All day yesterday I worked on computer / router issues and spent hours investigating new router security protocols and how they interact with older software. After 13 hours of that I did not feel like getting to comments. So I am just reading the many grand comments of the last few days. Keith left a comment that jogged my memory and I felt it was so good I wanted to share it with everyone. Below I will put Keith’s comment, my response, and the wonderful presentation Sheldon Whitehouse did.
Nan, I agree. I have long said over half the Republican party is voting against their economic interests and have no idea they are. Being a former Republican, the GOP stands for one thing – giving more money to rich people and helping them keep it. Everything else is window dressing to garner votes and mask this mission. The fight for conservative judges, for example, has less to do with Roe v Wade and more to do with judges who will rule in favor of corporations, owners and developers when screwed over litigants sue them. People need to re-read this last sentence as it is sadly true and of great importance. Keith
Hey Keith. Very astute of you! You see something I have only seen covered in progressive left media like TYT. You know what some call the extreme left. The ties to the Federalist Society and the groups that pushed these judges to business interests is deep. Sheldon Whitehouse gave an amazing presentation on this subject if you are interested. Surprisingly most news sites left or right want to ignore this aspect. Not in the video but I was stunned when Gorsuch wrote that a man should have died in his truck when the company he worked for told him to stay with it in the freezing cold and die rather than seek safe shelter.
I just got home. About 1:40 PM. Let me start this with saying the misadventure of my new eyeglasses is still continuing. The abridged version is that after 6 weeks when they went to adjust the new lenses in the new frames the frames broke. So two new frames and new lenses are ordered, and the second pair will be a midrange blue tinted just for my time at the computer. They asked if I wanted a pair for that when I first ordered my new glasses and I declined as I have so many old frames taking up space around the house. But Randy talked to me and explained how important the blue tint is for people who spend long hours on a computer like I do. So this time I agreed. I only had to pay for the blue tint in the second pair otherwise the doctor’s office is picking up the extra costs for the new frames and lenses other than what I paid for the first pair that went wrong.
But that is not the misadventure I am talking about. First I am just starting to feel well again after over a week of allergy attacks / and or a cold that had my face a swollen red hived cracked skin mess with swollen sinuses and watering eyes. Needless to say I really did not feel well. But I felt pretty good yesterday and today. The universe seems to really wanted to make sure I was up for what was going to happen.
Ron must go to Greensboro, North Carolina again. His brother is in a nursing home up there and has dementia. Ron has taken a trip up there every year, one year twice in that year, to first get his brother into and settled in the nursing home and to do all the legal / medical stuff involved. Plus to see his brother. One of Ron’s sisters has also been very involved. She lives in both Texas and New Hampshire. Normally she either flies into our area and stays with us then drives up to Greensboro with Ron or she flies in to the Charlotte airport. In that case Ron drives up to Charlotte NC and gets a hotel room, next day picks up his sister and they go to Greensboro. Then they come back to Charlotte and stay the night, sister flies out and Ron drives home.
That is the plan this time. Ron is leaving here on the morning of Monday Apr 11th. Not that it matters but I have shots that morning. So Ron called the Ford dealership to get our Ford Escape titanium that has a little over 40,000 on it serviced and the auto Butler detailing and paint coat service we bought extra with the car done. They said bring it in this morning. So we dropped it off around 9 AM and returned home. At 11 AM I got a call on my phone, and when I answered it a very excited woman said “Mr. Miller, Mr. Miller, Where are you?” I laughed and said “North Fort Myers and where are you?” The woman replied “I am at the dealership and you need to be here right way. You need to come back right now.” She was so hyper I got worried. I asked what was going on and she told me I did not want to know. Wrong answer I told her, she called me and now I want to know what Is going on.
On the phone she wouldn’t tell me what happened except that they had damaged our car. Bad enough that it would need to go to the body shop via a flatbed and they had no idea when it would be fixed. She kept saying she did not know when I asked questions. But no worries she said they had a loaner ready for us but needed me ( turns out she thought she was talking to Ron as he checked the car in and did not realize we were a same sex male couple.) to come in right away and sign some papers and take the loaner. I informed her that my spouse was leaving for NC on Monday and if their loaners were not able to do that, we had a serious issue. She got all flustered and said she would talk to her manager who would deal with it for us when we got there.
When we arrived Ron said he wanted me to go in with him. I normally handle these the car things other than dropping the car off as I let him drive the better car to the dealership and I follow him there and I take him back in the van. The van doesn’t have all the nice electronic gadgets and gismos as the car does, which doesn’t bother me. When we found the woman service person Ron had dropped the car off with, she basically tried to ignore me. She told me to wait in the lobby and she would take Ron to see the car. When I informed her it was my car also she seemed confused. But I got a cart with only two seats she said. Ron did not want a scene so I said fine, go take pictures and get all the information and I will wait in the lobby. When Ron came back he was upset. I knew it couldn’t be good. She came back she still seemed to only want to talk with Ron. I informed her that we jointly owned the car and if she checked the paperwork she would see we were a couple and in fact the phone she had called was mine and most likely I would be the one she and the dealership would be dealing with on the matter. That gave her pause. Then she said that their loaners couldn’t go out of state, I said that was her problem and not mine, but they needed to fix the situation. She still kept saying she did not know what happened and wouldn’t tell us what all the damage was other than to say that it was totally covered by them and it needed to go to the body shop via flatbed truck. She kept repeating it happened on the lot and not off the lot which was important because the services the car was there for were on the lot available. There would have been no reason for anyone to take the car off the company grounds. She went to again talk to the manager and when she returned, they had approved of us getting a rental car from a nearby Enterprise rental agency and the dealership was paying for it. When I told her I really wanted to know what happened she said well she thought she heard something about a car carrier flatbed or other large truck but she really couldn’t tell me anything. Remember she had been to talk to the manager several times and over an hour and half had passed between her call to me and now. She knew what happened and the dealership did not want us to know. Below are the three pictures Ron took. I wished he had opened the hood and got pictures from the front but he did not think of it. Before we left the woman asked if we had thought about buying a new vehicle or trading the escort. The story continues after the pictures.
So we left the dealership and went down the street to the car rental place. It is a very busy 6 lane road with 2 or more turning lanes. We seen some signs saying entrance and so I went there, parked, and we went inside. Turned out we were at their car sales department and after hearing why we were they tried to sell us a car. I guess in these times I can forgive them, but they did not know my Ron and he was getting more and more upset and I needed to get this wrapped up and everything back to normal. We got to the right building and told the nice young guy behind the desk the story and that we understood the dealership was paying for the car rental. He agreed they were and started to set things up. He asked Ron if he wanted me to be able to drive the car and it would be $25 dollars more a day. Plus did he want their insurance for another $25 dollars a day. As he talked and addressed Ron, I realized we had the same situation happening. I told the guy we were a married couple and our insurance was joint and we preferred it. I have to say I love how he readjusted. It was no big deal but he got to cut out half of the spiel he had to say knowing it now applied to both of us. I understood his position, he had assumed we were just friends and it was part of what he had to go over to gain as much profit for the company and cover them in case of issues. Once he understood we were a married couple things went so much smoother. This is the part of same sex marriage a lot of people cannot understand. Marriage is about a lot of legal rights that are just assumed for male / female couples but must be insisted on and pushed for with same sex couples.
So long story shorter than it was for us. We got home, Ron has to learn about the rental car and its features. He has to get ready for his trip. We had to return to the dealership to get his large maps and papers with notes from his prior trips there even though I offered to print him new ones, he wanted the ones he had his notes on. I did not argue. It has been 32 years of changes and adventures and understanding how we both have developed and aged is part of why we are a happy couple. He is frustrated and upset so I asked him to just sit and chill while watching TV. Everything can be handled in the next few days. James has time off this weekend to teach Ron how to use the map system in the car. It is going to be OK. If car prices and the current issue with hyper inflated costs were not an issue I would simply trade the car. We had planned to do so two years ago. The little car gets crap fuel milage. That is why we bought it and it never got what we thought it would. It is smaller than we really wanted because we thought it would be better on fuel and still have a very strong turbo driven acceleration. I only bought the car because Ron was going on a trip to New Hampshire and he loved the car when we test drove it.
So that is the daily misadventure that continues for us. I thought you would want to know. Now I have to deal with some left over laundry and house chores. Best wishes.
The beloved sandwich cookie has debuted a new short film, directed by Alice Wu, to tell a sweet, touching story about the family journey of a young LGBTQ+ man.
The latest piece of work from award-winning filmmaker Alice Wu (The Half Of It, Saving Face) is a short film about coming out. We meet a young man who appears to be stumbling through his coming-out process to his parents. But there’s a twist that extends this story from the traditional coming-out story to illustrate a larger point about the process, the struggle, and the challenges that don’t end after that first conversation. It’s also an Oreo ad.
The Note is the latest result in a multiyear collaboration between the cookie brand and PFLAG National, and is the launching point for its new #LifelongAlly campaign, which includes a $500,000 donation to the advocacy organization. Oreo senior brand manager Olympia Portale says the brand didn’t want to show another coming-out story, but worked with PFLAG, ad agency 360i, and Wu to find an insight for taking the discussion around coming out in a positive, new direction. That insight revolves around the idea that coming out isn’t just a one-and-done experience. “For many people, the only time their parents or family even acknowledge that they’re in this community is in that first moment,” says Portale. “That [subsequent] silence can last years and can be really harmful. So we wanted to show that being an ally, being supportive to family members, isn’t just about saying ‘I love you, and I support you’ in that one moment, but how you show up in an active way, so that individual feels you have their back all the time.”
Oreo’s first high-profile Pride campaign came back in 2012, the brand’s centennial year, with a Facebook post featuring a cookie stacked high with rainbow-colored icing alongside the comment, “Proudly support love!” The post was widely celebrated but also sparked a backlash, as it came amid the gay-marriage debate at the time. A decade later, LGBTQ+ rights are again at the center of the culture wars, as Texas has passed a controversial anti-trans law, and Florida has passed its “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The landscape for brands in this environment has only become more charged, as Disney has found out amid the Biden-era attacks on “woke corporations,” which take public stands on issues. After initially drawing backlash from LGBTQ+ fans and allies for remaining silent on Florida’s new law, Disney is now a constant target for Fox News and right-wing politicians for its opposition to the bill. Despite this fraught climate for brands, Oreo has continued to step into this issue with impressive creative work and zero hesitation.
This is the third consecutive year that Oreo has worked with PFLAG on its Pride campaign, which began with the 2020 short, Proud Parent. In that spot, a young woman’s father paints the yard fence as a rainbow to show his support. For Portale, the message of The Note is an extension of that first film. “What would’ve happened after the father painted the fence?” asks Portale. “That’s not exactly how we approached this project, but it’s about galvanizing a new generation of allies, to really understand that allyship is action, and it takes more than just showing up at Pride once a year.”
Oreo isn’t the only brand to create Pride work around a coming-out story. A 2016 McDonald’s Taiwan ad went viral, showing a gay son coming out to his dad over coffee at the golden arches. Last year, Doritos Mexico created a spot that shows a dad who goes on Reddit to find help to talk to his son, as part of that brand’s ongoing #PrideAllYear campaign work.
Key to Oreo’s strategy in creating content for and engaging with LGBTQ+ people has been its commitment to working with partners within the community. Portale says that this hasn’t been an overnight development, but one that has evolved over years; it has continued to get stronger particularly since partnering with PFLAG in 2020. “We couldn’t have done this without the help and support of PFLAG,” says Portale. “Partnering with them to do this kind of work, to make sure you’re not doing any harm, has been incredibly valuable. Having Alice Wu on this project was incredible and took the brand into a different space. The nuances she brought to the original idea were incredibly powerful, and took it into a different level.”
For other brands looking to replicate Oreo’s success, Portale says that first is to know what your brand stands for, and why it exists in the world. For Oreo, that is to be playful but also to bring people together. “Oreo is a family brand,” says Portale. “When you ask people their first memory about Oreos, they’ll usually talk about their family. So our goal is to provide moments for people to come together. When we think about how we can extend that into more meaningful topics or territories, we want to focus on the places when these connections between family members might be at risk. If we’re going to fight for a world where all families belong, this was a natural place for us to go.”
Stepping into more meaningful topics can be tricky territory for a brand, and one key to navigating that path is to know the brand’s voice isn’t the most important. “The Note is not Oreo’s story,” says Portale. “Oreo is there to lend our megaphone to the community we want to support, to illustrate the message we, as a brand, want to stand behind is a great place to start. How do you shine a spotlight on people whose story this belongs to?”
COOKIE! I love COOKIES. C is for COOKIE. COOKIE IS FOR ME. I do NOT like GAY COOKIES. "Sexuality" has NOTHING TO DO with the Cookie experience. Cookies are for ALL! Basically Cookies are "asexual"—why is the WOKE LEFT messing around with OREOS?!?! STOP THE INSANITY pic.twitter.com/TS3k5M4LQv
Since @oreo is "coming out" I'm going to remind everyone that OREOS SUCK. Taste like Driveway Gravel. Not MOIST. Even Nabisco knows the truth–the cookies are too DRY. Milk Reliant, not a stand alone cookie. Go with the FIG NEWTON. We don't care about Mr Fig's orientation! pic.twitter.com/1FtiQscnbU
Is this the time in the past the right wing dreams of taking the country? Is this their idea of the way things should be? The stereotypes drove me crazy, but it was actually funny to think that some people think families really were this way and they want to return to the ridged strict role models they think made people happy, not understanding those times were miserable for most people who had no say in their place in life. Enjoy.
If they are not of straight White Anglo Saxon Protestant stock, or something similar, Republicans are terrified of them. I thought the only news story recently was that the far right was annoyed beyond belief that Disney was “normalizing LGTBQ” and recognizing that there are more families than the typical white family with a father, mother, and two children. Nobody, including Disney is afraid of or disdainful of traditional families. Accepting non-traditional families and treating them with respect TAKES NOTHING away from traditional families!!!! The fear is only coming from the ones who want want to go back to the days when all they saw was people who looked like, sounded like and worshiped just like them — with everyone else hidden in the shadows.
The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
With little discussion and no debate, the Republican-controlled House voted 70-14 to send the bill to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has previously said he’d sign any anti-abortion bill that comes to his desk.
The Oklahoma bill, which passed the Senate last year, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother, said GOP state Rep. Jim Olsen, of Roland, who sponsored the bill. Under the bill, a person convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
Stitt, who contracted COVID in July 2020, announced a statewide day of fasting and prayer against COVID in December 2020.
On his inauguration day in January 2019, he declared that the primary mission of his administration would be to “bring people to Jesus.”
In April 2021, he signed into law a bill that legalizes running over protesters. Which is what Jesus would want.
Oklahoma House gave 70-14 approval to bill that would make performing an abortion a felony. Bill passed with little discussion and no debate. Passage comes as a "Bans Off Oklahoma" rally is being held at the Capitol in support of abortion rights. https://t.co/tzT2HTGfvi
The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
With little discussion and no debate, the Republican-controlled House voted 70-14 to send the bill to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has previously said he’d sign any anti-abortion bill that comes to his desk.
The bill is one of several anti-abortion measures still alive in Oklahoma’s Legislature this year, part of a trend of GOP-led states passing aggressive anti-abortion legislation as the conservative U.S. Supreme Court is considering ratcheting back abortion rights that have been in place for nearly 50 years.
The Oklahoma bill, which passed the Senate last year, makes an exception only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother, said GOP state Rep. Jim Olsen, of Roland, who sponsored the bill. Under the bill, a person convicted of performing an abortion would face up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Olsen said.
Similar anti-abortion bills approved by the Oklahoma Legislature in recent years have been stopped by the courts as unconstitutional.
“These legislators have continued their relentless attacks on our freedoms,” said Emily Wales, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. “These restrictions are not about improving the safety of the work that we do. They are about shaming and stigmatizing people who need and deserve abortion access.”
Wales said Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinic in Oklahoma has seen an 800% increase in the number of women from Texas after that state passed the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the U.S. in decades.
The Texas law that took effect last year bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, without exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
Also Tuesday, the Oklahoma House adopted a resolution to recognize lives lost due to abortion and urge citizens to fly flags at half-staff on Jan. 22, the day the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in its landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.
This morning I was listening to a podcast doing an interview with an abortion provider from Texas. She was talking of serval patients she needed to get out of Texas immediately because their lives were in danger. In one case the fetus had died and was killing the woman but legally she couldn’t abort the fetus under Texas law. In another case that was non-life threatening but also tragic a woman had been raped about two months prior and just realized she was pregnant with the rapist issue. She wanted it out. She begged the doctor but by Texas law the doctor could only get her out of the state. Some states have even blocked that avenue by making leaving the state for abortion illegal. In these cases there was no exemption to these laws for the life of the woman. Listening to this doctor talk about the real life situations and the things that clearly made it about controlling women and not about pro-life and how even attempt to prevent pregnancy was being made illegal. The more I learn about these laws the scarier the situation becomes. And to be clear these heartbeat bills are based on a total fiction. There is no heart beat at 6 weeks because there is no heart at that stage of development. There is a clump of cells that will turn into a heart later in development, it is called a something pole and it has a small electrical charge. But it is not a heart and it is not beating.
A $300 million slice of Florida’s nearly $200 billion public pension portfolio is invested in Russian companies, even as the pariah nation faces mounting accusations of genocide and other war crimes in Ukraine.
Democrats want Florida to divest that tiny part of the fund, arguing the state’s leaders should act swiftly to dump Russian investments. Florida’s holdings include Russian oil producers, mining companies and the country’s largest bank, according to a review from late January.
In December, DeSantis and other Republican leaders ordered an audit of the state’s investments in China that could lead to divestment. In a news release, DeSantis said the “Communist Party of China is not a vehicle that we want to be entangled with.”
A $300M slice of #Florida’s nearly $200B public pension portfolio is invested in Russian companies, including oil producers, mining companies and the country’s largest bank. @GovRonDeSantis doesn't want to divest. https://t.co/f81rQEj63E via @SkylerSwisher
#Broward Commissioners pass resolution asking for a boycott of companies doing business in Russia and ask State of Florida to divest any investments in Russia. Also resolution calling, in part, for a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/PiiprE18yF
— Broward County Commission (@browardinfo) April 5, 2022
If your state pension fund is still invested in Russia, you're invested in war crimes, the murder of civilians, and genocide.
Republican politicians routinely claim that cities run by Democrats have been experiencing crime waves caused by failed governance, but a new study shows murder rates are actually higher in states and cities controlled by Republicans.
“We’re seeing murders in our cities, all Democrat-run,” former President Donald Trump asserted at a March 26 rally in Georgia. “People are afraid to go out.”
In February, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blamed Democrats for a 2018 law that reduced some federal prison sentences — even though it was signed by Trump after passing a GOP-controlled Congress. “It’s your party who voted in lockstep for the First Step Act that let thousands of violent felons on the street who have now committed innumerable violent crimes,” Cotton said during a speech in the Senate.
Last December, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, told Fox News viewers, “America’s most beautiful cities are indeed being ruined by liberal policies: There’s a direct line between death and decay and liberal policies.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at a rally on March 26 in Commerce, Ga. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
But a comparison of violent crime rates in jurisdictions controlled by Democrats and Republicans tells a very different story. In fact, a new study from the center-left think tank Third Way shows that states won by Trump in the 2020 election have higher murder rates than those carried by Joe Biden. The highest murder rates, the study found, are often in conservative, rural states.
The study found that murder rates in the 25 states Trump carried in 2020 are 40% higher overall than in the states Biden won. (The report used 2020 data because 2021 data is not yet fully available.) The five states with the highest per capita murder rate — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri — all lean Republican and voted for Trump.
There are some examples of states Biden won in 2020 that also have high per capita murder rates, including New Mexico and Georgia, which have the seventh- and eighth-highest murder rates, respectively. And there are Trump-supporting states with low murder rates, such as Idaho and Utah. Broadly speaking, the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest, has more murders per capita than the Northeast, interior West and West Coast, the study found.
Those findings are consistent with a pattern that has existed for decades, in which the South has had higher rates of violent crime than the nation as a whole.
Demonstrators march in Atlanta on April 14, 2021, to protest the shooting death of Daunte Wright three days earlier. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
“We as criminologists have known this for quite some time,” Jennifer Ortiz, a professor of criminology at Indiana University Southeast, told Yahoo News. “States like Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama have historically had high crime rates.”
Criminologists say research shows higher rates of violent crime are found in areas that have low average education levels, high rates of poverty and relatively modest access to government assistance. Those conditions characterize some portions of the American South.
“They are among the poorest states in our union,” Ortiz said of the Deep South. “They have among the highest rates of child poverty. They are among the least-educated states. They are among the states with the highest levels of substance abuse. All of those factors contribute to people engaging in criminal behavior.”
“I thought that was a very good study,” Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and former president of the American Society of Criminology, told Yahoo News about the Third Way report. “In Republican states, states with Republican governors, crime rates tend to be higher. I’m not certain that’s related to the fact that the governor is a Republican, but it’s a fact nonetheless.”
Police and emergency personnel work on a crime scene in Waukesha, Wis., in November 2021. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
(While the Third Way study divided states by presidential vote in 2020, using gubernatorial party affiliation leads to similar results because most states have recently chosen the same party for governor and for president. Based on presidential vote, eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates lean Republican, versus seven of the top 10 if one uses the governor’s party.)
Although murder rates tend to be highest in the South, the biggest increases in 2020 were found in the Great Plains and Midwest, according to Third Way. The largest jumps were in Wyoming (91.7% higher than in 2019), South Dakota (69%), Wisconsin (63.2%), Nebraska (59.1%) and Minnesota (58.1%). Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska all voted for Trump and have Republican governors. Wisconsin and Minnesota voted for Biden and are led by Democrats.
Few large cities are governed by Republicans — only 26 of the 100 largest U.S. cities have Republican mayors — making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. But cities that do have Republican mayors do not have lower murder rates than similarly sized Democratic-led cities, the study found.
Some experts warn against the impulse to use crime data to score quick political points.
“Being a Republican or Democratic state or city is correlated with many other issues,” David Weisburd, a professor of criminology and executive director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, wrote in an email to Yahoo News. “That means that the murder rate may be due to the state being Republican, or it may be due to the fact that Republican states have many other risk factors related to crime or murder rates. Even with a very comprehensive modeling of all of these factors, it is very difficult to get a valid causal result for explaining crime rates.”
Police tape blocks a street where a person was shot in a drug-related incident in Philadelphia in 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
That argument cuts both ways, however. Weisburd also thinks the claims of Trump and other Republicans who say Democrats have caused a crime wave in the cities and states they govern are unfounded. “I don’t think this argument can be supported no matter which way you go,” Weisburd said.
Murder rates in the U.S. rose dramatically in 2020 from record lows, and the increases are similar across states — regardless of partisan preference. For homicides in 2020, Third Way found a 32.2% uptick in Trump-backing states versus a 30.8% rise in those that voted for Biden. Some states with large cities, such as New York and Pennsylvania, saw larger-than-average increases: New York went up 47% and Pennsylvania is up 39%. But the largest increases were in rural, Republican-led states, including Montana (+84%) and South Dakota (+81%).
The higher national murder rate is naturally causing public concern, although violent crime does remain far below its early 1990s high point. “Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2019,” from 757 incidents per 100,000 people to 379 per 100,000, the Pew Research Center noted last November. Between 2019 and 2020, the murder rate jumped from 6 homicides per 100,000 people to 7.8 homicides per 100,000, but that was still 22% below the rate in 1991 of 10 homicides per 100,000.
Yesterday, I sat through first day of jury selection in the trial for my daughters killer. Since her murder, my mission is to reduce gun violence. Never should have been a partisan fight. Simply put, Republican states are deadlier & they need to change.https://t.co/uol9NUOr3E
“The 5 states with the highest per capita murder rate — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri — all lean Republican. Broadly speaking, the South, and to a lesser extent the Midwest, has more murders per capita than the Northeast and West.” https://t.co/1SI8ZFvk52
House Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) wrote in a letter to Disney CEO Bob Chapek he will fight to rescind Mickey Mouse’s copyright renewal over the megacorporation’s LGBT campaign.
Banks wrote to Chapek as the Mickey Mouse copyright will expire on January 1, 2024. Given Disney’s opposition to Gov. Ron Desantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act, and its push to include as “many, many many LGBTQIA characters in its stories,” he cannot support an extension of its copyrights.
Banks explained that Congress had repeatedly extended Disney’s copyright due to intense lobbying from Disney. Now, Disney could lose its copyright renewal when Republicans are slated to hold the House majority after the 2022 midterm elections.
Read the full article. Banks last appeared on JMG when he falsely claimed to be on the Capitol riot committee in letters to federal agencies seeking information to be turned over to the committee.
This is what the party of small government wants. Complete control over everything. Complete control over people from forced birth to what is indoctrinated to them in conservative run public schools, to what people can do in the bedrooms and this their genitals, to what businesses can do or say. That is freedom, right? Isn’t that why the maga crowd refused to wear masks because it took away their freedoms? But telling restricting what you can read, say, watch, and what sex you can have along with who you can marry due to the church doctrine is pure freedom. Not for me.
Next year, the woke Disney lobbyists will ask Congress to extend Micky Mouse’s trademark.
Scottie's Playtime 