America - The Official Thread

[Keef]

I think a few play a representative role in government, though they can easily be confused with those like Liz Cheney who just happened to find a backbone in a fleeting moment, but they tend to face rebuke for their principles like Kinzinger and Gonzalez did.

They're probably a bit more common among the citizenry, and I do feel pity for them because I imagine they feel like their party has been hijacked.


I hope for justice as well, but punishing people who didn't do a thing as a proxy for those who actually did the thing isn't justice...it's just wrong. I wouldn't have thought I'd have to make clear that vengeance isn't justice either, but here we are.

I'm not suggesting vengeance, merely that I understand why it's been done and will continue to be desired. I don't do a lot of things that are wrong but I understand why others do them.

Just curious, do you believe I as a white male owe reparations to FAMILIES OF SLAVERY?
Are you white? Do you believe YOU owe the same? Was your family even here then?
PS: my family wasn't here then and after WW2 were in NY.

As far as I know my family were immigrants from Germany in the late 1800s. At least one of my great family was still alive when I was a kid and they were born sometime around 1900, presumably spending their whole lives here in Dayton. While I do know nobody ever directly participated in slavery, I don't know if anybody actively worked against it. I also do know those most *didn't* actively work against it - my parents were literally part of the late-70s white flight from a once-lovely but eventually redlined urban neighborhood which is still poor and blighted today. Funny thing is, despite having moved to the burbs long before I was born, decades after that they had actually found themselves struggling to keep up with that suburb. They went from too good for the hood to a dying breed stuck in their old ways, literally. Part of me is glad they're not here to laugh at black bowling balls hanging from a tree on Halloween.

As for reparations, I've never been in a position to pay anybody anything - I'm one of the ones who needed assistance - but I do think it's my duty to make sure the failures of the past are never committed again and that the people and families who were effected do receive some sort of reparation or justice in the form of the real freedom and real opportunities that others were given because they were born the right color or in the right neighborhood. Discussing these issues with people I know and trying to change minds and laws isn't much but I can't do much more while I struggle to pay my own bills. I figure later in my career I'll be able to afford to either spend that money to make real physical changes, or bask in my successful whiteness and not have to worry about it.

Edit: To be clear, I absolutely do owe it to those persecuted to acknowledge that the people who taught me were wrong and that I'm going to conduct myself differently. They've been waiting too long for somebody to care about what they've been trying to say for generations.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Looks like Paul Ryan has been rummaging around in his closet looking for his backbone and may have actually found it.

Once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads. And here's one reality we have to face: If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we're not going anywhere. Voters looking for Republican leaders want to see independence and mettle

The 2024 GOP primary is going to be an absolute war.

 

[jjaisli]

Looks like Paul Ryan has been rummaging around in his closet looking for his backbone and may have actually found it.



The 2024 GOP primary is going to be an absolute war.

You mean, NOT the clown show it was in 2016?

 

[Blitz24]

You mean, NOT the clown show it was in 2016?

2024 MIGHT say hold my beer, fumble the beer, then hold the beer upside-down.

 

[Danoff]

absolute war.

...as long as it's not literally war.

 

[UKMikey]

I think a few play a representative role in government, though they can easily be confused with those like Liz Cheney who just happened to find a backbone in a fleeting moment, but they tend to face rebuke for their principles like Kinzinger and Gonzalez did.

They're probably a bit more common among the citizenry, and I do feel pity for them because I imagine they feel like their party has been hijacked.

The figures from Quinnipiac U's poll suggest that Repubs who don't want Trump to run in '24 are only a third of the party.

https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3810

If those 2/3 of Trump GOPers only make up a third of the overall electorate (as the poll also suggests), however, then he'll lose if he runs... by a lot. No wonder they're trying to disenfanchise and suppress as many Dems as they can.

 

[Danoff]

The figures from Quinnipiac U's poll suggest that Repubs who don't want Trump to run in '24 are only a third of the party.

That might not sound like much, but a decent percentage of that 1/3rd would vote against him. He has a subset of a minority right now. Which is not surprising given the last half year or so of politics.

 

[McLaren]

The most unfortunate part of that whole case, is that Caroline Bryant, the store clerk who is responsible for getting Till killed in the first place by fabricating the allegations, has not faced any sort of criminal repercussions for her actions (despite admitting to fabricating them) and has seemingly lived on as if nothing ever happened.

Closest thing I can find to punishment is that she reportedly does not go out in public & the family members who have made public comments have said they take care of her and her whereabouts are concealed. I have a feeling she will likely pass long before it becomes news she died.

She also admitted it so late in life, any punishment would never have the appropriate impact. Even the public shaming Bryant & Milam went through never changed their minds once they admitted it.

 

[Outspacer]

BBC



💡

Motherboard article - some swearing.

 

[Liquid]

 

[TexRex]

 

[Keef]

Friday is the last time this thread was updated? Good grief. You guys must have been left speechless by Michael Flynn calling for a coup against the US government.



It's clear by the intonation of his voice what he meant when he said that. He said, "No reason [it can't happen here]. It should happen here." Anybody who is literate in our language knows this.

Yevgeny Vindman offered to prosecute those comments as in a court marshal. He's the brother of Alexander Vindman, both of them fired by Trump.

The Army won't investigate the matter as Flynn is retired and no longer a member. He's free to do what he wants and the military justice system has no authority over him anymore.

The dude straight up said it. He's a danger to America and to all of us. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done publicly so we know that something is being done and nerves can be calmed.

 

[TexRex]

Friday is the last time this thread was updated? Good grief. You guys must have been left speechless by Michael Flynn calling for a coup against the US government.



It's clear by the intonation of his voice what he meant when he said that. He said, "No reason [it can't happen here]. It should happen here." Anybody who is literate in our language knows this.

Yevgeny Vindman offered to prosecute those comments as in a court marshal. He's the brother of Alexander Vindman, both of them fired by Trump.

The Army won't investigate the matter as Flynn is retired and no longer a member. He's free to do what he wants and the military justice system has no authority over him anymore.

The dude straight up said it. He's a danger to America and to all of us. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done publicly so we know that something is being done and nerves can be calmed.

It made the Cursed Whathaveyous thread. It's asinine. It's also protected speech.

 

[Touring Mars]

Friday is the last time this thread was updated? Good grief. You guys must have been left speechless by Michael Flynn calling for a coup against the US government.



It's clear by the intonation of his voice what he meant when he said that. He said, "No reason [it can't happen here]. It should happen here." Anybody who is literate in our language knows this.

Yevgeny Vindman offered to prosecute those comments as in a court marshal. He's the brother of Alexander Vindman, both of them fired by Trump.

The Army won't investigate the matter as Flynn is retired and no longer a member. He's free to do what he wants and the military justice system has no authority over him anymore.

The dude straight up said it. He's a danger to America and to all of us. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done publicly so we know that something is being done and nerves can be calmed.

What happens in Minamar stays in Minamar.

 

[TexRex]

What happens in Minamar stays in Minamar.

(sic)

 

[UKMikey]

It made the Cursed Whathaveyous thread. It's asinine. It's also protected speech.

If only Flynn agreed as he tried to pretend he didn't say what he said. I guess his denial/"clarification" is also within his rights as a free citizen too though. As is other people's to form their own opinions of him.

 

[TexRex]

If only Flynn agreed as he tried to pretend he didn't say what he said.

I'm fairly certain he's aware that there are consequences for speech that fall short of criminal prosecution.

 

[Keef]

It's also protected speech.

That's the core of the argument and I'm on one side of it while some are on the other. Speech which results in violence is not protected by law.

Edit: Such speech is protected until found unprotected, basically.

 

[TexRex]

That's the core of the argument and I'm on one side of it while some are on the other. Speech which results in violence is not protected by law.

Edit: Such speech is protected until found unprotected, basically.

Speech protections have been honed for what I consider to be the better over time. Where we are right now when it comes to incitement, as defined in SCOTUS' ruling on Brandenburg, may not be perfect, but I think it strikes a good balance.

Of course, advocacy for speech protections is not to be interpreted as support for Flynn's remarks. He's ****ing garbage and I hope to one day find myself in a position to dance on the ****er's grave, but his remarks didn't rise to incitement to imminent lawless action.

 

[Keef]

In other news, I was pretty appalled to come across this when browsing the news. "Unbelievable" doesn't cut it. Some comment quotes from Reddit:

The kids involved ran away from a religious foster home.

The home has been the site of 289 calls for service, including a security guard being beaten to death by a different 14-year-old kid.

I'd really like to know if this home is getting the worst of the worst and is a hot spot because of that, or if it's an absolutely horrible facility that is manufacturing the worst of the worst.

The only open sources I can find show that it has poor ratings by former employees on Indeed for low wages and redirecting clothing donations to thrift stores instead of to the resident children, was the subject of a lawsuit in 2005 for withholding wages, and the public filings show that the top officers all make well above median income for that part of Florida.

I wish I could say that sounds horrible, but that just sounds like run-of-the-mill charity graft. What's the scoop on this place having so many violent kids?

EDIT: Multiple people have responded to note that redirecting clothing donations to thrift stores instead of to the resident children is not shady in and of itself. I completely agree. Sale of donated goods is fine when the proceeds are used for the same goal as the donation itself, and when the donors are fully aware that their donation might end up this way. The link I posted had content that indicated that the donors are misled into believing they are providing directly for the children, but it's quite possible that the person who made this statement is misinformed, biased, or just angry and throwing every possible criticism at the organization.


-> I grew up in Deltona and knew a girl from this foster home when we were in elementary school, but this was almost 20 years ago now. She was very aggressive, sniffed and bit at people constantly. She eventually made friends with another girl in class and that family adopted her, and then her behavior improved DRAMATICALLY. I’d never thought much of foster homes but after seeing her immediate turnaround, it’d be hard for me to believe that the conditions there aren’t neglectful at best, dehumanizing at worst.

"The sheriff, at times shouting, lambasted the juvenile justice system and the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home. He said the 14-year-old girl has been in trouble with the law before, including when she stole puppies and set her prior facility in Flagler County on fire. After that, she was sent to Volusia County.

...

He said facilities like FUMCH aren’t equipped to handle some of these children. He also noted that a security guard was beaten to death there earlier this year. He called the home “a complete failure,” adding that deputies have been called there 289 times in the past year."

The Reveal podcast aired a story about for profit juvie homes that was chilling and it was noted how much time the local police spent at these homes.

https://revealnews.org/podcast/the-bad-place/

I'm sure most people don't have the capacity to understand what it means to "live to die".

To have not just zero, but negative support, negative care, and negative attention as a child everywhere you go. Having no one to turn to, no where to run to. Being so beaten down, and told from everyone from the beginning that, essentially, you aren't going to amount to anything. To not only believe that your life will amount to nothing, but to understand that as fact and fate. Seeing others in "better" situations, thinking to yourself "why am I not worth it?", then coming to the self-realization that you just simply aren't worth anything but hate, pain, and misery.

So what are you to do, being worthless in an unloving and uncaring world? You say **** it. Who am I to matter? And go out with a bang. To inflict more effect than you ever would in a positive sense. To show this life, it was beyond not worth it.

Bad kids are not born, they're made.

So, let's just try them as adults, lock them up for life and forget this happened, move on with our lives and do nothing.

I'm glad no one died, but this is just another thing that's wrong with our social climate.

EDIT: To my situational brothers and sisters, I love you guys.

We could discuss so many things about this and one of them is police conduct. The police attempted to deescalate this situation with children for thirty minutes.

And we didn’t returned fire. But after she came out of the garage, hey, there was nothing left that we could do. We had to do we had to do,” Chitwood said.

Thirty minutes they put themselves in harms way trying to solve this without anybody getting seriously injured or killed. Eventually they exhausted their resources. I'd say they did a glorious job of self-restraint when they had all the reason in the world to immediately return fire and kill these kids as so many other officers have done in situations around the country, including some where no serious danger was present. Note this quote:

And the amazing thing is they don’t do what I would have done. I would have walked in because I have an eyewitness telling me two juveniles just forced their way into the home,” Chitwood said. “They take a step back and contact the homeowner and say, ‘Should anybody have access to your home?’ as resources are pouring in to surround the property.”

The deputies didn't go looking for what was going on. They carefully observed and studied their environment first. The Sheriff himself said that he would've approached the situation head-on...and likely what would've happened is he would've found two kids pointing guns at him and he would've had no choice but to end it immediately and we'd have two dead kids on our hands, very similar to various situations we've read in the news lately. Instead, cops thought better to keep their distance. It's pretty amazing that they held out as long as they did, but what happened here was a better result than what would've happened if they had approached the situation head-on. Nobody died.

Another topic is who is truly "evil" in this situation as the Sheriff described the children. The Reddit comments are pretty glaring - nobody is describing these children as evil. They did a terrible thing, but we all know that children are products of their environment. Almost everything humans die besides eat, breath, and sleep is a learned behavior. These kids learned to be evil, and they might have learned from an environment that was evil, an environment possibly imposed by adults who are evil.

The Sherriff said a lot of things in this interview apparently:

The sheriff, at times shouting, lambasted the juvenile justice system and the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home. He said the Jackson has been in trouble with the law before, including when she stole puppies and set her prior facility in Flagler County on fire. After that, she was sent to Volusia County.

“The brainiacs in Tallahassee, they want to do this restorative justice stuff. They need to take a deep look and say, ‘Something’s not right here,’ because where the rubber meets the road, these kids are killers. They’re capable of killing. This juvenile citation (expletive) that you hear from these faith groups, they need to worry about what’s going on in the pulpit in their church, not worried about what’s going on on the (expletive) streets when you have 14-year-olds and 12-year-olds arming themselves,” Chitwood said.

I don't understand what he's saying here. He's blaming everybody and I'm sure everybody has something to do with it. The whole matter requires investigation. I'm not sure exactly what "restorative justice" is but it seems like basically reeducating problematic children, like therapy for addicts basically. Problem is, that only works if the environment is actually one of nurturing and education. The Sherriff goes on to chastise the religious groups running these foster homes which is in line with the public scrutiny in the Reddit thread suggesting that the environments of some Florida foster homes, including this one in particular, are anything but nurturing and educational but neglecting at best. But it seems like "the brainiacs in Tallahassee" need to have a word with themselves, their own constituents, and their own police officers: The Florida state government has been majority Republican controlled since 1997 and all three branches Republican since 1999. I was wondering who might have been in charge of setting policy for homeless child housing but the same people have been in charge of the whole shebang for at least 22 years now. They've designed effectively a prison system that removes homeless and "problematic" children from society but then raises them to be criminals, just like what conservative governments tend to do with drug addicts, and what they've done in the past with various other groups of undesirables.

Did you enjoy how I turned a news story about 12 and 14 year old kids going on a shooting rampage in Florida into an analysis of the failure of American conservative policy? Was there any other possible conclusion I could've come to? Discuss.

 

[Tornado]

Sure am sick of CNN trotting out formerly disgraced Bush administration officials in order to blindly parrot that, yes, Trump is indeed bad.

People watching CNN likely are already aware of that fact and have been told that by people on CNN for months already, and don't need to hear it from asshole NeoCons cynically using their public railing against Trump as the basis of their 2021 redemption tour.

Today they had John Boehner on, and were even nice enough to help him hock his new book, whose title I didn't catch but was probably "Why I was always woke and smart and good and loved Obama, actually."


Jesus Christ.

 

[TexRex]

Today they had John Boehner on, and were even nice enough to help him hock his new book, whose title I didn't catch but was probably "Why I was always woke and smart and good and loved Obama, actually."


Jesus Christ.

I think the title is something about "chaos caucus"...? I don't know.

I have to confess, though, that I liked some of the supposed outtakes for the audiobook that were unflattering to fat Castro Ted Cruz.

 

[TexRex]

The United States Supreme Court issued a decision today on Van Buren v. United States, wherein a law enforcement officer was found to be in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986--legislation meant to criminalize access to privileged areas of computer systems by those not granted such privilege--by using his access to systems as a law enforcement officer to do a license plate lookup in exchange for payment. Certainly an abuse of power, but not really the sort of thing the Act was intended to address.

Like a lot of legislation passed in an attempt to keep up with technological advancements, the Act has good intentions but is poorly written and, as determined by SCOTUS, is overly broad. The 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett overturns the judgement on Van Buren and narrows the scope of the Act.

The 6-3 decision wasn't along lib/con lines as one might expect, however. The liberal Justices (Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor) voted in concurrence with Justice Barrett and were joined by the other two Trump appointees, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Justice Thomas wrote the bat-crap crazy dissenting opinion and was joined by Justices Alito and Roberts.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/justices-narrow-federal-computer-fraud-statute/

 

[Danoff]

Facebook punts for 2 years on Donald's account.

They say they'll re-evaluate after 2 years. This is actually almost exactly the same thing they did before with an indefinite ban, it just moves re-evaluation from any-time to no-sooner-than-2-years-from-now. I don't think this really responds well to their independent review board's finding that the indefinite ban was insufficiently concrete. A further ban 2 years from now will probably be better received by the public than it would be today. It also leaves Donald in limbo for 2 years, which is good.

 

[TexRex]

 

[Famine]

I honestly have no idea where to put this, but since it concerns an American (born in South Africa), a company blocked from trading in the USA (based in the Cayman Islands), and the US financial authorities... here seems fine.

So, after last year buying a load of Bitcoin secretly, then promoting Bitcoin and propelling its price upwards, then revealing his company had bought a load of Bitcoin and was selling his cars with Bitcoin, then telling people not to use Bitcoin ever again because The Environment crashing prices again (no idea if his company sold all its holdings or not, but I can guess), then promoting DogeCoin - all of which is in violation of court orders regarding his Tweets being overseen by lawyers so as not to affect markets, but apparently not enough for anyone to do anything about it - Ol' Musky is at it again.



If you don't speak Musk, the last two characters are "to the Moon", echoing his comments about DogeCoin and something something SpaceX, I don't know, whatever. The first two characters refer to... hmm... well... "CumRocket".

That's a cryptocurrency based on the Binance Smart Chain. It's themed around the... ahem... "adult entertainment industry", and there are plans to create a site for "adult entertainers" to sell their wares using the currency. There's also something about NFTs, which is a cast-iron guarantee of something being a scam.

Unpredictably, the coin has risen in value by 600% over the last 12 hours (to a massive $0.28).


*sigh*

 

[Keef]

The main problem with getting on the cum train is knowing when to get off.

 

[McLaren]

I thought it was a bit weird to see people on WallStreetBets from the Game Stop circus that wanted the wealthy hedge fund companies to pay for the way they abuse the market, become the same people who now re-share/happily follow a billionaire who seems to like using cryptocurrency as his personal playground.

 

[Keef]

I thought it was a bit weird to see people on WallStreetBets from the Game Stop circus that wanted the wealthy hedge fund companies to pay for the way they abuse the market, become the same people who now re-share/happily follow a billionaire who seems to like using cryptocurrency as his personal playground.

They don't do these things out of some sense of morality. They literally call themselves retards and apes. They just do it because they can, they're looking for any advantage, especially if its on The Man. The only thing in common among their choices is that they're unconventional and typically not recommended by traditional market analysts. The Gamestop drama just happened to be basically the first time when such a large scheme was genuinely uncovered and aimed squarely at something the little guys actually liked and wanted to preserve.

 

[Liquid]

I honestly have no idea where to put this, but since it concerns an American (born in South Africa), a company blocked from trading in the USA (based in the Cayman Islands), and the US financial authorities... here seems fine.

That's a cryptocurrency based on the Binance Smart Chain. It's themed around the... ahem... "adult entertainment industry", and there are plans to create a site for "adult entertainers" to sell their wares using the currency. There's also something about NFTs, which is a cast-iron guarantee of something being a scam.

Unpredictably, the coin has risen in value by 600% over the last 12 hours (to a massive $0.28).

We as a species get what we deserve.