They All Look Alike? Really?

In touting an endorsement by Jasmine Crockett, who is a Texas Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman and Senate candidate, of a California Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Congress, California Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva (D) used this imagery.

To the vast majority of us, it’s plain that the image labeled Jasmine Crockett is not an image of Crockett. There’s not even a hint of resemblance, other than that it’s an image of a black woman. And it was offered by a liberal white woman* in typical white female liberal savior fashion. That Quirk-Silva didn’t even recognize her “mistake” until queried by Fox News is instructive.

It is possible that this…error…didn’t flow from any “all blacks look alike” racism. Maybe it flowed, instead, from the “all blacks are politically monolithic so any black image will do” racism.

*To clarify, based on Quirk-Silva’s name: born Sharon D Howard, she acquired her family name from her first marriage to Shawn Quirk and, following divorce, her current marriage to Jesus Silva. Her decision to hyphenate on her two married names is her own.

Drug Mistake

President Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that reclassified marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug (highly dangerous and tightly controlled) to a Schedule 3 drug (not so dangerous, not so tightly controlled, but still illegal at the Federal level.

This is a mistake.

Leave aside all the dangers of modern-day marijuana or its unproven medical uses (multiple studies conflict with each other on the effectivity of a variety of constituent chemicals).

If the purpose really was to improve access for research (to, among other things, address those medical uses and those dangers), there was a simpler way to do that. Schedule 1 drugs are, in fact, deucedly difficult to obtain, even for researchers. However, that could have been addressed by setting up a licensing facility that would ease access to marijuana by approved laboratories and approved researchers working in those laboratories specifically on marijuana research.

It still can be. Trump’s EO can be rescinded, and that licensing facility still can be stood up.