More Thomas criminality- Thomas sold his 1/2 interest in his mother’s house to Crow for an above market price of $133000 in 2014 (and likely hers for the same price) and did not report it on his financial disclosure form, a clear specific requirement of government code for any real estate transaction over $1000, including for supreme court justices and including sales to “friends”.

Crow also improved the home and allows Thomas’s mother to live there rent free, also not reported, but it’s less clear how criminal that is despite its clearly being unethical bribery.
Crow also bought and bulldozed the neighbors homes so she wouldn’t have noisy neighbors….I mean because he really just wanted to beautify that random neighborhood.

Of course, in your mind, nothing burger. Thomas clearly wouldn’t rule in favor of the man who funds his and his families extravagant opulent lifestyle and his wife’s high paying extreme right political lobbying group….never….and breaking ethics and tax laws don’t count if the perp is Republican.

Referred to the DOJ for prosecution. First time ever in history for justices. More MAGA greatness.

Today’s MAGA terrorist - Patrick McCaughey. Convicted on 9 counts of assaulting police with deadly weapons, including trying to crush one to death using a riot shield and the force of the crowd, pulling off his gas mask and gouging his eyeball out with his thumb.
Should have been charged with a minimum of two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and gotten double death penalty, but is facing 16.5 years.

Today’s bonus MAGA corruption…Pubic hair Thomas’s lame excuse, that he’s known the Nazi Crow for 25 years and accepted hospitality from an old friend (who he met 5+ years after becoming a justice when Crow started showering him and his wife with extravagant “gifts” (with strings attached) and asking for favorable rulings), and that he asked his colleagues and they said (wrongly) that he doesn’t have to report “gifts” from “friends”, even million dollar gifts from “friends” of his position on the court, not his person…that’s an admission that ALL the Righty justices are in cahoots with this bribery scheme and are definitely also on the take. They instructed him on how to take the bribes and hide them. He really exposed the total illegitimacy these unqualified far right “judges” brought to the court and the destruction and death their cash bribe motivated rulings have been.

Today’s MAGA hypocrisy- N Dakota Republicans just cancelled free school lunches for poor children whose parents make $4.86 an hour (minimum wage for servers) saying the pennyless parents need to pay, followed immediately by increasing the amount legislators (themselves) get for free lunches to $45 per day (more than poor people earn with full time employment) because food is expensive.

Since you are Russian I’m guessing you know “Pravda” (“Truth” in Russian) the Russian propaganda publication is the model for Truth social (Toth Senchal), the MAGA social media Pravda.

Liar. That’s not what he said. No surprise, you can’t be near the truth, it burns you.

He sent millionaires/billionaires as “stealth missionaries”…not mom and pop evangelicals. Mom and pop prayed and sent cards, billionaires sent hundred thousand dollar and more vacations. He did that because billionaires can make bribes mom and pop can’t…sent stealth because bribing judges is against their religion, ethics, and morals….and justices are apparently exempt from ethic and morality rules and laws so can accept any amount without reporting it but still don’t like the optics.
I would bet you any amount (were you not a welcher) the “conservative” justices never pay for their lunches, which they hold in places like the four seasons where the bill can exceed $1k easily every day. Keep in mind this well funded group was only one of dozens lobbying the conservative justices.

Alito leaked decisions to these billionaires, and let them shape decisions….and was paid well for it. Typically hypocritically, suddenly the right doesn’t care one bit about leaks from the court, when last week they were still screaming for blood from the 3 sane justices they assumed were the leakers. Now that it’s known Alito is a leaker….NOTHING BURGER. You infants are so transparent. To your ilk wrong is only wrong if the left does it.

A few dinners is what they CLAIMED, but not everything they did. It’s what he says he suggested (but that’s not believable one bit), not the limit of their involvement by far.
He admitted they hosted dinners for them regularly…including travel across the country and stays in massive estates as part of the “dinner”, and including their friends and families, and often and repeatedly hosted them on extravagant vacations to different continents, including extravagant first class hunting trips to South America, etc, (including first class travel for them and their families)…. and entered a Faustian deal where the court would make abortion illegal only if the evangelicals would support EVERYTHING ELSE in the far right agenda no matter how evil.

Hilarious that he claims he was trying to convince the court it had the people’s support to eradicate reproductive rights. That was a blatant lie from evangelicals, they were opposed by over 70% of the people, and utterly destroyed the legitimacy of the court in their political zeal to erode individual rights for Americans. (And many other ethical and moral failings)

This is the far right court selling a decision (and a legal right) for political gains…and you know they get kickbacks from the far right for that too.

You love wasting tax payer dollars. How many millions wasted on Trump’s fake illicit defense by an activist judge inserting herself in a federal case to protect him? How many hundreds of millions were wasted in Trump’s repeated election fraud investigations that found no fraud besides Republican frauds they ignored? How many billions wasted on Trump’s failed useless border fence that’s already crumbling into rivers and getting blown down in wind, and hasn’t slowed border crossings at all since they’ve increased since he built it? How much was wasted investigating BLM and ANTIFA….how much was wasted CREATING ANTIFA by labeling any protester ANTIFA unless they could prove they weren’t, in a ploy to create a boogie man for you to fear? Now you want to spend hundreds of millions investigating private citizens (Hunter, Clinton). You want to spend hundreds of millions investigating Fauchi. You don’t want to spend a dime investigating the highest court being bribed….unless you only target liberal justices then you’re 100% on board with any amount.
And exactly how many tax dollars have been spent on investigating this? Pretty certain it’s near zero. It’s just public knowledge now. Just said in congress under oath…that’s all.

Edit: I bet you have no problem with justices like Kavenaugh “partying” (getting drunk and raping women?) with Matt Gaetz, Stephen Miller, Erick Prince, Matt Schlapp, Sebastian Gorka, Sean Spicer, and others who have upcoming cases in front of his court, right? Just like it’s fine that Thomas didn’t recuse himself from cases directly involving his wife despite clear ethics rules requiring he do so….right? So much for “high ethical standards”….they have no standards. The right delegitimization the court started with denying Obama a nomination and is now complete.
And the Mark Meadows voter fraud case progresses. Sure he lived in a run down mobile home in the woods, he wasn’t lying to illegally register to vote in N Carolina…one of 3 places he registered. Lots of republicans committing vote fraud in N Carolina.

Today, speaking under oath to the senate subcommittee looking into our covid response, Dr Birx said Trump failures to support mask mandates and social distancing cost us 30-40% of the 741000 covid related deaths, so his own people blame him for almost 300000 dead Americans from just one of his many failures to protect America. When asked if Trump did everything he could to mitigate the virus and save lives, her answer was a unambiguous and unqualified “no”.

Now hide your head up your prolapsed asshole again, proclaim this verifiable fact “fake news”, and send Donny another $45 to fight election fraud, ignoring that he hasn’t spent a dime of the millions of his cultists money he’s raised claiming he was fighting election fraud on fighting election fraud, 100% of his expenditures have been administrative….paying himself, paying for his travel, paying for his extravagant lodging, often at his own properties…not one dime paying for fake audits or lawsuits, not from him or his fundraisers.

But what do you expect from a con man with multiple convictions for fraud including charity fraud, stealing money he raised for veterans.

And sweet zombie Jebus, under the inept and extremely financially conflicted Dejoy, the USPS has now completely lost our ability to send packages or first class mail to Australia! It’s been that way since early September before you try to say it’s just temporary. It’s criminal that this Trumpists crook is still in his position.

Bob, you been drinking again?

They're - they are.

Waist - the part of the human body below the ribs and above the hips.

Waste - an act or instance of using or expending something carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
"it's a waste of time trying to argue with him"

Your - belonging to or associated with any person in general.
"the sight is enough to break your heart"

------------------------

You make it sound as though they are after YOUR entitlements.

This Christmas, after all the economic's critique of the failure of the utility of gift giving---I finally figured one (there are other) purposes of gift giving for me---it's to give permission...Permission for extravagance, for excess, for activities, for pursuits, for...whatever it may be---within the context of the relationship you have with the recipient.

Nice.

*Promote

I'm far enough away from these issues to admit that I don't have anything like concrete knowledge on the subject, but I feel like I should mention some of the more obvious counterpoints to some of the things he's said in this video. Otherwise I'd get that dirty echo chamber feeling, and no amount of showering seems to wash that away. Could be I'm just a masochist, though, who enjoys arguing.

I think there's racism in every culture. I think it's often much more subtle than described in the video, often even subconscious. I also think that modern western culture is among the least racist cultures to have ever existed, despite our many complaints.

I guess I'll talk about Libya first. The west (the white people he was talking about) is continuously demonized for supporting tyrants and the like. Yet when they participate in overthrowing a clear example of a extravagant super villain tyrant, they are demonized for that. I'm not saying they didn't have other motives, I'm just saying that it's an example of a tautology. No matter which choice they make they are labeled racist.

Now, when beleaguered folk make a desperate attempt to dangerously cross a sea, well knowing the risks they are incurring, it is again the fault of the Italians for not rescuing then with sufficient alacrity. Yes, many of them are coming from countries the west had a hand in destabilizing. But it would be pretty racist for you to demand that the Italian navy take full moral responsibility for the actions of other western nations, simply because they are white too. Also, if the only number you pay attention to is the number that drown, your bias is showing.

Next the issue of the Commonwealth. It seems absurd to expect the UK to treat former colonies populated by citizens that had moved there the same as former conquests that have since shrugged off the yoke of empire. The justifications for this discrimination would seem to be a combination of racism, cultural chauvinism and sober pragmatism. The latter two factors clearly scale with the gap between the culture of the colony in question and the home country, and probably ought to in some sense.

The incarceration thing is tougher to poke holes in, and clearly a much more touchy subject. Once could argue all sorts of justifications for why more members of ethnic minorities are apprehended, but it's nebulous and smells of bias and chauvinism, at best ending in a chicken vs egg conundrum. But once you're in police custody, I think can agree on demanding a higher level of equality of outcome. So I checked out a charity called Inquest who had compiled pretty comprehensive stats on police custody deaths since 1990. Here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/bame-deaths-in-police-custody
To summarise, since 1990, ethnic minorities have made up a total of 153 out of 1557 deaths in police custody, or roughly 10%. Given that they currently make up 13% of the population, that seems to be well within an acceptable range of results, so I was confused at first. Then I thought maybe he had misspoken and had meant to say state custody, or inmate deaths. So again I looked for some numbers, and again Inquest had the most comprehensive data, broken down by year and ethnicity etc. Again here's a link: http://www.inquest.org.uk/statistics/deaths-in-prison
It shows 453 out of 3963 prison deaths are suffered by ethnic minorities. This seems almost perfectly in line with the 13% population of said minorities. So again, I'm a bit confused by the point he's making.

All of that said, I think I agree with the sentiment of his presentation, which perhaps confuses me even more.

We have the enormous misfortune in the UK to live in a democracy; how could it not? As more people from, effectively, the past enter the country the progress we've been making will be slowed or reversed.

Western, or probably more specifically north-western europe is that special region in the world where religion is actually dying off. More people in the UK are non-religious than religious. Christians in this country finally have the decency to be ashamed of their faith, and any extravagant public expression of belief is met with contempt from believers and non-believers alike - look at the minor scandal created when Tony Blair admitted to being a catholic, and engaging in such outlandish behaviours as prayer.

Orthodox christians from easten europe, and refugees from even less civilised areas, haven't had the opportunity to develop the same attitude. As they settle in their nasty little insular communities, the danger is that they're in a position to act as voting blocs that damage public policy.

Anyway, I'm sure it's heartening for eric to discover that basically none of us has any idea either.

Microsoft are installing adware and spyware on millions of PCs without their owners' consent. They're criminals, unambiguously, and they should be punished - brutally and extravagantly.

OMG...I was SOOOO hoping you would make that argument.
The 'blanket' minimum wage is the minimum we have decided that those living in the cheapest places to live should be paid. I agree, it should be based on cost of living...but the $15 an hour standard is what we've said should be the minimum in back woods Appalachia, and in larger cities it should be well over $20. Reduce the pay at the top to a reasonably high level and that won't cost most businesses another penny.

OK, bay area....you said ""those who choose to live there need to consider their income" ....ignoring the majority of people who are 'stuck' there without sufficient income; those who've lost financial stability, or those born there to poor parents who have never made any choice, and usually their parents who no longer have a choice to make at this point. They simply can't afford to move. The same goes for most low income people anywhere, they don't "choose" to live there, they don't have the luxury of a 'choice'. ...or are you lobbying for free moving and relocation services for the poor?

10 years ago, $15 an hour was not a living wage in many places, the bay area for one. I left there 20 years ago, and $15 an hour was pretty hard to live on as a single man sharing an apartment THEN, I can't imagine how it is now, especially for those with children.

No, you didn't say ONLY kids living at home have minimum wage jobs, but you did mention them as if they are a large percentage of minimum wage workers, and the group we should focus on, and implied that wages should be determined (at least in part) by THEIR needs. They are in fact the smallest group of minimum wage workers, and even they need more money to eventually move out.

Really? " those unwilling to put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society." If you really believe a large percentage of people working for minimum wage are "unwilling to put in effort" to better themselves, I just don't know what to say. That's completely batshit insane, they work insanely hard for little compensation, with little respite, and absolutely no respect. Most are putting out more than a reasonable maximum effort just to go deeper into debt constantly, there is no amount of effort that makes more time to make more money to pay for training, or an amount of effort that makes tuition free. Also, who do you think will take over for them if they all put in the effort and gain the skill required to actually do a decent service to society"...(whatever the hell that insulting statement is supposed to mean besides implying they aren't decent or serving society today...by choice)?
What are you talking about "Complacency shouldn't be allowed to make life more difficult for all of us"? WHAT?!? OK, yes, so stop being so complacent about the horrendous way we treat those at the bottom of the financial system because that makes life more difficult for all of us by forcing those with 'more' (but not enough 'more' to avoid taxes) to pay higher taxes for welfare, prisons, policing, housing, etc....by making the nation more crime ridden because it's the only way to make a living for so many...by overtaxing our medical system because so many can't afford to be preemptive with their health and only accept medical help when it's at emergency stage...etc.

If the funds to raise the lowest wages don't come from the extravagant pay that goes to the top and are instead being transferred directly to consumers, yes, it's a vicious cycle. That's why you have to ALSO lower top compensation by law, like maybe tie it to the lowest paid worker in the company. That would stop inflation from being a feedback loop with wages.

Yeah, that Krugman piece was pretty ridiculous.
'It wasn't the big banks that caused the crash, it was smaller banks....like Lehman Bro's' (really, smaller?), not BofA and their cohorts.....um....no. I'm sure he's technically correct, that SOME economists have said that, but not those that are impartial.

I'm also getting pretty sick of this lie that Sanders didn't have a plan and couldn't answer the question of "how do you break up the big banks". It's a lie, pure and simple, and only works on the ignorant willing to listen to edited 'interviews' where his actual answer is cut out, or willing to believe those with a clear bias against him. He had a clear plan, he explained it, it's a reasonable plan and it's well thought out. That Clinton can't 1)understand it or 2) admit it, and that her subordinates are willing to spread the lie exemplifies HER lack of qualification to be president, not his.

It's funny (sad really) that many of the 'extravagant promises' that she mentions that have taught the African-American voting block to be distrustful came from the Clintons.

Again with the 'large lead in delegates' lie.....it is 1) not large and 2) quickly evaporating. Without the (well paid for) super delegates, Clinton's lead (before losing Nevada and Missouri) was already <10%, with most states yet to vote polling heavily for Sanders (except in land line only, day time polls). In the past week, 2 states that were called for Clinton have gone to Sanders thanks to her delegates not showing up for her...even they don't really care for her enough to vote, and they're HER DELEGATES! When do we get to start saying Sanders is the clear frontrunner and that Clinton is harming the Democrats by badmouthing HIM? That day must be coming soon.

To the guilty, blame assignment is often called 'petulance' and 'self righteousness'. When one answers charges with insults against those making the charges, it's a pretty good indication that the charges are true.

Too myopic to admit you're 100% wrong.
Too insulting to be worth my time.
"...relatively short post"! That says it all....and I did take the time to read your ridiculous tome, obviously, since I addressed it from top to (near) bottom....which was far more than it deserved....as to your first sentence.

I read. You said you were not in danger of contradiction in suggesting I had not cracked a book about feminist theory...you're quite wrong.
You said you were not in danger of contradiction in suggesting I had not engaged with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote ( or to translate that chogie-speak, you said I had never met a reasonable Feminist that actually stuck to feminism)....again you are wrong....I was raised by one.
You suggested the dictionary definition of words you continue to misuse was provided to address the disparate levels of political thought through out humanity and civilization? You were again wrong. It was provided to show that the 'group' (I use the word loosely) using the name "Feminist" is not the same thing as the idea of 'feminism'. Again, you were completely wrong, as you were in your complete last insulting post.

Now, because you stoop to infantile insults, I'm done with YOU, not just the subject.
Thank you, (please don't) come again.

gorillaman said:
I don't think I'm much in danger of contradiction in suggesting that you yourself have yet to crack a book of feminist theory or engage with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com (and when did dictionaries move from being an aid to understanding obscure words to the ultimate arbiters of political thought?).

@newtboy

I don't think I'm much in danger of contradiction in suggesting that you yourself have yet to crack a book of feminist theory or engage with a feminist activist making no more extravagant sex/gender claims that the one you quote from that unimpeachable source, dictionary.com (and when did dictionaries move from being an aid to understanding obscure words to the ultimate arbiters of political thought?).

There is no separating the movement from the ideology; this is an ancient truism. Without the movement, the idea dies. Without the idea, the movement doesn't exist. My unfollowable second paragraph comprises only examples of actual, nasty feminist doctrine which I have encountered in the real world, and could probably even document with a few google searches. I can hardly be blamed that this group is so dissolute, so indiscriminately inclusive of maniacs and criminal fanatics that no single representative feminist can be found, no central text can answer for the whole.

But for the sake of increasingly and inexplicably divisive argument, let's attempt to isolate just that 'small-f' feminism in the definition you give: "feminism: noun: the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men", which I will unconditionally repudiate and abjure, for the following reasons.

i) Let's be boring and start with the name. A name that has rightly attracted much criticism, and which Virginia Woolf - not a feminist, merely a devastatingly intelligent and talented woman - called "a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete".* Anyone can see the defect here, an implicitly sexist term that apparently calls for the advancement of one sex at the expense of - whom? Well, whom do you think? A special politics for women only and exclusionary of those other incidental members of the human species, once allies and comrades and now relegated to the other side of what has become a literally unending antagonism.

You may say, "it's only a name", but how little else your dictionary leaves me to examine. No, were there no other social or intellectual harm in feminism, I would reject it on the ground of its name alone.

ii, sailor) Would that there were a known equivalent for the term 'racialism' that could relate to the cultural fiction of gender. The demand for women's rights necessarily requires that such a category 'women' exists, and is in need of special protection. Well what virtue is there in any woman that exists in no man? What mannish fault that finds no womanly echo? Then how is this distinction maintained except through supernatural thinking?

There are no women; and if there are no women, then there is nothing for feminism to accomplish. You may sign me up at any time for the doctrine of 'anti-sexism' or of 'individualism', but I will spit on anyone who advocates for 'women's rights'.

iii) This has been touched on before, and praise satan for that time saving mercy, but I reject the implicit assumption that there is a natural societal opposition to the principle of sex equality and that those who fail to declare for this, again, historically very recent dogma fall by default into that opposing force.



*The quote is worth taking in its fuller context, written in a time when the word 'feminist' was a slur on those heroes whose suffering and idealism has been so ghoulishly plundered for the tawdry use of @bareboards2 and her cohort:

"What more fitting than to destroy an old word, a vicious and corrupt word that has done much harm in its day and is now obsolete? The word ‘feminist’ is the word indicated. That word, according to the dictionary, means ‘one who champions the rights of women’. Since the only right, the right to earn a living, has been won, the word no longer has a meaning. And a word without a meaning is a dead word, a corrupt word. Let us therefore celebrate this occasion by cremating the corpse. Let us write that word in large black letters on a sheet of foolscap; then solemnly apply a match to the paper. Look, how it burns! What a light dances over the world! Now let us bray the ashes in a mortar with a goose-feather pen, and declare in unison singing together that anyone who uses that word in future is a ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man, a mischief maker, a groper among old bones, the proof of whose defilement is written in a smudge of dirty water upon his face. The smoke has died down; the word is destroyed. Observe, Sir, what has happened as the result of our celebration. The word ‘feminist’ is destroyed; the air is cleared; and in that clearer air what do we see? Men and women working together for the same cause. The cloud has lifted from the past too. What were they working for in the nineteenth century — those queer dead women in their poke bonnets and shawls? The very same cause for which we are working now. ‘Our claim was no claim of women’s rights only;’— it is Josephine Butler who speaks —‘it was larger and deeper; it was a claim for the rights of all — all men and women — to the respect in their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.’"

I'd like the next two to be a challenge of baker's gold proportions if anyone dare place the task upon me, ...no exotic ingredients or process being too extravagant-

If one thing can be said about mankind it is that we have a talent for finding ridiculously extravagant ways of killing ourselves.