Free Republic

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) stated that Republicans on the Judiciary Committee attacked Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for being “a black woman representing poor people” and that these statements, along with criticism of her record on sex crimes could be called “dog whistles.” Hirono said that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has voted to confirm judges with similar sentencing records to Jackson’s and “that’s why I brought it up, and that’s why I asked Judge Jackson, do you think that these judges who have been sentencing along the...

On Monday’s broadcast of “MSNBC Live,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison argued that Democrats have to “call the lies out” on culture war issues and Republicans “understand that the only path to power for them is to make the American people scared, to come up with all of the dog whistles and the boogeymen and all of that.” Host Stephanie Ruhle asked, “Do you need to start addressing more of these culture war issues head-on? Until now, I often hear, this is misinformation, this is nonsense, which it absolutely is. However, this misinformation and nonsense is impacting how people vote. Do...

In at least 80 cultures worldwide, people have developed whistled versions of the local language when the circumstances call for it. To linguists...hope to learn more about how our brains extract meaning from the complex sound patterns of speech. Whistling may even provide a glimpse of...the origin of language itself. Whistled languages are almost always developed by traditional cultures that live in rugged, mountainous terrain or in dense forest. That’s because whistled speech carries much farther than ordinary speech or shouting, says Julien Meyer... a linguist and bioacoustician at CNRS, the French national research center, who explores the topic of...

17 November, 2020 - 19:43 lizleafloorAztec Death Whistles Sound like Human Screams and May Have Been Used as Psychological WarfareRead Later PrintWhen odd, skull-shaped grave items were found by archaeologists decades ago at an Aztec temple in Mexico, they were assumed to be mere toys or ornaments, and were catalogued and stored in warehouses. However, years later, experts discovered they were creepy ‘death whistles’ that made piercing noises resembling a human scream, which the ancient Aztecs may have used during ceremonies, sacrifices, or during battles to strike fear into their enemies. The Aztec Death Whistles were Not Common Instruments Two...

Ivanka Trump talked about the current and future state of the U.S. workforce at CES — an appearance that was met with a fair amount of enthusiasm among the tech-industry attendees. In a keynote session Tuesday at CES in Las Vegas, the daughter of and adviser to President Donald Trump said the administration has worked to put in place multiple programs to retrain American workers and is looking for new ways to bring people into the workforce.................. .......She walked onto the stage at the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom to applause and even some cheers and whistles. The room was packed well...

Mexico City’s Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera is handing out plastic whistles. A half-million of them. At three bucks a pop, he’s hoping that women will use the whistles to scare off harassers on the packed public transportation system. When the plan was announced this summer, it received a flurry of scathing criticism and mocking memes on social media. But city officials are moving forward and have been handing out the whistles by the thousands at subway and bus stops. […] So far, the critics of the whistle plan have been making the most noise. Since he began handing out the...

Harold M. Ickes never forgets a favor, especially if he's the one who did the favor. So the veteran political operative made sure that, when the time was right, he alone would call Garry Shay, former chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party... And once Ickes started calling, he didn't stop until Shay said the words Ickes wanted to hear -- that he would support Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August... the man in charge of Clinton's feverish effort to lock up superdelegates is Ickes, whose enthusiasm for...

California auditors uncovered state employees submitting false expense reports, sleeping on the job, getting paid for unperformed work and living rent-free on state property, according to a report released Tuesday. In the state's latest semi-annual report on whistle-blower complaints, the Bureau of State Audits pinpointed at least eight cases of employee or agency misconduct between July and December of last year, costing the state $250,000 or more. The bureau has seen a sharp increase in complaints since 2002, when a law took effect requiring state agencies to notify employees about California's whistle-blower hotline. "It's very helpful because there have been...