It’s easy to shop for me, really (click to embiggen)It’s Friday! It is the second Friday in December, but tomorrow is that third Saturday, and that’s important, because it means our annual Holiday Party along with the Ghost Story Challenge is this weekend! Woooo!
And as I’m assembling this post on Thursday night, after two very long work days, I barely have any of the Ghost Story finished! Eeek! On the other hand, most years this is exactly where I am at this point. As one of m
Enough of that. Welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, bottom five stories of AWFUL peole, my blog posts, and the top five videos.
First, thank goodness for the rule of law: Neo-Nazi Found Guilty in First Degree Murder of Heather Heyer at Charlottesville White Supremacist Rally. Remember those rallies, with those alt-right jerks chanting Nazi phrase while waving their tiki torches? You know, that ones that Trump called “fine people” and at another part referred to as “us”? And there were counter-protesters (the people Trump called “them” in the same sentence) who were there to speak out against hatred and genocide and so forth? And then there was the asshole who drove his car into the crowd on counter-protesters, injuring at least 35 people but worst of all, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. The neo-Nazi behind the wheel of that car was arrested, charged with murder, among other things, and this week the jury returned their verdicts (plural):
James Fields found guilty on all 10 counts, including 1st-degree murder, for ramming car into a group of peaceful counter-protesters following Charlottesville white nationalist rally in 2017.
—NBC News report
Not everyone is happy with this development. There was a lot of commentary on the alt-right/neo-Nazi/InCel/Men’s Rights Advocates side of various social media very angry about the first degree murder charge, especially. I actually laughed out loud at some of the comments. It’s always enlightening to watch people who pride themselves on logic demonstrate their ignorance and irrationality. Painful, but enlightening.
Those online lawyers are trying to claim that the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to hurt people because of a meme he shared on social media three months previously of someone running liberals down with this car. That is not what happened. Instead, prosecutors showed the jury video of Fields sitting stonefaced in his car with the engine idoling, watching the counter protestors (who were all some distance away), and then, throwing his car into reverse, backing as far as he could on the street, throwing it into first, and peeling out aiming for the crowd. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t confused. He intentionally backed up so he could have more space to get his car up to as high a speed as possible when he hit it.
He drove 500 miles to participate in the rally. When his mother found out where he’d gone, she texted him urging him to be careful. He texted back (shortly before driving into the crowd): “We’re not the one who need to be careful.”
There was a lot of video (because it’s a big protest and people have their phones and Go Pros and such out), and numerous witness statements that there was no one standing near his car. Contrary to the tales his supporters are telling each other, he wasn’t surrounded, no one was yelling at him, nothing.
Yes, the Instagram post about driving over people was also part of the narrative for premeditation, but it was a tiny part. There were other conversations and comments made in the days leading up to the rally. And, of course, that chilling text message to his mother.
So, his intent to cause harm is established by his words shortly before the act, and the very deliberate act of slowing backing up to get more running room with the car. And twelve people on that jury came to a unanimous decision that the prosecution had established his intent to harm and that he had planned to do it before hand. An important part of premeditation isn’t just that it’s planning in advance, though. Part of the reason we think of premeditated murder as worse than an impulsive act of passion, is an opportunity to change one’s mind. I don’t know the precise jury instructions this jury was read, but the typical text from the judge includes that bit about premeditation: did the defendant have an opportunity where he could have stopped and decided not to go through with it, and then went ahead?
He could have, at any point during the backing up and staring at the crowd decided not to do it.
One of the other crimes he was found guilty of was fleeing the scene of the crime.
His defense team tried to disprove the intent argument by saying he was immediately remorseful, et cetera. But, he fled the scene. Sure, once he was tracked down and arrested he was sobbing, but I think we all know that he was upset because he had been caught.
Of course, Fields wasn’t the only alt-right jerk found guilty…
So what does it all mean? Each of the three men has already pled guilty to serious crimes. Each made a plea deal to cooperate with Mueller’s invistigation, the U.S. Attorney’s investigation, and “other related prosecutions.” That latter is one of the few public hints we’ve been given over the 80-some weeks of the Special Counsel’s investigation that information is being shared with state (and apparently international) justice departments. That latter is important not just because of more crimes, but it has been a signal that even if Trump rushes in and tries to pardon everyone, it won’t keep the men out of jail. Presidential pardons have no effect on state criminal charges, nor of international ones (as are likely to be brought by various European countries we can assume since Trump’s banking associates were raided last week over there).
While a lot of people are focusing on the anonymous Individual-1 named in the filings (which is clearly Trump himself), and the fact that the men have already made statements and provided evidence that Individual-1 participated in their crimes, what I find a bit more interesting is that all three of these men’s cases came to this point today, and how very different they are. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to the filings, has cooperated fully since he plea deal–everything he has told prosecutors has been able to be verified. So both Mueller and the U.S. Attorney are asking the judge for leniency on his behalf for the crime’s already pled guilty to.
Trump’s former attorney, who months ago bragged that he would take a bullet for Trump, on the other hand, has sometimes been less than cooperative. He has continued to lie about some things that the prosecutors can prove are lies. He has, on the other hand, provided a lot of evidence that Individual-1 committed a number of crimes related to the recent election. So, the prosecutors are asking the court to not go nearly so lenient on him, but don’t be too harsh, either.
And then there’s the former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Manafort has lied and lied and lied in indisputable ways. So both prosecutors are recommending maximum penalties for all his crimes.
This is a strategic action. It warns all of the other people who are being or are about to be questioned by either the Special Prosecutor or the U.S. Attorney, that if you don’t cooperate, they will bring the hammer down. And if any Trumpkins are reading this and thinking smugly, “until the president shuts it down,” well that’s not easy. Yes, Trump has been maneuvering to shut Mueller down, but so far he’s been unsuccessful. And while I don’t think the Senate Republicans are yet ready to hold Trump to account if he fires Mueller, stopping the U.S. Attorney is much more complicated, and nothing the alleged president can do prevents a jurisdiction like, say, the New York State Attorney General, pursuing charges against many of these people. It doesn’t stop the Congressional Democrats, who are about to take control of that chamber, from holding hearings including asking a fired Mueller to come tell the public everything he found out.
I don’t think it is at all a coincidence that as this was coming to light that Trump went on a lengthy, angry, foul-mouthed attack on Twitter directed at his former Secretary of State. I think he’s starting to realize that he has backed himself into a corner, and the people he counted on to protect him are all going to behave like Flynn if they find themselves in the crosshairs. Donald Trump’s entire existence has just been set on fire
Right now, I just hope the country survives long enough for us to see a bunch of his inner circle carted off the prison.
Regarding the cartoon I illustrated this post with: I probably should do a new Sunday Funnies post about this site, but if you want to learn more about Trudeau’s long running comic, or just catch up, you ought to check out Reading Doonesbury: A trip through nearly fifty years of American comics
It’s been an odd week. For instance, my bus commute is on one of the Rapid Ride lines. One of the things about the Rapid Ride buses is that all of the doors open at each stop, and most of the stops are equipped with a pay station so that passengers with a bus pass or pay card can pay before the bus arrive. Makes each stop faster, but also puts people on the honor system. So there are random teams of Fare Enforcement officers who board buses and check everyone’s passes while the bus continues. Normally I only see Fare Enforcement about once a week. This week, every single time I rode the bus, Fare Enforcement boards. And each time they found two people who hadn’t paid, who were then written up with a ticket. The best was coming home Monday night, though. A Fare Enforcement crew got on the bus just before we pulled out of downtown. They found two people, then they got off the bus at a later stop (where they wait for the next bus). Then, about 100 blocks later, a second crew got on the bus, and they also found and ticketed two people (and they were different people, because the others had left the bus by then). Fun, eh?
Enough of that. Welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: five stories about one of the sweetest holiday specials Jim Hensen’s Muppets ever made, the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories about writing and reading, five stories about awful people, and five videos (plus notable obituaries).
Dead Poppy. “one thing that’s been left out in this rush to praise Bush as the Greatest Single-Term President in History or whatever other superlatives you wanna toss out there in the encomiums of doom is that he had no fuckin’ choice when it came to legislative goals except to do some rational shit. He had a Democratic House and Senate for his entire term.”
Videos!
The Danish National Symphony Orchestra – For A Few Dollars More (Live):
Tom Goss – Gay Christmas – This video is for those who have felt like an outsider on what is supposed to be the happiest time of the year. If you don’t feel at home this holiday season, I hope you can spend time with those that love you for all that you are:
It’s Friday! It is the final (and fifth) Friday in November.
Today is the first of my string of Fridays off. For many years now, when I can, I have been taking the Friday between the Thanksgiving holiday and New Year’s Day off. Having a string of three-day weekends leading up to Christmas makes shopping and decorating and other holiday prep a whole lot easier.
Welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories from the realm of science and sf/f, five stories of the blue wave, five stories about awful people, and five videos (plus notable obituaries and my blog posts).
(click to embiggen)It’s Friday! It is the fourth Friday in November–the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving Holiday. This day has been called Black Friday for many years, though many retail chains have moved the beginning of the shopping day to Thanksgiving Afternoon, which ought to raise the ire of the same people who bitch about the so-called war on Christmas, yet somehow doesn’t. Regardless, while I used to avoid shopping on this day just to avoid the crowds, after the first time I read the story of some poor minimum-wage-earning retail employee being trampled to death in a Black Friday Sale, I have made it a priority to just stay home and not shop at all. Unfortunately, those of us doing that aren’t sufficient to bring an end to the insanity. I… I don’t know what else to say.
So, we find ourselves on the fourth Friday of November. Depending on where you live it is either the day after a major holiday or just another Friday. In either case, I guess it is time to get to my links. Before I get to that, though, I have a supplement to my irregular Sunday Funnies feature. Sheryl Schopfer is a long time friend who has multiple web comics. She recently suffered an accident that has interfered with the production of her comic. I am quite humbled that a very silly thing I wrote originally for her amusement a while back has been chosen to fill in part of the gap: Oh Deer, Oh Deer, Oh Deer.
Welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of the blue, and five videos (plus my blog posts).
How Big A Difference Does The House Speaker Really Make? Personally, while I want the Dem leadership go go in new directions, during this time when we only have HALF of one of the branches of government, I want the person who pushed through increases to social programs in the budget last year, thank you very much. We’re in the middle of a complex chess game against fascism, so we need someone who knows the system.
(click to embiggen)In the U.S. it’s Thanksgiving, a day which most of us were taught in school was to commemorate a peaceful feast between the the Pilgrims and their neighboring Native Americans. Of course, we are also taught in school the equally false notion that the pilgrims came to the America from England looking for religious freedom, when in fact what they came to do was establish a theocracy—they fled England because the folks back home wouldn’t let them persecute neighbors who worshipped very slightly differently than they did. So while the Native Americans whose land the Pilgrims were squatting on did occasionally meet and break bread with the colonists—and have to teach them how to farm since most didn’t know how and so forth—the traditional Thanksgiving story is a myth.
Being raised in evangelical fundamentalist churches, I was also taught that it was a religious holiday (after all, who would we be saying “thanks” to, right?), though there isn’t really anything very holy about what the European colonists did to either the Native Americans nor the environment we found here.
Anyway as Anya observed in that one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “To commemorate a past event you kill and eat an animal. A ritual sacrifice… with pie.” And I have to admit that the past events I am commemorating are the holidays spent with extended family back when all my grandparents and most of the great-grandparents were still alive. Which is why one of the dishes I’m cooking and serving today in sweet potatoes with heavy cream, molasses, and pepper… as close to how Great-grandma used to make it as I can get.
Since a lot of my bookmarked stories this week don’t really make sense to include in tomorrow’s Friday Five, in case you need something to read today, here are some Thanksgiving Links:
This is former Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee addressing racism in a 1968 edition of Stan’s Soapbox (a feature that was printed on the letters page of most of the Marvel comic books at the time) after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.It’s Friday! It is the third Friday in November–nearly Thanksgiving in the U.S.! It is also National Novel Writing Month, which means I’m not spending as much time blogging or reading the news during the week.
This week’s links a real mix for me. One of the people in the obituary section is a person I have considered a friend for about 26 years. Another wrote or oversaw the writing of an amazing amount of the stuff I read during my childhood and teen years.
Anyway, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, five stories of the resistance, five stories of awful things, and five videos (plus my blog posts and notable obituaries).
Trump’s Tax Cut Was Supposed to Change Corporate Behavior. Here’s What Happened.. “Since the tax cuts were passed, the 1,000 largest public companies have actually reduced employment, on balance. They have announced the elimination of nearly 140,000 jobs — which is almost double the 73,000 jobs they say they have created in that time”
Fred Patten:1940-2018. Fred was a friend, a contributor to the zine I used to edit, and an editor who purchased at least on of my stories for one of his anthologies… he was also the person who probably single-handedly introduced anime to North Anerica, among many, many, many other accomplishments.
I keep reminding myself that I spent most of my life assuming that never, in my lifetime, would queers have true equal rights, including the right to marry. The fact that with the pro-Nazi party is appointing so many federal judges the last two years and the next makes it very likely that what rights I currently have will be taken away. So I had planned to fight the rest of my life, anyway; on one level not much has changed. But if you are a person reading this who thinks I should lighten up on the politics, clearly YOUR rights aren’t under threat, so either educate yourself and join the resistance, or go away. I don’t want you reading my stuff if you aren’t will to help me fight for equal rights. That doesn’t make me the bad guy.
Anyway, enough about that. We scored a bunch of victories this week. So, welcome to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) good news stories of the week, five stories of the resistance, and five videos (plus my blog post and notable obituaries).
(Click to embiggen)It’s Friday! It is the first Friday in November, which means that it is National Novel Writing Month? I am spending as much of my free time as possible writing, trying to finish one of my novels.
Last weekend I posted about the mad bomber than ran off to Geek Girl Con and only learned about the mass shooting at a synagoge when I checked news later on my phone. I… I am still so angry about that. I’m not Jewish, okay, but dang it, I’m a human being and you shouldn’t have to be a member of a community to be infuriated when people murder members of that community while literally shouting things that the alleged president of the United States has said. Please scroll down and read about the eleven people who were murdered last weekend in my In Memoriam section. And please, if you can, donate to a cause that fights hatred. Even more, if you haven’t already voted, please, please, please vote. Vote for candidates who will crack down on hate crimes. Vote to take our country back from the Nazis and white supremacists who currently control the White House and both houses of Congress. This isn’t the last chance to stop the evil, this is rather the first chance to fight back at the ballot box against the evil that already controls the nation. Vote!
Welcome to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week and five videos (plus my blog post and notable obituaries).
It’s Friday! The fourth (and final) Friday in October! Are you ready to get your spooky on? And by this time next week, will you be joining me in National Novel Writing Month?
Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of the first edition of Friday Five, which replaced my previous Friday Links. I have not, over the course of this last year, stuck strictly to my original redefinition of the post: only the five top stories of the week, plus notable obituaries, links to my own posts, and five videos. Some weeks I have two or three categories of links each of which contains five stories. But my goal of limiting how much time I was spending assembling a post which fewer people have been reading since the inauguration of that which has put many of us into compassion fatigue and so forth, has been obtained. So, since I find it impossible not to read the news and bookmark stories I find interesting, this is going to continue!
Which brings us to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week featuring good news, top five stories, top five stories of interest to queers and our allies, top five sci fi stories, the bottom five awful news stories, and five videos (plus my blog post and notable obituaries).
This one needs explaining: usually Shapiro is the one making deranged attacks on queer people, women, racial minorities, and the left in general. So I have to acknowledge when he says something good: Shapiro criticizes conspiracy theories about bomb threats to Dems.
Joachim Ronneberg: WWII hero who thwarted Nazi nuclear plant dies at 99. They parachuted into the mountains, skied to the base, blew it up, then eluded 3000 Nazi soldiers to escape to Sweden. In later years, Ronneberg liked to describe his team’s harrowing escape as “a good skiing weekend.”
Courthouse security footage shows Lewis County Judge R.W. Buzzard chase after two inmates who attempted to escape his courtroom in Chehalis, Wash., on Oct. 16, 2018:
Font Folly 