194 Comments
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larry parker's avatar

"...someone’s immortal soul that a parent believes would be at risk."

Show me an immortal soul.

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cdbunch's avatar

Even if one exists, what kind of deity would condemn a child for a decision their parents made? Viruses on the other hand...

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Age of Reason's avatar

Larry's correct, there is absolutely no evidence to support such nonsense as an immortal soul and it is incumbent upon all freethinkers to quit giving even an inch to those who proport at advance such thoughts.

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Richard Wade's avatar

I agree with the importance of the lack of evidence, and I agree with the importance of challenging the belief, but the phrase "incumbent upon all freethinkers" sounds a little oxymoronic.

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Len Koz's avatar

The exact deity these fuckwits believe in. Their own bibble says in Deuteromy that their god will avenge the guilt of their fathers unto the third and fourth generation. So if your greatgrandpa pisses off their god, he's coming after you.

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cdbunch's avatar

And they think such a monster is worthy of worship? Boggles the mind.

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Len Koz's avatar

Better yet, its followers think this is a benevolent being.

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Maltnothops's avatar

"...someone’s immortal soul that a parent believes would be at risk."

Whereas setting your child up to die young enhances their odds of getting to heaven. The older they get, the more likely they will backslide.

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jomicur's avatar

And while you're at it, show me how something immortal can be "at risk."

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larry parker's avatar

First things first. : )

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Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz's avatar

There can be only one.

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cdbunch's avatar

Too bad there aren't ghosts, can you imagine if some of these people were visited by the ghost of measles past?

These idiots won't be happy until they bring smallpox back from its lab.

Edit: I hate it when I don't notice I used the wrong their until after it's been upvoted.

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larry parker's avatar

Mississippi House bill 316 - It's illegal to mention the past except for the bible.

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cdbunch's avatar

How are you going to fine or imprison a ghost? You have as much chance as you do with a virus.

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larry parker's avatar

Who you gonna call?

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cdbunch's avatar

Well, that brightens my morning a little bit. the memory of Chis Hemsworth dancing in jeans and a *tight* white t-shirt.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

Better still: Chris Hemsworth in the movie "Vacation." That was the one with him in tight grey boxer briefs with the bulge.

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

What about the other side ?

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cdbunch's avatar

The stills I've seen are impressive and worth a little bunk-time, but I've never see the movie. I wasn't a huge fan of the original (Yeah, I know, I'm dead to half the board) AFAIC, Chevy was much funnier in "Modern Problems"

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larry parker's avatar

I don't remember that in Ghostbusters.

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cdbunch's avatar

He was prettier than Annie Potts, even if he was dumber than a Trump (much nicer though)

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NoOne of Consequence's avatar

It's not enough that the Right is letting kids get murdered by guns in school, now it's another easily preventable set of plagues? Great job, pro-life crowd.

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cdbunch's avatar

Oh, lets not forget their deliberate, deadly war against LGBT kids.

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oraxx's avatar

They claim to care about the fetus, up to the minute it's born. That's it. They couldn't care less about the physical and mental health of women. They are opposed to gun control, and universal health care. They favor the death penalty, and they never met a war they didn't love.

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cdbunch's avatar

Until the war lands on their oh so manicured front lawn.

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oraxx's avatar

Indeed. Military service is a job that has been relegated to the peasant classes, and we no longer pay for them, as we put them on our grand children's credit cards.

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Age of Reason's avatar

That's just the tip of the iceberg, wait until your statisticians add up the number of deaths and mental health issues as a consequence of your anti-women courts.

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NoOne of Consequence's avatar

Not a data set I'm looking forward to at all.

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cdbunch's avatar

It'll be a lie, just like the COVID statistics. You think the states are going to hand over the real data, like their orange savior, it makes them look bad.

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XJC's avatar

Exactly as Jesus ordained in the book he wrote...even though most of it was written before he existed, even though he created everything that came before he existed...huh?

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NOGODZ20's avatar

The bible belt state of Mississippi by the numbers:

Ranked next-to-last Overall as "Best State to Live In." Ranked dead last in Healthcare (and about to get even worse). Ranked 43rd in Education (that high?). Ranked next-to-last in Economy. Ranked 48th in Infrastructure. 44th in Opportunity. 41st in Fiscal Stability.

The Magnolia State is God's Country. He can have it.

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larry parker's avatar

I feel sorry for the River and Magnolia trees.

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jomicur's avatar

They rank that high in Education because when they filled out the forms they spelled it "edjumakayshun," so it didn't get counted right.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

I picture their educators (especially in their private Christian schools) wearing Tucker Carlson's deer-in-the-headlights dumbfounded expression.

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jomicur's avatar

He's a product of Catholic education, and he actually took it seriously. What other expression could he have?

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jomicur's avatar

Oops. I was thinking of Hannity. Same difference, I guess.

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oraxx's avatar

I call that look of Carlson's, a dog trying to figure out how a doorknob works.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

I typically think of it more as "straining at stool".

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NOGODZ20's avatar

All he has to do is tilt his head and the image is complete.

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XJC's avatar

God (through his messiah, Donald J. Trump): "I love the uneducated."

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

Ok, so because we allow for those rare folks who will actually die from the vaccine to be exempt from taking it, we now have to allow folks who play imagination games to not take the vaccines. This isn’t about the religious getting fair play between secular and sectarian issues, this is about life and death and imagination. These folks are not understanding the reality of death. This is the harm that religion is causing. An entire population not only doesn’t understand the permanence of death, they demand that they get control over other people’s physical safety because of their poor relationship with death.

I’m out, the USA is fucked.

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Joan the Dork's avatar

Oh 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘺. Why am I not surprised that this ruling came out of one of the Federalist Society's disciples? That mob of fuckwits wouldn't know a rational argument if someone printed it out, rolled it up, and slapped them with it 'til their faces swelled up.

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Richard Wade's avatar

An emerging new definition of the word religiosity: EXTREME SELFISHNESS AND SELF-CENTEREDNESS

There are some things that people living in a community are compelled to do for the good of the community as a whole. There's a fine line between individual freedom and selfish irresponsibility. Carving out religious exemptions for public safety practices is a mistake. Religions are infamous for taking a mile when they're given an inch. Sometimes slippery slopes really ARE slippery slopes:

"...must allow religious exemptions for vaccine deniers."

...must allow religious exemptions for limits on public noise. (just passed in Minneapolis)

...must allow religious exemptions for parents refusing life-saving medical care for their children.

...must allow religious exemptions for wearing masks during a pandemic.

...must allow religious exemptions for businesses refusing to serve LGBTQ+ customers.

...must allow religious exemptions for food service workers to wash their hands after crapping.

...must allow religious exemptions for shooting firearms into the air.

...must allow religious exemptions for speed limits.

...must allow religious exemptions for driving on the right side of the road.

Add your own idea of a ridiculous extreme exemption. Where is the line in the above sequence where you would say "Oh that would never happen."? There IS no line for people who claim that the Great Spook commands their privilege to be exempted. We're already seeing exemptions that folks used to dismiss with "Oh that would never happen."

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jomicur's avatar

Must allow religious exemptions for any and all thought deeper or more complex than "Go, team, go!"

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Ben J's avatar

There is nothing anywhere in the Bible that mentions vaccines, epidemiology, virology, immunology, or indeed, anything other than "God sends plagues ". Claiming a religious exemption without any scriptural back up is simply asserting religious privilege.

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

Didn’t Jesus condemn washing hands, saying something like what comes out of your mouth is worse than anything you can find on your hands? Or something.

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mechtheist's avatar

NO religion gets to decide what is or isn't true of a fact.

NO religion gets to decide what is or isn't moral.

"when it is someone’s immortal soul "

That the idea of an 'immortal soul' plays any part in this decision violates the 1st of those rules which make it a violation of the establishment clause. Letting religious beliefs trump established science does the same thing. If we ever get a sane majority in congress, they really need to pass some laws that make it easy to remove judges and especially justices in SCOTUS if their decisions entail denial of facts.

This case if even more blatant than the Kacsmaryk Mifepristone ruling but all the recent cases where religion won entail clear denial of facts. The press coverage of these cases still exhibit the extreme and wholly unjustified deference to religion and religious belief, even when the denial of facts is mentioned, there's no clear statement of how grossly dishonest these opinions are, and, they certainly don't call out how dishonest the judges and justices are to write or concur with those decisions.

There could be a, very tarnished, silver lining to this cloud in that it's going to lead to more and more kids, and everyone else for that matter, getting sick. Maybe at some point, if enough folks get sick or start dying, that deference will start to crumble.

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larry parker's avatar

We have a recent example (that's still ongoing) of that deference not crumbling.

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mechtheist's avatar

That's kinda my point, even with Kacsmaryk, even though a lot of the BS in it is mentioned, they don't explicitly state what it really means which is that religion is turning these judges into grossly dishonest PsOS.

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Whitney's avatar

I was gone a few days, but somehow, it looks like I didn't miss too much.

I sometimes wish we could just boot these parents out of health care. Clearly, they think they know better than doctors and nurses who trained for years to be able to help others, so why should they want healthcare? Go home and take that spoonful of honey and whatever the panacea currently is, and start planning your funeral. I'm sick of the idea that some 15 minute internet search is better than actual, trained, experienced medical advice and care. Anyone who wants to whine about 'but my beliefs! I sincerely believe them!' can stop expecting the rest of us to put up with their shenanigans.

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Lucius's avatar

Evangelicals are pro-mass death. To the surprise of literally no one who knows anything about them.

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jomicur's avatar

A bit OT: We have still another demonstration of how thoroughly the Catholic bishops have subverted and corrupted America's judicial system: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/21/new-orleans-church-donation-judge-clergy-abuse-victims

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

Trump appointee?

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NOGODZ20's avatar

"Only the best people!"

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jomicur's avatar

Wokeism! Communism! How dare you suggest America's courts should concern themselves with facts and reality!

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

I am writing so of course I am awake and nobody in DM's family joined the communist party since her grandfather 😁

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NOGODZ20's avatar

I see SCOTUS decided the availability of mifepristone is okie-dokie...for now.

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jomicur's avatar

Back in the 60s we used to say "Not to decide IS to decide." But that really doesn't apply to SCOTUS, does it? At least not in this case.

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larry parker's avatar

Not rush(ing) to judgement on you, but in the 80s we said "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".

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cdbunch's avatar

That was never truer than 6 and a half years ago.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

Ah ... lines! Takes me back 60 years. "I must not ....."

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

Trust me wee still had them in the 80's.

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Troublesh00ter's avatar

Saw the headline. First two words out of my mouth were, "Oh, F***!!!" It's not as though Mississippi is among the WORST states to live in the first place. For what others have reported or commented on here, they are in the bottom tier in virtually EVERY category, particularly health care, and NOW they're willing to expose their kids to even more danger, in order to cootchie-coo a few religious nuts.

I feel sorry for those poor kids, because they deserve better. Hell, their parents should KNOW better ... and yet either they don't or they don't WANT to know better.

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

How can their parents know better when there are so many that are still children themselves?

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cdbunch's avatar

Too many generations removed from the polio generation. Worse, from the parents of the polio generation who lived in terror that it would affect their kids.

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

We both are about one generation* away from the one where measles vaccine (the 60's) didn't exist and yet.

*Jomicur, NOGODZ, Guerilla Surgeon and some others knew this time.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

I remember seeing the black-and-white photos of row after row after row of people afflicted with polio inside iron lungs. What a horror.

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Troublesh00ter's avatar

I remember those pix, too, though I never actually knew anyone who had been stuck in an iron lung. I DO remember measles (early 60s, sometime after my family moved to Winnetka, Illinois), and it was MISERABLE.

Still, there's worse out there. I wonder how some of those anti-vaxx parents would react if they saw a case of pertussis (whooping cough) up close and personal?

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

There was a case of scarlet fever in my first boardschool. He was quarantined* and the nurses took our safety very seriously.

* His parents couldn't take him back and it was impossible to send him to an hospital for the same reason they couldn't come, they were probably working too far away.

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Richard Wade's avatar

I had the measles before there was a vaccine, and I nearly died of it. Ice water baths to bring down my extreme temperature were very painful.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

My mother made sure I got every childhood disease going, simply because it was better to have them early, even though it may well have been dangerous. Some of the worst weeks of my life. Measles, mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough. The only one I can really remember now is chickenpox, because it itched like a bastard, and I wasn't supposed to scratch it. I did however catch the 1st vaccine for polio, which I'm really glad off given the number of people there were in iron lungs or wearing leg calipers back in the day. They whacked a shingles vaccine into me a year or 2 ago, which I didn't know existed. Probably just as well.

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Dianne Marie Leonard's avatar

You're right about chicken pox. My older brother (now 71) is blind and mentally disabled, both from birth. He got chicken pox, along with the rest of us. We were left pretty much to our own devices because my mom and dad had to give my brother 24/7 care while he was sick. You couldn't tell him not to scratch because he wouldn't have understood. So they had to tie him to the bed. He screamed like a dying animal, day and night, for probably ten days. Afterwards, he had (and still has, to this day) scars on his wrists and ankles, in addition to the scars from where he scratched before they tied him down. What a fucking nightmare, for my parents and all of us siblings (6 others)! This is what these stupid idiots want to subject the children of Mississippi to. And, yes, I'm old enough to remember polio and to have had contemporaries who got it as children, to have had nextdoor neighbors whose small son died of it. Not even my mom, a conservative catholic who believed in faith healing and attended faith healing services at her church, was deluded enough to deny her kids every vaccine that was available.

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cdbunch's avatar

True but measles rarely had complications as severe as polio, most people only suffered for a little while and then were fine. Polio had life-long consequences for many of the afflicted. It was much more noticeable and more debilitating, and parents lived in fear that their children would get it.

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

Tell that to DM and prepare yourself to dodge her cane. She lost her younger sister and probably would have lost me too if a vaccine wasn't available.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

I have a friend whose pretty much deaf due to measles, and an old acquaintance who was rendered sterile by mumps after puberty. Wife and I will take pretty much any vaccine going, because we know about pre-vaccine times – even though she had an allergic reaction to the last – either Covid or flue not sure, because we got them both at the same time.

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Straw's avatar

My father had two aunts crippled by polio. I remember them well from my childhood. In my generation in my country, all are vaccinated. Because of that, my kids are not, they didn't need to. I have to talk to them about that. Before they travel to some not really developed country like where their cousins live.

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Boreal's avatar

OT:

Here's for our christian cheerleader of Nazi free speech.

Jewish student with autism had swastika carved onto his back, mother says

The woman said she noticed the hate symbol after her nonverbal son came home from Clark High School in Las Vegas.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jewish-student-autism-swastika-carved-back-mother-says-rcna80983

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cdbunch's avatar

"𝑺𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒍𝒔 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒏𝒐 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒏𝒐 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒖𝒏𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆 𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒅," 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅.

Someone needs to carve that into Ron DeSantis's forehead.

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larry parker's avatar

Terrible if true. Sorry I have to say "if", but the article set off a couple of skeptical alarm bells.

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Boreal's avatar

I will see if another news article for this comes up but it was NBC and not some fringe news outlet.

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cdbunch's avatar

I don't find I doubt a swastika was carved in the young man's back. I suppose if the mother suffered from something like Munchausen by proxy, it's *possible* she did it. But that strikes me as unlikely.

Whether it happened at the school seems questionable since no evidence has been found, but I could see it on the way to or from school.

My big question is what is the FBI waiting for? I think a civil rights violation can be assumed until proven otherwise.

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larry parker's avatar

"...what is the FBI waiting for?" - That's one of the bells. If the FBI thought there was something there, they would have made a stronger statement.

Also, waited 4 days before filing a police report and not with the police, with the school police. Could be one in the same, I don't know how the school police are set up.

Where was the assistant? I would think that would be on the way to and from school, too.

Lots of questions. Idk, maybe it is just a poorly written article.

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cdbunch's avatar

There is always the possibility that the assistant did it.

Or maybe the assistant let him go to the restroom by himself.

I'm a little surprised to see a nonverbal person in a regular public high school. I suppose they thought the socialization would be good for him, but high school students? Not a good choice from how I remember high school.

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jomicur's avatar

The jocks in my Catholic high school were barely verbal (unless a grunt qualifies as speech) and almost totally illiterate.

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cdbunch's avatar

Those are jocks. Whether they can speak or read doesn't matter, just so long as they can play handegg or basketball, they'll advance to the next grade.

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RegularJoe's avatar

We have some nonverbal kids in our local schools... they do well and it benefits both them and the general student population. I don't believe anyone would be allowed to bully them, both from potential staff action and peer action.

If only we could get the theofascists to behave properly towards our LGBTQ+ community.....

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cdbunch's avatar

Not just him, but the other advocates of hate speech on the board.

"Monsters are not born. They are made." - C.J. Roberfs

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MichaelL65's avatar

There is not a single verse in the Bible, or any other religious text that forbids vaccinations. There are, however, a shit load of verses that speak about caring for one another. These idiots choose to ignore those because they are nothing more than selfish d-bags.

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NOGODZ20's avatar

And for the anti-abortionists? Not a single condemnation of abortion in that entire book. Abortion is even practiced by its deity and his minions.

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jomicur's avatar

What do you think the Bible has to do with American christianity? They have their idea of what the Bible says, and that's enough for them.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

I am arguing about vaccines on one of the blogs I follow at the moment. They keep saying forcing people to get a vaccination is contrary to blah blah blah. I keep saying but many courts both national and international have decided that in an emergency such as a pandemic it's perfectly acceptable to force people to be vaccinated.

And there it rests they keep repeating their nonsense and I keep repeating my rebuttal. On MSN, I've used the reporting system to report people for Covid misinformation after they suggested that the Swiss have banned certain vaccines which is untrue. Still up there though.

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jomicur's avatar

You might try pointing out them that the Constitution says clearly, right in the opening bit, that one of the reasons for establishing the nation is to"promote the general welfare." Anti-vaxxers hate the very reason the nation was founded. I've shut a couple of them up that way (though I assume they just decided to shut up; I doubt they really changed their "minds")

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

We don't have a written constitution. 😁

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cdbunch's avatar

Well, when you write one, be sure to much more carefully word your first and second amendment than we did.

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Joan the Dork's avatar

Not to mention the Fourth through the Tenth, because the wingnuts fudge those constantly too. The only one nobody seems to play games with these days is the Third... but then, it hasn't really been put to the test since the Civil War.

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cdbunch's avatar

I haven't noticed them fudging the Ninth, so much as ignoring it. But they do love the Tenth, until California does the right thing then suddenly the federal government is supposed to step in.

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jomicur's avatar

Ah, I assumed you were arguing with Americans. And why weren't you, dammit? Don't you know America is the center of everything in the whole damn universe?

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NOGODZ20's avatar

"Don't you know America is the center of everything in the whole damn universe?"

No, it isn't. I am!

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

One day Zeus released 2 eagles at the end of the earth. They crossed path at Mount Olympus.

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jomicur's avatar

Oh yeah? Then why was Delphi considered earth's navel? Gotcha, heathen.

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

That was Apollo having a tantrum 😝

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

"Hé connard égoiste planqué derrière ton écran ! Si tu veux crever, je te suggère de te pendre, d'utiliser ton arrivée de gaz, ou même d'avaler autant de cachetons que tu veux. En revanche ça ne te donne pas le droit d'envoyer ma reum ou moi ou ma nièce bouffer les pissenlits par la racine. J'te salue pas crétin(e) des alpes."

There, if you want some variety 😁

Ask me for anything you don't understand after translation.

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Joan the Dork's avatar

From the context, I'm guessing "eat dandelions by the root" is roughly equivalent to "pushing up the daisies."

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larry parker's avatar

Taking a dirt nap.

Wearing a pine tuxedo.

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Guerillasurgeon's avatar

Popping your clogs. Carked it.

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Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

Goggle didn't translate reum Chat-gpt returned this:

There is no direct translation for the word "reum" in English as it is a slang word used in French. It is often used to refer to an old person who is considered grumpy or irritable.

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Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

Wrong, it's "verlan" a form of slang. DM* is one 😉

*Sadly drumpster mother is another one.

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RegularJoe's avatar

I'm fine with them refusing to get vaccinated...as long as they stay out of The Commons.

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