Author: Richard

The other Chinese bug plaguing the country

The spotted lanternfly is native to China and has been spotted in the American east coast as early as 2014 but is recently more rapidly spreading (theoretically by people moving due to Covid and unknowingly transporting lanternfly egg masses with them). Local governments are asking citizens to kill and report it to wildlife if they see it as it is a danger to ecosystems outside of Chyyna, India and Vietnam.

Technically, this is a depiction of Mothra, the Godzilla movie monster, but it also serves as a warning of how bug problems can get out of hand

I know you’ve never heard of this, because I haven’t, and that means you probably haven’t – so if you’re wondering what this thing is:
Although its called a “fly” and looks like a moth, the spotted lanternfly is a hopping tree bug. It’s considered invasive and dangerous because it deposits “sticky honeydew secretions” that then grow mold that prevents plants from photosynthesizing and causing the plants to die according to USA Today. This makes it dangerous to trees and cash crops, marking it as a threat to orchard, grape, and logging industries.

This “stomp to kill” order is no joke. Watch how local government twitter accounts request you to assassinate these things as it creeps from the far east coast into the midwest:

Then it appeared in a Kansas students entomology entry at a state fair display (the student correctly identified the insect, by the way). One of the fair’s judges was familiar with the insect — and the requirement of reporting it to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Story developing. Godzilla on standby.

Feds fail at Jan 6th rally setup

A rally on September 18th at the U.S. Capitol to protest the injustice of the continued hold and demonization of protestors arrested at the January 6th riot still being currently held as political prisoners despite not even being accused of, let alone shown to be guilty of, any crimes that justify such a lengthy detention. These prisoners are having their justice delayed and thus denied, presumably because of how useful they are to federal propaganda efforts in fearmongering over the January 6th protest Democrats have been calling an “insurrection” and “sedition” despite neither charge being used in the prosecution of any of the prisoners.

The warnings from the Right

It was to this end that many online were publicly warning that the planned Sept 18th rally in support of the prisoners, though appearing to have been initiated in good faith by true believing conservatives, was going to be hijacked by the Deep State levels of the federal government looking to serve their own propaganda purposes. At best they would use the event to smear the attendees and at worst, instigate violence so the fed-led narrative that the protest on January 6th (which was also later revealed to contain an alarming amount of federal government undercover participants) was more of a danger to the country, or anyone, than it was. These warnings cited the Charlottesville protest in 2017 which was originally organized as a protest against the removal of historical statues, but was hijacked by a group of Racists led by Biden 2020 supporter Richard Spencer who carried tiki torches and chanted “Jews will not replace us” – which was of course the only aspect of the event that the corporate press ended up covering. In anticipation and suspicion of exactly that setup taking place – Proud Boys founder Gavin McInness announced at the time, before the rally in Charlottesville, that all Proud Boy members were forbidden from attending, as he predicted it would be a setup to make the group and all other attendees look racist. While only a couple rogue Proud Boys broke the commandment and attended the rally anyway, the corporate press dutifully smeared the organization as being racists who marched with Nazi’s.

Similarly, on this rally for the Capitol prisoners, former President Trump agreed with the suspicion of how it would be covered and warned his base about the rally in a September 16th interview, calling it a “setup” and said media would use it as an excuse to bash Republicans regardless of its outcome. Specifically:

“On Saturday, that’s a setup,” Trump said about the rally. “If people don’t show up they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a lack of spirit.’ And if people do show up they’ll be harassed” – Or worse, set up and made out to be “domestic terrorists” attempting an “insurrection.”

The Results

Most on the Right listened to the warnings and. well. It was a total bust for the feds. 

The January  6th riot was completely unarmed with not a single person firing, brandishing, or even having a firearm holstered on their person, which made the attempts to call the riot an “insurrection” look more and more desperate and pathetic, so feds hoped to catch someone they could perceive, paint, or pretend was a threat this time and – AH HA! – A swarm of 7 Capital Police officers in padded armor, helmets, visors, and shields swarmed a man for interrogation and subsequent “arrest” when they finally spotted someone to have been armed. The man then shows them his badge, revealing that he is an undercover fed. Lol… Now busted, all 7 suited-up soldiers extract their boy to safety, escorting him out, yelling at people recording the embarrassing display. 

https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1439312268701863939

“Are you under cover?” the officers asked as the man pulled out a badge.

https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1439314612638429185

Rest assured, everyone: The FBI arrested the FBI at the FBI rally.  We can finally sleep with peace. 

Actually, we don’t know what agency he was with specifically, so that joke may be unfair. He could have been CIA.

In fact, by all accounts, there were more undercover feds at the rally than there were actual ralliers…

Except their disguises weren’t nearly as good…

Many pointed out that these guys all had their fed watches on display -but I found it extra funny that treason-General Milley sports the fed gear as well:

Selective Force

Reminding everyone that the federal Government indeed knows how to erect barriers when they want to, a fence was put up around the US Capitol building, “as law enforcement braces for Sept. 18 protest“. Meanwhile, thousands of Haitian migrants illegally mobbed into the countries southern border the day prior.

Others pointed out the full on war gear that the Capitol Police were armed with in order to stand around and watch a few people say that unfair prosecution for non-violent criminals is – shocker – a bad thing.

And the selective force of the corporate press in what they report and in what intensities in order to shape narratives conducive to profit: 

Maher: Afghanistan should wake up the “woke” Left on America (Spoiler: it won’t)

It’s a nice sentiment but if 9/11 didn’t wake up the woke (instead if blossomed fields of woke mobs) then Afghanistans reality is unlikely to click any lightbulbs. Still, he tried. And its commendable since he’s talking against the grain with his audience instead of stroking them in the ways their spoiled sensibilities expect to be massaged by figures like him. 

“We Americans should really get some perspective on where we live,” Bill Maher declares before going into an obligatory 90 seconds dunking on conservatives for being patriotic in order to set the tone and then saying the obvious:

“We’re not the bad guys. Oppression is what we were trying to stop in Afghanistan. We failed, but any immigrant will tell you we’ve largely succeeded here. And yet, the overriding thrust of current ‘woke’ ideology is America is rotten to the core, irredeemably racist from the moment it was founded and so oppressive, sexist and homophobic we can’t find a host for the Oscars or ‘Jeopardy!’”.

“And this is where your new [Afghan] roommates that you took in will prove so valuable because they’ll turn to you and say ‘Have you people lost your fkking minds?!?…

Have you ever heard of honor killings,
public beheadings,
throwing gay men off of roofs,
arranged marriages to minors,
state-sanctioned wife-beating,
female genital mutilation,
marriage by capture?
Because we have.’”

“What’s the lesson of Afghanistan. Maybe it’s that everyone from the giant dorm room b—- session that is the internet should take a good look at what real oppression looks like,” Maher continued. “Ask your maid, ask your Uber driver, ask the Asian woman giving you a massage. … America may not be the country of your faculty lounge and Twitter dreams, but no one here tries to escape by hanging on to an airplane. No, we wait ’til we get inside the plane to fight – and only because they cut off the beverage service.”

PS: The part in the video about Justice John Roberts essentially saying that “the south was ready for the honor system [but they weren’t]” is a reference to a Supreme Court ruling a couple months ago (July 2021) that two provisions of an Arizona voting law that restricted the how ballots can be cast do not violate the Voting Rights Act, because, well – they don’t. At all. Which I explain at length here.

Ed Morrisey further rebutted Maher’s criticism of Conservative patriotism, noting that references to former Speaker Boehner who used to cry at mentions of American opportunity afforded to working class people a lot are as bout as timely as the Macarena, adding:

Maher takes the easy slams on conservatives’ expressive patriotism and the obligatory audience-pleasing shots at Donald Trump — and George Bush, for just criticizing him almost two decades ago — which tend to undercut his own argument on perspective. The Trump lawsuit is much more recent and had to be a legal headache (and certainly is worthy of Maher’s scorn here), but criticism from one of your frequent targets is part of the job, no? And on that score, why bring up Bush in 2021 if you’re arguing for perspective? Why bring up Boehner at all? Couldn’t Maher and his team find an example of excessive patriotic fervor from sometime over the past ten years? If not, maybe that’s not a point worth making.

The same goes for ripping Kristi Noem for riding on a horse to celebrate a major cultural event — the Sturgis rally. Maher didn’t include that as a criticism of her participation in the event during the pandemic, which has been a point of controversy, but merely for holding an American flag while riding the horse. Perhaps that’s overweening patriotism in Maher’s eyes, but even so it hardly equates to the witch-hunt atmosphere that pushed Kevin Hart out of an Oscars hosting gig. To quote the famed philosopher Jules Winnfield, that “ain’t the same f***ing ballpark, it ain’t the same f***ing league, it ain’t even the same f***ing sport.” It’s a rhetorical reach that should have resulted in emergency rotator-cuff surgery for Maher.

But the fact remains that Maher didn’t have to point out that we’re not the bad guys here, and he did anyway. and deserves some kudos at least.

Bizarre attempts emerge to spin Biden Afghanistan disaster as being Trumps fault

It is a political tradition to blame the previous party in charge for current negatives and rob them of the credit for the work they did that spring positives under their oppositions term in power. It’s the same result as taking credit for the enjoyable shade or fruits of a tree that the team you are against planted years ago, but blaming that other team for having planted the tree when you chop it down with lazy or improper accounting for physics and its fall damages property.

Barack Obama was so good at this that he not only took credit for and was able to spin-as-a-good-thing policies he was elected explicitly to advocate against when he was a candidate like extending the Bush tax cuts, legally legitimizing and then expanding the Bush spying apparatus, dramatically expanding the Bush war efforts, and the flipping his policy on what would later be embraced as being called “Obamacare” – but he also took credit for things he actively opposed while in office but turned out well despite his efforts, such as promising that Obamacare was legal and would have no taxes but when the Supreme Court ruled that it was expressly illegal and unconstitutional unless it was considered as a tax, or when he tried to block oil drilling – failed – and then took credit for the resulting oil boom that he had opposed saying “that was me, people“. lol.

Joe Biden is not as talented. and his supporters are forced to make goofy stretches to attempt to blame Donald Trump for the Biden blunders happening in his first year in office. The highest profile disaster so far has been the Biden “cut and run” withdrawal from Afghanistan that handed over total control of the country to the supposedly evil-terrorist leaders we had been fighting for 20 years, left Americans stranded, left military dogs abandoned to die, and left billions worth of tanks and airstrike vehicles and guns and ammo for the new rulers to use against their people.

The typical stretch to blame Trump for all this has been that Trump is the one who set the 2021 withdrawal date from the country, “so there!”. This ignores the reality that Biden scrapped the Trump withdrawal date, all the negotiations and terms that went with it, and didn’t follow any of the Trump administrations guidelines for a tiered withdrawal plan that would have at least made an attempt to avert the obvious disasters mentioned above.

The newest theory from someone named Cheri Jacobus, a NeverTrump activist and Russiagate Hoax podcast producer is that Trump set a “booby trap” for Biden with that Afghanistan policy, that, er… Biden ignored and revamped and made his own and did not have to follow at all or in any of the ways that he did.

In case you missed it: Jacobus lists Trump and Mike Pompeo as being “enemies of America” along with Vladimir Putin in her baseless accusation that Biden’s horrifically mismanaged Afghanistan withdrawal actions were somehow a Trump/Russia collusion “trap”. No argument or explanation for the wild conspiracy theory, of course; she just tosses it out there to keep gullible minds connecting bad Biden moves to etherial Trump/Russia puppetry.

Sure, lady…

But the purpose is highlighting this insanity is to remind how thorough the Russiagate hoax peddlers continue to attempt to use this excuse, years after the Trump/Russia Collision conspiracy theory was investigated and debunked.

Last year, weeks before election day, Jen Psaki and Politico columnist Natasha Betrand helped spread the total lie that Russia was somehow behind tricking Americans in some way about the incriminating details found on Joe Biden’s son’s laptop.

The laptop was later verified to indeed have been Hunter Biden’s and it was revealed that the whole time Democrats and supposed “former intel officials” were claiming that its contents were Russian disinfo, Federal prosecutors had in fact been secretly investigating Hunter Biden for exactly the crimes he is shown admitting to and talking about (particularly international money laundering) in the contents of the laptop. But by then it was too late: Joe Biden had won the election, Hunter Biden received no punishment or prosecution, and Jen Psaki was hired as the Biden White House Press Secretary.

Supreme Court rules that anti-fraud provisions (obviously) don’t violate the Voting Rights Act

Why would they?…

The Voting Rights Act bars regulations that result in racial discrimination. To claim that these laws are Voting Rights Act violations, you must claim that racial minorities cheat more than other groups and have a legal right to. Lolwut?

Sounds like there’s no way that’s not a huge exaggeration, I know, but to prove the argument is really that insulting, we’ll walk through it: 

After so many claims of fraud in the 2021 election, many emanating from Arizona, but none of them receiving their day in court with which to have their claims and evidence analyzed and cross examined and thus verified or debunked – Arizona legislature did the next best thing and at least made some common sense “make it harder to cheat” rules under new state voting law provisions that addressed some of the fraud claims. Everyone wins, right? The side that won the election doesn’t have to waste time listening to claims of evidence that they didn’t really win, and the side that claims they were cheated gets their “ways it could have happened” addressed. Since the Democrats didn’t cheat to win, this isn’t a problem, right? Well…

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated both Arizona provisions under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act under a broad claim that the state can’t be trusted because it’s so racist. Seriously… The 9th Circuit alleged state has a “long history of race-based discrimination against its American Indian, Hispanic, and African American citizens” and a “pattern of discrimination against minority voters has continued to the present day.” So by that “ur RACIST” edict, the court said that the state could not make laws that make cheating in elections so easy. Specifically:

The two Arizona provisions say 1- That ballots cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day must be wholly discarded and 2- A restriction on a practice known as “ballot harvesting” by requiring that only family caregivers, mail carriers and election officials can deliver another person’s completed ballot to a polling place. In other words: obvious logical anti-cheating adjustments that should have been made a long time ago and have nothing to do with race in any way whatsoever. Democrats just didn’t have a way to combat this or most other anti-democracy tactics of voting fraud, so they rely on the old “it’s racist!” claim.

In the escalation of this issue to the Supreme Court via the case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee regarding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – the court pointed out that preventing fraud is actually a good, not racist, thing.

“Fraud can affect the outcome of a close election, and fraudulent votes dilute the right of citizens to cast ballots that carry appropriate weight” Justice Alito wrote, while also noting that fraud can “also undermine public confidence in the fairness of elections and the perceived legitimacy of the announced outcome.” 

Laws that a person has to vote in the precinct a person is registered to vote in is not discriminatory.

Restrictions on ballot harvesting are not discriminatory.

Hence the 6 to 3 ruling by the court.

The Left is angry because the ruling makes it harder to legally claim that opposition to cheating is racist.

It was the third significant decision on voting rights in the last 13 years by the court, along with the 2008 Crawford v. Marion County ruling and the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. All three have made it harder to prevent voter suppression, liberals argue, and easier for those in power to enact laws that erect obstacles to voting.

The impact of the three rulings, taken together, is that “the conservative Supreme Court has taken away all the major available tools for going after voting restrictions,” wrote Rick Hasen, an expert on election laws and the author of “Election Meltdown.” “This at a time when some Republican states are passing new restrictive voting laws.”

Yup. The court is “taking away all the major available tools for going after voting restrictions”. Those “major tools” being “using dishonest claims of racism to oppose policies you can’t attack on Constitutional, factual, or logical grounds”. So sad.

The Left lamented:

Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act Decision Narrows Another Path to Challenge Discriminatory Voting Laws – ACLU.org

The Court’s Voting-Rights Decision Was Worse Than People Think –The Atlantic

Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through the Heart of the Voting Rights Act – Truthout.org

And in all these hysterical whoah’s, I was unable to find a single actual-argument (let alone any actual evidence) in support of the ludicrous claim that racial minorities disproportionally vote in-person in the wrong precincts and have a right to keep doing so, and/or why collecting mail-in ballots from voters who are unable or unwilling to submit those ballots themselves (which, remember – involves nothing but sealing the postage-free envelope, signing your name, and putting in your mail box – all of which is expressly allowed for caregivers and family members to do in the Arizona provisions) is an act of racial discrimination.

Everyone upset about this ruling is just mad that it’s harder to cheat.

Billionaires go to space. Peasants feel bad about themselves.

After decades of seeing fictional billionaires like Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark put their wealth into awesome efforts to change the world – the year 2021 finally saw a few of them do something more than just open a boring foundation: they actually built rocketships and went in them to go into space.

This was met with a lot of unhappy reaction on the internet because of course, “if someone has enough money to advance privatized space travel then why can’t they just give it to me?” – or some similar response with the same general thesis. Yawn.

In America, a lot of coverage of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos preparing to go into space has been the big item for years, with only minor mentions of how UK billionaire Richard Branson of the Virgin company has also been planning Virgin spacecrafts and to a similar extent, we only see side-mentions of Elon Musk’s effort with SpaceX – but in a surprise move from Branson: Virgin beat Bezos to busting space-sex quicker than SpaceX. (alternate headline?).

Credit and Congratulations to the Daily Beast for making this excellent image in 2017

An added layer of amusing coincidence is that Virgin’s ship is shaped like a plane and Bezos’ ship is shaped like a penis.

The big thing that got people heated about what captains of industry spend their capital on to change this dull world was when Bezos pointed out that this was made possible because the company he started has good employees that helped make it popular enough to be so widely adopted by customers that he could pay for such an endeavor.

The reason they didn’t like this sentiment was because they interpreted it differently. Specifically, Bezos said: “I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this”; and this was stretched to mean some kind of admission of exploitation along the lines of “you losers who work for me and you suckers who buy shit from my company bankrolled this hobby of mine. Morons”. Which is weird, but less weird when you know that these same people have been demonizing Amazon for only paying workers really-well, and not really-REALLY-well, and … well – on the customer end of it, they have no argument because Amazon undeniably trounces competition in prices so it’s not like Amazon buyers are getting gouged with huge markups. So it’s really just the employee part that is acting as a confirmation-bias where people set up a false premise that if billionaire has billions of dollars then it is immoral for them to pay the lowest-tier job roles in their company at industry competitive rates – they should be gifting them MORE for their work because, shucks – they’re billionaires!

Lame.

But its even more lame that private industry builders are using their money to advance space travel and instead of being happy about it, so many are just using it as another excuse to feel bad about the world and how it differs from what they think it should be. It’s lame and it’s a shame. A lame shame with unwarranted blame.

Trans Athletes

Preamble: Why is this even a thing?

You may find it strange that there is so much overnight hot debate over trans athletes, but really it’s a media manufactured division point. Plutocrats will always invent and then ally with supposedly marginalized groups to keep the middle and lower class divided and away from united opposition against them.

The second wave of “but why tho?” after acknowledging that part of it is that it’s strange that so many people take the bait beyond general commentary of the obvious unfairness and get coaxed into really caring about this issue. Because yes, it’s biologically unfair for biological men to compete against women just by self-identifying as that gender, sure – males have weight distribution, strength points, bone density, height, weight, and testosterone producing biochemical advantages that biological women don’t. Of course that’s the case. But also: Why do you care? Beyond commenting on the unfairness of course – nothing wrong with observing the obvious against a crowd of anti-science gaslighters trying to deny it – but after the notation, then is it really anyones business other than the women involved?

Women who play sports should decide women’s sports rules. 

Why should anyone have an opinion-that-matters (ie: with consequence) on an issue that doesn’t affect them? The common answer is fairness – but if women in sports don’t mind losing (and they virtually always do) to biological males identifying as women, then who are we to White Knight for them and intervene because we know so much better than these crazy dames? I’m being partially facetious only because there is no actual democracy in sports leagues and the women being put in this unfair advantage don’t actually have any say in the matter except to publicly dissent the practice and deal with the hate and backlash from the bigots on the Left or stay silent. Still – the main point that these women are the only women who’s opinion should matter appears to me to be an unassailable peace-making position.

On the other hand, I can see where it would be annoying to see the issue constantly framed in gaslight like this USA Today headline:

1- The smear signaling in the headline is false, as this isn’t a Conservative issue.

2- Their evidence is not that shaky.

At least they’re not kneeling

(hat tip to this tweet that I couldn’t get to embed right)

The strange reporting of the strange Matt Gaetz accusations

Matt Gaetz is a 38 year old Florida Republican Congressman that could best be described as possibly the Trumpiest person in Congress. He bucks his dumb party on issues of endless wars in the middle east, the drug war at home, restrictions on free speech and civil liberties, and dunks on the Left with the same snarky “merry prankster” jovial tone that has strong Andrew Breitbart vibes. That makes him a threat to the establishment of both parties, and with the OrangeOne out of politics, Gaetz is one of the top targets for those Cathedral types who don’t want him to be a part of the national dialogue.

At the end of March 2021, the New York Times reported anonymous leaks accusing him of having had sex with a minor, maybe having paid for it, and doing drugs. Gaetz immediately denied it all and revealed some cuckoo-bananas details surrounding the investigation, asking the Department of Justice to reveal even further details that he says exonerates him.

So what is really going on here? The reality is that nobody really cares. His haters are blindly claiming everything alleged (plus a lot of tangential claims not even alleged) are obviously true and his supporters are blindly calling it a Deep State coup against him. I don’t have any special report on whether any of the claims about him are true, but what I find interesting are the uncontested details of how the corporate media and social media bias swarms are using it as a textbook smear operation. Whether or not there is something legitimate to smear, I don’t know, and find endlessly less interesting than the known facts of how this report continues to be used (a week and a half after the story broke, at the time of this writing) to take Gaetz down and you don’t have to like Gaetz to find it interesting as well.

Using the appearance of impropriety to defame or criminally prosecute people you don’t like is the oldest Statist tactic in the system, but usually it’s over something completely stupid like “Donald Trump isn’t releasing his tax returns to the public” or when they successfully took down the Republican Governor of Virginia with bribery accusations (that the Supreme Court later threw out as total bullcrap, after the damage had been done) who was a rising-star until his Democrat enemies were able to use interpretations of the law that made a credible possibility that he’d serve jail time over a nothingburger. When you can make the accusations sound actually repugnant, however (read: something sexual that implies a layer of abuse as well), then that’s when you’ve got a quality smear on your hands.

The allegations against Gaetz, explained

As stated, last month The New York Times reported on a possible DOJ probe into Gaetz and citations of that report got an unusually high volume of traction on social media for how vague and unsubstantiated the details of the investigation are, raising more red flags than the allegations themselves if viewed through a media analysis lens and not just a “can I find an excuse to defame someone I hate?” lens.

The saucy part here was that Gaetz was “under investigation over possible sex trafficking” of a minor – a claim that the Times‘ own reporting failed to ever substantiate or support in any way, then later downplayed in a follow-up report. The investigation, per the Times reporting, was actually over an alleged consensual relationship with an anonymous 17-year-old girl who was not alleged to have been under any duress or threat or any other detail of having been sex trafficked in any way. The Times reported that the FBI stopped questioning the unidentified women involved back in January and acknowledged that “no charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz”, but they use the term “sex trafficking” despite any evidence of coercion. Super weird.

The use of this horrible term, that typically describes a horrible legal and moral crime, set his many critics and haters ablaze in hopes that they are either true or just glee in the ability to act like they are in the meantime. The actual facts of the case however, started as murky, and then just kept getting reframed to lesser and more convoluted offenses.

Another guy whom Gaetz knows is alleged to be shadier and have a history of facilitating “sugar baby” relationships or something, but “knowing a shady/creepy dude” is a guilt by association fallacy so that too raises questions on the use of these suggestions in service to defame rather than to inform.

Anatomy of a Smear

As the initial salacious claims about “sex trafficking” actually being “not that at all” and the 17 year old part having no evidence other than an anonymous source, the narrative began to crumble a little bit but the common response on social media was a “yea, but still…” argument that just because The NY Times appears to have used a fake claim as the central point of their report, doesn’t mean that the rest of it (potentially paying for someones travel so they will have sex with you – plus still keeping alive the “and maybe she was 17, if this actually happened – we don’t know” part) is okay.

These critics shouldn’t be let off the hook so easy. The original claim, and phrase that was all over Twitter in particular, was “sex trafficking” and there is zero evidence of any such thing ever even being alleged. It was just included in the original Times report through a convoluted loophole that i’ll show you their explanation for in a minute. But “sex trafficking” is a term with a legal definition that is not supported by the Times piece. The claim the anonymous sources made is that Gaetz is accused of having a consensual sexual relationship with a 17 year old in a state where that’s a legal thing to do – but it’s “sex trafficking” because he allegedly paid for her travel. Not advisable and maybe a really bad thing to do, but not exactly kids in a Wayfair cabinet. Also just not what sex trafficking is, even loosely defined. The Times sort of acknowledges this, but justifies their lie through a strange loophole of a claim that even when sex trafficking doesn’t take place, it can be accused if something different takes place. Kindov like saying “We are reporting that Mr Smith is under investigation for robbery. He is not accused of taking anything that wasn’t his, but if prosecutors think they can prove that he arrived at the store by taking a ride sharing service in a county where those are banned from use, then they could accuse Mr Smith of robbing the store”.

Sounds really stupid, right? Sounds like something I would absolutely have to be grossly misinterpreting or just making up to make the Times look bad, no? Read the admission for yourself. From the Times:

It is not illegal to provide adults with free hotel stays, meals and other gifts, but if prosecutors think they can prove that the payments to the women were for sex, they could accuse Mr. Gaetz of trafficking the women under “force, fraud or coercion.” For example, prosecutors have filed trafficking charges against people suspected of providing drugs in exchange for sex because feeding another person’s drug habit could be seen as a form of coercion.

Some of Gaetz’s haters refused to go along with the re-defining of what “sex trafficking” means in order to score points on someone they hate:

To recap, Gaetz was accused of: Knowing a shady guy; having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old; paying for her travel (which was sneakily called “sex trafficking”); and maybe taking MDMA.

Gaetz’s Response, Denial, & Defense:

Gaetz says he’s never had a relationship with anyone who was 17 and that such a person doesn’t exist and they’re just smearing and then attempted to extort him, demanding $25 million from his dad “in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away”, as he told Tucker Carlson.

On April 1st, Gaetz linked to an article with details of the alleged extortion plot in his denial of the claims made against him:

At the time of this writing, the details are still unfolding about what is verifiably true regarding either sides accusations of the other, but we do know that the extortion thing was real for a few reasons: One being that there is a paper trail of Gaetz reporting the extortion attempt:

The congressman further said about the matter the day prior (as reports of the allegations were still unfolding):

Further: the extortion plot against Gaetz was confirmed the same day as the allegations against him.

A week later, more confirmations that Gaetz was being extorted, including from the person alleged to be extorting him.

In a follow-up Times article on the Department of Justice probe, the allegations against Gaetz were reduced from having been with a 17-year-old – who again, Gaetz denies and says no such person even exists for which to make such a claim – to a much lesser and much more speculative claim and tone. And just like the initial Times story, their follow up report is delivered entirely through anonymous “people close to the investigation” with no sources named, official statements, or documents related.

So, while it’s not my job to attack or defend the Congressman, and I won’t venture to try out either direction – the smear attempt is clear as the Times would and should have framed all these details in far different journalistic language and notation of its speculative nature if the intended thesis was not to defame Gaetz with the charges.

Why they’re going after Gaetz

With the smear so evident, you might ask why. Is there any doubt that this is only a frenzy because he is an effective voice for the right?

I lead this piece describing Gaetz as “the Trumpiest person in Congress” – Which means he’s also a threat to the establishment of both parties, like Trump since he is an upbeat sort of merry prankster in his delivery and is always making snarky comments that get peoples attention and the things he gets their attention to are the red pill type issues the establishment doesn’t want talked about (endless wars in the Middle East, how the government colluding with big banks is totally stealing everyones time and labor, how the drug war is bullshit, etc).

If that analysis is wrong, then why have none of his critics been able to substantiate these claims despite using the worst-imaginable terms to describe them, that then keep getting leveled down in severity as details are revealed? Journalism that sloppy is virtually always intentional. It puts out fragments of the truth for the purpose of muddying the waters around a person or issue and gives that person or issues critics the ammunition to extrapolate into whatever their imagination can conjure.

When sex acts or their allegations are attack-worthy or not (according to Democrats)

#MattGaetzisapervert was trending on Twitter for a day, and hundreds of tweets invented details and conclusions not reported by the Times or any other source. To a degree, that is understandable since, for the people who hate Gaetz – why give him any benefit of any doubt? But since the details keep showing nothing heinous they can pin him with, his Progressive critics have to resort to 1950s style Conservative notions of sex to smear him with.

The Lefts unabashed defense of Bill Clintons several admitted affairs, dismissals of the rape and assault claims against him, and of course the most famous sexual misconduct by a man in power in the past 200 years – the White House Intern “sexual relations” he had in the White House, lied to the public about, perjured himself under oath about, had his administration publicly attack/pressure/&smear an intern over, and then admitted when his seaman was found on one of her dresses.

While the Right, with their adorable and antiquated sense of honor and goal of consistency always thinks they’re being so righteous and clever by pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left – the Left openly flaunts it. In this case, they never made a secret of the fact that they selectively use sexual misconduct as a smear while giving zero fkks about it when their power players are caught dirty-handed.

Nina Burleigh, the former White House correspondent for Time Magazine who covered the Clinton White House once famously said that she would be “happy to give [Bill Clinton] a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

It may not be an effective tactic to point out, but it’s still noteworthy here with Gaetz. Raheem Kassam pointed exactly this hypocrisy out by pulling a repeat of that same laughable Clinton defense, this time in a recent context from former Times editorial board member Gail Collins who “suggested ex President Bill Clinton was entitled to a defense over his sexual exploits because he grew the U.S. economy”…

Writing in The New York Times, Collins’s article literally states:

“Nancy Pelosi once defended President Bill Clinton after he got an intern to fellate him in the Oval Office,” Gaetz argued in an opinion piece in The Washington Examiner. This is true, and we would hope the congressman gets the same kind of loyal support the very second he presides over one of the longest economic expansions in American history.

In other words: as soon as we like you, *then* and only then, are you entitled to a defense over accusations you may have not even done. As if Nancy Pelosi’s defense of Bill Clinton’s abuse of power for sex on the job in the White House was because he “presided over” (a way to make “was president during” sound more kingly in a context when talking about him doing the nasties) a time when the Republican House controlled economic bills and .com boom led to a good economy. lol.

Again – none of the allegations against Gaetz are, at the time of this writing, officially public, and again – Gaetz claims that no under-18 person he’s had any relationship with exists to be able to make such a claim about him (and no one has shown any evidence otherwise).

One needn’t go back to the late 90s to find a Democrat accused of sexual impropriety that Democrats don’t treat seriously, however. Even ignoring the credible accusations against sitting Democratic President Joe Biden, the current Democratic Governor of New York is in the same position. Some pointed it out –

Developing…

Corporate Press attacks the powerless and the Left attacks… the dissent

Brenna T. Smith is a college graduate who has already been accepted for a job at the New York times tweeted with excitement that her *first* story for USA Today had dropped. What was the story she broke that she was alerting people to? She, along with co-authors Jessica Guyunn and Will Carless, was snitching to the public that marginalized people accused of crimes are trying to get a fair trial by paying for legal representation, sometimes in sneaky ways that the government and mega corporations don’t want them to.

The article, titled, “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” doesn’t provide much of a service to the public except to act as Democrat activism spotlight, pressure and shame tech companies to do more than they already have “to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online” as Glenn Greenwald, whom we’ll get to here in a moment, noted.

Pretty awful, right? The political Left would normally agree, traditionally, but in the current political climate that is all Sports Team and not-so-much morality about right and wrong – Smith was doing the Cathedrals work because in this case, the government and oligarchical corporations opposing these groups are Democrats and Democrat-centric, and the marginalized people are Trumpsters. So f*ck them and their right to a fair trial, amirite?

Glenn Greenwald called the author alerting people to the article out for it by merely congratulating her for what she was looking for congratulations about. ie: her tweet’s thesis, to paraphrase, is “hey guys! look at this! I’m so proud to begin my journey in journalism this way” and Greenwald takes that premise and illustrated its clownworld nature in dissent:

Greenwald, being one of those “problematic” Leftists that stays true to their liberal ideology regarding institutionalized government power, corporate power, and its inherent conflicts with marginalized groups and minorities – *even when it’s the “other team”* that is affected by them – got the bigots on his side angry, per usual.

The problem is though that these haters don’t really have anywhere to go with their anger due to the contradictions of the ire with the facts of the situation, so they force themselves into pretzel-ion contortions to make a case that vaguely rationalizes their position, as Ben Collins did in his attempt to defend Brenna’s corporate shilling here below (and you can see how easy such a line is to demolish, as Daniel Foster does in his reply) –

https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/status/1377077786985238530

Ben Collins’ narrative-nonsense aside – the factual claims he used to make it are also just as nonsensical. Journalists not shilling for power structures, and the people who read them, have known for months now that the Jan 6 rioters didn’t include any extremist organizations except for a few ANTIFA suspects. As Politico reported, and Greenwald pointed out – many of these so called extremists didn’t do anything extreme enough for prosecutors to charge them with…

That’s because despite the propaganda from the Biden administration and it’s apostles using fear-language about an “insurrection” (that was completely unarmed, and verifiably not an insurrection in any way) and potential attempted murder and threats to the Republic – the actual offenses the majority of rioters were guilty of boiled down to nothing more than trespassing. From the Politico report linked above:

“My bet is a lot of these cases will get resolved and probably without prison time or jail time,” said Erica Hashimoto, a former federal public defender who is now a law professor at Georgetown. “One of the core values of this country is that we can protest if we disagree with our government. Of course, some protests involve criminal acts, but as long as the people who are trying to express their view do not engage in violence, misdemeanors may be more appropriate than felonies.”

The prospect of dozens of Jan. 6 rioters cutting deals for minor sentences could be hard to explain for the Biden administration, which has characterized the Capitol Hill mob as a uniquely dangerous threat. Before assuming office, Biden said the rioters’ attempt to overturn the election results by force “borders on sedition”; Attorney General Merrick Garland has called the prosecutions his top early priority, describing the storming of Congress as “a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”

And yet – these unarmed misdemeanor trespassers continue to be demonized as murderous threats and have their rights trampled by government and giant corporations because of it.

The Angry Leftist Backlash…

These are some randomly chosen responses to Greenwald that each represent the most common talking points and line of argument that dozens of others were seen also using:

They can just get public defenders…
https://twitter.com/BasedCorp/status/1376499411551981571

^This guy says applauds the journalist for “exposing” that some people being persecuted with ludicrous charges threatening to ruin their lives are trying to get voluntary help from other private citizens to get a good defense. He “didn’t know [that] was happening” and needed corporate journalism to expose that dirty deed. See, it’s a good thing because these people who haven’t been convicted of a crime yet are “terrorists” for having protested against the state that he’s simping for here

Disagreeing with a Leftist is Cancel Culture…
+Criticizing a women is misogynst…
+The targets of the piece can afford it…

A lot of haters used the 3 outrage points in ^this reply, accusing Greenwald of:
1- being involved in Cancel Culture for… er… disagreeing with someone (lol – that’s not what cancelling is, or what cancel culture is/means)
2- being misogyst for disagreeing with a woman (lol – that *is* basically what that word is/means in modern times, sadly), &
3- dismissing the argument that a huge corporation using its platform to persecute minority groups is fine because, like, duh you guys – if you can afford to both take a day off work and buy a night at a DC Holiday Inn for $70, then you can obviously also afford the $10,000+ attorney fees to go up against the limitless funds of the United States Government. like come on guys.

That last one is especially poorly thought out, not just because of the “if you can afford a hotel room then you can afford weeks of legal defense bills” idiocy but because it creates a fan fiction about everyone charged and their employment. Typically the logic goes “if you have time to spend a day protesting, you probably don’t have a job”, but these people can’t go with that or they might have to defend the rights and personhood of people they were told were meritless scumbags, so they have to invent jobs and lives for them and then determine that their take-home-pay from those employment positions is more than enough to buy fair representation against the State.

If these people deserve legal defense, then don’t allow people to help them pay for it – just defend all of them yourself!
https://twitter.com/Michilines1/status/1376364445010599937

^Then there’s this one using the excuse that instead of advocating for freedom of association among people making consensual bids to help defend the persecuted – Greenwald (who lives in Brazil) should fly back to the US, drop his life and livelihood, rent a house, reactivate his license to practice law in the States, and then represent all 200+ cases of those charged in the Jan 6 riots. You know, because Reasons. Makes way more sense than just letting those people pay for their own individual legal representations.

Disagreement is harassment & bullying
+ this is apPauling because Brenna is an intern for USA TODAY

“A literal intern”. lolwut? It’s okay to use your platform on twitter to disagree with a metaphorical intern, but a “literal intern” who uses their corporate platform on the nations 2nd most distributed news source to “bully and harass” (by Kendall Brown’s logic – not by realist terms) marginalized groups under persecution by the state for protesting their government in unarmed but inappropriate ways is cool?

The full cry-bully Septuplet

The award goes to Soledad O’Brien for fitting all 7 of the most shallow and vapid anger tropes used to dismiss rather than rebut valid points in one single tweet.

  1. Call dissent an “attack”
  2. “You can’t disagree with females” trope
  3. “She’s just an intern [writing for a major corporate journalism outlet]”
  4. Light criticism = “nasty” to snowflake mentality
  5. “It’s Misogynistic to criticize women” trope
  6. Dismissal of legitimate point as “trolling”
  7. “This person doesn’t deserve the time [that i’m spending to convince you that that is the case]” trope

The Power-Play Tactic at hand – Explained

Media figures, outlets, and their supporters have never appreciated dissent but this level of whining about a pundits criticism of a journalists use of their corporate platform is a fairly new cultural development, though a very old tactic.

The strategy is a straight power-play that leverages victim culture to create an aggressive soldier-class that is expected to be treated like clergy. If they could get away with using religious status terms like that, they no doubt would, but instead they anoint their offensive linemen & women as a clergy-class by using the “poor baby / how dare you!” defense and attack. The Left, more than anyone else, desires not just a fair ability to make its case, but a totalitarian monopoly on an issue without dissent. Since they can’t legally do this, they socially engineer this as best they can by using figures with pitiable pasts or underage figures like Greta Thunberg to make their aggressive arguments and then cry foul if criticized. Their dream scenario:

https://twitter.com/sevven_seas/status/1376615246572441600

Read the whole thread for more >>>

And this, of course, in the context of journalists and pundits actively targeting private citizens, and often minors to be taken down. Compare, for example, the treatment of Brenna T Smith, an adult woman who bragged about exposing the powerless to further scrutiny and persecution with her first journalistic attempt and got sarcastically congratulated for it, to Nick Sandman – a 16 year old boy who politely stood still and smiled while getting harassed by a senior adult banging a drum in his face for no reason and became national news under the false premise that he was somehow bullying his harasser.

Greenwald recognizes the tactic and called it out as well:

No, it’s not easier to buy a firearm than it is to vote for the first time

I started this post from seeing a Leftist blue-check-mark claim that in Pennsylvania you can buy a gun and walk out with it that same day but it takes a month to register to vote. Okay?… I mean – I’m not confused at the point the lady was attempting – she’s saying that protecting yourself shouldn’t be easier than voicing what brand of authoritarian control should rule over you and your neighbor — it’s just a dumb point is all.

Idk if that’s true or not in Pennsylvania specifically. It’s not true generally – something we’ve known for years since Barack Obama made the same claim and it was debunked – but why let the truth get in the way of a perfectly good emotionally-persuasive talking point amirite? But on PA specifically – idk – but I’m not gonna look it up cuz it doesn’t matter. 

Voting is not a right. Firearm ownership is. 

When elected representatives openly say that non-rights should be easier to access than your Constitutionally guaranteed rights – then you know you’re looking at an authoritarian douchebag.

My states new senator, Alex Padilla, who was appointed to Kamala Harris’ Senate seat, and many wondered if he would live up to Officer Harris’ authoritarianism, did his predecessor proud by repeating the falsehood (tweeted here by CBS News without commentary or fact-checking, of course):

“In a majority of states” means that Padilla is claiming that in at least 26 states it’s easier to buy a gun than it is to vote for the first time. It isn’t. 

Even if it is true that in Pennsylvania you can get a same-day firearm purchase, all 50 states have eligibility requirements and you have to pass a background check, present a valid, pay taxes and fees to the government for the purchase, and I would imagine that even in a quick-buy state like maybe-PA-is, that a good percentage of the time the person would still end up having to wait days or weeks for their firearm to be in their possession. Soooo. If we could just make voting as “easy” as it is in that allegedly most-easy state then that’d be a good start, yea. 

If Republicans had any balls then they would call Democrats’ bluff on this talking point and try to make their false claim a reality by introducing a bill that makes what they’re claiming so. Democrats would vote against it because they’re using the false talking point negatively, but it would illustrate that it’s 1- not currently true, and 2- force Democrats to go on record by way of a vote that they want power more than they want you to have protection.

David Harsanyi articulates how that could work:

Of course, we would be able to test Padilla’s contention by linking the two issues. Let’s pass an H.R. 1 for guns. If you can receive a ballot in the mail, then FedEx should be able to bring you an AR-15. If you can vote without photo ID, you should be able to buy a handgun without it, too. If we are to institute same-day registration and voting, then Americans should also enjoy same-day background checks and gun purchases. If we implement automatic voter registration for anyone using a government service, we should simultaneously implement automatic background checks that pre-clear them for gun ownership. If we’re going to pre-register 16 year olds as voters, let’s pre-register them for gun ownership, as well.