Sounds Mildly Important

Forbes:

A federal judge today ordered the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and its controversial editor Andrew Anglin to pay $4.1 million to Muslim Comedian Dean Obeidallah for falsely accusing him of being the mastermind behind the 2017 terrorist attack at a U.K. pop concert that left 22 dead.

According to the New York Times, Obeidallah earned the ire of Anglin for a 2015 Daily Beast column that spoke of the “ bone-chilling attraction to Trump by white nationalist groups. It’s almost like they view Trump’s candidacy as their last stand against the changing demographics of America. He’s become the poster child for their philosophy that “White Lives Matter More.’

Daily Stormer readers took offense to Obeidallah’s comment and threatened him with bodily harm over social media and in the story’s comments section, according to the paper.’

In a June 13 ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. of the Southern District of Ohio, noted that the website Anglin founded in 2013 that denigrates Jews and other minorities “acted with actual malice when they published false statements… that Obedallah committed crimes of terror, including murder.” 

Sargus awarded Obeidallah $3.28 million in punitive damages along with $470,000 in economic damages and $350,000 in non-economic damages along with his attorneys fees and costs. He also issued a permanent injunction ordering the removal of any content that describes Obeidallah as a terrorist or a member of ISIS.

Interesting wrinkle:

Enforcing the court’s order may be difficult since Anglin’s whereabouts are unknown and he is thought to be living outside the U.S. He didn’t respond to an email request for comment for this story and didn’t retain a lawyer to fight Obeidalllah’s lawsuit. There also was no discussion of the case on The Daily Stormer website, which calls itself “the most censored publication in history.”

These Daddy State propaganda pimps can operate with some impunity because of the shielding effect of the globalized intertoobz, and by relying on the time-honored tactic of Appropriated Victimhood.

And while we have to be very careful about putting the chill on Free Speech, it's not unreasonable to go after opinion outlets that propagate the kind of outright lies that do real harm to real people.

What's really interesting to me though is the fact that "we the good folk" are kinda quietly starting to rack up some good solid wins against these clowns.

• Alex Jones has been spanked pretty hard
• The NRA is in debt - reportedly teetering on the abyss - having to defend itself from something that might actually be a case that's being made against them for laundering Russian money in order to funnel it to GOP campaigns
• RT and DumFux News are both feeling the effects of a viewership  starting to get hip to their tricks
• KKK got slammed in court not all that long ago too

So, in spite of my oft-stated pessimism (ie: "this joint is done, and we're just arguing about who gets to do what with the corpse)...

...it seems we ain't quite dead yet.

'Bout Fuckin' Time, Bubba

Lynching is a premeditated extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate a group. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle for maximum intimidation.

Imagine living in a country where there's no federal law making it illegal to lynch somebody. 

Where a "States' Rights" argument holds sway and blocks all efforts to codify what should be a no-brainer: "We don't subscribe to mob rule here."

Welcome to USAmerica Inc - before last year anyway.

Smithsonian:

In a legislative victory 100 years in the making, the Senate unanimously approved a bill on Wednesday that declares lynching a federal crime in the United States.

The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act was a bipartisan effort introduced earlier this year by three African-American Senators: California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker and South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott. The bill, according to CNN’s Eli Watkins, deems lynching—or mob killings that take place without legal authority—as “the ultimate expression of racism in the United States,” and adds lynching to the list of federal hate crimes.

Though the practice existed during the era of slavery in the United States, lynchings proliferated in the wake of the Civil War, when African-Americans began to establish businesses, build towns and even run for public office. “Many whites … felt threatened by this rise in black prominence,” according to PBS. In turn, the article reports, "most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed 'uppity' or 'insolent.'"

Lynchings were largely—though not exclusively—a Southern phenomenon. Between 1877 and 1950, there were 4,075 lynchings of African-Americans in 12 Southern States, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. The new bill states that 99 percent “of all perpetrators of lynching escaped from punishment by state or local officials.”

Loudoun Times-Mirror:

Years before lynching was outlawed in Virginia, a black teenager in Loudoun County was a target of the gruesome act for allegedly scaring a white, teenaged girl.

But before Orion Anderson's day in court, researchers say a small group broke into his jail cell, dragged him to the Leesburg freight depot in southeast Leesburg, hanged him and and shot him.

This Wednesday, in the same area where Anderson was lynched, the first of three markers remembering those lynched will be memorialized. Community members and elected officials will join the Loudoun County NAACP, Loudoun Freedom Center and NOVA Parks to honor Anderson in the first of a series called Loudoun Remembrance and Reconciliation.

Back in 1918, Missouri Republican Leonidas C. Dyer first introduced a bill that would make lynching a federal crime. According to the BBC, the bill passed the House but did not to make it through the Senate. Over the next century, more than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced to Congress, all of which failed. Filibusters were used three times to block the legislation.

“Excerpts from the Congressional Record show some senators argued that such laws would interfere with states’ rights,” Avis Thomas-Lester of the Washington Post reported in 2005, the same year that the Senate passed a resolution apologizing for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation. “Others, however, delivered impassioned speeches about how lynching helped control what they characterized as a threat to white women and also served to keep the races separate.”
- and -

Earlier this year, the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution for the commonwealth to acknowledge “with profound regret” the existence and acceptance of lynching. The resolution was introduced by Democratic Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan from Richmond and co-patroned by local Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-33rd). Democratic Del. Delores McQuinn (D-70th) introduced a similar resolution in the House.
"Earlier this year..."!?!

And BTW, why the fuck is it that:

1) it's always the Dems who're taking this up

...and...

2) what's wrong with Repubs that they resist the simple impulse to act like human fucking beings?

Like the man said - I don't know that you're a racist asshole, but it's plain to see that there are racist assholes among us, who self-identify as racist assholes - and they believe you to be a racist asshole just like them.

And BTW #2: They all knew about it. There were no "good southerners" any more than there were "good Germans" who weren't aware of what was going on, and who were just as shocked as anyone else to find out "there were bad things being done on our behalf that besmirched our good name and went against our Christian faith and blah blah fucking blah."

Bullshit.

Today's Pix

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Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton's gags

A PSA

Be kind to critters whenever possible.

The Supremes

SCOTUS comes up big on a couple.

Washington (CNN) -  The Supreme Court on Monday said a person can be charged and tried in state and federal court for the same conduct without running afoul to the double jeopardy clause of the US Constitution because state and federal governments are separate sovereigns.

The case has implications for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is facing charges in New York State that are similar to the federal charges for which he has been tried.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

This should be good news, but it's worrying because it pressures 45* to amp up his theme of calling for vigilante-style violence to keep him from having to leave office.

WaPo, Robert Barnes

June 17 at 10:50 AM

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the challenge to a lower court’s findings that some of Virginia’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered, saying that House Republicans did not have legal standing to challenge the decision.

The decision could give an advantage to the state’s Democrats. All 140 seats in the legislature are on the ballot this fall, and the GOP holds two-seat majorities in both the House (51 to 49) and the Senate (21 to 19).

Democrats have been hoping that a wave of success in recent Virginia elections will propel them to control of the legislature for the first time since 1995.

The party that controls the General Assembly in 2021 will oversee the next statewide re­districting effort, following next year’s census — potentially cementing an advantage in future elections.

Oddly, Gorsuch and Thomas sided with Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan on this one.

Last Week Last Night

John Oliver - Impeachment

Pelosi is playing the FDR card: "Sounds like a great idea - now go out and get the support we need to make me do it."

And she's not wrong.

To reiterate: Pelosi is in charge of The House. That's no small thing, but it's 1 part of a 6-part machine and the Repubs control majorities in all of the other 5 parts (ie: Senate, Executive, Judicial, State Governments and the Big Money Donors). 

And again, she's playing a pretty strong game (so far) with a pretty weak hand.

And also too, I can't presume to know everything she knows, so I have to presume she's working in the context of information I know nothing about.

That said, there's nothing wrong with keeping up the pressure. We just have to be a little careful not to express our frustrations in terms of "she's stupid" and "she's incompetent" and "she's not doing her job", etc.  We can't afford to get suckered again. 

Because this is not about "those bumbling dumbass Democrats".

We're in this pickle because of the GOP - because of Republican policies in service to the 40-year project of Radical Libertarians to shitcan our little experiment in self-government and replace it with plutocracy.

Don't fall for that shit.

Today's Tweet

But it didn't keep a jagoff like Tom Cotton from calling for a "retaliatory strike" against Iran.

Is it just me, or has the Gulf of Trumpkin incident receded from the top of the news unusually fast? It's almost as if they figured out that this dog won't wag, and moved on

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 16, 2019

Today's Keystone Kops

...except it's not fuckin' funny - not when people can and do get killed over some "issue" that's almost never anything more than a fews dollars worth of goods or the result of some ignorantly incompetent cops.

What happened in Phoenix is another example - in a long list of examples - of how shitty things have gotten, and how much shittier they're likely to get.

Justin King:

And here's the video he refers to:

Ahh Well

And my noble quest for fame continues.

Today's Tweet

Betty kills it

Reminder to All “Straight” Men Who Selflessly Devote Their Lives to Thinking About Gay Men Having Sex:

Remember to turn our app off in church. Our servers can't handle that much traffic.

Thanking you in advance,

Grindr Tech Support pic.twitter.com/QpEe75yPUQ

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) June 15, 2019

Podcast

The Professional Left with Driftglass and Blue Gal

Mail a check payable to:

The Professional Left Podcast

PO Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62791-9133

My Kinda Dog

AKA: Trumponomics

I always called it The Blondie & Dagwood Marketing Strategy.

If I'd known the GOP was going to adopt it as their main policy, I woulda kept my fuckin' mouth shut.

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