A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Old GOP Isn’t Coming Back

Good. The old GOP was fucking terrible.
If the GOP splits in two, Congress will be more gridlocked than now. Two major parties of about equal size are bad enough but when there are three parties, none with a majority, it will be worse.

What world are you living in dude?

Are you really going to pretend that the Democratic Party is united still?

That only worked when Orange Man Bad.

You're already seeing the cracks. I predicted that a long time ago.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Thursday, March 4, 2021 12:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
The damage is already done.^ Started with a very weak brain and destroyed it. He'll never achieve average education or IQ.

There isn't enough alcohol in the world to drink the quantities necessary to make me as stupid as you are, Roomba.

Does my constantly proving you an idiot hurt your fee-fees? It should.

To which the Roomba follows up with:

Quote:
Biden's First Act Of War Hits 3 Countries

And all I have to say is LOL

P.S. You check that IP address yet? You need help figuring out how to do it?

Hell... I'll be a real nice guy and even let you know how to change it. Won't matter much though since I'd still have the dates and times that you had the old one you posted all the naughty stuff with.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

You're a useless piece of shit. Kill yourself. That's the only way you can possibly improve the world.

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Thursday, March 4, 2021 1:17 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

What world are you living in dude?

Are you really going to pretend that the Democratic Party is united still?

That only worked when Orange Man Bad.

You're already seeing the cracks. I predicted that a long time ago.

The crack in the Democratic party is fortunate for Trumptards. On one side are a majority of Democrats who think Trumptards are worth something. On the other side are much cooler headed and more cynical Democrats who have decades of experience and know Trumptards aren't worth a goddamn, either as individuals or as a mob. 6ix, you better hope the whole Democratic party doesn't figures you out because then you and your kind are dead meat. I will give you an example: The Civil War started along the same lines -- most Northern Generals believed in their hearts that the Confederates could be reasoned with. But a very few Northerners were certain that the most reasonable thing to do was kill all the Confederates. Eventually, the kill-them-all Generals Grant and Sherman came into power and proceeded to kill-them-all with great success. Unfortunately, Lincoln wouldn't allow the justly deserved killing of the Confederate elite to continue all the way to completion and his successor, Andrew Johnson the last of the slave-owning Presidents, was even worse when he pardoned all Confederate politicians as revenge for being impeached.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, March 4, 2021 9:34 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Please also include this one on your list. this one.

Quote:
You're a useless piece of shit. Kill yourself. That's the only way you can possibly improve the world.

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Thursday, March 4, 2021 9:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Please also include this one on your list. this one.
Quote:
You're a useless piece of shit. Kill yourself. That's the only way you can possibly improve the world.

I missed that one. Thanks.

32.

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
The damage is already done.^ Started with a very weak brain and destroyed it. He'll never achieve average education or IQ.

There isn't enough alcohol in the world to drink the quantities necessary to make me as stupid as you are, Roomba.

Does my constantly proving you an idiot hurt your fee-fees? It should.

To which the Roomba follows up with:

Quote:
Biden's First Act Of War Hits 3 Countries

And all I have to say is LOL

P.S. You check that IP address yet? You need help figuring out how to do it?

Hell... I'll be a real nice guy and even let you know how to change it. Won't matter much though since I'd still have the dates and times that you had the old one you posted all the naughty stuff with.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6 a useless piece of shit. Kill yourself. That's the only way you can possibly improve the world.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Thursday, March 4, 2021 9:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

What world are you living in dude?

Are you really going to pretend that the Democratic Party is united still?

That only worked when Orange Man Bad.

You're already seeing the cracks. I predicted that a long time ago.
The crack in the Democratic party is fortunate for Trumptards. On one side are a majority of Democrats who think Trumptards are worth something. On the other side are much cooler headed and more cynical Democrats who have decades of experience and know Trumptards aren't worth a goddamn, either as individuals or as a mob. 6ix, you better hope the whole Democratic party doesn't figures you out because then you and your kind are dead meat. I will give you an example: The Civil War started along the same lines -- most Northern Generals believed in their hearts that the Confederates could be reasoned with. But a very few Northerners were certain that the most reasonable thing to do was kill all the Confederates. Eventually, the kill-them-all Generals Grant and Sherman came into power and proceeded to kill-them-all with great success. Unfortunately, Lincoln wouldn't allow the justly deserved killing of the Confederate elite to continue all the way to completion and his successor, Andrew Johnson the last of the slave-owning Presidents, was even worse when he pardoned all Confederate politicians as revenge for being impeached.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Dead meat?

lol. That's funny.

Come at me, bruh.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Friday, March 5, 2021 6:37 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Republican Roadblocks to COVID Relief

Shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking vote to kick off Senate debate on Democrats’ $1.9 trillion relief bill. After the clerk began to read the 628-page legislation, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a customary request to waive the reading of the bill. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson rose to object. As I write this, the clerk is just getting started on reading aloud the table of contents of a piece of legislation. Republicans think the full recitation could chew up 10 hours. Senate clerks think they can do it in five.

The objection was the first salvo in a wave of dilatory stunts that Johnson and his Republicans have planned over the next few days as they try to do something they’ve been wholly unsuccessful at so far: turning public opinion against Democrats’ popular legislation, which Republicans wish to frame as less a COVID relief bill than a raid on the Treasury for unrelated Democratic priorities.

Johnson says that he’s submitting the Senate clerks to this trial of vocal-cord durability not to be a jerk, but because the “American people deserve to know what’s in it.” It’s hard to think of a less effective way to inform the American people about what’s in a bill than by forcing an hourslong recitation of incomprehensible legislative language on the Senate floor, but that’s the message.

And when that’s done, Johnson and other Republicans have more plans for dragging out the process. After the bill text has been read aloud—and Middle America is out with pitchforks, infuriated by learning through C-SPAN that the legislation would strike the semicolon in subparagraph 4(b) from Section 2104 of the Semiconductor Transparency Act of 1986—there’s a period of up to 20 hours of debate, followed by the rapid-succession, open-amendment process known as a “vote-a-rama.” In a typical vote-a-rama, hundreds of amendments get submitted, but only a small portion get a vote as the physical necessity of sleeping asserts its primacy. There were 889 amendments submitted during the last all-nighter in February, for example, and the chamber only voted on around 40 of them—which was still more than usual.

This time, however, Republicans are talking tough about a far more grueling process. Asked how many amendment votes he’d like to see, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said, “I’m hoping for infinity.” Indiana Sen. Mike Braun wouldn’t quite go all the way to infinity, but he said there would be many more votes than there were in the “warm-up session” last month.

There’s a perverse logic to the otherwise pointless behavior. When the minority can’t change the outcome, all they can do is throw up arbitrary delays, in the hope it arouses controversial atmospherics. Since the relief bill is unusually popular, with Republican base energy far more devoted to the gender politics of Mr. Potato Head, they’ll feel pressured to elevate their endgame to a new level of performed horror.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/covid-relief-ron-johnson-s
enate-republicans-wasting-time.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 5, 2021 6:38 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Biden's Covid stimulus bill isn't nearly enough to save Democrats

The Democratic Party controls Washington. It’s time to act like it.

The stark reality is that the president's party traditionally loses seats in Congress in the midterm election. This should scare the crap out of Democrats given their slim margins of majority: 10 seats in the House; one in the Senate. Democrats lost 63 House seats and six in the Senate under Barack Obama in 2010. In 2018, the GOP lost 41 House seats under Donald Trump.

If there was ever a time for Democrats to go big, it’s now. It’s the only way not to lose badly come 2022. Period. And the GOP knows this, which is why on Saturday every single House Republican voted against Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan. The GOP knows that every day they can prevent Democrats from delivering on helping Americans, it’s a good day for their 2022 electoral prospects.

Does any Democrat believe blaming the Senate’s woefully out-of-date filibuster rule as the reason for not enacting programs will inspire voters to come out and vote for Democrats in 2022? The filibuster has been called a lot of choice words lately, but one thing it is for sure is a way to depress Democratic voter turnout in 2022 — and the Senate GOP knows it.

Standing in the way of ending the filibuster are Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Their opposition to ending this “Jim Crow relic,” as Obama called it, will not just deprive millions of Americans of a livable minimum wage and guaranteed access to the polls, but it will also almost definitely result in Democrats losing control of the House and the Senate in 2022.

Ending the filibuster is the only way Democrats can deliver. Because there’s simply no way 10 Republican senators will join with Democrats to support these sweeping programs, no matter how necessary or how much they’d also help their red state constituents. The Democratic Party controls Washington and it’s time to act like it. If not, by 2023 we will yet again be discussing how much of a bummer it is that the GOP controls Congress.

More at https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-s-covid-stimulus-bill-isn-t-nearly
-enough-save-n1259453

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 5, 2021 9:21 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

If I were an independent or Dem weazel Senator in a red district, thered be a point wen my frustration woud overcome my instinct to get re-elected.

Therez a limit to how many owrz a human can take lissening to Opie (Rand Paul) blather out BS.

Even wen he'z not blathering, i'd be involuntarily obsessed with hiz stoopid haircut bobbling along to the beat uv wutever nursery ryme wite gi rap he lissinz to on hiz ear budz.

I woud rezine myself to the sertainty uv getting voted out in 22 by a landslide. By the time the vote came up I'd be daydreaming uv my future az a lobbyist for my state's biggest health care conglomerate or insurans company, quietly chanting 'yea' with tearz in my eyez.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

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Friday, March 5, 2021 9:38 AM

If you chucklefucks ever got rid of the fillibuster, you'd be bitching and moaning about it every time the GOP was sitting with 50 to 59 senators and just steamrolled you.

A majority of GWB's Presidency would have greatly benefited from it, as would the 2nd half of Trump's Presidency.

Stop being a moron and only thinking about today, Second.

--------------------------------------------------

A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Friday, March 5, 2021 10:33 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Republican Party is the biggest threat to American democracy today. It is a radical, obstructionist faction that has become hostile to the most basic democratic norm: that the other side should get to wield power when it wins elections...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-demo
cracy-13-charts

Frum the article:

"It’s very hard to see how any of this gets better. It’s very easy to see how it gets worse."

A solution to consider - commandeer the Republican party.

Trump did it by shouting louder and longer the lie about Obama being born in Kenya than the real Republicanz.

I think Hillary actually orijinated it during the primaryz for the 08 election. Then the GoPs ran with it. Eventually they gave it up, perhaps thinking its too rediculous and coud backfire, giving Demz campain advertizing ammo. But they were obviously rong. The appetite for rediculousness wuz only growing amongst the tea party extreemists.

So wut if a candidate for Prez emerjez hoo haz very solid anti-elite, anti-Dem anti-establishment credentialz?

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

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Friday, March 5, 2021 10:38 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Republican Party is the biggest threat to American democracy today. It is a radical, obstructionist faction that has become hostile to the most basic democratic norm: that the other side should get to wield power when it wins elections...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-demo
cracy-13-charts

Frum the article:

"It’s very hard to see how any of this gets better. It’s very easy to see how it gets worse."

A solution to consider - commandeer the Republican party.

Trump did it by shouting louder and longer the lie about Obama being born in Kenya than the real Republicanz.

I think Hillary actually orijinated it during the primaryz for the 08 election. Then the GoPs ran with it. Eventually they gave it up, perhaps thinking its too rediculous and coud backfire, giving Demz campain advertizing ammo. But they were obviously rong. The appetite for rediculousness wuz only growing amongst the tea party extreemists.

So wut if a candidate for Prez emerjez hoo haz very solid anti-elite, anti-Dem anti-establishment credentialz?

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

Thank you JO, for actually acknowledging that Hillary started the Birther movement in 08. Good luck finding any evidence of that fact online anymore though, as it seems to have been completely scrubbed.

The tricky thing about birth certificates from the 1960's is that they're laughably easy to forge and duplicate. My own from the late 70's is as well.

My take is that he's probably a US citizen, and at the very least it's innocent until proven guilty here. But there is a shadow of a doubt, and that's never going to go away.

As for "commandeering the Republican party" via obstruction?

What are you and Vox writers huffing? This is what both parties do all the time. All the time.

P.S. Don't finish a post with a link without putting a space or something else after it or it screws up the quote system here.

Oh... you figured it out. Much appreciated.

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Friday, March 5, 2021 7:07 PM

No. We call you a Nazi because you believe absolutely everything Nazis believe.

Sorry you can't see that, but you are incredibly dumb and uneducated.

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Friday, March 5, 2021 7:09 PM

Bernie's $15 Minimum Wage Amendment FAILS After EIGHT Democrat Senators Vote AGAINST It!

Plenty of Nazis among the Dems. They are fully committed to losing, and they will.

I give humanity 50 years. We'll all be gone in 100.

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 12:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
No. We call you a Nazi because you believe absolutely everything Nazis believe.

Sorry you can't see that, but you are incredibly dumb and uneducated.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 7:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Please also include this one on your list. this one.
Quote:
You're a useless piece of shit. Kill yourself. That's the only way you can possibly improve the world.

You should, too. You're a Russian troll. You have no value to anyone in the world. Your own family hates you. You are a failure. You have nothing to live for, so why live at all, loser?

And why is Naziboy quoting Bill Maher? He's an idiot, too. Always was.

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 7:24 AM

This piece of shit should kill herself, too.

Combined wealth of the 8 Democrats who voted against sanity: $43 million.

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 9:19 AM

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 4:51 PM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Thank you JO, for actually acknowledging that Hillary started the Birther movement in 08. Good luck finding any evidence of that fact online anymore though, as it seems to have been completely scrubbed.

Not scrubbed, debunked.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/birther-movement-founder-trump-
clinton-228304

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theo
ries#Origins_of_the_claims

No suprize that the claim that Hillary started it iz GoP disinfo based on cherry pikking and oversimplifying a tangled story. Dependz on most peepl not having the time to reserch every tiny detail.

Quote:

P.S. Don't finish a post with a link without putting a space or something else after it or it screws up the quote system here.

Oh... you figured it out.

No, I didnt! Just coinsidens or luk. Thanks for the info.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 6:05 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

A thread for Democrats* Only

I've been harping about how awful the democrats* are since 2016:

Hillary Clinton: just because she deserves her own thread
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433&p=1

And nobody who seems to be pro-democrat* here has addressed a single one of my objections. Nope, not one post on the particulars in all that time. Instead of addressing the problems with democrats*, the pro-democrat* faction here seems content to take personal potshots instead.

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO GET YOU TO STOP FOCUSING ON TRUMP (AND RUSSIA), AND ADDRESS AMERICAN PROBLEMS THAT DEMOCRATS* ARE NOT ADDRESSING? That's what I want to know.

BTW, as a registered democrat*, since 2016 I have not voted for a democrat*. People who get my vote only need to meet 2 requirements: 1) NOT the democrat*, and 2) having a platform that resembles my own views - which I have posted multiple times. But to reiterate: 1) focus on global warming, and 2) reduce the threat of nuclear confrontation with Russia. Both of these are EXISTENTIAL threats - ie, whether we and the planet survive in some reasonable fashion, or not.

And as you may have noticed democrats* have done absolutely nothing to reduce US global warming gas EMISSIONS, and are actively provoking Russia with unending sanctions about un-evidenced claims. (And let me point out, again, the difference between reality and delusion, news and propaganda, is EVIDENCE.)

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 6:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
T

]
Trump THREATENS to Sue Republican Party If they Don't stop using his name in Fundraising

He should worry more about the multiple suits against him.

But, he's always been stupid. He's convinced he's God,
along with Naziboy and his Russian trolls.

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Saturday, March 6, 2021 6:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Thank you JO, for actually acknowledging that Hillary started the Birther movement in 08. Good luck finding any evidence of that fact online anymore though, as it seems to have been completely scrubbed.

Not scrubbed, debunked.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/birther-movement-founder-trump-
clinton-228304

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theo
ries#Origins_of_the_claims

Nah. It's not debunked. I remember Hillary saying it back when Trump was still doing reality TV and nobody ever imagined he'd run for President.

The only problem was that YouTube was only a year or two old at that time and only had crazy cat videos and teens doing stupid stuff. Nobody was saving newscasts, and so history only 13 years ago is easy to erase.

Wikipedia and politico are highly biased "sources" and completely incapable of fact checking.

Quote:
No suprize that the claim that Hillary started it iz GoP disinfo based on cherry pikking and oversimplifying a tangled story. Dependz on most peepl not having the time to reserch every tiny detail.

Just yesterday, you yourself said that Hillary started it in 2008, and now you're convinced otherwise. See how easy you just got manipulated and had your reality changed by somebody else saying what you wanted to hear?

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Sunday, March 7, 2021 12:39 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Role of The Big Lie

Ken Melvin | March 7, 2021 10:40 am

Usually, lies are told for purpose. So, in most cases, if we can determine whose purpose is being served, we will know who is behind the lie.

Whose interests were being served by the Confederacy during the American Civil War? Sure as heck wasn’t those of the yeomen farmers who did most of the fighting and dying. There’s a good chance that it was the planters who told the lies that got so many killed. Heady stuff; people knowingly and willingly telling lies to people that were willing enough to believe in enough to die for those lies.

Whose interests are being served by American Capitalism? Free Markets? Who’s putting up the perpetuating? Sure as heck isn’t the lower fifty-percent.

Who in America’s interests were best served by the Vietnam War, the Invasion of Iraq? Sure wasn’t all those dead and wounded. Wasn’t the rest of the lower fifty, either.

The lower fifty is constantly being admonished to work hard and do the right thing? Who says what is the right thing. Who benefits most from all the hard work?

Who in America’s interests were best served by offshoring all those jobs? Certainly wasn’t in the interests of all those who died from Methamphetamine and Opiates.

In whose best interests is America’s ‘worst in the advanced world’ healthcare system? The dead can’t talk? Too bad.

In whose best interests is America having a lower than living minimum wage? Whose are they that are getting more than their fair share and want to keep it that way?

In whose interests was it to take America back fifty-sixty years? Those whose support system is based on white supremacy, maybe?

Speaking of Trump: Trump lied impulsively with purpose; the purpose being his own interests.

The Big Lie is such a big part of America, where would we be without it? What would we do without it?

https://angrybearblog.com/2021/03/the-role-of-the-big-lie

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 7, 2021 1:49 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

To Hell with Unity by Fintan O’Toole

Biden’s ability to govern depends on abandoning any hope of reconciliation with the GOP.

March 25, 2021 issue

They had a better class of insult at Catholic boys’ prep schools in the 1950s. During his first semester at Archmere Academy in Delaware, where Latin was a big thing, Joe Biden was given a nickname: Joe Impedimenta. The word referred to his speech impediment, the stutter that meant, as he recalled, “I talked like Morse code.” But it also signifies in Latin the baggage encumbering an army’s progress over rough terrain. As president, Joe Impedimenta needs to move fast. It seems obvious, however, that he will be held back by a formidable hindrance. His baggage is an impossible ideal, a desire for bipartisan unity that cannot be fulfilled. Yet he can and must leave it behind him and learn to travel light.

Biden has long returned to a phrase from Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address of 1861. In his 2007 book, Promises to Keep, he deplored the way “partisanship rips at the bonds of affection that tie the country state to state, political party to political party, citizen to citizen.” In November 2008 Biden stood with Barack Obama as the then president-elect, in his own victory speech, quoted Lincoln’s words to “a nation far more divided than ours”: “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” Even leaving aside the reality that Lincoln’s appeal preceded by a matter of weeks the outbreak of open civil war, its repetition on that hopeful occasion thirteen years ago now casts a gloomy shadow. The appeal was no more successful in 2008 than it had been in 1861—and there is even scanter reason to think it will be heard in 2021.

Indeed, in Biden’s own previous analysis, the “ethic of division” in contemporary American politics took hold as early as the 1994 midterm elections, when Republicans stormed to victory under the banner of Newt Gingrich’s radically right-wing Contract with America, in the process winning more House seats in the South than the Democrats for the first time since Reconstruction. If this is so, almost thirty years of calls for mutual respect and tolerance have been not just rebuffed but flung back with contempt. There surely comes a time when repeated declarations of unrequited love look less like fidelity and more like madness, a time to see the bonds of affection tying party to party as bonds in the other sense, chains that shackle the democratic majority to the will of a fiercely intractable minority.

What Biden surely understands by now is that he does not have to break those fetters—the Republican Party has done the job for him. The willingness of most congressional Republicans to endorse Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the November election and their unwillingness to convict Trump for his role in the violent putsch of January 6 may be horrifying. But these choices are also clarifying. There can be no illusions of accord, or even of civilized dispute. There is only a minority that will do everything in its considerable power to thwart, to wreck, to undermine.

There should be a kind of liberation in this implacable hatred. Biden has been freed, by the failure of the Republicans to move beyond Trumpism, to shake off his pursuit of consensus politics. He has become Joe Nonimpedimenta.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210302222100/https://www.nybooks.com/art
icles/2021/03/25/joe-biden-to-hell-with-unity/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 7, 2021 11:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
To Hell with Unity by Fintan O’Toole

lol

Fuck you.

There was never going to be any unity. You've been terrible for 4 straight years and thought things would change now?

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Monday, March 8, 2021 8:41 PM

Fascists are indistinguishable from royalists.

https://twitter.com/libertyhangout/status/1256782525734752256?lang=en

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Monday, March 8, 2021 8:47 PM

Even if that were an entertaining video, I'd never watch something that was posted by the Roomba.

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 8:04 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Will Stagnation Follow the Biden Boom? The relief bill is done; infrastructure may be harder.

Financial markets are signaling that they expect a return to underperformance once the Biden boom is behind us. These days interest rates are, in effect, a barometer of economic optimism — and these rates have in fact risen as the rescue plan has moved toward the finish line. But the rise has been modest, comparable to the “taper tantrum” of 2013 (don’t ask) and minor compared with some interest rate surges of the 1990s.

What markets are telling us, in effect, is that after the boom they expect a return to stagnation — which would, again, be a bad place to be. How can we avoid it?

The answer is actually obvious: a large program of public investment, paid for largely with borrowing, although with a case for new taxes, too, if it’s really big. Such a program would do double duty. Macroeconomics aside, we need to spend a lot to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, fight climate change, and more. And public investment can also be a major source of jobs and growth, helping to pull us out of the stagnation trap.

The good news is that the Biden administration’s economists understand all of this perfectly well, and by all accounts they’re already in the process of putting together a very ambitious infrastructure plan.

The bad news is that getting such a plan enacted will be very hard politically — probably even harder than getting to yes on short-term economic rescue.

In a well-functioning democracy, putting together a big public investment plan wouldn’t be hard. “Every bit of polling evidence I have reviewed,” wrote Gallup’s Frank Newport, “shows that Americans are extremely supportive of new government infrastructure legislation.” Remember, the Trump administration spent four years promising a plan any day now, although it never delivered.

But every bit of polling evidence I’ve reviewed also showed that Americans — including many Republicans — supported the American Rescue Plan. Yet not a single elected Republican voted for it.

Republicans will probably offer similar lock-step opposition to anything Democrats propose on infrastructure. In fact, the very popularity of infrastructure spending will stiffen their opposition, because what they want, above all, is to make the Biden administration a failure.

So the big question is whether Democrats can pull off another political miracle, and pass a second round of crucial economic legislation in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition. The answer to that question will determine whether the Biden boom will endure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/opinion/biden-economy-stagnation.ht
ml

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 9:42 AM

Excuses, excuses.

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 10:03 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Excuses, excuses.

Dan Price
Founder/CEO, Gravity Payments tweeted:

Minimum wage
Costco: $16
Walmart: $11

Average pay
Costco: $24
Walmart: $15

Employees on food stamps (subsidized by you)
Costco: Virtually none
Walmart: More than any other company

Founder net worth
Costco: not a billionaire
Walmart: over $220 billion; up $30 billion in pandemic

Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more.

11:55 AM · Feb 26, 2021·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/danpriceseattle/status/1365359972398301184

What is Dan Price famous for? A $70,000 minimum wage at his company.
www.cnbc.com/2016/04/15/70k-ceo-i-wasnt-ready-for-the-surge-of-attenti
on.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 10:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/covid-19-relie
f-bill-heres-what-we-know-when-you-can-expect-aid/6788221002/

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 10:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/covid-19-relie
f-bill-heres-what-we-know-when-you-can-expect-aid/6788221002/

Do you understand that no Republican Congressmen voted for the covid-19 relief bill nor the increase in a minimum wage? They have excuses, but so what? Those are to avoid saying that this money comes from the rich and the rich don't want to pay. The rich don't want to either say it themselves or to be known as Scrooges. Therefore, get the GOP to give excuses so that the rich don't have to.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 10:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/covid-19-relie
f-bill-heres-what-we-know-when-you-can-expect-aid/6788221002/
Do you understand that no Republican Congressmen voted for the covid-19 relief bill nor the increase in a minimum wage? They have excuses, but so what? Those are to avoid saying that this money comes from the rich and the rich don't want to pay. The rich don't want to either say it themselves or to be known as Scrooges. Therefore, get the GOP to give excuses so that the rich don't have to.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 11:04 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Bill Gates would NOT have a sign on his bus "For Vaccinated Only" but might have something morbid: "Those who are NOT Vaccinated have an increased likelihood of death from Covid-19." Gates would very likely never attach a number to the probability of death until he has 50 or more years of data, which is why he will never have a sign "For Vaccinated Only". He won't live long enough to be certain.

https://i.imgur.com/N3IAMO4.jpeg

CVS vaccine appointments are going unfilled deep in Trump country

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 11:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Costco and Walmart have the same low prices. So you when you hear "raising the minimum wage will just result in higher prices or layoffs," remember that's not basic business. It's corporations making a choice: pay more or give shareholders billions more.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/22/covid-19-relie
f-bill-heres-what-we-know-when-you-can-expect-aid/6788221002/
Do you understand that no Republican Congressmen voted for the covid-19 relief bill nor the increase in a minimum wage? They have excuses, but so what? Those are to avoid saying that this money comes from the rich and the rich don't want to pay. The rich don't want to either say it themselves or to be known as Scrooges. Therefore, get the GOP to give excuses so that the rich don't have to.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

That's because there's hardly any Covid relief in the bill.

They really need to start voting all of these things separately.

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 11:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Bill Gates would NOT have a sign on his bus "For Vaccinated Only" but might have something morbid: "Those who are NOT Vaccinated have an increased likelihood of death from Covid-19." Gates would very likely never attach a number to the probability of death until he has 50 or more years of data, which is why he will never have a sign "For Vaccinated Only". He won't live long enough to be certain.

https://i.imgur.com/N3IAMO4.jpeg
CVS vaccine appointments are going unfilled deep in Trump country

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Try and make us take it.

See what happens.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 12:25 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Try and make us take it.

See what happens.

Texas Democrats will not try to make Trumptards take a bath, wash their clothes or even wear clothes, which is totally a personal choice, especially because Texas is too far away to see, hear or smell you. 6ix, your life is your own; waste it if it pleases you. Many Texas Trumptards before you have wasted their lives and gone to early deaths. What is so special and unique about Indiana Trumptards that you would live longer?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 12, 2021 7:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ending the End of Welfare as We Knew It
The Democrats’ new child benefit is a very big deal.

The era of “the era of big government is over” is over.

The relief bill President Biden just signed is breathtaking in its scope. Yet conservative opposition was remarkably limp. While not a single Republican voted for the legislation, the rhetorical onslaught from right-wing politicians and media was notably low energy, perhaps because the Biden plan is incredibly popular. Even as Democrats moved to disburse $1.9 trillion in government aid, their opponents mainly seemed to be talking about Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head.

What makes this lack of energy especially striking is that the American Rescue Plan doesn’t just spend a lot of money. It also embodies some big changes in the philosophy of public policy, a turn away from the conservative ideology that has dominated U.S. politics for four decades.

In particular, there is a sense — a strictly limited sense, as I’ll explain, but real nonetheless — in which the legislation, in addition to reviving the notion of government as the solution, not the problem, also ends the “end of welfare as we know it.”

Once upon a time there was a program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children — the program people usually had in mind when they talked about “welfare.” It was originally intended to support white widows while they raised their children, and it was effectively denied to both Black and unwed mothers. Over time, however, these restrictions were eroded, and the program rapidly expanded from the early 1960s to the early 1970s.

The program also became hugely unpopular. In part, of course, this reflected the race of many beneficiaries. But many commentators also blamed A.F.D.C. for creating a culture of dependency that was in turn responsible for the growing social ills of inner cities, although later scholarship, notably the work of William Julius Wilson, suggested that the real cause of these ills was the disappearance of urban jobs. (The social problems that have followed economic decline in much of the American heartland seem to confirm Wilson’s thesis.)

In any case, in 1996 Bill Clinton enacted reforms that both drastically reduced aid to the poor and imposed draconian work requirements, even on single mothers. Welfare as we knew it really did end.

But the American Rescue Plan Act, closely following proposals from Senator Michael Bennet, reinstates significant aid for children. Moreover, unlike most of the act’s provisions, this change (like enhanced Obamacare subsidies) is intended to outlast the current crisis; Democrats hope and expect that substantial payments to families with children will become a permanent part of the American scene.

So is “welfare” back? Not really.

A.F.D.C. was intended to provide mothers with enough to get by — barely — while raising their children. In 1970 three-person families on A.F.D.C. received, on average, $194 a month. Adjusting for inflation, that’s the equivalent of around $15,000 a year today, compared with the $6,000 a family with two children over age 6 ($7,200 if they’re under 6) will receive under the new plan.

Alternatively, it may be more informative to compare “welfare” payments with the incomes of typical families. In 1970, an A.F.D.C. family of three received about 25 percent of median income for three-person families — hardly a generous allowance, but maybe, just, enough to live on. The new legislation will give a single parent of two children less than 7 percent of median income.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/opinion/biden-covid-relief-welfare.
html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 12, 2021 7:40 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Congressional Freshman Class Is a Tribute to Our Nation’s Notorious Local Bozos

Every town, midsize city, or urban neighborhood has one, or, perhaps, a family of them: the nuisance litigants, the business owners who address zoning board hearings while visibly intoxicated, the parents who ruin PTA meetings by accusing The Polar Express of encouraging demonry. They are the ones who have been banned from multiple softball leagues for reasons that somehow involve child support. They are America's local ding-dongs and loose cannons.

The demands of politics have always made "popular” figures out of the kinds of people who the average voter would find off-putting in person, and Mr. Psycho Goes to Washington is not a wholly new story. Five-term Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar is apparently such a not-great guy to be around that six (!) of his siblings filmed campaign ads urging his constituents not to vote for him. (In February, Gosar was the featured speaker at a conference organized by a "white identity" fanatic who described the deadly Capitol riot as "awesome".)

It's not a purely Republican phenomenon, either: onetime Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson was known for both his caustic partisan rhetoric and tendency to appear in headlines like "Grayson Loses $18 Million in Fraud Scheme" and "Grayson Accuses Wife of Bigamy." Going back further, there are figures like California Rep. John Schmitz, a 1970s Republican so extreme that he was removed from the John Birch Society's "national council" because the group had gotten tired of dealing with the bad publicity generated, in the words of a 1982 UPI article, by his "statements against homosexuals and Jews.” Schmitz had two children out of wedlock with a woman who'd taken his college political science class and, with his actual wife, fathered '90s tabloid character Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher jailed for raping her 6th-grade student and having two of the student’s children.

Never before, though, have our nation’s area weirdos dominated one party’s media presence and priorities as they do now. With much of politics, and political fundraising, carried out through social media performance, the ability to get attention has become functionally identical to the ability to command influence, and a new herd of public figures has stampeded through the gap where the fence dividing fame from infamy used to stand. Many of them were personally inspired by Donald Trump, who got his own start as the notorious protagonist of bankruptcies and divorces in the New York City area. Area creeps are having their moment, and the Republican freshman congressional class is where they are having it. Here, a guide to its most prominently messy legislators.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert

Grim/colorful backstory: Boebert’s biggest moment in Congress thus far was appearing via Zoom for a committee hearing with several rifles piled haphazardly on a bookshelf behind her. (Seriously, one of them is just, like, lying on a row of books.) This makes sense given that her claim to fame as a candidate was Shooters Grill — a restaurant, which she operates with her husband, that employs waitresses who ostentatiously carry guns while working. The restaurant owed almost $20,000 in unpaid state taxes while Boebert was running for office; in 2017, a local health department determined that an unlicensed vending stand it set up at a rodeo caused as many as 80 cases of food poisoning.

Boebert’s mother left a number of comments on a YouTube video accusing a former WCW wrestler named Stan Lane of evading responsibility for being Boebert’s biological father. Boebert has been arrested numerous times.

More at https://web.archive.org/save/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/
03/republican-freshman-class-notorious-local-bozos.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 12, 2021 11:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would ease paths to unionization and ban state right-to-work legislation, passed the U.S. House on a party-line vote Tuesday.

Since the twofold combination of the Citizens United decision and the decision by Charles Koch to dramatically ramp up his political activity, labor has been dealt a string of legislative defeats at the state level. Right-to-work laws, which eliminate the requirement that people represented by a union join and pay dues to the union in the private sector, passed in Indiana and Michigan in 2012, Wisconsin in 2015, West Virginia in 2016, and Kentucky in 2017.

Until now, there has not been a single state in which Republicans control the legislature and governorship where right-to-work legislation has made it out of committee and then failed to pass.

https://theintercept.com/2021/03/12/union-right-to-work-montana/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 14, 2021 8:46 AM

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Sunday, March 14, 2021 9:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Try and make us take it.

See what happens.
Texas Democrats will not try to make Trumptards take a bath, wash their clothes or even wear clothes, which is totally a personal choice, especially because Texas is too far away to see, hear or smell you. 6ix, your life is your own; waste it if it pleases you. Many Texas Trumptards before you have wasted their lives and gone to early deaths. What is so special and unique about Indiana Trumptards that you would live longer?

If somebody doesn't want to take a bath, they're not going to have many friends. If somebody goes out of their house naked, they get to spend a night in the pokey... a lot longer than a night if they did it anywhere near any children.

You really need to stop deluding yourself about how great you are. You're not that great.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Sunday, March 14, 2021 6:44 PM

Bolivia’s Fascist Coup Leader Jeanine Áñez Arrested; Found in Box

A little good news from down south.

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Sunday, March 14, 2021 8:50 PM

The problem with the way you throw that word around, she might just be some random chick.

You really ought to stick to using the bad words for people who really deserve them.

Since you can't read, Roomba, might I suggest the following link:

https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf-Sommer-Time/dp/B00H1OW6F0/re
f=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf&qid=1615769388&s=audible&sr=1-1

It's even free if you have an Amazon Prime membership.

Good stuff.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Monday, March 15, 2021 8:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Dark Money Behind GOP Judges Is Now Behind Voter Suppression

Sen. Whitehouse is not thinking about headlines. He is thinking about getting dark money out of the courts and voting booths.

Sen. Whitehouse chairs a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee that deals with oversight of the federal courts, and now that the Democrats are in charge, he is taking full advantage of it. He held a hearing on Thursday aimed at pulling back the curtain on the role dark money has played in the placement of judges at all levels.

"Courtrooms ought to be open places where you know who is present, not a place where powerful players can come masked behind front groups hiding both their own identity and their interconnections," Whitehouse said at the hearing. "The Supreme Court should not be a place that has a special interest-controlled fast lane bringing certain special interest-chosen cases before the court at high-speed, without the trappings of a real case or controversy," he insisted.

O'Donnell reminded us just how hard Mitch McConnell worked to grease the wheels for the Federalist Society to slide their obscenely conservative lawyers into judgeships, totaling 231 in all during the former guy's reign. "Many of those judges were unqualified, and all were the result of a right-wing screening process funded by dark money, contributed by people in corporations who want the courts to serve them," he said, warning that since those judges are now in their positions for life, Biden has a lot to do to balance the scales. He asked Whitehouse to tell the story of "how they got there and who put them there."

Whitehouse didn't name names, but said the "same donors, the same entities, the same operatives, the same machinery that, in the Trump administration, was driving the court capture operation," is now behind the voter suppression effort we are seeing in so many Republican states. "If we don't show the American people what this dark money operation is, and try to dig at who's behind it, then we're doing a real disservice to the American people," he said.

O'Donnell pointed out that these special interest-appointed judges are now going to be deciding these voter suppression cases, brought by the very same people who put them into their positions of power — all the way up to the Supreme Court. (Looking at you, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.)

My husband agreed. "With litigants in the courtroom with bogus names, like the 'Honest Elections Project,' which is run right now by the same person who led the project that put these judges on the bench. So they'll be in the courtroom when these voter suppression cases are litigated to remind the judges, 'Yes, I am the one who got you there. Now it's pay back time.'"

I'll save you the Google search, and just let you know that the Honest Elections Project is funded by the DeVos family and the Kochs. Sheldon's just being coy.

When O'Donnell asked him how much HR1 would help solve these problems of dark money in corrupt appointments of judges, Whitehouse was unequivocal.

"Enormously. Enormously," he insisted. "It would do two things. First of all it makes government money a thing of the past for contributions over $10,000. And second, it takes the money spent on judicial confirmations and treats them as what they are, which is a political advertising expense that has to be disclosed also. It would make an enormous difference."

Whitehouse even has confidence (more than I do, honestly) that the public, once informed, would actually care. "As soon as the American public, as citizens sees who the players are on the stage, they get the plot right away. And that's why these nasty big dark money players love to hide behind masks and try to fool the American public, and deny them the knowledge of who's on the political stage. And in this case who's in the courtroom," he said.

It certainly explains why the GOP is so viscerally opposed to HR1. Transparency is not their friend, though they've shown they care less and less about hiding their true motives.

O'Donnell thanked Whitehouse for being "one of the people in the Senate who's always doing the thinking about the issue that isn't on the front page, today, that we do have to be thinking about." In other words, voting matters, and elections have consequences. No one is feeling the pain of that more than the GOP, right now, and Whitehouse is helping to dish out the punishment.

More at https://crooksandliars.com/2021/03/sheldon-whitehouse-lawrence-odonnel
l

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, March 15, 2021 9:15 AM

There is no voter suppression.

Done listening to you, TrumpTard.

--------------------------------------------------

" 'You're like the Nazis' is the new 'I don't like you'. That disqualifies her from marching around planet Who-Gives-a-Shit in a helmet? ~Bill Maher

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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Monday, March 15, 2021 9:53 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

We Need to Start Talking About Where Wealth Comes From

People’s views aren’t formed in a vacuum: they are shaped by social and political forces that evolve over time. Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal revolution wasn’t just successful because it reorganised the economy – it was successful because it embedded a particular narrative about how wealth is created and distributed in society. This is a world where, so long as there is sufficient competition and free markets, every individual will receive their just rewards in relation to their true contribution to society. There is, in Milton Friedman’s famous terms, “no such thing as a free lunch”. It’s a world where businesses are the “wealth creators” who create jobs and drive innovation, and business owners are entitled to the financial rewards of success – regardless of how enormous they are.

Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ largely accepted this narrative of wealth creation, and until relatively recently nobody in the mainstream of British politics challenged it. Is it really any wonder that most people believe it?

The problem, of course, is that it bears little resemblance to how the economy actually works. While it is true that working hard will generally help you earn more money, this causality doesn’t hold in reverse: not all wealth has been attained through hard work. In practice, the distribution of wealth has little to do with contribution, and everything to do with politics and power.

Someone that is born in the UK will earn more than someone born in Sub-Saharan Africa, even if they perform exactly the same labour. Why? Because one was lucky enough to be born in a powerful country with a legacy of imperialism that has rigged the rules of the global economy in its favour. The economist Branko Milanovic has estimated that 60% of someone’s income is determined by where they were born, and an additional 20% is determined by the income level of their parents. This means that place of birth and parental background accounts for around 80% of someone’s earning power on average.

In the age of the ‘self-made’ millionaire, the lottery of birth is more important than ever. As George Monbiot once said:

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

Within countries, extreme fortunes almost always derive from control over a scare resource – fossil fuels, minerals, land, monopoly networks, money etc. To the early classical economists, this kind of wealth – attained by simply being a gatekeeper to scarce resources – was deemed to be unearned, and referred to it as ‘economic rent’. But today the Sunday Times Rich List is dominated by rentiers – financiers, real estate tycoons, oil barons, monopolists and aristocrats – many of whom acquired their original fortune in somewhat questionable circumstances.

As Grace Blakeley puts it:

“You do not become a billionaire through labour. You become a billionaire through inheritance, corruption or economic rents – or, in most cases, some mixture of all three.”

But it’s not just billionaires that accumulate wealth without working. Over a third of all the income in Britain is paid out as capital income (dividends, rents and interest) rather than labour income (wages and salaries). Capital income is inherently passive: it doesn’t correspond to work or skill, but ownership. And while capital ownership is distributed extremely unequally, in recent decades changes to pensions and the housing market have enabled many middle class households to join the capital income gravy train and accumulate wealth without lifting a finger.

As I’ve written about before, since 1995 three quarters of all wealth accumulated in the UK – totalling £5 trillion – has come from rising house prices. The driving force behind rising house prices has been rising land prices. But land is not a source of wealth but of economic rent. The truth is that most wealth made through the housing market has been gained at the expense of others who are now seeing more of their incomes eaten up by higher rents and larger mortgage payments. The housing boom is not an example of wealth creation, but wealth redistribution on an unprecedented scale.

More at https://angrybearblog.com/2021/03/thatcherite-narrative-on-wealth-crea
tion-goes-unchallenged

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 16, 2021 7:30 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s Strategy for Returning to Power Is Already Clear

By Masha Gessen, March 2, 2021

Hands waving while Donald Trump speaks at CPAC 2021. Speaking at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, the former President positioned himself and his audience as the only true Americans.

Viktor Orbán became the Prime Minister of Hungary in 1998. Four years later, with a record number of Hungarians turning up to the polls, his party lost power. The next day, Orbán’s allies claimed voter fraud and demanded recounts, and although these demands were rejected, Orbán continued to claim that the election had been stolen. In 2010, after eight years leading the opposition, Orbán and his party, Fidesz, returned to power with a supermajority—enough to change the constitution and begin rapidly consolidating autocratic power. Orbán has not left office in the decade since.

The Law and Justice Party, led by the twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, first held power in Poland between 2005 and 2007, as part of a coalition government. Eight years after being voted out, their party (led, after Lech’s death, by Jaroslaw) returned to power, receiving the largest share of the vote that any party had seen since the fall of Communism. They quickly got to work dismantling the institutions of liberal democracy and establishing autocratic rule.

Other European autocrats never had to leave office—Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenka, and, of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin have not been in the opposition since first touching power—but the cases of Hungary and Poland provide examples of a particular path to autocracy. It involves an aspiring autocrat who is rebuked by voters and who then frames his loss of power as illegitimate, launching a campaign aimed at undermining not only the party that won the election but the very institutions of democratic government. To discuss this scenario, I called Bálint Magyar, the author of such books as “Post-Communist Mafia State” and “The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes”—and my intellectual guiding light on things autocratic.

After losing the 2002 election, Orbán declared that “the homeland cannot be in the opposition.” By “the homeland” he meant himself, envisioned as the only true representative of Hungary; if he wasn’t in government, then the government had been hijacked. Orbán and the opposition, therefore, criticized everything that the new government did—not because they disagreed with the policies but because, in their view, a government that wasn’t led by their party had no right to exist. Magyar used an example from his own work: he served as Hungary’s education minister from 2002 to 2006 and created private-public partnerships that, he said, Fidesz members privately praised but publicly criticized—because they opposed everything done by the new government.

Magyar might as well have been describing last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, in Orlando, where former President Donald Trump accused President Joe Biden of having “the most disastrous first month of any President in modern history.” Trump recited a litany of lies about his own record and Biden’s policies on immigration, and he ranted about the COVID-19 pandemic: it sounded like he was against masking and against not masking, against social distancing and against not social distancing—or, simply, against everything Biden. “In just one short month, we have gone from America first to America last,” Trump falsely claimed, positioning himself and his audience as the only true Americans, much as Orbán had claimed to be the sole representative of Hungary.

Throughout Orbán’s eight years in the opposition, the parties in power “were always trying to have a normal discussion of policy issues,” Magyar said. But Orbán’s party chose “a permanent regime-critic paradigm rather than a government-critic paradigm.” In other words, Fidesz opposed the institutions of government themselves, not just the people staffing those institutions or the policies that they pursued. “It was a permanent cold civil war,” Magyar explained. By the time that Fidesz returned to power, government institutions were widely viewed as illegitimate—and therefore easy to corrupt or dismantle. Trump, of course, waged war on institutions of government as President, and, as the ex-President, he will continue to attack their legitimacy. In this, he can count on the support of the Republican Party, which, for more than forty years, has positioned itself as the anti-government party.

Magyar said it was “bad news” that Trump had announced that he would not be leaving the Republicans to form his own party. During the past week, the conservative commentators Joe Walsh and William Kristol have floated the possibility of leaving the Republican Party to Trump and forming a new centrist conservative party or joining the Democrats. In Magyar’s opinion, that would be an ineffective response to Trumpism. “Whoever leaves a party always loses,” he said.

The Republican Party—whose representatives in Congress voted against certifying the results of the Presidential election hours after a violent Trumpist mob invaded the Capitol—isn’t going to save itself from Trumpism, and it certainly isn’t going to save America from it. What can the Democratic Party do? In Magyar’s view, it has to aggressively pursue policies with definitive answers that address the existential fears that fuel Trumpism. This brings us to Magyar’s new definition of populism, which he identifies in his most recent book as “an ideological instrument for the political program of morally unconstrained collective egoism.”

The key word in this definition is “egoism.” In fact, Magyar suggested reading the definition backward to better understand it: “The egoistic voter who wants to disregard other people and help solely himself can express this in a collective more easily than alone.” The collective form helps frame the selfishness in loftier terms, deploying “homeland,” “America first,” or ideas about keeping people safe from alien criminals. In the end, Magyar writes, such populism “delegitimizes moral constraints and legitimizes moral nihilism.” This is the sum of the political program: “The populist gains unquestionable moral status as he exploits the people’s psychological demand for group-belonging and selfishness, who in turn find an ‘understanding’ actor and collective amidst the difficulties of their lives.”

Magyar views populism as the opposite of liberalism, not only because it seeks to topple constitutional structures but because it rejects the ideals of solidarity that Magyar sees as the foundation of liberalism. The idea that liberalism is rooted in solidarity may sound strange to Americans, who often think of liberalism as a set of individual freedoms. But populists on both sides of the Atlantic traffic in this exact opposition: as Magyar puts it, their “populism offers problem solving without moral constraints—while dogmatic liberals offer moral constraints without problem solving.” A banner that hung over the CPAC stage this past week said “America Uncanceled,” a reference to the bogeyman of “cancel culture” and, more broadly, political correctness—precisely the moral constraints, rooted in solidarity, that Magyar is describing.

Of course, Orbán, Trump, and other populists do not deliver actual solutions: Magyar is describing their political offer, not their practice. The challenge for the party in power is to create solutions, proving in practice that solidarity can be more rewarding than selfishness. The Hungarian government in power during Orbán’s period in the opposition faced all the familiar pitfalls: it responded to a budgetary shortfall by requiring tuition payments at public universities and co-payments for medical services. These wildly unpopular and painful austerity measures only solidified support for Fidesz. The secret to saving the American system of government, according to Magyar, is not much of a secret. Will the Biden Administration and the Democratic Congress raise the minimum wage; provide all Americans with accessible and reliable health care; introduce a wealth tax; cancel student debt; and invest in infrastructure, particularly in rural areas? These are existential questions for both American society and the American political system.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-strategy-for-retu
rning-to-power-is-already-clear

Masha Gessen is the author of “Surviving Autocracy” and “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017. Famously, Gessen was dismissed as editor of the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug Sveta for refusing to send a reporter to observe Putin hang-gliding with the Siberian cranes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, March 16, 2021 10:09 AM