All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[PwrdOn]

[Farealmer]

The look on the nabbed fella's face tells us all what a freaking joke he thinks it is to cross over without going through channels.

There are people that have that look when going to maximum security prisons. What level of punishment do you think the US needs to use to prevent people from making that face when caught at the border?

[thwhtGuardian]

Yeah, that's definitely an image it conjures.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This has to be one of the worst images of our failure at managing immigration that I've ever seen:


I just can't fathom a situation where that action would be acceptable.

Looks like a scene from a rodeo. Absolutely deplorable.

[Malvolio]

Seriously? Jeez Louise! This harridan's a real prize.

"Is that a real person? Come on! No one really has the last name Milk! You made that up!"

[SUPERECWFAN1]

This has to be one of the worst images of our failure at managing immigration that I've ever seen:


I just can't fathom a situation where that action would be acceptable.

What action is that? Rounding up illegal entrants at the border? Would a jeep be better optics? We are cowboy country so I see no shame in this or aggressively stopping people from flooding the country. The look on the nabbed fella's face tells us all what a freaking joke he thinks it is to cross over without going through channels.

As the great late Norm MacDonald would say when shocked... 'Good Lord ..."

[Jack Dracula]

On that note, China currently seems to be going out of its way to ignore those optics with one recent powerplay in Afghanistan involving rare earth minerals. And yes, it does involve, let’s say “brushing shoulders” with the Taliban to get at those nice rocks.

Long article on where Afghanistan may be headed, and one that isn’t sentimentally “loaded”, BTW, but some rather noteworthy details:





…….”Gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet” or something or other?

I predict sometime over the next 12 months we’ll hear reports of China supplying tech and training to the Taliban government to help them maintain the equipment & aircraft we left behind.

[Robotman]

Post-Trump, Democrats push to curb presidential powers

Thank you! So much work needs to be done in order to inoculate our democracy from the next wanna be dictator.

Though I’m guess that only a fraction of this proposal (if any) will actually make it past Republicans in the House who seem to be anxiously awaiting the next right wing strongman who will declare himself god-king.

[Kirby101]

Post-Trump, Democrats push to curb presidential powers

Thank you! So much work needs to be done in order to inoculate our democracy from the next wanna be dictator.

Though I’m guess that only a fraction of this proposal (if any) will actually make it past Republicans in the House who seem to be anxiously awaiting the next right wing strongman who will declare himself god-king.

Just bring out all the clips of them saying Obama or Biden is a dictator.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Just bring out all the clips of them saying Obama or Biden is a dictator.

And they'll fervently deny ever having said that.

[numberthirty]

What action is that? Rounding up illegal entrants at the border? Would a jeep be better optics? We are cowboy country so I see no shame in this or aggressively stopping people from flooding the country. The look on the nabbed fella's face tells us all what a freaking joke he thinks it is to cross over without going through channels.

(Unless you have a receipt for your crystal ball? Detailed citation needed.)

[numberthirty]

Post-Trump, Democrats push to curb presidential powers

Thank you! So much work needs to be done in order to inoculate our democracy from the next wanna be dictator.

Though I’m guess that only a fraction of this proposal (if any) will actually make it past Republicans in the House who seem to be anxiously awaiting the next right wing strongman who will declare himself god-king.

Depends...

I could see a lot of them banking on taking Congress who would like nothing more than for Congress to have one more tool to hobble a Presidency with.

[AnakinFlair]

So, the House just passed stopgap legislation to keep the Government open, but apparently the Republican's in the Senate are threatening to block it because... reasons

Because government shutdowns always work in the Republican's favor.

[Tami]

Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites

Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.

But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers.

Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it.

It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment.”

Epik, based in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, has made its name in the Internet world by providing critical Web services to sites that have run afoul of other companies’ policies against hate speech, misinformation and advocating violence. Its client list is a roll-call of sites known for permitting extreme posts and that have been rejected by other companies for their failure to moderate what their users post.

[CSTowle]

What action is that? Rounding up illegal entrants at the border? Would a jeep be better optics? We are cowboy country so I see no shame in this or aggressively stopping people from flooding the country. The look on the nabbed fella's face tells us all what a freaking joke he thinks it is to cross over without going through channels.

Why am I not shocked to see you supporting terrorizing asylum seekers with men on horseback with whips?

Even if you get delight from the plight and mistreatment of others. Maybe it's bets if you kept that to yourself.

You saw the same thing when that kid took a gun across his state's border to a neighboring one to shoot people. They like to say he was "protecting property" (that wasn't his to protect, as he wasn't a resident of the state again let alone owner of property in the city), but really he was living out the masturbation fantasy of all these white supremacists. Getting to use their fetishized weapons that, as Obama famously made the mistake of telling the truth about (though behind closed doors), they cling to in order to feel the power they obviously know they lack without them on another human being. Preferably ones darker than themselves.

These guys cosplaying cowboys or (in the fantasies of the white supremacists who will be proudly posting these images and out loud wishing they had been on horseback with them to "round 'em up") slave overseers will be sending thrills up the legs of the increasingly vocal white nationalist faction on the right for years to come. The only good thing about this movement is that it's now coming out into the open, where before people kept such feelings to themselves generally and allowed those of us on the left who would prefer to believe in the general decency of humanity to believe we were living in a more tolerant and less racist world. You can't solve a problem until you first acknowledge there is one, and now it's impossible to deny. So give Trump that at least. He saw these people, and he pandered but good. Now's the time to figure out what to do about it.