DramatistDreamer

This is disturbing. Why no well-funded civilian core? Even before reading this article, I already knew what the ethnicities and colors of the kids would be. Thousands of Teens Are Being Pushed Into Military’s Junior R.O.T.C.

Wait til Harry’s book debuts next month. Folks will truly get their knickers in a twist. I cannot wait. 😂

It greeted me the moment I arrived at Heathrow Airport for the first time and was being processed via immigration. It matters little what your status or station in life either. One my professors talked of being on the receiving end of veiled and sarcastic remarks when she revealed that she was a professor of English literature, because she’s Indian. I have family members who used to work for NHS and boy do they have stories! But what can you say of a country that brags about emancipating slaves while neglecting to admit (until recently) that they compensated the slave owners (but not the formerly enslaved) with taxpayer money until 2015.

This made me chuckle.

People are pretending as if Bout was given a life sentence and walked Scott-free. He was due to be released in five and a half years. Also, people have conveniently forgotten about Trevor Reed’s release via prisoner exchange.

Apparently, Bout had been scheduled for release in 2029, he wasn’t given the maximum sentence due to a lack of evidence. As much as I despise Tulsi Gabbard, at least she had the one iota of awareness that her political capital as a ‘public servant’ had waned and sought to exit. She’ll end up going the way of Sarah Palin, as a novelty for Fox News Channel for however long they choose to tolerate her and she’s got about as much political influence as Sinema these days.

Hopefully House Democrats are acting with some sense of urgency. I feel as if I hear more about what Democrats in the Senate want to achieve but not the House Democrats, which could be a function of a lack of thorough reporting of what’s happening on Capitol Hill. DACA seems to only get mentioned when someone makes a threat to take it away.

You weren’t the only one who thought this could happen. Just more of her trying to squeeze what little leverage she might muster. JMO but I doubt it will go the way she wants or expects. She doesn’t have the experience or ‘miles under her belt’ of a Joe Lieberman and I haven’t seen what allies she has managed to scrounge up. She didn’t even begin her Senate career with much goodwill. We’ll see how this goes.

Netflix won’t give a damn about the people who are trying to give the docuseries low ratings on IMDB, lol. They got people to watch, the moment the episodes were posted, BBC World News declared it “Breaking News” and it’s got well over a quarter of a million tweets. Netflix must be over the moon. Almost none of this information came as a surprise, except for the scenes about Meghan’s niece. The same Royal Family who had weathered Charles’ tampon talk with Camilla couldn’t let the niece set in the back pew of the cathedral watch the wedding ceremony, so scandal averse were they? Push-lease.🙄 But the fact that they have a tight bond while neither has a relationship with Samantha says so much and it was an unexpected piece. That segment about Stephen Lawrence still makes me deeply emotional as I remember that time very clearly and had a classmate who experienced a harrowing encounter with some racist guys when we were in London the year after the Lawrence murder. The murder and the aftermath was like an open wound in the Black community and is still deeply triggering to me and others, I am sure. I do believe that Meghan didn’t experience racism before she got into that family because of her color and her mother admitted not preparing her for how the world might “see her”. Both Halle Berry, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris said that their mothers gave the, that talk, that the world would see them as Black women and treat them as such. I guess being born in a different era, Ms. Ragland perhaps assumed that things would be different. Not so much. JMO, but Harry wanted out of the family business and he found someone who he was both attracted to and felt would be able to endure what follow once he made a run for it. That’s all I’m going to say about that, lol. ‘The Royal Family couldn’t really even prepare Diana for what she would face, so how were they going to prepare Meghan, an American woman of mixed ethnicity?

Unlike the announcement of the episodes being released of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries, this is genuinely Breaking News: In a one for one prisoner swap, Brittney Griner is being released in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

If you have ever lived in NYC, you know that rats are a serious problem. People have higher expectations for their mayor than they would any garden variety quality of life in the city advocate, especially when their mayor is so gung-ho about ‘cleaning up the streets and subways’. Well, as someone who has personally seen rats surfing the subway system and exiting the stations as if they are regular paying straphangers, it is a big problem. When I lived there, the Manhattan borough President had been fined $100 because the lid of a coffee cup had been found on her front lawn. 1 single lid. If she was fined , Adams should face a bigger fine for housing rats, especially when his administration clearly hasn’t found enough housing for New Yorkers in need of housing.

BBC World News chose to open their broadcast not with the story of the far-right group that were planning to storm the German Parliament but…wait for it…Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docustory series?? Huh? The Brits need to get their media sorted because their obsession is pulling their priorities out of whack. I am feeling a shade of secondhand embarrassment for them.

^^Unfortunately, it seems like the January 6th insurrection inspired this plot. At least German authorities made arrests before the coup plotters were able to storm the German parliament building.

To all who are interested.

There has been a lot going on in Peru these days, to put it mildly.

Stacey Abrams and LaTosha Brown really did lay the groundwork for these Democratic election victories of the last two years. This was several years in the making. Senator Warnock ran a great campaign. He tried to subtly yet pointedly illustrate the character flaws of his opponent and how that would directly impact Georgia without going fully negative. He really did the best that any human could do. As for the margin of victory, yes, it should have been wider but I think some people greatly underestimate just how huge NFL/NCAA football is in the South and Herschel Walker is a massive part of that legacy, even those who didn’t and refused to vote for him acknowledged that. Heisman Trophy and HOF, that’s like name recognition times 10! Just try to appreciate Warnock’s win for all that it encompasses in the Senate.

The Black Friday deal was too irresistible to me. It just happened to coincide with the World Cup and there are some movies that I want to watch, plus I feel like revisiting the Frasier series.

This is a name that I had totally forgotten about.

Despite their penchant for facilitating access journalists to invade their platforms, the NYTimes, on occasion, does still produce well researched investigative reporting. This article is worth a read. A gift link, courtesy of a random account.

The Climate Thread

Yeah, I tried to watch a few post-Thanksgiving episodes and this is also the sentiment that I got while viewing. You feel as if the elements are there but there is no genuine motion to scenes, there is no movement. Also, just out of curiosity, when’s the last time Y&R did an honest to goodness sequence? Another thing that struck me as odd was how there is now basically one two minute or less scene (a few sentences of dialogue) before the opening. How long has it been this way?

Surprising to no one. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/hate-speechs-rise-on-twitter-is-unprecedented-researchers-find/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=owned_echobox_tw_m&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1670014377-1

That’s a great story @JaneAusten, it’s so affirming and a reminder that there are not just politicians in Congress, there are also genuine public servants. My mother is one of Senator Chris Murphy’s constituents. He works hard. His office once helped her with an issue, it was relatively small but but it was time sensitive, vexing and a source of frustration for her. I reached out on her behalf and not long after, his office reached out and worked with her until the issue was resolved. Whenever she sees his name on the ballot, she fills it in! The media doesn’t do this either, which is the larger problem. They are afraid of being seen as fawning over “the libs” but they can easily do this with Congresspeople of all political stripes who are actually doing genuinely good work for their constituents. Sometimes even on the local level, media neglects to cover this. Of course, part of the problem is how little local media outlets there are left (newspapers, independent broadcasters not owned at least in part by media behemoths).