The By That I Mean podcast

29/10/2024

Someone drove through (deep-blue) neighborhoods in Vancouver WA and Portland OR and lit ballot boxes on fire using incendiary devices. "Several hundred" completed ballots were destroyed. Hmm I wonder if this could have anything to do with the one political party in this country that's been deliberately harrassing and targeting election workers, denying election results, and claiming fraudulent and stolen elections...

If you or people you know have already voted in these areas, please check the appropriate online ballot tracking service and make sure your ballot was counted. And everywhere else: keep an eye out, please. Keep awake and aware of surroundings. Look out for each other. Sh*t's even stranger now.

Oregon and Washington ballot boxes were set aflame Monday as early voting continues in the election. Portland police released a suspect vehicle photo.

30/09/2024

Kris Kristofferson was one of few people I imagined might well live forever. He had crested every mountain in the realm of human art & experience with skill & integrity, and had lived lifetimes before I was even born. Maybe, I figured, he'd even beat Death too.

But we know that's not how the song goes. RIP to one of the most beautiful men who ever truly lived.

All before the world knew him, "He was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, a defensive back, a bartender, a Golden Gloves boxer, a gandy dancer, a forest firefighter, a road crew member, and an Army Ranger who flew helicopters." Then he became one of the very finest songwriters to ever live, gave most of those songs away to some of the other finest songwriters and performers to ever live, and he "dabbled" in acting where he embodied memorably-iconic leading men and some of the coolest fu***ng sidekicks in film history.

"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Even if he hadn't committed another word of ink to paper, this would still be one of the very best lyrics and BEST choruses ever.

Throughout it all, up and down, he stood up for every belief he'd ever professed - and he stood undaunted with people like Sinead O'Connor who were punished by this cruel and stupid world for committing the crime of telling the truth too early & too plainly.

There were none quite like him, and won't be any more. From this article, "he said during a 1995 interview with the AP he remembered a woman complaining about one of the songs that began with killing babies in the name of freedom.

'And I said, "Well, what made you mad — the fact that I was saying it or the fact that we’re doing it?" To me, they were getting mad at me ’cause I was telling them what was going on.'"

Kristofferson, a songwriter and A-list Hollywood actor is known for classics like “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” and for starring in films like “A Star Is Born" with Barbra Streisand.

24/09/2024

Let's all meet Leonard Leo, one of the most powerful people in the United States of America! Leonard is the redundantly-named authoritarian billionaire goon who has already bought himself much of the federal judiciary and the US Supreme Court (handpicking ALL THREE Trump appointments to the Supreme Court, he brags!). And he's the guy who funded & personally oversaw the overturning of Roe v Wade under President Trump. No, you never voted for Leonard Leo - because he's never run for political office!

And yet, he rules us all - and he wants even more! THIS guy, Leonard Leo, is also the money man behind Project 2025 that is now Trump's plan to effectively dismantle the federal government for good if he takes office again. "Leo has funded 60 of over 80 Project 2025 initial advisory groups, including over half the Advisory Board in 2022, using hard-to-track dark money."

Leonard has also largely bought himself the federal courts from the time of George W. Bush's administration on, installing record amounts of far-right judges into lifetime appointments to federal courts across America. The radical political mission of Leonard Leo's courts is to completely undo the 20th century and 19th century for the profit of people like him. Their goal is to make America a white theocratic ethnostate, even though the political far right can't consistently win democratic federal elections. Even as evil as all that is - it was just a dry run for what good ole Lenny's trying to do to our elections this year.

In the 2024 election cycle, Leonard Leo's organizations and SuperPACs are wielding a political war chest with more cash on hand than both of America's major political parties! Sit with this for just a second - you may already think you know Lenny but you don't know Lenny at all.

You see, Leonard Leo is Catholic... but dude isn't just *Catholic.* He's literally a member of the fascist theocratic political organization called Opus Dei. I grew up in one of the more Roman Catholic cities in this country, surrounded by Catholics who I would describe as pretty conservative - but no one in my family or my friend group or my schoolmates is anything remotely like this in their beliefs, not even in their wildest dreams. Their vision for America, at least as I always understood it, is NOT for it to become a theocratic white ethnostate!

Leonard Leo *proudly* calls himself a theocrat. And again, he's got more money ready to make that real than both parties do. He already owns the Supreme Court and the federal courts (and keep that in mind the day after Election Day when the court battles start). If we don't learn how evil these people are, if we don't see how large-scale their plans are, we won't be prepared for anything they're planning and we can't imagine how to fight back. I will give you some links where you can read about him, but let's let Leonard speak for Leonard. (Alliteration!)

Leonard said "in 2022, as he accepted the John Paul II New Evangelization Award at an event held by the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. [quoted from the Slate article]...

Leo: "These barbarians, secularists, and bigots have been growing more numerous over the past few years. They control and use many levers of power. Yet even so, we cannot lose hope in the ultimate success of the new evangelization. With God, all things are possible. He has equipped us to carry out this mission no matter how impossible it may seem. As we prepare for this hard yet necessary task ahead, I urge us to remember three things. First, the threats to the new evangelization are not of flesh and blood. This is spiritual warfare. Our opponents are not just uninformed or unchurched. They are often deeply wounded people whom the devil can easily take advantage of. He has hardened their hearts and closed their minds, which means reason alone will not win this struggle."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/supreme-court-leonard-leo-catholicism.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/opinion/leonard-leo-fundraising-supreme-court-irs.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/leonard-leo-dark-money-supreme-court-trump-1234972151/
https://www.stopthecoup2025.org/who-is-leonard-leo

The inside story of how Leonard Leo built a machine that remade the American legal system — and what he plans to do next.

17/09/2024

Here's a new latest example of how Journalism Is Dead: LAist is L.A.'s local public NPR station (used to be KPCC). They're also one of the only original local "journalism" outlets left in one of the largest cities in the country.

LAist's Housing Reporter David Wagner wrote this piece about a CRUCIAL report that the City of Los Angeles has absolutely *buried* - the city has buried this report for four months because it proves that landlords gamed rent control laws and raised rents above inflation for decades to guarantee their profits, at the expense of tens of millions of working and poor Angelenos. And this report all but demands strengthening rent control, lowering allowable rent increases, AND stopping the game of tacking on additional percentage points of rent increases for any renters' utilities that are nominally paid by their landlord. Massively important stuff, right?

But LAist's only "Housing Reporter" chose to frame this entire piece with the anti-journalism known as a "Both Sides" perspective that, instead of THE TRUTH, instead looks for a "balance" that puts the most powerful richest voices in the room on equal footing and prominence to the vast majority of powerless people in our entire society. According to this "view from nowhere" perspective, social issues could never possibly have any clear moral or ethical or socially-valued valence to them, and there's never a clear right thing to do - especially when it might call landlord profits into question! This fake version of "journalism" is actually just the maintenance of a servile and pathetically obedient attitude toward our society's idiot rulers.

Instead of discussing rental housing like it's a basic crucial issue of life that often has life-making-or-breaking stakes for the over 63% of Los Angeles residents who rent, David Wagner claims this is actually just a "fiery debate" between equally-valid competitors. (If you can't tell how I feel about that approach to the news: f**k all that up a tree!)

David Wagner's primary sources for this razor-sharp analysis? Oh, he spoke to one landlord lobbyist (whose whiny bitching fills the bulk of his article) and to one public advocacy lawyer. Having conducted those brief interviews, he considered his job well done.

THIS MAN SPOKE TO NOT EVEN ONE RENTER ABOUT HOW WEAK RENT CONTROLS HAVE IMPACTED US. IN A CITY OF MILLIONS WHERE OVER 63% OF US RENT THE ONLY HOUSING WE HAVE, AND AMID DUAL CRISES OF HOUSING AFFORDABILITY AND HOMELESSNESS, ONE OF THE ONLY "LOCAL" "PUBLIC" JOURNALISTS LEFT HERE COULD NOT EVEN BE FU***NG BOTHERED TO SPEAK TO *ONE* PERSON WHO RENTS THEIR HOUSING.

I guess we were all busy that day!

https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/los-angeles-housing-rent-control-increase-caps-rso-limits-economic-roundtable-report

The independent economic analysis finds some rent increase rules favor landlords and recommends changing the formula for deciding annual increases for rent-controlled apartments. It was filed four months ago but not released publicly. LAist obtained a copy through a public records request.

11/09/2024

So, this was a new talking point tonight from the former President of the United States during his first Presidential debate against Kamala Harris. This viciously racist and anti-immigrant rumor captured in the AP's headline "Trump falsely accuses immigrants in Ohio of abducting and eating pets" was made up by literal neo-Nazis in Springfield Ohio. It went viral on right wing online media spaces before JD Vance retweeted it yesterday and actively endorsed the rumor. Former US President Donald Trump used the debate to amplify and present this freakish, racist, anti-immigrant and again *neo-Nazi* rumor in primetime to a worldwide audience.

As always, Donald Trump's not ONLY trying to scrape as much money off America's carcass as he can. He's also -always- trying to get some black people killed.

"Vance, who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spread a debunked claim about Haitian migrants living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on Monday, accusing them of abducting pets and eating them. The claim, which local police say is baseless, was made by far-right activists, local Republicans and neo-Nazis before being picked up by Vance. A well-known advocate for the Haitian community says she received a wave of racist harassment in the aftermath of Vance's post."

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5107320/jd-vance-springfield-ohio-haitians-pets
https://apnews.com/article/haitian-immigrants-vance-trump-ohio-6e4a47c52b23ae2c802d216369512ca5