A Jesus and Mo from ten years ago, brought back for obvious reasons.

J and M Patreon.

Back to Kansas:

After moving Dodge City’s sole polling site outside city limits, county election officials sent newly registered voters an official certificate of registration that listed the wrong place to cast a ballot in the midterm election — the latest election snafu to surface in the iconic Wild West town where Hispanics now make up the majority of the population.

The southwest Kansas city, located 160 miles (257 kilometers) west of Wichita, has only one polling site for its 27,000 residents. For nearly two decades, that site was at the civic center in the mostly white part of town.

So, finding that too easy, officials moved it outside of town a mile from any bus stop…and then they sent out the wrong location to voters.

“I didn’t know this could get worse, and it did: ‘Hey, let’s move the site and not tell new registrants where they are supposed to go,’” said Johnny Dunlap, chairman of the Ford County Democratic Party.

Local election officials are now scrambling to notify newly registered voters who might be confused by its official registration notice that listed only their regular polling site — not the temporary site for the November election. At the same time, voting rights activists are marshalling their resources to get Dodge City voters to the new polling place — an effort boosted by an outpouring of money and volunteers after widespread national coverage.

…

Nearly 600 people have volunteered to come to Dodge City to give people rides to their polling place on election day, Dunlap said. The advocacy group Voto Latino is trying to provide Lyft rides to voters who need transportation. The party is also leasing vans for election day voting, canvassing in neighborhoods and advertising to inform voters of available rides.

Stealing elections right out in plain sight.

Oh good, more erasing.

The National Sexual Wellbeing Survey for Women Who Have Sex With Women is live for 4 more weeks!
We need to make sure this research is representative of ALL self identifying women!
CALLING ALL TRANS WOMEN-
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: https://t.co/6FL6X3EiKe#transwomenarewomen pic.twitter.com/IgYmqO4re5

— LGBT Foundation (@LGBTfdn) October 24, 2018

Weird, ain’t it? No mention of lesbians, but urgent recruiting of trans women.

Oh wait there is one mention of lesbians! Well sort of. Well not really mention, but tiny hint. Tiny bashful hardly there hint. There’s the L in LGBT Foundation.

Not for long though, judging by the replies.

The Daily Mail (yes; sorry):

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled a woman convicted by an Austrian court of calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile did not have her freedom of speech rights infringed.

The woman, named only as Mrs. S, 47, from Vienna, was said to have held two seminars in which she discussed the marriage between the Prophet Mohammad and a six-year old girl, Aisha.

According to scripture the marriage was consummated when Aisha was just nine years old, leading Mrs S. to say to her class Mohammad ‘liked to do it with children’.

She also reportedly said ‘… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?’

It would be nice to know what kind of seminars, where, for what purpose, with what credentials…but even so, it’s not obvious what it means to “convict” someone of calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile, since it’s not obvious that doing so is a crime. Yes, fucking a girl of nine is in fact paedophilia, and it’s against the law in places with humane laws. I guess I’m now a criminal under Austrian and European law.

Mrs S. was later convicted in February 2011 by the Vienna Regional Criminal Court for disparaging religious doctrines and ordered her to pay a fine of 480 euros plus legal fees.

So Austria has a law against disparaging religious doctrines? That’s insane. This isn’t the 12th century; if we can’t disparage religious doctrines what can we disparage? We need to be free to disparage all forms of illegitimate power, and religion is high on that list.

After having her case thrown out by both the Vienna Court of Appeal and Austria’s Supreme Court, the European Court of Human rights backed the courts’ decision to convict Mrs S. on Thursday.

The ECHR found there had been no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In a statement on Thursday the ECHR said: ‘The Court found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.’

That’s not peace; it’s forced silence.

‘It held that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate, and by classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.’

I get that they don’t want people stirring up hatred against Muslims. On the other hand have they given enough thought to the way this tactful refusal to call fucking a nine year old girl what it is can teach believers that it’s ok for men to fuck nine year old girls right now? Are “religious feelings” more important than that?

H/t Author

By way of refreshment:

https://twitter.com/ClintFalin/status/1055538301845864449

The Guardian reports live on a law enforcement press conference in NYC:

40m ago 15:45

Sweeney is reiterating that the 10 bombs are being analyzed at Quantico, the FBI’s forensics lab in Virginia. He’s also confirmed that white powder in some of the devices, including the one delivered to the CNN offices, does not constitute a biological threat.

38m ago 15:47

John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter terrorism, says that a retired police officer found the package in lower Manhattan addressed to Robert DeNiro.

“A retired NYPD detective who was awake and watching the news saw an image of one of these devices and it occurred to him that it resembled a package he had screened that had been sent to Robert DeNiro’s offices on Greenwich Street,” Miller said. The retired officer alerted the authorities.

This is America. It’s not good.

The Guardian has a letter plus answer thing under the headings In it together Women.

Headline: When I went home with period pains I told my boss I had a cold. Should I have told the truth?

Letter:

Last month I had to leave work in the middle of the day. I was in a great deal of pain from my period, a problem I have had for several years. Sometimes I can manage it with painkillers, but not always. Even when I can cope with the pain, my periods affect my sleep, and make me slower and less productive. When my (female) boss saw how unwell I was, she kindly suggested I go home. I told her the next day I must be coming down with a cold. I’ve been thinking, why didn’t I just say “I have bad period pains”? I know it’s because I don’t want to be seen as weak and I don’t want to play into stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods. That said, I worry about using a sick day or two every month. What are my rights in this area regarding sick leave? Should I speak up next time? Am I letting the side down by not coming out and being honest about my period?

Reply by Poppy Noor:

Something happens to you once a month that is painful and out of your control. You are not alone. Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work.

screeeeeeeeeeech Wait, what?

Menstruators?

What happened to “women”?

It says “women” at the top of the page, before the headline. The writer mentions that her boss is female, and then cites “stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods.” The piece is about a thing that women have to deal with that can hinder them at work and school and life in general. It’s about an issue that affects women, it’s from a woman, it’s about a physical process inseparable from the female reproductive system. Why was the hideous contemptuous reductive word “menstruators” used instead of “women”?

Poppy Noor herself promptly uses the dreaded word:

Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work. And yet, you feel you will be seen as weak or unreliable if you tell someone about it. Your fears aren’t unfounded: a number of studies show that women’s pain is routinely dismissed by health professionals, especially when it comes to gynaecological issues. And other women seem to share your fear. YouGov found that only 27% of women affected by period pains told their boss and many of them (33%) pretended, as you did, that it was something else affecting their work.

“Women” three times and “gynaecological” once. So why use “menstruators” at all?

Originally a comment by latsot on He’d blab all the secrets if only he knew anything about them.

As the text says, it’s not only secret information that’s damaging. We all routinely give away far more information than is good for us. We tend to assume that the minutia of our lives are uninteresting and cannot harm us (if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear).

We do crazy things like tell Amazon who our friends and family are, when their birthdays are and the sort of stuff they like. In fact, it’s worse than that, because we tell them the sort of stuff we think they like. Of course, if they are Amazon customers too, they can compare what we think they like with what they think they like, which is one hell of a powerful way to target ads. Amazon constructs complex social networks based on the information we freely and unguardedly give them. It uses them to manipulate us into buying things in complex and subtle ways. It encourages us to flesh out the weak or hypothesised links in those social networks by, for example, sending us ads for things we think a person it guesses is connected to us would like, round about the time it thinks their birthday might be, in the hope that it will remind us of that person and trigger us to buy them something. They don’t really care about making money from whatever we’ve bought, they want us to flesh out the bones of the social network they’re building. It’s a long game and Amazon isn’t selling what you think they’re selling.

This is a really cheap thing for Amazon to do. It doesn’t lose anything with these fishing expeditions. In fact, it learns something from every time we don’t take the bait, too.

And this is just us. We’re nobody. We don’t have any big important secrets. Amazon doesn’t care about big important secrets because it knows it can manipulate us using the stuff we actually want to tell it. And all it wants is to make money. And Amazon is not targeting us specifically to achieve specific goals. It doesn’t care whether it adds a link to an aunt or to a friend. It doesn’t care what you buy for them. It cares about what you bought for them after it sent you some fishing ads.

So imagine the sort of thing that can be gleaned by monitoring Trump’s calls and data traffic. He’s a highly specific target and there are presumably vast resources aimed at him, with fairly specific goals. This makes him a much easier target than any of us, if the goal is to find ways to manipulate him. Imagine foreign governments building up the same sort of social network around him and his contacts as Amazon does about us, with the added benefit of highly trained and creative analysts, all focused on this one person…

So this is where we are.

Authorities said Wednesday they had intercepted packages containing “potential explosive devices” addressed to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in New York and former president Barack Obama in Washington, while another possible bomb was discovered at CNN’s offices in Manhattan.

These devices and other suspicious packages were located after an explosive device was found this week in a mailbox at the Bedford, N.Y., home of George Soros, the liberal philanthropist who is a frequent target of criticism from far-right groups.

Not a “target of criticism” so much as a bogey-man, a scarecrow, a hate-figure, a protocol of the elders of zion in one person.

Anyway. This is where we are. Not yet two years of Trump playing president and they’re trying to kill us off.

Authorities were quick to label the string of packages terrorism, something that is often debated after attempted or successful violent attacks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement “condemning today’s attempted acts of domestic terrorism.” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), speaking alongside O’Neill and Miller at a news briefing near CNN, used similar language.

“This clearly is an act of terror, attempting to undermine our free press and leaders of this country through acts of violence,” de Blasio said.

And who has done more than anyone else to foster and inspire and promote this kind of thing? The president of the US. You could say people like Mike Cernovich spend more time at it, but if you combine time and effort and reach, Trump wins by miles.

These devices were sent to people and an organization that have all prompted anger among the far right. Soros, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, has funneled much of his fortune into liberal projects around the world and is the focus of considerable conspiracy theories. Clinton and Obama have also long been the focus of intense far-right anger, while CNN has repeatedly come under intense criticism from a range of figures on the right, including President Trump.

Including President Trump, who detests free journalism and critical reporting, and feels no responsibility to restrain his public explosions of rage at them.

Another law enforcement official said the packages sent to the public officials this week shared similar markings, and at least one of them had a return address from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). Authorities do not believe she is involved, an official said. Law enforcement officials were also investigating a suspicious package sent to her. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

A similarly-constructed package addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder Jr. was intercepted by law enforcement officials, according to people familiar with the investigation.

So that should have been in the headline and the lede. Soros, Obama, the Clintons, CNN, and Holder.

Unlike the packages intercepted before reaching Obama and Clinton, the device sent to CNN was found while its building was teeming with employees. CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center in New York evacuated suddenly Wednesday morning after the suspicious package was discovered there.

Will Trump stop screeching about “fake news”?

Nope.

Deb Haaland on the voter suppression in North Dakota:

On Oct. 9, our U.S. Supreme Court green-lighted voter suppression of Native Americans in North Dakota in a move that should outrage all of us. It comes just two short years after the Native American environmental movement skyrocketed into the national spotlight through the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. Now, those same Water Protectors are under attack again.

As a Pueblo Indian woman, I traveled to North Dakota and stood with the Water Protectors to protect land and water. Now, I support them and Native Americans across North Dakota as they organize to keep their right to vote during a contentious election year.

…

As a country, we should be moving forward, but instead conservative lawmakers keep dragging us back. As an organizer in the most underrepresented communities in my state, I have felt the frustration that so many voters must feel when other states limit polling locations, require photo IDs, and put unnecessary barriers in front of voters. In this case, targeting Native American voters is shameful and wrong.

This moral bankruptcy is exactly what November’s “blue wave” candidates seek to correct. The stark number of women candidates, primarily women of color, seek to change the trajectory of our country and offer leadership that is both compassionate and fierce.

And that’s why conservatives are so determined to suppress the vote: it will be mostly Democratic voters who will be suppressed.

Tribal leaders and activists are working around the clock to ensure our sister nations in North Dakota can vote.

The Turtle Mountain Band is printing free IDs for anyone who needs one to vote—demand has been so high that the machines have melted the IDs. The Native American Rights Fund, according to their latest news update, “is working in conjunction with the Spirit Lake Tribe, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and the Three Affiliated Tribes (‘MHA’), as well as community organizations Four Directions and Western Native Voice, to ensure tribal members living in North Dakota who come to the polls on Election Day will be provided voter identification free of charge.”

We all have work to do. I joined dozens of New Mexicans to knock doors and educate voters on how and when to vote. Join us. Knock doors, make phone calls, donate. If our friends at Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain are giving this their all, we should too. Together, we can fight back by ensuring more, not fewer, people vote.

This is the spirit I want to carry with me to Congress. There is no higher patriotic duty than when we exercise our right to vote, ensure others do the same, and fight so that all of us are represented. Come November, let’s elect fierce candidates who will melt the machines, fighting for equity and justice for all.

Unite and fight.

Hangin’ with Hannah:

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054208545812434944

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054210534390685696

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054211818535546880

https://twitter.com/HannahMouncey/status/1054509307897638912

Awww – sister!