That's Bill Maher's homophobic rape joke, which I transcribed from the recording of last night's episode of "Real Time."
Here, you can watch it.
I cannot believe prison rape remains a stock comic subject. Quite aside from the general problem of casual joking about rape, the prison rape topic is not only very stale — I've heard these jokes for 50 years — but it shows enthusiasm for punishing human beings convicted of crimes in a manner that extends beyond the legal sentence. It's laughing at the torture of persons held in captivity. When I hear Maher tell that joke, I picture him standing alongside Lynndie England and Charles Graner, grinning toothily and giving the thumbs-up sign.
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243 comments:
1 – 200 of 243 Newer› Newest»Judging from some of your commenters' personal attacks on me, Althouse, I think your core audience is rather keen on homophobic rape jokes.
It tells you whose side Maher's on.
Mistake to think it's a joke.
Expected You to know better.
Well at least it wasn't about Trump....
It's always all about Chuck.
Maher is one nasty POS.
Remember when Maher used to occasionally have on people like Chris Hitchens who vigorously made fun of the liberal dogma that his audience gobbles up?
As I’ve said, not every joke is funny, furthermore, not every joke is a joke.
Chuck is feeling hurt.
Poor chuck
See chuck cry.
That's a good stand-up act.
Prison rape jokes are just material, as is the rest of it.
The That's Not Funny reaction lacks an enforcer because the reaction itself is a new joke on old material.
The audience comes across as liberal-stupid but that doesn't affect the act.
Just like the hunting and trapping of beautiful, innocent wildlife, homo hate & prison rape/brutality jokes are part of the sadistic culture of America. There is no need to "Make America Hate Again" when it has never stopped hating.
I agree with Inga. Maher isn’t joking in the slightest. He really does want Trump supporters — of both sexes — to be raped.
"I cannot believe prison rape remains"
No, not back to I cannot believe! Please!
Anyway, we can all believe it perfectly well: progs don't believe their own BS, they'll use anything handy to vilify non-progs, and their transvaluation of values has made I-cannot-believe sensibilities entirely passé.
Yes, this is a real pet peeve for me...joking about prison rape is despicable. It may be a way of discharging anxiety or it may be a way of expressing sadistic pleasure at the thought that criminals must endure this, (but then, even persons incarcerated for minor crimes, or being held until trial, not even proven guilty of anything, must also be subject to this torture). However, what it does most of all is allow us to forget about it and move on.
I don't think the joke is homophobic. I imagine a significant majority of rapists in prison did not really take to wanting to rape other men until they were looking at a long or permanent stretch of never getting to touch a woman again. I don't think of men such as this as gay. I think of them as rapists. They would be just as happy to rape women if we made such available by having coed prisons.
We had a dog like Chuck.
It had to go live on a farm.
The joke is both stale and funny.
Part of the humor is that it is the expected jibe.
Quit saving the world. I'm fed up with hearing about rape.
Our women are so protected and safe that they are fantasizing about rape non-stop. Yes, they are.
Homophobic rape jokes are funny. Some of you guys need to get loaded and cease turning everything into a moral and ideological test.
Chuck, pull that corn cob out of your ass.
Well, yeah, I guess. If being afraid a Muslim will kill you is Islamophobic, then I suppose being afraid a homosexual will rape you is homophobic. Of course, being afraid a heterosexual will rape you is then heterophobic.
Prison time for what?
Althouse, don't you ever get tired of morally improving the world?
This is a prissy goody two shoes schoolgirl thing you've got.
For Christ's sake, get drunk as hell, go to the local orgy and let the devil out.
I don't even have any sins to confess because I'm old and I can't take the beating for whoring, drinking and carousing any more. I sure as hell miss that shit. It was wonderful.
How about a list of Bill's jokes every week with a poll ranging from, "I'm dying here" to, "Hang the bastard"?
Educational about what jokes are off limits.
Then post a [Offensive joke]/[topics that put my panties/boxers in a wad] Venn diagram.
It would be dang near sciency.
We need a humor police force to stop this insensitivity. You recucklickins should get away from letting Fox News mentally gang-rape your psyches and watch Maher once in a while. He is on a tear basting many #metoo lambs, so you could get off on that.
Maher admirers are most amused.
Bill Maher voted for corrupt Hillary.
Hillary belongs in prison for her Private Server. Insert prison rape joke about Hillary here__________________>
Maher is a coward.
We had a dog like Darrell. She got runned over by a car.
Maher normally has a trademark way of telling homophobic, racist or sexist jokes. He puts the joke in mouths of Republicans. So in this case, the joke would be, "Republicans are saying, 'Now that he's looking at prison time, will he be willing to take a dick?'" It's a sweet comedic device. Maher not only gets to tell his offensive jokes, he gets to tar his political opponents.
Maher makes a big deal about his comic courage, and once upon a time he did take real stances. But it's been years since he did more than play to his liberal audience.
Robert Cook: "Yes, this is a real pet peeve for me...joking about prison rape is despicable."
I have to agree with Cookie here. Individuals who have not yet even been tried or convicted are subjected to rather horrific torture/rape episodes. This is particularly true of younger accused individuals who are thrown in the worst of the worst and are brutalized with the incidence of HIV amongst these victims extremely high compared to society at large.
Basically, thrown in jail awaiting trial for some relatively minor offense and ending up with a health-driven death sentence before your case is adjudicated.
But hey, Michael Cohen, so it's funny.
Fen's Law. Over and over and over again.
Rob: "Maher not only gets to tell his offensive jokes, he gets to tar his political opponents."
Think of it as the "humor" equivalent of transferring a hundred years of democrat Jim Crow/racism onto modern day republicans.
Similar to blaming the Civil War on "conservatives".
The rewriting of history and transference of guilt and responsibility is a never-ending business for the left.
Oh hell, everything in life is simultaneously tragic and hilarious.
Haven't any of you read "Cancer Ward?" It's one of the great tragic comedies ever written. One of the funniest books ever.
The characters who are faithful to Uncle Joe even while they freeze to death at hard labor in Siberia are absolutely hilarious. Every one is convinced that their banishment was a mistake and that it will be corrected by a letter writing campaign to the Man of Steel.
"Unforgiven" is one of the funniest movies ever and it's about a bunch of dumb cowboys who imagine they are saving whores from perdition, when in fact they're just tired of wallowing in pig shit on their farms.
Aside from the joke, the idea that an attorney would turn on his client is not only a fundamental Sixth Amendment violation, it is cause for immediate disbarment.
Did Michael Cohen rape Juanita Broderick?
Barack Obama being fucked up the ass 'til he bleeds out the ears: Comedy gold.
Robert Cook, I agree with you.
Is it rape rape?
Anyone else notice the wide-spread and coordinated effort by the various Left-Wing news organs to try and scare Michael Cohen with stories about how Mueller is going to throw the book at him and how he's going to get life in Federal PMITA prison... how he won't last more than two weeks and how he's not made for prison life.. yadda yadda yadda...
Anyone else feel like this is an attempt by the press to intimidate and threaten Michael Cohen to play ball OR ELSE!!!
Chuck sounds butthurt.
tcrosse: Having the rapist holding Obozo by the ears forcing fellatio would be even funnier.
Robert Cook, your mind is so dull, flat, prosaic and literal that reading your dreck could drive the weak minded to suicide.
Don't you ever let up on the world saving bullshit?
Don't you ever get tired of being a boring as hell, witless Marxist?
High school kids start drinking heavily in response to droning teachers delivering the daily moral like you do.
How do you stand yourself?
And I agree with Virgil. The great majority of prison rapists are not gay; they are men who rape other men because they do not have access to women and because it is a way of sadistically asserting power over weaker inmates.
Cohen is not going to flip. He knows the God Emperorer will pardon him. That's why he pardoned Scooter.
You see he is not a faggot like Bush.
The fact of prison rape means the government provides our most violent prisoners with sex slaves.
Just like the hunting and trapping of beautiful, innocent wildlife, homo hate & prison rape/brutality jokes are part of the sadistic culture of America. There is no need to "Make America Hate Again" when it has never stopped hating.
This is brilliant Trumpitski: hunting = hating
What's next? Farming = Holocaust or Eating = Murder? Is this the same as the liberal meme that Breathing = Pollution?
And WTF do you mean by "innocent wildlife"? There's a whole lotta hunting and trapping going on within the animal kingdom even excluding Humans. Even underpass-dwelling trolls are smarter than your take.
Shouting Thomas, you might feel differently if you were locked up in the pokey for a couple of nights with guys who wanted to make you their prison bitch. I have no idea why objecting to prison rape or jokes about prison rape makes one a humorless Marxist.
Oh my. We were just laughing at the hilariously transgressive Hiphop Jesus mocking reparations, but Maher’s prison rape joke - well, #that’s not funny. Is absurd hypocrisy funny? I think so!
Bill Maher represents the fascist impulse of the progressives.
Shouting Thomas, you might feel differently if you were locked up in the pokey for a couple of nights with guys who wanted to make you their prison bitch.
I might, and that's pretty funny, too!
"This is brilliant Trumpitski: hunting = hating"
Trumpit thinks it's much more kind to let deer starve to death in the winter or get eaten by coyotes or hit by cars. Trumpit thinks deer would quietly and gently die in their sleep if it wasn't for mean humans.
Since Trumpit thinks humans are no better - in fact, much worse - than animals, why does Trumpit expect humans to treat deer with more kindness and consideration than wolves or coyotes do? Wolves and bears start in on the venison dinner while Bambi's mom is still alive. A well-placed bullet is far more merciful.
Trumpit shows what can happen when a dimwitted child watches "Bambi" one too many times.
Snark said...
Oh my. We were just laughing at the hilariously transgressive Hiphop Jesus mocking reparations, but Maher’s prison rape joke - well, #that’s not funny. Is absurd hypocrisy funny? I think so!"
'Cause prison rape is just like people who never owned slaves paying reparations to people who were never slaves themselves!
God almighty, you've dialed the stupidity level up to 11 today.
Truth be told, the prisons that the bourgeoisie go to are quite different from those inhabited by the proletariat.
Typically these people go to very nice group homes, or are given home confinement.
They may still get raped, but probably only in financial terms.
langford peel said...
"Cohen is not going to flip. He knows the God Emperor will pardon him. That's why he pardoned Scooter."
I think you are correct.
Agreeing that unconsented sodomy is undesirable is not homophobic. Is that what you believe homosexuals do?
Quite aside from the general problem of casual joking about rape, the prison rape topic is not only very stale — I've heard these jokes for 50 years — but it shows enthusiasm for punishing human beings convicted of crimes in a manner that extends beyond the legal sentence.
Well, if you're not a fan of it then stop contributing to the mass incarceration state and the privatization of prisons to the must less accountable private prison industry, where abuses of every sort are rife and encouraged.
But if virtue signaling is more important to you than standing up for the heart of the problem, I'm not surprised.
When I hear Maher tell that joke, I picture him standing alongside Lynndie England and Charles Graner, grinning toothily and giving the thumbs-up sign.
You lack imagination. But then, you lack an adequate appreciation for the facts of how these problems are perpetuated.
"Cohen is not going to flip. He knows the God Emperor will pardon him. That's why he pardoned Scooter."
I think you are correct.
On Trump and his supporters seeing Trump as a god, or an emperor? Or both?
Time to polish your Trump shrine. I know that's more important to you than rule of law.
Shouting Thomas, you might feel differently if you were locked up in the pokey for a couple of nights with guys who wanted to make you their prison bitch.
He loves it, apparently. (Invent emoticon here for a combination of smiley-wink with cringe).
You don't have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of prison rape to know that it's unlikely they'd go after Thomas for whatever crime he could be imagined to do first. First they go after the pedophiles. (But the "pecking" order after that is a bit murky to me. Someone else might want to step in. Then the serial murderers? Who knows... crime is more of a Republican interest than mine).
Maher - the poisonous dwarf - says something tasteless, unfunny, and Left-wing.
How surprising.
Maher knows a lot about getting fucked in the ass. He could write a tell-all.
Maher - the poisonous dwarf - says something tasteless, unfunny, and Left-wing.
How surprising.
Probably about as unsurprising as your befuddlement as to his popularity or the reason for it.
Prison rape is a tired joke, that was never funny.
Actually, almost all Felons are Democrats, so Cohen might turn into a "D" in prison. It has that effect on people.
Maher is one nasty POS.
Cohen once publicly boasted of defending Trump against charges of marital rape by proposing that the concept was not legally valid.
How you like them apples?
Your political heroes are animals but your Manichean S-M worldview apparently obligates you to defend the indefensible.
Avenatti said of Cohen that the latter lacks the two most crucial aspects needed of a wanna-be "fixer" as he set himself up to be: He's not smart and he's not tough.
I don't know what's coming to Cohen and how much of it he deserves but my guesses are: a lot more than he thought was coming to him and more of it than you think, respectively.
Why no compassion for a good man and smart attorney being set up for a guaranteed FBI frame job with faked evidence and lying Agents?
That should bother every ethical lawyer left on the planet not yet corrupted by money and power. And there are more than you think.
Instead the Kill the Pig President riot mob being sponsored by Hollywood and Media monopolists is shaming all who look away and say nothing hoping the New World Order kills them last.
Actually, almost all Felons are Democrats, so Cohen might turn into a "D" in prison. It has that effect on people.
Apparently you didn't pay attention to the Mueller indictments, the aftermath of Watergate or the number of felons in the Reagan administration. And that's before considering the number of Republican pedophiles. Politics is the way you prefer to conduct your crime.
The age of That's Not Funny.
langford peel said...
Cohen is not going to flip. He knows the God Emperorer will pardon him. That's why he pardoned Scooter.
Wasn't that one of the harshest criticisms of the Obama Administration? That a corrupt Obama Department of Justice handed out investigatory favors, and immunity, to people like Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills and others? I am trying to picture Langford Peel's reaction if Hillary had been indicted, and Obama said, "I am going to pardon her; this whole investigation has been a witch hunt, no pun intended."
Langford Peel are you suggesting that it would be okay for Trump to pardon Michael Cohen, to keep him out of jail, or to somehow allow Cohen to escape any need to cooperate with investigators? Are you saying that it would be okay, for Trump to do that because Obama might have done it and this is war with the deep state and to hell with the rule of law?
Why no compassion for a good man and smart attorney being set up for a guaranteed FBI frame job with faked evidence and lying Agents?
Cohen is not smart and decided to act more as an executive associate than an attorney long ago.
He's essentially Trump's consigliere. And Hannity's. Why no compassion for the good attorneys and judges of the SDNY? Apparently they saw the evidence that was powerful enough to warrant an extraordinary no-knock search and seizure of this park bench interlocutor for pigeons and other hobos and hangers-on.
Why no compassion for the good attorneys of the Justice Department and FBI and Office of Special Counsel?
I think some attorneys actually care about justice. The definition of justice does not begin and end with Trump's personal never-ending and constantly growing lawyering needs.
“God almighty, you've dialed the stupidity level up to 11 today.“
Get some self-awareness you benumbed, ridiculous hypocrites. Calling Maher out for a joke of this nature is literally one of the most asinine things I’ve ever read on here, and that is saying a lot given the resident absurdist bilge quotient in the Trump era. I wonder how you can even stand yourselves in moments like this - the gang perpetually outraged at the outrage machine, outraged today over a joke targeting Cohen’s laughable, obsequious Mafioso-style loyalty pledge to the president, because it uses a common-as-dirt prison joke as a vehicle. Get a grip!
“Judging from some of your commenters' personal attacks on me, Althouse, I think your core audience is rather keen on homophobic rape jokes.”
Just for the record, I never thought Chuck was gay and even if I did would not have viewed him negatively based on his sexual orientation.
Fix the prisons systems, right-wingers - if you think what goes on there is so wrong, unjust, and unfunny.
Assholes. The problem's staring you right in the face. When you make it a for-profit industry, guess what? More lockdowns at lower cost and worse oversight - if any. Duh. This is not rocket science. Same goes for your AG Foghorn Leghorn Beauregard Sessions' love of locking people up for victimless crimes such as addiction disorders etc.
They call it "mass incarceration" for a reason. We do more of it than anyone else and Republicans don't have the stomach or humanity to deal with social problems in any other way. Either someone's a scoundrel who needs to die by electric chair or they're a hero and awesome human being. Most things are shades of gray and so are most people and so are most social problems but the Republican need to either hate and condemn and vilify or love and extol and idealize and worship blinds them to the most effective tools for dealing with and effectively confronting the majority of this country's problems and massive social failings.
Cohen won't flip on Trump, and probably worse for the anti-Trump faction is this- Cohen has nothing to flip with, so it is a moot point. The best they can hope for is that Cohen is forced to prove Trump is lying about Daniels and maybe some other women he slept with- embarrassing Trump, but probably costing him no support.
I agree with you 100% Althouse.
Any Trump supporter railing on about justice who takes no note of the abjectly abominable timing of the recent Scooter Libby pardon is not worth taking seriously. Trump was sending a message with that shit: Loyalty over law. Plain and simple. Same thing with his offer to pay the legal bills of any supporter at one of his rallies charged with assault.
THat's your guy, Trumpers. He NEVER cared about the law, let alone justice. He's a mobster mentality through and through. His career started as a slumlord who hired thugs to break hallway lights and let rats into buildings rented by people he wanted to scare away. And then gloat over his first magazine cover illustration depicting him as a nasty thug. Get real.
the abjectly abominable timing of the recent Scooter Libby pardon
It was bad timing. It should have happened ten years ago.
Does this belong with "the era of that's not funny"?
I agree that this kind of joke is outside the pale, but that judgment is in tension with the idea that people are too quick to conclude that.
Scooter Libby was railroaded. OK by the loyal left!
Valerie Plame was the one who was "railroaded." FTFY.
The left is pathetic but the right wants to politicize and legally weaponize even the CIA and how they will go after and endanger the lives of its agents. So it's small potatoes to think that the FBI should serve their Personality Cult Leader Trump personally. They need to relinquish power and leave town yesterday. They have no concept of rule of law and have no place serving in any American administration until they figure this out.
"How do you stand yourself?"
Hahahaha!
Easily. How do you stand yourself? Your posts suggest a very unhappy person.
It is justice for President Trump to pardon Cohen or Michael Flynn who are being railroaded by the couppt forces of the Deep State who are trying to reverse the election through a unprecedented perversion of the law. Rather than respecting the rule of law they are fucking it in the ass. Using handpicked Democrat Paritisans like that FISAjudge and Kimba Wood they are manipulating the justice system and destroying long held rules in their insane quest to destroy this President.
They didn't violate the offices of Bruce Cutler when they were after John Gottii. They didn't violate attorney client privilege when Lynn Stewert defended terrorist. When Kunstler defended the FALN. None of that rose to the danger of the wrong man winning the election fair and square.
This is the same contempt for the rule of law that Muellar displayed when he let innocent men go to jail and in fact die in jail to protect Whitey Bulger. How he protected Greg Scarpa the Mafia killer who did black bag jobs for the FBI. The FBI under Hoover, Comey, Muller and McCabe have trashed the rule of law over and over in the furtherance of the aims of the Swamp and the Deep State.
In contrast the God Emperor has abided by the rule of law. He had the right to fire Comey. He has not fired Mueller or Rothstein or even ZmcCabe who was fired by an Internal investigation by an Obama appointed Inspector General. Unlike the DNC and their servers he has turned over everything that was requested. Unlike the FBI he has compiled with Congressional subpoenas. In return the raid his lawyers office. Not to find evidence. But to find politically motivated salacious details to leak to the press.
Of course Trump is justified in issuing said pardon to all of the people the Deep State is trying to destroy in their attempt to reverse an election.
But then a a Democrat like you knows that Chuck.
The pearl clutching nature of Althouse's complaint here is that the joke is self-evidently not homophobic. I agree with Robert's general point that prison rape is not a joke, but neither is death or infirmity or growing old. There are a lot of aspects to life that are handled, often awkwardly, with humor.
California only has about 5% of its inmates in "private prisons".
And yet the vast majority, the 95% in the "public" prisons, some of the most expensive in the US, still manage to make them awful places.
And, note, the state is a Democratic one-party state and has effectively been so since the 1990s.
...Scooter Libby pardon is not worth taking seriously.
I see your point on timing. Scooter should have been pardoned day one. Or better, by that pussy Bush.
Hey we have a non-crime here of "outing" a non-spy.
So what, let's do a deep dive investigation anyway.
Hey the guy outing the non-covert operative is Richard Armatage (sp?). Let's ignore that. After all there is no crime in what we are investigating.
Scooter Libby and a news guy had different recollections of conversations a few years ago.
So what? Isn't that he said, he said. Besides the crime isn't a crime. And, if it were we know the guy who did it. Libby ain't him.
Yeah but Libby works for Chaney (the Great Satan). He might even flip some cap on HIM.
Off to jail Mr. Libby.
Won't us NOT charging Richard A show the investigation is phony? Nah, if a misdeed is done in the political world and the perp is an R it doesn't make a sound (or the evening coverage by CNN).
So, yeah, isn't it just AWFUL that timing and other gamesmanship are used on (non) criminal issues.
Come to think of it, Trump should have issued the pardon the day the Special Investigator was named.
Bill Maher is only half-joking, in a clown-nose on/off sort of way. The Democrat Party faithful openly endorse sodomy for Republican-leaning white collar criminals:
"I would love," said Bill Lockyer, California's Attorney-General, "to personally escort [Enron CEO] Lay to an 8 x 10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey.'"
Cohen once publicly boasted of defending Trump against charges of marital rape by proposing that the concept was not legally valid.
Buckley argued the same thing in 1980 or so. The argument is that rape is a violation of feminine modesty, and in the case of marriage that's not possible. The correct charge for that situation is assualt and battery.
The court went the other way but that's just the court being wrong.
Or are pardons only for Puerto Rican Terrorists and a Democratic donors like Mark Rich?p
One persistent theme here is that at least Trump fights back. He is a fighter, like a big fish that constantly takes the bait.
A shrewder fish might take the bait a little less often.
It is justice for President Trump to pardon Cohen or Michael Flynn who are being railroaded by the couppt forces of the Deep State who are trying to reverse the election through a unprecedented perversion of the law.
"Railroading" - Not a legal concept. Again with loyalty oaths and state being manipulated to serve favored individuals and their nefarious, illegal acts over basic legal understandings.
"Deep state" - Also a made-up term with no meaning in law or government. Just a way of saying there should be no civil servants or agencies in a country this big other than those who serve Trump's personal interests and place them over the agencies' legal missions.
But thanks for showing how easily the lines blur in Trump land between actual law and order and strange and elaborate dystopian vengeance fantasies. You folks could all use a dose of Seroquel. Trump's own relationship to reality is already tenuous enough as is.
The right-wing Trump chain gang seeks to define "corruption" as something having nothing to do with actual law. Their alternative is a personality cult led by the dictator and the sealed off-wall around the alternative reality that they define together. But facts have a stubborn way of leaking through.
You all are natural authoritarians finally showing your true colors. The republic was specifically designed to protect against this disease of yours and will do so presently. But you'll still fail to learn your lessons. You're immune to constitutionalism, apparently. The country knows better. Enjoy cheerleading your crime spree for the rest of its short life.
Randa Jarrar laughing at the death of Barbara Bush struck Althouse as funny, while Maher laughing at the specter of Cohen being sexually assaulted in prison doesn’t. Trump too strikes her as joking when he’s being serious.
Humor is a subjective thing.
Humor is a subjective thing.
Subject to the politics of her increasingly detestable Trump-Forvever crowd, apparently.
Trump is gross. His (and his Always-Defender's) understanding of truth, law and justice even grosser.
They are perversions of the system and require a heavy dose of removal from power. A giant injection of impeachment, disbarment, and disenfranchisement.
“They are perversions of the system and require a heavy dose of removal from power. A giant injection of impeachment, disbarment, and disenfranchisement.”
Indeed. And it/ they are coming.
"You all are natural authoritarians finally showing your true colors."
According to a man that enjoys the prospect of Trump's lawyer being raped in prison. Just as he enjoyed the no-knock raid on Manafort's house featuring Manafort and his wife in bedclothes being frisked by FBI agents in full battle regalia.
this began you recall when they misidentified him as being in prague, because of a rumor those Russian spies fed Christopher steele, which became part of the fisa warrant and an official intelligence document, that james clapper fed cnn and Buzzfeed,
I wonder how many women did Cohen pay off because Trump sexually assaulted them? Will there be evidence of payoffs to women who weren’t in a consensual sexual relationship with Trump in the Cohen documents?
The Toothless State-fellator is torn. On the one hand, prison rape is brutal. On the other hand it is prisoners of the State getting sodomized, so he may be getting titillation out of it. After all a man who is as blase as he is about the billions murdered by his beloved Big Brother shouldn't be grossed out by rape. I'm guessing at least some of those billions of Democide* victims were probably raped before they were executed. Maybe even after they were executed.
*Using the term coined by R. J. Rummel, probably the leading expert on State-sanctioned and State-authorized murder.
“while Maher laughing at the specter of Cohen being sexually assaulted in prison”
It seems fairly evident to me that the joke was about Cohen flipping, not about relishing the spectre of anyone being hurt in prison. It was about AVOIDING prison.
Inga and snark are eager for details to feed your delusions.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/372457-ig-poised-to-reignite-war-over-fbis-clinton-case
Try that for size.
The always-brilliant Inga wonders about women Trump may have sexually assaulted. Why wonder, Inga? Just make stuff up. It's what you and other State-shtuppers do. "No truth but socialist truth," right?
For me one point is how awesomely unfunny it is. Even if someone thinks prison rape jokes are funny, this is not funny. It's like no one even made an attempt to make it funny. When you learn that farts are funny, you still have to do more than say the word 'fart.' This doesn't amount to much more than that.
"authoritarian" is a meaningless term.
It is a pejorative that cannot be consistently applied.
Humans require leaders. People are designed to self-organize into hierarchies, this is natural behavior. Experience brings the ability to recognize who has natural authority and who doesn't. There are natural leaders. That may or may not include other qualities, but it is in itself a very valuable quality.
Academics are in general very poorly equipped to evaluate leadership, being as a class self-selected against it.
Funny, but I'm fairly certain Bill Maher swings both ways. It's probably how he got the job because he's not funny.
Langford Peel; meet Scott Adams...
”I no longer care about the fucking law.”
God, it’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m in the middle of a 20 mile bicycle ride.
I stop for a moment to check my messages and you stooges are still in the midst of one upping one another over who’s more morbid and deadly serious over the subject of homo rape.
I suggest a trip to the nearest bar for a few boilermakers. See if you can find a Loose Lucy.
You guys are hilarious. Some of you could use a good anal raping.
The law changes from place to place and from era to era, but human nature doesn't.
The laws are both tools and features of the human terrain, there to be used or adjusted to or avoided, or if necessary changed. The use of laws as weapons in political combat is ancient.
Above the laws are higher considerations. A valid law can be used unjustly, unfairly, or against the interests of some group, or of the polity as a whole. A perverted culture can turn a reasonable system of laws into a disaster.
Which is one reason to study, for instance, the great drama of the collapse of the Roman Republic. Their arguments are not your arguments, no one has an interest in their factions, but their circumstances and the way they fought their conflicts have many parallels here in the US.
According to a man that enjoys the prospect of Trump's lawyer being raped in prison.
I really don't care either way. It's not my problem. Plus, I told you how to prevent it. Any reason why this Cohen guy should be any more important than any of the others who suffer under your mass incarceration regime? Once again you prove that rule by men (the one with the holy un-rape-able asshole) is more important to you than rule of law.
The Deep State is a real thing despite the best efforts of the apologist who makes excuses for the Duopoly who control it and both political parties. Their minions like Macranama, Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and Brzinski serve their interests and not that of the people. Theyserved up everything from Vietnam to the Iraq War. They are pushing for a war in Syria even now. Trump is the only one standing in their way.
Toothless would see that if he was not a blind partisan. He is the true authoritarian who wants to reverse the election through extra legal means to return it to the clutches of the people he pretends to dispize. That is what the social justice warrior progressive nincompoops like aritmo want. Give control back to the Clinton/Bush dynasty who are the servants of the a Deep State.
President Trump is our last chance to stop this. If he is deposed by trashing the rule of law by destroying things like attorney client privilege....well the next step will not be pretty.
Get real. An attorney-- any attorney-- would be looked on as an asset by prisoners. He'd be coddled, not raped.
The Toothless State-fellator is torn. On the one hand, prison rape is brutal. On the other hand it is prisoners of the State getting sodomized, so he may be getting titillation out of it. After all a man who is as blase as he is about the billions murdered by his beloved Big Brother shouldn't be grossed out by rape. I'm guessing at least some of those billions of Democide* victims were probably raped before they were executed. Maybe even after they were executed.
*Using the term coined by R. J. Rummel, probably the leading expert on State-sanctioned and State-authorized murder.
"Your Honor, I William Chadwick, intend to show the innocence of my client Michael Cohen - consigliere for Donald Trump - on account of... STALIN! MAO! Whoops, excuse me. Can't help that. It's just a nervous tic of mine. Plus, I don't know how rule of law works and thought that had anything to do with the defense of my clients. I should promise that it won't happen again but I have never seen the inside of a courtroom or served on a jury or otherwise participated in American democracy in any way, shape or form."
William C said
The always-brilliant Inga wonders about women Trump may have sexually assaulted. Why wonder, Inga? Just make stuff up. It's what you and other State-shtuppers do. "No truth but socialist truth," right?
worth a repeat.
Wish facts are real deep inside the small minds of the loyal left.
Langford Peel said...
Toothless would see that if he was not a blind partisan. He is the true authoritarian who wants to reverse the election through extra legal means to return it to the clutches of the people he pretends to dispize. That is what the social justice warrior progressive nincompoops like aritmo want. Give control back to the Clinton/Bush dynasty who are the servants of the a Deep State.
worth a hearty repeat
Inga said...
TTR said...
“They are perversions of the system and require a heavy dose of removal from power. A giant injection of impeachment, disbarment, and disenfranchisement.”
Indeed. And it/ they are coming.
Do it. Stop talking and do it.
Let’s get this over with.
The Deep State is a real thing...
In Egypt and other states run by the military.
...despite the best efforts of the apologist who makes excuses for the Duopoly who control it and both political parties.
The word you're looking for is called "lobbying." If you weren't so enamored with the endless possibilities created by bribery, you'd stop going to war with agencies and the dedicated civil servants who staff them. They have a mission, defined in longstanding law, because after 1929 it became evident to everyone that a country of hundreds of millions couldn't be run by one dude alone. Nor could he (or should he) have personal oversight over every one of them. This concept goes back even further, when the previous graft-based administrations that gave the Teapot Dome Scandal and, before that, the infamous Tammany Hall, led to civil service reforms that made administrations professional things, rather than the personal services of the official.
I realize you think that loyalty is a long-dead thing, but start worrying about loyalty to the working class instead of loyalty to Trump - a billionaire who should gain esteem and cooperation by his actions and reason, not by his sternness and paranoia.
Their minions like Macranama, Kissinger, Cyrus Vance and Brzinski serve their interests and not that of the people.
Kissinger met with Trump after the election and Trump's cabinet is staffed by more billionaires and Wall Street and special interest lobbyists than any other in history.
Theyserved up everything from Vietnam to the Iraq War. They are pushing for a war in Syria even now. Trump is the only one standing in their way.
They persuaded him on the basis of a chemical attack and dead Syrian kids. He'll fold too, now. Just watch.
she and toothless are trolls, or properly uruk hai orcs, now the distinction between a mere troll, and a journolister and a govt official is about one standard deviation between them,
Do it. Stop talking and do it.
Let’s get this over with.
Patience there, psychopath.
This is a legal investigation. Not a poorly executed Republican military adventure.
Apparently you too have never served on a jury or even seen the inside of a courtroom.
like Conrad blacks, or bob McDonnell or tom delay's, yes those were not mockeries of travesties of a sham.
"Toothless would see that if he was not a blind partisan. He is the true authoritarian who wants to reverse the election through extra legal means to return it to the clutches of the people he pretends to dispize. That is what the social justice warrior progressive nincompoops like aritmo want. Give control back to the Clinton/Bush dynasty who are the servants of the a Deep State."
worth a hearty repeat
By parrots like you, maybe.
No election will be "reversed." Even impeaching Trump gives us this Pence guy - unless you transgender obsessives confused Mike Pence for Hillary Clinton. And if the very impeachment outlined in the constitution is "extra legal means" or the rule of law that Trump is not above is an "extra legal means" then you've already declared your aversion the constitution itself anyway.
Like I said, civics education is one more thing that Republicans are very stupid and ill-informed about. No wonder they're so easily misled. They don't even know how the American system of law and government is structured in the first place. Pathetic. I guess I'd be as afraid of it as they are if I were as ignorant of it as they. Paranoia and ignorance usually go hand-in-hand.
"For Democrats everything, for Republicans, Mahr, Kimmel and Colbert"
david radler who was as least as liable re Hollinger's financial status, as were other members of the board that weren't touched, like jim Thompson or henry Kissinger, Ronnie earle took three bites of the apple to get an indictment, which was reversed on appeal.
A fine analogy for the nature of law.
They are tools, like the internal combustion engine. There are alternatives to it, other types will serve, and have, under other circumstances, with various defects and benefits.
As a whole the internal combustion engine has increased human welfare to a massive degree. However, it can be misused.
These things can be used to facilitate suicide and murder, invasion and conquest, even exterminations as with the various Nazi uses of carbon monoxide laden engine exhaust.
Judging from some of your commenters' personal attacks on me, Althouse, I think your core audience is rather keen on homophobic rape jokes. - Chuck
Just when I think you cannot be a bigger, sniveling, whining simp ... you prove me wrong.
Toothless would see that if he was not a blind partisan. He is the true authoritarian who wants to reverse the election through extra legal means to return it to the clutches of the people he pretends to dispize. That is what the social justice warrior progressive nincompoops like aritmo want. Give control back to the Clinton/Bush dynasty who are the servants of the a Deep State.
The state is controlled by the corporations, dummy. The very corporations that are getting better representation in Trump's cabinet than in any other in history. He even thought an oil exec was the best choice for SOS. Diplomacy run by, of and for the Exxon Mobils? And whom does Scott Pruitt, corruptocrat extraordinaire, represent? Oklahoma's oil and natural gas industry.
I never once voted for a Clinton or a Bush. I'm sure you have, though. Right-wingers were happy to align themselves with the GOP for quite some time, and they will continue to do so now that Trump is the effective leader of the RNC. Just watch the RNC play all sorts of legal-propaganda interference on Trump's behalf, now - or at least until Mike Cohen's office was searched. It's pathetic.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Ms. Althouse just throw a bunch of scorn our way in DEFENSE of humor...at least when it came to defending Tenure?
I don't find it funny aimed at my tribe, but I also get it's supposed to be a joke.
Mahr hasn't taken the Lesson Of Cicero: that when one is dealing with a thin skinned bully, one usually gets a perch on the Milestone, with the ex wife piercing your tongue with her hair pins.
Or perhaps he should consider the case of Kathy Griffin. But Bill Mahr thinks he is smarter than everyone else just because he is a comedian.
God, it’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m in the middle of a 20 mile bicycle ride.
I stop for a moment to check my messages and you stooges are still in the midst of one upping one another over who’s more morbid and deadly serious over the subject of homo rape.
I am listening to music, alternating between Jimmie Webb and Eliana Garanca. Folk and opera.
Out to the nursery soon. I stop by to see if there is any sense being posted.
This seems to be the lefty thread.
Trumps cabinet certainly hasn't got more wealthy characters than previous ones, and you need to take into account the factor of time. There is no-one in his cabinet that would have approached the relative wealth of Nelson Rockefeller, just as one example.
And if you mean Janet Yellen, she is independently wealthy and not a "player". The family sold their businesses long ago.
If you want to count players, the supporters of the previous administration and of HRC comprise the majority of American billionaires. I encourage analysis of the "Fortune" list.
I suggest a trip to the nearest bar for a few boilermakers. See if you can find a Loose Lucy.
You guys are hilarious. Some of you could use a good anal raping.
Will it make us more complacent like Michael K Kennedy?
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
This is a legal investigation. Not a poorly executed Republican military adventure.
Apparently you too have never served on a jury or even seen the inside of a courtroom.
You are a joke. What High Crime and Misdemeanor are you going to impeach Trump over?
In the meantime:
Hillary, Obama, and the FBI have been caught paying foreign agents for information to be used to undermine an election. Michael Steele is a foreign agent. The Russians he paid with DNC money were, well, Russians.
The Obama administration has been caught illegally spying on a political opponent.
Over a Dozen DOJ/FBI people have resigned/been demoted/fired for lying and unlawful activity.
Comey and McCabe have been caught committing blatant perjury while under oath.
Yeah you go ahead with your little stalinist coup.
Then we will wipe you out.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
The state is controlled by the corporations, dummy.
And you want to give the state more power and disarm the citizens of this country.
You can't be stupid enough to where these obviously contradictory positions are reconcilable.
It is clear that you want the right(leftist) corporations in power and you want a tyrannical state.
But we already knew what the left wants from the dozens of examples you have provided throughout history. You will not get the chance to murder/starve your political opponents this time.
Indeed. And it/ they are coming. - Inga
The know-it-all speaks again. But then will deny making any such claim.
And there most certainly is a deep state.
Its not difficult to find yourself face to face with part of it, if you are in the right place. Mainly where the money is.
The interrelation of regulatory agencies, large business, "consultants", and many academics is the outer fringe. The EPA was one of the better exposed areas here. Another, should you choose to look, is the whole industry around Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Look up some of the consultants and check out their Linkedin accounts. Who did they work for? Like all these things, these are a mass of relationships.
Comey, for instance, was very well plugged in in this way, on his side. There is much material on his role in HSBC for instance (our family bank at one time, until they ruined their reputation).
Unsurprisingly, buwaya confuses the meaning of the word "more" (as in "more billionaires, etc.") with what he points to as a single very rich person who served as Gerald Ford's vice president. Which is what I suppose is what every Bernie Sanders supporter is looking to re-create. The caretaker cabinet serving as a placeholder after Dick Nixon. Okay.
On to the next point for him to completely misunderstand and flub.
DeVos, Mnuchkin, Wilbur, Pruitt, Kudlow, etc. never represented a single anybody who was not of the millionaire/billionaire-corporate class. That's where their interests and allegiances lie. It's a cabinet created against, opposed to and committed to the destruction of the working class.
There were two monks going cross country to their assigned monastery, an older monk and a youngish monk.
They came to a river ford, but the river, was running high. A young lady was standing on the bank, needing to cross. Now, the monks had a vow of celibacy but they also had a vow of tending the flock and charity, so the older monk pulled up the hem of his habit, tucked it into his belt, and hoisted the young lady in need on his back, and carried her across (Lucky for him she was not a Feminist)
After crossing the ford, they walked on for a few miles, the younger monk's outrage growing with every step. "How could you do that? Do your vows mean nothing? Do you have no shame? To have that young lady's supple thighs entwined around your waist...to have her bosom pressed against your back...her nipples poking at you...her breath gasping in your ear. Shame, SHAME Brother Donald!"
The older monk looked puzzled. "Brother Althouse, I put that lady down on the other end of the river. Why are you still carrying her?"
**
Whenever Ms. Althouse goes off on her exhortations of prudery and 'that isn't funny or proper', I am always reminded of that joke.
What are the largest corporations in the US, and whose side are they on? This is not difficult to find.
Get the list and post it here in tabular form.
The exercise will be rewarding.
I think that a Fox News Reporter might want to investigate if there is a #MeToo movement in Maher's past. Considering how he went through women in the past, I'm guessing he is at least as guilty as Azziz.
Blogger Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) said...
Then we will wipe you out.
He also said a bunch of ignorant, drug-induced, legally ignorant and laughably stupid crap to justify his overriding violent goals, but no one read them.
But it's true that gullible junkies who keep themselves entertained with conspiracy theories and rely on personality cults and military dictatorships to substitute for their ignorance of civics and rule of law are bound to have a flimsy grasp of reality.
Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) things might makes right. Notice how he didn't object to my assertion that he's never served on a jury or even seen the inside of a courtroom. Or wrote to his elected representative. He's like the scum that mooches off of and floats on top of democracy.
Trump made a similar joke to Comey, who laughed.
What are the largest corporations in the US, and whose side are they on? This is not difficult to find.
Corporations representing disruptive, capitalist change that exemplifies tech are more interested in social and global stability than the corporations that rely on rent-seeking like extraction rights. The latter represent the right because they need an aristocracy to keep people down and ignorant. Biggest isn't the point when fossil fuel and other industries are at least as powerful with old money shareholders, family wealth, legal favors and an agenda that is opposed to what people want. Most people care about not having to discard their iPhone than whether their car runs on hydrogen or petrol.
buwaya is out of touch and lives in a bubble.
Obama cabinet included the following extraordinarily wealthy people - just from a glance, you can extract more if you deep dive-
HRC
John Kerry
Penny Pritzker
Jack Lew
And if you are including corporate players deeply involved in the last administration; well, I can only point, again, to the Forbes list.
Whatever interests narrow enough to trace back to a few industries the less wealthy four individuals in Obama's cabinet that buwaya fixates on represented, he can't say. Nor can he equate that to the much greater numbers of special interests reps that Trump scraped together just in a single year, instead of eight.
buwaya's about as good at drawing comparisons as Chef Boyardee is at making gnocchi and risotto. Just an absolute fraud.
Ritmo is the font of all wisdom, in his own mind that is.
Really Ritmo?
Money is money, and, traditionally, one must count, for instance, banks and other financial institutions, as "old money", and pretty much everything Warren Buffet owns. Much of the American trend in the last three decades is wealth concentrating in finance vs the "real" economy.
And so forth.
The other interesting thing about the US economy is that the high tech bits are getting ever more concentrated as they have gotten less entrepreneurial, and not coincidentally more liberal. This was predictable, this is in Schumpeter, and plenty of old Silicon Valley players predicted it. And they were right.
And if you are including corporate players deeply involved in the last administration; well, I can only point, again, to the Forbes list.
buwaya is incapable of judging a tree by its fruits. The Goldman Sachs members of Trump's cabinet are repealing regulation of Wall Street of the sort that kept 2008 from repeating itself and defanging the CPFB faster than Trump can say "tax cut!"
These are explicitly giveaways to the investor class. But again, buwaya is incapable of judging a tree by its fruits.
In any case, again, to the Forbes list.
Who there likes Trump, no matter what business they are in?
With few exceptions they backed the Democrats in 2016 and you will find that they back them this year too.
Those are your plutocrats, and they are the heart and soul (because it is all made of money) of the Democratic party. This is because the actual wealth creation in the modern US economy comes from exploiting regulations and political relationships. Much more so than in the past anyway.
Which cabinet agency did Warren Buffet serve in?
buwaya is forgetting his points faster than he can forget which cabinet official served which special interest - and how.
It's just easier to say that he can't tell which fruits belonged to which tree he wants to judge. He says, "They're all fruit. Yummy!"
Anyway, good luck on trying to stifle the tech industry. I'm sure that will be much easier to do than keeping the financial and fossil fuel industries regulated, which you also seem to think is wrong to do.
Comparing the rent-seeking nature of extraction rights with tech giants becoming richer. Hilarious. Yep, I'm really sure the American people care more about how their power lines are energized than whether or not they have access to the most cutting edge personal and information technology.
Also, let's not forget Trump's giveaway of the internet to the telecom companies with that graft-monger Pai. Yes, I'm really sure Americans trust the FCC to take away net neutrality from them and give the big telecoms net partiality instead. Okay.
Judging the trees by their fruits... a skill that buwaya lacks.
In any case, again, to the Forbes list.
Who there likes Trump, no matter what business they are in?
With few exceptions they backed the Democrats in 2016 and you will find that they back them this year too.
Because they like progress and lucrative disruptive technologies are the role that capitalism plays in progress. That doesn't mean that they have to be against social progress, though (like you are).
Those are your plutocrats, and they are the heart and soul (because it is all made of money) of the Democratic party.
They are not plutocrats because they are not looking to rent-seek the government as a way to favor exclusively their own industry (OR EVEN THEIR OWN TAX STRUCTURE!!!!) at the expense of any other industry or social or economic class.
Pretty easy to understand, unless you are a regressive who likes to confuse himself and others like buwaya. But then, he can't just a tree by its fruits. He's just trying to confuse which trees are producing which fruits.
Jesus would be very opposed to the interference, corruption, chaos and confusion that buwaya is trying to sow.
TTR is always a gas. Literally. He tries to suck all the oxygen from the board by multiple postings, however inane and unconvincing.
At least Chuck, Inga, ARM and Voltaire have the virtue of being brief.
Bill Maher’s a pig. So are most of his fans. Guys like him are a sign of how far we’ve declined.
Like I always say, FIDO: The way to keep me posting less is for right-wingers to stop posting so many wrong right-wing errors in thought. Just look at buwaya: He's posted more thought errors in longer form than Guttenberg. But right-wingers believe so many wrong things so I make it a point to correct them all. Just being as comprehensive in my corrections as my opponents are in their wrongness. I can see why that bothers you - you rely on misinformation.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Blogger Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) said...
Then we will wipe you out.
He also said a bunch of ignorant, drug-induced, legally ignorant and laughably stupid crap to justify his overriding violent goals, but no one read them.
You can't name a single law Trump has broken that rises to the level of High Crime and Misdemeanor.
Do it. Name one. Any single law. Site evidence.
Meanwhile Obama committed treason, conspiracy, several espionage act violations, multiple FISA act violations. Dozens who served in his administration have been fired, demoted, or resigned.
Obama spied on the entire Trump campaign using a Hillary Clinton paid for document where the democrat campaign paid foreigners for information and access. This is undeniable fact in the public record.
No it is you who are pushing a stalinist coup. You have decided Trump committed a crime and you will find it. You will ignore multiple felonies committed by democrats because the law is only a tool to you.
You are a cancer on a free republic.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Like I always say, FIDO: The way to keep me posting less is for right-wingers to stop posting so many wrong right-wing errors in thought. Just look at buwaya: He's posted more thought errors in longer form than Guttenberg. But right-wingers believe so many wrong things so I make it a point to correct them all. Just being as comprehensive in my corrections as my opponents are in their wrongness. I can see why that bothers you - you rely on misinformation.
You haven't posted a single specific argument yet. All you do is post generalized assertions.
Buwaya posts actual relevant history with details and support. You can't even begin to discuss his points in detail.
You aren't smart enough.
Dismissed =/= wrong
You are a cancer on a free republic.
So says a guy who thinks he knows more facts and law than a duly, congressionally appointed prosecutor in charge of the investigation he doesn't trust and has no legal training or understanding about.
Yep. I'd say Achilles (The Violent, Legally Ignorant Psychopath) is much more of a "cancer on a free republic" than anyone, including the congress, willing to allow a prosecutor to collect and present his evidence and case in a court of law. What's this junkie going to do next? Take over all of congress, hold a gun to their heads and demand that they end the investigation? Take over the FBI and the entire SDNY state prosecutor's office and shut down their prosecution of Cohen, Trump's consigliere?
Does this dildo even know how jurisdiction works? Federalism, anyone?
He wants to use threats of violent, military force on Congress and the State of New York to do what he wants and has the malignant ignorance to call anyone else what he wants to call them.
Incredible. This guy isn't fit to run a post office. What a loser Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) is. He probably couldn't get through reading seven words in the Constitution before falling into a drug-induced stupor. And then waking up suddenly and threatening violence on anyone nearby.
Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) never read the constitution. I guarantee it.
Those are your plutocrats, and they are the heart and soul (because it is all made of money) of the Democratic party. This is because the actual wealth creation in the modern US economy comes from exploiting regulations and political relationships.
Yes and the Democrat voters and Bernie bros are the serfs.
It is a serious worry how the economy has become a casino instead of making things.
We won World War II because we made things. 30,000 airplanes a month. Hitler dismisses it as a fairy tale.
Then they were overhead.
Could we win a war now ? What may save us is that the other countries like China are just as corrupt.
You haven't posted a single specific argument yet. All you do is post generalized assertions.
Lol, not only have I posted arguments, I successfully rebutted every right-wing bullshit assertion posted so far on this comment thread. Not a single one of my refutations have you been able to dismantle. Name a single one. (Although that would require a skill you lack: Reading).
Buwaya posts actual relevant history with details and support. You can't even begin to discuss his points in detail.
Every one of his posts were irrelevant and every one of them I dismantled. Again, if you could read you'd know that.
You aren't smart enough.
Going after messengers instead of message. Authoritarians always elevate personality over substance - that's why thy fall so easily prey to a cult of personality, like Trump's cult of personality.
Go and argue your way out of that, Violent Wacko.
Bernie bros..
Michael K's a fan of Hillary Clinton's propaganda, I see.
So, to summarize the Ritmo position,
The Democrats (or whomever else it is he approves of), are backed by and serve the interests of their group of plutocrats, who on inspection seem to comprise the large majority of these people, and certainly a similar proportion of wealth.
And the Republicans/Trump, or whomever it is he disapproves of are backed by "deplorable" plutocrats, again, on inspection, a smallish minority of these people, and so also their wealth.
The difference between the two categories is alleged to be some factor of "entrepreneurialism", or something like that. Regardless of the age of the fortunes or the nature of the businesses it seems, banking/finance being extremely ancient.
This AN argument, of sorts.
Ritmo is the equivalent of the crap one must step around in San Francisco to get anywhere.
The era of Nucor, for example, needs to be revived.
I am a big fan of the genetics application companies, some of which are the work of Craig Venter, who may be creating the next era of "making stuff."
So, to summarize the buwayan position:
The Republicans (or whomever else it is he approves of) are backed by and serve the interests of people who want to control the pricing of and access to energy sources and the telecommunications media and finance companies that they own.
And anyone else who clearly doesn't oppose innovation in technology or information technology should be accused of being just as corrupt and evil, no matter how much greater a social and economic good they provide or how much less favoritism they require of government, because entrepreneurship and progress are bad things and not needing protection by government from what the people actually want is somehow also a bad thing.
This is A whiny bitch fest, and nothing more.
buwaya wants you to choose serfdom and to equivocate it with a serfdom that technology companies never asked of or enforced on you. He wants you to serve the interests of Wall Street, the telecoms and fossil fuels industries.
What the heck. Maher is a buffoon. But then so was Bill Lockyer who held a number of statewide offices over the years in California. During California's "energy crisis" in 2001, Lockyer was the California AG. He said that he wanted to personally escort Enron executives to their prison cells in San Question and introduce them to their "new bunkmate" Bubba!
Harty har de har! Of course we've since had Kamala Harris as AG and now Antonio Becerra. It's tough to decide who the sorriest one of the three is.
I am a big fan of the genetics application companies, some of which are the work of Craig Venter, who may be creating the next era of "making stuff."
Michael K thinks that letting someone own your DNA will be almost as great as letting them own your internet or own your energy resources or own your economy (as Wall Street does).
Whatever takes more control from you and gives it to someone who needs Congress and Trump to run to for protections, you can bet that Michael K is for. buwaya, too.
They want to give more power to the powerful and take it away from regular folks.
Ritmo is just demonstrating ignorance. Just step around him.
Rent-seeking is indeed the main engine of wealth creation in the US.
It is achieved most efficiently by creation of laws and regulations that restrict competition by favoring economies of scale. As we have seen has been the case since the Carter-Reagan regulatory reforms.
The nature of these can be extremely particular, or universal. This is an extremely complex matter in detail, though there are general laws with broad effect. The cost of medical insurance for instance, or limitations on truck traffic in a municipality, or financial reporting rules. On the whole regulatory burdens have grown steadily, the ability to raise capital has fallen, and even high tech industries have consolidated.
Once consolidated and monopolized it is in their interest to keep out competition. That is business strategy 101.
Another means is through holding and protecting "intellectual property". The government does the protecting. Again, this is a government benefit which adds greatly to the value of the business.
All of this creates a synergy between government and these consolidated businesses. It is no accident they then back Democrats.
You have refuted nothing. You make bland assertions and declare victory like your hero Obama.
What exactly did Michael Cohen do that rises to the level that required the destruction of the rule of lawyer client privilege? He paid off Stormy? That happens everyday and the State does not raid a lawyers office to seize a lawyers files to leak the details of his other clients dealings with a lawyer? They don't do that to drug dealers lawyers. To cop killers lawyers. To pedophlia serial killer murderers lawyers.
Michael Cohen answered every subpoena or Inquiry placed before him. This gestapo move s direct violation of the rule of law. Gaming the system to put this before Kimba Wood a minion of the Deep State is another perversion of the law. Using a pet activist judge to get a FISA warrant to violate the privacy of everyone who ever met Donald Trump is just another gross violation of the rule of law. Unmasking these people to Obamas minions like Yates and Powers and Rice yet another ass fucking of the rule of law.
The perversion of justice by those suffering Trump Derangemrent Syndrome is a much more egregious perversion than the simple homosexual anal sex that is the delight of incacerated minorities and Ritmo Braxilio.
Shorter Achilles: No Justice, No Peace.
Shouting Thomas, have you ever seen "The Apostle?" I am reminded of Billy Bob on the bulldozer.
I can't believe prison rape has been allowed to go on. Law and order in prison should be absolute. Prisons should never be private, and there should be no prisoner accounts that people can send spending money to. All prisoners should receive the medical and psychological care needed to allow them to function in society, and they should be treated with dignity. Part of treating people with dignity is having high expectations for them and defending them as members of society. Therefore, any violent behavior should be put down. And hard.
Every man in prison does not get raped. Every man in prison does not become a rapist or bi-sexual.
One of most likely to get raped is one who talks too much, going on and on and on with stupid shit. Day after day, annoying other prisoners. Not a sex thing. A punishment thing.
This is getting ridiculous. Trump should make it clear that any person indicted by Mueller's grand jury for anything other than illegal interference in the 2016 presidential election will be pardoned. End the travesty.
"One of most likely to get raped is one who talks too much, going on and on and on with stupid shit. Day after day, annoying other prisoners. Not a sex thing. A punishment thing."
Then they should go in for the more civilized punch in the jaw instead of becoming grotesque creeps.
" It is no accident they then back Democrats. "
The intellectual property thing and the rent seeking are both heavy in California.
California used to build airplanes and missiles. I worked on some of them.
Now it's "snapchat" and facebook" which are the equivalent of dating sites.
What exactly did Michael Cohen do that rises to the level that required the destruction of the rule of lawyer client privilege?
I don't know - ask the judge. Or do they no longer have the right to issue warrants that prevent lawyers from destroying evidence and committing crimes-in-progress Trump-State, either?
You people are such damn autocrats it's ridiculous. Looks like one-man rule is harder to implement in America than you wish it were. What a pity. LOL!
Don't worry. There are plenty of other one-man strongman states for you to move to if autocracy fails in America. Your Dear Leader is visiting his buddy in North Korea soon, for instance. Maybe you can appeal for asylum to the other Hair-Raiser if America fails to succumb to One-Party-State Rule. There is hope for you yet, langford!
Howard said...
Shorter Achilles: No Justice, No Peace.
Inga and TTR have explicitly called for the disenfranchisement of their political opponents.
Would you like to go on record as a Stalinist piece of shit too?
Ah yes. Patents. Another part of the Constitution against which the regressive conservative Republicons have decided to go to war. However abusively they've been exploited, let's rail against that instead of simply reforming the terms of their issuance.
Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
It's really getting to the point that for everything against which these authoritarian Republicons rail I can find a part of the Constitution that represents whatever it is that they're really trying to destroy.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
What exactly did Michael Cohen do that rises to the level that required the destruction of the rule of lawyer client privilege?
I don't know - ask the judge.
Perfect stalinist response.
The judge who officiated Soros’s wedding after another judge was recused from the case.
You don’t give two shits about the rule of law.
"Agreeing that unconsented sodomy is undesirable is not homophobic."
I just don't know where to start about critiqueing this statement. Is this like saying ... oh why bother.
I am nowhere near as Stalinist as Achilles (The Violent, Illegal Psychopath).
If ending the packing, cracking, efficiency gap-creating gerrymander and other voter restrictions amounts to a "disenfranchisement" of the Republican handicap they add to their democracy disadvantage, then let's have more of it.
Sources (for the non-illiterate Constitution-Haters - i.e. excluding Violent Achilles):
https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-efficiency-gap-better-way-measure-gerrymandering
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/03/upshot/how-the-new-math-of-gerrymandering-works-supreme-court.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/19/pennsylvania-supreme-court-draws-a-much-more-competitive-district-map-to-overturn-republican-gerrymander/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0a0c5e5b25be
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/pennsylvania-gerrymandering-case-congressional-redistricting-map-coverage-guide-20180308.html
Your fight against the voters and your war on their democracy is soon about to end. Enjoy the decline of your artificial power inflation scheme, asshole.
I don't know - ask the judge.
Perfect stalinist response.
Lol. So some drug-addled roid-rager in bumblefuck who agitates for a violent coup against the constitutional system that prevents Trump from attaining One-Man-One-Party Rule calls judicial independence "stalinist." You can't make this stuff up, folks. Stalin - the guy who gutted the independence of the judiciary, did he not? Too funny.
But Achilles has done too many drugs and entertained too much violence and neglected to learn too much about how America or other law-abiding societies work to catch himself in the middle of that stumbling clusterfuck of a mess.
THe evidence will all come out at trial. The lawyers know what they have to do and even that clown Cohen hired initially is done banging his fists on the table like Krushchev. Achilles (The Violent Psychopathic) won't get his vigilante mob "justice" which takes no time for due process or collecting evidence or trials but he can always fantasize on what he might have gotten away with in the pre-Civil Rights South where they also thought the courts were too slow and not "democratic" enough for them.
"And WTF do you mean by "innocent wildlife"?"
If a lion kills and eats you, too F-ing bad. If you shoot a lion like that bastard dentist did you belong in prison along with the rapists, murderers, etc. He was only thirteen, you miserable pieces of human ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Cecil_the_lion
I hope someday that Achilles (The Violent Psychopath) gets indicted for a crime and decides to serve as his own attorney. The downfall caused by his own ignorance would be exhilarating.
Now, for the facts (and an informed - as opposed to ignorant - opinion):
The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest privileges in law. Without such a privilege, clients may not feel compelled to fully and openly communicate with their attorneys. The privilege is not absolute, however, and there are certain exceptions that allow the opposing side access to communications that would normally be protected. One such exception, known as the crime-fraud exception, involves communications in furtherance of a contemplated or ongoing crime or fraud.
The crime-fraud exception was first recognized in the United States over one hundred years ago, and the policy behind it is well-defined. (The crime-fraud exception was first recognized in the United States in Alexander v. U.S., 201 U.S. 117, 121 (1906).) The legal community does not deem discussions concerning future wrongdoings, such as fraud, that occur during an attorney-client communication worthy of protection. Id. at 562–63. While the practice of law encourages full and frank communications between the attorney and client, only communications concerning past wrongdoings are protected.
Yep. Achilles (The Violent, Idiotic Psychopath) apparently thinks "stalinists" were running the U.S. Supreme Court in 1906!!!
TTR wrote: “Ah yes. Patents. Another part of the Constitution against which the regressive conservative Republicons have decided to go to war. However abusively they've been exploited, let's rail against that instead of simply reforming the terms of their issuance” in response to Michael K.
I assumed that Michael K was referring to patent troll behavior as it is the most notorious “rent seeking” behavior. A recent SCOTUS ruling removed an unfair advantage enjoy by the trolls: choice of venue.* So in theory, it could be harder for CA-based trolls to abuse the system. I would like to hear Bruce Hayden’s expert opinion on that.
Also “reforming the terms of their issuance” is unfortunately ambiguous because it has a double meaning.
___________________________
Amusingly, trolls ( the commenter sort) also have venue advantage. Some who troll here are completely ineffective at other less troll friendly websites.
Hey Achilles (The Psychopath):
You can find out who issued the warrant. Go contact the SDNY (and their prosecutor!) and tell them why you disagree with their interpretation of the law and their ruling. Also, be sure to provide them with a link to your 1:45 PM comment about "wiping (people you disagree with in basic matters of law) out".
I don't read Ritmo's droppings so have no idea of what he said.
Hmm,
Everything is important in proportion.
One drug-addled roid rager in bumblefuck is meaningless.
A few hundred thousand angry well-armed men controlling all your means of transport and communication (which all run through bumblefuck) is something else entirely.
Never dismiss people you don't like, without counting them first. Everyone who has gotten into trouble this way started by making this mistake. The Sinhalese against the Tamils for instance.
I know, Michael K. You don't have an idea about much. (He just found out about the importance of molecular biology about sixty years after Watson and Crick and Franklin discovered the double helix so give that old timer some credit!)
Crick and Franklin already died and Watson is pretty old (90) so by Michael K's standards their discovery three score years ago is just making it onto his radar screen. Pretty impressive, for an ancient ghost in daycare diapers like Michael K.!
Never dismiss people you don't like, without counting them first. Everyone who has gotten into trouble this way started by making this mistake. The Sinhalese against the Tamils for instance.
Rule of law matters no matter how legitimate you think violence as a first recourse is or how much you prefer the idea of might making right.
"They spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend and they are ready to talk.”
Donald Trump speaking about reporters.
Almost as funny as Bill Maher
“Never dismiss people you don't like, without counting them first. Everyone who has gotten into trouble this way started by making this mistake.”
Indeed. Trump loyalists, 33%. Then there’s everyone else.
There’s a difference between finding a joke funny and recognizing that a statement is a joke.
I can be against punishing a person for telling a joke, eg firing that professor, without believing it was a funny joke.
I wouldn’t recommend firing Bill Maher for that joke, and I would have ignored the unfamous professor’s bad joke. I chose to speak about her ONLY after people advocated firing her.
I have not been AT ALL inconsistent.
It's a moot point anyway. Thankfully NO ONE'S opinions here will substitute for HBO's programming decisions, lest they become a much less successful channel, and well on their way to bankruptcy.
There's a larger lesson, though. The right wing consistently overestimates its own popularity, which is why it has to subvert democracy to retain power.
Intensity of opinion is not the same thing as how popular that opinion is.
The right wing is very intense.
"Then theres everyone else"
True. These are good reasons for everyone to start making concessions and trades, and observing "red lines". But unfortunately I think you are beyond that.
250,000 more people than last year bought a gun last month, and a very high proportion of these were "assault weapons", so much so that it cleaned out all the stock of these in the channel. We are talking of several times enough guns (and probably ammo) to have armed the entirety of the "Irish troubles", or about the same as the Tamil rebel side in the entire Sri Lankan civil war. And thats just the INCREASE in sales in ONE MONTH. Over 2,000,000 other sales were made in March. And there are vast numbers stockpiled by the public already.
The numbers are so enormous its difficult to grasp the scale of it, to put it in perspective. We are talking of several times more military-class weapons than have been deployed by all sides in WWII.
Every one of these people has had a "red line" crossed, and they are thereby crossing someone elses "red lines". You are so, so close already, and yet the bitterness this year is probably going to make this a new record.
And, note, every faction heading into a civil war has at some point cited the "rule of law". For heavens sake, that was the entire argument cited in the South Carolina declaration of secession.
You can cite law, or the rule of law, all you like, but that wont save you. The law is a mass illusion. The law must be applied - judiciously, else it goes away.
If the facts are against you, pound on the law. If the law is against you, pound on the facts. If both the facts and the law are against you, pound on the table.
Ritmo is so ignorant that he thinks the "double helix" was the last word in genetics.
Where do we find such people?
Jesus !
Read a book ! You could start with Reich's "Who we are and how we got here," although the vocabulary might be over your head.
I'm not sure a civil war is a sure thing but if the left really does take down Trump, legally or violently, there will be one.
I wouldn’t recommend firing Bill Maher for that joke, and I would have ignored the unfamous professor’s bad joke. I chose to speak about her ONLY after people advocated firing her.
The problem is seriously claiming that it's not funny.
It may be funny or it may not be funny, but it's not a serious issue either way.
Women find stuff seriously not funny, as distinguished from just not funny.
I spoke to a friend who's organization insured cities and counties. Prison rape is a joke. It's not abnormal for county jailers to put a kid busted for pot in a cell with a violent offender and let them get raped. He said the number of claims is insane. When someone goes to jail, they're going to get raped
My college major was molecular biology, Michael K. Nice try.
The progress of that field was pretty continuous from Watson-Crick-Franklin through Monod, the HGP, epigenetics, and so on. Using everything that's known about non-coding regions to at least find application in human migration/descent patterns is old hat by now. The best summary so far is Spencer Wells', unless you want to get into all the pre-African exodus stuff involving Neanderthal DNA and whatnot. Seven Daughters of Eve was published more than 15 years ago. Or if you want to get less anthropocentric about it, it's good to start with Dawkins - The Ancestor's Tale. And then move on to The Greatest Show on Earth once you get over your molecular biology complex and develop an appreciation for tying it back into the basic evolutionary picture that's always threatened by the American right's drive to make our country more ignorant.
Or you can read a few National Geographic or Smithsonian issues a year, honestly.
It's just not as new as you think. But I understand that navel-gazers think that any new experience for them must be, as with everything else, the same way (i.e. just as new) for everybody.
To be a bit of a contrarian, the problem with patents is not patent “trolls”, but rather the multibilion dollar tech companies with weak portfolios that make a habit of appropriating other companies’ IP. “Trolls” is just the pejorative term that they use to describe patents rights owners who assert their patents against them, costing them billions a year. Someone will invent something, get it going, and these companies will step in and quash them, like bugs, dropping tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to buy market share. And then they spend tens of millions of dollars a year lobbying Congress to further weaken the patent system (which is much less than they are paying in damages). It is so bad that the House Judiciary Committee put out a bill a couple years ago that would impose losing plaintiffs pay (the attorneys’ costs, etc). Losing defendants of course wouldn’t be affected - since they had written the one sided legislation. We are talking Google, Amazon, etc. the only reason that legislation hasn’t passed is that the pharmaceutical industry depends heavily on their patents to pay for their R&D, and lobby against any serious weakening of the patent system. What we fear is the point where they get together and manage to bifurcate the patent space between electronic and software patents on the one hand, and drugs on the other. And, so far, they haven’t been able to somewhat transparently do such. But with billions of dollars at stake, we think that it is inevitable. Which is why I am happy that I am retiring, and wouldn't really recommend patent law as a career for recent LS grads.
The Gene Doctors, a PBS special on Netflix now. Worth watching.
Credit where it's due: I have great respect for Inga when she holds forth on her specialty.
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