Saturday, February 19, 2022
Oh my gosh Josh! THE HAWLEY MUG Infamous Capitol Hill Riot Fist-Pump Campaign Fund-Raiser...A plain bid to generate outrage
The Josh Hawley Mug: It Makes Him An Asshole, But Shouldn't Make Him A Copyright Infringer
from the hawley-shit dept
"Josh Hawley, the waifish fascist Senator from Missouri, has made it onto our pages several times in the past. When he's not advocating breaking up Twitter because he doesn't like how a private company is run (fascist), or breaking up lots of other companies he simply disagrees with (fascist), you can typically find him pretending the First Amendment works the exact opposite of how it does in reality or explaining in published books and newspaper pages how much he's been silenced and canceled. It might all look very stupid on its face, but it isn't. It's actually quite diabolical.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the Josh Hawley mug he's selling on his website.
See? He's an asshole. In case you can't see the image or don't know what the issue is, that picture of Hawley was snapped by the AP and was him saluting the crowd of strange people protesting outside the Capital building because their preferred candidate lost. Some of those people later stormed the capital in a violent attempt to overthrow the will of the America people. Now Hawley, in a plain bid to generate outrage, is utilizing that picture of him saluting that crowd in order to raise campaign funds. Immediately after the launch of the mug product, his team sent out an email fundraising on it, apparently purely over the joy of making liberals angry, which appears to be one of Hawley's major policy positions.
Everyone remembers the photo of profa senator Josh Hawley raising his fist to salute the murderous rioters who stormed the Capitol, injured 150 police officers, and tried to hang Mike Pence. Now Hawley is selling a curiously named "Show Me Strong White Coffee Mug" with the same image in an amateurishly designed graphic.
He says its a "perfect way to enjoy Coffee, Tea, or Liberal Tears!" and is "not a pro-riot mug."
None of this is new or creative. The liberal tears thing is at least as old as Ben Shapiro saying it all the time and is probably older than that. The slogan is lame. And the picture, as Boing Boing goes on to note, is from the AP.
In addition, his mug uses an image based on an Associated Press photograph and is probably a copyright violation. AP told Rolling Stone that it's investigating. As you might recall, artist Shepard Fairey used an AP photo of Obama a decade ago, and ended up paying AP an undisclosed amount to settle the copyright lawsuit.
And here is where we take the Techdirt turn. The Fairey case was settled out of court, but we argued all along the way that Fairey's use should have qualified as fair use. I take the same view of Hawley's use of an AP photo. The use is for raising campaign funds, rather than purely commercial use. The photo is being used as political speech. It's at least mildly transformative, although not as strongly as Fairey's, given that most people will recognize where that image is from. And, ultimately, Hawley's mug represents zero threat to the AP's business. The AP isn't selling mugs with the picture on it to those that wish to drink liberal tears.
So while it's fun to discuss what a jerk Hawley is, trying to pretend that we think this is copyright infringement just because I don't like him would be disingenuous. And I, unlike Josh Hawley, am not that."
Senator Josh Hawley Puts His Capitol Riot Salute On Campaign Mug
An email sent to supporters boasted that the coffee mug “is the perfect way to enjoy Coffee, Tea, or Liberal Tears!”
"Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) never apologized for saluting the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and now he’s selling campaign merchandise emblazoned with his infamous fist pump.
An email sent to supporters on Monday boasted that the Hawley campaign’s new $20 coffee mug “is the perfect way to enjoy Coffee, Tea, or Liberal Tears!”
Friday, February 18, 2022
WHO'S ALL-IN FOR MORE DISRUPTIVE TACTICS...Wait Wait Don't Tell Me Now
This is NOT so hard-to-believe
Republicans who opposed racial justice protests hope truckers ‘clog up’ US cities
Lawmakers including Rand Paul and Ron DeSantis say they would back disruption of a Canadian-style trucker convoy
In the wake of racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, a wave of Republican lawmakers supported legislation to punish protesters who blocked roads. Now some of those same Republicans are supporting similar tactics from conservative trucker convoys protesting against vaccine mandates.
Last year, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an anti-rioting law that stiffened penalties for protesters who blocked roads and even gave some legal protection to drivers who ran them over. It went so far that in September a federal judge struck down the law, ruling it unconstitutional.
Draft legislation from DeSantis – seen by many as the leading heir to Donald Trump – was even more draconian. He initially sought to extend “stand-your-ground” laws that would have granted legal immunity to drivers claiming to have unintentionally killed or injured protesters disrupting traffic.
Yet DeSantis has thrown his support behind conservative trucker convoys using similar tactics to protest against vaccine mandates that for weeks have blocked roads between Canada and the US, stalling trade between the two nations and leading to disruptions to the global supply chain. He also announced Florida’s attorney general would investigate GoFundMe after it dropped the page for donations to Canadian truckers.
Nor is he alone. The Texas senator Ted Cruz told Politico he sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission demanding an investigation into GoFundMe. The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan similarly decried GoFundMe.
Many Republican politicians have also expressed enthusiasm and support for US truckers seeking to emulate the Canadian protests on US soil. A convoy of truckers is set to begin a protest drive to Washington later this month, in a move some fear could bring the same kind of disruption that has gripped the Canadian capital, Ottawa.
The Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who has criticized the disruptive tactics of racial justice protesters in the US, is “all for” the disruption of a trucker convoy. “I hope the truckers do come to America. I hope they clog up cities,” Paul told the Daily Signal, a publication of the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation.
Paul said: “Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, to you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.”
In 2020, Paul described a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters that confronted him in Washington as an “angry mob”, thanking police for escorting him and “literally saving our lives from a crazed mob”.
Jared Holt, a researcher of extremism, said the double standard by rightwing politicians was part of a strategy by Republicans to favor seizing any political opportunities to disrupt a Joe Biden presidency, rather than choose to be consistent in ideology .
“I think the hypocrisy on display makes evident that this kind rhetoric is best understood as a piece of a broader project and not a hard ideological stance,” said Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s digital forensic lab, a non-profit that monitors and combats disinformation online.
Thirteen states with Republican legislatures have introduced bills offering some level of immunity to drivers for hitting protesters blocking roads, an investigation by the Boston Globe found, with Iowa, Oklahoma and Florida successfully putting those laws on the books.
Some of those lawmakers who drafted legislation have expressed support for convoys.
Bill Eigel, a Missouri state senator who sponsored a bill to crack down on protesters who block roads and grant some immunity to drivers who hit them, joined other Republican state legislators this month to speak at a rally promoted as a “freedom convoy” to the capitol.
The possibility of a US trucker convoy repeating the Canadian protests in America has also captured the imagination of the conservative media and many others on the right in America. Fox News has devoted 15 hours of coverage in the past few weeks, according to Media Matters.
In the same span, over a hundred thousand social media accounts have participated in convoy groups, on Facebook and alt-tech platforms like Telegram, in a decentralized effort to organize a protest in the US.
Organizers of the most popular trucker convoy group announced plans to meet in Barstow, California, next week and begin their journey to Washington.
The Department of Homeland Security this month warned law enforcement agencies that a trucker convoy could be planning to reach Washington by the State of the Union address on 1 March.
Holt said the convoys have the potential to be “fairly disrupting, especially on travel and supply chains” but cautioned against parallels to the 6 January attack on the Capitol. “From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t believe a majority of the people who have expressed interest in participating in this are doing so with the express intention of committing acts of violence,” he said.
But he added: “That being said, a fair amount of them do subscribe to conspiratorial, far-right, extremist [ideologies]. So the risk is always there.”
INFLATION HOVERING FAR TOO HIGH | Financial Times
Fed should raise interest rates ‘steadily’ from March, says John Williams
New York Fed president is the latest to back ‘lift-off’ next month as central bank plots policy pivot
"A top official at the Federal Reserve said the US central bank should “steadily” raise interest rates from their current near-zero levels starting in March, in a bid to damp demand and bring down inflation.
The comments from John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on Friday come amid substantial uncertainty about how quickly the central bank will increase its main policy rate after “lift-off” expected in March.
As a member of Fed chair Jay Powell’s inner circle, Williams’ views carry significant weight as senior policymakers engage in a heated public debate about the lengths the Fed needs to go to counter inflation.
“With today’s strong economy and inflation that is well above our 2 per cent longer-run goal, it is time to start the process of steadily moving the target range back to more normal levels,” he said at an event hosted by New Jersey City University.
“In particular, I expect it will be appropriate to raise the target range at our upcoming meeting in March,” he added.
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INSERT
By Michael S. Derby
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams is on board with the U.S. central bank starting rate raises next month, and said he is confident that inflation levels that are “far too high” will fall as the year proceeds
Williams acknowledged that inflation, which has reached its fastest pace in four decades, was hovering at a level that was “far too high”, and said monetary policy had an “important role to play” in helping to tame it. . ."
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“Demand for goods and some services is now far outstripping supply, resulting in elevated inflation,” he said. “With the labour market already very strong, it’s important to restore the balance between supply and demand and bring inflation down.”
He also advocated for the Fed to “steadily and predictably” reduce its nearly $9tn balance sheet, and start scaling back its holding of Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities later this year.
“Taken together, these two sets of actions — steadily raising the target range for the federal funds rate and steadily bringing down our securities holdings — should help bring demand closer to supply,” he said.
Williams is the latest Fed official to weigh in on the pace at which the central bank should be moving away from the ultra-stimulative monetary policy settings that have been in place for two years since the onset of the pandemic.
James Bullard, president of the St Louis Fed and voting member on the Federal Open Market Committee this year, has been one of the most vocal advocates for “front-loading” the interest rate increases. He has called for the federal funds rate to be 1 percentage point higher from its near-zero level by July.
Bullard has also previously signalled his support for a larger than usual half-point interest rate rise next month — although he said he would defer to Powell on the issue.
Several Fed officials have pushed back on the need for such a move, including Esther George of Kansas City and Loretta Mester of Cleveland. Mary Daly of San Francisco has instead called for a “measured” approach to lifting the fed funds rate to a level consistent with slower economic activity.
> Williams did not comment on the potential size of March’s adjustment.
Divisions within the Fed are even sharper over the balance sheet, with some officials making the case for outright asset sales of agency mortgage-backed securities and others preferring a more methodical reduction by no longer reinvesting the proceeds of maturing securities. The Fed has not yet specified when the process will begin and how quickly they will proceed."
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