Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalTrump Fave in MI Thinks Child Predators Just Love Abortion
Michigan gubernatorial primary candidate Tudor Dixon made an especially striking argument about why abortion should be outlawed, at a recent campaign stop.
During a conversation about a proposed ballot referendum this year that would guarantee accessible abortion in the state, Dixon said that doing so would create “a safe haven for any type of predator out there.”
“If you’re a predator there’s nothing you like more than abortion. And if you can get a girl an abortion without her parents knowing you can keep hurting her,” Dixon said at a meet-and-greet at Na-Lar Farms last week.
“So we have to make sure we protect people from predators in this state. We cannot let this constitutional amendment be passed and give predators a chance to keep preying on young women,” she added.
In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last month, a decades-old state law banning abortion went into effect in Michigan, only providing exceptions for if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. While the law has been at least temporarily blocked in court, Michiganders have been left in limbo over the future of abortion access in the state.
Organizers for the proposed ballot referendum argue it’s a means to protect pregnant people from carrying unwanted pregnancies, including those caused by rape or incest. The website for the coalition backing the proposal, Reproductive Freedom For All, says the proposed referendum would affirm that “every person” has access to “political interference about all matters relating to pregnancy, including birth control, abortion, prenatal care, and childbirth.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fave-tudor-dixon-in-michigan-thinks-child-predators-just-love-abortion?ref=home
This sick obsession with "child predators" says a lot about the GQP
Okla. downgrades school district over complaint it shamed White people
The Oklahoma State Board of Education voted this week to downgrade the accreditation of Tulsa Public Schools after a teacher reportedly complained that the school district’s training materials “shame white people.”
The board voted 4-2 to lower the status of Tulsa Public Schools to “accredited with warning” on Thursday after the State Department of Education determined an implicit bias training for teachers in August 2021 violated House Bill 1775. The law, which restricts discussions of race and sex in public schools, is widely seen as targeting critical race theory. The state investigation began after a complaint from a teacher who has not been publicly identified, according to the Oklahoman.
The board also demoted another district, Mustang Public Schools near Oklahoma City, to “accredited with warning” after it self-reported that a teacher had violated House Bill 1775 by using an exercise that made students uncomfortable on account of their race or sex.
The demotions mark the first enforcement action under the law, which Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed in May 2021, the Oklahoman reported. All four members who voted to downgrade the districts were appointed by Stitt.
The law does not explicitly mention critical race theory — an academic framework for examining the way laws and policies perpetuate systemic racism — but prohibits teaching what it calls “discriminatory principles,” including that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/30/crt-oklahoma-tulsa-schools-shame-white/?itid=hp_national
Oklahoma, you are not OK!
How burn pits may have raised veterans' risk of rare cancers and respiratory illnesses
A bipartisan measure to expand medical coverage for millions of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans exposed to toxic burn pits stalled on Thursday, after 25 Republican senators who supported the bill last month reversed their stance.
The move prevented the legislation from reaching President Biden's desk. The bill has already passed in the House, and a previous version passed in the Senate last month, before a few changes were made. Proponents of the measure were surprised that the current version did not sail through again.
At issue is the way military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan disposed of waste from around 2010 to 2015: by dumping it in a pit and setting it on fire in the open air.
Many veterans attribute health problems that arose later, such as cancer and respiratory illness, to exposure to chemicals released into the air via these fires. The smoke carried a range of harmful substances, including lead, mercury, benzene, hydrocarbons, dioxins and volatile organic compounds.
"Those who were deployed at bases where burn pits were used clearly had exposure to agents that are known to be harmful," said David Savitz, an epidemiology professor at the Brown University School of Public Health.
The legislation would have expanded health care access to more than 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to toxins while serving in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. It also would have added 23 illnesses, including several cancers, to the list of conditions eligible for federal health care coverage.
The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 — or PACT Act, as it’s known — was named after a U.S. veteran who attributed his lung cancer to burn pit exposure. Robinson died of his illness in 2020.
Savitz and other experts said burning waste the way the military did could certainly raise the risk of disease, but more research is needed to know if the conditions veterans are reporting were directly caused by burn pits. Regardless, they think veterans should be able to get the care they seek.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/burn-pits-veterans-healthcare-risks-cancers-respiratory-illness-rcna40669
If we "wait for all the research" we'll be waiting till doomsday. Fuck the RepubliKKKans.
America First is laying plans to perpetuate Trumpism beyond Trump
He spoke in lurid detail of cities overrun by violent crime. He railed against the media, deep state and liberal elites. And he touted his wall with a dire warning: “Millions of illegal aliens are stampeding across our wide open borders, pouring into our country. It’s an invasion.”
Donald Trump’s return to Washington this week was deja vu all over again. The former US president’s 90-minute speech at a luxury hotel was eerily reminiscent of the nativist-populist campaign that won him the White House in 2016. But while Trump himself never evolves, his audience this time around was different.
While the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a rightwing thinktank, was happy to indulge the garrulous showman at its inaugural summit, it also maintained a cold-eyed focus on the future. Over two days Trump’s allies and alumni laid out a blueprint for a return to power and a second term more authoritarian, more extreme and more ruthless than the first.
The institute – evidently untroubled by the associations of the phrase “America First” with Nazi sympathisers who wanted to keep the US out of the second world war – has 150 staff, including nine former Trump administration cabinet officials and more than 50 former senior staff and officials. Familiar faces such as Kellyanne Conway, Larry Kudlow and Mark Meadows were feted at the conference.
The AFPI is led by Brooke Rollins, a former domestic policy adviser in the White House, who boasted how the 15-month-old organisation put “boots on the ground” in 32 states on issues from “election integrity to school choice and patriotic education to health care transparency to taxes and spending to fatherhood initiatives to border security to big tech censorship”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/30/america-first-trumpism-beyond-trump
We can't let these fascists win
Newsmax Host Suggests School Shootings Due to Unarmed Kids
A Newsmax host seemed to suggest Friday that recent school shootings are the result of students not bringing guns to class, saying that when children did so decades ago there were “no mass shootings” and “no problems.”
Carl Higbie, in an interview with Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) focusing on the assault weapons ban that passed the House earlier in the day, showed a clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) criticizing the methods that “some totally irresponsible people” use to train their young children in firearms usage. Higbie took offense at her remarks.
“I’d say it’s about a hundred years ago, these so-called toddlers and 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds used to carry guns to school as a completely normal thing in a lot of areas of the country–and probably even more recently than a hundred years ago. No mass school shootings, no problems,” Higbie claimed sweepingly, to which Steube agreed.
Higbie, who worked for a Super PAC that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, also boasted that he taught his 9-year-old how to use an AR-15.
“Do you think that guns, as Nancy Pelosi says, are really the problem?” asked the Iraq War veteran and 2014 Connecticut congressional candidate.
“Of course they’re not the problem,” replied Steube, who, as a sign of his devotion to the Second Amendment, couldn’t help but show off his gun collection during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month on gun reform.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsmax-host-when-kids-used-to-carry-guns-there-were-no-school-shootings?ref=home
Let's talk about irresponsible journalists
Let me introduce you to the darling of the stray cat jail
This is Tallulah. We've had her for several weeks since she returned from foster care at around 9 weeks old and just over 2 pounds. She was spayed at that time. The reason we still have her is that, to put it delicately, she has digestive problems. She's currently on Hill's Science Diet I/D and doing better, but still not perfectly enough to suit our animal care manager. In my opinion, she may have celiac disease rather than IBS...cats apparently do get it, though it's rare...and would need grain-free food for the rest of her life, which could be done. but would be more expensive. A potential adopter already rejected her because of her digestive troubles and the diet she's currently on ("too expensive and too much trouble"
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Tallulah is the sweetest, most adorable kitten I've met in a long time. Of course, I have a preference for torties, but she is exceptional. She's tiny, energetic, and a complete love bug. She's in the top front kennel by the door, and whenever that door opens, she runs to the front of her kennel, hoping for attention, which she always gets. When that kennel door is opened, she'll crawl into your arms for a snuggle and purr her little heart out. But she's content to play with her toys, too, and doesn't scream for attention the way some do. I'd take her home in a hot minute if only I could have an indoor cat. Expenses be damned! Yesterday I finally got her to sit still for a portrait. Sorry it's a bit dark though.
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Justice Samuel Alito Is Now Beefing With Boris Johnson and Prince Harry
Time to bust out the world’s tiniest violin for sore winner Samuel Alito.
The Supreme Court Justice authored the Dobbs decision in June, which upended nearly 50 years of federal protections for the right to choose and has since thrown abortion laws and healthcare for pregnant patients into utter chaos. But Alito used his speech at a “religious liberty” conference in Rome as an opportunity to gripe about foreign leaders who criticized the rollback of civil rights in the U.S.—including British royals and the political leaders of Canada, France, and the United Kingdom.
Speaking at the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit in Rome, Alito said he’d “had the honor this term of writing, I think, the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law.”
Those leaders included U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whom Alito joked “paid the price” for his criticism after Johnson called the Dobbs decision “a big step backwards.” The crowd laughed, then applauded. (Johnson was forced out as prime minister this month after a revolt from Conservative Party members over a host of scandals.)
Alito also alluded to criticism from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said women’s “rights are being undermined by the Supreme Court of the United States” and whose government announced support for including abortion rights in France’s constitution following the Dobbs decision, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called the ruling “horrific.”
Prince Harry, who now lives in California along with American wife Meghan Markle, gave a speech at the United Nations earlier this month honoring Nelson Mandela. In the speech, Harry criticized a “global assault on democracy and freedom” taking place “from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4axxxn/justice-samuel-alito-boris-johnson-prince-harry-abortion
Dude gets up on the wrong side of the bed EVERY day!
Something I just saw
"Just saw someone onReddit refer to Texas as *Howdy Arabia" and I am absolutely exhausted by how accurate that is."--cribbed from a Facebook post.
Mob-Fleeing Dweeb Josh Hawley Is Writing a Book Called 'Manhood'
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a man whose salary we all unfortunately help pay, is writing a book, or having someone write one under his name. Either way, it’s coming out in May 2023, and it’s called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues Americans Need.
We’ll save you the suspense: This book literally no one asked for is based on a speech Hawley once gave to fellow reactionary idiots:
"Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games?"
Hawley announced the book days after he made headlines for running in fear away from a Capitol insurrection he helped foment. In a video shown at the House Jan. 6 hearings, which drew much laughter from the room, Hawley raises a fist in support of the mob of insurrectionists outside the Capitol, and then later literally sprints through the halls to escape them.
So this is definitely the most hilarious and humiliating possible moment for the senator to announce that he’s writing the definitive book on what it means to be a man. But conservative men will no doubt buy it nonetheless, because the masculinity panic on the Right is very real: Fox News darling Tucker Carlson, who hosted an entire special on how to raise testosterone levels earlier this year, had a former Abercrombie and Fitch manager on his to recommend tanning one’s testicles. Nevermind that experts warn that toasting your balls (“bromeopathic therapy,” as Carlson’s show called it) could actually kill a man’s fertility, because testicles hang outside the body specifically for the purpose of keeping sperm cool.
https://jezebel.com/mob-fleeing-dweeb-josh-hawley-is-writing-a-book-called-1849344640
I thought about putting this under Humor, but no, it's REAL. 
Woman Tells Congress What It's Like to Be Hacked by NSO's Pegasus
On June 14 of last year, the daughter of Paul Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager credited with saving hundreds of lives during the genocide in Rwanda who is now in prison in the country, met with the Belgian foreign affairs minister to discuss her father’s situation. On the same day, her phone was hacked using tools made by spyware vendor NSO Group, according to forensic analysis of her phone.
On Wednesday, the daughter, whose name is Carine Kanimba, testified in front of Congress in a hearing on the threat of the proliferation of commercial spyware made by companies like NSO Group. In front of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence committee, Kanimba shared her experience as the victim of sophisticated government spyware.
“I was mortified, and I am terrified,” Kanimba said.
Kanimba said she believes NSO Group’s spyware was used by the Rwandan government to keep an eye on her and her family’s efforts to secure the release of her father, who in 2020 was abducted in Dubai and later convicted in Rwanda on terrorism charges. Kanimba explained the psychological pain she’s suffered because of the surveillance.
“I am frightened by what the Rwandan government will do to me and my family next,” she said. “It keeps me awake that they knew everything I was doing, where I was, who I was speaking with, my private thoughts, and actions at any moment they wanted.”
Even now that her case is public, Kanimba said the Rwandan government could still “reinfect” her phone.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3pvaj/woman-tells-congress-what-its-like-to-be-hacked-by-nsos-pegasus
More lovely folks /s
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