Getting A Jump On Pride Month One Of My Favorite LGBTQ+ History Channels

 

I like Hugh Hagius' videos about LGBTQ+ history.   I like his research and writing and I like his plain, no production gimmicks style.   I will probably post a number of them in the next month 

And Now The Poetry Corner - Posted for reasons I'm not going to disclose

In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus

by X. J. Kennedy

In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day

Rose a lady in skunk with a topheavy sway,

Raised a knobby red finger—all turned from their beer—

While with eyes bright as snowcrust she sang high and clear:

“Now who of you'd think from an eyeload of me

That I once was a lady as proud as could be?

Oh I'd never sit down by a tumbledown drunk

If it wasn't, my dears, for the high cost of junk.

“All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf

Beat the down of the swan by a length and a half.

In the kerchief of linen I caught to my nose

Ah, there never fell snot, but a little gold rose.

“I had seven gold teeth and a toothpick of gold,

My Virginia cheroot was a leaf of it rolled

And I'd light it each time with a thousand in cash—

Why the bums used to fight if I flicked them an ash.

“Once the toast of the Biltmore, the belle of the Taft,

I would drink bottle beer at the Drake, never draft,

And dine at the Astor on Salisbury steak

With a clean tablecloth for each bite I did take.

“In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the track,

A steel-guitar trio, a bar in the back,

And the wheels made no noise, they turned over so fast,

Still it took you ten minutes to see me go past.

“When the horses bowed down to me that I might choose,

I bet on them all, for I hated to lose.

Now I'm saddled each night for my butter and eggs

And the broken threads race down the backs of my legs.

“Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass

Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.

Keep your bottoms off barstools and marry you young

Or be left—an old barrel with many a bung.

“For when time takes you out for a spin in his car

You'll be hard-pressed to stop him from going too far

And be left by the roadside, for all your good deeds,

Two toadstools for tits and a face full of weeds.”

All the house raised a cheer, but the man at the bar

Made a phonecall and up pulled a red patrol car

And she blew us a kiss as they copped her away

From that prominent bar in Secaucus, N.J.

If That Kind of "Protected Speech" Is OK For Everyone Else Why Is It Wrong When Judges Are The Victims Of It?

 AS I SAY BELOW,  just about everything Judge Esther Salas says, I agree with.  I will not mention a few things I disagree with just now - but listen to what she is saying about the violence and harassment that is coming the way of judges because of Donald Trump and his allies lies and violence provoking language about them. 

Here's my comment on this video.

I agree with just about everything Judge Salas said, but I would add that it was the judges and, especially, the "justices" who decided that these kinds of attacks were perfectly all right when it comes to them being made against other People. Whether they be politicians, especially, as it turns out Democratic politicians or teenagers who are victims of online harassment. There was a case in Massachusetts quite a while ago where a teenage girl was harassed and badgered and terrorized by girls at her high school and one of the girl's mother who was egging them on into committing suicide and when her mother tried to get redress she was told by the courts that her daughters assassins had a First Amendment "right" to drive her daughter to kill herself.* If the judges and "justices" had not made that interpretation of the First Amendment the kind of thing that she is rightly objecting to when it's judges who are the target of it would not be happening. You can't have that interpretation of the First Amendment and the kind of civility or even safety she is advocating.

* I haven't located the post I wrote at the time on that one but I did find one I found about a male nurse who frequented suicide blogs posing as a young woman, encouraging People to commit suicide online for his sexual pleasure. It was all about how he and lawyers said he had a "right" to do that. Here's a bit of what I wrote then:

Pretending he was a women half his age,* Dinkel trolled suicide websites (NB) and encouraged people to kill themselves in front of web cams for his sexual gratification. He’s suspected in at least five suicides and was believed to have encouraged as many as a hundred around the world. While pursuing his “suicide fetish (sic)” he worked as a nurse in hospitals and nursing homes. After years of doing this he was outed by Celia Blay, a 64-year-old woman with few technical skills, who tracked him down when police refused to become involved. The details of the case are pretty awful but even worse is the fact that the criminally degenerate Dinkel will likely get off without prosecution in the United States. As he has put it "Nothing is going to come of it, ... I've moved on with my life, and that's it." And, given the free speech fetish in our current legal culture, he’s probably right. As he moves on with his life, his victims will, of course, not. The law that St. Paul police used to finally stop him, for now, is likely to not be deemed to cover internet predators of his kind, encouraging people to kill themselves for his gratification on web-cams. If he never serves a sentence of a day, it wouldn’t be surprising. Here is how Jonathan Turley puts it: Turley said that if prosecutors file charges against Melchert-Dinkel, convicting him would be difficult, especially if the defense claims freedom of speech. The law professor said efforts to make it illegal to shout "Jump!" to someone on a bridge have not survived constitutional challenges. "What's the difference between calling for someone to jump off a bridge and e-mailing the same exhortation?" he said.

With all respect to Judge Salas, the judges and, especially, "justices" are now in a sewer they put the rest of us in. I only wish she would realize that what she wants for judges, they deny to the rest of American society.

I Also Got Some Flack

when I proposed taxing the endowments of places like Harvard and MIT and other rich, private institutions with enormous endowments and using the money to fund education for the poor and working class of Boston and other places.   But when Trump's robo-blonde designated liar, KKKaroline Leavitt talks about shutting down elite education because we need more electricians and plumbers,  I think it's in line to ask why that skank went to the Benedictine St. Anselm College - she went there on a softball scholarship, to tie in with the post below - instead of a vo tech where she might have learned to do something more productive than lying her face off for fascism.

I looked at the, no doubt St. Anselm maintained Wikipedia pages for the college and they list the lying fascist skank as one of their notable alumni.   They should be ashamed of having produced  such an amoral person, though I suppose like most of elite Catholic institutions, the same rules apply for them that some of them applied to organized criminals.  

Sports Are Healthy!

SINCE I GOT the kind of push back I knew I'd get when I again declared myself not a sports fan,   I thought I'd share this account of the good, clean, fun athletic competition is:

The teenager, identified in local media as Ryan Satterthwaite, died in hospital on Monday after playing a game of "run it straight" in Palmerston North.

The game has two players, one with a ball and the other the tackler, who tries to knock the other player down.

"Run it straight" has recently become popular as a viral online trend and has long been played in Australia and New Zealand.

"We would urge anyone thinking about taking part in a game or event like this to consider the significant safety and injury risks," Manawatū police spokesperson Ross Grantham said in a statement on Tuesday.

"While this was an impromptu game among friends, not a planned event, this tragic outcome does highlight the inherent safety concerns with such an activity."

I suppose it would have been OK if it had been one of the many deaths that have come about through organized games with coaches and rules and paying viewers and owners making money.   And if you think that that has nothing to do with this:

Mr Grantham added it was not a police matter, but officers will "continue to undertake enquiries on behalf of the coroner".

The match sees two players running head first towards each other over a 65-foot field without any protective equipment or kit.

It's even been endorsed by some professional rugby players, with England rugby player George Burgess, 33, winning £9,500 after competing in an Australian tournament, according to The Mirror.

Ryan was rushed to hospital by friends after the match on Sunday and died the following day.

One tournament, the Runit Championship League, described the game as the "fiercest, new collision sport".

Professor Patria Hume, an expert in sports science and injury prevention, said the sport is "a step backwards"

"This is a reckless and dangerous spectacle," she told the NZ Herald.

"The science is clear – repeated head impacts increase risk of long-term brain damage."

Run It Straight's founder, Christian Lesa, said community support remains strong despite backlash and said the game should only be played under strict and regulated conditions.

Again, I ask, so it's OK when someone dies or is maimed or suffers permanent brain damage so long as it's organized and,  I'm sure, someone is making money off of it. 

The nauseating, phony and ginned-up sentimentality and quasi-religious sanctity concerning "sports" has led the world into pretending it isn't what it is, sometimes ritualized, sometimes very actual violence as entertainment.   I merely said no one has ever been able to explain to me why I was supposed to care who won or who lost a game,  something that extends to everything from checkers to the phoniest, most sentimentalized and sanctified of shake-down con jobs, the Olympics and America's real religion, the NFL, but there are actually larger problems with sports.    

When I asked the guy who most consistently trolls me to explain to me why I should care, he listed with no explanation the long ago Brooklyn Dodgers,  The Mets (he's a NYC guy, I suspect those who live in other sports markets couldn't care less about the ghost of a team moved to Los Angeles a lifetime ago or the Mets) and mentioned a couple of famous players who,  I had to point out, where human beings, not sports.   A good part of why I don't like sports is because I do care about the lives and health and happiness of human beings and animals - don't get me started on sports that involve the abuse, harm and death of animals.   Such are also covered by "sports."  Bear and badger baiting were popular sports - bloody Queen Bess was a big fan -  as are dog and cock fighting.   

I am still awaiting some brighter sports fan to explain to me why I should care about it.   Though, that's a lie, I stopped waiting for that explanation about the time I was 12.  I do resent the near universal demand that I pretend to care about it and the idea that something is wrong with someone who doesn't like sports or find them interesting.   If someone told me they weren't interested in some part of the arts I care about,  I wouldn't figure they were morally depraved,  I'd have figured we liked different things.   The difference is that few to no artists produce artistic work that they want half of those who hear or see or participate in it to be unhappy.   That's built into sports.   In many of them along with a body count and lists of those maimed and injured, and corruption for profit, like, you know wars?   Some fun, huh?   I think there is something wrong with those who can watch People and animals getting killed or injured in some entirely unproductive and useless would-be entertainment with pleasure and no reflection on the morality of what they're getting pleasure from. 

Why don't I publish all of the neo-Nazi troll's comment?

BECAUSE AS HE almost always does, he slanders People and accuses me of saying things I've never said, often about things I never heard of.    I don't carry slander against other People.   If he didn't do that I might more often post his comments.   But, as I always have to point out, lying with bearing of false witness is the mother tongue of those on the right.   It's the start of why they are so consistently dangerous and evil.   Unlike the mainstream media and media in general, I won't be fair to fascists,  I won't be nice to Nazis and I despise anti-democrats of all kinds, on the fascist right and their near cousins on what only stupid people think are far removed from them on the left side of a stupidly written up graph.   There is egalitarian democracy and there is gangster government.  Only egalitarian democracy is a legitimate form of government, the rest of it is merely less bad to totally evil.  

It Could Get Worse

IF KRISTI NOEM ever finds out who Irma Grese was.   I can easily imagine her LARPing that role and Trump giving her a pardon for whatever crimes she committed while doing it and our insane Constitution letting them let her off the hook.   I can well imagine that happening under our legal system.  Especially under the Roberts Court and its unitary executive fascist model. 

They've identified, activated and weaponized every of the many defects in the United States Constitution.  Even some of the head-in-sand MSNBC lawyers are beginning to face the fact that the Constitution has been in a crisis for years now,  I'd say ever since Bush v Gore in 2000.  

Update:  I'm tempted to point out that SS Barbie was the governor of the once great state of South Dakota at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic and she was one of those who was the most irresponsible of all governors in the country,  among other things permitting the Sturgis Motorcycle rally to go on with an eye to the money that would bring in and, besides that,  it made her the Covid Queen of South Dakota, as one publication put it.  A star in MAGA world and, no doubt along with her considerable and extensive plastic surgeries,  got her the same kind of notice from Trump that a woman can get from him if she isn't a billionaire.   I think her recklessness with Peoples and animals lives is reason to think, given the right circumstances that she'd do what Irma Grese did.   

As it is, I think the Dakotas and Wyoming should either be forced into being one state cutting down the number of criminal idiots they send to the Senate down by four or they should be returned to territorial status.   South Dakota, at least, used to send someone like George McGovern to Washington,  now it sends criminal idiots like her to Washington. 

Memorial Day Radio Drama - Canadian Broadcast Corporation - Afganada

 Afganada

Afganada was one of the last radio dramas produced by the once very fine Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio Drama department.   I'm posting the first of three episodes you can find at Archive.org.   Apparently you can hear the entire series at i-tunes, though I haven't tried the link. 

It's a story of Canada's involvement in the United States' long war declared on the poor country because the country that financed and aided the terror attack on September eleventh was the rich dictatorship of Saudi Arabia,  which is now doing through Republicans and Trump some of what they wanted to do through financing and aiding that attack,  destroying America through buying Trump and Republicans.   America is its democracy or it is just another dirty, seedy nation state under oligarchic fascism, like the countries Trump went to this month expecting to get lots of money from them, which he did. 

In trying to decide what to post on the damaged and sullied and should be solemn holiday of Memorial Day,   I thought, given Trump's attacks on the best friend the United States has ever had,  it would be best to remember the Canadian and Afghan veterans of what was our war and our fight.   Canadians died in fighting and attacks, both military and civilians,  many were injured including those who sustained permanent injuries, many came back with the same range of health issues that others who answered America's call in what turned out to be the longest war in our history.   It should be remembered that the first Canadians killed in Afghanistan weren't killed by the Taliban or other factions on the ground there,  they were killed when the United States bombed a training exercise, the pilot thinking it was an enemy operation, the Tarnak Farm Incident.    Remember that when you hear Trump and Republican-fascists talking trash against Canada.  

It's Been A While Since

I enjoyed a FAFO video, here's one about a Trump supporter immigrant from Denmark who is now sitting in Trump's ICEstapo prison without access to a lawyer waiting to be deported without due process.   

Here's one case where I have no problem with deporting him.    I don't think America needs to import a fascist like him.  I wonder if Denmark would welcome his wife and kids.  I'd certainly want to know if she supported Trump because I wouldn't have any problem with them excluding her on that basis just as I have no problem with America excluding those who support fascism. 

Since I Don't Care

about sports - could never understand why I was supposed to care who won and who lost a frickin' game, including when I was forced to play - I didn't think about what the latter-day FOX Lies robo-blonde Riley Gaines claim to fame consisted of and how it implodes her hate shtick and the use of trans-athletes by our neo-fascists.   

Here's how the estimable NTodd put it in the comments here.

"an accomplished athlete" = highest career finish was 5th place (the one she tied with Lia Thomas), failed to qualify for an Olympic qualifying event (lol), then retired from swimming to make money on the hate grift. "

I hadn't thought until I was washing the floor, thinking about this that as Lia Thomas was tying with Aryan Blondie, Thomas merely tied for an also-showed place AND A NUMBER OF NON-TRANS WOMEN BEAT BOTH OF THEM. 

If the problem with trans-women athletes is that they have some competitive advantage over those who are assigned biological females at birth,  how come several such non-trans females  beat both Lea Thomas and the FOX style robo-blonde?   I wonder what other sports records of trans-women losing or winning against those assigned female gender at birth would show as to the validity of that complaint.   Someone should ask the FOX hate skank that question,  I haven't read that anyone has brought it up to her yet. 

Watching A Video About

German "Brotkultur" bread culture, included a description of what has become called "bread" in the United States.    The video said that the junk was "tasty" which reminded me that back in the 1970s an immigrant to the US complained to me that American "bread" was what in his country would have more likely been called "cake,"  the sugar content was so high.

The only reason which makes that memory at all relevant to anyone else is that the man who said that to me was a Lutheran pastor who was AN AFRIKANER WHO WAS FORCED OUT OF MUSK-TRUMP NOSTALGIA APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA FOR OPPOSING THE RACIST REGIME. 

I'm old enough to remember when the Afrikaner immigrants in the United States were opposed to white supremacy,  not like the ones the white-supremacist Musk-Trump-Vance regime want to import now. 

Another Real Intelligence Has Noticed It Too

I PROPOSE "REAL INTELLIGENCE" as opposed to "artificial intelligence,"   I think that's a phrase that we need to promote to fight against the "AI" that is destroying human intelligence and culture with ersatz "realism."   How about this for a bumper sticker? 

"WHY BELIEVE "AI" WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THE REAL THING?" 

Mike Lewis at the National Catholic Reporter has also noticed the flood of fake "Pope Leo" videos that have been generated, having "him" say things he's never said using a sometimes near-enough imitation of his real voice and image to peddle lies that are, in fact, fooling a dangerously large number of People.   

In the days following Pope Leo XIV's election, the internet has been inundated with artificial intelligence-generated deepfake videos, images, and messages purporting to depict the new pontiff. These media fabrications, some of which have been circulated on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, present the pope delivering messages he never said, sometimes even in his own voice.

For example, a YouTube video, entitled "POPES WAKEUP URGENT CALL TO ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS || POPE LEO XIV SPEECH," posted on a channel called "Pope Leo XIV Sermons," delivers a fiery 42-minute exhortation about the end times in an AI-generated voice based on that of Pope Leo.

A snippet:

"The sky is heavy with prophecy. The clock of heaven is ticking its final seconds. And I declare to you today: 2025 is not just another year. It is a spiritual alarm sounding in the heavens for all who still have ears to hear. Look around you. Do you not see it? The world is unraveling at the seams."

The entire thing pretty much goes on like that, speaking of signs, warnings, and the end of the world, but without actually saying much with specificity or substance. My guess is that the script is AI-generated as well. I would say the whole thing is silly, except that this channel has over 13,000 subscribers and the video has over 230,000 views.

Most concerning is that some Catholics have been misled by these videos. A friend mentioned that her brother-in-law was sending AI-generated videos to their family's group chat. When it was pointed out to him that the video pages even had clear labels indicating the content was fake, he refused to believe it, insisting, "Why would someone fake such a beautiful sermon?"

Another friend shared with me that his mother told him that she thought the aforementioned AI-generated video about the end times was genuine. Even after he explained it was fake, she responded, "It was still a good message."

I sent a link to the video to a priest friend of mine. He responded that they'd just had a parish talk on the papacy, and at one point a participant stood up and shared a fake Pope Leo prayer they found on social media. My priest friend remarked, "This is going to be a massive problem."

All three of these exchanges happened within a five-hour timespan.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid was going to be a result of this "AI" lying,  if they can do it with Pope Leo they can do it with any politician and you can bet that such lies are being manufactured or will soon be, having any Democratic front runner say things and put online that will sink their chances in a close election.   

I think of it as being related to the opposition research that American Catholic "trads" with millions and billions were doing and circulating on "liberal" possible Popes at least in the last year or two as we got closer to another conclave.   I've seen reports that such a file was kept on Pope Leo while he was still Cardinal Prevost as well as a number of others.    One of the Youtubes I saw promoting the absurd idea that they might lie Raymond Burke or Robert Sarah into the papacy may well have been "informed" by such a load of op-research dirt on far less unlikely candidates.   Happily, the Cardinal Electors in place right now aren't as gullible as they were in the late 1970s or even early 2000s,  though I wouldn't be surprised if, along with watching "Conclave" some of them were seeing what was on Youtube as they went into Conclave.   Americans won't be so fortunate in our elections as a extremely dangerous fraction of our voters are extremely vulnerable to "AI" generated lies of this kind, perhaps even more so than the bad actors made up and on a couch at FOX Lies.

America will either make it illegal to make and distribute such stuff or Americans can kiss not only democracy but the possibility of a decent government and society goodbye.   Back before "AI" I was pointing out how much actual, Holocaust denying,  Hitler revering neo-Nazi propaganda there was on Youtube and that when I called it to "youtube's" attention, they didn't see anything wrong with posting it even though it clearly violated their posted guidelines.    That was back when I had some confidence it was some low-paid idiot young person who had something to do with that level of "content moderation,"  Now I suspect they may give that task to a badly programmed "AI" system.   

We have to face the fatal problem that the late 18th century concept of "free press" and "free speech" is in the 21st Century and find a way to make the freedom to tell the truth compatible with protecting democracy and a decent life from lies and hate speech.   I will point out that the hate speech and lies we face now WERE TOLD ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE, NATIVE AMERICANS, LATINOS, CATHOLICS, ITALIANS, FRENCH CANADIANS,  WOMEN, AND MANY OTHER SEGMENTS OF THE AMERICAN POPULATION and lots of People were killed, enslaved, oppressed by that "free speech" and "free press," only the slogans of the First Amendment drowned out that glaring truth.   Now, in the 21st century, it's not only Women and members of hated and oppressed minority groups who are targeted by Democrats of any nationality and "liberals" and now judges and "justices" who don't have the means to have a protective team mitigating the dangers.   

Hate speech and lies are, in fact, the determining factor in our elected politics and, now, the very law of the land in the hands of the Roberts Court - the majority of them put in power exactly by the kind of media campaign that I mentioned the very same American billionaires and millionaires put in place to try to get a Raymond Burke or Robert Sarah the papacy.   It's no wonder they thought they could do it in the election of a pope,  they've succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in destroying America's once aspiring democracy.  

I May Post the Comment I'm Keeping In Moderation For Now, It's By The Neo-Nazi Who Trolls Me

 Riley Gaines is not only a lovely and fiercely intelligent young woman, and, unlike you and your fellow misogynist Olbermann's claim, an accomplished athlete, but she's also an astute observer of Dem logic.

She pointed out, despite the shooting of the Israeli embassy workers yesterday, the Dems have been remarkably restrained in not calling for a ban on guns. You guys have also been quiet about a ban on "offensive speech" and are not referring to the person in question as a, "Nazi."

Has the professional spoil sport skank pointed out THAT REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS HAVEN'T BEEN CALLING OUT FOR A BAN ON GUNS AFTER THE SHOOTING AT THE ISRAELI EMBASSY?   IF THEY'D NOT ARMED AMERICA TO THE SKIES, THE SHOOTING PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED. 

While The Free Press Demands Liberals and Democrats Apologize For Having The Most Competent

the most competent post-Covid pandemic government in the free world,  I have yet to hear any conservative, any ex-recent-Republican, any of those who have been parts of the Republican Party, its politicians, its judicial appointments, its, God help us, Supreme Court appointees APOLOGIZE FOR THE POLICIES AND IDEAS AND CLAIMS AND PROCLAMATIONS WHICH HAVE BROUGHT US HERE.  TRUMP II.

It is Republicans and conservatives who gave us the previous record breaker in adjudicated criminality within a presidential administration,  Nixon.   It brought us to the then record-breaker in that,  Reagan.   It brought us Bush I, an administration so corrupt that George H.W. Bush pardoned his way out of himself being the subject of a likely indictment for high crimes committed during his presidency.   It brought us Bush II through the Bush v Gore 5 Supreme Court "justices" - conservative Republicans -  whose actions were so bad that they lost two Republican "justices" who voted against that overthrowing of American Democracy, the Supreme Court choosing to install Bush I's idiot son whose irresponsibility led to 9-11 and, not only the hopeless Afghan war in response to what was largely a Saudi financed terror event but which then used the opportunity to lie us into invading Iraq, a bloodbath so catastrophic that the numbers of those whose deaths resulted make the lake of blood Saddam Hussein was responsible for look like nothing.  And to top that off there was the Bush II economic crisis which nearly did what Trump is now well on his way to doing.

And it should not be forgotten that Bush II cemented the Republican-fascist control of the Supreme Court which has largely been at the center of enabling Trump, both during his first regime and now as the Judicial system under the Roberts Court not only failed to stop Trump - repealing parts of the 14th Amendment and turning the American presidency into an absolute monarchy for all practical purposes - it is clear that under the guardianship OF CONSERVATIVES the American Constitution has failed entirely.  

Anyone who claims that isn't the case is lying AS TRUMP HAS YET TO BE STOPPED BY IT.

Sharing the greatest share with the Supreme Court is the Republican caucus of the Congress,  which could have stopped Trump by convicting him of the most outrageous and clearly impeachable offenses in BOTH OF THE TRUMP IMPEACHMENT TRIALS.   

All of this is the consequence of American conservatives going back half a century, this decent into American fascism has been a consequence of the choices of conservatives.

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE ROLE THE AMERICAN MEDIA HAS PLAYED IN THIS, BOTH THE ADMITTED CONSERVATIVES AND THE "BOTH-SIDES" ASSHOLES WHOSE "EVEN HANDEDNESS" ALWAYS ENDS UP PROMOTING REPUBLICAN-FASCISM.   And that includes the "liberal media" which was never liberal, the New York Times played an enormous role in promoting it, as did all of the networks, including PBS and NPR,  most of those in the press who aren't culpable run small newspapers or magazines.   And a lot of those which may come to mind,  such as The Nation and The Progressive and In These Times are not off the hook in that regard.   Promoting idiotic spoiler "third-party" and independent candidates and driving down the anti-fascist vote that counts. 

I wouldn't suggest anyone hold their breath waiting for a. conservatives, even those ex-Republicans to start, in large numbers, admitting their role in bringing us to this and asking for forgiveness, b.  waiting to breathe for the media to admit to it is even more likely to get you dead.   The lawyers, the judges, the "justices" will certainly not admit to the role they played in this.   Nor will anyone in the media ever try to get them to admit it.   They're all too busy trying to get governors of states hit by major catastrophes to sell books for Jake Tapper in the latest ginned-up program to make low-information voters blame Joe Biden and Democrats for them giving us Trump. 

This kind of media campaign ahead of a difficult election for Republicans, to give the low-information voters a vague sense that Democrats can't be trusted has been going on my entire life.   If I had a dollar for everyone I've encountered who had some vague sense that Hillary Clinton was corrupt WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SAY HOW OR WHY THEY THOUGHT THAT I'd be rich.   

Israel Is A Genocide State They Should Be Cut Off By The West

 

Why Not Go Farther?

I SEE A LOT IS BEING made of what is being presented as Pope Leo casting shade on non-hetero "normal" marriages in an address he made to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, the other day.   It is being presented in a way that a lot of my fellow LGBTQ+ People will, no doubt, be offended by as could, very easily Women or men who had single-parent families and,  I'll point out, those who have made other kinds of marriages than the minority of those covered by the remarks.   

This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.”[2] *

I'll give you the entire context of this in the second of three words he said were the basis of the Church's, well,  I'll give you that paragraph too:

In our dialogue, I would like us to keep in mind three essential words that represent the pillars of the Church’s missionary activity and the aim of the Holy See’s diplomacy.

The first and third are certainly worth discussing but it is that one sentence this is focused on.  It appears in this context. 

The second word is justice. Working for peace requires acting justly. As I have already mentioned, I chose my name thinking first of all of Leo XIII, the Pope of the first great social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum. In this time of epochal change, the Holy See cannot fail to make its voice heard in the face of the many imbalances and injustices that lead, not least, to unworthy working conditions and increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden societies. Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies.  

It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.” [2] In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.

My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.

Of course no one should hold their breath waiting for America's free press to notice that passage about "the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies," when they can gin up hatred of LGBTQ+ People for the free press and to  its owners' profit.  This piece is as much about how the free press will use selected sentences and phrases that Pope Leo uses, and nothing sells in the free press like sex.  

Note the the [2] just after the problematic quote which refers to a footnote that indicates this is a quote taken from Leo XIII's great encyclical, Rerum Novarum which was issued on 15 May 1891.   If there's one thing that Leo XIII was not thinking of it was LGBTQ+ families, which I doubt he could even imagine.   Leo XVI certainly can imagine such families and those other "non-standard" families I mentioned and others, such as families that result from divorced parents remarrying or, I'll point out, families that would fit entirely well within the ones covered by his definition THAT IS UNTIL ARE THEN ALTERED BY UNEXPECTED DIVORCE OR INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION OR DEATH.   I'm sure many of the families of those who Good Pope Francis was so concerned about,  those who were imprisoned, those who were separated by the necessity of a parent going abroad to try to get the means of support - immigrants (Leo has certainly taken up their cause even before he became Pope) and many others are as much in need of the concern of governments, churches and other institutions.  AND SO DO THOSE WHOSE PARENTS OR GUARDIANS AREN'T IN THE MINORITY OF MARRIAGES COVERED BY POPE LEO'S UNFORTUNATELY RESTRICTIVE SENTENCE.

My first question in regard to the remark about types of families is why shouldn't governments go farther in providing the good implied by Leo's claim of why they should focus on some families than in the subset of all families he chose to focus on.  

I will note that in no place at least in any document I've seen, has Leo opposed such support being given to the majority of families that aren't covered by the set he sets out as the supposed ideal.  Though that is certainly the implication being taken from it by those who hate LGBTQ+ People and our families.   Maybe I should start capitalizing Families,  because, as the two Leo's more than just imply,  People ideally live in families, if not biologically related People living in one or more households, then in families of friends.

I'll use this opportunity to advocate something I did when the marriage-equality issue was so much under discussion, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in that state and the Republican-fascists and the free press used hatred of LGBTQ+ People to promote Republican politicians chances,  as they are doing now, no doubt using Leo's unfortunate sentence to do that. 

The government should not be in the marriage business, that is between couples and God, in the first instance and, somewhat down from there, whatever churches they choose to belong to.  Governments should have no more to do with that than to acknowledge households and relationships by recognizing civil unions of two adults who choose to enter into a civil union.   In discussing that at the time I noted that in France, the most common form of civil union was entered into by single daughters and their widowed or divorced or otherwise unmarried mothers.   Civil unions and families are what should enjoy the governmental protections that are given only under legal marriages now.  

The irony of the Catholic Church position on this is that it defines such homes only by the sex lives of those who head or form such families.  You'd think they would recognize that families can be formed when those who lead them don't have sex with each other and never intended to.   I know of families in which a Lesbian aunt or Gay uncle play as big a role in them as the biological parents or parent do.  Such a family which is not defined by anyone having sex with anyone would be left out of the concern of governments under this formulation AS WOULD THE CHILDREN GROWING UP IN SUCH FAMILIES. 

Update:  I should have mentioned that a lot of those who would make such vicious use of Pope Leo's statement would fail to notice that their own families are as not covered by what he says governments should be concerned with as those of LGBTQ+ parent-led families.   For a start, families in which one or both of the parents have adulterous relationships even if they stay married, those which, as I mentioned above, are formed after the divorce and remarriage of one or both of the hetero-sexual parents.   I don't have statistics BUT I'LL BET THE LARGE MAJORITY OF THOSE IN POLITICS AND THE MEDIA WHO MAKE SUCH USE OF IT ARE AS EXCLUDED BY POPE LEO AS SAME-SEX COUPLES' FAMILIES, in fact I'll bet that there are as large a percent of stable same-sex parent families of faithful couples as there are in hetero-sexual parent families.  I'll bet Lesbian couples raising children have a better track record of faithfulness than hetero-sexuals who would be taken as falling within Leo's definition. 

I wish I could find the clip of the former professional virgin, Ben Shapiro whining and squeaking about the only purpose of marriage being pro-creation.   Someone in the Q&A asked him if he intended to stop being married when he was done having children.   It's a question that any politician or media figure who says something along those lines should have to answer for IN TERMS OF THEIR OWN LIVES AND MARRIAGES.  

The Free Press Is The Enemy Of Egalitarian Democracy And A Decent Life For All

THE MEDIA HANDLING of the news that the best president in living memory,  Joe Biden has an aggressive and metastasized form of prostate cancer has been entirely in keeping with the media handling of Democratic politicians as opposed to Republican politicians, also going back to at least 1966 or so.  Any Democrat or would-be liberal or lefty who hasn't noticed that Democrats are ALWAYS in for worse treatment by the media than Republicans in that fifty-nine years  or so is either a media professional who has a vested interest in lying about that - and almost all of them are - or they are extremely stupid.  

The fact is that the media is only even a friend of equality and democracy when they have some requirement to favor the truth over opportunistic lies.   That comes as close as a taught lesson from experience as could be had from an honest appraisal of the history of the American media, freed by Supreme Court rulings to lie with impunity.  That is freed to lie  when it comes to Democratic politicians who might not favor the interests of the millionaires and billionaires who own and run and appear on camera in the media as opposed to the Republicans who are devoted to the servicing of millionaires and billionaires.  This is yet another example of that one law for the lion and the ox meaning oppression as mentioned here Saturday,  one law for the liars and the truth-tellers leads to oppression as can be seen in the descent of American politics into fascism over exactly that same fifty-nine years after the Sullivan Decision.  

Jake Tapper is, no doubt, gleeful in the marketing opportunity he and his co-writer have had in applying the double standard that is fully compatible with the First Amendment, one-law fits all, as it has turned out.   No doubt about it.  I heard the allegedly liberal NPR giving him that kind of opportunity this morning as they used his line that not only Joe Biden's administration but the entire Democratic Party allegedly kept Joe Biden's health problems and alleged mental decline a secret.   They do that AS NO PART OF THE MEDIA THAT REALLY COUNTS, THE NETWORKS, THE CABLOIDS, THE GUTTER LEVEL PODCASTERS, ETC.  DON'T DO THE SAME FOR THE ENTIRELY CLEAR MENTAL DEBILITY OF TRUMP.  

Joe Biden's administration LED BY HIM, PUT TOGETHER BY HIM, had the best performance of any president since Franklin Roosevelt did with a similar situation handed to him by three Republican presidents.   His economic policies were the envy of democracies that didn't bounce back anywhere near as much from the economic chaos that had come in the years before he took office.   He had the most competent presidency since LBJ's and, unlike the tragedy of LBJ getting suckered farther into Vietnam by the Harvard boys,  Joe Biden bravely took the hit by sticking to the deadline that Trump I set for the U.S. exiting from the interminable war in Afghanistan.   He was, indeed, THE MOST COMPETENT PRESIDENT OF MY LIFETIME and that goes back into the Truman years.  Yet the media has painted him as a senile and incompetent old man.  Apparently George Clooney's disappointment that Joe Biden, during a very difficult presidency forgot his face figures heavily into this.   As good an actor as Clooney might be, and he's good but he's not great, and as handsome as he continues to be,  I'd rather have a president who remembered the People and issues that were a vital part of his job than even a celebrated Hollywood actor.   Actors who are disappointed that a President, who has to meet regularly with heads of state,  politicians, advisors, popes, heads of state, etc.  might not recall who they are (do we know that Joe Biden watched his movies?) are not the best measure of the competence of an American president.  

I will contrast the media handling of Ronald Reagan who frequently forgot who members of his cabinet were and who as sympathetic a head of government as Margaret Thatcher noted had nothing much in his head,  who believed he was in on the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp, as he sat in Hollywood, the incompetent and stupid Bush II and now Trump who is clearly and publicly both stupid and demented and who wrecked America's health-care,  economy and infrastructure once and who is doing it again, and who well may top Hoover in tanking the economy decisively.   

Anyone who buys into the relatively young Thomas Jefferson's absurd notion that journalism is a reliable bulwark against oppression after two hundred and fifty years of the evidence that unless they are punished for lying, they will always serve wealth and the most malicious of purposes, is either a liar or they are more demented than anyone has accused Joe Biden of being.   I would put Jake Tapper in the liar category,  someone who serviced the rise of Trump II by his refusal to fact check him during the "debate" that he co-anchored with the equally putrid Dana Bash.   And I would put NPR,  the New York Times and virtually every other large player in the American media in that category.   

There is a potential for the media to serve egalitarian democracy but not so long as it is owned by the millionaires and billionaires and especially not as long as it has legal protection to lie with impunity for the interests of its owners and operators.   The legal mechanisms to hold them to account and to break up the very real control of those with millions and billions would be far different from what we have now and, LIKE ANY MAN MADE LEGAL SYSTEM, would have flaws and dangers embedded in them.   For anyone who prefers the current system with its known dangers which are deadly to egalitarian democracy and a decent life for all than to try to learn from the disasterous history of America after the Sullivan Decision, you have already given up on equality, democracy and decency,  how much worse does it have to get before you face the obvious truth?   A Third Reich, Italian fascist or Imperial Japan in ruins?   A post-nuclear nightmare?   I will remind you of the Musk-Trump regime playing with the "fail safe" system that protects us from our own nuclear arsenal -  I wonder if George Clooney will admit that it was safer under Biden than with what he, foolishly, helped bring us back to.   I can't rate our alleged journalism's danger to democracy as opposed to the role that Hollywood has played in it - Trump as a politician is a product of Hollywood as was Reagan - but "liberal Hollywood" is about as reliable for being a problem for it.   But, then, entertainment is a matter of make-believe, just as our journalism is, now that they have also had public interest requirements removed from them, as well as not lying.  

There Are Already A Huge Number

of totally fake AI generated videos supposedly of Pope Leo giving sermons he never gave and saying things he hasn't said.   I get a lot of "catholic" as well as Catholic content foisted on me by several sites algorithms in the languages I do searches in and I've seen them in English, French and Spanish so far.

I hope that someone as internet savvy as Leo assigns a couple of People at the Vatican to get on that because if the comments on such fake videos are anything to go by,  they will be a major burden to his papacy as they, in fact, are in every area of activity online and, so, in real life.  

This is a real danger for reality being what determines human culture.   It didn't start with AI or even the internet but both of those have made things worse by an enormous factor.   

For Once A Welcomed Commercial - A Quick Post Which May Lead To More In Time

WILLIAM BLAKE is one of my favorite poets and one whose poetry has often resisted my understanding.   I've tried a couple of interpreters of Blake, E.P. Thompson was the last one I tried, and, while I've found some persuasive things in them, none of them has ever really convinced me they really got him.   I did come to the conclusion that you probably couldn't get to him unless you shared at least some of his belief in God and Jesus which even such devotedly sympathetic secularists reject.   It would be like someone studying modern physics without believing in electrons or current biology without believing in the things that Barbara McClintock discovered (which, clearly, many of the big names in the popular understanding of science, today, don't).   

I will note that in the last several months of reading Scripture, especially the New Testament,  I have come to the startling conclusion that love is a central force in existence, both our only hope of the survival of death - and I mean literally that, continued conscious existence after bodily death, not some remembered existence or other transient metaphor - but also as the reason any of us or the universe exists at all.  I haven't developed any great Scriptural or reasoned arguments to support that,  so huge is it that I would guess you'd have to say it in Blakean language and that might not have the force it needs without Blakean pictures in color, as well.  Blake is also one of my favorite artists.  

I hadn't thought of Blake in my thinking about this until listening to this new short essay "Enemies of the Human Race" William Blake on the disaster of atheism, by Mark Vernon - which has an announcement of his upcoming book Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination which, alas, won't be published here in the States until September and who knows if any of us will have enough money to buy it by then.   

I may go into some of what Mark Vernon says when I have time to work out a better copy of the machine transcription (AI is a so-so stenographer as well as being essentially stupid) and I'd have to re-read the two long and difficult poems he discusses.   What he says about Blake's condemnation of what amounts to modernism and, in my thinking, the inadequacy of republicanism and secular, non-egalitarian democracy and the impossibility of that when there is enormous disparity in the actual having of physical, material wealth.    I think Blake got it right when he said, "One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression".    The pretenses of our law that pretends that there is "Equal Justice Under Law" when there never has been and the Lockean framers of the Constitution and the judges and "justices" have made it even more so have certainly come to its real reality in the criminal triumph of Trump and Republican-fascism.   I might note that you could state it more clearly by replacing "lies" for "Lion" and Truth for "Ox,"  only one such substitution of terms to prove the validity of the relationship - if you wanted to try to do it mathematically. 

Update:  Don't know why it didn't occur to me that you might be able to read the essay at Mark Vernon's Substack.   You can but it requires a subscription,  you can get a free one with a link through his website.  I will be reading through what he said on the video and might have some comments on it later. 

Hey Hey RFK How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

If someone deserves to die that way it's Little Bobby,  I just hope he doesn't take innocent children along with him.  

 Notice how Chris Hayes discerned a definitely eugenic statement about only "sick children" dying of measles and advocating "choice" for parents to allow their children to be one of those "sick children" - no doubt the "sick children" might have a different opinion about their parents ignorantly or malignantly taking that chance for them just as those who have fallen for the anti-vaxx cult lies taking such a chance.   Put on top of his call to register those who are said to have autism - something his fellow Republican-fascists USED TO claim to fear as a prelude to . . . . something BAD.   At least when they gave that as their excuse to oppose Social Security.

The irony in the new eugenics goes very deep, all the way back to a belief in the theory of natural selection and its long and immediate history of generating eugenics as a "science."  One of those huge ironies is the enthusiasm that the haters of Darwin have for his most consequential product.   I'm sure Little Bobby is a true believer in not only the reality of evolution but in a particularly crude and primitive conception of Darwinism, natural selection.  With him the common cause he has with the Protestant Fundamentalist anti-evolutionists is his love of money.   When it comes to anti-vaxx,  he got into it and stays in it and promotes it because it enriches him.