Just Say "Kamala", This is Taking Forever

 

Obvious plant Catturd cut right to the bone, here. I mean, seriously, he ate. You can free-associate how the imaginary problem of pets being eaten by people who just want to come somewhere with good-paying jobs and settle down is a "real issue", but the real issue is: are we othering Kamala Harris enough and making her the foreign person who might even eat pets herself? 

Sure, it's an obvious form of faked-up concern a la the litter boxes and the on-demand sex change operations in public schools and all that. But what they are also doing is trying to make that about how immigrants and people of color are not like us--and neither is Kamala Harris. It's going from John Eastman-style "Where's the birth certificate?" to "Obama ate a dog." 

Maybe she identifies more with the supposed pet-eaters? The ones that don't actually exist? Maybe she identifies with this weirdo who at least has an immigrant parent who kills local animals:

Zippy Wants Your Money

 

In the time it took me to ride this zipline in the mountains of Colorado, the national debt increased by $837,163.

Our sky-high national debt stands at nearly $35 trillion as of today. Interest payments on that debt are now larger than the entire defense budget, and within ten… pic.twitter.com/A6g9Ta8FSe

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 25, 2024

Now, you could find yourself saying "Bob!  Bobbaleh! Bobbabooey! Bobtollah! Didn't you pick a rich idiot as your running mate so you didn't have to reference the national debt to infer someway somewhere, bitches need to make up for a money crunch?"  What are you going to do for the debt, Bobbo? 

No one knows. Probably some shit to do with Bitcoin or the like. 

 What I do know is his advisor on criminal justice and Black outreach just stepped down.

I think it's pretty weird we have a political campaign where nobody has the same positions on things like reproductive care.  I think it's pretty weird that one of Kennedy's main backers is also a Trump backer--Tim Mellon. 

But the weirdest thing of all is--does Bob know where he lives? Because he seems to have been voting from a house that is in foreclosure in NY, and isn't his main residence at all? 

"Where do you live?" isn't supposed to be a trick question! 

Jesse Singal's Twitter Account Died in a Helicopter Incident

 

I've ignored Jesse Singal's reporting about trans people because he seemed to me to be a tetchy dolt--someone writing with no particular expertise on a subject he was unqualified to write about, who was righteously roasted frequently for same, and then, nonetheless, persisted. He occupies a kind of twilight centrist space, on one hand, understanding that anti-woke is basically bigoted, but also being himself anti-woke about trans issues. How long can you report badly about a whole marginalized group and still think you are not the problem?

Singal has deactivated his Twitter account after a story that was dumb as hell. He relied on a "whistleblower" who related stories as a former employee of a pediatric gender clinic who really had a lot to say about the patients and their treatment because she was keeping a little list. A little list she never needed to be keeping, because it was a HIPAA violation. But one of the funny anecdotes she recounted to gullible Jesse and that he repeated, was that one of the youthful patients related identifying as a helicopter. 

Holy shit. The only trans joke conservatives know, and Jesse Singal--didn't recognize it? Like, he didn't smell a rat? He didn't realize he was being taken for a ride by the trans clinic equivalent of Abby Johnson? 

Yikes on bikes, Jesse. Are you a professional out here or what? 

Ivermectin is Useless for COVID-19 and Vaccinations Are Good

 

These are just some important things that were sorted out by science recently:

Vaccination after COVID improves immunity; ivermectin fails in major trial https://t.co/m1pWiU3VoZ pic.twitter.com/e5Xjw2bQKz

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 2, 2022

So, long story short, if you want better protection from COVID-19, get some kind of vaccination if you haven't already. Things being what they are, I will treat myself to a second booster for my 50th birthday.

Also, as many people who understand the difference between parasitic worms and viruses could have told you, ivermectin, a favorite elixir of crackpots, doesn't do a thing. This isn't supposed to be an "I told you so" kind of thing, but more like an "every reasonable person told you so and the ones who didn't weren't anyone you should have paid attention to" sort of thing. I know my readers are probably already aware--but send the link to a friend who needs the facts.   

 

Also, too:

Risk of myocarditis and other inflammatory heart conditions was higher after Covid infection than after Pfizer or Moderna vaccination, CDC study finds. - @CNBC https://t.co/cIsYj4LcX5

— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 2, 2022

COVID-19 infections are more dangerous to the heart than getting any of the available vaccines. The folks who want to swear up and down that the vaccinations are deadly and that pharmaceutical companies would want to kill people off on purpose are barking insane--why would anyone want to kill off customers? 

It just doesn't make any sense. (I hardly need to add, that for the people who fear they will be microchipped, that there is a microchip shortage right now. It doesn't make sense, and even if it did, it would be wildly cost-prohibitive and impractical. Vaccines do what it says on the label--offer some protection from severe illness and/or death.) 

In other news, I'm posting about how science is getting it right because I'm worried about how we're getting it wrong--I'm still looking a bit warily at the "stealth Omicron" situation, I want to think that the US isn't going to see another wave, but I'm bracing myself, 

Magnetizing Videos

Wow. An anti-vaccine nurse in Ohio tried to prove the Vaccines Cause Magnetism theory in an state legislative committee. The demonstration did not go to plan pic.twitter.com/0ubELst4E8

— Tyler Buchanan (@Tylerjoelb) June 9, 2021

Yeah, this person might not be "jiving" in the sense that her silly ass tried to stick a key on herself like that was a thing that was really happening. She apparently thought the display would be more dramatic than that. Honestly, if keys are sticking to your neck, for crying out loud, stop using pancake syrup as a moisturizer!  Keys aren't even usually magnetic! They are brass or some other, nonmagnetic alloy.

It seems like some of these credulous people have just been passively watching videos posted to Facebook, and have convinced themselves that that qualifies as "having done research". But if you're familiar with psychic debunkers like the late James Randi--you wouldn't see a video of someone with assorted metal things stuck to them and immediately assume "this is very credible".  You would wonder: "how did they do that?"

You might even, before showing your gullible face in public, also wonder why they might do that.

I have to question the kind of mind who finds it easier to believe that pharmaceutical companies would play a game like "Let's replace this vaccine with magnetic crystals and see if anyone notices" than that randos on the internet are playing shenanigans, whether for attention, active disinformation, or just to generally be pests.

Also--what would be the mechanism by which a small amount of injectable material magnetizes the body of a full-grown person? It seems to me like a person who has come to the conclusion that one can be magnetized by a COVID-19 vaccine injection hasn't given a lot of thoughts to how vaccines or magnets work. 

Some of these conspiracy theorists aren't uneducated people--they just aren't thinking. It may feel like they are doing the work because they are engaging with a new idea ("Vaccines ae bad, actually"), but they are responding at an emotional, not intellectual, level. Believing things you see on a YouTube video is not empirical data!

Of course, it's reasonable to be concerned about what you put into your body. The American diet is stuffed with dodgy, not especially nutritious things, and the fact that we have drug advertisements on television is really bizarre. But it's also really important to be concerned with what you put (or allow to be put) in your head.

I recommend--for goodness' sake, people, think about the things you're thinking about!

Trump Has Been Briefed, Now, And Can *So* Read

The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited @nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2020

By now, Trump has certainly been sat down and caught up with the intel that more than one source has corroborated was in a PDB earlier this year, even though White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany assures us that Trump "does read" and is "the most informed person on planet earth" regarding the threats this nation faces.

(How then, did he screw up COVID-19 so bad? Was that not a threat? Ah, but he also called that threat a "hoax". And here we are.)

Well, he certainly could be the most informed person, if he wanted to be. But he doesn't want to be. He is the proverbial horse that can be lead to water, but not made to drink. He can be made to read, but he can not be made to understand what he has read if he simply refuses. When Friday's story hit, if it had at all blindsided him and made him aware of something he needed to know but was not properly informed of, he would not have spent the next couple of days golfing, but getting to the bottom of it. Now that he is, per the White House, informed, why would he be calling it a "hoax"? The story exists!

His White House handlers need to understand his ass can not be cleaned up. He will never be accountable, and thinks all he needs to do is tweet the word "hoax" to make a problem go away. It looks bad because it is bad.

President Bunkerboy Has a Theory

In Trump's stable genius mind, a 75 year old man would crack his skull on purpose to make the cops look bad:

"He fell harder than was pushed."

And was apparently doing some antifa super soldier stuff to police radios. Because why not?
Also, he tags in OANN: to back up this nonsense, I suppose.

His mind is a series of trapdoors--just when you think Trump can get no lower, there's just more and nastier below.

UPDATE:  Oh. It's disinfo. Got it.

A Virulent "Hoax"

Trump calls coronavirus criticism Democrats' 'new hoax' and links it to immigration https://t.co/Q2JfVQtklA

— The Guardian (@guardian) February 29, 2020

"Hoax" seems to be Trump's magic word for dismissing any news he doesn't particularly care for. The story about Russian assistance to his 2016 campaign? He calls it a hoax--but it certainly isn't. The impeachment over his abuse of office in holding military aid over Ukraine's head to extort an investigation into Hunter Biden? He calls it a hoax, but the details of the extortion plot are quite clear when you eliminate his apologists' obfuscations. And now that the stock market, what Trump believes to be a key indicator of his strong economy (it isn't) is being affected by the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, and cases here in the US are documented with some accounting of Trump Administration cock-ups, Trump and his pitiable lickspittles like Mulvaney and Pompeo are comfortable suggesting that this, too, verifiable as many details may be--is a hoax. The virus only exists to fuck with Trump's re-election plans. Pay it no mind.

Of course, if it was a "hoax", that wouldn't entirely explain why, consideration of the coronavirus enters into postponing a summit with Asian leaders. That much is real. But I guess, the hoax part is supposed to be the bit where a whistleblower was removed for pointing out that infectious disease protocols were not observed when dozens of Health and Human Services workers met with Wuhan evacuees, who were not tested, and these personnel afterwards just....went about their business. We aren't supposed to note that the Administration hobbled our pandemic readiness, or that crisis management after the fact is a poor substitute for preparedness when a crisis does hit.

Trump Writes Notes to Himself

It's not necessarily the dumbest thing about Donald Trump, but somehow, just knowing that his handwritten notes to remind himself of the lying smear-job he was going to hit a sitting congressperson with were rendered phonetically ("Al caida") adds a little wry reminder that this is a person who doesn't read, and bases his strong opinions on things "some people" are saying.

Maybe there's a learning issue involved affecting his curious spelling choices, and I shouldn't judge him for that. But I think we definitely can judge a person who doubles down on racism by adding a lie (not for the first time) that associates an innocent person with terrorism because she has the temerity to disagree with him.  

You don't have to like what "the Squad" stands for to understand what he is doing here and know that it is wrong, however you want to spell it.

An Inaccurate Refrain or a Vicious Lie?

Trump in Green Bay reiterated a vicious thing directed at mothers of dying babies, which should seem so outstandingly cruel and inappropriate to politicize that he would be blasted from pillar to post, but we have accepted as so commonplace a lie regarding women's fertility and the fragility of neonates that perhaps it was not countered as efficiently as it needed to be when first bruited. 

The disgraceful start to this rant (based on medical knowledge Trump does not appreciate) has to do with comments taken way out of context by VA Gov. Ralph Northam, which aren't actually even wrong in themselves. 

If an induced labor resulted in a live birth, when a still birth was expected, in a fatally at risk pregnancy, where the expectation of survival was small to non existent, yes, despite the delivery being of an alive child, the expectation that death would occur is not only plausible, but a responsible conversation. Because the diagnosis of that child would already be some condition incompatible with life. So that, even if the child was resuscitated, they would never know the sound of their name. So that, even if the child was resuscitated, they would never make the sound of a word. So that, even if they were resuscitated, they would not crawl. So that, even more than they knew the feel of the skin of their mother, they would know pain.

To what kind of life is this child resuscitated? And to what purpose is it kept alive? To know what? and experience what? Pain, gasping, suffering. How can it be that there is no understanding that sometimes, an easy passing is all the mercy a parent can grant, and that intervention is a greater curse than a small body deserves?

This choice is terrible and personal, and not to be used to smear entire families and their doctors for culture war points. It is a vicious lie that Trump is making, not a mistake. Because he does not acknowledge the mothers who have undergone this choice, and would rather demonize the doctors that mercifully brought them through the death of their carried to term, or near to term, wanted children.  Because there is no woman carrying this baby 40 weeks or very nearly, through all the changes of her body, and the potential for harm to herself, and judgment, and the knowledge of all who see her swelling form, who means to terminate at the very last moment for no good reason.

This child would have been loved. Sometimes the only decent love is letting go--and that has to be okay, too. And politicizing this makes me want to fight for all these slurred and maligned mamas.

He never had a right to use you and your babies to demonize those who support abortion rights. I support the choice of all obstetric patients to do what is best for themselves and their potential kids. It is not the government's right to dictate this reproductive process. Assuming people who are bereaved are murderous is just gross and bizarre.

Stay Bull Jean Yuss 2: Code Orange

Trump at NRCC dinner:
-vows to "take back the House"
-says “They say the noise [from wind farms] causes cancer”
-tells crowd he's just sure someone will leak "his whole damn speech" to the media while it's being broadcast on C-SPAN

But everyone just sits and grins cause money. pic.twitter.com/73yQXBEfjT

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) April 3, 2019

Donald Trump is having a bit of a "normal one" today, I'm afraid. I mentioned earlier that he was reprehensibly lying (as was his minion, Hogan Gidley) regarding Puerto Rico, but did not also mention that he was also going volte-face over his earlier claims that he was fully exonerated by the Mueller report. Now, he says Dems are crazy for wanting the full report that allegedly fully exonerates him, which does suggest that crowing over not-quite four pages of a summary of a summary might have been overselling things a bit. This was, sadly, not the entirety of Trump's dysfunction and incompetence on display.

In an event with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump was simply bizarre. He was unable to say the word "origins", saying instead "oranges". He stated his own father was born in a nice place in Germany (he was born in the Bronx). He also seemed to indicate that part of the problem with immigration was judges.

Judges. Mkay.

I've joked recently about Trump being a "Stay Bull Jean Yuss" because of his quite obvious ignorance about how wind power even works and his own crowing about his supposed intelligence. Indicating that wind power causes cancer comes from the same place anti-vax bullshit does (oh, wait up, he's about that bullshit, too)--the fake news sewer of the internet.

I've also kidded that maybe some part of Trump's ignorance and apparent incapacity is a work, not a shoot, on the off chance that he needs an insanity plea for whatever shit he fears all the investigations surrounding him will eventually lead to.

Yeah. But it still isn't funny and needs to be looked into, though. There is something very not okay with this picture. It looks bad because it is bad, you guys.

Martyr-Baiting With Roger Stone

JUDGE to STONE: "Thank you, but the apology rings quite hollow." https://t.co/wEN8cw2Umd

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) February 21, 2019

Roger Stone made a very interesting play:  how was poor old Roger Stone (with his rotating staff of 5 or 6 unknown persons who use his phone) to know posting a picture of the judge with a crosshairs symbol would make anyone mad?

Please think of Stone's paltry nearly $50k a month takings and donate to this poor, persecuted man's legal fund! (Snerk.) Anyway, naturally, he got hit with a full gag order, and I'm pretty sure he will gag on it and have to talk about how the deep state and its minions are oppressing him and then get thrown in jail.

And I will find that hilarious.

When Did This Thing Go So Wrong?

Hey, all, long time, no post here, but I just wanted to check in to say I'm pretty good, even if the Republic seems a little weird. If you know my handle, you can follow me on Twitter, where I don't comment often, but retweet with a sure hand and a speed-reading eye. Or something like that. Don't bother emailing me. Email is like using the telegraph or a fax machine. 

Anyhoo, obviously I've got some thoughts to jot if I'm taking to ye olde longforms again, and this is about the whole Kavanaugh nomination. I have no idea if he's getting up or down-voted (even if I feel like, barring a bombshell in three minutes, McConnell is definitely on track to speed to a vote regardless of the optics because his programming on SCOTUs appointments is a legacy issue timed to elections and partisanship, and I also know that pretend-moderates like Collins can't be stupid enough to think we are all that stupid), but I do know that one of the delights of not blogging with the flow of the news cycle is getting some rudimentary sense of history back. I also think my regular readers know me regarding me esteem for the timeliness and need for the Me Too movement. Kavanaugh strikes me as a member of Team Bro--he (apparently) has ascribed since early manhood to a version of masculinity that talks shit and does dumb things. Does that mean he has for real and certain done things that disqualify him for the seat?

Well, I know he's a partisan hack and perjured himself during the hearing so far and not for the first time, and probably is a vote against Roe vs Wade, so, frankly, even if I didn't natively have enough to nail him as a sexual assault perpetrator as a larval popped-collar preppy young Republican, I can feel pretty sure that he's a big old nope-in-waiting in a world where just the facts pertained--he's a guy who wouldn't be at the top of your SCOTUS list unless you were a chief executive who really was hoping that some executive privilege shine would prevent you from getting indicted on a charge of potential light treason. (Can I briefly mention what a wondrous penumbra executive privilege would have to cast on such an occasion where written opinion would presume that other assumptions of rights bestowed by the white spaces in the law as opposed to the black were eclipsed? But I digress.)

And yet it's been quite clearly alleged that the hesitant claims of drunken sleaziness (by other people, not those admitted in his own yearbook or memorialized in an albeit fictionalized version of himself from a close high school companion) are a part of a "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy".  Great shades of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" commented upon by the 2016 presidential election popular vote-winner, back when Kavanaugh was a part of that brigade, who uselessly spent taxpayer money investigating the suicide of her good friend Vince Foster, despite the pain of that man's family, and who spared no feelings in encouraging the most salacious and hurtful lines of questioning re: Monica Lewinsky.

If Kellyanne Conway or Mitch McConnell think they can get my fucking sympathy for poor old disrespected Brett, they've got this whole thing badly wrong. But they don't want my sympathy, they want the pissed off RW base who needs to see whores give birth to their babies they didn't want to be overjoyed that Roe Vs Wade has finally fallen. (See: Everything Erick Erickson has been Tweeting, lately because, wow! Us bitches have just been killing our children, for a value of children for us feminazis that is mostly teaspoon-sized with tails and no possible threat of pain, and his version being angelic teacup-toddlers who have a hotline to babby Jesus.) Also payback for Robert Bork, I guess, because Merrick Garland never existed. And the base doesn't realize Bork was a fucking mess. Or maybe they do--their kind of fucking mess. 

See, the other thing I have gotten perspective about from my blogular absence was the sheer difference between the sides. I abstained from chiming in about the death of Senator John McCain because I wanted to abstain from his hallowing--the spectre of St. McCain threatened to dampen the urge to Resist, and this doesn't work in any way, shape or form. For us libs, McCain's actual progressive usefulness to our side was always more of a promise than a threat to the Republican establishment. And the touchy-feely niceness of bipartisan remembrance, like GWB sharing hard candies with former FLOTUS Michelle Obama, really doesn't change a thing. Kavanaugh worked for Bush, and those withheld docs from his time working for that administration mean something. Did he support torture? (Amnesty International never weighs in on court noms--but here, they have.) Bush is still supportive of this freaking guy.  He didn't suddenly morph into some resistance dude over Werther's Originals with our "going high" spokesperson. 

And I'm not for going high, myself anymore. I am entirely down with hitting these fuckers right in the nuts.  Mitch McConnell, Russia's dubiously-useful idiot Donald Trump, and yep, even pore ole alleged incel until he was shockingly past high school Brett Kavanaugh, who somehow thinks talking about the activity of his junk post secondary school absolves him of any weirdness (as if penetration was the only kind of abuse!) all probably need some down-low smacking where it will hurt and count. 

And that down-low smack goes to anybody who wants to know where this thing went so wrong and why people are talking about their personal business (protesters of Kavanaugh are telling Congressional aides the stories of their assaults, the time they also realized they were Me Too) while they protest this latest outrageous degradation of norms and propriety. 

Trump and McConnell and any number of RW spokesfolks can claim Kavanaugh is a "fine man". I don't know what their definition of fine man is, though. Copacetic? Role-knowing? See, I remember the 2004 election, when John Kerry was what many of us libs would call a fine man, and he was Swift-boated by the same folks who called Obama a Kenyan and a Muslim. And he mentioned Dick Cheney's daughter in what all of us would have considered an off-hand way as being lesbian--which isn't a smear for Dems. It isn't. And yet--this mention was a big deal for Republicans.  It was completely true--she was lesbian, and mentioning it was beyond the pale. Even if things said contemporaneously about Kerry were fucking lies. And Dick Cheney was and is a proponent of torture. 

The right wing and the left in this country seem to have totally different ideas of what is even good. There isn't a great overlap of ideals anymore from what I can tell, and if that is the case, I'm just for fucking the Pro-Trumpists side right the hell up.

I don't know or care where this thing went wrong. I just know I stay resolutely on the side that isn't pro-torture and pro-infinite executive stay out of jail cards, and I'm pro-women aren't the sum total of their reproductive parts and pro-rubbing Mitch McConnell's Stepford Senator jowls into not delivering this particular Bro Keggernaugh to the SCOTUS.

Here I stand, I can do no other.  

Trump is Having an Angry Weekend

CNN's latest reporting about Trump's weekend: He's "watching TV" and "getting riled up by his sons who are encouraging him to go harder on FBI" pic.twitter.com/BlRlHzC2AB

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 18, 2018

I think it's a little bit astonishing that after being relatively satisfied with the Mueller indictments and Deputy AG Rosenstein's press conference, and then a nice photo op with Broward County first responders (since he and Melania were already in the neighborhood) followed with a Studio 54 disco party but, sadly, no golfing!! Trump allowed himself to get all riled up by his two large adult sons and go a-Tweeting in the most disgraceful manner.

This collection is where Trump, annoyed at his press, starts blaming others for shit. He blames Democrats for not passing DACA (they are the minority party in Congress, and he himself actually ended DACA) and not passing gun control (see also--the minority party but they tried). He blamed the FBI for not catching "all the signals sent out" by Nikolas Cruz and blames this on the focus on the Russian meddling the ine 2016 election (specifically, the "collusion") but seems unaware that with 35K employees, the FBI can do numerous things at once, and that there really is no legal way of holding someone on suspicion of being really screwed up and dangerous forever--it isn't a crime to just be screwed up and owning guns. There was little they could actually do there because maybe the laws are kind of lax regarding dangerous people getting guns?  Seriously--using the 17 dead bodies in Florida to fig-leaf the investigation into his campaign ad Russia is damn low.

He also wants General McMaster to go beyond what the indictments or what Rosenstein said and publically waive him from allegations that the election results were impacted or...various conspiracy theory bits of glurge that I term the "Trump trots". If you are familiar with the "gish gallop", the Trump trot is the same thing, only a stickier mess of nonsense delivered by Tweet by a US President.  The Democratic party or the DNC never would have colluded with Russia to...smear Hillary Clinton and install Trump--that's just a fucking stupid thing to allege. There's no sign they did anything at all to boost Hillary Clinton during the election. Also, Uranium One is just really dumb and already debunked an awful lot. The Steele Dossier is not debunked, but holds up. The rest of the tweets that burbles about "Speeches, Emails, and the Podesta Company!" is just sad. Really sad. Throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Donald Trump doesn't seem to get that he is in office right now because these bullshit things got pushed even though they should not have mattered. Trump got paid large money for Wall Street speeches, just like Hillary Clinton. His transition team and his White House staff are using private email trust me. Also his son in law Jared (let me amend this here form) Kushner is not only not supposed to have a security clearance, but is requesting lots of classified info. 

What Trump is saying is bullshit, but he isn't thwarted, because he is apparently quite peevish:

Here we go--he references the dumb "pallets of cash" thing he swears he saw on Fox News which never happened to pretend there is a scandal about the thing where the US refunded Iran money they paid us for weapons they never got. He's just a bit mistaken as to what happened there.

He insults House Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff for a thing he hasn't said. And then he disgracefully lies about his long-held position regarding Russian meddling, which has been that Trump treated it as entirely a hoax. He hasn't admitted their wrongdoing even still, is blaming everyone else in sight, and never has either brought the additional sanctions requested by Congress or suggested any other punishment. In fact, I kind of think being back on his bullshit about why the FBI is supposedly wasting their time with the Trump connection to Russian meddling is, in a very real way--more obstruction, very much along the lines of firing Comey quite obviously for his attention to Trump's Russian connections.

Although I have not ever really figured out when Trump was at his smartest, I can safely say that the experience of angry Trump is fairly dumb. The position of President is stressful enough as it is--but most likely more so for a person woefully uninformed with a staff he either distrusts or which is also incompetent and probably not suitable to be there either.

This sort of thing is very sad and transparently an admission of knowledge of guilt and rank incompetence on his part.

Here's What Happened at Gov. Bobby Jindal's House

So, we all know that Governor Bobby Jindal resides in the Governor's mansion there in Louisiana, right? Well, he used the lawn of his residence to counter a protest of about fifty Planned Parenthood supporters with a big screen showing the Planned Parenthood hoax videos--which I think sounds like one hell of a stunt.

Wait a minute, you might say, hoax videos? Why would he be showing those on the lawn of the Governor's mansion in Louisiana which is paid for by the taxpayers there?

Well, it's a funny old thing. It looks to me like people who knew very well what the fetal tissue donation situation was, set up false companies to try and tip-toe representatives from Planned Parenthood into saying things that sounded incriminating for the skullguggerous purpose of killing it. That's how it looks to anyone who really looked into it.

As it happens, so far, several states that lodged investigations into Planned Parenthood on the basis of these videos, have determined that there was no there, there. It turns out that use of fetal tissue has been very positive for medical science.

Do the "Pro-Lifers" Want Another Murder?

The recent hack that disclosed the identities and addresses of numerous Planned Parenthood employees has me a little concerned for their personal well-being. Because anti-abortion activists aren't above stalking and issuing death threats, and, in some cases, carrying through on their intent to murderously act against reproductive health care workers, this alarms me. It alarms me that the people who engaged in the recent videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood "selling baby body parts" (which it by no means does) engaged in a pretty heinous fraud and possible identity theft to pull off their hoax.

It also bothers me that in order to perpetrate the hoax, the fake front orgs the anti-choicers used to engage with Planned Parenthood had to know full well what the prenatal tissue scheme was about so that they could exploit that subject without the PP personnel catching on. They knew that tissue donation was legal and counted on that to create their "front group" interfaces. Those representatives questioning Planned Parenthood personnel, represented themselves as being from research labs. They weren't asking how to buy body parts, they were talking about tissue donation, because only tissue donation was discussed. And  PP personnel even admitted that sale of parts was not an issue.

These videos are, for people who accept that sometimes, a person might want or need to terminate a pregnancy, simply weak gruel.

In the past, anti-choicers have even resorted to murder to try and persuade reasonable people that there is a problem with killing. (And this is obviously stupid.)  But they fail to recognize all these female-bodied persons who go to clinics of their own volition to get services that include abortion. They fail to take into account why women abort.  They criminalize women's unwanted pregnancies from the jump, not even looking into what makes them unwanted.

I find their tactics dishonest and their intentions to be less than very moral.

Actually, It's About Ethics in Reproductive Health Journalism



 

I feel a little awkward writing about another Planned Parenthood video hoax, because deep down, I think: "Aren't people smarter than this? Like, why would there be a need for investigations into something people familiar with the issue and who watched the whole three hours figured out right away?"

 

The idea that Planned Parenthood would be selling baby body parts is actually embarrassingly stupid. Of course, no one risks fines of up to $50K for a human parts trafficking violation over a "sale" of $30 to $100 for "parts" as if the organs of a later-term fetus could even be used in a grown body. Of course that's reimbursable fees for treatment and storage of tissue donation, and no more objectionable than a person willing their body to science. How in the hell can people demagogue over something this uniquely highly-edited and awkwardly-obtained? But I know why--and it doesn't surprise me at all that the time stamp on the video is a year old or that some legislators knew about the video and kept it under their hats for weeks. They knew it was bullshit, and didn't care. Because they knew very well that their intended audience would eat it up with a spork. What is truth, anyway? And if that question makes you want to wash your hands--it should. The truth ought to matter. But these anti-reproductive autonomy operatives just don't care about the truth. They even lie about the first-hand experience of actual women who have had abortions.

 

I've covered this question about the pious falsehoods before. The religious right doesn't care about walking the dark side where honesty is concerned because they believe they have a bigger truth than mere facts account for--and surprise: That truth doesn't involve your autonomy or will. It involves other people making choices for you--like the idea that employers can use a religious exemption to fire unmarried pregnant ladies. That means employers get to judge whether you should be married, or even be pregnant. And things being what they are, that question isn't simple. And I don't think it out of the question people would throw the religion card because of their group insurance rates. It means Congress feels okay about not funding breast cancer research--that cancer being a major killer of women--because of an association with Planned Parenthood.

 

It's all cynical right-wing pandering bullshit, and it's all based on lies. but Goddamn, it sometimes is effective for these folks. And it shouldn't be. And that bothers me. The religious right has been lying about things for a long time--even trying to cause racial divisions over what really is individual reproductive autonomy. The problem here is, whether someone believes abortion is murder or not--shouldn't anyone care whether the champion video of the moment is even for real, and correctly depicts anything? Anything at all? Because if it was heavily edited and just grants a figleaf to religiously-motivated far-right pols, I think that's dodgy as hell and resent their attempt to poison a debate with sheer lying bullshit.

Far be it from me to call this a partisan circle jerk, but...

You know, when the Speaker of the House goes to the trouble to have a nice graphic posted on his website, and the National Republican Congressional Committee goes to the trouble of making a nice fund-raising website that also sells swag, albeit blissfully not any that actually advertises the 9/11/12 tragedy, and when Congressmen decide they also might want to fund-raise or campaign based on it, well, I have a hard time following along with prosecutor Committee Chairperson Trey Gowdy's claim that this investigation is above partisan fundraising and other bullshit.

Me, I am basically certain that if Democrats decided to withdraw from participation in this particular investigation and claim it was on principle and because this is a partisan circle jerk, they would be called out as "not taking the deaths of four Americans" seriously with hoarse voices and trembling pointy-fingers from people who have not ever had a qualm about ditching responsibility about people who die from stuff like poor access to health care, income inequality, pollution, or insanely permissive attitudes regarding guns. And yes, I am calling it a "partisan circle jerk". I genuinely think that the ideal scenario for the Benghazi-beaters would be an absence of Democrat interference and the fantasy-killing fact-checking thing.  Nah. I think this happy-fun-times really needs a wet blanket thrown over it, and well, wet-blanket is a thing Democrats can do.  I think it's a responsibility.

See, otherwise, the fantasy of the kind of slack-jawed Fox News purveying half-wit that believes Obama smoked a doob rolled in pages of the Bible while watching the attack unfold in the Situation Room with his Commie buddies because he had drone footage and whatnot and followed the carnage with high fives and a trip to Taco Bell would end up being the dominant message. And the end result of the planned circle jerk would be a general bukkake on a handful of Obama Administration officials.

Nope. I say Democrats should just nest right in there like a handful of homely Buzz Killingtons to inject a little saltpeter in the salacity. "Always be cockblocking", or something. I dunno. Let's just not let this farce be fully farcical.

Sheriff Arpaio Gives a Press Conference Regarding a Fraud

That's right. Sheriff Arpaio has been talking about himself again--that's quite the fraud!

Anyhow, he claimed today that after a six-month investigation by his crack cold-case squad, he's pretty sure that Obama's birth certificate is some kind of fraud because it was printed out on some kind of printer or something.  Because everyone knows that real birth certificates issued by the state of Hawaii are carefully copied by quill-bearing scribes on parchment, I guess. It's kind of obnoxious, actually--because if he has a top-notch cold-case squad, why doesn't he have those thumb-sitters investigate the backlog of rape and domestic abuse cases they've got hanging around?

(That was rhetorical--obviously that kind of work would never get him national attention!)

What a jerk.

Well, that's Noah's ark, sorted...

A link at Pharyngula points the way to the actual story of the Chinese-Turkish Ararat joint venture to find Noah's ark.

To wit--it's a hoax:

I was the archaeologist with the Chinese expedition in the summer of 2008 and was given photos of what they now are reporting to be the inside of the Ark. I and my partners invested $100,000 in this expedition (described below) which they have retained, despite their promise and our requests to return it, since it was not used for the expedition. The information given below is my opinion based on what I have seen and heard (from others who claim to have been eyewitnesses or know the exact details).

To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake. The photos were reputed to have been taken off site near the Black Sea, but the film footage the Chinese now have was shot on location on Mt. Ararat. In the late summer of 2008 ten Kurdish workers hired by Parasut, the guide used by the Chinese, are said to have planted large wood beams taken from an old structure in the Black Sea area (where the photos were originally taken) at the Mt. Ararat site. In the winter of 2008 a Chinese climber taken by Parasut’s men to the site saw the wood, but couldn’t get inside because of the severe weather conditions. During the summer of 2009 more wood was planted inside a cave at the site. The Chinese team went in the late summer of 2009 (I was there at the time and knew about the hoax) and was shown the cave with the wood and made their film. As I said, I have the photos of the inside of the so-called Ark (that show cobwebs in the corners of rafters – something just not possible in these conditions) and our Kurdish partner in Dogubabyazit (the village at the foot of Mt. Ararat) has all of the facts about the location, the men who planted the wood, and even the truck that transported it.

That's astonishing cheek they've got. I was willing to suppose they were just massively misinterpreting some pre-existing wooden structure in favor of their biases, not manufacturing one. It's really disappointing--well, no it's not as I surmised they are doing it to make a bs documentary and generate buzz and funding from the credulous, but still--dishonesty is not a nice trait to find in people.