Ohio is such a weird state

Ohio is not in the so-called Bible belt but nevertheless it shares with those states a highly puritanical mindset. Stormy Daniels, the actor at the center of a legal battle involving her relationship with Donald Trump, was briefly arrested and then released following a performance at a strip club in Columbus, Ohio. That episode sheds light on what a reactionary and puritanical state Ohio is. She was accused of coming in contact with a customer during her act. Jeremy Pelzer writes about the history of the strange 2007 law that led to her brief arrest.
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Democrats need to abandon the idea that ‘centrism’ is the way to go

The Democratic party leadership prides itself on being ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’, bland and soothing labels that do not really mean anything other than reassure people that they are only interested in incremental changes. The real reason they argue in favor of being ‘moderate’ and ‘centrist’ is likely because they get a lot of money from Wall Street, pro-business, pro-health insurance industry, pro-Israel lobby and other groups and do not want to do any thing that might risk that funding stream. But that message is too brutal for public consumption so the argument that they publicly trot out is that as the Republicans move steadily to the right, a move to the center will encompass a larger segment of the electorate who will have nowhere to go other than vote Democratic.
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Korean must be a very compact language

I do not speak Korean but was intrigued by this tweet from Donald Trump containing a note sent to him by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that contain the original Korean and its English translation. The Korean version takes up so much less space, only about 50% of the English.

How the Thai boys and coach were rescued

During the time when the boys and their coach were being rescued from their long stay in the caves, there was not much information about how the rescue was carried out. More details have now emerged of how they survived their ordeal in the cave and how the rescue endeavor that was much more harrowing and difficult than I had imagined. It was sad that a navy seal died in the rescue attempt.
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Deadly American generosity

Jon Schwarz commented on Americans praising the generosity of the country for acts that result in the deaths and suffering of many people.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar celebrated the Trump administration for its treatment of immigrant children it has separated from their parents. “We have nothing to hide about how we operate these facilities,” said Azar on CNN. “It is one of the great acts of American generosity and charity, what we are doing for these unaccompanied kids.”

This magnanimous claim raises an obvious question: What are the other great acts of American generosity?

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Support the Pursuance Project Kickstarter project if you can

The Kickstarter project deadline for meeting the goal is just three days away. If you can, please consider donating to it. You can read about the project and donate here.

With the open society under threat, the time has come to fulfill the promise of the Internet by launching an entirely new way for citizens to work together: securely, intuitively, and effectively. The time has come to build Pursuance.

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The growth of nonprofit news media

The traditional news media, faced with filling in every single moment with content that will draw in viewers that can be sold to advertisers, has descended into the pattern that we see, of talking heads who are selected because it is already known what they will say and can be counted on to argue with each other without adding much useful knowledge. In this drive fro phony drama and confrontations, resources for real investigative reporting that requires a lot of digging and analysis, get squeezed out as being too expensive. As Seymour Hersh says in his book Reporter, the worst words a reporter can say are “I think”. But that is the most common phrase in these shows as people speculate about things they don’t know or try to predict the future.
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Bogus civility

It is quite extraordinary how liberals will sign on to the notion of civility, even when that is used as a cover to not take strong public stands. Cartoonists Reuben Bolling and Tom Tomorrow take aim at his kind of advice.

Tom the Dancing Bug 1396 please don’t use the n-word