Even more reasons
We thought the excuses Hillary Clinton had given for losing the 2016 presidency to Donald Trump had stopped. But this past week, in several speeches she gave, they picked up again and became even more diverse. So Twitter users began a new game, #OtherReasonsForHillarysLoss.
They include:
- "Her celebrity supporters didn't tweet in ALL CAPS enough. Looking at you @DebraMessing, @Alyssa_Milano, @Rosie."
- "Russian infiltration of pantsuit manufacturing."
- "Obama thinks we have 57 states, Hillary thinks we have 47."
- "She got pulled over by the cops while speeding to Wisconsin and Michigan."
- "A hostile press."
- "She spent the last 2 weeks of the campaign looking for the lost mate of her left shoe."
- "Not enough cowbell."
- "Alyssa Milano campaigned for her. It's the kiss of death."
- "Children got wise to her candy house in [the] woods so she didn't have the energy to campaign in [Wisconsin]."
- "She reminded everyone of that old crazy lady down the block who yelled at you when you were a kid."
- "Katy Perry didn't try hard enough."
- " deplorable sub-humans who refused to adhere to it being her turn."
- "The Ghostbusters Remake."
- "Not enough spinach pancakes.
Ooh, not the military
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., got a little nostalgic last week, recalling the 2010 incident in which she twisted the arms of longtime opponents of the military to vote for the defense authorization bill so that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy could end.
"Don't tell anybody I told you this," the former majority leader told an LGTB rights group.
Pelosi should know Washington, D.C., well enough to understand any secret she shared would be passed on as soon as possible.
In recounting the incident, she said she went to members of "the liberal contingent" of the party and asked them to vote for the bill. She named former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, and current Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Texas, and John Lewis, D-Ga.
She used the term "liberal contingent" - that's all of them, right? - but we digress.
"Never," Pelosi said. "We never vote for the defense bill."
But this time they did, and the homosexual policy they hated - one put in place by Democrat Bill Clinton - was gone.
The public trust
When the Super Bowl came to her hometown in February, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas just had to be there. Indeed, she was so desperate to be a part of the action, she used campaign funds for tickets to the game, food at an Italian restaurant the day of the game and payment to a consulting firm for a design for invitations to the game.
A photo on the congresswoman's Instagram account showed her at a kickoff event for the game, and another showed her - as she wrote - "on location" for the game at NRG Stadium.
Lee has since been called on the carpet for her use of campaign funds in the transactions, and her staff since has scrubbed photos of her at activities surrounding the game.
Matthew Whitaker, president of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based government accountability group, said Lee should explain to the public why the tickets were a campaign expense.
"We are always concerned and want more information when we see campaign expenditures that are not directly for campaign purposes," he told the Washington Free Beacon. "Campaign funds should not be used for any thing other than running a campaign. There have been many cases of public officials abusing their campaign funds for personal expenses and for the benefit of others. The public deserves an explanation on why Super Bowl tickets were a campaign expense."
The disbursements for the tickets ($4,900), meal ($4,901.46) and consulting firm ($250), totaled nearly $10,000.
It's no wonder Lee doesn't want the public to see what she's been up to.
Hunting sanity at Hunter
Students at Hunter College in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City now can take a course to help fill their political science major called Abolition of Whiteness, according to Campus Reform.
A description of the course says it will examine "how whiteness - and/or white supremacy and violence - is intertwined with conceptions of gender, race, sexuality, class, body ability, nationality and age."
The course will be taught by Jennifer Gaboury, a women and gender studies professor, and the three-hour class can be used either as a political science credit or one in women and gender studies.
A previous school catalog describes the course as "an overview of whiteness studies in the United States," specifically "focusing on concepts of consciousness, in/visibility, disavowal, and resentment."
Good luck on finding a similar course called Abolition of Blackness. That would rightly be called racist.