This is the moment the spell of the Red Scare broke. It had been cast over the American public, and after this encounter on the Senate floor, it all seemed stupid, McCarthy, petty and small.
Jolted to reality by Joseph Welch, we rightfully asked ourselves, “What were we thinking?”
Have you no decency, sir?
It bears repeating; the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy was little more than an attempt to gain political power by bullying, denigrating, and attacking those less powerful than himself.
Have you no decency, sir?
Those caught up in the thrall of Donald Trump and his cronies gleefully attack gay and trans people, immigrants, black people, and even women. They are convenient surrogates, powerless to stop the bullying, and in the case of gays and trans people, unknown enough to most people to be defended.
Have you no decency, sir?
And here we are, less than a week from probably the most consequential election of my life. Where is our Joseph Welch? Where is the person who will finally break this spell we’ve been under? Who will deliver us from this pettiness and smallness?
“As to be expected, the more I’ve talked about what I value most — which is my Catholic faith — the more polarizing I’ve become. It’s a decision I’ve consciously made and one I do not regret at all,” Butker said Friday evening in an address at a gala in Nashville, Tennessee.
Harrison Butker – Kicker… The Kicker! from the KC Chiefs. He’s the KICKER!
Why are your outdated personal opinions about what other people do with their lives considered values of Catholicism? Why are you using an appeal to authority to justify your own idiotic personal opinions that have nothing whatsoever to do with being Catholic?
“I’m a practicing Catholic, and that’s why I kick puppies. It’s my Catholic Faith!!!”
Personally, there is nothing in the way I was raised or taught that made me think it’s okay to tell women their best lives are lived serving men and their children. I think you have Catholicism and evangelical christianity mixed up, but I’d wager there is also some diversity in their practices and values as well.
Own it you feckless coward! Your fetish is a woman who stays at home and raises the kids.
You’re entitled to your tastes. I’m not going to kink-shame. If you find a woman whose wish is exactly that, she’s happy, and you’re happy. More power to you both.
But don’t pretend or confuse your personal tastes with what is and what is not ideal or mandated by your “faith.”
Diversity, have you heard of it? Ah, but then you’re probably not a fan of that either.
Sigh, is this really a thing with these idiot cultural warriors? They can’t seem to separate their own kinks with what is ideal? I like it, they say, it works for me, so therefore it is best and everybody should do it.
I’m reading this horrifying article about this poor kid who had a breakup with his girlfriend, spiraled, acted out, and eventually killed himself. His mom blames TikTok for providing him with provocative suicidal ideation videos, but at the end, the lede, buried as deep in exposition as you can get, revealed this nugget:
When Dave realized that Mason had gone to his room, he ran there and pounded on the door, trying to get him to unlock it.
But Mason was already gone. The 16-year-old died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
This happened in Arkansas, so I wondered how easy it is for a kid to get a gun.
You must be 18 to purchase, but you can possess a shotgun or rifle without restriction at any age. Did mom and dad buy him a shotgun for his sweet 16? If he were 18, he could purchase any weapon with no restrictions. No parental notification. No waiting period. No permit. No mandatory safety course. No registration. Nada.
So parents need to know what books kids are reading, what teachers are saying about sex, whether or not there’s a trans kid in their county, and what their kids are doing on TikTok, but are perfectly ok with that same child possessing a device specifically designed to take a life.
A child, mind you. Can’t vote, can’t drink, and can’t enlist in the military.
It boggles my mind.
So let’s say it was a gun of one of the parents. They are the ones who brought the weapon into the house and failed to secure it. No information can be found on the internet about what kind of gun was used. Was it a rifle or shotgun, that he would be legally allowed to possess, or a handgun he got access to by other means. I think it’s telling what the news article leaves out, while calling for accountability for TikTok. I mean, TikTok is trash, but the elephant in the room is easy access to guns.
You are 5x (3x by suicide, 2x by homicide) as likely to die by gun violence if there is a firearm in your house, either by your own hand or the hand of a family member. The best way to stay safe from gun violence is to not own a gun.
I was speaking with someone a while back, trying to get to the crux of the wrongness of the assertions that the election was stolen, the covid vaccine is harmful, and the mainstream media is lying about it.
So I told a story. I told the story about how back in 2002/2003, I knew that Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Credible sources trotted out evidence, and the main stream media had agreed. World governments agreed. Saddam could come for the US next with his weapons of mass destruction. That’s why we had to go in and fight a war.
I had watched in the years leading up to this, countless inspectors finding nothing. I had watched the brinksmanship, the back and forth; did they have access; didn’t they have access. I didn’t know anyone on the team. I didn’t know anybody from the intelligence agencies. I had no access to any first hand data about the situation.
I knew in my gut that Saddam had nothing and the war was a lie.
“Without data you’re just a person with an opinion.”
W Edward Deming
My correct selection of “black” on the roulette wheel was no indication of my credibility. It was no guarantee on future outcomes. It was not even an indication of any probable future outcomes.
I moved the needle exactly nowhere. Sure, I made a correct assertion, but with no data, no evidence, and no basis whatsoever.
Practice it with me. Don’t trust me in any capacity. I have no insight. I have an opinion based on nothing. I could be wrong.
If anyone has any doubt about the veracity of these anti-vaccine conspiracies going around, I can assure you they are pure unadulterated lies. These are not well meaning, but misinformed, people who really believe these things and just “want to help.” These are malevolent forces, bad actors actively trying to sow discord in the US. Probably other places as well, but I can tell you definitively about what I see in the US.
My day to day job is running communications and web infrastructure for a wide variety of clients – email, web, messaging. This means that I am privy to the attacks that happen, the attempts to sell pharmaceuticals, scam you out of bitcoin, steal money, phish identities – you name it, I’ve seen it for going on 25 years now.
Currently, there is a concerted effort to undermine people’s faith in government, public health, and society. I will share one example here in image form, because I do not want to give it any visibility to search engines.
excerpt of the body of a website comment form spam
The rest of the body contains various links to a google drive account with hundreds of meme-ready images to share on social media professing to the myth that the Covid-19 vaccines somehow shed live viruses to other people, something called vaccine shedding. If you want a quick history of this and to see if there is any truth at all, read the wikipedia article.
In short, there are no modern live virus vaccines in use. So virus shedding is not a thing, okay? It was only partially a thing with the oral version of the polio vaccine in the 1950s.
Why are they posting this stuff, you might ask. Why work so hard to hunt down and post contact form, email, website spam?
Why would someone anyone do this?
Let me be clear, these are not concerned citizens “trying to get the word out.” These people, organizations, state actors are paid to spread this misinformation. Based on the webserver logs, I show that between 50% and 85% of all traffic to websites that I host and maintain is coming from China, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus.
There is no content I host that would interest any individuals in those places. The only interesting bit to them is that these sites are hosted using WordPress, the single most popular content management software in the world. It’s popular and predictable, so it draws in bad actors trying to foment discord and steal money.
This the reason that captchas exist, folks, in addition to all the behind the scenes stuff – mitigation techniques that attempt to weed out automated spam posts. Sometimes, however, it’s just people being paid to post stuff.
And someone is getting paid to do this.
If you are disposed to believe these sorts of posts, please understand that these people are not your friends. They are not aligned with you politically or spiritually. They are manipulating you for nefarious ends. They are attempting to undermine your faith in the rule of law, public health, science. What they gain is a divided country, hobbled both politically and economically.
So here’s another thing I don’t understand. Vaccine hesitant people – I see you on Facebook. Your sharing of crazy “facts” from random websites is truly awe-inspiring.
For example, there’s a thing where some people think that vaccinated people shed DNA and it affects people around you. Another is that the mRNA mechanism of the vaccine itself can rewrite your DNA. I am not making this up.
I apparently have never ever fully grasped the depths of human stupidity… but that’s a post for another day.
The short of it for now: I thought the vaccine was Trump’s triumph. Operation Warp Speed. Remember that? Dear leader saved us all with his remarkable leadership and vision.
I remember him and you decrying the liberal media’s ingratitude for the vaccine. Trump himself lamented that he wasn’t getting credit for the vaccine. Nobody thanks me.
Pouty face.
But then suddenly, there’s a good 40% of the US that says they don’t trust it. Is it now Biden’s vaccine? What happened?
No, I really want to know. No, I actually don’t. That’s a rhetorical question.
I love how Foxnews and the like are talking about Dr. Seuss in their ongoing segment, “Libs are trying to destroy America – Endless Culture War edition.” Frankly, the recent news is a gift to radical right wing media. They can’t get enough of the outrage.
But I don’t really want to talk about that, I guess. It’s sort of the context, but I really want to talk about the great white middle class, those with whom Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was so impatient.
Why is it taking so long for us? Why is realizing that society is deeply racist and has been built that way for centuries rolling along in such slow motion? Yes, the arc of the moral universe is long and it does bend toward justice. But why so long, and why is the arc so gentle?
I reflect on my own journey of understanding and the increasing granularity of my own personal discoveries of racist things. I personally wouldn’t have found Dr. Seuss racist growing up. Haha, look at the funny characters. That’s what Chinese people are. Look at the interesting African tribal guys. Oh, that’s what Africans look like. My personal journey didn’t get me very far, because it’s a feedback loop of normality.
Why is your favorite dish something your mom made?
As time has gone on, I, like a lot of other normative white folks, have awakened to the realization that black people and Asians don’t like being portrayed like that, that stereotypes are bad. They would never draw themselves like that or portray themselves like that.
I get it. Now let me continue to take myself on my personal journey toward woke-ness. Bravo. Please let me pat myself on my woke-ass back.
Bah! It’s this personal journey bullshit that’s making it take so long!
But here’s the thing – there’s a shortcut.
Psst. They have been telling us for decades, and sometimes for even hundreds of years.
All we had to do was listen.
When people tell you what you said was hurtful, believe them.
When people tell you a depiction is racist and hurtful, believe them.
When people tell you that police profile and harass them, believe them.
When people tell you their city’s water is full of lead, believe them.
When people tell you they have experienced sexual harassment/assault in public and in their workplaces, believe them.
When people tell you they hurt, believe them.
Really, it boils down to – believe people when they tell you things they experience and don’t filter their words through your own completely different experiences.
Today’s big story on foxnews.com is a real head scratcher, but it perfectly encapsulates the silly arguments that they and radical right media make to distract, score vague emotional points, and stir up discord in society.
“John Kerry’s family still owns private jet as he leads climate fight, FAA records indicate,” they breathless report while clutching their pearls.
Okay, so let’s break this down folks. First, this is a classic ad hominem, attempting to discredit the messenger rather than the message. Most of what Fox News does is attack the person, rather than policy position or relevant actions. What’s more, most of the time the person they are attacking is made of straw, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.
What are you saying, Fox News? Kerry is a hypocrite? Okay, let’s go down that path. He’s a hypocrite. I agree with you. What now? Are you insinuating that he will not enact or support policy that will promote sustainable energy investment?
Are you saying he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
“Look,” you say, “he says he’s all about conservation, but he flies around in a private jet.” And then you leave that hanging in the air as if that’s it. Case closed, wrap it up boys, we’re done here. Dem discredited!
If we dig a little deeper, we have to ask ourselves if what you’re really saying is that John Kerry is a duplicitous energy wasting bastard who does not support what we, Fox News, support, namely that global warming is an existential threat.
John Kerry is not a serious proponent for real policy change with respect to renewable energy, because he flies around in a private jet.
I do not think your argument means what you think it means, Fox.
It’s interesting to see misogyny alive and well in Republican circles. Now, I’m not going to defend her aims, but I can sympathize and recognize when someone has been pushed off a glass cliff. For those unfamiliar with the term, a glass cliff is the cliff that weak men push women off when they need to accomplish something difficult and don’t know how to do it or if it will even work.
Have to do a bunch of layoffs but don’t want to look bad doing it? Bring in a woman, have her fire everybody, and when morale tanks, change her out for someone, “more aligned with our workplace culture.” Bonus points if you can smear her with some salacious detail on the way out. Examples include, Carly Fiorina or Ellen Pao. Anyway, check out this article from vox that goes into greater detail.
“Hey, hire a woman to do it. If she fails, we can fire her and say we tried to be inclusive.”
Chuckle chuckle chuckle. Backslaps all around.
And so we arrive at the 2020 election, and the allegations of fraud. Read this for backstory. Long story short – Sidney Powell has been disavowed, fired, terminated, and downsized with prejudice. None of the machinations of the Trump administration worked, so the guilty must be punished. Never you mind about the buck stopping anywhere but Trump.
Their legal team pawed at every legal door possible and came up empty handed. When things went sideways (because of lack of evidence), they fabricated it and lied about it in the press.
Sidney was there leading the charge, taking one for her President, with the tacit approval of Trump and Giuliani.
Now that things have pretty much completely failed, they’ve decided she’d make an excellent scapegoat.
“Mr. President, it was all her fault. We failed because she was unlikeable, incompetent, and opportunistic. She didn’t have your best interests at heart.”
And so, our little cadre of incompetent, unlikeable, opportunistic men nudged Sidney out of the circle, off the glass cliff, to tumble down and down.
During the 2000s, Laura and I were election functionaries. We verified the identities of the voters on the rolls, we observed the rule of law concerning the casting of ballots and prohibited electioneering (political slogans and merchandise within a certain distance of the polling place). Each of us inspected and signed the blank ballots for accountability (so that we know how many ballots there were and that some “extra” ballots don’t just show up someplace), helped people with technical problems, and secured the ballots before, during and after the election. We were unable to leave the voting room (except bathroom breaks). Lunch was provided for us. We then counted the ballots and reported the final tally to the election commission.
This was all done on paper, hand counting, hand reporting, signatures, observed by poll workers representing the three major parties here. There were times I fought for the intended will of a voter even when it didn’t agree with my party. A stray mark from a frail hand no where near a candidate should not invalidate an obvious selection. The other poll workers were equally committed to a fair and impartial outcome.
Once the final numbers are reported, the original ballots are sealed in a briefcase and affixed with the final tally. We are then able to watch the precincts report the count and observe ours entered in the total.
You would think, listening to Donald Trump, that elections are a new thing, that hell, trying to steal an election is a new thing, as if no one has ever thought of that. Elections have been going on in one form or another for thousands of years. We have developed very robust chains of trust based on transparency, redundancy, checks and double checks.
I have personally observed and participated in the process as a poll worker, and I can confirm that there is no possible way that there could be fraud in an election.
If someone fudged the vote tally reports, we would know it, because we know what we counted. Votes are not tracked by individuals (of course), but they are tracked by polling place or by precinct or district.
Could an individual with a hidden pen change votes or invalidate them surreptitiously? Yes, it’s possible, but more than likely that person would be caught, and at most they wouldn’t be able to affect more than a few 10s of votes. It could never arrive to the levels required to change the outcome.
I walked away from each election I participated in confident in the outcome, even when it didn’t go my way. I was assured that the process worked and that the will of the people was being heard.
So stop. Please stop. There is no fraud. There could be no fraud. Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States. Stop trying to undermine the will of the people and our democratic system.
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time," said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
