Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalRepublicans express alarm that Texas execution nearly went ahead
Republican lawmakers in Texas expressed alarm on Monday at the apparent willingness of state officials to execute a potentially innocent man on the basis of junk science, as the political fallout of the 11th-hour reprieve of Robert Roberson continued to roil the state.
Several Republican members of the state’s House committee on criminal jurisprudence lined up to air their discontent with the handling of the case of Roberson, 57, who was convicted of killing his two-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in 2002 by violently shaking her.
Roberson was accused of “shaken baby syndrome”, a diagnosis that in recent years has been called into question as a reliable forensic tool.
Representative Jeff Leach told a hearing of the committee on Monday that he had come to be convinced that Roberson was “fully innocent”. And yet the prisoner, he said, had come “within 20 minutes and 20 steps of being executed by the state of Texas”.
Monday’s hearing of the committee not only amounted to one of the most dramatic outpourings of unease by Republican state politicians in a death penalty state about the flaws of the capital system, but it also temporarily spared Roberson’s life.
It was the committee’s issuing of a subpoena for the death row inmate to appear before it last Thursday night that persuaded the state’s supreme court temporarily to stay the execution, even as Roberson was sitting waiting to be escorted into the death chamber.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/21/republicans-texas-execution-robert-roberson
Shaken baby syndrome is pretty much now thought to be "junk science", the child had been sick for much of her life, and now even REPUBLICANS are alarmed...but AbBUTT and Paxton are still champing at the bit to execute the guy.........
GOP candidate for NC schools chief has spread falsehoods, 'groomer' rhetoric
At a street festival in downtown Wake Forest earlier this month Michele Morrow walked through the crowd wearing a blue T-shirt that read, “Make education great again” across the back.
As she spoke to voters, Morrow drew on her experience homeschooling her five children to say why she should be North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction.
“The majority of homeschoolers would put their kids gladly back into public school if they were sure that they were going to be safe, they weren't going to be bullied,” Morrow told a voter. She said parents don’t want “this worldview that is not their family's worldview, pushed on their children.”
That message might resonate with some parents but the election for North Carolina’s top schools official could be a referendum on Morrow’s track record for unfounded accusations and falsehoods.
She has promoted Q-Anon conspiracy theories, says some teachers are “groomers” and has said the “plus” in LGBTQ+ stands for “pedophilia.” On the campaign trail she often calls public schools “indoctrination centers.” Four years ago, she said former President Barack Obama should face a firing squad - which she has later said was a joke.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/nx-s1-5154035/north-carolina-schools-candidate-michele-morrow-obama
They always say it's a "joke"....but then why do they say it at all?
I hope everyone realizes
that the slobfather is merely a stalking horse for JD Vance. He's too infirm and unhinged to be president. If, God forbid, he is elected, he will either die shortly thereafter, be 25th Amendmented, or be merely a figurehead as JD, Peter Thiel, and the other fascists and architects of Project 2025 run roughshod over the country. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN!
A young teen gives birth. Idaho's parental consent law snags her care.
https://wapo.st/4hflJjqThe patient, 36 weeks pregnant, was having mild but frequent contractions. She had come to the emergency room in this small lakeside town because she was new to the area and had no doctor. In most cases, physician Caitlin Gustafson would have begun a pelvic exam to determine whether labor had started. This time, she called the hospital’s lawyers.
Mom-to-be Aleah was only 13 years old. And under a new Idaho law requiring parental consent for nearly all minors’ health care, Gustafson could be sued for treating her because the girl had been brought in by her great-aunt.
What followed were more than two frantic hours of trying to contact Aleah’s mother, who was living in a car, and her grandmother, who was the teen’s legal guardian. The grandmother finally gave verbal consent for the exam — from the Boise-area jail where she was incarcerated on drug charges.
“I was freaking out,” said Anna Karren, the relative who had taken Aleah into her home just days before. What if the hospital couldn’t reach the right person? “They want guardianship papers, and I don’t have them.”
The nerve-racking scene reflected the consequences of a law that physicians, therapists, adolescent advocates, school officials and some law enforcement authorities call misguided and dangerous, another attempt to legislate health care in a state where one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans already has doctors on edge.
Critics say the law — which also grants parents access to minors’ health records, doing away with confidentiality that providers and teen advocates call crucial — ignores the reality that parents aren’t always present or trustworthy. Three months after its implementation, they contend it is hindering adolescents’ ability to access counseling, limiting evidence-collection in sexual assault cases and causing schools to seek parental permission to treat scrapes with ice packs and Band-Aids.
This is beyond stupid. First of all, why is a 13 year old pregnant? Her family dysfunction reflects a lot of that. See the article for her comment about changing diapers as a toddler. This law is dangerous as well as stupid in the extreme.
What does JD Vance really believe?
The world is on fire, but in Washington DC topic A is Olivia Nuzzi. Her suspension as a writer for New York Magazine for sharing “demure” nude photographs of herself and other indiscreet communications with Robert F Kennedy Jr has engendered gales of hilarity to relieve the tension of the razor-thin close campaign.
Nuzzi’s relationship in journalistic terms fits the supreme court’s ruling on presidential immunity of the distinction between Donald Trump’s “private” and “official” acts involving the January 6 insurrection. In the spirit of the court and The Scarlet Letter, the blond bombshell has received more punishment for sexting than the blond bomber has for attempting a coup.
In the hurricane of gossip the most notable public discussion of the Nuzzi affair was an exchange of two buddies giggling at their lowbrow humor. “There’s this weird sex scandal story going on right now,” says the first. “The media is obsessed with – I don’t think there was any actual sex in the sex scandal.” Hahaha. His pal snickers, “That’s how I’m sure it is.” They guffaw. “I think that’s right,” replies the first. They laugh together in a communion of their misplaced coolness, unclever witticisms and pubescent misogyny.
This is not dialogue from an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head. It is not a cartoon. It is not a satire. The first jokester is the Republican candidate for vice-president, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. His interlocutor is Tucker Carlson, the erstwhile No 1 Fox News host, fired as a liability, financial and personal, and left to roam untethered in the social media wasteland.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/14/jd-vance-trump-beliefs
JD is largely a creature of his own invention, going with the prevailing RepubliKKKan winds,...
'Florida isn't safe': Ron DeSantis is unfit for hurricane response, activists say
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is back in the spotlight as he briefs residents on the arrival of Hurricane Milton, amid warnings it could be one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the state.
DeSantis, who dropped his presidential campaign in January, is as governor responsible for implementing Florida’s emergency plan by coordinating agencies, marshaling resources and urging residents to follow evacuation orders.
It’s a role he is unfit to play because of his record on the climate crisis, Florida activists say.
“Florida isn’t safe with DeSantis at the helm of our state government,” said Matthew Grocholske, 20, campaign strategy lead with the Orlando, Florida, chapter of the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
Less than two weeks after it was slammed by the deadly Hurricane Helene, the state is bracing for Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm.
Florida environmentalists say that DeSantis’s policies to boost fossil fuels, suppress carbon-free energy and ignore global heating have fueled the climate crisis that has exacerbated such hurricanes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/09/hurricane-milton-helene-florida-desantis
I really wish Milton would just carry him out to sea, never to be heard from again
Mike Johnson: There's No Rush For Congress To Approve Hurricane Relief
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he won’t call Congress back into session early to fast-track emergency funding for hurricane victims, arguing that there’s no rush since “it takes a while to calculate the actual damages.”
“We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” he said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
“That’s 30 days from now. The thing about these hurricanes and disasters of this magnitude is it takes a while to calculate the actual damages, and the states are going to need some time to do that,” he continued.
Members of Congress left Capitol Hill late last month to focus on campaigning in their home states. They are scheduled to return on Nov. 12, a week after Election Day.
President Joe Biden had asked lawmakers to hasten the approval of about $1.6 billion in federal funding towards the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program, which Biden said will run out of funding in weeks.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-congress-wont-vote-early-hurricane-relief_n_6703e86fe4b097cbbcb61d21
That sorry little weenie would have called them back yesterday if Helene had hit his state!
More Black and Latina women are leading unions -- and transforming how they work
Women make up roughly half of U.S. labor union membership, but representation in top level union leadership positions has lagged, even in female-dominated industries and particularly for women of color.
But Black and Latina women are starting to gain ground, landing top positions at some of the biggest unions in the U.S. That has translated into wins at the bargaining table that focus more attention on family-friendly benefits like parental leave and health care coverage, as well as protections against sexual harassment.
Often when people think about unions, “they think of a white guy in a hard hat. But in fact, studies show that about two-thirds of working people who are covered by a union contract are women and/or people of color,” said Georgetown University labor historian Lane Windham.
Indeed, hospitality union UNITE HERE’s membership is majority women and people of color. And last month, more than 12,000 of them across six states went on strike to push for wage increases, fair workloads and more affordable health care under the leadership of Gwen Mills, who in June became the first woman to be elected union president in its 130-year history.
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that Black and Latina women experience a particularly wide gender pay gap. They also face intersectional headwinds of both racism and sexism in their careers, making them even more attuned to inequities in the workplace and motivating them to increasingly step up the fight as union leaders.
https://apnews.com/article/labor-union-diversity-black-latina-women-leaders-0c186ea63ae8eebeaadb15e131b77a61
This year's Electoral College map may show another 'blue shift.' Here's why
The counting of ballots can take longer in some places than in others.
In presidential elections, that difference can cause a candidate’s early advantage in a state to change as more localities report their results in the hours and, sometimes, days after polls close on Election Day.
In 2020, the phenomenon known as the “red mirage” or “blue shift” turned the hue of several seemingly red states — where then-Republican President Donald Trump appeared to be in the lead over the then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden — blue.
Trump and his allies responded by linking that change in states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania to baseless claims of widespread voter fraud involving mail-in ballots.
In fact, however, it stemmed from partisan divides in where voters live and their preferred way of casting ballots, plus, in some states, laws that slow the tallying of votes.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/06/nx-s1-5141959/electoral-college-map-what-is-blue-shift-red-mirage
'Every day is a new conspiracy': behind Trump's ironclad grip on rightwing media
In the last few months, Donald Trump has done interviews with rightwing Twitch streamer Adin Ross and a host of podcasters, including Dr Phil, comedian Theo Von, computer scientist Lex Fridman, and YouTuber Logan Paul – part of what the Atlantic has dubbed Trump’s “red-pill podcast tour”.
He’s posted incessantly on his own social media platform, Truth Social. He did a live space on Twitter/X with the platform’s owner, Elon Musk. He talked with Fox’s Laura Ingraham and called into Fox & Friends and spoke to other Fox hosts and personalities.
His media strategy aligns with the current state of the rightwing media landscape: Fox is still a dominant source, but for the most Maga-adherent, it’s not Trumpy enough, despite some of its hosts embracing election denialism. Instead, there’s increasing fragmentation thanks to influencers and lesser-known outlets built around Trumpism.
This is the first election since Tucker Carlson, once Fox’s loudest voice in a primetime spot, was reportedly fired by the network, and his solo ventures so far haven’t taken on the prominence he had on TV. It’s also the first election since longtime Republican heavyweight Rush Limbaugh died. These big changes have left holes in rightwing media, which were filled by an increasing cadre of influencers, content creators and smaller outlets.
Adrianna Munoz, a 58-year-old from Queens, New York, who attended a Trump rally earlier this year in the Bronx, told the Guardian that she mostly gets news from YouTube, X and conservative commentators she follows, such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson.
“I used to watch TV news every morning – network news and the local news channel in New York,” she said. “Now I don’t. They sold out. They don’t tell you the truth. I don’t want to hear that rubbish.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/07/trump-rightwing-media-tv-podcasts-sites
And this is what's wrong.
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
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