Month: October 2023

Hmmm… unlikely at best

This, frankly, has always struck me as kind of bullshit. I mean, I know the things that make me weird—you may have seen and been confused by some of them on here—and I can’t blame all of them on damage from the stroke cos some of them go back much further than that, and I don’t see any way of translating those into positives…

Yeah, that’ll help

The US stops selling guns! Except, no, it does piss all of the sort, really:

The US has stopped issuing export licenses for most civilian firearms and ammunition for 90 days for all non-governmental users, the commerce department said on Friday, citing national security and foreign policy interests.
The commerce department did not provide further details for the pause, which also includes shotguns and optical sights, but said an urgent review will assess the “risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights, or fuel criminal activities”. […]
Export licenses for Ukraine and Israel, as well as some other close allies, will be exempted from the temporary halt in exports.

I mean, obviously, cos you wouldn’t want the regional instability or violations of human rights we’re still witnessing in Gaza right now to be impeded in any way whatsoever, would you. (And no, pogroms aren’t the solution to that situation either.) As for firearms being diverted to Bad People for Bad Things, eh, those people will just get their guns elsewhere, it’s not like the US has a monopoly on weapons… this won’t make a damn bit of difference, and it certainly solves nothing at home and more of this will just keep happening. Still, it’s nice to know they’re still thinking of Ukraine, given how the discourse seems to have forgotten that‘s still a thing…

Pence out

In other US political news, Mike Pence is dropping his pants bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This comes as quite a shock to me, cos I didn’t even know he was running for president in the first place… He learned nothing from January 6, did he? The cult were calling for his execution that day. He knows that. I can only assume he thought they’d calmed down since that day and would be OK with him running for president. They wanted him dead for just doing his job as vice president back then, I see no reason to assume they don’t still want him at the end of a rope… especially if he were running for president against Glorious Leader. Alas, we have now been spared the potential spectacle of Pence actually becoming president and Trump’s goons trying to execute him at his inauguration…

Melt!

The American right are having a meltdown over a literal meltdown. The statue of the guy that, lest we forget, lost the American Civil War which provoked that Unite the Right rally in 2017, is now an ex-statue:

While the statue was finally removed from public display in 2021 there were still several ongoing lawsuits attempting to protect and restore it to its previous location, which meant rather than disposing of it, the council was forced to put it in storage until all the legal matters were resolved. With the final case resolved on September 26 of this year, the council was finally free to proceed with the plans unanimously voted for in 2021: sending the statue to be melted down, and its brass repurposed for more useful things going forward.
The plan was proposed and overseen by the local non-profit, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The group reportedly intends to take the brass that used to make up the visage of defeated, pro-slavery, Confederate leader/traitor Robert E. Lee and make it into a new public art project, to be installed on August 12, 2027. That’s just in time for the ten-year anniversary of what’s come to be known as the Summer of Hate for the alt-right, neo-Nazi violence that terrorized the Charlottesville community, taking the life of counter-protester Heather Heyer and injuring several more.
The foundry used to recycle the statue into something more fitting is being kept anonymous in order to protect the workers from any kind of violent reprisals, a legitimate concern after the escalating open white supremacist violence of the last decade.

Whoever the fuck Reed Cooley is, he’s clearly pissed that “they” chose to destroy and re-purpose this statue rather than just hide it in a museum. It’s hysterical in and of itself, but the second sentence in particular is what makes it hilarious. After all, not only is there no point in hanging drawing and quartering “your” forefathers at this point, the war ended nearly 160 years ago so there’s probably not much left of them to do that, but… they never even did that to Robert E. Fucking Lee when the war ended. He was stripped of his citizenship, which was returned in Andrew Johnson’s 1868 amnesty, and he lost some property, for which the family was compensated a couple of decades later,  but was otherwise allowed to go on living and do so with comparative honour until his death five years later from natural causes. Never even went to jail. Hanged drawn & quartered my arse, REED.

New Who, 1970

One of the numerous photos announcing the advent of third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, and one that, in hindsight, drips with a certain irony. There’s a Silurian and one of the alien ambassador costumes from his first series, sure enough, but there’s also, notably, a Cyberman—and not even the most recent Cyberman design at that, for some reason, that’s one of the “Wheel in Space” models—and a Yeti. Ironic because, although Pertwee apparently claimed the Cybermen were his favourite Doctor Who monster, they wouldn’t appear in another story until the next Doctor took over and their sole appearance in a Pertwee story was a cameo in “Carnival of Monsters” where neither they nor the Doctor crossed paths… and the Yeti would never appear again other than another cameo in “The Five Doctors”, in which Pertwee’s Doctor conspicuously did not encounter them either…

A Halloween warning

Every year, when Halloween rolls around, parents get paranoid about their kids going trick or treating and being given drugs instead of chocolate or whatever, because giving drugs away for free is something drug dealers do all the time rather than making money, apparently. In any case, though, parents should evidently be worrying about other things turning up in their kids’ Halloween treat bags:

HOLY SHIT (as it were), imagine getting one of those in your swag…

…and, obviously, the reverse situation is also something you might want to watch out for.

Habemus Speaker… oh, fuck no

So the US finally has a new speaker of the house. This latest piece of bullshit began a few weeks ago when Matt Gaetz, one of the most punchable-looking people in US politics, put forth a motion to oust the then-speaker Kevin McCarthy for trying to stop a government shutdown. This meant having to get a new speaker, cos the government can’t actually function without one, and the most likely candidates, the guy who once spoke at an event run by David Duke and the pedophile enabler, failed to get up… but finally they got some character called Mike Johnson to do it, and, impressively, they seem to have got someone even worse than messrs Scalise and Jordan, even if they claim not to know much about him:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) acknowledged to The Hill that he has never met Johnson. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said that he doesn’t “know him very well” but “may have met him” in the past.
Some lawmakers added they didn’t know about him until recently, when he became a potential option for Speaker. Only hours before he became the fourth Speaker-designate in a matter of weeks, Johnson lost his bid for that title to House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).
But senators, who by and large had grown increasingly concerned and desperate over the past three weeks as the House sat in a stalemate, are mostly relieved to have someone running the chamber. And they are willing to give Johnson a chance.
“He seems to be a good pick. I’m all for him. Anybody that can get through,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters with a laugh, adding that he too does not know him well. “No, not much. Seems like a very capable fellow.”

Yeah… capable. Capable of what, I wonder, now that he’s been elevated to the fourth-highest position in the whole US government…

Well, it appears SOMEONE did their research on this guy, and what a charmer he evidently is. And there’s the slight business of him being  a January 6er…

There are some questions about the most notable portion of Johnson’s congressional tenure, though. He was among the architects of the push to overturn the 2020 electoral count in favor of then-President Trump. House Republicans booed a reporter Tuesday night who asked Johnson about his role leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.
However, Cassidy — one of seven Senate Republicans to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — said that item on Johnson’s resume does not give him pause.
“If all we do is focus upon flaws, we never move forward, because everybody in this institution … has some incredible flaw that you would look upon and say, ‘Does this disqualify them for X, Y and Z,’” Cassidy said.
“At some point, you’ve got to move ahead, and he’s a guy that can bridge those differences,” he added.

Bill. My brother in Christ. This is a guy who doesn’t even believe in the legitimacy of the current US government. This should disqualify him from EVERYTHING, cos all he’s going to do is undermine it. The US is not exactly having its most shining time right now, is it…