Is it safe to come out?

The Obamas: You Can't Fake That! (Warning! May cause bittersweet tears)

Starbucks needs more than racial bias training: "You cant train bias out of people"

snip

“Just doing training is not enough,” said Holly Hutchins, associate professor of human resource development at the University of Houston’s College of Technology. “Organizations tend to rush to the training option as a way to quickly window-dress issues, especially around gender or racial bias.”

Of all the options available for educating the workforce, Hutchins said diversity training “actually has the least impact”.

“People are feeling like they’re going to be strong-armed into changing their beliefs and perspectives about something, and it can often trigger even more stereotypes and backlash,” she said.

snip

Heather McGhee, president of Demos, an equal rights thinktank, will develop the Starbucks training plan with the former US attorney general Eric Holder and representatives of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Anti-Defamation League.
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McGhee said she was not surprised by what happened to Nelson and Robinson.

“It called to mind some of my earliest memories as an African American of feeling unwelcome and being discriminated against in stores and restaurants and movie theaters,” McGhee said. “This is – more than most people who are not black know – a regular part of the considerations we have when moving through public and private spaces in America.”

McGhee said that while the closure of stores and the implementation of racial bias training was an eye-catching step, it would serve “really as an introduction”. It was important that Starbucks carried on the work, she said, including encouraging “interpersonal interactions” among employees of different races and backgrounds.


More:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/21/starbucks-racial-bias-training-black-men-arrested?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=272313&subid=20993289&CMP=GT_US_collection

Am I missing something? With all the real news going on, why is Barbara Bush dying a big deal?

Just have to say this again: Obi Wan was SO wrong when he said you'll never find a more wretched

hive of scum and villainy. The hive just keeps getting bigger and more wretched by the day. You'd never be able to sell it as a movie. Too unbelievable.

Congress people saying illegal to bomb Syria w/o their approval. T just announced he's bombing??

What??? Two congress folks on Chris Hayes just said he has to get congressional approval to bomb and that it's illegal. But I guess this is just one more example of him being outside the law.

On Chris Hayes: Cohen is a fixer, not an attorney, and there is no client/fixer privilege.

Therefore, attorney / client privilege does not apply.

ANd if Trump pardons Cohen, Cohen can no longer take the fifth amendment.

Important point about framing gun debate at town hall with my state reps and senator

Last week I went to a town hall with my state rep and another from a neighboring district and my senator; all progressives, all wonderful; they do regular town halls and are very responsive to constituents. They have been on the right side of the gun debate all along and have always worked for better gun laws, but getting only incremental change each legislative session due to the amount of resistance.

It was my state rep and one from a neighboring district and my state senator. What I noticed is that they were very careful to always say "gun violence prevention" rather than "gun control." It wasn't automatic yet; sometimes they would start to say gun control and then change to gun violence prevention. There were two NRA types who started shouting when the gun issue came up; insisting the reps and senator wanted to take away the second amendment and generally spouting NRA talking points. The others in the audience told them to be quiet let the reps/senator answer the questions. I realized that "gun control" is like a red flag in front of a bull, and gun violence prevention is a much better way to frame it.

This is Oregon, and we have liberal Portland and then a whole bunch of rural areas in the eastern part of the state, so a lot of gun lovers.

On another note, one of the reps referred to the "tax deform bill." It has made it very difficult for them to figure out a state budget becasue nobody really knows what the tax bill does yet. They spent a lot of time talking about all the things they are having to do at the state level in response to all the craziness in DC. It has taken a lot of time away from what they would have been doing with state business if that were not the case.

You were wrong, Obi Wan. We have found a more wretched hive of skum and villainy.

Hillary 2004: "Without paper, voting machines could be programmed to help GOP steal elections"

Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Bob Graham co-sponsored a bill to require paper prior to the 2004 election because they saw the writing on the wall This is an excellent article that lays out all the problems and controversy around the introduction of paperless DREs.

I read this August of 2004 and knew then it was going to be stolen, along with a lot of other DUers. Now finally we have NYT publishing a video of a voting machine hack by a cyber security expert.
See https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210459183

It has been exceedingly difficult to get attention on this issue. Verified Voting has worked tirelessly since before the 2004 election and it was through their efforts that the NYT piece happened.


The Nation
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
Electronic counts, unaudited touch-screen ballots, enhance opportunities for fraud.
By Ronnie Dugger
July 29, 2004


In the US Senate seven Democrats and the one Independent are co-sponsoring a bill by Senators Bob Graham and Hillary Clinton to require paper trails on DREs by November, with a loophole for jurisdictions whose officials deem it to be technologically impossible. Clinton told the press that without a voter-verified paper trail GOP-leaning corporations might program voting machines to help Republicans steal elections [see sidebar, page 16]. In an interview in his hideaway office in the Capitol, Graham told me that he regards his and Clinton’s bill as so obviously needed that it’s “a no-brainer.” The absence of a paper trail on the DREs could endanger “the legitimacy” of November’s election, Graham said.

New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt introduced a House bill more than a year ago requiring a paper trail on DREs. It has 149 co-sponsors, including a few prominent Republicans. Holt says, “The verification has to be something that the voter herself or himself has to do”; without that, “we will never have a truly secure election.” Holt’s bill has opened up a partisan divide in the House. The chairman of the committee to which his bill is assigned, Ohio Republican Bob Ney, informed Holt that he is against the bill and would not allow a hearing on it. A few days later Graham and Holt wrote their fellow members of Congress that “without an independent, voter-verified paper trail, we will be able only to guess whether votes are accurately counted.” Last month Ney relented and scheduled two hearings. Holt plans to offer his bill as an amendment to the Treasury appropriation after Congress returns from its August recess. Graham is still mulling his strategy.

Much more:
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-they-could-steal-election-time/

And of course we know that much more than a paper trail is needed, but the point is a lot of people were on it way back then and trying to do something about it.