Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalAaron Rodgers lost way more than a chance at the Super Bowl this season
Aaron Rodgers, the outspoken quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, had a statistically marvelous season.
In December, he threw his 443rd touchdown, passing Brett Favre to become the Packers’ all-time record holder. He also became the first player in the team's history to be named to 10 Pro Bowls. In all, his 37 touchdowns this season and only four interceptions are enough to make him the presumptive favorite to win MVP at his ripe age of 38.
But Rodgers had a humiliating season, regardless — and not just because he mustered a pedestrian 225 passing yards in his final performance, a 13-10 playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers. When we look back on his year, everything Rodgers did on the field will be overshadowed by his selfish flouting of Covid-19 safety measures, his arrogant political rants and his exhausting victim mentality.
A rehash, shall we?
Rodgers was sidelined after testing positive for Covid on Nov. 3. Since the NFL has allowed Covid-positive players to continue playing if they’ve been vaccinated, Rodgers’ absence was a clear sign he hadn’t received the shots. This surprised many, since he’d previously — and evasively — claimed he’d been “immunized” against the virus. Then, after being called out for being deceitful, he accused a “woke mob” of trying to “cancel” him. Doctors be damned, in Rodgers’ view, he knows who the true “experts” are.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/aaron-rodgers-playoff-loss-covid-biden-rcna13284
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"Karen" Rodgers
'Climate of fear': Fla. school district cancels professor's civil rights lecture over critical race
'Climate of fear': Fla. school district cancels professor’s civil rights lecture over critical race theory concernsA Florida school district canceled a professor’s civil rights history seminar for teachers, citing in part concerns over “critical race theory” — even though his lecture had nothing to do with the topic.
J. Michael Butler, a history professor at Flagler College in St. Augustine, was scheduled to give a presentation Saturday to Osceola County School District teachers called “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” which postulates that the civil rights movement preceded and post-dated Martin Luther King Jr. by decades.
He said that he was shocked to learn why the seminar had been canceled through an email Wednesday but that he wasn’t surprised because educators feel increasingly intimidated over teaching about race.
Less than 24 hours before Butler was informed of the cancellation, a state Senate committee advanced legislation Tuesday at the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to block public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” when they’re taught about race. DeSantis also wants to empower parents to sue schools that teach critical race theory.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/florida-school-district-cancels-professors-civil-rights-lecture-critic-rcna13183
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Thanks, DeSatan!
Tennessee deputy found fatally shot inside burning home
A 22-year-old sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee was found shot dead inside her burning home Sunday, officials say.
Deputy Savanna Puckett did not report to her assigned shift at 5 p.m., the Robertson County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
A deputy then visited her Springfield home to check on her and found the residence “engulfed in flames," the agency said.
The deputy tried to enter the home but couldn’t due to the blaze.
Firefighters arrived and entered the home, where they found Puckett shot, according to the sheriff's office. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tennessee-deputy-found-fatally-shot-burning-home-rcna13257
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Check the boyfriend.
Texas woman arrested after allegedly trying to buy another woman's child for $500,000 at Walmart
A Texas woman has been arrested last week after allegedly attempting to buy a woman's child at a Walmart store, police say.
Rebecca Lanette Taylor, 49, was arrested Tuesday and charged with sale or purchase of a child, a third-degree felony, according to jail records.
Taylor allegedly approached a woman who had her baby in a car seat and one-year-old son in a shopping cart at the self-checkout section of a Walmart in Crockett, about 120 miles north of Houston, on Jan. 13.
Taylor allegedly commented on the woman’s son’s blonde hair and blue eyes and asked “how much she could purchase him for,” according to the probable cause affidavit obtained by NBC News.
The mom "tried to laugh this comment off, thinking Taylor was joking. Taylor told her that she had $250,000 in the car and she would pay that much for him. (The mom) told her no amount of money would do,” the affidavit stated.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-woman-arrested-allegedly-trying-buy-another-womans-child-500000-rcna13282
A single 6-week visit after having a baby? The U.S. is doing postpartum care all wrong.
With the omicron variant forcing hospitals to make difficult decisions once again about what care to provide, Covid-19 must not again defer postpartum care. Postpartum follow-up care is essential health care, and we should be expanding rather than constricting access. The experiences of women who gave birth during the early days of the pandemic make that clear.
I gave birth to my youngest daughter in March 2020, just as our state shut down. Things rapidly changed as I attended my final prenatal care appointments and entered the hospital to deliver her. New restrictions meant I had to attend prenatal appointments without my partner, and I was limited to a single support person once it came time to give birth.
We were discharged early, just 24 hours after Lily was born, to limit our risk of exposure to Covid at the hospital. Despite the extraordinary adaptation that this unprecedented crisis demanded of our health care system, I consistently felt that my health care providers and the health care system as a whole were committed to caring for my baby and me.
That changed when I left the hospital. I had never felt more alone. Even in normal times, weekly visits in late pregnancy give way to a profound lack of attention to women in the U.S. after childbirth. A single routine postpartum visit at six weeks leaves women otherwise largely on their own to cope with physical and emotional challenges that vary in severity, from postpartum pain to depression to breastfeeding challenges.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-surges-health-officials-must-remember-person-postpartum-care-essential-ncna1287880
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US postpartum care is not a whole lot better in NON-PANDEMIC times (speaking as one who gave birth 4 times)!
Maryland man found dead amid collection of more than 125 snakes
Police officers called to a Maryland residence by a concerned neighbour found a 49-year-old man dead – and surrounded by more than 125 venomous and non-venomous snakes, held in tanks on racks.
The discovery by Charles county sheriff’s deputies and emergency responders at the house in Pomfret became even more bizarre when they established that none of the reptiles, including a 4.3m (14ft) Burmese python, had escaped or were slithering free.
“At last count it was over 125 individual snakes that were racked or in cages inside the home,” Jennifer Harris, a Charles county government spokesperson, told WUSA news.
“I want to assure anybody living within this neighbourhood that we have not seen that any of the snakes were not properly secured or could have escaped. People were concerned there was some danger but we’ve not determined any of the snakes were not secure after this gentleman’s death.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/24/maryland-man-dead-collection-snakes
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My first thought was that one/some of the snakes had escaped and done him in, but not so, apparently.
US conservatives linked to rich donors wage campaign to ban books from schools
Conservative groups across the US, often linked to deep-pocketed rightwing donors, are carrying out a campaign to ban books from school libraries, often focused on works that address race, LGBTQ issues or marginalized communities.
Literature has already been removed from schools in Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Librarians and teachers warn the trend is on the increase, as groups backed by wealthy Republican donors use centrally drawn up tactics and messaging to harangue school districts into removing certain texts.
In October, the Texas state representative Matt Krause sent a list of 850 books to school districts, asking that they report how many copies they have of each title and how much had been spent on those books.
The Texas Tribune reported that the books included two by Ta-Nehisi Coates; LGBT Families by Leanne K Currie-McGhee; and ‘Pink is a Girl Color’ … and Other Silly Things People Say, a children’s book by Stacy and Erik Drageset. Krause’s list sparked panic in schools, and by December a district in San Antonio said it was reviewing 414 titles in its libraries.
In Pennsylvania, the Central York school board banned a long list of books, almost entirely titles by, or about, people of color, including books by Jacqueline Woodson, Ijeoma Oluo and Ibram X Kendi, and children’s titles about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. “Let’s just call it what it is – every author on that list is a Black voice,” one teacher told the York Dispatch.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/24/us-conservatives-campaign-books-ban-schools
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But we knew who was funding this, didn't we?
Toxic PCBs Festered at This Public School for Eight Years as Students and Teachers Grew Sicker
For Michelle Leahy, it started with headaches, inflamed rashes on her arms and legs, and blisters in her mouth.
Some students and staff at Sky Valley Education Center, an alternative public school in Monroe, also had strange symptoms: cognitive problems, skin cysts, girls as young as 6 suddenly hitting puberty.
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Leahy, like others, eventually became too sick to return to campus. She developed uterine cancer as her other symptoms escalated.
“Who would ever think that the job that you love was making you sick?” Leahy, 62, said.
She didn’t know it then, about seven years ago, but her classroom contained some of the highest levels of toxic chemicals found at Sky Valley. Inspections and environmental testing across campus found an amalgam of harmful environmental conditions, including very high levels of carbon dioxide, poor air ventilation and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a banned, synthetic chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to some cancers and other illnesses.
https://www.propublica.org/article/toxic-pcbs-festered-at-this-public-school-for-eight-years-as-students-and-teachers-grew-sicker
Lesbian Sues U.S. Army and Air Force Over Boss' Demand She Grow Her Hair and Wear Makeup
For nearly 14 years, Tech. Sgt. Kristin M. Kingrey has served her country as a member of the West Virginia Air National Guard. Now Kingrey, a 37-year-old lesbian, is suing the Army and Air Force, claiming a senior male leader said she should grow her hair, wear makeup, “and ultimately appear more feminine,” or prepare to face the negative professional consequences.
Kingrey told The Daily Beast that after the remarks were made a job she had successfully applied for was suddenly withdrawn, and the Guard also refused to hire her for a position she was qualified for, “despite her satisfactory performance as a federal employee,” as her lawsuit, filed in a federal court, states.
When the comment was allegedly made, it was not the first time. “From 2016 to 2018, I was constantly being pulled into my seniors’ offices being told my hair was out of regs (non-regulation),” Kingrey told The Daily Beast. “It crossed a line into harassment, and I carried on my person a copy of our regulations in regards to female hair length because I was not breaking any rules.”
Kingrey, from Charleston, West Virginia, believes that sexism and homophobia are key parts of her case—she was signaled out as a woman, and a lesbian woman specifically. Hers comports to a stereotypical lesbian appearance, she says, and her boss wanted her appearance to be more conventionally “feminine.”
The lawsuit, filed on Nov. 23 last year, claims Kingrey was subject to “continued harassment, discrimination, and retaliation based upon her sex—including her sexual orientation and perceived gender nonconformity.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lesbian-sues-us-army-and-air-force-over-bosss-demand-she-grow-her-hair-and-wear-makeup?ref=home
The school shooting generation grows up
The details are embedded in Sam Leam’s memory, even though it happened more than 30 years ago, when he was just a kid. Recess on a chilly January day. Waiting with friends by the tetherball courts for a chance to play. A sound like the crack of fireworks, and a simple thought running through his head: It’s too early for Chinese New Year. Plugging his fingers in his ears. His classmates running and screaming. Following them into the school, and watching a panicked teacher drag students into his room. The teacher shutting the door on him. Continuing down the hallway. Falling, and being unable to get up. Crawling down the hall. Another teacher closing her door. Reaching his classroom, where his teacher pulled him in. Another kid, telling Sam that he’d been shot.
Leam was 7 when a man brought a semi-automatic weapon to Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California, killing five children who were immigrants from Cambodia and Vietnam, and injuring about 30 others. Leam was one of them, shot three times, twice in the buttocks and once in his arm. The shooting took place in 1989. At the time, mass shootings at schools were incredibly rare. Leam couldn’t have known that tragedies like the one he experienced would, a decade later, be a horrible national trend, and that while uncommon, they would only continue, becoming more frequent in the decades after. At the time, he was just a kid, struggling to make sense of what happened.
It wasn’t easy. “My mom, coming from the killing fields of Cambodia and surviving her own trauma, didn’t want to talk about it. I remember asking her certain things about the school shooting,” he said, but “it was traumatizing for her, too.”
The kids who lived through the start of the school shooting era have grown up. Most of them came of age in the late ’90s and the 2000s, when mass shooters started showing up in schools in Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; and Springfield, Oregon (though some, like Leam, survived them even earlier). Now adults in their 30s and 40s, many with children of their own, they are navigating a world in which what happened to them was not an anomaly but the beginning of a recurrent feature of American life. As children, they practiced tornado and fire drills at their schools. Because of what happened to them, their kids have active shooter drills, too.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22878920/school-shootings-survivors-columbine-mental-health
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Long, but worth the read
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