Montenegro

https://goo.gl/maps/UBBn6eBqoY22

How is Trump even AWARE of Montenegro? Why is this coming up after his Russia visit? Does Russia’s pal Serbia want access to the coast?

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/02/12/446336/election-security-50-states/

«No state received a perfect score in this report. With few exceptions, most states fell in the middle of the spectrum: No state received an A; 11 states received a B; 23 states received a C; 12 states received a D; and five states received an F.

….
This point cannot be overemphasized: Even states that received a B or a C have significant vulnerabilities that leave them susceptible to hacking and infiltration by sophisticated nation-states. However, by making meaningful changes to how elections are carried out, states can improve their overall election security while supporting public confidence in election procedures and outcomes.

….
The information included in this report is derived primarily from state statutes and regulations, as well as interviews with state and local election officials. A debt of gratitude is owed to several organizations for the work they’ve conducted on the seven categories considered in this report, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, Verified Voting, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. We also drew from information supplied by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

….
The issue of election security is expansive and fast-moving. As such, it is always possible that certain data points may need updating as state laws and practices change or more information becomes available. Information contained in this report reflects research and analysis at the point of publication.»

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/trump-skips-intel-briefing-siding-putin

Given who he chums with, I’m not entirely sure Trump skipping the briefings is a bad thing. Maybe we can buy him a boat and let him spend his days driving it around Chesapeake Bay.

What an AMAZING coincidence. The new “pro-life*” Supreme Court nominee might also help continue the assault on public schools and affirmative action in education. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

(*Perhaps I should say “pro-birth”.)

«Perhaps more revealing than his own schooling is the fact that Kavanaugh, according to his testimony in his 2004 Senate confirmation hearing, previously helped spearhead school-choice-related outreach efforts for the Federalist Society, a legal organization of conservatives and libertarians. He was also one of the attorneys tapped in 2000 to represent then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush in a long-drawn-out lawsuit that sought to end a highly controversial state school-voucher program that Bush had spearheaded. (The Florida Supreme Court in 2006 ruled that the program was unconstitutional, a decision that observers predicted would major implications for similar initiatives elsewhere in the country.) According to Politico, Kavanaugh also said in a 2000 TV appearance that he anticipated the U.S. Supreme Court would one day uphold school vouchers.

Should he be confirmed to the Court, his views on these matters could be hugely consequential for the country, in part because of how much influence the Court court has over education. “The public school has served as the single most significant site of constitutional interpretation within the nation’s history,” Justin Driver, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, argues in the introduction of his forthcoming book The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind. “No other arena of constitutional decisionmaking—not churches, not hotels, not hospitals, not restaurants, not police stations, not military bases, not automobiles, not even homes—comes close to matching the cultural import of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence governing public schools.”

A slew of education cases could make their way up to the nation’s highest court in the (near) future, and in particular, affirmative action is almost certain to get another hearing.»

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/07/supreme-court-private-school/565211/

Hmm.

https://twitter.com/jaboukie/status/1018965113330528256

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣|
           implying tht all 
           homophobes r
             secretly gay
       allows str8 people
      to blame gay people
         for homophobia
|＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿| 
             (\__/)    ||
             (•ㅅ•)   ||
            /  　  づ

(I wonder how this sign-bunny thing will show up after getting fed through the IFTTT meat-grinder.)

I think this is an important point: «insidious attitudes about who should be “allowed” to use the resources that are available». Let’s not do that.

Source: https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-straw-ban-harms-disabled-people

«Picking a fight over straws may seem nonsensical, but the larger low-waste and zero-waste movements, which tend to be overwhelmingly white and nondisabled, frequently single out products that benefit the disability community, like straws or pre-cut fruits and veggies, as a wasteful use of natural resources. It’s a two-part logic: One, the planet’s resources are limited and growing scarcer, and two, the way to control that is by cutting back on the use of nonrenewables. This does little to explore which humans are using the majority of resources on Earth and where the real choke points of waste lie. And it feeds insidious attitudes about who should be “allowed” to use the resources that are available.

Rethinking the way we use natural resources is the only way to combat waste, but paradoxically, the solution some suggest is “conscious consumerism”—buying the “right kind of stuff” that will in turn save the planet. Don’t ask for a straw with your smoothie, but definitely take an ecotourism trip to Costa Rica. The “green lifestyle” can come at the expense of disabled people who are often already living low-impact lifestyles by default. (After all, disabled people can be twice as likely to live in poverty as nondisabled people.)»

Well, THERE’S a turn of phrase.

Dean S (@DinoStraciatela) Tweeted:
It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the GOP gets a midterm walloping and donors, McConnell, Murdoch etc. discard POTUS like a used condom. https://twitter.com/DinoStraciatela/status/1019036975280611328?s=17

Folks who are interested in seeing the actual text of an actual bill in Congress can amuse themselves by looking at this random one I just pulled up. It seems like a nice, short bill. Looks like it’s about 80% references to other bills. Good luck.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr959/text

When people find shocking things in bills, they’re usually buried in language like this. When people make breezy assertions that just reading the bill is the easy way to know what Congress is up to, they’re referring to stuff like this.

Something to ponder:

https://twitter.com/LibyaLiberty/status/1018877230825574401

«Best response to the above tweet is the thread I’m linking here:

Hend Amry added,

🙂

OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) Tweeted:
Sarah Palin is trending so I can only assume her kids Trig, Track, Bio, Calc 2, and JV Lacrosse have gotten into some kind of drunken snowmobile fight. https://twitter.com/OhNoSheTwitnt/status/1016855947153690624?s=17