Lurker > Lord_of_BeefDip

Humble_Novice posted...

Aren't the Houthi rebels bad people too?

Fuck yes they are. We also shouldn't be doing shit to support Saudi Arabia considering they are pretty fucking bad about bombing the shit out of civilians as well. Not even taking into account SA has been a big part of spreading ultra fundamentalist Islam around the MW for decades now. That and if any nation had any hand in 9/11, pretty sure it would link back to at least some SA officials.

mustachedmystic posted...

Says the constitution. Iirc, treason is only reason a natural born citizen can be deported.

Of course if fuckface gets back into office, especially with a GOP Congress, what's to stop him from making Trumped (Get it?) up charges of treason towards pro-Palestenian protesters?

hockeybabe89 posted...

"Uh uh uh being better than the GOP isn't good enough anymore. They'll never learn if they don't lose!"

It's shit like this that makes me believe that no matter what, Biden has to win.

I hate his policy on Israel, and I still hope he can be pushed to do better. Because it's awful that we provide arms to that government. I'm not suggesting we abandon Israel. But any and all future funding should be absolutely contingent on them stopping their brutality.

Obviously Hamas needs to go as well, but we'd need the good will of the average Palestinian citizen to really do that. Something we'll never have so long as Israel keeps up it's campaign, especially since the most we do is finger wag and then continue business as usual. We need to freeze all current funding and weapons transfers, and tell them they no longer can rely on our veto at the U.N., and that sanctions could be on the table. They need to stop what they are doing, and come to the table. Hamas would need to be dealt with, which would be easier if the biggest recruitment tool stopped killing civilians.

That said, while I don't have high hopes for Biden to do most of that, he is still leagues better than Orange Mussolini. Biden might finger wag and still supply Israel to an uncomfortable degree, and be an asshole verbally to protesters, but I'll take that over the guy who would possibly aid Israel directly in turning Gaza into a parking lot, and who is also pro deportation of protesters.

Biden at least has been pretty good domestically, Trump would be not only astronomically worse in every facet, but would also gladly help usher in Project 2025.

Heineken14 posted...

Yep, those are the 2 I was referring to. I think Sotomayor would last 4 years but I believe she's also 70, so fucking hell if she didn't. 7-2 conservative split all from a dude who tried to over throw the government and didn't get the most votes 3 times in a row.....

....but Biden just doesn't inspire me enough, you know?

I think it's more than fair to call out Biden and try to push him to be better, while still acknowledging that Trump and the GOP are an existential threat to American Democracy, and even if it's just harm mitigation, it's better to vote pretty much straight blue up and down the ticket.

It also doesn't help how the meds handles things when it's Democrats vs. Republicans. Dems are held to way higher standards, when the same thing would barely be a blip from a Republican.

Shit like what Abbott did with pardoning that supremacist murderer, to this SCOTUS ruling, to project 20 fucking 25 should be wall to wall coverage. Among others.

Facts should be painted so obviously that any normal moderate or fence sitter should be dead set on tossing the current GOP out on their collective asses.

Dudebusters posted...

Yeah but listen something something Genocide Joe in conclusion I can't vote to stop the people actually openly calling for genocide

I think it's more than fair to call Biden out for continuing to wag his finger while still providing them arms.

Biden might be able to be pushed to do better, and even as is, sadly, he is still orders of magnitude superior to the average Republican.

Still, biggest push should be to actually make him do better. There are people who have lost family and friends to what's happening in Gaza, those people probably won't be easily swayed to vote Biden even if Trump would be worse, because Biden has likely crossed their red line.

It isn't logical to sit it out and maybe let Trump win, but it isn't a good strategy to just chastise and mock people with some concerns and reservations, since those can go very deep.

I've seen people on this board effectively mock Arab Americans for being hesitant to vote Biden, saying that they more or less should get ready for the camps here in the US if Agent Orange wins. That was slightly paraphrasing, but that is a disgusting sentiment, to hold that out. It is reductive and won't do much to actually convince people .

I still plan on voting Biden, even in Missouri, because at the very least I care about harm reduction. But at some point these leaders should be pushed to do better, if only because they might actually help their chances of winning election if they do. And I do get tired of people more outraged by people who are pissed with Biden than they seemingly do at what Israel is doing.

EPR-radar posted...

This. Tails is a rancid deplorable bigot, and that's actually a dominant view in the Republican party.

He is one of the worst users I had the displeasure of interacting with. Though I remember absolutely bodying him in a debate on gay marriage back on 261.

A long time ago though I remember a guy called DW7StillRules or something of the like. Dude was a legit neo-nazi. Had linked to an actual supremacist website, and had once posted that leopards and jaguars had more in common than white people did with black people.

Fucking vile racist, and I was absolutely stunned that he only got sent to purgatory for the latter one. He was back within half a year. Not sure what happened to him after that.

I for one appreciate this rare moment of candid honesty. Not everyone can admit to having literal brain worms.

Trumble posted...

I can take or leave the hornyposting ban, but the closing / locking down of boards is not good. Not a fan of the rules on political topics (keep them off game boards is fine; but limiting them to only CE rather than all social boards is excessive) or the ban on warned / suspended topics.

Here is my take. If any board got locked down, or at least was made invite only, especially in order to contain political discussions, it should have been 261.

I'd been fine with it having been banned across all game boards and heavily restricted on other social boards if it had its own dedicated board.

I'm also not really in agreement with CE being given the LUE treatment. The system boards in all honesty seem to me way more vitriolic and toxic on average, and they are the most accessible. CE already wasn't listed in the main page for anyone new given it already had a decently high karma requirement.

Of course I've been incredibly inactive as a mod lately thanks to IRL stuff, so my input really probably isn't going to be the most sought after.

I'm going to still pull the lever for Biden, and encourage anyone else to do so, because Trump is going to be this, plus much much more.

That said, people do need to really get their priorities right. Being more outraged at people appalled by this than our administration for continuing to fund the Israeli government really shows how morally skewed some people are.

The people encouraging not voting here are at best being short sighted, especially if talking about people who live in swing states. But it takes a lot of gall to chastise the people pissed with Biden more than Biden himself, especially considering at least some people in Arab American communities have had people they know actually die in Gaza. Yes it's short sighted still for them to not vote, but if they are someone who is personally impacted, or feels like the administration values their lives less, those feelings and reluctance to vote are very real things.

I get that our support for Israel is baked in. We fund them because they are a strategic ally in the ME. But there has to be a point where we at least pause all weapons transfers along with any financial assistance, and use that to strongarm them into at the very least ending their indiscriminate (Though one could argue it's at least sometimes targeted.) military strikes, and to come to the table and negotiate.

Hamas needs to do the same, and step out of government and disarm themselves, they are no saints either. But Israel is the one with the power over there, and if I've read things correctly in the past, they have even funded Hamas knowing that it gives them an easy Boogeyman.

Demanding Biden be better should not be a difficult ask. And being better doesn't have to mean completely abandoning Israel
But there absolutely should have been a hard red line that would severally impact essential aid for them to continue.

And while Biden might take a hit as this would be divisive, sometimes doing the right thing is the most important. Especially considering based on the polling I've seen, it would be less detrimental for him to pump the brakes a bit on supporting them than to continue with business as usual.

DoesntMatter posted...

i don't get this. i don't get it anymore than i get people getting mad at fighting games like Soul Calibur where you can still hit your opponent after they are already beaten. or any more than i get that weird news story a few months ago about someone claiming to have gotten "virtually raped" in the Metaverse. all that's happening is a character model is moving on a screen. the movements aren't even sexual or explicit. and they amount to literally nothing. there is nothing that happens to your player character any differently if they get teabagged versus if they didn't. it just seems like a really trivial thing to be so upset about.

Some people can have bad reactions when exposed to things that remind them of their trauma. Granted this is the first time I've seen someone that gets bad flashbacks of past abuse over this particular thing, but a thing to keep in mind is that while you might not be able to understand the reasons why, try to have some empathy, because your experience is going to be entirely different from someone else's .

Having said that, as someone who is guilty of teabagging people in games, I'll give my take.

I don't do with the intent of it being sexual. Disrespectful sure, but typically to a player that has been obnoxious to me first in some way. I can't speak for others, but I do not do so with the intent to simulate assault or necrophilia. All I see is a bunch of pixels shooting at each other in a (normally) 3D space. As an aside, I often get my own comeuppance, as while I'm making myself look like a petty fool, I often get killed in the process.

So I do it out of pettiness, I at least don't do it to simulate anything, and I certainly don't do it to trigger or remind people of their past traumas.

I've also more recently been doing less of the Teabagging and more shooting their dead body as a way of being disrespectful.

I'll also add this OP. If we ever played a game together, not that it's likely, but I would absolutely not teabag anyone during it. Not you nor anyone else in the lobby. And if you or anyone else told me "hey, can you stop that, I've had bad experiences and it reminds me of them" , I'd stop immediately, give you a free kill on me if we were enemies, and not do it again with you present. I'd still probably shoot bodies of annoying players, but that's it. Fuck only knows how many times I saw someone with a legit offensive name and I went out of my way to kill the player and mag dump into their body.

ClayGuida posted...

Let them fight for Republican voters.

I agree with this.

Even if RFK only takes 3-5% of GOP voters, those that might hate Trump but still otherwise mostly agree with the bat shit nonsense, it would be a net good thing.

I'm on decent terms with the girl I first dated. W don't talk much if ever, but there is no animosity.

My ex wife and I get along, hell when we divorced we went into court agreeing on everything, with a coherent plan for our son. Joint custody, she has primary physical because I have no one to keep an eye on him when I'm at work. And now on my weekends her daughter (Son's younger sister, who was born over a year after we split to who my ex was with then.) almost always comes over with my son, and I treat her no different than if she was married biological daughter.

EPR-radar posted...

Priorities. The GOP might lose the Santos seat tonight.

And they did.