If the grifter in chief lasts out his term, he has 945 days left in the White House
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Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Americans separated from their decency:
• Today is Juneteenth:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” —General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865
When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the “Executive” to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification.
• Study finds disturbing link between climate science denial and racism: Political scientist Salil Benegal at DePauw University found in his research that white Americans became much less concerned about climate change during the presidency of Barack Obama. He believes racist attitudes contributed to this shift. "I'm not trying to make a claim in the study that race is the single most important or necessarily a massive component of all environmental attitudes," Benegal said, but he thinks it’s important to keep an eye on this. When effects of political partisanship, ideology, and education, were factored out of his research sample, the data revealed that, compared with black Americans, white Americans became 18 percent less likely to see climate change as a very serious problem during Obama's terms of office. The study was published in Environmental Politics.
• Meanwhile, a leading climate science denier site sneers at last week’s report that in the past five years, Antarctic ice has been melting at three times the previous rate. The headline at Watts Up With That? reads: “Good News! 99.989% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Didn’t Melt!” Climate change, you see, is just a hoax perpetrated by “Warmunists.”
• After 27 years, it appears to be bye-bye to the Jerry Springer Show.
MIDDAY TWEET
• The Washington Post shows its problematic reporting again by calling a hard-right Virginia congresswoman a “moderate”: Rep. Barbara Comstock of the state’s 10th Congressional District gets credited for being a Trump opponent based on two votes against the pr*sident’s agenda. But Comstock actually voted the Trump line more than 97 percent of the time. According to 538.com, her voting record reflects a 52-percentage-point swing away from her constituents’ preferences. Just because there are extremists like Corey Stewart running for Senate in Virginia doesn’t make Comstock a “moderate.” This bogus adjustment of the political spectrum is a frequent sin at the Post, though it is far from alone in this practice.
• Pew study finds that politically informed, tech-savvy people who trust national news sources are better able to distinguish fact from opinion in media stories: In a statement Monday announcing the study, Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at the Pew Research Center, said, “Overall, Americans have some ability to separate what is factual from what is opinion, but the gaps across population groups raise caution, especially given all we know about news consumers’ tendency to feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days, and to dip briefly into and out of news rather than engage deeply with it.” The study found that both Republicans and Democrats were more likely to say a statement is factual if it favors their side, regardless of whether it is actually factual or just opinion. Respondents in the study mostly disagreed with factual statements they incorrectly labeled as opinions. About a fourth of respondents were mostly mistaken in distinguishing fact from opinion in the 10 examples they were given to read. Respondents 18-29 were the most likely (34%) of all age groups to correctly classify all five factual statements (34%) and all five opinion statements (46%).
• J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia, gets new name: Barack Obama Elementary: Like at least 100 public schools mostly in the South, this one had been named for a Confederate general, J.E.B. Stuart. Ten U.S. Army bases are also named for Confederate generals.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, #WhereAreTheGirls? We still don’t know. But it's not like Trump has a history of trafficking & abuse of young girls or anything. Oh, another weird sex cult link? Sessions flirts with Holocaust denial. Kobach gets schooled. Kaliningrad gets reinforced.
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