Open Thread…………………………………………..Thursday, June 19

MoonHowler

bitch203

 

It’s just a raging bitch kind of summer, or perhaps I am describing myself.  The weekends have been great–better than probably any of us living in Virginia in June deserve.  This weekend is supposed to be just like the last 3 weekends.  Warm and gorgeous.

I am taking the plunge and having my wrap-around deck re-stained. What a pain!  I think I have more on my deck than I do in my living room.  Plants, furniture, mosquito spray.  Mosquitoes have been horrible.  Bull Run breeds them big.

Has anyone found a cure to keep the mosquitoes at bay?

I need a beer that is perhaps less biting than an IPA.  Any suggestions?

Supreme Court expected to issue Hobby Lobby ruling today

MoonHowler

CBSNewyork.com:

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether Hobby Lobby needs to cover contraception as part of its health care plan.

Owners of the crafts chain object to certain forms of contraception. Under the affordable care act employers are now required to cover birth control.

The Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby in a 5-4 decision. So much for saying there is no war on women. The buffer zone ruling and the contraceptive ruling both are directed at women. No one else.

To prove a point, the Court specifically stated their ruling was just about contraception, and not other things, like blood transfusions. You don’t get any more religious than the Jehovah’s Witness ban on blood transfusions for their members. That was a mighty short sighted ruling, in my opinion. Furthermore, corporations shouldn’t have religious beliefs. Corporations are legal units serving as one body. Funny how inanimate bodies can now have religious beliefs.

Stay tuned.

Tweeting birdies say RUN, COREY, RUN!!!

MoonHowler

Yesterday I had a strange phone call from a county employee who identified themselves as an “ex-birdie.”  I almost hung up on them except his voice sounded very familiar to me.  Once we got the identity established, the fun began.  It seems that loyalty to staff counts a great deal at Complex 1 and at Independent Hill.

There are about 4,000 county staff and about 10,000 school board staff.  The caller then asked me (like I would know) why Pete Candland thinks that they would all vote for him rather than Corey Stewart.  I just listened, assuming that was a rhetorical question.  He went on to say that Candland has subjected their bosses to public embarrassment and humiliated them with supposed gotcha questions.  Additionally, there has been a great deal of public criticism over staff work projects over the past two years that we keep hearing about during BOCS meetings.  Now that is getting fairly personal.  He also told the budget director her numbers were wrong when in fact, they weren’t  wrong.

This employee was on a rant.   He then told me that Melissa Peacor was far more popular with staff than Candland realizes and that she had been attacked relentlessly (THAT part I know, the popular point I didn’t.)   Chris Martino was also called out by Candland’s BFF, the Sheriff, as being a financially  illiterate nincompoop.  Martino’s sound investment choices kept the county on an even keel for the past 5 years and Fairfax County routinely called him for advice, very often too late.  (I knew that Chris Martino was much sought after by other municipalities from some of my chick friends at Complex 1.)  (Too bad Fairfax, you snooze you lose, he’s ours!)

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Supremes strike down clinic buffer zones in Massachusetts

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down protest-free buffer zones around abortion clinics in Massachusetts as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s ruling was a narrow one, pointing out that other states and cities had found less-intrusive ways to both protect women entering clinics and accommodate the First Amendment rights of those opposed to abortion.

Massachusetts asserts “undeniably significant interests in maintaining public safety on [its] streets and sidewalks, as well as in preserving access to adjacent healthcare facilities,” Roberts wrote. “But here the commonwealth has pursued those interests by the extreme step of closing a substantial portion of a traditional public forum to all speakers.”
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The Puckett resignation: Smelling a huge giant stinky rat

MoonHowler

Richmond Times Dispatch:

 

A series of emails from the interim director of the Virginia Tobacco Commission outline plans hatched by Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, to offer Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell, a senior job with the commission once he resigned from the Virginia Senate.

The emails, obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, document the overtures made by Kilgore through the commission in the week leading up to Puckett’s June 9 resignation, which effectively transferred power from Senate Democrats to Senate Republicans — giving the GOP a majority in the evenly divided chamber prior to a crucial vote on the state budget and Medicaid expansion.

“If you’re in tomorrow Terry would like us to call Puckett to discuss what kind of role he might like with w/ Commission,” Interim Executive Director Tim Pfohl wrote to commission staffer Ned Stephenson on Thursday, May 29.

 

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Suarez: Serial biter?

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

This is how a sports biting scandal works. It begins, as it did when Uruguayan soccer star Luis Suarez allegedly bit Italian Giorgio Chiellini, with disbelief. Then comes the introspection phase as analysts try to contextualize the errant chomp. Finally, the scandal reaches, as it did on Wednesday in the Suarez case, the blame-the-media phase.

Uruguayan soccer officials claim the picture of Giorgio Chiellini clutching his tooth-marked shoulder was, in fact, altered to make the bite marks look worse than they actually were. “The accusations against Suarez are unfounded, and we will prove it,” Alejandro Balbi, the secretary general of the Association of Uruguayan Football, told Sport Witness.

“If every player starts showing the injuries he suffers and they open inquiries for them everything will be way too complicated in the future,” Balbi added in an interview with Uruguayan radio. “We’re going to use all arguments possible.”

Conspirators prowl the periphery, he said. “You shouldn’t forget that we’re rivals of many … This does not go against what might have happened, but there’s no doubt that Suarez is a stone in the shoe for many.”

This is not the first time Luis Suarez has been accused of biting during a soccer match.  There have been at least 3 other formal complaints where Suarez was fined or suspended.  He is, in fact, a serial biter.  He should be banned from ever competing again. Period.  The Uruguayan soccer officials are simply full of it.  Let them play all by themselves and see how it works out for them.

 

Meanwhile, GO Team USA!  The game between team USA and Germany  begins at noon today.  The game can be seen on  ESPN and live online at watchespn.com for those who are stuck at work.

team usa

 

Arizona School Superintendent John Huppenthal: I’m not a racist but…..

MoonHowler

huffingtonpost.com:

Arizona state schools Superintendent John Huppenthal (R) is facing mounting pressure to resign from his post after he admitted to authoring numerous incendiary posts across several political blogs starting in late 2010.

Last week, Huppenthal acknowledged that in 2010 he anonymously posted online commentary calling welfare recipients “lazy pigs” and accusing Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger of having “fed 16 million African-Americans into abortion mills.”

Although Huppenthal apologized for using “certain inflammatory words” in a statement to The Arizona Republic on Wednesday, he maintained that he participated in the blogs anonymously because he didn’t want his position as an elected official to obstruct a free and open exchange of ideas.

“I love talking about public policy, and I have a passion for engaging in debate,” Huppenthal explained to The Republic in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “I probably have 300,000 words out on the Internet, and 100 of them are getting me in trouble. When all of your missteps are there all together for people to see, it’s not a pretty picture.”
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More than disturbing….Lawrenceville

MoonHowler

From Eric Byler:

This was one of the most disturbing nights of filming I have experienced in America since Oct. 16, 2007. The next day I was interviewed on MSNBC to report on what I had witnessed.

Prior to that, I wrote this in an email to Annabel Park and Police Chief Charlie Deane (ret.) of Prince William County, VA:

I filmed the entire town hall event last night. I met the Sheriff and gave him two copies of the film. I also gave a copy of the film to the Mayor-elect and a county supervisor. The story in Lawrenceville is a lot more complex than “look how racist people can be” and also more complex than “country folk just hate the federal government” although I saw a lot of that too.

It seems that the administrator of the now-defunct college down there signed an agreement with the federal government to house these unaccompanied minors on the campus, without informing the local elected officials or the People. They have a right to be upset about the lack of transparency. I only counted 2 people who stood up to defend the idea of helping these young people in 3 and 1/2 hours (but I did step out for a while with 1 camera rolling).

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Woman excommunicated for advocating ordination of women

MoonHowler

 

 

 

The war on women which supposedly doesn’t exist is still alive and well. Katie Kelly was excommunicated. The proceedings took place here in Northern Virginia last Monday, even though Ms. Kelly has moved to Utah earlier in the spring. An all male council determined her fate.

Gender equality shouldn’t even be an issue in 2014. However, to many people in many walks of life, it is alive and not only well, it is kicking. Churches can establish their own rules. However, with that right should come the knowledge that the public will sit back and stand in judgement. How far will the long arm of the church go? Will it extend to those members who hold elected office? The issue isn’t about ordination. The issue is really about free speech and independent thinking. That is what the church is attempting to control.

According to the Huffington Post:

Jan Shipps, a retired religion professor from Indiana who is a non-Mormon expert on the church, said church leaders are practicing “boundary maintenance,” using Kelly and Dehlin as examples to show people how far they can go in questioning church practices.

Kelly said before the decision that she will always be Mormon.
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No Darth, YOU are wrong!

MoonHowler


For starters, not everyone is named “Reagan,” Dick. For 6 years now, George W. Bush has kept quiet and has let President Obama run the country. I haven’t always agreed with former President Bush but I think he has shown an incredible amount of class during the transition up until the present. Dick Cheney, not so much.

According to Fox News:

Dick Cheney has been Darth Vader for the left since the days when he was seen as the driving force behind George Bush’s dead-or-alive approach to foreign policy.

And while W. has maintained a respectful silence since leaving office, the former vice president has spent the last six years denouncing President Obama time and again, in ways that have ticked off the libs even more.

But Cheney surfacing yet again to slam Obama for the crisis in Iraq—in the aftermath of a war that he aggressively promoted from the White House—has triggered a backlash. And the moment was crystallized when he appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show.
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Immigration: Flashbacks to our past!

MoonHowler

Krystal Ball of MSNBC interviews 9500 Liberty filmmaker Eric Byler about the events going on in Lawrenceville, Virginia. The federal government attempted to sign a deal with a local defunct college to house some of the undocumented  children from the latest border crisis.

Eric was there in Lawrenceville filming the townhall meeting where the townspeople came out in full force to fight the deal.  He informed Krystal that the process was bad.  The towns folk felt that the federal government was trying to pull a fast one on them and therefore they came out “guns a blazing.”  All but 2 people spoke against the plan to house the young immigrants on the abandoned college campus.

Perhaps if the plan had been better presented, in the light of day, the children might have a residence.  The plan was scuttled because of town outrage.

The video begins with some footage some of us might find very familiar.

Smackdown in the Old Dominion

MoonHowler

Image: Virginia Legislature

Washingtonpost.com:

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed portions of the state budget Friday and vowed to defy the legislature by expanding Medicaid without its approval, setting up a legal showdown with Republicans even as he averted a government shutdown.

McAuliffe’s actions — cheered as bold leadership from the left, denounced as brazen overreach on the right — represent a bid to reassert his power as chief executive following the GOP’s recent takeover of the state Senate. They plunged a Capitol that puts a premium on gentility more deeply than ever into harsh, Washington-style enmity.
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