All the trigger warnings for sexual assault, rape, and rape culture.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
All the trigger warnings for sexual assault, rape, and rape culture.
Ahhh, a holiday trip. The thing you’re looking forward to all year. And this year it was extra special, because we went to Ireland. And Ireland is amazing. And Ireland was amazing, but, well, let#s get started at the beginning of a road trip where you’d have dismissed the movie plot as not realistic.
The first day of travel went ahead really well. We made it up almost to Cherbourg and decided to go looking for a campsite. We found one at “Utah Beach” and arrived just right for their weekly mussels night at the restaurant. The next day we set out for the ferry and of course we arrived with hours to spare. This was when our first car troubles started, which were a blessing in disguise. See, when people start getting serious with each other, there’s certain things they can combine, like some insurances and stuff. Back in the day, I asked Mr if he had a membership to some road assistance or if I should get one, now that my parents could no longer claim me on theirs. He assured me that this was taken care of by the car company. Now when it was time to start the car again, our battery died and my husband found out that his car company road assistance had run out when the car turned 10 or so. After the nice people from the port helped us out, I told him that I was now getting some damn road assistance and signed up on the spot.
Well, in Rosslare we got off the ferry and set out for Kilarney the engine went into safety mode. We drove to the next garage who told us “no way, I got time in 3 weeks, try the next town”. By some luck, whatever had annoyed the engine had stopped and we could go to Kilarney. next day we went to a Peugeot garage, the guy there read out the engine data and assured us that apart from an issue with the secondary fan which needed fixing at home, the car was good to go. We had a wonderful time in Kilarney and were looking forward to the rest of the holiday.
Next stop was Connemara, which is in the far west and very thinly populated. On our way there the car gave a warning sign about the particle filter which said “check manual”, the manual said “have it fixed at a Peugeot garage”. Sounded not urgent and the car drove with no issues. Connemara was amazing, despite the storm.
Off we went to Dublin, only that we never arrived as planned.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
About 50 km before Dublin the car went into safety mode again. We made it to a service station and had it towed. Now, people in Ireland are extremely helpful, so the road assistance guy hitched our caravan and drove it to the campsite with Mr. and 1 kid, while the other one and I followed by taxi (some issues there, none too big). The next days were mostly spent by figuring out where to take the car and what was wrong with it. The engine data said that the injectors for cylinders 2 and 3 were broken. We decided to have it fixed for a hell lot of money, so we could go home with our stuff and enjoyed the remaining few days.
On the day of departure we wanted to leave early so there was enough time for mishaps and traffic jams. That’s when we realised that the caravan had a flat tire. There was a screw in it. Thankfully there was a really nice guy at the campsite who helped us out getting the tire fixed. No problem, we still had time.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
It’s about 160 km from Dublin to the ferry port. After 80 of them, the car went back into safety mode. We wanted to cry, we wanted to yell, but in the end we decided to push through and make it to that damn ferry, because everything was bound to be easier once we were back on the continent. We made it there, we called road assistance, we spent an unexpected two days in Cherbourg and got told that it was injector 2 again. We told them that we’d just had it fixed, could it be anything else? Nope, probably a faulty piece. We resigned to pay for repairs and try to get back some money from Ireland afterwards. At this point we just wanted to get home. The clean undies were all gone.
Instead on Tuesday, we left Cherbourg on Thursday and made it a full 100km to Caen before the car started to act up again and we gave up. We explained to the road assistance that we would not try to have it fixed at some garage in France again. We waited all Thursday if they could get us a rental, any rental, honest, we don’t even need to return it in Germany, in France next to the border is fine, but none was to have. After a night in a hotel I booked train tickets and we went home. And now I need to recover from my holiday.
Car and caravan will be brought home, we’ll take it to our usual garage then to see what their opinion is. Maybe we’ll be able to get some of the money back. We’ll at least get the train and hotel costs back from the road assistance and don’t have to worry about getting our vehicles back, so that was the best 72 bucks membership fee I ever spent.
Wow. Just. Wow.
I know that the internet discussions are years being infested by pro-Russian trolls who are doing their best to disrupt any discourse, but I did not expect this. I have probably missed something, but I was taken completely by surprise when a long-time commenter on FtB went full fascist apologia. And these comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and I have to respond:
So first (paragraph) thing first – why should anyone believe anything that Russia’s top brass are saying at this point? One does not need to go too far back to demonstrate that they are absolutely unashamedly lying about anything with a straight face. These are their statements as they recently evolved:
And I could go on much further with the blatant lies. There are even videos where Russian diplomats lie even when confronted with actual evidence of their lies.
These things are not a matter of opinion, these are facts on public record over just a few recent weeks. I mean, how fucking broken must your moral compass and your reasoning capabilities be to believe anything that Putin and his stooges say at this point? Sure, they might say the truth occasionally, just like a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.
I am sure that the Ukrainian side also lies for propaganda and after the war ends, if there still are historians, it will take them a lot of work to untangle where the actual truth lies. But right now any Russian in a position of power in the current regime is so trustworthy that when they wish you a “Good Morning” you should assume it’s night until proven otherwise with independent evidence.
The second paragraph flies in the face of actual pictorial and video evidence of residential areas being deliberately shelled and bombed. Further, I have a friend who worked with unguided earth-to-earth rocket launchers similar to the BM-30 Смерч that Russians are using in Kyiv. No matter what the current Russian propaganda says, those are not precision weapons for a precision striking of military targets, especially not in urban warfare. Those are scorched-earth weapons designed to stomp an area into nothing but craters and rubble. Using them on a military airport or convoy or some barracks in the countryside could be legitimate military use (as far as the word legitimate can be applied). Using them in a crowded city is a deliberate war crime intended to kill and terrorize civilians.
Sure, Russians say otherwise, but if anyone is inclined to believe them, I refer back to the first point.
Now for the last paragraph which actually got my blood boiling.
I do not like using rape in analogies because I have seen it used by dudebros to trivialize issues they deem unimportant and to trivialize rape at the same time, but in this particular case, I think the analogy is apt – saying this is analogous to blaming a rape victim for injuries because they did not submit to the rapist without a fight.
So let me stress this point – Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are not dying because Zelenskyy will not or cannot surrender, they are dying because Putin invaded Ukraine and is too power-hungry, too arrogant, and too proud to stop. In any conflict, it is the assailant who bears all the moral responsibility for damages incurred on the assaulted, never the other way around.
Further, this stinks of “ifonlysm“. The current conflict shows a striking resemblance to what has happened just before WW2, so we can actually look at what might have happened ifonly Ukraine gave Luhansk and Donetsk to Russia willingly and ifonly Zelensky went into exile and left Putin to install back his puppet Yanukovich. So let us do it.
The Sudeten Germans did face some discrimination in Czechoslovakia, there is absolutely no doubt about it. It could be argued that it was less than the discrimination Czechs and Slovaks faced in the former Austria-Hungary, but it was still discrimination and the Sudeten Germans did not like it. Solving such societal issues takes time and patience, with the occasional strike or civil disobedience thrown into the mix to wake politicians from their stupor and complacency, but they can be solved peacefully as long as you do not believe in quick fixes, which do not exist.
Hitler’s Germany did however offer a quick fix. With his guidance, instead of working to reach mutual agreements on a way to equality, the SdP fomented animosity between Germans and Czechs and always escalated demands to a level they knew cannot be reasonably met. At first, SdP lied about their connection with the Nazis. Then they lied about their intent to secede Sudeten from Czechoslovakia. Then they lied about receiving military support from Germany and forming paramilitary Sudetendeutsches Freikorps. Then they lied about said paramilitary performing terrorist actions within Czechoslovakia, intentionally provoking a forceful response from the Czechoslovakian government.
And then international powers that be decided to give them what they said they wanted and without consulting the Czechoslovakian government, they gave Sudeten to Germany. Not many people actually know that this was immediately followed by the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps actually escalating, not stopping, the violence. Most people probably do know that this did not stop Hitler from eventually annexing all of Czechoslovakia, directly governing Bohemia, and installing a puppet fascist regime in Slovakia, killing and enslaving scores of thousands of innocent civilians even when they did not even try and put up a fight.
This is because when a tyrant says they want this or that or they will have to resort to violence, they are always lying. Their stated goals are only seeking plausible deniability, a fig-leaf casus belli in order to expand their power. Violence is the goal because being able to inflict it without consequences demonstrates the tyrants’ power. And once they think they can get away with it, they stop bothering even with that pretense.
So no, ifonly Zelenskyy or Ukraine did or did not do this or that would probably have very little impact on what Putin would do. Ukrainian people were not given a choice between forceful invasion and peaceful lives, they were given a choice between forceful invasion and submitting to being second-class citizens licking Putin’s boot while it is crushing their necks nevertheless. Blaming them for putting up a fight is blaming the victim, pure and simple.
Iris at Death to Squirrels has a post up regarding the cruel treatment and unjust imprisonment of a young bi-racial girl with mental health problems. It’s an ugly story about a family looking for help and finding horror instead. It’s not only an indictment of the American mental health system but another urgent example of why Black Lives Matter really does matter. The more I read, the angrier I became, and I encourage you all to go read the story and get angry, too. Then, go sign the petition. I did, but I’m not an American, and the petition needs American voices – lots of them. At the very least, it will let this family know that they are not alone, but maybe collectively, we can get this child the help she desperately needs and offer her a future. Thanks.
Before you send out parties in search for your missing host: I’m in hospital with a nice big spinal disc herniation. Sorry for the not working link, you can google it yourselves.
They’re trying to get the pain under control with medication, cortisol injections in the spine and physiotherapy. If that doesn’t work they’ll transfer me to the university hospital. I’m sick and tired of this shit, and patience has never been my strong suit.
My BFF has brought me a plush llama. I miss y’all.
I have never watched Fox News when I was in USA, and of course I have no incentive to watch it now. However the stories that I read about it on the interwebs are truly bizarre.
This one trumps them all: Fox News host: ‘Anti-Semitism from the left’ is the real cause of hateful attacks on Jews
Where exactly does this “virulent anti-Semitism from the left” happen? Where do roam these elusive creatures, these leftist antisemites? Where exactly is the land of “fringe of the progressive side.”?
How come that someone spews such a weapon’s grade bullshit on air and is not immediately challenged for providing evidence for it? Any person who says such inane claptrap should be discredited and mercilessly mocked.
Cecil the lion gained fame after he was killed by Safari Club International member Walter Palmer during an illegal hunt in Zimbabwe. Paula French/ZUMA.
Just the other day, I posted about Amerikka doing its best to reach shithole country status. Naturally, no matter how great a country truly is, there’s always the fucking idiot contingent who moans that they have higher taxes, so bad. I would be more than happy to pay taxes which went to the common good, that’s the point of taxes. Here in Ustates, taxes rarely go to the common good. They certainly don’t under the current regime. Taxes end up in the pockets of the obscenely wealthy and corrupt. Today brings you a fine example of where tax dollars in this shithole go.
The Trump administration has launched a commission at the Interior Department to promote big-game trophy hunting and the “economic benefits that result from US citizens traveling to foreign nations to engage in hunting.” The council, which will cost taxpayers $250,000 a year, is charged with making recommendations to Secretary Ryan Zinke about removing barriers to importing trophy hunting animals—such as the recently overturned ban on elephant and lion trophies from some countries—and relaxing legal restrictions on hunting and importing endangered species.
Anyone impressed by this? Anyone happy about having their pocket picked for this utterly immoral, corrupt bullshit? Wait, it gets worse.
The members of the International Wildlife Conservation Council, which is holding its first meeting Friday, include a reality-TV safari hunting guide, a former beauty queen, gun industry representatives, members and affiliates of a controversial trophy hunting group, and a veterinarian associated with an exotic animal breeding facility in Florida that sells endangered animals to roadside zoos.
“It’s really embarrassing,” says Masha Kalinina, the international trade policy specialist for the wildlife department at the Humane Society International. “I just question the qualifications of each and every one of these people. Notably missing from this trophy hunting council are legitimate representatives of the conservation community with proper scientific credentials and a record of successful conservation programs, along with wildlife law enforcement experts and biologists who have no financial stake in promoting trophy hunting.”
The council’s charter calls hunting “an enhancement to foreign wildlife conservation and survival.” Along with pushing to relax imports of trophy animals, it will also review the way the US complies with an international treaty designed to protect endangered plants and animals that guides regulation of the exotic animal trade. But the membership of the council seems heavily weighted toward people who think the best way to conserve wildlife is to kill it.
Indeed, the country’s largest trophy-hunting lobby seems to have an outsized role on the council. Of the 16 IWCC members, at least 10 have an affiliation with Safari Club International, which represents wealthy big-game hunters who often tangle with the Fish and Wildlife Service over permits to import of game trophies from overseas, particularly for endangered species. The advocacy group, with 50,000 members, frequently lobbies Congress and federal agencies to fight environmental regulations. It sued to overturn the Obama-era ban on importing elephant and lion trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The Trump administration ended the ban earlier this month, despite the president’s earlier objections and comments that elephant hunting is a “horror show.”
Those members include Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist and asshole extraordinaire who killed Cecil the Lion.
The principal deputy director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Greg Sheehan, who is effectively running the agency in the absence of a congressionally confirmed director, oversees the IWCC. He is an SCI member and attended the group’s convention in Las Vegas last month when it awarded its “professional hunter of the year” honors to a South African man who has been fined for leading hunts of endangered black rhinos.
It gets much worse from there. It’s a sickening read, and its symptomatic of the rot spreading out like gangrene from the current regime to poison everything. Those people who want to point to higher taxes in other countries, countries which provide healthcare, free education, and many other benefits to their citizens, you need to shut the fuck up when tax dollars here go to such evil, corrupt enterprise.
Mother Jones has the full story, with all the relevant links, and you can read about all the members of this “council”.
Paul Nehlen, screengrab.
RWW has an extensive story about Paul Nehlen, an unapologetic nazi who is running again in an attempt to unseat Paul Ryan. Nehlen is intent on shoving the Overton Window as far right as possible, to ‘sanitize’ and normalise white supremacy and nationalism. Just a bit here, because the article is fair long, and rich with links.
Paul Nehlen, who is running again to unseat Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in Wisconsin, told Breitbart radio host Curt Schilling today that he is using his campaign and fiery social media presence to force discourse in the Republican Party further to the right—in his case, toward the white nationalist worldview of the alt-right.
This morning, Nehlen joined Schilling to talk about campaigning for failed Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama and his upcoming 2018 campaign in Wisconsin.
“There’s a lot of followers out there, there’s a lot of people out there, that look up to me and I take that seriously,” Nehlen said. “But you know, people like you who are out there every day—you wake up every morning and you work hard, you get your message out, it’s imperative that you realize, ‘Hey, there’s a bunch of people out there like me, who aren’t going to give up.’ And if we’re all moving forward in the same direction, moving that Overton Window to the right, and saying, ‘Hey, this fake news media, that doesn’t work us, that doesn’t scare us’—you know, I’m standing up for people’s free speech, lawful speech.”
Mmm. Odd how that standing up for people’s free, lawful speech only has to do with things you approve of, while you’re oddly silent in other cases, along with the rest of the freeze peach brigade. Unfortunately, the Overton Window has already been shoved considerably to the right, as we all get more accustomed to seeing and hearing white! white! white! everywhere. We really can’t afford to let this happen, but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Earlier this year, Nehlen retweeted photos that celebrated the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Nehlen was also a major proponent of “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory and told the Associated Press in August that he still believed it to be true. Earlier this month, Nehlen told columnist John Podhoretz on Twitter to “do us all a favor” and “eat a bullet.”
Last week, as first documented by the blog Angry White Men, Nehlen appeared on and praised the hosts of “Fash the Nation,” an anti-Semitic podcast popular in alt-right circles, and celebrated that “the red pills are being shot at people like with bump fire stocks.”(Taking a “red pill,” a reference to a scene in the sci-fi film “The Matrix,” is alt-right shorthand for embracing the movement’s views and bump stocks are the type of weapon modification that enabled the mass shooter in Las Vegas to achieve near-automatic fire). Nehlen also appeared on “Fash the Nation” last year, calling for an end to birthright citizenship.
Recently, Nehlen has pushed even harder to the right and dropped any attempt to conceal his affiliations with the furthest fringes of the Right.
It would be really nice is someone like Nehlen could simply be dismissed as ‘lunatic fringe’ without a hope of gaining support. Unfortunately, that’s not the case any longer. While people like this might not be winning yet, the call is too close for comfort. There’s no comfort at all to be had in the fact that it’s someone like Paul Ryan who does win, because while Ryan might not embrace nazism, he’s an awful sociopath, bent on eliminating poverty by eliminating all those icky poor people.
© Marty Two Bulls.
A trio of youtube nazis, oh pardon, white nationalists, have decided to stop pretending they aren’t nazis. Ooops, white nationalists. My keyboard just keeps slipping. These three chuckleheads are not helping me out of a current case of Benderitis (kill all humans).
Faith Goldy, a former Rebel Media reporter who has grown ever closer to the alt-right, joined Red Ice host Lana Lokteff and 4chan YouTube muse Lauren Rose in a video uploaded yesterday to deliver full-throated endorsements of ethno-nationalism, a movement that seeks to promote white supremacy in Western nations.
…“Civic nationalism perpetuates that it’s OK to bring foreign people into your country as long as they’re a bunch of tolerant egalitarians. That’s how I see it personally. It doesn’t take anything else into consideration like religion, race, ethnic group. As long as you’re tolerant and have egalitarian values, that seems to be OK,” Rose said, going on to say that she, Goldy and Hargraves have recognized that “when you replace the founding stock of a nation, you replace the entire nation.”
Golly, what a group of geniuses we have here. A little further on, they talk about knowing history well. As you can see, their actual knowledge of history is quite impoverished. Okay, let’s pretend all the immigrants to Turtle Island are cattle. Or dogs, whatever. If you start with a specific stock, and breed from that stock, and continue breeding, you aren’t replacing the initial bloodline (stock). Now, if you let your stock die out, or kill them, and get something completely different, then yeah. Exactly how you’re applying this to Amerika, I’m not sure. There was one wave of immigrants after another, which resulted in a massive tangle of people from all over the place. Many of the people who emigrated here could not be described as ‘tolerant egalitarians’, and all manner of immigrants were treated like they were lower than shit on a shoe. It was a sort of bigotry free for all.
Later in the interview, Goldy claimed that civic nationalism was invented as “an answer to ethno-nationalism” and that she didn’t care “what anyone thinks about ethno-nationalism” because detractors of the white supremacist movement have “not properly studied history” and don’t realize that “ethno-nationalism was the greatest propeller of human history when determining the maker or breaker of empire of civilization. This is what rallies men and gets them moving.”
I can name three people who have not studied history at all, let alone properly: Faith, Lana, and Lauren. There is no one “empire of civilization”. Empires come, empires go. Eventually, all empires decline and fall. That’s a thing you can find when studying history. Propeller is quite the interesting word choice. Oh yes, the notion of “hey, let’s go conquer” has been a long held rally cry of sorts. Generally speaking, all the men who had to get moving in history had to do so under the orders of assorted royalty and the ruling classes. Mostly, they were cannon fodder, winning lands for people who could not give one hearty fuck about them. Some things just don’t change.
Goldy continued, “It is a natural tribal instinct for human communities to go with their own. So the question is, are we going to continue to work against nature and try to rise above it even though we’re 40, 50, 60 years into this experiment?”
:facepalm: Forty to sixty years? Seriously? Holy shit. So, this whole ‘civic nationalism’ has only been going on since 1957, has it? Yes, people have a tendency to gather together when in an immigration situation, because there’s comfort in people who come from the same place you do, share a culture and language. That does not mean that people don’t expand outwards, learning other languages, customs, and becoming a part of their adopted homeland. Y’know, if you have this stupid idea that people at large need to be kicked out, that means you too, because none of the Indigenous people who were already long here on Turtle Island ever invited any of you.
Lokteff went on to remark that she thought “it’s really funny that a lot of these civic nationalists that we hear popping up, that they claim to be more on the right side, it’s only white people talking like that. Sure, you might have a few blacks or Latinos in there, but it’s like a white ideal, you know? What’s going to happen when they’re a minority? Seriously.”
Gosh, you could, oh I don’t know, fucking deal with it. So terrified of losing your privilege and power. Tsk. I can’t speak for anyone else, but from my viewpoint, we aren’t going to be running out of white people anytime soon. All this fretting over nothing. Whipping up fear for no good reason.
Goldy said that middle-class white men are “literally committing suicide” because immigration policies have made those white men feel like “strangers in our own backyard.”
Uh huh. A lot of white men can’t seem to manage to kill themselves without first slaughtering as many people as possible. Perhaps if these fellas who feel like strangers in their own backyard could do something truly radical, like saying hi to their neighbours. Maybe have a barbecue or something, what with that being such a white dude tradition. Get to know people a bit. Might work wonders.
“Some of the white guys are kind of mad right now when they’re literally on the shit list. They’re last in line for schools, for loans, for jobs, for grants. They’re blamed for all the problems in the world. They can’t be in politics. I have a son. I don’t want him to grow up in that kind of world where he’s on the shit list and later on he’s a minority,” Lokteff said. “How do you think they’re going to be treated when that happens?”
Such fucking idiocy. If you could wave a wand, and turn everyone in Amerika whitey-white, white men would still moan, whine, and hate each other. That happens when you raise people up with the idea that everything and everyone on the planet belongs to them, that they are entitled. There are a whole lot of people who are last in line for schools, loans, jobs, and grants. The majority of them are not white, and not male. They aren’t exactly thrilled to always be on the shit list which all minorities are consigned to, and here again is the one true thing you fear: that you will be treated the way you treat others. Be nice if you figured out just why that scares you so damn much.
As you’re looking for someone to blame (as always) about no good jobs, etc., raise your eyes to the filthy rich. Raise your eyes to shit regime you ushered in.
Rose agreed that white men are the “most under-attack group right now” and claimed that liberals began importing immigrants from developing countries because it “ensures their power.”
Immigrants are people, you flaming doucheweasel, they aren’t products. No, liberals are not in business importing people. People who immigrate here do so because of various reasons, with one important factor: they want to do so.
She said “whites are going from this vast majority of our nation—the face, the founding stock of our countries—and are now going to become minorities in less than a century. And people think that this is going to all be OK because we’re all tolerant, right?”
The ‘face’ of our nation is due for a change, I’m good with it. And no, Ms. Rose, we are not all tolerant. You certainly aren’t. That said, I’m not a fan of tolerance. I prefer acceptance.
She continued, “I think we should take whites and we should move to a foreign nation and start voting as voters and voting for our own interests and then the government will start to benefit whites rather than the natives. And then when they start complaining that their new system is benefiting us and not the natives, we can call them privileged bigots.”
You have no idea how favourable I find this cunning plan. Although, I hesitate to inflict you assholes on any other nation; every one has enough problems of their own.
“There is still a white majority and I think that any sort of movement that we have going forward has to appeal to that majority, as Donald Trump did implicitly whether he wants to admit it or not, but he did,” Goldy said.
Yes, a white majority. Fancy that. Here’s hoping that most white people are not stupid, bigoted nazis like you.
Lokteff elaborated later in the interview, “We want the natives to be the majority. There will be some people that aren’t of that native stock, but they need to be a smaller percentage of the population, correct? Right?”
Goldy agreed, “For me, I put it very, very plainly. For me, just a simple majority. Let’s start there.”
:snort: You want natives to be the majority? Great! When are you all leaving? I’ll come to the airport and wave bye. You fucking hateful assholes are not. native. stock. You are not natives. You are fucking immigrants, the descendants of criminals, thieves, and genocidal maniacs. Also, all the people in this country who are not white, but their families have been here for generations upon generations? They are just as ‘native’ as you are, whether you like it or not. There isn’t enough fuck off in the universe for you all.
Roy Moore speaks at Voters Value Summit 2017. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch).
Oh, so many evangelicals of the religious reich are propping up Roy Moore with absolute zeal, and a gigantic raft of lies. I’m not going to address all of them; I have a busy day ahead, but some of this, ugh, toxic morality is so damn disgusting. I will make the point that it’s hardly uncommon for men in their late 20s/early 30s to pursue people in their early teens; it happened to me often enough, and yes, that was in the 1970s. That sort of age gap wasn’t as frowned upon then, a man of 32 with a solid career was considered to be a good match for someone 17 to 19 years old, a steady hand, so to speak. Yeah, I know. I am thankful attitudes have changed in that regard. All that said, it does not make that behaviour any less skeevy or questionable. There’s a massive power imbalance there, and that was particularly true in Moore’s case, as he was a district attorney, and most teenagers aren’t completely clear on just how much power is or isn’t contained within that position. Moore was in a position to make an effective threat.
The fact that Moore was so very careful to not engage in intercourse tells me he knew damn well what he was doing was wrong, and he didn’t want to be caught. He certainly didn’t want to be punished in any respect, so he was very cautious. Does the fact he’s been married the last 32 years make it okay? No. I’ve been married for 38 years, together with my partner for 40 years. What does that tell you about the state of my marriage? Nothing. What does that tell you about my character and actions for the last 40 years? Nothing.
I expect many of the evangelicals supporting Moore wouldn’t be upset if a 32 year old wanted to date their teenage daughter, and that really does not make anything better. It makes it much worse.
The American Family Association stood by its endorsement of Moore, writing in a statement, “AFA Action believes Justice Roy Moore to be a truthful man and a solid Christian.” Bryan Fischer, a radio host for AFA’s American Family Radio, wrote that establishment Republicans were turning against Moore because they “despise ordinary Americans like us who believe in the Ten Commandments, natural marriage, normative sexuality, right and wrong, the Constitution as written by the Founders, the rule of law, and the Judeo-Christian tradition of truth claims and moral values.”
I’m an ‘ordinary’ American. I’m mixed race, childfree, bisexual, and identify as female. I’m an atheist who is committed to inclusion and acceptance. I live rural, with one partner and too many animals. I do not believe in the ten commandments, natural marriage, or missionary position only and don’t fuckin’ enjoy it. I don’t believe in the constitution; I think it’s high time for a rewrite. I believe in marriage equality. I do have a strong sense of right and wrong. I somewhat respect law. A lot of it is damn stupid, and needs serious reworking too, and the police system needs to be torn down and redone completely. WTF is the “Judeo-Christian tradition of truth claims and moral values”? Truth claims? Jesus Christ. How about the truth? I’m not allergic to that. I am allergic to the twisted, abusive bullshit you asses present as ‘moral values’. Your ‘moral values’ say Moore is a stand up guy, not a skeevy man who used his position to impose on teenagers. Why in the hell should I pay attention to such a version of “right and wrong” ? No. Just no.
AFA president Tim Wildmon told Religion News Service, “I don’t think this kind of story will change support for him among Christians since he has categorically denied it. Most will see it as dirty politics.”
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. That little sentiment should be familiar to you all.
Jerry Falwell Jr., one of President Trump’s strongest allies in the Religious Right, told RNS, “It comes down to a question who is more credible in the eyes of the voters — the candidate or the accuser.” He later clarified that he believed the candidate.
Ah, the christian version of bitches be lying. How lovely.
Anti-choice activist Janet Porter wrote in WorldNetDaily that she trusts Moore in part because he doesn’t think her “heartbeat bill,” which would ban abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy, goes far enough. Porter laid out her theory that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos encouraged the paper to manufacture accusations against Moore in order to bring him profits. “Not sure who to vote for?” she wrote. “Just look at who the enemy is firing at the hardest. He’s the guy you want.”
Don’t be dragging Lucifer into this mess. Your imaginary archvillain hasn’t done anything. If Moore was such an amazingly upstanding christian, why didn’t he fight off the temptation to impose himself all over one teenager after another? Why, when the urge came over him to accost a teenager or go hunting them at the local mall, was this solid christian not on his knees in prayer? The only enemy here are Moore’s own actions. “Hey, it was a long time ago” does not excuse it. Look at Moore’s attitude towards bodily autonomy rights. Is this a man who views women as full human beings? No.
Ugh, ugh, ugh, so damn disgusting. RWW watch has the full rundown, replete with links.
Photo courtesy starpulse.com
We’re going to go back in time a bit, to an article Simon Moya-Smith wrote in January this year. He’ll help you out with Columbus apologists. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!
Glaring contradictions. Stupid fucking lies, and good ol’ American bullshit.
Yes, folks today we are talking U.S. history, and there’s nothing more politically correct than American History. It’s RIFE with soft language to spare the feelings of fuckers who desperately want to believe their homesteading great-grand-pappy wasn’t a murdering, raping, thief.
OK. So today let’s hit on the numbskullery surrounding Columbus Day. “Why in January?” you ask. Well because Colorado State House Representative Joseph Salazar, a democrat, is currently working to repeal the foul thing from the state’s list of recognized holidays. And lately he has received an onslaught of hate mail from dipshits who don’t seem to understand the seemingly elusive concept of logic and facts.
Recently, Rep. Salazar has been forwarding me these messages, and they range from fucking hilarious to seriously fucking delusional. They’re more on the seriously fucking delusional side, though.
So, I thought I’d share with you some responses you can use against the common, hackneyed pro-Columbus Day arguments you will surely continue to encounter for as long as you engage the willfully blind. Feel free to share the following with your friends or family, or maybe just that fucker who sits at the end of the bar incessantly defending the bullshit American narrative as written. (Remember: The American narrative HATES to be fact-checked. So fact-check that goddamn thing any time you can.)
Okey dokey, here’s what you can say to those dullards spewing trite claims and arguments about Columbus and Columbus Day, and let us start with the most common and least accurate:
A Chelan County emergency services worker posted a disturbing joke to the county’s Facebook account, kidding about protesters being rammed three weeks after a Virginia protester was killed by a driver who did so.
The worker managing the county’s emergency services Facebook account posted a crude cartoon with an illustration captioned, “All lives splatter … nobody cares about your protest / Keep your ass out of the Road”
The as-yet unidentified poster included the note: “I don’t wish harm on anyone … but protesters don’t belong in the road!”
Mmm, you don’t wish harm on anyone, but you show a depiction of people being harmed because, “hey, it’s funny, and those libtards deserve it, lol!” I imagine if such was directed at you, emergency services worker, you wouldn’t find it so gosh darn amusing. I sure as fuck don’t. Handing J. Q. Public license to murder is not funny. It’s not funny that open murder is being written into law, because of course, dissent is evil, so you better do all your dissenting someplace legal, like your closet, where you can’t help to effect any change at all.
Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett apologized for the post on Monday, saying the non-commissioned employee intended to share it only on a personal account.
“Staff at Chelan County Emergency Management feel terrible that this inappropriate and hurtful post made it onto the Facebook page,” Burnett wrote in the news release. “Changes have already been made in procedure to assure nothing like this will ever occur in the future.”
Oh, and that makes it okay, does it, to change things so this sort of evil shit can’t make it to the official page? Naturally, having employees posting this vile poison on their personal accounts, that’s just dandy! Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’d want Chelan County emergency services anywhere near me. Your asshole employees would be just as prone to killing me as helping me, right, Sheriff Burnett?
In recent months, law enforcement workers around the country have been called out for posting the meme and similar statements.
A Slate examination of the trend in August – “Run Them Down”: Driving into crowds of protesters was a right-wing fantasy long before the violence in Charlottesville – highlighted three police officers and one firefighter who were caught urging vehicle attacks on protesters. One Oregon cop was fired for suggesting that drivers “push the right” pedal when facing Black Lives Matter protesters.
Pigs will be pigs, won’t they? This is what happens when cops shops refuse to hire intelligent people. This is what happens when cops shops happily hire white supremacists and assorted dumbshit bigots. Then gives them a license to be homicidal prickshits.
Via Seattle PI.
