@raphjd Imagine if you also got outraged at the inequitable policies that led to 23% of last year's layoffs (layoffs, not for-cause firings) being minority employees, despite minorities only making up 18% of the school's workforce.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-governor-desantis-defends-dont-say-gay-bill/](link url)

Apparently, Florida's conservative government believe that our LGBT+ community needs to be erased in order to comfort shitty parents' ignorance.

Interestingly, I've read the Bill and it doesn't actually limit speech to LGBT+ discussions. I seriously hope that some LGBT+ parents sue the shit out of some Florida school systems for mentioning or showing depictions of heterosexual relationships. Teaching about man/woman, husband/wife, or mommy/daddy relationships also violates the Bill.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/nyregion/trump-fraud-lawsuit-ny.html

Trump reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in benefit by overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars. It will be interesting to see if the US Attorneys investigate for violations of Federal law based on the evidence transmitted to them by the NY AG's office.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-life-herschel-walker-paid-for-girlfriends-abortion-georgia-senate

As the Bible says, "Do as I say, not as I do!" Herschel Walker, running for Senator in Georgia, believes that there should be no exceptions to the ban on abortions, not even rape or incest... Except when it's his girlfriend that's pregnant! In that case, he's perfectly willing to fund her getting her inside's scraped like a fisherman's knuckles.

What an absolute hypocrite! This man is such a moron. It will be a sad day for Georgia, and the country, if he wins this election.

LINK: Trump Wanted I.R.S. Investigations of Foes, Top Aide Says

The reason Trump is convinced that the multiple tax cases and DOJ investigations against him are nothing more than political hit jobs and witch hunts designed to make him look bad, is because that's what he himself did while in office.

"While in office, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service...
...
Mr. Kelly said that along with Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe, Mr. Trump discussed using the I.R.S. and the Justice Department to investigate the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan; Hillary Clinton; Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, whose coverage often angered Mr. Trump; Peter Strzok, the lead F.B.I. agent on the Russia investigation; and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. official who exchanged text messages with Mr. Strzok that were critical of Mr. Trump."

I guess Shakespeare was right. The lady doth protest too much, indeed.

@blablarg18 said in Douglass Mackey case: USA criminalizes memes. Literally.:

First, you are literally a conspiracy theorist.

No, he was charged with criminal Conspiracy Against Rights. Wow, you are a monumental dumbass! He was literally charged with, and convicted of, C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y!

I don't have to be a conspiracy theorist--he was convicted of it. No theory necessary.

"Cadre"? Really? OK what about them? Why aren't they prosecuted?

The criminal complaint listed four co-conspirators, but only by their Twitter ID# (long alpha-numerical string).

So far, journalists have been able to determine that co-conspirator #1 was an alt-right, neo-Nazi and QAnon botmaster only known by his Internet handle "Microchip."

Co-conspirator #2 is Anthime "Baked Alaska" Gionet; a white nationalist arrested for storming the Capitol on Jan.6 and known for having participated in the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, VA.

Co-conspirator #3 is a pro-Trump far-right activist and propogandist who goes by the Internet handle "Nia."

I don't think the fourth co-conspirator has been identified yet.

The fact that Mackey was successfully prosecuted for Conspiracy likely means that the co-conspirators will be prosecuted as well, since their trials will be easier after the first conviction.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that Gionet would be the next to be prosecuted because they know their identity. Who Microchip and Nia are offline may not yet be known by the government. I believe the government only knew who Mackey was because his real name was outed in a Gab post by white nationalist GOP candidate Paul Nehlen after they had a disagreement.

Prosecution could not show EVEN ONE SINGLE voter whose legit ballot had been affected. Not one.

First, he wasn't charged with altering or tampering with ballots; he was charged with Conspiracy Against Rights, meaning they were alleging his misinformation interfered with people exercising their right to vote. So, why would the prosecution need to present altered or tampered with ballots?

Second, the government could charge Mackey with Conspiracy even if his whole group had failed to achieve any results. Conspiracy does not require a completed or successful other crime in order to be prosecuted. You are being prosecuted for conspiring to commit the other criminal act, not the other criminal act itself. The actus reus that constitutes the crime is the conspiring with others.

Sorry @blablarg18 but Tucker Carlson can try to spin this (and you can continue to mindlessly parrot him) all he wants, but Carlson's just wrong on this one, as he is about a great many things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/22/desantis-slavery-curriculum/

Apparently, Florida wants to indoctrinate its children into believing that human chattel slavery was a good thing.

Saying slavery helped blacks by teaching them trade skills is like saying Auschwitz helped Jews hit their target weights. It's an absurd and grossly inappropriate misrepresentation of the atrocity.

If you haven't watched The Last of Us on HBO yet, then you should. It is one of the best video game adaptations ever done. It's a post-apocalyptic world wherein a fungus has taken over the bodies of billions of humans and turned them into "zombies."

Episode 3 is a bottle episode about a gay couple who grow old with each other in the post-apocalypse world.

[https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/us/florida-flagler-county-schools-all-boys-arent-blue-book/index.html](link url)

"A school board member in Florida wants someone to be criminally prosecuted for allowing a young-adult memoir for Black queer boys on school library shelves." I wish we were past this in America, but I guess we're not.

@tj16

Unfortunately, gays are not immune to the toxic paradigm sold by people like Rush Limbaugh. Basically, you take anything in the world that's happening, reduce it to a gross oversimplification couched in emotive terms, and let the audience's outrage convince them of the rightness of your argument. Once you've got them agreeing or buying in on some portion of what you're selling, their innate cognitive dissonance will keep them doing the bulk of the work glossing over or ignoring the patent holes in your worldview.

It's how conservative radio, QAnon, and even some groups on the Left work and perpetuate themselves.

@hubrys said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

And if he keeps telling folks that Vitamin A is a treatment for measles, then it's only a matter of time before someone kills or seriously hurts their child by giving them high doses of Vitamin A. Unlike most other vitamins (e.g., Vitamin C), Vitamin A doesn't flush out of your body as expensive pee. Vitamin A builds up in your body and destroys your liver. Just a matter of time before a kid goes from blotchy red patches on their skin to blotchy red patches on their now yellow jaundiced skin because their dumbass parent destroyed their liver with cod liver oil.

And I was correct.

West Texas children treated for vitamin A toxicity

@raphjd said in Trans-Rights Drag Queen indicted for molesting child...:

any child molester should be prosecuted to the fullest.

I agree; however, it is likely that Gawd and Jebus, as well as being rich, white, and politically connected, will keep this shithead out of prison. I mean, if he says Gawd has already forgiven him, then who are we to try to punish him?

Just kidding! It was a MAGA Trump-endorsed, mega-church pastor who molested a 12-year old girl.

Megachurch founder Robert Morris indicted on charges of "lewd acts" with a child

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

OK but then, who brought in the bug that went around? We can't know, except, masses of aliens who bring in disease or who bring "eradicated" diseases back to USA, is known thing.

The countries of the Americas (other than Brazil and Venezuela) share the same measles-free status as the United States. Note that just because a country has cases of measles doesn't mean it isn't measles-free. To lose measles-free status, the country has to have the same strain of measles transmitted endemically amongst the native population for at least 12 consecutive months. Like in America, measles was eradicated with mass vaccination programs supported by the governments and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).

In the last decade, most of the measles outbreaks in America have been traced back to Americans traveling back and forth to the Philippines, Ukraine, Israel, Thailand, Vietnam, England, France, Germany, and India.

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

Second - child in Texas. Um, unvaccinated because migrant? Reports don't say.

His Daughter Was America’s First Measles Death in a Decade

It was, indeed, a young Mennonite that died. It was not an unvaccinated migrant.

‘America First’ Is a Lie

An excellent explanation of how Trump's skinflint foreign policy is destroying American power around the world.

@blablarg18 said in USA "Social Security" system has some fraud. Watch Bernie Sanders pretend he doesn't know:

Your own article describes software so messed up, it would support fraud well.

The software is only "messed up" because DOGE doesn't know how COBOL works. It is an antiquated programming language that is not taught in schools anymore. SSA is not the only agency that relies on COBOL.

And it's not even the worst record-keeping system the US has. The National Archives, responsible for keeping up with the employment records, retirements, and pensions of every government employee going back to the late 1800's, are stored on paper in manilla folders underground in a limestone mine near Kansas City. The records are manually updated, on paper, by government workers going in and out of the caves like ants and replacing files in folders in filing cabinet drawers.

@blablarg18 said in USA "Social Security" system has some fraud. Watch Bernie Sanders pretend he doesn't know:

They established that some bad checks go out.

To be sure, there are instances of overpayments and fraud within the Social Security system. A July 2024 report from Social Security's inspector general stated that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

The statements being made by Trump and DOGE are patently false. Millions of dead people are not getting checks. No one 130, 150, 300 years old is receiving checks. The SSA automatically stops payments at the age of 115 by default regardless.

Finding that 10, 100, or 1,000 dead people who receive checks doesn't make Trump and Musk's statements true. They didn't say that 10, 100, 0r 1,000 people were getting checks. They said millions. And they did so because they were either too stupid to understand the computer language used by SSA, or they did understand and were too deceitful to care.

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

BUT, there is debate about whether they died of measles. Because some reports have said, -with- measles.

Those who die from measles tend to die from the pneumonia, dehydration, and/or encephalitis complications caused by it.

But even if the children don't die from measles, they can still suffer lifelong problems such as brain damage, blindness, and have to live with the ever-present threat of encephalitis (SSPE and MIBE) that can occur years after they "recover" from the measles.

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

Second - child in Texas. Um, unvaccinated because migrant? Reports don't say.

The outbreak appears to originate from a close-knit Mennonite community. Mennonites tend to be of Swiss and German decent, not Latino.

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

measles is so often benign

Measles has a 1 in 5 hospitalization rate. In 2024, the hospitalization rate in the US was up to 40%. I don't think you'll find many folks who went through having measles, outside of religious crazies, that would wish their children to have to go thru with what they did.

@blablarg18 said in RFKJ backs measles vaccine. What does media do? Lie, of course.:

RFKJ PUSHES MEASLES VACCINE to solve outbreak.

The problem is that he also pushed Vitamin A supplements and Cod Liver Oil as a cure for the measles. And he's had the CDC send doses of clarithromycin, an antibiotic, down to Texas to treat measles. HINT: Measles is a virus. Antibiotics don't cure viruses.

And if he keeps telling folks that Vitamin A is a treatment for measles, then it's only a matter of time before someone kills or seriously hurts their child by giving them high doses of Vitamin A. Unlike most other vitamins (e.g., Vitamin C), Vitamin A doesn't flush out of your body as expensive pee. Vitamin A builds up in your body and destroys your liver. Just a matter of time before a kid goes from blotchy red patches on their skin to blotchy red patches on their now yellow jaundiced skin because their dumbass parent destroyed their liver with cod liver oil.