What a shocker!

OMG YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT?? The Texas shooter had a history of domestic violence and investigators say his killing rampage was linked to a “domestic situation”:

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — Investigators said Sunday’s church massacre in Texas occurred amid an ongoing “domestic situation” involving the gunman and his relatives, at least one of whom had attended the church.

…

Kelley, 26, was court-martialed in 2012 and sentenced to a year in military prison for assaulting his spouse and child, making him the latest mass attacker or suspect with domestic violence in his past. He was reduced in rank and released with a bad-conduct discharge in 2014.

This has never happened before! It’s just a shame that virtually every mass shooter in recent times doesn’t fit a profile like, say, “violent entitled men who abuse women and children” or something. Then it might be easier to do something to address it? We could maybe ensure such exemplars of American masculinity never have access to guns? Too bad, so sad that they’re each a Lone Wolf living in a cultural vacuum without any common behavior in their backgrounds to trigger an intervention.

Well. At least we have an endless supply of thoughts-n-prayers to offer the victims and their families.

Fun petition: Disbar Jeff Sessions!

[CONTENT NOTE: white supremacy.]

No, of course it won’t accomplish much of anything. Does anyone really believe the good ol’ boys of the Alabama Bar see any problems whatsoever with a white supremacist lying liar who lies as attorney general? Hahaha no I think not. But if this petition gathers just enough signatures to make a little noise, it will piss off the rabid racist asshole currently in charge of the U.S. Department of Injustice! FUN!

 

 

Conservatives, and particularly conservative men, are notoriously thin-skinned. If the numbers are big enough, maybe it’ll even yield some hot conservative tears – and, well. You all know how much I looooove those! Let’s doooo eeeet!

[via Color of Change]

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is Too Racist to Be a Lawyer #DisbarSessions

Jeff Sessions is a liar, a racist, and a white supremacist. Last week, Sessions testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and one thing is clear — enough is enough. Sessions’ entire political career has been to undo major progress hard fought and won from decades-long work by Black people and communities of color. And he continues to spread so many untruths just to maintain power that keeps him in close proximity to the ugliest and most dangerous White House administration. Sessions does not represent and never will represent any symbol of fairness and justice.

Jeff Sessions holds a prominent law license from the state of Alabama that gives him the power to be Attorney General. He should not be the Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice and he has no place in this country to practice law.It is long overdue to finally shut down his power and access as well as stop the harm that he continues to inflict. And the way we’re going to do it is by getting him disbarred from the Alabama State Bar. Bar associations are responsible for issuing licenses for lawyers to practice but just as importantly ensuring that the integrity of how lawyers use their role is upheld.

The Alabama State Bar should not allow Jeff Sessions to keep a license to practice law. He is dishonest and corrupt. It’s time to disbar him today.

Jeff Sessions has spearheaded Trump’s entire Law and Order agenda. As Attorney General, Sessions has built a false, racist narrative that crime has exponentially increased across the U.S. Right after being sworn in as Attorney General, Sessions said national crime rates were the highest they’d ever been–but it was a lie. According to FBI data, the national rate was decreasing.1 Sessions is following the eerie and distorted words of Trump who said, “In many of our biggest cities, 2016 brought an increase in the number of homicides, rapes, assaults, and shootings.”2 This in and of itself is a violation of the Alabama Bar Code of Ethics — Sessions is actively engaging in dishonesty as a chief law enforcer. This ignites fears and sets up a big platform for ruthless policies that directly impact Black people and many other marginalized groups.

This white supremacist narrative of Black people and immigrants as violent and dangerous has led to extreme changes and further violates another ethics code of being prejudice and bias. Sessions was determined to bring back the war on Black people by restarting the “War on Drugs.” This includes pushing prosecutors to issue the most severe punishment against people who commit drug offenses, giving local police departments more power to arrest and surveil with access to militarized equipment. He’s against any form of police accountability and has eliminated consent decrees. Sessions even went after Sanctuary cities by threatening to withhold federal funding for refusing to comply with harsh immigration laws. And Jeff Sessions reversed the ban on federal private prisons. Sessions said, “the ban on private prisons hurt the prison system’s ability to meet the future needs for housing.”3 This, of course, is all code for locking up more people for profit. This list goes on and on, and it will continue as long as Sessions has the power to keep his license.

Jeff Sessions does not represent the people. His job is to only target and criminalize our people. Alabama State Bar must take away his license now.

We already know who Jeff Sessions is. It is not just lies — but he is unapologetic in wanting to dismantle democracy and destroy the rights of all our communities. Plain and simple he is a White man with a lot of privilege and power he doesn’t deserve. He is incapable of upholding the integrity of his position in the U.S. Department of Justice. Jeff Sessions has abused his power long enough.

Sign the petition.

Until justice is real,

Scott, Rashad, Arisha, Scott, Anay, Clarise, Enchanta, Malaya, Kristen, Katrese, and the rest of the Color Of Change team

References:

1. “The ACLU says Trump’s executive order on crime aims to “stop national trends that don’t exist”,” Quartz, 02-09-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/9697?t=9&akid=8090%2E2505660%2ErziDSw

2. “Sessions calls rise in crime a ‘dangerous permanent trend,’ but FBI data shows rate consistently falling,” Yahoo News, 02-09-2017 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/9698?t=11&akid=8090%2E2505660%2ErziDSw

3. “Justice Department Keeps For-Profit Prisons, Scrapping an Obama Plan,” New York Times, 02-23-2016 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/7973?t=13&akid=8090%2E2505660%2ErziDSw

__________
Color Of Change is building a movement to elevate the voices of Black folks and our allies, and win real social and political change. Help keep our movement strong.

__________

Sign the petition! Forward it! Blast it on your social media! Share far and wide the joy of imagining Jeff Sessions’ epic CBF* as he reads all about it in his morning paper.

__________
* Cat Butt Face.

Rape and domestic violence for fun and profit.

[CONTENT NOTE: rape, domestic violence, inhumane treatment of vulnerable people.]

I AM SIDE-EYING THE FUCK OUT OF YOU AUSTRALIA. And yeah, I know that is reeeeeeeeally saying something coming from a citizen of the United States of Avarice, where we will happily privatize for profit everything that isn’t nailed down, and also everything that is nailed down too. Hell, I hesitated even posting about this story, lest I give Paul Ryan et al or conservative Democrats the Squirrel People any more exquisitely horrible ideas. So please, people: I implore you to keep this information to yourselves during your usual daily barrage of irate calls to your congresscritters.

[Read more…]

PETITION to UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Kaiser: cover birth control co-pays.

via UltraViolet:

Trump just announced he will take away free birth control from up to 55 million women, claiming it promotes “risky sexual behavior.”

How ’bout you worry about controlling your own sexual behavior, and I worry about mine.

Asshole.

Women use birth control for everything from calming menstrual cramps to family planning to managing crippling pain from endometriosis. In fact, sex becomes a lot riskier without access to birth control.

Gosh, ya think?

This is just the latest attempt by the Trump administration to pander to right wing extremists who want to sabotage women‘s health care.

FIFY. You’re welcome.

The good news is that we can still save free birth control for millions of women who need it. Insurance companies benefit from covering the co-pay–in part because birth control is vastly cheaper than childbirth or endometriosis treatment. Let’s make sure that every single health insurance company, starting with three of the biggest–UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Kaiser–hears from us right away.

Can you sign the petition and help pile the pressure onto insurers to continue to cover birth control?

__________

Under a capitalist healthcare system, rights and access are dependent on a profit motive. Not on what is moral and good and the right thing to do. Not on laws or constitutions. Certainly not on the best health care practices. So we must desperately appeal to the bottom line of a parasitic, profit-driven industry, one whose notorious and egregious abuses are legion, and which in any sane and just society would not even fucking exist.

But here we are. Please sign and signal boost the petition if you are willing and able.

THANK YOU.

I sure do love the smell of burning conservatives.

Well lookee here.

Rep. Tim Murphy resigns from Congress after allegedly asking woman to have abortion

Rep. Tim Murphy told House leaders on Thursday that he will resign from Congress this month, a day after the eight-term Pennsylvania Republican announced that he would not seek another term amid a personal scandal.

Personal scandal? Oh do tell…

The resignation of Murphy, a clinical psychologist, comes after a news report claimed that the married Republican had asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.

…

Murphy is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus and was a co-sponsor of a Republican bill approved Tuesday that bans most abortions after 20 weeks of fetal development.

Also: FUCK YOU CONSERVATIVES.

 

 

Whose pain matters?

Since there are currently no pressing problems facing our great nation, the US House of Reprehensibles has just passed HB 36, a national ban on abortions after 20-weeks. Charmingly entitled “The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” the legislation would force a pregnant patient who is carrying a fetus that is dead, dying, or incompatible with life to carry it to term and give birth, unless the patient is in grave danger of death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

According to reality, fetuses are not capable of feeling pain until at least 28 weeks. But since conservatives are highly allergic to reality, perhaps Your Liberal Media™ might helpfully report on this egregious tripe from another angle. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that a fetus is indeed capable of feeling pain at 20 weeks.

SO FUCKING WHAT?

You know what’s really painful? Giving birth. (So I’ve heard – I personally dodged that bullet thank Vishnu.) I would like my legislator to promptly propose a bill entitled The Pain-Capable Pregnant Person Protection Act, which provides free abortions on demand to anyone who wishes to avoid the pain of childbirth. The bill should have no problem passing in this congress, seeing how the majority is so concerned about sparing citizens from painful medical procedures.

F*CK YOUR THOUGHTS ‘N PRAYERS.

 

It’ll probably do fuck all because cowards gonna cow, but please sign and share this petition if you are willing and able (via CREDO* Action):

Emergency petition: Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need gun control now.

Tell Republicans in Congress:

“It is time to put your constituents before the National Rifle Association. Reject currently pending legislation that would gut regulations on gun silencers and armor piercing bullets, block the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, and take immediate action to ban weapons of war, including assault weapons and large capacity magazines, which have no place in the hands of private citizens.”

Sign the petition.

[Read more…]

Well played.

As I’ve mentioned, I loathe U.S. men’s sportsball with the burning intensity of ten thousand suns. #yesallmenssportsball. The reasons are legion, but a big one is the cloying stench of jingoist militarism that pervades the realm. And of course that is no accident: a 2015 Senate report released to little fanfare detailed U.S. military contracts worth millions of taxpayer dollars with pro sports teams for “paid-for patriotism,” from solemn “salutes to service” to flag-waving pageantry to ceremonies honoring hometown war heroes on the field. Worse still, the NFL alone receives about $1 billion a year in public subsidies to build and operate stadiums and other handouts, thereby enriching obscenely wealthy team owners at taxpayers expense.

Unlike other temporary expenditures on infrastructure or even businesses in which state and local governments might invest to ultimately benefit the public and/or their treasury’s bottom line,

[p]ublic handouts for modern professional football never end and are never repaid. In return, the NFL creates nothing of social value—while setting bad examples, despite its protests to the contrary, regarding concussions, painkiller misuse, weight gain, and cheating, among other issues.

Other issues indeed. Like, oh, say, sexual assault and domestic violence, for which career-ending consequences are virtually unheard of. But a player sitting out the national anthem to protest racism and police murdering people of color? GAME OVER.

Now I don’t know about you, but I always have to wonder: what does our Sexual-Assaulter-In-Chief think about all of this? Fortunately for inquiring minds like mine, he has not shut up about it since his Nazi-fest on Friday night.

Trump told the Republican rally that such actions “disrespect our heritage.”

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired,'” Trump said… He went on to encourage spectators to boycott games where national anthem protests take place.

He’s been completely obsessed with these anti-racist NFL protests for three days now, tweeting yesterday:

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem,” Trump wrote. “If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!”

And this morning:

…

Can I tell you how much I looooove all of this? Because the backlash is just a beautiful fucking thing to behold. Ever since Commander Cheetohead started his fascist little crusade on Friday, NFL players, coaches and even team owners – who collectively contributed $7 million to Trump’s campaign and some of whom are his personal friends – have responded overwhelmingly, negatively and vociferously. Yesterday, the protests spread from the NFL to major league baseball when some d00d who plays for the Oakland As knelt during the national anthem. And this just came over my news feed, just as the Sunday games begin to get underway:

Dozens of players kneel, coaches link arms in solidarity as Trump asks NFL teams to ‘fire or suspend’ protesting players

SOMERSET, N.J. — As President Trump called for NFL owners to suspend or fire players who protested the national anthem, players and coaches answered defiantly Sunday morning, with most members of the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars either standing with their arms locked in solidarity or taking a knee on the field.

Ravens Coach John Harbaugh joined his players, locking arms, and Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a Pakistani American billionaire and businessman, joined his players before the game’s kickoff at 9:30 a.m. in London’s Wembley Stadium. Ravens Hall of Famer Ray Lewis also took a knee during the anthem.

Most members of both teams, the Ravens’ coach and the Jaguars’ OWNER. On an international stage, no less.

LOLOL!

Keep it up, Mr. President! Heckuva job! Now if we could just get you to piss yourself silly over all the sportsball players kneeling to protest domestic abuse and sexual violence against women, that would be super.

Oh wait. There aren’t any.

[edited because rage typo.]

Petition to Las Vegas PD: Release the video.

[CONTENT NOTE: white supremacy, racist police violence.]

Full disclosure: I have no idea who Michael Bennett is. I loathe men’s sportsball with the burning intensity of ten thousand suns. This campaign is the only reason I know that Bennett is a black man—but of course that is the only thing that matters to far too many police officers in this country. Please consider signing this petition, and signal boosting. Thank you.

via Color of Change:

Campaign created by
Patrisse Cullors-Brignac, Black Lives Matter Global Network

Release the names of the officers and footage from the police assault on NFL player Michael Bennett on Saturday, August 26, 2017.

Why is this important?

[Read more…]