This is an example regarding mail-in voting (for our Canadian friends, republiQans are very much trying to prevent this as well for the same reason)

This is republiQans threatening other republicans to vote as they demand.

This is the threat-to-arrest mailer wrt ACORN, which is a whole other rant, but particularly relevant.

? Did not know that. I assumed they were essentially WORMs but otherwise identical. Do they not use the same laser or something like that?

Ah! Yes. Hm. Well then . . . where do distributors get theirs from? Not Sony, presumably?

Hell yeah :)

Oh! Oh, yes, it’s a whole thing here since the “Moral Majority” group in the 80’s that packaged well-meaning people into hateful ignorant political cheerleaders.

And I appreciate your perspective because it highlights a different aspect of the right-wing agenda: part of their process is to build in a “reasonable interpretation” of laws that they actually have no interest in whatsoever.

As an example, there was a big push in many states to enact “voter i.d.” laws. We used to just walk into the polling station, give our name and address, they’d look it up, put a checkmark next to it to show we’ve been counted, and we’d go vote.

Well the right wing media in concert with the republiQans and propaganda mills, i mean, “think tanks” started complaining this was a system ripe for abuse. “SO MANY people just vote multiple times under different names!”

That absolutely never happened in any even-close-to significant amount. Never. There were individual cases - we still see them once in awhile, and it’s always the republiQans doing it. Anyway, they kept this lie up for years.

While that was going on, republiQan legislators, united by ALEC, passed laws saying everyone had to show a valid government ID to vote. I had several conversations with friends and family about these, and either due to parroting the fox news talking points or genuine well-meaning concern, they said, “but doesn’t it make sense to know someone is who they SAY they are, before they vote?” And it does. It does make sense.

But that’s not why they did it. They did it because people without government ID are largely older minority voters, who mostly vote Democratic. This was just to prevent them from voting. They had all sorts of made up lies about “oh they can just go down to the DMV and get a free ID”, yeah if someone takes them and walks them through it and they brought the right paperwork, yeah. It was a big burden for a lot of people who just stopped voting (mission accomplished).

Secondarily, anyone with outstanding parking tickets or who suspects there’s a warrant out for them (or is in general targeted by the cops, like black men) will see lots of ads and mailers before the election that when they show their ID to vote they’ll be arrested and taken away. They won’t, it’s just scare tactics but it works well and voting went down for a lot of Democratic-leaning voters.

To this day they stand by the now long-discredited idea that people are using false identities to vote - trump even clings to this as one of his Big Lies of how he “mysteriously” didn’t get enough votes in 2020, still. It was always bullshit; it was always designed to keep Democrats from voting, and it worked.

Hell yeah

? . . . as opposed to - ?

This one. Easier setup, cleanup’s a breeze, no muss, no fuss.

Typically if you turn yourself in to the cops peacefully, even if you’re shitfaced hammered, they don’t usually slap more drunk charges on.

Forcing it as a belief system is definitely wrong, . . . I don’t see the difference with the Bible . . .

Make no mistake, that is absolutely the point of these - again, unconstitutional - laws. They’re hoping to parlay this illegitimate fascist court into making it constitutional while the iron is hot.

. . . especially if presented as a historical document and prototypical collection of stories?

It won’t be. They want this in elementary school. How much literature was in grades 1-3? Any inference that it will be treated as a “historical document” is an outright lie. (Edit: the article says teachers must teach it to “students in grades five through 12” but that’s different than Louisiana’s “10 commandments displayed in all classrooms” law. They all serve the same purpose: to promote “Christianity” in school.)

I’m not religious and wasn’t raised in a religious family …

Then believe me when I tell you this is what it is for. These legislators are not history buffs. They are evangelical ‘Christian’ nationalists.

I couldn’t believe how much context it gave me on our culture and its origins.

Having to read and study the whole thing would also help rein in overzealous religion IMO. The #1 reason I’ve heard from evangelicals who left their church was “I decided to read the Bible for myself”

Good points and I’m all in favor of unintended positive outcomes. Bible scholarship is interesting as an elective and if that was offered at my school I might have considered it. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about criminal penalties for not promoting a specific religion. That’s the whole point of the law, and it is 100% wrong.

True, but that was a fair bit before the founding of America. Although to your point I doubt they’ll be forced to teach that history. More likely they’ll be forbidden from teaching that history.

For a long period which roughly coincided with the founding of America, English-speaking people only learned to read using the Bible, and often that was the only book they ever used for anything so it became a sort of de facto dictionary and Guiness Book of World Records and all kinds of things that it was never meant to be, plus a lot of new things it was never meant to be, and of course the things it was always meant to be.

Mandatory firearms training in school would be more Constitutional than teaching the Bible though. For a very important reason. Akin to a “prime directive” if you will. If you want kids to study it as an elective then fine, allow that, but forcing it on kids is wrong, wrong wrong.

There’s a lot of truth in that but your second point is the reason why it’s still a terrible, terrible idea.

(number of last drinks) - (hours from last drink) + 24hours = SuperHappyFunTimes

I assume he’ll show up completely plowed to give himself some extra runway.

I don’t know that to be true, but if so why has the history of Windows been a continual string of vulnerabilities, hacks, and weak security such as their own cloud service being compromised and their codebase stolen?

That is, if there’s a DoD “version” that’s more secure, couldn’t they make more money selling that? I dunno, they’re dead to me but they’ve never been short of people who want to use them for whatever reason.

Literally any half competent debater could have torn Trump apart up there.

He’s “debated” a large number of half-competent people in primaries and post-convention. Which one tore him apart? Examples please.

The failure wasn’t the moderators but the opposition candidate to Trump letting him run hog wild.

While the visual of hog-tying trump by a cowboy-hatted Biden is fun, it’s simply not his job to chase the gish. That’s why trumps insane rambling works; it’s not possible to practically address each batshit claim or outright lie. It’s just not. Biden’s already got the job of presenting and defending his own platform.

It is absolutely the moderators’ job to check him and a failure to do so means not only that it’s wide open Crime Time for trump but that the proceedings themselves lend authority to his lies.

The moderators have to try to keep the appearance of neutrality, but the candidates do not.

The appearance of neutrality? As opposed to just neutrality? Okay, well either way, again - no. The moderators have to acknowlege reality and remind the shit-talkers that they can’t say what they just said because it’s bullshit. And once again, they can’t do that with trump because he’s a compulsive liar who is incapable of acknowledging anything but his own reality.

And the only reason Trump was so successful in spouting BS and getting away with it was because his opposition had the strength of a wet paper towel.

Spouting BS and getting away with it is the entirety of what trump does. He’s not an authority on anything, he can’t function as any sort of manager without a stadium’s worth of assistance, and - really, hear me now - he is utterly. incapable. of not lying.

Nothing will stop him from trying to babble nonsense and if the moderators, effectively the referees, the arbitrators, refuse to hold him to any standard, there’s no other outcome than to watch helplessly at his idiot spewhole as it disgorges lie after lie after lie.

Biden blew it, yes, but if you think there was something to be gained by engaging with trump, i encourage you to consider the simple fact that trump is not able to acknowledge truth if it does not directly benefit him, and any attempt to do so will be met with more lies, more vitriol, and no one will succeed.

It’s unconscionable that anyone at this late date would even consider that even a remote possibility.

Approved

ka-chunk

Fair enough. I just think of “shill” in a context of paid advertiser or, well, useful idiot. Yeah, ok I could see that.

Agreed. Make it so.

Having “debates” be this ridiculous mud-wrestling that only benefits trump or another conman is the big step back and the loss to democracy.

They are apparently unable to create a forum in which a position can be taken and defended with facts and reason. UNABLE. Because the republiQans are fielding a demented sociopath and a compulsive liar.

The format is beyond broken, and there isn’t a way to fix it when one party has no intention - never had any intention to follow the rules, or decorum, or common decent behavior.

We found that out eight years ago. I can’t believe they walked right into it again.