Political Randomness

[El Guapo]

This whole political moment is one giant experiment into finding idiots at a bar talking politics and entrusting them all with unfathomable power.

[Skinypupy]

The NFL will now fine players who kneel during the anthem.

Remember kids, forced patriotism is the best patriotism!

[Isgrimnur]

Teams. The NFL will fine teams.

The policy subjects teams to a fine if a player or any other team personnel do not show respect for the anthem. That includes any attempt to sit or kneel
... Those teams also will have the option to fine any team personnel, including players, for the infraction.

[Skinypupy]

My bad, thanks for the correction.

[Chaz]

I suspect that the teams will proceed to pass on fines or other punishment to players. Also, the NFLPA was apparently not involved or consulted in making this rule. Which they're pissed about.

[Isgrimnur]

Which is probably why the NFL is fining teams and not players. Since it's not technically a direct player fine, why do we need to ask the players? We can just leave it up to team policy.

[Isgrimnur]

Jets will not fine their players:

“I do not like imposing any club-specific rules,” [chairman Chris] Johnson said. “If somebody [on the Jets] takes a knee, that fine will be borne by the organization, by me, not the players. I never want to put restrictions on the speech of our players. Do I prefer that they stand? Of course. But I understand if they felt the need to protest. There are some big, complicated issues that we’re all struggling with, and our players are on the front lines. I don’t want to come down on them like a ton of bricks, and I won’t. There will be no club fines or suspensions or any sort of repercussions. If the team gets fined, that’s just something I’ll have to bear.”

[GreenGoo]

[Skinypupy]

That’s a fantastic response.

[Chaz]

Good for him. I'm gonna take a wild guess and assume Kraft is taking the opposite approach with the Pats. Man, remember when I used to like that team.

[Holman]

Protest finds a way.

By trying to suppress the gesture, every gesture is heightened. Everyone is watching for whatever the next sign will be, and that means the protesters command everyone's attention. Their message is amplified by the attempt to muffle it.

[Unagi]

Which is probably why the NFL is fining teams and not players. Since it's not technically a direct player fine, why do we need to ask the players? We can just leave it up to team policy.

But, why on earth is it fining teams that have players that will not kneel to Zod? I mean our flag.

[Unagi]

Protest finds a way.

By trying to suppress the gesture, every gesture is heightened. Everyone is watching for whatever the next sign will be, and that means the protesters command everyone's attention. Their message is amplified by the attempt to muffle it.

Honestly, at this point I could see people (players) not kneeling just to protest this 'fine' as being authoritarian in nature and not remotely what America stands for. I sure the hell would.


Wrong
Side
Of
History

[Holman]

Eagles defensive end Chris Long makes the point:



link

[Remus West]

Eagles defensive end Chris Long makes the point:



link

I admit to being a Tom Brady slappy and wanted him to get another ring last year. Chris Long is the reason I was happy the Eagles won. Mad respect for that man.

[LordMortis]

While I like the sentiment. The football field (assuming this what he is talking about) is not his platform, it's his workplace, make more really the team owners platform, unless the stadium was paid for by a municipality, then ownership of the platform gets hairy but even being hairy, it's still not his.

That said, owners who take government money to play the national anthem and force their employees to show respect to paid patriotism so they can appease the followers of Mike Pence? Well? Go Jets!!!!

[El Guapo]

That’s a fantastic response.

It's a good response, but at the same time my understanding is that this new policy was passed unanimously. Doesn't that mean he voted in favor on it (or at most abstained)? How does it make any sense for him to do that and say that he'll pay the resulting fines?

[LordMortis]

It's a good response, but at the same time my understanding is that this new policy was passed unanimously. Doesn't that mean he voted in favor on it (or at most abstained)? How does it make any sense for him to do that and say that he'll pay the resulting fines?

It's my understanding the Roger Goddell is time tested as an unreliable narrator and that at very least Jed York has told the media he abstained from voting.

The Cake...

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300000 ... y-for-2018

San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York said he abstained from voting, in part, due to the lack of player involvement in the decision process.

[Remus West]

While I like the sentiment. The football field (assuming this what he is talking about) is not his platform, it's his workplace, make more really the team owners platform, unless the stadium was paid for by a municipality, then ownership of the platform gets hairy but even being hairy, it's still not his.

That said, owners who take government money to play the national anthem and force their employees to show respect to paid patriotism so they can appease the followers of Mike Pence? Well? Go Jets!!!!

Same guy donated his pay from last season essentially playing for free for the year. His platform is his action and demeanor on or off the field. The platform is the fame given to him through the game.

[noxiousdog]

While I like the sentiment. The football field (assuming this what he is talking about) is not his platform, it's his workplace, make more really the team owners platform, unless the stadium was paid for by a municipality, then ownership of the platform gets hairy but even being hairy, it's still not his.

That said, owners who take government money to play the national anthem and force their employees to show respect to paid patriotism so they can appease the followers of Mike Pence? Well? Go Jets!!!!

RIght up until Trump got involved I agreed with you. However, when the US government takes an active role in trying to squash free speech, I'm all for extra protesting.

[LordMortis]

RIght up until Trump got involved I agreed with you. However, when the US government takes an active role in trying to squash free speech, I'm all for extra protesting.

I hear ya'. Pence making a show to get in to a game so he could publicly walk out of it began something that crossed a lot lines with regard to where the workplace is not the place for political speech. Pence might be the least trustworthy man in politics right now. He talks a great game, literally among the best, about the meeting of liberty and egalitarianism but he does it while brandishing chains pointed at specific people whom aren't criminals.

They make it hard for me not move my own goalpost. That's where I come around to accepting and even utilizing the deplorable verbiage, I was offended by not two years ago.

[Paingod]

While I like the sentiment. The football field (assuming this what he is talking about) is not his platform, it's his workplace, make more really the team owners platform, unless the stadium was paid for by a municipality, then ownership of the platform gets hairy but even being hairy, it's still not his.

That said, owners who take government money to play the national anthem and force their employees to show respect to paid patriotism so they can appease the followers of Mike Pence? Well? Go Jets!!!!

RIght up until Trump got involved I agreed with you. However, when the US government takes an active role in trying to squash free speech, I'm all for extra protesting.

Exactly. We're discussing the players and would have been done discussing them if this hadn't become an issue the President pushed, which sets the whole thing center-stage, no longer about free speech in the workplace. If he had never gotten involved, the NFL could handle this any way they wanted. Now they have to decide if they're willing to attack the first amendment for the President.

[Skinypupy]

So, all those kids that ICE separated from their parents and started tossing in DoD warehouses? Yeah, they've managed to lose 1,475 of them.

From page 8 of the HHS report to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:

From October to December 2017, ORR attempted to reach 7,635 UAC and their sponsors. Of this number, ORR reached and received agreement to participate in the safety and well-being call from approximately 86 percent of sponsors. From these calls, ORR learned that 6,075 UAC remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight UAC had run away, five had been removed from the United States, and 52 had relocated to live with a non-sponsor. ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 UAC. Based on the calls, ORR referred 792 cases, which were in need of further assistance, to the National Call Center for additional information and services.

I don't care if they're "illegal" or not, they're still goddamn human beings. Treating children and families this way is just horrific.

[YellowKing]

I don't care if they're "illegal" or not, they're still goddamn human beings.

Brown skins are animals. Get with the program, you left-wing nutjob. #MAGA

[Zarathud]

Disgraceful and inhumane.

[Skinypupy]

Jesus. When we're not just outright losing them, we're apparently beating them, tasing them, running them over with cars, sexually assaulting them, and depriving them of food and water.

“Migrant children long have reported varied mistreatment in CBP custody, including sexual, physical, and verbal abuse, and the deprivation of basic needs such as food, water, and emergency medical care,” the ACLU said in a summary of the report.

Some children accused officers of punching or kicking them and running them over with vehicles. Others described being tased and verbally abused by officers.

Children also described being deprived of edible food and water, held in freezing cells, touched inappropriately by officers and threatened with rape or death.

For the record, this happened under the Obama administration, and somehow I doubt it's gotten any better under Trump's. Utterly and completely unacceptable, regardless of who was/is in charge. This is truly shameful.

[hepcat]

Someone pointed out to me recently that John Kelly looks an awful lot like Michael Ironside. Now I can’t stop hearing Captain Rasczak when I see him on tv.

[Isgrimnur]

And Eric Greitens is still governor of Missouri....

Not after June 1st.

Embattled Missouri Governor Eric Greitens announced on Tuesday he will resign over the scandals that have dominated his tenure.

The Republican governor has been embroiled in controversy after facing accusations of sexual misconduct and misusing a charity donor list. In recent months, Greitens had been indicted on a felony computer-tampering charge related to the donor list and on a felony invasion of privacy charge, though that charge was dropped earlier this month.

In a statement released shortly after Greitens announced his resignation, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner said, "a fair and just resolution" of pending charges against the governor has been reached and that additional information regarding the resolution would be released on Wednesday.

Greitens did not admit to legal wrongdoing during a press conference where he announced his resignation, saying that while he is "not perfect," he has "not broken any laws, nor committed any offense worthy of this treatment."
...
The resignation will take effect at 5 p.m. on Friday, Greitens said.

[pr0ner]

I have to admit, I'm surprised.

[Smoove_B]

Please tell me this isn't real. This can't be real.

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.

...

“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it,” he said. “People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”

When asked whether he’s a pedophile or just writes about pedophilia, he said, “It’s a mix of both. When people go over the top there’s a grain of truth to what they say.”

Asked whether there was a “grain of truth” in his essay about father-daughter incest and another about raping his ex-wife repeatedly, he said yes, offering that plenty of women have rape fantasies.

And in case that wasn't enough:

According to Larson’s campaign manifesto, his platform as a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian” candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting “benevolent white supremacy,” as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography.

In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, “We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.” He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they “are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men’s children.”

[Isgrimnur]

When Illinois has a Nazi running, all bets are off.

[pr0ner]

But wait, there's more. From 2017:

When accountant Nathan D. Larson was talking to voters and collecting signatures to qualify as a candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates, he left out some unusual details from his résumé:

In 2009, he pleaded guilty to threatening to kill the U.S. president, an admission that led to 16 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Since then, among other things, he has advocated for legalizing incestuous marriage and making it harder to win a court restraining order against an allegedly abusive spouse.

...

Larson, 36, says his candidacy is rooted in a genuine desire to bring positive changes to Virginia. He called a letter he sent to the Secret Service in 2008 that warned of his imminent plans to assassinate either President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama an act of civil disobedience meant to call attention to what he believes is the tyranny of the U.S. government.

“It doesn’t allow people to secede or do anything like that,” Larson said. “If people want to break away from the majority, they’re not allowed to do that.”

His platform includes legalizing child pornography as well as incestuous marriage; allowing men to have multiple wives and physically discipline them; repealing the 19th Amendment; and abolishing state funding for girls and women to attend high school and college.

Larson also wants to strengthen fathers’ rights in child-custody cases and make it tougher to win a court restraining order against a spouse — positions that he said are inspired by personal experience.

[pr0ner]

Amazingly I haven't heard about this woman before, but the person who runs the Twitter handle @amymek, one of the biggest "anonymous" alt-right Twitter hate spewers, was doxed by HuffPost yesterday.

The funny thing is, Amy Mekelburg had outed herself on Twitter before, and to friends, but she's apoplectic now that she's been officially outed by HuffPo and that it cost her husband her job. Plus the usual big alt-righties on Twitter (Cernovich et al.) are circling the wagons around her now.

However, it's social media - you can't expect to remain anonymous on there forever, and if you spew vile hate and racism for years, and get over 200K followers, what do you expect to happen?

[Fitzy]

But wait, there's more. From 2017:

When accountant Nathan D. Larson was talking to voters and collecting signatures to qualify as a candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates, he left out some unusual details from his résumé:

In 2009, he pleaded guilty to threatening to kill the U.S. president, an admission that led to 16 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Since then, among other things, he has advocated for legalizing incestuous marriage and making it harder to win a court restraining order against an allegedly abusive spouse.

...

Larson, 36, says his candidacy is rooted in a genuine desire to bring positive changes to Virginia. He called a letter he sent to the Secret Service in 2008 that warned of his imminent plans to assassinate either President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama an act of civil disobedience meant to call attention to what he believes is the tyranny of the U.S. government.

“It doesn’t allow people to secede or do anything like that,” Larson said. “If people want to break away from the majority, they’re not allowed to do that.”

His platform includes legalizing child pornography as well as incestuous marriage; allowing men to have multiple wives and physically discipline them; repealing the 19th Amendment; and abolishing state funding for girls and women to attend high school and college.

Larson also wants to strengthen fathers’ rights in child-custody cases and make it tougher to win a court restraining order against a spouse — positions that he said are inspired by personal experience.

He threatened Obama? That's a pardon.

[hepcat]

Amazingly I haven't heard about this woman before, but the person who runs the Twitter handle @amymek, one of the biggest "anonymous" alt-right Twitter hate spewers, was doxed by HuffPost yesterday.

The funny thing is, Amy Mekelburg had outed herself on Twitter before, and to friends, but she's apoplectic now that she's been officially outed by HuffPo and that it cost her husband her job. Plus the usual big alt-righties on Twitter (Cernovich et al.) are circling the wagons around her now.

However, it's social media - you can't expect to remain anonymous on there forever, and if you spew vile hate and racism for years, and get over 200K followers, what do you expect to happen?

I don't like outing people like this BUT, you have to be a special kind of moron to espouse that much hatred and not expect it to come back and smack you in the face at some point. If you're going to seek out celebrity status through hate, yet still expect to be anonymous in this day and age, you really do deserve whatever happens to you. That's like Hitler calling for the extermination of all Jews using a twitter account called "DoggieLover"...then getting upset when Elie Wiesel (the guy, not the woman, Rip) uses your real name in a public statement condemning your views.

I don't like that the internet can be a torch wielding mob of villagers, but at the same time, everyone knows it can be a torch wielding mob of villagers, so you shouldn't put on a goddamn Frankenstein costume and show it to said villagers while telling them you're going to eat their children.

Christ, people can be dumb.

[El Guapo]

Please tell me this isn't real. This can't be real.

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.

...

“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it,” he said. “People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”

When asked whether he’s a pedophile or just writes about pedophilia, he said, “It’s a mix of both. When people go over the top there’s a grain of truth to what they say.”

Asked whether there was a “grain of truth” in his essay about father-daughter incest and another about raping his ex-wife repeatedly, he said yes, offering that plenty of women have rape fantasies.

And in case that wasn't enough:

According to Larson’s campaign manifesto, his platform as a “quasi-neoreactionary libertarian” candidate includes protecting gun ownership rights, establishing free trade and protecting “benevolent white supremacy,” as well as legalizing incestuous marriage and child pornography.

In the manifesto, Larson called Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” He urged Congress to repeal the Violence Against Women Act, adding, “We need to switch to a system that classifies women as property, initially of their fathers and later of their husbands.” He also showed sympathy for men who identify as involuntary celibates, or incels, suggesting it is unfair that they “are forced to pay taxes for schools, welfare, and other support for other men’s children.”

Roy Moore really was a trailblazer for the pedophile-American community.

[Captain Caveman]

The GOP in 2018: voting for white nationalists and pedophiles to own the libs.

[Kraken]

The GOP in 2018: voting for white nationalists and pedophiles to own the libs.

He's running as an independent. You can't put this one on the GOP...in fact, he's going to be poaching their most deplorable voters.

[Kurth]

So, all those kids that ICE separated from their parents and started tossing in DoD warehouses? Yeah, they've managed to lose 1,475 of them.

From page 8 of the HHS report to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:

From October to December 2017, ORR attempted to reach 7,635 UAC and their sponsors. Of this number, ORR reached and received agreement to participate in the safety and well-being call from approximately 86 percent of sponsors. From these calls, ORR learned that 6,075 UAC remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight UAC had run away, five had been removed from the United States, and 52 had relocated to live with a non-sponsor. ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 UAC. Based on the calls, ORR referred 792 cases, which were in need of further assistance, to the National Call Center for additional information and services.

I don't care if they're "illegal" or not, they're still goddamn human beings. Treating children and families this way is just horrific.

I heard an in-depth segment on this on NPR yesterday. A couple important facts that have been misconstrued or misunderstood: (1) The 1,500 “missing” kids weren’t separated at the border by ICE. These were unaccompanied minors who had no adult with them when they arrived at the border. (2) Characterizing them as “missing” is a little off. They were each released into the custody of an adult sponsor in the U.S., and ICE has been unable to reconnect with those adult sponsors, apparently when it does a routine follow-up check-in call. While that’s not acceptable, it’s also not entirely shocking. Many of the adult sponsors of the kids are relatives or friends who themselves are in the U.S. illegally and subject to possible deportation. Not surprisingly, they often don’t supply ICE with accurate contact info or just refuse to take ICE’s check-in calls because they, understandably, want to have as little to do with ICE as possible.

The NPR segment was all about prevailing narratives in media and social media and how “fake news” gets started and spread. It also discussed how “fake news” isn’t a binary thing but how there are many different flavors and degrees. On this particular immigration story about the 1,500 kids ICE allegedly separated from their parents at the border and then lost, the narrative appears to be a mash-up of two different stories - the fact the Trump administration has a policy of separating kids/adults at the border and that ICE hasn’t been able to contact these 1,500 unaccompanied kids.

One other thing I found interesting: Trump’s policy of separating children and adults is not entirely new. It’s been standard policy for some time that ICE would separate kids from adults whenever ICE thought the adults in question may not be the parents of the kids or their lawful guardians. ICE has traditionally done this because of fears of child trafficking and also that kids are frequently kidnapped and forced to cross the border with an adult so that adult can make it into the U.S. The difference is, the Trump administration has suggested that the separation policy should be used as a deterrent to immigration, which really sucks.

[Captain Caveman]

The GOP in 2018: voting for white nationalists and pedophiles to own the libs.

He's running as an independent. You can't put this one on the GOP...in fact, he's going to be poaching their most deplorable voters.

Good point. But Roy Moore and this video below are consistent with the broader conclusion:

https://twitter.com/NBCNightlyNews/stat ... 4676033537