Category: Crime

But Of Course!

Here’s to people staying off Democrats’s necks as they fight this in the same fashion. Gerrymandering hurts my heart; I live in a state gerrymandered to just barely inside the law. I don’t like it for any state no matter the majority, but. If one’s gonna do it, they all ought to.

Of course, if we had instant runoff voting and no parties, this wouldn’t be a thing. Everyone would have someone to vote For. And we’d be a democratic republic today. -A

Gerrymandered Balls by Clay Jones

Republicans are cheating again Read on Substack

What do Republicans cheat at more, golf or elections? It’s a tough call. But cheating at one of those things means that they’ll cheat at the other.

Republicans in Texas are trying to reshape their congressional districts, even though it’s not the time redistricting is normally done. Usually, that’s shortly after the results of the census are published (which is once a decade), and states redistrict according to the new population size, and to fit with possible changes, such as new districts or losing them.

During the last census, Texas picked up two congressional seats because its population grew during the 2010s. Since the Texas legislature is controlled by Republicans, they were able to draw up the district maps. Naturally, they redraw them to favor Republicans. It’s not like they would do it honestly. They’re Republicans.

This is called gerrymandering, and Texas is one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. Wisconsin is number one.

Texas now has 38 congressional districts, with 25 of them going to Republicans, 12 going to Democrats, and one is currently vacant. But even after winning a huge majority after gerrymandering, 25 congressional seats are not enough for Texas Republicans, so they want to redraw the lines again in their favor.

Texas will be blue someday, or at least a swing state. The best way to keep people from sending Democrats to Congress is to take away Democratic candidates. After gerrymandering, voters are not choosing the candidate. The candidates are choosing the voters. It’s horrible, rotten, unfair, and neither party should do it. But Republicans don’t care if they cheat.

After Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 in what experts say was the most secure election in American history, Republicans cried foul and set out to change election laws in every state. In Georgia, for example, where Biden won in 2020, and Blue areas are growing, Republicans changed voting laws, and Trump won over Kamala Harris in 2024 by just 2.20 percent. In Texas, they focused on changing the laws, not for every district, just the districts that had a majority of Black voters. They tried to make it as hard as hell to vote in Houston.

Republicans said all these changes were for election “integrity.” But how much integrity do you have when you make it illegal to give an old lady a bottle of water while she’s waiting in line for nine hours in the Georgia heat? It’s a fact that when fewer people vote, Republicans win.

The 2024 election, which Trump “won,” had fewer voters than in 2020, when Biden won. (snip-MORE)

Open Windows, Clay Jones

Supersized Winning by Clay Jones

Tariffs are taxes Read on Substack

The Treasury Department reported that Trump’s tariffs brought in over $28 billion in revenue last May. Naturally, this got MAGAts hyped up and excited as they think this is “winning.”

Hey, it doesn’t matter that Trump’s tax cuts for asshole billionaires will lead to even larger deficits, we’re getting all this revenue from foreign nations. They got more “winning” last week when the European Union agreed on a tariff on their goods of 15 percent. Holy Wowzers. That’s a lot of winning.

What MAGAts don’t realize is that the $28 billion wasn’t paid for by China, Mexico, Canada, or even Penguin Island. They don’t understand that the 15 percent on EU stuff won’t be paid for by the EU. American consumers pay for the tariffs. Even if you suck at economics, and it’s a hard subject, learning how tariffs work can be easy.

In easy terms, a tariff is a tax. While Donald Trump is cutting taxes, he’s also raising them.

Let’s say I live in Denmark and I sell wooden shoes. That’s Denmark, right? Or was it Holland? I just looked it up, and it’s Holland. The shoes are called “Klompens,” probably because you klomp around in them. Anywaysies, I’m in Europe and I sell stupid shoes. When I sell them to stores in the United States, Trump forces me to pay a 15 percent tariff. How do I make up that 15 percent, because I don’t want to eat it. I raise the price of my Klompens by 15 percent. The store doesn’t want to eat that 15 percent either, so guess what they do. They raise the price of the shoes they bought from me by at least 15 percent. That means American customers of those stupid, ugly wooden shoes pay the tariffs.

The way this can hurt me is that people may not want to purchase my stupid, ugly wooden shoes, and will tell me to get the klomp out of here. Fortunately, American consumers may not even notice the price increase. We still purchase iPhones even though every new version costs more than the last one, and the only changes are that they come in more colors and with “enhanced” AI, like we need more of that shit. Siri doesn’t let me talk to myself anymore. I’m sticking with my 12 until it dies of natural causes or I accidentally murder it deliberately. So far, it’s fine, knock on Klompens. (snip-MORE)

Trump is rewriting history by Ann Telnaes

He wants you to forget the truth Read on Substack

Grey Poupon When You Get Your Limo On by Clay Jones

Why don’t I have a job where my travel’s paid for and it’s all first class? Read on Substack

This cartoon was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

The Advance wrote with today’s cartoon: Reporting this past week by Adele Uphaus that a member of the Fredericksburg School Board took a first-class flight to a conference in Atlanta, had school division transportation personnel shuttle her to the airport in Richmond, and was traveling with School Board clerk Angie Roenke’s credit card which was shut down due to “possible purchase card usage issues” drew a great deal of attention. As did Uphaus’ reporting on July 8 about travel to Hawaii by another Board member. Yes — Clay Jones noticed.

I have covered this subject not just once but twice before. This is the third version, and it’s based on some new reporting by Adele Uphaus.

I know that if I ever flew first class on my last employer’s dime, I would have some ‘splaining to do. After every convention, the editor who managed expenses would call me into her office and review everything on my expense report, which typically had very low expenses. The editor’s presumption with each review was that you were trying to steal from the company. It was about as enjoyable as a body cavity search, unless you’re into those kinds of things.

Anyway, I don’t get how a school board member is flying first class and getting away with it while teachers are buying their own school supplies. (snip-MORE)

Whistleblower: 10-year-old Palestinian boy ‘gunned down’ after receiving food aid

Former US Green Beret says Israel committed war crimes at Gaza food distribution site | BBC News

Peace Ribbons & More, In Peace & Justice History For 8/4

August 4, 1964
The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick.
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992:
” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.”
Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
August 4, 1964
FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE.

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman
At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote.
The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations.
Watch a video 
Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964:
Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman.
• 400 attended mass meeting in Marks.
• Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result.
Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten.
• Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez
• $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets.

This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.)
Read more 
August 4, 1985
Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.


Maggie Wade, who traveled to Washington, DC from Indiana with her daughter,
sitting at the Pentagon with her embroidery panel of the Ribbon Project.
Photo © Ellen Shub

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august4

In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage

Ruined Afternoon Swim

sigh.

A Trans Woman and Her Friends Were Violently Assaulted at an Austin Swimming Hole

The incident is being investigated by police as a possible hate crime.

By Samantha Riedel

A transgender woman and several friends were harassed and assaulted in Austin, Texas last weekend, and one bystander who stepped in to defend them was hospitalized, in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime.

On July 26, the trans woman — who has requested anonymity during the ongoing investigation — and several friends visited Barton Springs, a public swimming hole in Austin’s Zilker Park, as Chron reported Wednesday. During their visit, three men they didn’t know flirted heavily with members of the group, the woman told Chron, but soon began harassing and pointing at her, making remarks about not “support[ing] that lifestyle.”

The three men then reportedly began shoving members of the group and poking the women “near their breasts,” according to a Reddit user who posted about the incident on Monday, claiming to be a friend of one of the victims. At that point, a bystander — identified as Jarod — intervened, and was attacked himself.

“The three men then proceeded to get violent and aggressive, yelling at us and getting in our faces until one of them decided to start swinging and punched Jarod in the jaw, knocking him unconscious,” the anonymous trans woman told Chron. “I quickly ran over to him in an attempt to help Jarod out but was then punched in the face by the assailant in the orange shorts.” The men then shoved another of the women to the ground and left the scene soon after, according to video footage of the incident posted to social media.

The Austin Police Department (APD) released a statement on Tuesday stating that the alleged assault was under investigation and could be declared a hate crime by the city’s Hate Crime Review Committee. “APD remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a secure and inclusive Austin community,” the department stated. (Community leaders called for APD to be investigated for excessive force in March this year, after videos circulated online that appeared to show officers throwing a trans woman onto the ground during an arrest.)

Austin-area drag performer Brigitte Bandit posted about the assault on Instagram Monday, asking locals for help identifying the attackers. In a follow-up post the next day, Bandit stated that the men had been identified and the information had been shared privately with the victims. “I will not be posting their information without consent of the people involved in the attack,” Bandit wrote, adding, “[l]et’s let them decide which routes they decide [are] best.” (snip-MORE. Also embedded tweet. Then, if you click through, you’ll see they’ve gotten the suspects ID’d.)

Doctor Gives Eyewitness Account Of Gaza Horrors| Dr. Ambereen Sleemi | TMR

ICE is thugs targetting brown people who are US citizens, detaining them, taking their ID and not returning it, assaulting them, then making up charges against them.

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790723408167092224

Clay Jones

Kill The Messenger by Clay Jones

Dictators fire people for bad news Read on Substack

Firing people for delivering bad news is a fascist move. It was popular with the likes of Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and dare say it, Adolf Hitler. Trump and Hitler both fired generals they didn’t trust.

Sometimes it would be a census taker telling Stalin that his famine was reducing the population. He wouldn’t just be fired, but shipped off to a gulag, or even murdered. The first thing to go in a dictatorship is a free press.

Yesterday, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, delivered a negative jobs report. Trump, our Dear Leader and Fascist in Chief, didn’t like those numbers, so Hair Fuhrer fired her.

TACO said, “I’ve had issues with the numbers for a long time. We’re doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony, like they were before the election, and there were other times. So I fired her, and I did the right thing.” OK, Shitler.

Russia and China manipulate their economic numbers. Like Trump, they take apolitical agencies and politicize them. Yes, the BLS will now be politicized. People who don’t want to lose their jobs will only report happy news to Cheeto Mussolini. The government will be less informed. The American people will be lied to.

It will be like people in North Korea being told there is plenty of food while they’re staring at empty shelves in their markets. You’re not starving. Who are you going to believe, Kim Jong Un or your lying growling stomach?

Trump doesn’t want us to believe our lying eyes either. He’s lied about vote totals, crowd sizes, tariff formulas, and even weather forecasts. Remember when he tried to change a hurricane’s direction with a Sharpie. I can do a lot with a Sharpie, you’ve seen it, but I can’t move a hurricane with one. (snip-MORE)

Clay Jones

Stolen Women by Clay Jones

Trump thinks women are property…his property Read on Substack

If you are aware of a pedophile, and you enable that pedophile, then you’re as bad as a pedophile. So, what did Trump know? What did Trump do?

There is a video of Trump seeing a young girl going up an escalator in 1992, maybe she was a preteen, and he comments that he’ll be “dating” her someday. It’s creepy. It’s creepy like when he said he’d be dating his own daughter if they weren’t related. On another occasion, he said what he and Ivanka have in common is their love for sex. I just shivered.

I know relationships are different, but what father wants to talk to his daughter about his or her sex life? Ew. The most I ever talked to my mother about sex was shortly after my separation from my wife, and she said she hoped I wouldn’t fall in love with the first woman I slept with. I told my mother, “I haven’t fallen in love with either of them.” And she said, “TWO? TWO? I’m so ashamed and proud of you.” Unfortunately, my father wouldn’t shut up about his past exploits.

Trump is a creeper. When he endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate, he already knew about allegations of pedophilia against Moore. Trump’s defense was, “He said he didn’t do it.” That’s the same defense he used for Putin’s election meddling.

Whenever it’s a he-said-she-said situation, Trump will always go with he-said. (snip-MORE)