Monday, February 10, 2025

Books and Batman


Hope you've already read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: OWNED finds Eoin Higgins owned by bad journalism."  Book review?  That's journalism.  I read it and I'm like OMG.  

I am one of the ones who's always screaming for more book coverage in the community.  And I point out when I do make that call that we don't have to do something in depth.  Three paragraphs can be enough.  Just to talk about a book and get the word out.  Now because I love books, I've learned a lot from Ava and C.I. and I think I've written stronger (and longer) book reviews in recent years.

They wrote a 4,000 word piece before you even get to their end notes.  It's amazing.  And it's funny and it's hard hitting and makes clear that they are not in the mood to play.  

I especially love it when they point out the short comings of the book with regards to South Africa.  The author is apparently unaware of the anti-apartheid movement and he's also unaware that three of Chump's biggest donors and supporters are White men who learned racism in South Africa under apartheid.

By the way, I am Gen X and the author's insulting attack on us goes far beyond his refusal to recognize that we were part of the anti-apartheid movement.

Now to comic books.  Taylor Mills (Screen Rant) notes:



DC has recently unveiled Batman’s original Bat-Family—one that predates both Robin and Batgirl. And no, we’re not talking about Alfred Pennyworth, Commissioner Jim Gordon, or Bruce’s first love interest, Julie Madison. What makes this revelation even wilder is that it’s part of mainstream continuity, making this mysterious Bat-Family lineup all the more significant.

...Batman became an intergalactic legend before he was even one on Earth.

Jason Aaron, Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, and David Baron’s Batman: Off-World mini-series reaches its epic conclusion with issue #6, delivering a game-changing addition to Batman’s history.

Set in the early years of his crime-fighting career—long before Robin, Batgirl, or the Bat-Family fans know and love—this story unveils the Dark Knight’s first off-world adventure. But it does more than just showcase Bruce’s relentless determination and raw badassery. It also expands official Batman lore in a major way, revealing the long-hidden identities of his original Bat-Family and redefining his earliest allies.


Huh?

Sounds interesting but also sounds like it's going against the grain of the story we know and have known for years.  In fact, I feel like it's ripping off the Arrow -- the old CW series about Green Arrow.

I'm a lot older than when I first read Batman so I'm sure I can absorb and embrace any changes but haven't the last 20 years demonstrated that the sensibilities of some are bent out of shape by even so much as a costume change?

Here's C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"


Monday, February 10, 2025.  South African born Alien Musk continues to control the US government as he tries to destroy it, JD Vance joins Alien in attacking the judiciary, the political closet cases who destroyed the turnout for Kamala and their enablers mistakenly think we can all be friends now, Susan ("Medea") Benjamin applauds Alien Musk online, and much more.


We're starting with Billy Joel.

 
Dreamt of his "It's A Matter of Trust" and Prince's "Trust" -- the latter of which is a little too upbeat and fast paced for me trying to ease into a Monday morning with blood sugars so bad right now I'm dizzy. So we'll just go with Billy.

It is a matter of trust.

If you go to BLUESKY of late, you'll find some well meaning people and some flat out liars regarding how we move forward this year and the next.

The well meaning people are enablers and idiots.  The liars are just liars.  They both insist, that we need to come together on the left and work together.  

Here's an example of a well meaning person.



Here's my reply.


Now?  After the election?  Reminds me of DEATH BECOMES HER.

 



No, the time to come together was before the election when it mattered.

Uncommitted -- a Socialist movement led by Socialists like Rashida Tlaib, her sister and Norman Solomon -- took the position that they would destroy Kamala Harris' run.  That's what they set out to do.  And, as sister Layla insists, as the election approached, if they had backed down, the Democratic Party would never take them seriously again.

Again?

Layla, when do you think those of us in the Democratic Party took you seriously?

You lived in a  political closet.  You and your crowd posed as Democrats.  Do you really think we would ever take seriously grown adults who were Socialists but tried to lie to the larger public and pretend that they were Democrats.

You're fakes and frauds.  The SEP members (another US Socialist party) do not feel the need to hide in political closets.  We take them seriously. 

But little liars like yourselves who do nothing but run rat f**k games as you try to destroy us?  No, we don't take you seriously.

And that was our mistake.

There is no "now" for a coming together.

The time to come together and work together was when we had a chance to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.  And while Democrats, swing voters, independents and Republicans were working to make that happen, you were working to destroy Kamala.

Now?  Now we're going to work together.

Why in the world would we work with people we don't trust.

Did you miss this Socialist?



Look, there's Susan Benjamin -- stage name Medea -- yet again coming to Donald Chump's rescue. 

We don't need you Socialists.

No, we don't.

What's going to happen over the next four years is what happened with Ralph Nader after 2000.  We are going to do the verbal and written equivalent of smashing your head against a brick wall or through a plate glass window over and over again.

Now, I didn't take part in that in 2000 (or after the 2000 election).  But I did understand it.

And what you and the other traitors to this country will understand is that you're not trusted, you're not wanted and you're not leading a damn thing.

The political closet cases hail from DSA.  It is not a Democratic Party organization.  It's a small number of Socialists (approximately 80,000 members in this country).  And they rat f**ked the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris' election.

They got away with it because they and their enablers pretended there were no Socialists in this country.  Which is how, for three months leading up to the election, Amy Goodman could present the lie over and over that Democrats weren't crazy about Kamala.  The point of the lie was to suppress turnout.  To show how much damage Socialists could do the Democratic Party.  So Amy brought on all these Socialists -- and one Communist -- to pose as Democrats and degrade and insult Kamala.

They pulled that off.

And now they're going to pay for it.

In "Media: OWNED finds Eoin Higgins owned by bad journalism," Ava and I take on Eoin Higgins' new book.  It's garbage, it's trash.  And if someone is recommending it to you in these tough economic times -- recommending you spend your money on it -- they're either someone afraid to do a true critical appraisal or they're part of the hidden, political closet cases.

Eoin himself is a political closet case.  As Ava and I note, the book is filled with Republicans, MAGA, Tea Party members and Libertarians.  Otherwise?  The "left."  Never explored never defined.  We're all just Democrats apparently.  This even though Eoin is citing one Socialist after another that he worked with over the years.

It's lying.  It's lying from a political closet case.

We point to an AP poll right before the election, right before.  Showing that the Democratic Party was split on Gaza.  And that's truth that Socialists worked overtime to hide.  Because that reality undercut their "KAMALA IS SO EVIL AND WON'T LISTEN TO US!"  She did listen to you, she did meet with you (including Layla) she just wouldn't give you everything you wanted.  And when four out of 10 Democrats did not agree with your goals and aims, she would have been stupid to have done so.

But that reality got hidden from the people.

So, no.  We can't all get along now.

These people destroyed the country and their actions may bring about the destruction of the Democratic Party.  If you think -- and maybe you don't, a lot of these people are ignorant and stupid -- this goes away, you better learn your history.

The Green Party ran Nader in 2000.  They not only refused to run him again (he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2004), the Green Party did a safe-state strategy where they asked people to only vote for them if the voters was in a safe state -- meaning one that would go Democrat. 


We are all, in this country, already suffering because of you rat f**kers who posed as Democrats and used that lie to pimp that Kamala was a good candidate.

Socialists want the destruction of the United States system.  That is DSA's ultimate goal and what they're working towards.  Had voters watching DEMOCRACY NOW! or reading THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, COMMOND DREAMS, et al had that knowledge, they wouldn't have thought there was no difference between Kamala and the Convicted Felon.

However, you've worked this out in your head, you need to replay it because this doesn't end well for you.  By tanking our nominee, real Democrats are not going to put up with you, we're not going to tolerate your lies, your games and your bulls**t.  You declared war on us.

Sad for you, there are about seventy million of us.  And there's only 80,000 of you.

Or there were only 80,000 of you.  As the reality continues to sink in on how you harmed our country, you're going to find people walking away from you.

Oh, sure, Kyle and Cenk will get together again (or their equivalents in four more years) and come up with some cute little name like "Justice Democrats" for Socialists to hide behind.  But we'll be blasting that wall down, the one you're hiding behind.

So for those who think it's time to give rat f**kers?  Step aside or get caught in the crossfire because collectively the Democratic Party is going to protect ourselves.  And for those of you who think you can trick us, you can't.  You've lied forever and a day.  And we looked the other way and indulged you until you put Chump back in the White House.  We're done pretending you're not Socialists and we're done pretending like we don't know that you're Socialists.

You attacked the Democratic Party at a time when we needed to rally.  That will not be forgotten and it will not be forgiven.

DSA turned on a US House Rep over Gaza.  They're also currently struggling with AOC.  The smartest thing in the world politically for AOC to do if she wants to be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 2028 is to let the current break with DSA become a permanent break.  They can't help her.  At this point, the only thing that they can do is hurt her.

I need to pull in Trina before I forget again.  Friday, Trina's "A pig boy named Colin King" went up.  It speaks for itself but I will first off applaud Trina for calling the bully out.  Secondly, DSA is standing on quick sand.  They pose as Democrats, yes.  And they fool people.  And those people then attack Trina, myself or anyone who points out the truth that Rashida is a Socialist.  When Trina or I bring up the proof?  They vanish.  Just like their support for Rashida.  You tricked your own supporters.  They're not happy about that.  And that's why you should never have gone into a political closet to begin with.  

Your supporters find out you lied to them.  How do you think that makes them feel?

Tricked.

You are standing on quick stand and you are no position to threaten the Democratic Party now or in the next elections.  You're getting exposed for what you are.  

We've covered this here repeatedly.  But for those just walking into the room, I'll note this that Ava and I attached to the end of the book review:


Media: Accountability -- a term beggar media needs translated

Buy a clue (Ava and C.I.)

Media: How Amy Goodman harmed immigrants and helped elect Chump

"2024: The Year of Betrayal From Inside The Left."

Raison d'être (Ava and C.I.)

Media Lessons (Ava and C.I.)

Media: An idiot says he'll sue over art evaluation, two other idiots defend Trump's nominees

Media: Journalistic Malpractice

Media: You apparently can't teach common sense to journalists (Ava and C.I.)

I-I-I-I-I-I Ain't Gonna Tweet on TWITTER (Ava and C.I.) 

Media: White supremacy won the 2024 election (Ava and C.I.) 

Don't give a dime to the racist NATION magazine

Media: The election winds down

Media: The double standard

Media: Are they trying to elect Donald Trump?

Media: Abusers Donald and JD fit the pattern

Media: The damage done by Dave Zirin and The Gaza Freaks

The death of corporate media has been widely misreported 

Media: Broadcast TV and Jill Stein -- two things that always fail to deliver

Media: Hard Truths and Soft Media

Media: A great sitcom, a lousy debate

Media: The stupid on the right and the stupid on the left will doom us all

Media: They don't know any better

Media: The embarrassments of the 2024 presidential campaigns

Media: We usually get our twists and turns from TV


Every day, a few more people learn the truth about what went happened and a few more people get inoculated against DSA.  There is no coming together with people you can't trust and, again, you're the new Nader and you're going to live with the same fall out.


These people did their part to put Chump back in the White House.  Instead of falling to their knees and apologizing to the American people, you find them online cheering on Alien Musk and his DOGE efforts -- as with the already noted Susan Benjamin.  No, there is no forgiveness, there is no healing, we're not going to work together.  Ben Makuch (GUARDIAN) reports:


In 2022, the Pentagon proudly announced a committee on diversity and inclusion, with a Marine veteran and senior director at Tesla, serving as a member. The same person, who spent nearly six years at Tesla, also helped push Elon Musk to make Juneteenth a company-wide holiday. But Musk is a notorious recipient of lucrative government contracts and changes with the winds of presidential administrations.

Now in 2025, as a “special government employee” heading up the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Musk is going to war with those kinds of government diversity and inclusion programs and slashing whatever he sees as a “waste” of public coffers.

But legal resistance is mounting, as Doge faces countless lawsuits alleging everything from privacy concerns to free speech violations, which all leads to one important question: is any of this even legal?


Laurence Tribe, one of the nation’s leading and preeminent constitutional scholars and a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has already argued that much of Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders on the day of his inauguration disregards the US constitution. He told the Guardian he saw Musk’s actions as furthering that culture.

On whether or not Doge and Musk can legally have this much power over an array of government departments, Tribe was emphatic: “NO.”

Musk has applied a buckshot method across the government, offering CIA agents walking papers while appraising the Department of Education – all at the same time.

Tribe said the lack of guardrails being placed on Doge’s maverick initiatives, raises “both” questions of illegality and ethical wrongdoing that can be challenged in court. As for Musk’s status as a federal contractor (such as his StarLink work with the Pentagon) and now a government employee, Tribe sees it as “absolutely” a legal conflict of interest.


But Susan Benjamin supports DOGE!!! As we have argued since 2009, when Susan Benjamin was saying that US troops didn't to remain in Afghanistan (and she was getting called out by ANTIWAR.Com for doing so), it's past time CODESTINK broke ranks with her and forcibly retired her.  Tara Suter (THE HILL) reports the latest on Alien Musk:


Tech billionaire Elon Musk called for the annual firing of judges following an early Saturday decision from a judge stating that the Treasury Department should bar access to its payment systems to anyone besides “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.”

“I’d like to propose that the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year. This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent,” the tech mogul said in a post on his social platform X.

The order halts special government employees and those detailed from outside the department from getting into the systems, which includes Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).


Foreign born Alien Musk of South Africa is currently serving at least two masters -- the governments of the US and China.  And considering the rivalry between the two, people need to be questioning how effective this foreign born person is to the US?

Alien Musk is not the only boyfriend of Donald Chump's that is attacking the court currently.  The Convicted Felon's little buddy JD Vance is also attacking the courts and insisting that the administration doesn't need to follow the law.  Yasmeen Hamadeh  (THE DAILY BEAST) notes:

Vice President JD Vance was mocked Sunday for seemingly lacking a fundamental understanding of democracy after he suggested that judges shouldn’t be allowed to “control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Despite graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, Vance questioned the authority of judgeships in an X post Sunday, writing: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.

[. . .]

While some, including Musk, applauded Vance’s comments, others were quick to criticize the vice president’s post for its seeming disdain toward the government’s system of checks and balances.

New York Rep. Daniel Goldman replied to Vance: “It’s called the ‘rule of law’ @jdvance. Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other (‘separation of powers’).

“The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law. If you do, then you won’t have problems,” he continued. 


 Others may be noticing as well.  Tom McAfee (RAW STORY) reports:


J.D. Vance raised the eyebrows of legal experts on Sunday by suggesting Donald Trump's administration might refuse to comply with a lawful court order. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court probably also noticed, according to a political analyst Sunday.

Anthony Coley, the former chief spokesperson for Attorney General Merrick Garland, appeared on MSNBC over the weekend. At one point, the analyst called a "pause" in the conversation to raise a red flag about Trump's conduct surrounding the Super Bowl.

In talking about Vance's tweet, Coley brought up John Roberts, who was recently put on notice about throwing a "lifeline" to Trump.

"I think the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Chief Justice John Roberts, is also paying attention to this particular tweet from J.D. Vance," Coley said. "And I'm not saying that he is normally following the tweets of a Vice President of the United States, but he saw this coming, the chief justice did."

He continued, noting that, "Back in December, he issued his end of year report, where he warned people of all parties of the necessity of holding themselves to the rulings of courts, even when people disagree with them."


Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren's office issued the following:

“The millions of families who rely on ED to help them achieve the American Dream deserve answers about reports that an unelected billionaire and his team now have access to some of their most sensitive personal information.”

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) led 16 of their colleagues in sending a letter to Acting Secretary of the Department of Education, Denise Carter, launching a probe into recent reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has infiltrated the Department of Education (ED) and that “DOGE staffers have gained access to federal student loan data, which includes personal information for millions of borrowers.”

The letter was joined by Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.).

There are over 40 million federal student loan borrowers in the United States. ED’s student loan database contains millions of borrowers’ highly sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, marital status, and income data. 

“This deeply troubling report raises questions about potential exposures of Americans’ private data, the abuse of this data by the Trump Administration, and whether officials who have access to the data may have violated the law or the federal government’s procedures for handling sensitive information,” wrote the senators.

According to public reporting, “a handful of 19-to-24-year-old engineers linked to Musk’s companies, with unclear titles, could be bypassing regular security protocols” during DOGE’s infiltration of federal agencies. The senators also raised concerns that the access provided to DOGE-affiliated staff by the Department may violate the Privacy Act, which generally prohibits the disclosure of such information.

“We are especially troubled by this reporting given President Trump’s stated pledge to abolish the Department,” concluded the lawmakers. “The millions of families who rely on ED to help them achieve the American Dream deserve answers about reports that an unelected billionaire and his team now have access to some of their most sensitive personal information.”

Additional reporting suggests that DOGE has “fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to probe the agency’s programs and spending.” The 18 senators requested answers from Acting Secretary Carter about DOGE’s access to federal student loan data and any other sensitive databases by February 13, 2025.

###



Let's note this post LGBTQ NATION has done on BLUESKY this morning:



Immigrants (and those who appear to be) and LGBTQ+ people (especially transgender persons) are the most attacked right now under Convicted Felon Donald Chump and his underlings JD and Alien.  And yet Susan Benjamin shows up to declare her support for DOGE?

Are you getting now why we can't afford these non-Democrats posing and pretending to be one of us?  Why we can't 'all get along' now?  This is about people's lives and even after they tanked the election, these people not only can't apologize, but they're still working to harm immigrants and LGBTQ+ members.  They are not our friends.  They are not our allies.  They are not deserving of our support.  We have real people in real jeopardy that we need to be supporting and working with right now.  The fake-ass political closet cases are on their own.


New content at THIRD:


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