Hope moved through the hallways of the White House sinuously, touching no one, letting no one touch her. Plump Midwest interns scrambled like cats on linoleum to get out of the way of her long, confident strides and smokey eyes. She growled softly at a junior speechwriter while he struggled with the Keurig in the hallway; a prey animal instinct making him shiver. She let her hand idly graze the crotch of one of the Secret Service agents in the final approach to the Oval Office, turning to smile at him with a swish of hair. He let only his eyes follow her as she breezed past the last phalanx of secretaries.
“Is he in?” she asked, not even slowing to hear an answer. She knocked on the Oval Office door as she let her musk flood the agents to either side. She never wore any perfume but herself, a quick finger in the honey pot and a line drawn down both sides of her neck, each wrist. She smiled while they fidgeted. Had they really smelled what they thought they had smelled? Faint and familiar. No, surely not.
“Come in,” Donald finally croaked. Hope flipped her hair back to give them one more dose and opened the door.
He was sitting at his desk, wearing pants for once, his toupee perched on his shoulder, and holding his Make America Great Again hat on a raised fist. Hope sighed deeply and shut the door behind her.
“Mr. President,” she said brightly.
“Hope,” he said, “Hope, Hope, Hope.” He dropped the hat on his desk and took the toupee off his shoulder. He twisted it around and around, confused, before putting it on his head. “Stop squirming,” he said.
“Mr. President?” Hope asked.
“Not you,” he said, “You squirm all you want.” His leer turned into a squint of confusion.
“Do you want anything?” he asked. He slapped a large button on his desk and a can of Diet Coke rose out of it on a little platform, condensation forming immediately in the jungle heat of the office, mold growing in the corners, a thick biofilm over the windows.
“Did Joe ever get a good sniff of you?” he asked. He opened the Diet Coke and drank deeply, the loose flesh of his neck working up down as he swallowed.
“I’ve never met the Vice President,” she replied. He finished the can of soda, threw it at a trashcan, missed and the can came to a rest on its side, leaking on the floor.
“The maid will get it,” he said. She realized he was talking to his hat again. Another one of those days we aren’t going to get much done, she thought.
“Shhhhhhh,” he whispered and patted his head, slowly and carefully. He then stood abruptly.
“Do you want a Diet Coke?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Are you sure?” He slapped the button again and another Diet Coke rose. “So cold,” he said, holding over his neck. “Cools the blood.”
Hope crossed to the settee and pulled her skirt into place before sitting down.
“Come sit beside me, sir,” she said, patting the cushion.
Donald looked around suspiciously before taking up his hat and crushing it to his chest.
“It’s OK,” she said, “No one is watching.”
“They’re always watching,” he said. He took a few shuffling steps and sat down beside her as far away as he could.
“They are also listening,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Who?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“They!” he said insistently. “They said they were listening.” Donald pointed to his hair and then to his hat, still smushed into his chest.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“He can tell you,” he said and smoothed out the hat. It was raggedy and frayed. Someone had glued googly eyes to the front panel of the hat and there was something that looked worryingly like a semen stain on the bill.
“Take him,” he said, holding the hat out to her. “He likes to watch when you go to the bathroom.”
“That’s your hat,” she said, “Your special hat. I couldn’t possibly.”
“I don’t know how Kim Jung Un is still alive!” he screamed at the hat as she fled the room.
Sorry to go OT right off the bat, but this happened..
RIP
That sucks. My favorite drummer, Tony Allen, crossed the Jordan this past week as well.
My absolute fav Kraftwerk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC_anEzaBVs
Scheiße. Hard to choose just one.
RIP
Bahn, Bahn, Bahn….
Now is zee time on Sprockets ven ve sad.
Uli Kunkel of Autobahn is still with us though, isn’t he?
Well, I guess Florian kicked the can. But death happens everyday; nothing neu.
https://youtu.be/YVMXQuKuISQ
https://youtu.be/7-ihFss88VU
As long as they leave Michael Rother going.
Motorik!
The memorial concert to the creator of motorik drumming .
Whoa.
“She growled softly at a junior speechwriter while he struggled with the Keurig in the hallway; a prey animal instinct making him shiver”
This being the single most stimulating thing that ever happened in his life, I can only assume that he ejaculated in his pants immediately after.
““Is he in?” she asked, not even slowing to hear an answer. She knocked on the Oval Office door as she let her musk flood the agents to either side. She never wore any perfume but herself, a quick finger in the honey pot and a line drawn down both sides of her neck, each wrist. She smiled while they fidgeted. Had they really smelled what they thought they had smelled? Faint and familiar. No, surely not.”
Should I be worried that I’m aroused by a SugarFree story? Do I need to talk to someone professional?
Like a hooker?
What else did you think I meant?
Winston’s Mom?
An amateur that performs at a professional level.
Like Robert Trent Jones.
If you win on her course, you get a green jackit.
*Not a spelling error.
Talk about your golf clap.
I remember this time I was dating this girl. We weren’t breaking up, but she was moving far away. So I asked her for something I could remember her by. So she took wiggled off her panties, shoved them up her hoo ha, then pulled them out, and placed the on the table.
The waitress didn’t even say anything.
It depends on which part aroused you.
Brilliant Calvin and Hobbes spin – just like when Suzie was around. Bravo!
^This
Rich Lowry has been smoking some good weed today.
“Apparently the only way for college kids to have their right to due process recognized by progressives would be to run for and win the Democratic nomination for president”
https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/1258052718356283394
“Another way of looking at this is that Betsy DeVos is changing the Title IX rules from the ones that Joe Biden liked before he was accused of sexual assault to the ones that Joe Biden demands now that he has been accused of sexual assault.”
https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/status/1258001181953097730
Just took XX to work. There were cops everywhere and 1/4 of the parking lot was cordoned off. XX said someone shot himself in his car and no one knew until security found him.
RIP whoever you are. I’m sorry.
+1 COVID death
/public health “expert”
Likely so.
OT, but holy shit. New Project Veritas.
Art Bell was fun when he had on crazy conspiracy guys on. I didn’t think that he would someday seem normal compared to the reality of 2020.
Next we’ll find out Alex Jones was right all along, and our frogs actually were being turned gay.
Somehow I find this completely unsurprising.
Accept that the “News” is just propaganda. Then it’s a short jump from selective reporting and spinning to staging it.
Didn’t they do a Dateline or 20/20 or 60 Minutes story in the 90s about some kind of exploding cars, where they actually used a demo charge on a gas tank to make B-Roll of a car exploding?
It was Dateline.
That would be NBC
In its apology, NBC admitted that it had used incendiary devices to ensure that a fire would erupt if gasoline leaked from the truck being hit by a test car. The 15-minute segment was addressing critics’ charges that GM’s full-size pickup trucks built between 1973 and 1987 are unsafe because their gasoline tanks are on the sides of the trucks, outside the frame.
See, I get the 1A concerns with slander and libel laws, really I do.
But NBC should have had to pay fucking billions in damages to GM for that. That’s straight up lies. I wonder if the producers of that segment shorted GM stock for the week after it aired?
I think it was 20/20 who did the hatchet job on Food Lion, though.
hatchet job? they did everything that was exposed
/ grocer’s son
For some reason that reminds me of this: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/body-man-missing-10-years-013509174.html
Would Gayle King be where she is today if she wasn’t a friend of Oprah?
Next? Where have you been?
https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/
“It’s OK,” she said, “No one is watching.”
Run away! Run awaaaay!
Exactly. That’s how you get blackmailed.
Muh…muh head is spinning.
*rereads*
The opening paragraph reminds me of Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Very appropriately in every sense.
Now I’m awash with questions about who else in the WH has heard the rumors of POTUS talking to his hat and hair. Squirming, almost.
In a perfect timeline, Trump would hire SugarFree to be his speechwriter.
They already made ‘Mouth of Madness’.
Several excellent lines. I wouldn’t want this one to be overlooked:
+1 In favor of Hope squirms
Hope Squirms Eternal?
Heh, heh. In these trying times…
My favorite was:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-tuesday/free-advice-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-meet-praise-criticism-with-equal-scorn/
She looks very cute in that picture.
I’ve noticed that leftist publications tend to run the worst pictures of Republican women, but conservative outlets tend to pick nice pictures of female politicians regardless of their politics.
Meh. I still think Kristi Noem is better looking.
I thought was an exceptionally empathetic article from someone who could more than hold his own snarking around here. Also something you are just so much less likely to get from a left-leaning source.
On the other hand, Williamson might just be angling for a job with a left-leaning outlet. His attempted gig at the Atlantic blew up and the future of a big paycheck at the Abbey of St. William of Buckley is anything but bright.
Personally, I think he learned his lesson.
She isn’t a natural politician – which Williamson searingly described.
Yeah I make fun of AOC as much as anyone, but goddamn it she’s actually worked a real job in the private sector sometime in the last decade.
Chuck Schumer, by contrast, has as far as I can tell never actually worked in the private sector.
On the other hand, Williamson might just be angling for a job with a left-leaning outlet. His attempted gig at the Atlantic blew up and the future at the Abbey of St. William of Buckley is anything but bright.
Gonna go squirrel huntin’
Uh oh, I feel denouement fast approaching.
Nov 2020?
Uh oh, I feel denouement fast approaching.
Try thinking about baseball.
*applause*
“Did Joe ever get a good sniff of you?” he asked. He opened the Diet Coke and drank deeply, the loose flesh of his neck working up down as he swallowed.
“I’ve never met the Vice President,” she replied
She didn’t really answer the question…
🙂
I think Phil Murphy has gone as insane as a Sugarfree character. He can’t name a tentative reopening date like August. He just keeps repeating impossible to meet criteria. “Flattening the Curve” is a distant memory. The state was broke before any of this happened.
are you still under martial law?
Hell yes.
There’s no timetable to reopen from N.J. coronavirus lockdowns, ‘whether you like that or not,’ Gov. Murphy says
Suck it proles.
What’s even more insane is that a large portion of the NJ public still think he’s too aggressive. This is beyond insane. You know, maybe the only way this is going to get resolved is if the administration tells the states that discussions around any sort of bailout can’t start until they’ve finished opening up. I think you’ll see the whole tenor of the conversation change after that.
I think he’s figured out that there’s no good exit without a big federal bailout, and he’s betting on more damage making that bailout more likely.
Always follow the money.
SCIENCE!
Contrary to perspectives aired by Boston protestors on Monday, a new poll indicates that many Massachusetts residents support Governor Charlie Baker’s extension of the state’s stay-at-home order.
The poll, conducted by The Boston Globe, Suffolk University and WGBH News, surveyed 500 individuals and was published early Tuesday. Its results demonstrated support for a lengthened lockdown protocol among the majority of respondents, 85 percent of whom said they approved of Baker’s decision. A nearly identical fraction of the poll’s participants noted their support for the governor’s response to the new coronavirus pandemic in general.
500 Massholes? What more do you need?
The faculty of Harvard?
WFB Jr should be spinning in his grave.
More news from Mass.
Thank god for common sense gun control! Imagine how worse it would have been in NRA country…
Why didn’t the father cross the street?
Yeah, yeah, two children but…
Lunatic asshole
If you’re worried about social distancing, why would you choose a melee weapon?
Especially one that is guaranteed to get their precious bodily fluids on you.
As said in the morning. If you’re policy system is based off of “What the people will let us get away with” you will get bad government. Always.
“a new poll indicates that many Massachusetts residents support Governor Charlie Baker’s extension of the state’s stay-at-home order.”
So what?
Throughout history there have been majorities supporting all kinds of things. Doesn’t give you the license to enforce your view on someone else.
This is like the end of The Uninvited or the return to Satis House. Doesn’t look good in the cold light of the day.
“We do believe and buy into the guidance that we’ve gotten from experts in the field that you need to see downward trends in a number of key indices associated with this virus for some period of time before you can actually reopen,” he explained, as crowds of protestors gathered outside Massachusetts’ State House in Boston to push for an end to the stay-at-home order, which was initially set to expire on Monday.
Want the numbers to go down? Stop testing.
“Key indices”, “some” period of time. The lack of specificity is telling.
*fap fap fap
Wait a minute, this is a Sugarfree story…he’s going to go all sideways and have Hope turn into Hillary or something. Oh, well.
fap
Be in the moment, bacon.
Forbes headline:
Trump Borrowing $3 Trillion For The June Quarter Will Exceed Obama’s Last 5 Years
GOTCHA!
No link because Forbes.
Printing, not borrowing. Borrowing implies repayment.
We’re lending it to ourselves!
That doesn’t count.
We are lendgin it to ourselves. Which means when the ongoing default (printing away your debt is just another form of default) hits critical mass, we will really feel it.
IANAEconomist, but it seems to me that (((they))) print/embezzle money, with no intention of paying it back, but the scheme is to enrich themselves and it only devalues the currency one teeny, unnoticeable bit a time. As long as their subjects’ lifestyles don’t perceptibly change, not enough people will care nor revolt.
If it were simply greed I could understand it; this is worse – this is ideology. Bad ideology. Destructive ideology.
I’ll never know, but I suspect that those truly in powerful are greedy, and they use the ideologues as their useful idiots.
Ideologues are much like religious zealots. Base motives don’t describe why they tick the way they do.
https://i.redd.it/9krfhnqm55x41.jpg
Freudian slip?
From this mornings talk about the murdered researcher; Somebody called his murder / suicide perfectly.
https://twitter.com/anactualwalnut/status/1245764510612426752
All I can say is no fucking way I’m going to take or have my kids take an untested, rushed to market vaccine for a virus type for which nobody has ever developed a vaccine before.
“for which nobody has ever developed an effective, non-harmful vaccine before”
I have no idea what this guy discovered – an now we’ll never know.
Not just his discovery, any of them. Every actor out there is running at a frenetic pace to be the one who gets to market first and receive billions upon billions of dollars in contracts.
It’s a photoshop. They didn’t line up the lit up dots with the grid of lights. Close, but not an actual photograph.
Ag radio has a report that meat volume could drop 30% and retail prices up 25%. That seems optimistic to me. As it becomes visible, I don’t see how it won’t become another panic spree buying. Other than a brief restock, I haven’t seen any sanitizing wipes or many cleaners period. Even bleach has a hard time staying in stock. Zero hand sanitizer for the past two months and even liquid hand soap is still not available.
yeah: we’re essentially buying two of any non-perishables when it’s reasonable so as to bump up inventory. We order filet every week under the notion that we’ll enjoy it when we get it and not worry when we don’t.
I get pissy about being allowed to buy only 2 cans of evaporated milk or tuna or soup or whatever at Aldi’s.
Ground beef was up $2/lb, tenderloin was same price.
Our dog is on a semi-restricted diet so have been keeping an extra bag since this started and reordering when that one is opened rather than getting close to out completely. Went to reorder yesterday and it’s sold out. Vet’s portal ships direct from the manufacturer. Larger size was still in stock so ordered that instead. Not looking good.
Up TO $2/lb or up BY $2/lb.
Cuz I buy ground beef regularly at $2/lb, so I’m hoping I’m reading BY because if not, I’mma feel gypped.
Increase was $2/lb on top of regular price. Both ground chuck and sirloin.
Slate doesn’t seem to like Creepy Joe all that much.
How one treats women in the collective or the abstract doesn’t have much bearing on how one treats women personally—and even, how one treats some women personally doesn’t have much bearing on how one treats some other women. Brett Kavanaugh coaching a girls’ basketball team and having women serve as his law clerks doesn’t materially matter to the question of whether he assaulted Christine Blasey Ford. Joe Biden writing the Violence Against Women Act similarly has no bearing on whether he assaulted Tara Reade.
These arguments have no relationship to the claims they are meant to disprove—claims that are notoriously resistant to proof either way. We are stuck, once again, in a battle between what he said and what she said (never mind that she has reliable corroborating witnesses and he continues to prop up witnesses who weren’t there). We are now engaged in a hunt for documents that will not confirm whether Joe Biden put his fingers inside of Tara Reade.
. . . .
Something that was frequently said in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings was that regardless of whether Brett Kavanaugh assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they were in high school, the performance of rage he gave ought to have disqualified him for the role of Supreme Court justice. Joe Biden did not demonstrate rage when it was his turn. What he demonstrated was something much more benign, something that has allowed his party to continue to line up behind him. What he has demonstrated is incompetence. He cannot speak cogently or convincingly about a very important issue, an issue that is extremely relevant to his past and critical to our country’s future. That should worry his party, not reassure them.
They don’t see the irony of Joe literally grabbing them by the pussy?
Brett Kavanaugh coaching a girls’ basketball team and having women serve as his law clerks doesn’t materially matter to the question of whether he assaulted Christine Blasey Ford.
Sure. But then also what his friends wrote in his yearbook also wouldn’t materially matter either. It’s not about being corroborating evidence, it’s about establishing the character of the person in question.
I still get a laugh out of the pearl clutching over Kavanaugh – “Dear lord, this man was RAISING HIS VOICE over being falsely accused of sexual assault!”
Interesting take last night on The Tucker Carlson Show.
I was leaning to ‘Joe did it’, now I am leaning heavily in the other direction. I simply dont believe her. She has, over the years, given more than one version of what happened. I dont remember all of the details…her brother corroborated her earlier versions but not her present one….and she has endorsed Joe in the past after the supposed incident.
It just doesnt pass the smell test for me.
Don’t know if he did it; can’t know if he did it.
But, live by the me-too sword, die by the me-too sword.
This here. What happened is unknowable.
What is known is that Biden and his supporters have one standard for me, and no standards for themselves.
It just doesnt pass the smell test for me.
Wonder if Joe thought the same.
+Hope’s “perfume”
Faaaaaaaappppppp. 2 moments Tundra if you’re counting.
*Something* probably happened, because she told multiple people about it at the time. Whether it was as bad as she now describes, or something much milder, or even just an innocent misunderstanding, who knows. Regardless, it’s exposed most of the MeToo/BelieveHer people as complete hypocrites.
TBF, Slate is basically The Daily Worker so it’s unsurprising that they dislike the man who defeated their icon.
Holy. Shit. If this doesn’t illustrate the Democrat mindset perfectly, nothing will:
Going to go to bat here for Cuomo. He’s an ass. But The way the taxes are collected is probably directed by the legislature, he may not actually have much leeway on it. /end
That being said, his unsympathetic “i can’t give a subsidy” attitude does betray a lack of desire to get it changed.
Funny how his powers are unlimited in all other regards. Fuck him – you play the tyrant, you can die like the tyrant. [which means Preet, stabbed in the back by his state senators, not by me]
But he can go to the legislature and ask for an exemption.
Funny how he didn’t say he would do that.
He got what he wanted from these people, so fuck them.
Wait until they find out that if they file joint federal returns that NY will require the taxation of their spouse’s income as well, who has no nexus with NY at all.
Some of these people will be better off working for free, instead of triggering the NYC tax… and should immediately stop “helping” in NY.
This will be spun in an anti-trump way to harangue his SALT reform in his tax law.
Probably, even though it has nothing to do with that.
Wait until they find out that if they file joint federal returns that NY will require the taxation of their spouse’s income as well, who has no nexus with NY at all.
Some of these people will be better off working for free, instead of triggering the NYC tax… and should immediately stop “helping” in NY.
I don’t understand why anyone lives there. You may be thinking, “That’s rich coming from a guy who lives in California!” And I say, as a guy who lives in California, I don’t understand why anyone lives in NYC. At least we have nice weather. NYC has……bagels.
RACIST!!!!
And giant rats.
CBGB.
Oh, wait…
Bagels, knishes, the best pizza, and black and white cookies.
What’s even more insane is that a large portion of the NJ public still think he’s too aggressive. This is beyond insane.
Once you get the mob stirred up and headed in one direction, it’s hard to get it to turn or stop?
Who woulda thunk it?
Proggy DINK friend on FB had a meme with Trump as the old Uncle Sam recruitment poster: “I want YOU to die for our economy.”
Bitch, what do you think the tanked economy is going to do to people who don’t have a place to live or food to eat because their jobs got forceably shut down?
The disconnect between DINK progs and deplorables is mind-boggling. If they really cared about the less fortunate, they would not have any disconnect at all.
What is a DINK?
Mojeaux has the acronym below; I’ll just add it originated as a subset of yuppies.
DINK?
Double Income No Kids
It is, yet again, another manifestation of utopian nonsense thinking from the left. We don’t need to work – everyone just stay home and Uncle Sugar will rain c-notes down on us indefinitely!
Especially when inflation turns those c notes into more value for the physical substance.
Double income; no kids
Oh, I thought it was these guys.
My wife and I are DINKs, but we are far from proggies. The one has little to do with the other.
We were DINKs, until our idiot governor shut down my wife’s employer.
That’s why I put “proggy” in front of DINK, so as to be specific.
I think there’s a substantial overlap between the two sets, but certainly not 100% overlap.
I have found that the overlap of people who use “dink” (unprompted) to describe themselves and people with nutty leftist worldviews is much higher.
@Raven
I didn’t see your question at the time, but you didn’t miss anything.
My “Australian” handle update was just born out of our dog chat the other day. Nothing “escaped,” that’s just part of my schtick. I updated my avatar accordingly, but I can’t see anyone’s avatar now and presume no one can see mine.
Australian Shepherds are the bomb
I can see avatars.
#MeToo
They aren’t there when I refresh, but the populate soon enough.
I’m so lazy I only restart my laptop with each new president or so.
My laptop is old and I worry needlessly like an old lady, so I shut it down once a week.
Ditto!
Thanks!
I like the change of perspective with this one.
Cuomo says it’s ‘shocking’ most new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who had been staying home
I’m not scientist, but I think people might be lying. Maybe because they don’t trust authoritarians?
Key words
and not venturing much outside
That’s hardly staying at home.
Tell me again how the “shelter in place” and “essential workers/businesses” thing is preventing people from catching the Cough, Andy.
Yet another piece of evidence that these policies are failing on their own terms.
The Constitution is dead letter when the judiciary would rather wipe their asses with it than read it.
https://www.christianpost.com/us/federal-judge-rules-calif-gov-gavin-newsom-had-right-to-ban-church-services.html
And the Bee strikes.
We’ve already established that civil rights can be suspended when the government claims there’s an emergency, so why not the 1st amendment?
The power of FYTW is unlimited.
This Court finds the State and County stay at home orders being challenged here bear a real and substantial relation to public health
Shall make no law… etc.
Constitution is dead. Makes the worries about coming out with a bad constiution at a convention look silly. And at least a convention could lead to a breakup of the states.
“…hanging by a thread…”
If the church was really interested in saving it, it woulda said, “Nah, bruh, we’re staying open for business. Come at us.”
On the other hand, in Kentucky a Federal judge granted an injunction against the governor’s travel ban as the ban is unconstitutional.
On the gripping hand, Bashear’s ban on in-person church services stands though drive-in church services must be allowed.
Judge. Show me where the “General and Nueutral law” exception is laid out in the constitution. Don’t point to any “Powers” granted to congress. The 1st Amendment was written after that and any of thos powers would be dead in the face of the whole “Shall make no law” part of the amendment.
a neutral law of general application places incidental limits on a religious exercise
That’s my understanding of how this works. Otherwise, you run the risk of exempting anything that is claimed to be “religious” from the law and getting the government involved in determining what is, and is not, a valid “religion” (a line we have crossed, it is true, even though this is precisely what the ban on “establishment of religion” was supposed to prevent).
Where the judge misses the boat is on “incidental”. I don’t see how padlocking a church is “incidental” to free exercise of religion.
Good start to a double day of Hat and Hair.
On the AM link about Rand not wearing a mask: If you’re worried about someone who already had it not having good enough immunity then all the hopes pinned to a vaccine are shot down. But then again I guess I don’t FACTS or SCIENCE correctly.
Missouri bootlickers discover their snitching is subject to FOIA disclosure.
Under the benevolent reign of God-Emperor Dean, no anonymous report would be given any attention or follow-up at all.
If its not important enough for you to put your name on it, its not important enough for me to care.
I am so over this lockdown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55lxVJIF05E
Big time.
If it goes much longer, I’ll be treatment bound.
Crikey. Get an eyeful of the porkers who shut down that bar in Texas.
The porkers who shut down that bar in Texas are, well, pretty porky.
What is Ector County doing with an MRAP?!?!
It’s the only vehicle that can hold their officers
Big Apple Infidel
@BigAppleInfidel
Are those vests or police-themed lobster bibs?
Hah!
“Meal Team 6″….haahahahahahahah
Points will also be granted for “Squeal Team 6”.
LARPing bad-assery.
Well, if it’s good enough for the LA Schools PD, Ohio State University, Florida State, et al…
Regular bullets can’t penetrate that much ballistic lard.
Thicc blue line
Rule 34, I guess.
Thicc is hot. That is vomit inducing.
Twas the worst type of John-o
I laughed
I think the Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State would argue that the government allowing you to worship violates the constition….
I mean i guess they just did.
:RAGE BOILS:
Really it seems like AUSCS is just an organization trying to impose atheism. Fuck you. I don’t try to impose my religion on you, stop trying to do yours.
Its a dilemma once the government goes beyond being pretty minimalist.
If you exempt religious organizations, you are establishing religion.
If you apply all kinds of micromanagement to religious organizations, you are inevitably going interfere in some way with their free exercise of religion.
I reject the idea that not forbidding religious acivities establishes religion.
The problem is what is a religious activity? Going to the bar and drinking with the boys is part of my religion. Open it up.
Sounds good to me.
To be serious, however the idea that a blanket ban on church services is constitutional because it would be unconstitutionally establishing religion to allow people to meet, just arguing that the government has all power, as long as it fucks us all equally.
RC perfectly states how I would have responded but more clearly.
I was surprised to learn that churches were closed during the Spanish Flu epidemic.
Once the government overreaches, though, its get hard to exempt churches from the overreach. The fundamental problem isn’t that churches are subject to the overreach, its that everybody is.
Privileges for churches are just as much of a problem as privileges for anybody. The 1A was originally intended to keep churches and religions from both being targeted, and from being privileged. That only works when you aren’t living in a Total State, such as we now are. With a Total State, there is no avoiding violations of both the Free Exercise Clause, and the Establishment Clause.
my problem is that here it seems very much like the “privlege” is “free exercise”.
If you give religious organizations exemptions, special privileges, etc. from the law, you are establishing religion. I think tax exempt status for churches qua churches is unconstitutional. As were blue laws, and the fact that blue laws didn’t close churches to be open when businesses had to be closed.
If all the law did was prevent people from violating other people’s rights, this wouldn’t be an issue. But once the law goes beyond that, it will find itself in a dilemma where it either inhibits free exercise of religion (you must pay for abortions) or establishes religion (unless your religion says you shouldn’t).
I think we agree on how to solve the dilemma, but until that happens, its a dilemma.
I know we are agreeing here on the problem (government is taking the power it doesn’t have). I think i would agree on the Tax exemption part, except i don’t think the government should be able to collect any taxes. Blue Laws i’m agreeing with.
Making the argument sounds very much to me to be “The government can do whatever it wants to the religious, if it does so under auspicies that it is doing so for everyone else”. The government has exempted plenty of businesses, so clearly it has exemption authority. The only issue is that the people being exempted are a religious group. Seeing as the government is not giving any money to these institutions, nor only extending it to certain religious groups, i don’t see it an establishment of religion, and a clear infringement on the free exercise of religion.
And what would they have to do to make it fair? What do the atheists demand to be opened on that part? You see where i’m coming from? A part of many religious exercise is meeting and gathering with other believers. I’m find with saying “meetings of Atheists to talk about how they don’t believe in God” are okay too. What is being set up is an impossible standard that essentially destorys the “free exercise” part of the 1A.
The band haven’t made any sense, so there is no “fair” option. You can go in Publix, but not hobby lobby. You can go into a liquor store but not a toy store. Instead of picking winners and losers they should have posted recommendations and allowed people to pick their level of risk. About the only force I could possibly accept is quarantine of actively infectious people, but even that is pointless with such a large contingent of a symptomatic carriers.
The problem is a government that does whatever it wants. Creating special exemptions, privileges, classes doesn’t reduce that problem. It makes it worse.
I’m not sure whether I’m on board with that definition of establishment. It certainly isn’t the original intent, but I’d have to think through whether there are any unintended consequences to treating any religious preference as establishment.