Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

...and so begins a new day.
The usual suspects will arrive shortly.

[Frank Drackman]

The “Usual Gang of Idiots” is more accurate

[LexAquilia]

Malika is surely gonna awaken soon and start copying and pasting his bluesky feed here.

[Michael P]

All the grey boxes below make it look like the manic shitposter continues to live down to expectations.

[Malika la Maize]

The American Renaissance comrades confer!

[AmosArch]

Just a few examples of how Blue state authorities and juries across the country are moving to de facto legalize harassment and violence against politicians and members of the opposing party in their territory. Of course any whiff of similar or even lesser moves by members of heretofore mentioned opposing political groups in the other direction is still met with the retribution of a thousand supernova suns. One of the rare instances of prog law enforcement actually functioning if for nefarious purposes.

Man shining laser pointer at Trump's helicopter found not guilty: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/17/jacob-winker-found-not-guilty-pointing-laser-trump-helicopter/88232732007/

Magistrate judge throws out charges for protestors storming church
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/magistrate-judge-rejects-charges-don-lemon-anti-ice-protest-minnesota-church/

Protestor acquitted of striking officers despite witnesses: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trumps-chief-cbp-agent-testifies-184208615.html

Man who threw sandwich at federal agent in Washington is found not guilty of assault charge
https://www.police1.com/legal/man-who-threw-sandwich-at-federal-agent-in-washington-is-found-not-guilty-of-assault-charge

Chicago PD standdowned from assistant surrounded ICE agents.
https://fop.net/2025/10/national-fop-and-illinois-state-fop-condemn-reports-that-chicago-police-officers-were-barred-from-assisting-ice-agents/

[not guilty]

And what inference do you claim that we should draw from these examples, AmosArch?

Or is everyone out of step but you?

[Bwaaah]

I too am out of step. With harassment of people. There may be a few others.

Bad behavior wrapped up in social justice stories. Your mom let's you get away with that crap.

[Malika la Maize]

Harassment of people by federal prosecutors, law enforcement, etc., that the Recently Disaffected Liberal is however down with!

[Bwaaah]

Nope. I'm not down with anybody harassing anybody.

Your turn.

[Magister]

Bwaaah jumps in to agree with right-wing comments and to argue with or criticize non-right-wing comments. Revealed preference: not a liberal, disaffected or otherwise.

[Bwaaah]

You and Malicia backhandedly affirm that harassment, for certain reasons, is a liberal value. But overtly, all you do is call me names.

"You can't call yourself a liberal and agree with the right about anything. Liberal is our word, not theirs."

You don't even try to call your philosophies "liberalism." That range of principles matters little to you. You just resent somebody who disagrees with you using a word some people still associate with leftist virtue.

Leftist virtue. Hate-filled virtue. Liberalism? That's archaic in your circles. "OK, boomer?"

Grow your numbers. Share your hate. Feed on it. Fester. Wonder why so much of the world doesn't feel your better tomorrow.

You are hateful, Magister. Hateful.

[Malika la Maize]

I’m sure Magister is fine with the label liberal. I’m less so, but whatever it’s certainly not hateful to point out your phony routine of Bari Weissism (or as I call it in regard to you, Bwaaarism).

As I’ve said, you’re like the guy who insists he’s a ‘Canes fan but spends all his time badmouthing the Cane’s players, coaches, etc., while defending the ‘Noles. Nothing wrong with ‘Noles but plenty with phonies.

Anyone who insists on their “liberalism” but who routinely ignores the racist, misogynistic, fascist postings here but runs like a sprinter to badger the Sarcs and Magisters of this blog as the *real* problem is full of it.

[grb]

Malika la Maize : "... guy who insists he’s a ‘Canes fan ..."

Having lived in Florida & had a desk between a Gator and Seminole, I have to say your analogy would work even better with "U of" & "State".

During football season things often got ugly.

[Life of Brian]

As I’ve said, you’re like the guy who insists he’s a ‘Canes fan but spends all his time badmouthing the Cane’s players, coaches, etc., while defending the ‘Noles. Nothing wrong with ‘Noles but plenty with phonies.

You know, I've often used the analogy of mindlessly swilling beer and cheering for your team to describe modern partisan politics. But I'm really not sure I've ever seen that analogy so directly and cheerfully embraced by the partisans themselves -- usually there's at least some weak attempt at a high-sounding veneer. Kudos for the honesty.

[Bwaaah]

More name-calling.

"Anyone who insists on their “liberalism” but who routinely ignores the racist, misogynistic, fascist postings here but runs like a sprinter to badger the Sarcs and Magisters of this blog as the *real* problem is full of it."

Freedom of expression. Not harassment. Sorry for my tolerance. (Remember that term?) I am, as I have repeated, anti-Democratic Party. That's been my stance now for six years. It has nothing to do with liberalism. (You baselessly conflate those terms, "liberal" and "Democrat.")

And get your facts straight...I don't go after Magister. He comes after me. I left him alone after any attempts I made to have a reasonable conversation with him were met with nothing but unwillingness and contempt.

You're pretty bad too. It's like showing your humanity would be some kind of admission of political loss. What is up with that?

[Bwaaah]

And I'll ask again as I've asked before: What liberal values do you hold that you think I don't?

[Malika la Maize]

No, not playing your game, because your commenting history, even just here today demonstrates plainly your revealed preferences as someone else called them.

Someone who is more bothered by Maigster’s “intolerance” than, say, the misogynistic, racist and fascist comments replete in this thread or a sandwich thrower than Trump’s LEO, prosecutor, etc., actions who then styles themselves as “liberal” even in the weasel “classic” sense is a certified phony.

[Bwaaah]

"No, not playing your game"

Is that what you call a serious discussion, about, for example, liberalism? A "game?"

"Ewwww. Did you hear what Bob said yesterday? OMG."

Shrieking at isms and calling people names...you don't tire of that. Like I don't tire of pointing out what's been wrong with Democratic Party positions.

Go lawless, like DJT. Trash 'em all. Fuck BWAAAH. He's a disaffected BWari.

Burn it down.

[Malika la Maize]

You’re a phony. Like I said, if you go around ignoring the tribalism, racist, misogynistic and blatantly fascist posting of the MAGAns here while falling over yourself to criticize the critics of MAGA, well, as said you’ve revealed your preferences, and calling it “liberal” in any sense of the term is palpable phoniness.

[Life of Brian]

You’re a phony.

Maybe sit back and ponder the question: "phony WHAT?"

Heck, I'm a liberal in the long-standing classical sense -- personal autonomy, minimal government meddling, free markets, etc. But the modern movement has pretty much abandoned those tenants in favor of a comprehensively smothering nanny state, and is now just wearing the name like a skin suit.

And that's exactly why you never engage with Bwaaah about any specific liberal values -- that would give the game away. So you try instead to create some sense of obligation or guilt for not showing blind fealty to a team, with zero regard for what that team actually represents.

If your actual values really are superior, why do you try so hard to distract from them?

[Malika la Maize]

“personal autonomy, minimal government meddling, free markets”

If you were a principled holder of those “tenants” you too would be criticizing Trump more here. The “Somalis are garbage people,” “tariffs is the most beautiful word,” let’s cap credit card interest rates, etc., guy is not the guy for those values.

I’m all for smaller government, less regulation and markets. But those are not the only aspects of liberalism that are important. Restraint on law enforcement, eschewing racist/sexist generalizations, respect for the norms of good government and avoiding excessive political tribalism are important as well. And right now the largest threat to those are coming from conservative populism. When MAGAns here say “Sometimes you need to be cruel and brutal to fix things” or “burn Arabs, not crosses,” or the problem with women is they live in a time where they don’t get a good slapping “liberals,” classic or not, should be appalled, yet you and Bwaaarii are mum. You’re phonies.

[Bwaaah]

"If you were a principled holder of those “tenants” you too would be criticizing Trump more here. The “Somalis are garbage people,” “tariffs is the most beautiful word,” let’s cap credit card interest rates, etc., guy is not the guy for those values."

Why does LoB have to answer for those assertions? What difference does it make that you do?

You're really into trashing dialog. What for?

[Life of Brian]

If you were a principled holder of those “tenants” you too would be criticizing Trump more here. The “Somalis are garbage people,” “tariffs is the most beautiful word,” let’s cap credit card interest rates, etc., guy is not the guy for those values.

Not engaging on the Somali distraction -- rhetoric aside, there's a real underlying problem there as I know you know.

The rest* is not something I generally favor in a vacuum, but for better or for worse we're not in a vacuum: both trade and credit card interest rates are already badly broken from prior rounds of governmental meddling. Might it be better just to nuke it all and start over? Could well be in the long term, but the short-term disruption would be significant and would disproportionately impact the lower-income crowd.

I’m all for smaller government . . . Restraint on law enforcement, eschewing racist/sexist generalizations, respect for the norms of good government and avoiding excessive political tribalism are important as well.

But that right there is my point: those are all "enhancements" of the New Liberalism™, not classical liberalism, and micro-meddling like that is the antithesis of smaller government. If people want to individually hold those values, that's awesome and just another facet of personal liberty. But using government as a club to enforce them is a whole different ball game.

And right now the largest threat to those are coming from conservative populism.

If by that you mean they're the largest bloc of people who you have the least chance of controlling via nanny government, absolutely. But the classical liberal wouldn't view that as a threat to their grasp on power, because it wouldn't be.

As for your parade of exaggerated, overwrought nutpicking, I reject the premise that not affirmatively calling out every single outrageous thing that emerges from the fingers of long-established shitposters (Drackman, Martinned, Ed, Hobie, etc.) say anything in particular about my own character.

* Just playing along for now that the credit card thing was a serious proposal rather than just a bully-pulpit move to put a spotlight on an industry that really is getting out of control. I remember when 12% was super-high -- one of my cards at the time was actually locked to the prime rate. The offer I just opened this morning had a squeaky-clean-credit floor of almost 20%. Likewise, a lot of the tariff chatter is ultimately just short-term position plays.

[not guilty]

"Heck, I'm a liberal in the long-standing classical sense -- personal autonomy, minimal government meddling, free markets, etc."

I don't know about Life of Brian in particular, but many in the MAGA cult throw those values out the window when the topic is government regulating other people's sex practices and the sometime consequences thereof.

[Malika la Maize]

And yet he never talks about Trump’s prosecutors, LEOs, etc., harassing people, just when leftist protesters do it.

Keep riding that phony pony.

[ducksalad]

Enjoy!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/trump-administration-chicago-bovino-murder-for-hire

[AmosArch]

LOL threatening to kill federal officials is totes hilarious. I'm sure progs would be thrilled and let everybody off the hook if crazed MAGA people did this with an Administration they liked as long as it was just a joke bro.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I look at it a little bit differently.

If the left is openly saying they intend to kill federal officers, that lowers the bar on what constitutes acceptable use of deadly force. They’re not shooting neutral citizens they’re shooting purpose of threaten to kill them and that makes it inherently self-defense.

It’s not that Rebecca no good made an officer honestly believe she was gonna run over him, and actually hitting him in the process, but she’s member of group who threat to kill him. Under that standard, it would be perfectly legitimate for an officer to shoot her in the back as she was fleeing just like John Kerry did in Vietnam.

If the left wants to encourage the government to kill them, hey, that’s their call — I won’t mind the attrition….

[David Nieporent]

It’s not that Rebecca no good made an officer honestly believe she was gonna run over him, and actually hitting him in the process, but she’s member of group who threat to kill him. Under that standard, it would be perfectly legitimate for an officer to shoot her in the back as she was fleeing just like John Kerry did in Vietnam.

Not only is this delusional and wrong and made up, but you didn't even get her name right. Renee Good was the one that ICE murdered.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You completely missed my point.

Right now, the burden of proof is on the ice officer to show that he had grounds to fire.

However, IF this open hostility is permitted to exist, the burden of proof would then shiftto the victim as the presumption would be that the victim intended lethal intent towards the officer.

Well, I am trying to suggest is that this is not a good thing.

And pointing out that using an iPad is not unlike trying to drive on black ice rather sophomoric.

[grb]

Dr. Ed 2 : "You completely missed my point."

1. I think DN's point is you haven't gotten a single fact right all the years you've posted here. And - yes - that's an exaggeration, but only by the slightest degree.

2. And your point is ludicrous. Nobody is permitting anything and one random (disgusting, illegal, unhinged, etc) call for violence isn't going to make the laws on police use of force magically vanish.

3. And we don't have to presume anything on Good's murder. Everyone can see Ross wasn't hit, wasn't in danger, wasn't in the path of her car when he began firing, and wasn't justified firing execution-style shots thru the drivers side window as the car passed him by.

[David Nieporent]

1. I think DN's point is you haven't gotten a single fact right all the years you've posted here. And - yes - that's an exaggeration, but only by the slightest degree.

He's like a stopped calendar: correct once a year.

[David Nieporent]

Right now, the burden of proof is on the ice officer to show that he had grounds to fire.

That is yet another thing you have gotten wrong. Right now there's no burden of proof at all. If he were to be prosecuted or sued, the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor or plaintiff, not him.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You clearly are unaware of the routine internal officer involved shooting review. He has the burden of proof of convincing the brass that it was legitimate to shooter. And yes, she did hit him.

And I keep reminding you people is that there is an EDR printout of exactly what she was doing with that vehicle and when. Not a maybe but a second by second computer record.

[David Nieporent]

You clearly are unaware of everything. Including the fact that Pam Bondi immediately announced that he had done nothing wrong and there would be no investigation.

I don't know why you keep reminding us of something you think you know that might or might not be true and wouldn't answer anything relevant anyway.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The magistrate judge approved charges against two of the church-storming protesters for conspiracy to violate civil rights. This was based on a different statute than the FACE Act, which the magistrate refused to invoke. The magistrate also didn't charge Lemon, whose attorney says this is about his rights as a journalist.

[AmosArch]

The magistrate also didn't charge Lemon, whose attorney says this is about his rights as a journalist.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

despite video evidence outright showing clearly he wasn't some neutral observer. I guess plotting together with the other activists and haranguing people in the church is neutrality just like running over an officer is posing no threat in leftyland.

[not guilty]

AmosArch, what statute(s) do you contend that Mr. Lemon violated?

[AmosArch]

Are you implying barging on to presumably private property and disrupting others religious worship is protected speech? Is this more of your vaunted legal expertise other prog posters here constantly slobber about? If you have clients I really feel sorry for them. Maybe you should refund their money.

[Bwaaah]

As he'll remind us in matters like those, it's generally not against the law to be an insolent douche bag. On others, they like to call it "privilege," or in the case of disadvantaged people, "acting out from lived experience." For half the country, they call it "increasing right wing extremism."

They call me "disaffected."

We stupid. They smart.

[Magister]

We stupid. They smart.

Bwaaah the fake liberal owns up to which side he's actually on.

[not guilty]

"Are you implying barging on to presumably private property and disrupting others religious worship is protected speech?"

I am not implying a damn thing. I ask once again: what statute(s) do you contend that Mr. Lemon violated?

The fact that you are squawking likely indicates that you have no idea.

In order to prosecute someone for a federal crime, "The legislative authority of the Union must first make an act a crime, affix a punishment to it, and declare the court that shall have jurisdiction of the offense." United States v. Hudson, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch) 32, 34 (1812).

[Joe_dallas]

NG - Why ask a stupid question when you already know the applicable statute?

Face Act

[not guilty]

Joe_dallas, what do you claim that Mr. Lemon did to "by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injure[], intimidate[] or interfere[] with or attempt[] to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship"?

The use or threat of force is the sine qua non of 18 U.S.C. § 248(a)(2). Take your head out from up your ass and read the freaking statute.

And when I ask a question such as this, it is because I don't presume to know what another commenter is thinking or claiming. You would do well to learn to do that yourself.

[jb]

Are we back to the crime of providing coffee and donuts?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Hand out coffee and donuts on January 6 to those going into the capital?

[jb]

Anyone get arrested for that? I must have missed the coverage.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No one was stupid enough to do it.

The word, however, people who had not been there, had not even been in DC, who arrested and prosecuted for organizing the event. I don’t see a difference between that and Lemon.

[David Nieporent]

The difference is that there's no evidence Lemon organized any event.

[David Nieporent]

The issue isn't whether he's "neutral." The issue is whether he was conspiring with them to do something illegal or just following them and observing. So far the only evidence you seem to have that he was "plotting together" is that he made a trip to Dunkin Donuts.

[Riva]

Because democrat judges aren’t “judges,” they’re partisan hacks who do the bidding of other democrats.

https://x.com/BillMelugin_/status/2014434382455378123

https://x.com/atalarico1970/status/2014444891875553336

You could also ask Boasberg, the creep who signed the NDOs requested by the thug Smith targeting republicans.

[MarkJawz]

That's why I always say that Pinochet was a hero. He fixed Chile. Had he obsessed about "due process" and the "system," Chile would have been Venezuela today.

Sometimes you need to be cruel and brutal to fix things.

[Malika la Maize]

The classic fascist mantra.

[Riva]

Odd that you purport to express dislike of fascism but seem to have had no issues with the Biden regime's lawfare targeting of political opponents. Almost like you're just a second string parrot rent-a-troll with no real principles.

[Malika la Maize]

This is at best whataboutism and deflection, bot.

[Riva]

No little creepy second string parrot rent-a-troll. The response highlights your repulsive hypocrisy. Of course that assumes you actual have principles or standards.

[Malika la Maize]

At best that’s what whataboutism does, but it doesn’t refute the initial claim about Trump. It’s interesting you chose that deflection instead though (or rather your programming did).

[Riva]

If you really believe whining “whataboutism” gives you a free pass to be a repulsive hypocrite, you’re even more of an idiot than I had thought.

And funny how the standard troll response here constitutes “whataboutism,” second only to projection. I guess this might even be more repulsive hypocrisy if the creepy little parrot troll is to be taken seriously. We desperately need a better class of troll here.

[Malika la Maize]

This is why people know you’re a bot:

Me: Trump’s comments demonstrate a crass senile egoist.

Rivabot: But what about Biden? You’re a hypocrite.

Me: At best you’ve proved me a hypocrite but you’ve not answered my charge about Trump in any way.

Rivabot: But what about Biden, you hypocrite!

[Riva]

I wonder if the creepy little second string parrot troll supports fascism or thinks fascist regimes have never routinely used prosecutions, courts, and “legal” processes as tools to attack political opponents. I can see the little shit as a fascist, but who cares really. Just a POS creepy little second string parrot troll anyway.

[Malika la Maize]

See, it’s not programmed to respond.

[Riva]

I see the creepy little second sting parrot troll has quite a tantrum when he (she or whatever) can't control every response. I guess if he (she or whatever) weren't a childish self-absorbed little shit, then he (she or whatever) wouldn't be a creepy little leftist second string parrot troll.

[Riva]

And it should go without saying that a creepy little second string parrot troll trying to justify using sick dehumanizing insults like some demented "Buffalo Bill" wannabe redefines the meaning of asshole. Maybe outshines crazy Dave Nieporent (if they'e not the same parrot troll).

[jb]

Was there a time when these political opponents weren't afforded normal elements of due process, since that's what the discussion is about here.

[MarkJawz]

Yes. Starting with Obama.

[jb]

Who was throwing Obama in jail with no due process?

[grb]

Malika la Maize : "The classic fascist mantra."

Indeed. We await MarkJawz giving Hitler the same treatment. And they say Mussolini made the trains run on time!

[bernard11]

That's why I always say that Pinochet was a hero. He fixed Chile. Had he obsessed about "due process" and the "system," Chile would have been Venezuela today.

Sometimes you need to be cruel and brutal to fix things.

And usually you don't. That the fixer uses cruelty and brutality is no proof that fixing what needed to be fixed required that.

[MarkJawz]

The D.C. jury pool has shown itself to be irresponsible. Charges brought in the district should be heard elsewhere.

I'm thinking before a jury of 12 Protestant whites from Iowa or Nebraska.

[Malika la Maize]

You don’t have to scratch too much to reveal it these days.

[jb]

The inclusion of sandwich guy kind of tells the whole story here: this administration overcharges in order to score political points, but has lost many of the competent people working at the DOJ. As a result, many of those cases flounder when put in front of judges and juries.

[MarkJawz]

You know full well that that jury wasn't going to convict him of anything. Just like they'd have convicted any 1/6 defendant no matter how outrageous.

[jb]

Dozens of J6 insurrectionists were found not guilty on at least one charge, and two were found not guilty on all charges.

Meanwhile, if there were a charge of "edible mayhem" or "soft owie" a jury would probably have had to think about convicting sandwich guy. Of course, it didn't help the prosecution's case that the officer provably lied on the stand.

[Nelson]

He definitely lied in his report. I think he’s the one who forgot that he was being recorded and made completely false statements about the behavior of the sandwich guy and ridiculous claims about the injuries he suffered, which the Administration ran with.

Or maybe that was a different mouth-breathing thug. The quality of law enforcement has plummeted lately.

[not guilty]

President Bone Spurs Chickenhawk has posted the following message on Truth Social:

Deranged Jack Smith is being DECIMATED before Congress. It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions. He destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy. Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse! Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM — A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115939889414201547

I find it quite curious that the MAGAt in chief, who is not fit to shine Jack Smith's shoes, has declined to identify any particular instance of unethical conduct by Mr. Smith, just as he called for criminal prosecution of Mr. Smith without identifying any criminal statute that he claims was violated.

The current version of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct -- on which the disciplinary rules of nearly every state plus the District of Columbia is based -- is here: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_rules_of_professional_conduct/model_rules_of_professional_conduct_table_of_contents/

If Donald Trump is ever given an enema, his remains will fit nicely into a cigar box.

I challenge the members of the MAGA cult to identify what ethical rule(s) that Jack Smith has violated.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I’d say Jerkoff Smith should be taken out in the woods and shot except bullets damage trees. (Except when it’s really cold and all the sap is frozen, then they ricochet…)

Anyone unable to see this show himself be disbarred, and yes, NG, that means you.

Richard Nixon looks like a virginal choirboy when compared to these schmucks.

[Frank Drackman]

OK, Ed, with my lineage I'm a little sensitive about taking peoples you don't like into the woods and shooting them, I think a few days (and nights) at Rikers would be sufficient.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

There were what, 14 million Jews in Europe circa 1930?

If only 10% of them have been armed, that would’ve been 1.4 million guns. Imagine how history would be different….

[Frank Drackman]

and the German Army was 15 million guys with Guns and that's just the Regular Army, figure another 10 million Reserves. Easy to be a tough guy from your Sofa 80 years later.

[SRG2]

Not to mention armed police in Germany and other friendly armies and armed groups elsewhere.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Were there still armed police outside of the Gestapo in Germany at this point?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I was thinking more along the lines of Uncle Otto with a six shot revolver when the Gestapo broke in after the Frank family.

[not guilty]

Dr. Ed 2, what federal criminal statute, if any, do you claim that Jack Smith has violated?

What applicable Rule of Professional Conduct, if any, do you claim that Jack Smith has violated?

If you are unable to answer, grow a pair and admit that.

[Frank Drackman]

Since Dr. Ed's busy telling Jews how they should have beat the Germans in 1930, Try 18 USC 1621 for Starters,

Frank

[not guilty]

When, where and as to what testimony do you contend that Jack Smith committed perjury as to any material matter which he did not believe to be true, Frank? Please be specific.

[Frank Drackman]

I thought you claimed to be a Shyster? The Evidence isn’t the point, it’s making your targets life miserable and ruining him financially and emotionally, see the story about the guy falsely accused in the 96’ Olympics bombing. Like one of Reagan’s guys said, there’s no place to go to get your reputation back.

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

"Like one of Reagan’s guys said, there’s no place to go to get your reputation back."
...or your money.
(That was Ray Donovan. Sec. of Labor)

[Dr. Ed 2]

“To what office do I go to get my reputation back?“

I quoted that in my dissertation. Don’t ask why…..

[Nelson]

We believe you wrote a dissertation exactly as much as we believe you teach college. Nit at all.

How horrifying would it be to have someone as constantly and transparently wrong about such a wide array of topics teaching?

Back when I took the SAT and answering wrong lost you points, he would probably have created the first student to get a negative score.

[Joe_dallas]

not guilty 5 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
"When, where and as to what testimony do you contend that Jack Smith committed perjury as to any material matter which he did not believe to be true, Frank? Please be specific."

Just like Malika , JB and other leftists - you chose to be intentionally ignorant on the misconduct.

Go to National Review, do a search for Jack Smith. They have quite extensive commentary on his misconduct.

[Sarcastr0]

you chose to be intentionally ignorant

The j_d flounce!

extensive commentary
com·men·tar·y
/ˈkämənˌterē/
noun
an expression of opinions about an event or situation.

[Malika la Maize]

Again, you bring no info, you point to places and say we may find it there, but you provided none. It’s reasonable to assume it is because you have none.

[BrotherMovesOn]

NG, I've always appreciated your contributions to these comment threads. Excellent citations and analysis for those 'legally' inclined. I look forward to further comments. But ... I'm begging you, please stop asking Dr. Ed to cite statutes or case law.
He's insane and no need to pile on.

[Sarcastr0]

I blocked him once it felt too much like watching the antics of a mentally ill man for amusement.

[Dr. Ed 2]

That’s the tactics of the left today, arbitrarily declare anyone who disagrees with you as being insane. There was a famous Russian author who said something about that a while back.

[AmosArch]

You know the insult 'chickenhawk' only really works with someone who is an actual warmonger. Trump so far has been one of the more dovish Presidents in recent history in deed if not in words. Certainly for Republicans. Maybe you should take that label and apply it to those who want huge war with Russia or want America to continue to foot the bill and fight all their battles rather than someone who is trying to reduce the amount of military action America does that the EU should be taking care of.

[Riva]

I would say “chickenhawk” is idiotic. If a president is using military force in a limited, careful, and strategically justified way, “chickenhawk” is the wrong childish insult. The word targets bellicosity plus personal avoidance of service, not responsible decision‑making about force.

[Nelson]

Chickenhawk refers to people who were unwilling to fight when they were called, but are willing to send others to die in military adventures.

Donald Trump was a draft dodger who didn’t even have the integrity of George Bush or Bill Clinton (which says a lot) and use the ROTC to get around it. He just had a doctor lie for him and had his daddy bribe a few people and suddenly his flat feet or bone spurs or stubbed toe or something made him ineligible for the draft.

But he’s willing to risk American soldiers to prove how “strong” he is.

That is the definition of a chickenhawk.

[Nelson]

“ Trump so far has been one of the more dovish Presidents in recent history in deed if not in words”

Sure. Except for bombing Iran, invading Venezuela, blowing up suspected drug boats, and sending the military into American cities, he’s totally peaceful.

[Joe_dallas]

Head in the sand - there is now quite a bit of details of Jack Smith misconduct that is publicly known

[jb]

Classic Joe post. No details about all of this stuff we're supposed to know, but by golly if we haven't reached the same conclusions as Joe we sure are big dummies.

[Joe_dallas]

JB - I expect commentators to have some background info. Jack smith misconduct is reasonably well known and publicly available. Step out of your leftist echo chamber

[jb]

Hard to do when you keep all you commonly known knowledge so secret.

[Joe_dallas]

Google might help you

Jack smith misconduct
jack smith wiretaps
Jack smith distorts statutes or misuses statutes.
jack smith hearsay witnesses

just a sample of google searches available that will detail some of the misconduct.

[Malika la Maize]

Why can’t you produce these things? The reasonable assumption is you cannot.

[Joe_dallas]

I just gave you sufficient info.

Do some homework instead of remaining ignorant in you leftist echo chamber

[Sarcastr0]

Flounce flounce.

[Malika la Maize]

You gave no info, you told us to find some, but you provided none. It’s reasonable to assume you have none.

[jb]

"Jack smith misconduct"

Good one. I found this: https://www.citizen.org/news/jack-smith-to-detail-trumps-criminal-misconduct-before-congress-and-the-public/

"jack smith wiretaps"

I found some articles explaining how Jack Smith didn't do any wiretaps, but he did request the call logs for a number of Republican politicians.

"Jack smith distorts statutes or misuses statutes."

This was useless. I didn't find anything interesting related to the query.

"jack smith hearsay witnesses"

I found articles saying that Jack Smith thought that Cassidy Hutchinson would have been a hearsay witness, so he didn't want to rely on it. I'm not sure what you think this has to do with misconduct on his part.

[Nelson]

Wait, Joe Dallas believes hard-right silo news that turns out to be completely false?

Imagine my surprise.

[David Nieporent]

Jack smith misconduct is reasonably well known and publicly available.

It is actually well established that there was no "Jack Smith misconduct" and that anyone saying there was is stupid or a liar or a stupid liar.

[Nelson]

“ Jack smith misconduct is reasonably well known and publicly available”

No, MAGA lies and distortions of the truth are well known (to the hard right) and publicly available. The lies are publicly available, not any actual documentation or facts because there aren’t any credible accusations, never mind findings or censure, against Jack Smith.

[not guilty]

"Head in the sand - there is now quite a bit of details of Jack Smith misconduct that is publicly known"

IOW, you have no clue as to any particular instance of misconduct.

What federal statute(s) or applicable rule(s) of professional conduct do you -- Joe_dallas -- claim that Jack Smith violated? I am not asking about what anyone else has written or said. Please be specific.

[Riva]

Ask Iran’s nuclear program and Maduro about the “chickenhawk” bullshit. And the sick abuse of power represented by Smith’s unconstitutional lawfare targeting of Biden’s political opponents was a national disgrace. The really scary thing is that democrat hacks are apparently looking forward to trying it again. So much for the rule of law and democracy. Nice while it lasted.

[Nelson]

Apparently Russian troll farm workers struggle with the idiom “chickenhawk”.

Riva, to help educate you about our country, a chickenhawk is someone who avoided their opportunity to serve (in Trump’s case he dodged the draft in Vietnam) but are gung-ho about putting military lives at risk to appear “strong”, often in contrived or manufactured crises.

Trump is the definition of a chickenhawk.

https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/303632

[bloocow2]

http://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=title&order=asc

Someone described me as "polite" recently. With apologies in advance, this post is not going to be polite.

So, an organisation calculated the human cost of the gutting of USAID and PEPFAR around this time last year. More than 750,000 deaths, basically. At least 500,000 of them children, who suddenly couldn't get treatment for AIDS, pneumonia, malaria, tuberculosis and more.

I can't even express how angry this makes me. Not just as someone who's currently working in development, but as a human being. Fuck the people who did this. Fuck the people who supported it. Fuck Elon Musk who described USAID as a "criminal organisation". Fuck Marco Rubio who lied about the efficacy of USAID. Fuck all of them.

I don't care if there were inefficiencies in it. There are in every organisation. Every single bad thing about USAID was more than offset by the millions of lives it saved. And now it is gone, and fuck everyone who helped make that happen.

(sorry for the swear words, this is one of the only things that I'll break them out for)

[Kazinski]

Pug your money where you mouth is.

What has Australia, Europe, Canada, and Asia done to.make up the shortfall.

I would have supported the pure aid to the poorest programs, but they spent decades abusing the programs making it a cash cow for leftists here, and funding things like transgender theatre groups for children abroad.

They shit the bed so bad, it wasn't possible to just change the sheets, they had to raze the building to eradicate the stink.

[AmosArch]

I like how the same people complaining about cuts to aid, suddenly were all scrooge mcduck and didn't want a penny to go to Argentina even though by the type of predictions they make plenty of people would have probably died there as well if we didn't assist.

You see its less about goodwill and humanity toward their fellow men and more about seizing and maintaining control over the levers of power for the purse of charity. A very powerful institution both practically and in terms of perception for a group obsessed with controlling institutions that gets hopping mad at the slightest disruption to this goal.

These same types of 'hands of the charity Cheeto man' people had no problem ruthlessly infiltrating and dismantling the previous support/charitable aid networks of the world run by those they didn't like. And continuing to dismantle the remnants of it even to the present day as well as attempting to blacken its reputation both in the present and historically (see the fake child burial scandal in Canada)

Traditional churches. Pregnancy crisis centers. Christian counselors for gay people voluntarily visiting them. etc etc. and other opposing aid organizations should be shut down. But its okay here. Because these were the 'bad' type of support/charity aid networks. Just because something calls itself a charity, aid, or support organization doesn't mean the good they do is outweighed by the bad silly!

Progs know that all the aid organizations run by fellow progs are all good and must be given 100x more funding while all aid organizations run by people of opposing belief systems are all horrible and need to be shutdown immediately because they made some movies and anecdotal documentaries saying so.

[Bwaaah]

"its less about goodwill and humanity toward their fellow men and more about seizing and maintaining control over the levers of power for the purse of charity"

That's what good people do. Isn't that what good people do?

Excellent remark.

[Magister]

The United States using a tiny part of its immense wealth for humanitarian ends (as bloocow2 talks about) would be not only what good people do but a liberal value that Bwaaah will pretend to hold but not actually advocate in the slightest. Is it fair to conclude that Bwaaah is not a good person?

[Brett Bellmore]

"It's" immense wealth?

That's the thing: "The United States" does not have immense wealth. The United States has a gun, and citizens who have immense wealth. Which is not at all the same thing.

The United States DOES have immense debts, though.

[Magister]

"The United States" means the totality of our people, our territory, our institutions, etc. The single largest institution is the federal government; at one point in my life, I borrowed a higher ratio above my income than the US has borrowed, even though I'm not likely to continue that income for the indefinite future and I don't have my own currency that my debts were issued in.

But, good pedantry! Please go on to apply it to comments from, oh, I don't know, maybe Brett Bellmore.

[Bwaaah]

I admit to believing in quite a few of U.S. humanitarian ventures. For example, global propagation of treatment for HIV/AIDS has been a great initiative. I like the Peace Corps. I like food aid programs in cases of famine (where the food gets to the hungry people, not just the ruling regime). I like Voice of America. I like food assistance programs in the U.S. too, e.g. SNAP. I like HUD. I could go on with a lot of things I like.

If you think the U.S. Department of State, considering all of its staffing and global ventures in recent decades, show an efficient way to make a dollar improve the life of a needy person, I don't know how you got there. So much of it had become the government about the government, for the purpose of administering government. Not bad. Just expansive, expensive and useless.

Democrats have shown no interest in pulling out a scalpel to get rid of that waste...not at scale. Just superficial waste-cutting programs (for which they need more funding). Why should Democrats care? Because there are better ways to spend a dollar to help people in need, including saving a dollar that we could surely use tomorrow (to help people in need).

But on a very positive side, so meaningful to me, so unspoken of, is the fact that we (i.e. the world) substantially eliminated wide scale hunger, due to lack of food, globally. More succinctly: the people of the world have global access to reliable food supplies that are only interrupted now by war or corruption of local powers that be. Nature, weather, and for the most part, even local governments, no longer stop the availability of food. (I feel sorry for the people of North Korea.)

How amazing is that? How much or little do you care?

[Bwaaah]

And what percent of our annual federal spending now goes to pay for what we did yesterday, unavailable for today or tomorrow? Sorry, man. Fucking do-good grifters shitting the bed. Is that "liberalism" to you? It looks like people who are lousy at managing a dollar to me.

[Bwaaah]

I think "Obamacare" was a step in the right direction.

It's a HUGE problem that one major health care expense can financially destroy a person or family, not just momentarily, but often enough, for the rest of life. That is where I am willing to fund the risk pool, necessarily at greater expense to me to offset the people who can't afford the actuarial cost. Does that fuck up the economics of health care? Yes, it does. But I carve out a special exception for such a special opportunity to solve a HUGE problem that threatens all people.

Having implemented that huge (but very beneficial) health insurance program, does it make sense to encourage and subsidize would-be immigrants from all around the world with the benefits and subsidies intended in Obamacare? (Democrats do that encouragement in New York City. I think the party likes to allow that everywhere.)

The hopeful promise of Obamacare, "affordable" (read: "subsidized") health insurance for all citizens, is now being undermined by the limitless, unconstrained "virtues" of the Democratic Party and its angry adherents like you. Brilliant!

[Brett Bellmore]

And I object to doing that, because the blunt truth is that, barring people who just drop dead in their tracks from a major stroke or heart attack, the amount you can spend on health care that people actually get something out of may start out low when people are young and healthy, but it climbs exponentially as you get older. Everybody who doesn't stroke out eventually faces that choice of either being financially destroyed or just giving up and dying.

And you could bankrupt the whole world trying to spare everybody in one country that fate.

So, yeah, maybe you can as a practical matter put a floor under people, childhood vaccinations, stuff like that, but you can't actually say, "We're not going to let anybody face financial ruin over health care expenses!" You absolutely do have to let people face that, thanks to finite resources.

Now, I think that's a temporary thing we're going through. We started out with health care being cheap because "He's dead, Jim" is cheap, health care doesn't cost much when there's nothing you can do.

And eventually we're going to reach the point where almost all health care is preventative, people don't even age, and thus health care is for almost everybody dirt cheap, and you can just suck it up and handle the exceptions.

But we're in the middle now, where we're not terribly good at preventing people from getting sick, but we can do a lot of expensive things to deal with their being sick, and we just can't afford giving everybody the best health care.

And if you've got to 'ration' it, giving it to the people who can PAY for it is a pretty reasonable thing do do.

[Bwaaah]

I understand. I am effectively ceding control of the market valuation, and asset allocation, to the government. But the rationing is effectively delegated to insurance companies, who are prioritizing according to a mix of expert preferences and resource availability.

I've already been denied coverage of a significant problem in one instance, and had treatment significantly delayed in another. I understand the risks, up to and including death. The compromise is worth it to me.

"We just can't afford giving everybody the best health care.".

Quite correct. The system already provides mixed value services depending on ability to pay, including varying levels of service for varied levels of insurance coverage. I welcome (and encourage) better services for people who can afford them.

I'm betting we won't bankrupt the country doing this. I'm not sure we won't. I take the endurance of "nationalized" healthcare systems in other countries as indicative not that they are good, but that they can be sustained. (I'm not sure of that either, but the history looks persuasive to me.)

BTW...it's already been many years that the government has effectively required hospitals to treat all comers. They've been servicing our voracious health care appetite for years.

[Malika la Maize]

You can’t get more Bwaaari than this:

Sure, USAID saved lives and that’s great but they weren’t as efficient as they could be and Democrats didn’t take a scalpel to it so that’s the problem not Trump taking an axe to it! Let’s focus on the former, please!

[Bwaaah]

That was your crappy take, Malicia, not mine. Anyway, consider me smitten by your nasty invective. nyah.

Get a point.

[bernard11]

i>Democrats have shown no interest in pulling out a scalpel to get rid of that waste...not at scale.

Well, I don't know. Examples would help. Meanwhile I will say that Republicans have shown no interest in using a scalpel rather than an axe. Was DOGE careful surgery, or was it some fools with machetes run amok, who ultimately didn't even save any money?

[jb]

"I like how the same people complaining about cuts to aid, suddenly were all scrooge mcduck and didn't want a penny to go to Argentina even though by the type of predictions they make plenty of people would have probably died there as well if we didn't assist."

This is very "honey, why are you so mad I bought a new PlayStation when you were just going to spend the money on food?". The entire USAID budget was less than the $40B Trump gave to Argentina, so yes people were upset that he prioritized giving handouts to his buddies* while stripping away aid for some of the neediest people in the world.

* Which yes, probably saved a handful of lives at the margins but was not targeted to do so and would be wildly inefficient if you looked at it through a humanitarian lens.

[grb]

jb : "The entire USAID budget was less than the $40B Trump gave to Argentina..."

You read AmosArch's comment and it's like fantasies from some far distant planet. The "ruthlessly infiltrating and dismantling" crap comes from some dark corner of his lizard brain. Meaningless sneers against "progs" seems rather insufficient to counter hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths.

Particularly when you step back and look at the big picture. Trump and the DOGE shitshow started with USAID because of the predictable ignorance of MAGA followers. Survey after survey has shown people over-estimating the amount of foreign humanitarian aid by factors of 10X or 20X. Hilariously, when respondents were asked to give an acceptable number (vs the erroneous one in their heads), the majority gave one over 2X higher than reality.

That ignorance made USAID the perfect target for our stunts & gimmicks President. And it was all so uselessly counterproductive and stupid. Because even if you don't care about the good done and deaths prevented, the aid was a cheap and effective use of soft power. That the same clowns who fret about growing Chinese influence around the world cheered this self-destructive act just proves what f**king idiots they are.

[AmosArch]

More lies. Trump didn't 'give' 40 billion to Argentina he gave 20 billion and unlike USAID it wasn't a handout it was a loan.

Much less than the USAID budget, which doubled recently, yup no reason to be concerned about something suddenly 2xing. So the US suddenly discovered a way to save 2x the starving African children in 2021? Budgets will just keep ballooning into infinity because any cut will result in dead children presumably according to proven liars. People will die if you ever cut a single dollar. Again like other people said why doesn't any one else step up since 'it is just a tiny drop in the bucket'. And don't give the lame excuse 'well their foreign aid budgets are already so and so percentage more than the US' So this is worth more then the dead children you were telling us about?

[jb]

My bad. There was initially discussion of $40B, but that included private investment that never happened.

As for the USAID budget, how's this nugget for you?

Today, President Trump requested $40 billion for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) budget. This request upholds the President’s commitment to protect our country and put American interests first.

[Voize of Reazon]

What has Australia, Europe, Canada, and Asia done to.make up the shortfall.

I don't know of any more recent data but here is a table of humanitarian aid given in 2024 as a fraction of gross national income for many countries. The top 12 are all European.

[AmosArch]

The US must keep funding an ideologically captured organization that uses taxpayer money to advance the interests of certain groups over that of other Americans. Because any disruption would kill poor third world children. Even though they don't care about the deaths caused by disrupting the organizations controlled by other ideological groups. The US must continue to allow any graft/increase to go through with it including the sudden doubling of its budget a couple years ago where they must have suddenly found a way to save 2x more poor third world children. Bigger budget = more children saved. Any pause = death of these children. The lives of these children are surely worth more than any amount of money. As long as its not also helping conservative organizations.

But these same children can just go off and die because some abstract graph on the internet showed some european countries presumably have x number higher than the US's y number, in large part because the US subsidizes them, and it would be totally unfair to have this x number rise even higher than y.

[Voize of Reazon]

Amos, I suppose it depends. If your desire to stop spending 0.23% of the US GNI on foreign aid was, as Kazinski implied, because these other countries should be doing more, the fact is they (mostly) are doing more. Australia's percentage was lower at 0.19% but Norway led the pack at 1.02%. So if that was your reason, you should rethink your reasoning.

But if that's not the case, if it was just Kazinski's attempt to rationalize some other motivation he doesn't want to admit out loud and didn't figure into your reasoning, then I expect the data won't make any difference.

[AmosArch]

America's spending props up the rest of the world in a million different ways. The Aegis of military protection allowing for the development of the modern european welfare state simply being one of the more obvious ones. Saying Norway spends a bigger percentage of its budget on foreign aid is as useless and misleading as saying that Billy spent a bigger percentage of his allowance on charity than his parents did out of their income.

If you want to quibble that current European spending levels entitles them to also abandon the same orphans they accuse the US of abandoning over what some would consider a comparatively small amount of funding. Fine. Just don't pretend to be the caring moral exemplar.

[AmosArch]

Yes if they want to be mad about this. Be mad at the parasites who commandeered important charity for their own selfish ends. Not the people who have to clean it up.

[Mr. Bumble]

Thank you for the report from a former prison colony.
If the work was/is so important where is the rest of the world in filling the need?
(posted without seeing Kaz's comment)

[bloocow2]

Thank you for your valuable contribution to this discussion. I was under the impression that every country aside from America was perfect, but you have disabused me!

[Mr. Bumble]

Now tell us about your country's contribution to ending AIDS.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Thank you for your valuable contribution to this discussion. "

More valuable than just saying F**k repeatedly.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I love how people want to do good with other people‘s money.

They somehow forget there is nothing preventing them from donating every penny they have to the cause they believe in.

[Brett Bellmore]

"So, an organisation calculated the human cost of the gutting of USAID and PEPFAR around this time last year."

I purely hate what I've come to call "benefit analysis". The perpetual demand that government programs be evaluated on the basis of their (often just intended) benefits, and all costs ignored. As well as ignoring finite resources.

Apparently we're supposed to do EVERYTHING somebody somewhere thinks will have benefits, ignoring all costs, ignoring that we're massively borrowing, ignoring a mountain of debt whose interest is so high that if interest rates ever spike again it will consume 100% of revenues.

Even ignoring if there's something else more beneficial we could spend it on; We'll just do that, too, acknowledging tradeoffs is immoral!

[Bwaaah]

By the way...it was reported last week that a new study indicates that the cost of climate change will be twice what was previously thought.

I think the cost has doubled every three months for the past 30 years. That's a lot, isn't it?

Not enough. Limitless costs call for limitless spending. So many superior thinkers with pockets full of zeros, prognisticating.

[Bwaaah]

I got that reversed. "Limitless spending calls for limitless costs."

[Joe_dallas]

And ignoring how little of the funding actually goes to program services.

[MarkJawz]

Right now, the United States is seemingly able to spend unlimited amounts of money, by borrowing unlimited amounts of money at relatively low yields, <5%.

If the rest of the world is no longer willing to buy our debt at reasonable yields, then this house of cards is in trouble.

[Malika la Maize]

If it’s the debt you’re worried about shouldn’t you prioritize defense spending?

[jb]

"I purely hate what I've come to call "benefit analysis". The perpetual demand that government programs be evaluated on the basis of their (often just intended) benefits, and all costs ignored."

This is dumb. No one does this.

[hobie]

I don't know how the hillbillies in Australia work, but here...making brown people miserable is all part of the fun.

And when you couple brownies with the other hayseed bugbear: healthcare, you get more general excitement.

And if that healthcare involves hayseed bane (vaccines), well you might as well kiss that program goodbye

[LexAquilia]

Quick question, why would anyone with a brain want the people in government in charge of their healthcare?

Can you find a examples of US government programs that would make one say "man, I want THAT but for my healthcare!!"

[hobie]

In socialist Portugal I broke my arm when I slipped on some dog drool. Wife drove me to the hospital where they saw me right away, did two x-rays, and got a cast. Because I was an expat I had to pay full price: $40. And I thought to myself...'Man, I want THAT!'

Here's the ocean-view villa I lived in where the marble floors and a constantly drooling dog caused slippage

https://maps.app.goo.gl/AasqxXYx8dFc4pZQ9

[Brett Bellmore]

Now understand that the reason you can't get a paramedic to fix your broken arm for $40, (Or probably $400 given differences in prevailing wages.) is exactly that health care is totally entangled with the government here.

[hobie]

'health care is totally entangled with the government here'

Just like Portugal! What a coincidence.

[Sarcastr0]

'True free market health care has never been tried'

No one does a better mirror-tankie than Brett.

[Brett Bellmore]

Why would I ever say that it's never been tried? We used to have it, the government took it away as a result of always doubling down when regulation didn't work.

[LexAquilia]

Can you find a examples of US government programs

Not a single person could. Not even you or bureaucrat extraordinaire, Sarcastr0

[bloocow2]

We do have healthcare here! It isn't perfect, but I can generally go to a doctor when I need to.

I'm happy that people use this as an argument against what I actually said, though, which had absolutely zero to do with Australia. It shows that they have no defence against the charge, aside from "but other, less influential countries also kill people though abrupt funding cuts!"

Which is pretty weak as far as arguments go. If that's the best people have, then I know I'm on good footing.

[hobie]

Yes, our hillbilly logic that we use to explain/justify things will seem bizarre to normal people. As you are starting to see, we all struggle to make sense of it.

[Sarcastr0]

You gotta understand MAGA arguments depend more on who you are, or assuming bad faith, than on what you say.

It's not a movement with a strong ideology or vision. It's just anti-things.
There's a lady on Tiktok who is asking Conservatives a simple question, “what does life look like under conservatism in 15 years” and every single Conservative keeps glitching out when they are asked this. No one answers her. A whole movement built on 0 imagination and just hating other people.
https://www.tiktok.com/@itsallisxn/playlist/Conservatism%2015%20Years%20Out-7592845359743863565

[Bob from Ohio]

"absolutely zero to do with Australia"

Australia could have stepped in once the evil Americans acted evilly.

Formed a coalition with New Zealand and Canada and the EU and UK. Easily replace our funding.

They didn't, I guess your country doesn't value those alleged dead Africans either.

[MarkJawz]

Why are brown people outside of the West the responsibility of the West?

[LexAquilia]

If USAID really was a life saving keystone, why didn't Europe plug the gap?

[Sarcastr0]

The initial arguments were telling.

The liberals were talking about the impacts, the misery, and the loss of goodwill for America.

MAGA was insisting that the issue was that the organizations that deliver the aid are all liberal, and that showed USAID was corrupt.

Or something. It didn't matter. What mattered was this owned the libs. The misery of Africans were not on the radar.

More dammingly, perhaps, is that the normies who don't care much about politics didn't care. This didn't move the needle against Trump much at all. They though we spent a ton more money on foreign aid than we did, and sure didn't care about immiserating and killing a ton of people who aren't us.
At some point, the idea of America having an obligation to use it's economic heft to be a force for good just...left our polity.
Wages of being a world empire, perhaps - the incipient chauvinism about those outside the empire became malignant, and broadly, if quietly, held.

I have some hope that Trump's increasing toxicity will make everyone want to take a hard look at every shitty thing he did, including dismantling USAID. But yeah, America did something massively fucked up.

[MarkJawz]

If America had a moral obligation to use its economic heft to be a force for good, a premise that I dispute, it disappeared when we started running $2 trillion deficits, year after year.

[Brett Bellmore]

The government's budget is funded by a combination of money extracted by threats of violence, and borrowing premised on threatening future violence. The moral obligation here is to,

1. Spend not one cent more than is actually necessary for,
2. The welfare of the people footing the bill, and nobody else.

I suppose the government could have a separate fund, filled with voluntary donations, that could be spent on stuff that failed to meet the above criteria. But if the money was given voluntarily, why would you need to route it through government? The only thing government brings to the table that you can't get anywhere else is the power to threaten to shoot people to get your way.

[ducksalad]

Your two criteria are pretty good. So good that really everyone from Pol Pot to Ayn Rand would agree. There are just some minor disagreements to be cleared up: how to define "necessary", "welfare", and "the people footing the bill".

[Absaroka]

There is an argument that (at least some) foreign aid benefits all Americans. Coupla examples:

-we maintain hospital ships, because if there is a war we might want some hospital ships in a hurry. But how do you keep a ship up and running in case that eventuality happens. What we have done in the past is sail them around, making port calls and giving free care to the locals. As anyone who has read a bio of an SF medic knows, fixing a child or grandma's problems is a fantastic way to have people get very warm fuzzies for you.

We kinda had that market cornered for a while, but the Chinese aren't fools, and have lately been sending their newly built hospital ships around South America, garnering said warm fuzzies for themselves.

To be sure, one can just say 'to heck with soft power, if some country in South America has something we want, we'll just invade'. But I think you may find that is quite a bit more expensive, even if the moral issues don't trouble you.

...

[Absaroka]

Secondly, I haven't found hunger to be pleasant. Fortunately, every year American farmers produce food in excess of domestic needs. Some of that excess capacity is paid for by the govt - us - buying excess and giving it away overseas, generating warm fuzzies. But it also means our own farmers have the tractors and combines and other excess capacity that if, say, we have a spell of severe drought, we will still have sufficient capacity that Americans won't starve.

There are, of course other approaches. You could just give an equal amount of money to farmers to oversize their tractors and so on, and pay for auditors to make sure they are doing so.

Etc.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Fortunately, every year American farmers produce food in excess of domestic needs. Some of that excess capacity is paid for by the govt - us - buying excess and giving it away overseas, generating warm fuzzies."

Which it does, explicitly, to drive up food prices in America to the benefit of farmers and the detriment of everybody else.

A classic example of what the general welfare clause was meant to exclude: Legislation meant to benefit one part of society at everybody else's expense.

[Absaroka]

"to drive up food prices in America"

Wait, I don't think I follow. If you have a fixed supply of X, then a new customer buying part of X lowers the supply without changing the demand and so the price will indeed slide up the curve.

But supply isn't fixed. When someone consistently is willing to buy more of something suppliers increase their capacity. The increased supply means the price can stay the same.

Think about it. You are selling 100 widgets a year for $10 each, which covers the costs of your factory, wages, and profit margin.
A new customer says 'we'd like a long term contract for $100 widgets a year at $10 each'. Saying 'I'll give you the 100 I have at $20 each' works only if the customer is desperate. If they aren't they just shop around and get someone else to set up a widget factory to make them for $10 each.

Looking at everything through an ideological lens isn't good. It doesn't matter if the ideology is communism, fascism, or libertarianism, deducing reality from an ideology will lead you astray.

[Brett Bellmore]

The program is literally called "price supports", and you think its job isn't to raise prices?

[Absaroka]

Well, can you flesh that out some? I'm not seeing it.

There are price support programs, but I'm not seeing the foreign aid tie in.

I know farmers who get paid to not grow crops as a price support, but again I don't see the tie-in.

[Magister]

We are all Keynesians now, except for Brett Bellmore.

[Commenter_XY]

AussieTrash,

Belly up to the bar, and start giving. Petition Albanese.

[CountmontyC]

1) You don't care that there were inefficiencies in USAID because you weren't paying the taxes that funded USAID
2) After the literally hundreds of billions of dollars USAID has spent what problems were solved? Why does USAID have to forever fund programs that apparently don't solve the said problems? Personally I believe that if the problems are not being resolved we shoild stop the funding.

[Sarcastr0]

A paradigmatic response!

1) Inefficiencies that are asserted but unproven.
2) A ridiculous postulate that foreign aid is useless if you can't defeat unstated problems forever.

Note the lack of specifics, and the tailored goalposts. That's because these are not the real objections, they're just the eyewash. They may *feel* true to CountmontyC - I'm not saying he's intentionally lying. But does it matter? He's already been convinced of the outcome and the rest is just whatever gets him from here to there with the least cogitation required.

[CountmontyC]

It was bloocow who admitted that there were inefficiencies and he stated that he didn't care. Easy enough to not care when the money being spent doesn't come from his pockets.

I will also state that any aid the USA provides should only ever be temporary with the nations receiving that aid working to resolve the problems being dealt with. If after literally decades of receiving aid to fix a problem and the problem still persists they should receive a warning of either fix the problem or the aid stops. We are not obligated to fund their problems forever.

[Sarcastr0]

Any system has inefficiencies. You assert that they are existential.

Problems like hunger and disease are going to persist. What kind of gumdrop world do you live in?

[Joe_dallas]

Sarcastr0 31 minutes ago
"Any system has inefficiencies. You assert that they are existential."

Inefficiencies up to 70%+
Where $ funding actual program services are less than 30%, and many cases, less than 10%.

[Sarcastr0]

Is the 70% from 'common sense?'

[Joe_dallas]

You work in the field of funding government projects.

You should know from your work experience what a reasonable estimate of actual funding for programs services. Excessive layers of admin costs are not actual program services.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean aid grants are not research grants.

But in research grants, your asserted 70% is full of shit.

For those more interested than you in facts, in my experience admin costs are a marginal component of indirect costs. It's driven partially by the increasingly burdensome due diligence requirements coming from statute, reg, and agency policy.
If you complaint is about admin cost, maybe streamlining the process is what you'd want.

Other indirect costs are for F&M, publication fees, access to journal fees, etc. This is not some loosey goosey thing - it still needs to be itemized in the budget docs.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200/appendix-Appendix%20III%20to%20Part%20200

[Joe_dallas]

the fluff in research grants is arguably much less than USAID.

Though with your background, you should be able to recognize how little actual USAID funding actually goes to program services.

[Sarcastr0]

How the fuck should I recognize that, Mr. number out of his ass?

I'm not a big AI truster but you don't deserve more work than that:

Approximately 7.7% of USAID's nonmilitary foreign assistance budget from fiscal year 2013 to 2022 was directed toward administrative costs. These expenses cover operating costs for delivering aid, with the vast majority of the budget going toward project-based assistance.

Administrative vs. Project Costs: While administrative overhead accounted for roughly 7.7%, the majority of funding (about two-thirds) went directly to project-based assistance.

Your 2 step of wild assertion, then flounce and attack when questioned, is tiresome and lazy.

[Joe_dallas]

https://medium.com/the-simulacrum/how-much-of-every-us-taxpayer-dollar-actually-reaches-the-beneficiary-the-usaid-breakdown-3d523b916e5f

[Life of Brian]

While administrative overhead accounted for roughly 7.7%, the majority of funding (about two-thirds) went directly to project-based assistance.

Um.... [counts on fingers]... where'd the other 29% go? And why the careful language "project-based assistance"?

Oh, right: Most of the remaining money went to grantees and subcontractors with their own layers of overhead, and USAID had no flippin' clue how much that really was and a comically inadequate system in place to even pretend to audit it. 7.7% was just their own personal skim-off.

It was a feel-good OPM slush fund, one which of course had a few tangible things to point to as ammo for overtrusting folks like you. As many have already said, those few tangible, meaningful and useful things can of course be funded by those sitting shiva for USAID, and at an astronomical discount.

[Bob from Ohio]

"you can't defeat unstated problems forever."

Twenty years of funding the AIDS drugs and zero change in African sexual behavior. Don't they need to step up? A little?

[bloocow2]

USAID saved millions of lives. Millions! Through the programs mentioned in the link I posted, which I assume you have studied in great detail. PEPFAR alone is responsible for at least 2 million people being alive today, who otherwise would not have been alive. To say nothing of the programs to combat malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and ever so much more. Despite its flaws, it was a force for good in the world.

So please, do tell me about the "failures" that would counterbalance that achievement, that would justify cutting the whole thing down to basically nothing for no appreciable benefit to your tax dollar. Or say that you don't actually want any foreign aid at all, because - as heartless and shortsighted as that is - at least it would be honest.

[MarkJawz]

And why was "saving" millions of lives so that the population of sub-Saharan Africa was able to increase by 1000% in the last 80 years a good thing? Is it in any better shape than it was? Or does it just have more people, and more subsistence burning, more climate change, and more poverty and misery?

[CountmontyC]

You make the assertion that the USA must forever be the world's benefactor? Why should the USA be solely responsible fir the rest of the world's problems? How much does Australia donate to the organizations that USAID funded? Unless the other first world nations are chipping in on the costs in a reasonable amount they have no right to say the USAID must continue.

[Sarcastr0]

You make the assertion that the USA must forever be the world's benefactor
CHARITY IS A GOOD THING.

MAGA is so full of whining selfish psychos.

[Commenter_XY]

Charity begins at home, doofus.

[Sarcastr0]

That is a saying against being charitable.

[Commenter_XY]

No, it is actually not. We can and must take care of American citizens who cannot care for themselves, or find themselves in desperate circumstance. It is charity closer to home.

Not that a piece of work like you does charity in any form.

[Bob from Ohio]

"CHARITY IS A GOOD THING."

It is a private virtue, not a governmental one.

[CountmontyC]

Using the government to give money to someone else is not charity and can more appropriately be called legalized theft.

Btw how much money is bloocow's home country of Australia giving away in foreign aid? I will save you the time of looking it up and it is a little over $3 billion in American dollars. Perhaps Autralia should be more charitable.

[Sarcastr0]

Giving money to the sick and hungry is a charitable act.

By precipitously halting that, we immiserated and killed a lot of people.

That's evil, and I don't fucking care about the niceties of whether you like foreign aid because of some virtue of selfishness pre-modern understanding of government.

And I don't care about Australia's aid, as that's not the issue, and tu quoque is a fallacy.

But since you seem petty and fallacious enough to care:
"Australia's official development assistance for the 2025-26 budget is set at approximately $5.1 billion, representing about 0.18%–0.19% of its Gross National Income or roughly 0.65% of the total federal budget."

"Historically, U.S. foreign assistance has consistently been less than 1% of its federal budget and generally falls below 0.33% of the U.S. GDP.
That does not include the USAID cuts. Data is not available for the spending for 2025, since it is not expected to be equal to the Congressionally appropriated amount."

[CountmontyC]

That $5.1 billion you cite is in Australian dollars. In American dollars it is closer to $3 billion and by your own link does not equal what the USA has given even as a percentage of GDP. I would also point out that the USA also is often the world's first responder when a natural disaster occurs sending in food, doctors, blankets, tents and ships to aid the victims. We also aid Europe, Australia, New Zealand and that amounts to at least tens of billions of dollars if not hundreds of billions of dollars and Japan by providing for their defense. And that doesn't even count the money we have given to the Ukraine which is estimated at over $175 billion in the last four years. The USA also donates approximately $35 billion in actual charity through private donations. The USA has been more than charitable over the years but the spigot needs to be closed until the USA gets it's finances in order.

[Sarcastr0]

Percentage of GDP doesn't really care about what currency you're in.

We're often the world's first responder? I question how well that holds, given the antipathetic nationalism the admin is into right now. But even if it is true, that's just picking and choosing types of death.

And NATO isn't foreign aid! Who did you think would by that bit of poop?

UKRAINE? As a US charitable case??? Do you read the fucking news?

Now you're just throwing around bullshit.

[CountmontyC]

So it would not be uncharitable to withdraw from NATO and stop funding Ukraine?

[Bob from Ohio]

I don't actually want any foreign aid at all.

Military aid to a few selected countries which helps our security is ok but civilian aid is mainly stolen by local dictators, warlords and NGO workers.

[MarkJawz]

These people are not our problem. In fact, Western aid has made things worse, as it's allowed the population of the third world to balloon way beyond what their people and societies are capable of caring for.

[Malika la Maize]

“But sometimes you need a dictator.”

[not guilty]

It turns out that the rank coward Jonathan Ross is married to a Filipina. Hmmm.

Here is a Substack post with some interesting observations about MAGAts who take foreign brides (including the MAGAt-in-chief): https://rachelandthecity.substack.com/p/the-ice-shooters-immigrant-wife-proves?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

[Kazinski]

You dated.any American women lately, especially the over 40's?

No thanks.

But I am a little confused, I thought immigrants are the backbone of the country.

Both my grandmother and Grandfather on my mothers side were children of immigrants, but they all came here legally.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The problem with Gen X women, i.e. those over 40, is it they were young in the era of the transition between it being socially acceptable for men to date women 20 years younger than they, and it not being so acceptable.

Hence, this created a shortage of datable women in their generation in that both men, their own age, and those 20 years old of them were concurrently seeking to date them. And that’s where their attitude came from, along with the fact that physical beauty is really skin deep, and they’ve now lost that.

Sex bots maybe mindless, but they’re not vindictive. It will be interesting to see if AI permits them to become manipulative.

[MarkJawz]

Yes. There are plenty of YouTube channels where you can watch women from 35-50 think that they are the prize because they have "established careers." Men don't care about that. Just like these women to which you refer wanted to date 45 year olds when they were 25, today's 45 year old men (at least the successful ones) don't want 45 year old women.

They just don't get it.

[Estragon]

Sexbots!

“Sex is gay”

-Alex Dwyer

[not guilty]

A hit dog will holler, Kazinski?

https://linguaholic.com/linguablog/a-hit-dog-will-holler/

[Commenter_XY]

Does that explain AWFL screeching?

[Sarcastr0]

Misogyny continues to grow on the right.

[Commenter_XY]

Try dating an AWFL, dumbass. I've heard the horror stories.

[Sarcastr0]

An affluent white female liberal?

I married one.

[Mr. Bumble]

Of course you would.
Isn't being a DINK in Whitelandia wonderful.
Don't forget to change the litter box.

[Sarcastr0]

Misogyny continues to grow on the right.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Read John Locke on the rational roots of prejudice.

[David Nieporent]

Locke thought prejudice was irrational.

[Malika la Maize]

Forget fossil fuels, incel anger is where it’s at for the right these days.

[Mr. Bumble]

So you find it upsetting when a white man marries a brown immigrant.
Interesting.

[not guilty]

Well, it's often said that immigrants will do jobs that Americans find distasteful. Two of them even married Donald Trump.

[Frank Drackman]

And 1 Chinese Chick had sex with Eric Balls-smell, talk about cruel and unusual.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I can’t imagine how dedicated to one’s country one would have to be to be a swallow. The Soviets had them, the ChiComs do now, how could you possibly believe in either country enough for that?

[Jerry B.]

Or possibly dedicated to keeping your family out of a labor camp.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I look at it a little bit differently ~~ I think Trump finally found a woman able to stand up to him. Actually two, his chief of staff is no slouch.

Different type of relationship, different circumstances, but I suspect that both women get their way — eventually — more often than you might think.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"So you find it upsetting when a white man marries a brown immigrant."

He's really pissed off that Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman.

[Bwaaah]

He resents them playing his card.

"We are the ones who like brown people, not them!"

[Frank Drackman]

Are you daft? Filipino women are hot as fuck.
Now they will cut your Dick off if you cheat on them, so be discrete. (See Bobbitt, Lorena)
Too bad Duelings gone out of style, I'd let you have choice of weapons Honda Pilot or Handgun, as my favorite DDS used to say,
"Experience is the Teacher of Fools"

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

Lorena, was an Ecuadorian immigrant.

[Frank Drackman]

So sad that you know that.

[Bwaaah]

In my house, they're all called "Mexicans."

That makes it easier to always be right.

(My wife still doesn't think it's funny.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

NoGood’s fatal mistake was that she grown up in a culture where one does not hit girls regardless how much they deserve it, and honestly didn’t believe the iceman would actually do anything.

She’s a product of her generation.

[Mr. Hook]

And how many women have you hit in your life?

[CountmontyC]

Are you opposed to miscgenezation? What a racist you are.

[not guilty]

WTF is "miscgenezation"?

[Estragon]

Hoo boy— when you posted this I knew some of the responses were going to bury the needle and boy, I was not disappointed.

It has been an interesting few months trying to tease out some thoughtful responses from the denizens here married to southeast Asian spouses to things like ICE enforcement and Kavanaugh stops. The blithe certainty that they themselves will be fine doesn’t make a lot of sense when you assume a relationship of love and mutual respect. However eventually a comment along the lines of “I’m not worried because she stays out of trouble” pops out— showing how dead on the money this article is. It is about dependence and control. Ed just shouts the quiet parts as the cherry on top.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not blind certainty, is the thing. It's observant, reasoned certainty.

[Estragon]

I appreciate the implicit agreement with what I said here. As I said: this piece is right on the money.

[Bob from Ohio]

"rank coward Jonathan Ross"

He served in Iraq for a year at the height of the insurgency. Combat machine gunner, his life at risk every day.

What is your military record, you putz.

[shawn_dude]

How many unarmed women did he shoot in the face in violation of military policy there, too?

[BrotherMovesOn]

I've done more for Israel than anybody frankly, if you want to be honest, nobody has done, they said it couldn't be done, they said "Sir, no one has ever ..." And I did it. I've done more for the Jews than, than, any President, even Jesus Christ, if you want to be honest about it ..., when you think about it, I've done more even than him. And the king of Saudi Arabia nominated me for the nobel prize, which was a great honor. He's a great, we get along great ... also likes to shoot a round of golf, he's pretty good, can't beat me though but heh 'cough' heh, Mohammed bin Salam is welcome to come to any of my amazing golf courses, seriously uh ... we're doing well with the golf courses, all around the world ... uhh ...and we are now the hottest country in the world. They say "Sir you are the hottest country in the world, can't we, can't we get in, and invest billions?"
So much money we're taking in with the tariffs ... and also, as well as I also won the FIFA Peace Prize, which I won, and was also a great honor.
But Norway didn't want to give it to me ... They are a very stupid country ... I didn't want it ... I only stopped 8 wars, which is like so many more wars stopped, I mean dead stopped, than anyone in history, they said it couldn't be done, they said "Sir, you can't do it - don't get involved!" And I solved all of them. They don't give me any credit for the amazing things I've done in the Congo. Switzerland, If it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German now. All we want is Iceland.
CNN reporter: How long is the deal for?
Trump: There is no time limit. It's forever.

[Frank Drackman]

They do mostly speak German in Switzerland. It's their own version, "Schweizdeutsch" but it's German.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Only in a third of the country, and there was a very serious concern around Basel that the Nazis would cross the border.

But translating Trump speak into English, I think that’s a reference to Davos.

[Malika la Maize]

Crass egotism, it’s his forte.

[Martinned]

Senile. But the Project 2025 types need him as a figurehead. They would't be able to roll out fascism in the US nearly as well with JD "punchable face" Vance as President. So they let him ramble. From their POV it's harmless.

[Joe_dallas]

Martinned 2 hours ago
"Senile. "

Another leftists that couldnt see the obvious in Biden, some how possesses the medical skills to diagnose Trump

[Malika la Maize]

It wouldn’t be a day ending in y without some jd whataboutism!

[Martinned]

You're the one who is suddenly no longer worried about having a senile president. From my POV Bide was at worst harmlessly senile. Trump, not so much.

(Though, for the record, from my POV I'd rather have Trump as US president than Vance. Vance is just as evil but probably less inept.)

[Bunny495]

"From my POV Bide was at worst harmlessly senile."

You can't say the same thing for his autopen.

[Magister]

Biden was of course not senile, despite dramatically inconsistent claims around here that he was a vegetable before he became president but defeated Donald Trump in 2020 debates. But he, his advisors and his autopen were collectively harmless compared to the current administration because they actually followed norms, court orders and laws.

[Kazinski]

Conservatives ruin everything, when you had a local council.come.up with a game to try go educate children to embrace the UK's brave new world, they completely ruin it;

"The game, titled Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism, allows players to choose between a young man or woman, both named Charlie, who has just started university and wants to socialize and make new friends. The player meets Amelia early in the story. She is introduced as a classmate and, according to the plot, is involved in political activism linked to right-wing movements. If the player selects the ‘wrong’ answers—joining Amelia and taking part in a protest against mass migration and in favour of traditional values—the game ends in a ‘Prevent referral’."

Now they've used AI to create an Amelia video, damn she's hot.

"The prompts were simple.

First, I told ⁦
@grok
⁩ to look at every single Amelia meme on the Internet.

Second, I said: “Become Amelia, then make a video and tell the British people what you want them to know.”

Here’s the surprising result."

https://x.com/Huff4Congress/status/2011978673331609945?s=20

There is even a German version of Maria.

[Mr. Bumble]

Put this up a few days ago but most people won't click on a link.
Compare this purple haired cutie and the message to the purple haired harpies of the left.

[Krayt]

That's downright frightening. The response? Curmudgeonly scolding and disreputable censorship and disreputable government re-edumication camps.

Jfc

[Bunny495]

I found a link to the Pathways game and actually started playing it. Talk about a steaming pile of dog shit and this was just getting through the introduction and reaching the point where the option of a male or female guide was offered. I can still remember Leasure Suit Larry and even back then I thought that style of game play was a steaming pile of dog shit back in the cave man days of computers. Does anyone really think todays kids would waste their time clicking the "NEXT" button tens of times to hear a preachy voice over. The game was even worse than the crap the Harris campaign wasted money on.

[Kazinski]

Do you think "playing" the game was voluntary?

[BrotherMovesOn]

Jeremiah, that's pretty ... creepy! Wow.

[darkknight9]

I have a way to temporarily mitigate any problems with Ice in Minneapolis. Between December and February all agents who come to serve must be directly from southern border state's Ice/cbp units right on the front line. That should give this community time to prepare their own defenses and arrangements because there's no effing way those good ol boys are going to be out and about right about now. Its -22F/-30C outside right now with an abysmally low windchill that will cause exposed skin to freeze in less than 5 minutes. If anything else we'll all be wearing masks so id'ing anyone is going to be a massive make your fingers hurt its so cold outside chore. 🙂

[Dr. Ed 2]

Doesn’t the MRAP come with a roof mounted machine gun that can be controlled from inside the vehicle? Inside the vehicle. — where it is warm….

[John F. Carr]

The agents have to get out of the vehicle to make the arrest. A roof mounted machine gun can't depress far enough to shoot people right next to a tall vehicle. And the vehicle is vulnerable to people standing next to it.

Remember, if you bring a molotov cocktail to a protest you have to register it as a destructive device ahead of time and pay a ripoff registration fee. It's like a 20,000% tax.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Gasoline won’t ignite at -30.
Not enough vapor, and the liquid doesn’t burn, only the vapor.

[BrotherMovesOn]

-22. That's cold. Napoleon's 1812 campaign also encountered extreme cold.
Won't somebody think of the ... agents?!

[Frank Drackman]

-22? that was a nice spring day on the Eastern Front. Why the Roosh-uns won. That Davos Circle Jerk could have been choreographed by Pooty-Poot's PR department.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

It was more combination of long German supply lines, and Hitler micromanagement that led to the Soviet victory.

One other thing it’s rhythm a carb and which I don’t include when I discussed this in high school classes — the holocaust helped the Soviets win. Every boxcar the Jews, going to the concentration camps was a box card not filled with winter clothes going to the Russian front, every train on the tracks going to the concentration camps was a train not carrying supplies to the east in front.

German rail capacity was limited, particularly when one went east through Poland (where the caps were) and the holocaust also was just significant allocation of personnel.

It’s interesting to ask if Hitler would have lost, have them not been a holocaust, had he not dedicated the rail resources, and the human resources to the holocaust?

[BrotherMovesOn]

How were their janitorial supply lines?
Wasn't that a bigger issue, in the end?

[BrotherMovesOn]

"when I discussed this in high school classes".
Maine, folks.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, I’ve taught US history in a Maine high school, i’m even a certified high school teacher, amongst a few other things.

[Frank Drackman]

You’re certainly Certifiable, and a Maine-iac.
One of the most miserable places I’ve been, and I’ve been to a bunch, was the Navy SERE(I’d tell you….) School, Classroom portion was at the old Brunswick NAS, in February, cold and dark, but the Ersatz(that means fake) POW Camp was on Rangley(spelling?) mountain, with the Guards in their surplus East Block Unis, Snow, you thought you were in a Gulag.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

I thought it was off the airline, a.k.a. main route nine, halfway between Brewer and Calais, in one of those towns that have no name. Or are they using the old emergency landing field from Tower Air Force Base? That’s out there too.

I hate to tell you, but the location really isn’t secret.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Relief is in sight. The forecast for the next week includes one day where the high will reach 9 F. That's like living in the Northern Rockies, except colder, because lower-elevation air is thicker and chills more efficiently.

[Martinned]

How much is that in Freedom Degrees?

[Michael P]

9 Freedom degrees -- can't you read? One of the things Making America Great is that it needs to get even colder before Freedom degrees turn negative -- and even so, there are more negative Freedom degrees than negative degrees Communism.

[Frank Drackman]

HT to one of the greatest Patrick Swayze roles (so many to choose from Bodhi in "Point Break", Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing" (I've been told I could have been his Stunt Double) Jed in "Red Dawn" (Wolverines!!!!!!) Jack in "Black Dog", and finally, "Dalton" in "Road House"
"You're Jack Smith?"
"Yes"
"I thought you'd be bigger"

Frank

[not guilty]

I still haven't seen any of the arrest warrants or supporting criminal complaints as to the disruptors of the protest that interrupted Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, but this comment from yesterday's open thread bears repeating:

I haven't yet seen the arrest warrant or supporting complaint. It seems to me, though, that 18 U.S.C. § 241, prohibiting conspiracy against rights protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, may be a bit of a stretch.

In order to satisfy the Due Process requirement of fair warning, prosecution under §§ 241 or 242 requires that the targeted federal right(s) have been identified at some level of specificity comparable to the civil litigation requirement under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (regarding individual capacity damages liability) that the right at issue be "clearly established" by the statute itself or by judicial decisions concerning such right(s). United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 270-271 (1997).

The parishioners of course have a First Amendment right not to be disturbed in their worship service by the government. They have a statutory right not to be disturbed by private persons by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 248(a)(2). The church and its members have a statutory right to be free of private persons' intentionally defacing, damaging, or destroying any religious real property or attempting by force or threat of force to do so, in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 247(a) and (b). The church and its members have a statutory right to be free of private persons' intentionally defacing, damaging, or destroying any religious real property or attempting to do so, because of the race, color, or ethnic characteristics of any individual associated with that religious property, or attempts to do so, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 247(c).

Do those federal rights extend to freedom from private persons' entering a building and verbally disrupting a worship service? (Separately from state law prohibitions against criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, etc.?) I could be persuaded of that, but at this point I am not sure.

[Frank Drackman]

Do you recycle your Drool??? Did your mom have any Kids that Lived, when you Fart does it improve your usual Body Odor??
What Don Lemonhead et al did was the same as Burning a Cross, is THAT protected??
(breaking first rule of Shyster-jism, asking a question I don't know the answer to, since I don't see many peoples publicly Burning Crosses, I'm guessing it isn't (protected)

Frank "Burn Arabs, not Crosses"

[Mr. Bumble]

"Frank "Burn Arabs, not Crosses"
Channeling Dr. Ed2?

[Frank Drackman]

No, a Johnny Carson “Carnac the Magnificent” bit
You know, how he would give the answer first, then read the question.
“Burn Arabs” (and Ed would repeat it and get a dirty look from Carnac)
“What we will do when we run out of Oil”
See, in 1979 we didn’t have 50million Mooselems here to blow shit up.

Frank

[Bwaaah]

What did the Progressive say about burning Arabs?

"Which way do I go on this one...Islamophobia or carbon emissions?"

[not guilty]

"What Don Lemonhead et al did was the same as Burning a Cross, is THAT protected??"

Actually, burning crosses can be protected, depending on the circumstances, or so a plurality of SCOTUS opined in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 365-366 (2003):

The act of burning a cross may mean that a person is engaging in constitutionally proscribable intimidation. But that same act may mean only that the person is engaged in core political speech. The prima facie evidence provision in this statute blurs the line between these two meanings of a burning cross. As interpreted by the jury instruction, the provision chills constitutionally protected political speech because of the possibility that the Commonwealth will prosecute-and potentially convict-somebody engaging only in lawful political speech at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.

As the history of cross burning indicates, a burning cross is not always intended to intimidate. Rather, sometimes the cross burning is a statement of ideology, a symbol of group solidarity. It is a ritual used at Klan gatherings, and it is used to represent the Klan itself. Thus, "[b]urning a cross at a political rally would almost certainly be protected expression." R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S., at 402, n.4 (White, J., concurring in judgment) (citing Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S., at 445). Cf. National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977) (per curiam). Indeed, occasionally a person who burns a cross does not intend to express either a statement of ideology or intimidation. Cross burnings have appeared in movies such as Mississippi Burning, and in plays such as the stage adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, burning a cross can be legal, if it's your own cross you're burning, someplace you're entitled to burn stuff.

Which has precisely nothing in common with the circumstances at hand.

[not guilty]

Brett, Frank Drackman made an insipid characterization of Don Lemon's conduct, but he also asked whether burning a cross is (First Amendment) protected.

I answered, citing relevant Supreme Court authority that the answer to his question is fact specific and dependent on circumstances.

Have you got a problem with that?

[Frank Drackman]

Talk about insipid…..

[Bwaaah]

I stopped reading when insipid wrote "insipid."

[Joe_dallas]

NG - What did Brett state that was wrong that inspired to you to correct him?

Best guess is that whiplash double standard thing you suffer from - since what he stated is correct.

[not guilty]

I didn't correct Brett. Like a blind hog finding an acorn, he is correct here.

[Josh R]

You missed Drackman's point and NG's reply to it.

Drackman claimed Lemon is just as guilty as someone who burns a cross and the First Amendment does not protect cross burning. NG correctly countered that to the contrary, cross burning is presumptively protected. It would be unprotected if the proscription is content-neutral or is a true threat. But cross burning to make a political statement (e.g., endorsing White Supremacy) is protected speech.

As such, Lemon's speech is equally protected, although he may be guilty of violating a content-neutral statute or a statute that outlaws true threats. In the latter case, a jury would have to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Lemon's speech was a true threat.

[Brett Bellmore]

It wouldn't have to be a true threat, you could probably get him on simple trespassing or obstructing exercise of a civil liberty.

Just like a cross burning wouldn't have to be a true threat to be prosecuted if you burned somebody else's cross, or did it where you weren't entitled to set fires.

[Josh R]

Yes, as I said, "It would be unprotected if the proscription is content-neutral or is a true threat." Your examples are the former.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The cross spreading case is RAV versus St. Paul, you think an attorney would know that.

[Josh R]

Both R.A.V. and Black dealt with cross burnings.

The former established the doctrine that a statute which proscribed unprotected speech based only on the target's race is an unconstitutional content-based prohibition because it allows the same unprotected speech for other reasons. As such, outlawing cross burnings that are true threats based only on the target's race is unconstitutional.

Black modified that doctrine to permit a statute to be content-based when the content discrimination is based solely on the reason the speech is unprotected. Thus, a statute which outlaws cross burnings that are true threats is permissible even though other true threats are not outlawed. The state is permitted to believe that cross burnings are worse true threats deserving of proscription.

[Dr. Ed 2]

True, I read RAV as permissible and lack as prohibitive so when one mentions permitting cross burning, I argue RAV is the relevant decision.

I also think that black opened a potential hornet nest because I know a lot of Jewish people who would love to put the expression from the river to the sea in the same category as cross burning, and there is justification for that.

[not guilty]

Black clarified R.A.V. I am aware of both cases. I deemed Black to be more responsive to Frank's question.

And neither has jack shit to do with Don Lemon's conduct, as Frank inanely posited.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I have a better solution, armed, men hanging out, bacon, wrapped scallops, and shooting everyone who doesn’t take one

[Frank Drackman]

Is there any problem where your solution isn’t shooting people’s?

[Mr. Bumble]

...or nuking or using snow plows.

[Bwaaah]

My father's solutions always began with, "First, you get yourself a big barge..."

[Dr. Ed 2]

I think it’s a good thing that Trump is suing both Chase Bank and the schmuck who is running it, what I don’t see is why he didn’t include the Sherman charge in that suit

Love him or hate him, I don’t think any of us want banks to be able to arbitrarily shut down lawful businesses that they don’t like.

The credit card companies are a holes, we badly deed, new government regulations, because there is no competition, it’s a closed cartel. Middle America hates the credit card industry and attacking them is a way for Trump to win the midterms.

[David Nieporent]

There are so many stupid things about this, including the fact that the lawsuit has nothing to do with credit cards, nobody hates credit cards, and I don't want banks (or any other businesses) to be forced to do business with people they don't want to do business with, and the reference to "Sherman" makes no legal sense whatsoever.

[Frank Drackman]

People say I'm a little slow, but can someone explain what Gavin New-Scum is talking about with this whole "Kneepad" thing?? I don't get it, Repubiclowns are scrubbing floors?, working on cars? Roller Blading?? I've worn Kneepads doing all 3, what's so funny???

Frank

[hobie]

Is Newsom's trolling causing you to get one of the first cases of NDS, Frankie?

[Malika la Maize]

Trump’s had that for years.

[hobie]

What I'm looking forward to is the hilarious renaming of all things labelled 'Trump', by President Newsome. Its really gonna grind his gears. I have a few suggestions for Newsome:

Christen a Trump naval laundry ship.
Get Planned Parenthood of Minnesota to rename: 'The Donald Trump Center for Pregnant Trannies'
Get FIFA to retroactively rename their prize the "Obama is the Greatest President Ever Prize'

Well, you see where I'm going with this.

[Frank Drackman]

Let me know when JFK goes back to being Idlewild

[Mr. Bumble]

When they bring back "Car 54 Where Are You".

[Voize of Reazon]

Has that traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights cleared up yet?

[Frank Drackman]

That child the Scout Troops short of must be in his 70’s.
And I don’t think Kruschef is coming.

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

They found the child; in bed with the scout master.

[Malika la Maize]

The National Institutes of Health said on Thursday it is ending support for all research that makes use of human fetal tissue, eliminating funding for projects both within and outside of the agency…

Human fetal tissue has been used to study cancer, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, birth defects, blindness and other disorders, and to test new treatments and develop vaccines. Drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, cystic fibrosis and hemophilia have been developed using human fetal tissue, and stem cells derived from the tissue are used to produce vaccines, including shots for rabies and hepatitis A…

“Human fetal tissue research has been indispensable to biomedical progress and remains the gold standard for revealing how human cells and organs form,” said Tyler Lamb, director of policy for the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

He added, “Denying N.I.H.-funded researchers access to human fetal tissue removes an irreplaceable scientific resource, slowing therapeutic innovation and delaying hope for patients and families living with devastating diseases.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/health/fetal-tissue-research-ban-trump-nih.html

[LexAquilia]

Save yourself the work of pretending you curated anything and just paste directly the bluesky link

[Malika la Maize]

lol, is this going to be your hobbyhorse for the next few days Lex/Harriman/Chuck? Pretty sad flailing. Trump publicly rejecting you anti-Semites really hurt, didn’t it?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fund it with your own money.

[Martinned]

That's going well

The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found.

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/22/white-house-ice-protest-arrest-altered-image

[Malika la Maize]

That’s just how he panders to his base.

[hobie]

To elicit maximum MAGA joy, the niggers need to be more niggery, and the misery more miserable.

I'm surprised the juveniles didn't add a sombrero and Trump in an AI jet dumping sewage on her. Gotta keep things classy, bro.

[Frank Drackman]

Ummm!!!!! you said the "N-word"!!!!!
I'm telling EV!
and it's supposed to be Capitalized and ends with an "A"
not an "ER"

Frank

[Mr. Bumble]

A word that's so hurtful and yet regularly used by the people it describes.

[Martinned]

It's almost as if context matters!

[Mr. Bumble]

What context? Rap lyrics? Trash talk?

[Bwaaah]

"A lot of Democrats these days talk about Republicans like white people used to talk about niggers."

[hobie]

Frankie, I've already told everyone here that I was officially given my N-Card two years.

Here's the story in case you forgot:

It was 10:00am on a work day, and several of my homies were on my porch smoking blunts. One of them calls out to his 'nigga' walking down the street. I exclaim, 'I want to say nigga too.' And one of the men says, 'Man, you a nigga now. You can say it as much as you want.

Now the ironic thing about it was a week later, and the same guy that gave me my N-Card was back on the porch and I say to him, 'What up my nigga'. And he explodes in anger, 'Don't be calling me nigga! I ain't no nigga!'

But, legally, I'm allowed to say it here

[Life of Brian]

I forget: did we ever do an over/under on EXACTLY how unlikely it is this pitch-perfect apocryphal tale actually happened?

[Dr. Ed 2]

.

[David Nieporent]

Hey, Trump could've also put the characters MS-13 on her picture; we should be thankful for his restraint.

[Sarcastr0]

https://www.startribune.com/ice-raids-minnesota/601546426

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that it costs an average of $18,245 for each person detained and deported from the United States."

As though all the white nationalism cropping up wasn't a clue, this was never about economics.

[Commenter_XY]

With all the stupid shit the fed govt pisses away money on, like USAID and trans-festivals in Africa, spending 18K to rid ourselves of a criminal illegal alien sounds like a much better use of taxpayer money to me.

We cannot deport illegal aliens fast enough.

[Malika la Maize]

It’s a shame Romney got pilloried for his “self-deport” approach because if we just had very serious fines on hiring those here illegally we would discourage most of it while not having to have a huge expansion of a federal LEO agency (along with such aggressive enforcement situations).

[Dr. Ed 2]

Not what we have the illegal underground economy we do, and not when we have the welfare fraud we do.

[Commenter_XY]

I have no problem prosecuting and imprisoning business owners, CEOs, Boards of Directors of companies that hire illegal aliens.

[shawn_dude]

Given that ICE is detaining and deporting people who came here legally and are going through the process correctly (see: detaining people attending asylum hearings and required immigration check-ins), we didn't really need a "huge expansion" of anything. If removing criminal immigrants was the goal, they had sufficient staff to accomplish that on Jan 20th 2025. This "huge expansion of federal LEO" is for some other purpose.

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter very much demonstrating that it's not about economics.

[Commenter_XY]

You're right, asshole. It is about enforcing the law.

[shawn_dude]

No one on the right gives a shit about enforcing the law if they aren't outraged at classified documents stored in a resort bathroom, Presidential pardons for people who beat police officers, the coverup of Trump's involvement with Epstein and the administration's contempt of Congress in ignoring the law requiring release of the Epstein documents, the ICE memo that instructs ICE agents to violate the 4th Amendment by breaking into private homes without a warrant, the wholesale graft by Trump absorbing bribes through his memecoin, etc. It's shameful hypocrisy.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It would’ve been a whole lot cheaper not to have let them in in the first place. There is a reason why I consider Obama to be the antichrist.

Add a reminder of what G Gordon Liddy said about the price of 9 mm ammunition.

[Magister]

I remember G. Gordon Liddy telling people to shoot federal agents in the head. I suppose that might be viewed as economizing on ammunition, although I doubt that was his motivation.

[hobie]

VISA commercial: "Price to export one brown person: $18,000. The look of joy on the MAGA face: priceless."

[Dr. Ed 2]

When you add up the public assistance charges everything from EBT to free healthcare, the burden they put on our schools because they don’t speak English, and don’t wanna learn it, the crime they bring with them and their involvement in drug trade and their propensity to rape and sexually assault females, $17,000 is a bargain.

Perhaps we should clean out our prisons and send them all to Canada. I’m sure Canada would love that….

[not guilty]

It's not a good thing, but a significant portion of the American economy depends on cheap labor from illegals. If prices for groceries, construction, overnight lodging and dining out increase significantly, that may have electoral consequences that Republicans don't want.

[Bob from Ohio]

"this was never about economics"

Duh. Its about protecting our country.

That cost seems very manageable.

[shawn_dude]

Yeah... from melanin.

[Riva]

Of course and it should also be noted that public schools, healthcare, welfare, emergency hospital, police and other public services consumed by illegals are free, as are the funerals and medical care of citizens victimized by violent illegals. And who could ever put a number on the suppression of wages? That’s impossible. It’s also obvious that there are no other impacts from illegals. It’s not like an illegal population could impact congressional apportionment.

[John 4]

Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post directed at Carney.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-says-withdrawing-canadas-invitation-020000457.html

[Malika la Maize]

Our domestic and foreign policy is being run on the principle of one man’s narcissism.

[Malika la Maize]

The National Football League Players Association has fired the veteran lawyer who sued the union and top executives last month, according to a court document filed in federal court this week.

Heather McPhee, the NFLPA's associate general counsel since 2009, revealed in a court filing that the union fired her on Dec. 30. The dismissal came less than two weeks after she sued the union, its former executive director, Lloyd Howell Jr., and two current senior executives for allegedly conspiring to keep her from cooperating with a yearlong federal criminal inquiry into union finances.

Last August, McPhee had been put on paid administrative leave for alleged workplace "misconduct" after she had repeatedly raised legal concerns about union leaders' decisions. She also alleged that executives had tried to keep her from testifying before a federal grand jury now investigating the NFLPA and the Major League Players Association.

In her federal lawsuit, filed last month, McPhee accused the current and former executives of illegal misconduct, sex discrimination, breach of fiduciary duty and retaliation as she prepared to become the star witness in the yearlong criminal inquiry being conducted by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47696265/nflpa-fires-long-attorney-raised-legal-concerns

[Michael P]

Money doesn't but happiness, but it makes a good down payment.

[Malika la Maize]

I think it was Charles Bukowski who said, in response to the assertion that poverty assists in creating great art, that he never wrote better than after having a really good steak.

[Moderation4ever]

My preference is the singer David Lee Roth who said, "money can't buy happiness but it can buy a big boat and you can sail right up next to happiness."

[Frank Drackman]

Or Wyatt Earp, “I’ve already got a guilty conscience, might as well have the money too”

[Bunny495]

Or Bob Dylan who said 'Money doesn't talk, it swears, obscenity who really cares". With a not to Melania who wore a coat saying "I don't care, do U"

[Sarcastr0]

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/us/politics/trump-rubio-student-speech.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

"The documents indicate that in nearly all instances, the arrests of the students were recommended based on their involvement in campus protests and public writings, activities that the Trump administration routinely equated to antisemitic hate speech and support for terrorist organizations. They also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech."

How anti-American.

[Malika la Maize]

But you see, non-citizens don’t have our rights, so there’s no problem with acting towards them in a way contrary to the principles behind those rights!

[Joe_dallas]

Its a NYT article - Why would you presume its an accurate reflection of the facts, given the NYT history of accuracy in their reporting?

[Sarcastr0]

Lazy Joe, what would convince you?

[Joe_dallas]

A news organization with a better track record of accurate reporting. NYT is a very poor record of accurate reporting associated with any political topic.

but you already know that - which means you dont care.

[hobie]

Heh. When the threat to Norway and Greenland broke last week it was headlines immediately in all MSM newspapers. Yet it took over 16 hours before Fox and National Review would run a story about it. I know it was 16 hours because all the hayseeds in the comments sections of both rags were bitching about it.

So it is understandable, Joe, that with MSM news sources (what with all the timely reporting and lack of culture war outrage saturation) not looking at all like the MAGA ones, you would naturally think something's amiss with them...and not the MAGA ones.

[bernard11]

NYT is a very poor record of accurate reporting associated with any political topic.

No, Joe. It doesn't. Yes, you can point to a few mistakes, but compared to the Trumpish slop people cite here all the time it's never even printed a typo.

[Malika la Maize]

It links to the documents Just Dumb.

[David Nieporent]

Its a NYT article - Why would you presume its an accurate reflection of the facts, given the NYT history of accuracy in their reporting?

Because of the NYT's history of accuracy in their reporting.

[Commenter_XY]

You mean, like Duranty? That kind of accuracy? 🙂

[bernard11]

Duranty. The RW's inevitable go-to when discussing how inaccurate the NYT's reporting is. It's one of their rituals, I guess.

The guy died almost 70 years ago, and the bad reporting came well before that.

But it's the best thing the fools can come up with.

[David Nieporent]

Duranty! Drink!

[Kazinski]

Might? Could?

At least they did it out in the open, and didn't get gag orders to keep anyone from knowing, they knew full well their views would be tested in court. That's the way our legal system should work.

Contrast that with Jack Smith when confronted with similar doubts about the constitutionallity of subpoenaing the phone records of Senators and Congressman, went ahead and did so anyway but did their best to cover their tracks by not informing the judges of who the targets were, and issuing gag orders to the phone carriers so they couldn't disclose the subpoenas. And even lying on the affidavits, claiming targets like speaker McCarthy were flight risks.

[Martinned]

The list of newly appointed King's Counsel in England and Wales is out: https://kcappointments.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Applicants-recommended-for-Appointment-2025.pdf

For more on the honourary KC's, see here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-kings-counsel-and-honorary-kings-counsel-welcomed-by-lord-chancellor--2

[Malika la Maize]

So the NYT has an interesting interview with Alex Honnold, a mountain climber who was featured in the film Free Solo and who is going to climb a 101 story skyscraper in Taiwan on an upcoming Netflix show. He’s got a wife and two small kids and it raises some interesting questions about the morality of engaging in death-defying stunts when you have that:

Honnold: Honestly, I don’t think the calculus has changed that much. Because I never wanted to die. Which is why I put so much effort into the preparation and training. I mean, implicit in the question is that I have more to live for, and, yeah, I have more to live for, and I’m still doing my very best to not die.

NYT: But it’s not just that you have more to live for. It’s that your loss would be felt in a deep way for more than just Sanni.

Honnold: Kind of. I mean, baby Alice wouldn’t remember. Baby June probably wouldn’t remember. She’ll be 4 in another month. It’d be felt, and obviously it’d be super hard for Sanni, but they’d be well provided for. I don’t feel like I’d be leaving them in the lurch. They wouldn’t even necessarily be traumatized their whole lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/us/alex-honnold-netflix-taipei.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

[Estragon]

While I have not personally met Alex (though my sister has) I have met one or two other elite mountain climbers, including one of the filmmakers involved here and in Free Solo.

I can state unequivocally that this right here:

“Because I never wanted to die”

That is some BS. He might not be able to admit it to himself but all of these guys want to die on the mountain. They’re addicted to the psychological high, and keep pushing for ever greater thrills— unclimbed peaks in Pakistan, mountaineering in Antarctica, climbing El Cap without a rope, and now this ridiculous skyscraper thing. Not one of these dudes envision hanging it up, growing old, dying in bed surrounded by loved ones and their adult kids. Just look at the quote! He’s already fantasizing about dying and telling himself the kids will be just fine!

[hobie]

That sounds about right.

[Kazinski]

It also sounds suspiciously like someone who goes to participate in a civil disturbance armed.

[Commenter_XY]

Why do you climb, E? What is your motivation?

[Estragon]

Climb the things Honnold climbs? I don’t.

[Mr. Bumble]

People do all kinds of crazy shit for thrills. That's fine if it works for them. What I don't understand is Honnold doing this climb without safety equipment.

[Bunny495]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrl17DKeCGo

[Absaroka]

Here's a news conference by some MN police chiefs. It's long, so here is a tl;dr:

first 5 min: these folks don't oppose immigration enforcement, and have happily worked with ICE for years. But what is happening now is different. One indicator is that they have had off-duty officers stopped by ICE. And those encounters haven't gone well, because US citizens don't usually carry proof of legal residence, which makes it hard to prove you shouldn't be arrested as an illegal immigrant. Rifles were pointed at officers from the beginning of the stop. Phones knocked out of hands. Statistically speaking, if this is happening to off duty officers, it is happening to ordinary citizens, and the chiefs are getting reports of that.

And what is behind this? At 20 some minutes in one of the chiefs says when he calls ICE supervisors he has known for years and asks 'what was up with the stop at 4th and Main at 2PM yesterday' the answer he gets is 'we don't know ... they have brought in teams from all over and no ones knows who is doing what'. No one is wearing ID or identifying themselves to the stopped off-duty officers, so there is no way to follow up on misbehavior during a stop'.

IIUC ICE has more than doubled in size in the last year. When you go on a hiring binge like that, you are going to get the bottom of the barrel. Training has been shortened, and there are rumors of arrest quotas. You don't have to oppose enforcement to see how that goes off the rails. DMN posted yesterday that one of the targets of a raid where a door was taken with a battering ram was ... currently in prison.

This is just incompetence writ large.

[Sarcastr0]

This doesn't seem like incompetence; the scale of whose rights are being flagrantly disregarded looks a lot more like intentional collective punishment at this point.

I suppose thinking this would cow other cities into compliance is a misunderstanding of human nature that could be seen as incompetent.

[David Nieporent]

I think it's fair to say that it's a combination of malice and incompetence.

[Sarcastr0]

If the admin's strategic goal was to break public resistance to immigration enforcement activities, it was a tactical mistake to go to the Twin Cities.

[shawn_dude]

I don't think the point of this is to force compliance. I think the point of this is to enrage the public and get them mad enough to hold mass protests and build a pretext for invoking the insurrection act and martial law.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I wonder what the attitude of the off-duty officers was.

If they had said, I’m a citizen. I was born in wherever and I’ll be happy to show you my drivers license if you’d like to see it, I think things would have gone differently.

[Kazinski]

My wife is an immigrant, with a heavy accent, and she doesn't carry any ID other than a drivers license when she goes out.

But she isn't worried at all because she lives in a state where you can't get a license without proof of legal presence, ICE knows that. States that issue drivers licenses devalue the worth of their licenses to their own citizens.

[SRG2]

Trump sues 'woke' JP Morgan for $5bn over debanking

Donald Trump is suing JP Morgan and its chief executive Jamie Dimon for $5bn (£3.7bn) over claims it debanked him. The US President has accused the Wall Street giant of unfairly closing his personal bank account and those of his businesses for “woke” reasons in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Obviously frivolous. I hope JPM countersue. Discovery might be interesting. As might JPM's defence.

[Martinned]

Hopefully Jamie Dimon will learn his lesson and stop being so woke...

[Dr. Ed 2]

Frivolous my arse!

They were legal hospitality, corporations doing business just like the Marriott corporation, which happens to be run by Mormons. What if somebody who didn’t like Mormons — and there are such people — decided to die-bank the Marriott Corporation, merely for being owned by Mormons.

JPM’s defense WILL be interesting because they’re already essentially saying that federal regulators made them do it, and my guess is they probably can produce written documentation to support that.

Question — and I’m serious here — can JPM implead or whatever it’s called to bring in the United States government as a codefendant here and argue that the wrong was actually done by the US government not JPM?

On a related issue, as a defense tactic, could JPM argue a color of law violation on behalf of Trump, arguing that JPM was merely caught in the middle with no recourse?

But the large question is that we need to either a: strictly enforce the Sherman act and break up our big banks, or b: consider them to be natural monopolies, which regulate like electric and gas companies.

Either way, it really has nothing to do with Trump. They could’ve done the same thing to Bernie Sanders or Howard Dean it’s just that those men wouldn’t have had the financial resources to sue.

[jb]

"What if somebody who didn’t like Mormons — and there are such people — decided to die-bank the Marriott Corporation, merely for being owned by Mormons."

That would probably be illegal, because religion is a protected class in lots of anti-discrimination laws.

Usually being an asshole and trying to undo a valid election isn't protected in the same way.

[David Nieporent]

Question — and I’m serious here — can JPM implead or whatever it’s called to bring in the United States government as a codefendant here and argue that the wrong was actually done by the US government not JPM?

No. Also, what wrong?

But the large question is that we need to either a: strictly enforce the Sherman act and break up our big banks, or b: consider them to be natural monopolies, which regulate like electric and gas companies.

Once again, why on earth are you bringing up the Sherman Act? Who do you think JPM conspired with?

[bernard11]

we need to either a: strictly enforce the Sherman act and break up our big banks, or b: consider them to be natural monopolies,

The big banks are not natural monopolies, or monopolies at all. Within a short walk from my home are branches of Chase, Santander, and BankAmerica, as well as of several smaller, regional banks.

When I've sought credit for businesses I've typically had interest from 2-3 banks, offering significantly different terms.

[Voize of Reazon]

You can read the complaint here.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Reading the complaint, it looks like it has merit, possible as a breach of contract.

If the stuff that colleges put in their literature is considered a contract with students then the ethical principles the banks put in theirs argue could be considered a contract with their customers.

I predict this is gonna get very interesting.

[David Nieporent]

Reading the complaint, it looks like it has merit, possible as a breach of contract.

Reading the complaint would reveal that there isn't any claim for breach of contract. (And I mean that literally; it's not that I think such an accusation would be frivolous, but that the complaint does not assert this.)

[David Nieporent]

Obviously frivolous. I hope JPM countersue. Discovery might be interesting. As might JPM's defence.

Countersue for what? Him being a terrible human being? If that were a viable claim JPM would have to get in line behind the entire rest of humanity in suing Trump.

[SRG2]

If Trump can file a frivolous lawsuit, JPM can assuredly countersue on frivolous grounds. And possibly for defamation.

[Martinned]

That's going well...

A study on the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok embedded on X estimates it created 3 million sexualized images in 11 days in January, including 23,000 of children.
(...)
The study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed a sample of 20,000 posts on Grok's X handle, out of a total of 4.6 million in an 11 day period. It found that 65 percent of the sample was sexualized images and 0.5 percent were likely depicting children.

https://www.politico.eu/article/grok-x-3-million-sexual-deepfake-11-days/

https://counterhate.com/research/grok-floods-x-with-sexualized-images/

[Mr. Bumble]

"Byte Dance has signed off on an agreement to sell US Tik Tok to a group of American and UAE investors."
But will anything really change.
ByteDance still controls the algorithm.

[Krayt]

I thought it was the potential hidden spying.

[Sarcastr0]

"BOVINO: With those inner city residents, what we're seeing is fantastic public support. Here in Minneapolis a lot of thumbs up and a lot of 'good jobs.' Now, a lot of it is under their breath because they are afraid of that 5 or 10% of agitators are rioters"

The admin has rightfully attained contempt for MAGA that they will believe anything, and just don't even try anymore.

[Malika la Maize]

Authorities say Moore entered a woman's apartment Dec. 10 and blamed her for him losing his job that day, then grabbed butter knives and kitchen scissors and threatened to kill himself…

When the charges were filed, Washtenaw County assistant prosecutor Kati Rezmierski quoted Moore as telling the woman, "My blood is on your hands."

Michaels, who spoke outside the courthouse after the status conference, took issue with that account, saying statements from the staff member were misleading and "full of omissions."

"The arrest should be quashed, meaning the arrest is not valid, and any evidence taken or received as a result of that arrest should be quashed and suppressed," Michaels said. "We are asking that the complaint be dismissed. It's our belief ... that without these misleading statements and omissions, there would be no probable cause for these charges."

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47694476/ex-michigan-football-coach-sherrone-moore-returns-court

[Estragon]

Sometimes, the “worst of the worst” — the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s catchphrase for undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records — are exactly where one would expect: prison.

That was the case for Lue Moua, a 52-year-old Laotian man who DHS officials say they were looking for when they instead arrested an elderly U.S. citizen last weekend.

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/man-ice-sought-in-humiliating-arrest-of-us-citizen-has-been-in-prison-since-2024/

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, if the state authorities had the courtesy of telling ice where he was, none of this would have had to happen.

I don’t much care what the law says, I’d like to see some lawfare to harass the schmucks at the state level who refused to cooperate with their own government. I’d like to see a few governors in jail, if necessary on fabricated charges like they tried with Trump.

Fair’s fair……

[Estragon]

“the courtesy of telling ice where he was”

https://coms.doc.state.mn.us/publicviewer/

[Estragon]

“I don’t much care what the law says”

Have you considered posting somewhere other than an (ostensibly) legal blog?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Frivolous lawsuit my arse!

They were legal hospitality corporations doing business just like the Marriott corporation, which happens to be run by Mormons. What if somebody who didn’t like Mormons — and there are such people — decided to die-bank the Marriott Corporation, merely for being owned by Mormons.

JPM’s defense WILL be interesting because they’re already essentially saying that federal regulators made them do it, and my guess is they probably can produce written documentation to support that.

Question — and I’m serious here — can JPM implead or whatever it’s called to bring in the United States government as a codefendant here and argue that the wrong was actually done by the US government not JPM?

On a related issue, as a defense tactic, could JPM argue a color of law violation on behalf of Trump, arguing that JPM was merely caught in the middle with no recourse?

But the large question is that we need to either a: strictly enforce the Sherman act and break up our big banks, or b: consider them to be natural monopolies, which regulate like electric and gas companies.

Either way, it really has nothing to do with Trump. They could’ve done the same thing to Bernie Sanders or Howard Dean it’s just that those men wouldn’t have had the financial resources to sue.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Let me rephrase that.

I care exactly as much as what the law actually says as do those on the left.

When the Never Trumpers start admitting that they are attempting to enforce laws that don’t exist, I will stop arguing that my side should do the same thing. As a late justice Scalia put it, it’s not fair to ask one side to follow Marcus de Queensbury rules while the other side fights freeform.

I’d love to return to a society where law meant what it said, but where a long way from that right now.

[Estragon]

“Let me rephrase”

No need. You just said the exact same thing with more words.

“Someone else did something bad” is exactly what a 12 year old would say. Would you accept that as an excuse from your child? Actually— never mind, maybe don’t answer that one.

“Marcus”

I’m beginning to think this curious habit of yours is intentional.

[David Nieporent]

Would you accept that as an excuse from your child?

A woman would have to be willing to let Dr. Ed near her for him to have a child.

[not guilty]

"Have you considered posting somewhere other than an (ostensibly) legal blog?"

Ed sometimes says the quiet part out loud.

[Estragon]

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/17/ice-takes-credit-for-some-criminals-that-were-already-in-minnesota-prisons

[John F. Carr]

Bloomberg Law reports the en banc Fifth Circuit sounds supportive of displaying the Ten Commandments in schools. The conservative judges think Stone v. Graham is no longer good law. The lawyer for the opponents of the Ten Commandments displays argued that the case is binding precedent until explicitly overruled.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/full-fifth-circuit-wary-of-ten-commandments-laws-challengers

[bernard11]

From the linked article:

Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan also pressed Youngwood on what historical examples exist to show that the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools was like the establishment of religion, as the Supreme Court’s new test for Establishment Clause cases asks courts to weigh history as part of the analysis.

Youngwood’s answers, including that he can’t present a historical analogy of something existing in public schools from a time when public schools didn’t exist, didn’t sit well with Duncan. “It’s your burden to do that,” Duncan said.

Another genius Trump judge.

[John F. Carr]

Top politicians in Maryland propose a "Predatory Pricing Act". They have visions of electronic price signs on grocery store shelves raising prices when Democrats walk by and lowering prices when Repubicans walk by. This isn't happening but in their heads it might happen. So they want to do two things.

1. Prohibit prices for "essential goods" from changing more than once per day.
2. Ban use of individualized surveillance data in pricing.

Some states have laws requiring that the price scanned at the register match the price on the shelf. These laws effectively make individualized pricing impossible and limit the frequency of price changes.

If I owned a grocery store in Maryland I would abuse loyalty cards instead. The government isn't going to stop me from offering discounts, is it?

https://southernmarylandchronicle.com/2026/01/21/no-intraday-grocery-price-changes-proposed/

[Dr. Ed 2]

If you think about it, this is pretty much the same issue as Trump V. JPM.

Should companies be required to treat all of their customers equally what can they pick and choose whom they will do business with, and this goes back to the British common law of the public house.

What John is missing here is that if the customer is known, and would be by facial recognition technology, the price he is charged will match the price which the electronic display showed him. And I, being a nice white guy, would be both shown and charged a cheaper price because white guys don’t shoplift — which is the rationale behind the Maryland law.

All the cash register knows is the SKU number it read off the barcode. What happens now is the store computer tells the register what that SKU stand for and what to charge for it. Once you know who the customer is, you can use a mathematical percentage arrangement to increase or decrease the price charged. You can even vary this so that common items, e.g. a gallon of milk comes out at the same price for everyone so that most people don’t even notice what you’re doing.

Of course, the low only says that the shelf price is supposed to to match register price, not that it does,and if a customer really makes a fuss about it, they might, maybe, give the customer the item for free as required by law. More often they’ll accuse the customer of attempting to shoplift.

And you know those price scanning machines that is supposed to print a price ticket for you? Try to find one that’s actually working, let alone one that actually prints a sticker.

[Bored Lawyer]

"individualized surveillance data in pricing"

Enlighten us. What's that?

[John F. Carr]

The governor has not enlightened me. His press release says

The change to electronic shelf labels creates the potential for “dynamic pricing,” where the cost of basic household goods could surge based on the time of day, the weather, or granular consumer data—allowing stores to calibrate price increases to extract maximum profits on the backs of consumers.

https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/Governor-Moore-Announces-Legislation-to-Protect-Marylanders’-Pocketbooks,-Data-Privacy-at-the-Grocery-Store.aspx

[John F. Carr]

The latest anti-Trump slogan is "we will be ungovernable". This is a bad slogan because of two laws.

A seditious conspiracy is one that aims "by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States". 18 USC 2384.

Without the force element, becoming ungovernable is grounds for the President to send in the military or National Guard. 10 USC 252.

If we had a repeat of Kent State -- panicked soldiers shooting civilians, at least some of whom are clearly innocent bystanders -- would our divided country care?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I’m not so certain it cared after Kent State.

Remember that Kent State was in a rural, conservative portion of Ohio. I believe it initially had been a normal school.

After the shooting, townies would drive by each other with their left hands out the window and four fingers extended, meaning “ we at least got four of them.”

A better example, often overlooked, was the shootings at then-all black Jackson State. Talk about a picture telling a thousand words, the morning-after picture of the dorm is priceless, the cops shot the bleep out of it.

The whole thing would’ve been ignored had it not occurred about the same time as Kent State, and get swept up into the same presidential investigation. What really surprised me was how objective the commissions report was, particularly since most of people writing were high-level, military officers, both active and retired.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Remember that the Rozzi building had been burned down at Kent State the night before and they have been other rioting as well.

I think the response would been different if that hadn’t happened.

That’s why I say the people attacking iceman make it far more likely that the iceman are gonna shoot in any particular situation.

[Commenter_XY]

If we had a repeat of Kent State -- panicked soldiers shooting civilians, at least some of whom are clearly innocent bystanders -- would our divided country care?

Answer: Yes, very much so.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Did our country care about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings#/media/File:Old-Glory-Jackson-State-May-1970.jpg

For the record, I hope it doesn’t happen.

That said, there’s nothing more the radical left can do that. It isn’t already doing, it wouldn’t get them any more upset than they already are. On the other hand growing question the right would consider it legitimate and ask why they didn’t shoot more of them.

And in the middle that would be ceased to hold.

The left really is playing with fire because they aren’t anticipating the consequences of what happens when the right adopts their tactics. Not just their violence, but they vote fraud, their lawfare, and their abuse of NGO’s. A lot of people think I’m advocating a third Civil War no, I just fear it’s increasingly becoming inevitable.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Did our country care about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings#/media/File:Old-Glory-Jackson-State-May-1970.jpg

For the record, I hope it doesn’t happen.

That said, there’s nothing more the radical left can do that. It isn’t already doing, it wouldn’t get them any more upset than they already are. On the other hand growing question the right would consider it legitimate and ask why they didn’t shoot more of them.

And in the middle that would cease to hold.

The left really is playing with fire because they aren’t anticipating the consequences of what happens when the right adopts their tactics. Not just their violence, but they vote fraud, their lawfare, and their abuse of NGO’s. A lot of people think I’m advocating a third Civil War no, I just fear it’s inevitable.

[shawn_dude]

Then why doesn't half the country care about ICE entering homes without a warrant to detain non-white US citizens? Or that ICE is detaining non-white, off-duty police officers and demanding their papers? Or their continued detention of native Americans?

Show me the outrage on FOX or other right-wing news outlets regarding these detentions or the leaked ICE memo claiming agents don't need a judicial warrant to invade a private home.

[John F. Carr]

The 1776 Project Foundation sued Los Angeles over racial discrimination in schools. The minority group - non-Hispanic whites - has class sizes up to 35 students while favored groups are capped at 25 students and have preferential admission to magnet schools.

This situation is a legacy of anti-discrimination lawsuits from the 1970s. The articles I read do not make it clear if discrimination against non-Hispanic whites is required by court order.

https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-schools-lawsuit-discrimination-1776-project-da1c0137c236af59d396a675021524f5
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/los-angeles-schools-desegregation-lawsuit.html

[Mr. Bumble]

Eight days and counting until the next government shutdown.

[grb]

The Washington Commanders and architects HKS released the first renderings of the proposed stadium on the site where RFK sits now. This interests me because I lived in the neighborhood when the Ex & myself were in DC. To my eye, the scheme looks agreeable simple and basic. Scroll to the bottom of the HKS attachment and you see the more flashy solution for the Rams & Chargers’ home. Nothing wrong with that, but I think basic works best in this setting, particularly because the stadium is meant to evoke RFK in shaping and mass.

One interesting thing is all the satellite buildings surrounding it. I suspect they’re undefined visual filler but if not, the plan must involve channeling all the stadium parking to underground parking below office buildings. But would that work in practice?

The HKS verbiage is funny in relentlessly pounding the spin this facility will be used for every kind of event at all times of the year. That’s a good 80% horseshit, but they are trying to sell a product.

Since we live in a political world, one final point: Meet National Capital Planning Commission chairman Will Scharf, a Trump appointee. Since even architecture is grounds for braindead culture war nonsense, he proposed the stadium be built with “classical, neoclassical elements”. I’m guessing he envisions a Rome Colosseum, bloated 10-12X its size. That ancient building was 258K sqft; SoFi (Rams-Chargers) is 3.1million.

https://www.hksinc.com/our-news/articles/hks-named-lead-architect-for-washington-commanders-new-world-class-stadium/

https://www.dezeen.com/2026/01/15/washington-commanders-stadium-hks-nfl/

[Dr. Ed 2]

In our Post-9-11 World, I think underground public parking is an inherently bad idea, particularly parking under buildings.

Do not forget the first attempt to destroy the world trade centers was the 1993 truck bomb in the underground parking garage, and if the terrorists had been able to park where they were supposed to (memory is they couldn’t because there was an parked vehicle there), people who understand such things have said it is quite likely that one of the towers would’ve been toppled into the other, bringing them both down.

It’s one thing for the FBI have employee parking under its building, they’ve already done background checks on their employees, or at least hopefully they have. It’s somewhat more risky to have private sector corporate employees parking under their building, but still the corporation knows who’s working for it, particularly on the upper headquarters level.

But random football fans?

You have absolutely no idea who these people are! I know tickets aren’t cheap, but anybody with a chunk of change can buy one, for cash, and park there. KaBooom…….

Besides, how would you ever do tailgating underground? All the charcoal grills are big enough hazard in above ground parking lots.

[grb]

For God's sake, Ed, get a grip! Because of one terrorist attack thirty years ago, we should ban underground parking? For your information, a majority of all new major office buildings in DC have parking underneath. I know that because I worked on several. The major problem with them is transitioning from a column grid that favors parking to one that works with office space. I still remember tilting concrete columns at crazy angles to get from Point A to B.

There have been terrorist attacks on aircraft. Ban planes? There have been terrorist attacks at festivals. Ban celebrations? You need to transition to a mentality not looking for an excuse to fear.

[David Nieporent]

Because of one terrorist attack thirty years ago, we should ban underground parking?

Correction: because of one failed terrorist attack thirty years ago.

To be fair, Dr. Ed is not the only dumbass on issues like this. Because of one failed plot we had to take off our shoes, and because of a different one we had to put liquids in small bottles.

[grb]

My big problem recently was belts. Being at the low-end of my weight cycle, I had to frantically clutch my pants to keep them from dropping to my ankles. And either because of the humor in this or my general disreputable appearance, airport security insisted on doing several chem-swipes for explosives in my carry-on while I stood a-clutching.

Of course this was at Heathrow, the airport I loath over all others.

[Dr. Ed 2]

They sell web belts with plastic buckles that will not set off metal detector. I found them at the Army Navy store. You probably can find them on the Internet. A court security officer told me he sees a lot of them.

Think military or Boy Scout belt without the brass buckle, they’re fully adjustable.

[grb]

Beating that dead horse : The Washington Wizards play in a downtown arena. Many visitors come by Metro, as will be the case with the Commander's new home - The Stadium-Armory station being nearby. But a massive percent of Wizard fans park in the downtown garages and have done so for - yes - about thirty years.

Your thoughts on that?

[Dr. Ed 2]

We haven’t had a plane hijacked in 24 years, why do we have to deal with all of this real ID and TSA bullshit?

For that matter, other than September 11, we haven’t had a plane hijack in the United States since Castro agreed to start sending them back and that was like 72 or 73. So four planes hijacked just in 50 years that’s not much.

[Bored Lawyer]

Here is a question by a puzzled Gen-X-er.

It has become the fashion lately in emails and websites to identify the person's preferred pronouns. He/him, she/her, they/them, etc. I get that's part of the movement to make gender fluid.

Question is, why two pronouns, subjective and objective cases? I would think it is obvious that someone who prefers "he" also prefers "him." Same for she/her and they/them.

Are there people who want different pronouns for subjective and objective cases? He/her or she/him? Why?

[Magister]

Perhaps because it's awkward to use only one, such as "My pronouns are he" or "My pronoun is he"? I think originally people used the longer he/him/his, so it's perhaps just a shortening from that and maybe will eventually be shortened again. I have seen people use different pronouns ("she/them") to indicate that they are comfortable with either. And it works out better if thon is using nontraditional pronouns where people might not know what the objective or possessive form would be.

[Brett Bellmore]

Since you're already dealing with a case where the person isn't using standard English you can't just assume that their preferred subjective and objective pronouns match. You don't know how much of English grammar they've rejected.

[jb]

For the common ones like he/him it's fairly redundant. Some people prefer pretty weird pronouns that most people aren't familiar with, though, so in those cases having both is more useful.

I have seen a small number of people who prefer mismatching pronouns like she/them. That seems a bit confusing to me; I think I'd have a harder time consistently getting it right.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Damn, you’re right…..

I’ve been misreading the second one as possessive, i.e.”he, his” — and been responding with “Dr., Doctor’s” — which also has the advantage of being gender neutral, which really pisses them off.

As to those who like to refer to themselves with a plural, I like to point out that such is a symptom of schizophrenia…

[David Nieporent]

As to those who like to refer to themselves with a plural, I like to point out that such is a symptom of schizophrenia…

I mean, it isn't, but as long as you're being gratuitously insulting, why not be gratuitously wrong, too? (Although query whether something that one has an irresistable compulsion to be can really be characterized as gratuitous.)

[Commenter_XY]

Clearly, they cannot figure out what they are, BL. 😉

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Stephen Colbert referenced this. I thought these people were wary of fairness-type doctrines:

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=153940

Also on the free speech front, we have an academic targeted for signing a brief in support of trans people:

https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/emily-suski-arkansas-law-deanship/

[John F. Carr]

The FCC is warning broadcasters that its 2006 decision allowing Jay Leno's interview segment to be considered legitimate news does not mean that any of the similar late night programs in 2026 get to call themselves news. This matters because a news interview with a candidate for office does not trigger "equal time" rules while an entertainment interview with a candidate for office does.

[Dr. Ed 2]

IT’S ABOUT TIME ! ! !

How about Ronald Sullivan?

He was a mere professor at Harvard Law, and he lost his residence life position at Winship house for the offense of serving on the defense team of Harvey Weinstein.

Yes, a clinical professor and one of the premier defense attorneys in the country joined a defense team. The students protested and Harvard caved. Heaven forbid that a man accused of a crime have the benefit of council….

Likewise, what about the blacklisting of those attorneys whose only offense was to defend a client named Donald Trump? Again, what have I happened to that part about “right to council“?

Would you be defending this woman if she submitted a brief on the other side of this case and lost her job at, say, the University of Maine School of Law, where she almost inevitably would?

[David Nieporent]

Your logic and opinions are dumb enough, but could you at least try to get something right? It's counsel, not council.

I have no idea what "blacklisting" of Trump's attorneys you are referring to, though.

[grb]

So Davos is over. A smug Trump made a preening spectacle while giving an extra, extra embarrassing speech. In it, he repeatedly confused Iceland & Greenland, but no biggie: His barbie doll spokewoman simply said it didn't happen, video be damned.

The big news was Trump had "won" on Greenland. The big news the next day was that "win" only existed in his diseased mind. Apparently the other world leaders simply said soothing meaningless words, the way you might speak to a ranting homeless person on the street while hurrying by.

Prime Minister Carney said meanie things about Trump. Therefore our Terrible-Two President disinvited Canada from his "Board of Peace". Boy, didn't that idea turn into a buffoonish shitshow fast! I'm still waiting to hear North Korea's been invited.

I'm guessing even Trump knows everyone else in NATO sees him as mentally-ill clown. Why else the childish insults about our allies in Afghanistan?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-nato-allies-disgusted-and-outraged-over-remarks-afghanistan-war/

[Dr. Ed 2]

What you are missing is the extent to which JD Vance is stepping into a leadership role. Trump, like Andrew Jackson, was the instigator that got the movement going and he needed to be a loose cannon.

But what you’re now seeing is a JD Vance, who is a calmer and more steady version of MAGA. It’s not what Trump thinks he won. It’s gonna be what JD Vance thinks WE won that matters, and I think it’s more than media is telling us.

If we can build anything we want to anywhere in that country, does that essentially mean we own it??

[grb]

1. Trump is president. Vance has a job, but it isn't worth a bucket of warm spit.

2. Vance is a joke. When I note he's a whore without principles who'll say anything for power, you'll reply that's just like Trump. But the latter has skills at being a ethics-free huckster conman; Vance doesn't. His political career will never survive the stench of Trump's presidency. He sold away his soul for a four-year nothing job.

3. If we didn't "win" (and we didn't) then what Vance thinks doesn't matter in the slightest.

4. Given we already had almost unlimited right to establish military bases on Greenland by treaty, having almost unlimited right to establish military bases on Greenland today isn't a "win".

5. Still, this Vance shtick tells me another cultist is looking for an off-ramp from the Trump nonstop embarrassment. That's good.

[bernard11]

Given we already had almost unlimited right to establish military bases on Greenland by treaty, having almost unlimited right to establish military bases on Greenland today isn't a "win".

Of course, that's the trick. Trump will endlessly claim that he "won" that marvelous, unprecedented in world history, concession by his skillful negotiation. No one else could have done it.

And the cultists will believe it, and repeat it.

[David Nieporent]

It's kind of like how he changed the name of NAFTA and claimed to have renegotiated it.

[apedad]

DAVID MARCUS: New York Dems pull dirty districting trick as 'aw shucks' Indiana GOP folds

New York City has only one Republican member of Congress, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Staten Island, the city's only red borough, and parts of South Brooklyn that are purple. An absurd and obviously partisan judicial ruling on Wednesday has put the seat at risk.

The judge said there was strong evidence of a "racially polarized voting bloc," as well as "a history of discrimination that impacts current day political participation and representation," and "that racial appeals are still made in political campaigns today."

The problem for Republican voters, who would love a fair shake, is that states like Indiana still won’t respond. As usual, Dems are united and playing fast-break basketball, while the GOP is taking the "high road" and playing as the Washington Generals.

Vice President JD Vance has been leading the charge to stiffen the spine of the soft GOP of yesteryear. He called out Indiana state Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, and he wasn’t subtle.

"I’d like to thank (Bray) for not even trying to fight back against this extraordinary Democrat abuse of power. Now the votes of Indiana Republicans will matter far less than the votes of Virginia Democrats. We told you it would happen, and you did nothing," Vance wrote on X following Virginia's plan to erase GOP seats.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-new-york-dems-pull-dirty-districting-trick-aw-shucks-indiana-gop-folds

(Darth Sideouos voice) Good, good....

Republicans are just too darn nice to politically fight.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Right now……

JD Vance is coming into his own, and he’s gonna be a cross between Trump and Reagan with a bit of Calvin Coolidge thrown in.

[grb]

..... along with Jesus Christ, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and a bit of Johnny Appleseed thrown in. You know, Ed, if you expended this much fantasy wattage dreaming impossible dreams about women, you might learn to like'em more. An empty-suit nothing like Vance is not (repeat NOT) worth the effort of so much moonbeam yearning.

[grb]

The gestapo comes to Maine. Oh, they're still fielding a sizable occupation force in Minnesota and arrested a two-year old today, but Maine is now also in the crosshairs. So - of course - they immediately embarrassed themselves. Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce on the arrest of a corrections recruit:

"In this particular case, this is an individual that had permission to be working in the state of Maine. We vetted him," Joyce said. "Every indication we found is that this was a squeaky-clean individual that really hadn't done anything at all."

Joyce said the recruit had left the academy and went to Texas for a hearing on his immigration status. "He took the extra step of risking his job to fly to Texas to take care of hearings and for some reason, he was picked up last night," the sheriff said, adding how he was amazed at ICE leaving the recruit's car unsecured:

"They left it right on the side of the street. Folks, that's bush league policing," Joyce said. "In my world, you wait for a wrecker. You wait for somebody to come pick it up that the individual wants, or you get permission to drive the vehicle into a public parking spot and you lock it up and you give the person their car keys. You don't leave their personal belongings unsecure along the streets of the city of Portland. It's not fair to the guy that owns the car. It's surely not fair to Portland police."

"This opened the door for me based on the fact, I mean, this is an individual that was trying to do all the right things," he said. "I guess if you're not the card-carrying U.S. citizen, then you must be illegal, because that's what they told me is 'he's illegal,' and he's definitely not a criminal. So what part of him is illegal? I don't know."

Watch the video clip. See a real law enforcement officer both amazed and disgusted with ICE actions:

https://www.wmtw.com/article/cumberland-county-sheriff-maine-ice-operation/70095060

[Mr. Bumble]

How is that 5 year old you were ranting about the other day?

[grb]

Five-years old is way too easy child's play for ICE. These are crack commandos, with their masks, heavy armament, camouflage uniforms to blend in with the Minneapolis scenery, and jackbooted thug tactics. They aim higher.

They took down a two-year old today.....

[Dr. Ed 2]

AND WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN FLEEING ADULTS ABANDON SMALL CHILDREN?!?

What do you think happens when the city police arrest a mother for drunk driving when she has a child in the car? Or when they’re chasing down bank robbers, and they execute an arrest warrant and arrest mommy and daddy?

For that matter, what do you think happened to the child when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed?

JD Vance, who’s been the small child it was such circumstances, put it best — they’re not gonna leave a small child out to freeze to death. They’re gonna put them in a warm vehicle, let him play with the (music) radio, and probably buy them a few snacks.

They usually wind up handing the child off to child protective who sort out who the child should be with.

having a child is not a get out of jail free card.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bear in mind this is not the first time this has happened. The town of Old Orchard Beach, which is just over the county line from Cumberland County, had an illegal alien as a police officer. He only got caught when he tried to buy a gun, and the NIBC identified him as an illegal alien and reported him.

As a sworn officer, at least in theory, the town had done a full background check on him, including fingerprints. I believe the same thing as required of a jail worker, even if he isn’t toting a gun.

This really no excuse for this.

And what would get really interesting is if there was ever a lawsuit against the department because of one of these individuals, an excessive force complaintor a negligence complaint, Heck, even if the patrol officers slid his cruiser sideways on the ice and hit someone with it.

I’m guessing an intrepid trial attorney could make a big issue with the jury out how he wasn’t even supposed to be an officer….

[Bunny495]

Well this is a kick in the dick
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lawmakers-should-pass-real-id-voting-in-georgia-raffensperger-says/ar-AA1ULjYm

[jb]

How annoying is it to get a RealID in Georgia? I know in a lot of states the DMVs capacity to issue them has been way lower than demand. Also, how much do they cost?

[Bunny495]

I can't speak for anywhere but Florida but my drivers license is a RealID and the cost was $US48.00. While Florida does issue some non RealID drivers licenses it is rare and probably harder to jump through hoops to get the non RealID one than to simply bring required documents for the RealID. Not to mention the cost for both is the same. Florida was a leader with RealID starting in 2010 and Georgia is a johnny come lately. There are obvious advantages to having a RealID. Florida does offer a RealID identification card issued by DMVHS for a cost of $US25.00 with a no cost option if you have something like a letter from a homeless shelter. Bottom line is Florida is way ahead of the curve.

[grb]

When I renewed my drivers license, I got a RealID. There was no additional cost.

[Bunny495]

Depends on the state. I seem to recall NY, CA, WA (probably more as well) smack you with something like a fifty-buck surcharge. There is also something similar to the passport card for those who cross the border daily with NY's RealID.

[ducksalad]

One has to go to particular effort to get a non-RealID license in Texas. If you don't anything special or different RealID is the default.

[jb]

Yeah, the Florida situation sounds quite reasonable. Utah is similar. Some other states like New Jersey and Alabama seem to have been really backed up and a majority of people still don't have them.

[grb]

Why? Because Raffensperger wouldn't change vote results on Trump's command?

[Mr. Bumble]

You give new meaning to the term fuckwit.

[grb]

Hopefully a good meaning! 🙂

[Mr. Bumble]

Don't you have a ballroom to help design.
Maybe start with Mamdani's Mini Ballroom.

[grb]

Mr. Bumble : "Maybe start with Mamdani's Mini Ballroom."

I thought that was a bidet. (haughtily) I have plumbing engineers for that!

[M L]

Lying WaPo Debunks Its Own ‘ICE Detains… 5-Year-Old’ Headline in Paragraph Five

First things first… Imagine being such a lowlife, degenerate scumbag of an illegal alien that you run off and leave your five-year-old son behind.

That kind of behavior is simply beyond my comprehension. Not because I’m a good guy but because I’m a normal guy. What kind of animal does such a thing? Okay, bad example. Animals protect their young. You would think that anyone with human DNA wouldn’t even think twice about staying close to their child under any circumstance. I can’t imagine dropping the leash and leaving my dog behind, much less a small child, much less my own child.

If you’re capable of abandoning your own child in this way, which will forever damage that child in the knowledge that he is not loved unconditionally by his own father, then you are capable of any horror. Just another example of the unvetted, Third World barbarians Democrats allowed into our country.

Anyway, look at how the the Washington Post, a far-left propaganda outlet, uses the headline and sub-headline to lie about this to its gullible and shrinking readership…

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2026/01/23/nolte-lying-wapo-debunks-its-own-ice-detains-5-year-old-headline-in-paragraph-five/

[jb]

What is the Post supposed to be lying about? The headline says they detained a five year old kid. They did. Here's the few paragraphs after the one about the father running away:

"After detaining the father, ICE officers then asked Liam to knock on the door to see if any other people were inside the home, “using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to the school district.

Another adult living in the home who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, the school district said. ICE agents refused.
Liam’s middle-school-aged brother returned home 20 minutes later to find that his younger brother and father had been taken away.

Liam and his father are now in San Antonio in the custody of Homeland Security authorities,"

You and Breitbart seem to assume everyone is too dumb to click on the link and actually read the story. Then again, you probably didn't click on the link and actually read the story, so their trick worked pretty well!

[grb]

jb : "... assume everyone is too dumb to click on the link and actually read the story."

That's been ML for years....

[David Nieporent]

It's not clear whether M L is the moron and Breitbart are liars, or whether Breitbart is also just moronic. Here's what Breitbart (correctly) quotes paragraph 5 as saying:

“The father fled on foot when ICE officers approached him, DHS said. ‘For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,’ it added.”

Breitbart claims this proves the WaPo was lying about events, and M L is illiterate enough to believe Breitbart. But that paragraph five is not what happened; it's what DHS said happened. Yes, DHS contradicts the story. But that's just because DHS lies about everything.

[jb]

They don't even contradict the story, though. They still arrested the kid and nothing in that quoted paragraph suggests otherwise.

[Mr. Bumble]

So why don't you and Davy tell us what really happened.

[jb]

You can just read the article. It's linked from the Breitbart piece. I already quoted the most relevant bit above, though.

[Mr. Bumble]

So DHS is lying and Columbia Heights Public Schools district officials (who weren't there) accused ICE officers of using the 5-year-old “as bait.” A 10-year-old and her mother were also detained.
Got any other sources as to what happened?

[jb]

Sorry, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Let me summarize how I understand the conversation:

Breitbart: Lying Washington Post headline says 5 year old was arrested, but the article contradicts that! It says his father ran away.
Washington Post article: 5 year old was arrested AND DHS says his father ran away.
jb: Seems like everyone agrees a 5 year old was arrested
Bumble: Why are you accusing DHS of lying?

To be clear: I'm not saying DHS is lying (although they often do). I'm saying Breitbart is lying, because the article does not in any way contradict the headline. DHS does not seem to be contradicting the article or the headline in any way, either.

[Michael P]

To be clear, you misrepresent what the Washington Poo wrote. I'm not saying you and they are lying, but the evidence points to you being suckered by their intentional deceit.

[jb]

This is from your Breitbart article:

Lying headline: “ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old”

What part of that headline do you assert is "lying", as Breitbart does, or at least misleading?

[Life of Brian]

I can’t imagine dropping the leash and leaving my dog behind, much less a small child, much less my own child.

An almost literal replay from four months ago, when the bloodbath headline was "ICE held 5-year-old autistic girl in Massachusetts to pressure father to surrender" and it turned out he actually ran in the house and left her in the car by herself.

I'm sure I speak for us all when I say this is EXACTLY the sort of character and values we need to promote in this country, and we should import as many other model fathers just like them as we possibly can, post haste!

[Bunny495]

Looks like a he said/she said. Way too much FUD here.

[Krayt]

1. Entering a home without a warrant, and not in hot pursuit, is something directly forbidden by the Constitution. This is such a bad violation, there should be no QI for agents, and their policy superiors.

2. Apparently 57 Republicans joined Democrats in preserving a mandate for a car kill switch to be controlled by the government.

Do not build the tools of tyranny. Then they cannot be abused.

No kill switches for cars "with a promise to use it responsibly."

No kill switches for the Internet, "with a promise to use it responsibly." See Iran at the moment.

A fundamental design principle of the Constitution: Do not build the tools of tyranny. Then they cannot be abused.

Republicans! You see, and currently complain, how easily Europe slips into censorship and re-education and 1984-like (in your opinion) "The State says you will see 5 fingers." without a First Amendment. Now is your chance to fix this, and you are failing.

You have all the power. Trump has said he'll sign pretty much anything you send to him. Fix it.

[Michael P]

Apparently 57 Republicans joined Democrats in preserving a mandate for a car kill switch to be controlled by the government.

57 out of 217 Republicans joined 211 out of 215 Democrats to block this amendment, and you cast it as a problem with Republicans.

You are the problem.

[John F. Carr]

Democrats have been a lost cause forever. Republicans used to offer hope.

[grb]

I live on the east coast.

Me : "Ya know, all this bad weather is gonna give ICE a bad name."
Coworkers : (groans and dismayed hoots)

They're a tough crowd.......

[Bunny495]

Just got this email. Not to worry Tallahassee is on the ball

City to Send Mutual Aid to Marietta, Ga.
Crews Prepared to Assist with Impacts from Winter Storm Fern

As the sun rises tomorrow, Jan. 24, the hum of engines, gear and hearty voices will meld as crews prepare a mutual aid deployment. Winter Storm Fern is forecast to hit portions of the Southeast, and a team of 17 personnel from City Electric and Fleet, along with a variety of trucks and equipment, will head to Marietta, Ga., to assist with anticipated power restoration efforts.

"Our highly skilled crews are no stranger to the conditions they may face. They welcome the challenge and will demonstrate the professionalism and heart that Tallahassee is known for," said Tony Guillen, General Manager of the City of Tallahassee Electric and Gas Utility. "We're proud of their commitment."

According to the Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA), "More than 200 million people in 35 states are projected to be in the path of Winter Storm Fern, which will begin depositing heavy snow and damaging ice on a swath of more than 2,000 miles of land beginning Friday through Monday. This potentially historic winter storm is expected to cause mass disruption, including widespread and possible long-lasting power outages, particularly from anticipated ice accumulations in parts of the South. This is Florida's largest cold-weather mutual aid deployment to neighboring states in recent years."

As with all severe weather events, as the path of projected impacts changes, utility crews may be deployed to assist with power restoration in other impacted areas.

A City of Tallahassee team also deployed to Marietta, Ga., last winter and were recently honored for their efforts by FMEA. For more information, visit Talgov.com.

[grb]

I hadn't heard it has a name. "Fern" seems an awfully big letdown. As for me (brace yourself for egocentric selfish opinion), I live in the city and walk almost everywhere. I don't have to shovel it. I don't have to drive in it. Come Monday, I'll trudge to work as usual and probably have the building entirely to myself. Worse case? I'll have to reach up in the closet for my long-disused snowshoes.

Given all that, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....

[Mr. Bumble]

Just hope you don't lose power.

[not guilty]

"I hadn't heard it has a name. "Fern" seems an awfully big letdown. As for me (brace yourself for egocentric selfish opinion), I live in the city and walk almost everywhere. I don't have to shovel it. I don't have to drive in it. Come Monday, I'll trudge to work as usual and probably have the building entirely to myself. Worse case? I'll have to reach up in the closet for my long-disused snowshoes."

Ice on a sidewalk can be quite dangerous. I hope that you do well.

[Michael P]

Virginia elected a CIA/Saudi asset, and quickly discovers that "the warmth of collectivism" might just be from millions of gallons of sewage spilled just upstream from our nation's capital.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/01/23/sewage-spilled-potomac-river/

[jb]

Wow, clown school is in full session today. What actions do you think Spanberger took in the last week that caused this to happen? Especially since the sewage line break is in Maryland and DC.

[Michael P]

You were acting like a fan of WaPo style journalism just above. Why is this (d)ifferent?

(That's a rhetorical question, you need not bother answering.)

[grb]

You need to learn the difference between a rhetorical question and meaningless one. Since I canceled my print subscription to the WaPo, I can't see beyond the paywall. But I'm betting the article does not justify your braindead slur against Spanberger for the reasons jb gave above.

Given you didn't/couldn't address those reasons just increases that certainty. As he said, your comments seem to be made while in full clown drag, with bright orange wig, white face paint, and big floppy shoes. Take off all that gear and try again. You might do better.

[Bunny495]

I took MP's comment about sewage flowing into DC to be figurative rather than literal, a concept you might need to get up to speed on.

[grb]

Oh. Instead of a stupid meaningless slur, it's a stupid meaningless "figurative" slur.
That certainty settles things!

[Bunny495]

I am shocked to find there is sewage in DC.

[grb]

Whereas I consider it a natural part of the human condition. But - hey - I've always been a realist....

[Michael P]

There is very literal sewage flowing into DC, from a pipeline carrying sewage from both Northern Virginia and Maryland.

jb seems to think that debatable implications are great when aimed at ICE but incredibly offensive when aimed at far-left wreckers of civilization.

[grb]

"implications" ?!?

You're certainty not helping Bunny495 with his "figurative" defense. Though to my (very non-lawyerly-eye) your best defense is impaired judgement due to insanity. I think you might get off with that.

[Michael P]

I am not trying to help Bunny495. I wrote extremely literally, and no one has written anything to suggest that my comments need any defense at all.

You and jb, on the other hand, are coming across as morons who either cannot read or do not read.

[jb]

Here's what I think: ICE arrested a five year old boy (like the Washington Post article said) and Spanberger had nothing to do with breaking a sewage pipe in another state.

The fact that you might think either of the above statements is in doubt is further evidence that you are a partisan clown.

[Bunny495]

I am curious about the term arrest. No doubt the father was taken to custody with the intent to deport (or that is what my guess is).

So what are the LEOs to do with the five year old kid. I don't see leaving him on the street as an option. There were some claims relatives offered/begged to look after him but without verified identity that could be a risk. I have seen no mention of the mother which raises more questions than it answers.

Bottom line is you can't leave the kid on the street, no obvious caregiver to leave him with, so what else but bring him along.

[jb]

To be clear, the Post headline actually said "detained" not "arrested" so it's correct even if you want to quibble with my use of the word "arrested. But the kid is in a detention facility in Texas. Sure seems like he was arrested!

This is what the article says about the decision to take the 5 year old:

DHS said it was not targeting Liam and that ICE’s policy is to ask parents if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person designated by a parent.

It was not immediately clear why ICE officers had not left Liam in the care of the adult whom school officials say had begged the officers to leave Liam there.

As you say, there's more questions than answers about how the boy ended up detained in Texas, but none of that undercuts the veracity of the original story.

[Michael P]

ICE pretty obviously did not leave Liam with some random adult because Liam's parent ran off rather than designated a safe person to put him with. Apparently, neither jb nor the Washington Poo are able to put two and two together.

[Mr. Bumble]

" But the kid is in a detention facility in Texas."
With his father. Would you rather that they be separated?

[jb]

Apparently we all agree that the original Post headline was right and Breitbart was full of shit since no one seems to be disputing that a 5 year old was detained. So that's a little progress.

Of course, Michael P is also full of shit since ICE caught the dad right away, before they took Liam. So they clearly could have asked who he wanted to leave Liam with.

[Bunny495]

Jordan asked Smith how much of the $35 million he used to prosecute Trump went towards paying confidential human sources.

Smith said he didn’t know the identity of a confidential human source who was paid $20,000, payment documents the FBI turned over to Congress in early January revealed.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-special-counsel-jack-smith-makes-4-big-admissions-in-fiery-public-hearing/ar-AA1UPCAB

[grb]

It's the end of the day and I'm getting quarrelsome and grumpy. Keeping that in mind, here's my question:

What the (bleeping) hell is your point ?!?

[Bunny495]

Well either I want to get a $US20,000 gig looking at vids or as Shakespear said something is rotten in Denmark. Even in today's inflated economy twenty grand is not just a nice chunk of change but way more than almost all CHS gets paid. Got any more questions. Like how many more FBI guys were on in plain clothes mingling in the crowd on 6 Jan other than the three already IDed and why Smith is playing coy about it.

[jb]

Like how many more FBI guys were on in plain clothes mingling in the crowd on 6 Jan other than the three already IDed and why Smith is playing coy about it.

Why is this a question for Smith? He was investigating war crimes in the Hague on January 6.

[Mr. Bumble]

"It's the end of the day and I'm getting quarrelsome and grumpy." Unlike the the beginning of the day when you're quarrelsome and grumpy?

[grb]

Touché

[ducksalad]

Sweet spot is right after lunch. If it was good lunch.

[Bunny495]

jb please pay attention, Smith was testifying about his investigation of Trump/Jan 6 and how he spent the 35 million including $US20,000 to a single CHS and an unknown amount to other CHSs. Got any more questions about the over/under of a leak about these CHSs and undercover agents in the crowd Jan 6.

[grb]

Make Polio Great Again!

Dr. Kirk Milhoan, the pediatric cardiologist who chairs Trump's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, suggested making measles and polio vaccines optional for children attending public schools:

“If there is no choice, then informed consent is an illusion,” he told the New York Times. “Without consent it is medical battery.” Milhoan, who pushed ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, said:

“As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different, and so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”

He also suggested deaths from the current measles outbreaks will be helpful for understanding disease risk:

“What we’re going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles. What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What’s the incidence of death?”

Just when you think today's Right can't get any more loathsome and imbecilic, they top themselves again.

[grb]

So the Trump White House released images of the people arrested for the church protest. One of the images had been digitally altered to show the arrestee weeping. Caught out in this lie, the administration claimed it was a "meme"......

Poor halfwit Trump is worried these days over his "legacy". He should rest easy. He's given the country many new ways to describe "lying". And isn't that the kind of epithet you'd want on your tombstone?

[Sarcastr0]

https://reason.com/2026/01/23/bureau-of-land-management-says-bison-are-not-livestock-obstructing-plans-for-a-huge-private-prairie-reserve/

The new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum ordered in December 2025 that the BLM reconsider its 2022 decision that bison may graze on BLM allotments. The new BLM decision issued last week now finds that bison are not cows, sheep, horses, burros, or goats and therefore are not domestic livestock according to federal regulations. In its new decision, the BLM may only "issue permits where the animals to be grazed will be used for production-oriented purposes. That would include their being used for their meat, milk, fiber, or other animal products."

Amusingly the Congressional Research Service has just issued a new report on federal grazing regulations that cites a 1976 Department of the Interior's Office of Hearings and Appeals holding "that bison may be considered 'livestock' under the TGA [Taylor Grazing Act], where the bison are treated in substantial respects as livestock and have characteristics in common with livestock." As it happens, American Prairie arguably meets the "production-oriented purposes" requirement since it actively manages its bison and authorizes annual harvests from its herd.

In a statement hailing the new BLM ruling against American Prairie's grazing permits, Knudsen says, "I'm pleased to see this proposed decision from the Trump Administration's Bureau of Land Management today. Canceling the American Prairie Reserve's bison grazing permit will help to protect the livestock industry and ranching communities in Northeastern Montana from the elitists trying to push them out."