Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 780 posts filed in Musings (this is page 7 of 78).

A Constitution to pick and choose

A conservative friend recently posted the following meme image to his Facebook page. It read:

Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first States that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional???? It’s OK to drug test people who work for their money, but not for those who don’t? … Re-port this if you’d like to see this done in all 50 states. If you can afford to buy drugs and extra illegal things then you can afford your own groceries.

My friend frequently posts other memes supporting the Second Amendment and other rights made possible by our Constitution. I thought it a bit disingenuous to claim to support the Constitution when it protected something important to him but not when it protected something important to someone else.

Continue reading →

Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

Remember when I wrote about how the Confederate Memorial doesn’t belong on the State Capitol grounds? I suggested the memorial be moved to the Oakwood Cemetery, where it and the ideals behind it could be retired forever.

The only place racism belongs is in the cemetery. Racism deserves to be buried.

Sadly,  some misguilded individual doesn’t know the difference between a monument to racism celebrated with a position on public grounds and a monument on private grounds marking the graves of people who lived in those times.

This person has vandalized someone’s final resting place. This is shameful and disrespectful and off-limits. Let the racists rest in peace along with the misguided ideals by which they lived. Let everyone see that the legacy of racism ends in the cold damp earth of a cemetery.

Speak about out our contiuning to celebratie these legacies on public grounds while advocating that the proper place for these legacies is six feet under.

 

Vandals spray-painted anti-racist graffiti on nine monuments inside Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood Cemetery, mostly damaging the graves of high-ranking officers in the Confederate Army but also defacing the stone of North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, whose racial views in the early 1900s have found increasing criticism.

The attack caused roughly $20,000 in damage on Wednesday night and is thought to be the first of its kind on private property, said Robin Simonton, executive director at Oakwood. Cemetery officials reported the crime to Raleigh police during the weekend, hoping to spare further destruction during the holidays.

Source: Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers | Computerworld

This doesn’t surprise me. Electronics has been transformed into whole computers on chips, while computers themselves have become capable of supporting nearly unlimited creativity. Today anyone can perform on a smartphone what was once considered miraculous work, without knowing anything about circuitry or how to solder. Software is the new electrical engineering.

Two occupations long associated with innovation — electrical and electronics engineering — has stopped growing, according to the U.S. government.T

he Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in an update of its occupational outlook released Friday, said that the number of people employed as electrical and electronics engineers is now at 316,000, and will remain mostly unchanged for the next decade.

Source: U.S. predicts zero job growth for electrical engineers | Computerworld

Shaming Sanders supporters

Some of the reasons I support Bernie Sanders

Some of the reasons I support Bernie Sanders


Some supporters of Hillary Clinton for President are getting annoyed by supporters of Bernie Sanders, accusing Sanders supporters of “splitting the party” and trying to shame them into supporting Clinton. As a Sanders supporter, I’m tiring of this approach and tired of the insinuation that I’m not a true liberal if I don’t support a female candidate for President.

As a liberal who supports gender equality (though I maintain equal pay is fiction), I would be thrilled to vote for a female Presidential candidate but unfortunately Senator Elizabeth Warren opted not to run this year. Instead, I’m going with a candidate who had the courage and foresight to vote against the disasterous Iraq War, voted against the privacy-gutting PATRIOT Act, wants to decriminalize marijuana use, supports reinstanting the Glass-Steagall Act to rein in Wall Street abuses, opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, and opposed the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty, among other differences.

Continue reading →

Woodland gets hammered over public solar opposition

A story that ran last week in the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported that the town of Woodland, NC voted against a rezoning request for a solar farm after citizens opposed to the farm were concerned the solar farm would suck all the energy from the sun. Wrote News-Herald reporter Keith Hoggard:

Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms.

“You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.”

He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland.

Jane Mann (Bobby Mann’s wife), also weighed in:

Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the natural vegetation that makes the community beautiful.

She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the vegetation from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where vegetation is brown and dead because it did not receive enough sunlight.

She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer.

Continue reading →

Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – The Washington Post

As I was saying.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the National Rifle Association proposed putting more guns in schools. After a racist shot up a Charleston prayer group, an NRA board member argued for more guns in church. And now predictably, politicians and gun rights advocates are calling for guns in movie theaters after a loner killed two people at a theater in Louisiana.

The notion that more guns are always the solution to gun crime is taken seriously in this country. But the research shows that more guns lead to more gun homicides — not less. And that guns are rarely used in self-defense.

Now a new study from researchers at Mount St. Mary’s University sheds some light on why people don’t use guns in self-defense very often. As it turns out, knowing when and how to apply lethal force in a potentially life-or-death situation is really difficult.

Source: Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – The Washington Post

Combat veterans shoot down NRA ‘fantasy world’ of ‘good guys with guns’

The NRA loves to parrot the thinking that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. They say this because they want to encourage gun ownership and, sadly, many conservatives think that they can be the savior in the case of a mass shooting.

A journalist asked combat veterans how this would work out and predictably they were not impressed (see story below).

It reminded me of something that was emphasized time and again in my CERT training:

In a crisis, you will always fall back to your training.

Continue reading →

The Jones Street Exodus

The architects of North Carolina’s so-called “conservative revolution” are abandoning ship in droves now. Paul “Skip” Stam, Leo Daughtry, Bob Rucho, and Tom Apodaca, have all called it quits. Thom Tillis started the ball rolling, leaving town to go to the U.S. Senate.

The N&O’s Rob Christensen posits that it’s because the “revolution” has been a success. Apodaca agrees:

“We’ve come to a point where we’ve accomplished almost everything we set out to do,’’ Apodaca said.

Let’s take stock:
Continue reading →

One big reason REI can decide to skip Black Friday – The Washington Post

Am I the only one sad that a retailer chooses NOT to make it’s employees work over Thanksgiving is newsworthy? Is this how far we’ve fallen? Does America really worship the almighty dollar this zealously?

Outdoor retailer REI made an announcement Monday that may have sounded like sacrilege to retail industry veterans. It will be closed this year on Black Friday, shutting its doors on retail’s holiest of days and paying its employees for a day off. Some hailed it as an unprecedented move, especially at a time when many other retailers have turned even Thanksgiving itself into a day of holiday shopping.

Source: One big reason REI can decide to skip Black Friday – The Washington Post

Unfriendliness

Noticed today that someone I thought was my friend unfriended me on Facebook. What’s odd is that we still have dozens of friends in common. I’ll give it a few minutes of thought and then I’ll promptly move on, because I’ve reached the point in my life where I don’t particularly care to sugarcoat my thoughts for anyone’s benefit.

I am who I am. I respect you for who you are (the Hindi concept of namaste resonates strongly with me). If you cannot accept me for who I am I am not going to change for you.

Peace out. Namaste. Good luck to you. Just don’t expect me to slow down for you.