Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2084 - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE HALLOWEEN EDITION 2011.01

http://indepthnh.org/2019/10/30/ghouls-and-zombies-dems-and-gop-scary-day-at-the-nh-state-house/

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2084 - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE HALLOWEEN EDITION 2011.01

2 DAYS - daily election day countdown

This post is a bit disorganized compared to the previous Weekly Hodge Podge posts.

Partly, the disorganization is due to time constraint. But also this one came together sort of randomly, and I am okay with it that way. Maybe it's more trick or treat style without sections thematically organizing content.

BUT ALSO, after spending at least an hour Sunday morning editing and adding pictures of Trump as a vampire and many other edits, when I went to finish the post today, now, Monday morning, NONE OF THOSE CHANGES HAD BEEN SAVED!!!! This makes me pissed off. Blogger (owned by Google) has forced us bloggers to shift to the new version of Blogger, and though it left "legacy version" available for a while, and I cheated longer by saving key URLs to dashboard, Google/Blogger finally "turned off" those URLs leading to Legacy version and forced us all to start using it. And it's buggy and doesn't work, CLEARLY, as evidenced by this complete loss of all the edits I made on this post yesterday. I do not want to be a beta tester for Google. The company should have kept Legacy version available because it worked. I never experienced this problem with it.

In fact, I am writing this text in Notepad because the auto-save feature in Blogger seriously lags the typing of text, especially with long posts, and it's really fucking annoying.

While I am at it, just FYI, embedded videos show up in the editing/draft window as grey boxes and not in a preview mode that allows them to be identified for what they are. So to keep videos straight as I draft, I have to take the extra step of labeling all of them, which is time consuming though not a terrible thing to do.

Of course, none of this blather and aggravation compares to what is really upsetting in our world, such as what i just learned but have no news link for: children from other countries (non-Mexican) are being released into Mexico because they are illegal immigrants, but since they are not from Mexico, they have no support system at all, plus they are children with no resources.

That is vile and criminal.

But vile and criminal is the hallmark of the thing that calls himself president who is the occupant of our house, the people's house, and all his power-hungry toadies who have enabled him.

This election is rigged. It is rigged by Trumpists trying to retain power for his Orange-ness.

Always remember that Trump is all about projection. When he says the rigged election will be the most horrible thing ever, he is projecting the consequences of how he and his lawyers are suppressing votes, how he is making a clarion call to his crazies to intimidate voters at the polls, and even worse, when caravans of his loyal nutjobs try to intimidate Biden/Harris buses and run them off the road, he PRAISES THEM.

That action is inciting violence, which is a felony. TRUMP IS A FELON. Maybe someone with some conviction should grab him by the vagina and arrest him.

Just two more days as the publishing of this post but one more day in the reality of when I write it.

AND NOW THE NEWS....

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/10/31/055204/why-do-we-keep-setting-our-clocks-back-an-hour

Why Do We Keep Setting Our Clocks Back an Hour?

Posted by EditorDavid  from the falling-backwards dept.
"Its that time of year again," writes long-time Slashdot reader rufey:Millions of people around the world will be adjusting (or have already adjusted) their clocks... Over the years it is apparent that most people who have spoken about the twice-yearly clock change oppose it.

So I ask, why are we still changing clocks in the year 2020?
Long-time Slashdot reader thegreatbob believes the answer is: inertia.Personally, I am less opposed, and much more indifferent to its continued existence. One thing (arguably good) that it does do is provide distinct, specific temporal reference points that the gradual changing of seasons does not, by forcing people to take some sort of irregular action.

Do I think this in any way helps cancel out the harm caused by upsetting the sleep cycles of a huge portion of the population? Absolutely not.
But Slashdot reader Anonymouse Cowtard argues they're grateful for the time change — because "I was sick of the sun waking me at 5 a.m."

Since it is that time of year again, share your own thoughts in the comments.

And why do we keep setting our clocks back an hour?






https://www.e-flux.com/journal/76/72878/what-can-we-learn-from-vampires-and-idiots/

Armed Trump Supporters Attempt To Road Rage Biden Campaign Out Of Texas

Robyn Pennacchia
October 31, 2020 01:40 PM

An event in support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Pflugerville, Texas has been canceled for "security reasons" — those "security reasons" being a group of heavily armed Trump supporters that have been following the Biden/Harris bus around the country, from swing state to swing state, trying to run it off the road and ramming into vehicles they suspect belong to Biden voters. You know, because that's just a really good and normal way to try and win an election!

Texas State Rep Sheryl Cole announced last night that the event, meant to be held jointly with Austin Young Democrats, had to be canceled because "Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits."

And she was not kidding. One of Trumpists actually rammed their car into Biden supporter's car while trying to run them off the road.

Dr. Eric Cervini, a campaign volunteer, posted a video of the madness to Twitter.

Cervini also posted a video of the Trump truck trying to run the Biden supporter's car off the road. Naturally, Trump supporters are claiming on Twitter that no such thing happened and that actually, the Biden voter was the one starting shit with their car.

There was, reportedly, also a lot of screaming about how Joe Biden is a communist.

Although Texas has long been considered a deep red state, it's not so clear this time around. Demographic changes have lead the state to move a little to the Left in some areas, leaving the things a little more evenly split than they have been in the past. Kamala Harris has been campaigning there this past week in a bid to flip it.

In an interview with Houston's ABC13, Harris said:

"The people of Texas have so much at stake in this election. And certainly, when you look at Houston and you look at the numbers of people who contracted (COVID-19)...when you look at the small business community of Houston...Joe and I feel a very strong sense of commitment to right the wrongs, and implement a plan that is getting us back on our feet and building back better. And Houston would be a direct beneficiary of that."

It's not clear if Harris would have been at this particular event, but Wendy Davis was expected to be there, as was Congressman Lloyd Doggett and Austin mayor Steve Adler.

You know what will be really nice? The fact that next week may be the last week when "armed" is an adjective frequently used to described supporters of the President of the United States of America. These people will still exist, they will still be armed, they will still be fucking batshit and they will still be dangerous. But they won't be the people currently getting what they want, and on some level, that will be a relief. A small relief, sure, but we have to take what we can get at this point.

[MSN]

https://warontherocks.com/2016/02/donald-trump-realism-and-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/







Trump disappeared all the data. All of it. — Huge comprehensive report at HuffPost

With no data, can we even really say that they HAVEN'T ended coronavirus like this White House list of "accomplishments" claims? (Politico)

https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/146457710/Trump-Vampire---Sucking-the-life-out-of-everyone

MORE VARIOUS AND SUNDRY NEWSY LINKS

And that, and a million other insane things that are far too numerous to blockquote, is Why He'll Be Voting For Kanye. — Vice

Well hello 17-page House doc on the HHS propaganda COVID/election campaign! Get in Dok's belly! (House.gov)

This is a beautifully reported story on how the Trump admin interfered for Turkey with the Justice Department's Halkbank prosecution. I had forgotten "Attorney General Matthew Whitaker" even existed! — New York Times

Amy Bony Carrot's confirmation is one more fuck you to feminists. — Amanda Marcotte at Salon

Forced hysterectomies by the ICE gynecologist up to at least 57. (Intercept)

Judge DQs DOJ's attempt to defend Trump from E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit after he denied raping her, saying she wasn't his type. — CNN

Go to jail for one hundred and twenty years, NXIVM guy. (Buzzfeed)

Know who else should go to jail for one hundred and twenty years? This awful sociopath alt-right youtuber I'd never heard of in this story from two years ago. — Daily Beast

No bail for the seemingly very rapey one from the State Department. (Trigger warning obviously.) — Daily Beast

These Nazis, former Marines and porn actors, may have been plotting to kill Black Lives Matters' Alicia Garza. (HuffPost)

These Nazis just seem exhausting. (Buzzfeed)

Harley David Sonofanelectricbike. (The Verge)

Goblincore. — Mashable


https://www.wonkette.com/cant-follow-bannon-giulianis-bizarre-made-up-joe-biden-corruption-china-plot-here-try-some-crack

So let's just close by noting that the exact same people who screamed that the Steele Dossier was FAKE NEWS, and Brett Kavanaugh's accusers were FAKE NEWS, just like all the women who accused Trump of sexual assault were FAKE NEWS, and Russian influence in the 2016 election was FAKE NEWS — those same people Jacob Wohl'd up their own LITERAL FAKE NEWS dossier about Hunter Biden and talked themselves into believing it was true. Demanded that social media platforms let it run riot on their platforms! And are currently excoriating actual news outlets for refusing to treat it as if it's real news.

And indeed the wingers moved as one to throw China up against the wall and see if it would stick.

Well, one of the presidential candidates gave his child China all right. But sadly for Donald Trump Jr., he wasn't that child.


Researchers now say we should be getting 22 hours of sleep a day. (Reductress)

Militia shithead goes on Alex Jones to promise he's ready to kill us all, but like probably only if we need killing. — Media Matters

Relevant! Trump and MAGA supporters want to kill you. (Rude Pundit)

How does QAnon survive none of its theories coming true? The same way every other cult does. — Religion Dispatches

Indivisible will be protesting the day after the election if Trump does a Trump. Find your event here. (Protect The Results)



Armed Trump Supporters Attempt To Road Rage Biden Campaign Out Of Texas

Robyn Pennacchia
October 31, 2020 01:40 PM

An event in support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Pflugerville, Texas has been canceled for "security reasons" — those "security reasons" being a group of heavily armed Trump supporters that have been following the Biden/Harris bus around the country, from swing state to swing state, trying to run it off the road and ramming into vehicles they suspect belong to Biden voters. You know, because that's just a really good and normal way to try and win an election!

Texas State Rep Sheryl Cole announced last night that the event, meant to be held jointly with Austin Young Democrats, had to be canceled because "Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits."

And she was not kidding. One of Trumpists actually rammed their car into Biden supporter's car while trying to run them off the road.

Dr. Eric Cervini, a campaign volunteer, posted a video of the madness to Twitter.

Cervini also posted a video of the Trump truck trying to run the Biden supporter's car off the road. Naturally, Trump supporters are claiming on Twitter that no such thing happened and that actually, the Biden voter was the one starting shit with their car.

There was, reportedly, also a lot of screaming about how Joe Biden is a communist.

Although Texas has long been considered a deep red state, it's not so clear this time around. Demographic changes have lead the state to move a little to the Left in some areas, leaving the things a little more evenly split than they have been in the past. Kamala Harris has been campaigning there this past week in a bid to flip it.

In an interview with Houston's ABC13, Harris said:

"The people of Texas have so much at stake in this election. And certainly, when you look at Houston and you look at the numbers of people who contracted (COVID-19)...when you look at the small business community of Houston...Joe and I feel a very strong sense of commitment to right the wrongs, and implement a plan that is getting us back on our feet and building back better. And Houston would be a direct beneficiary of that."

It's not clear if Harris would have been at this particular event, but Wendy Davis was expected to be there, as was Congressman Lloyd Doggett and Austin mayor Steve Adler.

You know what will be really nice? The fact that next week may be the last week when "armed" is an adjective frequently used to described supporters of the President of the United States of America. These people will still exist, they will still be armed, they will still be fucking batshit and they will still be dangerous. But they won't be the people currently getting what they want, and on some level, that will be a relief. A small relief, sure, but we have to take what we can get at this point.

[MSN]

THE PANDEMIC




THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT


Photo of flu patients during the First World War

I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.



ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.

WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS

Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.


Data can be found here, as always: 

This is also a good data site:
Worldometer - Coronavirus info

Last updated: November 02, 2020, 14:05 GMT

 United States

Coronavirus Cases:

9,477,317

Deaths:

236,504

Recovered:

6,104,497

About Worldometer
Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
THE CORONAVIRUS IS MUTATING NOW WHAT?

Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic - The Atlantic

A Red Cross worker in the United States, 1918

No image available



Posted by EditorDavid  from the advance-Australia-fair dept.
The continent of Australia, where nearly 25 million people live, "has recorded its first day of no local cases of Covid-19 in almost five months," reports the BBC:Zero cases were reported in the 24 hours between 20:00 on Friday and 20:00 on Saturday - the first time this has happened since 9 June. The state of Victoria - epicentre of Australia's second wave - recorded zero cases for the second day in a row after a 112-day lockdown.

Health officials say more restrictions may be eased in the coming days. "Thank you to all of our amazing health & public health workers & above all else the Australian people," Health Minister Greg Hunt said on his Twitter account.
Australia combined lockdowns with "proactive testing and tracing," the article reports, adding that in addition Victoria "imposed some of the severest stay-at-home and curfew rules in the world."

Folding@Home Exascale Supercomputer Finds Potential Targets For COVID-19 Cure (networkworld.com

Posted by BeauHD  from the group-effort dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World:The Folding@home project has shared new results of its efforts to simulate proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus to better understand how they function and how to stop them. Folding@home is a distributed computing effort that uses small clients to run simulations for biomedical research when users' PCs are idle. The clients operate independently of each other to perform their own unique simulation and send in the results to the F@h servers. In its SARS-CoV-2 simulations, F@h first targeted the spike, the cone-shaped appendages on the surface of the virus consisting of three proteins. The spike must open to attach itself to a human cell to infiltrate and replicate. F@h's mission was to simulate this opening process to gain unique insight into what the open state looks like and find a way to inhibit the connection between the spike and human cells.

And it did so. In a newly published paper, the Folding@home team said it was able to simulate an "unprecedented" 0.1 seconds of the viral proteome. They captured dramatic opening of the spike complex, as well as shape-shifting in other proteins that revealed more than 50 "cryptic" pockets that expand targeting options for the design of antivirals. [...] The model derived from the F@h simulations shows that the spike opens up and exposes buried surfaces. These surfaces are necessary for infecting a human cell and can also be targeted with antibodies or antivirals that bind to the surface to neutralize the virus and prevent it from infecting someone."And the tech sector played a big role in helping the find," adds the anonymous Slashdot reader. "Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, AWS, Oracle, and Cisco all helped with hardware and cloud services. Pure Storage donated a one petabyte all-flash storage array. Li

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/11/01/0239254/the-us-military-has-experienced-55443-covid-19-cases---including-vice-chief-of-space-force

The US Military Has Experienced 55,443 COVID-19 Cases - Including Vice Chief of Space Force (upi.com)

Posted by EditorDavid  from the sick-leave dept.
UPI reports:Space Force's vice chief of space operations tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday, Space Force announced.

According to a press release issued jointly by the Space Force and the Air Force, Gen. David D. Thompson took a test for the virus after learning that a close family member had tested positive. Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said Thompson has not shown symptoms of COVID-19 so far and was on leave last week, but returned to the Pentagon for work on Monday and Tuesday to address a virtual symposium for the National Defense Industrial Association and Texas A&M University. He is now self-isolating and working from home...

As of Thursday morning a total of 55,443 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the [U.S.] military since the beginning of the pandemic, with 8,839 of those reported among Air Force personnel.

Chief Of Staff Mark Meadows Unveils New White House COVID-19 Strategy: If You Can't Beat It, Join It!

Michael Mora
October 26, 2020 03:16 PM

media.giphy.com

Remember early in this pandemic, about 700 years seven months ago in one of his daily coronavirus briefings, when Donald Trump declared himself a "wartime president" against "the invisible enemy" named Covid-19? If not, here is a refresher:

Coronavirus: Trump calls himself 'wartime president' in battle with 'invisible enemy'youtu.be

It was a statement so ridiculous, it actually caused a small crash in the one thing Trump has cared about during his presidency: the stock market.

But on Sunday, October 25th, 2020, the war "ended." Or at least, that was what was declared by former Republican congressman and Trump's current (final?) White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Meadows's 17-minute appearance on CNN's "State Of The Union" on Sunday was like disasterpiece theatre. It began with host Jake Tapper asking obvious questions about contact tracing after it was reported that Mike Pence's chief of staff Marc Short and several aides at the VP's office tested positive for Covid-19. After Tapper pointed out several times that the White House did not notify people that could have been infected per CDC guidelines, Meadows chose instead to argue about the source.

Mark Meadows: We're not going to control the pandemicwww.youtube.com


TAPPER: According to "The New York Times" -- quote -- "Two people briefed on the matter said that the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had sought to keep the news of the outbreak from becoming public." Why would you do that? Is it because it's yet another sign of how much the White House has failed to contain the virus?

MEADOWS: Well, obviously -- yes. Yes, obviously, that's not a report. That's actually a tweet. And, when we look at this, when we're really talking about ...

TAPPER: No, that was a New York Times story.

Tapper pointed out some basic facts to Meadows:

TAPPER: So, Mark, Marc Short has been in close contact with Vice President Pence.

MEADOWS: Right. That's correct.

TAPPER: I mean, they are always with each other. Short is now positive for the virus.

MEADOWS: That's correct.

TAPPER: So, CDC guidelines say that Vice President Pence should quarantine for 14 days. Now, I understand the White House is trying to get around that by saying the vice president is an essential worker. But, Mark, how is going all over the country, how is that -- campaigning -- how is that essential work? It's not like he's helping to contain the virus, in fact, the opposite. He's holding rallies that could be spreading the virus.

Now this isn't the first time Mike Pence has ignored an AID(e)S crisis for political reasons, but it's even more jarring when coming from the person that is supposed to be leading the task force to stop this virus. Meadows kept insisting that Pence was following CDC guidelines despite Tapper pointing out he isn't.

Here's where Meadows declared victory, by declaring defeat:

TAPPER: It's coming from all sorts of places. It's coming from all sorts of places, because the pandemic is out of control.

MEADOWS: That's exactly the point. So, here's what we have to do. We're not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas...

It was so unbelievable, especially at the end of a presidential race hinging on who can resolve this crisis, that Tapper asked for a clarification.

TAPPER: Why aren't we going to get control of the pandemic?

MEADOWS: Because it is a contagious virus. Just like the flu, it's contagious.

TAPPER: Yes, but why not make efforts to contain it?

MEADOWS: Well, we are making efforts to contain it. And that's...

TAPPER: By running all over the country not wearing a mask? That's what the vice president is doing.

This is as close of a surrender as anyone has ever witnessed. So much so, the Biden campaigned seized on it to make their main point why we need to elect Joe:

Of course, this message is not technically new. Trump was already trying to claim premature victory in July. But now they are basically resigned to their lack of a plan.

Then Meadows came up with some next level deflection after Tapper pointed out the mixed messaging on masks from the administration at the Trump Covid rallies:

MEADOWS: Have you been to a rally? You come on with us to a rally, and we will -- we will show you. We give out masks.

TAPPER: They don't wear them.

MEADOWS: Well, it's a free society. You're not wearing one right now, Jake.

TAPPER: There's literally nobody in this room. There is literally not one person in the studio.

MEADOWS: Yes, and so -- so, you're saying that you always wear a mask wherever you go? Come on, Jake. The American people know that's not true. I know it's not true.

TAPPER: I wear a mask when -- except when I'm in here, in my office, and home. That is true, 100 percent.

Later Tapper posted these with what I can only imagine was petty glee.

The interview went so badly that even after the subject changed, the White House tried to pull Meadows out like The Sandman does to terrible acts at the Apollo Theater (which is still better than Trump on "60 Minutes"). Meadows attempted to play it cool, but Tapper decided to put it on front street so everyone at home knew how in trouble Meadows would be with President Biff Tannen.

TAPPER: Mark, I'm being told that we're getting the hook from your team over there at the White House. (LAUGHTER)

Stay safe, vote and see you next time.

Have a week!


https://www.newscientist.com/article/2258109-nasa-confirms-there-is-water-on-the-moon-that-astronauts-could-use/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1603728171

Check out these images of Javicia Leslie as the new, badass Batwoman. I can't wait to see the cowled sister beat up cops. I mean, hey, even the very white Bruce Wayne Batman fought the law (and won!) in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. (Variety)

http://handbill.us/2018/08/28/trump-demagogues-the-midterms/

Do We Finally Have Enough To Make A Negligent Homicide Charge Against Jared Kushner Stick?

Stephen Robinson
October 28, 2020 04:15 PM

Jared Kushner is the dumbest man who ever walked the Earth without stumbling into the mouth of a sleeping saber-toothed tiger. He might think he's smarter than all the Black people who've avoided marrying Ivanka Trump, but he's not. Unfortunately, his idiocy was a driving force in the Trump administration's disastrous COVID-19 response.

CNN reports that Donald Trump's useless son-in-law bragged to Bob Woodward in mid-April about how the president had “cut out the doctors and scientists" advising him on the pandemic. He told Woodward in a taped interview that Trump was “getting the country back from the doctors," and he referred to this process as “a negotiated settlement," because he's an asshole.

KUSHNER: There were three phases. There's the panic phase, the pain phase, and then the comeback phase.

Fuck you. We're talking about the coronavirus not Robert Downey Jr.'s career. This doesn't end with Iron Man.

KUSHNER: I do believe that last night symbolized kind of the beginning of the comeback phase.

Jerkoff Jared here was referring to that fateful day in April when Trump announced he was bored with the coronavirus and governors should just open their states up already. There was no plan and sure as hell nothing resembling the robust national testing strategy that could make this not a dumpster fire.

No, this wasn't the beginning of a “comeback phase" for America. It was more of a comeback for the coronavirus, but like Ms. Aretha Franklin, it had never gone away, girl.

KUSHNER: That doesn't mean there's not still a lot of pain and there won't be pain for a while, but that basically was, we've now put out rules to get back to work.

More than 40,000 Americans had died by this point, but Kushner won't quit with the MBA-speak, like a corporate consultant saying there'd be some "pain points" during the right-sizing. There was indeed “pain for a while," as almost 200,000 more Americans have died since April. That's more than 60 9/11s.

Trump is such a sociopath he couldn't stick to his own piddly-ass rules for reopening. It wasn't long before Trump was cheering on states such as Georgia, Texas, and Florida that opened well before they were ready. Currently, all three states are moving into the hot zone.

KUSHNER: Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors.

Yeah, this line is like the Bat-Signal for the guys at the Lincoln Project. The ads make themselves.

Giphy

We needed a president whose ego wasn't so fragile he wouldn't mind doctors taking the lead during a public health crisis. Trump wants to avoid responsibility for all the needless COVID-19 deaths that occurred on his watch, but Kushner said it loud and clear: “Trump's now back in charge."

And what do we have to show for it a week before the election? Trump and Kushner prioritized the economy over human life. This plan was evil but also stupid. The economy could never recover fully nor could Americans safely resume a normal life until the virus was contained.

Dr. Jor-El Anthony Fauci sounded this alarm in May when the idiots running the White House were trying to marginalize him.

DR: FAUCI: There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak you may not be able to control, which, in fact, heterodoxically would set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery. It would almost turn the clock back instead of going forward.

Kushner, who's totally lacking in self-awareness, told Woodward that “the most dangerous people around the president are over-confident idiots," but fortunately Trump had replaced them all with "more thoughtful people who kind of know their place."

While these obsequious sycophants politely stood by and watched, Trump and Kushner personally ushered in a coronapocalypse. The question now isn't whether they should walk out of the White House permanently on January 20, 2021, but whether they should do so in chains.

[CNN]

Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.


https://www.wonkette.com/conservatives-know-what-censorship-is-and-it-is-people-not-reading-their-tweets

The biggest example conservatives gave this week of being censored was the fact that Twitter briefly suspended (acting) Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan just because he tweeted something kind of racist.

The tweet read:

@CBP & @USACEHQ continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It's a fact, walls work.

The commissioner was informed through email that his account was locked because the tweet violated their rules. "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease," the email read.

I would say that accusing people of being "gang members, murderers, sexual predators" and drug dealers is pretty darned offensive and also likely to lead to the harassment of those who Trump supporters merely suspect are not here legally, because of the color of their skin. It's also incorrect. Statistically, undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than are citizens of the United States.

Neo-Nazis Arrested For Stalking Wrong Family In Wrong House

Robyn Pennacchia
October 30, 2020 03:30 PM

Two alleged members of The Base, a violent neo-Nazi terrorist group, have been arrested in Michigan for threats they made online.

Justen Watkins, 25, and Alfred Gorman, 35, were arrested Thursday morning on charges related to harassing and threatening a Michigan family whose house they mistakenly believed was the home of antifascist podcaster Daniel Harper. The home was actually occupied by a man named Richard Shea, his wife, and their infant child — none of whom, to anyone's knowledge, hosts a podcast of any kind.

According to an affidavit filed by Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant Sherry Workman, on December 11 of last year, the two men dressed up in skull masks and took pictures of themselves posing menacingly on the Sheas' porch, prompting the family to contact the police. Not long after, the men posted those pictures on The Base's publicly available Telegram page with the caption "The Base sends greetings to Daniel Harper of the Antifa podcast 'I Don't Speak German.'

Man in a skull mask standing outside of a house.

The Sheas' address was the target of a harassment campaign by members of The Base and other neo-Nazi groups, based on the incorrect belief that a podcaster who said mean things about Nazis lived there. The harassment was ratcheted up after the post went live. Even after Watkins realized he had gotten the wrong address, he bragged online that "message got across even with the wrong house too."

The men now face charges of unlawfully posting a message, gang membership, and using a computer to commit a felony.

Watkins, for his part, claims to be the new official leader of The Base, saying that he was personally appointed by founder Rinaldo Navarro (aka "Norman Spear," aka "Roman Wolf") when he stepped down earlier this year after being outed by The Guardian.

Navarro started The Base (the English translation of Al Qaeda, coincidentally or not) back in 2018, after he went to go meet up with white nationalist radio personality Harold Covington, who had hoped to turn the entire Pacific Northwest into some kind of whites-only country, even though that one other guy couldn't even pull that off in a North Dakota town with 16 people in it. Covington, however, did not show up, on account of how he was dead. Not long after, Navarro decided that taking over the Pacific Northwest was not enough and that he needed to assemble terrorist cells of white supremacists who would be willing to fight a race war. This is how The Base was born.

Navarro didn't just want casual white supremacists. No. He wanted violent ones. He wanted his own little army of Dylan Roofs out there doing mass shootings and other acts of terrorism. He recruited prospective members from far right sites and vetted them by quizzing them on their appreciation of SIEGE, the newsletters written by James Mason, another white supremacist who wanted to overthrow the country and who once tried to start another white supremacist group with Charles Manson that he had hoped would be like the Manson Family 2.0. It was not.

Similarly, Justen Watkins is not just some keyboard warrior who spent a lot of time on 4chan screaming racial epithets. He probably did that, too, but he also ran a "hate camp" in Bad Axe, Michigan, for Base members to get together with their assault rifles and train for the race war.

The affidavit states:

In November 2019, Watkins was identified as a member of The Base, who conducted recruiting and produced propaganda material for the group. The same month, Watkins ran a "hate camp" for members of The Base in Bad Axe, MI where Watkins led tactical and firearms training for members of The Base. The training was documented in videos used to make recruitment and propaganda videos for The Base.

Additionally, in early 2020 Watkins submitted a manifesto he wrote to numerous Instagram users on the status of The Base that was also shared on public The Base social media channels. Within the manifesto Watkins made the declaration (emphasis in original text): "I will train with firearms, explosives, knives, Ryder trucks, and anything else I have to destroy this K*KE SYSTEM THAT IS GENOCIDING MY people." He concluded the shared writing with the following call for violence (emphasis in original text): "To victory with PURE UNADULTERATED ARYANVIOLENCE! HAIL TERROGRAM!"

He seems nice.

Watkins and Gorman are not the only members of The Base to be arrested this year. In January, several of their highest ranking members were arrested for planning various terrorist attacks, including the planned brutal murder of a Georgia couple they believed to be "antifa." They were outed by another of their highest ranking members, who turned out to be an FBI agent. Not long after that, Rinaldo Navarro, having been exposed, left the group, giving the remaining higher-ups access to all the emails and social media passwords they would need to go on in his absence.

That didn't work out too well either. Turns out that one of the people Navarro entrusted with this delicate information was in fact an infiltrator, and soon enough, their social media profiles were littered with memes mocking him.

From there, things pretty much just imploded. And that was when Justen Watkins was allegedly put in charge.

It is not entirely clear what the current state of The Base is, how many people are involved or who will be in charge now that Watkins is likely going to prison. Hopefully no one.

[Michigan.gov]

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/76/72878/what-can-we-learn-from-vampires-and-idiots/

 Hunter Biden Is Very Bad, Wonkette Reluctantly Admits

Evan Hurst
October 28, 2020 08:54 AM

Tom And Jerry Reaction GIF
Giphy

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith saw a tweet from a Daily Caller idiot and had an observation:

Uh oh sounds pretty bad. Hunter Biden traded off his family name, just like every other person with a recognizable name that isn't "Smith" and parents who are powerful. Better take Donald Trump's advice and go beg the elections commission to let us change our vote away from Hunter Biden now.

In that spirit, here are the Top 10 Bad Things About Hunter Biden that Wonkette is now willing to admit we were Fake Newsing about, because of how George Soros paid us to, obviously:

1. Met in Biden Tower with Russians promising dirt on his opponent, a meeting he set up by jizzing all over his computer screen while typing "IF IT'S WHAT YOU SAY I LOVE IT, ESPECIALLY LATER IN THE SUMMER."

2. Signed checks for his dad to reimburse the family lawyer for paying off a porn star his dad fucked behind his stepmom's back, to keep her quiet before the presidential election.

3. Tweeted ADORRRRABLE pictures of himself with his baby while his dad was ripping babies out of their mommies' arms at the US-Mexico border.

4. Fleeced the Secret Service for the privilege of staying at Daddy's properties, then lied about it and said they let the Secret Service stay for free.

5. Got his legal fees paid by Daddy's presidential campaign.

6. Got his girlfriend a "job" doing "things" for Daddy's campaign. (And by "things" we mean SCREAMING VERY LOUDLY AND SCARING ALL CHILDREN AND HOUSEPETS.)

7. Was so grifty and gross with his family's "charity" that he and Daddy are now no longer even allowed to HAVE charities.

8. Alllllll those Chinese patents that just conveniently were granted by China while Daddy was president. Just for you! No reason!

9. Oh yeah and the sweatshops.

10. Had a face that was so weird and bad looking it is not even like a human face, it is like if you got too drunk to drive and decided to draw faces instead.

Just fooling, all those things were about Donald Trump's filthy children, and nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden.

We are sick and tired of writing about Hunter Biden, and writing about the Rudy/Russia disinfo op about the Bidens in Ukraine we've been living through ever since impeachment, though, and we hope to never do it again.

Giving us hope on that front is The Daily Beast, which reports that the Trump campaign isn't even messaging on Hunter Biden anymore, because of how that October Surprise turned out to be more like a COCKTOBER TURDPRISE, which isn't even a good pun, but we're four years into covering Trump and the election is next week, so we're tired.

That Daliy Caller idiot (see tweet above) may not have gotten the memo, but it turns out the Trump campaign, which is so poor it just pulled ads out of Florida, doesn't seem to have much interest in WHERE'S HUNTER:

Though the president has repeatedly mentioned the allegations in rallies, on Twitter, and at a presidential debate last week, his campaign has barely supplemented it with its paid media. With the exception of a few promos for "Where's Hunter?" merchandise, the campaign hasn't mentioned the younger Biden in ads on Trump's Facebook and Instagram pages since October 13, the day before the New York Post first reported on the contents of Biden's hard drives. Pro-Trump super PAC America First Action hasn't mentioned Hunter Biden at all in its Facebook or television ads since then.

The Beast reports that out of the Trump campaign's last 29 ads, only two have even remotely touched WHERE'S HUNTER.

One official working on the Trump reelection effort privately expressed to The Daily Beast this week that they saw little point in harping on the Hunter Biden emails and foreign-dealings stories, as it had little chance of significantly altering the narrative, even at the margins.

Even Ted Cruz is admitting that.

The Beast notes that there are some of the "Trump faithful" — read: the most dead-ender idiots who drink Trump's bathwater — who think the Hunter Biden thing is still a good campaign message:

"Joe Biden's corruption issue broke through the mainstream media blackout and Joe Biden lied in front of tens of millions of Americans. Republicans have to keep pressing that," said John McLaughlin, a top pollster for the president and his 2020 campaign. "Trump and his voters will be energized. Biden will try to stall for the remaining…days."

Hahahahahahaha John McLaughlin? THIS John McLaughlin?

OK.

Nobody gives a fuck about Hunter Biden, these conspiracy theories are stupid and bad since they all fail to remotely accuse Joe Biden (the candidate) of wrongdoing, and we will never write about these things ever again.

Unless we have to, in which case gonna be pissed.

The end.

[Daily Beast]

Here's Barack Obama Clowning On Trump Again, Because You're Into That Type Thing

Evan Hurst
October 27, 2020 02:20 PM

One of the only good things about this final week of the interminable 2020 presidential election season — besides the polls, which show that maybe it won't be our last election season ever — is that Barack Obama has been on the campaign trail kicking Donald Trump full-force right square in his nuts every chance he gets. Making fun of Trump's TV ratings, making fun of Trump for running away from "60 Minutes" and Lesley Stahl, etc.

It really gets under Donald Trump's skin when Barack Obama makes fun of him. It ruins his whole life and sends him into years-long tailspins. Remember that time Barack Obama killed Osama bin Laden with his fists while he kicked Trump in the nuts and laughed at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011? Trump is STILL pathetically trying to brag about minor characters the military has killed during his presidency and spreading conspiracy theories about how maybe Obama didn't kill bin Laden after all.

Anyway, Bamz is back at it today. And he's back on Trump's very low ratings, which are even lower than the ratings for COVID-19.


OBAMA: What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. [...] COVID, COVID, COVID, he's complaining! He's jealous of COVID's media coverage!

He really is. He was tweet-whining about it this morning. That the global pandemic that has killed 226,000 Americans because of his malevolent mismanagement is talked about more on the news than his glorious Dear-Leader-ness.

Here's Obama making fun of how Trump's White House is having its SECOND coronavirus outbreak in one month.


OBAMA: The White House — lemme say this. I lived in the White House for a while. You know, it's a controlled environment. You can take some preventive measures in the White House to avoid getting sick! Except this guy can't seem to do it! He's turned the White House into a hot zone!

It's true, maybe if everybody in the White House would stop breathing their stinky Nazi breath all over each other and actually accept that the pandemic was real, maybe they all wouldn't have so much coronavirus all the time.

Here's Obama helping Trump out by telling him that "tweeting at the TV doesn't fix things" and "watching TV all day doesn't fix things," noting that you actually have to GO TO WORK, LAZY ASS, if you want to fix the pandemic you have spread across the country.

And here: "The pandemic would have been challenging for any president, but this idea that somehow this White House has done anything but completely screw this thing up is nonsense."

Here is Obama making fun of Trump saying there's "not much" he'd do to change his coronavirus response, given the opportunity. "Really? Not much? You can't think of ANYTHING that you might be doing differently? Like maybe you shouldn't have gotten on TV and suggested we inject bleach to cure COVID?"

It's funny because Trump did that, because Trump is a ginormous fucking idiot, and Obama knows it.

There was so much more. There was Obama pointing out that he and Joe Biden created SHITLOADS more jobs than Trump "created," and he made fun of Trump saying he's been the best president for Black people since Abraham Lincoln. He even gave Jared Kushner some shit for saying Black people would love Trump if only they weren't so shiftless. "Who are these folks? What history books do they read?" (White supremacist alternative histories, we think.)

It was a good Obama speech, just like all Obama speeches are. But it's especially good when he's just completely mean to Trump, who deserves every bit of it.

One more week.

[videos via The American Independent]

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz Declares War On Mitch McConnell So We'll Call That A Nice Time

Stephen Robinson
October 27, 2020 04:25 PM

Mitch McConnell is the worst thing that happened to the Senate and possibly America. (Donald Trump couldn't have survived impeachment or stacked the federal courts with rightwing hacks without McConnell.) We all know McConnell's a cartoon villain but we wondered if he'd ever push mild-mannered Democrats past the point of civility's return.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's sham hearings and party-line confirmation, followed by her midnight Sith-lord swearing-in ceremony at the White House, might've finally alerted Democrats to the fact that they're dealing with a bunch of crooks. Senate Republicans have no honor, desire for consensus-building, or respect for tradition. Adhering to “norms" or even the promises they made publicly just four years ago are for suckers.

Democrats are sick of being suckers. It's not fun. Their kids are watching.

Brian Schatz is a young, idealistic senator from Hawaii. He believed in the world's greatest deliberative body, but after Barrett's drive-by confirmation, he's no longer confident in the Senate's ability to do great things. This is a legislative body with the time to stack the courts — McConnell moved on to another judicial appointment after ramming through Barrett — but can't manage to pass a stimulus bill that would help millions of struggling Americans during a global pandemic. This is because McConnell sees no value in compromise. His only joy comes from demonstrations of brute force.

McConnell has murdered the Senate, and Schatz took a moment Monday to eulogize the institution he loved.

SCHATZ: I really worry about the Senate itself. I was so thrilled to be here. The circumstances of my entering the Senate were tragic, actually, because of the death of my predecessor. But I'm not gonna lie. I was being sent to the world's greatest deliberative body. It's like a promising high school basketball player being the 12th man on the LA Lakers. That's how I felt. I walked in and I thought, “This is the big show, the place where we solve America's problems."

And I have seen the inexorable destruction of this institution because of a lack of restraint on the Republican side.

Schatz is a Democrat so he admits that he'd love to claim that the blame fell on both sides. But he just can't. It's like he doesn't even know who he is anymore.

SCHATZ: It would be easier for me, because I don't wanna sound like that. I don't get anything out of that.

Brian Schatz doesn't want to be Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton or that new douchebag from Missouri.

SCHATZ: I imagined these groups of people — and it wasn't always the moderates, right — in the middle. Nowadays, the only people cutting deals in the middle are the moderates. But back in the day, it was Teddy Kennedy and Orrin Hatch.

That's true! Kennedy and Hatch worked together on such legislation as the Ryan White AIDS Care Act, State Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. Cruz and Cotton spend most of their time scapegoating Democrats for the government's failures on Fox News.

SCHATZ: It was Danny Inouye and Ted Stevens. And now, there isn't even a desire to do big things here.

McConnell would disagree. He thinks passing giveaway tax cuts for billionaires is a noble cause, as is filling the courts with conservative judges so young they still have learner's permits. He hasn't actually improved anyone's life on a material level.

SCHATZ: There is a total lack of ambition to solve America's problems here. And there is a total lack of restraint when it comes to the exercise of power.

McConnell doesn't care if the past three Supreme Court justices were confirmed with a bare majority after he ditched the 60-vote threshold. The only thing “bipartisan" about Barrett's confirmation was its opposition, but once again, McConnell believes consent of the governed is a concept for suckers. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96 to three, but Barrett's vote in the Supreme Court will have no less authority.

Schatz didn't just mourn a simpler time and leave with his tail between his legs. He demands that Democrats build something better from the Republican rubble. Since Justice Ginsburg's death, Schatz has targeted Mitch McConnell's Senate majority. He's joined with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy to fundraise on Twitter for Democratic Senate candidates across the country. They're both adorably affable but they're not Charlie Brown trying to kick a football: They know that Republicans can't be reasoned with and only total defeat can even begin the process of repairing the Senate.

Better days are ahead but we still have work to do.

Donate to the Democratic Senate fund here.

And if you're on Twitter, go follow Schatz and Murphy. They're a reminder that the problem isn't the Senate in general. It's the Republicans who control it.

[Washington Post]

Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-pontifex-maximus-and-his-lawyer.html

MONDAY, MAY 20, 2019

The Pontifex Maximus and His Lawyer: Glenn Greenwald and his strange far-right blind spot


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[Cross-posted at Daily Kos.]

You may be like me, confused about how nationally known pundits who label themselves “progressives” can go on Fox News and encourage Tucker Carlson in his attacks on liberal Democrats. Or how they can tell their readers that the threat of white nationalism and its violence is “nonexistent,” or that calling attention to the threat of hate groups and neo-Nazis is exactly like the neocons blaming all of Islam for 9/11.

But this has been happening with increasing regularity within a certain faction of “progressive” journalists who, as it happens, are also convinced that Russian interference in the 2016 election is a complete non-story—particularly Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey.

Over the weekend, Tracey tweeted out his view that the threat from white nationalism is “nonexistent” and that liberals were being politically overwhelmed by the hysteria of it all:


I replied with an extended thread pointing out the many acts of white-nationalist terrorism before and after Charlottesville, more than enough evidence that the violent hate being stirred into action by the new generation of young fascists is a serious problem that deserves our full attention. We are being inundated in a disturbingly large wave of hate crimes, against an increasing range of victims. We’re even seeing assassination attempts being made by far-right ideologues who believe they are doing the bidding of the authoritarian figure they worship—namely, Donald Trump.

These trends are not contained just to the United States, of course. From Norway in 2011 to Christchurch in 2019, the problem of rising fascist authoritarianism and its attendant violence has become a global one. We’ve seen authoritarian regimes take power in Hungary, in Turkey, in the Phillipines, and the results have all been predictably brutal and frightening for anyone who believes in open democracies.

One of the worst examples of this, of course, is in Brazil, where the ascendance of the proto-fascist authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency has been accompanied by assassinations of his opponents and a surging tide of hate crimes that has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of assaults targeting the LGBT community—mirroring, perhaps on a more intense scale, what we are seeing in the United States. (Certainly Bolsonaro is more openly fascist and thuggish than Trump.)

So when Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and is highly active against Bolsonaro and his regime, published a tweet describing the kind of fear and loathing that exists within the LGBT community in Rio because of the regime, I politely reminded him that, while many communities (including the immigrant and Muslim, as well as LGBT) in the United States are under a similar cloud of fear, especially amid the current rising tide of hate crimes, people like Tracey—who Greenwald frequently promotes in his Twitter feed—were actively hurting our efforts to combat the problem by dismissing it as “nonexistent”: they “want to tell us that having white nationalists killing people in acts of targeted terrorism in our streets and houses of worship is just a figment of our overactive liberal imaginations.”

Greenwald—who apparently has a different interpretation of “nonexistent” than I do—responded that Tracey was saying “no such thing,” rather, that he was “saying it's important to keep the threat in perspective & not be alarmist about it so politicians can't exploit it.” We went to and fro, with me pointing out that “alarmist” is a label that could just as easily—and just as unjustifiably—be plastered on him as on me. And that I’ve been documenting the rise of this problem for years, which he full well knows.

I also pointed out that, in the not terribly distant past, he has himself been an enabler of fascist movements, much as Tracey is being now. So he dismissed me as a liar.

Well, here are the receipts. It’s a little story I call “The Little Pontifex Maximus Who Wanted to Make America White Again and His Lawyer.”

Ben Klassen
It all kind of begins in 1956, when a man named Ben Klassen invented an early version of an electric can opener and patented the device. Klassen was a tinkerer who had made a killing in real estate; he was one of the cofounders of Silver Springs, NV, and had walked away with a bundle. Klassen’s invention was a wall-mounted design, and he made another bundle off his patent for the first few years, mostly in industrial use. However, other designs that were cheaper, more portable and applicable to household appliances came along. By 1962 he had closed shop.

Having made a couple of small fortunes (mostly in real estate), Klassen decided to become a politician. A longtime member of the John Birch Society, he ran for the Florida House from his home in Broward County 1966 and won on an anti-busing, anti-government platform. He only served one term. Klassen also headed up a local group supporting George Wallace’s presidential candidacy.

After losing his seat in 1968, Klassen decided the Republicans and Democrats were too corrupted by Jews and founded his own party, the Nationalist White Party, in 1970. The NWP was aimed at recruiting white Christians: “We believe that the White Race was created in the Image of the Lord...” was No. 1 on the party’s official 14-point program. But it fell apart quickly when Klassen began expressing doubts about Christianity.

Klassen explained his apostacy in later books.
His main concern (elucidated at length in later works) was that Jesus was a Jew and the entire Christian faith was thus the tainted offspring of Judaism. Klassen regarded the Jews as children of Satan and believed no worthwhile religion could come from them. So he decided to found an entirely new religion, separate from Christianity and Judaism, predicated essentially on the worship of whiteness. He called it Creativity, and his organization the Church of the Creator.

Klassen’s first book, Nature’s Eternal Religion, explains the theology (such as it is) in detail: White people are the obvious cream of God’s creation, and as such should be held as the repositories of God’s Will, the holders of all religious, political and economic power. It’s also incredibly crude and vile, essentially third-grade-level racism expressed with sixth-grade-level intelligence. Klassen insisted on the persistent use of degrading stereotypes and epithets regarding all nonwhites and Jews. He reveled in it.

Klassen moved to rural North Carolina and set up his church operations near the rural town of Otto in 1982. He continued to churn out texts, notably The White Man’s Bible—a sort of refined version of the earlier texts—and an autobiography, Against the Evil Tide.

Here are some more prime pages from these texts. As I said, this is some of the most vile and hate-filled white supremacist propaganda you’ll find anywhere. The David Dukes and Richard Spencers are sagacious compared to Klassen. Klassen’s one major contribution to white supremacism was coining the war cry “RaHoWa!”, which is a shortened version of his core credo, “Racial Holy War.”





The Church of the Creator didn’t attract a large following, but those who did join were fairly predictable as far as white-supremacist groups go: Vicious, violent, thuggish, and not terribly bright. If anything, they seemed to attract a particularly cretinous stripe of hater, many of them criminals. Over the years they collected a very extensive track record.

George Loeb
One particular case brought real strife to Klassen: the 1991 shooting of a black man in Florida named Harold Mansfield by a Church of the Creator acolyte named George Loeb. The victim’s family took Klassen to court.

Fearing the lawsuit might result in him having to hand over his church and property to a black family, Klassen in 1992 sold it at a steep discount to William Pierce, leader of the infamous National Alliance hate group and author of The Turner Diaries.

Klassen by now was rather elderly, and there was already a scramble within the COTC membership for church leadership after his departure from the role of Pontifex Maximus. In 1990, Klassen had announced he would turn the job over to one Rev. Rudy Stanko.

Based in Billings, Montana, Stanko was a “deacon” in COTC. He was a former cattleman who had been sent to prison for selling tainted meat to Montana schoolchildren. It was during that prison stint that he was converted to the faith, such as it was. Upon his release, Stanko returned to Billings in the late ‘80s and began proselytizing on behalf of the COTC and formed a relatively active “church” there. He also penned a book titled The Score, an anti-Semitic screed that blamed Jews for his imprisonment.

Klassen adopted Stanko’s cause and promoted his work at the Creativity newsletter. Eventually, this led to Klassen anointing him his successor. Stanko, however, let his imminent Maximushood go to his head. Before the change had been made official, he began announcing his plans to move the church headquarters out to Montana. This did not sit well with Klassen, who wanted to keep the church in the South.

Klassen's Creativity church in South Carolina


So Klassen cancelled Stanko’s ceremonial anointment announced that he was changing the successorship, handing the title of next Pontifex Maximus to a pizza delivery man from Baltimore named Charles Altvater, who was later arrested for attempting to firebomb a cop’s car.

Klassen by then had already changed his mind again, and instead named a Milwaukee man named Mark Wilson as the successor. That lasted a few months before finally settling on a man named Rick McCarty. Upon being named leader, he moved COTC back to Florida.

Church members were continuing to commit violent hate crimes, in ways indicating its spread nationally. In the Pacific Northwest, a couple of young COTC members bombed NAACP offices in Tacoma and a Seattle gay bar in July 1993. Two more COTC members, Geremy von Rineman and his girlfriend Jill Scarborough, were part of a group of neo-Nazis charged in Los Angeles with plotting to bomb the city’s largest black church, also in July 1993.

Apparently depressed by his wife’s recent death from cancer, and the looming likelihood that his church was about to be sued out of existence by the SPLC, working with the victims of COTC hate crimes, Klassen committed suicide on Aug. 7, 1993, with sleeping pills.

His worst fears shortly came true. Representing the family of Harold Mansfield, George Loeb’s victim, the SPLC took Rick McCarty and COTC to court in 1994 and won handily, with McCarty not contesting. It won a $1 million judgment and seized all of its assets.

Seizing the opportunity, a 20-year-old white supremacist from Peoria, Ill., named Matthew Hale announced he was dissolving the organization he headed, the National Socialist White Americans Party, and reforming it as a religion: the World Church of the Creator. The remaining Creativity true believers all quickly lined up behind him. This included Rudy Stanko, who still had a fairly active Creativity church group spread throughout Montana. He also had come into possession of most of the stock of Klassen’s library of books.

This is when I became more intimately familiar with the “Creativity” religion, due mainly to the recurring criminality emanating from its ranks in the Pacific Northwest, and in Montana particularly. At the time, I was reporting on the activities of the Militia of Montana and the Montana Freemen (I met my wife while working in Missoula and still have family scattered around the state). Stanko’s little congregation of haters, true to form, had been committing hate crimes in the Billings area: Defacing a Native American home, entering a black church during worship and threatening congregants, knocking over markers in a Jewish cemetery.

Things came to a head around the holidays in 1993, when someone threw a rock through the window of a 6-year-old Billings boy who had placed a Menorah in his window. The faith community, outraged, organized a public response in which everyone in town put Menorahs up. The response led to a PBS documentary titled Not In Our Town, the making of which itself led to the formation of a national organization with that name, devoted to enabling communities to stand up to hate groups and their toxic effects. They do great work to this day.

Stanko’s group became more muted in their activities, though they were known for going around and leaving copies of Klassen’s vile books on people’s doorsteps, apparently as a kind of proselytizing. The Montana Human Rights Network collected most of these.

Even though his operations were based in Illinois, the WCOTC held its annual national convention in the western Montana town of Superior every year, likely due to the prevalence of Montanans in the church’s membership. Matt Hale appeared to enjoy the annual trips.

Back in Illinois, Hale had gone to law school at Southern Illinois and obtained a degree and passed the bar, intent on using it on behalf of his ‘religion.’ However, the Illinois Bar had other ideas: A special panel refused to admit him, denying him a license. So he sued.

Hale’s case attracted media attention. He began hiring lawyers to assist him in his legal battle – notably, he seemed to have a thing about hiring _Jewish_ lawyers specifically. The first attorney he hired was none other than Alan Dershowitz. However, Hale soon discovered that Dershowitz’s fees were extraordinarily high, so he dropped him and turned to the services of another Jewish attorney, Robert Herman of the St. Louis firm Schwartz, Herman and Davidson.

Eventually he hired a young hotshot Jewish lawyer from New York to spearhead his legal challenge. Hale liked to trot this young man out for the press as proof (for dumb reporters who hadn’t bothered to crack open a Klassen text) he didn’t hate Jews. His name was Glenn Greenwald.

Yes, that Glenn Greenwald. As most of us know now, Greenwald has a long track record of defending the civil liberties of even the most questionable of cases, and they frankly didn’t come much more questionable than Matt Hale. In any event, this case launched his legal career, and probably ended it too. Greenwald never practiced law afterwards.

From a purely abstract and legalistic standpoint, it’s possible to make a case, as Greenwald has, for a Jewish attorney to defend the civil rights of a militaristic anti-Semite and neo-Nazi. And from the first news story I read about his involvement, I understood this. The ethical case, however, is not so clear. After all, Hale’s group was primarily engaged in the business of depriving minorities—particularly blacks and Jews—of their civil rights through hate crimes, threats, and intimidation. They saw spreading such hate as one of their own rights.


So, from where I sat in Montana, spending time with the frightened victims of WCOTC thugs, someone who was defending their ability to use the levers of the legal system essentially was enabling their “right” to deprive other people, vulnerable people, of theirs. More to the point, in a world in which there are myriad opportunities to defend genuinely needy, innocent people being wrongly deprived of their civil and free-speech rights, I struggled to understand why any humane and capable attorney would devote their efforts to defending neo-Nazis’ rights.

The most disturbing aspect of Greenwald’s advocacy on Hale’s behalf, however, involved the viciousness with which he attacked Hale’s critics, as well as the strange and frankly dishonest twists of logic and rhetoric he deployed. It went well beyond the usual legal advocacy, as we’ll see.

Hale’s legal case wound through the state bar’s appeals process. He had two more hearings before the bar. On June 30, the second and final appeal was rejected. Hale had also looked into getting a license through the Montana bar but couldn’t. He was out of luck.

Benjamin Smith
Two days later, July 2, his longtime second-in-command—a hotheaded young man named Benjamin Smith, 21, whom Hale had recently named “Creator of the Month”—went on a killing rampage targeting minorities wherever he could find them.

He first took drive-by shots at Orthodox Jews in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, wounding nine. Next he drove to Skokie, where he encountered a black man walking with two of his children outside his home. The man, as it happened, was former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Birdsong. Smith shot and killed him in front of his children.

Smith drove away from Skokie and headed to Northbrook, where he shot at an Asian-American couple but missed. On July 3, he drove through Urbana, Springfield, and Decatur, shooting and wounding two more black men and an Asian man. In Bloomington, Ind., he murdered Won-Joon Yoon, a 26-year-old Korean Indian University student as he walked into his church. Smith also shot at but missed about nine other people. Police soon tracked him down back in Illinois on July 4. After a high-speed chase, he shot himself in the head and crashed his car into a metal pole. Still alive, he shot himself once more in the chest, finishing the job.

In Evanston that week, a public memorial provided an opportunity for all of the victims of Smith’s rampage to mourn. There is an annual race held to this day in Evanston in Ricky Byrdsong’s memory.

A few months later, the Center for Constitutional Rights led a lawsuit filed on behalf of the victims against Matt Hale and WCOTC. Here are excerpts from the original story published in the April 6, 2000, edition of American Lawyer:



Elevating the profile of last July's racially-motivated shooting spree to still a higher level, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights has filed suit against the white supremacist group it claims is responsible for the two-state tear that left two dead and nine wounded.

In a federal lawsuit filed here Tuesday, lawyers for a Decatur pastor wounded during the spree allege World Church of the Creator leader Matthew F. Hale not only encouraged, but conspired with shooter Benjamin Nathaniel Smith to "commit wholesale acts of genocidal violence in furtherance of their self-proclaimed 'racial holy war' against any and all African-Americans, Jews, Asians and other ethnic groups."

…

This is the second such suit filed against Hale, an Illinois bar applicant who has been denied a law license on moral fitness grounds.

Indeed the Center's suit appears to link Hale's rejection into the bar to Smith's "rampage." In late June, the state bar's Committee on Character and Fitness again denied Hale's petition to join the bar. Smith, who had testified as a character witness for Hale that April, began shooting two days later. "Immediately after the Illinois State Bar's decision and as part of the World Church of the Creator's war, Smith ... began a rampage of genocidal violence," the lawsuit states.

And while Hale himself has linked the shootings to his bar application in the past, he said Tuesday that it's ridiculous to think he had any control over Smith.

"Certainly I had a lot of contact with Ben Smith, I never denied that for one minute," Hale said. "If every lawyer who knows someone who commits a crime is a conspirator, the legal profession would cease to exist."

Hale's lawyer, New York attorney Glenn Greenwald, took a similar tact in responding to the suit.

"It's all just guilt by association," said Greenwald, who isn't sure yet whether he will be representing Hale on this latest federal action.

He did, however, seem interested in taking the case on. He compared it to the first suit, which alleged Hale ordered Smith to target minorities.

"All they can say Matt Hale did is express the view that Jews and blacks are inferior,” he said. "There's just no question that expressing those views is a core First Amendment activity."

Further, Greenwald said, "I find that the people behind these lawsuits are truly so odious and repugnant, that creates its own motivation for me."

Take note of Greenwald’s comments. It’s common to see some hyperbole on a defendant’s behalf in such cases. What’s not common is talk like this: "I find that the people behind these lawsuits are truly so odious and repugnant, that creates its own motivation for me." (Also, note how Greenwald bandies the phrase “guilt by association” to describe Matt Hale’s culpability in the rampage. Many of Glenn’s critics would become accustomed to hearing the same phrase, abused in exactly the same fashion, in the years ahead.)

He was also interviewed for an August 2000 Los Angeles Times piece describing how civil-rights groups were using civil courts to bankrupt hate groups. Greenwald was quoted thus:

"Nobody has found a shred of evidence that Matt Hale even knew about the crimes, let alone participated in them," said his lawyer, Glenn Greenwald. Civil rights groups "have said their intent . . . is to bankrupt these hate groups by forcing them to put their resources into litigation so they don't have any money for anything else, which I think . . . is an abuse of the court system."

"By suing us, they demonstrate the correctness of our cause," Hale added. "They're demonstrating how desperate they are to stop us."

Yes, for some reason, survivors of a shooting and families of the victims do, indeed, become desperate to stop neo-Nazis replicating their murderous rampages.

Moreover, there are a number of noteworthy issues here regarding Greenwald’s truthfulness. First, in fact, it shortly emerged that not only had Hale just given Smith his group’s top award, he had spent 16 hours on the phone with Smith in the two weeks before the rampage.

Even more significant is Greenwald’s view that the standard tactics used by the SPLC and other civil-rights groups to bankrupt hate groups that actively deprive minorities of their civil rights (both via advocacy and action) via the civil process is “an abuse of the courts.”

In his subsequent attempts to help Hale get his law license, Greenwald’s rhetoric was similarly over the top, as in this lawsuit before the Illinois Supreme Court in 2001 (which, unsurprisingly, failed badly):

The denial of Matthew Hale's application to practice law in the State of Illinois embodies the most egregious -- and most dangerous -- constitutional abuses which have, again and again, been resoundingly declared by courts in this Nation to be patently unlawful. In sum, Hale, a well-known and vigorous advocate of racist and anti-Semitic ideas, was barred from the legal profession and denied his livelihood because the individuals sitting on the Committee of Character and Fitness for the State of Illinois happened to disagree -- strongly -- with Hale's political and religious views. To describe the denial of Hale's application to practice law, then, is to illustrate the profound dangers it poses to the most basic and valued liberties guaranteed to all citizens by the United States Constitution.


Eventually, Greenwald ran afoul of the courts on ethical grounds, when he recorded interviews with witnesses in the lawsuit brought by one of Ben Smith’s victims without their knowledge or permission. The magistrate judge granted both motions, finding defense counsel's conduct unethical under two separate rules: Local Rule 83.58.4(a)(4), prohibiting ‘dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation;’ and Local Rule 83.54.4, stating ‘a lawyer shall not ... use methods of obtaining evidence that violate the legal rights of [another] person.’”

Hale explicitly depicted Smith’s “free speech martyrdom” as a good thing. Indeed, here’s how Matt Hale was quoted in a July 2000 Peoria Journal Star article examining the effects of Smith’s murder spree, headlined “Hate Changing Us in Good, Bad Ways.”

The past year has been a roller coaster ride for Matt Hale.

Hale, 28, has found himself known worldwide. His organization, the World Church of the Creator, couldn't have asked for better publicity than what it got after Smith's shooting spree, which ended in Smith's suicide.

"It's what Ben would have wanted," Hale said from his East Peoria home, which also doubles as his group's headquarters.

While refusing to disclose numbers, Hale said the World Church has grown greatly, and he credits the media with spreading the word.

An Oak Park-based watchdog group, the Center for New Community, issued a report last week saying the group has gained about 100 members since last year. Still, that puts the World Church at only about 300 members - far less than the numbers hinted at by Hale.

Hale failed in his attempts to get a law license - a matter he says probably played a role in one-time Morton resident Smith's decision to begin his killing spree.

For Hale, the immediate legacy is that he, an unlicensed attorney, finds himself the defendant of several lawsuits brought by the victims' families. A little-known group in Oregon even filed suit against Hale and his World Church, alleging Hale's group stole their name and tarnished it.

All the work and talk by religious groups, Hale says, hasn't done anything to change the climate of tolerance in Peoria.
"I think these so-called plans and programs are a joke," he said. "When people say we are combating racism, that's a crock - everywhere I go, I see racism."

Any discussion of race or hatred must involve him, Hale maintains, since his religion is based upon the notion that whites are superior to all other races or religions.

"Until they invite me to the table, we have a monologue, not a dialogue," he states flatly.

Judge Joan H. Lefkow
As the story notes, an Oregon church called Te-Te-Ma Truth Foundation, based in Ashland, which had some years before copyrighted the named Church of the Creator for their multiple congregations, sued Hale’s organization in federal court for trademark violation. Hale initially won that lawsuit: District Judge Joan H. Lefkow dismissed the trademark case in 2002. However, an appeals court reversed her decision, forcing her to order Hale to remove the World Church’s name from its websites and literature.

Judge Lefkow then became the early victim of what we now think of as a “troll storm,” but in this event by rabid neo-Nazis around the country. White supremacist radio host Hal Turner said she was “worthy of being killed” … “it wouldn't be legal, but in my opinion it wouldn't be wrong." Photos of her home were posted on the web.

The whole enterprise blew up for good on January 8, 2003, when Matt Hale was arrested for conspiring to murder Judge Lefkow. An informant had assembled a collection of video and audio evidence showing him doing exactly that. He was convicted in April 2004.

While Hale was awaiting sentencing, on Feb. 28, 2005, a man entered Judge Lefkow’s home and murdered her mother and her husband. Initially assumed to be related to the Hale case, it turned out to be a man angry over another case.

Hale’s allies on the Web and elsewhere celebrated. “I can barely contain my glee,” one of them wrote.

Matthew Hale was handed a 40-year prison sentence a few weeks later. The judge called it an “extreme, egregious attack on the rule of law.” Hale called it “a horrible miscarriage of justice.” Greenwald concurred, telling the New York Times that Hale had been “wrongly imprisoned.” The interview occurred when it emerged that Hale had attempted to send a coded message of some kind through Greenwald via his mother. He denied he had delivered it.

The Church of the Creator promptly fell into complete disarray. In Montana, one key member who happened to have possession of the stock of Klassen books that Rudy Stanko had originally obtained decided to defect. He sold them all, $41,000 worth, to the Montana Human Rights Network for $300. As often happens with such orgs when they begin to decay, the WCOTC continued to rack up an impressive and disturbing record of hate-fueled violence.

Now, as someone who tracked the WCOTC carefully due to their presence in the Northwest, I was familiar with most of this information at the time. As I said, though I understood and, on general principle, respected Greenwald’s reasons for taking on Hale, I had questions about how he went about it.

So I was surprised in a good way by much of what I began reading at Greenwald’s blog, Unclaimed Territory, in fall of 2005. It was smart, thoughtful, and quite insightful about what he rightly saw as an executive power grab in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. I began citing it favorably at my own blog, Orcinus, which at that point was also pretty well established (I opened shop there in January 2003). One of the first times I did so, in fact, was to defend him for having taken on Hale as a client, with which critics tried to smear him.

There were stumbles—such as his now-infamous (and disavowed) post describing the “parade of evils caused by illegal immigration”—that harkened back to my earlier concerns about his work. The disavowal, written years later and defensively blaming “Obama cultists,” is also less than persuasive.

I also was an admirer of Greenwald’s terrific 2006 book How Would A Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. Having just wrapped up my study of the Japanese American internment, I wrote a number of posts concurring with its thesis.

I finally met Glenn in person at the 2007 Yearly Kos gathering in Chicago, the year before it was renamed to Netroots Nation. We really only had a brief conversation, and so even though I was bursting with questions for him, I never got to ask them.

Questions like:


  • ·      Do you have any regrets about everything that went down around having Matthew Hale as a client?

  • ·      Did it ever bother you that the organization whose rights (not altogether clear in any event, since you lost all the rulings on his law license denial) you were expending your expertise defending was itself in the business of depriving vulnerable minorities of their civil rights?

  • ·      Did it ever bother you that by trying to make it possible for Hale to practice law, you were actively assisting WCOTC’s explicit efforts to become part of the mainstream – that is, normalizing them?

  • ·      Do you still believe using the civil courts to bankrupt hate groups for their followers’ criminal acts, as the SPLC, Center for New Community, Center for Constitutional Rights, and many others do, is an abuse of the system?

I continued to cite Greenwald’s work quite bit over the years anyway. But beginning in the fall of 2007, as he increasingly promoted the presidential candidacy of Rep. Ron Paul, I chimed in by pointing out Paul’s long record of dalliances with the far right. My then-blog partner Sara Robinson and I began publishing a series of posts about Ron Paul and this history. It culminated with a post I composed with the help of readers, detailing the long legislative record of Paul’s extremism in Congress—some 161 bills, all linked.

A couple of days later, Greenwald attacked me at Salon. It opens: “I’m not trying to be Ron Paul’s advocate, but still, outright distortions and smears are distortions and smears.”

I responded the next day, pointing out that those “distortions and smears” were comprised of a laundry list of legislation with links. Also known as cold dry facts.

Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that a smear by definition is false. And I'm having difficulty fathoming how a post comprised almost solely of links to legislation Paul has sponsored -- 161 of them, in fact -- could constitute a smear. In the world of the blogosphere, the posts don't get much more fact-oriented.

In one of his updates, Greenwald countered with his favorite phrase.

For reasons I’ll detail at another time [ed note: He never did], I found virtually all of that to be unpersuasive, relying almost entirely on lame guilt-by-association arguments that could sink most if not all candidates (the only arguably disturbing evidence in this regard is this 1996 Houston Chronicle article, which Neiwert didn’t mention [ed. Note: Actually, I did] and the pro-Paul response is here).

As I pointed out, that’s not how “guilt by association” works, no more than you can dismiss Matt Hale’s ties to Ben Smith’s rampage with by waving that phrase about.

The problem with Ron Paul isn't that he has irrelevant associations with far-right extremists—it’s that he seeks out their support, openly advocates their agenda, and receives financial and ideological support from them. … Those grim realities make his associations all too relevant, especially for a public official in the position of a serving congressman, and now, presidential candidate.

… [T]his isn't "guilt by association"—first, the argument isn't that Paul is a racist per se, but that he is an extremist who shares a belief system held not just by racists but other anti-government zealots as well. Paul is identified with their causes not simply because he speaks to them, but because he elucidates ideas and positions—especially regarding the IRS, the UN, the gold standard, and education—identical to theirs. This is why he has their rabid support. There is an underlying reason, after all, that Paul attracts backers like David Duke and the Stormfront gang: he talks like them.

Second and perhaps most importantly, there are legitimate reasons for anyone to raise objections to Paul's associations, speaking before the Patriot Network, the CofCC, and similar groups—he's a public official, and he is lending the power of his public office to legitimizing radical-right organizations like this. Think of why it would be wrong to appear before the Klan, or the CofCC, as Trent Lott and Hayley Barbour have done in the latter case.

It's not merely what it implies about your own beliefs and standards—it’s that you've lent the power of your public office to empowering and raising the stature of racists and extremists. You of course have the right to do so—but the public has every right to criticize you for it as well, as it should. After all, what this comes down to is not so much beliefs and values but judgment. One expects, after all, a congressman to display better judgment than to appear before a group of nutcases. Ron Paul didn't, and hasn't, for a simple reason—he’s one of them.

And just as his associations with far-right extremists have empowered those groups—a favor now being returned in the form of their avid support for him even as he attempts to strategically distance himself from them—his recent stunning successes mean the further empowerment of these groups. And that is why, over the long term, we ought to take much greater pause in considering the value of his success.

Before signing off, I offered one more missive, which Glenn sniffed at and dismissed.

At this point, it had become manifestly clear to me that Greenwald has an immense blind spot—an inexplicable one, really—when it comes to far-right extremism and its spread into the mainstream, and the toxic effects of that spread.

This isn’t a matter of whether Greenwald is a racist or an extremist or an anti-Semite or anything like that. I don’t believe he is, even remotely. I’m glad I defended him initially. And no doubt, Glenn will dismiss this entire piece as a lie and a smear in which I make him out to be a racist. But seriously, I don’t believe for a minute that he is.

I just believe his sort of principled rigidity on free-speech issues blinds him to the real-world effects of fascism—particularly how it manipulates free-speech principles in order to destroy them. Fascists use people like Greenwald to leave a trail of wreckage.

It’s not about whether or not he’s racist—which, after all, would indeed make the whole issue one of guilt by association. That’s not the point of all this. No, this is a question of judgment: If you’re so short-sighted that you can’t see how your ethical choices wind up enabling harmful behavior, then exactly how astute is your judgment in any event?



It’s not guilt by association, it’s the guilt of association: People in responsible mainstream positions who lend legitimacy to people from far-right hate groups—whether Klansmen, skinheads, neo-Nazis, or militiamen—are exercising profoundly poor judgment. Lending them that legitimacy not only normalizes them, it empowers them. It helps fuel the twisted psychology of the far right that inevitably, like a law of physics itself, produces violent horrors and ruptured communities. Ask the folks in Billings, or in Illinois.

The closest anyone has come to getting an answer out of Greenwald about the questions about judgment raised by his work on Matt Hale’s behalf was in an interview in Rolling Stone in 2013. His answer was typically self-serving, and certainly indicates a lack of any regret: “To me, it's a heroic attribute to be so committed to a principle that you apply it not when it's easy ... not when it supports your position, not when it protects people you like, but when it defends and protects people that you hate."

All very noble-sounding of course, but it hardly squares with the reality of how he conducted himself. There is no indication Glenn hated Hale or WCTOC in any of his dealings with them; indeed, you can easily find expressions of admiration both in his public remarks and his legal filings. But his expressions of hatred for Center for Constitutional Rights and SPLC were vivid, not to mention anyone who dared oppose his cause. Equally vivid were his dismissal of the families of Ben Smith’s victims for being “desperate to stop us”—and assertion that their desperation proved the “correctness of our cause.”

Over the ensuing years, he’s manifested this blind spot, and supremely bad judgment, many times. Once he posted a tweet promoting an ad by the far-right conspiracist outfit the Oath Keepers, soft-pedaling them as “a coalition of former police, military and public officials.”

More recently, of course, he has appeared frequently on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. Carlson’s record of promoting white-nationalist causes and ideas clearly doesn’t bother Greenwald. In the process, of course, he has become exactly what he once derided caustically: a “Fox News liberal,” one whose appearance on the network is mainly used to help forward right-wing talking points and destroy the left. He’s now a Useful Tool.

And now he is defending his fellow faux progressives as they join Carlson in his campaign to minimize and defend fascist white nationalism as Not Really A Problem.

But apparently, fascist authoritarianism is only a problem in Brazil. Because Glenn lives there and he is seeing the consequences in person. Perhaps Greenwald should try living in the States again, so he can experience firsthand that the consequences are here too. It’s not clear what alternative universe Michael Tracey is living in, however.
Posted by at  

Christian Lady Worried About Witches, Christian Witches And Christians Who Don't Know They Are Witches

Robyn Pennacchia
October 31, 2020 10:45 AM

This year isn't really the best year for holidays, since pretty much the whole point of most holidays is being around people. Either people you love or complete strangers or some combination of the two. As such, there is a dearth of the usual holiday bad takes. I mean, if people can't do much retail shopping, how is there even going to be a War on Christmas?

Because there's not likely going to be a lot of trick-or-treating this year, there haven't been the usual stories about ridiculous Christian Hell Houses where wholesome teens wearing purity rings scare each other about the horrible fates they face should they have sex or be gay or play with a Ouija board or have an abortion or whatever, and there haven't been the usual rantings about why Halloween is super evil and will open people up to being possessed by demons. Like remember that guy who did a whole video about how Halloween is when Satan can legally turn you into "The Little Mermaid?" Totally slacking this year.

Even the gang over at Charisma News is mostly just saying "screw it" and rerunning old articles about how to gird one's mind-loins against Jezebel and Her Witchcrafts (which is also the name of my new band) on Halloween. Although Jennifer LeClaire, former Charisma News editor and author of the previously mentioned guide to not being cursed by witches, did bring a little something this year as well.


This year, she is not merely concerned about regular, Pagan witches. This year, she is concerned about people going around calling themselves Christian Witches and also all of the Christians out there who are witches but don't even know that they are witches. We assume they will find out though when they get their letters from Hogwarts.

She writes:

So-called "Christian" witches love to come to my church, Awakening House of Prayer, in Fort Lauderdale. Mind you, I realize there's no such thing as a Christian witch, but that's what they call themselves.

I've seen a rise of Christians practicing witchcraft. Or maybe they aren't Christians at all. I won't judge someone's salvation, but when people in church release word curses, pray against you and conduct unholy fasts to destroy you, the fruit of the Spirit is clearly lacking. Galatians 6 lists both the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh. Witchcraft is among them. But there is a higher level of witchcraft that some so-called Christians are tapping into, and it's dangerous.

This seems like a thing that is not actually happening? Not the part about how there are Christian Witches, there are people who believe all kinds of things out there, but the part where they are actually showing up at her church in Ft. Lauderdale. One would imagine that Witches of any persuasion would not frequent the same church as Jennifer LeClaire, known hater of Jezebel and Her Witchcrafts. It seems more likely that she just heard about them on the internet.

They are out there, she says, cursing Donald Trump and his campaign:

Christian witches have emerged with a vengeance. Christian witches are targeting government officials like President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But they are doing much more behind the scenes and are lifting their voices to recruit the discontented to their campaign.

Specifically, she knows of one lady who posts on Facebook a whole lot.

There are Christians who act like witches and actual Christian witches. Both sides of this prophetic warning were and are true. One example of the latter is Rev. Valerie Love, who has been garnering media attention and ranting on Facebook against anyone who won't accept her as an ambassador of Christ. She wrote on the social media platform:

"Stop thinking you can tell people how to worship. Stop thinking you can tell people how to connect with the divine. I could tell you how many people have told me, "You can't be a Christian witch" but here I am. See, you can't tell me how to worship. You cannot tell me how to connect with the divine. That's between me and God. You cannot tell me how to pray."

That sounds fair enough. I don't see why she can't be anything she wants to be and not telling people how to pray is in the Constitution. If Jennifer LeClaire can do "prophecy" I don't see why this lady can't do ... whatever it is that she does as a Christian Witch.

Far more interesting, however, are the witches who don't even know they are witches:

The second category of Christian witches is those who don't know they are witches—and most other people don't know they are witches, either. These Christian witches may be polite and strong tithers, never missing a church service, but they are operating in witchcraft that control. In charismatic circles, we call this type of Christian witch "Jezebel."

Both types of Christian witches are rising in this hour. The first type are in no way part of God's kingdom. Rather, they are card-carrying members of the kingdom of darkness. The second type may make their way into heaven, but they need deliverance from hurts, wounds and other issues in their lives that make their lives a living hell. As a matter of fact, I believe anyone who calls themselves a Christian witch also needs healing and deliverance.

LeClaire does not explain how people who don't know they are witches are supposed to know they are witches. Are they supposed to throw themselves in water to see if they float? Ask their doctor to check for a witches mark? Wiggle their nose and see if anything happens?

Clearly, she doesn't know. Even the audio course Charisma offers on Witchcraft and Spiritual Warfare doesn't offer any particular guidance on this matter. Although it will tell you how to remove any curses put upon you by relatives who were in the Masons.

Fathers, Grandfathers, and Uncles have dedicated and vowed their relatives to freemasonry and these spirits can attack through generational lines. Masonic vows are difficult to break, but when partnering with the Holy Spirit freedom will occur.

And also how to keep people from cursing you with astral projection:

Prayers are being prayed and curses are being sent forth against your prophetic destiny. Astral projection, monitoring and familiar spirits gather information and report back to demonic commanders how to wreak destruction on your life. In this episode, based off Kathy's new Witchcraft eCourse at www.charismacourses.com, learn how to combat the powers of darkness that are assigning curses against the will of God for your life.

Well ... that's probably very useful. Happy Halloween!

[Charisma News]




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/donors-trust-donor-capital-fund-dark-money-koch-bradley-devos/

Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement

You haven’t heard of Donors Trust, but it’s bankrolled the right’s fights against unions, public schools, climate scientists, and more.

by ANDY KROLL - Feb. 5, 2013

Founded in 1999, Donors Trust (and an affiliated group, Donors Capital Fund) has raised north of $500 million and doled out $400 million to more than 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups, according to Whitney Ball, the group’s CEO. Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations. Wisconsin’s 2011 assault on collective bargaining rights? Donors Trust helped fund that. ALEC, the conservative bill mill? Donors Trust supports it. The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute? They get Donors Trust money, too.

Donors Trust is not the source of the money it hands out. Some 200 right-of-center funders who’ve given at least $10,000 fill the group’s coffers. Charities bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, the DeVoses, and the Bradleys, among other conservative benefactors, have given to Donors Trust. And other recipients of Donors Trust money include the Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the NRA’s Freedom Action Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired (PDF) by none other than David Koch. 


https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/30/2142239/time-cells-discovered-in-human-brains

'Time Cells' Discovered In Human Brains (npr.org)

Posted by BeauHD  from the why-memories-seem-like-movies dept.
Researchers have identified cells in the human brain that are responsible for episodic memories. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. NPR reports:The cells are called time cells, and they place a sort of time stamp on memories as they are being formed. That allows us to recall sequences of events or experiences in the right order. "By having time cells create this indexing across time, you can put everything together in a way that makes sense," says Dr. Bradley Lega, the study's senior author and a neurosurgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Time cells were discovered in rodents decades ago. But the new study is critical because "the final arbitrator is always the human brain," says Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki, Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at New York University. Buzsaki is not an author of the study but did edit the manuscript.

Lega and his team found the time cells by studying the brains of 27 people who were awaiting surgery for severe epilepsy. As part of their pre-surgical preparation, these patients had electrodes placed in the hippocampus and another area of the brain involved in navigation, memory and time perception. In the experiment, the patients studied sequences of 12 or 15 words that appeared on a laptop screen during a period of about 30 seconds. Then, after a break, they were asked to recall the words they had seen. Meanwhile, the researchers were measuring the activity of individual brain cells. And they found a small number that that would fire at specific times during each sequence of words.

"The time cells that we found, they are marking out discrete segments of time within this approximately 30-second window," Lega says. These time stamps seemed to help people recall when they had seen each word, and in what order, he says. And the brain probably uses the same approach when we're reliving an experience like falling off a bike. The results help explain why people who have damage to the hippocampus may experience odd memory problems, Buzsaki says.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/10/29/2314236/sleeping-giant-arctic-methane-deposits-starting-to-release-scientists-find

'Sleeping Giant' Arctic Methane Deposits Starting To Release, Scientists Find (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD  from the tipping-point dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean -- known as the "sleeping giants of the carbon cycle" -- have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal. High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 meters in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback loop may have been triggered that could accelerate the pace of global heating.

The slope sediments in the Arctic contain a huge quantity of frozen methane and other gases -- known as hydrates. Methane has a warming effect 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. The United States Geological Survey has previously listed Arctic hydrate destabilization as one of four most serious scenarios for abrupt climate change. The international team onboard the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh said most of the bubbles were currently dissolving in the water but methane levels at the surface were four to eight times what would normally be expected and this was venting into the atmosphere. The scientists -- who are part of a multi-year International Shelf Study Expedition -- stressed their findings were preliminary. The scale of methane releases will not be confirmed until they return, analyze the data and have their studies published in a peer-reviewed journal. But the discovery of potentially destabilized slope frozen methane raises concerns that a new tipping point has been reached that could increase the speed of global heating.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/10/28/226202/scientists-discover-coral-reef-taller-than-the-empire-state-building

Scientists Discover Coral Reef Taller Than the Empire State Building (bbc.com)29

Posted by BeauHD  from the lost-and-found dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC:An enormous coral reef has been found at the northern tip of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the first such discovery in 120 years, scientists say. At 500m (1,640ft) high, the reef is taller than New York's Empire State Building and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Scientists on a 12-month mission found the structure, detached from the Great Barrier Reef off Cape York, last week. They were conducting 3D mapping of the sea floor in the area. A team aboard a research vessel owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), a non-profit group based in California, used an underwater robot to explore the reef.

The reef is the first of its kind to be found in the region since the late 1800s, scientists said. There are known to be seven other tall reefs in the region, including the one at Raine Island -- the world's most important green sea turtle nesting area. While the reef is bedded to the ocean floor off North Queensland, it is detached, meaning it is not part of the main body of the Great Barrier Reef. Described as "blade-like," the reef is 1.5km wide (one mile), then rises 500m to its shallowest depth of only 40m below the sea surface. Researchers are expected to continue surveying the northern Great Barrier Reef until 17 November.


https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/29/0021204/nasa-discovers-a-rare-metal-asteroid-thats-worth-10000-quadrillion

NASA Discovers a Rare Metal Asteroid That's Worth $10,000 Quadrillion (observer.com)

Posted by BeauHD  from the that's-a-lot-of-zeros dept.
Iwastheone shares a report from Observer:NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called "16 Psyche" in the Solar System's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid Psyche is located at roughly 230 million miles (370 million kilometers) from Earth and measures 140 miles (226 kilometers) across, about the size of West Virginia. What makes it special is that, unlike most asteroids that are either rocky or icy, Psyche is made almost entirely of metals, just like the core of Earth, according to a study published in the Planetary Science Journal on Monday.

Given the asteroid's size, its metal content could be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000), or about 10,000 times the global economy as of 2019. Using ultraviolet spectrum data collected by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope during two observations in 2017, researchers deduced that Psyche's surface could be mostly pure iron. However, they recognized that the presence of an iron composition of as small as 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet observations. Psyche is the target of the NASA Discovery Mission Psyche, expected to launch in 2022 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Further facts about the asteroid, including its exact metal content, will hopefully be uncovered when an orbiting probe arrives in early 2026. The asteroid is believed to be the dead core left by a planet that failed during its formation early in the Solar System's life or the result of many violent collisions in its distant past.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/27/2320237/daycares-in-finland-built-a-forest-floor-and-it-changed-childrens-immune-systems

Daycares In Finland Built a 'Forest Floor,' and It Changed Children's Immune Systems (sciencealert.com

Posted by BeauHD  from the playing-in-the-dirt dept.
omfglearntoplay shares a report from ScienceAlert:Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest's undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child's immune system, according to a small new experiment. When daycare workers in Finland rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth such as dwarf heather and blueberries, and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time. Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centers in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.

"We also found that the intestinal microbiota of children who received greenery was similar to the intestinal microbiota of children visiting the forest every day," says environmental scientist Marja Roslund from the University of Helsinki. Prior research has shown early exposure to green space is somehow linked to a well-functioning immune system, but it's still not clear whether that relationship is causal or not. The experiment in Finland is the first to explicitly manipulate a child's urban environment and then test for changes in their micriobiome and, in turn, a child's immune system. While the findings don't hold all the answers, they do support a leading idea -- namely that a change in environmental microbes can relatively easily affect a well-established microbiome in children, giving their immune system a helping hand in the process.The study was published in the journal Science Advances.


Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

5. Hundreds of people stranded by President Trump’s asylum limits are languishing in squalid conditions in a tent camp on the border.

Members of this displaced community requested refuge in the U.S. but were sent back into Mexico and told to wait. Many have been living in fraying tents for more than a year, surrounded by rotten debris, human waste and uneaten food swarming with flies. It is one of several refugee camps that have sprung up on the doorstep of the U.S. for the first time in the country’s history.

When the issue of immigration came up at the final presidential debate last week, Mr. Trump was correct in saying that the Obama administration expanded the number of border facilities with chain-linked enclosures. But separating children from parents was a policy all Mr. Trump’s own.











A 2017 photo shoot showing several Black models wearing head scarves.Patrick Demarchelier

6. Vogue’s September issue celebrated Black culture. But some employees say Anna Wintour, the editor, fostered a workplace that sidelined women of color.

The magazine — and by default Ms. Wintour — has defined fashion for generations of women, setting a standard that has favored white, Eurocentric notions of beauty.

Black journalists who have worked with Ms. Wintour told the Times that they had not gotten over their experiences at a magazine whose workplace mirrored its exclusive pages. Some said they felt so out of place that they created white alter egos — several used the term “doppelgänger” — just to get through the workday. A 2017 photo shoot showed several Black models wearing head scarves, above.

Ms. Wintour said in a statement that while she had made mistakes along the way, she was “committed to doing the work.”




TIME BEING

AN OCEAN OF TIME

70 minutes of deep-drifting, time-melting,
soul-stirring bliss that hovers delicately
at the fringes of darkness and light
 

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NOVEMBER 1st
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also...


 
IMPULSE Playlist
 
Deborah Martin & Dean De Benedictis have taken over the IMPULSE playlist!

Check out a collection of formative tracks that illuminated the pathway to their collaborative project, DESENSITIZED.

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Steve Roach
TOMORROW

 
It's another new album of Mandala-esque sequencer-based electronics from Steve Roach.

 



 


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2011.01 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1948 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

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