Jamelle Bouie’s Opinion:

It should go without saying that the “great replacement” is idiotic. There is no “open border.” There is no effort to “replace” the white population of the United States. Racial diversity is not a plot against the nation’s political institutions. And the underlying assumption of the “great replacement” — that, until recently, the United States was a racially and culturally homogenous nation — is nonsense.

Musk is especially preoccupied with the racial makeup of the country and the alleged deficiency of nonwhites in important positions.

On X, Musk recently pinned a post to a slickly produced video that purports to expose a “Democrat open borders plan to entrench single-party rule,” in which Democrats shepherd millions of people into the United States and “keep them in the country at all costs.” Musk says, “This is actually happening!” The video had, at the time of this writing, well over 50 million views.  (Bouie doesn’t say if AI was involved in the video).

Musk is far from the first person to push the “great replacement” theory. It was featured in ads released by Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a top Republican in the House. “Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” said one version of the advertisement. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”

The foregoing is from the opinion column of Jamelle Bouie on March 23, 2024*. Nan’s concern is that this apparently wild and wooly man [Musk] has great status with NASA and is a power in our world of newer and newer occupiers and agents of space and wealth.  What will the outcome of this become? Scary.

*N.Y. Times..

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

From IF A FOETUS IS A PERSON…

“Typically, parents apply for a Social Security number when they obtain a birth certificate, but if states declare that personhood begins at some earlier arbitrary point in time, they will need to provide evidence, perhaps through a life certificate, that this new person exists and resides in their state. Once the life is established, can a mother insure a six-week fetus and collect if she miscarries? Will the tax code be adjusted in these states to allow parents to claim their unborn children as dependents at conception? If so, can a woman who suffers more than one miscarriage in a fiscal year claim all of her?

“There are no laws that allow the United States to deny citizenship rights to a natural-born citizen merely because they reside with, or in, a noncitizen. Detaining any person without arraignment or trial violates the Constitution and international human rights laws. A fetus has not committed a crime, not been arraigned or charged, not weathered a trial by a jury of its peers, not had the opportunity to confront its accuser. These laws redefining personhood surely mean that a pregnant woman cannot be incarcerated, as doing so requires confining a second person without due process.

“Every state permits the custodial parent—who has primary physical custody of the child and is primarily responsible for his or her day-to-day care—to receive child support from the noncustodial parent.8 Because a fetus resides in its mother, and receives all nutrition and care from its mother’s body, the mother should be eligible for child support as soon as the fetus is declared a person—at conception in Alabama.

“Trying to define citizenship and personhood based on the laws of each state creates some far-fetched and even ridiculous scenarios. If we follow that logic, we will tie our Constitution into a knot no court can untangle.”

Carliss N. Chatman, If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, and Citizenship, 76 WASH. & LEE L. REV. ONLINE 91 (2020), https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr-online/vol76/iss2/2

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ALABAMA has become the latest state to ban diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] initiatives. On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill that forbids those programs in public colleges and offices.  The bill, SB 129, mandates that DEI offices and initiatives that are funded by public colleges or government agencies be dramatically changed or removed altogether. In addition, it aims to stifle academic lessons that center gender, race, or identity [the bill refers to them as “divisive concepts”].

I’d like to know, who made them divisive?   Sure doesn’t make me want to go to school or college or work in a government agency in Alabama….

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HERE COME THE CLOWNS –  Not to be too disrespectful, but what riches await us in outer space? —  “Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe.”  –N.Y. Times   [Nan says: ….Don’t forget Heaven…]

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ANOTHER TOPIC, ENTIRELY:

One of the advantages of being free is writing and sharing something imperfect.  I’ve sure been known to do that!  It helps keep me “cleaned out.”

WHY NOT?

I’m cold and I’m old

and I wish I was thirty

and warm.

I’m old and I’m told

to just write the best

that I can.

If I could I would

so put up with me

please.

And maybe one day

I’ll cough out a gem

on a whim.

Okay?

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ALL RIGHT — I guess blogging can get to be a disease: oh, the power of it all…..

Trophic Relationships in Deep-Sea Environments
FOCUS: Methane ice worms are found in dense colonies at cold seeps where
they live on mounds of exposed methane hydrate (“methane ice”), and feed on snow algae.  (Wikipedia et al)

….OF THE BAD NEWS:

“Though most of the attention paid to methane emissions these days focuses on that leaky industrial infrastructure and the climate risks of new liquid natural gas facilities, what worries me most is how much of it seems to be coming from natural sources, which may be responsible for 40 percent of the annual total — and the share may be growing, thanks to the effects of warming on emissions from wetlands, in particular, where higher temperatures promote more microbial activities that generate methane.” –David Wallace-Wells N.Y. Times opinion Writer

________________________________

BULK CLONING?

“They may have invented a way to clone monkeys in bulk.”….Primates tend to resist cloning.  “For some, that is a blessing, since it postpones the awkward day when somebody proposes  cloning people.”   At present, the only folks making money from cloning are the companies that clone pets and horses.”—The Economist Jan. 20, 2024, “Mass Production?”

QUESTION:  Would all good cloned people have a place in heaven, or just the first one?  What color would their skin be?

________________________________

BTW:

A lot of time and money is being spent trying to make AI recognizable for what it is.  “But in the battle between the fakers and the detectives, it seems that the fakers have the upper hand.”  —The Economist, “True or False?”

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Sorry, I don’t know if this is a repeat or not…

WHO OR WHAT AM I?

I wonder…

An icicle melting

in warm rain?

Or poppies sprouting

in my brain?

A beat to someone

else’s drum

or sidewalk gum,

that just hangs on?

Tromp it, stomp it

I’m the boot.

O sole mio!

I sing at the

wailing wall,

ruffling my wings.

_______________________

He was curled up into himself like a babe,

the remains we found around the bend

beside the brook, as we perambulated

without a care until this old fellow

came into view. Poor, by his looks, and

quite dead and cold. Who did he belong to,

who had his heart?

nm 2017   Image: Fredrik Raddum

Repeated for mechanical reasons.

I was excited.  My post “Confession” got ELEVEN likes!  Then I realized I hadn’t written a post called “Confession.”  Thanks for the brief “up,” guys.  Must have  been Nan’s Notebook or Nan Cohen.

OH oh oh!  I DID WRITE CONFESSION!  Seems that post must have been held up for more than a month  (possibly being searched for any breaking of rules, since I mentioned others). If so, glad I made the cut, more than a month late. It was submitted on Feb. 1, 2024.

I DID WRITE CONFESSIONS!  Thanks for the real Likes!

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Types of female genital mutilation —  WHY?  Female Genital Mutilation (often referred to as FGM) is a destructive operation, during which the female genitals are partly or entirely removed or injured with the aim of inhibiting a woman’s sexual feelings. Most often the mutilation is performed before puberty, often on girls between the age of four and eight, but recently it is increasingly performed on babies who are only a couple of days, weeks or months old. — Google

Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

In 1997, WHO classified female genital mutilation into four different types. Since then, experience with using this classification revealed the need to subdivide these categories, to capture the varieties of FGM in more detail. Severity (which here corresponds to the amount of tissue damaged) and health risk are closely related to the type of FGM performed as well as the amount of tissue that is cut.

The four major types of FGM, and their subtypes, are:

Type I. Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans (the external and visible part of the clitoris, which is a sensitive part of the female genitals, with the function of providing sexual pleasure to the woman), and/or the prepuce/clitoral hood (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoral glans). When it is important to distinguish between the major variations of Type I FGM, the following subdivisions are used:

Type Ia. Removal of the prepuce/clitoral hood only.

Type Ib. Removal of the clitoral glans with the prepuce/clitoral hood.

Type II.  Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans and the labia minora (the inner folds of the vulva), with or without removal of the labia majora (the outer folds of skin of the vulva). When it is important to distinguish between the major variations of Type II FGM, the following subdivisions are used:

Type IIa. Removal of the labia minora only.

Type IIb. Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans and the labia minora (prepuce/clitoral hood may be affected).

Type IIc. Partial or total removal of the clitoral glans, the labia minora and the labia majora (prepuce/clitoral hood may be affected).

Type III. (Often referred to as infibulation). Narrowing of the vaginal opening with the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the labia minora, or labia majora. The covering of the vaginal opening is done with or without removal of the clitoral prepuce/clitoral hood and glans (Type I FGM). When it is important to distinguish between variations of Type III FGM, the following subdivisions are used:

Type IIIa. Removal and repositioning of the labia minora.

Type IIIb. Removal and repositioning of the labia majora.

Type IV. All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.

Deinfibulation refers to the practice of cutting open the sealed vaginal opening of a woman who has been infibulated (Type III). This is often done to allow sexual intercourse or to facilitate childbirth, and is often necessary for improving the woman’s health and well-being.

Despite the health risks, some women undergo a narrowing of their vaginal opening again after being deinfibulated, at the time of childbirth – meaning that they may undergo a series of repeated infibulations and deinfibulations throughout the life-course.

World Bank

https://www.worldbank.org › topic › girlseducation

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SORRY FOR THE DISCOMFORT OF THE INFORMATION, but do we want to know what’s going on or not?    The practice is almost universal in Somalia, Guinea and Djibouti, with levels of 90 per cent or higher, while it affects no more than 1 per cent of girls and women in Cameroon and Uganda.

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Notoriously anti-trans author JK Rowling decided to celebrate Mother’s Day in the UK with slurs at transgenders.