1. #36886
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    It also was, "don't politicize the court".

    It would have been hypocritical of her to push against that her whole career, then bail on it because the GOP don't play by the same rules.

    However, it's the choice liberals are left with at this point, to have the moral satisfaction of being better ethically than your opponents, but you can feel good about that while they get another step closer to authoritarian dominion.
    RBG definitely should have retired as many called her to do so when the Dems had WH and Senate the last time. She gambled and lost, and that has to be her legacy.

    The longer Breyer refuses to take the hint the worse it will get.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kidfresh512 View Post
    And then they leverage all the losses to avoid taxes and paying their bills and bankruptcy over and over.
    It does seem like Trump has made more money in his business ventures failing than in successful businesses. Of course, that does seem more like the norm for the super-wealthy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    https://consequence.net/2021/11/loui...-comedy-album/

    This is why I don't take any bloviating about cancel culture seriously, least of all about the 'silencing' of comedians.
    There's a real conversation to be had about censorship, public shaming and online outrage, but complaining about "cancel culture" has degenerated into "random people on Twitter criticized me."

  4. #36889
    Astonishing Member JackDaw's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ed2962 View Post
    There's a real conversation to be had about censorship, public shaming and online outrage, but complaining about "cancel culture" has degenerated into "random people on Twitter criticized me."
    I think the term is 99 times out of a hundred is a complete misnomer…a person heavily criticised is not “cancelled” if they can carry on making a living in their usual trade or profession.

    But having said that, I often wish criticism was coached in a more tolerant manner. “Hate the sin, not the sinner” has much to commend it.

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    Ultimate Member Malvolio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    https://consequence.net/2021/11/loui...-comedy-album/

    This is why I don't take any bloviating about cancel culture seriously, least of all about the 'silencing' of comedians.
    It's why I don't sign on to petitions trying to get anyone off the air or canceled from their platform. They always find another platform. Also, a lot of good people who work behind the scenes on these shows lose their jobs and they won't find new jobs as easily as the performer who's in the spotlight.
    Watching television is not an activity.

  6. #36891
    Ultimate Member Malvolio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Johnathan View Post
    It does seem like Trump has made more money in his business ventures failing than in successful businesses. Of course, that does seem more like the norm for the super-wealthy.
    A great example of that is the Trump University fiasco. Many people will say that Trump lost that one because he agreed to pay the plaintiffs $25 million. That sounds like a lot of money to most of us. But to Trump, it's just a cost of doing business, because he made $175 million from the people he ripped off. So even when you figure in court costs and lawyer fees, he still probably came out over $100 million ahead.
    Last edited by Malvolio; 11-25-2021 at 03:46 PM.
    Watching television is not an activity.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    https://consequence.net/2021/11/loui...-comedy-album/

    This is why I don't take any bloviating about cancel culture seriously, least of all about the 'silencing' of comedians.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    [url] ...For his return special, C.K. dove straight into the allegations. “I learned a lot [from the experience],” he said. “I learned how to eat alone in a restaurant with people giving me the finger from across the room.”
    Good to see he learned the important lesson. (/sarcasm)


    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainEurope View Post
    The SPD, Greens and FDP have agreed on a coalition treaty, which is kind of blueprint of their plans for Germany for the next 4 years.

    I am pleasantly surprised how much in it I like.

    Some highlights are:
    • Exploring lowering the federal voting age to 16.
    • Improving access to abortion by eliminating a law banning doctor's offices "advertising" abortion services (i. e. offering any kind of information on it).
    • Many improvements to allowing access to higher education to poorer kids (higher monthly payments, higher income threshold of their parents, smaller percentage of it to be paid back later, more flexibility in changing your majors without losing the benefit).
    • Removal of a law that required trans people to have therapy before seeking gender reassignment surgery and change in legal status.
    • Getting out of coal 8 years earlier than the last government's plan, investing more into rail and less into roads and other climate initiatives.
    Looks good, best of luck going forward!

  8. #36893
    Ultimate Member Tendrin's Avatar
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    Chapelle being a grown man going to a high school with this grade school level ****.

    https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/stat...98858757443584

    Skin as thin as a republican party platform.

    (And he still found time to erase trans people of color. <3)
    Last edited by Tendrin; 11-26-2021 at 04:21 AM.

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    On this date in 2014, "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" ran a profile of Andre Bauer, who for years was a thorn in the side of former Governor Mark Sanford, and looked to supplant him after his "hike in the Appalachians". After spending years intimidating local police in the Palmetto State into not giving him tickets for extreme speeding violations, and crashing his own personal plane, he garnered further attention for pushing for state-issued license plates with a crucifix on them that said "I Believe", and condemned anyone opposed to this violation of the separation of church and state to hell. His campaign for governor was marred with ugly gaffes, like having former FRED Jake Knotts say that his opponent, Nikki Haley, "wasn't really a Christian", and a "raghead", dragging as many men out of the woodwork as he could to claim they had participated in adulterous affairs with Haley, and then Bauer himself comparing people on welfare to stray dogs. Needless to say, there's a reason that people now refer to her as "Governor Nikki Haley", and Andre Bauer went on to fail to be elected in South Carolina's 7th District two years later in 2012.

    On this date in 2015, we published our original "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" profile of Stephen LaRoque, a former member of the North Carolina General Assembly who was an opponent of voting rights, gay marriage, and climate change research who mocked protesters who appeared at the state capitol to protest the Republican-controlled legislature stripping unemployment benefits by offering them a job doing yard work for a pittance at his home. LaRoque tried to act like these workers were getting a sweet deal by being paid more than a dollar an hour than he gets paid as a legislator... but then word broke that LaRoque had been caught embezzling $2 million in ill-gotten interest on state agriculture loans since 1998. Since he was found guilty and sentenced to 24 months in prison

    On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published a profile about Don Dwyer, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates whose career when spiraling out of control, much like the vehicles Dwyer would often operate while inebriated. Dwyer’s first incident back in 2012 saw him crashing his boat, “The Legislator” while intoxicated, injuring himself, another adult, and four children with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Not even a year later, Dwyer was charged with DUI during a traffic stop where he failed three different sobriety tests and was cited for over 14 violations including driving without a license. Supposedly, that second incident went on record while Dwyer claimed to be in a treatment program, and while he was about to be sentenced for his drunken boat crash. Dwyer, though, had a reasonable explanation for losing himself to raging and irresponsible alcoholism… His wife left him and he was really sad because his colleagues had allowed gay marriages to start happening. In the small world of Maryland politics, maybe it should come as little surprise that Dwyer is also closely linked to the White Nationalist Michael Peroutka, as he once served as the executive director for Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution. When you’re pals with a Neo-Confederate lunatic, it can’t come as a surprise that Dwyer ended up frequently submitting nullification legislation to any law he didn’t like. Or, y’know, the fact that Dwyer misinterprets the Constitution to think that people should have to pass religious tests to hold public office (The Supreme Court’s Tarasco v. Watkins ruling says otherwise). And, it’s real hard to feel bad for him for getting voted out of office considering that Dwyer responded to the Sandy Hook Massacre in early 2013 by holding a fundraiser where he auctioned off two assault rifles. Anyway, Don Dwyer failed to get re-elected in 2014, finishing a distant sixth in an eight candidate Republican primary for his seat. He did not run for any office in 2016.
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    It was on this date in both 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled Glenn Gruenhagen, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives who first came onto the scene back in, you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave with but 51% of the vote. He since has somehow gathered a following among GOP voters, winning with at least 60% of the vote in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Perhaps his charm with his party lies in his radical social conservative views, like that he is “pro life from conception to natural death” and thinks that abortion somehow has “economic consequences” or that he claims the Affordable Care Act will lead to “healthcare rationing”, a frequently debunked myth the right likes to spread about the ACA that has been widely known to be a bogus talking point for around… oh, eight or nine years now.

    Gruenhagen’s signature issue, however, is LGBTQ rights, or why we should not have them. Going back to his earliest days serving on a school council, Gruenhagen has been fervently anti-gay, often interrupting school board meetings to, non sequitur, rant about the evils of sodomy. In 2005, his own colleagues noted:
    Back in 2007, Gruenhagen also wrote an op-ed in his local paper, where he wanted to discuss Christmas… The topic he veered off for a moment to show how aghast he was at Congressman Keith Ellison being sworn in on a copy of the Koran and how it was a plot to have it someday take the place of the Bible, and somehow, he went even further off course from talking about celebrating the birth of Jesus and instead onto the dread topic of sodomy:
    ”When newly elected U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison insisted on using the Koran (Qur’an) at his oath of office, many citizens raised concerns about the symbolism of that event. . . . . I believe we see the disturbing and subtle influence of using the Koran to replace the Bible as our source of “civil and religious liberties.”... Many have great concern for our country as we have drifted from the Judeo-Christian principles which gave us our liberties and freedoms, into the religion of atheism, such as the belief in abortion, pornography, sodomy as an orientation, evolution, etc. The corruption of atheistic values in our schools and government institutions leaves open the door for a foreign religious value system to influence our country’s culture. [emphasis added] Many patriotic Americans are concerned that our freedoms and liberties will be lost with the censorship and removal of our Creator who authored our liberty and freedoms. Is it important for publicly elected officials to place their hand on the Bible during their oath of office in spite of the American Civil Liberties Union? I’ll let you decide.”
    At another point in 2013, Gruenhagen wrote a column online that linked any constituent who read it to an anti-gay hate group from Massachusetts that conveniently still reports sodomy is a crime (which, no, not after the Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003). The gist of all this rants is, by being allowed to exist, and marry people, and have any gay sex, the gay community are “coming after Christians with their gay agenda”, and that homosexuality is just a form of “sexual addiction” based on an “unscientific lie. And he will, at any point, reflexively start telling lies about homosexuals.

    The “secret gay agenda” is hardly the only bizarre conspiracy theory Gruenhagen believes in, as he is also a climate change denier wielding a particularly abhorrent lack of logic, insisting that talk of it is “a United Nations fraud”, while making the idiotic accusation that those who do acknowledge evidence of climate change “believe that exhaling is causing global warning”, citing “facts he learned at CPAC. And honestly, when the most sane idea you’ve pitched in government is to castrate sex offenders because “it worked on the farm, maybe you shouldn’t be a legislator. That’s just us at FRED thinking, though.

    Regrettably, Glenn Gruenhagen was elected to a sixth term in office in 2020, where we’re sure he’ll continue to try and block any Democratic bills that cross his path, even something as simple as a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to include an equal rights amendment. or to sponsor bills that would defund any public library that dares to host a Drag Queen Story Hour.

    We’ll end today’s profile by noting that on January 6th, 2021, while the U.S. Capitol was being overrun by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and domestic terrorists trying to prevent the counting the electoral college votes that would lead to Joe Biden being sworn in as president after being incited by Donald Trump, Glenn Gruenhagen was one of six Minnesota state legislators who were having their own little sedition-fest back in St. Paul, where several speakers called for violence, including one who flat-out wanted to start up a civil war. Gruenhagen, of course, painted himself the victim when criticism emerged, saying, ““It seems like it is political theater to try and intimidate and silence a constitutionally protected peaceful rally at the St. Paul Capitol in support of Trump.

    Because of course he’s the sort of self-righteous d*** who wouldn’t read the room and take responsibility.
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  11. #36896
    Ultimate Member Robotman's Avatar
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    G.O.P. Cements Hold on Legislatures in Battleground States

    Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the G.O.P. against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.

    In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governor’s veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans’ advantage is virtually impenetrable — leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.

    Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.

    And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.

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    On this day in both 2014, in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted its first two profiles of Ira Hansen, of the Nevada House of Representatives, who was quickly forced out of being Speaker of the Nevada House after people actually realized he had a staggering history of making outrageously ugly comments… including his time as a radio talk-show host where he made anti-Semitic remarks, made sexist arguments against women in the military, advocated for a “masturbation tax”, and that he once said the Oklahoma City Bombing was a “false flag” attack that the Clinton administration was actually responsible for.

    He also writes columns from an office with a Confederate flag hanging on the wall, slanders Martin Luther King Dr.’s legacy, refers to President Obama as a “negro”, a term he’s fond of, makes arguments as to Hispanics and African Americans of being of lower intelligence than whites, and blames illegal immigrants for tuberculosis cases without any evidence to support that racist claim. Hansen’s bigotry also expands to gays, as he likes to conflate homosexuality with child abuse, including him blaming the abuse of children by Catholic priests on gays. Of course, when Hansen’s past as an author and talk-radio figure came back to force him to pass and not accept his role has Nevada House Speaker, he gave a non-apology apology where he said his remarks were only being “taken out of context”. What can’t be taken out of context is Hansen’s staunch pro-gun attitude, his support for transphobic bathroom laws, or the fact that he mentioned President Eisenhower’s “Project Wetback” as a model for what the United States should implement to handle undocumented immigrants (without remembering how deadly that campaign proved for those Mexicans, with up to 88 deaths resulting in a single day.

    And, wouldn’t you know it, even though Ira Hansen is a pretty clear racist and a bit of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, he managed to be re-elected to a fourth term in the 2016 elections by having the benefit of running unopposed. In 2018, decided to divide and conquer, as he has decided to make a run for Nevada State Senate to replace the retiring Don Gustavson, and Ira’s wife Alexis ran for his seat in the Nevada House. So… now Nevada has two loony Hansens in their ranks. Ira won to enter the Nevada State Senate with 60% of the vote, and Alexis managed to pull down 70% to join him in the Nevada State Assembly.

    That means Hansen won’t be up for re-election until 2022, and in the meantime, Hansen has continued being an extremist, voting against expanding background checks on firearm purchases, and even for measures as modest as increasing the minimum wage in Nevada during the greatest period of income inequality in our nation in a century.

    Oh, and he popped off on the floor of the Nevada State Senate on an anti-choice rant where he compared abortion to slavery:

    Nevermind that it’s twenty years into the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, he just compared abortion to slavery, which fits into the sorts of views he expressed on his radio talk show but claimed were “taken out of context”. The sooner Nevada is rid of this moron and his wife from the legislature, the better off the state will be.

    As the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Hansen went into the “covidiot” category, as we would have thought he would. Hansen waited until as late as MAY 2020 before he was complaining about restrictions on businesses by Nevada Gov. Sisolak and demanding they “take the handcuffs off. Too many people must have been surviving. In May of 2021, Ira Hansen pushed back against a ban on “ghost guns” that could be printed with a 3D printer and be untraceable, referring to is at “trampling on the constitutional rights of certain people, because he’s apparently not content with the number of mass shootings that have already happened in his state.

    And of course, he’s one of the types that the Nevada Republican Party would put forth to try and gerrymander in their favor during redistricting. Because it seems just fine to let someone like this guarantee themselves re-election in his district until he hits term limits IN 2026.
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  13. #36898
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    Quote Originally Posted by Robotman View Post
    G.O.P. Cements Hold on Legislatures in Battleground States

    Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the G.O.P. against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.

    In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governor’s veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans’ advantage is virtually impenetrable — leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.

    Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.

    And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.
    More Fallout of a Stolen Election. Local Fortification.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Xheight View Post
    More Fallout of a Stolen Election. Local Fortification.
    More like fallout from their failure to steal an election, and their attempt to try harder next time.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Malvolio View Post
    A great example of that is the Trump University fiasco. Many people will say that Trump lost that one because he agreed to pay the plaintiffs $25 million. That sounds like a lot of money to most of us. But to Trump, it's just a cost of doing business, because he made $175 million from the people he ripped off. So even when you figure in court costs and lawyer fees, he still probably came out over $100 million ahead.
    Yes, and honestly, it is a lot like the way Madoff made all the news because he was obviously criminal, but the actions of the actual major financial institutions were basically handled quietly through various fines that were paid with money the government already gave them in the bail-out. Trump makes the news, but the for-profit college scams are still out there ripping people off and using the college loan system to do it while leaving people unemployable and in massive debt AND raising tuition costs for everyone else.

    However, irrespective of which party is in power, our government protects and promotes MLMs, PayDay Loans and Rent-to-Own scams while working hard to keep wages low and productivity high. If we really want to make low wages work, then increase public funding for housing, transportation and medical care coverage that is not provided by employers. The reason wages are so high is that most of the working class cost of living is a scam paid for by credit cards and high-interest loans.

    On top of that, almost every industry defies regulations to make their profits and then pay a meager percentage of those profits in fines for violating regulations that the regulators already expected them to violate. It's a kind of legitimized graft. The government depends on the funding provided by those fines so naturally they aren't really going to want to do anything to actually stop the violations. It's the same way cities depend upon the money generated by parking violations, traffic tickets and municipal fines to avoid raising taxes -- and of course this disproportionately affects the poor and working class. And if you're poor and owe money to the government and can't pay, they will simply create a lien of some kind that they can sell to private investors who will then use the court to take whatever you own including your house.

    It's a vicious cycle where the government protects industries that prey upon the most vulnerable people and then also preys upon the same people that they are supposed to be representing -- and for some reason, we keep voting for these people to represent us. Mainly because the only candidates with a reasonable shot to get elected have their campaigns funded by the people profiting most from this system.

    Nothing ever gets solved or changes in this system. Instead, the people most affected by it eventually die out, the various crises do all the damage they can and everyone pretends that they fixed the problem.

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