What a fun night. It was college. We needed beer. I could help with that. A small party was in full swing. I had a fake ID. What could go wrong?
It was a good ID. It had holograms, it had my name, my home address, my birthday, albeit, 2 years off. I was now from St Paul, Minnesota, 55101 instead of Indianapolis. I could still use my student ID, credit/debit cards and such as a secondary ID. A group of 6 of us crammed in a Dodge Duster (not the old cool kind, the kind that was around for a couple years between the “K” car and Neon). It was a two door compact, not a one of us was under 5′ 10″ and 180 lbs. It was probably a sight to see, us going down the road in such a cramped way. But someone had a hook up for an ID, we couldn’t pass it up. We drove the 2 hours or so from northern Indiana to Milwaukee. We met some guy at a supermarket. He wore a hoodie and told us to stand against the wall by the shopping carts. He took our pictures and told us to meet him at McDonalds in two hours. Two hours later, we had custom made fake’s. We went to some restaurant similar to Applebee’s and had our first beers.
It couldn’t have been more than three weeks since I’d gotten my fake ID. But I was already using it liberally. We had a good smaller party going at the fraternity house and beer was running low. Nathan had a fake too. We volunteered to head to Wal Mart and get more beer. I remember being upstairs and ready to go. Nathan asked Rick if we could take his car since he had a headlight out. “Like I’d let your drunk ass take my car,” replied Rick. I wish we’d taken Rick’s car. Instead, we took Nathan’s truck. We bought the beer without issue and headed back towards the house.
We made it back to the vicinity of the house without issue. Parking on the street next to the house was full. So, Nathan turned down the alley to park behind the house. But the driveway was full. We kept going down the alley and were going to make a full loop around the block. We could go farther up the side street to find more parking. When we pulled out of the alley, I saw the cop car down the street. Being that we only had one headlight, I started to get concerned. He was well over a 1/3rd of a mile away, but I’m sure he saw us.
Nathan turned down the main street, I told him the cop saw us and to hop the curb and pull next to the house and into the driveway backwards. I really wish he had done that. It would have been a much better option. But he didn’t, he went all the way around and turned back up the side street. That’s when we saw the cherries and berries illuminate. We were getting pulled over. For some reason, I assume out of some sort of panic, Nathan pulled back down the alley and half into the driveway. The campus police pulled in behind us. We were literally hanging half out of the driveway into the alley. Nathan threw his fake in the center console, and I threw mine under the seat.
Officer Friendly got out of his car. The lights were flashing brightly, and faces started appearing in the windows of the house as people watched. He came to driver’s side and had a fairly relaxed conversation. He let us know our headlight was out and we should get it fixed. I don’t know this for certain, but I really think he was going to let us go. Just based on his demeanor and attitude, I don’t think he wanted to bust us. But, it wasn’t meant to be. The Chief of Campus police was working that night and must have seen the lights from a distance. He came flying up behind Officer Friendly’s car and got out frantically. The first words out of his mouth were, “Are they 21? Do you see the two cases of beer in the back.” I knew any chance of walking away was over at that point.
**Important note: I went to college in one of two counties in Indiana didn’t “ticket” arrest for minor consumption, but actually took people to Jail.
To be continued . . .
Your Campus Police Chief sounds like an asshole.
Back in the mid-80s, my little college just had some security guys. The house I lived in always had a “mid-week madness” keg-party on Wednesday nights. The head security guy would drop by to chat before things kicked off. He’d drink a beer while telling us to make sure things stayed under control. No mention of drinking age. We’d agree – and usually did keep things for going too far.
Why do universities have a separate police force anyway?
If I wanted to be charitable, I’d say it goes back to when Univerities were all regarded as part of the Church and thus operated under Church law… but I think the answer is “because they can”.
See below. Universities want their own cops to manage what kind of trouble their paying customers get into (within limits), and they have the political stroke to make that happen.
It made sense when I went back to school in Los Angeles in the 90s. Their main job was keeping the violence occurring outside the campus outside the campus.
+1 USC
I can’t muster a “Fight On” today.
They couldn’t yesterday either.
How else are you supposed to cover up crimes committed by star football players or kids with connected parents?
Because the police force for the town/city at large has no incentive to focus the resources required on the highly dense area that is a modern college campus. Especially now in the “everybody goes” era of college, there are unique and expensive policing problems that arise on college campuses.
My brother is a campus cop (in Indiana) , and it sounds like they’re kept busy with all the drug gangs, shootings, and robberies, and don’t have much time for minor in possession charges unless there’s a reckless driving charge coming with it. He says the university is the one that drives a lot of the ticky tack stuff, and his department generally* tries to avoid giving Johnny Coed a record over a few ounces of pot or a case of Bud Light.
*he has told me stories of asshole coworkers, though, so it’s certainly not a uniform truth.
That said, it sounds highly situational. They’ve been understaffed since my brother started, so they simply don’t have the manpower to chase every little infraction at their school of tens of thousands of students. It would probably be very different at a 2500 student private liberal arts school with 50 cops on the beat.
I’m not against the idea of campus cops, I’m more against cops using procedural violations as a nose under the tent to start probing for issues that wouldn’t otherwise be discovered.
Campus cops are usually not tasked with busting students for this kind of thing. Bad for business, and all.
HR is handling all those campus rapes. What is left for campus cops?
I did find one use for a campus cop: I had locked myself out of “Married Student Housing” so I walked to the campus PD and had an officer unlock the apartment. He came in with me so I could get my wallet with ID and my keys to prove I really lived there. That was handy.
Your Campus Police Chief sounds like an asshole.
He was. The students actually protested the police for the treatment.
The Chief’s son was in my class. He was a really weird dude. Not long after this, me and a few friends found him in the dorm bathroom incoherent and vomiting. My vindictive side wanted to call the police and watch old chiefy show up to see his drunk son. But instead we took care of him, got him back to his room and made sure he was ok.
“I went to college in one of two counties in Indiana didn’t “ticket” arrest for minor consumption, but actually took people to Jail.”
* Hangs head in shame.*
Indiana’s good for some things, but not everything. I suspect we’ll be the 57th state to legalize pot.
I believe it’s the county you live in, if you live in the county that starts with “P”
Currently, I do live in said county. I grew up one county over, the one that starts with “L”.
Both directions start with an L.
It ends with an E.
Glorified mall cops keeping the world safe from adults drinking.
My 18-21 years were spent in the Army. No fake id required. The older soldiers provided the beer.
I thought there was special dispensation for military under 21. There used to be for squids at the Navy base right by my house when I was growing up.
No official dispensation by the time I joined. Some older soldiers mentioned the time before on-post followed local law.
Not anymore.
When I toured Eton College in UK, I noticed taps in the student lounge. The guide told us that students could get a pint once they were 16 y.o. and had acceptable grades.Wnder if it’s the same today. Probably is, as long as you don’t start in on “the bloody wogs.”
Back in ’05ish Foot Bliss was 18 if you were stationed there. Us AF boys couldn’t go down from Hollman to drink but most of the army E-Club servers didn’t check if we were AF or Army. Reason being was at the time, Juarez was open to go to and it was to keep military members from going there and drinking. Think they dropped the 18 year old rule when they basically black-listed the Mexican border town.
Foot Bliss?
Don’t worry; we won’t kink shame you.
Shame and kink away
University police are POST certified, accredited and sworn officers. In general, universities’ have police forces due to jurisdiction; the area covered does not fall under the purview of any elected body. Same reason prisons have guards, the military has MP’s, and so on.
Was this on campus or off?
/confused
Campus jurisdiction ends one street over from where we were. They get that area since there is campus housing around there.
MN fake IDs in the 80s were pretty simple. You could use a razor blade to remove and rearrange the raised numbers. No holograms or any of that shit. Tell the DMV you lost it, get a legit one and enjoy!
No one looked too carefully at them, either. I had no idea at the time how lucky we were.
Looking forward to the next installment!
I had no idea at the time how lucky we were.
The lucky ones were the ones, like me, who were the right age to be legal for booze at 18. I got grandfathered for a year or so after they switched it back.
19 for us.
I was too busy being a serious engineering student to get into trouble partying.
When I turned 21, I went with a few friends to a pizza joint and ordered a beer. This was before the craft beer revolution had permeated middle America, so it was a Coors. I was not impressed.
So I didn’t really drink at all until my senior year, and then it was quite light. Except for the occasional tequila. Just as well since I had to maintain a relatively high GPA to keep my scholarship.
I have more than made up for my lack of drinking since then, to my detriment. Haven’t had a drink “this year” yet. 👍
I didn’t drink much beer until I had a former bartender as a roommate. He introduced me to actual beer.
I had long hair and a goatee at 18. I seldom got carded.
I was routinely carded up until I was in my 30’s. If I’m buying beer at a grocery store, and the girlfriend is with me, I will get carded about 40% of the time (and she’s older then me!). I’m still carded every once in a while, even with my beard being more gray then anything else at this point.
I get the perfunctory cardings at Walgreen’s…that’s about it. I got carded once when I was forty, because the store had a “if they could be under thirty…” policy. I was flattered.
Buy beer or wine in a grocery store in PA and you get carded even if you are (and look) 75 years old. There are large swaths of Pennsyltucky, but those good old boys still vote to make thirsty kids have to get their older siblings to buy their booze.
creech:
Tennessee has a law stating you must get carded for every purchase. Only place that really followed it as written (that I noticed in my times there) was the airport. Others would card you once (or not at all), and then not ask again.
And in Pennsyltucky, the kids just need to steal some of their relatives’ shine.
I had a legal ID and was over 21. When I got my license they asked how tall I was. I replied, “66 inches”. That got put on my license as “6′ 6″”. I never noticed it but a clerk at the liquor store did. “You’re not six-foot six!” I tried to explain but he just kicked me out.
There was never an age issue on base in the early 70’s. My folks came to visit me at Biloxi and my brother and I snuck out to hit the bar off base. I was 18 so I could order beer but my younger brother had a fake ID (that used to be mine) and he was served mixed drinks.
Responsible? I probably should have gone that route, but at least I had fun.
Bought booze at 18. Legally, in bars.
There was a bar in the middle of nowhere that was rigorous about checking IDs. You could not get in before you were 18. So it became the first bar you went to on your 18th birthday.
When I turned 18, I drove around for half an hour trying to find the place, then eventually gave up and went to a different bar.
Some told me the next day that the bar had burned down a week before my birthday.
Isn’t it ironic.
Don’t you think.
I turned 21 when Texas changed the law. I was drinking legally at age 18. It was a crap decision. If you can draft someone at 18, that person should also be able to drink and smoke.
Get married; get a job; buy a car; buy a house; and have kids.
But you cannot be trusted with tobacco or alcohol.
Of course not, there’s no way you can afford it with all of those other expenses.
pfffttttt…
Cut your junk off and devastate your proper physical development with hormone blockers is where it’s at now.
From September 1st to mid October I couldn’t buy a beer to save my life, harsh time for a raging alcoholic.
It was even easier when they weren’t photo ID’s. A friend’s mother would borrow her older sister’s driver’s license to get into parties at the Playboy Mansion when it was in Chicago.
My older brother (+5 years) let me renew his license with my photo – wasn’t even a duplicate. He also gave me a (cancelled) credit card to go with it.
He had more issues from his genuine duplicate license than I ever did with his ID.
What a mensch (who just became a grandfather a few hours ago).
As an aside, I did the same for my younger brother but they had switched to digital photos by that point – enough time has passed that the fact it’s not my photo in the system wouldn’t be obvious, should I ever need to deal with the NYS DMV again (assuming they even keep things around that long).
There would have been some awkward questions if I had to do so back then.
I grew up in a richy rich suburb where the cops were basically afraid of hassling the children of powerful assholes so high school saw no impediment to drinking. Once I was in college no one gave a shit at all. I had a friend who routinely bought beer with a hilariously terrible fake. People would just shrug and sell him beer.
It seems like everyone cares more today. I get carded more as a middle aged man than I did as a baby faced teenager
They do care more today. Case in point, my friend’s kid was expelled (not suspended, EXPELLED) from high school for having a THC vape a few months ago. I don’t recall that kind of zero-tolerance in the 80’s. * Fondly remembers stoners hanging “out back” between classes.
In Texas in the eighties, if you were caught with pot you’d go to pound me in the ass prison. High school would be expulsion and juvie prison. Still much the same today.
Probably because it was a vape as much as the THC – given the current moral panic.
The neighboring richy rich city hassled everybody, rich or poor, because the rich assholes wanted their perfect town. I was stopped for walking along a residential street at night. They would stop you to check if your bicycle was registered. Only the Disneyland Gestapo were worse.
When I worked at an Osco, some kid came in and used a terrible fake to buy from me. I looked at hm (no one else was around) and said, “Dude, I’m going to sell you the beer, but please don’t use that fake anywhere else, it’s terrible.” He blushed, paid, and went away.
Have you considered checking your privilege?
*Checks
“Yep. It’s still there.”
I was never much of a drinker.
It doesn’t help that most beer and wine has an odor to my nose that makes them unpalatable. Most ciders and mead have it too. Kinnath’s mead was the first that did not have that wine odor to it.
Speaking of, I’m trying to figure out how to get more mead from Kinnath now.
Let me know the next time you road-trip through Iowa.
it’s a trap
shush
Theme song for UnCiv’s visit with kinnath
I don’t know when that will be, but I’ll let you know
I will be at Honey Harvest in Sep 2023.
I’m not sure if I will be.
I haven’t planned anything for this year.
I dunno. That sounds like the kind of maneuver that will still draw cop attention.
He couldn’t see us from there, and the way cars were in the drive, we would have been able to tuck ourselves in quickly and go unnoticed.
minor consumption – what happens with significant consumption?
Campus cops suck. The original Karens.
https://relatably.com/m/img/police-memes/c02b34a590ad463de053a3f542375ce77c1168e340c065621a52fec7baf19ebb.jpg
Campus cops
Fake IDs were never a thing in Romania… then again there was 0 issue getting booze if you looked at least 14 or so
I went to Spain at 15 in the 80s and the clubs would give me whatever I wanted. Dunno if it’s different now but they certainly didn’t care then.
A restaurant in Germany would serve my 12 y.o. son beer as long as I was with him.
Probably healthier than the water.
Here in Ohio, it’s legal for parents/guardians to provide drinks to their children. However, it’s not legal for anyone underage to sit at the bar (although some bars don’t care).
It used to be that way in NM but they did a big overhaul of the alcohol laws some time back because of the DWI problem*.
We lost our drive-up windows at the same time.**
* Of course, they ignored the fundamental DWI issues: Large number of Indians who didn’t care and the corrupt legal system in the state that would let repeat offenders go because “he’s my cousin”
** I asked rhetorically at the time if we would get our windows back if it was shown to have no effect on DWI rates. It didn’t and we didn’t.
Juarez didn’t care, at least in 69-70. There was even a bar called “El Submarino” that was supposedly where all of the El Paso high school kids partied.
OT: Some of you commented that the lefties who hate the NFL will use the Damar Hamlin freak accident (commotio cordis) as an excuse to water down the NFL even further and turn it into flag football.
But I had no idea how maudlin MSN would get so quickly: https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/the-terrifying-moment-that-stopped-the-nfl-cold/ar-AA15V4zP
Never mind that there are 1-2 similar deaths in kids’ baseball due the same unlucky circumstances.
The “article” throws around terms like “relentless”, “violence”, “brutality..
“It is an intrinsically vicious sport that many spectators deem justifiably brutal” I guess I should have seen that coming when Obama said he wouldn’t let his hypothetical sons play football.
Just came across my newsfeed that the game will not be resumed this week.
My only mild take is 17 games and a 14 team playoff make this more complicated then it needs to be.
Wimps gonna whimper.
It’s surprising that, throughout its history, the game has avoided an abundance of frightening scenes.
Weird.
The David French point reaches zero.
The newest token faux conservative has entered the ring!
“Although quite conservative”
Nice to see the commertariat jumping all over that non sequitur.
Even as a conservative I have to agree with the left on this point. /the start of every one of his articles from now on.
Isn’t that Jennifer Rubins grift he’s horning in on, or is she at WaPo?
She’s got the deranged lunatic grift cornered.
Ah, looks like she is at WaPo. Nice to know the supply of faux conservative columnists is meeting demand.
Rubin and French are part of the conservative movement unfortunately. It’s the part that should have been lopped off long ago before the gangrene set in.
Meanwhile, it seems as if Schellenberger and Tiabbi are getting red-pilled in real time.
Is David Brooks still their tame “conservative”?
He prefers the “civilized” moniker.
House is most appropriate.
His audition piece.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-and-tucker-carlson-dont-understand-the-first-amendment/672352/
To my knowledge, French has not updated his commentary in the last month.
“But finding coercion is key.”
That’s the problem. It’s all wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Nice place you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
“Instead, they detail the exercise of First Amendment rights by independent, private actors.” If you look over the constant communications that included specific requests from the FBI to remove posts as benign as jokes, sure, then I guess your argument is correct.
Yeah, the mask is off. It’s obvious now that government agencies were outsourcing their suppression of speech through private companies. The left can go fuck itself with any “it’suh prviit cumpny” bullshit from now until damnation, far as I’m concerned.
More: this is to the tune of maybe a hundred million a year.
There is the $35 million FBI task force, plus another $32 million from the NSF to grant to universities and think tanks to fund this, plus CIA, plus DOJ, plus CDC… and then you have several large outside funding sources for the think tanks like the Stanford Internet Observatory (Koch) who help decide what speech to suppress and how best to counter speech (including disinformation campaigns to accompany speech supression)
“But finding coercion is key.”
Why? IMO any requests at all from the government or any candidate or political party are inappropriate. The government should not be involved in citizens’ speech unless there is a crime involved, and even then there are proper channels.
Oh hey, TOK, apropos of nothing – I was watching TV in February, and whatever network I hit had the “Beijing” Olympics on (I think it was in Canada at that point). Specifically, sled hockey. I watched through a couple line changes, but didn’t hear anyone named Kevin take the ice, so I quit. (Not the biggest hockey fan.) But from what you said after, it sounded like you had a good experience – hope that’s true.
And yeah, it was the US team…
There actually is a Kevin on Team USA, and he also plays for my team. So I’m The Other Kevin in many contexts.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Here is a key nugget that everyone is ignoring:
The FBI and others directed social media companies to suppress any talk that cast doubt on the security of vote by mail.
This, in the summer of 2020.
Again…. months before the election, when Trump was down double digits across the country….. the FBI directed Twitter to supreas any questioning of mail in ballots, and we can reasonably infer that they passed similar instructions to CNN the NYT, ABC, Facebook, Google…
Do you need more of a smoking gun?
This is not post-election worry over “questioning election integrity”. This is suppression 6 months prior to the election.
Does anyone doubt that they were telegraphing their plans?
What it would take to stop this, and to keep it from re-emerging, is way, way beyond the capabilities (never mind willingness) of our elected officials.
I am leaning the other way based on what we have seen.
They do not work for the politicians. It is the other way around. These people are selecting who gets to run. They are the puppeteers. Biden kinda removes the mask – he clearly is not in charge of anything-, but you had to suspect it before.
The real question is, who is the scriptwriter and producer for the puppeteers? My money is on rhe soros, Koch, Bezos, Lockheed, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, etc. Of the world.
There’s no one puppeteer. It’s a series of theater troupes full of puppeteers who cross-pollinate and support one another in their goals. Entire constellations of non-profits, entire universities, a gazillion NGOs and fascist corporo-governmental entities. Billions of our dollars paying to grow the collective tail that wags the fascist dog. There are leaders, but it’s not so neatly organized.
They can buy politicians but they can’t actually buy bureaucrats.
I only had to read the first paragraph to spot the retardation. The muh private company argument no longer applies to companies that are being leaned on by the government and the author is well aware. IOW, he’s lying.
Or what Stinky says richt heah ^^^
If the government can penaltax their war around limitations on government authority why not use 3rd parties to do things the government isn’t authorized?
“The only problem with McCarthyism is that they went after the wrong people. ” – The NYT, probably.
Nice misdirection, there. That’s not the line of reasoning that supports the argument that the 1A has been violated, and never was.
And, yeah, anytime somebody from a law enforcement agency makes a “request”, there’s an unavoidable element of coercion to it. As someone who gets “requests” from mere regulatory agencies regularly, its there even at that level. And when the DOJ or its buttboy the FBI rings you up, the jackboot is palpable.
Ask some of our pilots here if a ‘request’ from FSDO (flight safety) can be ignored…it’s force of regulatory and/or governmental reach that probably 100% of corporate lawyers advise not to ignore.
They wanted their own Jennifer Rubin.
And they got her.
Wait, didn’t he forbid his wife to be Facebook friends with other men? How can the NYT justify paying such a misogynist?
That was this guy? lmao
But, why?
NY legal?
Because it’s funny.
It’s deranged enough that I already want one.
I don’t know. I have it on good information that those bullets will rip your lungs out, man.
Someone really needs to come out with Werewolf 9mm ammo.
I’m willing to accept that that thing has some possible practical use, especially in a ban state.
But holy fuck is that thing ugly.
Given the choice between going to the range with a POF Tombstone, and going to the range in full furry regalia…I’d have to think about it.
LOL
Per Evil Sheldon’s comment: When semi auto is banned…
I didn’t look of age to buy alcohol until I hit forty so thank god we had a local guy that’d sell to you if you were tall enough to put it on the counter, no ID needed. He was an old bastard who’d sell to a nine year old if he felt like it but at the time I was glad he was around.
Someone is a sour Kraut.
A regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim confirmed Tuesday that the doctor was convicted of “issuing incorrect health certificates” to people from across Germany, most of whom she had never met or examined.
In addition to the prison sentence she was handed a three-year work ban and ordered to pay 28,000 euros ($29,550), the sum she had received for issuing the medical certificates. Her office assistant was fined 2,700 euros.
“The process is more reminiscent of a sale of certificates than a medical procedure,” the court said in a statement. It noted that she was not faulted for providing certificates to her existing patients.
During the trial the defendant had argued that wearing masks was harmful to people´s health.
Unapproved medical opinions are not allowed.
I thought for sure the sour Kraut was going to be named Reuben. But the doc is a she, so probably not.
Uuuuuuuuuuugh.
This is a long first day back.
Agreed.
Amen.
This was the wrong day to start using the standing function of my stand desk.
Rant about everyone being soft part 2-
NFL is now offering mental health services to players, and says they won’t play the game until the guys are ready.
What the fuck are you going to do if they say they aren’t ready to play a game on Sunday? What if that’s too soon?
We need a serious fucking comeback of man the fuck up.
Welcome to the United States of Pussified America.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1610292982766256129?t=j7NZOTmczJtRcjz1aHNvUA&s=19
Under the heading of WTF
He looks…”Asian.”
Good shoot.
He wasn’t the best hatchet man.
What a cutting remark.
Chop it, Swissy will come in swinging.
I don’t worry about Swiss’ hackneyed response.
Terror – TERROR I scream!
What actually bothers me most – these fucks an national council.
what bothers me even more – my typing /an/have a/
They have been offering all the agencies details to the secure and not an emergency border. We have technicians down there processing paperwork
I am convinced the government is pumping chemicals in the air which cause typos.
*adjusts tinfoil hat
*psst* the whole industry is in on it /not an FAA employee
***Makes notes to rigorously check obits in RJ’s locality for news of his impending “suicide”.***
I spent too much time over at TOS over the last couple of days.
They are finally discussing the Twitter files, if tepidly.
ENB featured on Meet the Press to deflect attention to republican threats to do something about it. She says Mastadon is the answer.. the free market will fix it.
Any of you who have been over there witnessed me go full on scorched earth. There is no longer a question in my mind… they are now a part of the propaganda machine, and not due to some TDS induced psychosis. It is clearly by design.
Greenwald, Taibbi, Weiss and crew seem to be the last place to get any real independent reporting.
If it were just Twitter employees doing this without any outside governmental forces, yes, more speech/social options would be the answer. If she doesn’t think that Mastadon isn’t infiltrated then I have a bridge to sell her.
ENB has been sad to watch. When they first brought her on, she did some good long form investigative articles for them. I don’t think I can think of anyone that got hit harder by TDS. Complete establishment booklicker now…….and not the hot kinky kind like you’d think from her hooker coverage.
https://twitter.com/reason/status/1609995320435302402?t=uCr6My-FLYFiRPTf0Yr_8w&s=19
Judge for yourself.
Is this a “libertarian response” to “the security state is directing what can and what cannot be said at every news agency and television station, every social media company and even banks and payment processors”?
Or is this deflection and cover?
Look! Republicans are pouncing!!
I’m with you already dude. She’s become a completely unhinged lunatic. The whole “free market will solve it” is past childishly naive at this point. It’s downright retarded. The problem is that various agencies and branches within the government have now proven that not only do they put their fingers on the scales by using private businesses as enforcement mechanisms, they face no meaning full opposition or accountability for doing so, all but guaranteeing the spread of this behavior. She is arguing for the state to literally do whatever they want with no reprisal. It’s completely unreal to watch.
ENB has been sad to watch. When they first brought her on, she did some good long form investigative articles for them.
Agreed. In her early days, I thought she was a good writer, even though I thought she was wrong a lot. She descended even before Trump, but that definitely accelerated it. Also marrying a communist.
I wonder if it has anything to do with their dependence on Koch?
Koch does have a seat at the table when suppression decisions are made… at a minimum via the SIO.
Jane Mayer here we come!
She says Mastadon is the answer.. the free market will fix it.
Three thoughts:
(1) That cesspool of pedophilia?
(2) If it actually does catch on, it will be deplatformed upstream, as has happened before.
(3) Or, it will be (or already is) taking orders from the feds.
If your response to “look, here is proof that the federal government has been directing a propaganda machine illegally in order to influence the outcome of elections and suppress debate on important issues” is to immediately start pointing at the people who are saying “stop, or we will use the government to stop this”, I will contend that you are in fact a shill for the state who is attempting to deflect attention away from the illegal conduct taking place
I really don’t see any valid argument to the contrary.
Indeed. Put another way: If you think accusations of censorship by the state should be censored by the state, you are in no sense whatsoever a supporter of free speech. The opposite, in fact.
It’s like writing a fucking encomium to Hoover as the Church Commission is delivering it’s report.
I don’t see what you’re getting in a huff about. Don’t you know that we stopped the rise of fascism when Trump lost? This is clearly nothing to worry about or all the corporate media and social media companies that were just shown to take their marching orders directly from the executive branch, FBI and CIA would tell that we need to be worried. Think about it man!
LoL… I am stunned to learn that we may have left fascism in the rear view mirror a while back.
In all seriousness, the effectiveness at convincing normies that this story is a nothing burger is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. The biggest smoking gun for the existence of real life actual definitional fascism is being completely waved off because it’s the “good guys” doing it. My boomer con dad thinks nothing of it, but he’s completely terrified that white supremacy is making a comeback. He can’t name a single name when I ask him who these ascendant Nazis are, but they’re coming. Meanwhile the most powerful government the world has ever seen is wiping their ass with the only thing that is supposed to prevent them from becoming totalitarians. The second you accept your enemy’s framing of the narrative, you’ve lost completely.
And if two of us could see how scary the propaganda machine was….. well, they would think we were gay, and they wouldn’t take us.
But if three… just think… if three people sang a bar of Alice’s Restaurant……
Black smoke over Congress. No Speaker of the House chosen after second ballot.
Dun… dun… duuuuuuuuun!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40
Wow, haven’t seen that one in a long time.
Obligatory.
Put a conch in the center of the room and battle it out for it. The person to first sound off with it, becomes speaker.
I prefer the approach where you put all the candidates in a room, break a pool cue in half and throw it in with them, and tell them whoever comes out is the new Speaker.
Put everyone in congress in a giant boat, going over Niagara Falls.
That’s it. They can vote on the way down if they want.
I like the way you and this guy think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P10bC0Bxp20
TOS thinks this is a bad thing
They really love the establishment.
Fighting over the direction of the next congress is an unalloyed good thing. They should fight it out
The sad part is, it isn’t a big fight – it’s just a few, just enough to throw a little bit of gravel in the gears, and it won’t amount to anything.
Exactly.