#and not to pull a whataboutism with this but like... for real... what about the people who physically can't eat a vegan diet? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luxlightly · 1 year

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"Why have people from other largely white countries been so weirdly obsessed with insulting harmless American stuff lately? We've done way worse stuff and yet there's a wave of people insulting harmless or even positive things like 'overly friendly'. Why are people doing things like taking videos of saying there's no fresh baked bread in the bread isle at walmart while blatantly ignoring the bakery section then saying there's no 'real' bread in America?" It's because they're being outed as doing the worse stuff and they desperately want to hold on to their sense of superiority to ignore their own systematic issues. That's the long and short of it. Now I'm sure not every single person is doing it for that reason but that's where the shift happened. For years, especially during the Trump presidency, we were getting constant "Those racist Americans! They're all fascists!" pretty hard from places like England, Canada, and other largely white countries. "We can't be racist! Just look at America! We're not them so we can't have a rising fascism problem!" was the go-to excuse to dismiss any concerns about issues of fascism, racism, etc. Then, rapid fire, we started seeing things like the discovery of the atrocities in indigenous schools Canada. The Tories making a mess of English government. The refusal of England to allow Scotland to pass an lgbtq equality bill. More and more vocal fascist movements. "We're not racist and stupid like America!" stopped being an easy way to maintain a sense of superiority and lack of accountability very quickly. And Americans, especially in online spaces have largely become aware and heavily critical of these problems in our own country. When people pull out the "Well maybe there's something wrong in my country but Americans are so racist!" the response is often "Yeah it's a real issue here. It makes me very worried for the future of our country". Which doesn't fit the "All Americans are so stupid and ignorant and will get violently angry to defend their prejudiced beliefs and that's why the problems there could never happen here" stereotype that's been used to avoid introspection about their own ingrained problematic ideas. So it's shifted to things that are benign enough that most Americans will actually say "Hey that's not really fair. I'm not sure why you're upset about that." Or that are just blatantly untrue but enforce the stereotype about Americans being stupid and culture-less. It a form of "Whataboutism" and it's done all the time here in America, too. Realize the exact problems you criticized the middle east is rampant here, too? "Well...their food is weird, right?? And what's with the way they...dress? Their culture is so ignorant and off-putting!"

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papirouge · 3 months

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Ah yes, because we all know that Russia bombed the equivalent of 2 H bomb onto Ukraine in the span of a few weeks, precisely like Israel did. No mention of the (illegal) use of white phosphorus, which is known to have terrible effect on the environment. That's totally a normal "war" stuff that happened before and that we should just gloss over like we did before :) .....NOT.

The "exceptional" treatment for Israel is simply on par with the exceptionalism of this war. Pulling out a whataboutism about other countries, or the Russia-Ukraine war is stupid considering that either Ukraine or Russia has yet to showcase the same casualties as Palestine does.

"how many country has YOUR country set off" that precisely because people acknowledge that their country has a hand in this conflict (sugaring Israel with their taxpayer money and weapons) that they're doing the most against it, genius🙄 And you know what happened when Westerners said that this conflict is actually also our business because that's our money that goes wasted onto it? we've been told that we're just clueless goyim and that we are forbidden to have an opinion on it lmao Because Israel spilling goyim blood to have their fanatic millennialist Gret Israel way is totally not goyim business...ofc So what's the truth? should we stay in our lane or not? how? we've been boycotting but even that has been a problem for Zionists too somehow (we'll get back to it later on this post). At this point whatever we do or say will never please you because you're just mad we stopped drinking the Kool-Aid.

btw, it's funny to see yall suddenly whine about the delusional left saying that the hostages are "crisis actor" when the ones who've been consistently saying that the victims in Gaza weren't real and made up an entire HASHTAG #paliwood to mock them(!!) were Zionists.... interestingly no Zionist complained about people making a "trend" off tragedies, like they do against pro Palestinians...what a load of hypocrites lel Actually Zionists were the one insinuating that the hostages were actors for displaying signs of sympathy for their captor and not being enough mad at them lmao ....Something-something...every accusation is a confession LOL I'm not saying that there's no delusional conspirators in the left/anti Zionist side though, only that acting like the left had some sort of monopoly in denying basic reality to fit their narrative is straight up dishonest. Never forget that the ones who came up with the "crisis factor" talking point were CONSERVATIVES, to act like mass shooting were psy-op and that no kid died in Sandy Hook to remove from their side any responsibility regarding their loose gun control policies. The same right whose antisemites constantly fly under your radar, and that you lazily label as "leftist" just because they're against Israel....

Behold, LEFTIST anti Zionist MEME 🤡

Interesting how I never see you guys seethe about the actual antisemitism of this flock of guys🧐 it's like, the left had to bear the whole responsibility of the rise of antisemitism on its shoulders.....why?

"focus on their own shit" You mean, those civilians precisely did by doing what they could do at their own level such as boycotting, something that Zionist lobby also tried to make it illegal(??). Zionists made fun of protesters protesting IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY against their own government, saying how useless they are and hop they're more of an inconvenience than a "real" protest. Like sis, if you want people to "focus on their own shit", keep that same energy for Israel and tell them to stop trying to interfere onto foreign country politics (trying to make the ban of Israeli products illegal) & assaulting them! So yeah, don't be surprised that people start to get scared of Zionism. Which btw already did a handful of victims already...even in the West :

"Zionism will kill us all". If you can use Islamism like a boogeyman to say it will "kill us all" (in the West), don't be surprised we pull out the same energy for Zionism who also kills ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"harass and threaten people in other countries" lmao you mean like those two Israel agent did by assaulting US citizens on their own soil? 🤡

the same US citizens who hound their own officials to stop funding this war, and you know who's still making fun of them?? ....Zionists (look at the comments)

youtube

but yeaaaaah anti Zionists are totally not doing shit and are just lazily harassing people online. Tell me you have no idea what you're talking about without telling me you have no idea what you're talking about.

TL;DR : you guys never beat the every accusation is a confession allegations

#jewishbarbies #zionism #israel #palestine #gaza #papi watch #free palestine from hamas #Youtube #anti zionism #am israel hai

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convoy914 · 2 years

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Here's what the anti-censorship, pro-filtering crowd are actually worried about:

Minorities are going to write stories with racist villains, and those villains might use slurs. Should that be banned from AO3?

Child sexual assault survivors might want to tell their own stories to process their trauma. They aren't going to hurt real children while doing it and might not pull any punches to avoid diluting the horror of what happened to them. Should those stories be banned?

Transgender writers are going to write stories where their protagonists suffer from transphobic hate crimes and microaggressions. Should those stories be banned?

Figure out a solution that won't get innocent people caught in the crossfire because the far right wants to shut those perspectives down, and THEN we'll listen.

But sure, keep parroting Far Right Propaganda about how sinful and evil AO3 is! I'm sure that won't backfire when homophobes push to have queer coming of age stories labelled as child porn!

OOOO, lots of whataboutisms. You seem to be under the impression that it’s one or the other. That it’s necessary to keep things as they are in order to prevent The Dark Ages. That the Holy A03 is tho only bastion against the Evil Puritans. That people won’t be able to tell. Why is that, exactly? Why do you assume that it has to be one or the other?

But sure, let’s play this game: If we ban white people for saying the N-Slur on Twitter, then what about black people who say it? If we ban pedophiles from Twitter, will that mean banning people who talk about their experiences? And as for the commonly repeated “it’s actually survivors” thing, okay sure. Why do they need to SHARE it? Why is that part necessary? I have never gotten an answer there. Do you have an answer? Depiction is NOT automatically endorsement but in the cases where it clearly IS, or will in fact cause harm because, guess what, tagging doesn’t magically solve all problems, putting it out there for everyone to see won’t actually help and has more risk of harm than anything else, then it’s absurd to suggest that we NEED to keep ALL of it. ESPECIALLY, might I add, when it’s porn or REAL CHILDREN that they refuse to take down.

Frankly, the idea that being against CHILD PORN is “far right homophobia” is insulting. It is fucking deranged that we’re at the point where people are using right wing arguments about censorship to whine about even the slightest amount of moderation and then acting like the people who call out this hypocritical nonsense are the “real” conservatives. Because that’s all this is: The same exact arguments I hear against moderation on Twitter, the same “it’s just fiction” excuse I hear from lolicons, the same hypocrites that calls themselves “anti-harassment” and then harass the hell out of actual children. WE’RE the ones using “far right” arguments? YOU’RE the one fearmongering about what will happen if we try to introduce even the slightest amount of moderation. If we even TRY to sift through what’s endorsement and what isn’t, because clearly that’s impossible. To even TRY to improve A03 somewhat, because if we do that then it’s the second age of homophobia

Look, I’m not going to deny that things were hard and this website was founded for a reason. Mostly, it’s incredibly helpful. But it’s gotten to the point where people react violently to the suggestion that their precious anarchist website might have some flaws, that maybe a LITTLE moderation would be helpful, and to the point where they’re defending ANY depiction of child porn or anything else because it’s either that or the homophobes win. How do you COME to that conclusion? How do you tell yourself, with a straight face, that leaving ALL of that up there is somehow “protecting” people? There comes a point where the reaction to something is just as bad as the thing it was reacting against, and this cult-like devotion to a website and all the hoops you’ll jump through to pretend like there’s no other way is definitely one of those cases.

Anyways, when I call this “cult-like”, I’m not being facetious. I know how this works: Feed people stuff that sounds reasonable while hiding the true intent, slowly normalize to that idea, and then we get what you’ve just done: Defending leaving ANY depiction of these things up because there’s definitely no other way, using the exact same “it’s just fiction” excuse that lolicons and their ilk use, acting like it HAS to be a “one or the other” based on what you IMAGINE Conservative Christianity to be like (which, might I add, is the exact same thing exclusionists do to justify why asexuals aren’t “oppressed enough”). WE don’t provide the alternative? YOU’RE not willing to hear any alternatives out. Because no matter how much they may protest to the contrary, it really does come down to “any moderation = bad” just like conservatives love with absolutely no sense of irony.

My advice: Take a step back and analyze what you’ve said, just…look at what that collection of words put together means. You ARE better than this, I know that. And the fact that you ARE against pointless censorship is a point in your favor. But that’s exactly how they get their hooks into people, convincing them that censorship and moderation are the same thing. And the damndest thing is, I’m not even sure it’s intentional on THEIR part, either. I think they’ve genuinely deluded themselves into thinking this is necessary, because they can’t see the irony. You want a real life example of “going too far in the other direction”, well here it is. It’s a real damn shame that it’s devolved into this “all or nothing” thing, but that’s just how it is. And I’m just responding appropriately.

#You want to play the “you’re using right wing arguments” game?#Sure okay: take this garbage back to 4chan where it belongs Ben #I can play this game too #It’s not very fun but I can #Anyways none of this has changed my mind in the slightest #Some people really DO use right wing arguments as part of their cult like devotion to a fucking website and can’t see the irony #Call me a hypocrite if you want #but at least I fucking know I am

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hero-israel · 2 years

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It occurred to me: aside from whether the situation in Ukraine is actually in any way comparable to anything happening in Israel/Palestine, mostly in my experience what people who criticize Palestinian militants are criticizing is attacks on Israeli civilians or the recruitment of child soldiers into Palestinian militant groups, not attacks by Palestinian militants on uniformed Israeli police or military (admittedly, combined with the idea that it is on its face absurd to claim that Israeli forces cannot defend themselves from armed Palestinian attacks). As Ukraine has not launched missiles at Belgorad (the closest Russian city to Ukraine), most persecutions against its Russian speaking citizens are generally understood to be Russian fabrications, and all Russians coming into Ukraine at the moment being uniformed Russian soldiers, there’s not really an opportunity for Ukrainians to do the kinds of things Palestinian militants are accused of.

Why is this fight different from all other fights?

I've seen tons of "WHATABOUT Palestine??" posts this week. As you say, it's different because Ukraine wasn't doing anything, the entire usual structure of debate is impossible, and instead people are seeing a major war created ex nihilo on live TV. Also add in a ton of European chauvinism ("This is a civilized country, the refugees look like our neighbors") and the giant pre-existing military infrastructure built specifically to stop Russian invasions.

What's really interesting is that we are seeing what BDS would look like if it had any political / financial mechanism beyond spraying graffiti on synagogues in California. Closing airspace and cancelling energy deals and freezing the central bank has real political impact, and if Israel someday decided to invade Greece and cluster-bomb Athens at no provocation I'd say we would see just such a real BDS unleashed against Israel (deservingly so). But even as people complain incessantly about the 1948 war and say all "resistance" tactics are justified, they are implicitly recognizing that I/P is an old, two-sided conflict, making it much less compelling or feasible to pull plugs.

I can't help but notice that you don't see physical hate crimes directed against Russians elsewhere. The traditional target status of the Jew simply doesn't translate.

#ukraine #russia #jumblr

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hms-no-fun · 3 years

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Opinions about conflict betw telling queer stories as happy and telling them realistically? i.e. it's unideal if every queer character has bad things happen bc they're queer, but also that's the experience of many queer folks

this is such a fun question i’m gonna answer it twice.

the first answer is that it depends on the kind of story being told. is this a fluffy magical girl anime about gay teens that is otherwise nonviolent and happy? well, a little bit of conflict might be worthwhile in that case! but a little goes a long way. the really important matter in judging it is, does its extremity match the vibes of the rest of the show? and is it doing anything with the shift? the obvious comparison point here is revolutionary girl utena, a show which is very much about how queer people are manipulated and controlled by cishets with power. it goes in some really extreme directions with its wlw violence, but it is also just an extreme show in general. you might not be into it, you might be triggered by it, but the violence is there for a reason and it’s doing something interesting!

but the thing is, as i try to come up with fake examples of a show doing it poorly, i always wind up thinking that anything a story does can work if it’s executed well. like my childhood is littered with children’s cartoons that have just like *one* extremely dark episode that fucked me up for life... and i think that’s awesome?? maybe that’s a bit of stockholm syndrome there, idk, but that’s how we get to my second answer to your question!

imagine asking this same question about cishet stories. is it casting a bad light on cishet relationships to show them breaking up all the time? is it bad cishet representation?? god even just typing this i feel like an alt-right troll pulling a whataboutism out of my ass, but i’m being genuine here! it’s silly to even start down that path because “bad representation” in this case is actually just bad writing. we don’t even parse at as existing on a scale of “representation” because our media is built by and for a white allistic cishet audience.

so the real answer to your question is that it’s kinda counterproductive litigating what is and isn’t an acceptable queer story, when in reality what we need is MORE. more happy queer stories, more sad queer stories, more brilliant queer stories, more mediocre queer stories, more upon more upon more until we as queer people are no longer fighting over table scraps.

#queer #representation #sarahposts

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silvermoon424 · 3 years

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The way anti-SJW's and conservatives in general decide it's a great idea to jump on and pull the "whatabouism" rhetoric on marginalized people's posts is frustrating. I do acknowledge what men go through. However to attack minorities and women as well as getting angry at them for just venting about how they feel unsafe and harassed just for being marginalized and minority in the country where they faced discrimination, this is not it. It does not diminish the struggles minorities faced.

FOR REAL. This happens so fucking often it's excruciating.

For example, you're basically guaranteed to see certain men bitching on any posts about feminism or even just women venting about issues women face. Post about female genital mutilation? Men will be asking why we're not talking about circumcision. Post about rape/sexual assault against women? Men will be asking why we're not talking about male rape victims or (God forbid) false rape accusations. Post about how women feel unsafe walking alone at night? Men will be asking why we're not talking about how men are actually statistically more likely to be victims of attacks by other men.

It's really telling that MRAs and the like don't usually make posts talking about these issues on their own, they just bring up these talking points to derail women talking about our experiences and our issues. There are plenty of valid issues men face but it's not a good look to constantly derail posts and topics where women are talking about their own issues with whataboutism. And it would be one thing if they were actually adding to the discussion and connecting it to issues women face (because a lot of the issues men face actually do stem from misogyny and toxic attitudes about masculinity) and being respectful, but like 95% of the time it's just an attempt to talk over women and diminish our issues.

It just makes me so mad that so many MRAs and people who are really vocal about men's issues are so shitty because like I said men's issues are valid and deserve to be talked about/worked through. But so many of the people advocating for them are outright fucking misogynists who hate women and blame feminism for everything wrong in their lives.

#feminism #rant

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lavenderek · 3 years

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So you're saying you don't think "underage" fic is gross. Is that what youre saying?

well, no. yuck. what i’m saying is, what exactly and specifically do we want to happen?

there should not be explicit fic about underage characters, got it. so what age can they not be under? 18? 16? what country’s laws regarding the age of consent do we prioritize? like, i think it’s gross that the age of consent is 16 in some places, but i’m an american, so i would, wouldn’t i? so ok, what if we hedged it a bit and put the age as like, 14? that way it’s not little kids, it’s all teenagers. but no, gross, 14-year-olds are children. fun fact: so are 16-year-olds. they are also children.

what about fic about two teenagers having a consensual encounter? should all romantic or sexual fic have to be about adults only? your answer to this may very well be “yes,” and that’s completely valid. a teenager writing fic might disagree. somebody who’s a big fan of a show that’s about a bunch of teenagers might disagree. should there be an adults-only section on the site? there’s already a “stop, you have to be 18″ box to check before you can access explicit fic, so how do we verify a user’s age? they can just lie about their age and click through anyway. you have to be 18 to make a youtube account and i’ve had one since i was 13. i remember very deliberately choosing a new birth year when it asked for my birthdate.

then you get to slightly greyer areas like large age gaps, or heavy role play between consenting adults. i have absolutely witnessed fic that’s clearly written to be CP, but it’s tagged as age play. so like, for all intents and purposes this is CP, but if you roll in like “hey, this is fucked up,” they can be like, “oh, so you read this picturing actual children, sicko?? you have a problem with two adults doing shit in the bedroom??? how dare you!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”

it’s kind of like on porn sites, how they make like nasty inc*st stuff but call it “stepmom” or whatever, like oh, they’re not actually related! sure, joseph, thanks for covering all your bases

so we can’t ban kinks. or can we? should we limit depictions of serious addictions or domestic abuse too? torture, or even body horror? these are generally accepted to be dark content.

i’m not trying to engage in whataboutism, i’m naming actual, relevant questions about shit that’s disturbing in real life (no offense to kink people who follow codes of consent and conduct) and can be incredibly upsetting to encounter online. shit that i can’t imagine wanting to read, let alone write.

these are the questions that we, you, i, people pro-a*3 and people anti-a*3, are all asking, and not a single one of us can or should answer them unilaterally.

so it’s like, oh, okay, so there should be no oversight at all? should there be no rules? no, obviously, that would be horrible, i don’t trust any of these fuckers to conduct themselves civilly. so there should be some rules, but not too many rules. that’s what we have now, and clearly the way things are now isn’t working because a lot of users are reasonably very upset.

should there be a voting system, and rules are set by a popular vote? should certain words be flagged and you can’t post the fic with that word in it? should there be a thing where when you post a fic, you have to select the ages of each character and that’s listed at the top of the fic? what if they age during the fic? should there be a flagging function, where you report someone for not using sufficient tags? users will find workarounds for all of this. you know they will. so mods will have to be very specific about the rules and introduce, like, a vetting system for it. which is a lot more manpower and a lot more chances for subjective judgments.

all of the above is why it operates on a tagging system instead. i’m gonna be real, i only go on a*3 to read comments on my own shit lmao, and even when i did go on there more often i never went in the tags searching for fic. so is there a blacklist function? is there a flagging function?

if there is a flagging function, maybe they make it so that if the flagged user has violated the rules, their account is suspended and their fic made private for the duration and until they add necessary tags.

cool, a compromise. but uh-oh, it turns out Mod A agrees that this fic is n*ncon, but Mod B thinks it’s just vague, not n*nconsensual, and doesn’t feel comfortable banning the fic. or it turns out User didn’t post anything flaggable, they were reported by somebody who is targeting them for some reason, or by someone who is more stringent about n*ncon than somebody else would be, like, it’s gotta be enthusiastic and verbal consent or else it’s skirting the edges too much.

it’s like, we’ve already witnessed censorship (please take this word usage gently, i know it’s touchy but it’s the word to use here) being a problem here on tumblr with their stupid nipple ban. there’s a double standard regarding whose nipples are explicit and whose are kosher for public consumption. people have to appeal their shit getting flagged and sometimes nothing gets fixed regardless. i’m sure other people are pleased that there’s less of a chance of them accidentally scrolling past a picture of a hard dick at work.

so you get it, this is a problem that’s more complicated than “all of x should be banned and if you post it there’s something wrong with you,” a belief you’re more than entitled to hold but can’t base, like, fanfic legislation off of. you get it you get it.

you get it, but like, what is the fucking deal with those “fandom moms” who go off on soliloquies about the days of old or whatever the fuck whenever this topic comes up? what about the weirdos who are like, “what’s next, banning gay fic????” yeah, if we allow gay marriage you can marry a tree, that’s how it works, thanks tiffany.

but no, the reason they do this is NOT that they think lgbtq content is comparable in any way to CP. the reason they do this is that this exact problem has taken place on every site that has ever hosted fic. and many previous sites did think lgbtq content was comparable to CP. it was categorized as adult content and hidden.

that’s why a*3 exists in the first place. it was to avoid godmodding and absolutism. it’s supposed to be more or less self-governed. i don’t want there to be CP on a*3 any more than you do, but i also don’t trust randos to decide what is and isn’t acceptable content. this topic is not new.

i’m in support of stronger government regulation in real life because it can be argued that certain actions and systems violate human rights. everybody deserves food and shelter, for example. the same can’t be argued in this case because some creep writing CP doesn’t violate my rights. i find it offensive and i don’t think they should be writing it, but my right to click the back button is intact. there is no institution making it impossible or even difficult for me to not read fanfiction. the creep could just as reasonably argue that their right to post what they want is being affected.

why is this response so long? is it because i can’t shut up? yes, but also because this is a complex issue and that’s why nobody has taken significant action on it.

people are also big mad.

i’ve never understood this impulse to see somebody not doing a thing you want them to do and assume it’s out of malice or incompetence, anyway. i don’t know anybody who volunteers for a*3 but it’s my assumption that given the choice to have us all pissed at them, or have us all not pissed at them, they would choose to have us not be pissed at them. it just seems like the reasonable reaction to have. and like, i’d be pretty shocked to part the kimono and find out they’re all CP-loving gargoyles and a*3 actually stands for A lot Of child abus3. that is the reason i have not been like, “fuck a*3.” because what are they supposed to do, you know?

there’s no simple or inarguably morally right solution here. the princess is in another castle. just post fic on tumblr, i guess? make another hosting site that’s exactly like a*3 but romantic characters can only be like, 21?

i actually think the legal age in the US should be raised to 21, not joking. your brain literally and biologically isn’t finished developing at 18. teenagers lack the world experience to make decisions that adults make.

somewhere there is an 18-year-old or a person who moved out and became self sufficient at 18 who hates this sentiment. there’s a teenager in an abusive home who would be intensely demoralized by the prospect of having to remain beholden to these people for three more years.

and there’s a parent who is relieved to know that their kid can’t be preyed on by army recruiters for three more years. there’s a person who got into a car crash with a teenager who misjudged whether or not they could make a turn who’s like, yeah, she could probably have benefited from a few more years.

nothing is as simple as it should be. i agree with you, but i’m not willing to pass blanket judgments with regards to actions that should be taken. and honestly, given how little i actually go on the site, i don’t even have a dog in this fight. so all my opinions on it are moot anyway.

(side note, if you are in an abusive home and you can’t make your own bank account, or if your bank account is monitored by your abusive parents, maybe try venmo? you can get a debit card that pulls directly from your venmo balance. a surprising number of places accept venmo payments, and this way you can save up money in secret.)

anyway uhhhhh seeya

#who is this even #haters #long post #please DO NOT REBLOG

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years

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they’re doing it again and you need to be ready

youtube

Only this time, the call is coming from inside the White House.

This story is weird. It’s going to get weirder. If we don’t brace ourselves, then it’s going to work, again. If we do get a grip on it, we really might be able to make this a turning point against the regime. So even if you don’t usually care about the international intrigue, you do need to understand what’s going on with Trump, Ukraine, and the whistleblower.

The reporters and members of congress who are talking are being extremely careful with what they say. What we know is this:

The incident or incidents of concern happened by mid-August. A whistleblower somewhere in an American intelligence service decided that whatever had happened was serious enough to take to the inspector general (IG), who’s kind of like a federal agency’s internal affairs cop. The inspector general agreed that it was worth going through the process of reporting it.

The way that process is supposed to work is that the inspector general reports the concern to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who has to report it to the House and Senate intelligence committees within a couple of weeks. What actually happened is that the inspector general brought the issue to the DNI, who decided to ask the Department of Justice if he should pass the whistleblower’s concern to Congress. The rule on this is pretty straightfoward, so it’s not clear why he went to the DOJ. Unsurprisingly, the Trump-branded DOJ told the DNI not to report to Congress. Their excuse was – get this – that the whistleblower was concerned about something which wasn’t done by anyone in the intelligence community, so it wasn’t in the IG’s wheelhouse, so NO SNITCHIN’.

After those couple of weeks had passed, the IG contacted the intelligence committee and told them that a whistleblower had come forward but the brass were refusing to hand over the details, and House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff pulled the fire alarm. Last week, the inspector general testified behind closed doors to the House intelligence committee.

We still don’t know the substance of the complaint. We do know that it has something to do with a “promise” Trump made on a phone call with a foreign leader and that it had something to do with Ukraine.

Some other things we know which are definitely important and almost certainly relevant:

In a July 25th phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked him to open a bullshit investigation into some business that former Vice President Biden’s son Hunter had in Ukraine. Eight times.

President Zelensky also had an extremely weird meeting with Vice Pretender Pence and former National Security Advisor John Bolton during Pence’s trip to Poland in late August. A few days later Zelensky met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he and his staff expressed confusion and alarm about communications they received from Trump friend and “lawyer” Rudy Giuliani.

Trump stalled on paying out $250 million of funds that Congress had set aside to support Ukraine’s military, then suddenly reversed himself in mid-September and agreed to pay up, plus an extra $140 million.

Giuliani melted down on CNN and admitted that he’s been trying to pressure the Ukrainian government to go after Biden.

While all this was going on, there were a handful of abrupt firings and resignations in some high-level national security positions. This included the Director of National Intelligence (that’s the person who’s supposed to be handing over information to Congress right now) and National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was in that strange meeting between Pence and the Ukrainian president.

Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine into prosecuting his political opponents is bad enough to be a major story on its own. It definitely deserves this degree of freak-out. But we also have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that it is not the whole story. There was no need to blow the whistle on that in August, because we knew about it in May. This whole thing has been a serious risk and a real pain in the ass for both the whistleblower and the inspector general. Normal people don’t do that unless they have a really good reason, and these aren’t normal people, they’re fucking spies. I would be extremely surprised if they were trying to give up government secrets just to add a little color to a story we already knew. It feels like there’s another shoe to drop on this.

Ukraine was not targeted for extortion at random. Trump did not throw a dart at a map. Ukraine was a relatively early domino in our current geopolitical clusterfuck. Back in 2014, Ukrainian protesters drove their corrupt Putin puppet president out of office. Putin retaliated by invading eastern Ukraine, Obama and other allied leaders retaliated with harsh economic sanctions against Russia, Putin retaliated by helping Trump sabotage the 2016 election, and Trump has been trying to pay him back by undoing all those sanctions. That $250 million in military aid Trump sat on is to help Ukraine defend itself from the Russian army, which is still occupying the Crimean peninsula.*

To add insult to injury, Trump supporters and other Russian propagandists have used Ukraine in their deflections from the Russian government’s attack on American democracy. Ukraine’s corrupt Putin puppet president was a client of former Trump campaign manager and current federal inmate Paul Manafort. When Manafort joined the Trump campaign, people naturally used information gathered in Ukraine to find out more about him. This, through some ham-fisted whatabout jujitsu, became THE REAL COLLUSION!!!! It was no such thing, of course, but you can imagine that in Trump’s mobster mentality, roping them into colluding with him now feels like justification for having accused them of collusion before.

And to be clear: this time it’s Joe Biden, for …. reasons. Whatever. The point is that they are lying and abusing their power to create scandal in order to make political opponents look as corrupt as they are, so that the press can sigh with relief and say “many scandalous people on both sides” and then squishy moderates/leftier-than-thou purity fetishists/politically disengaged people throw up their hands and say “well, they’re all corrupt, both sides, why bother showing up” and that only ever helps the right. Today the lies are about Biden. As soon as someone overtakes him in the polls, it will be that someone else. You have to be ready to challenge it.

Like I said. It’s going to get weird.

*Since it’s going to be coming up a lot! You’ll hear people refer to the country as “Ukraine” and “the Ukraine” interchangeably. That’s wrong; it’s just “Ukraine.” That mistake doesn’t sound insulting to most English speakers (if you’re reading this, you’re probably from “the United States”) and most of the people who make it aren’t trying to be insulting. But “the Ukraine” is what it was called under the Soviet Union, so it has kind of colonialist implications. It’s a grammatical dogwhistle like “Democrat Party”: people who don’t know better might pick it up innocently enough, but you do want to break or avoid the habit.

#trump russia #ukraine #house intelligence #national security #joe biden

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theempressar · 5 years

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Not exactly an OC, but... 6, 14 and 18 for Shannon 😀

6. With their closest friend/s

Oh you KNOW it’s Party Time, Betches! She loves to take her girls out on the town and hit all the dance spots and all the local bars know her on a first name basis. She has no shame in her game once she gets going. She’ll be the one on the dance floor, loud and obnoxious, grinding up on guys and girls. Life is one big DANCE PARTY...there are NO troubles when she has a drink in her hand :)

On the flip side of the coin...she doesn’t do well with expressing her emotions and deep thoughts with said friends. She doesn’t like to have to “think” about things. Eventually...all will get sorted with her credit card. If you fake happiness, you can buy it! And she’s generous with her money too...if a guy is not buying her the drinks (which most of the time they are) she’s buying drinks for her girls.

14. When something pisses them off

OH you’re asking all the GOOD ones...LOL!! She takes the term “Hell Hath No Fury” to that level and beyond. She pulls no punches. She will cut you verbally and if that doesn’t work...she’s not above resorting to slapping her point across. She’s a wild beauty when she’s angry and her face speaks volumes. She’s an exploder...but after she’s done she’s fine. She can hold a grudge...but often times she doesn’t remember really why she’s angry...however she has a lot of “whataboutism” She can bring up stuff from the past and use it in her arsenal if she’s feeling like she’s losing the battle. 90% of the time she’s wrong though...but that doesn’t stop her.

18. Just done something embarrassing

Oh...I think she gets mortified actually. (when she’s made aware of it) I think she deals with a lot of insecurity. You have to clue her in that what she’s done IS actually embarrassing...she has no filter. She would turn it into something she meant to do in the first place. But when she finds out that it is embarrassing she will retreat for days. Her people will have to convince her that they weren’t embarrassed by her actions and that she’s fine and the bad bitch she claims to be. Her girlfriends are GOOD at helping her with that. -- *update* Robby knows JUST how to talk his mom out of being embarrassed as well. She usually goes running and crying to him. Since he is more her parent than vice versa he has the responsibility of bringing her around and he’s the only one that can make her feel better...and he feels needed...but I believe that’s what is known as co-dependency...nods.

I hope I gave her a little more “flesh” @missviolethunter. Is this how you would see her too? I’m not just thinking RP Shannon...I think her character is a lot this way as well. What say you? I love talking about her for some reason...she’s really becoming one of my FAVE characters...LOL!! All her faults and flaws! She’s REAL!

#shannon hc #shannon

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dentalrecordsmusic · 6 years

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Will Wood Interviews Will Wood

I’m going to be honest: I get a lot of press releases and most of them get thrown in the trash. They are, of course, entirely positive information about the given artist and therefore entirely boring. However, when I got a strange (unnecessarily big) package in the mail containing three (3) pieces of glitter, a very small gentlemen’s hat, and the following interview of Will Wood answering questions from himself, I felt it was important enough to pass along to our readers.

AN INTERVIEW WITH WILL WOOD

BY WILL WOOD

In this pre-apocalyptic wasteland of whataboutism and Russian disinformation, it can be difficult to pick all the pyrite from the proverbial pan. That’s an idiom now. In the old days, knowledge was banned and burned and buried in temple ruins and conquered libraries. It was suppressed and scarce and it took a hungry mind and a passion for discovery to shine light onto dark ages. The information age is upon us now – and while we can all tap into a bottomless well of knowledge at any time, we are no better off. The light is already so bright, the sound so deafening, that anything you have to show or say is already washed out in the cacophony. We still know nothing, because while we can see so much, we cannot distinguish illumination from illusion.

That’s what attempting to prepare for an interview with Will Wood taught me. Some information checked out, but everywhere I looked I saw misprints, inconsistencies, lies, theatrical exaggeration, errors, and the constant churning of the rumor mill. I read everything from errors in basic information, to full-blown criminal accusations. For instance, one source claimed they had found he had a home in a town called Glen Ridge, when in reality his P.O. Box is in Glen Rock, and his home is in Egg Harbor. Another source said he once kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach at a Renaissance Faire.

I like to think I prepared as well as anyone could have. Which means I prepared quite poorly. So arriving at the beach outside the B.L. England refinery in Egg Harbor New Jersey where Mr. Wood agreed to meet me had me feeling like a dead man walking. He was standing there in a bright green trench coat and aviator sunglasses, holding a steel briefcase. He greeted me with a firm handshake and a slight bow before sitting right down in the sand and lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.

Q: Do you do drugs?

A: I had a really bad trip on a low dose of antipsychotics recently. Don’t drive until you’ve adjusted to a medication. Almost ran over my own car.

Q: What are your thoughts on the affect social media has had on the arts?

A: I’m fairly certain Mark Zuckerberg technically holds the copyright to all of my intellectual property and he’s a demon lizard. But hey, that’s showbiz.

Q: Is it challenging to be openly queer in the music industry?

A: Nobody cared about my feelings until I put on makeup. I’d wear dresses more often but I’m getting paunchy from too many trips to Golden Corral. I never get my money’s worth but I always try. And the harder I try, the less its worth.

Q: So you came here from North Carolina a few years ago, what was it like making that adjustment?

A: I had to lose the accent because people kept asking me if I played country music.

Q: Do you like working out here?

A: You see that lighthouse? It’s actually a cosmetically enhanced sulfur-scrubber. It reeks of eggs for miles. I work out of a back room at Lee’s Food, which also reeks of eggs. Yes it’s a real place. Probably not for long though.

Q: And you like that?

A: Have you ever tried filing your income taxes on a fold-up card table in an 85 degree spare bedroom while eight staff members shout at each other in Mandarin while trying to make Japanese food to serve in a Korean restaurant and your daughter is running in the back door holding the neckbones of a great blue heron asking you to hold on to it while she tried to find the head?

Q: That sounds like a no.

A: I didn’t say that.

Q: What’s it like trying to raise a child? Is it difficult to juggle family life and work life?

A: Mildred is getting old enough to take care of herself. My partner and I skipped most of the ugly years where they’re too stupid to talk or eat on their own and they scream at you to pull your tit out in the middle of Thompkins Square Park. Then again, lots of people in Thompkins square park will do that to you.

Q: Okay. So. Is it difficult to juggle family life and work life?

A: You just asked me that.

Q: Right, but you-

A: We were going to adopt a little boy and name it Oliver but the orphanage thought we were being funny so they shoved a moody tween at us and lost the paperwork. But let’s not talk about Millie. I don’t like her getting attention from press, I’m sure you can see what that’s doing to Jacob Sartorius and that kid from “It.”

Q: Does press attention bother you personally?

A: Look, this is going to sound like some Sean Spicer shit. But a lot of press out there about me is just plain false. For instance, someone quoted me as liking Billy Joel back in 2015. I said a lot of stuff in 2015 I didn’t mean but I have always been a staunch Elton John man. Even though his lyrics are trash. His lyricist’s lyrics, I mean. He should just write his own, his lyrics can’t be any worse than that walking beard’s drivel.

Q: And… so, the inaccurate reporting- does it bother you?

A: Let me put it to you this way. Imagine if someone said that you liked Uptown Girl without your consent.

Q: You seem to be very critical of other musicians, you’ve been quoted repeatedly as saying “I hate music.” What makes you feel this way?

A: When you hate 99% of something, it’s most efficient and pretty effective to just say you hate that thing. A Nazi who gets along well with 1% of Jews is still a Nazi. Most of the world’s music is painfully banal or no fun to listen to.

Q: What sort of music do you like then?

A: Anything by Green Day. Everyone seems to laugh when I say that but it’s entirely true. Billie Joe Armstrong is my biggest songwriting influence and the world needs to know that.

Q: One of the defining features of mental illness is the manner in which it inhibits “functionality,” but short of suicide as a risk to one’s life its difficult to say if there’s a clearly objective definition of healthy psychoemotional functionality. We can really only work with one’s ability to reconcile their personality with cultural norms, and their own idea as to how comfortable they should feel in their own skin on a regular basis, which is also partially informed through socialization. One can cite psychosis and acute mania as definitive examples of why its necessary to consider various mental and behavioral traits as medical concerns, but its also worth noting that in some cultures throughout history hallucinations and what would appear to be delusional states have been valued and seen as sacred.

Is mental health seen as a medical problem only because social systems with enormous power have designed ways to remove nonconforming or negative natural phenomena through medical intervention, and if so, should we be more distrusting of psychiatry and the ever-changing spectrum of mental health diagnoses? Should we really call them sicknesses?

A: We only see the flu as a medical problem because physical medicine exists. Before the study of pathogens began to arise, it was simply seen and spoken about as a part of nature, and sometimes seen as divine or diabolical intervention – much like the examples of mental illness you gave. All health concerns ultimately amount to levels of social functionality, the individual’s personal experience, their mortality in extreme cases, and the illness’s threat of compromising those things in others. This is everything from cancer to the common cold – the only distinction is that we as a culture identify with our minds in ways we do not our bodies. This is ultimately arbitrary, and a socialized distinction, as the brain is a physical organ, our sensory organs are part of our mind’s subjective experience, and the body is inseparably connected with the brain as one singular organic being.

When one realizes this fully, one could likely start to see that what you are saying is true, but does not challenge the validity of the science itself. It is important to participate in this newer and complicated field of science wisely, and draw your own distinctions between problems that need medical attention and don’t, (only you can tell how much a physical injury hurts) but that does not mean that there cannot objectively be a disease. The importance of considering mental illnesses as diseases and giving diagnoses lies in our ability to communicate and interact with the topic – accurate and mostly agreeable language must be used to classify ideas and phenomenon. It was giving names to certain psychoemotional and behavioral states that first allowed scientists to organize the information necessary to invent life-saving interventions in therapy and medication. Seeing mental well-being as a medical concern the way we see physical well-being is not only accurate, but useful.

Q: Are you getting tired of writing this?

A: Well it’s good character work. World-building.

Q: Is any of what you said true up there?

A: It actually is but since I’ve made up a couple fun little things in interviews or used flowery language in the past a lot of people just assume everything I say is theatrics now. You know?

Q: I guess that makes sense. I’ve made some stuff up in my writing before too, I get it.

A: That wasn’t a question. As a matter of fact, that was an answer so you should be A and I should be Q.

A: That’s stupid. Just because you asked “you know” doesn’t mean we need to switch the only thing that identifies us in the article.

Q: Wait hold up though, my last response was also an answer, so I should still be an A.

A: Wait, so who’s going to be A, and who’s going to be Q?

A: You’re going to be Q now, because you asked who’s going to be Q. You’re the questioner.

Q: Isn’t this going to get confusing?

Q: I’m Q now too because I have to ask you if you have a better idea. Put a question mark on there so I can stay Q, that way people don’t get confused. ? Yeah right there just like that.

A: Why don’t we just use our actual initials, since it’s become less of an interview and more of a conversation? Should I be Q? It’s a response but it’s-

Q: Why didn’t I think of that?

W.W.: Oh, you did think of that.

W.W.: That’s true, I did.

W.W.: You shouldn’t have, it’s as stupid as the switching of Q’s and A’s.

W.W.: That was your idea, so we’re even.

W.W.: First base.

W.W.: THE WILL WOOD AND THE TAPEWORMS THREE YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION IS HAPPENING MAY 25TH AND 26TH WITH A VERY SPECIAL IN-STUDIO PERFORMANCE BY WILL WOOD AT THE VERY PLACE WWATT’S FIRST ALBUM “EVERYTHING IS A LOT” WAS RECORDED! TICKETS TO NIGHT ONE ARE ALMOST GONE AND VIP PACKAGES & TICKETS TO NIGHT TWO ARE LIMITED TO GO TO WWW.WILLWOODANDTHETAPEWORMS.BIGCARTEL.COM NOW AND SEND ME YOUR MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEYVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Purchase tickets here, or buy them at the door at Backroom Studios.

Catherine Dempsey has no idea how Will Wood got her address. She is scared. You can follow her on Instagram.

#will wood #will wood and the tapeworms #new jersey #punk rock #cabaret punk #interview #catherine dempsey #music news

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sextonsharpwinhalstead · 6 years

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Chicago Med Review 3x17 The Parent Trap

I enjoyed this episode mostly because of the continuity with last one. Also, the synopsis for the next two episodes until the finale is continuous with their personal storylines.

This seems like the most mundane and simplistic critiques, but this show has been known for writing their characters arcs off a cliff and completely forgetting what they built as canon in prior seasons.

So, needless to say I am very happy that we continue from last episode to this one.

Let’s start with Sarah. Poor Sarah. Before I get into this arc I’m just going to say this. I have seen, and not just here in our mostly peaceful Tumblr bubble, but all around on Facebook and Twitter, there has been some rather unfair opinions about Sarah. She’s been drug through the mud more than any other character on Med. And before we start the whataboutisms there is a consistent level of torment for her character that seemed small and developy but now looks loud and regressivey.

Her first year she was bombarded with an overall sense of uncertainty; whether it be with her career, her performance, her self-esteem. Her boyfriend was basically the same as a human wall; I swear he never understood her, she had a nitpicky mother, and then her mentor was shot. She returned collected but not before his shooting stole all the growth her character had. She has been questioned, berated, suspended, humiliated multiple times at work, and crippled by anxiety. Just when we thought she was going to get a break her father shows up to remind her that there is nowhere she belongs not in the ED, not in psych, and not in the heart of the man who fathered her.

I knew he wasn’t going to give us some mushy ending, but this man is truly diabolical which I love cause he is the multifaceted villain this show has needed. He asks for Sarah when he’s first admitted, accuses Dr. Charles of keeping them apart, and then when he has the chance to amend things with her he decides to go full on monster. Taunting and teasing Sarah with the connection he cannot give and will not fake. Rhodes was so happy to play hero he didn’t realize he was saving Sarah’s tormentor. And if you think that this is the last we’ve seen of Bob or have to deal with him than I would say you are a lot more optimistic than I.

For the love of god Med; give this girl a break next season. She deserves to use her knowledge confidently and to have some happiness….and some effing friends.

Speaking of Connor, he handled the news about his former lover potentially becoming a current lover of his father well. I’m sorry guys, I’m petty and messy, and you know I love drama, and I thought I was going to get my payoff! Things were looking like Ava was going to pull an intergenerational Rhodes train but instead Cornelius got all creepy and Ava pulled off the tracks. Bummer. The dark soul burning within me has a messed up headcanon for this, but I won’t share it here cause God’s watching…maybe in a one-shot on A03 if I get bored. Anyway, this whole daddy does the-son’s girl was just so we could finally get Connor to admit that he gets jealous of the idea of Ava with anyone else.

BTW this summer when I’m bored I’m going to make side by side comparisons of all my headcanons/fanfiction come true this season.

April and Noah were back on a case together…a kind of boring case that could’ve been bigger but there were no stakes in it; unless you count the whole Sharon-bypass story which I don’t. I didn’t need them to tell me about the scary board for the umpteenth time. We get it, Sharon’s job is in jeopardy…sadly for drama sake I was half-hoping April, Noah, hell anyone would collapse after the drug spill. But no and they are going to drag the will-they-won’t-they-fire Sharon until the end of the season.

I guess I should talk about Ethan and Emily even though her character has kind of underwhelmed me. I guess I thought Emily Choi would be the kind of girl who always had excuses but without apologies. You know what I mean? They tell you why they do what they do but they are not sorry, and you need to deal with that. But this whole episode makes Ethan look intolerant to anyone who won’t measure up to his rigid standards. I just don’t know where this story is going but if it’s going where I think it is…it better not be.

The most drama was the Manstead fight. *side note can Maggie please stop trying to play matchmaker; this is a fucking hospital and those are adults! They have never been the highlight of anything for me, but Will finally said what I was hoping he would. Stop being a judgmental bitch; and Natalie was like, “Yeah, it’s actually exhausting riding this high-horse.” But then she told him he wasn’t off the hook; so, I don’t know what to expect with these two… Supposedly Natalie gets some “surprising news” perhaps these two could be stuck in a parent trap? Jesus Christ, I hope not, my real hope is that they want to fire Natalie.

#chicago med #april sexton #ethan choi #emily choi #Sarah Reese #bob haywood #sharon goodwin #natalie manning #will halstead #cornelius rhodes #connor rhodes #ava bekker #maggie lockwood #noah sexton #I didn't even really edit this #the parent trap #chicago med review #3x17

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dexi-green · 7 years

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I absolutely love tilde x eggsy (probably mostly because im not a big shipper and generally dont care too much about romantic relationships.. esp.

in action movies) because it is a shining example of what Kingsman does best as a film franchise and a major theme. (i saw the movie once, so i apologize if i get some stuff wrong)

With Kingsman it will either really lean into a common spy movie trope with a wink to the audience or subvert it. Eggsy being with Tilde completely subverts the Bond Girl trope. And it works well and was so pleasing to see because we expected the trope from the ending of the first film. Seriously, who thought she was even going to get a mention in the next film?! We all probably walked out of the theater, possibly forgetting about her, thinking that was just a one time thing that was going to go away, and there was gonna be a different girl in the next film. But no. They sleep together, but then end up building a real relationship off screen between the films. And TGC tries really hard to show us that emotional connection they have, without forcing flashbacks or exposition on why they continued seeing each after that night. From Tilde noticing Eggsy's sadness at the loss of Harry, to Eggsy's unwillingness to sleep with someone to save the world without asking her first. Aside from his general do good personality, Tilde getting the Blue Rash becomes his driving force for this mission.

I dont at all think it was shoehorned because its a major theme in this film. Harry talks about how he didnt see anything when he got shot by Valentine, that he had no connections in his life (because they are like the Jedi). A lot of people found fault with this because whatabout eggsy or merlin? But if you interpret it as romantic connection, he is effectively giving his blessing to Eggsy and Tilde. Saying i never got to have that connection with someone, i regret not having that, i could've died never having it and i want you to pursue it, no matter the cost. Afterall the film's title has a double meaning that alludes to this theme of romantic (and platonic) connections. The Golden Circle, and Tilde and Eggsy's golden wedding bands.

TGC i feel is about these connections we have with people, romantic and otherwise (and lack thereof in some cases). The way our lives intertwine and impact each other. What people we decide to pursue and put stock in. That being said, it does kinda make me pissy about Roxy, JB, Brandon, the new Arthur (Dumbledore)'s deaths in the beginning, because they kinda passed without a second thought...which sucks but maybe we can hope for another plot twist in the third film that'll explain or alievate the situation a bit.

But Harry and Eggsy's relationship, and how Eggsy is the one who can bring Harry back. How Harry trusts Eggsy to trust him even though he literally got his memories back probably hours/days ago. How they utterly trust Merlin. How Merlin takes Eggsy under his wing when Harry is gone, and is willing to sacrifice himself for them. Whiskey's everlasting love for his wife and child that he would sacrifice so many others for. The statesman and the kingsman intertwined histories and futures. Even.... ELTON JOHN DETECTED: FRIEND.

Like obviously movies are going to rely on the characters connections with one another, and you could probably pull this meaning out of any movie. But with soy movies...its always kinda about this loner spy with no connections except the agency they work for. With an evolving door of a cast each movie. This movie definitely had flaws but i just appreciate the theme of interpersonal relationships a lot in this movie, moreso than some others.

#kingsman #spoilers #kingsman spoilers #kingsman: the golden circle #kingsmen #eggsy unwin #harry hart #kingsman tgc #tgc #also the kingsman comics are i think made by icon comics #which is a marvel company #so technically kingsman is a part of the mcu #or rather the x-men universe because fox #so gimmie that crossover

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2018weekinreview · 4 years

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The Year In... Donald Trump

Trump’s year also began with the longest shutdown in American history. 35 days of 800,000 government workers going without pay and trash piling up in national parks. All for a border wall Trump repeatedly told everyone Mexico would pay for. And a wall he did nothing about until Republicans lost the House in the midterms. Trump also had that infamous Oval Office meeting with Chuck and Nancy, where he said he would take credit for the shutdown. Then he immediately blamed Democrats. Eventually, Trump caved without money for his border wall, and with everyone saying he got worked by Nancy Pelosi. So he declared a national emergency, while also telling everyone he didn’t need to do it. Which kinda undercut his own messaging. All so he could lie and say he was building a wall for his 2020 campaign.

In March, Michael Cohen testified before Congress, calling Trump a racist, a con man and a cheat. He also laid out details of the illegal Stormy Daniels payment and the Trump Tower Moscow deal. And Cohen alleged that Trump had him threaten his former high school over the release of his grades and SAT scores. Which is hilarious. Republicans’ best defense in the whole thing was holding up a giant sign with a picture of Cohen saying, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!” That same month Paul Manafort also received his sentencing. And still nobody’s mind was changed by anything.

An attack on a mosque in New Zealand, and the way that the attack was handled by Jacinda Ardern seemed in stark contrast to how Trump has responded to attacks in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville by white nationalists. It was eye-opening to see what it looked like when a nation’s leader didn’t thrive on the politics of fear, walls, Muslim bans, birtherism, Shithole countries, whataboutisms and conspiracy theories.

By April, the number of migrant detentions at the southern border was at a 12-year high. Trump threatened to bus migrants to sanctuary cities. It’s hard to say if he has any real solutions or he just wants to sound tough and run on more racist scare tactics heading into 2020.

The Muller Report was released with no new indictments. Which in itself was probably a major win for Trump. Then William Barr misled the public over the findings of the report. And Trump claimed total exoneration. Which led the Mueller team to leak that the report was much more troubling than Barr led on. Trump decided to stonewall Congress on their investigations. And in June he’d tell George Stephonopolulos that he would accept dirt on his 2020 opponent from a foreign country and that he would not tell the FBI. Eventually, Mueller testified in public. And he spelled out how Trump welcomed Russian help in the 2016 election. And that Trump was not exonerated. And that he at least attempted to obstruct justice before he was stopped by his own staff. Pelosi still wasn’t budging on impeachment, but all of this would just be a dry run for what was to come.

The New York Times uncovered 10 years of Trump’s taxes and showed that he’d lost over a billion dollars, which is more money than any other tax payer over that same period.

North Korea began testing missiles again, despite all of Trump’s photo ops. There were growing tensions with Iran, where Trump even called off a military strike at the last second. And it appeared that Trump’s entire foreign policy was governing by threat of tariffs or obliteration. Meanwhile, nobody was in charge of Defense or several of the other key cabinets.

In September, Trump fired war monger, John Bolton, as his National Security Advisor. Bolton was probably furious when Trump threatened another attack on Iran shortly after his departure.

The trade war with China especially spooked economists as well as Republicans who assume that Trump’s approval ratings have stayed consistent due to his economy. And this was all right around the time Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland.

There was renewed outrage at the border, when reports showed how horribly overcrowded an unsanitary conditions were there. Trump responded by saying the facilities were clean and good and that if migrants didn’t like them, they didn’t have to come. Which was all just more tough talk for his racist base. But Trump’s rhetoric got more explicitly racist when he told Ilhan Omar to go back to where she came from. And crowds at his rallies began chanting, “Send Her Back.” And then Trump sent another racist Tweet about Elijah Cumming’s district in the black section of Baltimore.

When two shootings happened within 24 hours of each other in Dayton and El Paso, pundits began openly questioning the type of racist rhetoric Trump had been spewing over the past month and whether it had contributed to the epidemic of mass shootings in the country. Trump, by the way, went to El Paso for a photo op before going ahead with planned ICE raids in Mississippi. And then he backed away from gun reform shortly after.

Trump was accused of rape and responded by saying the woman wasn’t his type.

Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, so Trump cancelled a trip to Poland and went golfing instead. He also told people that the hurricane was going to hit Alabama, which is was not. So after the National Weather Service had to correct him, Trump produced a map of the hurricane path and then altered it with a Sharpie to include Alabama. Just when I thought Trump claiming windmills caused cancer would be the dumbest climate-change-related incident involving Trump this year.

The 2020 Democratic primary kicked into high gear. And voters were repeatedly told by pundits they had to choose between purity and electability. And polling showed that Joe Biden could beat Trump. Pollng showed that Bernie Sanders could beat Trump too, but nobody was allowed to discuss that.

In September, a whistleblower came forward and alleged that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine until the country agreed to investigate the Bidens. So Trump undermined our national security and risked the integrity of our elections for personal gain. And then his White House officials were alarmed enough by the request to try to hide the transcript in a classified server. It was easier to understand than anything in the Mueller Report, so a formal impeachment inquiry was opened. Transcripts were then released. Trump said “No quid pro quo” a billion times. He publicly called on Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens, as if he were trying to normalize what he did. Mick Mulvaney said that this sort of thing happened all the time. And a Fox News poll in October showed that 51% of voters wanted Trump impeached and removed from office.

Possibly as a form of distraction, Trump pulled troops out of Syria so Turkey could invade the region. Which means an abandonment of the Kurds, who had been our allies. This got a massive backlash, even from Senate Republicans. And this was before ISIS prisoners began escaping. Trump kinda got out of that shortly after by announcing that a raid in Syria had killed ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But he had to add that al-Baghdadi died crying like a dog and a coward, even though nobody knows how he would have that information.

Trump tried to announce that the G7 would be at his Doral location in Miami. Since that is a blatant example of self-dealing and a violation of the emoluments clause, he had to reverse that decision shortly after.

After damning testimonies in the impeachment inquiry, Republicans were left with attacking the process. And storming into chamber rooms to pout. Trump maintained that it was a perfect phone call. Public hearings began soon after. And the main takeaway was that Yeah, he’s guilty. But do people care? During the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch, Trump talked shit about her on Twitter, which some have called witness intimidation. She got a standing ovation as she left. Gordon Sondland said everyone was in the loop of the secret backchannel in Ukraine. Fiona Hill pushed back against the Republicans using Russian conspiracy theories on election interference.

In the middle of all of this, Trump campaigned for gubernatorial candidates in Kentucky and Louisiana, made both races about himself, and then both of his candidates lost. Trump is also losing the suburbs. It might just be anecdotal and specific to those races. Or Trump might not have the political capital he thinks he does.

The impeachment process transferred to the judiciary. Articles of impeachment were drawn up. Mitch McConnell has apparently blocked off January for a trial. But you know how he is. The numbers aren’t moving at all. The country is just too partisan to change their oppinions. We still have wildcards with potential testimonies from Don McGahn, John Bolton or others within Trump’s orbit. There’s also whatever Rudy Giuliani is doing with his side project in Ukraine. But as of now, it looks like Trump is going to be impeached and then saved by the Senate, who will inevitably say it’s an election year and they should let the voters decide. Because everything is hyper partisan. So Trump will either be damaged heading into the election or he’ll claim vindication. It should be a horrifying 2020.

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theliterateape · 5 years

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Chris Churchill Saves the World | The Misguided Art of Defending Misguided Art

By Chris Churchill

We love to be entertained. Maybe it’s a side effect of having tamed our environment so well in the last one hundred years or so that we only have to work eight hours a day to keep a secure existence. Maybe it’s because working (as it is for most of us) is a miserable part of our lives and we need entertainment to save our brains from the repetition that puts undue stress on our bodies. So, maybe “love to be entertained” is only one way of looking at it. Maybe that’s just for those with nothing to do. Maybe many more of us need to be entertained. It’s a lifeline to our very sanity for much of human civilization.

I have my go-to sources of entertainment. I’m one of those people who you laugh at because they’re screaming along with their favorite music on their car stereo. Queens of the Stone Age makes me feel strong... or vulnerable... whichever one I need. Ween makes me embrace my own feelings of oddness and cleverness as well. Prince or The Beatles make me feel strong, clever, wise, and/or powerful on a good day. When I had a mental health crisis in 1999, Radiohead’s OK Computer gave me sufficient rest from “all the unborn chicken voices in my head” so that I didn’t completely melt under the heat and gravity of my own illness.

Comedy does it for me too. Usually comedians I’ve followed for years; the ones who feel like old friends.

It’s the old friends thing that can really cloud your judgment, though. Not just that, but rather the idea that you have any personal connection at all to these sources of entertainment. (I mean they aren’t old friends, you know. They aren’t family, you know. But a HUGE part of their job and their success relies on making you suspend that rational understanding that they are not your friends and feel that they are, if only for the duration of their set.)

When one of them proves to be unworthy of your fandom, it’s a tough breakup, isn’t it?

I’ll admit, I used to love both Bill Cosby and Louis C. K. I truly thought they were good guys who were simply commenting on life’s foibles and the shortcomings of the human male. I have insecurities about much of what makes me male. So their humor felt like an old friend saying, “I get it. I feel that way too.” (Cue laugh of recognition and relief.)

Implied in their onstage personas was also this thought: “But we’re not really going to do the bad thing.” But then you find out that, yes, they did want to do the bad bad things. That changes things, doesn’t it? For me anyway, that changes the whole point of their humor. Then it loses me. Not simply because I don’t want to support a sex criminal (which should be enough) but because the art they had put out there no longer means the same thing to me.

If I try to hold the Louie of his television show, with all his honest introspection about the concerns of modern sexuality and single parenting and if I try to search for emotional truth — if I try to hold that Louie in my head while also picturing the one that trapped young female comedians in a room and forced them to watch him masturbate — suddenly I don’t care about his foibles anymore. I don’t find him to be the lovable underdog anymore. And with that, the point of view and the point, in general, of the joke, vaporizes. The whole stage/screen persona changes from an honest, vulnerable guy into a guy wants you to believe he’s an honest, vulnerable guy in order to trap you in a room.

As far as Cosby goes, who can laugh at his album Spanish Fly, and as a result, any of his humor anymore, now that you know the actual point of view of Mr. Cosby? I can’t.

“I’m a sexual predator but, God, I love my family. I’ll drug a woman but YOU should pull up your pants.” It falls apart.

Recent revelations about other celebs have brought these same thoughts to mind as I watch the fan base of R. Kelly debate over social media about whether or not his music should be totally abandoned because of his sexual predation. Of course, the first line of defense for those who desperately need the art that R. Kelly created in their lives, is that other people did the same types of things or worse than their chosen artistic hero (one example I’ve seen is Hugh Hefner) so where’s the anger at him? (Of course, “whataboutism’s for kids”, you know.) Yes, reevaluate Hefner with modern eyes. Do that. But also reevaluate your own heroes when it comes out that they have been awful.

Notice that people who are not fans of R. Kelly have no problem believing the young ladies who are accusing him of assaulting and imprisoning them. Fans of his, the more fanatical the better, create reasons why that either the accusations are untrue (“These ladies want money.”), why it’s not so bad (“I had a kid when I was fifteen and I knew exactly what I was doing.”), or why it is a conspiracy by some outside party to discredit, destroy, or punish their celebrity hero. It’s usually a whole lot of mental karate to protect their emotions of sadness, disappointment, or shock.

Of course now, thanks to the Michael Jackson documentary, I hear a lot of “They killed Michael Jackson. Now they’re smearing his name with all these fake allegations of child sexual abuse.” Who are they? And why would you do the mental and emotional gymnastics to believe this but not put your mind and feelings through the same ringer to protect a different celebrity? That’s a question about you, not about them. You can go ahead and answer that, if you want. (I know I was real late on accepting that Cosby and Louis C. K. had done the things they had been accused of doing for years.)

The things we do so we can keep listening to the same music, the same comedy, the same television or movies... SMH… It’s crazy how we’ll defend someone we don’t know over someone else we don’t know simply because the first one made up something we loved or needed and the second one, as far as we know, didn’t. We overlook the fact that art isn’t the only thing that’s valuable. That other person you don’t know is valuable too. Believe me, I understand how art can treat the ailments of the soul. But you know what else does that? Doing the right thing and having a clear conscience about it.

“Cosby would never do that. You know he was about to buy NBC? They just wanted to bring a black man down.”

“Hugh Hefner wasn’t all bad. I loved that magazine. Even though, maybe it was misogynistic and his little empire may have even promoted abuse. He seemed like my fun uncle, Hugh.”

“Billy Graham was such a man of God. Even if he was hateful to homosexuals and those who opposed him.”

“John Lennon beat his wife. But he went through intense therapy and grew up a lot. But still, he beat his wife. But he wrote ‘Imagine’. But he did beat his wife.”

“Richard Prior was a violent drug addict but he grew from it and got wiser and funnier.”

Sometimes, the facts do fall on the side of the person who did the bad things. Sometimes people grow, repent, and only make relatively “small” mistakes for the rest of their lives, like forgetting to take out the trash. Sometimes they don’t.

Let me suggest that the information on sexual predators shows that there will probably be no growth or repentance for any celebrity who preys on children. R. Kelly preyed on children. I’m sorry if your own life experience tells you that a fifteen-year-old is an adult. It’s not. And you, hopefully, are more mature by far than you were then. Hopefully, no adult forced you to do anything too grown up at that time. If they did, hopefully you aren’t doing any mental karate to protect them.

The larger point, though, is that it’s not even about repentance or forgiveness. It’s about the new understanding of the original point of view of the art. If a piece of art was created by an artist who created it from their warped perspective on life, then maybe the art doesn’t mean what we think it means anymore. Maybe we were singing or laughing along with the wrong messages. Can we be mature enough to adjust our feelings accordingly?

#celebrity #scandals #Bill Cosby #Louis C.K.#R Kelly #Michael Jackson #Separating the art from the artist

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thedeadshotnetwork · 6 years

Link

Trump and Philippine President Duterte showcase their 'great relationship' before face-to-face meeting

Trump in Asia

Trump and Philippine President Duterte showcase their 'great relationship' before face-to-face meeting

7:39 a.m. ET

On Monday, President Trump said he and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte "had a great relationship," before the two men held their first bilateral meeting on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Manila. Neither Trump nor Duterte answered questions, and Trump laughed as Duterte half-jokingly called reporters "spies" and Philippine security personnel "jostled some of them roughly" before ushering them out of the room, The New York Times reports. The two leaders did not discuss human rights much or at all, depending on who you asked.

After their 40-minute meeting, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "the conversation focused on ISIS, illegal drugs, and trade. Human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines' fight against illegal drugs." Duterte spokesman Harry Roque said "the issue of human rights did not arise; it was not brought up." Duterte had discussed his country's "drug menace," Roque said, and Trump "appeared sympathetic and did not have any official position on the matter and was merely nodding his head, indicating that he understood the domestic problem that we faced on drugs." Duterte had faced international criticism for encouraging the extrajudicial killings of at least 6,000 drug users and dealers.

Also attending the meeting was Jose E.B. Antonio, a Duterte trade envoy and and real estate developer who is also Trump's partner on a $150 million luxury tower in Manila. The meeting highlighted Trump's much warmer relationship with Duterte than Duterte had with his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Still, Roque said that Duterte's main focus is improving relationships with other Asian nations, especially China. Duterte had politely rebuffed Trump's offer to mediate the dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea, explaining, "Today, China is the No. 1 economic powerhouse, and we have to be friends." Peter Weber

death and taxes and more taxes

House Republicans could pass their tax overhaul plan as soon as Thursday

7:41 a.m. ET

House Republicans who stand opposed to the GOP tax reform bill say they haven't heard from leadership in weeks, signaling confidence by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) that the legislation will pass without difficulty in a floor vote later this week. "I think they've made the calculation that they have 218," Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) told Politico.

Scalise and his team will officially count votes Monday night; House Republicans can lose up to 22 votes and still pass the plan. The bill includes new tax brackets and rates, but would not change the rate for married Americans making more than $1 million dollars. Additionally, the House version of the overhaul bill would add an expected $1.457 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, a problem for many Republicans who oppose the bill.

The House Rules Committee will review the bill on Wednesday, although no major amendments are expected, Politico reports. A floor vote could come as early as Thursday, although Republicans are leaving open Friday as potential wiggle room, in case any problems arise.

The legislation could face more obstacles in the Senate, where the margin for passing the overhaul is even slimmer. Additionally, the House and Senate bills have a number of major differences, including that the Senate version leaves seven tax brackets, versus the House proposal's four brackets, and lowers the top rate for wealthy individuals to 38.5 percent from 39.6 percent.

"The House will pass its bill, the Senate will pass its bill, and then we will get together and reconcile the differences, which is the legislative process," Ryan reassured last week. Jeva Lange

Nature's Nightmares

The deadly Iran-Iraq earthquake struck during a live newscast

6:23 a.m. ET

The death toll from Sunday's 7.3-magnitude earthquake near the Iranian border in northern Iraq has risen above 300, including six reported deaths in Iraq and 336 in Iran from the strong, shallow quake. Iranian state television, which reported the deaths and nearly 4,000 injuries, said both numbers are expected to rise as emergency responders reach remote areas hit by the earthquake. The epicenter was 217 miles north of Baghdad, but tremors were felt as far away Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel. You can see some of the wreckage, and an Iraqi Kurdish broadcaster experiencing the earthquake on live TV, in this BBC News roundup:

And for more information on the earthquake itself, you can watch the CNN report below. Peter Weber

alabama special election

The Roy Moore allegations have turned Alabama's Senate race into a tossup

5:07 a.m. ET

Four polls public polls have been released of the Senate race in Alabama since The Washington Post reported allegations by four women on Thursday that Republican nominee Roy Moore initiated inappropriate relationships when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers as young as 14. They point to a tight race, ranging from a 4-point Moore lead (44 percent to 40 percent for Democrat Doug Jones, Change Research) to a 4-point Jones lead (48 percent to 44 percent, JMC Analytics and Polling). In the RealClearPolitics average of polls conducted Thursday and afterward — which includes an unpublished Emerson poll with Moore up 10 point — Moore leads Jones by 2 points.

"Each of the new polls has potential shortcomings," Politico reports, and "instant polls are often misleading barometers of how sudden, negative news coverage can impact a campaign." Before Thursday's bombshell, the five previous public polls found Moore ahead of Jones by 6 points, 48 percent to 42 percent, FiveThiryEight notes, which isn't great for a GOP candidate in a state President Trump won by 28 points. Sex-related scandals have sunk some candidates but not others, and Politico suggests that until more reliable polls come in, if they do, watch "the decisions made by both parties over the coming week." Peter Weber

Johnsplaining

John Oliver explains the real dangers of Trump's trolling and 'whataboutism,' proposes some defensive tools

3:56 a.m. ET

On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver spent the bulk of the show on President Trump and how Americans must avoid following him into a nihilistic cul-de-sac. "I honestly know that the prospect of talking about Trump yet again feels exhausting," he said, suggesting that every room in America have a clock that counts the minutes since someone mentioned Trump's name. But "Trump's presidency is like one of his handshakes: it pulls you in whether you like it or not," Oliver said, and you need to be prepared.

Trump is often staggeringly incoherent, but "the real damage isn't in how he says things, but from three key techniques that he uses to insulate himself from criticism and consequence," Oliver said: Delegitimizing the media, "whataboutism," and trolling. "Despite Trump's few real policy accomplishments to date, he has consistently achieved one thing, and that is making his enemies unhappy," he noted. "And for many Trump supporters, that itself counts as a major victory."

Thanks to Trump, these techniques are spreading with a patina of legitimacy, Oliver said, pointing to Sean Hannity's pivoting from the allegations against Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore to Bill Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct. "Even if you believe that Democrats are guilty of a double standard, the solution is not to have no standard whatsoever," Oliver said. "That is why it's so important to train ourselves to identify these three techniques, because their natural endpoint is the erosion of our ability to decide what's important, have an honest debate, and hold one another accountable."

Oliver acknowledged the bleakness of that pronouncement then listed a few bright spots to keep people going, "because the Trump presidency is basically a marathon: it's painful, it's pointless, and the majority of you didn't even agree to run it." He ended with some new Trump-focused ads from his "Catheter Cowboy" character. Watch below — but be warned, there is NSFW language throughout. Peter Weber

It wasn't all bad

Baltimore book lovers come together to rebuild charity destroyed by fire

2:19 a.m. ET

It doesn't matter if customers at Baltimore's The Book Thing take home one book or 100, as it all costs the same: $0.

Every book inside The Book Thing is free, and there's no limit to how many books people can walk out the door with — some teachers are known to fill up several boxes to use in their classrooms, while casual readers might just grab one or two tomes off the shelves. Russell Wattenberg has been running The Book Thing for 17 years, never charging a dime for anything. "It cuts down on robberies," he joked to CBS News' Steve Hartman. "We encourage shoplifters."

In March 2016, a fire ripped through The Book Thing, with all of its inventory going up in smoke. It didn't take long for the community to rally together, bringing Wattenberg cash donations and holding fundraisers to help rebuild; so many books have been donated that Wattenberg still has 7,000 boxes to go through. The Book Thing reopened in October, and there's never a shortage of customers. "I don't have the patience to teach somebody to read," Wattenberg said. "I don't have the diligence to be a writer. The only way I see to contribute to the written word is by doing this." Catherine Garcia

sexual misconduct

Harvey Weinstein publicly defended Roman Polanski in a now-removed 2009 op-ed

2:14 a.m. ET

In 1978, director Roman Polanski, then 43, accepted a deal to plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl who accused him of drugging and raping her in Los Angeles, but then fled to France when he learned that the judge was leaning toward rejecting the plea deal and order him to return to jail. In 2009, as Polanski was detained in Switzerland and fighting extradition to the U.S., where he remains a fugitive, producer Harvey Weinstein wrote an op-ed in Britain's The Independent urging "every U.S. filmmaker to lobby against any move to bring Polanski back to the U.S., where he could face life in jail."

"Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time," Weinstein wrote. (Polanski spent 42 days in a California state prison.) "I think the reason we can all be on Polanski's side over this is not to do with what happened in 1977. It's to do with the fact that the punishment for what happened so many years ago had already been decided." Weinstein name-dropped some other Hollywood notables, including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, who would probably rather be left out of this now that Weinstein has been accused of rape and serial harassment by numerous women. Luckily for them, The Independent has pulled the op-ed from the web.

Since Samantha Gailey pressed charges in 1977, four more women have publicly accused Polanski of sexually assaulting them when they were young girls — one came forward in 2010 and three more this year, most recently Marianne Barnard, who said Polanski molested her when she was 10 and she couldn't remain silent anymore now that "all these women are bravely coming forward" with accusations against Weinstein and others. Peter Weber

totally normal

Watch the president of the Philippines sing a love song to Trump

1:08 a.m. ET

They'll always have Manila.

President Trump and Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, shared a moment Sunday during a dinner at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. Duterte, accompanied by singer Pilita Corrales, got on stage and began to croon the pop song "Ikaw" (You), filling the room with such lyrics as "You are the light in my world, a half of this heart of mine." When he was finished, Reuters reports, Duterte told the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, I sang uninvited, upon the orders of the commander-in-chief of the United States."

It's rare for Duterte to show such a soft side — he's quick to insult people, and since taking office last year, more than 3,900 Filipinos have been killed in his war on drug dealers and users. It's unclear why Trump would ask Duterte to sing, if he had requested "Ikaw," or if Justin Trudeau was taking notes for the next time he sings "Endless Love" to Angela Merkel. Catherine Garcia

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