Tag archive: Black

TN members

Tennessee Turmoil

On 6 April 2023, the lower chamber of the Tennessee State House took an unprecedented step – voting on the expulsion of three members who had violated floor protocols by joining an anti-gun demonstration during a lag in official proceedings.  State representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson briefly took a bullhorn to the well of the House to express solidarity and support for hundreds of students and others who had come to protest lax gun laws in the Volunteer State, in the wake of a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville the week before, that had left six dead, including three nine-year-olds.

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AN may20 cover

Asteroid Casefiles: Saturn Station Fallout

Recent pronouncements by 2020 presidential election contenders and a personal run-in with potential disaster sent me scrambling for the ephemeris lately, and while having that knowledge in hindsight didn’t change the reality, at least there was some comfort in confirming the timing of the cosmos is always perfect.

 

In all four instances, Saturn seems to have been a mover and shaker of the events, and with the planet of authority, restriction, limitation, career and status currently at station, that’s not surprising.  Saturn turned retrograde on May 11th, but has been energizing its station degree of 1 Aquarius since April 7, and will continue to do so until June 15, affording two months of saturnine shenanigans while it slows, changes direction, and picks up speed again.  So Saturn themes are emphasized throughout the period, which has also witnessed the height of the US death toll from coronavirus (about to top 100,000), with Saturn acknowledged by the ancients as Lord of Death.

 

Saturn also rules chief executives and the presidency, which is the chief focus of this article.  In particular, we’ll look at two statements from presidential candidate Donald Trump and one from rival Joe Biden, all of which garnered heightened attention or controversy.

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TRac cover

Trump the Racist: An Asteroid Indictment

“I am the least racist person that you have ever met,” – candidate Donald J. Trump, interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, 9 December 2015

 

Donald Trump’s gift for hyperbole and unwitting comic self-commentary may be encapsulated in this quote, given just after the GOP presidential candidate had called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the US in 2015. Trump had kicked off his campaign months earlier with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants, whom he characterized as “criminals and rapists.” I guess the kindergarten taunt “takes one to know one” would be appropriate here, given Trump’s penchant for projection and schoolyard bully tactics.

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VA2 flag cover

Virginia Vicissitudes: Northam & Fairfax (Oh, yeah, and Herring & Norment, too)

The first weekend of February 2019 wreaked havoc in the executive branch of the Commonwealth of Virginia. On Friday the 1st, the Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s moral authority to govern was blown to smithereens by the release of a Medical School yearbook photo purporting to depict him in blackface, standing next to a hooded KKK clansman figure. At first, Northam admitted his fault, later retracting this admission, but copping to a “lesser charge” of having worn blackface during the same time period, when impersonating Michael Jackson in a dance competition. He was only dissuaded from demonstrating his version of Jackson’s trademark “Moonwalk” at a press conference by his considerably more level-headed wife, who whispered to him that these were “inappropriate circumstances” for such a performance.

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