@Memor-X yeah this specifically says PO boxes are not good enough

@Unionhawk dat "economic anxiety"

1) status-complete you complete shithead

2) you can just move away from your neighbor

imagine saying this after some white supremacist who was in cville just became a convicted domestic terrorist

[Mitch Hedberg] Somebody is going to be killed because of the political climate. Someone was already killed because of the political climate, but somebody is also going to be killed in the future because of the political climate.

consider relevant parts withdrawn (everything except calling him a shithead and commenting on his neighbor)

Nostradamus over here, yeah, I predict that in this moment wherein neo nazis roll through Portland monthly with police help, someone will get hurt

maybe i'm putting too much blame on one person but maybe you can blame Trump for making such a climate?

Didn't that neighbor thing turn out to be unrelated to politics anyway?

like i say it because i do recall someone shooting up a newspaper office because they critical of Trump and Trump calls the media who says anything "not nice" about him is the enemy of the people

@Memor-X trump is cult leadery in that I’m not sure which other politician could whip people up into a frenzy like he does, but he didn’t invent white supremacy as a cover for rich people fucking over the poor

In more important news

@murgatroid99 yeah it was some sort of lawn care dispute

maybe it's the media coverage but why does Trump keep holding rallies as opposed to doing work? have other presidents done this in the past?

@Ash so this isn't normal for a president to do?

Teamsters leadership is ignoring the democratic vote of members against the new contract, and are ratifying it anyway

The contract, which introduces two tier, failed something like 54-46 with 90,000 members voting

@Unionhawk How can they do that? They're bound to perform as per their membership directs, are they not?

I'm going to guess no

Should they be absolutely

Sounds like union leadership is about to undergo a radical and violent change.

They better

TDU (teamsters for a democratic union) will be all over this

Who's the smarty pants that let their leadership ignore a majority vote if less than half the members vote?

@Frank the people who wrote up that union constitution and 2/3 rule thing?

@Frank It's funny because the General President is a Hoffa

(specifically, his son)

@Memor-X yes and no. All presidents will do fundraisers and give speeches and endorse party candidates in local races. All presidents will campaign for re-election. The difference here is that most presidents don’t campaign for themselves until they are actually on the ballot, whereas trump started campaigning a month or so after starting the presidency, iirc

Also trump rallies still get media attention for him saying wild and outlandish lies, but Obama’s were much more low key and boring

I remember Obama doing a bunch of campaign events back when he was trying to hype the Obamacare bill to get it passed

Ahhhh, I see. Exxon's (small, relatively) donation to the carbon tax initiative, explained

Is the tldr "to get headlines that they're doing good"?

tl;dr aside from the whole demand thing we covered before, the concept is that as a trade-off it weakens the EPA, consolidates regulations, and because the carbon tax on companies gets used as a fund to taxpayers they'd be less inclined to vote against anything more restrictive that would net them less cash

@Unionhawk That too but they have a more directly Corporate motive

"Carbon tax: It's Good Enough™"

None of those pesky emissions targets or anything, just a balancing game with sweet, sweet capital

, in order to placate people and stave off actual revolution

Of course

@TimStone *facepalm*

There's just so much to unpack there, but like, do they expect this to just randomly happen at some rally, one day?

UGHHH CORN (the rally was in Iowa)

@TimStone no but now they are hoping he'll lock up Feinstein

He lied and stoked the crowd by saying that Democrats want to take their ethanol away

Except now that is my platform

No more ethanol

Screw Corn 2020

@Ash this was a right wing memey kinda thing since he announced he was running for president the first time

his legal name is barack hussein obama

and this was one of the "proof" that he is a secret muslim, because that's exactly how opsecworks

@Ash racism is a helluva drug

@GodEmperorDune liberals won't hurt you, friend

I can promise you that

My lawyer has informed me that I am unable to legally promise anything further,

BUT

@GodEmperorDune well maybe if you have tighter gun control?

@Memor-X lelelele

i have $50 on him calling them con artists regardless who they are

@GodEmperorDune it's terrible that these people exist, but are they blaming Discord for "allowing" it?

@Chippies Less "allowing it" and more "not being proactive in preventing this or even quick to react if someone reports them"

@Nzall I personally don't think Discord should interfere with "private" servers

and even if they did, nazi's can always go to IRC

Discord to me seems like a modern version of IRC

Is anyone else suddenly getting loads of invalid flag messages concerning Rory Alsop?

on SE?

as in the blue orb next to your icon and a message from Rory Alsop which looks fine?

yeah, in chat

I don't have one

Like someone is spam flagging Rory Alsop

I even refreshed the page in case it was glitching out and still none

@Nzall is anyone reporting them though?

@Memor-X The slate journalist reported them and they were still up a week later

@Nzall sure they didn't just start up again? like i wouldn't be surprised if a) they get rid of people who try to report them and b) they just start back up again

congratulations to noted republican michael bloomberg for joining the democratic party and becoming a presidential candidate

That feeling when you're going down like 15 floors on an elevator and someone gets in to go down a single floor.

FUCK WHY AM I EVEN IN THIS ROOM

@InvaderSkoodge and then someone from that floor enters to go down to the next floor, and so on

@InvaderSkoodge too similar to The Bridge, we've all done it

As an aside, you (the CEO) have to be quite the asshole to bring your own wine to restaurants

@TimStone rest in power

As one does

I…did not know this was a thing?

Come for the horrible picture of what a consistently sucked on thumb looks like, stay for the anecdote of the German anti-thumb sucking story of Scissorman where a thumb-sucking boy gets his thumbs cut off

> But is it hurting their relationships? Connor’s partner recently caught him mid-suck, and he quickly withdrew his thumb, defensively

ಠ_ಠ

?????

Do you really think Donald Trump would do that? Just go on the Internet and tell lies?

Indeed! The tweet quote I guess is in some sense "not untrue" in that it's mostly the current state of affairs but like...not at all as described

Pre-existing condition protections are mostly still in effect while Republicans are, right now, in court trying to remove them! And junk insurance plans are now available, even though they're basically the same as just throwing money away

.......Nice :(

Can't wait to get screwed for going to Walgreens instead though

@TimStone Uhhh apparently not to be outdone by the President the WSJ Editorial Board, after having done "lol Susan Collins Consents" just last week, has decided to go all in on Bolsonaro??

lol Rand Paul likely got duped, just amazing

@TimStone Ugggghhhh

Aetna's terrible

@Ash I didn't mean it like that. I was just commenting, and it felt like an appropriate time for that quote

Georgia police called on black man babysitting white kids

> Mango says the officer told her Lewis was questioned because he's a black man driving around with two white children.

Remember guys, racism is dead!

Also this guy runs a youth program and everything: inspiredbylewis.com

But he was black, therefore, he must be a criminal and up to no good!

but again racism is dead guys

deader than Elvis

here's a video of his interaction with the officer on the scene: thegudda.com/…

I like how even the officer on the scene knows this whole thing is ridiculous

@TimStone i was upset reading the headline, then i realized it was about sheldon adelson

i guess it wasn't just about moving the embassy to jerusalem then

just boring old financial corruption

@Ash yes, your evaluation is correct

@TimStone #1 i don't feel he wrote this personally, but all presidents have a team of writers so. but #2 how do they let this shit through unchecked?

Oh, he definitely didn't, and it's kind of absurd that if you're big enough a paper will just let you put up anything in the op-ed

(in our continuing series of "most people don't gaf who specifically is on the Supreme Court")

@TimStone is wind pressure really a good measure for hurricane damage? i thought flooding and rain caused more death and damage

@TimStone It looks like 80% care as of the last poll

@murgatroid99 They do, but only because it became a huge thing!

@GodEmperorDune It's not, for damage, but it's the more consistent way to compare relative hurricane "power", however that might translate into consequence

@TimStone Well, one regressive asshole is much like another. It didn't really matter that it was Kavanaugh in particular until Ford's allegations.

That's correct. Politicians like to frame it as though a specific nominee really matters though and there's much to suggest that's not the case

Like the whole most Americans not even being able to name a Justice thing, even Gorsuch who had just been confirmed not that long prior

I keep forgetting Gorsuch, or mixing him up with Garland, who should actually be in his place

I mean, to be fair

Right? Presumably it's an illegal-immigration-related attack ad, so I guess they're implying people are crossing the border with nuclear device in tow as one does

@TimStone you can't cross the border with a nuke if we don't have borders anymore taps head

yay minnesota and NY

If I remember correctly you're supposed to bring it across in a bale of marijuana

@TimStone ah, the nukeweeducken

#neverforget

@TimStone oh wow i was not familiar with this refrance

extremely wtf

> This was not Frank’s first reference to a nuclear weapon traveling across the border in a bale of marijuana. In fact, he raised the possibility on the floor of the U.S. House during an Aug. 2, 2012 speech, according to his website.

Unpopular opinion: Motion to rename "/r/unpopularopinion" to "/r/whitemaleproblems".

besides, everyone knows that nukes travel in shiny chrome or brushed aluminum suitcases

@Ash Hahah no, no, everything is quite bad

@Ash MULTIPLE TIMES

"Bales of marijuana" is perhaps the best phrase.

this dude fancies himself a writer on 24 or something

It's such a concise encapsulation of how little someone knows.

@Yuuki i'm imagining those massive bales in open fields in texas, the 10 feet high ones

And there are a bunch of cows next to it, all with stereotypical red irritated eyes.

where they like roll up the grass and keep rolling

@Ash yeah

@GodEmperorDune Or, more practically, a vending machine!

@Ash I'm now imagining one of those tiny red wagons with a small bale of marijuana that's cushioning a giant living-room sized nuclear warhead.

(It's the plot point of The Sum of all Fears)

@Yuuki like the space shuttle crawler thing but made up of red wagons

@TimStone cut to angry person hitting the machine because chips got stuck and booooooooooom

@Ash apparently it's something aimed at curbing vandalism but why not just ban the vandalism instead?

@GodEmperorDune Wait, so does that mean kids technically can't be accompanied during Halloween?

i don't know how taking pumpkins from porches and smashing them in the street ever counted as "trick or treating"

@TimStone Most americans can name more Renaissance artists than they can SCOTUS justices

@Ash right?

I can name at least 4: Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Rafael

@Nzall But only if you phrase it as "name the teenage mutant ninja turtles".

@GodEmperorDune why can any town simply enact stupid laws in the US?

and then you got Boticelli, Caravaggio, Bosch, Vermeer, Cock,...

@MadScientist lol

And yes, Cock is an actual Renaissance artist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Cock

@Ash cops, man

seriously how are the existing laws not against this

didn't kobach in kansas do a similar shady thing when he was secretary of state and running for a different office?

@GodEmperorDune This is exactly why there are no existing laws.

@Ash Basically that your voter application info must match exactly with the info on record in other databases.

@Ash i imagine something where if every single thing in the voter registration database doesn't exactly match the other datasource, they toss the voter registration thing out

if you want to be petty about it, st vs street

@Ash exactly

i'm pretty sure that if the person affected sued, the court would tell the govt in this case to GTFO but by then the vote is long gone

we used to have a thing where before policy changes like this to voting databases were allowed, they had to get pre-approval from a federal agency, but that was overturned by the supreme court around 2014-2015 or so

(the pre approval was to evaluate if you were doing the thing for racist voter suppression reasons and block it before any damage was done)

if congress wanted to put the voting rights act back in place, they could

@Ash not while they benefit from things like this, no

It was also for specific states.

States with a history of racial discrimination.

Coincidentally, the states that are currently purging voter rolls.

@GodEmperorDune I'm pretty sure the solution in that case is obvious, not that it would ever happen. Everyone involved is sentenced to life in jail, you hold a new election, and reverse all decisions made by the party that obtained power illegally.

R A C I S M I S H I S T O R Y

@Yuuki i think the saner approach would've been "make all states get preapproval" instead of "racism is over, no need for this anymore"

@TimStone Totally unrelated to their letting China establish a military presence there while kicking out India, of course

@TimStone I can't vote him because he's the representative we deserve, but not the one we need right now.

hue, my TL has nicknamed him #blackoutbrett and i am here for it

But in more newsy things, I will never get used to reading trump stream of consciousness in print

talking about a poll

> “Plus there’s 10 percent, they think, where people don’t respond, unfortunately. I’m not sure if this is nice or not nice, but when they don’t respond, that means it’s an automatic Trump vote. But it’s a 52,” Trump said, “and we’re doing very well in the polls.

@Ash don't try to understand what Trump means, that way lies madness

Sounds like he's estimating how many people didn't respond to the survey and counting them as being in favor of him

So the poll was 42% in favor of him with 10% who didn't respond so that obviously means it was 52% in favor of him

/eyeroll

@Ash Exactly

@Ash yeah i think he was saying undecideds in the poll should automatically count for him

as @SaintWacko pointed out

he might be alluding to the "shy trump voter" theory during 2016, i.e. people were too embarassed to tell pollsters that they were voting for trump so they lied and said they were undecided

whew

> “Well, the Mueller investigation, if anything, it’s showing that the Democrats colluded with Russia and others. And it’s showing there’s no collusion from me. There never was. And yes, I’m very satisfied with the way that’s going. It’s a process. I’m very satisfied. I consider it to be an illegal investigation. It should’ve never been called. But is there anything there? Nothing. There’s no collusion. There is no collusion.

aka: "I don't want to answer the question so I'll talk about how great I am"

@GodEmperorDune whew indeed

He is so insanely delusional

to be fair there is an obama admin official who was found to also have lied about lobbying for other countries and mueller did uncover that, but that's the vast minority of the results

Trump has reportedly tried to fire John Kelly, but fails because he usually uses Kelly to fire people

> “Dumb luck” was the phrase one administration official used to explain Kelly’s endurance. The president can only focus his anger or frustrations for so long before he moves onto the next thing. Meaning, if someone is plotting to get rid of Kelly, convincing the president to concentrate on the idea that he’s a problem matters more than whether or not he actually is a problem. This is where Kelly is helped by the fact that his enemies are even more inept than they believe he is.

> “When the president says, I need you to leave, Kelly just ignores him,” the administration official said. “I think the president just doesn’t know who to call to fire him. Normally if the president wanted to fire somebody, he would call Kelly to do it. But there’s nobody else to call.”

@MadScientist I 100% believe this and it's hilarious

@GodEmperorDune lol, of course

@TimStone VEEP credits play throughout

yodawg.jpg

crap, paywalled, finding a better link

Oh no Ireland, wut is you doin

@Ash yeah the colorado decision was similarly fuct

yeah ireland is right next to the sea, should be easy enough

> “The important message from the Masterpiece Cakeshop case is that there is a clear distinction between refusing to produce a cake conveying a particular message, for any customer who wants such a cake, and refusing to produce a cake for the particular customer who wants it because of that customer’s characteristics,” they wrote, adding that the Belfast bakery “would have refused to supply this particular cake to anyone, whatever their personal characteristics.”

no that's not the message of it at all

the message was "don't have judges make biased statements during the state appeals process"

Technically the ruling touches on this and I think it was a point argued in the case, it's just not central to the ruling

Specifically Gorsuch had the dumb idea that the cake refused by Masterpiece Cakeshop fell under the first class, which doesn't make any sense!

(because the cake was just a wedding cake, which they sell all the time, but this time was to a gay couple)

@TimStone i mean if you subscribe to "decide the case however you want, then figure out the legal way to justify it" judicial theory

It came up because there was this other dude who wanted cakes conveying disapproval of same-sex marriages and bakers denied him on the basis of the message, as they'd have done for anyone asking for such cakes

But it's weird to cite that considering that like, it's not even the same law, and that wasn't the central bit of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case

i don't even get what sort of precedent that SCOTUS decisions have elsewhere in the world

I think it was just an off-the-cuff association but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me because British speech rights have significant differences to ours

So it's not even like "Ah this thought process follows" because there's no reason why it has to given the difference