#supreme team

[alchemisoul]

50 Cent

"Ghetto Qu'ran"

Nas

"Get Down"

Early 50 Cent records truly showcased how fucking fierce he was when there was no plan b and nothing was guaranteed yet. You can hear how hungry he was and what he poured into it.

It's quite shocking how underrated and relatively unknown this song is considering how strong of a track and how interesting and influential the background anc content of the song was to his entire career.

It's pretty crazy how much his life could have gone in a completely different direction and how close it was to never happening.

I thought it was interesting that he brought up the Nas record as he was right on in the way that both tracks share in the unique way the offered unuque insight into the world behind the music in NYC and Queens specifically.

As well both record show these two at the top of their game over around the same point in time over amazing beats which showcased how influential the soulful samples were to the vibe and quality of the highest quality of hip-hop music that was coming out in the 2000's which was also synonymous with the keystone Jay, Kanye, Rick Ross, Dipset records of that era - which for my money is a sound that embodies the Golden Era of Hip-Hop as much as the 90's if not surpassed it.

[warhead]

[bonnoman]

Sup

[gupremacy]

city light

지금이 나의 삶의 반의 반쯤

어떠냐 묻는 말에 난 늘 하는 같은 대답뿐

다를 것 없어 i'm good

마치 너무 당연하단 듯 변함없는 나의 꿈

예전같이 아주 뜨거운 숨을 쉬지만

그 땐 이기려는 마음뿐이었지

어렸던 나의 눈엔 너무 비싸 보인

행복은 그 여자 손목에서 빛나던 Christian Dior

다 입고 있는 옷에 따라 성격이 변해

그게 이 도시의 첫 느낌

그 때쯤 내가 목표로 삼은 건

먹고 사는 짓 다음 단계의 모든 것

밤이 되면 난 다른 내일을 꿈꾸고

어제 같은 오늘을 봐 아침에 눈 뜨며

그대로인 듯 조금씩 움직여

성공의 바로 밑 어디쯤 현재 나의 주소

다 괜찮아 보여 이 길에 서있어 whatever 니가 있는 곳에 그대로 있어도 돼

잠시 어두워져도 불안해 하지마 wherever 날 믿어도 돼 그대로 있어도 돼

성공과 실패의 한 뼘 사이가 현재 나의 주소

그 둘의 첫 글자, 성실이 내 돈의 출처

3억짜리 집, 크레딧 카드는 purple swag

외제차는 없어도 두 발엔 항상 lebron x

뛸 준비가 됐지 errday

일한만큼 놀고 놀만큼 벌 땐

자존심을 안 팔아도 언제나 흑자인

나의 포지션 지켜낼게 끝까이

해가 뜨고 나서야 난 잠에 들어

대신 내 꿈 속은 하나도 안 어두워

기회란 놈도 잠이 없지 내 방을 노크해

기다려봐 좀만 더 자고 널 잡아볼게

앞자리수가 '3'이 됐지만 난 forever 'young'

가끔 이런 삶도 내게는 과분해 보여

멍 때리고 돈 뺏기던 공백기는 끝난 지 오래

이젠 매일이 내겐 comeback season

다 괜찮아 보여 이 길에 서있어 whatever 니가 있는 곳에 그대로 있어도 돼

잠시 어두워져도 불안해 하지마 wherever 날 믿어도 돼 그대로 있어도 돼

새로운 아침이 지나 기분 좋은 밤이야

고생들 했어 다들 잔 비워

한 여름의 낮 같던 나의 맘

식어버린 게 아냐 쉬고 있는 거야 마음 놔

stay cool, 어느 곳에 있든

stay cool, 어느 곳에 있든

stay cool, 어느 곳에 있든

잘하고 있는 거야 이대로만 해 내일도

많은 길을 돌아왔고

첨으로 다시 돌아갈 수도 없지만

끝이 어딘지 몰라도 난 괜찮다고 느껴

언제나 just sit back relax & take notes

sit back relax & take notes

sit back relax & take notes

sit back, sit back

다 괜찮아 보여 이 길에 서있어 whatever 니가 있는 곳에 그대로 있어도 돼

잠시 어두워져도 불안해 하지마 wherever 날 믿어도 돼 그대로 있어도 돼

[afrotumble]

Robert Townsend Recalls Making Hollywood Shuffle With a Credit Card

[sophfandoms53]

Shadow fans,,,, how are we possibly still alive right now like this is absolutely insane

[feroluce]

I love the fact that the Silvermane Guards are essentially just a very devoted "We Love Gepard Landau" fanclub, and I desperately need for all of them to get into ship wars about it behind their Captain's back. The soldiers are all split into several factions:

Some of them ship him with Sampo 🛡💣 (enemies to lovers/hateship enjoyers; this does not necessarily mean they like Sampo- in fact it's more like most of them want to sic their Captain on him skzjsmdm)

Some of them ship him with Bronya 👑🛡 (knight and princess trope enjoyers and also a sorta-kinda "that is our mom and dad" type of deal; this faction gets riled up and ridiculously hypes Gepard up to Bronya every time she comes down to the frontlines mskdkxmd)

Some of them ship him with the trailblazer 🛡💫 (the smallest and newest faction, but steadily gaining!)

Some of them ship him with Pela ❄🛡 (workplace romance enjoyers; Gepard once charged out into the Fragmentum alone to save Pela from an expedition gone horribly wrong, and when this faction saw Gepard carrying Pela back princess style they threw a whole party)

Some of them ship him with Dunn 🛡🗡 (also workplace romance; Dunn is very flattered by this because yeah wrong Landau, but wow, the troops really think he's good enough to woo the Captain, what an honor)

And some of them ship themselves with the Captain 🛡❤ (yumejoshi enjoyers; this faction throws a massive group effort every Valentine's Day and are also all very supportive of each other)

The final faction is an odd one, because they're defined not by who they ship their beloved Captain Gepard with, but rather by who they don't ship him with. Their name is generally shortened to the A.B.S. Group- Anybody BUT Sampo 🚫💣 DKSZJJSMSOZ

[mamawasatesttube]

the thing abt early timkon (yj-era) is that they never disliked each other. they liked each other so much! it's "i like this guy i think he's overall competent and a good asset to my team and he's nice to be around most of the time. BUT ALSO sometimes he opens his mouth and i just wanna stuff my boot in it", which to me is overall a MUCH funnier dynamic than just rivals or whatever.

like. they're 15 and all they know how to do is bicker like an old married couple. kon tries to do something nice for tim and tim's pissed because he thinks kon is calling him incompetent. tim opens his mouth and kon's like oh my god shut up im gonna put you through a WALL. a third party insults either of them and theyre both like what the FUCK did you say about my bestie i'm gonna kick your ass!!!!!!

it's their "get out of my school" era. the "picking on you to get your attention" era. the "stealing your food just to piss you off teehee >:3c whatre you gonna do about it?" era. and yet they'll also doze off on each other's shoulders on the sofa. they contain multitudes. (every multitude is a stupid teenager, screaming endlessly into the void.)

[el-ffej]

THESE TWO (do crimes, have fun):

Comedy Gold.

[lion-buddy]

big last few days for the bnuuy fandom

[keymintt]

more art fight stuff! these fellas belong to @beatcroc, @the-nerdy-bard, @porcelllio, and @confusedlucifer !!

[ngdrb]

What has happened to the Republican Party? Why have they abandoned all their principles and beliefs and become so extreme? 

In recent years, the Republican Party has undergone a significant transformation, veering away from its traditional principles and embracing a more extreme ideology. This shift has left many questioning the party's direction and has drawn criticism from both sides of the political aisle.

The Abandonment of Traditional Republican Values

Historically, the Republican Party has been known for its commitment to fiscal responsibility, limited government, and a strong emphasis on individual liberties. However, in recent times, the party has seemingly abandoned these core tenets in favor of a more divisive and polarizing agenda.

Fiscal Responsibility

Once a hallmark of the Republican Party, fiscal responsibility has taken a backseat to other priorities. The party's stance on deficit reduction and responsible spending has become increasingly inconsistent, with many Republicans supporting policies that contribute to growing national debt.

Limited Government

The principle of limited government, which advocates for restraining the size and scope of the federal government, has been overshadowed by an expansionist approach to executive power and centralized authority.

Individual Liberties

The party's traditional commitment to individual liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy, has been called into question by some of the party's more extreme positions on issues like immigration and civil liberties.

The Rise of Extremism

The Republican Party's shift towards extremism can be attributed to several factors, including the growing influence of fringe groups, the polarization of political discourse, and the party's embrace of populist rhetoric.

Influence of Fringe Groups

Fringe groups with extreme ideologies have gained a stronger foothold within the Republican Party, shaping its policies and rhetoric. This influence has contributed to the party's move away from its traditional values and towards more extreme positions.

Polarization of Political Discourse

The increasingly polarized nature of political discourse in the United States has played a role in the Republican Party's shift toward extremism. As the divide between the two major parties has widened, the Republican Party has become more ideologically entrenched and less willing to compromise.

Embrace of Populist Rhetoric

The party's adoption of populist rhetoric, which often focuses on creating divisions and appealing to emotions rather than facts, has further fueled the trend toward extremism.

Conclusion

The Republican Party's transformation has left many questioning its future direction and its ability to appeal to a broad range of voters. As the party continues to grapple with internal divisions and external pressures, it remains to be seen whether it will return to its traditional values or continue down the path of extremism.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red-teaming the SCOTUS code of conduct

Tomorrow (November 18) at 1PM, I'll be in Concord, NH at Gibson's Books, presenting my new novel The Lost Cause, a preapocalyptic tale of hope in the climate emergency.

On Monday (November 20), I'm at the Simsbury, CT Public Library at 7PM

Last April, Propublica's Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski dropped a bombshell: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had been showered in high-ticket "gifts" by billionaire ideologue Harlan Crow, who subsequently benefited from Thomas's rulings in the court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow

This was just the beginning: in the coming days and weeks, more and more of Thomas's corruption came to light, everything from the fact that his mother's home had been bought by Crow, to the fact that Thomas's adoptive son went to a fancy private school on Crow's dime:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus

The news was explosive and not merely because of the corruption it revealed in the country's highest court. The credibility of the court itself was at its lowest ebb in living memory, thanks to the two judges who occupied stolen seats – Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. One of those judges – Kavanaugh – is a credibly accused rapist. Thomas is also a credibly accused sexual abuser:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/30-years-after-her-testimony-anita-hill-still-wants-something-from-joe-biden-514884

Then, this illegitimate court went on to deliver a string of upsets to long-settled law, culminating in the Dobbs decision, which triggered state laws that force small children to bear their rapists' babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/health/abortion-bans-rape-incest.html

That was the context for the Thomas bribery scandal, which was swiftly joined by another bribery scandal, involving Samuel Alito's improper acceptance of valuable gifts from Paul Singer, another billionaire who brought business before the court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court

This string of scandals and outrages naturally prompted public curiosity about the Supreme Court's ethical standards, and that triggered fresh waves of incredulous outrage when we all found out that the Supreme Court doesn't have any:

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-doesnt-the-supreme-court-have-a-formal-code-of-ethics/

When Congress made tentative noises about providing minor checks and balances on the court, the justices erupted in outrage, telling Congress to go fuck itself:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/supreme-court-ethics-durbin/cf67ef8450ea024d/full.pdf

Chief Justice Roberts went on whatever the opposite of a charm-offensive is called (an "offense offensive?"), a media tour whose key message to the American people was "STFU, you're hurting our feelings":

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/roberts-defends-high-court-against-attacks-on-its-legitimacy

To the shock of no one except billionaires and Supreme Court justices inhabiting the splendid isolation from societal norms that is the privilege of life tenure, America didn't like this. The Supreme Court's credibility plummeted. A large supermajority of Americans – 79%! – now support age limits for Supreme Court justices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

Support for packing the Supreme Court is at an historic high and gaining ground, now sitting neck-and-neck with opposition at 46% in favor/51% opposed. Among under-30s, there's a healthy majority (58%) in favor of appointing more SCOTUS justices.

As Roberts' wounded bleats reveal, SCOTUS is very sensitive to its plummeting legitimacy. After all, the court doesn't have an army, nor does it have a police force. Supreme Court rulings only matter to the extent that the American people accept them as legitimate and obey them. Transformational presidents like Lincoln and FDR have waged successful wars against the Supreme Court, sidelining its authority and turning it into an unimportant rump institution for years afterward:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#blitz-em

Now the Supremes are working their way through the (mythological but convenient) five stages of grief. Having passed through Denial and Anger, they've arrived at Bargaining, with the publication of the court's first "code" "of" "conduct":

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf

It's…not good. As Max Moran writes for The American Prospect and The Revolving Door Project, the proposed code amounts to "security theater," a set of trivially bypassed strictures that would not have prevented any of the scandals to date and will permit far worse in the years to come:

https://prospect.org/justice/2023-11-17-supreme-court-objectivity-theater/

The security framing is a very useful tool for evaluating the Supremes' proposal. The purpose of a code of conduct isn't merely to prevent people from accidentally misstepping – it's to prevent malicious parties from corrupting the judicial process. To evaluate the code, we should red team it: imagine what harms a corrupt judge or a corrupting billionaire would be able to effect while staying within the bounds the code sets.

Seen in that light, the code is wildly defective and absolutely not fit for purpose. Its most glaring defect is found in the nature of its edicts – they are almost all optional. The word "should" appears 53 times in the document, while "must" appears just six times:

https://ballsandstrikes.org/ethics-accountability/supreme-court-code-of-conduct-hilariously-fake/

Of those six "musts," two are not pertinent to ethical questions (they pertain to the requirement for a justice to get prior approval before getting paid for teaching gigs).

When the code of conduct was rolled out, the court and its apologists pointed out that it was modeled on the ethical guidelines that bind lower courts. In the wake of the Thomas revelations, these guidelines were a useful benchmark to measure Thomas's conduct against. The fact that other federal judges would have been severely sanctioned or even fired if they had engaged in the same conduct as Thomas was a powerful argument that Thomas had overstepped the bounds of ethical conduct.

But as Bloomberg Law discovered when they compared the lower courts' codes to the Supremes' draft, the Supremes have gone through those lower court codes and systematically cut nearly every mention of "enforce" from their own draft. They also cut the requirement to "take appropriate action" if a violation is reported.

If you are a bad judge or a bad donor, all of this is good news. Nearly everything that it condemns is merely optional, which means that if a judge can be convinced to ignore a rule, they won't have violated the code. What's more, even widespread rulebreaking doesn't trigger an investigation. That's a very weak security measure indeed.

But it gets worse. The Supremes' code also omit key definitions found in the codes that bind the lower courts. The most important definition to be cut is for "political organization," which the lower courts define expansively as both parties and "entit[ies] whose principal purpose is to advocate for or against political candidates or parties." That definition captures "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups" – the whole panoply of organizations whom federal judges must maintain an arm's length distance from in order to preserve their objectivity. Federal judges may not lead, speak at or donate to these organizations.

By omitting this definition, the Supremes open the door to involvement with precisely the kinds of PACs, thinktanks and other influence organizations funded by the billionaires who have benefited so handsomely from the judges' rulings.

What's more, the Supremes carve out an explicit exemption for speaking to "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups," and to serving as a director, trustee or officer of "a nonprofit organization devoted to the law, the legal system, or the administration of justice and may assist such an organization in the management and investment of funds."

As Moran points out, this exemption would cover – among other institutions – the far-right Federalist Society, which satisfies all those criteria. That means a Supreme Court justice could sit on the board and raise funds for the FedSoc without raising any issues with this code – not even one of those squishy "shoulds." Nothing in this code would stop Clarence Thomas or Thomas Alito from accepting lavish gifts, private jet rides, or luxury tour buses from billionaires with business before the court:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/justice-thomas-267000-loan-rv-forgiven-senate-democrats-104303972

As Moran writes, these definitional vacuums are a well-understood class of weaknesses in ethics codes. Congress gets a lot of mileage out of this ruse – for example, by narrowly defining "lobbying" to exclude things that most people understand that term to mean, Congress engage in improperly close relations with lobbyists while still maintaining that they hardly ever talk to a lobbyist at all:

https://www.politico.eu/article/jeff-hauser-opinion-watergate-european-union-qatargate/

The same ruse goes for campaign contributions – if you want to accept a lot of campaign contributions that would fall afoul of ethics rules, just narrow the definition of "campaign contribution" until all the money you're receiving no longer qualifies.

Moran closes by calling on Congress to formulate a real, meaningful code of conduct for the Supremes, one that orders Supreme Court judges not to accept corrupting gifts and to maintain the arm's length neutrality that the rest of the federal judiciary is required to keep. Rather than this new code of conduct constituting proof that SCOTUS can be its own oversight, its gross deficiencies should put to rest any question about whether the Supremes can be trusted to regulate themselves.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/17/red-team-black-robes/#security-theater

Image: Senate Democrats (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Supreme_Court_Building,_July_21,_2020.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[vertigoartgore]

1992's Marvel Comics Presents Vol.1 #102 B cover by Sam Kieth. Source

[punkeropercyjackson]

I just saw someone say Hobie never smiled onscreen and only smirked

?????????????

[manisha999]

#संतरामपालजी_का_अयोध्याभंडारा

श्रीराम जन्मभूमि अयोध्या में संत रामपाल जी महाराज के पावन सानिध्य में सतलोक आश्रम द्वारा अलौकिक भंडारे का आयोजन किया जा रहा है।‌।