Wednesday, March 17, 2021

And another day of sweeping election bills, radical Republicans, Asian Americans in fear, blatant racism, ‘a bad day,’ college sports revenue is racism, bill reauthorizations, data on legalized weed, and ‘cruises to nowhere’ comes to a close:

“The US did a very unusual thing when it voted out an aspiring autocrat despite huge obstacles (voter suppression, threats to officials, attempted coup, etc). But if the Dems do not abolish the filibuster and protect voting rights, the next US election will vote autocracy back in.” — Sarah Kendzior

Deaths

US: 550,649 (+1282)

World: 2,692,621 (+10,422)

Cases

US: 30,294,798 (+102,574)

World: 121,813,138 (+579,712)

Senate Democrats introduce sweeping election bill that would curb GOP efforts to restrict voting access. Though it passed in the House, the legislation is likely to hit a roadblock in the Senate, where it's not clear there would be enough Republican support to overcome a filibuster.

The Most Radical Republicans Aren’t in Congress, They’re in the State Houses. If you think the national GOP has embraced fringe figures, wait until you meet their colleagues in state houses. “Many of these folks have been in our legislatures for a while,” says Carolyn Fiddler, the communications director for Daily Kos. “And they always leaned in that direction. But Trump normalized it. And he demonstrated that you can use it as a way to gain and exercise power.”...Democrats may have won control of the White House and US Congress, but Republicans still have party control of governments in 30 states. And when redistricting happens sometime in the next two or three years, after the most recent Census is released, most of those GOP-controlled legislatures will be redrawing district lines to further gerrymander their states and ensure that their party can retain control and grow in power for another decade. And if extremism is what helps Republicans win elections at the state level, then that’s what the party will ultimately embrace, according to Fiddler. “Republicans value numbers more than sort of managing the direction of their party, and they will take wins where they can get that,” she says. “I think you’re going to see a strengthening of the grip of these extremists, these QAnon believers and whatnot, on the Republican Party before it has any hope of swinging the other way.”

Asian Americans were already living in fear. The Atlanta-area spa killings feel like a terrifying escalation for them. Many Asian Americans across the United States have been verbally harassed, spat on and injured for months in a "disgusting pattern of hate" that coincides with the Covid-19 pandemic. The killings of eight people, most of them Asian, at three spas in the Atlanta area Tuesday jolted a community already on edge, even as law enforcement has not yet determined a motive.

Racism, sexism must be considered in Atlanta case involving killing of six Asian women, experts say. While police said the suspect denied having racial motivations, experts and activists alike say it's nearly impossible to divorce race from the discourse, given the historical fetishization of Asian women.

Fetishized, sexualized and marginalized, Asian women are uniquely vulnerable to violence. The perceptions of Asian and Asian American women as submissive, hypersexual and exotic can be traced back centuries.

The Cop Who Said The Spa Shooter Had A "Bad Day" Previously Posted A Racist Shirt Blaming China For The Pandemic. Capt. Jay Baker shared a photo of a T-shirt he got on Facebook, saying that the coronavirus was imported from "CHY-NA."

Racists attack Asian American chef who criticized Texas over mask mandate.

White supremacist propaganda surged in 2020, report says. There were 5,125 cases of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and other hateful messages spread through physical flyers, stickers, banners and posters, according to Wednesday’s report. That’s nearly double the 2,724 instances reported in 2019. Online propaganda is much harder to quantify, and it’s likely those cases reached into the millions, the anti-hate organization said.

'I signed my life to rich white guys': athletes on the racial dynamics of college sports. Athletes help their schools raise billions of dollars in revenue and never see a single cent. It is an issue at the forefront of many of their minds. And, here’s the thing: an extremely high proportion of the players being systematically denied the revenue they are responsible for generating are Black...At some schools, the numbers are particularly startling. Texas A&M, the second-highest athletic revenue earning institution in US college sports, has only 3.1% Black students in the general student body. Yet, its college football team is 75% Black, and its women’s basketball team 92.9%. It is hard to deny from these numbers that Black athletes are admitted into institutions that usually ignore them specifically to have their labor exploited for the universities’ gain...“Athletes are expected to be content as an unpaid labor force for a system that allows economic opportunities for everyone but [them]. The racial undertones are always there.”...If a scholarship and chance to play college sport is one of the best possibilities available for material uplift, it is something of a no-brainer to take that opportunity. But, when a choice is between bad and worse, then it isn’t really freely made – and that is exactly what we are talking about in the context of college sports. How else do we explain McDermott’s instinctive use of the plantation analogy? McDermott’s repulsive comments should not be dismissed as one-off lapses of judgement, but part and parcel of what Billy Hawkins calls “the new plantation”: a structure that views Black bodies as expendable and their labor essentially exploitable...The problem is not calling the conditions of college revenue sport racism, white supremacy, or a new plantation; the problem is that no matter what label we put on it, that is what it actually is, and it is exactly what a lot of very wealthy and powerful white people want it to be. — Read it all. Then stop getting entertainment from college sports until things change.

Vatican ruling on same-sex couples prompts defiance, pain, confusion.

White House Announces $10 Billion For COVID-19 Testing In Schools.

‘The fighting continues': A Tigray town reels from drawn-out war. “The war is escalating. Now it is focused on the civilians.”

House votes to reauthorize Violence Against Women Act. -- 172 House Republicans voted against it. Remember that.

Elliot Page becomes first trans man to appear on Time magazine cover. "What I was anticipating was a lot of support and love and a massive amount of hatred and transphobia," Page is quoted as saying. "That's essentially what happened."

Amazon warehouse worker testifies to Senate: 'My workday feels like a 9-hour intense workout every day'.

The Data On Legalizing Weed. Tax revenue from legal recreational marijuana has surpassed everyone's expectations. Colorado usually collects more than $20 million a month. In 2020, the state collected a total of $387 million. The California government collects more than $50 million a month.

IRS to push tax filing deadline to May 17.

Cruise line offers 'cruises to nowhere' for vaccinated passengers. British cruise line P&O Cruises has announced it is to offer "cruises to nowhere" for vaccinated British travelers this summer. The voyages will depart in late June from the southern England port of Southampton and navigate the UK coast.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.