129 Comments

"Just look at where our society is headed."

Pretty much every seat in the halls of power of this country is occupied by Christians, Greene. Do they shoulder the blame for where our society is headed? And it wasn't nonbelievers in the Capitol trying to overrule democracy on January 6th.

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More Christian privilege. Most of the comments an the sheriff's FB post are supporting him, and the opposition gets shouted down with "separation of church and state ain't in the constitution" and "if you don't like it don't look".

"In God We Trust" on money, sheriff's vehicles, and government buildings have been declared "ceremonial deism" by SCOTUS. But watch them freak out if you suggest those be removed. "Ceremonail deism" is a lie to cover the blatant constitutional violation.

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But just try to change it to "In Allah we trust" meaning the same exact thing and watch their heads explode.

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If they really trust in an imaginary being, then the sheriff's department doesn't need things like squad cars, body armor or any sort of weaponry and therefore don't require funding.

Let them do their jobs without any of those things. God will provide, right?

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Dec 28, 2021
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Plus all those who can't pass the paperbag test, who were part of the reason the southern states wanted the 2nd amendment passed.

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Why can’t these authoritarian asshole see the danger of a military/law enforcement organization choosing their religion?

Wait… I see it now. Authoritarian Asshole.

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The 30-years-war, the Albigensian Crusade; just two historic examples showing the atrocities that state/king/authorities mandated and enforced religion can and will lead to. It does not come out of nowhere, that furious hate and resistance of the reactionaries to quality and excellence in the teaching of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

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"I have been in law enforcement for over thirty years. My training taught me to value God, family, and my country."

It's a shame none of your training ever taught you to value local or state law, the Constitution, or the greater community you serve. Which includes nonbelievers, FYI. What a waste of thirty years!

"My motivation comes from the greatest motivational speaker of all times, Jesus Christ."

We're talking about a guy whose greatest hits included *motivating* one of his dearest friends to betray him, and *motivating* the local establishment to crucify him... just thinking out loud here, but *maybe* 'ol JC isn't the best motivational speaker there's ever been.

"It is time, past time, to stand up."

Yes. Yes it is. Time for someone to stand up to you and compel you to stop piss-marking government buildings as if their services are only for your own tribe.

"I will not waiver on my stance and Christian beliefs."

Nobody's asked you to waver on your beliefs, numbnuts- but your *stance* is fixing to cost your municipality a significant amount of money.

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I realise that law enforcement training in the US is not standardised, but I would have hoped that it would have taught him to enforce the law. Because any training that taught him about religion would be irrelevant and just as illegal as what he's doing now right?

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Considering how the police in this country have been behaving, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that police academies must be training their cadets using Judge Dredd and Punisher comics.

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Supplemented by the biography of Nathan Forrest.

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"The Punisher Has Words For Police Who Use His Skull Logo"

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/punisher-police-skull-logo-spoilers/

Castle: I'll say this once. We're not the same. You took an oath to uphold the law. You help people. I gave all that up a long time ago. You don't do what I do. Nobody does. You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America, and he'd be happy to have you.

Cop: Who the hell do you think you are? Like it or not, you started something. You showed how it's done. Now you don't like others following your example? Too bad, tough guy.

Castle: If I find out you are trying to do what I do, I'll come for you next.

Cop: Careful what you say here, Castle. Starting to sound an awful lot like a threat.

Castle: It was.

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Law enforcement training seems to be pretty standardized in white supremacy. But that’s not talked about, even when we try to talk about it.

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Dec 28, 2021Edited
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Oh, they get the pay just not in ways that are accountable like bribes and confiscations.

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"The simple fact is that if Greene were promoting anything besides Christianity, the question wouldn’t be whether it needed to stop, but how quickly it was going to happen."

A lot like in Saudi Arabia when it comes to promoting something other than Islam. These people are of the exact same mindset as those radical imams they often complain about but for some reason they get really insulted when we call them the Christian Taliban.

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If Greene is so hot and heavy for his messiah then let him sell all he has, give the money to the poor, quit the force and become a minister.

He won't, of course.

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Dec 28, 2021
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Nip it! Nip it in the bud!

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Real people who were born on December 25th whose birthdays I'd rather celebrate:

* Rod Serling

* Annie Lennox

* Humphrey Bogart

* Sissy Spacek

* Justin Trudeau

* Jimmy Buffet

* Quentin Crisp

To name but a few.

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Both Justin Trudeau and his younger brother were born on Christmas Day, two years apart. When the younger sibling was born, at least one newspaper ran the headline, "Even God only had one son."

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Now, that's what I call meticulously planned and executed copulations/inseminations and time sensitive targeted births! Chapeau, to father and mother Trudeau!

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Sir Issac Newton. I know he would of celebrated on Jan.4thbut England was still using the older Julian calendar and not that cat-licker one for quite a few years.,

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Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sonuvabitch IN SPACE!

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we all know you want to sing this on Christmas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-AfTdXpRjo

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Where is the sexy kiss and the sultry voices ?

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would love to see a old salty dog drill instructor do that. Rest in peace R. Lee Ermey.

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He had an impressive career in both movies and TV, whether onscreen or through voicework.

Too bad his endorsement of first Ted Cruz and then Donald Trump for POTUS in 2016 put a stain on his legacy. Wonder what he would have thought of them and their activities had he not died?

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I like to think he'd be first in line to discipline them.

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When I saw FMJ I had flashbacks to my time in Basic.

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I personally know 4 people born on 12/25. I doubt I know any 2 people born on any other day. Kinda weird.

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A friend in elementary school with my same first name was also born the same day I was. It is not December 25.

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One of my grandsons was born on my birthday. He sucked up to grandma early! :D

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I once dated a woman whose birthday was the day after mine.

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"Merry Christmas to all and Happy Birthday to our lord and savior. To everyone that is working today, we thank you."

I know this is way far down on the list of issues here, but may I please take a moment to gripe about the assumption that everybody wants Christmas off? Personally, I'd LOVE to work over Christmas and take lieu days when everyone else is working, and not everything is closed. A few years back, I walked into the lunchroom partway through a co-worker's rant about how "EVERYBODY should get Christmas off, no exceptions!!!!1!11!!!" I jumped in and asked, "So we should close the hospitals down? No firefighters? Police? EMTs? Sucks to be you if you have a heart attack or your house catches fire on Christmas Day!" So she said, well, yes, of course there have to be SOME exceptions. (Regardless of what she'd just so adamantly stated.) Then I asked her, "What about people who don't celebrate Christmas? I used to be friends with a couple of Jewish brothers who worked at a movie theatre. They volunteered to work Christmas Day and Boxing Day every year, and laughed their asses off that they were making time-and-a-half on what was the same as any other day to them. Why should they be forced to take Christmas off?"

I'm honestly kind of astonished I didn't get hauled into HR, as I said all this standing right outside their office. But I'm so sick and tired of Christianity being the default, I kinda snapped.

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For working over Christmas and New Year's, I get a $1500 bonus. Just another couple of days, and bunch of extra cash. My late wife's favorite holiday for this part of the year was Thanksgiving (because she loved the turkey dinner), so thatbis the one i take off. The others are just days.

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When I worked in the hospital years ago I would always volunteer to take someones place on Dec.25th, I could wait for end of shift to go pick up the sacred meal of Chinese food to celebrate while watching a movie at home.

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My father was a Mountie. He volunteered to work Christmas every year until he had a kid - said Christmas was for kids, so he didn't need it off for himself or when it was just him and my mother. I never had much use for my father, but I always thought that was pretty nice.

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Both DM* and my sister were too sick to celebrate the 25th December so we will celebrate it in January.

*Ours was Lebanese, DM turn to choose.

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I hope they’re on the mend. Get well soon DM and sister.

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I hope your nurse Aria is taking good care of them so that the are up and around for Twelve Night.

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Aria was, as usual, helping with stocking DM"s meat in her stomach after singing her version of Christmas carols :D

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They promote everyone being off on Christmas especially retail and service folks, while they’re staying in a hotel visiting their relatives for the holiday.

You are absolutely right about all of it, that is why HR didn’t get involved.

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It was more my tone than what I was saying. Y'know when you say "Oh shut up, you fucking idiot" without actually saying, "Oh shut up, you fucking idiot?" It was one of those deals.

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"Merry Christmas to all and Happy Birthday to our lord and savior. To everyone that is working today, we thank you."

Christmas Day came on the Sabbath, Sheriff Greene. As a bible-believing Christian, it was your duty and the duty of all believers in the Columbus County Sheriff's Office to go out and execute all those who worked on the Sabbath. This includes any and all of your fellow believers. "Show them no mercy," as the bible and your god often say. Why did you not obey that god?

This is why you never take what you find in the bible literally. The end results are always a horror.

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How can he take it literally when he has never bothered to read it(if he can) just like the Constitution.

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What? And close down the super stores where he buys all that super cheap meat? What's he gonna eat, the poor chap?

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waiver? He means "waver" One is a noun and one is a verb. They are homophones.

But cops in the rural south likely aren't hired and don't advance based on intelligence and educational level. In the rural bible belt, he possibly advanced in his career BECAUSE he is a Jesus freak.

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Sheriffs are elected, not hired. That explains a lot.

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True. Isn't the pool of sheriff candidates usually from the hired pool of local cops? Certainly a person can get elected sheriff without any policing experience, or come from a different jurisdiction, but that seems to be rare in the USA.

Given how most elected sheriffs run unopposed, a sheriff candidate commonly gains political gravitas in a preordained line of succession within the local constabulary based on the approbation of the existing leadership that leads to stronger fundraising ties to and familiarity with the community's local gentry?

Having a politicized hierarchical system in a county sheriff's department helps breed local corruption by allowing wealthy and connected community members to bribe, pressure or otherwise cajole their way out of legal problems. That makes reform more difficult, wouldn't one think?

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Dec 28, 2021
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I find the I/me thing particularly painful. I grew up in a time and place where it was drilled into me that one always always always used "I." "Me," was for lower class hicks, and I was better than them. It wasn't until high school that I learned the proper usage, and by then, the wrong way was pretty heavily ingrained. Between that, and the sneering looks and condescending conversations in response to me speaking correctly because every other snobby parent in my area had taught also my peers not to talk like the hicks, I never properly broke myself of my bad habits. More often than not, instead of saying it correctly, I adjust my entire sentence structure to avoid the issue - which can get a bit cumbersome.

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It is kind of amazing to see the many ways people throughout times have found to make each others life miserable. If only we were equally “creative” in making each others lives more liveable.

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And it's so simple to say it correctly! Aaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!

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Dec 28, 2021
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A guy I worked with while delivering furniture for Penny's was a master at that. When dealing with customers, he spoke standard American English and black English the rest of the time. Once while we were killing time in the office, he went into another room to use the WATS line to call some of his relatives back in Ohio. He went from speaking black English in one call and then to a perfect Jamaican patois in the next! 🤯 I turned around to look at him to make sure somebody hadn't slipped past me and into the other room.

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That reminded me of a story my brother told me. In the military, they like to play stupid jokes on people fresh out of basic training. One of his fellow sailors was told to get ten feet of chow line, so he came back with four or five sailors holding lunch trays and had them stand in a line.

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It wasn’t a box of grid squares?

I had a civi searching high and low for starter cleaning fluid, once.

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For us in the Air Force, we were diddly bopping all over the Air Base in 'Nam trying to scrounge 50 feet of flight line. Or 10 gallons of prop wash.

For those of us who'd been had, we couldn't wait to pull those stunts on the next batch of newbies, continuing the tradition.

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Have them fill in form Eye Dee Ten Tee.

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Hadn't heard that one before (or did and forgot it). :D

See, I don't care who you are. That's funny, right there.

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Sometimes when I am talking with someone who is a veteran I will tell them that I had a "special" MOS, this usually triggers some skepticism from them. When they ask what my MOS was I tell them I was a one delta ten tango, I then wait for them to figure it out.

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Go ask the Chief Engineer for permission to blow the CHENG.

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What if he says yes? :)

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Tent stretcher (manual or hydraulic), squelch lube, muffler bearings, sky line.....oh, and military bearings. 😁

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Relative bearing oil and bulkhead remover.

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Its plane too sea that ewe due knot no how two right like a Okie.

Eye no eye no, Im dead too ewe.

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“… right like a Okie.”

That should be “right like uh Okie.”

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Dec 28, 2021
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Dec 29, 2021
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In French we say "queue de billard", it's not entirely wrong.

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Dec 29, 2021Edited
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*coughs*goal*coughs*

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As a sheriff, his job is to uphold the law, not the Bible, and he should already know that. Even his own Bible says not to serve two masters.

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His book tells him to obey all earthly laws and authorities. Not that he would know that since he's never cracked open his book and really read/understood it.

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they are more interested in preaching the word of "god" then following what "the good book" says. edit how are you holding up with this cold weather?

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Certainly not as bad as I thought it would be. It hasn't dropped into the teens like they said it would. And fortunately, there haven't been any outages. Not in my neighborhood, anyway.

How you doing with all the white stuff?

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"How you doing with all the white stuff?"

Are you talking oreos or coke?

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Why not both?

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They've come out with enough new flavors, I wouldn't be surprised.

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White stuff? Not when it's 76°F.

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it is around 28 in Seattle right now.

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In the 43 years, I've lived in St. Petersburg, it has only snowed once. The snowflakes melted as soon as they hit the ground.

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shocking I am doing alright. well except for falling on my butt while going on a walk.

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Took a tumble myself the other day. Tripped over a solid obstacle buried in the snow.

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It would be nice if people got out and shoveled their walks, trapped inside until they do (maybe March) so I can use my wheelchair to get somewhere.

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glad you were not to badly hurt.

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I've had no internet for 3 days because of the snow in NorCal. Thank goodness for the snow, but I almost had to read an actual BOOK! Luckily, I had enough stored on my Kindle. :)

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Dec 28, 2021
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I don't do the white stuff.

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You don't use Tide Laundry Detergent? I thought everyone used Tide.

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I refuse to recognize the authority of mutaween. Fortunately, I live nowhere near that shïthole county.

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I had to look up 'mutaween', thanks for the learning opportunity! Oh, almost forgot: FUCK THE MUTAWEENS OF THE WORLD!

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Once upon a time.....er, no shit- there I was....

31 years ago (and a few months), on a logistics mission in Riyhd, I was taking a photo of my LT and the E6 on the trip in front of a fountain we thought looked cool. White van pulls up, couple of dudes with sticks get out and start yelling at us, demanding my camera, getting ugly. Me, the SPC, orders the LT and Sarge into the truck NOW! while racking my 16. Fortunately, everyone understood my message, immediately complied, in I jump and in gear goes the hummer, and off we sped. There was never any discussion of what happened, as nothing happened. Fück the mutaween, and thanks to my leaders for knowing when to listen and back the play.

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Fuck you SubStack.

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It really leaves much to be desired, doesn’t it?

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We didn't realize how good we had it with Disqus. Let's hope the new system at OnlySky blows both away.

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No where near as good as sub shack or love shack.

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I was on substack before I created my Disqus account, hence the different avatar. Disqus is best for large communities, substack is typically more for small insular ones focused on more arcane literary topics. The commentariat typically moves to a platform like Disqus once it outgrows substack.

OnlySky will likely get hundreds of posts per topic and needs a platform that is more troll-proof than Disqus and Twitter, yet more user friendly than substack.

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What happened? Lengthy post get obliterated? Is it the ice age gap between articles?

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Refusing to load the Captcha until AFTER I click the Login button.

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Ah.

I avoid Captcha altogether by staying logged in.

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Work PC, so I use Incognito mode as much as possible.

>.>

<.<

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It's strange. I also log into FA Substack almost daily at the public library and I never see Captcha.

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The problem is that I also don't see the Captcha until I click Login, then it loads the Captcha and condescendingly tells me I need to complete it first.

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That Christmas message with the images of decorated trees violates Jeremiah 10:1-5. Their own god told them not to cut down, nail down and decorate a tree.

Oops!

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... along with the things he can is also shooting people .... innocent or not ..it does not matter

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He will apologize to the white ones that he was only trying to wound.

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"I have taken many pictures with that Bible verse in that backdrop without a single issue..."

"Argumentum ad antiquitatem," Greene. Look it up.

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Oooh ooh! I have many times said "Happy Holidays" without a single issue!

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I'm sure he'd be happy to rectify that problem.

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