Kitchen Sink Omelet

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.'

I like how people say if I can't respect the 45, then respect the office of the POTUS. I respond, "Why? You elected Trump as president, knowing full well he was unfit, and you didn't care. How is that respecting the office?"

From Indivisible.org, how big data is being used for voter suppression--and how inept the oppressors are with sensitive information: On October 23, a story broke in Mother Jones, ProPublica, and Think Progress that caused a big stir in voting rights circles. A group of citizens in Illinois ha d discovered some smoking-gun evidence that the problematic Interstate Crosscheck program had some major security issues—and that key people knew about them. WHAT DID YOU GUYS DISCOVER? COULD YOU WALK US THROUGH THE SECURITY PROBLEMS YOU FOUND? Within the past two weeks we discovered massive security failures in the Crosscheck program and in how the Illinois State Board of Elections (SBE) handles voter data.   We sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to Illinois and other states for information about the program. We were startled by what we got back. For starters, we received multiple usernames and passwords that election officials use to log in to voter data and Cross...

So much criticism of Liberalism posits that the idea of social and cultural progress at the expense of tradition is balloon-juice at best, hedonism at worst. At the heart of this critique is the (often unspoken) catechism "we have to live in the real world" usually expressed in historical anecdotes carefully chosen to prop up this restricted viewpoint. How telling is this look to the past--the history of economic/cultural repression justified by "that's just how things are" to keep us frozen in an eternal profit-loss margin continually favoring a fortunate wealthy few, a trade of a few shekels for the souls of the American people, using historical merit to maintain this obvious lie. Since the historical evidence is overwhelmingly against this worldview, such support from the past must be treated as an article of faith. Anyone who uses this faith to justify the violent treatment of people based on color, gender, status or income is someone who has a vested inter...