Russia's Weapons In the Form of Words

Update 9/9/24: Thanks again to the Crooks & Liars crew especially Steve in Manhattan for promoting this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please remember to GET THE VOTE OUT America and stop Republican/Russia sabotage of our elections! Also, please consider my book Notice a Trend as a stocking stuffer this coming Halloween uh Turkey Sacrifice Day hold on, Saturnalia!

 I am an arms dealer fitting you with
Weapons in the form of words
And don't really care which side wins
As long as the room keeps singing
That's just the business I'm in
-- "This Ain't a Scene," Fall Out Boy

The Department of Justice this week dropped a bombshell in the form of indictments and sanctions towards Russian operatives who were paying off Far Right media outlets and "influencers" to undermine our nation's elections and policies (via Shannon Bond, Jude Joffe-Block, and Caitlin Thompson at NPR):

On Wednesday, the Justice Department charged two employees of RT, the Russian state media broadcaster, in a scheme to secretly fund and direct the production of social media videos that racked up millions of views.

The RT staffers, named in the indictment as Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They’re accused of funneling nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company that contracted with online influencers with big audiences...

“The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.

Still, didn't anybody on the RT payroll suspect they were all working from the same script, all so favorable to Putin and to Russia? Or are these Far Right "influencers" so twisted by their own world-view - that Ukraine is the enemy, that liberals are Commies, that there's a global conspiracy to destroy Alpha Males - that they didn't care how much like puppets they are?

The charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva come as U.S. intelligence officials say foreign efforts aimed at swaying the outcome of the election are escalating. On Wednesday, the government seized 32 internet domains connected to a separate Russian influence operation, while Iran has recently been accused of trying to hack both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.

What sets the RT operation apart from many other interference efforts is that it appeared to reach a real audience, thanks to the recognizable names attached.

“Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” wrote Renée DiResta, the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, about how online influencers spread propaganda and rumors, in a post on Threads...

The thing every American - especially the ones getting hammered repeatedly by these propagandists - knew that what was coming from these influencers wasn't home-grown but a coordinated effort by a deep pocket source: They tended to repeat the same messages and stick to the same talking points. Now there's proof in a courtroom that the Far Right Noise Machine was getting paid to attack the rest of us. That the money was coming from Russia is what stings.

The money itself is obscene. One person getting $400,000 A MONTH to spew the pre-scripted content? About 90 percent of most Americans don't see that much income in a YEAR. The greed of these pro-Russian influencers barely equals the severity of their anti-American output.

A good number of social media commentators - most of them doing it for free by the by - pointed out how these Far Right influencers have been screaming for decades about "leftist bloggers and pundits getting paid by George Soros" so the irony is not lost. It may not be irony actually: It's certainly deflection and confession on their parts. 

What the mainstream media - affected by the revelation that there is this kind of corruption in their own circles - need to realize, what a majority of Americans need to understand is how all of this is Putin's psychological (psyops) war on the United States.

This may not be a real-world warzone like Ukraine with tanks guns and bloodshed, but our airwaves and information sources are battlegrounds now. Putin can't afford a direct war on America - Gods help us, it would end in nuclear fire if that happens - but he's bitter and enraged at how our government has imposed economic sanctions not only on Russia but on himself ever since the Magnitsky Incident in 2009 led to congressional legislation that targeted Putin and his corrupt regime.

You can see the uptick in Far Right rhetoric around that time as the Tea Party stirred anti-Obama resentment into anti-government outrage. It helped Putin that many of the Far Right are synced to his own political and social world-views - nationalist, extremist, evangelical/orthodox Christianist, expressing open contempt and horror towards women, ethnics, gay/lesbian/trans people - to where these so-called "patriotic Americans" would happily - for a high fee - turn against their fellow Americans to side with a foreign despot.

There used to be anger and outrage from the Far Right Republicans back at the height of the Cold War if ANYone was caught working on the Soviet Russia payroll. Today, you have to think that everyone from Fox-Not News to Newsmax on down to InfoWars (what's left of it) have their hands out for the Russian oligarchs to tickle their palms for another $400k each (I would like to think National Review have higher personal standards than to sell out like that, but even now I have doubts).

If we were at actual war, what these Far Right media elites are doing would be considered treason.

Thing is, we are at war: Engaged by an enemy nation in Russia that is overwhelming our media with disinfo, conspiracy tripe, brazen lies - what we'd call "flooding the zone with shit" - to where almost half our fellow citizens can't tell what's real or fake news anymore. All thanks to Russia's front-line Fifth Columnists spewing all that shit at us from Facebook to Twitter to podcasts to facetime on the prime time talk shows.

Half the reason the United States is on the brink of civil war is because Putin is paying those wingnut bullshitters to confuse and defame Americans, to make us fear and hate each other at the expense of our own common cause to support and defend this nation.

Goddamn them. Every single one of these greedheads betrayed America for Putin's cash. Send them to prison first, and let Hell take them when they die.

This Is What Censorship and Whitewashing Look Like

So this Sunday, Doonesbury ran a comic strip that directly attacked Ron DeSantis' attempt in Florida to whitewash American History: (edit, I had a bad link earlier. second edit: where are all the views coming from? please comment below...)

I can't show the whole strip (copyright), but you can click the link to see it. While Trudeau is usually good on research - when he states a fact in his strips, he can vouch for the sources - he does make a mistake claiming that I-95 is the best escape route to take. Christ, I-95 is a parking lot just like I-4! The teacher will never make it. Take the backroads like Highway 441!

All kidding aside, the story doesn't end with this strip angering up DeSantis or any "Lost Cause" wingnut. Because it angered up a major media conglomerate instead, as the Gannett newspaper chain decided not to run the strip as though they could hide it (via Keegan Kelly at Cracked.com):

This past Sunday, many readers whose regional newspapers are owned by the multi-billion dollar, conservative-leaning mass media holding company Gannett flipped to the funny pages to find that Doonesbury was conspicuously missing from its usual position in the printing. Former Iowa State Representative and president of the Veterans National Recovery Center Bob Krause noticed that absence and made sure to show Twitter what Gannett hid from them.

Gannett owns almost 400 newspapers in the United States, including the national publication USA Today and local papers in 44 states, among which is Krause's Iowa, where the Des Moines Register followed company protocol and cut out the above strip from circulation. Apparently, Gannett didn't want its readers knowing that seven of the states in the U.S. Confederacy explicitly cited the issue of slavery in their declarations of secession. Gannett also doesn't want comic strip fans learning about how almost 100,000 white southerners chose loyalty to their country over preserving slavery as they fought for the Union during the Civil War.

Many conservative-dominated states have passed legislation designed to prevent education about historical topics such as slavery and civil rights, but the state that Trudeau name-drops in Sunday's censored Doonesbury strip has drawn the most attention for how hilariously absurd its lengthy ban list stretches – a school district in Florida even made national headlines this past summer for banning an Arthur book from the school library...

I'd written before about how Doonesbury sits on the edge of controversy and how newspapers try to find a balance to ensure First Amendment rights aren't violated (often by putting the comic on the Op-Ed page). Here, the Gannett media corporation couldn't be bothered with that, and just straight up banned the Sunday comic. Gannett however forgot that Doonesbury is available through other sources - such as the GoComics archive - and that too many people would notice that void in the Sunday funnies.

What we're seeing here in real time is the Far Right Republican effort - led by DeSantis and a dozen-plus Republican governors - to whitewash American history to hide the "shame" of slavery, civil war, and racism from the schoolbooks in order to "protect the sensitivities of privileged Whites." They're getting help by these media empires - mostly owned by conservative rich folk, and owning most of our newspapers, radios, and local television stations - who want to pander to the wingnut Narrative of White Victimhood and the avoidance of literal centuries of racism and sexism that underlines our nation's history. (It ought to horrify everyone to realize how much control over our media that's held by so few corporations)

These history deniers, these panderers, these censors are incapable of even debating what it is they're trying to shove down the throats of our school-age children, and so they will resort to silence because they cannot convince. And this wasn't censored just in Florida: it reached as far as Iowa (a Union state) showing how far the company's - and the wingnut conservatives' - reach was on this.

All these wingnut deniers are doing is highlighting their own fear, their own ignorance, their own racism.

Shame on Gannett corporation for violating the First Amendment. Shame on DeSantis and every Florida Republican who cannot accept the racist history of our state and our nation. Shame on them for failing to recognize their sins and work to improve themselves by, you know, being less racist and less sexist.

I hope to God Trudeau sues Gannett on free speech rights. I hope to God the Republicans lose the next ten election cycles so their inept and racist legislation gets flushed out of our legal codes.

Stop voting Republican, Florida. Stop voting Republican, America. They don't want people to know the facts about our history, about our current economic and social inequalities, they don't want people to think period.

Update: I received a follow-up tweet from Ruben Bolling (aka Tom The Dancing Bug creator) on Bluesky - wait do we call them tweets there? - that he had done some digging into the matter, and had spoken to someone from Doonesbury's publisher that Gannett Media had "simply canceled" their subscription to the strip. Bolling considers it "not censorship, but a bad business decision."

I dunno. It depends a little bit on when the Gannett owners decided to drop Doonesbury. It just seems a little too coincidental that they drop the strip for ALL their papers - even in places where it's still popular - as this particular comic was getting prepped for print.

One of my core arguments remain: Florida Republicans are whitewashing our state's and nation's history, to the detriment of ALL our youth and adults who need the facts from the past to understand what needs repair in our society to improve our future. The corporate media is doing nothing to fight against that censorship, no matter how this looks.

DeSantis Imposing Silence Upon Florida's Bloggers

With Ron DeSantis in full control of the Governor's office, with his allied Republicans in full control of the Florida Legislature, we are witnessing the hostile takeover of the Sunshine State.

DeSantis is rigging the state's public university system to the control of his lackey and corrupt buddies, he's looking to impose harsh restrictions going after gays and transgender teens/college students, he's carrying through his threats to go after any corporation - Disney, why the hell haven't you punched back? - that refuses to play his racist/sexist games, he's shutting down any criticism of him like the bully he is.

And the state GOP is happy to help him on that. Just tonight, I'm hearing the legislature is considering a bill that would target reporters and bloggers in Florida who write/say anything negative about the Governor (and other state elected officials, but we know who they're covering for here). Via Sam Sachs at WFLA News:

Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to register with the state or face fines.

Brodeur’s proposal, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination, would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.

In the bill, Brodeur wrote that those who write “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so, must register with state offices within five days after the publication of an article that mentions an elected state official...

You may argue "But Paul, this is for bloggers who receive payment." I don't get paid directly for this blog (I don't even get donations, at least none I've seen), but I know these assholes. Some genius wingnut prosecutor in their ranks would argue that any money I make from marketing myself - like the published books I link on here - counts under this law, and then force me to jump through their hoops to appease their regulations.

Once they've got ANY means to shut down anybody writing about them good or bad (especially anybody critical), these Republican bullies will abuse that law well enough to harass and target me and any others writing in Florida about their sins and follies.

And what exactly are we registering FOR? Are we registering for certification? That we have to submit our writings in advance to someone in the Legislative Services office or Ethics (ha!) Commission for editing and approval?

Are we required under this law to be censored? Are we required to beg for the "privilege" of criticizing anybody in power in the state of Florida?

This is straight-up violation of the United States Constitution and the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

One of the things about criticizing our elected officials is that we're calling for change, we're pointing out where the leadership is making mistakes, we're attempting to express our grievances through public outcry. Whether or not we have merit in our criticisms - if we're doing it on the facts or if we're idiots spewing conspiracy - should be up to the public forum (and the courts) to resolve that.

But DeSantis doesn't like to be criticized. He doesn't like getting pointed out where he's gotten things wrong. We've seen this when he and his allies went after the health care expert who kept tracking COVID responses in spite of DeSantis' attempts to pretend all was well. Ever since he won re-election - and ever since he began his Pandering To MAGA Voters 2024 Campaign - DeSantis is looking to inflict the same punishment on everybody else.

This is DeSantis proving himself the Imposter, as Junius warned: The imposter employs force instead of argument, imposes silence where he cannot convince, and propagates his character by the sword.

If DeSantis and the Florida Republicans come after me for my blogging, I will fight back. If they go after anybody else in Florida who are bloggers, I will help them fight back the best I can.

Never let the bullies like DeSantis win.

Fight back, bloggers.

...

Anybody know a good Free Speech law firm by the by? I hope Poynter Institute has somebody pro bono...

Telling Me I Got to Beware

What a field day for the Heat/
A thousand people in the street/
Singing songs and a-carryin' signs/
Mostly say "Hooray for our side"...

-- Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"

Let me throw up a couple of links here, first from Evan Donovan with WFLA back in April:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1 at a 10 a.m. press conference with Florida lawmakers and law enforcement officials at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office’s headquarters in Winter Haven. He did not take questions after the signing.

The law went into effect immediately.

The legislation, nicknamed the “anti-riot bill,” was first filed in the Florida House of Representatives in early January, and passed the Senate on Thursday evening.

The bill, which covers 61 pages, makes several changes to Florida criminal and administrative law, and will:

Make it more difficult for cities and counties to reduce funding for law enforcement, allowing local elected officials to challenge those budget decisions, and giving the state power to approve or amend the local budget

Allow those local governments to be sued if they fail to stop a riot

Define “riot” as a violent public disturbance involving 3 or more people acting with common intent resulting in injury to others, damage to property, or the imminent danger of injury or damage

Enhance penalties for people who commit crimes during a riot

Create a new second-degree felony called an “aggravated riot,” which occurs when the riot has more than 25 participants, causes great bodily harm or more than $5,000 in property damage, uses or threatens to use a deadly weapon, or blocks roadways by force or threat of force...

If you don't see the horror of any of that, try to imagine for example hanging out in a group of three people walking down the street minding your own business until a cop car pulls up and the officers accuse your little group of "acting with imminent intent to cause injury or damage." It'd be your word against the cops, which is too bad for you because you're getting tasered, handcuffed, jailed, and/or shot for it.

Imagine you're a city manager who suddenly has to deal with a street protest because a local cop shot an unarmed Black kid. Now you fear your city getting sued by your business owners even if a window gets busted, so you're pushing your law enforcement to crack down harder than ever to show you've done your job. There's no carrot here, only the stick swung by state Republicans to make sure no city takes the "soft power" approach of resolving a protest.

This isn't even the worst of it. Here's additional details from Steven LeMongello and Gray Rohrer with the Orlando Sentinel:

But opponents say it would make it easier for law enforcement to charge organizers and anyone involved in a protest, even if they had not engaged in any violence.

“The problem with this bill is that the language is so overbroad and vague ... that it captures anybody who is peacefully protesting at a protest that turns violent through no fault of their own,” said Kara Gross, the legislative director at ACLU Florida. “Those individuals who do not engage in any violent conduct under this bill can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony and face up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights. The whole point of this is to instill fear in Floridians...”

The law, which goes into effect immediately, grants civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road, which Democrats argued might have protected the white nationalist who ran over and killed counter-protester Heather Heyer during the Charlottesville tumult in 2017. It also makes blocking a highway a felony offense...

Hitting protesters with cars is a common tactic for the White Power wingnuts who show up to counter-protest and get their scalps. Florida just gave them all a goddamn hunting license.

So not only are DeSantis and Florida Republicans making it easier to arrest any group of minorities under any circumstances even when there's no riot actually happening, the sadists are going to make it easier for trump-worshipping wingnuts to commit Vehicular Manslaughter if they "fear" three people walking across the street intersection are rioting. This is akin to Stand Your Ground, which is still a terrible law. Only now you can use your goddamned coal roller truck to do so.

/headdesk

None of this is about the safety of the general public. ALL of this is geared towards stomping on the powerless who have only public protests as a means to address problems and demands that our governments do something to fix things.

This is a straight-up attack on the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

DeSantis claims this is about shutting down violent riots. It's not. This is about turning every protest especially the peaceful ones into a riot so he and his law enforcement buddies can throw everybody into jail.

Republicans don't want to hear from you if you got a problem. Florida Republicans don't think any protest is a peaceful assembly (unless it's their own side staging an insurrection in trump's unholy name). These godless wingnuts want to shut down the freedom of speech of those who have every reason to speak out against injustice.

There is nothing legal in these anti-riot laws. Because these laws turn everything into a riot in the Police State's point of view.

Gods help us.

The Long Night of trump's Denigration

THIS MOTHERFUCKER

photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Had Lafayette Park outside of the White House cleared on his orders. With cops using tear gas and rubber bullets, they pushed out what had been a disciplined and calm protest against trump's (in)actions on racial justice.

All so trump could walk to the nearest church - St. John's Episcopal - so he could stand outside it, holding up a Bible so he could get a GODLESS PHOTO OP as though he's doing The Lord's work destroying the First Amendment, and overriding states' authority with plans to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to negate Posse Comitatus and send military troops into our own cities with orders to "shoot all looters."

To quote El Kilgore in his article:

He did not enter the church, mind you; our president is not a church-goer. Nor did he explain the reason for this juxtaposition of hellish threats of violence against American citizens and a brief appearance in front of a place of worship consecrated to the Prince of Peace...

trump also did this on pure impulse. trump did not inform the church's bishop he was going there, did not ask permission, and most obviously exploited their faith against their will:

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde all but called the president sacrilegious for this gross political exploitation of her denomination’s church. The conservative evangelicals Trump cares about most, of course, won’t listen because they generally don’t think women should be eligible for religious leadership; some don’t even consider mainline Protestants like Budde real Christians at all. They do, however, love their Bibles, and some may bridle at this heathenish politician’s cynical use of the Good Book. Even if they believe he’s inadvertently doing the Lord’s Work, they don’t want him making it just another arrogant boast in his panoply of narcissistic hymns to himself...

The Shitgibbon didn't even know how to hold the Bible properly. He kept moving it around, waving it for display and not for genuine inspiration.

trump's little speech during all this staging called out for his followers to stand by their "Second Amendment" rights, which is a call to the gun nuts to go public again with their assault rifles for intimidation (and now, actual acts of violence). There was no mention of our citizens' First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, but as you can see with how trump used the police to crush a peaceful assembly outside the White House door, he doesn't give a rat's ass about OUR freedoms.

he only cares about his appearance: Staging himself as a bully and a monster, thinking that makes him a hero and a man.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives need to fight back against this wanna-be tyrant. The Republicans in Congress - especially in the Senate - need to be SHAMED into realizing they're backing the destroyer of American freedom. The Governors need to deny trump any excuse to send soldiers into OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS before they shoot us.

The Republican War On Everybody Else just ramped up to DEFCON-2.

We are one more trumpian meltdown away from DEFCON-1.

To every person who voted for trump in 2016, to every Moderate who refused to vote for Hillary, to every Progressive who mocked any support to Hillary: GO FUCK YOURSELVES. There is no GODDAMN WAY Hillary was ever going to be THIS bad. WE WARNED YOU. This is your nightmare foisted on the rest of us. And if you think you'll be spared the damage that's to come, you're likely going to be the ones paying first...

(Update 6/8): Thanks again to Batocchio for listing me on Crooks&Liars for Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sorry I don't post as often as I should.

Just the Facts Jack In This Age of trumpian Bull

One of the more frustrating things about The Darkest Timeline has been how trump would take to his Twitter account to post and retweet nonfactual statements, wild accusations, and straight-up lies.

However over the past week or so, trump has gone overboard pushing a discredited conspiracy theory about former Congresscritter-turned-MSNBC-talking-head Joe Scarborough, a story involving a staff worker who died at a district office back in 2001. It's gotten so bad that the woman's widower sent formal letters to Twitter and the press begging for the social media outfit to use its authority to delete the offending tweet(s).

The public outcry against trump's abuse of Twitter's code of conduct had been an ongoing protest ever since 2017 - no previous President Loser of the Popular Vote has been so vulgar towards the general population the way trump has - but this moment seemed to have crossed a line even for the notoriously lax Twitter bosses.

The next time trump went to Tweet an outrageous falsehood - about the legitimacy of vote-by-mail - Twitter took the extraordinary step of adding a footnote that basically accused the Tweet (and trump) of being wrong. Let's refer to Gilad Edelman at Wired for the rest:

What prompted Twitter to finally break the seal was a two-tweet tirade about the supposed dangers of expanding vote-by-mail during the coronavirus pandemic...

Later that evening, Twitter added a note to the bottom of the tweet: a big exclamation mark and a message reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked to a Twitter Moment fact-check. “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud,” read the bold heading. Beneath it came some bullet points on vote-by-mail, followed by a curated feed of tweets picking apart Trump’s various recent claims about it...

The Twitter spokesperson said that flagging Trump’s vote-by-mail tweet was the debut of a similar policy to protect “civic integrity” by correcting false information about voting or the census. Twitter didn’t say so, but it surely helped that this particular tweet contained one nugget of rock-solid, certifiably false information: the claim that California was sending ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, ballots are going only to registered voters...

This is, for the most part, the first time trump has been contradicted in real-time pretty much to his face (nearly every other countering in the media has been indirectly through op-ed articles and pundit shows).

It's telling that Twitter still hasn't confronted trump on the personal attacks he's done on their service, which are offensive and wrong and deserve him getting his account suspended (AKA Twitter Jail). Still, any little bit helps... Because trump's response to getting punched back has been to lash out in full meltdown. Via Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair:

Trump threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies the day after being fact-checked by Twitter. “Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” the president wrote in a post on Wednesday. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

Funny thing about the First Amendment, it's not on trump's side here:

The president, notes the Associated Press, does not have the power to “unilaterally regulate or close the companies, which would require action by Congress or the Federal Communications Commission,” and Trump’s call to expand regulation on such tech giants “appeared to fly in the face of long-held conservative principles on deregulation...”

Anything trump tries to do to punish Twitter will likely lead to lawsuits taking years to resolve, by which time trump could be out of office (and fleeing for a country without extradition).

The facts, obviously, aren't going to slow trump down on this. he's threatening to issue an Executive Order (remember when Republicans attacked Obama for his EOs?) to compel Twitter and other social media outlets - Facebook and YouTube, both services facing increasing pressure to police their websites for disinformation over COVID-19 and other conspiracy nutcase theories - to bend to his will. trump doesn't have the legal standing but he has the ego of the bully to make life harder for the companies attempting to curtail his - and his cronies' - ongoing efforts to gaslight the world.

But the facts should matter. And these social media sites have an obligation, not only to the First Amendment but also to the common interest of properly informing the public. Forcing trump to confront his falsehoods in real-time, cutting off the Russian bots trying to overwhelm our attention with disinfo, and making sure Americans have the correct facts ought to be their agenda here on out.

Because as we've seen with three years of trump's gaslighting, lies and disinformation kills.

When Churches Betray Faith, Churches Become Conspiracies

God. (via the Houston Chronicle and reporters Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco):

In the decade since Vasquez's appeal for help, more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals.

It's not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state.

They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.

About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers.

Nearly 100 are still held in prisons stretching from Sacramento County, Calif., to Hillsborough County, Fla., state and federal records show. Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today...

And these are just the ones we know about, from 20 years or so. This is rape and sexual assault that likely had been going on for decades earlier.

For all the goddamn Christian wingnuts yelling and screaming about Muslims, the greatest threat to our families in the United States are the goddamn Christian wingnuts.

Did you catch that last bit? Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today.

Did you catch that earlier bit, where some of the victims were forced to get abortions? The Southern Baptists are one of the biggest religious groups to rail against abortion, but by God if their own should rape a woman or young girl then hey let's just make sure that medical procedure we don't talk about that it gets done in another state where nobody will find out.

Goddamned hypocrites. (Edit: I used an offensive word here earlier, I removed it for the sake of good friends)

How is this any better than what the Catholic Church has been doing for decades (if not centuries) covering up their own pedophiles and rapists? The Pope just had to come out recently and confess his church has been covering up the rape and sex slavery of nuns, on top of the recent revelations of what priests have been doing to children.

This isn't about God (other than perverting the Lord's work) this isn't about Faith (other than destroying it for thousands of victims) this is about Power, the power of institutional control that a church can grant to those in charge. This is about a blinded, lustful Patriarchy that views their flock not as followers but as the next meal.

There is no God in these churches the second their own politics demanded they protect the rapists and abusers instead of their children and victims.

To hell with these scandal-plagued institutions. For all that the laws of man have brought against them - charges and convictions and jail time - the churches themselves remain relatively unpunished, still standing, still seeking more converts and members (and victims for their abuses). Utterly convinced God has forgiven their sins as though THEY can judge their own corrupt selves.

To hell with them. We need our government to step up here. We need accountability.

These churches need to lose their tax-exempt status.

It is an argument cropping up across the world wherever these Church scandals have struck. A lot of nations grant tax-exempt status to churches out of respect to the idea that churches are charitable institutions, looking out for the well-being of their parishioners and their communities. They also do it as a sign of separation of Church and State, to avoid the political abuse of faith that history has shown doesn't end well for a lot of innocent people.

But these sex abuse revelations are exposing that concept as a lie. These churches are so horrified by exposure they've covered up, lied, betrayed victims, all because the threat of liability - of paying restitution to victims - drove them to cover up.

These churches love Money and Power more than they love God and People.

So if money is what they love(worship), that's where the punishment should be.

End their tax-exempt status.

Oh, they'll yell, they'll scream, they'll claim we're violating their First Amendment rights to free worship. Which won't be true. If they want to keep gathering and praying, they can do that. It's just they can't keep all the goddamned cash that rolls in when they do.

We have to recognize this truth: These churches that protected sexual predators and abused their own members are no longer churches. These organizations are now criminal conspiracies.

Goddamn them.

The First Amendment Is Dead Along With All the Dead in Our Churches and Schools

Here's the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Anybody notice where the National Rifle Body Count Association creates a conflict here?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can no longer practice our faith in this nation because our churches are getting shot up. Congress - thanks to their gun lobby overlords - refuses to do anything to regulate gun ownership to ensure our churches don't turn into target practice. By inaction, Congress is interfering with our First Amendment rights to go to church.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can no longer as a People assemble peaceably. We can no longer go to movies, or shopping malls, or church services, or schools, or even more church services, or nightclubs, or Sikh religious services, or workplaces, or country music concerts, or baseball games, or public rallies, or anywhere at all because we live under the threat of an Angry Guy with guns just showing and opening fire with military-grade rifles with high-capacity ammo clips that can wipe out 200 to 500 people in a matter of minutes.

For God's sake. EVEN THE AMISH GET SHOT AT.

All because the National Everybody Else Gets Shot Association has the gun as their Golden Calf, and their profit margins as their Holy Scripture.

We can never be safe in public. We can never go to school or church or work without the nagging dread that we will get killed because an Angry Guy with enough firepower to kill hundreds in a single minute gets to express his rage and his bloodlust.

The First Amendment is dead. Shot to death on the streets of America by a Second Amendment that no longer has any merit or value to us.

You wanna know how to stop the next mass shooting, America? If we can't set up gun laws to perform universal background checks as 80 PERCENT OF US WANT DONE, if we can't set up gun laws to limit the size of ammo clips to reduce the number a single gunman can fire within seconds, if we can't pass legislation to limit ownership of military-level assault rifles that serve no other purpose than to clear out entire buildings within a minute?

Here's how we stop the next mass shooting:

Stay home.

Stop going to school. Stop going to church. Stop going out in public to shop, or attend concerts, or view movies. Close down the stock markets. Stop going to work.

Stay home.

Don't give Angry Guys with Guns any targets to shoot at.

Sure. We're killing off the entire economy if we do this.

But if it means ending the gun manufacturers' profits and bankrupting the NRA, so be it.

There is nothing else we can do. The First Amendment is Dead, why should we try to adhere to its principles of peaceful gatherings in public?

Trump the Imposter

I always come back to this quote, as the villains on the Far Right keep proving it true:

An honest man, like the true religion, appeals to the understanding, or modestly confides in the internal evidence of his conscience. The imposter employs force instead of argument, imposes silence where he cannot convince, and propagates his character by the sword.
- Junius (Letter 41, 1770)

And how are the villains on the Far Right proving it true?

Due to their leader, Donald "Lost the Popular Vote By 3 Million" Trump.

Due to what Trump said yesterday at a mind-blowing mess of a rant (via The Moderate Voice):

...From there, the president’s criticism of the media went from barbed to personal in a cutting assessment of what he viewed as unfair coverage of his first few weeks in office – a period that has seen a succession of crises.

On a day when he ceded a loss over a signature policy in a federal appeals court, had to replace his labor secretary pick and faced questions over the resignation of his national security adviser, Trump chose to make the media a central focus of an unusually long and combative presidential news conference.

When asked by journalists of contacts between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives, he deflected the questions and put the focus instead on what he described as “illegal” government leaks and “dishonest” media coverage...

“...Tomorrow, they will say: ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press,'” Trump said. “I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people. But I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it.”

Hint: when a guy tells you as he's ranting and raving that he's "having a good time," no he's not. Guys having a good time hoot and holler, they do not rant or rave. But I digress...

In one unusual exchange near the end of the news conference, Trump called on a questioner, asking if he was “a friendly reporter.”

When the journalist asked about recent threats to 48 Jewish centers across the country and signs of rising anti-Semitism, Trump appeared to take the question personally, replying: “I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” He added he was also the “least racist person,” told the reporter to be “quiet,” accused him of lying and then dismissed the question as “insulting.”

The reporter in question was Jewish Orthodox, and the reporter's query tried to lay out that he wasn't accusing Trump of anything - that Trump's got Jewish grandkids for example - other than trying to get Trump to admit there's something wrong with the uptick in bomb threats to Jewish centers and day care schools.

But Trump couldn't handle that. He quickly made it a personal attack on himself, and tried to bully the reporter by telling him to shut up and accusing him of lying.

Refer back to Junius' quote: This is Trump imposing silence where he cannot convince.

And Trump proved Junius again today, when he tweeted out this (via Balloon Juice):

I dunno how long this tweet will last before anyone deletes it, so...

Check out the framing, how he sets his position: he is accusing "FAKE NEWS media" - which happen to be some of the oldest, more reliable news agencies in the United States - of being "the enemy of the American People!"

He is setting them up as boogeymen, witches, Dirty Reds, Willie Hortons, black thugs in hoodies, scapegoats. Never offering actual proof of his claim that they are fake, but insisting that "we" his audience of "the American People" buy his word.

This is the bullying child in middle school who, when caught lying to the teachers and to the parents and unable to answer for his terrible performance with schoolwork and playing with the other kids, blames everyone but himself.

This is the con artist who, when caught setting up a job to trick a businessman out of everything, will accuse that businessman's associates of being the real crooks trying to stop him from a sweet deal.

This is the wannabe dictator who, when floundering in an administration wrapped up in foreign scandal and waning polls, attacks those who reports his regime's failures in a desperate attempt to keep his imperial robes and golden trinkets.

This is Trump proving Junius correct 250 years or so ago. Nothing has changed between the tyrants of the 18th Century and the would-be tyrant of today.

Trump is already trying to impose silence where he cannot convince. It's not going to be long before Trump uses force over argument by propagating his character by the sword...

And 62 million of you voted for this Imposter.

Gods help us.

How To Identify Hate Speech

It looks a lot like this:

Yet Terry Jones, the pastor who organized a mock trial that ended with the burning of a Koran and led to violence in Afghanistan, remained unrepentant on Saturday. He said that he was “saddened” and “moved” by the deaths (note: as of 20 dead so far), but that given the chance he would do it all over again.

What Jones did was Hate Speech:

Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic. In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.

When Jones burned the Koran, he knew full well the Muslim community across the planet would be outraged.  He knew that violence would follow.  He may not have known who would get killed in the process, but he had to know there would be at least one death at the hands of an outraged mob.

Jones incited others to acts of violence.  And he revels in it now, glorying in the attention we're giving to his sad sorry ass.

What is sad is that there are so many in the media/journalism world - Sullivan, Benen, some of the others I read online - that are rushing to Jones' defense, claiming what he did was "wicked" but that "hey, it's protected by the First Amendment."

I call bullshit.

What Jones did: This is not protected speech under the First Amendment.  He intended for an act of violence to follow what he said and did.  This is in my mind no different that a Klu Klux Klansman burning a cross on a black family's yard.  This is no different than an anti-Semite smearing accusations of blood libel on the wall of a synagogue (using pig's blood, no less).  This is no different than some racist bastard saying and doing something that gets a riot going in a street.

And getting a riot going is EXACTLY what Jones did.

Jones may not have pulled a trigger of a gun or swung a machete or committed a direct act of murder on the streets of Afghanistan this weekend.  That blame falls directly on the hands of the murderers themselves and the mullahs who incited the mobs to march on the UN office in Mazar-I-Sharif.  But Jones gave them the outrage: Jones gave them the motivation.

Jones' action makes it harder for the United States to handle itself on the world stage, especially now as the U.S. is trying to steady the entire Middle East during the uprisings between Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Good Lord, Afghanistan.  From the 1800s onward, that place has never known a day of peace, has it?  And Jones, reaching out from his pathetic little church building in the woods of Florida, is making it worse:

In speaking with Afghans about the incident, it’s surprised me how many people support the spirit of the protests. No one I’ve talked to supports the killings of the UN workers. But even well-educated, informed Afghans tell me that it’s good that people are speaking out against the desecration of the Quran.
Much of the support stems from the inability of many people here to contextualize the March 20 Quran burning. A translator who works for a fellow journalist here in Kabul did not know that Florida pastor Terry Jones was the same person who threatened to burn the Quran last September.
This led to the perception that many Americans share his beliefs, even if he heads a small church of about 30 people who have so little support that they’ve had to sell their furniture on eBay to stay afloat. Mr. Jones is now trying to sell the church property.
In a place like Afghanistan, where the vast majority of the populace is illiterate and many lack regular access to reliable news outlets, perception and rumors often become more important than facts. Now that the story of the Quran burning has spread, it almost does not matter how strongly US officials – from President Barack Obama to Gen. David Petraeus – condemn Jones’s actions. The damage has been done.
After almost 10 years of foreign troops and international aid groups, the Taliban is still a serious threat and it’s difficult to see what tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid money has bought for the country. Patience is wearing thin among many Afghans, and incidents like the Quran burning provide a vehicle for their growing anger...

Jones and his ilk "accused" the Koran of inciting crimes such as murder and rape during that mock trial of his leading up to the book burning.  By his own legal argument, he's as guilty as that Koran he burned.

Jones is trying, through his acts of outrage, to condemn an entire religious belief, to condemn millions of Muslims who really aren't all violent rabble.  If they DO get violent, Muslims are no different than Christians and Jews who go rioting in the streets when THEY get offended as well.

If any condemnation of violence and murder should be applied, it should be based on their ACTIONS, not their belief.  Jones could have believed in what he thought about Islam and the Koran, and it would have remained an offensive but protected belief under the guideline of the First Amendment.  BUT HE ACTED ON THAT BELIEF, and in that action committed an atrocity that drove others to respond with murder.  That makes it Hate Speech: His actions a Hate Crime.  He's as guilty as the bastards who killed in Mazar.

Jones should go to trial for that Hate Crime.  A REAL TRIAL.  And found guilty in a court of law governed by Men, as Jones should be found.

The trial awaiting Jones for his sins in Heaven with the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Ishmael, is already a foregone conclusion: the deepest pit of Hell is not enough for Jones...

Okay, let's hold a protest

From Greenwald:

More importantly, Obama can only do so much by himself. The Obama administration should, on its own, initiate criminal proceedings, but the citizenry also has responsibilities here. These acts were carried out by our Government, and if we are really as repulsed by them as we claim, then the burden is on us to demand that something be done.

More than 250,000 Americans attended protests yesterday (ostensibly) over taxes and budget issues. If these torture revelations are met with nothing but apathy, then it will certainly be reasonable to blame Holder and Obama if they fail to act, but the responsibility will also lie with a citizenry that responded with indifference.

He's right. If a handful of Obama-hating wanna-be secessionists can work up the gumption to gather in protest over taxes THAT HAVEN'T EVEN HAPPENED YET IF EVER, then we ought to gather anyone and everyone in the United States who are morally opposed to the use of Torture and other criminal acts THAT HAVE HAPPENED.

So c'mon folks, let's gather round and rally on the National Mall and tell The Justice Department that we want Justice, that we want a Special Prosecutor investigating the criminal misdeeds of these memo-writers (Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury) and their political patrons (Feith and Cheney above all else). Let's do it. Let's rally.

All we need are the permits filled out, 50 bucks paid for the paperwork, and uh oh yeah 200 million of our closest friends. Anyone know a good date to schedule this all for?