Strangely Blogged

This blog kills fascists. Eventually. It’s a process I’m working on. Be patient with me.

Since 2016, I’ve felt sort of hyperaware about the potentiality of Russian disinfo because obviously, WikiLeaks and the IRA. Per the Senate Intelligence Committee, in multiple volumes, this was anything but a hoax. The claim Trump didn’t welcome it and appreciate it is more than answered by his campaign’s silence about it and even attempted cover-up. Money was funneled through Facebook and Twitter ads and RW-pressure groups like NRA. I joke that we are still living in 2016 because we are still finding out how that election was, well, weird.

I deleted a post about how weird it was that Benny Johnson was a dupe to launder Russian talking points in the Tenet exploit because I realized that his basic dopiness and right-wing credulity is a whole fucking bigger mood than I was handling at the moment. We get that RW dopey incendiaries are out here–and they are pretty well-funded domestically as it is. Like, you pick a random concern-trolling “Liberty” “Freedom” “Heritage” or “Family”-labelled group from the last 100 years, and it was probably founded by some freaky Christian billionaire bigot family like the DeVos, Wilkes, Prince, Mellon, Coors, Koch, Busch, etc. The family-tree of theocratic and Bircher-light think tankitude has been incestuous and generously endowed since forever.

But where there is money and batshit, you have a real problem–people who love the hell out of money and don’t care what degree of batshit they spew. If you wanted useful idiots for foreign actors, this is one way you could open up a path for useful idiots to wrongfully mobilize people by playing on their fears and so on. Propaganda is cheap and effective. Even when we try to sanction the fuck out of the players to try and make it prohibitively costly to shit in the US litterbox–someone will try it.

Part of the reason why is we have a great big permission-structure to lie on the GOP side of things. We talk about it, but I don’t think we talk about it as much as we need to. The media is in part at fault, but also, money has generated a whole right-wing puke funnel, just feeding viewers like baby birds. And the results of the propaganda: fear and anger–short circuit logical critical thinking pathways. Well-fed ducklings become sitting ducks.

The internet influencer thing though, is even more perverse. There’s no reason to believe these people are anything but cons. I’ve thought of it as the “Triumph of the Swill”, because it’s propaganda without even artistry or competence. It relies on people being poorly educated or getting hopped-up on the idea that contrarianism is “independent thinking”–because you are a super genius of rare qualities, you can see through Big Atmosphere’s lies since Joseph Priestly and reject climate change, or see where that shill Jenner was headed with his vaccination/germ theory nonsense. You have clearly beat the mentality of Darwin and Le Compte de Buffon regarding that evolution jazz, too.

Conspiracy theories proliferate and why not? Anything might be true once anything can be called false.

Why not DARVO Russia and Ukraine? Why not introduce a little Holocaust denial? Why not suggest civil wars are actually good and healthy, or that secession could be beneficial to a large US State?

Harmful, wrongheaded views can be pimped out to attractive or engaging morons, who speak down to controversy-curious people without the tools to resist. They’ll even have you believing education itself is a problem and suggest you do away with it.

I think it’s good it’s being addressed, but the right wing is super-great at trying to say their free speech right are denied whenever they get told to stop being shills for utter bullshit. I get the feeling the pool of people who have been Russian-cash injected and super-bullshit charged will widen. And yes to people maybe being made examples of, because the shit has to stop.

But we clearly have a problem with toxic “elements” in our political environment. Some remediation feels like a good thing. Geting people to realize and care that one side has been enabling foreign propaganda to influence us and to recognize it as a national security threat is very important–that we haven’t been screaming about it enough since 2016 feels like a failure.

Also the Feds need to do Posobiec and Flynn. because I can’t believe those asses aren’t being handled from elsewhere.

at September 06, 2024

Labels: 2016 Presidential election, assholes, GOP, journalism, new media, old media, propaganda, social media, trump

Georgia shooting: father of teen suspect charged with second-degree murder

(Now that things have calmed down media-wise, and there is solid information, here’s a post. I’m glad to see the parent and gun owner held accountable; for this, and always. I am never in favor of charging a minor as an adult, though there should be consequences laced heavily with rehabilitation. But the parent and gun owner should be fully responsible because they’re actual adults, and the parents (some child shooters will not have parents, so this goes to the caregiver.) Gun owners should always know that their guns are secure, and tell law enforcement when they’re not secure. Others’s mileage with these things may vary, and you’re welcome to chime in!)

Colin Gray faces four involuntary manslaughter, two second-degree murder and eight cruelty to children counts

The father of the teen suspected in the Georgia school shooting has been arrested, the Georgia bureau of investigation has said.

Colin Gray, 54, was arrested by the bureau in connection to the shooting at Apalachee high school. Colin is the father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who is suspected of fatally shooting two students and two teachers with an assault-style rifle at the high school on Wednesday.

He is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia bureau said.

“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia bureau of investigations, told reporters on Thursday evening.

“What are we facing? Heartbreak. A young person brought a gun into a school, committed an evil act and took lives, and injured people not just physically but mentally,” said the Barrow county sheriff, Jud Smith, during the news conference.

The teenager has been charged as an adult in the deaths of the school students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and educators Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Hosey said.

At least nine other people – seven students and two teachers – were taken to hospitals with injuries and all are expected to make a full recovery, Smith said.

Colin Gray is being held at the Barrow county detention center.

More than a year ago, the alleged shooter was interviewed by Georgia police after they received tips about online posts threatening a school shooting. Police did not have enough probable cause to arrest him then, according to the Georgia bureau of investigation.

In that 2023 inquiry, the father said he had hunting guns in the house but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them, and the son denied making the threats online, the FBI said.

Georgia state and Barrow county investigators say the younger Gray used an “AR platform style weapon”, or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the attack in which two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed.

It remained unclear how the shooter obtained the weapon.

Investigators have yet to comment on what may have motivated the first US campus mass shooting since the start of the school year.

Jackson county sheriff’s investigators closed the case after being unable to substantiate that either Gray was connected to the Discord account where the threats were made, and did not find grounds to seek the needed court order to confiscate the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office on Thursday.

“This case was worked, and at the time the boy was 13, and it wasn’t enough to substantiate,” Janis Mangum, the Jackson county sheriff, said in an interview. “If we get a judge’s order or we charge somebody, we take firearms for safekeeping.”

The younger Gray was taken into custody shortly after the shooting and was being held without bond at the Gainesville regional youth detention center, Glenn Allen, the Georgia department of juvenile justice communications director, said on Thursday.

His arraignment is set for Friday morning before a Georgia superior court judge in Barrow county by video camera.

While parents are not usually held criminally liable if their child shoots someone, recent high-profile events are evidence that they could face charges in the future. In November 2023, Deja Taylor of Virginia was sentenced to 21 months on two federal charges after her then six-year-old son shot his teacher in January.

The elder Gray’s arrest also comes months after the unprecedented conviction of the parents of a Michigan high school student who shot and killed four students on 30 November. In February, Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter. The next month, her husband, James Crumbley, was convicted on the same charges. The pair was sentenced to serve at least 10 years in prison.

“I didn’t really think about what precedent it was setting,” Karen McDonald, the prosecutor for Oakland county who brought the case against the Crumbleys, told CNN on Thursday. “If nothing else I would’ve hoped that the highly publicized details of this case would steer parents and make them think twice.”

“It’s enraging that this could still happen when it’s so easily preventable,” she continued.

This article was amended on 6 September 2024. An early version said Deja Taylor was sentenced to 21 years, not 21 months.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/05/georgia-school-shooting-father-arrested?CMP=share_btn_url

Bad republicans

Paxton Sues To Block Federal Abortion Privacy Rule

Fox Host: US Media Is The Greatest Threat, Not Russia

Newsmax Declares Harris A “Lying Caucasian Woman”

Paxton Sues Blue County To Block Voter Registration

Axios: GOP’s Biden Probe “Collapsed Into Irrelevance”

Colbert Tees Off On Mark Robinson Porn Shop News

Watters Blames “Deep State” For New Russia Scandal

Watters: Russian Charges Are “Dirty Tricks” By DOJ

Rubio: The Podcasters In Russia Scandal Are “Victims”

Loomer Claims FBI Allowed GA Shooting To Help Dems

Trial Begins In 2020 Attack By Cultists On Biden Bus

Some cultists in the caravan were armed.

Last year Texas police were ordered to pay $175,000 for failing to respond to frantic calls from people on the bus.

Marco Rubio, Trump Junior, and Jeanine Pirro were among the prominent cultists who celebrated the attack.

Trump later declared that the FBI should not investigate the attack, saying, “Those patriots did nothing wrong.”

Trump To Jewish Group: “Israel Is Gone” If Harris Wins

NPR Names Trump Staff Involved In Arlington Incident

Vance: School Shootings Are A “Fact Of Life” [VIDEO]

The childish stupid misogynist shit the right spews.

Watters: World Leaders “Smell Fear From Harris”

NPR: Trump Team “Verbally Abused” Arlington Official, Pushed Him Aside In Altercation Over Ban On Filming

Felon: If Jesus Counted Votes, I’d Have Won California

I’m just an ordinary Catholic, but I’m thinking that Jesus probably wouldn’t come down for a man found liable by a jury for sexual assault.

And since Jesus invented the laws of the universe, including math, He would certify that Trump lost California. And GA, NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA. https://t.co/NVfVyr1bVh
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 28, 2024

Nicole Shanahan Blames Autism On “Toxins” In Water

Trump Plan Would Balloon National Debt By $6 Trillion

Keeping Trump’s campaign promises would increase the national debt by $5.8 trillion over 10 years, while Harris’ would cost $1.2 trillion.

Vance: New Trump Indictment Is Election Interference

Harris Team: Trump Lied, No Agreement On Live Mics

Vance: Childless Teachers Union Head Brainwashes Kids

Trump Team: Disgraceful Arlington Official Is Mentally Ill

Trump deputy campaign manager identified in Arlington National Cemetery dustup

September 5, 20246:47 PM ET By Stephen Fowler, Quil Lawrence, Tom Bowman

One of two staffers involved in the altercation at Arlington National Cemetery is a deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump’s reelection bid, NPR has learned. The former president insisted this week the incident did not happen, highlighting a growing disconnect between the messaging of the candidate and his campaign. NPR is identifying both staffers after the campaign’s conflicting responses to the incident last week outside Section 60 of the cemetery, where many casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.

The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.

Caporale is a one time aide to former first lady Melania Trump who left the White House to work for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before returning to the Trump campaign. He was also listed as the on-site contact and project manager for the Women for America First rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 where Trump urged the crowd to “stop the steal” before some of them stormed the U.S. Capitol.

After Trump participated in a wreath laying ceremony on the third anniversary of the deadly bombing at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. service members, Trump visited Section 60 at the invitation of some family members and friends of the fallen soldiers.

ANC rules, that had been made clear to the Trump campaign in advance, say that only an official Arlington photographer can take pictures or film in Section 60. When an ANC employee tried to enforce the rules, she was verbally abused by the two Trump campaign operatives, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Picard then pushed her out of the way according to two Pentagon officials. (snip-More)

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5101991/trump-campaign-arlington-national-cemetery-staff-debate

Peace & Justice History for 9/6:

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august6

Why are ‘fact checks’ vouching for Trump’s lies?

Losing the framing battle

L O L G O P

https://www.theframelab.org/why-are-fact-checks-vouching-trumps-lies/

Let’s hope 2024 will be the year that “both sides” fact-checking as a journalistic genre grows up.

The comically bad “fact-checking” that came out of the Democratic National Convention should be a wake-up call for anyone who cares about the truth.

Example: Kamala Harris received a “Mostly False” when she said that, through Project 2025, Donald Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.” Politifact explained that “Project 2025 doesn’t mention a ‘national anti-abortion coordinator.’ The document calls for a ‘pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families.’”

That’s like saying it’s untrue to suggest a diner serves ketchup when it merely offers catsup.

Trump’s Firehose of Falsehoods

These attempts to parse “tomato” from “tomah-to” might make some sense in a reality that didn’t include Donald Trump, whose complete rejection of the truth thrives when the press falls into the trap of suggesting “both sides” as equally flawed. The perennial GOP nominee lies about everything from hurricane warnings to his historically bad jobs record.

His lies – including his flood of falsehoods about the 2020 election that led to the end of America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of power – define him.

Even the idea that Trump can be fact-checked helps Trump. It falsely suggests there are times when he might be constrained by the truth when he, like all authoritarians, is “cognitively irresponsible,” says rhetoric scholar Jennifer Mercieca. He uses his words almost solely to reject the idea that he’s accountable to anyone or democracy itself.

The combination of Trump’s firehose of falsehoods and the media’s agenda to appear even-handed has always yielded toxic slop. But “fact checkers’” do accidentally reveal two truths:

As Dr. George Lakoff has explained for years, accepting someone else’s framing spreads that framing, even if you’re debunking it.

The whole fact-check genre could be called “Don’t Think of this Thing I Think is Wrong.” Whether it’s Richard Nixon saying, “I am not a crook,” or the AP telling us that JD Vance didn’t technically mate with furniture, the idea you’re trying to dispel is spread far more than it can ever be debunked. A fact check tends to be the opposite of a truth sandwich, which Dr. Lakoff proposed to minimize the spread of blatant lies.

The press still has no idea how to treat Trump, one of the worst liars in American history.

Many of the worst fact checks – like the suggestion Trump doesn’t want to repeal Obamacare – rely on Trump’s constant contradictions of himself, often in the same sentence. This loads in the presumption that Trump uses language the way typical politicians do instead of as a super salesman/demagogue.

Lakoff categorized Trump’s tweets to make it easier to analyze Trump’s linguistic vandalism:

Trump is also an expert in paralipsis, which Mercieca describes as his way of asserting something without taking responsibility for saying it himself. It’s his game of “I’m not saying/I’m just saying.” He does this by retweeting particular noxious notions or images he’s trying to spread or framing his assertions with “many people are saying.” It’s a repulsive hack that renders fact-checks useless.

Fact checks in the Trump era have begun to operate a bit like the “Community Notes” scam on Elon Musk’s version of Twitter. Sure, you occasionally get a gem that exposes an obvious scam – like a faked Trump rally photo or a Republican bragging about an infrastructure program he opposed. But think about where those notes don’t appear. They’re never on Elon’s tweets, which are saturated with right-wing propaganda, AI-generated disinformation, and neo-Nazi conspiracy theorizing. So, in essence, they’re vouching for every lie he spreads.

Can Fact Checks be fixed?

Donald Trump depends on journalism’s failed conventions to continue to normalize his unprecedented attack on American freedoms. That’s why editors must pursue multiple strategies to ensure they don’t mislead anyone into thinking Trump’s dishonesty is comparable to his opponent’s or any relevant American political figure.

We need information to debunk lies, yet there should be a greater sense of responsibility when dealing with blatant untruths. That starts with recognizing that lies change brains, even when debunked. They are like toxic spilloff or nuclear waste that must be tracked, contained and cleaned up as much as possible. The best way to do that is to lead with the truth whenever possible, the exact thing Trump is trying to bury with his lies.

Readers also need a sense of Trump’s lies’ unprecedented scope, recurrence and purpose. One strategy is to annotate a typical rally speech with facts and reality checks. Then, compare it to a typical Harris speech. Another is to track his most-repeated lies. And, as Dr. Lakoff has suggested for decades, journalists should also analyze the rhetoric’s frames to give voters a sense of the information war being waged for their brains.

The problem with all of these strategies is that the press would be required to do something that they seem to do their best to avoid: Call out Trump’s lies directly. The best we can hope for is a “falsely claims” in a headline or two, which is better than nothing.

Fact checkers should stop pretending they are the be-all and end-all of determining a fact’s value. Since their jobs do not seem to depend on their reputations or track records, they should bring in experts whose careers depend on accuracy to take on Trump’s most repeated lies.

Publications that care about the truth need to show they understand the seriousness of this moment. Democracy and journalism face an unprecedented attack from Trump and MAGA that threatens the future of these two pillars of a free society.

Cowering to Trump will, at best, buy you more opportunities to cower to Trump, who will never be satisfied – not until he can imprison anyone who displeases him by suggesting he alone isn’t in charge of deciding what is true.

29 Powerhouses-Refinery 29’s list of self expression-empowered people of 2024

They are champions of unapologetic self-expression and style.
They are Refinery29 Powerhouses.

(On the page, there is a list, with names hyperlinked to read any and all at your convenience. It’s good to know about outstanding people. -Ali)

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/refinery29-powerhouses-list-2024

Fascist Thumbs in Cemeteries by Clay Jones

Benjamin Netanyahu is as obtuse as Donald Trump Read on Substack

Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killed a ceasefire and hostage release agreement last July. The report is based on a document the newspaper obtained. Bibi killed the deal by proposing a raft of new demands at the 11th hour.

Among those demands was that Israel retain control of the Egypt-Gaza border area – a condition Netanyahu has since portrayed as non-negotiable, including at a press conference on Wednesday.

Last week, the Israeli Defense Force found six dead Israeli hostages. Yedioth Ahronoth also reported that at least three of the six hostages, Carmel Gat, Aden Yerushalmi, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin were due for release as part of the May draft agreement.

The other three hostages murdered are Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, and Alex Lobanov.

An Israeli source familiar with the talks said Netanyahu’s demands were to blame for the deaths of the hostages over the weekend. Netanyahu, who’s already a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, is responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 Palestinians. I have to look the number up every time I write about this because it keeps rising.

Much like Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu bombs civilian targets.

The inside source told CNN that when Netanyahu put the obstacles up and said no to the deal, “The hostages died because he insisted.”

The Hostages Families Forum said the deaths are a “direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”

Donald Trump does not care about people who died for our nation. When he visited Arlinton National Cemetary, he stood next to graves for a political photo-op of him giving his patented thumbs-up. Trump saw dead soldiers as a tool for his campaign.

Netanyahu, who’s as fascist, corrupt, heartless, and as selfish as Trump, sees dead hostages as a tool for his campaign…his campaign of war. Bibi refuses to end this war. In the current round of ceasefire negotiations, one of Bibi’s demands is that he can resume indiscriminately bombing Gaza anytime he wants. It’s a ceasefire for only one side to cease firing.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. We can’t forget that they’re murderers and kidnappers. There wouldn’t be any hostages to negotiate for if Hamas hadn’t kidnapped them. But we also can’t forget that Hamas is NOT Palestine. Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be cannon fodder for Netanyahu.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, it was a gift for Netanyahu.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (go watch it on his page, linked here and up above.)

Off Topic: The 33 most anticipated movies of the fall

Read it sometime when you have a few minutes. It’s a fine little break from school shootings, etc. I was surprised by some new ideas for movies, and am looking forward to seeing a couple of these, at least.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Updated 4:07 PM CDT, September 3, 2024

The seasonal differences of the movie calendar have eroded a little bit with time. Neither of the last two Oscar juggernauts — “Oppenheimer,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — opened in the fall, the traditional launching pad of Academy Awards hopefuls.

And just the same, f all tends to be nearly as stuffed as summer is with sequels, horror thrillers and would-be blockbusters. Still, some of the old rules still apply. A large percentage of 2024’s best movies are set to unspool in the coming months.

So with that in mind, here are some of the most anticipated films of this fall, from large to small and everything in between. (Snip-there are many-scroll on through on the page while enjoying a nice cool/warm drink of something, and/or some ice cream.)