Reply With QuoteIt's slowly getting to the point where you'll have to be suspicious of people who *don't* have classified documents stashed away at their private residences.
Not wrong, but...Originally Posted by Starker
Sadly, these are FAR from the most deluded amongst the right-wing.
Documents marked as classified found at Pence's residence, today. Does anybody not have a few tucked away for a rainy day?
It's slowly getting to the point where you'll have to be suspicious of people who *don't* have classified documents stashed away at their private residences.
It has to be infuriating for the millions of people who would lose their career if they made a similar "innocent" mistake.
Or who lost their lives for selling secrets to the Russians.
New York Times chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Durham expedition:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/u...ssia-barr.html
WASHINGTON — It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.
Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.
But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.
Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.
Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.
* Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
* Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.
* There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)
Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.
[...]
Oh, thank you! Participating in CommChat feels like sitting at the end of the table at a restaurant, where everybody else already knows each other. I rarely feel I can contribute. So you can picture my tensorial excursion as the awkward geek butting it to ramble at length on a non-sequitur, to everyone's mild discomfort.
That's a pre-requisite for membership here, you're good
Good to know!That's a pre-requisite for membership here, you're good
Sadly I can't be awkward as I please, because it ties into my disorder. Saying something that transgresses eventually leads to suicidal thoughts. (There's no risk of suicide. It's part of my disorder to have my subconscious shout "KILL YOURSELF" whenever I remember any of a large class of events.)
...Oversharing is less risky, oddly enough.
"The choice is between normal or crazy"
- Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The wording in this Iowa Republican bill on child labor:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...w/69870761007/
The good and the bad of Iowa's bill that would bring big changes to child labor lawsA new bill introduced in the Iowa Legislature would rewrite Iowa's child labor law to allow teens to work in previously prohibited jobs so long as they are part of an approved training program."A business that accepts a secondary student in a work-based learning program shall not be subject to civil liability for any claim for bodily injury to the student or sickness or death by accident of the student arising from the business’s negligent act or omission during the student’s participation in the work-based learning program at the business or worksite."The bill exempts businesses from civil liability if a student is sickened, injured or killed due to the company's negligence. A business also would be free of civil liability if a student is hurt because of the teen's negligence on the job — or is injured traveling to or from work.It would some children under 16 to drive themselves to work-based programs. The Iowa Department of Transportation says online a student must be 14 1/2 years old to obtain a special driver's license.
And it would let kids under 16 work until 9 p.m. instead of quitting by 7 p.m. And quitting time would be extended to 11 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day.
Last edited by Cipheron; 8th Feb 2023 at 14:42.
I couldn't finished watching, I was telling the TV to eff off so much it wasn't worth it.
Well, Slow Uncle Joe showed them what a political ambush is at the SOTU speech. Even McCarthy was forced to take a break from shushing the garish hecklers, to give Joe a standing-O.
It's the power of a simple truth over a web of lies.
"Republicans offer a vision for a future built on freedom, not fear-mongering."
-- McCarthy
Projection is a way of life in the Republican Party.
What did he say?
Basically called them out on their "cut social security and medicare" bullshit (AKA Paul Ryan's entire reason of existence) and when they bood and jeered and shouted he was a liar, he turned it around and asked whether this meant cuts are off the table now. And then everyone clapped... for real.
Now the Republicans are under slightly more pressure to pretend that none of their proposals on this ever existed and all the embarrassing videos where they discuss it or pitch this to their donors, etc, don't exist.
Is that going to have any effect? It seems to me that inside the R-bubble, every proposal to gut social security and/or Medicare and/or Medicaid is pitched as "saving" it.
I think there's a political capital effect when a tag line can be branded. It's like George HW Bush branding "Read my lips: No new taxes." Circumstances changed and the new taxes were the right thing for him to do at the time, but he'd branded that phrase so memorably that it was easy to turn it into a sword against him just by replaying it. What Biden did here was brand the idea so it can serve that purpose later. I think.
Edit: Speaking of that example, that's the moment for me when the GOP started with the purity tests and purging itself of its middle that started them on the path to where we are now. It wasn't Dems attacking with "read my lips" (it was their taxes!), it was the GOPs right wing, Gingrich and Buchanan, that seemed inexplicably driven to make sure Bush didn't win reelection just to hand power over to Clinton. Better to purge out the moderates than win elections, and the Tea Party and MAGAts were only a matter of time in coming from there.
Last edited by demagogue; 9th Feb 2023 at 23:33.
Outside of the R-bubble, these are wildly popular programs. I don't think Republicans really realise how much of a political loser this idea is.
The Republicans' entire purpose is to lose "gracefully," to perpetuate the fiction that change can be achieved through voting.
Apparently, Montana Republicans really want to get rid of all that "theory" nonsense kids have been learning in school these days.
Back to the monkey trials?https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/billhtml/SB0235.htm
A BILL FOR AN ACT ENTITLED: "AN ACT ESTABLISHING REQUIREMENTS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS; defining "scientific Fact"; and PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE."
WHEREAS, the purpose of K-12 education is to educate children in the facts of our world to better prepare them for their future and further education in their chosen field of study, and to that end children must know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory; and
WHEREAS, a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation and is for higher education to explore, debate, and test to ultimately reach a scientific conclusion of fact or fiction.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:
NEW SECTION. Section 1. Requirements for science instruction in schools. (1) Science instruction may not include subject matter that is not scientific fact.
(2) The board of public education may not include in content area standards any standard requiring curriculum or instruction in a scientific topic that is not scientific fact.
(3) The superintendent of public instruction shall ensure that any science curriculum guides developed by the office of public instruction include only scientific fact.
(4) (a) The trustees of a school district shall ensure that science curriculum and instructional materials, including textbooks, used in the district include only scientific fact.
(b) Beginning July 1, 2025, a parent may appeal the trustees' lack of compliance to subsection (4)(a) to the county superintendent and, subsequently, to the superintendent of public instruction under the provisions for the appeal of controversies in this title pursuant to 20-3-107 and 20-3-210.
(5) The legislature intends for this section to be strictly enforced and narrowly interpreted.
(6) As used in this section, "scientific fact" means an indisputable and repeatable observation of a natural phenomenon.
Last edited by Starker; 10th Feb 2023 at 00:45.
"We're not fascists!"
"indisputable" Republicans dispute every scientific fact they're aware of.
Most schools (probably every school) leave out the indisputable and repeatable observation that the stupidity of people is infinite. I don't see why we don't teach this. Even someone with such stellar intelligence as *meself* will confess their own stupidity...
Although I must say, I've been puzzling over how such presidents have been allowed to happen in America as Donald "covfefe bigly" Trump and Joe "repeat the line" Biden. EDIT: But then again I'm not American, and we have our own bizarre political phenomena, albeit very small in comparison. Everything is bigger in America.
The concept of infinity itself is theoretical, so you better not go to Montana to spout such heresy, science boy.
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