First Looks category archive

When fellowship is needed, join us . . . .

When: Thursday, October 12, 6 p.

Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street (Map)

More here.

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (October 5, 2017). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

Meet Peaches and Ziggy.

(When we got them from the SPCA, Ziggy was named “Mango,” and we thought, “What the hell kind of name is ‘Mango’ for an [ex-]tom cat?” “Ziggy” came about because he zigs and zags about the house.) They are brother and sister and get along famously, snuzzling and nuzzling throughout the day.

They fill the hole left by JoCat’s passing. We were loading her into the carrier to take her to the emergency vet when she breathed her last.

JoCat joined the family when my father passed away a dozen years ago and had a long full life of dominating the household.

Her sister lives with my brother. Originally, they were Joe and Sam, until it became apparent that they were Josephine and Samantha. With cats kittens, it’s hard to tell . . . .

Diane McWhorter explains the con.

As Lyndon Johnson said,

If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.

That’s the proposed new term for Donald Trump’s cabinet. Eugene Robinson explains.

If it goes viral, double-check it.

Twice.

Per The Smoking Gun:

Somehow, voter information available through a LexisNexis commercial database lists Kushner’s gender as female (as reported yesterday in Wired).

But Kushner’s current voter registration form (seen below) reveals that he is, in fact, 100% male. The document is on file with the New York City Board of Elections.

Follow the link for the image.

PoliticalProf.

We went to the SPCA on Friday and adopted two six-month-old cats, brother (on the left) and sister. They are as rambunctious as one could wish and busily engaged in taking over the house. Their favorite spot is the top of the cat tower that I built several years ago from scrap lumber and left-over carpet pieces.

They do not replace JoCat; they succeed her.

Read more »

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

The weather here is very nice, but I’m under it.

When fellowship is needed, join us . . . .

When: Thursday, September 14, 6 p.

Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street (Map)

More here.

Bruce Lowry observes the eraser marks:

Indeed, in many parts of this country, we run from our history, or at least its unsavory parts. A couple of years ago, the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., issued a ground-breaking report titled “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.”

The report found that “very few public commemorations of African Americans’ suffering during the post-slavery era exist today” and that “no prominent monument or memorial” existed to mark the deaths of the nearly 4,000 Southern lynchings that had been documented at the time of the EJI’s report in 2015.

Follow the link for the complete article.

Redacted Tonight’s Natalie McGill lampoons corporations’ “corporate responsibility theatrics.”

In The Roanoke Times, historian Robert Willingham points out just who, exactly, is guilty of “whitewashing history.” A nugget; follow the link for the rest:

If we leave those statues unchallenged we assent to the assertions of their erectors: that the Confederate cause was just, and that the emerging* racial order in the south was justified and virtuous.

__________________

*The statues were erected during the beginning of the Jim Crow era, roughly about a century ago.

Shaun Mullen investigates.

Dick Polman considers why Trump keeps bashing the press. A snippet:

Trump’s sole ideology is self-preservation, and what he sorely needs – as his relations with Hill Republicans continue to erode, as his legislative agenda teeters toward DOA, as Bob Mueller and the congressional probes continue to tighten the noose – is love and reassurance from his loyal 35 percent. If he can keep them happy, distracting them from his own failings by feeding them an enemy, by professing to hate the same “elites” they hate, he’ll have the best shot at hanging onto his job.