Dear GOP: South Carolina blood is on your hands
The voice of Republican state senator Larry Grooms from South Carolina is on my teevee, waxing eloquent about the awful shooting death of black Democratic state senator Clementa Pinckney in that Charleston church massacre. He says, “There’s evil in this world,” choking back a little tear. He might even mean it. Yes, there is evil in… Continue reading “Dear GOP: South Carolina blood is on your hands”
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
Stephen Colbert does Trump
Donald Trump‘s big presidential announcement Tuesday was made a little bigger with help from paid actors — at $50 a pop.
New York-based Extra Mile Casting sent an email last Friday to its client list of background actors, seeking extras to beef up attendance at Trump’s event.
“We are looking to cast people for the event to wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement,” reads the June 12 email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “We understand this is not a traditional ‘background job,’ but we believe acting comes in all forms and this is inclusive of that school of thought.” (Read the full email at the bottom of the post.)
The pay was listed as $50 for fewer than three hours of work. According to the email, Extra Mile was reaching out to potential extras in partnership with Gotham Government Relations and Communications, a New York-Based political consulting group that has worked with Trump in the past. Gotham GR had no comment.
Suspicions that the event had hired extras came to light Wednesday when anti-Trump activist Angelo Carusone came across an Instagram photo, showing a man he recognized as a background actor posing at the Trump event. Carusone screengrabbed the photo of the actor, Domenico Del Giacco, and published it in a blog post. Del Giacco has since deleted the account. The photo shows him with a woman, identified in the now-deleted Instagram post as actress Courtney Klotz.
Gee, I wonder whose hateful rhetoric fueled this shooter
The voice of Republican state senator Larry Grooms from South Carolina is on my teevee, waxing eloquent about the awful shooting death of black Democratic state senator Clementa Pinckney in that Charleston church massacre. He says, “There’s evil in this world,” choking back a little tear. He might even mean it. Yes, there is evil in… Continue reading “Gee, I wonder whose hateful rhetoric fueled this shooter”
New $10 bill announced
I guess it’s only going to be worth $7.73?
Will it be Susan B. Anthony or Harriet Tubman? Eleanor Roosevelt or Rosa Parks? Or another important woman from American history?
These will be among the names the nation ponders after the Obama administration’s announcement late Wednesday that a woman will be featured on the $10 bill, the first time in well over a century that a female portrait will grace the United States’ paper money.
The redesigned bill will be unveiled in 2020 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the right of women to vote. The Treasury Department is launching a massive public campaign to solicit suggestions through social media and town halls for what the bill should look like and who should be on it. The only requirements for candidacy are that the woman be deceased and embody the theme of the bill’s new look: “Democracy.”
Pope to consuming nations: Pay your moral debt to the poor
What’s not to love about this Pope? His moral courage is an example to us all. Via The Guardian:
Pope Francis has called on the world’s rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt” to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an undeniable risk to humanity.
The pope’s 180-page encyclical on the environment is not only a moral call for action on phasing out the use of fossil fuels, as was expected. It is also a document infused with an activist anger and concern for the poor, casting blame on the indifference of the powerful.
“The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned,” Francis wrote. “In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.
“The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development.”
In a press conference on Thursday in Vatican City to mark the release of Francis’s encyclical, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who wrote a draft and is the pope’s point-man on social justice issues, said it was imperative for “practical proposals not to be developed in an ideological, superficial or reductionist way”.
“For this, dialogue is essential,” he said.
The encyclical – a statement of papal teaching – describes an “ecological crisis” and includes a section devoted to the latest scientific findings. It argues that climate change is not just a “global problem with serious implications”, but has an impact felt disproportionately by the world’s poorest people.
Francis writes: “Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms”. The failure to respond, he says, points to the loss of a “sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded”.
He calls access to safe water a “basic and universal human right” and says depriving the poor of access to water is akin to denying the right to a life.
The Argentinean pontiff heaps praise on efforts made by scientists to find solutions to man-made problems, and lashes out at those who intervene in the service of “finance and consumerism”.
Mass Shooting At Historic Charleston, SC Church
Yet another mass shooting, and this one certainly appears to be race-motivated. A shooter opened fire on Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police are still looking for a 21-year old white male, wearing Timberland boots and a gray sweatshirt. CNN: Several people were killed in a shooting at an historic African-American church in Charleston,… Continue reading “Mass Shooting At Historic Charleston, SC Church”
WTF?
Jesus. They really do have an entirely different set of rules for their own, don’t they?
A Neptune Township, New Jersey police officer named Phillip Seidle allegedly shot and killed his estranged wife in the presence of their seven-year-old daughter on Wednesday—and reports say that other law enforcement agents on the scene took no action to stop Seidle from firing shots at the victim in their presence, with some officers even hugging and comforting him when he surrendered. From a NJ.com account that quotes prosecutor Marc LeMieux:
At around 11:30 a.m., Asbury Park police officers … saw a 2012 black Volkswagen Jetta being driven by Tamara Seidle turn onto Sewall Avenue. Behind it, LeMieux said, was Phillip Seidle in a 2005 Honda Pilot.
The couple’s 7-year-old daughter was in Phillip Seidle’s passenger seat, he said.
Tamara Seidle crashed her Jetta into an unoccupied green Ford Focus, LeMieux said. At that time, LeMieux said, Phillip Seidle got out of his car, took out his .40- caliber Glock service handgun and fired “several” shots into Tamara’s Seidle’s car.
LeMieux said that Seidle fired again at his wife after his daughter was taken away by fellow officers, and confirmed the accounts of witnesses who told the Asbury Park Press that no attempt was made to use force against Seidle as he fired this second round of shots:
Officers on the scene recognized Seidle, LeMieux said. When asked by the Asbury Park Press why no police force was used to stop Seidle from firing his weapon a second time, LeMieux responded by saying “that is under investigation.”
Tamara Seidle suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died.
Citing a witness, NJ.com reports that other officers “hugged [Phillip Seidle] and patted him comfortingly on the back” when he was eventually taken into custody at the scene.