Chicago Court Gets Its Prior Restraint On, Tells Police Union Head To STFU About City's Vaccine Mandate
from the please-don't-make-me-side-with-this-asshole dept
The Chicago PD -- fronted by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) [itself fronted by John Catanzara, "one of the most frequently-disciplined officers in the history of the Chicago PD"] -- is fighting the city of Chicago's vaccine mandate.
Yes, the thin blue line between criminals and the safety of the public has decided it will not stand between the spread of the virus and the safety of the public. Or, indeed, the safety of its officers, apparently. As COVID-19 continues to kill more officers five times faster than gunfire, Chicago PD officers have decided they'd rather die from something preventable than receive a vaccine.
Disgraced-officer-turned-police-union-president John Catanzara is the one making the most noise about the city's mandate and is weaponizing the PD's lack of self-care against the mayor and the city itself.
Officers in Chicago had a deadline of midnight Thursday to disclose their vaccine status to the city or be placed on unpaid leave, Catanzara said. Lightfoot said the city would take the weekend to check with officers who haven't complied before putting them on unpaid leave, and that she didn't think that would happen Saturday or Sunday. Lightfoot said officers should report for duty until they're told by supervisors that they've been placed on leave.
"If we suspect the numbers are true and we get a large number of our members who stand firm on their beliefs that this is an overreach, and they're not going to supply the information in the portal or submit to testing, then it's safe to say the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50% or less for this weekend coming up," Catanzara said. "That is not because of the FOP, that is 100% because of the mayor's unwillingness to budge from her hard line. So whatever happens because of the manpower issue, that falls at the mayor's doorstep."
The city apparently takes this threat seriously. It has asked a Cook County (IL) court for an injunction to block the FOP from speaking out against the vaccine mandate, which covers all city workers. The FOP has sued right back, seeking an injunction blocking the city from enforcing the mandate. In the meantime, the PD itself has cancelled all vacation and time off requests to ensure staffing once the mandate goes into effect.
The resistance against the mandate is inexplicable, given the alarming number of law enforcement deaths the virus has caused. Law enforcement agencies demand tougher laws and increased funding every time there's a spike in officer deaths at the hands of suspected criminals. But when it's a preventable disease doing the killing, cops would rather go jobless than be inoculated.
This resistance is being led by a man who's mostly known for violating rights and running his mouth. If Catanzara truly speaks for the Chicago PD rank-and-file, perhaps a 50% layoff isn't a bad idea, especially if the city can restock with new officers who aren't already accustomed/resigned to the PD's long history of brutality, violence, rights violations, and nonexistent oversight. Then again, you'd think the rank-and-file would want to continue trying to get a handle on increasing gun violence in the city, given the oft-stated concerns about public safety.
But none of that makes this an acceptable interim outcome. The litigation crossfire has resulted in an additional violation of rights.
A judge late Friday issued a temporary restraining order against the Chicago police union president, prohibiting him from making public statements that encourage members not to report their COVID-19 vaccine status to the city.
Cook County Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan ruled there was potential irreparable harm if local Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara persisted in making such statements. City attorneys argued they were tantamount to him advocating “sedition” and “anarchy” because he was directing members to disobey an order from their superiors.
Catanzara's agitating may be aggravating and annoying but it is not "sedition" or "anarchy." His statements may run contrary to the city's wishes but he should be free to make them. He has not actually called for strike (which is forbidden by the PD's contract) but rather suggested officers' should refuse requests for vaccination status and memorialize these interactions via body cam if possible. Catanzara has also speculated that more than half the police force will no longer be employed if a COVID vaccination is a job requirement. This court order appears to be prior restraint -- something impermissible even with the city's obvious interest in ensuring the safety of its employees.
That being said, maybe Chicago police officers should do the thing they're always telling citizens to do: comply, comply, comply. If it appears rights are being violated, members of the public are expected to take their lumps first and sue about it later. That's what the PD should do here: supply the PD with their vaccination status and get aggrieved later -- that's if they care at all about being the thin blue line standing between the innocent public and violent criminals.
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Filed Under: chicago, covid, free speech, police unions, prior restraint, vaccine mandate, vaccines
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The most deadly disease in this country is stupidity, it's reached epidemic proportions, and unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any cure or even an effective treatment for it.
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The cure is already here
Tut, tut, nonsense! COVID is an effective stupidity treatment. The vast majority of victims today are unvaccinated.
Of course a fraction of those folks are unable to be vaccinated, but it is highly unlikely those folks are gunning for a HCA.
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Re: The cure is already here
I'd be all for this if COVID was a little more targeted, but sadly it has a habit of taking out innocent victims along with the people who demand it come take them.
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Re:
You have half of it.
The other half is unmitigated arrogance.
To quote Londo Mollari : Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you.
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Re:
The US Congress is exempt from the Corona vaccine mandate, but go on…
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Re: Re:
And in California, the prison guards are exempt from the vax mandate because they have a powerful union that helped the governor defeat his recall.
But it's all about the science...
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No... Please... Come back...
Oh noes, anti-vaxxers might no longer be paid by the city and won't just be put on paid leave, what a horrible outcome that is definitely worse than having potential plague carriers interacting with the public in close quarters.
Yeah, 'we refuse to get vaccinated and won't do our jobs if you try to demand it' is not the threat they think it is. That said the judge really screwed up here, giving them a legitimate gripe to whine about rather than the self-serving fictional ones they were employing before so hopefully they come to their senses and realize they overstepped or have a higher court smack them down on this.
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Re: No... Please... Come back...
We're at the scapegoating stage of the slide into fascism:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Extreme-nationalism#ref219382
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Would you like to try again?
Ah yes, blaming the jews in general for all of life's problems is just like blaming the individuals for their demonstrable actions(or inactions as it were) in refusing to take basic steps in order to safeguard the health and lives of those around them against an ongoing pandemic that's killed hundreds of thousands in the US alone, a very solid and honest comparison there.
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Re: Would you like to try again?
Yeah, i've been exposed to this claim lately.
1) Biden / the Libs, in order to do a thing, need to create a scapegoat, just like the Nazis did.
2) FEMA camps. (These are back in style again.)
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Re: Re: Would you like to try again?
"Yeah, i've been exposed to this claim lately."
I wonder why you'd then go on to prove that claim correct in your next sentence?
The nazis did horrible things to people born as an ethnic minority.
No matter what is done to the anti-vaxxers it will be done because those anti-vaxxers chose to endanger everyone else.
That you don't see much of a difference is basically taking a shit on some six million graves plus change.
Even if every anti-vaxxer was rounded up and incarcerated it would be no more objectionable in principle than the idea of putting everyone pulling a DUI in the slammer until they stop being a road hazard.
Finally I do take note that by your own argument George Washington was a nazi because he forced his army to take their vaccines.
So not only are you a horrible asshole for pulling the nazi comparison between scapegoating jews and incarcerating those deliberately endangering the public, you are also a moron for doubling down on that malicious nonsense.
Just admit the truth to yourself - nothing matters to you except your idea that <party A> is evil. Facts be damned if they show otherwise.
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Re: Re: Re: Would you like to try again?
"I wonder why you'd then go on to prove that claim correct in your next sentence?"
I could be wrong, but I read that as being him listing the claims, not necessarily agreeing with them.
"That you don't see much of a difference is basically taking a shit on some six million graves plus change."
Well, 6 million in the Nazi analogy (more, actually, since that number only counts the Jews killed in the holocaust and not the many other groups they murdered on the way to that goal), then an additional 5 million or so who have died from COVID so far. IMHO, any fight against basic common sense public health measures means that the people who have died so far have died in vain and every new body added to the total is blood on their hands.
"Even if every anti-vaxxer was rounded up and incarcerated it would be no more objectionable in principle than the idea of putting everyone pulling a DUI in the slammer until they stop being a road hazard."
What's amazing is that, at least as far as I'm aware, no such proposal has seriously been made. The most extreme measure being proposed are the vaccine mandates, which are essentially just new rules for employment that people can choose to abide by or find other employment, which happens on a regular basis with all sorts of training and legal measures in all sorts of companies.
That the people most loudly against these measures are people who work directly in close proximity to the public in roles that are supposed to be protecting them (police, firefighters) or in roles that already require a wide range of vaccinations to be employed in the first place (military, nursing) just boggles the mind.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Would you like to try again?
"That the people most loudly against these measures are people who work directly in close proximity to the public in roles that are supposed to be protecting them (police, firefighters) or in roles that already require a wide range of vaccinations to be employed in the first place (military, nursing) just boggles the mind."
And then the talking point by GOP morons is "this is nazism! Herp Derp!".
I'm sure every jew in the US is just thrilled to see the gottverdammte endlösung compared to employers forcing their employees not to be walking health hazards.
There is no salvaging that nation. Full idiocracy is a matter of when, not if.
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Re: Re: Re: Would you like to try again?
Yep, as PaulIT says below, i was listing stupid shit people say. Maybe i could have been clearer. Also, i'm not the person who started this thread branch, if that helps.
That people compare mask or vaccine mandates by governments in some situations, or businesses for their employees, is being touted as being like Nazi history, scapegoating people who "are just standing up for their freedomz".
"FEMA camps" are not nor have ever been a thing.
I have exactly zero arguments against anything you stated, other than i don't believe that horrifying shit against which you spoke.
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Blaming a specific ethnic group for all the world’s ills only because said ethnic group exists is scapegoating. Blaming the stand-alone complex that is the anti-vaxxer/maskhole brigade for helping keep a viral pandemic alive because they’re helping keep said viral pandemic alive is putting the blame where it belongs.
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Re:
Sorry Stephen, you're using the wrong dictionary. Remember this is Trump bizarro-land speaking, so "scapegoating" actually means what you would call "blaming the guilty". Just like "truth" means anything I believe Today, no matter what I will tomorrow or did yesterday. And "fake news" means "anything I don't like or shows that I'm wrong".
This is the crowd that support fox, where they showed an infographic of deaths from covid in 2020 versus 2021, implying that Biden oversaw around 70,000 more covid deaths than Trump did, ignoring that Trump was president in early 2021, so he actually oversaw more than 100,000 more covid deaths than Biden did, even ignoring the people who contracted covid under Trump but died under Biden and also ignoring that the pandemic is being kept alive in the US by Trumpist anti-maskers and anti-vaxers.
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Re: Re: No... Please... Come back...
But Trumps not president any longer bro...
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Re: Re: No... Please... Come back...
Sorry, I lost my trumper-to-sanity dictionary.
Could you explain how correctly noting that people doing explicitly dangerous things of their own free will is related to people being scapegoated for their ethnicity?
I know that victimhood and projection are the tools being used, but it's a little too early in the morning to be doing this much stretching myself.
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Re: No... Please... Come back...
If you're acting hysterical over cops and nurses and airline employees who don't want to get vaccinated but you have no problem with Biden's wide-open border, where hundreds of thousands of illegals are flooding into the nation at positive rates of 8-10%, and the government is making no effort to even test them, let alone mandate they take a vaccine, then...
Sit down. You have no credibility on this issue.
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Re: Re: No... Please... Come back...
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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The vaccine does nothing to stop the "spread of the virus". We've known that since July.
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Re:
Of course, that's why so many diseases still ravage the planet with death tolls no different today than in the 1900's, because vaccines just don't work and it's all a song and dance that the entire medical industry(among numerous others) has bought into.
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Re:
A proper peer reviewed study is required to support that conclusion, and without it you are spreading misinformation.
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Re: Re:
CDC Director Walensky: "What our vaccines can't do anymore is prevent transmission". - August 6 2021
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Re: Re: Re:
An unsourced single sentence without any context, well I mean that's practically the same thing as a peer reviewed study so well done delivering as requested.
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Re: Re: Re:
Which is not quite what you claimed. Indeed it has always been known that the vaccine was not perfect, but it does reduce the chances of getting infected, and if infected greatly reduces the chances of dying.
It has to be said that your apparent understanding of science and how it works is just enough for you to be misled in a fashion that makes you a danger to yourself and others.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
The quote is correct - in that because so many shitheads are refusing to follow basic public health guidelines (not just refusing to get vaccinated, but also refusing to do things like wear masks, social distance, etc.) that many places are going to miss out on hitting targets where vaccines alone will be able to stem transmission.
Meanwhile, even though they're still cautious in terms of how the winter, immigration and long term antibody presence will affect things going forward, Portugal's biggest worry as they continue to return to normal life is that they've basically run out of the people vaccinate:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/30/portugal-vaccination-covid/
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Dying is not the same as getting infected.
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Re: Re: Re:
If you are unvaccinated, you WILL get COVID.
If you are vaccinated, you have a small chance of getting COVID.
Choose wisely...nevermind you didn't chose wisely.
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Re: Re: Re:
Would you mind sharing the context, because I have a feeling that the reason the quote is so short is because you removed the context that indicates why you're full of shit...
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Re:
I offer you scholar.google.com to find this misinformation...well....lie.
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Let’s assume you’re correct in your assumption, in that the vaccine may not completely stop the spread of the virus. The vaccine still hinders the spread of the virus, though—and any form of COVID-19 spread through vaccinated people will most likely be weakened due to the vaccine.
Now, what do you think will happen if enough people are vaccinated against the virus, such that it has few-to-no new victims to infect and no way to properly mutate into new (and possibly deadlier) variants?
Also, if you think vaccines don’t eventually stop diseases, please go look up polio.
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Re:
The first round of polio vaccines didn't go so well. In fact it actually caused 40,000 cases of polio, 200 children were paralyzed and killed ten. Let's hope our first covid vaccines have better success. See Cutter incident here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
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Re: Re:
Uh, zero deaths or covid infections from the vaccine out of 6.76 billion doses given.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
4,944,531 deaths from COVID
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
0 vs 4,944,531. Gee I wonder which one wins?
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Re: Re: Re:
Zero? Really?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Learn to context. Zero as in zero people getting COVID from the vaccine itself.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Who is arguing that the Covid vaccine is giving people Covid?
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You should definitely try digging up this time chummer.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Probably the idiot who responded to a post saying that there's been zero death from vaccination with an article about breakthrough cases (i.e. cases that happened despite the vaccination, not because of it) as if it were a counterpoint to the claim.
You should have a word with him, he doesn't seem to understand context.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Check the gravatars - he (/she) is that same idiot.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I knew that ;) The sarcasm was heavy there, at least in my mind when I wrote it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's people who get sick despite being vaccinated, not people infected by the vaccine.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Charting the overlap between those who say the vaccine is bad and those with capacity for rational thought requires an Euler diagram.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually, I find that some of them are, you just have to inject facts into the conversation. For example, I have alleviated a friend of her concerns about how quickly the mRNA vaccines were developed by pointing out that the majority of the research and testing took place before this specific coronavirus came about, it was just the financial and regulatory steps that sped thing up in this instance.
People aren't necessarily a lost cause, it's just difficult right now because people have tied misinformation to their political and social identities.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Given those criteria I first thought there could be no overlap but I quickly came to the conclusion there is one and it mostly contains grifters and dishonest assholes with an agenda.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"HE SHOOTS... HE SCORES! ANOTHER OWN-GOAL FOR TEAM ANTIVAX!!!"
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Re: Re:
Wild polio causes paralysis in 0.1 to 0.5% of infected so even there the vaccine was an improvement over catching the wild versions.
Taking isolated papers and reports, and especially those that justify an anti vaccine stance, is not the way to evaluate a vaccine, you need to read much more widely.
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Re: Re: Re:
They didn't even really do that, the report they linked to might have covered a botched vaccine but when compared to the 'normal' numbers even the ones they provided pale in comparison. 10 dead is a terrible thing to be sure but compared to 2400 it's barely a blip.
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Re: Re:
... did you read your own link before posting it, because it does not say what you seem to think it does.
While the botched vaccine and the victims from it are certainly tragic the alternative is a lot uglier.
He reminds us that, within a decade of Karl Landsteiner's identification of the polio virus in 1908, an epidemic in New York killed 2400 people (mostly children) and left thousands more with a life-long disability. In the 1950s, summer outbreaks in the USA caused tens of thousands of cases, leaving hundreds paralysed or dead. 'Second only to the atomic bomb', polio was `the thing that Americans feared the most'.
And as for modern vaccines...
The Cutter incident had an ambivalent legacy. On the one hand, it led to the effective federal regulation of vaccines, which today enjoy a record of safety `unmatched by any other medical product'.
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Re: Self selecting population decline
It's hilarious watching these antivax idiots score own-goal after own-goal. You'd think they'd learn eventually. But (un)fortunately they keep keeling over dead before they are able to learn from their mistakes.
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Re: Re: Self selecting population decline
It's the strangest form of own goal at that as this is not the first time I've seen an anti-vaxxer point to a study or article that directly refutes their claims as though it supported them and in fact that seems to crop up on a regular basis.
It's one thing to provide bad evidence or try to avoid providing any evidence, another to make an appeal to authority by pointing to an authority that doesn't agree with you.
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Re: Re: Re:
"... did you read your own link before posting it, because it does not say what you seem to think it does. "
Of course he didn't. He was probably provided that link on some anti-vaxx echo chamber where they all wave links to studies around. If any of them actually read what those links lead to they'd have an inkling that either it doesn't show what they thought it would show or it will turn out to be a webpage written by some snake oil salesman who's either not a doctor or who has had their license to practice revoked for being a nutjob.
It's interesting to note that very few of the older generation are that sceptic about vaccines because they remember polio.
My own parents both recall polio. Neighbors devastated one of their children got it, classrooms where one or two people sat where they wouldn't have to move too far to get to the door because they were partially paralyzed, and you couldn't move out-of-doors without encountering someone with crutches or in a wheelchair.
This generation grew up with the good fortune of the Salk vaccine having eradicated that terror - and now busily marginalize vaccination from the privileged position of having inherited a society safeguarded by those vaccines they now spurn.
I think we should give these benighted fuckwits what they want. Evict them from society and put them all on some island where they can dwell without having to encounter any of the horrors of modern medicine and science. Their malicious bad faith alone has cost the US 600k dead which would all, statistically, be alive even if the government had done nothing but sit on their hands.
Instead they made infecting others and risky living a pledge of allegiance to whatever tinpot Qanon conspiracy nonsense they saw fit to believe in.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"It's interesting to note that very few of the older generation are that sceptic about vaccines because they remember polio."
Well, the older generation are in higher risk groups either purely through age or the comorbidities that come with it, so that also plays a part.
But, you don't have to be that old. My uncle has spent his life with his right arm being completely withered by polio as a child. He overcame this and managed to have a good career and is enjoying a nice retirement, but I'm guessing he would have preferred a vaccine if it had been available then. As far as I'm aware, there's no vaccine "hesitancy" in my extended family.
This seems to be a big problem with anti-vaxxers generally and not just due to COVID - because they and everyone they grew up with were vaccinated as children, they were spared the horrors of the actual diseases, and so some selfish morons have come to believe that because they didn't experience it themselves then that means the diseases aren't a real problem. Hopefully this will correct itself soon and we'll be spared the daily/weekly story of "person spreading misinformation on social media begged for vaccination on his death bed, but it was too late by then".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hopefully this will correct itself soon and we'll be spared the daily/weekly story of "person spreading misinformation on social media begged for vaccination on his death bed, but it was too late by then".
With a body count in the six digits range in the US alone and anti-vaxxers still being a thing at this point I suspect/worry that that's simply not possible and they've dug themselves so deeply into the 'everyone outside the nurgle cult are in on the greatest lie in history/so long as it doesn't affect me I don't care' mindset that the only thing that will change their mind is if they or someone very close to them catch it and die as a result, and even then I wouldn't put high odds on the latter doing the trick if the body wasn't theirs.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Maybe. Many stories about recent vaccine mandates seem to suggest that when faced with actual visible consequences of not getting vaccinated, the majority of people drop their objections rather quickly. There's a lot of claims that they will quit beforehand, but when they have to make an actual decision, a lot of the people threatening to quit do get the vaccine. Many stories I've read recently suggest that it's usually less than 1% of the workforce who are either quit or fired.
How this plays out long term is open to debate of course, but the signs appear to be that mandates are working, both in terms of getting people vaccinated and in terms of stopping people who present a risk to the people they work with being in a position to infect them directly.
The main concern for me, as always, is that the people who have turned this into a "freedumb" issue and decided that their right to infect people is more important than the rights of others not to be infected, might decide to take more direct violent action before this is all over. People have been murdered for asking them to put a mask on, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone who recently got fired decided to start shooting.
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It’s kind of darkly hilarious: If the anti-vaxxers and the maskholes hadn’t fought against the actions being mandated back when those actions were voluntary, they wouldn’t have any mandates to fight against.
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Re:
Yes, that's why this whole thing is so depressing. They're so obsessed with "freedom", they've made themselves less free than people who did the things asked of them.
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Re: Re:
Warning: Dude, get out of the house, it's on fire and about to collapse!
Response: Screw you, you can't tell me what to do. Oppression! Overreach!
Warning: It's just two steps, we can argue about it later if you like.
Response: [posts conspiracy theories to fav online spots]
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
My first YouTube video.
I guess I'm one of those older folks. Though my increased vulnerability isn't the ONLY reason I support masks and vaccines. Unlike some, I actually care about other people.
P.S. My wearing a mask reduces the chance of spread if I'm infected. I wear a mask to protect YOU, not so much me.
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Re:
Well, the current SCIENTIFIC position is that it is highly likely that all breakout infections come from unvaccinated people. This has not yet been conclusively shown, but there is evidence that points strongly in that direction.
You've heard of SCIENCE, haven't you? You know, it's that thing you hate because it sides with reality rather than whatever dingbat crazy idea you current adhere to.
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Re: Re:
"...all breakout infections come from unvaccinated people.."
Can you cite your source for that claim?
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Re: Re: Re:
You're a big fan of the CDC apparently so I'll point to the numbers they're providing. To avoid triggering the spam filter I'll just post the summary but if you want to check the source scroll up to TaboToka's comment and it's the first link they posted.
-For all adults aged 18 years and older, the cumulative COVID-19-associated hospitalization rate was about 12-times higher in unvaccinated persons.
-Although weekly rates can vary, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults ages 18–49 years was about 14-times higher than fully vaccinated adults aged 18–49 years.
-Although weekly rates can vary widely, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults ages 50–64 years was about 15-times higher than fully vaccinated adults aged 50–64 years.
-Although weekly rates can vary widely, the cumulative rate of COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in unvaccinated adults ages 65 years and older was about 9-times higher than fully vaccinated adults ages 65 years and older.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Where did Bart go?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm still here waiting for proof that "...all breakout infections come from unvaccinated people.."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm still here but the moderators won't let me respond to this verifiably false misinformation:
"...all breakout infections come from unvaccinated people.."
Let me know when you find a source for that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
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Put down the cross other people need the wood
Yeah, that's called a 'spam filter' and is the reason I didn't post a link in my comment, because comments with links have higher odds of being caught by the filter and it can take a bit for staff to clear it from the pile.
It has nothing to do with you and you're much better off dropping the assumption because holding on to it is just going to get you laughed at by anyone who's been on TD a while and seen what is allowed to be posted(including other plague rats in the past).
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Re: I know logics not your thing but...
You could have responded, instead of responding that you can't respond, ya know.
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Shhh honey, the adults are talking.
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The vaccine does nothing to stop the "spread of the virus". We've known that since July.
I mean literally yesterday yet another study proved this to be bullshit.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2113864
Get the fuck out of here with your plague spreading nonsense.
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Then you wouldn't mind sharing the evidence. Something sourced from non-conspiracy sources that accounts for the massive drop in infection rates in many highly vaccinated populations would be nice.
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Actually this peer reviewed study shows no correlation between vaccination rates and rates of infection. I can't believe that 3 months after the new CDC guidance that people STILL think the vaccine means you can't transmit the virus:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
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And you have conveniently ignored this line line the paper
Just selecting the bits that say what you want is fundamentally dishonest.
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[study co-author] Subramanian told PolitiFact:
"Concluding from this analysis that vaccines are useless is misleading and inaccurate. Rather, the analysis supports vaccination as an important strategy for reducing infection and transmission, along with handwashing, mask-wearing, proper ventilation and physical distancing."
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We can already see you lack reading comprehension, you don't need to keep proving it.
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As others have pointed out, you might want to try reading links before you post them. However:
"I can't believe that 3 months after the new CDC guidance that people STILL think the vaccine means you can't transmit the virus"
I agree with you here. Anyone who understands the science should not think this and it's depressing that some people have convinced themselves that the vaccine is an immortality shield rather than a safety net.
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Vaccine not the only issue...
and
I suspect there will be a few officers in the "Cancel my time off that was scheduled 6 months in advance? Let me make a few calls to other nearby cities..."
Crap jobs are crap. Bartenders aren't the only ones with crap working conditions.
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Re: Vaccine not the only issue...
Only with police departments, the cops are the ones 99% responsible for any crappiness involved in their crap job.
Sure, they can ring up nearby cities. But this is the same thing that would happen in any industry where a chunk of the workforce is out for whatever reason. Vacations get cancelled.
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If only the mortality rate was 75%.
"My officers and I stand firm in not complying with the vaccine mandate! All 250 of us thud, 249 of us will no longer, thud 248 of us. The 248 of us see this overreach as thud. Dammit, Ok, the 230 of us thud. Here have some horse medicine...oh he's dead too. I stand by my 175thud4 officers." -John Catanzara
thud
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skr6wpsiWI8
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I've often said with this pandemic, it's a shame that COVID manifests itself with "flu-like" symptoms. It would probably be over with long before now if something externally manifested like smallpox.
The problem isn't the mortality rate, it's the fact that people are able to merrily spread it while denying they have it.
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I think it is less the deniability and more the vanity involved. Studies found warning of tanning causing wrinkles deterred people from heavilly tanning with booths more than emphasizing skin cancer. To be fair it may also be a frame of reference issue - you can know what it is like to feel ugly by first hand experience but you cannot know what it is like to die firsthand while being capable of making decisions.
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It's none of the government's business to know your medical history or information yet this is exactly what government and the courts are trying to involve themselves in. Do they honestly think the FOP is going to say nothing to their members? This is going to backfire in an epic fashion.
Can anyone say 'Streisand Effect'?
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Re:
This is not a case of the Streisand Effect. That's where someone's objection to something they want to keep secret draws more attention to the thing. There's nothing not public going on here.
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I mean for me, anything that puts police in a bad light and gets us closer to #abolishthepolice.
That reads good in any book. Even if it takes a scam to get the blinders off.
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Is it a "strike"?
Generally speaking, in the labor context, a concerted refusal to perform job duties would be covered by the no-strike clause in a collective bargaining agreement (I confess I have not read the CBA between the police union and Chicago), and again generally speaking, an employer can obtain injunctive relief against a union for fomenting an illegal strike. If employees believe that their rights are being violated, the general rule (related to the point in the last graf of your article) is "obey and grieve."
(Saith the former labor lawyer)
Beyond that, public employee laws in many states limit the ability of public employees, especially police officers, to engage in strikes. I don't know enough about Illinois law to know what the public employee laws say on that subject.
But perhaps these are angles that you ought to explore in writing further about this controversy
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History says otherwise
Ignore science, and history, all you want.
Natural immunity does exist.
Ignore human rights all your want.
You’re asking people to inject a virus. Dead, partial, or otherwise.
The “left” wants this to be a political thing.
The rest of us see reality.
Fact: those who get vaccinated after contraction are 70pm% more likely to suffer Severe complications if infected with a variant post vax
Fact: transmission of the virus is less than 1:1000000” to previously vaccinated from unvaccinated.
Fact: greater than 80% of Post-06/21 US deaths from the virus are non-vaccinated
Again—shut up and let them die!
Dems especially should stfu 🤫 🤬 😑
99% of anti-vaxers are Republicans!
The loss of one innocent per 100 is an acceptable loss.
As long as vax requirements maintain medical exemption bypasses I’m all for letting dumbfucks die!
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No, they don’t. They want this to be over.
The GOP and its voter base are the people politicizing every step, every measure, every request-turned-mandate meant to curb the spread of a deadly virus. They’re the ones who fought and continue to fight facemasks, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and anything else the government (and any good, decent, cares-about-society person) knows will help end the pandemic sooner.
If you have a problem with that, blame the guy you voted for in 2016 and 2020. He’s the one who politicized every measure meant to curb the spread of COVID-19 and acted like nothing was happening even as thousands of people died every day. He’s the one who shat on and shunned science and expertise in favor of his own hubris and ignorance. He’s the one who ultimately led his followers to the cliff of mis- and disinformation, then let them jump off it without giving a damn about anyone but himself.
And if you have a problem with me “making this political” by pointing all of that out, I don’t care. I’m not here to comfort your pro-Trump biases or fellate your ignorance. I’m here to point out the truth: Donald Trump made the pandemic worse by politicizing every measure and step meant to curb the pandemic (including getting the vaccine), his cult-like fanbase took his lead regardless of the consequences (including their own deaths), and “the left” is waiting for all of those idiots to either die or get the vaccine so shit can go back to some reasonable sense of “normal”.
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You mean like how the Vice President said she would not take any vaccine developed under the Trump administration prior to her election?
How about stop blabbing and just let them die?
Did you get the vaccinations? Do you have a mask on?
Things are, generally, back to relative normal. At least outside of hyper-liberal controlled cities.
They’re not going to get the vaccination. Give up already! Just wait for them to drop dead and carry on!
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I know this is hard for you to understand, but I actually care about other people and don’t generally want other people to die—even those who, say, oppose my right to live as an openly queer person.
Yeah, it’s not like hundreds of people are dying of COVID every day any more~. It’s not like people are still protesting masking, vaccinations, and other such public health measures~. Nope, it’s all back to normal outside of “blue” cities~. Liberals are the ones extending the pandemic by refusing to do things that risk public health, yep, that’s right~.
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You’re still focusing on a lost cause. If they aren’t vaccinated by now they won’t be getting it.
It’s that simple.
About the only way you could get them vaccinated is to round them up and forcefully inject them. And then what what kind of country would we be if we did that.
It’s an absolutely pointless fight!
That aside, store are open. People are buying what is on the shelves, when there’s something to buy, that is.
Life moves on.
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…says the guy still standing up for the people who called for the execution of the sitting Vice President over a legal and fair election result.
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Re:
Your need to intentionally twist my comments into alternative views… grr.
A) I doubt that the hang Pence people were literal.
B) if they were they’re scum sucking maggots.
C) it’s protected speech. Even if it’s abhorrent.
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I don’t need to do that. Your available-to-everyone comment history speaks for itself.
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"I doubt that the hang Pence people were literal"
Sure, I mean if you ignore all their publicly stated comments and the actions they took, you can come up with all sorts of excuses.
"if they were they’re scum sucking maggots"
Yes. Which is why they're being prosecuted within the law and people are trying not to allow such people to have another opportunity to reverse a massive loss from the former con artist in chief.
"t’s protected speech. Even if it’s abhorrent."
It stopped being mere speech when they violently attacked the seat of government with the express intention of overturning democracy. Nobody's being prosecuted for speech, they're being prosecuted for what they did.
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Re: Re:
"About the only way you could get them vaccinated is to round them up and forcefully inject them."
That would be wrong, which is why we're instead saying "if you can't take basic public health measures, you don't get to work with the public any more". For some reason, the eternal victims have a problem with them not being able t infect people...
"That aside, store are open. People are buying what is on the shelves, when there’s something to buy, that is"
Yep, everyone is better off without Typhoid Mary behind the till, even if there's other problems in existence.
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You appear to have the wrong impression on my thoughts on vax mandates.
I support them. No vax, no job.
Goes along with my support for a vax passport and my view on rolling out RealID to every citizen and linking vax status to the barcode. No vax no enter. Sounds good to me.
I’m only against mandating a person get vaccinated. I have no problem with requiring vaccination to do anything in the real world.
Now: I do have an issue with requiring a business to be vax enforced.
I a business owner doesn’t want to be vaxed and doesn’t want to be masked you get the government to plaster the black skull on the door, warning everyone of the status. And the public will choose how to deal with such a business.
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You’re an avowed Trump supporter; forgive us for not thinking you’re willing to go against him and his dictates, since your lack of any meaningful criticism of Old 45 in general (and his handling of the pandemic in particular) clearly suggests you’re on his side of the mandate debate.
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With how much I’ve spoken about needing vax passports? And how linking them to RealID and rolling it out nation wide as part of the botched pork plan?
🤔
Just because I support secure borders, legal and monitored immigration, logically considered movement to renewable energy, law and order, and the right to keep a weapon to not feed and defend my family; doesn’t necessitate agreement on a whole platform. Few people agree with the whole of any party platform.
And more than a few times I’ve called out trump’s lack of proper handling of mask information.
Among other complaints.
His continued “stolen” election mantra isn’t helping. Though the fact that absolutely none of the democrats are willing to open up the books and verify anything, via recounts or otherwise, doesn’t help dissuade concerns.
I have my issues with his platform, and the Republican platform as a whole. Just like I have issues with the Democrats.
The right of a business to protect itself is key in my personal concerns.
I don’t think you should be forced to get vaccinated, or wear a mask.
But I have zero problem with denying you access if you aren’t or don’t.
You make the choice to be a walking statistic. Just don’t do it here. I’d go further than even most dems do in where those requirements should be. And I have a different opinion on how they should be worded and implemented. But the end result is the same.
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This is literally the first time I’ve ever seen you actually say that. You’ve been defending him without question for months, and now—only now—you’re willing to criticize him? You, who has been literally handed a comprehensive and well-sourced list of Trumpian atrocities multiple times but has written said list off as “leftist” grousing about him winning the 2016 election? You, who takes every opportunity to say “BuT hE dIdN’t AcTuAlLy SaY ‘dRiNk BlEaCh’!” any time anyone brings up those particular comments? You, who has literally defended the insurrectionists of January 6th as “peaceful” and insisted that Trump had absolutely no role whatsoever in inciting that riot?
I’d ask what the fuck changed your mind, but at this point, it’s irrelevant. Why? Because I’m sure all he’d have to do is say “I was for vaccine mandates before they were cool” and you’d fall right in line with his views on vaccine mandates regardless of anything you’re saying here.
You’ve been parroting his bullshit, carrying his party line, and virtually riding his spray-tanned dick for months. You’ve proudly touted your “I voted for Trump” alleigances to him and his party on a regular basis. I don’t believe for a second that your willingness to say what you’re saying now has a goddamn thing to do with actually being critical of Old 45. It also isn’t because you suddenly care about other people—your whole “let them die” schtick in this discussion is proof enough of that.
So no, I don’t believe for a minute that these out-of-nowhere views on vaccines and masks are your actual views (or that you’ve held them for months if they somehow are). I also don’t believe you’re actually able to criticize Donald Trump in any sense, let alone in a way that shows meaningful disagreement with his actions as president (especially in re: the pandemic). And if you have a problem with those assertions, that problem is one of your own making. I’m not going to solve it—that burden lies with you.
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A list I line-items for you. Came out about 50/50 on for and against.
Well, it’s a fact. He didn’t.
That a brain dead far left columnist and a few brain dead supporters thought he did is a separate issue.
I 100% defend every person there who protested within the boundaries of the law and unequivocally condemn to the courts those who broke the law. And have been quite clear on that.
“Peacefully” full stop
Nothing. My opinions haven’t substantially changed. You just actually took the time to read what I said as opposed to blindly replying to what you cold cliff notes out of it.
Go back to the voting laws articles to see just how undeniably supportive I am/was of vaccine passports. And tying it to RealID.
I have concerns with the government mandating it as opposed to private business. I I fully support no vax no work. Clearly and unequivocally have since supply surpassed need.
I don’t in general. It’s not about protecting the population as a whole for me. It’s about protecting to the best we can those who have done the right things the right way.
That’s because you don’t believe what is infront of you, and invent “intentions” between the lines.
I don’t. See above.
I’ve clearly stated problems I have with the former President multiple times. They’re just not the same problems you have.
We have different opinions on what is and is not important.
And we have different ideas of how to reach shared goals.
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You keep on pushing the extreme Trumpist line until challenged, and the moderate you views somewhat to appear more reasonable. That is a way to encourage extremist Trumpists, while washing you hands of any responsibility for encouraging extremist views.
By the way regardless of policy is is now apparent that the republican party would be happy to see a dictator seize power, and so voting for them endangers US democracy, and risks bringing in a full on fascists state..
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forget it, man - Lodos wants to be ruled, and he wants Republicans to rule him
why else would he have voted for a bigoted asshole with a history of sexual assault accusations? it wasn't because he was a good businessman or a good politician or a smart leader
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Nope, it was he promised to secure our borders.
Protect the second amendment.
Restructuring energy towards self sufficiency.
Ending international involvement.
Industrial and commercial investment
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Yeah, like most con artists he promised a lot of stuff that would never happen in order to grift from the gullible and stupid.
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and Lodos voted for Trump, so he should know!
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Interesting response.
We got the wall, Biden stopped construction.
He modified trade.
We were nearly energy independent at end of term.
He reduced international expense and focused on our country.
The economy rose to record highs during his term.
On the issues I voted on, I wasn’t disappointed.
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you didn't get the wall, you got minor upgrades to parts of the existing fencing
he modified trade but also shit on America's international allies
we were nowhere near being "energy independent"
he reduced international expense by shitting on America's international allies and thinking America exists in a vacuum where it doesn't affect and isn't affected by the rest of the world
the economy rose to new heights, then crashed hard because of how he handled a pandemic that has thus far killed three-quarters of a million people
and let's not forget all the attacks against trans people that you don't care about, all the packing of the Supreme Court to ensure a 6-3 conservative bent that will give more leverage to conservative Christian fascists, and the whole "putting kids in cages" thing that he made worse
we know you think nobody else outside of your specific three-foot circle of existence matters, but it's nice of you to confirm it
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"We got the wall"
You got a relatively small section of a wall, most of which wasn't new and some of which is already falling down, and it was a failed concept from the start. Some work needs to be done on the way the border is handled and the way certain immigration is processed, he just chose the least effective way of doing that (well, least effective at working, he apparently picked the right one to fool incredulous morons.
Oh, and he also failed to get Mexico to pay for it as promised - you paid for his failure again. Seems strange for a "libertarian" to be supporting such a waste of public funds that required in many areas land being forcibly taken from private citizens, but I don't expect a consistent viewpoint from you.
"He reduced international expense and focused on our country"
Yes, he made your country a laughing stock and broke all sorts of international agreements that will have a lasting negative effect on the country, and it's true that he installed incompetent sycophants and donors who had the express purpose of destroying certain domestic interests as well. Many of the people he installed were hostile to the very departments they were appointed to, and were working to make the lives of Americans worse. Fortunately, he didn't have time to implement the worst of his plans.
"The economy rose to record highs during his term."
Yes, it took a couple of years of him riding on Obama's impressive recovery from the shitshow Bush left him, until his mismanagement destroyed it. That's the problem with a lot of these figures - they're lagging indicators and destructive policies can take a year or two to have their effect. The US economy is not a tiny sailboat, it's a massive oil tanker, and those take a long time to slow down or turn. The fact that you keep changing the captain in the middle of making a manoeuvre is sufficient to fool the ignorant and gullible, but actions taken during the captain's tenure does still have an effect.
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Remember, Lostcause has a property/property rights fetish, so of course he’s fine with that.
To wit: the United States Postal Service.
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>"Peacefully" full stop
The following are quotes from Donald Trump himself; they come from his speech on the 6th of January, just before the insurrection:
Now, I’m sure you want to mention all the times he brought up marching peacefully and whatnot. Don’t bother; I’ve skimmed enough of the transcript to know those parts exist. Instead, I want you to read each of those quotes, and notice some of the verbs/verbal phrases he uses: “stop”, “save”, “fight”, “take back”, “get tougher”, “show strength”, “protect”. Then look at the overall gist of those quotes: “we’re fighting to stop the steal”, “we have to get tougher on the fraudsters”, “we’re here to save democracy”, “we need to do something about this”.
He isn’t explicitly calling for violence, no. But between his planting the idea that his “patriots” must stop the steal by showing strength and doing “something” about the Democrats/“weak Republicans” to save the country, his talking for months about how the election would be fraudulent (but only if he lost), and his continual(ly rebuked) efforts to overturn an election he lost both electorally and popularly, those quotes—his words—become a form of his mob boss–esque stochastic terrorism. He didn’t need to directly call for violence; all he needed to do is make his wishes known and let his followers do the rest.
And he wasn’t the only one doing it that day, too. To wit (and emphasis is mine):
Subtext and dogwhistles are about understanding language—both how it’s used and how it can be coded to mean more than it says. Let’s look at one of those quotes from Donald Trump on the 6th of January to see what I mean:
“Our country”: Not “the country”, but “our country”—a country in which he and his supporters are the rightful ruling class, the people that “own” the right to govern. To American conservatives, Republican rule is the default under which we should all live and Democratic governance is the outlier, the exception, the fuck-up.
“We will not take it anymore”: “It” can mean whatever he wants that pronoun to mean, but in this case, he is referring to, essentially, “Democrat fuckery”; in that context, he is saying that conservatives will no longer accept Democrat fuckery (i.e., Democrats winning free and fair elections).
Rhetoric like Trump’s doesn’t need to explicitly call for violence when subtext and dogwhistles can do the job for him. He doesn’t need to say “kill Mike Pence”; he needs only to say “if Pence doesn’t do the right thing, we’re all that’s left to stop the steal” and let his followers come to a conclusion that was suggested by his own rhetoric. Again: It’s a mob boss tactic that keeps him away from direct liability for the actions of those he (knows he and his fellow speakers) incited. After all, a mob boss doesn’t need to say “whack this guy” for his goons to know what he wants and whack that guy anyway.
Take a bunch of people who have been manipulated for months by right-wing media and Donald Trump into believing the election would be/was stolen. Tell them that the literal last line of defense against the stolen election is a Vice President who has already confirmed he will carry out the duty of his office (i.e., confirm Joe Biden as the President-elect). Rile up that crowd even more by referring to them as true patriots, telling them to toughen up and “show strength”, accusing those who refuse to “fight” for Trump of cowardice and weakness, and implying that those who do want to fight for Trump are now the only people can save American democracy itself. What do you get when you metaphorically put all that gunpowder into a keg and light a match—when you get a crowd that angry and point them in the “right” direction?
You get an insurrection.
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Re: >"Peacefully" full stop
Yes, some people find things other than what is said. It’s a mental fallacy. A mental failure. I didn’t watch anyone else. Only Trump’s portion. If anyone actively called for violence or law breaking against the federal government should be arrested and tried for not just instigation but treason.
I found no such call for violence from the president.
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Your inability to understand context, subtext, and the concept of “dogwhistles” in speech is a mental failure. Those things exist; that you can’t grasp how they work is your problem, you undereducated conservative whackjob.
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Your need to find such dog whistles in everything said is your problem.
Did it dawn on you that maybe it was the false sense of subtext that pushed the incompetent idiots to do something other that what was said?
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No, it did. But it wasn’t a “false sense of subtext” unless you think Trump is a bumbling buffoon—and everything you’ve ever said to defend him tells me you don’t, won’t, and can’t believe that for even a second.
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Oh, and one more thing:
Again: That’s what Trump does. He doesn’t need to explicitly call for violence; he needs only make his wishes known, then wait for his followers to do the rest. I mean, why the hell else do you think so many Trumpists still reject COVID safety measures? It’s because Trump rejected and denounced them. That his followers eventually committed violence against others in the name of “freedom” isn’t Trump’s fault…but only because he didn’t directly say “go shoot people who make you wear a mask indoors”.
Trump spent a good chunk of his speech riling up a crowd already furious about the election results. He kept making sure they believed that they were the only line of defense between America and Joe Biden becoming POTUS—that they were the people fighting for the soul of America and democracy—by saying shit like (and this is a direct quote from his January 6th speech), “You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen.” He knew that crowd was at a fever pitch of anger and resentment and grievance against Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and any lawmaker who wasn’t willing to prevent “an illegitimate president” from being confirmed as the winner of the 2020 election.
He had all the gunpowder in a barrel. All he needed to do was light the match and watch what happened. Again (and emphasis mine): “You will have an illegitimate president. That's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen.” After Mike Pence confirmed to the world that he would do his job and confirm Biden as the election winner on January 6th, what do you think Trump meant when he told his followers that they couldn’t “let that happen”? What do you really think he meant when he said “we will stop the steal”? What the actual fuck do you think he wanted to happen when he told that angry crowd of hundreds-to-thousands of his loyal followers “we're going to have to fight much harder” and “you have to show strength and you have to be strong” and “we have come to demand that Congress do the right thing” and “when you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules”? Because he sure as shit didn’t want people to go home and write angry letters to their Congressional representatives. And given the accounts of that day, he didn’t seem too upset about all the violence in and around the Capitol.
That you think he wanted peace when all he wanted was power—legitimately obtained or otherwise—says a lot about how willing you are to kiss his ass. Do you have Trump-branded kneepads, by any chance?
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Re:
Could be the whole ‘live free or die’ thing? Nah.
When damn near half the country believes fraud a competent electorate attempts to verify the results.
See I remember a time when a Republican one and the Dems went running to every court to recount and hanging chads and all that.
This was a closer election. One with multiple cases of fraud and tampering well documented.
Bags of completed ballots left in parking lots. Dumpsters.
Single party harvesting. Non delivery of ballots to known members of parties. Back dating of stamp cancellation.
But who cares as long as your own choice wins right?
Maybe he hoped thousands of people chanting outside would be a moment of personal consideration in congress? The thought to pause the process and review the results?
I’m fairly convinced the election was legitimate. My personal guess given the down ticket Republican wins was people voted for Biden only and submitted their ballots. Not knowing or caring about anyone else.
But we don’t know for sure and never will.
Nope. I have Husky. Quite comfortable.
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That situation was laser-focused on a single state at a point in the election where the electoral vote count was so close that the winner of that state would win the election. (The American people didn’t elect George W. Bush to the first term of presidency; the Supreme Court did.)
Compare the results of the 2000 election with the results of the 2020 election, then tell me the 2020 election was closer. You’ll be a liar, but at least you’ll be consistent in that regard.
You mean like the case of fraud in Texas that was found to have been committed by a Trump voter—a case that led to an actual $25,000 bounty payout for the person who documented and reported it? Or do you mean one of the other cases where Trump supporters were found to have committed fraud and tampering? Because by and large, it was Trump supporters doing that shit in 2020.
No claim of widescale voter fraud/vote tampering—of a literally election-changing amount of fraud—has yet been proven. No one who has claimed such an amount of fraud took place has been able to back up their bullshit with credible evidence. Even the bullshit Cyber Ninjas audit found that the results went in favor of Biden, just as the actual election results said. (That they fucked up and found more votes for Biden is less proof of fraud and more an indictment of their sloppy-ass auditing methods.)
Keep defending that “but Trump actually won, it’s the Dems who cheated him” bullshit, though. Doing so keeps proving you’re the exact kind of person you keep claiming you’re not.
Several states had already done recounts and audits—in some states, multiple recounts took place. By the time January 6th rolled around, the results were all but locked in and any objections were rooted in bullshit beliefs about widescale electoral fraud—beliefs that, when put to the test in courts of law, were found to be wholly displaced from reality. Even with the few objections from Congressional Republicans slated to happen, the results were eventually going to be confirmed.
Donald Trump didn’t want to give up his power. He had already talked—“joked”, if you believe him—about serving more than the two terms he was legally limited to serving. He had been claiming for months that any result not in his favor would be a fraudulent election result, regardless of his lack of evidence that such a thing would—or could—even happen. He literally begged Georgia’s election officials to “find” votes for him that didn’t exist so he could win that state.
And you still think he wanted his followers to be peaceful—even while telling them to march on the Capitol, to “show strength”, to “stop the steal”?
Jesus, I thought tp was delusional…
What doubts could you have left when none of the Trump team’s five dozen lawsuits—including the infamous “Kraken”—ever amounted to anything? What doubts could you have left after multiple states ran audits and recounts that confirmed their election results were, in fact, correct? What doubts could you have left after seeing how no one—not Trump, not Giuliani, and certainly not any Trump supporter in a seat of government power—has ever presented so much as an iota of credible evidence that an election-changing amount of widescale voter fraud took place during the 2020 presidential election?
I don’t doubt that there were instances of voter fraud in the election—some intentional, some not. But enough to change the results of an election where Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence—and neither you, Trump, or your fellow Trumpists have produced such evidence. Your doubts are bullshit; your weirdly devoted fandom of Trump is what drives them.
Anyone who isn’t a Trump devotee can be reasonably sure—99.9%, I’d say—that there was no widescale, election-changing, democracy-annihilating amount of voter fraud in the most closely watched election in American history.
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Hence my long use of “King George W”
https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_Election_Analysis_Hub,_2020
You’ll find the national breakdown doesn’t do the turnout justice. The volume of districts that went 51/49 is far larger than the national numbers suggest.
So? It happened. And it could have and should have been reviewed. Throughly!
And never will be because nobody actually looked for it.
Uh, I don’t. Did you read my take or skip over it.
Oh, you did read it.
My biggest concern was just how unable to watch the watchers were. Too far away to see.
My opinion is it was a generally accurate result. But it’s opinion.
The joys of freedom. You have a right to your opinion.
I would have preferred a 100% national recount. But no, I don’t think it would have likely changed the results enough to change the president.
Not with how big of a margin republicans won down ballot.
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None of those numbers matter because the Electoral College numbers aren’t decided on a district-by-district basis (Maine and Nebraska notwithstanding). They’re decided by a winner-takes-all vote, and Biden won more states than Trump (and had a larger popular vote victory than Hillary Clinton did against Trump). All the key “battleground” states ran recounts and audits where necessary; all of those recounts and audits found no widescale voter fraud—and that includes the ridiculous Cyber Ninjas audit.
And it is being reviewed…when evidence of such cases arise. But as I said: All the recounts and audits in the states what ran them found no evidence of widescale voter fraud. In every presidential election, there is always some miniscule amount of voter fraud—sometimes intentional, sometimes not. But no modern American presidential election has ever seen the kind of voter/electoral fraud that would sway the entire election. You haven’t proven it exists, your Trumpian brethren haven’t proven it exists, and even Trump himself hasn’t proven it exists.
There were multiple recounts in some states. There was the ridiculous Cyber Ninjas audit, which went in looking for a specific result and came out with the one they didn’t want. There have been enough investigations into any alleged acts of voter fraud—individual cases or mass amounts—that if there is any massive voter fraud waiting to be uncovered, it would’ve been found by now. Or do you actually believe there was a national conspiracy to commit such mass-scale voter fraud in at least four states that Biden would be declared the winner of the election? Because you can maybe argue that numerous such conspiracies could have happened independently of each other in a handful of cities around the country. But arguing that it happened nationally, and was coördinated nationally? That will require an extraordinary argument—one you can’t put forward without sounding like the elderly game show host you simp for on a daily basis.
Every time you cast even a sliver of doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election, you’re defending the idea that Trump won—because you’re defending his belief that he won save for all the cheating that hundreds of election officials around the country and his own “expert” legal team couldn’t find after months of searching for it.
Say “there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election” without any other qualifications—and actually mean it. Until you can do that, all you’re doing is defending a rather Big Lie.
Do you really believe they should’ve been able to see every mark, every name, every bit of private information on every single ballot as they were counted? The point of poll watchers is to ensure that ballots are counted fairly and help election officials resolve any issues that arise with either the counters themselves or the legitimacy of a ballot (to which the counters themselves would likely alert a poll watcher). Their job is to be a check in the system, not to be the only check.
No, it’s a fact backed up by the evidence—none of which says “mass-scale voter fraud tipped the election in favor of a given candidate”. Do you have the evidence that says such a level of fraud did take place? If so, now is the time to produce it. If not, fuck off with trying to act like it exists.
Here’s a fun question people who claim the vote was “rigged” or “fraudulent” (or simply defend such accusations…) somehow never get around to answering with any semblance of rationality: For what reason were all those ballots allegedly “rigged” in favor of Biden to give him the win in the presidential election, but weren’t rigged in favor of down-ballot Democrats to give them a wider margin in the House and the Senate?
I doubt you’ll have a rational answer to that, too. But that’s just my opinion~.
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No. I’ve said multiple times before I don’t believe that. This is a party that’s can’t secure their own servers. Forget about pulling off a targeted single line fraud.
No. But I will say:
It is highly unlikely that there was enough voter fraud to change the outcome.
In an ideal application: yes.
Well, given I replied to you with an answer back in what, February?
That reply was, and remains:
It’s extremely unlikely any organised method of fraud,on a large enough scale to change the results, took place.
Combine that with my stated belief just a few replies up.
That I figure it was just the volume, of otherwise ignorant to the choices, of people who checked off Biden and submitted their ballots otherwise incomplete or filled in randomly.
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Because of course you can’t flat-out admit that Dear Leader is lying when he says the election was rigged. You really are a piece of work, you brainwashed Trumpist.
Do you even realize the amount of work that would have to go into a conspiracy to commit mass-scale election fraud in at least four different states and have it go unnoticed? For fuck’s sake, some dude sent in a vote for his dead wife and got caught; you think millions of votes could be changed nationwide and be hidden by the same people who, as you put it, “can’t secure their own servers”? I mean, the amount of people who would need to be in on the conspiracy alone would nullify any chance of the plan ever being hidden forever. When more than one person knows a secret, the chance of that secret being revealed to other people rises in proportion to the number of people who know the secret. Two people might be able to hide a secret for a good long while, maybe even the rest of their lives—but two hundred, two thousand, or two hundred thousand? Yeah, good fucking luck with that.
No one—not state election officials, not handpicked Cyber Ninjas, not the (possibly high on) crack Trump legal team, and not even Donald daughterfucking Trump himself—has uncovered any evidence that even remotely hints at the kind of conspiracy you still believe has a chance of existing. No one has found any proof that the election results were the result of widescale voter fraud in any one state, let alone four different states. No one who believes the election was rigged (including Trump!) has offered any explanation as to why the presidential race was rigged in favor of the Democrats but every down-ballot election wasn’t.
The fact of the matter is that there is no chance—no chance in hell—that the most watched over, most audited, and most double-checked presidential election in modern American history (if not all of American history) saw any significant amount of voter fraud, let alone an amount that would have decided the election one way or the other. To insist that there is even a chance of such fraud existing is to prop up the Big Lie for Old 45.
You cannot believe the 2020 presidential election was free and fair while also believing there is a chance, however small you think it is, that hundreds or even thousands of people secretly worked in concert with one another across the country to defraud the voters of America by rigging said election in favor of Joe Biden. You can only have one or the other—so pick one and stick with it.
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What a crazed reply!
I can’t say unequivocally that there are no gods either.
And I can’t be 100% positive unless I personally count each and every ballot.
That’s every election held in this country over its existence.
I can not state to a fact; but in all likelihood of reasonable statistical probability: the election was free from result changing fraud.
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Yes, you can. You simply refuse to do so.
The likelihood of individual cases of voter fraud in the presidential election is already staggeringly low, as every study of such fraud has borne out. The likelihood of hundreds to thousands of people across multiple states secretly working in concert with one another to rig a presidential election in favor of a single candidate (but somehow not rig the down-ballot elections in favor of that candidate’s party…) is so low that it may as well not exist—especially when considering the multiple checks in the election system in every state, the amount of work that would need to go into rigging an election across numerous states with numerous different ballot designs, and the unthinkable number of people that would be involved in such a plan needing to keep it secret for the rest of their lives.
The most watched over, most audited, and most double-checked presidential election in modern American history (if not all of American history) saw no significant amount of voter fraud, never mind an amount that would have decided the election one way or the other. To insist that there is even a slight chance of that level of fraud existing is to prop up Trump’s election lies. Do you really want to go on record as saying you support the Big Lie? Because so far, that’s what you seem to be doing: supporting even the slightest possibility that the Big Lie isn’t a lie because you want your favorite orange autocrat back in the White House.
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Glad you now understand!
99.999— is ≈ 100. It is not, however 100.
Now that you understand that I believe Biden nearly-certainly won, we can move one. Yes?
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No.
You can’t prove that mass-scale voter fraud happened in even one state, never mind all four states that were the subject of months of audits, recounts, and investigations by election officials and Trump’s dipshit legal team. You can’t expect me to believe there is even a sliver of a chance that the most closely watched presidential election in our lifetimes was marred by mass-scale voter fraud.
All I’m hearing you say is “I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiink Biden won, but there’s a small chance Trump actually won”. There is no such chance. Your refusal to admit as much is proof that you’re still hoping to have your favorite orange autocrat back in the White House to “own the libs” or shove immigrants back into concentration camps or hurt whoever you think he needs to hurt in whatever way he needs to hurt them.
Joe Biden won a free and fair election that was not, and will never be proven to have been, “rigged” in any way whatsoever. Say it without any other qualification and mean it. If you can’t do even that, just go ahead and tell me who you want Trump to hurt the most—it’ll be a far better (and far more honest) use of your time than going “but 99.99999% isn’t 100%”.
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Which is why I’m running around yelling stop the steal.
I didn’t even do that when Trump ‘won’ in 16! Or Obama, or King George the Unelected.
Biden is President.
Republicans aren’t helping their party for 24 by keeping this fraud election thing going.
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Then you’re lacking in principles, morals, and goddamned sense.
Donald Trump won the Electoral College (without winning the popular vote) in the 2016 presidential election, and no one can prove—or has proven—that said election was rigged for Trump in any way. See? Easy as fucking hell to say without any qualifications, and I hate Donald Trump with every last microscopic fiber of my soul, so telling the truth about his victory isn’t exactly something I enjoy doing.
If I can do it for Trump, what the fuck is stopping you from saying it for Biden, other than your obnoxious simping for a spray-tanned autocrat who obviously hurt some people you wanted him to hurt?
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I didn’t do it for Trump. That’s my point. I will never know with absolute certainty that any election result is 100% accurate unless I count every vote myself.
I believe Biden won. I’ve even qualified that belief against the “stolen” crowed with evidence of down ballot wins for republicans.
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No one can know anything with absolute certainty; nobody is God Herself. But we can be as certain as possible about what we know to be true, and I know that there was no mass-scale voter fraud in the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020.
Let me give you an analogy—one that, like all great American analogies, is rooted in sports. There’s a concept in (American) football fandom called “Scorigami”, which refers to a football game that ends with a score that has never happened in any other prior game. Of all the possible unique scores that could conceivably happen in the NFL, only one is practically impossible to achieve: 6-1. The circumstances of that score happening are so incredibly unlikely by any stretch of the imagination that, in terms of statistical probability, it will never be achieved in any game played between now and whenever the NFL ceases to operate unless that game is 100% rigged. We can safely say that the NFL will never see a 6-1 game, even if we can’t know that with the absolute certainty of God Herself.
The same can be said for a rigged presidential election. The statistical probability of individual voter fraud in any such election is small enough to be negligible at best. Ergo, the probability of a nationally coördinated effort to commit widescale voter fraud in multiple states for the sake of rigging the election in favor of a given candidate is so small—the circumstances that I’ve mentioned are necessary for such rigging being as improbable as those needed for a 6-1 game of football—that such rigging is practically impossible to pull off. I can safely say that no free and fair American presidential election will ever be rigged in favor of a given candidate, even if I can’t know that with the absolute certainty of God Herself.
Why can’t you say the same?
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I did. I never bought into any sort of system wide fraud. I can say with certain certainty that there was no national rigging against trump. None.
My concern, and it has nothing to do with 20, is red states controlled by blue cities.
And this is not a 2020 concern. It’s a know in-the-future concern.
There are districts in these states, specifically California, and Illinois, that came down to closeness under 1000 votes, under 100 votes. In a few cases, Illinois and Georgia, under 10 votes. Now we’re within the margin of error.
In states like that: California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Georgia, Florida….
District errors can have an effect on electoral votes.
That would NOT change 2020.
It could be a factor in the future though.
My concern is for both parties. A flaw in one district can flip a state’s elector position. A fraud in one district can change the elector position.
Unlike you, I’m not on anything about Trump or Biden here. It’s about a single cat casting a vote. A single dead guy.
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That’s why we have recounts and audits and other measures designed to double- and even triple-check the results so that the correct winner is determined. Even if I don’t approve of what the Supreme Court did with the 2000 election, it is also one of those measures—the final measure, if you will.
Every one of the four “battleground” states that Trump contested in his (characteristically childish) post-election hissy fit recounted and, in several cases, audited the election results well before January 6th. None of them found any significant irregularities, such that those irregularities would have been enough to change the results of the election.
You know what else can flip a state? Measures meant to curb voting rights for the marginalized and the “enemy” of a specific political party (hint: it’s the GOP). Gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws, voter roll purges, shit like Brian Kemp overseeing his own election in 2018—all of that is what Republicans have done to improve their chances of holding onto power. Not one of them—not a single goddamn one—was willing to even allow debate for either the broader voting rights bill put forth by the Democrats in general or the more narrowly constructed bill crafted by Joe “I tried to get ten Republicans to sign onto this bill and all I got was zero” Manchin.
You want to prevent democracy from being torn down? Convince Republicans to protect the franchise for people who vote against Republicans and stop gerrymandering states in a way that favors Republicans while marginalizing their “enemies”. The GOP is the party most guilty of this shit on a national basis; start with them instead of whimpering about “both parties” as Republican politicians aren’t closely aligned with people who would sooner stomp on your neck and order you to worship the Christian God than let you worship (or not worship) however you please.
The modern GOP is more closely aligned with white supremacists, violent militias, and fascist ideology than the Democrats are. Donald Trump merely sped up the process of bringing those connections into the light of day. You want to make a change? Stop kissing his spray-tanned ass and start looking at just how much the GOP has intertwined itself with the power-hungry Religious Right. One place you can start is with the current conflation of “evangelical” with “Republican”, which is credited to(/blamed on) Old 45 himself.
Or do you still want to say that Donald Trump was a great president who could’ve united the country under his powerful orange fist if not for the evil fucking Democrats and their dreams of luxury gay space communism derailing the Trump agenda of halting all immigration, fucking over trans people, hurting people who didn’t vote for him, and giving rich people even more ways to keep their money out of society?
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Which is just one of reasons I support a full rollout of RealID to every citizen 100% free of charge.
Not only do you then have id; you can link vaccination status to it too!
You’d think both parties would support that!
The most important things to ME heading into 16 were securing our borders, ending our international involvement, and not having the government “your damn right we’re coming for your guns!”!!!!!
But more than that, the single most important thing to me was voting against Hilary Clinton.
Much like so many said doesn’t matter who other than Trump.
As for 20? At least I knew where trump was. He did what he said. He didn’t hide. He didn’t lie on policy. He didn’t hide away from the public.
I had a general idea how Biden would screw over the country. But I wasn’t sure. Sadly, he’s a lot worse than I expected.
Trump had plenty of positions I disagree with but I knew what his positions were.
He supported my most important concerns.
I’d have to deal with the rest.
That’s the way with anyone who runs for President. I’ll never find someone who agrees with everything I believe.
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And yet, look at which party refuses to even debate stronger voting rights in Congress. (Hint: It ain’t the Dems.)
…motherfucker, please, miss me with this shit.
If the government wanted your guns, it would take them. You might have guns, but they have MRAPs and tanks and drones and all manner of bombs and guns and other shit they can use to literally wipe you off the map.
I’d argue that a majority of gun control advocates don’t want to get rid of all guns (though there are obviously some that do). They want to get rid of shit like AK-47s and other such weapons of mass murder—or at least keep those kinds of guns in the hands of the American military. That’s a move with which I agree, too. As for me? My ideas on the matter skew like this: All guns should require some form of permit to own; any gun other than a handgun should require a specialized permit with stricter restrictions on who can own them; all gun sales should have background checks attached (and that includes gun show sales); no one convicted of a violent crime should ever be able to legally purchase any gun; and anyone who owns any kind of gun(s) should have to pass an annual firearms safety course and prove they are storing their gun(s) safely if they want to keep their gun(s).
I’m all for people owning a gun for self-defense. But there needs to be some fucking limits on it—or would you prefer to keep hearing about mass murders every other week?
Has Biden allowed a pandemic to flourish by pushing misinformation as fact, dismissing scientists and experts, ignoring the existence of the virus within the United States for at least a month, and urging people to try unproven/unsafe “treatments” for a viral disease? Has Biden given tax breaks to the wealthy that a majority in Congress is reluctant to roll back, thus furthering the increasingly unstable economic divide between the rich and the poor? Has Biden threatened to withhold disaster funds from “red states”, kicked trans people out of the military, referred to racists as “very fine people”, dismissed legitimate criticism of his time in office as “fake news”, pissed all over the international allies of America, all but played grab-ass with fascists and dictators, tried to ban people from entering the U.S. based on what religion they practiced, or whipped an already-angry crowd into enough of a frothing rage that they stormed a citadel of American democracy to actually interrupt American democracy?
No?
Then for whatever he’s fucked up—immigration, the Afghanistan exit (which was originally a Trump plan!), not convincing Manchin and Sinema to nuke the filibuster, not giving people another pandemic stimulus check, not getting rid of those tax breaks for the wealthy, waiting for months to staff important cabinet decisions—he’s nowhere near as bad a president as Old 45. He’s not a great president, but nobody ever believed he would be. (I should know, since I voted for that centrist dingleberry.)
No, he didn’t—or, at least, not any you weren’t willing to ignore. I mean, his party is decidedly anti-queer in all ways, even if Trump himself is at least ambivalent about cisgender queer people. Do you really believe trying to be one of “the good queers” by voting for Trump will save you from the GOP?
Nobody will; that’s a goddamned fact of life. But the best barometer I know of for voting goes like this: Think of the most vulnerable person you know, then vote in their best interests.
I voted for Biden because he wasn’t going to lead a party of anti-queer, anti-abortion, pro-corporation, plague-spreading Christian fascist dickheads into power. Trump would’ve done all that and more—and given how the GOP has become further untethered from reality since his loss, that alone should stand as proof of what a second term would’ve done (and could still do) to this country.
My god, do you even read some of the shit being said by Trump’s sycophantic followers in Congress?
And that’s just a handful of examples from the past 30 days. That isn’t even a comprehensive listing of all the batshittery Republicans have been spewing in the past month alone, and Trump has enabled six years of this outlandish bullshit because he trampled all over every political norm in this country just so he could have the power to make everyone pay attention to him that he always wanted.
Donald Trump and the GOP are so closely intertwined these days that they are one and the same—the GOP even reused the 2016 platform for 2020 because why bother updating it when Trump didn’t need to update any of his own bullshit. When you support Trump, you support the assholes who keep kissing his ass to stay in power(/not get shot by his supporters)—assholes like Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell.
Are those the people you want running this country? Are their policies—instilling Christian theocracy into law, the elimination of abortion, harsher (and possibly more violent) treatment of immigrants, more tax cuts for the wealthy/a widening of the already vast economic divide, ignoring the climate change crisis to the point where there are no more “moderate” solutions, putting anti-queer laws back on the books/undoing Obergefell v. Hodges, literally banning words like “equity” and “intersectionality” from being used by teachers—the ones you want to support? Because that’s what you’re getting when you support Donald Trump. You’re implicitly supporting the Republican platform when you explicitly support the Trump platform, because they’re one and the same.
If you still think he and the GOP would be better rulers—sorry, leaders for this country, by all means: Say so. But have the courage to own it instead of trying to say “bUt I dOn’T sUpPoRt AlL tHaT sTuFf!” or some other deflective bullshit. All of the shit I’ve talked about is what Trump was okay with the GOP doing under his leadership. You have to own all that shit when you say you support him.
At least I don’t have to pull myself out of that moral quagmire; I voted for the spineless pissant centrists that don’t actively invite theocratic fascism to root itself into every level of government.
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You and I are in total agreement. Unfortunately the Dem party as a whole is not.
I own a 10 gage. I have hunting shells but it stays locked and loaded with less lethal hand made paper blank salt shells. Hurts like hell but won’t kill you. It it stored next to a P90 with the extension and butt removed. The first 2 rounds again salt!
Then:
I aim for knees.
I have no intention of killing an intruder.
In real life situations if you get close I’m more likely to just take your gun and beat you over the head with it.
In over 20 years I never had to shoot someone stateside.
Honestly, seriously, it’s more I like the taste of small game than anything else.
Confrontation? Most cases I’d just beat the crap out of you. 87% of violent confrontations occur within 10 feet. Close enough I don’t need a firearm to subdue you.
No. But he’s let hundreds of thousand into the country illegally. The majority believed to be infected.
Yes. The largest source of consolidated wealth, the Catholic Church, remains tax free.
Has Biden threatened to withhold disaster funds from “red states”,
No, but if you don’t follow federal law you shouldn’t get federal funding.
No
No, he’s used other terms for the anti-white people.
Yes
Yes. Eg France?
Eg Iran, Ukraine
No, but no recent president has
I disagree.
Well documented bull fucking shite
He totally ignored and dismissed Trump’s plan and went with his own against the advice of EVERYONE
It’s there to protect the minority.
Trump didn’t veto one
Like the multi trillion dollar Catholic Church?
Are you delusional? This very site comments on Biden’s failure to nominate for federal positions!
Correct
No. I hold out hope some day the Dems will offer someone who isn’t a slave to their bank account.
You do that. I know my existence is short and I’ll vote for the person most likely to be most beneficial to those I care about.
They’re not from my state.
I can’t do anything about them.
I do. My vote is for the person most likely to support the causes I’m most concerned with. And I’m willing to knowing deal with the down sides.
2016 was a fluke. I’d literally take a bullet to the brain before voting for genocidal kill kill kill Clinton. I was a sanders supporter. I don’t doubt for a second if someone handed that turd of existence a weapon, a free shot, and immunity, she’d pull the trigger.
I believe in socialised capitalism. A free fair base safety net.
I don’t support killing thousands because the killers put money in your account.
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Yeah, Biden personally opened the floodgates~. That’s totally what happened~.
At worst, his administration was slow to respond to a sudden surge in border crossings. That’s not the same thing as “letting people in”.
Who believes this? Who told you this? What are their sources? How do those sources know whether their assertions are true? For fuck’s sake, Lozenge, be critical of the media you read instead of accepting shit you want to be true as true just because it sounds “right”.
Show me where Joe Biden is personally and singularly responsible for the laws that exempt churches from paying taxes. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
What federal laws were “blue states” not following when Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal monies from them? Be specific.
Oh, by all means, list them. And be specific with quotes and their context—you have to prove he meant “anti-white” with what he said. Again: I’ll wait.
Of course you do. You think the crowd there on January 6th was all smiles and sunshine and puppy dog farts until, like, five “lone wolves” broke into the Capitol and forced everyone else to march into the building and storm the halls of Congress and shit.
Jesus Christ, Lostcause, do you even remember why they were there in the first place? Because it wasn’t to congratulate Donald Trump on his four years as president, it wasn’t to celebrate Joe Biden winning the election fair and square, and it wasn’t to throw a party for American democracy working as intended. The Trumpist crowd gathered at the January 6th insurrection was there to protest the results of a free and fair election because they didn’t like the free and fair results—and their Trumpian leaders, including Dear Leader himself, kept adding fuel to that fire by lying about how the election was “stolen” and “rigged” (something even you say is an outright lie!) and telling the crowd they had to “show strength” and fight back against the system (which included Mike Pence).
Keep lying to yourself about January 6th. I’ll tell you the truth about it, every time, until you get the fucking point: The Trumpists weren’t in D.C. on January 6th to sing “Kumbaya”.
The specific parameters (and execution) of the plan belong to Biden and his administration, yes—but that plan was initially spearheaded by the Trump administration, starting with the release of 5,000 Taliban soldiers as part of a deal struck between the Taliban and the Trump administration. (And if you needed reminding, Trump secretly invited Taliban leaders to Camp David on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, presumably for negotiations for a peace deal. Do you think Biden would’ve done that?)
From what—debating voting rights bills on the Senate floor? The filibuster is an antiquated relic that should be nuked for the sake of making the legislature work again.
Y’know, I have my own issues with the Catholic Church, but let’s not act like Biden is singularly and wholly responsible for its evils—or for the laws that make it exempt from paying taxes. And if you’re gonna piss all over Biden for that, why aren’t you pissing all over Trump for ignoring the Church, too? (Or does Trump get a pass because he was hurting immigrants and trans people?)
No, because I literally said that was a Biden failing.
You must care about conservative Christians a lot, then.
Oh, but you can: You can denounce Trump, his political ideology, and his sycophantic asshole followers as being bad for America. Look at what they’ve done to this country. Look how they’ve turned basic science into something to be questioned. Is this the America you want to see in four years? In eight? Do you really want a Trumpist America—a country ruled by people who genuinely believe wearing a facemask is akin to being killed in the Holocaust and any facts that don’t fit their worldview are “alternative facts” that can safely be ignored?
And thanks to your selfishness in not wanting to vote for a Clinton, we got Trump giving us a preview of American fascism. Congratulations, you played yourself.
I can say the same for Donald Trump. Hell, he effectively confirmed that with his “shoot someone on 5th Avenue” comment. You sure do seem okay with a violent man leading the country…so long as he’s hurting the people you think need to be hurt, anyway.
No, you don’t. You believe in capitalism with a small bone tossed to the poor. After all, you keep saying you’re a libertarian, and those schmucks sure as shit don’t believe in socialism.
Neither do I. But as a quick aside: Do you support a leader killing hundreds of thousands of his country’s own citizens through (possibly malicious) negligence and willful ignorance towards a viral pandemic?
…you know what, never mind—you’ve already answered that.
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Re:
His administration is not enforcing any of the laws. They aren’t holding. They aren’t detained.
https://news.yahoo.com/dhs-dropped-40-000-covid-190800213.html
He’s not. But he’s president and he has a congressional majority. You want to tax rich people right? Start with the richest then!
Here’s two big ones.
Criminal immigrant retainers
Arresting violent lawless criminals looting and rioting.
"These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America,"
Or
"In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy”
Or
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-racism-examples_n_5991dcabe4b09071f69b9261
Despite the many times I called out the violence and said all law breakers should be arrested?
No. They were there to demand a full and complete review of the election process.
That some turned violent and resorted to rioting destroyed their agenda’s support from more moderate people.
Let me take a page from trump’s book:
I absolutely condemn the violence on Jan 6!
I do not know. But I prefer a peaceful negotiation.
At least to start with.
I doubt you’ll be thinking that when Republicans have a majority.
Yes. Both held majority congressional control. Both Presidents and their parties should have done something!
But you keep talking about taxing the rich. How about starting with the richest.
I’ve made my concerns quite clear. Other party goals are collateral damage.
I absolutely denounce the far right shites and their anti vax anti mask rhetoric.
Yep: definitely a better choice in my book.
Thanks to your selfishness and hatred of trump we have Biden destroying America. Thanks.
Actually I do. And my comment history shows that. Things like base income, free health care. Free education. That’s all a social base.
You can build capitalism on top of that.
In retrospect there are many things trump could have done better.
In retrospect every pandemic could have been handled better.
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Would you prefer more concentration camps, or would you prefer he send ICE agents to shoot border jumpers?
How does the former CBP head know for sure what the Biden administration is doing when he doesn’t work in it? How does he know how many immigrants are carrying COVID? How am I supposed to trust someone who worked under Trump—and thus has every reason to lie about the Biden administration’s approach on immigration?
Okay. I say we start with Donald Trump, since he likes to act like he’s richer than God.
You seem upset that Biden called out white supremacy. Nothing about those two sentences even remotely sounds like he’s “anti-white”. If anything, your conflation of “anti-whiteness” with “white supremacy” paints a pretty good picture of your thinking on the matter…and it’s not a pretty one, lemme tell ya.
Okay, and…you’re upset that Trump was called out for being a racist asshole? That’s not being “anti-white”—that’s telling the truth.
Yes, because you’ve been continuously defending the crowd of Trumpists at the January 6th Rally & Riot Extravaganza of being “peaceful”. They weren’t there to be peaceful—they were there to express anger and hatred because their guy didn’t win an election. All of the people who attended the rally/stormed the Capitol may not have gone with criminal (or violent) intent, but they went with unjustified anger in their hearts all the same.
No they weren’t. They were there to demand that Mike Pence put Trump back in office, full fucking stop. It wasn’t a “review the election” event, it wasn’t an “audit the results” event—it was a “Stop the Steal” event. I already posted that long-as-fuck copypasta full of quotes from the speeches of Trump and his cohorts that day; do you really need a refresher on what the fuck they were all trying to say, or are you going to call me a fucking lunatic because I can read context and subtext better than you?
Yet you refuse to condemn the protest against a free and fair election that was based on what even you admit were lies from the rightful loser of the 2020 presidential election and his sycophant followers. That is your primary problem here: You’re defending an attack on American democracy itself, and you’re more than happy to do it because Trump is “your guy”.
The filibuster is a relic that needs to be nuked regardless of who has the majority in the Senate. I will stand by that statement and you can’t make me say otherwise, not even with the threat of voting into office people who will curtail queer civil rights. (Y’know, like Trump and his cronies.)
Like what, piss off an untold amount of voters? I’m an atheist and even I know that no politician who wants to stay in office is ever going to seriously suggest taxing churches—and that goes triple for Republicans, who only ever see the wall of separation between church and state crumbling over in favor of the church.
And yet you refuse to denounce the man who emboldens their rhetoric, encourages their nasty behavior, welcomes their violent tendencies with open arms.
If you want to denounce the body, you have to denounce the head as well, because it’s still part of the body.
Funny, who is it that’s threatening school board members and pushing horse dewormer as a COVID treatment and trying to ban words like “equity” from being said by teachers and continuing to push Trump’s Big Lie despite all the evidence saying it’s a Big Lie and refusing to even debate voting rights laws on the Senate floor? Because that sure as shit ain’t Democrats and “leftists” doing that.
Biden inherited a wrecked America from a man who did more to divide this country than nearly any other president in history. Don’t blame him for not being able to snap his fingers and fix the problems Trump and his Republican asskissers caused.
I don’t believe you, libertarian.
You say that, and yet…
…I don’t think you even meant it.
Name ten things Trump could’ve done better about his handling of the pandemic—and if you bring up Democrats or “leftists” even once, your list is invalid due to deflecting blame for his fuck-ups onto other people.
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Those are trump’s comments. Not Biden. I said trump didn’t call racists, as the intended subject, fine people.
You appear to not have followed the discussion. Or I misunderstood your statement.
No. I prefer remain in Mexico. I prefer apprehend and deport.
I defend the right to protest within the boundaries of the law. Regardless of what I think of the protestors.
Because “They weren’t there to be peaceful—they were there to express anger and hatred…” could just as easily prepend ‘police violence against…’.
Protest. Just don’t break the law.
Yes. When half of congress spent 4 months 100% ignoring or ‘whatever’ing any concern or complaints. Then nearly two months saying ‘don’t care’ enough to even contemplate.
I recognise what they are angry and why they believe what they believe. And their right to protest over that belief no matter how wrong they are.
Protest is a foundational right under a representative government.
No. I’m not. I’m defending the right to legally gather. Hold a permitted rally. Have a protest.
Regardless of what the cause is.
Just don’t break the law. Lawbreakers should be punished.
That makes you a rarity. The Republicans threatened to remove it when in power too. It’s not a threat of voting. Congress will flip again. As it always did and always will. The filibuster is a balance to power to mandate discussion.
Personally I think it’s too easily invoked and the numbers should be modified.
But I’m afraid of either current party having carte blanch
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Please note that his statement about “very fine people” referred to people on “both sides” of the Charlottesville debacle. One side was made up largely of white supremacists and racist Confederacy-defending shitheads; the other was made up of people protesting those assholes.
Tell me: Do you think white supremacists and pro-Confederacy shitheads are “fine people”? Because Trump thought so.
Any laws that Congressional Democrats may have wanted to pass to shore up election security before the 2020 election either were blocked or would’ve been blocked by the same people who are currently using the filibuster to refuse even debating such laws on the Senate floor.
Congress didn’t need to investigate the election results because the states did that—some states even did it multiple times over. (And not all of the election officials in those states were Democrats, by the by.) The only people willing to say “there are serious problems with the election results” were the same people who prevented the creation of a truly bipartisan commission into investigating the January 6th insurrection.
You think it’s Democrats who don’t care about free, fair, and secure elections? It’s Republicans who don’t care—because they’re the ones trying to deny voting rights based on whether people have the “right kind” of ID, disenfranchise voters through nationwide partisan gerrymandering that gives them fewer overall votes but more state legislatures, and force people to choose between their vote and their lives by cancelling mail-in voting (which, like in-person voting, saw no mass-scale voter fraud).
And who do you think wants Republicans to enact all this shit? It sure as shit ain’t Democrats, and it sure as shit ain’t Biden—it’s Donald “I want my Oval Office back” Trump.
Just to be clear: You’re fine with people protesting American democracy itself?
Again: Republicans used the filibuster to stifle debate on a voting rights bill last week. The filibuster isn’t a tool to “mandate discussion” any more—it’s a partisan “fuck you”, and it needs to be nuked if we’re ever going to see the Senate work again.
Are you afraid of Trumpist Republicans voting to curtail your civil rights because you’re queer? You should be—your vote for Trump won’t save you from the face-eating leopards.
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Largely. Not completely. And no: white suprematists are fuckturds.
Etc.
I know this will be hard for you: just for a moment. Put yourself in the fanatics that were there. You’ve got the like of OAN and The Patriot as your News.
Brainwashed with the premise that the party that couldn’t secure their own servers some how pulled off some great conspiracy?
From their point of view, the really believed it.
I understand why they were there.
I support their right to protest, to complain, to petition. I support that right for all Americans. Up until you break the law.
Never said that. Actually can’t understand why they won’t support a national ID though.
No, but I support your right to do so.
I prefer bi or pan. And yes; very afraid that republicans will vote against lgbt rights.
Hence my concern about the filibuster.
You nuke it now, and come 22 there’s nothing to stop that from happening.
Think about all the things you hate about Trump policy. Being passed with no debate at all.
Even worse, think about the people behind trump. The real white suprematists. The real threats. The real minority of the party. The crazy’s like magic the gathering.
With nothing between them and passage?
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Understanding it and condoning it are two different things. You’re out here condoning what was literally a protest(-turned-riot) against American democracy itself.
Same reason they don’t generally support voter ID laws: They don’t want to shut out people who may not have the documents required to obtain such an ID.
Then you are okay with it.
You nuke it now, and in 2022, Democrats can pass laws that strengthen queer rights—including trans rights—without Republicans being able to do a goddamn thing about it. If anything, that’s exactly what the Dems should do: Nuke the filibuster, pass everything they want to pass (including stuff that will help people who didn’t vote for the Democrats!), then dare the GOP to undo it when they get power again. The GOP wants to have the worst positions possible on everything without actually owning those positions via Congressional votes—so I say the Dems should absolutely make them own those positions on the record.
Besides, if Republicans get control of the Senate in 2022, they’re going to keep filibustering and obstructing anyway—just with a majority this time, as they did in the Obama years. Are you okay with Biden routing around Congress via executive action as Obama (and Trump!) had to do?
Without a veto-proof majority, none of that will matter unless the Republicans can hold onto control of the Senate until the next Republican president takes office.
And as I said, Republicans used the filibuster just last week to stifle debate on a voting rights bill. Whatever you think the filibuster was meant to protect, it isn’t being used that way any more. I’m willing to risk the consequences of nuking the filibuster if doing that means Mitch McConnell loses the power to stop bills from even being brought to the Senate floor.
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Re:
No. I support their right to protest. That support ends at breaking the law.
Again, RealID should be handed to each and every American citizen. It’s up to the government to find a way to do that.
Problem is they will.
Yes. Because the next president will come along and undo it just like Trump and Biden did.
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Here’s the thing about that: Republicans still have to win elections.
Say the Democrats schedule a vote for a bill that polls well across the political aisle (let’s say “paid parental leave” for the sake of argument). Without the filibuster, the Republicans would have to vote for or against that bill, to own their position on it. I would have to assume that (under more normal circumstances), you might see a few Republicans vote in favor of the bill just to save face with constituents back home. And if paid parental leave proves popular with voters once it’s passed and implemented, Republicans will have a harder time defending a vote to dismantle it when they eventually regain power in the Senate.
The point of nuking the filibuster, then, would be to prevent Republicans from hiding behind the filibuster and claims of “communism” or “socialism” or whatever boogeyman scare word they’re using these days. That will prove useful in future elections for both the Senate and the presidency. Sad thing is, the Democrats aren’t willing to play hardball on this—I mean, Joe Manchin had his “I can find ten good Republicans to support this” voting rights bill nixed by every Republican in the Senate, and he still refuses to nuke the filibuster. (Then again, he’s also a conservative posing as a Democrat, so there’s that.)
The filibuster needs to die, and Democrats need to kill it. Whatever the consequences, it can’t be that much worse than letting Republicans bring Congress to a grinding halt for the sake of protecting a procedural trick.
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In the flip side:
Say the dems pass a bill 51:50 adding a one cent per mile driven tax on petrol cars.
Or
Republicans pass a heartbeat act. 51:50
And the president signs it.
Now what?!!?
They’re out there examples. But not so out there that they haven’t been dreampt about.
As I said, I’d look at modification.
The way the house had use of unlimited debate always appeared to me to be the correct method. But we need a return to actual speaking, not breaks and pauses and recess and holds. Nancy proved the master at over 8hours.
But multi-person speeches could go longer.
And I’m Ohkay with that. I don’t care if you use the classic 1832 method of taking turns reading an encyclopaedia! Just keep talking.
Eventually you’ll get a 51 vote call to move on to a vote on the bill.
Or to pull it.
I also want a return to 100% coverage on the CSPAN services. (As an aside I’d like all three channels to be mandatory carry and broadcast nation wide as well).
Such a system would put the focus on the person speaking. Be it discussion of the bill’s text or stalling.
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That’s why we have both the courts and midterm elections.
This, I would be okay with.
But I still say nuking the filibuster is the correct way to go.
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Re: Name ten things
I don’t know about 10, but as a toss?
Stop all inbound travel of non citizens. Not just the source country as he intended to do.
Quarantine inbound citizens.
Discuss the importance of 95% filtration masks
Work with congress to fund and make available n95 masks in bulk so every American can get them, and get them free of charge.
Those steps alone would have greatly reduced the plague spread.
I would have immediately implemented federal n95 mask mandates for federal properties and made sure those masks were available at the entrance.
I would have pushed for states to do the same for state properties.
And worked to supply fema funds to pay for those masks.
I would have pushed for a voucher program to distribute n95 masks free of charge to businesses small and large to implement their own private mandates.
I would have implemented an employment mandate for masking. No mask no work. And worked with the SSA to make those masks available to employers for employees.
I would have implemented a national emergency mandate that stopped production of generic paper disposable masks and directed all production to transition to n95 production.
I would have directed the department of education to develop a federal method of in home remote learning to be implemented nationwide and funded by the government for every public educational institution.
I would have directed the interior and executive departments to do the same for federal employees so that all federal functions continued remotely.
I would have directed the same for congress. To make all members work from offices and remain off the floor.
And indirectly related: I would have used presidential mandate to force congress to vote on a consistent method of voting for this (2020) election. A guarded chain of custody directive. And required counts to be done under clear close action cameras. Allowing segregated poll watchers to see all ballots remotely from separate rooms while still seeing the ballots completely as they had in the past.
Thus eliminating the entirety of the “steal” movement before it began.
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My god, you actually can point out the shortcomings of your Orange Demigod and his roving band of idiot assholes. Good for you!
…except for this:
Yeah, none of that shit between (and including) those sentences was ever going to happen. And even if everything before the last sentence had happened, I guarantee—on the graves of my grandmothers, god rest both their souls—Trump still would’ve found a way to say the election was stolen from him because he wanted to have that “out” in case he lost. He wanted to have that grievance to hold onto so he could keep grifting from gullible morons and continue to build political power within the Republican party (which he has now all but taken over).
You would probably have been a better president than Donald Trump. But you got him instead. You have to own your vote for incompetence, partisan division, anti-queerness, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, and pro–Christian fascism. You have to own the fact that you elected a narcissistic sociopathic game show host without a second of public service experience into the highest office in the land. You have to own every decision he made that hurt people—maybe even people you care about—because you helped put him in the position of power that let him hurt people indiscriminately.
I own my vote for Biden—and the good, the bad, and the ugly that goes with it. I’m willing to take my responsibility for helping to put him in power when he and his administration fuck up. For what reason are you so hesitant to admit that you voted not for the Donald Trump you want me to believe he is, but for who Donald Trump really is: a hateful, spiteful, petty, violent, attention-seeking man-child who will literally hurt himself if it means someone else gets hurt worse?
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Re:
Hence why I said “I would have” and not he should have.
I’m not. I made my choice. I accept that choice came with much baggage. Some of it will take a lot of time to correct.
Now we have another set of stupid errors on top of it.
I would have been very happy to vote for 16s Dem #2 who actually had a plan to support his social agenda. Instead they rigged their own internal system to hand the country the gore hound traitorous bytch.
I would have been happy with a few of the options put forward for 20. Instead we got a man with diminished function who would only deteriorate further in office. The perfect puppet for the queen of darkness and her acolytes to control.
I fully recognise what that second vote was for. A continuation of the same problems. And the few things I wanted that actually were being worked on. What I didn’t want was a new clintonian mess on top of it.
Right now we don’t have Biden working on getting us out of trump’s mess. We have him generally ignoring that and making a new mess of his own. Well, not his. I don’t blame Biden for “his” mess because he’s not the one making it willingly. He just says what he’s told, signs what he’s told, does what he’s told.
At this point I no longer care who or what. As long as SOMEBODY does SOMETHING. The government is absolutely, totally, completely, out of control.
Every branch, every dpt, doing what ever it wants with no guidance or control or constraints.
This is as close to total chaos the country has ever come.
Hell, I’d actually consider queen Lilith right now.
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You wanted things to get worse than they did in his first term? Because that’s all that was going to happen if he got a second term: All his worst impulses would’ve been given a green light. Everything, and I do mean everything, he did to help turn this country closer to a Christian theocracy led by the worst kinds of people would have only been compounded by another four-year mandate, and you seriously believed American fascism would’ve been better than Biden?!
This is why I keep wondering who you want(ed) Old 45 to hurt: It’s clear that you really want him to hurt someone, whether it’s Clinton or Biden or “the libs” or trans people or immigrants or who-th’fuck-ever you think “deserves” to be hurt. No one votes for a man so driven by abject cruelty towards other people that he openly admits to molesting women unless they want him to deploy that cruelty onto the “right” targets.
Oh, and Trump was the perfect picture of mental capacity? He looked directly at a solar eclipse without any eye protection, for God’s sake. Besides, Trump is only three years younger than Biden—or did you conveniently forget that fact?
…oh my god, are you a fucking comic book villain or some shit, you sound like a poorly-written comic book villain right now, oh my fucking god that is pathetic, even Marvel movies have better written villains than you, jesus tapdancing christ aaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha—
[ahem]
It’s kind of sad that you let Hillary Clinton live rent-free in your head even after she’s lost most of her political relevance—and even sadder that you treat her as The Absolute Worst Person to Ever Exist in the History of Ever when she isn’t even close to having committed the same kind (or same amount) of atrocities that, say, Kim Jong-Un has committed as leader of North Korea. (And by the by, who kissed Kim Jong-Un’s ass so much that it gave him credibility as a world leader? Oh, right: That was Donald fucking Trump.)
Don’t get me wrong when I say that part of the quagmire we’re seeing from Congress right now is Biden’s fault. I’m not trying to minimize his role in this. That said: Republican obstructionism via the filibuster and the combined efforts of Manchin and Sinema to stall anything even remotely progressive(/threatening to wealthy people’s bottom lines) are far bigger roadblocks than Biden’s personal incompetence.
Also: “Trump’s mess”? Good for you, recognizing that Trump fucked over America! And if you hadn’t wanted him to make things even worse (as evidenced by your vote for him in 2020), maybe that admission would mean something.
Now you’re starting to sound like a conspiracy nut. Inside Job is not a documentary series, dude.
Careful what you wish for, you sweet summer fetus. You may end up inviting a leopard in to eat your face.
And the January 6th insurrection, which had a very real chance of subverting American democracy in the name of Orange Fascism—that was order?!
For someone who says they’re an atheist, you’re sounding a hell of a lot like a Bible thumper who preaches against Satan on a busy street corner.
When I rip on Trump, I might exaggerate his personal characteristics (though not by much…) and use colorful language, but I don’t go off like he’s The Ultimate Evil Beyond Even Cthulhu. He’s a human being, not a supernatural evil borne from the pits of hell—which is what you apparently believe Hillary Clinton is. And when I tear into Trump’s failings, it’s not to point out that he is that supernatural evil—it’s to point out how his flaws drove his behavior in office and helped him fracture a country that was already breaking apart thanks to conservative ideologies rooting themselves more and more in unwarranted grievance, unproven lies, and unthinkable cruelty.
Your Grand High Savior Against the Ultimate Evil is a bumbling narcissist who built an image of success even as his business ventures failed one by one around him (and hurt innocent people in the process), an elderly game show host who ran the government like it was his game show (even when it meant staffing the government with incompetent nitwits), and an objectively cruel human being whose predilictions towards women are so creepy and repulsive that he once claimed he could “grab [women] by the pussy” without consequence because he was famous and once said he would date Ivanka if she weren’t his daughter. Even if I buy that Hillary Clinton is evil to her core, she still wouldn’t be anywhere near as evil as Donald Trump.
I mean, Hillary at least respected American democracy.
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Age is only a tertiary factor with dementia.
Says the person who somehow always get’s back to trump?
Interesting you turn to the DPRK and not China or Iran.
But the fastest way to reach a solution to a problem is to confront the problem.
What do you suggest. They were a bit past the ignore-them stage of development! Or maybe you just want to bomb them and be done with it? Since mass murder of innocents is a way to solve problems: right?
All obstructing. Part of the hope with trump back at the beginning was an outsider. That was the same with Obama coming in.
Unfortunately the machine that is Washington destroys all ideals.
Both parties are controlled by people who are nothing more than pocket book slaves.
Both parties are spearheaded by people who are only concerned with keeping their seat in office. And at the least, finding a golden parachute for private transition.
I kind of figured it wouldn’t be much more than more of the same.
Biden in his current state (at the time) was an absolute unknown.
Subversion of democracy? Yes. It was remotely possible. Unlikely but possibly.
Insurrection? No. That involves overthrowing the current government. Trump was president.
In the most left wing conspiracy aspect of it it would have been preventing a transition of government, not overthrow.
Which is sedition, not insurrection.
By the way: on the way out there possibility that someone actually intended to, and did, hang pence, that would be treason. Not insurrection.
Lilith is extra-biblical. She’s an aspect of pre-Judæan myth and religion. A myth that is continually roped into un-official texts of many religions. Beyond the book people you find her in Greek, Roman, Babylon, Turk, Persia, Hindu, Tao…
Her rebellion was a foundational view for women’s rights. She would not be subjugated.
Unfortunately she would spend eternity raping both men and women and eating their offspring.
And as such you can see my characterisation of her as a false god leader. One who would devour the very people she pretends to represent.
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Hillary Clinton didn’t win the White House, and she sure as shit didn’t spend four years fracturing the country even worse than it was in 2016. Whatever you think she might’ve done as POTUS is irrelevant—we know exactly what Trump did as POTUS, and that will be relevant to any discussion of contemporary politics far more often than not. Her “damage” to the country is imagined; his damage to the country is real.
Interesting how you always ignore or downplay how Trump all but played kissyface with dictators and autocrats like Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Something other than giving them everything in exchange for nothing—which is exactly what happened when Trump met with Kim Jong-Un. Trump gave North Korea credibility on the international stage; he got no solid promises on anything from North Korea in return. And that happened because Trump likes people who run their countries like a dictatorship—people who hurt their enemies without consequence or shame or remorse and hand down edicts like a king to his subjects.
It would’ve been worse, because Trump would’ve had something even more dangerous than an edict to run the country: nothing to lose by doing whatever the fuck he wanted. At worst, he might’ve been impeached again, but no Republican was ever going to vote for his conviction again. No Republicans would’ve ever pushed for his removal from office for anything he did in office. He was bad enough when he got the power of the presidency; another four years—this time with nothing left to lose, a Supreme Court leaning in his favor, and an entire political party almost wholly under his control—would’ve let his worst impulses come to life.
For whatever fuck-ups Biden has committed as POTUS, it’s not nearly as bad as what Trump would’ve done by now—and that’s based on the damage he did in his first term, not some perceived damage he might have done in an alternate timeline.
“Kill Mike Pence”—does that ring a bell? The insurrectionists were seeking to prevent American democracy from being carried out by the then-current federal government. Anyone who says otherwise is a Trumpist, deluded or not.
Trump allowed nearly a half-million people to die of COVID-19 due to his refusal to properly dealing with the pandemic. Many of those people were people who voted for Trump—and even if they weren’t, Trump still represented them by virtue of being the president of the entire United States. You want to whine about Hillary, but what about the false god you helped put into the Oval Office?
See, that’s the thing that galls me about people like you: You’re more than willing to say you voted for Trump, but when it comes time to take responsibility (however small) for your role in putting that son of a bitch into office, you deflect from that and go “well Hillary would’ve been worse” or “well Biden is worse because reasons”.
I know that Obama and Biden fucked up (and in Biden’s case, will continue to fuck up) while in the Oval Office. I’m aware that I helped put them into the presidency, and whatever their administrations did(/will do) to hurt innocent people—Americans or otherwise—is, in the tiniest of ways, partially my fault. I’m more than willing to take what little responsibility I must for those decisions.
You’ve seen the damage Trump did as president. You know how much he hurt the country. You admit to having that knowledge. But when you’re asked to own your responsibility for putting a lying, philandering, bigoted elderly game show host with no history of public service into the highest seat of power in the country and watching him burn every sense of sociopolitical decorum to the ground, you punt by saying shit like “well Hillary would’ve been worse”.
Own your responsibility, however small, for the damage you helped inflict upon this country (and others) by putting Trump into office. If you can’t do that, fuck all the way off to Gab or Parler or Truth Social (when it opens). I don’t want to hear your pissant excuses any more.
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Regardless of your thoughts on the leadership, DPRK IS a governmental actor.
What trump did was open dialogue. Absolutely, he should have pursued it further than he did. But then the pandemic came along.
Putin? What about him? Russia wasn’t threatening to bomb us almost daily.
Neither was Turkey.
North Korea was a real and direct threat to us. Still are.
To slightly modify your own statement above:
Whatever you think he might’ve done continuing as POTUS… is imagined.
I directly commented on that.
Again, I take responsibility as a person who voted, for that vote contributing to mishandling of the pandemic.
A non-existent pandemic at the time of my 16 vote was not on my list of concerns.
At the end of his term, his administration had overseen a record production of a vaccination for the pandemic. Not just one but 3. 3 that are helping hundreds of millions.
With the pandemic looking to be handled, finally, it lowered down my list of concerns again.
I can stomach that about as well as Fox News at prime time. All of about 1 minute.
Well Parler. I’ve never used gab and we know nothing but our own opinions of what truth social may or may not be.
But i don’t use facecrap or the like either.
You at least have a brain behind your commentary.
I use Reddit. But that’s not Web 2.0. Much closer to this site in interaction.
Social media platforms as a whole tend to bring in brain dead copy-paste morons who’s reply to why is pure and simple “{name} said so!” And that’s not my thing.
Couple that with endless stupid pictures of bagels and people typing over pop culture and making stupid memes? No thanks.
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No, what he did was kiss Kim Jong-Un’s ass. His administration did little-to-nothing afterward—before or after the pandemic became a thing—to force any concessions from North Korea on its nuclear programs or its numerous abuses of the human rights of North Koreans. A dictator was given credibility on the global stage at the cost of America’s own. That isn’t “opening a dialogue” by any stretch of the imagination.
It is, at worst, an educated guess based on who he is and what he did while in office.
Before he became president, Donald Trump was known to be a lying grifter who routinely fucked over people under his employ and a poor businessman whose track record was so bad that the mainstream financial sector refused to deal with him because of his being a huge credit risk. He was credibly accused by one of his ex-wives of raping her (the accusation being withdrawn notwithstanding), and he admitted on tape to molesting women because he believed his fame would let him get away with it. He was proven in court to have enacted racist policies with one of his properties, and his bigotry towards women, racial minorities, and immigrants was on full display during his campaign.
While he was in office, Donald Trump used his position to further the divisions caused by the extreme rightward drift of American conservatives in the wake of Obama’s time in office. You can keep making the same defense of his statements all you want, but he referred to a group largely made up of white supremacists and defenders of the Confederacy as “very fine people”. He encouraged his supporters to “own the libs” at any cost—not in those exact words, but certainly through others as well as his own actions. He praised dictators for handling dissent in ways he could only dream of doing. He lied and lied and lied again about everything from the size of his inauguration crowd to the COVID-19 virus “disappearing” even as the first big surge was incubating. That isn’t even anywhere close to being a comprehensive list of his bullshit (but I know where you can find one).
Every worry, every fear, every negative thought about a second term of President Donald Trump is based on who he was before he was president (including his time on the campaign trail) and what he did while he was president. When I talk of the damage he could’ve done (and might still do) with a second term, it’s based on the damage he did with his first. The potential for Trump and his cronies to enact full-blown Christian fascism in the United States isn’t some overblown fantasy—it’s how Texas ended up with that anti-abortion law.
Hillary Clinton had her fair share of problems as a candidate, not the least of which is that she wasn’t seen as a great person in general. I won’t deny that, had she gotten into office, I likely would’ve disagreed with a fair amount of what she would’ve done. But for all her flaws and foibles and issues as a politician, she wasn’t the goddamn Antichrist. For that matter, neither was Trump—but he was a hateful, spiteful, violent bastard whose desire to use the Oval Office for his own personal benefit was evident even as a candidate.
The damage you believe Hillary Clinton would’ve done to the United States as president is based on your own (hilariously overblown) biases against her. The damage I believe Donald Trump would’ve done to the United States with a second term as president is based on the damage he already did. For fuck’s sake, we have people openly asking conservative pundits “when do we get to use the guns”. I didn’t see anyone openly asking liberal pundits when they “get to use the guns” against conservatives in the wake of the 2016 election.
Am I exaggerating the threat Donald Trump poses to the United States? Maybe…but not by much.
And the rush job for those vaccines, combined with the Trump administration’s long-standing rejection of science and contempt for independent expertise (which only worsened during the pandemic), led to the widespread adoption of anti-vaxxer talking points among conservatives.
Hell of a “win” there, huh?
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Re:
You and I will never agree on this obvious.
You talk of support and recognition.
Regardless of you sole opinion, he’s the leader of an independent state.
I will always choose diplomacy over conflict.
And will always support those who make such a logical rational choice.
Feel free to keep posting McConspiracy’s list.
In-line Irene’s that for you. Go back and read. I agreed with Apx a third as accurate, acknowledging a potential viewpoint-based, and pushed off a their as fake, factually incorrect, or outright nonsense.
And I likely would have agreed with less than 10 percent of that genocidal faux queen’s choices.
If the unvax crowd, it remains nearly evenly split between dems and Republicans
Too many zombies followed the words of the VP you chose. NEVER.
Over on the right you have a large majority that is against all vaccines for mythological reasons. A lost cause.
And a lesser group against it because of stem cells. Also a lost cause.
Remove those two and you get what, a few dozens?
A few hundreds?
Every report or study or survey of any worth comes to the same results. It’s (Apx */- 10%) 50/50 on political choice in the unvaxed. And the largest of the ‘left’s’ unvaxed are urban, blacks.
Trump had very little effect in anti-vax. I’m still waiting for you to ACKNOWLEDGE the VP’s statement let alone condemn it.
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He’s a goddamned dictator who didn’t deserve to be treated as a credible world leader by a global superpower.
I will. It’s well-sourced and comprehensive; ain’t my fault if you’re not willing to accept facts about Donald Trump over your simping for the Orange Fascist.
Again: Hillary Clinton is not the Antichrist, a succubus, a demon, or any other supernatural evil. And I’d like to remind you that Donald Trump thought he was essentially a king, what with him repeatedly lying about Article II giving him the power to do anything he wanted as president. You imagine Hillary would’ve been a genocidal fascist? Donald Trump cause nearly a half-million Americans deaths through his negligence and made Christian fascism seem fashionable to Republican lawmakers (and their conservative voting base).
You’re gonna have to provide at least one solid citation for that assertion. No explicitly right-wing news sources will be accepted.
No, he had an effect—his administration fast-tracking the vaccine almost certainly helped make people already leaning towards anti-vax beliefs dig their heels in more. Be it for reasons related to religion, stem cells, mRNA, or any other bullshit excuse, the anti-vaxxers held firm to their beliefs in the wake of the COVID vaccine…which Trump didn’t help dissuade at any point while he was president and sure as hell hasn’t pushed back against in any meaningful way after he left office.
He also didn’t help anyone by shittalking measures meant to protect public health (mask mandates, social distancing, lockdowns), recommending drugs and…experimental treatments with no proven significant effects in re: treating COVID, and continually saying “the virus will completely disappear soon” when no such thing was even close to happening. Trump didn’t give a shit about people dying from the virus—he gave a shit about the economy cratering…and how that was hurting his polling numbers. A single death wasn’t a tragedy to him, and thousands of deaths was a statistic he ignored.
The pandemic rages on in the United States because Trump helped anti-vaxxers and plague enthusiasts by not doing a goddamn thing to effectively denounce their bullshit. He fanned the flames of conservative anti-science/anti-expertise propaganda, and that led to the increase of anti-vaxxers/maskholes/“it’s not that bad” plague enthusiasts. If he’d listened to the scientists and coordinated a national response and treated COVID-19 as a public health crisis instead of a campaign crisis, we’d probably have a lot fewer deaths from COVID than three-quarters of a million.
If I knew what the fuck you were talking about, maybe I’d have an answer for you. Always provide context, Lozenge.
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Re:
Contrary to the pathological liar's "50/50" false narrative (At least they haven't gone into the explicitly racist "whatabout black people" extremist talking point yet), here's a PBS/NPR poll that it's 41% right 4% left (21% "independent.")
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Re: Re:
And here’s another:
Nearly half of unvaccinated respondents were Republicans (49% versus 29% Democrats)
https://hotair.com/headlines/2021/06/13/poll-the-biggest-unvaccinated-groups-n396366
So again, 50/50.
Apx 50% of the unvaxed are republicans. Not the majority. The largest self-identifying party. But not the majority of people.
Just about every survey positions republicans between 39% and 49%.
Nearly always shy of 50%.
Given there are very few voters of a class that goes further right than the most-right-wing republicans, the idea that the majority is on the right is flat out incorrect.
The only way you get a republican number above 60% is in small rural Republican hot zones. And that is categorically Inappropriate for a national view.
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I’d say a majority of anti-vaxxers—slim though it may be—are conservative, even if they don’t identify as Republican. By and large, liberals/progressives and even jackasses like libertarians aren’t coming out en masse against the vaccines. (Libertarians might not like the mandates, but who gives a fuck.)
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And yet we have regular interaction with states like Iran, China, Venezuela, … they are also dictatorships.
I get it, you’d wait till they finally managed to strike the US with a rocket and then kill millions of innocents in a retaliatory strike.
You forget, or ignore, your history.
Talks with the USSR kept everyone alive.
No, I KNOW she’s a genocidal maniac. Her ignoring the problems of ethnic Rus and Dvol in southern Ukraine while members of her family and her associates profiting from contracts in the country, many of them government-associated level, proves that.
Her willingness to support China while they massacre Turk, Mongol, and Uyghur populations?
Sorry, you comments on the Koreas is without meaning.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0
And numerous times before and after.
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That’s cute, that you think I’d believe that. But you’re WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG.
No, what I’d like our government to do is continue sanctioning North Korea and put pressure on China to make North Korea clean up its act. China is one of the few countries still willing to ally itself with North Korea; anything that NK does (including military strikes against its neighbors or the United States) will reflect poorly on China, and I don’t think the Chinese government would want that.
And what did Trump treating North Korea with kid gloves get us? Nothing.
No, you think she is.
You act like nobody in the Trump administration profited from international military activities. Hell, did Trump do anything significant about Russia encroaching on Ukraine during his time in office? If you want to claim Hillary Clinton is personally responsible for a genocide in Ukraine only because she didn’t intervene in stopping it, you can’t ignore anything Trump and his administration did (or didn’t do) about that same situation. He was president, not her. (And she will never be president, so you can stop worrying about your personal Antichrist ever being able to sit in the Oval Office.)
See my previous paragraph, but substitute the particulars for your question above where necessary.
Maybe you should pay closer attention to what she said. She outright said she would take the vaccine if doctors and public health professionals said to take it, but she wouldn’t take it if Donald Trump said to take it. That isn’t being anti-vax—it’s being smart enough to know that you shouldn’t trust Donald “I looked directly at a solar eclipse without any glasses” Trump (or any other Republican) when it comes to matters of science.
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And when have sanctions ever done anything other than hurt the people who live in the country being sanctioned?
You mean Russia coming to the aid of the Dvol and Rus who live there?
I’m glad trump didn’t intervene there. Those people deserve freedom. Not ethnic based targeting.
Oh, so the whole trump-China situation didn’t happen?
Tell that to the non-Republicans who aren’t vaxed.
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Re: Re: Name ten things
None of that is even possible in the US.
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Re: Re: Re: Name ten things
The president can refuse to sign a bill. When he issues a proclamation that he will not sign any bill (pocket veto) until something else reaches his desk, it becomes a mandate.
Yes. And dems are looking to federalise it completely.
I would have sought a temporary federalisation with a sunset.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Name ten things
No, that's politics. A mandate would force Congress to do something, which again the President cannot do. Regardless of what he or she proclaims, Congress can pass or not pass whatever they want.
Citation needed.
How? Seriously, by what mechanism would you federalize elections, keeping in mind that it would almost certainly be immediately challenged in court?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Name ten things
Have you read the ‘ For the People Act of 2021’?
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr1/text
I have.
That’s exactly what it does. It creates an entire list of federal regulations for elections.
And hey: the vast majority of it is very good and exactly what I would require in legislation.
Let’s start with the bad:
Presidential Tax Transparency
A no go. Taxes are private personal information.
It’s one thing to request them. Another entirely to demand it.
And the voting machine regulation is far too lenient.
No. This means no time for setup and testing. This should be on passage and not extending. By January of 2024.
Findings Relating to District of Columbia Statehood
Though it mentions the previous endeavour, which I fully supported, it does not mandate it.
The only way to do this is to either create a new state separate from DC of the populated area OR to jettison the land occupied by the public into surrounding states. Which I consider the better choice.
I’m also concerned with just how lax the identification requirements are.
The plan otherwise is very very good.
The single largest flaw is the DC section. Which is too open in it’s clause to be specific in action.
But let’s not pretend this isn’t federal control.
Own it. Stand by it.
I do.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Name ten things
Which is not at all the same thing as federalizing elections. "You must meet these minimum standards" is not "the federal government is now going to be running the election".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Name ten things
We have a different use for the term then.
I look at any federal control being added as federalisation.
And not in a bad way at all.
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The thing is, the mass shootings with scary rifles get the headlines, but most gun deaths are from handguns. Any gun violence plan that doesn't deal with the handguns that are already out there is somewhere between window dressing and falling short of the mark.
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I’m well aware of that. But I can’t think of any reasonable measures for “dealing with handguns” that won’t sound like “take all the guns”—not any measures that can be applied only to handguns in particular, anyway. (Hence my call for permits for all kinds of guns and proof of responsible gun ownership.)
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And here’s where we differ. I’d support a ban on semi automatic hand guns. Especially small calibre ones. And at the least a much more restrictive buying regulation.
Congress is all up in, er, arms, over rifles. Rifles aren’t holding up 7-11 at 1am.
When was the last time someone knocked of a liquor store with a 24” 20 gage shotgun?
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Re: Re:
I don't know the barrel length or gauge, but would you accept an internet cafe?
https://www.villages-news.com/2021/03/13/summerfield-man-arrested-in-robbery-with-shotgun-at-i nternet-cafe/
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Wow, Ohkay.
There’s always a ready exception to the norm.
The general point of agreement stands though. Handguns are far more likely to be used in firearms crimes.
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Republicans' anti-"fraud" measures are a Final Solution in search of a problem.
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Re: Re:
"How about stop blabbing and just let them die?"
Some people are not psychopaths and will work to protect the lives of people they disagree with politically even if it affects their long term goals.
"Things are, generally, back to relative normal."
Have... you actually seen figures?
"At least outside of hyper-liberal controlled cities."
Apparently not.
"Just wait for them to drop dead and carry on!"
Some people have this weird idea that human life is worth saving even if they were brainwashed by your con artist hero. Strange, huh?
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Re: History says otherwise
Lostinlodos: "I'm totally a centrist with facts"
Also Lostinlodos: That pile of hallucinogen-induced partisan extremist bullshit above
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Re: Re: History says otherwise
Fact: toom1275 has the chance to sit on the sideline and watch those that vote against his opinions drop dead of their own accord!
Why do you care so much? You should be happy your voting block will go up a percentage point or two.
See someone without a mask? Walk away. And since the unvaxed are nearly guaranteed to be unmasked: they’re easy to avoid!
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Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"Fact: toom1275 has the chance to sit on the sideline and watch those that vote against his opinions drop dead of their own accord!"
Because hes not a monster...
But hey another own goal from team anti-vax!!
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Because unlike you and your fellow Trumpians, toom isn’t a fucking sociopath who sees a public health crisis as a way to cull the population of “undesirables”.
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Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"Why do you care so much? You should be happy your voting block"
There's a trend among normal people to not consider politics to be an issue of life and death and that some people would like to protect the lives of people even if they disagree with them politically. I know that Trump fans don't think this way, but other have a concept of basic empathy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
Well then… I just don’t care if someone is too freedom fighting to get the vax.
I have no sympathy for them. If you don’t want it move over there and enjoy yourself. You won’t live long but hey, you sue free now!
It’s not empathy or politics or anything like that.
It’s personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.
That’s all the more it is.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"Well then… I just don’t care if someone is too freedom fighting to get the vax."
Well, I care because I read way too many stories about those same people gasping on their death bed repenting about how wrong they were. I'd prefer it if people don't died horrific avoidable deaths, even if I don't agree with the politically.
"It’s personal responsibility"
Yes, which is why I'm so annoyed about people not being personally responsible, especially in a global pandemic where we could be so much further to defeating it if they were responsible. Instead I'm reading about idiots demanding they get the right to infect entire populations and have them shut down because they don't understand what mRNA is...
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And waaaaaaaaaaay more often than not, they happen to share one specific political trait: They voted for Donald Trump.
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Sadly, the infection of that idea has spread to people outside of the US, so the fact that a lot of them voted for a corrupt gameshow host who boasted about sexual assault and bankrupted virtually every business he touched is not the whole story. I've honestly seen people protesting about "socialism" who depend on. socialised medicine to breathe because the US disinformation has infected them,
But, in most other places those people are the minority and everyone else just rolls their eyes and carries on with a better life than they would have had if they were allowed to dominate the discussion.
It's just a shame that the plague monkeys take people out with them. If we could guarantee that people who go to motorbike rallies and Trump rallies would take themselves out and nobody else, I'd say go for it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
Well you should care, because the more the virus circulates the sooner a variant that the vaccine does not protect against is likely to evolve. The problem with potentially fatal diseases is those who will not take steps to limit its spread will kill innocent people by passing it on.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
There’s two direct responses to this.
A) in time we will develop a system much like is in place for the flu.
Eventually.
There was a time when it could kill everyone. Now it’s less a concern.
Swine flu decimated my mum. Now dependant on o2. The treatment regiment destroyed her bones and left her wheelchair bound for all but a few short steps.
So I fully understand cause and effect.
And the first wave is always the deadliest! But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Eventually it will be just another shot to consider. Probably two or three a year.
And like every other virus out there there will be anti-vaxers that don’t take the poke and drop dead.
Of all the mandatory shots for participation in the real world, there’s always people who get around it. Get it. And then drop.
The solution is not to dictate from the government. It’s to implement a reliable, consistent, nation wide method of proof. And allow business the right to mandate proof for entery.
One part the “left” is missing is the majority of the “anti-vaxers” aren’t against the vaccination. Or even against requirements. They’re against government mandates.
If a business wants to allow or deny entry to unvaxed it should be the private decision of the private business on private property.
As long as the public is duly informed I don’t have any problem with private choice either way.
I won’t be visiting non-vax locations.
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Only the families of those idiots are concerned about those idiots on a personal level. Everyone else is concerned about who the hell else those idiots will take with them by way of spreading the disease before they drop dead.
Then why the actual fuck didn’t they get the vaccine before any sort of mandate came down from any government institution or private organization? (Here’s a tiny, insignificant, maybe-won’t-be-of-much-help hint for you: IT'S BECAUSE THEY WERE AGAINST THE VACCINE.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"So I fully understand cause and effect."
You clearly don't, otherwise you'd have come out of a situation where millions died of preventable disease with a reaction other than "but mommy I don't want to wear a mask for 10 minutes!" or "vaccines have a documented effect of eradicating preventable disease, but not this one, for reasons that have not been proven!".
"They’re against government mandates."
Mandates have appeared because ignorant twats, usually the same people who are against every other common sense measure against the virus such as masks and social distancing, are placing everyone else at a far higher risk than necessary because they can't consider anything other than their own small lives (usually combined at the moment with regular stories about them going "wait, I'm infected? Protect me!" just before they die of a disease they could have avoided contracting if they'd have just done what was asked").
No matter what you people claim, your "freedom" doesn't extend to infecting populations with a preventable disease. Other people should have the freedom from being infected just because your selfish asses can't think about anyone other than your own worthless lives.
"It’s to implement a reliable, consistent, nation wide method of proof."
The proof is available. You people have decided you don't want to believe it. Therefore, the rest of us have to force you to either act like adults or get the fuck away from the rest of us so that you stop increasing the body count.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
Who’s “ You people”?
I will happily supply my vaccination status if asked.
I support companies banning unvaxed. And I support companies requiring all who enter to be masked.
I just wish the government would stop spreading a false sense of security on less than reliable 10c paper masks.
If you’re going to mandate something it should be all in. I don’t want to be near a person with a paper mask any more than a person with no mask.
And if the government Wants to mandate something they should supply it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"Who’s “ You people”?"
Trump voters like you, duh
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
The fallacy that all trump voters are anti vax? I see.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwi
anti-vax? no
anti-science, anti-societal, anti-giving a fuck about other people? yes
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwi
Not all of them, although people stupid enough to be anti-vaxxers in the current climate quite often are people also stupid enough to vote for Trump. The venn diagram isn't a single circle, but there's a hell of a lot of overlap.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
"I just wish the government would stop spreading a false sense of security on less than reliable 10c paper masks."
Nobody claims they're 100% effective, and they're demonstrably better than wearing nothing. If the poor little babies over there actually wore them rather than demanding the right to infect everyone around them because their weak constitutions can't stand wearing an extra piece of clothing for a few minutes, the body count would be somewhat lower.
"And if the government Wants to mandate something they should supply it."
They mandate a lot of things that they don't pay for, and your type don't seem to have a problem with it. Why is public healthcare suddenly so important for them to provide, after you've spent decades pretending that not having a healthcare system that routinely bankrupts people is a good thing that's been achieved everywhere else in the world?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: History says otherwise
Yep. I generally complain about much of that idea.
Maybe stop fighting the atheists (under the guise of communism) and buying rockets for Israel to fit with the nukes they claim not to have?
And start funding all these requirements?
Not sure who “your type” is here. I’m more than consistently vocal the government should fund mandates.
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Voters like you—y’know, Republicans. Conservatives. Trumpists.
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Re:
"I'm not a Republican, but every time I think the left does something I will lick the soil off every Republican foot after kissing the ground they walked on." - Lostinlodos
But nah, let's go ahead and ignore how the champion you voted for the 45th presidency by and large ignored advice on the virus and vaccines, claimed credit when it was politically beneficial, and whose name gets chanted by his supporters on why they think nobody should get the vaccine. Can't wait to see what garbage you rehash this time.
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Re: Re:
Let’s see, his administration funded the research, had it developed, and came up with three vaccines. In record time. Then began to implement a rollout.
So he ignored vaccines how?
Or how about his stopping travel from China, the verified source, shortly after the outbreak started? Only to have the order wind up in court because democrats, er, something something.
His mask rhetoric may have been bad. Partially accurate, but not helpful to the general population.
And I’ve always disagreed, quite publicly, with the half-truth of mask info.
From both parties.
But no, I don’t think there is any major change of how he did things in retrospect.
Minor things, yes:
I would personally prefer he pushed through some form of protection for business that allowed them to mandate mask use among employees. (As opposed to mask mandates at the government level). Just like I think there should be protections pushed to protect employers from harm for firing non-vaxed shites.
I would have shut down all non/citizen inbound travel much faster.
And set up quarantine systems for citizens returning.
I would have completely closed and over guarded the entirety of our border.
And I would have worked with American companies to produce N95 masks at a record production rate. Much like the re-purposing of factories during political wars. This is a biological war. And we have the ability to shift production. That should have been done.
Aside from those things I don’t see anything more that could have been different in a positive light.
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That was despite Trump, rather than with his full support. Also there are others of his party, in Florida and Texas for example, who are also anti mask and vaccine, so there is some great leadership there.
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Came for the Lostinlodos misquoting, was not disappointed. He ignored advice. He promised to fight Fauci's advice on masks, on restrictions, wherever he thought it would win him the dumb white vote like yours.
But continued to let in traffic from Italy despite statistics indicating that that was where the next major outbreaks were coming from.
Yes, we've long since established that you pick the dumbest of hills to die on despite not actually following through with the die part.
And this is why the comments of "I don't like Trump but I will get on my knees and lick the Trump Tower under his pants when his fee-fees get threatened by Techdirt" aren't an exaggeration.
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Funny. All that and the takeaway isn’t even accurate. I didn’t say I “don’t like Trump”.
I clearly said I don’t agree with all of his policies.
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your only disagreements with him are minor nitpicks - you've never criticised him on any major plank of his platform (or the GOP's platform, which is basically the same)
you just keep deflecting with "well he didn't say EXACTLY that" or "oh but what about [Democrat of choice]"
you can't criticize Trump because you agree wirh him so much that to criticize him is to criticize your own personal political dogma
and you don't have the guts to do that - your continued defense of January 6 is proof of that
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Yes, I defend the right to peaceful protest.
The vast majority of those who were there on the 6th remained within the boundaries of the law.
I support the foundational premise of the right of the people to petition the government with grievances and demand redress.
Within the boundaries of existing law.
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Yet, you make a lot of excuses for the most prominent event in modern history that fits none of those criteria...
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Do I?
Looks cut and dry and over to me.
Those that broke the law were charged.
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aren't you the same asshole who said Ashli Babbett was killed because she was "standing while white"?
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Yes. I did make that error. Once another member supplied a video link showing a different angle that clearly showed here as a threat to the interior; I corrected that mistake.
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what part of "hang Mike Pence" is a grievance with the government, you fascism apologist?
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It isn’t, any more than the posters of trump in crosshairs.
Or Madonna calling to blow up the White House.
It’s protected speech.
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What part of forcing their way into the Capitol trying to hang Mike Pence is covered by free speech? Their action turned speech into a creditable threat.
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Those that entered the capital broke the law.
Not everyone entered the capital. Those that did not did not.
It’s that simple.
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And the people outside the Capitol who assaulted police officers and damaged property—they weren’t breaking the law?
You can keep making excuses for them, Lostcause, but it won’t save you when they eventually come for you.
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The minority that broke the law should be punished for doing so.
I will not condemn the 6th any more than I will not condemn the whole of the BLM protests for the few that rioted and looted.
Those that break the law should be held accountable.
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Your history of "But but but BLM!" posts would disagree.
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Wrong again.
I don’t blame the entirety for the acts of the few.
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Re: Fuck your feelings
Come on man. We can all see your posting history.
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Yep! Not hiding anything.
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Boldly standing by your own blatant lies is not a sign of bravery or honesty. It's a sign that you keep picking the dumbest hills to die on.
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But you have played the “whataboutism” card by comparing the January 6th riot to BLM protests and going “well aren’t you going to condemn all the violence from those people”. You’ve literally tried to compare riots borne from largely peaceful protests against police brutality and racial inequality with one singular riot that, if we buy your interpretation, started as a “peaceful” protest against American democracy itself.
You keep saying “I’m not a Republican, I’m not a conservative, I’m not with them in any way other than being a Trump voter”. But everything you’re saying outside of that proves otherwise.
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It’s not what about anything. It’s simple fact.
I have no partisan limit on calling out criminal actions.
I’m not the one ignoring criminal acts.
I’m a libertarian. With strong liberal leanings and a few conservative beliefs.
Let me once again in bold letters eliminate myself from the Republican Party.
The Jewish god, Christian god, Islamic god, all the same god:
Get your self righteous arse down here and suck my little 7” multiracial cock.
Hey preacher man: keep handing out bibles. There’s a transportation distribution crisis. Bibles make great toilet paper.
It’s a fucking parasitic tumour until you cut the cord.
Here’s a way to solve the national debt and not only fund national health care but reach the extreme alt left idea of universal income:
Tax religious institutions. 80% sounds fair to me.
How about 100% tax on gas vehicle purchases and a 100% tax credit on electric vehicles? It pays for itself twice over!
Here’s an idea, how about free solar energy.
If you want to spend a billion dollars, spend it on somethiuseful
So yes: fuck the bipartisan NWO of life long politicians and fuck the god’s army Republicans and fuck the gia tit sucking dems.
Fuck em all.
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Keep telling yourself that; maybe one day, it might even be true.
…says the guy who fetishizes property rights, thinks a flat tax is a good idea, openly wishes for the deaths of others, and voted for Donald Trump. You’ve far more in common with conservatives than you do with liberals—you’re just too afraid to admit it.
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Property rights, more specifically resources, are a cornerstone of the libertarian movement.
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Libertarians are conservatives who smoke pot.
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Interesting opinion. I can’t stand the smell. Like dead 🦨 butt.
I’ll pass and stick to tobacco.
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I give our closet Jan 6th cheerleader another week or so before he starts drunkposting again about how he thinks our collective mothers and sisters were worshipping his cock in his alcohol-induced fugue while he gave his 2nd Amendment a harmonica lesson.
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You’re a funny funny poster.
As long as people refuse to acknowledge that the majority of those there did not break any law: I will continue to point out that fact.
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And you’ll also keep pointing out the “BLM riots” as if the overwhelming majority of Black Lives Matter protests weren’t peaceful and the few riots that did come from those protests weren’t aimed at stopping American democracy from happening.
We’ve seen your post history, Lodos. Ain’t no use in trying to hide your attempts to equivocate protests/riots against racial injustice with a riot against American democracy itself. We know you’ve done it, we know you’ll keep doing it, and I know you’ll keep trying to deflect from your having done it and your wanting to keep doing it.
Just fucking own your bullshit for once, you coward.
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I gotta stop posting in the early morning.
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Morning. Lol 😝
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No. I call out that most of those ended in violent law braking. I don’t condemn the people calling Ou cops that shoot first.
I condemn the looters that have cost a combined loss exceeding a billion dollars and the media ignoring that aspect.
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If the media is ignoring it, then I congratulate you on following the primary sources so closely and would appreciate it if you could share your work here. I suspect that the sources don't say what you're claiming they do, but it would be nice if you occasionally back up your "facts" that nobody's reporting on.
Unless of course by "the media ignoring" the "facts" you just stated is that you mean that nobody outside of the echo chamber of known liars and propagandists you get all your news from are covering it in the same way, and you just assume that because you haven't seen the same spin elsewhere then it must be everyone else is wrong. In which case, I don't really care which lies you're believing this time, your tracks record on most subjects doesn't justify the effort made in repeating the debunking that's usually already happened many times elsewhere.
Also, who really cares? If BLM caused the damage you claim, that doesn't let all the people who tried overthrowing democracy off the hook. Outside of the schoolyard and the right-wing gutter press, "but mommy they did it too" doesn't work as an excuse.
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No, what you do is hem and haw and wonder what the unarmed citizen could have done to reduce the odds of getting shot while following orders.
Again, reading your post history isn't hard. Your first response is to consistently find fault with who you consider to be your opponents, i.e. anyone you have no strong affection or affiliation with. You consistently expect everyone else to be endlessly accommodating to your team's stupidity.
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Timmy, time to look up what prior restraint is because you don't
This guy is a government worker, so his first amendment rights regarding what he does while working isn't as expensive as a regular person. Two, as part of the police union with anti strike provisions in their contact also contractually limits what he can, and cannot do. So in the future tim, do some research.
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Fuck your and your violations of rights
Go fuck yourselves
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Re: Fuck your and your violations of rights
That's what I love about plague rats and their insistence that their right to infect people outweighs the right for others not to be infected - you all come across as so level-headed and educated.
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