😂 Way to drop your latest racist defense attempt for murderous cops like a molten steel potato after I poked it so full of holes there was nothing left. 😂

What are you talking about?
That’s the deal she offered under the first time offender program…cooperate, fulfill your lengthy probation and community service sentence and fines, and the charge is expunged. Until then it’s deferred. Fail to fulfill all the requirements or fail to fully cooperate with the prosecutors, you’re a felon and your probation gets revoked and trial starts, likely with you remanded. That’s how it works.
What do you think this means, bob?
Clearly you think it’s some loss somehow. Please explain yourself….by yourself, not with some internet troll video.
It’s a guilty plea that (legally, not in the court of public opinion or memory) goes away if conditions are met…like the others got. Did you not know or something? 😂
I would agree, they all should serve prison time so in that sense I feel it’s a small loss for justice, but also a bigger win.

They had been offered immunity deals with no fines, no probation, no community service, no guilty plea to felonies that stick if they don’t fulfill every requirement and no referral to the bar and instead went this route with all those repercussions and still are cooperating now. Sure sounds to me like they all lost big for no good reason.



The point is she now admits under oath that there was never any of the evidence she claimed, never a stolen election, and they knew it. She’s going to cooperate prosecuting the big fish, and will likely be disbarred for her lies.
How is that a loss, Bob? What?!? 🤦‍♂️

Not so hollow after all…in fact it’s atomic.

Edit: oh sweet zombie Jeebus…Trumps lawyers just filed in federal court in his Jan 6 trial claiming that he had not been charged with any crime in the case!

He’s charged with 4. 1 count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, 1 count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, 1 count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and 1 count of conspiracy against rights.

This is his best defense…pretend he’s on trial for nothing because they have no defense to the charges. It’s not going to work.

How do you put on a defense against no charges? You don’t. 😂

LMFAHS!!

Bipartisan hearing. Mostly Trump republicans testifying. All corroborated with indisputable evidence despite the ever increasing attempts at obstruction, the intentional destruction of evidence under subpoena, the number of officials pleading the fifth making them undeniably guilty in the court of public opinion and offering no defense in the court of law . That’s why you’re told “do not watch, it’s just a show, don’t, whatever you do, learn some facts about the attempted coup and fraud Trump and his administration was personally involved in planning and directing”.

Investigations are generally one sided, especially since the “other side” here is firm that there’s “no crime to investigate, it was a picnic and normal discourse, not a failed coup, not attempted election fraud on unheard of levels from within the government, Trump is perfect, investigation over”.
Do you think Capone was allowed to be part of the police force investigating him?
How about El Chapo…was he on his own investigatory committee? We’re the officials he was known to have paid off? 🤦‍♂️

Only no insurrectionist MAGAs because the accused doesn’t get to be part of the investigation, and the non complicit Republicans mostly refused to cross Trump with 2 notable exceptions….two life long multi generational actual Republicans, not the new anti America, anti democracy, anti sanity Q brand MAGAts.

Even intentionally ignorant, head in the sand idiots like you can see this simple fact.

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

- Karl Popper from The Open Society and Its Enemies [1945]

If you fight a war you have to use everything you have. The only limiting factor is own survival and post war public opinion, decided largely by who wins. There is nothing moral or legal about wars, every bet is all-in.

You only want to wage wars with clear objectives that at least your own population understands and that you know you will win, and be able to justify after the war is over.

Putin got something wrong. Or everything.

I read it, nowhere did it give an estimate of what those protests cost, and it indicated there were multiple other routes for the oil to travel so didn’t even disrupt oil transportation completely, much less ALL commerce.
And it was about pipelines crossing their (or protected) land it seems, a far cry from the truckers. Yes, the validity and severity of your cause matters, just like the damage you do and to whom.

Billions worth of goods stuck temporarily…but no actual estimated cost for their delay, this cost billions in lost production and salaries that won’t be recovered.

That protest was targeted against the offending entity, not the populace. I have no issue with natives blockading their own land and preserves that feed those reservations against permanent destruction for some private profits. That’s a far cry from the truckers blockading the main border crossing for industry and tourism because they’re afraid to get a poke.

The numbers I saw were special. Hundreds of millions-billions lost (your billions in goods delayed doesn’t have a price tag). That was before the bridge was reopened. These protesters weren’t satisfied with that damage and continued to close your capitol with ever shifting demands. Since regular measures had failed, I support emergency measures, seizure, even forfeiture after trial, of any funds or tools used.

Perhaps they became only as localized (but certainly not as targeted, and localized in a city not the unpopulated country), but they had already done exponentially more damage and showed no sign of end or even demands.

Let’s ignore someone personally supporting a grass roots movement outside their country and control, please. I find it a red herring totally unconnected to how he governs.

Yes, some Floyd protests were more violent than the truckers, some weren’t, remember how they were all violently smashed, tear gassed, rubber bullets galore, run through with police trucks, unmarked vans pulling up and grabbing people crossing the streets, unmarked vans driving through towns full of police shooting tear gas at any moving body, etc? Don’t pretend the response is similar.
Also, the Floyd protests lasted a weekend in most cases (occupy Portland really wasn’t about Floyd) and went elsewhere the next march. They weren’t closing down one area for weeks intent on staying. Most lasted hours and were peaceful until police became violent, despite right wing media’s fear-mongering.

I think you’re stretching, putting on blinders, and doing insane mental gymnastics to pretend you believe that. From the actual damage caused, the idiotic reasoning behind it (quickly abandoned), the extremely uncanadianness of the self centered far right rally masquerading as protest, the international damage, the foreign involvement from planning to funding, these are unique “protests” in numerous ways.

Their idiotic beliefs are only one of many distinctions I’ve pointed out, and as I mentioned only color public opinion and the amount of patience they’re given by the public, not how the government treats them. It’s not at all honest for you to pretend that’s the entirety of my position…it’s very Bob of you, and has lost some of my respect.

Pipelines crossing sovereign territory or preserves = bad so blockading those areas to force pipeline movement = good….oil companies didn’t truck the oil out, they increased shipments from other areas by rail. Read the article you linked.

Native cultures and governments are different. Pretending an elected board for a reservation works for the people is naive in the extreme. Read about politics on reservations, who funds the people that get elected in most cases, what happens to opposing candidates…saying the board signed off while so many showed up to fight against it seems a bit at odds, no? Like maybe the board members were bribed, had ties with the oil industry, or other conflicts….just maybe?

And again, those protests didn’t cost a fraction what the truckers did from my research. Delaying delivery of a billion in goods isn’t the same as costing a billion in losses. Neither is delaying or cancelling a billion dollar project. Be adult please….don’t make such specious arguments ….please. They don’t slip by, and they make me think you are being disingenuous.

Evidence? Like a secret recording? A near impossibility, and at best even if perfectly successful, a career suicide mission and lifelong threat for anyone who tries.

Anonymous sources are the best you'll get in today's political world where turning on Trump always leads to credible death threats and often attempts, but they're good enough for Trump to quote when making policy, so fair game to use against him.

The evidentiary rules in the court of public opinion are not the same as criminal court.

Apologies, didn't mean to misrepresent you. We've debated things before and you seemed to lean to no cop is a good cop because there are so many bad ones guilt be association and failure to clean things up makes them all bad. You'd also said up thread to fire all active officers.

I'll cease trying to word how you feel on it, I just wanted to demonstrate by counter example that not everybody means 'reform' when they say "defund". At a minimum , the degree of 'reform' varies from change some laws and regulations to fire them and start over from scratch.

My comment of being ruled by our 'betters' was meant as a sarcastic dig on them and their abject failure in letting things rot this far and doing nothing.

Finally, my comment on public opinion on solutions being non-uniform was mostly to emphasize that as just normal, and the current status quo is just so unacceptable that it is unifying people from varied points of view to stand up against it. The most important point being that declaring, see nothing will satisfy the mob because they can't agree what to do is a twisted deception and the truth is people want things to be better than they are, and there is as you pointed out tonnes of common sense ways to go about that,

I try and choose my words carefully, it looks like you are still responding to what you think I must mean, rather than what I said. You say you thought I meant jr and the recent war in Iraq when I reference Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. I was in fact referencing no particular Iraq war, but the overall condition Iraq is in(as per the video and my own earlier reference to same. Maybe some room to misunderstand that, but my full quot if you can read it carefully this time:
“blaming Bush Sr. for Iraq, rather than Saddam's campaign of genocide against his own people and his conquest of Kuwait.”
I did specifically name Bush Sr, which At the least should rule out thinking I’m discussing anything done by Jr.

As for Sr’s war in Iraq, Kuwait was a province of the Iraqi state when Senior came in to liberate it. He also stopped short of removing Saddam, which was imo a mistake for Iraqi’s and the one thing I’d agree would be a fair accusation against him re the overall consition of Iraq today. It left Saddam time for another genocide against the Shia Iraqi’s that had risen up thinking Senior was serious about standing with them. Public opinion though was too much against it and so American forces stopped short of removing Saddam and followed popular opinion. Saddam’s WMD programs where dismantled(which he very much had then) and northern Iraq’s airspace remained occupied by Anerican forces right through until jr’s war. Saddam also continually decieved, obstructed and kicked out the UN inspectors in Iraq there to confirm his full and continued disarmament. Enough so that before jr’s war one of the most vocal anti-war inspectors cited Saddam’s almost certain possession and use of chemical weapons as a reason risking an invasion was too dangerous...

The rule of law is being followed. Nothing being stolen-- Politics is a nasty business. It was on full displayed yesterday.


Democrats sprung an 11th hour attack "October surprise" on Kavanaugh to smear him in public opinion and delay the vote, A week later Democrats want to delay more for an FBI investigation.. What hog wash. just a political stunt -- I'm sure they will bring about another false claim before the senate vote .
Bottom line no one corroborates her testimony ..


Republicans are not insisting on and FBI -- only Flake is -- A political cover for him to vote yes today and get it out of committee.

FBI HAS looked 6 times into Kavanaugh character and background. Now another one for a 40 yr old repressed "memory" ?


Are your you or any friends alter boys?

If this was true, all that was done was some tit grabbing by foolish boys.
You want to disqualify a man of sexual fumblings when he was 17 boy? Is that the society you want to live in? 50 -90% of men would be guilty.

An old girl can call the police and say you wrongly fondled her when you were 17? And you lose your career of over it? BS.
NO cop department would even giver her the time of day.


Justices should be above reproach and their morality unquestionable. Kavanaugh wins on both counts.

FYI...#walkaway is a right wing campaign where they had republican actors (and stock photos) claim they were Democrats who were sick of the liberal nonsense and they, and millions like them, were walking away from the Democrats. It was for right wingers, not left, false verification that they are correct and lefties are finally coming around to their truth, and a counterpoint to the "blue wave" campaign. They were caught on day one, and it never caught on outside right wing websites, mostly because it was a horrible, stupid, poorly implemented, transparent ploy. No surprise that, even though he knows that, Bob still puts it out there hoping to convince someone.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/walkaway-campaign-stock-photos/

Looking into it, I've found that it's reportedly become a Russian ploy.....
#WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing (July 17), according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Just one more time Bob is spreading Russian propaganda.

On the chance your 'jokingly' isn't obvious, MLK, Ghandi and Mandela's causes ALL had support from those willing to use violence, aka better weapons would help.

Malcolm X would be the next most prominent figure beside MLK. Indian independence wasn't won with peaceful hunger strikes alone, and again lots of violence in South Africa.

Ghandi even bridged the gap to working alongside the effective army fighting for India's independence:
" I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier."

Speaking more to the point of America today, pretty much no civil war has been fought exclusively with civilians on one side, and the government, police, army and all other branches of the state united on the other. The reason being that if that kind of unity within the government against the civilian population exists, you ALREADY have tyranny.

In America, the example would be if a president or a particular political party decided to try for tyrannical over reach, would the American public be better equipped to resist that with or without guns? In civil war, guns give power to the majority of public opinion that would need to be there otherwise. In a nation with an unarmed public, whatever the majority of soldiers side with is likely gonna win. With an armed populace, the civilian opinion matters more.

I think it's an overall modest observation, and one that really doesn't in anyway make it obvious that the modest benefit is worth the costs. That is another matter, but you can't factually claim that there isn't a meaningful difference between an armed and unarmed population when facing civil war.

Asis Ansari denies anything untoward or intentionally disturbing.....as is admitted by his accuser that's trying to have him convicted in the court of public opinion and blackballed....over her regretting having had bad consensual sex.

A bad date isn't rape, bad consensual sex later regretted isn't rape, an argument isn't rape, no chemistry isn't rape, only rape is rape and your contention is that this doesn't matter, they are equally guilty and deserve equal scorn and hate?!? Being weird is the same as being a rapist?!? Jesus fucking Christ, I always thought you were rational. This position you're taking is not rational, and drives rational people away from the movement....and will destroy it before it has any effect.
Being weird is a good thing, just look at the "normal" person and tell me they're worth emulating.

Don't stop using your brain.

Does this go both ways? If a man has a bad date, or bad sex, can he accuse the woman of exaggerated disgusting behavior publicly by lumping her in with serious abusers to hurt her professionally and personally as revenge for his own inability to say "stop" or "no"?

I hope that girl you had a bad date with in high school doesn't come back to show you the error of your position by adding your name to the "me too" list, destroying your career, family life, and future with no recourse to prove your innocence...all because she didn't orgasm.....but I do hope you see the error.

BTW, the next time you're caught saying something disturbing to someone else, you need to remind them you aren't trying to murder them. Your position means if you upset someone, that's the same as the worst thing you could have done, torture murder. There is no distinction.

In fact, your post did upset me, you fucking child raping monster. That's not overboard at all according to you, and you are exactly the same as a serial chomo...until legal sentencing time. That is what you advocate.
Fuck. People have all lost their fucking minds over this issue.

I think I see things more jadedly than you do.

Here's what I see of the situation. On a nation state level, nobody cares about the Palestinians. The Palestinians only influence on the chess board is their suffering. All of their 'allies' like Syria, Egypt and Iran don't care about the Palestinians for anything more than making sure that they suffer, the greater and the more public that suffering the better propaganda it makes. Israel and it's allies only care about the Palestinians in so far as that same suffering makes them look bad and sways public opinion as well. The threat from the Palestinians is a police and humanitarian matter, not a military one.

So everybody with boots on the ground doesn't care about the Palestinians. The Israeli side will take what they want as long as public opinion isn't too onerous on it. The Arab nations will actively arm, encite and push the Palestinians from peace to violence at ever turn because it ensures they serve their 'purpose' of public suffering better.

I count exactly zero hope for a two state solution reached between Palestinian and Israeli's as equals. A future of the region where the Palestinian people are afforded a better future either in a province of Israel, or their own state created under terms dictated to it by Israel I see as at least an existent possibility. I honestly believe seeking something more is simply not a possibility because NOBODY wants it. The Israeli's don't, the Palestinians allies don't, even the Palestinians themselves don't.

You seem to think maybe the parties can be made to change their minds on that, but it runs contrary to their self interests.

Israel gains nothing by backing down and negotiating as equals for a two state solution.

Palestine's 'allies' actually lose out greatly in any resolution to the status quo because it currently ties down Israel and makes for great propaganda. They'd lose that and gain nothing in return but less suffering for the Palestinians whom they don't care about.

Palestinians themselves might be persuaded to change their minds, but the only ones swaying their public opinion are their 'allies' with a vested interested in making sure they continue to fight forever for all of Palestine and not settle for two states. Additionally, for all intents and purposes their opinions don't matter anyways because they lack the power to make a meaningful difference.

None of the above is my opinion on how I would like things to be, nor how I think they should be, but rather how I see it actually looking. Nation state actions can usually be stripped down to narrow self interest and naught else. The exceptions are failures of the state representation, like say a dictator choosing their personal interest over a national one, or a buffoon blundering off into idiotic random actions...

Never having to fear financial disruption due to an opinion does afford one a sense of liberty. No company is going to fire your shares and stop sending dividends.

jon's clever attempt to sway public opinion on a fools tweet lines his pockets with book royalties and speaking fees. He's profiting from a special kind of sinister back door racism. It enriches him financially and psychologically with the praises from the suckers who are being told to all go buy his book.

The very thought of being embarrassed or shamed by profiting from racism in a country built by slaves is truly hilarious. No matter if you stand or take a knee all are paying rent or interest.

Bob i hate to break it to you, but America has started to become a little bit of a joke in the rest of the world... Your rude, pig headed and frankly severely lacking in intelligence and personal skills president is taking you backwards. But that's no indictment on Americans, because many states have thankfully backed the climate accord, and if non-Trump aligned Americans are to blame for anything, it is only not being able to force the correct candidate through to beat Trump. If we want the drift of American political opinion in Europe these days, we have to watch late night talk shows rather than listening to the president.

Three things happened RE: Paris accord.
One - the American president has used a European stage to demand spurious money from Europe and turned them publicly into opponents rather than allies. Even the worst Brexiteers had the good grace to make that claim on smaller stages where they could be laughed at - it's banter, not a serious political point, except to Trump! Apparently friendship is now an issue of economics, so if Russia decided to start a war, America's involvement might depend on how much it costs to be involved (or who Trump's personal mates are, or what Russia has on him) despite being a key cause of war.
Two - other countries including China all came together to show international brotherhood *against Trump*. This is now Trump's position in the eyes of worldwide public opinion; Trump stands opposed to the entire rest of the world save two countries Syria and Nicaragua! America has *stepped away* from the rest of the world. So now the rest of the world is by definition leading America, showing her the way.
Three - Trump has shown us that he is not interested in listening to the best logical reasoning, the best mathematical models, from the combined talent of the best minds that this planet has produced. So he's completely unreliable.

I think even Trump's fiercest proponents must now start to admit, in private, that they didn't get what they thought they were getting. He is a psychological child with the arrogance of a rich grown man.