March 30, 2018

Rampant Crime Committed by Immigrants is all in Trump's Imagination

“Every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities,” he said last week. “They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.”

In a large-scale collaboration by four universities, led by Robert Adelman, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, researchers compared immigration rates with crime rates for 200 metropolitan areas over the last several decades. The selected areas included huge urban hubs like New York and smaller manufacturing centers less than a hundredth that size, like Muncie, Ind., and were dispersed geographically across the country.

According to data from the study, a large majority of the areas have many more immigrants today than they did in 1980 and fewer violent crimes. The Marshall Project extended the study’s data up to 2016, showing that crime fell more often than it rose even as immigrant populations grew almost across the board.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/30/upshot/crime-immigration-myth.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20180330&nl=upshot&nl_art=0&nlid=74838209emc%3Dedit_up_20180330&ref=headline&te=1

March 30, 2018

Can anyone believe....

....that we have a President of the United States that doesn't know what the Postal Service is for?

.... that doesn't know the difference between a community college and a vocational school?

C'mon, these are not hard concepts to grasp!

March 29, 2018

"It should not be this hard to serve your country."

An op-ed piece appearing in today's New York Times, by David J. Shulkin.

"I have fought to stand up for this great department and all that it embodies. In recent months, though, the environment in Washington has turned so toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive that it became impossible for me to accomplish the important work that our veterans need and deserve. I can assure you that I will continue to speak out against those who seek to harm the V.A. by putting their personal agendas in front of the well-being of our veterans."

Evidently Shulkin was against privatization of the VA system and lost his job over it.

If you run into a paywall, try using your browser's "incognito" function.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/opinion/shulkin-veterans-affairs-privatization.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

March 27, 2018

Arpaio says he will resume attacking Obama's birth certificate if elected

Can anyone believe this delusional whack job??

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/arpaio-says-he-will-resume-attacking-obamas-birth-certificate-if-elected/ar-BBKMLuU?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=mailsignout

March 27, 2018

Hey, Tabasco sauce lovers!

Avery Island, home of the famous hot sauce, could soon become marooned in the face of climate change.

"The threat posed to Tabasco is replicated along much of Louisiana’s coast, where a football field of land is lost every 100 minutes. Around 2,000 sq miles of land, roughly the size of Delaware, has vanished from the state since the 1930s due to a cocktail of maladies and self-inflicted wounds, stemming from the overdevelopment of the Mississippi river and an unquestioning embrace of extractive drilling, topped off by the wrenching global consequences of climate change."

"Climate change has cast a shadow over several everyday staples, menacing the production of chocolate, the harvesting of hops for beer, the growing of coffee beans."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/27/climate-change-louisiana-tabasco-avery-island

OH NO NOT COFFEE, BEER, AND CHOCOLATE!!!

March 26, 2018

Tonight's Vinyl Selection

Heart Like A Wheel

Linda Ronstadt

1974

A mix of older classics in with the new, and Linda's exquisite emotive singing, make this one of her best!

Includes "You're No Good," "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," "Heart Like A Wheel," "When Will I Be Loved," "Willin'" and "You Can Close Your Eyes".

And my favorite "Faithless Love".

I think I'm only going to do more Vinyl Selections occasionally from now on (or, translation: when I'm in the mood!)

March 24, 2018

Tonight's Vinyl Selection

Innervisions

Stevie Wonder

1973

The fact that Stevie Wonder put together a collection of songs so fabulous .... and in doing so addressed themes such as spirituality, drugs, political ethics, life in an urban environment .... and created such classic, funky, and catchy compositions ... this album is truly one for the ages. But then what else would we expect from Stevie Wonder!

Includes "Too High," "Living for the City," "Higher Ground," and "He's Misstra Know It All".

March 23, 2018

Paul Waldman on "macho men".

Former Vice President Joe Biden, age 75, and President Donald Trump, age 71, get into an argument about which one of them could beat up the other.

Let's just think for a moment what it would look like if these two septuagenarian marauders really went at it behind the gym. Not exactly Ali-Frazier.

Biden may be placing himself as women's protector in this scenario, but he still validates the idea that the way to stop sexual assault is for other men to mete out punitive violence, so the transgressing man can be brought to heel. The women in this case have no agency of their own; they're the victims or the audience for Biden's display of chivalry.

That is certainly a contrast with Trump, whose audience has always been other men. Throughout his life, Trump enacted a very public performance of dominant male sexuality, one built not on handsomeness or physical prowess but on possessing desirable women, even if it took simply buying them — or pretending that he had dated them when he didn't (ask Carla Bruni). Men were the ones he played to, to show them that he was superior. Consider that when he was engaged to Marla Maples, he negotiated with Playboy for her to pose nude, but she refused to do it. What kind of man would pressure his fiancee to take off her clothes for the world to see? A man who wants other men to desire his woman, in order to elevate his own status.

http://theweek.com/articles/762394/retrograde-fantasies-trumpbiden-rumble

March 23, 2018

Joe Walsh & Daryl Hall, Life's Been Good!

March 23, 2018

Pick up the Pieces! at Daryl's House