Never Again

Politicians lie to us daily. I think it’s a requirement of the job. Hillary and Bill were famous for it, Barack admitted to lying as well. So, why do I loathe trump?

Lies have been told by us and to us since time immemorable. Some lies are those that protect the person hearing the lie; the proverbial ‘No, Honey. Those pants do not make you look fat at all.’ Some call these “white lies” or “social lies”, meant to smooth interaction with others rather than pummel someone with the blunt truth.

Then there are the lies that are self serving; the ‘no officer, I’m sure I wasn’t speeding’. These are lies that are easily seen through because we expect to be lied to in this way. We expect to have someone attempt to protect himself in the best story available. Invariably, we get that speeding ticket anyway, and we pay it because we know we were speeding.

Then there are the lies that injures others.

When trump came down that pompous escalator to announce his candidacy for president, he began his political career with lies and doubled down at every opportunity. I felt the man was completely ill prepared for the task, that he put his trust in people who were monstrously untrustworthy, and I was positive he would do a poor job. No surprise, he quickly showed himself to be pernicious, incompetent, a sociopathic narcissist, far less intelligent than he would have us believe, and he hero-worshipped dictators. As his very inadequacy found him out the powers behind the throne failed to rein him in.

Nonetheless, he was the president of the country. No matter how poorly done, he was our president, and that carried a two-way responsibility that I hated yet had little choice but to accept. As our president, he was charged with and accepted the duty to lead everyone, even me. Repeatedly he lied to me. Repeatedly he told me to trust him. And, as president, as the one who ultimately is the one in charge, I trusted the office. Then, I found that I couldn’t go to work because I didn’t have a mask; I couldn’t see my elderly family because I couldn’t risk their very life; I couldn’t see my friends because I could transmit a virus that could jeopardize their life and their loved one’s lives. A virus he told me was not an issue, would be a couple people, would go away like a fluff of cottonwood in the breeze.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter what you think about that virus, because he knew it to be deadly. He knew, and he accepted my family’s potential loss of life as a convenience. He knew and denied reality knowing it put us at risk. He lied and convinced others to lie and made the truth tellers a pariah.

We don’t have to agree in this country to find a common ground. Policy difference is a good thing. It frees the opportunity for debate and challenge, hopefully arriving at an idea that is the best it can be, able to survive challenge and investigation. But there must be a reality we can share. Never again will I allow myself to be led by someone who would see my death and the death of everyone I know as the inconsiderate cost of being thought powerful. Never Again.

Hugs. Randy

From Courtney’s Weekly Tea

It’s a newsletter I read because I enjoy tea. Also, she’s a part of Romancing the Vote, an organization that does work near and dear to my heart. I also own one of her books, with several more on my wishlist. Anyway, she’s got a little editorial in the letter this week, worthy of a read. There is no link to the letter, but the link to sign up for the letter is here.

“The Purpose of the Postmenopausal Female…

“I’ve been immersed in politics for, um, several weeks. Part of it is hope that finally, endlessly, we will be able to put some of the awfulness of the last years behind us and move forward into a world where we care about an equitable future.

“But also, confession time: JD Vance speaks directly to a very specific grudge that I’m holding.

“You want to know my grudge? I am endlessly grudging against what I call in my head the ‘legal abuser network’—that set of people who think that power is more important than, you know, treating folks with dignity. They’ve aligned themselves with abusers over and over and gaslit everyone who remains. JD Vance is On My List. In other circumstances, ‘stop being such assholes and treat people well!’ would be a moral statement and not a grudge. But they tried to induct me into the ‘no, look, you’ll get power, it’s cool, just pretend the abuse didn’t happen’ club, and so it’s absolutely a grudge and I want them all to fail.

“But I digress.

“I have been taking a very grim pleasure in watching people flip over rocks and seeing—yet again—that there is JD Vance, writhing away from the light like a many-legged centipede, leaving a trail behind him filled with things like his rancor for childless cat ladies and his belief that the Italians and the Irish were violent immigrants who maybe should have been banned from entering the country in the 1840s, and his statement that the only purpose that a postmenopausal female (it’s always females! Jerks like JD Vance can never use the word ‘women!’) serves is to do childcare.

“Last night, I was thinking about how Vice President Harris has reinvigorated a campaign that many (but not me) thought dead. I was watching Michelle Obama deliver a speech as probably one of the best orators in the nation, possibly beating out her husband who is a generational talent at giving speeches. And I thought about how many women in their generation—a scant decade older than me—faced barriers to entry from so many sides, and how much of who they have become was shaped by opposition.

“And it made me doubly proud to be the party of Not JD Vance, because as we can all plainly see, the purpose of a postmenopausal female is to kick ass.”

A quote for the day-

lifted from my SoJo email.

Voice of the day

The will to abolish is what comes forth when pessimism about the possibility for effecting justice hits rock bottom and careens back up in the form of righteous fury.
– Joshua Dubler and Vincent W. Lloyd, “Restructuring a World Without Prisons”

Britain burns while liberals check facts

Stewart Lee

Traditional news outlets flagellate themselves when inaccurate. But the rightwing instigators of last week’s riots aren’t restricted by concepts such as truth

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/11/britain-burns-while-liberals-check-facts-riots-nigel-farage

(Seems like good commentary.)

Let’s get ready to rhumble! As heroic locals and beleaguered police battle to stop cocaine-fuelled hard-right rioters burning people to death, the laughing faces of ITV’s Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hang suspended in the smoke shrouding buildings in Rotherham and Tamworth. Watch us wreck the mike!! Psyche!!!

The greatest trick Nigel Farage ever pulled, appearing in December’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, was looking normal to the ITV millions by eating a pizza covered with some penises. How Ant and Dec laughed as Nigel’s EU views were left un-factchecked by current affairs titans such as Britney Spears’s sister and a man from JLS. Psyche!

And now Britain burns in Farage-flavoured flames, minorities prepare escape packs, policemen are battered by cokehead patriots with swastika tattoos, and sausage rolls are looted from Greggs because blah blah blah Muslims. Are Ant and Dec proud? Straight up proovin’ we can getcha groovin’. This track’s boomin’! It ain’t no hype!

A 17-year-old boy, born and raised in Wales to parents from the safe country of Rwanda (which is largely Christian), has now been charged for last week’s horrendous murders. However, hysterical social media accounts had already claimed the perpetrator was a cross-channel Muslim from Syria, called Ali Al-Shakati, which translates as “I Have to Go to My Apartment”. I don’t know Arabic but I assume “Apartment” was his surname and “I Have to Go to My” was a string of unnecessary first names, like what those foreigners have.

Señor Apartment’s guilt was amplified online by Farage, bypassing the tedious opportunity of asking questions in the parliament he is paid to attend, who wondered, “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? … I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” having got his information from Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer currently facing charges of human trafficking, and valid news source.

Farage works to the same schematic as lucratively rewarded libertarian Netflix standups. He’s not making a definitive statement that could get him in trouble. No. He’s just sayin’, just puttin’ it out there. And then he drops the mic and leaves his fans to get arrested. Ka-booom!

Stoking tension with speculation is stupid. But Farage isn’t stupid. Once broadcasters redubbed the barking of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams because he was considered too charismatic. But today Ant and Dec invite Farage to eat penises in a clearing, and he has his own show on GB News, which is the same thing. Let’s get ready to rhumble!

A BBC reporter described one riot as a ‘pro-British march’, which is like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise

The Tory party blamed the incoming Labour administration for the fire they set. Their own adviser Dame Sara Khan said Tories’ “inflammatory language” had “undermined social cohesion”. The right spent 15 years training a fat dog to shit in our house and now that it’s finally done loads of massive shits everywhere, they tell us it’s Labour’s fault for not killing the shitting dog five weeks ago. Or something.

Gaza ceasefire demonstrations, none of which ended in attempted mass murder, were “hate marches”, but the commentariat initially called the current would-be pogroms “protests”. The Tory Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones said the riots were “upholding British values”. Do these include making toddlers chant the word “paki”, and stealing sausage rolls? A BBC reporter even went as far as to describe one riot as a “pro-British march”, which is a bit like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise.

On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, a load of old white men, including the home secretary’s embarrassing husband Ed Balls and the Daily Mail hate-gonk Andrew Pierce, source of endless fudged front pages, repeatedly shouted down Zarah Sultana’s attempts to explain the Legitimate Grievance Riots as a British Asian. And then Jeremy Vine, the monstrous Belial from Basket Case to his benign brother Tim, invited Farage’s Reform sidekick Richard Tice, of all people, on to his show to explain the violence, as a bin full of entrails and flies was unavailable.

Farage’s falsehoods threaten lives. We have to do better. Liberal legacy media flagellates itself when inaccurate. The reason my last column didn’t mention the Legitimate Grievance Riots was because I’m now filing six days early so the legal department can protect me, and the paper, from my incoherent “jokes”, having recently received a request for correction from a former Tufton Street commentator, and wrangled over the wording of a complaint from Mumsnet. It’s only Monday. By the time you read this you might be on fire.

My main job is comedy on stage, and I can’t afford to be banned for my carelessness in print from every venue in the world, a fate that recently befell two comedians I admire enormously, neither of whom are Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld. Two months back I wanted to quit this column, done in by dramas, but a chance encounter with the 70s actor Judy Matheson of The Flesh and Blood Show fame, declaring herself an avid reader in a King’s Cross cafe, appealed to my vanity.

But the rightwing instigators of the Legitimate Grievance Riots aren’t restricted by factchecking. Farage choses online agitation over parliamentary presence. The evil Elon Musk declared “civil war is inevitable”, and recently allowed the worst offenders back on his now lawless X. This is handy if you are black because Tommy Robinson announces the towns chosen for next week’s riots on Musk’s platform so you can avoid them.

In 2020, Farage broadcast himself entering identifiable hotels used to house unprocessed migrants on social media. Earlier this year, the newsreader Geeta Guru-Murthy, someone Farage fans would want deported, casually called the hard-right figurehead’s language “inflammatory”. The enfeebled BBC demanded her apology. Now those hotels are on fire. Is that inflammatory enough for you? Let’s get ready to rhumble!

Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is streaming on Now TV. He previews 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with guests the mysterious Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)

Good Sense

Armistice Sonnet | Abhijit Naskar | World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Armistice Sonnet

Ceasefire is a diplomatic gimmick,
They cease only to hit back harder.
Demilitarization is what we need,
We got no use for one more ceasefire.

Ceasefire only postpones war,
disarmament instills peace.
Armistice empowers armament,
demilitarization plants peace.

Tyrants don’t call truce to allow aid,
but only to rearm themselves,
so they can call in more ammunition,
from their apely imperialist friends.

One more ceasefire we could do without,
World is wailing for the final ceasefire.
Disown every statesman who prides military,
Builders of military are merchants of murder.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

J6 Rioter Back In Custody After Threats To Officials

J6 Rioter Back In Custody After Threats To Officials

Are the authorities powerless to stop Tommy Robinson’s online output?

New laws may make it easier to pursue far-right activist over alleged role in spreading disinformation

(I think they are here, because of our Constitution. However, it’d be good to see this sort of activity controlled, and people safer. -A)

Images of Tommy Robinson using his phone while sunbathing in Cyprus as a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers was set alight have prompted outrage among those long concerned about his ability to inspire far-right action, even from a distance.

Yet while he has long seemed able to operate with impunity, events may finally be catching up with the man who first rose to prominence in 2009 as the de facto leader of the now defunct English Defence League (EDL).

Far from being powerless to pursue Robinson, new legislation means the authorities may be able to move more easily against those who share damaging information online that they know to be untrue.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is already known to be among those who are being looked at by police for their alleged role in disseminating disinformation.

A former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald KC, spelled out on Monday how he believed investigators would want to quickly identify individuals who are involved in “online organisation, online incitement and online conspiracies”.

“I think prosecutors will want to have a strategy to identify people who may have been involved in inciting and encouraging these events, and they will want to arrest them and build cases against them. These are, in one sense, the most important people,” Lord Macdonald told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.

While Robinson has been abroad since 28 July, when he fled the UK on the eve of a high court hearing over contempt of court proceedings, he has maintained a near constant commentary on events in the UK since the fatal stabbings of three young girls in Southport on 29 July, sharing claims that police have described as false.

While he has long been a prolific user of multiple social media platforms – benefiting in particular from the return of his X account after Elon Musk bought Twitter – going after him for his online output is not clear-cut.

The far right has moved online, where its voice is more dangerous than ever Read more

Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general for England and Wales, told the Guardian: “It is an offence to incite violence on the grounds of race, belief or sexual orientation, and there is incitement to hatred. But it’s a grey area between the right to criticise and incitement to hatred and is a very difficult area to police.

“Quite simply, that’s why it is possible for people to play around with that area. Either you clamp down on it, in which case legitimate freedom of speech gets eliminated and breeds undesirable problems of its own, or you live with it and challenge those views through debate.”

Recent changes in the law open up other possibilities. Since January, an amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information that they know to be false and “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.

Ashley Fairbrother, a senior prosecutor at the law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon, said: “This now makes the circulation of damaging and false information online into an offence in its own right.” (snip-More)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/06/are-the-authorities-powerless-to-stop-tommy-robinsons-online-output

Virginia man charged with threatening to kill Vice President Kamala Harris

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN Published 5:46 PM EDT, Mon August 5, 2024

sigh.

CNN —

A Virginia man has been charged with making death threats against Vice President Kamala Harris and appeared in federal court on Monday.

According to court records, Frank Lucio Carillo made several threats against Harris, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray, several Arizona officials, and others on the right-wing social media platform Gettr.

In response to a subpoena, the FBI found 4,359 posts from Carillo “targeting various public officials,” including Harris.

In several posts, Carillo allegedly threatened to cut out Harris’ eyes and described various ways he wanted to kill the vice president, court records say.

“I will cut your eyes out,” Carillo allegedly wrote in one expletive-laden rant where he called Harris a “b*tch” and said he hoped she would “suffer a slow agonizing death.”

A number of similar posts are cited in court records, with graphic and detailed threats against the vice president as well as others, including one Islamophobic post in 2023 when he wrote that people should “go out with your guns and kill all Muslims.”

When FBI agents first arrived at Carillo’s house over the social media posts, Carillo asked if they were there “about the online stuff,” and said, “I posted it.” Carrillo, appearing to talk to himself, also said, “I guess I’m gonna need a lawyer,” according to court documents.

Federal agents retrieved two firearms from his home, including a pistol he bought in 2023 and a rifle purchased this year.

A hearing to determine whether Carillo will remain behind bars while awaiting a resolution in his case has been set for Thursday. (snip)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/05/politics/death-threats-kamala-harris-virginia-man-arrested

Enough with the platitudes. How about some radical empathy and accountability?

Mark McCormick July 25, 2024 3:33 am

Note from A: I love this writer. He’s a heck of a great human. I used to read him when he wrote for the Wichita Eagle, and since have sort of kept up with different things he’s done over time. He wrote back a thank you note to me when I wrote in to thank him for some particularly incisive, also brave, coverage. I don’t recall what, but I’ll never forget he wrote back. Anyway, it’s good to see him writing again, and on a vital subject. Give it a look!