Jump to content

Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty


Recommended Posts

Posted
6 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

You dismiss so many lives.

You are really slaying that imaginary dragon. 

56 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The insurgent outliers that you voted for in 2016 in the name of burning it all down talk about a deep state because they want to put one in place. 

Take that delusion up with Willie.

58 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

There are certainly malign forces, bad incentives, systematic exclusionary hatreds and abuses, misguided and fucked up policy with armies to back it up and on and on. BUT there are no secret hands pulling the strings and directing traffic at the ground level.  In the United States, what we see is pretty much what we get.

Well there are certainly those things listed in the first sentence, and it takes only a cursory review of the 20th century to put the lie to the last sentence. As political power in this country has been consolidated we have enabled the worst of both individual and corporate actors under our flag. You are correct that there is no secret all powerful hand, real corruption requires an enabling system of good-meaning people steeped in the absolution of jingoism. Those letters to MLK telling him to off himself didn't write and mail themselves. The Church Committee wasn't a collective hallucination. The Nigerian uranium justification wasn't the work product of a secret hand directing traffic. All that shit requires a framework, a consolidation of power and control to materialize malign force, systematic abuse, misguided and fucked up policy with armies, etc. But we can easily dismiss that experience and those that pay attention to these things if we just redefine the components of that framework and focus on traffic lights and shitters. tHe DeEp sTaTE mAkES ThE pOo PoO gO aWay.    

  • Fuck You 1
Posted
19 hours ago, Captainant said:

You don't need to hold office to lead a fascist movement. You simply need to continue to evade and dely and deny justice long enough to spark enough chaos to seize the moment. 

We are currently riding right down the middle of that track and heading towards a cliff. Every day we delay trumps accountability is another notch more dangerous 

Good post and very true.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

JFC whenever the resident death panelist drops by it's always a beating. Just contrarianism for the sake of it, and paired with an incredible ability to be intellectually dishonest to boot. 

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Haha 1
Posted
9 minutes ago, Captainant said:

JFC whenever the resident death panelist drops by it's always a beating. Just contrarianism for the sake of it, and paired with an incredible ability to be intellectually dishonest to boot. 

Its his schtick.  He rewords your position into a sweeping generality, and then comes forward with his lucid specific examples of why you are wrong, barely holding back the tone poem that he is the intellectual spreading his wisdom pearls before the knuckle dragging swine.

While it’s tiring, he probably feels better about himself after it, and so kicks puppies less. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 2
Posted
13 hours ago, NAVY said:

Well this 1 in 5 thing just sucks. Not too surprised given depth of media segmentation along political lines. Even when Fox isn’t bending the truth super hard right, their advertisers sound alarm after alarm. Buy gold! The banks are collapsing! Protect your internets! Your house will burn down! 

The foresight to get rid of cable TV 15 years ago probably saved this vet. Well that and degrees from UT 

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/21/958915267/nearly-one-in-five-defendants-in-capitol-riot-cases-served-in-the-military

IMG_2482.jpeg

“Served in the military” is pretty meaningless. I’d bet a pizza that the vast majority (maybe every single one) was discharged at some point or were tolerated for 4 years doing bitch work because they weren’t capable of being promoted past, maybe, assistant drill instructor who teaches kids how to fold the bed sheets. Notice that none of them mentioned in the article has a title of note. There certainly needs to be more work on rooting out this type of scum from the military but I still believe that that top brass pride themselves on being apolitical when it comes to their jobs and all but a handful of morons among the rank and file are going to follow the chain of command. Any outliers can be dealt with internally. The joint chiefs aren’t going to authorize a military coup for a fat fuck who constantly insults soldiers and war heroes. I’d bet if he went too far, even as Commander and Chief, they’d say no or court martial his ass. Like if he had ordered them to nuke San Francisco after Pelosi’s sarcastic clap that made him look silly, they wouldn’t do it and would act against him if necessary. I truly believe that the actual military isn’t going to be the source of the countries downfall, it’ll be the gravy seals.

  • Hook 'Em 4
Posted
1 hour ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

I wonder how many of the J6 insurrectionists were waste water managers?

Take our the veterans and real estate agents and ex-cops, and who's left?

 

 

Had to have been at least a couple of chiropractors and MLM practitioners in there.

Posted
54 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

He's the hero we need.

 

And the shit we get.

Just now, texasdago said:

Had to have been at least a couple of chiropractors and MLM practitioners in there.

Isn't that what realtors are?

  • Haha 1
Posted (edited)

I always love when an arch-conservative uses the history of conservative abuses of governmental power wielded against leftists to justify his desired "burn it all down and replace it with the Church" politics. 

Edited by wildcat09
  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
  • Haha 3
Posted
46 minutes ago, 'stache said:

“Served in the military” is pretty meaningless. I’d bet a pizza that the vast majority (maybe every single one) was discharged at some point or were tolerated for 4 years doing bitch work because they weren’t capable of being promoted past, maybe, assistant drill instructor who teaches kids how to fold the bed sheets. Notice that none of them mentioned in the article has a title of note. There certainly needs to be more work on rooting out this type of scum from the military but I still believe that that top brass pride themselves on being apolitical when it comes to their jobs and all but a handful of morons among the rank and file are going to follow the chain of command. Any outliers can be dealt with internally. The joint chiefs aren’t going to authorize a military coup for a fat fuck who constantly insults soldiers and war heroes. I’d bet if he went too far, even as Commander and Chief, they’d say no or court martial his ass. Like if he had ordered them to nuke San Francisco after Pelosi’s sarcastic clap that made him look silly, they wouldn’t do it and would act against him if necessary. I truly believe that the actual military isn’t going to be the source of the countries downfall, it’ll be the gravy seals.

Successful revolutions start from the top, not the bottom. The American Revolution happened because the landed, property owning class leaders sparked and led it, not Farmer Smith fresh from the fields.  PFC Snuffy and Sgt. Rock will follow, but they won't organize and lead a coup.  The Flynn brothers and others of their ilk in the officer ranks are the ones to keep an eye on.  They are the leaders who will take the lower ranks astray.

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
9 minutes ago, dcbc said:

As a career state government employee, who always has done his best and remembers why he got into this line of work in the first place (it wasn't to get rich), thank you.  There are a lot of us who still believe our role is an important one.  But I happen to think the folks whose job it is to deliver clean, potable water to the rest of us are more important.  But we each have a roll to play.

Thank you for your service and I mean that sincerely. 
Also, “role.”

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Thank you for your service and I mean that sincerely. 
Also, “role.”

Thanks.  Do you mean what is my role?  Or it should be our respective roles?  I checked my spelling, which usually is atrocious.  And I got it right for once.

 

And I would never suggest that I am not well-compensated or that State benefits aren't good.  But I'll be working long past my otherwise young retirement age to put two kids through college versus many people in my field with comparable experience.  But I never have regretted my career path as a state employee.  It really is what I was meant to do.

Edited by dcbc
  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
6 minutes ago, dcbc said:

As a career state government employee, who always has done his best and remembers why he got into this line of work in the first place (it wasn't to get rich), thank you.  There are a lot of us who still believe our role is an important one.  But I happen to think the folks whose job it is to deliver clean, potable water to the rest of us are more important.  But we each have a roll to play.

Being a local government employee is a tough job, not so much because the job (although I'm sure at times...), but because the way people treat them, which is frankly awful.  If you ever have to get a building permit, or go to zoning, while you wait in line you will see no shortage of this.  People think they have the right to be disrespectful, it's crazy.  I've always found, even if you disagree, being polite and respectful will get you a lot further, primarily because they are so unaccustomed to it (also its just the right way to do things).  God help you if you have to go a public meeting or hearing, it's non stop grievance and insanity.  In the end, thanks to you and everyone else that largely does thankless jobs many of us take fore granted.  

Also, thanks for checking in on what I am sure is one of your many vacation days.  

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Well there are certainly those things listed in the first sentence, and it takes only a cursory review of the 20th century to put the lie to the last sentence. As political power in this country has been consolidated we have enabled the worst of both individual and corporate actors under our flag. You are correct that there is no secret all powerful hand, real corruption requires an enabling system of good-meaning people steeped in the absolution of jingoism. Those letters to MLK telling him to off himself didn't write and mail themselves.

If your point is that we need what MLK called “a true revolution of values” to redirect the enabling hand of well meaning people towards the service of a just and verdant world, I agree 100%. 
If your solution is to break the enabling hand of well meaning people so we can become a kleptocracy and each get in on the grift to the best of our ability, that is where we part. 

Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Being a local government employee is a tough job, not so much because the job (although I'm sure at times...), but because the way people treat them, which is frankly awful.  If you ever have to get a building permit, or go to zoning, while you wait in line you will see no shortage of this.  People think they have the right to be disrespectful, it's crazy.  I've always found, even if you disagree, being polite and respectful will get you a lot further, primarily because they are so unaccustomed to it (also its just the right way to do things).  God help you if you have to go a public meeting or hearing, it's non stop grievance and insanity.  In the end, thanks to you and everyone else that largely does thankless jobs many of us take fore granted.  

Also, thanks for checking in on what I am sure is one of your many vacation days.  

Thankfully, my interaction with the public is nonexistent.  And my vacation days and ability to take them are many.  I won't portray myself as a do-gooder who works under miserable conditions to fight the good fight.  I edited my post above to add that I'm fairly-compensated and have great benefits, but still take pride in my work, which I always remain mindful affects people's lives.  The nature of my job allows me to check in on Surly when my brain needs a break.  And with that, back to the grind.

Edited by dcbc
  • Hook 'Em 5
Posted
6 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Thanks.  Do you mean what is my role?  Or it should be our respective roles?  I checked my spelling, which usually is atrocious.  And I got it right for once.

 

And I would never suggest that I am not well-compensated or that State benefits aren't good.  But I'll be working long past my otherwise young retirement age to put two kids through college versus many people in my field with comparable experience.  But I never have regretted my career path as a state employee.  It really is what I was meant to do.

“Role” refers to one’s position or function within a group, ie, “we all have a role to play”.
“Roll” as a noun refers to material in a ball or cylinder, and as a derivative of the second, a list or catalog of names- ie “voter rolls” or “roll call”

And your role, whatever it is, in the noble and essential if thankless, but rewarding service to the people of Texas is important and not taken for granted by me.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
1 minute ago, dcbc said:

Thankfully, my interactions with the public is nonexistent.  And my vacation days and ability to take them are many.  I won't portray myself as a do-gooder who works under miserable conditions to fight the good fight.  I edited my post above to add that I'm fairly-compensated and have great benefits, but still take pride in my work, which I realize affects people's lives.  The nature of my job allows me to check in on Surly when my brain needs a break.

The vacation stuff was just a cheap shot joke.  

  • Haha 1
Posted
1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

“Role” refers to one’s position or function within a group, ie, “we all have a role to play”.
“Roll” as a noun refers to material in a ball or cylinder, and as a derivative of the second, a list or catalog of names- ie “voter rolls” or “roll call”

And your role, whatever it is, in the noble and essential if thankless, but rewarding service to the people of Texas is important and not taken for granted by me.

Right.  I thought that's what I said.  

Oh, I got it right the first time.  My mind was on Thanksgiving the second time 'round.  Good catch.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
2 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

The vacation stuff was just a cheap shot joke.  

It's twoo.  It's twoo.  I'm like the Nathan Arizona of Vacation Hours - More than I can handle.

Posted
2 minutes ago, dcbc said:

As a career state government employee, who always has done his best and remembers why he got into this line of work in the first place (it wasn't to get rich), thank you.  There are a lot of us who still believe our role is an important one.  But I happen to think the folks whose job it is to deliver clean, potable water to the rest of us are more important.

All of the worker bees at every level of government contributes to our civilization and standard of life in some form.  Roads must be maintained or our economy tanks.  Parks are essential to protecting wilderness and outdoor recreation areas for everyone.  Wildlife folks are essential to protecting fish and wildlife, both game and non-game.  There are people working to ensure that we have clean air, water, and soil so that we don't have to live in each other's shit and garbage.  Laws are enforced to protect these things plus everything that embodies "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  The people who do these things, as has been pointed out, are humans, with human frailties and foibles, but the overwhelming majority do their honest best.

I was once lectured at length by a libertarian relative who contends that all laws are unnecessary impediments to absolute personal freedom.  In his world there should be no environmental laws, we should let the free market work out what level of pollution we all must accept.  All roads would be toll ways to pay for their construction and maintenance, there would be no public education, no public utilities, no government at all, so that he could exercise his total freedom unconditionally, without any obligations to society.  He ranted about me being on the government tit my whole career and that I had a cushy job funded by poor, put upon taxpayers.  It was discouraging, but he's not why I did (recently retired) what I did, anyway.  I did it for my kids and their future, and all of those who do appreciate the work being done on their behalf.

I, too, was and am fairly compensated.  My job did have some leisurely days, and I got a very nice vacation package.  There were also long days and nights of work, and a lot of stress.  I know that a lot of people are in similar situations in both the public and the private sector, so that doesn't make me special.  I'm still proud of being a small part of something bigger than me that exists for a purpose other than just to move money from one account to another.

  • Hook 'Em 7
  • Drool 1
Posted
47 minutes ago, Scheiss Meister said:

The Flynn brothers and others of their ilk in the officer ranks are the ones to keep an eye on.  They are the leaders who will take the lower ranks astray.

And you can't lock them up because they'll just chop themselves out using their hatchet faces.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 3
Posted
1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

I always love when an arch-conservative "Libertarian" uses the history of conservative abuses of governmental power wielded against leftists to justify his desired "burn it all down and replace it with the Church" politics. 

FIFY

  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, Captainant said:

JFC whenever the resident death panelist drops by it's always a beating. Just contrarianism for the sake of it, and paired with an incredible ability to be intellectually dishonest to boot. 

y'all know the board has an ignore feature, right?

Posted
8 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Just as an aside, it's pretty much universally agreed among health scientists that modern sanitary sewer and water systems have been the single most important factor in increasing life expectancy over the past 150 years.  By far.   Just thought I'd through that shit out there.

 

IMG_1951.gif.97258f270c89214cadaddfe247bcefb1.gif

  • Like 1
  • Haha 5
Posted
3 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

If your point is that we need what MLK called “a true revolution of values” to redirect the enabling hand of well meaning people towards the service of a just and verdant world, I agree 100%. 
If your solution is to break the enabling hand of well meaning people so we can become a kleptocracy and each get in on the grift to the best of our ability, that is where we part. 

Dr. King didn't handwave the toxic role of the American political power structure and its foreign policy by saying silly things like "as long as decency matters, the Deep State lives." In fact the Riverside speech you quote from was a direct confrontation of the militaristic corruption of the American political complex; what some people who are so inclined might refer to a core component of the "Deep State". And he was called a communist sympathizer and a traitor for it. Which sounds a bit familiar. If you want to talk about a true revolution of values, I am all for it. But what you are doing isn't that, it's holding concepts and elements of our political system that rightfully deserve consistent criticism in front of a circus mirror and barking out "decency is the Deep State" for rhetorical purposes to undermine those criticisms. But again, thanks for tagging me in on the experience.    

  • Fuck You 1
Posted

sorry to interrupt your smearing shit on the walls annie - there's some actual news on the trump trials:

https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-georgia-hearing-emergency-video-misty-hampton-jonathan-miller

Quote

 

ATLANTA — An attorney for one of Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election-racketeering case said at an emergency hearing Wednesday that he provided confidential video evidence to the media.

"In being transparent with the court, and to make sure that nobody else gets blamed for what happened, and so I can go to sleep well tonight, judge, I did release those videos to one outlet. And in all candor to the court, I need the court to know that," said Jonathan Miller, an attorney for former Coffee County election supervisor Misty Hampton.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled Wednesday's hearing following a motion by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office in the wake of reporting from ABC News and the Washington Post on Monday that included videos from the four people who recorded interviews as part of their guilty plea deals.

In his comments, Miller did not specify which media outlet he'd shared the videos with.

Most of the 45-minute hearing — conducted live in Georgia and via Zoom for all of the attorneys — was devoted to a discussion of proposals for a protective order governing evidence exchanged between the parties in the case going forward.

Willis’ prosecutors wanted a blanket order on all the evidence. Co-defendant David Shafer’s legal team proposed an alternative in which the state would specifically designate certain evidence as sensitive. Prosecutors agreed with Shafer’s counter-proposal, as did most of the defense attorneys for the other indicted co-conspirators, including Trump attorney Steve Sadow. 

 

 

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Haha 1
Posted
Just now, SydneyCarton said:

Someone explaint to my puny, non-lawyer brain the consequences of this? Is this the defense saying the jury pool will be tainted, becuase they tainted it?

It's the same shit as trump and cruz whipping people into a frenzy about non-existent voter fraud, and then pointing to that public concern as a justification for doing whatever the fuck they want. In the NY trial, trumpco is going for a mistrial because of all the fuckery that trumpco has done in the proceedings.

It's not terribly creative, but since there's a scarily large contingent of lawyers that are overly credulous of trump's truthiness, they'll continue to get away with it

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
22 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

There is a deep state, but it’s not a secret cabal of the powerful. It is what Robert Heinlein called “Our Noble, Essential Decency” in his Famous essay for “This I believe,” as follows:

This basic but noble, essential decency is the matter and substance and prime directive of the “deep state”, for all of its bumbling. Decency is precisely the thing that Donald Trump and his partners in diminishment seek to eliminate from government and more broadly, from the culture, and every edgelord cynic like @Anastasis or dumbass conspiracy loon or deluded partisan is their witting or unwitting accomplice in that nasty and dehumanizing work, and it saddens and angers us. But as long as decency matters, the Deep State lives. 

I would toss in that if The Deep State existed in the way that Republicans think it does, and acts in the way that they pretend it does, it would not have let Trump win in 2016, and we'd be talking about who was going to succeed Hillary after her second term.

  • Hook 'Em 6
Posted
1 hour ago, BamaATL said:

Well imagine that, country bumpkin idiot hires an attorney who is also an idiot.  I guess he gets credit for owning it?  

1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

Someone explaint to my puny, non-lawyer brain the consequences of this? Is this the defense saying the jury pool will be tainted, becuase they tainted it?

It could be an attempt by Misty Hampton's attorney to say "Hey, Trump and his lawyers knew the election was lost, but he continued to mislead people, including my client.  My client believed that President Trump, his campaign staff, and his lawyers would not knowingly deceive her and others, but clearly they did.  Here is video  testimony that President Trump's lawyers and President Trump knew the election was not stolen, but they continued to deceive myself and other county officials."

Posted
7 minutes ago, Scheiss Meister said:

It is what they tell themselves to justify what they want to do if they gain control.

Bingo -- "The Deep State," and the shit they attribute to it, is Exhibit #4,509,875 in the case of "every accusation is a confession."

  • Hook 'Em 5
Posted
35 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Bingo -- "The Deep State," and the shit they attribute to it, is Exhibit #4,509,875 in the case of "every accusation is a confession."

Except they aren’t smart enough to pull it off. 

  • Hook 'Em 1


×
×
  • Create New...