Lying liars are still lying

I’ve been hearing a lot about how the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a bank in the heart of tech bro country, where Peter Thiel kept his money, was due to it being too woke. Go woke, go broke, as they say. As it turns out, the claim is contrived nonsense.

According to stories bursting across the right-wing mediasphere today, a key reason for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was its focus on spreading “woke culture” rather than efficiently managing risk and profits. Ground zero for this is the allegation that SVB had donated over $73 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes.” That struck me as quite a lot of money for a single company, even a large and profitable one, to give to any cause or even all causes. So I tried to find out where this factoid came from and rapidly found my way to a Trumpist think tank. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a complete lie. I want to show you the receipts, but first some key details.

The story came from an “analysis” from the Center for the American Way of Life, a project of the Claremont Institute. You can tell from the name it was going to be a skeevy, dishonest organization, where they conflate “American” with “Capitalist”. What they did was compile all charitable donations to a huge range of organizations under one umbrella they called Black Lives Matter…not that BLM isn’t an unworthy recipient, but that they threw in so much money that any grass roots organization would have no way to spend it all.

Basically, if a donation benefitted a black person in any way, it was “BLM”. For instance:

Claremont lists 3M pledging a whopping $50 million to “BLM.” But the cited document, published in September 2020, appears to be mainly focused on supporting STEM learning in Black communities. It’s a pledge of $50 million over 5 years and lists $6 million in initial investments. That $6 million consisted of $5 million to the United Negro College Fund for work in St. Paul, Minnesota; another $1 million is slated for “annual investment to social justice partnerships, led by our employee resource network community champions and building on the initial investment from 3M Foundation in 2020.”

For Claremont, these are all “BLM.”

Oh, look, Boeing supported BLM! Not really.

Then there’s Boeing’s $15.6 million to “BLM.”

You can see the cited list of recipients here. The largest recipients include the Seattle Children’s Hospital, United Negro College Fund, Chicago Urban League, D.C. College Access Program and the Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering, Inc.

My favorite, though, is Bank of America.

Rather unbelievably Claremont lists Bank of America as giving more than $18 billion to “BLM.”

Yes, billion.

The cited documents appear to report only $1.25 billion and that appears to be almost entirely going to financing for housing and business development in minority communities. So this money may be targeting minority advancement, but its in the form of loans that BOA will get paid back for. An apparently tiny fraction of that total (no specific numbers are cited) goes in grants to organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.

Bank of America gets a big chunk of change from me every month, since they hold my mortgage. Which means, by the transitive property of the Claremont Institute, that I am giving a large fraction of my income to BLM every month.

The vast majority of the organizations are highly mainstream and even corporate in their focus (supporting minority-owned small businesses, recruiting minority employees in STEM fields). The ones that aren’t mainly focus on housing, closing gaps in medical care in minority communities and supporting STEM education and coding. In many cases, the cited documents include no information to support the purported dollar amounts at all. In some cases a claim about one corporation is backed up with a document about another corporation entirely. So there’s a high degree of slapdash and incompetence involved. But the general message is that anything in any way connected to Black people in pretty much any way is “BLM riots,” and explicitly supporting mayhem and violence.

Slapdash and incompetent is a good summary of most conservative organizations. Add in dishonest and it’s perfect.

You can clearly see the direction they want to go

The conservative vision of the future of America is quite clear. Let’s hide the ugly parts of our history. An eighth grade history teacher was canceled.

Finally, on Feb. 8, 2022, at 4:05 p.m., Wickenkamp scored a Zoom meeting with Superintendent Laurie Noll. He asked the question he felt lay at the heart of critiques of his curriculum. “Knowing that I should stick to the facts, and knowing that to say ‘Slavery was wrong,’ that’s not a fact, that’s a stance,” Wickenkamp said, “is it acceptable for me to teach students that slavery was wrong?”

Noll nodded her head, affirming that saying “slavery was wrong” counts as a “stance.”

“We had people that were slaves within our state,” Noll said, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Post. “We’re not supposed to say to [students], ‘How does that make you feel?’ We can’t — or, ‘Does that make you feel bad?’ We’re not to do that part of it.”

She continued: “To say ‘Is slavery wrong?’ — I really need to delve into it to see is that part of what we can or cannot say. And I don’t know that, Greg, because I just don’t have that. So I need to know more on that side.”

He left the teaching profession after that load of waffly rubbish.

They hate women. Conservatives have a radical perspective on abortion and contraception.

The House Judiciary Committee in Arkansas was scheduled to discuss a bill that would classify “causing the death of an unborn child” as a homicide. I’m not using the word ‘abortion’ here for a reason—because while the legislation would certainly make abortion prosecutable as a homicide, it goes far beyond that. HB 1174 says that it’s a crime to end a pregnancy by “wrongful act, neglect or default,” language so broad that women who have had miscarriages could be prosecuted for murder if the state decides that they somehow ‘caused’ it. (The bill even specifies that “accidental miscarriage” is not prosecutable, which means that legislators believe there is such a thing as a miscarriage that is not accidental.)

So if a woman miscarries and the state decides that it happened because she lifted a heavy box, or didn’t take her prenatal vitamins—they could charge her with murder. I wrote about this bill back in January, but it’s worth repeating: There is no limit to what a zealous prosecutor could argue ‘caused’ a miscarriage or stillbirth. In fact, cases like this have already been brought forward before Roe was even overturned—for reasons ranging from alleged drug use, refusing medical interventions like a c-section, even a suicide attempt.

But there’s more. Because this bill defines human life from fertilization, women could also be charged with murder for using Plan B or IUDs—which conservatives believe prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg—or undergoing IVF. In fact, legislators removed language that would prevent the prosecution of women who use contraception or IVF:

On the bright side, the future is looking bright if you’re a wealthy white man with a strong bigotry streak.

Dallas Humber, American terrorist

Another vile human being has been dragged into the light. This woman has been promoting terrorism and encouraging mass murderers for decades, while hiding behind online anonymity. Left Coast Right Watch has done an amazingly thorough job of tracking her down — online anonymity isn’t as safe as she thought.

Over the past few years, she was simply known as “the narrator”—the disembodied voice that reads mass murderer manifestos, how-to guides on attacking critical infrastructure and collections of short essays written by an anonymous collective of white supremacists and accelerationists—the people hell-bent on causing the collapse of society.

Her name is Dallas Erin Humber, and she’s deeply involved with the online network of violent, militant bigots known as Terrorgram.

Here she is with her Nazi pedophile (why do those two words go together so often?) boyfriend, Jason Gant.

This is a doxxing I fully support. She’s the voice behind this thing called the Terrorgram Collective, an online group for the cheering fans of terrorism, murder, and mass destruction which has inspired at least one mass killing. Humber is a cheerleader for the worst, most contemptible people on the planet. I won’t quote her screeds — they make me sick, and probably would nauseate you, too — but if you must, the link above includes many excerpts from her sordid history, and there’s more here.

It’s not clear what more can be done about her, though. She’s a 33 year old woman living a normal public life in Sacramento, California, while inciting international violence under a cowardly pseudonym. Will exposing her have any discouraging effect at all? It’s not at all clear what it will do, other than give CPAC an opportunity to invite her to next year’s conference, and it looks like the law isn’t rushing forward to shut her down.

It’s also unclear whether Humber — now that her role in Terrorgram has been exposed — could or would be prosecuted. In the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brandenberg vs. Ohio, the court ruled that advocacy of violence could be punished only “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

Arusha Gordon — associate director of the James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law — told HuffPost that it can be a high hurdle for prosecutors to jump to prove that certain incitements are “likely” to produce “imminent” violence.

It might be tough, for example, to demonstrate that Humber encouraging her followers to commit acts of terror amounts to an “imminent” threat in court. The Terrorgram Collective’s propaganda doesn’t always declare a specific, upcoming date for its followers to do terror.

So far, we’ll just have to settle for the fact that the world knows her name, where she lives, and what she looks like, and that her hatred will be scrutinized.

The Genocide Party had their yearly get-together

One pleasant bit of non-news is that CPAC is dying. For a couple of decades now, the Conservative Political Action Conference has been a yearly spectacle of far right conservative speechifying, when the radical Republicans could let their hair down and let their freak flag fly, and the media would dutifully report on their gibbering mania, and we’d point and laugh, and then some of the kooks would get elected to high office. Remember when David Silverman tried to get American Atheists represented at CPAC? That was an omen.

This year, I hadn’t even realized it was going on until several days into the conference, it was that much of a yawner. Attendance is way down, and the ratfuckers are giving speeches to nearly empty seats. Prospective presidential candidates are skipping the whole show. It’s a “who cares?” event now.

However, as it’s relevance declines, the participants are reaching for the big bottle of crazy evil to spark excitement, and as we all know, the Republican party has become unhealthily obsessed with what’s in other people’s pants. They’re trying to pass laws to restrict people’s civil rights, they’ve developed a weird hatred of Mrs Doubtfire, they want to burn books that even mention the existence of non-traditional non-heterosexuals. What’s next? How can they top the insanity they’re perpetrating right now?

How about genocide?

The Right’s war on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles openly called for the public eradication of transgender individuals. During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.
…
In his speech, Knowles used a convoluted line of thinking and false logic while trying to prove his horrifying point that trans people should not exist. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It can be all or nothing, he said. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can’t become women — as they cannot — then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society — and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion — then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.

We’ve seen where this line of thinking goes, we don’t need a roadmap to recall our history. First we have to silence the Badthought with bookburnings and firelit marches and shrieking news articles. Then we pass laws criminalizing drag shows (Tennessee just made appearing in drag a felony with a 6 year prison sentence). Next we have to isolate the bad people in concentration camps, and then we have to move on to a Final Solution.

You would think that Ben Shapiro, Knowles’ big boss at the Daily Wire, would be aware of the comparison. Knowles himself is being made aware that he said the evil parts out loud, and is lashing out at the media that is reporting on his words and demanding retractions.

You said it, big boy. Be thankful that the only pain you might suffer is a little public humiliation, rather than a prison sentence or a beating or a gas chamber, like your victims have to deal with all the time.

We came this close to electing a bozo governor

OK, it wasn’t really that close: Scott Jensen was defeated 52% to 44% by Tim Walz in the recent Minnesota gubernatorial race. It looks worse in the maps, but that’s because rural Minnesota is relatively thinly populated, with most people living in the dark blue lake of Democrats on the eastern side of the state. You mean to tell me that real estate doesn’t vote?

Scott Jensen would not be making the news now except that he’s under investigation by the state medical licensing board.

Dr. Scott Jensen, the family medicine doctor who lost his run at Minnesota governor in the midterm elections last year, announced on social media that he was under investigation by his state’s medical board, adding “If it can happen to me, it can happen to you!”.

It can only happen to me if I were a medical doctor, and if I spent an election campaign making grossly dishonest claims about the pandemic.

This “humble midwestern family doctor” has some pretty serious ties to international Bannon politics which would explain his shocking brashness. Jensen’s attempts to convey his overdue accountability as an attack not just on him but on anyone who speaks out as he so “courageously” does (in line with his political affiliations) is Trumpian. It’s also how fascists gaslight for undeserved support. He is the problem. His actions have had consequences on others and it is high time they have consequences for him. Thanks to his November loss, he’s just a regular citizen without the power to carry out his revenge fantasies on the medical board.

Fortunately, he got beat, badly. The news isn’t so great for Wisconsin.

In any case, accountability has come far too late for these politically-aligned disinformation doctors thanks in large part to politically-aligned lobbying efforts. One state over in Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson – who had hosted Jensen’s Pandata colleague McCullough on his conspiracy panels – won his re-election. He has joined the fight against medical license accountability for his allies, despite that falling completely outside his jurisdiction as a senator.

Doctors like Jensen and politicians like Johnson claim to want to take politics out of healthcare while politicizing medicine during a global crisis. There is no sympathy to be felt for power-hungry men like these who lie so brazenly and so destructively. Covid was not a political game; it has cost real people their real lives. Disinformation has been central to the global failure that has been the Covid response.

I hope disinformation will have a political cost. It’s a thin hope, though.

Why not just skip ahead and try them for witchcraft?

A few people in the state of Idaho really want to arrest doctors and nurses.

Two Idaho lawmakers have introduced a bill to charge those who administer mRNA vaccines with a misdemeanor.

Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, and Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, sponsored HB 154. It was introduced in the House Health & Welfare Committee on Feb. 15 by Nichols. According to the bill text, “A person may not provide or administer a vaccine developed using messenger ribonucleic acid technology for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state.”

Nichols has an associates degree in business administration; Boyle has attended college, no mention of a degree, and lists her occupation as “rancher.” Neither knows a lick about biology, obviously, but they’re trying to pass a law to criminalize a useful medical tool.

It goes without saying that they’re Republican. Also batshit nuts and ignorant.

I do appreciate that they added that “or any other mammal” clause to their law. At least they’re admitting that people belong to the mammalian taxonomic class! I suspect they just threw that in to make their wacky law sound sciencey.

They’re lying to us: news at 11

Fox News is being sued for $1.6 billion by Dominion voting systems for their lies about voter fraud. Mano has the story of how Fox News memos reveal that they knowingly lied. Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were presenting absolute lunatic Sydney Powell as a credible source on air, while saying behind the scenes that she was “lying,” “unguided missile,” “dangerous as hell,” “mind-blowingly nuts,” “totally off the rails,” “completely BS,” and “a complete nut.” Then they’d publicly treat her as a respectable source. They knew. They lied.

Also disgraceful: Maria Bartiromo, unhinged Trump fanatic, knew a few things about her sources.

“Powell’s source … explained that she gets her information from experiencing something ‘like time-travel in a semi-conscious state,’ allowing her to ‘see what others don’t see, and hear what others don’t hear,’ and she received messages from ‘the wind,'” stated the lawsuit.

Real journalists, on hearing that their witness got their information from someone who claimed to have traveled in time while snoozing, would just close their notebooks, hang up or walk out, and refuse to use anything from that source ever. Not Bartiromo! She went live with it, not bothering to acknowledge that she got it all from a trippin’ loon.

Remember, nothing out of Fox News is journalism, it’s all dishonest propaganda. I hope they lose their lawsuit. Losing $1.6 billion would sting, but realistically, their wealthy billionaire backers will cover the loss and they’ll keep on poisoning the country with lies. We’re never going to pop that bubble as long as inequity allows the rich to trample the truth.

Or as long as one of our political parties is corrupt and willing to cover up the facts. Here’s an ugly local story about a Minnesota state representative.

According to the police reports, Grossell, 53, appeared intoxicated when he walked into the hotel bar at the Best Western Plus Capitol Ridge, known as the Kelly Inn, on St. Anthony Avenue near the state Capitol shortly after midnight on May 4. Like many lawmakers from Greater Minnesota, Grossell rented a room there while the Legislature was in session. [Hey, I’ve stayed at that hotel several times — I had no idea it was infested with politicians! –pzm]

After three more drinks, the bartender told police, Grossell slumped over a table. A hotel security guard was called over, and, according to a video footage reviewed by police, Grossell shoved the security guard five times, the fifth time being a two-handed shove that caused the guard to lose his balance. A “grapple” ensued, police reports state. The guard later said Grossell slapped him at one point but he was uninjured. The guard allowed Grossell to go to his hotel room.

The hotel called police. The guard said he wanted to press assault charges, and officers said hotel staff wanted Grossell evicted.

Officers found Grossell kneeling on the floor of his room. He was “unable to fully communicate.” Unsure if Grossell was having a medical episode, and believing he was unable “to care for himself,” a St. Paul police sergeant decided to have Grossell taken to Regions.

After investigators viewed security footage and interviewed witnesses, they cited Grossell for disorderly conduct.

According to the police reports, Grossell became “belligerent” at the hospital on several occasions, leading to an escalating situation that resulted in police arresting him for trespassing.

A nurse reported that Grossell was being “so disruptive in the pod that visitors and patients were being disturbed from their care, coming out of their rooms to see what had been going on,” one officer wrote. A doctor had concluded there was no medical reason to keep him there, and they needed him to leave so that other patients in the waiting room could be seen. Grossell was offered cab fare to take him home, but he refused.

The nurse told the officer that “Grossell referred to her as a ‘sick b—-‘ and told her to ‘get your head out of your ass.’”

This unsavory and unpleasant person has been elected to state office twice. He serves on the House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform committee. He is, of course, a Republican. Notice how the state party responds to this news.

Grossell, who sits on the House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform committee, among others, has faced no formal repercussions within the state Legislature. On Wednesday, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, declined to comment. As head of the Republican caucus, Daudt could effectively “discipline” Grossell by getting him removed from committees. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, has the ultimate power over such things. She declined to comment Wednesday.

The Republicans have no integrity or honor. Hortman, a Democrat, is also letting him escape with no consequences. And this is how we run the country?

Driftglass & Blue Gal tell it like it was

One podcast I listen to fairly regularly is “The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal,” and the latest episode was weirdly reassuring. It was a reminiscence about the state of blogging in Ye Olde Days, you know, the early 2000s-2010s. It reminded me of how horribly awful the political landscape was then, and of all the faux liberals who dominated the networks and newspapers. It’s still the same old problem — the NY Times is not a progressive newspaper at all, in case you hadn’t noticed — but it was so much worse back then. Chris Matthews was considered left wing! The Dixie Chicks got canceled! David Brooks was given a sinecure at the NY Times! Ann Coulter was featured on MSNBC!

Political media is still generally abominable, but this podcast made me aware that maybe there has been some slight progress. I’ll excuse it for making me feel old.

Shame on Temple University

The Temple University Graduate Student Association has been on strike for about a month. They’ve been protesting the fact that the university demands full-time work for $19,500 a year, and expects them to live on that in a major city on the East Coast. I lived in Philadelphia 23 years ago, and I can tell you that even then $19,500 would have been starvation wages. I don’t know how they’ve been coping in 2023.

I guess the answer is that they haven’t, and that’s why they’re striking.

Now Temple University, which has always played up their role in serving the working class and poorer communities in the region, has decided to send out a little surprise message to the striking workers.

As a result of your participation in the TUGSA strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the spring semester. You now owe the full balance listed in TUpay, which is due by Thursday, March 9.
If your balance is not paid-in-full by the due date, you we be assessed a $100 late payment fee and a financial hold will be placed on your student account. This hold will prevent future registration,

Who is running that place nowadays? Some cartoon villain?