Teddy Roosevelt, POTUS #26

On April 23, 1910 - a year after leaving office - Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs.

The most famous section of his speech still resonates and inspires.

It is not the critic who counts.

What Matters

It's hard to watch politics sometimes. And sometimes, the fact that it's hard to watch is the reason we have to watch. I think some politicians try to make it as gruesome and grotesque as possible so we'll choose not to see the shitty things they do.

One of the hardest things for me right now is just knowing what a brilliant thing we did when we elected Barack Obama 12 years ago, and then remembering having to watch as the GOP pulled every shitty trick in the book to block the progress he tried to lead us to make.

For most of Bush43's time in office, and for at least the last 6 years of Obama's presidency, Republicans lied to us and cheated us and stole from us, and then gave us Cult45, thinking (IMO) they'd created in us the mindset that would accept the final push to install the full-blown Daddy State plutocracy they've been working on since forever.

Politicians are always using the rhetorical "crossroads" imagery, and while there's usually a kernel of truth in it, it's (also usually) more flourish than reality.

I hope I'm wrong, but I can't stop thinking we've passed through that intersection and the devil is standing in front of us with his hand out.

On The Local

The Daily Progress:

A federal judge agreed to dismiss Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s lawsuit against the city of Charlottesville and various officials on Friday.

Kessler has filed several lawsuits since the deadly Aug. 12, 2017, rally. The lawsuit dismissed Friday was filed on the two-year anniversary of the rally and claimed that the defendants violated Kessler’s First Amendment rights as the rally turned violent.

Judge Norman K. Moon ruled that law enforcement has no obligation to protect people when other parties attempt to suppress their speech.

“[T]he First Amendment merely guarantees that the state will not suppress one’s speech,” he wrote. “It does not guarantee that the state will protect individuals when private parties seek to suppress it.”

Divide And Conquer

Turns out the Mark Zuckerberg character in the movie Social Media wasn't the plucky entrepreneurial good guy supernerd after all.

I think maybe the writers and producers had that suspicion all along.

WaPo, Yaël Eisenstat:

I joined Facebook in June 2018 as “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops” in the company’s business integrity organization, focused specifically on political advertising. I had spent much of my career working to strengthen and defend democracy — including freedom of speech — as an intelligence officer, diplomat and White House adviser. Now I had the opportunity to help correct the course of a company that I viewed as playing a major role in one of the biggest threats to our democracy.

In the year leading up to our 2016 election, I began to see the polarization and breakdown of civil discourse, exacerbated by social media, as our biggest national security threat; I had written about that before Facebook called. I didn’t think I was going to change the company by myself. But I wanted to help Facebook think through the role it plays in politics, in the United States and around the world, and the best way to ensure that it is not harming democracy.

A year and a half later, as the company continues to struggle with how to handle political content and as another presidential election approaches, it’s clear that tinkering around the margins of advertising policies won’t fix the most serious issues. The real problem is that Facebook profits partly by amplifying lies and selling dangerous targeting tools that allow political operatives to engage in a new level of information warfare. Its business model exploits our data to let advertisers aim at us, showing each of us a different version of the truth and manipulating us with hyper-customized ads — ads that as of this fall can contain blatantly false and debunked information if they’re run by a political campaign. As long as Facebook prioritizes profit over healthy discourse, it can’t avoid damaging democracy.

I'm good with the argument that we don't want a private sector entity deciding questions of free speech - that's not really what we're talking about - but I get the argument.

Coupla things:

• It's everybody's job - everybody's right, and everybody's obligation - to hold as many people as possible to account for telling the truth.
• There's a near-absolute expectation that advertisers don't get to put out false or misleading claims about their own products, or the products of their competitors.

Caveat Emptor applies, but only to a certain extent. So if (eg) your dealership has a car for sale that you advertise as a peach, when it's a lemon - you can expect a visit from the fraud unit.

You can be fined.

You can go to jail.

You can be barred from that industry.

Thing 3: No rights are absolute or unlimited. Speech is not just an expression of ideas - it's also an action. If your actions present a clear and present danger to others - as individuals or as a community - you can be (and should be) smacked down.

We've got to have a taste of a Teddy Roosevelt-style Trust Buster in the White House. Some of these companies have grown too big and too powerful.

It's not like we've never been here before

Today's Tweet

"Free speech" is a guarantee that the government can't punish you for expressing your opinion...

James Woods says he's leaving Twitter 'until free speech is allowed' on the platform following suspension | Fox News 👍👋👏👍👋😁😁best thing that has happened to twitter in a long time! This pathetic has-been two bit “actor” will definitely not be missed https://t.co/DoPadqZbgQ

— Suzanne's Criteria68 (@criteria681) August 21, 2019

...but no rights are absolute or unlimited.

The Prophet Zappa

From Joe's Garage, Acts I, II & III (1979):

Eventually it was discovered
That God
Did not want us to be
All the same
This was
BAD NEWS
For the Governments of The World
As it seemed contrary
To the doctrine of
Portion Controlled Servings
Mankind must be made more uniformly
If THE FUTURE
Was going to work
Various ways were sought
To bind us all together
But, alas SAMENESS was unenforceable
It was about this time
That someone
Came up with the idea of TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION
Based on the principle that
If we were ALL crooks
We could at last be uniform
To some degree
In the eyes of THE LAW
Shrewdly our legislators calculated
That most people were
Too lazy to perform a
REAL CRIME
So new laws were manufactured
Making it possible for anyone
To violate them any time of the day or night,
And
Once we had all broken some kind of law
We'd all be in the same big happy club
Right up there with the President,
The most exalted industrialists,
And the clerical big shots
Of all your favorite religions
TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION
Was the greatest idea of its time
And was vastly popular
Except with those people
Who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws,
So, of course, they had to be TRICKED INTO IT...
Which is one of the reasons why
Music
Was eventually made
Illegal

Garrett Epps, The Atlantic:

If a citizen speaks at a public meeting and says something a politician doesn’t like, can she be arrested, cuffed, and carted off to the hoosegow?

Suppose that, during this fraught encounter, the citizen violates some law—even by accident, even one no one has ever heard of, even one dug up after the fact—does that make her arrest constitutional?

-and-

He was charged with “disorderly conduct” and “resisting arrest without violence,” but the local prosecutor dropped the charges, saying in essence that no reasonable person would believe them. Lozman then brought a federal lawsuit against the city for “First Amendment retaliation.” A federal judge agreed that Lozman had “compelling” evidence that he’d been arrested as punishment for his protected speech. But the judge then threw out the case, reasoning that he actually could have been charged with the obscure state offense of “willfully interrupt[ing] or disturb[ing] any school or any assembly of people met for the worship of God or for any lawful purpose.”

What this meant, the court decided, was that the officer who arrested Lozman would have had “probable cause” (a reasonable basis to believe a crime had been committed) to arrest him if he had known about “assembly of people” statute and wanted to enforce it. The fact that the officer didn’t know about it was irrelevant—and so was the city’s unconstitutional motive. As long as an officer could have arrested Lozman for something, in other words, the retaliatory motive didn’t matter. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed: the existence of probable cause for any offense is an “absolute bar” to a suit for retaliatory arrest, it said.

"You're making trouble, so we'll have you arrested, and we'll charge you with some weird shit later because everybody's guilty of something - all we have to do is smash-fit some bullshit ordnance around what you did".

Free Speech

Freedom ain't free. And the cost can be pretty heavy.

We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OkCupid. Within 10 minutes we banned him for life.

— OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017

We always have to be a little careful in how we react to people expressing views we disagree with. 

That said, it's important to remember Popper's Paradox:

Yeah - It's That Bad

From Right Wing Watch

Wiles asserted that “devil-worshiping, Luciferian, demon-possessed maniacs” have formed a “criminal cabal [that is] running this nation and much of the world” that allows them to engage in “child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, [and] child murder.”

Gotta wonder - why is the Great and Powerful Donald of Oz unable to mount an effective resistance to this evil cabal? 

Why would 45* fire Flynn for knowing the truth, when he (45*) could use it to seal the deal on prosecuting Hillary?  And what's keeping Flynn from speaking this truth now?

What about god's noble warriors of a GOP that's been in control of Congress for 6 years? They're all powerless against these devil-worshipers?

I also wonder about the morality of someone who just takes this crap at face value, and seems not to care whether it's true or not. But I think always testing for truth ends up being a threat to their faith.  They've been trained not to question certain things. They already accept the big absurdity on faith (and they pay handsomely for that), so why not look for other opportunities to trade fairy tales for tribute?

My favorite political fantasy right now is that somebody out of office takes one of these greasy slugs to court. Not to spank 'em or collapse their phony little fiefdoms financially (although that'd be one very enjoyable side effect), but to force them out into the open and expose them as the lying sacks of shit they are by requiring them to present the "evidence" they're basing these crazy-fuck ideas on as they peddle their huge steaming piles of bullshit to the rubes.

Of course, you can't do that because of the whole Free Speech thing and 200 years of precedent allowing anybody to say anything about a public figure with near-absolute impunity.

So what can you say about a system that protects even the lowest and shittiest of the muck divers?

You say, "I give them the benefit of law for my own safety's sake".

And then you say "God bless America"

But still - y'know?

Sometimes A Troll

I gotta say - I expected a push-back that was more in line with the usual rabid attacks from the fetishists.  

Still early I guess - could be a lot more coming when everybody starts getting home from work tonite(?)

I'll update if anything interesting happens.

Bernie-esque

"He wants America to work for him and his friends, at the expense of everyone else. He's offered no credible plans to address what working families are up against today. Nothing on student loans or the cost of prescription drugs. Nothing for farmers and struggling rural communities. ...nothing for communities of color in our cities to overcome barriers of systemic racism. Nothing to create new opportunities for young people. Just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics, with the addition of his own unique Trumpian ideas that even Republicans reject."

Not crazy about the F35 thing, and I'm still waiting for good answers on the flipflop on TPP and KeystoneXL.  And I'd like her to acknowledge / deal with the shit that NAFTA turned out to be - she kinda tries (companies gaming the system etc), but it's just not there yet.  

But she's putting it out there in pretty good shape.  For me right now, it's a matter of supporting her as "a wonk I think I can trust on policy", if we can figure out how to keep pressure on her and rein in her apparent difficulties with the seemier aspects of making deals and thinking she has to hide those details from us - to the point where she lies when she really doesn't have to.

Anyway, it's a pretty thoroughly boring stump speech, and that's a good thing, kids. Cuz it sure beats the fuck outa what that other guy's doin'.

About That Geller Lady Thing

Every time something happens like what happened in Garland TX, I'm reminded that "free speech" is a weapon as much as it is a tool.  And that goading some dumb sucker into a fight just so you can make a point (and a pile of cash) is about as craven as it gets.

I'm not suggesting the two dead 'jihadis' deserved anything but bullets in their heads once they started the shit, but let's at least admit their reaction was predictable - and predictable  to the point that we can condemn the fact that the provocation has almost nothing to do with Free Speech, and everything to do with making it justifiable (and profitable) to kill Muslims.  

Geller's little stunt produced exactly what it was intended to produce, which is Violence As Revenue Opportunity.

A good bit from The Rude Pundit:

5/06/2015

Conservatives Really Need You to Care About the Garland Thing

Honestly, conservatives, most of us on the left look at Pamela Geller's stupid ass Mohammed cartoon thing, which was attended by a handful of Fox "news" zombies and more media than it deserved, and think, "Well, if that's what you wanna do." 'Cause, see, we all knew that images of Mohammed piss off loser jihadi-wannabes who need to prove their street cred. So, oh, gee, you mean the deliberately provocative act provoked someone to violence? Well, fuck us all with a surprise stick. Shit, considering the nonsensical conspiracy theories floating around Texas right now, why not say that the two idiot gunmen were promised cash and seven minutes in paradise with Geller to come shoot up the joint in order to justify the whole goddamned effort?

But the right really, really needs us to give a shit. They need us to condemn Geller's show. Look at what Erick "Erick" Erickson of the Red State blarg had to say right after the shooting: "Over the next twenty-four hours, we can expect the media to wring its hands about 'Texas gun culture,' the unnecessary provocations of Pamela Gellar [sic], and a host of other issues. They will work very hard to suggest Muslims were somehow the victims and try to distance the story from Islam." Look at that list. One of those things has come true - about Geller being an attention whore who makes real whores think, "Fuck it. I should retire and give her the whole block" - and the rest? No one of any note has said shit about guns in this case (except maybe how the bad guys got the guns). No one has said Muslims were victims, except to say that a bunch of needy fucknuts tried their hardest to get a reaction from Muslims.

Later, Erickson says, "[T]he most telling thing to me is how quickly prominent leftists placed blame on the event organizers for holding than event instead of on a group of Muslims for deciding they can kill because they are offended." No, sweet, pudgy Christ fellater, we are all blaming the dudes with the guns. We can also say, without contradiction, that the event wouldn't have taken place if the threat of violence wasn't built into it, and that shit's reckless. By the way, aren't you the people who think that the problem with rape on college campuses isn't that rapists do it, but that sexy coeds get drunk and are easy targets?

Anyway, you know who some of the loudest voices against Geller are right now? Other conservatives who think Geller's full of shit, which, of course, made Geller screech even louder than usual. (That last link has all the cartoons from the event, and you will forever regret clicking on it.) Skeevier attention whore Donald Trump even said that Geller was "dumb."

Still, people like Rush Limbaugh blubber on about how much eeevil liberals don't give a goddamn about free speech. Meanwhile, most of us real lefties, not the fantasy flesh-eating gorgons conjured by the deranged minds of conservatives, feel about the cartoon display the same way we feel about flag burning: You have the right to do it, but you sure as shit aren't doing it to make people believe in your cause.

It's your right to fuck with people's core beliefs. And it's our right to think your point is worthless.

Pendulum

Here's a guy running in Virginia's 6th District - Andy Schmookler.  He's up against a strongly entrenched incumbent (Bob Goodlatte) and he'll prob'ly get stomped, but it's just possible this speech should be packaged and sent to every Democrat everywhere.



And here's a guy not running this year - Mark Warner - giving a speech that's kinda crummy, but considered OK for a Democrat speaking in rural Virginia.  I still think it's just not what's needed at all.



If you want "regular folk" to get behind you, then you have to get up on your hind legs; you have to go toe-to-toe, and you have to stick it into the other guy's gizzle.  It's called a fight, and they don't call it that fer nuthin'.