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Episode 11  - “A Rebirth of Constitutional Government”

The homework episode! Wow, this one was a lot of research.

If you want to get like us, or at least like Amanda, here are some source documents:

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution

The Johnson Amendment

Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

McCain-Feingold

Tyler recommends the NPR’s More Perfect podcast, about the history of the Supreme Court. It’s really good in that discouraging NPR kind of way.

The cover of the GOP platform. Don’t let it lure you in with its well-designed wiles:

“Shoutout to Kalashnikov”: Mikhail Kalashnikov, the late inventor of the AK-47, got some shoutouts from newlyweds (according to him):

[Kalashnikov] said he was proud of his bronze bust installed in his native village of Kurya in the Siberian region of Altai. He said newlyweds bring flowers to the bust. "They whisper ‘Uncle Misha, wish us happiness and healthy kids,’” he said. “What other gun designer can boast of that?”

The “fetal body parts for sale” platform language that sounds shocking on paper but has been well refuted.

The big fetal body parts sting that many of GOP lawmakers have cited: 

Attack On Planned Parenthood: 3 Deceptive Edits In The Video Claiming Planned Parenthood Is “Selling Aborted Baby Parts”

A smaller, even sloppier one, where the “journalists” just emailed a Planned Parenthood offering money for parts:

Indictment Sheds Light on Planned Parenthood Sting

Gallup’s great historical page on abortion

The Terri Schiavo case was a long-term news item from about 1990 to 2005. Schiavo’s husband and her parents fought very publicly in court over end of life care and who gets to make the decisions once a person is determined to be in a persistent vegetative state.  

June 2016 Gallup article on the Electoral College, which America thinks is the dumbest.

The awfulness of voter ID has been covered at length, here are some good pieces:

This Is How Hard It Is To Get A Voter ID In Wisconsin

Confusion over South Carolina ID law could keep voters away

Judge Orders Texas To Spend At Least $2.5 Million To Not Enforce Its Voter ID Law

Tyler’s former coworker Zack Roth’s book The Great Suppression is a good if partisan book on the subject.

Attribution because CITE YOUR SOURCES:

Theme Backing Song - Parasite by Lamprey - Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Political Speech Quotes from American Rhetoric

And Leslie #PlatformPod series continues as Amanda and Tyler deep dive into “Restoring the American Dream,” section one of the GOP Platform.  

Amanda promised a screencap of her note to self, that no one believes that “this is the best America can do.”

Territorial Tax System

Amanda mentioned territorial tax system.  The definition from Nasdaq.com is 

 “A tax system that taxes domestic income but not foreign income.

Countries that have territorial tax systems (in addition to the aforementioned Hong Kong) are France, Belgium, and the Netherlands according to NASDAQ.

Congressional Research Service

The platform claims that U.S. businesses "face the world’s highest corporate tax rates”. Nice turn of phrase, but not really.

Per the Congressional Research Service:

A particular aspect of the corporate tax system that receives substantial attention is the 35% statutory corporate tax rate. Although the United States has the world’s highest statutory corporate tax rate, the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is similar to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average. Further, the United States collects less in corporate tax revenue relative to Gross Domestic Production (GDP) (2.3% in 2011) than the average of other OECD countries (3.0% in 2011).

Here’s a list of OECD countries.

Community Banks

Per the platform: “From 13,000 community banks in 1985, only 1,900 remain”.

Where one .pdf closes, another opens. The authoritative measure of community banks in all respects is the 2012-published FDIC Community Banking Study.

By their specifications - and there’s a whole section on “Defining The Community Bank” - community banks are 94% of all U.S. banking organizations. The FDIC puts the number at 6,356 community banks in 2011.

There’s still a huge drop - according to the FDIC, there were 14,408 community banks in 1984 - but the math doesn’t match and we couldn’t find a source that did line up with the platform’s 1,900 community banks claim.

Theme Attribution because CITE YOUR SOURCES:

Backing Song - Parasite by Lamprey - Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)

2016 is turning out to be a doozy of an election year.  In an effort to make some sense out of the rhetoric, Amanda and Tyler are digging deep, reading so much, and about to take a deep dive into the 2016 Republican Party Platform, as published at the Republican National Convention.

Who are the Republicans?  What do they stand for? 

Tyler and Amanda have signed on to do the deep reading, but if you want to read along click here to get the full text of the GOP platform, or visit https://www.gop.com/the-2016-republican-party-platform/

!!!!!!! WE need to point out that if you’re looking for details, don’t just google “Republican Party Platform.”  That search will lead you to this URL:  https://www.gop.com/platform/  which is a well created site for the 2012 platform, NOT the 2016 platform. The 2016 platform is infinitely less accessible, appearing as a PDF embedded in a blog post on the GOP site and not replacing the old platform’s site. If you want the direct link, use the first one we mentioned.

Speaking of the Constituion

Amanda quoted the intro section to the Constituion, the official online version of which can be found on the United States Publishing Office website. 

On page 6:

“The continuing process of amendment, clearly described in the note of the following text, has enabled the Constitution to accommodate changing conditions in American society at the same time that the Founders’ basic outline of national government remains intact.”

“Flexible Foundations”

Amanda offhandedly mentioned flexible foundations. These are one of the results of technology and better understanding of seismic activity and earthquakes where buildings have seismic isolation in the foundation to prevent the building itself from being damaged when the ground below it moves.

One good example of is are Lead Rubber Bearing (LRB) columns, and here are a few videos that explain how those work.  Some are promotional for a specific company but do a good job of explaining how LRBs work.

Episode 08 - Heavy Stuff First Recorded 02/02/2015

Libsyn link

We held onto this one for way too long because we got busy, but it’s still -alarmingly- relevant.

Long List Of Links

Hannibal Buress’ infamous set in Philadelphia: “I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns.”

Cosby Timeline from Vulture

Roseanne Barr and Patton Oswalt on Cosby.

In November 2014, Slate published a complete list of the women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. This list contains 42 names.

BreakingNews’ “Bill Cosby Sexual Assault Allegations” page has 213 items on it. This is still a story.

“How to joke about Bill Cosby” by the hilarious (but not here) Cameron Esposito.

I’m proud it was a comic—Hannibal Buress, whom I’ve known and respected and watched for years—that reignited this shitstorm. Because it was a comic who stepped up and turned the mirror on Cosby, other comics have taken the allegations seriously.

Even more so because it was a male comic and a black comic—someone who would be qualified by the same sex/race modifiers as Cosby in a New York Times article about “Mr. Buress’ set” and “Mr. Cosby’s fall from grace.” I’m glad we didn’t have to read the sexist jokes that would have wormed their way into Twitter feeds, microphones, and bullshit office conversation if Hannibal were a female comic. Or, if Hannibal were white, wade through racist anti-Cosby nonsense that somehow placed fucked-up attitudes toward sexual assault unevenly on the black community.

Michael Eric Dyson’s book Is Bill Cosby Right? (Or Has The Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?)

Bill Cosby’s “Spanish Fly” routine:

Ta-Nehesi Coates on Cosby and cowardice.

Key & Peele’s valet bit on still liking “racist-ass Melly Gibson” is in Season 3, Episode 6, which is on Comedy Central’s site and nowhere else. You’ll need a service provider.

Mark Whitaker authored a biography of Cosby published in 2014 called Cosby: His Life And Times. Here’s an article by journalism professor Steve Weinberg critiquing Whitaker’s omissions of allegations against Cosby.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler joke on (or maybe just about) Bill Cosby at the Golden Globes

A discussion about the alleged “skewering” by Fey and Poehler.

A rape joke metric, from Melissa McEwan.

Friend of the show Allison McCarthy: Bill Cosby Gets Away With Everything

We went to that Sleater-Kinney show! It was so good.

Buzzfeed’s trawling/trolling of tweets wondering who Paul McCartney and Missy Elliott.

Missy’s cool with it:

😭the new kids think I’m a new artist &I’m bout 2blow up😳😂 like Paul McCartney Lord ha mercy chile I love me sum y'all😭

TIME on the concept of the teenager.

Dominic Holden reports on a landmark study at the University of Washington:

Gender Cognition in Transgender Children, noteworthy as the first report from the Trans Youth Project, the country’s first large-scale longitudinal study of transgender kids, concludes, “The data reported in this paper should serve as further evidence that transgender children do indeed exist and that this identity is a deeply held one.”

Attribution, because CITE YOUR SOURCES!

And Leslie Intro: “Spinnin’” by Alex

ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/32423 CC Attribution (3.0) - Edited for length

1st Transition: “Mimo” by andotherthings

soundcloud.com/andotherthings/mimo CC Attribution - Edited for length

2nd Transition: “Used Me Instrumental” by The Spin Wires

http://spinwires.bandcamp.com/track/used-me-instrumental  CC Attribution - Edited for length

3rd Transition: “Girls Like you Instrumental” by The Spin Wires

http://spinwires.bandcamp.com/track/girls-like-you-instrumental

After an extended life-based hiatus And Leslie is back with deep dive series especially tailored for USA 2016.  In the next few weeks you can expect new episodes, lots of quoting and reading, and hopefully a little enlightenment.

First Stop: Republican Party Platform Anyone who wants to read along at home, full text of the 2016 GOP platform can be found here.

Recording Schedule will be:

Dedication and Preamble

“Restoring the American Dream”

“A Rebirth of Constitutional Government”

“America’s Natural Resources: Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment”

“Government Reform”

“Great American Families, Education, Healthcare, and Criminal Justice”

“America Resurgent”

Wrap Up & Additional Comments

For extra credit read our friends the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (aka amendments 1-10), Constitutional Amendments 11-27 and the Declaration of Independence.

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND SALE !!!

USE CODE : TUBMAN20

GUEST: Fanta Sylla 

Welcome to #SWOONSTEP, the podcast where women and non-binary people regale you with talk of babes and bangers. This week, Crystal and Megan give you the rundown on all the bad things your least favorite naughty white women did. In a whiplash tonal change we are then joined by the intensely smart and self-possessed Fanta Sylla – a writer from Paris and 1/5 of Black Girls Talking – who talks with us about loving Kendrick Lamar from a non-US perspective, French electro, and her family’s Syllart record label. Fanta doesn’t believe in weird crushes, but she shares with us the unvarnished truth about who is hot and who just makes hot sounding music. A bit of late-breaking boy drama forces your hosts back on the hotline to giggle uncontrollably over the Zedd v. Diplo spat. This is a classic episode of #SWOONSTEP: a guest who is a genius in her spare time plus a segment that’s more wild laughter than fully formed sentences. Enjoy and thanks for listening!

Miniature Bust of an African Woman Wearing Skull Cap and Pendant

England (c. 1500s)

Carved Black Agate; 3.6 centimetres

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