Dog Days [DOT 6/7/22]

6/7/22 MegMegMcGee 40

Vacation is over, it’s hot, muggy, the kids are bored, I guess that’s why they call it the dog days of summer.

FFS this headline. Who cares if he’s a rapper? Are they trying to make it sound like he’s Black?

Highland Park reels from parade shooting as 22-year-old rapper arrested
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/05/highland-park-parade-shooting-live-updates/

JFC

Computer says no.

After Roe, are Republicans willing to expand the social safety net?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/05/roe-v-wade-abortion-republicans-social-safety-net

The home state loves to be an embarrassment.

10-year-old rape victim forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana for abortion
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/03/ohio-indiana-abortion-rape-victim

LOL

Have a good day!

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40 Comments

    • They’re voting on one by the end of the month. So future Ohio 10 yr olds will have to come to Illinois with the rest of the Midwest, South, and Plains states.

  3. …don’t currently have time to find links but if anyone happens to be interested a couple of cabinet ministers resitgned yesterday & since then there’s been…perhaps more of a trickle than an actual flood…but a bunch of other MPs have done the same…with more saying they’d vote borinds out given another confidence vote

    …they’d have to change some (party) rules to force him out & he isn’t exactly someone who seems like they’d resign…but it actually looks pretty bad for him

    …the last straw is apparently his being willing to have a deputy chief whip who was known to be unacceptably “hands on”…& then to wheel out people briefed to say he had no inkling only for the civil service to correct that to “we absolutely told you about at least one specific allegation when he was in the foreign office”

    …so…popcorn may be appropriate?

    • Saw this in my local paper this morning. Here’s a link:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/06/uk-boris-johnson-resignation-parliament/

      Quote:

      LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday was fighting for his political life as more ministers and aides continued to quit his government, saying that they no longer have faith in Johnson’s leadership.

      Johnson was trying to move on from the dramatic events on Tuesday, which saw the bombshell resignations of two of his most senior cabinet ministers — Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid — both of whom have their own power bases in the party and are thought to be future leadership contenders.

      • …so…still a little shy of links as I’m basing this mostly off shit I heard on radio…but it sounded like upwards of a couple-dozen MPs have voted with their feet & left the sinking ship…the 1922 committee that would need to change its rules to bring about a fresh confidence vote is about a week away from the end of its current term so they’re voting on a new executive today ahead of schedule in order not to have any major upheaval of their rules kicked off by someone on their way out rather than with a fresh mandate

        …but boris is busily insisting he’ll be prime minister in the morning & absolutely won’t be doing anything so premature as resigning…because if nothing else he’s never been in danger of being accused of doing anything with anything that might resemble grace…but a “delegation” including the contemporary tory answer to brutus himself, michael gove, went to see him this evening to give him the better-jump-than-get-knifed-&-turfed-overboard speech

        …so…he looks to be…as the locals might say…”proper fucked”

        …& the pickings for his replacement are…not great…so the fact that one of his party pressed him to rule out trying to throw a general election as a last-ditch alternative to resigning was interesting…they don’t like their chances in one of those just now…& indeed boris…who still seemed to be insisting he expected to remain PM for the duration…claimed the earliest he could imagine one of those turning up was a full two years away…make of that what you will…but…well

        …although if you need a laugh…rory bremner is an impressionist who has a pretty solid history of doing a lot of politicians well enough that he used to have a regular show on tv mocking them in their own voices

        …so you could do worse than search for “bremner, bird & fortune” on youtube…but there is another reason he might be worth paying attention to at a time like this

      • I’m sure you’re right on the photo. There’s simply no way someone could craft that out of foam. Even if it was feasible, the foam would dissolve before you could finish. Simple shapes, sure. But not that.

          • I learned something new today, thanks! I want one for my home coffee. If I ever win the lottery. All my coffee would have Fanny’s face , lol

          • One of the coffee/sandwich shops near the school where I work has the ability to do the foam pictures, too!

            I still don’t really understand how it works, but I’ve seen the pictures when teachers & other co-workers manage to bring them back to the school, and they are SO neat & weird!😉😁

      • No dog in this fight here, but I DO know that there are some “latte-printing” machines which 100% *can* do printed pictures!

        And I only know it, because I’ve SEEN a few–one coffee & lunch/sandwich place near the school where I work is able to print them😉

        I’m not quite sure how the teachers & staff got the pictures I’ve seen on their drinks–i suspect the place probably has a “latte printer” similar to this one?

        https://www.drinkripples.com/technology

        And I never asked if the pictures were emailed/texted in advance, so they could be printed out… but I HAVE seen this sort of “latte art” irl/in Meatspace, and it is COOL*and*ODD!😉💖

  5. THAT’S the headline WaPo went with? Everything i read about the shooter said he was unemployed, lived alone (in an apartment paid for by family), and spent all his time online. High school acquaintances said he was weird and distant back then. I would bet that if the FBI bothers to look they’ll find incel and/or white supremacist garbage on his computer.

    • Probably find all that and more on his computer. Apparently the cops had to visit once and confiscate his vast collection of knives and swords. His family refused to sign a complaint. So then he was allowed to buy guns. Very sensible.

      Families need to start being prosecuted as accessories to these crimes. You harbored him, you’re guilty of accessory to murder. Maybe then people would start taking these weird basement dudes seriously. “Wait, you mean if he does something crazy, I could go to jail with him?”

      • Didn’t have time to follow up this morning, but this article talks about families abetting mass shooters, and what happens when occasionally one reports the kid.

        Many parents of school shooters ignore glaring warning signs. This grandmother didn’t.

         

        It’s becoming more common to prosecute the families, but it needs to be automatic and severe. It’s horrifying how many of them helped the shooters by providing them with weapons, ammunition, and training. No, you don’t get off by paying a fine. You helped someone murder people.

          • In general they seem to be, but that’s no excuse. Some claim to have “seen nothing” but I don’t find that exculpatory, particularly when you’re talking about a minor that lives in your house. One Columbine killer’s mom, Klebold, actually wrote books to claim it wasn’t her fault. Didn’t help her with the civil suits she got slapped with (both families lost big), but I still think criminal penalties should be assessed. Find out who your kid is hanging out with and what he’s doing. That’s your fucking job. Find out if he’s being bullied. Talk to the school. Get him help.

            In this Highland Park case, dude was an adult. But the family refusing to sign a complaint when the cops confiscated his knives should make them complicit in the murders.

            • Sorry, things keep occurring to me. The family should have to affirmatively refuse a complaint (yes, contradiction in terms). They should have to sign a statement saying “In the judgement of these officers, this individual represents a danger to himself and/or others. By signing this statement, I agree to be held responsible for any criminal actions that the individual harbored in my home commits.” Or something like that. Bet you’d get them to sign a complaint then.

        • That school is pretty close to me, I even used to coach at their gym sometimes.  We had some other shootings & close calls in the area and take this very seriously.  In the last couple months since the last few school shootings, many kids are getting arrested for threats.

  6. One of the things that turns my stomach about the profiles of Highland Park Illinois are the omission of one key fact — that the town of flag waving, patriotic people is highly liberal.

    The NY Times has no problem running poorly reasoned pieces shaming liberals for not being patriotic enough. But if there was ever a time to honor patriotic liberals, they are conspicuously silent.

    I get the reluctance to address the fact the murderer was a Trump supporter or other parts of his right wing engagememnt. These issues can be complicated by mental health and other issues. News organizations should tread carefully — in fact, they should typically be much more direct why they are.

    And I can even say that playing up the liberal character of Highland Park would be a tough call, since there are so many things which define the character of a place, and residents are never identical.

    But would it hurt if the Times simply admitted they screwed up and drop its bias on the issue? They not only default to a notion that the right is patriotic, they promote it, and it’s miserably wrong. At their heart the Times itself has no understanding of patriotism, which is how they fail so badly in covering it.

      • The running defense of mainstreaming right wing radicalism is that it is necessary to educate about what they think.

        The problem is they’re liars and propagandists, and if education was the real goal, they would instead invite any of the many qualified liberal critics of the right.

        They want propaganda, or even worse, they believe it.

        • …I think part of the problem is to do with playing coy about presenting things in a way that leaves them open to a charge of bias by dint of offering a simultaneous critique…so they opt to just “present” that stuff verbatim, more or less…the BBC has consistently struggled with that kind of thing…& is perhaps another example of being accused of bias by both sides…from those who aren’t fans of the government the complaint is much as you frame it…but the pro-government types complain even more stridently that the other articles/segments that provide the kind of context which shows statements to be flawed “proves” that the organization itself is biased against the government

          …given the interplay between the state & the funding model for the BBC that’s a situation with a more direct line of threat involved…but I very much suspect that when it comes to the NYT many of the answers lie on a similarly tied-to-the-purse-strings calculus which they seem to hope people will view as exemplifying balance rather than a commitment to gutlessness

          …I do wonder, though…I know I read at least some drek from the NYT to see what today’s flavor of right-wing bullshittery might be…with every expectation that much of it will be argued poorly enough you’d think a child would be embarrassed…since for the most part the line the GOP tries to walk is too morally & intellectually bankrupt to allow for better underpinnings

          …but if you were the sort of person who looked at the NYT because of rather than despite the likes of bedbug bret…do you just ignore the rest of the headlines that might lead you to some their actual journalism?

          …they do probably fill a larger proportion of the column inches on offer so I’d expect they must stumble over at least some of that stuff…& although I don’t think any of us have time for that to make a difference by osmosis alone…it seems like it might at least be useful to have some honey in the vicinity even if those flies in particular have a stated preference for vinegar?

      • Since AG Sulzberger took over, they have studiously avoided linking Trump to antisemitism despite his overtly antisemitic statements, including an attack on the Times itself.

    • Highly Liberal, with large Jewish and Hispanic populations.

      Worries about Antisemitism, racism, white supremacy, & fascism were DEFINITELY the concerns I was seeing cross my Twitter feed, from folks from that area & who’d lived there in the past, but who are now places like here (being another “large-ish” Midwestern metro, we get a LOT of Chicago-land transplants).

    • I’ve watched that so many times. What a bunch of idiots.
      Is there a pile of fireworks over by the car that catches? What were they thinking? That’s a residential neighborhood there isn’t even any space for that type of fireworks.

      • …pretty sure that some kind of “stable genius” must have been involved…& that yes, they really did decide the safe place to put the crate of explosives was directly in the vicinity of the only large tank of highly flammable liquid on hand

        …I was genuinely beginning to wonder if we were going to get a full-on hollywood car explosion before the clip cut out…that shit is hard to do in real life…but a sustained series of fiery explosions like that seemed like it might have been in with a shot?

        …the things is…you can get whole display sets of fireworks that are damn nearly idiot-proof even in a location like that…they’re all in a box which ideally you’d sink into a suitably shaped hole in a bit of earth but can be wedged in place with a few bricks/cinder blocks to make sure they don’t tip over…then you only have to light one fuse & stand there with everyone else enjoying the sequence

        …if you really want to push the boat out maybe have two or three & set them off one after the other or even two/three at a time if you’ve got the space & more than one person with a lighter…& if you feel it isn’t right without a finale then maybe one actual rocket for the &-we’re-done big bang?

        …even then, though…the infant in the front row would have been enough to make me think that particular lot ought to be denied access to any & all fireworks on general principles

        • My brother is super into pyrotechnics. But he built a semi professional launching platform to set them off. And he only uses it at my sister’s rural home and directs them to go off over the pond. He also doesn’t drink so it’s probably the safest amateur fireworks display. And pretty elaborate.  But most people don’t put the amount of effort into it that he does.

    • …I meant to get around to that thing about the covid funds yesterday…but like a bunch of other bits & pieces…I kind of failed to steer the post off the one strand of fucked up & into any others

      …but that shit is plenty fucked up

      • Yup!!!

        The assholes weren’t *quiiiite* as bad over here in Uptown, but the building next to mine still did have jackwagons shooting the smaller Roman Candles off their 4th floor deck,  over the sidewalk & street, and nearly onto the roof of the 4-story office building across the street from theirs🙃😡🤬

        They were “just having fun!” with zero thought about any consequences of misfires, dropped firework, or what was gonna happen, should the fireworks land on that opposite building😒🤬

  8. Personal opinion with all the coverage I see referring to him as a rapper and talking about how he wore women’s clothing to hide as he fled the scene?

    They’re trying to downplay the fact that this shithead is a standard whitebread white dude who just went on a killing spree which based on location is probably heavily motivated by antisemitism.

    But guarantee transfolks are getting worse treatment than usual in some areas right now because dude wore women’s clothing to flee the scene.

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