Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
‘We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are now in a new geological age, the Anthropocene – the Age of Humans.’
David Attenborough says 'The Garden of Eden is no more'
‘We have changed the world so much that scientists say we are now in a new geological age, the Anthropocene – the Age of Humans.’World Economic Forum #wef19
Posted by EcoWatch on Thursday, January 24, 2019
9 Things They Won’t Tell You Before Your First Psych Hospital Admission
Jan Bunten, The Mighty January 24, 2019
Being admitted, voluntarily or involuntarily, to a psychiatric hospital can be traumatic. You’ve probably just been through some kind of mental health emergency. Depending on the circumstances, you may feel you’re being treated like a criminal. It’s especially scary the first time. Knowing a few tips can make your stay less stressful and more healing.
1. Make a note of your phone numbers.
Write down all of the phone numbers you might need on a piece of paper. They will take your phone, so you will need access to those numbers.
2. Buy an all-purpose calling card.
You can find them at Walmart or dollar stores. Make sure it’s not made to work with just one carrier. Some hospitals won’t allow you to make long-distance calls, and they’ll limit your local calls. Best to leave money and debit cards at home. You only need your calling card, driver’s license and insurance card.
3. When packing clothes, go for loose and comfortable.
No drawstrings or shoe strings. Pack a sweatshirt or hoodie (no drawstrings), even in summer. Don’t pack more than five days worth of clothes. You’ll have access to laundry facilities if you need them.
4. The hospital will provide soap, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant.
If you try to bring a bunch of your own toiletries, they won’t let you have a lot of them. If you run out of something, they’ll give you another.
5. Bring a couple of books.
Most units don’t have books. You won’t have access to the Internet. Bring a journal (no metal spiral) but not all units will allow pens or pencils. You’ll need to ask about that.
6. Expect to spend the first couple of days resting and getting stable.
You may have been through some trauma before ending up in the hospital. Try to relax and settle in. Try to eat at least a little every meal.
7. After you’ve had a chance to get to know the routine, open yourself up to the therapies that are provided.
Go to all the groups, even if you don’t think they’re for you. Talk to the other patients, at least the ones who are open and ready. Some people might be fearful or angry, especially when first admitted. Best to smile and give them space. But some will be near to where you are in your recovery. You can learn a lot from other patients. You can also have a lot of laughs. It’s therapeutic.
8. Refrain from asking your doctors and therapists when you will get out.
I know it’s hard to be away from your friends and family, especially when you don’t know how long you will be there. It’s been my experience, and I’ve seen it over and over again, that begging to get out will only delay your discharge. Work with your doctors, take your meds, participate in groups and recreation, don’t hide in your room, and you should be out in a matter of days. Of course, you need to be honest with your caregivers. If you don’t feel better, don’t say that you do.
9. There will be some indignities.
You may at times feel patronized. Being in a psych hospital is a lesson in patience. You will get out and you will get your dignity back. Try to be in the moment while you’re there. You should feel no more shame than you would if you were hospitalized for anything else.
Be honest and open with both your caregivers and the other patients. Before you know it, you’ll be discharged. Take it easy for a few weeks. Follow whatever treatment plan you were given at discharge. You may find being hospitalized was one of the best things that ever happened to you.
In the cold light of hindsight, it seems that Seth Moulton’s brainstorm to replace Nancy Pelosi with “fresh new leadership” may have been-how do you say?-premature?
Donald trump: As the Shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union Address. I agreed. She then changed her mind because of the Shutdown, suggesting a later date. This is her prerogative – I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over. I am not looking for an….
If maps had folded that easily back when I was a kid, there would have been a lot fewer arguments on long road trips.
It is interesting to look back at how the last couple of days played out. This was probably the most fraught exchange of actual letters between a president* and a Speaker of the House since the invention of the telephone. The first letter that Pelosi dispatched to Camp Runamuck, on January 16, the one that disinvited the president* from the House chamber, was couched in all kinds of Beltway civility-speak. Pelosi “respectfully suggested” that the two of them find “another suitable date” for the president* to give his speech-once the government re-opened, of course. A day later, of course, the president* dispatched a letter to the Speaker explaining how he could not give her military transport for a trip that eventually would have placed Pelosi in Afghanistan to visit American military personnel stationed there.
I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!
This time, Pelosi’s response was as clear and direct as a notice of eviction:
I am writing to inform you that the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the President’s State of the Union address in the House Chamber until government has opened.
At which point, on his preferred venue, the electric Twitter machine, the president* struck his colors Thursday morning. And, because Camp Runamuck is a nest of nasty, scheming reptiles, it appears that a lot of these cold-blooded critters are trying to save their own reputations in the aftermath. From CNN:
White House officials had believed Pelosi wanted only to postpone Trump’s State of the Union for political reasons after she sent a letter to him last week asking him to delay the address until after the partial government shutdown ended. The plan from administration officials was to call her bluff by pressing forward with plans to deliver the speech, including a new letter on Wednesday that they hoped would force her hand. In that letter, Trump said he was planning on coming to the House chamber to deliver his address on Tuesday as planned, as he had been assured by Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security officials that there would be no problem providing security for the speech. Pelosi had initially cited security concerns as a reason to delay the speech.
They were left considering possible alternatives before Trump scuttled the idea in his Wednesday night tweet. White House officials were hesitant to hold a campaign-style rally because they thought it wasn’t formal enough to look like the traditional speech. Officials also recognized that it’s harder to keep Trump on message during a rally, where he often feeds off the crowd, versus a more formal address. Officials noted that television networks rarely carry the rallies live. The message Trump planned to deliver at the Capitol — even one shaped around the shutdown — would be much more tamped down than the President’s usual rhetoric at a rally…Some officials believed a rally would be seen as just another campaign speech, which they acknowledge people have started to tune out.
See? It was only we Anonymous White House Officials who kept President Adderall from immolating himself and his administration from some airplane hangar in Alabama. Time was that one did not mock The Rallies. I will grant you that no president ever has deserved loyalty less-or deserved less loyalty-than this one, but, holy mother of god, could these Anonymous White House Officials grab more greedily for the ripcord?
“I’d give him the whole thing,” Peterson told KFGO’s Joel Heitkamp, “and put strings on it so you make sure he puts the wall where it needs to be. Why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, at some time.” Thirty-two days into the shutdown, Peterson had seemingly done what no other Democrat in Congress had yet dared to do: accede to Trump’s wall demand, and go against Democratic leaders’ insistence that the wall, an “immorality,” would receive not a dime of taxpayer money…
“I’m probably the only one left that has the guts to say what I said. It’s ridiculous,” Peterson said. “People say, [the wall] is a waste of money. Maybe it is. We’ve wasted money on stupider things than this. Maybe it isn’t going to do much good, it’s probably not going to do much harm. Why are we getting wrapped all around the axle on this?”
Brilliant, Congressman Peterson. Enjoy your primary next time around.
Some people just don’t learn. The D’Allesandro is strong in this one.
January 22, 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Slams Shutdown During First House Floor Speech
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Slams Shutdown During First House Floor Speech
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn't afraid to call out Trump during her first House floor speech
Posted by NowThis Election on Tuesday, January 22, 2019
The president’s lawyer gave another eye-popping interview. This time he mentioned tapes.
By Charles P. Pierce January 22, 2019
GETTY IMAGESJASON KEMPIN.
One of the most reliable joys of political journalism in this very weird political moment is the series of interviews that Isaac Chotiner is doing for The New Yorker. His latest is a chat with Rudy Giuliani and, yes, there are moments in it that will make you stop so hard that your eyeballs shoot out three feet and then snap back. This is one of them.
Chotiner and Giuliani were talking about the BuzzFeed News story from last week about how the president* allegedly instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress regarding the prospective Trump Tower project in Moscow. And this ensued:
RG: I can’t discuss that. President Trump would not have done that. If anybody would have done it, obviously it would have been his lawyers, and I really can’t discuss that. That would be confidential.
IC: Do you—
RG: But I can tell you, from the moment I read the story, I knew the story was false.
IC: Because?
RG: Because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts, I have been through all the e-mails, and I knew none existed. And then, basically, when the special counsel said that, just in case there are any others I might not know about, they probably went through others and found the same thing.
IC: Wait, what tapes have you gone through?
RG: I shouldn’t have said tapes. They alleged there were texts and e-mails that corroborated that Cohen was saying the President told him to lie. There were no texts, there were no e-mails, and the President never told him to lie.
Mr. Butterfield? History calling on Line One.
IC: So, there were no tapes you listened to, though?
RG: No tapes. Well, I have listened to tapes, but none of them concern this.
Oh, OK. If you follow the link embedded in the interview, you come to a CNN report from last July when a tape emerged on which the president* and Cohen were heard discussing hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. That may be all this is about but I think Chotiner spoke for all of us with that, “Wait. What tapes have you gone through?” It gets a little nuttier further on:
IC: The quote in the story from you is that the “ ‘discussions were going on from the day I announced to the day I won,’ Mr. Giuliani quoted Mr. Trump as saying during an interview with The New York Times.”
RG: I did not say that.
IC: The Times just made that quote up?
RG: I don’t know if they made it up. What I was talking about was, if he had those conversations, they would not be criminal.
IC: If he had them, but he didn’t have them?
RG: He didn’t have the conversations. Lawyers argue in the alternative. If we went to court, we would say we don’t have to prove whether it’s true or not true, because, even if it’s true, it’s not criminal. And that’s why Mueller will not charge him with it.
IC: Does it matter to the American people if it’s true? We are living in a democracy here. We want to know these things.
RG: That’s an insane question you just asked me. I am not saying that he did it. I just told you he didn’t do it. I am telling you that their investigation is so ridiculous that, even if he did do it, it wouldn’t be a crime. Now, would the American people be interested in it? Of course. There’s a big difference between what the American people would be interested in and what’s a crime. The American people can be interested in a lot of things people conceal that aren’t crimes. I’m a criminal lawyer. I am not an ethicist. And I defend people against unfair criminal charges.
The youngest woman ever elected to Congress again made headlines and sparked conservative criticism when she said Monday that she and other young Americans fear “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made the remark during an interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates at the MLK Now event in New York City celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
Ocasio-Cortez called the fight to mitigate the effects of climate change her generation’s “World War II.”
“Millennials, and Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us, are looking up and we’re like, ‘The world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'” she said.
Climate change has been a driving issue for the freshman Democrat since arriving on Capitol Hill. Back in November, she joined a group of about 200 climate change protesters outside the office of then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when she arrived for her orientation. Since taking office, she has called for a “Green New Deal.”
In November, a 1,600-page report from the federal government said the climate is changing faster than at any point in modern history and that the impacts are already being felt. But a dozen years is a short timetable even those who are most concerned about the effects of global warming – such as naturalist Sir David Attenborough, who warned that climate change could lead to a “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world.”
Many conservative commentators took issue with what they considered her alarmist statement about the issue.
Ocasio-Cortez’s comment on Monday was in response to a question about when and why she decides to “clap back” against her social media critics. She said her main priority is to call out what she believes are widely-accepted but incorrect assumptions, including the idea that people must choose between the economy and the environment.
She said she does not take the criticism personally but sees it as a “deliberate strategy.”
“If you try to attack and discredit the messenger, then perhaps you can discredit the message,” she told Coates.
Climate change: Meet the Florida congresswoman leading the House charge
More: A dozen ways life on Earth could end
Contributing: Doyle Rice
Once upon a time, Ayn Rand-reading, red-baiting Republicans denounced Soviet Russia as an evil superpower intent on destroying the American way of life.
My, how things have changed.
The Grand Old Party has quietly become the pro-Russia party — and not only because the party’s standard-bearer seems peculiarly enamored of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under Republican leadership, the United States is starting to look an awful lot like the failed Soviet system the party once stood unified against.
Supposedly middle-class workers — people who have government jobs that are supposed to be stable and secure — are waiting in bread lines. Thanks to government dysfunction and mismanagement, those employed in the private sector may also be going hungry, since 2,500 vendors nationwide are unable to participate in the food stamp program while the government is shuttered and unable to renew licenses for the Electronic Benefit Transfer debit card program.
Why? Because of the whims of a would-be autocrat who cares more about erecting an expensive monument to his own campaign rhetoric than about the pain and suffering of the little people he claims to champion.
And for now, at least, most of those little people are too frightened of the government’s wrath to fight back overtly. Instead, desperate to keep jobs that might someday offer them a paycheck again, the proletariat protest in more passive ways: by calling in sick in higher numbers.
The would-be autocrat surrounds himself with toadies who spend more time scheming against one another — sometimes to comic effect — than trying to offer their boss sound guidance or thoughtful policy solutions. In his presence, and perhaps especially when the cameras are on, they praise him relentlessly: his brains, his leadership, his “perfect genes.”
Sometimes they appear afraid to stop clapping, echoing stories of forced standing ovations for Joseph Stalin recounted in video footage and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago.”
Apparent corruption among these kowtowing aides — including improper use of public funds or private favors for fancy travel and other pampering — remains rampant. Unlike in true socialist states, it seems, our leaders haven’t run out of other people’s money.
Meanwhile, federal law enforcement is publicly directed to pursue the would-be autocrat’s political enemies, as well as the family members of those enemies, such as former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s father-in-law. Purges of law enforcement or other members of the “deep state” are also demanded, and sometimes acted upon. Such actions, when taken by thugs abroad, were once denounced by Republicans.
State-run media, or something closely approximating it, feeds the public a steady diet of pro-leader propaganda and shields viewers from news that might embarrass the head of state. Independent sources of information or accountability, or those who deviate from the party line, are branded “enemies of the people.”
On the macroeconomic front, leadership may be touting “deregulation” but in many ways is moving toward a more centrally planned economy, which includes the shielding of pet industries from the whims of the market or technological change.
That means propping up coal plants, which fracking has made less competitive. And slapping tariffs across thousands of foreign products, to subsidize struggling domestic competitors or sometimes to protect “national security.” And granting more price supports for farmers.
Just as government has inserted itself into more markets, though, it has abruptly stopped functioning, holding up the processing of those farmer subsidies or tariff exemptions. It’s the old Soviet model in a nutshell: promising much, interfering a lot, failing to deliver.
Perhaps providing proof of concept to President Dwight Eisenhower’s domino theory, our government has simultaneously encouraged more central planning by other economies, too.
This includes greater government-directed management of bilateral trade balances by China, the European Union and other countries, regardless of what individual businesses within those countries need or where they’d prefer to source from. While the Trump administration claims it wants China to move in a more market-oriented direction, it also wants it to promise that theoretically private Chinese companies will buy soybeans from the United States, and not Brazil, regardless of quality or price.
Needless to say, “picking winners and losers” was once a thing Republicans abhorred, a practice embraced only by failed socialist states; today the Republican standard-bearer picks winners and losers even within the government itself. The government may be officially shuttered, but President Trump decided to do an end run around the constitutionally mandated, democratic appropriations process. He is picking and choosing which government functions are allowed to function: yes to his offshore drilling plan and tax refunds; no to the Smithsonian museums.
All branches of government may be equal — but some, it seems, are more equal than others.
Dr. Martin Luther King was NOT just a civil rights leader or a religious leader. He was a voice for millions of workers who were made silent in their workplaces and in their lives. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a LABOR LEADER.
Maybe one of the greatest spokespersons, for working Americans, in the Twentieth Century.
Celebrate his day! (MLK was assassinated the very next day, after making this speech to striking workers.) ~AS
Last week, the “second lady” of the United States, Karen Pence, went to work as an art teacher at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia. Immanuel Christian is one of the many American religious institutions, as Rebecca Klein reported for HuffPost, that discriminates both in its hiring and its admissions. The school requires “moral purity” from its staff, meaning they can’t be queer, have sex outside marriage or watch porn, and must “respect the unique roles of men and women.” The school also reserves the right to expel students for being queer.
Immanuel Christian is not unusual. Too many religious schools at all levels regulate the personal conduct of their employees and students, restrict the books teachers can assign or students can read, and demand fealty to narrow constructions of religious identity, while enshrining bigotry into their bylaws.
Vice President Mike Pence says that criticizing institutions that discriminate like this is anti-Christian. I say that these schools are not only anti-American, in that they exclude so many Americans, but are also not in the best educational interests of the students who attend them.
For too many other institutions, faith provides the material to build a defensive wall rather than a strong foundation.
There are about 27,000 religious private K-12 schools in the United States and over 1,000 religious colleges and universities. Many of these institutions are inclusive, welcome, places. I should know, as I taught at Dominican University, a Catholic institution in the Chicago area, for over 10 years. I only left so I could raise my kids in Minnesota. For Dominican, and for thousands of institutions like it, faith traditions provide a rock of identity on which to stand and welcome the world with confidence.
As a secular Jew, I felt at home at Dominican. As an institution, it knew what it was and hoped I would share in the mission to make a “more just and humane world.” My Muslim and queer colleagues reported similar feelings of inclusion, and I don’t think Dominican is atypical in this regard. From kindergarten to graduate school, it’s possible to attend or work at a religious institution of learning that takes faith seriously without endorsing exclusion or bigotry.
Alas, for too many other institutions, faith provides the material to build a defensive wall rather than a strong foundation. Karen Pence’s new employer, Immanuel Christian, is one of many examples at the secondary level. I’ve been tracking similar issues at the collegiate level.
Here are just a few examples. Catholic schools love to fire queer teachers, especially when they get married or pregnant. Recently, Franciscan University of Stubenville removed the chair of the English department from his position as punishment for teaching Emmanuel Carrère’s The Kingdom, despite there being no question about the professor’s own commitment to Catholicism. In 2016, St. Mary’s, a small school in Minnesota, fired a popular professor for using phallus props in his production of Medea.
Wheaton College, an elite school sometimes styled the “Harvard of Christian Schools,” began termination procedures against professor Larycia Hawkins (the first tenured African-American professor in the school’s history) because she posted on Facebook that she stands “in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” According to Wheaton’s provost, the idea that two of the three Abrahamic religions might venerate the same deity violates the school’s “doctrinal convictions.” Hawkins and Wheaton eventually “parted ways.” No one questioned whether Hawkins was a Christian, but whether her theological understanding of the nature of divinity narrowly clung to Wheaton’s ideological mandate.
At another elite Christian school, Ozark College, students are required to venerate the U.S. flag as well as maintain a Christian life. For Ozark, Christianity excludes “ touching, caressing, and other physical conduct of a sexual nature with a person of the same sex,” all of which is grounds for being fired or expelled.
Imagine what it’s like to be a student or professor at Wheaton today and to know that it’s not just required to be a Christian, but to be exactly the right type of Christian. Will the next professor at Franciscan who wants to challenge students with a complex, possibly offensive, book hold back in order to preserve their professional status? And no one, anywhere, ever, should risk employment because of who they love or what consensual activities they choose to engage in with other adults.
And what about the quality of education? Since at least 2014, a significant cohort of writers and public figures have argued passionately that higher education requires mandatory, regular exposure to “intellectual diversity.” The conversation, as led by people like University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, the FIRE organization on faculty rights, and elite (mostly white male) writers like Jonathan Chait, Connor Friedersdorf, Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Frank Bruni and Jonathan Haidt, have joined more explicitly partisan voices to condemn elite liberal universities.
According to them, the modern practices of overprotective parenting and oversolicitous educators have created a generation of “snowflakes,” students unequipped for the real world, locked in ideological bubbles, and prone to mental health struggles. But these concerns for educational rigor always seem to apply in the same direction. We hear more about sandwich diversity in the Oberlin cafe than we do about the experience of students at religious schools.
I agree that intellectual diversity is important to a true education. But if there are students who are being turned into snowflakes by their education, by mollycoddling parents and by teachers, then surely it’s the millions of students who are attending schools that mandate limited viewpoints, adherence to ideology, and no exposure to true diversity.
As this essay went to press, a video of young white men from Covington Catholic High School harassing a group of indigenous people went viral. The students had traveled from Kentucky to D.C. to attend the March for Life, but paused to surround elder Nathan Phillips as he was playing a drum and chanting. One slid close, grinning, thrilled with his racist provocation, a Hazel Massery of his generation. Maybe if Karen and Mike Pence are worried about saving Christian education in this country, they are going to have to break down the walls of bigotry that cocoon such institutions. Alas, all they seem to care about is keeping queer people out.
Aren’t they the real snowflakes?
David Perry is a historian and journalist. He works at the University of Minnesota.
Lady Gaga weighed in on the nation’s current state of affairs during her “Enigma” show in Las Vegas on Saturday, joining an ever-growing list of celebrities to voice their disapproval of the Trump administration.
The Grammy winner singled out Vice President Mike Pence, slamming him for thinking “it’s acceptable that his wife work at a school that bans LGBTQ”
The vice president has defended Karen Pence’s decision to teach at the Immanual Christian School, which bans LGBTQ employees, students and families. In an interview with Eternal World Television Network, Mike Pence likened the uproar over his wife’s decision to an attack on Christianity.
“You are wrong,” the singer said, before speaking of her own Christian faith:
You said we should not discriminate against Christianity. You are the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace Mr. Pence and you can look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.
The “A Star Is Born” actress also issued a message to Donald Trump amid the ongoing partial government shutdown, asking if “the fucking president of the United States could please put our government back in business.”
“There are people who live paycheck to paycheck and need their money,” she said to applause from the audience.
So how are the red states who voted for Trump doing under his presidency?
So how are the red states who voted for Trump doing under his presidency?
Posted by Late Night with Seth Meyers on Friday, January 18, 2019
