Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Sen. Ron DeSantis is continuing his war to destroy Disney, making public threats of retaliatory, punitive state action against the entertainment company for the crime of acknowledging LGBTQ+ people exist and are Disney customers.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed Monday that the Florida Legislature will soon reassert control over Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, promising to void development agreements and even floating the idea of building a state prison near the world-famous attraction.

Legislation also will be filed to take away Disney’s self-inspection of rides and monorails and allow the state to examine a ride if someone is seriously injured on it, DeSantis said at a news conference at Reedy Creek’s administrative building.

He then mused about potentially selling off the district’s utilities and developing district land that Disney doesn’t own.

“People are like, ‘Well, ... what should we do with this land?” said a smiling DeSantis. “... Maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks? Someone even said, ‘Maybe you need another state prison?’ Who knows? I just think that the possibilities are endless.”

DeSantis’ hand-picked oversight board, which will meet on Wednesday, will also consider revoking the development agreement and other measures, he said, citing what he called a “plethora of legal infirmities.”

The governor said lawmakers could move on the bills as soon as next week.

Asked whether the state would take away the ride inspection exemption granted to all major theme parks in the state, including Universal Orlando, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens and Legoland, DeSantis suggested only Disney would be affected

“I think it’s going to be this legislative question,” DeSantis said. “But I think what the Legislature is going to do is apply that to special districts.”

 

And again, don't get me wrong here. Disney is a massive conglomerate worth $180 billion or so, and that's after it has lost half of its stock value in the last two years because of its greed, with the mighty Marvel Studios, Lucasfilms and 20th Century Fox empires being bled dry, Disney Plus losing billions in the streaming wars, and the company bowing to Chinese censorship. I actually do want to see the company suffer.

But I want to see Ron DeSantis lose badly too. And you know what? The more they fight, the more they both cause harm to each other? I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with are Disney employees and Florida residents paying the price for this war of attrition, and that's where we're headed.

 

Keep that in mind.

Last Call For Dominion Takes The Win-ion

Dominion Voting Services has settled its defamation suit against Fox News for just short of half what the company was asking for, minutes before the trial was scheduled to begin today.

 

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in.

“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.


"Money is accountability," said Stephen Shackelford Jr., the attorney scheduled to give opening statements for Dominion on Tuesday.

Fox News, in a statement, said it acknowledged "the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."

"This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the network said. “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

 

Some observations:

 

One, it's not over yet.  Fox News still faces a similar defamation case from voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic over the same Big Lie claims for an even larger sum, $2.7 billion.

Two, we don't know the full terms of the settlement. It's entirely possible that Fox News personalities may have to say, publicly apologize. We'll see about that. You can bet Fox will drag their feet on that as long as they can and issue an apology at 4:30 AM on a Sunday.

Three, you can bet Fox will quietly raise cable TV fees on providers as it remains the second-most watched cable network behind only ESPN. Your cable bill is going to go up even if you never watch the network. Financially, this isn't going to hurt Rupert Murdoch one bit. Fox News is still a $16 billion company, and it'll make the settlement and more back off of American cable customers in the years ahead.

Four, Fox News will continue to lie about, gaslight and attack Democrats, liberals, Black, Latino and Asian folk, LGBTQ+ folk, Muslims, Jews, and pretty much everything else in the future. That won't change one bit.

So, we'll how how this shakes out, but yeah, both sides are going to claim victory here, and both sides are correct to do so.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy and the Shutdown Clowns are once again announcing their plans to cut trillions in social spending and crash the economy with the debt ceiling, not caring that the demand is supposed to be "or" not "and".

In his speech Monday, McCarthy sought to lay the blame for any potential market fears of a default at Biden’s feet.

“The longer President Biden waits to be sensible to find an agreement, the more likely it becomes that this administration will bumble into the first default in our nation’s history,” he said.

Biden, meanwhile, has demanded that House Republicans produce their own budget as a starting point to negotiations. But getting his entire caucus — whose members disagree on what to cut and by how much — to sign on to one budget blueprint would be a herculean task for the Republican speaker.

“Let me be clear, defaulting on our debt is not an option. But neither is a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates, more dependency on China and an economy that doesn’t work for working Americans,” said McCarthy. “Addressing the debt requires us to come together, find common ground and reduce spending.”

The fact that McCarthy was roping two unrelated legislative tasks – passing a debt ceiling hike and approving a federal budget – together as one deal remained a nonstarter for the White House.

In statement Monday morning, White House spokesman Andrew Bates accused the California Republican of “holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, threatening our economy and hardworking Americans’ retirement.”

Despite McCarthy’s attempt to portray the White House as lagging behind or late to the table, the current state of affairs lines up with what a White House official told CNBC earlier this spring.

The Biden administration planned to pursue negotiations in earnest with Congress only after Tuesday’s tax deadline.

At that point, the official said, the federal government would have a better idea of how much revenue was coming in from taxes, and how far it would go toward paying the country’s bills. This would influence how urgently the White House would need to reach a deal with congressional Republicans.

 

Biden has a budget proposal and a debt ceiling proposal, McCarthy doesn't have the votes for either. That's the difference...and oh yes, the spending cuts the House GOP want would smash a hole in the economy, and the House also wants the ability to take the economy hostage again a year from now so they can do even more damage and blame Biden for it.

It's a pretty horrific situation, but the worst part is, again, McCarthy doesn't have the votes to pass anything without Democratic help. Maybe that forces him to the table, but maybe that leads to default and economic depression.

We'll see. The clock is running out and all sides know it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black lives still matter, even in small town Oklahoma.

 

GOP officials from McCurtain County, Okla. are being investigated by the FBI after they were caught on tape expressing their frustration about it not being socially acceptable beat up and hang Black people, as well as their desires to hire hitmen to kill newspaper reporters.

The audio was published by print-only newspaper McCurtain Gazette-News, and it released transcript of a recording from a county commissioners meeting last month to the public that allegedly incriminates several public officials after disturbing comments were made. The full audio recording from Gazette-News reporter Bruce Willingham will be released by the newspaper at a later date.

After hundreds came out in protest, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has called for the resignation of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy (R), District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings (R), Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix for their comments in the meeting. District 3 Commissioner Robert Beck (R) is also cited in the audio.

The transcript suggests that the group first started discussing a recent fire which killed a woman and her two dogs. The group joked about the woman’s body parts falling off her body, and that it is similar to eating barbecue.

“So we get her in the body bag and Kyler goes, ‘You do know what we gotta do right?’ Faith goes, ‘No, what?’ He goes, ‘You gotta pre-heat the oven 350 degrees, leave her in there for 15 minutes,’” said Clardy.

Later in the transcript, Jennings and Clardy had a racist exchange and went back and forth about society making it unacceptable to lynch Black people.

“I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when that when Alan Marshton would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for f—ing sheriff,” Jennings said.

After Clardy said things aren’t like that anymore, Jennings continued.

“I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”

Jennings supposedly went on to say that he knows of two large pre-dug holes “if you ever need them,” referring to disposing the remains of Bruce Willingham and his son, Chris, also a Gazette-News reporter. Jennings also said that he knows of “two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys.”

Manning chimed in and claimed nobody would care if two of the Gazette-News’ reporters were harmed. “Yeah, but here’s the reality,” Manning allegedly said. “If a hair on his wife’s head, Chris Willingham’s head, or any of those people that really were behind that, if any hair on their head got touched by anybody, who would be the bad guy?”

 

Gov. Stitt has to at least pretend he wants them gone, but let's face it: It's 2023, and what white supremacist Republicans really want is an America where you can go around and shoot, kill, and/or lynch Black folk just like granpappy used to do back in the Good Ol' Days, cause even if you were an Okie from Muskogee shit-kicker dirt poor asshole, at least you could still take a pipe wrench to one of them ni-CLANGs like God intended and then put a couple of them civil rights reporters in the goddamn ground

The problem isn't what these dirtbags said on tape, it's what millions of white folk say when there's nobody around to record it.

And you know what?  The casual way these assholes talked about lynching and putting reporters in the ground, with total indifference to human life?

That sounds like a confession to me.  It sounds like something they've seen or done before, and more than once. I'm glad the feds are involved, because it sounds like there have been decades of "bad guys" over the years here and no effort to investigate the victims.

But the worst part is that we should realize that in 2023, even discussing this case in a school or college classroom would be illegal in several states, because it would be banned under anti "Critical Race Theory" laws. This is exactly the subject my high school in NC discussed more than 30 years ago during the reaction in LA to the Rodney King verdict, and talking about this story would be illegal in a NC classroom or public university course if NC Republicans have their way.

Black Lives Matter.

 

Do better.

Last Call For Chinese Firing Drill, Con't

As tensions between China and the US continue to worsen, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today two Chinese nationals operating out of a Chinese police outpost in Chinatown, NYC were arrested for conducting foreign police operations on US soil.

 

Two men were arrested early Monday on federal charges accusing them of conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China in connection with a police outpost operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, officials announced in a news conference.

The outpost, which court papers say was operated by Chinese security officials, is one of more than 100 Chinese police operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The charges against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the Chinatown outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.

“Today’s charges are a crystal clear response to the P.R.C. that we are on to you, we know what you’re doing and we will stop it from happening in the United States of America,” Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in announcing the charges with other officials. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city,” he added.

Last fall, F.B.I. counterintelligence agents searched the outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 East Broadway, indicating an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.

Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The F.B.I. raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.

It could not be immediately determined whether the men had lawyers. Mr. Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and maintains a residence in China. Mr. Chen lives in Manhattan. Both men are U.S. citizens.

In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Mr. Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Mr. Chen as its secretary general.

The two men were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying text messages between themselves and their handler at China’s Ministry of Public Security in October 2022, around the time of the F.B.I. search, as well as conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China without registering with the Justice Department, as the law requires.

The charges were announced later Monday at a news conference in Brooklyn by Mr. Peace; the F.B.I. assistant director who leads the New York office, Michael Driscoll; and the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, David Newman.

The complaint accuses the men of assisting the Chinese government. Since 2015, according to the charges, Mr. Lu participated in counter-protests in Washington, D.C., against members of the Falun Gong, a religion prohibited under Chinese law.

More recently, the complaint says, they have helped operate the police outpost for the Fuzhou Municipal Security Bureau, a branch of the nation’s Ministry of Public Security, the nation’s intelligence, security and secret police.

When news of the search in Lower Manhattan was first reported in January, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the role of the outposts, saying they were staffed by volunteers who helped Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses back home.

But The New York Times reviewed Chinese state news media reports in which the police and local Chinese officials described the operations very differently.

The officials, cited by name, trumpeted the effectiveness of the offices, frequently referred to as overseas police service centers. In some of the reports, the outposts were described as “collecting intelligence” and solving crimes abroad without the involvement of local officials.

Those public statements left it murky who exactly was running the offices. In some instances, they were described as being led by volunteers; in others, by staff members.

 

Yeah, these "Help Centers" are straight up Chinese police outposts used to keep tabs on Chinese dissidents living abroad.  The fact that these centers are operating out in the open and conducting intelligence operations in broad daylight might be something of an issue, and it's not just here in the US that these outposts exist, either.

I'm glad that the DoJ is moving to interfere with these outfits. NYC can't be the only one in the US, either.

It's time to shut them all down, frankly.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black lives, Black History, Black experiences still matter, even when white Republicans try to erase us.

 

Louisiana Republican Party officials want state lawmakers to forbid the study of racism at colleges and universities, arguing in a resolution approved Saturday that classes examining "inglorious aspects" of United States history are too divisive.

The resolution, passed by voice vote with no discernible dissent at the state party's quarterly meeting in Baton Rouge, asks the Legislature to pass laws removing diversity, equity and inclusion departments and agencies "within any institution of higher learning within the state." Without citing evidence, the resolution asserts that these programs have bloated budgets and inflamed political tensions on campuses.

The move comes amid efforts by Republican lawmakers nationwide to exert more control over educational materials and curricula, including books containing LGBTQ+ themes and classes about racism. They hope the effort will endear them to the GOP’s grassroots base as the party recovers from its 2022 midterm losses and prepares for the 2024 presidential election.

The Louisiana GOP chapter has remained mostly aligned with the national party's far-right factions, rallying in support of former President Donald Trump ahead of his arrest this month and endorsing Trump acolyte Jeff Landry, the state attorney general, for governor. That stance has repeatedly stirred controversy for local party leaders.

In approving Saturday's resolution, state party officials urged the Legislature to take steps similar to those of other conservative states that have considered curtailing programs deemed to increase tribalism and hostility on campuses.

The resolution targets both classroom content promulgating critical race theory and efforts to improve diversity in higher education staffing and campus programming. It criticizes LSU and University of Louisiana System programs run by Claire Norris, a UL system administrator, for dedicating money and staff to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices.

The measure argues that "DEI bureaucracies" act as "divisive ideological commissariats" and that critical race theory makes students feel less rather than more welcome.

The resolution drew a rebuke from University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson, who in a written statement called the depiction of life on campuses "so foreign to the reality at our institutions it defies comment."

"We make no statement on the inner workings and platform development of political parties. That is their business," Henderson said. "That said, the naming of an invaluable member of my staff is unnecessary and inappropriate. She is an exemplary professional and an asset to Louisiana and higher education."

Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said in a statement that the Board of Regents stands by its programming.

"Programs that support student success and strengthen a sense of belonging on campus and in the wider community are important and impactful, yielding positive results in student completion," Reed said.

 

As I've said before when you outlaw a culture's history, when you outlaw learning about the dark aspects of that history, when you make teaching about that history illegal, you erase that culture, and you erase that people.

And then the injustices that happened then, happen again.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

The Long (COVID) War, Con't

Colorado's health department has released devastating estimates of the occurrence of long COVID in the state, and it's affecting as much as 10-11% of the population.

 

State officials have released their first estimate of how many people in Colorado have been hit by long COVID-19. The figure is staggering: Data suggest that between 230,000 and 650,000 Coloradans may have been affected.

With a state population of nearly 6 million, the data suggest as many as one in 10 Coloradans have experienced long COVID, according to the report from The Office of Saving People Money on Healthcare in the Lt. Governor's Office. And many of them have struggled to find treatments and answers about what can be a life-altering illness.

People with post-COVID conditions can have a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog and headaches, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those may be prolonged, lasting weeks, months, or even years after infection.

Some patients described their challenges in a January segment on CPR’s Colorado Matters.

“I think that's what's so unclear about long COVID and potentially concerning about those numbers is that we certainly know some people recover,” but most haven’t, said Dr. Sarah Jolley, a researcher with CU Anshutz. Jolley is also the medical director of the UCHealth Post-COVID Clinic, one site of a national study looking at recovery after COVID.

Jolley said only 30 to 40 percent of long COVID patients have returned to their individual health baseline so far, based on what she’s observed and seen in research.

“There are a number of folks where symptoms persist much longer and so it's hard to estimate what proportion of that 600,000 will have longer-term symptoms versus shorter-term long COVID symptoms,” she said. “I would say the minority of individuals that we've seen have had complete recovery.”

The implications of that are enormous, Jolley said, both in terms of so-called long-haulers’ quality of life as well as Colorado’s workforce, education, health care and other systems.

Jolley said the best protection and prevention against long COVID is getting fully vaccinated, including the latest booster. “We know that vaccination lessens the risk of long COVID, lessens the severity of initial disease,” she said, noting the lagging number of people getting the omicron booster in Colorado. Currently, only about a quarter of eligible people in the state have received the omicron booster, according to the state’s vaccine dashboard, far below the uptake for the initial series of vaccines.

 

When the best case scenario is "two percent of the population is suffering from debilitating, long-term physical and mental symptoms preventing them from being able to function" then again, we're nowhere near ready to deal with the implications. We're talking millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans disabled by COVID in the months and years ahead.

 

We're not going to have the resources to deal with that, let alone the second and third-order effects on the economy, society, and health systems.  

This is going to be the public health challenge of our generation and we've barely even started to acknowledge it.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Another pair of mass shootings over the weekend in Gunmerica, one of them in Louisville, still reeling from another mass shooting earlier last week.

 

At least two people were killed in a shooting at a park in Louisville, Kentucky, over the weekend, less than a week after a mass shooting at a bank in the city left five people dead.

Two people died and four others were injured after shots were fired into a crowd at Chickasaw Park in Louisville on Saturday. Police responded to reports of the shooting around 9 p.m., and two victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

Louisville Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said at a press conference on Saturday night that while there were hundreds of people in the park at the time of the attack, police had no witnesses to the shooting. Humphrey also said it was unclear who opened fire.

“I want to speak directly to whoever the shooter is,” Humphrey said. “Turn yourself in. The best thing for you to do is to turn yourself in. We know that this will not end well. The best-case scenario is for you to turn yourself in and stop this.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) also reflected on the gun violence in the city over the past week, saying it had been “an unspeakable week of tragedy.”

“On Monday, we lost five of our fellow citizens to a horrific act of workplace gun violence,” Greenberg said. “And now, five days later, we’re at another scene of a reckless act of gun violence.”

 

Meanwhile, another mass shooting happened last night in Alabama.

A celebration turned violent in downtown Dadeville Saturday night as a shooting left four dead and more than 20 people injured according to investigators on scene.

Witnesses tell WRBL the gathering was a Sweet-16 Birthday celebration at Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, and the shooting happened around 10:30 Saturday night. We are told the majority of those injured are teenagers. That information has not been confirmed by law enforcement. We do not know if a person(s) of interest or suspect(s) is in custody.

Sources tell WRBL multiple law enforcement agencies are working feverishly in multiple jurisdictions on the investigation. Law enforcement’s limited disclosure of information regarding the mass shooting, the victims, and the suspect(s) has left some members of the community feeling increasingly frustrated. WRBL is told ALEA is leading the investigation, not local law enforcement. ALEA releases the following statement Sunday morning around 8:15:

At approximately 11:45 p.m. Saturday, April 15, Special Agents with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s (ALEA) State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) launched a death investigation at the request of the Dadeville Police Chief. The investigation is a result of a shooting which occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville, located in Tallapoosa County. Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries. The following agencies responded to the scene and are currently assisting with the investigation: The Dadeville Police Department, Tallapoosa County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the 5 Circuit District Attorney’s Office. Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.

 

Gunmerica will never stop until we stop the GOP, period. A majority of states are now open carry/permitless carry and more will die.

 

Gunmerica forever!

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

After both of The Justins were returned to the Tennessee House last week after being ejected by state Republicans, at least one Republican had robocalls thanking them for expelling "Antifa terrorists" from the legislature.

 

A new robocall is falsely accusing the three Tennessee Democratstargeted by Republicans for expulsion from the state legislature of being violent "Antifa" radicals.

Audio of the call, which was obtained by the Tennessee Holler, describes Tennessee Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson as "radical activists posing as elected officials” who purportedly "led an angry mob of Antifa intending violence" to the Tennessee State Capitol building earlier this month.

The robocall also falsely claimed that law enforcement officials confiscated "pipe bombs" from demonstrators protesting against the three Democrats' expulsion.

According to the Tennessee Holler, the calls were funded by right-wing organization Enlighten Tennessee, whose stated goal is to "preserve the Conservative economic principles which make Tennessee the greatest state in the country to live."

Gloria Johnson, the one Tennessee Democrat who survived the expulsion vote, reacted angrily to the robocall, which she decried as "disgusting."

"Antifa? Pipe bombs?" she asked incredulously. "I guess parents brought them in strollers with their babies and toddlers. I didn’t know they made brass knuckles for children. This is disgusting, disgraceful, and it’s going to get someone hurt."

Johnson also hinted at legal action against the call and revealed that she's "already have had my lawyer on the phone" to talk about options.

 

Republicans both inside and outside the state have repeatedly said that the expulsion of Justin Pearson and Justin Jones was justified because of their "terrorist, insurrectionist actions".  Now we see people are trying to get the Justins lynched.

Black Lives Still Matter. Even in Tennessee.

Sunday Long Read: Power Dril Nation

This week's Sunday Long Read is Nate Rogers's profile of legendary Twitter zeitgeist poster Paul "dril" Hochney in The Ringer, the man behind one of the most surreal and witty accounts of the last decade, making the trenchant observations of a digital world one shitpost at a time.

 

Dril is a real person, or so I had been told. Sitting in the House of Pies in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, I was waiting for him to join me in a booth—but I didn’t know who was actually going to show up.

It was the quiet midafternoon hours at the diner, which is a relic of when the area was less upscale, and it still partially attracts an off-key clientele of misfits and bozos, some of whom are alone and in no hurry to leave. (As I sat, an older man in oversized overalls walked by carrying a seat cushion; it was unclear whether he worked there.) This venue was the most readily available approximation of Dril’s world that I could think of.

While I waited, I pulled up Dril’s Twitter account and looked at a recent post: “The fact is,” he wrote, “people arent doing a good job wiping their ass these days. And its attracting all manner of stray dogs and coyotes to our towns.” The likes were ticking up and up in real time as they moved toward their eventual zenith of almost 17,000. By Dril standards, this wasn’t even a particularly popular—or deranged—post.

With 1.7 million highly engaged followers, Dril is one of the more powerful Twitter users and, by default, one of the more powerful figures on the internet. Active since 2008, the Dril account—simultaneously known by the profile name “Wint”—with its grainy Jack Nicholson avatar, has been responsible for countless viral posts, just as beloved for the vivid scenes they induce as for the baffling grammatical and spelling errors they contain. Many of his tweets have become part of the permanent online lexicon: “‘im not owned! im not owned!!’, i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob”; “issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’”; “i am selling six beautfiul, extremely ill, white horses. they no longer recognize me as their father, and are the Burden of my life.”

To most people, he is nothing; show the unaffiliated some of his posts, and they will likely just generate confusion and possibly anguish. (“Uh, so, I think I’ll stick with gardening. Where bull poop helps good things grow, and the tweets come from birds, not nitwits,” read one of many upset people in the comment section of a recent Washington Post feature about Dril, inadvertently adopting their own Dril-esque cadence in the process.) But to a large sect of the Very Online, he is king—the undisputed poet laureate of shitposting, the architect of a satire so effective that it has become impossible to tell when Dril stopped mocking the way people speak online and when we, instead, started speaking like Dril online.

For almost 10 years, he was entirely anonymous. Like a decent number of the people in the so-called “Weird Twitter” scene that Dril is still vaguely a part of, he doesn’t put his real name on the account—but as time has gone on and his popularity has grown, it’s become nothing short of miraculous that he’s kept up the mystery. He’s a pyramid-obsessed phantom. He’s banky. Still, over the years, some of his digital curtain has begun to part—largely spurred by his being doxxed in 2017, when his identity was revealed to supposedly be that of a man named Paul.

Around the same time, Dril started a Patreon, released a book, Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, and had an Adult Swim television show, TruthPoint—a surrealist Infowars parody in which he manifested behind a cheap old man mask and bantered with self-professed “manic pixie stream boy” cohost Derek Estevez-Olsen. Dril also began doing an interview here and there, but never anything substantial, and always in character. I reached out to him via email, and when he replied, the name attached to the account was “paul d.” But I still wasn’t totally sure that he wouldn’t walk into House of Pies with his mask on, throw a plate against a wall, and then walk out.

“I’m Paul,” he said, once he found me and after I began by asking whom, exactly, I could say I was speaking to.

Paul Dochney, who is 35, does not, in fact, look like a mutant Jack Nicholson. He has soft features and a gentle disposition and looks something like a young Eugene Mirman. It’s difficult to say what I expected to find sitting across from me, but it wasn’t this. Looking at him, you’d never presume that this was the person who made candle purchasing a matter of financial insecurity.

He opted to stick with water—not a terrible decision at the House of Pies, but also, I worried, a choice that theoretically allowed him a quick exit at any point. For a while, I got the sense that he might have been deciding how much to reveal to me in real time, based on how the conversation went. But one thing he was clear about from the beginning: It was all right to end this game of living in the digital shadows.

“I mean, my name is already out there,” he said, acknowledging the fact that, after the doxxing, he had at separate points confirmed his name on both Twitter and Reddit. “It’s in my Wikipedia article. Maybe people need to grow up. Just accept that I’m not like Santa Claus. I’m not a magic elf who posts.”

In some sense, anonymity has served a creative purpose. “Practically, it’s a good tool,” Estevez-Olsen told me later in a phone interview, “because when you make a post, you don’t want to be like, ‘From Paul Dochney, I fuck flags’ or whatever. You want to have some distance from it.” (He would know: “Estevez-Olsen” is itself a TruthPoint stage name that he asked me to use for reasons of privacy.)

But the secrecy has also lingered because of the types of personalities Dril naturally attracts to his orbit. “Most people are normal,” Dochney explained. “But there’s, like, three or four weirdos who just ruin it for everyone.” Jon Hendren, a fellow titan of Weird Twitter who is known by his subtle handle, @fart, told me that he had seen some disturbing messages people had sent Dochney in the past—that he wasn’t being paranoid or dramatic. “It’s gotta be kind of surreal,” Hendren said. “And it’s got to be kind of difficult to live with.”

 

Before Elon Musk brings Twitter to a grinding halt with pieces of it falling off like a cartoon Ford Pinto, it's nice to know that yeah, social media in the 2010's and early 2020's was pretty good with people like dril in it.

 

Right before, you know, it all went to shit.

Last Call For In Which Zandar Asks Your Burning Questions, Con't

Lauren Gambino of The Guardian asks:

 

‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance? 

 

Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.

Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.

Their fury over the ruling has been met with relative silence from Republicans.

Only a handful of congressional Republicans offered immediate comment on judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision last week to revoke the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Just a fraction of Republicans on Capitol Hill signed an amicus brief urging an appeals court to uphold the ruling. And among the party’s national field of Republican presidential nominees, just one – the former vice-president, Mike Pence – unabashedly praised the decision.

The starkly different reactions underscores just how dramatically the politics of abortion have shifted since last June, when conservatives achieved their once-unimaginable goal of overturning Roe v Wade.

For decades, Republicans relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, calling for the reversal of Roe v Wade and vowing to outlaw the procedure if given the chance. But since the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, abortion has emerged as a potent issue for Democrats, galvanizing voters furious over the thicket of state bans and restrictions ushered in by the decision.

Republicans have struggled to respond, lacking a unified policy on abortion in the nearly 10 months since the landmark decision.

 

I have to laugh, because the answer to that question is "Elections don't matter if Republicans control enough states to award the Republican 270 electoral votes."

It's possible that abortion costs the GOP some seats, but no Republican will survive a primary with a position to the left of Trump in any way.

Besides, SCOTUS is set to gut nearly all federal civil rights legislation in the next 15 months. The voting landscape in November 2024 is going to absolutely be a world apart from where it is now. And so far, Republicans haven't paid a price for much of anything. People are badly underestimating how much GOP supermajorities, gerrymandering, and SCOTUS being 6-3 conservative will conspire to make sure the GOP doesn't pay a price in my lifetime, either.

Even if you think Ron DeSantis, for example, will pay dearly in his 2024 run over Florida's abortion law, because he changed the rules in Florida, he'll still be Governor of Florida if he runs for the White House and loses. He may not be able to run again for Governor in 2026, but he can run in 2028 for President, and he can run for Governor again in 2030. He's younger than I am by 3 years. He'll only be 50 in 2028 and 52 in 2030. He has a long political career ahead of him, and there's no reason to think the GOP won't remain in total control of the state for decades to come.

So unless Democrats manage to dismantle these permanent gerrymandered walls, nothing will change.

Nothing.

Tik Tok Clock, Con't

Utah recently passed a bill limiting social media accounts for kids in response to the rise of TikTok as a national security threat, and if you think that the First Amendment issues with that bill are messy, Montana has apparently banned TikTok entirely this week.

 

MONTANA LAWMAKERS VOTED 54-43 today to ban TikTok from operating in the state and forbid app stores from offering it for download. The legislation is likely to become law, which would make Montana the first state in the US to ban the popular social media platform—a move that could spark a constitutional battle and endanger digital rights.

People who already have TikTok on their devices would not be in violation of the law, which will now go to Greg Gianforte, Montana's Republican governor. The move comes after years of amorphous assertions from the United States government under two presidential administrations that TikTok, which has 150 million US users, is a threat to national security because its parent, ByteDance, is a Chinese company.

Gianforte is expected to sign the new bill into law, which would take effect on January 1, 2024. In December, he banned TikTok from Montana government devices, a step other states have taken in recent months as well. In announcing that ban, Gianforte said, “I also encourage Montanans to protect their personal data and stop using TikTok.”

A statewide ban is radically different from a government device embargo and general encouragement, though. It has implications for Montana residents’ speech and ability to hear speech—rights protected under the US First Amendment.

“We’re under no illusions that this is not going to get challenged,” Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen told The New York Times on Wednesday. "I think this is the next frontier in First Amendment jurisprudence that’s probably going to have to come from the US Supreme Court. And I think that’s probably where this is headed."

Soon after today's vote, TikTok condemned the bill on both First Amendment and logistical grounds.

“The bill's champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill's constitutionality will be decided by the courts,” TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement. “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

 

First Amendment issues in an age where regulating technology is rapidly outpacing federal oversight and legislation is the next big fight we're going to have, and we're not even ready to start having that particular conversation yet as a country. 

This is not going to go well at all.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Recent mass shootings in Lousisville and Nashville this month went completely ignored by DOnald Trump and the rest of the ammosexuals at this year's NRA Convention in nearby Indianapolis this weekend, because the solution to guns killing people in Gunmerica is always more guns!

 

Amid an advertised “14 acres of guns & gear” on display in Indianapolis, a phalanx of announced and unannounced 2024 GOP candidates paraded in front of rank-and-file members of the National Rifle Association’s leadership forum.

Pummeled by lawsuits and scandal in recent years, the NRA show went on this week in the shadow of a pair of mass shootings. In 2019, this event took place in the belly of the cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium. Now it’s reduced to a ballroom at the Indiana Convention Center and tiered ticket prices were dropped for free admission to fill out the room.

But the annual cattle call—which drew the likes of former President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, among others—stood out for its red-meat policy pitches on guns. (Former ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina all appeared by pre-recorded video messages.)

Even after recent mass shootings in Louisville and Nashville, none of the candidates staked out middle ground — thus shaping the contours of a familiar gun control debate ahead of 2024. Prior to the most recent shootings in Louisville and Nashville, a Gallup poll showed 63% of Americans are dissatisfied with gun laws.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the speeches or the lusty applause they received inside the hall here this afternoon. The two parties seemed farther apart than ever on guns. Pence — who just four years ago came to Indianapolis and declared Indiana’s first-in-the-nation red flag law a possible national model to prevent mass shootings — made no mention of them from the stage. Instead, he called for expedited executions of perpetrators. Businessman and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who boasted about owning an AR-15 and received perhaps the warmest welcome of the crowd behind only Trump, called for the abolition of the FBI and ATF. Noem even went so far as to sign an executive order on stage, flanked by NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, putting an end to some banks’ recent efforts to stop lending to gun retailers and manufacturers.

And Trump, meanwhile, proposed reimbursing any teacher for the full cost of a concealed-carry firearm and training from highly qualified experts.

Elect Trump, the former president told the red hat-flecked crowd to close out the confab, “and no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”

“This is not a gun problem, this is a mental health problem, this is a social problem, this is a cultural problem, and this a spiritual problem,” Trump concluded, all but ending any prospect of gun control legislation among the GOP field ahead of 2024.

 

There will never be "moderation" in the Gunmerica Party. Stop pretending otherwise.

 

Until Republicans are voted out, nothing will happen.

Ron's Gone Completely Fucking Wrong

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed law one of arguably the most horrific, dystopian fascist decrees in the country right now, and understand that no matter who the GOP candidate for the White House in 2024 is, they will run on bringing this fascism to every corner of America.

First, how bad does your abortion ban have to be in order to make it into People Magazine? 

 

On Thursday, DeSantis announced that he signed the Heartbeat Protection Act into law, which will now require a woman to provide proof that the pregnancy was a result of rape, incest or human trafficking in order to receive an abortion up until 15 weeks of gestation.

Documentation can include a restraining order, police report, medical record or other evidence.

This restriction is an exception to the new law, which states that otherwise, abortions will be banned after six weeks unless done to save a pregnant person's life.

 

Read that again. Go on, I'll wait. 

You have to have documented proof of your rape, or you have to bear the rapist's child. The burden of proof is on the victim.

"We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida," DeSantis, 44, said in a news release.

"I applaud the Legislature for passing the Heartbeat Protection Act that expands pro-life protections and provides additional resources for young mothers and families," he added.

The legislation comes exactly one year after the Florida governor signed a bill prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. That law is currently being challenged before the Florida State Supreme Court. The new law would only go into effect if the previous 15-week law is upheld.

On Thursday, The White House issued its own rebuttal to the news that the bill had passed in Florida.

"This ban would prevent four million Florida women of reproductive age from accessing abortion care after six weeks — before many women even know they're pregnant," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement issued Thursday.

The statement added, "This ban would also impact the nearly 15 million women of reproductive age who live in abortion-banning states throughout the South, many of whom have previously relied on travel to Florida as an option to access care."

 

And yet, it potentially gets worse. Much worse.

Florida’s Senate Bill 1718 is much worse than even Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 in 2010, which turned every police officer in that state into an immigration agent. The wide-ranging assault would make it a felony for anyone to give someone they know or should “reasonably” know to be an undocumented immigrant a ride, a job or shelter, punishable by up to five years in prison — and up to 15 years if the immigrant is a minor.

In addition, the bill would ban out-of-state tuition waivers at colleges and universities for undocumented students; invalidate out-of-state licenses given to undocumented immigrants, such as those issued by California; prevent undocumented immigrants from becoming attorneys; require hospitals to collect data about the immigration status of patients and the costs they incur; and require that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. The bill would also make it a felony for someone to use false identification to obtain a job and punish employers who don’t use the federal E-verify program to check immigrants’ documents.

Such changes would have a chilling effect on immigrant communities in Florida and turn good Samaritans or even family members into criminals. Clergy members who minister to undocumented immigrants would be forced to choose between helping those in need and their concern about potential criminal penalties. People who employ undocumented gardeners, nannies or housekeepers would have to fire them or face criminal charges.

Immigrants and immigrant advocacy organizations worry that the bill is so vague it could apply to mixed-status households, meaning U.S.-born children couldn’t give their undocumented parents a ride or allow them to stay overnight. And with a Republican supermajority in both houses of the Florida Legislature, the bill is likely to pass.

DeSantis said the crackdown is necessary “to protect” Florida residents from what he claims are President Biden’s open-border policies. That’s ridiculous. Of the 4.5 million immigrants in Florida, slightly more than 900,000 are undocumented. And they pay taxes — about $1.6 billion a year, according to the American Immigration Council.

Furthermore, the border is not open, and certainly not friendly to immigrants. Biden has continued and expanded the Trump-era policies of expelling migrants to Mexico or deporting them to their home countries, partly due to court challenges and pressure from Republicans.

Florida legislators eager to climb aboard the DeSantis hate train may laud him as a bold visionary, but this tired political ploy is just as likely to come back to bite them. That’s what happened more than a quarter-century ago after California Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Republican Party supported the rabidly anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving healthcare, public education and other services. The measure was declared unconstitutional and solidified Democratic control in the state. 

 

I'm hoping that the courts find both to be unconstitutional and that these laws cost DeSantis his political career. I'm probably wrong on the latter part, but if these stay as laws in Florida, thousands of regular people are going to go to prison for a very long time for helping women and undocumented immigrants, and it's going to make both categories of living, breathing human beings into subhuman pariahs.

Ron DeSantis is an absolute fucking monster, and I no longer hesitate to use that exact term to describe him.

 

 

 

Book Ban Bonanza, Con't

For now, a Texas county commission will keep their library open after a federal judge ordered the county reverse its book ban for the public library, which caused the Llano County, Texas county commissioners to consider closing the library rather than comply with the judge's order.

A small-town Texas library system threatened with extinction was spared Thursday after the Llano County commissioners said they would abide by a federal judge's order to restore the books they banned rather than shut the system down.

Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who is the head of the county commission, made the announcement after county leaders heard from more than a dozen residents at an emergency meeting.

"The library will remain open while we try this in the courts, rather than through the news media," said Cunningham, who said the county has already spent more than $100,000 on legal costs and vowed to appeal the federal judge's decision.

Outside the county building, loud cheers could be heard as jubilant opponents of shutting down the libraries celebrated.

"That's a victory," the Rev. Kevin Henderson of Sunrise Beach Federated Church declared. "That's a victory for free speech!"

A disappointed Eva Carter disagreed. She said she was on the side of those who wanted to close the libraries and predicted the federal judge's ruling would be overturned on appeal.

“We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed," Carter, 82, said. "We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done.”

Before the commissioners made their decision, residents were given two minutes apiece to weigh in at an emergency meeting. And some of the first to speak denounced the commissioners for threatening the century-old system that, they said, has long been a vital part of the community and a haven for students seeking to do schoolwork and research.

They also dismissed as nonsense claims some in the community have made that the targeted books are pornographic.

"These books are not pornographic," librarian Suzette Baker, who works at the Kingsland branch of the system, told the commissioners.

Jeff Scoggins paused from livestreaming the meeting to warn the commissioners that they will hear it from the voters if they bow to a "minority" that is pushing to close the libraries.

It will be a black eye for Llano County, and "this could domino" to other Texas counties where local libraries have been targeted by small but vocal groups of conservative critics, Scoggins warned.

 

Of course, as Republicans target public schools, public libraries, public transportation and public services for elimination, it's up to us to get involved locally and fight to keep even basic governance. Republicans don't want any of it.

 

What they want are dumb, uneducated slaves who are suffering while they profit. And in a lot of red states, they are going to get that. Everyone gets to deal with church-based everything: health care, education, social services who only help who they see as worthy of it. Don't want to play ball? Suffer without, die or leave, it's all the same to the "Christians" running the show.