Wednesday, December 21, 2022. Hate merchants peddle hate with little consequences, Iraq's last prime minister was a sadist sicko, Will Lehman calls out voter suppression, and much more.
We're going to start with this exchange from last week's House Oversight Committee hearing:
US House Rep David Cicilline: Republicans are happy to discuss our community when they're attacking our rights, when they're crying on the House floor because they oppose marriage equality or when they releasing statements attacking our community in press releases and when they release new bills targeting our community. But when it comes to actually discussing the violence against our community and its causes? Just a quick condemnation of what happened at Club Q and violence broadly and nothing more. In my view, this is shameful. And so I want to begin, Ms. Robinson, to thank all of the witnesses for being here today. Ms. Robinson, as we near the end of this hearing, is there anything that we've not covered yet relating to anti-LGBTQ+ extremism and violence that you would like to share for the record?
Kelley Robinson: We can do something about this. We can assure that social media companies uphold their community standards. We can pass the equality act to ensure that LGBTQ+ people actually don't have legalized discrimination happening to them in more than half of the states. We can, as a community, step up and say whole heartedly, no matter what our party affiliation is, repudiate and rebuke these horrendous attacks on our people. There is work to be done and, especially on this ten year mark of Sandy Hook, we can do something to end this epidemic of gun violence. We have to and we must.
US House Rep David Cicilline: Thank you so much. And Mr. Wolf, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story. What message do you have for politicians who are championing bills to limit the rights of the LGBTQI+ community?
Brandon Wolf: Thank you, I'm grateful to be here. And my message is simple: Words have consequences. Somebody has to pay the price for unmitigated, unbridled hatred -- the kind of hatred that we've seen on the rise across this country. We've heard a lot about accountability in this hearing and I'm glad we're talking about accountability. No one is asking for anyone but the shooter at Club Q to be on trial in Colorado Springs. But what we are saying is that people should be accountable for the things that come out of their mouths. And when you're willing to traffic in cheap shots and biogtry against a marginalized community that's already seeing hate against it that's on the rise, already seeing violence rising across the country, when you're willing to traffic in those things to score political points, you have to be accountable for what happens next. You have to hold yourself accountable for the impacts of your words. Words really do have consequences. Unfortunately, communities like mine have felt them. We have to do better than we are today.
Last Wednesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee, chaired by US House Rep Carolyn Maloney, held a hearing entitled "The Rise of Anti-LGBTQI+ Extremism and Violence in the United States." The hearing was held due to the rise in violence aimed at the LGBTQ+ community which includes last month's Club Q shooting.
The shooting left five people dead:
- Daniel Davis Aston, 28
- Kelly Loving, 40
- Ashley Paugh, 35
- Derrick Rump, 38
- Raymond Green Vance, 22
The shooting also left twenty-five people injured.
There's at least one more moment from the hearing I intend to highlight this week. For hearing coverage, see Monday's "
Iraq snapshot," THIRD's "
Editorial: Words and silences have consequences," "
Those fake ass 'religious' litigants (Ava and C.I.)" and "
BROS (Ava and C.I.)," Thursday's "
Iraq snapshot" and Friday's "
Iraq snapshot," Ruth's "
Allies are needed (House Oversight Committee)," Kat's "
Respect for Marriage Act is only step one, more needed," "
Cori Bush speaks some truth in Committee hearing," Trina's "
LGBTQ youth need a safe nation (Dr. Jessie Pocock)," Mike's "
Texas, come claim your idiot (House Oversight Committee)," Stan's "
Shontel Brown, Chris Wallace, Wonder Woman" and Rebecca's "
glenn greenwald wants to be the biggest bitch there is ."
Hate merchants continue to attack the LGBTQ+ community and they largely get away with it. You can -- and a body does -- call for gay people to be killed -- and get away with it. At least with regards to government officials. Sometimes, a community comes together to make clear that this hate speech is neither wanted nor desired. Such as in Fort Worth, Texas, where Stedfast Baptist Church's hate merchant Jonathan Shelley is in a tizzy that
his church will have to move yet again:
“The
reality is nobody really wants to lease to us, so it makes it very
difficult,” Shelley said. “I am still working a few options, as far as
lease options, or maybe even getting a building.”
In May, Shelley spoke to the Arlington City Council and said that gay people deserved to be killed. He advocated for enforcing an old Texas law outlawing “sodomy” that has since been ruled unconstitutional.
Residents
in Watauga have said they want Stedfast out of their community because
it promotes hate-filled, violent rhetoric that causes them to be
concerned about their safety. Church officials said they have been
harassed by the protesters.
You're calling for murder. And you're surprised people don't want to lease to you? You're calling for murder and you're pretending that this is due to your religious teachings. See "
Those fake ass 'religious' litigants (Ava and C.I.)" for how to many idiots are getting away with too much by citing ''religious freedom" when they're not even practicing the teachings of Jesus.
Your a hate merchant spewing hate but don't worry, Jonathan Turley will always protect your speech. He won't protect the rights of other speech. He won't protect the speech of drag performers or of libraries but he'll rush to defend the hate merchants and only the hate merchants.
Protesters
trying to shut down a reading event geared toward neurodiverse children
at a branch of the New York City Public Library were met by a wall of
counterprotesters.
The standoff over the Drag Story Hour event
— a popular national storytelling program where drag performers read
children's books at libraries, schools and bookstores — took place
outside the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in
Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday. The event was billed as
“storytime with local drag performers adapted to be more accessible to
kids with autism and other disabilities.”
Saturday's
protest was just the latest in a string of standoffs across the country
from a fringe movement targeting drag events over unsubstantiated
allegations of grooming.
The
group demonstrating on Saturday brought handmade signs covering a
spectrum of issues, with messages protesting everything from fascism to
grooming to gender identity.
New
York City Council member Erik Bottcher shared images and videos online
of the protesters, some of whom he tried speaking with before entering
the children’s reading event.
“I
want to show you the face of hate, right here in Chelsea,” Bottcher
said in a video shared on Twitter, before showing the counterprotesters
clad in rainbows.
“This
is particularly important at this moment when we are seeing a rise of
hate and violence targeting LGBTQ+ communities," the representative
said.
A right winger gets booed at a campus events and Jonathan Turley's sobbing tears and insisting booing is wrong. (Another example of how stupid he is and how he shouldn't be commenting on supposed art -- cake baking and computer templates aren't art.) But a mob goes after a library event and, in fact, targets a local government official and Jonathan says nothing. Well, after all, FOX NEWS is now paying him.
Outrageous. Unless you're banking a check from FOX NEWS apparently.
Turning to Iraq . . .
Mustafa al-Kadhimi was Iraq's most inept prime minister since the US-led invasion of Iraq. It turns out that he might have also been one of the most corrupt and sick -- and remember, Iraq has already suffered through two terms of Nouri al-Maliki being prime minister. So to be more corrupt and sick than Nouri is really saying something. Remember, Nouri's actions lead to the rise of ISIS in Iraq.
Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) report:
A flagship anti-corruption drive under the tenure of U.S.-backed Iraqi
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi used incommunicado detention, torture
and sexual violence to extract confessions from senior Iraqi officials
and businessmen, according to a nine-month investigation by The
Washington Post.
Kadhimi, who left office in October, came to power in 2020 after mass anti-corruption demonstrations felled his predecessor. His government’s high-profile campaign to tackle graft in one of the world’s most corrupt countries drew widespread international encouragement.
Central
to the effort was a series of highly publicized night raids in late
2020 on the homes of public figures accused of corruption, conducted
under the authority of the Permanent Committee to Investigate Corruption
and Significant Crimes, better known as Committee 29. The architect of
the raids was Lt. Gen. Ahmed Taha Hashim, or Abu Ragheef, who became
known in Iraq as the “night visitor.”
But what happened to the men behind closed doors was far darker: a
return to the ugly old tactics of a security establishment whose abuses
Kadhimi had vowed to address. In more than two dozen interviews —
including five men detained by the committee, nine family members who
had relatives imprisoned, and 11 Iraqi and Western officials who tracked
the committee’s work — a picture emerges of a process marked by abuse
and humiliation, more focused on obtaining signatures for pre-written
confessions than on accountability for corrupt acts.
Those
interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive matters or, in the case of detainees and their
families, to protect their safety.
“It
was every kind of torture,” one former detainee recalled. “Electricity,
choking me with plastic bags, hanging me from the ceiling by my hands.
They stripped us naked and grabbed at the parts of our body underneath.”
In
at least one case, a former senior official, Qassim Hamoud Mansour,
died in the hospital after being arrested by the committee. Photographs
provided to The Post by his family appear to show that a number of teeth
had been knocked out, and there were signs of blunt trauma on his
forehead.
Right now, my thoughts go to Robert Pehter, whose been held forever and who looks like he's been tortured. The Australian government has done nothing to secure his release.
We'll wind down with this from Will Lehman's campaign:
Dear fellow workers, Yesterday, I submitted a formal protest to the UAW Monitor challenging the UAW election results. Based on extensive evidence of voter suppression by the UAW bureaucracy, the election cannot be considered a real expression of the will of the membership, and the results should not be certified. I encourage you to read the full text of my challenge to the UAW election results, which thoroughly documents how the vote was suppressed: |
This election was characterized by a deliberate suppression of the vote of the rank and file by the entrenched UAW leadership. The union intentionally failed to provide adequate notice to the rank and file, who are not accustomed to direct elections and would not ordinarily expect to receive ballots. This fact is confirmed by the extremely low 9 percent turnout. Hundreds of thousands of members were simply unaware that an election was taking place and did not vote. In some locals representing tens of thousands of younger academic workers, turnout was less than one percent. The 9 percent turnout in the UAW elections was by far the lowest for any direct national union elections. By comparison, the first-ever Teamsters direct election in the 1990s had 28 percent turnout. The first-ever UMWA direct elections had 47 percent. The alibi of the UAW apparatus—that workers are “apathetic”—is simply not credible. Meanwhile, even as the UAW apparatus was keeping workers in the dark about its union elections, it went to great lengths to “get out the vote” for the Democrats in the midterm elections—meaning that the UAW leadership had the means to inform workers of the union elections, but deliberately did not. To remedy the violation of workers’ democratic right to participate in a meaningful election, either ballots should be re-issued and a new UAW election held, or the names of all candidates added to the ballot in the runoff. In either case, this time adequate measures must be taken to prevent the UAW leadership from suppressing the vote and ensure that the entire membership is aware of the election and able to vote. I urge workers in the UAW and my followers to read the full protest and to share it as widely as possible. Contact my campaign and send us a statement supporting my challenge opposing the UAW bureaucracy’s attempt to once again trample the rights of the rank and file. |
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The following sites updated:
