Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalMichael Cohen's family doxed after Trump guilty verdict in porn star hush money case
The addresses and phone numbers of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's family members were posted to a doxing website after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in connection with a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Cohen, Trump's former "fixer," played a key role in the plot to keep adult film actress Stormy Daniels quiet during the 2016 election and testified against Trump at trial. According to Cohen, Trump said the revelation of Daniels' story of a prior affair would be a "total disaster" and "catastrophic" for his 2016 campaign.
Trump has denied the affair but was convicted of falsifying business records related to Cohen's hush money payment to keep Daniels from telling her story. "What I was doing was at the direction of and for the benefit of Mr. Trump," Cohen, who served time in prison, said at trial.
Phone numbers and addresses for Cohen's wife and children were posted early Monday morning on a site that has been used to target other figures involved in Trump’s various legal issues, according to the group Advance Democracy, a non-profit research group.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/michael-cohens-family-doxed-trump-guilty-verdict-porn-star-hush-money-rcna155268
This needs to STOP. NOW.
How Q Became Everything
You can track QAnon’s arc, like most things in America, through its relationship with corporate brands. Although the conspiracy movement emerged out of fringe imageboards in 2017, its first viral successes came on Facebook and YouTube, where its lore envisioning Donald Trump fighting an elite cabal of liberal pedophiles was honed and refined. When Covid came in 2020, QAnon ballooned under lockdowns, putting it in the mainstream, but leaving it short of actually being mainstream.
Call it the Wayfair era. In July 2020, followers of QAnon began spreading a particular pedophilic panic: the absurd notion that the online furniture retailer was selling children for sexual abuse via armoire orders. Non-Q masses took the bait: “Mentions of Wayfair and ‘trafficking’ have exploded on Facebook and Instagram over the past week,” the Associated Press wrote at the time, noting that related TikTok hashtags “together amassed nearly 4.5 million views.” A national human trafficking hotline issued a press release warning that a flood of calls about the conspiracy had distracted them from genuine work.
While it was widely peddled, it was also widely derided. Surely, something so absurd could not keep going. And looking back on the uproar from two years later, Wayfair seemed like the death of Q. By late 2020, major Q adherents had been purged from the platforms. Its influencers and weird hoaxes almost never broke into broader consciousness, except to be debunked. Its galvanizing messiah, Trump, was on his way out of the White House. Q was no longer inspiring people to murder mob bosses, kidnap their own children, or show up heavily armed at the Hoover Dam.
But far from being the end, Wayfair was a sign of what the movement was turning into—one confirmed in late November 2022, when the Balenciaga panic happened. The genesis point was a TikTok video posted by Brittany Venti, a right-wing provocateur and influencer with a history of aggravating culture war fights. While displaying pictures from a Balenciaga ad campaign showing small children with purses made to look like teddy bears wearing bondage straps, she complained that a “worldwide, internationally known brand” was “advertising their purses by having a child hold kink fetish gear.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/06/how-q-became-everything-big-feature-wayfair-balenciaga/
So they want us to think the world is run by pedophiles...
Adele Livid After Someone Screams 'Pride Sucks' at Her Show: 'Are You F*cking Stupid?'
If you come at the queen, you best not miss.
Adele rang in the start of Pride Month on Saturday night by shutting down a member of the audience at her Las Vegas residency show who took the opportunity to yell out “Pride sucks” between songs. A video taken by a concertgoer of the 16-time Grammy winner’s fiery response shows her seated at the piano, pointing into the crowd.
“Did you come to my fucking show to say ‘Pride sucks’? Are you fucking stupid?” she can be heard asking. “Don’t be so fucking ridiculous. If you have nothing nice to say, shut up, all right?” As the audience cheers, the singer coolly flips her hair over her shoulder and turns her attention back to her regular crowdwork.
Adele has long been a professed ally to the LGBTQ+ community. In 2016, she dedicated a concert to the victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, telling her fans through tears, “The LGBTQIA community, they’re like my soulmates since I was really young.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/adele-livid-after-someone-screams-pride-sucks-at-her-show-are-you-fcking-stupid?ref=home
Organic cheese and free lunch for all: what the US can learn from other nations about better school meals
In a 2015 documentary, the film-maker Michael Moore cheekily suggested the US invade France because its school lunches are amazing.
School food culture in France is indeed enviable. Menus sometimes include beets with vinaigrette as the seasonal salad of the day, organic beef lasagne for the main course, followed by organic camembert for the cheese course and a pear for dessert.
The school community values meals and those who prepare them as contributing to students’ education. Meals are typically made from scratch using fresh ingredients. And joy is central to the experience of eating together. That said, the French system isn’t a perfect model: France doesn’t have a national school lunch program and parents are billed directly for the cost of meals.
In the near-decade since Moore’s film, there have been a lot of improvements in what the typical US student might encounter in the cafeteria. Thanks in large part to school food fights at local, state and national levels, more students have access to free school meals than ever before, schools across the country are cooking more recipes from scratch and local farmers are supplying more of the food that students eat. However, these changes remain precarious or subject to political and economic priorities. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In our new book, Transforming School Food Politics Around the World, we discuss how to successfully challenge and transform public school food programs to emphasize care, justice and sustainability, with insights from eight countries in the global north and south. Ultimately, we argue for the importance of school food as a public good.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/article/2024/may/31/free-healthy-school-lunches
This country is so focused on useless "testing" that they neglect everything else.
Boeing's largest plant in 'panic mode' amid safety crisis, say workers and union officials
Boeing’s largest factory is in “panic mode”, according to workers and union officials, with managers accused of hounding staff to keep quiet over quality concerns.
The US plane maker has been grappling with a safety crisis sparked by a cabin panel blowout during a flight in January, and intense scrutiny of its production line as regulators launched a string of investigations.
Its site at Everett, Washington – hailed as the world’s biggest manufacturing building – is at the heart of Boeing’s operation, responsible for building planes like the 747 and 767, and fixing the 787 Dreamliner.
One mechanic at the complex, who has worked for Boeing for more than three decades, has claimed it is “full of” faulty 787 jets that need fixing.
Many of these jets are flown from Boeing’s site in South Carolina, where the company shifted final assembly of the 787 in 2021 in what was characterized as a cost-cutting measure.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/01/boeing-safety-crisis-response-union-busting
We have to fly to Vegas in a couple of weeks. Just praying it's not a 747/787
Gov. Lee signs bill blocking local red flag laws
Governor Bill Lee has signed legislation preempting local municipalities from enforcing extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), commonly known as red flag laws, which allow judges and police to temporarily take away someone’s guns if they’re at risk of harming themselves or others, despite his push for extreme risk protection orders before the Special Session in 2023.
The piece of legislation, which became law with Gov. Lee’s signature on May 28, “preempts the entire field of legislation regarding extreme risk protection orders,” according to its language, “except as otherwise provided by state law.”
However, a year prior, Gov. Lee advocated for ERPOs ahead of the 2023 Special Session on public safety.
“A person that has shown that they are a real threat to themselves or to others, that person, that individual should not have access to firearms,” Gov. Lee said to reporters in April 2023.
After the Republican supermajority publicly said they would not support legislation allowing ERPOs, Gov. Lee dropped the issue, and it was never presented during the special session.
https://www.wate.com/news/tennessee/gov-lee-signs-bill-preventing-local-government-from-enacting-red-flag-laws/
Chickenshit bastard. His own friend was killed in the Covenant School shooting and he does....nothing.
Mother of Jan. 6 officer Michael Fanone swatted after he called Trump 'authoritarian'
Michael Fanone, a former police officer who was nearly killed by a mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, spoke outside the courthouse during closing arguments in Donald Trump's hush money trial on Tuesday, calling Trump "an authoritarian" with "a violence fetish."
Hours later, Fanone's mother was "swatted" at her home in Virginia.
On Tuesday, a fake "manifesto" attributed to Fanone was sent to a number of email addresses, including some associated with a high school that Fanone attended for a year more than two decades ago. The "manifesto," viewed by NBC News, claimed that the writer had killed their mother and planned to go to the recipient's school on Wednesday and shoot more people. It provided Fanone's mother's home address.
That night, Fanone told NBC News, his mother opened the door to law enforcement while in her nightgown, "mortified" to find SWAT team officers at her home.
"How dangerous is it to send law enforcement to an address in which you essentially are describing an active shooter, in which the only person present is a 78-year-old f---ing woman," Fanone told NBC News. "This is the reality of going up against or challenging Donald Trump. ... These swatting calls are incredibly f---ing dangerous, especially when the target is somebody like my mom."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/mother-jan-6-officer-michael-fanone-swatted-called-trump-authoritarian-rcna154467
The Washington Post said it had the Alito flag story 3 years ago and chose not to publish
Nine days after The New York Times reported about the political symbolism of an upside-down American flag that flew at U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s home, the Washington Post acknowledged it had the same story more than three years ago and decided not to publish it.
The Post’s story was both an extraordinary example of journalistic introspection and an illustration of how coverage of the Supreme Court has changed since the incident itself, shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
That day, some of the demonstrators who marched in support of former President Donald Trump carried the upside-down flag. Both newspapers reported that the same symbol was displayed outside of Alito’s home in Fairfax County, Virginia, before President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Alito has said that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, raised the flag as part of a dispute with neighbors who had placed “personally insulting” yard signs directed at them. Judges traditionally avoid partisan symbols to maintain the appearance of neutrality in political disputes that may come before them.
https://apnews.com/article/washington-post-alito-flag-missed-story-d7cfd2e8f5271fc8987ea2b0206bb7bb
Not exactly a sterling example of journalistic integrity.
Atlanta police surveil people opposing 'Cop City': 'There's this constant stalking feeling'
Atlanta police have been carrying out around-the-clock surveillance in several neighborhoods for months, on people and houses linked to opposition against the police training center colloquially known as “Cop City”.
The surveillance in Georgia has included following people in cars, blasting sirens outside bedroom windows and shining headlights into houses at night, the Guardian has learned.
While no arrests have been made, residents said they’re at a loss as to what legal protections of privacy and freedom from harassment are available to them. Chata Spikes, the Atlanta police spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment.
The ongoing actions started soon after an 8 February pre-dawn, Swat-style raid on three Atlanta houses in which Atlanta police and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sought evidence relating to arson of construction and police equipment.
Police have since established themselves in four neighborhoods, centering on about 12 houses – including those that were previously raided – with marked and unmarked cars parking near them, driving slowly by and leaving when approached by residents.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/29/atlanta-police-cop-city-surveillance
Feels ominously like Nazi Germany, doesn't it?
After a traumatic C-section, journalist takes on the medicalization of birth
When journalist and professor Rachel Somerstein had an emergency C-section with her first child, the anesthesia didn't work. She says she could literally feel the operation as it was happening. Later, after her daughter was born, Somerstein remembers a practitioner blaming her for the ordeal.
"[They] came to my room and told me that my body hadn't processed the anesthesia correctly, that there was something wrong with me," Somerstein says.
Somerstein considered suing the hospital, but since neither she nor her daughter suffered long-term consequences, she was told she didn’t have a case. So instead of pouring her energy into a lawsuit, she decided to write a book. In Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section, she writes about her own experience with childbirth, as well as the broader history of C-sections.
Somerstein notes that the earliest C-sections were performed on women who died in labor or who were expected to die in labor. The intention was to give the baby a chance to live long enough to be baptized by the Catholic priest. It wasn't until the late 1700s or early 1800s that the procedure was seen as a way to potentially save the mother's life.
"One thing that's so interesting about this history, to me, is that it shows that the forces promoting C-sections have always had something to do with an external pressure," she says.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/28/nx-s1-4977627/rachel-somerstein-invisible-labor-c-section
It's true that C-sections are sometimes necessary, but in the US they are performed far more often than in the rest of the world, probably because of the doctor's fear of litigation. When I was in neonatal/L&D, we used to say, "Failure to progress is whatever your doctor says it is, " and "Inductions are a major cause of C-sections".
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
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