Every day, a new tweet, a new speech, a new lie Trump-ets failure, rigged elections, voter fraud.
These are lies. We know they are lies. Every study, every bit of evidence, says voter fraud is vanishingly small. Small like 31 likely voter fraud cases out of more than 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. Politifact puts it in perspective: more people are struck by lightning than accused of voter fraud. Continue reading
Filed under elections, Uncategorized
Photo by Jes, published under Creative Commons license
In the Lowry Grove mobile home park, families own their homes, but not the ground on which those homes sit. Many of the mobile homes jin the St. Anthony, MN park are too old to move. Aside from physical stress, the older homes wouldn’t be allowed in more modern mobile home parks. So if the residents lose their leases, they lose everything. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
The Minnesota Office of Higher Education wants to shut down Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business. The two schools are owned by the same outfit and have campuses in the Twin Cities, Rochester and St. Cloud, as well as one in South Dakota and some in Wisconsin. The OHE move comes after a Hennepin County District Judge found that the two schools engaged in fraud on students. A Minnesota law says that the state cannot approve any school “if there has been a criminal, civil or administration adjudication of fraud or misrepresentation in Minnesota or another state.” Continue reading
Filed under education, Uncategorized
Photo by Dick Thomas Johnson, published under Creative Commons license
Does chocolate really help weight loss? Does aspartame cause seizures? Did an Italian doctor discover a simple operation to cure multiple sclerosis? Do dryer sheets cause cancer? The answer to all these claims is a resounding NO. So why do these, and hundreds of other phony health stories, continue to circulate? And how can you sort good health and science information from utter crap? Continue reading
Filed under media, Uncategorized
Tonight I’ll watch Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic nomination for president. And while I watch, I’ll celebrate with some cookies, the Hillary chocolate chip cookies I baked this afternoon. I’ve been baking those cookies since 1992. They were (and are) my family’s favorites among all my cookie recipes. Hillary’s chocolate chip cookies went to school with my daughters, to the envy of their classmates. Sometimes they asked me to pack extra cookies for sharing. I mailed the cookies in care packages to college dorms. These cookies have gone to parties and potlucks and staff meetings. I’ve dropped off boxes of the cookies for telephone callers in the 2012 “Vote No” campaign for equal marriage rights and at the #JusticeforPhilando occupation this year. I’ll probably keep baking them forever. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Screen shot from 1968 LINCOLN PARK DEMONSTRATIONS DURING DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 111-lc-53312 National Archives and Records Administration Lincoln Park Demonstrations During Democratic National Convention (8/25/1968) National Archives Identifier: 32123 Local Identifier: 111-LC-53312 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/32123
My most vivid memory of the 1986 Democratic National Convention is a tank, rolling down Michigan Avenue. And, besides the overwhelming number of police and soldiers — medics with Red Cross armbands. Those memories, even more than the tear gas and the terror, stay with me still.
We filled the streets and parks with protest and they responded with gas and guns and clubs. Police attacked protesters. And reporters. And Democratic National Convention delegates. Chicago Mayor Daley famously proclaimed, “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder!” Well, yes. They did that well. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Photo by c.art, published under Creative Commons license.
This morning’s coffee with friends focused on the convention. The hate and the speeches and the hate and the plagiarism and the hate and the stupidity and the hate and the platform and … all the reasons that I am avoiding television and news this week. So today I’m focusing on poetry. Writing some. And re-reading some. Mostly from Minnesota poets, like Joyce Sutphen, whose words caught in my heart the first time I read “In Winter:” Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Fireworks go off randomly throughout the night. Facebook fills up with photos and with complaints from people whose dogs cower under the bed, whining. Once in a while, a mild reminder that not only dogs suffer from sudden, loud noises — veterans, too, may brace themselves for the 10 p.m. barrage or wake in terror at the 2 a.m. explosions.
Post traumatic stress: a reaction to trauma, to being shot at, to being hit by shrapnel, to witnessing a bombing, to seeing people killed in front of you. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Georgia Senator David Perdue seems to have told people to pray for President Obama’s death last week. Of course, he was only praying from the Bible. Psalm 109, to be specific. He quoted one verse: Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
From 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection
As the school year ended, we got a peek at what is really happening to the 50 million students in 95,000 U.S. public schools. The Office of Civil Rights (U.S. Department of Education) released a first look at the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection on June 7. That’s a whole lot of data, and more will come over the next few months. Here are six take-aways from the first round: Continue reading
Filed under education, race, Uncategorized
Bombing schools and hospitals is a war crime. Deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Yesterday’s fulminations from the Führer in the White House go beyond war crimes to announce that he intends genocide: the wiping out of an entire people and civilization.
ICE is only one of the federal agencies surveilling people. Federal surveillance reaches far beyond immigrants. Federal agents use massive databases, facial recognition, cell phone photos, and license plate records. Beyond surveillance, they target and threaten people involved in protests, bringing the full weight of federal power to bear on individuals. Their actions often remain […]
Five years after the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the attacks on democracy and on elected officials continue. Yesterday, two politicians currently under attack by the Trump administration spoke out with anger and eloquence.
The New York Times today has plenty of coverage of who, how, when, and where the United States illegally attacked Venezuela and abducted its president and first lady. But that’s far from the whole story. A few easily overlooked but essential facts: For informed insights on the consequences of Trump’s attack on Venezuela, see:
50 USC Ch. 33: WAR POWERS RESOLUTION §1541. Purpose and policy (a) Congressional declaration It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United […]
Mary Turck