I Mentioned the Weather Here,

earlier today. Because it’s been particularly wild, especially just now at 10:35 PM CDT Sunday, I thought I’d write in. So far, so good where I live, we got winds, but no rain (it did rain before I mentioned the weather could impact my time online and posting,) and certainly no tornadoes. Temps stayed below 75 all day, with lower 60 degree dewpoints. Something could have twisted up, but not a huge something. So, that is good, with the exception that now the atmosphere here will lend itself to the same watching and hoping about the weather tomorrow (Monday.) But it is and has been safe here today and tonight. That’s the primary post.

The reason I thought I’d better write in is because, to the West of us, there is an ongoing tornado emergency. There have been tornadoes, a couple with extensive damages, in the late afternoon and evening, but this tornado now is one of what the weather people have been worrying about all the past week. It even was headed toward Greensburg, but did travel between Greensburg and another small town, so those cities are relatively safe. But the storm has been intensifying, and the tornado has been, also. I figure it’s going to make the AM news, and I didn’t want anyone to worry that we got hit; the area is somewhat North, and pretty far West of where I live, a few jogs South of Wichita. So that’s my weather check-in.

I don’t know what the news will tell about it, but the meteorologist I watch was visibly and audibly saddened by watching the reflexivity radar on the tornado, saying it is very bad. So it must be very bad, because he’s not an alarmist meteorologist. I’m yet again humbly thankful to have such weather avoid my area, and I hope there is not much population on the tornado’s path. We travelled by Greensburg for a karate tournament a couple of years after the Big One there, and I don’t recall a lot of homes on the road between towns, but there were houses around and about. We’ll see tomorrow, of course.

So, there’s that.

Republicans caused or did this. We should ban them.

Comer: James Comey Was “Trying To Jizz Up A Coup”

Trump Admin To Close Famed NASA Research Center

Photo: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro, who also serves as Kennedy Space Center director, a post she assumed in 2021. Trump elevated Petro to lead NASA after he ousted former Sen. Bill Nelson for believing in climate change.

 

WaPo: The Federal Brain Drain Is Rapidly Escalating

 As previously reported here, European governments have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to lure US scientists.

OK Schools Chief Calls Education Ranking “Fake News”

Newly-released data shows that Oklahoma ranks 46th in per-pupil spending, but Walters, who is eyeing a run for governor, has called for cuts to his state’s “wasteful” education spending, including $250,000 to provide school districts with emergency inhalers. 

In his KFOR interview, Walters did boast about getting new teachers a signing bonus, but as was widely reported the time, $290,000 of that money had to be clawed back because it had gone to teachers who did not qualify. Some of those teachers had already spent the money.

Combat Sports Clubs Are Recruiting White Nationalists

The SPLC’s report is here. The February 2024 report linked below shows that the same thing is happening in the UK.

Tesla Effectively Bans Its Investors From Suing Them

 Guess who donated to the Texas Republicans behind the new law?

 

Felon Has Another Screaming Fit On “Stolen Election”

Trump Demands That Walmart “EAT THE TARIFFS”

Feds Seize Shipment Of Shirts From Anti-ICE Brand

Something something free speech.

New: CBP seized a shipment of t-shirts from @cola.baby featuring a swarm of bees attacking a cop. The company also sells "ELIMINATE ICE" t-shirt and previously was threatened by LAPD for "FUCK THE LAPD" shirts and hats. Shirts to be "destroyed under CBP supervision"www.404media.co/cbp-seizes-s…

Jason Koebler (@jasonkoebler.bsky.social) 2025-05-15T19:44:07.171Z

Forbes: Canadian US Tourism Boycott Is Growing

Canadian Travel Boycott Has Strengthened—Car Travel To U.S. Plummeted 35% In April, Fourth Consecutive Month Of Year-Over-Year Declines

Forbes (@forbes.com) 2025-05-13T11:53:03.619Z

Trump Posts Video Claiming Hillary Is A Serial Killer

OH GOP Bill Would Designate “Natural Family Month”

Rep. Beth Lear first appeared here in January 2024 when she defended her anti-trans bathroom bill by citing the “millstones” bible verse which calls for drowning anyone who hurts children.

She later blamed “depraved monster” Alfred Kinsey, liberals, and the ACLU for transgender people even existing.

Rep. Josh Williams first appeared here in July 2024 for his bill that would criminalize drag shows in the presence of children. Williams reintroduced his bill last week.

 

Happy Birthday Sir Bertrand Russell, and more in Peace & Justice History for 5/18

May 18, 1872

Bertrand Russell
Birthday of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his “Man’s Peril [from the Hydrogen Bomb]” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development of nuclear weapons: “. . . as a human being to other human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
A year later, together with Albert Einstein nine other scientists, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons.

Text of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto 
He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. He resigned in 1960, however, and formed the more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting mass civil disobedience, and he himself with Lady Russell led mass sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence, at the age of 89.

Bertrand Russell in front of the British Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, London
May 18, 1896
Supreme Court endorsed “separate but equal” facilities for those of different races with its Plessy v. Ferguson decision, a ruling that was overturned 58 years later.
May 18, 1972
Margaret (Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change) to consider the common problems faced by retirees — loss of income, loss of contact with associates, and loss of one of society’s most distinguishing social roles, one’s job. The members discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement — the freedom to speak personally and passionately about what they believed in, such as their collective opposition to the Vietnam War.


Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers

Gray Panther history 
May 18, 1974
In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. 
The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France.

Detailed background on India’s nuclear weapons program and its first test 
May 18, 1979
A jury in a federal court in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee established a company’s responsibility for damage to the health of a worker in the nuclear industry. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant where plutonium was manufactured.
Silkwood had become the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety issues, but had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents. The jury in Judge Frank G. Theis’s court awarded her estate $505,000 in actual damages, and $10 million punitive damages.

Karen Silkwood’s sisters and parents
She had died in a car accident on her way to a meeting with a The New York Times reporter five years earlier.
Karen Silkwood remembered 
The Supreme Court upheld the decision and the award 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may18

“Libyan Gov’t Decries Fake News about Taking 1 mn. Palestinian Refugees: ‘Committed to the Palestinian Cause’”

Juan Cole 05/17/2025

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Abu Dhabi-based Erem News reports that the Prime Minister of Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, has vehemently denied the report in the “American Thinker” by what Libya called the “notorious conspiracy theorist” Jerome Corsi that the Trump administration is negotiating with the Libyan government to take one million Palestinians. It is an absurd allegation on the face of it. Libyans have long been extremely pro-Palestinian and any leader that cooperated with the extremist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in ethnically cleansing so many Palestinians from …

Read More Here:  https://www.juancole.com/2025/05/scurrilous-palestinian-committed.html

Some clips from TizzyEnt

Again their doing stuff that hurts others

 

 

DOJ Claims Prominent Law Firm Is National Security Threat For Working With LGBTQ Rights Group GLAD

 

 

 

 

Pentagon Has Spent $21M On Migrant Flights To Gitmo

Texas House Passes Anti-Trans “Biological Truth” Bill

OH Cultist Films Himself Burning LGBTQ Library Books

Trump Defense Lawyer Named Librarian Of Congress

Blanche last appeared here when he sanctioned the American Bar Association because its lawyers have failed to show suitable obedience to Glorious Leader.

DHS Terminates Protected Status Of Afghan Refugees

 

White South African “Refugees” Arrive At DC Airport

But Trump claimed Monday that a genocide was taking place in South Africa. “Farmers are being killed,” the president said. “They happen to be White.

But White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”

Trump has imported a new Mickey Mouse from South Africa.

Thumbnail

“Little Yellow Chest”

Busy Day in Peace & Justice History on 5/17, Including Outrage & Rebellion in Seattle, a Wedding in MA, & a SCOTUS Decision Desegregating Public Schools; So Much More-

May 17, 1919
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formally established in Zurich, Switzerland.
May 17, 1954
In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling “separate but equal” public education to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision, bringing an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

Read more and more
 
Above: Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954.
   
George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit (left to right), the successful legal team, celebrate the Brown decision. . .
three years later . . .
May 17, 1957
Martin Luther King, Jr. led 30,00 on a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. to mark the third anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in education unconstitutional.
May 17, 1968
A group of anti-war activists who came to be known as the “Catonsville Nine,” including Philip and Daniel Berrigan, broke into the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board center and burned over 600 draft files.

The Catonsville Nine in a picture taken in the police station minutes after the action.
From left to right (standing) George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) David Darst, Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, Tom Melville.  photo Jean Walsh
Read more about the Catonsville Nine 
May 17, 1970
 
100 protesters staged a silent “die-in” at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle to protest shipment through their city of Army nerve gas being transported from Okinawa, Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot in eastern Oregon.
Outrage and Rebellion 
May 17, 1973
In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as Watergate special prosecutor.
Flashback: On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. with the intent to set up wiretaps. One of the suspects, James W. McCord, Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee.
May 17, 2004

Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts, were married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, becoming the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other such couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses.
The day was characterized by much celebration and only a few of the expected protests materialized.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may17

Did drumpf just threaten someone for using their 1st Amendment?

Trump bashed the Boss — once known as the “embodiment of rock & roll” — due to Springsteen’s criticism of the drumpf administration.

“I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States,” Trump wrote. “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy.”

Trump went on to accuse Springsteen of being a “pushy, obnoxious JERK” and “dumb as a rock” for having previously supported President Joe Biden, before attacking Springsteen’s appearance.

“This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country,” the president wrote, adding, “Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

That, to me, sounded like a threat! It sounded like the President of the United States just threatened a citizen because he exercised his 1st Amendment Right to Free Speech. I mean, I’m surprised he didn’t say “Nice guitar you gots there. Shame should somthin’ happen to it”.

Hey! Isn’t that Illegal?

Management at a Kid Rock-themed restaurant and bar in Nashville reportedly rushed non-citizen employees off the premises during the weekend over fears of an impending ICE raid.

During the busy Saturday service, non-citizen employees at three restaurants owned by Nashville businessman Steve Smith were told to leave, including Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse.

“We were already understaffed because of the ICE raids throughout the weekend,” an employee at one restaurant told the outlet. “Then, around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, our manager came back and told anyone without legal status to go home.”

I mean, it’s almost like they don’t mind breaking the law whenever it suits them. Who would ever have thought it?

Did you ever get the feeling that this whole immigration issue is nothing more than a bullshit issue used to divide us? Asking for a friend.