Pelosi silent on dad's actions
"If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy," U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said recently, they should remove all statues inside the U.S. Capitol related to Confederate figures.
Not only did Pelosi not call for the removal of the statues during her time as speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011, but her father as mayor of Baltimore dedicated statues to Confederate heroes Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Indeed, according to reports, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., the Democratic mayor of Maryland's largest city, speaking before a crowd of 3,000 in 1948 as hawkers sold Confederate battle flags, called the causes the Confederate figures were fighting for "sacred institutions."
"Today, with our nation beset by subversive groups and propaganda which seeks to destroy our national unity," he said, "we can look for inspiration to the lives of Lee and Jackson to remind us to be resolute and determined in preserving our sacred institutions."
D'Alesandro, a Democrat like his daughter, also said, "World Wars I and II found the North and South fighting for a common cause, and the generalship displayed by these two great men in the War Between the States lived on and were applied in the military plans of our nation and the Pacific areas."
To date, Pelosi has had nothing to say about the statues, which current Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh decided to have removed recently under cover of darkness.
Southern college tolerance
We're not sure what's keeping Clemson University Assistant Professor of Human-Centered Computing Bart Knijnenburg from relocating to where he's more comfortable.
The professor evidently has a problem with Republicans - not one or two but all of them, and more than 63 million voted for President Trump last November.
"All [T]rump supporters, nay, all Republicans, are racist scum," he wrote on a recent Facebook post, according to Campus Reform.
"All [R]epublicans? Yes," he continued in the comments section. "Your complacency made this happen. Pick a side: denounce your affiliation, or admit you're a racist."
He added, "You should come live in the [S]outh for a while. It's exhausting."
In other posts, he equated Trump, Trump voters, the GOP and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to "Nazis," the "KKK" and the "Alt-right" - they're "all racists," and he advocated violence, if necessary, to shut down white supremacy. "This needs to stop, by any mean necessary," he said.
Apparently, he still has a job. Why, we're not sure. No Republican would have had the same been said about Democrats.
Pronoun police
Well, it sounds like California, but these days it could be anywhere.
A bill proposed in the Golden State suggests jail time for up to one year for those who would incorrectly use someone's preferred personal pronoun.
The Senate bill, the "Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, and Transgender Long-Term Care Facility Residents Bill of Rights," states, "It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to ... willfully and repeatedly fail to use a resident's preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns."
Fines for repeat offenders, the bill's language says, could be as high as $1,000.
The bill also mandates that restrooms and rooming situations in such facilities - no matter if the institution has a religious component - will be designated by gender identify and not biological sex. In other words, Grandma Millie would be forced to room with Phyllis (formerly Phil).
The only upside, sadly, is that each roomie may forget who they are anyway.
Thanks, Obama
Gun manufacturers were sorry to see President Barack Obama leave office. The month that President Donald Trump arrived marked the end of 19 months of record year-over-year increases in background checks for gun purchases. In 2016, the gun industry published a report that it had grown 158 percent since 2008, when Obama was elected.
Meanwhile, the economic impact for the industry jumped from $19.1 billion in 2008 to $49.3 billion in 2015, and the number of full-time jobs in the industry climbed from 166,000 to almost 288,000.
Now, thanks to the overblown media reaction to the violence between "alt-left" and "alt-right" groups in Charlottesville, Va., recently, the sale of Confederate battle flags is growing.
Alabama Flag & Banner, located near Huntsville, has been hand-sewing the flags since 2015, when Amazon and other retailers stopped selling them following a church murder spree by a young white supremacist in Charleston, S.C..
Typically, it's been selling 600 to 800 flags a year, but the shop recently received 100 orders - in just one day. Now, there is a two- to three-week delay on orders. Owner Belinda Kennedy says, as they were afraid the case would be with guns under Obama, people are afraid they soon won't be able to get the flags.
"Everybody's got a different reason [for buying]," said the owner, who also sells U.S. state flags, American flags, historical flags and religious flags. "By and large, I think people are afraid they may not be able to get it one day."
Kennedy said she knows Chinese-made Confederate flags are available and others that are hand-sewn to order, but she believes her business is the only one in the U.S. currently manufacturing the flags.