Lads we already fixed America a few months ago.
Lock the thread
Yes asshole, I am biased against rapists and those that try and cover up rape and deny it happened. I wasnât aware that it was a pre arranged meeting in my original post, but thanks for confirming you donât dispute the facts stated.
The fundamental issue is a girl was raped and the school board lied to parents and facilitated another sexual assault by moving him to another school. Everything else is noise and spin by TV networks.
A girl was sexually assaulted by a boy in a school toilet and the issue of what to do with the perpetrator until he could be brought before a juvenile court appears to have been handled badly.
But thatâs not at all what the Republicansâ grievances were over.
The right-wing bullshit machine spun all this into all out attack on trans rights, as part of an insane, never ending right wing culture war.
Trans people or trans issues had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.
The attack was not enabled by any trans inclusive bathroom policies. Loudoun County did not have a trans inclusive bathroom policy. Right wing media lied that it had.
The simple fact is a boy and a girl went into a bathroom and the boy sexually assaulted the girl.
This was obviously a serious crime - but what has it to do with trans people and trans issues? Nothing.
It was an entirely invented moral panic against an âout groupâ of the sort the US right wing has been inventing for centuries.
The moral panic was not against the perpetrator or the rape culture fostered among young men which had enabled the perpetrator to be in the mental space where he felt empowered to commit the crime. The moral panic was against an entirely innocent minority which had nothing to do with anything regarding this case.
It was used to stoke grievance against Democrats and progressives and basically anybody who wasnât white and straight under the poisonous flag of âanti-wokeâ - an ideology which is nothing more than bigotry against traditionally marginalised minorities for having the temerity to assert their rights and not live according to the prescribed "norms"and âvaluesâ of reactionary white, straight, right-wing society.
The framing of all this by right wing media and the Republicans was a lie.
Highly recommended reading.
The sinister story of Kyrsten Sinemaâs turn to conservatism and political corruption
Thom Hartmann, Independent Media Institute
October 13, 2021
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) Screengrab.
When Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the Mafia had a series of rituals new members went through to declare their loyalty and promise theyâd never turn away from their new benefactors. Once in, theyâd be showered with money and protection, but they could never leave and even faced serious problems if they betrayed the syndicate .
Which brings us to the story of Kyrsten Sinema.
For a republican democracy to actually work, average citizens with a passion for making their country better must be able to run for public office without needing wealthy or powerful patrons; this is a concept that dates back to Aristotleâs rants on the topic. And Sinema was, in the beginning, just that sort of person. But Iâm getting ahead of myselfâŚ
After the Nixon and Agnew bribery scandals were fully revealed with a series of congressional investigations leading to Nixonâs resignation in 1974, Congress passed and President Jerry Ford signed into law a series of âgood governmentâ laws that provided for public funding of elections and strictly limited the role of big money in campaigns.
Just like the 1/6 attack on the Capitol produced a âselectâ committee to investigate the anti-democracy crimes of Donald Trump and his cronies, Congress authorized the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to look into Nixonâs abuses and make recommendations.
The committeeâs 100-page report documented how Nixon had taken bribes (most notably $400,000 from ITT to squash an antitrust lawsuit); used âdarkâ money from wealthy friends and corporations to set up astroturf âcitizens committeesâ (an early version of the Tea Party) to make it appear he had widespread support among the American public; and used off-the-books money to both support loyal Republican politicians whose help he needed as well as to pay for his âopposition researchâ surveillance which included the Watergate break-in of the DNCâs headquarters.
In response to the report, Congress passed an exhaustive set of new laws and regulations, most significantly creating from scratch the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), outlawing secret donations to politicians while providing for public funding of federal elections to diminish the power of big money. (Jimmy Carter was the only presidential candidate to win using such public funding.)
Over the years since, conservatives on the Supreme Court have repeatedly gutted provisions of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), most famously in 2010 with their notorious Citizens United decision.
With that stroke, over the loud objections of the four âliberalsâ on the Court, corporations were absolutely deemed as âpersonsâ with full constitutional rights, and billionaires or corporations pouring massive amounts of money into campaign coffers was changed from âbribery and political corruptionâ to an exercise of the constitutionally-protected âright of free speech.â
Into this milieu stepped Kyrsten Sinema, running from a seat in the Arizona Senate for the US House of Representatives in 2012 as an âoutâ bisexual and political progressive. The campaign quickly turned ugly.
Following the Citizens United script, the Republican she confronted in that race (Vernon Parker) used corporate and billionaire money to carpet-bomb their district airwaves with ads calling her âa radical left-wing activist promoting hatred toward our country, our allies, and our familiesâ and warning people that she âengaged in pagan rituals.â
The district was heavily Democratic (Obama handily won it that year) but the race was close enough that it took six full days for the AP to call it for Sinema. And that, apparently, was when she decided that if you can only barely beat them, youâd damn well better join them.
Sinema quickly joined other Democrats whoâd followed the Citizens United path to the flashing neon lights of big money, joining the so-called âProblem Solversâ caucus that owes its existence in part to the Wall Street-funded front group âNo Labels.â
Quietly and without fanfare, she began voting with Republicans and the corporate- and billionaire-owned Democrats, supporting efforts to deregulate big banks, âreformâ Social Security and Medicare, and make it harder to for government to protect regular investors or even buyers of used cars from being ripped off.
She voted with the Chamber 77 percent of the time in her first term; in return, political networks run by right-wing billionaires and the US Chamber of Commerce showered her with support. In her first re-election race, in 2014, she was one of only five democrats endorsed by the notoriously right-wing Chamber.
Sheâd proved herself as a âmade woman,â just like the old mafiosi documented by RFK in the 1960s, willing to do whatever it takes, compromise whatever principles she espoused, to get into and stay in the good graces of the large and well-funded right-wing syndicates unleashed by Citizens United.
So it should surprise precisely nobody that Sinema is parroting the Chamberâs and the billionaire networkâs line that President Joe Bidenâs Build Back Better plan is too generous in helping and protecting average Americans and too punitive in taxing the morbidly rich. After all, once youâre in, you leave at your own considerable peril, even when 70 percent of your stateâs voters want the bill to pass.
And this is a genuine crisis for America because if President Biden is frustrated in his attempt to pass his Build Back Better legislation (that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans across the political spectrum) â all because business groups, giant corporations and right-wing billionaires are asserting ownership over their two âmadeâ senators â thereâs a very good chance that todayâs cynicism and political violence is just a preview of the rest of the decade.
But this isnât as much a story about Sinema as it is about todayâs larger political dysfunction for which sheâs become, along with Joe Manchin, a poster child.
Increasingly, because of the Supreme Courtâs betrayal of American values, itâs become impossible for people like the younger Sinema to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them. Our media is absolutely unwilling to call this what even Andrew Jackson would have labeled it: political corruption . But thatâs what it is and itâs eating away at our republic like a metastasized cancer.
A guest on Brian Stelterâs CNN program yesterday pointed out that there are today more autocracies in the world than democracies and, generally, democracies are on the decline. This corruption of everyday politics by the rich and powerful is how democracies begin the shift to autocracy or oligarchy, as I document in gruesome detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class .
While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, whatâs far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court.
In Justice Stevensâ dissent in Citizens United , he pointed out that corporations in their modern form didnât even exist when the Constitution was written in 1787 and got its first ten amendments in 1791, including the First which protects free speech.
âAll general business corporation statues appear to date from well after 1800,â Stevens pointed out to his conservative colleagues on the Court. "The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans they had in mind.
âThe fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides itâŚ. Unlike natural persons, corporations have âlimited liabilityâ for their owners and managers, âperpetual life,â separation of ownership and control, âand favorable treatment of the accumulation of assetsâŚ.â Unlike voters in U.S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled.â
Noting that corporations âinescapably structure the life of every citizen,â Stevens continued: âIt might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their âpersonhoodâ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of âWe the Peopleâ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.â
Even worse than the short-term effect of a corporationâs dominating an election or a ballot initiative, Stevens said (as if he had a time machine to look at us now), was the fact that corporations corrupting politics would, inevitably, cause average working Americans â the 95 percent who make less than $100,000 a year â to conclude that their âdemocracyâ is now rigged.
The result, Stevens wrote, is that average people would simply stop participating in politics, stop being informed about politics, and stop votingâŚor become angry and cynical. Our democracy, he suggested, would be immeasurably damaged and ultimately vulnerable to corporate-supported demagogues and oligarchs. Our constitutional republic, if Citizens United stands, could wither and could die.
âIn addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices,â Stevens wrote in 2010, "there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter. Corporate âdominationâ of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy.
"When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing.
âThe predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders âcall the tuneâ and a reduced âwillingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.â To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled.â (Emphasis mine)
As if he were looking at Kyrsten Sinema facing a tough choice about her own political survival leading up to the 2014 election, Stevens added:
âPoliticians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation.â
And, again looking into his time machine to today, the now-deceased Stevens pointed to the frustration of average Americans with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
âOn a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to âhold officials accountable to the people,â and disserve the goal of a public debate that is âuninhibited, robust, and wide-open.ââ
Stevens and his fellow âliberalsâ on the Court were both prescient and right.
They warned in their dissent that foreign money would corrupt our elections and we saw that in a big way in 2016. Thereâs apparently no way of knowing how much of todayâs political turmoil â from school board to election commission to hospital and airplane violence â is being orchestrated and amplified by foreign players on social media masquerading as Americans to weaken our country.
They warned that because of the Citizens United decision Americans would become cynical and reactionary; thatâs happening today. Armed militias are in our streets, people are regularly assaulted for their perceived politics, and right-wing media demagogues make millions (literally) promoting hate and fear.
And, they warned, it could doom our republic, something thatâs now within our sight.
Iâd give her one
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Somehow you managed to drag this thread to new depths.
Matt Taibbi has a good piece on the Virginia election based on interviewing voters. Well worth a read.
Fire it up, great writer
He wonât like that.
Matt Taibbi 
Entirely in keeping with @Tierneevin1979âs character that he gets his opinions from a professional contrarian right wing hack who sexually assaulted his way around Russia.
Is he the guy who played in goal for Man Utd?
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Pretty much. And Assad. Heâs a Syria chemical weapons conspiracist.
He best âworkâ was when he was addicted to heroin. 
Itâs great that the lads who donât like my posts post links to a shill for Assad in the absence of being able to make their own points.
Makes them very easy to dismiss as the cranks they are.
Doesnât it?
I see you hate addicts now Fr.Nice one.
Gotta follow Greenwald for an honest appraisal. And also as the woke morons have no response to his arguments. Just shrieking.
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Itâs hardly a surprise Glenn Greenwald would eulogise a black person who dedicates their career to keeping black people down.
After all, heâs a Jew that defended actual Nazis in court.
David Frum is a Republican and a staunch right-winger who was one of the main architects of the Iraq War.
However David Frum is not wrong about everything.
Heâs certainly not wrong about the following.
Youâd do well to listen to him.