Seems like a pretty good egg.
Jun 2, 2020
Brandon Perna
Perna does a vlog series on YouTube about the NFL, and my Broncos in particular.
Seems like a pretty good egg.
Seems like a pretty good egg.
COVID-19 Update
USAmerica Inc reported fewer than 800 new deaths for yesterday.
Growth rates are still at 1.01, and the slopes are becoming more gradual.
Still waiting to see if the big uptick materializes, as we pass one week from "the re-opening".
Growth rates are still at 1.01, and the slopes are becoming more gradual.
Still waiting to see if the big uptick materializes, as we pass one week from "the re-opening".
Jun 1, 2020
Today's Tweet
hat tip = my boy Lukey - proud of you, son.
Watching the murder of #GeorgeFloyd and the resulting protests, I was reminded of the way I used to think. I wrote a letter to former myself. #LetterToAWhiteMan #BlackLivesMatter— Rhett McLaughlin (@rhettmc) May 31, 2020
Medium post: https://t.co/NmqBBtG1kI pic.twitter.com/jhs2j4gIUt
COVID-19 Update
APR 1
4,081
MAY 1
63,871
JUN 1
106,200
I guess the good news is that the number of dead Americans didn't quite double in the 31 days of May.
Top 20 States
May 31, 2020
Today's Tweet
All day, every day, I'm asking: What the fuck is wrong with these fuckin' cops?
Salt Lake City cops shove down an elderly man with a cane for the crime of standing along the street: pic.twitter.com/PCLkHqQtJg— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 31, 2020
The Danger Is Real
... but as usual, 45* is playing at being the victim, and trying to foist his culpability onto a convenient scapegoat (Daddy State Awareness Rule 1).
WaPo:
“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers,” President Trump said on Thursday as he signed an executive order designed to punish social media sites for exercising free speech. To honestly identify the danger to free speech, he would have had to include a mirror in the signing ceremony.
The White House has been plotting its assault on Internet platforms for some time now, and the directive marks the first shot formally fired. It comes as a response to Twitter applying a fact-checking label to tweets from the commander in chief that falsely suggested that vote-by-mail is systemically fraudulent. Twitter early Friday rallied rather than retreating, slapping a warning on a presidential tweet for glorifying violence. The tweet from the president, and then from the official White House account, called protesters in Minneapolis “THUGS” and declared that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
The order signed on Thursday is a grab-bag of grievances with remedies that are at best illogical and at worst illegal. Certainly the declaration is a terrible abuse of authority. The White House wants federal regulators to write new rules “clarifying” a landmark law regarding Internet speech, and to discipline companies that allegedly display political bias or otherwise engage in censorship. The Justice Department is also tasked with reviewing agencies’ advertising spending to yank dollars away from sites deemed “problematic.” Finally, the proclamation tells the attorney general to develop a proposal for legislation to promote the order’s policy objectives.
This last instruction suggests a glimmer of understanding that the preceding commands run afoul of the law. The order is a backward interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which wasn’t written to prevent platforms from exercising an editorial role. Just the opposite: Section 230 was written to allow platforms to exercise such a role without exposing themselves to legal liability for posts by third parties. Mr. Trump acts as if he seeks an interpretation of the rule when actually he seeks an invalidation. That’s not his role, but Congress’s — and so far Congress has largely chosen to leave Section 230 alone.
The order also does little to advance the president’s own objectives. Threatening platforms with loss of their immunity for displaying political bias may scare them away from policing conservatives who break their rules, but only until they lose their immunity. After that, platforms will have an incentive to move in the other direction, ramping up takedowns for fear of hosting something illegal on their sites. Admittedly, Twitter has an enforcement problem today that lets people on the right and left alike get away with rule-breaking; that allows both sides to interpret policing failures as signs of prejudice against them. But this week’s order won’t resolve that, and it isn’t really trying to.
All this confusion and contradiction obscures the president’s true objective: to exploit the powers of his office to bully private companies out of holding him to any standard but his own. The fact-checks and warning labels that have so enraged Mr. Trump this week aren’t restricting his speech. They are speech; people remain free to read Mr. Trump’s tweets, even the most offensive ones. All terms of service are a matter of platforms engaging in exactly the sort of unimpeded expression the Constitution enshrines.
Thursday’s order begins by asserting that “free speech is the bedrock of American democracy,” a “sacred right.” The president has that correct. He just won’t admit he’s the one impinging on it.
WaPo:
“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers,” President Trump said on Thursday as he signed an executive order designed to punish social media sites for exercising free speech. To honestly identify the danger to free speech, he would have had to include a mirror in the signing ceremony.
The White House has been plotting its assault on Internet platforms for some time now, and the directive marks the first shot formally fired. It comes as a response to Twitter applying a fact-checking label to tweets from the commander in chief that falsely suggested that vote-by-mail is systemically fraudulent. Twitter early Friday rallied rather than retreating, slapping a warning on a presidential tweet for glorifying violence. The tweet from the president, and then from the official White House account, called protesters in Minneapolis “THUGS” and declared that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
The order signed on Thursday is a grab-bag of grievances with remedies that are at best illogical and at worst illegal. Certainly the declaration is a terrible abuse of authority. The White House wants federal regulators to write new rules “clarifying” a landmark law regarding Internet speech, and to discipline companies that allegedly display political bias or otherwise engage in censorship. The Justice Department is also tasked with reviewing agencies’ advertising spending to yank dollars away from sites deemed “problematic.” Finally, the proclamation tells the attorney general to develop a proposal for legislation to promote the order’s policy objectives.
This last instruction suggests a glimmer of understanding that the preceding commands run afoul of the law. The order is a backward interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which wasn’t written to prevent platforms from exercising an editorial role. Just the opposite: Section 230 was written to allow platforms to exercise such a role without exposing themselves to legal liability for posts by third parties. Mr. Trump acts as if he seeks an interpretation of the rule when actually he seeks an invalidation. That’s not his role, but Congress’s — and so far Congress has largely chosen to leave Section 230 alone.
The order also does little to advance the president’s own objectives. Threatening platforms with loss of their immunity for displaying political bias may scare them away from policing conservatives who break their rules, but only until they lose their immunity. After that, platforms will have an incentive to move in the other direction, ramping up takedowns for fear of hosting something illegal on their sites. Admittedly, Twitter has an enforcement problem today that lets people on the right and left alike get away with rule-breaking; that allows both sides to interpret policing failures as signs of prejudice against them. But this week’s order won’t resolve that, and it isn’t really trying to.
All this confusion and contradiction obscures the president’s true objective: to exploit the powers of his office to bully private companies out of holding him to any standard but his own. The fact-checks and warning labels that have so enraged Mr. Trump this week aren’t restricting his speech. They are speech; people remain free to read Mr. Trump’s tweets, even the most offensive ones. All terms of service are a matter of platforms engaging in exactly the sort of unimpeded expression the Constitution enshrines.
Thursday’s order begins by asserting that “free speech is the bedrock of American democracy,” a “sacred right.” The president has that correct. He just won’t admit he’s the one impinging on it.
A Statement Of Faith
There has to be a shift in our cultural morality.
I was horrified and deeply saddened by the footage of the last moments in the life of George Floyd. Like so many before him, Mr. Floyd’s death was the preventable product of a system that too often treats Black Americans as targets for suspicion, oppression, and violence.
Over the past three days I have found myself thinking of the many young men that I have been fortunate to coach and get to know in my career. Each of them is a child of a loving Father in Heaven, full of their own power and potential to make a positive impact on the world around them — just like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others were before their deaths.
I am fortunate and privileged, humbled, and honored, to lead young men of all races, all faiths, and all beliefs in a shared pursuit of excellence on the field of play, in the classroom, and in life after college. I have no way of fully understanding the fear, pain, and anger members of the Black community at UVA and all over the world are feeling right now. But that doesn’t absolve me, or anyone else, from our responsibility to be honest about the world around us and to use our influence to drive positive change. I pray that God will bless the memory of George Floyd and so many others and that we will not waste another moment to build a society where every person enjoys the same right to life, liberty, and happiness as citizens of this nation.
I was horrified and deeply saddened by the footage of the last moments in the life of George Floyd. Like so many before him, Mr. Floyd’s death was the preventable product of a system that too often treats Black Americans as targets for suspicion, oppression, and violence.
Over the past three days I have found myself thinking of the many young men that I have been fortunate to coach and get to know in my career. Each of them is a child of a loving Father in Heaven, full of their own power and potential to make a positive impact on the world around them — just like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others were before their deaths.
I am fortunate and privileged, humbled, and honored, to lead young men of all races, all faiths, and all beliefs in a shared pursuit of excellence on the field of play, in the classroom, and in life after college. I have no way of fully understanding the fear, pain, and anger members of the Black community at UVA and all over the world are feeling right now. But that doesn’t absolve me, or anyone else, from our responsibility to be honest about the world around us and to use our influence to drive positive change. I pray that God will bless the memory of George Floyd and so many others and that we will not waste another moment to build a society where every person enjoys the same right to life, liberty, and happiness as citizens of this nation.
Bronco Mendenhall
Head Coach
UVa Football
COVID-19 Update
"Officially", another 1,015 Americans died of COVID-19 yesterday.
And since we still don't have a good handle on the reporting - partly because we still have assholes in government who insist on hiding the truth from us - it was probably more like 1,300 or 1,500.
And since we still don't have a good handle on the reporting - partly because we still have assholes in government who insist on hiding the truth from us - it was probably more like 1,300 or 1,500.
On Privilege
I have privilege as a white person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice:
- I can go birding (#ChristianCooper)
- I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery)
- I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean and #AtatianaJefferson)
- I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride)
- I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark)
- I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards)
- I can play loud music (#JordanDavis)
- I can sell CDs (#AltonSterling)
- I can sleep (#AiyanaJones and #breonataylor)
- I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown)
- I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice)
- I can go to church (#Charleston9)
- I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin)
- I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell)
- I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant)
- I can get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland)
- I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile)
- I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones)
- I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford)
- I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher)
- I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott)
- I can be a 10yr old walking with my grandfather (#CliffordGlover)
- I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese)
- I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans)
- I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood)
- I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo)
- I can run (#WalterScott)
- I can breathe (#EricGarner)
- I can live (#FreddieGrey)
- I can be arrested without the fear of being murdered (#GeorgeFloyd)
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