All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Carlene The Crazy Cow – Anthony’s Crazy Love and Life Lessons in Empathy

Forget about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow

Instead of fires, Carlene takes a bow.

Her logic was curved

Applause, undeserved.

She’s taking her encore now.

Source: Carlene The Crazy Cow – Anthony’s Crazy Love and Life Lessons in Empathy

Look After Yourself Friday – Belladonna’s Flashlight

Hello, you sexy, beautiful thing!

Yes, you FRIDAY!

Every day is a celebration, but there’s a special kind of beauty about Friday, especially this one. Today, I’m blessed to spend the entire day with my precious daughter, enjoying some pampering and delicious food.

Tomorrow, it’s all about my baller. We are rising early to hit the road for three basketball games and then heading home to catch ‘inside out ‘,(a heartwarming animated movie about emotions).

Stay safe, say something positive about yourself and do something fun.

You could have chosen any blog to read, but you chose mine, and I’m honored!

Source: Look After Yourself Friday – Belladonna’s Flashlight

Sankt Peders Bageri – Gastro Obscura

MjRfbi5qcGc.jpg (403×390)

Founded in 1652, during the reign of Frederick III, Denmark’s oldest bakery is still beloved by locals in Copenhagen to this day. The shop has every every sort of bread and pastry one could want, from wienerbrød (known internationally as a Danish) to cream-filled fastelavnsboller (Carnival buns).

The undisputed star here though is their coils of cinnamon-scented, sugar crystal-topped dough that draw lines once a week. The onsdagssnegle, “Wednesday snail,” is roughly twice the size of a normal kanelsnegle (cinnamon roll). When it debuted in 1988, the bakery only offered it on its namesake day.

Source: Sankt Peders Bageri – Gastro Obscura

Walking in the rain – CatsinCambridge

20th June 2024

.

“We got all wet!”

.

As predicted yesterday, we had another cracker of a storm.

The day before it came on as I was going outside. I hesitated just long enough to convince myself I would not be struck by lightning, then carried on.

It reminded me of my childhood when I liked nothing better than getting thoroughly drenched…

Source: Walking in the rain – CatsinCambridge

Louisiana Burns The Constitution | Filosofa’s Word

I noted the other day my utter disgust at the new Louisiana law to force religion on every student from kindergarten through college by demanding the ten commandments of the Christian religion be posted in every classroom.  Thom Hartmann has an in-depth analysis of the injustice of this new law that is interesting, thoughtful, and honest.  His piece is truly a deep dive into the history of the separation between church and state and how Louisiana is in direct violation of all the Constitution stands for, but being a deep dive, his piece is too lengthy (3,436 words) for me to share here in its entirety.  So … I am sharing with you the first and I think most relevant part of his post, but if you would like to read the rest, you can do so here.


THE FOUNDER’S FURY: TEN COMMANDMENTS INVADE OUR SCHOOLS

It is utter BS to justify imposing religious doctrine on impressionable youth: there isn’t that much overlap between the Ten Commandments and American or Louisiana law…

By Thom Hartmann

21 June 2024

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” —Thomas Jefferson

How will the Ten Commandments do anything at all to help Louisiana’s many crises? That state has:

— One of the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the US (26% of all Louisiana children live below the poverty line),
— More than twice the rate of death for women in childbirth than the national average and almost twice the rate of child and infant mortality,
— Terrible high school graduation rates and one of the lowest adult literacy rates in the entire developed world,
— A 38.1% adult obesity rate, one of the highest in the developed world,
— One of the worst violent crime rates in the country (549.3 incidents per 100,000 people, vs the US national average of 366.7),
— STD rates off the charts, usually ranking in the top 5 in America for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis,
— The second-lowest life expectancy in the nation,
— One of the worst levels of income and wealth inequality in America,
— Almost twice the national rate of hunger (“food insecurity”) with almost one in five (16.7%) of their children going to bed hungry every year,
— More people dying from heart disease than almost any other state,
— Among the worst and most lethal air pollution in the nation (see: “Cancer Alley”),
— Almost twice the national rate of teen pregnancy (27.5 per 1000 females 15-19 compared with a national rate of 17.4), and
— Almost twice the number of people in prison as the national average (680 per 100K vs a national average of 419).

Republicans in the state now have a brilliant new solution to all these problems brought on by a half-century of Republican rule: post the Ten Commandments in every school and college classroom in the state, starting with kindergarten.

This is particularly bizarre, given that Republican Governor Jeff Landry says he’s ordering this “because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” He even includes a fake quote attributed to James Madison in his proclamation.

This, of course, is utter BS to justify imposing religious doctrine on impressionable youth: There isn’t that much overlap between the Ten Commandments and American or Louisiana law.

Our laws don’t, as do the Ten Commandments:

— Specify a single god who must be worshiped,
— Demand a ban on graven images (statues, crucifixes, and pictures of deities),
— Require us to take a Sabbath day off work every week or be put to death,
— Mandate that children “honor” their parents or be stoned to death,
— Make it illegal for men to “covet” other men’s wives or sleep with unmarried women,
— Or criminalize telling a lie except under oath (in fact, corporations have recently asserted the explicit “right to lie” under the First Amendment, and Trump averaged a lie every 3 minutes in his last speech).

The only two things in common between the Ten Commandments and most state or federal laws are prohibitions on killing and stealing, which have always been pretty obvious and don’t need giant posters saying, “Don’t Kill” and “Don’t Steal” in school.

This pitch for religious indoctrination by government was also a major concern for America’s Founders, which — remembering the then-fresh lessons of Salem, Massachusetts — they resisted as a naked power grab.

Religious leaders of that day tried to pull it off by claiming that America’s system of jurisprudence was founded on the Ten Commandments, and that therefore that document and Christianity more generally should be integrated into our nation’s political and legal systems.

The claim was made so often and so loudly — particularly by Virginia’s largest slave holder, the evangelical Patrick Henry, who right wingers today love to quote and vigorously opposed the Constitution in part because of the Establishment Clause and because it didn’t explicitly support slavery — that several of the actual Founders thought it necessary to refute it in detail.

Author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and the man who wrote the first draft of the Bill of Rights which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” Thomas Jefferson was probably the most methodical.

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly:

“Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland’s question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were…”

Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document that was “a manifest forgery.”

The reason was simple: British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

Source: Louisiana Burns The Constitution | Filosofa’s Word