Dad passed last night.

Just went through this pricing last 7 days.
7 grand to cremate and place in a Crypt Mausoleum next to mom.

sometimes the truth reveals itself at the most unexpected moments.

but it wasn't wholly one man that launch the [redacted] war against Saddam. it was the work of many.

SIDEBAR: recall during those times, the administration tried five 'slogans' to sell the war. wasn't until WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMDs) that they found a 'winner'.

Colin Powell forever gave up his chance at the US Presidency when he tried to sell the UN on the idea. Remember it well. Watch it live, at work, with w/boss. We saw nothing to warrant a war.

Remember it well, indeed. Hunter S. Thompson was a guest on Letterman the following night and said something to the effect of "you couldn't get a search warrant for a known mobster's house w/that kind of evidence". (have looked on YouTube for it but can't find it)

Also, remember Angela Merkel saying she couldn't ask her people to go war w/info given. A comedian remarked later that when you can't Germany to agree to invade a country - there has to be something terribly wrong w/the idea.

Sadly, this was the moment the Republicans must have believed they could sell any lie, anytime, anywhere, about anything.

They might be correct.

Teacher here. It's made-up-nonsense. I don't give a shit what gender or sexual orientation a kid is and im CERTAINLY not going to try to convince anyone to change anything about themselves.

That said, I'm going to acknowledge that gay/trans people exist in authorship and literature as it arises. You can't read someone like Whitman (Leaves of Grass, arguably America's greatest poet) and not come across references to sexuality either implicit or explicit. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45472/i-sing-the-body-electric

It becomes relevant in passages like this:

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

----------------------------------
Maybe a conversation like:

"'Love flesh swelling' like he's in love with some woman and they...he...?"

"Probably not, he didn't have any serious female relationships as far as I am aware."

"But the title is 'The female form'"

"Well, it's possible, but it's not likely the case that he was talking about himself being in love with a woman. This poem is in the text but he wrote many other pieces about he-himself falling into and out of love with various men and we have letters documenting those relationships with his male significant others. Although, I'm not sure what to call them because gay marriage would have been illegal at the time. He's likely writing the poem in a way where he appreciates the female form and sees men who are drawn to it like the way I appreciate watching bees act obsessively driven to the middle of flowers. I like watching Bees in action, but that doesn't mean I'm going all pollen crazy, still I appreciate it for what it is."
-------------------

This is an example of how discussion of sexuality would come up in my classroom as I imagine it. Note how I'm not trying to convince the kid I'm talking to to turn gay like it's a big game of rainbow-red-rover or something. Nevertheless, knowing the author's sexual preference in this instance informs our understanding of the piece.


My own personal theory?
The people railing against things like this are the same shitheads that can't be bothered to read ANYTHING and instead giggle and guffaw at "hurhurhurhur he hadd'a boner" where I get to live an early stage of Idocracy.

Also, I agree that the "funky stuff" shouldn't be just avoided altogether. For goodness sake, just let teachers have the difficult conversation that everyone is avoiding. Reminds me of when Peggy Hill was struggling to say "Penis" when she was assigned sex ed.

Back in 2014 I worked for a company in Naples FL that is owned by Jack Roush. The job was mostly road testing new cars before they started hitting dealer lots. We would travel on specified routes for 8 hours. There was day and night shifts. I mostly drove nights. The routes were on Interstate and city roads. Every test vehicle had a Black Box.

We had three 2015 Vipers. The thing I liked the most with that car is that it felt like you were sitting in the hand of God. I cannot tell you how hard it was to keep to the speed limit. It was so hard that I got written up just for "touching" 100 mph for 2 seconds.

Me and Viper https://ibb.co/DWTx0Wy

If that were true for everyone, there would be no children in foster care.

It doesn’t take children to expand your limits, they just give you no choice. I found I can go weeks on < 5 hours sleep a night all by myself, I became more patient just by getting older, I’m more compassionate because I’m not a thoughtless teenager anymore, no child required. I also retained my sanity (what little I started with).
Sure there are some good times for the parents, but not so much for the public at large. Overall making more people with the massive glut of humanity that exists has a negative value. I wrote a thesis on this, called “the fallacy of the intrinsic value of human life”. Got an A. Horrified my writing class. Double win!!

"Freedom hey? Time to show them some Southern Hospitality! Bring them down a peg!" said Proud Boys.

Jon and his Stay Human band on Colbert's TLS is the only late night talk shows band that I love - or at least I don't feel pointless.

I'm not particularly concerned what immediately happened to the slap at the Oscars. The confusion around whether it was scripted or not is understandable. And there were, are, and will have plenty of over-entitled actors/actresses acting irresponsible to the 90% of us (or maybe 50% of us, while the other 40% is just "signaling") at the Oscars, always.

Could Jada have stopped Will just by saying "it's not worth it?" Would this whole scandal happened if she didn't do the side-eyes that Will saw AFTER he laughed at the joke?
Is she partly to blame (of course not)? Who knows what headspace Will was at? It's Hollywood - where 99% of the people live 2, 3, 4 different lives behind & in front of the cameras. Not wise to judge anyone at that moment.

But what happened AFTER is more interesting. The lack of apology directly to Rock and the non-sense justification of his acceptance speech. Will & co partying the night away. Those speaks volumes to what one can make of his speech and tears.

One thing's for sure, as newtboy wrote, Smith just handed white supremacists the biggest gift one person possibly could.

Your video, Tommie Turvey and Pokerjoe! - Night Of The Horse, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

And…. Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, committed voter fraud.
He rented a shack in N Carolina and claimed it was his home. He registered to vote from that shack. He never visited the home, and no one stayed the night there while he rented it.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-did-mark-meadows-register-to-vote-at-an-address-where-he-did-not-reside

He lied about it being his residence, and voted illegally in N Carolina. Voter Fraud…by your guys.
Lock them up for years, and it’s definitely time to require any registered Republican to verify both their residence and identity by random physical checks and DNA testing at their expense. Voter ID is needed for your party, and a fake driver’s license is too easy to get to count.

You want secure elections, don’t you? Then you obviously want special requirements for the group that tried to commit massive election frauds….that’s Republicans.

Or can you admit you’re completely hypocritical and don’t care about all the voter fraud now that you know it was all Republicans perpetrating them?

I expect no answer, because there isn’t a good answer for you.

BTW, strong leader Biden just announced a ban on Russian energy products. Good for Tesla. Yes, it will hurt, gas prices will rise. Freedom isn’t free, and if you don’t chip in your buck 0 five, who will?

well...don't see categorizing dung, in the crap column, as spreading the right's meadow muffins. thought it was showing the bigotry, xenophobia, phantom fears that have been an American past time. (also have these ever left the rights' playbook?)

of course, it's boogie-boogie-all-night-long for the right. just tried putting it in the context of other hairy scary nothings that have been hawked - - then and now.

[should have put in a better link for the Nebraska case. the writing of the SCOTUS' decision is enlightening. almost apologetic.]

Your video, Saturday night covid discussion, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The protests you mentioned didn’t halt commerce for huge swaths of your, and our country, did they? Severity and ubiquity of impacts matter.

Lemme ask you, did this protest ask for dialog, or outright refuse it?

None of the other protests intentionally caused as much collateral damage as possible. It’s not their cause, it’s their methodology and severity of the results.

It’s not about their cause du jure, it’s about their methods, causing economic damage as deep and widespread as possible. I’ll ask, did the other protests you mentioned try to shut the country down for their cause, or were they targeted against the industries/entities they were protesting?

I’m pretty certain that, had they not blocked freeways, border crossings, cities, and industries their protests wouldn’t be being broken up and protesters wouldn’t be arrested. Again, it’s not the why, it’s the how that’s an issue. Their methods aren’t the same as other tolerated protests in severity nor focus.

BUT…there is a significant difference, morally, ethically, and logically between protesting being murdered by police or protesting your last tiny bit of sovereign land or water sources being taken and permanently destroyed by oil companies, and protesting not getting a shot to have the privilege of traveling to another country. I’m far more prepared to be patient for life and death causes than ignorant inconvenience causes.

Edit: P.S. also, “fuck your feelings” goes both ways. These are the same people that took that stance for 4 years here (some still do). When you tell people “fuck your feelings” in response to any subject, any complaints, it’s pretty ridiculous to expect those same people to respect your feelings, especially while you honk a truck horn in their back yard all night for weeks. In my neighborhood, there would have been burning trucks night one, and peace night 2….but I’m a native Texan, kind of the opposite of a Canadian.

@newtboy,

Finally we're talking about my Canada .

I'm agreed with calling 90% of what the convoy and truckers are protesting as being misguided, ill informed or flat out wrong. That however shouldn't be what the right to protest is based upon.

The extent of the protestors illegal activity seems to have been blocking of roadways and borders. Which in Canada isn't exactly new:
-Blockading of roads to logging work sites to "protect old growth forest"
-Blockading of roads pipeline construction sites
-Blockading of transportation highways and railroads

In the past 2 years alone, those various sites have seen blockades ranging from weeks to months. In virtually every single one of those instances the Liberal government went out to meet and negotiate with the protestors while allowing them to continue for weeks to months. In one of the biggest protests Trudeau himself went to meet with the groups in person. Trudeau has a video of himself praising the farmer convoy and blockades in India, declaring his government will always defend the right of groups to protest.(those groups blocked multiple border crossings)

This time though, Trudeau started out with insulting, ridiculing and belittling the protestors. Within the first day of the protests, politicians and our national news corp in CBC were demanding an immediate end to the protests.

The protests that have seen comparable zero violence to the protests in the US in support of Floyd(which I support), where condemned repeatedly by the CBC and Trudeau as terrorizing the populace and inciting violence. For reference, Trudeau remained steadfast in support of the Floyd protestors right to protest.

The federal government essentially tried insults and ridicule to try and end this protest though, and when that didn't work they invoked a national emergency measures act that requires both:
-A threat to Canada's sovereignty
-A threat that can not be addressed by any other laws or means

The government then proceeded to empower themselves to not merely arrest protestors, but to freeze/seize the bank accounts of anyone considered to be supporting the protest, with no court oversight required.

The difference in how protestors are treated based upon what it is they are protesting is alarming and should be a red flag for anyone and everyone.

For reference, while these protests were going on, a pipeline worksite in BC that has been continually shut down by protests for the last several years was attacked in the night by a mob wielding machetes and axes. The workers and security were chased off and millions in damages were done to the site afterwards. Trudeau didn't feel the need to even address the incident though because he was to busy villianizing the convoy. The CBC media buried the incident under local BC news, and downplayed it as an 'alleged' incident, despite RCMP having responded and even having had an officer injured in the incident. CBC also emphasized there wasn't any verified connection to the ongoing protests against the pipeline...

When you look at the narrative, despite my disagreeing with the vast majority of what the convoy is wanting to say, I am disgusted by the attempt to remove their right to say it and everyone wanting to support a strong democracy with the right protest should feel the same.