I do hope Weld runs, so when Sanders decides to run as an independent because he didn’t win the primary and splits the liberal vote, we’ll wind up with a sane Republican in the White House.

https://thenib.com/are-we-on-the-stupidest-possible-timeline

Sharp humor. 🙂

https://ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2019/02/16/insectageddon-is-a-great-story-but-what-are-the-facts/

Happy to find out that insectageddon ain’t quite all that.

I still like the backyard garden of native plant species, though.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/17/florida-sixth-grader-charged-with-misdemeanor-after-refusing-recite-pledge-allegiance/

«“This is a prime example of the over-policing of Black students in school.”»

Yup.

«But the substitute teacher was not aware that students are not required to recite the pledge, the school district said,»

This is beside the point. Conflict w/kids is inevitable; handling the conflict WITHOUT bringing in the justice system really is the school’s responsibility.* This isn’t a failure on the part of the sub; it’s a failure on the part of the school system.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/could-congress-block-trumps-emergency-declaration/

«What happens if Trump vetoes the resolution?

In the Senate, 67 votes would be needed to override his veto, meaning 20 Republicans would need to break with the president. As noted above, there are more than 20 Senate Republicans wary of this move. So it’s at least theoretically possible that the dam could break; the fissures run deeper than the typical issues on which only a handful of Republicans like Collins and Murkowski are considering a vote against the president. But not liking the emergency declaration and voting for a resolution that will stop it — and stoking Trump’s anger as many Republicans are gearing up for primaries in 2020 — are totally different things. It’s also not clear if McConnell is required to even hold a vote on the veto override.

The bill would also have to achieve a two-thirds majority in the House, which wouldn’t be easy. FiveThirtyEight has not done a formal whip count in the lower chamber. A two-thirds majority would require 288 votes — so 53 Republicans would have to join all the Democrats. Most Republicans in competitive districts lost in 2018, which means there are relatively few GOP representatives left who have to worry about electoral pressure. Earlier this year, amid the government shutdown, for instance, a bloc of about a dozen Republicans broke with Trump to back some Democratic measures to fund the government without wall money. So it’s not like all 197 House Republicans are Trump loyalists. But a dozen is a long way from the 53 GOP votes in the House to override his veto.»

https://twitter.com/elliott_downing/status/994358894074912768?s=17

Love me some Twitter noir.

Elliott Downing (@elliott_downing) Tweeted:

“What’s in our pit, Pooh?” Piglet whispered. “Is it a Heffalump?”
Pooh peered down at the drifter’s broken body. “I’m afraid not, Piglet.”
“We’re going to be in trouble now, aren’t we?” said Piglet.
Pooh lay a hand on his friend’s arm. “Not if we fill in this pit before morning.”

https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it

I get the feeling this was written in the 1997-98 time frame, so, during the Clinton era? Feels pretty prescient.

«The conditions that threaten to undermine our sense of nationhood, bound up in the debate over slavery and manifested in intense sectional conflict during the pre-Civil War era, are today both more complex and diffuse. Some of today’s conditions are part of the tragic legacy of slavery–a racial climate marked too often by mutual mistrust and misunderstanding and a condition of desperate poverty within our inner cities that has left many young people so alienated that any standard definition of citizenship becomes meaningless. More commonly, but in the long run perhaps just as alarming, tens of millions of Americans have been turned-off by the corrupting effects of money on the political system. Bombarded with negative advertising about their candidates, they express their feelings of alienation by staying home on election day.

If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.»

https://twitter.com/lindsaypcohn/status/1097099234648772609?s=17

Beautiful pictures of a backyard garden on this thread, and there’s probably no more, either. Is this a modern-day victory garden? (I guess we still need to use less pesticide when growing our food, which means yields will go down and prices will go up. And maybe that BT corn was a bad idea. Is that one of those things where you have to get new seeds every year? That would be good.)

Lindsay P Cohn (@lindsaypcohn) Tweeted:

Fabulous thread. I had no gardening experience and managed to create a beautiful and very insect/bird-friendly garden mostly just doing these things … it’s not hard and it’s fun🦋🐞🕷🐛 https://t.co/nLrHpKXFip

Updates: BT and organic farming: http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/organic_farming.html

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/houston-belief/article/By-identifying-abuse-in-Bible-we-can-call-out-13619414.php

We really need to de-shame sex.

Excerpts from a really good article:

«The church must do better to unravel silence. We start by hearing and believing the survivors in the Bible. We start by calling out places of oppression when we see them. We start by talking about misogyny, sexual exploitation and abuse. When we learn to identify harmful systems of abuse in our Biblical texts, we help ourselves to recognize them and call out injustices in our current realities.

….

Religion has often treated sex as something to be feared, denied, exploited.

We must resist the temptation to make this just about the Southern Baptists (or the Catholics or university students or Hollywood). This is about all of us. It is about our culture’s normalization of misogyny and heteronormativity; about our culture’s normalization of unchecked power and the villainization of survivors. When we allow the culture to tell us that women are worth less than men; that people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized people are of less value; when we allow our culture to keep abusers in power, we all have a problem. When religion is used to protect the people in power rather than to empower the oppressed, we all have a problem.

What then should we do?

Listening to survivors — and believing them — would be a good place to start.

….

I grew up a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid. I am now a progressive Baptist minister. The church, regardless of the denomination, has a lot to answer for. While exposing the devastating and pervasive problem of sexual violence in the church might be seen as a good reason to stay away from religion or spirituality, I hope we can instead see this as the moment for change. This is the moment to move away from systems of power and privilege that create the environments conducive to abuse. This is the moment to read again our sacred stories and see a God who is present with us in pain and who calls all of us to work for healing and wholeness. This is the moment to hear the stories that need to be shared and to honor the sacred courage it takes to speak. This is the moment for change.

:

Rev. Laura Mayo is senior minister of Covenant Church: an Ecumenical, Liberal, Baptist Congregation in Houston.»

https://twitter.com/TomHeartsTanks/status/1096453763798228992?s=17

Tom Hearts Strykers Now (@TomHeartsTanks) Tweeted:

Across the Army, you hear stories about black mold infested barracks or soldiers living 2-3 in a single-person room, offices and hospitals and motor pools falling apart that wouldn’t meet safety codes outside the army.

It’s okay though. We definitely support the Troops™️. https://t.co/Wakt7WGK7s