It turned to be about a dozen crows fighting over the contents of a discarded fast food bag in a parking lot.

In retrospect, I may have merely witnessed an unkindness.

After all, it is hard for most of to tell the difference between crows and ravens.

Talking to an old friend at my former university recently, he mentioned that one of the trends he is now seeing and his colleagues are seeing in other blues states is a wealth of LBGTQ applicants for open positions from states like Texas and Florida. Call it a red state brain drain or simply LGBTQ people not feeling safe in red states even at the higher education level anymore.

The trend is highly noticeable since many of these job searches have until recently, produced very little in the way of viable candidates over the last decade. The pools of applicants just haven't been all that great until republican governors like DeSantis began declaring war on higher education.

This also extends to students unwilling to apply to schools in red states as a result of laws like DeSantis' Don't say gay law and restricting what can be taught and what can't be taught.

As the red states trend dumber and the blue states benefit from idiotic laws, both sides have something to feel good about, if only a little.

No law is going to save us. Nothing Congress will do will ever prevent this horrific slaughter of our sons, our daughters, our wives, our husbands, and all those we love. No one is coming to save us. We're alone unless we act together and we have a plan.

It is far past the hour we needed to act but it isn't too later. We need to stop being shielded from the carnage. We all have cameras on our phones and we need to have the unbelievable courage to use them. At every single mass shooting, the camera phones need to be documenting the carnage and then plastering the internet, cable news, and newspapers with as many scenes of dead children, dead grandparents, dead babies as possible.

It is a horrific ask I know. But these victims can't speak for themselves anymore and we have to. We have to until something is done. Inaction isn't a choice anymore. We have to do the unthinkable or we have to accept that we'll never end gun violence.

Demand MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, and every other news outlet publishes graphic images of the carnage in America. Let the world see what we live with until nobody would even consider taking a trip to this country. If it were me or my child laying in the bushes with our faces blown off, I'd want the world to see what republicans have brought us to.

I first started noticing it online in chat forums and then started hearing it in republican controlled State Houses across the country. They have two reasons to change the meaning of the word. The first is to muddy the waters so that when someone uses the word insurrection, it doesn't just refer to the January 6th insurrection but anything they choose to call an insurrection. This effectively mutes the criticism of their ilk's behavior by attempting to inject many instances of insurrection and making their insurrection just one of many, whether or not the latter instances are even remotely related to the term insurrection. If you speak out against Repuke policies, you're an insurrectionist. If you protest against Repuke policies, you're an insurrectionist.

The second thing it does, is give their ilk a talking point that they can throw back in the faces of those that point out that they tried to overthrow the government after losing an election. Never mind arguing with them that protesting policies in no way equates to an insurrection and that public protest is a Constitutionally protected right while insurrection is treason. They don't care as long as they have something to use in one of their loosely based in reality arguments.

The reason any of this matters is because in any fascist authoritarian autocratic movement, the meaning of words begins to change. The definition of insurrection is a violent uprising against an authority or government. Any protest in opposition to their agenda is now considered violence in their world. The right to protest is likely the next casualty of this anti-democratic cabal.

The term is: Reverse Validation. It is when a politician or a leader or a media organization takes an issue like birth control, gay marriage, or even child labor laws, and publicly sows doubt and controversy where issues such as these seem to most of us to have been settled already. Why do this? Because it releases lots and lots of energy in the population it is directed at.
"The war on Christmas" is an example of a seasonal reverse validation. A kind of hybrid use of this ideology. Reverse validation quickly angers people around some issue and once the energy has been effectively used up, another issue is introduced and another and another keeping the target audience either angry or on the edge of anger all of the time.
You might have an easier time remembering this dynamic if you simply call it the Fox business model.

The dynamic of the gun manufacturing lobby pushing more and more lenient gun access laws across the country as well as a core group of Right wing Second Amendment fanatics threatening any Republican with loss of their legislative position if they promote any commonsense gun legislation, boils down to Republicans trading our children's lives for their coveted government jobs.

So, what exactly is the ratio of Republican legislators to dead children over time? How many children does it cost to keep each Republican comfy cozy in their lucrative taxpayer job?

The only thing these Republicans worry about is the loss of their jobs. They aren't even pretending to care about kids gunned down in classrooms anymore. They simply go silent until the next shooting and quietly pass more and more lenient gun laws in between mass shootings. Rinse and repeat.

The cost of electing any Republican is just too high. No child deserves to die so some fraternity boy can live up to daddy's expectations. If they are willing to use our children to further their own political careers, why do we even need them? The Republican Party has to wither and die if our children are to live in a world free of school mass shootings.

ELECT DEMOCRATS - SAVE CHILDREN.

Says Trump.

Now wait a minute. A couple of protesters wanted to defund the police because the police were openly killing citizens and the Right wingers went nuts. I mean, you never saw any major democrats support this idea but it was definitely said by some of the protesters in the wake of multiple police abuses. I get the passion but not the solution.

Now we have Trump calling for defending Federal Law Enforcement because he has been charged personally. Is the Right going to go nuts again?

The two motives are pretty stark. One is concern for the safety of citizens on the streets that may be pulled over for a broken tail light and end up dead while the other is simply Trump concerned for himself.

This is why I find the Right such a collection of hypocrites. It's pretty straight forward.

I have held a grudge against the majority of the media outlets for both spending way too much time covering Trump during the 2016 election and allowing him to ridicule the media in general all the while letting Fox kiss his ass. The rest of the media hasn't given up on this dynamic and we might just see it all again in 2024. I'm sick of it.

The crazier Trump gets, the more free coverage he gets. The more free coverage he gets, the more people tune into his message. The more people tune into his message, the more people end up voting for him.

Trump is like a drug to these media outlets. They all want to be the first to report that he made a racial, misogynist, hateful, statement about whoever and the media eats it up. All the while, Trump is openly condemning them as the enemy of the people. This game only works if you participate.

Here's an idea... STOP FUCKING COVERING THIS ASSHOLE THAT IS BOTH USING YOUR NEWS OUTLET AS FREE ADVERTISING AND CONDEMNING YOU AS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!

It's that simple. Stop hiding behind the silly idea that all news is worth reporting.

That's why you never see woke conservatives and why they see the term as an insult to label others with.

We have a policing problem in this country. We have a policing system that investigates itself, is accountable to itself, and disciplines itself. When hasn't that been a recipe for corruption in any organization?

Only since the proliferation of cell phones and body cameras has the problem with these public servants been so front and center. Any young black person will tell you that this is nothing new. It just has more visibility now that we have cameras everywhere.

If there are legions of good cops serving today and only a few bad apples, why aren't the vast majority of these good cops turning their fellow cops in for corruption? If you turn your head in the face of corruption, aren't you also corrupt?

Don't even get me started about qualified immunity for police. Ultimately, if a cop is found to have committed some kind of corrupt act, and they are held responsible in civil court, the taxpayers end up footing the bill and that has to end.

Show me the downside for a corrupt cop here. How are they ever held accountable?

Have you ever had an occasion where you called the cops and they showed up and caught the thief, or found a stolen item, or solved a crime? Did they even try or was it a waste of time?