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February is Black History month. part of that history is learning how disgracefully Blacks were treated even after the American Civil War. This is the sad history of Ota Benga who was born sometime in 1883 in the rain forest of the Congo, long after slavery was ended in the United States.

Ota Benga (c. 1883 – March 20, 1916) was a Mbuti (Congo pygmy) man, known for being featured in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from African slave traders by the explorer Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who took him to the United States. While at the Bronx Zoo, Benga was allowed to walk the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo’s Monkey House. Except for a brief visit to Africa with Verner after the close of the St. Louis Fair, Benga lived in the United States, mostly in Virginia, for the rest of his life.

African-American newspapers around the nation published editorials strongly opposing Benga’s treatment. Robert Stuart MacArthur, spokesman for a delegation of black churches, petitioned New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. for his release from the Bronx Zoo. In late 1906, the mayor released Benga to the custody of James M. Gordon, who supervised the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

In 1910 Gordon arranged for Benga to be cared for in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he paid for his clothes and to have his sharpened teeth capped. This would enable Benga to be more readily accepted in local society. Benga was tutored in English and began to work at a Lynchburg tobacco factory. [..]

In 1914, when World War I broke out, a return to the Congo became impossible as passenger ship traffic ended. Benga became depressed as his hopes for a return to his homeland faded. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32 or 33, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, and shot himself in the heart with a borrowed pistol.

He was buried in an unmarked grave in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, the remains of both men went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Hill Cemetery, a burial ground that later fell into disrepair. Benga received a historic marker in Lynchburg in 2017.

Phillips Verner Bradford, the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, wrote a book on the Mbuti man, entitled Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (1992). During his research for the book, Bradford visited the American Museum of Natural History, which holds a life mask and body cast of Ota Benga. The display is still labeled “Pygmy”, rather than indicating Benga’s name, despite objections beginning a century ago from Verner and repeated by others.

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The Breakfast Club (Look Within)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

The Beatles appear on TV’s ‘Ed Sullivan’; Sen. Joseph McCarthy launches his anti-communist crusade; World War II’s Battle of Guadalcanal ends; Soviet leader Yuri Andropov dies; author Alice Walker born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

Bob Marley

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Late Night Today

Late Night Today is for our readers who can’t stay awake to watch the shows. Everyone deserves a good laugh.

Saturday Night Live

Super Bowl Pre-game Show Cold Open

James “No, Not That One” Brown (Kenan Thompson) interviews Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid (Aidy Bryant) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians (Aidy Bryant) during the NFL Super Bowl Pre-game show.

center>Weekend Update: TwinsTheNewTrend on Songs They’ve Never Heard Before

TwinsTheNewTrend (Kenan Thompson, Chris Redd) stop by to react to some music they’ve never heard before.

Weekend Update: Lowell Fitzroy and Janet Noonan on Cancel Culture

Lowell Fitzroy (Mikey Day) and Janet Noonan (Heidi Gardner) stop by Weekend Update to talk about some children they cancelled.

Weekend Update: Biden’s Stimulus Plan

Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like Mitch McConnell criticizing Marjorie Taylor Greene for her extreme conspiracy theories.

Weekend Update: Morgan Wallen Video & Super Bowl Bets

Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like a man building a backyard rollercoaster for his children.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Rowdy Friends, Please Stay Home This Year

Bonus points if you find a way to eat the entire chicken wing mountain before the game ends.

Famous Films And The NFL Come Together For Stephen’s Super Bowl Special Monologue

Stephen Colbert loved every minute of Super Bowl LV, but he thinks the player introductions would have been more entertaining if award-winning directors took over. Watch the monologue from Stephen Colbert’s special post-Super Bowl monologue now!

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Fighting Covid Is Like Fighting a War

Why Biden needs to go big and ignore the worriers.

There has been some pushback from progressive pundits — most notably Larry Summers, but he’s not alone — against President Biden’s proposal for a very large Covid relief package. Before I get into the reasons I believe this pushback is misguided, let me say that it’s refreshing to discuss good-faith criticism coming from people who actually have some idea what they’re talking about, as opposed to the cynical, know-nothing obstructionism that has become the Republican norm.

Nonetheless, the critics are wrong. No, the Biden plan isn’t too big. While the pundits’ concern that the size of the package might produce some economic stresses isn’t silly, it’s probably overwrought. And they have the implications of an expansive plan for the future completely backward: Going big now will enhance, not reduce, our ability to do more later.

To see where the criticism goes wrong, we first need to be clear about what the Biden administration and its allies in Congress are trying to accomplish.

Right from the beginning some of us tried to explain that the pandemic slump isn’t a conventional recession, and the required policy response isn’t conventional stimulus. What we’re dealing with is more like a natural disaster than a normal recession, and the appropriate policy response is mainly a kind of disaster relief.

After all these months, however, this remains a peculiarly hard point to get across; even some sophisticated economists sometimes fall into the trap of assessing policy in traditional stimulus terms.

Charles M. Blow: A Holistic View of Vaccine Hesitancy

From the perspective of Black people, particularly many young ones, the government is not to be trusted.

I recently had a conversation with a younger friend of mine — a Black man in his 30s here in Atlanta — about whether I was going to get the Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available to me and whether I should.

My answer was clear: Absolutely.

So was his: Absolutely not. At least not yet, not until he was able to see over a longer period of time how others responded to it. In fact, he was somewhat astonished that I was eager to be vaccinated, treating it as a gullibility or naïveté on my part.

It wasn’t necessarily that he didn’t trust vaccines, it was that he didn’t trust the government that was pushing it. This mistrust, I believe, is an underappreciated part of vaccine hesitancy, particularly among younger Black people.

It is now a well-established fact that Black people are getting the vaccine less than their white counterparts and also express more doubt about it. But those numbers are more complicated than the top-line takeaways might suggest.

Jennifer Senior: The Women Who Paved the Way for Marjorie Taylor Greene

She’s the latest descendant in a lineage of Republican women who embrace a boffo radicalism.

When I was coming of age as a journalist, it was an article of faith — and political science — that female Republican politicians subdued their party’s excesses. It was a measurable phenomenon, even: Republican women voted to the left of their male counterparts in Congress.

But as the G.O.P. began to radicalize, becoming not just a small-government party but an anti-government party — a government delegitimization party — this taming effect ceased to be. Moderates of both sexes cleared out of the building. A new swarm of firebrands rushed in. Not only did female Republican elected officials become every bit as conservative as their male counterparts; they began, in some cases, to personify the party’s most outlandish tendencies.

This is the thought I keep returning to when I think about Marjorie Taylor Greene: That there is something depressingly familiar about her. She’s the latest descendant in a lineage of Republican women who embrace a boffo radicalism, who delight in making trouble and in causing offense.

Amanda Marcotte: Republican Senators aren’t beholden to their base — they’ll acquit Trump because they agree with him

Republicans who claim they want to “move on” are lying, since the best way to do that is bar Trump from running

‘Tis the night before his second impeachment trial, and all through the Senate, cowardly Republicans are still grasping for some way to let Donald Trump off the hook while not looking complicit in his attempt to violently overthrow the government by sending a fascist crowd to storm the Capitol. (Hint: It’s impossible.) So Republicans are reaching for their most potent weapon in the battle to convince the D.C. cocktail party circuit that they’re still respectable statesmen: the welcoming arms of Politico, the beltway media outlet always willing to lend a sympathetic ear to pathetic excuses and amplify the silliest of GOP spin in the name of neutrality.

“Where Democrats and Republicans agree on Trump,” read a Monday morning headline at Politico. “Both parties want to be rid of him. They just differ on the means.”

Even without reading the full piece, one can tell this is hoary nonsense, as even the conventional wisdom holds that Republicans always make it a point to disagree with Democrats, even on basic questions of fact. “Always be ‘triggering‘ the liberals” has eclipsed any actual ideology as their main organizing principle. Still, we here at Salon buck the trends popularized by social media and make a point to actually read an article we deign to comment on. In this case, however, it does not improve the situation.

“Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in as many years has Democrats and Republicans in rare agreement: Most senators want to get it over with, and they want the former president to go away,” writes Andrew Desiderio.

Cartnoon

Famous Films And The NFL Come Together For Stephen’s Super Bowl Special Monologue

Stephen Colbert loved every minute of Super Bowl LV, but he thinks the player introductions would have been more entertaining if award-winning directors took over. Watch the monologue from Stephen Colbert’s special post-Super Bowl monologue now!

TMC for ek hornbeck

The Breakfast Club (The Same House)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Funeral of Jordan’s King Hussein; Premiere of ‘The Birth of a Nation’; a South Carolina civil rights protest turns deadly; the Boy Scouts of America is incorporated; actor James Dean born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

We all live in the same house, we all must be part of the effort to hold down our little house. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just… do something about it. Say something. Have the courage. Have the backbone. Get in the way. Walk with the wind. It’s all going to work out.

John Lewis

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Super Bowl LV

Just as last Monday’s almost a blizzard two and a half feet of snow started to get that greyish “been here too long” look, Stars Hollow has gotten a fresh coat of the cold white stuff. Not as much as last week but enough for the town to get out the plow guy. He does a good job on the steep hills in my part of this berg, on that I can’t complain. But, as they say, whoever “they” are, I’m digressing. So, let’s get on to the subject of this missive Super Bowl LV, that’s 55 for those not literate in Latin. Ego Latinam dictum . I took 4 years in high school and at one time spoke it fluently. It was only useful when I needed to converse with my Latin teacher. Yes, I’m an over achieving polyglot and always got an “A”. Anyway, back to “Throw the Damn Ball.”

This year’s spectacle is between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with former Patriots’ (ek hornbeck hated them) MAGAman Tom Brady and the almost equally despised Kansas City (MO) Chiefs with their youngster quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. You don’t hear too much about Mahomes in the news because it’s been all about cheater Brady in his 10th Super Bowl at age 43 which is long in the tooth for just about any professional athlete.

I’m truly disappointed that neither the Buffalo Bills (the only NY team that play IN NY) or the Green Bay Packers are in the game. Just as an aside, the Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rogers announced he is staying with the team for another season. He also was named NFL’s 2020 MVP and announced his engagement to Ms. Shailene Woodley. At 37, Rogers was them most “never married” bachelor around, now he’s off that playing field, maybe.

I can’t which team I’m rooting for since I hate them both just about equally: the Bucs because, well, Brady and Floriduh; the Chiefs because they continue to insult Native Americans with their racist chant and logo. The Chiefs are seeking to repeat last year’s SB LIV win and keep the Bucs from being the first franchise to win a Super Bowl on its home turf. I suppose I’ll support the Chiefs because I really loath Brady.

The game is being played in Raymond James Stadium, or “Ray Jay” stadium as the locals call it, an open air stadium with just 25,000 of its 65,890 seats occupied by guests and first responders. The weather is forecast to be cool (mid 60’s) and breezy which is a blessing since last night there was a tornado watch for the city which was lifted early this morning.

This year the game is on CBS and CBS Sports channel on cable. Pre-game babble and ceremonies start at 6 PM ET with kickoff at 6:30.

The halftime show will start about 8 PM because it takes over 2 hours for them to get through 30 minutes of actual play with all the interruptions due to time outs, flags on plays, injuries and, lest they be forgotten, the highlights of the Super Bowl games, the commercials. Sorry but this year there is no new Budweiser commercial, nope no horses and no showdown between Coke and Pepsi. The half time show will not be on the field this year, either, it will be in the stands thus eliminating the mob scene on the field during a pandemic. Sensible.. Canadian artist The Weeknd will be the guest star, real name Abel Tesfaye, who has won three Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards and nine Billboard Music Awards. Super Bowl halftime performers do not get paid. The NFL does cover the cost of the performance.

The national anthem will be sung by Grammy-nominated artists Jazmine Sullivan and Eric Church. Nothing can top Whitney Houston’s or Lady Gaga’s performance of the anthem, ever.

And now a word from ek hornbeck from 2019:

Let’s get this out of the way first. There is <i.no team in the NFL I despise more than the Patsies, not even the ‘Boys. So my rooting is entirely with the Scams despite the fact they stole the Super Bowl from the ‘Aints (who are at least tolerable) through bad officiating.</i.

And the NFL as an Institution is nothing more than a Blackface Minstrel Show where the only real thing is the Traumatic Brain Injury Owners inflict on their Slaves.

This has become a secular holiday and a corrupt display of late stage capitalism through relentless marketing. Only the naked advertisements will hold my attention as I find Throwball in general intensely soporific (also Football, give me some Curling or Darts).

So Let’s Play Ball!! Oh, wait, that’s baseball, isn’t it?

TMC for ek hornbeck

Up Date: Once again comments are not visible. WordPress was supposed to have resolved this issue, obviously they didn’t. Limited commentary will be below the fold.

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Puppy Bowl XVII

Woof! Once again it’s snowing in Stars Hollow, not as much as last week but enough that we need to put on the snow boots and get out the shovels and ice melt. So, while the snow is falling, we can all sit around the TV with hot chocolate and watch the yearly spectacle of cuteness – Puppy Bowl XVII.

If the snacks can’t get you through Super Bowl Sunday, maybe 70 puppies playing football can.

It’s the Puppy Bowl time.
And even though so many beloved events have been canceled in the past year, Puppy Bowl XVII is very much on.
With 70 puppies from 22 different shelters, Sunday’s event will pit Team Ruff against Team Fluff in a canine football match for a common goal: To be adopted.
Here’s what you need to know.
Don’t be phased by the roman numerals. This is Puppy Bowl no. 17, the latest in a tradition that began in 2005.
Pups are split up into two teams and placed in a canine-sized football stadium to compete for “touchdowns,” but there’s also a national anthem performance, a halftime show, play-by-play commentary and a “rufferee.”
The winning team captain gets a “Chewy Lombarky Trophy,” but really, all the dogs win.
For the past 16 events, 100% of the puppies and kittens featured were adopted. (Yes, there are kittens — more on that later.)
The Puppy Bowl is all about celebrating adoptable pups and the shelters and staff who help them.
This year’s Puppy Bowl features dogs from nine Northeastern states.
You’ll meet Marshall, a deaf Boston Terrier mix training to be a therapy dog for Covid-19 nurses.
You’ll learn about Mona, a 10-year-old Toy Poodle mix from Los Angeles who takes reiki healing sessions.
You’ll see five special needs players and four hearing impaired pups, including Jett, a double front amputee Labrador mix who loves to scamper in the countryside.
And all of these players will be cheered for on the sidelines for the very first time by puppy cheerleaders, Animal Planet said in a statement.
It’s not just for puppies, the kittens get their turn, too.
This year’s event has special guests: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and First Dogs, Champ and Major.
Also, longtime friends and animal lovers Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg will be hosting with Dan Schachner as the game’s “rufferee.” Celebrating 10 years of “rufferee”-ing for the Puppy Bowl, Schachner will call puppy penalties, ruff-housing and touchdowns.
And now a word from ek hornbeck that was posted in last years bowl:

Some people are under the impression I don’t like dogs which is not at all true. Most of them like me too though there is this one, Luna, that my activist brother occasionally has to look after that barks every time she sees me.

She has abandonment issues due to mistreatment and my lifestyle, which consists mostly of cursing at the computer and wandering to the refrigerator at odd intervals for food, means I’m only available intermittently for emotional bonding and that’s what dogs want, all the time.

Take your neediest girlfriend ever, triple it, and that’s what Dogs are like. Yeah they’re also a pain in the ass in other ways, you have to walk them for one, but that excited door bouncing is not just, “I need to pee.” Dogs genuinely like their humans and miss you when you’re away.

And if that’s the kind of experience you’re looking for (along with the knowledge they’ll be dead in 15 years despite your best efforts and all your money) then you should have one. Emily has deeply regretted it ever since her last one died, yet I can’t persuade her to just get another one. Our pets tend to find us, we don’t go looking for them.

We also go for hyper imaginative names like “Terry” for a Terrier and “Dally” for a Dalmatian. Yep, we have a lot of fun in Stars Hollow but to make up for it the Winters are long, dark, and cold. Now walk that damn dog before they pee on the carpet.

In truth we set up a dog run which is what you do when you don’t want to strap a Taser to your dog’s neck and opt for the more civilized solution of wrapping them in chains. It’s still there, vacant, and I can never mow that part of the lawn without checking my shoes.

I could certainly make Luna love me, or at least obey me, because I know all the Caesar Milan tricks, but the question is how committed am I to that relationship? She’s not my dog, or even my brother’s, simply a stranger who sleeps over every so often.

Perhaps she senses that and it’s the source of her discontent.

The other things you should know about dogs is they like to play, practically all the time unless they’re sleeping in which case they make good footrests and bed warmers if you can stand the hair and dander. They can do amusing stuff like chase non-existent Tennis Balls but I think that a cruel trick. You can dress them in costumes and they don’t seem to mind, unlike Cats where there is always this seething resentment. Of course Cats pretty much resent everything (not unlike a teenager) which is why I like them. You don’t have to walk them either which is bonus.

Alas I am completely pet free at the moment but when I consider my sketchy attention to details perhaps it is for the best.

Puppy Bowl  is on the Animal Planet channel and repeats throughout the day until 2 AM ET.
TMC for ek hornbeck

Cartnoon

How Republicans Lie About The Minimum Wage – SOME MORE NEWS

(And Democrats – BK)

Hi. Here’s a News about the Minimum Wage, Rand Paul, and the ghouls of the Republican Party. It’s also about Tiger King.

BobbyK for ek hornbeck

The Breakfast Club (Berries)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club!

AP’s Today in History for February 7th

The Beatles arrive in America; Ramzi Yousef arrested for the 1993 blast at New York’s World Trade Center; Jordan’s King Hussein dies; Author Charles Dickens and Country music star Garth Brooks are born.

Breakfast Tune Shine On You Crazy Diamond- Pink Floyd – Banjo Cover

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

Something to think about over coffee prozac

QAnon Fears That Greene’s Obsession with Jewish Space Lasers Is Distracting Her from Battling Baby-Eating Cannibals
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