1. #36691
    Mighty Member 4saken1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xheight View Post
    That is where your disconnect with his heroism begins I am guessing. There is very strong strain in American Culture that believes that people, not institutions, step up to others doing wrong. As someone posting on a comic message board I would think that you would begin to understand that.
    This country has a long history of individuals 'stepping up' to perceived injustices which ultimately end in tragedy. In recent history, these include Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, the Jan.6 insurrection, and the post Katrina shootings to name a few. It wasn't that long ago that lynchings were seen as an acceptable form of justice when an African American man dared to look at a white woman or tried to register to vote. The Tulsa massacre was started when some white folks felt the need to right a wrong when a young black man was accused of assaulting a white teenage girl.
    The problem with vigilantism is that the perpetrator is usually an ill informed (and often racist) dolt who's goal isn't so much to enforce the law as to act out their racist fantasies.
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  2. #36692
    Ultimate Member Gray Lensman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    You talk about your opinion but I'm unclear about what it is. Are you skeptical of claims of fraud, or do you think the election was stolen?


    The term "ignorant" isn't meant as a slur. It's objectively true. Pretty much everyone on the planet is ignorant about something. Ignorance can often lead to people being mistaken, as they make assumptions that have no basis in reality. This gets into the Dunning-Kruger effect, the way ordinary people with low ability will overestimate their own abilities at something because they don't have the framework and competence to understand it. It becomes easy for people who know a little bit about something to trick those who don't know as much, and this is something we should oppose.


    Sometimes we will need emergency regulations. There are still procedures for putting those into place. There is a bad-faith argument from the left pushing for the permanent adoption of emergency regulations without ever making it clear that it was meant to be temporary, framing it as a matter of regression rather than as something that was successful and that should be made permanent (someone can make a good-faith argument that early voting or other emergency provisions worked well and should become part of the standard process going forward.) Bad-faith arguments on the left don't excuse bad-faith arguments on the right.

    Braynard could always present his evidence, much of which wasn't based on restricted evidence. It is worth noting that more data has been released since then, for anyone to investigate whether there were shenanigans in the election.

    As for technocrats and experts, these are the people who are supposed to evaluate complex systems. There are going to be plenty of right-wingers, who would have all the incentives in the world to expose massive election fraud. It would be very useful for the careers of many Republicans if they could prove that 50,000 votes in Georgia were manufactured.

    The alternative to technocrats evaluating evidence is people who have no idea what the hell they're doing, like the Arizona state senate auditors checking ballots for bamboo fibers.
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    I always hate when people get angry about "experts". Technically, anytime someone calls a plumber or takes their car to a shop they are consulting an "expert".
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  3. #36693
    Astonishing Member Godzilla2099's Avatar
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  4. #36694
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Godzilla2099 View Post
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    Nothing else needs to be said.
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  5. #36695
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray Lensman View Post
    I always hate when people get angry about "experts". Technically, anytime someone calls a plumber or takes their car to a shop they are consulting an "expert".
    To go with this example, if you think someone has been ripped off by a mechanic, it helps to have the language necessary to be able to describe it. It's not good enough to just have a hunch. And that's a relatively low stakes situation compared to claims of a massive conspiracy to steal an election.
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  6. #36696
    Extraordinary Member thwhtGuardian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xheight View Post
    That is where your disconnect with his heroism begins I am guessing. There is very strong strain in American Culture that believes that people, not institutions, step up to others doing wrong. As someone posting on a comic message board I would think that you would begin to understand that.
    Innocent or guilty in a court of law...he isn't a hero. Period.
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  7. #36697
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    Nothing else needs to be said.
    What does need to be said that is that waving a gun around is an implicit threat. Zimmerman was following a kid with a weapon designed to kill at a distance. How was what Trayvon did not self defense?

  8. #36698
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ChadH View Post
    I’m not absolving his attackers of responsibility for their own actions. They made the decision to attack him and they paid for it with their lives. Is it really justice if Rittenhouse, who chose to be there, fully understanding the risk should walk away a free man?
    Choosing to be there makes him a participant not a victim. The jury got it wrong.
    Politely, they got it right.

    That said, exactly what they got right is almost entirely disconnected from actual justice based on what a prosecutor decided to go for.

    Caught Dan Abrams pointing out that the jury was not being asked to decide on if Rittenhouse ever should have been there to start with or if it was a good idea for him to take a gun.

    What they were asked to decide is if there was specifically a credible "Self-Defense..." defense in this particular instance.

    Since he could possess the gun legally and he never took it across state lines?

    There is no criminal act prior to him being attacked that would negate a "Self-Defense..." claim. Past that, video pretty clearly showed someone else initiate the first shooting, and Rittenhouse only shooting after he had been attacked while running away.

    It's not even like he decided to stop running, and initiated the second conflict. He only took part in it when he had no other reasonable way out of it.

    It's really clear self-defense.

  9. #36699
    Ultimate Member babyblob's Avatar
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    Very sad breaking News. A Car drove through a holiday parade in Wisconsin. No word yet on dead and injured. CNN said the car got away.
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  10. #36700
    I am invenitable Jack Dracula's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray Lensman View Post
    I always hate when people get angry about "experts". Technically, anytime someone calls a plumber or takes their car to a shop they are consulting an "expert".
    I recently had an Engineer and a math teacher tell me I shouldn’t listen to experts.
    The irony was lost on them.
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  11. #36701

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    On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, Barbara Comstock, the former U.S. House Representative for Virginia's 10th District, who was a former opposition research specialist from the 2000 Bush campaign and Blackwater lobbyist who as a Virginia state legislator who boldly supported legislation to help out her fellow women like mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion and Personhood bills that would outlaw many kinds of birth control. Heck, back in 2012, while campaigning for Mitt Romney, she called equal pay for women a part of the “left wing agenda” and argued against the Lilly Ledbetter act. During her first campaign to win a seat in Congress, she expressed opinions like $250,000 of income a year “not being rich”, that we could solve our immigration crisis by tracking undocumented immigrants like FedEx packages, and that she wanted to push for additional Benghazi investigations, because the eight we’d had already at the time weren’t enough. She was in office from two terms from 2015-2019, and was swept away by the 2018 Blue Wave after spending her last term in office fleeing both her constituents, and the media, diving into elevators at the capitol whenever possible to do either.



    It was on this date in both 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled the sitting Alabama Secretary of State, and 2020 U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, John Merrill, who formerly served a four year term in the Alabama House of Representatives from 2010 through 2014. Merrill is only not talked about as a extremist lunatic because he was running in the same primary as a certain former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore. Yes, the racist, homophobic, repeatedly alleged pedophile and sexual predator Roy Moore.

    John Merrill, however, makes quite a case for himself as well, given that during his four year career as a legislator, he supported bills to do things like create stricter voter ID laws to disenfranchise voters (that would be overturned as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court but five years after he voted for it), to pass one of the most brutal anti-immigrant laws in the country, to try and nullify the Affordable Care Act, practice the unconstitutional and failed conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients, and to try to outlaw abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected (i.e. at six weeks, when many women don’t even realize they’re pregnant yet).

    And his voting record isn’t even the beginning of this story. Although, his support of voter disenfrachisement didn’t stop with but one bill. A study done by researchers at Auburn University has found that Merrill is bad at his job as Secretary of State, either by incompetence or deliberate sabotage, take your pick. The study focused on the quality of Alabama's county voting and election websites, and found statewide problems with information provided to voters. Their evaluation of the relationship between voting systems and "demographic, socioeconomic, partisan, and participatory composition" of counties showed "limited voting and election information and are not in full compliance with accessibility, usability, and mobile readiness standards." Further, the extent to which voting and elections information are provided is "related to county composition." (Short version: It seemed like counties with African Americans were given less access to good information, and voting access.)

    So, in light of this study, Merrill was interviewed in a documentary about voter suppression just prior to the 2016 election about his failings as Secretary of State, and he actually made the argument that increasing voter registration would “Cheapen the work” of civil-rights advocates like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Enacting automatic voter registration to undo voter suppression and boos election would, in Merrill’s warped little mind, allow people who are too “lazy” to vote now to have the “privilege” of voting.

    Yeah, that’s a real motherf***er of a stupid argument to make, but he made it.

    Alas, it isn’t only voter suppression and racism that we’re going to make note of before we close out our original look at John Merrill… it’s the homophobia. He complains about homosexuals being depicted positively and too often on television, and longs for the days when “Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian, Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy.” (Bonanza is the most recent of those shows, and it has been off the air since 1973, when Merrill was nine years old).

    The most damning quote:
    This isn’t a one-off comment, either, as Merrill doubled-down on his frustration with people accepting that gay people exist on television, but not limiting himself to fictional content, instead attacking a United States gold medalist, soccer star Megan Rapinoe, because HOW DARE SHE BE AN OUT AND PROUD LESBIAN AND PEOPLE BE OKAY WITH THAT.

    John Merrill ran for U.S. Senate in 2020, but when it became clear he had no path to victory, he dropped out prior to the primary.

    While he still will be Alabama Secretary of State until 2022, we’re starting to wonder if John Merrill might be on his way out of Alabama politics after that, because after all the years where this putz has been pining for “straights only”, “wholesome”, “traditional values” being on television and rooting against the US Women’s Soccer team having lesbians on it, it turns out he’s a bit of a hypocrite on applying those values to his own life. In April of 2021, Merrill got caught having an affair, and of course there were details. Like leaked texts where Merrill was asking his mistress to give him a good pegging. There were other salacious details, none of which were ever brought up on the Andy Griffith Show.

    We’re hoping that by this time next year, we can report that John Merrill will have been bounced from office.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 11-21-2021 at 05:26 PM.
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  12. #36702
    Ultimate Member Malvolio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 4saken1 View Post
    This country has a long history of individuals 'stepping up' to perceived injustices which ultimately end in tragedy. In recent history, these include Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, the Jan.6 insurrection, and the post Katrina shootings to name a few. It wasn't that long ago that lynchings were seen as an acceptable form of justice when an African American man dared to look at a white woman or tried to register to vote. The Tulsa massacre was started when some white folks felt the need to right a wrong when a young black man was accused of assaulting a white teenage girl.
    The problem with vigilantism is that the perpetrator is usually an ill informed (and often racist) dolt who's goal isn't so much to enforce the law as to act out their racist fantasies.
    And of course, they often don't bother to find out if the people they shoot are actually guilty of anything. Shoot first and ask questions later, right?
    Watching television is not an activity.

  13. #36703
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by babyblob View Post
    Very sad breaking News. A Car drove through a holiday parade in Wisconsin. No word yet on dead and injured. CNN said the car got away.
    Guess Wisconsinites have gotten the word that they can kill and get away with it, and now the lawlessness begins.
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  14. #36704

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    Saw this on Twitter, from former FBI counterintelligence specialist Frank Figliuzzi...

    Half of the pro-Rittenhouse promotion is coming from foreign adversaries. Russian intelligence has been revealed to want to destabilize the United States through racial strife. And it works, unless Americans are smart enough to realize they're being motivated to turn on each other by foreign entities.
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  15. #36705
    Ultimate Member Gray Lensman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Malvolio View Post
    And of course, they often don't bother to find out if the people they shoot are actually guilty of anything. Shoot first and ask questions later, right?
    Lynching and vigilante are both words the US added to the English language.
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