I’ve got to stop paying any attention to the news, for my health

This has been a week of despair, mostly.

And you all wonder why I’ve found enjoyment in studying the lives of spiders this year. There’s a reason: I’d rather immerse myself in the study of a species that isn’t full of stupid evil assholes.

Jacob Wohl: In the running for dumbest person on the internet

Fresh off his trip to make up lies about Minneapolis, Jacob Wohl crawled back under the rock he came from, but not before giving a big interview to USA Today. He gloated about the Minneapolis trip.

He flew to Minnesota last week to “investigate” the rumor that Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother, a mission for which he tried to fund-raise $25,000 from his online followers. Wohl’s trip to the heartland devolved into bizarre tweets in which he suggested that Minneapolis was so overrun by Somali jihadists that he had to wear a bulletproof vest and travel with a team of “security professionals.”

That isn’t the big news, though. The important thing he did was to brag about creating multiple fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook in order to intentionally undermine the next presidential election with fake news.

No, really.

He bragged about his secret operation to corrupt a federal election to a widely read newspaper. There is stupid, and then there is Jacob Wohl stupid. The result was inevitable: he’s been permanently banned from Twitter.

Twitter banned notorious Trump supporter Jacob Wohl from its platform on Tuesday, alleging that Wohl broke the site’s rules against creating fake accounts.

Wohl’s ban came hours after he boasted in a USA Today interview about his plans to create fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook, which he said would be used to manipulate the 2020 election.

“The account was suspended for multiple violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically creating and operating fake accounts,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

Wohl had already created several fake accounts before he was banned, according to a source familiar with Wohl’s activities on Twitter. Wohl told USA Today that he intended to use the accounts to help Trump in the 2020 election, pushing Democratic primary voters to back weaker candidates who would be easier for Trump to defeat in the general election.

He’s still on Instagram and Facebook — Facebook, because it is notoriously the worst social media site for enforcing even its ineffectual rules, worse than Twitter, if you can believe that. I suspect he doesn’t care about the ban anyway, because he was creating fake accounts…so he’ll just create more fake accounts. He’ll have his friends create fake accounts. There is no credible authentication on any of these sites. And so the manipulation will continue.

It’s possible he’s not the dumbest person on the internet, just one of the least ethical.

One more Wohlism

Do you know why Minnesota is overrun with jihadists? Do you? DO YOU?

Chevys with bumper stickers, that’s why. How dare individuals “value all families”, support girls sports, point out that “The media are only as liberal as the conservative businesses that own them”, and wish for peace on Earth. Radicals! Freaking extremists! We’re one small step away from sharia law, socialism, and guillotining small business owners at this rate.

One more example of the sterling inanity of Wohl and Loomer

The Chucklefuck Twins are on a legal mission here in Minnesota. Jacob Wohl explains:

Let’s just try to parse that, OK?

Laura Loomer and I just tried to serve Ilhan Omar

So they’re acting as process servers? Is there a lawsuit in the works?

with a sworn affidavit

I don’t get it. They’re serving her with a piece of paper that someone else signed? An affidavit? You don’t need to serve that. You could just mail it, it’s just providing information.

that says she never married her brother

Now we’re deeply in right-wing lunacy land. That makes no sense. They’re giving her a sworn affidavit that she never married her brother? I think most of us could recieve a piece of paper with someone’s signature on the bottom that says we hadn’t married a sibling, and without batting an eye, would calmly close the door and call local mental health services. Yeah? It’s true. I didn’t marry a relative. I don’t need you to inform me of that fact.

Apparently, though, this is part of a scurrilous rumor (spread by Minnesota’s own crank right wing conspiracy mill, the PowerlineBlog) that she married her brother in a cunning scheme to get him a green card. There is no evidence for any of it.

It’s also bizarre because a) any brother would have been naturalized by the same process that naturalized the Omar family, b) US citizenship laws make siblings as eligible as spouses, so there’d be no need for a marriage, and c) the “brother” she’s accused of marrying isn’t her brother.

I think this is more of a case of the Chucklefuck Twins showing up with an accusation and a demand that she deny it, and then hoping to use the fact that she wouldn’t dignify such an absurd claim with an answer and threw them out as evidence that she was guilty. Just like how the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota wouldn’t respect a pair of chucklefuck pseudojournalists in an armored car, therefore the ILCM hates Jews.

And then Omar isn’t dignifying them with her attention. How sad for them.

Nice example of burying the lede

The headline: BILLIONAIRE HORNDOG BOB KRAFT CHARGED WITH SOLICITING PROSTITUTION IN LEAD-UP TO SUPER BOWL.

Don’t care. Prostitution shouldn’t be a crime anyway. But this one hides the real story:

In a press conference Friday morning, Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr announced that Kraft was just one of the 25 people being charged with solicitation as part of a human-trafficking investigation.
…
According to Florida police, Kraft was caught in a months-long investigation into a human-trafficking ring in the area, involving at least 10 spas.

There’s an important word being downplayed there. Sex between consenting adults, not an issue, even if there is an exchange of money. When it’s human-trafficking, though, that means consent has been lost, and this Kraft bozo is exploiting women.

They did at least include one criminal charge in the headline, “Billionaire”. Lock him up for that, I’m fine with it.

Alexander Acosta broke the law

There’s yet another crook in Trump’s orbit. His labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, has been found to have broken the law when he gave convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal.

A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.

It was quite a serious crime. Years of procuring and sexual molestation of kids. More than 30 victims.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.

“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’

But man, what a slap on the wrist Epstein got.

Instead of prosecuting Epstein under federal sex trafficking laws, Acosta, then the U.S. attorney in Miami, helped negotiate a non-prosecution agreement that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. Epstein, who lived in a Palm Beach mansion, was allowed to quietly plead guilty in state court to two prostitution charges and served just 13 months in the county jail. His accomplices, some of whom have never been identified, were never charged.

Left unsaid…that jail sentence was a joke. He got to go home during the day, and just had to check in for confinement at night.

I remember when Lawrence Krauss and Robert Trivers flailed about trying to defend Epstein…and Krauss earnestly telling me at a conference that I should stop criticizing him, he’s a good guy and a friend to science.

I sometimes wonder if, since his own fall from grace, Krauss has ever admitted that he was wrong, and that his arguments were bad and foolish. I haven’t heard. I certainly haven’t had a conversation with him in years.

He probably hasn’t. Last year, this was Krauss’s wife defending him…and Epstein.

You know, Dr Dahl, one other problem with that comment, besides the fact that having sex with a minor is not a “lifestyle”, is that the courts have just determined that he was not punished for his crimes. He is a bad man who got away with it. I wonder if any of the recipients of his largesse are willing to recognize that yet?

By the way, Krauss is still getting gigs, but he’s not quite in demand as he used to be. I see he’s appearing on this YouTube channel next Tuesday…maybe someone should ask him about it.

I had no idea how sleazy Manafort was

All I can say is, “Holy shit.” I’ve always known that the Republicans were publicly depraved, but that’s nothing compared to how they carry on in private. The Rude Pundit puts it plainly and rudely.

A pretty goddamn extraordinary article by Maya Gurantz in the Los Angeles Review of Books delves into the hacked and leaked texts of Paul Manafort’s daughter, Andrea, many to her sister, Jessica. This happened in 2017. Gurantz looked through the 285,000 texts, many of which deal with wedding plans and pregnancies, and she finds one giant thing that most every article or report you’ve read or seen about Manafort has left out.

That would be “a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in ‘gang bangs’ with black men while he watched.”

Usually, I expect the Rude Pundit to state the story in the bluntest, crudest way…but this time, after reading the Gurantz article, I have to say he may have failed to fully communicate the horrifying nature of Paul Manafort. It isn’t quite litotes, but it comes perilously close in comparison.

Manafort was a sick, racist, misogynist who abused his own helpless wife, and his wife revealed these facts to her daughters, who then disgustedly talked with each other about how much they hated their father.

I tried to help my mom and she just put her head back in the sand and is currently happy.
Either in ignorance or acceptance. Either way not my choice to judge. It’s her life.
And as long as that shit doesn’t affect my life, whatever.
I know my dad is a horrible and moral-less human. Total selfish sociopath. I don’t ever fool myself or forget. He is a master manipulator

The daughters also inherited that trait — they talk about milking their dad for a lavish dream wedding, guilting him into coughing up big bucks, and then never speaking to him again. They’re also pro-Trump.

Remember: this is the party of evangelical Christians.

Rutger Bregman is a hero

After the historian made a big splash by calling out all the billionaires at Davos who flew in on private jets to explain how committed they were to addressing global climate change, Tucker Carlson was eager to have him on his show…until the actual interview happened, Bregman called out Fox News and Carlson for their hypocrisy, and then poor little Tucker melted down in fury and announced that he wouldn’t air the the interview, said Bregman should go fuck himself, and declared him a tiny-brained moron. Sweet.

Fortunately, Bregman was clever enough to record the interview for himself.

He did ask another perceptive question, though. Why is it that all these TV pitchmen at Fox (and, to be fair, elsewhere) millionaires? Sure, they should get a fair wage for putting the work in, but face it — they’re not particularly bright or talented.

You ought to get paid more than that for speaking truth to power. Bregman is totally transparent about who is paying him.

Be it resolved

In that the 2020 election is far far away…

In that there is already a plethora of people jostling for the candidacy…

In that all of them, even pathetic Howard Schultz, are better than Trump…

In that there will be much campaigning in the next nearly two years…

In that I’m already sick of it all…

Be it resolved that:

  1. I shall consider each candidate, be they Bernie, Kamala, Amy, Kirsten, Pete, Cory, Julian, Elizabeth, yea, even Tulsi, on the merits of their policies as presented in the primary campaign,
  2. and that I shall vote my conscience in the primary election, not on the basis of mythical “electability” or “likability”,
  3. and upon the resolution of the primary process, I shall campaign for and vote for whoever is selected to represent me, no matter how lukewarm I am towards them personally.

Because Trump is a fuckwit, and he must be deposed.

So be it.