We need a mensch

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos discussed an article by Robert Klemko in The Washington Post. Klemko talked about race with nasty guy supporters at the Tulsa rally. The main thread is they claimed they weren’t racist. Two other threads emerged as well.

1. We’re not racist because we don’t see color.

2. They claim even the Black Lives Matter protester’s speech is violent.

Clawson wrote:

That’s it in a nutshell: “I don’t see color” and “all lives matter” come from the same place. It’s a place of refusal to acknowledge that the system doesn’t operate exactly the same for everyone, and that those differences bear in any way on how we see the world around us.

It’s the worldview that turns virtually anything Black Lives Matter protesters do into an example of violence, no matter what.

Even their speech is considered violent.

Another man, there with his granddaughter, watched a white man jump out of a truck and pepper-spray Black protesters, then said “I’ll just tell her it’s wrong the way they’re doing things.” As in, the protesters, not the guy with the pepper spray.

Mark Sumner of Kos has a summary of what is currently known about Russian’s paying a bounty of dead Americans in Afghanistan. I’ll let you read it.



Even in Mississippi. The state legislature “retired” its state flag. This is the one with one quarter showing the Confederate flag. It has been the official flag since 1894. The flag has been removed from flagpoles across the state. Those from the Capitol will become part of an exhibit at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The state does not have an official flag at the moment, though there is another flag with the state seal that could be used until a new one can be designed and approved by the citizens. Many are surprised and delighted it is actually happening.



Ghislaine Maxwell was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein and his ability to provide underage children to prominent people. She has finally been arrested. That prompted Rabia O’Chaudry to tweet:

I can't help think if prosecutors had taken allegations of victims seriously and arrested the likes of #Epstein, #GhislaineMaxwell, Weinstein, #Dershowitz, etc sooner, @realDonaldTrump likely would be in prison instead of being President.

The virus is raging across the South and Southwest with Arizona as one of the hot spots. Steven Spohn tweeted:

Arizona is preparing to implement SCORECARDS to determine eligibility for receiving care in a COVID world with limited supplies.

The elderly & people with pre-existing conditions immediately fall into a lower category of priority due to life expectancy.

I am not yet concerned for myself because I have a life expectancy of more than five years. But this would be upsetting to some feisty 90-year-olds and their families.



Leah McElrath tweeted:

Despair around pain and money are inextricably related.

Can’t get away from pain long enough to implement actions to achieve financial security AND don’t have enough money to make expenditures and to take necessary time to address pain curatively.

The result is constant crisis.

I’m saying this out loud in the hope it might make someone else feel less alone.

Living in constant crisis is spiritually exhausting—and it can make you feel like a failure when the reality is that simply being alive and trying to stay that way are accomplishments beyond words.

Liza Sabater tweeted a thread, but it is not good news. Because of coronavirus mutations and a lot of defunding of the FDA, CDC, and the broken medical system in general over the last couple decades, Sabater thinks it could be two years before a vaccine is ready. Add to that the broken welfare system and the tendency for Wall Street to suck the life out of Main Street plus the GOP in Congress stingy on help. It could take ten years to recover.

how do we survive a fascist failed state in the middle of a pandemic?

how do you fight back when their weapons are the US Treasury & a deadly virus?

this is keeping me awake.

if i wasn’t prepared for 2 yrs of viral lockdown, am even less prepared for 10 of viral warfare.

I don’t post to social media outside of this blog. I do read Twitter and occasionally mention the others. I’ve mentioned TikTok once and just a few days ago. Your Anon Central tweeted:

Delete TikTok now; if you know someone that is using it explain to them it is essentially malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation.
...
Tiktok is harvesting data on children/teens to monitor their market reach and political development; to find the best methodologies to coerce them within the next 5 - 10 years. This gives China an upper hand on the manipulation of large swaths of society across several countries.

Stanley Krute tweeted a thread, saying we need Joe Biden. We need a mensch. He then quoted a story from Rabbi Michael Beals of Claymont, Delaware. A group had gathered to say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for Mrs. Greenhouse. She was poor and in rent-controlled senior housing. The only place to meet for the service was the communal laundry room. Amazingly Senator Biden joined them. He explained:

Back in 1972, when I first ran for Senate, Mrs. Greenhouse gave $18 to my first campaign. Because that’s what she could afford. And every six years, when I’d run for reelection, she’d give another $18. She did it her whole life. I’m here to show my respect and gratitude.

Beals added:

Now, the number 18 is significant in the Jewish faith -- its numbers spell out the Hebrew word chai, as in “to life, to life, l’chayim!” But it’s also a humble amount. Joe Biden knew that. And he respected that.
…
Joe Biden didn’t come to that service for political gain. He came to that service because he has character. He came to that service because he’s a mensch.

And if we need anything right now when it comes to the leadership of our country -- we need a mensch.

Mary Winston Jackson was a “computer” for NASA (actually started with its predecessor NACA), a woman who crunched numbers by hand before there were machines to do it. Her story, and that of colleagues Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan was told in the movie Hidden Figures (which I encourage you to see if you haven’t). Jackson went on to be the first African American female engineer at NASA. NASA is renaming its headquarters building in Washington, DC in her honor.



Bill in Portland, Maine of Kos posted his annual version of Cheers and Jeers as if it was written on July 4, 1776. It’s a fun way to mark our national birthday.