Clown Car VI: Hello, Goodbye. On to 2024.

[Estebonrober]

According to the bill, students would be permitted to conduct "free-speech activities", including "all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, and speeches; distributing literature; carrying signs; circulating petitions; faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary, whether published or unpublished; and the recording and publication, including the Internet publication, of video or audio recorded in outdoor areas of campus."

"The State Board of Education may not shield students, faculty, or staff at Florida College System institutions from free speech protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution," the text of the bill adds.

Under the legislation, all 40 state-funded colleges in the Sunshine State would also be required to each conduct an "annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity" at their indiviudal institution.

Florida's Board of Education would create a "objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid survey" that considers "the extent of which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom."

Beginning September 1, 2022, the results would be compiled and published annually by the Florida Board of Education.

Florida bill would allow students to record professor lectures to use as political bias evidence | Fox News

I love watching conservatives twist themselves into pretzels justifying this kind of policy. Could you imagine the outrage of similar being drawn up on all sorts of topics going the other way? This is stupid, its just plain big brother trying to intimidate the "marxists!" against sharing an opinion. God forbid you actually have to read Chomsky or Hume while in University. Everyone knows intellectual thought ended at Hobbes and Smith. No further education needed.

fwiw you can record lectures pretty much everywhere these days. Its the conglomeration of this data and then the use of it by a "non-partisan" (read GOP rough-shod hatchet board) board to justify recommendations to the state for enforcing "free speech". Also fwiw, I'm all for free speech,. . .you want to go in your poli-sci class and talk about how great the slaves had it and how the Nazis really jsut wanted a safe place for their German children? Go for it.

 

[Takhisis]

Progressive....policies??? HUH??? Progressivism is all about individualized leverage of diverse interdisciplinary competencies to succeed multidimensionally in a fast-paced, flexible, and knowledge-based labor market. Tired, outdated, and old-fashioned paradigms like "public policy" and "collective action" only hurt the ability of modern entrepreneurs to innovate and uplift within this societal matrix.

Reacher Gilt! Twelve and a half percent!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/28/rud...hed-by-federal-investigators-report-says.html

• Federal investigators executed a search warrant at the Manhattan apartment of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who was the personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump, according to a new report.
• The search was conducted as part of a criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, The New York Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Luckily its not a crime when Republicans do it.

Matt Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg said in a letter that Gaetz paid for sex with a minor
“From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App, or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-paid-minor-for-sex-joel-greenberg-letter-report-2021-4

 

[amadeus]

I love watching conservatives twist themselves into pretzels justifying this kind of policy.

I don’t know how best to weigh in on this, but I’m kinda in favor of rules that allow for publicly-funded lectures to be available to the general public from the standpoint that it is good for educating the populace and they are receiving taxpayer dollars.

Weaponizing their speech against them in some committee though is not good, and that applies to liberals or conservatives that are supposed to be in an environment of academic freedom.

 

[Samson]

Luckily its not a crime when Republicans do it.

I watched legal eagle on this, and it is hilarious. I am not actually sure what "leaving Venmo public" means, but I think it means anyone can see all the details of him paying women for sex because he did not click on a button. How do these people get to positions of power? Do you not have to have some sort of mental capacity for linking actions and consequences to be successful in politics?

Spoiler Legal Eagle on Gaetzgate :

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Apparently Biden did some public talking, and the right wing partisan hacks have responded.

You won't believe what happens next.

Yes. You guessed right. They are complaining about debt. The Trump sycophants are up to their: think of our children antics again.

And just after Trump turned the corner on the economic crisis, Biden is undoing all his good work with extreme socialism

It's delicious.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oh goody, they're coming for your menthols.

 

[Samson]

Oh goody, they're coming for your menthols.

I do not get the menthols thing. My memory of smoking behind the bike sheds was it was all about rollies, as kids are poor and rollies are cheap.

 

[Farm Boy]

They're not targeting kids, that's the justification. Punching down on menthols is about race(lolNewports), class(lolKools), and easy targets for people manhandle around.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I do not get the menthols thing. My memory of smoking behind the bike sheds was it was all about rollies, as kids are poor and rollies are cheap.

Rollies are tasty and have better tabacco.

You can take my hypothetical menthols, but you'll never take my rollies. Give me rollies or give me death (pre-empt and give you death, yes, very clever). Don't tread on my rollies.

Uhm ...

Menthols is socialism.

Yeah, I'm done.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Menthols are gross.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Agree to disagree

 

[Takhisis]

It's a bit predictable, but Mike Pence has made a speech (finally) and of course it's just criticism of Biden all over.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I watched legal eagle on this, and it is hilarious. I am not actually sure what "leaving Venmo public" means, but I think it means anyone can see all the details of him paying women for sex because he did not click on a button. How do these people get to positions of power? Do you not have to have some sort of mental capacity for linking actions and consequences to be successful in politics?

Spoiler Legal Eagle on Gaetzgate :

Political family name
Wealth and privilage
Republican safe district
Talent for Gas lighting
Hubris

Sites for sugar daddy exist in a legal grey area, as paying gifts for your girlfriend / mistress is legal. Probably why Gatez felt that he could venmo money publicly. The Feds are nailing him on other laws that were violated. (Campaign fiance, sex trafficking a minor)

 

[GenMarshall]

Menthols are gross.

Smoking in general s gross, but that's another topic.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm pretty mad about the moves to ban smoking outright. That's the end game that is being set up. I'm particularly pissed that in addition to, 'think of the kids', they are now adding to that, 'think of the black people'. It comes across to me as deeply patronizing and manipulative, but I'm not black so I don't press those claims to hard lest I become the patronizing one.

But I'm not pro smoking, and I'm all for curtailing it in the public sphere. I'm also for curtailing it around kids, and curtailing advertising and to an extent even fine with highly taxing it. But they're headed straight for prohibition, as if we haven't learned anything about how well that works over the course of the 20th century. It's maddening.

Everyone knows it is addictive, it's not like people are ignorant of it at this point. There are also lots and lots of smoking cessation tools out there, and I think it's appropriate to make cigarette manufacturers bankroll free cessation tools for people that want to quit. Using their addictiveness as a pretext to ban them is dumb, almost as dumb as is trying to racialize this particular issue to get the pro-equity crowd outraged into curtailing everyone's rights to protect the rights of minorities to...not be allowed to smoke what they want? It's so dumb.

I don't even smoke! (but I used to, to be fair)

Alcohol is addictive too, and demonstrably worse for your health. We going to ban it? Lots of research says that foods that hit the trifecta of sweet, salty and fatty area also highly addictive. Are they going to take away Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to stop the working class from being slaves to big candy?

 

[Samson]

Alcohol is addictive too, and demonstrably worse for your health.

Alcohol is addictive, and can be bad for you. I do not think there is any metric where it is worse than smoking, smoking kils about 20 times as many people and a lot more people drink than smoke.

It is very hard to quantify the individual risk, but this paper says booze is good for you up to about 50 units/week. Most say less than that, but many say a little is good for you.

 

[Farm Boy]

Doesn't matter. It's about taking stuff away from people and forcing them to do stuff. Once The Thing is taken, there will be The Next Thing to take. That's the jam. The people that go for this will not find satiety.

 

[Kyriakos]

Banning cigarettes will only create a larger black market.
Vaping could replace cigarettes; it seems less unhealthy by far (I had been vaping for a couple of months).