Funny events in anti-woke world

BrawlMan

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I think he's just an intensely arrogant man with limited social skills and underdeveloped maturity whose success and lack of limitation has led to a overconfidence and overambition. As a swashbuckling entrepreneur, this isn't so much of a problem.
It is when the idiot keeps fucking things up for everyone.
As someone who seeks to interfere in social and political matters so much, he needs to be firmly slapped down.
Agreed.
Elon Musk has the mentality of a child.

He also has a philosophical understanding of free speech little more developed than a 16-year-old, and no significant conception of the difficulty of social media's task balancing free speech against harms to individuals - as is abundantly clear by him inadvertantly setting a Twitter mob on an employee of the corporation he intends to buy.

Musk stating that he would reverse Trump's ban is precisely why he cannot be trusted with Twitter, because he is indicating that he should be the final arbiter of what should and should not be on Twitter. In other words, declaring that he is dictator of his own private concern. This is inconsistent with the notion of "public space" that he also says he aspires to.
I don't actually think he's malicious.
Whether he is aware of it or not, what Musk is doing is a form of maliciousness. There is a term called obliviously evil, even I am not giving him that benefit of a doubt. The douchebag knows what he is doing wrong, but Musk does not care. It's that exact problem of letting bratty, rich, adult-children in charge, because they got an overinflated ego and can't take any form of criticism. So they screw over anyone just to make themselves feel better, and rather fuck the world, than do any self reflecting or admitting they're in the wrong.
 

Cheetodust

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For the record this is what happens when misinformation is let run rampant on social media. The idea that social media is a "public square" and everyone gets equal say is absolutely nonsense when well financed propaganda machines are always going to have undue amounts of power. It's another freedom that only makes us equal in theory, but in practice when there's massive wealth inequality and a handful of oligarchs can compete financially with entire countries there is no chance of the power being distributed evenly.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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How are these people a serious political party?
Perhaps by a broken dishwasher Matt Schlapp means that his house-servant fell ill because he/she couldn't afford private medical care on the minimum wage Matt was paying, and the delay is a new one from Vietnam or Honduras or wherever getting a visa.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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Greenwald is another getting filed under the "supremely punchable face" collection of bad faith opportunist kunts whom is best avoided directly looking at when they speak, for future blood pressure's sake.


Pennsylvania might be needing an urgent wellness check


The two main contenders for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania took a short break from savaging each other this week to train their collective fire on an unexpected rival who is experiencing a surge in popularity in the eleventh hour of the high-profile contest.

In fact, on Wednesday afternoon, it seemed like anyone with a Fox News show or a follower count in the six-digits on MAGA Twitter is speaking with the same voice: if Kathy Barnette wins the primary Tuesday, she is going to lose the Senate seat to a Democrat.

But for Barnette—a previously little-known author whose only other political credit is a landslide congressional defeat in 2020—all the attacks just showed that leading candidates David McCormick and Mehmet Oz think of her as a threat.


“I think I see it as a badge of honor,” Barnette said. “They’re actually paying attention to me.”


McCormick and Trump-endorsed Oz weren’t the only ones startled by Barnette’s sudden rise.

Sean Hannity took time on his show to slam her attacks on Muslims, including her claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim.


Newsmax’s Greg Kelly called her a “race card playing scammer.” Former Trump acting intelligence director Ric Grenell called her “unfit for office,” highlighting a 2015 tweet in which Barnette said “pedophilia is a cornerstone of Islam.” Pro-Trump accounts have circulated a misleadingly edited video meant to portray Barnette, who is Black, as a radical Black Lives Matter supporter.

Conservative media outlets have stirred up murky questions about her military service. Even Trump got in on the action on Thursday, putting out a vague press release claiming Barnette would lose a general election because of “many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted.”

But Barnette said she isn’t concerned about the questions about her background.

“As some people say, I’ve got receipts,” Barnette said.

Tuesday’s Republican primary was expected to come down to McCormick, a businessman, and Trump’s pick, Oz. But a pricey ad battle between the two leading candidates and a viral video about Barnette’s life story have created an opening for the little-known author and failed House candidate who now polls roughly equal to her rivals.

A Fox News poll conducted between May 3 and May 7 put Barnette at 19 percent, McCormick at 20 percent, and Oz at 22 percent—a three-way tie in the poll’s 3 percent margin of error.

It’s the second time in two election cycles Barnette has been on the ballot. In 2020, she lost a general election bid for a House seat by more than 20 points. That loss and her thin political experience appear to have convinced Republican operatives that she would struggle in the Senate primary. But her sudden rise has upended the GOP race, which for months has been a brutal one-on-one cage match between Oz and McCormick. The two have spent at least a combined $28 million to date—with associated outside groups dumping another $25 million in ads—making this the most expensive congressional race so far in this midterm election cycle.

Republican operatives from Washington to Pennsylvania quickly mobilized this week in a mad scramble to dig into Barnette’s record for potential lines of attack. By Wednesday night, a pro-Oz super PAC was running ads on YouTube attacking Barnette for once circulating a petition to create a statue for Barack Obama, part of an oddball compromise Barnette once proposed to save a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. In a Wednesday appearance on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show, McCormick pointed to Barnette’s 2020 defeat as proof that she’s a guaranteed loser.

“She’s been tested,” McCormick said. “Even the last two years, she ran for Congress and lost by 20 points."

Trump, himself, weighed in on Thursday in a statement, saying she “will never be able to win the General Election” and reminded his followers that Oz was his pick.


Barnette’s recent rise has been powered in the primary in part by a video in which she lays out her background as the product of her then 11-year-old mother’s rape to argue for sweeping restrictions on abortion, including in cases of rape. But Barnette’s story may have inspired Republican voters, her hardline stance against abortion even in the case of rape might not play so well in the general election. Other potential general-election weaknesses included her ties to Jan. 6, her attacks on Muslims and LGBT people, her campaign’s unwillingness to discuss her background, and her flirtations with QAnon.

Barnette refused to concede her 2020 congressional defeat to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D), hiring an amateur election fraud “expert” only to fire him after the man failed to find compelling proof that she had been cheated. She chartered three buses to take people to the Jan. 6 protests in Washington, claiming in a Dec. 22, 2020 Facebook video that the country was being stolen from Trump supporters.

“Fight, fight, fight,” Barnette said. “This is our country. This is not their country. This is our country.”

Later in the video, Barnette blended a reference to Christmas family dinners with a militant call for Trump supporters to use a “sword” and prepare for Jan. 6.

“We will enjoy our families with our sword drawn,” Barnette said.

Barnette, who was in Washington the day of the riot but claims she didn’t enter the Capitol, has since tried to distance herself from the violence, calling the riot a “hoax” on Twitter. But in an April 2022 interview with a Pennsylvania TV station, Barnette insisted she didn’t call the riot a hoax after all.

“I don’t recall ever saying that,” Barnette said.

“It was a tweet,” one local TV reporter said.

“I don’t recall — no, January 6 was a day, and what happened, happened, on that particular day.”’

Barnette has also dabbled in the QAnon conspiracy theory. In her 2020 congressional campaign, she embraced “Save the Children,” a QAnon front movement that hijacked the Facebook hashtag “Save the Children” after moderators started banning hashtags related to the conspiracy theory. In her 2020 campaign, Barnette posted frequently about Save the Children, putting her campaign logo on stock photos of children bound with rope or with their mouths gagged to suggest that her opponent was weak on child trafficking.


‘I will not forget about the children,” Barnette wrote in one post. “We cannot continue to ignore this evil that is being perpetrated on our children.”

Barnette also has a history of making anti-gay comments. In 2013, she led a group called Truth Exchange Ministries that appeared at anti-gay marriage protests. In a blog post, Barnette called being gay a “culturally degenerate lifestyle.”

“Can we, as a nation, co-exist with the Homosexual Agenda?” Barnette wrote. “No, we cannot and will not for long.”

Barnette went on to compare LGBT people to “robbers” and “extortionists,” and claimed the “homosexual movement” has a goal of “domination.”

“Make no mistake about it, homosexuality is a targeted group in the Bible, right along with cheats, drunkards, liars, foul-mouths, extortionists, robbers, and any other habitual sin,” Barnette wrote.

Barnette even appears to have posted online about not wanting to fly on the same plane as a lesbian woman.

“Please PRAY for my babies and me,” Barnette wrote in a March 2013 tweet. “We are about to board the place (sic) to California and there's a homosexual female…”

Barnette has also joined a growing Republican movement to restrict the voting rights of people who move out of blue states as some kind of punishment. In a Dec. 23, 2020 Facebook post, she wrote that California and New York transplants “should lose your voting privileges for a minimum of 2 years.”


“It’s only fair that you should suffer the consequences of your voting habits,” Barnette wrote.


As Republicans look to undermine Barnette’s bid, right-wing media outlets have stirred up questions on a key part of her resume: her ten-year service in the military. Conservative news outlet The Washington Examiner published a story this week noting that Barnette’s campaign refused to answer basic questions about her life, including her hometown and her military career. The Washington Free Beacon, another Beltway right-wing site, followed up and reported that Barnette’s campaign manager hung up on a reporter when asked about her military record.

For now, though, it appears Barnette was telling the truth about her service. Late Wednesday, Barnette provided The Daily Beast and other outlets with documents that purport to show she served in both the Army Reserves and the Alabama National Guard in the 1990s. A spokesperson for the U.S. Army confirmed the National Guard service to The Daily Beast, though the military office responsible for verifying the Army Reserves information did not respond to a request for comment.


In an interview, Barnette blamed the kerfuffle over her military service on the fact she was in Pennsylvania’s rural Elk County on Wednesday and unable to get cell phone service to provide campaign staffers with her military documents.

Though there may be plenty of material to work with, even the well-funded front-runners may not have enough time to air the entire oppo book to voters before Tuesday’s primary.


With the influential conservative group Club For Growth fueling Barnette’s late surge with a $2 million spending commitment, there’s a sense that she could vault into the top spot. If that were to happen, Democrats and many Republicans agree that Barnette would be uniquely positioned to turn Pennsylvania from a top-tier battleground into a likely flip for Democrats. Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a prolific fundraiser, is likely to win the Democratic nomination.

Barnette could be a headache for Senate Republicans even if she wins. In a recent appearance on Glenn Beck’s show, Barnette said she would support Beck’s calls for top government officials to be arrested, and suggested she wouldn’t back Sen. Mitch McConnell as the party’s Senate leader.

The only Democrat who knows what it’s like to run against Barnette is Dean, who defeated her easily in 2020. Dean watched as Barnette embarked on her quixotic crusade to prove, somehow, that rampant voter fraud was the reason she lost, and she has been paying attention to her previously longshot campaign for Senate.

“If somehow she wins the nomination, we will see through the course of the campaign, she simply doesn't have ideas that match our state's values,” Dean said. “She just doesn’t.”

Other Democrats are salivating at the prospect of facing Barnette in the general election.

“I’m sure many of us are hoping she sustains it and wins,” said T.J. Rooney, the former head of the state Democratic Party. “Because she’s certainly — [it] would be very tough to elect her.”
Can I just single out that last bit...

Other Democrats are salivating at the prospect of facing Barnette in the general election.

“I’m sure many of us are hoping she sustains it and wins,” said T.J. Rooney, the former head of the state Democratic Party. “Because she’s certainly — [it] would be very tough to elect her.”
This was how trump won, you fucking detached sociopaths! Never underestimate the power of radicalised spite, ffs!
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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On Feb. 23, a resident of Otero County, New Mexico sent a worried email to one of the county’s three commissioners.

“My neighbor was a volunteer for [children’s aid group] CASA and she recognized someone who came to her door asking how she voted in November 2021 as someone who either was convicted or pleaded guilty to sex with a child,” the Otero County resident wrote. “She is terrified. She has grandchildren she cares for. Did the County perform background checks on the volunteers going to voters homes?”

The email came in reference to a then-ongoing “canvass” of local voter rolls, as part of an “audit” of Otero County’s 2020 presidential election. Like a previous effort in Maricopa County, New Mexico, the audit attracted a conspiratorial crowd that had falsely attributed Donald Trump’s reelection loss to voter fraud. As part of the audit, a conspiracy-promoting Telegram group, the New Mexico Audit Force (NMAF), was commissioned to knock on locals’ doors and ask them questions about their 2020 votes and their voter registrations.

A new tranche of Otero County communications, first obtained via public records request by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, sheds light on locals’ concerns about the home visits.

Within an hour of receiving the email complaining of an alleged child sex offender knocking on doors, the Otero County commissioner forwarded the message to the county’s attorney, R.B. Nichols. Nichols quickly texted Erin Clements, leader of the NMAF.

“Erin,” he wrote, “got a question from a resident. Is audit force doing background checks on volunteers?”

“No,” Clements wrote back. “we’re not doing formal background checks. Please have this person call me if they’d like to discuss any concerns they have.”

Email records show that Nichols passed Clements’ phone number to the concerned resident.


Reached by phone, Nichols told The Daily Beast that Otero County had not investigated the allegation about a convicted sex offender.

“The county’s position is that those were volunteers,” Nichols said of canvassers. “We weren’t supervising or running the canvassing. Those were all volunteer efforts.”


The Daily Beast was unable to verify the allegation of a convicted child sex offender knocking on doors in connection to the audit. Clements did not return a request for comment, and denied a version of the allegations in a February email to the local sheriff.

The exact nature of the NMAF’s involvement with Otero County and the audit has been subject to dispute. Emails between Clements and county officials show that she and the NMAF discussed a possible audit in November 2021, where she said that the audit would likely cost the county $30,000. A December email from Couy Griffin, a pro-audit county commissioner who was recently convicted for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, indicated that he thought the county could approve the audit “if it stays under $50,000.” Later that month, emails show, Clements presented the county with a proposal for an audit led by EchoMail, a tech company that had previously worked on the chaotic Maricopa County audit. Her estimated costs for the audit had increased to $49,750—just shy of Griffin’s $50,000 limit.

In January, Clements and her husband David gave a presentation on behalf of EchoMail at an Otero county commission meeting, during which they outlined plans to rescan ballots and knock on Otero County doors. At that meeting, Nichols expressed concern that the audit and canvas would expose the county to legal vulnerabilities.

"I have reservations and my recommendation right now would be not proceeding with the audit,” Nichols said at the time. He went on to cite potential issues with canvassers representing themselves as county officials.

“Are these volunteers representing the Commission when they are doing this?" Nichols asked the Clementses, who had stated that NMAF volunteers would be conducting the canvas. "Those are some things that we need to flesh out. Because some people are not going to like someone coming up to their door and asking them about where they're registered to vote, how they're registered to vote... Some people could see that as intimidation."


“I want arrests, I want prosecutions, I want firing squads.”


The canvas’s current status is murky. EchoMail quietly withdrew from the audit in March, announcing that it had found no evidence of voter fraud. EchoMail has denied contracting with the NMAF and an attorney for EchoMail told The Daily Beast last week that EchoMail was unaffiliated with David Clements.

Despite EchoMail’s finding of no election fraud, at a Otero County commission meeting on Monday David Clements claimed the NMAF canvas had unearthed troubling discrepancies in voter rolls. (A similar “canvas” report connected to Maricopa County’s audit was roundly debunked.) A county official at the meeting described the Clementses “and their organization” as continuing their canvas efforts independently. The Alamogordo Daily News reported that the canvas was allowed to continue.


During his presentation, Clements downplayed EchoMail’s finding of no fraud, attributing the tech company’s pullout to multiple investigations against it. He blamed one of those investigations, by the House Oversight Committee, on a previous Daily Beast article, which he said introduced new allegations that NMAF volunteers had misrepresented themselves as county employees. In fact, that article noted that the allegations were not new, but had been formally raised by both New Mexico’s secretary of state and its auditor’s office, the latter of which had launched its own investigation.

At the time, the New Mexico secretary of state had received between 40 and 50 complaints about Otero County canvassers, while the state auditor had received approximately 20.

While David Clements attributed the complaints to one woman who filmed an NMAF canvasser and uploaded the interaction to TikTok, Otero County officials have signaled their own concerns about NMAF canvassers misrepresenting themselves as employed by the county.

In a recent draft resolution that was never ratified, Otero’s three commissioners proposed language stating that “we understand and appreciate that New Mexico Audit Force partnered with Echomail to provide volunteer services in furtherance of the 2020 Election Audit directed by this commission. However, we want to ensure that NM Audit Force and its volunteers are not misrepresenting themselves as county officials to Otero County residents. For the continued duration of your canvassing efforts, we request that your volunteers clearly identify themselves as volunteers with NM Audit Force.”

Emails reviewed by The Daily Beast show even more complaints, including the allegation that a pedophile was involved in the canvas and a complaint from a man who said that canvassers had repeatedly misrepresented themselves as county officials.

“I was visited yesterday by two ‘Otero County Canvassing’ officials, as they stated they were,” the man wrote. “They wanted to ask me a few questions. I answered on my video doorbell, and stated I was not interested and to have a good day. The gentleman pressed me to answer a few questions, again I stated I was not interested and to have a good day. Upon leaving the lady stated ‘Did you vote, it says here you voted.’ This is all on video and record. They clearly represented themselves from ‘Otero County Canvassing.’”

The man called the interaction an act of intimidation.

Otero County residents have previously voiced concern about the distribution of their voting information to door-to-door canvassers—a concern intensified by comments made by NMAF leadership. At a recent meeting about audit efforts, David Clements announced that “I want arrests, I want prosecutions, I want firing squads,” for people found to have stolen the 2020 election.

The NMAF was aware of such complaints as early as February. That’s when Nichols forwarded the complaint about an alleged sex offender to Erin Clements. That’s also when Clements filed a complaint to the local sheriff, accusing one complainant (the TikTok user) of inciting threats against her. As evidence, Clements included the TikTok footage, and voicemails she’d received from aggrieved locals.

A sergeant who reviewed the case did not agree with Clements’s description. “In these voicemails I was unable to locate a specific threat aimed directly at Mrs. Clements,” the sergeant wrote in a police report, adding that the TikTok video did not include a call to harass Clements. “(I) believe they all acted independently,” the sergeant concluded.

The attached voicemails reveal more locals’ complaints about the canvas.

“What the hell are you doing with people’s personal information?” one woman said in a voicemail reviewed by The Daily Beast. “Signature cards and everything like that. For all I know, you’re a sex criminal!”

The NMAF is also not the first conservative canvassing group to field complaints about alleged impropriety toward children. In an internal handbook, the Colorado-based conspiracy group U.S. Election Integrity Project previously disclosed an apparent penchant for attracting predators. In the handbook, first reported by the Colorado Times Recorder, the USEIP said it had conducted basic social media checks, but that unsavory characters had slipped through the cracks.

“This process was in place for many months, until we learned (roundaboutly) that there were a couple of people in our group, who were volunteering for our events, who had a criminal history of sexual misconduct,” the USEIP handbook reads. “Since our events are always open for people to bring their kids, we couldn’t continue to be so relaxed in our approach [...] It’s unfortunate that we must check volunteers for pedophilic leanings, but welcome to 2021.”

It is unclear whether the NMAF implemented any of its own background checks after receiving complaints in late February.

In a separate late-February email to the sheriff, Clements said that she had received a phone call from a woman complaining of a known predator participating in the canvas.

“She claimed that a friend of hers opened the door one day and a known pedophile was at her door - by himself presumably,” Clements wrote. “I asked for the name of this pedophile. It wasn’t one of our volunteers. I suspect she’s making up the whole story, but I was very clear this person wasn’t working with us.”
Links removed from text cos there is no justice
 
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BrawlMan

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Links removed from text cos there is no justice
If that pedo had done something to one of MAGA's kids, or a friend/ally they would have known who he was instantly and send him off to prison. These heartless, hypersensitive, hypocritical bastards are using pedos to to intimidate people and their children. These assholes can't even be described as a less than decent. That would be too positive giving them credit they didn't earn. They're going to hell and have their genitals ripped out. 24/7.
 

Hades

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Greenwald is another getting filed under the "supremely punchable face" collection of bad faith opportunist kunts whom is best avoided directly looking at when they speak, for future blood pressure's sake.
Greenwald confuses me. On one hand he revealed that Bolsonaro and the judiciary conspired to jail Lula and usher in a far right regime, but on the other hand he seems a simp for other far right figures in almost all other instances
 

Cheetodust

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So there's a baby formula shortage in America and the right are demanding foreign babies starve to death? Cool, you guys are one more blackout away from going Lord of the Flies aren't you?

Anywhere I can donate baby formula to the immigrants? No offense, but i think it's time we just let the US wind down. You're not capable of being civilised.
 
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Gergar12

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I dont know if I could stand these two opposing idiots debate....

Should there be a reason why I should watch any of this?
WhatifAltHist left the debate early to one hour, and they ended up talking past each other.

Edit: One hour
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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For the record this is what happens when misinformation is let run rampant on social media. The idea that social media is a "public square" and everyone gets equal say is absolutely nonsense when well financed propaganda machines are always going to have undue amounts of power. It's another freedom that only makes us equal in theory, but in practice when there's massive wealth inequality and a handful of oligarchs can compete financially with entire countries there is no chance of the power being distributed evenly.
I agree. It's diabolical that the Clinton campaign spent $1 Million to pay people to spread misinformation and troll and attack people online.
 

Gergar12

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So this is why we don't have healthcare. It's very cool tho.