The Panama Canal is operated, entirely, by the nation of Panama. This operation of the canal, as far as we can tell, has been done in a completely neutral manner, with absolutely no bias or political influence at all.
Is everyone on the right very very drunk?
The Panamanian ports are Panama's business, and have _nothing_ to do with operating the canal. They are merely located near the ends of it, but that has essentially nothing to do with the canal, which is generally moving traffic that is not going to either port.
I hope everyone who has argued, on this very site, the transphobic talking point about hormone blockers and HRT needing more study for kids (Despite this all being well studied for decades), has noticed that the very people demanding there be more studies then turn around and mock the very studies, in fact the mere idea of studies on this topic, that are designed to do that.
From my perspective, I do think that there should have been a lot more transparency in the firings.
Hegseth has been incredibly transparent about why he fired the top JAG lawyers. He thinks they will get in the way of what he wants to do with the military. It's not some secret, he keeps saying it.
I admit he's not super clear about what those things he's planning on doing are, but it's something involving questions around the constitution and lawful orders.
Hey, do you know that Trump had to be talked out of ordering the military to fire on protestors during BLM? He was talked out of it by the Secretary of Defense.
But hearing that it’s merely bigotry is much better than the worry that it was fascism.
You do understand that fascism requires bigotry, right? Part of what distinguishes fascism from other forms of authoritarianism is the division of society into in-groups and out-groups and the scapegoating of the out-groups.
But anyway, while firing various specific Joint Chiefs was 'mere' bigotry, firing the top JAG lawyers wasn't. It was to make sure that the Secretary of Defense would not be 'blocked' from doing some unspecified stuff where apparently there were going to be questions about the legality and even constitutionality of orders.
given that she failed to bulldoze Congress into fixing the situation, she’s derelict in her duties
That is absolutely not her job. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are advisors to the President and the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Navy. (Who is the person actually in charge of the Navy.)
It is the job of the President to ask Congress for things, upon the advice of the Secretary of Defense, presumably after listening to the Secretary of the Navy.
It would be wildly inappropriate for military officers to run directly around trying get Congress to do things. Not only is that bypassing their chain of command, but those are political considerations that they are not supposed to involve themselves in.
Do you have any knowledge whatsoever about how this is supposed to work, or have you just read gibberish right-wing defense of the decision?
...hey, it's funny how you just included Marines in there, and yet the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps was not fired. Weird. Almost as if he's a white guy.
Did you get confused and assume she must also run that? Because the actual head of the Navy (which is again The Secretary of the Navy) is indeed in charge of both, they are both under the Department of the Navy. But the two services have separate positions on the Joint Chiefs, which is not part of the command structure.
Dry Run for DOGE. (What, you thought the twentysomethings were the real deal? They’re a stalking horse.)
A 'stalking horse'?
Do you know who pointed out the previous audit in 2013 had not been correct?
The Pentagon Inspector General. It's literally in the link you gave.
Do you know who oversaws those audits?
The DoD Inspector General. Both of them. The 2013 and the 2023 audits. (Neither of which, you may notice, happened under Trump. The president at the time doesn't really deserve the credit, but instead of arguing that, I will just point out it wasn't Trump anyway.)
Do you know who Trump fired?
That's right. The Inspectors General.
None of this has anything to do with Trump, considering that the auditing of all departments was directed in _1992_, and the audits started by the military not any particular president. What he has done is make it _impossible_ for anyone to require these audits to happen, along with making it impossible to collect any instances of waste or fraud from whistleblowers, because that's what IGs are for.
Three of the six fired were the JAG lawyers that are supposed to advise the actual heads of the services. (Who are not the Joint Chiefs, to be clear. The chain of command does not go through the Joint Chiefs.)
It's been explicitly stated by Hegseth that he was worried those lawyers would be 'roadblocks' to what he wanted to do with the military, that the current ones might not 'give sound constitutional advice', and how they wouldn't be 'well-suited' to give recommendations when the military gets lawful order.
All this stuff about how there are plans to use the military in ways that the lawyers might disagree with is being said _really_ out in the open by him, BTW. Those are things said by him, directly, in public, to the media. This is incredibly worrying, there's almost no possible conclusion but that he is talking about using the military against US citizens, and it's really absurd no one is talking about it.
NPR says that Trump fired six four-star level people. The other five were dudes.
Did you...not read that?
One of the other people was the only Black officer in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Really doesn't undercut the 'bigot' concept there.
Three of them were the three top lawyers for the services, which feels like less bigotry and more 'The lawyers will not agree with what I am trying to do'. Which is literally the justification Hegseth gave, that he 'didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.', and lots of stuff like that.
Firing _all_ top lawyers so they will not try to advise the military on what orders are lawful is not relevant to removing _specific_ individuals from their post elsewhere. (It is, however, pretty relevant WRT our slide in fascism.)
So that leaves us with exactly one white man: General James C. Slife, vice chief of staff of the Air Force.
He probably was fired for supposedly giving women special treatment in the Air Force's elite special tactics field. This is actual nonsense, he called for an investigation _into_ that, but is as what he was smeared with: https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/401174/trump-fired-generals
So, to be clear here, we have Brown, who is supposedly doing DEI stuff, and Slife, who is supposedly helping one specific woman although he isn't. Okay, there's a very, VERY thin justification for removing them, even if the second is a lie and the first is just the general 'encouraging Black people and women into the military' that is 80% of what 'DEI' is there.
Which then leaves Franchetti. Who is not, in any manner at all, have alleged to do _anything_ even vaguely DEI related at all. There just is nothing there.
Her crime appears to have been that she _is_ a woman, and thus Hegseth, as he has claimed claimed repeated on podcasts, feels she does not deserve the position, despite not offering the tiniest bit of support to that claim.
That is bigotry. That is how bigotry works. You just talk about the vague _vibes_ of how someone isn't as good as other people don't deserve their position.
Some people may be confused about Jaybird's stupid conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian president is a cocaine addict.
There's a simple explanation of why he believes that, and that is that he has direct access to dumb conspiracy theories piped into his head.
But for those who wish to know the origin of his wrongness, feel free to Google 'Zelenskyy cocaine', where you will learn that it was a doctored video. Multiple doctored videos, in fact, probably as part of deliberate Russian misinformation.
Would you say that calling for the release of this stuff from the people who said that they’d release it would do harm to Trump, then?
Wow. Seems like a somewhat straightforward and easy way to harm Trump.
Yes, the Democrats should be out there hammering hard on Trump to release it, with plenty of insinuations as to why he is not, and even going outright conspiratorial about this. Just straight up use the right's conspiracy theories against them, because the conspiracy theories about Epstein _are_ sorta right, even if right has been duped it's the left behind them, instead of just Extremely Powerful People who pay off everyone willy-nilly.
But Dems are not doing that.
Welcome to the real world, where the Dems do literally nothing to help anything that could vaguely be considered 'outside norms', but they sure will pretend and even fundraise off their complete lack of action. Glad you're now up-to-date.
And this is assuming that none of the Dems are going to get hurt by any hypothetical information. (Even if there is no real information cause the FBI didn't investigate, it's not like people could know that for a certainty.) I think there are probably _less_ sex predators in the Democrats than in the Republicans, just by sheer statistical history, but there are likely not zero. And Democrats _actually have to remove them from office_, whereas nothing is going to happen to Trump despite what is revealed, so I suspect there's some interesting calculus among the Democratic sociopaths with power.
The actual left, meanwhile, sorta already is stirring all this up as best they can, but really do not have power to get the media eye, and the normal media doesn't really get in front of the conspiracy far-right anyway.
In fact, Ilhan Omar _is doing literally this_ on Twitter, stirring things up, on purpose.
Maybe he was lying! You’d think that that’d be something that we’d want to know!
Gee, if only we could put someone in a position of power who could ask Acosta who told him to drop the investigation. Maybe the next president.
Hey, have you ever seen this Cindy McCain clip from C-Span?
The fact you are conspiracizing about Epstein is hilarious. We _already believe_ these 'conspiracies'. They are very obvious.
Epstein, extremely clearly, was not prosecuted for years for blackmail reasons, or if not explicit blackmail because prosecuting him would harm other powerful people.The failure of the FBI to follow up on things almost certainly was due to political pressure, as was the sweetheart deal cut by Acosta. We believe all this! I'll even go so far as to say he probably didn't commit suicide, although I will admit that is a little conspiratorial and I have no real evidence.
What we do not believe is that the FBI has any real evidence, or that they are going to release it if they do.
Neither do we believe that _Trump_, of all people, is going to be doing anything to find out more. Mostly because we're pretty sure he's implicated more strongly than whoever the right hallucinates is going to implicated on the other side. (Is it still Bill Clinton? Is he still the target? The president from *checks notes* twenty-four years ago?)
We are simply enjoying watching the right eat itself alive because they believed _Trump_ was going to do this, and have to try to come up with nonsense justifications as to why Trump isn't doing extremely obvious things, which he should have already done years ago, like try to track down Acosta's claim.
““I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” You’re assuming he worked for OUR intelligence groups. Not necessarily.
No I'm not. I'm just assuming whoever told Acosta that information was working for the US government, because that's logically the only people who Acosta should be listening to.
The question is 'Did someone in the US government tell Acosta to back off with the claim he 'belong to intelligence?'.
Trump could easily determined the answer to that years ago. Just ask Acosta who said that. Then go ask them if they told Acosta that.
Once we find out the answer to that question, if he was indeed told that, we can then ask questions like 'Is that true, did Epstein belong to intelligence? If so, which intelligence agency?'
Now, Acosta didn't technically say it was someone from the US government who told him that, so I guess it is hypothetically possible that Acosta was approached by, for example, French intelligence. Who told Epstein 'belongs to intelligence, specifically, us', so he decided to not continue prosecution. But that means Acosta semi-openly admitted to be an agent of a foreign government, which seems really dumb for him to do.
No, for sanity's sake I will assume it was someone in the US government who told him that information, and not a foreign power...or a random person on the street, for that matter.
I thought it was broad enough to cover such things as “spending” but if you insist, I’ll limit future examples in this thread to stuff that has a .gov or .mil website.
You, starting the thread:
The DEI thing is where the teeth are going to be and every attempt on the part of the various departments to route around it are going to result in DOGE defenders pointing out how important this actually was.
You see that word 'DOGE' right there?
DOGE is the thing that exists in the Federal government that is going around doing things to the Federal government.
It is not an executive order telling the Department of Education to issue guidelines that have not actually been issued yet, and it certainly is not universities prepping for what they think it might be.
If you don’t like the word “hide”, how’s “rebrand”?
What is this conversation _even about_? What is the point you think you are making?
Yes, universities will stop using words like 'diversity' and 'equity' and 'inclusion', as Republicans have decided to war a word against them.
They are going to use other words that mean those things, like 'collaboration' means what was meant by 'inclusion', and 'fairness' means what was meant by 'equity'.
As for diversity, I'm going to suggest they can just move to 'intergration', so as to make it clear what is actually being criticized, and the Trump administration can take the pro-segregation position.
They just fired the only female four-star Naval Admiral, Lisa Franchetti, who, incidentally, was the only female officer at that level in the entire armed forces.
There was absolutely no attempt to even _give_ a justification for that one. Literally none.
With firing the head of the Coast Guard, Linda Fagan, they could at least claim she hadn't cleaned up and fixed the scandal of her predeceaser fast enough, although there was no real evidence she wasn't exactly that. And could make vague handwaves at 'DEI', although as the scandal was 'A massive rape and hazing culture that was covered up', I think doing things to stop 'sexual harassment' and treat sexual misconduct seriously seemed warranted as a response to that! But whatever.
But Admiral Franchetti had _absolutely_ nothing like that. She has made no large policy changes whatsoever in the year and an half she's be in place. There's no 'DEI' to point at, there's nothing. There's no possible objections whatsoever. She's a solidly competent administrator and military who worked her way up the ranks. She doesn't seem to be out of her depth. She's exactly the sort of person the military should be lead by in peacetime, and her combat record seems competent too.
And, again, to repeat, they didn't give a reason. There is no stated reason for removing her. Probably because they didn't want to give their real objection, which Hegseth has stated in his book, in that he thinks she was confirmed for 'optics' instead of 'skill'.
There is, again, no evidence of this, there's no complaint about her actual command, and this what bigotry actually looks like...both these example.
You get minorities and women held to standards that white men are not, like how Fagan has not immediate magically erased something the previous Coast Guard Commandant did and was not even _fired_ over. And when there's literally _nothing_ they can point to about Franchetti, who seems just a very competent person who has done nothing wrong and in fact, not really done much at all except keep things running, like she's supposed to, and pretty much everyone seems happy with her, it's just sort a 'Oh, she must be a diversity hire and I will remove her'.
And to be clear, they are not 'lying'. That's not how bigotry works. They honestly believe that. They're just bigots who assume that anyone who isn't a white man couldn't have earned their position.
It was a good thing. It was just a good thing that was pushed by an entire industry, the health insurance industry.
My point was that the only useful thing that the Democrats did was with full consent and at the _request_ of the industry they did it to. And any part of it that that industry would object to, like a public option, was off the table to start to start with.
--
I am, of course, exaggerating a bit by saying that it's the _only_ thing Democrats have done. CFPB was a useful thing, and it really was done over the objection of the industry. There have been other smallish things like that.
But there have been massive problems that absolutely no one has tackled that would be incredibly popular, but there are large entrenched interests sitting opposed to.
And it's easy to blame the Republicans for it, but the Republicans blocking the way cannot explain why they do not get out there and try, why Democrats do not come out with a comprehensive bill about, for example, stopping wage theft, and force the Republicans to stop it. Get on all the talk shows about this big problem, keep repeating it. Run against them next election on this failure to do it.
And the reason is: They do not actually want to do politics either.
Basically arguing against there being anything worth investigating at all and accusations that there is something worth investigating as being evidence of a grand conspiracy.
Saying 'This will amount to nothing' is not pushback to the files being released, and I am baffled as to how you think that is the same thing. Pushback would be saying 'These files should not be released'. As far as I can tell, no one has said that.
Likewise, I can't figure out what you mean by 'accusations that there is something worth investigating as being evidence of a grand conspiracy'. Everyone agrees there was, indeed, something worth investigating, and it sure would have been nice if that had been investigated. By the TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.
Or investigated and prosecuted by Acosta, who has cleverly invented a claim about 'intelligence' that could have been investigated _by the president_. 'Hey, a guy in my cabinet says that Epstein worked for one of our intelligence services, it's too bad that I have literally no way to confirm that. Anyway, for my next order of business, I'm talking to the Director of National Intelligence.'.
Indeed, why _hasn't_ Trump stated that? He's put his person in at the CIA, and surely Acosta can explain who, exactly, told him that. Weirdly Trump has remained completely silent on all that. He could have done all that his first term, and Acosta could have maybe even not had to resign!
The fact that the _right wing_ has decided to focus on these files, and think they will reveal anything damaging about Democrats, so insane. This is an investigation that a _political actors on the right_ crippled and was never really done.
But, no, the left is not 'pushing back' on releasing the files, the left is just 'We're pretty sure this investigation was so curtailed that there's not going to be anything useful in these files.' No one says not to do it.
In fact, we can agree that Ilhan Omar is...reasonable left-ish, right? You probably think she is farther left than I do, but I think we can agree that, of all the House Democrats, she's in the top 25% farthest left, right?
Do I need to link to her tweet about how it's weird the AG won't release the files? (I actually kinda think she's trolling and doesn't really think anything will come from it, but it's the 'never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake, and maybe even encourage their supporters to yell support for mistake' trolling.)
Pushback on the left to releasing 'the Epstein files'? What? What pushback on the left do you imagine there is?
The right-wing echo chamber you live in is exceptionally hilarious when it confidently telly you things 'the left' is doing, Jaybird.
Most people on the left do not think there actually are 'files' that will result in anything and that this is nonsense.
There is a minority belief that that there are blackmail files collected by the FBI or something like that that are being used to blackmail politicians. (I am merely reporting this theory, I don't believe it.) They _also_ want these files released, as much as the right, although they are pretty sure that whatever the Trump administration releases will not be that.
There is a very thin sliver of _that_ conspiracy who thinks the blackmail of Democrats will be released and not blackmail of Republicans, which...honestly, the left sorta is in favor of, because at least those Democrats will no longer be blackmailed and at least some amount of rapists can be removed from office.
But, again, that's a pretty small conspiracy, and they aren't pushing back on the release anyway.
Where is this pushback? A few Democrats worried about forged files? Or harassment of witnesses?
Then why are you calling what you believe a 'conspiracy theory'?
'Person tries to launch a very stupid project that also incidentally violates Kickstarter TOS, has people try to convince her not to do it, she refuses, and her Kickstarter get, correctly, shut down due to complaints it violates the TOS.' is not a 'conspiracy theory'.
There's no conspiracy at all. Every part of that happened fully in the public. It's just stuff that happened.
This is like me talking about a conspiracy theory about the moon landing, and the conspiracy is: We put some people in a rocket and they landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.
That's not a 'conspiracy theory', that's the generally accepted thing that happened!
There is going to be stuff they haven't handed over, and it's all going to be things that the FBI doesn't consider evidence. Like the fact some agent spent a few hours looking into a conspiracy theory said online and concluded that there was nothing there, but some time was, indeed, spent on it and that time and lack of any outcome was documented.
People do not understand how many completely random 'leads' there are in investigations like this, and how most of them do not pan out and are not worth mentioning to anyone. "This conspiracy is trivially disproved by the actual evidence we have so far.'
So what is going to happen is all that nonsense is going handed over, and Bondi is going to release it, and a bunch of completely random stuff is going to come out, where the FBI looked into something and determined it wasn't real, that some people in the right-wing echo chamber think they can use to implication...I don't even know at this point. Bill Clinton? Oh no!
They're looking into this for some sort of smear campaign, they're going to instantly leap on 'The FBI looked into X for being connected with Epistein! He's guilty!' without bothering to mention that the FBI found no evidence at all. Which is how it always works, they generate the accusations, then they use the existence of the accusation to as proof there must be something there, and then they use the fact there was nothing there as a conspiracy.
But here's the kicker, there's a reason that wasn't handed over: There's going to be a _lot_ of looking into Trump. Or, worse, leads that _were deliberately not looked into_ and people can now look into.
And I'm tired of Democrats and the left generally operating in the realm of truth. So I say, we start lying, the exact same way, back. Because the FBI _was_ given information that Trump was linked to all this (Katie Johnson filed a lawsuit that was dismissed.), and unlike Bill Clinton, he is still relevant in politics. Is he actually guilty of using Epstein's girls? I have no idea, although he's done and said enough stuff that is so very close to it that I would be honestly startled if not.
But I don't care. We way way are outside the realm of 'actually guilty' with this administration, which not only launches baseless investigations against people but has pardoned people _literally found guilty in court_ and threatened judges for presiding over the trial that convicted them, and I'm tired of that only mattering for things Republicans say about Democrats. So the thing to do is to instantly leap on Trump's name being in those files, and keep hammering it. I think the framing should be 'Anyone found in those files at all should resign immediately from politics.'.
And they have, hilariously, backed themselves into a corner where they cannot withhold any of this.
I love how everyone has decided that my technical clarification is me making a political point in opposition to whatever Jaybird's assumed political point was. Instead of just the clarification I said it was.
The events described are happening at Barnard College, not Columbia College. If you are unsure of that fact, you can look at the image in the linked xit, where the demands are to speak to the President and Dean of Barnard, not Columbia. Or you can just look at news reports.
The two colleges have a fairly complicated relationship to each other that no one understands, not even the two colleges. But they are legally two different schools, and two different locations, and as we are talking about people taking over a building, I feel it is important to distinguish where that building is, at minimum.
That is the entirety of the statement I am saying. I have said nothing else, either explicitly or implicitly. Nothing in what I said should be constructed to mean anything besides 'The events described are happening not at the location said, but this other location'.
There will be various departments that will try to route around it by hiding that it was the DEI office the week prior.
We in a discussion about Musk slashing the Federal government. Why are you talking about the University of Colorado, and why are you using the University of Colorado as an example of a department?
Anyway, no, that's not an attempt to 'hide'. As far as I know, this is the only part of anything Trump has done that applies to colleges:
Sec. 5. Other Actions. Within 120 days of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education shall jointly issue guidance to all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds, as well as all institutions of higher education that receive Federal grants or participate in the Federal student loan assistance program under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 1070 et seq., regarding the measures and practices required to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).
Those guidelines do not appear to have been issued yet.
This college has apparently decided that the Department of Education will likely have a problem with the name, at minimum, so has preemptively changed it.
Why do you think this is an attempt to 'hide'?
Do you think the college should assume the guidelines are going to be 'anything that every had the name DEI' should be removed? That the University of Colorado should just preemptively dismantle the entire department? That seems somewhat stupid.
Weren't you one of the people complaining the Air Force, having been ordered to shut down their DEI training, removed a video of the Tuskegee Airmen that was shown in it, despite that clearly being part of the DEI training and covered by the order? You complained this was 'mandatory compliance'.
But here, you're complaining about a university, _which has not been given guidelines yet_, tries to get ahead of the guidelines in the vaguest way (It seems clear the term 'DEI' is a problem, at minimum.), and you have decided that this is 'hiding' something.
What you think the University of Colorado should have done at this point in time?
The conspiracy theory that *I* believe is that Owens tried to get in on the whole “Team Good Anti-Harassment” train, instead of being welcomed with open arms, she had her stuff shut down and Randi Lee Harper bragged about shutting it down in an open post to freakin’ everybody.
The actual story: Person with no experience in something attempts to start a project in that field that might be incredibly dangerous to both herself and others, sparking a lot of discussion about this.
A person with experience who currently works in an non-profit in the field contacts her and tries to explain the bad aspects of this and various concerns people have. This attempt does not work.
The person with no experience in the community then has something happen that causes them to invent a conspiracy theory where the person who just talked to her, and in fact everyone around that person, were part of a conspiracy attacking her.
Where in this story, exactly, do you think 'open arms' should have been? There was a single failed conversation, and then a conspiracy started.
What is this, 'Zoe did not immediately manage to convince Candace of everything, ergo, everything after is their fault.'? I don't think that's how that works.
And why exactly do we think things would have turned out differently if they _had_? There still would have been the racist emails and harassment immediately after that, and for all we know Candace would have blamed Zoe _anyway_.
If you’d like to explain to me that “but what they did was good, though”, that’s fine. Feel free.
It was good, because it was an incredibly stupid project that would cause tons of harm because she didn't understand very basic things about how harassment worked on the internet. In fact, there was supposedly harassment _from the sample data_, that's probably what got Kickstarter to shut it down.
Here is someone talking about it in a very neutral way, staying out of conspiracies, _back then_, before Owens moved rightward: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/online-bullying-database-doxing-kickstarter-suspended/
To quote that article: Owens promised not to publish any addresses, emails, or phone numbers. In an interview with Vocativ, she said that the site would only collect accused harassers’ names, locations, employers, social media links, and current and former school information.
This is of, to be clear, anonymous accounts. We can, in retrospect, see how _astonishingly_ stupid her plan is.
I don't know what the doxxing rules exactly are on this site, I've never wanted to come anywhere close to them, but I'm pretty sure linking people's username here with their real names and employers would count as doxxing here. It certainly makes doxxing a lot easier. And 'Social media' links is just insane, because most people have _some_ social media under their real name and others under pseudonyms.
This is because, again, Candace Owens basically understood _nothing_ of what she was talking about. Her idea of the result of 'doxxing' appears to be 'the person might get some spam calls', not 'swatting' or 'employer gets harassed until they are fired'.
But I don't really know why I'm having to explain this, because _absolutely no one defends her project_. At all. This isn't some political question, where there are differences of opinion.
The DEI thing is where the teeth are going to be and every attempt on the part of the various departments to route around it are going to result in DOGE defenders pointing out how important this actually was.
This is actual gibberish.
DEI programs make up almost _no_ amount of the budget, and a huge chunk of it is just normal HR stuff that has to be done anyway.
The reason that it is 'important' that they are being cut is that the cutting of it is accompanied by _overtly bigoted decisions_. It is, to use a word, 'signalling', and the thing is it singalling is that 'white straight men are back in charge'.
There have been a number of times where the Diversity Department was quickly renamed in the middle of the night to “Wellness” or some crap like that and various hall monitors have cheerfully posted screenshots saying “they’re trying to pull a fast one!”
Ah, clever plan, if you don't actually link to anything, no one will point out how getting you're your news from liars on Facebook.
Personally, I think that the bad job people should be fired but…
...you're okay with people who are doing a good job and who just got promoted being fired.
I guess that's how your sentence is supposed to end?
I continue to believe Obama’s talent as a politician and his popularity among progressives convinced a lot of what is effectively the Dem base (white, educated, middle to upper middle class people) that everything was fine and dandy with the Democratic Party, even though he basically didn’t accomplish anything for the last 7 years of his presidency, and the Democratic Party as a whole was a rotten-to-the-core gerontocracy that no longer seemed to have any principles, messages, or really any ideas whatsoever, much less the hope that got Obama elected.
I just want to make it clear it's _even worse than that_: The ACA existed solely because the insurance industry needed it. It wasn't some last glorious grand thrust of 'The last right things the Dems did', it was 'the system is so broken that even the people paying the lobbyists started worrying about things'.
It's not just Obama, it's all the way back to Clinton, too.
For the last 35 years, neither party has gotten elected by presenting useful political ideas to the American people. Neither of them. At all. This is because the Republicans do not have useful ideas (Well, they were no longer _allowed_ to have them or they would be primaried...before Trump. Now, the only ideas they are allowed to have is Trump stomping on a human face, forever.) and the decaying-and-molding Democrats will do everything in their power to stamp out the useful ideas that their individual members might come up with. 10% of Dems are allowed to have good ideas, sometimes even say them in front of cameras, but nothing can ever come from it, and it will never be used nationally.
Instead, every election, the most 'charismatic' person on the ballot got elected. There were only two exceptions...the first was Gore and Bust, one who presented as incredibly boring and the other who often couldn't talk...and they, for all statistical purposes, _tied_. The other exception was when we got tired of the first term of Trump and elected Biden, but we weren't electing him because of his policies either.
Thanks to the wealthy getting what they wanted from Reagan, and collecting enough money to purchase both the political system and the media, we sorta just...stopped doing politics ~35 years ago, if by politics we mean 'actually electing people based on real things they promise and intend to at least attempt'. The system has been held in stasis, with Republicans unwilling to move, Democrats also unwilling to move but doing some performative struggling, and all of them just getting older because if you don't allow new ideas into the system, you also end up not allowing new people.
Which is why what is happening right now is such a shock. It's horrible and stupid, yes, but it's also a shock because it turns out things actually can change.
Randi Lee Harper bragged about getting Social Autopsy shut down. From the horse’s mouth:
You do understand the conspiracy Owens has is about the harassment, right?
It is not about who pointed out to Kickstarter that the project violated Kickstarter's terms of service by, essentially, being designed as a dox tool. That was reported to them by, at minimum, Randi Lee Harper. (Although it probably was reported by like half the damn planet, because her Kickstarter was being read as 'We will track down people saying stuff people don't like and dox them' by _everyone_. We can argue whether Owens meant for it to say that, but that's how everyone read it.)
Those two things are, uh, not at all the same things.
If I'm throwing a party with loud music, and someone reports me to the police, and someone drives by taking shots at me...that doesn't make them the same person. Especially if my loud music has angered half the town.
For people who do not understand what happened here, this article is illuminating: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/how-social-autopsy-fell-for-gamergate-trutherism.html
(I cannot believe I just linked to a Jesse Singal article. The phrase 'newcomers wander into the weirder, angrier corners of the internet without first reading a tour guide or two.' is honestly so hilarious and said without the slightest self-awareness of what happened to him later on.)
And a lot of the illumination reading that _now_ is that it now is 2025 and we now actually all know how these sort of explosive harassment campaigns start and exist and things they do. Owens...didn't. Yes, that's right, she was proposing her tool with literally no context of any this, because her experience was basically 'Some people sometimes said mean things on Facebook under fake names', not the absolute meltdown of GamerGate that was still sputtering along.
So she wandered into a situation she didn't understand at all, almost everyone got horrified at the idea of what she was trying to do (I cannot emphasis enough how no one, on any side, liked the idea.), Zoe Quinn reached out and tried to reason with her, pointing out it not only was a bad idea, but also that she needed to brace herself for when everything started, 45 minutes later the hate started, she decided that was Quinn, and everything from there on was just a gibberish conspiracy, eventually slipping into the conspiracy that Quinn was faking all the harassment to start with and that Social Autopsy would have exposed that.
I'm now actually interested if you believe _that_ conspiracy theory.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 3/3/2025”
What does the word 'control' mean to you?
The Panama Canal is operated, entirely, by the nation of Panama. This operation of the canal, as far as we can tell, has been done in a completely neutral manner, with absolutely no bias or political influence at all.
Is everyone on the right very very drunk?
The Panamanian ports are Panama's business, and have _nothing_ to do with operating the canal. They are merely located near the ends of it, but that has essentially nothing to do with the canal, which is generally moving traffic that is not going to either port.
On “Group Activity: President Donald Trump Address to Congress”
I hope everyone who has argued, on this very site, the transphobic talking point about hormone blockers and HRT needing more study for kids (Despite this all being well studied for decades), has noticed that the very people demanding there be more studies then turn around and mock the very studies, in fact the mere idea of studies on this topic, that are designed to do that.
On “Musk vs Gore”
Hegseth has been incredibly transparent about why he fired the top JAG lawyers. He thinks they will get in the way of what he wants to do with the military. It's not some secret, he keeps saying it.
I admit he's not super clear about what those things he's planning on doing are, but it's something involving questions around the constitution and lawful orders.
Hey, do you know that Trump had to be talked out of ordering the military to fire on protestors during BLM? He was talked out of it by the Secretary of Defense.
https://www.axios.com/2022/05/02/mark-esper-book-trump-protesters
I mention this for no reason whatsoever.
You do understand that fascism requires bigotry, right? Part of what distinguishes fascism from other forms of authoritarianism is the division of society into in-groups and out-groups and the scapegoating of the out-groups.
But anyway, while firing various specific Joint Chiefs was 'mere' bigotry, firing the top JAG lawyers wasn't. It was to make sure that the Secretary of Defense would not be 'blocked' from doing some unspecified stuff where apparently there were going to be questions about the legality and even constitutionality of orders.
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That is absolutely not her job. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are advisors to the President and the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Navy. (Who is the person actually in charge of the Navy.)
It is the job of the President to ask Congress for things, upon the advice of the Secretary of Defense, presumably after listening to the Secretary of the Navy.
It would be wildly inappropriate for military officers to run directly around trying get Congress to do things. Not only is that bypassing their chain of command, but those are political considerations that they are not supposed to involve themselves in.
Do you have any knowledge whatsoever about how this is supposed to work, or have you just read gibberish right-wing defense of the decision?
...hey, it's funny how you just included Marines in there, and yet the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps was not fired. Weird. Almost as if he's a white guy.
Did you get confused and assume she must also run that? Because the actual head of the Navy (which is again The Secretary of the Navy) is indeed in charge of both, they are both under the Department of the Navy. But the two services have separate positions on the Joint Chiefs, which is not part of the command structure.
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A 'stalking horse'?
Do you know who pointed out the previous audit in 2013 had not been correct?
The Pentagon Inspector General. It's literally in the link you gave.
Do you know who oversaws those audits?
The DoD Inspector General. Both of them. The 2013 and the 2023 audits. (Neither of which, you may notice, happened under Trump. The president at the time doesn't really deserve the credit, but instead of arguing that, I will just point out it wasn't Trump anyway.)
Do you know who Trump fired?
That's right. The Inspectors General.
None of this has anything to do with Trump, considering that the auditing of all departments was directed in _1992_, and the audits started by the military not any particular president. What he has done is make it _impossible_ for anyone to require these audits to happen, along with making it impossible to collect any instances of waste or fraud from whistleblowers, because that's what IGs are for.
"
Three of the six fired were the JAG lawyers that are supposed to advise the actual heads of the services. (Who are not the Joint Chiefs, to be clear. The chain of command does not go through the Joint Chiefs.)
It's been explicitly stated by Hegseth that he was worried those lawyers would be 'roadblocks' to what he wanted to do with the military, that the current ones might not 'give sound constitutional advice', and how they wouldn't be 'well-suited' to give recommendations when the military gets lawful order.
All this stuff about how there are plans to use the military in ways that the lawyers might disagree with is being said _really_ out in the open by him, BTW. Those are things said by him, directly, in public, to the media. This is incredibly worrying, there's almost no possible conclusion but that he is talking about using the military against US citizens, and it's really absurd no one is talking about it.
"
Did you...not read that?
One of the other people was the only Black officer in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Really doesn't undercut the 'bigot' concept there.
Three of them were the three top lawyers for the services, which feels like less bigotry and more 'The lawyers will not agree with what I am trying to do'. Which is literally the justification Hegseth gave, that he 'didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.', and lots of stuff like that.
Firing _all_ top lawyers so they will not try to advise the military on what orders are lawful is not relevant to removing _specific_ individuals from their post elsewhere. (It is, however, pretty relevant WRT our slide in fascism.)
So that leaves us with exactly one white man: General James C. Slife, vice chief of staff of the Air Force.
He probably was fired for supposedly giving women special treatment in the Air Force's elite special tactics field. This is actual nonsense, he called for an investigation _into_ that, but is as what he was smeared with: https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/401174/trump-fired-generals
So, to be clear here, we have Brown, who is supposedly doing DEI stuff, and Slife, who is supposedly helping one specific woman although he isn't. Okay, there's a very, VERY thin justification for removing them, even if the second is a lie and the first is just the general 'encouraging Black people and women into the military' that is 80% of what 'DEI' is there.
Which then leaves Franchetti. Who is not, in any manner at all, have alleged to do _anything_ even vaguely DEI related at all. There just is nothing there.
Her crime appears to have been that she _is_ a woman, and thus Hegseth, as he has claimed claimed repeated on podcasts, feels she does not deserve the position, despite not offering the tiniest bit of support to that claim.
That is bigotry. That is how bigotry works. You just talk about the vague _vibes_ of how someone isn't as good as other people don't deserve their position.
On “Group Activity The Full, Unedited Trump, Zelenskyy, and Vance Video”
Some people may be confused about Jaybird's stupid conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian president is a cocaine addict.
There's a simple explanation of why he believes that, and that is that he has direct access to dumb conspiracy theories piped into his head.
But for those who wish to know the origin of his wrongness, feel free to Google 'Zelenskyy cocaine', where you will learn that it was a doctored video. Multiple doctored videos, in fact, probably as part of deliberate Russian misinformation.
On “From Fox News: AG Pam Bondi announces Epstein files will start to be released on Thursday the 27th”
Yes, the Democrats should be out there hammering hard on Trump to release it, with plenty of insinuations as to why he is not, and even going outright conspiratorial about this. Just straight up use the right's conspiracy theories against them, because the conspiracy theories about Epstein _are_ sorta right, even if right has been duped it's the left behind them, instead of just Extremely Powerful People who pay off everyone willy-nilly.
But Dems are not doing that.
Welcome to the real world, where the Dems do literally nothing to help anything that could vaguely be considered 'outside norms', but they sure will pretend and even fundraise off their complete lack of action. Glad you're now up-to-date.
And this is assuming that none of the Dems are going to get hurt by any hypothetical information. (Even if there is no real information cause the FBI didn't investigate, it's not like people could know that for a certainty.) I think there are probably _less_ sex predators in the Democrats than in the Republicans, just by sheer statistical history, but there are likely not zero. And Democrats _actually have to remove them from office_, whereas nothing is going to happen to Trump despite what is revealed, so I suspect there's some interesting calculus among the Democratic sociopaths with power.
The actual left, meanwhile, sorta already is stirring all this up as best they can, but really do not have power to get the media eye, and the normal media doesn't really get in front of the conspiracy far-right anyway.
In fact, Ilhan Omar _is doing literally this_ on Twitter, stirring things up, on purpose.
"
Gee, if only we could put someone in a position of power who could ask Acosta who told him to drop the investigation. Maybe the next president.
The fact you are conspiracizing about Epstein is hilarious. We _already believe_ these 'conspiracies'. They are very obvious.
Epstein, extremely clearly, was not prosecuted for years for blackmail reasons, or if not explicit blackmail because prosecuting him would harm other powerful people.The failure of the FBI to follow up on things almost certainly was due to political pressure, as was the sweetheart deal cut by Acosta. We believe all this! I'll even go so far as to say he probably didn't commit suicide, although I will admit that is a little conspiratorial and I have no real evidence.
What we do not believe is that the FBI has any real evidence, or that they are going to release it if they do.
Neither do we believe that _Trump_, of all people, is going to be doing anything to find out more. Mostly because we're pretty sure he's implicated more strongly than whoever the right hallucinates is going to implicated on the other side. (Is it still Bill Clinton? Is he still the target? The president from *checks notes* twenty-four years ago?)
We are simply enjoying watching the right eat itself alive because they believed _Trump_ was going to do this, and have to try to come up with nonsense justifications as to why Trump isn't doing extremely obvious things, which he should have already done years ago, like try to track down Acosta's claim.
"
No I'm not. I'm just assuming whoever told Acosta that information was working for the US government, because that's logically the only people who Acosta should be listening to.
The question is 'Did someone in the US government tell Acosta to back off with the claim he 'belong to intelligence?'.
Trump could easily determined the answer to that years ago. Just ask Acosta who said that. Then go ask them if they told Acosta that.
Once we find out the answer to that question, if he was indeed told that, we can then ask questions like 'Is that true, did Epstein belong to intelligence? If so, which intelligence agency?'
Now, Acosta didn't technically say it was someone from the US government who told him that, so I guess it is hypothetically possible that Acosta was approached by, for example, French intelligence. Who told Epstein 'belongs to intelligence, specifically, us', so he decided to not continue prosecution. But that means Acosta semi-openly admitted to be an agent of a foreign government, which seems really dumb for him to do.
No, for sanity's sake I will assume it was someone in the US government who told him that information, and not a foreign power...or a random person on the street, for that matter.
On “Musk vs Gore”
You, now:
You, starting the thread:
You see that word 'DOGE' right there?
DOGE is the thing that exists in the Federal government that is going around doing things to the Federal government.
It is not an executive order telling the Department of Education to issue guidelines that have not actually been issued yet, and it certainly is not universities prepping for what they think it might be.
What is this conversation _even about_? What is the point you think you are making?
Yes, universities will stop using words like 'diversity' and 'equity' and 'inclusion', as Republicans have decided to war a word against them.
They are going to use other words that mean those things, like 'collaboration' means what was meant by 'inclusion', and 'fairness' means what was meant by 'equity'.
As for diversity, I'm going to suggest they can just move to 'intergration', so as to make it clear what is actually being criticized, and the Trump administration can take the pro-segregation position.
"
They just fired the only female four-star Naval Admiral, Lisa Franchetti, who, incidentally, was the only female officer at that level in the entire armed forces.
There was absolutely no attempt to even _give_ a justification for that one. Literally none.
With firing the head of the Coast Guard, Linda Fagan, they could at least claim she hadn't cleaned up and fixed the scandal of her predeceaser fast enough, although there was no real evidence she wasn't exactly that. And could make vague handwaves at 'DEI', although as the scandal was 'A massive rape and hazing culture that was covered up', I think doing things to stop 'sexual harassment' and treat sexual misconduct seriously seemed warranted as a response to that! But whatever.
But Admiral Franchetti had _absolutely_ nothing like that. She has made no large policy changes whatsoever in the year and an half she's be in place. There's no 'DEI' to point at, there's nothing. There's no possible objections whatsoever. She's a solidly competent administrator and military who worked her way up the ranks. She doesn't seem to be out of her depth. She's exactly the sort of person the military should be lead by in peacetime, and her combat record seems competent too.
And, again, to repeat, they didn't give a reason. There is no stated reason for removing her. Probably because they didn't want to give their real objection, which Hegseth has stated in his book, in that he thinks she was confirmed for 'optics' instead of 'skill'.
There is, again, no evidence of this, there's no complaint about her actual command, and this what bigotry actually looks like...both these example.
You get minorities and women held to standards that white men are not, like how Fagan has not immediate magically erased something the previous Coast Guard Commandant did and was not even _fired_ over. And when there's literally _nothing_ they can point to about Franchetti, who seems just a very competent person who has done nothing wrong and in fact, not really done much at all except keep things running, like she's supposed to, and pretty much everyone seems happy with her, it's just sort a 'Oh, she must be a diversity hire and I will remove her'.
And to be clear, they are not 'lying'. That's not how bigotry works. They honestly believe that. They're just bigots who assume that anyone who isn't a white man couldn't have earned their position.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
It was a good thing. It was just a good thing that was pushed by an entire industry, the health insurance industry.
My point was that the only useful thing that the Democrats did was with full consent and at the _request_ of the industry they did it to. And any part of it that that industry would object to, like a public option, was off the table to start to start with.
--
I am, of course, exaggerating a bit by saying that it's the _only_ thing Democrats have done. CFPB was a useful thing, and it really was done over the objection of the industry. There have been other smallish things like that.
But there have been massive problems that absolutely no one has tackled that would be incredibly popular, but there are large entrenched interests sitting opposed to.
And it's easy to blame the Republicans for it, but the Republicans blocking the way cannot explain why they do not get out there and try, why Democrats do not come out with a comprehensive bill about, for example, stopping wage theft, and force the Republicans to stop it. Get on all the talk shows about this big problem, keep repeating it. Run against them next election on this failure to do it.
And the reason is: They do not actually want to do politics either.
On “From Fox News: AG Pam Bondi announces Epstein files will start to be released on Thursday the 27th”
Saying 'This will amount to nothing' is not pushback to the files being released, and I am baffled as to how you think that is the same thing. Pushback would be saying 'These files should not be released'. As far as I can tell, no one has said that.
Likewise, I can't figure out what you mean by 'accusations that there is something worth investigating as being evidence of a grand conspiracy'. Everyone agrees there was, indeed, something worth investigating, and it sure would have been nice if that had been investigated. By the TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.
Or investigated and prosecuted by Acosta, who has cleverly invented a claim about 'intelligence' that could have been investigated _by the president_. 'Hey, a guy in my cabinet says that Epstein worked for one of our intelligence services, it's too bad that I have literally no way to confirm that. Anyway, for my next order of business, I'm talking to the Director of National Intelligence.'.
Indeed, why _hasn't_ Trump stated that? He's put his person in at the CIA, and surely Acosta can explain who, exactly, told him that. Weirdly Trump has remained completely silent on all that. He could have done all that his first term, and Acosta could have maybe even not had to resign!
The fact that the _right wing_ has decided to focus on these files, and think they will reveal anything damaging about Democrats, so insane. This is an investigation that a _political actors on the right_ crippled and was never really done.
But, no, the left is not 'pushing back' on releasing the files, the left is just 'We're pretty sure this investigation was so curtailed that there's not going to be anything useful in these files.' No one says not to do it.
In fact, we can agree that Ilhan Omar is...reasonable left-ish, right? You probably think she is farther left than I do, but I think we can agree that, of all the House Democrats, she's in the top 25% farthest left, right?
Do I need to link to her tweet about how it's weird the AG won't release the files? (I actually kinda think she's trolling and doesn't really think anything will come from it, but it's the 'never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake, and maybe even encourage their supporters to yell support for mistake' trolling.)
"
Pushback on the left to releasing 'the Epstein files'? What? What pushback on the left do you imagine there is?
The right-wing echo chamber you live in is exceptionally hilarious when it confidently telly you things 'the left' is doing, Jaybird.
Most people on the left do not think there actually are 'files' that will result in anything and that this is nonsense.
There is a minority belief that that there are blackmail files collected by the FBI or something like that that are being used to blackmail politicians. (I am merely reporting this theory, I don't believe it.) They _also_ want these files released, as much as the right, although they are pretty sure that whatever the Trump administration releases will not be that.
There is a very thin sliver of _that_ conspiracy who thinks the blackmail of Democrats will be released and not blackmail of Republicans, which...honestly, the left sorta is in favor of, because at least those Democrats will no longer be blackmailed and at least some amount of rapists can be removed from office.
But, again, that's a pretty small conspiracy, and they aren't pushing back on the release anyway.
Where is this pushback? A few Democrats worried about forged files? Or harassment of witnesses?
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
Then why are you calling what you believe a 'conspiracy theory'?
'Person tries to launch a very stupid project that also incidentally violates Kickstarter TOS, has people try to convince her not to do it, she refuses, and her Kickstarter get, correctly, shut down due to complaints it violates the TOS.' is not a 'conspiracy theory'.
There's no conspiracy at all. Every part of that happened fully in the public. It's just stuff that happened.
This is like me talking about a conspiracy theory about the moon landing, and the conspiracy is: We put some people in a rocket and they landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.
That's not a 'conspiracy theory', that's the generally accepted thing that happened!
On “From Fox News: AG Pam Bondi announces Epstein files will start to be released on Thursday the 27th”
There is going to be stuff they haven't handed over, and it's all going to be things that the FBI doesn't consider evidence. Like the fact some agent spent a few hours looking into a conspiracy theory said online and concluded that there was nothing there, but some time was, indeed, spent on it and that time and lack of any outcome was documented.
People do not understand how many completely random 'leads' there are in investigations like this, and how most of them do not pan out and are not worth mentioning to anyone. "This conspiracy is trivially disproved by the actual evidence we have so far.'
So what is going to happen is all that nonsense is going handed over, and Bondi is going to release it, and a bunch of completely random stuff is going to come out, where the FBI looked into something and determined it wasn't real, that some people in the right-wing echo chamber think they can use to implication...I don't even know at this point. Bill Clinton? Oh no!
They're looking into this for some sort of smear campaign, they're going to instantly leap on 'The FBI looked into X for being connected with Epistein! He's guilty!' without bothering to mention that the FBI found no evidence at all. Which is how it always works, they generate the accusations, then they use the existence of the accusation to as proof there must be something there, and then they use the fact there was nothing there as a conspiracy.
But here's the kicker, there's a reason that wasn't handed over: There's going to be a _lot_ of looking into Trump. Or, worse, leads that _were deliberately not looked into_ and people can now look into.
And I'm tired of Democrats and the left generally operating in the realm of truth. So I say, we start lying, the exact same way, back. Because the FBI _was_ given information that Trump was linked to all this (Katie Johnson filed a lawsuit that was dismissed.), and unlike Bill Clinton, he is still relevant in politics. Is he actually guilty of using Epstein's girls? I have no idea, although he's done and said enough stuff that is so very close to it that I would be honestly startled if not.
But I don't care. We way way are outside the realm of 'actually guilty' with this administration, which not only launches baseless investigations against people but has pardoned people _literally found guilty in court_ and threatened judges for presiding over the trial that convicted them, and I'm tired of that only mattering for things Republicans say about Democrats. So the thing to do is to instantly leap on Trump's name being in those files, and keep hammering it. I think the framing should be 'Anyone found in those files at all should resign immediately from politics.'.
And they have, hilariously, backed themselves into a corner where they cannot withhold any of this.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
I love how everyone has decided that my technical clarification is me making a political point in opposition to whatever Jaybird's assumed political point was. Instead of just the clarification I said it was.
The events described are happening at Barnard College, not Columbia College. If you are unsure of that fact, you can look at the image in the linked xit, where the demands are to speak to the President and Dean of Barnard, not Columbia. Or you can just look at news reports.
The two colleges have a fairly complicated relationship to each other that no one understands, not even the two colleges. But they are legally two different schools, and two different locations, and as we are talking about people taking over a building, I feel it is important to distinguish where that building is, at minimum.
That is the entirety of the statement I am saying. I have said nothing else, either explicitly or implicitly. Nothing in what I said should be constructed to mean anything besides 'The events described are happening not at the location said, but this other location'.
"
Just to clarify, that's not Columbia, that's Barnard.
On “Musk vs Gore”
We in a discussion about Musk slashing the Federal government. Why are you talking about the University of Colorado, and why are you using the University of Colorado as an example of a department?
Anyway, no, that's not an attempt to 'hide'. As far as I know, this is the only part of anything Trump has done that applies to colleges:
Sec. 5. Other Actions. Within 120 days of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education shall jointly issue guidance to all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds, as well as all institutions of higher education that receive Federal grants or participate in the Federal student loan assistance program under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 1070 et seq., regarding the measures and practices required to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).
Those guidelines do not appear to have been issued yet.
This college has apparently decided that the Department of Education will likely have a problem with the name, at minimum, so has preemptively changed it.
Why do you think this is an attempt to 'hide'?
Do you think the college should assume the guidelines are going to be 'anything that every had the name DEI' should be removed? That the University of Colorado should just preemptively dismantle the entire department? That seems somewhat stupid.
Weren't you one of the people complaining the Air Force, having been ordered to shut down their DEI training, removed a video of the Tuskegee Airmen that was shown in it, despite that clearly being part of the DEI training and covered by the order? You complained this was 'mandatory compliance'.
But here, you're complaining about a university, _which has not been given guidelines yet_, tries to get ahead of the guidelines in the vaguest way (It seems clear the term 'DEI' is a problem, at minimum.), and you have decided that this is 'hiding' something.
What you think the University of Colorado should have done at this point in time?
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
The actual story: Person with no experience in something attempts to start a project in that field that might be incredibly dangerous to both herself and others, sparking a lot of discussion about this.
A person with experience who currently works in an non-profit in the field contacts her and tries to explain the bad aspects of this and various concerns people have. This attempt does not work.
The person with no experience in the community then has something happen that causes them to invent a conspiracy theory where the person who just talked to her, and in fact everyone around that person, were part of a conspiracy attacking her.
Where in this story, exactly, do you think 'open arms' should have been? There was a single failed conversation, and then a conspiracy started.
What is this, 'Zoe did not immediately manage to convince Candace of everything, ergo, everything after is their fault.'? I don't think that's how that works.
And why exactly do we think things would have turned out differently if they _had_? There still would have been the racist emails and harassment immediately after that, and for all we know Candace would have blamed Zoe _anyway_.
It was good, because it was an incredibly stupid project that would cause tons of harm because she didn't understand very basic things about how harassment worked on the internet. In fact, there was supposedly harassment _from the sample data_, that's probably what got Kickstarter to shut it down.
Here is someone talking about it in a very neutral way, staying out of conspiracies, _back then_, before Owens moved rightward: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/online-bullying-database-doxing-kickstarter-suspended/
To quote that article: Owens promised not to publish any addresses, emails, or phone numbers. In an interview with Vocativ, she said that the site would only collect accused harassers’ names, locations, employers, social media links, and current and former school information.
This is of, to be clear, anonymous accounts. We can, in retrospect, see how _astonishingly_ stupid her plan is.
I don't know what the doxxing rules exactly are on this site, I've never wanted to come anywhere close to them, but I'm pretty sure linking people's username here with their real names and employers would count as doxxing here. It certainly makes doxxing a lot easier. And 'Social media' links is just insane, because most people have _some_ social media under their real name and others under pseudonyms.
This is because, again, Candace Owens basically understood _nothing_ of what she was talking about. Her idea of the result of 'doxxing' appears to be 'the person might get some spam calls', not 'swatting' or 'employer gets harassed until they are fired'.
But I don't really know why I'm having to explain this, because _absolutely no one defends her project_. At all. This isn't some political question, where there are differences of opinion.
On “Musk vs Gore”
This is actual gibberish.
DEI programs make up almost _no_ amount of the budget, and a huge chunk of it is just normal HR stuff that has to be done anyway.
The reason that it is 'important' that they are being cut is that the cutting of it is accompanied by _overtly bigoted decisions_. It is, to use a word, 'signalling', and the thing is it singalling is that 'white straight men are back in charge'.
Ah, clever plan, if you don't actually link to anything, no one will point out how getting you're your news from liars on Facebook.
...you're okay with people who are doing a good job and who just got promoted being fired.
I guess that's how your sentence is supposed to end?
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
I just want to make it clear it's _even worse than that_: The ACA existed solely because the insurance industry needed it. It wasn't some last glorious grand thrust of 'The last right things the Dems did', it was 'the system is so broken that even the people paying the lobbyists started worrying about things'.
It's not just Obama, it's all the way back to Clinton, too.
For the last 35 years, neither party has gotten elected by presenting useful political ideas to the American people. Neither of them. At all. This is because the Republicans do not have useful ideas (Well, they were no longer _allowed_ to have them or they would be primaried...before Trump. Now, the only ideas they are allowed to have is Trump stomping on a human face, forever.) and the decaying-and-molding Democrats will do everything in their power to stamp out the useful ideas that their individual members might come up with. 10% of Dems are allowed to have good ideas, sometimes even say them in front of cameras, but nothing can ever come from it, and it will never be used nationally.
Instead, every election, the most 'charismatic' person on the ballot got elected. There were only two exceptions...the first was Gore and Bust, one who presented as incredibly boring and the other who often couldn't talk...and they, for all statistical purposes, _tied_. The other exception was when we got tired of the first term of Trump and elected Biden, but we weren't electing him because of his policies either.
Thanks to the wealthy getting what they wanted from Reagan, and collecting enough money to purchase both the political system and the media, we sorta just...stopped doing politics ~35 years ago, if by politics we mean 'actually electing people based on real things they promise and intend to at least attempt'. The system has been held in stasis, with Republicans unwilling to move, Democrats also unwilling to move but doing some performative struggling, and all of them just getting older because if you don't allow new ideas into the system, you also end up not allowing new people.
Which is why what is happening right now is such a shock. It's horrible and stupid, yes, but it's also a shock because it turns out things actually can change.
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You do understand the conspiracy Owens has is about the harassment, right?
It is not about who pointed out to Kickstarter that the project violated Kickstarter's terms of service by, essentially, being designed as a dox tool. That was reported to them by, at minimum, Randi Lee Harper. (Although it probably was reported by like half the damn planet, because her Kickstarter was being read as 'We will track down people saying stuff people don't like and dox them' by _everyone_. We can argue whether Owens meant for it to say that, but that's how everyone read it.)
Those two things are, uh, not at all the same things.
If I'm throwing a party with loud music, and someone reports me to the police, and someone drives by taking shots at me...that doesn't make them the same person. Especially if my loud music has angered half the town.
For people who do not understand what happened here, this article is illuminating: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/how-social-autopsy-fell-for-gamergate-trutherism.html
(I cannot believe I just linked to a Jesse Singal article. The phrase 'newcomers wander into the weirder, angrier corners of the internet without first reading a tour guide or two.' is honestly so hilarious and said without the slightest self-awareness of what happened to him later on.)
And a lot of the illumination reading that _now_ is that it now is 2025 and we now actually all know how these sort of explosive harassment campaigns start and exist and things they do. Owens...didn't. Yes, that's right, she was proposing her tool with literally no context of any this, because her experience was basically 'Some people sometimes said mean things on Facebook under fake names', not the absolute meltdown of GamerGate that was still sputtering along.
So she wandered into a situation she didn't understand at all, almost everyone got horrified at the idea of what she was trying to do (I cannot emphasis enough how no one, on any side, liked the idea.), Zoe Quinn reached out and tried to reason with her, pointing out it not only was a bad idea, but also that she needed to brace herself for when everything started, 45 minutes later the hate started, she decided that was Quinn, and everything from there on was just a gibberish conspiracy, eventually slipping into the conspiracy that Quinn was faking all the harassment to start with and that Social Autopsy would have exposed that.
I'm now actually interested if you believe _that_ conspiracy theory.
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