Linkee-poo Tuesday

Busy morning and last night.

"An elite team of Thai Navy SEALs and foreign rescue divers brought out the final four boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave near the Thai-Myanmar border, extracting the team through a labyrinth of tight passages after they spent two weeks trapped in darkness."

"Trauma in childhood echoes through generations, according to new research that could have implications for thousands of migrant children recently separated from parents at the U.S. border." Also a part of institutional racism.

The rich are just like you and me. "NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley, about people rushing to finalize divorces so they can deduct alimony payments before the new tax law kicks in."

"Twitter suspended more than 70 million accounts in May and June, and the pace has continued in July, according to the data." Wow. So now I wondering how many of those accounts that "suddenly disappear" when some people call them out go away because the user deletes their tweets (or accounts) or go away because Twitter identifies them as trolls and suspends their account? But, so why is Twitter getting more aggressive? Could it finally be political pressure is getting to them? "Legitimate human users -- the only ones capable of responding to the advertising that is the main source of revenue for the company -- are central to Twitter’s stock price and broader perceptions of a company that has struggled to generate profits." Yeah, I think that's more the case. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

Hate breds hate. "Woman beats a 91-year-old Mexican man with a brick, tells him to 'go back to your country'."

"A California federal judge on Monday rejected the Trump administration's efforts to detain immigrant families for long terms, calling it a 'cynical attempt' to undo a longstanding court settlement. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said the federal government had failed to present new evidence to support revising a court order that limits detaining children who crossed the border illegally for extended periods."

"President Trump signed full pardons on Tuesday for Oregon cattle ranchers Dwight Hammond, 76, and his son, Steven Hammond, 49, whose long-running dispute with the federal government ended with them going to prison for arson." So much for the rule of law.

Judge Kavanaugh is a product of the Federalist Society whose sole purpose is to develop young lawyers and school them thoroughly in conservative thought. That may seem to be a benign cause, but it most definitely is not. These lawyers and now justices have a severely warped interpretation of both laws and the Constitution, one that most lawyers, after studying the actual law, could not support. These people where bred to repeal Roe v Wade, strike down anything that came close to encroaching on the second amendment, support corporations and the idea of corporate personhood over the rights of citizens and the general public, to roll back civil rights protections, and to denigrate the accused and limit their rights before the law.

"Kavanaugh has not expressed outright opposition to Roe v. Wade." Let me call bullshit on that one. While under consideration for the Appeals Court, Kavanaugh refused to answer questions about his personal belief on Roe v. Wade and gave the answer that it was "settled law." Well, for the Supreme Court, it is not "settled law" and they can change it.

"'Provide sitting presidents with a temporary deferral of civil suits and of criminal prosecutions and investigations,' Kavanaugh proposed." Although he thinks impeachment is still an option (which is good, because that's actually spelled out in the goddamn Constitution). No one is above the law.

Better double-up on the tin-foil in your hat. "And it is possible, though unlikely, that every trail between Trump Tower and the Kremlin extends no farther than its point of current visibility… What is missing from our imagination is the unlikely but possible outcome on the other end: that this is all much worse than we suspect." Well, not missing from some of our's imaginations. Although it is boggling to contemplate, even for people schooled in cloak and dagger thinking. It may also be difficult for two generations brought up in an era that can be exemplified by the over-the-top and ridiculously easy to stop R (Grokked from Elizabeth Bear)