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Failed Imagineer
Sep 22, 2018

Meatball posted:

In this analogy, though, frog Joe Biden is only temporarily stunned by the poison, and always swims back to the shore. He's given McConnell several rides at this point.

In this analogy (and also in real life) Joe Biden Greenfrog has incipient dementia, retains no memories of previous betrayals, and spends his days in a reverie of when his Dad used to drive the Corvette down to the ice -cream parlour on a summers day

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

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Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Denzel is literally receiving the nation's highest civilian honor and still hasn't gotten a Best Picture Oscar. For shame, Hollywood.

He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."?

The other 15 recipients are the standard major civil rights icons, Olympic athletes, politicians who served a very long time, labor leaders, and - for some reason - a posthumous award to Steve Jobs.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-award-medal-freedom-biles-mccain-15/story?id=86321997&cid=social_twitter_abcn

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 7, 2022

Rigel
Nov 11, 2016

Oxyclean posted:

If anything, wouldn't making FTM play in women's sports be worse or just as bad?

Most of the hormone therapies (especially testosterone) for FTM are already very, very banned by doping rules, for obvious reasons. I guess this hasn't come up yet because they were not going to be competitive anyway at the elite levels against cis men. The only issue has been MTF beating cis women at the elite level.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Rigel fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jul 7, 2022

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."?

Neil Armstrong was the first in a line, even though Buzz was also right there.

Though in Buzz's defense, he did punch that moon landing hoaxer, so in the end it's a wash :unsmith:

Fritz the Horse
Dec 26, 2019

... of course!

Meatball posted:

In this analogy, though, frog Joe Biden is only temporarily stunned by the poison, and always swims back to the shore. He's given McConnell several rides at this point.


Failed Imagineer posted:

In this analogy (and also in real life) Joe Biden Greenfrog has incipient dementia, retains no memories of previous betrayals, and spends his days in a reverie of when his Dad used to drive the Corvette down to the ice -cream parlour on a summers day

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

idk where this extended analogy slapfight is going but let's end it, thanks

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
Brittney Griner pled guilty because Russia said it would be willing to negotiate her release if she did.

She is facing 10 years in a penal colony for bringing an empty vape cartridge with "traces of hash oil" into the country.

Russia has not made clear what they want negotiated, but they have publicly stated that they need to have communications "outside of the public eye" with the U.S. to come to an understanding.

It is assumed that part of the request will be to free a Russian arms dealer - Viktor Bout - who was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and extradited to the U.S. If you don't know who Viktor Bout is, his biography is pretty wild. The Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War" is based on him.

quote:

Viktor Bout is a Russian arms dealer. An entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator, he reportedly used his multiple air transport companies to smuggle weapons since the collapse of communism from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout was nicknamed the Merchant of Death and Sanctions Buster for his reported wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes.

quote:

His training allowed Bout to become a polyglot and master six languages: Russian, Portuguese, English, French, Arabic and Persian. He is reported to be fluent in Esperanto, which he learned at age 12 in the early 1980s as a member of the Dushanbe Esperanto club.

quote:

On 2 November 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment. Since June 2012, Bout has been held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1545051632240472065

quote:

The United States government has classified Brittney Griner as “wrongfully detained” and is working to secure her release regardless of the outcome of the trial. While the Kremlin claims it has no involvement in Ms. Griner’s case, Russian state media reports have indicated that Moscow may press the United States to free a Russian in American custody — like the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout — in exchange for her freedom.

Mr. Ryabkov said that until the conclusion of Ms. Griner’s case, “there are no formal procedural grounds” to discuss further steps. He hinted, however, that Moscow was interested in negotiating over her fate, claiming that she would be helped by “a serious reading by the American side of the signals that they received from Russia, from Moscow, through specialized channels.”

He did not specify what those signals were, but insisted that talks on Ms. Griner’s fate should take place out of the public eye, according to Russian news reports.

Rigel
Nov 11, 2016

Looks like that Russian arms dealer was sentenced to 25 years and I believe he's been in prison in the US for roughly half that.

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Brittney Griner pled guilty because Russia said it would be willing to negotiate her release if she did.

She is facing 10 years in a penal colony for bringing an empty vape cartridge with "traces of hash oil" into the country.

Russia has not made clear what they want negotiated, but they have publicly stated that they need to have communications "outside of the public eye" with the U.S. to come to an understanding.

It is assumed that part of the request will be to free a Russian arms dealer - Viktor Bout - who was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and extradited to the U.S. If you don't know who Viktor Bout is, his biography is pretty wild. The Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War" is based on him.





https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1545051632240472065

I can’t find in this article about the vape cartridge being empty. Is there another article you can link?

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003
SOME REALLY TEDIOUS DUMB SHIT THAT SUCKS ASS TO READ ->>
russian official statements on it previously have been that it was 'traces of residue'

yronic heroism
Oct 31, 2008

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Denzel is literally receiving the nation's highest civilian honor and still hasn't gotten a Best Picture Oscar. For shame, Hollywood.

He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."?

The other 15 recipients are the standard major civil rights icons, Olympic athletes, politicians who served a very long time, labor leaders, and - for some reason - a posthumous award to Steve Jobs.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-award-medal-freedom-biles-mccain-15/story?id=86321997&cid=social_twitter_abcn

Denzel won Best Actor for Training Day, I think.

haveblue
Aug 15, 2005



Toilet Rascal
I think the iPhone and more generally the late-00s smartphone revolution counts as a major contribution to the culture of the United States (discounting picayune arguments over how much Jobs was personally responsible for its design and engineering)

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

yronic heroism posted:

Denzel won Best Actor for Training Day, I think.

Yeah, but none of his movies have gotten the Best Picture.

mawarannahr posted:

I can’t find in this article about the vape cartridge being empty. Is there another article you can link?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/world/europe/brittney-griner-trial-photos-russia.html

quote:

She was detained as she passed through security after officials said they had found vape cartridges with traces of hashish oil in her luggage. If convicted, she faces a sentence of up to 10 years at a penal colony.

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Herstory Begins Now posted:

russian official statements on it previously have been that it was 'traces of residue'

Here’s something from TASS with weights

https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15098621?l posted:

"Будучи в достаточной степени осведомленной, что перемещение наркотических средств не разрешено на ЕврАзЭс, не позднее 17 февраля 2022 года в неустановленном месте при неустановленных обстоятельствах у неустановленного лица приобрела для личного употребления два картриджа, в которых было 0,252 грамма и 0,45 грамма гашишного масла, а всего - 0, 702 грамма", - сказал прокурор. После Грайнер решила ввезти наркотик на территорию России, положив запрещенные вещества в рюкзак и чемодан, полагает обвинение.


iphone translation posted:

"Being sufficiently aware that the movement of narcotic drugs is not allowed on EurAsEC, no later than February 17, 2022 in an unspecified place under unspecified circumstances, she purchased two cartridges for personal use, which contained 0.252 grams and 0.45 grams of hashish oil, and a total of 0.702 grams," the prosecutor said. After that, Griner decided to import the drug into the territory of Russia, putting prohibited substances in a backpack and suitcase, the prosecution believes.

Later, Griner arrived on the flight New York - Moscow at Sheremetyevo Airport. On the same day, during the inspection of hand luggage, she found two cartridges with hashish oil.

According to the expert's conclusion, substances are cannabis oil, which are subject to control in Russia and classified as narcotic drugs.

These are some unusual weights that I don’t think you can buy at most stores that sell vape cartridges. Could someone with better understanding say if this is more likely the measured weight of residue than the net weight at purchase? Typically you see .5 and 1 g net weight. If that was the recorded net weight remaining, I wouldn’t call them empty.

Darko
Dec 23, 2004

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Denzel is literally receiving the nation's highest civilian honor and still hasn't gotten a Best Picture Oscar. For shame, Hollywood.

He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."?

The other 15 recipients are the standard major civil rights icons, Olympic athletes, politicians who served a very long time, labor leaders, and - for some reason - a posthumous award to Steve Jobs.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-award-medal-freedom-biles-mccain-15/story?id=86321997&cid=social_twitter_abcn

I can't think of anything Denzel produced which should have won Best Picture. He has two acting awards for Glory and Training Day, though. I have no idea what you're talking about here.

Sub Par
Jul 18, 2001


Dinosaur Gum

mawarannahr posted:

Here’s something from TASS with weights



These are some unusual weights that I don’t think you can buy at most stores that sell vape cartridges. Could someone with better understanding say if this is more likely the measured weight of residue than the net weight at purchase? Typically you see .5 and 1 g net weight. If that was the recorded net weight remaining, I wouldn’t call them empty.

Could have been gram or half gram carts that were partially used.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

Darko posted:

I can't think of anything Denzel produced which should have won Best Picture. He has two acting awards for Glory and Training Day, though. I have no idea what you're talking about here.

It was just an old joke that the Oscars were snubbing Denzel movies for a while. None of his movies were nominated for Best Picture until 2017 and in the 90's there were jokes about Denzel's movies getting snubbed.

They were eventually replaced by the complaint about Leonardo DiCaprio being snubbed every year until he finally won one.

Aztec Galactus
Sep 12, 2002

Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it

selec
Sep 6, 2003

Dubar posted:

Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it

Yeah, it’d be difficult to impossible to convince Biden that an American being treated this way in American courts was anything to be concerned about.

Now, if your his son, he’ll just have his people wire you $20k on the pinky promise it’s not for more drugs. But that’s not how it works in his eyes for the rest of us.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Dubar posted:

Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it

Worth noting that WNBA members travel to play overseas precisely because they make significantly less than NBA players, so they are forced to.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.
At a glance, I'd also assume the fact that Griner is an openly-married lesbian probably factored into her being targeted by the notoriously discriminatory Russian state.

Willa Rogers
Mar 11, 2005

Kaal posted:

At a glance, I'd also assume the fact that Griner is an openly-married lesbian probably factored into her being targeted by the notoriously discriminatory Russian state.

I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account.

Like, what are the optics of a president touting diversity & letting a Black lesbian rot in a Russian prison?

As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison:

quote:

A colonial territory used (mainly) for the detention and forced labor of deportees, typically where free labor is desperately scarce.

a penal institution where prisoners are exiled (often located on an island from which escape is difficult or impossible)

Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Willa Rogers posted:

I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account.

Like, what are the optics of a president touting diversity & letting a Black lesbian rot in a Russian prison?

As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison:

Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?

As bad as American prisons are I don’t think it’s an idiosyncratic or underhanded way of reporting or translating it. I’m pretty sure I’ve read about penal colonies being a thing in Russia since I first started reading anything about Russia as a child. “Colony” is in the name of the designation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_labor_colony posted:

A corrective colony (Russian: исправительная колония (ИК), romanized: ispravitelnaya koloniya) is the most common type of prison in Russia and some post-Soviet states. Such colonies combine penal detention with compulsory work.[1][2] The system of labor colonies originated in 1929[3][4] alongside the Gulag labor camps, and after 1953 the corrective penal colonies in the Soviet Union developed as a post-Stalin replacement of the Gulag labor-camp system.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.

Willa Rogers posted:

As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison:

Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?

You should check out this excellent book, which depicts life in one of the labor camps / penal colonies. The book was banned for a very long time throughout Russia, only to become required reading when the author returned to Russia and agreed to publicly support Putin as a nationalist and reformer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich

hekaton
Jan 5, 2022

sure wish i could understand what the hell was going on with my life
so i could be properly upset when things happen

Kaal posted:

You should check out this excellent book, which depicts life in one of the labor camps / penal colonies. The book was banned for a very long time throughout Russia, only to become required reading when the author returned to Russia and agreed to publicly support Putin as a nationalist and reformer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich

Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

hekaton posted:

Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States.

I guess we'd have to emphasize that modern psychiatric care has actually probably gotten worse outside of private practice.

Russia's jail system is pretty bad. Their penal system is even worse.

CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jul 7, 2022

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

Willa Rogers posted:

I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account.

Like, what are the optics of a president touting diversity & letting a Black lesbian rot in a Russian prison?

As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison:

Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?

You can be sentenced to a penal colony or prison in Russia.

Normal prison is like prison everywhere else: individual cells, structured time outside of cells, and generally run directly by the state government.

Penal colonies are bunk/military style housing, generally run by an appointed local official and not the state/national government, don't have a fixed daily schedule, don't have guaranteed heating or water because they are constructed in remote locations outside of where you were arrested for the crime, and are generally structured around a specific form of labor (i.e. everyone there mines a specific mine).

quote:

Instead of cells in prisons the inmates are housed in barracks in penal colonies. In total, there are 869 such colonies of various regimes scattered across Russia, eight prisons and 315 remand centres. The geographical location of penal colonies is linked to the concept of economic development adopted back in Soviet times, when prisoners were used as forced labour, such as during the construction of large-scale investments carried out by the Soviet state including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM), as well as in forestry in harsh weather conditions – in Karelia, for instance. Even today, the largest number of penal colonies is located in regions that are rich in natural resources (mainly forests), such as Krasnoyarsk Krai and Perm Krai, or in highly industrialised ones, such as Sverdlovsk Oblast, Kemerovo Oblast and Primorsky Krai.

The Republic of Mordovia is a special case, because it hosts a large number of penal colonies within a relatively small territory. There are regions in the Republic of Mordovia, the Komi Republic and Chuvashia, where work performed by prisoners and individuals employed by the FSIN accounts for a major portion of the local labour market. In these regions, the role of FSIN is particularly significant. Due to the geographical location of the penal colonies, prisoners serve their sentences far from their home towns. Those penal colonies that are located in remote areas far from densely populated regions usually have harsher conditions: problems with running water and heating are common. Due to their remote location and inaccessibility, these colonies are less frequently inspected by external bodies and the control mechanisms are weak.

Inmates in penal colonies also aren't told where they are going and aren't allowed visitors. Normal prisons are assigned to a specific address that is public and have certain hours allowable for visitors.

quote:

Most often, prisoner transport is organised in special windowless railroad carriages known as Stolypin cars, in which prisoners in groups of ten are transported in compartments measuring 3.4 m2. Moreover, neither the convicts nor their families know the train’s destination.

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 7, 2022

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.

hekaton posted:

Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States.

Depends on if modern Russian prisons have changed since Soviet times (they haven't). That being said, there's plenty of modern exposés of what Griner is looking forward to.

https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/785yny/brutal-and-often-too-brief-photos-of-life-in-a-female-penal-colony

Willa Rogers
Mar 11, 2005

I looked up some stats & all-over deaths-per-thousands for prisoners in Russia are almost twice that of the U.S.:

quote:

Some 600,000 people are held in nearly 1,000 prisons and detention centers across Russia, with 4,000 deaths from various causes recorded each year, "one of the highest rates in the Council of Europe countries," panel chairman Jens Modvig said during the review.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/08/10/russia-must-rein-in-torture-prosecute-prison-guards-un-a62498

That's 666 per 100k.

quote:

In 2018, [U.S.] state prisons reported 4,135 deaths (not including the 25 people executed in state prisons); this is the highest number on record since BJS began collecting mortality data in 2001. Between 2016 and 2018, the prison mortality rate jumped from 303 to a record 344 per 100,000 people, a shameful superlative. It may seem like a foregone conclusion that more people, serving decades or lifetimes, will die in prison. But for at least 935 people, a sentence for a nonviolent property, drug, or public order offense became a death sentence in 2018.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/06/08/prison_mortality/

Doesn't include federal prisons or d.p. deaths, and both places were reported during the pre-covid times.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Willa Rogers posted:

As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison:

Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?

The difference is that the prisons are on a distant, remote, lightly-populated frontier, where the prisoners are typically used as a labor force to develop the area, building up the infrastructure necessary to make the region hospitable for free settlers and industry. It also made for a convenient way to deter escape, since the prisons were often so isolated that it would be extremely difficult for fugitives to hide out on their own or return to a major settlement.

The British and French empires primarily used penal transportation to expand their overseas colonies, but the Russian Empire made heavy use of penal labor for the colonization of Siberia. While later governments reformed the prison system in various ways, several aspects of the penal colony system - including the name - were inherited in some form to this day.

It does sound scary and foreign to American sensibilities, but that's mostly because for various reasons, the US never really had any interest in to shipping prisoners off to a distant frontier. Our demands for forced labor and our systems for providing that involuntary labor were different enough that we never really did anything quite like the penal colonies used by the British, French, and Russian empires. After all, there was little need for temporary prison labor when straight-up slavery was thriving.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Main Paineframe posted:

It does sound scary and foreign to American sensibilities, but that's mostly because for various reasons, the US never really had any interest in to shipping prisoners off to a distant frontier. Our demands for forced labor and our systems for providing that involuntary labor were different enough that we never really did anything quite like the penal colonies used by the British, French, and Russian empires. After all, there was little need for temporary prison labor when straight-up slavery was thriving.

I mean, slavery is straight up thriving, in prisons.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
Everyone on Herschel Walker's campaign thinks he is a pathological liar and mentally unstable, but they are hanging on for the paycheck and in the vain hope that they can steer him in the right direction.

Some of them think the campaign stress is going to push him over the edge, that he might actually not be 100% there, and dozens of members of his campaign staff are leaking it to reporters.

https://twitter.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1545055876456669186
https://twitter.com/sambrodey/status/1545061260449832961

quote:

Herschel Walker Lied About His Secret Kids to His Own Campaign

When Herschel Walker’s campaign aides approached him this winter to discuss whispers that Walker had a secret child, the Georgia GOP’s Senate candidate told his campaign the rumors were false.

Walker’s aides already knew he was lying.

They had expected him to lie, and had obtained documents in advance of that conversation verifying that Walker did indeed have another child, The Daily Beast has learned. They handed the documents to him, and after some more back and forth, Walker finally admitted it was true. His aides asked if there were any other children they needed to know about. Walker insisted this was it.

When the Daily Beast learned about the existence of that 10-year-old child in June and went to the campaign for comment, campaign manager Scott Paradise prepared a statement. But first, he went to Walker with a question: Be honest—are there any other kids?

No, Walker said.

Paradise then put out a statement insisting that Walker—who at that point had only publicly acknowledged one child, his adult son, Christian—was “proud of his children.”

“To suggest that Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child because he hasn’t used him in his political campaign is offensive and absurd,” Paradise said in a statement.

The very next day, The Daily Beast reached out again, asking about yet another undisclosed child, a 13-year-old. The campaign approached Walker and asked again. This time, he acknowledged the teen was his.

The campaign verified that the 13-year-old was Walker’s son, and that he had yet another child—a daughter from his college days about 40 years ago.

This account of Walker lying to his own campaign about his children comes from a closely connected adviser and was verified by communications that the source turned over to The Daily Beast. We are not quoting from the messages out of concern that they could potentially expose the source’s identity.

The communications reveal a campaign and a candidate in chaos.

Emails and texts show advisers discussing how they don’t trust Walker—both to tell the truth to them and to handle campaign events properly—and harboring concerns that he isn’t mentally fit for the job.

He spouts falsehoods “like he’s breathing,” this adviser said—so much so that his own campaign stopped believing him long ago.

“He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” the person said, adding that aides have “zero” trust in the candidate. Three people interviewed for this article independently called him a “pathological liar.”


The Walker campaign declined comment.

Walker has, in fact, racked up a staggering record of falsehoods. He has claimed he was a trained FBI agent and worked for law enforcement, neither of which is true. He has told a preposterous series of lies about his academic record—forcing his campaign to delete claims from his official bio. He has grossly overstated his business success. He has falsely taken credit for founding a veterans support program. And, most recently, he claimed that former President Donald Trump had never said the 2020 election was stolen.

The campaign source painted a picture of an operation that for months has been at the mercy of a volatile, deceitful candidate.

“A campaign’s worst nightmare,” the source said. “It’s like a shitshow on a train in the middle of a wreck.”


But if the campaign is headed for a disaster, the Republican Party appears to be in the dark about just how bad it is.

In conversations with GOP higher-ups, senior Walker campaign aides have held back on their ongoing struggles with containing, directing, and cleaning up after Walker—even if, internally, they believe he’s a serious liability, according to this source who is familiar with those conversations.

The revelations come at a critical time. The national party—with the all-important blessing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)—has lined up behind Walker after his easy primary win last month. The GOP is now investing in major political and fundraising operations across The Peach State.

Many establishment Republicans were lukewarm on Walker from the jump. When the first reports broke last summer detailing Walker’s checkered personal history, influential GOP figures balked. Some hoped that “somebody else” would take over the closely watched race, which will likely determine which party controls Congress heading into the 2024 presidential election.

“Some of it’s pretty bad, obviously: physical abuse and pulling a gun on his wife, if that’s true,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Politico last July, adding, “I’d prefer to have somebody else.”


(Walker has denied these claims.)

But the skeptics couldn’t stave off the MAGA-fueled boost Walker got as Trump’s handpicked candidate. The two men have been friends since the 1980s, when Trump showcased the phenom running back as a main attraction in his NFL knock-off, the USFL. And with Trump’s early endorsement last September, the popular athlete was quickly out of reach, quickly going dollar-for-dollar against Democratic incumbent opponent Sen. Raphael Warnock, the top fundraiser in Congress. By April, Cornyn had forked over his personal endorsement.

The party now appears all-in. When The Daily Beast recently asked Scott, the NRSC chair, whether he felt his organization had failed to vet Walker, Scott called him a “good candidate” and predicted a win.

But while NRSC contacts have been checking in with Walker advisers over the last several months, the campaign source said, staffers haven’t been forthright about the internal turmoil.

Donors are jumping ship, the campaign source said, pointing to Home Depot founder and GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus, who has already contributed more than a million dollars to a pro-Walker super PAC. According to the source, Marcus recently told a top Republican fundraiser that he doesn’t feel comfortable going through with another planned seven-figure gift in light of the revelations about the children.

The Daily Beast reached out to Marcus for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

While those revelations may have taken backers by surprise, they weren’t news to the campaign.

Aides have secretly derided Walker for months, according to this person and internal communications seen by The Daily Beast. They have ridiculed his intelligence. They fear his mood swings and instability. And staffers worry he could embarrass himself at any moment, setting the campaign back yet again and burning energy on damage control.

The overriding concern is that the stress and pressures of campaigning—criticism and backlash in particular—might make him “just not mentally stable,” the source said.

But this person noted that the months of bombshell reports about Walker’s trumped-up business record, erratic personal life, and the legions of lies and ludicrous exaggerations have so far clouded the mental health issue in the media.

The strategy now is to keep Walker off television and on script, this person said. “Except he doesn’t listen,” the campaign source said. “He doesn’t take direction, because he comes from a place where he says, ‘I have built myself up in the media for years.’”

In a meandering 40-minute phone interview with The Daily Beast the evening before The Daily Beast reported on his second and third previously undisclosed children, Walker tried to duck the issue more than a dozen times, preferring instead to grill this reporter on topics ranging from gas prices and climate change to the “definition of a woman” and abortion.

Eventually, Walker acknowledged both sons in a statement, in which he stated plainly, “I have four children. Three sons and a daughter.”

(Two people with direct knowledge of the events told The Daily Beast that Walker took a DNA test for the daughter, whom he fathered in college but only met in the mid-2000s.)

Walker’s instinct to lie has shredded the campaign’s trust in its own candidate, according to the adviser and communications reviewed by The Daily Beast. Over the following weeks, the source said, allegations of more children poured in. Most of them were readily dismissed—but one stood out. Because senior staff no longer trust Walker’s denials, the campaign has quietly investigated the anonymous allegation behind the candidate’s back, The Daily Beast has learned.

While staffers often exercise tight control over a candidate’s schedule, in Walker’s case, the reasons behind those efforts appear unique. With Walker, the campaign source said, any public interaction carries enormous risk, which aides try to mitigate with curated public appearances and strict media gatekeeping.

“He screws up on Fox News where people agree with him, so the idea of him taking an adverse interview or interacting with people who don’t agree with him is a non-starter,” the adviser said, likening the prospect to sending him “into the lion’s den.”

Walker’s top staffers bring years of experience to the table, but they struggle to keep him on message and don’t trust Walker to speak coherently, according to communications obtained by The Daily Beast. Aides establish guardrails, but Walker blunders over them.

Currently, Team Herschel is reckoning with three potential debates against Walker’s incumbent opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), a number they hope to whittle down to one, the source said—and only if it is on their terms.

The campaign hired a renowned debate coach, who prepped former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—two men who had their own rhetorical hurdles to clear.


Walker recently called on Reverend Warnock to “name the place and the time” for the debates, and has been champing at the bit since last fall.

Still, several sources in Georgia said that, among the GOP rank and file, Walker’s controversies don’t seem to be making a dent.

Jason Shepherd, a longtime party leader in the state, told The Daily Beast that Republicans aren’t talking about Walker’s secret children, and if they do, it’s to blame the media for “highlighting what many are seeing as a personal issue.”

But when it comes to Walker’s opponent, who himself is involved in a custody dispute, Republicans—including the national party—haven’t been afraid to highlight that issue, accusing the pastor of “ignoring the financial needs of his own children,” despite the fact that Warnock is not accused of evading child support.

(Walker, who boasts publicly about being a good father, has long railed against absentee dads, specifically in the Black community.)

The Walker campaign has recently trained much of its resources on countering the reports of the secret children. The team released its first general election ad on Tuesday, framing Walker as a “uniter,” and aides have been angling for public appearances with his closest family members: his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker; his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman; and his 22-year-old son, Christian Walker—a brash right-winger who profits off of swag promoting his father’s candidacy.

While Julie Walker is a continual presence on the campaign trail, both Grossman and Christian Walker have resisted the campaign’s entreaties in the wake of The Daily Beast reports.

It’s still unclear when Grossman and Christian Walker first knew about the two other sons. Previously, Christian, an aspiring MAGA world influencer who has made campaign appearances with his father, frequently targeted absentee dads in social media rants. The focus of those attacks, however, appeared to shift after the Daily Beast reported his half-brothers.

With just four months until Election Day, it’s unclear whether the Walker campaign and its candidate can right the ship—but it’s not out of the question.

Walker, who grew up poor and shaped himself into one of the most stunning all-around athletes of his era, achieved much of that success through sheer determination. (“Most people who know Herschel believe he willed himself into his current condition,” reads a 1981 New York Times profile.)

So far, Walker and the campaign appear to have run a strong race since he got out of the blocks last August—quickly raising tens of millions of dollars, and coasting through the primary with about two-thirds of the vote.

And while the general election contest against Warnock shows no signs of being anything less than brutal, the campaign, like Walker, is projecting an air of confidence.

“Do we have problems? Yes! Can we solve them? Yes!,” Walker says at the end of his new campaign ad. “Georgia is my family. The United States is my family. So I’m going to fight and take care of them.”

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jul 7, 2022

Fritz the Horse
Dec 26, 2019

... of course!

Rigel posted:

Most of the hormone therapies (especially testosterone) for FTM are already very, very banned by doping rules, for obvious reasons. I guess this hasn't come up yet because they were not going to be competitive anyway at the elite levels against cis men. The only issue has been MTF beating cis women at the elite level.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

As a general comment on trans athletes and other trans issues, these are sensitive and complex issues and it is not the responsibility of trans posters to educate you on them. Before you comment on trans issues in D&D, please do some homework and/or maybe lurk the LGBTQIA+ thread. The purpose of D&D is to inform and educate, so posts like the quoted above are walking a thin line between regurgitating unexamined TERFy talking points and serving as an opportunity to discuss and learn.

Don't make assumptions, please come informed or lurk/read up before you wade into discussion of trans issues.

Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 7, 2022

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
They actually got Sinema to agree to a new revenue raiser.

One of the provisions in the Trump tax bill allowed people with passthrough income to get a 20% reduction on their income taxes for that income. Passthrough income is essentially when you own or co-own the business or entity that pays your salary and you generate income that you take personally, but not as salary. This would eliminate that provision and is effectively a 3.8% increase in taxes on passthrough income for people above $400k.

It is part of the new planned reconciliation package and will raise $200 billion, but all of it is going into the Medicare trust. So, that doesn't mean $200 billion in additional new spending for the bill.

It would keep Medicare fully solvent through 2031.

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1545099324748595202

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
The passthrough element became an instant area of focus for IRS after the TCJA went through, because of course it incentivizes a lot of sleazy fact-specific behavior to minimize costs with passthrough entities. If it's going away, that'll be some degree of enforcement relief (in several years when it's no longer part of the audit system).

FizFashizzle
Mar 30, 2005







Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Everyone on Herschel Walker's campaign thinks he is a pathological liar and mentally unstable, but they are hanging on for the paycheck and in the vain hope that they can steer him in the right direction.

Some of them think the campaign stress is going to push him over the edge, that he might actually not be 100% there, and dozens of members of his campaign staff are leaking it to reporters.

https://twitter.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1545055876456669186
https://twitter.com/sambrodey/status/1545061260449832961

It’s very possible Walker is not lying to the best of his knowledge.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.
A mentally unstable pathological liar? Not only does he have a good shot at a Senate seat he should try for President!

VideoGameVet
May 14, 2005

It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion. It is by the juice of Java that pedaling acquires speed, the teeth acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my bike in motion.

Darko posted:

I'd need to see them because conservatives use California and Chicago as stats because of their pure numbers. Currently, though, per capita, California has 25 percent fewer mass shootings than the average, similar to how Chicago starts dipping to teens and twenties when per capita comes into play.

https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2019/01000/Changes_in_US_mass_shooting_deaths_associated_with.2.aspx

METHODS

Mass shooting data for 1981 to 2017 were obtained from three well-documented, referenced, and open-source sets of data, based on media reports. We calculated the yearly rates of mass shooting fatalities as a proportion of total firearm homicide deaths and per US population. We compared the 1994 to 2004 federal ban period to non-ban periods, using simple linear regression models for rates and a Poison model for counts with a year variable to control for trend. The relative effects of the ban period were estimated with odds ratios.

RESULTS

Assault rifles accounted for 430 or 85.8% of the total 501 mass-shooting fatalities reported (95% confidence interval, 82.8–88.9) in 44 mass-shooting incidents. Mass shootings in the United States accounted for an increasing proportion of all firearm-related homicides (coefficient for year, 0.7; p = 0.0003), with increment in year alone capturing over a third of the overall variance in the data (adjusted R2 = 0.3). In a linear regression model controlling for yearly trend, the federal ban period was associated with a statistically significant 9 fewer mass shooting related deaths per 10,000 firearm homicides (p = 0.03). Mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the federal ban period (relative rate, 0.30; 95% confidence interval, 0.22–0.39).

CONCLUSION

Mass-shooting related homicides in the United States were reduced during the years of the federal assault weapons ban of 1994 to 2004.

I'm sure the ammosexuals will gunsplain this somehow, but there you go.

Scuffy_1989
Jul 3, 2022

Crime in general dropped during the 90s as it was a period of economic growth and stability. You did see a huge drop in the murder rate after the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill.

And while assault rifles are an efficient tool, the prior to 2009 Aurora theater shootings most of the mass shootings were performed with pistols. The media coverage of that weirdo spawned a good deal of what followed.

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



Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

Scuffy_1989 posted:

Crime in general dropped during the 90s as it was a period of economic growth and stability. You did see a huge drop in the murder rate after the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill.

And while assault rifles are an efficient tool, the prior to 2009 Aurora theater shootings most of the mass shootings were performed with pistols. The media coverage of that weirdo spawned a good deal of what followed.

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





There's a very strong correlation between the assault weapons ban and the murder reduction - the murder rate even shot back up as soon as it expired - but, there isn't a conclusive proven causation.

The argument that crime in general dropped because it was a period of economic growth and stability seemed like a tried and tested truth, but after 2009 we had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and crime kept going down for years. Then, when the average savings of the bottom 50% of Americans tripled in the back half of 2020 and first half of 2021, we had the highest percentage increase in violent crime alongside a small decrease in property crime.

The last 20 years or so have sort of broken what everyone thought they knew about crime rates.

We also don't really know for sure what caused the huge crime decline in the 90's. There's lot of theories about lead pipes, abortion, tough on crime policies, the crack epidemic dying down, the huge crackdown on gangs, gun control, Clinton-era "peace and prosperity," etc. But, crime basically fell everywhere in the entire country over a period of years and income, policing policies, and geography seemed to have no effect. It was just a huge universal drop in almost all crime.

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jul 7, 2022

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Scuffy_1989
Jul 3, 2022

The murder rate was already on the rise prior to the 2004 expiration of the assault weapons ban.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-cases-in-the-us-since-1990/

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