Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Kit is a gonzo journalist from Austin, Texas.
Posted in Archive, Journalism, and Lee Camp
Inside the North Carolina House, protesters chanted as police arrested them one by one.
For the second day in a row, the chambers were cleared and the public was banned from viewing a legislative coup in progress.
The North Carolina GOP, facing the defeat of incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory on November 8, are doing everything they can to hold onto power, even if it means literally rewriting state law.
Posted in Act Out!, Austin, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video
Whenever you talk about terrible things happening in Texas, people start to tune out. You’re thinking, of course it’s fucking awful, it’s Texas. Why don’t we let them secede already?
It’s true, Texas politics seem like what happens when you apply dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” as an instruction manual BUT everything that happens there is a test balloon. The University of Texas at Austin motto is “what starts here changes the world.” And with most states and the U.S. Congress united behind that shit stain Trump, you can bet we’ll all be eating the same shit-filled Texas chili soon enough.
Now, the Texas government is full of low-life scum, but due to the peculiar whims of Texas politics, the Lt. Governor is a scumbag who stands above all the rest. The Lt. Governor is not just president of the state senate, but also sets the agenda for the entire legislative session. The senators and reps have a lot of politics to get through in a short amount of time, because the Texas State legislature only meets for 140 days every other year. Lemme say that again but slower: A hundred and 40 days EVERY OTHER year. The rest of the time, that massive building is just a big pink tourist trap.
Posted in Journalism, and Lee Camp
Until recently, cops in Denver were confiscating life-saving equipment like sleeping bags and tents from area homeless people.
On Saturday, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock promised to let the homeless keep their tents and blankets during cold weather months. An upcoming “polar vortex” is expected to usher in dangerously cold, below-zero temperatures in Denver.
“As a city, we have a responsibility and moral obligation to protect the lives of our residents,” Hancock said in a statement quoted by the Denver Post.
This freshly minted “moral obligation” to not kill homeless people in the winter came only after a local outcry and widespread condemnation of the policy on social media.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, is spearheading a bipartisan effort to force the United States to stop arming extremist groups in Syria.
The bill, known as the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, would make it illegal for U.S. funds to be spent in ways that directly or indirectly support terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly known in the West as ISIS or ISIL).
“The bill singles out ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the ‘rebranded’ version of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front) and forbids support to them, their allies,” Jason Ditz reported for Antiwar.com on Thursday.
Gabbard is a distinguished veteran of the Hawaii Army National Guard who has served in the Middle East. In the House, she serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced Rick Perry, the avowed climate change denier and former governor of Texas, is headed to the White House as the president-elect’s pick to head the Department of Energy.
While Perry actually helped turn Texas into a leader in wind power generation, the name of the department he’s been tapped to head eluded the governor in a now infamous incident at a 2011 Republican presidential debate during the first of his two unsuccessful bids for president.
He was attempting to name three federal departments he would dismantle if elected, including the Departments of Education and Commerce, but stumbled when he seemed to confuse the Department of Energy with the Environmental Protection Agency:
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Speaking to the Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Oslo, Norway, Henry Kissinger shared his hopes for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
“Before postulating an inevitable crisis, an opportunity should be given to the new administration to put forward its vision of international order,” Kissinger said in the speech on Sunday.
Kissinger, whose career includes service as a diplomat, U.S. secretary of state, and national security advisor under multiple presidential administrations, acknowledged Trump’s unusual and divisive campaign:
