Here is a list of Opinionated Blogs ordered by Last Commented, posted by members. A Blog is a journal you may enter about your life, thoughts, interesting experiences, or lessons you've learned. Post an opinion, impart words of wisdom, or talk about something interesting in your day. Update your blog on a regular basis, or just whenever you have something to say. Creating a blog is a good way to share something of yourself with others. Reading blogs is a good way to learn more about others. Click here to post a blog.
Feminists Get Taste of Their Own Medicine, Fined Under Gender Equality Act for Hiring Too Many Women
In 2013, France decided to strike un petit blow against the patriarchy.
No more could top positions be filled with sclerotic white males and/or future sclerotic white males. Instead, only 60 percent of management could be of one gender. As for those elsewhere on the gender spectrum, well, I’m sure the Fifth Republic will catch up with you sometime soon, assuming they haven’t already.
The move was purportedly done to ensure gender parity. A noble cause — except that’s not really what it was about, since the only reason most of us know about the regulation is that it’s caused an international furor because Paris’ mayor got fined for appointing too many women to senior roles.
According to AFP, Socialist Anne Hidalgo said $110,100 fine for her 2018 staffing decisions was “absurd.”
And yet, there it was — her new management hires consisted of 11 women, five men. That’s 69 percent female.
Read more:
No more could top positions be filled with sclerotic white males and/or future sclerotic white males. Instead, only 60 percent of management could be of one gender. As for those elsewhere on the gender spectrum, well, I’m sure the Fifth Republic will catch up with you sometime soon, assuming they haven’t already.
The move was purportedly done to ensure gender parity. A noble cause — except that’s not really what it was about, since the only reason most of us know about the regulation is that it’s caused an international furor because Paris’ mayor got fined for appointing too many women to senior roles.
According to AFP, Socialist Anne Hidalgo said $110,100 fine for her 2018 staffing decisions was “absurd.”
And yet, there it was — her new management hires consisted of 11 women, five men. That’s 69 percent female.
Read more:
online today!
For every action...
For every action, there's an opposite and often more powerful reaction.
Coming from the mouth of attorney Sidney Powell were false accusations that Dominion Voting Systems, makers of the machines used in the 2020 presidential elections were rigged.
Her statements were (and still are) unfounded. However, the reaction to this is Dominion employees have been stalked, harassed and received death threats.
Dominion has sent a letter to Powell demanding:
"For the safety of Dominion's employees and for the sake of the truth and confidence in American democracy, we demand that you immediately and publicly retract your false accusations and set the record straight."
It's my opinion a simple letter isn't enough and Powell should suffer some legal consequences for her actions.
Coming from the mouth of attorney Sidney Powell were false accusations that Dominion Voting Systems, makers of the machines used in the 2020 presidential elections were rigged.
Her statements were (and still are) unfounded. However, the reaction to this is Dominion employees have been stalked, harassed and received death threats.
Dominion has sent a letter to Powell demanding:
"For the safety of Dominion's employees and for the sake of the truth and confidence in American democracy, we demand that you immediately and publicly retract your false accusations and set the record straight."
It's my opinion a simple letter isn't enough and Powell should suffer some legal consequences for her actions.
Writing Blog
Blessed Sunday
To All Bloggers.
Hope you all doing well.
Your opinion.
Is discrimination on behalf of Power Colour Religion Country is allowed.
To All Bloggers.
Hope you all doing well.
Your opinion.
Is discrimination on behalf of Power Colour Religion Country is allowed.
online today!
Who can you trust...
Having tested positive for COVID-19 last week, Rudy Giuliani was admitted to the hospital. It was reported he was 'feeling fine' and four days later he was released... just like Chris Christie, just like Donald Trump.
I shouldn't find it odd that political celebrities have access to medicines and treatments (experimental or otherwise) that the general public cannot get.
In the news this morning Giuliani was interviewed having said' he experienced “serious symptoms” before he was given experimental drugs that weren't available to others in the same quantities. During the interview, he also said that he received the same "cocktail" of medications that Trump did when he contracted the virus.'
The story goes on to read 'According to the New York Times, ????officials at the FDA have raised concerns privately that people with connections to the White House seem to be obtaining access to the antibody treatment before it has reached anyone else as well.'
It's pretty easy to play-down a virus when you are part of the inner circle.
I shouldn't find it odd that political celebrities have access to medicines and treatments (experimental or otherwise) that the general public cannot get.
In the news this morning Giuliani was interviewed having said' he experienced “serious symptoms” before he was given experimental drugs that weren't available to others in the same quantities. During the interview, he also said that he received the same "cocktail" of medications that Trump did when he contracted the virus.'
The story goes on to read 'According to the New York Times, ????officials at the FDA have raised concerns privately that people with connections to the White House seem to be obtaining access to the antibody treatment before it has reached anyone else as well.'
It's pretty easy to play-down a virus when you are part of the inner circle.
English Premier Division Football League
Millwall Yobs 0, The Rest of Us 1.
A premier football match was marred by booing during the 'Taking the Knee' act. Racsim, in any form is disgusting.
Ask yourself. What makes me ‘special’, is it the colour of my skin?
I just happen to be born in the UK, from a long line of mixed heritage, French, Scandinavian, Welsh and somewhere a smattering of Italian. So, not special at all,
But why am I not ‘picked’ upon by others, is it because I am 'white'?
Because I don’t fit the stereotypical person, who has been indoctrinated to mistrust, to dislike and form a prejudice against another.
George Floyd was one of many men and women who have been killed through prejudice. Prejudice which has been caused by years and years of built-in dislike because of the colour of their skin.
STOP looking at anyone who doesn’t look like you and see them for what they are.
HUMAN BEINGS.
If you want a fair and just society, start every day and dismiss all your negative thoughts on your neighbours, dress, culture, religion and colour.
You only have one life live it
5 Minutes of ranting and chanting and destruction will not erase centuries of hate.
Everyone’s lives matter, not just BAME.
A premier football match was marred by booing during the 'Taking the Knee' act. Racsim, in any form is disgusting.
Ask yourself. What makes me ‘special’, is it the colour of my skin?
I just happen to be born in the UK, from a long line of mixed heritage, French, Scandinavian, Welsh and somewhere a smattering of Italian. So, not special at all,
But why am I not ‘picked’ upon by others, is it because I am 'white'?
Because I don’t fit the stereotypical person, who has been indoctrinated to mistrust, to dislike and form a prejudice against another.
George Floyd was one of many men and women who have been killed through prejudice. Prejudice which has been caused by years and years of built-in dislike because of the colour of their skin.
STOP looking at anyone who doesn’t look like you and see them for what they are.
HUMAN BEINGS.
If you want a fair and just society, start every day and dismiss all your negative thoughts on your neighbours, dress, culture, religion and colour.
You only have one life live it
5 Minutes of ranting and chanting and destruction will not erase centuries of hate.
Everyone’s lives matter, not just BAME.
Trump - a "total disgrace"
An opinion piece from The Washington Post;
In response to:
Trump’s pardon of Michael Flynn is a parting disgrace
November 25, 2020 at 8:25 p.m. EST
DAY AFTER day, year after year, Americans wondered when Donald Trump would change. But winning primaries, claiming the GOP nomination, taking the White House and being president did not snap him out of a lifelong habit of indecency. It was too much to imagine that losing his reelection bid would bring a change of character. And so it is that President Trump is leaving the White House just as he entered it: a total disgrace.
In what we can only hope will be his last official degradation of his office, the president pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, on Wednesday, the afternoon before Thanksgiving. Mr. Flynn freely pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators, a felony, about whether he discussed anti-Kremlin sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. “I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right,” Mr. Flynn said then. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.” But then he took it all back.
Mr. Flynn switched lawyers, hiring Sidney Powell — yes, the same Sidney Powell who last week alleged a vast international communist plot to flip the 2020 presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden — and insisted that he was the victim of FBI manipulation. Of course, no one forced him to lie to counterintelligence investigators. But Mr. Trump, who had privately pushed then-FBI Director James B. Comey to go easy on his former confidant, waged a public campaign against prosecuting Mr. Flynn, tying it into his efforts to discredit the Russia investigation. Finally, Attorney General William P. Barr bailed out Mr. Flynn, moving to drop the case against the former Trump staffer, despite his previous guilty plea.
Mr. Flynn’s judge balked, igniting a debate about whether he could stop the Justice Department from showing such obvious favoritism for one of the president’s friends based on legal reasoning the department rejected in other cases. A former federal judge hired to advise the court found Mr. Barr’s justifications “an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.” No matter: Now the case is closed. Mr. Trump steamrolled the facts and debate, deploying one of the least reviewable powers of his office — his pardon authority — to officially end the Flynn drama. He enabled an admitted felon to walk free solely because he was a loyal Trumpist.
As he so often does, Mr. Trump grounded his decision in a half-baked conspiracy theory, insisting Wednesday through his press secretary that Mr. Flynn was “the victim of partisan government officials engaged in a coordinated attempt to subvert the election of 2016.” In fact, Mr. Flynn was caught scheming with the representative of a foreign government that actively tried to subvert the 2016 election. Then he lied about it to the FBI.
So it remains in Mr. Trump’s America, at least for a couple more months: Guilty is innocent; lies are truth; traitors are patriots. The question is not whether Mr. Trump has degraded the presidency. The question is how much long-term damage he has done. Will future presidents now feel free to use the pardon power — or the other vast powers of office — with such nakedly crooked motives? How many will calculate that they can make corruption appear to be patriotism as long as enough of the country wants to believe the lies they tell?
Trump’s pardon of Michael Flynn is a parting disgrace
November 25, 2020 at 8:25 p.m. EST
DAY AFTER day, year after year, Americans wondered when Donald Trump would change. But winning primaries, claiming the GOP nomination, taking the White House and being president did not snap him out of a lifelong habit of indecency. It was too much to imagine that losing his reelection bid would bring a change of character. And so it is that President Trump is leaving the White House just as he entered it: a total disgrace.
In what we can only hope will be his last official degradation of his office, the president pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, on Wednesday, the afternoon before Thanksgiving. Mr. Flynn freely pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators, a felony, about whether he discussed anti-Kremlin sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. “I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right,” Mr. Flynn said then. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.” But then he took it all back.
Mr. Flynn switched lawyers, hiring Sidney Powell — yes, the same Sidney Powell who last week alleged a vast international communist plot to flip the 2020 presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden — and insisted that he was the victim of FBI manipulation. Of course, no one forced him to lie to counterintelligence investigators. But Mr. Trump, who had privately pushed then-FBI Director James B. Comey to go easy on his former confidant, waged a public campaign against prosecuting Mr. Flynn, tying it into his efforts to discredit the Russia investigation. Finally, Attorney General William P. Barr bailed out Mr. Flynn, moving to drop the case against the former Trump staffer, despite his previous guilty plea.
Mr. Flynn’s judge balked, igniting a debate about whether he could stop the Justice Department from showing such obvious favoritism for one of the president’s friends based on legal reasoning the department rejected in other cases. A former federal judge hired to advise the court found Mr. Barr’s justifications “an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.” No matter: Now the case is closed. Mr. Trump steamrolled the facts and debate, deploying one of the least reviewable powers of his office — his pardon authority — to officially end the Flynn drama. He enabled an admitted felon to walk free solely because he was a loyal Trumpist.
As he so often does, Mr. Trump grounded his decision in a half-baked conspiracy theory, insisting Wednesday through his press secretary that Mr. Flynn was “the victim of partisan government officials engaged in a coordinated attempt to subvert the election of 2016.” In fact, Mr. Flynn was caught scheming with the representative of a foreign government that actively tried to subvert the 2016 election. Then he lied about it to the FBI.
So it remains in Mr. Trump’s America, at least for a couple more months: Guilty is innocent; lies are truth; traitors are patriots. The question is not whether Mr. Trump has degraded the presidency. The question is how much long-term damage he has done. Will future presidents now feel free to use the pardon power — or the other vast powers of office — with such nakedly crooked motives? How many will calculate that they can make corruption appear to be patriotism as long as enough of the country wants to believe the lies they tell?
Trump = LOSER
Last night in Rolling Stone;
In response to:
No Matter What Lawsuits He May File, President Trump Is an Epic Loser
David S. Cohen
Tue, November 17, 2020, 5:44 PM EST
Donald Trump is having a terrible November. First, he loses the presidential election as an incumbent in historic fashion. Then, in his much-hyped litigation explosion to show the world that he really won on November 3rd, he has lost in court repeatedly. There’s just no two ways about it: Donald Trump will leave office as an epic loser.
By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you know that Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden. Biden received 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. This is the same amount Trump won by in 2016, which Trump and his advisers touted then as a “landslide.”
]What makes Biden’s “landslide” more impressive is that, unlike Trump, Biden won the popular vote. Whereas Trump lost the nationwide vote tally by 2.8 million votes in 2016, Biden is on track to win the popular vote by 7 or 8 million. (He is currently ahead by 5.7 million, with millions of ballots left to be counted, mostly in Biden-friendly California and New York.) Biden is currently just under 51 percent of the total vote, leading Trump by 3.7 percent. (Both of these numbers should get bigger.) In 2016, Trump received just 46.1 percent of the total vote (losing to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percent).
Most everyone knows this (even Trump himself apparently). What has been harder to keep track of is just how much losing Trump has been doing in his election-related litigation. Part of the reason is because court cases in multiple states are esoteric and hard to keep track of.
But part of the reason is that there’s just so much losing. By one election lawyer’s tally, Trump is 1-25 in election litigation so far. (By the time you read this, his record will probably be even worse.)
The losses have come in every conceivable way. When the Trump campaign has claimed election fraud, judges have routinely asked for actual evidence. In court, as opposed to on Twitter, litigants who make allegations have to back them up with proof. The Trump campaign has had none, and judges have taken notice. They have lectured Trump’s lawyers on the rules of evidence and the basics of hearsay. They have sifted through affidavits and found the same thing that every state administrator told The New York Times when it contacted each one — there has been no fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Other losses have come because conservative lawyers have quietly asked courts to withdraw their lawsuits. Monday morning, for instance, lawyers asked federal courts in Michigan and Wisconsin to dismiss their claims, leaving no federal court cases challenging the results in those states.
No Matter What Lawsuits He May File, President Trump Is an Epic Loser
David S. Cohen
Tue, November 17, 2020, 5:44 PM EST
Donald Trump is having a terrible November. First, he loses the presidential election as an incumbent in historic fashion. Then, in his much-hyped litigation explosion to show the world that he really won on November 3rd, he has lost in court repeatedly. There’s just no two ways about it: Donald Trump will leave office as an epic loser.
By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you know that Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden. Biden received 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. This is the same amount Trump won by in 2016, which Trump and his advisers touted then as a “landslide.”
]What makes Biden’s “landslide” more impressive is that, unlike Trump, Biden won the popular vote. Whereas Trump lost the nationwide vote tally by 2.8 million votes in 2016, Biden is on track to win the popular vote by 7 or 8 million. (He is currently ahead by 5.7 million, with millions of ballots left to be counted, mostly in Biden-friendly California and New York.) Biden is currently just under 51 percent of the total vote, leading Trump by 3.7 percent. (Both of these numbers should get bigger.) In 2016, Trump received just 46.1 percent of the total vote (losing to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percent).
Most everyone knows this (even Trump himself apparently). What has been harder to keep track of is just how much losing Trump has been doing in his election-related litigation. Part of the reason is because court cases in multiple states are esoteric and hard to keep track of.
But part of the reason is that there’s just so much losing. By one election lawyer’s tally, Trump is 1-25 in election litigation so far. (By the time you read this, his record will probably be even worse.)
The losses have come in every conceivable way. When the Trump campaign has claimed election fraud, judges have routinely asked for actual evidence. In court, as opposed to on Twitter, litigants who make allegations have to back them up with proof. The Trump campaign has had none, and judges have taken notice. They have lectured Trump’s lawyers on the rules of evidence and the basics of hearsay. They have sifted through affidavits and found the same thing that every state administrator told The New York Times when it contacted each one — there has been no fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Other losses have come because conservative lawyers have quietly asked courts to withdraw their lawsuits. Monday morning, for instance, lawyers asked federal courts in Michigan and Wisconsin to dismiss their claims, leaving no federal court cases challenging the results in those states.
(continued in my comment below)
The Emporer with No Integrity
From The Miami Herald;
In response to:
Donald Trump might look like he’s fully clothed, but in reality . . .
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Tue, November 10, 2020, 3:41 PM EST
We turn, one last time, to Hans Christian Andersen.
Over the past four years, many observers, this one included, have found one of the Danish writer’s most famous tales irresistible for explaining both Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s slavish sycophancy toward him. In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a monarch parades through town naked, having been convinced by swindlers that he’s actually draped in an exquisite outfit made of a fabric visible only to those who are not “unusually stupid.”
Not wanting to be thought dense, everyone pretends they can see the magnificent outfit. Then a child blurts out the obvious. “But he hasn’t got anything on!” And the crowd begins to whisper to itself, until the truth finally breaks like a shaft of sunlight through the clouds, and the whole town cries out that the emperor is unclothed.
Well, in the wake of last week’s defeat and his refusal to concede same, it’s Trump who stands naked before us, revealed for anyone who inexplicably still harbored doubt, as the liar and loser he always was. He rages against math, excoriates voting, raves about imaginary schemes to steal a victory he never won. His psychopathy is nude, his disconnect from reality is disrobed, his toxic narcissism stands bare-cheeked before us all.
And you wait for the whispers to begin, wait for the toadies and lickspittles who have long enabled him to at last blurt the obvious. And you wait. And you wait.
And there is silence.
In a political season that has produced more than its share of embarrassments, this may be the greatest humiliation yet for a nation that styles itself a beacon of democracy. At this writing, almost no one — not party elders, not young guns, not cabinet members, not the first lady, not the children — has found the courage to publicly say the truth. Indeed, some — like the invertebrate Sen. Lindsey Graham — have even encouraged Trump’s delusions, a display of political gutlessness with few, if any, equals in recent memory.
Its insistence on denying reality has reduced the GOP to a state beyond parody. Think a Washington Post report of party loyalists marching seven times around the U.S. Capitol like Israelites in the Bible around Jericho. Think the once-respected Rudy Giuliani holding a press conference in a Philadelphia landscaping supply company parking lot near a sex shop to decry fictitious election irregularities. “Do you think we’re stupid?” he cried. “Do you think we’re fools?”
It’s enough to make comedy writers obsolete.
But it’s not a joke. Attorney General William Barr, Trump’s consigliere, has authorized prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of voter fraud. Even though there are none. The General Services Administration has refused to process paperwork needed to release funds for President-elect Joe Biden to begin the transition process. In other words, the machinery of government has been brought to bear to protect a boy man’s fragile ego from the truth.
Acknowledging a bitter defeat is never easy. But so many others have risen to the task with grace. Hillary Clinton did it. Mitt Romney did it. John McCain, John Kerry and Al Gore did it. The weakling Trump is uniquely unable to do it, a failure that makes you long for Jan. 20. On that day, he’ll be escorted into disgrace, still insisting that he won what he didn’t. One imagines the emperor would empathize. Even after the child cried out, he still couldn’t admit his nakedness.
“So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.”
Donald Trump might look like he’s fully clothed, but in reality . . .
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Tue, November 10, 2020, 3:41 PM EST
We turn, one last time, to Hans Christian Andersen.
Over the past four years, many observers, this one included, have found one of the Danish writer’s most famous tales irresistible for explaining both Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s slavish sycophancy toward him. In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a monarch parades through town naked, having been convinced by swindlers that he’s actually draped in an exquisite outfit made of a fabric visible only to those who are not “unusually stupid.”
Not wanting to be thought dense, everyone pretends they can see the magnificent outfit. Then a child blurts out the obvious. “But he hasn’t got anything on!” And the crowd begins to whisper to itself, until the truth finally breaks like a shaft of sunlight through the clouds, and the whole town cries out that the emperor is unclothed.
Well, in the wake of last week’s defeat and his refusal to concede same, it’s Trump who stands naked before us, revealed for anyone who inexplicably still harbored doubt, as the liar and loser he always was. He rages against math, excoriates voting, raves about imaginary schemes to steal a victory he never won. His psychopathy is nude, his disconnect from reality is disrobed, his toxic narcissism stands bare-cheeked before us all.
And you wait for the whispers to begin, wait for the toadies and lickspittles who have long enabled him to at last blurt the obvious. And you wait. And you wait.
And there is silence.
In a political season that has produced more than its share of embarrassments, this may be the greatest humiliation yet for a nation that styles itself a beacon of democracy. At this writing, almost no one — not party elders, not young guns, not cabinet members, not the first lady, not the children — has found the courage to publicly say the truth. Indeed, some — like the invertebrate Sen. Lindsey Graham — have even encouraged Trump’s delusions, a display of political gutlessness with few, if any, equals in recent memory.
Its insistence on denying reality has reduced the GOP to a state beyond parody. Think a Washington Post report of party loyalists marching seven times around the U.S. Capitol like Israelites in the Bible around Jericho. Think the once-respected Rudy Giuliani holding a press conference in a Philadelphia landscaping supply company parking lot near a sex shop to decry fictitious election irregularities. “Do you think we’re stupid?” he cried. “Do you think we’re fools?”
It’s enough to make comedy writers obsolete.
But it’s not a joke. Attorney General William Barr, Trump’s consigliere, has authorized prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of voter fraud. Even though there are none. The General Services Administration has refused to process paperwork needed to release funds for President-elect Joe Biden to begin the transition process. In other words, the machinery of government has been brought to bear to protect a boy man’s fragile ego from the truth.
Acknowledging a bitter defeat is never easy. But so many others have risen to the task with grace. Hillary Clinton did it. Mitt Romney did it. John McCain, John Kerry and Al Gore did it. The weakling Trump is uniquely unable to do it, a failure that makes you long for Jan. 20. On that day, he’ll be escorted into disgrace, still insisting that he won what he didn’t. One imagines the emperor would empathize. Even after the child cried out, he still couldn’t admit his nakedness.
“So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.”
A Blog is a journal you may enter about your life, your thoughts, interesting experiences, or lessons you have learned. It's your own page on Connecting Singles that you can update on a regular basis, or just whenever you have something to say. You can write about an opinion, impart words of wisdom, or talk about something interesting in your day. Creating a blog is a good way to share something of yourself with Connecting Singles members. Reading blogs is a good way to learn more about members you have met here. Please be sure to read the blog rules before posting.
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