Go Fuck Yourself

Devasting & Disgusting: The Nashville Shooting

by planet eddie| March 29, 20233:21 pm| 97 Comments

This post is in: Go Fuck Yourself, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, The State of Being Trans in America

This is Transgender Visibility Week, so I was bouncing around ideas this morning about what to post, but when I checked in on different internet communities where trans news abounds, things are squarely focused on how afraid people are from the backlash of the Nashville shooting that happened Monday.

I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing to focus on an individual shooter’s identity because no person goes out and shoots up a school who just isn’t simply sick in the head first and foremost. Our attention should be focused on the grieving parents, students, and communities who want tangible action against gun violence.

Three nine-year old children are dead: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. Three staff members are also dead: Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of The Covenant School; Mike Hill, 61, a custodian at the school; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher. You can read more about all the victims here.

This is devastating, but now it is getting disgusting as the Right wing, media, and all our usual suspects (MTG, Musk) have latched onto this shooting as an anti-trans Reichstag Fire.

Even before police officials in Tennessee identified the person responsible for murdering three children and three adults in the latest mass school shooting in the U.S., far-right extremists and transphobic people began spreading misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation focused on transgender people and not guns.

The shooter had access to two AR-style rifles, an AR-style handgun, and a handgun, but a Congresswoman is blaming the trans community for gun violence.

People who are trans are much more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators.

It’s the guns. https://t.co/CH6YNGderH

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 27, 2023

Ingraham: We also don’t know the extent to which drug therapy of any sort also might have come into play here pic.twitter.com/YP4owJDhNk

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 28, 2023

Interesting how no one is talking about how the shooter is a “biological female” (eyeroll).

Some facts:

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 130 mass shootings this year, 647 in 2022. In total, they calculate 2,871 mass shootings in the U.S. since 2016. Some of those incidents involved multiple shooters.
In that time, 3 of those shooters have been identified as transgender or nonbinary (I’m not counting the Club Q shooter since that has largely been debunked).
That’s roughly 0.1% for those of you running the math in your head.
Re: Hale. It’s quite unclear whether they are transgender or not, since there are conflicting reports from family and friends. Again, it’s not the damn point. Since the overwhelming percentage of mass shootings are carried out by white cis-men, it reeks that this shooter’s identity is the hot topic du jour.

Multiple members of my family lived in Newtown, CT during the Sandy Hook massacre, and I remember thinking at the time… this will stop, this has to stop. I fully expect that this tragedy will instead be used as a rallying flag for the right to gin up more anti-trans and christo-fascist nonsense, instead of actually doing something to protect children from guns.

pic.twitter.com/LnfKZuSXgL

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) March 27, 2023

Joyful Trans Visibility posts will be forthcoming later this week.

EDIT: Thanks @Matt_McIrvin and @SpaceUnit for pointing out my typos. I blame my terrible ADHD.

Devasting & Disgusting: The Nashville ShootingPost + Comments (97)

Repub Venality, Retro Edition: The Iranian ‘October Surprise’

by Anne Laurie| March 19, 20231:13 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Go Fuck Yourself, Iran, Our Failed Media Experiment, Republican Venality

dig up his corpse and hang ithttps://t.co/LbvvMEmKgR

— sun 🔆))) (@revhowardarson) March 18, 2023

In which John Connally richly earns his reputation for being cynical, self-centered, rapacious and coldblooded. Congrats to @peterbakernyt for revealing details of this important historical moment.

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) March 18, 2023

The GOP wants one last chance to show Jimmy Carter how ‘cunning’ they were back in 1980, and Peter Baker is more than happy to launder their gleeful dance (unpaywalled link):

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

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“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday…

Mr. Barnes said he was certain the point of Mr. Connally’s trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,” he said. “It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

None of that establishes whether Mr. Reagan knew about the trip, nor could Mr. Barnes say that Mr. Casey directed Mr. Connally to take the journey. Likewise, he does not know if the message transmitted to multiple Middle Eastern leaders got to the Iranians, much less whether it influenced their decision making. But Iran did hold the hostages until after the election, which Mr. Reagan won, and did not release them until minutes after noon on Jan. 20, 1981, when Mr. Carter left office…

Suspicions about the Reagan camp’s interactions with Iran circulated quietly for years until Gary Sick, a former national security aide to Mr. Carter, published a guest essay in The New York Times in April 1991 advancing the theory, followed by a book, “October Surprise,” published that November…

Mr. Barnes said he did not reveal the real story at the time to avoid blowback from his own party. “I don’t want to look like Benedict Arnold to the Democratic Party by participating in this,” he recalled explaining to a friend. The headlines at the time, he imagined, would have been scandalous. “I did not want that to be on my obituary at all.”

But as the years have passed, he said, he has often thought an injustice had been done to Mr. Carter. Discussing the trip now, he indicated, was his way of making amends. “I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,” he said. “He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”

What Connally did to delay the Iran hostage release so Reagan could cinch 1980 election echoes what Nixon’s emissaries did to sabotage LBJ’s peace talks to cinch the 1968 election for Nixon. Connally was extremely close to Nixon in 1980. Any chance Nixon gave Connally the idea?

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) March 18, 2023

Excellent point from Tom Scocca, at Indignity:

… The hostages also got a bad deal out of it. Former Newsweek correspondent Elaine Shannon tweeted that after the release, Carter’s aides learned the hostages “had been falsely told he hadn’t tried to free them.”

Judging by Barnes’ account, at least 17 percent of their captivity—the 77 days between Reagan’s election and inauguration, to say nothing of the months between Connally’s tour and the election—served only to burnish Reagan’s standing at Carter’s expense. They were directly held hostage for the sake of Ronald Reagan’s public relations.

report accurately on anything involving current politics https://t.co/EOprNbkEF5

— sun 🔆))) (@revhowardarson) March 18, 2023

The suspicions and theories about collusion are not a secret. The exact mechanics of it were not known until now.

— Peter F. Jackson 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 (@pjackson_nl) March 18, 2023

i don’t doubt any of this but the iranians kept the hostages until carter was out of office out of sheer spite. they’ve said as much. they weren’t getting out earlier. carter got bullied into letting the shah into america and it was unwise in the extreme. https://t.co/fbxnpiaU3s

— world famous art thief (@CalmSporting) March 18, 2023

Go even further back and you’ll find Nixon doing a similar thing with Vietnam back in 1968. https://t.co/W8HxfLE1RX

— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) March 18, 2023

Whether it’s Ronald Reagan backchanneling Iran to keep American hostages locked up for political gain, or Barack Obama secretly negotiating with Tehran to prevent nuclear war that could end life on planet Earth, both sides have been guilty of sneaking around with the Ayatollahs.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) March 19, 2023

Repub Venality, Retro Edition: The Iranian ‘October Surprise’Post + Comments (51)

Just Fucking Do It Already

by John Cole| October 27, 20222:23 pm| 189 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Go Fuck Yourself

Taking a moment from being swamped to yell into the void and get something off my chest. One of the most irritating things about getting older and having watched people and politics for multiple decades is that I am just sick and fucking tired of debating the same bullshit year after year after year. The shit is settled in most cases. The science is settled. The likely outcomes are settled. Just fucking do it.

The proximate source of this outburst is the slew of articles about this bullshit:

Aides to President Joe Biden were enraged when Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman abandoned a secret deal they believed they’d struck to boost oil production, The New York Times reported.

Citing US and Middle Eastern officials, the newspaper said Biden aides believed they’d reached an agreement with the Saudis to increase oil production until December.

This would’ve enabled the Biden White House to claim that the president’s controversial visit to the kingdom in July had resulted in a significant benefit, and would’ve boosted Democrats ahead of the midterms, where they are facing criticism from Republicans over high gas prices.

Biden had criticised the Saudis on the campaign trail over their human rights record, but as the war in Ukraine increased oil prices he made the trip to Jeddah over the heads of senior members of his own party and was pictured bumping fists with bin Salman.

But instead of handing Biden a much-needed political win, the crown prince abandoned the deal. Saudi Arabia also enraged Democratic lawmakers and White House officials earlier this month by announcing plans to cut production along with Russia and other OPEC nations, pushing up oil prices.

Just fucking stop negotiating with them and cut them the fuck off. They are not an ally in any meaningful sense of the term. Literally every shitty thing that has happened in the Middle East (that was not started by the Brits or the CIA, I must note), has found its genesis in fucking Saudi Arabia. You could go through and list dozens of things they are the cause of, and it does no even begin to start with the 9/11 bombers. Stop propping up this corrupt and brutal and stone age fucking monarchy, their wahabbist cult, and let them deal with their own fucking security and messes.

And while we are at it, fuck Aramco. Put the same god damned screws to them we are currently putting to the Chinese tech sector.

And don’t tell me but, but Israel. Fuck those guys, too. They can handle their own fucking messes. They’re not helping clean anything up, that’s for fucking sure.

I’m sick of these guys.

Just Fucking Do It AlreadyPost + Comments (189)

Global Affairs Open Thread: Steven Pinker Has THOUGHTS

by Anne Laurie| July 26, 202210:36 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Go Fuck Yourself, Open Threads, War in Ukraine

"How can I propose the worst possible idea, but also still keep getting funding for my institution from both American and Russian Oligarchs?" https://t.co/Z3tVuZvm2z

— onomatopoeia (@cotedesure) July 25, 2022

It’s all very well having ‘Time’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today”, 2004’ and multiple ‘Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers”‘ hits on one’s LinkedIn profile — one does not stay in demand as an Aspen-level Thought Leader^(tm) without an ongoing supply of press notices, preferably laudatory. How to market a well-honed talent for expressing that All Is for the Best in This Best of All Possible Worlds in this new age of virality?

Bad choice, Professor Pinker!

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Global Affairs Open Thread: Steven Pinker Has THOUGHTSPost + Comments (27)

Sick of the Bullshit

by John Cole| June 30, 20224:26 am| 111 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Commentary, Go Fuck Yourself, Open Threads

I’ve been in a mood all fucking day, and shared some choice words with people on social media, including this rant on facebook:

I’ve started cutting more people out of my life today. Ditching a bunch of old fraternity brothers, people from undergrad and HS, people I haven’t spent any time with in 20 years, etc. I’m just over it. I am tired of garbage human beings taking advantage of the fact that we drank together the last century thinking we’re “friends” as they do and say repellent things and vote in ways that hurt people.

We’re not friends. We were drinking buddies. Or shared a frat house. Or worked together. That’s it. We had some good times long ago.
But you’ve become a monster. Someone I don’t want to associate with. You’re doing and saying awful things and actively making life miserable for other people.

I’m tired of you using me to think what you are doing is ok and thinking I think everything is alright and you’re a good person. You want to live in a polite civilized world where there are no repercussions for your awful behavior because we shared a joint and some Milwaukee’s Best in 1988.

You think someone jeering Mitch McConnell at dinner is a greater sin than eradicating individual rights or smearing all Mexicans as drug smugglers or all the other awful things you post.

You say “it’s just politics” or “why are you so intolerant” or it’s just a debate.” But you’re not debating. You’re spewing memes and bullshit you heard somewhere and don’t understand and when confronted with it you just lie or chant fake news. You’re a sophist, a charlatan, and a fraud. I’ll wait here while you google sophist.

No, it’s not. The people you are voting for, the bullshit you are peddling, the lies you are spreading- these are hurting real people. You’re not a good person no matter how many “I believe in the lord our God” or “jesus saves” memes you post. You’re a trashy, self-centered, bad person. You think what you do privately in the voting booth shouldn’t impact our relationship . It does.

I don’t owe you shit, and I am tired of pretending that what you are doing is ok. You’re a bad person and we’re not friends.
And if you are wondering if I am talking about you then I probably am. Stop being a shitty person because a decent person wouldn’t be wondering.

I’m 52 and I am just fucking over the bullshit. I am tired of people being awful and doing awful things and thinking they have the right to around without repercussions. I don’t care if this insulates them more and they retreat farther from reality into their fucking maga cocoon, fuck them. They need to be called out, shamed, shunned, and treated like the filth they are. You can’t be nice with them because they just take you for granted, you can’t debate them because they live in their own reality, and you can’t change most of their minds because their beliefs are based on a two thousand year old work of fiction that has been rewritten thousands of times to benefit the people in power each time. So fuck them. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

In other news I made a pork shoulder today. Took about 10 hours and I came up with a new rub, and tomorrow we are doing pulled pork with a carolina sauce and slaw and I will be making some salsa verde and a lime cilantro aoli for carnitas.

Sick of the BullshitPost + Comments (111)

Open Thread: Hate Will Not Win Reposted

by TaMara| June 25, 20221:46 pm| Leave a Comment

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Civil Rights, Commentary, Gay Rights Are human Rights, Go Fuck Yourself, Open Threads

From Starrlet O’Hara:

Regarding The Incident At PRIDE

First and foremost, I need to thank everyone who has reached out to me this week. If I haven’t responded, please know that I do appreciate your concern and your kind words. I just needed a minute to process this before I addressed it.

I was on stage for our Rust Belt Theater family friendly Kids Show, getting ready to announce the next performer… When a man with a megaphone rushed out of the crowd. He called me a “pervert.” He said that I was “grooming” and “indoctrinating” children. He was also filming my reaction.

My first instinct was to tackle him. I did not. My second instinct was to scream back at him. I did not. I have been doing theater for children for over 25 years. As a performer I am always hyper aware of my audience and what I consider to be APPROPRIATE, especially when it comes to young people. In the words of the late, great Stephen Sondheim:

“Careful the things you say,
children will listen.
Careful things you do,
children will see.
And learn.”

What I COULD do, was counter his message with my own, because the only way to banish the DARKNESS is to turn on a LIGHT. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and started to sing. The first words that came to my mouth were…

“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high…”

It’s a song my Nana used to sing to me, probably the first song I ever learned all of the words to. It has always been a source of comfort for me when I needed it, and in that moment it was there for me once again.

The man with megaphone got LOUDER. He began to circle me, getting closer, becoming more and more agitated, screaming at the crowd…The crowd of CHILDREN, telling them I was a MONSTER. I was terrified, but I was determined not to show it.

“There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.”

Then something unexpected happened…One by one, beginning with Esther Gin and Mrs. Goutfire, the other performers joined me. They linked arms with me, and started to sing along. We were then joined by people in the audience, singing in unison. Together we drowned his message of HATE with our message of HOPE. He had a megaphone, but I had a family.

In the end he ran off, pursued not by parents, not by security, but by queer and nonbinary teenagers. They were wearing pride flags as capes, like the heroes that they are.

“Birds fly over the rainbow, why then oh why can’t I?”

By the end of the song, the darkness was gone, banished by the light. By progress. By the future. Afterward, several people asked me if it was all part of the show. I promise you it was not

After it happened I was determined not to let anyone see me cry. I took a moment in the dressing room to get myself together, and we just continued with the show…Because that’s what we do. And what we do is important. This incident was a reminder of just HOW important.

Anyway….thank you for indulging me, and allowing me to get this out. I have been struggling with it all week and I’m hoping that writing down the experience will ease my mind a little. The anxiety, and especially the nightmares have been brutal. My mind is not always as kind to me as perhaps it should be.

“If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow…Why, oh why can’t I?”

Please know that I love all of you, no matter what.

Here is a photo from that day with my two nieces, Ellie and Ema, who rode on the pride float with me.

“Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell,
Children will listen…”

-Robert Dennick Joki
AKA Starrlet O’Hara

Be an ally. This hate cannot stand.

Someone asked me what to do if you’re afraid, afraid to confront the crazy person, afraid they are going to turn violent, but you still want to do something? I agreed that confrontation is not the best response in this day of every bully has a gun.

I responded that if all you do is stand silent in solidarity beside someone who is the target of this hate, that means they are not standing alone. Hold their hand, put an arm around them. That can be more powerful than shouting back at the crazy.

Hate WILL NOT WIN

But I am afraid things are going to get worse before we turn the ship around. But we’ll only turn the ship around if we all stand up and say “this is not okay.”

Anyway, this is an open thread. I’m going to go pour some more coffee, maybe pet a critter or two so I can calm the fuck down.

Open Thread: Hate Will Not Win ***Reposted***Post + Comments