The New South is Rising

The data out of Alabama about who voted for Doug Jones in Tuesday should make the GOP nervous.

Be afraid, GOP, be very afraid.

There’s a very good reason why they’re trying to ram a bad tax bill through and want to hand the internet over to the Telecoms who will owe them big time next year.

I’m going to guess that turning the internet into just another packaged deal for the cable companies is going to turn out younger voters like you have never seen before. Net Neutrality may be the single thing that finally does the Republicans in.

Go ahead, touch that third rail.

In the meantime, guys like this one give me hope. Oh, sure, you might not be able to download him quickly after next year. But he’ll still be out there. Yep. Rednecks are liberals too.

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Texas Republican Blake Farenthold is a dick and a bully. No one should have to work under these conditions. Shame of the House of Representatives for not disciplining him and getting him to resign.

Michael Rekola, who was Farenthold’s communications director in 2015, described in an interview with CNN new details of the congressman’s abusive behavior. It ranged from making sexually graphic jokes to berating aides — bullying that Rekola says led him to seek medical treatment and psychological counseling, and at one point, caused him to vomit daily.

One comment from the congressman was especially personal. Rekola was about to leave town to get married in July 2015, when, he said, Farenthold, standing within earshot of other staffers in his Capitol Hill office, said to the groom-to-be: “Better have your fiancée blow you before she walks down the aisle — it will be the last time.” He then proceeded to joke about whether Rekola’s now-wife could wear white on her wedding day — a clear reference, Rekola said, to whether she had had premarital sex.

“I was disgusted and I left. I walked out,” Rekola said. Almost immediately after returning from his wedding, he gave his two-weeks notice.

Those crude remarks in the summer of 2015 marked just one of many instances in which Farenthold made sexually charged comments to or in the presence of aides, Rekola said. During the nine months that he worked for the congressman, Rekola said, he was also subject to a stream of angry behavior not sexual in nature — screaming fits of rage, slamming fists on desks and castigating aides, including regularly calling them “f**ktards.”

Blake Farenthold and Ted Cruz, Texas role models.

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Speaking of that third rail, Business Insider has a post about what you can expect after net neutrality is ended. This is how they do it in Portugal. You know how you can’t get certain channels on cable unless you buy stuff you don’t want? Something similar will happen with Netflix and Hulu or instant messaging. Yes! That unlimited messaging that you ALREADY pay your wireless service for could be charged again when you come home and switch to your home’s WiFi.

Isn’t that special?

If you like your health insurance choices, you’re going to love the new internet from Comcast under no net neutrality.

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The Conversation has a post by Frank McAndrew, at the psychology department at Knox College about why year end celebrations like winter solstice, Christmas and Hanukkah are so important to people. To me, this suggests what it is that cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are disrupting when they cut their followers off from those celebrations and why they do it:

The Zuni of the American Southwest, meanwhile, have long viewed the house as a living thing. It’s where they raise their kids and communicate with spirits, and there’s an annual ritual – called the Shalako – in which homes are blessed and consecrated as part of the year-end winter solstice celebration.

The ceremony strengthens bonds to the community, to the family (including dead ancestors), and to the spirits and gods by dramatizing the connection each party has to the home.

During the holidays, we might not officially bless our home like the Zuni. But our holiday traditions probably sound familiar: eating with family, exchanging gifts, catching up with old friends and visiting old haunts. These homecoming rituals affirm and renew a person’s place in the family and often are a key way to strengthen the family’s social fabric.

Home, therefore, is a predictable and secure place where you feel in control and properly oriented in space and time; it is a bridge between your past and your present, an enduring tether to your family and friends.

It explains so much about how ex-JW kids react to the holidays.

People, do not do this to your children.

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We’re all in this together. Everybody sing: