Month: November 2025

Obviously

Donald Trump pardons Rudy Giuliani and others involved in trying to overturn 2020 election

US President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as several others involved in efforts to overturn 2020 election,  a Justice Department official says.
Mr Giuliani was formerly the mayor of New York and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer until he was disbarred last year.
Justice Department Pardon Attorney Ed Martin posted on social media a signed proclamation of the “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon, which also names conservative attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. […]
Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, and none of the Trump allies were charged in a federal case.
But the move underscores Mr Trump’s efforts to continue to rewrite the history of the 2020 election he lost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. […]
Mr Giuliani and others who were named in the proclamation had been charged by state prosecutors over the 2020 election, but the cases have hit a dead end or are just limping along.
A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Mr Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.

So it’s kind of an empty gesture in that it has no real immediate effect, but it’s also a useful shot in the propaganda war. Mushroom Cock’s got to keep that myth alive even though it’s pointless now. I only wish he’d let Four Seasons Total Landscaping make the announcement, that might at least have made it funny…

Goodbye world

John Laws is gone at last. Did you know he was still alive until now? I certainly didn’t. I suppose this is what happens when you don’t listen to AM talkback radio stations that struggle to get more than a few thousand listeners, you don’t realise what coffin dodgers are on them… Anyway, nothing of value, etc? I don’t know. Nothing if not a fantastic voice, obviously, iconic figure and all that, and most charitably called “problematic”:

Laws did not achieve his fame and success without controversy. In 1999, he was at the centre of the cash-for-comment scandal alongside his fellow 2UE broadcaster Alan Jones. The pair were accused of accepting payments from companies in exchange for favourable on-air commentary. Both denied any wrongdoing.
“Nobody has suggested I have broken any law. But you would think from the controversy that it was first-class industrial espionage or industrial rape,” Laws said at the time. […]
He was found in contempt of court for interviewing a juror in 2000 and received a suspended jail sentence. In 2001, his show was found to have breached the rules around decency and the treatment of suicide. In 2013, Laws asked a tearful female caller describing her childhood sexual assault if she might not have been at fault.
Two years later, he told a distressed older male listener who had called in to describe his childhood sexual abuse to “go to the pub and have a lemonade” and, although he had been empathic, Laws was criticised for his lack of awareness. In 2015, the former Socceroo Tim Cahill hung up on Laws after he repeatedly questioned him about his wealth.
In 2021 he was found to have breached the commercial radio code after calling a listener “mentally deficient” and urging them to “say something constructive, like you’re going to kill yourself”.
“I’d hate to think I was very cruel. I’m certainly rude and I’m certainly impatient, intolerant and a lot of things I shouldn’t be” he told Studio 10 in 2017.
He called his producers “handmaidens” and insisted they wear skirts or dresses to work although at least one former female employee maintained he was always a courteous boss and said “his old-fashioned manner felt respectful” to her.

His Wiki entry further notes:

In 2004, Laws and rival talk-back host Alan Jones were accused of taking payment to make favourable comments on products and services under the guise of merely expressing personal opinion, after entering into deals with Telstra. The ABA subsequently found that Laws’ deal constituted cash for comment but Jones’ did not. Laws, apparently angered by what he saw as inequitable treatment, launched stinging attacks on Jones and the ABA’s head, David Flint. In an appearance on the ABC’s Enough Rope, Laws accused Jones of placing pressure on Prime Minister John Howard to keep Flint as head of the ABA, and made comments that many viewers took to imply a sexual relationship between Jones and Flint, and broadly hinted that Jones, like Flint, was homosexual.
In November 2004, Laws and 2UE colleague Steve Price were found guilty of vilifying homosexuals after an on-air discussion about a gay couple appearing in the reality TV show The Block. They described the couple as “young poofs”. Laws had previously apologised for another incident in which he called gay TV personality Carson Kressley, of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame, a “pillow-biter” and a “pompous little pansy prig”.

So another dinosaur bites the dust (along with Graham Richardson, who popped his own clogs just the other day). Nothing else to say about the tedious old git.

Lyndwulf

John Coulthart features an interesting edition of Beowulf at his blog today, this being a 1939 edition illustrated by Lynd Ward…

I admittedly haven’t seen much of Ward’s stuff, and what I have seen has only been his b/w woodcuts; I think this is the first time I’ve seen him in colour. I should note I haven’t just nicked this from John’s blog post, cos he rarely if ever posts large versions of stuff; instead I nicked it directly from the Internet Archive scan of the book that he links to, whence I got larger versions of the colour illustrations. John also notes:

It’s also possible to read the poem itself, although I wouldn’t advise it with this translation by William Ellery Leonard, not when it begins so risibly with the words “What ho!” Beowulf famously opens with a declaration in Old English—”Hwæt!”—that bards would have shouted to gain the attention of their audience. The word doesn’t translate easily to contemporary English but it’s usually given as “Hear!” or “Listen!” Leonard’s “What ho!” is a phrase that belongs with Bertie Wooster.

Woof. The only W.E. Leonard work I’m otherwise familiar with is his translation of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which I did not particularly like and I don’t think that was entirely Lucretius’ fault (even though I do find the whole concept of didactic verse of that sort frankly bizarre), I recall Leonard’s translation doing some contortions to the English language that were just… off-putting. Don’t think I’m into what I read of his Beowulf while getting these illustrations, either; keeping the appearance of the Anglo-Saxon verse with the caesura in the middle, but not the alliteration structure or the four-beat pattern (turning it into hexameters which I’ve never liked in English verse), and then making the line ends rhyme which English alliterative verse generally just didn’t do, all strikes me as a bit of a bastardisation. Still, the illustrations are pretty cracking, and I give you some of my favourites (click to enlarge, obviously):

Dunn and dusted!

The astounding tale of Sean Dunn appears to have reached its end:

A former Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington DC was found not guilty of assault by a DC jury on Thursday in the latest legal rebuke of the federal intervention.
Sean Charles Dunn, a former justice department paralegal, became a symbol of the resistance to Trump’s occupation in the nation’s capital when video of him, clad in a pink polo shirt and shorts, throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent, wearing a bulletproof vest, went viral.
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted at the officers on 10 August, calling them “fascists”. After throwing the sandwich, he took off running.
Dunn’s lawyers argued his sandwich throw was a “harmless gesture” meant as an act of protest. In a city under federal siege, the incident served as a rallying point, with posters showing Dunn mid-throw popping up around the district. Prosecutors said Dunn knew he didn’t have a right to throw the sandwich at the agent, and that his speech was not the issue, but that he threw a sandwich at a federal officer “at point-blank range”. […]
The jury acquittal was another example of DC residents pushing back on federal troops in their city. Grand juries have in several instances, including Dunn’s, refused to indict people with assaulting officers as the US attorney Jeanine Pirro has pushed for felonies.
The man who was hit with the sandwich was CBP agent Gregory Lairmore, who told the jury earlier this week that the sandwich “kind of exploded all over my uniform” and “smelled of onions and mustard”, according to the Washington Post. The defense pushed back, as it appeared in imagery from the scene that the sandwich did not leave its wrapper.

What a transcendently ludicrous situation this was from the start, and that’s a third failure on Jeanine Pirro’s part to get an indictment out of it. Mind you, though I said the story appears to be over, I wouldn’t be surprised if they go for a fourth, just to make sure. In conclusion, Colbert:

Mamdanimania

Lots of excitement in the US today, particularly for Zohran Mamdani. There was a bunch of election stuff the Democrats were successful at, but Mamdani’s victory as NYC mayor over Andrew Cuomo was the biggest one… as an avowed outright socialist and Muslim born in Uganda to Indian parents, he had a lot going against him, like Fox News, the GOP, elements of his own party (even if he did win the Democrat primary over Cuomo, as long as Chuck Schumer’s running that show the party will never be as brave as it needs to be against TrumpCorp), etc, and he still beat Cuomo. Which I think had to happen; Cuomo had made too much of a cunt of himself in the last days of the campaign (things like the overtly racist AI ad), plus he comes trailing multiple accusations ofand if Zohran had lost then right-wing American media would’ve had a collective breakdown. They really needed him to win so they would have something to screech about.

I just hope he pulls it off. I know he’s now the Republicans’ chief target (Mushroom Cock had already threatened to cut federal funding to New York even before the election, obviously), so they’ll do everything in their power and probably several things they can’t legally do (cos illegality has proven no barrier to them) to get in his way. But I’m equally worried that the Democrats will fuck things up for him too; like I said, he might’ve won the election primary cos Cuomo was too obviously compromised, but Democrat leadership has been a lot less resistant than I suspect most people would like them to be. I fear they’re not going to be much to him, and they’ll try and make him more useful to them…

Still—nice to see Democrats actually achieving something, especially on the same day that Dick Cheney checked out, even if it was maybe more of a reaction against the GOP than for the Democrats as such. I just hope people aren’t down now; there’s a lot of people online rejoicing as if it were Obama ’08 all over again, and I understand that happiness, but, well, all of these victories have been at a much lower level, and at the federal level Krasnov’s still running the show, or at least pretending to, so I’m hesitant to get too excited. But we have to take what we can get when we can, don’t we…

Nothing of value, etc.

Dick Cheney’s dead.

Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at age 84.
Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. […]
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”
In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.

How nice of him. Given his part in steering the Republicans into the increasingly far-right morass it’s been in ever since Obama displaced Dubya, though, I’m disinclined to give him too much credit for finally seeing the light. Him and Rummy were the real power behind Bush the Younger, and though the latter must take ultimate responsibility for his catastrophe of a presidency, Dick & Don deserve as much blame. No mourning here.

Catbert plays the world’s tiniest violin

Oh Scott, you really ARE declining fast if you think Mushroom Cock either knows or cares who you are or that he will do anything for you. What’s in it for him to do that? And who the fuck are YOU that you think you deserve direct help from Krasnov (assuming he could give it anyway)? I’m sure you’re hardly the only person Kaiser are screwing over at the moment, you don’t have any more right to live than those people…