Fauci: Restrictions likely won't be reversed before Christmas https://t.co/1iVwbjJARP
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) November 29, 2020
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday/Monday, Nov. 29-30Post + Comments (27)
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You
Fauci: Restrictions likely won't be reversed before Christmas https://t.co/1iVwbjJARP
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) November 29, 2020
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday/Monday, Nov. 29-30Post + Comments (27)
by TaMara| 50 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
An energetic 2 yr old GSD can be a real handful, but Major really loves his dad..and he looks so innocent. ? pic.twitter.com/U0V4OwEB7t
— Taking Back America-Biden/Harris2020 (@JoeWins2020) November 30, 2020
I’m just glad to know that I’m not the only one maimed by my dogs this week. And I was reassured by many tweets of people with much smaller dogs landing on their ass. #doglife
Open thread
Sunday Night Open Thread: Major Biden 1/Joe Biden 0Post + Comments (50)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Gun Issues, gun safety
After disputing allegations of misspending for years, the NRA tries to come clean — new tax filing says current and former execs misused the nonprofit’s funds for personal gain. w/ @CarolLeonnig https://t.co/GdMENP9NmF
— Beth Reinhard (@bethreinhard) November 25, 2020
Our bad!… no, really, them bad. They’re trying to save Chief Grifter LaPierre’s worthless arse by blaming the guys who’ve already been thrown off the sledge:
… The NRA said in the filing that it continues to review the alleged abuse of funds, as the tax-exempt organization curtails services and runs up multimillion-dollar legal bills. The assertion of impropriety comes four months after the attorney general of New York state filed a lawsuit accusing NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other top executives of using NRA funds for decades to provide inflated salaries and expense accounts.
The tax return, which The Washington Post obtained from the organization, says the NRA “became aware during 2019 of a significant diversion of its assets.” The 2019 filing states that LaPierre and five former executives received “excess benefits,” a term the IRS uses to describe executives’ enriching themselves at the expense of a nonprofit entity.
The disclosures in the tax return suggest that the organization is standing by its 71-year-old chief executive while continuing to pursue former executives of the group. The filing says that LaPierre “corrected” his financial lapses with a repayment and contends that former executives “improperly” used NRA funds or charged the nonprofit for expenses that were “not appropriate.”…
Break Out the Tiny Violins: Hard Times for the Gun-HumpersPost + Comments (129)
by WaterGirl| 96 Comments
This post is in: Guest Posts, Medium Cool, Open Threads, Popular Culture, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In
In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools unsuffered. We hope it’s a welcome break from the world of shit falling on our heads daily in the political sphere.
Tonight’s Topic: Fat City
On this week’s MC, let’s talk sports and art.
I recently re-watched John Huston’s amazing film “Fat City,” and it got me thinking about the way films/books/TV series use sports to explore culture. This is usually their strength, even if the actual representation of sport is also pretty good. As solid as the football is in “North Dallas Forty” or the boxing in “Raging Bull,” or the soccer in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, the real insights are about the cultures in which these activities occur.
So, what examples can you think of that explore this kind of cultural exploration?
***
? NOTE: For next week’s Medium Cool, we’ll have the discussion of Tom Levenson’s book, Money For Nothing, that we promised in our thread the day Tom’s book was released. ~WaterGirl
by Betty Cracker| 190 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Trumpery
Politico has an article about Dems and left-leaning independent voters reclaiming the American flag after the election:
[F]or many people on both sides of the political chasm, the flag had been re-cast as a kind of shorthand, an extension of the MAGA hat—sending an instant message of which side you were on, or inspiring stereotypes that pulled the country even further apart.
“When I saw somebody with a flag bumper sticker or a t-shirt with a big flag on it, I immediately thought. … It’s a Trump nut job. A crazy person,” said California screenwriter Ed Kamen…
“My attitude’s changed about it now,” Kamen, an independent, told me weeks after the election. “I am proud of my country, I love my flag, I love my country. And it’s nice to see the flag again representing the country as a whole, instead of one section of it.”
The article acknowledges that Republicans co-opted national symbols long before Trump — a literal flag humper — came along to represent the logical extension of Republicans’ worst instincts. But from what I’ve seen, the timing of the change described in the article is off; liberals taking back the flag is not just a post-election thing.
I think Dems and left-leaning indies began taking the American flag back four years ago. Anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot more American flags at anti-Trump and/or anti-wingnut issue demonstrations (Women’s March, airport protests against the so-called Muslim ban, March for Our Lives, etc.) than I recall seeing at anti-war marches, etc., during previous administrations.
Possibly it’s an instinctive response to the idolatry surrounding Trump and the un-American character of his time in office. W was an awful president, and his fans and flunkies questioned opponents’ patriotism. But Trump’s brazen attempt to rebrand America as his property and conflate the national interest with his personal interests strike me as different from W’s more pedestrian Republican awfulness.
Maybe that’s the difference that made some of us reach for our national symbols. We tend to value things more when they’re endangered.
Trump’s hideous visage and/or logo desecrate some of the American flags flown by cultists around here. I’ve never been one to attach a lot of meaning to symbols like flags, but seeing the Trump-despoiled flags makes me angry, as does the thin blue line flag, which I consider another form of desecration.
I’ve seen the whiny cultists in my town who spend their weekends haunting the courthouse traffic light corner and screaming about election fraud and communism fly thin blue line flags and an upside down American flag. But mostly they wave Trump flags.
I considered making a “Who’s Sleepy Now, Bitch?” bumper sticker to escalate my taunting campaign against them. But maybe I’ll just put an American flag sticker on my car — for the first time in my life.
It’s not so much that we’ve taken back the flag; it’s that the Trumpists tossed it aside in favor of grotesque knock-offs that express their allegiance to their idol instead of the country. So the flag is ours now.
Open thread!
This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment
Here's what I'm left wondering:
Why Did Even More Americans Vote for Biden?https://t.co/grW4k1bXGX
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 27, 2020
Dyspeptic Open Thread: Statler, Waldorf, and MePost + Comments (248)
by WaterGirl| 17 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
I kept taking photos throughout the fall, intending to send them to Anne Laurie for a Garden Chat. I never got them sent, but maybe we can use some garden cheer this morning.
Imm’s comment about missing the Garden Chat this morning prompted me to throw this together using the On The Road form.
Last Minute Garden-ish ThreadPost + Comments (17)
I picked 5 bags of these tomatoes the night before our first frost.