By David Futrelle
Well, the post I was working on for tonight turned into a much bigger post than I expected; I’ll put it up some time later this weekend if I can wrestle it into shape by then. In the meantime, have this OPEN THREAD celebrating the new hero of the moment, Plaid Shirt Guy.
Plaid shirt guy (real name Tyler Linfesty) was randomly picked to be one of those directly behind Donald Trump at his rally in Billings, Montana last night. Not a fan of Trump, Linfesty was caught on camera responding to a number of Trump’s more outlandish assertions with obvious and rather comical disbelief — until Trump’s people ushered him off the stage and into the arms of the Secret Service, who ultimately tossed him from the rally and send him on his way.
Here’s one of Linfesty’s finest moments:
This guy rules pic.twitter.com/TgP1sHycVC
— Clem Fandango (@Squanch_Me) September 7, 2018
Here he is being given the hook:
In solidarity with Billings #plaidshirtguy who was escorted off the risers after wearing a @DemSocialists sticker for 20 minutes. pic.twitter.com/wNH08GzMU4
— Billings DSA (@Billings_DSA) September 7, 2018
Shortly after that, several other rallygoers standing behind Trump were also sent on their way:
When you realize halfway through a Trump rally that the people in the bleachers need to be peppier and blonder. pic.twitter.com/NytEn23a9g
— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) September 7, 2018
Linfesty’s reactions were a bit reminiscent of Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker’s legendary caught-on-camera response to some of Sean Spicer’s baffling pronouncements at one White House briefing. Here you can compare the two:
— sophie tylenol (@sophietylenol) September 7, 2018
The Daily Beast tracked Linfesty down after the event to ask him about his experience and his affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America.
One more little video, this one turning Trump’s weird mispronunciation of the word “anonymous” into something rather glorious.
Anomynous. pic.twitter.com/sJ36OGPgOy
— Levi Fishman (@levifishman) September 7, 2018
We live in deeply weird times. Discuss.
My dissertation is complete and gets handed in a week Wednesday, my printer has decided to start playing silly buggers, and I’ve had to fill in the ESA50 form for my reassessment for my sickness benefit, Employment and Support Allowance. Strangely enough most of my stress I’d coming from the anxiety of going to a medical assessment and talking about my mental illnesses with a stranger. It took me long enough to trust my doctor and family.
So, other than that, not much going on in my life. Hope all are well??
Many congratulations on the dissertation, Nanny! And my sympathies from the very bottom of my sympathetically-stress-twisted guts (having recently supported somebody through a PIP appeal) for the ESA hoops they force you to jump through. That whole system is so not-fit-for-purpose it beggars belief. Wishing you all the best with – well, with both :-s
So I went ahead and joined the New Democratic Party this weekend. I applied to the Ontario provincial branch, but I understand that there’s no distinction with the NDP between provincial and federal party, so being a member of the provincial party makes you a member of the federal party by default.
Which is nice because I’d like to have a voice in replacing Jagmeet Singh, who is really testing my patience with his seemingly constant bungling.
Starting with a monthly five bucks contribution. And I’m thinking about volunteering for the local candidate for the 2019 election… although my fear of vote splitting is present, given how low turnout is, just getting people to think about voting is probably worth knocking on the door for an NDP candidate in, even in staunchly Liberal Don Valley West.
*shrug* I’m open to thoughts.
@Viscaria – congrats!!!
@Nanny – break a leg! Do you have your defense scheduled? (I used to be a grad student advisor, so I have to work hard to stop myself from making sure you have all your paperwork in *giggle)
Anyway… on a much less positive topic… I think my cousin is becoming an incel. He comes from a very conservative part of the family. It’s not really too surprising, since he was already pretty homophobic, racist, and xenophobic. Now he is reading Jordan Peterson and doing all this alt-right garbage. He has never had a girlfriend, regardless of the fact that he is fairly good looking, and constantly complains that all the women he meets are… well, basically, all the stupid things incels say about women that y’all already know and I’m not going to repeat here.
Ive tried warning the family about this but no one listens to me. They’re all still pretending that no one in our family could possibly do that!! and that his DV jokes are just a phase.
@Yutolia the Green Hash Thing
I hope it is just a phase but with incels its disturbingly easy to go from “Its just jokes.” to “Braking news X injured and Y killed in attack…”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2014/06/archbishop-says-he-was-unsure-if-priests-raping-children-was-a-crime
I can’t even 🙁
Thought I’d just drop this morsel here for you guys to chew over…
@Nequam
Sounds like you have your own Qanon,
hope it is not too frustrating for you.
@Nequam: Ick, not sure where that post came from, but if that’s what you’re dealing with, I’m sorry. Yuck!
I hope your uncle and my cousin never meet, that seems like something he would be attracted to.
@TreePerson: I really hope they’re right and it is just a phase. I feel like he’s been going down this road a long time though.
Don’t worry, it’s not my uncle; I was just reading this on another forum and was sort of amazed.
@Nequam
Ah OK, with out the context I had assume.
I found this in Incel Tears subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/89tahr/incels_were_not_all_that_bad/
I went to the site referenced, and it actually seems like it’s trying to do a good thing. There was one post that was sexist and whiny, but pretty much no one responded in agreement and instead people offered positive advice on how the OP author could improve themselves.
I think this subreddit is pretty new, and to me it seems like it has the potential to become either helpful or hurtful at this point.
@Cyborgette: I can’t believe I actually read that right. OMG…
@Yutolia the Green Hash Thing
Sorry to burst your bubble, but within 5 seconds of browsing the farcical “IncelsWithoutHate”, guess what I found? Sexism with a side of *gasp* hate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsWithoutHate/comments/9el9ds/society_has_insulated_women_and_made_it_where/
(the whole post is basically, “women are shallow pricks who only care about hotties”).
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsWithoutHate/comments/9e582y/did_some_of_these_cold_approaches/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsWithoutHate/comments/9e121i/trying_to_understand/ (woman meets incel, incel describes his blatantly misogynistic views, invites woman to incel chatroom, woman is barraged by unending toxic torrent of virulent hatred of women, is kicked from chatroom for being a woman. The kicker? Not one single person in the entire thread calls out the blatant sexism).
https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelsWithoutHate/comments/9e550f/possible_planted_evidence/ (Oooo, it’s about us!!)
Aaaand, yeah, I haven’t even finished the first page.
The problem is in the very root core belief of inceldom itself, that being “involuntarily” celibate is a wrongdoing, an offence, and no matter how many times or how many incels deny it, that unavoidably leads to questioning a woman’s right to say no. It’s rooted in misogyny, just as Nazism is rooted in racism.
Yeah I’ve been reading more and was about to come back and post a never mind!!! since I obviously wasn’t paying attention.
My apologies to anyone who goes there!!!
And yes, I understand that inceldom is toxic and entitled and I’m not defending it. I just hoped… oh, I don’t know what I hoped… maybe that it was a place for lonely people actually looking to change that, but unfortunately ‘incel’ is the only correct part of the title.
Feeling kind of stupid now… well, maybe David will find some use for it!
God fucking dammit, Ontario’s mini-Trump Doug Ford is trying to use the Nonwithstanding Clause to ignore the Canadian Charter of Rights and subvert a judicial ruling against his dumbass plan to cut the Toronto council in half.
https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2018/09/10/ford-says-hell-invoke-the-notwithstanding-clause-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-bombshell-move.html
If he’s willing to invoke powers that allow him to ignore fundamental rights of Canadian citizens over this petty fucking squabble, I don’t want to know how much more often he’s going to pull this shit. Probably any time he doesn’t get his way.
Ontarian Mammotheers, please contact your MPPs. If this bullshit passes this Wednesday, our rights will literally be at stake.
I always thought the notwithstanding clause should either a) not exist, or b) come with a poison pill whereby the invoking government must resign within the following 60 days, triggering a new election, so that it would only ever be used in a genuine emergency or similar situation where it was felt that the benefits to the province/country outweighed the risk of the incumbent party not winning a fresh election. A risk made exponentially worse if the use of the notwithstanding clause proved unpopular with the public …
*lonely, non-entitled people.
Ugh
@Surplus
Either of those two options would be infinitely preferable to the current system in place with this dumbass clause, definitely.
I’ll dream that this absolutely reprehensible use of the clause raises awareness of this bullshit and causes some backlash that might result in one of those two options. (It’s not going to happen, of course, but I can dream.)
It’s pretty appalling that Canada has a “hey, do you want to ignore these things that we’ve classified as Fundamental Rights? Cool, just get a majority vote!” option.
Oh, and also if we keep it, we should require a supermajority to invoke it.
Thanks Opposable and Yutolia.
@Opposable, I’ve applied for PIP for the third time as well, last mopnth. So many forms, so much evidence. Because being mentally ill and autistic doesn’t bring enough stress, the government have to provide extra.
@Yutolia, so far I don’t have to do a defence. It’s for an MA in Creative Writing, so I had to write the first 13000 words of a novel I was going to write anyway, and the 2000 words of criticism. I’m fairly pleased with it. My MA is a means to an end for me. I want to go on to do a PhD. I’m thinking something about autistic women in literature, as writers and characters. My MA dissertation is about autistic women in crime fiction.
@ Nanny Oggs Busom:
Ooh, that sounds interesting.
@Nanny Oggs Busom – Those forms sound like a pain. But your writing plans, creative and academic, sound really cool. Best of luck!!! 🙂
After I did my undergrad, I applied to an MA in Creative Writing. Although I didn’t get into the program (I got into an academic MA a year later), I heard some good things from those who did – despite the part about abusive profs which I wrote about a few months ago. That was another issue.
Wishing you the best so hard, Nanny. The PIP system is designed to weed people out purely by making it so stressful and exhausting to fight your way through.
I hope you might have been able to find some kind of useful support organisation where you are? We were helped by a local disability rights organisation (checking through the forms) and when the DWP (outsourced of course) assessment turned the application down flat – with zero in every category – we appealed and they were able to help with a human being actually going to the tribunal hearing with us.
As I’m sure you know, a large majority of appeals are successful for the applicant. In ours they gave the DWP rep some serious side-eye and we didn’t even have to speak beyond confirming identity because – and this turned out to be the crucial thing – we had quite a lot of documentation (genuine assessments, letters from professionals involved, etc.). I also made an audio recording of their assessment – the useless one – and transcribed it for the appeal.
Even just getting someone to go with you can be helpful, I think. I hope you can get through this!
@Catapla, Surplus,
At least we got the judge’s ruling out of it. I can’t think of the last time I saw a judge rip a politician a new one like that. The only thing he left out was that the whole thing is clearly Doug settling scores from his days at City Hall, as evidenced by the fact he’s not touching city council sizes anywhere else. But seriously, isn’t the notwithstanding clause supposed to be for… well, bigger issues than your petty little family feuds?
Still, maybe with fewer seats Mammoliti (sp?) won’t get back in.
Then again, everyone’s so fixated on the city council size debate, nobody seems to be paying much attention to the whole “replacing elected positions with nominated ones.” Aren’t populists supposed to be all about elected officials? Hypocritical bullying heroin-dealing whinge-basket…