What's my collective noun. (Grokked from Dan)
Doctors getting more patients up and moving faster. Remember when "rest and relaxation" was the medicine of the day? Apparently after a brain injury (like a stroke), the sooner they get you back on your feet the better off you are.
Your communicator is ready. A Bluetooth accessory for your cell phone. (Grokked from Ken McConnell)
Why a bike stays up. (Grokked from Dan)
What it meant (and still means) to be white. An example of a family in the Jim Crow South, who because of the shapes of their children's noses and the shade of their skin were ostracized from the white community and "Local authorities expelled the Platt kids from Lake’s white schools and forced the family to move out of their white neighborhood and into a house without running hot water and other basic amenities." This was 1955, still living memory.
The secrets of Empire. In this case, the British Empire and what they did, and tried to do, to keep that empire. And all about the documentation. When I was younger, a lot was made of the Nazi pre-occupation is documenting everything. I never understood that focus because keeping records is what governments do. In this case, the British, while they burned and dumped a lot of those records as they pulled back, also kept a lot at Hanslope Park, England. And it was only by circumstances that lawyers for the Kenyan Mau Mau discovered this. It's a hard story to listen to, and trigger warnings abound. Humans, we're really shitty to one another.
I'm sure the police don't knowingly use civil forfeiture laws to increase their own budgets on the backs of the poor who have few resources to challenge them in court. Civil forfeiture laws need revamped. I agree with their initial intent, but how they're being used is completely against that intent. And, IMHO, those departments who have been abusing their power need to have criminal cases of fraud and illegal money laundering brought against them. Nobody has it worse in jail than a cop. Throw a few chiefs in jail for perpetrating these extra scams (note in the article that two scams are happening, by the fraudulent insurance salesmen and then by the civil authorities) and you'll see a lot of this abuse end. (Grokked from the Slactivist)
What white privilege looks like. In this case, former Mayor Guiliani defends Donald Trump saying, "'… I certainly think that it doesn’t reflect on Donald Trump as a man who is a very charitable and a good man. I’m sure if he really had a chance to say it he’d reverse it,' Giuliani said." So, Donald, given ample chance to reverse it for the past month, what do you say? "'What can be simpler or more accurately stated? The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.,' (Trump) said in the statement." There is an outcry of comedians hoping Trump will stay in until the bitter end, but I hope not. Because of his extreme views, he makes the other's extreme views look moderate by comparison.
Revising the hoary, "No atheists in foxholes", Si Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, goes a little farther. "'I don’t believe — there's no such thing as an atheist,' he told the Christian Post in an interview published on Friday. 'Because there's too much documentation. Our calendars are based on Jesus Christ… Whether you believe in Him or not, every time you sign your calendar, you write down the day's date, you're saying He's here.'" Okay, Si, when when I write Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, am I then a Norseman? What if it's Friday the 13th in May? Man, triple score Norseman. If I write down a Saturday in January, does that make me Roman? This is the Christianity of the Conservatives, it is no deeper than this. A veneer of words and a belief that "God is just like me and is on my side", everything else doesn't matter. Also, the movie they're promoting, "Faith of Our Fathers", also known as, "Milking the Flock".
"Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest ever real-life experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years… would those women choose them?… They did… and the results were startling. The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40… while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school." Strange how that works. And while you'd think the Pro-Life group would embrace this as a really good way to reduce abortions, remember that they've labeled IUDs as abortion machines (in fact, they're against all contraceptives). "'If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to,' said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution." The problem, the private funding that made the program possible is running out, and there's the battle over Obamacare's coverage of birth control. But, if you're a fiscal conservative this should be an easy choice. "The state health department estimated that every dollar spent on the long-acting birth control initiative saved $5.85 for the state’s Medicaid program, which covers more than three-quarters of teenage pregnancies and births." Seems like a no-brainer. Here's a BoingBoing article if you can't see the NY Times. (Grokked from everybody)
And then there's the local GOP group in Iowa who decided to decorate their 4th of July and re-election float. Yes, I'm sure Marion County has 3 confederates buried in the cemetery, how many Union soldiers are buried there as well? And in other news, Dinesh D'Souza is an ass. Seriously, GOP activists, there's enough shit to go around that you don't have to make shit up.
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