With very little support among black voters in hypothetical general election matchups against either Democratic presidential candidate, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has resorted to stealing photos of black people in an attempt to make it look like he has more black support than he actually has:
Donald Trump stole a photo from an online news article on the website of WCPO-TV, the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati, Ohio. That is extremely unethical use of social media, and it proves that fraud and deception are Trump’s modus operandi.
An article about this subject by ThinkProgress is available here.
I don’t have the “ideal male body” by most people’s standards. I’m not muscular. My belly is very big. I’m not athletic at all. I sometimes have difficulty shaving my facial hair (although I never cut myself while shaving). I dislike haircuts to the point that I let my hair get very long and shaggy before I have my hair cut. I am physically clumsy.
However, I love my body.
Would losing some weight and building some muscle make me feel better, both emotionally and physically? Yes. However, I’m more than willing to embrace my less-than-ideal body, because I am who I am, and not everybody can have what a lot of people consider to be a “perfect” body.
Unlike a lot of overweight/obese people, I’ve been fortunate to have not been fat-shamed often, however, I have been fat-shamed by a couple of people. However, I’ve seen people who weigh a lot less than I do (especially women, although I’ve seen it done to men as well) fat-shamed by others on social media.
My advice to people who have been fat-shamed is simple: Love your body!
The official Facebook page of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is actively promoting Hillary Clinton’s recently-launched presidential campaign through this photo that the DNC shared on Facebook.
While Hillary is currently the only Democrat running for president, there are five other Democrats, at least that I’m aware of, are considering runs for the Democratic presidential nomination: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb, and Martin O’Malley. As a result, it’s highly inappropriate for any organization directly affiliated with the Democratic Party to promote Hillary or, if she draws one or more primary challengers, other candidates before there’s either a presidential nominee or a presumptive presidential nominee. Promoting one candidate while other potential candidates are weighing bids is favoritism, and favoritism discourages candidates from running for public office at all levels and gives the Republicans the “machine politics” attack line against Democrats that easily turns off persuadable voters.
Additionally and to my knowledge, organizations officially connected to two state Democratic Parties, Texas and Wisconsin, have also sent out pro-Hillary social media messages upon the launch of her presidential campaign. In the case of Texas, the state Democratic Party itself sent out a pro-Hillary tweet. In the case of Wisconsin, that state’s College Democrats chapter sent out a pro-Hillary tweet.
This reminds me a lot of the Mary Burke fiasco in last year’s Wisconsin gubernatorial race that resulted in far-right Republican Scott Walker winning a second term as Governor of Wisconsin. In that race, the state Democratic leadership hand-picked Burke, a wealthy former business executive who ran on supporting a corporate agenda, to run for Governor of Wisconsin and promoted her in virtually every way possible despite the fact that two other Democrats, neither of which ran for different reasons, considered gubernatorial bids.
It’s 100% clear to me that the failed, corporate Democratic establishment hates democracy and is only interested in promoting their cronies and insiders. If you want a Democratic presidential candidate who will stand up to the Democratic establishment and fight for a more progressive America, you want Bernie Sanders to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. I hope he runs, or I’m going to be very disappointed.
From top to bottom: normal color setting, blacklight, candle, halogen light, mercury vapor light. Photos taken by webcam built into laptop computer using ManyCam free program; various lighting settings are actually various ManyCam color settings.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I use a laptop computer that runs on the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.
I recently downloaded the free version of ManyCam (you can download it here; you’ll need a webcam either built into or plugged into your computer in order to use the program), and I was experimenting with the wide array of color settings that ManyCam provides.
What I did was take five webcam selfies in a dark room, one with a normal color setting, one with a color setting designed to mimic a room lit by a single blacklight, one with a color setting designed to mimic a room lit with a single candle, one with a color setting designed to mimic a room lit by a single halogen light, and one with a color setting designed to mimic a single mercury vapor light. You can see the results on the right side of this blog post.
I got the various RGB color codes for each of the lighting settings from this webpage. However, since the ManyCam color settings, located in the image tab at the bottom of the program window, utilize a set of four sliders (saturation, red, green, and blue) to adjust the color of the picture and doesn’t allow for entering RGB codes in order to adjust the color, I set the saturation to default by clicking the three-colored symbol to the left of the top-most of the four color sliders in the bottom right corner of the program window (if the four color sliders don’t appear, click the “image” tab on the left-hand side of the program window about two-thirds of the way down from the top of the window, and they should appear in the bottom right corner of the window), I made sure that the red, green, and blue sliders (each of these are marked with a small circle of the respective color to the left of the slider), are set to default (in order to check this, click the little circles to the left of the sliders). Next, I clicked on the “text” tab that is located four tabs to the right of the image tab and unchecked the “show ManyCam logo” (if this is already unchecked, leave it unchecked). Next, I set the photo/video option to photo (this is located immediately below the left-hand side of the webcam preview display located on the left-hand side of the page below the video/effects/gallery tabs, the photo button is to the right of a slider with a video button on the left end and a photo button on the right end) Next, I clicked the “image” tab again in order to display the color settings, which should appear in the bottom right part of the program window.
I then took a picture with the default color settings (in order to take a picture, click the big snapshot button immediately below the center of the webcam preview window). Next, I adjusted the color sliders to approximate a blacklight setting (the RGB code for that is 167, 0, 255, so I kept the blue slider at the default value, set the green slider as far left as it will go, and set the red slider approximately 65% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position), and then took a picture. Next, I reset the color sliders to their defaults, and then adjusted the settings to approximate a candle setting (the RGB code for that is 255, 147, 41, so I kept the red slider at the default value, set the green slider approximately 58% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position, and set the blue slider approximately 16% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position), and then took a picture. Next, I reset the color sliders to their defaults another time, and then adjusted the settings to approximate a halogen light setting (the RGB code for that is 255, 241, 224, so I kept the red slider at the default value, set the green slider to approximately 95% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position, and set the blue slider to approximately 88% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position), and then took a picture. Finally, I reset the color sliders to their defaults one more time, then adjusted the settings to approximate a mercury vapor light setting (the RGB code for that is 216, 247, 255, so I kept the blue slier at the default value, set the green slider to approximately 97% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position, and set the red slider to approximately 85% of the way between the left-most slider position and the default slider position), and then took a picture.
Coca-Cola bills itself as “The Official Soft Drink of NASCAR” and has provided sponsorship to several drivers who race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the top level of NASCAR-sanctioned automobile racing, although they’re not the primary sponsor of any Sprint Cup team.
As part of its partnership with NASCAR and several of its top drivers, Coca-Cola maintains a Twitter account designed to market Coke to NASCAR fans, using the handle @CocaColaRacing. However, whoever operates the Coca-Cola Racing Twitter page sucks at marketing.
Coca-Cola Racing tweeted two photos of NASCAR driver Joey Logano, one of several drivers sponsored by Coca-Cola, celebrating his win in the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee in August of this year. The right-side photo shows Logano with no Coke bottle whatsoever (although a Coca-Cola patch on his racing suit is visible), and the left-side photo shows Logano with a Coke bottle that is nearly empty. Additionally, if you were to click on both photos to view the full photos, you’ll find that the two photos are the same exact picture, with Logano holding a near-empty Coke bottle in his left hand (right side from the viewer’s perspective), the only difference being that the photo is cropped slightly differently in the left side photo in the tweet than the right side photo.
It’s not anywhere near as bad as their infamous marketing fail from nearly three decades ago, but, for Coca-Cola to market itself by depicting someone holding a near-empty container of their flagship product is a big fail on their part.
The Progressive Midwesterner 