Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I really should read my own blog.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Cue the RW Whiners…

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Cue the RW Whiners…

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  2. 2.

    zhena gogolia

    And Jill looks better — more chic and sexy — in that baseball jersey than M. did in all her designer trash.

  3. 3.

    zhena gogolia

    I think I’m missing part of the discussion. I don’t know who the tweets are responding to.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Early entertainment alert.

    75th Tony awards coming up on CBS (and also Paramount+) on Sunday, June the 12th. In a broadcasting first for the ceremony, to be aired live across all mainland time zones, beginning at 8 Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain and 5 p.m. Pacific.

    While traditionally the opening sequence favors the spectacular; IMHO they will never top the 2013 extravanganza which pulled out all the stops.

  7. 7.

    WereBear

    Well, I’m both less and more cheerful now after going through AL’s tweet selection this morning.

    I guess it’s yet another stage of Pandemic Induced Mental Dislocation.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    While I have no illusions about the existence of shitty lefties, I also wonder how many tweets are from righties posing as shitty lefties.

  14. 14.

    MisterDancer

    @Baud: I also wonder how many tweets are from righties posing as shitty lefties

    I think there’s a lot more of that than we really understand. And we really should be putting work into understanding it, better.

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Sometimes you can find out more about a tweeter’s politics by checking out their accounts. Twitter makes that pretty easy. I do this some when I’m curious.

  19. 19.

    HinTN

    My understanding is that the Marines select heavily for intelligence in their recruiting. I had a long neighborly relationship with a former Jar Head. He was crusty, irascible, and set in his ways, but he was no dummy.

  20. 20.

    Soprano2

    I think all the people who believe they never served with a gay person are funny. My husband said he knew there were gay people in the unit when he was in the Army, and that was late ’60’s/early 70’s. He said as long as they didn’t violate the rules and weren’t obvious about it (because he was obligated to report if they were) he didn’t care as long as they did their job. Especially during a time when there was a draft, of course there were gay people in the military! Geez, all the delicate conservative snowflakes are pathetic.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Makes sense.  Although I wouldn’t put it past the right to have dedicated lefty sock puppet accounts.  But that does take more work than firing off a random tweet.

  24. 24.

    Served

    One big piece of context missing from the jokes about the Marines tweet is that LGBT people on Twitter have a running joke about brands and orgs doing completely unhinged Pride month PR. They make fake ones, they make fun of bad ones, etc.

    Another big topic yesterday was the White House announcing that the First Lady would take part in the unveiling of a stamp honoring Nancy Reagan…during Pride month.

  25. 25.

    martha

    @Soprano2: And my lovely, now long-departed, FIL talked about the gay men he served with during WWII…he was on a destroyer in the Pacific. “You knew they were different, but if they did their jobs most of us didn’t care.”

  30. 30.

    Old School

    @Baud: 

    I haven’t noticed that phrasing on any other website, so I’ve wondered if it is a new setting on the revamped Balloon Juice rather than a new Twitter setting.

    But maybe it occurs elsewhere too.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Twitter is like an immense prairie dog town. Lots of people popping up from an expanse of interconnecting burrows.

    There are informal communities; one of my favorite ones connects to @eclecticbrotha, aka Ragnarok Lobster. That’s how I found Mangy Jay, Lynn V, Buffalo Meg and many other staunch Democrats.

  41. 41.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    Thanks. I like it because it’s tidier, but I need to stop trying to theorize about computers. ‍♀️

  42. 42.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: You’re bold this morning, going naked. I thought you’d stick with testing pantsless links, but this is a new step.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    @Baud: 

    My comments here exemplify this principle.

    OK, now I’m confused. Are you saying you’ve been pretending to be pantsless this whole time?

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    @WereBear: ​
     

    Comedy isn’t natural to the right wing.

    There aren’t many adult/normal/rational/natural things that are. Racism, fascism, hating on others, usw. — those are about the only things that are “natural” to the RWMFs.

  51. 51.

    raven

    @NotMax: My bride has to go to Costco (80 mile round trip) to get her new glasses so I’ll ask her to pick one up!

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Ragnarok Lobster also introduced me to Xeni Jardin, the semi-retired tech culture journalist from Wired and Boing!Boing!  She had a lot of interesting things to say, especially about the nexus between Jeffrey Epstein, the Russians, and Silicon Valley. Some of this was based on personal experience participating in Edge Foundation events. But Jardin has been silent for a month now. @xeni is a large account with more than 100,000 followers. It’s still up but Jardin is not tweeting.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    Harper’s Bazaar is still published?

    Well, if it upsets the right wing to have the First Lady on the cover, cool.

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    I’m a little disappointed that B-J is not spending more time discussing The Trial of This (And Every Other) Millennium, instead of this woke socialistical LGBTQ+ and quasi-political stuff.

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @NotMax: ​
     
    I expect better from you, pal. I mean, I don’t expect you to duck the response completely, but that one laid an egg, you silly goose.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @Geminid: 

    I re-experienced Twitter a little when BJ was down. The Twitter format irks me, even if I could screen out awful tweets.

  61. 61.

    AWOL

    @Soprano2: My father served in the Pacific with an openly gay man during WW2. He introduced the platoon to “Ulysses” and went on to a teaching career at NYU. He was popular among his fellow troops.

    For all his alcohol-driven faults in logic, Gore Vidal enlisted and fought.

    Arthur C. Clarke was essential to the British war effort.

    Fuck these homophobic ghouls.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Can you keep an eye out and let me know if it happens with every twitter link on this site?

    Because when we did the site rebuild i had to specifically request that twitter links not show up as (I can’t recall the exact syntax) something t.co (or something like that).

    If the “link to twitter.com” thing is happening consistently here when non-front-pagers are posting a tweet, then I can follow up with the developers.

    If it’s inconsistent, do you see any kind of a pattern for when it shows up that way?

  64. 64.

    MisterDancer

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Rather than re-post my comment from earlier today here, I’m just gonna pull from this Vox article:

    The narrative of the trial has been shaped in part by what appears to be, according to multiple researchers, an army of bots spreading rhetoric favorable to Depp. One researcher found more bots favorable to Heard, but said most of those bots were from third-party apps trying to capitalize on the trial; meanwhile, they found the highest pro-Depp bot post was shared nearly 20,000 times. The work of those bots has been further amplified by “men’s rights activists” — the part of the far-right-leaning extremist “manosphere” that seems to have decided discrediting Amber Heard is the key to destroying every woman who accuses men of abuse or domestic violence.

    Conservative media outlets have also promoted a one-sided narrative of the case; Vice recently reported that Ben Shapiro’s popular conservative news platform the Daily Wire has spent nearly $50,000 promoting ads about the trial on Instagram and Facebook — most of it trashing Amber Heard. The presence of these bad actors has, if anything, only exacerbated the vitriol Heard has received within the mainstream.

    In other words, this trial is “sponsored” by the same damn people and movements we claim we’re fighting against, on this blog. That’s why it’s getting so much play, and that said play is leaning in specific directions…

    …yes, including it’s own brand of “bothsiderism”. And I’ve seen this anti-Heard approach play out, for years now, in social media circles. This isn’t new, just vastly amplified.

    Look. I’ve got to step away, because y’all cannot imagine how utterly infuriating and upsetting the “lookie-loo” discussion about this, is.

    But I beg of ‘yall, please take a step back from the obvious approach on this.

  65. 65.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl: My link at 32 showed as

    when I copied it and “link to historycolorado.com” when I posted it.

    WG edit: link above was removed because it was breaking the mobile site. plus, i had already learned what was being demonstrated.

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    @Baud: When Balloon Juice was down, the desire to express myself that it had awakened led me to actually tweet a few times. I’ve gotten six “likes” already!

    I also participated some in a political blog I’ll call the Daily Kuss. It’s kind of like a dystopian version of Balloon Juice.

  68. 68.

    SFAW

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
     

    I don’t understand why so many people care

    Seriously? I could make a comment on the general populace, but that would be ill-advised. But in a country where Fox News and People magazine have any kind of dedicated following, you’re surprised (OK, “amazed,” but still)? In a country where a racist, fascistic, multiple-bankruptcy grifter can have a successful “reality” TV show, and where far-too-many people believe he’s a successful businessman?
    You have a (much) higher opinion of the populace than I do, I guess.
    Look, I love ya, and I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m (unfortunately) letting my frustration with the morons controlling the direction of this country get to me.

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @MisterDancer:

    I apologize for getting this started. It was meant as a(n attempted) joke, but I guess I was trolling a bit, and it was a throwaway comment, since I think that whole thing was/is ridiculous. So, sorry for doing it.

  71. 71.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: I noticed that a few days ago.  I assumed that it was a way to keep FYWP from breaking the right margin (by not automatically word wrapping long naked links correctly).

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  72. 72.

    Eolirin

    @WaterGirl: It’s not just Twitter, it’s every naked site link. Honestly I think it’s an improvement, even if it’s different behavior.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    ‘@Dorothy A. Winsor

    I’m with you. If it weren’t for this joint I wouldn’t even be aware of it at all. And now being made vaguely aware, do not give a nanofig about it, much less about the dweebs seeking to expropriate it to their own warped ends. They’ll move on to burbling about the next shiny bauble soon enough.

  76. 76.

    WaterGirl

    @Sure Lurkalot: Thanks, that’s helpful.

    Now I need to know if it happens with every link, or if it’s just some links, what the pattern is.  I have a lot of other stuff going on today so I can’t watch it myself.

  77. 77.

    Old School

    What is it with Democratic presidents and their suits?  First Obama has the audacity to wear a tan one.  And now Biden has his own suit scandal.

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Perhaps, but will Adm. Linda Fagan  be cranky and rage driven enough to fill Adm King’s shoes? lol

  79. 79.

    UncleEbeneezer

    This is deeply troubling and probably deserves it’s own post:

    “Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

    The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”

    Much more at link.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    ‘@Baud

    Almost wish the famed Secret Chimp had a dedicated site, if only to see [link to Lancelot Link].

    ;)

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @UncleEbeneezer: Curious talk from people who expect to win the mid terms, isn’t it?  Also this is GOP, most likely this is another grift.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    ‘@WaterGirl

    In case you missed it downstairs, site was throwing up a 522 error overnight between (roughly) 2:40 and 3 a.m. blog time.

  84. 84.

    WereBear

    I’ve been watching legal channels on Youtube for months now, so moving into a new trial was routine. I only follow a few who explain law to someone who was interested enough to major in a pre-law program, once upon a time.

    But show me a trial between two movie stars that wouldn’t take over the world? If it was Bollywood it would be the same.

  85. 85.

    The Moar You Know

    Or maybe they can just avoid the month of June altogether except for Flag Day.

    @Sure Lurkalot: that’s the last thing they’ll celebrate.  Desecrating the flag of the United States has become an art form with these goddamn people.

    The version I find most offensive personally is the Bootlicker’s Flag, that goddamn blue stripe piece of shit.  Because if there is any truly American founding principle, it’s that bowing down to your neighborhood provider of state-sanctioned violence is not a requirement to be a good citizen.

  86. 86.

    Burnspbesq

    I haven’t seen it yet, but I assume there is some kvetching on social media about the rainbow numbers on the back of the jerseys that the U.S. men’s national soccer team wore in last night’s win over Morocco.

  87. 87.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    We are running a later version of WordPress and later version of the site theme, and it appears that one of those two things has likely resulted in this change.  Most likely it’s the theme.

    As long as it’s only naked links, I prefer this new way.

    I have also just set balloon juice links (links to stuff that’s on Balloon Juice site) to open in a new Tab, just like I had previously set for external links.

    That way if someone links to a previous balloon juice post or something else on BJ, but you haven’t noticed that it’s a BJ link, it will open in a new tab just like it does with external links instead of taking you out of the current page and landing you in another thread. (or whatever)

    edit: With the new setting for internal links, it turns out that when we click on the date time stamp, that also opens the current thread in a new tab. NOT GOOD. So we are not opening internal links in a new window. I have already changed it back.

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    I have noticed that our nyms are bolded on the new site. I like it.

    Sorry, I already asked for that to be changed back to the way it was before.  :-)

  91. 91.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s like those “tiny.url” things. Tidies up the joint

    ETA: Looking at past posts, I think it happens when the link is a separate paragraph.

  93. 93.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: I’ve noticed that even the “next post” arrow is now opening it in a new tab, which is not ideal. Possible to change that? Otherwise I always prefer links to open in new tabs.

  94. 94.

    Miss Bianca

    @Soprano2: I remember having one of those “teachable moments” as a substitute teacher when I was doing a long-term gig about…geez, twenty years ago now. I was teaching a unit on WWI, and talking about military recruitment and volunteerism, and I had one boy pipe up something about how young men like him would have volunteered rather than “stay home with all the women and the gays”.

    I remember looking at him and saying, “what the heck makes you think the gay guys would have been staying home? Hell, they would have been the first to join the army! Because that’s where all the BOYS would be!”

    The whole class just erupted into laughter, the boy himself included. You could tell that that was a brand-new way of looking at things for him.

    Nowadays, of course, I would likely be fired for saying any such thing. But I like to think I disrupted a homophobic paradigm at least momentarily.

  95. 95.

    debbie

    For Tony G:

    As an American, I don’t have much use for royalty, but on this Jubilee, let us not forget that the Queen hated Donald Trump’s stinking guts and so that’s good enough for me.

    Long Live the Queen. pic.twitter.com/fjRIsSlHTb
    — Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) June 2, 2022

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer: Just at a glance, the vast majority of people who are upset are bigoted right-wingers insisting this means China is going to crush us, through some power of superior bigotry I guess?

    The idea that cis-heterosexuality is necessary for “strength” never seems to die regardless of the complete lack of evidence.

  98. 98.

    Jager

    @HinTN:

    A long-time friend (RIP) of mine was an ex-Marine, he made a ton(s) of money over the years. His Bentley GT’s license plate frame said “Not so mean, not so lean, still a Marine”

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer: My daughter, a fairly feminist sort, is convinced that Amber Heard was the villain here. I think she’s just been marinating in the general buzz.

    I have no particular idea about the actual merits of the case but the thing I do notice is that Johnny Depp’s side is animated and supported by all the misogynist usual suspects, spewing their usual bullshit, and that’s about as deep as I care to go.

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    ‘@debbie

    At this point willing to posit she’s determined to hang on long enough to spare her subjects having to endure staring at Chuck’s kisser on the money.

    //

  102. 102.

    germy

    TROY — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s victory in three students’ lawsuit over the COVID vaccine mandate sets a precedent for colleges across the state, lawyers for RPI said Tuesday.

    The students had sued in January, seeking exemption from RPI’s vaccination requirement and seeking a total of $27.5 million in damages. The judge hearing the case dismissed the matter in April, and the students’ window to appeal closed last week.

    https://dailygazette.com/2022/06/01/ex-rpi-students-lose-27-5m-suit-over-vaccine-mandate/

    Well, at least they tried…

  103. 103.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: I mean goddamn, if the past six years hasn’t been a noisy handful of social-media lefties trying to confirm every grotesque stereotype of the left the right has ever put out there.

  104. 104.

    RaflW

    I donate a significant gift to my Unitarian Universalist denomination every year specifically designated to supporting UU military chaplaincy. For people with passing familiarity with UUism, this program might be a surprise, as we’re seen as very liberal, even ‘peacenik’ sorts of church folk.

    But here’s the deal: Young people in our armed forces have lot of spiritual needs. Who do they turn to if UUs, UCCs, reform Jews etc don’t send and support clergy to be chaplains? There’s tons of conservative, Christianist, right-wing clergy working on these young (and not so young) hearts and minds in uniform.

    Offering confidential spiritual direction and support from a religiously pluralist, open, welcoming and affirming perspective is essential. And for LGBTQ troops? Imagine experiencing a loss or personal crisis as a queer E-2 and thinking your only clergy option is a Catholic priest or Assemblies of God pastor. Gaaah.

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    FYI, WaterGirl, clicking now on the title of a post while on its comment page opens up a new tab displaying that same page rather than refreshing it in the same tab as before.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RaflW: There’s a notorious (and, to my mind, blatantly illegal) culture of evangelical Protestant religious coercion in the armed forces–as in, attend right-wing Christianist religious services or be punished in some way. Anything that helps cut into that is good.

  109. 109.

    WaterGirl

    I edited my comment at #87 to add this:

    edit: With the new setting for internal links, it turns out that when we click on the date time stamp, that also opens the current thread in a new tab. NOT GOOD. So we are not opening internal links in a new window. I have already changed it back.

    Hello, law of unintended consequences! :-)

  110. 110.

    different-church-lady

    @NotMax: There used to be a time when Kings and Queens were determined to see their royal sproglets ascend to the throne.

  111. 111.

    jnfr

    For some reason links from the front page are all forced opening in a new tab, which I don’t really like. I vaguely recall that there used to be a check box to make that happen or not happen, is that still possible?

  113. 113.

    Mike in NC

    @MisterDancer: Ben Shapiro’s popular conservative news platform the Daily Wire

    A few months back one of the local rags ran an anti-gay column by this shithead. A bunch of readers must have complained because he quickly disappeared.

    We get two local daily newspapers and both of them have decided to stop running ‘Letters to the Editor’ since most of them just regurgitate FOX New propaganda.

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: See if that happens again.  I had to clear cache on Balloon Juice so it’s possible that made a difference, but it shouldn’t have.

    Let me know if it happens again.

    Previously, I had it set up so you never saw that box; it was just sort of automatically clicked in the background.

  116. 116.

    Steeplejack

    Site note, in case anyone else is experiencing this:

    I habitually click on the timestamp next to a Balloon Juice comment to bring that one up to the top of my screen. Just got on the site a little while ago and found that doing this now opens a whole new tab with the current comment at the top of the screen. No bueno. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s disconcerting to see the screen do what appears to be page refresh every time you click a timestamp and then later see that you’ve got 10 new tabs open.

    I have reported it to WaterGirl.

    ETA: It started happening sometime after about 4:00 a.m. EDT this morning.

  120. 120.

    RaflW

    @Soprano2: I was friends with a gay couple in TX in the early 90s who were ex-Air Force. One was then a pilot with a major airline, after being an officer. The partner had been a 10 year or so enlisted guy.

    Before DADT, when the officer got reassigned, they would work very discreetly with their superiors to get the other guy transferred within a tolerable amount of time. Apparently worked at least twice. They both bailed before DADT but said that likely would have made their arrangements quite a bit more difficult.

  129. 129.

    RaflW

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: There have been some very eye-opening threads about the intense push to hype that trial.

    I had noticed that my twitt-box had the trial top of “what’s happening” every single day for a very long time. In a spot that was not optional (lower ranked items have three dots that let me say “not interested” – but this wasn’t available for a thing I was utterly, completely not interested in).

    Why was it so urgently important to Twitter execs that I not be able to escape coverage of something to which I cared not? I’m not generally a dark, conspiracy minded person (I can be pessimistic, but that’s a different stripe). But there was a fucking agenda to that level of push.

  131. 131.

    NotMax

    Ptui. Landline just rang (5:09 a.m.). Silence on the other end when answering machine took over indicates robocall or other junk communication.

    Time zones, people. They’re not a new phenomenon.

  132. 132.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mike in NC: One of the newsletters I subscribe to — Legum’s Popular Info maybe? — wrote about how Shapiro’s popularity is less than it seems because his outfit manipulates the hell out of social media algorithms to inflate impressions and shares, and the irresponsible assholes at FB allow this even though it’s against their own rules.

    There’s got to be something like that going on because even if Shapiro tells the type of lies that reinforce your preexisting biases, he does it with the voice of a helium-huffing squirrel, and I just refuse to believe there’s a gigantic market for that.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @RaflW:

    Pretty short sighted of media and social media companies. Heard was held responsible for the headline in the Washington Post, a headline she didn’t write. Yikes. That’s not good.

    If they pushed it, and I think they did, it’s going to come right back and bite them.

  137. 137.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    I am an infrequent Facebook user, but occasionally I see one of those “trending” lists, and I am amazed that usually four or five are “Ben Shapiro something something.” Got to be some algorithm manipulation going on.

  138. 138.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    And didn’t Heard get convicted of defaming Depp in a piece she wrote that didn’t mention him by name?

    I didn’t follow the trial, but it was impossible to avoid.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    Yup. I just think it’s shocking. If that’s the standard for defamation there are going to be a lot of defamation claims and following that there is going to be a lot of reluctance to publish anything about famous or powerful people.

    How the hell did the US end up with a lower standard then the UK?

  140. 140.

    Another Scott

    Trump-backed Republican Doug Mastriano says if he’s elected Pennsylvania governor he’ll make everyone re-register if they want to vote again. Legal scholars say it’s a throwback to laws designed to keep Black people from voting and would violate U.S. law. https://t.co/QQvd9jaT3Q

    — AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 2, 2022

    These monsters don’t care about the rules and the law. They only want power for themselves.

    We must defeat them in the fall and in every election going forward. They won’t quit, and Democracy is not safe with them out there.

    (via Popehat)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  141. 141.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby:

    On the internet anyone can pretend to be anything.

    @Baud:

    My comments here exemplify this principle.

    I bet you really do wear pants, then. ;-)

  144. 144.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @lowtechcyclist: I bet you really do wear pants, then

    Baud sold out to Big Trousers. sigh, and I thought a pantless Buad was the one thing we could count on.

  146. 146.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Baud: I think the same thing all the time, especially when you look at their info and they’re no one you’ve ever heard of, either have 12 followers since starting in January 2021 or 45,698 followers and every word in the bio makes it sound like a political activists resume

  149. 149.

    Baud

    Everyone thinks I’m lying about the pants instead of all the other things.  Weird.

  152. 152.

    Brachiator

    @MisterDancer:

    The narrative of the trial has been shaped in part by what appears to be, according to multiple researchers, an army of bots spreading rhetoric favorable to Depp. One researcher found more bots favorable to Heard, but said most of those bots were from third-party apps trying to capitalize on the trial; meanwhile, they found the highest pro-Depp bot post was shared nearly 20,000 times. The work of those bots has been further amplified by “men’s rights activists” — the part of the far-right-leaning extremist “manosphere” that seems to have decided discrediting Amber Heard is the key to destroying every woman who accuses men of abuse or domestic violence.

    I have not paid any attention to this trial, but obviously know it is taking place. In the old days of the studio system, Hollywood moguls would try to keep this mess out of the news. Today, the two celebrities can’t get out of the way of their egos and insist on dragging their crap out into the open.

    And crap attracts flies. I didn’t know about the bots, but I knew that there was a loosely organized social media effort to slam Amber Heard so that she would be fired from the Aquaman movie sequel. I’m not surprised to hear about the crazy far right bots. They are all over the place. You could try to outlaw them, but I don’t know that they will ever go away.

    Actress Jennifer Grey recently wrote a memoir. She describes young Johnny Depp as looking insanely beautiful. Now he is rather pathetic. Not sure if he still has any acting talent.

  154. 154.

    Captain C

    @Old School: One of the first suggested tweets following that one was Kyle Rittenhouse congratulating Johnny Depp on his trial victory. Great company you’re keeping there, Depp.

  155. 155.

    raven

    It took the awful police 3 minutes to get to there.

     

    On June 1 at 2 p.m. local time, the gunman purchased an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle. He had previously purchased a 4.0-caliber semiautomatic handgun on May 29.
    On June 1st at 4:52 p.m., a third party who was on a video chat, off location, with an on-location doctor, called 911, saying the doctor told her to call 911, saying there has been a shooting.
    At 4:53 p.m. police received a 911 call about a shooter in a building. They continued to receive multiple calls that were more specific on the shooter being on the second floor of the Natalie building on the campus at St. Francis Hospital.
    At 4:56 p.m., the first Tulsa police officers arrived. Officers entered the building on the first floor and made their way to the second floor based on the information they received.
    At this point, officers were calling out “Tulsa police,” and advancing toward the suspect location’s when they heard a gunshot, Wendell said. “We believe that was the final gunshot with the suspect taking his own life.”
    That gunshot was at 4:58 p.m., which was about 39 seconds after the first officers entered the building, he noted.

  157. 157.

    Kay

    @JPL:

    Thanks. I didn’t know that. There’s also something about VA being where one files a defamation case that I saw on Twitter.

  159. 159.

    Baud

    @Kay: 

    I don’t know why that is, but that’s where David Nunez filed his defamation lawsuit against the Cow.

  160. 160.

    Soprano2

    @JPL:  It was a jury that wasn’t sequestered, either, so I assume they heard stuff in the press about the trial whether they wanted to or not.

  163. 163.

    artem1s

    @UncleEbeneezer: ​
     

    Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

    This would be disturbing but when you dig down and read the full article, it’s obvious this guy who is ‘training’ these ‘recruiters’ don’t know shit about what poll workers do. He’s never worked the polls and is just repeating the GQP tired old lies about how Demon-crats enable illegal voting.
    Here’s what I want to know… How much is this grifter charging for his ‘training’ sessions? Everything he is telling the writer about what they are ‘training’ these people to do won’t be allowed. My bet is they will believe the ‘training’ they are paying for is all they need to show up at the polling place and go to work.
    How many will actually follow thru when they find out they have to go thru BOE training, show up for a whole 12-14 hour day, and get paid a whopping minimum wage for their time? And even if they do go thru training, they are going to be vastly disappointed with the actual experience. They may try this shit, but they will get ejected if they do. They can’t spend all day on their cells phones. it’s not allowed.
    This is a grift. No way does he do this unless the payoff for him is worth it. This isn’t going to happen the way he’s imagining it or the way these rubes imagine it will.

  164. 164.

    CaseyL

    I paid mild attention to the Depp-Heard trial, as I’ve paid mild attention to how Heard’s accusations got Depp fired from a  number of projects, like Fantastic Beasts. I’ll admit up front feeling sympathy more for Depp, and here’s why: Paul McCartney.

    McCartney had a very long, very happy marriage which ended with his wife’s death from cancer. He remarried a couple years later to what turned out to be a predatory, abusive nightmare of a person.

     

    I remember reading at the time that this happens with sad frequency, something about the people who broke up with/otherwise lost partners after a long, loving, positive relationship are too trusting, or just don’t recognize warning signs because they’ve never needed to.

    Depp had a long and good relationship before he met and married Heard. It ran into trouble almost immediately. Remember the hoorah a few years ago about a dog they were allegedly mistreating? And how Heard treated the whole thing as a joke, while Depp was the one who seemed really bothered by it? I thought, way back then, there was something “off” about her.

    So put that all together, and I, TBH, believe Depp.

  168. 168.

    Ruckus

    @MisterDancer:

    There is for sure.

    Even as an old white dude I can attest that there is a lot of racism out there, and not all of it comes from the right side of the political aisle and not all of it is obvious, especially as obvious as it was 50-60 yrs ago. But less obviousness doesn’t mean it’s not there. It may not be as obvious and as overt, but yes it is still there. Some animals are loners and some are not. Humans are group type animals, even as there are some who are less or a lot less group orientated. And those groups do not have to make a lot of sense, or logic. And in the case of humans, sense and logic are often in short supply.

  169. 169.

    WereBear

    @WereBear: 

    Emily D Baker, former CA prosecutor, now consultant and law nerd

    Runkle of the Bailey, Canadian, criminal defense

    Law and Lumber, courthouse local, with a skilled explanation of a contentious piece of evidence involving a bed and a chisel

  173. 173.

    ian

    @different-church-lady:

    There use to be a time the sproglets were worthy of a throne.

    The only decent people in the British Royal Family got chased out of that country by British Tabloid Media.

  174. 174.

    Ruckus

    @HinTN:

    The marines may do that now but back in my day (Vietnam era) they wanted, and needed bodies. At my draft physical in 1967 they took 1/3 of the draftees that day in LA into the Marines. Raven has said here before that during his draft physical they took 1/2 of the draftees that day into the Marines. (Being drafted doesn’t make you dumb, but being drafted into the marines for 2 yrs then meant that you were extremely unlikely to ever to be more than an infantryman and were extremely likely to be heading to Vietnam. Your life expectancy once you arrived in country was likely to be 2-4 months. That’s from marines that I’ve known that served in Vietnam.)

  175. 175.

    The Golux

    @Alison Rose :

    I’ve noticed that even the “next post” arrow is now opening it in a new tab, which is not ideal.

    I noticed that suddenly I was seeing multiple BJ tabs where I hadn’t before.  I agree wholeheartedly that this should not be the behavior, as it only worsens my already-out-of-hand tab count.

    ETA: Thanks for reversing this!

  176. 176.

    J R in WV

    @AWOL:

    Arthur C. Clarke was essential to the British war effort.

    So was Alan Turing, who worked on the Enigma Cypher for the British military intelligence. Then after the war they sent him to prison for being gay, after which he committed suicide. A brilliant math prodigy, lost to us so young, for being gay.

    I have a lot of trouble admiring the British, ruled by Tories and sold out to the Russians, historically full of hate for anyone the least bit different. Sorry, Tony J… but there it is.

  178. 178.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    Everyone thinks I’m lying about the pants…

    Not me. I don’t wear pants around the house either. Boxer shorts from Duluth Trading, Wife has ordered some underware from them and quite enjoys it.

  180. 180.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s still going past the margin. You need the first break after “colorado.org” and then lined up with that.

  181. 181.

    Steeplejack

    @J R in WV:

    I like the 100% cotton boxer briefs from Duluth Trading. Very comfortable. (Well, 96% cotton and 4% something stretchy.)

  182. 182.

    evodevo

    @CaseyL: Yes…this.  I was just saying the same thing to Mr. Evodevo yesterday, when we were briefly discussing the trial.  And I used Paul McCartney as an example.  As far as I remember, Depp has had a lot of relationships back in the ’90’s, and the one with Vanessa Paradis lasted for many years.  IIRC several of them testified in his favor during the first trial…so, did he change that much?  Or have the alcohol and drugs done enough damage that his personality changed?  Who knows?  When you put two volatile personalities together, it isn’t going to be a normal relationship anyway…

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