Kitchen Sink Omelet

If we can keep making music like this, then I still have hope for our future.

The exhaustive conspiracy theories about Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, explained and debunked by Newsweek Adapted by Daffyd ap Morgen The entire Hogg family is connected to the CIA, FBI and CNN Like many conspiracy theories, these likely started with a tiny kernel of truth:  Hogg’s father is a retired FBI agent-information that the teen volunteered offhand during a television interview. Hogg or his mother is a CNN VIP who is "pimping" her son   This developed after a photo surfaced of Hogg and his sister, Lauren, touring the studios as children.  According to Snopes, the family was actually on a $35 VIP tour.  Rebecca Boldrick, the mother of the Hogg siblings, works as a school teacher, which the Broward County School confirmed. Hogg didn’t attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School A picture from a different yearbook with another student named David Hogg is used,  Others circulate a mugshot from a 26-year-old California man named David Hog...

To Do Next for the #NeverAgain Movement: Settle on a Clear Demand Social Justice and Activism by Ted Rall | April 5, 2018 - 5:22am Adapted by Daffyd ap Morgen A huge turnout will not lead to new gun legislation. Victory is achievable when rallies sharpen their focus. Movements need enthusiasm and careful strategizing to sustain and grow. Congress and the president ignore one-off events of large groups of Americans carrying signs, and chanting slogans.  Sustained movements must be organized around a message. Social media can bring large groups of people together quickly.  But they also need a simple, coherent, bumper-sticker-ready demand message. The 10 printed demands for the March on Washington remind us of American society’s failure to address the needs of the poor and oppressed since 1963.  They had a clear, coherent set of demands, beginning with: “Comprehensive and effective Civil Rights legislation from the present Congress — without compromise or ...

From Daily Kos : ME-Gov: A huge mess is unfolding in Maine, after Secretary of State Matt Dunlap told legislators on Thursday that the state could not conduct its June primaries using instant-runoff voting (IRV) due to a legal issue first pointed out by the state attorney general's office. Confusingly, though, Dunlap later said his department would nevertheless proceed with implementing the new system, which was passed by voters in 2016, claiming that election officials "do not have time to do anything else."​ ​The legal dispute is highly arcane but it leaves the state in a precarious position. Both Dunlap and state Attorney General Janet Mills, who is a candidate for governor, urged the legislature to correct the problem, but that's simply not going to happen, since Republicans and a number of Democrats are opposed to IRV. That means the issue is headed to court, though it could play a role on the campaign trail, too: One of Mills' opponents in the Democra...

https://twitter.com/ManInTheHoody

"Maryland School Shooter killed by Armed School Resource Officer." Let's unpack this: A student brings a gun to school.  The armed student opens fire on other students, wounding two students.  The armed student specifically targets a young female.  An armed school resource officer intervenes.  Both fire at each other.  The armed shooter dies in EMR.  The armed school resource officer is lauded as a hero.  We shrug and say, "Too bad."  The armed school resource officer is now touted as proof that we need armed school personnel to counter the threat of rage-student-revenge shootings.  I can't go any further than this because the sheer insanity of this, the mass hysteria of this, is mind-numbing. We shrug, and this is the new normal . And of course the answer is more guns . The student doesn't have a gun to bring to school.  This horrible syllogism, this mad freight train of conservative mythology stops in its tracks. The...

This horrible, and part of the horror is it is so commonplace....

Driftglass quoting Michelle Goldberg on Meet the Press: Transcript: MICHELLE GOLDBERG: I mean I am maybe a very naive person because I just cannot get my head around the psychology that there are good people among the white supremacists is not a bridge too far, but tariffs are, right? And that I can kind of suck up the white supremacy for a tax cut, but this is my red line. I mean I just -- you know, I will go to my grave not understanding the mentality not just of the Gary Cohn but all the people that collaborate with these people. TOM BROKAW: I don't think that's being fair to Gary Cohn. GOLDBERG: What? You think Gary Cohn has collaborated with this foul, disgusting government for a tax cut? JOHN PODHORETZ Yeah. He is the economics person. He's not the Charlottesville person. And he could say to himself, you know, "I'm trying to serve the country. I think this is a good thing to do, to do the tax cut." He did the tax cut and then the policy that...

xkcd strikes again!

Bobby Cramer : 'Kasky began a group text with a few friends that has since ballooned to include as many as 19 participants. Someone built a website, while another person designed a logo. “I’ve been there [in the group chat] since basically hour one,” said Whitney. “Cameron just felt really inclined to make a specific movement. You can’t just make change. You have to be organized.”' Conservative neo-fascists are terrified of these students, and try to smear and minimize them at every opportunity.

Televangelist Billy Graham is dead. As the man who helped paste the face of the Xian God onto institutional racism, thus justifying thousands of deaths, spreading his homophobic bile to developing nations, I am definitely not sorry to see him go. And as a pagan, I'm not surprised he's considered welcome to the Xian Heaven instead of roasting in eternal torment as he deserves. This world is a slightly better place with him gone.

Bobby Cramer : Washington Post : ' The White House was under siege. Domestic abuse allegations against a senior aide were ignored, pointing to a potential high-level coverup. Two Cabinet secretaries were caught charging taxpayers for luxury travel. A Playboy centerfold alleged an extramarital affair with the president. And the special counsel’s Russia investigation was intensifying. The tumult was so intense that there was fervent speculation that President Trump might fire his chief of staff. But a gun massacre at a Florida high school last Wednesday, which left 17 dead, seemed to shift the media glare away from the Trump scandals and gave embattled aides an opportunity to re­focus on handling a crisis not of their own making. While the White House mourned the loss of life in Parkland, Fla., some aides privately acknowledged that the tragedy offered a breather from the political storm.

Bobby Cramer : 'I have resolved to ask every elected official running for office from here on out, regardless of party and regardless of office, how much money they’ve received from the NRA or any other gun lobby. Then smile and patiently wait for their answer. / It’s a simple question, really, and they should know the answer. And it should be a matter of public record so if they fudge, we can pull it up and tell them how much they’ve gotten from them. Then ask them what they plan to do with it.'