Never forget— Older than Hillary.

Friday News Story Part 1

Friday News Story Part 2

This wouldn't be very interesting to the regulars, but we do have lurkers.

David Matheson, the most notorious conversion therapist in the country has come out the closet, divorced his wife and is now looking to date men.

Gee, what gay guy wouldn't want a catch like him? I mean, Utah (where this God-fearing Mormon lives) has safe houses for gay teens, because of the suicide rate among gay teen Mormons.

I mean, once you overlook the fact that he's authored a successful book and commands the salary of a professional psychologist, all by telling gay teens to just "pray the gay away," why, he's gay husband material all the way. And who cares about all those gay teen suicides? What's a few dead bodies?

Toxic femininity?

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/319718/

Greenwald

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1088769686651789312

What happened to the days when the sheriff would call you up and say, "Hey, I have a warrant for your arrest. Do you want to come in on your own, or should I have a deputy pick you up?"

There's a recent book for kids: "Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship."

http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2018/02/21/review-of-the-day-can-i-touch-your-hair-by-irene-latham-charles-waters/

First quarter of the review, by Elizabeth Bird:

"For a long time, maybe as long as children’s books have been published in America, there has been an unspoken understanding amongst white parents that when it comes to race, the less said to children the better. White people are particularly attached to the notion that if you don’t mention race, don’t speak its name, don’t bring it up in any way with kids, then they’ll never notice race on their own and they’ll grow up to become wholly unprejudiced individuals, incapable of even a single racist thought. Right. This belief persists, flying in the face of studies that have shown that kids aren’t blind. One of the very first things they perceive growing up is difference. And if you don’t offer guidance of any sort to them as they age, then you’re allowing the world with all its messages and lessons to do the teaching for you. So children’s books find themselves at a crossroads. They can either continue as they have in the past, trading in specifics for hazy 'we’re all the same inside' messages, or they can trod a new path. They can actually try their hand at confronting race head on in a format for the young. It took four people to bring us Can I Touch Your Hair? and countless others to bring it to our library and bookstore shelves. It takes only one person to buy it and show it to a kid. And it takes only one to use it as the conversation starter we’ve needed for so long..."

(snip)

Two 5th-graders, a black boy (Charles) and a white girl (Irene), are assigned by Mrs. Vandenberg to write poems together - on any subject.

From page 19:

"Geography" (by Irene)

When Mrs. Vandenberg
points at the US map
and asks, "Why do we call
this region the black belt?"
I stretch my hand high.
But she calls on Patty Jean
instead.

Patty Jean leans forward,
like she's sure she's right.
"Because black people live there."
Mrs. Vandenberg's face
squinches like a rotten peach,
and her voice comes out sour.
"Of course not, Patty Jean.
Use your head."

I sink down into my seat.
Patty Jean's answer is my answer.
I learn
when it comes to black and white,
sometimes it's best
to press my lips closed
and not say anything at all.

(end)

I admit, I'd never heard of the black belt. So I looked it up.

SEMI-SPOILER

When I looked back at the poem's title, I remembered that geography is, after all, about more than the locations of landmarks, borders, or even people's languages - namely, it's also about imports, exports, and natural resources. So it's fair to assume that the teacher DID in fact drop enough clues, in advance, as to why the black belt has that name, and so, both girls were likely not paying attention! (No, it's not about oil.)

My boyfriend would farm just to use this. Wouldn't yours? ~ Amy

Mine wouldn't, but I would.

Learn to code y'alls

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/1088714406702112768

I'm generally pretty decent at geography, but I am unfamiliar with this "black belt" region. *does research* Oh.

The Black Belt is a region of the Southern United States. The term originally described the prairies and dark fertile soil of central Alabama and northeast Mississippi.

I am now better prepared for Jeopardy. At least it isn't that gods-cursed red clay of Georgia.

Greenpeace is environmentally friendly, right?

Or not. Beach scrapping consists of running a ship a ground on an accessible beach, and dismantling it with unskilled labor who...don't know how to properly dispose of the various toxic materials on a ship. Some of which may very well be asbestos.

So the former ship-owner which organised the vessel to be scrapped in such a fashion [beach scrapping] in a Commonwealth country would surely be the target of strong criticism from members of the environmentalist lobby, such as say, Greenpeace. Caroline Lucas, she of the Green Party, would surely raise the issue in the House of Commons, especially if the former ship-owner were European with branches in the UK. The EU itself has strong regulations against EU ship-owners employing beach-scrapping. However, these can be easily bypassed by re-flagging a ship before scrapping.

Except Caroline will not be raising this issue at all.

The former owners of the ship were Greenpeace themselves.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/greenpeaces-own-environmental-vandalism-goes-conveniently-unreported/

Amusing.

https://twitter.com/Rowaida_Abdel/status/1088567657346027521

And if they don't want to learn to code, perhaps they can learn another valuable skill, such as plumbing, electrician, or dog groomer.

Of course, they can always go back to being a Starbucks barista.

Timeless?

Just figured out Garner was wearing a hairpiece.

> Sixclaws at January 25, 2019 9:40 AM

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