Elon Musk plans to reinstate nearly all previously banned Twitter accounts — to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.
After posting a Twitter poll asking, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” in which 72.4 percent of the respondents voted yes, Musk declared, “Amnesty begins next week.”
The Twitter CEO did not respond Thursday to a request for comment from The Washington Post. The poll garnered more than 3 million votes
The mass return of users who had been banned for such offenses as violent threats, harassment and misinformation will have a significant impact on the platform, experts said. And many questioned how such a resurrection would be handled, given that it’s unclear what Musk means by “egregious spam” and the difficulty of separating out users who have “broken the law,” which vary widely by jurisdiction and country.
“Apple and Google need to seriously start exploring booting Twitter off the app store,” said Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s cyberlaw clinic. “What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities. It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause. People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence. I can’t even begin to state how dangerous this will be.”
Manic Monday Reads: This is America
Posted: November 28, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: Gaslighting, Republican pervs, sex trafficking 12 Comments
: Claude Monet, Jean Monet on his Hobby Horse, 1872
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The GOP is the party of projection. They gaslight us all the time. It’s not all that ironic that I got to use Merriam-Webster’s word of the year at the top of this post, as reported by PBS Nightly News. You’ll see my point soon enough.
“Gaslighting” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740 percent in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.
The gaslighting was pervasive.
“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s unveiling.
“It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year,” he said.
There were deepfakes and the dark web. There were deep states and fake news. And there was a whole lot of trolling.
Merriam-Webster’s top definition for gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”
More broadly, the dictionary defines the word thusly: “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”
Gaslighting is a heinous tool frequently used by abusers in relationships — and by politicians and other newsmakers. It can happen between romantic partners, within a broader family unit and among friends. It can be a corporate tactic, or a way to mislead the public. There’s also “medical gaslighting,” when a health care professional dismisses a patient’s symptoms or illness as “all in your head.”
Despite its relatively recent prominence — including “Gaslighter,” The Chicks’ 2020 album featuring the rousingly angry titular single — the word was brought to life more than 80 years ago with “Gas Light,” a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.
Paul Gauguin, Clovis, 1886
It’s also a great movie from 1944.
Gas light is a 1944 American psychological thriller film directed by George Cukor, and starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury in her film debut. Adapted by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston from Patrick Hamilton‘s play Gas Light (1938), it follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is descending into insanity.
We lost the late great Angela Lansbury this year on October 11th. I loved her in The Manchurian Candidate, which is also apropos viewing to accompany the last few years. It was filmed in 1962, But Gaslight was filmed during the same period that Rachel Maddow’s Ultra covered when many Republicans in the country became enamored with Hitler. Everything old becomes new again.
One of the strangest narratives and most deadly that Right Wing Republicans have come up with is that the Democratic party is rampant with “groomers” and pedophiles. This has primarily been used to attack the GLBTX community and to suggest anything that talks to the love that dares not speak its name focuses on children. This conspiracy really took off a right-wing conspiracy disinformation campaign, #PizzaGate. It has its own hashtag and just never goes away. Here’s a little review of its relevance from the SPLC. “‘There’s nothing you can do’: The Legacy of #PizzaGate.” The story is from last year.
The Washington City Paper, a small D.C. outlet, ran a story called “Alt Right Conspiracy Theorists Obsess Over Comet Ping Pong” on Nov. 6, 2016. A phone call requesting comment for the article marks the moment that restaurateur James Alefantis’ life changed.
The online disinformation campaign now known as #Pizzagate, which extremists blasted into mainstream visibility on such sites as Twitter and Reddit, targeted Alefantis with a storm of harassment and lies, falsely suggesting that liberal elites abused children in the basement of his pizza restaurant. The #Pizzagate fable ultimately inspired a man to drive across state lines from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., to “save” fictitious victims. He fired a gun inside Comet Ping Pong in December 2016, when the restaurant was full of families eating lunch. Trolls continue to target Alefantis and his staff with harassment even now, as the event approaches its fifth anniversary.
Researchers of the far right still talk about #Pizzagate, but for different reasons: #Pizzagate influenced the politically charged disinformation campaigns that followed it in significant, often underreported ways. #Pizzagate helped birth the sprawling, pro-Trump conspiracy #QAnon, which in turn led to a number of violent crimes. #Pizzagate represents a watershed moment for Trump-era extremists, and its popularity united such figures as the actress Rosanne Barr with open neo-Nazis and, potentially, the Russian government. It can be viewed as a forerunner to the so-called Big Lie, wherein millions of Americans falsely came to believe that former President Trump won reelection in 2020 but liberal elites colluded to change the outcome.
Hatewatch published a detailed analysis of Twitter’s enabling of the far right on July 7. The analysis frequently references #Pizzagate due to the degree to which once-obscure extremists who pushed those lies went on to achieve fame on the website without ever facing consequences for their actions. Hard-right disinformation peddlers such as Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks, who hyped #Pizzagate on Twitter, also later used the site to push lies about the 2020 election in the runup to the violent insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. Twitter has enabled these figures for years and even recommended to readers Posobiec’s misleading content about the trial of Derek Chauvin, despite the sensitivity around the trial and his connections to the white supremacist movement.
“Madame Monet and Child” Claude Monet, 1875
A renewed moral panic, stoked by the far right and trickling into mainstream conservatism, has come on the heels of an abrupt shift in the fight for gay rights in America. Following the recent passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and a wave of other homophobic and transphobic legislation throughout the country, current right-wing rhetoric has focused on accusations of “grooming.” The term — which describes the actions an adult takes to make a child vulnerable to sexual abuse — is taking on a conspiracy-theory tone as conservatives use it to imply that the LGBTQ community, their allies, and liberals more generally are pedophiles or pedophile-enablers.
Attempting to reframe the controversial Florida law, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw described it as “the Anti-Grooming Bill” in early March, tweeting that if you’re against it, “you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Those familiar with QAnon will recognize this bizarre leap in logic. Pushaw adopted language that QAnon conspiracy theory believers and the related #SaveTheChildren crusaders have used to imply that liberals are, if not pedophiles themselves, advocates of pedophilia.
This rhetoric has long existed among fringe conspiracy-theory-mongers and extremists, but Pushaw’s usage helped turn grooming into a mainstream conservative talking point.Fox News has run several segments devoted to pedophilia throughout March and April. During the same period, numerous Fox pundits began describing the behavior of parents and teachers who want to allow children to express their transgender identity as grooming; one Fox and Friends guest suggested children were “being ripened for grooming for sexual abuse by adults,” while America Reports guest Charlie Hurt said affirmative care for trans children “goes beyond just predatory grooming” into “psychological torture.”
Accusations of pedophilia were also a refrain during the March 2022 confirmation hearings for new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. After Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) falsely accused Jackson of giving child pornographers unusually lenient sentences and “soft” treatment, other conservatives, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, ran with the idea that Jackson and anyone who supported her confirmation was supporting or sympathetic to pedophilia.
The result of this fear-mongering is grim: Vice reports that users of extremist right-wing websites like Patriot.win recently tried to publicize the address of a school superintendent who they claimed was “grooming” children. In March, the superintendent placed a school nurse on leave for allegedly making inappropriate statements on Facebook about a student who may have been receiving gender-affirming care.
Claiming the superintendent was “supporting leftist grooming in her schools” by implicitly protecting the welfare of a potentially trans student, one Patriot.win user wrote that she “needs to be executed by our judicial system.” Other users made violent references to hangings and gallows in response to various debates over trans identity. There’s concern that these online threats could lead to real-world physical violence; as Vice noted, many of the platforms pushing this current narrative are home to extremist communities, including some that were involved in planning the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Framing homosexuality as a wicked specter and queer people as pedophiles is one of the oldest narratives in the homophobic playbook; proponents of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other recent anti-gay and anti-trans legal actions across the US have been all too happy to recycle it. Only now, due to the paranoiac tendency of the modern right wing, it’s also being expanded and applied to LGBTQ allies, to educators whose work gets caught in the cultural crossfire, and to liberals writ large.
One of the heroes of these freaks is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has whistled every dog whistle and pushed every possible law to support these false accusations and narratives. It is Gas Lighting. And, it’s odd that whenever we get into the history of any of these folks, we find their policies and lack of action endanger children. Living, breathing, sentient, feeling, and vulnerable children suffer under Republican regimes.
Merahi metua no Tehamana (English Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana) is an 1893 painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin, currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.[1] The painting is a portrait of Paul Gauguin’s wife Teha’amana during his first visit to Tahiti in 1891–1893. This marriage has always provoked controversy because it was arranged and completed in the course of a single afternoon and Gauguin claimed Teha’amana was just thirteen years old at the time.
Somebody knows what happened to Sophie Reeder. But not the police. Not her parents. Not the private investigators who tried to find her.
Despite powerful evidence that she fell into the hands of a sex trafficker, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department’s handling of her case diminished the chance she’d ever be found.
Sophie’s case was part of the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s year-long investigation into child sex trafficking, a vile crime that is relatively easy to get away with in Florida.
Sophie wasn’t a runaway, or a foster child, or an abused daughter, like many girls who fall under a predator’s sway. She was a middle-class girl with two parents who loved her — parents who had the means to help. Friends and family saw red flags, but no one realized quite what they were seeing.
Her case shows that sex trafficking is common, hiding in plain sight.
In Sophie’s cell phone, police found messages she sent a friend, discussing prices charged for commercial sex acts.
“There are so many cases in our local community, and the average person has no clue,” said John Rode, a former South Florida cop who has searched for Sophie for five years. “If I ask 10 people, ‘What is human trafficking?,’ most are going to say it’s a container on a ship, and there’s 50 Haitian people packed into the container like the movies. Most of the cases are just young runaway girls that get mixed up with the wrong person and sooner or later they can’t get out or they can’t be found.”
Although most of their stories aren’t told, children are reported missing every day in Florida. Last year, 2,166 kids were reported missing in Florida, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. All but 145 of them were found.
These children — runaways and other missing kids — are among the most vulnerable to sex trafficking, researchers have proven.
Their stories are eerily similar: a girl with low self-esteem meets an attentive older man. He may offer gifts, compliments, promises of a better life — or even love.
Sophie suffered from anxiety and depression. Many teens do. I was one of them.
It’s not just the institutions in governments like Ron Desantis that cause these inefficiencies. Their attitudes toward living, breathing children who are now subjected to school programs make them feel like outsiders. It also is a program that provides no solutions, no information, and no help. You’re on your own, kid.
Jeanne Hebuterne
Amedeo Modigliani, 1919;
And I will go there. This is from Salon. It’s also from last April, and I’m so sorry I missed reading all this then. It took Sophie’s story to get me to dig into it all. “So, Let’s Talk About Republicans and Sex Crimes. This seems like an appropriate moment.” Paging anyone that can prosecute Matt Gaetz! Floriduh pervert.
Because American politics are now just one, long, low-rent nightmare, Republican culture warriors have spent the past few weeks slandering their various enemies as being soft on pedophilia. For some time, this sort of raving was mostly confined to adherents of QAnon, the Trump-idolizing conspiracy cult that believes Democratic politicians and other elites are secretly operating a global child trafficking ring.
But a confluence of events has helped bring a version of it mainstream.
During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in March, Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz attempted to smear the nominee by inaccurately claiming that she had a record of handing out unusually light sentences in cases where defendants were accused of viewing child pornography. The issue descended deeper into absurdity after three moderate Republicans voted to confirm Jackson this week and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—the walking id of MAGA-America—tweeted about them, saying “Murkowski, Collins, and Romney are pro-pedophile.”
Meanwhile, defenders of Florida’s new “don’t say gay” law, which strictly limits public school teachers’ ability to discuss LGBTQ people and issues in the classroom, began referring to the legislation as an “anti-grooming” bill—evoking the deeply homophobic idea that an adult would only talk about these topics with a child in order to prime them for abuse. After Disney, one of Florida’s largest employers, called for the law to be repealed, conservative social media influencers and Fox News personalities like Laura Ingraham launched a wild crusade against the company accusing it too of being complicit in “grooming.”
This is all galling. But it’s especially rich considering that, of the two major parties, the GOP has many more notable and recent scandals involving the sexual abuse of minors and young students—as well as a recent track record of reacting to them with a shrug.
Let’s review some of that history …
In 2006, Florida Rep. Mark Foley was forced to resign after it was revealed that he’d sent sexually explicit messages and propositioned teenage congressional pages via email and text.
In 2015, former Rep. Dennis Hastert, the longest-ever serving Republican speaker of the House, pleaded guilty to making illegal hush-money payments in order to cover up his history of sexually abusing high school wrestlers he had coached decades before.
“Nothing is more stunning than having ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence,” the judge said at his sentencing.
During and after the 2016 presidential race, among the dozens of women who accused former president Donald Trump of being a sexual predator were several contestants in the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, who reported that he barged into their dressing room while girls as young as 15 were changing. (Trump allegedly told them, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”)
His campaign denied the accusation, but CNN unearthed a 2005 Howard Stern interview where Trump bragged about walking into backstage dressing rooms at the pageants he ran.
During the 2018 midterms, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore was accused of preying on girls as young as 14 and 16; the New Yorker reported that his habit of trying to pick up high schoolers was so notorious that it actually got him banned from a local mall.
Also in 2018, Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s fiercest allies and a co-founder of the hardline conservative Freedom Caucus, became embroiled in a scandal over his time as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, where a team doctor named Richard Strauss, who committed suicide in 2005, was found to have sexually abused more than 177 male student athletes.
An investigation commissioned by the university found that Strauss regularly used examinations as an excuse to grope and fondle the students, sometimes to the point of ejaculation; often ordered them to strip nude unnecessarily; and in two cases, attempted to perform oral sex. Numerous former wrestlers told reporters that Jordan was personally aware of the abuse during the early 1990s but chose to turn a blind eye. The Congressman simply denied having any knowledge of it—and suggested at least one of the accusers claiming otherwise was acting on a personal vendetta against him.
And finally, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is currently the subject of a literal sex-trafficking investigation, which is looking into whether he had sex with an underage 17-year-old girl, among other issues. (Greene is close with Gaetz, who denies the allegations, and has defended him.)
On Twitter, liberals have taken to rattling off this list of scandals—among others—in response to conservative accusations of grooming (in a somewhat apt turn of events, a former Republican National Committee staffer was sentenced for a child pornography conviction the same day Jackson was confirmed to the court).
Some have gone further, remarking that the GOP is particularly afflicted with a pedophilia problem. “Every accusation is a confession,” goes one popular refrain. (Some large social media accounts have been trying to make the phrase “pedocon” stick.)
So, the word gas lighting seems appropriate, don’t you think? There are many vulnerable populations in this country. Just think of our amazing backlog of testing rape kits! You can check the backlog in your own state at the link.
While the press fritters its print away on the psychosis of Elon Musk or the hapless pursuit to be Speaker of the House by Kevin, the pandemic continues. Women cannot get accessible and affordable reproductive healthcare. Voting Rights are being decimated. Folks are trying to vote in Georgia as we speak. We’ve got a few days past a mass shooting, and it goes out of the national consciousness that quickly. But, hey, that football game!
And the republican gaslighting and victim-blaming, and projection keep going on. Donald Trump meets with a White Supremacist, and Stephen Miller trots to the Capitol to speak to Kevin. Nobody presses a potential presidential candidate for the Republican Party on it. Lindsay Graham was omnipresent on the Sunday Talk shows at one time. Where is he now? Plus, why don’t they have a platform and a list of planned policies? We need a much more involved press to get to answers. I’m not sure if they just took Thanksgiving weekend off to watch football and eat turkey or what. But these things demand answers. And only a few regional newspapers with fewer reporters go after the stories about our community problems and solutions. The repeats of whatever on the new stations were maddening. Why all the time spent yammering on about clogged airports?
It’s more than just covering the bullets after they’ve torn through a nightclub, a second-grade classroom, or a place of worship. Why are our children so vulnerable? Why have we still not taken back the night? Who is following droughts all over the world? Check where big money goes, and you’ll find the answer. It goes from gun manufacturers to Republicans. It goes from Wall Street and Silicon Valley to Republicans. It goes from the Fossil Fuel Industry to Republicans. Everything old is new again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: History Repeats
Posted: November 25, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: American NAZIs, O. John. ROGGE, Rachel Maddow's Ultra, Rob Denbleyker banned from Twitter, Twittler and the Chief Twittler 7 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I finished Rachel Maddow’s Ultra on Wednesday. I’m not exactly going to spoil the ending for you but let me say this, truth, justice, and the American way did not work on the American NAZIs in the end. Most of the bad guys returned to their little corner of the country and continued. Only a few were held to account, mainly by the ordinary Americans who knew them and held them accountable for their Pro-NAZI sentiments and actions. Then President Truman actually covered up the findings from the NAZI records on their program to subvert America’s stand on the war. A DOJ prosecutor was fired and later leaked what he had discovered there in a book no one reads and appears hard to find. If you want to be surprised by who was motivated by the American First Committee, look here.
You should listen to the podcast too, but at least review this radio interview on Meet the Press in 1946 with fired Federal Prosecutor O. John Rogge. He went public on everything he knew about how involved many US politicians and cultural figures were actually part of a bigger NAZI plot to make America neutral, at the very minimum, to the Hitler regime.
I intend to read his book as soon as I can get it into my kindle or in my mailbox. The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration, 1924-1942 has everything that Truman did not want you to read. (by O. John. ROGGE | Jan 1, 1961). Only the Father Coughlin story showed up in my American History classes. The rest needs to be known. Around 26 US senators and representatives had NAZI sympathies or actual participation in NAZI Germany’s plan for America.
Several news stories are germane today to that same fascist, Nazi, Anti-Semitic movement we have seen Trump lead since he took an escalator in Trump Tower that would lead him to the White House. First, the selling of Twitter to Elon Musk has become a purge of people with “Antifa” sentiments or sympathies. You can visit there today and see the number of folks, including Canadian cartoonist Rob Denbleyker whose little stick figures were a common fixture on the site.
While the NAZIs, Anti-Semites, Racists, and all of the worst of the ists have been freed from banishment. Bans on other content providers are now rampant. Here’s a brief discussion of this at Newsweek. “Activists Accuse Elon Musk of Banning ‘Anti-Fascist Accounts’ on Twitter.”
In the latest complaints from Twitter users under Elon Musk‘s leadership, the CEO is being accused of banning “anti-fascist accounts” while previously suspended conservative users are being reinstated.
Steven Monacelli, an independent journalist, reported on Tuesday that the group Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (EFJBGC)—a leftist group based in Texas that volunteers as armed protection for LGBTQ events—had been suspended after breaking Twitter’s content rules.
According to a screenshot posted by Monacelli, the group was suspended for violating the platform’s rules “against hateful conduct,” citing two recent tweets from the club.
On Wednesday, clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic Alejandra Caraballo reported that Chad Loder, an outspoken anti-fascist from Los Angeles, California, had also been suspended. Loder had reportedly been keeping track of anti-fascists who had recently been banned from the platform, according to a screenshot posted by Micah Lee, a writer at The Intercept.
Monacelli posted that he had reached out to Loder to ask if he had received a “suspension report” from Twitter explaining why his account had been banned. Loder reportedly said he had yet to receive one.
This is from The Washington Post. “‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts. The Twitter chief says he will reinstate accounts suspended for threats, harassment, and misinformation beginning next week.” The doors from the hell realms are opened. The wisdom beings are banned. Sounds like a perfect NAZI program to me. #BlackTwitter has already headed to Mastadon.
Meanwhile, this is happening everywhere in America, including Seattle/Tahoma’s SeaTac airport. This guy loves Hitler, hates people of the Jewish Faith, and spews your basic NAZI diatribes.
After over a week of deadly mass shootings, the last thing anyone expects is these fanatical open displays of Nazi sentiments. But, hey, let me see you one random NAZI in the airport plus one in charge of Twitter banning anyone that sounds slightly to the left of Hitler and raise you one Exiled Ex-President. Same as it ever was. From Axios, “Trump talks with white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago dinner.”
Former President Trump dined and conversed with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday night, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: Trump’s direct engagement with a man labeled a “white supremacist” by the Justice Department, one week after declaring his 2024 candidacy, is likely to draw renewed outrage over the former president’s embrace of extremists.
- Fuentes, who frequently promotes racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, had been spotted with Ye at Mar-a-Lago, but reports erroneously suggested he did not have dinner with the former president.
What they’re saying: “Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Trump said in a statement.
- Fuentes did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Driving the news: Ye, whose Twitter account was recently restored after being restricted for anti-Semitic comments, posted a video on Thursday night titled “Mar-a-Lago debrief.”
- Ye claims in the video that Trump was “really impressed” with Fuentes because “unlike so many of the lawyers and so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he’s actually a loyalist.”
- A source familiar with the conversation told Axios Trump took a phone call during the dinner, and his demeanor toward Ye seemed to change when he got off the call. Trump made some nasty comments about Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, and told the rapper to pass them on.
- Ye, who has lost major sponsorships over his anti-Semitism and recent far-right associations, has said he wants to run for president in 2024. The rapper claims Trump started “screaming” at him at the dinner and told him he would lose — “most perturbed” by Ye asking Trump to be his running mate.
This analysis of the meeting is from Politico. “Donald Trump dined with white nationalist, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The president hosted Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. He said it was “quick and uneventful.” “
In a post to his social media site, Trump confirmed the gathering.
“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote. “Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”
However eventful, the dinner reflects a remarkable moment in an extremely early 2024 campaign cycle: the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination breaking bread with a man who frequently posts racist content and Holocaust revisionism, brought there by a rapper who is launching his own presidential campaign under the shadow of his own antisemitic remarks.
“If it was any other party, breaking bread with Nick Fuentes would be instantly disqualifying for Trump,” said Democratic National Committee spokesperson Ammar Moussa. “The most extreme views have found a home in today’s MAGA Republican party.”
It underscores how few guardrails currently exist within the former president’s political operation, with few aides there to screen guests or advise against and manage such gatherings.
And in this country, women struggle to regain full citizen status. Reproductive Freedom is on the ballot and on the gratitude list. While men air their NAZI grievances, women want their rights back. This is written by Nikiya Natale at The Nation. “We’re Thankful for Our Abortions. Many people who have abortions celebrate their experience. Here’s why my colleagues and I at We Testify are thankful.”
This holiday is founded on the unforgivable genocide of Native Americans, and my commitment to justice for all people makes it difficult for me to celebrate things I am thankful for. And the harsh reality is that the utter disregard for all Indigenous people in the 1800s fuels the same systems of white supremacy that dehumanize all of us today. Black lives are taken by the police and the prison-industrial complex, any sense of LGBTQ+ peace and tranquility has been obliterated by gun violence and hate, and, ultimately, the small promise of abortion access guaranteed by Roe v. Wade was stripped away by an illegitimate Supreme Court.
When I look at the state of this nation, the anger piles up, and my gratitude is depleted.
And yet, gratitude is what I am searching for in this moment. I am grateful to spend the long weekend with my young son, who is here because I was able to plan a pregnancy when I was ready to parent. I am grateful to have accessed my abortions in Texas while it was still legal in the state, and that my multiple abortion experiences now guide my work.
When I express this gratitude for my abortions, sometimes, I and other abortion storytellers at We Testify, which is an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions, are met with questions and chiding from family members or loved ones who believe that we shouldn’t “celebrate” or be “thankful” for our abortions. “I’m pro-choice, but it’s nothing to celebrate,” they say.
But I am thankful for both of my abortions. I am thankful that I didn’t want to be a parent then, so I didn’t have to be a parent then. The blessing to plan a pregnancy and have a child when I wanted to have a child is something I have immense gratitude for. I really am thankful for it, particularly in this political climate and moment.
The BBC reports that France wants to establish this right in its Constitution.
France’s National Assembly has backed a bid to enshrine the right to abortion in the constitution, prompted largely by increased restrictions elsewhere.
Lawmakers voted by a large majority to include a clause guaranteeing “the effectiveness and equal access to the right to end pregnancy voluntarily”.
Left-wing MP Mathilde Panot, who is behind the change, said it was to protect against the “backsliding” seen in the US and Poland.
But the bill will face a tough passage.
Last month the upper house, the Senate, rejected a similar proposal and is thought unlikely to back the new amendment. Right-wing parties – which dominate the Senate – argue that abortion rights are not under threat in France.
A change of constitution would also have to go to a referendum, although opinion polls suggest more than 80% of French voters are behind it.
Ms Panot’s amendment went through after securing the support of MPs in Emmanuel Macron’s ruling Renaissance party, but a reference to the right to contraception was scrapped.
Macron MP Aurore Bergé had been due to present her own abortion amendment next week but withdrew it, telling MPs how her mother had endured an abortion without anaesthetic before it was legalised in 1974.
“The question of access to abortion and of protecting it isn’t a whim; it shouldn’t be politicised; it’s not a matter of party politics,” she said.
Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti also backed changing the constitution and praised the “historic” vote.
Last February, the French parliament voted to extend the legal timeframe for abortion from 12 to 14 weeks, similar to neighbouring Spain. It is lower than other European countries, including Sweden, the Netherlands, England, Wales and Scotland.
Ms Panot dedicated Thursday’s vote to women in the US, Poland and Hungary. Her push to change constitution was triggered by a vote in the US Supreme Court to end the national guarantee to abortion access, overturning the landmark Roe v Wade ruling in 1973.
Thirteen US states have since begun enforcing abortion bans, while voters in states including California backed proposals this month to enshrine the right to abortion in their constitution.
The struggle continues,
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: The American Gun Fetish
Posted: November 21, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: American Gun Fetish, Colorado Springs Shooter, Kenosha Shooter, Lax Gun Laws, LBGTQ Community, No more safe places 21 Comments
Madonna with a Machine Gun, Kārlis Padegs, 1932
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m not exactly sure how the connection from being your basic angry, miserable guy turned into being your basic angry, miserable guy who goes out to kill a bunch of people developed in this country. It seems to be a feature today, and it’s a bad one. The Colorado Springs shooter is a prime example of what happens when law enforcement ignores red laws, and a community stirs hate and resentment towards a minority community. It’s hard to feel safe anyway with that kind of shitpot stirred vigorously by right-wing politicians and more than a few churches.
The Q Club Shooting in Colorado is not the first of its kind. It will not be the last of its kind, given the current political and social environment we’re enduring right now. “Club Q shooting follows year of bomb threats, drag protests, anti-trans bills. Right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ community, experts say.” This analysis was written by Casey Parks for The Washington Post.
In the hours after the shooting, investigators did not say what led someone to open fire Saturday night in a Colorado gay bar, killing at least five people and injuring 25 others. But LGBTQ advocates across the country believe a surge of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and laws is at least partially to blame.
“When politicians and pundits keep perpetuating tropes, insults, and misinformation about the trans and LGBTQ+ community, this is a result,” Colorado Rep. Brianna Titone (D) tweeted Sunday.
Titone, Colorado’s first openly trans legislator, and the chair of the state’s LGBTQ legislative caucus, said anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, including one of her colleagues, have used hateful rhetoric to directly incite attacks against LGBTQ people.
Though the most recent FBI data shows the number of hate crimes against LGBTQ people remained relatively flat between 2008 and 2020, an independent analysis by the research group Crowd Counting Consortium shows that right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ community.
Already this year, armed protesters and right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys have used intimidating tactics to disrupt drag-related events in Texas, Nevada and Oregon, as well as other states. Children’s hospitals across the United States are facing growing threats of violence, including bomb threats, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens. And in October, a man attacked a transgender librarian in Idaho before yelling homophobic slurs and attempting to hit two women with his car. Idaho is one of 18 states that does not have hate crime protections for LGBTQ people, though many local law enforcement agencies still track those crimes.
Every year, at every event that celebrates this beloved community in New Orleans, the most fanatical white evangelical men that are angry and miserable goosestep into town. I guess they have to find something else to do with their time since there’s now a limited number of women’s clinics for them to stalk.
According to Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center of Transgender Equality, a quarter of those violent deaths happened in Texas and Florida. Those states have proposed dozens of anti-trans laws and regulations in the past two years or put in place anti-trans policies, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide gender-affirming care for their children.
“Anti-trans legislation, fearmongering, and disinformation put the trans community and trans lives at risk,” Heng-Lehtinen tweeted.
If I have been quieter than usual this weekend, it’s because of this, although I’m not on campus this semester.
https://twitter.com/UofNO/status/1594486155395096578
This followed today.
Master of Calamarca, Archangel with Gun, Asiel Timor Dei, before 1728
I suppose I should be thankful that the Campus police are actual police with all the authority of the New Orleans Police Department. They knew what to do and prevented it. So here is what the news is reporting. This is from a message from UNO President John Nicklow.
“I want to provide you with more details on the reason for today’s campus closure. Last week, a former student entered a classroom and acted in an erratic and disruptive manner. Once this was reported to the UNO Department of Public Safety, our officers responded immediately and began an investigation into the individual, which led to a confirmation of suspicious activity. Our officers discovered a video posted Friday on one of the suspect’s social media accounts, showing him purchasing an assault style rifle at a gun store. Additional photographs of him brandishing the firearm were posted across the suspect’s social media accounts. It was at this point that multi-agency surveillance of the suspect began and continued throughout the weekend. The suspect’s off-campus location was continuously monitored, and thus no imminent threat to campus existed. We were not able to share this information with you until now because it would have compromised the investigation.
“The UNO Department of Public Safety worked closely with the New Orleans Police Department’s Intelligence Division, Violent Offender Warrant Squad (VOWS) and the 3rd Police District to secure arrest warrants for Terrorizing, Stalking and Unlawful Disruption of the Operation of a School. The New Orleans Police Department’s Intelligence Division and U.S. Marshals Task Force conducted a joint operation during the overnight hours with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, which arrested the suspect without incident. The suspect is in custody and no longer poses a potential threat to the UNO community or the larger community.
Information about the shooter in Colorado Springs is turning into a rather sordid, creepy tail. This is from Heavy. His mother’s father is a Maga State Senator in California who praised the January 6 Insurrection. The shooter was known to the police, and his mother thought he had mental health issues. The Shooter did not have a social media presence, but the mother did.
Online records show Aldrich living at an apartment complex address in Colorado Springs. Online records indicate he shares that address with his mother, Laura Voepel, 44, who works as a support engineer and previously lived in California.
Laura has praised her father, outgoing California state Representative Randy Voepel, in Facebook posts, writing, “Keep up the work Dad~~ You work hard to improve our lives and a lot of us take notice.”
On Aldrich’s birthday, Laura Voepel wrote on Facebook, “My boys 15 birthday! He got head to toe (6’3″) ghillie military suit ànd he is surfing cloud 9.” She tagged her mother, Pamela Pullen, in the post, who Ancestry.com records confirm is Randy’s ex-wife.
Heavy was not able to find any social media profiles for Aldrich. But Facebook posts made by his mother reveal he had been dealing with mental health issues. She posted often about her son in a Facebook group for women involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Colorado Springs area.
In one post in July 2021, she asked for help finding a criminal defense attorney: “Hello Sisters. Does anyone know of a fantastic defense attorney? I ask this with a heavy heart but my family really needs some help at this time. We have cash to retain good counsel. Thank you.” Her post about needing a criminal defense attorney came just after her son was arrested.
Boy with a Flintlock Rifle, 1817, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
The police and criminal justice response to his arrest for threatening his mother with a possible bomb were underwhelming, to say the least. This is from ABC News. “Gay club shooting suspect evaded Colorado’s red flag gun law. The suspect in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb last year.”
A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.
Yet despite that scare, there’s no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man’s mother says he had with him.
Gun control advocates say Aldrich’s June 2021 threat is an example of a red flag law ignored, with potentially deadly consequences. While it’s not clear the law could have prevented Saturday night’s attack — such gun seizures can be in effect for as little as 14 days and be extended by a judge in six-month increments — they say it could have at least slowed Aldrich and raised his profile with law enforcement.
“We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path,” said Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the state’s red flag law passed in 2019. “This should have alerted them, put him on their radar.”
But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun at just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.
Gwenn Seemel, 2018, Terrorist
One year after killing two people and injuring another because he felt threatened by the bad libtards, manchild Kyle Rittenhouse is talking about running for Congress. Who could forget his pudgy face and that poorly-acted crying jag? This is from The Chicago Tribune. ” One year after acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, the battle to define his public image rages on.” Why does he have a public image, you may ask? Well, he’s still a celeb in the right-wing gun-fetish Republican Party and talking about a run for Congress.
Rittenhouse was just 17 when he shot two men to death and wounded a third during a night of unrest in 2020 that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake, who is Black.
Kenosha County prosecutors charged him with homicide but he claimed self-defense. At the end of a 15-day trial, jurors declared him not guilty.
His lead defense attorney told reporters at the time he hoped Rittenhouse would keep a low profile following the verdict, but that hasn’t happened. Despite initially expressing a reluctance to be “a cause person,” Rittenhouse has embraced the attention, becoming a figurehead in conservative politics and the gun rights movement.
“I’m just getting warmed up,” he told a critic on Twitter earlier this month. “Get comfortable.”
But while Rittenhouse promises to bring down the legal hammer on his detractors, he remains entangled in his own court proceedings. The family of Anthony Huber, one of the men Rittenhouse killed, is suing him and a host of Wisconsin law enforcement officials for allegedly conspiring to deprive Huber of his constitutional rights.
Rittenhouse’s attorneys filed papers in August trying to get him dismissed from the case, arguing among other things that a private detective who scoured the country for the teen delivered a summons to a home in Florida where Rittenhouse doesn’t actually live (the Tribune couldn’t reach Rittenhouse for comment, but his Twitter page gives his location as Texas).
A judge has yet to rule on the motion.
Rittenhouse and his backers are raising money for both legal fights. The Media Accountability Project, a Nevada-based LLC Rittenhouse introduced on the Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” is accepting donations “to hold the media accountable in court for their malicious lies, defamation and propaganda.”
The teen has also endorsed a video game called “Kyle Rittenhouse’s Turkey Shoot” that he said is meant to fund his lawsuits. Footage of the game, which is supposed to be released before Thanksgiving, shows an avatar that resembles Rittenhouse firing at “fake news turkeys.”
A GiveSendGo campaign is raising money for his defense in the Huber lawsuit, as is the National Foundation for Gun Rights, which depicts the case as a battle for the Second Amendment.
William Burroughs, Shooting Art
As for the Congressional run, this is from HuffPost. “Kyle Rittenhouse Meets With GOP House Caucus. The Kenosha shooter appeared to stoke his right-wing celebrity ambitions with a weird Capitol photo. “ Why wouldn’t you want to be called a shooter with this glam treatment?
Rittenhouse repeated his self-serving defense and held a question-and-answer session, The Hill reported. He has been hailed as a right-wing celebrity since the killings.
The caucus is chaired by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Rittenhouse posed for a photo with both of them, and with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
He also posed for a wild Twitter photo in front of the Capitol, writing: “T- 5 years until I can call this place my office?” Given Twitter’s meltdown, it was unclear whether it was an actual message, though his profile did have a “verified” blue check.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Texas declared that it was unconstitutional to prohibit domestic abusers under a protective order from having a gun.
It’s one of the latest examples in a troubling trend initiated by the Supreme Court’s June ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which signaled the potential for a wave of court-mandated rollbacks of gun regulations. An oft-overlooked consequence of this is how relaxing gun laws prevents police officers from doing their jobs properly.
In Bruen, the court held New York’s licensing of handguns violated the Second Amendment. The state had required applicants for concealed carry permits to show “proper cause,” or, in other words, a specific need for a gun. As of the time of the ruling, six other jurisdictions — including Maryland, where one of us is from — had similar “proper cause” rules regulating gun carrying, all of which were imperiled by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
So far this year, officers have seized more than 2,200 guns illegally carried on the streets of Baltimore. Without Maryland’s gun licensing law, which relies on a proper cause standard, officers are left with a dangerously vague uncertainty about whether to approach someone carrying a gun to determine whether it is illegal or not — let alone remove the gun from the streets. This means police will be required to make more split-second decisions that risk tragic outcomes on both sides of the badge.
Four months after the Bruen ruling, a West Virginia judge invalidated part of a federal law prohibiting the possession of a firearm with an altered or removed serial number. Those serial numbers are critical to helping police solve crimes and distinguish responsible gun owners from violent criminals.
As the tide moves in the direction of more guns on the streets and fewer regulations, police chiefs are the first to point out that this trend makes their jobs more difficult and puts officers at a higher risk of injury or death. That danger extends to everyone in the community — children, the elderly and passersby on the street.
Rather than reserving their firearms for the most dangerous situations, law enforcement officers now have to worry that nearly every civilian has the means to use deadly force. Tensions will rise, and trust will decline.
My first duel [frog with gun]
I’m unsure how we stop turning every public location into the OK Corral. I’m pretty sure MTG and the one from Colorado got their seats for being big gun fetishists, among other unappealing personality traits. The MAGA cheerleaders aren’t going anywhere, it seems. Yet, a majority out there wants this madness to end. This is from Steny Hoyer’s site. The Poll was taken in May of 2022.
A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll out this morning shows that Americans overwhelmingly favor common-sense legislation to address gun violence.
- 88% of Americans support requiring background checks on all gun sales.
- In 2021, House Democrats passed H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would require background checks on all gun sales.
- House Democrats also passed H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, which would close the ‘Charleston Loophole’ and work to prevent firearms from reaching the hands of prohibited gun owners.
- 84% of Americans support preventing sales of all firearms to people reported as dangerous to law enforcement by a mental health provider.
- During the first week of the June work period, the House will take up legislation to enact a national Red Flag law that would prevent those who pose a threat to themselves or others from being able to legally possess a firearm.
Senate Republicans should listen to the American people and work with Democrats on common-sense gun legislation that will take important steps towards ending gun violence in America.
That sounds like a good start.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Frantic Friday Reads: Political Chaos Edition
Posted: November 18, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: Hakeem Jeffries, January 6th Insurrection karma, Midterm Consequences, Ron DeSantis, Why are Medieval Knights always fighting snails? 18 Comments
warrior snail
Pontifical of Guillaume Durand, Avignon, before 1390
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I just replaced my TV in the season of political infighting and maudlin Crassmas shows. At least I don’t have to fight any Black Friday Crowds in actual stores. I’m not sure I’d survive that. Even Medieval Warrior Snails have more guts to face an oncoming crowd than me. My nice Amazon delivery guy is coming with it sometime next week within a 6-day window, even with Prime. I bumped into the busy season but was waiting for my check from Hollywood South for enduring a few weekends of having my block shut down for that AMC series shoot. I bet a Warrior Snail could deliver it faster.
You know that Senator John Kennedy is known for saying some pretty outrageous things. He appears to be gearing up to run for governor despite his runaway reelection in the midterms. He always makes these weird references to pop culture, which always goes awry. I don’t think he cares he’s the butt of many memes. Try this one reported by Politico.
It’s not every day that a senator quotes a famous mob movie to describe the state of his political party after a week of infighting.
“You’ve gotta have a war every five or 10 years to get rid of the bad blood,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, paraphrasing a line from “The Godfather” to paint a picture of Senate Republicans. “And then you start over.”
Tension built within the Senate GOP for nearly two years, from former President Donald Trump’s post-insurrection impeachment through a host of bipartisan Biden-era deals that many Republicans opposed. And after the party’s midterm election losses, those cracks turned into a chasm.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) mounted a challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that embodied the conservative griping about the Kentuckian’s leadership style. As GOP senators spent roughly 10 hours in private meetings this week that at times grew highly contentious, the conference cleaved over a same-sex marriage bill that most of them opposed.
When McConnell defeated Scott, 37-10 (a tally that some Republican senators still won’t talk about) the intraparty whispers and rumors of opposition to the tight-gripped leader finally got quantified on paper. The GOP now hopes that its factions — or warring families, as Mario Puzo would put it — are at peace.
That McConnell faced his first contested leadership race in nearly 16 years atop the conference marked a turning point in the GOP. He’s held the post longer than anyone else in his party, and soon enough will break the Senate’s overall record. Despite that rarefied air, it’s clear that he was pushing for every single vote he could lock in
A snail-cat, depicted in the Maastricht Hours – an illuminated devotional manuscript produced in the Netherlands during the early 1300s
I’m not sure he realizes that calling the Republican party something akin to Mafiosi is strangely true and probably not a label they want. It does appear that both the Senate and House contingents have a lot of group infighting. They’re doing some strange things for a party that’s always seen its role as the top ass kisser for American Business. This is also from Politico under the headline: “GOP plans to punish ‘woke’ Wall Street. GOP lawmakers are singling out major asset managers as likely targets because of climate investing practices they see as hostile to oil, gas and coal.” I will use Digby’s take on it since it came with popcorn.
This should be super fun to watch:
Wall Street loves Republican tax cuts and deregulation. It’s going to hate the GOP’s plans for 2023.
Republican lawmakers, who will be in the House majority come January, are pressing party leaders to send a message to big financial firms: Stop appeasing the left with “woke” business practices, keep financing fossil fuels and cut ties with China. Republicans will have committee gavels and subpoena powers to back that up.
GOP lawmakers are singling out major asset managers and their Washington trade groups as targets because of climate investing practices they see as hostile to oil, gas and coal. Some Republicans want to continue hauling in big bank CEOs to publicly testify — a tradition established by liberal Democrats. GOP senators are already demanding that law firms preserve documents related to how they advise clients on environmental and social initiatives, signaling a potential investigation. Wall Street firms and Washington lobbyists are preparing for subpoenas.
Caught in the middle are Republican committee leaders who are facing pressure from their rank-and-file to adopt a populist tact toward big business.
“My members are intent on sending a message that you can’t kowtow to a far-left agenda and still have Republicans fighting the good fight on behalf of free markets and a marketplace that would benefit these companies,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who is poised to chair the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview. “This is a complicated factor for sure.”
Uhm yeah. It’s a complicated factor for sure. Free markets as long as you do what we tell you may not be a big winner with the Big Money Boyz.
Knight v Snail II: Battle in the Margins (from the Gorleston Psalter, England (Suffolk), 1310-1324, Add MS 49622, f. 193v
Well, DeSantis certainly showed Disney (not!), so this can only signal that some of the troops are already taking on the DeSantis mantel. However, it still reminds me of the Smithsonian’s age-old question, “Why Were Medieval Knights Always Fighting Snails?”
I will mention that Josh Hawley has taken to ranting on the Washington Post OpEd page today about Republicans being out of touch with Working Americans. I’m not going to bother with that, but here’s another headline with a twist. “Ron DeSantis has reached a perilous point: Inevitability. Can you recall another politician who seemed like an Inevitable Candidate for their party and time? Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Gary Hart, Thomas Dewey, Robert A. Taft …”
“If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from Trump, now is his moment,” read the headline on an Atlantic article by David Frum last week.
If he runs “he will be a formidable candidate,” Jeb Bush told Neil Cavuto in October.
Jeb Bush was also an Inevitable. Hillary Clinton was an Inevitable (twice!). Neither’s inevitability yielded the presidency. That’s the tricky thing about being an Inevitable.
“What voters will be looking for a year from now, or two years, is very unpredictable,” says Alex Conant, who was communications director for the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio (once an Inevitable) and Tim Pawlenty (never an Inevitable). “So that candidate who looks perfect for the current moment might not be what they want later. Jeb and Trump are the perfect examples.”
Knight v Snail III: Extreme Jousting (from Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Tresor, France (Picardy), c. 1315-1325, Yates Thompson MS 19, f. 65r)
And yet, the Insurrection is not disappearing from the news even as low-energy Donald announced his 3rd bid for the Presidency. This is from Kyle Cheney at Politico, “‘Do not become numb’: Prosecutors close seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers. After a grinding eight-week trial, prosecutors pleaded with jurors to consider the weight of leader Stewart Rhodes’ words in the lead-up to Jan. 6.”
“These defendants repeatedly called for the violent overthrow of the United States government and they followed those words with action,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said in her closing statements. “Please do not become numb to these statements. Think about what is actually being called for in these statements.”
To prosecutors, the case is clear: Rhodes was the “architect” of a plan to overthrow the government by force unless Trump took direct action to seize a second term he didn’t win. As Jan. 6 approached, Rhodes grew increasingly frustrated at Trump’s inaction and assembled a team — including co-defendants Kelly Meggs and Kenneth Harrelson of Florida, Jessica Watkins of Ohio and Thomas Caldwell of Virginia. They coordinated to amass an arsenal of heavy weapons at a Comfort Inn in nearby Arlington, Va., and developed land and water routes to ferry them to Oath Keepers if violence erupted.
Two dozen Oath Keepers entered the Capitol after other rioters breached it and migrated toward the House and Senate chambers before they were repelled by police. Later, they met Rhodes outside the Capitol. Prosecutors say the group celebrated their actions and prepared to continue their efforts to oppose the government even after authorities regained control of the Capitol.
After closing arguments Friday, jurors will begin deliberating on the most significant charge — seditious conspiracy — as well as a slew of other charges lodged against the Oath Keeper leaders, including obstruction of an official proceeding and destruction of property at the Capitol.
The January 6th Committee is also working on finishing up before Republicans take a very weak hold on the House. NBC News reports that “Jan. 6 committee interviews former Trump Secret Service agent Bobby Engel. Engel, the lead Secret Service agent for Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, could provide information former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s bombshell testimony.” Representative Zoe Lofgren was on Nicole Wallace yesterday but didn’t provide any conclusions reached if any.
The House Jan. 6 committee on Thursday interviewed Bobby Engel, who was the lead Secret Service agent for then-President Donald Trump when the insurrection took place, three sources familiar with the session said.
Engel could provide key testimony related to information shared by Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. She delivered bombshell testimony before the committee at a public hearing this summer.
Hutchinson testified that she was told Trump tried to grab the steering wheel in an armored SUV and lunged toward his security detail when he learned he would not be taken to the Capitol after his rally on Jan. 6.
Hutchinson said Tony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, told her about the incident. She also said Engel had not disputed Ornato’s account. Ornato and Engel both testified before the committee before Hutchinson.
Detail from The Gorleston Psalter
Now, to the goods news on the other side of the aisle. From the Washington Post, “Rep. Lauren Boebert race too close to call, with margin inside recount threshold. ” This will likely require very buttery popcorn too. And from CNN, “Democrat Katie Porter will win reelection in California, CNN projects . Whew, that’s a relief.
And as one historically significant and powerful Leader of the House retires, another one will become the Minority Leader, in line for the big position. This is reported by NBC News, “Rep. Hakeem Jeffries announces bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader. If elected, Jeffries, 52, would become the first Black leader of a congressional caucus. Reps. Katherine Clark, 59, and Pete Aguilar, 43, are seeking to join Jeffries in Democrats’ top three.”
New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, said Friday that he will run to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the party’s leader after Republicans took back control of the chamber in last week’s midterm elections.
His announcement in a letter to colleagues came a day after Pelosi said in a powerful floor speech that she is stepping down after a two-decade reign as the top leader of House Democrats.
If Jeffries is successful, it would represent a historic passing of the torch: Pelosi made history as the first female speaker of the House, while Jeffries, the current Democratic Caucus chairman, would become the first Black leader of a congressional caucus and highest-ranking Black lawmaker on Capitol Hill. If Democrats were to retake control of the House — a real possibility with Republicans having such a narrow majority — Jeffries would be in line to be the first Black speaker in the nation’s history.
The ascension of the 52-year-old Jeffries to minority leader would also represent generational change. Pelosi and her top two deputies — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. — are all in their 80s and are receiving from within the party for “new blood” in leadership; Hoyer will not seek another leadership post while Clyburn plans to stay on and work with the next generation.
Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., are seeking to round out the new leadership team, announcing Friday that they will run for the No. 2 and No. 3 spots in leadership. Clark, 59, announced a bid for Democratic Whip, while Aguilar, 43, is running for Democratic Caucus Chair.
It does make me wonder who the Republicans will demonize once Leader Pelosi steps down. However, I’m enjoying those praising her, a lot. This is from Time Magazine and a likely precursor to her becoming Time’s Person of the Year. Won’t that just send the head Mafiosa into an orange rage burble that no one will care about? “Nancy Pelosi Reflects On the Not-Quite-End of An Era.”
For two decades, it has been in every congressional Democrat’s interest to stay in Pelosi’s good graces. Since winning her first leadership position in 2001, she has ruled the House Democratic caucus with an iron fist and a velvet glove, keeping her fractious party in near-lockstep during historically tumultuous times. From the Iraq War to the financial crisis, through health-care reform and government shutdowns, through two presidential impeachments, a pandemic and an insurrection attempt, she has been a constant force and consummate operator. No national politician of her era can match her combination of legislative prowess, vote-counting savvy, negotiating skill, and fundraising ability.
On Thursday, it was finally time to move on—sort of. Shortly after noon, she gave a brief speech on the House floor, announcing that she would not seek re-election as leader of the House Democrats. It was time, she said, “for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect.” Yet she couldn’t bring herself to step away completely: she owed it to her constituents in San Francisco, she said, to stay on as a rank-and-file member of Congress and finish her two-year term. Like the man who fakes his own death and then sneaks into the funeral, she would stick around to see how her people tried to get along without her.
Just after her speech, the 82-year-old House Speaker sat at a white-clothed table in a small, ornate room off the House floor known as the Board of Education, a hidden chamber where former Democratic Speaker Sam Rayburn used to hole up and relax. Then-vice president Harry Truman was playing cards with Rayburn here in 1945 when he learned that FDR had died and he would become President. One wall Rayburn had painted with a Texas seal; on two others, Pelosi recently added her own touches: a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a tribute to women’s suffrage.
I was fortunate to meet and hear Speaker Pelosi speak at Tulane University a few years ago. I was invited by my then Congressman Cedric Richmond. She spoke to a group of young women on how to become the political leaders of the future. She was funny, gracious, and serious about getting everyone’s voice to the District. It’s great to go out on the top even though she will be sorely missed.
So, I’ve posted this youtube as one explanation of the Knights vs. Snail Battles. Maybe JJ will chime in with some theories of her own. Here’s a gory explanation from the Old Testment.
For Digital Medievalist, Lisa Spangenberg floated another idea. She says that “the armored snail fighting the armored knight is a reminder of the inevitability of death,” a sentiment captured in Psalm 58 of the bible: “Like a snail that melteth away into slime, they shall be taken away; like a dead-born child, they shall not see the sun.”
I kind of like this modern take on it.
“The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm, while if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn.”
― A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
I view it as a Revenge Tale painted by Nerds.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: The Numbers Game
Posted: November 14, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: Donald Trump and fascism, midterm elections 2022, Republican Extremism, Twitter Free zone 12 Comments
Transverse Line, Wassily Kandinsky, 1923
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Ballots are still being counted in the 2022 Midterms. The Senate has only one race that will go to a runoff. That is the Georgia race between Herschel Walker and incumbent Senator Ralph Warnock. The dynamics of this race may change since the majority status has been decided. Folks may decide to stay home rather than support Walker, who is definitely an odd choice for what used to be the severe and staid part of Congress. There is a general feeling that the Republicans will take the House, albeit by a very slim margin.
Fordham Professor Jed Shugerman, writing on mastodon, believes that 3 Roberts court’s decisions had much to do with the House outcome.
Some reasons why GOP will win the House:
1. Roberts Court decision Rucho allowing partisan gerrymandering.
2. Roberts Court decision Shelby County striking down preclearance in the Voting Rights Act.
3. Roberts Court shadow docket blocking Black districts in AL & LA (@mcpli)
The Ten Largest, No. 7, Adulthood, 1907, Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
The Louisiana case definitely helped since the non-gerrymandered congressional districts would’ve added an additional black Congressman who would undoubtedly be a Democratic Party member. This would have been a pick-up. Currently, 205 seats have been called for the Democratic Party and 212 for Republicans. The Guardian characterizes the status this way: “US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hope of keeping House fades as counting continues – live.” The New York Times lists those elections left to call here.
Many of the states with a large share of outstanding votes conduct elections primarily or entirely by mail. It may still be days until news organizations can project which party will control the House next session, but Republicans appear to be on track to reach a majority of seats if the latest trends continue.
In California, where several competitive House races are not yet called, about 65 percent of the expected vote has been tallied statewide. Ballots there have until Tuesday to arrive. In 2020 it took the state 11 days to report 95 percent of its votes.
In Arizona, a substantial number of voters did not return their ballots until Election Day. Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, is not expected to finish counting until early this week.
In Oregon and Washington State, all or most ballots are expected by Tuesday.
Results continue to be reported.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to hold rallies before his supposed Tuesday announcement of his next Presidential bid. He continues to attack the Jewish community in the United States for not adequately supporting Israel. This is from Haaretz. “At ZOA Event, Trump Again Attacks U.S. Jews for Supporting Democrats. The former U.S. President says too many Jewish people ‘are not doing the right thing for Israel’ by voting for the party that just won the Senate in last week’s midterm election.” Trump seems to misunderstand the diversity of Jewish Congregations in the United and that the Zionism faction is not a universally held Jewish belief.
Former President Donald Trump blasted American Jews for failing to vote for Republicans in sufficient numbers after he accepted the Theodor Herzl Medallion from the Zionist Organization of America, at the right-wing group’s annual gala on Sunday.
“You do have people in this country that happen to be Jewish that are not doing the right thing for Israel – too many,” Trump said, echoing a post he made on social media last month that drew heavy criticism from the American-Jewish community. ”The Democrats get 75 percent of the [Jewish] vote, which is hard to believe. We can’t let that continue,” he said.
Barack Hussein Obama … and then it’s 75 percent of the vote.” He then turned to ZOA President Morton Klein in mock confusion, exclaiming, “What the hell is going on here, Mort?”
Speaking at the sold-out event at New York City’s Pier 60, Trump proceeded to attack the “people in Congress who hate Israel,” contrasting the situation with the past when “you couldn’t touch Israel and couldn’t say a bad thing about it.”
Paul Klee, The Twittering Machine, 1922
Maybe he should learn a little more about the various traditions in the United States, like those practiced in the Reform Judaism congregations.
The Supreme Court continues to reject attempts at gun safety laws. This is from the AP: “Supreme Court rejects another bump stock ban case.” We will live with the nutcases Trump appointed for a very long time.
The Supreme Court on Monday again declined to hear a lawsuit involving a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The justices’ decision not to hear the case leaves in place a lower court decision that rejected bump stock owners’ efforts to be compensated for bump stocks they lawfully purchased, but were required to to give up after the administration ruled they were illegal. Lower courts had said the case should be dismissed.
As is typical, the justices made no comments in declining to hear the case, and it was among many the court rejected Monday.
Last month, the justices rejected two other challenges involving the ban. Gun rights advocates, however, scored a big win at the court earlier this year, when the justices by a 6-3 vote expanded gun-possession rights, weakening states’ ability to limit the carrying of guns in public.
In the tradition of Uncle Clarence Thomas, more of the Right Wing Justices are taking part in clear Political Events, further eroding any confidence that they may be the least bit impartial. This is from Reuters: “Standing ovations for conservative U.S. justices at Federalist Society event.” I am appalled by their various comments at this event.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett received standing ovations from members of the conservative Federalist Society on Thursday at its first annual convention since the court overturned a nationwide right to abortion.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch also received applause at the event of the legal group, which is one of the most influential in the country and whose members have long criticized the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that the court overturned in June.
Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch have helped create a new conservative supermajority on the court.
The loudest applause at the event in Washington, D.C. may have been not for the justices but for Alito’s opinion in the June ruling. Other conservative members of the court backed the ruling.
Alito did not mention the ruling or other aspects of the court’s work during his brief remarks. But Stephen Markman, a former justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, said that if the ruling were forever associated with Alito, “I do not know of any decision on any court by any judge of which that judge could be more proud.”
The comments were met by a standing ovation, with attendees turning to face toward Alito.
Barrett also briefly spoke at the event, largely honoring the late Judge Laurence Silberman, who served on D.C.’s federal appeals court and died last month. As she took the stage, Barrett said: “It’s really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside of my house.”
Paul Klee, “Death and Fire,” 1940
Gee, the Hand Maiden doesn’t want any of us peons in our democratic society disturbing her attempts to put Christian Nationalism in its place. She needs her beauty rest.
Trump continues to be blamed for all the losses and such bad candidates. Let’s not forget that all Trump has really done is amplify what’s been cooking in the oven since the Reagan years, at the very least. That might be a ham in the oven, but the pig wore lipstick before it got there.
From The Washington Post: “Trump blame continues for midterm losses as ex-president readies to announce bid. ‘I’m tired of losing,’ Trump critic Larry Hogan says, as Republican senators weigh in on leadership contest.” The problem is that even though they attempt to gentrify their radical agenda, the base wants its anger and red meat. I don’t think you will be able to put that back into the closet.
Donald Trump’s Republican critics renewed their push Sunday to steer their party away from the former president, warning that he could hurt Republicans’ chances of winning the Senate runoff in Georgia next month if he announces plans for another White House bid on Tuesday.
“It’s basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And it’s like, three strikes, you’re out.” Hogan said it would be a mistake to nominate Trump again as the party’s 2024 presidential candidate after Republicans failed to take control of the Senate and made far fewer gains in the House than predicted in the midterm elections.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result,” he added. “Donald Trump kept saying we’re gonna be winning so much we’re gonna get tired of winning. I’m tired of losing. That’s all he’s done.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) echoed Hogan’s comments on ABC’s “This Week,” calling Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in his state, a “Republican extremist” and saying the results across the country amounted to “a rejection of that extremism.”
Frantisek Kupka, Localization of Graphic Motifs II, 1912/1913
They can afford to say that now that the Supreme Court is doing its dirty work. I still remember them touting the style of the now Virginia Governor who tried to act moderate enough to get elected but then went full-on Christian White Nationalist. I think they’re just trying to fool centrists and independent voters. Genn Youngkin may have worn the clothing, but he still was a pig wearing lipstick. However, Trump has attacked him recently since he’s not quite pro-Trumpy enough. “Trump hits out at Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin with the bizarre comment that his name ‘sounds Chinese’. This report is from The Insider.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin amid speculation that the governor might run for president in 2024.
Writing on Truth Social on Friday, Trump bizarrely commented that the governor’s name, which he spelled “Young Kin” “sounds Chinese.”
Trump also took credit for Youngkin’s political rise, claiming that he would not have become governor without his endorsement.
“I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him – or he couldn’t have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it,” Trump wrote.
Youngkin dismissed Trump’s comments while speaking to reporters on Friday and said he was focused on bringing people together.
“Listen, you all know me, I do not call people names,” the governor said. “I really work hard to bring people together and that’s what we’re working on.”
“That’s not the way I roll and not the way I behave,” he added.
Youngkin has previously declined to comment on whether he would run in 2024, stating in October that he was “focused right now on being the best governor in Virginia that I can possibly be.”
Gustav Klimt, Baby (Cradle), 1917/1918
No matter how much he talks like a polite gentleman, his policies are the same old Republican Culture wars and wealthy class, corporate appeasement with the same dose of White Christian Nationalism and Jingoism. “Youngkin proposes new history standards, including teaching patriotism in Va. schools.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is overhauling former Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration’s proposal that would have set history and social science standards in Virginia schools.
Youngkin’s VDOE’s new draft proposal would determine what students learn about American history and Virginia history inside the classroom.
If adopted by the Virginia Board of Education, the new standards will be in effect for seven years starting in the 2024-2025 school year. Professional development would begin in the summer of 2023, according to a fact sheet that was sent to legislators and obtained by 7News.
The Governor’s 53-page proposal would require:
- Kindergarteners to learn patriotism which includes pledging allegiance to the American flag
- Students would learn critical thinking skills starting in the first grade
- Starting in 4th grade, students would describe the Civil Rights movement in Virginia and students would describe why James Madison is called the “Father of the U.S. Constitution” and why George Washington is called the “Father of our Country” and students would learn about Reconstruction and the Civil War
- In 11th grade, students would learn about Christopher Columbus and about the race-based enslavement of Africans and more
After Youngkin appointed new members to the Virginia Board of Education this year, the board delayed adopting the history curriculum proposal that was crafted under the Northam administration.
Northam’s proposed revisions to the history curriculum, which have now been scrapped, included:
- Lessons on the LGTBQ+ community and social justice
- Numerous lessons on racism and discrimination
- Recognized holidays like Juneteenth
- Lessons on gender equity and equality, climate defense, and renewable energy
- It would have halted the requirement of teaching some lessons on Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin
- It would have scrapped the requirement of understanding why George Washington is called the “Father of our Country” and why James Madison is called the “Father of the Constitution.”
See. Pig meet Lipstick.
The one governor’s race that I’m watching is still going in a good direction. “Kari Lake’s path to victory continues to narrow despite gains.” Lake would’ve joined the ranks of elected Republican women that continuously embarrass women and Americans everywhere.
Anyway, that’s my offerings for today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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