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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. Dear Leader's own words. Plain English. No ambiguity. Zero confusion.
  2. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/18/us/trump-news/3e6f9920-edbe-5269-b64d-fb4a0b9b1e28?smid=url-share
  3. A Trump-appointed judge ruled the regime lied and tried to illegally deport minors, aka child trafficking. A judge blocks the Trump administration from immediately deporting Guatemalan children. A federal judge on Thursday temporarily prevented the Trump administration from hastily deporting hundreds of Guatemalan children, faulting the government for relying on false pretexts that β€œcrumbled like a house of cards” when presented in court. In a striking opinion, Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, wrote that the government had misleadingly presented its actions as a β€œreunification” effort, bringing children back to their parents in Guatemala who it said had requested their return. But he noted that a series of revelations since the children had been β€œroused from their beds in the middle of the night and driven to an airport” during the Labor Day weekend had cast doubt on the government’s representations, suggesting a rushed attempt to remove as many as 327 minors before their lawyers could mount a response. The children came to the United States as unaccompanied minors and have been housed under the supervision of the government in shelters or with families in foster care. β€œThere is no evidence before the court that the parents of these children sought their return,” he wrote. In a previous directive, Judge Kelly paused the government’s ability to deport the children until Thursday. The new order extends that block for the foreseeable future while the lawsuit over their fate continues. He also extended the prohibition to all minors from Guatemala who entered the United States alone and have not exhausted their immigration appeals. As the case has evolved since the holiday weekend, Judge Kelly has challenged a number of the government’s claims. During a hearing last week, Judge Kelly grew frustrated after lawyers representing the children presented a report by the Guatemalan attorney general’s office showing that when the Guatemalan government had sought to contact the families of the children, some could not be located but none of the others had sought their children’s return. According to the report, many believed their children were secure in the United States. Some expressed fear for their children’s safety if they were forced to return to conditions in Guatemala. In the opinion, Judge Kelly noted that additional questions had emerged this week, after a report submitted to Congress by anonymous whistle-blowers asserted that the office that monitors the children in the Department of Health and Human Services had ignored its own data showing that at least 30 had signs of having suffered child abuse and neglect in Guatemala. The whistle-blower report claimed the Office of Refugee Resettlement had raced to clear the children to be loaded onto planes in what Judge Kelly described as a β€œmidnight operation,” in spite of the data. β€œDefendants do not claim to have asked the children whether they want to go back to Guatemala, whether they were abused or neglected, or whether they want to return to their parents or legal guardians,” he wrote. The Trump administration claimed it had followed a strict procedure for vetting the children before selecting them to be flown back, based on a checklist that included factors such as whether they might face danger. After the government went as far as loading the children onto planes to be flown out over the Labor Day weekend, the judge on holiday duty, Sparkle L. Sooknanan, halted the flights and blocked the government from preparing to send more. At the time, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, attacked Judge Sooknanan and pressed claims made by the Justice Department in court that the Trump administration was returning stranded children who wanted to leave. β€œThe Biden judge is effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country,” he wrote on social media. But Judge Kelly, who has since inherited the case, dismissed the notion that the government was acting responsibly or exercising a narrow authority allowed under the law to repatriate unaccompanied children from abroad. He wrote that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act allows children to be sent back to their home country only after a strenuous determination that it is in their best interest. He added that the law was designed to prevent child trafficking, and the rushed attempted removal of the children appeared to stretch the law’s intended use. β€œWhile defendants plunged ahead in the middle of the night with their β€˜reunification’ plan and then represented to a judge that a parent or guardian had requested each child’s return, that turned out not to be true,” he wrote. He said the process outlined in the law was designed to avoid β€œrushed, seemingly error-laden operation to send unaccompanied alien children back to their home countries.” Lawyers from the National Immigration Law Center who represented the children had asked Judge Kelly to block the deportation of a larger group of children, roughly 2,000 of whom are living in shelters. They nonetheless celebrated the decision, saying it had prevented an attempt to remove the children without any legal resistance. β€œThe court saw through the government’s repeated misrepresentations of critical facts to try to justify the indefensible targeting of vulnerable children who would have faced danger if sent to other countries,” EfrΓ©n C. Olivares, a vice president at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement. While he limited the ruling on Thursday to Guatemalan children, Judge Kelly, who was appointed to the bench by Mr. Trump in 2017, warned the government not to interpret the opinion as an invitation to expand its operations. β€œOf course, the court does not foreclose expanding the class later if developments warrant that adjustment,” he wrote. β€œDefendants should not construe this decision as an invitation to take similar action with respect to these other unaccompanied alien children.”
  4. Time to bring this thread back. Btw, has anyone figured out which handle @clapclapclap uses nowadays? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-threat-nyc-mayor.html A Texas man was charged in Queens on Thursday with threatening Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case. The man, Jeremy Fistel, 44, was extradited from Plano, Texas, by New York police officers and brought to the city on Wednesday to face charges of making a terroristic threat and aggravated harassment, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and asked for anonymity. The law enforcement official said that the charges were the result of threats made in June, when Mr. Mamdani’s campaign said he received a string of profane voice mail messages at his district office in Queens. In one, the man called Mr. Mamdani, who would be New York City’s first Muslim mayor if elected, a β€œterrorist” who was β€œnot welcome in New York or America,” according to audio provided by the campaign. The caller said he should be careful starting a car. Andrew Epstein, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, said at the time that the campaign was cooperating with the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. The charges against Mr. Fistel come during an extraordinarily tense time for elected officials and public figures in the United States, where political violence has skyrocketed in recent years. Just over a week ago, Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, was shot dead during a public event in Utah, and in June, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota, was assassinated along with her husband inside her home. Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens, is the clear front-runner in what has been a particularly high-profile New York City mayoral race. Candidates in the city have always been expected to interact intimately with voters, and Mr. Mamdani has predicated his campaign on spontaneous encounters. Tighter security could change the nature of this race, and races to come. Mr. Mamdani said in an interview with The New York Times on Sept. 11 that he had received new threats on his life since Mr. Kirk’s killing, which had occurred just a day earlier. Mr. Mamdani said he was frightened for his staff and the people close to him, including the security officials assigned to guard him. But he also expressed resolve and said he would carry on in spite of the potential danger. β€œIt won’t change how I campaign,” Mr. Mamdani said. β€œIt won’t change how I move through the city that I love.”
  5. I am unaware of any public threats--or private, for that matter--coming from the Biden administration to shut down Facebook.
  6. I like this tactic. It has the imprimatur of an official hearing by a government in exile. Yeah, it shows they don't have the power to hold hearings while showing what they could do *if* they had power. It's kind of striking and, dare I say, subversive. Maybe it's just stupid and performative. I dunno. It kinda works for me.
  7. The first thing I think of when I hear about them is the work they did following 9/11 in trying to tamp down all the Islamophobia. Just a bunch of God-fearing, spiritual folks trying to keep us from all killing each other over spiritual matters. That's my impression of the group.
  8. Wordle 1,551 3/6 β¬›β¬›β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨ β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨πŸŸ©β¬› 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #829 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1332 9️⃣4️⃣ 8️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ 🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨 ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
  9. NYTimes updates (spoilered to avoid longcatting)
  10. @Nicole44 Google AI summary
  11. Here's an explainer to get our collective feet wet:
  12. Lots of wild shit out there. This morning, I just learned about the speculation that his roommate might've been transmaxxing.
  13. The supposed redeeming qualities that I've seen cited by fans are that he was a) a Christian (not an especially extraordinary quality), b) loved his family (also not a low bar), c) was willing to shout his beliefs at anyone who could hear them (only requires a bit of hubris or self-confidence), and d) successfully built a "movement" (admittedly a great skill, but he also had access money).
  14. There's a lot to unpack here. One thing I'll point out is the cruelty of using social pressure to force someone into a gender that they are not. Much like forces transpeople to remain in the one that they aren't. Does this "transmaxxing" extend to actual surgery? Seriously, imagining some weak-willed, Theojon-like, but straight cis guy, to have his dick chopped off, undergo a surgical procedure to construct a vagina, take hormones, grow tits, and all that just so that he can be forced into having sex with other guys because they can't get it anywhere else. What a gotdam torturous nightmare. That's just about the most fucked up thing I've ever heard of, if it's actually a thing.
  15. These people are terrible at connecting dots. That's the fucking problem. These people are unable to follow basic trains of logic. They can't think shit through.
  16. It's been a busy morning, and I'm just now finally getting caught. @Enchubben, I'm sure you've been overwhelmed with all the notifications and angry comments. But I hope you take a moment to consider this. I wanted to reach out and offer up a simplified explanation of where your concerns, as a (I assume) middle-aged white Texan male, should rate on a scale of being discriminated against in hiring practices at the workplace. 1 - We discriminate against historically marginalized groups. 2 - We don't discriminate and are an equal opportunity employer (EOE) 3 - We actively reach out to historically marginalized groups to build a more diverse talent pool for hiring prospects (DEI). 4 - We make sure to set aside a percentage of seats for historically marginalized groups (Affirmative Action). 5 - We discriminate against the dominant group that has historically occupied this company.
  17. Wordle 1,550 3/6 β¬›πŸŸ¨β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨ β¬›πŸŸ©πŸŸ¨πŸŸ©πŸŸ© 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #828 🟩🟩🟩🟩 πŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺπŸŸͺ 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 πŸ™‚ Daily Quordle 1331 5️⃣4️⃣ 7️⃣9️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ 🟩🟨🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟩🟨🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  18. Yeah, that's the thing. Everything is out in the open, on full display, for everyone to see.
  19. Absolutely. My description includes that aspect as well.
  20. The best, most succinct way I could describe it from the times I've been involved is active outreach to diversify the talent pool.
  21. In case anyone needs receipts on this: https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-joe-biden-should-be-put-prison-andor-given-death-penalty-crimes-against
  22. Taking state media to the next level.
  23. Here's some context: A veiled threat to stone transpeople by justifying it through the Old Testament, while criticizing someone for being tolerant of transpeople who justify their tolerance from the New Testament Christ's command to love your neighbor as yourself. Then, the second post where he angrily shouts to that audience that someone is an abomination to God. These aren't soundbites with short clips taken out of context. Maybe -phobe is the wrong suffix, but then again, fear is at the heart of hate. And Kirk clearly hated transpeople.
  24. H/T to C-Man for posting this. Go here to rep him.
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