Vampire Blood Offer, Anti-Semitic Comment, GND And Anti-AOC Tweeters, And "That Ain't Actually True"

There's so much to write about, but not nearly enough time to do it well.  So let me just offer some highlights.

On my post Vampire History Of Alaska, I got a comment from Leonard who has become a vampire and is offering vampire blood to others.  Is this like ISIS recruitment?  Just a joke?  A scam?

On a 2010 post Does Lisa Murkowski's Religious Preference Matter? I got a new comment that makes allegations about Jews that I really can't understand.  I do understand that part that suggests Murkowski is a secret Jew who's made her way into a power position.

Both of those comments force me to decide if I should just delete the comments, or leave them there to let people see how bizarre some people are.  I've responded, with some hesitation, to the anti-semitic one - because I think people should see the kinds of things people right, and to put them into context, though I couldn't commit to dealing with every allegation in detail.

Then there's the Green New Deal.  I've started a post on that, but I need to do more research.  As someone who has spent a lot of time finding out about climate change, I'm for the idea, but I realized I didn't know all the details.  What I have learned through my involvement with Citizens Climate Change is:

• Climate Change is real
• It's caused by humans
• 'Fighting' Climate Change isn't going to bring economic ruin, but rather will add jobs to the economy, and keep the US competitive as the world shifts to new sources of energy
• A carbon fee with dividend is a market based approach that is the most politically viable and technically effective way to go 

All the scare stuff is by those with vested interests in fossil fuel based energy, people who use it to stoke partisan enmity, or those who who just resist change in general.

And as I read about the GND, I've noticed an unusual number of attacks against it and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.  When she tweets, there are way more anti-AOC responses than there should be.  People who follow her only to attack her it would seem, or are getting sent to attack her tweets by others.  I have checked out a few of these people.  Like Forrest Cook.  His Twitter page says he signed up in July 2009, he's got a total of 13 Tweets and 6 followers.

Of those 6, three are clearly from Kansas (as is Cook). Four have 25 or fewer followers and aren't very active.  Two followers, including Shinobi Ninja, have lots of posts and followers.

Cook's first tweet was July 21, 2009.  
Cook's second tweet was Feb 19, 2019.  And 17 more since then - including today Feb 24, 2019.
He's following 45 Tweeters - including all the Democrats who have announced for President, AOC, Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.  (He's also following Trump, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Kevin McCarthy.

How many newly reactivated Tweeters are out there?  Was Forrest recruited to reactivate?  Was his Twitter handle taken over?  Or has just gotten back into this on his own?   I sent him a tweet asking what got him started again. Here's his response:

"I just never got into Twitter until recently...time to enter another fold of Social Media...although, no mater the venue, the message, the hate and the angst is still the same"

There's more:

Andrew Sullivan  reacts to a new book - Frédéric Martel's In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy.  Here's just a snippet.  You can read it all here.

"I’m no naïf when it comes to the gayness of the church. I’ve lived in it as a gay man for all my adult life, and my eyes are open. And so the book did not surprise me, as such, but it still stunned, shocked, and disgusted me. You simply cannot unread it, or banish what is quite obviously true from your mind. It helps explain more deeply the rants of Pope Francis about so many of his cardinals, especially his denunciations of “Pharisees” and “hypocrites,” with their sexual amorality and their vast wealth and power. “Behind rigidity something always lies hidden; in many cases, a double life,” he has said. He has excoriated “hypocrites” who live “hidden and often dissolute lives,” those who “put makeup on their soul and live off makeup”; he has exclaimed in public that “hypocrisy does a lot of harm: it’s a way of life.”
The only tiny consolation of the book is the knowledge that we now have a pope — with all his flaws — who knows what he’s dealing with, and has acted, quite ruthlessly at times, to demote, defrock, or reassign the most egregious cases to places where they have close to nothing to do. And if you want to understand the ferocity of the opposition to him on the Catholic right, this is the key. His most determined opponents are far-right closet cases, living in palaces, leading completely double lives, backed by the most vicious of reactionaries and bigots on the European and American far right, and often smarting at their demotions."

Finally, a very subtle and essay by a black Southerner on the difficulty of speaking honestly - Kiese Laymon's "That's Not Actually True."

"Weeks after I finish my audiobook, I will be interviewed on NPR by a much older white man from up north. I will imagine him sliding around his office in his socks. Near the end of our interview, he will sincerely ask me why I still talk to my mother. I will say, “Oh my god.” Then I will tell him the question should be why do we still talk to y’all when, northern or Southern, y’all refuse to critically engage with your investment in your belief that niggers ain’t shit. I will answer the question before the older white man from up north can answer and say, “If y’all ever paid us what we worked for, we wouldn’t talk to y’all. You know that right? We really wouldn’t. But we ain’t got no money so we talk to y’all. And we hope it makes our checks bigger.”
That’s not actually true."