And the ultimate goal of sowing doubt about the electoral process is easy enough to discern: Enough doubt about the process would allow Republicans to not only challenge, but outright ignore any election result. Welcome to American fascism — if you think it can’t happen, it already is.
Lockdowns are not the solution and have gone on way too long. A few week? Maybe. A year? No.
I’d tend to agree, except for the fact that lockdowns weren’t adhered to in a unified way across the country. Some places locked down fully; some didn’t. Some places held onto the lockdowns until the virus was more under control; some didn’t. This lack of a unified national response to a once-in-a-lifetime public health hazard — especially from the federal government, which should’ve been leading one but wasn’t — led to the greater spread of the virus within the U.S.
Mandating everyone use an inadequate mask is not only a violation of personal Liberty, it’s such a minor benefit I can’t justify trampling personal, and property rights for it.
Would you have preferred a mandate against wearing masks of any kind?
The mask mandates don’t “violate liberty” — at best, they mandate a minor inconvenience for the sake of protecting public health. (As Thanos might put it: “A small price to pay for savlation.”) It’s such a minor inconvenience that I can’t justify destroying public health and causing an even worse social and economic crisis in favor of complete “liberty” from masks.
Wonder how many masked people got the virus from being misinformed on how and what a mask can do. And NOT do.
I wonder how many unmasked “patriots” spread the virus in the name of “liberty” and “freedom”.
The discussion of masks rarely properly covered the 95% masks.
So what.
So people had no motivation to spend slightly more for a working protective solution. The misinformation on masking, by lack of disclosure, was a major problem.
You know what would’ve helped? Clearer information about masks from the federal government and medical experts. Wanna know what stopped that from becoming front-page news? GOP leaders — including the then-president! — decrying mask mandates and saying “masks are ineffective” and all the other bullshit they said to make wearing a mask seem like (to paraphrase recent comments from GOP Rep. Marjorie Three-Names) wearing a yellow star during the Holocaust. Blame the man you helped put in office for that outcome.
those same states have the highest infection rates. Lock downs and mask mandates created a false, fake, sense of security
Several states didn’t take the lockdowns/mask mandates/etc. seriously. GOP leadership in Washington didn’t, either. I won’t deny that we had some false hope pinned on masks and lockdowns and such — but we would’ve had better outcomes if we’d all have tried our best to avoid situations where we could catch/spread the virus.
He didn’t ignore the pandemic, he tried to not panic the population.
Look how well that worked out: 400,000 dead in a year, panic buying on supplies people normally took for granted, numerous jobs lost and businesses closed, and all so Donald Trump could claim day after day that the virus was either “under control” or “going away” when neither claim was true.
He didn’t try to stop a panic. He tried to sweep a pandemic under the rug because it was destroying the economy and he knew that didn’t bode well for his polling numbers.
He tossed out a plan that wouldn’t have worked for the current virus.
How do you know, with the absolute certainty of God Herself, that the pandemic playbook developed by the Obama administration wouldn't have worked — even partially — for COVID-19?
That had nothing to do with who created it.
Donald Trump spent his entire time in office in a mad dash to undo anything good that Obama did — notably the attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act and his revocation of LGBT-friendly policies enacted by the Obama administration. Hell, the political career of Old 45 arguably began when he led the “birther” movement that sought to invalidate the presidency of the first Black man elected to the seat. To claim Trump tossing out the pandemic playbook had nothing to do with whose administration created the playbook is, at best, unintentional ignorance of the racist past of Donald Trump. (At worst, it is intentional ignorance.)
he NEVER said inject bleach into your body
Donald Trump himself said the following at [a press briefing on the 23rd of April 2020] (https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pe nce-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-31/): “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting. … And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”
While he didn’t explicitly say “bleach”, the context of those comments makes his suggestion clear. And that context? He made those comments after a presentation about how sunlight and disinfectants (such as bleach) affected the COVID-19 virus on non-porous surfaces.
He wanted to protect the people likely to have problems without stomping on liberty.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t give a damn about people dying of COVID until after the number of people dying became too great for even him to deny the truth.
He tried to shut down travel but the Dems went to court.
Please provide a story from a credible source that proves this claim.
He tried to move funding but the Democrats set up road blocks.
Please provide a story from a credible source that proves this claim.
He set up a plan for [vaccine] funding, testing, and distribution.
Even if I were to grant this: His plans were half-assed and rushed into because of how late he was in getting his shit together in a backpack and telling the federal government to do something in response to the pandemic.
When Biden came in and “did stuff” it’s because the Democrats stopped obstructing everything.
The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” any of the major COVID relief bills, except to fight for measures that would’ve benefitted the American public but the Republicans had tried to kill. The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” any plans to develop a vaccine. The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” anything meaningful related to the COVID-19 response. If you could offer proof of that claim, you would’ve.
And Biden coming into office meant a changeover in administration leadership on multiple levels — including those that had seen lax (if not non-existent) leadership from Trump cronies who cared more about making Old 45 look good than about saving lives. This meant people who knew how to do their fucking jobs, and do them well, were finally in positions of power again. Democrat-led “obstruction” didn’t cause COVID-19 responses to be delayed — that happened because of Trumpian-led incompetence and sociopathy.
Your vote for Donald Trump was a vote for human suffering. Live with that for the rest of your life.
Only if you ignore how Republican leaders fought tooth and nail against lockdown measures and mask mandates and other “we need to protect public health” actions — the same actions that Donald Trump decried over and over and over again even after he himself caught COVID. He wanted to “reopen the economy” at several points during the pandemic — including Easter and the 4th of July — when the pandemic was nowhere near under control. Neither Trump, GOP lawmakers, nor Republican voters generally gave a good god’s damn about how many people died from COVID, so long as they could find a way to stop wearing masks indoors and act like the pandemic wasn’t killing hundreds-to-thousands of Americans per day.
For all their general spinelessness, at least Democrat lawmakers cared enough to enact and enforce measures that likely saved thousands of lives. They cared enough to keep mask mandates in place, to lock down cities so the virus wouldn’t spread as quickly as possible, to do something other than pretend the pandemic was “under control”.
Keep in mind that your support for Trump in 2020 was a vote for supporting the same person who ignored the pandemic until he couldn’t, tossed out a pandemic playbook because it came from the presidency of a Black man, and suggested the idea of injecting bleach into one’s body to kill the virus. Your vote was in support of a presidency that wanted great economic numbers regardless of how many deaths were needed to get those numbers. Among the many evils of the Trump administration, the absolute disregard for human life and suffering from a president who cared more about his polling numbers than death counts sits on the top of the list of his biggest atrocities. And you voted for that to keep going.
I hope you eventually get the fascist you want in office. I hope you vote for him, support him wholeheartedly, and cheer when he announces the death of American democracy. Because when he comes for you — and he will, eventually — I want your last thought before you get dragged off to prison (or worse) to be “but I voted for him to hurt others”.
Your vote was a vote for human suffering. Live with that for the rest of your life.
There actually now is a legal requirement [t]hat Twitter host speech of any politician. Florida's.
The Florida state government can’t force Twitter to host any speech published by Florida politicians any more than the federal government can force Twitter to host the speech of the sitting POTUS. This law compelling a forced association between Twitter and Floridian politicians will be found unconstitutional in short order.
The fact that they can regulate speech in that forum means that the regulation of such speech isn't an "unconstitutional" infringement of a corporation's free speech.
The law infringes not upon the right of free speech, but the right of association. The government generally cannot compel association — a private person/entity will always have the right to decide who/what they will associate with for themselves. (Anti-discrimination ordinances are an exception, but those are based on who a person is rather than the speech they espouse.)
A government entity within the United States, at any level of government, can’t require a open-to-the-public privately owned space to host third-party speech — even when that speech comes from a politician. To say otherwise would be to upend the First Amendment.
A "content neutral" law is one that applies to all speech regardless of the substance.
I repeat: One person says gay people should have all the same civil rights as straight people. Another person says gay people are abominations who should be “cured” of their “disease” before they kickstart the apocalypse by merely existing. Under “content neutral” laws, Twitter would have to host both forms of speech — even if it didn’t want to host the bigoted bullshit — or face some form of punishment for its refusal to associate with bigotry.
Would you mind explaining how this outcome can still work under the idea that the people who own and operate Twitter have the right to decide what speech Twitter will and won’t associate itself with?
The UDTPA specifically precludes corporations from "represent[ing] that goods or services have sponsorship, approval, characteristics, ingredients, uses, benefits, or quantities that they do not have or that a person has a sponsorship, approval, status, affiliation, or connection that the person does not have." As well as a host of other no-no's. These are all restraint's on speech.
Those “restraints” deal with commercial speech (e.g., marketing). They don’t say that Twitter must host speech its owners/operators otherwise don’t want on Twitter servers. No law says that because no law can say that because to upend that principle is to upend the First Amendment (as well as private property rights) for the sake of some asshole who wants a right (“free reach”) they don’t have and can’t give themselves.
Given that Republicans have every incentive to refuse certification of election results — and their supporters have no issue with using political violence to enforce that decision — I’d be more worried about fascism.
Also worth noting: The Supreme Court, which rejected attempts to basically have SCOTUS itself decide the election results, currently has a two-thirds conservative majority. The same Associate Justices that Trump named to the court also rejected his arguments (and those of his supporters) because even they didn’t believe in undying fealty to Dear Leader at the cost of American democracy.
while Twitter may not be a public forum in its entirety (at least currently), the feeds of politicians on twitter may well be
That doesn’t mean Twitter is obligated — legally, morally, or ethically — to host the speech of any politician. What the ruling means is this: A given politician cannot block constituents on social media sites run by that politician. For example, AOC can’t block people in her district from viewing her tweets or interacting with her on Twitter. (But she can mute them, since that doesn’t remove their ability to interact and she isn’t under an obligation to read everyone else’s bullshit.)
there is a long history of the US requiring equal access to at least broadcast medium to politicians
If Twitter and Facebook were networks on a broadcast medium instead of communications tools, you might have a point.
Such "content neutral" laws are regularly accepted limitations on free speech.
One person says gay people should have all the same civil rights as straight people. Another person says gay people are abominations who should be “cured” of their “disease” before they kickstart the apocalypse by merely existing. Under “content neutral” laws, Twitter would have to host both forms of speech — even if it didn’t want to host the bigoted bullshit — or face some form of punishment for its refusal to associate with bigotry. Please explain how such an outcome is “acceptable”.
requiring transparency and adherence to codes of conduct are pretty normal consumer protection measures states have been requiring of companies for a long time as well
Speaking as someone who has moderation experience: You can have a strict code of conduct and still run into situations that said code doesn’t cover. The ability to adapt moderation for new situations in a timely is why requiring the strictest adherence possible doesn’t work — after all, you can’t adapt on the fly if the law won’t let you adapt without first filing forms in triplicate.
The Universal Deceptive Trade Practices Act has regulated companies in their dealings with consumers for quite a while as well. It's been adopted by nearly every state in a pretty standardized form.
That act doesn’t (and shouldn’t) regulate what speech a private entity — no matter how large or small — can choose to host.
Florida can set the requirements for a corporation doing business in its state.
No government official, at any level, can force a social media service to host speech that said service doesn’t want to host. But if you still believe otherwise, I do have One Simple Question for you.
Assume for a moment that you run a small Mastodon instance. Yes or no: Should the government have the absolute right to make your instance host offensive-yet-legally protected speech that you don’t want hosted on/associated with your instance? Answer directly and on-point; deflecting with “but my instance wouldn’t as big as Twitter” or other such off-topic bullshit will not be considered an answer.
Normally, I’d ask you to gather all seven Dragon Balls before you summon me to grant a wish, but I guess~ I can make an exception this time. 😁
[ahem]
Social media services are not public fora; if you need a citation for that, look no further than a Supreme Court ruling from 2019 where Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion:
Under the Court’s cases, a private entity may qualify as a state actor when it exercises “powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” … It is not enough that the federal, state, or local government exercised the function in the past, or still does. And it is not enough that the function serves the public good or the public interest in some way. Rather, to qualify as a traditional, exclusive public function within the meaning of our state-action precedents, the government must have traditionally and exclusively performed the function.
The Court has stressed that “very few” functions fall into that category. … Under the Court’s cases, those functions include, for example, running elections and operating a company town. … The Court has ruled that a variety of functions do not fall into that category, including, for example: running sports associations and leagues, administering insurance payments, operating nursing homes, providing special education, representing indigent criminal defendants, resolving private disputes, and supplying electricity.
…
When the government provides a forum for speech (known as a public forum), the government may be constrained by the First Amendment, meaning that the government ordinarily may not exclude speech or speakers from the forum on the basis of viewpoint, or sometimes even on the basis of content[.]
By contrast, when a private entity provides a forum for speech, the private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment because the private entity is not a state actor. The private entity may thus exercise editorial discretion over the speech and speakers in the forum. This Court so ruled in its 1976 decision in Hudgens v. NLRB. There, the Court held that a shopping center owner is not a state actor subject to First Amendment requirements such as the public forum doctrine[.]
The Hudgens decision reflects a commonsense principle: Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed. Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. After all, private property owners and private lessees often open their property for speech. Grocery stores put up community bulletin boards. Comedy clubs host open mic nights. As Judge Jacobs persuasively explained, it “is not at all a near-exclusive function of the state to provide the forums for public expression, politics, information, or entertainment[”.]
In short, merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.
If the rule were otherwise, all private property owners and private lessees who open their property for speech would be subject to First Amendment constraints and would lose the ability to exercise what they deem to be appropriate editorial discretion within that open forum. Private property owners and private lessees would face the unappetizing choice of allowing all comers or closing the platform altogether. “The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use.” … Benjamin Franklin did not have to operate his newspaper as “a stagecoach, with seats for everyone.” … That principle still holds true. As the Court said in Hudgens, to hold that private property owners providing a forum for speech are constrained by the First Amendment would be “to create a court-made law wholly disregarding the constitutional basis on which private ownership of property rests in this country.” … The Constitution does not disable private property owners and private lessees from exercising editorial discretion over speech and speakers on their property.
…
A private entity … who opens its property for speech by others is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.
The Arizona state government needs evdience of major voting irregularities to prompt a government-run audit. No such evidence exists in re: the 2020 election, even after recounts and other cursory investigations. The current “audit” is being carried out by a nakedly partisan outside group that wants desperately to find in favor of Trump regardless of the truth. This ridiculous farce of an “audit” is a conclusion in search of a theory, an answer in search of a question. Anyone who takes it seriously is equally as ridiculous.
Why you keep coming back for more punishment, I will never know. But since you’re here…
The wall didn’t start in 2017. So it’s not 4 years.
Irrelevant. Trump promised a wall across the entire southern U.S. border. Trump didn’t deliver anything even close to that.
I did say I’d word the conflict differently but it’s still a land issue.
Only if you take the cost of human lives out of the equation, sure.
north Korea, is only poor because they’ve been cut off.
North Korea is militarily hostile towards several of its immediate neighbors and the United States. If you can’t figure out why the world would rather sanction North Korea than let that country do whatever to South Korea, Japan, etc., this conversation is above your ability to comprehend.
We obviously have different views on how it should have been handled.
I’m not hearing you say Trump should’ve handled it differently. 400,000 deaths on his hands, and you can’t even bring yourself to admit he fucked up. I’m more than willing to criticize Obama for his failures. (Kickstarting the policy that would eventually evolve into Trump’s family separation policy is a good place to start.) For what reason do you remain unwilling to criticize Old 45 for his failures as a leader during a national pandemic?
it was “including” thugs and rapists.
His statement heavily implied that of the immigrants coming in from Mexico, the majority of them were “thugs and rapists” while only some of them were “good people”. The broader (and racist) implication is clear: Mexico is sending criminals into the United States.
Your football hero wasn’t a great player to start with.
Irrelevant. Plenty of players with worse stats than Colin Kaepernick were signed to other teams after he was drummed out of the NFL. The league blackballed him out of fear of what Trump (and his supporters) might do in retaliation for the protests. It wasn’t a “hey, this guy sucks at the game” decision — it was a “hey, we don’t wanna piss off Dear Leader and his angry-as-fuck followers” decision.
Bravado is different from action.
If he’s willing to fuck around on his wives behind their backs, how willing is he to lie to anyone and everyone about anything? (Judging by his time as president: He lies as easily as he breathes.)
I agree with the separation and the “kids in cages” crap was bull.
Oh, wonderful, you’re in favor of traumatizing children and breaking them up from their families for no reason other than they crossed the border illegally. I hope you know there are still several hundred migrant children that the U.S. government still hasn’t managed to reunite with their families. And I won’t even get into the nightmare of a system that lets American families receive custody of migrant children whose parents were deported — a sick form of adoption that will likely separate a child and their birth parents forever.
The overcrowding was an issue caused by Democrats. Every time he tried to deport, someone got in the way.
Gee, it’s almost as if he tried to violate the law and a bunch of people said “no, that isn’t how this works” until he finally got the message. Imagine that~.
Trump didn’t call violent people good folks. Period. Didn’t happen.
He literally said there were “good people on both sides” of a march for white supremacy and a protest against said march. Whether he referred to “violent people” or not is irrelevant — he still said that the people marching in favor of white supremacy were “good people”. He didn’t denounce white supremacy; he never has; he never will.
Did cities across the country need to burn for the angry cop?
Better to burn buildings than to…oh, how did the insurrectionists put it? Oh, right — better to burn buildings than to hang the Vice President. Property can be replaced; lives can’t.
And I don’t condone riots/looting/property damage. Don’t even think of laying that accusation on me. That said: I understand the anger that gave birth to those riots. Centuries of injustice and hatred and pain and suffering visited upon generations of people for no reason other than the color of their skin created the conditions for those riots. The murder of George Floyd — another unjust execution of a Black man at the hands of the same system that can bring in white mass murderers without firing a shot and even treat them to fast food — was merely the latest match to light the flame.
The insurrection, on the other hand, was a giant group of assholes — people who’d been convinced by a con artist that an election with no signs of massive widespread voter fraud was actually stolen — crashing into a citadel of American democracy and chanting for the murder of the Vice President because he didn’t violate the Constitution and declare Donald Trump as the winner of an election he lost both popularly and electorally. That shit isn’t “understandable”. That shit is indefensible in both act and spirit.
The leaders of the plot were always anti-Trump.
No, they weren’t.
Nothing there says or suggests “violently storm into the capital”.
Rudy Giuliani suggested “trial by combat”. Other speakers, like Trump, extolled the virtues of strength and begged Trump supporters to help “stop the steal”. For months, Trump and his cronies claimed the election would be stolen (or, post-election, was stolen) and suggested his supporters would have to take action on his behalf. Trump acted in his usual mob boss way: He didn’t need to give an order when his wishes were so plainly known. All he needed to do was light the fuse — e.g., give a speech that asked his followers to take some sort of action on his behalf — and watch the kindling burn.
Recounts are part of the legitimate electoral process.
Every recount that was triggered as part of the legitimate electoral process found no evidence of widescale voter fraud. The “audit” in Arizona is not part of that process — and given the stories I’ve read about the incompetence of the group carrying out that audit, that is certainly for the best.
I don’t blame trump for anything on the pandemic. It’s not the first one and it’s not the last. A reacted to the best of his ability on an unknown
Over a year before the COVID pandemic, Donald Trump dismantled the government team created to help fight/prevent pandemics. When the pandemic first reached American shores, he claimed it was “under control” and it would “disappear”. In the course of the year between the outbreak and the end of his term, Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the severity of the virus, repeatedly contradicted actual scientific experts, suggested false “cures”/treatments such as ingesting bleach and taking hydroxychloroquine, and showed more concern for his own image than for the health and safety of the populace — including the Secret Service agents he had drive him around the hospital after he himself contracted COVID-19.
He didn’t do anything a good leader would’ve done. He did what he thought was best for his polling numbers: Ignore the large bad thing, focus on the small good thing. More than a year later, we have more than half a million Americans dead because of Trump’s incompetence, lies, and unwillingness to tell his supporters that wearing masks and social distancing would save lives. I mean, he and his administration wanted to “re-open the country” on Easter (2020, that is) — a time when the virus was still rapidly spreading around the country.
400,000 people died so Donald Trump could focus on his election. But sure, keep telling me he wasn’t responsible, as the man in charge of the federal government, for the shit-ass response of the federal government to the COVID-19 pandemic. See how far that argument gets you.
with half the country fighting every move he made
Half the country was fighting mask mandates and shutdowns — and they were fighting those measures partly because Donald fucking Trump himself came out against those measures. (The other part was because of brainwashing about “freedoms” and “liberty” by — you guessed it~! — the same Republicans that supported Donald Trump.)
as far as I’m concerned that’s all it is. Choose the target and point your finger.
I point my finger at a federal government that either seemed uninterested in helping prevent a pandemic or was too afraid of Dear Leader to contradict his proclamations of “it’s nothing, it’s going to go away, it’s fine”. And since Trump was Dear Leader at the time…well, gee, guess who gets to eat the blame for the incompetence/carelessness/sociopathy of his administration~.
we weren’t prepared
We could’ve been if Trump hadn’t literally tossed out the pandemic playbook left for him by his immediate predecessor because Old 45 hated Barack Obama for being both Black and a better man than Trump.
I’d hope instead we look at how it got here, how it spread, and find ways to react better, faster, when it happens again.
Let’s start by not electing someone who gives more of a fuck about whether he’s polling well on Fox News than about whether thousands of people are getting sick/dying on his watch. I know that being president takes at least some minor sociopathy, but we don’t need to elect a complete sociopath. So maybe don’t vote for the Republican next time, Lodos.
The administration’s achievements in 4 years was worth any failures.
On the 20th of January, the COVID-19 death toll in the United States was near or above 400,000 (depending on which stats you’re looking at and whether you believe the death rate is underreported).
Yes or no: Is everything Donald Trump accomplished in his four years as president worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who died from, and the health and well-being of the millions more infected with and affected by, COVID-19 in the year between the first recorded cases/deaths and the time he left office?
Building a wall that long and that high takes time.
Four years wasn’t enough to build even a significant portion of the promised wall? Four years of tearing through environmental regulations, rerouting government funding, and promising that American taxpayers would never foot the bill amounted to what — some new fencing? Keep making excuses for his failure; I’m sure Old 45 would appreciate your support.
Most of those deals were made with the intent of uniting countries against Iran. And that sounds good to me!
And if that happens to fuck over the Palestinian people to the point where they’d agree to any deal just to stay alive…well, tough shit for them, huh?
that’s exactly what the issue is. A land dispute.
Even if the conflict is a “land dispute”, referring to the situation in that way makes it sound like the multitude of deaths that have happened just this year (to date) are about a hotel or some shit. Saying the conflict is a “land dispute” is no better than saying the genocide of the indigenous Americans at the hands of the colonists/American government was a “land dispute”. It is sick, sociopathic shit — and you’re helping to propagate it.
North Korea is a genuine country with a genuine leader. They’d be far less of a threat if the West stopped stepping on their neck and stabbing them in the back.
North Korea is a nightmarish dystopia of extreme poverty hidden by excessive luxury that is run by a dictator who kills family members and has dissenters sent to work camps. North Korea is a country led by people willing to start a war so they can eventually drop a nuke. North Korea is a threat not just to the stability of the East Asian region, but to the entire world — because they want Global Thermonuclear War to be something other than a computer simulation. But sure, tell me how the guy with the funny haircut makes for a great meme or some shit.
Whatever damage came from the pandemic was limited to shutdown states.
Restaurants around the country closed. The travel and tourism industries got hit hard because virtually nobody was travelling to (or from) the States. Everyone suffered from the lockdowns; that you want to limit that damage to “shutdown states” (read: states that actually tried to minimize the damage from COVID because they were run by competent lawmakers) says a lot about you.
I do not accept you claim Trump was a racist.
He referred to Mexican immigrants as “thugs and rapists”. He referred to a Black man peacefully protesting police brutality as a “son of a bitch” and was the primary reason for said Black man getting blackballed from the NFL. He also referred to violent white supremacists as “very fine people” and refused to condemn the violent white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys. Hell, he even refused to condemn white supremacy. “Racist” is the kindest thing I can say about him in that regard.
The next two mean nothing. So what. Never proven. Don’t believe you.
As far as “sexist” goes: “Grab ’em by the pussy” should be enough, but go back to statements made throughout his term — and notice the gender of the people for whom he saves the most heated insults. (Hint: It wasn’t men.)
As far as “philandering” goes: He admitted to having affairs while married to his ex-wives, which is a telltale sign that he’s not going to be truthful in all his dealings with other people. (To wit: his overinflated net worth.)
Biden did no better with migrants.
Biden may not be doing much better, but he’s not trying to make things worse by actively separating families and shoving kids in cages within concentration camps. That shit happened on Trump’s watch. Why aren’t you criticizing Trump for doing that shit?
You intentionally mis-quote and I agree with the statement, not the intention. Nobody should steamroll anyone based on race.
“Jews will not replace us” is anti-Semitic horseshit that is an offshoot (if not a whole-assed plank in the platform) of the so-called Great Replacement Theory. That “theory” says whites are in danger of being “replaced” by all the other races (and mixed-race people), so whites have to do whatever they can to prevent that fate. It’s bigoted horseshit and defending that horseshit, even in passing, makes you little better than the tiki torch–carrying white supremacist bigots who chanted that phrase during a midnight march the night before Charlottesville.
the majority of BLM’s public front is violent anti-white racists
[citation needed]
All shouting black power over a surge fuller criminal who was stopped for committing a felony.
Three things.
“Surge fuller”? What the fuck is that.
George Floyd was killed by a police officer who arrested Floyd for using a counterfeit $20 bill — which Floyd may not have even known was counterfeit. How did the sentence fit the crime?
“Black power” is about the empowerment and freedom of Black people. “White power” is about the supremacy and sociopolitical dominance of white people over all other people. Can you spot the difference? (I don’t think you can.)
I don’t accept heavily edited papers claiming humans are more than a drop in the proverbial bucket on climate.
We are more than “a drop in the bucket”. Well, not all of us. We know who the biggest pollutants in the world are — hell, we have their names and work addresses. But our leaders don’t do anything about them because Big Energy still has big bank accounts and none of them fucking care about what’s going to be left of this world after they’re dead.
The person who tried to kidnap the Michigan gov was anti-trump
The plot to kidnap and execute Gretchen Whitmer involved an entire group of people who, at one point or another, showed support for Old 45. The likelihood that they were inspired to plan their violent uprising against the Michigan state government by the words of Donald Trump (e.g., “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”) may not be 100%, but to rule that factor out completely because some of those assholes criticized Trump later on is…flawed thinking, at best.
Trump never told anyone to ‘invade’ the capital.
“We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.” — Donald Trump, on the 6th of January
And because I know it will be brought up: Yes, he exhorted his followers to march “peacefully” in the next sentence he spoke. But after having riled that crowd up with lies about voter fraud and weak Republicans and “cancel culture”, nobody expected his followers to march peacefully. And we now know that members of white supremacist groups that had planned a violent entry into the Capitol were in the crowd, so peace, as the meme goes, was never an option.
The recount happened because the PEOPLE called for it.
Why did they call for it? Because they were lied to for months about whether the result of the election would be legal. (It was.) Because they were lied to for months that massive fraud would take place. (It didn’t.) Because they were lied to by a man who believed he would win a second term (he didn’t) and explicitly told supporters in both 2016 and 2020 that he would refuse to accept any election result that didn’t have him marked as the winner (he did). The only reason that ridiculous Arizona “audit” is going on right now is because of the Big Lie that — and you have to know this is true now — Republicans can and will use to justify a refusal to certify any election in which a Democrat wins. Why wouldn’t they? They’re not going to suffer any actual consequences for it — none that their rich lawyers and a Republican president can’t do away with, anyway.
The members of Congress exercised one of their rights in objection.
Their objections were bullshit because nobody — not Trump supporters, not Trump’s legal team, not Trump himself, and certainly not the members of Congress who objected to the results of a free and fair election out of naked partisan loyalty to an American fascist — produced any credible indication that the 2020 presidential election was anything but free, fair, and above board.
I don’t believe in your god.
You will receive no mercy here. If you want mercy, pick a god and pray.
…says the guy so obsessed with a website he hates for no reason other than someone quoted Barack Obama at him a decade ago that he shitposts to the tune of hundreds of spamfiltered attempts at commenting every day.
I know this is rich coming from me, but seriously, Brainy: Get a life.
He didn’t even get a huge chunk of it built. At best, he had a small new portion built and fixed up existing portions of the current wall. And no, Mexico didn’t pay for any of it.
middle-east agreements between Muslim states and Israel
Most of those deals were made with the intent of uniting Sunni-controlled countries against Shiite-controlled Iran. The side effect of such a united front? Palestinians would be left without any major allies. And all at the behest of an asshole who literally called the Israel/Palestine conflict — and this is a direct quote — “a real-estate dispute”.
attempts at negotiating with North Korea
Donald Trump handed credibility as a genuine world leader to a brutal dictator in Kim Jong-Un. The United States received literally nothing from North Korea in return. Winning~!
a roaring economic recovery that remained generally stable despite the pandemic
Uh, no. No, it did not. The pandemic fucked up the economy hard; it may be well past Biden’s term before it picks back up to full steam again. And even if — if — Trump did help build it back up in the three years prior to the pandemic he helped make worse, the economy was already recovering prior to Trump entering office. He inherited a growing economy from Obama, managed to keep it steady for three years, then fucked it all up when he decided his political ambitions were less important than people dying of COVID-19 by the hundreds every day.
I made a choice in 20
And you chose to vote for an racist, sexist, philandering, woman-groping, white supremacist con artist whose biggest claim to fame prior to becoming president is that he hosted a hit game show and overinflated his net worth. You voted for a man who approved of putting migrant kids in cages by themselves, who showed support for the “very fine people” who shouted “Jews will not replace us”, who referred to a Black man peacefully protesting police violence as a “son of a bitch”, who was seemingly in favor of worsening global climate change, whose rhetoric about masks and lockdowns inspired a group of armed sociopaths to make a plan involving the kidnapping and execution of a sitting governor, and who committed hundreds of other atrocities during his campaign and during his time in office. And let’s not forget his support for the people who have supported, are supporting, and will continue to support his Big Lie — including the armed insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol and chanted “kill Mike Pence” as they looked for both Pence and members of Congress, the assholes working on that ridiculous audit/recount/whatever in Arizona, and the lawmakers who would rather abandon truth than stand up to an old man who rules by fear of what his supporters could do…politically and physically.
I didn’t vote for the worst president in American history — the closest thing we’ve had in our lifetimes to an American tyrant, a man who would be king if not for the spines of those willing to tell him “no”. You did that. Until you can denounce your support for the man, you will be marked as a supporter of blatant and unrepentant evil.
May God have mercy on your soul. I sure as shit won’t.
False premise: To have abandoned that policy, the DSA would first have needed to adopt said policy as part of its overall platform. I’ve found no proof that it has; if I’m wrong, I retract this criticism.
I do know she discussed open borders on Instagram just recently
Then you should be able to find a direct quote, or a video clip, where AOC herself explicitly says she supports open borders — instead of a bunch of results that claim (without sourcing those claims) AOC supports open borders.
The department should be split back to the original agencies.
Which is the position I support. ICE isn’t necessary; the agencies it replaced were.
I said more entry points on a more secured order.
The U.S. can’t secure more entry points without more people and more deterrents against illegal entry. It can’t really deter illegal entry without resorting to violence (because little else works). So in this case, yes, “more security” inherently means more violence.
It gave us many positive benefits but it is poorly implemented. I don’t have a solution but Obamacare is as bad as it is good.
It’s still better than the status quo we had before Obamacare, which is what the GOP — the party of Trump, the man for whom you voted — wanted to bring back without any plan to replace Obamacare/the pre-ACA status quo.
Do you not understand people can have views that contradict their chosen vote?
You said you voted for Trump. Trump supported — among other things — a complete repeal of the ACA, stronger border security (which would eventually include his concentration camps along the southern border), “very fine people” who marched on Charlottesville in support of white supremacy, letting COVID run rampant for months before finally admitting that it wasn’t going to “just go away”, and…oh, what else was it…uh…lemme think…oh yeah, he also supported an armed insurrection against Congress and the unconstitutional overturning of the results of a free and fair election.
You voted for him and everything he stood for, even if you didn’t agree with all of what he stood for. You voted for a president who is, in every sense of the term, evil. Until you renounce that vote and express sincere regret for the pain caused by the man you supported, you’re a piece of shit. I won’t grant you absolution or sympathy if you can bring yourself to do those acts, though — I’ll save my sympathies for the families of those who died from COVID thanks to Donald Trump, the man for whom you voted, being a lying narcissistic grifter asshole who was more worried about looking bad in the polls than about the deaths of the people he was elected to serve.
On the post: Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors
And the ultimate goal of sowing doubt about the electoral process is easy enough to discern: Enough doubt about the process would allow Republicans to not only challenge, but outright ignore any election result. Welcome to American fascism — if you think it can’t happen, it already is.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
FYI: Quoting a Founding Father doesn’t scare me.
I’d tend to agree, except for the fact that lockdowns weren’t adhered to in a unified way across the country. Some places locked down fully; some didn’t. Some places held onto the lockdowns until the virus was more under control; some didn’t. This lack of a unified national response to a once-in-a-lifetime public health hazard — especially from the federal government, which should’ve been leading one but wasn’t — led to the greater spread of the virus within the U.S.
Would you have preferred a mandate against wearing masks of any kind?
The mask mandates don’t “violate liberty” — at best, they mandate a minor inconvenience for the sake of protecting public health. (As Thanos might put it: “A small price to pay for savlation.”) It’s such a minor inconvenience that I can’t justify destroying public health and causing an even worse social and economic crisis in favor of complete “liberty” from masks.
I wonder how many unmasked “patriots” spread the virus in the name of “liberty” and “freedom”.
So what.
You know what would’ve helped? Clearer information about masks from the federal government and medical experts. Wanna know what stopped that from becoming front-page news? GOP leaders — including the then-president! — decrying mask mandates and saying “masks are ineffective” and all the other bullshit they said to make wearing a mask seem like (to paraphrase recent comments from GOP Rep. Marjorie Three-Names) wearing a yellow star during the Holocaust. Blame the man you helped put in office for that outcome.
Several states didn’t take the lockdowns/mask mandates/etc. seriously. GOP leadership in Washington didn’t, either. I won’t deny that we had some false hope pinned on masks and lockdowns and such — but we would’ve had better outcomes if we’d all have tried our best to avoid situations where we could catch/spread the virus.
Look how well that worked out: 400,000 dead in a year, panic buying on supplies people normally took for granted, numerous jobs lost and businesses closed, and all so Donald Trump could claim day after day that the virus was either “under control” or “going away” when neither claim was true.
He didn’t try to stop a panic. He tried to sweep a pandemic under the rug because it was destroying the economy and he knew that didn’t bode well for his polling numbers.
How do you know, with the absolute certainty of God Herself, that the pandemic playbook developed by the Obama administration wouldn't have worked — even partially — for COVID-19?
Donald Trump spent his entire time in office in a mad dash to undo anything good that Obama did — notably the attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act and his revocation of LGBT-friendly policies enacted by the Obama administration. Hell, the political career of Old 45 arguably began when he led the “birther” movement that sought to invalidate the presidency of the first Black man elected to the seat. To claim Trump tossing out the pandemic playbook had nothing to do with whose administration created the playbook is, at best, unintentional ignorance of the racist past of Donald Trump. (At worst, it is intentional ignorance.)
Donald Trump himself said the following at [a press briefing on the 23rd of April 2020] (https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pe nce-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-31/): “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting. … And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”
While he didn’t explicitly say “bleach”, the context of those comments makes his suggestion clear. And that context? He made those comments after a presentation about how sunlight and disinfectants (such as bleach) affected the COVID-19 virus on non-porous surfaces.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t give a damn about people dying of COVID until after the number of people dying became too great for even him to deny the truth.
Please provide a story from a credible source that proves this claim.
Please provide a story from a credible source that proves this claim.
Even if I were to grant this: His plans were half-assed and rushed into because of how late he was in getting his shit together in a backpack and telling the federal government to do something in response to the pandemic.
The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” any of the major COVID relief bills, except to fight for measures that would’ve benefitted the American public but the Republicans had tried to kill. The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” any plans to develop a vaccine. The Democrats didn’t “obstruct” anything meaningful related to the COVID-19 response. If you could offer proof of that claim, you would’ve.
And Biden coming into office meant a changeover in administration leadership on multiple levels — including those that had seen lax (if not non-existent) leadership from Trump cronies who cared more about making Old 45 look good than about saving lives. This meant people who knew how to do their fucking jobs, and do them well, were finally in positions of power again. Democrat-led “obstruction” didn’t cause COVID-19 responses to be delayed — that happened because of Trumpian-led incompetence and sociopathy.
Your vote for Donald Trump was a vote for human suffering. Live with that for the rest of your life.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Only if you ignore how Republican leaders fought tooth and nail against lockdown measures and mask mandates and other “we need to protect public health” actions — the same actions that Donald Trump decried over and over and over again even after he himself caught COVID. He wanted to “reopen the economy” at several points during the pandemic — including Easter and the 4th of July — when the pandemic was nowhere near under control. Neither Trump, GOP lawmakers, nor Republican voters generally gave a good god’s damn about how many people died from COVID, so long as they could find a way to stop wearing masks indoors and act like the pandemic wasn’t killing hundreds-to-thousands of Americans per day.
For all their general spinelessness, at least Democrat lawmakers cared enough to enact and enforce measures that likely saved thousands of lives. They cared enough to keep mask mandates in place, to lock down cities so the virus wouldn’t spread as quickly as possible, to do something other than pretend the pandemic was “under control”.
Keep in mind that your support for Trump in 2020 was a vote for supporting the same person who ignored the pandemic until he couldn’t, tossed out a pandemic playbook because it came from the presidency of a Black man, and suggested the idea of injecting bleach into one’s body to kill the virus. Your vote was in support of a presidency that wanted great economic numbers regardless of how many deaths were needed to get those numbers. Among the many evils of the Trump administration, the absolute disregard for human life and suffering from a president who cared more about his polling numbers than death counts sits on the top of the list of his biggest atrocities. And you voted for that to keep going.
I hope you eventually get the fascist you want in office. I hope you vote for him, support him wholeheartedly, and cheer when he announces the death of American democracy. Because when he comes for you — and he will, eventually — I want your last thought before you get dragged off to prison (or worse) to be “but I voted for him to hurt others”.
Your vote was a vote for human suffering. Live with that for the rest of your life.
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
The Florida state government can’t force Twitter to host any speech published by Florida politicians any more than the federal government can force Twitter to host the speech of the sitting POTUS. This law compelling a forced association between Twitter and Floridian politicians will be found unconstitutional in short order.
The law infringes not upon the right of free speech, but the right of association. The government generally cannot compel association — a private person/entity will always have the right to decide who/what they will associate with for themselves. (Anti-discrimination ordinances are an exception, but those are based on who a person is rather than the speech they espouse.)
A government entity within the United States, at any level of government, can’t require a open-to-the-public privately owned space to host third-party speech — even when that speech comes from a politician. To say otherwise would be to upend the First Amendment.
I repeat: One person says gay people should have all the same civil rights as straight people. Another person says gay people are abominations who should be “cured” of their “disease” before they kickstart the apocalypse by merely existing. Under “content neutral” laws, Twitter would have to host both forms of speech — even if it didn’t want to host the bigoted bullshit — or face some form of punishment for its refusal to associate with bigotry.
Would you mind explaining how this outcome can still work under the idea that the people who own and operate Twitter have the right to decide what speech Twitter will and won’t associate itself with?
Those “restraints” deal with commercial speech (e.g., marketing). They don’t say that Twitter must host speech its owners/operators otherwise don’t want on Twitter servers. No law says that because no law can say that because to upend that principle is to upend the First Amendment (as well as private property rights) for the sake of some asshole who wants a right (“free reach”) they don’t have and can’t give themselves.
On the post: Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors
Given that Republicans have every incentive to refuse certification of election results — and their supporters have no issue with using political violence to enforce that decision — I’d be more worried about fascism.
On the post: Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors
Also worth noting: The Supreme Court, which rejected attempts to basically have SCOTUS itself decide the election results, currently has a two-thirds conservative majority. The same Associate Justices that Trump named to the court also rejected his arguments (and those of his supporters) because even they didn’t believe in undying fealty to Dear Leader at the cost of American democracy.
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
And your point here is…what, exactly? That there are limits of “free speech”? Try telling us something we don’t know.
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
That doesn’t mean Twitter is obligated — legally, morally, or ethically — to host the speech of any politician. What the ruling means is this: A given politician cannot block constituents on social media sites run by that politician. For example, AOC can’t block people in her district from viewing her tweets or interacting with her on Twitter. (But she can mute them, since that doesn’t remove their ability to interact and she isn’t under an obligation to read everyone else’s bullshit.)
If Twitter and Facebook were networks on a broadcast medium instead of communications tools, you might have a point.
One person says gay people should have all the same civil rights as straight people. Another person says gay people are abominations who should be “cured” of their “disease” before they kickstart the apocalypse by merely existing. Under “content neutral” laws, Twitter would have to host both forms of speech — even if it didn’t want to host the bigoted bullshit — or face some form of punishment for its refusal to associate with bigotry. Please explain how such an outcome is “acceptable”.
Speaking as someone who has moderation experience: You can have a strict code of conduct and still run into situations that said code doesn’t cover. The ability to adapt moderation for new situations in a timely is why requiring the strictest adherence possible doesn’t work — after all, you can’t adapt on the fly if the law won’t let you adapt without first filing forms in triplicate.
That act doesn’t (and shouldn’t) regulate what speech a private entity — no matter how large or small — can choose to host.
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
Don’t forget the Gaslight Express, set to launch next January 6th!
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
No government official, at any level, can force a social media service to host speech that said service doesn’t want to host. But if you still believe otherwise, I do have One Simple Question for you.
Assume for a moment that you run a small Mastodon instance. Yes or no: Should the government have the absolute right to make your instance host offensive-yet-legally protected speech that you don’t want hosted on/associated with your instance? Answer directly and on-point; deflecting with “but my instance wouldn’t as big as Twitter” or other such off-topic bullshit will not be considered an answer.
On the post: Florida Man Signs Blatantly Corrupt And Unconstitutional Social Media Bill, Cementing Florida As Tech Laughing Stock
Normally, I’d ask you to gather all seven Dragon Balls before you summon me to grant a wish, but I guess~ I can make an exception this time. 😁
[ahem]
Social media services are not public fora; if you need a citation for that, look no further than a Supreme Court ruling from 2019 where Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion:
On the post: Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors
The Arizona state government needs evdience of major voting irregularities to prompt a government-run audit. No such evidence exists in re: the 2020 election, even after recounts and other cursory investigations. The current “audit” is being carried out by a nakedly partisan outside group that wants desperately to find in favor of Trump regardless of the truth. This ridiculous farce of an “audit” is a conclusion in search of a theory, an answer in search of a question. Anyone who takes it seriously is equally as ridiculous.
On the post: If There's A Defamatory Review On Yelp, Is It Google's Job To Hide It?
It’s a Christmas miracle!
…wait a moment…
…I’m being informed that today is not Christmas. Well, shit, there goes the joke.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Why you keep coming back for more punishment, I will never know. But since you’re here…
Irrelevant. Trump promised a wall across the entire southern U.S. border. Trump didn’t deliver anything even close to that.
Only if you take the cost of human lives out of the equation, sure.
North Korea is militarily hostile towards several of its immediate neighbors and the United States. If you can’t figure out why the world would rather sanction North Korea than let that country do whatever to South Korea, Japan, etc., this conversation is above your ability to comprehend.
I’m not hearing you say Trump should’ve handled it differently. 400,000 deaths on his hands, and you can’t even bring yourself to admit he fucked up. I’m more than willing to criticize Obama for his failures. (Kickstarting the policy that would eventually evolve into Trump’s family separation policy is a good place to start.) For what reason do you remain unwilling to criticize Old 45 for his failures as a leader during a national pandemic?
His statement heavily implied that of the immigrants coming in from Mexico, the majority of them were “thugs and rapists” while only some of them were “good people”. The broader (and racist) implication is clear: Mexico is sending criminals into the United States.
Irrelevant. Plenty of players with worse stats than Colin Kaepernick were signed to other teams after he was drummed out of the NFL. The league blackballed him out of fear of what Trump (and his supporters) might do in retaliation for the protests. It wasn’t a “hey, this guy sucks at the game” decision — it was a “hey, we don’t wanna piss off Dear Leader and his angry-as-fuck followers” decision.
If he’s willing to fuck around on his wives behind their backs, how willing is he to lie to anyone and everyone about anything? (Judging by his time as president: He lies as easily as he breathes.)
Oh, wonderful, you’re in favor of traumatizing children and breaking them up from their families for no reason other than they crossed the border illegally. I hope you know there are still several hundred migrant children that the U.S. government still hasn’t managed to reunite with their families. And I won’t even get into the nightmare of a system that lets American families receive custody of migrant children whose parents were deported — a sick form of adoption that will likely separate a child and their birth parents forever.
Gee, it’s almost as if he tried to violate the law and a bunch of people said “no, that isn’t how this works” until he finally got the message. Imagine that~.
He literally said there were “good people on both sides” of a march for white supremacy and a protest against said march. Whether he referred to “violent people” or not is irrelevant — he still said that the people marching in favor of white supremacy were “good people”. He didn’t denounce white supremacy; he never has; he never will.
Better to burn buildings than to…oh, how did the insurrectionists put it? Oh, right — better to burn buildings than to hang the Vice President. Property can be replaced; lives can’t.
And I don’t condone riots/looting/property damage. Don’t even think of laying that accusation on me. That said: I understand the anger that gave birth to those riots. Centuries of injustice and hatred and pain and suffering visited upon generations of people for no reason other than the color of their skin created the conditions for those riots. The murder of George Floyd — another unjust execution of a Black man at the hands of the same system that can bring in white mass murderers without firing a shot and even treat them to fast food — was merely the latest match to light the flame.
The insurrection, on the other hand, was a giant group of assholes — people who’d been convinced by a con artist that an election with no signs of massive widespread voter fraud was actually stolen — crashing into a citadel of American democracy and chanting for the murder of the Vice President because he didn’t violate the Constitution and declare Donald Trump as the winner of an election he lost both popularly and electorally. That shit isn’t “understandable”. That shit is indefensible in both act and spirit.
No, they weren’t.
Rudy Giuliani suggested “trial by combat”. Other speakers, like Trump, extolled the virtues of strength and begged Trump supporters to help “stop the steal”. For months, Trump and his cronies claimed the election would be stolen (or, post-election, was stolen) and suggested his supporters would have to take action on his behalf. Trump acted in his usual mob boss way: He didn’t need to give an order when his wishes were so plainly known. All he needed to do was light the fuse — e.g., give a speech that asked his followers to take some sort of action on his behalf — and watch the kindling burn.
Every recount that was triggered as part of the legitimate electoral process found no evidence of widescale voter fraud. The “audit” in Arizona is not part of that process — and given the stories I’ve read about the incompetence of the group carrying out that audit, that is certainly for the best.
Over a year before the COVID pandemic, Donald Trump dismantled the government team created to help fight/prevent pandemics. When the pandemic first reached American shores, he claimed it was “under control” and it would “disappear”. In the course of the year between the outbreak and the end of his term, Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the severity of the virus, repeatedly contradicted actual scientific experts, suggested false “cures”/treatments such as ingesting bleach and taking hydroxychloroquine, and showed more concern for his own image than for the health and safety of the populace — including the Secret Service agents he had drive him around the hospital after he himself contracted COVID-19.
He didn’t do anything a good leader would’ve done. He did what he thought was best for his polling numbers: Ignore the large bad thing, focus on the small good thing. More than a year later, we have more than half a million Americans dead because of Trump’s incompetence, lies, and unwillingness to tell his supporters that wearing masks and social distancing would save lives. I mean, he and his administration wanted to “re-open the country” on Easter (2020, that is) — a time when the virus was still rapidly spreading around the country.
400,000 people died so Donald Trump could focus on his election. But sure, keep telling me he wasn’t responsible, as the man in charge of the federal government, for the shit-ass response of the federal government to the COVID-19 pandemic. See how far that argument gets you.
Half the country was fighting mask mandates and shutdowns — and they were fighting those measures partly because Donald fucking Trump himself came out against those measures. (The other part was because of brainwashing about “freedoms” and “liberty” by — you guessed it~! — the same Republicans that supported Donald Trump.)
I point my finger at a federal government that either seemed uninterested in helping prevent a pandemic or was too afraid of Dear Leader to contradict his proclamations of “it’s nothing, it’s going to go away, it’s fine”. And since Trump was Dear Leader at the time…well, gee, guess who gets to eat the blame for the incompetence/carelessness/sociopathy of his administration~.
We could’ve been if Trump hadn’t literally tossed out the pandemic playbook left for him by his immediate predecessor because Old 45 hated Barack Obama for being both Black and a better man than Trump.
Let’s start by not electing someone who gives more of a fuck about whether he’s polling well on Fox News than about whether thousands of people are getting sick/dying on his watch. I know that being president takes at least some minor sociopathy, but we don’t need to elect a complete sociopath. So maybe don’t vote for the Republican next time, Lodos.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
On the 20th of January, the COVID-19 death toll in the United States was near or above 400,000 (depending on which stats you’re looking at and whether you believe the death rate is underreported).
Yes or no: Is everything Donald Trump accomplished in his four years as president worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who died from, and the health and well-being of the millions more infected with and affected by, COVID-19 in the year between the first recorded cases/deaths and the time he left office?
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Four years wasn’t enough to build even a significant portion of the promised wall? Four years of tearing through environmental regulations, rerouting government funding, and promising that American taxpayers would never foot the bill amounted to what — some new fencing? Keep making excuses for his failure; I’m sure Old 45 would appreciate your support.
And if that happens to fuck over the Palestinian people to the point where they’d agree to any deal just to stay alive…well, tough shit for them, huh?
Even if the conflict is a “land dispute”, referring to the situation in that way makes it sound like the multitude of deaths that have happened just this year (to date) are about a hotel or some shit. Saying the conflict is a “land dispute” is no better than saying the genocide of the indigenous Americans at the hands of the colonists/American government was a “land dispute”. It is sick, sociopathic shit — and you’re helping to propagate it.
North Korea is a nightmarish dystopia of extreme poverty hidden by excessive luxury that is run by a dictator who kills family members and has dissenters sent to work camps. North Korea is a country led by people willing to start a war so they can eventually drop a nuke. North Korea is a threat not just to the stability of the East Asian region, but to the entire world — because they want Global Thermonuclear War to be something other than a computer simulation. But sure, tell me how the guy with the funny haircut makes for a great meme or some shit.
Restaurants around the country closed. The travel and tourism industries got hit hard because virtually nobody was travelling to (or from) the States. Everyone suffered from the lockdowns; that you want to limit that damage to “shutdown states” (read: states that actually tried to minimize the damage from COVID because they were run by competent lawmakers) says a lot about you.
He referred to Mexican immigrants as “thugs and rapists”. He referred to a Black man peacefully protesting police brutality as a “son of a bitch” and was the primary reason for said Black man getting blackballed from the NFL. He also referred to violent white supremacists as “very fine people” and refused to condemn the violent white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys. Hell, he even refused to condemn white supremacy. “Racist” is the kindest thing I can say about him in that regard.
As far as “sexist” goes: “Grab ’em by the pussy” should be enough, but go back to statements made throughout his term — and notice the gender of the people for whom he saves the most heated insults. (Hint: It wasn’t men.)
As far as “philandering” goes: He admitted to having affairs while married to his ex-wives, which is a telltale sign that he’s not going to be truthful in all his dealings with other people. (To wit: his overinflated net worth.)
Biden may not be doing much better, but he’s not trying to make things worse by actively separating families and shoving kids in cages within concentration camps. That shit happened on Trump’s watch. Why aren’t you criticizing Trump for doing that shit?
“Jews will not replace us” is anti-Semitic horseshit that is an offshoot (if not a whole-assed plank in the platform) of the so-called Great Replacement Theory. That “theory” says whites are in danger of being “replaced” by all the other races (and mixed-race people), so whites have to do whatever they can to prevent that fate. It’s bigoted horseshit and defending that horseshit, even in passing, makes you little better than the tiki torch–carrying white supremacist bigots who chanted that phrase during a midnight march the night before Charlottesville.
[citation needed]
Three things.
“Surge fuller”? What the fuck is that.
George Floyd was killed by a police officer who arrested Floyd for using a counterfeit $20 bill — which Floyd may not have even known was counterfeit. How did the sentence fit the crime?
We are more than “a drop in the bucket”. Well, not all of us. We know who the biggest pollutants in the world are — hell, we have their names and work addresses. But our leaders don’t do anything about them because Big Energy still has big bank accounts and none of them fucking care about what’s going to be left of this world after they’re dead.
The plot to kidnap and execute Gretchen Whitmer involved an entire group of people who, at one point or another, showed support for Old 45. The likelihood that they were inspired to plan their violent uprising against the Michigan state government by the words of Donald Trump (e.g., “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”) may not be 100%, but to rule that factor out completely because some of those assholes criticized Trump later on is…flawed thinking, at best.
“We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.” — Donald Trump, on the 6th of January
And because I know it will be brought up: Yes, he exhorted his followers to march “peacefully” in the next sentence he spoke. But after having riled that crowd up with lies about voter fraud and weak Republicans and “cancel culture”, nobody expected his followers to march peacefully. And we now know that members of white supremacist groups that had planned a violent entry into the Capitol were in the crowd, so peace, as the meme goes, was never an option.
Why did they call for it? Because they were lied to for months about whether the result of the election would be legal. (It was.) Because they were lied to for months that massive fraud would take place. (It didn’t.) Because they were lied to by a man who believed he would win a second term (he didn’t) and explicitly told supporters in both 2016 and 2020 that he would refuse to accept any election result that didn’t have him marked as the winner (he did). The only reason that ridiculous Arizona “audit” is going on right now is because of the Big Lie that — and you have to know this is true now — Republicans can and will use to justify a refusal to certify any election in which a Democrat wins. Why wouldn’t they? They’re not going to suffer any actual consequences for it — none that their rich lawyers and a Republican president can’t do away with, anyway.
Their objections were bullshit because nobody — not Trump supporters, not Trump’s legal team, not Trump himself, and certainly not the members of Congress who objected to the results of a free and fair election out of naked partisan loyalty to an American fascist — produced any credible indication that the 2020 presidential election was anything but free, fair, and above board.
You will receive no mercy here. If you want mercy, pick a god and pray.
On the post: Parler Was Allowed Back In The Apple App Store Because It Will Block 'Hate Speech,' But Only When Viewed Through Apple Devices
…says the guy so obsessed with a website he hates for no reason other than someone quoted Barack Obama at him a decade ago that he shitposts to the tune of hundreds of spamfiltered attempts at commenting every day.
I know this is rich coming from me, but seriously, Brainy: Get a life.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
He didn’t even get a huge chunk of it built. At best, he had a small new portion built and fixed up existing portions of the current wall. And no, Mexico didn’t pay for any of it.
Most of those deals were made with the intent of uniting Sunni-controlled countries against Shiite-controlled Iran. The side effect of such a united front? Palestinians would be left without any major allies. And all at the behest of an asshole who literally called the Israel/Palestine conflict — and this is a direct quote — “a real-estate dispute”.
Donald Trump handed credibility as a genuine world leader to a brutal dictator in Kim Jong-Un. The United States received literally nothing from North Korea in return. Winning~!
Uh, no. No, it did not. The pandemic fucked up the economy hard; it may be well past Biden’s term before it picks back up to full steam again. And even if — if — Trump did help build it back up in the three years prior to the pandemic he helped make worse, the economy was already recovering prior to Trump entering office. He inherited a growing economy from Obama, managed to keep it steady for three years, then fucked it all up when he decided his political ambitions were less important than people dying of COVID-19 by the hundreds every day.
And you chose to vote for an racist, sexist, philandering, woman-groping, white supremacist con artist whose biggest claim to fame prior to becoming president is that he hosted a hit game show and overinflated his net worth. You voted for a man who approved of putting migrant kids in cages by themselves, who showed support for the “very fine people” who shouted “Jews will not replace us”, who referred to a Black man peacefully protesting police violence as a “son of a bitch”, who was seemingly in favor of worsening global climate change, whose rhetoric about masks and lockdowns inspired a group of armed sociopaths to make a plan involving the kidnapping and execution of a sitting governor, and who committed hundreds of other atrocities during his campaign and during his time in office. And let’s not forget his support for the people who have supported, are supporting, and will continue to support his Big Lie — including the armed insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol and chanted “kill Mike Pence” as they looked for both Pence and members of Congress, the assholes working on that ridiculous audit/recount/whatever in Arizona, and the lawmakers who would rather abandon truth than stand up to an old man who rules by fear of what his supporters could do…politically and physically.
I didn’t vote for the worst president in American history — the closest thing we’ve had in our lifetimes to an American tyrant, a man who would be king if not for the spines of those willing to tell him “no”. You did that. Until you can denounce your support for the man, you will be marked as a supporter of blatant and unrepentant evil.
May God have mercy on your soul. I sure as shit won’t.
On the post: If There's A Defamatory Review On Yelp, Is It Google's Job To Hide It?
Or to put it a different way: Don’t taunt the wasp hive unless you want to get stung.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
False premise: To have abandoned that policy, the DSA would first have needed to adopt said policy as part of its overall platform. I’ve found no proof that it has; if I’m wrong, I retract this criticism.
Then you should be able to find a direct quote, or a video clip, where AOC herself explicitly says she supports open borders — instead of a bunch of results that claim (without sourcing those claims) AOC supports open borders.
Which is the position I support. ICE isn’t necessary; the agencies it replaced were.
The U.S. can’t secure more entry points without more people and more deterrents against illegal entry. It can’t really deter illegal entry without resorting to violence (because little else works). So in this case, yes, “more security” inherently means more violence.
It’s still better than the status quo we had before Obamacare, which is what the GOP — the party of Trump, the man for whom you voted — wanted to bring back without any plan to replace Obamacare/the pre-ACA status quo.
You said you voted for Trump. Trump supported — among other things — a complete repeal of the ACA, stronger border security (which would eventually include his concentration camps along the southern border), “very fine people” who marched on Charlottesville in support of white supremacy, letting COVID run rampant for months before finally admitting that it wasn’t going to “just go away”, and…oh, what else was it…uh…lemme think…oh yeah, he also supported an armed insurrection against Congress and the unconstitutional overturning of the results of a free and fair election.
You voted for him and everything he stood for, even if you didn’t agree with all of what he stood for. You voted for a president who is, in every sense of the term, evil. Until you renounce that vote and express sincere regret for the pain caused by the man you supported, you’re a piece of shit. I won’t grant you absolution or sympathy if you can bring yourself to do those acts, though — I’ll save my sympathies for the families of those who died from COVID thanks to Donald Trump, the man for whom you voted, being a lying narcissistic grifter asshole who was more worried about looking bad in the polls than about the deaths of the people he was elected to serve.
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