Those uppity women…no longer controlled by fear of dinosaurs

What a charmer. This guy, Sean Parnell, is running for the Pennsylvania senate with Donald Trump’s blessing, and is facing charges of spousal abuse. His ex-wife has had two protections from abuse orders on him. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant person, as you can tell from this outburst.

The idea that a woman doesn’t need a man to be successful… the idea that a woman can live a happy and fulfilling life without a man, I think it’s all nonsense.

I am gonna say something very un-pc, I reject this study wholesale. I feel like the whole happy wife, happy life nonsense has done nothing but raise one generation of women tyrants after the next.

Maybe it is just now there is an entire generation of men that don’t want to put up with the bs of a high-maintenance, narcissistic woman.

It used to be, you know, women were attracted to your strength because you could defend them from dinosaurs.

The whole rant is just hateful and nuts, but I do confess I laughed out loud at the stupidity of that last comment.

Some heroes sit at a keyboard

Did you know that social media has a Nazi problem? Of course it does. But often it is subtle and requires expert scrutiny.

When Ksenia Coffman started editing Wikipedia, she was like a tourist in Buenos Aires in the 1950s. She came to learn the tango, admire the architecture, sip maté. She didn’t know there was a Nazi problem. But Coffman, who was born in Soviet-era Russia and lives in Silicon Valley, is an intensely observant traveler. As she link-hopped through articles about the Second World War, one of her favorite subjects, she saw what seemed like a concerted effort to look the other way about Germany’s wartime atrocities.

Coffman can’t recall exactly when her concern set in. Maybe it was when she read the article about the SS, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary, which included images that felt to her like glamour shots—action-man officers admiring maps, going on parade, all sorts of “very visually disturbing” stuff. Or maybe it was when she clicked through some of the pages about German tank gunners, flying aces, and medal winners. There were hundreds of them, and the men’s impressive kill counts and youthful derring-do always seemed to exist outside the genocidal Nazi cause. What was going on here? Wikipedia was supposed to be all about consensus. Wasn’t there consensus on, you know, Hitler?

So she sat down and got to work, and started pointing out the lack of skepticism in so many Wiki articles.

Not for the first time, Coffman has been removing material from the article about the tank division. She thinks it’s full of unsourced fancruft, the Wikipedia word for fawning, excessively detailed descriptions that appeal to a tiny niche of readers—in this case, those thrilled by accounts of battle. The article tells how “the division acquitted itself well” even against “stiffening resistance,” how it “held the line” and earned the “grudging respect” of skeptical commanders. One contributor has used the eyebrow-raising phrase “baptism of fire.” It’s as if the editors don’t see the part lower down the page where a soldier uses the phrase “and then we cleaned a Jew hole.”

The glorifying language, Coffman thinks, is a clear sign that this is historical fan fiction. It elides the horrors of war. If editors want such details to stay on the page, at a minimum they should use a better source than Axis History, a blog whose motto is “Information not shared is lost.”

Turn on the History Channel sometime: it’s the same thing. There’s a reason it’s called the Hitler channel, and it’s because it’s cheap and easy to grab WWII footage — often nothing but propaganda films which launder and present credulous versions of the story — and splice it into a story. Aren’t those Nazi uniforms stylish? Wow, those soldiers had to be brave and stalwart to stand up to a Russian winter. Gosh, so many tanks! Cool! Let’s not think about what those soldiers were trying to do.

You can also see it on YouTube and in video games and the newspapers, always focusing on drama and spectacle without questioning what the hell those assholes were hoping to accomplish. It just takes a little effort to peel away the gosh-wow veneer to expose the rot beneath, but someone has to make the effort.

Another example in real life, with modern Nazis: Richard Spencer is on trial, and is trying desperately to present himself as “the erudite founder of a thinktank who represented a version of white nationalism that took pains to avoid racial slurs and glorification of violence”. He’s not. The lawyers showed everyone what he says when he’s not putting on a show for the gullible.

The plaintiffs played audio for the jury of Spencer launching into a tirade in the presence of co-defendants Jason Kessler, Nathan Damigo and Elliott Kline after learning about Heyer’s death following the Aug. 12, 2017 rally. (The leaked audio was previously published by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in 2019.)

“Little fucking k*kes,” Spencer said. “They get ruled by me. Little f*cking octoroons… I f*cking… my ancestors f*cking enslaved those pieces of f*cking sh*t. I rule the f*cking world. Those pieces of f*cking sh*t get ruled by people like me. They look up and see a face like mine looking down at them. That’s how the f*cking world works. We are going to destroy this f*cking town.”

So hooray for Ksenia Coffman. Hooray for Michael Bloch, the lawyer out to expose Spencer. We need more warriors like that.

Is it OK to lie in your election campaign?

I notice that we’ve had some recent election setbacks, much of it driven by the usual Republican tactic of race-baiting. It’s going to get worse in the next election cycle. It seems the major approach they’ve taken is to lie forcefully about Critical Race Theory, inventing a new bugaboo to drive racists to the polls. And it worked!

A little clarity from the opposition on how CRT isn’t what the Republicans claim it is would have been nice. Here’s an example:

I guess it’s not illegal to lie through your teeth in order to get elected, but it sure would be nice if Democrats stopped being marshmallows who let them lie. I’m beginning to suspect they don’t particularly want to fight for racial equality, or labor, or tax reform, or any of those “divisive” topics that ought to be central to their platform.

First you strawman those who disagree with you, then you murder them with your car

I wish I could just laugh off this demented buffoon, Madison Cawthorn.

When I see the people that are in Washington, DC who are trying to insert their woke politics into our culture, trying to destroy western civilization, trying to take all of our morality away from everyone, trying to make everyone genderless, sexless, and Godless.

No one on the liberal/progressive side wants to destroy western civilization. We want to make our culture stronger, more humane, and more egalitarian. If you consider that an act of destruction, you have a warped vision of what society should be.

No one is trying to take away everyone’s morality. Morality is a good thing. We would like to diminish the kind of immorality that allows people to kneel on other people’s necks until they are dead.

Hey, remember when the conservative complaint was that we were licentious proponents of free love? I guess that wasn’t really their concern. Now their complaints have gone the other way, accusing us of making everyone genderless and sexless. No one wants to do that, although we would say that if you don’t want to have sex, you shouldn’t have to.

It’s true that I would like to see everyone godless, but I also know that you can’t force atheism on anyone. It’s a free choice, and that’s all we ask, is that everyone have liberty of conscience.

Madison Cawthorn is a ridiculous mad far-right looney-tune who has to invent absurd accusations to stir up hatred. His comments about what “people” in Washington, DC are doing are stupid and false, but his next words ought to concern everyone.

We want our country back, we want our culture back, and if you want to stand in the way that, we will run you over.

“run you over”–that would also be a misrepresentation of his own side in the culture wars, if it weren’t for the fact that right-wingers have been doing exactly that, and Republican lawmakers are working hard to make it legal to kill protesters with cars.

Ari Weil, a researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, counted six states that considered laws shielding drivers who attack protesters in 2017, but most of those “hit and kill” bills (as the ACLU refers to them) went nowhere. It took a few more years for the right-wing propaganda apparatus to fully numb conservative consciences, and prepare them to openly endorse an idea as plainly depraved as this one. In the meantime, the car attacks kept coming: In 2020, Weil tracked “72 incidents of cars driving into protesters across 52 different cities,” over the span of just over a month. The online far right memed about running over demonstrators regularly, and cops openly encouraged it in social media comments. Cops also, in cities such as New York and Detroit, participated in the practice themselves. In Boston last year, Police Sergeant Clifton McHale was recorded on a police body camera bragging about hitting demonstrators with a police cruiser. He was placed on administrative leave when that footage was surfaced by reporter Eoin Higgins. He is now, Higgins reports, back on desk duty.*

Now lawmakers seem to have overcome whatever reticence they may once have felt about formally endorsing automobile attacks. Five states besides Florida introduced similar bills this year, granting some form of immunity to people running into demonstrators. The Iowa measure passed the state House and awaits Senate approval. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt just signed another version into law in his state. This one shields attacking drivers from criminal liability.

That last bit from Cawthorn is openly an incitement to violence. He will not face any legal difficulties for telling his constituents to murder unspecified people they don’t like with their cars. And shouldn’t he be in prison for inciting an insurrection already?

Proud to be that twit’s enemy

My favorite part is when JD Vance announces “The professors are the enemy,” and then smiles smugly and pauses to let the applause roll in.

He’s trying argue that National Conservatism needs “wisdom”. I’d love to know how he defines that word, because as he uses it it seems to be synonymous with “ignorance”. A society that belittles learning and knowledge is doomed.

Also, JD Vance is a colossal, gaping asshole.

The ongoing disappointment with the Democrats continues

Primary these motherfuckers. I never want to see their faces again.

I didn’t expect much of Biden, to be honest, but the constant failure of the Democrats to put up much of a fight for anything is depressing. I know, we’re going to hear it’s all Manchin and Sinema’s fault (and I agree, they are both colossal fuckwitted blockheads), but at some point you have to stand up and declare that there are core principles to being part of the party, and that the apparatus of the party is going to actively fuck up your re-election chances if you don’t cooperate. What I suspect, though, is that the bidness Democrats are secretly grateful that they’ve got Manchin/Sinema around as an excuse to instead fuck over their electorate.

So now the Democrats plan to kill family leave and Medicare/Medicaid expansion from their budget, all because a few convenient die-hards are resisting the idea of supporting Democratic voters. I note that the right-wing hates the idea of health care and actually supporting families, so this is basically caving in to the Republicans. If I wanted to vote for Republican policies, I would have voted for a Republican, you know.

The damning thing about this strategy is that it is so short-sighted. By ditching their principles and the only reason to vote for a Democrat — other than that they aren’t openly maniacal, perverse monsters — they are damaging their own chances in the next election cycle.

The House Democrats at most risk of losing their seats in the 2022 midterm elections are urging their colleagues not to jettison a set of popular programs from President Biden’s economic and social spending package, warning that failing to deliver on these promises to voters could pave the way for Republicans to regain control of Congress.

These vulnerable Democrats argue that expanding Medicaid into certain states, allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, expanding Medicare coverage and providing for paid family leave are key to both motivating Democrats to vote in the midterm elections and to winning over the small but key group of independent voters who could otherwise back their Republican challengers.

“No normal person can understand why we can’t negotiate for drug prices,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said. “So what they see when we can’t pass that year after year is greed, and I have no problem saying I’m frustrated with the other side of the aisle, but in this case, my own party because that one is just a simple thing we could do.”

All four policies are at risk of being left out of the final bill due to opposition from centrist Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), whose votes are key on every issue given the 50-50 Senate, as well as a small group of Democrats in both chambers opposed to giving Medicare too much authority to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

I am so, so tired of hearing about Manchin/Sinema, two parasites profiting from their intransigence with the reward of tremendous amounts of attention…and not enough of it is negative. I am also tired of watching Biden mumble placid centrist excuses for doing as little as possible.

I ask again, as I do in every election, what positive reason do I have for supporting Democrats? Is it really going to be just “they aren’t Trump” forevermore?

You can’t say that

Those fervent conservative Free Speech Warriors have hit on a new strategy to protect our sacred right to say anything we want to anyone we want to: banning the bad words. Wisconsin Republicans have proposed sweeping censorship of words and concepts from the public schools there.

Curiously, they forgot to ban “irony”. Maybe they didn’t know the word exists.

Fortunately, the bill is just posturing by sanctimonious Republicans, and has virtually no chance of passing. If it did, I suppose I’d have to gallop across the border to rescue my granddaughter once she hit school age.

It’s such a strangely blatant defiance of the principles these people usually hide behind, but there’s a reason for it. We can’t make our white children conscious of racism.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed legislation on a party-line vote Tuesday that would bar public schools from teaching critical race theory, the latest Republican-controlled legislative chamber to take action on a culture war issue that erupted in school board meetings around the country this summer.

The measure mirrors efforts in other states to block teachers from instructing students on concepts of racial injustice or inherent bias.

But in testimony before a Wisconsin Assembly committee considering the bill in August, one of the measure’s lead authors went farther than in other states, spelling out specific words that would be barred from the classroom.

“It has come to our attention, and to some of the people who traveled here to Madison today, that a growing number of school districts are teaching material that attempts to redress the injustice of racism and sexism by employing racism and sexism, as well as promoting psychological distress in students based on these immutable characteristics,” state Rep. Chuck Wichgers (R) said of his bill. “No one should have to undergo the humiliation of being told that they are inferior to someone else. We are all members of the human race.”

Nothing in Critical Race Theory is about telling anyone they are inferior — quite the opposite. You can tell what really concerns him, though: the idea that white people might be told they’re inferior. When it was just discrimination against brown people, then it was OK to talk about their imaginary inferiority.

Wichgers, who represents Muskego in the legislature, attached an addendum to his legislation that included a list of “terms and concepts” that would violate the bill if it became law.

Among those words: “Woke,” “whiteness,” “White supremacy,” “structural bias,” “structural racism,” “systemic bias” and “systemic racism.” The bill would also bar “abolitionist teaching,” in a state that sent more than 91,000 soldiers to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

The list of barred words or concepts includes “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness.”

Whoops, there goes social studies and history.

Shouldn’t you be brought up short if you find yourself agreeing with Putin?

Putin is the new poster child for toxic masculinity. Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin again attacked Western liberalism in a fiery address on Thursday, blasting so-called cancel culture and advances in gay and transgender rights.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin stressed that his country should adhere to its own “spiritual values and historical traditions,” while steering clear of “sociocultural disturbances” in the West.

Some Westerners believe “the aggressive deletion of whole pages of their own history, reverse discrimination against the majority in the interests of minorities … constitute movement toward public renewal,” Putin said. “It’s their right, but we are asking them to steer clear of our home. We have a different viewpoint.”

Putin, who told the Financial Times of London newspaper in 2019 that liberalism had become “obsolete,” has loudly advocated for what he considers to be traditional family values. In his Thursday remarks, he said the notion that children are “taught that a boy can become a girl and vice versa” is monstrous and “on the verge of a crime against humanity.”

He also suggested that transgender rights supporters were demanding an end to “basic things such as mother, father, family or gender differences.”

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, it was engrained into us that the left were the commies, which was an evil ideology, obviously, and only bad guys would favor the Russians (the hippies were more anarchist than communist, though), while the righteous right-wing was populated with American patriots. Now it’s clear that the conservatives were moving towards totalitarianism, while at the same time the Russian leadership was converging on the same, leaving communism to become synonymous with the criminal right. I can’t see much difference between Russian Putin and American John Bircher anymore.

He really, really, really misses Twitter

Donald Trump tried this before, with his pathetic little “blog” that closed up shop in short order. Now he’s trying again, with what he calls his new social media company.

Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a social media platform called TRUTH Social that will rolled be out early next year.

The former president, who was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year, says his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise.

Like his previous effort, though, he’s just half-assing it, taking existing frameworks and making the minimal effort to slap a few cosmetic changes on it. This TRUTH social thing seems to be nothing but a Mastodon instance with his name on it, and there is zero thought put into security and checking accounts on the back end. People have already cracked it and found the registration page, despite the fact it isn’t opened yet, and created joke accounts on it. I saw that someone managed to put a photo of a pig pooping on its testicles prominently displayed (I’ll spare you all), as well as registering under various obvious pseudonyms.

This thing is going to flop and fail hard. Once word gets out to the gullible millions that it’s really just an unintentional honey trap — sign up to praise Lord Trump, and someone is going to slurp up your registration info to laugh at you, or worse — I don’t think it can thrive. Hey, did you hear that hackers stole the Oath Keepers registration list and have exposed 35,000 members identities, including a swarm of Republican politicians? TRUTH Social is going to be so fragile and porous, with tissue-paper thin defenses, the hackers are just going to drool in its general direction and rip on through.

But that doesn’t matter. This is an ego-trip for the ex-president. Or is it something more? Like maybe another grift?

Former president Donald Trump’s media venture, Truth Social, could give his new company access to $300 million.

However, some of the investors who funded the venture weren’t aware that Trump would be involved, according to a report from the New York Times.

“The details of Mr. Trump’s latest partnership were vague,” the Times reports. “The statement he issued was reminiscent of the kind of claims he made about his business dealings in New York as a real estate developer. It was replete with high-dollar amounts and superlatives that could not be verified.”

He knows who his real marks are: stupid rich investment bankers who don’t even bother to look to see who they’re giving hundreds of millions of dollars to. And who needs that much money to set up a Mastodon instance?

After this one goes belly up, look for the Donald to beg for half a billion dollars to set up a Discord server. And for his clientele to pay for it.

I know that pain

Lawsuits, as I know from personal experience, cause great personal stress and financial difficulty. They are effective when appropriately applied against the bad guys.

A federal lawsuit against the organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has rattled hate groups and white supremacist leaders, goes to trial this month.

The suit already has helped to dismantle some of America’s most well-known white supremacist groups, and it has financially crippled one leader of the so-called “alt-right,” the white supremacist and nationalist movement that came to prominence under President Donald Trump.

“It’s very stressful, and very costly,” said Richard Spencer, one of the defendants in the lawsuit and the former de facto leader of the “alt-right,” in an interview. “This level of pressure is definitely scary.”

Good. He should be scared. When we were sued, we could at least console ourselves with the awareness that we had done nothing wrong (not always an adequate defense when dealing with the law), but these fascist neo-nazis have to know that they’re doing evil.

It does remind me of two things, though.

  • Damn Richard Carrier for making me feel a tiny glimmer of sympathy for the murderous Charlottesville rally organizers.
  • I have to periodically express my gratitude for our readers and donors who dug us out of that unpleasant hole. Thank you all very much!

I’d rather not think about the fact that a national mob of anti-Semitic criminal rioters probably has more supporters than a blog network that promotes something as benevolent as freethought.