The rule in the joint press conferences Trump holds with foreign leaders is that they each answer two questions. Trump surprised the Finnish President by inviting him to answer more questions. What followed was hilarity.
I see where a Memphis theater is cancelling a showing of Gone With The Wind. Racial insensitivity. The movie shows it like it was.
And that’s bad.
They will have to take all the cowboy and native American movies off too when it occurs to someone that they are shooting Indians.
Except for “They Died With Their Boots On” . They will like that.
“Welfare reform implemented in Kansas caused individuals to reenter the labor force while earning higher incomes, according to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability.
Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback took office in 2011 and began to implement welfare reform after the previous governor, Kathleen Sebelius, had relaxed requirements for those on welfare to work or search for employment.
From 2000 to 2011, the number of able-bodied adults on cash welfare was increasing by 42 percent in Kansas, while nationally the number on welfare had dropped by a third.
Brownback first began reforming welfare by strengthening sanctions for those who received cash assistance by implementing a three-month ban on those who refused to meet work requirements. If an individual failed to meet the requirement for a second or third time, the ban was prolonged for six months to a year.
“Since these reforms took effect, compliance with work requirements has climbed from historic lows,” the report states. “The percentage of able-bodied adults on the program who are employed has also risen. Meanwhile, the opposite trends were occurring both nationally and in the region with fewer able-bodied adults on welfare working.”
Brownback also began collecting employment and wage data on 17,000 individuals who had left the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program for a duration of four years to see if these individuals became self-sufficient.
The study found that those who left welfare saw their earnings increase by 104 percent in one year, which is $20 million more than they had while on welfare. In four years, these individuals saw their incomes increase by 247 percent.
Individuals who left welfare are also better off because they found employment in more than 600 different industries and found long-term, high-paying jobs.”
The historical fact that no one has noticed is that in this movie, Rhett Butler says a curse word.
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damm.”
This was new and opened the way for all sorts of profanity.
This according to the Overton Window.
And when UCLA screened Gone with the Wind in the big auditorium, stuffed with students, 40 years ago, everyone said that line out loud with him. (Well, not me). Gee, I wonder if AMC, TNT, Amazon Prime and Netflix will start censoring our movie choices. What will Ricky watch?
Speaking of discernment in what we watch, did yous all notice the big backlash Kevin DeYoung got from Christians for making the simple and true observation that we believers shouldn’t be watching Game of Thrones? We knew this already (and I’m painfully aware of it in myself), but Christians can sure be savage.
ometimes I think Pope Francis is a gift to the Catholic Church, especially when he says something silly, clumsy, or even stupid.
He allows serious Catholics to take the papal cult less seriously than they have been doing for generations. Overall, that’s a good thing. It began almost gently, as a matter of style, with the way Pope Francis offered pungent insults in his homilies and interviews. He called out archetypes. He slammed what he called “airport bishops.” He characterized Christians who complain too much as “Mr. and Mrs. Whiner.” He belittled certain types of nuns as “old maids.”
Suddenly, the almost Olympian dignity of the papacy was replaced by something else.
“But Griffin had joked earlier in the year about going after Barron: “It’s not about trying to be an equal-opportunity offender anymore because Hillary got such a beat down. It’s his turn. So I’m happy to deliver beat down to Donald Trump — and also to Barron. You know a lot of comics are going to go hard for Donald, my edge is that I’ll go direct for Barron.” Again, maybe that was a joke at the time but here she is bringing up Barron Trump again in this interview for her comedy tour. I don’t think that’s going to end well for her.
And that brings us to the reversal of her apology. “Are you no longer sorry for it,” Griffin was asked by one of the show’s co-hosts. “Correct, I’m no longer sorry,” Griffin replied. She continued, “The whole outrage was BS. The whole thing got so blown out of proportion.”
Griffin then argued she had suffered enough over the incident saying she “lost everybody” meaning her celebrity friends, plus the cancellation of her comedy tour after threats to various theaters. “I mean, these Trump fans they’re hardcore,” Griffin said.
At this point, the female co-host pointed out that the liberal celebrities who criticized Griffin’s stunt weren’t doing so because they liked Trump. In other words, doesn’t the universal condemnation suggest she really did go too far? “No, you’re full of crap. Stop this,” Griffin replied. “Stop acting like my little picture is more important than the actual atrocities that the President of the United States is committing.””
“Trump Pardons America’s Worst Lawman, Sheriff Joe Arpaio
The notorious former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff was held in contempt by a federal judge.
Donald Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday, using the first official pardon of his presidency to clear the record of one of America’s most abusive, racist, and divisive lawmen.
In pardoning Arpaio, Trump has given a free pass to an unrepentant and habitual abuser of power, a man with insufficient regard for the Constitution he swore to uphold or the separation of powers it enshrines. . .
A federal judge found Arpaio, who was notorious for jailing inmates in a sweltering desert tent camp, in contempt of court in July for flouting a 2011 order to stop the unconstitutional racial profiling and detainment of Latino residents.”
Let’s see? Game of Thrones? I have been around people who were watching it and it was on TV. I can’t get into it and I really don’t like to watch sex. Even at my advanced and experienced age, it is embarrassing.
Rape scenes? How can you watch that? Doesn’t it make you want to throw up just knowing that someone is being raped? Rape is a fact and some movies deal with it, but they let you know it is happening they don’t shove it in your face.
From “World” online
More than 100 evangelical leaders signed a statement released Tuesday affirming Biblical teaching on human sexuality. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood launched the effort to coincide with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission annual conference in Nashville, Tenn. The document, dubbed the “Nashville Statement,” reiterates long-held evangelical beliefs about men, women, gender, and marriage. “
For years, engineers have warned that Houston was a flood disaster in the making. Why didn’t somebody do something?
______________________________________________
Houston is built on what amounts to a massive flood plain, pitted against the tempestuous Gulf of Mexico and routinely hammered by the biggest rainstorms in the nation.
It is a combination of malicious climate and unforgiving geology, along with a deficit of zoning and land-use controls, that scientists and engineers say leaves the nation’s fourth most populous city vulnerable to devastating floods like the one caused this week by Hurricane Harvey.
“Houston is very flat,” said Robert Gilbert, a University of Texas at Austin civil engineer who helped investigate the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “There is no way for the water to drain out.”
Indeed, the city has less slope than a shower floor.
Harvey poured as much as 374 billion gallons of water within the city limits, exceeding the capacity of rivers, bayous, lakes and reservoirs. Experts said the result was predictable. …
_____________________________________________________
I remember seeing a special re-release of Gone With the Wind when i was in high school (so sometime in the late 1960s) — I think my mom said we went when I was younger, but I didn’t really remember anything about it.
I noticed a black couple sitting several rows in front of us (these were the days when afro hair styles were big) and mentioned to my mom after I’d come home that it must be kind of strange and hard for them to watch some of those characterizations in the film. She responded that it was the way life was in “those days” before any of us (or their parents) were born. But I still felt uncomfortable thinking how some of the scenes would look from a black person’s viewpoint.
Still, I hardly think theaters should ban or refuse to show the film. In many other ways it was, as they say, a classic.
It’s not about the movie. If we’re having trouble allowing an Asian man do his job because his name is Robert Lee, you can be sure the current foolishness over GWTW is not about the movie itself. It’s about control. Who has it, and who doesn’t.
I saw GWTW in the early ’70s. It was the first movie I ever saw at a theater. I was not allowed to go to movies, but this was a special showing for several schools in the Dalton, Georgia area, and I went with my 7th grade class. The second movie I saw was Corrie Ten Boom’s story, The Hiding Place. In the mid ’70s Dad actually took me to the theater to see it. That was a really big deal. It was the first (and last) time we ever went to a movie together.
The Hiding Place was the first movie I saw on the big screen, Debra. The main thing I remember about that day was that I’d eaten some old Spanish peanuts at home before going to the theater and had had a bad taste in my mouth the whole movie.The crazy memories we sometimes hold onto. 😉
DJ, 4:27, yeah. 🙂
Linda, I know — the ELCA!! The pastor and his wife are a lovely couple, great friends of my friends whose son got married that day. The church is a small rural church in farm country — the groom and groomsmen were transported to the wedding in a tractor-pulled, empty, clean hay wagon 🙂 — and I think their church is pretty distanced from the current liberal theological standards of the larger ELCA body. I have attended the confirmation services of our friends’ three children, and the (same) pastor has, in my recollection, always presented the Gospel in its truth and beauty, and avoided the feel-good fluff where God smiles down on your lifestyle, whatever it is, that often characterizes ELCA “worship.” (I have extended family who are ELCA members, and it’s sad what passes for a sermon in some of those churches, from what I’ve experienced in my infrequent visits.)
Ricky, now that really is fake news. Oy — I was going to retweet when I started looking for another source and found none. Then realized, duh, that can’t be real … (Still, things look so horrible there, almost anything is believable)
I saw GWTW when they came out with some anniversary edition (in the 90s) and had it in the theaters. I’d read the book by then.
One of my brothers saw The Hiding Place in a theater–he’s nearly 60 and that’s his only time of being in a theater. His youth group was going to see it, and he assumed it was at a church (I mean, real Christians don’t go to movies, right?), but by the time he knew it was at a theater he was there, and figured it was either go in and watch or sit in the lobby by himself.
I read the book later for a senior class book report. I remember feeling embarrassed when I gave the oral report, saying the character I most admired was Melanie (?) and the student body present, who was in the class, raised his hand and really took me to task for picking such a “weak” character.
I read the Hiding Place long before I ever saw the move (when it was on TV, I think)
Melanie was the strong heroine. She did not compromise her principles by doing business with the carpetbaggers. When poor folks like Archie (who was left out of the movie) needed a place to stay, they came to Melanie. When Rhett asked the knitting group where he could find their men to warn them, it was Melanie who took their lives in her hand by disclosing their location. When no one could persuade Rhett to release Bonnie’s body for burial, it was Melanie who took charge and got the job done. Melanie was wise and self-controlled, but she was anything but weak.
Wandering Views 
The rule in the joint press conferences Trump holds with foreign leaders is that they each answer two questions. Trump surprised the Finnish President by inviting him to answer more questions. What followed was hilarity.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I see where a Memphis theater is cancelling a showing of Gone With The Wind. Racial insensitivity. The movie shows it like it was.
And that’s bad.
They will have to take all the cowboy and native American movies off too when it occurs to someone that they are shooting Indians.
Except for “They Died With Their Boots On” . They will like that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interesting.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/report-welfare-reform-kansas-caused-individuals-reenter-labor-force-earning-higher-incomes/
“Welfare reform implemented in Kansas caused individuals to reenter the labor force while earning higher incomes, according to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability.
Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback took office in 2011 and began to implement welfare reform after the previous governor, Kathleen Sebelius, had relaxed requirements for those on welfare to work or search for employment.
From 2000 to 2011, the number of able-bodied adults on cash welfare was increasing by 42 percent in Kansas, while nationally the number on welfare had dropped by a third.
Brownback first began reforming welfare by strengthening sanctions for those who received cash assistance by implementing a three-month ban on those who refused to meet work requirements. If an individual failed to meet the requirement for a second or third time, the ban was prolonged for six months to a year.
“Since these reforms took effect, compliance with work requirements has climbed from historic lows,” the report states. “The percentage of able-bodied adults on the program who are employed has also risen. Meanwhile, the opposite trends were occurring both nationally and in the region with fewer able-bodied adults on welfare working.”
Brownback also began collecting employment and wage data on 17,000 individuals who had left the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program for a duration of four years to see if these individuals became self-sufficient.
The study found that those who left welfare saw their earnings increase by 104 percent in one year, which is $20 million more than they had while on welfare. In four years, these individuals saw their incomes increase by 247 percent.
Individuals who left welfare are also better off because they found employment in more than 600 different industries and found long-term, high-paying jobs.”
LikeLiked by 5 people
The historical fact that no one has noticed is that in this movie, Rhett Butler says a curse word.
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damm.”
This was new and opened the way for all sorts of profanity.
This according to the Overton Window.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And when UCLA screened Gone with the Wind in the big auditorium, stuffed with students, 40 years ago, everyone said that line out loud with him. (Well, not me). Gee, I wonder if AMC, TNT, Amazon Prime and Netflix will start censoring our movie choices. What will Ricky watch?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Speaking of discernment in what we watch, did yous all notice the big backlash Kevin DeYoung got from Christians for making the simple and true observation that we believers shouldn’t be watching Game of Thrones? We knew this already (and I’m painfully aware of it in myself), but Christians can sure be savage.
https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2017/08/22/one-more-time-on-game-of-thrones/
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Curious how people react when they feel guilty. Or am I reading too much into it?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2017/august/why-christians-should-avoid-watching-rape-scenes.html
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450910/pope-francis-papacy-diminished
Pope Francis Is Diminishing the Papacy. Good.
________________________________________
ometimes I think Pope Francis is a gift to the Catholic Church, especially when he says something silly, clumsy, or even stupid.
He allows serious Catholics to take the papal cult less seriously than they have been doing for generations. Overall, that’s a good thing. It began almost gently, as a matter of style, with the way Pope Francis offered pungent insults in his homilies and interviews. He called out archetypes. He slammed what he called “airport bishops.” He characterized Christians who complain too much as “Mr. and Mrs. Whiner.” He belittled certain types of nuns as “old maids.”
Suddenly, the almost Olympian dignity of the papacy was replaced by something else.
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No longer are, or never were?
I’m thinking the latter. .
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/29/kathy-griffin-no-longer-sorry-brings-trumps-son/
“But Griffin had joked earlier in the year about going after Barron: “It’s not about trying to be an equal-opportunity offender anymore because Hillary got such a beat down. It’s his turn. So I’m happy to deliver beat down to Donald Trump — and also to Barron. You know a lot of comics are going to go hard for Donald, my edge is that I’ll go direct for Barron.” Again, maybe that was a joke at the time but here she is bringing up Barron Trump again in this interview for her comedy tour. I don’t think that’s going to end well for her.
And that brings us to the reversal of her apology. “Are you no longer sorry for it,” Griffin was asked by one of the show’s co-hosts. “Correct, I’m no longer sorry,” Griffin replied. She continued, “The whole outrage was BS. The whole thing got so blown out of proportion.”
Griffin then argued she had suffered enough over the incident saying she “lost everybody” meaning her celebrity friends, plus the cancellation of her comedy tour after threats to various theaters. “I mean, these Trump fans they’re hardcore,” Griffin said.
At this point, the female co-host pointed out that the liberal celebrities who criticized Griffin’s stunt weren’t doing so because they liked Trump. In other words, doesn’t the universal condemnation suggest she really did go too far? “No, you’re full of crap. Stop this,” Griffin replied. “Stop acting like my little picture is more important than the actual atrocities that the President of the United States is committing.””
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“Atrocities? Atrocities? We aint got no stinkin’ atrocities!”
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“Trump Pardons America’s Worst Lawman, Sheriff Joe Arpaio
The notorious former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff was held in contempt by a federal judge.
Donald Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday, using the first official pardon of his presidency to clear the record of one of America’s most abusive, racist, and divisive lawmen.
In pardoning Arpaio, Trump has given a free pass to an unrepentant and habitual abuser of power, a man with insufficient regard for the Constitution he swore to uphold or the separation of powers it enshrines. . .
A federal judge found Arpaio, who was notorious for jailing inmates in a sweltering desert tent camp, in contempt of court in July for flouting a 2011 order to stop the unconstitutional racial profiling and detainment of Latino residents.”
http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/25/trumps-pardon-of-former-sheriff-joe-arpa
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Let’s see? Game of Thrones? I have been around people who were watching it and it was on TV. I can’t get into it and I really don’t like to watch sex. Even at my advanced and experienced age, it is embarrassing.
Rape scenes? How can you watch that? Doesn’t it make you want to throw up just knowing that someone is being raped? Rape is a fact and some movies deal with it, but they let you know it is happening they don’t shove it in your face.
LikeLiked by 3 people
From “World” online
More than 100 evangelical leaders signed a statement released Tuesday affirming Biblical teaching on human sexuality. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood launched the effort to coincide with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission annual conference in Nashville, Tenn. The document, dubbed the “Nashville Statement,” reiterates long-held evangelical beliefs about men, women, gender, and marriage. “
LikeLiked by 3 people
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-harvey-engineering-20170828-story.html
For years, engineers have warned that Houston was a flood disaster in the making. Why didn’t somebody do something?
______________________________________________
Houston is built on what amounts to a massive flood plain, pitted against the tempestuous Gulf of Mexico and routinely hammered by the biggest rainstorms in the nation.
It is a combination of malicious climate and unforgiving geology, along with a deficit of zoning and land-use controls, that scientists and engineers say leaves the nation’s fourth most populous city vulnerable to devastating floods like the one caused this week by Hurricane Harvey.
“Houston is very flat,” said Robert Gilbert, a University of Texas at Austin civil engineer who helped investigate the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “There is no way for the water to drain out.”
Indeed, the city has less slope than a shower floor.
Harvey poured as much as 374 billion gallons of water within the city limits, exceeding the capacity of rivers, bayous, lakes and reservoirs. Experts said the result was predictable. …
_____________________________________________________
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I was pleased to attend a wedding this month in which the (ELCA) pastor mentioned marriage as being a union between one man and one woman.
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What a concept! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember seeing a special re-release of Gone With the Wind when i was in high school (so sometime in the late 1960s) — I think my mom said we went when I was younger, but I didn’t really remember anything about it.
I noticed a black couple sitting several rows in front of us (these were the days when afro hair styles were big) and mentioned to my mom after I’d come home that it must be kind of strange and hard for them to watch some of those characterizations in the film. She responded that it was the way life was in “those days” before any of us (or their parents) were born. But I still felt uncomfortable thinking how some of the scenes would look from a black person’s viewpoint.
Still, I hardly think theaters should ban or refuse to show the film. In many other ways it was, as they say, a classic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s not about the movie. If we’re having trouble allowing an Asian man do his job because his name is Robert Lee, you can be sure the current foolishness over GWTW is not about the movie itself. It’s about control. Who has it, and who doesn’t.
LikeLiked by 3 people
ELCA?!?!? Do say.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I saw GWTW in the early ’70s. It was the first movie I ever saw at a theater. I was not allowed to go to movies, but this was a special showing for several schools in the Dalton, Georgia area, and I went with my 7th grade class. The second movie I saw was Corrie Ten Boom’s story, The Hiding Place. In the mid ’70s Dad actually took me to the theater to see it. That was a really big deal. It was the first (and last) time we ever went to a movie together.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra (5:06), you’re right
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Hmmmm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/08/29/university-fires-professor-who-suggested-harvey-was-karma-for-texas-republicans/?utm_term=.2ec739ddcbce
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Goodbye, Columbus?
Among our headlines this afternoon: Columbus Day may soon be over in LA, replaced by Indigenous Peoples Day
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The Hiding Place was the first movie I saw on the big screen, Debra. The main thing I remember about that day was that I’d eaten some old Spanish peanuts at home before going to the theater and had had a bad taste in my mouth the whole movie.The crazy memories we sometimes hold onto. 😉
DJ, 4:27, yeah. 🙂
Linda, I know — the ELCA!! The pastor and his wife are a lovely couple, great friends of my friends whose son got married that day. The church is a small rural church in farm country — the groom and groomsmen were transported to the wedding in a tractor-pulled, empty, clean hay wagon 🙂 — and I think their church is pretty distanced from the current liberal theological standards of the larger ELCA body. I have attended the confirmation services of our friends’ three children, and the (same) pastor has, in my recollection, always presented the Gospel in its truth and beauty, and avoided the feel-good fluff where God smiles down on your lifestyle, whatever it is, that often characterizes ELCA “worship.” (I have extended family who are ELCA members, and it’s sad what passes for a sermon in some of those churches, from what I’ve experienced in my infrequent visits.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 2 people
Video is moving.
What a horror some of these folks are going through.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/us/harvey-houston-texas-louisiana/index.html
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Ricky, now that really is fake news. Oy — I was going to retweet when I started looking for another source and found none. Then realized, duh, that can’t be real … (Still, things look so horrible there, almost anything is believable)
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m laughing. A destroyer’s draft is too deep to get to Houston. At least, I think so . . . yikes, how far under water ARE they? LOL
LikeLiked by 1 person
I saw GWTW when they came out with some anniversary edition (in the 90s) and had it in the theaters. I’d read the book by then.
One of my brothers saw The Hiding Place in a theater–he’s nearly 60 and that’s his only time of being in a theater. His youth group was going to see it, and he assumed it was at a church (I mean, real Christians don’t go to movies, right?), but by the time he knew it was at a theater he was there, and figured it was either go in and watch or sit in the lobby by himself.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@8:35 Glad to see that Texans are holding on to their sense of humor. That’s a valuable quality in hard times.
Praying that the dams and levees hold, and the water recedes with no more loss of life.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read the book later for a senior class book report. I remember feeling embarrassed when I gave the oral report, saying the character I most admired was Melanie (?) and the student body present, who was in the class, raised his hand and really took me to task for picking such a “weak” character.
I read the Hiding Place long before I ever saw the move (when it was on TV, I think)
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president
He went on to become an attorney in the film industry, so go figure.
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Melanie was the strong heroine. She did not compromise her principles by doing business with the carpetbaggers. When poor folks like Archie (who was left out of the movie) needed a place to stay, they came to Melanie. When Rhett asked the knitting group where he could find their men to warn them, it was Melanie who took their lives in her hand by disclosing their location. When no one could persuade Rhett to release Bonnie’s body for burial, it was Melanie who took charge and got the job done. Melanie was wise and self-controlled, but she was anything but weak.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I saw “The Hiding Place” in the theater in the 70’s also.
GWTW- Melanie in the book, and Melanie in the movie were two very different people.
LikeLiked by 1 person