This was a great updating on her column, which I think everyone should read at least once for knowing the enemy.
It's brilliant.
There are layers upon layers of people who will go or have gone MAGA-among which is the 'tradwife TikTok influencer (a twin sister of the other one you mentioned) who has gone that route.
But this paragraph stands out above the rest of it:
"MAGA appeals to people who need to feel special, who need enemies to blame, who need simple answers to complex problems. It attracts those who mistake confidence for competence, who confuse being loud with being right, who think that admitting uncertainty is weakness."
All those Karens and Chads we've encountered in real life or read about are essentially MAGA.
But you forgot one very important part about them: they're racist and sexist to the core.
It's why we got Trump instead of that black prosecutor named Kamala Harris.
Simple times appeals to MAGA's, when 'one knew their place in the world and didn't step over that line.'
But one more quote, and this one is just as profound and it applies to MAGA.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
LBJ.
He was right then and now.
So this guy did this stupid thing, and does he really, really believe that he got away with it?
Cops (and that means ALL cops, federal, local, cartoon) have a nasty habit of remembering if you make them look bad. By broadcasting how 'smart' he was he just made himself a target the next time he gets pulled into the room to talk to them.
He got out of his predicament this time, but the CBP have been literally kidnapping people off the street and they somehow end up in another state or country without ever having had a chance to talk to a lawyer.
Don't tell me the CBP does not have institutional memory and that they did not keep records of what happened.
If he goes out of the country again and comes back he might have another 'encounter' with them and then he'll find out what the term 'karma bites' means.
He might not walk out of that interview free. Especially if he in the past has said that he identifies with a certain group that are not very popular right now or have been in the past.
Another point the cop in that video states that everyone should remember:
The cops can and do lie to suspects. It's standard procedure.
They are encouraged to get them to talk. They will lie to them willingly and without any qualms whatsoever.
They won't be punished for it. In fact, they'll get 'attaboy' for having gotten their confession without undue force.
YOU are NOT allowed to lie to the cops. You WILL be prosecuted if they find out you did lie to them and one of the charges will be lying to the cops.
And in the video both the professor and the cop tell how easy it is to make sure you lie and get caught.
So yeah Hasan has gotten stupid. Anyone who follows his 'advice' is a bigger fool than he is.
STFU and don't talk to cops-end of subject.
I've been attempting to keep my language sort of clean, but believe me, I'm ALWAYS saying it. Every single day, hour and second.
And for the record,
FUCK DONALD TRUMP AND ALL WHO RIDE WITH HIM.
There.
I feel slightly better.
You know the one that I mean.
It's coming true as we write this.
I've always said that ICE is just the fancy title for the American Gestapo.
This is not getting better.
And it's gonna get far far worse before we're through.
just for fun, I'm gonna exercise my free speech rights here and now:
F-47 is a curse word, not a new jet and I'm using it as one.
I'm glad that this one victim got some reward for his suffering at the hands of these very corrupt bad cops.
Just imagine how many have not and will never receive anything-Who are still in prison because of lying corrupt cops.
Too many to count. If you're poor, or black or both, you're fucked when it comes to the power imbalance.
And the worst part?
The cops KNOW it.
I wonder if there would be as much defending a cop if he shot an elderly blind person who was lost?
I bet not.
But they do that, too, because they're armed and they're more dangerous than most of the criminals on the streets-and they're always forgiven for shooting unarmed people because of the "imminent threat" to them.
It reminds me of that rookie cop in "Police Academy" who went insane over guns. "Do we get guns yet?"
I firmly believe there are far more psychos playing cops than there are psychos who need to be shot.
I hope he wins the lawsuit, because maybe the city will stop hiring psychos for cops.
The fact that these 6 monsters were finally caught does not seem to matter to the people who elected the sheriff, who still is in charge.
He wasn't put on trial, although I don't know why-he was the person who looked the other way while his deputies did depraved monstrous things to unsuspecting citizens.
Perhaps the voters will remember that fact next time they have elections..
This story is not uncommon, nor really surprising.
Because there is this:
"In most states, hospitals and debt buyers can sue patients to collect on unpaid medical bills. Three states limit when hospitals and/or collections agencies can initiate legal action.Sep 7, 2023"
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2023/sep/state-protections-medical-debt-policies-across-us
At least you were able to pay your bill. Those people who cannot often end up with medical debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy.
I'm timing mine out-after 7 years they have to expunge it from the credit records.
Our healthcare system is the worst in the world and then we wonder why people end up homeless...
We all know it, and Musk's driving it right into the ground at 800 mph-but it's not affecting most of us because we've already moved on.
If it was his intention to destroy Twitter, he's certainly succeeded.
It'll be a husk of itself in the next year, and then Musk will whine, "I thought I could make it run better! Why did it fail?"
Clueless to the end.
This is why you don't let selfish billionaires take over media without knowing what they're doing.
Billions of dollars wasted down the drain, for a cesspool that desperately needed draining.
It's drained now.
I've been watching the demise of Twitter with bemused indifference. It's burning down all its' bridges before they cross them, and I'm pretty amused by that.
So when I heard about Mastodon, I hied over there and registered.
Now, I'm an average American of average intellect (ok, so I'm lying, being on BestNetTech is not for average intellects, so help us heaven) but I don't understand what is so hard about finding your way around it.
I figured out how to set up an instance and my home page, etc. It's not hard at all if you're interested in a customized experience.
Sure, there are some limitations (and Mike has cited them all) but it's a damn sight better and more relaxing to be on Mastodon without fearing being swamped by Trump apologists and fascists of every stripe on your feed.
I'm also signed up with Elk, which is a streamlined alternative.
Blue Sky just smacks of another attempt of getting back at Twitter and Musk for having destroyed the pig stye it was.
Yeah, all the media are there and noted other people.
But that does not save Twitter from being a hole in a ground which is not worth saving.
And I don't know why anyone is still on there. It's a vast wasteland of stupidity and hate.
For a few months, it appeared that Parler would actually succeed, and panic ensued.
Then someone noticed nobody but nutcases were on there whining about TFG losing the election, it became obvious there wasn't enough money in the world to keep it going.
It should have been named "The Seventh level of Hell" for all the popularity it had.
I do wonder though if the Jan 6th decimated the audience, because that's where most of them hung out.
When nearly all of your audience is in prison, there is a problem collecting subscription fees, I understand.
Oh, well, no great loss to mankind.
Up where I live (in god's country or Maine as it's called) there's only a few providers of internet or cable systems.
One of them is Dish.
The other one is Spectrum which I hate with passion (and who would not if they're forced to pay for Fox Network?) and I pay right through the nose of it, but it sure beats being a customer of a company you pay the cost of the system for but can't even call them to complain that you can't even use their system.
That's a sheer dystopian 1st world problem.
Did anyone actually believe that ISPs would really voluntarily not resume normal operating conditions?
In spite of those lovely commercials they run saying "In these difficult times, we're here for you", which really should be reworded to include "just make sure you pay your bill because we don't give a damn if you're unemployed or broke."
The idea of being charitable was not written into their agreement with the FCC, merely that they wouldn't be too greedy while people are dying or children need to teleconference with their teachers because they're in quarantine.
Which is why I laughed when they said they would do it. Who's going to enforce a voluntary request?
Not a toothless,powerless and totally defanged FCC.
Because they know where their money is going and how effective their contributions to campaigns are. Those they buy stay bought.
It's written in the fine print on the bill you receive.
You can always tell the backstops to any discussion of white supremacist violence in the reasons that Republicans give for them:
Lack of family ties-I actually heard one Republican claim that having better family relations would do the trick. (maybe, but it's not high on the list of reasons)
Violent video games! Of course they're going to drag this old war horse out. Just because Japan and S.Korea have millions of players must mean that they're all gonna go insane tomorrow. Right.
Not enough guns-"Hey, let's just arm the people and it'll take care of itself." Sure. Texas is an open-carry state. Tell it to the families of the victims.
As an American I ask myself what did we do to deserve this hellscape with DT and the Republicans literally pointing to anything but assault weapons and white supremacist ideology.
But of course we won't mention the fact that the NRA gives millions in contributions to the GOP every election year.
Just this:
Jack Dorsey went to visit Donald Trump the other day. Donald Trump complained he was losing followers. Jack said nothing to dispel the notion that Donald Trump can do damn well whatever he wants and get away with it:
" The 1st Amendment doesn't apply to a businesses. Only government. Twitter can ban whomever they want, for any reason, or even no reason whatsoever. Businesses can do whatever they like on filtering and censoring."
This is true. I know that rule. But when Twitter is trying so terribly desperate to ban hate speech of any type, the most egregious tweeters are ignored and then the rest suffer the consequences.
Meanwhile, you can go on there and retweet all the hate you want and you'll get a pass. Say something even slightly naughty about a Republican bobble head and you get shut down.
I think Twitter's time in the limelight is over and overdue.
Another useless experiment in appealing to the masses-where the masses consist of trollbots and mass retweeters.
It's a wonder that they've not been hacked yet-unless you consider the Russian trollbots to be hacking it actively every day.
I, too, was recently banned by Twitter. It wasn't a racist, or incendiary thing, either.
I got banned for calling Tomi Lahren a 'blonde bimbo' (in the third person, no less) in a tweet.
My account was locked for having offended the community in whatever way it offended them.
No shit.
Twitter is real bad at this. I'm not apologizing to her or Twitter, nor am I going back.
They're banning the wrong people for the wrong reasons while Donald Trump can threaten entire groups of people or insult dead heroes to his heart's content.
Just don't describe his cult followers with nasty names or else you'll be banned, too.
They obviously have never heard of the 1st Amendment and if they have, they certainly don't prove it.
We, as the public, pay for the courts and their personnel, their electronics and everything else. It's about time we got something back for all the money we spend on the court system.
I hope it does see the light of day. Could have used it back in the day when I was paying for printing out reams of casework from courts. I couldn't afford it then, but had to pay for it because that's the way it was.
I wonder if the students had been boys, would they have been so willing to strip search them?
Smacks of small town pettiness, ignorance and sexual deviancy.In that kind of mental fog, boys can pass the test, while girls are sexually assaulted at will.
But still-didn't it occur to anyone involved that what they did was group gross sexual assault?
Nah, that's just too much to think about...and $50 was the price of stupidity.
Everyone should have been fired the second this happened. I hope the girls involved get the millions they deserve for having endured such a invasive breach of their constitutional rights.
Truly the update we needed!
This was a great updating on her column, which I think everyone should read at least once for knowing the enemy. It's brilliant. There are layers upon layers of people who will go or have gone MAGA-among which is the 'tradwife TikTok influencer (a twin sister of the other one you mentioned) who has gone that route. But this paragraph stands out above the rest of it: "MAGA appeals to people who need to feel special, who need enemies to blame, who need simple answers to complex problems. It attracts those who mistake confidence for competence, who confuse being loud with being right, who think that admitting uncertainty is weakness." All those Karens and Chads we've encountered in real life or read about are essentially MAGA. But you forgot one very important part about them: they're racist and sexist to the core. It's why we got Trump instead of that black prosecutor named Kamala Harris. Simple times appeals to MAGA's, when 'one knew their place in the world and didn't step over that line.' But one more quote, and this one is just as profound and it applies to MAGA. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” LBJ. He was right then and now.
Influencers and stupidity
So this guy did this stupid thing, and does he really, really believe that he got away with it? Cops (and that means ALL cops, federal, local, cartoon) have a nasty habit of remembering if you make them look bad. By broadcasting how 'smart' he was he just made himself a target the next time he gets pulled into the room to talk to them. He got out of his predicament this time, but the CBP have been literally kidnapping people off the street and they somehow end up in another state or country without ever having had a chance to talk to a lawyer. Don't tell me the CBP does not have institutional memory and that they did not keep records of what happened. If he goes out of the country again and comes back he might have another 'encounter' with them and then he'll find out what the term 'karma bites' means. He might not walk out of that interview free. Especially if he in the past has said that he identifies with a certain group that are not very popular right now or have been in the past. Another point the cop in that video states that everyone should remember: The cops can and do lie to suspects. It's standard procedure. They are encouraged to get them to talk. They will lie to them willingly and without any qualms whatsoever. They won't be punished for it. In fact, they'll get 'attaboy' for having gotten their confession without undue force. YOU are NOT allowed to lie to the cops. You WILL be prosecuted if they find out you did lie to them and one of the charges will be lying to the cops. And in the video both the professor and the cop tell how easy it is to make sure you lie and get caught. So yeah Hasan has gotten stupid. Anyone who follows his 'advice' is a bigger fool than he is. STFU and don't talk to cops-end of subject.
Saying things
I've been attempting to keep my language sort of clean, but believe me, I'm ALWAYS saying it. Every single day, hour and second. And for the record, FUCK DONALD TRUMP AND ALL WHO RIDE WITH HIM. There. I feel slightly better.
That Poem
You know the one that I mean. It's coming true as we write this. I've always said that ICE is just the fancy title for the American Gestapo. This is not getting better. And it's gonna get far far worse before we're through. just for fun, I'm gonna exercise my free speech rights here and now: F-47 is a curse word, not a new jet and I'm using it as one.
Cops misbehaving badly
I'm glad that this one victim got some reward for his suffering at the hands of these very corrupt bad cops. Just imagine how many have not and will never receive anything-Who are still in prison because of lying corrupt cops. Too many to count. If you're poor, or black or both, you're fucked when it comes to the power imbalance. And the worst part? The cops KNOW it.
Police Brutality
I wonder if there would be as much defending a cop if he shot an elderly blind person who was lost? I bet not. But they do that, too, because they're armed and they're more dangerous than most of the criminals on the streets-and they're always forgiven for shooting unarmed people because of the "imminent threat" to them. It reminds me of that rookie cop in "Police Academy" who went insane over guns. "Do we get guns yet?" I firmly believe there are far more psychos playing cops than there are psychos who need to be shot. I hope he wins the lawsuit, because maybe the city will stop hiring psychos for cops.
Nothing new under the sun
The fact that these 6 monsters were finally caught does not seem to matter to the people who elected the sheriff, who still is in charge. He wasn't put on trial, although I don't know why-he was the person who looked the other way while his deputies did depraved monstrous things to unsuspecting citizens. Perhaps the voters will remember that fact next time they have elections..
Be thankful for small mercies
This story is not uncommon, nor really surprising. Because there is this: "In most states, hospitals and debt buyers can sue patients to collect on unpaid medical bills. Three states limit when hospitals and/or collections agencies can initiate legal action.Sep 7, 2023" https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2023/sep/state-protections-medical-debt-policies-across-us At least you were able to pay your bill. Those people who cannot often end up with medical debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. I'm timing mine out-after 7 years they have to expunge it from the credit records. Our healthcare system is the worst in the world and then we wonder why people end up homeless...
Twitter sucks
We all know it, and Musk's driving it right into the ground at 800 mph-but it's not affecting most of us because we've already moved on. If it was his intention to destroy Twitter, he's certainly succeeded. It'll be a husk of itself in the next year, and then Musk will whine, "I thought I could make it run better! Why did it fail?" Clueless to the end. This is why you don't let selfish billionaires take over media without knowing what they're doing. Billions of dollars wasted down the drain, for a cesspool that desperately needed draining. It's drained now.
Mastodon not easy?
I've been watching the demise of Twitter with bemused indifference. It's burning down all its' bridges before they cross them, and I'm pretty amused by that. So when I heard about Mastodon, I hied over there and registered. Now, I'm an average American of average intellect (ok, so I'm lying, being on BestNetTech is not for average intellects, so help us heaven) but I don't understand what is so hard about finding your way around it. I figured out how to set up an instance and my home page, etc. It's not hard at all if you're interested in a customized experience. Sure, there are some limitations (and Mike has cited them all) but it's a damn sight better and more relaxing to be on Mastodon without fearing being swamped by Trump apologists and fascists of every stripe on your feed. I'm also signed up with Elk, which is a streamlined alternative. Blue Sky just smacks of another attempt of getting back at Twitter and Musk for having destroyed the pig stye it was. Yeah, all the media are there and noted other people. But that does not save Twitter from being a hole in a ground which is not worth saving. And I don't know why anyone is still on there. It's a vast wasteland of stupidity and hate.
Color me not brokenhearted
For a few months, it appeared that Parler would actually succeed, and panic ensued. Then someone noticed nobody but nutcases were on there whining about TFG losing the election, it became obvious there wasn't enough money in the world to keep it going. It should have been named "The Seventh level of Hell" for all the popularity it had. I do wonder though if the Jan 6th decimated the audience, because that's where most of them hung out. When nearly all of your audience is in prison, there is a problem collecting subscription fees, I understand. Oh, well, no great loss to mankind.
Ha ha, I'm not a customer
Up where I live (in god's country or Maine as it's called) there's only a few providers of internet or cable systems. One of them is Dish. The other one is Spectrum which I hate with passion (and who would not if they're forced to pay for Fox Network?) and I pay right through the nose of it, but it sure beats being a customer of a company you pay the cost of the system for but can't even call them to complain that you can't even use their system. That's a sheer dystopian 1st world problem.
So why pay for a luxury?
Did anyone actually believe that ISPs would really voluntarily not resume normal operating conditions?
In spite of those lovely commercials they run saying "In these difficult times, we're here for you", which really should be reworded to include "just make sure you pay your bill because we don't give a damn if you're unemployed or broke."
The idea of being charitable was not written into their agreement with the FCC, merely that they wouldn't be too greedy while people are dying or children need to teleconference with their teachers because they're in quarantine.
Which is why I laughed when they said they would do it. Who's going to enforce a voluntary request?
Not a toothless,powerless and totally defanged FCC.
Because they know where their money is going and how effective their contributions to campaigns are. Those they buy stay bought.
It's written in the fine print on the bill you receive.
Really fine print. Like invisible.
Anything but guns and hate
You can always tell the backstops to any discussion of white supremacist violence in the reasons that Republicans give for them:
As an American I ask myself what did we do to deserve this hellscape with DT and the Republicans literally pointing to anything but assault weapons and white supremacist ideology.
But of course we won't mention the fact that the NRA gives millions in contributions to the GOP every election year.
Banning assault weapons? What a silly idea!
One last comment to leave
Just this:
Jack Dorsey went to visit Donald Trump the other day. Donald Trump complained he was losing followers. Jack said nothing to dispel the notion that Donald Trump can do damn well whatever he wants and get away with it:
https://www.salon.com/2019/04/24/jack-dorsey-making-nice-with-donald-trump-shows-twitter-has-no-interest-in-curbing-abusive-content/
" The 1st Amendment doesn't apply to a businesses. Only government. Twitter can ban whomever they want, for any reason, or even no reason whatsoever. Businesses can do whatever they like on filtering and censoring."
This is true. I know that rule. But when Twitter is trying so terribly desperate to ban hate speech of any type, the most egregious tweeters are ignored and then the rest suffer the consequences.
Meanwhile, you can go on there and retweet all the hate you want and you'll get a pass. Say something even slightly naughty about a Republican bobble head and you get shut down.
I think Twitter's time in the limelight is over and overdue.
Another useless experiment in appealing to the masses-where the masses consist of trollbots and mass retweeters.
It's a wonder that they've not been hacked yet-unless you consider the Russian trollbots to be hacking it actively every day.
Which the Mueller Report did. In detail.
Banning and locking
I, too, was recently banned by Twitter. It wasn't a racist, or incendiary thing, either.
I got banned for calling Tomi Lahren a 'blonde bimbo' (in the third person, no less) in a tweet.
My account was locked for having offended the community in whatever way it offended them.
No shit.
Twitter is real bad at this. I'm not apologizing to her or Twitter, nor am I going back.
They're banning the wrong people for the wrong reasons while Donald Trump can threaten entire groups of people or insult dead heroes to his heart's content.
Just don't describe his cult followers with nasty names or else you'll be banned, too.
They obviously have never heard of the 1st Amendment and if they have, they certainly don't prove it.
About time!
We, as the public, pay for the courts and their personnel, their electronics and everything else. It's about time we got something back for all the money we spend on the court system.
I hope it does see the light of day. Could have used it back in the day when I was paying for printing out reams of casework from courts. I couldn't afford it then, but had to pay for it because that's the way it was.
Not really a failure
True, it's a huge waste of time and energy-but it does say alot about this country.
We haven't turned into a nation of paranoid crazies wanting to turn in our neighbors for being immigrants.
No, just the aliens we saw in the backyard last night. It's a joke, and an expensive one, but at least we're not taking it seriously. (yet).
It also proves that ICE should be abolished.
However, we still have people calling cops on others for being alive and black. That's a real problem.
Girls will be searched
I wonder if the students had been boys, would they have been so willing to strip search them?
Smacks of small town pettiness, ignorance and sexual deviancy.In that kind of mental fog, boys can pass the test, while girls are sexually assaulted at will.
But still-didn't it occur to anyone involved that what they did was group gross sexual assault?
Nah, that's just too much to think about...and $50 was the price of stupidity.
Everyone should have been fired the second this happened. I hope the girls involved get the millions they deserve for having endured such a invasive breach of their constitutional rights.