BernardoVerda 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: MAGA’s Big Miscalculation

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 22 Sep, 2025 @ 02:31pm

    Classic "Every accusation a confession."

  • On the post: Somebody’s Lying: Susan Monarez’s Congressional Testimony Is 180 Degrees From RFK Jr.’s

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2025 @ 10:06pm

    He claims he personally lost two and nearly three close acquaintances to Covid vaccine -- so I'm betting he can safely be accounted as as clumsy a liar as Bobby Jr.

  • On the post: Charlie Kirk Doesn’t Deserve What’s Happening To Him

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2025 @ 01:57pm

    War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. Black Is White. You Is Smart.

  • On the post: The Murder Of Charlie Kirk Didn’t Help Anyone

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2025 @ 09:02pm

    Yeah; that's how it goes.

  • On the post: Newly Granted Nintendo Patents An ‘Embarrassing Failure’ By The USPTO, Says Patent Attorney

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2025 @ 08:54pm

    Personally, I've been feeling like patents and copyright have been out of control for years now. "Intellectual Property" rights are becoming the new Enclosure laws -- with even less pretense at a conforming to solid legal and philosophical rationale.

  • On the post: Federal Judges Are Done Playing Nice: NBC Reports Full-Scale Revolt Against SCOTUS Shadow Docket Bullshit

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2025 @ 02:21pm

    If I ever post something that dumb, I hope that I too remember to post it anonymously.

  • On the post: The Murder Of Charlie Kirk Didn’t Help Anyone

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2025 @ 02:02pm

    The word you're looking for, is 'incitement'

    Whatever there is to be said about Charlie Kirk (the less, the better, IMPO) he was not violent. He was not a source of violence. He did not initiate violence against anyone. Could his ideas have inspired someone to violence? Maybe. But inspiration is not culpability.
    Charlie Kirk was most definitely a source of violence -- he was, with malice aforethought, inciting violence. Charlie Kirk was careful to couch his "arguments" as mere social discourse, political debate superficially (if one assiduously ignored any broader perspective) within the limits of permissible speech, and even as appeals to common sense, logical reasoning, and principled values, but the arc of his arguments and inevitable consequences of his misinformation, disinformation and faux-principled hate mongering was clear. Charlie Kirk was not "just talking". Charlie Kirk was a conscious, self-motivated participant of an organized program to incite change, to override objections by any means available, and to impose that change on the rest of society -- whether the rest of society wants it or not. (The last few months should suffice to remove any reasonable doubt about whether imposing that change by force is part of that agenda. The use of force and violence -- contrary to law -- is already underway.) Generals and politicians safely ensconced in their bunkers behind the lines are at least as much a participant in the violence they direct, as the schmucks soldiering at the front. They don't get to evade responsibility by claiming "Well you know, I personally didn't really engage in actual violence myself. I didn't personally fire a rifle or launch a missile... other people did that part." The only surprise is that in this case, some of the hate and violence that Charlie Kirk incited -- was in fact at that very moment inciting -- splashed back on him personally. That splash-back wasn't some non-violent actor becoming the victim of violence. That was Karma.

  • On the post: CBS Caves Again, Will No Longer Air Edited Interviews After Noem Whined About Cuts To Hers

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2025 @ 10:17am

    Yes. Kristi Noem is apparently in too deep to understand that the edit she's so upset about was actually CBS doing* her a favor.

    • though it's unclear whether they were trying to help Noem, trying to avoid spreading disinfo, trying to avoid getting sued for cooperating in flagrant slander, or just trimming for time.

  • On the post: CBS Caves Again, Will No Longer Air Edited Interviews After Noem Whined About Cuts To Hers

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2025 @ 10:05am

    Re: Re: I seem to be in quotations mode these days...

    But honestly, you'd think that the people in the business of informing the general public would know (and understand) this -- and how it applies to their own actions. Proof, I guess, that wealth, power, even cleverness and profession, have very little to do with actual intelligence let alone wisdom.

  • On the post: CBS Caves Again, Will No Longer Air Edited Interviews After Noem Whined About Cuts To Hers

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2025 @ 10:00am

    I seem to be in quotations mode these days...

    ... but damn if it hasn't already all been said before:

    “Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore. They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?” ~ A.R. Moxon

  • On the post: SCOTUS Says ICE Can Use The Family Guy Skin Color Chart For Arrests (But Won’t Explain Why)

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2025 @ 05:49pm

    Occam's razor: There's a technical term for people like Koby: "useful idiot".

  • On the post: SCOTUS Says ICE Can Use The Family Guy Skin Color Chart For Arrests (But Won’t Explain Why)

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2025 @ 03:33pm

    Hermit crab

    SCOTUS has become the institutional equivalent of a hermit crab... Why call it the Supreme Court anymore? The judicial body is gone, and something else has been crawling around, wearing it's old shell for protection and camouflage. They aren't a court of law anymore, let alone a Supreme Court. If the mass media were to report current actions as they deserve, the headlines wouldn't read "The Supreme Court decides..." but rather "The SCOTUS Six strikes again!"

  • On the post: Choosing ‘Daddy’ Over Democracy

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 02 Sep, 2025 @ 05:27pm

    Didn't I mention 'priorities' already...?

    “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” ~ David Frum, 2018 . (Note that Frum is a conservative journalist, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and as of this last November, officially an ex-Republican)

  • On the post: Federal Officers Arrest Two People Fighting A Wildfire In Washington Because Why Not

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 02 Sep, 2025 @ 05:08pm

    Why are they doing sh*t like this?

    Priorities, man... it's all about having priorities.

  • On the post: The Inversion Of American Values

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2025 @ 05:25pm

    “I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.” Texas State Senator Craig Washington (D–Houston) on 6 July 1989

    • Often mis attributed to the late, great, Texas journalist Molly Ivins (which is how I came across it -- an understandable error; it's so Molly Ivins, but she was in fact quoting the Senator)

  • On the post: Chaos At CDC As Trump Admin Ousts CDC Director After Only Weeks On The Job

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2025 @ 03:09pm

    Inevitable.

    Hired her because she was very good at her job. Fired her because she really was, in actual fact, very good at her job.

  • On the post: Were A Few Random DEI Programs Worth Killing Democracy?

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2025 @ 03:10pm

    Too be fair, there has in fact been an ongoing and rapidly worsening crime spree in Washington DC, for many months now. It's actually pretty hard to miss, seeing as how it's openly operating out of large, highly visible establishment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is barely bothering to disguise even its most blatantly unlawful activities, and is quite actively extending it's tentacles across the entire country. Only the most willfully blind fool could miss it.

  • On the post: Were A Few Random DEI Programs Worth Killing Democracy?

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2025 @ 02:51pm

    This is a useless argument, because the reality is this language-policing game has just one actual rule, a very simple rule: "Heads; the 'conservatives' win. Tails; the 'liberals' lose." It's very sad when progressive-minded people let themselves be suckered into that game -- even sadder when they referee even more harshly. But when even MAGA apologists chime in to support that nonsense (as they inevitably do, they can't help it) it merely highlights that this kind of facile, wishful-thinking nonsense is indeed, almost invariably, just another iteration of language-policing bullshit.

  • On the post: Justice Jackson Correctly Defines The John Roberts Supreme Court As The Calvinball Court

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2025 @ 01:56pm

    What is it good for, anyways?

    Of course, the whole point of the legal system (including the American constitution) is that it's very much the exact opposite of Calvinball. Justice Jackson's calling out of the current SCOTUS modus operandi as politically aligned, judicial "Calvinball" is essentially an open acknowledgment -- from the Supreme Court bench -- that the Supreme Court has become in practice a illegitimate legal body, little more than a purely political, kangaroo Court.

  • On the post: Privacy‑Preserving Age Verification Falls Apart On Contact With Reality

    BernardoVerda ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2025 @ 01:18pm

    As you yourself regularly demonstrate, posts to this forum are not barred on the basis of mere stupidity, no matter how utterly inane those posts may be.

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