said cop died "for probably doing his job incorrectly". YIKES



NEW YORK — A woman who called it “ridiculous” that New York City streets were closed during fallen New York Police Department Officer Jason Rivera’s funeral has been fired by a theater and film production company after her tirade went viral.

Actress Jacqueline Guzman is “no longer a member” of Face to Face Films, the company announced, citing her “insensitive video.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/actress-who-called-it-ridiculous-to-close-nyc-streets-for-fallen-officer-s-funeral-is-fired/ar-AATiSZs

“Yet the legislature is singularly focused on

legislating as if they won by a margin of 99 to one

in 2018, as if they have a total mandate by which they can control people’s lives. It’s disgraceful and disappointing.”

The issues that Republicans see as a priority for Florida are red meat to DeSantis’s conservative base. They include the 15-week abortion ban bill, which received a chaotic hearing on Thursday, and moves to give parents more say over classroom curriculum and control of school libraries. In Polk county this week, education officials went from school to school pulling 16 books flagged by a conservative parents’ group as inappropriate, including Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller The Kite Runner.

They include bills to strengthen the governor’s fierce anti-immigrant stance by locking out from state or local government business any company involved in the transportation of undocumented migrants.

And two healthcare bills have been introduced in the Republican-dominated Florida legislature that opponents say further vilifies and isolates the LBGTQ community. One, touted as the vulnerable child protection act, would criminalize professionals who provide gender-affirming medical care to minors; the other would allow any medical professional the right to refuse treatment or procedures including gender affirming surgery or abortions on moral grounds.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/free-to-do-as-you-are-told-florida-republicans-advance-wave-of-draconian-bills/ar-AATjBFs

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/books/book-ban-us-schools.html

Jack Petocz with the protest signs he used at a school board meeting in Flagler County, Fla.Credit...Todd Anderson for The New York Times



Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said in a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.


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“If you look at the lists of books being targeted, it’s so broad,” Ms. Nossel said. Some groups, she noted, have essentially weaponized book lists meant to promote more diverse reading material, taking those lists and then pushing for all the included titles to be banned.

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So far, efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators have largely faltered, as law enforcement officials in Florida, Wyoming and elsewhere have found no basis for criminal investigations. And courts have generally taken the position that libraries should not remove books from circulation.

Nonetheless, librarians say that just the threat of having to defend against charges is enough to get many educators to censor themselves by not stocking the books to begin with. Even just the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Howard-Hesseman-star-of-WKRP-in-Cincinatti-16817359.php



NEW YORK (AP) — Howard Hesseman, who played the radio disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” and the actor-turned-history teacher Charlie Moore on “Head of the Class,” has died. He was 81.


Hesseman died Saturday in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery, his manager Robbie Kass said Sunday.



Hesseman, who had himself been a radio DJ in the '60s, earned two Emmy nominations for playing Johnny Fever on CBS’ “WKRP in Cincinnati,” which ran for four seasons from 1978-1982. The role made Hesseman a counterculture icon at a time when few hippie characters made it onto network television.

In the first episode, Dr. Johnny Fever announces the station’s changeover from elevator music to rock ’n roll with a record scratch and a proclamation.

“All right Cincinnati, it’s time for this town to get down! You got Johnny, Dr. Johnny Fever, and I am burning up in here. We’re all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts because I got the healing prescription here from the big KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now, I am talking about your 50,000-watt intensive care unit, babies!”

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Howard-Hesseman-star-of-WKRP-in-Cincinatti-16817359.php

Long article.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/28/magazine/miami-condo-collapse.html



But meaningful reform, of the kind McGuinness imagined, has long been notoriously hard to enact. Florida has roughly 1.5 million residential condo units — among the most of any state — and a highly lucrative condo and co-op industry with many powerful players, from management companies and developers to firms specializing in condo law. Historically, these groups, and the lobbyists who represent them, have successfully pushed back against any policy they view as constrictive or unduly expensive. And already, just months after the collapse of Champlain Towers South, there are signs that similar efforts are underway. “You’d hope that this is the wake-up call,” Steven Geller, a longtime state senator and representative, told me of Champlain Towers. “But I’d anticipate the same thing we’ve seen since the 1980s. The same thing, incidentally, that you see with mass shootings, or at least mass shootings back when they were rare. The lobbying groups go out and go: ‘Listen, now is really not the time to deal with this. Now is the time to pray and heal. Let’s talk about it next year.’ Then next year comes around, and guess what? It’s old news. Let me tell you: I want to be wrong, but my experience says, ‘Be realistic.’”

Pull up a map of the Florida coast, drop your finger onto the surface and you’ll almost certainly land on a town or city with its own disaster in the making. According to one recent study, 918,000 of Florida’s condo units are, like the ones in Champlain Towers South, more than 30 years old; many towers were thrown up during the boom years, when oversight was lax, developers were incentivized to prize speed over attention to detail and every permit was a rubber stamp away.

Even in the most rigorously built structures, secured to the face of the earth by heavy pylons driven through yards of shifting sand, the coastal environment has inevitably taken its toll. Facades are pitted by the salt and sea air. Balconies are crumbling. Pool decks are spidered with cracks. And water — and rising sea levels — are a fact of life. Water on the roads, water slopping up and out of the drains, water in subterranean garages and the very foundations of condo towers packed with hundreds of residents who are frequently blind to the dangers that lie underfoot or, more tragic still, unable to fund the repairs that could save their lives.

And time is running out. “It is a ticking-clock scenario,” Eric Glazer, a veteran condo-law specialist told me. “A bomb got set off, back in the day, and it’s about to go off.”

Nebraska's Mascot Loses Hand Gesture Used Since 1974
In recent years, the 'ok' sign has been read by some as a white power reference



The hand gesture that the University of Nebraska's mascot has been making since 1974 has been changed after that gesture took on new meaning about five years ago. For decades the Herbie Husker mascot formed an "OK" hand gesture by placing his thumb and forefinger together to form an O. But some hate groups adopted the gesture as a sign for white power, with the three straight fingers being read as a W and the circle and wrist next to them fashioning a P, reports the Flatwater Free Press. The mascot now shows his index finger raised in a "number one" gesture.

The Anti-Defamation League states that while "use of the okay symbol in most contexts is entirely innocuous and harmless ... In 2017, the 'okay' hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters 'wp,' for 'white power.' Used by many on the right—not just extremists—for the purpose of trolling liberals, the symbol eventually came to be used by actual white supremacists as well," it continues, per the AP.

CNN quotes the university as saying "the concern about the hand gesture was brought to our attention by our apparel provider and others" and so the school began reworking the logo in 2020. "The revised logo is now the only Herbie Husker mark available to licensees," it notes.

https://www.newser.com/story/316290/nebraskas-mascot-loses-potentially-problematic-gesture.html

Former President Donald Trump held a rally on Saturday night in Conroe, Texas.
During his speech at the rally, Donald Trump Jr. said he took his son to make an AR-15.

The firearm was manufactured at F-1 Firearms in Spring, Texas, according to Donald Trump Jr.
During a Trump rally on Saturday in Conroe, Texas, Donald Trump Jr. said he took his 12-year-old son, Donald Trump III, to a gun manufacturer where he got to make his own AR-15.

"Oh, I love Texas. And today, by the way, I got to do the most Texas thing ever," Donald Trump Jr. said during his speech at the rally. "Since we came in late last night, I was able to bring my little son Donny to my buddy Dion's manufacturing facility at F-1 Firearms. And Donny, little kid from New York City, now Florida, thank God, got to make his own AR-15.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-jr-brought-his-12-year-old-son-to-texas-for-a-trump-rally-and-let-him-build-an-ar-15-at-his-friend-s-business/ar-AAThOO0

More people died in Michigan in 2020 than were born, according to state records, the first time that has happened since at least 1900.

Michigan isn't the first state where that's happened, and it won't be the last. The national birth has been falling for years. But experts say that if Michigan can't start bringing in more immigrants and attracting residents from other states the way that places like Texas, Colorado and North Carolina have, it could spell serious problems for the economic future of the state.

Preliminary data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services shows 104,166 people were born in 2020 while 117,087 people died.

In Michigan, COVID drove those death numbers up from years prior — MDHHS says there were 11,362 COVID deaths in the state in 2020, which doesn't cover the 12,921 difference between births and deaths two years ago. That number is also more than 6% higher than the around 99,000 people who died in the state for each of the few years prior.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2022/01/26/michigan-deaths-exceed-births-first-time-economic-impacts/6580505001/