It felt as if, for the first time in history, the gender playing field at the high court was finally leveled, and as a consequence the court’s female justices were emboldened to just ignore the rules. Time limits were flouted to such a degree that Chief Justice John Roberts pretty much gave up enforcing them. I counted two instances in which Roberts tried to get advocates to wrap up as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor simply blew past him with more questions. There was something wonderful and symbolic about Roberts losing almost complete control over the court’s indignant women, who are just not inclined to play nice anymore.
Solicitor General Don Verrilli will probably not get adequate credit for giving a nearly flawless 10-minute argument Wednesday morning on behalf of the Obama administration. He opens with the most succinct recitation of the issue so far: “This law closes most abortion facilities in the state, puts extreme stress on the few facilities that remain open, and exponentially increases the obstacles confronting women who seek abortions in the state. And it does all of that on the basis of a medical justification that cannot withstand any meaningful scrutiny that the American Medical Association has told you is groundless and that the district court found will actually operate in practice to increase health risks to women.”
Update: Erica Garner spoke out about the making of the ad on her personal website, saying that Sanders’ team allowed her full creative control of the video and message.
“They had a totally different idea of what should be done,“ Garner said, “but true to form with Senator Sanders, he listened to me [and] didn’t tell me he knew better and I was not practical; and this is what we produced.”
She elaborated on her backing of his campaign by saying that his willingness to let her speak on her own terms reinforced her support.
If i was American you can bet you bottom dollar I would vote for any presidential candidate who expressed this much compassion and drive to fight for the rights of people who so far have been denied them.
Absolutely. I hope he wins the primaries. I really do. Please get out there and vote if you feel similarly. Please.
Actually, there's a lot of science that says this isn't possible. Most kill psychopaths are actually able to feign human emotions, and are quite charming. So, I have no idea what Ted Cruz's many, MANY malfunctions are, but serial killer probably isn't one of them.
So after Reagan survived his assassination attempt (bummer tbh) his wife Nancy made contact with a psychic named Joan Quigley and asked her if she could have foreseen and prevented the attack, and Joan said “Shit yeah I could’ve”.
So Joan was brought on as the White House’s unofficial official astrologer.
Reagan, President Goddamn Reagan, Ronald Wilson “666 The Great Beast Satan Himself” Reagan, literally consulted a fucking astrologer on scheduling and advice on policy with the Soviet Union. Reagan’s Chief of Staff, Donald Reagan (no relation, holy shit there’s no way he didn’t get the position because Ronald was like “This will be hilarious”) had pretty much all of his decisions cleared by Quigley and eventually outed her as the White House astrologer after he quit following the Iran-Contra clusterfuck.
Basically during some of the most tense years of the Cold War we had a nuclear capable state advised by a wizard.
Okay, so @squaredoritos, I’m making this text post because what I want to share with you is too long for an ask haha
I saw you reblogged this post about introducing your icon (in this case Steve Rogers/Captain America) to Girl Scout cookies. And I got to thinking about it and did a little research, but here’s the thing…
Girl Scout cookies were being sold as yearly fund-raisers by individual troops as early as 1917, then based off a suggested cookie recipe in the magazine by 1922. By 1933, organized sales of Girl Scout cookies as fund raisers were going in extensively in Philadelphia and New York City. By 1936, the cookies were being manufactured in factories and shipped out for sale all over the country. By the time WWII came around, cookies were still being sold, but limited supply of flour, butter, sugar, etc, meant the Girl Scouts also sold calendars and by 1943 (around when CA:TFA takes place) they were also collecting cans of fat to aid in the war effort and selling War Bonds without a profit (you know who else sold War Bonds? Captain America, that’s who.)
So, the concept of Girl Scout cookies wouldn’t be a new thing to Steve. And I’m sure as an entertainer and spokesperson during the war, he probably met with troops of these girls (for photo ops and what not) doing what they could to help out the soldiers, and Steve being Steve, probably became pretty fond of the organization and what they stood for.
Flash forward to after the ice, and Steve is grocery shopping or out on a run, and he sees one of these little Girl Scout cookie stands and remembers those cheery little faces he met all those years ago and all the effort they put out as an organization to help girls and young women feel empowered. And, maybe, because he knows things change over time, so many other things have, he uses Google like Nat taught him and checks into the sorts of things they’re doing now and he’s so excited. Because yeah, the organization has changed some, but seemingly for the better, became more inclusive, stands for helping girls and women even more, and it warms his heart a little.
Next time he passes that cookie stand, he stops and looks at the new, vast variety of cookies available (there was one, maybe two last time he bought any) and because he can’t decide which ones he might like best and there are 4 little girls practically beaming at him with their little vests/sashes, he buys two boxes of each of them.
TL;DR: New Head Canon: Steven Grant Rogers freakin loves the Girl Scouts and Girl Scout cookies and has a stash of Thin Mints in his freezer at all times and now every year, the rest of the Avengers send him with some money and a list of how many boxes of each they want.
I JUST GOT A MENTAL IMAGE OF STEVE ROGERS IN HIS TIGHTS SURROUNDED BY A TROOP OF GIRL SCOUTS AND JUST
I think it’s funny that able bodied people think disability prejudice is gonna be solved by cyborg parts, like those of us who will have them aren’t gonna be bugged with constant “Yeah, but you know, you still aren’t human in the strictest sense of the term, I mean whole human, natural and organic, you know what I mean…”
And with capitalism still in existence getting implants or prosthesis will just be grafting planned obsolescence onto your actual body. People honestly think they won’t make limbs the same way they make other electronics?
These never occurred to me but you are right. I can think of worse things. Government control over what parts can not do for parts paid for with government money. You got eye implants while on “welfare”. Then they better not be used for “immoral” things like strip clubs. Gps locks take care of that.
Government legs? You better use them for at least X number of steps a day to prove they were needed.
New arm but unemployed? Better have a job or it turns off.
A big thing I’m also thinking about is cyborg parts that are so specialized for one job-related task that they get in the way of literally EVERYTHING else you might want to do, unless you buy more of them, especially in the early years:
An arm specialized for factory work that’s so heavy it causes spinal damage and chafing around the stump area(more so then even normal artificial limbs)
An mechanized exoskeleton so you can walk in an outdoor-type job, but nobody considered you might want to remove it to bathe or have sex because why would the cripples want to do a silly thing like that
This stuff is such a big deal and yet somehow a lot of transhumanists seem to have totally missed the fact that most cyberpunk authors are totally cognizant of what a nightmare hellscape future digital capitalism will be
And don’t forget the element of coercion/lack of bodily autonomy that will very absolutely come with having widespread mecha-upgrades that can “fix” us broken folks – because for sure, if disability can be solved with robot parts, do you think the able-bodied folk are going to trust us for long to make the decisions for ourselves as to whether or not we want those cyborg bits installed? They’ll be passing laws that say we have to get them or we don’t get accommodations we need anyway, jamming them into us as babies (whether they work fully well or not), using us to alpha test them, it’s going to be fun times.
I’m pretty sure we already do that last one with cochlear implants…
#like this is a thing i already see in the present? #when it comes to deafness and cochlear implants/hearing aids #and hearing people constantly sniping at us #like no i’m not getting a terp #why don’t you just put your hearing aids in #sorry it doesn’t work like that #i’d still need a terp even if i were wearing them #but even if i didn’t just seriously #wearing my hearing aids also aggravated my DEBILITATING MIGRAINES #to the point where i literally could not get through a day of work #without collapsing in pain #abled people just never trust us to make our own decisions about our health and our lives #like that is going to change in the least as technology advances #nope nope nope
Haha yeah that was my tags on that post. XD We are… already there with this on some of these things it’s just going to get moreso as technology progresses.
I feel like with the media knowing full well that superdelegates’ votes can change based on the changing tide of elections–even Bill and Hillary Clinton changed their votes and voted for Obama at the convention in ‘08–it’s completely dishonest to count superdelegates in the current delegate counts. Clinton’s displayed total being boosted by over four hundred points that she doesn’t actually yet have just serves to sway voters in the middle to vote with the candidate who appears to have a mandate and Bernie supporters to feel disillusioned and stay home.
The light blue is pledged delegates–that is, delegates won in primaries. The dark blue is superdelegates, whose votes are not officially cast until the convention in July and can change up until the second they’re actually cast. In reality, Bernie Sanders is behind Hillary Clinton, but not by the ridiculous amount the media is (successfully) attempting to sell us, because if Bernie did pick up enough delegates in the later primaries to gain on or surpass Hillary, there’s a better-than-good chance some number of these superdelegates would switch sides before the convention.
It’s almost as ridiculous as if they started adding delegates from primaries that haven’t happened because of poll numbers in those states. The media reporting votes that haven’t been cast as though they have is extremely dishonest and is transparently in service of a goal, which is a Clinton victory.
This isn’t to say Bernie would definitely win if these deceptive tactics weren’t being used, but that these tactics are interfering with the fairness of the election.
I think adding in superdelegates - which not only can change but emphatically did change in 2008 when Clinton’s superdelegate lead rapidly evaporated in a storm of defections once Obama secured a majority of the pledged delegates - is actually considerably more ridiculous than modeling future primaries based on polling and demographic data, which was capable of accurately predicting the end result of the 2008 process pretty much as of the day after Super Tuesday.
That’s right friends, don’t count Bernie out yet! #RepresentationMatters
So if you’re feeling the Bern, make sure you VOTE! 💖💞 (i would too, but i’m canadian)
Especially since the phone is locked because the FBI screwed up in the first place. These are NOT people I trust with the ability to unlock any phone for "reasons."
Hours after Apple and the FBI faced off before a Congressional panel on the matters of encryption, privacy, and law enforcement, the company officially filed its objection to a court order directing it to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone that belonged to one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, CA, on Dec. 2, 2015.
Last month, a United States Magistrate Judge for the Central District of California ordered Apple to aid federal law enforcement in circumventing privacy protections on an iPhone found in the possession of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.
In a one-sentence filing [PDF] provided to the court last night, Apple says it “hereby formally objects to the Court’s February 16, 2016 Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search, referring to the motion to vacate [PDF] if filed last week.
In that motion, Apple contended that “This is not a case about one isolated iPhone,” but instead is a question of “the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe.”
Apple maintains that “no court has ever authorized what the government now seeks,” which is for Apple to create a back door to bypass iPhone encryption “making its users’ most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance.”
The company says that if the FBI wants the authority to compel Apple and others to weaken their encryption, it should do it through Congress, not through the courts, which Apple says is a “forum ill-suited to address the myriad competing interests, potential ramifications, and unintended consequences presented by the government’s unprecedented demand.”
Apple’s motion to vacate also called out the FBI’s insistence that this is an isolated instance that doesn’t pose a bigger-picture concern.
“The government says: ‘Just this once’ and ‘Just this phone,’ But the government knows those statements are not true,” reads the motion, pointing to other pending attempts to compel Apple to hack its own devices.
The government ran into a significant roadblock in one such case earlier this week, when a federal magistrate judge in New York sided with Apple [PDF], denying law enforcement’s efforts to compel the company to assist in unlocking a crime suspect’s phone.
While Apple has said it has offered suggestions to the FBI on how agents may be able to unlock the device, the company has repeatedly, and publicly, pushed back against calls for it to assist in this matter.
“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Feb. 17 note to customers. “The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.”
Today, March 1st, is the day we remember the victims of filicide. In the past 5 years, over 180 people with disabilities, people just like me and those I love, have been murdered by their parents for being different. I am filled with sadness every time I think about it. Please visit the online memorial to find out more about how you can help stop this. #ddom2016 #disability #disabilityawareness #actuallyautistic
Edit: For those in Australia, please visit this site to write to your local MP about ending the violence against people with disabilities.
For those like me living outside of the US, or those who can’t get to a vigil, there is one online here as well as a link to physical vigil sites: https://www.facebook.com/events/1726468137594861/
According to the Des Moines Register, security said they were acting on Trump’s orders to remove the students, who were standing silently atop bleachers at the event. Trump’s campaign is denying the order. In video of their ejection, the students give a valid reason for their presence.
Instead of just admonishing young people for not voting, we need to make absentee voting less bureaucratic and complicated, and transportation to and from polls more available
Don't try this here. Super ButtButt will put you in the hospital (not ME, mind, just YOU). And you'd never see the boyfriend's cat again (assuming you managed to catch her in the first place.)
People talk a lot about how Harry Potter taught them about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil etc and of course I think that’s very important but like…
Harry Potter also taught an entire generation of kids that the news media can’t always be trusted to tell the truth, that the government can often be corrupt or incompetent, that the legal system isn’t always right, that the people in power don’t always have your best interests at heart. That bad things sometimes happen to good people, that your heroes aren’t always as perfect as you think they are, that even those with the best intentions can be wrong, that everyone can make mistakes and that often in order to make things right it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
…and I think in a way that’s every bit as important as the more positive messages.
