Gay Marriage Bans, Religious Freedom and the Battle of the Armrests

by Nomad

The Armrest Story

About fifteen years I had to fly back to the US, having learned my mother was ill. I wasn't in the mood for arguments. I really wasn't in the mood for traveling.  I had long since lost my thrill of air travel. It's now something I put up with but seldom enjoy. I just pray it will be uneventful. That's the best I can hope for.

Part of the problem is that I can't stand being packed in close quarters with strangers. If you share this particular dread, then you know that flights are a whole lot of un-fun. 

On this particular flight- from Izmir to Istanbul- the first leg in was to be 16-hour flight, I was unfortunate enough to be sitting next to a classic nightmare passenger. Almost anybody who has traveled has had at least one experience with one of the countless varieties of detestable types.

Hillary Clinton: "There's a Full-Fledged Assault on Truth and Reason"

by Nomad

"Now, you may have heard that things didn’t exactly go the way I planned. But you know what? I’m doing okay." Hillary Clinton told the graduating class at Wellesley, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. "I won’t lie. Chardonnay helped a little, too. But here’s what helped most of all: remembering who I am, where I come from, and what I believe.” 

Ms. Clinton had stood at the podium before, forty-eight years ago, to give her own student commencement speech. In this return engagement, the former first lady and Secretary of State had an important message for the young women of the Class of 2017. This the assault on the truth now going is "serious business." Lives of innocent people will be devastated.

As evidence, she cited the recently proposed Trump budget which she called "an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest, and hard-working people."

And to top it off, it is shrouded in a trillion-dollar mathematical lie. Let’s call it what it is. It’s a con. They don’t even try to hide it.

ACLU: “Sanctuary Cities” Law Wrongheaded, Racist, Undemocratic and Un-Texan

by Nomad

On the issue of the new laws banning "sanctuary cities" in Texas, there's a showdown on the calendar between the state, civil rights groups and city governments.

ACLU and the Strike of Pecan Shellers

When 12,000 pecan shellers- mostly Hispanic women- went on strike in San Antonio in January 1938, one of the effects of that three-month labor action was the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. 

At that time, Texas was famous for its pecan production and accounted for nearly half of the nation's pecan production. The center of that production was- you guessed it- San Antonio. It might have been a big business but there wasn't much of a trickle down effect for the workers.
The pecan-shelling industry was one of the lowest-paid industries in the United States, with a typical wage ranging between two and three dollars a week. In addition that, the fine brown dust of the pecan shells was the suspected cause of the high rates of tuberculosis in San Antonio. 

When workers demanded better working conditions and something closer to a living wage, local law enforcement cracked down on the picketers despite their right to free speech and free assembly. 

Brookings' Elaine Kamarck Explains the Delicate Process of Impeachment

by Nomad

One of the helpful things a blog like Nomadic Politics can do is to provide its readers with accurate information on complicated or misunderstood issues. This, in turn, can lay the foundation for an intelligent discussion based on informed opinions.

One topic which is much talked about but rarely explained in depth is the topic of the impeachment pf the president. In US history, there have been only three times this constitutional provision has been attempted.

Elaine Kamarck is, as senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management, an esteemed authority on the way things work in politics and government.  

The Goodness of Gardening: Renewing our Spirits and Urban Spaces

 by Endless Summer

The Need to Refuel

First, let me say a big thank you to Nomad for allowing us to continue this community here in this space he so graciously hosts. And thank him for giving me the opportunity to communicate with the community through this post.

The 2016 election has brought us a set of challenges unlike most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Daily, we see Trump and the GOP rend the fabric of our democratic society, and the pace and breadth of the assault threatens to overwhelm us. Trumpression is real, and most of us have expressed it here in our comments. So I asked Nomad if I might write a post with the intention of uplifting the community, and he obliged.

Resistance, no matter the form it takes, requires fuel. Whether it’s marching in protests, calling and writing lawmakers, attending organizational meetings, it takes a lot out of you. It’s fatiguing, not to mention infuriating, to have finished a round of phone calls to lawmakers, only to check twitter and see another abomination unleashed on us. It’s been just over 100 days and I’m exhausted. I know y’all are too, so let’s refuel.

I think of refueling, or some say self-care, as feeding the soul; the things we can do each day that bring us joy and generally make the world a better place.