Tetanus McGrift

Who the hell is hogging the victim wah-wah pedal? 

Oh right-o. That's Andrew Doyle, curtailed in his attempt to squeeze more $$$ from @TitaniaMcGrath, the lemon he spawned from his malcontent alter ego, garnished with the face of his RealDoll™ and weaponized with gobs of his/her/their fatuous, churlish, humourless tweets. 

Doyle is an odd duck who seems to hang out at the doctrinaire Quislette where fakery, deceit, fraud and hoax are championed if clothed in the correct ideological garb. Charmed by Tetanus' purported strident, *leftist* siren's song, the alpha dogs and even Kay Fils occasionally throw him some scraps from their table. Dixit the man, à propos the malicious fabricated subterfuge he believes to be a Swiftian-level parody:

"From Titania’s earliest appearance, I resolved to stay anonymous — not to cause mischief, but more for the fun of it. If people believed she was real, I reasoned, I could enter into dialogue with her detractors. This meant that the satirical impact would not be restricted to what Titania said, but how others reacted to her. Her tweets are designed to ridicule the excesses of the social justice left, but her interactions tend to expose the folly of those on the right who take her at face value and lose their temper. As such, her targets are not limited to one side of the political spectrum." 

Juxtapose! Compare the Tetanus avatar with the silicon playmate whose current nom de guerre is Jessica. The blank eyes, slightly ajar lips, blonde hair.. thoroughly down-tarted and accessorized with photoshopped glasses and a library to convey intellectual credibility. Voilà! Is this how Incel boyz amuse themselves when they wish they could cavort with $6K Barbies? 

So pucker up gurrl — your charmless Daddy is going to press you hard and put you away dry. To update Madonna's _Material Girl_ lyrics: 

'Cause we are living in a monetized world

And I am a monetized girl..

Do check out Doyle's Twitter Galatea, here. His/her/their fans are legion, at least in his mind. Note the appropriated banner art, no credit given to its creator. He must fantasize how he/she/they emulate the witty brilliance of @TheTweetOfGod. None of them are in David Javerbaum's league. 

It has been pointed out by many that an aggrieved Doyle uses a stodgy Tetanus to malevolently punch down at his targets. Though pathetically cringe-inciting, he/she/they are deeply unfunny. 

That + his/her/their hamfisted tweets are anti-comedy poison. Not canceled, just canned. Hence the MASSIVE failure on the Fringe and club circuit.

Premier Deadbeat Dad

Or if you prefer, Daddy Cheesecake. There were some inspired responses to my previous blogpost about Premier Daddy Drug Lord's Magical Make-over.

A powerful Twitter hashtag Premier #DeadBeatDadDoug is the brainchild of David D. aka @answerallman. The Beaverton picked up the theme with its _ Deadbeat Dad Behind in Health Care System Payments_. 

More critics of Premier Drug Lord's corrupt and depraved mismanagement of the Covid19 pandemic and ensuing systemic public healthcare crisis have presented cogent facts.

Leading, is this powerful thread:

The best way to counter all disingenuous campaigns, electoral or other, that try to spin Premier DeadbeatDad and Fraud Nation's governance as anything but carnage and calamity for the 99% of people in Ontario is to state and restate the evidence. 

That's it. Acts of corporate corruption and gross, deliberate malfeasance from Ford, Elliott, Lecce, Mulroney and *Dr* Fullerton are well-documented.

 

We won't let the rightwing and pro-liberal MSM gild Daddy Cheesecake's flaming pile of shit. We will oppose their propaganda and expose its stench and toxicity.

Premier Daddy Drug Lord's Magical Make-Over

A PR campaign calculated to deliberately *change the story* about the Ford government's Covid19 failure to defend and protect the people of Ontario is visibly under way.

Vomitrocious propaganda from a former Toronto Sun stenographer. He parrots focus group speaking points from the Cons' campaign to obnubilate facts about their malfeasance and lack of due diligence to prevent Covid19 deaths in Ontario. 

He cites an opinion from this Navigator™ flak, an experienced turd-gilder and lobbyist who susurrates slick BS with practiced aplomb.

[Ford] was dogged by controversy over rebranded, and subsequently defective, licence plates. He was feuding with the province's teachers unions during tense contract talks. And he vowed to launch his 2022 re-election campaign this year.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything.

"He became 'Premier Dad' to everybody and he found that empathy," said Amanda Galbraith, a principal at public relations firm Navigator and former communications director for Toronto Mayor John Tory [..]

No, the "experts" quoted in the fluff piece aren't tripping on Doug's prime hashish. They are seasoned spin doctors doing their job: diverting all journalistic attempts to scrutinize Fraud Nation's malfeasant actions and depraved incompetence during the pandemic and the systemic public health crisis. 

Nothing has changed. Premier Fraud Nation exploits Covid19 for his own political agenda. The rightwing media amplifies his lies, trying not to trip over the bodies of those who have died and are suffering in private and hugely profitable Long Term Care residences.

More honest trenchant reactions to the Premier Dad® crap here.

A reminder of the harm and pain that squalid, corrupt Fraud Nation has inflicted upon Ontario people. From here.

 

This is an old problem. But now LTC industry lobbyists exploit Ford's *Open For Business* channels to receive federal pandemic $$$ and to guarantee retroactive impunity for their malevolent carnage.

Fraud Nation has hit the campaign trail.. so let's hit back, chipping away at the sparkly brass of his public relations. Let's expose what he's done, and how this greedy, sleazy huckster is paving the way to a gravy trough full of taxpayer-funded freebies for his criminal cronies, developer buddies, corporate hogs and other good ol' boys to stuff themselves. Opposition to the Ford government kleptocracy is organized and its genuine, grass-roots people and groups will lead the battle. 

Updated to include knowledgeable facts from actual journalists doing their work, plus a pithy observation from Fern Hill.

Away from these stories we tell and the waltz we take.

_Take This Waltz_ is a current offering on MUBI, a film-streaming service. Also, _Away From Her_. I own a dvd copy of the latter which has an Academy Award nominated screenplay, adapted from an Alice Munro short story.

Sarah Polley writes, casts and directs her film stories for women and for those who love us. Some tedious men who reviewed _Take This Waltz_ were rather loathsome about it. Their hatefulness is self-revealing; it exposes their toxic masculine insecurities and egregious, narcissistic beliefs about people who don't look like them or behave as they do.

Men who will twist themselves into knots defending Weinstein + other movie industry sex predators and glorifying their worst anti-cinematic garbage, can't find enough words in their meagre vocabulary to disparage Polley's films, as this dickhead did. Fortunately, there are many who are able to appreciate her work. 

Stories We Tell is not just very moving; it is an exploration of truth and fiction that will stay with you long after repeated viewings. For a first screening of this picture is simply a way of getting in training for it. It is fiendishly difficult to review and to praise properly. This is not just documentary, but narrative magic. As one figure in the film says to the director, Sarah Polley, “What a vicious director you are.” The remark is offered with paternal humor, but no great irony. For the speaker has been put through the wringer, and a similar process is waiting for anyone hoping to talk about the picture. [...] 

So the documentary has to yield some space to being a family story—like Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Ghosts, and Three Sisters. But those plays are written in tragic tones, and they involve self-destructive people. One of the bonuses in Stories We Tell is how decent and well-meaning the other people in the circle are. They include the siblings and half-siblings as well as friends from several generations. There is a tenderness implicit in the way they talk and pay attention to each other that may be unusually well-behaved, but which also grows out of mutual respect for untidy family get-togethers, children mingling with pets, and the urge to record them all for the album of record and misunderstanding. Stories We Tell is an admission that we are not good with facts.

When _Stories We Tell_ was released in 2013, I wrote this at DJ!

I love _Take This Waltz_ and upon viewing it again, discovered delightful bits that hadn't registered the first time. Such as this deliciously raucous version of _Closing Time_ performed by Feist.

A key confrontation played by Sarah Silverman and Michelle Williams encapsulates a dilemma many women face.  What is worse: abandoning the social imperative to nurture one's child, or refusing to coddle a man-baby who doesn't want children who might be winning competitors for his wife's attention?

The film has scene upon scene of such subtle, underwritten encounters between its characters. Women get it. Most men don't. 

Ça suffit!!! -- ENOUGH!

For over a decade, DJ! has published blogposts that expose the malevolent weapons deployed by patriarchy to enforce its gynophobic ideologies.

Fern writes and tweets mainly about choice with respect to women's reproductive rights, and its sociopolitical significance. I focus on individual and systemic manifestations of a system that upholds men's privilege and impunity in matters of physical and sexual violence against women and girls.

Around 2016 I lost patience with the drawn-out process of writing blogposts about these issues. So much unrelenting VaW everywhere across the planet, that tweeting / retweeting was expedient. 

Every act of violence against women and girls boils down to the same element: men are "allowed" to do what they do and the challenge is to not get *caught* and if that happens, count on the old white boys to affirm the male imperative to hunt down their prey and have fun, doing harm.

This. 

“I think this Tuesday, Dec. 15, will be a dark one for all victims of sexual assault, because I am an example of the limits of the justice system when it comes to sexual violence. I profoundly deplore that the myths and the stereotypes of another era, that were often brought up by the defence, could be echoed in that courtroom. It is a negative message sent by the justice system to victims,” Charette said.

“Finally, to all the victims, I would like to say this: Don’t be ashamed. Despite the disappointment of today, I invite you to denounce (sexual assaults). Things are starting to change.”

Change..? Seems so, so slow. Peter Nygård was arrested in Winnipeg for extradiction to the US to stand trial.

His arrest on sex trafficking charges came after U.S. federal authorities raided Nygard’s Manhattan offices earlier this year [...] after 10 women sued Nygard, saying he enticed young and impoverished women to his Bahamas estate with cash and promises of modeling and fashion opportunities. Several plaintiffs in the suit, filed in New York City, said they were 14 or 15 years old when Nygard gave them alcohol or drugs and then raped them. 

 

Last, and certainly not least. 

In a series of sexual-assault rulings this fall, the Supreme Court has sent a message to appellate courts that they should listen to lower-court judges who believe the complainant.

The court has ruled in seven sexual-assault cases this fall, and in all seven, it has taken the side of the complainant and prosecution. In five of those cases, appeal courts had thrown out convictions registered by trial judges, saying their decisions had been unfair to the male defendants. In the other two, trial judges convicted the men and appeal-court majorities upheld the convictions. [...]

Women’s advocates say the Supreme Court is maintaining its fairness.

“I really don’t see this in any way being about a loss of objectivity and fairness or jumping on the MeToo bandwagon,” Megan Stephens, the executive director and general counsel for the Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund, said in an interview.

The court, she said, is sending a message to appeal courts not to second guess trial judges on credibility and reliability assessments. “The primary message coming out of the Supreme Court is ‘don’t forget, you owe deference to those trial judges’. ”

Assessments of credibility (honesty) and reliability (accuracy) are central to the trial judge’s job. Appeal courts generally defer to these assessments because it is the trial judge who sits in court and hears directly from the witnesses. Witnesses do not testify at appeal courts. But if an appeal court believes the trial judge made a legal error in their approach to assessing credibility, it can throw out a conviction and order a new trial.

There were no legal errors. The criminal defence lawyers who appealed their clients' guilty verdicts would not accept the judges' judicial decision based on the testimony of witnesses / complainants whose credibility they attempted to destroy for their clients to *win* and to affirm their right to rape.

As these two squalid predators did, and were acquitted of their crimes, free to sexually assault again with impunity.

Legal errors. Did Judge Beaudoin commit any of those? Or was he merely conned by the prolific liar and accused serial sex predator Paul Batchelor?

Change. Whatever. Du n'importe quoi.

Sons of Gavin McAnus

A fitting name for the _Proud Boys™_.

So so much I have tweeted about their Dungeon Daddy's idiocy and their violent, circus-clownish peccadillos, since McAnus first spawned them. If my twitter account is restored, I'm archiving all my scathingly savage observations about this cesspool scum and their hipster neonazi progenitor.

Following in their patriarch's footsteps, the "boys" try to elevate gross, self-indulgent frat boy antics into ersatz civil disobedience. The medium is the message.

And what's with the piss-yellow, skid-mark-stained kilt fabric they're sporting during their little display? Their fashion stylist clearly believes that form follows function.

The response is mostly aghast and justifiably derisive. Some dickhead likened it to a PETA or FEMEN protest. Wut? Why not PUSSY RIOT, without the justesse, the wit, the punk music or the talent?

Some sharply noted words about this.

Bingo.

Seriously, though.

Trump repeatedly using the WP hand sign. A historic church under attack. Calculated tactics.

 
White supremacy choreographed by the Ku Klux Kops.

J. J. Thomson, prochoice philosopher

Had we but known, our blog could have been called _DAMMIT JUDITH!_ instead.

From Judith Jarvis Thomson's NYT obituary:

Professor Thomson showed that moral questions surrounding abortion suggest more general conclusions about the nature of fundamental rights. As Thomas Nagel, professor emeritus of philosophy and law at New York University, put it, “She expresses very clearly the essentially negative character of the right to life, which is that it’s a right not to be killed unjustly, and not a right to be provided with everything necessary for life.”

Professor Thomson advanced a theory of rights in her book “The Realm of Rights” (1992). But it was her abortion paper that, of all her work, had perhaps the greatest impact.

“A lot of the discussion in that time was focused on what was the fetus or embryo,” said Frances Kamm, a professor of moral philosophy at Rutgers University. “She completely shifted the view of the issues.”

Her brilliant essay published in 1971 argues a scathingly trenchant prochoice perspective. The relevance of her analogies, the elegant simplicity of her prose are eloquent and right on target.

"Everyone has a right to life, so the unborn person has a right to life." And isn't the child's right to life weightier than anything other than the mother's own right to life, which she might put forward as ground for an abortion?

This argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic. It is not, and this seems to me to be precisely the source of the mistake.

For we should now, at long last, ask what it comes to, to have a right to life. In some views having a right to life includes having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life. But suppose that what in fact is the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? 

[...] to return to the story I told earlier, the fact that for continued life the violinist needs the continued use of your kidneys does not establish that he has a right to be given the continued use of your kidneys. He certainly has no right against you that you should give him continued use of your kidneys. For nobody has any right to use your kidneys unless you give him this right—if you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due. 

Nor has he any right against anybody else that they should give him continued use of your kidneys. Certainly he had no right against the Society of Music Lovers that they should plug him into you in the first place. And if you now start to unplug yourself, having learned that you will otherwise have to spend nine years in bed with him, there is nobody in the world who must try to prevent you, in order to see to it that he is given some thing he has a right to be given.

Here at DJ! and on Twitter, I've challenged many fallacious and disingenuous factoids that fetushists scrape up to justify the forced pregnancy and patriarchal control of female bodies.

Some pithy tweets successfully smacked down these mostly religious zealots but had I been familiar with Thomson's splendid, succinct points, I would have certainly deployed them. Particularly since the jolly use of kidneys as metaphor was often explored.

That essay should be an integral part of the Philosophy Canon, and studied at colleges and universities.

IMMACULATE DECEPTION

In 2007 I wrote and posted a modest little piece at a pro-choice blog site called _Birth Pangs_. Sadly, its brilliant content was not archived when its originator abandoned it.

However. Fernhill and I developed our blogging chops there, and when we launched DAMMIT JANET! we did a copy-paste of selected BP posts. We then continued onward and upward. Fernhill built her blogging reputation on solidly researched prochoice pieces that untangled and exposed political ideology under all the foofaw.

The Virgin, The Angel and Choice is one of my gems, if I may say so with genuine humility.

#ImmaculateConception is trending right now on Twitter.

It's a timely reminder that oppressive, fundamentalist Christian doctrine is based on a deliberately patriarchal interpretation of that scripture, obfuscating the implication of God's formal request via a messenger, for Mary's CONSENT. 

Though it absolutely, fabulously acknowledges Mary's agency, that biblical text has been malevolently used to justify marital rape, the sexual abuse of women and girls, forced impregnation and the criminalization of medical procedures that facilitate women's right to choose.

To that we say: NO. 

We will continue to denounce how religious ideology is weaponized to justify patriarchs' crass need to put words in their God's mouth, only to *normalize* their pathologies, their demands and their fetishes.

Women and girls are not men's servants or handmaids.

Bravo BlockedByRempel observers and The Beaverton!

Whilst working on a blogpost about Kenney and his UCP's greed, rightwing nuttery and gross incompetence, as demonstrated by the mismanagement of the Covid19 pandemic and other public health issues in Alberta, I collected odds'n'ends about the federal government's Official Opposition health critic.

Always in attack mode, Michelle Rempel's tactic is to assault her political opponents with a frenzy of trashy claims and hope something sticks.

In November she launched into a shifty-eyed tirade as she threw out spurious and irrational accusations. It would seem Rempel has graduated from her legendary, copious imbibing of cheap boxed wine to harder pharmaceuticals procured by her 'Murrican husband.

In her wide-ranging selection of squawking points the MP for Oklaberta parroted, she CONveniently left out actual the fact it was Mulroney's Con government that facilitated the sale of Canada's major pharmaceutical laboratories to foreign corporations. Her former boss Stephen Harper did NOTHING to rectify this problem after the H1N1 health crisis.

Recently.

And, listen to this clip.

To summarize:

When did Rempel join a US-based evangelical, extremist cult that requires women to obey their husbands -- and to cleave to their opinions on everything, as Amy Coney Barrett's alleged religious community _People of Praise_ does?

Her preposterous act + her claims reflect the very worst Republican world view and rightwing neocon propaganda.

The Beaverton nails the Conspiracy Party of Canada's current depraved and delusional hypocrisy as K'erin O'Toole literally acts exactly as spoofed by The Beaverton. 

Read more hilarious responses to The Beaverton's tweet, here.

The foundation of science is evidence. It's evident the Con party led by O'Toole and informed by the MP from Oklaberta's obfuscations is based on lies and propaganda -- which they may or may not *believe* to be true and/or accurate.

Dementors: the ongoing horror of Fraud Nation's political theatre.

Watch this 12-seconds clip. Christine Elliott, Minister for Lies, Disease and Death in the Fraud Nation government has absorbed, virtually and literally, the most vile obfuscation techniques that Kellyanne Conway deployed as Trump's mouthpiece at the White House.

Elliott nails the worm tongue wording that flows out of KaC's cloaca like snakes and centipedes, but needs more voice coaching. Though spewing McKinsey's boilerplate propaganda points, she sounds like a screechy crank, unable to parrot Kellyanne's silky smooth and poisonously dulcet tones. 

Vomitrocious.

 

Juxtapose with spundit KaC, plying her meretricious trade.

In case you've just stumbled onto this blogpost, go read VERMIN wherein Elliott's chosen *expertise* for managing the pandemic -- McKinsey -- is exposed as malevolent, then Dementors, where her own particular brand of political perfidy is laid out. 

From the viewpoint of Ontario's frontline healthcare professionals and essential workers, Covid19 carnage is real. 

It is NOT *only* Grand Guignol depravity staged by Premier Drug Lord and his murderous ministers, for the titillation of Toronto Sun readers and their Con followers.

Greedy, corrupt, histrionic, fraudulent, conniving liars.

That is the Ford Family, of course whose members claim to be _The Kennedys of Canada_ but are actually and truly Ontario's Trumps. 

Here's a chart from CTV to help sort out all the players, including some of the more public faces.

Fernhill and I have written quite a bit about these crassly venal circus clowns at DJ! 

Teams of journalists have not only investigated the Fords' dubious activities but published such accounts widely.

A mind-boggling range of media and publications have covered this clan of faux-riche Etobicoke white trash in the last decades, from Frank Magazine to The Atlantic.

Landmarks!!! A tour guide to the stoopid.

There are surely hugely unlawful endeavours the Fords have facilitated which I hope journalists will soon expose, after lawyers have ensured all confidential sources requesting anonymity are legally credible. I suspect it involves international crime networks, real estate, gambling and $$$ laundering.

The Ford gals are a mixed bag of wacko: Kayla, Ky-Ky and Krista. Each one tries to monetize her family connections. But only *Ivankayla* dipped into the dark side where ignorant antivaxxers lurk. Such grifting involves celebrity super-spreading of fallacious propaganda about Covid19 and monetizing their followers' gullibility for profit, as that vile dickhead ChrisSky does.

Speaking of malignant narcissists, Premier Drug Lord continues to flaunt his meretricious incompetence, through the ravages and mass carnage his Fraud Nation government inflicts every day.

One last question..

Did Renata (Rob's widow) Ford's civil suit and her claims ever get resolved in court? Oh.. it seems not.