Politics Plus

From this week on you may assume that I have cut the stories down; that there are more which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them, but I can't feature all of them, even all of them which are underreported.  Because it's going to continue to be true for the foreseeable future.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

Last week I mentioned the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, and how it made homeless not only whoever may have survived it, but also a lot more people who have been trying to live and create in similar spaces (not only in Oakland, incidentally; other cities elsewhere in the country are cracking down on anyone who is using this kind of housing).  If you thought that was rock bottom, think again.  As of Monday, December 5, 36 had been confirmed dead but only 11 identified.  A chaotic situation for friends and relatives of residents.  On Facebook, a "Memorial Page for Oakland Fire" was set up, and survivors could post requests for information.

One survivor, Anna Mendiola, posted a photo of her sister in law, Jenifer (Mendiola), who also used the name Alana Kane, requesting any information.  Some friends also posted, and they tagged her Facebook page.  So, naturally, an uncounted number of trolls ran right over to Jennifer's page and started trolling like mad.

Mediaite will not post a link to the Facebook page out of respect.  But they posted a couple of examples.  Under a post urging friends to sign a petition that would encourage universities to cooperate less with ICE concerning undocumented students was posted  "sanctuary schools?  fuck no.  rip.  Trump 2029"

Under a call for Oakland residents to protest the election of Donald Trump, there are at least three comments:

"Worst post ever on FB.  You should be ashamed of yourself."
"Trump2020"
"All these anti-TRUMP anarchists are burning in HELL.  quite literally I'd say!"

Or, as Mediaite sums it up:  "A woman is missing — and, judging by some of the comments on the page, presumed dead — and trolls have taken to her page to criticize her for not supporting Trump. Her friends and family can see these comments."

I don't think you are going to have any trouble finding them, Ladies.  Like the old saying:  "Fools' names and fools' faces/Are often found in public places."  Apparently FaceBook is one of those places.  You'll track them down.

Nazareth College, in Rochester New York, "despite what the biblical name might evoke, is not a religiously affiliated college; it dropped its Roman Catholic affiliation in the 1970s…. Instead, the college picked up a commitment to religious pluralism: Every undergraduate is required to take a religious studies course, and engage with faith traditions other than their own."

The most obvious way to so engage is to attend the religious services of another fairh, introducing themselves as students, and asking questions like: "What are your core values? How do you see them as the same or different from those of other religions?"  This is what a couple of  Muslim students did, picking the evangelical Browncroft Community Church.  Their first visit was so successful, they returned for a second visit, during which they also went to the coffee hour and talked to members.  They felt that the second visit went at least as well – a rich, positive learning experience.  Some of the church members hugged them as they left.

But, after they left, a "concerned congregant" called the Department of Homeland Security (who went to the state police, who went to campus security, who called the Religious Studies Department Head) because apparently their homework assignment had become a "cause for concern."

You will be happy to know there is going to be no protesting over this.  The college officials, the senior pastor of the church, and the students, as well as the Muslim Student Association, don't want protest, but they do all want dialogue.  The President had a good conversation with the senior pastor, as a result of which a metting was set up between the course teacher and another pastor, and all have hopes that good will come of it.

All, maybe except Concern Troll.  So, Ladies, I think you need to look up Concern Troll.  And – an expression I don't use lightly – put the fear of God into him or her.

But, speaking of the fear of God, maybe Pastor David Grisham in Texas is not the guy to emulate. 

He strolled into a Texas mall, found a bunch of kids and parents waiting in line to take a picture with Santa, and started to YELL.  (He would probably call it "preaching"; most people would call it a "rant"; I would think almost anyone would call it rude and uncalled for.)

Some of what he said: 

"… When you substitute the lie of Santa Claus in the heart of your child for the truth of Jesus Christ, you are bearing false witness against God. Don’t lie to your children and tell them there’s such a thing as Santa, when you know in reality that there are no flying reindeer, there is no workshop at the North Pole, there is no elves making toys, that you buy all the gifts and put ’em under the tree.

That’s all the truth. And there is no real Santa Claus. There is no Santa. It is not your place to lie to your children. Tell them the truth about Jesus Christ."

He then went home and posted a video of the rant to Facebook, claiming he had been "assaulted."  Yeah, right.  Someone coming up to you and asking you to stop yelling is not assault in my book.  (The video is at the link, so you can judge for yourself.)  His teeth looked like that BEFORE he started yelling.  They do look like Trump voters' teeth, though, don't they?  I think he needs to be schooled by you Ladies.  Draw straws or flip a coin for who goes where – these people are all so pathetic that it's hard for me to say.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4027075

This week I have cut the stories down again; there are more which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them, but I can't feature all of them, even all of them which are underreported.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

There is so much going on, and I am sure there are stories worse than what is happening to Jahahara Alkebulan-Ma'at in Oakland, CA, but it's a story that bears on a bigger problem, one affecting many more people, as I will touch on.

Alkebulan-Ma'at moved to Oakland from Chicago in 1995, roughly 21 years ago.  At that time he quickly found the apartment he has lived in since.  Of course, then, Silicon Valley was just starting, and gentrification and impossible housing costs were still in the future.  His (now former) landlord always kept his apartment affordable, so when in 2014 he retired due to disability, his social security check covered the rent.

But in May 2016, his former landlord sold the building, and the new owner is evicting him, effective December 25.  Charistmas Day.

The East Bay Express interviewed both Alkebulan-Ma'at and the new landlord (well, the man behind the "Redevelopment Group").  Certainly Mr. Gorelik thinks he has tried to be fair.  He offered Alkebulan-Ma'at a buyout of $3,646.00.  Which I would roughly guess, in now gentrified Oakland, might last two months.  Alkebulan-Ma'at is on a waiting list for senior housing – but the wait can take years.  Years which he now does not have.

Adding insult to injury, shortly after November 8, Mr. Gorelik put up a huge Trump "Make America Great Again" sign in the property's front yard.  It was attached to a couple of trees, high enough so drivers on Interstate 580 could see it.  It was stolen, so Mr. Gorelik replaced it with one attached to the building itself, surrounded with barbed wire, and floodlighted.

Many of Popular-Vote-Loser Trump's supporters are making a big thing about how committed Trump is to urban renewal, and how wonderful this is going to be for people of color living in inner cities.  The reality is the experience of Mr. Alkebulan-Ma'at.  He now has no home and no place to go that he can afford.  He is disabled and lives on Social Security.  And he is not alone.

You may remember that Oakland was recently the site of a huge warehouse fire – at least, a building which was once a warehouse, which had been converted to varioua uses by artists, including, for some of them, housing.  The East Bay Express has numerous articles related to this situation, not the least interesting of which is An Open Letter to the Community from the Former Residents of the Recently Closed LoBot Gallery.  One excerpt:

We are just a few days into a nightmare that is still unfolding. Bodies are still being carried from the warehouse that many friends called home, but already people outside of this community are calling for a crackdown on art spaces. This threatens our ability to survive and create in a rapidly gentrifying city that we helped build.

Note that the LoBot was NOT the building which burned.  That was the Ghost Ship.  But the LoBot is still a casualty of that fire.  Another excerpt:

At LoBot, a fire inspector visited following an anonymous “concerned citizen” complaint. Even though we prioritized fire safety, and were not cited for any violations, our landlord told us to leave, and refused to negotiate. The art space we spent thirteen years cultivating was crushed in a matter of weeks, our home destroyed, our ability to create pushed further into the margins.

"We want safer buildings," say the LoBot evictees.  "But please listen to this community before you try to protect us."  Well, it is certainly gracious of them to be so charitable about the mortives of that "concerned citizen."  I don't know whether I could be that gracious myself.

So what to do?  Well, for starters, Tisiphone, maybe you could track down and sit on all thise "concerned citizens,"  who, I am convinced, have decided that what I would call art and creativity are actually sin and degeneracy.  Megaera, you may want to look up that landlord, his wife (who is also his business partner), and their lawyer, all of whom are named in the article, at least, and educate them on what it really costs to find a place to live after gentrification. 

And Alecto – OK, this is a stretch, but it seems like every time I comb through these happenings I end up saying "s**t."  And, well, s**t is kind of timeless.  It has been around forever, and will be around forevermore.  So maybe you would look into the episode of the "s**t sandwich."

So.  This Officer with the San Antonio, TX Police Department decided, last May, that it would be really cute to make a s**t sandwich, with real bread, and real s**t, and put it into a styrofoam container and give it to a homeless person.  So he did.  This guy must be just a barrel of laughs.   Several officers had knowledge of the incident and eventually reported it.  And the officer, Officer Luckhurst, admitted it.  But he said, he was really, really sorry.  Mm-hmm. 

So, in October , he was fired.  But, in San Antonio, they have a binding arbitration rule.  So, if an officer who is fired wants his job back, he and the department can go to arbitration.  The process is open to the public and to the media – but that may not mean that anyone can testify, just that anyone can watch.  And if the arbitrator says the officer gets his job back, then he gets it back.  Period. 

The police chief can attach conditions to his re-hiring/  For instance, in 2012, Officer Michael Garza was fired for shooting and killing his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend.  In 2015, an arbitrator ruled that he could get his job back.  I am not making this up.

All the Department could do was to ensure that he would never be in a position where he could interact with the public.  Well.  That sounds to me like he probably has a sinecure now.  It's probably too late to do anything about that now, but Alecto, if anyone can, it would be you. 

But I suspect the first thing is to make sure that the Luckhurst case does not get assigned to a wacko arbitrator.  Luckhurst may not have thought his action was so serious – I say that because there is a name for his facial expression in his picture ("a s**t-eating grin") – but the rest of us have plenty of outrage here.  Good luck.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross-posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4025947

This week I have cut the stories down to three which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

You know, it's not that long since Veterans' Day.  On the day after Veterans' Day, Army Sergeant John William Perry died of injuries received from an improvised explosive device in Bagram, Afghanistan.  He was 30.  He left behind a wife and two small children.  Also a mother, a father, and a grandmother with whom he had been living in California prior to deployment. 

His father, Stewart Perry, accepted the responsibility to meet his remains from Dover, Delaware to northern California.  With his wife an daughter, he boarded an American Airlines flight to Philadelphia, with a quick transfer in Phoenix, before traveling from there to Dover.

Apparently the flight was 45 minutes late getting into Phoenix, and the crew feared the delay might cause them to miss their connecting flight.  So, when the plane landed, the Captain announced that all passengers should remain seated to let a "special military family" exit the aircraft first.

Several passengers in first class began to boo and complain, Perry said.

"Some people were saying 'This is just baloney,' and 'I paid for first-class for this?' “

Daily Kos user noweasels (and isn't that a great name?) had this to say about it:

Dear Entitled First Class Whiners: When you hear “special military family” on board, you sit or stand and say “thank you.”  It doesn’t matter what you “paid,” because what you paid has no meaning to any family of any member of the military who has paid the ultimate price. 

But I would like for them to hear it from you, Megaera.  I'll bet it would be memorable.

BTW, Daily Kos has a group called "I Got The News Today" where members post tributes to the memory of service members who give their lives. Here is the tribute page for Sergeant Perry and another soldier who also died that day.

Transgendered people have probably always existed, but the earliest reference to one (that I know of) is to Tiresias, who appears in several myths, one of which is the Odyssey.  The scholarly consensus now is that the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or some semblance of them, actually occurred, and that this happened between roughly 1220-1178 BCE, or up to three and a quarter thousand years ago.  That is one heck of a long time it has taken humanity to catch up with reality, and, alas, there are plenty who still need to catch up.

One who hasn't caught up yet is Anmarie Calgaro, who has just filed a lawsuit against her emancipated (under Minnesota law) 17-year-old daughter (whom she calls her son) to prevent her from getting medical gender affirmation care.

The Minnespta Department of Education estimates, based on this year's Minnesota Student Survey, estimates that as many as 6600 students in grades 9 through 12 may be transgendered.  There is no data on what percentage of parents are likely to be affirming of their children and what percentage are likely to be oppressive.  But if Anmarie wins this suit, that's a lot of kids who may be cut off from their own identities. 

Additionally, the whole minor-and-medical-rights issue would also affect any minor needing to seek abortion.  Which is probably why the Catholic Thomas More Society is backing her.  Personally, I think More, who, by all accounts, was a kindly man, would turn over in his grave about their actions.

Alecto, I believe Minnesota is better than this.  Perhaps you can educate this mother and her legal team who are well over three thousand years behind the times and counting.  Alternatively, you may only need to educate the judge.  Whatever you can do.

Staying in Minnesota (and I am not trying to pick on Minnesota, these stories just happened to happen together, so to speak), we have this headline:

5th grader brings gun to school to kill Muslim 3rd grader.

Yes, you read that right.

Sheriff Bill Hutton said the incident was under investigation but that there had been no indication so far that a hate crime was committed. 

Right.

The gun in question was an airgun "replica handgun," which means it looked exactly like a "real" gun.  Not, however, that an air gun isn't a real gun.  Water pistols may shoot water, but air guns shoot pellets or BBs, and many have plenty of power to kill small animals.  In fiction, Sherlock Holmes's arch-enemy Moriarty had minions working on air gun research, and Moriarty's right hand man, Sebastian Moran, had one with which he killed numerous people.  The gun in the picture is a replica Ruger which fires 20 gram BBs with a 12 gram CO2 cartridge. It's probably not the one the fifth grader had, but it could have been, and there are many others it could have been also.   I would not be happy to have any of them pointed at me.

The fifth-grader had threatened to kill the third-grader three days prior to bringing the gun to school.  It was, thankfully, confiscated on the bus on the way in.  But it appears to me that the intention (premeditation) was there, so that this qualifies as "vengeful destruction."  And it doesn't appear he is likely to hear that from anyone  other than you, Tisiphone.  Yes, I'm sending you after kids now. 

Oh, as a postscript, some may remember that last year I wrote about a lavish and very, very expensive dinner offered by The Old Homestead Steakhouse.  At that time the cost was $45,000.00.  Well, it's back.  This year it's $50,000.00, with a different package of perks (no 2-carat diamond ring this year, but lots of other goodies.)

The Furies and I will be back.