January 13, 2025

If you want to get out of a marriage now may be the time.

More than 30 states and in the next US congress there will be what I call a set of creeping marriage modifications. These are a wide range of changes to marriage law that will change the how you get divorced and married including rolling back the concept of no fault divorce.

What do these proposed laws consist of? A whole basket of things. Some of these laws have been optional for years like extended contracts or covenants but have been famously unpopular.

So let us start out by saying a contractural marriage is an umbrella that says you can sign a contract that outlines more responsibilities in a marriage than already exist like a prenuptial or a financial agreements. The problem is (to MAGA) that these contracts can be voided if one person is very young (13 or 14), under duress, or if the contract is for marriage between two close relatives. See my previous article on men who homestead their wives.

But setting aside the more sinister nonsense, what is really going on? Well it is really a series of actions designed to fundamentally change marriage not through a single crazy law change but through a cross linking of laws the results in a new model.

https://qr.ae/pYC8MJ

January 9, 2025

Trump, the Public, and the Press

The billionaire class has proved itself a poor steward of media. Journalists must redouble their efforts to expose the threat to democracy.

The voters have spoken. A plurality preferred Donald Trump’s stream of lies to journalism’s truths about his many misdeeds.

I have covered and occasionally interacted with Trump for almost four decades and am still trying to understand why voters—and now, many business leaders and publishers—accept his record of ruthless bad behavior, chaotic management, and general incompetence and how journalists should respond.

Voters enjoyed Trump’s ability to intimidate his critics and establishment elites. And the Democrats were ineffective when responding to the grievances and promises—real and imagined—that were the basis of Trump’s campaign.

Even before taking office, the prospect of Trump’s controlling the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court frightened owners of once-proud news organizations. Some seem willing to undermine editorial independence to curry favor with the incoming president.

Billionaires, once thought to be the saviors of journalism, are proving themselves poor stewards of media companies. It is always dangerous to generalize, but several billionaires who have purchased media companies treat their acquisitions as sidelines they can run without much hands-on attention. They believe that running a media company must be easier than whatever business made them rich and that their talent and training are easily transferable from their primary business to media. They also trust their instincts more than others’ experience. They seem to favor many of Trump’s economic policies and fear he might retaliate against their primary businesses should he dislike their publications’ coverage of him.https://www.cjr.org/analysis/trump-public-press-bezos-soon-shiong-billionaire-owners-endorsements-scandal-los-angeles-times-washington-post.php?tpcc=NL_Marketing

December 24, 2024

Imgur Help

https://imgur.com/bxynMN4

Should I post the link above?



I am new to imgur and posting to DU thus the question. I am not sure what link to post etc.

November 10, 2024

And Yet It Moves

NO

Smips:
Reconsider Any Belief In Innate American Goodness: Are Americans inherently good, freedom-loving, devoted to free speech and free worship, committed to all people being created equal


Start Out Making a Small Difference: A country that votes for Trump is broken in very complicated and daunting ways. Harris could have won in a landslide and 45% of the people voting for Trump would still have reflected a country broken in terrible ways.


In Schindler’s List, Stern tells Schindler “whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” So save the world that way — one fellow American at a time. You can’t stand up alone against all the Trumpist bullies in America, but maybe you can stand up to a few local ones in defense of a neighbor

https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Things are worth believing and fighting for. Did you ever see a Trumpist moderate or express doubt? No. Trump spewed loathsome bigotry and lies and ignorance and promoted terrible and cruel policies, many of which he may actually implement. The fact he won big doesn’t mean you were wrong to oppose those things and condemn them

March 29, 2022

Killing Wolves to Own the Libs?

The gray wolf prefers to eat fleet ungulates—elk, deer—but when Europeans arrived in America with livestock its menu expanded. A wolf that cannot find its favored meal may turn to cattle and sheep. Livestock producers and big-game hunters have considered wolves an existential threat since Colonial days.


When I met him, on Halloween weekend in Coeur d’Alene, a lake town in the panhandle, he told me that he’d made his most recent kill during the summer. “I went out in the dark and sat and listened over this large valley,” he said. After hearing wolves howl all night, he set up where he thought they’d be in the morning. Using an electronic call—also legal—he played the sound of a young elk in distress. A wolf appeared. “Bang!,” Roman told me. The first sportsman to receive a check from F4WM for a dead wolf, he is now the organization’s president.


https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/killing-wolves-to-own-the-libs-idaho?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

August 17, 2021

The Afghanistan Debacle: How Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Bamboozled the American Public

David Corn From the Land
Snip:

The arrogance and ineptitude of Bush, Cheney, and their henchmen have led to the horrible images and tales we have seen reported from Afghanistan in the past few days—which themselves are the continuation of many years of horrible images and tales from the double-debacle of these two wars.


As the Post put it, “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

The 20 years of fighting did keep the Taliban at bay, and for many Afghans that was a true benefit. But the lies certainly were an offense against the American public and the Constitution. The war in Afghanistan—prosecuted in ignorance and sold with hubris and falsehoods—has been a scandal of the highest order, a fundamental violation of the national trust.


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/08/the-afghanistan-debacle-this-land-sneak-peek/

August 16, 2021

Trump Slams Biden for Doing What Trump Bragged About

“He ran out of Afghanistan instead of following the plan our Administration left for him,” the former president wrote in a statement Saturday. Then, barely 25 hours later, another statement from Trump: “Never would have happened if I were President!”

While we’ll never know exactly what a Trump administration-led withdrawal from Afghanistan will look like, we can make some educated guesses based on his words from barely a month ago. “I started the process, all the troops are coming home,” he told supporters at a rally in Wellington, Ohio in late June. “What are we going to say? We’ll stay for another 21 years, then we’ll stay for another 50. The whole thing is ridiculous.” And few months before that, in April of this year, Trump was clear about where he stood: “We can and should get out earlier…Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st.” Trump’s former National Security Advisor even agrees, saying the former president “would’ve done essentially the same thing” as Biden.

So let me get this straight, the only president to be impeached twice is blaming Biden for a mess that Trump took credit for in front of supporters?
]https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2021/08/donald-trump-statement-joe-biden-afghanistan/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-08-16-2021

August 16, 2021

An Afghan woman in Kabul: 'Now I have to burn everything I achieved'

A university student tells of seeing all around her the ‘fearful faces of women and ugly faces of men who hate women’

Early on Sunday morning I was heading to university for a class when a group of women came running out from the women’s dormitory. I asked what had happened and one of them told me the police were evacuating them because the Taliban had arrived in Kabul, and they will beat women who do not have a burqa.

We all wanted to get home, but we couldn’t use public transport. The drivers would not let us in their cars because they did not want to take responsibility for transporting a woman. It was even worse for the women from the dormitory, who are from outside Kabul and were scared and confused about where they should go.

Meanwhile, the men standing around were making fun of girls and women, laughing at our terror. “Go and put on your chadari [burqa],” one called out. “It is your last days of being out on the streets,” said another. “I will marry four of you in one day,” said a third.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/an-afghan-woman-in-kabul-now-i-have-to-burn-everything-i-achieved

August 16, 2021

'The world needs to stand with us': UK Afghans watch on as tragedy unfolds

Afghans who fled their homeland to settle in the UK express their fears for family and friends left behind


SNIP:
Dr Mohammad Haqmal, a public health director and academic who lived under the Taliban in Afghanistan and is now settled in the UK, says his fears for his sisters and brothers and their families trapped in Kabul are too great to put into words.

“I’m getting messages through the night from my family. Everyone is desperate to try to escape to India or Pakistan but they cannot do so. We never thought things would go back to this situation in Afghanistan. I have not been able to eat anything for the last few days. Things are getting worse and worse. We thought the Afghan government would resist but they have not.”

He is also distraught on a professional level. He worked in conditions of great adversity when he was a public health director in Afghanistan on an initiative known as the $1 project, which saved the lives of 2,500 women over an 18-month period in two districts with the poorest health indicators in the world. He believes the Taliban will undo much of that public health work.

“I used to lead the student association at the university in Kabul and I tried to speak to the Taliban. It is very difficult to explain to people here what it was really like living under their regime when you have not experienced that darkness. Life under the Taliban was like living in a graveyard. I remember a playground was built for children and the Taliban just tried to break all the equipment. They do not understand how to use resources. Everything has gone back to zero. Men are at risk but the risk is greatest for women. We do not want to let these stupid people take over but the world needs to stand with us.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/15/the-world-needs-to-stand-with-us-uk-afghans-watch-on-as-tragedy-unfolds

August 15, 2021

A Powerful New Deepfake Tool Has Digitally Undressed Thousands Of Women

The AI-generated nudes, which look horrifyingly realistic, are sweeping the web.

The website promises to make “men’s dreams come true.” Users upload a photo of a fully clothed woman of their choice, and in seconds, the site undresses them for free. With that one feature, it has exploded into one of the most popular “deepfake” tools ever created.


Any vindictive creep, for example, could easily “nudify” and post photos of his ex online to make it seem, very convincingly, as if her actual nudes had been leaked. “Holy mother [of] god,” one user raved about the tool’s “amazing” abilities in an online forum where men consume and discuss deepfake porn. “Ive never seen [results like this] before ... t


It’s unknown who is behind the site, which is riddled with spelling and syntax errors, just as it’s unclear where they are based. The operators did not respond to multiple interview requests from HuffPost. Last month, the U.S. was by far the site’s leading source of traffic, followed by Thailand, Taiwan, Germany and China. Now-deleted Medium posts demonstrating how to use the site featured before-and-after pictures of Asian women exclusively.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/deepfake-tool-nudify-women_n_6112d765e4b005ed49053822?link_id=19&can_id=bd85735f14962f3dd28c92002ae87091&source=email-erasing-january-6th-6&email_referrer=email_1261081&email_subject=kabul-falls-what-did-we-learn