If no one else has said it, I will: It isn't slander or libel IF ITS TRUE. To me, it looks as though Evangelicals For Harris is taking a page out of The Lincoln Project playbook, simply quoting the desired sources verbatim, with little other comment, and allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
To me, it looks to be potentially damned effective. I'll be curious to see what evangelicals think.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
Paul Simon is a flat-out GENIUS who has earned all the accolades he has gotten ... and for what I hear, he wants to continue performing, DESPITE his hearing loss!
Nothing ever demonstrated the disconnect between religion and morality quite like the evangelicals pledging their unconditional love for the most corrupt, incompetent and grotesquely immoral President in our history. They were foolish enough to believe Trump would give them a role in government, and he played them for the fools they are.
The religious zealots support a 34-count FELON! A RAPIST! A wife cheater, a certified liar resulting in deadly harm to people (Covid denial). A colluder with Russia…an asset to Russia. Sums up my thoughts on nutty religion perfectly!
Since their deity hasn't more fully empowered them, they clearly opted for someone who WOULD. The awful fact is that Trump has delivered more power and influence to right-wing evangelicals than Yahweh ever has.
But then, something that doesn't exist has a REAL HARD TIME taking any form of action!
It's hard to see how Franklin Graham or BGEA would have standing to sue given that they can't show any actual, reputational harm either to Graham or his organization. They'd also have to overcome the First Amendment protections of Evangelicals for Harris. The ad doesn't defame Billy Graham, his association or his Trump-worshipping son Franklin. IOW, they have no basis for infringing the free speech rights of Evangelicals for Harris.
But the most important reason Franklin Graham won't sue is because a lawsuit would open him up to discovery, which would be wide-ranging and reveal lots of inconvenient, unsavory truths Graham would rather the public - and the flock he's fleecing - not know about.
Frankie's just pounding the table because that ad is effective. It spotlights the hypocrisy of MAGA evangelicals' worship of Trump, the avatar for the seven deadlies.
It would seem as though Frankie has opened his mouth SEVERAL TIMES TOO MANY. His father, at least, had a degree of judgment as regards dealing with politics and politicians. Frankie clearly has NONE.
Had Franklin not inherited the family business, and make no mistake it is a business, he is someone the world would never hear of. He is a mind-numbingly stupid man who expects his putrid religiosity to be deferred to at all times.
That is fine for defamation cases: slander or libel. However, the truth is not, necessarily a defence against a copyright accusation. That is where the "fair use" defence comes in. Copyright material may also be used in legal proceedings without infringement. That is English law and, given the shared history, I do not expect US laws to be markedly different.
It's possible that clips in question were in the public domain, too. This was always going to be a copyright infringement not a defamation case. My point was to establish the lack of reputational harm Franklin might to try to claim.
Sour grapes from Franklin. How dare they tell the actual truth using actual video of what people really said! He is angry that someone is highlighting just what an asshole he is. He is mad at the idea that anyone who respected his father would dare to oppose the drift from hidden hate to open hate that the NSGOP has undergone over the last 40 years. He is mad that any of "his people" (as though he 𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘴 them) wouldn't shut up and follow orders. He is mad that there are actual Christians that don't want the conservative theocratic dystopia that fuels his wet dreams.
The intention is to highlight the Republican drift towards Nazi ideology, but I hadn't thought much about what the acronym could actually stand for. How about 𝗡azi-esque 𝗦camming 𝗚arbage 𝗢ld 𝗣arty?
As further backup to this whole topic, if you have not watched it, I encourage you to watch and listen to Howard Stern's interview with Kamala Harris. She comes across as living her belief system - far more christlike than tRump could ever be.
Okay, I feel like I need to say this because there've been two wall'o'text "...but Harris is bad too!" posts now, and we're only 26 days from Election Day as of this moment, so...
We get it. We 𝘢𝘭𝘭 get it. Harris/Walz is not a perfect ticket. No ticket ever is. There are issues they aren't progressive enough on, there are wrongs they're not going to do enough to right, and yes, gosh dangit, they're still Christians, and ain't that just a shame? Message received. Understood, copied, and registered.
And now that you've got it out of your system, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱.
We went through this same shit in 2020 with Biden, and in 2016 with Clinton; we came uncomfortably close to losing the former, and we 𝘥𝘪𝘥 lose the latter- and 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 because a disgustingly large number of voters let the perfect be the enemy of the 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘶𝘭 and pissed their votes away in protest.
I am not, to be clear, accusing anyone here of doing 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵... but we 𝘢𝘳𝘦 on the internet, folks. For all intents and purposes, this is a public forum, and even if you do not yourself intend to waste your vote, your words might just convince somebody else to.
We cannot afford for that to happen this year. We need 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 vote we can muster. We need the margin of defeat for Trump and his gaggle of goose-stepping god-botherers to be 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 that there cannot be any room for doubting the results of the contest. We need to send the loudest, clearest possible message, with the contents of said message being: "𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴- 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘍𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥." If we lose this thing by so much as one single vote, the body count will be astronomical. If the race is won, but by too narrow a margin, and another coup attempt sees greater success than the last one did, we'll be lucky if we don't have another Civil War for the trouble.
So, for the sake of democracy, for secular governance, and for all of the people who are probably going to end up dead if Trump and his cult get to play firetruck with the Oval Office for another four years- or worse- would you please just 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵 until November 6th? Hell, you can even start up again on November 5th, as long as you wait until the last polls close to do it- I'll even join you, because I wholeheartedly agree with all of your criticisms!
But not until then. This is walking-on-eggshells-through-a-minefield time, and you are poking the mines with a stick. Please stop poking the mines with a stick.
Well an increasing number of pundits seem to think Harris is going to win. Including Mike Moore, who predicted trumps when in 2016 against all the polling evidence. I think most of the world has its fingers crossed for you guys though.
I wasn't going to post this. F it, I'm posting it.
I'm voting in the next election because there is a chance it might be the last time I get to vote. I'm a woman living in Arizona, which is so deeply red it blots out the sun. They've put several propositions on this ballot to change how elections run, and it's pretty clear the goal is to make it harder for non-Republicans to win even local offices. Am I blowing things out of proportion? I sure hope so, but just in case I'm going to go down swinging and vote in November.
Women believed for years that Roe vs. Wade would protect their right to make decisions about their body and their pregnancy, and yet that protection failed. Who's to say the same can't happen to voting rights?
We actually knew when the supreme court was up for grabs in 2016, and told people, but some could not bring themselves to vote appropriately. They have been telling us for decades that was their plan.
We’re not electing a pastor, we’re electing a president.
It’s not about his character, it’s about what he will do to… er … for America. He’s proven he is willing to do anything to make America great again, deport foreigners, kill women, enslave black people… and he’s even put his life in danger to do it, twice. Not only that, he gave up his fortune to run the country, look at all the money he made from selling to the secret service and foreign diplomats, wait, he even divested, no he didn’t divest like every other president ever. I mean, he’s told us he will be making the presidency all about what’s right for us, like going after his political rivals, just like Krystalnacht.
As bad as Trump is, he doesn't even compare to the "top 5" or so worst Popes. So I have no problem thinking some church would take him as their leader. They've joyfully taken worse as their leaders.
But, it would be a pretty short arrangement. I figure it might take Trump a month, maybe several months at most, to clean out all their accounts. Then he'd quit.
Trump is an ahole who doesn't have any virtue or morals whatsoever. It's a brand new unheard of low when he took a version of the Bible and put his name on it. And why just why is he still the Republican presidential ticket right now?!?!? Get those votes Kamala and Tim!
OT- Windows just stealth-installed an AI chatbot called "Copilot" on my computer, again (happens every few updates, much like their attempts to re-enable their telemetry snoopware). I surgically removed it, naturally, but it's worth mentioning because anyone who has a Windows PC should be on the lookout for it. As a reminder, "AI" is code for "content theft," and Microsoft's Terms of Service permit them to use any content you store on their servers (possibly also anything you create using their programs, like Word or Excel, but I haven't looked over the ToS for those as I don't use anything MS other than Windows itself), so by allowing this shit to run on your system, you may be enabling Microsoft to steal and re-use your work- or that of others- for their own purposes. Just a heads-up. Look through your Apps list in Settings and uninstall Copilot if it's present.
Still running Win10 too. It's tried to stealth-download a whole-ass Win11 upgrade package before, too, and various other annoying shit from time to time. Ever since MS tried to force Vista on XP users back in the day, I swear that managing my OS has been like trying to keep a distracted toddler from wandering into a swimming pool.
And when I tried to upgrade this machine to Windows 11, it slowed to a crawl. That MAY have been because it was trying to update itself, but I was watching processes with Task Manager, and it didn't look that way.
Which means I may need to pop for another laptop when support for 10 is withdrawn. 😖
That's their evil plan... make you buy a whole new system.
I booted up a little Acer notebook I found, just to see if it worked. It runs on XP and how amazed I was that it didn't try to interfere with everything; just quietly did its OS job without all the other "here let me help you with that" bullshit that people are used to these days. Ah, the good ol' days. Sweet little dingus, I'm keeping it. But then, I still have my old Amiga 3000 somewhere, lol.
My Acer (an Aspire 5) has an i7 processor and 16 gig of RAM, and it still slowed to a crawl when running 11. Hell of it is, I had an HP laptop before this one and until it started running up against its 8 gig of RAM, it ran like a champ. Meanwhile, the Acer hangs every three-to-four days and needs a Big Red Reset to recover.
My Craptop, which I use as infrequently as humanly possible, came with Win10 pre-installed and started out not being particularly fast, but over the last few years bloat-creep has turned it into a total snail that takes upwards of ten minutes just to sort its shit out after booting. My tower was originally built as a Win7 box, but I switched to Win10 when MS ended support for Win7... and I've watched the OS slo-o-o-o-owly consume more and more of my system drive ever since. Every few updates, I have to move something else to one of my other drives to make more room for Windows' ever-expanding waistband.
I bought my Alienware in '22, the HP before that in '16 I believe. I had upgraded RAM and hard drive and OS in that time frame. Now none of them have been cheap laptops. I went for the high end stuff, but it *lasted*
Similar OT - Windows seems to have changed the default auto-save location from your computer to your connected cloud places.
If, like me, your kid occasionally does (and e-submits) school work on your computer, this can cause major personal information leakage and embarrassment, as your computer auto-saves your personal documents to some county government system.
So, I'd suggest that people check THAT too, while they're looking for Copilot.
11 defaults to putting the standard folders on OneDrive, but that can be changed. I had to, because copying my stuff from old computer rapidly filled my 1G OneDrive space. I also purchased office '21 from a 3rd party seller rather than a 365 subscription. So nothing tries to save to OneDrive by default.
I'm positively obsessive about sabotaging any of MS' phone-home bullshit- to the point of changing the file ownership on the .exe and revoking "write" and "execute" permissions for all users so that the offending program can't even be run by 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵.
I've also been avoiding MS' productivity software since XP came out, so there's that too... not even because of their shift towards forcing online connectivity in everything, although that would have been reason enough on its own, but rather because I just didn't like the feature bloat and constant UI changes with every. Single. Version. Of. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.
My response is seriously consider if you need Windows for anything. Web browsing, e-mail, and productivity software doesn't really need it. There are several 'Live' USB Linux distributions you can try before you install them, very little phone-home software because hardly anybody is trying to sell *you*.
I have an important piece of software that doesn't run on Linux so I still have Windows on my laptop. But the fact is Microsoft isn't going to quit this crap for home users until they start losing market share.
Actually, I'm much more concerned about Recall than I am about Copilot (which can't be uninstalled from Windows 11, only disabled). The only way we're going to get rid of both is for the EU to get off their butts and make it illegal there.
I notice it does not show up in install/delete programs tab where can I find it to delete it? in windows 11 Never mind, It was installed so I turned it off.
Yep, make sure you don't store your documents in their cloud. Also watch out for them trying to SCAM you into paying for it ... if you have an MS cloud storage account (required to have an office subscription) but don't use the storage, after a couple of years they will deactivate your office account until you "revalidate" your cloud storage. Except the "revalidation" message implies that your storage is FULL and they try really hard to upsell you to more storage BEFORE they let you view the page that tells you the status of your cloud storage (mine had 2 email attachments from 2017 taking up less than 1% of the free storage). And... this is only accessible after blocking access to your account for up to 24 hours while this phoney "revalidation" process happens.
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
He was writing Dune from 1960-64. He was a little bit prescient.
Yes yes yes. For too long we've heard how 'good' Billy Graham was. Oh my, how he wasn't. Good on you Mr. Mehta:
'If anything, the group is too kind to Billy Graham. He was, as I mentioned, antisemitic. He opposed LGBTQ rights. He was ambiguous when it came to racism.'
It’s a good, ethical way to get folks to vote for the candidate that has the country’s best interests at heart.
If using Billy Graham's clips is a copyright violation, then all the right’s ads using clips of Harris are copyright violations as well, even using Trump clips is too. He said these things publicly, disseminated them widely and they are using them fairly.
Keep driving home the point that Trump isn’t the messiah they claim him to be. Enough people will become uncomfortable enough to wake up.
I suspect both of them are multi-millionaires, but the point is that both of them are engaged with their audiences. Put briefly, they give a damn, and that shows in their actions.
Just as Donald Trump's inaction shows just as blatantly.
Actually, I'm pretty sure Ms. Swift is a billionaire, not a hundred-billionaire like the rat, but a billionaire. Musk could practically fund FEMA with his lunch money.
Bezos? Musk? Gates? All the others I cannot remember the names of? You named two. All the others remain totally silent, cold-hearted, out of touch and usually filled with contempt for those less fortunate.
Not a great statistical sample, but the women seem to have more empathy than the men. I wonder if Betsy De Voss contributed anything. I somehow doubt it.
I’m a little torn on this. Most evangelicals see us as the devil incarnate. I appreciate the EFH for making the effort and yes, the Dem tent is big enough to accommodate them for now. However, money where mouth is. Let’s see what happens after the election. If it’s the same shit different day, I’ll probably be disappointed, but not surprised.
If no one else has said it, I will: It isn't slander or libel IF ITS TRUE. To me, it looks as though Evangelicals For Harris is taking a page out of The Lincoln Project playbook, simply quoting the desired sources verbatim, with little other comment, and allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
To me, it looks to be potentially damned effective. I'll be curious to see what evangelicals think.
It’s always best when they go after their own.
https://i.imgur.com/gt1vrgd.mp4
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_truth
"The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel."
WOOF! Oh, Graham has stepped in it for sure, and I doubt he's going to like the smell very much! 😝
They're threatening to sue for copyright infringement, not libel.
Two words: Fair Use.
Two more words: Public Domain!
That does appear to be the case. Fair Use would seem to apply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
+++
🎼...… It's the same old story, yeah
Everywhere I go
I get slandered, libeled
I hear words I never heard in the Bible...🎶
Paul Simon is a flat-out GENIUS who has earned all the accolades he has gotten ... and for what I hear, he wants to continue performing, DESPITE his hearing loss!
I wish him all the very best.
Nothing ever demonstrated the disconnect between religion and morality quite like the evangelicals pledging their unconditional love for the most corrupt, incompetent and grotesquely immoral President in our history. They were foolish enough to believe Trump would give them a role in government, and he played them for the fools they are.
The religious zealots support a 34-count FELON! A RAPIST! A wife cheater, a certified liar resulting in deadly harm to people (Covid denial). A colluder with Russia…an asset to Russia. Sums up my thoughts on nutty religion perfectly!
Since their deity hasn't more fully empowered them, they clearly opted for someone who WOULD. The awful fact is that Trump has delivered more power and influence to right-wing evangelicals than Yahweh ever has.
But then, something that doesn't exist has a REAL HARD TIME taking any form of action!
+++ Trump values people to the extent he finds them useful, and not an iota more. He couldn't care less about them otherwise.
If you don’t mind I want to use your words exactly. Do I have your permission?
Help yourself.
Merci.
Dunno where you plan to use them but if they can help advance the cause of reason I'm okay with it.
Be assured that is the purpose.
It's hard to see how Franklin Graham or BGEA would have standing to sue given that they can't show any actual, reputational harm either to Graham or his organization. They'd also have to overcome the First Amendment protections of Evangelicals for Harris. The ad doesn't defame Billy Graham, his association or his Trump-worshipping son Franklin. IOW, they have no basis for infringing the free speech rights of Evangelicals for Harris.
But the most important reason Franklin Graham won't sue is because a lawsuit would open him up to discovery, which would be wide-ranging and reveal lots of inconvenient, unsavory truths Graham would rather the public - and the flock he's fleecing - not know about.
Frankie's just pounding the table because that ad is effective. It spotlights the hypocrisy of MAGA evangelicals' worship of Trump, the avatar for the seven deadlies.
It would seem as though Frankie has opened his mouth SEVERAL TIMES TOO MANY. His father, at least, had a degree of judgment as regards dealing with politics and politicians. Frankie clearly has NONE.
And he may pay for that lack.
So mote it be.
Had Franklin not inherited the family business, and make no mistake it is a business, he is someone the world would never hear of. He is a mind-numbingly stupid man who expects his putrid religiosity to be deferred to at all times.
This reminds me of someone else. Hmm ... tfg?
That is fine for defamation cases: slander or libel. However, the truth is not, necessarily a defence against a copyright accusation. That is where the "fair use" defence comes in. Copyright material may also be used in legal proceedings without infringement. That is English law and, given the shared history, I do not expect US laws to be markedly different.
It's possible that clips in question were in the public domain, too. This was always going to be a copyright infringement not a defamation case. My point was to establish the lack of reputational harm Franklin might to try to claim.
𝑁𝑜 𝑤𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝐹𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑙𝑖𝑛 𝐺𝑟𝑎ℎ𝑎𝑚 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑑-𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟.
Sour grapes from Franklin. How dare they tell the actual truth using actual video of what people really said! He is angry that someone is highlighting just what an asshole he is. He is mad at the idea that anyone who respected his father would dare to oppose the drift from hidden hate to open hate that the NSGOP has undergone over the last 40 years. He is mad that any of "his people" (as though he 𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘴 them) wouldn't shut up and follow orders. He is mad that there are actual Christians that don't want the conservative theocratic dystopia that fuels his wet dreams.
I understand the intention behind your use of NSGOP, but could you please explain the acronym again? Just what the letters mean. Thanks.
It's a riff on the OG Nazis' acronym, NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party).
The intention is to highlight the Republican drift towards Nazi ideology, but I hadn't thought much about what the acronym could actually stand for. How about 𝗡azi-esque 𝗦camming 𝗚arbage 𝗢ld 𝗣arty?
As further backup to this whole topic, if you have not watched it, I encourage you to watch and listen to Howard Stern's interview with Kamala Harris. She comes across as living her belief system - far more christlike than tRump could ever be.
👆👆👆👆
Okay, I feel like I need to say this because there've been two wall'o'text "...but Harris is bad too!" posts now, and we're only 26 days from Election Day as of this moment, so...
We get it. We 𝘢𝘭𝘭 get it. Harris/Walz is not a perfect ticket. No ticket ever is. There are issues they aren't progressive enough on, there are wrongs they're not going to do enough to right, and yes, gosh dangit, they're still Christians, and ain't that just a shame? Message received. Understood, copied, and registered.
And now that you've got it out of your system, 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱.
We went through this same shit in 2020 with Biden, and in 2016 with Clinton; we came uncomfortably close to losing the former, and we 𝘥𝘪𝘥 lose the latter- and 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 because a disgustingly large number of voters let the perfect be the enemy of the 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘶𝘭 and pissed their votes away in protest.
I am not, to be clear, accusing anyone here of doing 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵... but we 𝘢𝘳𝘦 on the internet, folks. For all intents and purposes, this is a public forum, and even if you do not yourself intend to waste your vote, your words might just convince somebody else to.
We cannot afford for that to happen this year. We need 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 vote we can muster. We need the margin of defeat for Trump and his gaggle of goose-stepping god-botherers to be 𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 that there cannot be any room for doubting the results of the contest. We need to send the loudest, clearest possible message, with the contents of said message being: "𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴- 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘍𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥." If we lose this thing by so much as one single vote, the body count will be astronomical. If the race is won, but by too narrow a margin, and another coup attempt sees greater success than the last one did, we'll be lucky if we don't have another Civil War for the trouble.
So, for the sake of democracy, for secular governance, and for all of the people who are probably going to end up dead if Trump and his cult get to play firetruck with the Oval Office for another four years- or worse- would you please just 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵 until November 6th? Hell, you can even start up again on November 5th, as long as you wait until the last polls close to do it- I'll even join you, because I wholeheartedly agree with all of your criticisms!
But not until then. This is walking-on-eggshells-through-a-minefield time, and you are poking the mines with a stick. Please stop poking the mines with a stick.
Vote with your heart in the primary; vote practical the general.
If the primary sends your favored candidate to the general, great! Then there's no difference. But most of the time, there will be a difference.
To summarize, we can not pull the U.S. to the left if we let it be pulled right over the cliff.
BRAVO!!!
I voted micron in 2022 because the alternative was lapeine. I will vote for nearly anyone* who isn't affiliated with this fucking family.
* sansamour can go croak in a ditch.
I love the meme of the Handmaids from the Tale saying, “I just didn't like Hillary enough.”
I just wish the boneheads didn't actually think that way.
Well an increasing number of pundits seem to think Harris is going to win. Including Mike Moore, who predicted trumps when in 2016 against all the polling evidence. I think most of the world has its fingers crossed for you guys though.
I wasn't going to post this. F it, I'm posting it.
I'm voting in the next election because there is a chance it might be the last time I get to vote. I'm a woman living in Arizona, which is so deeply red it blots out the sun. They've put several propositions on this ballot to change how elections run, and it's pretty clear the goal is to make it harder for non-Republicans to win even local offices. Am I blowing things out of proportion? I sure hope so, but just in case I'm going to go down swinging and vote in November.
Women believed for years that Roe vs. Wade would protect their right to make decisions about their body and their pregnancy, and yet that protection failed. Who's to say the same can't happen to voting rights?
We actually knew when the supreme court was up for grabs in 2016, and told people, but some could not bring themselves to vote appropriately. They have been telling us for decades that was their plan.
"Not a single white evangelical church in America would ever allow this guy to be their pastor if they wanted to be taken seriously,"
joel noesteem, pink lady, fartwell Jr, creepy TV screen man, creepy TV screen man hidden son...
We’re not electing a pastor, we’re electing a president.
It’s not about his character, it’s about what he will do to… er … for America. He’s proven he is willing to do anything to make America great again, deport foreigners, kill women, enslave black people… and he’s even put his life in danger to do it, twice. Not only that, he gave up his fortune to run the country, look at all the money he made from selling to the secret service and foreign diplomats, wait, he even divested, no he didn’t divest like every other president ever. I mean, he’s told us he will be making the presidency all about what’s right for us, like going after his political rivals, just like Krystalnacht.
Lemme try again…
Apparently we're 'electing' an emperor.
Are we about to be threatened with the comfy chair?
But they WOULD let him in in a heartbeat if, rather than wanting greater holiness (whatever that is, they wanted POWER and INFLUENCE.
Which one those evangelicals really were after is left as an exercise for the student.
As bad as Trump is, he doesn't even compare to the "top 5" or so worst Popes. So I have no problem thinking some church would take him as their leader. They've joyfully taken worse as their leaders.
But, it would be a pretty short arrangement. I figure it might take Trump a month, maybe several months at most, to clean out all their accounts. Then he'd quit.
Trump is an ahole who doesn't have any virtue or morals whatsoever. It's a brand new unheard of low when he took a version of the Bible and put his name on it. And why just why is he still the Republican presidential ticket right now?!?!? Get those votes Kamala and Tim!
Trump proves that there are a lot of shitty people in the good ol' US of A.
Always have been. Trump is the Pied Piper of these "people": promises then when they follow not delivering.
🎯
Yup!
Hoist by their own petards....it's a beautiful thing!
OT- Windows just stealth-installed an AI chatbot called "Copilot" on my computer, again (happens every few updates, much like their attempts to re-enable their telemetry snoopware). I surgically removed it, naturally, but it's worth mentioning because anyone who has a Windows PC should be on the lookout for it. As a reminder, "AI" is code for "content theft," and Microsoft's Terms of Service permit them to use any content you store on their servers (possibly also anything you create using their programs, like Word or Excel, but I haven't looked over the ToS for those as I don't use anything MS other than Windows itself), so by allowing this shit to run on your system, you may be enabling Microsoft to steal and re-use your work- or that of others- for their own purposes. Just a heads-up. Look through your Apps list in Settings and uninstall Copilot if it's present.
Running Windows 10 here, and it doesn't look as though it's in ... YET.
Still running Win10 too. It's tried to stealth-download a whole-ass Win11 upgrade package before, too, and various other annoying shit from time to time. Ever since MS tried to force Vista on XP users back in the day, I swear that managing my OS has been like trying to keep a distracted toddler from wandering into a swimming pool.
No more upgrades for us Win 10 users so... yay...
And when I tried to upgrade this machine to Windows 11, it slowed to a crawl. That MAY have been because it was trying to update itself, but I was watching processes with Task Manager, and it didn't look that way.
Which means I may need to pop for another laptop when support for 10 is withdrawn. 😖
That's their evil plan... make you buy a whole new system.
I booted up a little Acer notebook I found, just to see if it worked. It runs on XP and how amazed I was that it didn't try to interfere with everything; just quietly did its OS job without all the other "here let me help you with that" bullshit that people are used to these days. Ah, the good ol' days. Sweet little dingus, I'm keeping it. But then, I still have my old Amiga 3000 somewhere, lol.
My Acer (an Aspire 5) has an i7 processor and 16 gig of RAM, and it still slowed to a crawl when running 11. Hell of it is, I had an HP laptop before this one and until it started running up against its 8 gig of RAM, it ran like a champ. Meanwhile, the Acer hangs every three-to-four days and needs a Big Red Reset to recover.
I think I'm going back to HP next time.
My Craptop, which I use as infrequently as humanly possible, came with Win10 pre-installed and started out not being particularly fast, but over the last few years bloat-creep has turned it into a total snail that takes upwards of ten minutes just to sort its shit out after booting. My tower was originally built as a Win7 box, but I switched to Win10 when MS ended support for Win7... and I've watched the OS slo-o-o-o-owly consume more and more of my system drive ever since. Every few updates, I have to move something else to one of my other drives to make more room for Windows' ever-expanding waistband.
I bought my Alienware in '22, the HP before that in '16 I believe. I had upgraded RAM and hard drive and OS in that time frame. Now none of them have been cheap laptops. I went for the high end stuff, but it *lasted*
Similar OT - Windows seems to have changed the default auto-save location from your computer to your connected cloud places.
If, like me, your kid occasionally does (and e-submits) school work on your computer, this can cause major personal information leakage and embarrassment, as your computer auto-saves your personal documents to some county government system.
So, I'd suggest that people check THAT too, while they're looking for Copilot.
11 defaults to putting the standard folders on OneDrive, but that can be changed. I had to, because copying my stuff from old computer rapidly filled my 1G OneDrive space. I also purchased office '21 from a 3rd party seller rather than a 365 subscription. So nothing tries to save to OneDrive by default.
All part of the plan to sell you more crap.
That you don’t need and can’t afford.
Exactly!
I'm positively obsessive about sabotaging any of MS' phone-home bullshit- to the point of changing the file ownership on the .exe and revoking "write" and "execute" permissions for all users so that the offending program can't even be run by 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵.
I've also been avoiding MS' productivity software since XP came out, so there's that too... not even because of their shift towards forcing online connectivity in everything, although that would have been reason enough on its own, but rather because I just didn't like the feature bloat and constant UI changes with every. Single. Version. Of. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.
Hmph. I don't use the cloud with 10 (at least not that I'm aware of), and all my stuff I create I keep LOCALLY.
I appreciate the heads-up regarding 11, though. Molte grazie!
My response is seriously consider if you need Windows for anything. Web browsing, e-mail, and productivity software doesn't really need it. There are several 'Live' USB Linux distributions you can try before you install them, very little phone-home software because hardly anybody is trying to sell *you*.
I have an important piece of software that doesn't run on Linux so I still have Windows on my laptop. But the fact is Microsoft isn't going to quit this crap for home users until they start losing market share.
Actually, I'm much more concerned about Recall than I am about Copilot (which can't be uninstalled from Windows 11, only disabled). The only way we're going to get rid of both is for the EU to get off their butts and make it illegal there.
Don’t forget that “AI” uses MASSIVE amounts of power and water, which is terrible for the environment.
I notice it does not show up in install/delete programs tab where can I find it to delete it? in windows 11 Never mind, It was installed so I turned it off.
Yep, make sure you don't store your documents in their cloud. Also watch out for them trying to SCAM you into paying for it ... if you have an MS cloud storage account (required to have an office subscription) but don't use the storage, after a couple of years they will deactivate your office account until you "revalidate" your cloud storage. Except the "revalidation" message implies that your storage is FULL and they try really hard to upsell you to more storage BEFORE they let you view the page that tells you the status of your cloud storage (mine had 2 email attachments from 2017 taking up less than 1% of the free storage). And... this is only accessible after blocking access to your account for up to 24 hours while this phoney "revalidation" process happens.
Frank Herbert
“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
He was writing Dune from 1960-64. He was a little bit prescient.
Yes yes yes. For too long we've heard how 'good' Billy Graham was. Oh my, how he wasn't. Good on you Mr. Mehta:
'If anything, the group is too kind to Billy Graham. He was, as I mentioned, antisemitic. He opposed LGBTQ rights. He was ambiguous when it came to racism.'
It’s a good, ethical way to get folks to vote for the candidate that has the country’s best interests at heart.
If using Billy Graham's clips is a copyright violation, then all the right’s ads using clips of Harris are copyright violations as well, even using Trump clips is too. He said these things publicly, disseminated them widely and they are using them fairly.
Keep driving home the point that Trump isn’t the messiah they claim him to be. Enough people will become uncomfortable enough to wake up.
Do these people not know that “out of context” just makes us point and laugh?
You ever notice when there's something catastrophic that happens with these hurricanes etc., not one billionaire steps up to the plate
Is Taylor Swift not a billionaire – or Dolly Parton? I mean the idea of a singer being a billionaire seems crazy to me but who knows.
I suspect both of them are multi-millionaires, but the point is that both of them are engaged with their audiences. Put briefly, they give a damn, and that shows in their actions.
Just as Donald Trump's inaction shows just as blatantly.
Actually, I'm pretty sure Ms. Swift is a billionaire, not a hundred-billionaire like the rat, but a billionaire. Musk could practically fund FEMA with his lunch money.
Entirely likely, and while I don't know her music at all, her attitude is pretty clear, and I'm impressed as all hell with it and her!
Bezos? Musk? Gates? All the others I cannot remember the names of? You named two. All the others remain totally silent, cold-hearted, out of touch and usually filled with contempt for those less fortunate.
Not a great statistical sample, but the women seem to have more empathy than the men. I wonder if Betsy De Voss contributed anything. I somehow doubt it.
Musk's Starlink charged Helene victims $400 for "free Internet."
And if you didn't read the fine print you were signed up to $120 a month plan.
And by the time they get the equipment they paid for, their regular ISP will be back in business.
Even AT&T lets you pay $20-30 a month for two years to pay off that $1000 phone equipment.
Musk has learned well at the feet of his Melon Master.
I’m a little torn on this. Most evangelicals see us as the devil incarnate. I appreciate the EFH for making the effort and yes, the Dem tent is big enough to accommodate them for now. However, money where mouth is. Let’s see what happens after the election. If it’s the same shit different day, I’ll probably be disappointed, but not surprised.
I’m waiting for Franklin to sue. Discovery will be fun (but not for him).