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BrickHorn

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Posts posted by BrickHorn

  1. 19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I still see no way out.  I see two fires burning with incredible intensity.  There is no putting them out.

    Warming up for Open Mic Poetry Night?

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Haha 3
  2. 4 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

    can you not stop GIF by John Crist Comedy

    Yeah wtf. Fascists are fascists. Their particular race or religion has zero to do with it. 

  3. 2 hours ago, BeardIP said:

    Are you implying that Oct. 7th was justified then by the past tragedies inflicted, i.e. "...1948"?

    No, that was not my intent at all. 

  4. 18 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

     

    Quote

    The Christian’s posture towards the earth ought to be that it is ours, not theirs, for we are co-heirs in Christ.

    “Gimme that, it’s MINE!”
    ~ Jesus Christ

  5. 10 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

    What is the number where we decide that what Israel has done to the Palestinians in Gaza is worse than what Hamas did to the Israelis on Oct. 7?

    I don’t know exactly but, whatever the number is, they hit it in 1948.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  6. 8 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

     

     

     

     

     

      Reveal hidden contents

    The Federal Trade Commission, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from NBC News, confirmed it has received one fraud complaint against Patriots Dynasty that was filed in January.  But it provided no further details about the single complaint or who filed it.

    The Better Business Bureau has given the companies, which operate out of an industrial center in the Denver suburb of Aurora, an F rating, and the 33 complaints on the BBB site are unsparing in their criticism of the company.

    Repeated attempts to reach representatives for the companies by phone and email were unsuccessful. But Bank of America spokesman Bill Halldin said he’s heard reports from bank employees of customers coming in to exchange their Trump Bucks for actual cash, but the bank routinely turns them down.

    “It’s hard to put a number on how many people have come in,” Halldin said when asked for more specifics about who these people are and where they are located.

    BOA, as a matter of course, is continually on the lookout for fraudsters and circulates information in-house about possible scams, Halldin said.

    That’s little comfort to Amann, who is 77 and lives in Houston. “There’s no way to cash out what I have,” he said.

    What it is

    Since 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election, internet hucksters have been selling pro-Trump products like coins, checks and cards and marketing them as novelty items.

    The fine print on the websites offering these items usually notes that they are memorabilia.

    But on social media and in promotional videos — many featuring faked celebrity endorsements — the sellers have tapped an audience that believes Trump’s ouster was part of a great conspiracy and that by investing in the Trump Rebate Banking System, or TRB for short, Trump will reward their loyalty by making them rich. 

    Those who buy these items, the ads from Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots suggest, will be rewarded when Trump unveils a new monetary system that will turn these products into legal tender worth far more than the purchase price.

    230526-trump-bucks-1-ew-514p-f89886.jpg

     

    Invest in a TRB membership card “issued by Donald Trump,” the ads from Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots claim, and the purchaser who spent, say, $99.99 on a “$10,000 Diamond Trump Bucks” bill will be able to cash it in for $10,000 at major banks and retailers like Walmart, Costco and Home Depot.

    “TRB system membership cards are official cards issued by Donald Trump to allow Trump Bucks holders to use Trump Bucks as legal tender and deposit them in banks such as JP Morgan Chase, the Bank of America and Wells Fargo,” a narrator identified only as “John” that appears to be a computer-generated voice says in one YouTube ad just moments after cautioning viewers that “Trump Bucks are not legal tender.”

    “Wells Fargo has no affiliation with this product, and cannot accept it for deposit,” a bank spokesperson said.

    JP Morgan Chase did not immediately respond to an email from NBC News seeking additional comment.

    It’s a get-rich-quick scam that is catnip to a certain kind of Trump supporter — including QAnon believers and others who believe the former president is the only solution to America’s problems.

    NBC also reached out to representatives for Walmart, Costco and Home Depot by email to see if they’ve had customers come in to try to cash in their Trump Bucks. 

    “We don’t have any connection to this, and it isn’t a problem we’re seeing at our stores,” Home Depot spokesman Terrance Roper said in an email to NBC News. 

    Walmart spokesman Robert Arrieta said “we have not heard of this scam.”

    “We don’t have any program that resembles this,” Arrieta said and referred a reporter to the company’s fraud alert page.

    Michael J. Clark, a former FBI agent who teaches criminal justice at the University of New Haven, said it’s likely many of the victims have not yet figured out they’ve been conned.

    “If this is indeed a scam, the victims have not had enough time to realize they have been scammed as they will be awaiting the result of the 2024 presidential elections to receive the benefit of their initial outlay of money,” Clark said via email.

    How it spreads

    Fawning reviews are posted on dozens of websites with the headlines “SCAM OR LEGIT” that can stack Google with positive results and in hundreds of YouTube videos.

    In AI-generated promotional videos shared on social media and in chat groups, celebrities and politicians, including Trump, appear to endorse the scam.

    In one, Trump appears to announce the launch of the TRB system on Fox News.

    “Let’s make America wealthy again,” the artificially generated voice of Trump says.

    In another, Twitter-owner Elon Musk appears to say “That Trump certificate is not a joke, it’s real. Everyone needs to get as many as they can. I spend one million dollars on Trump certificates and this week I’m going to cash out my Trump items. Soon I will be the richest person on the planet again.”

    In reality, the advertisement features footage lifted from Musk’s appearance at a TED event in 2022. The video ends with a slide advertising a free app that promises to “make your favorite celebrity say anything.

    It’s so pervasive that even pro-Trump websites and Trump supporters have been sounding the alarm.

    Blogger Noah Christopher, who is the moderator of the “WeLoveTrump” Telegram group with 26,000 subscribers, has urged his followers more than 30 times this year alone to “not get conned.” 

    “The faked videos have been posted relentlessly by fake social media accounts on Facebook, TikTok, and in Telegram groups catering to devoted Trump supporters,” Noah wrote last month. “Unreal how pervasive and aggressive this scam is.”

    Christopher did not respond to an email from NBC News seeking additional comment.

    One 75-year-old Alabama grandmother, who consented to having her picture taken but asked not to be identified by name for fear of internet harassment, told NBC News the message she got from watching the pitches on the internet was that Trump was going to make her rich.

    But the grandmother, who describes herself as a “real patriot,” said what she got for the $1,500 she invested in Trump Bucks turned out to be fool’s gold.

    “I saw all these ads on Telegram that had Trump pushing coins and checks that he endorsed and how you can cash them in after a year and make a profit,” the grandmother, who lives in Mobile, told NBC News. “I was told how you can go to Bank of America or Target or Amazon to cash them in.”

    About six months ago, the grandmother said, she gathered up the Trump Bucks and commemorative coins she had purchased and drove 60 miles east to the nearest Bank of America branch she could find in Pensacola, Florida.

    There, she said, she was greeted by a teller who told her she’d been scammed.

    “When we get there the lady tells me she’s seen dozens of people coming in to cash these checks and they have nothing to do with this,” the grandmother said.

    A Florida woman who lives north of Tampa, and who also asked not to be identified by name because she fears internet harassment, said her 77-year-old mother-in-law was also fooled into investing tens of thousands of dollars in Trump Bucks.

    “My mother-in-law has always been conservative and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” she said. “But after Trump lost the election, she went down the internet rabbit hole with this.”

    This isn’t the first time her mother-in-law has fallen prey to a Trump-inspired scam. 

    “Several years back, she got into Nesara, which says that a radical reset of the U.S. economy is coming and all debts are going to be wiped out,” the Florida woman said. “She thinks she’s getting all the money back and that she’ll make a huge profit too.”

    First, the Florida woman said, her mother-in-law “started buying all this support Trump memorabilia from a website that clearly states it's memorabilia.”

    “From there, she went to other sites which has all sorts of people claiming that if you buy these Trump coins or these Trump checks for, say, a hundred dollars, you’ll be able to take them to a bank and cash them in for thousands of dollars.”

    To prove to her mother-in-law that she had been swindled, the Florida woman said she drove her to a nearby bank and urged her to try to redeem the Trump Bucks in her possession.

    “We thought she got it, she even admitted she got scammed,” the Florida woman said. “But then giant boxes arrived at the house full of Trump checks and other stuff that she bought for $500 and that would supposedly be worth $6 million one day. We tell her she’s getting scammed and she says, ‘Just wait, Trump will make all the patriots rich.’”

    “It’s like she’s in a cult,” the Florida woman said.

    Who profits?

    Good question. It’s not clear who concocted the TRB system scheme or created the fake promotional videos.

    A 2022 New York Times investigation reported a Romanian marketing company to be at the origin of so-called Trump coins — which had been wildly popular in 2022 and were also fraudulently marketed as a kind of alternative currency.

    Most of the posts and videos for the TRB system currently link to websites registered with the company names Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots, whose listed address can be traced to Shipoffers.com, a shipping center in Aurora, Colorado.

    Shipoffers warehouse manager Josh Pier said the center ships Trump-related products but said it doesn't manufacture them. He declined to discuss what those products are and would not confirm the names of the companies it ships for. The company handles shipping for a variety of companies, he said.

    Pier was echoed by Tony Grebmeier, one of the Shipoffers owners, who said he was unaware of any problems with any of the products the company ships and said if he was aware of any issues he’d take care of them.

    Responding to overwhelmingly negative Google reviews, Shipoffers tells unhappy buyers that it doesn't actually make the products or bill customers.

    The TRB products are purchased through online retailers ClickBank and Digistore24, which are affiliate marketing networks based in Idaho and Florida that connect would-be promoters with products to sell and earn commissions.

    The unique links posted across social media and in the captions of YouTube videos contain the usernames of these affiliate marketers, who get a cut from each sale generated by the fraudulent ads.

    A list of URLS for just one website, shows hundreds of affiliate marketers associated with a TRB membership booklet, a product falsely marketed as necessary to redeem the TRB products for real money.

    NBC News has also reached out to ClickBank, Digistore24 and ShipOffers for comment. When an NBC News reporter called the Patriots Dynasty phone number, she got a busy signal. There was also no response to an email sent to the address associated with Patriots Dynasty.

    The Alabama grandmother says she was initially fooled by the AI version of Trump she saw in the ads. She trusted Trump’s supposed business acumen and thought this was a good investment to have something to leave behind for her children.

    “Now I realize, well, that was stupid,” she said. “But I bought them because I believed President Trump, because he knows all about finance, and he was going to help the real Trump Patriots get rich.”

     

    If he weren’t running for President, I might actually root for Trump. He’s conning a bunch of stupid greedy assholes who deserve to be fleeced. 

    • Like 2
  7. 8 hours ago, F250 said:

    I would also like to see a law that allows for the beheading of anyone that promotes the Canons of Dort.

    Is that the one where Tim Conway walks around on his knees pretending to command an artillery unit?

    • Like 1
    • Haha 5
  8. 6 hours ago, HenryJames said:

    One of Charlie Kirk’s gargoyles gets bodied.

     

    ffa35bb5-068f-4415-809e-69319b63397d.png

    That guy should have responded:

    ”Our apologies, Aubrey. We mistakenly believed you were an undocumented immigrant. As a US citizen, you are only allowed one vote. To avoid an arrest for voter fraud, please mail any extra ballots you have to the Soros field office in Eagle Pass, Texas.”

    • Haha 5
  9. 13 hours ago, yoladu said:

    wait, didn't Jack Smith already petition the Supreme Court months ago to make a ruling on this whole Presidential immunity thing and they passed, saying : "Naww, go ahead and have the lower appellate court take this one."

    Then, the appellate court takes the case and rules two weeks ago unanimously 3 - 0 that the President would NOT have immunity.

    The Supreme Court then sits on it's hands for two weeks and then says : "you know, maybe we do want to rule on this case. Let's see now.... how about we listen to oral arguments in 7 weeks, sound good?"

     

    Makes a guy wonder.

     

     

     

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    9781541602649-1.jpg?fit=435,675

    • Like 1
    • Rage+1 1
  10. 29 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Fight back against any attempt to decriminalize the devil's lettuce MARIJUANA

    Texas has done this in the most counterproductive (and most Texas) way possible. Delta 8 THC and Delta 9 THC are widely available and completely unregulated here. There is a proportional weight limit, but I don’t think there’s an absolute amount limit per serving. And you can buy that shit anywhere, including shady independent businesses whose employees are more likely to sell to minors compared to the regulated dispensaries that operate in legal states. 

    So weed is nominally illegal here. But it’s functionally far more available, especially to children. Which is completely fucked up.

    • Hook 'Em 5
    • Rage+1 1

    High

    2 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

    I bought a pack of these, mostly to get free shipping, assuming that they would just be some sort of D8... But holy shit, I ate four of them and turned into a potato for several hours.  

    image.png.ec9345c22dd72ca03b7a30ad558b35af.png

    image.png.6fc75bb56836b65727c740f68b084afa.png

    What is the psychoactive ingredient in those? The manufacturer claims they do not include any THC, psilocybin, or even CBD. 

  11. 4 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    Who decided free speech is a fundamental right even in China?

    I bet all those Chinese kids who got steamrolled to death in Tiananmen Square are relieved to hear they have the right of free speech.

  12. 16 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

    Disagree with the natural right framing, but not the choice to make this a practical axiom

    Right. I will never dispute that the state should be structure such that free speech is a protected right. But this hocus-pocus about deriving it from natural law or a divine creator is a distraction. And deferring to the whims of a make-believe deity or subjective notions about what nature decrees is dangerous, because those concepts are untethered to reality. It’s much safer to advocate for rights on the basis of the good outcomes they generate and the bad outcomes they avoid in the real world.

  13. 29 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    The argument is that it's a fundamental right because man has deemed it so.

    Yeah, I should have been asking more questions all along rather than explaining why the idea of natural rights is absurd. The answers from proponents of natural rights make the absurdity of their concept clearer than I ever could. 

    It’s a natural right because we (read: I) say it is! What do a billion Chinese know? Or Russians? Or anyone who lived before 1783? The right to free speech was enshrined in the fabric of the universe at the very moment of creation. You won’t find it everywhere, or even in the vast majority of times and places. But the right to free speech is absolutely fundamental and universal and cannot possibly be denied any living human.*

    * Except in 99.99999999999999999% of circumstances. 

  14. 14 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

    A right is something that can be done without seeking approval from someone else.

    “Can be done” is doing a lot of work. Who decides what you can or can’t do? Who clears the way when there is disagreement? 

    Consider the example of free speech. In China, the government does not protect such a right. If you were to attempt to exercise that right without seeking approval to do so, you might find yourself censored, arrested, or even executed. Do you have a right to free speech in China? Why or why not?

  15. 16 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

    So your entire argument is circular as others have pointed out. You are saying that natural rights don't exist only legal rights because to be a right it has to be a legal right so natural rights don't exist. 

    This is the reason you can't convince anyone of anything. You are only saying this is the way it is because it is this way. 

    It’s not circular. The authority that enforces a right need not be legal (although I listed many examples related to legal authority for the sake of illustration). It can be cultural or supernatural or natural, to give a few examples.

    The point is that the word “right” has meaning. It conveys an entitlement. It’s something more than just an aspiration about how things should be or a judgment about what is or is not moral. And the term “natural right” implies that a particular right somehow derives its authority from nature (which the Enlightenment thinkers who advocated this concept attributed ultimately to a supernatural source). 

    My question is: in what sense does nature enforce any natural rights? If anything, nature seems hellbent on violating them. We all die, for example. As it pertains to life, the only inviolable law of nature is that it will inevitably be taken away from you. So how is the right to life in any sense protected by nature? From the time we’re born, nature is out to kill us. 

    But maybe I’m assuming too much. Maybe those who claim natural rights exist merely mean something like: there are certain moral principles that seem obviously correct. Okay. If that’s your view, fine. But you’re talking about something else entirely and the word “right” is just misleading propaganda. That something is morally correct is insufficient to give anyone an entitlement to the morally correct outcome. Which makes labeling these concepts as “rights” misleading or at the very least confusing.

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