Best Memes From the Olympics

 

Snoop Dogg at the Olympic Torch Relay

 

Celine Dion - Hymn to Love

Go Get 'Em Kamala!

 

Elon Musk Says His Child is "Dead" in Shocking Anti-Trans Tirade

 In his latest tirade, Elon Musk hassaid his 20-year-old trans child is “dead” — because she transitioned from male to female.  Musk shared the transphobic remark on yesterday's episode of Jordan Peterson's podcast and claimed he was “tricked” into signing off on gender-affirming care for Vivian Jenna Wilson, who changed her legal name in 2022.

“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier,” he said Monday. “This was before I had really any understanding of what was going on and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion. I was told Xavier might commit suicide.  It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs,” Musk continued. “Anyway, so I lost my son, essentially. You know, they call it deadnaming for a reason. The reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead.”

A quick note to jerks like Musk:  puberty blockers are not sterilization drugs. According to the Mayo Clinic, “GnRH analogues don’t cause permanent physical changes. That offers a chance to explore gender identity.”  Twitter used to consider dead naming a form of harassment until Musk bought the platform, when the policy was quietly changed. Musk revived it after a flurry of advertisers left the platform following his many controversial changes.

“So my son Xavier is dead,” he told Peterson. “Killed by the woke mind virus.”  Peterson shared his condolences despite Wilson not actually being dead and idiotically argued she transitioned due to supposed “depression.”  

Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and former university professor who was previously investigated for making transphobic remarks in his lectures, has since stopped teaching and signed a content distribution deal with conservative media outlet The Daily Wire.  The newfound podcaster told Musk that gender transitions have “demolished” children, despite research showing that LGBTQ youths who report high levels of parental rejection being eight times more likely to attempt suicide.  Musk agreed with Peterson and said gender-affirming care is so “evil” that “people that have been promoting this should go to prison.” 

GLAAD warned us all back in December that Musk is a proven “far-right hate-driven extremist” and cited his “extensive anti-LGBTQ posts and anti-trans comments” to warn advertisers about his “worrying” policy decisions at X.  We should have listened.

 

Ahhh-- So That's Why Whales Have Blowholes

Sharks in Brazil are now testing positive for cocaine as the drugs are being dumped into the ocean waters.

Drug smugglers have been known to get creative when it comes to trying to evade law enforcement, using bananas and other produce to illicitly ship them across international borders.. Buoys have also been used to keep afloat three tonnes worth of cocaine bricks in the ocean.

But it seems that bricks of cocaine like these are breaking open somehow and are now having an effect on the animals that inhabit the sea-- 13 wild sharks off the coast of Brazil have been tested positive for having cocaine in their bodies.  Tons of cocaine have been found in the waters around Florida and South and Central America, leading researchers to fear that it could be polluting the environment and impacting wildlife in those areas.

Now, a worrying study conducted by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil has found this hypothesis to be correct.  Experts dissected 13 wild Brazilian sharp nose sharks obtained from coastal waters near Rio de Janeiro and tested their muscle and liver tissue for drugs.  Not only did all the sharks test positive for cocaine, but the concentrations were up to 100 times higher than had been previously reported in other aquatic life.

 

Can We Get Serious? This is Not Funny!

Will the Real JD Vance Stand Up?

 

Republican National Convention Wrap-Up

In the week leading up to the expected campaign speech re-hash from the ear-bandaged Orange Man, there was a pathetic, protracted prologue from an assortment of other losers up in Milwaukee:

JD Vance gave a really boring acceptance speech, where he didn't talk about his radical position on abortion, or his equally radical desire to end no-fault divorce.

Kellyanne Conway didn't talk about abortion either-- even though earlier this year, she was urging Republicans to “own” their draconian abortion stances. 

Former senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro was released from prison on Wednesday—and headed straight for the stage of the Republican National Convention.  After making a hack prison tattoo joke, Navarro played the persecution card, crying that if he and former Trump adviser and fellow convicted criminal Steve Bannon can end up in prison for breaking the law, so can anyone who breaks the law.  For all of their “law and order” talknRepublicans sure do love their criminals.

Tech bro and Stalin wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy told America that in the face of all evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party loves Black and Latino Americans.  

We also saw the world's most humiliated man, Sen. Ted Cruz, who once called Trump a “sniveling coward” for attacking his wife and father.  Cruz told an entirely fabricated story of how America is “facing a literal invasion on our southern border, claiming that 11.5 million people have crossed our border illegally under Joe Biden.” It isn’t true, but whatevs. Kiss that ring, Lyin’ Ted! 

Nikki Haley refrained from calling Trump “unstable and unhinged,” to receive a mixed reception from the RNC audience. She then bent the knee to the man who called her “BRAINDEAD” and “BIRDBRAIN,” and endorsed him. Always on brand, Trump didn’t even deem to clap. 

Ben Carson took time away from whining about people trying to cancel Dr. Seuss stories to expound upon how great a second Trump presidency would be.  Florida. Sen. “Little Marco” Rubio and Gov. “Ron DeSanctimonious” gave speeches in support of the Orange Man. Rubio, best known for justifiably calling Trump a “con artist,” did his best to genuflect to Trump, by whitewashing the racist origins of Trump’s “America First” campaigns.

DeSantis put on his best boots and showed the lack of charisma that led to his untimely exit from the Republican primary. Gone from his speech was the admission that Trump actually lost the 2020 election.   At one point DeSantis told the convention audience that the GOP supports “law and order, not rioting and disorder.” Anyone ever heard of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021? 

South Dakota puppy killer Gov. Kristi Noem took time away from defending her state’s abortion ban to reminded people that her big claim to fame (before becoming the 21t century’s Cruella de Vill) was how poorly she managed her state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Most of you probably first heard about me during Covid,” Noem said, “because South Dakota was the only state in the country that stayed open for business. We didn't mandate anything. We never ordered a single business or a church to close.”  It was allowing superspreader events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that led to South Dakota’s horrific COVID rates.

Republican Sen. Tim Scott put on a brave face after being rejected by Donald Trump for the vice presidential slot, assuring the delegates that there is no racism in America. “This is going to offend the liberal elites. Every time I say it, it offends them,” Scott promised. “But let me say it one more time. America is not a racist country! No, we're not.”   But not really.  “If you are looking for racism today, you'd find it in cities run by Democrats," he later said.  Got it. So there’s no racism, except the racism that does exist. 

Even the buff bimbo barbie made an appearance.  Marjorie Taylor Green performed a recital of GOP talking points that included anti-trans rhetoric, immigration fear-mongering, and just a taste of whining about sending aide to Ukraine  She ended by saying one true thing—at least for the people at the very top who benefited from Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, and the billionaires he has promised to serve if elected again.  “Donald Trump will make us wealthy again,” Greene said. The only question is who the “us” is, because it certainly isn’t regular Americans. 

 

Michael Kiwanuka - Floating Parade

Spanish Dude Skips Work For Six Years and Nobody Notices

A man who managed to get away with skipping work for six years was finally caught out after he was ironically nominated for an award for his long service.

Joaquín García from Spain was a building supervisor for a water treatment plant in Cádiz and was employed by the local government for two decades.  But then one day, the 69-year-old just stopped showing up to work and still took home his $49K annual salary-- something he was (impressively) able to keep up for six years.

Garcia was able to get away with it for so long because of the bureaucratic structure of the local government-- there was a miscommunication between two departments, with each department assuming the other was overseeing Garcia's work.

It was only when Garcia was nominated for an award for his 20 years of service to the company that his jig was finally up.  "I wondered whether he was still working there, had he retired, had he died? But the payroll showed he was still receiving a salary," deputy mayor Jorge Blas told Spanish newspaper El Mundo.  “I called him up and asked him, ‘What did you do yesterday? The month before, the month before that?’ He didn’t know what to say,” Blas added.

Consequently, Garcia was required to pay a $29K fine (the maximum allowed under Spanish law) for his lengthy absence on the job. To the end, Garcia denied the allegations and even wrote to the mayor to ask if he had to pay the fine.  Garcia claimed he was bullied due to his family's politics and found there was no work to do at the water company-- to which he was originally assigned to be "out of the way."   Reportedly, Garcia made the most of all the confusion, becoming an avid reader of philosophy and an expert on the works of Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher credited with laying the foundations of the Enlightenment.

 

Musk Continues His Campaign of Hate Against LGBTQ Folks

Elon Musk said he will move the headquarters of two of his most high-profile companies, rocket firm SpaceX and social media platform X, from California to Texas. He said the move was due to recent laws passed by the state - in particular a new law which prevents schools from making rules requiring staff tell anyone, including parents, information about a child's gender identity.

Musk said that the SAFETY Act, a law California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed that would prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to inform parents if a child wants to be identified by a different gender, was “the final straw.”

The issue of what schools should tell parents about their children's gender identities has become a major topic of debate.  LGBTQ advocates say students have a right to privacy, but others argue parents have a right to know what is happening with their children.

Musk, has a transgender daughter, and has previously expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiments, including repeated antagonism against alternative pronouns - calling them an "aesthetic nightmare".  He has also been criticized for some of his statements on X regarding gender identity issues.  Musk's daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson filed a lawsuit to cut ties with him in 2022, saying she no longer wished to be related to her famous and wealthy father “in any way, shape or form.”  Last year, Musk said he would lobby to criminalize transgender medical treatment.

 

Eileen Cannon Dismisses Case Again Trump, Making Her Incompetence Clear

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon dismissed the prosecution in Donald Trump’s classified documents case. The convicted felon faced more than three dozen federal charges of mishandling classified documents. This is widely seen as a "quid pro quo" by Cannon, who was appointed to the federal position in the Southern District of Florida by Trump in 2020.

Even before charges were filed against Trump, Cannon was making headlines regarding federal prosecutors’ investigation of documents found at Mar-a-Lago during an FBI raid in August 2022. Cannon was judge-shopped by Trump’s legal team, and assigned to Trump's appeal against the investigation. Her first move was to assist Trump's legal team in cleaning up its somewhat convoluted appeal.

Cannon then sided with Trump’s defense and appointed a "special master"—a third party who looks things over to determine if there’s attorney-client privilege or other issues—to review the documents seized by the FBI. The move temporarily barred agents and prosecutors from reviewing them. According to Slate, it marked the first time a judge had stopped an investigation before an indictment. 

Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official under former President George W. Bush, called Cannon’s intervention “a special law just for Donald Trump by a Trump appointee, and it is unmoored from precedent, insupportable in law, will not be approved of by anybody who isn’t a Trump fanatic.”

When Judge Raymond J. Dearie, the special master whom Cannon had appointed, tried to do his job by ordering that Trump’s lawyers assert the validity of the documents seized, Cannon overruled him. She also overruled Dearie’s attempt at creating a reasonable timeline to proceed in.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Cannon's ruling, saying, "The law is clear, we cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations."

Trump was subsequently indicted, in a case that Anthony Michael Kries, a professor of election and employment law at Georgia State University described to the BBC as the “strongest case legally” against Trump and “absolutely airtight.” Unfortunately, Cannon was then assigned to preside over the case. 

She has since delayed the case, refusing to set a start date for trial, piling on postponements of previously stated deadlines, and repeatedly asking for the refiling of motions. Each move by Cannon has resulted in questions concerning both her experience and political leanings.

Cannon’s first intervention into the Trump classified documents story was characterized as “deeply problematic” by legal experts. Monday’s decision, after two years of Cannon’s legal misbehavior, has led experts like Noah Rosenblum, an assistant professor at NYU School of Law, to call the dismissal “bonkers,” exclaiming, “She is just making things up.”

 

 

 

 

Mess in Milwaukee

Trump Shot at Pennsylvania Rally

The man identified as the shooter in the apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was a 20-year-old from a Pittsburgh suburb not far from the campaign rally where one attendee was killed.  Investigators are working to gather more information about Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who they say opened fire at the rally before being killed by Secret Service days before Trump was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time.  An FBI official said late Saturday that investigators had not yet determined a motive. 

Relatives of Crooks didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press. His father, Matthew Crooks, told CNN late Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but wouldn’t speak about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.  A blockade had been set up Sunday preventing traffic near Crooks' house, which is in an enclave of modest brick houses nestled in the hills of blue-collar Pittsburgh.  Crooks' political leanings were not immediately clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in to office.   Public Pennsylvania court records show no past criminal cases against Crooks. Authorities told reporters that Crooks was not carrying identification so they were using DNA and other methods to confirm his identity.

Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. A video posted to social media  shows the body of a person wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.

The roof where the person lay was approximately 164 yards)from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target.  Investigators believe the weapon was bought by the father at least six months ago, according to two law enforcement officials.  Federal agents are still working to understand when and how Thomas Crooks obtained the gun. 

One rally attendee was killed and two others were injured in the shooting.  All three victims are adult men and were audience members-- there names have not been released.  A GoFundMe page, organzied by the Trump campaign's national finance director Meredith O'Rourke, was set up in the hours after the attack with donations going to the families of the injured.  It has so far raised more than $790,000.  

Trump released a statement on social media, saying he is "doing well" and is grateful to law enforcement officers.  President Biden went on national television saying, "There is no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick, it's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country."

 

When Are We Going to Start Making Greedy Corporations Pay For Their Crimes?

 This past January, a door plug blew off a 737 Max approaching 16,000 feet. While no one was killed or seriously injured on that Alaska Airlines flight, the incident not only brought unwanted attention and a slew of federal investigations, it upended an agreement Boeing reached in January 2021 with the Justice Department to end the risk of prosecution for defrauding the FAA during the Max certification. The Alaska Air incident happened just days before the probationary period would have ended. 

Boeing now faces up to $487 million in fines as part of its anticipated guilty plea to a felony charge related to two fatal crashes of the 737 Max. Critics of the deal, however, are calling it a “slap on the wrist.”  Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a charge that it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration, hiding crucial information about a design flaw on the 737 Max during its original certification process. That design flaw has been tied to crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, plunging the company into a crisis that led to $32 billion in losses.

“The Justice Department does no one any favors by trying to sell this as a tough deal,” said Peter Goeltz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board and now a CNN contributor who consults for transportation companies. “It doesn’t smell like a tough deal.”  Under the plea settlement, a $243 million fine that Boeing agreed to pay back in 2021 could be doubled to $487 million.  “That’s what, the price of three 777’s?” Goeltz said. “I’m not sure that it’s a significant fine.”

Before the losses started in 2019, the company was reporting record annual revenue of $101 billion and record core operating profit of $10.7 billion, or 21 times the cost of of the $487 million fine.  While Boeing’s credit rating is now at risk of falling into the junk bond status for the first time, credit rating agency Moody’s came out with a statement Monday that the plea and penalties “will have little effect on Boeing’s finances or operations.” 

The expected guilty plea did little to satisfy family members of the crash victims, who branded it a “sweetheart deal,” an “atrocious abomination” and a gross “miscarriage of justice.”  Their attorneys had argued that Boeing should have been hit with a maximum fine worth as much as $24.8 billion, which they calculated based on a multiple of their estimate of combined losses sustained by the families.

Other corporations that pleaded guilty to felonies have agreed to much larger fines. Oil giant BP agreed to pay $4 billion to settle criminal charges, including manslaughter, related to the explosion and oil spill at its Deepwater Horizon oil platform in 2010 that killed 11 workers. Volkswagen pleaded guilty to three US felony criminal charges and agreed to pay $2.8 billion in criminal penalties in 2017 after it admitted to cheating on its diesel emissions tests.

“The fact that this is in the millions of dollars rather than billions is an indication this is a slap on the wrist,” said Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor who worked on the BP case on behalf of victims and is now working for the families in the Boeing crashes. 

 

Disclosure - She's Gone, Dance On

Another Alito Flag Operation

Bubonic Plague is Back in the U.S.

A man from South Lake Tahoe, was confirmed to have contracted the plague earlier this week, California’s first case of plague in five years, according to the El Dorado County health department. In July, Colorado also saw its first case in five years when a southwestern region resident, who has since recovered, was infected, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Navajo County public health officials documented a case in Arizona late July. And two cases this year were reported in New Mexico, including a man who died.

“Bubonic plague in the U.S. is not the same scenario as the historical Black Death, and we do not need to be afraid of it in the same way,” Susan Jones, a professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences, said.  Though tragic, the cases this year aren’t unusual, she said.  The U.S. averages seven human cases of plague each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2006, cases reached a high of 17.  There had not been a plague fatality in the U.S. since 2015, which had 16 total cases, four of which resulted in deaths, according to the CDC. 

Though there is limited information surrounding the death of the man in Rio Arriba County on the New Mexico-Colorado border, the New Mexico Department of Health reported the case as septicemic plague, rather than the much more common bubonic plague.  Both septicemic plague and bubonic plague are caused by the same bacteria; the name refers to what part of the body is affected, according to the Mayo Clinic. Bubonic plague occurs when the infection causes large, swollen lymph nodes, called buboes. Septicemic plague refers to an infection in the blood, and can be the first sign of infection or develop from untreated bubonic plague, according to the CDC. Neither are contagious.  Only the third form of plague — pneumonic plague — can be spread from person to person. Pneumonic plague occurs when the infection gets into the lungs, either from untreated bubonic or septicemic plague, or from inhaling infected droplets from another person. It is the most serious form of the disease, the CDC says.

The majority of cases occur in the Four Corners area, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet, though plague is detected in rodents across the West. According to Jones, this is due to the squirrels and prairie dogs that live in these areas and harbor plague-carrying fleas. These fleas can make their way to humans by latching onto pets that roam in rural areas.

 

Argentinian President Emboldens Anti-LGBTQ Hate

In an attack that sent shockwaves through a country long considered a pioneer in LGBTQ rights, four lesbian women were set on fire in Argentina. Only one of them survived.

It happened at a boarding house in the Barracas neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where Pamela Fabiana Cobas, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, Andrea Amarante and Sofía Castro Riglo were sharing a room. Witnesses say a man broke in and threw an incendiary device that set the women on fire.  Pamela died soon after. Her partner Roxana died days later of organ failure. Andrea died a week later in the hospital. Andrea’s partner Sofía was the sole survivor. She spent weeks recovering in the hospital and is alive today only because Andrea threw herself on top of her to shield her from the flames, Sofia’s attorney Gabriela Conder told CNN. “Her partner saved her,” Conder said.

Local LGBTQ rights advocates condemned the attack as a hate crime and lesbicide, saying the women were targeted because of their sexual identity. Police have arrested a 62-year-old man who lived in the building but, according to Conder, aren’t currently treating the incident as a hate crime as they say the motive is still unclear. 

For Argentina’s LGBTQ groups the attack represents an extreme manifestation of what they consider a growing wave of hostility against them. Those they blame most for this rising intolerance are the people in power. Chief among them, they say, is the country’s new far-right leader Javier Milei.  “Things changed with the new government of Javier Milei,” said Maria Rachid, head of the Institute Against Discrimination of the Ombudsman’s Office in Buenos Aires, and a board member and founder of the Argentine LGBT Federation (FALGBT).  “Since the beginning of the new government, there are national government officials expressing themselves in a discriminatory manner and those hate speeches before our communities from places with so much power, of course, what they do is generate – actually legitimize – and endorse these discriminatory positions that are then expressed with violence and discrimination in everyday life,” Rachid said. 

When Milei ran for president in 2023, he and his party were accused of making offensive remarks against LGBTQ communities which were deemed hate speech by many groups. In an interview ahead of the election, Milei compared homosexuality with having sex with animals.  Diana Mondino, who would later become Milei’s foreign minister, told an interviewer that she supports marriage equality in theory, but at the same time, compared it to having lice. 

After taking office, Milei took steps that critics say weakened protections for LGBTQ groups. He banned the use of gender-inclusive language in government; replaced the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity with a less powerful undersecretariat within the Ministry of Human Capital; and effectively closed the national anti-discrimination agency, saying the Ministry of Justice would absorb its functions.

Accused of Witchcraft and Murdered for Their Land

Over in Kenya, there has been a sudden surge of elderly people accused of witchcraft then murdered along the Kilifi coast.  Seventy-four-year-old Tambala Jefwa recently survived two attacks and shared his story with the BBC.  Jefwa was accused of being a witch and has been attacked twice in his home 50 miles inland from the coastal town of Malindi. The first left him without an eye. The second nearly killed him.

Jefwa and his wife own more than 30 acres of land where they grow maize and raise a few chickens. There has been a dispute with family members over boundaries. They believe this was the real reason Jefwa was almost killed, not that people genuinely believed he was a witch.  “I was left for dead. I lost so much blood. I don’t know why they attacked me, but it can only be the land,” said Jefwa.

Belief in witchcraft and superstition is common in many countries.  But in parts of Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa, it can be used to justify killing elderly people to take their land.  A report called "The Aged on Edge" by Kenyan human rights organization Haki Yetu says one elderly person is murdered along the Kilifi coast every week in the name of witchcraft. Its program officer, Julius Wanyama, says many families believe it is one of their own who orders the killing.  “They use the word witchcraft as a justification because they will get public sympathy. And people will say: ‘If he was a witch, it is good you have killed him.’”

Few people in this region have title deeds for their land. Without a will, they rely on passing it down customarily through the family. Wanyama says seven out of 10 of the killings are elderly men because land ownership and inheritance lie with them.  “Historically people here in Kilifi do not have [land] documentation. The only document they have is the narrative from these elderly people. That is why mostly men are being killed, because once you kill them, then you have removed the obstacle,” said Wanyama.

In traditional African culture, the elderly are revered for their wisdom and knowledge.  But in Kilifi, it is the reverse. Old people are so fearful of becoming a target, many dye their hair in an attempt to look younger.  It is rare for someone in this region to survive after being accused of witchcraft.  For men like Tambala Jefwa there is real fear that whoever tried to murder him will come back.

 

Lil Nas X - Here We Go

Happy Fourth!