Month: February 2023

Categories
Gun Crime Gun Nuts

Kyle Rittenhouse Facing Massive Financial Lawsuit From Victim He Shot In Kenosha

Though he was found not guilty for the murder of two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin back in 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse is now facing having to pay a massive financial settlement to a man he shot who survived and claims he is owed money for what he went through as a result of the attack.

Fox News reports that Gaige Grosskreutz is seeking economic losses, “damages for emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and other pain and suffering on all claims,” and punitive damages.

“Astonishingly, the Kenosha Police Department, Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department, their supervising officials and police officers, and law enforcement officers from surrounding communities did not treat Defendant Rittenhouse or any of the other armed individuals patrolling the streets as a threat to the safety of themselves or the citizens they were sworn to protect,” states the lawsuit, which was obtained by Fox News Digital.

“Instead, the law enforcement Defendants deputized these armed individuals, conspired with them, and ratified their actions by letting them patrol the streets, armed with deadly weapons, to mete out justice as they saw fit,'” said the lawsuit filed Feb. 14 by attorneys Kimberley Motley of Motley Legal Services and E. Milo Schwab of Ascend Counsel.

Rittenhouse also shot two other men, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, both of whom died.

At a trial held after the shootings, Rittenhouse claimed he acted in self-defense and was acquitted of homicide charges.

Asked about the new lawsuit, Rittenhouse said he’s ready “prove my innocence again,” but claimed it would come with a large price tag, an apparent attempt to get other to pay his legal expenses. He added:

“I guess it came as a shock to why he’s filing a lawsuit because he admitted that he pointed a gun in my face and that he chased me down.”

Grosskreutz, however, claims he “approached with his hands in the air to try to ease the situation and stop the killing.”

 

Categories
Donald Trump Viral Video

Pete Buttigieg Has The Perfect Antidote To Trump’s Bullsh*t – And His Response Has Gone Viral

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has gone viral with comments he made in response to criticism from failed former president Donald Trump, and he’s also drawing praise for perfectly countering the lies and bullshit the disgraced ex-president made during his visit to the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on Thursday.

The back and forth between Buttigieg and Trump began when the one-term, twice-impeached former president was asked about his administration “pulling back rail regulations” which may have contributed to the derailment.

As he often does, Trump insisted, “I had nothing to do with it.” But the facts suggest otherwise, as Newsweek reports:

Speaking to investigative news outlet The Lever, Steven Ditmeyer, a former top official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said the “severity” of the accident was likely increased by the lack of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic (ECP) brakes.

A rule was passed under President Barack Obama that made it a requirement for trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes, but this was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.

That led a reporter to ask Buttigieg about what Trump said when the Transportation Secretary was in East Palestine:

“You mentioned the national political figures decided to get involved, it sounds like you’re talking about Trump. And then you said, ‘I need your help.’ How can he help?”

Buttigieg responded:

“Well, one thing he could do is express support for reversing the deregulation that happened on his watch. I heard him say he had ‘nothing to do with it,’ even though it was in his administration. So if he had nothing to do with it, and they did it in his administration against his will, maybe he could come out and say that, that he supports us moving in a different direction.”

The secretary continued:

“We’re not afraid to own our policies when it comes to raising the bar on regulation. And I’ve got to think that him indicating that this is something that everybody ,no matter how much you disagree on politics and presidential campaigns, can get behind – higher fines, tougher regulations on safety, Congress on tying our hands on breaking rules, all the other things that go with it that’d be a nice thing for him to do.”

In just 24 hours time, the video of Buttigieg’s remarks has been viewed nearly 2 million times, leading HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte to note:

“Never really understood why Republicans think picking fights with him is a good idea. He is hands down the Biden administration’s best communicator, he takes apart the criticism, turns them back on the critics, and does it all without sounding mad.”

Donald Trump fucked around and Pete Buttigieg helped him find out what a mistake that was.

Categories
GOP Social Media WTF?!

Lauren Boebert Walks Into A Massive Self-Own When She Tries To Give Americans A Civics Lesson

If you thought you’d seen and heard all of the laughable ignorance that can possibly come from Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, she outdid herself today, and it resulted in one of the most humiliating (and hilarious) self-owns you’ll ever encounter.

For some reason, Boebert decided that she’d offer a lesson in civics to everyone on Twitter, posting this:

“This is your daily reminder that America is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.”

Is Boebert right? Nope.

Yes, we are indeed a Constitutional Republic, but if we weren’t also a democracy, then what would be the point of the republic?

As the Washington Post rightly noted in a 2015 article:

The United States is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it’s only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy.

[…]

To be sure, in addition to being a representative democracy, the United States is also a constitutional democracy, in which courts restrain in some measure the democratic will. And the United States is therefore also a constitutional republic. Indeed, the United States might be labeled a constitutional federal representative democracy. But where one word is used, with all the oversimplification that this necessary entails, “democracy” and “republic” both work. Indeed, since direct democracy — again, a government in which all or most laws are made by direct popular vote — would be impractical given the number and complexity of laws that pretty much any state or national government is expected to enact, it’s unsurprising that the qualifier “representative” would often be omitted. Practically speaking, representative democracy is the only democracy that’s around at any state or national level.

Long story short: The United States is a republic governed by the Constitution, but it’s also a democracy because we elect those who represent us to make the laws by which we’re all governed.

So Boebert is wrong yet again, which isn’t surprising when you consider that she needed multiple attempts before she passed the GED high school equivalency exam.

Twitter users couldn’t resist reminding the Colorado Republican that she had once again managed to prove her own ignorance.

https://twitter.com/XandraCarre/status/1628805320700198912?s=20

Categories
Donald Trump QAnon WTF?!

QAnon Members Angry With Trump For Eating McDonald’s Because ‘They Use Human Meat In Their Burgers’

During his visit to East Palestine, Ohio, disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached ex-president Donald Trump decided to stop by a local McDonalds, where he bragged that he probably knew the menu better than the people who worked there.

As Newsweek reports:

Trump told employees that he knew what was on the restaurant’s menu “better” than they did on Wednesday while visiting a McDonald’s in the eastern Ohio village, near the site of a toxic train derailment earlier this month.

A clip of the moment captured on video and shared to Twitter by The Recount had been seen more than a million times as of Wednesday evening.

“What’s your specialty today? Hello everybody. That’s a nice, beautiful group of people.
“So, I know this menu better than you do. I probably know it better than anybody in here.”

However, some of Trump’s most ardent constituents in the QAnon movement were not happy with the Donald being at a McDonald’s because they claim the fast food chain uses “human meat” in their hamburgers.

Take a look at some of the madness that circulated on social media:

That led to endless mockery of the QAnon nuts.

 

Categories
Supreme Court

Elena Kagan Mops The Floor With Brett Kavanaugh In SCOTUS Ruling

A ruling just released from the U.S. Supreme Court features a hilarious footnote in which Justice Elena Kagan uses logic and reason to remind fellow Justice Brett “I like beer!” Kavanaugh that the law applies to everyone, including large corporations who try to get out of paying their employees.

Mark Joseph Stern of Slate caught the dustup between Kagan and Kavanaugh in a case where Kagan was in the majority on an opinion involving overtime pay for a man who worked 84 hours a week but was denied overtime by his employer.

The case is Helix Energy Solutions v. Hewitt. In it, Michael Hewitt alleged that he often worked as much as 84 hours a week on an offshore oil platform owned by Helix but was only paid a set amount for weekly work, not hourly, even though he clearly exceeded 40 hours work in a week, meaning he was entitled to overtime.

Kavanaugh, along with Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, were in the minority, ruling that Hewitt wasn’t entitled to receive overtime for his work. Kavanaugh also authored the dissenting opinion.

That led Kagan to make the following notation in the footnotes of the majority opinion, clearly aiming her comments at the three justices who had ruled against Hewitt, especially Kavanaugh since he was the author:

“The dissent… tries just to power past the regulatory text. The dissent reasons that because Hewitt received more than $455 for a day’s work, he must have been paid on a salary basis. That is a non-sequitur to end all non-sequiturs. Hewitt’s high daily pay ensured that the HCE rule’s salary-level requirement would not have prevented his exemption: $963 (per day) is indeed more than $455 (per week).”

In another footnote to the majority opinion, Kagan also wrote that Helix had made an argument in their filing before the Supreme Court they failed to make in lower court filings, which would normally mean the high court wouldn’t even consider it in their ruling, and yet Kavanaugh saw fit to “opine on it anyway” in his dissent.