@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.

@raphjd

You sound like the assholes that want to ban The Diary of Anne Frank because she dared talk about her labia and clitoris.

@blablarg18 said in Jimmy Kimmel thing:

swing & miss, something I don't know of & don't care

Clearly you've never seen or read V for Vendetta. That's a shame; you might have learned something.

Who would have ever thought we'd miss the days when Conservative hacks liked to pretend they were the side represented by V. Now, they're creaming themselves to emulate this guy:

If only you would apply the same sentiments expressed in this thread to the FCC Chairman pressuring Disney to cancel Jimmy Kimmel. But, alas, you remain a partisan hack who only wants to acknowledge Free Speech when convenient to you.

@blablarg18 said in Jimmy Kimmel thing:

broadcast licensees like ABC are required legally to be strictly even-handed & factual, different from cable networks.

The Fairness Doctrine was abolished in the United States in 1987 under Reagan. The FCC exercises certain speech restraints on over-the-air broadcasters, but those are confined to specific topics, which usually have been identified by Congress through legislation or adopted by the FCC through full notice-and-comment pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act (e.g., indecency, obscenity, commercial content in children's programming, conduct of on-air contests/game shows, or the Emergency Alert System).

The FCC doesn't have carte blanche power to enforce fairness or even-handedness. The FCC does not have the power to force broadcasters not to criticize the presidential administration.

The FCC Chairman said on the podcast:

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

And make no mistake, he was threatening to use his power to punish broadcasters with whom he disagrees. He made sure to clarify his threat on the Sean Hannity Show, where he further explained:

"Over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing [the] public interest obligation. I don’t think we’re better off as a country for it.... They [meaning late night hosts] went from going for applause, from laugh lines to applause lines. They went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology...."

FCC Chairman Carr called the late night hosts a "narrow, partisan circus," and said that the FCC was currently working to reinvigorate enforcement of the "public interest obligation" of broadcasters.

You're delusional and living in fantasyland if you think the decision was based on ratings. I mean, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owner of ABC affiliates, literally told Kimmel in Sinclair's official press release to make a "direct apology" for the comments and demanded he make a donation to both Kirk's family and to Kirk's Turning Point USA. You cannot pretend that the actions were because of rating. They were a reaction to the comments and the backlash from the FCC and Trump.

@blablarg18 said in Jimmy Kimmel thing:

No one who melts down over Jimmy Kimmel today, lifted finger to defend Roseanne.

Roseanne's cancelling wasn't perpetrated by the Administration (which was Trump's first administration) using threats from the Chairman of the FCC to the licenses of both ABC and the affiliate stations broadcasting ABC. The FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, made the public threats to Disney, ABC, and affiliates on the Scott Jennings radio show.

Trump's current FCC chair is using threats to cajole the networks into censoring opponents of the current administration. Disney (owner of ABC) has its ESPN poised to purchase the NFL Network, which will require approval by the FCC. And the largest network affiliate carrying ABC, which is Nexstar, is currently bidding to purchase its rival Tegna. That merger will also require FCC approval.

So, it's not surprising that neither of those corporations want to piss off the FCC chairman. Unlike Roseanne's cancelling, which was just a business decision based on public outrage at Roseanne's racist tweets, here we have a government agent as the cause of the cancellation. That's government censorship, which the First Amendment is supposed to protect against.

And Trump's not ignorant of the power his lapdog at the FCC has, since he just today said that the FCC should pull the licenses of any licensee who broadcasts media critical of Trump. He's already tweeting that he'd like Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers gone as well. FCC Chair Carr has already said he's going to look into how he can take down The View, potentially claiming that it isn't a news show and/or has violated some form of the Equal Time doctrine.

I don't think Trump and his followers are lovers of Fascism. I don't think they'd wear that on the lapel. But they sure to love using the trappings and methods of fascist governments.

@raphjd said in Epstein Cover-up by Trump Administration:

The difference is that Trump files lawsuits on his own; he does not use taxpayer money to do it, like Democrats do.

Literally up until last month when he and his DOJ lost in front of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump was arguing that he could use the Department of Justice (funded by the taxpayers) as his personal horde of lawyers for his appeal of the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit.

Prior to wanting taxpayers to pay for his defense, Trump had been using political donations from his supporters to pay all of his legal bills (well, at least the legal bills that he chose to pay, since he is notorious for not paying his debts to lawyers).

Trump's only using "his" money because the Judiciary literally refused to allow him to rob the taxpayers for his own interests. You don't know what you're talking about.

For those saying if Trump was on the Epstein list, Biden would have released them:

MAGA Members Have Mega Tizzy After DOJ And FBI Claim Epstein Files Don’t Exist

In February, asked on Fox News about the so-called client list, Pam Bondi replied, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

“My committee investigators have seen substantial evidence in the possession of the Trump administration pertaining to prominent Wall Street figures financing Epstein’s operations,” Mr. Wyden said in a statement. “The best-case explanation for the Trump administration on their mishandling of the Epstein case is rank incompetence, but the much likelier explanation is that Trump and wealthy people around him have things to hide.”

Hours of recovered video evidence recording thousands of trafficked victims, and we're to believe that they can't identify even one of the men shoving his dick in a girl's mouth? Were they all wearing Squid Games masks?

Usually with conspiracy theories, I assume there's just a bunch of smoke, but no fire. Here, Trump's FBI and DOJ are even denying that any smoke existed. It's like they're trying to convince everyone Epstein was a Mandela Effect.

@blablarg18 said in Minnesota lawmaker murdered; Dem who had repealed illegal aliens:

It shows how Dem violence, or at least Dem advocacy & desire for terrorist political violence, is indeed widespread.

Yes, the lesson we should take away from an Republican/Conservative assassin killing two Democrats is that Democrats are the ones advocating political violence. </sarcasm>