“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” (Podcast Version)
From the propagandists of The Guardian
And so he turned to alternative sources of information: podcasts like Bannon’s War Room, hosted by alt-right figure Steve Bannon, which regularly broadcasts baseless claims about ballot dumps and illegal voters. And an old favourite of his, the rightwing Catholic podcast The Taylor Marshall Show.
In the US, Australia and across the Anglosphere, people regularly spend hours with strangers talking directly into their ears. Around one third of Australian news consumers are reported to be podcast listeners, and indications are that numbers have grown during the pandemic.
Sinister sounds: podcasts are becoming the new medium of misinformation
Oh dear me! How’s possible that maybe more than a third of people in Anglo-speaking countries dare to seek information outside the government-approved means of propaganda distribution? Who they think they are? Free citizens or something? Something must be done to stop the clear and present danger of Free Thought!
This will not be allowed by the Powers That Be if they get their way. What I think we will see in the future is a desperate and possible successful attempt to control the access to the internet by those not politically-approved. Sort of a No-Fly list applied to anybody who might be deemed dangerous: You are on the No-Net List? You cannot get service at your home, nor you can buy a computer or device with WiFi or any other way to access the Internet. In the era of cyber-speed, you will be forced to the speed of horse-drawn buggy, not even Pony express.
And, of course, it will probably fail too.
” If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is.
Life will find a way.”
Ian Malcom – Jurassic Park
Hat Tip MarkBravo
The Cut doesn’t understand cruetly
From The Cut:
The Senseless Killing of Brandon Bernard
Trump’s decision to go ahead with his execution feels like cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
Brandon Bernard was claustrophobic, locked in a room by himself for 23 hours a day for 17 years, with just a sliver of sky, and by the end he was making sweaters. He hadn’t become angry, or mean; he hadn’t been driven out of his mind, and he shouldn’t have been put to death. Bernard seems to have been an extraordinary person; after he was killed, his lawyers said he hoped even in death he might help move us closer to a future when our country will not “pointlessly and maliciously” kill its own citizens.
I am struck by the ordinary peace of crocheting. Maybe he found rhythm in the repetitive movement of his hands, like meditation. At the end, you get a sweater. The human soul and body is so remarkable that even in torture, in isolation so severe it’s designed to cut off the heart from love like oxygen from the brain, Bernard got a hobby.
Bernard kidnapped and murdered two people, locking them in the trunk of a car and setting it on fire with one of the two victims still alive to burn to death.
That is cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
That after 20 years he decided to take up crocheting to pass the boredom of sitting on death row isn’t redeaming.
The person who wrote this is human fucking garbage.
Your daily reminder that they hate you, comments in The Cut
I started this post with the intention of writing about an article I saw:
This is by Talia Levin, the writer who quit The New Yorker for mistaking a USMC tattoo for a Nazi tattoo and accusing a double amputee of being a white supremacist.
The thesis of her article is that the Right’s defense of Kyle Rittenhouse is support for political vigilante violence.
When Antifa – i.e. violent white people in masks setting black business on fire – attacked first, he shot back. That’s not vigilante violence.
I wanted to focus on this paragraph:
In the minds of those who laud a gun-wielding teenage killer, who perhaps harbor arsenals and fantasies of their own, a decayed, degenerate social order can only be restored with shed blood. There is “order” in the act of killing, as long as the killer is white and the victim is a perceived political enemy. In the right-wing authoritarian imagination, “order” does not equate with justice, nor with the equal application of the law. It means enforcing a hierarchy of racial caste, of gender-based submission, of a Christian-centric polity. There is laudability in violence, even extrajudicial violence, that works to achieve these ends.
The Law of Political Projection applies. This is the Left in one paragraph. From the Red Army to the Red Guards to Che’s goons to Antifa, the Left believes they have a righteous mandate to put themselves on top and cast out the people they decide are oppressors, with bloodshed. One hundred million victims in the 20th Century, most of them innocent working-class people.
All that still stands, but when I read the comments, some comments stuck out far more than anything in the OpEd itself.
If the new Traitors To The Union get the second civil war they’re insisting on, I hope the U.S. military will consider using air superiority that wasn’t available to us in the 1860’s. Lay waste to the highest rural concentrations of Trumper anarchists and recycle the sorry Confederate flag shirt-adorned carcasses. Leaving sane, civilized citizens of all political stripes to address the nation’s real problems, and improve people’s lives.
Harsh? Not really. Advocating the violent overthrow of the government should have consequences. They brought it on themselves.
The OpEd is about the Right having violent fantasies, and the first – the very first – comment is from a Leftist demanding genocide by carpet bombing of 2,584 mostly rural American counties.
This guy doesn’t see the hypocrisy because he’s not saying he wants to fly the sorties himself. He’s just advocating that the government wipe out nearly 80 million Trump voters.
These people need to face up to their only accurate motto: “Come the Revolution we kill everybody.” Should work out just fine.
If it was up to the Left, we’d all be exterminated.
Supporting a young man who shot three people that attack him in self-defense is a violent fantasy, but calling for the eradication of all Trump supporters is just fine.
An important SCOTUS decision that was not publicized.
As much as the Trump lawsuits are being heralded, we did not hear about one ruling that was IMHO very favorable to reign in Federal misbehavior.
Arlington, Va.—In a unanimous opinion issued today by the U.S. Supreme Court, and authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court ruled in Tanzin v. Tanvir that individuals may seek damages as a remedy when federal officers violate their rights. The opinion closely tracks an amicus brief submitted by the Institute for Justice.
The case involved FBI agents who retaliated against Muslim-Americans and green-card holders who followed the dictates of their faith and refused to cooperate with the FBI by spying on their own communities. As a result of their refusal to cooperate, these individuals were placed on the No Fly List, which caused significant hardship, such as the inability to travel to visit family or for work.
But before you start jumping for joy believing Qualified Immunity is dead, it is not:
Both the Government and respondents agree that government officials are entitled to assert a qualified immunity defense when sued in their individual capacities for money damages under RFRA. Indeed, respondents emphasize that the “qualified immunity defense was created for precisely these circumstances,” Brief for Respondents 22, and is a “powerful shield” that “protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who flout clearly established law,” Tr. of Oral Arg. 42; see District of Columbia v. Wesby
I believe the decision (that you can read here) removes at least one important layer of governmental shielding protecting them when abuse happens. I do not read anything about being constricted to the Federal Government (which needs it badly) so I think it can be applied also to to your state or local agency. Basically while you still can’t sue the shitty Parkland Sheriff’s Deputies, the parents can bring havoc to BSO.
And of course, the above must be seen under the usual IANAL warning.
Hat Tip to Dan R.
Why are they asking Bill Gates
.@BillGates on Covid: "Even through 2022” we should be prepared for life to not return to “normal”
Says “sadly" it’s "appropriate” for bars and restaurants to close over the next "four to six months" pic.twitter.com/cmDD8pv3XR
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 13, 2020
Besides dropping out of Harvard and becoming a billionaire through anti-competitive, monopolistic business practices, exactly what the fuck are his qualifications to speak about a global pandemic or how small businesses should be forced to comply?
Being rich doesn’t make your opinion worth more or you an expert on everything.
Every one of these billionaires and celebrities who opines on how the people who work for a living and live paycheck to paycheck should embrace the suck should pay.
Want to end the lockdowns?
It’s time for a 100% windfall profits tax on every corporation that has benefitted from small business shutdowns and telework to fund small business COVID relief. The longer their competition stays locked down the better they do.
Amazon and Microsoft are at the top of my list.