Tag Archives: alt-right

Friday Five (rhymes with yahtzee edition)

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Jesus wept
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We have reached the first Friday in June, aka Pride Month.

I’ve posted numerous times recently reminding folks that the first Pride was a riot, and specifically a riot about police brutality, and specifically a riot instigated by black and latinx queer people, and therefore no white gay people have a moral or ethical leg to stand on opposing the current protests and should all join wholeheartedly in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. If you know any white cis gay men who aren’t supporting the resistance, shame them and if that doesn’t work, shun them. Because they don’t belong in any community other than the Nazis…

According to one of the priests present, the Reverend Gini Gerbasi, said, “We were literally DRIVEN OFF of the St. John's, Lafayette Square patio with tear gas and concussion grenades and police in full riot gear,” Gerbasi said. “We were pushed back 20 feet, and then eventually - with SO MANY concussion grenades - back to K street.”
According to one of the priests present, the Reverend Gini Gerbasi, said, “We were literally DRIVEN OFF of the St. John’s, Lafayette Square patio with tear gas and concussion grenades and police in full riot gear,” Gerbasi said. “We were pushed back 20 feet, and then eventually – with SO MANY concussion grenades – back to K street.”
Meanwhile, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five stories of the week, five stories of interest to queers and our allies, five stories about demanding justice, five stories about the pandemic, five stories about the criminal pretending to be president, and five videos (plus notable obituaries and some things I wrote).

Stories of the Week:

The libertarian right is not now and never has been opposed to the government using violence against its own people in general and the only people under any illusion about that are gun-owning American libertarians. I would have just left out the qualification of “right” — I’ve only met two kinds of libertarians: full on neo-Nazis who cloud their rhetoric under multiple layers of misdirection on order to recruit, and neo-Nazi sympathzers who are in deep denial and fool themselves more than they fool anyone else.

Belgian man has been receiving pizzas he never ordered for years.

Judge Invalidates One of the Last Vestiges of Federal Discrimination Against Same-Sex Couples.

Washington state officials say the state has recovered $300 million paid to criminals who used stolen personal information to file fraudulent unemployment benefit claims.

‘Scorching-hot hacked computer burned my hand’.

This Week in News for Queers and Allies:

What Is Operation Pridefall? 4chan’s Anti-Gay Pride 2020 Troll Campaign.

LGBTQ+ Pride Month: How you can celebrate even if you can’t travel.

Country Singer Ty Herndon Changes The Pronouns In His 1995 Hit.

Pride Month moves online.

Same-sex marriages have contributed $3.8 billion to the US economy – 45,000 jobs were supported by same-sex unions and they generated an additional $244 million in state and local taxes.

This Week in Demanding Justice:

Research Says Violent Cops Cause Violent Protests.

White women in Louisville line up to protect Black protesters.

The Protests for George Floyd’s Killing Turned Into a Police Riot.

Queer protester’s skull fractured after police shot rubber bullets into crowd.

Live Updates: Another Night of Nationwide, Largely Peaceful Protests.

This Week in the Pandemic:

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count.

Coronavirus may not be mutating, but experts say there is still potential for danger.

California: rise in Covid-19 cases raises fears over reopening and protests.

Workers Fearful of the Coronavirus Are Getting Fired and Losing Their Benefits.

Preparing For A Triple Whammy: Hurricanes, Pandemic And A Loss Of Public Confidence.

In Memoriam:

Steve Priest (1948 -2020), Sweet bassist and vocalist.

George Floyd.

At George Floyd Memorial, an Anguished Call for Change.

Things I wrote:

Weekend Update: A riot is the language of the unheard.

We’ve got a lovely bunch of Nebulas!

Tuesday Tidbits 6/2/2020: Pride begins in an actual police state.

The First Pride Was a Riot —Don’t Forget Who Got Us Here.

Videos!

Jimmy Kimmel Does A Great Job Explaining White Privilege:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Trump’s Deranged Response to the George Floyd Protests: A Closer Look:

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Dictator Fanboy Donald Trump Gets His Wish As Military Vehicles Roll Down The Streets Of Washington:

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Orville Peck – No Glory in the West (Official Video):

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Ricky Martin, Farruko – Tiburones (Remix – Official Video):

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Tuesday Tidbits 6/2/2020: Pride begins in an actual police state

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Trump delivers horrifying White House address as police unleash on protesters nearby.

President Donald Trump on Monday evening called for law enforcement across the country to dominate the ongoing protests and riots in response to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police. The dark and authoritarian message delivered from Rose Garden was sharply juxtaposed on cable news with images of peaceful protesters just outside the White House gates who were fired on by police with tear gas.

The president threatened to send the military into the streets if the unrest could not be quelled by other means.

Between the alleged president’s fascist proclamations and the curfews and related emergency orders from mayors and governors everyone who isn’t a diehard trump supporter/neo-nazi (as if there is a difference) has lost the legal right to protest. I am not exaggerating.

Trump needed photo op. Peaceful protesters at White House paid the price in tear gas, rubber bullets.

The real reason Trump went to St. John’s Church.

“Sources are telling my colleague Kevin Liptak that, in part, the reason the president made this trip outside the gates of the White House — a really rare trip, where you do not often see the president walk out of the front door of the White House, walk across Lafayette Square, to St. John’s — was driven, in part, that he was upset by coverage of the fact that he had been rushed to the underground bunker on Friday night during the protests that you saw breaking out here, in front of the White House,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said.

Trump Tells Governors They’ll Look Like ‘Jerks’ and ‘Fools’, Says He’ll Arrest ‘Thousands of People’, Suggests Jailing Protesters for 10 Years: ‘You Have to Dominate’.

Ivanka sends Pride tweet as Trump gasses peaceful protesters for publicity photo at church- Responses to the tweet from the LGBTQ community and celebrities ranged from outrage to disgust. Um, happy Pride month??

For as long as I can remember, columnist/pundit George Will has been an arch-conservative who argued against my own rights and against everything I believe. The last couple of years as he slowly came out as a never-trumper I have occasionally found myself at least partially agreeing with him. I am more than a little bit dizzy to read this piece from him where he finally comes up fully anti-trump, anti-neo-nazi and recognizing that that means become anti-republican: George Will: There is no such thing as rock bottom for Trump. Assume the worst is yet to come.

The Protests for George Floyd’s Killing Turned Into a Police Riot. This is not, by any means, the first time that riots have turned out to have been caused by the cops, rather than the protestors.

“You only gave us rights because we gave you riots. Queer Power”
“You only gave us rights because we gave you riots. Queer Power” (Click to embiggen)
Most of this last weekend’s update was concerned with the protests. But not all. I posted a link about the death of an infamous homophobe who shaped anti-gay attitudes and legislation for several decades. Another blogger was even more blunt that I was: Lou Sheldon was an evil, homophobic SOB and I hated his guts.

Alvin McEwen of Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters has spent many years exposing the lies and distortions of various anti-gay hate groups. And his take on Sheldon’s death did not disappoint:

Lou Sheldon was an evil homophobic son of a bitch. His rhetoric mutilated our minds while encouraging others to mutilate our bodies. With him, there was no nonsense about wanting to save our souls or loving the sinner while hating the sin. Lou Sheldon HATED LGBTQ people. And he made it his life’s work to disrupt our lives and cause us as much turmoil as he possibly could.

I kind of wish I had been this blunt on Saturday.

Meanwhile, we passed that horrific milestone of 100,000 dead due to the corona virus some days ago. It’s difficult to know how to wrap our minds around such a thing. The New York Times approached it this way:

The New York Times has gathered 100 obituaries of people who have died from Covid-19 as an attempt to wrestle with the magnitude of 100,000 Americans dead.
The New York Times has gathered 100 obituaries of people who have died from Covid-19 as an attempt to wrestle with the magnitude of 100,000 Americans dead. Click on the image to be taken to the page. The Times is making all their Covid-19 coverage available free.

Back to the protests and what they mean:

‘America’s moment of reckoning’: Cornel West calls nationwide uprising a sign of ’empire imploding’.

I Was the Mayor of Minneapolis and I Know Our Cops Have a Problem – Racism permeated the culture of the department. But there are ways to change that culture that other cities can copy.

Biden: Trump ‘consumed’ by ego, not leading during crisis.

“‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.’ George Floyd’s last words. But they didn’t die with him. They’re still being heard. They’re echoing across this nation,” Biden said.

“They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to a virus and 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment — with a disproportionate number of these deaths and job losses concentrated in the black and minority communities. And they speak to a nation where every day millions of people — not at the moment of losing their life — but in the course of living their life — are saying to themselves, ‘I can’t breathe.'”
—presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden

Tuesday Tidbits 5/26/2020: Willing to kill…?

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I had a fairly busy weekend, so no time to do a Weekend Update post. So here are some news links to stories that either broke after I made this week’s Friday Five, or are further developments on stories previously commented upon, or didn’t make the cut for the Friday Five but I wanted to make some comments…

Mugshots of two of the men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, “Remember, they weren't arrested because cops saw the tapes. The were arrested because we saw the tapes.”
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The shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery: A timeline of a case that’s gripping the nation: it took over two months for the white men who killed him — Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael — to be arrested.

Man who recorded the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery has been arrested, GBI says.

FBI investigating Ahmaud Arbery shooting as possible hate crime, lawyer says – Attorney for family of black jogger shot by white men says federal authorities are looking into prosecutors and police in case.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Was Ahmaud Arbery killed for ‘jogging while black’? The answer is an emphatic yes.

I’m not sure what else to say. That it took the leaked video of one the murderers’ co-conspirator being seen by the public to get a prosecutor to look at the case? Right. Anyone who thinks America is a post-racist society has their head stuck up something…

Not protestors, Domestic Terrorists - Vanilla ISIS.
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hanged in effigy as Second Amendment supporters protest coronavirus restrictions.

Husband Of Reopen NC Leader Says He’s ‘Willing To Kill’ To Stop ‘New World Order’. Also, insists he’s not a terrorist.

Threatening to kill people if they don’t do as you say—threatening to kill anyone you perceive has not doing as you say—is the very definition of terrorism. Y’all aren’t heroes. You’re not patriots. You’re certainly not Christian…

NC Coronavirus Hospitalizations At New High On Memorial Day – On the same day, a group demanding an end to pandemic restrictions planned protests throughout the state.

How many times do we have to say it: the restrictions aren’t what tanked the economy. It’s the fact that we’ve built the economy on a need for a lot of people to work themselves to the bone to keep things going, and that as soon as a significant fraction of the population cuts back on certain types of spending, everything collapses.

And saying, “People who are afraid of getting infected can just stay home. The rest of us want to be able to go to a restaurant or get our hair cut.” Just proves that you don’t think service industry workers are people. Because if there isn’t a shut down and there isn’t unemployment to cover them, then they have no choice but to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones just so you can have your dang hot wings.

Conspiracy theorists, far-right extremists around the world seize on the pandemic- Civil rights advocates have warned for months that the coronavirus could aid recruiting for the most extreme white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Child looking incredulous, “So, me wearing a bulletproof backpack to school with metal detectors, armed guards, and routine mass-shooter drills is 'the price of freedom'... but you wearing a mask in Walmart fo 10 minutes is 'tyranny'? ”
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CDC: Arkansas coronavirus outbreak linked to church services .

Georgia church closes two weeks after reopening as families come down with coronavirus.

More COVID-19 cases linked to California church services.

I can’t even…

In fairness, I want to point out that it isn’t just Americans who are capable of this level of stupidity: 107 COVID Cases Have Been Traced Back to One Church Service in Germany.

“Too many headlines begin with the phrases, 'Pastor Arrested...' 'Youth Pastor Charged with...', 'Pastor Pleads Guilty...'”

 
Youth pastor claims he was kidnapped by black men to avoid admitting why he was in a hotel room – After his wild claim made it to social media, local news investigated the racist tale and the now-unemployed pastor admitted the truth.

Former Abilene youth pastor wanted by U.S. Marshals arrested in Mexico.

Inola Pastor Arrested, Accused Of Sexually Assaulting 3 Young Girls.

This is an old, old topic I’ve written about many times. Human institutions of all kinds have a terrible habit of protecting people in power and enabling abusing behavior. But there is something particularly insidious about how that manifests in churches. Particularly in how often the pastor or other leader who has abused other people is embraced and offered forgiveness almost before they ask for it, and how their victims are treated as if they are the offenders. And this next story illustrates that:

One Youth Pastor After Another Sexually Abused Kids at This California Church. It’s in the news because civil lawsuits have been filed. But the killer detail is how in 1983, when a 13-year-old boy explained how the youth pastor had sexually assaulted him, it wasn’t just that the church leadership decided not to punish the youth pastor, but they contacted the police and reported the boy for making a false accusation! And the first reaction of the police was to grill the boy about his own sexual desires…

That’s the fucked up world many of us grew up in.

Weekend Update 5/16/2020: This is not about freedom

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“Does everyone grasp that 'reopen the economy' means keep poor people from collecting unemployment? And 'work sick or lose your job'? This in not about freedom.”
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Time for another post with stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or that broke after I completed the Friday Five post, or update a news story/event that I have commented upon in an earlier post. And as usual, I’m going to have more to say about these things than the typical amount of commentary in the Friday Five.

Before we get into all of that, I just want to share that this morning after my usual coughing and sneezing (we’re in peak hay fever season, here) I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my husband had already started the ribs cooking for tonight’s dinner. He makes his own rub for pork ribs and slow cooks them. So when my sinuses temporarily clear, I was flooded with the most amazing scents! My husband is awesome!

All right, let’s jump in to the other stuff:

We saw this coming. Covidiot New York Barber Cutting Hair ‘illicitly’ During Lockdown Tests Positive For COVID . Now, I want to make it clear, I don’t think this is ‘just desserts’, and I’m not cheering the fact that this guy has gotten this disease which is far, far worse than the flu. (See the story I linked to yesterday of the body builder who spent 6 weeks on a ventilator if you don’t understand). There are multiple tragedies here: 1) the guy is an idiot, yes, but his idiocy has been caused, enabled, and cheered on by a bunch of people in the rightwing media and politics who are themselves taking the very precautions they are urging others to protest, 2) if he tested positive, that means a number of his customers during this time who came in for the illicit haircuts got infected while there.

And the idiot minority (egged on by slightly less idiotic people whose wealth and privilege allow them to avoid some of the danger) are making decisions based in part on not comprehending the slow incubation period. And that outcomes are still difficult to predict. COVID-19: Daily growth rate slowing in Nebraska, but deaths per day rising. And of course, Editorial: Wisconsin politicians, court failed to protect public good.

And those supposedly slowing growth rates, well, they’re mostly meaningless because we aren’t testing enough to know how much of the population in any area actually has it: Most US states fall short of recommended testing levels – Coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks and the resolve of planners to reopen from pandemic shutdowns.

“I'm still amazed that 'protect the unborn' turned into 'kill your grandparents' in a matter of 6 weeks because people wanted a haircut.”
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And I repeat, that this is not like the flu! It’s not just lungs: Covid-19 may damage the heart, brain, and kidneys. Damage your body likely never will recover from completely. And again, it isn’t just old people or people with pre-existing conditions (as if letting those people die isn’t super immoral on its own). COVID-19 inducing strokes in young people. COVID-19 can cause some young children to have a fatal inflammatory syndrome. And everyone who has it suffers at least some of the long-term permanent organ damage.

Meanwhile, some people aren’t just being idiots, they are being evil: Landlords Sexually Harassing Tenants And Renters Aid Coronavirus Pandemic – “He knows I don’t have a job. He knows I don’t have anywhere to go — he’s preying on me.”.

Okay, I think it’s time to change topics before I start foaming at the mouth.

Remember our old pal, the lying, hypocrital hate-monger, Jerry Falwell, Jr? Well, he’s been in the news a bit this week!

Jerry Falwell Jr’s Liberty University guts entire Philosophy department. Which is especially strange given how much of the University’s web page and other marketing materials hype that very department and the PhD program it offered. Of course, Liberty University’s purpose has never been education. When Falwell Senior was still alive, it’s goals were propaganda, brainwashing, and making a shit-ton of money for the Falwell family. Since Junior took over, the milking students and donors for as much money as he can divert into his real estate investments and to pay off sex partners has become the premiere goal, eclipsing all others (as we’ve linked to many, many times).

It’s the reason he insisted on re-opening the university while state and local officials were begging him not to. It’s the reason he has refused to refund tuition for students stuck elsewhere under quarantine orders, or afraid to come back due to health concerns, or who have actually gotten sick and so forth.

The philosophy department is being cut because even with that refusal to grant refunds (or perhaps because), enrollment is dropping off.

You may recall the last time I linked to a story about Falwell it was about his saying that two reporters were being prosecuted for trespassing after they reported about the students afraid to come back and so forth? Well… Falwell Loses Bid To Prosecute “Trespassing” Journalists – Two journalists accused of trespassing at LU won’t be prosecuted. The linked story skips some of the details. The warrants were issued by a campus security copy. It just so happens that (because back in the day the university was so economically important to the local area and Virginia tends to have very conservative public officials), that the county has treated the campus security force as if it was a city police department.

However, when they issue warrants, those warrants are supposed to be approved by a magistrate and the prosecutor’s office. When Falwell touted these warrants initially, he lied (and his lie was widely quotes as fact in many news stories) that the warrants had been issued by a magistrate. They had been submitted but not yet reviewed. The review has finally happened.

Turns out that standing on public sidewalks and taking pictures and talking to other people on public sidewalks and then leaving when asked to doesn’t constitute trespassing. Who’d’ve thunk?

Let’s move to a topic much less dire for a moment:

Local Sleuths Track Down Source of Mysterious Radio Songs. This story was written by someone whose work I am a fan of, and is published in one of my favorite news sources, but I have quite a quibble with the headline. Unless the word “sleuths” is being used sarcastically. The story is interesting, and it is cool that some people tried to turn it into some sort of secret message. But actual sleuths would know that the FCC has a publicly available web site where you can plug in a radio frequency and your location and find out who holds the license for the station in question and the physical location of its transmitter(s).

Still, the answer to the mysterious twenty-song playlist that kept repeating unchanged for who knows how long is amusing.

I usually try to end these with a funny video, but…

The following is a different take on a particular moment that happened this week and was covered in at least one video linked in yesterday’s Friday Five. Rachel raises an issue that lots and lots and lots of us have been thinking, but few in the media have been saying aloud:”

Something Appears To Be Wrong With Donald Trump | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Midweek Update 5/6/2020: It’s not peaceful protest when you bring heavily armed vigilantes

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“The U.S. just had the worse one-day death toll from the coronavirus pandemic yet as states begin to reopen. Never Forget. They are reopening to force you off unemployment, NOT because things are getting better.”
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Models shift to predict dramatically more U.S. deaths as states relax social distancing.

Top US companies lay off thousands of workers while rewarding shareholders.

Since Georgia began ‘reopening,’ risk of exposure to coronavirus has increased 42% .

“The Black Panthers were arrested and labeled terrorists after they carried guns into a capitol building. These guys, doing the exact same thing, are called patriots exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. Gee, I wonder what the difference could be?”
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‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists’: Trump destroyed for calling armed Michigan protestors ‘very good people’.

Hannity scolds armed Michigan protesters: ‘Dangerous’ show of force ‘puts our police at risk’. When Trump’s number 1 cheerleader agrees with the rest of us…

Majority of Americans Don’t Support Reopening, Poll Finds — as Coronavirus Continues to Spread. “…78 percent said they would not feel comfortable eating out at a restaurant…” among other things.

“If $600 a week is enough to make people to refuse to work for you, you're not a job creator, you're a poverty exploiter.”
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Profit Over People: The Meat Industry’s Exploitation of Vulnerable Workers.

Guest Opinion: Let the new normal be a better normal – The coronavirus pandemic has lifted the veil covering the pervasive injustices that corporate greed and exploitation have wreaked upon our nation and the world at large.

Tuesday Tidbits 4/28/2020: Skipping pants is better than pants on fire, I suppose

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“Americans will accept 50,000 dead and 20,000 lies from a white president but not healthcare from a black one.”
“Americans will accept 50,000 dead and 20,000 lies from a white president but not healthcare from a black one.”

A Republican effort to sabotage Obamacare was just rejected by the Supreme Court.

40,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Outbreak.

Front of the New York Daily News. Photo of Trump wearing a protective mask with the headline “If only it were a muzzle.”
“If only it were a muzzle.”

Scarborough Calls Out Pence Statement On Tests As ‘Blithering Idiocy’. “Vice President Pence is learning from Donald Trump that when you’re caught dead on something, point back at the reporter and blame the media for misunderstanding it,” the Morning Joe host said.

“The venn diagram of people protesting shelter in place orders because they don't like 'the government telling them what to do' and people who think the government to tell pregnant people who want abortions what to do with their bodies is one giant f-ing circle.”
“The venn diagram of people protesting shelter in place orders because they don’t like ‘the government telling them what to do’ and people who think the government to tell pregnant people who want abortions what to do with their bodies is one giant f-ing circle.”

Coronavirus lockdown protests expose a far deeper sickness.

Trump and Darwin: Make America Sick Again.

“Trump said that 'HUNDREDS' of governors are calling him.' We only have 50. Think about that. Take all the time you need.”
“Trump said that ‘HUNDREDS’ of governors are calling him.’ We only have 50. Think about that. Take all the time you need.”

Cooper: Trump just lied about something we all witnessed.

AS TRUMP URGES DOCTORS TO LIE ON LIVE TV, FEDERAL OFFICIAL SAYS HE WAS FIRED FOR LIMITING HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE USE.

A single Trump tweet sums up his media strategy: Confusion – He can’t make his disinfectant remarks go away. So he’s trying to douse them with doubt.

Tweet by reporter Will Reeve: “I have ARRIVED* *in the most hilariously mortifying way possible” attached is another tweet showing how Reeve failed to get away with not wearing pants during broadcast.
“I have ARRIVED* *in the most hilariously mortifying way possible”

I don’t know about you, but I really needed the chuckle this evoked: Reporter Almost Got Away With Skipping Pants On Good Morning America.

Weekend Update 4/26/2020: Bleach Bum and Son of a Mitch

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The New York Daily News has been on FIRE lately!
Once again here we are looking at news stories that either broke after I finished the most recent Friday Five, or bring more information about a story included in that post, or that expand upon a story which I have linked to in some previous post—and upon which I want to make more extensive comments than I usually include in a Friday Five blog post, or otherwise didn’t quite make the cut before. Which ought to be a big surprise, but since we are all living in a dystopian timeline, maybe it oughtn’t be a big surprise that some of this didn’t make the cut when I’m trying to limit myself to no more than five stories to each of no more than five categories and trying not to let bad news outnumber the neutral and good news stories. Unfortunately, we are living in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, so any attempt to exclude all the depressing news can be construed as delusional. And I don’t want to be delusional, so…

Before I comment on anything else, please absorb this fact: U.S. hits 50,000 deaths from coronavirus – just as many states announce plans to ease social distancing. Some people have trouble with numbers. So let me give you a couple of comparisons: for every person who was killed in the 9/11 attacks, more than 16 Americans have been killed by COVID-19… so as of Friday afternoon, COVID-19 represents more than 16 9/lls… and yet there are people who think the precautions many states have taken are an overreaction…

Meanwhile, Coronavirus is spreading fast in states that may reopen soon, study finds. I don’t know what to say on this. I know that a fraction of the population doesn’t believe any of the facts we show them. And I know the politicians believe the facts, but they also believe that the people who die don’t matter… I don’t know how to get the idiots who don’t realize that their leaders want them to die to keep the economy moving to see what’s happening…

And maybe there isn’t a way, because while the president is spouting nonsense like this stuff: President Trump’s batsh*t crazy coronavirus ‘cure’ theories are not just shockingly senseless and stupid – they’re going to kill people, which you would expect anyone with a lick of sense to recognize as nonsense. Bleach is poison! Lysol is poison! It kills the virus on inanimate objects, sure, but if you put it in your body it will kill you. Everyone knows that, right?

Apparently not: Conservative radio host agrees with caller that vaping bleach might cure COVID-19: ‘You’re not crazy’ and American health hotlines have been swamped by anxious callers following last week’s bizarre suggestion by Donald Trump that researchers try using disinfectants to cure Covid-19 patients.

So apparently no, a lot of people really are that ignorant. Wow. Which is why pretty much every company the manufactures home use disinfectants came out with statements warning and even begging people not to do it: Trump’s Suggestion That Disinfectants Could Be Used to Treat Coronavirus Prompts Aggressive Pushback.

It is still boggling my mind. Have none of these people been responsible for raising or taking care of small children? When I was a kid I had it drilled into my head that bleach and lysol and ammonia and other cleaning chemicals we kept in the house were poisonous. Once I had a younger sibling, it was emphasized that I should keep an eye out to help make sure my sister didn’t drink any of the poison. And so on. Aaaagggh!

(Yes, I have been reduced to yelling incoherntly at the screen)

All of that craziness led to this: New York Daily News Hits Donald Trump With A Caustic New Nickname – The president’s comments about disinfectant and the coronavirus inspired the tabloid’s scathing moniker.

I’ve included an image of a front page of the New York Daily News above where they use the new nickname, but that’s not the big headline. The big headline goes to another corrupt Republican! McConnell says giving aid to states to help ease the pain from the pandemic would be a ‘blue state bailout.’ But most states were doing the right thing before the coronavirus hit. Which prompted a whole lot of people to point out that McConnell’s state has been leeching off far more federal tax dollars than it generates for decades, and in fact most of the so-called Red States always have, while it it so same Blue States who are carrying the load: Cuomo Swings At McConnell Again: ‘Just Give Me My Money Back, Senator’.

I could link to a whole lot more, including a lot of McConnell’s fellow Republicans, but thankfully our dear friends at the Wonkette have already gathered a bunch of those along with their own snarky commentary: It’s A ‘Kick Mitch McConnell In The Dick’ Contest, And Everyone Is Playing!.

Oh, and did you hear that the President fired the health expert in charge of coordinating vaccine development because he would jump on the chloroquine bandwagon? Ex-FDA Head: Ouster Of Vaccine Chief “Sets Us Back”. I mean, I’m sure that whatever sycophant that Trump chose to take over will do a fine job. Vaccines are hard, are they?

Meanwhile, the rest of the Republican crooks are started to get worried that maybe getting on the Trump train wasn’t such a good idea: Nervous Republicans See Trump Sinking, and Taking Senate With Him – The election is still six months away, but a rash of ominous new polls and the president’s erratic briefings have the G.O.P. worried about a Democratic takeover. Note that they aren’t worried about tens of thousands of Americans dying, or the tens of millions unemployed. No, they’re just worried about keeping control of at least one house of Congress so they can keep lining their pockets and the pockets of their billionaire buddies…

Maybe I should just let Randy Rainbow take us out on a lighter(?) note?

A SPOONFUL OF CLOROX – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Weekend Update 4/18/2020: manbabies, misinformation, and racism

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Once again, here’s some news that either broke after I assembled this week’s Friday Five, or is a new development in a story I’ve linked to or commented on previously. Plus more commentary than goes in my Friday Five posts.

Let’s start with a frequent guest in these updates: a disgraced, former Congressman who used to be a self-loathing closet case, and now has become a self-owning gay party boy: Aaron Schock is partying with a group of gay men in Mexico for his “self-isolation” – The “Instagays,” one journalist noted, “have a very different definition of ‘social distancing’ than the rest of us!” Gathering a whole bunch of your pretty boy friends and acquaintances from the get-high-and-dance-and-have-sex-with-random-people circuit in order to get high and dance and have sex with each other at a resort is not isolating, and it is exactly the opposite of a quarantine… and posting dozens of pictures of you doing that just seems stupid.

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But hey, there are a lot of other ways to be stupid during an epidemic of a deadly disease! You can gather a bunch of strangers from your community into a public place, and shout your nonsensical statements at each other: Michigan manbaby protest: Wait, we thought conservatives were “rugged individuals” – Who’d a thunk it? Right-wingers are a bunch of spoiled brats who start whining over the slightest inconvenience and Hundreds gather in California to protest stay-at-home orders. Yeah, shout and scream, wave your confederate flags and swastikas (I’m not kidding) and signs around. Spread those microscopic droplets of saliva all over the place! That’s how to protect yourself from the tyranny of a quarantine order, all right!

Or you can gather a whole bunch of people in a crowded space indoors and sing hymns! That’s another great way to protect yourself, your family, and your community from a deadly illness! Authoritarian Christians are deliberately undermining the public health response to coronavirus.

Or maybe not? Member of defiant Central church dies from coronavirus illness. Oops! No one saw that one coming, I guess. Virginia pastor who defiantly held church service dies of coronavirus. Or this one, either. I heard a clip on one of the news podcasts I listen to, where a woman who was leaving one of these church services kept repeating that she couldn’t get sick, because she was covered in the blood of Jesus, just like everyone else in the congregation. When the reporter asked her about people she might encounter afterward who weren’t church members, she replied that if they were covered in the blood of Jesus like she was, they had nothing to worry about.

I can’t find any passage in the Bible where Jesus claims his followers are immune to communicable diseases. It just isn’t there.

And while we’re on the topic of misinformed people trying to spread misinformation, Watch Dr. Tony Fauci debunk Laura Ingraham’s comparison of HIV treatment to treating coronavirus – Dr. Fauci: “Laura, this is different. HIV/AIDS is entirely different”. I have pointed out some similarities in that way that some people are reacting to this epidemic and how they reacted to (and still are) the AIDS epidemic. But that was about attitudes of people toward the victims. Not about how the two diseases spread. AIDS is not infectious through casual contact. HIV take years, many years, to become a threat to the person’s life. And eventually, we developed treatments that let people go even longer without getting sick, and it turns out that those some treatments make the person no longer capable of infecting others (as long as they stay on the meds). A vaccine would still be preferable to the regime of taking a cocktail of anti-viral drugs for decades.

This disease is communicable through casual contact. Because this virus is new to humans, there aren’t large fractions of the population carrying anti-bodies to older strains of the bug like there is for flu. There is no vaccine like there is for some strains of flu. And there is no effective treatment. None: Malaria Drug Study Halted Over Heart Arrhythmias.

And for a wide variety of reasons, some segments of the population is at higher risk for dying from this than others. And it isn’t just old people: The pathology of American racism is making the pathology of the coronavirus worse – Covid-19 is disproportionately killing black people because the whole system is worse for us. and Covid-19 is ravaging black communities. A Milwaukee neighborhood is figuring out how to fight back. Systemic racism means that some communities of color have a higher rate of some underlying conditions. Systemic racism also means they are less likely to seek medical help (either because they fear financially ruining their family, or past experience tells them that medical professionals don’t take their symptoms seriously, or both).

Let’s move on…

Oh, look! Paycheck Protection Program out of money: Thousands of small businesses shut out. We sure burned through that fast… if only there were the Inspector Generals available to monitor the funds, we could find out what really happened to the money. Guess we’ll never know…

And let’s close with this reminder of what our narcissistic president sees as being the important part of a disaster that has killed tens of thousands of his citizens and put more than twenty million out of work:

Trump's signature to be on stimulus checks, delaying mailing process: report
Trump’s signature to be on stimulus checks, delaying mailing process: report.

Thursday Tidbits: Reading about angry people while social distancing

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It’s nearly the end of my fourth week of working from home full-time because of the pandemic. The state’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order hasn’t been in effect that long. I chose to work from home four Mondays ago on a day when I would normally go in because I had developed a cough1 over the weekend, just to be safe. I didn’t want to be the person who infected other people if I happened to have this thing, right? Later that week, my boss encouraged everyone to work from home… and then we had the first request (not an order) from the state to all the tech companies to let employees who could work from home do so, and so the executives sent out the message to that effect.

I regularly worked from home at least two days a week for quite some time before then, so I didn’t expect it would be much of an adjustment3. And I’m an introvert, who while I like spending time with my friends, need to spend quite a bit of time alone in order to not be mega-cranky.

My husband, in the meantime, was still having to go into work five days a week4, which of course had me fretting. I’ve been fretting about all my friends and loved ones throughout this mess. Earlier this week, he and most of his co-workers were furloughed, so he’s going to be home with me all the time for the foreseeable future. Which means slightly less fretting, right? Of course it also means we need to figure out some new routines.

On the one hand, it helps that he’s also an introvert, and we already have a habit of spending most of our time at home ignoring each other. He usually sits at his computer and I sit at mine. If I’m watching TV he’s usually playing games on his computer, or designing 3D figures to print on his 3D printer, or sitting at the table painting said figures. So we’ve got that part sorted, for now.

But worrying about everyone else does wear on you. And even though I have been a news junkie5 since I was a kid, I’ve noticed that I’m starting to avoid some of my usual news sources during my daily reading. But even though I’m trying to avoid some of those external sources of anxiety, stuff still comes across my stream that just demands a comment.

For instance, White nationalist planned to bomb a Missouri hospital as revolt against coronavirus lockdowns. Seriously? Geeze. If you don’t want to click through, the guy was under surveillance by the FBI for some time because he was active on some of the same neo-Nazi message boards as several other people arrested over the last few months for similar plans. He had been in communication with someone he thought was building a bomb that could be installed in his car, and he showed up to pick up the bomb, not realizing it was an FBI sting. He resisted arrest, and got shot and killed in the process.

Bombing a hospital? Really?

I really don’t understand some people.

Meanwhile, there is a slightly positive development in another news story about an angry white nationalist: Christchurch shootings: Brenton Tarrant pleads guilty to 51 murders – A man accused of deadly attacks on mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch a year ago has pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder. At least the families of the victims won’t have to watch a long jury trial uncertain of the outcome.

Speaking of angry white men who may finally be held accountable for some bad stuff they’ve done: Alex Jones Loses Sandy Hook Court Appeal, Must Now Pay Nearly $150,000 In Legal Fees. I hope he keeps losing lawsuits from the families of those murdered children until he’s homeless8.

Another feature of angry white men we don’t spend enough time talking about is just how stupid they are. And it’s the kind of stupid that causes real harm to others. So I’m going to close with this video, where Rachel Maddow talks about one such stupid angry white guy. Take it away, Rachel!

Rachel Maddow blasts Mississippi governor for banning cities from coronavirus business closures:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Footnotes:

1. A couple days before that tree pollen count went into the deep red, and what few other symptoms I had were consistent with a severe hay fever attack, so I was fairly certain I didn’t have the coronavirus2. But, better safe than sorry, right?

2. I have been following the advice from the World Health Organization of checking my temperature several times a day ever since. I have had no fever in that time. The cough went away for a while, then came back, and then went away. No other symptoms have shown up, so knock wood!

3. And when some people on some of the podcasts I regularly listen to were talking about how difficult it was coming up with things to do to amuse themselves while avoiding going out, I admit I chuckled. I have so many books in my to-read pile, for instance! And there are all those shows I have been trying to get to on the various streaming services! The problem isn’t finding things to do, the problem is still not having enough time for the things I want to watch, read, or listen to!

4. Riding the bus back and forth twice a day. At least he doesn’t work directly with the public like he used to. He even pointed out that because his workbench in in a cage (because he works on hard disk and other highly valuable things that are easy to pocket), most of the time all of his co-workers are far enough from him to prevent casual infection.

5. I sometimes blame Weekly Reader6, which was this sort of mini newspaper that we used to get in some of the elementary schools I attended. The idea of Weekly Reader was to provide age-appropriate versions of the big news stories kids might be hearing their parents talking about or whatever. It was an interesting publication.

6. Though my paternal grandfather was a big fan of reading the newspaper, as well as the nightly news. And most of the radio stations in most of the places we lived during my childhood had an hourly news break provided by one of the major networks. And there always seemed to be a station that carried the Paul Harvey show at noon7.

7. Which I now realize had a quite skewed viewpoint and was as likely to report urban legends as it was real news, but there was something entertaining about it.

8. He deserves much worse, of course.

Weekend Update 03/07/2020: Men with more money, hate, and self-loathing than sense

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It is time once again for another of my Saturday posts where I talk about news stories that either broke after I finished this week’s Friday Five, or a story having been linked and/or commented upon in any of my previous posts has had new developments. Let’s go!

So, yesterday I included a link to a story where a guy who is frequently on CNBC as a financial expert said that it would be better for the economy if everyone just got sick the people who are going to die from COVID-19 just did so and got it over with so the rest of the world could get on with business. He didn’t literally quote the line from A Christmas Carol where Scrooge tells the two well-meaning gentleman taking donations for the poor that people who would rather die than go into the debtor’s prison that, if they would rather die, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population,” but he came close. Well, since then he has tried to backpedal a bit: Rick Santelli Sorry He Said You Should Get Sick And Die, For The Economy. Of course, since this is hardly the first time he has said that we shouldn’t care about people who have had bad things happen to them, I rather doubt his sincerity.

Let’s move on.

Earlier in the week I logged into the blog to work on a post, and I saw that my clicks were way, way up. So I looked at the list, and two old blog posts about disgraced former Congressman Aaron Schock (and self-loathing closet case) were getting a whole lot of hits. I had already seen the news stories where he finally came out of the closet (again, I’ll get into that), so I shouldn’t have been surprised—yet I was. Anyway, because one particular old Weekend Update post on the subject always gets lots of hits whenever Schock is in the news, I have taken to adding updates to the bottom of said post rather than keep making new posts just for him. I did so again. I’m gonna just quote it here for starts:

Update 7: Now, here it is March 2020, and Schock has decided to really come out. He means it, this time, because there is a really long post about it on his Instagram. As Joe Jervis notes on Joe.My.God: “The post goes on for several self-pitying pages.” He still doesn’t apologize for all his anti-gay votes and campaigning. The closest he comes is saying if he were in Congress today he would vote differently on LGBT issues. But he also reaffirms several times that he still supports the rest of the Republican agenda. In the self-pitying parts he blames his anti-gay votes on feeling the need to fit in with his Republican colleagues, which I’m going to give myself a silver star for, as I have predicted on this blog that Schock would eventually come out and blame the pressures of being closeted for all his hateful speeches and votes.

Since making that update, I keep seeing news outlets carrying the story of Schock coming out, and a lot of them are reporting it as if it’s just a sort-of-famous person coming out and isn’t he brave? Except, of course, he isn’t.

Those self-pitying pages of his really long Instagram post are filled with, “woe is me, my bigoted parents/friends/former colleagues have all rejected me” since he was caught on camera making out and groping guys in public, and his really bad attempt at coming out last August by actually asking a couple of other gay republicans to pretend to leak some of his pictures and conversations trying to hookup with men for sex online (and then renouncing it).

Millions of queer people have been rejected by family members. Some of us even had close family members threaten to beat us or worse (even if we came out after moving out on our own and becoming productive members of society). But most of us didn’t run for political office on extremely anti-gay platforms, vote against LGBT rights, give hateful speeches in Congress and on the campaign trail calling for rollback of what rights we had clawed out in some jurisdictions at the time. And most of us weren’t so comfortably well off that we could afford more than one multi-million dollar homes. I’m sure he’s not quite as wealthy as he used to be, but he has the funds to go to across the continent to attend the music festival where he was groping those guys, and later to Mexico where he was videoed putting money into the g-string of a male stripper. So I’m having trouble feeling sorry for him right now.

During each of the six years he was in Congress (from 2009-2015), several hundred kids were bullied because people suspected they were queer to the point that they committed suicide. Even more kids each of those years were thrown out on the streets by religious parents. Speeches Schock made in those years and votes he took contributed to the hostile homophobic environment that causes that bullying and rejection. So he has to do some atonement before he’s entitled to any sympathy.

I’ll let someone else say it: A Message to Former Congressman Aaron Schock — Welcome, I guess?

I will admit, at first I wanted to rant, “Girl, bye. Take your Republican, anti-LGBTQ ass outta here and go rub suntan oil on some WeHo dummy who doesn’t know he’s sleeping with the enemy.” But I thought better of that. I thought, “No, I should take the high road. What Aaron needs is help, because attractive, rich, gay, white celebrities never get help.”’

…So Aaron, I want to help you. I want to offer you the help you don’t deserve and that you never gave anyone else you oppressed. Privilege, right? It’s great.

It’s funny, and he has some good suggestions.

And now, for a different kind of self-loathing gay man: Ex-Judge Guilty Of Buying AR-15 For Nazi Boyfriend. I tried to follow the link that is inside that story to read the longer piece at the Pittsburgh Gazette, but the website asked me to whitelist the site to proceed. So I did, and in order to whitelist you have to then refresh and guess what, they then tell me that I have exceeded my free stories for the month. That is a really badly programmed paywall. Anyway, to avoid a paywall you can get some more details here: Retired Judge Admits To Buying AR-15 For Felon With Nazi Obsession.

It’s not crazy enough that a retired federal judge, of all people, illegally bought at least one semiautomatic rifle for the convicted felon who also happens to be a neo-Nazi. It’s that the judge, who is a man, and the neo-Nazi, who is also a man, are in a romantic relationship. Why do so many self-loathing gay white guys embrace Hitler? The original Nazis hated the gays (please go google “night of long knives” and “history of the pink triangle” if you’re not familiar). And neo-Nazis hate the gays, too. WTF?

The feds found a rather large cache of weapons, ammunition, and Nazi memorabilia. Some people just have way more money than sense, I guess.

Anyway, I wanna close this by quoting a hilarious tweet from more more than a year ago which explains why the image I linked above recommends composting rather than eating the rich. Take it away @Foone:

friendly reminder since this is going around again: DO NOT EAT THE RICH!
it’s called bio-magnification, people! the rich are at the top of the food chain, so they accumulate toxins from their food at a greatly increased rate.
Instead, /compost/ the rich.