The Republican Party Rebuttal to President Biden's Speech This Week

The Republican Party's response to President Biden's speech to Congress this week was given by Senator Tim Scott of South Carolins. He is Black, in case anyone doesn't know that and he said America isn't racist.Really, Senator Scott?

--Black Americans are far more likely to be stopped by police than white Americans, --far more likely to be arrested than white Americans, --more likely to be charged than white Americans, -- more than 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans, --more likely to be found guilty than white Americans, --more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than white Americans, --once sentenced, they get dependably longer sentences--for the same crimes--as white Americans. But not racist, you say?

Cut Medical Information Funding in the Midst of the Worst, Most Killing Pandemic in More Than 100 Years??

I can't even believe what I read and what I see.

Trump administration seeking to block funding for CDC, contact tracing and testing in new relief bill: report

The Trump administration is attempting to block billions of dollars for contact tracing, additional testing and other coronavirus mitigation efforts that would potentially be included in Congress's next coronavirus relief package, officials involved in the negotiations told The Washington Post.

Think about this.

During the worst, most killing international and national pandemic in the last more than 100 years, this Republican Party President Trump actually wants to actually BLOCK FUNDING for the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control on contract tracing and testing in a pending new relief bill.

I'm gobsmacked.

With this excuse for leadership, is it any wonder we, the United States, reputedly the wealthiest nation in the world, has the most cases and deaths, both, of any nation in the world?

Keeping in mind this was, is the knucklehead who took us, the US out of the WHO, the World Heatlh Organization in this same pandemic so it's not a total surprise, especially with all the other absurd, reckless, ignorant, even dangerous things he's done while in office and in this nightmare of a Presidency.

Meanwhile, also just now, today, this.

Colorado governor calls national testing 

'a complete disgrace'

Also this. He's in denial. Still. In denial about all of it.

Trump downplays virus, disputes bad polls in testy interview with Fox's Wallace

And here's the truth, the facts.

Undermining the CDC Puts Lives at Risk

Meanwhile, here's what's happening locally, in Missouri just now.

Missouri reports largest one-day increase 

of COVID cases

And this is what's going on across the nation and world.

U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 140,000 As World Sets Daily Record In New Cases

Coronavirus updates: 16 states break records for new cases in one week, one-day global record also reported; ERs becoming flooded in US

Coronavirus updates: 

South Carolina breaks record for new cases

But yeah, cut funding to our national medical community.  Freaking brilliant.

At least if he really were assisted and placed in this position of the Presidency by Vladimir Putin and Russia, at least that would make sense for why he seems to, time and again, set out to destroy us, destroy us all, destroy our nation, to tear it and Democracy down.

Thanks, Mr. President?

Thanks, Republicans?

American History, June 16, 1944

The things we don't know. 76 years ago yesterday.

WE REMEMBER June 16, 1944

George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person to be sentenced to death in the 20th century in the United States.

He was only 14 years old when he was executed in an electric chair.

During his trial, even on the day of his execution, he always carried a bible in his hands, claiming to be innocent.

He was accused of killing two white girls, 11-Year-old Betty, and Mary of 7, the bodies were found near the house where the teenager resided with his parents.

At that time, all members of the jury were white. The trial lasted only 2 hours, and the sentence was dictated 10 minutes later.

The Boy's parents were threatened, and prevented from being present in the courtroom, and subsequently expelled from that city.

Before the execution, George spent 81 days in prison without being able to see his parents.

He was held in solitary, 80 miles from his city. He was alone without the presence of his parents or a lawyer.

He was electrocuted with 5,380 volts in his head, imagine all that voltage in a teenager's head.

70 years later, his innocence was finally proven by a judge in South Carolina. The boy was innocent, someone set it up to blame him for being black.

May his innocent soul rest in peace. #NotInMyName #EndDeathPenalty #WeShouldBeBetterThanThis

On the Charleston Shooting (guest post)

This was put out quickly today on and by Esquire magazine. I thought it too important to not post.

Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable

In which we confront the dark heart of America. Again.

by Charles P. Pierce

What happened in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unthinkable." Somebody thought long and hard about it. Somebody thought to load the weapon. Somebody thought to pick the church. Somebody thought to sit, quietly, through some of Wednesday night bible study. Somebody thought to stand up and open fire, killing nine people, including the pastor. Somebody reportedly thought to leave one woman alive so she could tell his story to the world. Somebody thought enough to flee. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unthinkable is not one of them.

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unspeakable." We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. This was the church founded by Denmark Vesey, who planned a slave revolt in 1822. Vesey was convicted in a secret trial in which many of the witnesses testified after being tortured. After they hung him, a mob burned down the church he built. His sons rebuilt it. On Wednesday night, someone turned it into a slaughter pen.

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed. We should speak of all these things. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unspeakable is not one of them.

Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them. Let Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, look out her window at the flag of treason that is flown proudly at her state capitol and think about these things, and speak of them, before she pronounces herself so puzzled at how something like this could happen in South Carolina, the home office of American sedition.

Let Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom want to lead this troubled country, consider what it meant to absent themselves from campaign events in Charleston and think of these things and speak of them before they turn to their consultants about whether or not staying in a grieving city was what a leader should have done.

Let the elite political media that follows the two of them, roughly thrown into a maelstrom of actual news, look out onto the streets of Charleston and realize that politics exist for the purpose of governing a country, and not simply to entertain it.

Let Squint and the Meat Puppet think about these things and speak of these things before inviting Donald Trump, who is a clown and a fool, to come on national television and talk about his hair. Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them.

Think about what happened. Think about why it happened. Talk about what happened. Talk about why it happened. Do these things, over and over again. The country must resist the temptation present in anesthetic innocence. It must reject the false comfort of learned disbelief and the narcotic embrace of concocted surprise. There is a ferocious underground fire running through American history. It rages unseen until it flares again from the warm earth. It has raged from the death of Denmark Vesey in 1822 to the death of the Reverend and state senator Clementa Pinckney on Wednesday night.

This was not an unspeakable act. Sylvia Johnson, one of only three survivors of the massacre, is speaking about it.

"She said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.'"

There is a timidity that the country can no longer afford. This was not an unthinkable act. A man may have had a rat's nest for a mind, but it was well thought out. It was a cool, considered crime, as well planned as any bank robbery or any computer fraud. If people do not want to speak of it, or think about it, it's because they do not want to follow the story where it inevitably leads. It's because they do not want to follow this crime all the way back to the mother of all American crimes, the one that Denmark Vesey gave his life to avenge. What happened on Wednesday night was a lot of things. A massacre was only one of them.

Some Memorial Day/American History

The very Christian Republicans in South Carolina

I can hardly believe what I've read.  They're stooping this low:

GOP-Controlled SC Charges Fees, Requires Permits to Feed ...Homeless

Being homeless in Columbia, South Carolina is so severe a crime that you can be jailed for it, so it’s no surprise that the city who hates the homeless is now making it impossible for good Samaritans to feed the homeless. The point is to make it uncomfortable for the homeless to be downtown so that the city can hold people in a “facility” on the outskirts of town. The homeless shelter only has room for one in six of the city’s homeless. 

Judith Turnipseed, founder of a group called “Food Not Bombs” has been feeding Columbia’s homeless for 12 years. Turnipseed says that she will now have to pay $120 dollars to feed the homeless because of an old-and-previously-not-enforced law that says you must pay a fee to be able to gather in the city’s parks if the number of people is over 25 

So not only do they want to punish people who try to do something as awful as feeding and/or housing the poor, they also want to use their "small government" to make it difficult to do so.

I mean, who'd do that, right?



Links:

The Tragic List of Elderly and Homeless People Freezing

Millionaire CEO Says Struggling Americans Need to Suck it Up Because They Aren't as Poor as People in China 

Small note in the Star this week on Union Station

I saw this a couple days ago, then searched for more information on it online but could find no further information from the travel writers. Anyway, here goes:

Union Station lauded by travel writers

Union Station is one of the best examples in the world of conservation and preservation, according to the Society of American Travel Writers.

The restored Kansas City train station received one of six Phoenix Awards at the trade group’s annual meeting.

“The restoration itself was remarkable,” a selection committee member wrote, “and I love how the station has become a huge focal point of the community and also spurred other development around it.”

Other tourism sites lauded were a wildlife foundation in Namibia, the Charleston, S.C. city market, a wildlife society at Sanibel Island, Fla., a wildlife park in Fiji and a package of preservation projects in west Texas.

And to think we almost lost it.

Original story here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/13/3814251/union-station-lauded-by-travel.html

Tweets tonight from Robert Reich on So. Carolina

1) Gingrich victory in SC a huge gift for Romney -- making him seem reasonable & responsible. And it rallies the adults in the GOP around him; 2) Now is the time for Republican leaders -- if there are any left -- to do the responsible thing and tell the truth about Newt Gingrich; 3) Newt Gingrich has perfected the art of demonizing others in order to promote himself. His message is anger, fear, and resentment; 4) When voters are stressed and angry, they'll vote for the person who most embodies their nasty mood. Hence, the Gingrich surge; 5) Gingrich almost destroyed the GOP in 1996. Now he's been given a second chance; 6) White House loves idea of Grinch heading R ticket. Increases O's odds by 20%. But also increases odds that next US prez will be insane.

First there was the MRSA anti-virus; now, CRKP is here in Missouri, too

If you've had any hospital stays in the last few years, you're likely familiar with the super anti-virus MRSA, for which hospitals have had little or no effect fighting.

It seems we've antibiotic-ed ourselves into a never-never world where little if anything fights these infections.  It can and has killed people.  You go into the hospital to get better but instead, contract MRSA and get worse.

Or die.

Honestly.

Well, now, news is out of a newer and apparently more strain-resistant infection, CRKP (carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae).  And the fact is, it's been found here in Missouri, too:

Just so you know, it's another strain-resistant bacteria.

And it's here.

    

Links:http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/antibiotic-superbugs-crkp-mrsa-risk

http://patients.about.com/od/medicalmistakessafety/a/CRKP-Superbug-Infection-Found-In-Hospitals-And-Healthcare-Facilities.htm

http://patients.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=patients&cdn=health&tm=14&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cre.html

Collective bargaining for teachers a horrible thing?

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:


South Carolina -50th

North Carolina -49th

Georgia -48th

Texas -47th

Virginia -44th

Wisconsin, on the other hand, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

What's all this tell you, folks?
 
(Thanks and a hat tip to friend Andrew L. for this information).

South Carolina: Amazingly still fighting the Civil War (that they lost)

I don't suppose you saw this, did you?  South Carolina is--yes--actually going to celebrate, yes, celebrate the beginning of the Civil War.

That is some stunning ignorance.

Check this out:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Starting Monday, South Carolina will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War with a series of events that underscore the state's central role in that titanic, tragic struggle.

Two of the first events scheduled to mark the anniversary — a privately sponsored secession ball Monday in Charleston and an effort to display the original Ordinance of Secession — show just how divisive the Civil War remains.

There is some internal protest against it, thank goodness, and they see it for what it is, at least in part, and that is that it is a "a celebration of treason and slavery."

If it's not that, it's nothing.

But hey, what the heck, this way a whole lotta' white people can get together and have lots of big parties.

For a whole year.

That is some kind of twisted sick.

Party on, South Carolina.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/19/105532/150-years-later-s-carolina-celebration.html#ixzz18cfMz749

"Enjoying" nature and animals--that's why I tortured it to death

"I enjoy nature and animals a great deal and I understand why there is a reason for hunting," Mara-Christian told the Boston Herald. "I hunt because I want these creatures to be here forever." Right. You keep telling yourself that, honey. Link to original story: http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/20668/petite+woman+who+bagged+monster+alligator+defends+trophy+hunt/

Quote of the day--on the Senate and the energy bill going through now

"This is a political commercial bill," said of the efforts on energy. "We do them too. We do political commercial amendments. This is a political commercial bill. This is 'Republicans love BP.' They won't help clean up the Gulf. They want to defend their Big Oil buddies. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to have our own oil spill bill, showing we do want to clean it up, blah, blah, blah, blah." --Senator Lindsey ("I'm not gay") Graham (R-SC)