MadDAsHell
MadDAsHell's Journal'Not a statistic': Students walk out of Colorado shooting vigil to condemn politics and press
Source: Washington Post
A vigil commemorating the victims of the STEM School shooting in Colorado ended in protest Wednesday evening after students said they refused to be used as pawns to promote gun control.
Hundreds attended the vigil — students, teachers, activists and elected officials — to honor Kendrick Castillo, the 18-year-old who was fatally shot on Tuesday. But Castillo’s classmates were moved to protest after invitees Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) spoke. Many of the teenagers perceived the speeches as politicians politicizing their trauma when they wanted their own voices heard.
Students stood and stormed out. Some clapped and united in chants, deriding what they saw as a “political stunt.” The school parking lot quickly filled with teenagers, cursing at the press and holding backlit cellphones in the air. "What happened at STEM is awful, but it’s not a statistic. We can’t be used for a reason for gun control. We are people, not a statement,” said one student wearing a yellow Spartans shirt. Another teenager voiced similar frustrations, saying: “I thought this was about us, not about politics.”
The gathering at Denver’s Highlands Ranch High School, one of several held Wednesday, was organized by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Read more: https://beta.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/05/09/not-statistic-students-walk-out-colorado-shooting-vigil-condemn-politics-press/?outputType=amp
Why do we allow the alt-right to co-opt words, hand gestures, etc.?
This Cubs story is ridiculous. The "well these people are using this hand sign for something racist now so let's just let them have it" is the most spineless reaction we can possibly have. I'm black as was nearly every classmate I had and this was absolutely used for the circle game. The very fact that the Cubs banned this guy is legitimizing their stealing this from us and willingly handing power to the white supremacists.
If white supremacists start considering the average handshake a symbol of white power, are we going to let them have that too and ban everyone else from using it?
FUCK THAT.
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26703470/cubs-ban-fan-gesture-associated-racism
Medicaid Could Save $2.6 Billion Within a Year if Just 1 Percent of Recipients Quit Smoking
Source: University of California San Francisco
Reducing smoking, and its associated health effects, among Medicaid recipients in each state by just 1 percent would result in $2.6 billion in total Medicaid savings the following year, according to new research by UC San Francisco.
The median state would save $25 million, ranging from $630.2 million in California (if the smoking rate dropped from 15.5 percent to 14.5 percent) to $2.5 million in South Dakota (if the rate dropped from 41.3 to 40.3 percent), the research found.
The study, by Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, is published April 12, 2019 in JAMA Network Open.
“While 14 percent of all adults in the U.S. smoke cigarettes, 24.5 percent of adult Medicaid recipients smoke,” said Glantz. “This suggests that an investment in reducing smoking in this population could be associated with a reduction in Medicaid costs in the short run.”
Read more: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/04/413921/medicaid-could-save-26-billion-within-year-if-just-1-percent-recipients-quit
Desperation allowed cute "It's Mueller Time" memes to override what was right in front of our face.
We wanted justice so bad that we were willing to completely ignore Mueller's political history, his assistance in lying us into the Iraq War, and every other obvious sign that this was never going to be an impartial investigation. A guy whose personal and political history should be demonized on DU was instead lionized and worshipped because he was, simply, our only hope.
When cute memes become more important than facts, people are ultimately going to be disappointed.
Can we officially be done fetishizing and folk hero-izing Republicans?
"It's Mueller Time" memes are all cute until he does exactly what we expect Republicans to do: fuck us over. Mueller's history gave us not a single shred of reason to assume he was going to be fair in this process, yet there we were spending the last 2 years worshipping him like he was Elliot Ness. We actually did the Cons a favor by building Mueller up to be this saint, because it's now that much harder to refute what was ultimately (and unsurprisingly to me) shitty investigative work.
We are in this nasty habit of desperately clinging to anything that seems even remotely anti-Trump, but I promise you that all these guys will fuck us every chance they get.
Remember, McCain was Satan himself on DU just 11 short years ago; today we're awfully close to giving him sainthood. Don't turn these people into heroes.
What happens when people are over their heads: http://www.unwillingtowork.org
I realize it's a parody website but this is what happens when legislators don't think: http://www.unwillingtowork.org
Secure your spot today!
As per the goals outlined in the Green New Deal, every American will be provided with "economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work".
Questions have been asked about the process by which Americans can declare themselves unwilling to work and sign up for free economic security.
Fortunately, we think it should be as simple as declaring yourself as one of The Unwilling and then filling out the short application at the bottom to determine your new career and salary.
For answers to specific questions, please refer to The FAQ.
I had a feeling all Northam had to do was give it a week, and clearly he and his advisors did too.
This is America; if there's one thing Drumpf has taught us, it's that no matter the outrage, no matter how loud the cries or how many the protesting bodies, you only have to wait it out about a week or so. It's only a matter of time before something else drowns it out and people are on to the next outrage.
Not saying Northam won't still ultimately leave office, but if I was putting money on it, the fact that he made it past the first few days and into a new news cycle tells me he, and both of his troubled colleagues, are probably here to stay.
Judge gets national attention for KKK statement
Source: Nashville's NBC affiliate
He's made Newsweek and USA today. One of the headlines read, "Tennessee judge goes on tirade about crime among black men being 'more effective' than KKK."
Montgomery County Judge Wayne Shelton was on the bench talking to murder suspect Vincent Merriweather when he said, "I grew up in a time where people wore white robes and they shot at black people, and now we see young, black men wearing black hoodies shooting at black men and doing a much more effective job than the klan ever thought about doing."
"My initial reaction was, he was on point," said Jimmie Garland, the President of the Clarksville branch of the NAACP. While many people are sounding off, outraged, on social media, calling Shelton "racist," Garland is standing by his side.
"He's telling the young people, 'Stop killing yourself. Stop doing the job that, back in the early 30's and 20's and 10's, they did wearing robes and wearing pointed caps. You don't have to do that,'" said Garland.
Read more: https://www.wsmv.com/news/judge-gets-national-attention-for-kkk-statement/article_2dd1a108-12d2-11e9-b73f-eff5d9672984.html
Apparently in 2015 he made similar comments regarding the death of another young African-American male: “What a horrible tragedy this is. Black lives matter. That life mattered. That black life mattered to (his family) and it matters to me,” he reportedly told a pair of teenage brothers accused of gunning down a 20-year-old man after a high school graduation party...The Klan doesn’t exist anymore. Who doesn’t care about black lives now? I’ll let you answer that. I’m tired of black men killing black men. If I offended anyone . . . I can’t help it.”
Police In Houston Charge Suspect With Murder In Death Of 7-Year-Old Jazmine Barnes
Source: NPR
Police made an arrest on Saturday in the shooting death of a seven-year-old girl in Houston. The Harris County Sheriff's Office says 20-year-old Eric Black Jr. has been charged with capital murder. Black "admitted to taking part in the shooting," the office wrote in a statement.
Police initially said that a white man in a red pickup truck pulled up beside the car and opened fire. A tip from the public helped police identify Black, who is African American. He is now in custody in East Harris County.
Jazmine's family, a local chapter of Black Lives Matter and others had said they believed the shooting was racially motivated.
"I have no tint on my windows or anything so you can see there is a mother — a black mother — with daughters, beautiful children," Washington told CNN while police were searching for a suspect. "You took my baby from me and you have no care in the world."
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/06/682631402/police-in-houston-charge-suspect-with-murder-in-death-of-7-year-old-jazmine-barn
I hope this continues to get traction and we see justice for precious Jazmine. Unfortunately, without the salacious headline of a racially charged murder, this story now probably drops like a rock.
Has anyone looked at the newly released "list of charges" on their local website? What a joke.
It was an ACA requirement that just went into effect 1/1/19.
My local hospital has one excel file that is 281 rows, and another that is almost 6,300 rows. Each line has a "description" which will be absolutely meaningless to 99% of people, and then a charge, which because no one actually pays it, will also be absolutely meaningless. The information also lacks any instructions or context whatsoever; consumers will have no idea that their knee replacement is probably a combination of dozens of codes, instead of just 1 of the 100+ codes that have the word "knee" in it. Nor does this information account for the myriad other charges that will never show up on a hospital chargemaster, such as ambulance charges, physician charges, OP therapy charges, pharmacy charges, lab charges, etc.
Incredibly, this took NINE YEARS to implement. In 9 years, we should have been able to standardize wording, show code bundles, etc. Shit, if we passed Single Payer I would expect it to be implemented in less than 9 years.
I keep telling myself "it's a start," but if it's not even remotely useful information, what exactly is it a start to? How in 10,000 pages of regulations could we not have addressed this issue better? What a ridiculous waste of time and resources.
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Member since: Wed Nov 5, 2014, 11:56 AMNumber of posts: 2,067
