Task Farce!

So when you think of persecuted people in America, whom do you think of? Black people? Women? All the letters of LGBTQ? Well? Wrong! Whatever you said, you're wrong, because the single most persecuted group in America right now is Christians.

Man, you feed a couple of them to lions and they never get over it.

Obviously he wasn't Muslim, but most
Trump supporters think he is, and there's
really no point in arguing with them.

Now, I know that you're thinking, 'hey, hasn't Christianity basically been the official religion of America since the founding fathers made it like super clear that we would absolutely not have an official religion?' And you'd be right, so it's weird then that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a special Justice Department Religious Liberty Task Force. And you wouldn't need a task force unless religious liberty, specifically that of Christians, was under threat and the last president was a Muslim so, here we are. I guess...

Oh, and cakes. Gay cakes. Remember Jack Phillips, the baker from Colorado who was asked to make a wedding cake for a gay couple? Something specifically forbidden by Jesus Himself? What's that? Where in the Bible does Jesus say anything about gays or wedding cakes? Why Chapter: <cough> Verse: Shut up. That's where.

Above: Baker and American Goddamn hero, Jack Phillips took a
stand to make sure no one would ever have to treat gay people like
regular paying customers again. It's what Jesus would have wanted.

According to Sessions who spoke at the Department of Justice's Religious Liberty Summit-huh? Oh yeah, again, you don't have summits for things unless there's a crisis. Anyway, the Task Force will:

Jeff Sessions will be sort of like
Nick Fury if the Avengers were tasked
with defending homophobes in court.

...fully implement our religious liberty guidance ensuing that all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations."

-Jeff Sessions, Task Master

So it's a task force within the Justice Department tasked with telling the Justice Department how to do Justice Department things. 

Oh...right...

Specifically how to make sure that DOJ employees 'know their duties to accommodate people of faith.' Um, am I paranoid or is he saying that the task force's job is to tell everyone at the DOJ to side with religious people in cases where religious liberty is being invoked? Because not only is that pandering to the religious right, it also seems like it would undermine the integrity of the DOJ. How could the Attorney General compromise his department is such a transparently political move?

As for the 'guidance,' he's referring to, he put out some guidelines back in October that lay out how the First Amendment says that 'freedom of religion is a fundamental right of paramount importance...' and that it 'includes the right to abstain from action in accordance to one's religious views.' Which, no it doesn't.

"Should we clarify that 'free exercise thereof part'? Like, a couple hundred years
from now, you don't think someone's going to think that gives them a pass to a dick
and then call it religious liberty, do you? I mean, you'd have to be an asshole, right?"

-Ben Franklin

"That's fake news, I'm the most tolerant
person you're ever going to meet. So
tolerant you won't even believe."

-The President (actual quote*)

So if that sounds like what he's saying is counter to America's anti-discrimination laws that protect say gay people from being turned away at say, bakeries or auto repair shops, or pizza shops, or, I don't know, being asked to change seats so that a straight couple can sit next to each other-huh? Yeah, that one was today. Anyway, if it sounds like the Trump administration, which again most of us didn't vote for, is doubling down on protecting the right of intolerant people to be intolerant, that's because that's exactly what it's doing.

Super diverse! From Catholics and
Southern Baptists all the way to
Lutherans and even Mormons!

Sessions went on in his super-Jesus-y remarks on Monday to explain how the founding fathers:

"...clearly recognized that an individual's relationship to God is a natural right and precedes the existence of the state, and is not subject to state control. These concepts were placed into our Constitution...and [have] helped us to this day to be one of the world's most diverse religious people."

-Jeff Session Republi'splaining 

the Constitution to us

First of all, we're like 68th on the list of most religiously diverse countries in the world. Second of all, that's the Attorney General of the United States explaining how the Constitution says you can do whatever crazy bullshit you want and the state can't do anything because religion. Cool. I'm sure that's never turned out badly.

"Ok, so it's going to feel like I'm crushing your skull
with a mace, but just think of it of God's love."

-Some Crusader

*ok, not an actual quote, but c'mon, it sounds like something he'd say.

An Ignorant Goon Draws Near!

Move over American homophobes!

Say that's disappointing...huh? What's disappointing? Why this story about a Japanese politician making shitty comments about gay people. That's disappointing enough knowing that not even Japan, which thanks to time zones and jet streams or whatever seems to exist about ten years into the future, has been spared small-minded regressives with aggressively ignorant views about LGBTQ equality. But it's even more disappointing because now I have to feel weird about loving Dragon Quest.

"Slow, plodding gameplay?
Primitive graphics? Sign me up!"

-no one in America in 1989

Well, weirder. I'll explain. Dragon Quest is a series of Japanese role playing video games that started on the NES. They've never been super-popular outside of Japan, in fact Nintendo had to give away copies of the game to get Americans to even try it. They're an acquired taste, but I've been a fan since the first one and along with Final Fantasy, they were my first experience with video role playing games and manga style artwork. That's right, I'm playing the hipster 'it's super obscure, you've probably never heard of it card.' Oh, and also, the series was called Dragon Warrior back then because of some copyright bullshit, but you probably don't care about all that, so on to the raging homophobia.

Japan also drives on the left, so maybe
they just like to do their own thing?

The politician I mentioned, Mio Sugita, despite being a Japanese woman and a member of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party sounds a lot like a old white dude from America's jerk wing of the Republican party (yes, I know, they're mostly wing now). The Lib Dems, according to my exhaustive Wikipedia research, is Japan's right wing party and super into conservatism and nationalism. There probably is an answer as to the question of why the conservative party calls itself the liberal party, but that answer is almost certainly in Japanese and well, here we are.

Pictured: a childless straight couple
who can apparently fuck right off as well.

Of gays and lesbians Sugita said recently:

"These men and women choose not to have children. In other words, they are not 'productive.' I wonder if it appropriate to spend taxpayer money on them." 

-Mio Sugita, legislator, noted homophobe  

Oh, and it gets better. And by better I mean worse. She went on to suggest, in classic American homophobic asshat tradition that:

“...people may start demanding such rights as marriage between siblings, between parents and children, or between humans and pet animals or even machines.”

-Sugita going down a 

well-trodden slippery slope

"I don't know who this Sugita woman thinks she is, but this is a clear case of
intellectual property theft. I mean, we practically invented ignorant homophobia."

-Tony Perkins, head of the Family

Reattach Council and noted asshat

The story was 50% the Japan is weird
trope' and 50% the internet is kinda racist.

Yeah, then after getting tired of being married to their own parents and/or pets, they're going start marrying kitchen appliances and then when that ends in a messy divorce, people are going to start marrying abstract concepts. Holy shit, better start legislating some morality quick because the only thing that stands between the youth of Japan and marrying their Roombas and the notion of irony is Mio goddamn Sugita. Huh? Yeah, yeah, that Japanese guy who married his body pillow. Except he was Korean, the whole thing was a stunt and no, nobody married a body pillow. Ever.

So what the hell does any of this have to do with a long-running Japanese RPG series? Well, nothing until series music composer, and right-wing shit-merchant, Koichi Sugiyama invited Sugita on to his stupid cable access show or whatever to laugh at how liberals want to marry their dogs. Boooo.

"We'll be back with more of Mio Sugita's barely
coherent screed against homosexuals. So stay tuned."

-Japan's Fox News

Above: photos from some other
occupation and massacre...I guess? 

I say right wing-shit-merchant because in addition to composing the classic music to one of the best JRPG series ever, he also cohosts a conservative talk show on Culture Channel Sakura which I gather is sort of like Japan's Fox News if Fox didn't put on the pretense of being a shameless mouthpiece for the bananas right and people who miss the 50's. But that's not enough to make him a shit-merchant. Being a Japanese War Crimes denier is though. The Nanking Massacre? Yeah, never happened says Sugiyama.

Hey, maybe he should, you know,
shut the fuck up about the war and
 stick to composing music?

Sugiyama along with some other right-wing nutters even once took out an ad in the Washington Post to attack an earlier ad about the treatment of 'comfort women.' during the second World War. The term comfort women refers to the tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Burmese and Japanese women who were kidnapped by the Imperial Military and forced to work as sex slaves. Sugiyama and pal's ad claims comfort women, or 'ianfu' didn't exist but were instead legal prostitutes. It further asserts that the survivors are just lying. Awesome.

Anyway, so now we can add a sprinkle of homophobia to Sugiyama's already heinous worldview. But who cares right? I mean, what difference does it make that some elderly revisionist invited an obscure gaycist on to his stupid show for jerks? None, unless you're a fan of Dragon Quest. Before this story I was sort of vaguely aware that the composer of the series was a right-wing loon, but now that he's attached himself to Mio Sugita's crazy train, I've looked up the details and holy shit.

"[Marriage equality] could make people capable of enjoying normal romance
and getting married believe that they have an option of going homosexual."

-A thing Mio Sugita, a 

grown-ass adult, actually said

Most of the male cast of Arrested
Development, I'm looking at you...

Goddamnit, why do people have to ruin awesome things like Dragon Quest by being gross and hateful? I don't mean to suggest that the icky I'm feeling in any way compares to the horrible things Sugita and Sugiyama spout off about, but c'mon. And why hasn't the game's publisher, Square-Enix, fired the shit out of him? Especially now that for the first time in human history we're finally starting to hold people accountable for their words and actions through the power of public outrage and internet-based disgust?

Well, ok, I do know why. Dragon Quest games are traditional as hell and they've been using the same music and graphical style in all eleven games and the spin-offs for over thirty years, so yeah, they're probably reluctant to rock the boat. But there's still time to pull his score out before DQ 11's international release in September, right? I mean, rewriting and rerecording hours of orchestral music...how hard can that be? Oh...right. Very. Well, in the meantime, I guess I'll be playing Dragon Quest with the sound off. 

Here, enjoy these adorable Dragon Quest Slimes designed by famed Manga
artist Akira Toriyama-who's not a nationalist goon or raging homophobe. At
least not that I know of...Shit, if he is, don't tell me. I don't think I could take it.

Lake on Mars

Hey lookit, Italian scientists have discovered a lake on Mars! The find raises the likelihood that Mars may harbor life and further cements the need for us to get serious about exploring our solar system's fourth planet.

What? Lake on Mars? Like Life on-no? Fine...

"Um...ciao..."

-Some scientists

Super-cool discovery, right? Well, yes. So now's the part where we walk it back a bit. Technically the scientists used ground penetrating radar to detect evidence of water and detect evidence it did, although it's not so much a lake as it is a possible subterranean...or sub-martian? Sub-martian reservoir of liquid water. So to rephrase, scientists have uncovered evidence that suggests that there may be liquid water about a mile beneath a glacier on Mars. But the scientists are definitely Italian.

Maybe she couldn't resist the allure of
the film and television wing? I mean,
they've got Archie Bunker's chair.

But we should hear from an American on this one, I mean, we own space, right? According to Ellen Stofan, the former Chief Scientist of NASA and former member of the ground penetrating research team that made the find:

"I think this is extremely strong evidence that there is liquid water beneath the poles...which is extremely exciting."

-Ellen Stofan, former Chief Scientist of NASA

and now she works at the Smithsonian...huh...

NASA released this artist's rendering of
what we're likely to find on the red planet.

Yes, exciting is the word...a little too exciting, but Stofan, in her interview with NPR then doubled down on the possibility of Martian life saying:

"...because life here on Earth evolved in Liquid water...as we go outward from the Earth, looking for evidence of life beyond Earth, we're always looking for liquid water."

-Stofan, still raising 

everybody's hopes

Pictured: Ellen Stofan, head of the
Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum and noted crusher of dreams.

Wow...so like, so far so good? Usually when some science news like this breaks it sounds all Earth-shattering as a headline, but then gets chipped away at until all we're left with is the harsh reality that we're decades or maybe centuries away from finding real evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system-huh? Salty you say? Otherwise it would freeze? And the salts are deadly to-oh...yeah, there it is. As quickly she gave them, Stofan went ahead and crushed our hopes and dreams saying that the sub-glacial lake is almost certainly full of a kind of poisonous type of salt. Sigh.

Gee Roberto, if you're looking for water
on Mars, why not just find a unicorn and
ask them where they like to frolic?

But Roberto Orosei from the University of Bologna, who wrote the study released today was more hopeful-one might say naively optimistic in the light of Ellen Stofan's sober adherence to science's insistence on verifiable facts, but still, hopeful:

"This is just one small area. It is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered."

-Roberto Orosei, weaver of dreams and wonder

But regardless of whether you demand cold, objective evidence or prefer to subsist on hope and whimsey, this is still big news and will hopefully generate public interest in space exploration. Which is something we're seriously going to need because the way things are heading now, Mars is going to be little more than the cold, airless wasteland upon which Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will ride out Earth's nuclear wars and ecological devastation. Well, that or a Dutch reality show...

Because for real, if anyone should be left to face the mutant warlords and
highway gangs of post-apocalyptic Earth it should be Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

This is why she gets kicked out of restaurants:

"I mean, who do you people think you are?
 Coming in here and asking questions..."

-The Press Secretary

So Trump administration spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today in a press conference that-huh? Yeah, they still have those from time to time, but they're less about answering the press's valid questions about how the President is conducting America's affairs and more about Sanders explaining to us how all the terrible and reckless things the President does and says are actually awesome and how dare we question him? Anyway, Huckabee Sanders said that the White House was 'looking into' removing security clearance from six former officials.

They're not like, secutiry risks or anything, they just criticized the objectively terrible job he's done as president, and we're basically Russia now so...Anyway, according to Sanders:

Is 'because they were mean to me'
valid grounds to revoke clearance?

"Not only is the President looking to take away Brennan's security clearance, he's also looking into the clearances of Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Rice, and McCabe. The President is exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance because they've politicized, and in some cases monetized their public service and security clearances..."

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders

without a hint of irony

Wait? Politicized? Monetized? Has-has Donald Trump in his inexplicable year and a half as the President done anything, anything at all that couldn't be characterized as either the politicization or monetization or both of his job? Like, how many campaign rallies has he had since taking office? I mean, has Sanders somehow not actually met her boss?

Hey, who left this picture of Trump holding
a summit at his Mar-A-Lago Resort here?

Hey, who left this picture of Trump
and Paul Manafort...oh never mind...

She went on to add that:

"Making baseless accusations of an improper relationship with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the President is extremely inappropriate. And the fact that people with these clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy." 

-Sarah Hucka-wait a minute...

Um...this?

Which, well yeah, I guess they would be if they were baseless but, and I reiterate, holy shit. Did we not watch an improper relationship unfold before our very eyes like last week in Helsinki? Remember when he took an ex-KGB agent's smirking assurances over the consensus of every intelligence agency in America? And also, isn't removing the security clearances in retaliation for criticism like, textbook politicization? Fortunately someone in the room asked Sanders just that, to which she responded:

"No, the President's not making baseless accusations of improper contact with a foreign government and accusing the President of the United States of treasonous activity when you have the highest level of security clearance. "

-Sanders on...wait, what?

"Nuh-uh, you are!"

-Me, summarizing Sander's response

Kirk has talked androids into self-
destruction with more coherence.

Yeah, what? But she's not done:

"When you're the person who holds the nation's deepest most sacred secrets at your hands and you go out and you make false accusations against the President of the United States he thinks that is a...uh...something to be very concerned with. And we're exploring what those options are and what that looks like."

-Sanders, to a room of blinking disbelief

Pictured: The person most
of us elected President. 

Of course the President isn't going to accuse the President of improper-he's the President. That's the point. What is she even saying? I mean, baseless is saying that three million illegal immigrants, whom you totally made up, voted for Hillary Clinton when they didn't. Suggesting that Donald Trump may have had something to do with the unprecedented election meddling that 100% put him in the powerful position he's politicizing and monetizing the shit out of, is, you know, reasonable.

"It's going to be bonkers."

-Susan Rice on her kegger

Anyway, look, I don't know how security clearances work. Maybe it's totally normal to rescind to rescind security clearances of former officials. I'm sure ex-FBI Director McCabe has been eying the silverware since day one. And you know the minute Trump is out of town, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice is throwing a totally kegger in the White House ball room. But I'm willing to bet that this is more about a thin-skinned amateur flailing around because he doesn't have a clue how to be President.

You know in some ways, the real victim here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders who has to go out there and spin this like it's just another savvy political move from the man who brought us threatening tweets and forced child separations. But before you feel too bad for her, remember that she can always quit. Like, she's a professional shit merchant by choice.

Oh don't look at me like that. I'm sure Fox News would give you a job.

It is a good day to nerd...

Pictured: that time Spock got mad and
fought Khan on top of a flying garbage
truck in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Hey lookit! Did you see the trailer for season two of Star Trek: Discovery? Captain Pike, Lenny Kravitz, space angels, high-fives. I don't know about you, but I'm cautiously optimistic! I say cautiously optimistic because while I loved the shit out of season one, it wasn't perfect. And given how spectacularly Star Trek, as a thing, crashed and burned in the early 2000's, and how we had to wait years for a revival-huh? No, I'm not counting the J.J. Abrams movies. They're ok, they're just not very Star Treky (see right).

"Funny, I didn't see anything..."

-Londo Mollari*

Anyway, I don't want to get all obsessed fan here, but I need them not to screw this up. The trailer looks fun but like any good teaser it gives us very little to go on in terms of plot. We can expect some trekking. Possibly among the stars. But beyond that, there's some name-checking of Spock and a quick shot of Burnham encountering some kind of glowey angel thing or a Vorlon or something which lines up with now-fired show runner Aaron Harbert's hint that season two would deal with the themes of family and Burnham's 'struggle between facts and feelings and faith.'

It's a topic that, other than some glancing blows on DS9, is pretty un-trod territory for Star Trek so it'll be interesting to see what they do with it on Disco. The trailer also seems to indicate a lighter tone than the doom-filled Klingon War arc of season one, which I'm all for, and it's set to Lenny Kravitz's Fly Away which, I'm less all for, but it isn't the Beastie Boys again so I'm good. 

Does no one record a single album between now and the 23rd century?

Solo was fine and The Last Jedi was
the best one since Empire. You heard me.

But wait, there's more! Because this is Comic-Con season, the internet is awash in nerd news including an exclusive interview on Trekmovie.com with Alex Kurtzman, whom you might remember as the guy in charge of building a Star Trek cinematic universe...on television, which was already a thing, but cool. Anyway, he's sort of the Kathleen Kennedy of Trek, but without the irrational hatred of the fan base. Well yet...fans are a fickle bunch and sooner or later they're going to turn on him too. I have foreseen it. 

Tables...really, I mean, what nonsense.

So in this interview Kurtzman manages to say remarkably little despite kind of talking a lot, but we are able glean the hint of the suggestion that there might indeed be some more Star Trek to come thought it might not follow the traditional format of hour long dramas. Mini-episodes, animation, one-offs. It's all on the table, but at the moment the table is a secret. In fact, no one involved in production is even willing to admit there is a table or that tables are even things. You must have misremembered.

You know that's literally your job, right?

When asked about the rumors about a Khan mini-series or the return of Jean-Luc Picard, he said unhelpfully: 

"I mean they sound super cool, I'm a huge fan of both stories but it'd be really cool to see something like that."

-Alex Kurtzman, not really

justifying why this was 

an exclusive interview

Or maybe the $30 official Star Trek
vodka that has been to actual space. 

Um...yeah, that would be really cool. If only there was someone in a position to do something like that...say, like the guy in charge of Star Trek? But whatever, I don't want to be that nerd. The fact that we're getting any new Star Trek is cause enough to break out the Romulan Ale and make total veruuls of ourselves. Speaking of, it was also announced that there're going to be four short, fifteen minute Discovery mini episodes to tide us over until the show's return in 2019, one of which was written by Michael Chabon. 

Wow, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon is writing a Star Trek, Tig Nataro is going to play an hilarious engineer and Sir Patrick Stewart might be coming back as a grizzled, too old for this shit Jean-Luc. Yup, it's a good time to be a nerd. Or, to put it into gross business terms: as long as the brand remains profitable, I'm sure we can all look forward to consuming plenty of content based on our favorite IP. 

Finally, Saru's bitter-sweet story of growing up in Brooklyn
in the 1940's as only Michale Chabon can tell it.

*like a million nerd points if this makes sense to you.

Grave accusations of cahoots!

Sorry balkanization fans, it looks like venture capitalist Tim Draper's plan to split California into three states isn't going to happen, at least not anytime soon. Well, ok, it was never going to happen, let's be real. It was preposterous from the get-go and-huh? What plan to divide California into three states? Remember? Back in April?

Yes true believers this happened, don't believe me? Check
out Onward Stranger Fiction #1056: Ménage état!

Thunderdome as a means of settling
disputes are at least, what, five years off?

Here, I'll sum up. Draper is a venture capitalist and bored, I guess. Probably because he doesn't have a real job. So over the last few years he's headed a couple campaigns to try and get Californians to agree to split the state up into smaller states. The first time it was six states, this more recent one was three. He says it's because California is ungovernable, which I don't get. I mean, we have the nation's highest GDP, a decent standard of living and, to date, no Thunderdomes. It's not perfect, but it's at least a little governable.

Money: 'giving rich people
disproportionate influence
since the invention of money.'

But here we are. So with the best interests of the average Californian in mind, Draper mobilized an enormous grass roots movement to break the yoke of-sorry, did I say grassroots? I meant he threw a shit ton of money (a shit ton being $1.2 million), at getting enough signatures together to get an initiative on the ballot for November. Yeah, another ballot initiative. It's a thing we have in California for when we just want to forgo representative democracy and go right to mob rule.

Oh, and I may have indicated that he had the best interests of average Californians in mind, but I think he's thinking of the average Californian who lives in the Bay Area, works at a tech company and makes six-figures. Anyone in the poorer countries would find themselves suddenly and catastrophically cut off from the state's tax base.

"Yeah...and...?"

-Tim Draper, noted...uh...

what does he do again?

"Whooo! Prop 8! Homophobia forever!"

-some asshole

But lucky for most of us, the State Supreme Court quashed it, questioning the validity of the initiative. They said 'the potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.' Which, cool, because you can't put the dissolution of the state up for a show of hands just because you get enough signatures together. Remember Prop 8? Yeah, ballot initiatives can suck sometimes, and you need people who know what they're doing as a check.

The court also decided that it would have to look into whether breaking the state up would even be legal under the state constitution. Usually constitutions don't have a self-destruct clause, but hey, I guess it never hurts to check.

Blah blah blah, hackysack, so on and so forth cilantro, huh...
nope, nothing in here about breaking up into three states just because
come rich guy conned a bunch of rubes into signing a petition.

Pictured: Cahoots.

But Draper is having nunavut, and in a sour-grapes-y statement accused the court of silencing voters and called this a sign of corruption:

"Apparently, the insiders are in cahoots and the establishment doesn't want to find out how many people don't like the way California is being governed."

-Draper, with accusations of cahootery

Wow. He goes on to explain that this is the kind of thing that happens in third world countries which is first of all a shitty term used by privileged people to disparage developing countries and also weird because such countries are sort of famous for letting the wealthy elite use their money and power to bend public policy to suit their own needs. Hey, wait a minute...

That's the government for you, always acting like
duly elected representatives of the people...