Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
Here are a few news items to chew over. Feel free to share anything you think might interest readers. Please make sure to include links.
First news item
The Son of Man really doesn’t have a play to lay His head:
A priest in Bay Village says someone called police to report a homeless person. Turns out, it was actually a statue of Jesus.
The sculpture was created by Timothy Schmalz and depicts a man wrapped in a blanket and lying on a bench.
Within 20 minutes of the sculpture being installed at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, police were called, according to Alex Martin, the pastor at St. Barnabas. He tweeted that he spoke with an officer because someone reported a homeless person sleeping on a park bench.
We're glad to temporarily host this statue of Homeless Jesus to raise awareness of homelessness in Cleveland and remind us that all people are created in the image of God. pic.twitter.com/EKClQm7PFG
— St. Barnabas, Bay Village (@StBarnabasBV) October 12, 2020
Second news item
Shot:
"If you see anything, law enforcement is watching. US Marshals are watching … One thing I will say: law enforcement, they're on our side" — Trump on worries about voter fraud on Election Day pic.twitter.com/5WrP4rpOcG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2020
Officials in multiple states are taking aggressive steps to protect voters from efforts by militias or other armed groups seeking to congregate near polling places on Election Day, as simmering online activity indicates that some groups are trying to register as campaign poll watchers for Donald Trump’s campaign…
The measures come as online accounts tied to neo-Nazi sympathizers and “alt-right” groups such as the Proud Boys have been generating posts that encourage supporters to join the campaign’s Election Day operations, according to two new reports this week. That includes sending out links to poll-watching registration sites for the Trump campaign’s so-called Army for Trump, an effort working to recruit thousands of supports to sign up as poll watchers for the campaign on Election Day.
Third news item
Here is the video of Senator David Perdue mangling the pronunciation of Kamala Harris’s name. pic.twitter.com/aVJU451bDi
— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) October 16, 2020
A smart politician wouldn’t give his opponent so much to work with:
My opponent, GOP Sen. David Perdue of anti-Semitic attack ad infamy, just mocked Sen. Harris' name as "Kamala-mala-mala-whatever" at a Trump rally.
We are so much better than this. pic.twitter.com/9AvoQK4RdN
— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 16, 2020
Perdue’s comms director’s embarrassing attempt to cover for his boss:
Senator Perdue simply mispronounced Senator Harris’ name, and he didn’t mean anything by it. He was making an argument against the radical socialist agenda that she and her endorsed candidate Jon Ossoff are pushing, which includes the Green New Deal…Medicare-for-all, raising taxes, and holding up COVID relief for the people of Georgia.
Fourth news item
Aw, c’mon man! Uh, you do know that millions have already cast their votes, right?
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would take a position on “court packing” — the idea, favored by some liberals, that the Supreme Court should expand beyond its current nine justices — before the Nov. 3 election.
Biden has not laid out a clear opinion on the matter, but acknowledged during an ABC News town hall on Thursday that voters “have a right to know where I stand. They have a right to know where I stand before they vote.” The town hall Thursday evening was one of two different forums featuring Biden and President Trump.
Fifth news item
The kindness of strangers: (Read the whole thread.)
I am not ok. Feeling rock bottom. Please take a few seconds to say hello if you see this tweet. Thank you.
— Edmund O'Leary (@emerald1910) October 16, 2020
Sixth news item
One would be a fool to leave their heart in San Francisco:
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Sen. Dianne Feinstein have been deemed too problematic to be featured in the names of schools in the San Francisco Unified School District by a panel of 12 community members appointed by the superintendent.
Three weeks ago, the panel found that 44 of the 125 schools in the district might have to change their names after their review. KGO reported that panel members sought to rename schools currently featuring the names of, “anyone directly involved in the colonization of people, slave owners or participants in enslavement, perpetrators of genocide or slavery, those who exploit workers/people, those who directly oppressed or abused women, children, queer or transgender people, those connected to any human rights or environmental abuse [and] those who are known racists and/or white supremacists and/or espoused racist beliefs.”
I mean I guess Abraham Lincoln is "connected" to slavery, technically, kind of like Rosa Parks is "connected" to Jim Crow laws pic.twitter.com/mggUrdyaiu
— Patterico (@Patterico) October 16, 2020
Seventh news item
Exactly. So, what could you have been thinking?
“What the heck were any of us thinking that selling a TV-obsessed narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea? It is not a good idea,” Sasse in a recent telephone town hall with his constituents. “I think we are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami and we’ve got to hold the Senate and that’s what I’m focused on.”
Trump “mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” mistreats women and “flirted with white supremacists,” Sasse said.
Trump mishandled the coronavirus pandemic, botched foreign policy and sought to profit off the presidency, the senator continued.
“His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity,” Sasse said.
Eighth news item
There have been many men on the court who seemed deep and were celebrated for their scholarly musings but were essentially, as individuals and in their conception of life, immature. But this is not a child, a sentimentalist, an ideological warrior. This is a thinker who thinks about reality.
She’s not what you expect when you open your handy box of categories. People who understand conservatism in a particular, maybe limited way—they don’t know what they just got.
Modern, a particular kind of Catholic, a woman, with a lived emphasis on people in community—this is not a “standard conservative.” In her independence from partisan politics, in her lived faith in higher persons, spirits and principles, this is rather a dangerous woman.
And she’s sane.
Ninth news item
Millions of California ballots have been delivered to residents across the state as early voting begins for the 2020 general election, but some have gone to people who should no longer be registered to vote in the state, one group claims.
A new study from the Election Integrity Project California has found that close to 400,000 ballots have been sent to people who moved or died.
Just because:
“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Have a great weekend.
–Dana