I could watch CUNK ON EARTH every day and still laugh like crazy each time. Diane Morgan plays Philomena Cunk and she's hilarious. Jenny e-mailed to note the following interview with Diane.
I hadn't seen that but I really did enjoy it. And you can stream CUNK ON EARTH on NETFLIX. Here's a taste of this show. I love the Beyonce part.
It really is hilarious.
Had a high point today that quickly went down hill. What happened? I was so excited when I read that a Republican candidate had dropped out of the race for the party's presidential nomination -- especially because the photo was a profile and I thought it was Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis. Nope. It was Frances Suarez.
The review showed how much Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had changed the state's education system to root out what he calls "wokeism" in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that sprung up around the nation during the pandemic after the police murder of George Floyd.
“It’s not really about the course right? It’s kind of about putting down Black struggles for equality and freedom that have been going on for centuries at this point in time and making them into something that they are not through this kind of distorted rightist lens,” said Alexander Weheliye, African American studies professor at Brown University, who added that the evaluator comments were “complete distortion” and “whitewashing” of history.
The documents were provided to journalists for review by the left-leaning organization American Oversight, which sued the state Department of Education for the records.
In that, she ran away.
Grant Stern of the advocacy organization Occupy Democrats asked her the question in a video posted to X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Stern’s question came after Republican frontrunner Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Monday that there was a “roomer” going around that DeSantis was going to challenge Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for the seat.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Minister of the French Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu said that
Mazier “came under enemy fire” during a counterterrorism mission in
Iraq.
“Faced with terrorism, France will not back down,” Lecornu said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Seargant Nicolas Mazier was fighting for France, for our security. Fallen in Iraq, the whole nation mourns him,” Macron said on X.
France's chief of defense staff later on Tuesday released a statement
saying that units of French and Iraqi soldiers were ambushed amid an
anti-terror reconnaissance operation around 100 kilometers north of
Baghdad, during which Mazier was killed in an exchange of fire.
“Four other French soldiers were injured during these clashes and were
immediately given medical attention before being transported to an
American military hospital in Baghdad,” the statement added.
During the latest clashes, the French and Iraqi forces landed by helicopters in the al-Eth area after an Iraqi air strike on the extremists’ position but came under intense attack, the sources said.
“It was clearly an ambush by terrorists,” one Iraqi security source said. The battle lasted for more than four hours.
It’s been a difficult summer for Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako.
The leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church — one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome — left his residence in Baghdad in July. He relocated to the autonomous Kurdistan Region, where around half a million Iraqi Christians have settled since 2003.
The move turned a spotlight on the cardinal’s difficult relations with two Iraqi political figures: the country’s President Abdul Latif Rashid, and Rayan al-Kildani, the leader of the Babylon Brigades’ militia and its political wing, the Babylon Movement.
It was President Rashid’s decision to revoke a 2013 presidential decree recognizing the cardinal as the head of Chaldean Catholics and the person responsible for its assets that prompted Sako to abandon the Iraqi capital.
Al-Kildani’s Babylon Brigades, meanwhile, have pursued what Sako has described as a “deliberate and humiliating campaign” against him.
The ongoing turmoil faced by Christians today mirrors the trials
previously endured by Jews in Iraq. The emergence of militias intent on
occupying Christian lands and properties in areas like the Nineveh
Plains and other Iraqi cities encountered a significant obstacle in
their path — Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean
Catholic Church.
As the spiritual leader of Iraq's largest church, representing
approximately 80 percent of Iraqi Christians, Patriarch Sako opposed the
creation of Christian militias. His beatitude consistently urged the
Iraqi government to prevent the existence of such groups, as Christians
inherently advocate for a robust and stable government, not a fragile
one.
Influential figures like the bishops of the (Nineveh Bishops Council)
also opposed militia formation and the acquisition of Christian
political representation in the Iraqi parliament through tens of
thousands of votes outside of the Christian house gathered by militias
to support their proxies and impose them on Christians , intended to
consolidate the political power of these militias.
The resilience of Christians shocked the militias, prompting them to
target the head of the most powerful church, aiming to set an example
that would discourage others from opposing their expansionist policies
in the Nineveh Plains. This culminated in efforts to compel their allies
to affect the decision of the presidential institution of Iraq, by
issuing a presidential decree by the Iraqi president Abdul Latif Rashid,
to withdraw the presidential dated for more than 10 years ago, only
concerning Patriarch Sako.
Suppressing the Christian voice
While numerous other decrees by the Iraqi presidency for various bishops
and churches leaders remain in place, exclusively targeting Patriarch
Sako serves the purpose of conveying a clear message: Christians must
remain silent and cooperative during the militias' efforts to alter the
demographics of their ancestral lands in the Nineveh Plains. This
silence is also expected regarding the multitude of human rights
violations and abuses committed by these militias.
Everyone loves moms. Everyone. And that’s a problem for groups like Moms for Liberty.
The group revels in its inflated reputation as a “national powerhouse,” but its century-old playbook has always had a fatal flaw.
As the 1970s story of Alice Moore shows, white conservative mothers have always had great initial political success, but that appeal tends to spiral quickly out of their control.
Moore’s story might sound familiar. She rocketed into national prominence in 1974 by taking over her local school board, blocking books and fighting for “parents’ rights.” She ran as a nonpartisan “mother,” but in truth, she was an experienced activist for conservative causes. Long before she ran for school board, she had fought against abortion rights and against sex education in schools. She railed against public schools’ alleged progressive agenda, accusing them of “destroying our children’s patriotism, trust in God, respect for authority and confidence in their parents.”
Once on the school board of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Moore ignited a dramatic boycott of a new series of textbooks. She inflamed conservative opinion nationwide by claiming that the books trampled on parents’ rights. Moore warned that the new books would force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism.
Moore did not invent her powerful political persona. She modeled her career on that of Texas’ Norma Gabler. Gabler had become a national powerhouse in the 1960s by blocking history textbooks and forcing publishers to tell a more conservative story. Though Gabler always called herself just a “Texas homemaker” or “Longview housewife,” she ran a staff of eight, combing through textbook copy to sniff out progressive content.
Gabler, in turn, modeled her organization on that of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As far back as the 1920s, DAR leaders campaigned to keep America’s public schools “fundamentally Anglo-Saxon.” Back then, DAR claimed almost 200,000 members. Anne Rogers Minor, DAR’s national leader at the time, claimed that it was their role as patriotic mothers to “Guard well your schools.” Minor warned that too many teachers taught ideas that parents might not like. As Minor put it, “We want no teachers who say there are two sides to every question.”
DAR’s activism was powerful and lingered for decades, but their sprawling, angry organization always ranged beyond the control of the national leaders. In 1963, one DAR member in Mississippi humiliated the group with her violent opposition to a widely used children’s book. The book, The New Our New Friends (1956), had been read for years in Mississippi public schools. It told cheerful moral stories about cute baby animals, as when Bobby Squirrel discovered he could get a nut just by asking for one. One local DAR leader, though, accused the book of spreading subversive socialism by teaching children, like Bobby Squirrel, to expect a “collective welfare system.” DAR had worked hard to maintain their reputation as America’s maternal conscience. This kind of strident, frenzied activism, however, opened up the group to mockery from all sides, as when historian James Silver sarcastically praised the Mississippi DAR for keeping the state’s children safe from the dangerous “story of the squirrel storing nuts.”
By the 1970s, Alice Moore’s career repeated the pattern. Just like Norma Gabler and DAR, Moore attracted huge support, seemingly overnight. Her warnings about new textbooks led to a boycott of local public schools. The fledgling Heritage Foundation scrambled to send support. The White House, too, voiced its enthusiasm for Moore’s vision. President Ford’s commissioner of education, Terrel Bell, opposed any textbooks that “insult the values of most parents.”
As Alice Moore quickly found, however, her meteoric success came at great cost. Her inflammatory language about public schools and teachers led to a spate of bombings and shootings. The school board building was rocked by a dynamite bomb. Two elementary schools were firebombed. Nonconservative members of the school board were physically attacked and pummeled at a public meeting. The district’s superintendent went into hiding, moving from couch to couch every night to escape incessant death threats. Soon school buses came under hails of sniper fire. Along the turbulent picket lines, two people were shot; thankfully, both survived.
The great operatic contralto Marian Anderson is most often recalled for her brave and stirring performance from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing from the stage of their Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin.
Less well remembered is the extraordinary life she led before and after that moment, in a career that took her from Philadelphia, the city of her birth, to New York City, the White House, and performances before royalty and in the great opera halls of Europe.
Anderson possessed a voice of power, grace, and extraordinary range. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini said, "a voice like hers only comes along once in a hundred years.”
And yet, like many African American singers of her era, Anderson faced discrimination in her own country.
After graduating from high school, Anderson applied to the all-white Philadelphia Music Academy, which refused to admit her. Undaunted, she continued to pursue her dream and, when she was 23 years old, Anderson beat over 300 competitors for the opportunity to sing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
In Europe, South America, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere, she captivated audiences with performances in multiple languages, including operatic arias and songs drawn from the classical canon.
She also included traditional African American spirituals in her repertoire, sharing this important art form with the world.
By 1939, Anderson was an international sensation. However, when Howard University invited her to perform in Washington, D.C., the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her access to DAR Constitution Hall, the only auditorium large enough to accompany the throngs of anticipated fans. It would be Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, along with Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and others that fixed this injustice by inviting her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial.
The air was cold on April 9, 1939 - no favor to an opera singer. Anderson was also intimidated by the prospect of singing before the largest crowd she had ever faced. But, considering all she had overcome, these were small obstacles. She strode to the microphone and, with all her dignity and mastery, began her first song: “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
In many ways, Anderson was an unlikely hero. Off the stage, she was quiet and reserved. When asked to comment on the Daughters of the American Revolution and their refusal to let her perform, she characteristically demurred - preferring to let her performance speak for itself.
It did. Seventy-five thousand people heard her sing that morning, and before her retirement, she would enthrall millions more. She would make her belated debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955, tour the world on behalf of the United States in 1957, and sing for the inaugurations of presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Following Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington in 1963, Anderson captivated the audience with her rendition of the spiritual “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.”
Eventually, she moved to Connecticut, and at the end of her life, she traveled to Oregon, where she lived quietly, occasionally accepting well-deserved honors, until her death at age 96.
At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we have many treasured artifacts and exhibits from Anderson’s storied life. There is one of which I am particularly proud: the ensemble Anderson wore on April 9, 1939, when she sang to the conscience of the nation.
Although she wore a fur coat over her shoulders to fend off the cold, her jacket was bright orange with jeweled buttons that sparkled in the sun. A jacket befitting the icon she truly was. In 1993, with Anderson’s permission, the jacket was redesigned with new fabric and the trim that was on the original garment. We are honored to conserve and share the skirt as Anderson wore it that day.
If you have only ever seen black-and-white footage of her performance, I invite you to come to the Museum to see more. View Marian Anderson’s dress on display, listen to her voice, and learn more about her inspiring life and career. Come and experience a moment that transfixed, and ultimately helped transform the nation. Join us as we celebrate the life and achievements of a great American hero.
The message Michael Farris had come to deliver was a simple one: The time to act was now.
For decades, Farris — a conservative Christian lawyer who is the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement — had toiled at the margins of American politics. His arguments about the harms of public education and the divinely endowed rights of parents had left many unconvinced.
Now, speaking on a confidential conference call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires seeking, in the words of one member, to “take down the education system as we know it today,” Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said.
The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.
Nevertheless, Farris assured the conservative donors, their money would be well spent on this legal campaign. A conservative supermajority reigned on the nation’s highest court. In statehouses and at school boards, political activism over parental rights had reached a fever pitch.
“The time is right,” he said, later adding, “Sometimes it does take a while for seed to be planted and to germinate.”
The 50-minute recording, whose details Farris did not dispute in a series of interviews with The Post, is a remarkable demonstration of how the ideology he has long championed has moved from the partisan fringe to the center of the nation’s bitter debates over public education.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost into the conversation. Representative, your response to the racist shootings in Jacksonville? And also, you called on Governor DeSantis to call for a special session to discuss the matter. Your sense of the governor’s role in the past in terms of dealing with issues relating to the Black community?
REP. MAXWELL ALEJANDRO FROST: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me on.
And it was just sad. Organizers, advocates, community leaders, clergy, folks across the state, for years — for years — have been pleading with the governor to do many things, but two things in relation to this tragedy that happened in Jacksonville. Number one, act on gun violence. In a country where the leading cause of death for a child is to be shot to death, we need to do something. In a country where we lose a hundred people a day due to gun violence, we need to do something about the problem. And unfortunately, what we’re seeing, especially in the Republican Party now, is not only do they not want to do anything about it, but they want to say there’s no way to fix the problem, which I completely dismiss. That’s not why we run for office as elected officials.
The second thing, this governor consistently embraces and champions this far-right, fascist movement that is growing across the country, but really Florida and Texas, I believe, are the two epicenters of. And that movement gives credence and gives power to racist bigots like the murderer who went into that store and murdered three people and hunted three people down because of the color of their skin. All of these things are connected. When that shooter, months before that, would turn on the news, weeks before that, would turn on the news to see that kids in Jacksonville, middle schoolers, would learn that Black who were enslaved benefited, had personal benefit, from their slavery, that gives people credence. That pushes bigotry and racial hatred into people.
And so, you know, I saw those videos and those pictures of the governor at the funeral, at the memorial. And I was tweeting about this data. I have been in so many communities across this entire nation just after a mass shooting and just after a shooting. I’ve been doing gun violence work since I was 15 years old. And I get the want to, no matter who it is, have that unity. I understand it. But I have to say — I have to say, in moments like these, we have to stand strong on ensuring that leaders who contributed to the problem can’t use our communities as campaign stops. And that’s exactly what the governor did. And I’m happy that activists and organizers booed him and yelled to him, “You’re part of this! You’re part of the reason this happened!” because it’s nothing but the truth.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’re calling on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into what’s happening in Florida?
REP. MAXWELL ALEJANDRO FROST: Yes. Yes, I am. This is very important, too. We, as Democrats, as an organizer, we’ve got to take steps back and look at: Where is our power now? We understand that with this far-right, authoritarian leader as our governor, we need to look at power in other places, people power on the ground, but also the fact that Democrats, we hold the administration. We have the White House and President Joe Biden. And I want to see the Department of Justice do a lot more, using every tool in their toolbox, to investigate not just this specific incident, but everything going on in Florida.
And, you know, myself, I sent a letter with Congressman Jamie Raskin to Chair Comer of the Oversight Committee, the committee I sit on, and we asked the chair: We need to have hearings on what’s going on in the state of Florida, because this anti-democratic governor — it’s not just, you know, in the state of Florida; it’s spreading throughout the entire country. We saw what happened in Tennessee with the Tennessee 3. It’s this far-right movement that seeks to subvert democracy to consolidate power. And it’s important that we talk about it.
The chair completely, you know, did not respond to us, so I held my own hearing. I put my own hearing together, brought Andrew Warren, the state attorney who was taken out of office. That happened again with Monique Worrell. We brought state Representative Anna Eskamani. We brought a substitute teacher that was fired for simply posting footage of empty bookshelves because of the book ban. And we brought Jasmine Burney-Clark, who runs Equal Ground, that works on educating people across the state and fighting for democracy across the state and voting rights.
And what we found in that hearing and through our research is the governor is targeting municipalities, counties and people across the entire state that disagree with him. And he’s subverting democracy, removing them from office, and we can’t stand for it. All of these things are connected. We need the Department of Justice to look into the racial hatred, the hatred of Black people, hatred of immigrants, going on in the state of Florida.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Maxwell Alejandro Frost, we want to thank you so much for being with us, the youngest member of the U.S. Congress, former national organizing director of March for Our Lives, which was formed by survivors of the Parkland shooting in Florida. And, Rodney Hurst, civil rights leader from Jacksonville, all the best during this storm. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
MSNBC's Lindsey Reiser asked Rep. Nixon her thoughts on DeSantis' statement on the previous day's shooting.
After three innocent Black people were gunned down by a 21-year-old white man who carried an AR-15 style rifle adorned with swastikas, the governor said, "Florida, the state, and its people condemned the horrific racially-motivated murders, perpetrated by a deranged scumbag… Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida."
DeSantis' was booed by a crowd of mourners who gathered on Sunday to honor those senselessly killed.
The shooting claimed the lives of Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald Gallion, 29.
The gunman, identified as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, left racist writings and used racial slurs before launching the attack Saturday and then killing himself, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. Palmeter had worked at a Dollar Tree from October 2021 to July 2022, the sheriff said.
“There’s no question” the killings were racially motivated, the sheriff told CNN on Monday.
“He hated Blacks, and I think he hated just about everyone that wasn’t White,” Waters said. “He made that very clear.”
The killer was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun – which were both legally purchased, the sheriff said.
The Justice Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Sunday.
On Saturday, as Americans marked the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle and handgun opened fire at a Jacksonville store just blocks away from a Historically Black University, taking the lives of three Black Americans.
Already, federal law enforcement has opened a civil rights investigation into this attack and is treating it as a possible hate crime and act of domestic violent extremism.
As we allow that investigation to proceed, let us continue to speak truth about the moment we are in: America is experiencing an epidemic of hate. Too many communities have been torn apart by hatred and violent extremism. Too many families have lost children, parents, and grandparents. Too many Black Americans live every day with the fear that they will be victims of hate-fueled gun violence—at school, at work, at their place of worship, at the grocery store.
Every person in every community in America should have the freedom to live safe from gun violence. And Congress must help secure that freedom by banning assault weapons and passing other commonsense gun safety legislation.
Doug and I will keep the victims and their loved ones in our prayers.
# # #
MS. JEAN-PIERRE: This Saturday, our nation marked the six- — 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, a seminal moment in our history and in our work towards equal opportunity for all Americans.
Sadly, this day of remembrance ended with yet more American communities wounded by an act of gun violence, including communities in Boston, Chicago, and Joppa[towne]. At least one shooting this weekend was reportedly fueled by hate and carried out with two firearms.
On Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida, a white gunman went on a shooting rampage at a store near a historically Black university and killed three Black individuals. Even as we continue to — to — we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America.
As the President said in his statement yesterday, we must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school — to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. Hate must have no safe harbor. Silence is complicity, and we must not remain silent. And we must continue to do all we can to keep guns out of dangerous hands.
The President and the First Lady are praying for the victims and their families, and this entire administration grieves with the people of Jacksonville.
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