You may recall my post from a couple of weeks ago about people who deliberately use their First Amendment rights to taunt and provoke police officers in the hope that they will react against them, giving them fodder for their YouTube audiences. They claim that they are protecting the right of free speech by using it legally. I said that this was a dangerous practice since the police are armed.
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Winky won rave reviews at the Westminster Dog Show for deciding that she was going to do it her way, and not be controlled by the show’s demands for speed and accuracy and ignored the time to beat of 40 seconds.
R. Eric Thomas says that Winky’a performance showed us that trying to conform to other people’s criteria is not the most important thing in life. We also need to be true to ourselves and savor the moment.
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Cody Fenwick writes that the government funding deal that was just signed by Donald Trump was much worse for him that what the media are generally reporting, though even they concede that it was pretty bad for him. What is telling is that the deal requires the government to treat detainees with basic decency, such as not putting them in wire enclosed cages that were so cold that the detained children called them ‘ice boxes’ and even the sandwiches they were given were frozen.
As Fenwick writes:
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Elliot Abrams is an aggressive warmonger who oversaw US involvement in all manner of atrocities in Latin America going back to his time in the administration of George H. W. Bush. He was convicted in 1991 on two counts of withholding information to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair but was pardoned along with others because these people protect their own. He has now reappeared as Donald Trump’s point person to Venezuela, no doubt because of his expertise in subverting governments in that region.
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So to no one’s surprise, Donald Trump has caved once again on funding for his stupid wall, accepting an even worse deal than what he was offered before the government was shut down and another one he could have got when the government was shut down. So the great deal maker has shown that his great skill in getting successively worse deals, as described by Ryan Bort.
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The Green New Deal is the non-binding resolution introduced by representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey to highlight the importance of climate change and the need to find ways to combat global warming as well as providing a better standard of living for most people. A major goal is to achieve a 100% conversion to renewable energy by 2030. You can read the resolution here. Here is a summary of the main points.
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As I have said repeatedly, the US national parks are a genuine treasure, meant for everyone to enjoy. But in recent years the Republicans have been pushing for more mining and exploratory activities to be allowed on them. The last government shutdown that resulted in irresponsible visitors to the parks causing needless damage because of the absence of park rangers was also infuriating. They even cut down ancient trees in the Joshua Tree park and vandalized the desert.
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The report that Donald Trump’s recent schedule contains about 60% ‘Executive Time’ (i.e, no meetings with anyone) will come as no surprise to those who have realized that he is one of the laziest and most ignorant presidents in modern history. But there has been some curiosity as to what he does with all that time. Speculations have ranged from watching TV to watching TV. But a new report sheds some light on this issue.
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