Danny Bateman

1 hour ago, Scarlet said:

But then you read lucid and well crafted totally sane posts like below and you wonder..."maybe giving him another go at the most powerful position in the world is a good idea".

 

 

If somebody with a worldview this f#&%ing completely bonkers was in line next to me at the grocery store, I'd let them cut ahead of me just to get them the hell away from me in case today was the day their brain decided to break.

And yet some Americans are ready to put him in charge again. What the f#&% is wrong with us?

6 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

But that’s what I’m constantly told 

Why do you choose to listen?

4 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

And apparently with better healthcare systems we are told, and less racist than our country we are told and better at once in a generation issues like Covid we are told, and better transportation systems we are told.   No idea why they would want to bypass those countries and enter the US. 

There go those conservatives hating America again!

2 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

Which cult???   Apparently he was a Democrat with mental issues. 

I’m reading apolitical mentally ill weirdo. Initial impulse was a crazy Trumper. We were both wrong.

24 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

NPR's official statement in defense of Berliner's claim was pretty thin and mealy.

 

So who out there has a news source they like and trust and seems nonpartisan? 

There’s no perfectly objective news source. AP and Reuters usually do a pretty good job. BBC too. But they all have some level of editorial influence.

People need to just read varied sources and use critical thinking skills to evaluate which editorial bent might color those sources. The critical thinking part is lacking in a lot of people.

10 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Man I actually had to watch this to see if there was any actual context I was missing.

Nope, Marge just continues to be the embodiment of the least sophisticated, most selfish aspects of America.

Using a dead victim of tragedy as a prop to score political points is disgusting, IMO.

6 hours ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

This should go on another page but.....there's a lot about student loan forgiveness that offends the sensibilities, including mine. It would appear to play to an already entitled segment of America and ignore others more worthy of relief. And it's only part of a much larger issue of higher education that has multiple culprits and demands an almost complete retooling.

 

But it's also not a simple pandering handout -- if left untreated this unprecedented student loan debt is going to have a negative impact on the larger economy for years. And it's not like these students haven't been repaying their debt: in most cases they've been paying in tens of thousands of dollars in interest without touching the principal, a ridiculously predatory practice also plied on underclass borrowers. If you've got the time and can handle a host with a liberal bent, John Oliver does a good job walking through this with vetted numbers and jokes. 

 

 

 

Not to derail the FoPo thread, but it is refreshing to see SOMEONE take A step to address the ridiculous cost of financing secondary education so we can actually fill out important fields requiring advanced education instead of leaving vast swaths of our workforce cratered.

However misguided people want to judge student loan forgiveness to be (and you can make a strong argument is)... what the hell else is anyone else doing to address the issue as screwed up it as it is?

It seems like the conservative position on the issue is to pretend college is still just as affordable as it was decades ago and b!^@h loudly at anyone who complains that it isn't. Cue snarky Boomers not understanding why young people don't just work a job to pay for college like they did when they were younger.

On 4/12/2024 at 9:07 AM, Archy1221 said:

 

This dude makes the stupidest f#&%ing arguments. Just ignoring the elephant in the room so he can advance his bulls#!t argument.

Pound sand antivax boy.

17 hours ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

"Prior to Iowa" was a magical time when anything could happen. 

 Who can forget Republican nominees Scott Walker, Newt Gingrich and JEB!?

At one point all these dudes had a string of strong polling positioning them as tentative frontrunners prior to Iowa.

Archy definitely likes DeSantis more than most. I can understand why conservatives think he's an effective executive with conservative bonafides. But the same held true for Walker, in particular. And yet he fell on his face. I'm not sure folks who are fans understand how widely reviled these types  are outside their own bubble.

4 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

Doing the Lord's work here BRB. This was the chuckle I needed tonight!

4 hours ago, knapplc said:

This is a flat-out lie, just like the lies the conservatives gave Congress before being affirmed.

 

Every one of them said Roe was settled case law, untouchable. And then they ruled on Dobbs, and here we are.

 

 

Ahh, but what we need to ask ourselves is what are the odds this fellow would just straight-up lie just because he thought it would help him.

I don’t know man. He seems like a pretty straight shooter. 

23 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

Did anyone actually suggest rectal administration of UV light to treat Covid? Or are you just making a funny?  We know an actual real life study was done on the trachea, but rectal?  
 

But hey, let’s just pretend everyone got everything right while we tried to mock and silence the dissenters and no need to hold anyone accountable because…..well it’s was years ago and let’s move on or something.  
 

You say you work in Healthcare.    Let me ask…..

1) was it right to treat those who didn’t want to get the Covid-19 shot the way they got treated?  Vaccine mandates for the population set that didn’t need them.  Fired, mocked on social media, not allowed to attend school considering what we knew and know?

2) was it right to keep schools closed Fall of 2020, spring of 2021, Fall if 2021 when Europe gave us school safety data in May 2020? 

 

3) was it right to have mask mandates when Fauci said the following pre-Covid:  “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”  And plenty of research has been shown that the mandates didn’t work.  
 

4). How about keeping Business’s closed past late April/Early May when researchers had a pretty good idea about transmission and who was affected the most.  Luckily we had some Governors who went against the “Scientific consensus” and allowed their States to operate responsibly.  Remember when the open up the country crowd was mocked here in HB, the traditional news media, the Demmocrat Presidential candidate, social media platforms?   Yep, me too.  
Opening the economy earlier than EU was Probably one of the biggest reasons the US is outperforming other countries in post Covid economic rates.  
 

 

I kid, I kid. But the president did suggest injecting disinfectants or administration of light as ways to combat the virus. Given that COVID affects people internally, if we’re not going in through the throat, that leaves only one option….

Re: your second paragraph, well, no, that’s not really how science works. By trade I am a therapist, but I also have formal training in science and am trained to think about things scientifically. Science NEVER claims to be infallible or immutable. Pretty much the entirety of scientific history is built on the basis of improving on the established understanding of how the world works.

They don’t care about holding people accountable. If people want to do that with whoever is in charge because of how they led with regards to the science that was decidedly still emerging during a once in a lifetime worldwide pandemic, they’ll do it. The scientists themselves don’t give a crap because that’s not their job. Their job is to do the best they can to best inform leaders the best they can in a collaborative fashion. And scientists do not  change their recommendations on a whim, but try to go on the basis of an established consensus. With good reason, too, or medical recommendations would change so frequently we’d never keep up. This is where COVID was challenging, because it was brand new and they had to develop a body of evidence in real time while exercising caution not to just recommend promising initial findings willy nilly before establishing they were in fact not misleading or flawed in some way.

Frankly I think those in charge during COVID were dealt a crap hand and most of them tried to do the best they could. I don’t look back and find myself bitter about the decisions made in that time period. IMO Conservative media is deeply intertwined with a persistent drumbeat that its viewers are the perpetual victim and should be eternally angry or afraid; it doesn’t affect me but I wonder if that’s part of why conservatives are so focused on accountability and vengeance on those who’ve wronged them? It’s a very Trumpian ethos.

To your other questions:

1. Not sure what you mean. I’m not familiar with specific examples. To speak only on my personal experiences, I got my jab because I was comfortable with the science and life was easy. I got COVID eventually, and after a short spell of the symptoms being rough, I recovered well. I do know others who pursued religious or medical exemptions and they did not seem that onerous. Overall I don’t think about it much because IMO scientists examined a very complex situation and tried to recommend we exercise several of the few levers of control we had available to improve the situation, with working toward herd immunity via vaccinations as a viable one.

2. There’s lot of data on the numerous negative effects of school closures and disruption of in person school via use of virtual schooling on the long term development of young minds. That is regrettable and hopefully we can find different ways to make up the difference had the pandemic never affected these kids. But again, I understand why they would recommend the course of action they did. Best they could hope was that most leaders made sensible decisions.

3. Again, I wore my mask when needed (often at work, rolling my eyes at the inconvenience at times) and life was fairly easy. My understanding of mask use is it was oftentimes not to protect me but to try to protect those around me if I was asymptomatic but infected. I work with lots of folks with compromised immune systems so I wore mine and didn’t think twice about it. I do think folks who would go viral for refusing a mask where they were required generally had a poor understanding of the role of societal consequences for their actions. I see a lot of the same with the way some folks understand the First Amendment. I.e., you can say or do whatever you want given it’s not illegal, but you’re responsible for the consequences of your own decisions.

4. I didn’t think about it much. I just made use of the businesses that were available. Did some

driving for Doordash during the pandemic, made a few bucks. I guess I don’t have the same memory of conservatives being ridiculed you do.

3 hours ago, nic said:

I remember the angst over the last Election reform bills, nothing bad came of it and there was record turn out. Sue away. I bet they lose.

I promise you, when people in power enact new voting restrictions, they are not doing it in good faith to strengthen our democracy. We should not just trust them and go along quietly. I would argue we should be pissed any time any freedoms are restricted, within reason.

The goal is to chip away little by little until it’s added up enough to sway things in their favor. A maximalist position of just fighting any voting restriction seems fine to me.

15 hours ago, teachercd said:

There is a reason they have weight classes.  

 

Even a 10 pound difference is insane.  I know, I know, trump is fat, but, if a fat dude gets on top of you, it is over.  Unless you are one of those Gracie brothers that just choke everyone out. 

 
Somewhere up here in my state, Dan Severn is still pissed he lost to that shrimpy Royce in UFC 4. 

15 minutes of the hugely smaller man controlling your positions until you’re out of gas. Crazy to watch.

2 hours ago, knapplc said:

Interesting that, among those who have an axe to grind with the initial government response to Covid, their ire is directed at Fauci and not the guy occupying the White House, who directed much of that response. 

 

 

Who knows, maybe injecting bleach or rectal administration of UV light will turn out to be great options down the road. 
 

If they do hopefully SOME PEOPLE can admit they were just wrong on the matter!

2 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

Another great example of this is much of the Covid information in the first 6 months to a year that far far far too many people insisted was conspiracy or whacked out nut job posting…….actually turned out to be correct and the people we were pushed to accept as gospel were the ones that were wrong.  

Do you have examples of this?

1 hour ago, DevoHusker said:

Thank you for repeating what literally fills my timeline every day. 

 

I won't vote for Trump, so I don't need more reminders, but thanks again.

Absolutely 

Yeah wasn't trying to single you out. I'm just a bit punchy. I think in all likelihood a lot of people will have to bite the bullet this go around. I personally don't feel this way, as it's an easy choice for me. Our system is at fault for spitting out these choices again, so IMO we can all be pissed at the system itself.

But at the end of the day one party is a lot more broken than the other. Trumpism needs to be told to again f#&% off so we can get a decent alternative for that side of the aisle again. I shudder to think how much worse they get if they're once again rewarded for their current standard bearer.

2 hours ago, DevoHusker said:

That is your opinion, which is fine.

I disagree, which is also fine.

f#&% the fascist.

There, that was pretty easy.

1 hour ago, Decoy73 said:

https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/04/05/sources-say-trump-sought-to-directly-pressure-nebraska-state-senator-over-winner-take-all-proposal/

Quote

Trump, the sources said, called State Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the State Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and urged him to take action to get a winner-take-all bill up for debate in the waning days of the 2024 session.

 

Four working days remain in the 60-day session.

 

Brewer, the sources said, responded that it doesn’t work that way. The deadline is past to vote a bill out of a committee and get it passed this year. In addition, the Speaker of the Legislature on Friday said it’s also too late to amend a bill into another bill.

 

Trump then reportedly told Brewer, who is term-limited this year, that his political career was over.

 

Brewer, 65, is a decorated military veteran who represents Nebraska’s Sandhills area.

-----

When asked about the call Friday evening, Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of the Trump campaign, said Trump “absolutely, 110% did not speak with anyone in the State of Nebraska in the last six weeks.”

 

Brewer, when asked about the call initially, told the Examiner that it was a private conversation and he would not comment. Later, when told a news story was going to be posted, the senator texted that he would deny there was a conversation.

 

Three state senators said they had heard the story of the call directly from Brewer. They spoke to the Examiner only on the condition that they not be named for fear of reprisals.

Lol @ the bold.

Of course Pillen stuck his nose in this.

Ahh well, if there's one thing Nebraskans are used to, it's having conservatism rammed down their throat whether they like it or not.

But Nebraska conservatism used to be different. It's a shame places that used to pride themselves on a bit more independent-minded conservatism have also debased themselves at the altar of Trumpism.

1 hour ago, ZRod said:

Because they don't want to actually think. Just get the feels.

 
We’re in a vibes-based recession, bruh.

And after one weekend:

1 hour ago, knapplc said:

What are you guys going to do today now that you can't celebrate Easter?

Mourning the crucifixion and of our one and only Lord and Savior, Donald John Trump of course!!

2 hours ago, teachercd said:

In all my years of teaching I have busted 3 kids for cheating...

 

But I have seen way more than 3 kids cheat.

Well there ya have it. Why do Joe Biden and Democrats hate Jesus Christ?

I’ve suspected this very thing for some time now. Good to have it finally confirmed.