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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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17 hours ago, Pancho said:

 

I saw that when it aired on Sunday. At first I thought it was mildly interesting and then it turned into old white people ranting about how the Jan. 6 insurrection was staged. Oh wow, how original. I tuned out. Stop pointing your cameras and microphones at these morons. 

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9 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

It was a failed coup. In America. How anyone can deny that anymore is just baffling and they should all be hanged.

There are a lot of Americans who don’t know what “coup d’etat” means. They don’t know what “socialism” means either but they’re really afraid of that. To them they’re all just words. They can’t tell one phrase from the other but their thought leaders will tell them what they should repeat on social media. And they will obey and consider themselves politically involved.

”What about George Soros?!”

”Did you hear about the things Hillary Clinton did?!”

”All lives matter!”

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On 9/17/2021 at 4:59 PM, Born to Run said:

The freaks are out on 620 with signs saying " Joe's gotta go. 25th amendment."

Great branding. Of course a wreck happened right in front of them and traffic is shit. Nice job fuck heads. I'm sure you will sway people to your cause.
 

Are we one of those states that passed laws allowing you to run over protestors? Asking for my truck’s tires. 

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3 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

There are a lot of Americans who don’t know what “coup d’etat” means. They don’t know what “socialism” means either but they’re really afraid of that. To them they’re all just words. They can’t tell one phrase from the other but their thought leaders will tell them what they should repeat on social media.

I suppose next you'll tell us that their pejorative "communist corporations" doesn't make any sense?

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Kara Bell from Lake Travis, the one who went on the Mexicans and anal sex rant at the school board meeting a few days ago, has made her Twitter feed public again and it's as crazy as you would think. Kara Bell is clearly a believer in Q-Anon.  Note the "Kara Q. Bell"   Kara, you may remember, assaulted Nordstrom employees and then went on a screaming rampage when the police showed up, such that the police arrested her, hauled her away, and she ended up being charged with assault. 
 

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35 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Kara Bell from Lake Travis, the one who went on the Mexicans and anal sex rant at the school board meeting a few days ago, has made her Twitter feed public again and it's as crazy as you would think. Kara Bell is clearly a believer in Q-Anon.  Note the "Kara Q. Bell"   Kara, you may remember, assaulted Nordstrom employees and then went on a screaming rampage when the police showed up, such that the police arrested her, hauled her away, and she ended up being charged with assault. 

Lake Travis appears to suck. 

"Nonsense at Nordstrom (Rack)"

 

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12 minutes ago, C-Man said:

LoathsomeAlarmingHerring-size_restricted

 

Anybody else think Mitch would like a do-over so he can launch Trump into the sun like he could've back in January? The country would rid of that fucktard for all practical purposes.

Nope, I don't think Mitch would.   He's amassed so much power (and wealth) because of the path the Republican party has gone down.  Trump accelerated that trajectory in ways Mitch could have never imagined 5 years ago.

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33 minutes ago, immamac said:

What if I told you every post is already in elastic search. 

 

9 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Where’s the SurlyAPI platform?

I'd be interested in querying that data sometime... Really interesting dataset that you've got right at your fingertips for tracking the dissemenation of disinformation and talking points/etc. Would be interesting to quantify some of the rhetoric and "such and such board is soooo biased" shitposting we enjoy so much

How big is the SurlyIndex™?

 

edit - I'm doing a bunch of intelligent document processing and natural language processing stuff for my customers right now... Got my head in that space right now lol. It'd be interesting to run sentiment analysis against a user's corpus of posts and examine some of the accusations thrown around

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20 hours ago, Captainant said:

 

I'd be interested in querying that data sometime... Really interesting dataset that you've got right at your fingertips for tracking the dissemenation of disinformation and talking points/etc. Would be interesting to quantify some of the rhetoric and "such and such board is soooo biased" shitposting we enjoy so much

How big is the SurlyIndex™?

 

edit - I'm doing a bunch of intelligent document processing and natural language processing stuff for my customers right now... Got my head in that space right now lol. It'd be interesting to run sentiment analysis against a user's corpus of posts and examine some of the accusations thrown around

Imagine the data that would seep out of Texags database.

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23 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Isn’t that the woman now infamous for objecting to the word “cornhole” in a school library book?

Fuck book banners in their cornholes.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10007439/amp/Texas-mom-complains-descriptions-anal-sex-appearing-school-library-books.html

48121801-10007439-She_could_be_seen_in_a

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/us/governor-jim-justice-basketball-coach.html

 

Quote

The governor was livid.

“Other than GOD above and my family, I place my duties as Governor above all else,” he thundered in a statement sent out on Tuesday evening. “All I do is work, and I love my work, and I love the people of West Virginia, especially the kids.”

But there were some, he went on, who had recently committed a “vile action,” one that was “manifestly arbitrary and capricious,” even forbidden by law.

 

Quote

His antagonists were three retirees who sit on the school board in Greenbrier County, 110 miles southeast of the state capital. In August, they had voted not to hire Gov. Jim Justice to coach the boys’ varsity basketball team at Greenbrier East High School.

“Does the hate of these Board members hurt?” the governor wrote. “Of course, it does.”

 

Quote

This blast of dudgeon over his authority to coach the boys’ basketball team in his spare time — he already coaches the girls’ team — was par for the course in Mr. Justice’s tenure as governor of West Virginia. A coal mining tycoon and the state’s richest person, Mr. Justice, whose two terms in office have been richly marbled with conflicts of interest, has generally bulldozed past various rules and obligations. He has been hounded by private companies, federal agencies and county governments for hundreds of millions in unpaid bills, and he was sued, successfully, for preferring to spend his nights at his home in Greenbrier rather than in the state capital, as the state constitution mandates.

But he remains unabashed, and most voters, judging from the 33-point margin of his re-election in 2020, seem unbothered.

 

Spoiler

People may understandably ask why he would want to coach the Spartans while his state is struggling with no shortage of serious ills. Most urgently, West Virginia is in the middle of one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 in the country, with a record number of infected people in hospitals and a vaccination rate that, despite a pro-vaccine campaign featuring Mr. Justice’s pet, Babydog, lags every other state. To this question, Mr. Justice has a straightforward answer. He insists he would be good at it.

For two decades, Mr. Justice, 70, has coached the girls’ varsity team at Greenbrier East, winning a state championship in 2012. For seven years before becoming governor, he coached the boys’ team, too. As he detailed in an official grievance that he filed with the state public employees board, Mr. Justice led the teams to more wins than any coach in school history.

For many, however, the issue is not whether Mr. Justice, a Democrat turned Republican in office, would be good at the boys’ coaching job, but whether it is something he should really be focusing on right now.

“I have no animosity toward the governor at all,” said Richard Parker, the newest school board member, before he was told to refer any questions to a lawyer. “I just don’t see how he can be at both the girls’ games and boys’ games and still do his job as governor.”

Mr. Justice’s ties in rural Greenbrier County are many and deep. In 2009, he bought the Greenbrier resort, a historic, 710-room luxury retreat that had fallen into bankruptcy. He restored it to its extravagant glory, earning the undying gratitude of residents and making him the county’s largest employer.

The second-largest employer in the county is the board of education. There is some overlap.

The superintendent, for instance, is also the director of entertainment for the Greenbrier resort. A member of the school board is married to a photographer who works there. At a recent board meeting, a retired lawyer stood up to express support for the board’s coaching decision, yet even he acknowledged having led tours at the Greenbrier for several years.

Still, Mr. Justice has been involved with Greenbrier East basketball for much longer than he has owned the resort. Though his tenure has not been without controversy, he has won plenty and is a big-spending booster, paying to have parquet floors installed in the gymnasium like in an NBA arena, with his signature painted on the boards for posterity.

Earlier this year, Bimbo Coles, a graduate of Greenbrier East who played professionally, stepped down as coach of the boys’ varsity team, a position he had held since Mr. Justice left. Administrators at the high school interviewed six candidates, all youth basketball coaches or assistant coaches. The superintendent then informed the board that they had unanimously settled on only one: Jim Justice.

merlin_195126963_5e75cbb3-e9a0-489e-85c2

Mr. Justice paid to have parquet floors installed in the gymnasium like in an NBA arena, with his signature painted on the boards for posterity.Credit...Steve Helber/Associated Press

“I know I can do the job,” Mr. Justice told West Virginia MetroNews in August, insisting it would not detract from his performance as governor. “At my age, I’ll have to have great assistant coaches,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, they’ll have to do the work. I’ll coach the game. Nevertheless, I love the kids.”

In mid-August, the principal of the high school released a statement to the news media explaining why, after interviewing all the candidates, “Coach James Justice was the clear choice.” The letter highlighted his experience and success, and said that people who had played for him had “expressed their amazement of a man who works tirelessly, loves West Virginia, and loves all children as well as embraces all players, no matter their basketball talent.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Justice’s lawyer sent a letter to the superintendent warning of “legal action,” if the board were to deny him the position despite qualifications that “tower above the other applicants’.”

But at two school board meetings, several parents and residents as well as a player for the boys’ team, whose father was a candidate for the coaching job, spoke out against Mr. Justice’s appointment, saying they wanted someone who could give the team full attention. Some questioned how the governor could devote his time to two teams as well as a state in the throes of Covid-19, and expressed displeasure at the apparent answer: assistant coaches.

On Aug. 23, the board voted, 3-2, to reject Mr. Justice.

“Anybody would feel some level of emptiness,” the governor said ruefully of the board’s decision, at the end of a news conference about the state’s Covid-19 crisis. He had coached more than two dozen seasons at the school, he said, achieving “success beyond belief.” “There’s no question whatsoever,” he went on, “this is the worst of the worst from the standpoint of the kids.”

At the next board meeting, in mid-September, a group of people showed up to praise Mr. Justice, reading letters of support for the governor and expressing bafflement as to why the board had not chosen him. That same day, Mr. Justice’s lawyer filed the formal grievance.

The grievance, which listed Mr. Justice’s job title as “Girls Basketball Coach,” argued that “failing to select a candidate who is by far the most qualified — whether out of personal animus, political opposition, or any other reason — is arbitrary and capricious.” The governor was hauling the county school board before a judge.

An unusual week passed. The governor announced winners in the “Do it for Babydog” vaccination lottery, the number of known coronavirus infections in the state reached new highs and the school board members conferred with their counsel. The lawyer who had sued about the governor’s unconstitutional residency in Greenbrier announced he was planning to sue again. To some, it was both surprising and predictable that things had gone this far.

“He likes to get what he wants and he doesn’t like to hear no,” said Brentz Thompson, the retired lawyer who spoke at the school board meeting. “We can’t figure any other reason why he wants it.”

Then on Tuesday night, Mr. Justice sent out his letter. “I refuse to spend time fighting HATE,” it read. He was withdrawing his name, despite his love for the community and the “hundreds of calls from people in total disbelief” at the board’s decision. The board should pick another coach, he said.

The letter then concluded with something like a poem.

“My kids win in principle values!

“My kids win in the academics of the classroom!

“My kids win in life after basketball!

“And my East teams win on the floor! (496-173 74.1%).”

 

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