Holy sheep shit! The CIA has released information about a plot by Trump/Kushner in Oct 2020 to set up a secret communication channel with Russia using Russian diplomatic facilities in order to avoid any American monitoring of the pre-inauguration discussions (but clearly Russia would know all). Just one more instance of maga selling America to our long term enemies, in your eyes another “nothingburger” like every crime Trump commits, but if Biden did anything close it would be treason that requires a civil war.

Meanwhile maga representatives are saying on camera that everything they do in the House of Representatives should be about electing Trump…not protecting America, not improving the economy, not addressing immigration, not working to solve America’s issues, not anything positive, just help Donny….but nooooo…it’s not a cult. 😂

The judge actually corrected VonShitsinpants’s lies from the bench, namely the idiotic lie that the gag order means he cannot testify, a pure total lie he’s telling his moronic followers to excuse his not testifying…because there’s no way in hell he’s testifying without convicting himself of multiple crimes, he’s absolutely incapable, everybody knows it. It seems he was trying to set up an ineffectual council defense pretending his lawyer told him the gag order stops him from testifying or is even in effect inside court…the judge destroyed that weak attempt by correcting the lie on the record, Trump CAN testify, he chooses not to, just like every other case he’s been convicted of, he never testifies, it’s the smartest move he’s ever made.
His second chair lawyer ruined her legal reputation today arguing with Merchan over getting pre approval to violate the gag order again by retweeting posts that violate the orders, which is not a thing. The judge obviously turned them down, saying the order is crystal clear on its face, judges don’t give advisory opinions to defendants, and if they’re unsure if they’re about to violate the order AGAIN maybe just don’t post it, duh.

Came out today from people in the room that when sanctions were being set he tried to remove China from the countries being sanctioned because Xi was nice to him on the phone and so he promised he would.
Also in court today, Trump and Cohen on tape discussing setting up payments to his mistresses, how to hide the payments and not pay in cash, etc. 😂

PS- STILL WAITING!

It's no AI. Just a leaked hidden recording taken from his toilet at 3AM. Everybody knows how lax Mar-a-Lago's securities are.

"Duh, mama. Everybody knows that."

4 signs your house may be on fire:

1) You might find there is the smell of smoke or that you have difficulty breathing or seeing clearly.
2)You might hear crackling. Other sounds to look out for are fire alarms, and/or people yelling "Fire".
3) Feeling hot, perhaps even to the point of pain, even on cold days. If you experience this heat in your house and not elsewhere it may be another sign your house is on fire.
4) A spreading, bright incandescent light in places that you would not normally expect to be luminous .e.g furniture, floors, walls etc.

Am I being unfair?

Besides, everybody knows the real 4 are:
1)You can't agree which way the toilet roll goes on the holder (and/or refuse to use the holder)
2)Snoring
3)Cheat-guilt (Where one has a secret affair, succeeds in keeping it secret, but fails to forgive themselves)
4)Not laughing at my jokes.

@bcglorf

i don't think using @drradon 's example of anarchy a good use as a rebuttal.

now may be larken rose's vision is an extreme example,taken from the von mises institute,and where they dreamily offer a counter to police with a "non-aggression principle".while cute and adorable,humans tend to be far more vicious and violent in nature,especially when desperate.

but again,i think our respective approaches to authority will not find common ground here.

i do not seek a leader,but i am ok with a representative,though i do not seem to have any in my government at the moment.

i find it curious,amazing and not a little disturbing just how easily people will quietly,and tacitly accept a police that has become more and more draconian,violent and aggressive while SIMULTANEOUSLY decreasing the citizens rights to protect themselves,defend themselves and resist unlawful police practices.

because they simply change the law to make what WAS illegal...legal.with a stroke of a pen.

and i simply cannot respect when an american says,without any sense of justice or history,to just sit down,shut up and do what you are told.

while claiming they are a patriot,waving their american flag made in china.

the history of law enforcement in this country reveals that their main job,their main focus and duty is NOT to the poor,the dispossessed or the marginalized.

the police's job is to protect those who hold assets,who have money and wield political power.

and before you say anything,i am quite aware that there are some,and they are the majority,who do their job with honor and distinction.my argument is not about singular police officers but rather the systematic problems inherent in the system.

lets take my city for example.
i am blessed enough to live adjacent to a very wealthy and influential housing development.

average police response time?=7 minutes.

right down the street,not 10 miles down the road,is a depressed area of town.industry and manufacturing abandoned that area 20 years ago.it is stricken with prostitution,heroin addicts and abject poverty.

average police response time?=22 minutes

yet the main police station is in THAT area.

or should i bring up the history of american labor movement?
where the coal miners in west virginia decided to strike,and because the owners of the mines were politically connected.the governor sent in the state police to...and this should send chills down your spine...shoot any miners unwilling to go back to work.

and they did.
they murdered any coal miner still willing to stand up against the owners of the mine,and this included women and children.

now lets examine that for a minute.
workers for a coal mine decided to strike for better working conditions (which were horrible) and actually have a day off,besides sunday (because:god).

the owner of the mine,who was losing immense of amount of money due to zero production of coal,called the governor to have the state police,a civil institution,sent in to put those people down.to force them to either get back to work or face violence.

*now the owner brought in his own mercenary group to assist in the process of intimidation,strong arm tactics and violence.

i will add one more story that is personal,and comes from my own family,and may possibly explain my attitude towards police in general.

my father was born in 1930,in alton illinois.
now that small town had been hit particularly hard during the depression.my father spoke of not having indoor plumbing until he went into the navy,and how the floors in his childhood home were simple boards over dirt.

he grew up extremely poor,and my grandfather struggled to find steady work,and i gather from what my father told me.my grandpa made bootleg beer out of the bathtub.so he and his 6 brothers and 1 sister had to bathe in the mississippi river while grandpa tried to make money by selling illegal hooch.

my father also regaled me with stories of the chores he had as the youngest of 8 kids.it was his job every morning to head to the train tracks and pick the coal that dropped from the coal carts.(which he admitted to being lazy and stole directly from the very full coal cart itself while his brother kept an eye out for the station master).

my point is that my father grew up in desperate and poor times.

but one story always stood out,and i think it is because it has a wild west feel to it that always transfixed me,and i made him tell me the story over and over as a child.

when times are tough,people will do whatever they have to in order to survive,so my grandfather making illegal hooch was not the only illegalities being played out in that small town.neighbor upon neighbor did what they had to,and most were considered criminals in the eyes of the state.

so i guess one of my grandpa's friends was on the run from the law,and sought refuge at my grandpa's home.which he allowed,because neighbors take care of neighbors,at least they used to.

well,in a small town everybody knows everybody,and eventually three police officers showed up at my grandpa's house,and demanded that he turn over (i forgot the guys name).

and i remember the pride on my fathers face whenever he retold this story....

my grandfather stood tall on the top of his stairs facing his front door,holding his gun he was given during WW1 and told the police officers (which he knew.small town remember?),that if they took one step into his home..he would blow their heads off.

now this is a story retold from a childs perspective many years later.i am sure my fathers memory was a tad....biased..but i would bet the meaty parts were accurate.

now my question is this:
how would that exact same scenario play out in todays climate?

well,we would see on the 6 o'clock news how a family was tragically shot to death for harboring a criminal and that the police had done EVERYTHING in their power to avoid this kind of violence.

i know this is long,and i hope i didn't lose you along the way,but i think we should not dismiss the very real slow decent into a society that silently obeys,quietly accepts more and more authoritarian powers all in the name of "safety",and that any form of resistance is to be viewed as "criminal" and "troublesome".

so while i agree that "when should we shoot a cop" should be in the realm of:let us try to never do that.

i also cannot agree to placing cops on a hero platform as if their job is somehow sacrosanct and beyond reproach.they are human beings,of limited intellect,whose main job it is to protect those who own property,have wealth and wield political power.

and with the current disparity and blatant inequality their job has been more and more focused on keeping those 30% undesirables down.

the poor,the destitute,the marginalized,the addict and the junkie and the petty criminals.

those are a threat to the "better" citizens.they are a blight on a community that should be cleansed from the tender eyes of those who are deemed more "worthy".

rich folk may wring their hands,and lament the plight of the poor and wretched,but for GOD's sakes! they don't want to actually SEE them!

so a police officer can do all the mental gymnastics they want in order to justify their place in society,but at the end of the day,they serve the elites.

and they always have.

I highly doubt your car can be impounded for driving with an expired registration , even in PA. That is very nearly the least significant traffic violation there is. Of course, the police lie about that sort of thing all the time, which is probably the case here.

Even though people hate them, this is actually one of the reasons I'm all for automated traffic policing devices such as speed cams, stoplight cams and even more advanced devices as technology allows (with proper care for privacy in data collection). In the US, for instance, everybody knows you can generally drive up to 9 miles an hour over the speed limit without worry. This should not be the case. The police let this happen because if everybody is always technically speeding because that's just what's done, they can justifiably pull over and hassle whoever whenever they want to (read: minorities).

Men walkin' 'long the railroad tracks
Goin' someplace there's no goin' back
Highway patrol choppers comin' up over the ridge

Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin' 'round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin' in their cars in the Southwest
No home no job no peace no rest

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
Waitin' for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
Got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathin' in the city aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight
Where it's headed everybody knows
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Waitin' on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me."

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

Yes @Asmo, the situation is shitty and everybody knows it. There is no reason to act as if there isn't a racial bias in US police forces. Not all cops are racist, of course, but when you talk about the police as an organisation, you have to go by everyones behaviour.
It is a sad fact, being white in the US means being safer. Especially from the police.
Another thing, you're not a patriot if you provoke the cops to shoot you for a YouTube video. You simply give your life to prove a point everybody already knows to be true. You're even less a martyr than a suicide bomber. And those guys are idiots.

You tell me how this is racist...

Actual racist: "Black people can't be leaders."
Obama overhears it and responds: "Yeah, f'ing Obama!"

I'm pretty sure that despite Obama "playing around with" language that could be construed as racist, what he said would not be considered racist by pretty much anyone. It would be pretty damn funny actually because clearly Obama wouldn't sincerely say that about himself, nor black people, and it also pokes fun at that racist statement by pointing out there's a black person who is President of the United States, so clearly black people can be leaders.

Change Obama to David Duke, and yeah, it's now probably racist, and it's not funny at all.

Or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gHz-l40FNQ

Louis CK is saying that in response to Patrice O'Neal's factual account for the origin of a racial slur against Jewish people. Louis CK was very good friends with the late O'Neal, and he's not racist. O'Neal knew that. If you listen to the video, as soon as Louis CK starts his bit before anything that's faux-racist comes out, everyone is immediately laughing, including O'Neal, because they know he's about to insincerely say something horrifically racist to the face of a black person that had he been sincere, it would have been absolutely horrifying, but that's the point - he's absolutely not sincere. That's why it's absolutely hilarious and not racist because everybody knows Louis CK doesn't actually mean that at all.

Intent and context means a lot. When you take that context away, (other things said in that conversation, who is saying it, your knowledge about what they believe, previous conversations that might be references, etc.), the words can appear to be extremely racist, even when they're not.

How do I react when someone jokes about something that involves race? It completely depends on the context, and what I interpret the intent of it is. If I'm joking around generally with my friends like the above, and they say something like, "You know why black people smell? So blind people can hate them, too." We're in a situation we're joking, we already have had actual sincere conversations about race, I know he isn't racist, I know he actually believes that's 100% not true. How do I react? If I found the joke funny, I'd laugh because I'm taking it to mean he's making fun of what some racists believe because I know for a fact he doesn't believe that.

My father-in-law is a different story, because I know the guy, I know he's like a 5-6 on the racist scale, so I don't know if he actually believes black people generally stink or not, and generally inclined to believe he actually believes most or all black people smell. At the very least, I'm uneasy. I'm certainly not going to laugh at it. I'd probably show some kind of disapproval at the least. Completely different context because now, and here's the key, that may have been intended as an actual racist statement about black people. Once you go there, that's not funny.

So, if you consider me slightly racist because I make ironic racist statements as jokes, which I mean as mocking towards racists themselves, rock on. But you better be consistent in your outrage when someone exaggerates they're gonna kill someone when they get frustrated over something insignificant as an example. After all, that's playing around with words that are murderous and violent, so they must be a psychopath or homicidal!

Please note, that was sarcasm.

I'd wager the amount of harm that comes from religion outweighs the amount of harm prevented in such rare people who are only restrained by religion. Almost everybody knows the difference between right and wrong and much prefers to do right for its own sake.

Well, just to be clear... ISIS and any other al-qaeda groups anywhere in that region are still real "threats", just not directly or imminently to us (probably). And furthermore I wouldn't go judging the reality of these claims based on a 15-minute compilation of quotes put together by Cenk, many of which he subtly misinterprets (in fairness I skipped a handful because of that).

Basically, we can say for sure that Iraq had no WMDs, but there has been no retrospective on this because it is still a current event. Further, I would say that in this case everybody knows we're basically just bombing ISIS regardless of what legal excuse we use. I think Bush and Cheney just wanted to give the region an enema and still lie to us about it even today. There has been plenty of analysis on that in the last dozen years, none of which I'm an expert on.

One danger I see of political cynicism is to dismiss both sides as if their arguments are equally worthless. Just like with anything, ACTUALLY EVALUATE BOTH SIDES! For example: http://videosift.com/video/Last-Week-Tonight-with-John-Oliver-Climate-Change-Debate

Exactly. Everybody knows that their dwindling populations.... er, nope, that's not it. Um, yeah, deer are known to avoid all urban areas and contact with humans... er, nope, that's not it either. They are very bitey. Yep, that must be why. Bitey. And then, carnivorous deer. Good God man, stop with the Doritos!!!

(Really - this earns a "moron"? Moron.)

Everybody knows original un-fake-bullshit-milliondollar$$$-for-lulz Zombies
DOESN'T run.

And an artsy fartsy movie.. videosift really kills itself not letting people up/downvote unless you submit movies (which none views/vote anyway)