It's been a while...

Hi. This is the first time that I've posted anything on this blog for nearly six months, and the reason for that is simple:

A lot of shit has happened. A lot.

If you look at the current situation in Ukraine or the hearings on the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 that are going on right now, news events have effectively been an avalanche over the last few months, and they distracted me to the point where I decided not to write anything here because there was just too damn much of it. I'm finally getting around to it now because a friend pointed out that it had been nearly half a year ago when I last posted. Again, it was due to a shitstorm of news that caused me to even feel buried by it at times. I'm sure any number of people - if not a majority - feel the same way.

All that being said, I'm posting this to say that I'm back. I'll probably be posting shorter entries like I did when I first got an account on LiveJournal years ago, but there will be longer pieces from time to time as well. The simple fact is that a blog is only good when it stays updated, and it's about time that I revived this blog and its mirror site. So I have.

Here's hoping that I can keep doing it for a good, long time.

Idiot, Uninterrupted: The Sequel

And so The Donald walked back his bizarre assertions about Russia's innocence in hacking the DNC in 2016.

Oh, wait. He didn't. Or did he? It's getting harder and harder to tell, since President Unintelligible believes that any answer he gives will always be the right one, no matter how much it contradicts previous ones.

Meanwhile, fear the deadly threat that is...Montenegro. All 600,000+ of 'em. Maybe they'll invade Milwaukee or some other city equivalent to their gigantic population.

Idiot, Uninterrupted

So you were one of the people who thought that the Federal indictment against 12 Russian GRU agents would actually convince one Donald J. Trump that being more assertive in his upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin was a good idea, right?

Guess again.

What's actually shocking about all of this (other than Trump's sniveling, conspiracy-mongering performance at that post-meeting press conference) is that Trump is now - and deservedly so - getting dogpiled on by seemingly everyone, including high-ranking members of his own party who weren't joining in on the fun previously. Even more shocking is that commentators on Fox News went after him despite the fact that most of their broadcasts fed the very large rodents running amok in his imagination. As you might guess, it was only the complete lunatics and/or self-serving demagogues who decided not to join in, including repulsive tragedy ghoul and all-around blithering dipshit Alex Jones. Then again, if Jones hadn't responded to a Putin dog whistle about George Soros positively I'd be astounded to the point where I'd be checking my pulse.

Equally astounding was President Unintelligible's complete lack of a handle on outward reality during this burning Hindenburg of a presser. You would think - or at least hope - that he'd lay off the conspiracy theory sauce for half a minute, but of course not. All in the service of improving relations with Russia, of course, although Charles P. Pierce pointed out why that really isn't much of a good thing, if at all:

Compared to the president* on Monday, Neville Chamberlain was Conan the Barbarian. In an unprecedented exercise in national self-abasement, the president* threw the American system of justice, the credibility of the intelligence community, and both Robert Mueller and Hillary Clinton into the woodchipper in order to keep faith with a former KGB thug who leads a failing kleptocracy who, just as an added fillip, and right at the end of their mutually disgraceful fandango, issued a non-denial denial of whether or not his government has compromising material on the president*. He's a laff riot, is our Vlad.

They're both cutups. Top rate comedians, in fact.

Too bad the joke is on everybody else.

Repulsive

...is exactly what you can call this new Federal policy towards certain classes of Asylum seekers:

The policy (US Attorney General) Jeff Sessions took aim at lies at the heart of an area of immigration law that has been hotly contested over the past two decades. During that time, advocates for victims of domestic violence have succeeded in winning cases that liberalized the law to protect victims of abuse or extortion whose home governments couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them. Many of the immigrants granted asylum as a result were fleeing Central American nations that offer little protection to victims of domestic abuse and gangs.

The government does not appear to keep statistics on exactly how many asylum claims fall into the categories Sessions is now excluding, but advocates estimate that domestic violence victims seeking asylum number in the tens of thousands each year. A large share of those requests have been successful, as a result of several administrative rulings and court cases during the Obama administration.

“There are many, many Central American women and women from other parts of the world who have been able to obtain protection,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “Many women sitting right now in detention under these claims might lose their right to obtain protection and be deported to dangerous situations.”

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees had urged Sessions against changing the asylum rules. It warned that such action would violate international agreements the U.S. has entered into concerned refugees and would subject victims to being returned to situations where their lives are in danger. The American Bar Assn. warned that ending the asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence “would further victimize those most in need of protection.”

So, yeah, trouble all around: both for former (and, to be perfectly blunt about it, possible future) victims affected by this policy change, but also in terms of our living up to those inconvenient little things called "international agreements" as well. And a humanitarian one that most sane people wouldn't argue with in the first place, to boot.

Then again, international agreements? Even among formerly close allies? Who the hell needs those these days?

Mother Russia, abusive parent

The correlation you can draw between the attempted assassination of yet another pair of Russian expatriates (in this case, former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia) and this ill-disguised threat on Russian state television is quite a simple one: cross Vladimir Putin and you'll end up dead.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, a certain other demagogic politician possessing a good deal less intelligence than Czar Vladimir apparently continues to believe that his good buddy would never, ever attempt to interfere with American elections. At least that's what this unspent $120 million intended to prevent such interference in the future seems to indicate.

Worst. Facepalm. Ever.

Considering who actually did it and why, that is.

Is it too early to consider future plans for a bomb shelter, yet?

Oh Noes!

I now haz a Dreamwidth account.

As to why, here it is in a nutshell:

LiveJournal was bought by the Russian company SUP Media in 2007, but the servers themselves weren’t relocated to Russia until December of 2016. The new Terms of Service (TOS) agreement bans “political solicitation” and requires that any content which is considered “inappropriate for children according to Russian law” be marked as adult/18+ content. Given Russia’s attitudes toward LGBTQIA content, this likely means any queer content must be marked as 18+. Some users have argued that the new terms could even constitute an outright ban on LGBTQIA content.

In addition, any LiveJournal blog which receives more than 3,000 viewers in a 24-hour period must register as a media outlet; this places that blog’s content under even further content restrictions. Critics of the new policy further worry that LiveJournal’s compliance efforts will expose users to the Russian police force’s invasive web monitoring.
Uh, no. Afraid not. Thanks, but I'll pass.

4.444

...is the grand total of sexual abuse incidents lodged against the Roman Catholic Church in Australia between 1980 and 2015. If only a quarter of those allegations are true, that's sickening beyond belief.

But I'm sure Bill Donohue will have his usual red-faced, angry excuses all lined up - if he even bothers to bring any of this up, that is.