Would you say…

 Would you say that using chemical weapons is detrimental to people’s health?

I'm tired of other people changing the subject, so I thought I'd do a little myself

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/politics/progressives-black-latino-voters.html

 

How interesting, it seems that the NYT thinks that the POC vote isn't quite as in the bag for the DFL as some folks do.

 

There's been a lot of talk lately about all the turmoil in the SBC, one of those issues has been sermon plagiarism.    There has been an undertone of concern over the past few years among some in the "evangelical" world regarding pastors/authors who present the work of others as if it is their own.   I think this kind of sums things up well.

"Do you suppose there's a connection between a pastor believing it's ok to "outsource" the work of studying & preparing his sermons (e.g. plagiarism or using a service to help with sermon prep) and his being led astray from the truth & taken captive be worldly philosophies?"

"Melissa the Homemaking Mater"

Watching video from the Juneteenth celebration in Oakland where young black people were interfering with ambulances that came to deal with the 6 shooting victims from the celebration.   Somehow I suspect that the ex slaves in Galveston would be appalled at the scene.  

"Systemic racism is woefully inadequate because it:

1.  Fails to explain black underperformance relative to other racial groups

2.  Casts all white people as villains

3.  Casts all black people aspowerless actors with no agency

What is the correct idea that should replace it?"

Tyrone Williams

I thought that defacing and tearing down statues was now an accepted and valued means of peacfully engaging in protest.

I just saw that a Brit has undergone surgery and come out as Korean.   Does this mean he’s got grounds to sue 23 & me when his DNA test come back wrong?

News?

 NBC is reporting that there are scientists who wouldn’t discuss the possibility or call for an investigation into the true source of COVID because they didn’t want to be associated with Trump.   

I’m confused, I keep being told that Science is all about searching for the Truth regardless of anything else.   I guess we’ve wasted months of possible investigation time because scientists were worried about politics.   

 

For the Google challenged, here is the link.  

 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/lab-leak-theory-science-scientists-rcna1191

 

Dark

 Apparently the woke folk are pissed at Lin Manuel Miranda (a person of Hispanic heritage).   Lin, who’s most famous for writing a musical where he re cast the founding fathers as black dudes with mad rap skills, has a movie coming out soon.  Apparently this movie, In The Heights, had some serious problems.    The movie, set in a neighborhood full of Hispanic folks, who are all played by actual card carrying Hispanic actors, is under fire for its casting choices.   I guess it’s not enough to cast Hispanic actors to play Hispanic characters, you also must pick Hispanic actors of the proper hue, to be safe from the woke mob.    

Of course it’s completely reasonable to expect that the actors must meet multiple tests of authenticity to be cast.   Strangely it seems that Hispanic heritage isn’t enough to satisfy the woke mob.   They always find something to complain about.  

Apple

I saw something the other day about one of the companies that's a darling of the political left, despite it's actual business practices.   Yes, I'm talking about Apple.  I know they use slave labor to build their products, and that their products are built oversees because of the access to slave labor and the lack of environmental regulatoions.  But that's old, ignored news.  This is something I just saw recently.

I somehow was exposed to a young woman on Twitter with an absolutely compelling story of success.  She was the first person in her (immigrant) family to graduate from college, and was financially supporting her sick mother and brother who was going to college.   Laudable, right?

Well, upon investigation, I found out how she was doing so.  She was making (lots of) money by monetizing her sexuality on the internet.  She was using Patreon and OnlyFans to post "creative content" that was proving to be lucrative for her and her family.    Apparently she decided that those platforms charged too much of her income for their services, so she decided to start her own platform that would be more friendly to the content creators.   She came up with an alternative platform and it's been a success.  Their business model is that the platform (I can't recall the name right now) gets 10% of what people earn, and the creators get to keep 90%.   Again, this is all a great success story so for.

Enter Apple.   Apple announces that this platform needs to pay Apple 30% of all the revenues generated through the platform if they want to show up in the App Store.   Apparently it seems that Apple doesn't charge this 30% to OnlyFans and Patreon,  just to the upstart.   I understand that Apple has to get paid for their service, but 30% of revenue from a new platform, dedicated to allowing content creators to maximize their profit from their content seems excessive.  Seems like the kind of thing you'd see from a monopoly.  

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, and I'm rooting for the "little guy" (really girl/woman) in this.  It'll be interesting to see if the political left continues it's love affair with Apple if this ends up becoming a bigger thing.

It's similar to something I heard last week.  Someone I know who's a professional musician (one of the hardest hit jobs by COVID) had managed to make a decent living over the last year by providing music to YouTube that users could access at little or no cost for their videos.  Unfortunately YouTube decided that they needed more diversity in their contributors and the white guy in his 40's got shut down.  Not because his music sucked, not because he didn't put out enough music to meet demand, not because he was difficult to deal with, just because he wasn't diverse enough.  

The reason I'm writing this is that I will almost always support people who come up against an obstacle that stops them from doing what they think is right when they take the responsibility on themselves to achieve their goals.    Whether I'm supporting some folks who think that the local public schools aren't liberal enough and want to start a charter school to be more liberal, or someone who's making money selling naked pictures of themselves on the internet,  they deserve to be able to succeed or fail without Big tech or Big government preventing them from doing so. 

Fairness

 Many people were quick to jump on the bandwagon of charging/convicting the officer who shot Daunte Wright.   So, one might assume that the same folk would be equally interested in seeing Daunte’s alleged victims get some degree of justice also.    Personally it’ll be interesting to watch as the lawsuits against Daunte’s estate (and apparently other BLM heros), proceed.    It seems appropriate that the alleged victims of Daunte get their day in court, and get the only possible measure of justice available to them.  

Help

 Back during the election, and transition, we heard a lot from the Biden camp about helping folks harmed by the COVID shutdowns.  We were promised a $2,000 check, and got $1,200.  ( I know what the response will be to this, but the reality is that Biden did promise a $2,000 check after the $12,00 checks had gone out.)   

One of the things that was done was a program called the PPP, it was a way to help business owners pay the employees they'd been forced to lay off because their business had been shut down.  This program wasn't perfect, and wasn't really enough, but it was something.   After stringing business owners along for a while, there was finally a second draw from the program.  That second draw money was supposed to last through May 31st of 2021.   Unfortunately, it ran out around May 5th, 2021.  What's interesting is that despite some degree of outcry, the Biden administration has remained silent on their intentions of proposing additional funding for this program.     One thing to consider is that the businesses who need this funding are trying to get out of a hole caused by the federal/state government shutting down large segments of the economy.   Even though things are opening back up in terms of the government shut down, the reality is that these businesses and their employees are still incredibly far behind because of things beyond their control.   It looks like this is just one more thing that the administration talked a good game about, but isn't actually doing much to accomplish.   

I know that the "blame the GOP minority" crowd will behave predictably, and ignore the fact that the administration and the DFL majority hasn't proposed any legislation or even talked about proposing any legislation to deal with this.  I'm just not sure how it's possible to blame the GOP, when the administration/DFL hasn't even offered a solution.

I'm also a dissapointed in the GOP on this.  At a very minimum, a GOP sponsored bill to re fund the PPP program would be a political "win" for them.  Especially if the DFL didn't jump on board.   

Mostly, I'm just bothered by the relative silence on the matter.

Heartless conservatives

 Recently AOC took to social media to complain that her abuela's house in PR was still unrempaired after the hurricane 3 1/2 years ago.   Now AOC is pulling down $174,000 as a congressperson, and apparently has enough income to afford a Tesla.  The problem seems to be that the US government hasn't fixed her abuela's house and her abuela is living in substandard conditions.    Without unduly criticizing AOC, it does seem like there might have been some options for her to mitigate her abuela's suffering rather than to wait 3.5 years to post about it on social media.    But, on to the point of the post.

After Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator, saw the original post and commented on it he decided to take action.  Instead of waiting for the government, I started a GoFundMe account for AOC's abuela and raised over $48,000 in around 3.5 hours.  (Currently over $62,000).    I think it's awesome to see conservatives unite around this situation and to generously provide for the abuela of one of their political foes.