![IMG_7543](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50076495098_9904a2b6ba.jpg)
Enjoy your freedom.
To live freely in writing...
So Tweeter A is allowed to demand my ovaries, but I’m not allowed to talk about my ovaries, because you haven’t got ovaries? Seems fair. pic.twitter.com/yF8aUnbXz9
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) July 4, 2020
"The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and turn our free society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced."The New York Times has "Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message/Down in the polls and failing to control a raging pandemic, the president cast himself as waging battle against a 'new far-left fascism' that imperils American values and seeks to erase history." The speech is full of material that can be used to make the argument that Trump was pulling Americans together, but he was calling on us to reject the destructive message that he ascribed to the far left. The left is very conspicuously "waging battle" against American values, so it's not as though Trump is starting it. He's fighting back. Whether he's fighting for America — as he says — or because he's "down in the polls and failing to control a raging pandemic" is a matter of opinion.
"Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”The CNN headline is "Trump tries to drag America backward on a very different July 4th." He's "stirring fear of cultural change." The highlighted quote is "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children."
Biden might say the wrong thing at a debate, or have an awkward moment in an interview or at a press conference.... Biden’s campaign might make poor decisions about spending allocations in the battleground states.... It is possible that Trump before November will announce a coronavirus vaccine.... And it is possible that the economy will improve....Oh, heavens, no! Not a coronavirus vaccine and an improved economy! The double whammy!!
There could be no better place to celebrate America’s independence than beneath this magnificent, incredible, majestic mountain and monument to the greatest Americans who have ever lived.Somebody went heavy on the alliteration, but "incredible" sneaked in there. He's on the side of the monuments, not the destroyers of monuments.
Today we pay tribute to the exceptional lives and extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.He's got the great men on his side, not like those people who want to tear down statues of all of them.
I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defamed, their legacy will never ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.That's big! Very grand. Very much a stand against the protesters and rioters... without mentioning them. This is hyperbole, because Trump cannot protect the monument forever, and indeed, an understanding of geology would tell you that it's impossible for the monument to stand forever as an eternal tribute.
Too bad. It sounds like some of those "damning" items would recommend her to me!
A black law-and-order candidate would be awesome.
Wouldn't it be funny if she were rather conservative deep down but had to play that Democrat game because California.
But the Chinese Ministry of Affairs denies the use of any forced labor or detention of ethnic minority groups. “We hope that certain people in the United States can take off their tinted glasses, correctly understand and objectively and rationally view normal economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and American enterprises,” reads a statement released by the ministry.
The team looked at the way particular molecules, called methyl groups, accumulated in certain areas of the human genome over time and compared them with how they accumulated in similar areas in the dog genome....
[A]s time passes, the rate of ageing in dogs, compared with humans, slows down. The findings suggest a one-year-old dog would have a “human age” of about 30, while by the age of four they’d be about 54 in “human years”, and by 14 they would be on a par with a human in their mid-70s....
I firmly believe any place that writes an “A” like this is upscale pic.twitter.com/7wP3HtOQJ7
— scott (@Zimmer_down) July 2, 2020
I take the coronavirus serious. But we can’t live in a bubble.— Vanilla Ice (@vanillaice) July 2, 2020
I think at this point we all understand the severity of it. practice social distancing and wear a mask. This is an outside venue, Fourth of July on the lake with fireworks. Plenty of room for distancing.
A version of Biden’s legislation passed Congress and became law. On May 14, 1990, the day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging its constitutionality, Biden held a news conference and declared the government has a “legitimate interest” in protecting the flag. The court struck down the law, citing the First Amendment’s protection of free speech....That was entirely predictable, but Biden and others served their political interest by flaunting an intense desire to protect the flag.
"It's quite another thing to allow a whipping post to remain in place along a busy public street - a cold, deadpan display that does not adequately account for the traumatic legacy it represents, and that still reverberates among communities of color in our state."Interesting use of the word "deadpan," which I feel as though I've only ever seen as a way to deliver comic lines, and obviously there was no comedy behind the stark presence of the whipping post. But "deadpan" simply refers to the expressionless face, and the missing expression can just as well be disapproval or regret.
While Ms. Trump unquestionably possesses the same First Amendment expressive rights belonging to all Americans, she also possesses the right to enter into contracts, including the right to contract away her First Amendment rights. Parties are free to limit their First Amendment rights by contract.... A court may enforce an agreement preventing disclosure of specific information without violating the restricted party’s First Amendment rights if the party received consideration in exchange for the restriction... A party may effectively relinquish First Amendment rights by executing a secrecy agreement in which the party receives significant benefits....So the error is CNN's.
Here, the plaintiff has presented evidence that Ms. Trump, in exchange for valuable consideration, voluntarily entered into a settlement agreement...
It bears noting that, while parties are free to enter into confidentiality agreements, courts are not necessarily obligated to specifically enforce them. Whether to issue an injunction is a matter of equity. Confidentiality agreements are alternatively enforceable through the imposition of money damages.
"His argument is Main Street values against a crazy wave of anarchy. A lot will depend on how inflamed the monument issue gets. Trump has a vested issue in this. He’s actually cheering the anarchists on, daring them to take more down."He’s actually cheering the anarchists on... You see how that works (in the mind of the eminent historian)? Because Trump speaks out against the destruction and some people hate Trump, they're inspired to do more destruction. It's a way to get Trump. And you see the rank perversity of the implicit argument: Don't speak out against the destructiveness you oppose, because it will only inflame the destroyers, and they will do more destruction.
[D]uring the 2013 inauguration coverage, CNN referred to him as "a man who knows more about the presidency than just about any human being alive." In contrast, in 2006, historian Wilfred McClay in the New York Sun appraised Brinkley's scholarship as one that has failed to "put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase." Similarly, author Bill Bryson characterized Brinkley as "a minor American academic and sometime critic whose powers of observation and generosity of spirit would fit comfortably into a proton and still leave room for an echo."
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for a conservative majority in the 5 to 4 ruling, said the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to strike down the program because of a provision in the state constitution that forbids public funds from going to religious institutions. The U.S. Constitution’s protection of religious freedom prevails, he said.AND: Here's the text of the opinion. I'm going to read it and give you more detail. I've taken out a statement I had up for a few minutes, criticizing the WaPo headline in a way that I no longer think was right.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
Mr. Johnson is a Conservative populist who ran on a platform of pulling Britain out of the European Union and had, until now, modeled himself on Roosevelt’s wartime ally, Winston Churchill....From The Guardian, "Absolutely fanciful': Boris Johnson's new deal not Rooseveltian, say critics/The PM wants to be put on the same pedestal as Franklin D Roosevelt as he unveils £5bn capital projects":
One of [Johnson's] closest advisers, Michael Gove, recently [said]... “Roosevelt recognized that, faced with a crisis that had shaken faith in government, it was not simply a change of personnel and rhetoric that was required, but a change in structure, ambition, and organization”....
“F.D.R. was someone who had an extraordinary intuitive feel for where the public was and what the mood of the country was,” said Robert Dallek, an American presidential historian who published a biography of Roosevelt in 2017. “Does someone like Boris Johnson have that?”
“The notion that he’s going to turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful,” said professor Anand Menon, of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. “FDR surrounded himself with experts, and drew on what they had to say, in a way that Boris Johnson so far has not.”By the way, I'd avoid the figure of speech, "put on a pedestal." Things on pedestals are not doing well at the moment. They seem to be asking for a toppling.
If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, I’d be writing in someone’s name.... But the idea that a Biden presidency would be a threat to the Republic is laughable: It would be a return to politics as we used to know it before the proverbial sacking of Rome.Illustration of the Trump presidency, from the mind of Bret Stephens:
My pitch to the Romneys and Boltons of the world is simple: In order for their vision of sane conservatism to win, Trump’s insane vision must lose so decisively that it will be politically destroyed and morally repudiated by the broad majority of Republicans themselves. The bigger Biden’s margin of victory in November, the better it will be for normal conservatives in future Novembers. A vote for Biden now is a vote for a G.O.P. that has a future — in a country that has a future.
Fox News has done to our parents what they thought gangsta rap would do to us pic.twitter.com/7tv5SRb6Xz— Seltzer In Place (@VernorsHerzog) June 29, 2020
It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago.
— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) June 29, 2020
Washington Square Park, NYC. pic.twitter.com/PEidU4Njw8
— BILL HEMMER (@BillHemmer) June 29, 2020
I am so proud of my beautiful wife Kim Kardashian West for officially becoming a billionaire
— ye (@kanyewest) June 30, 2020
You’ve weathered the craziest storms and now God is shining on you and our family
So blessed this is still life
So I made you this still life
We love you so much pic.twitter.com/Vvtgzodnah
The center position is so powerful. Having seen the attention and (faux) adulation given to Justice Kennedy over the years, the Justices must be eyeing the vacancy. Some new person will get Kennedy's seat, but he is likely to be a staunch conservative like Gorsuch. The real vacancy we're seeing is in the "swing vote" position, and any Justice could feel pulled to try to sit there. Now, the liberals can't really aspire to occupy the position, but one of them, probably Justice Kagan, might become the force behind the swinging of one of the conservatives, and Roberts is the most likely to get swung. I picture Roberts seeing an opportunity to improve the reputation of the Court and to overcome the overt political look it's acquired over the years. I think there should be more elegant ways to do that than to simply throw his vote to the liberal 4 now and then. But if that's all he can do, I suspect he will.
My family and I came to America from the Soviet Union when I was a teenager. We became citizens. I got educated here and own a successful business. I write well and speak correctly, with almost no accent. I feel like I am an American.I haven't read the answer yet, but I love the question, and the predictable answer seems obvious: America is (or should be) about diversity, and you shouldn't think of yourself as foreign, but another great part of nation of immigrants. Thanks for contributing your special, individual mix of manners, topics, and attitudes. You belong here, and we love you. The only fix for your "handicap" is to stop thinking of it as a handicap.
I love America and try to learn new things every day, but I feel like something is missing in me.
Since I was born and spent my formative years in a communist country (truly like another planet, compared to the USA), my "autopilot" reactions are not like those of typical American-born people. For instance, my manners, topics of conversation, humor, dress, attitude toward money and even body language sometime seem "foreign."
I feel like it is hurting me to be "culturally different." I don't think I say or do anything straight-up offensive — it's more like a lot of subtle little things.
How can I fix this "handicap?"
I would love to know how to be more American, but I can't find any books or courses on the subject.
Born Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart... in the Soviet Union, he spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg—which he alternately calls "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg". He comes from a Jewish family, with an ethnically Russian maternal grandparent, and describes his family as typically Soviet.... Shteyngart immigrated to the United States in 1979 and was brought up in Queens, New York, with no television in the apartment in which he lived, where English was not the household language. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14....
After I grew up, I heard the chant of Fa Mu Lan, the girl who took her father’s place in battle. Instantly I remembered that as a child I had followed my mother about the house, the two of us singing about how Fa Mu Lan fought gloriously and returned alive from war to settle in the village. I had forgotten this chant that was once mine, given me by my mother, who may not have known its power to remind. She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman.... “And this is Fa Mu Lan... She was a woman warrior, and really existed.”I should add that "Mulan" is a current film.
As murals were being painted at the end of the school year, SJ Hemmerich, art teacher at Randall Elementary School, created a slide presentation of them. Hemmerich then presented it to students and as a last assignment asked , “If you could design your own mural for (Black Lives Matter), what would it be?” Then Hemmerich got the idea of why not do it for real.The only mention of parents in the article is about one student who said that her parents worry about her participation in the protests, so the mural-painting is a good, safe alternative. But I don't think teachers should be recruiting children to engage in political activism — even if it's artistic — without first involving the parents and getting their consent. I don't think adults should put any sort of pressure on children to take a political position and to do political work — even if it's artwork. Teachers should not be exploiting their access to children for any political purpose. They are given access to our children for the purpose of education, and it is a solemn trust that should never be violated.
Hemmerich, like other teachers, reached out to “Black and brown students” to get involved. Hemmerich got permission to work on one large mural and five panels located near each other. ... Hemmerich also sent an email out to art teachers in the Madison School District to recruit more help beyond Randall and wound up with more than 135 students and some staff members.
“I am really passionate about social justice work,” Hemmerich said. “I thought it would be a really good way to get students involved.”...
Monique Karlen, art teacher at La Follette High School, said she started by recruiting some of her students and then got other help from students from Middleton and East high schools...
Nothing brings home the French Revolution analogy quite as well as an actual guillotine left outside the homes of rich people. https://t.co/dXPEuZe9fx Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité . . . and la guillotine.https://t.co/uYehstN5SA— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 29, 2020
DC protester says: “when they become threatened, and we have no voice, the knives come out.” In front of a guillotine set up in front of Jeff Bezos complex in DC pic.twitter.com/synjRwgD1H— Drew Hernandez (@livesmattershow) June 28, 2020