BootmanLA

FWIW I use NordVPN, which has both desktop and mobile versions, and which I've been very happy with. I use a paid version, but there's a free basic version as well (IIRC).

Vast majority my ass. Trump won by one of the smallest popular vote margins in the last 100+ years, his lying lies to the contrary not withstanding. Put another way, the margin of Biden's victory over Trump in 2020 was more than double the margin in 2024. So if that pathetic finish counts as "vast majority", what did Biden's finish counts as?

Today Terra Cotta Hitler refused to rule out military action to take Greenland and the Panama Canal if need be. I used to be fairly sure that something would stop that kind of crap - like the 25th Amendment - but nowadays I'm not so sure.

Whenever I get back to Wisconsin, you know you're the first person I'm contacting.

Apology accepted, and I'm sorry if I misinterpreted the following: It sounded to me (and again, I may be misreading this) that you mentioned a bunch of details about porn actors that people might wonder about, and then immediately said that the CoR is responsible for keeping that. I linked those two together, but you may not have intended that.

To clarify @Lucienblack88's generally excellent answer: Under the U.S. system of federalism, certain powers are solely the province of the federal government, certain things are outside the power of the federal government, and certain powers can be exercised by either state or federal officials. Each state has a constitution, outlining the specifics of its government, the rights its citizens enjoy under the state constitution, and so forth. Broadly speaking, a state may not restrict a right recognized under the US Constitution, but it may recognize a right that the US constitution does not. For instance, currently per the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage is a recognized right. Should the Court overturn that decision, that leaves the matter up to the states to decide. Prior to that recognition (in 2015), some states, like Massachusetts, had already decided that recognition of same-sex marriage was mandatory under its state constitution. Several other states' highest courts have ruled similarly. If the US Supreme Court were to rule that in fact the federal constitution does not guarantee the right to same-sex marriage, those state guarantees would still hold. Other states have legislatively adopted same-sex marriage while not necessarily enshrining a right to such marriages in the state's constitution. Again, if the Supreme Court were to overturn its previous holding, those states' same-sex marriages would still be valid and couples could continue to marry, but (in theory) the legislature could repeal that authorization (which might set up new legal challenges under that state's constitution. Many states had, between 2004 and the 2015 Supreme Court decision, adopted constitutional bans on same-sex marriage (typically by limiting it to one man and one woman, which thus also bans any form of poly marriage, should such be proposed). Those bans were struck down by the 2015 decision. Since then, some states, but not many, have repealed their constitutional bans. In the others, if the Supreme Court were to reverse itself, those bans would "kick back in", although there's broad agreement that it (probably) wouldn't invalidate any existing marriages. Finally: because the federal government can require states to do certain things, under limited circumstances, in theory a more progressive Congress and president could pass a law mandating the recognition of same-sex marriages. However, the federal power to legislate is limited to certain "enumerated" topics (for example, to appropriate funds, to declare war, to regulate interstate commerce, and so on), and they'd have to assert one of those enumerated powers in the process. This Court has been a little more skeptical of such powers than it was in, say, the 50's, 60's and 70's. The general fail-safe way to pass such legislation is to tie federal money to it - ie requiring states to recognize SSM in order to get 100% of their medicaid matching funds, for instance. That's how we got a de facto national drinking age of 21 - the feds withheld a portion of highway construction and maintenance funds from any state that refused to adopt that drinking age. Eventually they all complied. So that's the interaction of federal and state law, in a (large) nutshell, regarding what happens when our Supreme Court rescinds its recognition of a right it previously recognized under the US constitution.

If we were closer I'd be happy to connect, though I don't drink (just a personal preference). But there are other places to meet up and have a conversation.

Not all prison sex is some dominant inmate raping a submissive one. Some guys are looking to get off but aren't going to force it on anyone else. Life isn't a porn movie.

It's fine that you're aware. However, your statement that the CoR was required to keep up with changes of address, contact info, etc. was incorrect, and for the benefit of those here who do NOT know what the regulations require, I wanted the accurate information on the record. In other words, it wasn't targeting you, but the bad information.

The general mechanism is what's called a PAC (Political Action Committee). PACs can be controlled by and affiliated with a campaign, or they can be independent. So I could, for example, create a PAC dedicated to supporting X candidate and/or defeating Y candidate, and as long as I don't coordinate at all with X or Y, I'm not subject to the same limitations as the actual campaign of the candidate. A PAC affiliated with a particular candidate is a little different. So, for example, the Speaker of the House can have a PAC (call it "SpeakerPAC") and he can solicit major donations to that PAC, then dole out the proceeds to his allies in the House who need more support. There are limits on PAC donations (no more than Z amount per election cycle from a particular PAC to a particular candidate), but they're larger, in some cases, than individual contribution limits directly to the campaign. There are also "issue" campaigns and PACs, which support or oppose issues on the ballot (constitutional amendments, initiatives by the voters, referendums proposed by the legislature, etc.). There's a whole set of rules about those, too. And yes, people can make contributions to recognized political parties, which can then also support candidates directly as well as make independent, non-coordinated expenditures on their behalf. At least, in theory they're non-coordinated. It's very difficult to prove coordination, just as it's difficult to prove a conspiracy in criminal law, so in reality, as long as they're reasonably careful there's little chance of getting caught working directly with the candidate. And since the regulatory body that governs campaign contributions and spending - the Federal Election Commission - is by law evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, it's very difficult to get them to act in any but the most egregious cases.

Not specifically, no. The Declaration of Independence (which is not, in any sense, "law" in the United States) does say that among our inalienable rights are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". But again, that's not law. In any event, "freedom" would require a lot of interpretation by the courts. Does "freedom" encompass the right to steal? To maim or kill? To have sex with minors? While the Constitution is broadly written, in many places, particularly in the Bill of Rights, it doesn't recognize anything nearly so broad as general "freedom".

The custodian of records is only responsible for the records related to the film(s) produced by that particular studio, and that doesn't include "what happened to" any of the performers. Basically, they need to have the legal name, address of record as of the time of the filming, proof of age, and (I believe) proof that the person can legally work here, whether it's proof of citizenship, copy of a green card, or whatever. No doubt studios that want to use a particular performer again will try to keep up with what he's doing, and where he's living, but there's no requirement that they do so. I think Raging Stallion liked having a "stable" of regular performers they could call on when they needed a particular "type" for an upcoming scene, which may explain why they kept more detailed records than were actually required by law.

A suggestion: if you're sexually active enough, you might see if you can get in to see a specialist in infectious diseases, or at least a local clinic that specializes in treating STIs. Both are much more likely to understand DoxyPEP and how to adequately prescribe it than many PCPs. I'm lucky in that my HIV doctor *is* my PCP, and as such, while I'm not especially sexually active, I wanted to be sure I had protection on hand for when I might need it. He was happy to prescribe enough to cover several "encounters", and told me that if/when I'd exhausted that, to let him know and he would send in a new prescription.

I'm not saying there isn't "dark money" (as a general concept) trying to change public opinion on things that may go before the Court. I'm saying that "dark money" is generally a term of art in politics referring specifically to political donations (whether for an issue on the ballot, or for/against a candidate) the source of which is not publicly revealed. Certainly money from Heritage and Leo is used to bolster conservative judges' profiles. That money pays for lots of things like conferences where conservative donors mingle with conservative judges; they provide scholarships to conservative students at elite law schools, and they help funnel those students into clerkships with conservative judges and justices. And in the sense we don't know where all of Heritage's money comes from, it's "dark money" in a sense. But the same could be said about donations to environmental groups who don't reveal their donor lists. Or pro-choice groups. It's been long settled law that organizations, in general, don't have to reveal their funding sources, or their membership rosters. What's changed about that, in the last several decades, is that electoral law - again, for both candidates and for issues on the ballot - used to be a recognized exception to that; if you wanted to influence an election, you had to at least reveal your funding. The decision Citizens United v. FEC, from just over 15 years ago, laid waste to that concept, allowing for anonymous funding of issue ads in general, and campaign ads as long as they were independent of the candidate in question.

That was Gorsuch, not Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh actually dissented in that case (Bostick v. Clayton County), ie he voted that the protections "on account of sex" did not extend to sexual orientation or identity. The votes in favor in the Bostick case were Gorsuch, Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. That much is clear in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. The problem that the Court (and it was a unanimous ruling, so not a conservative v. liberal split) found that individual states could not declare someone ineligible for office; that Congress, in fact, had to pass legislation implementing that provision. (To their credit, Congress has, in fact, passed such legislation, but the trigger is conviction of one of several offenses that constitute insurrection (as a concept, not a specific legal term). And Trump has yet to be convicted of any such offense, and is unlikely to, given his re-election. Prohibition was a completely separate issue. The US passed a constitutional amendment (the Eighteenth) which specifically prohibited the production, transportation, or sale of alcohol within the US. One can argue it took away a freedom, but it did so in a perfectly legal way. Luckily, a dozen years later the amendment was repealed (the only amendment, to date, to be repealed). Actually, in recent decades, election by a plurality without a majority (ie the most votes, but not over 50%) has become a regular thing. Clinton did not win a majority either election; Bush II did not win a majority in his first election; and Trump, of course, did not win a majority in either of his elections. That's more of a result of third-party candidates keeping either party from getting a majority than anything else, plus the fact that we do not have any provisions for a runoff (the way most states do for offices like governor, etc.). Trump's 49.7% is actually higher than Clinton's first election in 1992 or his second election in 1996. No one claims Clinton won with "minority rule".

The problem is that Roberts + the liberal wing is only four votes. Alito and Thomas are guaranteed votes to overturn Obergefell. Kavanaugh is somewhere around a 90% likely yes. Gorsuch is kind of a wild card; his views on textualism suggest if he could find any textual support for a right to same-sex marriage in the constitution, he'd vote to uphold it (as when he wrote the opinion establishing orientation/identity protections in employment, by finding textual support in the statute in question). The problem is that there's really nothing about marriage, one way or the other, in the Constitution, and while I believe the right exists, it's not for textual reasons (because I'm not a strict textualist). Barrett is also a wild card on this issue. Roberts, as he wrote in his initial dissent, doesn't believe that the right exists; but he's less willing than his ideological compadres to overturn precedent for the sake of overturning it. The question is whether he could keep Gorsuch and/or Barrett on that side. I'm not hopeful that he could.

Technically, I don't think any of the justices on the Court ever said, in confirmation hearings, that they would not revisit or overturn Roe. Saying that would be just as inappropriate as saying they would vote to decide any other, particular case in a certain way. It's true that they all acknowledged that Roe (and Casey) were the law of the land. But that is not the same thing as saying that they believe those cases were decided correctly, or that they do not think the cases should be revisited. There is no "dark money" being given to the justices, either. "Dark money" has a specific meaning, and it refers to money contributed to an election or issue campaign the source of which is not disclosed to the public. Justices are not elected at all (nor are any federal judges), so "dark money" by definition doesn't enter the picture. The possible exception might be PR campaigns designed to shore up support for a nominee who's facing opposition in confirmation, but that money doesn't go to the nominee. The ethical issue about justices accepting gifts (in particular, Clarence Thomas, who I don't think has ever paid for anything for himself in his entire life) and not disclosing those gifts. But that's not the same thing as dark money, and it's more specifically a problem for one particular justice, not the right wing of the Court as a whole. There's been no evidence that Gorsuch or Barrett or Roberts has any history of accepting expensive gifts at all, much less not declaring them. None of this is to defend the judicial decisions of the right wing of the Court, which are (often) reprehensible in my view. But correctly identifying the problem is important.

I think there are two potential issues here, and the OP (I *think*) is talking about the first one. In the US, at least, Doxycycline is still a prescription-only item. That means someone with prescribing authority (which includes all Medical Doctors (MDs) as well as Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners, in some states. But if your regular doctor is unwilling to prescribe a larger supply than a single dose, it may be time to seek another doctor. Discussing your sex life with him - or at least conveying that "one dose at a time" doesn't work for you - might prompt a bit of a change. The second issue , as @rawfuckr suggested, is cost, although Doxycycline is a pretty cheap generic antibiotic, having been around for decades. I'm pretty sure this is NOT the issue that @BlkBreeder69 was describing; but if it's relevant for anyone, there are almost always coupon and similar services from places like GoodRX that will bring the cost down even further.

If your account disappeared, presumably it's for violating the rules posted here, I'd imagine it's also a violation of the rules to create a new account in an attempt to get around being banned, but I couldn't speak directly to that.

If you're bored I suspect that's a symptom of being intellectually challenged. In any event, no, I don't intend to "take this somewhere else".

I suppose one might say that, if one ignores the 34 felony convictions for fraud, the massive civil fraud judgments against him, the massive defamation judgments against him, his attempt to forcibly stay in office by having a mob intimidate Congress into not certifying the election results, the thousands of businesses he harmed with his "business" tactics of refusing to pay his bills until they settled for pennies on the dollar, the massive fraud that was Trump University, his milking the Secret Service budget to float his resorts and golf clubs, his well-documented giant tax fraud dating back to before his father's death.... need I go on? This isn't to defend the warmonger neocons, who were itching for a chance to make their mark in the Middle East and screwed the pooch (and destroyed a surplus that was building at the time). But I don't see anything particularly good that came out of the last Trump term and this one promises to be much worse. As for not rolling back civil rights for LGBT people, especially the trans community, that's already in the works. You can bet your bottom dollar that the moment his team takes power, they're going to change the US government position on all the trans laws that have been passed in red states in recent years, supporting the states that have done so. Given that it was his appointees on the Supreme Court who overturned Roe and Casey, the idea that they would "not roll back any civil rights" is laughable. They already have, they're publicly stated they plan to do more, and they've got a court system already stacked with Trumpanzee judges and a bunch of appellate vacancies to fill as soon as he gets in.

Perhaps you have a different understanding of what "civilization" means. Civilization, as understood by historians, sociologists, and pretty much all social science fields, refers to the development of permanent dwelling places - the establishment of a city, or (in Latin) a civitas - a group of people living together who agree to be bound by basic rules of behavior (as opposed to nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers). Essentially the defining moment of civilization is generally held to be the introduction of agriculture - the raising of food as opposed to hunting and gathering it - which makes it possible to remain in a single place. Even then, civilizations could be (and often were) exceptionally tribal, but that doesn't mean individual tribes did not accept outsiders as members, either. It varied. I think this is a false dichotomy. There are aspects of human existence which lend themselves to hierarchy; there are aspects that lend themselves to democracy; and there are aspects that ought to be off-limits to both. The allowance of free speech and freedom of (and from) religion, for example, should be neither hierarchical nor democratic; they're recognition that certain things are beyond the democratic process and not governed by who's at the top of the pyramid. I think that in a healthy, first-world kind of place - one with the resources to address nearly any problem that exists, if we only had the willpower - that we should do so. Sadly, there are too many people in this society who think that if solving those problems means that someone who has managed to amass $200 billion might have to give up a good chunk of that, then the problem is not in fact capable of being solved.

I agree. It's when people angrily declare the equivalent of "I'm not a MAMMAL, I'm a human!" (but in "deviance from the sexual behavior/identity standard" terms) that I roll my eyes.

How about the group "humans"? Is that too broad for people because it doesn't drill down specifically to "male"? Categories work hierarchically. In biology, we recognize kingdoms (Animalia), phyla (Chordata), classes (Mammalia), orders (primates), families (Hominidae), genera (Homo) and species (sapiens), but we, as humans, are members of each group above that (along with a lot of non-human things). Just because you don't see any connection with the T or Q parts of that grouping doesn't mean that, at some level, we're all grouped into that category by people outside of it. When I hear people get snitty and say that they're not "LGBTQ" because they're just gay (or worse, they're men who have sex with men but they're not any of those "letters", I have to wonder what kind of drugs they're taking that lets them experience that kind of cognitive dissonance.

This statement is false. There is no record of a pardon for Neil Bush, nor was Neil ever charged with a federal crime (perhaps he should have been, but that's another story). Esquire has retracted the story in which it made this allegation - something other news outlets picked up and covered, also without doing their own research.