Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, the hometown of the beloved author of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee. What Tucker never heard about, growing up, were the 17 lynchings that happened in Monroe County.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
— “Strange Fruit,” Abel Meeropol, 1939

MONROEVILLE, Alabama — Growing up here, I was steeped in the stories that ripple through To Kill a Mockingbird. This is Harper Lee’s hometown, and her narrative, though fictionalized, brilliantly portrayed its racial climate in the 1930s. She called on eccentric characters who were well-known in town and put to good use tales with which she was familiar. My late father, who grew up here, identified some of those characters and tales for me.

He and my mother also taught their children to negotiate the landscape of Jim Crow, a welter of oppressive codes and customs designed to legitimize white supremacy. Those codes were still in force in my childhood, so I attended segregated schools through elementary and much of high school. I followed the law that locked me out of “WHITES ONLY” restrooms, waiting rooms, and downstairs seats in the movie theater.

As a very small child, I had my own experience with running right into the wall — not always visible but substantial nevertheless — put in place to separate the races. My mother and I were traveling to Montgomery on a commercial bus operated under the banner of Trailways Bus Lines. We had taken seats near the front, but when we stopped in Hayneville, just south of Montgomery, more white travelers boarded. The driver ordered us to the back.

At the ripe old age of four, I objected, my mother remembers. Terrified, she dragged me to the back. When we arrived at our destination, she called my father and told him he would have to come to drive us home. She didn’t dare take me on another bus ride for fear my obstinance would bring trouble.

https://bittersoutherner.com/in-the-hate-of-dixie-monroe-county-lynchings/?rq=kelso&utm_source=The+Bitter+News&utm_campaign=bb3fed3368-song_without_words_2018_10_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8269ec3593-bb3fed3368-91984949&goal=0_8269ec3593-bb3fed3368-91984949&mc_cid=bb3fed3368&mc_eid=bc2515f09d

You're watching the official music video for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - "Teach Your Children" written by Graham Nash. Originally released on the 1970 CSNY studio album "Deja Vu", "Teach Your Children" is featured on a 2018 Graham Nash career retrospective entitled "Over The Years..." Get a copy here https://rh-ino.co/overtheyears

The video is a collaboration between Graham Nash and celebrated filmmaker and animator Jeff Scher.

The imagery frames the youth-led liberal activism of 2018 against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and Peace demonstrations of the 1960's, providing a powerful visual aid to Graham Nash's relevant-as-ever appeal to teach not only our children but also our parents well.

“I wrote Teach Your Children because we have much to teach them. Conversely, I believe we as parents have much to learn from them as well. I think that Jeff Scher did a wonderful job of animating my lyrics and positioning the song in a contemporary setting." - Graham Nash (2018)

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway mocked Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) during an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, calling her a "29-year-old congresswoman who doesn't seem to know much about anything."

Conway's criticism came during an interview on "America's Newsroom" about possible successors to White House chief of staff John Kelly. Conway criticized Ocasio-Cortez for describing Kelly as a liar.

"[Kelly] is in his fifth decade of public service, and this country owes him a debt of gratitude, not the nonsense that has been spewed about him recently from the left, and from this 29-year-old congresswoman who doesn't seem to know much about anything when you ask her basic concepts about the economy, or the Middle East, or military funding," Conway told anchor Bill Hemmer.

"[It's] really embarrassing. And for her to even use a slur against him yesterday — I won’t repeat her name or the slur," Conway said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/420751-conway-says-ocasio-cortez-is-29-year-old-who-dont-seem-to-know-much-about

When former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos stepped out of a federal prison in Wisconsin last week after serving two weeks for lying to the FBI, he was greeted by his wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos — and a documentary series crew.

It was perhaps inevitable: Now that he has completed his role in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, George Papadopoulos is looking to Hollywood.

A docuseries about the couple is being produced by a Los Angeles-based company that hopes to capi­tal­ize on the personal drama surrounding the 31-year-old energy consultant and his Italian wife.

“The story to me is this young couple who falls in love and days later find themselves in the middle of this international scandal,” said executive producer Stephanie Frederic of FGW Productions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-prison-ex-trump-aide-george-papadopoulos-looks-to-reboot-through-new-docuseries/2018/12/11/e5fe31ca-fc8d-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7e44c89f153c

The Wall Street Journal Magazine (WSJM) has a puff piece on Gwyneth Paltrow and her pile of GOOP. People Magazine has an even more cloying companion piece. I expect that from People, but honestly I thought the WSJM might actually offer more than a thinly veiled advertisement.

I thought wrong.

Both articles have a serious case of nose-up-ass disease. I’m tempted to prescribe GOOP’s coffee enema kit, but I don’t want anyone to burn their rectum on my account. Although I would pay money to watch Paltrow walk us through a coffee enema step-by-step. According to WSJM she tries almost all the products GOOP sells.

If she tries them (or reportedly tries them), then when you buy them you can be just like Paltrow. Or at least aspire to be like her. GOOP is, after all, aspirational. Because that is of course what health should be. Aspirational.

WSJM gives Paltrow prime real estate to tell people how amazing she is, but also how she is just like the proletariat (for example, after getting married she and her new husband still have separate households, because teenagers). And how she made yoga and eating healthy cool in 2008.

No one ever thought of yoga or salads before Paltrow.

https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/gwyneth-paltrow-wants-to-take-your-money-the-press-is-helping-her/

He betrayed his promises and left a legacy of debt and disappointment.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s legacy can be summed up in just one number: $343 billion.

That’s the increase between the deficit for fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2018 — that is, the difference between the fiscal year before Ryan became speaker of the House and the fiscal year in which he retired.

If the economy had fallen into recession between 2015 and 2018, Ryan’s record would be understandable. But it didn’t. In fact, growth quickened and the labor market tightened — which means deficits should’ve fallen. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened in each of the five years preceding Ryan’s speakership; from 2011 to 2015, annual deficits fell each year.

As he prepares to leave office, Ryan says that debt reduction is one of those things “I wish we could have gotten done.” Ryan, the man with the single most power over the federal budget in recent years, sounds like a bystander, as if he watched laws happen rather than made them happen.

To understand the irony and duplicity of that statement, you need to understand Ryan’s career. After the profligacy of the George W. Bush years and the rise of the Tea Party, Ryan rocketed to the top ranks of his party by warning that mounting deficits under President Obama threatened the “most predictable economic crisis we have ever had in this country.” Absent the fiscal responsibility that would accompany Republican rule, we were facing nothing less than “the end of the American dream.”

Ryan’s reputation was built on the back of his budgets: draconian documents that gutted social spending, privatized Medicare, and showed the Republican Party had embraced the kinds of hard fiscal choices that Bush had sloughed off. And Ryan presented himself as the wonkish apostle of this new GOP, rolling up his sleeves and running through the charts, graphs, and tables that made his case.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/10/17929460/paul-ryan-speaker-retiring-debt-deficits-trump