December 29, 2017

Death threats are forcing professors off campus

Source: CNN

Comments weaponized

In the past year, more than 100 incidents of targeted harassment against professors have been reported on college campuses, according to the American Association of University Professors.
-- A California professor at Orange Coast College who was captured on video in the classroom criticizing President Donald Trump got death threats, according to The Washington Post.
-- CBS News reported a Princeton professor received death threats after giving a commencement speech in which she called Trump a "racist and sexist megalomaniac."
-- A University of Iowa professor was targeted after discussing white supremacy in the context of ancient statues and their use of white marble, InsideHigherEd.com says.

"Historically, it's been conservative professors who have faced retaliation and disciplinary threats, and harassment for offending people," said Ari Cohn, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program for the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
"I think over the course of the past year, as liberal faculty members have become increasingly outspoken with their criticism of the Trump administration, you have seen more professors on the left being targeted."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/us/university-professors-free-speech-online-hate-threats/index.html

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Right from the start, Trump and the right wing have lied their asses off. Trump himself lies an average of 5.5 X per day. "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Adolph Hitler

The right wingers have openly marched in our streets with their stinking swastikas and hooded robes. "The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence." Adolf Hitler

Regulatory agencies in the executive branch have been gutted. Scientific studies from the government have been silenced, and there is even a list of words they cannot use. We've lost net neutrality.

Now, we have right wing hate groups employing the same forms of intimidation that Hitler's nazis did back in the 1930s. It's fucking sick.

December 26, 2017

There's a good chance your holiday returns will end up in a landfill

Each year, I rail against the commercialism of Christmas. The first time I did was when Bush was asked what we could do to help troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars I was against anyway. Bush answered basically that we should keep spending, being consumers, buying things.

Sadly, because of our 'patriotic duty' to consume, every year at this time...WE SPEND MONEY WE DON'T HAVE ON SHIT WE DON'T NEED.

Now, we find out the returns mostly end up in landfills.

Here's the link. I don't have too much more to say because I've been disgusted about this for a long time. But it's sick. Surely in this society we stand for something besides flamboyant consumption?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/26/news/retail-returns-landfill/index.html

December 15, 2017

Late breaking OPINION from CNN. The silent majority of America just roared.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/opinions/alabama-virginia-suburbia-polarization-mitra-kalita-opinion/index.html

This is a provocative article. I live in the suburbs, am very active in the local political arena, and this article makes sense to me. I just don't see the polarization that we see from these nimrods in DC. Here, even the Republicans (mostly) are sane; by that, I mean we can sit down, hash out some solutions to problems we both can live with then roll up our sleeves and get things done.

I'm posting this because it is worthy of discussion. There are some really innovative and encouraging things happening at local levels. It has been an interesting study for me in terms of how local regions manage high economic growth. But I especially posted it because it makes us think in a new way - I get tired of people trashing certain groups, such as white working class people, because in my suburb WE ARE NOT ALL WHITE, BUT WE ARE ALL WORKING CLASS.

My hope is some of the heavy hitters on this site can maybe digest this information and see things in a new way.

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Here are four paragraphs from it as excerpt.

Most Americans are neither coastal elites nor inhabitants of flyover country (both objectionable tropes on their face). Most Americans live in the suburbs, a geographic term the US government is curiously loath to define. But suburbanites are not; a survey by an economist at Trulia, the online real-estate site, finds that 53% of Americans say they live in one. The suburbs mirror US demographic trends; minorities represent 35% of suburban residents, and in 2010, the share of blacks in large metro areas living in the suburbs surpassed 51%, meaning the majority of black Americans are suburbanites, according to Brookings.

The political upsets we've seen this year in New Jersey, Virginia and Alabama represent not so much a blue wave as an affirmation of moderation and civility and neighborliness. It's a far cry from the polarized America of tweets, headlines and political rhetoric. In fact, it is a rejection of that -- and a window into what the suburbs have become. Most Americans do not live in such extremes. Like Doug Jones, the incoming Democratic senator from Alabama, they might support the right to bear arms (with background checks). Or like Virginia's governor-elect Ralph Northam, they might not want to outright demolish Confederate statues but move them to museums.

...the collision of different groups of people eventually creates a certain fluidity and unity among them...A recent University of Pennsylvania study finds the use of political words on Twitter were concentrated among a small group of people who are either "very conservative" or "very liberal." Moderates simply do not wade in. This reticence on the internet could extend to voter turnout -- and perhaps it did in 2016.

But America does not live on Facebook, even if it sometimes feels that way. Americans live in places that care about jobs and schools and taxes. Issues such as health care and anti-corruption efforts seem to matter to suburban voters more than immigration. Brookings also reports the suburbs are growing faster than urban areas, partly because of the lack of affordable housing in cities, making them younger, more diverse. Their outlook -- and values -- feel increasingly cosmopolitan.