I think he’s lonely.
Category: rants
ruby’s rants & randomness
If you’re not outraged, you’re not reading my blog.
Civil rights and racial justice are gun safety issues
One of my many brilliant MomsRising colleagues wrote this piece which ties together the threads of surging racism and gun violence in this Trumpist era. She makes it clear why an intersectional approach that encompasses multiple issues at once is required for gun safety advocates to effectively fight the NRA, who works for gun manufacturers and now for the President.
By advocating not only for gun safety but civil rights and racial justice, the GVP community will find the voice it needs to engage immigrants and let them know that smarter gun laws would help make their communities safer, and it will finally show the Black and Brown communities that GVP truly is about saving lives and not just about controlling firearms. The Trump Presidency is an opportunity to build these bridges and finally achieve the broad, diverse coalition gun safety advocates need when the balance of power in Washington finally changes and the chance arrives for true gun policy reform.
– Civil Rights Is Now a Gun Safety Issue: Hate and Guns in Trump’s America, by Gloria Pan 3/03/2017
The TrumPutin timeline
This is all public information, fully sourced. Can we please stop acting like we don’t know what’s up? https://www.sutori.com/story/trumputin
Stop allowing a greedy, childish, narcissistic loser’s pathological lies to control the news cycle
The media is still continuing the same behavior that normalized Trump and allowed him to walk right into office with less qualifications than a 9th grade class president. They are helping Trump block out rational conversation about real issues by treating his insane tweets as real news. Yesterday they spent all day talking about his crazy “wire tapping” story! (It’s either totally invented or proof that a court found reasonable suspicion of him last year. If the latter, let’s talk about the many suspicious ties to Russia.)
Stop reading his tweets. Stop sharing his tweets, even to criticize them. Stop treating them like they matter or like he matters. He is an unhinged loser and a complete puppet of the White supremacist Steve Bannon. Stop acting like his childish rants are the most important news of the day.
Great reminder from my favorite cognitive linguist George Lakoff:
Republicans hate democracy, part eleventy million and one
They have tried criminalizing dissent in several other states, and now this “economic terrorism” bill filed today in North Carolina shows once again that Republicans value money and power more than civil rights, the Constitution, or democracy itself.
What would the founders say? What would Martin Luther King say?
AN ACT TO CREATE THE CRIMINAL OFFENSE OF ECONOMIC TERRORISM, TO ESTABLISH CIVIL LIABILITY FOR ECONOMIC TERRORISM, TO CREATE A DUTY FOR A RESPONSIBLE PUBLIC OFFICIAL TO TAKE ACTION TO CLEAR TRAFFIC OBSTRUCTIONS RESULTING FROM UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES, TO INCREASE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR OBSTRUCTING TRAFFIC WHILE PARTICIPATING IN UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES, AND TO PROVIDE CIVIL LIABILITY FOR THE COSTS OF RESPONDING TO TRAFFIC OBSTRUCTIONS AND CERTAIN OTHER UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES.
Read it at http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2017/Bills/House/PDF/H249v0.pdf
Don’t Get Played
Last night, US president Donald Trump gave what was, by the eroded current standards of American political discourse, a very good speech. It was a very good speech full of very big lies and very cruel policies disguised as empathy.
Read: Donald Trump’s joint session address played nice for a night in front of Congress—and used a technique straight out of the autocrat’s playbook by Sarah Kenzdior on Quartz
Image credit: http://globalslant.com/2016/12/jack-dorsey-donald-trump-bad-for-americer/
Remember the future
Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen is an absolute must-read. I’ve been coming back to it every few weeks to regain my bearing.
In the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.
No more innocent liberal surprise.
Friends, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump’s seemingly random and ill-informed actions are not part of President Bannon’s strategy.
They’ll bleed the public of money, culture, education, health, and community. They’ll sow chaos and violence. And they’ll beef up institutions that can enforce their coup: police & military.
This is truly disturbing to contemplate but do not look away! Turn toward the fear (as Pema Chodron would say), open your eyes and your heart. Batten down your hatches however you can and prepare for the worst. Then mobilize, speak out, tuck your body into places so the wheels of fascism don’t turn.
Stop being surprised that Trump is doing everything he said he would. He may well be the greediest man alive. History will remember how we responded.
Just another reminder that the companies that profit off our content and relationships give no fucks about us
So my Instagram account got hacked early last week. I’m not sure when. I found out when someone sent me this screenshot on Tuesday showing my photos with a different profile, which seemed to be marketing porn.
I submitted support tickets to Instagram on Wednesday and again on Thursday but never got any reply. Strangely, a few other friends said that they were also hacked this week! But they were able to get access back in less than a day after contacting support.
Finally, I used a professional network I’m in to see if anyone had contacts at Instagram. This connected me to someone, but he was on vacation! After I bugged him, he eventually connected me to someone else, and she was able to get my account restored on Saturday afternoon. They are both political staff there, not the help desk.
I still don’t know how it got hacked so I don’t know if there was a breach at Instagram or if someone got my password. I would very much like to know, and I also find it unacceptable (but sadly not surprising) that their tech support didn’t even care to reply to me or to stop a malicious hacker compromising their platform.
This whole thing caused some unpleasant flashbacks to The Great Hack of 2013, but my security is much better now because I use truly random, computer-generated passwords (and a password manager) and I always utilize multifactor authentication when it’s an option. So I immediately changed a few passwords that were overdue anyway, but I don’t see anything else suspicious on other accounts. Still keeping a watchful eye open…
Kickstart a comic collection about awesome women
I was excited to see the proposal for Femme Magnifique, a comic anthology with “inspirational” stories about “powerful” mostly-American women. The name was frankly a turn-off for me. I guess it’s supposed to be French but I don’t think of my self as “femme” in the typical American use of the term, and it seems kind of insensitive or clueless about trans identity (although there is at least one trans woman included).
I guess they were trying to make it appealing to a less-politicized audience, but I’m concerned that it’s pretty heavy on white women and entertainment figures (Beth Ditto?) and light on civil rights and feminist leaders. Where are Angela Davis, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, Grace Lee Boggs, Ava Duvernay, Carrie May Weems, bell hooks? Not even Ruth Motherfucking Bader Ginsburg?
Nevertheless it does sound like a good project with some really great artists, and I donated last week. Yesterday their Kickstarter hit 100%, so it’s going to happen! They have more rewards that will be released if they make their extra “stretch goals.”