It's #WorldRefugeeDay , and that's a thing that I am. Also, Col. Vindman, LTC Vindman, @juliaioffe, @IlhanMN, @biannagolodryga and other people that strut around this country with opinions as if they own the place.
Which we do.
Because this is what America was meant for. https://t.co/RZNU6rOsSv— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) June 18, 2021
Yup — this *is* what America was meant for!
The BBC has a wonderful photo essay — 1,000 Dreams to Mark World Refugee Day.
Factfile on the world's refugees and displaced persons, including the largest burden on populations, and where they come from, according to UNHCR data #AFPgraphics pic.twitter.com/XZg0L6AnSG
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 20, 2021
raven
Shout out to Col. Vindman, LTC Vindman! Anyone know which is a bird?
Baud
That map is eye opening.
raven
@Baud: Does it say how many we have, I’m on drugs.
Baud
@raven:
No, but it’s a small dot.
Ken
@Baud: And they’re all in Kansas.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Hope the drugs are helping.
Anyway, on topic, both my parents and my dear wife’s parents were refugees, so this is personally meaningful.
Baud
@Ken:
As if they haven’t suffered enough.
tom
Poor babies.
Ken
@tom: Backstory: He was working, and suddenly launched into a pro-TFG tirade at the customer, who listened for a minute then said “Sir, this is a McDonald’s. Are you going to take my order or not?”
Baud
@tom:
“You try to overthrow one government….”
Another Scott
@tom: That tweet excerpt is wrong.
Cuccinelli served as the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security according to Wikipedia.
IOW, he was never Senate confirmed. He was Acting.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cermet
People aren’t seeing the whole picture – as AGW grips, not thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands, nor millions but thousands of millions of people will be displaced in thirty or so years. If the current refuge level is serious, try thinking about the very near future. Wars will be the least of it – combine with new plagues, dwindling food supplies, vast new droughts over previously stable lands that use to be used for crops, and temperatures far above current records lasting many weeks to months. That is the future even if we started to seriously reduce current emissions. These are facts and thanks to our stupidity, our children and grandchildren will be living in this new world.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Grandparents on Mom’s side were refugees from the Mexican Revolution. On Dad’s side, from the Russian Revolution. I will always sympathize with refugees.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Wasn’t even Acting, since I think that has a time limit, which is why he was SOPDDSHS.
tom
@Another Scott: Confirmed or not, he is still a “Trump person” and therefore untouchable. My sympathy for him and other Trump people in the same boat is non-existent.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Since Alex retired as a LTC, I’m guessing his brother is the bird. Wikipedia* says both are LTC’s
*Wikipedia has been known to be wrong.
Timurid
Twitter PROTIP: Don’t call a blue check a Nazi. Especially the kind of blue check who really deserves to be called a Nazi. I called Baseball Crank a Nazi in one of his “LOL… Anybody seen Biden’s dog and son?” threads. I also invited him to commit a gross but physically impossible act. Less than a minute after posting I was hit with a 7 day ban for ‘promoting self harm.’
I’ve only been suspended from Twitter once before. The first case was almost certainly me triggering a bot. I was riffing on the Shakespeare ‘all the lawyers’ quote, and the phrase ‘I will kill’ was probably auto-flagged. Nothing I typed today would have been caught by an AI, but I didn’t stop to think that every high volume thread produced by Baseball Crank and other right wing personalities has its own war room of mods tracking it. I do fear for that one guy who compared Crank to Eichmann. He likely got perma-banned along with his whole family…
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Found it
Vindman is the twin brother of Alexander Vindman, who was a key witness in the Ukraine impeachment inquiry. The brothers were both Army officers serving on the National Security Council when they raised concerns about former President Donald Trump’s phone call to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019. They told an NSC lawyer that Trump’s phone call, in which he sought to pressure Kyiv for political dirt on his then political opponent, Joe Biden, was potentially illegal.
Suzanne
@tom: If I am ever again in a position to have input into hiring decisions, and I ever catch a whiff of Trumpiness, it is a hard-ass pass from me. They did enough “culture fit” and selection of straight white dudes for decades. I don’t want to be around those people.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Col. Eugene Vindman is a bird colonel. The “light colonel” (LTC) Alexander gets a silver oak leaf.
ETA: Oops, got ’em reversed.
Steeplejack
@tom:
Fuck that guy.
raven
@Suzanne: I have this photo album from when my dad coached in the northern burbs of Atlanta. They are wonderful black and whites of team, games, cheerleaders (with my when I was 6) and other school stuff. I went their FB page to see if there were any likely candidates to send it to. It’s and all black school now but it was 75-25 white back then. The mods on the site are all white trump fucks so I’ll just keep it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Hey, if he can’t lie on his own résumé, whose résumé can he lie on?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Again, according to Wikipedia(which also comports with my recollection) Alex Vindman’s promotion was blocked by TFG, so he retired as a LTC.
Spanky
@Steeplejack:
One is silver, one is brass
Either one
Can kick your ass
– Burma Shave
raven
@Spanky: pffft. . . .lifers
Suzanne
@raven: Yep. I would do the same thing. I just don’t want to associate with the Trumpy in any way, and if I have any say in the matter, I won’t.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I don’t understand the refugee map. Are those blue blobs where the refugees have gone, or the countries they came from? Does anybody know?
JPL
@Suzanne: Same. Local politics is nonpartisan, but one person that I campaigned for thinks Marjorie Taylor Greene makes sense. The person won, and is doing a great job, but she can find someone else to store and deliver the signs, as well as flyers.
mrmoshpotato
@tom:
Cry harder, Trump trash. They should’ve heave hoed this trash out the door.
ETA – sorry, they suck the ass of a guy who throws people out of windows. Oops, he slipped from 10 feet away…
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Besides, everyone knows it’s called Trump Cancelation.
CaseyL
@tom:
I’m sure he, and the rest of them, can find work in the areas that still love Trump. But my guess is none of them want to actually live and work in those areas, with those people.
tom
@CaseyL: I suppose if all else fails, they could hawk gold and diet supplements on InfoWars …
Ohio Mom
Ohio Dad, endearing nerd that he is, collects stamps. One lot he bid on and won included a fair amount of unused modern American stamps, which were of no interest to him. So I use them to send birthday, thank you, and other cards.
This is a long introduction to one of my favorite stamps, the 1960 four cents “World Refugee Year” one.
I hardly have any left because I stick one on every envelope (you have to use a lot of low denomination stamps to get to 55 cents).
My unspoken message is, look at us! We used to be a country that promoted and even celebrated our commitment to taking care of refugees. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
laura
Shout out to Ali Muhammad Ali, my friend who hails from Libya. Held in prison camps and disavowed after conscription by Kadafi, Ali Ali made his way to America and finally settled in Scaramento. I’m in awe of his personal story and deep faith and optimism in America. I am humbled by people who bring great gifts to our country because they are different and they look different and their food and their ways are new and despite all the difference, we are alike in every way that matters.
frosty
@Ohio Mom: One sad result of Biden’s win is that I can no longer stick the US flag stamp upside down to register a protest. It just looks normal and apolitical now. But I’ll take that trade off.
Suzanne
@JPL: I am not someone who participates in any sort of violence in my personal life, I don’t own guns, I’ve never been in a physical fight, etc….. but I will admit that I cheered really, really hard when Mike Ness from Social Distortion punched a MAGA douchebag who was being obnoxious at one of his shows. Fuck around with an old punk, find out.
Amir Khalid
@tom:
Ha! Their Schade brings me Freude.
Ohio Mom
frosty:
American flag stamps have been a thing for quite a while. Using them upside down in times of distress makes sense.
I almost always include a low denomination flag stamp on my evnvelopes because during TFG years I decided I wasn’t going to let MAGAites claim it as theirs. In their own way, they made me more outwardly patriotic.
Uncle Cosmo
@Spanky: Um…the silver oak leaf is LTC. The brass one is MAJ. A silver eagle is COL, hence the term “bird colonel.”
I never even frackin’ served & I know that.
Jay
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
the blue dots are where the refugees have gone, some are internal, most, external. Another way of looking at it, is the blue dots represent the refugee’s that a country is sheltering, some well, some mediocre, some bad.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@tom: Can’t imagine why an organization would want to hire lawyers who follow the law instead. Tots and pears, Cuckoo-nelli.
TKH
That Slava Malamud tweet is just so on the nose. Should put a twist in the kickers of just the right people.