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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It should be noted that one of the most important and successful moves the US made in Iraq was to hire ex-Ba'athists, Republican Guards, and sundry, creating the "Sons of Iraq," largely to keep these guys out of trouble.
Then, of course, when we pulled out, we just assumed that the Shi'ite-dominated government in Baghdad would have the brains to keep integrating these Sunni troops into the new Iraqi army. Whoops.
A bit of levity from a Washington Post op-ed: Rudy Guilani does not exist
.
The thing you have to understand is that there is nothing to testify about. Certainly, objective reality does not exist. None of my actions have consequences because there is no world outside myself. That is why I work for the Trump administration. (Which does not, of course, exist — a fact that is a constant balm to the consciences of those who work there, assuming they can be said to work for a thing whose existence is in doubt, and assuming they possess consciences.)
There was no meeting, no influence, no money, no information, because, fundamentally, none of these concepts are anchored in anything that can be called a shared reality. People may think they had a meeting. Porn stars may think they accepted hush money. But really — nothing happened, because no one is real but myself. I shut my eyes, and the world is snuffed out.
I am not here and (of course) you are not here with me. It is no insult to call the news fake: Everything is fake.
The point is, it is good that I work for the Trump administration.
I snap my fingers — the wall exists already! It is beautiful and tall. I close my eyes; my hands become enormous, large enough to engulf entire cities. I merely wish, and I am an expert upon any subject. The instant I cease to recollect the existence of Puerto Rico, it ceases to be a problem. I am the measure of all things. When I say that there are good people on all sides, it becomes so. Global warming is, of course, not real, because, again, nothing exists.
Why should we not do whatever we wish, truly? This is not reality. This is a playground for our minds.
History is a series of agreed-upon lies. It has no objective existence; we like to imagine we will be seen and judged, but we are neither seen nor judged. The only lesson I took from Hamilton (a musical my mind invented for my own amusement) is that if two people walk into a room and no one else is in the room when it happened, literally it is impossible to say what occurred in that meeting. And that assumes you live in a universe where a meeting is possible, which, again, I am not certain I accept.
Edited by Blueeyedrat on Aug 20th 2018 at 8:35:00 AM
Two U.S. Agents Fired Into Mexico, Killing Teenagers. Only One Faces a Lawsuit
:
In a dissent this month, a federal judge in California urged the Supreme Court to resolve the clashing rulings.
It cannot be, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote, that guards standing on American soil in Arizona may be sued for cross-border killings but that ones standing in Texas cannot.
“This is an untenable result,” Judge Smith wrote, “and will lead to an uneven administration of the rule of law.”
So Students of the University is North Carolina toppled a confederate statue “Silent Sam” on their campus,
Carr’s lengthy address made clear the symbolism of the statue. First, he credited Confederate soldiers with saving “the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” adding, “to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God.”
Then, he went on to tell a personal story.
“I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal,” Carr said. “One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”
On Monday night, when the statue that he’d dedicated was pulled from its pedestal by a crowd of protesters, Carr’s boastful reference to brutally beating a black woman wasn’t far from mind. The rally began as a demonstration of solidarity with Maya Little, who was arrested in April after reading aloud from Carr’s speech and covering the statue with red ink and her own blood. Little, a graduate student in history, faces charges of defacing a public monument, according to the Daily Tar Heel.
Early Monday evening, student activists covered the statue — now known as “Silent Sam” — with gray fabric banners. One read, “For a world without white supremacy.”
Another listed victims of racial violence, beginning with “Unnamed Black woman beaten by Julian Carr.”
Hours later, after darkness fell, those banners ended up providing cover for protesters. They tied ropes around the statue and toppled it to the ground, according to the Daily Tar Heel. Cheering and shouting, they began covering the statue with mud and dirt.
“I watched it groan and shiver and come asunder,” Dwayne Dixon, an Asian studies professor at UNC, told the Daily Tar Heel. “I mean, it feels biblical. It’s thundering and starting to rain. It’s almost like heaven is trying to wash away the soiled contaminated remains.”
Early Tuesday morning, the statue was hauled away in a dump truck.
Good on them. Another piece of Confederate horror destroyed. Just like that, the world is slightly better.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.There's a bit more to the article in the link. Basically, they tried to have it removed legally, but apparently the state government put up a byzantine labyrinth for any petitions regarding the removal of "monuments" (barf).
So, yeah. That's when this happens. When the people want something, and asking nicely doesn't help, you will some day wake up to torches and pitchforks.
Eh, didn't it have that one completely "mundane" episode set in WW 1 about the soldier who was going to get executed for deserting, and his father was going to do a bit of trickery to make sure the firing squad all had blank rounds so he could fake his death and run away, only for it to be revealed at the last second that no, he's going to die, and his dad lied to the guy so he would Face Death with Dignity
EDIT: Nevermind, I was thinking of Tales from the Crypt.
Edited by Reflextion on Aug 21st 2018 at 10:37:05 AM
Someone did tell me life was going to be this way.What's interesting about the Silent Sam account is that this uncivil disobedience is actually, in its own weird way, an effective legal strategy for having these statues removed
.
The hastily-passed 2015 state law that makes it next to impossible to get rid of these statues also contains this poorly-qualified and ill-defined piece of verbage:
(1) When appropriate measures are required by the State or a political subdivision of the State to preserve the object.
(2) When necessary for construction, renovation, or reconfiguration of buildings, open spaces, parking, or transportation projects.
(c) Exceptions. – This section does not apply to the following:
(1) Highway markers set up by the Board of Transportation in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources as provided by Chapter 197 of the Public Laws of 1935.
(2) An object of remembrance owned by a private party that is located on public property and that is the subject of a legal agreement between the private party and the State or a political subdivision of the State governing the removal or relocation of the object.
(3) An object of remembrance for which a building inspector or similar official has determined poses a threat to public safety because of an unsafe or dangerous condition. (2015-170, s. 3(c); 2015-241, s. 14.30(c).)
"An unsafe or dangerous condition" is so utterly f*cking vague that some have realized that a violent mob surrounding the statue is, in and of itself, fulfillment of the criteria.
Enrique Armijo, a constitutional law professor at Elon University School of Law, said the law’s ambiguity makes conflict almost inevitable.
What is “a site of similar prominence, honor, visibility, availability, and access?” And who determines that? The university? A local government? The General Assembly? The North Carolina Historical Commission?
“This is what happens when you pass laws too quickly and in heated response to events,” Armijo said. “It’s passing a law because you want to be able to go back and say you passed one. But it can be so filled with ambiguity that nobody knows how to apply it.”
If Cooper’s interpretation is correct, Armijo said, protesters have an incentive to continue to turn up the intensity of protests and possibly to topple statues themselves as they did in Durham.
“The leverage here is that if you’re for the statue coming down, show up prepared to take it down,” Armijo said. “That creates a clear threat to the object or to public safety. That creates the trigger that would allow the university or a municipality to take them down.”
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 21st 2018 at 9:58:40 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Michael Cohen is reportedly in talks to plead guilty.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/politics/michael-cohen-plea-deal-talks/index.html
Apparently cooperation with the federal government isn't on the table at this stage, so this might be in relation to the fraud charges.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Meanwhile:
"Jury in Manafort case appears closer to verdict, quizzes judge" - http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-russia-manafort/jury-in-manafort-case-appears-closer-to-verdict-quizzes-judge-idUSKCN1L60WU
In a sign that the jury at the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, may be coming closer to a verdict, jurors asked Judge T.S. Ellis how to fill out a verdict form for a single count if they cannot agree on that count.
Ellis read the jurors' question aloud in court and said he would tell them to try to reach unanimous consensus on all the counts of bank and tax fraud that Manafort faces.
> well, the article said the statue was taken away on a garbage truck? That hopefully means it doesn't come back.
Unfortunately,in uncompromising eyes of the law the statue was removed illegally in an act of vandalism,so they'll have to bring it back..and probably punish the people who did with fines or jail time
They'll probably move to somewhere else and put a fence around it
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverFor those following the race in Arizona, Kelly Ward is trying to win the race
by using Trump tactics against Sherriff Joe "The Nazi" Arpaio. And it looks like it's paying off.
On Friday, Ward will set out on a two-day, statewide bus tour along with a small collection of right-wing agitators chosen to generate headlines. Chief among them: Mike Cernovich, the anti-feminist troll best known for spreading the dangerous IRL conspiracy theory attempting to link Hillary Clinton to a nonexistent child-sex cult in the basement of a D.C. pizza joint. Cernovich describes himself as an “American nationalist,” and while he denies being part of the alt-right movement, the xenophobia and misogyny of his “men’s rights” activism aligns closely with it. Given that his brand-building mantras include “conflict is attention” and “attention is influence,” there’s little reason to doubt he’ll play it safe onstage. (You will not be surprised to learn Donald Trump Jr. counts himself a fan.)
During a Sunday appearance on MSNBC, Ward defended her decision to invite Cernovich by claiming, bizarrely, that she knew almost nothing about him. “I don’t really know what Mike Cernovich’s views are,” she said. “I know he’s got an audience and we want to serve everyone.” She similarly feigned ignorance when asked about the debunked #Pizza Gate conspiracy theory, which motivated a man to show up at the D.C. restaurant and fire a military-style assault rifle in December 2016: “All I know about Hillary Clinton is that she would have been a terrible president.” And Ward awkwardly answered a question about whether the GOP should embrace the alt-right by repeating Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. “I think the Republican Party and the people of the United States should embrace making America great again,” she responded.
Ward will also be joined on her bus this weekend by U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Steve King of Iowa. The former is a proudly politically incorrect member of the House Freedom Caucus who once called on Capitol Police to arrest undocumented immigrants who were invited to attend the State of the Union. The latter has a habit of saying things like, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” and that, for every Dreamer who becomes a valedictorian, “there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds—and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’ve been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Also making the trip: conservative TV personalities Tomi Lahren and Eric Bolling.
Ward’s play here is, sadly, obvious. Mc Sally remains the favorite for the GOP nomination—but in large part because Ward appears to be splitting the far-right vote with disgraced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In the current Real Clear Politics rolling average, Mc Sally leads with 33 percent to Ward’s 25 percent and Arpaio’s 20 percent. If Ward tried to move toward the middle after months of attacking Mc Sally for being insufficiently conservative, she’d likely lose some slice of her support to Arpaio, while not necessarily poaching any from Mc Sally. So instead, Ward is making one final push to consolidate the right wing by trotting out a few of its favorite mascots. The ensuing controversy and press coverage is a feature, not a bug. This, after all, is a woman who happily went on Alex Jones’ national radio show to receive his endorsement in her 2016 primary challenge to Sen. John Mc Cain.
Republican leaders are clearly concerned Ward can prevail next week, spoiling their chances of holding on to retiring-Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat. The head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm reportedly asked Donald Trump recently to change his mind about staying on the sidelines, believing—not unreasonably—that the president’s stamp of approval would seal the nomination for Mc Sally. And a Mc Sally-aligned outside group spent nearly $1 million last week alone attacking Ward, money they’d have much rather spent attacking the likely Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.
Of course, terms like establishment and outsider can only tell us so much in today’s GOP. Mc Sally was elected to the House in 2014 as a relatively moderate Republican. She had shown willingness to compromise on things like immigration and originally kept her distance from Trump, criticizing him for his Access Hollywood boasts about sexual assault and refusing, to this day, to say whether she voted for him. But since entering the Senate race, Mc Sally has tacked right and now happily embraces the president and his America First agenda. On matters of policy, then, Ward and Mc Sally agree on much more than they don’t, and both are selling themselves as key players for Team Trump. The difference, then, is simply how far out on the ledge each is willing to stand to make their case to Republican voters.
[[https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michael-cohen-president-trumps-longtime-personal-attorney-reaches/story?id=57310974
ABC reporting Cohen has flipped.

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My pleasure
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang