A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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A swindle by a Republican governor who will most likely be reelected despite the swindle:
The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott when the grid manager ordered wholesale power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies.
Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting to come back online, former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker told him that Abbott wanted them to keep prices high.
Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner, lied to the public when he said Abbott was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep wholesale electricity prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices.
The decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric. Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced co-op into bankruptcy.
“It (keeping prices high) did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”
“This decision resulted in $16 billion in additional costs to ERCOT's market,” wrote Carrie Bivens, director of ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.
Now Governor Abbott is facing questions about his own responsibility in the handling of last year's blackout.
Abbott had, "once again put the profits of his donors over the people of this state. Abbott screwed us, and he’ll continue to screw us until we vote him out," Beto O'Rourke said.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220223232930/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/energy/article/ercot-chief-abbott-direction-power-outage-storm-16941019.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy
The shift in American foreign policy from Obama to Trump is well illustrated by America’s interactions with the Philippines in recent years. Since his election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has slaughtered an estimated 7,000 people without a trial, many of them simply suspected of being low-level drug users. He has boasted about personally murdering people — including driving around on a motorcycle looking for people to kill; throwing a Chinese suspect out of a helicopter to his death; and shooting at least three. When Duterte was Mayor of Davao before becoming President of the Philippines, he lamented that he didn’t get the first crack at an Australian missionary who was brutally gang raped and then murdered. “I looked at her face, son of a bitch, she looks like a beautiful American actress. Son of a bitch, what a waste. What came to my mind was, they raped her, they lined up. Was I angry because she was raped? Yes, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, I think the mayor should have been first. What a waste.” And before being elected, Duterte pledged to be the Hitler of the Philippines, vowing to commit mass murder. That he has, though thankfully not on the same scale.
President Obama sharply criticized Duterte for these human rights abuses. The White House and the State Department coordinated to put pressure on Duterte to stop his killings. And crucially, Obama refused to give Duterte the thing regimes led by thugs often crave the most: international legitimacy. Under Obama, America shunned Duterte. There would be no White House visit, no smiling photo op in the Oval Office for the people of the Philippines to see. While America did not sever its ties to Manila completely, it did ramp up meaningful pressure on a mass murderer. That matters. And it clearly got under Duterte’s skin too; he called Obama a “son of a whore” as a result of his criticisms related to human rights. With “allies” like that, who needs enemies?
Trump sees Duterte differently. In a leaked phone call transcript obtained by The Washington Post, Trump explicitly endorsed Duterte’s death squads and praised the mass murderer’s moral character. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem … what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” He followed-up by reversing Obama’s icy tone toward Duterte and said he would instead extend the red carpet of the White House: “You are a good man … if you want to come to the Oval Office, I will love to have you in [the] Oval Office. Anytime you want to come … Keep up the good work, you are doing an amazing job.” Then, in a November 2017 visit to Manila, Trump boasted of the “great relationship” that he had with Duterte. During the trip, the two men laughed together as Duterte referred to the journalists in the room as “spies”. The hilarious punchline? 192 journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since 1992.
Of course, it’s hard to tell whether Trump simply admires ruthless, brutal despots like Duterte, or whether Trump is just acting in the interests of his own wallet (Trump Tower Manila opened in late 2017). But either way, Duterte now no longer has to worry about the President of the United States breathing down his neck and making diplomatic threats when he slaughters his own people. That shift makes it more likely that Duterte will stay in power longer—and abuse more people in worse ways in the meantime.
As with many countries, Trump’s behavior and praise for despots is at odds with the official position of the United States government and the United States State Department. I explore this problem further in the remainder of the book, as a gap between “high level” and “low level” diplomacy. With Trump, that gap has become a gulf. – from the Preface to the Second Edition of The Despot's Accomplice, by Klaas, Brian; Oxford University Press, Year: 2018
Free download: https://libgen.unblockit.cam/libraryp2/main/0FAF3FB5E1719EBE
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Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and countercharges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.
https://catholicphilly.com/2020/10/news/world-news/pope-calls-for-poli
tics-to-renew-focus-on-the-common-good/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and countercharges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.
https://catholicphilly.com/2020/10/news/world-news/pope-calls-for-poli
tics-to-renew-focus-on-the-common-good/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
LOL. What? You're just realizing this now?
You must not have noticed it for 4 years while immersed in your TDS echo chamber / sensory deprivation tank.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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White Christians of all types prefer Republicans to Democrats
Here is a chart from Ryan Burge:
https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1499808868045574154
The most interesting part of this is that every single white Christian group feels closer to Republicans than Democrats. That includes not just white evangelicals, but white mainstream Protestants and white Catholics. It's only the white atheists and non-Christians who feel closer to Democrats.
Also interesting: Every white Christian group places Democrats farther to the left than they place Republicans to the right. Even the non-white groups score it as a tie. This include Black Protestants (which is most of them) who have a different view: They don't think Dems are all that far left, but they also don't think Republicans are all that far right. They prefer Dems because they view themselves as left of center.
Also of note: No one views Donald Trump as more conservative than the Republican Party—not by more than a hair, anyway. They correctly view him as basically just a standard issue Republican conservative these days. The era of Trump being a supposed rogue within the party are long gone.
https://jabberwocking.com/white-christians-of-all-types-prefer-republi
cans-to-democrats/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:You didn't click the link. You didn't notice that this was the Pope saying it. The Pope looks at the entire world, not solely the USA. The USA is not at all special about having this problem of squabbling political parties unable to govern effectively. Also, the USA is not special about high inflation rates, but the way Republicans see it, inflation is uniquely American, which means it has to be Biden causing it. Too bad for that explanation, but the GOP is correct only if the rest of the World is these three -- Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and countercharges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.
https://catholicphilly.com/2020/10/news/world-news/pope-calls-for-poli
tics-to-renew-focus-on-the-common-good/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
LOL. What? You're just realizing this now?
You must not have noticed it for 4 years while immersed in your TDS echo chamber / sensory deprivation tank.
Inflation Rate Around the World
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Second appears to be the most Christian member on this board.
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Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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Sandy Hook: The Battle for Truth
The New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson’s Sandy Hook is a crime story, but it’s not the story of the tragedy immediately associated with its title, the 2012 mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that killed 20 first graders and six adults, as well as the gunman himself. The crime Williamson details happened later, when conspiracy theorists, egged on by alt-right media figure Alex Jones, insisted that the shootings were faked. They instigated campaigns of harassment against the family members of the victims, some of whom were forced to move multiple times as unhinged cranks tracked down their addresses and telephone numbers to circulate online.
Sandy Hook hoaxers justify their abuse of the victims’ families with the claim that the parents are not parents at all, but paid actors in a scheme to take away Americans’ guns.
“Trutherism” predates the Sandy Hook shooting, predates even the internet itself, springing from a mindset that the historian Richard Hofstadter identified in a celebrated essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” published in 1964. Williamson, for her part, follows the lead of the parents in referring to the believers in these theories as “hoaxers” rather than “truthers.”
When Williamson finally landed an interview with Alex Jones, it took place in a small room at Infowars HQ in Texas. She found him and his rants about the First Amendment shopworn and “tiresome,” but her masterful description of the encounter is anything but. Playing tough, Jones blustered at her with his usual abandon, but Williamson noticed something odd about his body language:
He was moving away, not toward me, parading around the room, seeking the corners. If he wanted to intimidate me, why not lean over the desk and get in my face? It struck me later that Jones may have needed that distance. People often ask: How can Jones or anyone attack the victims of mass murder? The answer: from afar. Jones doesn’t talk to actual people. He preaches to an invisible audience, an abstraction that makes it easier to absolve himself when its members act on the hatred he sows.
More at https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/sandy-hook-book-alex-jones-truthers-
reviewed.html
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9CThe+Paranoid+Style+in+America
n+Politics%E2%80%9D
American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions . . .
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-pol
itics/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Trump's Christian sins: fornication, adultery, gluttony. Pretty hard for Christians to deny that Trump has committed those, but there is more:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Second appears to be the most Christian member on this board.
--------------------------------------------------
Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
Deuteronomy 5:20 ‘You shall not bear false witness
Leviticus 19:11-12 ‘You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.
(This is also a certainty about Trump. He has been sued, and lost, a thousand times for not paying subcontractors.)
More at 50 Bible Verses about Lies: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Lies
If you spend money to professionally investigate, Trump voters turn out to be little to no better than Trump himself, which is probably what is attractive to them about him.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) called for killing leftists. Armed Republicans understand what he means.
GOP's violent rhetoric keeps getting worse — and almost nobody is paying attention.
Two weekends ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held its annual meeting in Florida. This event serves as a bellwether or test market, gauging the state of the Republican Party and "conservative" movement. As such, the conference is a rite of passage for would-be right-wing leaders who seek the approval of the Republican base.
Over the Trump administration, the faces of CPAC have changed from a more traditional conservative (tax cuts, pro-corporation) to a mixture of libertarian isolationism and cultural dog-whistling.
CPAC 2022's theme was "Awake, Not Woke." Its panel discussions offered a litany of right-wing reactionary obsessions: "The Moron in Chief," presumably a reference to Joe Biden; "Put Him to Bed, Lock Her Up and Send Her to the Border"; "Domestic Terrorists Unite: Lessons From Virginia Parents"; "Lock Downs and Mandates: Now Do You Understand Why We Have a Second Amendment?"; "Are You Ready to Be Called a Racist: The Courage to Run for Office"; and "Obamacare Still Kills."
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who also leads the Senate Republicans' campaign operation, gave the keynote address, offering his "11 Point Plan to Save America." He also said this:
We survived the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. But today we face the greatest danger we have ever faced. The militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within.
The militant left has now seized control of our economy, of our culture and our country.
The woke left now controls the Democrat party, the entire federal government, the news media, academia, big tech, Hollywood, most corporate boardrooms and now even some of our top military leaders. ... [T]hey are destroying just about everything they touch and they've got their hands on everything.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) was making a not so coded appeal for political violence against the "woke left," which in practice means all Democrats, liberals, progressives and others opposed to Republicans.
More at https://www.salon.com/2022/03/09/gops-violent-rhetoric-keeps-getting-w
orse--and-almost-nobody-is-paying-attention/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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