Posts made by bi4smooth

@raphjd

Read the tweets - he spelled McDonalds wrongly multiple times

This is a companion suit to the ones Dominion Voting Machines has filed.

If the evidence is similar, these folks are in a world of hurt because they were always careful to make their accusations in places where there was no rule about being truthful - not in court, not in legal briefs, and certainly not while sworn in someplace like in front of Congress!

The problem there is that this BACKS UP the claims that they knew the statements were false, which bolsters the civil claim!

"Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive"
" - Sir Walter Scott, ca. 1810"

@raphjd

You really don't care about back-stories, do you?

This lawsuit was a back-door attack on all race-related admissions - especially targeting affirmative action policies.

Yale was giving credit to low-income, urban high school graduates that gave them "seats" in the admissions class that "rich white" students thought should be rightfully theirs...

But that wouldn't look good - bad optics there, fighting for rich white kids (and let's face, it: we're talking the rich white kids who were "on the cusp" - not the ones who truly got there on the merit of their achievements!).... so, what's a rich, white daddy to do?

Here's a thought - pit one minority against another so we can get ALL the economic (which is, face it, really race) based admissions criteria! That way, little Johnny - who's been in elite, private schools with tutors and coaches to help his every kernel of knowledge - has the advantage over those poor black kids that I paid so dearly for all of this lazy kid's damned life!

Hmmm... can't pick Latins - they're mostly in the same poor neighborhoods as the blacks... I know, we'll use ASIANS! They're still a minority, right? And most of them are in the good neighborhoods too! So these kids are being discriminated against too!

Anyway, the schools WANT to have integrated, diverse classes of students... so there are set-asides to ensure that people from disadvantaged homes (and countries of origin) have a few spots...

It's not like they're turning Yale into an HBCU here!

In a perfect world, rich kids wouldn't have educational advantages over poor ones.
In a perfect world...

Aw, fuck that - this isn't a perfect world! FAR FROM IT!

Newsmax host Greg Kelly sure thinks highly of himself! (Well, I mean - he is on Newsmax - so he is definitely a celebrity!)

So this douche-bag goes to a McDonalds.. at breakfast... orders a "McFish" (sic)... gets his panties in a twist when told he cannot have one... and insists on speaking to a manager!

What could make matters worse?

Tweeting about it, and in doing so:

• Spelling the name McDonalds wrong (hint: it's not MacDonalds!)
• using a random Google Image of a McDonalds in his post
• being oblivious to the fact that the sandwich is called Filet-o-Fish (and has been for nearly 60 years!)
• being oblivious to the limited menu available at a McDonalds (sic) at 8 AM on a weekday!
• whining about being called a "male Karen"

Read more here

There is GOOD NEWS for this truly, literally, numb-skull:
He IS famous... now! -- Because NOW the Internet now knows the answer to that nagging question: what do you call a male Karen?

• It's GREG... from now on!

@raphjd
Honestly, if you were any more rabid, there'd be actual foam in your mouth!

@raphjd
The only part of the ugly, racist, homophobic past of the United States we disagree on is that I assign blame across the board. You want to blame one party over the other.

@raphjd

That's funny - I thought he just created a commission to find out how to re-unite those kids with their parents!

No, far more likely is that Biden will hold a rally in Texas to greet the latest "procession" from Central and South America of wanna-be immigrants...

He'll give 'em each a bottle of water and a ticket to a court hearing... to be held in a few months, after we get this Covid thing handled. They have to promise (in English, mind you! It only counts if they say it in English!) to come to that hearing, don't ya know!

@raphjd
Hmmm... I don't know the movie, but I'm guessing the original incident happened before 1996.

Why does that matter?

Because that's when Seection 230 was written into law.

Hmmm... maybe they didn't just pull that law out of their overly large, exceptionally old, pasty-white, "can't even SPELL Internet in 1996" asses?

Maybe some rich, white-owned business didn't like being sued for something they really didn't have any reasonable control over, and decided to swing some bucks the way of those Politician types - you know, the ones who love money... and telling other people what to do - and get some protections in there so it doesn't happen again!

@raphjd

• The Hart Senate Building is not "The Senate building" - it is one of MANY buildings in the "Capitol Complex"

• BLM and Antifa are separate organizations that have no more in common than QAnon and the College Republicans do!

• We people don't think any violent demonstration is ok - and we people condemn violent attacks - whether from the Right or the Left.

• MoC's (Senators and Representatives) are not "so-called" members of a party. They register with a party (or not - Bernie Sanders is an Independent!), and they caucus (meet and organize) with one party or the other. It's all well documented. There are no "so-called" Democrats or Republicans because each MoC's party affiliations are well documented.

• CNN doesn't write rules for demonstrations. However, when demonstrations cease being peaceful, they usually devolve into riots. CNN just reports the news, it doesn't define the news.

• Do you have a problem with the word mostly? Here is a definition. It's an adverb.

@raphjd said in Jen Psaki, Biden Press Sec, homophobic tweet:

Remind me again which party was it that gave the US its 3 most homophobic laws ever?

Ever? Really? Back in the 1700's, homosexuality was a capital offense (that is: death penalty) in some US Territories...

You wanna walk that back a little?

You know how you people whine about not being able to get gay cakes and whatnot? Well, you clowns can thank Schumer who authored the bill, and Biden, one of the co-sponsors, as well as Slick WIllie who signed it into law.

The case wasn't about getting a "gay cake" - it was about whether the cake maker could be FORCED to make a gay cake.... and the RIGHT DECISION was made, IMHO - just go get another cake maker! Jeez! Not like they're rare!

Or, if you HAVE to have one of THEIR cakes, order it without the HE&HE topper, and buy one on the friggin' Internet!

Freedom has to work and apply to both sides - the freedom of the gay couple to get married, and the freedom of the cake maker to not put 2 men on a cake.

For 26 years, people have been screaming that the 1994 crime bill was racist, which is kinda true. You hate the guy that reversed most of it and elect the guy who created it because y'all dumb as a box of rocks.

Sorry, but Democrats do not have a monopoly on sounded good then legislation that was racist as fuck - even at the time it was passed!

Ever wonder why the drugs used by minorities were made illegal in the 1970's (in the original War on Drugs - thanks NIXON (a Republican)), but the ones used by Whites were generally left alone?

• Smoking pot is illegal! It's a mind-altering drug that is habit-forming and is a "gateway" drug to worse ones
• Smoking tobacco is fine though - never mind that nicotine is (in some studies) more than 5x more addictive than cocaine!

Later, in the 80's (thanks, Nancy Reagan), we realized that White folks were addicted to cocaine - same as black folks! But the blacks were using CRACK cocaine, while the whites were still sniffing it! So?

• Let's increase the penalty for CRACK cocaine and LOWER the penalty for "regular" cocaine possession!

Let's not forget the "Jim Crow" laws (passed mostly by Southern Democrats). No, I don't mean the drinking fountain or separate bathroom laws - I'm talking about the laws that make simple things felonies, and up to a Judge's (a white judge's) discretion.

Why? Because those same States have laws that say that FELONS CANNOT VOTE!
It wasn't at all uncommon for a black man to be found guilty of a minor crime - even a traffic accident - and have the white judge define it as a felony, and then set aside the sentence as "time served"! The whole point of the exercise wasn't so much law enforcement as it was voter suppression!

Homophobia and racist ideals run deep in America.

We homosectionals should remember that we have a lot in common with other, racial and otherwise, minorities! Our fights are their fights!

@raphjd

Well, when you lose the logical argument, it really does just come down to name calling.

@raphjd said in Medical Ethicist: Elderly Shouldn’t Get Vaccines First Because They’re Too White:

How many right-wing nutters get their policies enforced by social media, MSM, and governments?

If you want to change minds (instead of going out of yours on these rants), come up with rational arguments and stop overblowing every little thing! I swear, someone lights a match and you run down the halls screaming the house is on fire!

Woke'ism is the law of the land now.

See above.

The same ass clowns that said the quotes above are getting their way.
You can murder and riot, but you can't have a peaceful protest.

See above

You can storm the Senate building and try to storm the Supreme Court, but you can't storm the Capitol building.

Ummmm.... The Senate building and the Capitol building are one and the same.
The Senate is on one end (North) of the Capitol Building, and the House of Representatives is on the other (South) end of the same Capitol Building...

And there's a difference between standing outside (or even INSIDE, assuming you got there peacefully and legally) and shouting... and breaking through the windows and entering the building with guns, clubs, TORCHES, and other weapons... if you cannot see that difference... well, I certainly can tell the difference... as can my 14 y/o son!

You can try to murder several cops by cementing them in their police station and setting it on fire, but killing 1 cop is evil.
You can murder 5 cops, but killing 1 is evil.

See top...

Everything the left does is justified, but everything the right does is condemned.

See top...

The only one on these boards that seems to apply the all and every label to these things is you.

You should know: It is VERY EASY to successfully defeat an opponent (in debate) who uses these terms. If you haven't been able to tell, I took debate classes in both HS and college

@raphjd
No justification - just a Republican (not a Trump-Republican, though) who believes that "fair is fair"

We shouldn't have to stoop to "stop the count - because I'm ahead" kinds if LUNACY to win elections.

We can (and do) win elections because we have better IDEAS and better CANDIDATES.

Well, at least down-ballot we did... and we WON!

We won BROADLY!

We don't have to get picayune about it! This NY district will have been won by a RAZOR THIN margin either way it turns out! If the Dems manage to get it back this time (it's a Dem seat now), we'll get it NEXT time (same bat time, same bat channel)!

And if we prevail here (the likelihood, even with the recount), the Democratic majority in the House will still be tiny... so, this result won't change that in any case... so all the huffing and puffing is for naught...

Recount and let's be done with it!

I don't mind enjoying the irony - I'll admit to that... but let's not make a mountain out of a mole hill here.

@raphjd

I have said this before: I am not a Twitter subscriber (nor, do I have a Facebook page).

I am a computer consultant. I know the amount of personal information data mining these companies do!

I also don't search on Google without a VPN and "incognito" mode-browser.
YES! I get blocked on a LOT of sites because I won't give up access to my personal data... so be it!

But that's another target.

What makes me defend Twitter against your out-sized and overblown (truly hyperbolic) accusations is that I am a small business owner - and a computer professional - and I know first hand how damaging your rhetoric would to the stability and usefulness of the Internet as a whole were your ideas to be made into policy and applied in a wide-spread fashion.

@raphjd
And if you were in LIBERAL echo chambers, you'd hear example after example of Conservatives making dumb statements too...

Neither side has a monopoly on idiocy!

Are you kidding? Marjorie Taylor Greene literally claimed the mass shootings in schools was faked! "A Red Flag Event" in her OWN words!

There are wing-nuts in both camps, and a pox on both their houses LOL

@raphjd

BOY, you sure like to over-simplify things...

In the Presidential race, after votes were counted - and re-counted - and re-re-counted manually - and there was no change in the outcome, the news media (and social media outlets) said "enough already"...

As is so frequent with your rantings: Dis AIN'T dat!

In this NY case, they have hard data to show the mechanical count - in their partial test of the system - was off by more than it should have been.

It's still a long-shot, but IMHO recounts should be allowed. Sometimes RE-re-counts are even needed (but really, only when the original re-count shows a discrepancy!). But counting over and over because you don't like or believe the outcome is just plain ridiculous!

DAMN IT! I'm a Republican - I want the Republican to win! But I also want it to be a legitimate win! Recount! But recount just ONCE! If the recount says my gal Claudia still wins, then stop with the protesting!

GOOD GOD, MAN! I live (and lived) in FLORIDA during the 2000 election (hanging chads and all!). There comes a time when you have to take the results as they are, and move on to the NEXT election!

I will admit that there is some irony that the Democrats are asking for a re-count! But really, those poor bastards lost so much in 2020! They were supposed to "sweep" into power!
LIMP is more like it!
The Senate was supposed to become 52-48, or even as bad as 55-45 for Democrats!
NOPE: 50/50 and that was mostly because Trump interfered in the GA runoffs!
The Dems were supposed to make huge gains in the House...
NOPE: the Democratic majority in the House is as slim as it's been (for either party) in quite a while!

I fear for my Republican Party if the QAnon wingnuts continue to gain footholds... I'm actually in favor of removing Marjorie Taylor Greene... from office!
Let the (Republican) Governor of GA appoint a replacement!

@walker1234
Our country demonizes a lot of other countries - especially non "Western" ones.

I have visited "war-torn" Israel and Palestine. I have visited the "evil empire" of Iran. I have visited many parts of Europe and Central America. (I hope to visit South America 2-summers from now... Brazil, Argentina, & Chile are on the agenda so far.)

In the vast majority of cases, the people themselves were, warm, kind, generous (sometimes to a fault), and giving.

Honestly, while we may have our freedoms (which is a Governmental thing, not a Societal one), I personally think Americans in public are some of the coldest, most cruel and uncaring, most judgemental, and self-centered of societies I have encountered in my travels. Get them in private and many are very different (kind, giving, generous, open, etc) - but that's where the societies seem to differ...

• When I got lost in Paris once, I was actually approached by someone offering to help me find my way...
• When I got lost in Iran, a taxi driver took me back to my hotel - free of charge!
• When I got lost in Los Angeles, I had to go to 3 different convenience stores to find someone who would even tell me what part of LA I was in!

(I know - it seems I got lost a lot - but a lot of my traveling predates smartphones and apps to make sure you are NOT lost - EVER!)

@raphjd said in Twitter refused to remove child porn because it didn’t ‘violate policies’: lawsuit:

Did Twitter say to this family that kiddie porn does not violate their TOS?
If you say NO, you are a liar.

Sorry, but no

1. each individual Twitter employee does not speak for Twitter. The company admits their employee was in error. The company has never said or claimed, in a blanket way, that kiddie porn is acceptable on their platform.
2. The twitter employee never said that "kiddie porn was OK," either. The employee DID say that particular post was not a violation of the ToS. (An example of ONE does not prove the general case!) [NOTE: I honestly don't know if this posting was close to "borderline" or not - there certainly are 15 y/o kids who look 25 - just as there are 25 y/o adults who look 15 Austin Young, for example... but I don't buy that as an excuse - the "petitioner" provided proof of under-age status... so, maybe it was "soft-core"? - again, I don't know. What I do know is that Twitter acknowledged their error.]
3. For your assertion that Twitter doesn't think kiddie porn is a violation of its ToS, you'd have to have MANY MORE examples - or have a statement from the company (not just an employee - although a whistle-blower who claimed it was a secret company policy would suffice, I would think.

I don't know about you, but it looks like I said NO and didn't lie... oops!

Twitter even fought the kid and his parents over removing the kiddie porn.
Twitter only did the morally (and legally) right thing because the mom got Homeland Security involved.

Look, I'm the father to NINE children, and am a former foster parent (yes, that's how I wound up with NINE!) -- If I had a NICKEL for every company or government agency that had employees that didn't follow the well published rules properly, I'd already be retired! Hell, my younger kids got a disciplinary free ride through Middle School because much of the faculty was afraid of me (I documented and then reported on an Assistant Principal's violations of School Board Policy towards a special needs child of mine - and she was invited to retire -- or be fired. My younger ones reported that teachers would warn each other: "leave that one alone - her dad's a nightmare!")

The point is: employees do DUMB THINGS all the time. Corporations (and Governments) are constantly having to correct mistakes like this. That doesn't mean its excusable, but it also doesn't mean the entire organization can be demonized over every little incident.

If the mom didn't have a contact who knew someone in HS, then Twitter would still be refusing to remove the kiddie porn.
Hell, kiddie porn isn't even legal, EVER, but Twitter didn't care at least in this case.

Again, you're jumping to conclusions here. A picture of a topless 14 y/o girl may or may-not be kiddie-porn, depending on the context. (One of a 14 y/o inserting something into their genitalia is less of a grey area!)... the point is, we don't know how "black and white" the determination of this being "kiddie porn" was... and without knowing that (from someone knowledgeable), I'm not ready to shut down Twitter over it!

I have to wonder how many other cases there are that we haven't heard of.

Now THAT is a legitimate question - and if more people come forward and it creates a pattern, I'll be happy to join your anti-Twitter campaign.

For now, we wait and see...

I think its worthwhile to point out where the protections of Section 230 are, and how they break down:

The problem (in my view) is not that sites are well covered by protections of Section 230, it is that many of these same sites allow users to create accounts (sometimes multiple accounts) that are essentially anonymous.

So, if you are scanning and see someone offering up a 12-year-old up for sex:

• the site where the posting is made cannot itself be held liable - they are protected under Section 230 (mind you: they do have to remove it as soon as they are made aware!)
• sites like Facebook, Twitter, and even eBay, Craigslist, and even THIS FORUM! can get hundreds, sometimes thousands (or even millions!) of posts every hour. They cannot police that much data!
• under the original intent of the statute, the original poster would be solely responsible for the content that they posted.
• But, in too many cases - with true anonymity - there is no way to track that person down! MOST sites do not request, much less require, any proof of identity!

So again, they passed an amendment to Section 230 that required the site to pull that particular kind of material down (child-porn, sex trafficking, and some other special categories)... and that's not a bad thing.

But that loophole kept popping up: you have to go after the originator of the content, not the platform on which they posted it... and some of this shit was truly awful shit! People wanted/needed to find a way to hold someone accountable! And, quite literally, there was no one else to look to!

So they passed another amendment that held the site accountable for such a posting to begin with... and that's somewhat problematic (and, in large part, what led to the death of the Craigslist Personals, as well as any other "Personals" that don't have some way of identifying and tracing actual user information - real, valid, information - like from a credit card!)

But that is just one of many problems that TRUE anonymity creates on the Internet!

@raphjd

Once again, you're looking at two chocolate cakes in the bakery and assuming they're the same - when one has chocolate cake inside, and the other has that disgusting yellow cake inside!

There is a difference here.

In Georgia, where the voting machines were supposed to be suspect, they did a "partial manual audit" and found no difference

Still, they, at the Republican's request, did a STATEWIDE manual audit, and saw the same thing: no difference!!

In the NY case, they did a partial manual audit... and... OMG! There WAS a difference! A "statistically significant one"!

So, now - with HARD DATA, not just accusations - They're asking for a district-wide hand re-count.

Fortunately, there are paper records, so this shouldn't be a big issue. Re-count and see who won!

It looks like the Republican won, but I'm OK (as a registered Republican) with checking to make sure. (Hell, we won almost everywhere else there was a competitive race - except for where the Orange Don-nut interfered). I'm confident we'll win on a recount!