Category Archives: despicable behavior

the US is the parent in the Gaza school shooting

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Remember Jennifer and James Crumbley? Sure you do. They’re Ethan’s parents. You know, Ethan Crumbly? Oh, c’mon…the 15-year-old kid who shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School in Michigan. Ring a bell? The murders happened back in 2021, but a month ago Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter because she 1) failed to get Ethan the mental health care he needed, and 2) made it possible for him to have access to both a handgun and ammunition.

Here’s the thing: the US are Jennifer and James Crumbley. The Israeli government is Ethan. And the thirty thousand dead men, women, and children in Gaza? They’re the victims of an international school shooting.

Just like Ethan’s parents, the US (and the world) has known for a long time that the government of Israel has been a threat to the daily existence of Palestinians. We’ve known about the government’s support of illegal settlements in the West Bank, we’ve known about their harsh policies toward Gaza. And yeah, like Ethan, some groups of Palestinians have made matters worse because of their behavior. But the fact remains, the US has been aware of the dangerous and destructive behavior of Israel. And like Ethan’s parents, we’ve not only ignored the abuse and the risk, we’ve deliberately enabled it by supplying the Israeli government with all manner of weaponry.

And hey, we’re still doing that. Thirty thousand plus dead Gazan — a large proportion of which are children — and we continue to hand them weapons. Yes, we’re saying, “Please use these weapons responsibly” but that’s like buying your 15-year-old mentally ill child a handgun, helping him load it, and asking him not to kill his classmates.

Jennifer Crumbly has been found guilty for making it possible for her son to kill other kids. Her husband’s trial will be held in the near future; he’ll likely be found guilty as well. In any rational, responsible World Criminal Court, the US will…well, you can figure it out.

I’m sure Ethan’s parents feel horrible about what happened. I’m sure they wish they’d acted before it was too late. I’m sure they just didn’t realize how their parental failure would harm others. I’m sure they had no idea how much it would harm Ethan and themselves. I’m sure that if they’d been present during the shooting, they’d have at least tried to take Ethan’s 9mm handgun and stopped the killing.

The US could do that. We could just stop providing the Israeli government with the weapons its using to commit genocide against the Palestinian people. It’s far too late, of course, but too late is better than never. We could stop giving Israel weaponry; it would be the moral equivalent of taking away Ethan’s handgun after he’s shot a few classmates. There are already too many bodies on the international schoolroom floor; nothing is going to change that. But we could try to prevent more bodies from stacking up.

We could do that. But we won’t.

nobody can understand?

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Here are the pertinent facts: 1) In 2021, a youth baseball nonprofit in Wichita, Kansas erected a life-sized bronze statue of Jackie Robinson—the player who broke the color barrier in major league baseball—in McAdam’s Park. 2) This year, on January 25th, after midnight, a couple of assholes cut that statue off at the ankles, loaded it onto a pickup, and drove off. There is surveillance footage of the vandalism and theft. 3) Five days later, the day before Jackie Robinson’s birthday, the Wichita Fire Department responded to a fire in Garvey Park and found the remains of the statue.

I’m appalled by this, but not terribly surprised. Open racism and hatred has become more common in the Trump era. And just to be clear, I’m not saying Trump himself is responsible for the hatred. I’m saying Trump essentially gave permission for existing racists to be more openly racist. Trump’s hate and rage made other racists feel comfortable in expressing their hate and rage.

What DOES surprise me, though, is the reluctance of so many people and so many news outlets to say what’s so plainly fucking obvious. Which is that this was clearly a hate crime. Local law enforcement officials haven’t offered an opinion about the vandals’ motive, but that’s essentially to protect any future prosecution. But how to you explain Bob Lutz, the director of League 42 (the nonprofit that installed the sculpture) saying, “Nobody can understand why this would happen.” Really, Bob? I think everybody can easily understand why it happened. Just ask around, Bob.

And then there’s Mike Freeman in USA Today. He wrote:

What happened? Was it a prank that went too far? Was it an act of racism? We don’t know yet.

We KNOW what happened. And Jesus suffering fuck, it was obviously NOT a goddamn prank. Since the two assholes involved haven’t been identified or arrested yet, we don’t have any direct admission that it was an act of racism. But given the fact that it was a statue of Jackie Robinson and that it was stolen and destroyed around his birthday, I think we’re pretty safe in saying there’s a really really really high probability that racism was the motive.

The statue will be replaced, of course. The money to replace it has already been raised. Although the original sculptor, John Parsons, is dead, the mold still exists and is viable. So the statue of Jackie Robinson will return. He’ll be back in McAdam’s Park, hand on hip, confident, smiling.

But the racism that destroyed the statue in Wichita still exists.

Here’s another ‘but.’ A more important ‘but.’ BUT there are at least seven other statues of Jackie Robinson scattered around the US.

Here’s the thing about statues of real people: they’re not really a celebration of that person. They’re actually an endorsement of the values that person stood for. That’s why we’ve been tearing down statues of Civil War generals. That’s why we’ve put up statues of Jackie Robinson.

monday monday

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It’s the first Monday in October, which means the Supreme Court of the United States is back in session. Although it’s not officially on their agenda, SCOTUS-watchers (which, I just want to say, aren’t nearly as cool as the Watchers that kept track of Highlander immortals or Buffy-era Slayers–now those folks had style) say the Court has to wrestle with this crisis-level problem: How to convince the public that the justices take seriously their ethical obligations.

The answer to which, of course, is completely fucking obvious. SCOTUS needs to actually take their ethical obligations seriously. Not just try to convince the public they’re doing that; they actually need to DO that. But that would mean chucking Clarence Thomas out on his ass. And probably Sam Alito too. And maybe finally investigate where their boy Brett K got the coin to pay off all his debts before his SCOTUS nomination process. So yeah, ain’t gonna happen.

But at least the government is still operating. Well, operating after a fashion. I mean, most of us expected to see Congress implode and a whole lot of government functions to stop this morning. Why? Because a dozen or so Republicans are acting like monkeys trying to fuck beach balls. The monkeyfucking cadre has even annoyed some of the less rabid Republicans. Don Bacon of Nebraska said, “We’re tired of fucking around with these whack jobs.”

We all are, Don. We’re all tired of them.

The fact that Congress managed to avoid stepping on a rake is seen as a sort of victory, although it’s not clear for whom. I mean, we’ll have to go through this same bullshit again in a couple of months. It’s not a victory for Kevin McCarthy, who is now solidly in the cross hairs of the monkeyfucking cadre. Matt Gaetz (Jesus suffering fuck, I still can’t believe this bouffant fuckwit is actually a sitting Member of Congress) has said publicly that nobody trusts McCarthy. Gaetz says he intends to press a Congressional motion to boot McCarthy directly in the balls (well, remove him from the Speaker’s position, which is much the same thing).

What’s interesting, though, is the anti-monkeyfuckers are murmuring about possibly expelling Gaetz IF he follows through on his attempt to kick McCarthy in the balls and IF the ongoing Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz (for being corrupt and doing drugs and getting horizontal with underage girls) finds he probably did all the awful shit everybody thinks he did. One anonymous Republican is reported (by FOX News, if that matters) as saying this about Gaetz: “No one can stand him at this point. A smart guy without morals.”

Nobody trusts McCarthy, nobody can stand Gaetz, and neither of them has any morals at all.

“You let me be Speaker of the House and I’ll supply you with beach balls.”

Speaking of somebody without morals who nobody can stand, Comrade Trump’s civil fraud trial begins today in New York City. It’s a bench trial rather than a jury trial, so it should be wrapped up pretty quickly. I mean, the judge has already ruled that the Trump Organization deffo committed fraud. He also revoked Trump’s New York business licenses, which will likely mean Trump will lose control over dozens of New York properties. Essentially, the trial is to determine how big a fine Trump will pay. The prosecutor is asking for US$250 million. A quarter of a billion here, a quarter of a billion there…it adds up..

By the way, Trump says he’ll testify if called. Yeah, I’m just going to leave that there.

So it’s going to be an ugly few weeks for Republicans. And rightly so. You know, among all the truly awful things the GOP has done in the last couple of decades, one of the worst things is they’ve changed us. By ‘us’ I basically mean people who prefer to be kind and considerate to other folks, even if we disagree with them. People who didn’t take pleasure in seeing other people suffer. The GOP has changed us into people who viscerally enjoy watching MAGA Republicans go at each other like rabid sewer rats.

I don’t like this about myself, but I WANT to see the GOP destroyed. I WANT to see McCarthy lose his Speaker position, I WANT to see Gaetz expelled from the Republican Party, I WANT to see Comrade Trump lose his businesses and his money and his freedom. I WANT to see him convicted and imprisoned. I don’t just want those things to happen; I want to WITNESS them. I want to see them humiliated, afraid, defeated, and lost.

I don’t like that about myself, but there it is. I’ve let those monkeyfuckers change me. I’ll never forgive them for that.

freedom to think for…themselves?

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Here, listen to this:

“When children are told what and how to believe whether in verbal, in writing or through visual symbols, they miss out on the freedom to think for themselves and use the skills they are learning in the classroom.”

That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it. Obviously, we DO NOT want to tell our children what and how to believe. We DO NOT want to limit their freedom to think for themselves. Right?

Except the woman who said that, Melissa Dungan, a trustee of the Conroe, Texas Independent School Board, totally wants to tell children what and how to believe AND limit their freedom to think for themselves. In a recent meeting of the school board, Dungan brought up an ‘incident’ in which a child in the first grade was so traumatized by seeing a poster of people of different races holding hands they had to change classrooms. I am NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Who the hell is Melissa Dungan? This is how she introduced herself when running for the position of school board trustee:

“I am first and foremost a Christian. My faith guides every aspect of my life including my roles as wife and mother – and will also influence my decisions as a school board trustee.”

As we all know, Jesus didn’t want little kids of different races holding hands with each other. Dungan’s Christian values also means she wants to ‘keep personal ideologies out of classrooms‘ and limit flags in schools to ‘the American flag, Texas flag, school flags and college pendants.’ Pride flag? Nope. Environmental justice flag? Nope. Because those flags inject a personal ideology, unlike the flags of the US and Texas, which, of course, are ideologically neutral. Not only can classrooms display those flags, they’re actually required to display them. Because those visual symbols surely don’t tell children ‘what and how to believe.‘

Does Melissa Dungan actually represent the community of Conroe, Texas? Well, consider that in 1922, when a 20-year-old Black man, Joe Winters, was accused of sexually molesting a 14-year-old white girl, the citizens of Conroe chained him to a post in the courthouse square and burned him alive. And in 1941, when African-American Bob White was accused of having a sexual relationship with a white woman, he was not allowed to have a lawyer and was tortured into giving a confession, and the all-white jury convicted him. He actually won an appeal based on the lack of legal counsel, but was convicted again. That conviction was overturned because the confession was a result of torture. During his third trial, White was killed by the alleged victim’s husband–shot in the back of the head IN THE COURTROOM in front of the judge, jury, courtroom personnel, and witnesses. The husband was arrested and tried the following week, and was acquitted.

So yes, maybe Melissa Dungan does, in fact, represent Conroe, Texas. The people of Conroe who elected her are apparently terrified by the notion that their children might be told that it’s okay for people of different races to be friendly with each other. That’s certainly an improvement over those earlier Conrovians who felt racial relations were best handled by non-judicial immolation.

Baby steps.

it’s worse than it appears

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A few more semi-quick thoughts about the Comrade Trump indictments. First, I’m a criminal defense guy. I spent several years as a private investigator specializing in criminal defense work. So I’m in the habit of looking at criminal cases brought by the State and trying to find weaknesses. This may be the most solid indictment I’ve ever seen, largely because Trump is such a reckless, unthinking criminal.

Second, there’s a discrepancy between the number of classified documents seized during the search of Mar-a-Lago and the number of documents listed in the indictment. There are at least a dozen documents identified as top secret that were seized but not included in the indictment. The assumption is that the information in those documents was too sensitive to even be mentioned in passing in a public trial. That suggests Trump’s crimes were even worse than those included in the indictment.

Third, what isn’t being discussed (or at least isn’t being discussed enough) is the actual harm brought by Trump’s crimes. This isn’t just a matter of Trump taking classified documents he had no right to take, and lying about them, and hiding them from the FBI. It’s an actual matter of national security AND of human lives.

Having seen how cavalier Trump was with highly sensitive information provided to the US by the intelligence agencies of our allies, those allies have NO reason to ever trust us with sensitive information again. That’s especially true if Trump isn’t held accountable for this. Our credibility in the international intelligence community has turned to shit.

Beyond that, there’s the very real risk to the intelligence agents and/or assets who have risked their liberty, safety, and lives to gather and collect the information contained in those documents. We KNOW that some of the Mar-a-Lago material was classified as HCS (HUMINT Control Systems). We’re talking clandestine human intelligence, serious spy stuff–the activities, capabilities, techniques, processes, and procedures spies use. If our enemies know WHAT information we have, they can start figuring out WHERE that information came from, and WHO provided it.

We also KNOW that a few months after Trump took that material to Mar-a-Lago, there was a ‘covcom’ breach. Covcom refers to the classified covert communications systems used by the CIA. The breach exposed a number of agency assets, especially in China and Iran. A number of informants had to be extracted; others were reportedly captured and executed. US counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station about the breach. Back in October of 2021, the London Times reported the suspicion that there was a ‘super mole’ in the US government betraying CIA assets. We have no way of knowing if that ‘covcom’ breach was a result of Trump’s egregiously lackadaisical treatment of classified material. But it’s possible.

The thing is, this scandal is far worse than it appears in news coverage. The actual harm to our intelligence community is severe and will be long-lasting. The damage will be even worse if Trump isn’t held accountable.

Also? Why is there a fucking chandelier in that bathroom? I mean…why?

asshole alert at the farmers’ market

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It’s really really really hard to pick the worst thing about Trumpism, but certainly one of the top five worst things is Entitled Aggressive Assholism.

Yesterday morning at the farmers’ market…wait. First, let me say that one of the many things I love about both my small local farmers’ market and the larger Des Moines Downtown Farmers’ Market is that they bring so many different communities together. There are Amish farmers selling rye bread next to some Salvadoran immigrants selling pupusas and some second generation Laotian-Americans selling sien savanh. There’s a young Black man with orange hair playing an acoustic guitar and singing old Beatles songs and just down the street is an old white guy with a ridiculously small electric organ playing Muzak versions of Bob Marley tunes. There are young couples with kids, old folks with walkers, dozens of breeds of dogs (and by the way, I’m always worried about the small dogs; I’m afraid they’re going to get stepped on in the crowds), gay couples holding hands, teens wearing Future Farmers of America t-shirts, cyclists in their helmets and spandex, suburban goth eye-shadow junkie kids, folks handing out flyers letting us know Jesus forgives us or that pollinators are at risk because of chemicals or reminding us that one of the voice actors from Pokemon will be signing autographs at the event center where the comic-con is taking place.

What I’m saying is that the farmers market is all about different folks coming together and getting along. And then there’s the guy wearing a t-shirt that says Transgenderism is a Mental Disorder. My phone was in my pocket, so I didn’t have time to get a photograph of him. But he was a classic Entitled Aggressive Asshole, a prime example of asshole culture.

The ONLY reason to wear a t-shirt like that in public is to provoke a reaction. This asshole deliberately set out to offend others, knowing he was unlikely to be seriously challenged about it. Unlikely to be challenged because those of us who are offended also believe in the right to free speech, and the right to believe in things others find objectionable, and the right to move around freely in public without somebody knocking you flat on your ass for being a colossal dick.

One of the worst things Trump released on the world is the fierce joy bullies and cowards find in the freedom to punch down without consequence. Right now, trans folks and drag artists have become primary targets of that twisted joy. I see articles complaining that Link (from the Legend of Zelda games) is trans-friendly, I see drag shows under attack by asshole politicians, I see concentrated efforts to prevent trans kids from getting the medical care they need. A year or two ago, none of this was much of an issue. Trans-hate has been largely manufactured for political purposes (and, of course, as another conservative grift).

My guess (and I have no actual evidence of this) is that a year ago, that asshole at the farmers’ market probably didn’t give a moment of thought to trans folks. But now that they’ve become a popular MAGA-target, he 1) found a vendor who was happy to make and sell the objectionable t-shirt, 2) spent his money to buy one so that he could 3) wear it in public in a place that encourages diversity in order to 4) offend the fuck out of people who are 5) too decent to knock him on his ass.

To be clear, I’m NOT an advocate of knocking people on their ass simply because they’re assholes (even if they deserve it–although I’d consider buying a t-shirt that says Vertical assholes deserve to be horizontal). And I’m not suggesting folks accept that asshole’s challenge and confront him in public. I mean, these assholes LIKE pretending they’re victims.

What I am saying is that it’s no longer enough for us to be silent allies. I suspect most of the folks who’ll read this have taken a relatively laissez faire approach to trans folks. Trans folks exist, not a big deal, end of story. But the movement to prevent trans folks from existing, that IS a big deal. Trans folks can’t afford for us to maintain a laissez faire approach. We need to stand up, speak up, and keep it up. We can do that without being assholes ourselves.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We really need to burn the patriarchy. Burn it from stalk to stem, then gather the ashes, grind them into dust, dig a hole and chuck in the dust, piss on the dust, cover the hole, and salt the earth over the hole. Then have tea and some nice cookies.

please tell me this doesn’t say what i think it says

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Two semi-related things. First, I have a new bike (about which I will almost certainly write, because that’s the sort of thing I do), but I’ve also been uncharacteristically busy, so unable to ride it as much I’d like. I’ve done a few short jaunts around the area, but that’s it.

Second, over the last couple of years, I’ve developed a habit of stopping when I see bike path graffiti. Sometimes the graffito is chalk art, sometimes it’s bits of philosophy, sometimes it’s a sort of editorial opinion. Regardless of what it is, the notion that somebody has deliberately made their way down a bike path and stopped to express themselves pleases me. I keep telling myself I should start photographing all those graffiti; it might make an interesting project.

So last Thursday, when I took a short ride, and saw some bike path graffiti, I did just that. Stopped, read it, photographed it, then went on my way. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the graffito itself since a) my mind was largely occupied by what I’d been working on before I went for a ride and b) a word in the graffito had been smudged out.

This greenspace is located between a commercial area and some townhomes.

It wasn’t until later, when I actually looked at the photo, that I tried to figure out what the smudged word was…and why it had been smudged out.

The [blank] never happened… but it should have!!!

Google Lens has an image-to-text application, so I tried that first. It suggested The halogen never happened, which didn’t make a lick of sense.

I tried to think of things that should have happened but didn’t. Because a lot of bike path graffiti deals with either matters of the heart (you know, stuff like Chad hearts Becky) or inspirational comments (like ‘Life is Good’), I initially focused on words that would make the phrase sweet or celebratory. The first smudged letter seems to be a ‘b’ or an ‘h’. Boyfriend…no. Backstory…no. Bahamas…maybe? The Bahamas never happened, but it should have. Possible.

Then I just tried to find words that would fit. Hangover…possibly, if the writer was into self-punishment. Harlequin…unlikely. Horseplay…don’t think so. Hologram…probably not. Holo…oh, fuck.

I’m hoping this isn’t as ugly and hateful as I think it might be.

Holocaust? The last smudged letters COULD be and ‘s’ and a ‘t’. And Iowa has increasingly become a Red-MAGA state. Our governor and legislature have been actively encouraging and passing more hateful, authoritarian policies. So this sort of irrational hate is very possible. It doesn’t matter that Jews make up less than 1% of Iowa’s population; antisemitism is never based on reality.

As much as I hate to say it…or even think it…holocaust seems to fit.

In the first photograph, you can see there’s another graffito just a few feet away. One word, maybe one short line. I didn’t even stop to look at it. Again, my mind was largely elsewhere when I stopped. But tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll get back on the bike and ride this path again to see what it says. Maybe it’ll add some clarity.

I’m really hoping somebody can decipher that smudged word in a more positive way. But even if there IS a better interpretation, I’m disheartened by the fact that my worst-case rendering seems so very possible.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We must burn the patriarchy. Burn it to the ground, gather the ashes, piss on them, douse them in oil and set them on fire again. Burn the patriarchy, then drive a stake directly through the ashes where its heart used to be, and then set fire to the stake. Burn the fucker one more time. And keep burning it, over and over. Burn it for generations. Then nuke it from orbit. Then have tea.

Also? Include antisemitism.

ADDENDUM: I went back yesterday to look at the other graffito. It’s also been smudged, which leads me to assume it was equally ugly. I can’t make out the word, though it seems to start with ‘JE’. Here it is:

indelible

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I didn’t watch the Trump Show on CNN last night. The notion that any serious news channel would give Comrade Trump a national platform to speak was ridiculous and offensive. I understand CNN’s desire to draw viewers; viewers draw advertising and advertising pays the bills. I get it. But to sacrifice journalistic integrity in order to…wait. Who am I kidding? Journalistic integrity? CNN started sacrificing that when it saw Fox News making serious coin by openly prostituting itself.

So no, I didn’t watch CNN last night. That said, I will admit to being curious about it, especially when I learned Kaitlan Collins would be given the job. She always seemed like a solid reporter. I mean, nobody would be able to stop Trump from his firehose lying, but maybe Collins would find some journalistic equivalent of a whip and a chair, and keep Trump partially at bay. It seemed unlikely, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Reader, I was wrong.

This morning I’ve watched a few clips of that horrorshow. And Jesus suffering fuck, it was like that scene in Aliens when the xenomorphs are shredding the Colonial Marines. Kaitlan Collins tried her best, but she was overrun. Not just by Trump’s lies, but by the audience as well.

Since it was a supposed ‘town hall’ affair, I assumed there’d be a live audience. It never occurred to me that CNN — or any actual news organization — could be so massively stupid as to gather an audience “[c]omprised of Republicans and otherwise undeclared voters planning to participate in the 2024 GOP primary.” In other words, they invited a Trump-friendly crowd.

Let me just say that again. CNN voluntarily and knowingly held a ‘town hall’ meeting in New Hampshire, the most conservative state in New England (I mean, their goddamn motto is “Live free or die”), hosting the only twice-impeached POTUS in history — a man who fomented an actual insurrection in an attempt to illegally remain in office — the day after he’d been found liable for sexual assault, and then invited an audience of his followers to attend.

That is deeply stupid. That is stupid all the way down at the cellular level. CNN basically asked Kaitlan Collins to interview a great white shark in a pool of sharks and then spooned in chum. They fucking ate her alive.

At one point, Trump turned to Collins and called her a “nasty person.” And the audience laughed. Laughed and applauded. All I could think about was Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified under oath about being sexually assaulted by Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. When asked why she was so confident about her memory of the assault, Ford said:

“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”

Emotional trauma is literally encoded on memory. The levels of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain sparked by the trauma sort of tattoo that experience onto the hippocampus — the part of the limbic system that consolidates information from short-term memory to long-term memory. Beyond the physical trauma of the assault, it was the casual, unthinking cruelty of the laughter that seared itself on Dr. Ford’s memory.

Cruel laughter. Trump called a respected television journalist a “nasty person” and his supporters cheered and laughed. It was exactly what they wanted. It’s what CNN gave them.

I was not surprised by Trump’s behavior last night; that’s who he is (and CNN had to know that). I’m shocked, but not surprised by the behavior of the audience; that’s who Trump supporters are (and CNN had to know that). But I am surprised and outraged that CNN, knowing who they were dealing with, deliberately brought those two explosive elements together and allowed them to detonate on a nation audience.

Fuck CNN in the neck.