Snowflake's Forum

Posted by collectivist "Are you frustrated with The Resistance©, still fronting for the failures of Hillary Clinton while thousands of kids whose families fled the killing regimes in central America that she enabled are being held in concentration camps? You’re not alone. Here at CounterPunch we get lots of calls from readers this time of year asking: where are the good groups? Where can I send a year-end check and know that the money will be well spent, not recycled into a fat executive salary or an annoying direct mail campaign? There are many such groups out there; indeed, there is a vibrant and thriving grassroots movement across a whole range of issues. Unfortunately, we can’t bring all of them to your attention. But once or twice a year we devote the pages of CounterPunch to a survey of what these organizations are up to. Here’s our end of the year list of good groups, the real resistance, fighting on the frontlines against ICE, the coal companies, the police, the...

Hey all! I've been having issues with my laptop and got tired of fighting with it to stay connected to the internet (it stays connected to Wi-fi just fine but loses internet) so I've just taken a few days break. I got back on this morning to find an email from Snowy about Disqus having issues again. Back in October, Disqus was having issues and I was able to find another commenting platform,  https://intensedebate.com/logmein I recommend bookmarking the site! Should Disqus continue to have major issues or if we decide to go ahead and change platforms, you'll already have it bookmarked. I'd also recommend bookmarking both Snowy's and this blog as I don't think there is a way to 'tag' people with Intense Debate as there is with Disqus (at least I haven't figured that part out yet, if there is a way). Anyway, I do have another blog that I had set up for testing commenting platforms and Intense Debate is what's installed on it. So th...

Joe Biden  told voters in New Hampshire on Monday that he would consider choosing a Republican as a running mate, but added, "I can't think of one right now." Biden discussed the possibility after a woman told the former vice president that if he is the nominee, he will "have to pull out all the stops." "Our 21-year-old son said the other night, 'I wonder if Joe Biden would consider choosing a Republican as a running mate," the woman added. "The answer is I would, but I can't think of one now," Biden replied. "Let me explain that. You know there are some really decent Republicans that are out there still, but here's the problem right now ... they've got to step up." Over the past few months,  Biden has offered several clues  about who he might consider as his vice presidential pick if he earns the Democratic nomination. He previously said he would prefer to pick someone "of color and/or a diffe...

Human remains — including 2 decapitated heads — were found on a North Korean 'ghost ship' that washed ashore in Japan About a hundred so-called North Korean ghost ships wash ashore in Japan every winter. Two decapitated heads were found on what's suspected to be a North Korean boat that washed ashore in Japan on Friday. Japanese broadcaster  NHK  reported that a boat with Korean lettering on the side washed ashore on the island of Sado on Friday. During a search of the vessel on Saturday, Coast Guard officials found seven "partially skeletonized" remains. According to the  Associated Press , the remains included three bodies, two heads without bodies, and two bodies without heads. It's unclear yet whether the two heads came from the two bodies without heads. Five remains were determined to be male. The wooden boat is believed to be a North Korean "ghost ship," about a hundred of which wash ashore in Japan every winter when the Sea of ...

Police say a Florida Grubhub driver attacked 2 Burger King workers by swinging a 3-foot ashtray after being told his order wasn't ready A  Grubhub  deliveryman was arrested on Saturday, with police saying he attacked two employees at a Florida  Burger King. According to a police report, the driver became "agitated" when he was informed his order was not ready for pick-up, and he struck a Burger King worker with a three-foot ashtray. Burger King, Grubhub, and the Clearwater Police Department did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. A Grubhub deliveryman was arrested this weekend after an incident at a Florida Burger King. On Saturday, Daniel Delellis was arrested on charges of battery, according to  police reports  first obtained by The Smoking Gun. According to the report, Delellis entered a Burger King in Clearwater, Florida, at 5:19 p.m. to pick up a Grubhub order. Delellis became "agitated" when informe...

Mother who injected feces into son with cancer's IV during chemo sentenced to 7 years An Indiana woman who admitted injecting her son's IV with fecal matter  has been sentenced . Tiffany Alberts of Wolcott, was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison and five years probation for six counts of aggravated battery and one neglect charge, according to the Marion County Prosecutor's Office. In September, Alberts was acquitted of an attempted murder charge. In 2016, Riley Children's Hospital contacted police after Alberts' son, who was 15 years old at the time, was being treated for leukemia and developed persistent and unexplained blood infections. Blood tests revealed organisms usually found in stool.  A nurse at the hospital observed in surveillance footage Alberts injecting something into her son's IV bag.  Alberts admitted to investigators that she had collected her son's feces and injected it in his IV. She said she did it...

https://youtu.be/DUmx4nNoDM4 "Harriet Fraad is a practising psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in New York City. She has been in private practice for 37 years and seen hundreds of people thrive without psychopharmacology. A contributor to  Class Struggle on the Home Front  (2010), Harriet's work deals with the interface between economy and psychology. With her husband, Richard Wolff, she coproduces the blog  Economy and Psychology " Posted by collectivist

Texas church shooting:  Suspect shoots 2 before he was killed by parishioners A man shot two people during a church service in White Settlement, Texas, on Sunday before two armed parishioners shot and killed him, White Settlement Police Chief J.P. Bevering said. One person who was shot at the West Freeway Church of Christ died and another victim has life-threatening injuries, Bevering said. Bevering praised the two "heroic" churchgoers who returned fire and killed the suspect. He said there is no ongoing threat to the incident. Medstar Mobile Healthcare spokeswoman Macara Trusty said the suspected shooter and a victim died en route to the hospital. Another victim flatlined on the way to the hospital but was resuscitated and is in critical condition, Trusty said. Lisa Farmer was not inside the church but told CNN her husband, church minister Britt Farmer, said the shooting happened during communion. "It was so chaotic," she said. "I thin...

Oldest Fossil Evidence of Animal Parenting Found in Canada 309 million years ago an animal that resembled a lizard wrapped its tail around a younger member of its species. Bones of a reptile-like beast curled around a younger member of its species may be the most ancient fossil evidence yet of a parent taking care of its progeny after birth, a new study finds. Parental care of offspring after birth, also known as prolonged parental care, is common among many vertebrates today, including birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians and especially mammals, but is absent in other groups. Analyzing the evolution of this behavior is challenging because it is rare to find the remains of parents and infants preserved together. Previous research suggested the earliest example of prolonged parental care involved South African fossils from the extinct animals known as varanopids. These particular fossils of creatures resembling modern-day monitor lizards were  more than 260 million years ol...

Archaeologists Find Evidence of the Iron Age Siege of Jerusalem Recently uncovered archaeological evidence matches the Bible's account of Babylonian invasion 2,600 years ago. In the 6th century B.C., the Babylonian king  Nebuchadnezzar II , fearful that the Egyptians would cut off the Babylonian trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean region known as the Levant, invaded and laid siege to Jerusalem to block them. His army destroyed the temple the Hebrew king Solomon built there, and forced the city’s elite to exile in Babylonia. So began the Babylonian Exile or Captivity, an event that shaped modern Judaism. A new archaeological discovery puts a rare physical stamp of authenticity on an event described in the Hebrew Bible. Israeli and American archaeologists have found evidence just outside Jerusalem's old city that apparently supports the Biblical description. In an area called Mt. Zion, which is also known as Western Hill, they found the remains of a home of someo...

Water From South African Mine May Contain Life That Was Isolated for 2 Billion Years The water contains bacterialike shapes that researchers plan to test for DNA. Two miles under a grassy plain in South Africa, pockets of water lie trapped in the rock. Scientists think the pockets might have been isolated from the surrounding environment for 2 billion years. These liquid time capsules are hot, salty, and devoid of nutrients from the surface, and they may be chemically similar to water deposits on Mars. Now, researchers think they may have found things living in this long-sequestered water. “There is a potential that [the pockets] were isolated over that long time scale. So this would be a unique opportunity to see life, essentially, evolving in a bubble,” said Devan Nisson, a graduate student at Princeton University in New Jersey, who conducted the research with colleagues, including Esta van Heerden from North-West University in South Africa. Nisson  presented prelim...

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard spoke candidly on Saturday about her  controversial decision to vote "present"  during last week's formal impeachment vote, adding she feared the impeachment of President Donald Trump would only "embolden" him and increase his chance for reelection. "I think impeachment, unfortunately, will only further embolden Donald Trump, increase his support and the likelihood that he'll have a better shot at getting elected while also seeing the likelihood that the House will lose a lot of seats to Republicans," Gabbard said, in a one-on-one interview with ABC News in Hudson, New Hampshire. Gabbard -- a 2020 president candidate -- noted that the prospect of a second term for Trump and a Republican-controlled House is a "serious concern" of hers, adding that she's worried about the potential ramifications that will be left if Trump is acquitted.  She told ABC News that it could leave "lasting damage...

Don Imus Signs Off On the April 4 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team, which is comprised of eight African-American and two white players, as "nappy-headed hos" immediately after the show's executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, called the team "hard-core hos." Later, former Imus sports announcer Sid Rosenberg, who was filling in for sportscaster Chris Carlin, said: "The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the [National Basketball Association's] Toronto Raptors." McGuirk referred to the NCAA women's basketball championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee as a "Spike Lee thing," adding, "The Jigaboos vs. The Wannabees -- that movie that he had." Imus initially was given a two-week suspension for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" on the air last week, but outrage cont...

Cuomo Blocks Judges Picked by Trump From Officiating New York Weddings Cuomo Blocks Judges Picked by Trump From Officiating New York Weddings ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s feud with President Donald Trump has covered all manner of topics, including taxes, immigration policy and whether America was ever “great.” Now, however, the governor has brought their skirmish to a whole new battleground: marriage. In an end-of-year kibosh, Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have permitted federal appeals and district court judges from around the nation to preside over nuptials in New York, thus denying them inclusion on a lengthy list of those so empowered, including the governor himself. And like the decision to tie the knot, the reasoning for Cuomo’s disapproval — signed Friday — was distinctly personal. “I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration,” he wrote. “President Trum...

People Can't Even Agree On When The Decade Ends As the world prepares to ring in 2020, many people are arguing over whether a new decade will also begin on Jan. 1 or whether it will actually begin on the first day of 2021. Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters In the binary times in which we live, it might not surprise anyone that people can't even agree on when one period of time ends and another begins. The question many are now asking is: When we ring in the new year and welcome 2020, should we also celebrate a new decade? Confusion over the answer is similar to the uncertainty that hung over watershed events from the millennium to the 2009-2010 changeover. As Jan. 1, 2020, approaches, it turns out there is a Team Zero and a Team 1 – those who believe the new decade will begin after midnight on the upcoming New Year's Eve and those who believe the burgeoning celebrations of a new decade (and all the "last decade" retrospectives) are in fact a year earl...

'Angry' tortoise accidentally started a house fire on Christmas The fire department shared an image of the tortoise on Facebook: “This 45 year old tortoise might look angry but it's his lucky day,” the photo caption reads. A grouchy-looking tortoise was rescued from a Christmas Day fire of his own making in the United Kingdom. The 45-year-old reptile, who lives in the city of Essex, accidentally started a small house fire by knocking a heat lamp on his bedding Wednesday morning, according to the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service. After neighbors heard a smoke alarm and contacted authorities, firefighters found the flame in one room and extinguished it, only to find the shelled suspect in its midst. In a statement , Gary Wain, fire captain of the Great Dunmow Fire Station, said this incident proves the importance of smoke alarms throughout a home. “Even if you're not home, they will alert anyone close by to the first sign of fire,” he said....

SO - that IS what it is like avoiding politics for a week! With Christmas out of the way, but also making plans for next week, I thought to myself, should I post a political OP - maybe something about Trump - just to get people back into the groove on this channel again? MY ANSWER: My brother and his family were over, and the family of my new lady friend on Christmas Eve, spent Christmas day catching up with old friends from Canada and my son by Skype, as for the rest of the last week - best I leave it to your imagination. SO BE HONEST - were you able to avoid politics and particularly Trump when you had your family gatherings? How did it feel to get a break from it all? AND with the weekend coming up, POST WHATEVER, a fun story, a fun meme, a fun joke, a fun video. AND IF I don't touch base with y'all by next week:

Posted by collectivist "I didn't know Christians could be Democrats until I got to college. Though affiliated with the relatively conservative Christian Reformed Church, my school had a small but vocal minority of leftist professors and students. Growing up, I went to church with my family every Sunday. We attended predominantly White non-denominational or Assemblies of God churches. What I heard from the pulpit ranged from apocalyptic altar calls—scary enough that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior every damn time—to sermons that condoned heteronormative sex and gender roles and condemned premarital sex, abortion, and alcohol. My father, a Black Ph.D. from Washington D.C., and my mother, a second-generation Puerto Rican immigrant who grew up in Spanish Harlem, are statistical anomalies. Until recently—Mami voted for Hillary— they’ve voted Republican, a political ideology affirmed and assumed in our churches.  So, in school, when I met my then-friend...