Michigan Circuit Judge Lisa Gorcyca Needs To Be Fired

Michigan Circuit Judge Lisa Gorcyca Needs To Be Fired

There are some stories that you just can't get out of your head. This is one of them. Here's the brief synopsis:
Three Oakland County children who refused to go to lunch with their father, as part of a bitter divorce and custody battle between their parents, are spending their summer in the county’s juvenile detention center, according to court records. “We’ll review it when school starts, and you may be going to school there,” Oakland County Family Court Judge Lisa Gorcyca told the children during a June 24 hearing, referring to the center in Waterford Township called Children’s Village, where authorities house as many as 200 juvenile offenders. Gorcyca, who blamed their mother for poisoning the children’s attitude toward their father, ordered the children be sent to the center for defying her orders — while in court — that they go to lunch with their father. The children — ranging in age from 9 to 15 — were deemed in contempt of court last month by Gorcyca for disobeying her orders to “have a healthy relationship with your father.”
Friday Open Thread [7.10.15]

Friday Open Thread [7.10.15]

A new Reuters poll finds that 63% of Republicans oppose the Supreme Court’s backing of gay marriage, which gives hope for conservative presidential candidates who have come out strongly against marriage equality.
“When asked in general whether they support allowing same-sex couples to marry, 51% of Americans say they do, while 35 percent oppose it. Forty-eight percent of independent voters back gay marriage, making it difficult for a conservative Republican to win general election votes on the issue.”
Indeed. These two issues.. gay marriage and immigration... will prevent the GOP from winning a presidential election until the party changes their stance on the issue.
Do Your Jobs or Get Fired.

Do Your Jobs or Get Fired.

To every self righteous sanctimonious hypocritical county or court clerk that refuses to do their job and issue marriage licenses, pursuant to the Constitution, to gay and lesbian couples, that should be the message. You either do your job, or you're fired. That is finally what Democratic Governor Steve Beshear did in Kentucky.
Patsy Mink & Birch Bayh – The Unsung Heros of the US Women’s Soccer Triumph

Patsy Mink & Birch Bayh – The Unsung Heros of the US Women’s Soccer Triumph

The subtitle of the post could be - Yes, politics matter. A mere 40 years ago women's soccer wasn't a thing. Women's sports in general were an oddity. Girls and women were discouraged from taking part in sports because some people thought that their uterus might fall out. "Sorry Jane. You are way more experienced, but we are hiring Bill for this job because he is a man." was a thing people could, and did, legally say. It seems crazy now, but I'm old enough to remember the bad old days. But by the the late 1960's and early 1970's women were pressing...

Interesting Theory

So I wonder what actual honest to God news story is going to happen that will shaken us and the media from our Trumpnosis. A Hurricane or some other natural disaster? The Iran Deal? Grexit? Also, did you know (and I didn't, for some shocking reason that is escaping me) that Donald Trump also ran for President in 1999? Did you know what positions he took back then? LOLz. He was a Reform Party candidate. Remember that cute Ross Perot-Pat Buchanan 1990's thing? As such, he was not beholden to the Republican Party base, and so he took some pretty interesting positions.
Thursday Open Thread [7.9.15]

Thursday Open Thread [7.9.15]

I love what Jeb Lund has to say:
The party has run so long on nativist anxiety about foreigners plundering lady liberty, stealing jobs and slowly strangling the republic to death that the next step is just calling immigrants rapists, thieves and murderers. And thanks to years of purity testing in Republican primaries, after trying to ignore the issue for weeks, the remaining candidates have only two options left: try to join or outflank Trump to the right or try to non-ignore ignore him by writing him off as “inappropriate.” The rest of the world can just call Trump an idiot, a man with few ambitions outside of being Trumpy, whose remaining strands of what one might call policy are wisps of spun sugar extruded by hot air, reminding everyone of the tacky coif that sits atop his blanched Smithfield Ham of a face. The Republican Party can’t even luxuriate in ad hominem. Yeah, they could call him an empty suit and a bozo, but that stops working the moment anyone notices that he sounds like a slightly loaded version of themselves.
Donald Trump is everyone's drunk belligerent uncle. That racist piece of shit that always ruins Thanksgiving. I was traveling around yesterday on business, so I got to listen to CNN and MSNBC in the car. It was amusing to hear them all freak out about the three computer glitches at the NYSE, United Airlines and the Wall Street Journal. But then the Trump interview went up on MSNBC, and then it was all both networks could talk about. Trump is like catnip to the media. One observation that I agreed with was that Trump always speaks in absolutes. Everything is the best, or the most, or conversely the worst. Everything is huge. The biggest. The largest. My diagnosis: Donald Trump has a serious inferiority complex. And that explains the combover. Real, confident men accept baldness. And he is still a birther. Which means he is insane, which explains comments like "I will win the Latino vote in 2016." That's like me saying "I am going to sleep with Gisele Bundchen in 2015." Both statements are counter-factuals and will not happen.