[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Target's Anti-Gay Problems Look A Little Bigger Than Just One Political Contribution
- [Crooks and Liars - Susie Madrak]
It appears that Target's anti-gay PR problems are getting bigger by the day. Looks like they have themselves a few "the Bible tells us it's wrong" fundies at the helm…
- Patriarchy hurts babies too
- [Pursuit of Harpyness - SarahMC]
[Trigger warning for violence against a toddler.]
This is why I wasn’t amused when my co-worker told me her husband removed their toddler son from a park after he became interested in playing with a pink toy. Of course that’s not the same thing as murder, but it’s a difference in degree rather than kind. They exist on the same bigoted spectrum. The gender policing of little boys, especially, happens constantly, all around us.
- Gitmo Judge Patrick Parrish Allows Convicted Torturer Joshua Claus to Coerce Teen’s Confession Under Rape Threat
- [Firedoglake - Jim White]
…Monday’s decision from Guantanamo Military Commission Judge Colonel Patrick Parrish [allows] all confessions of Omar Khadr to be admitted into evidence…
Think about that just a moment. Col. Parrish has allowed to stand a confession that a convicted torturer openly admits was obtained after relating to the teenage suspect a story in which a non-cooperative suspect was sent to a prison to be raped and killed…
Khadr. While there are legal questions surrounding whether the act of which he is accused (throwing a hand grenade) rises to the level of a war crime rather than an act committed during a battle in a war, there can be no doubt that coercing a confession under threat of rape and/or death should itself be a punishable act. Yet, even though the perpetrator [former military interrogator Joshua Claus] of this war crime has been convicted [...] of torture, the presiding judge at Khadr’s military commission trial has decided to allow this and all other confessions obtained from Khadr when he was a 15 year old wounded boy.
This heinous decision by Parrish should remove all doubt on the question of the object of the military commission system at Guantanamo. This system is set up only to obtain convictions without regard to US and international law…
- Crude Violations: BP Is Dumping Toxic Waste In Low Income Communities of Colour
- [FWD/Forward - S.E. Smith]
…nine landfills in the Gulf region have been selected as sites for disposing of waste. Waste management authorities claim the material isn’t toxic, which means that regular municipal landfills, rather than landfills specifically designed to handle hazardous waste, are being used. Of the nine landfills chosen, five are located in low income communities of colour.
This is not a coincidence….
From the start, the oil spill has disproportionately impacted people of colour. Many of the cleanup workers were people of colour, and BP also used primarily nonwhite prison labour in oil spill cleanup and tried to hide it…
- America Reduced to Taking Food Out of Kids’ Mouths to Pay Their Teachers
- [Firedoglake - Blue Texan]
There was a study last year that showed half of all American children will at some point in their lives rely on food stamps. Yes, 50%.
- Paul B. Farrell: Reagan insider: GOP destroyed economy
- [MarketWatch]
“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy. Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, 'Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.'
[Mismatched quotation marks in original. IDEK. -L]
- Updated Sherlock 'will be back'
- [BBC News]
[Why don't you look more surprised? -L]
- Storytelling visualized
- [swissmiss]
Kurt Vonnegut explains storytelling through Cartesian graphs on a blackboard. [chart porn and a linked article]
- Are physicists just making up dark energy?
- [io9 - Dr. Dave Goldberg]
In this week's "Ask a Physicist," I get defensive about dark energy. It dominates the universe; it's completely absurd; and it's apparently absolutely necessary.
- Patriarchy Suffers Setback, Conservatives Shit Their Pants
- [Pursuit of Harpyness - SarahMC]
- As Liberals Lose Hope, the White House is Losing Its Cool
- [FiveThirtyEight - Nate Silver]
Lord knows I've had my share of disagreements with the "professional left", as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs derisively referred to them in a rant to The Hill this morning. And I tend to endorse Jonathan Cohn's view that Obama has had a reasonably accomplished first year-and-a-half in office that perhaps has been taken for granted by some liberals.
But if there is a gulf between what Obama has accomplished and the amount of credit that some liberals are willing to give him for it, it just became much wider today…
- Someone tell Robert Gibbs: Jerry’s dead. Everyone’s gone home.
- [Pandagon - Amanda Marcotte]
…a lot of us relate to the very people that work in the Obama administration—hell, some on the The Left have friends and family in the Obama administration. It’s an Othering of your own fucking people. I don’t wear patchouli or sleep in a van. I hate smoking pot and don’t do it. Being supportive of gay marriage, being against torture, and believing that the government should do more during a depression, a la FDR? These simply aren’t out-there crazy hat opinions, as much as cowardly Democrats would like to pretend otherwise. As one of the non-hippie hippies who had the specific audacity to call bullshit on the Obama administration’s willingness to sell out the pro-choice movement that offers so much support, I’m especially annoyed. I’ve often defended the Democrats against some attacks I thought were a tad unfair—for instance, I’m really not sure how much you could have done to corral Bart Stupak, who was so self-absorbed on the abortion issue he actually ruined his own career over it—but when the Obama administration does something straight up cowardly they didn’t have to do, then hell yeah, I’m going to say something. That doesn’t mean that I abhor shoes and showers.
…what really makes me mad is this: The fucking slogan of the Democrats is, “Make us do it.” We’re told over and over by major Democrats, including Obama, that they want us to pressure them because it makes it easier for them to do the right thing. If all the pressure they get is from the right, they claim, they’ll be forced to move right. So we have to keep the heat on.
…They demand that we hold their feet to the fire, and this is how [White House press secretary] Gibbs pays us, by hippie-punching us?
- Designing an easier-to-read NYC subway map
- [FlowingData - Nathan Yau]
There's a lot of history behind the New York City subway map, but despite all the revisions, people (especially out-of-towners) still find it hard to navigate the underground. Designer Eddie Jabbour took his frustrations and put that energy towards a heavy redesign. After the MTA rejected it, he put it up in the Apple Store as KickMap, so that people could at least make use of his map on their iPhone. So far, a quarter of a million of people have downloaded it.
Jabbour explains the design process in his article for O'Reilly's recent compilation, Beautiful Visualization…
The Link(s): Tue, Aug 10th, 8am by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.