#trump name means lies

[isawthismeme]

[lizardsfromspace]

The factchecking this cycle has been so profoundly incompetent that it's finally getting some real backlash, but the extent of it really should be clear. So much of factchecking is not based in reality, but in a kind of contorted moon logic that can find true claims to be false and false ones to be true based on wildly inconsistent reasoning.

But this one really shows off some of the base assumptions of modern factchecking, and also bc it got a community note which is funny:

Let's take this one by one

The idea that quotes have any options but "he said it" or "he didn't say it". It is a binary, maybe with a third option of "it was clipped wildly out of context", but something you see constantly now is the idea that quoting someone's direct words without deceptive editing or removal of context can somehow be false

Pointlessly noting that it's from 2016, and that it's not clear if he currently believes it. What the hell does that matter to the question of if he said that in 2016? People understood that the "dig up someone's tweets from when they were 17" thing was inane, but they counter-balanced by apparently deciding that citing anything someone said more than about six months ago is Misinformation if we don't have objective evidence they would say the exact same thing now, even if there's no evidence they believe anything else. Analyzing someone's high school tweets and analyzing something the literal President said seven years ago are not equivalent

Noting that he walked it back following criticism. You see this constantly, too. Again, what does that matter to the question of if he said it? But this is just taken as a given now: if someone gets blowback and says "whoops I didn't mean it", that should be taken at face value. Effectively, Politifact is letting Donald Trump self-factcheck Donald Trump: their only evidence (and I read the article too) this is at all false is that Donald Trump said Donald Trump didn't really mean the words he said, so they must agree with the judgment of Donald Trump that Donald Trump was treated so unfairly here.

A general confusion over what factchecking is. If you're asked "did Donald Trump say this in 2016?", your sole job is to determine if he really said that in 2016. It's not to divine if he, deep in his heart, still believes it now. That's completely irrelevant.

The two guiding principles of modern factchecking are this: one, it's strongly rumored - and also, obvious to everyone literate - that the major factchecking sites have either standing orders to find equal numbers of lies on both sides, or are staffed by people who think it's their job to hold both sides equally to account (the exception is Snopes, whose writers are just terrible at their jobs). In the name of this, Donald Trump can say something on camera only for it to be judged false, while a Democratic politician can be excoriated for mildly rounding down a figure in a speech. A factchecking website once determined that saying climate change was a threat to life on this planet was a lie, because climate change won't kill all life on this planet. Politifact's lie of the year one year was a Democrat saying a Republican plan would "end Medicare as we know it", which was judged to be a lie because it wouldn't literally end Medicare completely. Figurative language needs to be scoured, comments said directly on camera need to be made fuzzy. This makes factchecking sites worthless at factchecking, because what even is this?

It's not true that Donald Trump will refuse to accept the election results, because he's merely said he won't accept, and has said if he loses, it's only because the election was fraudulent. Okay, what, do you demand that people prove he said his plans in exact words? What is the actual, functional difference between "he said he won't accept it" and "he said if he loses it's because he won and they stole it from him, and he won't commit to saying he'll accept it"? What are you talking about, who is this for? When you go to the Logic and Reason Site for Debunking & end up having to puzzle out their convoluted logic and reasoning to understand anything, the plot's been lost a bit

The other is the idea that context is exonerating. Any context at all. If they said they didn't mean it, partially false. If they walked it back, partially false. If they said it was taken out of context, partially false. If they said it a certain number of years ago, partially false. If there's a longer video, even if it shows functionally the same thing, pants on fire, five pinocchios.

Again, we have footage of Trump saying this, and the footage in the ad is unedited, and the factchecking website is declaring something that OBJECTIVELY HAPPENED WITH HARD EVIDENCE IT HAPPENED didn't really happen bc we don't know his heart, maybe he believes something different now, we simply can't know for certain. But we do know for certain. Because "false" at least used to mean "didn't happen". But factchecking sites are now on those Beyond Belief definitions of "true" and "false" I guess

But the real problem here is that they just accept anything someone being factchecked says at face value. Because, and I can't believe I'm saying this

It seems like the people paid to determine if other people are lying...have forgotten that people lie sometimes

[prozach27]

The idea that voting for Harris and Walz means you don’t care about Gaza is such an uneducated position that it can just about only be justified as a psy-op. What exactly is it that you think voting is for? If it’s to show where your idealistic morality lies - what you would really LOVE for America to look like with a president - then of course it makes sense to not want to vote someone who isn’t as critical as you’d like of the Palestinian Genocide. But that’s not the world we live in. As American citizens, we are IMMENSELY privileged, and we cannot possibly understand the horrors and tribulations Palestinians have endured over the last year. The idea that Trump and Harris are “equally bad” for Palestine is a position of immense privilege that doesn’t value Gazan lives. Trump has told Israel to finish the war. Harris is calling for a temporary ceasefire. From a purely logical perspective, one party is promoting a position that could save Palestinian lives while the other is asking for an escalation of events. If you can’t see the difference between these two positions - the real-world, life-altering difference between these two positions for people in a war-zone - then it’s time to ask yourself if you’re morally grandstanding by demanding nothing less than a complete end to the war, or if you’re more concerned in saving even one additional life.

There is no 3rd-party presidential candidate with enough name recognition to make it in this election. If you want a third party, by all means, support them after the election and help them get a foothold. That doesn’t change that they’re not a viable option for 2024. So, do you choose Trump - who wants to escalate the war - or Harris, who wants to help it calm down? These positions are fundamentally different and will lead to changes in the number of Palestinians who survive. Leaving the Palestinian genocide aside, Trump and project 2025 have made it clear how they want to limit abortion access, higher education, transgender rights, gay rights, and DEI efforts while the Harris White House wouldn’t be trying to actively dismantle these things. These are, once again, clear cut issues that will alter how many people survive under each presidency.

If your position is that “unless they give exactly what I want, they don’t deserve to be in office,” then it’s clear you’re not willing or interested in making the actually hard choices in politics and your activism is performative. You aren’t voting for who’s a good person or who you like most - you’re voting for the enemy you want in office. Do the right thing. Vote for Harris and give people a chance to save more lives.

[karenandhenwillson]

I think I figured out, at least for myself, why the 9-1-1 fandom and part of the Buddie-or-Bust side of it feels so much more toxic than ever before when I know for a fact, those demanding Buddie has to become canon and who are looking for any tiny clue to be able to say it will become canon have always been this toxic. (I mean, with the exception of some people who came into the show because with Buck being bi the show was suddenly not queerbaiting anymore--lol, it hurts even just writing this as if it were really true--and then became die-hard Buddie fans or at least pretend to be to garner enough followers and clicks to make money out of fandom. But I'm not talking about them here.)

Before Bucktommy, there was no real opposition for them in the fandom. Buck and Eddie both had other LI and those had their fans (I know for a fact there are still people now shipping Buck with Taylor or Buck with Marisol or Eddie with Shannon). But those were very few fans and they created their own little spaces in fandom places and were barely noticeable. So the Buddie-or-Bust fans were able to mostly ignore them. And there have of course also been some small fanon ships for Eddie and Buck with other people, but those are barely noticed either.

But Bucktommy? That got huge in practically an instant. Because so many people were excited for bi story line with an established character and one in Buck's circumstances (not even Buck himself). And the Bucktommy fans were loud about their support of this new canon ship. So Buddie-or-Bust fans suddenly felt threatened and became much louder in their hate for anything not Buddie. Because now, for some reason, the fans of the other ship seem to be a threat to them. And also, for the first time for any of the LI of Eddie or Buck, they made an honest effort to set up Tommy and the relationship with him as something long-term. Which the Buddie-or-Bust fans recognize just as much as the Bucktommy fans, and so they try even harder to find fault in every single thing.

And that did change something in the behavior of the die-hard Buddie fans. At times, I've been neck-deep in Ana bashing, in Shannon bashing, in Taylor bashing, in Chimney bashing, in Abby bashing, in Maddie bashing. Because I enjoy a good bashing at times. It can be very cathartic. But you know what I've never seen there? I've never seen any of those characters being called derogatory names. Or their fans being called derogatory names and, in most cases, their fans didn't retaliate to the bashing either. (Though, at least for Chimney fans they sometimes very viciously go against people even just mentioning they don't like him and it came up a couple of times that Chimney fans found derogatory names for those bashing Chimney because that group of fans also seems to be unable to avoid content bashing their fav and instead sought it out deliberately to complaint about it.)

I can't even count anymore how many derogatory names I've seen for Tommy or Bucktommy or Bucktommy fans. They seem to come up with a new name every other day. And they enjoy trumping each other in their creations and using those names to get around the boundaries others try to set for themselves by filtering out the already known names.

And I already see people coming at me with "Oh, but Bucktommy fans started it by calling us BoBs." and just: No. Once more, you get an F in reading comprehension. It's always been made very clear that BoBs stood for Buddie-or-Bust and I personally don't see anything derogatory here but also, it's always been made very clear it's a specific subset of Buddie fans who behave poorly to separate them from the Buddie fans who don't care about Bucktommy. Because those people using that term are very well aware that there are really just a couple of very loud bad apples in the Buddie side of fandom and the rest of the Buddie fans don't deserve to be lumped in with them. While, on the other hand, all Bucktommy fans are always called names as a whole.

And I think their biggest problem is not even necessarily the "threat" they perceive Bucktommy to be to their own ship, though that's clearly a big part still. Otherwise, they wouldn't come after authors and artists and other fans who once shipped and created for Buddie and are now creating for Bucktommy. And otherwise, they wouldn't tag so many Buddie fics as Bucktommy, too, in some kind of strange hope to convince Bucktommy fans to ship Buddie again. (Without noticing that all they are accomplishing is to make everyone annoyed at them. And yes, that includes those Buddie fans who don't care for Bucktommy at all because they need to curate the Buddie tag very carefully now, too.)

I think their biggest problem is this belief that their ship is only valid if it's canon.

Which is so strange. Fandom has always mostly been about ships that are very much not canon. And no one ever expected their ships to become canon in the past, as far as I know. (Except if it was promoted and then didn't happen. Looking at Sterek here.) Canon ships barely get any attention. I mean, look at all the 9-1-1 ships that are canon, including Tarlos, and how little content there is for any of them, and also how little engagement there is for this content compared to Buddie. That's always been a trend in fandom, that's not new with 9-1-1.

It's not only strange, I also think it's honestly sad for these fans. Because they have deliberately set themselves up to be disappointed and dig that hole of disappointment ever deeper. Even if Buddie should ever go canon, which I honestly don't think will happen, it won't be at all what they expect. And they'll either leave the fandom or turn on the ship they were so toxically addicted to before.

[azzy-the-christian-furry]

Further proof the republicans aren’t going to “save us” and are just democrats under a different brand name-

The abortion issue.

Aka, republicans admitting they don’t have a spine to stand for the unborn criticizing Arizona’s pro life decision.

Trump said it was bad.

Kari Lake said it was bad.

You know what makes me hate republicans even more than democrats?

At least the democrats are outright evil, by which I mean they don’t even bother hiding how absolutely demonic they are- easier to identify them as an enemy that way. Republican Party, though? They’ll spoon feed you little lies about how they’re so pro life and so pro rights.

Big rant and all. Screw both of your parties.

No, libertarians, this doesn’t mean you’re the good guys either. You guys tend to have candidates equally as bad on this particular issue.

There is only one hope we have. Jesus Christ is that hope.

[mandysblog85]

Trump's Ready To Pick His Running Mate After Conviction, Debate, And That Supreme Court Immunity.

Written by: Amanda Diallo

Date: July 23, 2024

After former President Trump was found guilty on May 30th on 34 counts in a NYC federal courtroom, he became the first President in American history to be convicted. It came after falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He has called the entire trial a witchhunt, rigged, and a hoax. Even said it was Biden's rigged trial. Blaming Biden's administration for the trial. Calling the federal judge of the trial names after the judge put a gag order on Trump.

Last week a Florida federal judge dismissed the classified documents' case against Trump. This came after Trump's assassination attempt on July 13 at a rally in Pennsylvania.

On 11 July, Trump was supposed to be sentenced after the 34 counts trial. Now the new date is 18 September.

On June 27th, the hard-to-watch debate which took place in Atlanta where Trump and President Biden faced off. The 90-minute debate became hard to watch because of Biden. CNN hosted the debate, Biden looked older, frail, and weak, he couldn't even put many words together, and it looked bad. Stuttering, mumbling, fumbling, it was bad. After the debate, the media went all out on Biden. A month later more top Democrats are calling for him to drop out of the race. Many said Trump won the debate, aside from him telling lies after lies. Biden lied as well.

Trump also got full immunity from the Supreme Court earlier in July. This means the court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch. This news made the left very concerned and angry. They said this made him a "king".

And on July 15th the first day of the RNC (Republican National Convention) Trump finally picked a running mate. He chose 39-year-old Ohio Senator JD Vance. Making history as the youngest running mate. Vance has led an interesting life. His humble upbringing, military life, attending Yale University (where he met his wife), being a politician, and now he could be the next VP of the United States. Vance also admitted that he was not always a Trump fan. A skeptical Vance turned around and now Trump's running mate.

VP Harris already gave jabs at Vance, stating he wouldn't be loyal to the country, but only to Trump. But at the same time couldn't wait to debate the 39-year-old Senator.

While many more Democrats are asking for President Biden to drop out of the race, Many (on the right) want Trump back in office to put this nation back together.

[tomorrowusa]

Jim Wallis is an anti-racist Protestant theologian. He thinks that Trump's Bible grift is just one of the Orange One's religious issues.

Donald Trump has gone from using the Bible as a prop to turning our Holy Scriptures into a commodity. Words no longer suffice for the things he says and does with the most common word for his personal, political, and presidential behavior being unprecedented. But I have some better words—religious words. I and many other faith leaders are willing to accuse Donald Trump of two more things. The first is idolatry—false worship. The White Christian Nationalism that Trump proclaims, directly names the problem. First, the most inclusive and welcoming message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is made white by the marketer-in-chief of racial grievance. Second, the word Christian is distorted beyond recognition. Service, sacrifice, and love are replaced with control and domination with Trump’s religious disciples unapologetically aiming for control in their “Seven Mountain Strategy”—with right-wing Christians ruling government, business, media, education, family, arts/entertainment, and, of course, religion. And in direct contradiction to Jesus' instruction to his followers to make disciples in every nation, Trump’s faith will be nationalism, not just positively loving your own country, but asserting the power of one nation over others. [ ... ] The second word is heresy, which means drawing Christians and others away from Christ. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement deny the truest and deepest teaching of Jesus in places like his Sermon on the Mount. Trump’s worship of wealth and utter disregard for the poorest and most vulnerable brings the judgment of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel Chapter 25, “As you have done to the least of these you have done to me.” And the life of lies that Donald Trump has led and deliberately spread to the damage of our nation completely contradicts Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John: “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”

Here's the burn.

To invoke God, Mr. Trump, in the making and selling of your Bible is a very dangerous thing—not only for the soul of the nation but also for yours. You once said that you never have felt the need to ask God for forgiveness in your life. You might want to reconsider that now.

[mellosdrawings]

I understand how you think about the three theorizes since it is possible it might be true or not. I do think Crowley is hiding something since he is most mysterious one among them all but isn't sure if he truly is related to Malleus, Ace being a traitor is hard to believe since he shows to truly care about his friends (this is the same guy who got back to school during winter break and have to take public transportations because he is worried about Yuu and Grimm) and the only thing I can think of his betrayal is as if Ace is doing it because he cares about them like imagine Ace not wanting Yuu to leave Twisted Wonderland as a sign of separating ties, and the timeloop is hard to tell if it is true or not.

I also think that Ace is mysterious for many reasons besides the last name. His dislikes of oysters and knowing the story behind it indicating about lies, he also have a thing with twisting truth with lies especially coming from his brother, and so one. And given Halloween events are foreshadows of the upcoming main chapters like in the second halloween event shows Malleus being a threat from his magic and so is Glomas, Ace has shown to be brutally honest and a trickster that it makes me think of a possibility in play.

I do agree with a lot of this and Ace is definitely a trickster and a liar but... I mean, that's the case for a good third of the characters. Jamil is n°1 liar, Kalim is also surprisingly efficient at keeping to himself, Rook is shifty af, Cater is a whole mystery by himself, Azul, Jade, Lilia, etc.

I think people obsess over him because he hasn't yet had his time to shine like Deuce even though he's been with us since the prologue. For me he's more of a trump card, a joker to be used at the very last moment with a UM that shifts the situation. Not a traitor in the sense that he's going to mess us over, but a wild card that's been kept in the game's sleeve and will be revealed as late as possible.

(Also a little note: In Trappola, the Ace is the most valued card, while the Deuce is the least valued, but if you win the last game with a Deuce you get a whole bunch of points on top of the regular points. It works well with Deuce's UM who makes him go from an usually pitiful mage to wild card that reverse a situation.)

[1americanconservative]

Victor Davis Hanson

@VDHanson

President Biden—the Matter Is Not  Over, Not Now, Not Ever President Biden Thursday night hit rock bottom as he gave a mean-spirited distortion of the special counsel’s report. And in the process, Biden further embarrassed himself, his toady press, and the country at large. In sum, the press conference disintegrated into an embarrassing free-for-all. Note the following: 1. To prove that he is cognizant, and does not believe that some dead European leaders are still alive, Biden assured us that President el-Sisi of Egypt was actually the President of Mexico, and almost seemed to believe that the Gaza corridor to Egypt was on our southern border. The more he talked, the more he confirmed Hur’s conclusions. 2. Biden lost his temper and finally lashed out at the special counsel who all but ruined his own reputation by straining to find any reason not to indict a sitting president. Biden should have thanked him for using the mentally incompetent defense to keep a sitting president out of jail. 3. Weirdly, the usually comatose, obsequious White House press finally woke up Thursday night. It was embarrassing that the jig is up and sycophants want to reboot as journalists before they are utterly discredited for participating in one of the great farces of the age: namely, Joe Biden was never mentally fit and was used as an empty vessel and a supposedly moderate veneer for his hard-left controllers—the Obamas, the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing, and the Squad sorts. The con worked for three years but tonight it started to fall apart. 4. The media understands the self-created fix the Democrats are now in: Biden is either cognizant and thus according to the prosecutor likely guilty of violating national security laws, or he is cognitively challenged and therefore unfit to continue his presidency. Take your pick—dangerously demented or guilty of violating his nation’s national security laws? Or both? 5. Otherwise, Biden gave a very brief but characteristically disingenuous defense of his violations of the law, with his old ritual of trashing Trump. In fact, the Biden and Trump cases are as different as they are similar: Mar-a-Lago is a far more secure location than Biden’s garage; Biden had no prerogative to declassify documents unlike President Trump; Biden took out the files for over a decade, Trump for less than two years; It was not Biden’s civic virtue that led to disclosure of the files, but the Biden Justice Department’s effort to turn a bureaucratic/civil dispute over classified presidential papers into a criminal indictment of Trump. That move prompted a cynical preemptive effort to avoid the charge of hypocrisy, given inevitably Biden's years-long violations would then logically come to light. 6. Biden flat-out lied about the Hur report. It did repeatedly document that Biden was mentally challenged; it said unequivocally that Biden willfully knew he was breaking the law by removing classified documents; and it noted specifically that the Afghan materials were in fact classified as “top secret”. Biden is a pathological prevaricator and lied every time he referenced the Hur report. 7. Screaming, insulting, blaming staff, claiming he had to focus on presidential business, self-righteous—all that scapegoating only further convinced the country that the Biden classified files scandal is not over. It is a spark to a fire that is about to burn out of control. God save us all.

[qqueenofhades]

*peeps my 19 year old head in the door* Why does everyone hate Bush so much? In school (two years ago) all we learned about his presidency was 9/11 and us invading the middle east afterwards, and ... not much else. Did he not invade the Middle east because of 9/11? And wasn't Obama a war criminal too? Why is Bush singled out?

Obama is not a war criminal. That is a disingenuous, bad-faith argument used by the Online Leftists TM who I have often critiqued. There are valid criticisms and questions to be asked about his foreign policy overall, but it is not an actual, definable war crime such as the Bush administration enabled and facilitated in the invasion of Iraq particularly, which was based on thoroughgoing lies about "weapons of mass destruction" and committed widespread atrocities, with the direct knowledge of Bush and members of his administration such as powerful Vice President Dick Cheney. I suggest reading up on Abu Ghraib and its prisoner abuses by the US Army and the CIA, the private military company Blackwater and its mass murders of Iraqi civilians (for which Trump later pardoned them), Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), and Halliburton, just for a start. These systemic abuses, especially at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, were explicitly defended by the Department of Justice in the "Torture Memos." Let's not forget Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for whom there is an actual legal case to charge with war crimes due to the Bush years. (They can't, because he's dead, but still.)

This should also mention the Patriot Act, the War on Terror, and the other disgraceful large-scale changes that made unprecedented mass surveillance and spying on civilians legal across America, in the name of "fighting terrorism." The war in Afghanistan went on for 20 years, achieved nothing except a lot more atrocities and actual war crimes, and wasn't even relevant to catching Osama bin Laden (who was eventually found hiding in a plushy Pakistani suburb and taken out.... in 2011, by the Obama administration). So yes. There's a lot there for you to educate yourself, and you will see what I mean.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Do you think Louis will be more upset at Armand for using his mind gift to make Louis turn Madeleine? I read that part on here somewhere and considering Louis saying that was the last of his humanity leaving when he turned her, I figured he would be more upset lol I think Louis just told Armand not to do it again. 🤣 Or does Louis just not care because he’s in love. I’m really interested in that part .

Sooo, the part you're referring to is this one, right (a discussion between Armand and Louis, prior to the trial):

“ ‘But if it’s any consolation to you...surely you realize I had a hand in it.�� “ ‘That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you... yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ I said. “ ‘No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this? “ ‘No!’ “I bowed my head. “ ‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ he said softly. ‘But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it....’ “ ‘I loathe what I did!’ I said. “ ‘Then loathe me, not yourself.’ “ ‘No. You don’t understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn’t even know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!’ “ ‘But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn’t be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn’t be rage in your voice,’ he said. “For the moment, I couldn’t answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak again. ‘You must never force me to do something against my will! You must never exert such power...’ I stammered. “ ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at some threshold. There I am powerless. However... this creation of Madeleine is done. You are free.’

I think this Louis will be more upset, yes.

However, I think the scene in the show will mirror the quoted discussion... in the break-up scene. Because Louis refuses to leave Claudia, despite Madeleine's turning. (We'll see, but I think that's this scene:)

I'm... just not sure whether it will include this admission of forcing Louis.

Because, Armand still does this in Dubai. He says: "I protect Louis from himself, always have." So maybe that admission will be something that will happen later. And the vow not to force him again never happened.

Though, tbh, it happens again in the book as well, he spell-binds Louis to leave the theater after the trial

And Armand’s eye said, Sleep.

and there is this comment from Louis later on that when Armand finally tells him that Lestat isn't dead after all that the veil that is between him and the world is suddenly thinner:

But when I heard this now from Armand it was as if the veil that protected me were thin and transparent, and though it still hung between me and the world of feeling, I perceived through it Lestat, and that I wanted to see him again. And with that spurring me on, we returned to New Orleans

So Armand obviously doesn't quite ... honor that promise as he should.

Personally I think that Armand likely kept Louis from bigger emotional outbursts. At the very least.

In the show the apology in episode 2 comes to mind, for the tear. Louis "resting" in-between. Armand coming and calming down Louis. Armand always watching.

So yes, when that falls away? When Louis will not buy into it all anymore?

I think he will be very upset. (What did Jacob say in the recent interview? Dubai would be explosive?)

Of course it will depend heavily on whether he suspected before and what the interview is actually for. Is it because he needs some kind of trump card to force Armand's hand? Or his own? Of course Daniel would be perfect for that, and of course using Daniel's relationship to Armand is a double-edged sword as well, given their history.

IF Armand did promise Louis not to force him again... then this Louis will definitely be beyond pissed when he can break free.

And, depending on what he will find when he does break free - that might be devastating for him. And then... things will likely unfold.

Given what is to come this will only be one aspect of the whole mess though and so... We'll see :). I do think the show has already hinted at all this, and I also think Jacob has done so in the last interview.

And wrt to him being in love... I do not doubt that Louis will fall for Armand, maybe even head-over-heels for a while. But that will shift, through all that happens. And a lot of things will weigh much heavier than that infatuation. The time after the trial is wrought with pain, and Louis trying to numb himself. And we have literally only had a glimpse... it will be very interesting to see what has to happen for this Louis to stay with the one who kills his daughter.

I think Jacob spilled the beans already a bit when he mentioned that Louis would choose that relationship "again" - that happens in the books as well, that Louis does go back to Armand at some point, and I do think that this is what we see in Dubai.

So no, I do not think Louis doesn't care because he's in love.

I think there's a lot more to it and I don' think they'll shy away from it^^.

[darkmaga-retard]

By Jonathan Turley JonathanTurley.org

September 4, 2024

We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest.

Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Indeed, he has given a voice to the rage in calling for others to be silenced or arrested.

Elon Musk has long been the primary target of Reich and his allies after dismantling the censorship system at Twitter, now X. Reich called Musk’s purchase of Twitter with a pledge to reduce censorship to be “dangerous nonsense.”

Notably, Reich’s friend, Hillary Clinton, was one of the first to call for a crackdown on Musk after his purchase of Twitter.  Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans.

Reich has always shown a chilling fluidity in how free speech is protected and argued that public interest should be able to trump the right of any citizens in espousing views that he believes are dangerous.

In denouncing Musk, Reich encouraged a campaign to counter his efforts to resist censorship. He wrote that Musk “may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.”

Like Hillary Clinton, Reich is calling on foreign governments and censors to silence American citizens including Musk: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

[angel-sweets666]

you wanted more so I'm gonna lurk and give it to you! I chose this particular story because it has a lesson in it that I think every shifter, beginner or not, should keep in mind when shifting and working on their scripts. This is gonna be a long one so buckle up!!

Last year when bnha s6 was airing, I felt extremely motivated to shift so I lied down and got to work! I ended up having a lucid dream where I was in a helicopter over a destroyed city (I had just caught up to the anime and finished the episode where Tomura destroyed Jaku hospital) and I decided it was a good a time as any to shift!! Lucid dreams are an alternate state of consciousness so shifting can be easier! A lot of people suggest making portals to your dr in your dreams but I suggest the "falling through the floor" method because it's simple and worked for me the first time I used it!! Basically you just jump through the floor with the intention of shifting

so I'm in the helicopter in my dream, I jump out and fell to the city below with the intention of shifting when I hit the floor, thinking hard about what I wanted in my dr and what reality I wanted to go to!! As I'm falling I see these white blobs in an infinite, black void, they're blinking and rapidly expanding and shrinking in no particular order (I usually get these when I'm shifting or close to shifting) and then as I'm falling, the blobs transform into different memories from my bnha dr and every single memory was a childhood memory of AFO. I didn't see anything like children's toys or a crib that cued me in on the fact that they were childhood memories, I just kinda knew. It was the same way you'd know the color of your eyes or your name without having to think about it, a fact that you didn't need to double check.

After falling through a few memories of AFO, I "settled" in what I could tell was some sort of core memory. The other ones kinda just flashed by me but this one I felt like I was LIVING IT!!

I, or I guess the child version of me, was outside. The sky was blue, there were a few clouds in the sky. All For One was in front of me, I could see the tree tops above him and around us. He stood in front of me and held his hand out to me as he spoke. He spoke Japanese and he spoke it with this weird, knowing grin on his face. I don't know what he said because I don't speak Japanese in this reality, but judging by the context clues, I know it was something similar to what happened to Tomura. When he was done speaking, he grinned evilly at me and then the memory ended.

Now for a bit of context, back in Dec 2020-Jan 2021 when I was naive and less knowledgeable about shifting, I scripted that my parents were S and A class villains, about on the same level of the Paranormal Liberation Army, and that I was being raised to surpass AFO but was adopted by a member of the hero commission after my parents were arrested and ended up going down a different path, choosing to be a hero. What I HADNT scripted was any past or relationship with All For One so it was really jarring for me. I was under the assumption that my parents didn't know him personally, that maybe they had one sided beef with him. Kinda like Endeavor's goal of using his kids to surpass All Might, but obviously that wasn't the case seeing as AFO had access to me as a child.

I ended up getting a spiritual reading done on it a few weeks later and I learned that my parents in my dr made a deal AFO involving me, that I was their bargaining chip and I was "promised" to him. Apparently he didn't want Tomura anymore because I was the key to everything he had ever wanted, I was his trump card!! I learned that instead of being born to surpass him, I was born to "become him", again I'm guessing he means it in the same way he's using Tomura's body as a vessel for his own consciousness. I don't know what exactly they made a deal about or why, just that I'm a major part of it. AFO actually implied that me getting adopted and taken away wasn't as accident, that my parents tried to hide me from him because they wanted to protect me. I don't have all of the answers yet.

Moral of the story: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SCRIPT!! Your dr is a reality just like this one, you cannot control 100% of what goes on there and the things you script may have unintended consequences, some good, some bad. Be mindful of what you're scripting because one event and snowball into something catastrophic if you're not careful. I'm not saying don't script connections to villains or certain events, I'm just saying think about what scripting it might entail, how it effects your life in that reality, the people around you, and their feelings about it. Every action has consequences, just like this reality!

I accidentally set myself up because I wanted a cool backstory in my dr. I'm not going to change my script because I want to learn about my past in that reality and because I was told there was a lesson to be learned in my relationship with AFO. I'm gonna see it though, but you don't have to.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SCRIPT!! I hope this story motivated those interested in reality shifting and deepened their understanding of how real it is, that it's a real life you'll be living!! Happy shifting everyone 💝

omg thank you for this warning, I didn’t actually think of it that way. I was mostly scripting some basic stuff about me, yk like I can’t get pregnant unless I’m like 100% I want to. Yk that sort of stuff but I was just about to get into my backstory, tysm for this I rlly appreciate you

[9w1ft]

Sharing my random thoughts since you asked for asks! You don’t have to respond. But I was noticing those articles of Karlie finally commenting on Taylor again came right around the time Biden was being pressured to drop out of the election and the Democratic Party seemed to be scrambling a bit. I feel like the friendship groundwork is being laid to be ready in case Trump is actually re-elected and KK is thrown back into the fire by association. His win in 2016 changed so much for them. Thoughts?

i did ask for asks! 😆

in a way i think what you are suggesting is a little bit paradoxical because if they were operating under the same manual and all things being equal, then the threat of a trump win would have had them laying the groundwork to distance themselves again, not the opposite.

that being said, times are sort of different. and priorities are different, in a way. i could write so so much and if people have other points to bring up please do, but ill just write a little.

one thought i had was that last time around they did not know what a trump presidency would mean, only what we could predict, and now they have something to look at as an example. also, jared had played a notable public role in trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, so the win had immediate optic implications as well as logistic implications to anticipate. this time around, jared isn’t on the trail, and is reported to not want a role in a possible second term. i think ivanka did show up at the rnc last month though and brought jared with her.

to circle back to my second point, i just hope that people consider that a lot of this sort of maneuvering or salvaging or pivoting that they might have done following the 2016 election results might not even really apply this time because they are in a different stage of life. biden’s win in 2020 is an example of this. trump being out and a democrat being in marked the end of a lot of worries and barriers that we assume they put up. but with the pandemic and time spent out of public, i get the sense there was a lot of introspection and reevaluating that went on and we can see that one or two little things entered their lives. now, the stakes are a bit different regardless of who is in office.

taylor’s fame is different in scale now too. i don’t think i have to delineate that for anyone here. but i want to say that it feels like it’s nearly reaching “too big to fail” levels

also, one other point i feel compelled to bring up is that while karlie has gone on to maintain haters, all of all this for the past 8 years has by and large not stopped her ability to succeed with her business and creative endeavors. i recognize not everyone’s gonna agree with me on this because it’s a sort of core talking point that is ingrained in a lot of kaylor thinking, but i do recommend people take a step back to look at this from a birds eye view. even just since 2019. karlie has continued to be the face of a perfume in carolina herrera and even repped the brand at the met gala, she became the face of a cosmetics company in estée lauder and still does campaigns for them, she did a line of sportswear in adidas and has continued being the face of products in the health and fitness sector, has continued to expand her forays into the tech sector, has done stuff for many LVMH luxury brands, looking camp right in the eye has become a meme with longevity that she herself has embraced, re-signed with swarovski and repped them at the met gala, has expanded kode with klossy and created many opportunities for her scholars via her connections with all of these brands that she works with, including people like tim cook, and shes got connections to people like bob iger, she helped arrange a tech panel for the white house, she continues walking the runway when she wants at the biggest events where otherwise she gets invites to, like paris fashion week, she continues doing couture fashion spreads, she now owns two magazines, had a street named after her, like, i could go on and on and maybe someone out there is hemming and hawing about project runway but i sometimes feel like people try to equate what people on the internet feel to what the business world feels about karlie and to push that her bearding ruined her image and prospects.. when in fact she’s continued to do so many thing that surely wouldn’t have happened if this association (and for the “see how you didn’t say kushner!” crowd ill say it, her kushner association) was seen as an actual problem to her clients, that actually have working relationships with her and know her. please understand that im not making this a conversation about values. im looking at the actual business reality and any affects there have been, which i would contend there have been less than people often imagine.

all of this to say, i am very much not convinced that the prospects of a second trump term are a driving factor in their decision making this time. i think it’s more about them deciding if it would be valuable to them personally, a net positive in their own lives, to be seen again. and i happen to think a little bit of this is on us to help provide for them. as a proof of concept. a window for them, in a way, in what could be best expected, if any good should be expected all. but that’s a tangent for another time, methinks.

[bookishtheaterlover7]

Chris lost just about 9k in 1 day. He no longer is his old brand. This ship, if you think it's pr or real or a mix, destroyed much more than his career, but it also destroyed his reputation. You have no right talking about safety on campus for Jews or African Americans if you're married to a Nazi. That's like saying yiure a vegetarian but owning a slaughterhouse where you get deliveries from.

If you ask people what they took out of the 3 apperances abiut ASP the inky thing people mention are these:

His ring

Him saying Gen z belongs in the back

His hair

And the racist antisemtic "wife" making his actions and appearance seem ungenuine. I want to believe that he isn't someone who mislead everyone about hia beliefs. This isnt republican vs democrat. This isnt even trump vs not trump. This is Nazisim and thats who hes "aligned" himself with. And thats who people see him as noe, and i mean who he is is now that. ASP wont save him another Captain America mlvie couldn't even save him. If thisbtruely is a ship he can get out if he needs to and then try and pick up the peices and rebuild whatever is left of his brand. I want to believe we weren't folled. I know he's not a boy scout and i think when he had cursed it was hot. But theres a difference between being human and not proper all the time and lying about believing in equality for all races and religions.

I dont see an issue if he does weed

But i do have an issue with Nazi-ism.

The only things hands have to hold onto to prove that he is a decent person is:

how sick he has looked since thris started as

the issues with the ring,

names not being used

TMZ not finding any legal documents/verifiying

Those are it.- if the later two ehich are the most important ones occure loke names being used or TMZ finding/verifying his whole career is over. Aure hell get work here and there but his co stars are doing amazing things and he'll be a footnote in 5 years but Tom Holland Hemsworth, RDJ and Tom Huddleston and Scarlett Johansson won't be.

Even if Disney/Marvel does another oG Avengers proj. doubt Chris will be involved if this ship true. Spokemanships & even chsrities have distanced themselves. Marvel has a great way to make sure the movie can be made without chris. After all cap was on the run for a while he looked for Bucky for a while....

His career of being an A or B kist where he makes at least 1 movie a year will be over. And it rests on wither or not this is real and if he lied about beliefs.

CHRIS owes un nothing

And we DON'T owe him our loyalty.

Well-said, An🫶n.

[uboat53]

Well, I've been writing this up piecemeal but this seems like a good time to pause and do a LONG RANT (TM) about what's been dominating political news lately.

INTRODUCTION

For those who aren't aware, the president had a bad debate. At the first debate he sounded confused and disconnected as opposed to his opponent who confidently spouted a torrent of lies without hesitation. Since that event, multiple people have come out with stories about him appearing confused, aloof, or otherwise stiff at other events. All of this has fed into the existing narrative, which has been pushed by conservatives and conservative media for years, that the president has suffered age-related mental decline and is no longer capable.

All of this has led to a predictable media frenzy and several large outlets, Democratic elected officials, and major donors have called on the president to withdraw from the race in favor of some other candidate. Given all of this, I thought I'd look at a few things. First, how I view the allegations of mental decline so far, what this means for the presidential race, and what I think of the general coverage of all of it so far.

AGE-RELATED DECLINE

Ever since Obama, we've had a bunch of old people as our major party nominees for president. Clinton was 69 on election day 2016, Trump was 70 then and is 78 now, and Biden is 81. At that sort of advanced age it's not unusual to have experienced some sort of age-related decline and it's very common for it to occur sometime in the next 4 to 8 years.

Those of us who have had older relatives go through it knows what it looks like. They confuse names, dates, and places, they have trouble putting thoughts in order, and, depending on their personality, they either retreat from conversation to avoid showing that they don't know things or they confidently spout wrong information. It's very interesting because, to a casual observer, they can still seem together, but if you scratch the surface a bit you find holes in everything very quickly.

So what can we say about Biden thus far? Well, he certainly seemed off balance and confused in the debate and there are anecdotal stories coming out about people who claim to have seen similar things at other events over the last several months. Biden's answer for his confusion at the debate is that he was jet lagged from a recent international trip and at least one of those other events that people have been telling stories about seems to have come after a major international trip as well, so it's possible that he just handles jet lag very badly. Of course, he's been doing a lot of international travel, repairing the damage that the Trump years did to our alliances, so that could just be a good way to hide it.

That said, I know people who consistently get really bad jet lag. Heck, I've been the guy with really bad jet lag before. Biden is also known for his speech issues, the "Uncle Joe" reputation where he says crazy things exists for a reason. They even made a short film about it in the Obama years (if you haven't watched "The President's Speech", go find it on YouTube and thank me later). Age-related decline is exactly that, decline over time, and I can't say that the current Joe Biden that I've seen not just in the debate and his recent press conference, but also in recent interviews and the numerous campaign appearances over the last several weeks seems all that different from the guy we saw in 2020, 2008, or any of the other times we've seen him in his long career in politics.

I'm certainly willing to hear more from people who interact with him more than I do, but no one seems to have anything other than pretty vague anecdotes at this point and, other than the debate, I haven't actually seen the issues. As far as I can tell, he's still weird, but in the same way he's always been rather than for some age-related reason.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE

To me, the age question is only relevant as it relates to the presidential race. Full disclosure: I'll vote for a corpse over Donald Trump because at least the corpse won't spend 4 years trying to take away the civil liberties of Americans while also making it easier for corporations and rich people to gouge and kill them and running up the national debt to funnel money to his cronies. In other words, I would very much like a Democrat to win and I'd support switching candidates to another one with a better chance even if Biden had no age-related issues at all.

So what DOES the data we have so far tell us? Well, we're far enough out from the debate and the wall-to-wall coverage of Biden's age that it's been factored into the polling and… it's not much. Trump got a bit of a bump and Biden got a bit of a dip after the debate, but they each moved only about 1 percent in the polls and it's already plateauing. For reference, Clinton rose 4 points after the first 2016 debate and Trump fell 3 points after the second. In other words, Biden's bad debate performance didn't move the needle much.

The polling data also doesn't seem to show anyone else doing better than Biden either. Biden is currently losing 47.5/44.5 to Trump, but Harris is down 48/46, Newsom is down 46.5/43, and Whitmer is down 46/42. And that's before any of the alternatives have been on the receiving end of focused Republican attacks. Moreover, if we look at FiveThirtyEight's election model, which has a fairly good track record, Biden's odds of winning have actually improved slightly over the last few weeks. (I should note that the race is still a dead heat, that slight improvement has still kept the race well within the margin of error but moved it from a tiny Trump lead to a tiny Biden lead.)

In other words, it's not clear to me that switching candidates would make it more likely that the Democrat defeats Trump. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all happy with a dead heat, I'd much prefer Trump be down by a landslide, but that doesn't seem to be about Biden specifically given that every plausible Democrat is behind Trump by a similar margin. Given that Biden has the advantage of incumbency, already has a national campaign built up, and has already suffered the full force of the conservative attack machine, I don't see a good case for switching to someone who wouldn't have that unless they have some other big advantage.

THE COVERAGE

To me there's a few angles I see in the way this story has been covered. First I'll take a look at the actual calls to withdraw, then I'll look at how it's been covered in the broader political media, and finally I'll take a look at the comparison to 2016 which… yeah, that's a thing now.

THE CALLS TO WITHDRAW

I'll admit, the calls for Biden to withdraw have been… vague, at least to my reading of them. They often reference the debate and the coverage since and some include a personal anecdote, but none of them seem to be heavy on specifics. I haven't seen, for example, a strong case made that Biden withdrawing would make it more likely that Trump is defeated, for example (see above).

More to the point, I feel like a lot of the calls to withdraw are about getting attention as much as they are about anything else. Don't get me wrong, George Clooney can probably whip up a media storm anytime he wants, but can any of you who don't live in Austin claim you'd heard of Rep. Lloyd Doggett before? How about Rep. Earl Blumenauer or Sen. Peter Welch? If you don't live in Oregon or Vermont, respectively, they're probably not names you've heard before. But, by calling for Biden to withdraw, they've ensured a good deal of national attention for themselves.

It's also the case that many (though certainly not all) of the representatives calling for Biden to withdraw represent swing districts. Even if Biden wins, any slight weakening of support could imperil their own re-election chances. I further note that several of the calls for withdrawal are clearly timed for political effect; Rep. Jim Hines released his statement immediately after Biden's press conference finished; far too quickly for the press conference itself to have factored seriously into his decision but timed perfectly to get the headline of "another Democrat calls on Biden to withdraw even after the press conference".

Now, I'm not accusing every Democrat who has called for Biden to withdraw of doing so for self-interested reasons, I'm sure a good many of them are sincere, but this is politics and our system is designed around self-interest; I'd be a fool if I didn't at least look for it.

It's also the case that those calling for withdrawal at this point represent a small minority of the party, 19 of the 213 Representatives and 50 Senators. So far it seems as if the majority of Democrats are, if not enthusiastic about Biden, content to have him stay as the nominee.

THE BROADER MEDIA

Now I've written some posts in detail about the failures I've seen in the political media and I'll let you read those if you're interested in that. What I do want to say in this spot here is that it very much seems as if the political media isn't holding to a neutral standard in this race, but is actively campaigning for specific results. Compare the wall-to-wall coverage you've seen over the last weeks to the polling numbers and data and it seems as if this story carries far more relevance to the political class than it does to the broader population of voters.

It also hasn't escaped me that major media outlets, The New York Times, for example, didn't wait for other people's reactions, but came out in favor of Biden's withdrawal from the race long before any fundraisers, elected representatives, or even polls had come out. If the editorial board of an outlet is the first to call for a political outcome, then it raises reasonable questions whether the outlet itself is actually reporting neutrally on that topic.

All of that brings me to…

THE LESSONS OF 2016

Just about everyone agrees that the media coverage of the 2016 election was one of the worst examples of journalistic behavior in recent memory; even most of the journalists themselves admit that. Journalists chased stories about Hillary Clinton that went nowhere for weeks, printing story after story about her e-mail server, her health, and numerous other topics that were gleefully ginned up by right-wing media and completely ignoring similarly damaging stories about Trump.

In addition, the media was caught off guard by how wildly and constantly Trump was willing to tell and repeat complete lies with forceful confidence and did not react with any form of reasonable fact-checking, but allowed the lies to be repeated over and over again to their audience until it was hard to tell truth from fiction.

Over the four years of the Trump presidency, the media got better. It started looking more skeptically at stories that originated in the fever swamps of right-wing media and only reported the ones that actually met journalistic standards of evidence, they started fact-checking more aggressively and regularly, and they started paying attention to all candidates, not just the one that people assumed would win. That got us through the 2020 election.

Since then, though, a lot of the insightful, capable journalists who led the way in setting that new standard have departed major outlets which have added more MAGA friendly voices to the more sensationalist journalists who remain. Many major outlets have also shifted in ownership toward wealthy individuals who prefer the FOX News brand of journalism.

In other words, the lessons of 2016 have largely been forgotten in much of the media today. Live fact checking has pretty much disappeared, journalists seem to dog-pile on popular stories instead of chasing real investigations, and ideas from right-wing media are leaking into the mainstream regardless of the quality of their reporting.

If you don't believe me that things are repeating, here is a sampling of stories from major news outlets that came after Clinton had a bout of pneumonia that led to her falling ill at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony. Tell me they don't feel at least a little bit familiar:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/11/hillary-clintons-health-just-became-a-real-issue-in-the-presidential-campaign/

She's fine by the way, her health and mental acuity have easily lasted the 8 years that she could have been in office.

WANT TO CONVINCE ME THAT BIDEN SHOULD WITHDRAW?

Simple, show me that someone else has a better chance of winning. Does someone consistently poll significantly better than him? Can you show some evidence that he has actually declined due to his age in a way that would affect his ability to win the election? Is there some other reason why another candidate could do better than Biden against Trump? I'm all ears!

The problem in my view is that those calling for Biden to withdraw have largely failed to articulate all of these things and, as much as I hate the fact that Trump has a good chance of winning this election, I don't see an option that leads to a better outcome at this point. If I can be convinced that there is a better option, then that's something I can go with.

CONCLUSION

I'm not convinced, based on the evidence so far, that Biden has any significant age-related decline as opposed to having the same issues he's always had, I'm very unconvinced, again, based on the evidence so far, that there is any better option to defeat Trump in the upcoming election, and it certainly feels as if many of the calls for Biden to withdraw have a strong self-serving element to them and result from the political media repeating a lot of the admitted mistakes of 2016.

I could certainly be convinced that Biden should withdraw for the good of the country, but I think I've put forward reasonable evidence for remaining unconvinced. Am I missing something? Let me know what you think.