I started to do a Weekend Update post with a couple of the stories below on Saturday, but I needed to get shopping done and be back up and set up somethings before my gaming group logged into the group chat at 1pm. So I didn’t get to it. I also frequently save memes, cartoons, and the like to use as an illustration for a blog post or Friday Five. I always gather a lot more than I can actually use, so every now and then I share some that I didn’t use. And I was struck by the fact that for several of the stories I had been leaning toward putting in the Weekend Update, I have a related graphic.
“AA Republicans turn on people like Mitt Romney & US intelligence agents, I’l like to remind everyone that the crook they’re stupidly protecting is banned from operating a charity in all of New York state because he and his swindling kids stole form a children’s cancer charity.”
“Just to be clear: if someone supports a political candidate who seeks your extermination, they also support yout exterminatiion. It doesn’t matter how they treet you interpersonally. They want you dead structurally.”
…and it was only a year ago he posted a pic of himself online wearing a “Broke Hoe” t-shirt and bragging about being $4million in debt…
Broke Homocon Milo Forced To Sell Website. Wow… a bit over a year ago he was actually bragging about being in debt, then last month he was whining on Telegram (the only social media platform that hasn’t banned him) about the fact that his followers don’t buy his books or donate.
This is one possible list of the types of Republicans that exist. I’m going to suggest an alternate listing…I started to do a Weekend Update post with a couple of these stories on Saturday, but got stuck in a bit of a spiral (and it was hard to concentrate between my sinus headache and the roofers pounding on the building) and ultimately decided to post something else. I figured, okay, tomorrow morning before the game… except the Seahawks game was at 10am, so as soon as I woke up I needed to start cooking, and then there was the game, and then I decided to watch part of two other games and then I got sucked back into reading a book I was nearly finished with. Anyway, given all the other things going on in the news, I’m pretty sure these wouldn’t make the cut for the Friday Five come the end of the week, and besides, they give me an opportunity to give you my list of the Types of Republicans (or Devils — same thing) by providing archetypical examples of the types.
So, the coach mentioned mentioned in the first link was “forced out at Baylor — itself a private Baptist university — following a wide-ranging sexual and domestic assault scandal involving football players.” But he isn’t the first that Falwell has hired for the university. There’s another coach Falwell insisted the university hire after he lost his job at Ole Miss because he used his school-sponsored cell phone to call an escort service, not to mention previous allegations of inappropriate behavior with high school girls when he coached at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis, Tennessee. I guess all these sexual predators should feel right at home with Falwell, Jr.
Next, the Evangelical Literalist Who Takes Away the Rights of Women, Queer People, While Claiming He’s Not a Bigot: A thorough investigation just destroyed the White House’s attempt to rebrand Mike Pence as not anti-gay. Pence’s staff and the White House were claiming the Pence can’t possibly be homophobic, because he shook hands with the Prime Minister of Ireland, who is one of The Gays! See, he can’t be a bigot! Except that first article dredges up things Pence has been doing as an elected official for nearly 30 years to deny rights to LGBT people and/or take rights and healthcare away from them. Then, of course, there is this that happened just a couple days after is staff was trying to deny the bigotry: Mike Pence Spoke at Fundraiser for Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate Group. (Note: the organization is also anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-women’s equality, and anti-accurate sex education in schools, plus very pro-bullying of queer children in schools). Pence is sure to feel home with all that hate!
The next type of devil/Republican is The Clueless Homocon who Enables and Encourages Neo-Nazis in Hopes Ignoring that Fact that when They Get Power They Will March Him Off to the Camps, Too:Homocon Troll Milo Banned From Midwest Furfest. “Yiannopoulos was banned from Australia earlier this year “on character grounds” and nearly every social media company has suspended his accounts for violating community guidelines against hate speech. Since losing access to his social media pulpits—and, more importantly, his Mercer family funding—Yiannopoulos has fallen millions of dollars into debt and spent his time almost exclusively blaming his self-inflicted wounds on others.”
Milo is only one of a bunch of people in this category (cf Andy Ngo, the entire membership of the Log Cabin Republicans, Peter Thiel, et cetera). Since he’s currently millions of dollars in debt and was just a bit of a week ago whining to is ~400 followers on the only social media platform that hasn’t banned him that not enough of them are shelling out donations to him for him to pay his bills… yet somehow he found the funds to try to buy a membership at Midwest Furfest (a convention that not only have I attended and love, but have had the privilege of being a Guest of Honor). And even though the convention has since banned him, he’s claiming he already has a room at the hotel “booked under someone else’s name” so they can’t keep him out. Never mind that being a guest at the hotel does not give one access to convention space. Also, if the room is his but booked under someone else’s name the hotel can eject him for that and/or revoke his room discount because he isn’t a convention member. If his name isn’t listed as an occupant of the room the hotel can eject him for trespassing. If he is, given his already made public statements that he tends to disrupt the convention, the hotel can legally eject him for that.
The fourth kind of devil is a bit more local, The Paranoid Anti-taxer Who Wants All the Benefits of Society as Long as He Doesn’t Have to Pay His Share of Taxes and THOSE Kind of People Do: Tim Eyman hit with new sanctions, ordered to disclose source of nearly $800K in donations. Eyman’s only income for a couple of decades are running various initiative campaigns to cut taxes, take away gay rights, prevent local tax payers from voting to raise taxes for services they want, and so forth. This is the second time he’s been on trial for mismanaging funds of this campaigns. The previous fines and settlements didn’t teach him a lesson. I hope he winds up penniless by the time this is over.
And now a Bonus category: White Supremacists Who Infiltrate Law Enforcement Institutions and Twist the Culture Until Ordinary Citizens are Perps by Default:Riotlandia: Why Portland Has Become the Epicenter of Far-Right Violence. “…on August 4, 2018, the police launched an unprovoked assault against peaceful protesters, nearly killing one when a flashbang grenade punctured his helmet, resulting in a brain hemorrhage. And on May 1 this year, 20 Patriot Prayer members led by Gibson and accompanied by Ngo attacked antifascists at a bar, fracturing the vertebrae of one woman (whose name was released by Ngo, leading to threats of violence against her, according to her friends). The bar owner claimed that it took police an hour to respond despite numerous emergency calls. The police released a lengthy statement seeking to justify why they didn’t respond until after the fight had ended despite knowledge of the attack as it was happening.” There’s more. So, so much more. Hit the link for the whole extremely well-sourced story.
(click to embiggen)Since I was busy with friends most of Saturday (and thus I started my usual errands earlier than typical), I didn’t have time to do a Weekend Update. So, here are some stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or broke after that post was assembled, or just provoke a desire for more extensive commentary than I like to put into Friday Five.
First, I have written more than once about financial and other shenanigans of local political gadfly and perennial anti-tax, anti-gay, anti-well-anything-decent initiative filer: Tim Eyman. A while back Eyman was caught on video stealing an office chair from an Office Depot. The video was kind of funny: he finds the chair set up near the door, sits in it, spins around in it, then stands up and wheels it out to his car. Moments later he came back inside and bought some other stuff. According to the testimony of the employees, he did not mention the chair to the cashier. He did not pay for the chair. When the cashier called someone over to help Eyman carry his purchases (which included some heavy printers), Eyman tried to turn them down. When they insisted, he led them to his SUV, and had the guy stack things next to the back of the SUV but pointedly did not open the back of the vehicle until after the employee had walked back into the store.
Eyman claims he meant to pay for the chair. But the sketchy behavior in the parking lot clearly said otherwise. Anyway, the case came to a close this week: Lacey lets Tim Eyman off with $193 fine for stealing chair. He also is barred from entering that Office Depot for nine months. The sheer pettiness and stupidity of stealing a $70 office chair when he’s going to be paying for $300 worth of printers other things is, to me, the perfect metaphor for the kind of entitled scam artist that he is. He hasn’t worked an honest day in decades. His only source of income for many years are the political campaigns he wages to cripple the state’s tax system or take rights away from gay and trans citizens.
And that income isn’t all on the up-and-up, either. He’s involved in a lawsuit over campaign finance violations, and he had some bad news there this week: Thurston County judge finds Tim Eyman in contempt again. According to the judge, this charge is for “refusal to disclose complete information related to hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments he solicited from individual donors.” Back in 2002 he settled a campaign finance lawsuit by paying a $50,000 fine and agreeing to a lifetime ban on being the “signer on any financial accounts” for political committees. In the current lawsuit, in which the state says he illegally funneled $300,000 from a 2012 initiative campaign into his personal accounts, the state is seeking $2.1 million dollars plus court costs and a lifetime ban on handling any finances of any political campaign. His previous contempt charge, for not turning over required documents, has been racking up a daily fine that the state says adds up to more than $200,000 so far. I don’t know if this second charge means more daily fines or what.
Meanwhile, another of his initiatives to severely limit local and regional citizens to tax themselves for capital projects will be on the ballot in the fall. He previously filed for bankruptcy protection, but then withdrew that once he learned that monthly reports on his personal finances would be available to the public, and might make some of his supporters question whether they wanted to keep donating to him. It has been said that the most dangerous place to be in this state is standing between Eyman and a TV news camera. Strange how he keeps refusing to turn over information, huh?
His wife filed for divorce last year—he claims that it’s because the state is being mean to him. Which is a really funny way of spelling “tired of being in close proximity of all this negative publicity that her husband’s actions have brought down on him.”
Speaking of men with no morals and sketchy finances: Financier Jeffrey Epstein found nearly unconscious in jail cell, suicide attempt suspected. You may recall the Epstein has been arrested in connection with sex trafficking and sexual abuse of underage girls. You may also recall that the evidence against submitted to the court includes what was described has a massive drove of photos of said underage girls in sexual situations. You may also recall how he got a sweetheart deal on similar charges years ago that meant he didn’t have to do serious jail time and was allowed to leave the jail 6 days out of every week to keep running his so-called business? And that after serving his ridiculously short sentence, he failed to report his movements to law enforcement as required under his plea deal?
Well, the case isn’t exactly looking any better for Epstein: The Feds Want to Talk to the Pilots Who Flew Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express”. Yes, the feds issued subpoenas earlier this month to Epstein’s pilots. I wonder if that may have prompted the alleged suicide attempt. And I’m using alleged for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it hasn’t been ruled out that he staged the stunt to get transferred out of the prison and into a hospital or mental institution.
Anyway, for years (and even just a few weeks ago) news stories have frequently referred to Epstein as a billionaire (though Forbes magazine famously refused to: Why Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Is Not A Billionaire).
One of those wild theories is based on something that Alexander Acosta (the former U.S. attorney who made that sweetheart deal years ago, and who was forced to resign as Trump’s Labor Secretary when the new Epstein charges brought that old deal back into the press) during the vetting for the Labor position. He said that old deal with Epstein wouldn’t be a problem because the only reason he made the deal was that someone warned him to back off because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” The implication was that Epstein had been providing some sort of information to U.S. intelligence agents. That’s the one I think is least likely. But his secretive money management funds might actually be a big Ponzi scheme, or blackmail could be a major component (and might be a better explanation for why someone would warn Acosta away from the case), or all his off-shore account, besides being a tried-and-true way to avoid paying taxes might also be a money laundering scheme.
I hope that it all comes to light as his trial proceeds. And I hope all the men who participated in the sex parties filled with young girls get what’s coming to them. Whoever they are.
One of many photos of the van owned by the bombing suspect. It is covered in racist, misogynist, pro-Trump stickers, including my images of prominent Democrats with gun sight crosshairs superimposed.I’m late getting out the door to Geek Girl Con, and if I had been more organized last night, I would have written this then and queued it for today. So this follow-up to some of the links in yesterday’a Friday Five will be brief. Yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that they had arrested a man who they believe mailed all those pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and other critics of the alleged president of the U.S.: Cesar Sayoc Jr., Florida man, arrested in pipe bomb case; van with ‘right wing paraphernalia’ seized.
Every news site on the web was able to obtain pictures of the suspect’s van because it has been notorious since 2016 in that region. People have been taking pictures of all the hateful stickers plastered on the van and sharing the pics on social media for a couple of years. He is extremely pro-Trump and extremely anti-Obama, anti-immigrant, anti-women’s rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which is exactly what anyone with any sense at all had been saying. Even at least one pundit who usually is virulently pro-Trump that I quoted yesterday: “If your first reaction to some evil person sending bombs to a variety of politicians on one side of the aisle is ‘FALSE FLAG,’ you are officially deranged.”
Voter registration in Florida is a matter of public record, and look which party the mad bomber belongs to…So, yes, the mad bomber is clearly someone who has been taking the many times that Trump has referred to locking up his opponents, encouraged is supporters to assault, suggested that someone should shoot, and so forth and finally tried to act on it. A quick search of images in any search engine using the suspects name will turn up pictures of him at Trump rallies, holding up pro-Trump signs, wearing one of those damn MAGA hats and so forth. I’m not linking or posting to any of those because, frankly, I think people who commit these kinds of crimes also get off on the attention afterward. But there are things to know about him: Suspected Mad Bomber Cesar Sayoc likes Trump, bodybuilding, scantily clad women; hates Democrats, Clintons, Obamas, immigrants. Scroll to the end of that article for a list of the many times that the suspect has been arrested in the past, always getting fines and probation, even when he threatened to blow up the local utility and kill thousands of people the second time! So, I’m not surprised that this evil man was on some watch lists. And based on how incoherent and badly spelled his many anti-immigrant and anti-progressive rants on line are, I’m not surprised that he left enough evidence on those packages for officials to trace back to him.
But don’t let any one paint him as an anomaly or a nut job. Remind people of the facts: Study shows two-thirds of U.S. terrorism tied to right-wing extremists. Two-thirds of the terrorist acts that happen in the U.S. are by republican supporters who aren’t immigrants and aren’t muslim.
The suspect is a native born U.S. citizen.
The suspect is registered Republican.
The suspect has proudly declared himself not just a Veteran for Trump, but a supporter of many of the most extreme Republican policies.
The suspect has been publicly calling for and echoing Trump’s calls for violence against liberals, immigrants, and so forth.
Last week I very intentionally didn’t do a Weekend Update post to supplement the previous day’s Friday Links post. I was feeling as if I was spending every Saturday morning writing about a few headlines that caught my eye later Friday. When maybe a better use of my time would be working on my fiction, or housework, or other things that actually gets something done that needs doing, y’know?
Then we got out of the movie last night, and one friend who had just turned his phone back on tells us that there was a shooting at a mall in a town about an hour’s drive north of where we were. There was almost no information available last night, and this morning there still isn’t really much: Cascade Mall shooting: Mayor vows to ‘bring the son of a bitch to justice’.
They have some really low-res blurry pictures of a generic looking dark haired guy wearing a very generic looking maybe black t-shirt and maybe black cargo shorts. They originally put out the APB for a “hispanic male wearing gray,” but if the pictures are any indication the only part of that which might be accurate is the shooter’s gender presentation.
Seriously, I know Seattle area men who come form a long line of Norwegians who look exactly like that guy. Heck! I used to know a lesbian firefighter (who was sometimes mistaken for a guy) whose ancestors came from Switzerland and England who looked just like that guy.
Some of the news sources are reporting this as the sixth mass shooting in Washington state this year. Another source said seven, and then lists them, but there are only five total in the list. Also of note only to my fellow pedants: one of the shootings they’re counting had only two victims, another had only three. The FBI still doesn’t have an official criteria for a mass shooting, but most people compiling statistics start with the FBI’s definition of mass murder (four people killed in a single incident, not counting the perpetrator), and count anything with four people shot as a mass shooting.
I don’t know what to say.
Except this (which I think needs to be repeated every time a story of some situation like this happens): unless you have the skills, temperament, and wherewithal to be a responsible gun owner (i.e., ensure that guns are always securely stored when not in use; they are kept clean and otherwise maintained; you regularly practice not merely shooting the thing but loading it, unloading it, checking its working parts before using it, working the safety; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera), don’t go buy a gun. Statistically, you will not be safer. Statistically, everyone around you will be less safe. That’s a fact.
Sometimes evil is attractive and enticing. (Cover image for “Evil” by Matt Goss.)Most stories involve a conflict. At the beginning of the story the protagonist is confronted with a problem, an obstacle, or a riddle, which will be resolved by the protagonist’s own actions at the end, and which is the thread that connects everything that happens in between together. Resolving that problem usually involves a struggle with other characters or forces, and some sort of inner conflict.
Protagonist is another word for hero. Because we often think of the main character of the story as a hero, and because stories usually involve the hero in some kind of conflict, it is tempting to think that every story needs a villain, too…
Font Folly 