Don’t Be That Guy

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A campaign is underway to bring date rape to the forefront.  It’s ironic that guys are finding the posters offensive….which is telling of how little men understand the devastation of rape.  I can tell you there isn’t a woman looking at the posters and not feeling anxiety and fear and vulnerability.

Someone put up posters protesting the campaign.  Note how the headline writer frames this as anti-feminist….instead of anti-woman.  It seems like a minor change of words, but has a huge impact because it’s easy to hate feminists, but if they say “woman”….that would be harder to justify.

And I think it is absolutely rape when a woman is intoxicated and is not able to give her consent.  And what kind of guy would take advantage of that??  Any decent man, no matter how much he desires her, is going to do the right thing and take her home and let her sleep it off.  If he wants to have sex with her, he will wait until she is sober.  A good man will want the woman to come to him willingly.

 

Private Prisons **edited

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**edited to add links.  Gees-o-pete.  Sorry.  Just done chelating and it’s definitely showing.

….what a misnomer, if there ever was one….Private Prisons evokes some sort of luxury…ha.

Diane Ravitch has this up.  But I wanted to search a little more.  Interesting that the news piece she mentions is not coming up on the top of the list.  I did find a blog by Jonathan Turley, where he features Mike Spindell:

The “uptick” in crime comes about because this prison is understaffed and what staff they have are not capable of providing a similar level of prison security, to that provided when the prison was run by the state. This is a cost that was unanticipated in the initial sale and the addition of this cost makes the enterprise less cost effective than originally stated.

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“But in the year since Corrections Corporation of America took over the 1,700-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution, state audits have found patterns of inadequate staffing, delays in medical treatment and “unacceptable living conditions” inside the prison — including inmates lacking access to running water and toilets. The state docked the company nearly $500,000 in pay because of the violations.”

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You know, it’s pretty bad when we have more people in prisons than RUSSIA and CHINA.

From the descriptions of the conditions in the prisons…for-profits will run prisons like dungeons and not think a thing about it.

A commenter posted the video of Dick Cheney’s culpability in the for profit prisons:

I never heard any more about the indictment, so I went searching, and found only a few articles dated 2011, and the rest in 2008.  It’s been disappeared, apparently.

Another commenter posted this, and I immediately thought of the public schools:

I don’t believe in the privatization of prisons for many reasons but one in specific. A friend’s son worked in one down in Florida about ten years ago. He lasted maybe a year. Besides the low pay and bad hours his biggest complaint was corruption. You see, the prisoners got to grade the guards. You would think this was a good idea right? Not so much. The guards became the prisoners puppies. The ones who moved up the chain of command were the ones who stayed out of the way and brought in the contraband. The rest were short timers who couldn’t take it anymore. Ponder on that thought for a while.

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I also found this on dailykos.  Why does it not surprise me the ALEC is connected to these for profit prisons?

NOOOOO!!!!!!

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!!!!!!!!!!

Bill de Blasio is apparently blessed by the Clintons….he is in the circle.

Peter Beinart should do his freaking homework before writing such a long-winded article on politics….especially when it raises the hopes of those of us who are wise to the Clintons and want to see their grip on politics broken.

 

 

Klonskys Rainy Sunday Blog and others **edited

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Fred Klonsky has an excellent blog covering the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham bombing, the NY Post slam piece on Diane Ravitch, and more.

As I was watching Bill Cosby speak on MSNBC Sunday, I thought of the bombing happening in August….and President Kennedy being killed just a few months later…and Martin Luther King just five years after that…the Kent State and Jackson State shootings…

Dailykos Teacher Ken blog on Diane’s book here.

The end of Clinton/Reagan politics.  We can only hope there will be no more Clintons or Clintonites in the White House after Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush…and I don’t agree that Barack Obama has been quite as Clintonite as the author believes–maybe at first, but I really feel he has started to break away from that in his second term. …especially within the last year.  And I can do without all the psycho-babble of why people choose political candidates….psychology and sociology theorists would like to put people in packages that suits a scientific measure, when people are much more complex than that.  Take me, for example….I am nothing like they would like to pigeonhole me as….

If a person matures psychologically as they get older, they will make their own choices according to their inner voice–not according to outside influences.  I think this is especially true if they are a spiritual person.

Challenge for Steve Perry.  Wow, it is unbelievable this guy is a Principal!  Really on the outer edge in his tweets, rightwinger for sure.  So glad that NBC and CNN are supporting the destruction of the public school system. /very snarky, indeed

HIs “no excuses” garbage is just that–just look at the statistics for how many of them his school serves.  And making a five year old stand up during lunch period because her mother didn’t send her to school with the proper uniform?  Are you kidding me??

Nobody is making excuses…the teachers and parents fighting for the public schools ARE fighting for kids in poverty and in minority neighborhoods who have multitudes of issues to deal with.  Not getting shot on the way to school is one of them…

Nancy Flanagan why all the snark?

A word about competition and profits

Rhee tells Philly how to solve problems.

Michelle Rhee penned an article about how to fix the public schools of Philadelphia. She says it is time for performance pay, so that there is “a great teacher” in every classroom.

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Great.  let’s start with Michelle Rhee’s performance in D.C.  Fail!  Or…how about her taping the kdis’ mouths shut and then laughing about it when they peeled the tape off and it tore their delicate skin off, too, leaving them crying and bleeding? Fail!  Or…how she is married to a predator??  Not someone I would want in charge of schools.

Be sure to click on the renegade video by an attendee to the *cough* conversation of Michelle Rhee and I think she mentions Steve Perry, too.    I love this–passionate public school advocates standing up against the propaganda.   Notice that they tell her they are “at the end” of the program and they try to hurry her up to quash her statement…but that is only 7 minutes into the program…it goes on for another 20 minutes!

The man talking (Perry) uses a LOT of emotional language–a red flag he doesn’t have facts to back up what he’s saying.  And, as the video asks…who are these “wrong” students Perry is talking about?  Not the dreaded poor, disabled, and minority students…that he says he wants to serve and calls Ravitch, et al, racists for not sending them to charters who will dump their butts for not jumping through hoops…..okay, I’m confused….

Also–as the commenter notes–Rhee mocks Hannah Nguyen.  Um-hmmm….but, yes, of course Rhee sincerely wants a conversation.  bwahahahahaha  *snort*  bwahahaha

**edited to take off the school finance link.  Like I said, I was tired last night, and mistakenly put that up.  After viewing one of the videos, it appears that the blog is pro-charter schools.  Or perhaps I should say anti-public schools.  Sorry for the mistake.

Environmental stuff

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Minke whale washes ashore in Portuguese Cove, Nova Scotia.  Why on Earth are they not taking the whale to someone who can analyze why it died?  They’re more worried about the smell of the carcass than finding out what caused its death. Mercury?  Runoff from chemical farms? Genetically modified organisms? Oil? Pharmaceuticals washed out to the ocean?

Greenpeace protests with mechanical polar bear. Pretty cool exhibit, eh?

 

More on Irish Slaves

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I went back to read the blog again, and this time clicked on the comments section.  I found the comment below about further study of the Irish slave trade.  It is amazing that this went on for 200 years, and nobody knows about it!

Stumbled upon this website doing Irish Genealogy and thought I’d post that I just finished the book To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland by Sean O’Callaghan and am starting White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America by Don Jordan & Michael Walsh.

I highly recommend To Hell or Barbados. It reads a little like a history text but still fascinating none the less to learn about this little talked about portion of history even though it went on for almost 200 years!

-J

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I found this blog on Sean O’Callaghan’s book To Hell or Barbados.   She writes a powerful paragraph in which she asks:

What if this story of the Irish and Scots had been exposed and well known; would slavery have had a different complexion and perceived differently today? Would the legacy of slavery, the blight and scourge it has inflicted upon people of African descent in the Americas be the same? Or would slavery have been understood for what it is: a system based on the conrol and subjugation of those who have no power–for economic gain.

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There is a short documentary video on the site, as well, but it only covers the African slave trade, so no new information on the Irish/Scots slave trade there.

Something disturbing, though, as I’m trying to find other blogs reviewing the book–one had stamped on it “White Pride World Wide”.  That is the LAST thing I would want to come of this information—we don’t need the KKK (and cohorts) to use this to further its hate agenda.   Good God, it should cause them to pause and reflect on how it was done to the vulnerable whites, as well, and therefore, should be a learning moment on empathy and justice.  It should be a lesson on how once again, those in power create hatred towards a specific group to gain even more power (the Nazi’s flash in my mind as I write that).

Do unto others…