Trumpy Bear will haunt your dreams

Let’s play a game: Poe or legit? See the answer below. (If you watch the ad, you lose either way.)

Transcript

(Click to open/close:) [−]

NARRATOR: The wind whispered through the forest. A storm is coming. You cannot defeat the storm. From the trees rose a resounding voice: “I fear nothing. I come when the Trumpet ^[sic] sounds. I am the storm, the great American grizzly.”

Introducing the original Trumpy Bear: the fearless, super-plush American grizzly. Trumpy Bear was born June 14th, Flag Day. Just find a secret zipper and pull out the flag blanket, then wrap yourself in the red white and blue for comfort and warmth. Show your patriotism and proudly display Trumpy on Flag Day and on any American holiday. Trumpy can even honor your own family heroes.

WOMAN: God Bless America and God bless Trumpy Bear.

NARRATOR: Trumpy Bear sits proudly at the front of the motorcycle for all the world to see, and loves to cruise with his brother.

MAN #1: I’m a former Marine and I’m proud to have Trumpy Bear ride by my side. Once a Marine, always a Marine.

NARRATOR: Everyone knows Trumpy Bear loves to go to the golf course.

MAN #2: When I ride with Trumpy Bear, he makes my golf game great again. Thank you, Trumpy Bear!

NARRATOR: Simply style his trademark hair and plays live in its paper chair. Even the toughest guys will love Trumpy Bear.

MAN #3: When America is great, business is great. When business is great, I am great. I love you, Trumpy Bear!

MAN #4: I am an Army veteran. I am proud to own the Trumpy Bear and I will always be proud to be an American.

NARRATOR: Order the Super Plus Trumpy Bear for only two payments of $19.95 and receive a special certificate of authenticity. Don’t miss out on owning a piece of American history. Order now for only two payments of $19.95.

Trumpy: The most fearless bear anywhere. Order now.

Sadly, this is, to quote The Poke, “a hideously real thing”. You can check out the equally hideous website if the video wasn’t enough for you.

In a way, though, commemorating the Trump presidency with a goofy, overpriced toy animal slathered in flag-worship and peddled to gullible supporters – it seems appropriate.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Alt-Right blogger self-owns with a xenophobic tweet

Gateway Pundit is a conspiracy-peddling alt-Right rag maintained by Jim Hoft, widely agreed to be the Dumbest Man on the Internet (and imagine the running for that title). The blog now has White House press credentials under the Trump regime, and their correspondent is Lucian Wintrich, a self-confessed troll. Here’s something he tweeted recently:

They break into our country, steal resources, then do shit like this. And libs still wonder why we are pushing for immigration controls... pic.twitter.com/Y5ZSv9jkgo

— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) July 29, 2017

Here’s a screencap in case the original tweet and image get deleted, for perhaps-obvious reasons:

Screencap

(Click to open/close:) [−]

There’s just one problem – whilst I can’t find confirmation, the online consensus is that the three individuals in that photo aren’t Mexicans, but rather Native Americans, a group that for some reason isn’t happy with a monument blasted into their ancestral lands as a permanent reminder of the destruction of their peoples and ways of life at the hands of foreign invaders.

You’d think Wintrich would sympathize. Though to be fair, he probably thinks all brown-skinned people are the same.

(via RT by @pzmyers)

Democrats eager to sell their soul with anti-abortion candidates

Rep. Ben Luján (D-NM)

Ever on the lookout for a winning strategy to recoup their losses, the Democratic Party has thought up a novel approach to help them win more elections: the basic rights of half their voter base are now considered expendable.

Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party’s campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.

“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” said Luján, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”

And you’ll never guess what they think is be worth rejecting a core principle for – actually, I kid, you already know the answer.

Luján, serving his second term as the DCCC’s chairman, has cast a wide net for candidates. A map on his office wall highlights districts held by dozens of Republican that he hopes to oust in the 2018 midterm elections.

“To pick up 24 [seats] and get to 218, that is the job. We’ll need a broad coalition to get that done,” Luján said. “We are going to need all of that, we have to be a big family in order to win the House back.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have both argued against party litmus tests, saying there’s room for people with different opinions on abortion. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), another influential voice, has echoed that argument.

The Democrats had a choice: appeal to their base’s interests, push charismatic candidates that get voters motivated as Obama did in 2008, and go-all out on a progressivist, hard-Left offensive to counter the increasingly regressive and destructive Right … or jettison the concerns and needs of the majority of their base and focus instead on peddling lukewarm candidates who have no problem throwing long-time voters under the bus in their bid for elected office. Also known as doubling down on the same failed attitudes that landed them where they are now.

They seem to think they can sell their soul to the devil and come out victorious.

(via RT by @pzmyers)

This Week in Puppycide: 07/29/17 – The first of far too many

Kicking off the new weekly feature, because there’re too many to blog about individually.

• Houston, TX (July 20): Officer enters backyard without notice or apparent cause, shoots & kills defensive family dog … then cites owners for not immediately producing ownership and rabies records.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• Alliance, OH (July 21): Patrolling cop flagged to deal with three loose dogs, approaches them, gets chased by one dog whilst a second seemingly tries to distract the first. Cop ends up shooting the attacking dog dead after it tries to bite him. I’d prefer if he’d tried non-lethal means (baton, spray, Taser, etc.) first. He didn’t seem to have much of a plan in approaching the dogs, either.
  (via Puppycide Database Project | Facebook)

• Yorkville, IL (July 21): Loose husky wanders into off-duty cop’s yard during kid’s birthday party, reportedly “growling and showing its teeth”; cop tries to grab it, gets bitten. Off-duty corrections officer shoots dog in head. Owner cited with three violations.
  (via Puppycide Database Project | Facebook)

• Ocoee, FL (July 22): Cops arrive to warn homeowner about his unmoored boat, officer immediately shoots and kills aging family dog Duke as he approaches them. No indication of aggression; few details yet known.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

• AVERTED in Denison, TX (July 22): Cops respond to dog attack, remove animal non-lethally. No shots fired, no-one needlessly endangered. More like this, please.
  (via Dogs Shot by Police | Facebook)

Daily Links: 07/29/17 – Obamacare repeal’s true Republican opponents

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK, top) & Susan Collins (R-ME)

• Whilst Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) deserves credit for his swing vote, don’t forget the two Republican women, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) ^{[both pictured]}, who’ve opposed repealing Obamacare from the start despite physical threats from male colleagues.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• In the wake of the “skinny repeal” failure, Trump calls for the end of the Senate filibuster … even though it wouldn’t have saved the repeal bill.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• US Senate Appropriations Committee undermines AG Jeff Sessions’s pot crackdown by voting to protect medical marijuana.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Hungarian teenager finds ridiculous and obvious security flaw in Budapest transit authority website, contacts website owners directly to avoid embarrassing them. Owners have him arrested on accusations of hacking.

• Scientists find evidence indicating there might be large amounts of water trapped beneath the surface of the Moon.

• And finally, Arby’s shows how to be awesome at dealing with a Twitter troll. (Spoiler: It involves a puppy.)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Trump praises police brutality. Police audience cheers.

In a country where public trust in the police is disintegrating by the day – possibly related to all the highway robbery, casual slaughter of pets, needless militarization, SWAT-style drug raids (often at the wrong address), unarmed Blacks (and others) harassed and murdered in droves, and on and on – President Trump saw his recent speech to an audience of uniformed officers as an opportunity to remind them of their oath to uphold the law and protect their commun—

Sorry, can’t get through that with a straight face. He joked about police brutality and encouraged them to ramp it up. And the cops applauded him.

Police should treat the people they arrest violently, President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon, encouraging cops to get “rough” when they toss people into a police vehicle.

Trump offered the praise for flagrant retributive violence by uniformed law enforcers during a wide-ranging speech to cops in Brentwood, New York. Officers present laughed and applauded in response.

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddywagon, you just see ’em thrown in rough. I said please don’t be too nice,” the president said, to a murmur of chuckles.

“Like when you guys put somebody into the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand, like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody, don’t hit their head,” he went on. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

The police laughter grew louder, giving way to applause and cheers.

I don’t know which is worse: that the sitting president would make a joke of law enforcement officers abusing the public they serve, or those officers treating it as an applause line.

Wait, I do know which is worse. Trump’s just being his usual terrible self. Those cops are the ones who are expected to uphold the laws and civil liberties of the people they interact with every day. That near-standing ovation they just gave Trump makes it clear just how seriously they take those duties. They should all be sanctioned, if not fired – or at the very least, kicked back into remedial training. But as the universe insists on reminding me, we don’t live in a just world.

Daily Links: 07/28/17 – Senate “skinny repeal” fails, thanks to McCain

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

• House Trumpcare bill dies. Second House bill ignored by Senate. Senate bill dies. Senate repeal-and-replace bill dies. Senate repeal-only bill dies. And now, Senate “skinny repeal” bill dies – after John McCain (R-AZ) ^[pictured] casts the deciding “no” vote. It’s anyone’s guess what happens next.
  (via @fark)

• Amongst the people caught by surprise by Trump’s trans ban announcement: Military officials, trans soldiers, the rest of the country, and even his own party, many of whom are now backpedaling.
  (via @fark)

• Meanwhile, survey shows most Americans oppose Trump’s trans military ban, yet just last month only 23% were okay with trans troops serving openly. Seems Trump is so widely hated he’s pushing more people than ever in favor of civil rights. (That, or more people go against him just to spite him.)

• Pakistani man rapes a 12-year-old girl. In response, village elders order the girl’s brother to revenge-rape the attacker’s sister. Police eventually arrest the elders and the original rapist.

• Texas teens harassed by police for mowing grass whilst Black.
  (via AlterNet | Facebook)

• Deeply satisfying (and informative!): Alt-Right knucklehead scoffs at the idea that Roman Britain was ethnically diverse, gets schooled hard by a historian.
  (via Pharyngula)

• And finally, after trying everything they could to weasel out of it (and almost losing an $18 million tourism rebate), Ken Ham and Ark Encounter finally agree to pay their “safety fee” tax.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Most Republicans favor closing or fining media they don’t agree with

Conservatives are always up in arms about the importance of free speech and how those darned liberals are supposedly undermining it (by using their own free speech to criticize them). Yet a new poll suggests more than half of them would have no problem silencing or punishing the press for using speech they don’t like:

Almost half of Republicans say they are in favor of courts shutting down media outlets that publish inaccurate or biased information, according to a new survey.

Forty-five percent of Republicans in the Economist–YouGov poll said courts should be able to shut down media outlets, while 20 percent of Republicans are opposed the idea.

[…]

A majority of Republicans also said they support fines for media outlets that put out biased or inaccurate news reports.

Fifty-five percent of Republicans said they would favor fining news outlets, compared to just 12 percent who opposed the move.

Alternate headline: Half of Republicans don’t understand the First Amendment. Or maybe they think it would be improved by cutting out that bit about a “free press”.

Before you start yelling at them, though, there’s also this:

Just 18 percent of Democrats said they would favor [shutting down media outlets for “bias”], while 39 percent of them are opposed to it.

That 39% is a chillingly low number. Subtracting the openly censorious 18%, that leaves 63% of Democrats who apparently can’t decide whether or not government censorship of the media is a bad thing. That’s a lot of Dems who don’t understand the First Amendment much better than most Republicans do.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Facebook bigot uses tired excuses to defend Trump’s trans ban

Tomi Lahren is something of a star on the far-Right, and for the reasons you’d expect: she’s a diehard Trump-defender who takes the Fox News brand of hyper-partisan conspiracy-mongering and cranks the assholery up to eleven. She previously held a job at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze before they canned her for her pro-choice views, and she’s now found a home for her perpetually outraged videos on Facebook. She’s also on Twitter, where she left this reaction to Trump’s recently announced ban of trans troops:

Pres Trump dedicated to putting radical Muslims in graves whereas Pres Obama was dedicated to putting men in the ladies room. #MAGA

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) July 26, 2017

There’s so much wrong here it’s almost a wonder to behold. President Obama ramped up the killing of “terrorists” (confirmed and otherwise) so high that even Breitbart took notice. Meanwhile, the only people Trump’s putting in graves (other than his own citizens, if his plan to repeal Obamacare were to go through) are foreign civilians – but they’ve got brown skin and funny-sounding names, so far be it from anyone on the alt-Right, Lahren included, to care. Ignoring it makes it easier for her to set up her bigoted swipe at the last decent president’s efforts to promote equality amongst his people – another thing Lahren and her fellow deplorables give no damns about.

But really, the award for best take has to go to J.K. Rowling:

Daily Links: 07/27/17 – US Senate kills “repeal-only” healthcare bill

• Despite yesterday’s blind vote, US Senate still rejects Republicans’ monstrous “repeal-only” healthcare bill. And now they need to lose their jobs.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Germany passes law enabling police to use “state trojans” to hack into people’s phones and spy on their communications and other data – for everything from suspected terrorism to drugs and sports betting fraud.

• Republican efforts to push anti-trans “bathroom bills” continue, this time in the Texas Senate.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Google goes to US court to fight Canadian Supreme Court decision to censor search results globally. I hope they win. Allowing any country to dictate what information people in other countries may access is a terrible precedent.
  (via @cancivlib)

• White supremacists & alt-Rightists are rejoicing that Trump & co. are giving them “room to destroy” by backing off from domestic terrorism investigations. There is so very much wrong with this.
  (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)

• And finally, the US Government Accountability Office can’t find any actual scientific evidence to support the TSA’s “Behavioral Detection” program.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Portugal’s drug decriminalization experiment in one chart

In 2001, Portugal took a bold new direction in their fight against the drug epidemic: decriminalizing it all, refocusing their efforts on rehabilitating addicts rather than treating them as criminals. Over a decade later, the results speak for themselves:

Meanwhile, the top law enforcement official in the United States wants to jump-start the Drug War by bringing back long-failed policies and cracking down on pot users.

What a contrast.

(via @ggreenwald)

Trump (on Twitter) bans trans personnel from US Military

Welcome to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell 2.0: Trans Edition.

President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States will no longer “accept or allow” transgender people in the United States military, saying American forces “must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory” and could not afford to accommodate them.

Mr. Trump made the surprise declaration in a series of posts on Twitter, saying he had come to the decision after talking to generals and military experts, whom he did not name.

[…]

The sweeping policy decision was met with surprise at the Pentagon, outrage from advocacy groups and praise from social conservatives. It reverses the gradual transformation of the military under President Barack Obama, whose administration announced last year that transgender people could serve openly in the military. Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, also opened all combat roles to women and appointed the first openly gay Army secretary.

As typical of Trump’s Twitter decrees, the affair is an unmitigated debacle. US Military officials hadn’t even heard of the policy change before Trump splattered it over social media; he took so long between tweets that the Pentagon briefly wondered whether he was announcing plans to attack North Korea.

Surveys estimate anywhere from around 4,000 to 15,000 trans troops are currently in the US Military on active duty and in the reserves (no definitive study has yet been conducted) – possibly as many as a fifth of all trans Americans have served at one point in their lives, twice the rate of the general population. Thousands of upstanding troops have just learned from Twitter that their futures have just been upended, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with their capacity to serve and much more to do with the Trump camp pushing their agenda and hoping to screw with Democrats.

Climate-denying head of House science committee writes about “benefits” of global warming

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), noted climate change denialist, is the Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which has gone straight to hell in a handbasket under Republican rule (apparently a precursor to the rest of the government). The one thing he’s consistent on is his staunch opposition to anything climate-science-related, because the petroleum lobby’s dollars don’t allow him to accept basic science and admit that global warming exists.

Unless it does exist and it’s actually good for us, apparently. IFLScience dissects an article he wrote for a Heritage Foundation mouthpiece:

The Republican lawmaker has received over $700,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, so his stance is not surprising. And neither is the publication. The editorial was published on the Daily Signal, a little-known blog funded by the big-oil-backed Heritage Foundation.

“The benefits of a changing climate are often ignored and under-researched,” Smith writes. “Our climate is too complex and the consequences of misguided policies too harsh to discount the positive effects of carbon enrichment.”

“Carbon enrichment”. That’s what deniers call pumping billions of tons of pollution into the atmosphere now? And never mind how Smith is the last person on Earth who should be talking about “misguided policies”.

He goes on to add that a higher concentration of carbon dioxide could aid photosynthesis and increase plant growth. This, he said, could correlate with a “greater volume of food production and better quality food.”

I see his logic: plants breathe CO₂, therefore more CO₂ = happier plants. Plants also need water; maybe we should dunk them into a lake to “increase plant growth”. And they like warmth and light, too, so let’s put them in a furnace – doesn’t get brighter and warmer than that. I predict we’ll have bumper crops every year. World hunger = solved.

Smith continues: “Also, as the Earth warms, WE are seeing beneficial changes to the earth’s geography. For instance, Arctic sea ice is decreasing. This development will create new commercial shipping lanes that provide faster, more convenient, and less costly routes between ports in Asia, Europe, and eastern North America.”

Except the reality is that the impassably solid sheet of ice that previously blocked Arctic routes is now turning into impassably hazardous chunks of ice that drift further south every year as the ocean warms up. Sending more ships up north, at least for the time being, is just a recipe for creating more Titanics.

The IFLScience piece goes to some length detailing how and why Smith is wrong on every count, so check it out.

Rep. Lamar Smith: For global warming after he was against it(s existence).

Hannity calls for more online harassment of journalists

Sean Hannity

Fox News’s Trump-defender-in-chief, Sean Hannity, wants the “fake news industry” – by which he means all those actual journalists who won’t let him into their clubhouse – to know that the 36% of Americans who are still on the Trump train are very angry at them for being so mean and unfair to Hair Furor, by quoting him verbatim and pointing out that he’s provably wrong about virtually everything. And he’s directing Trumpkins to get noisy about it (well, noisier):

Members of the Trump administration, they're beginning to shine a bright light on these dark corners of this fake news industry, and now thanks to social media, you can too.

[…]

I'm not encouraging you to get in your neighbor's face like former President Obama did, liberals would say I'm calling for violence. But you can call out fake news right at the source. For example, you can tell fake news Jake Tapper exactly what you think of his interview with Anthony Scaramucci, you can do it on twitter. Or you can message Brian Stelter humpty-dumpty, Jeff Zucker's stenographer about his Russia, Russia, Russia obsession and lack of desire to be fair and balanced and point out Hillary, Uranium One, and felonies she committed. And of course you've got liberal Joe, calling the president a schmuck, a goon, a thug and mentally unhinged. Great job, NBC. And if you don't think those remarks are appropriate, just send him a tweet. And over there of course you have Mika helping out, the overtop feigning outrage everyday, her disgusting treatment of Kellyanne Conway, very despicable. You want to take it to the next level? Write a message to their bosses, send a tweet over to Zucker over at fake news CNN or Andy Lack from NBC fake news. Right now the media is living in their little bubble. It is our job to remind them that there is an America way outside of New York, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Tonight, technology is now making it possible for you to take your point of view directly to the source and show America's elites that the forgotten men and forgotten women of this country voted for this agenda and they want it completed and for them to stop lying to you. Take to the social media, and I think you're going to have a positive impact.

I have a more realistic view of what kind of impact Hannity’s plan will have: a lot more Trumpkins will be added to a lot more people’s block and mute lists, frothing inconsequentially at people who’ll never hear them and wouldn’t care if they did.

The media will continue examining and debunking everything Trump and his incompetent entourage do, because that’s their job.

And Hannity will continue to attack them for exposing his team’s lies, because that’s his job.

Florida loses $1.1M over law banning doctors from discussing guns

In 2011, Florida’s legislature and Governor Rick Scott (R) rammed through a ludicrous law that prevented doctors from talking about gun ownership with patients, presumably because the NRA got mad that people whose job it is to save lives tend to question the wisdom of allowing every yokel to run around with a deadly weapon. Under the law, docs risked losing their licenses and getting hit with fines of up to $10,000 for every mention that a patient might not be using their guns safely.

Thankfully, the courts overturned the law in February, and now Florida taxpayers have to shell out $1.1 million in legal fees over the debacle:

Florida has agreed to pay $1.1 million in legal fees to lawyers who sued the state over a 2011 law that barred doctors from talking to patients about gun ownership, according to a gun control organization involved in the case.

The organization, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said Gov. Rick Scott of Florida had approved the reimbursement to lawyers who represented doctors and medical organizations in the case, which came to be known as “Docs v. Glocks.” In February, a federal appeals court overturned the law, siding with medical providers over the state’s powerful gun lobby.

“Florida taxpayers just paid $1.1 million because of the gun industry’s unconstitutional, antitruth agenda designed to increase gun sales at any cost — including children’s lives,” Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Center, said in a statement on Sunday. “Physicians have a critical role to play in preventing these deaths by talking to patients about the true dangers of guns in the home.”

Since people choose to put up with the constant gun-related loss of lives without doing anything about it (voting out gun-shilling politicians, for instance), perhaps the loss of their money will motivate them instead.

Oh, who am I kidding. If nothing changed after Sandy Hook, nothing ever will.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Daily Links: 07/25/17 – NHS axes prescriptions for homeopathy

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ)

Quick change: I’m moving puppycide reports to their own weekly post, since they’re cluttering up my Daily Links with their frequency. Which is depressing, when you think about it.

• England’s National Health Service plans to do away with prescriptions for homeopathy and other “low value” treatments. What took them so long?
  (via Friendly Atheist)

• “What you have here is a conservative group suing a conservative Justice Department for ignoring a FOIA request concerning a conservative House chairman’s efforts to kneecap FOIA.”
  (via @fark)

• Color me pleasantly surprised: Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) ^[pictured] does a good thing, signs a bill to protect the rights of trans students in public schools.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Texas to man: You owe your ex $65,000 in back child support. Man: This DNA test says the kid isn’t mine. Texas: Pay up anyway or go to jail.
  (via @fark)

• It’s like Cracked.com is aiming to become social justice central. I like it.

• Ken Ham’s Tax-Avoiding Ark Ride continues: Creationists sell Ark Encounter (again) to themselves (again) for $10 (again) so that it’ll be eligible for an $18 million tax rebate (again).

• China finds a novel use for pervasive surveillance: help impoverished school students with discreet supplemental financial assistance. And now I’m conflicted.

• And finally: What’s that? You don’t want to hear terrible White-boy rap from a flat-Earther? Well here you go anyway:
  (via Friendly Atheist)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

We need local variations of this sign

As seen in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota:

I suggest starting a mass run, only with a blank space for people to write in their own cities’ names.

For added accuracy, they should also add a dog.

(via Pharyngula)

Chinese region forces residents to install spyware on phones, wants to “register and scan” all devices

Xinjiang police checking residents’ phones for spyware

Well, this is horrifying. Whilst Westerners are trying to shine light on their governments’ backroom efforts to snoop on their activities and communications, officials in one part of China have decided to do away with any pretense and are openly forcing residents to install spyware on their phones under penalty of imprisonment:

On July 10, mobile phone users in the Tianshan District of Urumqi City received a mobile phone notification from the district government instructing them to install a surveillance application called Jingwang (or “Web Cleansing”). The message said the app was intended to “prevent [them] from accessing terrorist information.”

But authorities may be using the app for more than just counter-terrorism. According to an exclusive report from Radio Free Asia, 10 Kazakh women from Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture were arrested for messages sent to a private WeChat group chat soon after they installed the app.

The notification from police said the application would locate and track the sources and distribution paths of terrorists, along with “illegal religious” activity and “harmful information,” including videos, images, ebooks and documents.

Jingwang's website describes the application as follows:

[…]

Jingwang is a protection service with an adult and child categorization system introduced by Jiangsu Telecom. The main function is to block pornographic websites, online scams, trojan horses, and phishing sites; to alert users of how much time they spend online; and to enable remote control of one's home network. The tool is intended to help kids develop a healthy lifestyle by building a safe web filter for the minors.

I’m struggling to imagine a more blatant move to impose total government control on the lives of its citizens. And it only gets creepier, as anyone who might try to opt out of being cyber-nannied will quickly find out they can’t:

A Twitter-based media outlet, “Images from mainland China” (即时中国大陆映像), which covers censored news in China, posted photos taken from a checkpoint where police officers randomly checked residents to see if they have installed the surveillance app:

[…]

Authorities from Xinjiang are checking to make sure that people are using the official Jingwang application. A mobile notification demanded people install the app within 10 days. If they are caught at a checkpoint and their devices do not have the software, they could be detained for 10 days.

At least government snoops in the Americas and Europe still have the decency to act like the shady moral (and often legal) criminals they are, running their privacy-violating tricks behind everyone’s backs, thus allowing for some plausible deniability, no matter how transparent. On the other hand, it’s almost refreshing to see a government that completely gives up on pretending to care about civil liberties. Almost.

This renewed push for control isn’t limited to people’s smartphones, either:

A recent report from Freedom House, a US-based human rights group, also touched on the new surveillance practices:

In Xinjiang, authorities in a district of the regional capital Urumqi issued a notice on June 27 instructing all residents and business owners to submit their “personal ID cards, cell phones, external drives, portable hard drives, notebook computers, and media storage cards” to the local police post for “registration and scanning” by August 1.

Big Brother is coming to China even faster and more openly than usual. Then again, situations like this are the very reason projects like Tor exist and thrive in places like China.

(via Privacy News Online)

This depiction of the Democrat strategy seems a little too accurate

If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect cartoonist Matt Lubchansky has been eavesdropping on the Democratic Party, since his is pretty much how they’re behaving:

“The Polls Are In!” by Matt Lubchansky

Transcript:

(Click to open/close:) [−]

PANEL 1 —

MAN #1: [holding up “POLLS” notebook] Good news, everyone! Trump’s six-month approval rating is the lowest since the invention of polling!

PANEL 2 —

[Man #1 and Woman #1 are jumping with joy.]

MAN #1: 2018 and 2020 are in the bag. Next stop: Democratic landslide, baby!!!!

WOMAN #2: [reading “POLLS” notebook] Wait. What’s this?

PANEL 3 —

WOMAN #2: “Fewer than four in ten say the Democratic Party currently stands for something.” Huh. Seems like something to work on.

PANEL 4 —

MAN #1: [dressed in beach-wear] Wow. Now is not the time for your ideological purity tests! I’m taking a half-day.

The Democrats’ strategy so far has been to oppose Trump and little else. It’s therefore not that surprising that they’ve lost every election since Trump came into office. But hey, I’m sure that trend will reverse itself come the 2018 midterms without a need for any real soul-searching. After all, trying the same strategy over and over again and expecting different results each time is how things eventually work out, right?

I mean, why bother trying to tap into the passions of your largest voter base – the true Left – if you can just court the rural White vote and and try to seduce disgruntled Republicans and any other groups that don’t share your ideals and priorities instead.

(via Pharyngula)

Kim Davis costs Kentucky taxpayers over $220,000 in legal fees

Kim Davis

Once again, the actions of a brave Christian warrior, lionized by the religious-Right for taking a stand against the Gay Agenda (and, incidentally, the US Government), have led to a highly predictable defeat. And as usual, it’s the taxpaying citizens who are footing the bill:

A federal judge has ordered Kentucky taxpayers to pay more than $220,000 in legal fees because a county clerk refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning on Friday ordered the state to pay $222,695 in fees to the attorneys of two same-sex couples and others who sued Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis for refusing to give them marriage licenses. He also awarded $2,008.08 in other costs. Bunning said the county and Davis herself did not have to pay.

“Davis represented the Commonwealth of Kentucky when she refused to issue marriage licenses to legally eligible couples. The buck stops there,” Bunning wrote.

Not content with merely screwing the state out of nearly a quarter-million dollars, Davis and Liberty Council’s Mat Staver, possibly the least competent attorney in the country (aside Larry Klayman and Orly Taitz, anyway), plan to keep pushing their hopeless case onward:

But Davis’ attorney said she will appeal the ruling anyway. The judge ruled Davis lost the case. Attorney Mat Staver said they did not lose. He said the case was dismissed as moot after the state legislature changed the law in 2016 to remove the names of county clerks from marriage licenses.

I have a pro tip for you, Mr. Attorney Man: If a federal judge says you lost the case and orders you to pay up almost $225 grand in legal fees to the other side, you lost the case. The details of how you lost don’t much matter, nor do they change the fact that you lost. But then, we really shouldn’t expect something so complicated as “did he win or lose” to be understood by a man whom even Fox News thinks is “ridiculously stupid”.

I really don’t understand why some religious-conservatives think they can just refuse to obey the law whenever it goes against their beliefs. It never ends well for them. If they really had God on their side, you’d think they would win once in a while, rather than pose a constant and costly embarrassment to their supporters and countryfolk.

The rest of us don’t have the luxury of ignoring laws that inconvenience us, and neither do anti-gay Christians. It’s anyone’s guess how many more ruinously expensive courtroom losses it’ll take for the lesson to sink in. By the looks of the promised appeal, they clearly haven’t learned anything yet.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Washington county: Christian pregnancy centers must put up “not a health care facility” signs

“Crisis pregnancy centers” have been getting a bad rap lately. To be fair, that’s because they’re abject cons by religious groups who try to lure pregnant women under the guise of being legitimate medical clinics and then pump them full of anti-abortion fearmongering. Just lately we’ve seen centers in Illinois sue over a new requirement that physicians inform pregnant patients of all available options, including abortion, whilst an Alabama “pregnancy counselor” attacked a 12-year-old rape victim over a court’s decision to allow her to terminate her pregnancy. Their quality as people is about on par with their qualifications as doctors.

So if states can’t shut these frauds down, the least they can do is try to warn would-be patients about what these “clinics” really are – or aren’t. To that end, officials in King County, Washington have implemented a new rule:

Facilities commonly referred to as “crisis pregnancy centers,” many of which are faith-based, will be required to post a sign telling patients they are not health-care facilities, under a new rule approved Thursday by the King County Board of Health.

After emotional public testimony, mostly against the signs, nine of 10 board members voted for the rule saying their action was meant to bring transparency and accurate information to pregnant women. […]

[Councilwoman M. Lorena] González said the rule aims to ensure that women are not deceived by health care information given by people who are not qualified to dispense it.

The new rule requires that the pregnancy centers, also known as limited-service pregnancy centers, post a sign saying, “This facility is not a health care facility.” That sentence must be posted in 10 languages, including English, with all of the languages in 48-point type size.

This will apply to the eight “pregnancy centers” currently operating in the county. Failure to comply will cost $100 per day.

Note that the rule doesn’t shut the clinics down, nor even force their staff to seek actual medical training if they want to pose as doctors. It simply informs anyone visiting these clinics that they are not, in fact, medical centers. It literally just forces them to tell the truth … no matter how anathema that is to their very nature.

And their supporters aren’t happy about it.

“They did tell me about all options available,” said Jessica Johnson of Seattle[.] “Everyone knows where you can go if you want an abortion[.]”

[Dissenting councilwoman Kathy] Lambert offered similar reasoning for her dissent, saying an internet search will provide options for contraception and abortions.

Except that’s not how it works. Your doctor is the one who’s supposed to give you the right medical advice and inform you of all possible treatments. If you have to go home and Google your options afterwards, your doctor isn’t doing their damn job. Yet that’s exactly what these people are defending. It’s transparently mendacious.

Another supporter added this:

Jonny Nicoli, a supporter of the centers, scoffed at the idea that the rule just required signs. “That’s the same way a powerful government oppressed the Jewish population, by putting up signs,” he said.

Those poor, oppressed anti-abortionists. Forcing them to tell the truth about their lack of medical credentials is just the first step towards rounding them up, forcing them into ghettos and eventually and putting them on trains. Just you watch.

Actually, all you’ll learn from watching them operate is that they can spend years lying blithely to their patients with few to no consequences. Even this rule doesn’t penalize them for shoveling bullshit – it just warns anyone entering those clinics that they should have a wheelbarrow handy.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Christian university chooses LGBTQ student group over $3M donation

Samford Together logo

Well, this is interesting. A few days ago I heard about a Christian university that faced the choice of accepting a large donation from a Baptist convention that wanted the school to shut down its LGBTQ student group, or standing by their students and turning the money down. I thought it was obvious how that would go. Well, the decision is in and I was wrong:

An American university has rejected $3m (£2.3m) funding from a Christian organisation that demanded it shut down an LGBT students' group.

Samford University, a Christian institution founded by Alabama Baptists, declined a donation offered by state churches on the condition the group was stopped from forming.

Earlier this year, students applied for permission to form Samford Together to provide "a forum for students who want to discuss topics relating to sexual orientation and gender identity...[in] an open-minded and accepting environment".

The university's faculty approved the group in April, although it has yet to be formally recognised by Samford's board of trustees.

Following the faculty's vote, Alabama Baptist Convention - an association of the state's churches - said it was "saddened" that the university had "voted to affirm the recognition of a student group that identifies with values contrary to biblical teachings on sexuality".

Surprising news, at least to me. Religious schools aren’t typically known for doing right by their LGBTQ students. Note that Samford still hasn’t granted their LGBTQ group full recognition, which would be less odd if they hadn’t just rejected $3 million in order to protect them. Why turn down that much money for a group they aren’t willing to officially recognize?

Nonetheless, once enough time passes and it becomes evident God won’t smite the school for defending their minority students’ right to exist, maybe they’ll serve as inspiration for other religious institutions across the US to do the same. Baby steps.

(via @fark)

Daily Links: 07/22/17 – Puppycide and schadenfreude edition

[full size (800×500)]

• Puppycide in Wichita, KS: Cops investigating a burglary report check out a back alley, shoot & kill family dog after it pushes through a fence. Witness says dog was friendly and not dangerous.
  (via @PuppycideDB)

• Puppycide in Central Point, OR: Cop driving home spots man running from dog, then pit bull arrives and bites cop’s leg. Officer shoots dog in the head; no indication he tried to use baton, mace or other non-lethal means. No further details known.
  (via @PuppycideDB)

• Justice is schadenfreudelicious: Creationists behind Ark Encounter ^[pictured] boondoggle lose $18 million in tax rebates over the next decade after trying to scam their way out of $7 million in safety fees over that same period.

• US Government Accountability Office sets up fake police agency in sting operation to trick Defense Department into giving them military-grade equipment. There’s no way it’ll – oh, look, they received $1.2 million’s worth of weapons in less than a week.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Media Research Center, two weeks ago: We present the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence to Sean Hannity! MRC today: Whoops, takesie-backsies ^{[auto-play video warning]}.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Oh, look, it’s another family-values religious leader caught hiring prostitutes.

• And finally, religious-Right leader proclaims that LGBTQ-friendly PM Justin Trudeau is a sign that “Canada is under the judgement of God”. So I guess we’re doing pretty good.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tucker Carlson gets schooled by Satanist

Here’s a guilty pleasure: watching a smug Fox News host flail aimlessly when his woefully unprepared attack against the co-founder of The Satanic Temple backfires in his face.

I haven’t watched the whole thing as there’s only so much of Carlson’s permanently baffled face that I can take in one sitting, but it’s pretty entertaining to watch him founder on his own TV show when confronted with someone clearly smarter and more reasonable than he is. His lack of even basic research into the Temple is particularly damning, as is his hypocrisy in claiming to protect free speech whilst clearly favoring Christian expression over the Satanists’.

More details, including a partial transcript and the Satanist’s reaction to the interview, over at Friendly Atheist.

Alabama lawyer and “pregnancy counselor” attack child rape victim who’s allowed to abort pregnancy

Win Johnson (top) and Lorie Mullins

This may be the ugliest display of anti-abortion fanaticism I’ve yet seen from public officials. An Alabama court recently ruled that a 12-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by a family member could terminate the pregnancy without parental consent; the waiver was required since the girl and her siblings were removed from their parents’ home. That’s all well and good.

Except for the reaction from a former court official and a pregnancy counselor (of all people), who had this to say about the (thankfully unnamed) child victim:

Win Johnson, who was legal director for the Administrative Office of Courts under former Chief Justice Roy Moore, and Lorie Mullins, executive director of COPE Pregnancy Center in Montgomery, held a news conference today at the state judicial building.

[…]

He said it's stunning that courts would issue an opinion saying that a 12-year-old "was mature enough -- and I'm going to put this in its starkest terms -- to decide to murder her own child in her womb."

"Now, nobody has said that to her, I bet you, in any of her counseling," Johnson said. "Nobody has explained that to her in its starkest, rawest form, like that. But what if it was, what if she really thought through it, even as a 12-year-old and said, 'Gosh, I don't want that on my conscience.' "

I honestly don’t know how to react beyond visceral disgust. That anyone can become so twisted by ideology, so blind to the suffering of others, that they feel compelled to publicly scorn a fucking child rape victim over her decision not to have her life ruined by an unwanted pregnancy … I can’t imagine any clearer sign of the anti-abortionist disconnect between belief and reality. They’re too obsessed with protecting blastocysts and fetuses and other insensate lumps of cells to give a damn about the real and present physical and psychological harms that might arise from forcing a child to carry a pregnancy (from rape or otherwise) to term.

Daily Links: 07/21/17 – Oregon removes kids from parents with low IQ

Eric Ziegler (left) & Amy Fabbrini

• Oregon officials take couple’s ^[pictured] children away and put them up for adoption after declaring the parents’ IQ is too low; there are no reports of neglect or abuse. I have no words.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Iowa prosecutor magnanimously agrees not to ruin a 14-year-old’s life by putting her on the sex offender registry for sexting.
  (via RT by @radleybalko)

• Good write-up on AG Jeff Sessions’s wish to bring back decades’ worth of failed Drug War policies, including the useless-at-best DARE program.

• New York City evidently has run out of serious crime, since it’s now cracking down on people who watch other people’s pets for money.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Perpetually butthurt Todd Starnes joins other butthurt prudes in attacking Teen Vogue over its article on practicing safe butt sex.

• Two cases: A White cop shot and killed a Black teenager, and a Black cop shot and killed a White woman. Guess which story (and the nationality of the shooter) Fox News focused on.

• James Woods: Conservative actor, litigious asshole and weapons-grade hypocrite.

• And finally, it’s Big Bigot Ken’s Big Gay Boat Ride^*:

[full size (568×582)]

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

* For the uninitiated.