Court OKs Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants, Another Says Homeland Security's Head Might Have No Legal Authority

Plus: Trump threatens Iran, Pennsylvania pandemic restrictions are unconstitutional, sex workers call out Kamala Harris, and more...

Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf is likely illegitimate, a federal court says. That means some of the Trump-era asylum rules Wolf presided over are on hold, too.

The appointment of former Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan "was invalid under the agency's applicable order of succession, and so he lacked the authority to amend the order of succession to ensure Wolf's installation as Acting Secretary," wrote Judge Paula Xinis in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland's opinion, issued Friday (a day after President Donald Trump formally nominated Wolf—who has been acting DHS secretary since November—as the agency's official head).

"Because Wolf filled the role of Acting Secretary without authority, he promulgated the challenged [asylum] rules also 'in excess of…authority,' and not 'in accordance with the law,'" Xinis continued.

The lawsuit was brought by Casa de Maryland Inc. (CASA), the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), and three other nonprofit groups, and it challenges 18 DHS rules "that overhaul the criteria for issuing work authorization to asylum applicants," notes the court's opinion. "Plaintiffs mount a full-throated attack on the challenged agency rules, invoking the Administrative Procedure Act ('APA'), the Federal Vacancies Reform Act ('FVRA'), and the Homeland Security Act ('HSA')."

The court concluded that "preliminary injunctive relief" was warranted for both CASA and ASAP (but not the other plaintiffs), temporarily blocking "enforcement of the following rule changes against CASA and ASAP's members": 

The Timeline Repeal Rule, 85 Fed. Reg. at 37,545 (printing parts of the regulations to be codified at 8 C.F.R. § 208.7(a)(1)); -

The 365-day waiting period, 85 Fed. Reg. at 38,626-28 (referenced throughout and as codified at 8 C.F.R. § 208.3(c)(3); § 208.7(a)(1)(ii), (a)(1)(iii)(E), and (b)(1)(i); and 8 C.F.R. § 274a.12(c)(8)); -

Removal of "deemed-complete" rule, 85 Fed. Reg. at 38,626 (codified at 8 C.F.R. § 208.3); -

The discretionary review rule, providing that agency is no longer required to issue EADs to eligible asylees, 85 Fed. Reg. at 38,628 (changes reflected at 8 C.F.R. § 274a.13(a)(1)); -

The one-year filing bar, 85 Fed. Reg. at 38,626 (codified at 8 C.F.R. § 208.7(a)(1)(iii)(F)); and -

The rule requiring submission of biometric information as part of EAD applications, 85 Fed. Reg. at 38,626 (codified at 8 C.F.R. §§ 208.7(a)(1)(i) and (a)(1)(iv)(E),

It's a limited reprieve for now, but positive news nonetheless.

Another federal court ruling regarding immigration isn't so heartening. This one from Monday says the Trump administration can force out hundreds of thousands of immigrants who reside legally in the U.S. under what's referred to as "temporary protected status."

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to vacate a 2018 district court ruling that preliminarily blocked enforcement of the administration's order, which end the protected status program for immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan.

In finding "that the Trump administration acted within its authority in terminating legal protections" for these immigrants, the court "effectively strips legal immigration status from some 400,000 people, rendering them deportable if they do not voluntarily leave the country," The New York Times reports.

---

FREE MARKETS

Congress is out of touch on tech companies. "While Democratic and Republican officials have been criticizing the conduct of U.S. 'Big Tech' companies, a growing disconnect separates those crusading politicians from the way a lot of consumers are feeling," writes Art Raymond at Utah's Deseret News, in a look at consumer polling and political posturing around tech products. "It turns out, a close look at the attitudes of the average Jills and Joes who use the tech products and platforms every day reveals that, frankly, they really don't care that much."

---

FREE MINDS

Trump is fearmongering about Iran again. "According to press reports, Iran may be planning an assassination, or other attack, against the United States in retaliation for the killing of terrorist leader [Qassem] Soleimani," the president—who has lately been talking up his supposed anti-war bona fides—tweeted late last night. "Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!"

---

QUICK HITS

• Pennsylvania "Gov. Tom Wolf's pandemic restrictions that required people to stay at home, placed size limits on gatherings and ordered 'non-life-sustaining' businesses to shut down are unconstitutional," held U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV in a Monday ruling.

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that it's OK for Florida to make people convicted of felonies who have served their sentences pay off all court debt before they regain the right to vote.

• Ruling parties use the instruments of power to ensure their dominance, example 8 billion:

BREAKING: In 4-3 decision, Wisconsin Supreme Court keeps the Green Party ticket off of Wisconsin's ballot.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joins the court's three liberals to form a majority.

This means clerks do not have to reprint ballots and can now mail them.

— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) September 14, 2020

• A new lawsuit alleges a range of abuses against immigrant detainees at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. You can read all the allegations here.

• Who had "agreeing with Chuck Schumer on something" on their 2020 bingo card?

The time has come to decriminalize marijuana in this country.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 14, 2020

• All the clap emojis:

Last night, sex workers in Oakland sent a clear message to @KamalaHarris on her home turf: her vote to advance the #EARNITAct was a betrayal.

The EARN IT Act is SESTA/FOSTA 2.0. pic.twitter.com/vYhQBIDQlY

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) September 14, 2020

• Another good piece on the controversy surrounding the movie Cuties:

Lots of uniformed opinion out there engaging in censorship. Not a good sign for America. I focus on aspects of the film many are willfully ignoring. @CathyYoung63 @nickgillespie @mattzollerseitz
Cuties is Not What You Think https://t.co/P4RHiaKOIw

— Emina Melonic ☕???? ???? (@EminaMelonic) September 14, 2020

Comments

[Ra's al Gore]

Liberal Media Scream: Chuck Todd frets the media have lost their ‘power’
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/liberal-media-scream-chuck-todd-frets-the-media-has-lost-our-power

Todd then said: “The only way to understand this is to realize he doesn’t have shame about it. And when we lose our ability to shame a politician, we lose a lot of our power. That’s for sure.”

[Don't look at me!]

Not supposed to have power.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

There are many different forms of power. Government power, economic power, cultural power, etc. The media and other NGOs have always been used to destroy people. Imagine trying to be employed after ending up on an ADL or SPLC "hate" list. What can you do to be removed from the list? Argue your point before the governing board? Make a large donation? Who sets the limits to the Overton window? In contemporary society, simulated sexual activity by a minor (i.e. Cuties on Netlix) is acceptable but advocating reduced immigration rates is the equivalent of endorsing National Socialism.

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[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

Trump has been pretty good on assessing who the assholes are on the world stage. The two biggest are China and Iran.

Iran is legit terrorizing aggressor in the region. Maybe they're a 'peaceful protestor' in the eyes of Reason or something.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Iran is part of the axis of evil and needs to be destroyed!
Onward Christian soldiers!

[Rufus The Monocled]

No need to go to war. But you do need to remind the reprobates that run the theocracy they're little shits. I have no problem with that.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

According to Reza Aslan (the guy who wanted to punch the Covington MAGA kid because of a doctored tweet), Islam is a religion of peace corrupted by the bigoted Ulama and Iran is an Islamic democracy.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

The newly-signed Israel-UAE/Bahrain treaties probably reminds them.

[Overt]

They are also very clearly trying to sabotage the ongoing peace efforts in any way possible. Unfortunately, Israel pretty much locked Gaza/West Bank terrorist activities down to low intensity nonsense many moons ago, so their ability to provoke some sort of reaction that would derail the mideast peace wave is pretty hemmed in.

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

What Todd is actually describing is the fact the media has cried wolf too many times and has as a result lost their own power to get the villagers in a panic over Trump.

[Earth Skeptic]

Who'da thunk that reporting every event as apocalyptic would eventually turn off some readers?

But as the NYT and WaPo have discovered, they can sell panic porn every day to the mentally deranged.

[Muzzled Woodchipper]

“ Who’da thunk that reporting every event as apocalyptic would eventually turn off some readers?”

Especially when it’s so obviously spun.

I think the thing that strikes me the most about the media in the age of Trump is their willingness to claim that EVERYTHING T says/does is The Worst Thing Ever™️, yet rarely is what they say he said/did actually what he said or did.

Changing quotes in particular. If what he said is so terrible, why need it be changed or completely removed from context? Of course any rational person knows the answer to that question, but the sheer balls of it when the truth is in plain sight is staggering.

[Troglodyte Rex]

Even Ron Burgandy just wanted to report the news. Chucklehead Todd is a moron.

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[Ra's al Gore]

Report: College Board Became ‘Key Partner’ With Chinese Regime
Academic behemoth behind AP, SAT helped advance Chinese infiltration in K-12 schools
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/report-college-board-became-key-partner-with-chinese-regime/

[Ra's al Gore]

The FDA is outsourcing COVID-19 testing to China
At least 10 Chinese companies have received FDA authorization for U.S. testing.
https://jordanschachtel.substack.com/p/the-fda-is-outsourcing-covid-19-testing

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has come under fire for seemingly rubber stamping Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for COVID-19 testing without offering virtually any data-driven or appropriate testing standards, has been delivering EUAs to China-based pharmaceutical companies at an alarming rate.

[Ra's al Gore]

Could COVID-19 Have Escaped from a Lab?
The world’s preeminent scientists say a theory from the Broad Institute’s Alina Chan is too wild to be believed. But when the theory is about the possibility of COVID being man-made, is this science or censorship?
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/09/alina-chan-broad-institute-coronavirus/

For good measure, almost in passing, Chan pointed out a detail no one else had noticed: COVID-19 contains an uncommon genetic sequence that has been used by genetic engineers in the past to insert genes into coronaviruses without leaving a trace, and it falls at the exact point that would allow experimenters to swap out different genetic parts to change the infectivity. That same sequence can occur naturally in a coronavirus, so this was not irrefutable proof of an unnatural origin, Chan explained, “only an observation.” Still, it was enough for one Twitter user to muse, “If capital punishment were as painful as what Alina Chan is doing to Daszak/WIV regarding their story, it would be illegal.”

[Rufus The Monocled]

Is America that corrupted that an agency is willing to work with a country where the virus came from and are clearly an enemy right now?

Wow.

I know the FDA is as cynical an agency when it needs to be for politics but wow.

[The White Knight]

China is an enemy now?

[R Mac]

Shut the fuck up Dee.

[Longtobefree]

It has been since the Communists took over.
Read a factual history book.

[The White Knight]

Weird that our President is conducting trade negotiations with an enemy.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

So you're saying they hacked the OPM to protect American PII?

[Ken Shultz]

Another federal court ruling regarding immigration isn't so heartening.

Is ENB clear that things are constitutional or not regardless of whether we like them?

[BYODB]

I seriously doubt it.

[Fats of Fury]

ENB claims to be a libertarian feminist. She isn't clear on anything.

[Overt]

Right- if it were "another federal court ruling will lead to less heartening results", we could at least pretend that she sees distinctions between "could" and "should" and "ought" and "Must". Instead, she is right up there with all the others who seem to demand that every decision in our government be at the sole discretion of men in black robes.

[Ken Shultz]

I opposed Obama's adventure in Libya--solely because it was unconstitutional. Within the context of the question of whether Congress should have authorized what he did, I supported what Obama did in Libya wholeheartedly. We don't need to pretend constitutional things are unconstitutional because we don't like them, and we don't need to pretend unconstitutional things are constitutional because we like them either.

There are so many issues that are subject to this kind of thinking--that things are constitutional or not depending on whether we like them.

DACA was unconstitutional--regardless of whether we like it or don't like it.

Trump extending unemployment benefits to head off a $3.5 trillion stimulus package was probably unconstitutional--despite the fact that I hated that stimulus package with all my heart.

Upholding the principles of the Constitution is probably more important in cases where the implications are good for the policies we hate. It's the source of our credibility. And there's probably no better way to undermine the principles of the Constitution than to only support them when doing so happens to lead to outcomes that we like. The idea that the Constitution should only be interpreted in ways that we like may be the biggest threat to things like the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.

[Earth Skeptic]

Ken, at a more fundamental (and less sophisticated) level, I see the urge that many people have for government to "do something" whenever they perceive a need or desire some change. Legal niceties like constitutionality are way over their heads. Why should their government be any different?

[Ken Shultz]

On a less sophisticated level, this is why patriotism is so important.

My support for the First Amendment, Second Amendment, the separation of powers, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, etc. is what I'm talking about when I talk about my patriotism. And I don't think that requires sophistication.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

----Declaration of Independence

This is what it means to be an American. You cannot be a patriotic American and not believe this.

Upon enlistment, recruits are required to swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Believing in the core principles of the Constitution doesn't require sophistication. Simple patriotism will do. Not all patriotism is created equal, but the patriotism grounded in principles like the Declaration of Independence and constitutional principles like the First Amendment is vastly superior to all the other kinds of patriotism--and it doesn't require sophistication.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

"heartening"

Emotions first. Constitution? Maybe later when emotion permits.

[Earth Skeptic]

I can picture ENB's laptop, plastered with "I (heart).." stickers and other cute shit.

[Mickey Rat]

There does seem to be some confusion about whether the judiciary should be judging whether policy is good or bad rather than whether it is authorized under the Constitution and statute.

[Don't look at me!]

The chick with the huge glasses looks like a real bitch.

[ErictheRed]

Looks like AOC

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

The chick dick with the huge glasses moobs looks like a real bitch.

With a few quick changes that comment also works for the Schumer post.

[Ra's al Gore]

TIFU by helping ruin my son’s life
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/45c8qx/tifu_by_helping_ruin_my_sons_life/

My son has been in college since last fall. Last November, my 16 year old stepdaughter brought up allegations that my son had abused her repeatedly for several years. I confronted my son and he categorically denied it. But I knew that even though he was my son, I could not defend him for such an awful act.

My wife and I reported him to the authorities. My son was arrested in December and held in prison for a several weeks because I refused to provide him bail money. He was eventually expelled from his Ivy League college.

In the middle of January, my stepdaughter broke down and admitted she lied about everything. She had actually been having sex with her boyfriend and was scared the news would reach us.

The charges were dismissed and my son was released immediately but the damage was done. His first girlfriend from college ended things with him. The news spread about the allegations and all his childhood friends have decided to just stay away from him even though I called each and every one of them personally.

I have called the school and explained the situation and even though they sympathized, they said he needed to reapply for the next school year and go through the admissions process again.

My son is understandably furious at us. He has moved back home and refuses to talk to me at all. Both my wife and I have apologized to him repeatedly. We have banned my stepdaughter from our home permanently and she has been sent to live with her father in another state. My wife and I also agreed to completely disinherit her from our wills. It has been a very painful situation. All of us started therapy.

The realization of how badly I ruined my son’s life hit me when I picked up his first prescription of anti-depressants today. I bawled my eyes out in my car.

He is the pride and joy of my life. He is outgoing, funny, intelligent and the kindest person I know. But when I handed him his medication, I could not even recognize him. He locks himself in his room, does not eat properly and has lost several pounds so far.

Whenever I try talking to him, I just see the hate he has for me in his eyes. I don’t know if I can ever get him to love me again.....

[Rufus The Monocled]

YOU FUCKEN DEGENERATE ASSHOLE.

YOU RUINED HIS FUCKEN LIFE.

Man did this piss the living hell out of me.

To be honest, he's lucky he's only not talking to him.

/fist in mouth.

[Ska]

It's reddit. I'm just chalking it up to straight fiction. If anyone ever read that, walked away thinking "what an inhuman piece of shit disgraziato," and vowed to never come close to sinking to that level of garbage - then it was an effective parable.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hope you're right. But these days, would it be a stretch?

[Overt]

"These days"? It is four years old.

[Tulpa]

Which of course has nothing to do with his question at all.

[BYODB]

^ This. Odd's it's real approach zero.

It reads like someone's fan-fic.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Knowing a family that went through something similar. The son would never be arrested based only on testimony and even then, probably not without a confession. Detectives definitely assume the worst about people, but they don't proceed based only on a teenage girl's word.

Consider yourself outrage trolled.

[RabbiHarveyWeinstein]

Upboat, my fellow Rebbitor

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[Don't look at me!]

That’s what you get for ratting him out. How did you think it was going to turn out?

[John]

I hope the step daughter rots in hell. What a fucking bitch. I actually feel bad for the mother here. She believed the step daughter. I don't think that was necessarily unreasonable. The only thing you can fault her for was not realizing her step daughter was a evil bitch before she did. The whole thing is such a tragedy.

[Rufus The Monocled]

They sound like Democrats. Maybe the mother went to #believeher marches and the father is a cuck who supported it.

Real men don't do shit like this. Real men PROTECT their family.

You only enter the moral conflict realm when you have PROOF your kid committed a crime. This prick went on the words of one kid over another. He managed to ruin everyone.The more I think of it the more he should just sign whatever he owns over to the son and do the honourable thing.

[John]

It was his daughter too. Without knowing them, I can't say that it was unreasonable to believe the daughter. She said it happened over years. That seems like a pretty unlikely story. How would no one had known that?

That said, they faced the choice of either thinking the daughter was the evilest most vile bitch on earth or that their son was a rapist. That is an impossible situation. I am not going to judge their decision making in such a position even though it turned out to be wrong. The whole thing is the daughter's fault. Had she not lied, they never would have been in that position.

[mad.casual]

Real men don’t do shit like this. Real men PROTECT their family.

I agree. To the point that I'm pretty sure the story is fictitious. You don't rat your pride and joy out to the police and then refuse to post bail.

Moreover, as the parent of multiple children, despite popular narrative #believeallwomen is abject fiction obviously bordering on retardation and even a signifcant portion of women (especialy mothers) know it. Every "He/she hit me." from the age of 3 onward is preceded by a "Well he/she stuck his tongue out at me." or a "He/she took my toy from me." The idea that you immediately phone up the cops based on nothing other than her word (assuming the Father was a party to calling them) is bullshit. If you can't sort out what happened in your own house, the cops sure as hell aren't going to be able to. Further, if you couldn't sort out what happened, turned your kid over to the cops, and refused to post bail, you deserve every minute of the hell you walked head first into.

Best advice I could give would be to roll up all the finances you can to get the kid set up with a decent life in some remote corner of the country where no one will find out or particularly care that he didn't rape his sister years ago, help get the kid on his feet there, tell him not to make the same mistakes with his kids that you did, and then take a long walk off a short pier.

[Juice]

Made up story. Reddit.

[Rufus The Monocled]

"He is the pride and joy of my life."

Speechless.

And then proceeded to ruin him forever.

If I were this guy, I'd kill myself.

[Rat on a train]

This thread has been locked due to the overwhelming amount of comments breaking rule 5.

No poofters?

[Cyto]

Rule number 3.. . There is no rule number 3.

[a libertarian]

People write fake stories like this on Reddit all the time, in that subreddit in particular. If you're gullible enough to think this is real I can only imagine what other outrage bait you people have uncritically swallowed

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

People write fake stories like this on Reddit all the time, in that subreddit in particular.

r/politics being the most notorious.

[Sometimes Bad Is Bad]

Nope, not citizens, no asylum, send them home.

[Nardz]

Really gonna die on that softcore child porn hill, eh Reason?

[Echo Chamber]

Reason is just playing the odds. Which battle in the culture war has the right ever won?

[Trifrozion]

according to a Michael Malice thing I saw today, McCarthyism.

[mad.casual]

Battles don't win a war.

Just ask the Germans, who lost WWI *and* WWII and *still* run Europe.

Public schools in Chicago and other metropolitan areas are more segregated than they ever were. Universities are voluntarily following suit.

Women are getting more college degrees than men at a time when college degrees increasingly represent nothing but a means to transfer student loan debt to school administrators, moreover, they're increasingly incurring said debt to finance degrees outside STEM over the last several decades, if they even finish their degree programs at all. Abortion has killed and continues to kill more of it's own potential supporters than its alternative possibly could.

If you like the battles you're winning, you can keep the battles you're winning.

[Fats of Fury]

So which big time dem has a kiddie bombshell ready to burst? Clinton, Clinton or Biden?

[Echo Chamber]

Ghislaine Maxwell should pass on the tea

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Both Clintons. Bill, because he's a lech, and Hillary, just for the sheer power dynamic of the whole thing.

[Ra's al Gore]

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/09/14/and-with-these-phrases-the-woke-takeover-of-the-nyt-is-complete-n2576179

According to the American Psychiatric Association, in 2017, 36 percent of adults described themselves as feeling more anxious than they did the previous year. Also in 2017, more than 17 million American adults and three million Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 had at least one major depressive episode. A psychologist, Jennifer Panning, has even assigned a name to mental health problems attributed to this presidency: Trump Anxiety Disorder.

Some of us broke four years ago and haven’t recovered. Along with so many others, I had to ask myself what it meant to live in a system that allowed for a proudly racist and sexist representative of the capitalist class to seize presidential power. I mourned for the younger version of myself that had cast his first vote for the first Black presidential candidate on a major party ticket and had his cynicism challenged when that candidate actually won.

[…]

No, I never assumed that in my lifetime we would defeat the entrenched forces of white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism. But I had come around to believing that a slow, frustrating but ultimately sustainable victory and all the jubilation that would come along with it was something my friends’ children might someday experience.

[…]

When I can’t sleep, I think of the time I walked by a Planned Parenthood center in New York City and watched a person affix a cross to the side of the building and pray over it — a reminder of how reproductive rights remain under attack and are in danger of being whittled down to nothing. I think of how Breonna Taylor didn’t even see the police coming. I think of how I lost my great-aunt to Covid-19.

I feel fragile.

But as the election approaches, I know I can’t rely on a President Biden to cure my Trump-era depression. If he wins, it will simply represent a return to the normalcy favored by Democrats and the lie of American unity. A Biden presidency would not bring with it the same level of incompetence-meets-evil that we have suffered under the Trump administration. But without an agenda aimed at radically transforming (or in some cases eliminating altogether) the institutions that have caused so much harm, the best we can hope for is four years of bipartisan compromises that leave us facing the same challenges.

[Don't look at me!]

Do people really put this much effort into politics?
Why?

[BYODB]

Because capitalism advanced society to the point where they have nothing better to do than gnaw at the very thing that allows them to endlessly complain.

Think of a bitchy ouroboros, and you might have the right idea.

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

Everything is so terrible and unfair.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

If you feel that fragile and the worl is that hard and that scarry, then the author should kill themselves.

[Earth Skeptic]

Read Lukianoff and Haidt on how emotional pandering has crippled an entire generation.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

The coddling of the American mind was a great book

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

Welchie Boy has it bad.

If Trump wins again, there’s a pretty decent chance he could completely snap and carry out his Twitter mass murder fantasies.

[John]

Suderman disappeared for like 2 months after the 16 election. I would not be surprised if he was in some kind of in patient treatment. This people are not right.

[Fats of Fury]

Do sex workers in Oakland consider it a betrayal because they believe Kamala is one of their own?

[Cal Cetín]

They're just jealous.

[Cal Cetín]

Courtesans think hookers are crude and icky, while hookers think courtesans are too highfalutin' and stuck up.

[Ra's al Gore]

The CDC blatantly violates a Trump order regarding Critical Race Theory
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/the_cdc_blatantly_violates_a_trump_order_regarding_critical_race_theory_.html

At the beginning of September, the director of the Office of Management and Budget announced that, at President Trump's direction, all federal agencies would be banned from imposing Critical Race Theory (CRT) on their employees. This was the right thing to do. CRT is pure racism. While the KKK was obsessed with blacks and the Nazis were obsessed with Jews, CRT is obsessed with white people. Teaching it at federal agencies is a shocking violation of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite its unconstitutionality and the president's order, though, the CDC is planning to continue CRT training.

Christopher Rufo, who has become the point man for all of these stories about CRT training in the federal government, discovered what he aptly called a "BOMBSHELL." The CDC is going ahead with its plan — paid for with your money — to impose a thirteen-week-long CRT training program on its employees.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The CDC is going ahead with its plan — paid for with your money — to impose a thirteen-week-long CRT training program on its employees.

This is stupid, but the bottom line is that if Trump doesn't fire the people doing this, then the executive order was simply an empty gesture.

[Ra's al Gore]

HE'S FIRING CDC PEOPLE DURING A PANDEMIC BECAUSE HE WANTS US TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!

[Earth Skeptic]

Well, Science! already proved that the virus is racist.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Since part of the training (apparently) is for white employees to write letters of apology to other races, Trump should put the people responsible for ignoring him in front of a camera and make them apologize to the American taxpayer.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I'm honestly curious as to how they determine who's "white" enough to warrant signing. If I'm 25% beaner, for example, does that mean I get to skip it? If that percentage is only 1%, do I sign? If my great-great-grandfather was black, can I claim that being forced to sign such a document is systemic racism?

[Ra's al Gore]

New evidence makes Hunter Biden’s ‘business’ deals reek worse than ever
https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/new-evidence-makes-hunter-bidens-business-deals-reek-worse-than-ever/

Not long after its founding, BHR, the investment firm, became involved in a string of high-profile deals involving sensitive national security concerns. BHR received a pre-public offering stake in a state-controlled nuclear company now under federal indictment for espionage. It invested in strategic mineral resources in Africa. And it partnered with a Chinese military contractor to purchase a Michigan-based manufacturer of vibration dampening equipment, which is used in transport systems but is considered “dual use” by the federal government, i.e., it has military applications.

During all of these deals, Hunter Biden sat on the firm’s board of directors. His close friend and business partner Devon Archer was BHR’s vice chairman and a member of the investment committee.

[Commenter_XY]

Finally, a Judge has told tinpot dictator wannabes that it is unacceptable to lock up the population as a default = U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV

Too bad we did not have this case in April.

[Fat Mike's Drug Habit]

It's too bad Ginsburg is still breathing and this guy can't get a promotion.

[Juice]

U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV

Court sketch artists must love this guy.

[Nardz]

Funny!

[Dillinger]

is. funny. what if he's rotund?

[Ra's al Gore]

#Woke: Burger King Publishes Painting of the "King" Character Sharing a Gay Soul Kiss with Ronald MacDonald
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/390181.php#390181

[Mother's lament]

I can only see the back of his head, but Ronald doesn't seem to into it.

The way the Woke are going, for their 2021 campaign they'll have the BK bending over little Wendy with Dave watching.

[Ra's al Gore]

University Of Chicago’s English Department Says It Will Only Accept Applicants Who Will Work In Black Studies
https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/14/university-of-chicago-english-department-black-studies-applicants-racism-george-floyd/

“The English department at the University of Chicago believes that Black Lives Matter, and that the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks matter, as do thousands of others named and unnamed who have been subject to police violence,” the statement begins.

“For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.”

“English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why,” the statement continues.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

"Don't worry, guys, it's just a minority of crazies there, reality will straighten them out after they graduate!"

[Mother's lament]

These are the people who'll be ruling the world in 2035.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

A lot worse.

Just look at the rioters. These people are literally incapable of emotionally processing events that don't work out in their favor. When they get into positions of real, actual power, shit's going to come apart fast.

The shitlib Gen-Xers, as venal as they are, at least have some traces of competency from largely being left to their own devices as kids. Millennials and Zoomers, thus far, are showing how utterly fucking useless they are other than at throwing temper tantrums.

[Nardz]

College is designed to weed out the capable

[Jerryskids]

"English as a discipline has a long history of focusing on English" is what you meant to say. Imagine that! The nerve of those fuckers! Not once even pretending to give a shit about aborigines or Bantu culture or depletion of our marine environment!

[BYODB]

Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.

And see, here I thought language was meant to convey meaning and yet here we have an example of language being an actual impediment to understanding.

Could they describe how language determines whose lives matter, specifically?

[Cyto]

Actually, a competent administration would now have all the information they need to know that they should be cleaning house in the English department.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Competence has nothing to do with it.

I hate to have to keep hammering on this, but this shit has gone on for decades. It wasn't quite mainstream yet in academia when I went through grad school 20 years ago--I was actually commended by my left-wing Immigration professor for pointing out the methodological and historical flaws in "whiteness" studies during that time. But it increasingly became the de facto philosophical stance as the Gen-X professors, who are actually FAR more radical than their Boomer forebears (one of my fellow TAs was a no-shit CPUSA member, and everyone else was either Democrat or Green), settled in and started churning out class after class of IdPol indoctrination since the early 2000s. Their Millennial students are even more radicalized.

Academia at this point needs to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. Ironically, COVID is cornholing these places' budgets, and it will be interesting to see how many of the Class of 2020 actually end up going to college when things get back to "normal."

[Earth Skeptic]

So, more courses on Ebonics?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

‘S’mofo butter layin’ me to da’ BONE! Jackin’ me up… tight me!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

English as a diciplin has a long history of taking fast food orders

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Another good piece on the controversy surrounding the movie Cuties:

So we're tripling down on this, huh?

I found this reply to be hilarious in its projection:

It’s how interesting that the same folks who were gaga over Toddlers and Tiaras and Honey Boo Boo are now denouncing a serious look at the way girls and young women are treated

Bitch, the only thing most normies thought about those shows, or anything coming out of TLC the last 15 years, is that it they were train-wreck portrayals featuring fame whores.

[John]

No one I know or have met was "gaga" over Toddlers and Tiaras or Honey Boo Boo. Those were appalling too. But Cuties is worse. Those shows just filmed what was already happening. Cuties hired child actors and had them act like whores and porn stars for the movie. Oh and the filmmakers had 400 or whatever child actor "audition" for the role by twerking and rubbing themselves in front of the director.

But all of the usual assholes were on here last night defending it. Ironically, the one leftist asshole who wasn't was Palin's Buttplug. It was the one night where he wouldn't not felt alone being a pedo and he wasn't there. Amazing. Maybe cuties is too much for even him. Maybe he likes his porn more of the adolescent variety.

[BYODB]

It's hard to argue that a representation of a thing is worse than the thing itself, though. That said, on occasion, the representation of the thing is the thing itself.

[John]

Toddlers and Tierras filmed people who were already exploiting their children. They didn't exploit more, they just filmed what was happening anyway. I am not going to defend that. But it seems to me that hiring children to exploit them by acting in a movie is worse.

[BYODB]

I can't necessarily comment since I haven't actually seen it, but as I say sometimes a representation of a thing is the thing itself. This could well be such a case, but I'm certainly not going to watch it to find out.

If they didn't exactly follow the law regarding child actors, they're probably toast.

The less elegant way of saying all this is do we reasonably expect that a pedophile would see this as fapping material? If so, if probably deserves to be shit canned. But who's going to watch it to find out? Certainly not me.

[John]

Me either. Those who have describe it as pretty disgusting.

[BYODB]

Fair enough, while The Boyz manages to disgust me on the regular I keep watching. It has the bonus of not involving children though. That's usually a good line not to cross, and I'm not entirely certain who needs to watch a show to realize that sexualizing children is bad, either.

Also, for what it's worth, it seems absurd at face value to sexualize children to show that sexualizing children is wrong. If that's the only thing you can think of to teach that lesson, you are creatively bankrupt and a hack to boot.

[John]

It looks like a really bad movie anyway. These sorts of movies always are. If you have a story to tell and can make a good movie, you don't need to put in 10 year olds getting themselves off. The movie was made for the purpose of showing that and using the controversy to gain attention to an otherwise bad movie that would be ignored if not for the controversy.

I see zero reason to ever watch it. The claim that you can't condemn it without seeing it for yourself is absurd. Everyone agrees what is in it. You don't need to watch it to understand how awful it is.

[BYODB]

You can condemn a thing you haven't seen, but it's dangerous to do and risks being worse than the thing condemned.

It's not like we're burning books in the town square here, it's true, but the danger is always there.

[John]

It just means you need to be sure that the movie is what you are saying it is. The danger is that you are wrong and it doesn't show what you think it does. And that just means you need to be careful to ensure you are not mistaken. If I am, I would be happy to hear why. But, I have yet to hear anyone claim that the movie doesn't show these things.

[BYODB]

I suppose I'm just too reliant on my own experience to make a call on a moral or ethical question, but also in my own experience that's the safest way to be right.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

But who’s going to watch it to find out?

Sounds like a good way to get on an FBI list.

[BYODB]

Well, the FBI is on the short list of people who can legally watch child porn so that seems to check out.

[John]

All of these people like Sulumn last night saying it isn't child porn. Okay fine, load it onto your hard drive and leave it there forever. Or better yet, go make a similar film yourself and start distributing it on the internet. It is not child porn, so what do you have to worry about?

I wouldn't download that movie at gun point. Just because Hollywood can get away with child porn doesn't mean the rest of us can.

[R Mac]

Luckily (for sake of discussion only) I saw a few clips on the news. The twerking is nowhere near the worst of it. One scene showed the girls on stage laying on their back, legs spread with feet in the air, and their arm moving up and down their crotch. It didn’t look they were actually touching with their hands, but definitely appeared that their fore arm was rubbing it.

[Ron]

Never saw the show did Toddlers and Tierras show kids imitating sexual acts?

[John]

I don't believe so. It was kids glammed up an in beauty pageants.

[damikesc]

I'd also argue a sizable contingent of the audience were elites who loved mocking the rubes.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Here's the thing--it's not like "Cuties" is the first time that the entertainment industry has exploited kids like this. It goes back a looooooong time and has left a lot of ruined lives in its wake. It's why, while I think people like Alyssa Milano, Shia LaBeouf, and Natalie Portman, and Demi Lovato have stupid politics, I also understand that they had to grow up in an industry that sees child abuse, both physical and sexual, as a prerogative.

It's a pedophile version of the casting couch, and if you read the celebrity gossip blogs, some of these kids, unfortunately, are fine with going along with it because they see it as the cost of building their career. There's rumors that the reason Ariana Grande, for instance, had her career pushed to the moon was because she was okay with servicing Dan Schneider's fetishes in order to fulfill her ambition. Ditto with Judy Garland, who it's rumored ended up getting the part of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz over Shirley Temple because the latter laughed when Arthur Freed whipped out his dick in front of her.

[John]

These people have the power to make children and their parents rich beyond any reasonable measure. It would be shocking that pedophiles were not attracted to such positions.

Even if a person wasn't, the power that comes with making casting decisions at that level is so enormous it corrupts a lot of people. Someone starts out and has hundreds of beautiful adult actors who will do anything to get a part. Well that is fun for a while but even banging Hollywood starlets by the dozen gets old at some point. So, they end up looking for some kind of bigger thrill. For some it is raping them. That was what happened to Weinstein. Why was Weinstein raping women when there were hundreds who would do anything he wanted in return for the parts he could give them? Because after a while sex isn't a big enough thrill and raping them became his thrill. And for some it is having younger and younger actors until they are into kids. I have no doubt a good number of people in Hollywood have fallen down that little trap door to hell,

[BYODB]

I saw the NetFlix cover for that and instantly thought 'welp, never watching that'.

Amusingly, my second thought was 'It must be French'.

The French and cinema have a long, and mostly confusing, relationship and they should mostly be kept away from cameras. If you watch something with a French director, you're taking your sanity for granted even if you might miss the occasional gem like The Fifth Element until it's been thoroughly reviewed.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The French have been utter degenerates going back to the Bourbons. It's more of a surprise when they don't act like morally depraved goons.

[mad.casual]

Bitch, the only thing most normies thought about those shows, or anything coming out of TLC the last 15 years, is that it they were train-wreck portrayals featuring fame whores.

You aren't being explicit enough about the projection/sociopathy. I haven't watched a minute of either show and while I absolutely agree that they are likely exploitative trainwrecks, beauty pageants aren't or don't need to be explicitly sexual. To the point that many beauty pageants, even adult pageants, will DQ contestants for participating in explicitly sexual content. The idea that everything a parent has a little girl do in a dress sexual is fucking disgusting.

[Longtobefree]

Look; these children are old enough to decide without parental input or permission to change their sex. Why aren't they old enough to use the sex they have?
Serious question. Think about it.

[John]

You don't have to think long. Transgenderism was always the gateway to this for the reason you mention.

[Nardz]

Because the tranny movement is also sick and abusive

[MatthewSlyfield]

Congress is out of touch[full stop]

FTFY.

[Don't look at me!]

OT: Biggest fail of the year: Fake crowd noise on televised football games.

[Echo Chamber]

Just as lame as laugh tracks on sitcoms. Sheeple need audio cues

[Earth Skeptic]

Like on poorly-dubbed porn?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The whole thing is just sad--I've seen highlights from all the major leagues, and the games sound like WWE matches where it comes off like the whole arena is cheering when everyone is actually sitting on their hands or looking at their phones.

Even leaving aside the woke pandering in the Big 3 (the NHL thus far hasn't capitulated to this, probably because there's a bunch of East and Central Europeans on the teams who don't give a shit about American lefty IdPol), the whole exercise comes off like a glorified scrimmage.

[KDN]

The NHL has done its share. There was a big, "WE SKATE FOR BLACK LIVES!" banner in the bubble (haven't been watching recently, I really don't care about sports anymore).

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The Russian players probably rolled their eyes at that nonsense.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

As someone who grew up going to the city rinks In Chicago I can assure them that black people dont/can't skate

[Muzzled Woodchipper]

It doesn’t bother me much in baseball.

I’m just watching baseball.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Why would anyone watch a single game of any sport this year? Or maybe even beyond.

I watch 90 Day Fiance instead. Fuck sports. Bunch of self-entitled, narcissistic, drama-queen sissies. Ooo a man got shot I can't play today!

Pete Rose, Bobby Clarke, Gordie Howe and Laimbeer would eat this babies up and spit them out.

Guy Lafleur would skate around sans protection in an era where the Bruins and Flyers roamed the ice like Ogglethorpe.

You can't tackle a QB now, pitch high and in, or give a hard foul in the lane without some drama.

Fricken pussies.

[John]

Forget Lafleur, didn't goalies not wear masks until the 1960s? Being a hockey goalie without a mask has to be the most bad ass crazy thing in team sports history.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Larry Bird's (GOAT) trash talking would get him ejected from every game nowadays.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

I listened for 5 minutes on the radio on my way home last night. I heard the crowd noise and turned it off. No noise is one of the few things that could have redeemed playing in an empty stadium. The sound of pads crunching is one of the things that makes me nostalgic about playing football.

[John]

https://www.theblaze.com/news/la-sheriff-calls-out-lebron-james-asks-him-to-match-reward-for-finding-gunman-who-ambushed-deputies

LA Sheriff asks LeBron James to match the $100,000 reward for the shooter in the ambush of the two deputies. If James and his handlers at Nike and Bejing were actually interested in improving things and accomplishing anything, James would do this. It would show that police reform doesn't mean endorsing or tolerating the murder of law enforcement officers. He has a chance to greatly enhance his credibility on such issues and actually bring people together a bit.

I would be shocked if he takes him up on the offer. Assuming he doesn't, what does that say about James and BLM in general? It says that they don't want to bring people together or accomplish anything and do think police reforms means endorsing the murder of law enforcement. If BLM doesn't think murdering police is a good thing, why were there demonstrators at the hospital in their name celebrating the shooting? Why isn't BLM offering a reward?

[Rufus The Monocled]

James isn't going to do that unless his branding handlers tell him to.

[John]

If they were smart, they would tell him to do it. But they won't. And think about what that says about them.

[Rufus The Monocled]

And ultimately him.

He's a coward. An empty suit. No principles. No intelligence.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Principles don't sell overpriced sneakers made my Uighur slaves.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

BY Uighur slaves.

[Longtobefree]

Glad you finally sold them - - - - - - - -

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

This is the same guy who organized a walkout and then changed his mind when he found out he and his overpaid crowd of subliterate AAU plushies wasn't going to get paid for the rest of the playoffs.

[Ra's al Gore]

Did we all see the comparison between LBJ being carted off the court because of a cramp vs. the cop in LA who called for backup and treated her partner's gunshot wound, while having been shot herself?

[Earth Skeptic]

I wonder what his Chinese overlords think. They certainly support police powers, right?

[Fats of Fury]

When they arrest the shooter LeBron, Kamala, and Biden's staffers will come together an bail he, she, it out.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Anyone see the footage of the shooting? Child or midget?

[Ken Shultz]

"Trump is fearmongering about Iran again."

If you don't believe Iran is a security threat to the United States, do you believe they're a security threat to the people of Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Yemen--not to mention the people of Iran? Iran is a state sponsor of terror with a terrorist army in Hezbollah, and they would rather suffer crippling sanctions than give up on their nuclear WMD program. Meanwhile, their economy has been even further devastated by the coronavirus . . .

Our policy towards Iran is a legitimate question for debate in the 2020 presidential election, and if Biden plans to return to Obama's era of appeasement (and that's putting it nicely), then Trump is wise to point out that Iran remains a serious threat. That isn't fearmongering. That's campaigning.

"Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!"

----President Trump

Is Joe Biden's position any different.

If Joe Biden wouldn't retaliate against Iran for a major attack on the United States and Americans, then we should know that before the upcoming election. Thank you for bringing this important question to our attention.

[Ra's al Gore]

The world needs a strong China and Iran to balance the evil that is the slave owning United States.

[John]

The other thing is that by standing up to Iran, Trump has gotten the rest of the middle east to make peace with Israel. Israel and the Arab states have a common enemy in Iran. When Obama embraced Iran as virtually a US ally, this took away any role it could play in making peace between the Arabs and Israel. Trump, by leaving the JCPOA and treating Iran like the enemy it is, has now built an anti Iranian coalition that includes both Israel and the Arab states.

In 8 years in office, Obama destroyed two nations, Syria and Libya, walk away from the Green Revolution and ended the best chance for freedom the Iranian people had had in 40 years, allowed Iran and Saudi Arabia to fight a bitter proxy war in Yeman, and sent the Mullah a few hundred billion dollars in cold cash allowing them to prop up their economy for years and avoid any accountability to their people for their incompetence. But hey, he made up for it by allowing Iran to murder US soldiers in Iraq. So he has that going for him.

The contrast between that and Trump's record in the middle east could not be more striking. That contrast is driving the media and the foreign policy establishment out of their minds.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Exactly. Arab countries fear Iran.

But here at Reason, it's fear mongering. Too funny.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Watch for Iraq to remain ground zero as the proxy for conflict between Iran and the GCC.

[Ken Shultz]

"The other thing is that by standing up to Iran, Trump has gotten the rest of the middle east to make peace with Israel."

This is absolutely true.

We also haven't had a full discussion about the security implications of Biden's flip flopping on fracking. And the implications aren't just about devastating Iran's economy.

One of the reasons oil producing countries are more willing to be allies with our allies is because their oil isn't as important to us as it used to be. They don't have the leverage they once did over our economy, and the reason is fracking. If voting for Joe Biden means putting that in danger, the voters should know that now.

I know what Biden has said about how he won't ban fracking. I also know that Biden's Green New Deal proposal would mandate zero emissions from electricity production by 2035, and you don't get from where we are now to zero emissions by 2035 without banning fracking at some point.

Half the voters out there may be too young to remember what it was like when our economy was held hostage by oil producing nations. The CIA overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 because of their oil, and we felt compelled to do an awful lot of other awful things elsewhere in the world when our economy was subject to other people's oil, too. Opposing both fracking and American imperialism is like wanting to go swimming without getting wet.

[Ken Shultz]

P.S. Saudi Arabia isn't ready to normalize relations with Israel yet, but Bahrain wouldn't have normalized relations with Israel without Saudi Arabia's permission.

They're teetering towards an alliance with the U.S. and Israel against Iran--and that means peace.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Iran is a security threat to the people of Iran. They need to understand that in no uncertain terms. That is the only way that real change will ever occur.

[Ken Shultz]

All signs are that the military is taking over the government completely.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2020-08-27/revolutionary-guards-are-poised-take-over-iran

The democracy they allowed in the past was a means to let the Iranian people let off steam and a way to set up a scapegoat. The real powers in that state seem to have concluded that the solution is no longer to let the Iranian people let off steam--because the Iranian people themselves are becoming a legitimate threat to the regime.

One of the advantages of power sharing is that the executive can blame the legislature for their problems. When you're totally in control of everything, you're to blame for everything bad that happens. They'll try to blame the U.S. and its allies for their problems, but if the Muslim states surrounding Iran are doing just fine as allies of the United States, then making an enemy of the United States doesn't make much sense.

And the U.S. wan't to blame for shooting that Iranian airliner down. They did that to themselves. And the U.S. wasn't to blame for civil war in Syria. Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard helped reduce that place to rubble. And the U.S. wasn't to blame for the coronavirus. I'd love to think the Iranian people will someday go all Belarus on their people, eventually.

Their government is evil, and the Iranian people don't deserve to be subject to that. They're an amazing country with an amazing history and an amazing culture. Their contributions to STEM fields are amazing--all over the world and in the U.S., too. Persians coming to the U.S. from Iran in the wake of the Iranian Revolution may be the most successful group of immigrants in American history. There is no good reason why the Iranian people should be our enemies. The bad reason they are is because of their awful government.

[Earth Skeptic]

Come on. Obama was BFFs with the mullahs. That's all ENB needs to know.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Obama wanted to be BFFs with the mullahs. The mullahs all had a good laugh over that.

[Ken Shultz]

I'd have been BFFs with Obama for half the cash he sent the Mullahs on that palate.

[The White Knight]

Iran may pose a security threat to the United States, but ask yourself what purpose did Trump’s tweet serve?

Was he simply concerned about a threat his intelligence community told him about and wanted to warn the American people to be vigilant? If so, where were any practical instructions to the American people on the nature of the threat and what to watch out for?

Or was he whipping up fear or trying to look tough, because of the election coming up?

[Ken Shultz]

Oh, I suspect it was campaign bluster--on a legitimate issue.

Where does Biden stand on Iran?

Will Biden promise to retaliate against Iran if we're attacked?

If he refuses to make such a promise in kind, then that's telling.

If he effectively endorses Trump's tweet with a similar promise, that's telling, too.

Sorry being the nominee for president is such a pain in the ass, but, you know, Trump is running for office, too, and it isn't racist or homophobic to make your opponent take a stance on issues they'd rather ignore.

[Muzzled Woodchipper]

“ Where does Biden stand on Iran?

Will Biden promise to retaliate against Iran if we’re attacked?”

Only the teleprompter knows.

[The White Knight]

Biden (or his people) wrote an editorial a couple of days ago:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/opinions/smarter-way-to-be-tough-on-iran-joe-biden/index.html

Sounds like his plan would be to try to restore previous sanctions, work with allies and the U.N.

Again, because I know I’ll be misquoted, I’m not a Biden supporter and will not be voting for him.

[BYODB]

Maybe the clue is in who the tweet was directly aimed at, if you're curious about audience. Also, last I checked media can be aimed at multiple audiences for multiple purposes.

I do enjoy a good false dichotomy in the morning, though.

[Mother's lament]

"Court OKs Deportation of Hundreds of Thousands of Immigrants"

Good.
Millions managed to immigrate without cheating and trying to game the system. No country needs weasels whose first act is to break it's comparatively easy immigration laws.
It's not fair to the millions of people who put in the effort of becoming citizens fair and square.

[Earth Skeptic]

In the equality of outcome fetish mind, of course it is fair. To them, its NOT fair that some people get rewarded for their efforts but others, who did not make any effort, get nothing.

[Jerryskids]

I don't know how I missed it since I had a special marker in my bookmarks to keep track of it, but apparently Gen. Pat White has been reassigned to Fort Hood and is no longer the head of US forces in Iraq. White has been openly critical of the hawks in Trump's cabinet and is no fan of the endless wars paradigm or of the MIC. So was his replacement just a routine cycling of the command, a response to the ongoing mess at Fort Hood regarding the murder of Vanessa Guillen, or is there something more going on here in replacing the dovish White with somebody more belligerent and more hawkish, somebody more to Mike Pompeo's liking? Is Trump planning some sort of October surprise that definitely doesn't include bringing our troops home?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

There's no way we're really going to know unless it's something the press thinks can be used to embarrass Trump. If it's just typical Pentagon buffoonery, or if he's being assigned to actually clean up the shitshow at Fort Hood, they won't care.

[John]

It almost certainly is routine or sending someone they like to Fort Hood. If it were some kind of purging of a dissenter, White would not be getting a combat command like Fort Hood. He would be shuffled off to the Pentegon or a training command.

And the Guillen case is one of the worst cases of media lying in a while. Guillen was murdered by a sergeant she worked with because she had figured out he was cheating on his wife. The sergeant and his girlfriend murdered her because they thought she was going to tell his wife about their affair. Guillen had told her parents she was being sexually harassed. But that harassment, whatever it was, had nothing to do with her murder. The media is making it sound like Guillen was murdered because she complained or was going to complain about being harassed or that the murder had anything to do with the alleged harassment. It didn't. Her murder, while a tragedy, was the result of her having the bad luck to stumble upon some psychopath's marital affair.

[Echo Chamber]

Other October surprises:
The dork from NorK launches a missile over Hawaii instead of Japan.
Putin annexes Belarus.
Pooh bear demands honey from Taiwan.
An Iranian-backed group ignites ammonium nitrate near Israel.
Oops. Scratch that last one. Need to update the list. Other ideas?

[Unicorn Abattoir]

He was head in Iraq for 3 years. May just be a normal rotation.

[Earth Skeptic]

"The appointment of former Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan "was invalid under the agency's applicable order of succession, and so he lacked the authority to amend the order of succession to ensure Wolf's installation as Acting Secretary," wrote Judge Paula Xinis in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland's opinion, issued Friday (a day after President Donald Trump formally nominated Wolf—who has been acting DHS secretary since November—as the agency's official head)."

And this is another example of what I detest about the US legal system. It fetishizes process over substance, and ultimately will deny fact and logic if some arcane rule was broken.

[John]

Yes it does. It is a problem here but a tragedy when it is applied to the criminal justice system. As long as you are accorded the proper process, the fact that you are convicted of a crime you did not commit means nothing to our justice system. An innocent man given the proper due process is a legally convicted man. And that is horrible.

[Earth Skeptic]

Yes, and to me also detestable that guilty people go free "on technicalities".

[The White Knight]

I think it is great whenever a President tried to usurp powers and side step the law, and gets shut down by the courts.

[Earth Skeptic]

'It's a limited reprieve for now, but positive news nonetheless.

Another federal court ruling regarding immigration isn't so heartening. This one from Monday says the Trump administration can force out hundreds of thousands of immigrants who reside legally in the U.S. under what's referred to as "temporary protected status."'

ENB, did you sub this conclusion out to Shika?

[The White Knight]

She literally wrote about it in the blog post we are all commenting on.

[Commenter_XY]

Despite the forlorn hopes of Pravda reject Brown, Secretary Wolf will keep doing his job, promulgate regulations that piss off uber-libs, and boot illegal aliens the fuck out of the country. This case gets won on appeal.

[The White Knight]

Pretty awful that a court held a President to following the law.

[Juice]

I disagree with Chuck Schumer. The time was 60 years ago at least.

[Earth Skeptic]

"It turns out, a close look at the attitudes of the average Jills and Joes who use the tech products and platforms every day reveals that, frankly, they really don't care that much."

Thank the gods for apathy.

Unfortunately, apathetics are under-represented in Congress.

[Jerryskids]

We definitely need more apathetic people in Congress. Somebody should do something about that.

[The White Knight]

Well, look at what they are supposed to get all worked up about: that a site where people share silly videos might collect information on what videos they are watching and show them more of the same kind. Frankly, big deal.

[Mother's lament]

What they actually say; "Lots of uniformed opinion out there engaging in censorship. Not a good sign for America. I focus on aspects of the film many are willfully ignoring. @CathyYoung63 @nickgillespie @mattzollerseitz
Cuties is Not What You Think"

What the public hears; "We prominent leftists, liberals, Democrats and their media pals are totes cool with child porn. Only voting Trump can stop us".

It's not enough that they gamed their own nominations process to place a senile pedophile and an easy shrew as their option to Trump. They now feel that just before the election they need to stand behind what many regard as softcore kiddie porn.

[John]

Notice they don't bother to explain why it isn't what you think it is. It is indisputable that the movie shows 10 year old girls watching porn, twerking with each other, and rubbing their crotches through their clothes like they are masturbating. I am at a loss to figure out how that is not what I think it is. That is child exploitation and porn using 10 year old girls. Do these assholes expect us to not believe our eyes or do they really think that it is okay to film 10 year old girls doing that stuff?

[Mother's lament]

They do, because they're moral abyss's.

[John]

They really are. I saw last night where Nancy Pelosi's daughter is some kind of lawyer and has condemned the movie as child porn. I am sure she is a real QAnon uptight conservative, you know?

I mention her because she presumably has money and a career such that she can afford to go against the liberal talking points once in a while. I am not saying she wouldn't condemn this anyway. I am just saying she can afford to do so.

Journalists really can't. Someone like the reason staff or Cathy Young have absolutely nothing in the world except their membership in the media and prog club. That is it. If they ever lose that, they have nothing. They wouldn't have a career or likely any friends or connections. So, they will do or say anything required of them. Moral abyss is correct.

[Commenter_XY]

John, they really do think it is Ok to film 10-year girls doing that stuff. They are amoral, social degenerates.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

A few years back there was a 10-year old drag queen stripping in bars (and on the Ellen show). They stuck up for that, too.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Wait, what? I don't remember seeing anything like that.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Happened last year. Google seems to have memory-holed it, but I was able to find this link:

Mom whose 11-year-old dances in drag at gay night clubs cleared by Child Protective Services

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Oh, I'm aware of horrorcow Desmond Is Amazing--he's something of a legend in the internet underground for being used as pedo-bait by his deranged mother for progressive internet asspats. I just wasn't aware of Reason or its correspondents defending that atrocity.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Oh, I wasn't accusing Reason of defending it. I was saying that this is part of mainstreaming child pron.

[Fat Mike's Drug Habit]

They're still on the "it's not technically illegal so why is everyone upset?" train right now.

The idea that you can have a set of morals totally independent from government edicts is totally foreign to them.

[John]

The idea that you can have a set of morals totally independent from government edicts is totally foreign to them.

That is mighty Libertarian of them isn't it?

[Roberta]

I followed the article linked from the Twitter linked above, and then the comments to the article, which included a clip of the dance scene. Yeah, it's uncomfortable (but also funny, if you have a crude sense of humor) to watch, and apparently it's supposed to be.

Now I don't know. Could it have been done in a way that'd've made the audience just as uncomfortable without subjecting child actors to that? I mean, it bothers me even to have children curse on stage or screen; hell, it bothers me they even keep kids up past their bedtime to perform on stage. But maybe that's just my own sentimentality, and it doesn't bother the children themselves so much. After all, I've known children who could stay up later than almost all the adults. Maybe it's the same thing with having them perform sexual gestures, and there turns out to be no objective damage.

[Roberta]

However, that Twit invoked Cathy Young, and in her Twitter feed I don't know how to find what she's written on this. She's someone I might find persuasive in a morally difficult case like this. If nothing else, she could help clarify the issues and give some relevant facts.

The thing that makes the scene funny is the same as when a play or movie makes a sweet-looking child unexpectedly curse or hurl adult insults. Not a load of laughs, but a momentary "hah", funny for like half a second. Same when they make a dog unexpectedly talk.

[The White Knight]

People who live in glass houses...

"I’ve said that it Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

The Trump campaign might want to take pause on pursuing this direction.

[John]

So Trump once made a tastless comment about his then adult daughter once and that means ten year old kids twerking and grabbing their crotches in a movie is okay or at the very least no one can say anything about it.

I know you don't understand how fucking stupid your post is, but I speak for anyone with an IQ above 70 when I say it is unbelievably fucking stupid. WTF is wrong with you? What is your deal? What has to happen to a person that they see where a movie is being streamed on Netflix that shows ten year old girls rubbing themselves and they think "but Trump once said something". I am very curious to see how someone comes to be that irrational and mentally and morally broken. Someone needs to write a dissertation on this, because it is both horrifying and fascinating at the same time.

[Roberta]

It's not a glass house when Ivanka's not a child.

[The White Knight]

Amazing. You guys are so loyal to Trump, you are defending what he said.

[Ra's al Gore]

Chicago Police Superintendent: Attacks On Officers Are Up ‘Five Times’ Over Previous Years
https://www.dailywire.com/news/chicago-police-superintendent-attacks-on-officers-are-up-five-times-over-previous-years

[Mother's lament]

Trump is fearmongering about Iran again.

Trump just got three major peace deals achieved. Trump has started zero wars, not even one. He just was nominated twice for the peace prize. He's advocated removing American troops from places they've occupied for 75 years. You have never once mentioned this ENB.

You know who the real fearmonger is? You're the fucking fearmonger.

[Earth Skeptic]

She also enjoys wallowing in fear. Its a Gen Z thing.

[John]

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2020/09/15/insanity-wrap-50-crazy-antifa-goes-full-t-j-hooker-on-cop-car-n932540

Anyone else see the video of the cop car running over the Antifa tard? It would take a heart of stone not to find that funny.

[Mother's lament]

I'd like to watch that to the tune of Yakety Sax.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Dude didn't even run over him--the idiot climbed on top of the car and the cop took off.

If you're dumb enough to climb on top of a cop car while the cop is still inside, you deserve to get hurt.

On a related note, the Lancaster judicial system in Pennsylvania isn't fucking around--they set bail for anyone arrested for rioting at $1 million. That's a hell of a lot different than Antifa DA Mike Schmidt's catch-and-release program for the shitheads in Portland.

[John]

It is so obvious that the "riots" in Lancaster were the result of people imported there by BLM and Antifa just like they were in Kanosha. People are not going to put up with this shit. The doom sayers on the right who think Antifa and BLM are going to burn down America are paranoids. Antifa and BLM have no organic support among the larger population and cannot operate outside any area that doesn't have a Soros funded and elected mayor and DA who tells the police to stand down and allows them to run wild. Anywhere else, they quickly end up dead or in jail. I have no doubt they are stupid enough to try and take riots outside of their safe zones. They did it in Kenosha and again in Lancaster. They kind of surprised the authorities in Kenosha and were able to do some damage. In Lancaster, the authorities acted pretty quickly and they ended up in jail. I imagine things will play out exactly the same way going forward. Could not happen to a more deserving bunch.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

It is so obvious that the “riots” in Lancaster were the result of people imported there by BLM and Antifa just like they were in Kanosha.

The thing is that these fuckers have no OPSEC at all. They wear the same outfits every time--if you watch the videos, it's always a bunch of black-hoodied assholes that are trying to escalate, while the ringleaders are usually fat black women with bullhorns working to get the crowd increasingly riled up.

That's fine when you have a commie DA who's okay with you attempting an insurrection on his behalf, but it doesn't work out as well in a red-leaning county whose residents despise the bottom-feeding scum who came up from Philadelphia, even if the city itself leans blue.

If Schmidt is stupid enough to campaign outside of Portland in the areas that have been burned when he's up for re-election, he better bring a good security team with him.

[John]

They have zero OPSEC. Not only does that make it easy to catch them, it makes it easy to convict them of even mens rea crimes once you do. Normally, convictions in a riot are really hard to get because everyone potentially has a self defense claim or a plausible case of mistaken identity. It was a riot, the cop saw someone else do it and thought it was me, is reasonable doubt in a lot of cases. It is not reasonable doubt, however, when the retard defendant films himself committing the assault or vandalism and posts in on his social media page and spent the previous 24 hours announcing to the world on Twitter how he was going to "fuck up some fascists". And that is literally what most of these retards do.

[Roberta]

Lancaster?! I'm imagining Amish riots.

[Nardz]

These people are actually zombies

[Fist of Etiquette]

Pennsylvania "Gov. Tom Wolf's pandemic restrictions that required people to stay at home, placed size limits on gatherings and ordered 'non-life-sustaining' businesses to shut down are unconstitutional..."

SUCK IT

[Ra's al Gore]

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/15/0427258/gene-editing-to-produce-super-dad-livestock#comments

The pigs, goats, cattle and mice make sperm carrying the genetic material of donor animals. The researchers used a hi-tech gene editing tool to knock out a male fertility gene in animal embryos. The animals were born sterile, but began producing sperm after an injection of sperm-producing cells from donor animals. The technique would enable surrogate males to sire offspring carrying the genetic material of valuable elite animals such as prize bulls, said a US-UK team. This would be a step towards genetically enhancing livestock to improve food production, they added.

[Don't look at me!]

OMG! More GMOs!

[mad.casual]

That just seems like slavery artificial insemination with a lot of extra steps*.

*Saying this despite the lack of clarity as to whether it gets me laid or not.

[Fat Mike's Drug Habit]

I'll bet there's a lot less jerking bulls off with this method, which seems like a feature to me but I'm not one to kink shame.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

"It's important to think what you do makes a difference, that's why I manually master ate caged animals for artificial incemination"

[Troglodyte Rex]

What the what?

<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/09/15/kamala-harris-accidentally-touts-plan-under-harris-administration/?fbclid=IwAR07xPtmJWXLVePp8GFjbXuPIrlpCjvKLyF4hNkiYrHu2s0ZLwRLNf_fmjg"Harris Administration?

[Troglodyte Rex]

motherfucking squirrels

[Troglodyte Rex]

What the what?

Harris Administration?

[Rat on a train]

Honesty is a virtue.

[Earth Skeptic]

Also hard to keep track of "say outloud" and "think in brain".

[Longtobefree]

Who do you think is actually the democratic candidate for President?
For The dems to win the White House, they will have to get the Senate and keep the house.
IF they do, they can designate the DNC as the committee to determine if any future President is competent to carry out the duties of the office.
Read section four.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

[Jerryskids]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that it's OK for Florida to make people convicted of felonies who have served their sentences pay off all court debt before they regain the right to vote.

Well, given the fact that paying their court debts is part of their sentence, it's hard to see where people who haven't completed their sentence should be counted among the people who have completed their sentence. But then again, I'm one of that vanishing minority who still thinks that words actually mean things.

[John]

And Florida isn't obligated to let them vote at all. Felons have no federal constitutional right to vote. So, Florida can put whatever reasonable and otherwise legal conditions they want on their granting felons the right to vote. There is nothing unreasonable about expecting them to have paid all of their fines as well as finished their jail terms.

[Ra's al Gore]

Which is why we can't do the Presidency by popular vote. What is a felony and which felonies cost you your right to vote? That can differ state by state now since we have 50 state elections. We do one popular vote, and states cannot have their individual criminal codes.

[John]

That is a good point. It is one of the many reasons we could never have a popular vote for President. Indeed, I am not sure any or many countries do. Parliamentary democracies like the UK and Canada do not have a popular vote for their chief executive. The PM is elected by the Parliament.

[Ra's al Gore]

The whole point of the EC was to be a temporary Congress to elect a President, to compromise between a Parliamentary system, where Congress would have too much power, and a direct election, where the big states would have too much power.

[Dillinger]

>>>Another federal court ruling regarding immigration isn't so heartening.

you cancel my nominee, I send six-figures home. bwaahahahahaha

[The White Knight]

Thanks for being honest that you don’t give a shit about people.

[Dillinger]

ya man totes first-person there.

[The White Knight]

Don’t see anyone else’s name attached to your comment.

[Echo Chamber]

Man arrested twice in 12 hours for starting fires. Feature or bug of bail reform?

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/09/man-arrested-twice-in-12-hour-span-for-starting-fires-near-i-205.html

[ErictheRed]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

[Ra's al Gore]

https://twitter.com/pinknews/status/1152144812906340353?s=21

Just a reminder that Republican lawmakers want to make child drag shows illegal

[John]

It is a good thing gay rights hasn't become synonymous with support for the normalizing of pedophilia or anything.

[Ken Shultz]

"As Grisham neared home, Dodgers players on the edge of the third-base dugout berated him, and in that moment, it seems, the Padres became so much more than charming, young, innocuous underdogs.

They became threats.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29888817/dodgers-vs-padres-new-high-stakes-rivalry-mlb-needed

I'm not saying the Padres will win the division, but we are a game and a half behind the Dodgers, there are two more games against them (today and tomorrow), and we clearly cleaned their clock yesterday.

The Padres are sort of like the Trump campaign. The media thinks Biden will ultimately cruise to an easy victory--despite Trump winning victory after victory, issue by issue, game after game. The media seems reluctant to even acknowledge that it's possible for the Dodgers to lose [Padres to win] the division--and that is irksome. I suspect it's because they're all living in their bubble in New York and Los Angeles.

I'm not saying Trump will win, but anybody who thinks it isn't possible is delusional. Sometimes people want something to be true so bad, it twists their perceptions. We call it TDS in politics. Maybe we should start calling it "Dodgers Derangement Syndrome" en beisbol.

[juffa_ema]

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[Dillinger]

not enough you let the child-pron guy post here now you're a Netflix promoter too?

[Cal Cetín]

So it seems the Trump administration, and the 9th Circuit (!) have decided to enforce the "temporary" in "temporary protected status."

Which is unfair, since temporary is supposed to mean until the heat death of the universe.

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