsom, Buttigieg, Whitmer, Moore, Beshear, Cooper, Pritzker, and Moore. Data for Progress: Harris by 21 over a field including Newsom, Buttigieg, Whitmer, Pritzker, Shapiro, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar.
In a field without Biden, Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ consensus choice. Kamala Harris has always been the Democrats’ consensus choice.
But bros like Ezra Klein aren’t satisfied. They still think we Democrats don’t know what we want, and need to have a bro-devised process to help focus our tiny minds:
I think there’s a middle path here that Democrats should consider. None of the top-tier candidates are going to challenge Harris for the nomination. But what about some second- or third-tier candidates? Let a few up-and-comers make their case against Donald Trump. Let’s see some CNN town halls, some multicandidate forums. Nobody is going to go negative on each other here. Give the country a reason to watch a lineup of young Democrats, most of all Harris, make their cases against Trump day after day for the next few weeks.
Think of it not as a contest. Think of it as an exhibition. Maybe the people who’ve endorsed Harris can participate, too. She’s going to need a vice president. So maybe Gretchen Whitmer and Shapiro and Kelly and Beshear should be up there, too…. Maybe a little strategic ambiguity about what these candidate forums and voter town halls are would be good.
Harris vs. “some second- or third-tier candidates”? You mean the way Joe Biden ran against Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson? We all derived a great deal of civic nourishment from that process, didn’t we?
And what does Klein mean when he writes, “Think of it not as a contest. Think of it as an exhibition,” and then “Maybe a little strategic ambiguity about what these candidate forums and voter town halls are would be good”? Beyond the obvious (We can’t allow you simple folk to know what your big-brained betters are doing), is Klein arguing that this will be described as an exhibition but will actually be a contest, because donors who want another candidate will urge writers like Klein to magnify any Harris slip-ups and promote a donor-friendly alternative?
Klein goes on to say nice things about Harris, and says she’d almost certainly emerge from his process as the nominee. (Though you never know — he writes, “If she really isn’t up to it, [Democrats] need to know that now.”) He describes this as good publicity for the party (though I’d remind him that a few excellent speeches by the presumptive nominee would also be good for the party, especially if other party stars show up in support of her).
But it’s clear that if you’re happy about the party’s consolidation around Harris, Ezra Klein thinks you’re uninformed and need educating. I worry that patronizing bros like this — and not just the ones in the media — will choose not to vote for Harris, ‘cuz she’s a girl and a bunch of girls and girlymen decided to make her the nominee by acclamation, without contests and brackets and March Madness and a Final Four. We need to outvote Republicans, but we may also need to outvote America’s Ezra Kleins.
So the other day I was so tired I couldn’t function. Ron got home after driving straight through to get home that night, so I was up until midnight after getting up at 3 am the morning before. So I was in no shape to blog. So I spent the day with my hubby after he got home from being on a long trip to bury his brother and seeing his family. Then I got up this morning at 3 am, and after feeding the cats I went on the MS site I always check first. I have been sharing and helping others on the site and have started to get quite a few doing private chats with me. They say I am kind, caring, and nice to talk to … I will take it.
But just before I was to get off there and go to my blog, a guy showed up blaming his once … unwanted … blow job from a man overturning his entire life and now he is anti gay people, rainbow flags, pride, and any showing of gays in society because they are all abusers and child molesters. He went on at length about how abusive and dysfunctional gay people were, how they were flaunting themselves in an abusive way in society, so on and so on. Remember he is in a site for males abused as children sexually and in other ways.
Anyone who knows me knows I can not resist such shit. He threatened right in his first post that if people said he needed therapy, he was bi or searching, or that he was a bigot then he was gone. I was like OK. I answered every paragraph he wrote, telling him he needed help professionally on some, telling him that because he says he now had thoughts of sex with men that he might be seeking and should again talk to professionals about it, as that is not the way sexual assaults work. One forced blow job doesn’t make a man who only thought of women before gay. I called out his bigotry when he posted how gays were now in schools with rainbow stickers to make kids gay. I even outright asked him if he was a troll. We will see. But I have been there on that site since basically 3 am to now nearly 1 pm. I am going to skip posts and go right to comments. Again like always if I missed your comment because it dropped off the list please resubmit it, I will do my best to reply. Hugs Scottie
The conservative blueprint envisions ‘a biblically based’ definition of marriage and wants to protect adoption agencies that only work with Christians
Rebecca McCrayWed 24 Jul 2024 07.00 EDTShare
In 2021, Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram decided to take the next step toward growing their family and applied to foster a child. After identifying a three-year-old in Florida who they hoped to ultimately adopt, the Rutan-Rams turned back to their home state of Tennessee to start training to become foster parents.
But their plans quickly fell apart when the Christian state-funded foster care placement agency informed them by email that they “only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system”. The Rutan-Rams, who are Jewish, were out of luck.
“There’s already emotions playing into wanting to be a parent, and then to have us attacked personally just made it that much harder,” Liz Rutan-Ram told the Guardian.
The Rutan-Rams sued the Tennessee department of children’s services, arguing that a state law permitting private agencies to refuse to work with prospective parents on religious grounds violates the Tennessee constitution’s equal protection and religious freedom guarantees. The case will soon go to trial.
The predicament facing the Rutan-Rams could become more common under a second Trump administration. Project 2025, a 900-plus page blueprint for the next Republican administration and the policy brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation, contains an explicitly sympathetic view toward “faith-based adoption agencies” like the one that rejected the Rutan-Rams, who are “under threat from lawsuits” because of the agencies’ religious beliefs.
Project 2025’s Adoption Reform section calls for the passage of legislation to ensure providers “cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage”. It also calls for the repeal of an Obama-era regulation that prohibits discrimination against prospective parents and subsequent amendments made by the Biden administration.
Though Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, his campaign’s own 16-page policy agenda echoes many of its goals, and his ties to the plan’s architects are well-established. In Milwaukee last week, the Heritage Foundation’s role in the Republican national convention was on full display, both on welcome banners at the airport and in the millions of dollars invested in the event itself. Following Trump’s announcement of his vice-presidential pick, the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, said he was “good friends” with JD Vance, and effusively declared him “a man who personifies hope for our nation’s future”. Vance has previously said there were “some good ideas” in Project 2025.
Project 2025 is divided into four broad pillars, the first of which is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”. A conservative vision of family pervades the document, and the authors call on policymakers “to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family”.
The plan envisions upholding “a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. It would remove nondiscrimination roadblocks governing faith-based grant recipients, such as the agency that denied the Rutan-Rams. The authors argue that “heterosexual, intact marriages” provide more stability for children than “all other family forms”. In addition to calling for the passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, which would allow adoption and foster care agencies to make placement decisions based on their “religious beliefs or moral convictions”, it also calls on Congress to ensure “religious employers” are exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to make business decisions based on their religious beliefs.
To the Rev Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and a queer parent, the image of family portrayed by the policy agenda is blatantly exclusionary. The Christian nationalist plan rejects unmarried parents, single parents and LGBTQ+ families.
A billboard in Milwaukee, part of a campaign by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to raise awareness of Project 2025, that ran during the Republican convention. Photograph: Americans United for Separation of Church and State
“The definition of family according to Project 2025 leaves a lot of folk out,” Washington-Leapheart told the Guardian. “This blueprint really delegitimizes the kinds of families that are day in and day out raising children, paying taxes, contributing meaningfully to society.”
The Rutan-Rams have become the face of a campaign led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who are representing them in their lawsuit, that seeks to shed light on what they call the Christian nationalist goals of Project 2025. As part of the campaign, visitors to the Republican convention last week may have seen billboards reading “You gotta keep ’em separated,” in reference to church and state.
Project 2025’s vision is already law in a number of states. The Rutan-Rams are battling a Tennessee law, modeled after similar laws in at least 10 other states, that permits faith-based foster care and adoption agencies to exclusively work with prospective parents who share their beliefs.
Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of a book titled How to End Christian Nationalism, contends that the scale and reach of Project 2025 pose a far greater danger to democracy than a patchwork of state laws.
“What’s different about Project 2025 is the sweeping nature of its plan,” said Tyler. “It would really rewrite the federal government and change policies in so many different areas at once in a way that would hasten our journey down that road to authoritarian theocracy.”
The Holston Home for Children in Tennessee, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
Tyler worries that Project 2025’s deliberate erosion of the separation between church and state, a founding principle embedded in the first amendment to the US constitution, will get a helping hand from the US supreme court, which has handed a series of victories in recent years to Christian activists. She specifically mentioned the 2021 decision in Carson v Makin, which struck down a Maine law that banned the use of public funds for religious schools. It was “an earthquake of a decision that a lot of people didn’t really pay attention to that has really opened the door to government funding of religion”, said Tyler.
The threat of a theocracy doesn’t seem far-fetched to Washington-Leapheart.
“Project 2025 says that religion is a permanent institution that should influence American life,” said Washington-Leapheart. “That alone communicates the kind of arrogant way Christianity is situated as an inevitability. And it’s not. I say that as a Christian person who is firmly grounded in my faith. It is not an inevitable part of my identity, it is a choice I make every day.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies. (snip-more)
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Monthly headlines are turning into daily headlines:
Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture. (snip-more)
A 7-month-old tree kangaroo peeked out of its mom’s pouch at the Bronx Zoo and here is the video
The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head head out of its mom’s furry white pouch. (snip-click the Video hyperlink just above the title)
We discussed this a bit here a few weeks ago, about Sinclair sending talking points to all their stations, so that local reporters had to report that as real news. Here’s some more, from yesterday, that I didn’t get to until late.
Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair’s national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias of the content he was required to present on air, three sources told Popular Information. The sources — one current and two former Sinclair employees — spoke to Popular Information on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about the potential professional repercussions of speaking out about Sinclair’s editorial processes. Ramirez’s show, which continues to air with a new host, appears on at least 70 of the hundreds of local television affiliates owned by Sinclair.
One of the primary issues that prompted Ramirez’s resignation was the requirement to include at least three stories produced by Sinclair’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) on a nightly basis. Sinclair’s RRT is a group of four reporters who work out of Sinclair’s national headquarters in Maryland. The group’s output is prodigious. A Popular Information review found that between January 1 and July 4 this year, the RRT published at least 775 stories.
Most of the RRT’s stories are short and aggregate information from other sources. Sinclair publicly claims that the RRT and other components of its national newsgathering operation, known as The National Desk, provide a “comprehensive, commentary-free look of the most impactful news of the day.” But a look at the RRT’s stories over the course of the year shows that the group frequently produces pieces that have more in common with right-wing agitprop than journalism.
Often, the articles summarize press releases or social media posts from Republican politicians or other right-wing groups. Recent headlines include:
53 parent groups confront Biden education secretary over new Title IX rules: ‘Disgraceful’
GOP senator says Fetterman proves how ‘radical’ Dems have become on Israel: ‘Nuts’
Trump PAC launches new ad hitting Democrats on border: ‘Joe Biden does nothing’
Biden mocked by US Oil and Gas Association for touting gas price drops: ‘You’re welcome’
Elon Musk rips VP Harris for ‘lying’ about Trump’s abortion stance
Through July 4, 2024, the RRT has produced 147 stories this year that portray Democrats in a negative light and just 7 stories that portray Democrats positively. Over that same time period, the RRT has produced 57 stories that portray Republicans positively and 22 that portray Republicans negatively.
Many of the pieces produced by the RRT that do not explicitly mention Republicans or Democrats (or do so only in passing) still promote a right-wing agenda, highlighting stories that portray immigrants or LGBTQ people negatively.
These are the stories that Ramirez was required to present each night. Sinclair’s headquarters sent a list of four stories produced by the RRT to the team that produced the evening news broadcast. At least three had to be read on air. One current employee at Sinclair’s headquarters described the RRT team as “the right-wing propaganda arm of the national digital operation.”
The RRT is run by Julian Baron, a 2021 graduate of Syracuse University. Despite having little professional experience (and none outside of Sinclair), Baron’s title is “Chief of Staff for News.” In that role, Baron serves as the right-hand man for Scott Livingston, Sinclair’s Senior Vice President for News.
According to a fourth source, who currently works at Sinclair’s headquarters, Baron and the RRT are also responsible for creating the “Question of the Day,” which around 200 Sinclair affiliates are required to include in their broadcasts. (The questions appear on Sinclair’s website without a byline.) Recent questions include:
Are you concerned violent criminals are crossing the border?
Do you think former House Speaker Pelosi deserves some of the blame for Jan. 6 riot?
Do you think some of President Biden’s family members broke the law in their business dealings?
Do you think the Veterans Administration should be involved in health care coverage for illegal immigrants?
Do you think the FBI is protecting the Biden family?
The reporters on the RRT team who work under Baron are Jackson Walker, Ray Lewis, and Kristina Watrobski. Walker was hired by Sinclair less than two months after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2023. Walker spent his college years writing for The College Fix, a national right-wing student publication. On X, Walker frequently highlights when his stories are circulated by Libs of TikTok, an anti-LGBTQ activist. Walker retweeted a post by Libs of TikTok that highlighted one of his articles and described the LGBTQ community as a “child mutilation cult.” Lewis is a 2023 graduate of Rutgers University. Prior to joining Sinclair, he was an intern at the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. Watrobski is a 2020 graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh and previously worked for a Sinclair affiliate in Albany.
Baron, according to three sources, has the authority to assign and publish RRT articles without any editorial oversight. In addition to appearing on the evening news broadcasts, RRT’s articles are automatically syndicated to hundreds of local news outlets, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS. According to two of the sources who spoke to Popular Information, this frequently caused rancor among the news staff of Sinclair affiliates, who were concerned about the posting of biased or inaccurate content on their websites.
Sinclair defended Baron’s work but acknowledged that local affiliates have objected to stories produced by the RRT on numerous occasions. “The Rapid Response Team has published several thousand stories,” Sinclair spokesperson Jessica Bellucci told Popular Information. “On perhaps one or two dozen occasions we have gotten questions from a station about those stories and had a healthy dialogue – sometimes leading to the stories being changed.”
Despite confirming the conflict between the RRT and local affiliates — and other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting — Bellucci also told Popular Information that “the statements made in your email are flatly untrue.” She suggested that Popular Information may be “misinforming us about having sources” and was only pursuing the story “in pursuit of your sixteenth minute of internet acclaim.” Bellucci accused Popular Information of “attacking our reporters for doing their job, reporting on stories that may be unpopular.”
The only specific statement Bellucci disputed was the characterization that Baron and the RRT work “outside of the normal editorial process.” Bellucci did not dispute that the Baron and the RRT team operate independently. Asked to clarify what other aspects of Popular Information’s reporting, if any, are “untrue,” Bellucci did not respond.
Don’t interrupt them
According to the sources who discussed Sinclair’s editorial process on the condition of anonymity, reading stories produced by the RRT was not the only issue that made Ramirez’s role in the evening broadcast untenable. Sinclair’s national leadership frequently booked guests from far-right groups, including Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation. When Ramirez challenged the dubious claims made by these guests, he was admonished and instructed not to interrupt them. Sinclair’s leadership, including Livingston, emphasized that many of Sinclair’s affiliates were not in big cities, and the content of the broadcast had to reflect the sensitivities of those viewers. Representatives of progressive groups were almost never booked as guests.
The evening broadcast was also required to include “packages” produced by Sinclair’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Some of these packages had a strong right-wing bias or made unsubstantiated claims. Of particular concern were packages by Sinclair National Correspondent Kayla Gaskins. For example, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, Gaskins produced a piece questioning whether the bank was “too ‘woke’ to function.”
This package featured an interview with Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who said the bank’s downfall was the result of “[n]ot hiring the brightest people but hiring people based on what they look like or where they fall on the social register” and were too busy “playing the woke game” to head off problems. Marcus presented no evidence to support his claims.
The piece also featured Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Congressman James Comer (R-KY) making similarly unsubstantiated claims, clipped from Fox News, blaming the bank’s collapse on “woke” politics or DEI initiatives. After featuring on-camera comments by Marcus, DeSantis, and Comer, Gaskin notes in the last five seconds of the piece that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blamed former President Donald Trump’s deregulatory policies.
Another piece by Gaskin in April 2023 falsely claimed that “children in Washington state will soon not need their parents’ permission to switch genders.” But legislation, which became law in July 2023, is limited to homeless youth, and “doesn’t change the state’s medical consent laws.” In Washington state, “those under age 18 don’t generally have the right to make medical decisions without parental consent.”
The law deals exclusively with parental notification when a young person arrives at a homeless shelter. Previously, the shelter was generally required to notify parents within 72 hours. Under the new law, when a young person is seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, the shelter has the option of instead contacting “the state Department of Children, Youth and Families, which could then attempt to reunify the family if feasible.” The purpose of the law is to encourage vulnerable homeless youth, who may be estranged from their parents, to obtain shelter rather than living on the street.
Gaskin’s piece uncritically quotes Landon Starbuck, president of the anti-LGBTQ group Freedom Forever, claiming the “state is stepping in and medically kidnapping kids from their parents.” This echoed a false claim, circulated by Donald Trump Jr. and others online, that the law allowed “the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.”
