May rambling: Uvalde, TX

1400th episode of Coverville

 

health_data_2x
From https://xkcd.com/2620/

Fourteen children and one adult are dead. The assault at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed fourteen students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018. Wait, now it’s 19 children and two adults murdered. The assault at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.

 And… Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) blames CRT?  The time for politics – the politics of actually doing something – is now. Not, as Lee Goldberg points out: “The GOP’s answer is to have a third-grade teacher, armed w/a handgun, take [on a shooter]. Are they insane!?” Evil Stalks the Hall at the NRA. How the Uvalde police kept changing their story. The Weekly Sift guy repeats himself. 

Jacinda Ardern talks about gun control on The Late Show and gives the 2022 Harvard Commencement Address. (Should we move to New Zealand?)

Also

The Rising Tide Of Color, a 1920 book, “is sometimes cited as the origin of Replacement Theory. It’s available for free at Project Gutenberg, but you need a strong stomach to read it because it’s unapologetically racist in a way you seldom see today.”

D’Souza’s ‘Big Lie’ Movie Is So Bad Fox Won’t Promote It

Subway franchises and Utilities: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

USPSTF Guidance Misses the Mark on Youth Suicide Risk Screening

How many lives could have been saved with COVID vaccinations in each state

He Donated His Kidney and Received a $13,064 Bill in Return

Rod Serling sitting around talking about writing

Big ‘Saturday Night Live’ Departures Will Test the Show’s Depth

Before Pixar’s ‘Turning Red,’ ‘Braceface’ and a 1946 Disney Short Tackled the “Taboo” of Menstruation

Now I Know: The Eye Shield That Keeps the Grumps Away and And He Couldn’t Use the Discount Anyway and The €222 Million Nap and The Mystery of the 175-Year-Old Battery-Powered Bell

Undamming the Hudson River

RIP

Roger Angell, Revered Baseball Essayist, Dies at 101

Into The Storm: Alan White, YES drummer 

Ray Liotta Dies: ‘Goodfellas’ Star & ‘Field Of Dreams’ Actor Was 67

Fred Carter, the little-known Black artist behind Chick tracts of evangelism cartoons, Died. Those Chick tracks could be theologically… challenging.

R.I.P. Neal Adams, 1941-2022

MUSIC

Thoughts and Prayers – Drive-By Truckers

Beethoven Symphony No. 7, recast as a piano virtuoso work by Franz Liszt

Mr. Blue Sky and Kodachrome – Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem

Field Of Dreams – The Place Where Dreams Come True/End Titles (James Horner)

You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lie – Dana Valery 

Finale from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones by John Williams

Broken/Head Over Heels – Tears For Fears 

Avatar suite by James Horner

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You – Randy Rainbow

Coverville 1400: The Subject of this Cover Story is Talking Heads and  1401: Covers of 50-Year-Olds

I’m Alright – Jo Dee Messina

MARVEL Uptown Funk

The Untold Story of the White House’s Weirdly Hip Record Collection

March rambling: 151 fictional species

Upstate NY climate haven?

Zoom meetingsWhat is the only country with Catalan as an official national language? What is the only officially bilingual province in Canada? Answers below.

United Methodist conservatives detail plans for a breakaway. Their leaders have unveiled plans to form a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church, with a doctrine that does not recognize same-sex marriage.

North Dakota Is About to Kill the National Popular Vote Compact.

Daily Kos very comprehensive guide to the 117th Congress, members, and districts.

Upstate NY cities named among the best climate havens as the world grows hotter.

Jeff Sharlet: All That We’ve Lost (COVID).

24 Cybersecurity Statistics During the Spiraling Panic Around COVID-19.

Wait at Least Seven Weeks After COVID for Surgery.

Heather McGhee – “The Sum of Us” and The True Cost of Racism | The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Judge blisters prosecutors as he releases 3 wrongfully convicted Black men after 24 years.

The African/American Table.

Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Activist And Power Broker Dies At 85.

Roger Mudd, the longtime TV newsman, dies at 93.

Five things worth knowing about the Mars Perseverance Rover.

Tyranny of Choice.

Why spacing out is good for you.

Vlogbrothers: How Much Hope is OK?

Snow Days May Never Be the Same. As I’ve noted, boo, hiss!

Before You Blow Up on  YouTube | The Cautionary Tale of Jani Lane.

How to Delete Your Old Online Accounts (and Why You Should).

Deep Nostalgia photorealism on the MyHeritage site. Creepy.

Does Alcohol Really Burn Off When Cooked?

Cherry Blossom Cam – U.S. National Park Service in DC. The predicted peak blossom time is April 2-5.

Pokémon at 25: How 151 fictional species took over the world.

 We’re not in Kansas anymore. Or maybe we are.

Now I Know

Attempted Mann-Slaughter and Squashing the Garden and The Blues for Some Boo-Boos and The Soviet Plan to End the Weekend and The Not-Quite-Vice-President Who Was Almost Accidentally President and The Rock-Paper-Scissors Lizards and Arresting The Chief and  Why Blue Means Stop in Hawaii and The Other Harvard Makes a Bad Sale and The Genoa Exception.

MUSIC

Mr. Biden (Bring My Vaccine) – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

String Quartet in G Major – Florence Price

William Tell Overture (ending) – The Great Kat

Karelia Suite and Finlandia by Jean Sibelius.

Coverville 1348: This Day in Covers: February 25, 1976, and 1349: David Gilmour and “Girl” Groups.

Aquarius – Peter Lawford.

Let’s Hang On – Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

The Rebecca Jade section

Home Made, Parts 10 and 11

Panda Remix.

Remind Me

Concert of Pat Metheny music, Live(ish) From SpragueLand: Episode 16, The Fields, The Sky.

Answers

Andorra; New Brunswick.

Rushing to say good things about Limbaugh

cruel bigotries

LimbaughWhen I heard that Rush Limbaugh had died, my first instinct was to post what Arthur posted. In fact, the graphic I purloined from Arthur with permission. My parents DID use to say that if you don’t have something good to say about someone to say nothing. 

Then someone on Quora wrote, “Do you liberals have ANYTHING good to say about him?” So I thought and I thought, and I thought some more. Maybe it’s the Christian thing, or maybe just a challenge. So I took some bits from 1440.com, the AP, the Boston Globe, and Daily Kos.

He was consequential

“You didn’t have to like or even listen to Rush Limbaugh to be affected by what he did. Conservative talk radio wasn’t a genre before him. Without Limbaugh, it’s hard to imagine a Fox News Channel, or a President Donald Trump, or a media landscape defined by shouters of all stripes that both reflect and influence a state of political gridlock.”

“’He was the most important individual media figure of the last four decades,” said Ian Reifowitz, professor of historical studies at the State University of New York and author of ‘The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump.’ Limbaugh led the way in getting people “scared about the browning of the country.”

Changing governmental regs have consequences

“Launched in 1988—shortly after the repeal of a policy requiring equal airtime for opposing commentary on matters of public importance—” his eponymous talk show “expanded to more than 650 affiliate networks, boasting an estimated 20 million monthly listeners “

“There is no talk radio as we know it without Rush Limbaugh. It just doesn’t exist,” said Sean Hannity, who has 15 million radio listeners beyond his Fox News Channel show. “And I’d even make the argument in many ways: there’s no Fox News or even some of these other opinionated cable networks…”

“It wasn’t just that he transformed the media landscape, but he transformed the Republican Party,” said Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” “He became a power player and someone who could move voters.”

He made vulgarity acceptable

“Some of Limbaugh’s language was downright ugly. He invented the term ‘feminazi,’ called Chelsea Clinton a ‘dog’ when she was 12 years old and had to apologize for calling a young woman a ‘slut’ for arguing that birth control be covered by health insurance. He mocked the death of AIDS victims and played the parody song ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ when Obama was elected president.

“In the Limbaugh lexicon, advocates for the homeless were ‘compassion fascists,’… environmentalists were ‘tree-hugging wackos.’ He delivered ‘AIDS updates’ with a Dionne Warwick song, ‘I’ll Never Love This Way Again,’ ridiculed Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease symptoms, and called global warming a hoax.

“The headline on HuffPost’s obituary said Limbaugh ‘saturated America’s airwaves with cruel bigotries, lies and conspiracy theories.’ The Root called him a ‘spouter of racist, hate-filled garbage.'” And he sparked a “firestorm of loud-mouthed, racist, misogynist imitators.”

Ahead of the curve re: fake news

“He was not above baldfaced lies. During the debate over Obama’s 2009 health care bill, he fed the rumor mills over its provisions to have Medicare and insurers pay for optional consultations with doctors on palliative and hospice care, saying they empowered ‘death panels’ that would ‘euthanize’ elderly Americans.

“Limbaugh supported Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen and, on January 7, compared rioters at the Capitol to people who sparked the Revolutionary War.”

His wife apparently loved him

Limbaugh’s wife, Kathryn, made the announcement of his death on his show.

That’s all I’ve got, except for a  Mark Evanier story and some guy talking mostly about himself

“Religious Liberty Task Force”: dangerous

“They are not people of faith but the exact opposite. “

religious liberty task forceI attended church of my choice last Sunday. No one barred the doors or stationed armed militia to block my path. So I’m trying to see what this Religious Liberty Task Force is all about.

ITEM: New Regime Directive Lets Federal Contractors Discriminate Against LGBT People – For Jesus

ITEM: A nominee for a U.S. House of Representatives seat (R-NC) is an ordained pastor who was recorded just three years ago longing for the days when “homosexuality was once criminalized.” “Mark Harris, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but lost the nomination, also insisted that being Christian in America is illegal.”

ITEM: Evangelical U.S. Air Force General Has Secretly Been Running a Christian Online Ministry in Possible Violation of Rules. “AF brigadier general newly in charge of one of the nation’s most celebrated and elite Air Force wings has been running an online evangelical Christian ministry for the last five years—in violation of Air Force and Defense Department rules about religious proselytizing, according to a formal letter of complaint sent to Defense Secretary James Mattis…

[Brigadier General E. John] “Teichert, who flew combat missions over Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, according to his official bio, runs a website called Prayers at Lunchtime for the United States (PLUS). The website doesn’t mention Edwards Air Force Base, but Teichert recently posted a picture of his newly acquired general’s epaulet star, alongside a note about his new rank on the PLUS site.”

ITEM: Florida Gov. Rick Scott earlier this year signed into law a bill that provides $7000 a year in state funding to public school students who are being bullied, enabling them to switch to private, often Christian schools.

Why these are terrible situations! We definitely need a task force to protect us from these religious zealots! Say, what? Religious Liberty Task Force is only protecting what is still the majority religion in the United States?

So this cartoon, or this one aren’t as far-fetched as it would seem.

Stealing from my former presbyter: “I am proud to be part of a Christian tradition that doesn’t peddle in this theological heresy. Let’s be clear, everything these people are advancing from a policy perspective is against the most important religious/theological tenants of all three Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

“They are not people of faith but the exact opposite. People of faith do not separate families or desecrate the Creation or engage in militarism or discriminate or abuse women or harm the poor. And people who take sick, perverse joy in this are most certainly not people of faith and don’t need protecting.”

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial