11.21-23 Open Threads – The Progressive Wing

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Well, another senseless shooting at a gay club in Colorado Springs, CO. That happens to be a Religious Right area. Both James Dobson and Ralph Reed, a couple of A-1 prime examples of X-tian Fundie trash, have heavily infested that city over the decades. Still, LBGT+ folks are human beings. This is supposed to be the 21st century, not the 16th. And, of course, the sicko who did it put out plenty of warning signs which went unheeded, natch. 🙁 Out Nest is Open. Hope this finds you all well. Rant and Comment on, fellow Progressive Birdies! 🙂

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EyeRound

Hi and Happy Thanksgiving to all the Progressive Wingers! It’s been an age since I’ve commented here, but I have been stopping by often to catch up and stay informed. Bernie’s switch to the HELP committee has me a bit baffled, but I’m confident that he will do the best possible for education and unions on that committee. I guess with R’s in the House we are looking for a couple of years of stalemate, with no meaningful legislation passed. And there’s so much that the country needs! For example, hopefully the price of oil will somehow come down–at home we heat with heating oil here in far north NY and the price is anxiety-producing. The Colorado shootings are yet another tragedy and of course everyone immediately thinks of orange-man as being at the root of these insane, violent acts. Well, I can comment, but I’m not internet savvy enough to make posts–sorry! Since most of my information comes from the net–we gave up on MSM years ago!–TPW, Naked Capitalism and Caucus 99% are especially valuable to us. Speaking of, recently I am having connection problems with Caucus 99%, get the “refused to connect” message. I did the ip-restarts, but no luck. Does anyone know if their website is down? My thanks to all of you for keeping the TPW’s lights on here. And renewed wishes to all for a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving!

Hola, EyeRound. 🙂 Happy Thanksgiving!! I am having the same problem you have trying to access C99%. I’ve tried through both Firefox and Safari. No problem with NC and TOP. There are several of us on here who monitor this site. We are loud and proud Progressive/Futurists who came on board when LD started it as the BNR on DK 7 years ago.

Good to see you eye!

Hey guys/gals, I have been trying to access C99% through both Firefox and Safari for the last couple of days. No luck. The site is down. I’ve got no trouble with NC and TOP. Are you encountering the same problems?

Laura

I have also been unable to access C99%. I was banned there a couple of months ago for challenging the groupthink regarding Covid, vaccines, etc. Being banned for that actually proved my point that you aren’t allowed to have a different opinion, but whatever. In any case I was still always able to access and read all posts and comments so the ban was no big deal, but I wondered if JtC, the owner, had decided to REALLY ban me a few days ago when I couldn’t access the site. Glad that’s not the case because, other than the Covid/vaccine issues, I really appreciate the folks there.

No luck either

I’m not banned (that I know of), but I tried again this am. Same result. I really liked their photo diary and visited it every week. One of their commenters, humphrey, used to be a regular on here. humphrey, if you’re lurking, could you shed some light on this problem? Many thanks!! 🙂

EyeRound

C99% is slowly coming back to life now. I got the front page, no blog posts yet. Stay warm (but not too warm!), dry and happy, Wingers!

good news

I know i’m not banned as i usually lurk over thier.

They are back up and running. c99 had a problem with there host server.

some legit allyship here https://t.co/KaqmLbyznC
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 21, 2022

that thing where the only thing panicked cops know how to do is cuff and arrest people https://t.co/nERBD4Cumr
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 21, 2022

When the shooting started, Mr. Fierro said, he hit the floor, pulling a friend down with him. As bullets sprayed, he saw the gunman move through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of bar patrons had fled. Mr. Fierro, who served in the Army for 15 years, said he raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him.
“Was he shooting at the time? Was he about to shoot? I don’t know,” Mr. Fierro said. “I just knew I had to take him down.”
The gunman, who Mr. Fierro estimated weighed more than 300 pounds, sprawled onto the floor, his military-style rifle landing just out of reach. Mr. Fierro started to go for the rifle, but then saw that the gunman had a pistol as well.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Mr. Fierro said.
As the fight continued, he said, he yelled for other club patrons to help him. A man grabbed the rifle and moved it away to safety. A drag dancer stomped on the gunman with her high heels. The whole time, Mr. Fierro said, he kept pummeling the shooter’s head while the two men screamed obscenities at each other.
When police arrived a few minutes later, the gunman was no longer struggling, Mr. Fierro said, and he feared that he had killed him. The suspect in the shooting was taken into custody and remained hospitalized on Monday afternoon.
Mr. Fierro said he was covered in blood when the police arrived, and officers tackled him and put him in handcuffs. He said he was held in a police car for more than an hour, and screamed and pleaded to be let go so that he could see what had happened to his family.

The imagery of him being pistol whipped by his own gun and being stomped by a drag queen’s heels should do the trick too.
— Undone 🆓 (@statusUndone) November 21, 2022

The cops are a real problem. Many of them are ex-military and RW as heck. You would think they would recognize that this hero was a retired military man himself. Colorado Springs has always been a hotbed of religious righties, too.

The GQP illlogic in action.

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EyeRound

Hi Obf, Laura and Wi64! Many thanks for your responses to my problem with C 99% connections. I see now that I’m not the only one with connection problems. Hope the site monitor fixes things there soon, if that’s where the issues lie. Beyond that, Laura I’m really sad that you were banned there! Hopefully they will reinstate you soon–they’re supposed to be tolerant of all different points of view. My last trip to C 99% was on Friday, when Jtc published his online life story, which could have meant “Sayonara” but I hope not. I guess we’ll find out. In the meantime I will keep up my visits to TPW, read your comments and posts and be happy for that! (In addition to eating turkey on Thursday, when I’ll be wishing all of you the same!)

Right back at you, fellow Progressive. You mentioned living in NYS. How is the weather up there?

EyeRound

Cold. Highs are in the 40’s, at night down in the low 20’s, but a couple of nights ago we hit 12 degrees. It snowed several days ago. This time of year the sun usually helps to melt off the snow, but it’s still largely white when I look out the window. We’re pretty far north–about an hour’s drive from Canada. How are things in Florida, is the hurricane aftermath still ongoing? I think I read that you escaped personal damage from wind and water–thank Heavens!

I’m inland in East Central FL about 75-80 miles from the Space Coast (Cape Canaveral). 🙂 We escaped major storm damage including floods from both Ian and Nicole. I wish I could say the same for our coastlines, both SWest (Ft. Myers Beach, Port Charlotte, etc.), and East (Volusia County which is the Daytona Beach area). They were absolutely devastated by storm surge and massive beach erosion. Heartbreaking and caused by human $$greed$$. Whew, that is some serious cold up your way. BRRRRRRR! 🙂 I sure hope you were spared the 7′ super blizzard.

Close but at least a clear lead. The nonpartisan polls were pretty accurate for the midterm election.

https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/a-georgia-senate-runoff-poll-points-to-challenges-for-walker-warnock/6LDXR4OMDFEALMQCJEGFWUF2QM/

The poll, commissioned by the AARP, pegged Warnock at 51% and Walker at 47% — within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Conducted by the bipartisan team of Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research, it’s the first major public poll since the Nov. 8 election ended with neither rival securing the majority vote needed for an outright victory.

Alvin the beagle is back

Yes, we're doing this again🐕 pic.twitter.com/XuHX22RpDu
— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) November 19, 2022

Good news, jcb. 🙂 Hey, nothing wrong with Booger Beagles. LOL. I’ve got 2, and my male looks similar to Senator Warnock’s. You would not believe how popular they are. It’s nuts! Every animal lover I know has a Beagle tale. It sure wasn’t that way when I had my beloved Dobes.

On the surface good news BUT Warnock voters gotta show on election day!!!! We know the crazy R’s will and i call them crazy if they support Walker, He should be no where close to having the power of a Senator

Walker barely has a functioning brain cos of football injuries. I guess the GOPukes figure if they can get a joke like Marjorie super-bozo elected, hey, why not?💩💩

Note from the Oregon pardons FAQ (https://t.co/JBFV5MvsMA): Noncitizens ARE included.
"Are non-citizens excluded from the Governor’s marijuana pardon?"
"No. Governor Brown’s marijuana pardon applies to both citizens and non-citizens, and does not exclude
non-citizens."
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) November 21, 2022

🙂 !!!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/22/the-us-right-is-stoking-anti-lgbt-hate-this-shooting-was-no-surprise

There’s a morbid randomness to American gun violence – that fatal combination of scarce mental health treatment and superabundant firearms that makes America, and only America, a place where mass public massacres are common even when the nation is ostensibly at peace. But if the Colorado attack was enabled by America’s pervasive gun violence problem, it seems to have been prompted by the tenor of rightwing media, both broadcast and online, which over the past years has turned a virulent, conspiratorial and obsessively hateful eye towards the LGBT community.
In the coming days, the massacre at Club Q will be cast as an isolated tragedy, and those who point out the right’s complicity in the violence will be accused, with predictable cynicism, of politicizing the tragedy. But what happened in Colorado Springs this past weekend was the foreseeable continuation of a trend of escalating violence targeting gay spaces, and drag shows in particular.
Egged on by conservative politicians, like Lauren Boebert, social media figures, like Libs of TikTok, and traditional media scions, like Tucker Carlson, conservatives have spent the past months consuming the lie that gay and trans people are “groomers” – that is, perverts and pedophiles who want to molest children, or sterilize them, or confuse them into leading different, wrong and lesser lives. In the face of this supposed harm to the innocent, any vengeance can be justified.
The lie that gay people are “grooming” children has provided cover for violent and bigoted displays at LGBT community spaces across the country. Over the past year, drag performances and other LGBT events have been targeted with protests and violent threats in California, Idaho, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Oregon, North Carolina and New York. Violent rightwing militia groups, like the Proud Boys and a group calling itself Patriot Front – who wear masks, because they are ashamed to show their faces – have appeared at these events, menacing gay people with threats. Just last month, in Eugene, Oregon, violence erupted outside a drag show when rightwing goons appeared and began throwing rocks and smoke bombs. At that hate rally, as at others, the anti-gay protesters carried semi-automatic rifles. It was only a matter of time before they started using them.
Like most bigots, homophobes know little about the groups they target, and their hatred doesn’t hew to logic. But when pressed, they will say that gay and trans people lack the virtues that they associate with traditional masculinity – virtues like honesty and integrity; courage, discipline and willingness to protect the innocent. But it was patrons, several of them gay themselves, who subdued the attacker at Club Q. According to the New York Times, a drag queen at the club helped by stomping on the man with her high heels
Meanwhile, in Uvalde, police officers armed to the teeth – the paragons of hegemonic masculinity that the right is always insisting we worship – stood by, cowardly and immobile, while a gunman slaughtered little children. If the right sees “manliness” as a virtue, a willingness to risk yourself to help the vulnerable, then you’d think it would be clear to them who the real “men” were.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/colorado-springs-shooting.html

We also know that, in recent years, the right has become increasingly fixated on all-ages drag shows, part of a growing moral panic about children being “groomed” into gender nonconformity. Club Q hosted a drag show on Saturday night and had an all-ages drag brunch scheduled for Sunday. Perhaps we’ll learn something in the coming days that will put these murders, which took place on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, into a new light, but right now, it seems hard to separate them from a nationwide campaign of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. incitement.
During the early years of Donald Trump’s administration, conservatives downplayed the contempt for homosexuality and gender nonconformity that had once been central to their movement, foregrounding racial resentment instead. Opposition to gay marriage had become a political loser, and it was hard to pose as champions of wholesome family values while enthusiastically supporting a thrice-married libertine who’d made a cameo in soft-core porn. But in recent years, as growing numbers of kids started identifying as trans, the puritanical tendency on the right has come roaring back, part of an increasingly apocalyptic worldview that sees the erosion of traditional gender roles as a harbinger of national collapse.
Chris Rufo, the entrepreneurial activist who made critical race theory into a major political issue, shifted his focus to “gender ideology” in public schools. Lawmakers began to target pro-L.G.B.T.Q. teachers, and to accuse anyone who opposed them of being “groomers.” When Florida was debating legislation restricting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary wrote on Twitter, “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”
The language of “grooming” recapitulated old homophobic tropes about gay people recruiting children, while also playing into the newer delusions of QAnon, which holds that elite liberals are part of a sprawling satanic child abuse ring. Conservatives hoped to turn this conspiracy theory into political power; according to the Human Rights Campaign, Republicans and Republican-aligned groups spent at least $50 million on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. ads in the midterms.
Drag queens have been a particular obsession of those who believe that children are being lured into changing their gender or sexual orientation. “The drag queen might appear as a comic figure, but he carries an utterly serious message: the deconstruction of sex, the reconstruction of child sexuality, and the subversion of middle-class family life,” wrote Rufo in an essay about Drag Queen Story Hour, a public event series in which drag queens read to children and lead singalongs.
All over the country, Drag Queen Story Hours have been targeted by Proud Boys and other demonstrators, some heavily armed. In August, the Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert tweeted a photo of a flier for a Drag Queen Story Hour at a Colorado public library with the words, “Sending a message to all the drag queens out there: stay away from the children in Colorado’s Third District!” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh described drag events involving kids as a “cancer,” and wrote that “just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process.”
It’s been clear for some time that there are people willing to act on such ideas. Just last month, a man in a red baseball cap firebombed a Tulsa doughnut shop that had hosted a drag event. According to The Tulsa World, the vandal “left a note on a neighboring business that contained Bible verses and hateful rhetoric.”

If stupidity and aggressive ignorance weren’t so widespread in this nation, these FRightwingnut aholes would have no power. They are wrecking havoc on American English, and I despise them with every atom in my Self!

Always the hate card with these yahoos, They give us humanoids a bad name

“a drag queen at the club helped by stomping on the man with her high heels”
Those stiletto’s will leave a mark on him :)..

Shame it didn’t accidentally puncture his ‘brain.’

The air pressure being released would of been spectactular to watch 🙂

"enraged and horny" is right-wing media's comfort zone https://t.co/WqYP3G5yJe
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 22, 2022

regardless, congrats Allison! i'm sure you will tell the story of this case at countless dinner parties, which will serve as useful practice for when you have to explain it to God
— Law Boy (@The_Law_Boy) November 22, 2022

The usual white noize BS. jcb, how is your weather up around the Hudson River Valley?

The right are now openly justifying the slaughtering of LGBTQ+ people right after a tragic mass shooting. Years of lying and dehuminization have prepped their audience for violence pic.twitter.com/WiUI5IO5m9
— The Serfs (@theserfstv) November 22, 2022

like Lincoln said: 'A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"'
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 22, 2022

C99% Wednesday am update.

I wandered over there and was able to call up their Home Page. That’s as far as it went. When I tried to either log in or just read a diary, a 404 Not Found message came up on a white screen. The entries on that Home Page are several days old, too. Sure hope they can get the problems sorted out. I miss their weekly photo diary. 🙁

Laura

It’s up and running now! 👍

Just got back from over there. Thank you, Laura and la58. 🙂 Now, I can get my photo diary fix. LOL.

Good to hear!!!

Musk at twitter reminds me in a way of markos and dkos when it comes to rules and moderation on a whim

I don’t miss dkos but I miss Meteor Blades!

MB has semi-retired cos he’s going through a natural process called aging/getting old. It’s just part of life like death and breathing. He would be the first one to tell you that simple fact. But, thanks so much for the update on C99 getting back on line. How is your weather up in MI? You and yours have a healthy and peaceful Thanksgiving! 🙂

understandable as the joints are going thru the results of athletics and the physical result of some jobs i had in the past.The mind well that open as i do get a little crazy on here🤪🤪

A couple headlines

“Georgia Supreme Court Allows Early Voting on Saturday, Nov. 26 for Senate Runoff”
Another win for voters unless the R’s try the USSC next?

“Trump blasts Supreme Court over tax return ruling after a tough day in 3 other courts”

He should be blasting Moscow Mitch and the Federalist Society as that is where he got the names from. Cult-45 just passed along what they wanted and now he pissed.

The day they put his worthless carcass in handcuffs will be when I finally feel optimistic about my country again.

Aint Supposed to Die A Natural Death

I voted early today in Dekalb Cty but they will not hold voting tomorrow or Friday. I guess the workers are off for Thanksgiving. Each cty decides its own dates so some are not starting til Saturday or Sunday for early voting. Lines were looong. But fortunately, I qualified as a 75+ to skip the lines. Dekalb is a mostly dem cty so the long lines in a runoff vote look good for Warnock imho. And along the streets approaching (and leaving) the election headquarters there were people with Warnock signs waving at cars and people inside the cars were waving back. I felt good.

Up here in Wi everything is pretty much shutdown. A lot of people are celebrating the 2 holidays this time of year Thanksgiving and Deer hunting or what a call the human rut or a salmon returninbg to spawn. My son hunts but i stay away as way to many mix guns and alcohol.