In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Racism; appropriation] Following the discovery that Rachel Dolezal, president of Spokane's chapter of the NAACP and a professor of African studies, has been misrepresenting herself as a black woman for years, a lot of information has come out about the lengths to which she went to perpetrate her fraud and how extensive that fraud really was. She counterfeited black women's lived experiences and art about black lives, and she consciously, deliberatively coerced her younger brother into giving credibility to her ruse. And, in a Facebook post in which she never apolgozies but lists all her supposed accomplishments, she has announced her resignation as president of the Spokane NAACP. Well, that's a start.

In presidential news, Jeb Bush is running for president. Officially. And I don't give a fuck. Officially.

In other presidential news, Hillary Clinton's campaign is being criticized for denying the US political editor at The Daily Mail access to the traveling press pool, and then giving contradictory reasons for it. They should have just said, "Sorry, we didn't want you here because The Daily Mail is undiluted fucktrash," and I don't think anyone would have blamed them for it.

[CN: Rape culture] Two-time presidential loser Mitt Romney reviewed Clinton's first speech on MSNBC's Morning Joe and found a remarkable way of calling her a phony: "Well, I thought the text touched the various places she needs to touch to try and keep her base intact. Somehow when you see her on a stage or when she comes into a room full of people, she's smiling with her mouth but her eyes are saying, 'Where's my latte?' It just doesn't suggest that she believes everything she's saying." If the "her mouth is saying X, but her eyes are saying Y" sounds familiar, that's because it's disgusting rape culture language, commonly quoted as "her mouth is saying no, but her eyes are saying yes." Fuck off, Mitt Romney.

Whoa. Brave guy: "A teenaged North Korean soldier walked across the world's most heavily militarized border on Monday in a bid to defect to South Korea, South Korean Defense Ministry officials said. While there are more than a thousand defections from North Korea to South Korea every year, most defectors come via China and it is rare for a North Korean to crossing the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The last such crossing was in 2012. The soldier approached a remote South Korean guard post in Gangwon province's Hwacheon county, in the central area of the peninsula, at about 8 a.m. on Monday, one Defense Ministry official said. There was no exchange of fire or warning shots as the soldier clearly expressed his desire to defect, the official said. The soldier was being held in custody while officials ran checks."

[CN: Clergy abuse] Good riddance: "Ten days after prosecutors charged the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis with mishandling repeated complaints related to clergy sex abuse, the archbishop and another top bishop there resigned Monday in a rare public fall for U.S. church officials. Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché were not charged individually in the case and said they were stepping down to remove distractions from the archdiocese as it faces a crisis." I guess "to remove distractions" is what you say when your employer prohibits you from having a family to spend more time with.

[CN: Guns] Goddammit: "Ignoring opposition from university leaders throughout the state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) visited a gun range on Saturday, where he signed legislation permitting concealed firearms to be carried at public colleges and universities in Texas. Although the new law does give these schools some power to set rules regarding guns on campus, the new law specifically prohibits university presidents from 'establish[ing] provisions that generally prohibit or have the effect of generally prohibiting license holders from carrying concealed handguns on the campus of the institution.'" Yeah. Everyone will be safer now. (Nope.)

[CN: Guns; death; misogynist terrorism; disablist language at link] In totally unrelated news (ahem), Alex Kozak, a 20-year-old Iowa man who is an open-carry advocate, has been arrested for shooting and killing a female coworker after she filed sexual harassment complaints against him. My sincerest condolences to Andrea Farrington's family, friends, and colleagues.

Guess what? It turns out that David Brooks is not a very good journalist. Huh.

Welp, here is just a picture of a raccoon hitching a very temporary ride on an alligator's back! (Because he jumped off, not because he got eaten!)

And finally: Reasons to adopt a greyhound. OBVIOUSLY.