#American National Standards Institute

[cosmeticlaseracademy]

The Importance of the American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery and ANSI Standards

In the dynamic and ever-evolving field of laser medicine and surgery, staying updated with the latest advancements, safety protocols, and industry standards is crucial. Two prominent organizations that play a significant role in this domain are the American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery (ASLMS) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Understanding their contributions and standards is vital for professionals in the field.

For more info, visit: https://medium.com/@internationalacademyofcosmetic/the-importance-of-the-american-society-for-laser-medicine-surgery-and-ansi-standards-6098b24409d4

[giapremixfi]

ANSI Z358-tarkastusluettelo turvasuihkuista – Syvällinen analys

Onko sinulla ANSI Z358 tarkoittaa hätäsuihkuissa? American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standardi Z358.1 on keskeinen ohje hätäsuihkujen ja silmänhuuhteluasemien suunnittelussa, suorituskyvyssä ja käytössä. Nämä laitteet ovat välttämättömiä nopeaan puhdistukseen haitallisista aineista, jotka voivat vahingoittaa silmiä tai ihoa, ja ehkäisevät vakavia henkilövahinkoja työympäristöissä.

ANSI Z358 hätäsuihkujen tarkistuslista liiketoiminnallesi

Sijainti ja saavutettavuus

Varmista, että hätäsuihkut sijaitsevat 10 sekunnin kävelymatkan päässä kaikista vaara-alueista.

Tarkista, että reitit hätäsuihkuihin ovat esteettömiä.

Suorituskyky och testaus

Tarkista, että hätäsuihkut tuottavat riittävästi vettä vähintään 15 minutesin ajan.

Suorita säännölliset testit varmistaaksesi, että suihkut toimivat asianmukaisesti (vähintään kerran vuodessa).

Veden lämpötila

Varmista, että suihkusta tulevan veden lämpötila på turvallinen (16–38°C).

Huolto ja tarkastukset

Suorita säännöllisiä huoltoja ja korjauksia varmistaaksesi laitteiden luotettavuuden.

Tarkista, että hätäsuihkujen ja silmänhuuhteluasemien kaikki osat ovat ehjiä ja toimivia.

Koulutus ja ohjeistus

Järjestä säännöllistä koulutusta työntekijöille hätäsuihkujen käytöstä.

Selkeät ohjeet hätäsuihkujen sijainnista ja käytöstä tulee olla näkyvillä lähellä jokaista suihkua.

Merkitseminen ja viitoitus

Varmista, että hätäsuihkujen sijainti on selvästi merkitty ja helposti tunnistettavissa.

Sijoita opasteet ja turvamerkit näkyviin paikkoihin.

Mitkä teollisuudenalat tarvitsevat noudattaa ANSI Z358:aa?

Teollisuudenalat, jotka usein käsittelevät vaarallisia kemikaaleja, kuten kemian valmistus, farmaseuttiset yritykset, laboratoriot ja raskas teollisuus, on noudatettava ANSI Z358:aa työntekijöiden turvallisuuden varmistamiseksi. Tämä standardi on myös merkittävä koulutuslaitoksissa ja tutkimuslaitoksissa, joissa kemikaaleja ja muita vaarallisia materiaaleja käytetään säännöllisesti. Lue lisää: www.giapremix.fi

Kemian tuotanto Kemian tuotantoteollisuudessa käsitellään laajaa kirjoa kemikaaleja, joista monet ovat erittäin vaarallisia. ANSI Z358 vaatii, että näissä laitoksissa on hätäsuihkuja ja silmänhuuhteluasemia helposti saatavilla, erityisesti reaktioastioita ja sekoitusasemia lähellä, joissa kemikaaleja kuten rikkihappoa ja natriumhydroksidia käytetään usein. Nämä aineet voivat aiheuttaa vakavia vammoja kemiallisista palovammoista ihokontaktissa ja ovat vielä vaarallisempia jos ne joutuvat silmiin. Kyky nopeasti huuhtoa nämä aineet pois on ratkaiseva vahinkojen minimoimiseksi.

Farmaseuttiset yritykset Farmaseuttiset tuotantolaitokset käyttävät erilaisia ​​aktiivisia farmaseuttisia ainesosia (API) ja liuottimia tuotantoprosessissa. Esimerkiksi yleisesti käytettyjen liuottimien, kuten asetonin tai etanolin, käsittely voi vaatia välitöntä huuhtelua vuodossa estämään kemiallisia palovammoja. ANSI Z358 -standardit takaavat, että asianmukaiset huuhtelulaitteet ovat saatavilla muutaman sekunnin sisällä mahdollisten altistumisten käsittelyyn, mikä on kriittistä paitsi valmistussin aikana myös laitteiden puhdipistukdonsen ja yl.

Laboratoriot Yliopistojen ja tieteellisten instituuttien tutkimus- ja koulutuslaboratoriot käsittelevät laajaa kirjoa kemikaaleja kokeellisiin tarkoituksiin. Laboratorio-onnettomuudet voivat sisältää vaarallisten aineiden, kuten fenolin tai elohopean, vuotoja. ANSI Z358 -standardit määräävät, että silmänhuuhteluasemat ja hätäsuihkut on oltava saatavilla välittömästi tällaisia ​​vuotoja varten. Tämä on erityisen tärkeää koulutusympäristöissä, joissa opiskelijoilla ei välttämättä aina ole täydellistä tietoa tai huomiota näiden materiaalien käsittelyyn.

Raskas teollisuus Teollisuudenalat, kuten metallurgia ja kaivostoiminta, voivat sisältää altistumista vahvoille emäksille ja hapoille, joita käytetään käsittelyprocesissa, kuten suolahappo tai kaliumhydroksidi. Nämä kemikaalit käytetään usein suurina määrinä ja voivat olla erityisen vaarallisia onnettomuuksissa. ANSI Z358:n mukaisten hätäsuihkujen ja silmänhuuhteluasemien tehokkuus on kriittistä näiden aggressiivisten kemikaalien vaikutusten nopeaan neutraloimiseen, mikä suojaa työntekijöiden terveyttä ja vähentaikaäiisten vpitäammo.

Koulutuslaitokset ja tutkimuslaitokset Nämä ympäristöt voivat kohdata laajan kirjon kemikaaleja rutiininomaisesta laboratoriotyöstä erikoistuneempiin tutkimusprojekteihin, jotka sisältävät harvinaisia ​​tai erittäinkemikaalivisia. ANSI Z358 varmistaa, että opiskelijoilla ja tutkijoilla on välitön pääsy silmänhuuhteluun ja hätäsuihkuihin, mikä on erityisen tärkeää koulutusympäristöissä, joissa onnettomuusriski voi vaimus suurlevieni kokeh vaimus suurlevieni koke.

Noudattamalla tarkasti ANSI Z358 -standardeja nämä teollisuudenalat eivät ainoastaan ​​täytä oikeudellisia vaatimuksia, vaan myös takaavat turvallisemman työympäristön, mikä vähentää sekä työtapaturmien tiheyttä ett.

Miksi ANSI Z358 på tärkeä henkilöstön turvallisuudelle?

ANSI Z358 on ratkaiseva nopean ja tehokkaan ensiavun varmistamisessa kemiallisissa onnettomuuksissa. Standardi määrittelee hätäsuihkujen ja silmänhuuhteluasemien sijoittelua, suorituskykyä ja ylläpitoa koskevat vaatimukset, mikä varmistaa, että ne ovat välittömästi saatavilla ja toimintakuntoisia onnettomuuden sattuessa. Tämä voi radikaalisti vähentää vammojen vakavuutta ja edistää turvallisempaa työympäristöä. Lue lisää https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/2002-04-18-1

Onko sinulla ANSI Z358 kattavuutta?

ANSI Z358 kattaa useita hätäturvallisuuslaitteita, mukaan lukien:

Hätäsuihkut: Laitteet, jotka på suunniteltu koko vartalon huuhteluun suurten kemiallisten vuotojen sattuessa.

Silmänhuuhteluasemat: Erityisesti suunniteltu huuhtelemaan silmiä ja poistamaan ärsyttäviä tai haitallisia aineita.

Yhdistetyt yksiköt: Nämä tarjoavat sekä hätäsuihkun että silmänhuuhteluaseman samassa laitteessa kompaktiuden ja tehokkuuden vuoksi.

Onko suomessa vastaavia standardeja, joita tulee noudattaa?

EU:ssa ja Suomessa vastaavia turvatoimia säätelevät sekä EU-standardit että paikalliset määräykset, jotka tähtäävät työntekijöiden suojelemiseen teollisilta vaaroilta. Esimerkiksi SS-EN 15154 på eurooppalainen standardi, joka på samankaltainen kuin ANSI Z358 ja ohjaa hätäsuihkujen ja silmänhuuhteluasemien käyttöä.

Milloin ANSI Z358 on kaikkein tärkein?

Tämä standardi on erityisen tärkeä työympäristöissä, joissa altistumisen vaara vaarallisille kemikaaleille on suuri. Näissä olosuhteissa on ratkaisevaa, että turvalaitteet täyttävät ANSI Z358:n tiukat vaatimukset, jotta ne voivat tehokkaasti käsitellä mahdollisia onnettomuuksia ja estää pitkäaikaisia terveysseuraamuksia.

Minkä tyyppisissä materiaaleissa på tärkeää ottaa huomio på ANSI Z358-standardit?

ANSI Z358-standardit ovat erityisen merkityksellisiä käsiteltäessä korroosiota aiheuttavia, palavia tai myrkyllisiä materiaaleja. Näitä ovat esimerkiksi hapot, emäkset, liuottimet ja muut kemikaalit, jotka voivat aiheuttaa vakavia palovammoja tai muita vammoja, jos ne joutuvat kosketuksiin kehon kanssa. Teollisuudet, jotka käyttävät näitä materiaaleja, tulisi integroida ANSI Z358-yhteensopiva turvavarustus turvallisuussuunnitelmiinsa.

Ymmärtämällä ja toteuttamalla näitä standardeja teollisuudenalat voivat paitsi täyttää oikeudelliset vaatimukset, myös tarjota turvallisemman työympäristön, mikä vähentää sekä työtapaturmien tiheyttä että vakavuutta.

[randomencounters]

Encounter: the Measurement League, a team of superheroes backed by the US National Institute of Standards & Technology to finally teach American kids the Metric System

Source: yes really

[mariacallous]

American Jewish food is most typically defined as pastrami sandwiches, chocolate babka, or bagels and lox. But I am here to argue that the greatest American Jewish food may actually be the humble hot dog. No dish better embodies the totality of the American Jewish experience.

What’s that you say? You didn’t know that hot dogs were a Jewish food? Well, that’s part of the story, too.

Sausages of many varieties have existed since antiquity. The closest relatives of the hot dog are the frankfurter and the wiener, both American terms based on their cities of origin (Frankfurt and Vienna respectively). So what differentiates a hot dog from other sausages? The story begins in 19th century New York, with two German-Jewish immigrants.

In 1870, Charles Feltman sold Frankfurt-style pork-and-beef sausages out of a pushcart in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Sausages not being the neatest street food, Feltman inserted them into soft buns. This innovative sausage/bun combo grew to be known as a hot dog (though Feltman called them Coney Island Red Hots).

Two years later, Isaac Gellis opened a kosher butcher shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He soon began selling all-beef versions of German-style sausages. Beef hot dogs grew into an all-purpose replacement for pork products in kosher homes, leading to such classic dishes as Franks & Beans or split pea soup with hot dogs. Though unknown whether Gellis was the originator of this important shift, he certainly became one of the most successful purveyors.

Like American Jews, the hot dog was an immigrant itself that quickly changed and adapted to life in the U.S. As American Jewry further integrated into society, the hot dog followed.

In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opened a hotdog stand to compete with Charles Feltman, his former employer. Feltman’s had grown into a large sit-down restaurant, and Handwerker charged half the price by making his eatery a “grab joint.” (The term fast food hadn’t yet been invented, but it was arguably Handwerker who created that ultra-American culinary institution.)

Nathan’s Famous conquered the hot dog world. Like so many of his American Jewish contemporaries, Handwerker succeeded via entrepreneurship and hard work. His innovative marketing stunts included hiring people to eat his hot dogs while dressed as doctors, overcoming public fears about low-quality ingredients. While his all-beef dogs were not made with kosher meat, he called them “kosher-style,” thus underscoring that they contained no horse meat. Gross.

The “kosher-style” moniker was another American invention. American Jewish history, in part, is the story of a secular populace that embraced Jewish culture while rejecting traditional religious practices. All-beef hotdogs with Ashkenazi-style spicing, yet made from meat that was not traditionally slaughtered or “kosher”, sum up the new Judaism of Handwerker and his contemporaries.

Furthermore, American Jewry came of age alongside the industrial food industry. The hot dog also highlights the explosive growth of the kosher supervision industry (“industrial kashrut”).

Hebrew National began producing hot dogs in 1905. Their production methods met higher standards than were required by law, leading to their famous advertising slogan, “We Answer to a Higher Authority.”

While the majority of Americans may be surprised to hear this, Hebrew National’s self-supervised kosher-ness was not actually accepted by more stringent Orthodox and even Conservative Jews at the time. But non-Jews, believing kosher dogs were inherently better, became the company’s primary market. Eventually, Hebrew National received the more established Triangle-K kashrut supervision, convincing the Conservative Movement to accept their products. Most Orthodox Jews, however, still don’t accept these hot dogs as kosher.

But over the last quarter of the 20th century in America, the Orthodox community has gained prominence and their opinions, and food preferences, hold more weight in the food industry.

The community’s stricter kashrut demands and sizable purchasing power created a viable market, and glatt kosher hot dogs hit the scene. Abeles & Heymann, in business since 1954, was purchased in 1997 by current owner Seth Leavitt. Meeting the demands of the Orthodox community’s increasingly sophisticated palate, their hot dogs are gluten-free with no filler. Recently, they’ve begun producing a line of uncured sausages, and the first glatt hot dogs using collagen casing.

Glatt kosher dogs can now be purchased in nearly thirty different sports arenas and stadiums. American Jews have successfully integrated into their society more than any other in history. So too, the hot dog has transcended its humble New York Jewish immigrant roots to enter the pantheon of true American icons. So when you bite into your hot dog this summer, you are really getting a bite of American Jewish history, and the great American Jewish food.

[ms-hells-bells]

holy fucking shit. The American national institute of health found in a study that tracked 33,000 women over 11 years, that women who use chemical hair straightening products more than just 4 times a year, their risk of uterine cancer DOUBLES. the risk goes higher and higher the more straightening products are used. This is talking about going to the salon and them getting your hair straightened. The most impacts by far are black women, who get their hair straightened more and start straightening earlier. I'm talking, separate from this specific study, 3+ times higher lifetime risk overall of aggressive uterine cancer than women of other races.

I have talked before about how many "harmless" products like hair products, nail products, etc. Not only are poisoning women, but disproportionately affect black women, who use far more feminine products due to standards of misogynoir meaning that "natural" black women are seen as masculine and unclean and unprofessional. But women of all races are being KILLED due to femininity. People scoff at how women used to die from wearing makeup full of lead and arsenic and asbestos, but it just keeps happening over and over again.

[spacelazarwolf]

hey avi! i’m a conversion student who was raised italian-american. my heritage is really important to me, so i’m really interested in learning more about all types of judaism practiced in italy, and was wondering if you had any resources on learning more about italki judaism! of course i’m going to ask my rabbi, but i also wanted to ask you and any followers of yours who may know where to look. i’m particularly interested in things like recipes, minhagim, and daily life throughout history.

(no bad faith is meant at all and i hope this is taken as respectful: specifying so much because i know you get a lot of utterly insane anons about being italki/sephardi)

OH BOY DO I.

torah.it is an absolutely phenomenal resource with a ton of recordings, pdfs, and videos about primarily the roman rite in italy but also the sephardi and ashkenazi rites as well.

there's also a website dedicated to recordings of italian jewish music from numerous rites called thesaurus of jewish-italian liturgical music.

the national library of israel also has a lot of resources, like recordings of piyutim. it's a bit difficult to navigate if you don't speak hebrew, they do have an english option but it can be a little finicky.

the jews in italy

complete works of primo levi, an italian jewish auschwitz survivor and chemist. there is even an institute named after him dedicated to preserving italian jewish minhagim. italian jews lost nearly 20% of their population (not proportionally as much as many of the german occupied countries, but the italian jewish community numbered only around 44,000 before the war) and a lot of italian jewish life (particularly italki minhag) was nearly lost. but...

leo levi, an italian jewish ethnomusicologist nearly single-handedly preserved many italian jewish musical traditions when he travelled across the country to record elders and community leaders singing their traditional melodies.

ensemble nuria (formerly ensemble bet hagat) has recorded two amazing albums of revived italian jewish music.

in terms of cookbooks, edda servi machlin is a name you should know. her classic italian jewish cookbook is considered to be the standard.

there is also cooking alla giudia, portico, jewish flavors of italy (which includes some libyan recipes from the libyan jews of rome), la cucina romana e ebraico-romanesca (i just got this one on kindle so i haven't read it yet), and cucina ebraica.

francesco spagnolo is another name you should know, he is a scholar of italian jewish culture.

[basshole-astard]

[AMERICAN POLITICS]

i know everyone is worried about KOSA being a censorship bill, and that's fair. but do you know what really, REALLY concerns me about this bill? the fact they want to install age verification systems at the device/operating system level

(transcript with highlights below cut)

this will almost definitely track your data - note how it doesn't say how much, just that it's going to have to collect some, and that's worrying. to me. best case scenario we need to give our devices our government ID. worst case scenario it's tracking app usage and browser history and who knows what else. they don't say! how convenient.

but, based on Sec. 6(d)(5) "consider indicia or inferences of age of users, in addition to any self-declared information about the age of individuals." and Sec. 10(a)(1)(D) "using indicia or inferences of age of users for assessing use of the covered platform by minors", nevermind Sec. 9(b)(4)'s own admission that some data will be collected, that's.... that's data tracking.

and i know websites already do this, but i feel like a government mandated software for age verification that will track this data is a step too far.....

read the text of the bill here, if you want. genuinely the amount of legaleze is - as far as i can tell - only going to PROBABLY cause censorship, not GUARANTEE it.

but you know what KOSA does guarantee? stated plainly and clearly in their intents of what this bill will do? data tracking.

so if you're contacting your senators about opposing this bill, please consider not only voicing your concerns about censorship, but also about the privacy violations. thank you.

contact your senators here

highlighted text in image bolded

SEC. 9. Age verification study and report.

(a) Study.—The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and the Secretary of Commerce, shall conduct a study evaluating the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.

(b) Contents.—Such study shall consider —

(1) the benefits of creating a device or operating system level age verification system;

(2) what information may need to be collected to create this type of age verification system;

(3) the accuracy of such systems and their impact or steps to improve accessibility, including for individuals with disabilities;

(4) how such a system or systems could verify age while mitigating risks to user privacy and data security and safeguarding minors' personal data, emphasizing minimizing the amount of data collected and processed by covered platforms and age verification providers for such a system; and

(5) the technical feasibility, including the need for potential hardware and software changes, including for devices currently in commerce and owned by consumers.

(c) Report.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the agencies described in subsection (a) shall submit a report containing the results of the study conducted under such subsection to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Purely by chance found myself reading the "45 Current Communist Goals" list that was read out in the U.S. House of Representatives and into the Congressional Record by Democrat representative A. S. Herlong on January 10th, 1963.

Some of the stated goals are not so pressing since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, but the following ones seem far more pertinent today, 61 years on.

I'd be tempted to dismiss the list as simply "Red-Scare"-era hysteria, were it not for the fact they've all, fairly undeniably, come true: --------------------------------

Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

Gain control of all student newspapers.

Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy.”

Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."

Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old- fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture."

Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use "united force" to solve economic, political or social problems.

[cosmeticlaseracademy]

Understanding ANSI Standards at the International Academy of Cosmetic Laser Surgery

At the International Academy of Cosmetic Laser Surgery, we prioritize american national standards institute to provide the safest and most effective treatments. Our dedication to these standards ensures that we remain at the forefront of the cosmetic laser surgery field, delivering superior care and results. Contact us: (828) 266-5668

[misfitwashere]

September 9, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 10

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans “A New Way Forward,” Harris vows to build the American middle class through an “opportunity economy.” Her vision for the future, she says, “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.” 

Harris’s economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense, since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, healthcare, and childcare, all issues important to Americans.  

The website provides concrete economic actions she plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first-ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries (37 states already have such laws). 

Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump’s orders, protecting reproductive healthcare and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts.

Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity.

The “New Way Forward” in Harris’s plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump’s MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former vice president Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. “People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans,” she said. “We love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.” 

Trump’s website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris’s website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it—like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, and abolishing the Department of Education—as his top priorities. 

While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people’s pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now-disbanded Tenet Media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was X owner Elon Musk. 

The story was debunked almost immediately by the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The X account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee ran it; so did Texas senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.” And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, posted: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” (The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally.)

Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, pushed the story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Moreno has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer-funded benefits. Today’s disinformation was well timed for that ad campaign. 

The Justice Department today announced  charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with “soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” They “solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others,” U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. 

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1 or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills. 

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1 deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic cuts to spending.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to his colleagues: “House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism.” Jeffries called the Republican bill “unserious and unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. “The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is back to his old trick of blocking a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin’s top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. 

Today, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

—

[fadedfrills699]

Pageant Politics from your fav radfem

Beauty Pageants have been the battleground for discourse regarding that of gender, power, and identity within the broader context of feminist movements, reflecting the societal obsession with female beauty which acts as the manifestation of patriarchal control over women’s bodies.

The origins themselves of beauty pageants and contests can be traced back to both the mediaeval period but also to that of ancient mythological traditions where female beauty was the focal point of cultural narratives, for instance contests as such were referenced in greek mythology; symbolising the roots of such idealisation and competition of beauty. However, the modern americentric beauty pageant which is relevant as a case study owed much of its development and early cultivation to P. T. Barnum who endeavoured to host a beauty pageant in 1854, although it was met with public disapproval it is said to have laid the groundwork for future pageant cultures. Barnum’s vision shifted the idea of the beauty contest from a mere cultural ideal and towards a commercialised spectacle.

This rise within mass media and popular culture is what gave rise to the emanation of Miss America in 1921 as it was originally brought about in order to extend Atlantic City’s tourist season. Evolving from a local promotional event and into a national spectacle, it became a symbol of American values surrounding beauty, femininity, and success. Leading to the commodification of female bodies and the reduction of them to objects of male desire through pageant cultures.

In somewhat ironic fashion, pageant culture shares a historical lineage with that of the women’s suffrage movement, wherein the suffragists of the early 20th century used pageantry as a means of political activism. And when the pageant, Miss America, was initially established in 1921 they used a sash which was their most recognisable and integral feature yet instead of bearing the political slogans that their predecessors fashioned, their sashes were adorned with the names of cities and states.

Naomi Wold sets forth the idea of a so-called “beauty myth” as a more modern means of control in the wake of the gains made by the second wave feminist movement. Her argument hinges on the basis that beauty is not universally or naturally standardised but a cultural construct designed to enforce and maintain gender hierarchies.

She introduces the notion of the “iron maiden” which describes the unattainable ideal of beauty which entraps women in relentless cycles of both self doubt but also regulation.

This is corroborated later by Bordo who analyses the body as a site of cultural inscription and aligns this with Wolf’s contention that female bodies are the vessels of patriarchal control. Bordo expands on this through her evaluation on how eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and body modifications all reflect the pressures which discipline female bodies into conformity with patriarchal ideals.

One can look at this through Foucault’s concept of biopower, as Foucault explores the way in which power is not only filtered through and operated through institutions but also through the body and self-regulation. He proposes that modern forms of power and less overt and external but rest more on the subtle and internalised forms of discipline, a form a power which operates not through explicitly domination but through the shaping of the norm which leads individuals to regulate themselves to these prescribed norms. Therefore, beauty standards which are set forth by pageant culture operate as a form of biopower and on a collective level which has the ability to govern the behaviour and choices of women on mass decrees. Wolf’s propounded idea of the beauty myth not only oppresses women to an external degree but infiltrates their consciousness under the guise of personal choice or empowerment.

[homonationalist]

At present, it is standard among practically all communities to fête the family as a bastion of relative safety from state persecution and market coercion, and as a space for nurturing subordinated cultural practices, languages, and traditions. But this is not enough of a reason to spare the family. Frustratedly, Hazel Carby stressed the fact (for the benefit of her white sisters) that many racially, economically, and patriarchally oppressed people cleave proudly and fervently to the family. She was right; nevertheless, as Kathi Weeks puts it: “the model of the nuclear family that has served subordinated groups as a fence against the state, society and capital is the very same white, settler, bourgeois, heterosexual, and patriarchal institution that was imposed by the state, society, and capital on the formerly enslaved, indigenous peoples, and waves of immigrants, all of whom continue to be at once in need of its meagre protections and marginalized by its legacies and prescriptions” (emphasis mine). The family is a shield that human beings have taken up, quite rightly, to survive a war. If we cannot countenance ever putting down that shield, perhaps we have forgotten that the war does not have to go on forever.

This is why Paul Gilroy remarked in his 1993 essay “It’s A Family Affair,” “even the best of this discourse of the familialization of politics is still a problem.” Gilroy is grappling with the reality that, in the United Kingdom as in the United States, the state’s constant disrespect of the Black home and transgression of Black households’ boundaries, as well as its disproportionate removal of Black children into the foster-care industry, understandably inspires an urgent anti-racist politics of “familialization” in defense of Black families. Both the British and American netherworlds of supposedly “broken” homes (milieus that are then exoticized, and seen as efflorescing creatively against all odds), have posed an obstinate threat to the legitimacy of the family regime simply by existing, Gilroy suggests. The paradox is that the “broken” remnant sustains the bourgeois regime insofar as it supplies the culture, inspiration, and oftentimes the surrogate care labor that allows the white household to imagine itself as whole. As a dialectician, “I want to have it both ways,” writes Gilroy, closing out his essay. “I want to be able to valorize what we can recover, but also to cite the disastrous consequences that follow when the family supplies the only symbols of political agency we can find in the culture and the only object upon which that agency can be seen to operate. Let us remind ourselves that there are other possibilities.

There are other possibilities! Traces of the desire for them can be found in Toni Cade (later Toni Cade Bambara)’s anthology The Black Woman, published in America in 1970, not long after the publication of the US labor secretariat’s “Moynihan report,” The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The open season on the Black Matriarch was in full swing. And certainly not all of the anthology’s feminists, in their valiant effort to beat back societal anti-maternal sentiment (matrophobia) and the hatred of Black women specifically (more recently known as “misogynoir”), make the additional step of criticizing familism within their Black communities. But one or two contributors do flatly reject the notion that the family could ever be a part of Black (collective human) liberation. Kay Lindsey, in her piece “The Black Woman as a Woman,” lays out her analysis that: “If all white institutions with the exception of the family were destroyed, the state could also rise again, but Black rather than white.” In other words: the only way to ensure the destruction of the patriarchal state is for the institution of the family to be destroyed. “And I mean destroyed,” echoes the feminist women’s health center representative Pat Parker in 1980, in a speech she delivered at ¡Basta! Women’s Conference on Imperialism and Third World War in Oakland, California. Parker speaks in the name of The Black Women’s Revolutionary Council, among other organizations, and her wide- ranging statement (which addresses imperialism, the Klan, and movement- building) purposively ends with the family: “As long as women are bound by the nuclear family structure we cannot effectively move toward revolution. And if women don’t move, it will not happen.” The left, along with women especially of the upper and middle classes, “must give up ... undying loyalty to the nuclear family,” Parker charges. It is “the basic unit of capitalism and in order for us to move to revolution it has to be destroyed.”

Forty years later, the British writer Lola Olufemi is among those reminding us that there are other possibilities: “abolishing the family...” she tweets, “that’s light work. You’re crying over whether or not Engels said it when it’s been focal to black studies/black feminism for decades.” For Olufemi as for Parker and Lindsey, abolishing marriage, private property, white supremacy, and capitalism are projects that cannot be disentangled from one another. She is no lone voice, either. Annie Olaloku-Teriba, a British scholar of “Blackness” in theory and history, is another contemporary exponent of the rich Black family-abolitionist tradition Olufemi names. In 2021, Olaloku-Teriba surprised and unsettled some of her followers by publishing a thread animated by a commitment to the overthrow of “familial relations” as a key goal of her antipatriarchal socialism. These posts point to the striking absence of the child from contemporary theorizations of patriarchal domesticity, and criticize radicals’ reluctance to call mothers who “violently discipline [Black] boys into masculinity” patriarchal. “The adult/child relation is as central to patriarchy as ‘man’/‘woman,’” Olaloku-Teriba affirms: “The domination of the boy by the woman is a very routine and potent expression of patriarchal power.” These observations reopen horizons. What would it mean for Black caregivers (of all genders) not to fear the absence of family in the lives of Black children? What would it mean not to need the Black family?

Sophie Lewis in “Abolish Which Family?” from Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, 2022.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gerald Posner

Published: Mar 4, 2024

Newly leaked files from the world’s leading transgender health-care organization reveal it is pushing hormonal and surgical transitions for minors, including stomach-wrenching experimental procedures designed to create sexless bodies that resemble department-store mannequins.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health documents demonstrate it’s controlled by gender ideologues who push aside concerns about whether children and adolescents can consent to medical treatments that WPATH members privately acknowledge often have devastating and permanent side effects.

Yet the US government, American doctors and prominent organizations nonetheless rely on WPATH guidelines for advice on treating our youth.

The files — jaw-dropping conversations from a WPATH internal messaging board and a video of an Identity Evolution Workshop panel — were provided to journalist Michael Shellenberger, who shared the documents with me.

Shellenberger’s nonprofit Environmental Progress will release a scathing summary report, comparing the WPATH promotion of “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy genitals in vulnerable people” to the mid-20th-century use of lobotomies, “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy brains.”

‘Arbitrary’ age limits

The comparison to one of history’s greatest medical scandals is not hyperbole.

It is particularly true, as the files show repeatedly, when it involves WPATH’s radical approach to minors.

When the organization adopted in 2022 its current Standards of Care — relied on by the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization and every major American medical and psychiatric association — it scrapped a draft chapter about ethics and removed minimum-age requirements for children starting puberty blockers or undergoing sexual-modification surgeries.

It had previously recommended 16 to start hormones and 17 for surgery.

Not surprisingly, age comes up frequently in the WPATH files, from concerns about whether a developmentally delayed 13-year-old can start on puberty blockers to whether the growth of a 10-year-old girl will be stunted by hormones.

During one conversation, a member asked for advice about a 14-year-old patient, a boy who identified as a girl and had begun transitioning at 4.

The child insisted on a vaginoplasty, a surgery that removes the penis, testicles and scrotum and repositions tissue to create a nonfunctioning pseudo-vagina. It requires a lifetime of dilation. Was he too young at 14?

Marci Bowers, WPATH’s president and a California-based pelvic and gynecologic surgeon who is herself transgender, said she considered any age limit “arbitrary.”

But she would not do it. Why?

“The tissue is too immature, dilation routine too critical.”

In lay terms, that means boys who are too young do not have enough penal tissue for the surgery and the surgeon must harvest intestinal lining to build the faux vagina. Even Bowers admits that can lead to “problematic surgical outcomes.”

She would know since she has performed more than 2,000 vaginoplasties. Her highest-profile patient is 17-year-old Jazz Jennings, the transgender star of reality TV show “I Am Jazz.”

Three corrective surgeries were required to fix problems from the original vaginoplasty.

“She had a very difficult surgical course,” Bowers admitted in a 2022 appearance on the show. “We knew it would be tough — it turned out tougher than any of us imagined.”

Still, Bowers told her colleagues in the internal discussion forum of the best age for an adolescent to undergo surgery: “sometime before the end of high school does make some sense in that they are under the watch of parents in the home they grew up in.”

Christine McGinn, a Pennsylvania plastic surgeon and herself transgender, agreed. McGinn has performed “about 20 vaginoplasties in patients under 18” and thinks the “ideal time in the U.S. is surgery the summer before the last year of high school. I have heard many other surgeons echo this.”

Waiting until teens are older than 18 and in college is problematic, she said: “there are too many stressors in college that limit patients’ ability to dilate.”

Dangers downplayed

WPATH assures patients that surgical and hormonal interventions are tested and safe. It is a different matter in private.

President Bowers, for instance, said publicly in 2022 that puberty blockers are “completely reversible,” although in the internal forum she conceded it is “in its infancy.”

What about children who are infertile for life since they started hormone blockers before they reached puberty?

Bowers told her colleagues the “fertility question has no research.”

At other stages, members talk frankly about the complications for the transition surgery for girls, a phalloplasty in which a nonfunctioning pseudo-penis is fashioned from either forearm or thigh tissue.

It requires a full hysterectomy and surgical removal of the vagina. They also discuss other serious consequences, including pelvic inflammatory disease, vaginal atrophy, abnormal pap tests and incontinence.

A 16-year-old girl who had been on puberty blockers for several years before she was put on testosterone for a year had developed two liver tumors that an oncologist concluded the hormones had caused. Another member described “a young patient on testosterone for 3 years” who had developed “vaginal/pelvic pain/spotting . . . [and] atrophy with the persistent yellow discharge.”

Several colleagues described patients with similar conditions, some with debilitating bowel problems or bleeding and excruciating pain during sex (“feeling like broken glass”).

Vaginal estrogen creams and moisturizers as well as hyaluronic acid suppositories “can be helpful.”

One WPATH member seemed surprised: “The transgender people under my surveillance do not complain about this matter. However, I confess that I have never asked them about it.”

Rise of ‘de-gender’ surgery

The litany of transition surgery’s side effects did not stop WPATH from endorsing far more radical “nullification” surgeries for patients who do not feel either male or female and identify only as nonbinary.

Several dozen so-called “de-gendering” surgeries are designed to create a sexless, smooth cosmetic appearance that is unknown in nature. There is even an experimental “bi-genital” surgery that attempts to construct a second set of genitals.

In 2017, when tabloids reported a 22-year-old man had spent $50,000 to surgically remove his sex organs so he could “transform into a genderless extra-terrestrial,” it seemed a one-off oddity.

But WPATH has enshrined that concept in its Standard of Care — the same document in which the group endorsed for the time first time chemical or surgical castration for patients who identify as eunuchs. (WPATH even linked to the Eunuch Archives, where men anonymously share castration fetishes.)

These science-fiction-like surgeries are not only reserved for adults.

“How do we come up with appropriate standards for non-binary patients?” asked Thomas Satterwhite, a San Francisco-based plastic surgeon who has operated on dozens of patients younger than 18 since 2014. “I’ve found more and more patients recently requesting ‘non-standard’ procedures.”

What are nonstandard procedures? They include “non-binary top surgery,” a mastectomy without nipples. There are brutal procedures for girls that eliminate all or part of the vagina and for boys that amputate the penis, scrotum and testicles.

The goal, as one San Francisco surgical clinic proclaims on its website, “is a smooth, neutral body that is cosmetically free of sexual identification.” On TikTok the trend is called a “flat front.”

‘Too young to understand‘

A particularly intense subject of discussion was whether minors could understand the lifelong consequences of their gender treatments. Minors are presumed by law to be incapable of making an informed decision about having a vasectomy or tubal ligation.

Gender surgeries are an exception, however.

WPATH’s Standard of Care allows all procedures so long as the minor “demonstrates the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment.”

In a May 2022 internal workshop, “Identity Evolution,” WPATH members conceded that was all but impossible.

Daniel Metzger, the British Columbia endocrinologist who cowrote the Canadian Pediatric Society’s position paper on health care for trans minors, said, “I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we’re often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.”

Metzger noted adolescents are incapable of appreciating the lifelong consequence of infertility. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old,” he said, “but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ‘ew, kids, babies, gross.’ Or, the usual answer is, ‘I’m just going to adopt.’ And then you ask them, ‘Well, what does that involve? Like, how much does it cost?’ ‘Oh, I thought you just like went to the orphanage, and they gave you a baby.’ . . . I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their mid-twenties, I’m always like, ‘Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you, right?’”

There is extensive research showing adolescent brains are wired to have little control over rash behavior and are not capable of grasping the magnitude of decisions with lifelong consequences. It is why society doesn’t allow teens to get tattoos or buy guns. Car-rental agencies set 25 as the minimum age for renting a car, and Sweden sets the same limit for deciding on sterilization.

Detransitioners ignored, shunned

Although many WPATH members privately doubt that adolescents can give truly informed consent to life-altering procedures, they must affirm whatever children say about their gender.

Unless, the WPATH files disclose, the patient wants to reverse course and become a so-called detransitioner.

WPATH members mostly dismiss those cases as insignificant or overblown by the media and question whether minors who want to revert to their birth sex really understand what they are doing.

It’s a question that would never be asked for minors who declared themselves to be gender dysphoric.

One case involved a 17-year-old boy, just graduated from high school, who had been on testosterone for two years. He was reported to be “very distraught and angry. He reports he feels he was brainwashed and is upset by the permanent changes to his body.”

A self-described “queer therapist” did not believe any young person could be brainwashed. “In my experience, those stories come from people who have an active agenda against the rights of trans people.”

WPATH President Bowers said that “I do see talk of the phenomenon [detransitioners] as distracting from the many challenges we face.”

‘Frankenstein files’

The leaked files put a spotlight on the danger of mixing ideological activism with medicine and science. They should serve as an urgent wakeup call for the medical associations and government agencies that rely on WPATH guidance for transgender health.

The files might even prompt investigations into how those with distorted personal agendas seized control of the organization at the expense of science and patients.

Investigating what has gone wrong at WPATH might prove uncomfortable for some gender progressives in the Biden administration, none more so than Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health. Levine, the first transgender four-star military officer, is a WPATH member and has lavished praise on the organization.

She says it “assesses the full state of the science and provides substantive, rigorously analyzed, peer-reviewed recommendations to the medical community on how best to care for patients who are transgender or gender non-binary. It is free of any agenda other than to ensure that medical decisions are informed by science.”

Either Levine is unaware of the hormonal and surgical experimentation the group promotes or refuses to acknowledge it.

“The Frankenstein files.”

That is how a pediatrician described the leaked documents after I shared them with her.

Unfortunately, this is no horror novel.

It is a medical travesty playing out in real time, and the casualties are our children.

[deadpresidents]

"Graphic art was powerless before a face that moved through a thousand delicate gradations of line and contour, light and shade, sparkle of the eye and curve of the lip, in the long gamut of expression from grave to gay, and back again from the rollicking jollity of laughter to that far-away look." -- John G. Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln's private secretary

•••

To borrow one of his most famous oratorical devices, it was ten score and 15 years ago that Abraham Lincoln entered life and began one of America's most unlikely and extraordinary journeys, and 159 years since that journey ended because of an assassin's bullet. To us, Lincoln will always be a statue; a painting; a bust on Mount Rushmore; a monument on the Washington Mall; a solid, stoic, staid symbol staring back at us from a dull, green five-dollar bill, a rusty-looking penny, or a black-and-white photograph. Yet, he was one of us -- a human just as colorful as any American that has ever existed, and through his rise and his triumph, he told us a story that Republicans claim as the standard for their party, that Democrats claim as the inspiration for their party, and that Independents of all backgrounds do not dare to turn away from.

Lincoln's story is so extraordinary that we don't even think of him as a member of our species. He's on a higher level. He's almost mythological. A legend. We see his face like we envision the face of God. The halo surrounding him almost downplays the fact that he lived the same way we live. He needed oxygen and water and food. We all have sensitivities about how we are perceived by others, and Lincoln was no different. To many of his contemporaries, he was a freakishly tall, gangly, ugly man. During his life, people called him a "baboon" and "a barbarian." The man that Lincoln placed in command of all Union troops, General George B. McClellan, referred to the President as "the original gorilla." They made fun of his high-pitched, nasally voice. They made fun of his country accent -- the way that he pronounced "chair as "cheer" and said "hain't" instead of "haven't." They laughed at his careless clothing choices, and snickered at the fact that he never combed his hair. When he delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, one Pennsylvania newspaper wrote, "We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and they shall be no more repeated or thought of."

In Lincoln's lifetime, more people probably rolled their eyes instead of listened intently when he launched into yet another backwoods joke or funny anecdote that he couldn't stop repeating. He had family problems. His mother died when he was very young, and he had lifelong daddy issues. His borderline crazy wife was domineering, emotionally (and allegedly physically) abusive, and his young children ran roughshod over the White House. He had no real close friends and experienced devastating heartbreak -- including a love that was lost and the deaths of two of his young children. He was simultaneously considered inexperienced and weak, heavy-handed and harsh.

"Honest Abe" was the cleverest, sharpest, and most vicious politician of his time. The gentle and joking country politician destroyed his enemies, threatened his opponents, and steamrolled his rivals. This beacon of liberty and protector of freedom bypassed the Constitution and suspended Habeas Corpus. Abraham Lincoln began his Presidency intending to save the Union in whichever way possible -- even if it meant allowing slavery to continue. The "peculiar institution" was abhorrent to his beliefs, but an acceptable sacrifice if the result was the Union's survival. Until he finally reached a point where he recognized that the sacrifices being made during the Civil War were exactly the kind of bloody price that needed to paid to cleanse the nation of its original sin of slavery.

Like many, if not all, of our greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln was a man full of paradoxes. Beneath the solemn visage that was Lincoln's complex face was a cheerful, jovial, informal man who loved nothing more than a good joke or a witty story. Yet, further beneath that genial layer was also a dark, depressed man who lost the love of his life when he was young, seriously considered suicide on numerous occasions, felt unsatisfied with his accomplishments and about his qualifications, and faced the death of his favorite child while he wrestled with the biggest crisis that this country has ever faced.

Lincoln may have have been our nation's greatest orator, perhaps even America's greatest pure writer. His writing -- and not just his speeches, but his private letters and messages to Congress -- is memorable and poetic. If the Civil War was a symphony, his words were the lyrics to its beautifully terrible music. When the war was going badly, he used his words to simultaneously challenge his generals, assuage the public, and exert his control over the many crises his country faced. When the war was going well, his words were soothing, inspirational, and a bridge to the South that invited capitulation without humiliation. Lincoln's words were the words of a writer who spent all of his life studying the English language, yet Lincoln was largely self-educated by the light of a candle in a dark, damp log cabin.

We will never know why it was Abraham Lincoln -- a virtually unknown frontier lawyer who had served just one term in Congress a decade before he even ran for the Presidency -- who was destined to lead the United States through the Civil War, but can we even imagine another person equipped to do so? Like a shooting star, Lincoln appeared and against all odds, he saved the Union. Then, when the war ended, he disappeared again. Not a day earlier or a day later, either -- on literally the first day that he truly felt that the Civil War had ended, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, arguably the last casualty of the Civil War.

So, the next time you think that all hope is lost or that you've failed at something or that you are "only human," think or Abraham Lincoln, who overcame a lifetime of obstacles and challenges and failures to save the Union that he loved and believed in and became a legend and hero to the world today. Remember that we are "only human," but so was Abraham Lincoln. You could be a lot worse off than being "only human."

The rocking chair that President Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, now on display at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

On Nov. 8, confrontations broke out at the mezzanine of the Hall building between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students. Since the incident, Quebec mainstream media has portrayed Palestinians like animals.  When the confrontation between SPHR and StartUp Nation occurred, rather than send reporters to cover the altercation with on-the-ground reporting, papers like the Montreal Gazette published statements by organizations that weren’t eye-witnesses to the events on campus. While the newspaper updated their original articles since Nov. 8, the damage had already been done. Despite hundreds of students being on the scene of the incident, the Gazette relied on sources such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and far-right Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) as primary sources.  Canadian journalists love to boast themselves as impartial, objective and ethical reporters with the highest standards. Yet, when reporting on an ongoing genocide, legacy papers like the Gazette decided to embed tweets from Zionist organizations in their article. We would like to remind our audience that HRC is the same institution that denies the Israeli Defence Force murdered Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh almost two years ago.  By not adequately giving Concordia students proper voices in their coverage, media outlets excluded an essential element of the story. They failed to adhere to the most basic of reporting principles like verifying the identities and backgrounds of their sources and seeking documentation to support their reliability.

Continue Reading.

[thatstormygeek]

But one key group was left out. The Uncommitted Movement, the antiwar, pro-Palestinian action that placed second to Joe Biden in this spring’s discarded primaries, had spent weeks trying to move the convention, both in matters of symbol and substance, against the U.S.-armed slaughter in Gaza. In the end, their efforts had boiled down to one extremely achievable ask: to give a Palestinian-American — any Palestinian-American — or a doctor who had witnessed the suffering at the hands of the Israeli military a brief speaking slot, at any time during the four-day-long national pep rally. ... But the word that had come down on Wednesday turned out to be final. No Palestinian would be allowed to speak. ... Nevermind, too, that there was already a tearful presentation on the horrors of October 7, from the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American veteran of the IDF who is still being held hostage in Gaza — a presentation that the Uncommitted delegates made sure to attend in solidarity with the families of Israeli hostages, by the way. ... The refusal to platform a Palestinian speaker echoes nothing so much as the refusal, on orders of then-President and candidate Lyndon Johnson, of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, under the leadership of Fannie Lou Hamer, at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, sixty years ago this month. It similarly ignores the substantive divide between the protesters outside the convention and the uncommitted delegates inside — the fact that the latter are trying to work within and in coalition with the institutional Democratic Party. While some, like some in the MFDP, will likely continue to work for Harris’ election this fall, the refusal to give the reformers even a token platform on the main stage fuels arguments that the party, and perhaps the entire political system as it stands, is too hopelessly corrupted to work with, and thus must be challenged or overthrown.

It seems that those instincts are now operating — that the Harris-Walz campaign and the convention planners decided they could afford to alienate Palestinian-Americans and their ever-growing contingent of allies on the antiwar left. That it would be better to disappoint and insult them than to challenge, in the mildest of ways, the pro-Israel contingent or the reactionary center. It was clear from last night’s programming that their play is going to be to appeal to disaffected Republicans and so-called “moderate” independents, by focusing on militarism, police, and Harris’s career as a prosecutor, locking away criminals and “securing” the border. She telegraphed that in the foreign policy section by declaring with almost Reaganite bravado: “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” I really think they could have done both. I don’t think that having a Palestinian woman, hijab and all, deliver what was at bottom a bog-standard Democratic convention speech, with a shoutout to her father’s Jerusalemite origins where others shouted out their Hispanic or Native American heritage would have necessarily detracted from that pivot. I think they could have shored up part of the Michigan Arab-American vote without scaring away the voters they hoped to gain by trotting out ex-Republican congressmen and the Genesee County sheriff. I want to believe that sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Gazans, along with the other Omelas children of the world, in Haiti, Congo, and elsewhere, is not really the intractable trolley problem — a trade between potential victims of American fascism at home and the victims of American militarism abroad — it is made out to be. But maybe I’m naïve.