Movie night.

 

What is the name of this movie? 

Hey, it's almost Halloween.  

A culture of "casual bigotry" comes back to bite "Chucky".

 

I guess you all heard about John Gruden by now. Or Chucky as he has been affectionately known as throughout the years. He was exposed as a fraud when some of the e-mails  that he sent to another "good ole boy" disparaging blacks, women, and just about everyone else who doesn't look like they do surfaced recently. 

Folks on the right say that he was canceled. I say, on the other hand, that he was held accountable for his actions. That's how this works. The guy coaches in a league where almost 60% of the players are black, and like so many others in the billion dollar cash cow called the National Football League, he holds a reprehensible and Neanderthal world view of others.

The NFL now wants us to believe that they have looked into the some 650,000 e-mails and given them the the Captain Renault business: There is nothing to see here. Give me a break!

This article from Shalise Young is all of use right now.

"The NFL got what it needed: Sunday.

After a week in which the public started to really see what the league is, to get a glimpse of just how slimy its underbelly truly is, it needed Sunday.

Because once Sunday arrived, enough fans who may have been mildly appalled at the racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, exploitation, and the NFL's lead counsel doing favors for the president of at least one team, turned their attention to the games.

They may have even gotten an early start consuming the league's product, those who were masochistic enough to endure Jaguars-Dolphins from London. There were fantasy teams to follow and wagers to make, and just the seemingly insatiable desire so many have to tune in. 

Some of those people might not have been appalled at all, so they wanted Sunday to arrive so they could have their games, have their respite. There were fans last year hollering that NFL players and other athletes had to play games to entertain them during COVID lockdowns; it's highly unlikely the contents of the emails we've seen even moved them.

Reality tells us the NFL's power brokers are among them.

Individuals in the highest reaches of the country's most profitable sports league being racist isn't really news, not to anyone paying attention. This country is so accepting of anti-Black sentiment that Jon Gruden was still allowed to coach last Sunday after the report of his racist email to then-Washington executive Bruce Allen disparaging NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith's intelligence and appearance in truly 1920s fashion. 

It wasn't until more of Gruden's emails were made public — the ones where he circulated semi-nude photos of Washington cheerleaders, expressed disgust with the NFL hiring the first female official in its history as well as the drafting of an openly gay player, and went after commissioner Roger Goodell using an anti-gay slur for the crime of trying to protect players from traumatic brain injury — that he got to resign, once again showing the privilege of being a white man in the NFL, getting to dictate his own departure.

Then things got worse, or at least should have, for the league and its vaunted shield. On Thursday night, the New York Times published emails between Allen, the Washington Football Team president, and Jeff Pash, NFL lead counsel, in which Pash made a nominal fine handed down to Allen's team for lying on the injury report disappear, waved off the growing allegations of workplace toxicity in Washington, expressed anger over the NFL hiring a Black woman to be a league lobbyist on Capitol Hill, and yukked it up over Allen trying to cut a player's salary.

Pash, one of the most powerful people in league offices, still has a job as of this writing. The NFL has even defended Pash's interactions with Allen.

On Friday, the Associated Press published a story citing a source "familiar with the investigation" who claimed none of the other 650,000 emails under review as an extension of that deep dive into Washington's workplace culture contain the kind of bigotry expressed by Gruden and Allen.

To which we say: Bull. Crap.

Writ large, given the emails we have seen and the other things we know, there is no doubt that there are more emails showing how the league's decision makers really feel.

It is their — meaning white men of means — league, and they are loathe to let anyone who isn't into their league. Bringing even one person into the fold that isn't one of them is unacceptable. Allen groused about having to even interview non-white candidates for head coaching positions.

But Sunday came, which is all the NFL needed. Too many media outlets, some of them in bed with the league and profiting off the games, will do just what it hopes and by Sunday night won't mention the week where the league was revealed for what it truly is, will spend Monday happily rehashing highlights from Week 6 games.

Some of us are still appalled. Some of us hope whoever is slowly leaking these emails keeps going. Some of us are still angered by what's happened, the league's cowardice in continuing to protect men of ill will, disgusted that it is 2021 and in too many corners, including a league that would not be the multi-billion juggernaut that it is without the talents of Black athletes, the buffet of bigotry we saw still exists and in some ways is celebrated. 

Some of us skipped this Sunday's games." [Source]

No lies detected. 

 

"Catastrophic failure" in Rutherford County, Tennessee.

For those of you wondering why it's important to teach critical race theory in higher institutions of learning (notice I wrote in higher institutions of learning), please read this article about what has been taking place in the state of Tennessee with mostly poor juveniles  of color.

It's mind-boggling and scary that this could be happening in our country. And yet, given what has been taking place over the past few years, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. For instance, if someone had told me 20 years ago that America is ripe for a coup, and that one was almost carried out, I would have told them that they're crazy. 

But sadly, here we are. And things that seemed crazy in the past, have us all afraid for our future.  

*Image from MSNBC

Caption Sunday.

 

 

I need a caption for this picture.  

No one left to fight for democracy.

 Make no mistake field hands, democracy is dying. And if it is in fact dying, why is the democratic party " so complicit in its demise? 

This is the exact question writer Luke Savage asked in a recent piece in The Atlantic. 

"If you’ve followed recent Democratic messaging, you’ll have heard that American democracy is under serious attack by the Republican Party, representing an existential threat to the country. If you’ve followed Democratic lawmaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the threat is actually a rather piddling one. The disconnect, in this case, isn’t attributable to Democratic embellishment, but to inexcusable complacency.

In his first address to Congress, last month, President Joe Biden established three basic themes—each one invoked in a language of crisis and political urgency: “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” When it came to the third, Biden was both pointed and emphatic, tying the events of January 6 and the broader effort to delegitimize November’s election to a wider crisis of democracy. “Congress,” he declared, “should pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and send them to my desk right away.”

Biden is far from the only Democratic leader to have made the connection. In urging the Senate to pass H.R. 1, which would improve voter access and election security, Senator Chuck Schumer (hardly anyone’s idea of a firebrand) said in March that state voter-restriction laws “smack of Jim Crow rearing its ugly head once again.” He went as far as warning that “if we don’t stop these vicious and often racist actions, Third World autocracy will be on its way.” Schumer hasn’t been shy about naming an antagonist, either, citing a “concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote” and even declaring that “we won’t let [Republican-controlled legislatures] create a dictatorship in America.”

Granting some room for hyperbole, these dire pronouncements aren’t entirely misplaced. As of March 24, researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice had logged some 361 bills containing provisions that seek to restrict voting—a 43 percent increase from about the same time in February. Many involve the usual suite of suppression methods introduced under the auspices of fairness and transparency (expanded ID requirements, banning same-day voter registration, limiting the use of mail-in ballots, etc.), and one in Arizona even aspires to give the state legislature the authority to override the certification of future presidential-election results by simple majority vote. A recording recently released by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, meanwhile, makes more or less explicit that Republican operatives plan to use every tool at their disposal to defeat the renewed push for expanded voting rights, despite its widespread popularity.

Suffice it to say, a concerted right-wing effort really is under way to limit popular democracy and suppress votes. So what are Democrats doing about it? In a legislative sense at least, a cogent and comprehensive response is already in the works, in the form of the two bills cited by Biden in his congressional address. If realized, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and H.R. 1 (also known as the For the People Act) would constitute the most sweeping acts of democratic reform undertaken in decades. The latter alone would establish automatic national voter registration, independent redistricting commissions for House seats to prevent gerrymandering, expanded mail-in voting, and a number of new measures to reduce the overbearing influence of organized money.

Neither currently seems likely to become law, however. Rhetoric about autocracy notwithstanding, some liberal lawmakers are quietly threatened by aspects of the legislation. A few Black representatives in the South, for example, worry that independent redistricting commissions may cost them their seat. And some establishment figures reportedly fear that more democratically structured contribution rules will embolden left-wing primary challengers propelled by small donations. Senator Joe Manchin, meanwhile, has reiterated his opposition to H.R 1 on the deeply spurious grounds that any prospective voting-rights legislation ought to pass with bipartisan support—a DOA line of reasoning even when it comes to the watered-down version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act that Manchin himself is proposing.

The single greatest obstacle, though, has to do with the rules governing the Senate, and whether Democrats are ultimately willing to match their language of urgency with a strategy even remotely proportional to it. Due to the chamber’s filibuster rules, most legislation requires 60 votes to pass—an impediment that effectively empowers lawmakers representing only a tiny sliver of the electorate to block policies they dislike at will, including those designed to make American democracy fairer and more inclusive. (Especially frustrating, as the voting-rights expert Ari Berman has pointed out, is that Republican-controlled legislatures face no such supermajority requirement when passing legislation designed to restrict the vote—a kind of “asymmetric warfare” in which those working to preserve minority rule have a majoritarian advantage.)

Although Biden has mused about the idea of reforming the filibuster, he has ruled out its elimination. Manchin, predictably enough, is resoundingly allergic to the idea of change, while his fellow conservative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema ironically stated her emphatic support for H.R. 1 within days of dismissing filibuster reform in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Schumer, for his part, says that “everything is on the table” when it comes to passing voting-rights legislation, and he has, like Biden, made some noise about at least modifying the filibuster." [More of article here] 

But "noise" is not action. Schumer and other democrats always seem to make a lot of "noise" (they love the cable news cameras) but there is never any action. Just talk. 

One of the reasons that Joe Biden's poll numbers has been tanking is because a lot of progressive and young democratic voters are getting tired of all the talk.  That, and the so-called spirit of bipartisanship that Biden et al are always talking about. Biden's numbers were way up when he became president because a lot of Americans thought that he was going to correct some of the wrongs of the past four years, and put a leash on Mitch McConnell and his extreme right-wing agenda. 

I'm sad to have to announce that it has not happened. And what has transpired over the past year is more of the same: A radical power move by the minority to control the majority. 

Sadly, with the help of a weakened and delusional democratic party, it seems to be working.   

Testiclesgate.

 America has a huge testicles problem,  and I mean this in the most respectful way possible. 

You know that you have regressed as a society and a culture, when a semi washed up rapper's clueless words concerning the most serious pandemic of our lifetime is being tossed around and represents perfectly the zeitgeist of our era. 

May heaven help us all. Nicki Minaj was being mentioned more by "serious journalists" and cable and news pundits than the leaders of countries such as North Korea and France. (Both  of these countries, by the way, were in the news for far more serious reasons than those dumb misinformed statements by the rapper.) And she has the nerve to be pissed off. If you ask me this has done wonders for her career. It's PR gold. 

The poor leaders of Trinidad had to issue an official statement about the rapper's cousin's declarations. (No reports of swollen balls.) And the White House had to deny a claim that she was invited to the White House to talk about the vaccine. Nicki, of course, is hitting back. She is saying that they did in fact reach out to her, and it is the White House that is misinforming the public. Folks, trust me, I did not have a Nicki Minaj Joe Biden feud on my 2021 bingo card.  This is just nuts! Pun intended. 

We shouldn't be surprised that this is where we are in America, and that the race to the bottom continues. We elected a washed up game show host with zero shame and serious mental issues to be our president. Why should anything else surprise us?  

Now, incredibly, some folks actually found time out of their daily lives to march on the CDC on behalf of Nicki and her outlandish claims. 

"A group of anti-vaccine protesters recently rallied outside the Centre for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta, shouting slogans referencing Nicki Minaj‘s recent controversial tweets about the coronavirus vaccine.

“Nicki Minaj told the truth to me. Fauci lied to me,” protesters were filmed chanting outside the CDC. Local television station CBS46 reported one of the protesters saying, “We are here because the CDC has been lying to us for so long”.

Initial coverage of the rally suggested that those protesting were Nicki Minaj fans encouraged by her misinformation-laden comments. But Insider reported earlier today (September 17) that the protesters are part of a fringe political group called the Black Hammer, capitalising on the media attention surrounding Minaj’s tweets. The group is a self-described “anti-colonial organisation that exists to take the land back for all Colonised people”.

Black Hammer also took responsibility for organising the protest on their Twitter, telling followers they would be outside the CDC as they were “fed up with the way the media is portraying Nicki Minaj”.' 

Hold on America, we are almost there. Just brace yourselves for the fall.  

   

  

Caption Monday.

 

 

This took place on 9/11, when the president and other former presidents were doing more dignified things to acknowledge that solemn day.  

Give me a caption for this picture.  

? of the day

 On this Labor Day, when we put an emphasis on work, my question of the day is this: What do we have to work on the most to build a more perfect union? 

I have some thoughts, but I need yours.  

It's not a "hoax."

 

I'm thinking about the folks in Louisiana this morning. Today is exactly 16 years since Katrina devastated the state's largest city, and now, here we are again. Ida is on her way to leave her mark on that storm ravaged region.   

It's amazing to me that folks on the right still believe that climate change is all a hoax. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised. These same people believe that you can cure COVID by shooting yourself up with a worm drug used for horses.)  I'm here to tell you folks, it's not. I am no scientist. There are folks who read this blog on a regular basis who can play inside baseball with the best of them when it comes to the complexities and complications of the actual science behind this phenomenon.( I see you Pilot X) I'm not one of them. But I have eyes, and I have common sense, and I can tell you that it doesn't take a rocket scientist or an aircraft pilot to be able to tell you that the earth is changing in some scary ways. 

The West Coast of America is almost out of water. There are devastating fires in California and other states out West every year. Tornadoes and floods are getting more intense. And in certain parts of Europe they experienced the hottest months they have recorded in decades. There is more. The polar ice caps are melting, global sea levels are rising, humidity is increasing, the ocean is getting hotter, snow covers are melting earlier.... and on and on it goes. You get the picture. 

If you still don't believe that climate change is real, read what the Prime Minister of Greece had to say after devastating wildfires ripped through his country earlier this month.

 "Everything needed to change in order to minimise the effects of the climate crisis, he told parliament on Wednesday during a debate on the wildfires and criticism of the government's response to them.

Dealing with the crisis "is forcing us to change everything; the way we produce agricultural products, how we move around, how we generate energy and the way we build our homes," he said.

Part of a succession of blazes that struck southern Europe during a summer heatwave, the Greek fires scorched more than a quarter million acres of pine forest, with the island of Evia and areas of the Peloponnese, including near the archaeological site of the ancient Olympics, also hit.

Mitsotakis told lawmakers an earlier public apology for the disaster was also a call for action to become better at tackling such phenomena." 

It's going to take more  than the words of a European Leader to make us start taking this as serious as we should. You would think that one disaster after another would spur us into action. Clearly we are too selfish for that. The behavior of some when it comes to this COVID-19 pandemic is proof of that.

Let's keep the folks of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast regions in our thoughts. And let's start seriously thinking about where we go from here when it comes to climate change. We will be doing this all against the backdrop of Ida proving to us, once again, that climate change is real. 

*Pic from time.com

Caption Sunday.

 

 I need a caption for this picture.

Pic from Palmbeachpost.com

? of the day.

The question of the day is this:

Who do you blame most for the s**tshow in Afghanistan right now?

Here are your choices.

A. George W. Bush. (Sent troops there in the first place.) 

B. Barack Obama. (Didn't get them out)

C. Donald Trump. (Legitimized the Taliban and freed thousands of their soldiers.) 

D. Joe Biden. (Bungled the withdrawal of American allies and Afghan interpreters.)

E. The Afghan people themselves. (They didn't even put up a fight. And maybe they were never going to.)