I didn’t even know Johnny Depp was suing The Sun for libel. I barely know who he is, to tell the truth – I don’t think I’ve seen any of his work. Anyway, he was was suing The Sun for libel because The Sun called him a wife-beater, and he lost the suit because hey guess what it turned out to be true.

In the 129-page ruling, the judge, Mr Justice Nicol, said: “The claimant [Depp] has not succeeded in his action for libel … The defendants [the Sun and News Group Newspapers] have shown that what they published in the meaning which I have held the words to bear was substantially true.

The judge added: “I have found that

Way to inspire everyone to vote for Trump – start the bullying EARLY.

In a show of support of questionable political value, pro-Trump demonstrators clogged freeways Sunday across the country, from blue states like New Jersey, New York, and Washington state, to red-leaning Texas and purple Arizona. “WHOOO! We shut it down baby! We shut it down!” says one pro-Trump videographer as he pans the camera nearly 360 degrees, showing viewers the group of cars that had brought traffic to a complete standstill along the northbound Garden State Parkway in New Jersey.

Whoooooooo baby! Who knew that if a few people made a plan they could stop traffic on a freeway by simply forming a … Read the rest

Listen up Warsaw:

About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Friday, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) since it assumed office in 2015.

Protests have been held across the country since Poland’s constitutional tribunal declared earlier this month that abortions in instances where a foetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect were unconstitutional. Such procedures constitute about 96% of legal abortions in Poland, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

On Wednesday, pro-choice activists called a “women’s strike” that attracted over 400,000 people to protests in over 400 towns and cities

Good, but not over yet: Texas court says no.

The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday rejected, without comment, a bid by three Republican candidates and a GOP activist to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast from drive-thru lanes in the emerging Democratic stronghold of Harris County.

But.

A federal judge will hold an emergency hearing Monday morning — less than 21 hours before polls open on Election Day — to hear arguments on a similar challenge filed by the same group of Republicans, who say that state law prohibits drive-thru voting, so every vote cast from cars during the early voting period should be tossed out as illegal.

At the same hearing, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen will weigh

Women are a kind of accident that happens to men. Sometimes they can really spoil men’s whole lives!

Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. She was a 29-year-old model who was the face of an anti-bullying campaign and was about to return to her old school to talk to girls about gender-based violence. She was adored by her family. But on Valentine’s Day 2013 she was murdered by her violent, controlling boyfriend. He shot her four times through the locked door of a bathroom in his home, where she was cowering, petrified.

Poor guy. He must have been so upset!

Her future was stolen by a dangerous predator with a history of controlling and abusing women; a former girlfriend

What I’m saying. Brownshirts.

Aspiring fascist leader glorifies brownshirt violence pic.twitter.com/HSMXZGWPr7

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020

Trump calls on the DOJ to investigate AOC and Ilhan Omar for no good reason. The stuff of Nazi rallies, part 3 pic.twitter.com/LQqAc8CZFD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020

Tens of millions of people are voting for this. We’re on the cusp of becoming a failed state. pic.twitter.com/5YyDrfnZF6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020

… Read the rest

North Carolina news:

Alamance County sheriff’s deputies and Graham police pepper-sprayed people — including a 5-year-old girl and other children — who were participating in the “I Am Change” march to the polls on Saturday afternoon.

A march, that is – not a riot, not an invasion, not a terrorist attack, a march.

A racially diverse group of about 200 people walked with a police escort from Wayman’s Chapel AME Church to Court Square, where they held a rally encouraging people to vote. The event was organized by Rev. Greg Drumwright, a Burlington native who leads the the Citadel Church in Greensboro, according to his website.

Ah well there you go – racially diverse; they must be … Read the rest

More on the “Trump Train”:

According to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s Texas campaign, a Biden-Harris campaign bus was heading north on I-35 Friday afternoon on its way from San Antonio to a drive-by event with supporters at Texas State University in San Marcos, followed by a “closing argument” press conference at the Texas AFL-CIO headquarters in downtown Austin, when vehicles with Trump signs and flags surrounded the bus trying to slow it down in the middle of the highway or run it off the road.

Trump is the Bully candidate.

“Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to

From Ex-Muslims of North America:

A beautiful piece by Yemeni artist Boushra Almutawakel from her hijab series.

Jesus god. I want this nightmare to END.

"Did anybody see the picture of that crazy bus driving down the highway, they're surrounded by like, hundreds of cars? They're all Trump flags all over the place." — Trump glorifies an incident in Texas where his supporters tried to drive a Biden/Harris bus off the road pic.twitter.com/ZBSdEcvWHE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2020

Smirk smirk smirk goes Trump. His fans scream.

See also:

I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

Hur hur. Political violence is such a hilarious joke.

CNN has more details on the dangerous and terrifying actions by Trump fans in big trucks on a busy freeway:

The Biden campaign bus was

It seems that Trump vigilantes were out in force in Texas.

Multiple videos posted to social media on Saturday morning apparently show Trump supporters in trucks and cars harassing a Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaign bus in Texas, causing the campaign to cancel a planned event in Central Texas.

Harassing as in surrounding it on the freeway, tailgating it, and sideswiping a smaller vehicle.

A Biden campaign spokesperson told Forbes that the Trump supporters “attempted to slow the bus down and run it off the road.” And one local Democratic Party leader, Katie Naranjo, tweeted photos and said Trump supporters “followed the Biden bus throughout central Texas” and “ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats.”

Trudeau says “Yes but.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended free speech on Friday, but added that it was “not without limits” and should not “arbitrarily and needlessly hurt” certain communities.

“We will always defend freedom of expression,” Trudeau said in response to a question about the right to show a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, as France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine did.

But. But but but but but.

“But freedom of expression is not without limits,” he added. “We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

And what does “respect for others” mean? Does it require … Read the rest

More of this evil:

A Greek Orthodox priest was shot Saturday while he was closing his church in the French city of Lyon, and authorities locked down part of the city to hunt for the assailant, authorities said.

The priest, a Greek citizen, is in a local hospital with life-threatening injuries after being shot twice in the abdomen, a police official told The Associated Press. The attacker was alone and fired from a hunting rifle, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.

…

The reason for the shooting was unclear. It happened two days after an Islamic extremist knife attack at a Catholic church in the French city of Nice that killed three people, and

Emma Kelly in the Independent (Ireland):

LGB (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual) Alliance Ireland launched a Twitter account, claiming to fight for the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Ireland. For the casual social media user, this may seem pretty great. Of course we need people continuing the fight for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. However, note that the T for transgender has been dropped.

What does that mean, “dropped”? Is there some law that says the T must always be yoked to the L and G? No there is not. Lesbians and gay men are allowed to talk about lesbian and gay issues; they are not required to include trans people whenever they do so. Also: take … Read the rest

Statistically speaking, Trump’s rallies have probably killed about 700 people.

US researchers have suggested that a series of recent Trump rallies probably produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.

The study, released on Friday by scientists at Stanford University, looked at “the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.

“Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.

“Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these

Trump decided it would be a clever wheeze to accuse doctors of falsely reporting COVID cases for $$$$$$$$$$.

President Donald Trump on Friday baselessly claimed that doctors are inflating the coronavirus death count for monetary gain while cases, hospitalizations and deaths surge across the country.

“Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid,’ ” Trump said, without citing any evidence, at a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan.

More money how? How does that work? Where are the stats?

There is no evidence for the President’s claim and the statement represents a

Ah he’s got a Facebook post on the subject too. Glutton for punishment this guy.

His profile has Seattle Pacific University right at the top. SPU is at the bottom of the hill from me (north side, away from downtown) and across the canal from Fremont, which is now Google city. It’s small, and Christian, and a little bit creepy. I always see invisible scare quotes on the “university” bit.

So I found the controversy button on social media. Pretty neat feature. There were some helpful comments at the beginning of the post. After that, Zuckerberg let the monkeys out.

No, Zuckerberg doesn’t assign people to comment on your posts, chum.

Here is what the Bible teaches. Ephesians 5:23 says,

Brothers, a friendly reminder for life: don’t tell women what to do.

A friendly reminder pic.twitter.com/mPVfq8Tpbh

— Jesse Sumpter (@jesse_sumpter) October 28, 2020

“Make sure” how? Issue her express orders? Order her to show you her ballot before putting it in the drop box or the slot at the polling place?

A few reasons:
-They should be united in voting. The husband makes sure this happens.
-If they vote differently, they cancel each other out.
-If they vote differently, the husband leaves his wife unprotected. If the husband won’t vote for a guy, why would he let his wife do it?

— Jesse Sumpter (@jesse_sumpter) October 30, 2020

The husband is not responsible for how his wife votes. Women are … Read the rest

Aaron Rupar also following Trump’s on the road lies:

Trump is mad that Mayor Bowser is taking basic public health precautions to slow the spread of coronavirus in Washington DC, because he wants to have a big party at the Trump International Hotel that he still owns and profits from on election night pic.twitter.com/t2NfPMuVcE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2020

"You're doing good. In other words, you're all doing good, right? It's a pandemic, and you're doing good. You gotta get this governor, you gotta get her to open." — Trump pic.twitter.com/kn3G6tuU6L

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 30, 2020

Trump does this at every rally but it's worth reiterating how bonkers his conspiracy theory about TV outlets turning off