[Headline from DRJ]

Rochester airport security worker fired after passing mean note to traveler:

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — A bizarre story from the Greater Rochester International Airport: A security worker was caught on tape passing a note with a mean message to a traveler. As a result, she lost her job.

That traveler, Neal Strassner, said the worker gave him a note as he was passing through the security checkpoint. After he passed through he began walking away and heard the worker yell back at him “You going to open the note?”

At that point, Neal says he opened the note, which said “You ugly!!!” and the employee began bursting out in laughter, which you can see in footage from airport security cameras.

The video is at the link. The passenger isn’t ugly.

— DRJ

[Headlines from DRJ]

There have been two recent police shootings in Colorado:

Colorado Springs, CO:

Video shows Colorado Springs police shoot De’Von Bailey in the back as he runs away

Police yelled “Hands up! Hands up!” before shooting multiple timesColorado Springs police have released body camera video that shows two officers shooting 19-year-old De’Von Bailey in the back as he ran from them, ignoring their commands to put his hands up.

The graphic footage from two officers’ body cameras shows Bailey fall to the pavement, weakly attempt to raise his right hand up above his head as blood poured from gunshot wounds on his back and pooled on the street.

Bailey soon collapsed and moaned as officers handcuffed him. He died later after being transported to a hospital.

Rifle, CO:

Video raises possibility police shot Rifle man in the back

A cell phone video appears to show the Aug. 5 fatal shooting of Allan George in Rifle by police and seems to indicate he was shot in the back as he was moving away from officers.

The footage was taken across the river from the bridge where George was stopped, then shot by Rifle Police, who were attempting to arrest George on charges of child exploitation.

Legal experts weigh in on both cases: Colorado law tends to favor police who shoot “fleeing felons”.

— DRJ

[Links from DRJ]

My job here is breaking news headlines but I am deviating from that today to talk about college football. The first Division 1 games are still a week away and most teams don’t start for two weeks. But if you are like me, you are ready now.

The Preseason Top 25 rankings are:

(more...)

[guest post by Dana]

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grammy, Muftia Tlaib wants us to believe that she doesn’t know why her granddaughter wasn’t allowed to visit her:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grandmother says she does not understand what all the hubbub is about — why can’t her granddaughter, an important person in America, stop by for a visit?

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her — five to six years. But sometimes I see her on TV and talk with her on the phone,” said Muftia Tlaib as she sat in the family’s sun-washed garden in territory Israel has occupied since 1967. “Why didn’t they allow her to come here?”

[…]

“I can’t do anything. I’m really very sad,” her grandmother, who is in her 80s, told NBC News on Saturday. “I hope, inshallah, that she will come back. I’m waiting for her.”

What? Nobody told poor grammy that, at the end of the day, her granddaughter decided that politics are more important than her grammy?

It’s all pretty funny, given that Rep. Tlaib was so concerned that it might be the last opportunity to see her grammy that she even promised not to break Israel’s laws during her visit if she could just see her one more time:

I will respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit.

Anyway, with the apparent exception of grammy, the entire world knows that Rep. Tlaib was indeed given permission to make the trip to the West Bank on humanitarian grounds, and that she decided not to go because she felt that she was being forced to conduct herself “under oppressive conditions” that would limit discussions with Israelis and Palestinians, and in turn, “kill a piece of her.” Again, the “oppressive conditions” being: don’t promote boycotts against Israel and follow the law.

Sorry, grammy. Priorities.

Like her granddaughter, Grammy has no love for President Trump:

On Friday night, Trump tweeted:

“Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a complete setup. The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!”

Ninety-year-old Muftia Tlaib, sitting in her garden in the village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa, was not impressed. “Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming,” she said. “May God ruin him.”

(h/t narsciso)

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Draconian measures are the new woke:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the ads for Philadelphia cream cheese and Volkswagen, following complaints from the public that they perpetuated harmful stereotypes.

The new rules, introduced at the beginning of the year, ban the depiction of men and women engaged in gender-stereotypical activities to help stop “limiting how people see themselves and how others see them and the life decisions they take”.

In the ad for Philadelphia, the Mondelez-owned cream cheese brand, two new dads were shown eating lunch at a restaurant where food circulated on a conveyor belt. While chatting they accidentally find their babies are whisked away on it. “Let’s not tell mum,” one of them says.

Complainants said the tongue-in-cheek ad perpetuated a harmful stereotype suggesting men were incapable of caring for children and would put them at risk as a result of their incompetence.

Mondelez told the ASA it was stuck in a no-win situation, having specifically chosen two dads to avoid depicting the stereotypical image of showing two new mums handling all the childcare responsibilities.

The ASA banned the ad, saying it reinforced the idea that men were ineffective childcarers.

The ad for Volkswagen’s electric eGolf vehicle showed a series of scenes including a man and a woman in a tent on a sheer cliff face, two male astronauts, a male para-athlete and a woman sitting on a bench next to a pram. Text stated: “When we learn to adapt we can achieve anything.”

Complainants said the ad showed men engaged in adventurous activities, that unlike her male counterpart, the female rock climber was “passive” because she was asleep, and that the woman with the pram was depicted in a stereotypical care-giving role.

Volkswagen said its ad was not sexist and that caring for a newborn was a life-changing experience about adaptation, regardless of the gender of the parent depicted.

The ASA, however, “concluded that the ad presented gender stereotypes in a way that was likely to cause harm”.

Here are the harmful ads:

First impressions:

With the first banned ad, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have confirmed that they have no discernible sense of humor. Does any rational adult really believe that the commercial insults men? Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m inclined to give *adults* the benefit of the doubt in being able to discern reality from fiction, and deciding for themselves whether the two charming dads being distracted by food as their babies ride on the conveyor belt are really representative of every dad. And if dad’s are a bit more unfocused, is it not o.k. to tease them about it?

With the second ad, the ASA has demonstrated that they really have not adapated to anything other than being narrow-minded prigs. The watchdog group offensively devalue motherhood with their decision to ban the second ad as they assume that the new mom sitting on the park bench with her baby *isn’t* already involved in an even more serious activity, where, for the next 18 years the demand for adaptation will be life-changing and relentless.

The ASA takes on an impossible task because with every “success” will come “failure.” Most people won’t be happy with the outcome because across the spectrum, someone, somewhere will feel that the ban of X excludes their tribe as it elevates another tribe. By narrowing the standard of what is allowed, there comes an automatic increase in the number of those excluded from approval. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, so why not let individuals make the decision for themselves? Why?
Because that’s not in the best interest of the State, and that is what this is really all about: pushing an agenda that a few are charged with deeming what is best for the many. This is why they have stopped letting reasonable ads play, and letting people decide whether they want to purchase the product as a result of what they’ve seen. This is why they can no longer trust adults to make their own decisions. Moreover, perception is everything: Rather than seeing a woman relegated to sleeping while her mate gets up early to go out adventuring, perhaps she’s just damn tired from all the climbing and hiking she did the day before and the extra rest is a well-deserved, longed-for treat. I’ve been her. I know it to be true. Instead of the man getting up to go have fun without her because he’s that selfish, perhaps in his thoughtfulness toward her, he doesn’t bother to wake her, knowing she wants to sleep in, thus he moves carefully and quietly so that his woman can sleep a little longer with only the quiet stillness of early morning as her company.

Advertising expert Geraint Lloyd-Taylor put it bluntly:

It is concerning to see the ASA take on the role of the morality police. It has let its zeal to enforce the new rules override its common sense in this first batch of rulings.

And it’s ironic that the ASA doesn’t even see that it is they who are now limiting people’s choices because of their narrow-minded scope of acceptability:

The ASA’s Ella Smillie, who helped to devise the new rules, said: “We don’t see ourselves as social engineers, we’re reflecting the changing standards in society. Changing ad regulation isn’t going to end gender inequality but we know advertising can reinforce harmful gender stereotypes, which can limit people’s choices or potential in life.”

Funny, if anything, this is the very definition of social engineering. It reminds me of Harrison Bergeron and what happened when the State sought to create an across-the-board equal utopia and ended up dooming people to a nightmarish dystopia of suppression and oppression:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

[Headlines from DRJ]

It’s Right-wing groups vs Antifa today in Portland:

More than two dozen local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Federal Protective Service, were in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday to help police there monitor a right-wing rally that’s expected to draw demonstrators from around the U.S.

Self-described anti-fascists have vowed to confront the rally while leaders from the far right urged their followers to turn out in large numbers to protest the arrests of six members of right-wing groups in the run-up to the event.

The Oregonian:

What, exactly, is going to happen?

It’s hard to say. Portland’s largest protests tend to be roving, unpredictable affairs.

But here’s what we know:

Two Florida men with large followings in the right-wing movement are holding an “End Domestic Terrorism” rally Saturday at 11 a.m. in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. An organizer said he expects up to 1,000 people show up for the event, which seeks to draw like-minded people from around the country as a show of force against self-described anti-fascists, or antifa.

Rose City Antifa, Portland’s homegrown, amorphous band of anti-fascist activists, is calling on supporters to turn out in opposition to the rally.

UPDATE: Bear spray, shields, metal poles seized at Portland protests

— DRJ