Ya know, I hadn’t even thought of that until I read your comment. Because there’s gift cards for damn near everything. But a ‘gift card’ for a hospital… That is weird.
So when my doctor’s office screwed up and made my appointments run hours late, they have given me local gas station gift cards ($10) so weird, but I didn’t say no.
Madam? Madam, I need you to do 1 thing: Please drive to hospital and buy $1500 worth of gift cards, so we can make sure all the bad virus from your computer is cleaned, madam.
The institute’s founder, Mark McAfee, told the Los Angeles Times this weekend that his customers are, in fact, specifically requesting raw milk from H5N1-infected cows. According to McAfee, his customers believe, without evidence, that directly drinking high levels of the avian influenza virus will give them immunity to the deadly pathogen.
Looks like it’s going to be a fun flu season this year 🫠 Every day I feel more justified in my decision to relentlessly mask with an N95 every time I’m indoors in public.
didn’t cats already get the virus from drinking the raw milk? honestly at this point if only they wouldn’t end up infecting a bunch of other likely non-retarded individuals, I’d be inclined to just let them kill themselves with this and pass on beleiving that they proved their point. More realistically, they will probably spread it and kill a bunch of other people that way then still act like they have uncovered some great fucking secret, while somehow being the only survivors of the incident.
My reading is that they mean to say the conservative party has continued to move so far to the right that conservative positions from only 15 years ago are now “radical lib” positions.
Though I hesitate to frame this as the Overton Window. In society at large, the Overton Window continues to move to the left, being gay is normalized now, cannabis is normalized now, I would frame the conservative movement as a desperate grasping to prevent the Overton Window from continuing on its current path, normalizing a genderless society for example.
Economically, both American parties are right wing corporate welfare state proponents.
The united states is a corporate plutocracy, you can buy power and influence, and being poor is being increasingly criminalized. While the system squeezes wealth from the middle class like a sponge. It is engineered to transfer your life savings into the hands of the healthcare owners at the end of your life, instead of to your children.
Yeah, the Overton window moved because Trump won an election. I have no idea why I’m being downvoted (unless it’s by the people that say "I’m not voting because dems aren’t left enough).
As for the other items you bring up, gay bashing has now transformed to trans bashing. I have little doubt they would go back to gay bashing if they could. They’re already trying to divide and conquer with “just take out the trans of LGTBQ+ pretty please”. Weed is an interesting issue that both sides really should agree on and we’re finally coming to our senses. Economically, we have regulated capitalism. GOP wants to remove all regulation and the Dems want proper regulation. They are not the same, not even close.
Yep. I downvoted because of the ableism. I downvote that word every time I see it. I know of too many really good people who were severely bullied with that word due to physical and mental conditions beyond their control.
I realize downvoting doesn’t achieve much, but there’s little else I can do.
Kantar reviewed nearly 50 million social posts in the U.S. over 2 years. Over two-thirds of posts about people with intellectual disabilities were negative and nearly 29 million contained slurs (i.e., using the word “retard(ed)” or other words combined with “-tard”).
Spreading the R-word continues to hurt people with intellectual disabilities—and whether intended or not, is a form of bullying. Using the R-word is the same as using any slur against a minority group. Eliminating this word is a step toward respect for all.
Who said that was the only thing? There are many things. But voting is by far the biggest thing you can do. Can you do anything about Fox? No. But you can VOTE.
Yes, but that doesn’t change anything at all about the actual screening process. That pre-screen and interview only lets them get past the initial line. They still have to do everything like a normal person.
I have pre-check but it looks like Clear just cut the pre-check line. Pre-check is more like a pre-911 airport experience. Shoes and jackets typically stay on. If you don’t trip the metal detector you’re good to go.
Are you sure? There is a 6-month+ wait to schedule an interview for the Clear program in most places. It’s not something they can pull you out of line to give you a free trial… There is a background check and in-person interview as part of the process.
I use pre-check because I travel often for work. That registration process involves bringing in more documentation than is required to normally fly, a background check and fingerprints.
Yes, I was in line at… either SFO or San Bernidino, it’s been a while. They asked if I wanted to try it and I asked what it was, then they said the personal info they wanted and I said no way. They had people walking along their empty line talking to people in the TSA line. The TSA line was actually moving pretty smoothly that day, I bet they got more takers on slow days.
I also got offered a free trial from Clear a few weeks ago while getting into the security line, but the system wouldn’t work properly with my ID (he said it works better with passports, which I wasn’t carrying with me) so the rep just had me follow him to the front of the line, gave my ID to the TSA agent, and send me on my way. Clear doesn’t appear to need an interview, but pre-check does. You can have just clear to skip the line but not the security check.
I remember first hearing about Braxton a couple years ago, when he still hadn’t actually managed to take office. (And the racist fuckers down there are still fighting him on it). The amazing thing was that until Braxton, the office of the mayor was inherited. The town leadership was quite literally landed gentry, operating a miniature feudalistic society.
That he didn’t write the plays and presumably the poems. It’s basically flat earthers for the literature. The Atlantic ran a piece advocating for it and then ran two other pieces about how great they were for running the original piece.
It’s a good conspiracy they’ve got answers to all the questions, ‘what about all the huge piles of evidence that clearly show he wrote them?’ Is easily answered by ‘just pretend it doesn’t exist!’
Best is when they say Edmund Spencer wrote them or someone, it makes so little sense I almost hope it’s true.
My favorite is when they say Bacon wrote them. Ok spend five minutes and read New Atlantis and then five minutes reading say the Scottish play. Then look me in the eye while you say that the same author wrote both.
The style, the words, the handling of dialogue, every single aspect of the two men are different.
Some will say it is unfair to compare the two but I would say that since the conspiracy started with Bacon it is fair game.
It just boils the blood of some English lit types that the guy who will forever dominate the language only had a high school education and a bff who owned a bookstore.
This has nothing to do with this article, but I just want to express my appreciation for your contributions. You consistently post high quality articles (never anything MBFC deems low credibility) on a variety of topics. When something slips through that’s already been posted, you’re quick to delete it which helps de-clutter the feed. I’ve also never sensed any agenda from you, and you’re just here making the community great.
Yeah. Rodgers is a fucking idiot. Didn’t he see Alex Jones get absolutely obliterated in court for similar claims? Now there’s a precedent so the families should be able to easily repeat that.
OK, but if he’s still saying them then he can be sued now. Committing crimes in the past doesn’t absolve the same crime committed again. Now there’s a precedent for being a harassment-laden shitstain.
I think it’s wild you’ve been downvoted for this. Clearly these people haven’t read the article.
On Thursday, Rodgers did not deny the comments he made to Brown or the other source, but said on X, “As I’m on the record saying in the past, what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy. I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place. Again, I hope that we learn from this and other tragedies to identify the signs that will allow us to prevent unnecessary loss of life. My thoughts and prayers continue to remain with the families affected along with the entire Sandy Hook community.”
You can’t sue someone for defamation if they’ve never publicly defamed you. Otherwise I could just find someone to start claiming you said shit back in 2013 and sue you.
I’m not saying he didn’t say it. Or that he isn’t a piece of shit. I’m saying his public position on the issue has never been that it was fake, unlike Alex Jones.
Ah yes, because the law these morons passed that prevents them from being rehired for 6 months is the problem, not the horrible pay, worse teaching conditions, and the ever present threat of civil and criminal charges for even hinting that LGBTQ people actually exist. I’m sure repealing that little clause will fix everything.
Yeah, I'm just waiting for the summer when the yearly exodus is going to spread measles all over the place. I'm just so happy they've decided that unvaccinated kids with known exposures don't have to quarantine - with an infectivity rate of 15, what could possibly to wrong?!
Man that sounds familiar, it’s almost like it’s… (Checks notes) ahh every goddamn sector other than tech…
Government positions have it even harder because you have to convince an already absurdly selfish population to pay more tax to pay for more teachers. Knowing Florida that’s a lot of “I don’t have school age kids anymore so fuck your woke budget.” :(
Honestly, if you talk to most presidential historians they will tell you that you need about 20 years to pass before you can accurately assess a president. There’s too many unknowns that will come to light only years or decades after a term ends, Eisenhower is a great example of this. So these rankings are likely to change over the years.
Although, having seen Trump’s predilection for fraud, decit, and self-serving, I’d be shocked if he rebounds as more information comes out.
Eisenhower was always seen as aloof, sort of a figurehead, during his presidency. However, years after, once his papers were made public, a much different view of Eisenhower started to take shape. He was seen more as a hands-on leader. I believe he was in the 15-20th range in the 80s, but by 2000 was up to 9th, and recently up to 5th (8th in current poll).
Here’s a preview of a journal article that touches on it a bit.
I dunno, perhaps they should change the ranking to throw in some additional items like foot fungus, head lice, 2nd-hand dog vomit and such… and then Trump would remain in last place!? :-P
“Texas needs to be less dependent on the federal government, not more. These politicians want to mismanage our electric grid just like they mismanage our border,” the statement said.
I don’t think it’s objectively possible to be more mismanaged than the current Texan electrical grid.
I don't even know if it's corporate profits, that's actually a drawback to the corporate grid(see Enron's intentional mismanagement of California's energy grid)
It's just pure power for the ruling elite of Texas.
I doubt they will rule in his favor, or at least hope that is the case. The more likely scenario is that they’ll play for time. They refused to take the case early a few months ago so that it would be forced into a lower court. That court took it’s time and is now complete with the obvious ruling. Now the SCOTUS will take it up and sit on it till November.
This is doubtful. The Supreme Court fully understands that ruling the President has absolute immunity will serve to permanently undermine their own power. There is no material benefit to the Supreme Court in waiting to rule on this case, and every reason for them to make a hasty decision affirming the lower courts finding or simply refusing to hear the case altogether. Regardless of their own personal politics, it is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court will make ANY rulings that serve to undermine or limit the authority of the judiciary.
You’re absolutely right. It’s highly unlikely they’d rule in his favor. As you said, that would give any president absolute power and that’s not agreeable to the court who, after overturning Chevron, will wield a lot more power themselves.
I hope they refuse the case. It would have been smart for the judiciary as a whole to do that a long time ago. Let trump face trial while they still had another viable candidate in the race. However, the strategy in all of his legal fights has been to drag this out as long as possible in the hope that he becomes president and it’s all null and void. Thus allowing him to never face trial and the court to never rule either way.
Now the SCOTUS will take it up and sit on it till November
I'm doubtful they'll sit on it. As you said, they already indicated a lack of desire to pick it up last time Trump submitted an appeal to them on this basis. I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting a repeat performance here. Remember the rule of four would apply here and I'm sure Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Roberts would do exactly the repeat as before.
There's just not the numbers to play petty favors for Trump here.
That would be the most ridiculously stupid thing could do, it would be even more horrible and abhorrent than what Trump has ever threatened.
So, no.
What he could do, on the other hand, is unilaterally have him removed from any consideration for public office. And that would be perfectly sufficient. 
Joe Biden could also just revoke Donald Trump’s citizenship, which would then make him ineligible for office, and then deport him from the country. That would be simultaneously effective, and also completely hilarious.
Joe Biden could also just revoke Donald Trump’s citizenship
no, he can’t. there are extremely narrow circumstances under which that can be done, and this situation doesn’t warrant them. and, for, like, a zillion reasons, Biden shouldn’t exercise any extra-legal powers to do so when other options exist. (such as the one I mentioned).
That would be simultaneously effective, and also completely hilarious.
not a good enough reason, considering the multitudinous and catastrophic consequences.
To be clear, we’re talking about jokes being made about what Biden could do if the supreme Court grants the president unrestricted unilateral total immunity for all actions legal or otherwise.
So in the event that the president isn’t restricted by the rule of law or liable for the consequences of their actions, there’s a lot of things that Biden could do that would be advantageous for his personal political aims.
Don't be silly. They believe that the president would only have total immunity until they were impeached by Congress. So Biden would also have to execute anyone in Congress that would vote for impeachment. After that, he should be fine. Totally normal democracy in action.
This is so stupid. NYTimes putting the phrase “to deal with recent surges of migrants at the southern border”…there IS no surge of migrants. They’re pushing bullshit in a passive way to make it sound legitimate.
According to these statistics, the same thing happens every year. If you look at the previous years they all start to go up in January then peak around May and start to decline after that. So what’s the big deal if this happens every year? It’s to be expected.
During Covid the government enacted title 42 and didn’t allow any migrants entry to mitigate the spread of covid. Since covid is over they rescinded title 42, now all the asylum seekers waiting at the boarder are crossing as they would have just been turned away before. This was a predictable outcome and next year the numbers will drop back down.
What do you make of people coming from continents besides South America? Do we owe it to Russian or Chinese citizens to offer them asylum? From my perspective asylum is something you offer your direct neighbors who are fleeing threats on their lives. Offering asylum to literally any citizen of the world seems a bit extreme. If someone in China fears for their life, certainly there are closer and more accessible countries they can flee to.
The conservatives have been trotting out the “southern border crisis” red herring for so long that The Democrats were the first party to do it in the US. They keep doing it because it works. Those of us that live next to the border, like I do, can tell everyone back east that there’s no problem, but if one racist asshole starts yelling, there’s a whole bunch of racist assholes that live 2000 miles away that get scared and riled up.
The real problem is your deranged government officials bussing them all over the god damn US. Not that we can control your idiots but our idiots need to respond in kind. That is recieving them. Providing humane care and shelter. Then funding legal representation to sue the shit out of the people who sent them there.
Using human lives as a political hot potato is fucking despicable.
Sucks that it is happening. The second we put those people on a bus America has an obligation to them as the people who have purposefully done them harm. They aren’t just migrants anymore they are victims.
Yeah and California already has a border with Mexico, so it’s not like “sharing the burden” is a legitimate argument. Texas just wants to stick its thumb in California’s eye.
Ah, because Texas, where housing is supposedly cheap, doesn’t have enough housing for everyone? Texas, where the taxes are low and there aren’t adequate public services, can’t provide for their own homeless population? Texas, where teen girls are forced into childbirth, can’t offer support the underprivileged children produced by this policy?
Yes, using human lives as a political hot potato is despicable. However, the policy it implies (sharing the burden of caring for immigrants) is actually quite reasonable, and already policy in places like Germany.
what conservatives are upset about is often legal migrants and sometimes tourists. Its more transparent when cons talk about black people as “black culture”. They say its the “illegals” they’re worried about, but I doubt any rich republican employs less than 6 “Illegals” because I haven’t met a rich person that paid a fair wage. Its always been unserious.
I’ll never forget for months them screeching about it, and literally a day after the mid-term elections were over, the “caravans” were literally never mentioned again; until the next election year that is…
There were 50k more border encounters (illegal apprehensions) in December than the year before. In fact, encounters have been significantly higher than recent years since August (no data for January).
You can agree or disagree with the response to the influx of people at the border. But there is no denying there has been a considerable increase in traffic.
Except we’ve heard this (the surge point) every year for the past several election seasons and at other times. Someone didn’t learn the lesson of the boy who cried wolf. Tough to get people to listen when it’s actually happening if you bullshit them at other times.
I don’t disagree one bit. The Border™ gets trotted out more than it ought to every couple years. That’s probably why this issue will never be fixed–it’s great at riling people up.
However, I think people should still be aware of the facts of the situation. At least if they actually care about the problem. Misinformation doesn’t fix anything.
This right here confuses me. The people claiming that government numbers can’t be trusted are the same people who regularly rolled out government covid death numbers are the gospel truth during covid. My personal belief is that those numbers were wildly overblown, so I’m willing to believe that in this case you might be right and the migrant numbers are also overblown. That being said you can’t have it both ways. We’re the covid death numbers false?
I try to live my life mathematically. I cite sources that claim firm numbers frequently.
We are in a fucky time.
Everyone has the ability to capture unimpeachable figures, but everyone with a grasp on the raw data has a dude an inch over their shoulder saying "100 bucks if you fudge it."
We got strong in tech and the first thing we did as a digital world was fire the QA people and the auditors.
Seems like a great way to faceplant the gift of computers.
If you think this is BS, then bring numbers and facts. This surge, at the moment, is real. Check OP’s link.
It’s real. It’s happening. FFS, put politics aside, this is a humanitarian issue. And how are we to absorb so many extra immigrants this year?
Conservatives are bitching about jobs. Liberals are bitching about housing costs. Both concerns are wildly complex, but we have an issue right now, today.
Check my earlier comments and numbers. How do you propose to deal with an extra CHICAGO+ worth of humans? How fast can we build infrastructure and housing? I will point out, we’re only talking about illegal Southern border crossings, leaving out the rest of the immigration story. FFS, my wife is an immigrant. We’re trying to get her son over here.
I don’t have ideas, no ideas we can deploy fast enough, I ain’t that smart. But just because conservatives are pitching a fit doesn’t mean our current border crossings are not an issue.
We’re talking about live human beings here. Waving them off as a GOP conspiracy is ignorant at best, hurting people. Want to go to the border and tell those people they’re not real? Tell them they’re GOP pawns? Or, someone will come along and tell me they don’t believe government numbers they don’t agree with. Like the nuts did with COVID and the CDC?
I hear you. But you missed my point. Because at other times people lied about surges, it makes it harder to believe them when they occur. That’s all I said. I have no alternate story or numbers for our current predicament.
It’s real. It’s happening. FFS, put politics aside, this is a humanitarian issue. And how are we to absorb so many extra immigrants this year?
Easy, just don’t look. Then I don’t have to believe it exists.
It’s like the old sanctuary cities. Politicians pontificating that “all are welcome,” and “no human is illegal,” until their city actually gets too many of them. Then it’s, “whoa there, they should stay in Texas, not come here!”
I think the increase is corroborated by other measures, such as the size of tent cities in Tijuana etc.
Still, even if calling it a “migrant surge” is factually accurate, that doesn’t stop it from being propagandistic loaded language that any legitimate media outlet should avoid.
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