Hodad

WTF? That's you, in your own words, making exactly the same braindead, specious arguments I described. It's you literally arguing that protesting ICE means defending rapists. Not only did I make my point, your pathetic denial is making a secondary point: if you can't acknowledge what is right there in front of your face, in your own words, as I try to coach you beyond it, you're beyond help. My charitable interpretation was too generous. That's a shame.

"[she] had proved herself “untrainable, dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless” At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.”

He won 49.8% of the votes cast. While that in itself is alarming, I like to think the fact that he couldn't manage a majority means there's still hope for us. That if we ever get to hold another fair and free election, we have a chance to redeem ourselves.

In addition to being the least qualified person to ever hold the job, our "Secretary of War," is a fundamentalist Christian nationalist and follower of certified nutball pastor Doug Wilson. He's also tatted up with extremist icons and phrases tied directly to Christian nationalism--and indeed echo the cries of medieval crusaders. And now his military leadership are telling troops that... well, read for yourselves. Newsweek Some U.S. military leaders are telling troops that the Iran war is part of "God's divine plan" featuring President Donald Trump and Jesus, according to a religious freedom advocacy group. In response to Newsweek's request for comment on the matter, the Pentagon talked about Trump's action in Iran. Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the nonprofit group has received more than 200 complaints from roughly 50 military installations since Saturday involving reports of U.S. commanders linking Christianity to the "biblically sanctioned" war in Iran. "This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be 'afraid' as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now," one complaint reads. "He urged us to tell our troops that this was 'all part of God’s divine plan' and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that 'President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.'" All of that is objectively insane, but it's also not a joke. With this nonsense going on, are we any different than jihadists and crusaders? And do these nutters not recognize that contextualizing our military action as a holy war (in addition to being unAmerican) invites escalation and reprisal not just from Iran, but from the rest of the Islamic world? Are we not just becoming exactly what radical terrorists have accused us of being? Are we not just legitimizing more terrorism?

Taking this as your concession. You went ahead and asked AI to sort your shit out. Good on you.

\ Don't gaslight us You do that shit regularly. Gato, meet Gato. On 2/14/2026 at 9:58 PM, gatomontes99 said: The double tap was actually 4 strikes and the last 3 shots were meant to sink the remaining parts of the vessel because drugs were still in play. It was known that they were going to rendezvous with another boat to transfer the drugs that would, eventually, make their way to the US. It baffles me how much you want to defend people that are intentionally killing thousands of Americans. Why? You also defend illegal aliens that have killed, raped and stole from americans. Why? Why do you always defend our enemies? On 1/28/2026 at 5:46 PM, CrakHoBarbie said: We want illegal immigrants deported, but, i.c.e.'s tactics are draconian. They escalate every encounter. They're completely incapable of de-escalation tactics, they just shot a nurse in the back 10 times after they'd disarmed him. Federal agent's need to keep calm and regulated when in the field. Not, rampage like mindless animals. When any agency that roams the halls of justice with total immunity is out of control, its Congress's duly to slap a leash on them. On 1/29/2026 at 8:24 AM, gatomontes99 said: No, your side doesn't. That is why they are disrupting ICE. On 1/29/2026 at 11:08 AM, Hodad said: You didn't answer the question. It's not hard. Can people disagree with or protest a means without opposing the end? On 1/29/2026 at 11:14 AM, gatomontes99 said: Oh they can. But that is not what is going on here. And that was my point.

This is not an isolated or rare case. Cruelty is part of the DHS mission under Trump. Courts keep ruling against it, they keep doing it. A federal judge recently ruled that third party deportations are illegal. -- Asylum seekers, including those without criminal record, who have active legal status in immigration courts and orders not to be returned to their countries of origin, are being abducted and sent to random third countries to which they have no connection. From there they are detained at length or sent back to the country from which they originally fled. Imagine fleeing Togo to escape genital mutilation or conscription as a child soldier, fleeing to the US and applying for asylum and told by the courts that your threat is credible--doing everything you are supposed to do. Living life, working a job, maybe having US citizen children, and then someone snatches you, puts you on a plane and you wake up in in a prison camp someplace you've never been, where you don't speak the language, without access to friends or family and no way to access a lawyer. Completely cut off from due process. -- Here you'll be held in a prison camp, or perhaps returned to the nightmare you fled in the first place. This kind of cruelty is not an accident or a mistake. There's no justifying it--it is fundamentally unjust. And it's not an accident, but rather it's the explicit policy of this administration. It's truly shameful. I don't understand how any decent person can support it.

I believe they're off spooning with the guys who were outraged Obama for joining a NATO coalition to give air cover to the Libyan protestors trying to topple a brutal dictator.

Oh boy, here we go again with your busted COVID rants . No, a lower fatality rate does NOT require a higher infection rate. If you haven't caught on to how the statistics actually with after 5 years of 'splaining, I think it's unlikely that my repeating will help. Here's what I'm going to recommend. Having been granted little of your own, try turning to artificial intelligence. Find your favorite model. Copy that bullshit you just spewed and drop it in. Ask it to assess your argument and see what it says. Then report back. Deal?

Have you read your OP? And you might find the words of my post derogatory (they're certainly not flattering) but I'm also quite serious about the problem. Infobubbles are real and they are poison to discourse and democracy. Social media users voluntarily gavage an infinite supply of "content" designed and engineered specifically to manipulate their brains for engagement. They are constantly bombarded with extreme messaged (and photos of kittens) that reinforce every terrible instinct, to the point that it corrodes reason and creates a sense of alternate reality. The most extreme "takes" on an issue get shared the most, not on merit, but because they have the most shock value. Critical thinking is replaced by an echo chamber that normalizes the abnormal and actively discourage critical thinking. For example, I don't believe for a second that you ACTUALLY rationally worked your way to the idea that criticizing the time and way that we are engaging with Iran is tantamount to supporting the Ayatollah. I didn't think for a second that you rationally worked your way to the idea that disapproving of ICE tactics makes one pro-pedophile. There simply isn't any logic in those claims. Not a drop. Yet you make such claims repeatedly, on topic after topic. And not just you. Why? I'm being generous when I say it's because of your immersion in the infobubble. That's the charitable interpretation: that you're not fundamentally stupid (some here are) but rather that you're a normal dude who has fallen into self-destructive dependencies. And I do think that on some level you realize that and that's why you occasionally "engage" with "the left." You know there's another world out there from the before times. That's a legitimate and sincere criticism. If someone like Reg were to quit social media, he'd likely have no thoughts at all. If you were to quit, you could probably have your own again. Honest disagreement about real things is fine. Fake arguments about fake issues are infuriating. I'm not a gentle nurturer though. We all try to keep our kids off of this stuff, but I expect more of adults. Really, it comes down to if you want others to respect you, start by respecting yourself. ^^and that's the short version

Eh, once the argument has been made--rather conclusively over many posts--I don't see any point in retracing the same circular path. At that point assume bad faith, and that's something for which I have very little patience. I think I rarely call you names (though I can't confidently say "never") but I do find disingenuousness triggering and I'm happy to insult it. There are people on this forum who are shockingly dumb. And there are people who will pretend to be when it's convenient--who will pretend not to understand simple logical simply because they like the pithy, pre-packaged, trite lines of discourse. Meme culture writ large. This is a lawless forum. Rudeness and insults are the currency of the realm. I've been places where that wasn't the case, but it is here. When in Rome... If that's the culture here, I will have sharp arguments and a sharp tongue. There is no reward for either.

The Goode shooting was one graphic example. -- And that was obviously manufactured danger. Pretti was an even more egregious example. But there's no point re-litigating those. I'm speaking of the general violence they perpetrate at scale. Law enforcement is one thing. Goon squads roving around cracking heads and then checking papers is something new--and something distinctly unamerican. ICE has beaten and detained hundreds of US citizens because of their appearance. They've lost thousands of court cases in rapid succession. And they simply keep doing what they're doing. Even in post-Pretti Minneapolis the response wasn't to change their tactics, it was to move to the suburbs where there were fewer citizens and cameras to watch.

That's false. There used to be rules of engagement, standards of decency. They functioned as a legitimate branch of law enforcement. ICE has changed those rules and tactics. ICE has changed their recruiting. They are now snatching students off of street corners. Beating and detaining US citizens who happen to be brown. Menacing schools and churches. Illegally arresting people and shipping them off to third-world gulags. It is absolutely and unequivocally NOT normal or business as usual.

Are regular law enforcement officers like city cops being doxxed? No. Do they have to hide their identities? No. Why the difference? Because the way that ICE is conducting themselves is--again, deliberately and explicitly--not to serve the people of a community, but to terrorize the community so that the undocumented flee. The sequence of events does not start with doxxing and then masks. It goes like this: 1. ICE employs new tactics that are objectively awful, meant to sow terror 2. People see ICE agents behaving in ways that were previously unthinkable and incompatible with the United States 3. Lots of people think this is fundamentally wrong, and a small subset decide that forced transparency--doxxing is a way to holding ICE agents accountable for their actions. Maybe they won't be so shitty if they think people might identify them. 4. ICE says, "Nah, we're really committed to the mission of terror. We'll just put on masks instead."

My theory is that you understand deep down that there's an entire world outside of you algorithmically crafted info bubble, so you occasionally peek your head out to see. But you're not really prepared to deal with facts, reality or real debate, so you throw a tantrum like this. "Wouldn't it be easier if everyone just agrees with me, like on Twitter?"

This little exchange connects all the dots. I haven't realized before now that you've fashioned your entire personality, such as it is, after the C villain from every 80s teen movie. Not the main villain, but one of the minions that simps around after him. It all makes sense now. Trump is your villain, and you'll follow him like a puppy, at least until the climactic comeuppance.

Lol. Ogre haaaaaate nerds! You're about 50 years late, Ogre. The nerds won the world.

Maybe move this conversation to the friendly fire thread?

If you don't have to identify yourself, you're not accountable to the public. At this point, they are literally nameless, faceless thugs that roll up in a van and abduct someone off the street--girls, boys, students, professionals, mothers, the disabled, oh, and occasionally an actual criminal. There are frequent beatings and other abuses. And after the abductions, the targets are disappeared to awful "camps" in the US or foreign gulags. This includes the undocumented, those with legal status, and even a not-insignificant number of US citizens. None of that is made up. It's happening regularly. ICE loses the overwhelming majority of their court cases. 4,400 illegal detentions. It's a campaign deliberately and explicitly designed to create a sense of terror. That's the objective. And they keep doing it. I support a legally controlled border and immigration policies. Morality and ethics should shape that law, but I'm not opposed to a controlled border. Never have been. But I vehemently oppose these tactics which toss aside what used to make America great. In the effort to safeguard the geography of America, we're losing it's soul.

Well, girlfriend, I'll tell you. It "strikes a chord" because it's the micro that represents the macro. It's a distilled and purified version of thoughtless nonsense that absolutely permeates this forum. And it's not just this thread. I've posted in several threads lately about the lazy inanity of this particular specious argument. It's running rampant. There's really no point in talking to anybody that dumb--or who's committed to pretending to be that dumb. I'd prefer that all of you knock it off and actually debate a topic like serious people. Instead of, you, know. the mindless jerk fest.

Dude, you're simply spamming the board with a deluge of lame memes and Twitter posts. I could get raging drunk, tumble down the stairs and sustain a massive concussion, post the first addled thought that comes to mind and still be "kilometers behind" the firehose of spam you crap out here. Your endless spam makes an already shitty board objectively worse. You don't even have your own dumb ideas--your too busy re-sharing other people's dumb ideas. If I wanted to swim in the Twitter cesspool, I'd go jump in. Let a discussion forum be a discussion forum.

Your rebuttal to satirical mockery of objectively bad arguments is to simply restate the bad arguments? Okay. Meanwhile, back in old fashioned America some of us hang onto the old idea that the means are always--if not more--important than the ends. That's what the country is built on, core and fundamental to the founding philosophy. Apparently I'm a conservative now, trying to hang onto those principles.

How are you keeping score? With the bombing of the girls school, Trump's killed about 14x as many children. But on the other hand, only 4 US troops have died so far, so he's lagging behind there. Do you think he'll catch up? And the big question: once all the killing is done and the defense contractors have cashed their checks, do you think Trump will give Iran back to the oppressive Islamic regime the same way he gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban? I guess we'll see which is better when the totals are tallied. 🙄

I'm guessing this took you twice as long to type since you're only working with one hand now.

Terrible, awful, thugs of a theocratic, totalitarian regime. Something I'd rather not replicate in the US, but with Trump's secret police force acting with brutality and impunity we're another step closer.