Tweet Of The Day
Time for a rousing 6:00 a.m. game of "what did I just hear the fucking cats break"
— (((Popehat))) (@Popehat) September 4, 2016
Tweet Of The Day
#TripAdvisor #porridge #funny #Liverpool pic.twitter.com/bExPx69j1A
— Alan McElligott (@AMCELL) September 3, 2016
Tweet Of The Day
How fast was this duck going? pic.twitter.com/ddjBc0VnHZ
— Scoots (@scootertooter7) September 2, 2016
Today’s Quick Hits
1. Mandatory Minimums – What a Fine Idea
Or Not. ken White eviscerates Donald Trump’s latest bright idea about how to stop those immigrants from re-entering the USA after deportation.
2. Weird petitions to the Supreme Court
This document, replete with strange language, was an attempt to appeal a judgement to SCOTUS. I am still not entirely sure what the writer is trying to appeal by reading this document, but it seems that he was terminated by IBM and lost a court case under the ADA, and also lost on appeal. I fear that this petition will hit the SCOTUS out-tray on the floor in short order.
3. Weird Lawsuit of the Week
A guy with too much time on his hands think he has a slam-dunk RICO lawsuit against the mainstream media…where is my bulk order for popcorn. I need to increase it.
4. A classic tale of whistleblower retaliation
In which persistent abuse of police databases by school district leaders is brought to the attention of law enforcement, who decline to prosecute the persons engaging in abuse, but instead penalize the person who noticed the abuse. The result is a lawsuit that is likely to cost the school district a lot of money.
Tweet Of The Day
.@FEC to G_d: Prove you exist, or we're terminating your candidacy. The metaphysical implications of this are huge. pic.twitter.com/CkKwIpDZAZ
— Carrie Levine (@levinecarrie) September 1, 2016
Big changes in my social media presence
With immediate effect, my social media presence is shrinking down to the following:
1. This blog, which will be focussing more on business postings for the rest of the year
2. White Cat Publishing‘s blog and matching Twitter and Ello accounts, with occasional postings to Corporate Realist
3. My Business Twitter account
4. LinkedIn
5. My personal Ello account
My primary Facebook account will be deactivated in 2 months. There is insufficient upside to remaining on that platform. My contributions are mostly not welcomed and the signal to noise ratio is now unacceptable.
The Facebook pages for White Cat Publishing and Rainpebbles Glass will remain. Mary looks after the Rainpebbles Glass page, and I will update White Cat publishing automatically to point to that website’s blog.
If you want to contact me, please use the contact email on this blog or one of the other weblogs.
The Colin Kaepernick shitstorm, Part 3
It is instructive to watch the unfolding of stories and responses on Twitter. As I write this, one of the trending hashtags on Twitter is #VeteransForKaepernick. A lot of military veterans totally support Kaepernick’s right to sit for the National Anthem.
Here are some of the tweets that I found this morning with my comments.
Same people applauding for this crumpled on the fainting couch over Colin Kaepernick. pic.twitter.com/JmaW34imWL
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) August 31, 2016
Disrespecting the flag? Disrespecting the USA? Well, well, well. What do we have here?
“I don’t want him anywhere near my team. He’s a traitor.” Front office execs on Kaepernick. https://t.co/rwwOJwqltF
— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) August 31, 2016
Colin Kaepernick is a traitor? Holy moly. Somebody is either wilfully stupid, ignorant or both, and needs to go to a dictionary, look up the meaning of the word “treason” and wise up. It’s probably not a good idea for front office execs to be bloviating on this topic at all. 80% of the NFL’s players are not white, and when you have retired players like Jim Brown saying that they support Kaepernick, attempting to excoriate or censor his views is probably not a good idea. The NFL already has a credibility problem with its selective “look the other way” approach to players who, you know, actually commit crimes, like domestic partner abuse. (Conspiracy theorists have already noted that while the NFL had no problem coming down like a ton of bricks on Ray Rice, an African American player, for domestic partner abuse, they have done nothing about disciplining the Giants’ Josh Brown, who was arrested for domestic abuse and is white).
The idea that teams can force employees into compulsory obeisance to ceremonies is not one that will find favour either with employees or, more importantly, the legal system. It may also lead to the filing of a greivance by the NLFPA, which is deeply resentful of the NFL’s attempt, on top of what they consider to be a poor CBA, to impose all manner of non-appeable quasi-judicial punishments on players.
Kaepernick should have just threatened armed secession or occupied an empty building in the middle of nowhere with guns. Wait.
— Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) August 31, 2016
Ah yes. Quite. Currently there are thousands of would-be insurrectionists in the USA, some of whom have actually taken up arms against the US government. Yet their efforts to destablize the USA are being ignored in favor of the excoriation of one man who engaged in a legal peaceful protest action. This is why I consider most of the bloviation against Kaepernick to be profoundly unserious.