A North Carolina school district that has been repeatedly accused of ignoring or silencing students’ reports of sexual misconduct recently failed to do enough to help a 5-year-old girl who reported being sexually assaulted on the school bus, according to a new report from local news outlet WBTV. The girl was even allegedly forced to once again sit next to one of the boys who she says attacked her.

The 5-year-old girl said she was inappropriately touched by two boys on February 6, 2022, according to a school write-up of the incident obtained by WBTV.

“She said one boy was trying to get her to kiss another,” the write-up read. “The ‘fat boy’ was pushing her face against the window of the bus. She told her mother that one of the boys ‘put his fingers inside my cootie and was playing around.’”

The girl’s mother told WBTV that one of the boys also exposed himself to the girl.

After the girl’s mother reported the incident to the school, administrators initially promised to sit the girl next to an older female student on the bus, as well as sit her in front within the eyeline of the bus driver, according to WBTV. But instead, when the girl got back on the bus, she had to sit next to one of her alleged attackers, her mom told the outlet.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3nnq/north-carolina-cms-5-year-old-sexual-assault

Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Again.

At the Hideaway on Lee, a bar and music venue in Lafayette, Louisiana, Cedric Watson belted out the lyrics to "Oh, Bye Bye" in Louisiana French. The tune never fails to get the crowd up on its feet, dancing the spirited two-step everybody here seems to know as intuitively as how to peel a crawfish.

Watson squeezed his Hohner accordion and stomped out the beat as his band, Bijou Creole, scraped the washboard (also called a frottoir) and strummed a buoyant guitar rhythm. Soon, cowboy hat-clad dancers swirled around the floor like a pot of gumbo getting a good stir. As the Grammy-nominated musician slowed the pace with a bluesy version of "Ma Petite Femme", the dancers launched into a graceful waltz. Watson swapped the accordion for a fiddle, and changed languages from Louisiana French to the endangered Kouri-Vini.

Today, Watson is one of the brightest contemporary talents in American zydeco music. Zydeco is the traditional music of Louisiana Creoles of colour – the historical ethnic group describing mixed-race people born to European settlers and Africans in the colonial US. It blends elements of blues, R&B and soul and relies heavily on percussion techniques that reflect its African American and Afro-Caribbean roots. In addition to English and Louisiana French, it is also sung in Kouri-Vini.

Watson is part of a grass roots resurgence to revive Kouri-Vini, a historical name for the Louisiana Creole language that has been reclaimed to prevent confusion with other things "Creole", such as ethnicity, musical styles and culinary traditions.

Watson's next album, slated for release this summer, will be sung mostly in Kouri-Vini. Today, the language has fewer than 6,000 speakers, but at the beginning of the 20th Century, it was spoken by much of the Creole population in the 22-parish region of south-west Louisiana known as Acadiana.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230228-kouri-vini-the-return-of-the-us-lost-language

“If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen.”

Dolly Parton has uttered those words famously and often. But if she really were a drag queen, one of Tennessee’s most famous daughters would likely be out of a job under legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday.

Lee signed off on the legislation without issuing a statement or in a public ceremony. The bill goes into effect July 1.

Across the country, conservative activists and politicians complain that drag contributes to the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Several states are considering restrictions, but none has acted as fast as Tennessee to ensure children are not exposed to drag. The efforts seek to extinguish popular “ drag story hours ” at which queens read to kids. Organizers of LGBTQ Pride events say they put a chill on their parades. And advocates note that the bills, pushed largely by Republicans, burden businesses in an un-Republican fashion.

The protestations have arisen fairly suddenly around a form of entertainment that has long had a place on the mainstream American stage.

Milton Berle, “Mr. Television” himself, was appearing in drag on the public airwaves as early as the 1950s on “Texaco Star Theater.” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Highly popular drag brunches bring revenue to restaurants. That such spectacles are now being portrayed as a danger to children boggles the minds of people who study, perform and appreciate drag.


https://apnews.com/article/drag-queens-tennessee-bill-legislation-3ed2ddd0e8231819ade5d0c8b9f4c30a

Gov. BillyBob's hypocrisy and dissembling boggle MY mind!

While many pharmacists across the U.S. have struggled to get their hands on Ozempic, some haven’t bothered.

Nate Hux, the owner of Pickerington Pharmacy in Ohio, stopped stocking the diabetes drug — which has soared in popularity, particularly for its off-label use as a weight loss aid — last summer.

At that time, there were widespread shortages of Ozempic, but that’s not what drove Hux to ditch the drug. Instead, he said, it was because selling the medication was hurting his business.

The average wholesale price of Ozempic that pharmacies pay is about $900 for a 30-day supply, he said. But Hux said for each prescription, he was typically reimbursed just $860.

“It is too expensive for us to stock,” he said.

Hux is among a group of independent pharmacists who have stopped carrying Ozempic and other drugs in the same class, in part, they say, because of the underpayments by pharmacy benefits managers, who act as middlemen between pharmacists and insurers. These drugs, called GLP-1 agonists, are relatively new and still under patent, meaning there are no generic alternatives.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ozempic-wegovy-shortages-pharmacists-not-stocking-rcna71610

The Minnesota Vikings treat their players best, according to a new NFL Players Association survey, while the Washington Commanders have a long way to go.

The report, released on Wednesday during the league’s annual scouting combine, rated teams in eight categories – from meals and nutrition to training and travel – based on anonymous responses from about 1,300 players.

The Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins and Las Vegas Raiders were the top three teams while the bottom trio were the Los Angeles Chargers, Arizona Cardinals and Washington Commanders. The Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs were ranked as the fourth-worst team on the list.

“Player health and safety is our top priority, and we continue to invest in our facilities, including a new practice field, new turf in the practice bubble and increased meeting room space,” a spokesperson for the Commanders said. “We know there is more to do, and we regularly talk with our players about ways to improve their work environment and the experience for their families.”

Results showed three teams don’t serve players dinner at their facilities and one of those, the Cincinnati Bengals, doesn’t provide supplements or phone-charging plugs in lockers. And last season, the Jacksonville Jaguars dealt with a rat infestation.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/mar/02/no-family-rooms-and-a-rat-infestation-nfl-players-list-team-gripes

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., recently ousted five churches across the U.S. because they allow women to serve as pastors — including Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of the convention's largest member churches.

The SBC's policies state, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

The other four that were expelled are New Faith Mission Ministry in Griffin, Ga.; St. Timothy's Christian Baptist Church in Baltimore; Calvary Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss.; and Fern Creek Baptist Church near Louisville, Ky., according to the Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. A sixth church, Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Fla., was removed for issues related to sexual abuse allegations.

Observers outside of the faith say this convention's executive committee decision will contribute to a growing schism between conservative and moderate members of the SBC.

The move has also drawn criticism from within and outside of the religion.

Monique Moultrie, an associate professor of religious studies at Georgia State University, told NPR, "I think it is interesting that more swift movement was made towards removing these churches from their union, but there has not been as swift a response to the churches with leaders who were found to be predatory abusers of women and children."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1159326721/southern-baptist-convention-ousts-5-female-led-churches

Jennifer Mitchell remembered getting a call nearly two years ago that her 69-year-old husband, Bill, had crashed his car and had been committed to the Montana State Hospital, the state-run psychiatric hospital for adults about 20 miles from their home in Butte.

Physicians thought Bill Mitchell had dementia and could be a danger to himself or others, according to medical records. But once he was admitted, his wife really began to worry. She couldn't visit him because of covid-19 restrictions, and she couldn't get details about the care or the medicine he was receiving.

"I tried to get an idea of what he was taking, not taking. I could not get answers," Jennifer said.

When Bill was discharged after 60 days, Jennifer discovered he had been taken off some of his congestive heart failure medications. A month later, he went into cardiac arrest and was moved to hospice care. He died on July 30, 2021, a day after his 70th birthday.

The psychiatric hospital in southwestern Montana has been under scrutiny since the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decertified it in April 2022 following investigations into patient deaths and assaults. Federal officials found in the investigations that the hospital had failed to meet Medicare's "basic health and safety requirements."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/02/1160480706/her-husband-died-after-stay-at-montana-state-hospital-she-wants-answers

Presidential wannabe Mike Pence is playing culture warrior with a baseless and probably second-hand accusation against a nameless school in some nameless city or town in Iowa.

During a speech, Pence said he was in Iowa recently because “our foundation” weighed in on a case. “There is a school in Iowa that you have to have a signed note from your parents to get an aspirin but the school health office can give you a gender transition plan without notifying your parents or gaining their permission,” he claimed.

Really? Heartland Signal tweeted, “There is no evidence of this.” It speaks volumes that Pence did not name the school, did not say where in Iowa this school is, did not say how he “knows” this, did not say he visited the school nor whether he spoke to anyone in the school administration to find out why such a policy exists.

The whole thing smacks of some right-wing anecdote that Super Duper Christian Pence regurgitated, without bothering to verify any of it, in order to smear (undoubtedly public) schools and transgender acceptance for the sake of political gain.

https://crooksandliars.com/2023/03/pence-ia-school-dispenses-gender

Gimme a break, Q-Tip!

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed the Florida legislature to join his crusade against “wokeness” in public schools, First Amendment experts warned that like many of the anti-“critical race theory” laws around the country, the bills were written so broadly that they could be reasonably interpreted as de facto prohibition on anything other than specifically state-sanctioned speech.

Even critics of “wokeness” have argued that prohibitions on “divisive concepts” and definitions of “truth” are subjective, vague, and destined to sweep up far more content than was originally intended.

And wouldn’t you know it, now that schools across Florida are removing innocuous books because they bump up against certain “divisive” interpretations of gender, sexuality, and racism that could conceivably run afoul of Florida law—DeSantis is crying, “Hoax!”

The governor and his gaggle of sycophantic right-wing media influencers insist the book bans were only meant to go after the “porn” in books like Gender Queer or the “racism” in books like How to Be an Antiracist—and that most of the hundreds of other books facing state censorship were mistakenly included in the purge, or deliberately removed by educators to make DeSantis look bad.

Team DeSantis wants to have it both ways. They deny book bans are even happening, but the erstwhile small government, free marketplace of ideas-supporting conservatives are also openly contemptuous of the free inquiry and open debate trappings of liberal democracy. Better to ban the “bad” ideas than debate them, defeat them, or teach them in a larger context. (But don’t call it a ban, which they contend in the face of all evidence is a “hoax.”)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ron-desantis-anti-free-speech-crusade-would-cancel-fox-news

Anti-transgender muppets had a meltdown on social media Thursday after The Hershey Company released a new ad featuring a transgender woman for Women’s History Month.

On Wednesday, Fae Johnstone, the executive director of the Canadian social justice organization Wisdom2Action, announced that she was in a new campaign for Hershey’s Canada and featured on some of the chocolate bar’s wrappers. (Wrappers vary between her and other women involved in the campaign.)

“The chocolate's out of the wrapper!” Johnstone tweeted. “Honoured to be featured in this campaign by @Hersheys Canada for #InternationalWomensDay alongside 4 brilliant sisters and change-makers.”

According to Wisdom2Action’s website, Johnstone has an extensive background in community engagement, particularly working with trans support groups and mental health services for LGBTQ+ youth. On her Twitter profile, Johnstone proudly states she is a “queer, trans and feminist activist.”

But the so-called chocolate gatekeepers apparently didn’t like that extra detail and, despite often railing against “cancel culture,” called on chocolate fans to boycott Hershey’s.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/transphobic-grumps-are-very-triggered-by-an-ad-for-hersheys-chocolate?ref=home

As soon as I quit laughing, gonna go buy some Hershey's for the gang at the shelter