A round up of Trumpian events šŸ–•šŸŠšŸ¤”

Personally, Iā€™d have phrased it as ā€œquisling scum administrators disgrace their collegesā€. But your version works too.

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To be fair, he did at least say they support their right to do it.

Better than the ā€œwe deplore this kind of thing and will drop anyone who dares to disrupt our ritualised display of temple dancers and gladiatorsā€ done by other schools.

Letā€™s see if it lasts or whether it takes the obvious next step of " We tried to work with the cheerleaders to find an appropriate and constructive way to address the issue but unfortunately, they insisted on continuing their disruptive protest (which incidentally made American Veteran Jesus cry) so we had to drop them from the cheerleading team."

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Comrads?

Today, business site RBC revealed the numbers that allegedly made the company work. It reports (link in Russian) that over two years the agency spent $2.3 million on its US operations. Most of that was spent on Russian staffā€”around 90 employees (link in Russian) were working on the US at the height of the trolling campaign in 2016ā€”but it also paid for 100 US activists to travel around America, organizing 40 rallies in US cities, and spent $120,000 spreading their message on Facebook.

Vladimir-Putin-laugh-gif

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Holy crap. And the University is spending $500k on security? Itā€™s one thing to pass no laws abridging someoneā€™s right to free speech. Itā€™s another to spend half a million dollars to protect them every time they come to town.

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Itā€™s funny cause itā€™s true. Or not funny cause itā€™s true.

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Really. Thatā€™s insane. It sounds like a good basis for a protection racket type of scheme. He should promise not to speak for $100k.

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Or they could just bill him for the cost of security and require him to purchase insurance.

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They should, but they wonā€™t. Yet if someone gets hurt there the victim will likely have to pay for the ambulance ride to the hospital.

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But you canā€™t do that, because it sets his speech on a different playing field than other speakers and the team of lawyers backing the Nazi speeches across the country funded by wealthy donors are salivating to go to court on this shit.

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I was thinking about this too but I donā€™t think it works. I wouldnā€™t want someone who was receiving death threats because of their opinions to be charged for police time it takes to protect them. In other countries this wouldnā€™t be as much of a problem, but the US is, at the moment, totally unwilling to distinguish between a) promoting genocide; and b) promoting racial equality. As long as those are held as equally protected by free speech, institutions and states have to treat them equally.

In Canada advocating hatred and advocating genocide are offenses. The US looks a lot more like a police state than Canada. I think maybe itā€™s time the US grow up and just make some hate speech laws (obviously this is not going to happen).

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Yikes! The thought of the Trump administration creating hate speech laws isā€¦chilling.

Edit: Oops, missed. This supposed to be a reply to @anon50609448.

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Part of the slippery slope argument I never understood. Like somehow well meaning people committed to open government by the people and for the people choosing not to make hate speech laws is going to convince a petty, egomaniacal tyrant to follow in their footsteps. The crazy asshole acting in bad faith doesnā€™t care what the people acting in good faith did before them.

If reasonable people had agreed on reasonable hate speech laws like they have in other countries, then there would be established legal principle and legal tests to tell what can be reasonably called hate speech and what cannot. There would be a behemoth of case law that would be hard to move. I think other things being equal a country with existing hate speech laws is probably one where it is harder to suppress political speech than one without such laws (other things are not equal, and the huge body of case law around the first amendment should provide just as much protection, or would if the US had an actual separate judicial branch instead of partisan toadies).

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Weā€™ve covered this extensively over here.

Oh, I agree. If it had been done previously, or is done in the future, it could be a great thing. Iā€™m just not sure the current administration is the one that should tackle it.

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I just read about that; fuckinā€™ assholes.

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Again, heā€™s like a cargo cult for human emotion.

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I mean, yeah, itā€™s true. Death is a well understood occupational hazard of military duty (even more so when you are Special Forces). But, Christ on a Cracker, this is not a facet that you need to point out a grieving spouse.

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A branch of their strategy is to bankrupt targeted institutions either with a security bill, or by suing them Westboro Baptist-style.

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