Tag: Human Rights

Some positive trans posts debunking the hate lies of the anti-trans, I post some of Ethel’s videos. If you are interested in the truth about trans people, trans rights, trans people in sports then please follow her channel.


Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.

Today’s video explores the Cold War’s impact on the West, namely how the Red Scare laid down the groundwork for the modern anti-trans panic in sports. From the media’s open misogyny to literally cartoonish fearmongering, there’s a lot to unpack.

@EssenceOfThought7 hours ago Today’s video explores the Cold War’s impact on the West, namely how the Red Scare laid down the groundwork for the modern anti-trans panic in sports. From the media’s open misogyny to literally cartoonish fearmongering, there’s a lot to unpack.

Nearly 5,000 workers evacuated from Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, minister says

https://kyivindependent.com/nearly-5-000-workers-were-evacuated-from-russian-occupied-nuclear-power-plant-in-zaporizhzhia-minister-says/

by Kateryna Hodunova andThe Kyiv Independent news deskJuly 19, 2024 8:14 PM

Illustrative purposes only: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as seen from the streets of Nikopol, the city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, on July 6, 2023. (Amadeusz Swierk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Around 5,000 workers were rescued from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on July 19 during a press conference.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been under Russian occupation since March 2022. Its position near the front line has led to heightened nuclear safety risks throughout Russia’s full-scale war.

All evacuated employees were the workers of Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, according to Halushchenko.

Halushchenko also brought up that since February 2024, Russian forces have banned access to the plant for those employees who remained in the occupied territory.

“This is the personnel that we plan to attract to complete the construction of Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant units,” he added.

In April, Energoatom started building reactor units 5 and 6 at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant using U.S. technology that would help prevent power outages in case of Russian attacks.

After the reactor units 5 and 6 are built and units 3 and 4 are put into operation, the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant’s power generating capacity will exceed the one of the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to Energoatom

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on July 11 demanding that Russia withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and restore full control of the facility to Ukraine.

The resolution also condemns Russia for failing to implement safety protocols set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and calls on Moscow to allow IAEA inspectors full access to the plant’s facilities. (snip)

What the Don, et al. are doing with the “Black Jobs”, from The Root magazine

Trump Always Had a Plan To Eliminate ‘Black Jobs’ and Here it Is…

While boasting about Black employment, Trump is targeting ‘good government jobs’ in doomsday plan.

By Joy Rice Published 17 hours ago

While Trump boasts about his administration’s success in creating “Black jobs,” he and his inner circle are actually fine-tuning plans to eliminate them as part of his desire to dismantle the federal government.

That means tens of thousands of so-called “good government jobs” with benefits would be shipped out of the Chocolate City or gone nationwide, with Republican appointees replacing Black civil servants. This is not only alarming, but also indicates Trump’s deep disregard for the very communities he claims to support.

At the recent presidential debate, Trump claimed that migrants were responsible for “taking Black jobs,” perpetuating xenophobic sentiments.

“They’re taking Black jobs now,” he said. “They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”

What’s worse? Trump didn’t say. He also didn’t explain what a “Black job” means to him.

Trump continues to assert that his policies led to record-low unemployment rates among Black workers. Black unemployment did drop to 5.3% in August 2019 during his presidency, but he always fails to mention that it fell to a record low of 4.8% in April 2023 under President Biden, according to a Federal Reserve Bank analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But his campaign speeches and website reveal a starkly different agenda. And no matter how much he tries to deny it, they mirror the Project 2025 playbook written by members of his team and released by the Heritage Foundation. Trump’s plan is to drastically gut the government and federal workforce, a sector where Black Americans are significantly represented. This move threatens the stability and economic security of Black families who rely on these positions.

In addition to reclassifying 50,000 jobs, Trump says in a campaign video that “as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out, and I mean immediately out of Washington, to places filled with patriots who love America.”

This contradictory approach not only undermines Trump’s previous claims, but also raises questions about his inconsistent attempts to galvanize the Black community, which often involves harmful rhetoric and superficial gestures.

Whether making baseless statements alleging immigrants are taking “Black jobs” or enlisting rappers and entertainment figures like Amber Rose to endorse his campaign, his approach to Black voters has been disingenuous and predicated on a narrow and stereotypical view of Black culture — not the real needs and contributions of the Black community.

Joy Rice is a junior in political science at Howard University.

https://www.theroot.com/trumps-real-plan-to-get-rid-of-black-jobs-1851600374

A reblog from Janet

Not only does everyone need to be aware of where the guns are, even somewhere like a rural carnival, women especially have concerns for our safety that many men do not. Of course, guns are indiscriminate when they go off. I like how Janet presents the extra concerns transwomen have, in addition to the general concerns of women going about in public.

Rural Life, bigotry, and guns

A Ten Bears reblog

because amongst all else to read, learn, and inwardly digest, ya gotta see the JD Vance vid there!

Frig’sday Frigit File …

Today’s Hopium

Our today’s dose of inspiration to GOTV!

Yes, Trump Is The Ugliest Political Thing We’ve Ever Seen. That’s Why We Have An Election To Go Win and Cannot Let Up by Simon Rosenberg

I’m In Raleigh, NC Today at 5pm ET, The Hopium Community Gathers Tuesday

Read on Substack

(OK, here’s a snippet. I’m trying out the embed link they provide.)

SIMON ROSENBERG

JUL 19, 2024

Happy Friday all. I’m writing to you today from Raleigh, North Carolina where I am excited to be spending the weekend campaigning with Anderson Clayton, Josh Stein, Governor Cooper and the good Democrats and Hopium community members who are busting their ass to turn this state blue this November.

The Republican Convention is over and last night Donald Trump gave the longest, most bizarre and worst speech at a party convention in American history. Friends of mine from across the country who are not that involved in politics reached out to me shocked at how bat shit crazy he sounded, how long he went on, how unfit and unwell he so clearly is. That he was oh so weak not Trumpian strong. Here at Hopium none of this was a surprise. We’ve been talking about him from Day 1 here. We know he is a rapist, fraudster, traitor and felon. We know he is far more extreme and dangerous now than he was in 2016 or 2020. We know that this danger to our democracy, our freedoms and our future became far more manifest when he picked pro-Russia extremist JD Vance as his running mate and heir apparent. To us here at Hopium we didn’t need to hear a single word of that terrible speech last night to know what they are fighting for, what they want for this country:

They want Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. Americans to lose even more rights and freedoms. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist’s baby to term, and for more women to die on operating room tables. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. Verified rapists in positions of authority. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Huge new tariffs which will raise prices on everything and wreck the global economy which has made us prosperous. Big new tax cuts for their wealthiest donors and tax increases for every day people. Books banned across the US. Seniors to pay more for insulin and prescription drugs. Foreign governments free to pollute our daily discourse and harass our citizens. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to be pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.

Hannibal Lecter. Future GOP meetings in Russia-allied Venezuela. Hitler’s “poisoning the blood.” Autocratic leaders of China, Russia, Hungary and North Korea heaped with praise and respect. J6 criminals are “hostages.” Another embrace of QAnon, a violent cult calling for the jailing and assassination of Democrats. It was all there, ugly as it fucking gets, extreme, nothing held back. Another confirmation of why we are all working so hard to win the election, and why hard-working people of this great country deserve much better than this Putin-loving lunatic. (snip-More; the Hopium follows this)

Things happened on this date in history:

July 19, 1848 
The first Women’s Rights Convention in the U.S. was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Its “Declaration of Sentiments” launched the movement of women to be included in the constitution.The Declaration used as a model the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanding that the rights of women as individuals be acknowledged and respected by society. It was signed by sixty-eight women
and thirty-two men.
The impetus came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both of whom had been excluded, along with all the other female American delegates, from the World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) because of their sex.
Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage.When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot.The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement https://www.gilderlehrman.org/ap-us-history/period-4?modal=/history-resources/essays/seneca-falls-convention-setting-national-stage-womens-suffrage

July 19, 1958
Several black teenagers, members of the local NAACP chapter (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), entered downtown Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store (then the largest drugstore chain in Kansas) and sat down at the lunch counter.Wichita sit-in sculptureThe store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy.This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked
at those sitting in for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.”
That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain.
That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the store’s state offices, and was toldby the chain’s vice president that “he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc. (statewide), to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color.”

July 19, 1974 
Martha Tranquill of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to nine months’ prison time for refusing to pay her federal taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War.

July 19, 1993
President Bill Clinton announced regulations to implement his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying that the armed services should put an end to “witch hunts.” The policy was developed by General Colin Powell, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually summarized as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.”

July 19, 2000
A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter, Dani. The decision stemmed from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group, ALPA HQ.

Bonnie and Dani Jouhari

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july191848

News about ACA

I read CBPP so I can write my congresscritters about things they should be doing in we the people’s house. Here is a piece from CBPP, about the good the ACA has done for we the people.

ACA Drove Record Coverage Gains for Small-Business and Self-Employed Workers

JULY 17, 2024, 10:06 AM

Millions of small-business and self-employed workers gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Their uninsured rates reached record lows in 2022, due in part to policies that stabilized Medicaid coverage and enhanced premium tax credits to lower the cost of health coverage for millions of people in the ACA marketplace. States that adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion also played an important role. Extending and building on these policies will drive further progress.

Self-employed workers and small-business employees have had persistently higher uninsured rates than employees of large businesses. Relatively larger shares of small-business and self-employed workers have lower incomes, making health insurance premiums less affordable. And small businesses have long been less likely to offer health coverage to their employees than large businesses, frequently citing lack of affordability, while facing higher administrative costs per worker and less ability to pool risk.

Before the ACA, small-business and self-employed workers were often limited to unaffordable coverage options in the individual and small-group markets. In the individual market, insurers could charge people with pre-existing medical conditions like cancer or diabetes much more — or deny them coverage altogether. In the small-group market, where many small businesses purchased health insurance, high medical costs for one enrollee could cause insurers to raise premiums for the whole firm.

The ACA addressed these challenges through several key provisions:

  • It established marketplaces with financial assistance available to low- and moderate-income workers to help more people purchase affordable comprehensive coverage in the individual market. It made financial assistance available for people who lack access to affordable coverage through their employer, a common condition among small-business and self-employed workers.
  • Insurers were prohibited from denying coverage and charging higher premiums for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
  • Insurers in the individual and small-group markets were disallowed from charging higher premiums due to people’s health status or most other characteristics, including occupation or industry, and insurers were required to set premiums based on the health care costs broadly spread across their customers in the market. For example, in the small-group market before the ACA, one worker’s expensive illness could cause the premiums for the whole firm to spike.
  • Small-business and self-employed workers with low incomes became eligible for coverage under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which let people with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level enroll in Medicaid in states that adopted expansion.

As the ACA’s major coverage provisions went into effect, the uninsured rate for employees of small businesses (those working for firms with fewer than 100 workers) dropped from 25.2 percent in 2013 to 17.4 percent in 2016. In recent years, their uninsured rate fell further, and in 2022 reached a record low of 16.3 percent. There were 4.9 million fewer uninsured employees of small businesses in 2022 than in 2013.

Trends for self-employed workers were similar, with their uninsured rate falling from 27.3 percent in 2013 to 18.4 percent in 2016, reaching a record low of 16.4 percent in 2022. The number of uninsured self-employed workers fell by 1.3 million from 2013 to 2022.

Together, more than 6.2 million small-business and self-employed workers have gained coverage since the ACA’s major coverage provisions were implemented.

  

Coverage improvements for both groups were driven by enrollment in the ACA marketplace and Medicaid. From 2013 to 2022, Medicaid coverage increased by 2.5 million for employees of small businesses and 1.3 million among self-employed workers, according to Census data. And 2.6 million marketplace enrollees aged 21-64 were small business owners or self-employed in 2021, an analysis of Treasury Department tax data found using definitions of small business ownership and self-employment based on income and other factors. That accounted for about a quarter of all marketplace enrollment.

These gains can be advanced further. Recent enhancements to premium tax credits in the ACA marketplace lowered the cost of health coverage for nearly all of the 19 million people receiving the credits, cut the number of people who are uninsured by 4 million, and helped drive record enrollment in the marketplace in 2024. These enhancements, set to expire after 2025, should be made permanent and built upon. And for workers below the poverty level, state or federal action is needed to close the Medicaid coverage gap in the states that have not adopted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

TOPICS: 

HEALTH

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/aca-drove-record-coverage-gains-for-small-business-and-self-employed-workers

To follow up on reports about OK public schools-

It’s dated a few days ago, but it only made my phone stream today. I don’t usually read a lot of hard news on the phone; I like my desktop. Anyway. This looks like fun, especially reading that final comment from the OSDE office. 😈

Report: Norman Public Schools will not follow Walters’ attempted Bible mandate

by: Spencer Humphrey/KFOR

Posted: Jul 13, 2024 / 06:36 AM CDT

Updated: Jul 12, 2024 / 10:17 PM CDT

NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) — Norman Public Schools will not require its teachers to teach from the Bible, despite a recent memorandum from State Superintendent Ryan Walters attempting to require them to do so, according to comments made by the district’s superintendent in a recent report.

In a report published by the Norman Transcript on Friday, Norman Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Nick Migliorino is quoted saying NPS will not follow guidance laid out in a recent memo from State Superintendent Ryan Walters, in which Walters told districts teachers would be required to incorporate the Bible into their lessons.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Oklahoma teacher and local reverend express concerns about Ryan Walters’ Bible mandate

“Effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specified grade levels,” the June 27 memorandum from Walters said.

Migliorino told the Norman Transcript, NPS does not plan to follow that memorandum.

“I’m just going to cut to the chase on that. Norman Public Schools is not going to have Bibles in our classrooms, and we are not going to require our teachers to teach from the Bible,” Migliorino told the Transcript. “The standards are clear and our curriculum is very clear. And we’re not going to deviate from that. I don’t know. I’m just going to be direct on that one.”

Migliorino went on to tell the newspaper NPS will continue to follow the legal standards already in place regarding usage of the Bible in school.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Several religious leaders tell Supt. Walters to keep religion out of classrooms

He said that means Norman schools will continue to have copies of the Bible available for students to read or for teachers to incorporate into lessons if they choose, but they will not make it a requirement.

“We’re gonna follow the law, we’re going to provide a great opportunity for our students, we’re going to do right by our students and right by our teachers, and we’re not going to have Bibles in our classrooms,” he told the Transcript.

“It’s comforting that Norman Public Schools wants to follow the law and wants to follow protocols and isn’t going to follow a rogue executive edict from a state superintendent that doesn’t respect the law,” State Senator Mary Boren (D-Norman) told News 4 on Friday.

Boren said Walters likes to talk a big game — but it’s just that.

OKLAHOMA NEWS: Walters chooses Project 2025 co-author, other conservative activists to draft social studies curriculum for Oklahoma public schools

“He doesn’t even have executive power. I mean, he doesn’t, he doesn’t get to do an executive order that has legal impact on local school districts,” Boren said. “Legally, even though he can print all the paper he wants to, it doesn’t have the backing of the Constitution, doesn’t have the backing of state statute.”

A spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told News 4 in June that state law “already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and enables teachers to use them in instruction” if they choose, but it does not require teachers to use them.

News 4 reached out to the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) Friday to get Walters’ response to Migliorino’s comments asserting NPS will not require teachers to teach the Bible.

“Oh yes they will,” is all OSDE spokesperson Dan Isett told News 4 in response.

https://kfor.com/news/report-norman-public-schools-will-not-follow-walters-attempted-bible-mandate/

Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)

In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his childhood friend Marcel’s reaction to the word “revolution”:It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not meddle with them.

Source: Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)