City of Seattle goes insane

Public information officers for the City of Seattle have been advised they might want to avoid using the terms "brown bag" and "citizen" because some find these words offensive.

KIRO Radio's Dori Monson couldn't figure out why these words were being targeted so he asked the man that drafted the memo to the city's PIO's for an explanation.

Elliott Bronstein, with the Office for Civil Rights, began by addressing the offensiveness of "brown bag."

"For a lot of particularly African American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home."

Dori, who considers himself a pretty historically and culturally aware person, said he's never heard of this practice or association and wonders how many others have.

Bronstein also hadn't heard of it until recently, but as a white man, he said there are likely a lot of aspects to African American culture he wasn't aware of growing up.

Next, Bronstein had to clue Dori into why "citizen" should be avoided.

"A lot of people who live in Seattle aren't citizens, but they are residents," said Bronstein. "They are legal residents of the United States and they are residents of Seattle. They pay taxes and if we use a term like citizens in common use, then it doesn't include a lot of folks."

While there may have been complaints about the phrasing, Dori thinks they likely came from people who are too easily offended, and questions the city trying to accommodate all the concerns of this small percentage of people.

"I just think that this obsession with sanitizing our language for the easily offended is a silly pursuit," said Dori. "This comes closely on the heels of a law that was just implemented, I believe this last weekend, where we're changing manhole covers to person-hole covers and we can't call a fireman a fireman anymore. There just seems to be this steady trend in our region for doing this to language."

'Brown bag' and 'citizen' too offensive for use in Seattle

The American left is a failure

All of Chris Hedges articles and interviews are good but the heart of current concerns for this planet starts to emerge in the 3rd part of this seven part series.   Very much worth watching the whole series, finding his other videos and reading his weekly posts if you have time.  I certainly hope you do have the time.

Christopher Lynn "Chris" Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist specializing in American politics and society. Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)—a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction—Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010) and his most recent New York Times best seller, written with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" (2012).

A self-described socialist, Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

The Real News

Common Dreams dot Org

Chris Hedges on Truth Dig

Rand Paul for President 2018 - WTF

What the hell is this country  thinking to even allow this asshole on the podium.   This guy is way right of the Tea Party.    Just look who he hired as an aide -- Jack Hunter

Jack Hunter, the self-proclaimed “Southern Avenger” who made the leap from radio shock jock to Rand Paul aide, announced his resignation Monday amid heightened scrutiny of his previous career as a champion of neo-Confederate ideology.

Rand Paul aide resigns over neo-Confederate ties despite senator’s support

And here's another .....

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been leading an earnest—if sometimes awkward—effort to court black voters in the wake of President Obama’s re-election. It was a stretch to begin with, but Paul’s outreach campaign crashed into a wall on Tuesday as news emerged that a staffer is neck-deep in neo-Confederate ideology.

Jack Hunter joined Paul’s staff in 2012 as a social media aide and previously worked on one of Paul’s books. But as the conservative Free Beacon reports, he’s also a former shock jock who went by the moniker “the Southern Avenger” and wore a Confederate flag mask to events. 

Rand Paul can’t understand why black voters don’t vote GOP. Here’s a clue

A second deleted by request

A second deleted by request

Monsanto killing our bees?

Shortly after 50,000 bees were found dead in an Oregon parking lot, a staggering 37 million bees have been found dead in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada. Dave Schuit, who runs a honey operation in Elmwood has lost 600 hives. He is pointing the finger at the insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which are manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. This also comes after a recent report released by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) that recorded its largest loss of honeybees ever.   The European Union has stepped forward, having banned multiple pesticides that have been linked to killing millions of bees.

Can we really debate this much longer? The evidence linking pesticides to bee deaths is overwhelming. It’s not only bees, but an array of other insects as well. The last thing we need is more events to occur that companies can use to push the manufacturing and development or more genetically modified foods. One reason that has been used for justification of GMO’s is a food shortage, and we all know how critical bees are to our food supply. There is a huge conflict of interest here, the pesticides used to spray the crops that are killing the bees are developed by biotech corporations such as Monsanto.

Over 30 Million Bees Found Dead In Elmwood Canada