Photo by Retiring Guy
10/17/2022 update starts here
Photos by Retiring Guy
Tribeca Drive Regional Stormwater Facility
Video from May 9, 2022
Location
10/17/2022 update starts here
Tribeca Drive Regional Stormwater Facility
Video from May 9, 2022
Duncan Hopkins, a local organizer with the group Lancaster Stands Up who confronted Lancaster County GOP commissioners Ray D’Agostino and Josh Parsons at a public meeting last fall about their ties to election deniers, is alarmed by this landscape.
[snip].
D’Agostino and Parsons last year voted to remove Lancaster County’s only drop box for mail-in ballots, for instance, and Hopkins is concerned by local commissioners’ crusade against mail voting, which is central to Trump’s own lies about fraud. “There are a fair number of people who in the Republican Party have tried to make voting more difficult by taking away ballot drop boxes, making it more difficult to vote by mail,” he said. D’Agostino and Parsons faced no opponent in Lancaster’s Republican primary on Tuesday.
With Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Tim Scott all poised to make their long-running unofficial presidential candidacies official in the next week or so, you’d figure there isn’t a lot of room for additional dark horses in the field, particularly those not exactly in sync with the 2024 Republican Zeitgeist. Asa Hutchinson is already there for those who think the GOP needs to repudiate the 45th president’s legacy and go back to the pre-Trump Reagan-Bush orthodoxy. And to some extent all of Trump’s rivals are suggesting that sort of restoration, give or take some new culture-war savagery they want to preserve from the MAGA playbook.
Just saw an ad on TV for Iowa tourism:
This is Iowa. We just haven't been properly introduced. Say hello to the place where rolling hills meet low bills. Where our fields, inside and out, are always growing. And where the fun is just getting started. This is Iowa. So -- when are you coming to see us?
Something about it just didn't ring true to me. So I rewrote it:
This is Iowa. I'm sure you've heard of us. Say hello to the place where transgender kids meet hostility and discrimination. Where our financial support for private schools and disdain for public schools are always growing. And where the bans on abortion are just getting started. This is Iowa. So -- when are you coming to see us? If you're an immigrant who entered the US through Mexico, make it never.
Nebraska lawmakers voted on Friday to restrict access to abortion and medical care for transgender youth, after weeks of vociferous debate on two issues that have divided state legislators across the country this year.
Conservative lawmakers bundled provisions restricting access to both forms of medical treatment into a single bill in the final days of the legislative session.
The merger was done for practical reasons in Nebraska’s capital: As a result of persistent filibustering by Democrats, proponents of limits on abortion and transgender care were running out of time to push the issues through as stand-alone laws before the session ended.
Lyle Reimnitz, who lives a half-mile from a Davison County hog farm permitted for 8,000 sows, said the odors and gasses from the farm prevent him from living a normal life. He and his wife suffer from headaches and respiratory problems, they rarely sit outside or hang out laundry, and they have given up on their dream of having their daughter’s family move to the farm when her husband retires from the military.
“It doesn’t smell every day, but in the evenings, especially when the wind goes down and the humidity is high, we stay inside and keep our windows shut,” said Reimnitz. “The manure pits have gasses in them, and it gives me headaches, my eyes burn and I start coughing. My doctor said if I breathe it long enough, I will end up with respiratory problems.”
Reimnitz and others fear that if livestock confinements continue to develop rapidly in South Dakota, the state may follow the path of Iowa, the national leader in large hog farms where consistent odors, waterway pollution and fish kills have resulted from heavy CAFO development.
First grade teacher Melissa Tempel, who spoke out about Waukesha Schools' decision to ban "Rainbowland" by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton from a spring concert, said the district's superintendent has recommended she be terminated from her job.
Tempel said she was informed on Monday by superintendent James Sebert. In an email, Sebert told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Wednesday night that he was unable to comment on the personnel matter.
The recommendation is in the wake of the school's decision to ban "Rainbowland," which has caught the attention of national media outlets, a Cyrus' nonprofit, and even former President Barack Obama, who followed Tempel on Twitter shortly after she spoke out.
Tempel is currently on leave from the district after being placed on leave on April 3.
Connecting Milwaukee to Madison with a passenger rail line has long been discussed and debated at the state level. But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said last year he would not support using any state funding for a train connecting the two cities. Vos could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Even in Trump-friendly Washington County in western Pennsylvania, a leading election denier came up short in her bid for county commissioner. Ashley Duff, who used public comment sessions during county commission meetings to air conspiracy theories and won the support of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — one of the nation’s most famous election denialists — came in third place in the Republican primary with only 16 percent of the vote. That weak performance came in a county where Trump won by a landslide in 2020.