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

[CaptainEurope]

The only time I had to deal with genital mutilation was when some dumbass dude was admitted through our ER because he tried to cure his ED by putting a TV antenna into his urethra and then use that "sustained erection" to have sex. It had the catastrophic damage effect that any smart person not desperate to get laid could have predicted.

The urinalysis sample came up as a giant blood clot in a specimen cup that in our attempts to pour it into a vial and run it slid out akin to a can of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. We just called the ER and told them, "What do you think the result was? It's a situation more of 'is there urine in this blood?' than 'is there blood in this urine?'"

And hey, just like that, I've defended the trans community and with this anecdote somehow written a story worthy of a Warren Ellis comic. It's a great morning.

Oddly, I just saw this on twitter 10 minutes ago:

FjNd9wtWQAEXRqg.jpg

It's an article about preventative sexual health for men, with the poetic title "The Penis is the Heart's Antenna."

[worstblogever]

Oddly, I just saw this on twitter 10 minutes ago:

FjNd9wtWQAEXRqg.jpg

It's an article about preventative sexual health for men, with the poetic title "The Penis is the Heart's Antenna."

Hey, I told my story, but what you search for in Google, you bring upon yourself. LOL.

[Dalak]

Dalek thinks she should be banned and prosecuted for trying to incite violence, but what's the standard that we want social media administrators and prosecutors to use to determine that? Should it just be up to their discretion?

So you DO know what law she broke after all?

I assure you that I'm not being obtuse.

If she's broken a law, what law has she broken?

Looks like you are being deliberately obtuse after all, thanks for proving it.

Before you go on the expected tangent, the fact that the excuse "I didn't know they'd do it" will be used when at this point it's clear they know what they are doing and the inevitable reaction of their followers will be accepted in court despite everyone KNOWING that it's a lie doesn't excuse the crime or mean they are truly not guilty of it. Look how hard it is to nail Trump on 1/6 charges if you need more evidence. If the reply includes "What specific law?" then it's clear you are being needlessly specific on a comic book forum about details of law to shut down discussion on the subject.

Like I said, Mets wants to talk about standards of conduct because he doesn't want to talk about what Chaya is actually doing. It's not our job to conjure up content moderation policies. We're not lawyers and developers or congress. We're just people who can see plainly that someone is regularly targetting, inciting, doxing, and attacking a minority. Individuals who have been highlighted by Libs of Tiktok have received death threats, bomb threats, and others all because Chaya/LibsOfTiKTok chose to target them in frequently out of context and misleading ways.

Mets himself has offered the hoary old explanation that LibsOfTikTok just 'highlights Lib sillyness'. When evidence contrary to that point and her connection to real event has been pointed out, it has been passed over without comment to instead demand we articulate a content moderation policy for social media that he instead wants us to spend our time creating and defending for him to poke holes in.

So let's not indulge him. It's not the point.

Yes, Mets has proved he's not arguing in good faith, if it was even still in question at this point.

Meanwhile, all the people I know who are performing at drag shows have "side hustles" like volunteering at pet rescues, medical charities for children's cancer wards, helping rehome desperate families.

They do more Christian-like work than any supposed "Christian" evangelical out to promote violence against them by sharing accusations like "Grooming!" against them.

Some folks just need to learn the lessons they should have years ago in "Too Wong Foo" or "Kinky Boots" or something. The only thing stopping queens and kings from improving your community either through their art or their life off stage is your own homophobic obsessions.

It's like living alongside the X-Men as one of their human friends, and seeing them keep having to save a world that hates and fears them.

Mets hasn't seen Too Wong Foo but determined it wasn't Drag despite it showing a drag show with Ru Paul as a former winner in the very beginning. Another example of changing the focus of criticism against conservative actions via meaningless distinctions and deflections.

The lesson goes back further than that, Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches and Other Stories" should pretty much clear up any questions about people who might look or act differently than you do, and it's standard reading at age two.

There is zero reason to be questioning whether "mutilation" is an appropriate term to use to describe the trans comuunity.

These lessons should have been learned by everyone on the planet by now, but especially by anyone who tries to come off as civil and reasonable.

Instead we get this almost every time:
"Stop saying Offensive Thing."
"You mean Thing? But Thing isn't a slur, why should I stop saying Thing when I don't mean it that way?"
"Because it is an Offensive Thing"
*continued questions and statements about why Thing isn't really that offensive*

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" ran a profile of Charles Bishop, a former Alabama State Senator who lost his damned mind in the middle of the state senate and straight up went Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out on State Senator Lowell Barron, only regretting later that he didn’t take the fight outside and finish it. Bishop also regularly spoke in front of the white nationalist organization the Council of Conservative Citizens and was proud to oppose Alabama’s resolution to apologize to African Americans for slavery because “atonement equals reparations”. Bishop lost way back in the 2010 GOP Primary and hasn’t resurfaced in politics.

In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted profiles of former Indiana Governor and Vice President Mike Pence, who for a while, was considered to be an early establishment candidate for president that the Republican Party thought they would be able to rally behind in the 2016 elections. He was a sitting six-term Congressman from 2001 through 2012, establishing conservative bona fides without any scandals or major gaffes while winning elections comfortably. He actually won a 2010 Straw Poll at the Value Voters Summit where they thought he was their best choice to run against Barack Obama in 2012, but Pence opted instead to run for re-election as Governor of Indiana, and bide his time for what was to be a run in 2016. Then Gov. Pence, the insane true believer in the American culture wars that he is, went and signed Indiana's "religious freedom" law to allow for the legal discrimination of the LGBTQ community, then denied that the point of the bill was allowing discrimination (and making many send him the literal definition of "discrimination" since he seemed unable to understand it) and claiming he was incapable of discrimination because he once participated in an anniversary walk in Selma, Alabama. That only made critics note that during his time in the U.S. House, he actually campaigned on an agenda to " oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's as a 'discreet and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities," or that he called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus" and instead, "Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior". If you’re unclear as to what that means, it’s that Pence wanted money redirected towards gay conversion therapy, which doesn’t actually work, and is considered a human rights violation. But that’s not all. Pence responded to the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act by making the ludicrous claim that it would allow intimidation towards or even charges to be filed against pastors who expressed a Biblical worldview critical to homosexuality, and also tried arguing that the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would, in his words, “weaken unit cohesion” of our military, and once voted for a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Factor in the time Pence is awful enough to women that he voted against all equal pay legislation including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, railed against the Disney cartoon Mulan for implying that women might be able to honorably serve in the military, and actually had an Indiana woman arrested for having a miscarriage because his obsession with cracking down on reproductive rights is that over-the-top insane. We're talking that he voted for for the Terry Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Protection Bill extreme, here. We're saying that he was a sponsor of the legislation that tried to defund Planned Parenthood back in 2011, and his "evidence" of wrongdoing was a DIFFERENT doctored fraud of a video produced by friends of Breitbart News hacks like James O'Keefe.

Pence also compared the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act to 9/11, and in early 2015 decided state taxpayer dollars should be allocated towards “JustIN’, a state-run news service with two employees being paid $100,000 salaries to present a point of view where Mike Pence could do no wrong (cancelled after taxpayers called him out on wasting their money on him lying to them). Pence denied a link between smoking an cancer as late as 2001 (he was accepting money from the big tobacc/o lobby, of course), and denies climate change is a thing to this day.

Mike Pence is so enthralling that after Donald Trump decided that Mike Pence should be his running mate on the 2016 GOP ticket as his vice president, he apparently tried reneging on the offer at the last minute. And then Trump botched the announcement and roll out to get the GOP hyped. Then the campaign logo for the new ticket was openly mocked because THIS is what Trump's idea men came up with:


Pence spent most of the VP debate pretending Donald Trump didn't actually say all of the wildly deranged things he says out loud, and on social media, which was far better than the forgettable speech he gave at the RNC (he was clearly overshadowed by Ted Cruz telling people to "vote their conscience"). Maybe Pence's speech would have been better if he wasn't distracted by the inclusion of AIDS Activists in the proceedings.

And what a great campaigner Pence wasn't. When he couldn't help look like he was mildly aroused by the thought of, as he put it, sending Roe v. Wade to the "ash heap of history". Hell, he even managed to take on some of Donald Trump's worst habits... like falling all over himself to not say disparaging things about white supremacist David Duke, or praising Vladimir Putin. Heck, trying to defend Donald Trump isn't easy, like say when you have to spin how he isn't a fascist for talking about jailing his opponent during a presidential debate, but Pence was kept on his toes by girls as young as eleven years old trying to make excuses for Trump around the time the tape of him talking about "grabbing women by the pussy" hit.

And, in spite of Donald Trump being Trump, and Mike Pence being the coalesced nightmares of the LGBTQ community and women everywhere, they defied all the odds, and all the polling, and inexplicably won office. And then, suddenly, everyone finally got properly scared that with a Republican president, Republican House, and Republican Senate, that things like gay marriage, or reproductive rights would be fair game. Oh, and then they remembered that Mike Pence also has talked about wrecking Social Security, too. Or that he casually can talk about resuming a torture program at Guantanamo Bay Prison.

So maybe that's why we don't feel bad for Mike Pence when people donate to Planned Parenthood in his name (and still are), or the fact hat he’s so afraid of women he won’t have dinner alone with one unless his wife is there (who he calls “Mother”), or when he showed up at a performance of Hamilton, and acts surprised when the audience boos him, or that he gets a lecture from a cast of minorities, gays, and even an HIV Positive lead actor to remind him that he's spent his whole career making legislative and executive decisions to slight anyone who wasn't a straight rich white male.

[worstblogever]

Mike Pence has continued to be a witless turd throughout the Trump administration, trying to simply not be as corrupt as Trump and hope he inherits the presidency… but even at that, he hasn’t kept his nose clean. Where do we even begin with Pence? Let’s just hit the big points… by the end of the first month of the Trump administration, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired, after several FBI investigations into the fact that he had been illegally operating was a foreign agent of other countries came to light. The official story about Flynn’s firing kept changing rapidly, including that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates got fired after hearing Mike Pence go on Fox News and give a story that seemed to indicate he wasn’t aware of Michael Flynn’s activities. Also, he assured the public that no one in the Trump campaign was talking to Russians (he was). Well, as of December 1st, 2017, we know Mike Pence was just deliberately lying, as he is prone to doing, and he knew about Michael Flynn talking to Russians under the radar. In fact, per Flynn’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Pence and Jared Kushner directed Gen. Flynn to do that specifically.

This would be similar to how back in October of 2016, Mike Pence went over to Fox News for an interview/tongue bath and scoffed at the idea that the Trump campaign had any communication with anyone from Wikileaks. Except, y’know, we now know that for almost the entire campaign, Donald Trump, Jr. was talking to Wikileaks, and was even getting advice on which of their stories the Trump campaign should share more on social media. And Roger Stone was talking to Wikileaks, which he lied to Congress about.

This isn’t to say that all Mike Pence did was alternate between lying and hiding since becoming vice-president. He still surfaces to waste taxpayer dollars to do things like try to defeat Kim Jong Un’s regime by impotently staring angrily at the Korean DMZ, to lick Donald Trump’s boots in televised Cabinet meetings, or the time he attended a Colts game with the intention of angrily kneeling if anyone protested by kneeling during the national anthem. He’s been called out for helping funnel money towards Donald Trump’s businesses by manipulating his travel itinerary to stay at Trump resorts and bill American taxpayers for a small fortune. He's also using his office to again direct money towards Christian groups, similarly to what he did with groups that supported gay conversion therapy while in Congress.

In 2018, Pence started to ape Trump’s bigoted rhetoric more, as we praised disgraced former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, defended the Trump White House for banning CNN reporters from covering events (because what’s the big deal about the First Amendment, right?), cited false statistics about how people from the Middle East were sneaking across the U.S./Mexico border with refugees from Central America, or appeared with a fake rabbi who claims Jews who don’t accept Jesus go to hell at an event to honor Jews slain by a Neo-Nazi in Pittsburgh.

He has been rewarded for his loyalty by Trump by being thrown under the bus, completely, and as Trump’s corruption began to be laid bare in his dealings with Ukraine, and the impeachment inquiry began… Trump responded on September 25th, 2019, by telling the media that they should also ask Mike Pence about the times that he has demanded quid pro quos. Pence did push back on that, but hardly enough to convince us that there might not be some truth to it… and then EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified, it looked like Mike Pence would go back to just denying, denying, denying all the facts for the foreseeable future (which he is practiced in doing, but still).

And then… Covid-19 happened. And Donald Trump is horribly incompetent, but also terrified of receiving blame. So he named Mike Pence to be his patsy… we mean head of the Coronavirus Task Force in February 26th, 2020. As you might have noticed… Pence done effed up. Repeatedly and often. Who would thought the man who botched the response to an HIV outbreak while Governor of Indiana could mismanage a highly contagious respiratory pandemic and that 325,000 to 350,000 will be dead by the time he leaves office?

And forgive us if we take absolute glee in having seen Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris trounce him in a debate, where she lecture him for trying to interrupt her like a schoolteacher telling an unruly student to shut their entitled cake hole, and then he became so lethargic an actual fly parked on his head for the climax of the debate. We still aren’t out of tough times, and whatever glimmer of hope happens, we savor. Seeing this Evangelical white nationalist have his place taken by the first female VP, the first African American VP and the first Asian-American VP… ooooooh hell yeah we are here for that.

Mike Pence ended his tenure as Vice-President doing the bare minimum to support American democracy by certifying the electoral votes on January 6th, 2021, and Donald Trump responded to that by sending an armed insurgent mob to Capitol Hill, chanting threats to lynch him. He has made only a handful of public appearances since, and his own party have started booing and mocking him because it’s now a white nationalist, anti-democratic bag of nuts. Which, had he ever stood up for true principles at any point during the Trump administration, or sooner, or invoked the 25th Amendment that obviously needed to be, maybe he wouldn’t be a pariah to both the right and left. We still think he’s planning a 2024 presidential run where Trump will bully him and cause attempts on his life that will make things very awkward for the Republican Party, but they’re all cowards and will defend Trump for doing it.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Dion Bergeron, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, who also had a failed run to join the Indiana House of Representatives in District 9 of that body. He is, and stop me if you’ve heard this before… another in a long, long line of Republicans who ran for Congress in 2020 who were adherents of the Qanon conspiracy theory. On Facebook, Bergeron boasted that his “license plate says THANQ on the Indiana 'In God We Trust' plate,” and that his car had “stickers that proclaim Where We Go One, We Go All” on its side windows. He also called Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan/8kun who is believed to have been the originator of Qanon a “patriot”. We’ll note that Dion Bergeron was nowhere near close to reaching office in the race for Indiana’s 1st District, finishing fifth out of a possible six candidates in the GOP Primary, but was shockingly close to becoming a member of the Indiana House of Representatives in that race, getting to run unopposed and getting 43% of the vote in the general election. He fared about the same in 2022. We’re hoping he’s properly shamed for his support of conspiracy theories going forward and is not a threat to reach office… because it would be a disaster if he was. Since he continues to fail to reach office, we’ll set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1160-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Scott Pio
Welcome to what is the 1160th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’re profiling Scott Pio, a 2021 candidate for Virginia State Assembly in District 32 of that body. The first point we had Scott Pio brought to our attention by a reader submitting him for entry was this legendary Twitter post, where Pio thought he was the smartest guy in the room for coming up with a way to combat sea levels that are rising due to climate change. No, not cut greenhouse gases or invest in green energy… Scott Pio’s solution was “take all the boats out of the water”.

”“I’m curious, do you think the sea level would lower, if we just took all the boats out of the water? Just a thought, not a statement."

He also put his foot in his mouth shortly after the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown-Jackson, seemingly creating a conspiracy theory that the Delta Sigma Theta sorority was nefariously taking over the federal government:

”Skull and Bones has lost their power. It’s now the sorority known as Delta Sigma Theta who is taking control of our country at all levels of. Even the Loudoun County board of Supervisors Chairman is a Delta.”

Pio, of course, was a die-hard supporter of fellow nitwit Donald Trump, including his white nationalist wet dream of a contiguous, useless wall along the U.S./Mexico border being built, and frequently organized SUV convoys to visit Trump’s golf course in Virginia.

There’s a saying about the confidence of mediocre white men, and Scott Pio lends credence to it. Anyway, even with the pushback against Democrats after they won the White House in 2020, in the 2021 Virginia elections, Scott Pio couldn’t even match 40% of the vote in his efforts to get elected to the state legislature. Hopefully, if he makes any other runs for office, that pattten holds.

[mogwen]

Aren't you afraid of seeing more power outages over the next few days/weeks?
Now that some people have found this new way to terrorize, I'm afraid it will become viral.

[Dalak]

Aren't you afraid of seeing more power outages over the next few days/weeks?
Now that some people have found this new way to terrorize, I'm afraid it will become viral.

Yes I am, and I'm also wondering who first had the idea to shoot up our own infrastructure in order to say "Fuck the LGBT!" because I'd like to think Americans aren't stupid enough to think that's a good idea on their own.

[scourge]

Yes I am, and I'm also wondering who first had the idea to shoot up our own infrastructure in order to say "Fuck the LGBT!" because I'd like to think Americans aren't stupid enough to think that's a good idea on their own.

While I don't underestimate the stupidity of the right wing and think it is possible they'd come up with it themselves...I've seen the idea floated that they're trying to copy the news reports about Putin bombing power facilities in Ukraine.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Aren't you afraid of seeing more power outages over the next few days/weeks?
Now that some people have found this new way to terrorize, I'm afraid it will become viral.

While small towns and rural areas could remain susceptible to such forms of terrorism, and that’s exactly what this was, facilities in larger towns and major cities figure to be better protected. And after this weekend, security is bound to be upped.

[CaptainEurope]

Trump Had Hidden $19.8 Million Loan From North Korea-Linked Company As President

Donald Trump failed to disclose a $19.8 million loan from a company with ties to North Korea while he was president, Forbes reported Sunday, citing documents uncovered by the New York attorney general’s office.

Trump owed the money to L/P Daewoo while he was campaigning in 2016 and into his presidency, according to records. He didn’t list the debt in financial disclosure filings, as candidates and presidents are expected to do, Forbes reported.

The loan was paid off just over five months into his presidency. Forbes said the documents don’t specify who satisfied it.

Daewoo is a South Korean conglomerate that partnered with Trump on a development project near the United Nations headquarters in New York City and on several other projects over the years. The company has ties to North Korea, Forbes reported, and was the only South Korean company allowed to operate a business in North Korea in the mid-1990s.

Trump may have skirted disclosure laws and not committed an outright violation because the loan was on the books of his company, the Trump Organization, and not identified as a personal loan, Forbes noted.

The debt would have sparked conflict of interest concerns over an American president’s indebtedness to a foreign operation vulnerable to influence by North Korea’s rogue government. Trump often gushed about his close relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

[Dalak]

While I don't underestimate the stupidity of the right wing and think it is possible they'd come up with it themselves...I've seen the idea floated that they're trying to copy the news reports about Putin bombing power facilities in Ukraine.

Sadly aping Putin is all the rage in conservative circles nowadays.

While small towns and rural areas could remain susceptible to such forms of terrorism, and that’s exactly what this was, facilities in larger towns and major cities figure to be better protected. And after this weekend, security is bound to be upped.

To say I'm stunned by this would be an understatement, and by the stupidity it takes to think this would be a good idea. Security might be up but I suspect the response to that is going to become a challenge to the ones trying to attack these Drag shows to become better at attacking OUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE. The idiocy and sheer hate that would motivate someone to go through with this sort of destruction is almost incomprehensible to me . . . except that it IS actually happening. And it's enabled because of those excusing this sort of thinking by claiming 'modern drag' is somehow different and unacceptable compared to all the examples provided of it being accepted previously. This should be condemned by everyone under the sun, but we'll see the regulars in media and here excusing the ideas that keep leading to violence all too soon.

[Mister Mets]

It's a policy that works, like I said, is there a list of slurs you can't use here on CBR?

No.

Despite that though, is there a lot of confusion about what is and isn't appropriate here?

No.

So explain how "be civil" doesn't work.

And Tenderin's " Thinks she knows what she's doing" is the same, "don't yell fire!" standard I talked about. And it's not bout "thinks" it's that we all know(and you should too!). The message was very transparent: they never posted about the gay scene in Colorado before the shooting in Colorado Springs...but after the shooting posts objections about several other clubs and events in the area.

Do you need help connecting the dots there?

It's been posted before without light dawning so I guess I'll spell it out: the message is, "Good job, now here are some other places you guys should do next!" And it's a message that doesn't take some secret decoder ring to read, the intent was crystal clear.

Like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded area, that's a comment that could very likely cause harm to the wider community which is a very obvious "no-no"

And again, it's something that has been dealt with here at CBR. There have been cases of bad users here of publicly listing the addresses and phone numbers("doxing") of other users or comic professionals or columnists they don't like...and they get swiftly banned, because again the message is clear, "Here's their personal information, you guys do you!" and that's an act that could very easily lead to harm so it's an obvious no-go.

Again, it's not hard.

Don't defend these kinds of people or their actions.

CBR has a general policy against hate speech, so slurs are covered in that category.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ARDS-amp-RULES

But I think there are still plenty of questions.

I don’t know if I’d get away with being as rude to you guys as you are to me. This is mainly because given the bent of who reads the board, if I posted anything personal and mean, there would be more reports against me than when you guys get personal. It’s not something I’m interested in doing, because I’m not the type to insult people. In the name of equity, It would be nice for a Trump fan to have a clear understanding of what she could get away with.

I understand why you guys think Chaval’s trying to incite violence. But what is the criteria under which she should be banned for that from social media platforms, or according to at least one person here- prosecuted? Who gets to determine intent? Presumably the policy is not to ask Tendrin or thwhtGuardian what someone they dislike secretly believes.

There’s stuff that could be done, but the same approach would be used against people taking stands on other issues (IE- prominent critics of the police at a time of anti-police riots or activists in other countries fighting against dictatorships.)

The standards are simple and one that you seem unable or unwilling to accept as you keep tap dancing around it.

Use a slur - banned

Promote and retweet hate speech - Banned

Encourage violence against a group - Banned.

This is a standard that should be help up for everyone.

it is not a "Well what about this what about that?"

It is freaken simple.

Everyone knows slurs and hate speech are vile and have no place in this world.

You tweet about drag shows needing to be shut down just hours after a mass shooting at a gay club? It is clear that is encouraging violence. There is no debate on that. They should be banned!

Use the N Word, Use the F word for gays, use a slur on Latinos or Asians = Banned!

Why is that so hard to understand?

if you keep debating that fact you are either encouraging that kind of talk, or for what ever reason you are ignoring the argument that those words are vile and dangerous. I dont know which one would offend me more.

There are still going to be plenty of questions.

Some people don’t realize that certain words are slurs, given how language changes and how we get a greater understanding of regional differences. There may also be disagreements about what counts. Is thug a slur? I remember an argument about whether Mitt Romney and Republican Congressmen used a slur, when they referred to a “tar baby.” That seemed to be more about a useful metaphor sounding like a slur to people unfamiliar with the source material.

A ban on promoting hate speech requires us to define it, as well as to define what counts as promoting it. Not everyone understands explanations are different from promotion.

The problem with the “everybody knows” argument is that people have different experiences and frames of reference. Sometimes they’ll be ignorant about the use of a term as a slur. Sometimes they’ll think something innocent is a coded white nationalist image.

With what the libsoftiktok lady did, there should be some working standard for penalties. If the rule is that you can't criticize certain things after violent acts, that's going to have implications during protests.

There’s general agreement on the board that slurs are bad. So there’s little point to that discussion since we can predict the reactions. The worthwhile arguments are about where people may disagree or when they haven’t thought things through, and considered the specifics as well as the implications.

[Mister Mets]

There is no good reason to say anything contrary about terrible human beings, especially without at least acknowledging they are otherwise vile(which you strangely haven't done, I wonder why?)

I have mentioned that she’s bad. In my first comment on her, I noted that she sometimes adds mocking and derogatory commentary, and I later noted that the nasty things she says about people are why social media platforms ban her.

It is morally wrong to criticize people who are correct. Facts matter, even if a particular fact is to point out that a particular criticism of a terrible person is misguided. This is a line that we should strive to never cross, because why on Earth should anyone take you seriously if you ever hold it against someone that they’re making accurate points?

The lesson goes back further than that, Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches and Other Stories" should pretty much clear up any questions about people who might look or act differently than you do, and it's standard reading at age two.

There is zero reason to be questioning whether "mutilation" is an appropriate term to use to describe the trans comuunity.

I did not use “mutilation” to refer to the trans community.
Even with the use/ mention distinction, I haven’t made any claim about the larger trans community.
The only time I’ve said the word or a variation would be appropriate in this context would be if someone comes to regret that decision, although I haven’t suggested they’re representative of the trans community.

Like I said, Mets wants to talk about standards of conduct because he doesn't want to talk about what Chaya is actually doing. It's not our job to conjure up content moderation policies. We're not lawyers and developers or congress. We're just people who can see plainly that someone is regularly targetting, inciting, doxing, and attacking a minority. Individuals who have been highlighted by Libs of Tiktok have received death threats, bomb threats, and others all because Chaya/LibsOfTiKTok chose to target them in frequently out of context and misleading ways.

Mets himself has offered the hoary old explanation that LibsOfTikTok just 'highlights Lib sillyness'. When evidence contrary to that point and her connection to real event has been pointed out, it has been passed over without comment to instead demand we articulate a content moderation policy for social media that he instead wants us to spend our time creating and defending for him to poke holes in.

So let's not indulge him. It's not the point.

There’s little point in discussing the shortcomings of the woman behind libsoftiktok. There’s major agreement on that, especially on this forum. But if someone’s calling for a policy solution, be it from social media platforms or the government, the specifics matter. And they should be carefully thought out. Otherwise, we’re encouraging sloppiness.

Children complain about what they want without considering costs. We are adults. We should be able to discuss tradeoffs and specifics.

So you DO know what law she broke after all?



Looks like you are being deliberately obtuse after all, thanks for proving it.

Before you go on the expected tangent, the fact that the excuse "I didn't know they'd do it" will be used when at this point it's clear they know what they are doing and the inevitable reaction of their followers will be accepted in court despite everyone KNOWING that it's a lie doesn't excuse the crime or mean they are truly not guilty of it. Look how hard it is to nail Trump on 1/6 charges if you need more evidence. If the reply includes "What specific law?" then it's clear you are being needlessly specific on a comic book forum about details of law to shut down discussion on the subject.



Yes, Mets has proved he's not arguing in good faith, if it was even still in question at this point.



Mets hasn't seen Too Wong Foo but determined it wasn't Drag despite it showing a drag show with Ru Paul as a former winner in the very beginning. Another example of changing the focus of criticism against conservative actions via meaningless distinctions and deflections.



These lessons should have been learned by everyone on the planet by now, but especially by anyone who tries to come off as civil and reasonable.

Instead we get this almost every time:
"Stop saying Offensive Thing."
"You mean Thing? But Thing isn't a slur, why should I stop saying Thing when I don't mean it that way?"
"Because it is an Offensive Thing"
*continued questions and statements about why Thing isn't really that offensive*

I don’t get what “So you DO know what law she broke after all?” refers to. You mentioned incitement in posts, as did others.

I recognize how hard it is to nail Trump down on incitement charges on January 6. This is why I’m curious about how you would prosecute someone else for that. What guidelines should be given to prosecutors? Hell, what guidelines should social media platforms follow on this narrow question?

The difficulty nailing down Trump isn’t an excuse to avoid discussing the difficulty prosecuting someone else. It’s more of an example that some outcomes people want are tougher than they anticipated.

I said it’s not part of modern drag and appeared to be a road comedy. If you can demonstrate that Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo are drag queens, or that Stockard Channing and Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom are drag kings, I will reevaluate.

I stand by what I said at the time.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post6255912

[Mister Mets]

Aren't you afraid of seeing more power outages over the next few days/weeks?
Now that some people have found this new way to terrorize, I'm afraid it will become viral.

If power outages became widespread as a way to shut down ordinary activities, I suspect we would immediately have an aggressive legal response. Ordinary people who are opposed to drag queen story hour still want to be able to warm their houses when it’s 40 degrees out.

It also didn’t work. The show went on.

https://www.fayobserver.com/story/ne...s/69701476007/

That's it? That's what James Woods is whining about? That's what's supposed to be worse than Trump's kids stealing money from their own charity? Even if Hunter Biden were an elected official, the worst that would happen is he would leave office like Anthony Weiner did. If this is the best they've got to distract from Herschel Walker, the Rev. Warnock has very little to worry about.

The Hunter Biden story is serious, but not the biggest story. The new details don’t seem to change anything we already knew. The former CEO of Twitter said he thought it was a mistake to suppress the story. It does appear that some people on the left weaponized fears about Russian disinformation to cover up a story that was pretty easy to confirm.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/tech/...den/index.html

One way to consider it is what you would want the media to do if a coked up Eric Trump misplaced a laptop that had some embarrassing stuff on it.

I do think it’s easy for Republicans to overreach on this, the same way they pushed too much against Bill Clinton for his indiscretions in 1998 which led to bad midterm results (Democrats won a majority of Senate races and made gains in the House.)

Anyone think if the Democratic primary calendar had been changed the way Biden now suggested in 2015, Hillary would have beaten Trump?

It seems likely to me that Sanders would not have gotten artificially inflated by early caucus wins, and it would not have been worth it for Putin to support his campaign.

This system would help Biden and Harris in primaries.

We don’t know what would have happened if it was in place in 2016. It may have led to different primary candidates.

There is a potential problem of fighting yesterday’s battles and rules changes can backfire. Republicans thought their post-2012 changes made it easier for a moderate frontrunner to win, but it ended up helping Trump.