bhull242 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Intelligence Assessment Shows Trump Admin’s Venezuelan Gang War Claims Are Lies

    bhull242 ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2025 @ 04:41pm

    That law was repealed in 1920. FDR couldn’t have cited it.

  • On the post: Elon Musk Pretends He’s Leaving The Job He Supposedly Doesn’t Have To Not Return To The Job He Supposedly Never Left

    bhull242 ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2025 @ 04:22pm

    Businesses have hired consultants to jump start their operations for many years.
    Government is not a business.
    For some reason, applying this same concept to a government department stupifies you.
    Because, aside from the IRS, the point of a government department/agency is not to make money. By contrast, the sole purpose of a business is to make money.

  • On the post: When Good People Make A Mistake They Try To Fix It; If They Don’t, They’re Not Good People

    bhull242 ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2025 @ 02:20pm

    I fail to see how this proves otherwise.

  • On the post: The Reckoning At The Town Hall

    bhull242 ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2025 @ 03:56pm

    Did it ever occur to you that both sides of the aisle purposely created this disaster and that this Frankenstein monster is a direct result?
    Only one side is deliberately breaking the system and causing problems as a result. The system—for all its flaws—still worked better than what we have now, so it is disingenuous to blame the current disaster on anyone’s work in past administrations.
    40+ years of neoliberalism that has destroyed the American worker, sent all good paying jobs overseas, and destroyed the unions.
    That is an entirely separate and unrelated issue. Also, it was conservatives destroying unions, not neoliberalism, and the jobs sent overseas weren’t the “good-paying” ones so much as the labor-intensive ones.

  • On the post: Trump Continues Tanking Civil Rights In Hopes Of Scoring A First-Round Autocracy In The Next Election

    bhull242 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2025 @ 05:55pm

    1. At least one person who was detained was a U.S. citizen and, thus, not here illegally. His civil rights were violated.
    2. A nonzero number of people were here on a green card and, thus, are legal residents who can’t be deported so easily. Some of their civil rights were also violated.
    3. Believe it or not, but even undocumented immigrants here unlawfully have some civil rights, including a right to a hearing. Just because they don’t have all the same rights as those here legally doesn’t mean that they have no rights at all. Those rights were also violated.
    4. People seeking asylum also have civil rights which were being violated.
    5. Not even you could possibly believe that the people being deported includes 100% of all illegal immigrants in the country. Plenty of them are still here.
    Seriously, this is utter nonsense even for you.

  • On the post: Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds

    bhull242 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2025 @ 05:44pm

    That’s not an answer, and why did you even bother finding that out?

  • On the post: The Consequences Of An RFK Jr. HHS Appointment Are Smacking Our Children In The Face

    bhull242 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2025 @ 05:39pm

    “Everyone else” are those who are not subtards who think drinking bleach will cure indigestion. The population worth caring about would go on just fine, and in the end, better when the dead weight is cut off from it.
    You are aware that a) their children don’t necessarily share their parents’ views, b) children have no say whatsoever in whether to get vaccinated, and c) some of the infected are legitimately unable to get vaccinated because of other health issues, like allergies or a weak immune system, or for whom the vaccine is ineffective (like having a compromised immune system). Lumping all of those who caught the measles into one group is vastly oversimplifying matters.
    But to a shitlib, what really matters is we were CIIIIIIIIIVVVVVVVIIIIILLLLLLL.
    This isn’t even about civility. This is about recognizing nuance as a thing that exists. Not everyone who got the measles was unvaccinated by choice (with a few of them even having been vaccinated), and it’s not like vaccine-denialism has ever been exclusive to the right to begin with, so it makes no sense to infer anything about everyone who was infected. Go ahead and insult the parents of the kids who weren’t vaccinated despite having no legitimate reason not to vaccinated them along with the adults who chose to not get vaccinated. Go ahead and insult the MAGAts, too. That just doesn’t justify ridiculing all of the victims of the measles outbreak, many of whom had no say in whether they were vaccinated or not, let alone saying we’re better off without them.

  • On the post: What Is It, Exactly, That Being An American Means to You?

    bhull242 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2025 @ 05:08pm

    Where were you when the USA launched its illegal war of aggression on the people of Afghanistan?
    Lots of people were protesting it, but that’s also misstating what actually happened. Suffice to say that, while we weren’t exactly heroic at the time, it’s nowhere near the one-sided slaughter you portray it as.
    Why did you keep silent when your country murdered half a million innocent women and children out of sheer bloodlust?
    Why do you assume people kept silent? Just because you, personally, didn’t hear it doesn’t mean they were quiet about it.
    Why did you cheer on the murder of the hero Osama bin Laden by the terrorist group called SEAL team 6?
    Osama bin Laden killed numerous civilians and planned to kill more. He was no hero. Also, whether or not you agree with their goals or their methods, SEAL team 6 was a military group, not a terrorist group. Not every group that kills people unjustly is a terrorist group. (And before you try to accuse me of only labeling non-white groups as terrorists, there are a number of terrorist groups that have been white or included a substantial number of white people, such as Greenpeace and some white supremacist groups.)
    You couldn’t care less about these human beings slaughtered by your government.
    You couldn’t care less about the human beings slaughtered by the Taliban or al Qaeda. /hs Do you see the problem with your reasoning? How about you don’t assume what other people think and feel based on perceived silence about your preferred issue?

  • On the post: What Is It, Exactly, That Being An American Means to You?

    bhull242 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2025 @ 04:56pm

    You’ve just been refusing to look into the stories of the marginalized and taken the government-approved public school history books say it is.
    The “government-approved public school history books” have a lot to say about those stories, and there’s nowhere near as much sugar-coating in them as you seem to think. At least not the ones in my district. You also assume a lot when accusing all of us of not looking into them ourselves. Maybe don’t accuse an entire country like that.
    It’s only now the cameras are rolling while it’s happening so no one can pretend it’s just anti-American propaganda.
    I mean, a lot of people still do, but it’s not like we always did that.
    The real question is whether you want better, or just a return to “the good old days.” And many of you have already been clear you demand the latter.
    Speak for yourself, because most of the people you are addressing here don’t demand such a thing.

  • On the post: Lawsuit Filed Over The Bombing The Houthis Group Chat

    bhull242 ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2025 @ 02:52pm

    A reminder that the journalist who was included in the discussion explicitly said he was leaving out a number of things shared in the chat that would have been dangerous to leak. He was only sharing the parts he felt comfortable with sharing. That what we heard doesn’t include many details is entirely expected given this fact. It doesn’t mean more significant details were not in the conversation; we just aren’t privy to them.

  • On the post: But Their Signal Chats: Trump Officials Share War Plans With Journalist

    bhull242 ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2025 @ 12:54pm

    And the reason for those protocols is so that the deep state can listen into the conversation.
    No, it’s to ensure that messages don’t leak and that records will be available for access by the public later on through FOIA requests. There’s also no reason to believe that the deep state would have access via those protocols.
    It sounds like someone is upset that a secure system is being used to cut the NSA out of the picture!
    Why would you assume the NSA was kept out of the conversation? Why would you consider the NSA part of the deep state and no one else who was in the conversation? Also, the system wasn’t secure, which is why we even know about this whole mess in the first place.

  • On the post: But Their Signal Chats: Trump Officials Share War Plans With Journalist

    bhull242 ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2025 @ 12:48pm

    Assuming the deep state exists outside the President’s authority, it would not need a paper trail to thwart any decisions, and this completely ignores the fact that the record-keeping is so that the people can access the information through FOIA.

  • On the post: Trump’s Latest Weapon Against Critics: Destroying Their Lawyers

    bhull242 ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2025 @ 11:20am

    Earlier, you said:

    This already happened when Biden did it in 2021. You’re not issuing a threat that hasn’t already happened, and that we know for certain will of course happen again.
    When asked for exactly when and to whom it was done in 2021, your response is:
    It turns out that no republican law firms during the 2016/2020/2024 election cycles collaborated with the FBI to spy on democrat candidates, to get them illegally wiretapped, or used their security clearance to defraud the public.
    Basically, you tried to claim that it already happened the other way around, but when asked for examples, you deny that it happened and/or try to move the goalposts.

  • On the post: California’s A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups And Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly

    bhull242 ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2025 @ 10:59am

    “The government” in the abstract, not this particular administration.

  • On the post: DHS Buries Its Last Election Security Review Because With Trump In Charge, No One Cares About Election Integrity

    bhull242 ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2025 @ 09:58am

    I kinda like this silence…

    Surprisingly, most of the usual trolls seem to commenting less here. It’s nice not having to wade through the nonsense.

  • On the post: First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out Of Control

    bhull242 ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2025 @ 09:56am

    California’s AB-728 mandates age verification for anyone purchasing skin care products or cosmetics that contain certain chemicals like Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids. On the surface, this may seem harmless—who doesn’t want to ensure that minors are safe from harmful chemicals?
    [emphasis added] I’m sorry, but since when is Vitamin A a harmful chemical? And even alpha hydroxy acids are fairly safe. Sure, if you have too much of either, or if you have some pre-existing condition, then it can cause harm, but that applies to most things! I even looked it up, and the current consensus seems to be that the doses commonly used are safe for your skin, though alpha hydroxy acids can increase the chance of sunburns while the lotion is still on your skin, though this is reversible by simply not using the product while exposed to direct sunlight that is likely to cause sunburns in the first place. (And, I mean, most people know to use sunscreen—not body lotion or similar skincare products that aren’t specifically meant to prevent sunburns, specifically—when you’re going to be in the sun a lot, and sunscreen doesn’t use AHAs.)

  • On the post: Trump Claims Boycotting Tesla Is Illegal, Which It Very Much Is Not

    bhull242 ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2025 @ 09:42am

    That person was (at least mostly) agreeing with you.

  • On the post: The Elon DOGE Emperor Has No Clothes

    bhull242 ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2025 @ 02:09pm

    Musk is an advisor to the White House, not a DOGE employee.
    Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, you know. Moreover, the person in charge of an agency isn’t an employee of that agency; they’re the employer in that case.
    The young tech guys at DOGE received prior authorization from the President to access the red executive branch computer systems, […]
    Those computer systems don’t all belong to the executive branch, and Congress restricted access to those systems. The President doesn’t have the authority to grant that authorization.
    […] and they have Musk’s phone number.
    Even if I granted everything else, DOGE doesn’t have the authority to disclose that information to Musk.
    If the other executive branch employees don’t start doing their jobs immediately, […]
    The reason those employees aren’t doing their jobs is because Musk/DOGE tried to block them from doing so.

  • On the post: The Elon DOGE Emperor Has No Clothes

    bhull242 ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2025 @ 02:01pm

    Tell me you don’t know what free speech is without saying you don’t know what free speech is.

  • On the post: In A Monday Night Declaration, The White House Admits Musk And DOGE Violated The CFAA (Although They Might Not Realize It)

    bhull242 ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2025 @ 01:52pm

    The President of the United States has the authority to look into any system of the executive branch. He can therefore delegate employees to look into those computer systems, and report back on the waste, fraud, and useless government bureaucrats.
    Not if Congress doesn’t allow him to, which they haven’t.
    In the past, Techdirt has bemoaned regulatory capture. But now, Techdirt supports it,
    This has nothing to do with regulatory capture. If anything, giving Elon this much power is an example of regulatory capture, not a defense against it.
    under the theory that once hired, only the bureaucrats themselves can examine their own work,
    No, because certain members of Congress have oversight, and it’s not just their work but private citizens’ data being viewed here.

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