Horse kicks tree, farts on dogs, then runs away

I don't approve, but I do understand

McDonald's pulled out of Russia. Apparently Burger King & KFC have not.

I'm not able to boycott Burger King or KFC in outrage, since I never eat there. But I feel like something should be done about that.

The difference between combat and noncombat deaths is pretty arbitrary

If someone puts on a uniform, they're taking on all the risks that go with the service. Whether they're shot by an insurgent in a country we're stationing military advisors in or they crash a jeep on duty on an air base in Greenland or they suffocate in a kitchen fire aboard an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, they've died taking the risks that come along with serving the security needs of the Republic. All these sacrifices are costly, necessary, and honorable.

Universal background checks. Now. No loopholes.

That is not all.

Dude messed with the wrong lady (warning: animal violence)

"Jesus Guns Babies" -- Republican campaign slogan imitates parody

Republican Candidate’s Bonkers Campaign Sign Has Everyone Puzzled

A Republican candidate seeking the party’s nomination for governor in Georgia held an event with a “Jesus Guns Babies” sign on her bus as she insisted that the state is a Christian theocracy.

“We’re gonna do a political rally and we’re gonna honor Jesus,” Kandiss Taylor said on Sunday, then dismissed any notion of separation of church and state.

“We are the church,” she said. “We run this state.”

She launched into a confusing explanation about how the church, as a business, can’t control the government “monetarily,” but that the church’s people do in fact control the government.

“We are the church, and if it’s of, by and for the people, the church runs the state of Georgia,” Taylor said. “This is our state. We decide what happens.”

"Smells So Bad" -- Kushner cashed in BIG in months after leaving office. Mostly Persian Gulf oil $

Jared Kushner, Donald's Trump son-in-law, and former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin collectively raised $3.5 billion from the Middle East shortly after leaving the Trump administration, presenting potential conflicts of interest given that both men cultivated diplomatic relations with Middle Eastern leaders during their time in government.

According to The New York Times, Mnuchin collected $1.5 billion from the Emiratis, Kuwaitis and Qataris within three months of his exit from the Trump administration. Kushner, a former senior advisor to Trump, likewise raised $2 billion from the Saudi government during a six-month period after his tenure was complete.

The investments, which both men raised for their respective private investment firms, appear to stem from relationships developed while Kushner and Mnuchin were touring around the Middle East to finance the Abraham Fund, a $3 billion fund designed to promote economic cooperation and development between the U.S., the UAE, and Israel. The fund ultimately disintegrated, but shortly after Kushner and Mnuchin left office, "each quickly launched a private fund that in some ways picked up where the Abraham Fund had ended," the Times reported.

Abortion-Travel Bans Are "Next Frontier" With Roe Set to Topple

Nine states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—have abortion bans on the books, albeit unenforceable now, that were enacted before Roe was decided in 1973, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

What’s not clear is whether states can enforce their laws beyond their own borders—in particular, by trying to stop their residents from traveling across state lines to terminate a pregnancy. Trying to impose their abortion policies upon other states is what one legal expert calls “the next frontier in anti-abortion legislation.”

“It’s going to be an invitation to states to innovate in restricting and banning abortion,” said David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia, who’s authored an upcoming article on cross-state legal issues that could arise in the context of abortion rights. “There are going to be a number of states who are not satisfied with just knowing that there’s no abortion happening in their own state. They’re going to want to do more than that.”

The Cut: The Future of Abortions in America: an access map

The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally.

{snip}

America has always had a tradition of informal information sharing about how to end a pregnancy. Its embers have been kept alive by a network of grassroots organizers who not only were expecting Roe to fall but have already been working under barriers that belie this supposedly constitutional right.

The only good news now is that, in most cases, an abortion outside the blessing of the law no longer requires begging at the feet of a doctor or the often brutal, sometimes ineffective measures women took on their own before Roe: the infamous coat hanger, the consumption of toxic substances, a stranger with faked credentials. Nor will it bifurcate quite as it did in the ’60s, when wealthy, connected white women flew to countries like Japan and Sweden for abortions performed by doctors, while Black and brown women died in special hospital wards set up for septic abortion attempts. Modern pharma and the old-fashioned USPS now enable an early pregnancy to end safely at home — that is, if you can evade surveillance and law enforcement, which have already criminalized people, mostly women of color, for their pregnancy outcomes, even where abortion is technically legal.

A note about lying and Republican projection

Remember this talking point from the pre-Covid universe?

Ben Carson’s claim that ‘taqiyya’ encourages Muslims ‘to lie to achieve your goals’
Washington Post | September 22, 2015
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Carson, a neurosurgeon seeking the GOP presidential nomination, caused a stir when he declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he could not support a Muslim becoming president.

In a follow-up interview with The Hill, he asserted that he “did not believe Sharia [law] is consistent with the constitution of this country.” He said he could make an exception if the Muslim running for office “publicly rejected all the tenets of Sharia [Islamic law] and lived a life consistent with that.”

But then Carson added he was concerned about something called “taqiyya.” As he put it, “Taqiyya is a component of Sharia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals.” (Note: the Hill newspaper originally quoted Carson as saying “Shia” but later updated it to “Sharia.”)

Are Muslims Commanded to Deceive? Why Melanie Phillips Should Know Better
Carnegie Endowment | December 5, 2019
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A recent column published by the Times of London demonstrates why such editorial diligence, especially when religious claims are concerned, is so vital.

Admittedly, the columnist, Melanie Phillips, has form when it comes to anti-Muslim bigotry. Nevertheless, the Times seemingly did nothing to prevent her from describing “the doctrine of taqiyya” as “the command to deceive for Islam.” She goes on to enlist the claim of a deceased professor (without citation) that such divinely authorised deceit is common practice among Muslims.

This is, of course, nonsense. And had Phillips or her editor done their due diligence, they would have discovered as much.

Trump’s counter-jihad: How the anti-Muslim fringe conquered the White House
Vox.com | Feb 13, 2017
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Gaffney is the president of the Center for Security Policy, or CSP, a right-wing think tank located just blocks from the White House. In 2010, it convened a panel to study the Islamic threat to America. The group — which included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Edward Soyster — called itself “Team B II.”

...{snip}...

But the counter-jihadists have taken this medieval concept and turned it into a devious trick that Muslims are using to hide their true violent intentions.

They assert that the peaceful interpretations of Islam offered by Muslim authorities are a form of taqiyya designed to obscure the true nature of Islam from gullible Westerners. They point to things like the 9/11 hijackers going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol as examples of terrorists using taqiyya to blend in. And while the 9/11 hijackers certainly did those things, and may even have tried to justify their actions by saying they were just trying to blend in, they were all Sunni Muslims and therefore never would’ve used the concept of taqiyya to justify their actions.

“Under Islamic law, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations,” Team B II writes in its report. “What Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same thing as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know — or encouraged to think — by Islamic authorities.”

The Islamic Requirement to Perform Taqiyya and Lie to Non-Muslims
Brightwork Research | December 8, 2020
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* Islam may be the most explicit {religion} in calling for the practice to deceive non-believers