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Appeals Court Says DC Cops Possibly Violated The First Amendment By Arresting Pro-Life Sidewalk Chalkers
from the gotta-arrest-someone-I-guess dept
I guess the feeling was that some protesters needed to be arrested. And when most protesters are protesting cops, it’s probably a whole lot easier to go after those that aren’t.
That’s how this lawsuit got started. Following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, protests against police violence began all over the nation. In Washington D.C. — which has statutes against “defacing” public property — this took the form of “chalking,” i.e. writing out protest messages in chalk on public sidewalks.
Whether or not the law is right (or even essential), the law exists. Sidewalk chalking by anti-police violence protesters often contained the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” Pro-life protesters decided to do some protests of their own (but against what exactly in this context?) by writing the phrase “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on DC sidewalks. While it’s nice to see anti-abortion protesters at least tentatively agreeing that some black lives matter (at least up until they’re born), this was basically an opportunistic hijacking of a message to cops by people who generally don’t have a problem with cops.
I mean, right up until they do. This is from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decision [PDF]. (h/t Short Circuit)
In the summer of 2020, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the District to proclaim “Black Lives Matter.” Over several weeks, the protesters covered streets, sidewalks, and storefronts with paint and chalk. The markings were ubiquitous and in open violation of the District’s defacement ordinance, yet none of the protesters were arrested. During the same summer, District police officers arrested two pro-life advocates in a smaller protest for chalking “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk.
The organizers of the smaller protest, the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America (collectively “the Foundation”), sued. The Foundation alleged violations of the First and Fifth Amendments, conceding the defacement ordinance was facially constitutional, but arguing the District’s one-sided enforcement of the ordinance was not.
The lower court said these protesters were wrong. It said both allegations (under the First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause) were roughly the same and this unequal enforcement violated neither of the two ideals it decided should be considered a single claim.
The appeals court says they’re not the same. While it may be true the officers’ actions in these enforcement efforts may not have violated the Equal Protection Clause (given the lack of evidence demonstrating a discriminatory stance by the DC PD), it’s far more likely this violated the First Amendment rights of the abortion protesters.
The District seemed to decide it was better to let (certain) people speak, rather than create any additional reasons for residents to be unhappy with law enforcement.
The District all but abandoned enforcement of the defacement ordinance during the Black Lives Matter protests, creating a de facto categorical exemption for individuals who marked “Black Lives Matter” messages on public and private property. The complaint offers a number of examples. The day after Mayor Bowser’s street mural was revealed, protestors added an equal sign and “Defund the Police,” so the message read “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.”
Police officers watched as the alteration took place and did nothing to stop it. Although the Black Lives Matter advocates did not seek a permit or otherwise receive consent, they were neither arrested nor charged under the defacement ordinance. In fact, the District left the addition in place for months, eventually removing it in mid-August.
Selective enforcement is never a good idea. And it’s an especially bad idea when it’s immediately clear to those being arrested the enforcement of a statute is highly selective.
In a conversation about the permit, a police officer gave the Foundation verbal permission to paint its “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” message on the street. The officer explained that he believed Mayor Bowser had effectively opened up the District’s streets for political markings. The Foundation also sent a letter to Mayor Bowser asking to paint a mural and declaring it a constitutional right to do so. Mayor Bowser did not respond.
When the pro-life advocates arrived for their rally on August 1, six police cars and many police officers were waiting. The officers said the advocates could assemble in accordance with the Foundation’s permit, but if they painted or chalked their message on the sidewalk, they would be arrested for violating the defacement ordinance. Two students began to chalk “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on the sidewalk anyway. Despite the message being written in small, faint letters with washable chalk, the two students were arrested. The entire event was caught on video.
This was not the only incident. The Foundation planned to hold another rally on March 27, 2021, to proclaim “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” and write their message on the public street. The Foundation sought a permit and was allowed by the District to assemble with a bullhorn and a music stand. The District again denied the Foundation’s request to paint or mark on the street or sidewalk.
And that’s a First Amendment violation, says the DC Appeals Court. Selective enforcement is just a pretty term for viewpoint discrimination, which the government definitely isn’t allowed to engage in.
The government may not enforce the laws in a manner that picks winners and losers in public debates. It would undermine the First Amendment’s protections for free speech if the government could enact a content-neutral law and then discriminate against disfavored viewpoints under the cover of prosecutorial discretion. […] Neutral regulations may reasonably limit the time, place, and manner of speech, but such regulations cannot be enforced based on the content or viewpoint of speech.
That’s how the First Amendment works, and always has, especially in cases like these where the subject matter given selective enforcement is political speech. When the DC government took a hands-off approach to certain protests but showed up in force to police others, it got into the business of picking winners. That’s just not allowed.
The First Amendment prohibits the government from favoring some speakers over others. Access to public fora must be open to everyone and to every message on the same terms. The District may act to prevent the defacement of public property, but it cannot open up its streets and sidewalks to some viewpoints and not others.
The case returns to the lower level to address the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims. The District will now have to present better arguments than “well, one protest was bigger than the other protest” (yeah, that’s the actual argument) to avoid losing this lawsuit.
And that has always been the case. The First Amendment isn’t that difficult to understand. If cops understood the mayor as “opening the streets” to defacement of public property, that “opening up” applied to everyone, not just those the mayor may have sympathized with.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, arrests, dc circuit, defacing public property, protests, sidewalk chalking, washington dc
Comments on “Appeals Court Says DC Cops Possibly Violated The First Amendment By Arresting Pro-Life Sidewalk Chalkers”
What’s the difference between “pro-life” and “anti-abortion”? The “pro-life” people all have AT LEAST twelve adopted children. They also ride unicorns in their spare time…
Re:
No difference exists. “Pro-life”/“anti-abortion” people only give a shit about controlling women’s bodies. They think a 12-year-old girl is both too young to learn anything about sex and exactly old enough to be forced into bearing her rapist’s child.
Re: If you don't care once birth happens you're not pro-life, just pro-forced birth
‘Pro-life’ people care just as much if not more about what happens after birth occurs as what happens before that point, ‘anti-abortion’ only care what happens until that point.
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Missouri v. Biden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_v._Biden
In a while, we’ll see whether the government “asking” social media sites to censor specific viewpoints is also a 1st Amendment violation. Tim Cushing will tell you that when a police officer making a traffic stop “asks” the driver something, the driver often does not feel that it is safe to demur. Different or not? The courts will say.
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Ah, yes. “Show me on this org chart, where the nasty government touched you.”
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Per the “Twitter Files”, Twitter refusing to act on the government’s information more than half the time says “yes, it is different”.
Re: Re: From the 'Super polite cut' of the Godfather:
‘I’m gonna make them an offer they are explicitly allowed to refuse, and by my actions afterwards make crystal clear the offer was and continues to be entirely optional to comply with.’
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The left strenuously objects (correctly) to prayer in public schools, even when students are told that they can opt out. It’s going to be for the courts to clarify whether a request made by the government that would violate the 1st Amendment if it were mandatory violates the 1st Amendment nevertheless.
Re: Re: Re:2
Students can already pray, read the Bible, and do practically any other personal religious practice in public schools. What “the left” objects to is teachers and administrators leading those prayers or injecting religion (and it’s always one specific religion) into classes and school functions.
Twitter listened to the government’s requests and, more than half the time, refused to take any action on them—which the government outright said was an option Twitter could take. I fail to see how anyone’s First Amendment rights were violated by Twitter outright saying “no” to the government.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Don’t worry, we’re working on that. Having to share the same oxygen with imaginary friend believers is an unsustainable practice and frankly, fucking demeaning.
Re: Re: Re:4
So long as religious folks aren’t trying to force other people into practising a specific religion, I don’t care if someone prays in public.
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Re: Re: Re:5
We tolerated that, and look what the imaginary friend fuckers did. They ruined everything for women and minorities.
No more. We have tolerated the intolerant long enough.
Re: Re: Re:6
Plenty of religious people don’t object to minorities at all.
Re: Re: Re:7
And did they prevent those in their midst from demonstrating their intolerance of minorities?
No, they did not.
All it takes for evil to win is for “good” people to do nothing. And they did nothing.
If they truly did not object to minorities, they would accept their punishment for failing to follow the tenets of love and tolerance they supposedly proclaim. After all, they believe in an imaginary friend who got nailed to a rotting piece of wood for someone else’s crimes, so they should have no problem with this.
Re: Re: Re:2
Not even remotely similar, even if there wasn’t an official policy of punishing students who refused to pray to the particular god(s) of the school staff the act of doing so would out them as not following that religion or possibly no religion, something which could have serious social consequences and as such even setting aside the whole ‘if you come to this school you will pray to my god(s) when that time of the day rolls around’ first amendment issue there very much would be implied coercion involved.
Contrast that with the government’s ‘demands’ where unless you’re talking about something that wasn’t covered in the ‘Twitter files’ and was drastically different they explicitly came with a ‘you are free to ignore this’ clause and all that was being done was informing the platforms of possible rules violations and letting the platforms decide what to do from there.
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wat
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It’s probably our CSAM loving psychopathic Nazi loon, Hyman Rosen, speaking.
He appears to have a special hatred for you because you constantly exercise your 1A rights and it offends him.
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Correctly identified, although naturally I dispute the adjectives. And it’s people like you who hate the 1st Amendment. Exercising freedom of speech, religion, association, and petition is infuriating to those who are seeking to have the left boot stamping on the face of humanity forever.
Re: Re: Re:2
…says the dude who openly defended the idea of child rape as a mere “viewpoint” to debate.
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Re: Re: Re:3
As usual, you hallucinate imaginary versions of me who say what you want them to.
It is plausible for someone to think that posting an existing image of child pornography is a way to energize people to fight it more, in the same way that photos of other atrocities can support those causes. It is plausible that the owners of the site on which the image was posted believe that this is sufficient justification not to ban that user permanently, despite the fact that posting such an image may be illegal in the US.
That you disagree with this justification is irrelevant, since you are neither the user nor the site owner. You may attempt to convince, encourage, shame, or buy the site to get it to change. But in fact, the reason for your screeching outrage is as a way to attempt to disparage the site owner because he no longer permits the site to censor viewpoints of which you disapprove.
Re: Re: Re:4
I rest my case, Your Honor.
Re: Re: Re:4
If you fuck goats just to draw awareness to the issue of people fucking goats… you’re still a goat fucker.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I’ll hallucinate whatever the fuck it takes to get straight freaks like you off the streets.
You are a TERRORIST, and we do not negotiate with TERRORISTS.
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Your constant diatribes against law enforcement are silly, tendentious, and tiring; in a country of 300 million people, you can pull any number of incidents of bad behavior. So when my comments involve law enforcement, I will sometimes namedrop you ironically. Nothing to see here really – just find another stop-and-frisk to complain about.
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That you see nothing wrong in how “incidents of bad behavior” by cops occur on a regular basis across the country, affect their victims long after the incidents, and mostly go unpunished by the legal system is your problem. Cops wield power far beyond what the average person does; anyone with such power should be held to a higher standard than “well, don’t let it happen again”.
Re: Re: Re:2
We can only hope that he’ll experience first-hand the shit he trivializes in his effort to be a stupid little shit.
Re: Re: Re:3
Clearly, his parents didn’t manage to do it.
Assuming they were Polish Jews, of course.
Re: Re: Re:3
I would rather he come to his senses and develop a sense of empathy without needing to be the victim of police malfeasance.
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Re: Re: Re:4
You see nothing wrong, or at least nothing worth mentioning, with Black people, including children, murdering other Black people, including children, in numbers far disproportionate to their population share. You see nothing wrong with allowing shoplifting and looting and fare beating to go unmentioned and unpunished, despite the effect it has on destroying civil society, because the thieves are members of your favored victim groups. You see nothing wrong with sexually mutilating children by giving in to their delusions of being in the wrong body rather than giving them mental health treatment to understand that they are in the only body they will ever have with the only sex it will ever have.
Liberal insanity is far more destructive than police misconduct, but you are willfully blind to that, because somehow you have convinced yourself that ignoring social dysfunction is the solution to social dysfunction. Your favored victim groups cannot read, cannot calculate, cannot parent, and cannot work, and no amount of laying that at the feet of “white privilege” is going to change a thing.
Re: Re: Re:5
As usual, you hallucinate imaginary versions of me who say what you want them to.
They banned writing on the sidewalk with chalk?
Sure, the government has an interest in preventing the defacement of public property, because it costs money to repair… but chalk? On the sidewalk?
How would this law survive rational basis review?
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The government declaring that it wants to keep streets clear of defacement, even if temporary, is fine for rational basis.
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“They banned writing on the sidewalk with chalk?”
Sidewalk Karen will now commence locking up your children for playing hop scotch.
So…
When Tim Cushing advocates for the 1A rights of vile Nazis, who wins?
EVERYONE.
Haiku
This brings to mind the haiku…
Black lives matter
Blue lies matter
But who ends up black and blue?
Classmates in grade school learned that I was an atheist, and several of them literally declared that they were going to “beat God into me”. Very Christian concept, there…
Needless to say, it didn’t work, but I did beat the Hell out of one of them a while later. Semantics?
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There is no hate greater than “Christian love”.
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Stephen has the right idea. Until Christians are purged, furries, sexual and gender minorities will know no safety.
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Nobody is safe while abrahamics still walk the earth.
Re: Re: Re:2
…says the guy who has a problem with foreign wars and presidents using drone strikes.
Re: Re: Re:3
Rationality breeds out myth.
The percentage of religious belief falls year over yesr
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Really? ‘Cause “Muslim love” often comes with the extra gift of explosives, or being tossed off a building for being gay.
But sure, it’s the Christians who are the “no greater hate”.
Re: 'Evil? No no, I was beating them to save them from hell!'
I mean, once someone has bought into the idea that eternal torture can ever be morally justified and that those sentenced to it not only earned it but did it to themselves anything less than that becomes horrifically easy to justify in the believer’s mind.
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So the crime. Do the time. They vandalised the public sidewalk.
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The irony of those two sentences coming from a Trumpist is thicker than a bowl of oatmeal.
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That would depend on the oat to water ratio. I happen to like it thick, but many like it extremely thin. It’s a matter of personal taste.
And as soon as anyone shows evidence of a crime Trump committed…
So far I see “incitement’ without encanto
[no -]Fraud based on a highly paraphrased interpretation to a statement
Libel which doesn’t stick if you actually believe it.
And, oh look, the daily beast calling for disqualification. Remind me how all this wasted tax money isn’t politics.
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Yes, yes, you think subtext and context aren’t actual things people have to deal with and the phone call was as perfect as he said it was (which one I’m talking about is irrelevant) and the mean ol’ Dems are just trying to get back at Trump for being a demigod and a perfect president and the very definition of manliness, we get it. Christ, go actually kiss Trump’s actual ass if you’re that willing to do it online.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The context of the call was how many ballots vs voters.
Subtext isn’t criminal. The fact that you think Trump incited violence shows that subtext, is a personal belief.
People hear what they want to hear. Period. If one of the few hundred who broke a law beyond stepping in a place they shouldn’t be blame Trump… they are a) layers, and b) brain dead violent morons.
For the hundreds who broke no law beyond being on the wrong side of a moved barricade’s original location, and the thousands that broke no law at all… they didn’t hear any imaginary call for violence.
The real world fully understands your position. You hate Trump and want him convicted. Just like I’d cheer and party for a traffic violation agains the evil communist bitch of 16.
That doesn’t make Trump, or her, a criminal. Despite our wishes.
Innocent until proven guilty. And after all appeals.
Re: Re: Re:3
No, it isn’t, because I heard the exact same speech as everyone else and even I know how to pick apart exactly what Trump was trying to do. You don’t have to make an explicit call to action if you know what you’re doing, and subtext/context are how to do exactly that.
A call for violence? Maybe not. But they did hear Trump asking them to march on a building that was literally closed to the public for the purposes of carrying out the most important function of American democracy. They trespassed on the property surrounding that building despite it being closed off to the public that day. That’s a crime, and I expect the ones who committed more egregious crimes to be punished to the proper extent of the law.
I also expect the person who ginned up that crowd, pointed them towards the Capitol, promised to march with them, and let them loose to do what they did to be held accountable for inciting a riot/insurrection for the purposes of delaying the certification of—and I know you hate hearing these words, and that’s what makes me happy—a free and fair election that he provably lost fair and square.
Yes, I hate Trump. Yes, I want him convicted. No, I don’t want him convicted of crimes he didn’t commit.
I want him convicted for the crimes he did commit. That includes his attempt to undermine/overturn the results of—and here come those magic words again!—a free and fair election that he provably lost fair and square.
Calling Hillary Clinton a “communist” is like saying I’m a Republican: It’s almost as ridiculous as your literal belief that she’s an actual demon from the actual Biblical Hell.
Re: Re: Re:4
Shows you don’t have any quality study on governmental implementation. Even if you have a basic grasp of the idea but not the practice in communism.
Communism in practices as nearly always requires a central dictatorship to dole out the moneys to the masses. USSR, South Atlantic, Sourh America, Africa. Every communist country has implemented it nearly the same way.
The government skims much off the top, which lands in the rolling pockets, then gives away a pittance to the masses.
That is exactly what that communist currently does. She skims from the foundation income and a small amount makes it into the actual accounting. I have no evidence that her governmental control would be any different. She’s the opposite of Sanders and a major contrast to Obama.
Mind you I supported Sanders before the Clinton elites rigged the election and certification processes in her favour.
Republicans, including Trump, yell lock her up over emails and cell phones.
I say lock the four letter word more generally used for evil people in Brittany than the US, for her fraud in the primary process. True fraud. Proven fraud.
Again, Trump won 16 because millions would never vote for Clinton. Period. Ever.
Trump gained some of theirs votes for promising (and attempting as President) things core to American socialists and libertarians: ending international military involvement, charity here, not abroad, border security.
Communism has never been implemented for the commons. It has always been dictated by the elite. Clinton is a communist, in the international implementation of the practice. She wants to control, with endless access for herself, the money at the top and give out what is left.
The only country to ever toy with actual communism was China… and while Mao tried, the country quickly shifted without him to more common implementation.
Re: Re: Re:5
All the shit you say after that one line tells me one thing: You either don’t realize or refuse to admit that everyone in your lifetime who has ever been the presidential candidate for either of the two main American political parties has also been a capitalist.
Re: Re: Re:6
Excluding China’s first communist era, ni country has executed a true communism. Clinton is a Soviet style communist. Plain and simple.
Push the government takeover of most, if not all, industry.
Set flat rates of income in those industries.
Collect massive stores of government wealth, “for the people, later”.
Set a maximum income level, above which due to taxes you can not surpass.
And basically set the entire population just above poverty.
Equal, but hardly fair.
All while government travels in private jets and luxury yachts. Lives in plush multimillion dollar “government estates”. Maintains a private police force for them while we have none.
Decides what we can and ban not have, use, consume…
No thanks.
Re: Re: Re:7
I doubt you could point to a single instance of Clinton proposing any of that.
Re: Re: Re:7
I have never seen any Democrat lawmaker, including Hillary Clinton, seriously suggest this should happen. Nor do I support it.
I have never seen any Democrat lawmaker, including Hillary Clinton, seriously suggest this should happen. I don’t have a real opinion on it.
Okay, and…this is a problem, how, exactly? Because the way I see it, the government setting aside a lot of money to help people recover from natural disasters or pay for healthcare or…well, basically to help people achieve a bare minimum of existence isn’t something I’d decry.
Also not a problem. Or do you really believe Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk need to be worth even $100 million to survive?
Again: How the fuck is this a problem unless you believe in unchecked capitalism, which requires a massive amount of poverty to create the levels of wealth “achieved” by people like Bezos and Musk?
I don’t give a fuck about “fairness” to rich people. A few hundred people wanting to live in exorbitant luxury every day for the rest of their lives matter less to me than the thousands-to-millions of people who can barely afford even the cheapest of necessities. If taxing Bezos and Musk into “oblivion” (i.e., into being worth only one cent less than a billion dollars) is “unfair” to them, I’ll own that unfairness so long as it means millions of people don’t have to choose between paying their rent or eating fewer meals in a given month.
Do you think Bezos and Musk live in goddamn garbage cans or some shit? The same thing you accuse lawmakers (i.e., Democrats) of doing is exactly what rich motherfuckers like Bezos and Musk do. But you’re far too concerned about “fairness” towards the obscenely wealthy and their lifestyles of obscene luxury to even give a shit. For all your talk about supporting social safety nets and whatnot, you still don’t get how the unchecked capitalism that creates obscene wealth both makes those safety nets both necessary and stigmatizes those same safety nets as a “dependency” upon which the working class shouldn’t rely (especially if they can be working more than one full-time job). Welfare doesn’t subsidize the poor—it subsidizes the rich motherfuckers who refuse to pay higher wages to the people who make their companies profitable and hoard all that profit for themselves.
(This fuckin’ “temporarily embarassed millionaire” shit is so fuckin’ ridiculous…)
Re: Re: Re:8
Yes. And she shouldn’t be near anything that involves power over anyone else’s money
Had said she would “consider” capped income propositions.
A sliding tax that bars exceeding a certain amount is a non-starter for me.
Because later never happens. Just look at FEMA staying in a 5* hotel.
Nobody needs, but when you cap upward wealth you cap upward motivation.
All primates are genetically selfish. Most animals in general are. Do you think space x would have put space travel back into the US without profit motivation?
Not everyone is a Tim Cook or Steve Jobs willing to work for a dollar. They are the extreme exception.
I believe in the scientific fact that the 99% of life requires motivation to do anything more than what is required for survival.
I know. You don’t care about anyone with more than you. You don’t want anyone to ever exceed your position. I see someone with a billion dollars and I think wow, good for them. You see that and think, how can we force them to give it all to me.
Bezos and Musk aren’t using my tax dollars to do so.
If you think for a second raising taxes ever funds social welfare in THIS country (more than a pittance the first day) you’re in fantasy land.
If you want proof look at the budget and the deficit and where we spend money.
So you know what 113 billion USD could have done in this country? Plus another 72 in “social” concerns over there to the same country.
I will fight caps and raising taxes on anyone until someone shows a track record of spending that money 100% in THIS country.
Because I don’t give a shite about Ukraine or Uganda or anywhere else when the father of 3 is begging on the corner because our Demoshite governor caused his employer to go bankrupt by closing in person functions for over a year.
Re: Re: Re:9
That’s not her saying she seriously supports the idea. And I can’t think of any Democrat who has said they seriously support the idea. “Consider” isn’t “support”—and it sure as hell isn’t “put forth an actual bill in any level of legislature within the United States”.
And there it is: “Rich people won’t be motivated to do anything unless they’re allowed to make uncapped amounts of money!” I’ve probably said to you before what I’m about to say again, but I’m gonna say it again to make sure you understand my feelings on that kind of bullshit:
If the poorest half of Americans were to vanish in an instant, everyone left would be scrambling in vain to restore every basic feature of modern civilization. If the people on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans were to vanish in an instant, a bunch of lawyers would have to do some extra paperwork.
You can whine and cry about “unfairness” to rich people all you want. The people who really make them rich are the people who do things like pack goods in Amazon warehouses and flip burgers at McDonald’s and stock shelves in Walmart and…well, basically every janitor in the goddamn country would be missed within a day if they all disappeared. But the wealthiest motherfuckers in the world don’t generate their own wealth, and they don’t do the kind of labor that the working class does. They sit on their asses and whine about tax brackets and find ways to hoard their money and make sure as much corporate profit as possible finds its way to their bank accounts instead of the pockets of the working class. Not a one of the richest people in the world has ever done a single goddamned thing to earn their billions besides exploit the working class in one way or another. Low wages, inflation, tax breaks from politicians too afraid to piss off their campaign donors—all of that benefits the rich, none of that benefits the poor. The same goes for people working full-time jobs but are also on welfare: The rich get the actual subsidy by not having to pay their employees a living wage, which increases corporate profits, which increases an already obscene amount of wealth. (And don’t even get me started on golden parachutes and profiting from corporate failure.)
You care about the rich far more than you care about the poor. That you justify obscene wealth—the kind of wealth that exacerbates poverty, which in turn increases crime and homelessness and child hunger and every other negative effect of poverty—as necessary for the good of the country or even the world is so far beyond obscene that I don’t even have words for it. Like, do you actually believe defending a rich person is going to make them befriend you? Do you sincerely believe defending obscene wealth will make some of it trickle down into your pockets? Because I’ve got news for you, Trumpist: The only way that’s going to happen is if you’re a conservative on the Supreme Court, and I don’t think you’re Clarence Thomas.
Christ, now I’m so pissed off at you that I don’t even want to run through the rest of your bullshit. Keep parroting that temporarily embarassed millionaire bullshit, though—all that will do is make clear that you prioritize the feelings of the rich over the lives of the poor. And hey, I guess that’s par for the course for a Trumpist who values isolationism and keeping brown people out of the country.
Re: Re: Re:10
The moment democrats show the slightest bit of interest in using the funding of increased taxes IN THIS COUNTRY ALONE, I’ll listen.
They don’t use tax funds in this country. They raise taxes to send money to other countries.
Dem leadership doesn’t care about our country. Just look how the party illegally modified and outright hacked the election process to kill Sanders’ nomination.
You can’t be stupid, not with the occasional brilliance you post. But!
You come across as a spiteful hateful human being. No logical person in this country thinks the U.S. population would see one cent taken from taxes raised on billionaires.
And since you’re not an idiot, only one reason is left for your view.
You hate anyone with more than you?
I remind you, billionaires are not the only ones with stocks and bonds.
Those hamburger dollars went into savings. Savings used to invest.
You have no way to directly attack the rich you so despise for having more money than you do. And as soon as you go after your (fantasy of) stored wealth idea, you assault the entire population. Over 100 million people with annual income below 100,000 usd have stocks and bonds, CDs, real estate grants.
The moment you try to get even with those you don’t like, you attack the entirety of the country.
Your belief that only billionaires have the investments you want to steal is exactly why progressives are so dangerous to the country.
Without those investments banks don’t offer people like me 3% interest savings accounts.
Without those big accounts, people like me don’t get to own voting stock in companies we support.
Without those big accounts, people like me can’t save and grow for our children. Our grandchildren.
unlike you, I’m more worried about affording food at 1.3% tax when there’s 2.77 in taxes per gallon on fuel. Or how electric is 5x the cost today than 2019, or natural gas has increased 3x over.
Every time you raise taxes, you hurt the poor. The middle. Everyone except the rich. The rich can eat the jncrease as pocket change.
Re: Re: Re:11
Yes, yes, you think the U.S. should shut itself off from the world and refuse to spend any of its exorbitant first-world wealth on anything other than making the lives of rich Americans easier, we get it.
And you think GOP leadership gives a shit about the working class or the marginalized? They’re passing anti-trans laws! They’re either refusing to condemn (at best) or directly helping (at worst) shitheads like Libs of Tiktok terrorize libraries, hospitals, and drag shows! They’re the ones who passed a huge tax break for rich people while Trump was president! Dems have their problems, but they’re not actively courting a violently radical White supremacist voting base using grievance politics and fear of a “great replacement”—the party led by your infallible orange demigod is doing that shit!
Don’t insult me with the back of your hand, you bitch.
I have spite for Trumpists. I have hate for Donald Trump. Show me why I shouldn’t, other than some centrist needledick bullshit about “getting along” or “agreeing to disagree” (or some right-wing “Trump promised to keep all the bad brown people out of America” bullshit).
Yes, yes, you think every last cent raised in taxes goes overseas, we get it. Pick a different fantasy, like the one where Tucker Carlson leads the White Uprising against the Great Replacement—that seems more your speed.
“He can’t hate the rich for logical reasons because there is no logical reason to hate the rich!” That’s you. That’s you right now.
And no, I don’t hate everyone richer than I am. If I did, I’d be the kind of spiteful piece of shit that gets sucked into a right-wing murder cult (i.e., Trump’s voting base). What I hate is obscene wealth—the kind of money-hoarding bullshit that exacerbates poverty—and the people who think they need that level of wealth to survive when millions of people can barely afford to pay all of their bills on time. What I hate is the idea that such wealth can be defended or justified as right and proper and even necessary for the good of the world. What I hate is the belief that the obscenely wealthy do more to “earn” the vast amounts of money on which they sit—wealth that never re-enters the economy—than do the millions of working class people who actually produce that wealth, get less than a living wage in return, and pump their earnings back into the economy because they need to live on something other than prayers and possibly contaminated tap water.
But they are the ones who essentially determine how much all that made-up bullshit is worth.
So fucking what? They’re not the ones I’m talking about here. Obscene wealth isn’t a six- or even seven-figure annual income—it’s a seven-figure (at worst) daily income. Someone earning in a week, a day, or even an hour what the average American makes for working one full-time job in one year, and all without doing even remotely the same level of labor as those Americans? That is obscene and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Lodos. Trumpist. Dipshit, if you will. The richest American billionaire holds more wealth than 99% of the rest of the country COMBINED.
Billionaires hold in their hands an amount of wealth that no person could ever think to spend in their lifetimes. They hoard that wealth in offshore accounts and stocks and whatnot to make sure the money stays on their ledgers instead of anyone else’s. None of that wealth returns to the economy in any significant way precisely because it’s being hoarded instead of given back to the working class through higher wages or given to the government via proper-ass taxation. Which idea is truly more dangerous to the country: “Billionaires should be taxed more than the poor because they can afford to lose more personal wealth and still live comfortably” or “billionaires are letting the country rot because they want to be the one with the most marks in their ledgers when they die”?
What does it tell you that you think my wanting to raise taxes on the obscenely wealthy—and only the obscenely wealthy—means not only that I want to tax everyone else at a higher rate (which I don’t, fuck you very much), but that raising taxes only on the rich will actually hurt the working class somehow?
I mean, I know how much you want to dismantle the military and cut America off from the entire world and all that shit—none of which is ever going to happen barring a complete change in governance that actually agrees with you 100%, by the way—but how the flying rat fuck do you think we’ll ever be able to fund a universal basic income in this country without defunding literally every other bit of public spending? BECAUSE IT SURE AS SHIT WON’T BE BY TAXING THE POOR, MOTHERFUCKER.
(Jesus H. Christ on the cross, I haven’t seen apologia for rich people this shitty since people kept trying to defend Clarence Thomas for taking all those trips.)
I want to make this absolutely clear to you, Trumpist: I don’t hate the rich. I don’t hate people like Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift. Who I hate are people who make more money in a year than millions of people will ever earn in their lifetimes combined. I hate people who will never have their corporations pay the lowest paid employees a living wage and always have their corporations raise prices on their products only to increase the amount of corporate profit they can put on their ledger. (FYI: Janitors should be paid more than any other profession besides garbage collectors.) What I hate, Lodos, is the kind of greed and spite for humanity’s collective welfare that drives billionaires to hoard more money while millions of people fall deeper into poverty and despair. The obscenely wealthy don’t give a shit about anyone other than themselves; if they cared about other people—especially the poorest people—the obscenely wealthy would pay them living wages and make housing more affordable and basically give up a mere fraction of their wealth to drastically improve the everyday lives of Americans. But the wealth gap widens further every day, and the only thing you can think to care about is the United States closing its borders and isolating itself politically, socially, and economically from the rest of the world.
You really are a Republican.
Re: Re: Re:12 Warped perception
You’re such an absolutist. A or z.
There are a zillion levels between all and nothing.
No, I demand that until there are no starving homeless US citizens we not spend on another country’s homeless. Until the US has free healthcare we should not be propping up the social systems of other countries.
Fair fair. You and I would agree on 90% of a debate round and then claw each others guts out over the remaining 10%.
No. You have evil hatred for capitalism and despise anyone with more than you have. To the point where II wonder if it is spite or jealousy. (And it’s not brown, don’t be a race-baiting idiot. It’s criminal trespass. It’s stoping the flood of criminals).
Feel free to read the actual bills: they’re posted in the federal register. Over 80% of taxe increases since 2020 have funded foreign expenditures.
The only logic in your argument is they have more than we do. Burn it all down. That’s your argument.
But the poor are the ones that will suffer because of your blind rage over those with more than you.
Those top 1% make the same cash income as the Swifts and Cruises.
You are after non-cash-value investments (that’s what the Dem leadership is after, and I can easily show you video and text stating that).
You can’t get their non-cash without hitting over 80% of the country at the same time.
First, what you are after is NOT stored wealth. You after floating value holdings. Take apple stock. Shares that I purchased —flipping burgers mind you— at $33 each.
Those shares have had a value since as low as $13 and as high as $234.
I’ve not sold a single share. So when do you plan to tax me? Huh?
I already paid tax on that money from my paycheque. I paid tax again on transferral in the purchase. AND I pay taxes on the dividends payouts. And if I need to sell them, I pay taxes on the sale at the cost of the sale price.
So where do plan to tax me again? At the low of $13? At the high of 234? I just looked now, and if you took taxes on the high I would have unfairly paid taxes on $50 in value I don’t have today.
These aren’t bank accounts with money in them. These are pieces of paper worth nothing until two people barter an agreement on exchanging them.
If true, then I’m the only one. No current “Republican” would gut the military the way I want to. Or support a national, guaranteed, social security for every citizen. Free education from cradle to grave. Free healthcare for every citizen and legal visitor.
The gutting and restructuring of law enforcement removing all local agencies and replacing them With the Asian-style federal branched system.
But to make any of that work, we start with a key issue where I DO agree with “republicans”. Absolute unbending enforcement of border security.
Funny the progressives call me a Republican, republicans call me a demonrat. Both party can kiss my bum. Both could care less about you or me.
Re: Re: Re:13
Well in that case they did a fucking shit ass job, because you’re here…
Re: Re: Re:14
I was born here. Both my parents were born here. My grandparents were born here. My great grandparents were immigrants.
Re: Re: Re:15
And your kind isn’t wanted any more.
You’re going to get replaced by an enby and you’re going to fucking like it, Trumpy.
Re: Re: Re:13
I took some time away from the Internet this past weekend for mental health reasons, and I come back to this now because I want to make a concerted effort at replying to you without being a cruel, inhumane, and altogether snappy-ass bastard towards you. (In other words: This wisecrack I’m about to make notwithstanding, I’m trying very hard not to be the average Republican voter right now.)
In the grand scheme of things, yes. In American politics, not so much. Republicans have been veering towards their own zero-sum absolutism: “Either we rule the country or we burn it down.” One could argue that the turn began after the Civil Rights Movement, the ideological switch of the major political parties, and Nixon’s employment of the “Southern Strategy”. But in terms of the recent past, the turn began in earnest after the election of Barack Obama and kicked into overdrive with the election of Donald Trump. The GOP now either refuses to condemn or outright endorses tactics such as book bans in school/public libraries and literal bomb threats to children’s hospitals, all in the name of eradicating “wokeness”. Trump and his allies tried as hard as they could to overturn the confirmed-as-legitimate results of a free and fair election. The Republican Party is a party of fascists (or at least fascists-in-training), and fascism is always a zero-sum game.
Funny how you complain about my absolutism, then offer an absolutist position of your own in return.
I don’t believe the U.S. should be playing the role of “world police” or “international father figure” or whatever you can think to call what the country does on a global scale. But the U.S. has enough wealth to share that helping other countries isn’t going to destroy it. Could the government spend money more wisely? Yes. Would the country be better off if it concentrated only on its own problems and ignored the larger world as if the U.S. were the only inhabited country on the planet? I have serious doubts about that.
No. No, we would not. And even if we did agree on that much, the remaining 10% would likely be such a dealbreaker for any kind of middle ground that the other 90% would be irrelevant. (For example: I believe punching Nazis is a morally defensible form of cultural self-defense, which makes it the only form of political violence that I am willing to endorse. Can you say the same?)
I have plenty of hatred for capitalism, which decided before I was born that I was going to be poor (or lower middle-class at best) because I wasn’t born into wealth.
But as far as people who have more than I do? I hold no hate for the average millionaire. If anything, I envy plenty of successful people for the skills they developed to achieve their success. Take, for example, Trish Stratus: Long before she was a WWE Hall of Famer, she was a fitness model who signed with WWE to serve as a valet. Over the course of her career, she worked to develop skills as an actual wrestler that led her to become one of the most beloved women’s wrestlers in WWE history. Her work ethic and the improvement she showed over the course of her career gave her a level of success that few women in U.S. pro wrestling before her (and arguably since her) have ever enjoyed. I envy the path she took to achieve success, as I am…well, let’s say I’m not exactly able to develop my own skills the same way and leave it at that.
Then you have someone like Elon Musk, who inherited wealth from his family and became a “success” by either using his inherited wealth to buy his way into successful companies or failing upwards. Or you have someone like Jeff Bezos, who used an initial run of success with Amazon to start horning in on other retail avenues, push smaller competitors (in cyber- and meatspace) out of business, and build a retail empire that made him a billionaire even as underpaid workers in Amazon warehouses toiled away in brutal—and in a not-zero number of cases, outright fatal—working conditions to generate that wealth. “Success” for those kinds of people are less about developing some kind of useful or creative skill and more about figuring out how to make The Line go up as high as possible. If I shouldn’t hate obscenely wealthy people for exploiting everything from the federal minimum wage to child labor in overseas sweatshops for the sake of a higher number in an accounting ledger, feel free to explain why.
The majority of Republicans (including Trump) who talk about stemming the tide of immigration aren’t talking about immigrants from Norway or Canada or other countries with what would be considered majority-White populations. They’re talking about immigrants from Mexico, South America, East Asia (China in particular), and even the Middle East. They’re talking about people of color. Tucker Carlson and his explicit endorsement of the racist “Great Replacement” theory as a lynchpin of his thoughts on immigration provides all the proof I need for that point.
That isn’t the same as saying 80% of total tax revenue funds the U.S.’s foreign expenditures.
No one becomes a billionaire without sacrificing their ethics. No one can become a billionaire without exploiting the poor and the marginalized. No one in this world should ever be worth 1 billion dollars, never mind 100 billion.
The money hoarded by billionaires serves no one so long as it remains in their possession: It never goes back into the economy and it never “trickles down” to the poor. Yes, I think the government should tax any person or corporation with an annual net income of over $100mil to what you might consider an absurd degree. The money collected by those taxes could fund public works such as improved public transit, affordable nationalized healthcare, and fixing our rotten infrastructure (e.g., local water systems affected by lead). I don’t consider that to be “burning it all down” unless the U.S. literally can’t survive without a handful of people exacerbating national poverty for the sake of having a higher number in a ledger.
The rich already make the poor suffer. Capitalism demands that corporations increase profits and growth every year—after all, The Line Must Go Up (or Else). This is why every time you hear about a wage increase from a company, that same company almost always puts in place a price hike to “pay for” the increased wages. The company never asks its executives to take a pay cut, and rare is the day when an executive takes one of their own accord. But the market effectively dilutes the spending power of those slightly bigger paychecks via inflation (which is basically a codeword for “corporate greed”), and that amounts to an effective pay cut for working class employees. The wealth gap will never close and poverty will never be manageable so long as the wealth of corporate executives is allowed to rise unchecked. Tell me when I’m telling lies.
And there’s a reason for that: At a bare minimum, you display through your comments the kind of selfishness that people who aren’t Republicans tend to associate with Republicans. Your obsession with isolationist border security—though seemingly without the same racist intent found in the GOP—puts you squarely in their camp. You also support Donald Trump to an absurd degree; I mean, you’re out here implying that even if he did commit a crime in his attempts to overturn the results of a free and fair election, he shouldn’t be held responsible for that because he’s (A) a Republican, (B) a former president, (C) a current presidential candidate, or (D) any combination of the above. You seem to support the Republican idea that a Republican politician should always be above the same laws they will demand be enforced against Democrats, and that mostly comes down to you agreeing with Donald Trump’s (xenophobic and racist) position on immigration.
I’m not going to trot out the McSweeney’s list again or whatever because I know you will never be convinced that Donald Trump is a racist, sexist, xenophobic con man with a history of lying. I’m not going to repost the whole thing about Trump’s January 6th speech because I know you will never be convinced that he knew exactly what effect his words would have on his followers even if he couldn’t predict exactly what they would do. All I’m going to do is ask you two simple questions: If Hillary Clinton took the same exact actions after the 2016 election that Trump did after the 2020 election, and Clinton stood accused of the exact same crimes with which Trump is charged based on the exact same evidence, would you demand that she stand trial in a court of law? And if the answer is “yes” (as I expect it would be), for what possible reason—other than the Republican belief that Republicans must always be above the law—should Trump not stand trial?
Re: Re: Re:14
Yes, the political power wants to ban. Different things for their own reasons. Even when they agree what to ban, they have different reasons why. I have a life long hatred for the power elite of both parties. I’ve grown up with my choice of entertainment threatened every day of every year. My games, my music, my movies, my books, everything.
My stance on speech and sandboxing, even if you disagree, has a basis in reality: let them ban one thing and watch them ban it all.
My only demand as a voter is fix our own damn country first. When we have zero homeless and zero without food then we can worry about other countries’ populations.
We have waged a christian crusade around the world since 1947.
We had no business in Korea, viet Nam, North Africa, south and Central America. The USSR was no more threat to us than toxic mosquitoes. Other than the fact that we stationed missiles first. And set off a sick game of matching increases.
And today we spend tens of billions on Ukraine. We have differences on who is more right in the conflict, but neither is morally right. And this intervention spending needs to stop. It costs money and lives.
I’m quite sure we would. Our ability to work across the 10% depends only on your absolute predisposition for physical assault. I don’t punch people for being stupid bigots.
See, you have the typical progressive idea of ripping down the rich. Fine. My issue is more realistic, how. As I said most progressives eat to make a grab at valueless “stored value”. Which the vast majority of the country depends on for long term savings.
I’m on the complete opposite end of the idea. Forget the stored value. Reduce all taxes, eliminate deductions, create a social deposit guarantee for every citizen, and set a higher minimum taxable income level, above the deposit rate.
You still get you goal of less
Rich people, but in a fair way that doesn’t steal. Closing out deductions would at today’s rates create ~850 billion in increased revenue.
And
Not you or anyone else has yet shown how you would further tax stocks, bonds, other spendable investments. And you ignore, or are ignorant of, for every apple there are 100 GoGear. For Every Tesla there are 100 rabbit co. And for every Microsoft there are 100 work from home developers with semi-public offerings.
Yes, big investment houses suck. But they support the system as a whole. And low income people, including myself, depend on the system to save. Grow. And help the next generation.
With a handful of extreme exceptions, nobody is calling for shutting down immigration. You leave the term “illegal” out which is part of nearly every political statement on immigration.
You should not walk across the border in the middle of the desert and get free food, clothing, and healthcare. You’re a criminal.
A wall, is necessary, and the vast majority of the world uses some level of physical or video border separation. Walls, fence, drones, cameras. Across much of our country, we have none.
Tucker Carlson, I can’t say much on. I’ve seen very little of his content. Others than he is a minority in the R party whole. A tin hat racist and militant idiot on screen. And apparently less so off. But I won’t comment as I have no personal knowledge.
Once again! How do you plan to further tax non-spendable money?
Most of that “hoarded” value is stocks. The same stocks commonly heals by the majority of Americans? You are taxed on your income you use to buy them. You are taxed when you buy a stock. You are taxed when you sell a stock.
Rick’s have no set value. They change value by the second during trading hours and by the minute outside of prime trading. Something can be worth $20 in the morning and $500 by evening and $10 the next day.
Where do you plan to further tax?
No, the solution is not more taxes! **It’s eliminating the deduction on investment losses. **
Rich billionaires aren’t there because they hoard wealth! They are there because they buy crap and then write it off.
What ever started the game stop craze, the public proved there’s more to stock holding than wealth a few days in.
Big rich man group chose to dump and short sell GameStop into bankruptcy. A few anarchists messed around. But when the news hit, millions of single individual people, from the poor to the uber rich, threw their weight behind the company they supported.
The uber rich aren’t hoarding. They’re dodging taxes. The fix is fix the tax system.
And back to Clinton. I simply hate here. I hate her America last globalism. Her green new dealism. Her raise taxes not fix the broken system ism. Her lowest common denominator educationism.
And two things stick for me, both regarding elections.
As First Lady she supported the US lead overthrow of a free and fair election in Ukraine, as published in the diplomatic cable leaks. Tossed simply because the choice elected was pro Russia.
She has since been part of a not-quite-provably-criminal coup to remove Sanders from contention. As shown in the DNC leaks and the email leaks.
I hate her, more than you hate Trump.
We had finally had a chance for a president and a Congress that would supply a social base to our country. Instead we got a candidate that wanted to raise taxes on everyone, directly or I directly, sell off the US to foreign nations, disband the boarder control and immigration system, and basically crush anyone not directly in her uber wealth circle.
I haven’t once said Trump shouldn’t stand trial. I just recognise this is a series of show trials as there is no evidence “beyond all reasonable doubt”. I have concerns over the actions in Georgia. But do not believe they reached the level of illegality.
I believe he truly believed the election was result-changing compromised.
You’ll never get my support over the documents issue.for two reasons that have nothing to do with the person in possession.
1) I disagree with any document of government not being immediately readable by the people. Any declassification has my support no matter the processes used to do so.
2) he twice offered the NA a chance at full review. Even CNN admitted this
Thus, the president offered archive retrieval of declared declassified documents in his general possession. Therefore there is no legal basis for either the flash raid or the further prosecution.
And I’ll remind you, the Democrat party was preparing challenges up to the point Clinton conceded.
Both parties have a history of challenging results.
Re: Re: Re:15
That is never going to happen. Capitalism requires at least some level of poverty to work as intended. We can do better about reducing poverty, but we’ll never eliminate it. That said: Yes, the U.S. should focus primarily on fixing itself, but it can still offer aid to the rest of the world while doing so. The U.S. refusing to share its enormous wealth with the marginalized around the world would be doing the same exact shit American billionaires do to the marginalized within the borders of the U.S.
I’m not about “ripping down the rich”. Sure, I make jokes about eating the rich (which is so wasteful; composting them would be much more environmentally friendly). But I’m not about killing them or making them bankrupt or anything of that sort.
What I want is for the obscenely wealthy to stop being able to hide and/or hoard their corporate profits to make themselves worth hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions of dollars. You talk about the necessity of the wealthy to invest money and whatnot, but they’re investing in shit like the stock market that are basically gambling with extra steps, and everyone knows The House Always Wins. Guess who plays the role of The House in re: capitalism.
Reduce taxes for the poor and the middle class. Rich people can afford to be taxed at a higher rate and still live comfortably; the whole point of a progressive tax rate is to recognize this fact.
Tell me you don’t believe in wage theft and reduced spending power without telling me you don’t believe in wage theft and reduced spending power.
I don’t know how the fuck to do any of that because I’m not an economist and I’m not smart enough to become one, overnight or otherwise. Alls I know is that rich people could afford to be taxed at higher rates and for higher amounts of annual income than could people like me without lowering their standard of living, and that fact should be the driving force behind the U.S. tax system.
Have you ever heard the phrase “too big to fail”? And have you ever really thought about what it would mean if one of those kinds of companies actually did fail? No company should be so so singularly important to the economy that its failure would trigger a national economic catastrophe…which would ultimately become a global economic catastrophe, given how (whether you like it or not) the U.S. economic system is an important part of the economy of the entire rest of the world outside of the U.S.
I hate to break this to you, but one of those exceptions was the guy you voted for in 2016 and 2020. He tried to ban people from Muslim-majority countries. He praised Viktor Orbán for installing a barbed-wire fence along the border of Hungary. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he announced on Twitter that he wanted to completely suspend even legal immigration into the U.S.—temporarily, he claimed, but I’ve little doubt he would’ve made it about as temporary as a copyright term.
Whatever problems you have with the immigration system as it stands today, I can all but guarantee that Donald Trump would prefer to “fix” those problems by dismantling the system as a whole. (Unless, of course, the immigration involves White Europeans.)
Anyone who crosses the border illegally shouldn’t be treated the same as an actual American citizen. But a little compassion for the desperate and the destitute would not be country-destroying bad. Besides, the idea that illegal immigrants—especially brown people—are somehow destroying the country is some “browning of America”, “Great Replacement”, Stormfront-approved bullshit.
For what reason should Nebraska have the exact same level of border security as Texas, such that all of Nebraska’s state borders are enforced by walls and armed guards and drones and such? Because that sounds like a way to police interstate travel, and I know states like Texas and Florida already want to do that in re: abortion patients and trans people.
Distinction largely without a difference. Tax writeoffs allow companies to save money that otherwise would’ve been taxed, which allows those companies (and the executives in charge) to hoard that money.
The people who made the most bank on the GameStop craze were the people who already had a shitload of money to invest and enough experience to bounce before the bottom fell out. The House Always Wins, remember?
Again: Distinction largely without a difference.
Dude, the Green New Deal wasn’t even her idea. It was largely a concept pushed by progressives around the time of her campaign, yes—but as I’m sure you’re well aware, Hillary Clinton is not a progressive by any stretch of the imagination. Also, Jesus H. Christ on a cross, Lodos, she was not and will never be president—you need to let go of your bordering-on-actual-physical-violence obsession with her, dude. I hate Donald Trump and I still don’t think about him nearly as much as you seem to think about Hillary.
I’m not happy about what happened to Bernie, but goddamn, dude, she didn’t even win the election. She’s not the actual literal Super Devil like you seem to think she is. Seriously, get some therapy for this obsession of yours, it’s less healthy than my diet.
If you believe the four criminal cases he faces right now are mere “show trials”, I don’t see how you can’t think Trump shouldn’t stand trial in any of those cases. Calling them “show trials” implies that the trials are fraudulent or rigged in some way and therefore unfair to Trump (and his co-defendants). As for the evidence: That the cases may not satisfy all your doubts right now is largely irrelevant because what’s in the indictments is not the full extent of the cases that will be presented at their given trials. But you seem predisposed to accept the evidence as bullshit anyway, given your continued (and still uncritical) support for Trump and your admittance of being either unable or unwilling to understand the concepts of subtext and context.
He literally asked election officials to produce votes for him that didn’t exist. We have a recording of him doing that! It’s part of the evidence in the Georgia case!
How would using the power of the presidency to pressure an election official into betraying their oath of office by falsifying election results not be a crime unless you believe the president—or at least Donald Trump—is somehow above the law?
“Cool motive! Still murder.”
Some documents remain classified because their declassification and subsequent publication would put lives at risk. That includes the lives of Americans in other countries. Maybe you don’t care about those lives, considering your “America First” stance, but I’m sure the government would very much prefer to keep those lives out of danger.
I have a couple of questions.
Did Hillary Clinton court an electorate of violent White supremacists and conspiracy theorists? Did she say for months prior to Election Day 2016 that the election was going to be stolen from her? Did she tell a White supremacist group to “stand back and stand by” during a nationally televised debate? Did the Democrats file dozens of baseless, go-nowhere lawsuits around the country in December 2016? Did the Democrats call election officials in swing states to demand those officials find votes for Clinton that didn’t exist? Did Clinton call together a bunch of her rabid followers for a rally on the 6th of January 2017, tell the assembled crowd that they had to save democracy and “stop the steal”, and claim she would march to the Capitol with them to help them do exactly that?
The answer to all those questions is “no”. That’s why any (futile and pointless) challenge the Democrats could’ve raised in the wake of the 2016 election would never have been the same as Donald Trump’s attempts to openly subvert the results of the 2020 election.
I think the Electoral College is bullshit and needs to go. That isn’t the same as saying “the 2016 election was rigged because Trump lost the popular vote but still won the electoral vote”. Neither is it saying “Trump losing in 2020 is proof that American democracy is dead unless blood is spilled to defend it”—which is a position more and more Trumpists are taking seriously these days. They believe something that even Trump himself doesn’t believe; combine a false belief with a conservative media echo chamber that reinforces those beliefs and the violent “might makes right” nature of the increasingly fascist American right-wing, and what happened in 2021 will pale to what happens in 2025 if Trump loses the election (or what’ll happen in 2024 if Trump is convicted at trial).
You won’t have Democrats to blame if any of that shit comes to pass. They’re not the party that supports a man who sat on his ass and did nothing while his followers chanted for the death of the sitting Vice President of the United States.
Re: Re: Re:16
Right now the top 2% pay Apx 0% tax due to bill deduction processes.
Lower the taxe rate, remove deductions, and they pay more then they currently do
Wage theft is easily dealt with criminally. It rarely happens with legal employees working legal jobs with a company via legal methods. For 99% of workers it doesn’t happen. Miscalculation, lost hours, and the like however are problems.
Reduced spending power is going to get us back into the tax issue you refuse to accept is even possible, let alone my belief it is the issue. Every increase in sales or service taxes reduces the buying power of the food. Every increase in corporate taxes raises the cost of goods and services which reduces the spending power.
We’ll never agree on that.
And that’s not an economist issue, it’s a flat out reality issue. I own stocks and hold bonds. I’m hardly rich. Definitely on the lower end of middle class. And I’ll tell you a straight fact set here. The piece of paper has no value for stocks. I can not get a loan. I can not post it as an asset. It’s valueless. Until I sell or trade the stock share it represents.
That’s the democrat, in general and progressive, specifically, problem. Stocks aren’t stored wealth.
Any attempt to add a third tax is unfair to 100% of the population.
The issue is not stored wealth, it’s tax avoidance. Guys like Bezos and Musk aren’t paying taxes in the first place. They use (legal, but shouldn’t be) deductions to effectively wipe out taxes. And in some cases get a refund.
Yes! From both parties. And I have zero agreement with the idea.
Countries recorder in fact as supporting and/or harbouring terrorists
That’s what countries do, secure their borders and verify traffic of non-citizens.
Temporarily. You realise over 100 countries did just that? Nearly complete if not completely.
He signed 3 increases in visa issues to Asian countries, including India.
Trump attempted to push that would create a fast-track system, and increase immigration officer levels. Both parties did nothing on it.
We now have tens of millions of criminals in this country. That’s a fact, walking over the border without going through an entry point is criminal. And there is no tracking or verification.
And YES, terrorists, lifelong criminals, violent gang members, and organised crime associates are a minority among the millions.
There’s a huge difference. Remove the deductions and they pay taxes. No need to raise them, just make them pay taxes at all! And definitely no legitimate and fare way to tax stocks or bonds. See above.
And yet it didn’t. Uber rich investors intended to crash the company into the ground to bankrupt it and get a massive write off. Joe q public stopped it. The majority of the companies current holders are people with less than 20 shares.
The solution is to tax them. Period. Not artificially raise taxes they still won’t pay a penny on. And not assault items with no stored value that the majority of our population has at least some level of ownership in.
Sanders may have. And we wouldn’t be talking about any of this today.
Without prosecutable evidence. Hence, the trial is for show. Point, yell, lose, oh well we tried.
“subtext and context” have never resulted in retained conviction. Hence Rico. The only place where claimed subtext has sway on otherwise lacking evidence.
No he didn’t. That is your interpretation of the content of the transcript in context. I see a man demanding the (probably non-existent) votes he believes were cast and not counted, or were miscounted, be corrected. There is doubt.
And I see no evidence he said to do so.
Unfortunately the Nixon doctrine was never tested in court. But generally, that’s exactly how it is. A president can not be tried for carrying out his duties or actions as part of his duties.
We can argue if election fraud concern is part of the presidential duties. I don’t have a set opinion.
We can argue the Nixon doctrine. I don’t have a set opinion. I away slightly to yes, immunity in law, as that’s what impeachment trials are for: removing a president and thus removing immunity from further actions. But that’s one for the Supreme Court.
As I said, we have no business putting operational assets in roles in other countries that would be risky to them if exposed. Any such operations are generally criminal in nature, regardless of reasoning.
and thus would, personally, recall any such operatives first. Then declassify.
he take them with him to Mar-a-Lago
He didn’t. White House staff sent them.
Store them damn near anyone could’ve stolen them
Declassified documents stored in areas with limited access.
for what reason did he have lawyers lie on the record
I’m not sure they did. They may have infactually spoke, maybe they lied. But Trump has maintained his personal statement that everything was turned over is what his lawyers told him. The question here is on his lawyers. If they lied, a good follow up is not more hit orange man, it’s why did his lawyers lie.
have other people attempt to physically hide
Moving junk is not hiding. Unless you can sit there and say you never shoved a bunch of crap into a box, then later moved that box from one shelf to another…
We’ll dodge that and the end of the world green fear mongering.
election was going to be stolen
No. But you can’t deny the possibility was there as she literally stole the primary.
Did she tell a White supremacist group
Finish the sentence. “Stand down”
in December 2016?
No. In previous years? Yes.
No, but she did demand finding non existent votes in 2000, and 2004.
You forget her supporters. I clearly remember the view stating Trump should be shot. Madonna declares the White House should, in separate sentences at a rally, be burned and bombed.
Should I go on.
Neither Clinton nor Trump called for violence.
I’ll skip the EC paragraph beyond this: it is supposed to protect the minority from the majority.
Personally, I think there should be population limits on a city above which it becomes a separate state.
When 10% of a state’s area can dictate to the whole there is suppression.
Mind you, combining the elimination of the EC and the ability for states to retain freedom from (often failed) city methodology via expulsion would still give you a liberal president. It would also give you a liberal senate. And would force a generally conservative HOR.
Bringing us back to the original intent of two chambers.
That would be fair for everyone and force compromise.
Yes I’m worried about 2024. It may be the first time I don’t cast a vote for president in my lifetime. Or more likely I’ll vote for the libertarian or ASP candidate, a so called wasted vote.
They are going to force Biden as the candidate. A man now in mid stage dementia who has at nearly every public signing asked what it was he was signing. A man with no personal control over the office he sits in.
And Trump, a man who himself is not all that bad (save it, my view) but whose party has gone off the deep end.
In reality I’ll probably leave the US in the coming years when the last of my elders pass away.
Either way 2024 will give us a mess of a government. Likely a civil war of some degree. (I don’t think for a second millions of democrats would NOT riot over a Trump win ViV).
I’m not looking forward to it. A war is almost guaranteed I just hope the bloodshed period is short. And ideally the states finally break and set their own laws.
Because the US has never been a country. Was never intended to be one. We are a union of 50 individual countries (State means country in the rest of the world, including kings English). Hopefully the end of the Union is as peaceful as it can be and should be.
My biggest fear is the idiots from both parties that think this is one country and will crush l, kill, any who disagree with their own view of what should be.
Re: Re: Re:17
She did? Perhaps you should look the actual facts up and provide a citation. Until you do the above statement is entirely a figment of your imagination.
Re: Re: Re:18
She publicly pushed for, and then supported, the 2000 Florida recount.
She publicly supported the challenges in 2004.
Re: Re: Re:18
You may also want to educate yourself on the history of elections in this country. Trump’s actions are hardly unheard of.
Here’s a quick suggestion: Bing contested election.
Read the write ups by Reuters, Washington Times, NYT, Chicago Tribune…
Re: Re: Re:17
What do you call people being asked to do the work of two or more positions within a company without a corollating increase in pay for doing that work? Because some people might call it “doing a little extra for the good of the company”, but I call it “wage theft”.
The question you seem adamant to avoiding even asking, let alone answering, is “why”. To be more specific, the question is this: “Why does increasing taxes on rich people and their rich-ass corporations reduce the spending power of the working class?” The question is rhetorical; the answer is obvious once you think for even five seconds about the question itself.
Consider the following idea: We have a minimum wage, but not a maximum wage—a way to cap how much people can earn in a given year. So let’s say that the U.S. sets a maximum wage, such that the highest paid employee in any corporation can make no more than a 100-to-1 ratio of the lowest paid employee in a company. Assuming a $15/hr minimum wage in the company, the annual income for one full-time worker (assuming a 40-hour work week with no overtime, 52 weeks of work, and not including taxes) is $31,200. Under the 100-to-1 ratio of the maximum wage (and using the same assumptions as before), the annual income for the highest paid employee in a corporation would be $3.12 million.
Before you think “that’s unfair” or whatever, consider the following: According to the AFL-CIO (and per publicly available data), the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio for S&P 500 companies in 2022 was 272-to-1. Per the AFL-CIO’s chart on company pay ratios, the highest such ratio for an S&P 500 company in 2022 belonged to Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., with a median worker pay of $25,673 and a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 5,414-to-1. (To put that in perspective: Live Nation’s CEO earned approximately $140 million in 2022.) Not much of that $140 million is ever going to be put back into the economy in the same way that the working class pours their entire paychecks into paying for the necessities of modern life. And prices for tickets to concerts and such will keep rising so that the CEO and their fellow executives can keep making more money while making sure fewer people can even see a concert without blowing a massive part of their budget.
To people that rich, $500 isn’t a significant fraction of their personal wealth—it’s a rounding error. That’s the kind of wealth I talk about when I talk about obscene wealth. And that’s also my point here: A maximum wage would help cap the annual earnings of executives, and combining that concept with a progressive corporate tax that most impacts the richest companies would force companies to either put corporate profits back into the company (e.g., higher wages for lower earning employees, lower prices for goods, increased production to meet demand) or put significant sums of money into government coffers to pay for public works (e.g., fixing infrastructure, paying for nationalized healthcare). Corporate greed has exacerbated the wealth gap; it’s well past time to do something about it, and waiting for the wealth to trickle down sure as shit ain’t it.
And yet, plenty of rich people still invest in the stock market and still calculate their personal wealth based in part on those holdings.
Again: Distinction largely without a difference.
How many of those countries were the home countries of terrorists who either planned or carried out attacks on American soil between the day after 11 September 2001 and Trump’s naming of those countries as part of his original “Muslim ban” plan?
So what? He reportedly views Asians as “useful” minorities, so it makes sense that he’d prefer to have “useful” brown people in the U.S. as opposed to those he doesn’t see as “useful” (e.g., Middle Eastern Muslims, Mexicans).
Did he actually try, or did he just make a tweet about it one day and forget about it the next day—which is something he did a not-zero number of times during his presidency?
And if things were different, things would be different. But they’re not. Clinton didn’t win. Let it fucking go, dude.
Do you know how we prosecute fraud in this country?
Do you know how we prosecute mob bosses for murder-for-hire in this country?
In November 2020, the state of Georgia carried out a full statewide audit of the election results; both Biden and Trump gained votes from the nearly 5,000 votes found during the audit, but the result (Biden winning the state) remained the same. The Trump campaign filed for a recount in late November; the recount’s results (Biden winning the state) were formally confirmed in early December. Donald Trump made his “perfect phone call” to Brad Raffensperger on the 2nd of January 2021, nearly a month after the recount had re-confirmed the results; during that phone call, Trump—who was still the President of the United States and therefore the most powerful man in the country—said Raffensperger was taking a “big risk” of being criminally charged if he didn’t help Trump win. (“[Y]ou are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”) Trump also asked Raffensperger to lie about the election results by telling him “there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you’ve recalculated” despite Raffensperger having no grounds to “recalculate” the results in favor of Trump. No evidence was ever given, or has ever been given, that backs up any claim of any level of voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
So please, tell me again how the call was supposedly just about “disputing the results” when we have a recording of Trump telling a man to lie about official election results and dangling the idea that refusing to lie could result in criminal charges. And really sell me on the idea that Trump didn’t do anything wrong, because…I mean, I have the transcript in front of me, and you seem to really need some lessons in media literacy, subtext/context, power dynamics, and communication skills if you can’t see what Trump was doing.
Being concerned about election fraud can be part of those duties, at least in the sense that the president can lead pushes to reform voting laws. Asking an election official to lie about election results is most certainly not part of those duties.
And yet, we do. So until the time comes where we don’t, keeping info on those people classified should be the norm instead of the exception.
Care to make an offer of proof on that?
If they were “declassified”, why were they hidden? And to whom was access “limited”, and how?
They literally signed an affidavit saying “the feds got all the documents” before the feds discovered that no, they had not gotten all the documents. Either they really didn’t know all the documents hadn’t been found or they knowingly lied on the record to federal investigators. Given how Trump had people physically move some of the documents prior to the initial FBI search, I have a hard time believing his lawyers didn’t know he did that.
Why, then, did Trump not turn over the documents not found in the first FBI search during that first search—or, at the bare minimum, inform the FBI that the documents were there after the first search?
“Stealing” an intra-party primary is nowhere near the same thing as stealing a national presidential election, and you know it. You’re only saying that shit because you obsessively hate Hillary Clinton on a level that borders on sociopathic and violent.
Care to make an offer of proof on that?
No, I don’t. But Hillary didn’t tell her supporters for months that Trump and the GOP was going to steal the election from her, that voter fraud was going to be rampant in the election, or that electing her was the only way to protect American democracy. Conversely, Trump did tell his supporters for months that Biden and the Democrats were going to steal the election from him, that voter fraud was going to be rampant in the election, and that keeping him in office was the only way to protect American democracy. You need a lesson in how people get radicalized into violence even when the people doing the radicalizing don’t directly call for violence, and that means you still need some lessons in media literacy, subtext/context, power dynamics, and communication skills. For now, I suggest watching the video series “The Alt-Right Playbook” by Innuendo Studios as a primer for such things.
“Land doesn’t vote. People do.”
I’m not arguing that those in less populated states don’t deserve representation in national affairs. I’m arguing that the Electoral College (in addition to partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression, especially in the South) gives the GOP an advantage in a national election.
If the majority of a state’s population lives in that 10% of land, why shouldn’t they get a larger say in the state’s politics? Again: Land doesn’t vote, people do.
Ignoring the unproven accusation of dementia: Given that you’re worried about Biden’s age and health, why aren’t you levelling the same concerns at Donald Trump, who is only three years younger than Biden and has mental health issues of his own?
A flawed and rose-tinted view based on his racist immigration policies, but do go on.
Who do you think led/allowed the GOP to go there? Because it sure as shit wasn’t Mitt Romney.
Yes, people protested Donald Trump’s electoral victory and inauguration in 2016. But none of them rioted like Trump’s supporters rioted at the Capitol. And I can promise you that if anyone is going to start a civil war in the U.S., it’ll be the violent right-wing gun nuts who are aching to permanently “own the libs” without consequence.
I doubt the Founding Fathers would agree with you. But please, do go on about your preferred method of completely dismantling the U.S. federal government.
Re: Re: Re:18
I get your point.
For the answer you want. But there’s more to it. The bare answer is capitalism and greed. But you are probably pointing the finger at the wrong person. Jain Plain Food isn’t raising costs by choice. They make 10% net profit. Just enough to maintain the family of 4. They raise the cost to pay the rent, electric, water, gas…. You raised her cost of business, she raised prices to match the new cost.
You show the importance of proper, long-standing, terminology in political discussion.
That’s not a maximum wage, not a wage cap. That’s differential tethering and I wouldn’t disagree with that. At all.
Especially if you don’t bar bonus offerings at all levels and coupled it with a revamped tax system that kept, or reduced tax rates, while closing all deductions and raising the minimum taxable income.
Some people do. And it’s a fallacy. A non-spendable item with a flux value does not contribute to capital except at the very moment it is looked at. Again, it’s taxes when purchased. And taxes when sold.
You can’t arbitrarily tax it at some point along the way and be fair at any level of thought.
I’ll come back to this with a real exploration.
That’s not the reason. Countries that finance terrorist groups directly. Countries that allow such groups free operations. That bar extradition. That allow such groups free operation.
The “Middle East” is a political term. That’s Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Increases were signed for India, Pakistan, Dubai.
And useful is kind of the point. The wellbeing of the nation depends on people being useful to the society.
It was the core of his reform. Many, including you, get stuck on the wall (Biden is extending it as I type this). Secure the actual border. Increase the number of checkpoint crossing. Fast-track asylum through increased court officers. And generally speed the system with more bodies.
No, I will not ignore the criminal ascent she had at the detriment of the country. Especially since shoe is proof the system can be gamed by those with money.
Through the media in the hope of tainting the jury pool before trial.
Rico. And through the media in the hopes…
What he asked for was a direct investigation in a single locale.
You talk subtext. I talk context.
Yes, if Trump was correct and it was shown later that he was correct there were legal consequences for failure to do due diligence.
And no, there is nothing wrong with releasing a corrected count following the directed investigation.
Recall, declassify.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-departed-white-house-aides-rushed-pack-documents-2022-09-07/
And hundreds more. Trump didn’t even collect his personal property himself.
They weren’t hidden. Video shows that. Placing a box in a closet isn’t hiding. It’s being tidy. Something Trump was known for (see previous link). And access in that area was limited to staff and selected guests.
You make my point.
Because his lawyers said they turned everything over. MAL is huge. The staff area is huge. I loose stuff in a household the size of their suites.
Is still manipulation of the system.
Says the person who punches people with views they disagree with?
See earlier post link on Florida 2000
Other speakers at Jan 6 were inciting. Trump was not.
But none pulled the public nonsense Clinton supporters did. Calling for murder and treason directly.
Yes. And the system needs to be changed. However, simply doing away with the EC flips the extreme imbalance, rather than make it fair.
At the moment cities can financially decimate a state simply by force. And states residents have little to no recourse to tyranny as cities have absolute voting power.
Remember the whole cast off the tyrant speech?
The only way to be truly fair is to allow states to jettison large metro areas. Regardless of the enslavement will of the city population.
The north west is a rare fluke. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho will redraw. Nobody rationally doubts that at this point. There’s no if, but when.
But that is only because they have the support of the whole of Idaho
California, New York, and Illinois don’t have the population vote power to do that, despite many attempts over the last 20 years.
Instead what we see now is mass exodus. New York has seen an estimated 30% population decline.
California lost over 50% of business base during covid.
Chicago has lost so much corporate registration that it is offering long term tax holidays. And increasing other taxes to compensate. Oh, taxes again.
I don’t care about his age. Anyone and everyone with direct knowledge of the signs and effects of dementia knows Biden has it.
I know of people in their 90s who are still quite competent. And people in their 60s who are not. Dementia has nothing to do with age.
Trump, on the other hand, shows no signs of the ailment.
Fixed that.
It wasn’t Trump. His fault is in not overtly pushing back against the fringe.
If Trump wins 24 the left nutters will riot.
If he looses the right nutters will riot.
That remaining just cities burning as in blm (note tech dirt stated “cities burned… that’s ok”) and. Not outright war is a very thin line.
I’m far enough that anything short of outright war probably won’t have a major lasting effect nor an immediate threat higher than it already is. 9/10 non-domestic felony crimes in our county are committed by residents of the neighbouring one.
But I’m not going to pretend it won’t be devastating.
You are stuck in the race war idea. That’s nonsense. This clash is a building disagreement about lack of equal power. Lack of fair representation. Lack of self governance.
“This union of states”
The US is directly comparable to the European Union, and more directly to the former USSR. and Pre-modern Republican Rome. Even the UK.
All of which have/had an elected government body the overseas individual states. Much like the USSR and Rome, the elected body was generally of the elite, those with money, but elected non the less. Our union is a republic of individuals. Always has been. And you know I’m a state’s rights believer. Just like the UK left the EU, a state here has the natural right to leave when that state is no longer benefiting from the union.
Re: Re: Re:19
No, larger businesses with greedy executives raised her cost of business.
And you, conversely, show the importance of using terms that regular jackoffs like me can understand. If someone knows the term “minimum wage” and understand what that means, using the term “maximum wage” gives them an term that’s easier to understand when first hearing it as compared to “differential tethering”. When you want to talk to the average person about concepts like “differential tethering”, using an easy-to-understand phrase (“maximum wage”) instead of a phrase with which many people may not be familiar will always the better approach.
Society isn’t just about working until we retire (or die)—it’s about taking care of one another even when we’re not all able to work or otherwise contribute to society. The ability to perform labor of any kind is not now, and should never be, what determines if someone has the right to live in a society. Or do you believe we should, say, pull the plug on people who are too sick to perform labor?
Care to make an offer of proof for that claim?
You’re starting to sound like a Pizzagate believer, Lodos. That ain’t ever a good look.
And Donald Trump, who in all likelihood was in 2016 and nowadays probably still is richer than Hillary, isn’t proof of that?
Then Donald Trump, who never met a camera he didn’t like, will have a fair trial.
And he also asked for an election official to lie about finding enough votes to let Trump win the state of Georgia by a single vote. And he dangled the idea that a refusal to lie could result in criminal charges for that official. Again, that’s in the transcript, and you need to read it without imagining Trump hugging you from behind and whispering sweet nothings in your ear.
The state did do its due diligence—twice. Trump wasn’t asking for another investigation on that level. He was asking for state election officials to lie about the vote count so he could win the state of Georgia.
Again: The state did what amounts to two full audits of the vote count and found no major irregularities. Trump knew this—had to have known this—when he asked for Georgia election officials to find nearly 12,000 extra votes that didn’t exist so he could be declared the winner of Georgia. And no one, including Trump, has come forward since 2021 with any credible evidence of any major voting irregularities in Georgia.
Is it “hiding” when they’re placed in a closet in a room that the feds were kept from searching?
How secure was that area? Were the people allowed in it searched daily to see if they’d taken anything from those rooms?
At Trump’s behest. The chances they were unaware of Trump having documents moved to other places to hide them from the feds isn’t high, but that number also ain’t zero.
What does it say about Trump, then, that he thought holding presidential documents—some of which were likely not declassified, despite his declaration that he could psychically declassify them even after losing the presidency—in a place that big with a staff and guest list that large was a good idea?
I wouldn’t punch people with whom I disagree on matters of economics or entertainment. I would punch a Nazi because a Nazi would, if given the opportunity, kill a queer person like me without hesitation in the name of fascism. And before you can even THINK to say it: NO, I do not believe every Republican lawmaker and voter is a Nazi/fascist simply because they are Republicans, so keep that seed of shit out of your head before it ever takes root.
Only if you refuse to acknowledge the idea that Trump used language he knew would incite anger and hatred in the hearts of his followers—and had a damn good idea of what those feelings, stirred up to extreme levels on the day of the most important function in American democracy, would end up making his followers do even if he couldn’t accurately predict what any one of them would do. (Again: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”)
Does “hang Mike Pence” ring a bell? And the key difference between Clinton and Trump is that Clinton never once openly supported anything her fans/followers said in that regard, whereas Trump was (and still is!) more than happy to stoke those fires by saying things that run right up to the line of incitement without crossing it (e.g., telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”).
When a major city falls into ruin because the state isn’t there to help fund that city’s budget, and when the state falls into ruin because the ruin of that major city also ruins the state’s economy, do you think the gates of Shangri-La are going to open at the border of that ruined state?
And you’re not saying this and asking me to believe it only because you want to weaken Biden’s chances against Trump in 2024, right?
I dunno about that.
He told members of an avowed White supremacist group to “stand back and stand by” during a live, nationally televised debate. He referred to people who marched alongside White supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”, and the mealy-mouthed apology he offered up for that comment (and the half-hearted condemnation of White supremacists that came with it) sounded like he was a hostage reading a letter from his captors. He was never going to (and will never) denounce that “fringe” because they were (and still are) a huge part of his voting base.
They may protest and riot, but unless evidence crops up of major malfeasance in the election on the part of Trump and the GOP, you’ll likely see nothing that rises to the level of what Trump supporters did in 2021.
Yes, all those cities that burned to the ground during the BLM movement’s apex and during the protests/riots after the murder of George Floyd are but a distant memory now.
…which cities were those, again? Y’know, the ones that were wholly burned to the ground?
Better property than people. After all, property can be replaced.
Not really. A not-zero number of White nationalists would jump at the chance to kill non-Whites in service of “cleansing” the U.S. for the White race. How many of them do you genuinely believe support Democrats?
Yes, and look what happens when the side that believes they’re always “under-represented” gets all the power: Naked fascism. Or did you forget that conservative Christians—a group of people who love to play the “we’re oppressed” card—are the driving force behind criminalizing abortion, banning books in public/school libraries, tearing down the separation of church and state in favor of the (Christian) church, and destroying the public education system?
Oh, goody, you’re an individualist. Can’t wait for you to tell me why disabled people are a drain on society!
Hi! I’m queer. Under your idea that the U.S. federal government shouldn’t exist and the states within the U.S. should all have their own individual laws, there’s a good chance that I would be jailed for life—or even executed!—in a GOP-controlled state, because there’s a good chance that such a state—in the absence of federal laws and legal precedents protecting queer people from discrimination—would criminalize queerness. Is that what you mean by state’s rights? Or are you, perhaps, referring to the justification of “state’s rights” used by people who think the Confederacy and what it stood for—enslaving Black people—were good ideas?
Yeah, and how’s that working out for the UK, hmm? Is the economy humming along with no problems? Is the government stable with no major upheavals in leadership? Is citizen satisfaction with Brexit high enough to justify the move?
Re: Re: Re:20
I guess we see maximum differently. When I see the word maximum is se highest possible.
And what you describe is not a maximum. It’s a requirement for upward mobility.
Otherwise, it’s a grand idea. Tethering the bottom to the top is not something many discuss though, unfortunately. As long as it’s in percentage increases and not a dollar value, it’s an idea I would support.
Why must you be so dramatic? Again I fully support a guaranteed social base (what AOC termed in more common terms: guaranteed income). To every US citizen.
Once every US citizen is safe, secure, and well… then we worry about others.
But yes, I believe, with rare exceptions, those that seek to permanently join our country should have something to offer to the betterment of the whole. Something more than just a smile.
Eventually. It was a common topic in his early campaign speeches. But I’ll need to dig to find stuff that old.
She (directly and indirectly) rigged the Democrat primary. That’s not conspiracy, it’s fact. And what could have been one of the greatest presidencies in US history was lost forever.
Trump didn’t rig the primary or general process. Anyone who understands how Clinton became the candidate would have cause for doubt in our process while.
Probably. Though the judge has already curtailed his ability to speak publicly on the matter.
That is clearly your interpretations finding subtext and context and other fill in the blanks mad libs.
Mind showing how a federal officer or agent with a warrant for grounds is unable to search a closet if they so chose to?
No, Trump, under sworn statement, stated he made his statement of return after his lawyers told him all documents were returned.
… I’m not going there. There’s to many if then else maybe what if to it.
It’s still an act without an act. You border on preemptive = good. I don’t believe in stringing first. Ever.
I do believe in retaliation.
I’ll go along with the idea that he should have known better on some of his hype. Yes. But Trump, nor any of his co-rally, never said to resort to violence.
I remind you multiple Democrats said to commit acts of treason directly, in anti-Trump rallies.
Which speaker at the rally said that? I can’t find a clip.
… and “stand down”
California would have no detrimental effect in the separation of south and central coastal areas to the state of San Andreas, as has been pushed multiple times.
The separation of Chicago from Illinois would have no negative effect on Illinois. The separation of New York City from the state would do nothing to harm the state.
That’s the point many of us are trying to point out.
Remove the city from the state the state will carry on just fine. The city on the other hand will be forced to either change policy to something reasonable, or fail.
It’s clear. Has nothing to do with whoever ends up the R candidate. Which may or may not be Trump.
Along with thousands of others lacking the knowledge about the danger. Never claimed he was a genius. But he doesn’t forget what town he’s in, what piece of paper he is signing. Who is and is. It a member of his family.
TO STAND DOWN!
I believe that there were people, like myself, that day. Fine people who didn’t agree with the erasure of history. I judge a person individually, regardless of the company they keep. Sometimes differing groups can share a cause.
Maybe I missed something. I don’t see billions in damages and hundred dead from January 6. I see a rogue group of a few dozen terrorists. Very different from (attempted) burning of cities to the ground.
Seattle, Chicago, New York, Detroit
No, they weren’t destroyed. Just major damage. But you haven’t yet condemned the acts of terrorism they committed. Despite how many times I’ve called for the full prosecution of the few terrorists on Jan 6. You support the majority which was peaceful only in one. I support peaceful protest in all cases.
Will eventually die. And be gone. About the same as, eventually the remnants of the BPO and NOI will as well.
The number of concerning active racists, combined, is non-zero, but probably under 1%.
No, I’m a firm, unmovable supporter of the facts of our founding. We are today a union of 50 independent self governing countries (aka states ). United by a single, elected, pan-state parliament and a head of states. The constitution is clear. Absent federal law the state is rule.
I fully support the right of any state to leave at any time for any reason.
As long as the populace of that state votes to do so.
Exactly. That’s exactly how the constitution that binds the Union has it set up.
So, don’t go there. I’m not getting on a plane to Iran any time soon.
Like any country, you abide by the laws of the locale. If you can’t, or won’t, don’t go or suffer the consequences. If you’re there, move, or suffer the consequence. It’s not “fair” in a way, to a locations minority, but life is not fair. Never will be.
Slavery was just about dead by the time the war broke out. Country wide. It would have fizzled out on its own and eventually been eliminated by law without the war.
You can stick to the history of the winners all you want. But slavery was just one aspect of the civil war. And to those in the south, a minor one.
Yes. I believe completely that it would have taken longer, but slavery would have been outlawed in the confederacy as well. Even separated from the Union states and independent.
Yes. Most of the problems the UK has at the moment are not caused by the UK but inflicted upon them by the EU as punishment for not agreeing with them.
They are going through a similar situation as the US reconstruction period at the moment. In time it will settle.
Re: Re: Re:21
For what reason should a person’s utility to capitalism be the sole determining factor in re: who gets to enter the country legally?
And she lost the 2016 election. Even if Bernie had won the primary, you can’t know with the certainty of God that he would’ve beaten Trump in the main event. Let it go, dude.
Yes, that is how interpretations of speech works: We examine the context of someone’s speech, the subtext provided by what they both did and didn’t say, and use the combination thereof to determine what they meant. Consider taking some classes in media interpretation, communications, and linguistics.
The area was inaccessible to them either by lack of knowledge or an excuse proffered by Mar-a-Lago staff (at the behest of Trump himself). In any case, Trump stands credibly accused of moving documents to hide them from the feds.
And not for nothing, Lodos, but consider the following phrase: “Watch what they do, not what they say.” Trump talks a big game about having declassified documents and such, but what did he do with those documents? Trump may proclaim his innocence in each of the criminal cases he now faces, but would an innocent man try to drag out those cases with stalling tactics such as asking for criminal trials to take place anywhere from one to three years after the charges were filed? Actions speak louder than words, and Trump’s actions say far more about him than his words ever will. After all…
…an honest man—which is one of the things Trump loves to call himself—would’ve turned over all the documents and made sure he did so instead of trying to hide some of them from the feds. FYI: An honest man doesn’t need to tell you he’s honest.
Give Nazis an inch and they will take a mile, an acre, and an entire state in due time. Never give them anything but violence or the threat thereof.
He did know. That’s why he said what he said in the way he said it. Apparently, Trump is smarter than you when it comes to linguistics and communication skills, and…I mean, goddamn, Lodos, that’s kind of fucking depressing to even say.
Democrat supporters said that shit, yes. But Democrat lawmakers and Hillary Clinton did not. Or do you have an offer of proof that Clinton or one—just one!—sitting Democrat lawmaker publicly and openly called for Trump to be killed after he won the election?
No speaker at the rally called for the hanging of Mike Pence; that was chanted by the rioters during the insurrection. But for the record, Trump had spent days implying that Pence was the last hope for Trump to have his second term; when the 6th of January 2021 came, Pence had already confirmed that he was going to do his job instead of subverting American democracy. Trump intimated during his J6 speech that Pence was a RINO and the true last line of defense for American democracy were his followers. Is it any surprise, then, that Trump’s followers would call for the hanging of Mike Pence after being told Pence was an enemy to democracy by the one man they trusted to tell them the truth?
He never said that. In fact, during both the September 29 debate and the October 22 debate, the phrase “stand down” was only spoken twice—once during each debate, and each time by someone who wasn’t Donald Trump. I’ll even quote the pertinent part of the September 29 debate at length:
Again, I will note that Donald Trump never told the Proud Boys to “stand down”—he told them to “stand back and stand by”, which is not the same thing as “stand down” (and telling me otherwise is an insult to even your intelligence). Hell, look at the quotes: When directly asked to condemn White supremacists, Trump balked. He knew he couldn’t make that condemnation because he couldn’t risk alienating his primary voting base.
Not…really? Like, all I’m hearing from you is “let the major cities go all Mad Max or Walking Dead because that’s what rural voters want, even if it eventually results in socioeconomic catastrophe for them”. That’s not really doing much to convince me that states (and the federal government) should leave the major cities to fend for themselves with no state (or federal) funding to help.
See, now you’re startin’ to piss me off again. I want to remind you that I’m from the South—not the Deep South, but the South nevertheless—and I am aware of the history that you think people wanted to “erase” by taking down a monument to the Confederacy. But consider the following: Post-war Germany didn’t erect monuments to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the wake of World War II, not even to “preserve history”. Confederate monuments went up after the Civil War—many in states that weren’t even central to the conflict!—not to “preserve history”, but to send a message to Black people: “You’re free, but White people are still in charge.”
The Confederacy lived and died in a span of four years. On top of that, the Confederacy seceded from (and fought a war against) the U.S. for the primary (if not sole) purpose of preserving the institution of slavery. A statue is a glorification of its subject; statues of Confederate soldiers glorify those soldiers and the cause for which they fought and died. Those statues belong nowhere besides Confederate graveyards and history museums. To believe otherwise is to implicitly support the cause of the White supremacists who marched to “protect” those statues.
“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
That word is ‘Nazi.’ Nobody cares about their motives any more.
They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?” — A.R. Moxon
They attempted to subvert American democracy; success in that attempt likely would’ve led to a national crisis from which we might never have recovered. That sounds far more dangerous than a few fires and some property damage.
Then stop saying or implying that people burned entire cities to the ground during BLM and the George Floyd protests. Was the damage significant? Sure. Was it “they almost burned these whole-ass major metropolitian areas spanning hundreds of square miles to the ground” levels of bad? No. No, it was not.
I condemn riots. I condemn all forms of political violence (save for one incredibly narrow exception). I don’t feel the need to condemn every single instance of such violence every time it happens because no shit. That’d be like expecting every Muslim to condemn an act of terrorism committed by a Muslim each and every time such an act occurs: Once ought to be enough.
I already live in a state that’s effectively GOP-controlled and, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, I can’t get out. If this state were to criminalize queerness and the federal government couldn’t protect me from the “consequences” of existing as a queer person, what the fuck would you expect me to do that isn’t “go to jail” or “die by suicide”?
No, it really wasn’t. Every one of the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy explicitly stated that upholding slavery was the primary reason for secession and the founding of the CSA. The South relied on slavery as a major driver of its economy. (After all, slaveowners weren’t the ones picking the cash crops.) Any historian who isn’t committed to upholding a White supremacist version of history will tell you as much.
Again: The CSA was founded primarily to protect the institution of slavery and its Founding Fathers all said as much.
The UK government knew what Brexit would entail by the time Brexit needed to be finalized. The EU made clear to the UK what the consequences of leaving the EU would be. To blame the current woes of the UK on the EU when the UK government made the decision to accept those consequences is some grade-A bullshit.
So…the UK is going to enact Jim Crow laws and disenfranchise Black citizens from having any significant sociopolitical power?
Re: Re: Re:22
It shouldn’t. And I didn’t say capitalism. There are other ways to contribute. The point is to contribute. But I say yet again we shouldn’t be providing for non-citizens until we solve our own public crisis.
“Let it go”
She proved the process is broken and could be gamed.
“Yes, that is how interpretations”
Yes, you and Tipper and conspiracy nuts. I remind you of Dee Snider and Jon Denver. What is not in content is your own opinion.
When you have a search warrant you search. Everywhere the warrant allows. And as far as a delay… there’s credibility in the statement that so many documents require extended review time. Personally I’d go with a faster trial and likely railroading in the lower court to push the appeals and SCOTUS hearing quickly. But I also believe his lawyers think there’s a chance of a fair trial, so wish to put up an informed defence.
And I’m stepping out of this. Trump will be tried. In the end he will be convicted with confirmation or acquitted.
“and they will take a mile”
I do not and will not support violent first action. No matter who the target you punching nazis because they would punch you, is not a good platform. It lowers you to their level.
Do you have said proof in reverse?
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54359993
“I can only say they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.”
Ideally they would implement reasonable and workable policies rather than depend on the near poverty they force on the rest of the state. Taxing what the poor need to give to the poor creates
Enslavement. Raising taxes doesn’t help anyone. Closing tax deductions so the rich actually pay taxes is the solution
Re: Re: Re:2
Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes, let’s just ignore the… what is it now… 4? criminal indictments of Trump, and just say there is no evidence of any crimes Trump committed.
If you had said insufficient evidence, that would be one thing, but to say there is no evidence whatsoever is laughable.
Re: Re: Re:2
The only “evidence” I see so far is cherry picking out of context … and flat out bull shite nonsense.
If there is any real evidence of any criminal activity then they will ahonir during the trials. Until there is evidence he’s innocent. That’s the way it works, don’t be moronic.
Innocent until proven guilty.
So far nobody has even remotely presented anything that could pass at evidence of crimes.
The closest thing presented so far to getting a conviction is his claims of fraud.’
And even there, there is fraud in every election in this country. As far as I’m aware nobody has been found guilty for faulty understanding in beliefs when it comes to a criminal statement against overall facts. The idea that voting machines and hacking and uncounted ballots and fraudulent counting of ballots, all of which had happened in 2019, had any change in the final result, is asinine. But he walks on proving one single act of fraud.
Like it or not, reality is those pushing these cases are probably absolutely aware of how minimal and flimsy each case is. And are probably doing this for political reasons.
Re: Re: Re:2
So far no evidence of criminal activity has been made public. If there is such evidence, and they present it at trial, the jury will decide if the evidence is beyond all reasonable doubt.
Re: Re: Re:3
He confessed on national television, several times.
He bragged about his crimes, where were you, under a rock?
Re: Re: Re:4
Lodos wasn’t under a rock. He believes that a Republican can’t be held responsible for the crimes they commit because doing so would be unfair to Republicans—that is, if they commited crimes that aren’t just figments of the imagination of Demoncrats implanted in their heads by actual literal demon-from-Hell Hillary Clinton.
Re: Re: Re:5
Lodos supported Trump… until she realized she was going to be fed by the wolves.
And I’m sure she still doesn’t care even if she was, indeed, fed to the wolves. She certainly didn’t seem to give a shit about actual moderation issues, despite being a fucking admin for a Usenet BBS or some such thing she claims to be.
(And as for her gender, I am merely going off her words, and those should not be trusted until proved.)
Re: Re: Re:6
I never implied I was female. I am male though I don’t really care what you call me. Just saying.
Re: Re: Re:6
I believe in sandboxing. It allows for all topics and the greater good of the community. I believe in raw searches. Not algorithms feeding populism.
Proper sandboxing allows everyone to speak and keeps more problematic topics in their own space. I remember when Democrats were talking about safe spaces.
Unless the subject matter is illegal, people have a right to their own decisions and beliefs. Agree with them or not.
There’s a fine line between hard heals disagreement and trolling. Yes. And finding those flame war fire starters is tricky. But I will defer to moving over deleting.
Re: Re: Re:7
4chan tried that. It didn’t work. It never works unless the mods are willing to play dictator to an absurd degree, and most people who encounter that don’t like it.
They weren’t talking about sandboxes.
And people also have a right to mock and belittle beliefs such as “Hillary Clinton is an actual demon from the actual Biblical Hell”. Don’t like that? Don’t share your shit where you know it isn’t welcome, Trumpist.
Re: Re: Re:8
Don’t worry not interested in web 2 and web 3. Social media is just boring to me. Can’t remember last time I posted to one of those sites. And have no intention of making yet another one
I’m always of what safe spaces means, it was a backhanded joke.
And I don’t think she’s a demon, I just recognise she’s a power hungry dictator seeking to destroy all but her friends. Enslaving the poor in an endless cycle of taxes and hand outs, taking the money of financially well off individuals while protecting actual cash stores like foundations, destroying the many to protect a few, protecting her personal investments internationally to the detriment of the country…
Re: Re: Re:9
You literally said that you believe she is a demon. I wouldn’t keep knocking you for being an atheist with a literal belief in Bibilical scripture if you hadn’t admitted it yourself, son.
So it’s okay when a man or a Republican does it, but not when a woman or a Democrat does it? (Also: Hillary isn’t a dictator, and she was not and will never be president, so calm the fuck down and let your parasocial-to-the-point-of-violent-obsession grudge go, you ridiculous-ass fool.)
Y’know, it’s a funny thing. People like you love to talk about “handouts” and “dependency” and all this other coded bullshit for “the government shouldn’t be taking care of people”. But I never see y’all consider the obvious questions that come after such a statement:
Re: Re: Re:10
What part of my hundreds of posts supporting a social base, a social safety net, makes you think I’m against social based capitalism.
I fully support a base income (AOC style) for every citizen and legal resident.
You can just shove your my way is the only way ideals there.
Re: Re: Re:11
You voted for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Twice.
Re: Re: Re:12
And?
I voted against the dictator Clinton and cast my vote for long time Democrat Donald Trump. Who happened to run as a Republican. A man who supported most of the social libertarian priorities and both promised, and acted in Accordance to his promise, to secure our country’s borders, equalise trade, and reduce foreign wasted expenditure.
What part of that do you not like. What part of his policy. Be specific
Legal and monitored immigration
Reduced foreign expenditures
Less military involvement
Fair and equal expense in NATO
Educational advancement based on learning, not quotas
Removal of private education from public funding
Raising the minimum base income for taxation
I countered your McSwindle list in part.
For once, our it out there. What policy of President trump, not the party, not the others, what policy of Trump himself in act or stated support do you disagree with.
I’m willing to discuss any you can put forward. You haven’t yet. All you have done for years is claim party connections.
Put forward your actual Trump policy issue.
You have my honest solemn oath I will approach it honestly and without
I’ve said before, despite any feelings you have for me I don’t dislike you. Even if I disagree with some of your ideas.
I’m a social liberal gen x child. I fought hard my whole life for my ideas. A majority you would probably agree with.
And here’s your olive branch of sorts.
What policy has Trump stated, or signed, that you disagree with.
Re: Re: Re:13
Most of which are, or border on, socialism.
But I’m also a fan of the arts. And any move that threatens expression, like that expression or not, I will die on that sword with dignity and pride.
The moment you set limits on expression in public, you kill freedom.
Be it Passion of the Christ, or Mignonnes, or Harry Potter.
Be it mortal Kombat of school shooter
If you don’t like it don’t buy it. If having a sandbox is an issue for you, go elsewhere.
Boycott all you want. On rare occasions it works. hobby lobby, Budweiser. Your boycott is expression and I support that.
And he’ll, I’ll go so far as to say if you boycott a site I moderate, on the off chance you figure that out, that is your right. None of my employers/supervisors are unaware of my views or my long time internet postings.
Re: Re: Re:7
” believe in sandboxing. It allows for all topics and the greater good of the community. I believe in raw searches. Not algorithms feeding populism.”
I look forward to seeing your website / social media, should be a real hoot.
What will your algorithms be feeding?
Re: Re: Re:8
I wouldn’t use algorithmic suggestions. I wouldn’t create a web 2 or web 3 platform. I don’t believe in a communication platform publishing.
You enter a key word and see results for that key word as a topic or as posts. Filtered by post or user order.
Not some guided selection based on human trained opinion.
Re: Re: Re:7
And now, I will say you clearly have no idea, or, more importantly, don’t care, as to what happens in said sandbox.
Even the SomethingAwful Forums realized that you can’t sandbox the undesirables forever.
Undesirables who have been told, repeatedly, and who have money to burn, will stay, regardless of whatever you do until forcibly removed, with violence if necessary.
And the SomethingAwful Forums had a damn entrance fee.
The undesirables (read: White Supremacists and their treasonous ilk) are free to start their own website, email chain, forum, whatever. Freedom of speech doesn’t forbid them from doing that.
Whhat it forbids them from doing, and what they want to do, is to force US to keep them around.
Your “sandboxing” means your damn community implicitly endorses their words and actions.
Again, they are free to speak.
BUT NOT IN MY FUCKING HOUSE.
Re: Re: Re:8
Bingo. Monitor for illegal content. Otherwise, free for all.
Enter et your own risk.
No. Even if you make a false equivalence.
I come from the generation that battled the censorship movement.
First board games like Wizards and Desmond, Dungeons & Dragons…
Then movies. Then music. Then video games. Every year some new moral panic.
So you see hate today. I see speech, without reading or hearing it.
I will defend all speech, like it or not.
The moment you draw a line the line gets moved. That is fact, not theory. Eg Hays and the CCA.
I’ve studied content decisions academically and personally longer than many of this sites users have been alive. I’ve written thesis on the various aspects of the subject. A full dissertation on the link between the PMRC and the anti-entertainment-violence campaign in the 90s. How Stillwater directly steered Lieberman and Gore.
And the same people that lost legally over rap music and mortal Kombat and Harry Potter and Medieval fantasy games are the same calling out against speech today.
I will never put my support behind that movement. Because give them one win, and they will crush everyone. Death my a billion tiny cuts.
Re: Re: Re:9
(Fair warning, Lodos: I’m gonna talk about things like implications and subtext. Be prepared to deal with concepts that you don’t believe even exist.)
They’re not making one. The decisions you make, and the actions that follow, reflect upon who you are.
If you see bigoted/hateful speech on your website and decide that moving it somewhere else is preferable to getting rid of it, you are sending an implicit message: “I approve of both this speech and the people who post it being on my site.” That message reflects upon you an image of someone who is more than happy to let bigots stay on your site. Other bigots will take that to mean they’re welcome on your site and will flock to it; people who aren’t bigots will take that to mean they might be targets for your bigoted userbase. Some of them will even leave as a result.
And as I’ve noted before, sandboxing doesn’t work. Shitpits like the SA forums and 4chan have both tried it; they both failed to contain the sandbox within its limits. And even if the sandboxes did work, they’d still be host to vile and offensive speech that will turn away anyone who might otherwise be willing to use the site.
Sandboxing is a ridiculous-ass attempt at trying to sit on a fence between “moderating is community curation” and “protecting free speech” while trying (and failing) to act like you don’t support the vile speech you’re more than happy to host so long as it stays in the sandbox (which it never does). Your site’s reputation depends on what you’re willing to do to keep it from becoming a shitpit. Hiding hateful speech under a rug and pretending it isn’t there will never help you build a positive reputation.
Re: Re: Re:10
And as Alan Parsons said, “Sitting on fences can make you a pain in the ass.”
Re: Re: Re:10
If that is your take away it is your own shallow censoring mindset that is at play.
Since such things as harassment are not allowed in the main space there is little likely of such actions lasting more than moments in the main space.
And since sandbox users can not post in main space, no issue.
For some sites with poor methods of use. It works quite well at others where the default is tying a user ID to an ip address.
So be it. The kind of people who walk away from a video shoppe because they have an adult section locked away behind a wall that requires ID to access? Turds that don’t use a store over some moral issue over a single clothing option?
So be it.
Childish people afraid of a harsh reality, even when they are filtered away from the real world that is tucked behind a sandbox, would likely post crap that would get them put in the sandbox.
See, when you cater to the extremes of fear and the weakest of mental ability in reality, you wind up with real damaging censorship.
Nobody is forcing you, or others, to use any of the sites I moderate.
And in reality I doubt you’d know where I was working/volunteering other than a few where I’m active with the general community.
At least before you got sandboxed and filed an appeal and happened to get a review and response to me.
In reality I doubt you’d realise sites you use even have a sandbox. They generally are tucked away quite well. You have to REALLY go looking or be banished them it to find them.
That a few sites failed to utilise the process well doesn’t make it less able to be useful when implemented properly
Re: Re: Re:11
If someone wants to say something I don’t like, I’m not denying them the right to do it if I tell them to either stop saying it or fuck off from my website. What I’m doing is putting down a boundary, asking them to respect that boundary, and kicking them out if they refuse. None of that robs that person of their rights in any way; if anything, I’m exercising my right of free speech (“we don’t post that here…”) and association (“…so get the fuck out”) by kicking them out. Seriously, why do you and Hyman and the other Freeze Peachers around here think enforcing boundaries and asserting your rights over your own property is the same thing as silencing someone’s speech everywhere forever?
And what happens when those “moments” become much longer because the main space is overwhelmed by what would’ve been sandboxed content and you either can’t or won’t do anything about it because you don’t want to “censor” anyone? I’ll tell you: You’ll learn exactly why sandboxing never works—and why moderation that requires both the deletion of content and the banning of habitual linesteppers is the only way to keep your site from becoming a shitpit.
4chan moderates via IP address. That still didn’t stop /pol/ from infecting the other boards.
They’re the kind of people who vote for censor-happy Republicans and think everyone should have the right of free reach. So hey, you’re halfway there already!
And that’s my point: You’d be welcoming those people by telling them “hey, if you wanna be a complete dick and post racial slurs and shittalk queer people, here’s a spot for you to do it to your heart’s content”. You’d actively be giving space to people with whom you would otherwise never associate because you’re paranoid about those same people seeing you as a “censor” or a Nazi for telling them to fuck off from your site. You’d be giving more of a fuck about their opinions of you than you do about the people those assholes would love to run off. How fucked up is that? (Very.)
The only one catering to “the extremes of fear and the weakest of mental ability” would be you for catering to your fear of being seen as a censor by assholes who think hating people for their skin color or their sexual orientation is some 250 IQ shit.
My dude. It’s always apparent. And if you think there aren’t ways to get around sandboxes in a way you can’t figure out, you’re the one who isn’t capable of seeing reality. (And you are a Trumpist, so…)
You can’t implement sandboxing in a way that is impenetrable or undefeatable. And even if you thought you could, one person leaking what’s behind the walls of that sandbox would be enough to paint you as a sympathizer of bigots and assholes. After all, if you really didn’t like them or what they have to say, you would’ve gotten rid of them instead of giving them a dedicated space all to themselves on your property.
Re: Re: Re:12
I won’t argue reality. You’re one of the minority that in every other species would have been bread out.
Ouch, bad mean words.
Grow up.
Words can not hurt you.
And if you have some whatever from typed words you, alone, are the weak one.
I spent 14 years of my life like you. Before I grew a spine and smashed a desk over the bigot’s head.
Grow up. Grow a spine. And grow a preverbal pair of balls!
Stop being a cowering wimp.
Words can’t hurt unless your weak mind allows it.
The solution to bullies is to stand up to them. On the off chance you encounter them in the few minutes or hours their post remains unchallenged in the main space.
Most of them get cast off to the sandbox.
And what happens in the sandbox stays in the sandbox.
If you enter the sandbox you deserve whatever you encounter.
Re: Re: Re:13
And yet here you are.
Re: Re: Re:14
Yes, I am. Quite happy with my life in general. Sure there are issues. This president has tanked the economy. The cost of living has gone loopy. But I’m in moderately good health, and will continue on.
Re: Re: Re:4
Link to a reliable source (not MJ or WaPo known for not retracting intentionally false reports). I’d his public admission to a crime. I’ll wait for you to find some deep web hurried nonsense clip. But I won’t hold my breath.
Re: Re: Re:3
Other than the evidence presented in each of the four different criminal indictments, the transcripts and recordings of his phone call with Georgia election officials, the transcripts and recordings of his speech prior to the insurrection, the photos of still-classified documents being kept in Mar-a-Lago…
…oh. Right. I keep forgetting that you think all of that is a conspiracy by a woman you literally believe is an actual demon from the actual Biblical Hell to strike at the heart of American democracy (which Trump himself has done more work to erode than Super-Devil Killary Klinton ever has or ever will, but still). My bad! I’ll let you get back to supporting the GOP’s plans to wage war in Mexico, keep kids from learning about how bad slavery was, forcing young girls to birth their rapists’ children, and make voting much harder for everyone (who isn’t in the primary GOP voter base). And before you say “I don’t support that”: Trump either supports it or doesn’t condemn it, Trump is the GOP frontrunner and the party’s ostensible leader, and any Republican POTUS (including Trump) will seek to placate the GOP voter base by supporting all that shit (or worse). If you don’t want to be associated with support for that shit, don’t support—or lick the boots of—a man who will support any and all of it if he thinks it’ll get him the votes he needs to get back into the Oval Office.
You wanted to be a Trumpist. You have to own all of what that means—the microscopically small amount of good, the incredible amount of bad, and the astoundingly large amount of ugly.
Re: Re: Re:4
The transcript from the call in Georgia shows nothing illegal. Asking for a review and pointing out discrepancies is completely legal.
The speach on Jan 6… you love leaving out how “voice” was the key, how he called for peaceful protest, and how not once did he state anything close to calling for violence.
And how you ignore that Trump 2x offered for the government to come get their documents and they didn’t show up. How he claims to have declassified most (one document stands out) of them. Or how Obama still hasn’t relinquished hundreds of classified materials.
And oh…
wage war in Mexico, no, he supports a wall and targeted attacks on criminal militia killing Americans.
learning about how bad slavery was, no. Opposition to the nonsense 1619 project isn’t pro slavery. Nor is the fact that it was just about non-existent by the time of the civil war.
forcing young girls to birth their rapists’ children? Show where he said he would be or is against immediate care contraception for victims.
and make voting much harder for everyone? We understand. You don’t want people to verify they are who they say, or their eligibility. Ignore rhetoric fact that he supported federal funding for a national ID.
Re: Re: Re:5
And I suppose asking for 11,000 votes that didn’t exist to change the outcome of an election that was already decided is “completely legal”?
Yes, yes, you’ve made it abundantly clear how you don’t understand subtext, context, stochastic terrorism, and how people can be influenced to do horrible things even without being directly told to do them. We get it. Next thing I know, you’re gonna tell me that doxxing never leads to bad outcomes.
Trump took documents he had no right to take in the first place, and only his sycophants in the GOP are willing to say otherwise because they’re too afraid of violence from/losing an election because of his followers.
I can claim I’m the King of England. Doesn’t make it true, does it?
And yet, he reportedly asked about firing missiles into Mexico, and he hasn’t ever come out against the idea of waging war in Mexico (an idea that other Republicans are now beginning to endorse because it isn’t getting pushback from the party or its voting base).
And yet, he hasn’t come out against shit like Florida changing the way it teaches slavery by saying that the enslaved benefitted from slavery—i.e., whitewashing slavery so it doesn’t seem all that bad.
He’s never come out in favor of it. He’s never come out against the most extreme GOP abortion restrictions, at least on a state level. (He is reportedly against a strict national ban, which is…something, I guess.)
You’re wrong on that. But we have plenty of ways of verifying people’s identities and eligibility to vote that don’t require us to place heavy burdens on marginalized people so they can exercise their right to vote. We don’t need to keep closing polling places or introducing poll-taxes-that-aren’t or gerrymandering voting districts to dilute minority votes. We also don’t need to raise the voting age, which is yet another GOP idea for trying to win elections in lieu of building a platform that’s actually popular with younger voters and people who think the GOP is a party of authoritarians and autocrats. (To the party’s credit, that idea isn’t gaining much traction. [Yet.])
You keep forgetting because you want to think Trump is a morally and ethically stand-up guy, but Trump doesn’t really give a shit about anything unless it gets him attention and power. He’ll support anything he thinks will get him in the White House—which is not only why he started running as a Republican after he helped create the birther controversy, but also why he never held himself to any hard positions on anything: He knew GOP voters were dumbasses he could con, either to win the election or to make a shitload of money off losing the election. If he thinks raising the voting age to 30, supporting a complete no-exceptions national ban on abortion, sending every Green Beret we have into Mexico, and promising to destroy public education (which has been a long-term GOP goal since desegregation!) would get him a win, he’ll do it and he won’t hesitate to do it because that’s exactly the kind of person he is. That you refuse to see the truth about Trump—that he’d sell out you and all his other asskissers in a heartbeat if doing so would save him from legal peril/make him rich(er) and (more) powerful—is your problem.
Re: Re: Re:6
He asked for hundreds of thousands, and 11,781. 11,799, 18000,
He also argued against, rightfully, vacant addresses with votes, 18325. And the 4502 unregistered votes. The 4925 non-resident votes. He claimed he won 200000, 400000… looks to me a shocked and angry man who lost and was beyond surprised. Looking for a legal review.
Asking to find missing votes and asking to review and remove disqualified votes. Nothing illegal in there. CNN has the full transcript and the audio, btw.
There was none. People hear what they want to hear.
I remind you people hear what they want. And are responsible only for their own actions:
“The lyrics she quoted have absolutely nothing to do with these topics. On the contrary, the words in question are about surgery and the fear that it instills in people.”
…”only sadomasochism, bondage, and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore”
No, White House staff boxed the documents. Along with everything else. Trump reported the . He agreed to return them. Twice. The new administration failed to retrieve them in a timely fashion, then demanded complete capitulation, then conducted a military raid.
Doesn’t make it false either. The power of the office allows the president to declassify anything at a time, and there is no rule, restriction, or law, that says he must inform anyone. So yes, it is factually accurate that a president can declassify simply by thinking it. Prove he didn’t.
Yes, at terrorist militias that are a threat to our nation. Or our citizens. I distinctly remember 4 presidents doing just that while in training and support operations in Vietnam. Bombs and missiles in two other countries. Without a declaration of war. Obama, Trump, and Biden all used drones to take out targets around the world on the terrorist list. You are only complaining about one of those.
Each state has its own education offices. The states make their own curriculum. That is a matter for Florida residents, not the federal government.
Correct, he’s generally been rather quiet and evasive on the topic. The president doesn’t make law. Congress does. It is up to Congress to make a federal law. Absent a federal law, states maintain their own.
Given he supported a national federal ID using federal funding, I don’t see how a free identification burdens anyone.
There are not poll-taxes. Such a tax is illegal. Both parties redraw districts to their favour. That’s politics, right or wrong. As far as I am aware Trump never supported raising the voting age. Given in 2014 he supported lowering it.
Interesting you simply ignore the ‘inconvenient truth’ about Obama’s stash of classified material.
And you miss the point. I don’t care about a person’s morals. I care about actions. A joke about grabbing crotch doesn’t change ability. An athlete beating a dog or banging hookers when his white isn’t around doesn’t make them less qualified as an athlete.
A drugged up singer that is good is a good singer.
And I do not judge by company. I judge by the person. Actual actions, not imaginary implications. I see 4 years of 90% better for the country and 9% worse and 1% bad.
Re: Re: Re:7
Ah, the “but the other guy did something bad too” used as an excuse to trivialize the bad thing “your guy” did. It is the defense deployed by the small minded idiots.
Well, that explains why you have no problems with a president that is amoral, that lies and cheats, as long as he does some things you like.
I’m surprised you haven’t attached yourself to Trumps ass yet, because I’ve never seen anyone make up so many excuses and reasons why they support someone that will most likely break the US. And when that happens I guess you’ll come up with some other excuse so you don’t have to accept responsibility for your choices.
Being ruled by emotions have made you just another stupid fucker.
Re: Re: Re:8
Just shows it’s normal. It happens. The if difference is Trump tried to give them back. Then got raided by a military level force for not dropping everything on a days notice. It’s not about the documents, it’s about the political driven response.
The raid on Trump’s resort is the very definition of weaponising law.
I don’t agree with classified documents. Cover actions. And wars elsewhere that have zero effect on our country.
Funny. Normally I’m accused of being apathetic here.
Re: Re: Re:9
I dunno.
Biden did comply with every fucking instruction when they found classified documents in/on his property.
That’s the difference.
Re: Re: Re:10
Obama refused for years.
Re: Re: Re:11
Uh. No.
Here’s the National Archives’ statement on the issue:
I’m the outsider here and even I can at least Google that one out.
Re: Re: Re:12
The. a lied about the Trump situation until messages were leaked to the public, regarding his attempts to return the documents or have them reviewed, twice.
So they are less than reliable in what they say.
I’m going back to 2019, long before Trump and his false claim of 33 million. I’m talking about the Sun Times report of 50-55000 documents not reviewed, with access refused through 2019. To top that odf, the Sun times doubled down on their statement on Aug 12 of 2022 that Obama still heals classified documents.
He supplied access, not removal. Eventually. He is still in near complete possession of all that left the White House with him.
This all predates the political Theater of the flash raid on Trump.
Re: Re: Re:13
Why are you ignoring what NARA actually says about the documents? Because it doesn’t fit your beliefs perhaps? Seems like a strong trend in your arguments, denying factual reality.
How about you get the information from the source instead: https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2022/nr22-001
Re: Re: Re:14
You still miss the point. Post Trump raid bending of the truth aside
Obama’s staff took classified documents Obama’s staff refused initially, access to those documents.
That they eventually worked out a deal isn’t the point. He walked out of office with classified documents. Just like nearly every president has for, um, ever?
And your idea my view has anything to do with Trump is countered by my public comment history. I complained in 2019 about this.
As a side note to my ongoing complaint about the idiocy of his plan for a memorial youth centre on a state landmark.
One that will never be fully utilised.
I didn’t just vote for Obama, I was a member of both his campaigns.
It was a ‘oh and’ moment in the discussion of creating a destructive nightmare in the wrong place for the wrong reasons with no thought. One that was rubber stamped because oh, President from Chicago.
Re: Re: Re:15
No, they didn’t. Anyone believing otherwise have bought lies told by republican pundits.
In reality, the classified documents where moved and stored at a NARA facility in Washington DC. It’s all in the link I provided, but since you seem allergic to actual facts let me quote the relevant part:
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) assumed exclusive legal and physical custody of Obama Presidential records when President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA). NARA moved approximately 30 million pages of unclassified records to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they are maintained exclusively by NARA. Additionally, NARA maintains the classified Obama Presidential records in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area. As required by the PRA, former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.
Re: Re: Re:7
He got several. All of them went against him. That’s when he started planning shit like having the military seize voting machines and asking Pence to violate the goddamn Constitution. Or do you think that was also legally, morally, and ethically okay?
The funny thing is, you seem to believe with all your heart that Trump’s speech didn’t influence anyone into doing anything and Trump’s language was perfectly okay—but somehow, someone teaching The 1619 Project in any way will influence those being taught into become pinko commie leftists with a grudge against White people. Why is it that you think ostensibly left-wing speech can influence people to an absurd and life-changing degree but right-wing speech, even ostensibly “peaceful” speech, can’t influence people in any way whatsoever?
So what?
And yet, he didn’t. And even after the feds seized the documents they knew were at Mar-a-Lago, they had to go back once they learned that more documents had been hidden away by Trump associates at his personal request. Did that fact somehow escape your keen detective skills, or do you think everyone but Trump is lying about that?
They didn’t send in the military, you jackass. The feds sent in regular-ass federal agents to search Mar-a-Lago, find the documents, and take them back to the National Archives. They didn’t fucking send in Green Berets or black ops agents or whatever fever dream Trump told you to believe (which you apparently do).
And yet, given the sensitivity of some information in re: military operations and other American interests, declassification is typically a process involving people other than the president to ensure what gets declassified doesn’t endanger lives. Trump never went through that process, and he only claimed to have declassified the documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago after the news that he was still holding onto those documents came out (when he wouldn’t have had the legal authority to declassify them). Had he actually declassified those documents during his time in office—process or not—why would he have needed to hide them from the feds like he did and have his lawyers lie about how many documents he’d turned over?
It would still be firing missiles into a sovereign nation without military provocation from that nation’s government. And Trump reportedly asked about whether the military could do that and somehow keep it a secret from Mexico, which…well, that really doesn’t strike me as a smart plan.
And yes, I do have issues with the U.S. starting wars in other countries. Considering how much you say you have a problem with that, your looking for a way to justify starting a war in Mexico—just like the GOP is looking to do!—makes you a goddamned hypocrite.
No, I’m not. Drone strike murders are bullshit regardless of who orders them. But I should note that Biden has drastically reduced the number of drone strikes compared to Trump, who himself drastically increased the number of strikes compared to Obama.
Even so: He still hasn’t decried Florida changing its educational standards to appease angry conservatives (because that’s his major voting base). I also don’t see him saying shit about book bans across the country; if he really wanted to be a president instead of an attention whore, he’d at least try to act like he could serve everyone instead of trying to appease his one significant voting base.
And who’s responsible for making sure there is no federal law—or even a judicial precedent—to protect legal abortion nationwide? The GOP in the long term (a five-decade fight to make Roe v. Wade disappear) and Trump in the short term (getting three anti-abortion conservative SCOTUS justices handed to him by a right-wing think tank during his presidency, including one in an election year, something which the GOP whined about when Obama was president but had no problem expediting when Trump was president).
Also, if Trump gets the White House again and the GOP takes control of the Senate, I guarantee they’ll kill the filibuster just to pass a national abortion ban because who the fuck is going to stop them.
It’s not the ID—it’s the process of getting one, which may be daunting for marginalized people in one form or another. The same goes for the process of registering to vote, which often requires multiple forms of ID, which may take some marginalized people a fair bit of time and money to get. And the latter process is often designed to discourage the marginalized from finishing it out, especially in GOP-controlled states, which leads to disenfranchisement.
But hey, who gives a fuck if people can’t afford to go get a national ID one way or another? Not you! And why should you? It’s not a problem that affects you, so it’s not an actual problem! Empathy is for pinko commie leftists, amirite~?
When someone has to pay—in both time and money—to get the multiple necessary IDs for voter registration only so they can register to vote, they’re paying a poll tax.
Trump doesn’t. But at least one other Republican candidate does. And given how the GOP is losing the youth vote, the party knows it must either put forth a platform worth a shit (one with actual policies instead of grievance politics and fearmongering about queers and immigrants) or stop a lot of young people from voting. Raising the voting age isn’t a popular position now, but when the GOP starts getting desperate to stop losing elections because the youth vote starts going against it even harder, you can bet your ass that it’ll be popular.
Did Obama hide hundreds of documents from the federal government? Did Obama need to have federal agents search his properties for those documents? Did Obama instruct his lawyers to lie on the record to the feds about how many documents were retrieved?
No?
Then besides your “Obama and Biden are parademons that spawned from Super Devil Killary Klinton’s vagina dentata”–believing ass, who gives a fuck.
Yes, because morals never influence actions~. They’re two totally separate and distinct concepts with no overlap whatsoever~.
But it does say a lot about the guy who “jokes” about forcing himself on women who won’t do anything to stop him because he’s rich and famous and a he-said-she-said would automatically be weighed in his favor.
But it does say a lot about the character of that guy—and the people in charge of a team willing to overlook abusive behavior just so he can win a game. Y’know, like Joe Paterno looking the other way in re: the sexual assault of students by Jerry Sandusky at Penn State.
If a person sits at a table with ten Nazis, do you judge them by the fact that they chose to sit at a table with ten Nazis, or do you not care about that unless the person literally starts doing the Nazi salute?
Wanna know how I know you’re most likely a White cisgender male without a college education? It’s because you’re the exact type of gullible idiot that Trump deluded into thinking he was a demigod.
Re: Re: Re:8
Past; which is not the acts of the president.
donald Trump stoked false claims that Barack Obama had lied about his education
At the time trump was not the only one questioning the many former students that said they did not know or see them. Even some democrats questioned his education initially.
And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was
Fact. Obama did nothing to quell the questions either. His own book slip-cover was the primary source for the question. His full birth certificate was eventually released, ending the concern. I was one of many working in his reelection campaign who wrote to him asking him to address the question completely in public.
extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud
This was an issue caused by lack of direct access to an original document, combined with poor records post war. It wasn’t until the mid 60s hawaii began to properly maintain residence records.
How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.”
Well, it is a rather strange occurrence. … maybe take a link at other strange facts like Lincoln Kennedy etc.
Trump said Barack Obama could have claimed Kenya as his birthplace for special treatment from colleges
An interesting idea. Useless since by this time his birth certificate had actually been verified. Again, it was Obama himself who caused the birth question. But not immediately corrections (call demanding the recall) of a book that clearly stated he was born outside the United States.
Candidate:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Rude but factually accurate in context. Context being the discussion of illegal alien trespass across our border. Percentage rates of criminal to non-criminal illegal crossings are high.
Trump’s belief that Mexico should finance construction for the wall led Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a meeting with Trump in June 2017, and again in February 2018. Peña Nieto has repeatedly said that Mexico will not fund the border wall
And yet, the very much have funded the wall indirectly. Via modified,FAIR, trade agreements.
Donald Trump insulted the military service of Senator John McCain, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who endured torture and solitary confinement as a POW in Hanoi
Clearly trump projected his hatred (shared by many in this country) of the man in a terrible way. No one should disparage those who were captured in the religious crusade of Vietnam.
At the same time, McCain is no war hero. Calling him one degrades real heroes of that war. Men, and women, forced into service, who gave their livelihood and their lives to protect both their own team members, and innocent civilians.
Megyn Kelly
Trump clearly chose to react poorly to the line of pointless questioning. Nobody Denys he has a masculine superiority belief. His “sexualised” approach to women, a product of men of his age group across the aisle, is disgusting.
The entire forced situation had nothing to do with qualifications for president. Actions to be taken as president. Or any aspect of presidential operation. It was retaliatory public demonstrations by a woman who felt slighted by a candidate. As disgusting as his reaction was, she was equally wrong for entirely different reasons.
two of his supporters in Boston beat a homeless Latino man
Totally and completely unrelated to Trump or his candidacy. Two unrelated-to-Trump men committed a hate crime.
November 25, 2015
Trump, with no knowledge of any condition the journalist has/had, made fun of the wild movements of a questionable opinionist who disagreed with him. He did later apologise for the action when informed of the opinionist’s condition.
Trump, likely unintentionally, mis-spoke on the numbers. The total number of celebrants was hundreds, not thousands.
Re: Re: Re:9
After Donald Trump won the presidential election, his Palm Beach resort, Mar-a-Lago, doubled its initiation fee to $200,000.
That was done by the board of the club. Without input or act by the president.
Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to withhold “federal funds, except as mandated by law” from so-called “sanctuary cities
An act I strongly support. When a city breaks federal law it has no right to federal funding. Mind you the statement “undocumented immigrants” means in law, illegal alien trespassers. That is fact.
Donald Trump tweeted that, If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. Peña Nieto canceled the meeting
Good. Mexico later lost out on enriching itself via lopsided trade agreements. The wall was funded. Mexico lost billions in aid and investment.
(He) went on to explain why the Department of Justice and FBI should remain independent of each other.
The federal legal arm has long been a political tool. Tarmac meetings, dinners in private clubs, etc. the political undertakings are no secret. And span both parties.
a 90-day ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries
Countries with undeniable documented support at the government level for terrorism.
Donald Trump aggressively defended his travel ban
Baring travel from state sponsors of terror
Donald Trump ordered a raid in Yemen
Unfortunately such raids, throughout history… results are hit and miss. Such is the nature of clandestine operations and intelligence gathering.
Yates had instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the executive order from any legal challenges
She had a job to do. She failed to do her job. She was fired. That is what happens when you don’t do your job. It’s really that simple.
Tr ump signed an executive order which instructed federal agencies to remove two regulations on private businesses for each new one added. The order also stipulated new rules should offset additional cost to businesses by eliminating regulations of equal or greater value to business bottom line
??? And? So what?
Almost a year after Antonin Scalia’s death left one seat vacant on the Supreme Court, Donald Trump nominated Colorado judge Neil Gorsuch to take Scalia’s place. Barack Obama had nominated Merrick Garland to the position in 2016, but Senate Republicans broke with historic precedent and refused to hold Garland’s confirmation hearings.
Congress chose to process the current sitting president’s nomination. That act falls on congress, not the president.
The Emoluments Clause
Yet, for all the vocal nonsense, no actions taken about the image, occurred.
A recurring theme for McSwindle. Pretending laws say something they don’t.
February 1, 2017
No defence. The first honest concern from the long list. I am completely against this move.
House Republicans rolled back an Obama-era regulation that required oil companies to provide purchasing information when buying minerals from foreign governments.
I honestly don’t care. Both parties support less than ethical purchases. And actions.
We are sending tanks and bombs and missiles to kill people to a nation that refused to stop killing citizens trapped inside its borders by restructuring and persecuted for their ethnicity.
Donald Trump vowed to dismantle the Johnson Amendment, a law which restricted churches and other religious institutions from taking a public political stance while retaining tax-exempt status
I’m not sure what benefits there are in this in the first place. It’s not like the myth houses weren’t directly involved in politics despite the amendment.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai rolled back an agreement with nine internet service providers that had encouraged ISPs to provide affordable internet access to low-income communities
We have an Internet problem in this country. This didn’t change that. Until the government decides to roll out nationwide social internet, as a new granted right, nothing is going to change.
Donald Trump posted a report to his Facebook page saying Kuwait would institute a travel ban on many Muslim-majority countries
First time reading this. And I see nothing factual or non-partisan in the reporting.
The question is what made the news report in the first place. Then why trump posted it without verification
Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the federal judge who had blocked his travel ban
In less than presidential manner. Trump resorted to name calling the bizarre ruling of a judge that had no basis in law.
The Republican-led House Administration Committee voted to eliminate the Elections Assistance Commission, which was the only federal agency charged with ensuring voting machines could not be hacked. Chairman of the committee Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Mississippi, stated the committee had “outlived” its usefulness to the nation. Only weeks prior to the EAC’s dissolution, Donald Trump claimed hacks of voting machines allowed 3 million of people to vote illegally in the 2016 election. No evidence exists to support this claim
I am not sure as to the quality or ability of the agency. Trump continues here to misstate the election issues. With an incorrect number.
In actuality more than 30 millions people were illicitly allowed to vote without proving their personhood with a photo id. The votes we legal. Even if untrustworthy.
School Accountability Act, which evaluated the quality of service American schools provided to their students
The SAA has had disastrous consequences in our country. It has lead to a syndrome know as “teach-the-book”. Students spend most, or all, of lesson time focused solely on the materials in national testing. Students who would otherwise fail are passed by guidance or by false equivalency. Our educational system is failing. This act is one of the reasons.
Donald Trump stated the murder rate in America had reached a 47-year peak
A clear mistake/error/falsehood.
Donald Trump told a sheriff in Rockwell County, Texas, to “destroy” the career of a state senator who had opposed civil asset forfeiture
I honestly don’t think Trump understands:understood the practice.
February 7, 2017 – Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote to confirm Donald Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary.
Pence made his decision as all members of congress do. Harris has cast multiple 51st votes.l as well.
Despite extreme opposition, the Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
The opposition was not extreme in congress. Enough bits existed to pass the nomination.
President Trump used Twitter to lash out at Nordstrom for its decision to stop carrying his daughter’s retail brand
Wow, a person posted on social media about a grievance? Unprecedented!
February 9, 2017 – Donald Trump attacked Senator John McCain on Twitter.
Again, McCain is not a hero. He’s another grunt. Who has spent his post war life banking on the emotions of woe-is-me. Most pows, you’d never know. Only those who pretend, still, there was some reason for American involvement there: tout their time. Our cause was NOT just. It was another religious crusade against the atheist communist ideal. His comments this day, only serve to show decisions to our enemies.
The racial epithet referenced Elizabeth Warren, who has claimed Native American ancestry
The comment was directed at a fake claim of heritage.
Press Secretary Sean Spicer
Is responsible for his own comments. Period
Senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway promoted Ivanka Trump’s retail brand while speaking on television in her official capacity as an aide to President Trump.
Spin that wheel. She was a guest in non-official capacity on a television talk show.
She was reprimanded for here poor choice in what could be misconstrued as an official statement.
February 9 , 2017 – Before a day of golf with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Donald Trump tweeted that refugees were flooding in from the seven “suspect” countries his travel ban had outlawed
It is a testament to the great and vital work of our national law enforcement that these dangerous people, in violation of federal law,where apprehended before committing crimes.
Re: Re: Re:10
I could keep going, but I won’t
Re: Re: Re:7
The cool thing is, the crimes that warrant is based on have nothing to do with classification status. So even if had declassified everything, he could still go to prison for it.
Re: Re: Re:8
Yet the value of unlawful retention is unlikely to surpass civil level possession of stolen property. Meaning no felony and no jail.
Again, I never said what he did was correct. Just that it was common. It was not trumps fault he had the documents. He didn’t pack them up and move them. He did not direct that they be packed and moved.
It is again a fact he twice tried to have them reviewed and turned over (the opposite of Obama who still holds possession of materials he does not have a legal right to possess, permit not).
The facts are extremely clear from a historical look. This is quite common and sort of happens. Bill Clinton and Nixon took materials intentionally. Most others since the Nixon administration… it just happens. Most have returned or attempted to return, items when found. Carter, Bush, W Bush, Trump, pence, Biden.
Others have fought or refused, Clinton, Reagan, Obama.
There was absolutely no reason for a flash raid. Beyond performance acting.
Re: Re: Re:9
These crimes have nothing to do with the monetary value of the documents.
They are absolutely felonies.
The rest of your comment is basically just lies trying to equate Trump intentionally, knowingly, and repeatedly withholding documents to other people returning them as soon as they were found.
Re: Re: Re:10
Possession of “stolen” goods
In violation of the presidential records act.
When they go get the documents from Obama, bill Clinton, and Reagan I’ll give you a thumbs up. Until then, this is simply a matter of maintaining possessions of items someone else handed to him.
Items he attempted twice to return.
There is. O thing here Trump did any different than hundreds of other government employees over the years. Except that he was Trump and had an armed raid against his property. For materials he already attempted to return.
Re: Re: Re:11
Again – lies. We all know that is not what happened, so you needn’t bother.
Re: Re: Re:12
Have you read the 49 page indictment? I have.
The charges are:
Wilful retention, a glorified, typically politically motivated extension, of possession of stolen goods.
The legal text is nearly identical.
That they chose to place the counts under the espionage act is because any other stolen goods case had no felony option.
Obstruction, which isn’t going to stick no matter how hard anyone bends reality. Trump didn’t hide anything with the intent to hide. He moved the majority of presidential materials from trafficked areas to untrafficked areas. Otherwise known as, moving things out of the way. What was moved that wasn’t allowed to be is All Easily mistaken given the different post-offer demands as to what was to be returned and to whom.
There is no destruction, tampering, or witness tampering shown in any evidence yet. If it exists, they will show it at trial.
Falsifying requires intent. And as his lawyers admitted he was told that he turned over what was believed to be classified in full. Maintaining that what remained was declassified.
The best they have here is a debate on what is and is not classified. If it’s not classified, it reverts to a standard stolen document reception. And a stolen goods holding.
In the end, baring some bombshell video evidence nobody has leaked yet, the (current) government will end up modifying the complaint with a charge of possession of stolen goods and take the civil slap on the wrist for Trump, or dismiss the case at the first sign of it blowing up.
Only one document is known to be classified in fact. And that document is not believed by non-governmental legal review to fall under the espionage act limits.
Because if Trump looses the debate on what is classified, he will loose the initial case. And appeal. Eventually it would reach the SCOTUS who will clearly hold in near unity that the presidential right as it stands does not require notification. Sending the case back down to determine if the single document was kept for reasons of dispersion to foreign enemies.
And that is fairly well set caselaw in implementation. He must have actual intent to supply the document to a state with which we are actively at war or is under embargo.
At the time the document was taken.
Neither of which is apparent.
Re: Re: Re:13
The charges are:
Wrong. There are laws about mishandling sensitive information that carry substantial prison sentences and apply regardless of whether the documents are classified or not. You can harp on all you want about classification, and I suspect you will because it’s about all you have, but in the end that will not matter much even if it is decided in Trump’s favor.
Re: Re: Re:14
With one possible exception didn’t happen.
Trump didn’t move the documents, White House staff did. The only known case of a classified document is his hang up.
No evidence of it happening, so far.
Didn’t happen
To this date has always required intent. His lawyers are on the hook, not Trump. And no claim here against Trump will ever result i. Conviction.
Is completely dependent on at least some of the other charges sticking.
And that depends on (if) how he declassified info. If he flat out declassified the documents, nothing here.
If he downgraded documents, there’s a charge to stick.
I have been in a clearance position, rather high, previously. There’s a lot more levels of classification that the general public doesn’t understand. And the level of classification has much to do with penalties for mishandling.
Something in the bottom levels like LEO has never resulted in jail time. On only a handful of convictions. Further up the list into the realm of NFO is more inconsistent in legal handling.
Ultimately, like it or not, the SCOTUS has never countered presidential right on classification. Despite dozens of cases heard including 3 during trumps term.
Reality is the government whole likes secrets. Trump declassified more documents than all but Kennedy and Grant, through the common process.
And many more without the process that people moaned about but didn’t result in legal overreach.
What we ultimately have here is one non-sensitive classified document, and thousands the president claims are/were declassified by self alone.
The court isn’t going to muddy the clear history on this right and ability.
Here are you absolute, easily statable facts
There are three groups of people supporting the documents case.
Career politicians who like secrets
Anti-Trump politicians
Abti Trump public that believe the anti Trump politicians
Re: Re: Re:15
I like how most of your arguments are just sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting that nothing actually happened. I don’t think the judge is going to be too impressed if his defense is “it wasn’t me your honor, my lawyers and staff did all that without any instructions from me to do so and I had no idea what they were doing even though I admitted on tape that I had classified documents in my possession that I knew I had no right to.” (which is a thing that happened, by the way)
How many times do I have to tell you this? Even if they were declassified (which I think you’re going to be surprised to find didn’t actually happen), what he did with some of those documents is still illegal. Why do you go on for three paragraphs about classification every time?
a.k.a. normal, sensible people.
Re: Re: Re:16
One of us is wrong on the possession idea. We’ll know when the cases are over.
In declassification,
Though,
You’re simply wrong. You misunderstand classification. If there is restriction remaining it is set by the declassification. If he didn’t set a restriction there is none.
A later review could turn around and add one to any document not /for public release/. But a document holds no restriction unless a classification review sets one.
I can tell you what his likely argument will be over the single document known to be classified: he’ll probably say he lied in his bragging and it was really declassified. I don’t buy it, but it is again a battle of statements and beliefs, not facts.
Re: Re: Re:17
Says a lot that you’d prefer this fight be about feelings instead of facts.
It ain’t good.
Re: Re: Re:18
There is no evidence as to classification status either way. So it’s a matter of belief. so You believe Trump, one of the most extensive declassifiers, or the, well, entrenchment of secret keepers who don’t like the public to have access to any more of governmental information than they absolutely must supply by law.
any result other than clearing Trump here is a win for the anti-oversight of government. Nothing should be classified. Ever.
Re: Re: Re:19
I don’t care how many documents he declassified as president. The ones he held at Mar-a-Lago likely weren’t declassified, and he had no power to declassify them after he left the Oval Office. Even if some of those documents had been declassified, that really doesn’t explain why he had the documents hidden at his behest and why he refused to return them to the government of his own accord. The man literally kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago so he could show them off or whatever other ego-boosting motive he had for doing that shit. Nothing you’ve said about him in all your child-like fawning over a man you’re treating like a demigod has ever convinced me otherwise.
Show me evidence that the documents were declassified. Show me proof that the government failed to do its job without any obstruction from Trump or anyone working for him. You give me that and I’ll concede to anything that isn’t the kind of ceaseless and uncritical ass-kissing of Donald Trump you spew on a regular basis.
I mean, my god, man—I know this is a “if things were different, things would be different” hypothetical, but if Hillary Clinton stood accused of the exact same actions as Donald Trump, you’d be calling for the government to guillotine her and put her head on a pike outside the White House gates as a warning. Like, are you really willing to let Trump go uncriticized because he promised you that there’d be fewer brown people in this country while he was president?
Re: Re: Re:20
Trump was legally correct when he said “just by thinking it”.
If the president says they are declassified, they are. And if a former president says he did so then, the law says no evidence is necessary.
I’d say wow, that’s maybe the second good thing she did in her lifetime. She did stand against a bill that would have required identification for music purchases that include the PMRC label… much of a surprise to me since she 100% supported damaging artwork by forcing the label in the first place.
Re: Re: Re:21
The idiots take. Now define how “thinking something” makes it an act in the legal sense, because that is what matters.
Re: Re: Re:22
Easy,
The process of declassification requires from the president… nothing. No discussion, no signature, no confirmation, no reporting; nothing is required of the office.
There are standard routines but they are not required.
Re: Re: Re:23
I’m not surprised you use the word “easy”, because that is entirely in line with an idiots take.
Thinking about something and not acting or communicating it to anyone doesn’t satisfy the legal definition of an act. If it was otherwise we would also have to contend with the concept of “thought crimes”.
The whole thing about the “just thinking about it” is on the same level as a first grader uttering “the dog ate my homework” and only particularly stupid idiots buy into it.
Re: Re: Re:24
There is no requirement the president document or inform in his declassification actions. Period.
Re: Re: Re:17
Nope. Here’s the search warrant for the case:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22267182-trump-search-warrant-affidavit
Starting on page 3, it outlines the statutory authority, which is 18 USC section 793. Here is that law:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
Classification status has no bearing or mention in that law.
Here is the original indictment, also citing 793 on page 33:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/09/trump-2nd-indictment-full-document-text-00101294
Here’s the new indictment, and oh look at that… 18 USC section 793:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-trumps-new-charges-in-the-classified-documents-case
I look forward to seeing how you try to wriggle out of this one.
Re: Re: Re:18 Too easy
A used to the injury of the United States
Nope
B Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid
Nope
C Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid
Nope
D is a wide shot yet to be tested and likely to be struck down by the first test
E requires d
F doesn’t apply
G requires f which doesn’t apply
H requires g which requires f which doesn’t apply
Here’s your problem, the only w d would stick is if the entire presidential ability on classification is tossed out the window.
You would need a Supreme Court majority that thinks the protection of the government executive and legislature is more important than the public right to know when the president authorised the public to know.
I’ll (hopefully) be dead and gone before that happens.
And before you say Trump… I disagree with classification. Period. Full stop.
If I were some how to become president I’d recall 100% of our non-regular-forces. And 30 days later declassify, completely, each and every document in US history: to be accessible by the general public.
Re: Re: Re:19
What are you talking about? That law has nothing to do with whether the information is classified.
Re: Re: Re:20
If the President declassified documents that fit that line,
SCOTUS is not going to find against that.
He chose to declassify the documents. And then twice attempted to arrange for review and handover of materials. Which would place those declassified documents in the public record.
The terms of the sub are designed to stop people with the ability to declassify from doing so. It’s a shield from public accountability.
Keep in mind this big thing for the JD here is what was declassified by Trump: the NUMBER of nuclear weapons we have. Recorded numbers that were higher than our public reports.
This is Albury and Hale type documents, a black eye for the status quo. (Both leaks which Trump supported)
The real under the covers issue here is not material detrimental to the country but to the country’s perception and reputation.
Obama had documents that generally would show the US was lying to the general population. Much of which was already public disclosed in the Wiki documents.
Trump holds documents that (likely, and believed) show the US as a whole is lying to international oversight.
What the actual documents contain is unknown to all but a few. However there is a clear undertone here it’s a two issue concern.
First, it’s Trump, anything that can keep him down, do it
Second, it’s greatly disrupting materials fo the business-as-usual bi-party bull.
Ultimately— here’s your reality
Possession of won’t stick. The SC won’t override presidential control of classification.
Detainment won’t stick because it is a documented fact staff twice attempted to have the documents reviewed and turns over.
So the only chance you have is D
And the SC as it stands won’t overrule the president’s decision to allow public oversight release. That defence stands as Trump had made efforts for the distribution of the documents, claimed declassified, for index and release, to the NA.
Re: Re: Re:21
Let me quote it again:
Now, could you please point to where in that 18 word phrase it mentions that the information is classified?
Re: Re: Re:22
If the president decides it is not injurious: the Supreme Court is the only body capable of opposing that decision. The Supreme Court has never and is unlikely to ever, decide against a presidential decision to release any information.
You have an inclined cliff battle here; the president decided any risk is for the greater good. The greater good being the public access.
You’ll have to point to factual verification on that. I’ve not heard that one.
Correction, test the constitutional ability to hold a certification pending review. There’s a major difference between illegal and untested.
I stated multiple times it did. The extremest crackpots. People think they hear radio waves in their tooth fillings too. And little green men talk to thousands every day.
That doesn’t equate to incitement. Any more than airhead Gore found anything factual in Under the Blade.
I have no complaint about teaching when the first slaves were brought here, or about the intended change in meaning of the word gender. Or just about any other “left” idea.
You equate different issues without context. 1619 is nonsense. This country was founded when we signed the declaration of independence. Period. You can teach the horrors of slavery, as this country has done since the 1960s, without inventing crap that has no historical accuracy. And aside from left wing extra, like NOI, I don’t fear the left at all.
You were factually inaccurate stating Trump took them. He kept them. After attempting to return presidential records twice. He kept them when nobody came to get them.
Lost, misplaced, buried in other junk. Etc. A common problem among former P and VP.
Excuse the minor error in missing words used elsewhere in this thread. -like. -style. Dozens of officers, all armed, dozens of vehicles, a flash raid.
But not always. Even in process he declassified more documents than any recent administration. So yes, I’ll believe the word of someone who went out of their way to declassify stuff in process or out of… and again he didn’t “hide” anything. He had staff move old clutter into storage. And lost a few here and there along the way.
Cambodia, Laos, Columbia, Panama, Iran, Pakistan, …. Yes. That’s something the us has done since the 50s. Right or wrong, it’s common practice. Feel free to stand against the Biden drain strikes too, and give you a chance. Otherwise it’s the person, not the act.
No, personally I’d make demands. First that they act. Then that they not (feebly) cause an incident when we do what they clearly can’t, end the terrorist militias. And yes, I believe we should go to the sun first. But I also understand why we don’t. And generally have not. We kill terrorists. That’s just what the US does.
No, he hasn’t. Though I have not seen what it is you are stating you have a problem with. Therefore make no comment if he should nor should not take a stand against, whatever it is you have a problem with.
Democrats. Who have had dozens of chances to enshrine the right into law and have not. Who have had multiple times they could have passed an amendment without concern and had not.
The federal court has no legal standing to make such a choice as it did in Roe. Without federal law it is the sole law of the state.
Wasn’t it democrats for every time they slip out of complete power do that. Just like republicans. Kill the filibuster.
I wish they would add the teeth back to it. Debate must be ongoing. Not silent.
Yes. I agree that a tiny percentage of the population will have issues. The homeless, mostly.
The benefits of a federal ID outweigh the few tiny issues. And if democrats actually care about those few they will implement social support to help those that need help.
Maybe if states were barred from charging $10 or more for a birth certificate?
Really. What state? Most states require no id or one photo id.
Federally funded. As in no cost. Now who’s being a jackass
Again what state requires multiple.
Most states require only one identifier, not even an actual ID, to register. And 41 states do not require ID to vote.
And I doubt he’d sign a law requiring an increase. He’s fairly well on record of pushing the federal age to 16 and hasn’t contradicted that in over 20 years.
Yes. Thousands. No, for whatever reason the federal government didn’t flash raid Obama. And you entirely miss my point.
So what. So what Biden, so what Trump, so what pence, so what Biden… though if you want to show some consistency Biden’s document hoard was left in an easily accessible often open garage. That’s a bit ‘worse’ than being in private and semi private locations. Just saying.
Yet I know of only two who should qualify as such in congress today. Sometimes you need to sit with those you disagree with. That’s how life works out.
I’m a white middle class pansexual college educated male.
you got two right at least.
.
Re:
You, pan? Don’t make me fucking laugh. Anyone pansexual would never be capable of spewing such hateful bile, that’s just not possible. Ask Stephen T. Stone, he’s queer and he knows. Our gaydar can detect fakers coming from a mile away, like the idiot trying to make us look dumb in the comments.
You’re a breeder, a relic from a time long past, desperately trying to stay relevant because the girls won’t look at you like they did in the 1950s. Tough fucking shit.
Your day of reckoning is coming, just like it is with every piece of white male trash who doesn’t pick up a pride flag and stand with us in solidarity.
Re: Re:
I’ll make this clear for you, take it how you want. Willing holes are for stuffing. And there’s no difference between a woman or man in the #2 department.
Pan sexual by classic (non-butchered-extremest) definition means a person without preference nor limitation in sexual contact with males or females.
That I don’t agree with putting a failed MALE swimmer on a women’s swim team when not a single member of the team wants to be in the same shower with a naked penis… doesn’t have anything to do with my choice of sexual activity.
And I wasn’t born yet in the 50s. Or the 60s. Though Woodstock video: looked like fun. Too bad I missed that.
Re: Re: Oh, and
I’m a strong supporter of the thoughts of Freud, everything is sexual and anyone who is limited in sexuality is lying to themselves.
And the ideals of sexual liberation of Crowley and Mansket. Any person willing to fuck should fuck with any willing person.
Re Stephen T stone Land Doesn’t Vote
Let me explain this in the most reduced way I can: if you still don’t see where I am coming from it’s fair, at least you get the point.
We will create a new 51st state, the State of Five. A long time crab fishing island.
The state of 5 is a whole 5 properties on an island. 4 of the houses are a couple.
They get 8 votes
One house is multigenerational. 9 people live there over 18 years of age. They get 9 votes. They happen to be the smallest property on the island as well.
4 families are shore based crab fishers. One considers crabs fishing to be a moral wrong.
So the 9 people vote to pass a law to outlaw crab fishing in the new state. The very livelihood of the islands population.
The is what the electoral vote is designed to prevent.
Now if you remaster our hypothetical 51st island and make it the size of, say, Australia, things get more in par with the current system in our country.
9 million people in one giant house are outvoting the 8million in the other 4 homes.
Re:
Keep writing that fanfiction, Loddy, I’m sure Trump will remember you when he’s in prison after fucking up his own case on the witness stand.
You got one thing right though, willing holes are there to be fucked, and you’ve got imaginary Trump sperm dripping out of every damn orifice.
Re: Re:
I see you’re incapable of understanding basic math. It’s not your fault, I don’t blame you. Our educational system failed.
As for your fixing on Trump, seek help. A good psychologist would be covered under most insurance. You really need to talk to someone. Find out why you are so fixated on projecting deep emotional concerns on a single man. As well as your fantasy about sexual encounters.