OT - The USA Today

[Coolbreeze44]

We have a lot of fun on this forum debating all things Timberwolves basketball. I've made thousands of posts agreeing - disagreeing - informing - and editorializing. I wish the world we live in could more closely mimic the light hearted time we have on this board. But this post will be the most important I've ever written in this space, and I hope you will take the time to read it.

I will gladly clarify anything written here, but from my standpoint this will not be a back and forth debate. I just feel it's important at this time I take a stand, and hopefully this will get some of you to think more critically about the monumental political events taking place in our new country.

United States of America - 1776-2021 RIP

We had a good run, 225 years is a long time and the duration is similar in time to other great nations/empires over the course of history. Our rise and fall as a great nation has followed a familiar arc of powerful regimes of the past. It's amazing to realize this is happening in our lifetimes, but I guess it really shouldn't be too surprising. Eventually even great nations become corrupt and end up swallowing themselves under it.

So why is it over? Over the last 5 years I've spent a ton of time reading, watching, and researching the events which have unfolded. I consider myself informed but certainly not an expert. Eventually a lot of books will be written on what really happened to our republic, and I look forward to gaining as much education as possible. I'm a conservative but not a far right activist or conspiracy theorist.

I was watching the US vs Canada in the World Junior hockey tournament the other night as most of you were watching the Wolves game live. At the same time I was following the results of the Georgia Senate runoff elections. As the outcomes of each event came into focus I was struck by a sobering thought. I believe I was witnessing the last time the USA would compete athletically as a truly free nation. The magnitude of that thought has consumed me for the past 36 hours.

It's extremely obvious to me the presidential election on 11/3 was stolen. And I believe the same thing happened Tuesday night in Georgia. Forces both foreign and domestic conspired to pull this off. And though you are seeing the end result currently, this has been a long term process and evolution over several decades.

I invite you to look up the soviet communistic goal document of 1963. When you read through the goals and objectives you should be amazed at how many have actually been realized today. Not by the soviets of course, but by communist China. The ones that really stick out to me:

1) Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. (Check)

2) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their
activities violate civil rights. (Check)

3) Get control of the schools and bring propaganda to the curriculums. (Check)

4) Infiltrate the press. (Big time Check)

5) Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. (Check)

6) Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and
emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." (Happening)

7). Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state. (Check)

8) Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern
for the "common man." (Happening)

9) Support any socialist movement. (Check)

10) Infiltrate and gain control of big business. (Check)

11) Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. (Happening)

This represents about 25% of the paper, and again I encourage you to look it up if interested.

At the core of my beliefs is once you don't have free and fair elections, you really don't have a democracy. The republic is gone. With the compromised democrats now in charge, they and there communist influencers have free reign to shape the new America. The borders will be opened. The Supreme Court will become another branch of the democratic government and will hold 16 - 25 members. Government control and taxes will rise significantly. Tens of millions of babies will continue to be killed every year, some right up until birth. Elections may become a thing of the past, or they will be so wired no one will bother to vote. Minorities will get more financial breaks and incentives ( a good thing if you fall into that category). More recreational drugs will be legalized. The likelihood of civil war increases. Their will be no more free press, you can already see the censorship and filtering from big Tech, and of course the folly of the mainstream media. We are no longer going to know what is truly going on, just like our fellow humans in all those communist and dictator led countries.

Does the above sound like the same country you have grown up with and hopefully love? Like I said earlier very sobering indeed.

[AbeVigodaLive]

I'm at a loss.



I don't know if the end of the U.S. is upon us... but I am 100% certain the grim reaper is creating an account for this forum as I type this.

We've seen inklings of this before... and I warned you guys against letting it take over the forum... yet here we are. What a fucking shame.

It's been a good run. This place was great for basketball talk.




[Note: This stuff has NO PLACE here. Or at least I didn't think it did. I highly suggest the OP deletes it or somebody else does. Or even just move it to the General Discussion forum or something. Otherwise... well... I've already told you where we're headed.]

[Coolbreeze44]

I'm at a loss.



I don't know if the end of the U.S. is upon us... but I am 100% certain the grim reaper is creating an account for this forum as I type this.

We've seen inklings of this before... and I warned you guys against letting it take over the forum... yet here we are. What a fucking shame.

It's been a good run. This place was great for basketball talk.




[Note: This stuff has NO PLACE here. Or at least I didn't think it did. I highly suggest the OP deletes it or somebody else does. Or even just move it to the General Discussion forum or something. Otherwise... well... I've already told you where we're headed.]

I signaled it was an off topic thread. You're free to read what you please, and I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

[AbeVigodaLive]

I'm at a loss.



I don't know if the end of the U.S. is upon us... but I am 100% certain the grim reaper is creating an account for this forum as I type this.

We've seen inklings of this before... and I warned you guys against letting it take over the forum... yet here we are. What a fucking shame.

It's been a good run. This place was great for basketball talk.




[Note: This stuff has NO PLACE here. Or at least I didn't think it did. I highly suggest the OP deletes it or somebody else does. Or even just move it to the General Discussion forum or something. Otherwise... well... I've already told you where we're headed.]

I signaled it was an off topic thread. You're free to read what you please, and I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

To be fair... I stopped after the incendiary stuff got too much. Off Topic or not... there are places for this here other than the Basketball forum.

Again... just remember everybody... AbeVigodaLive warned y'all this was gonna happen.

[BloopOracle]

I'm with Abe on this one, I really don't want political stuff to sour this board, the Wolves already bring enough negativity.

[FNG]

Could Rondae Hollins-Jefferson help with this issue?

[SameOldNudityDrew]

I read your whole post Cool.

And I think I can imagine how you feel. If a presidential election or senatorial elections were fraudulently decided, it wouldn't only feel like the majority was cheated out of their power, but that the county itself had lost something even more valuable--the democratic principle of equality, of one person, one vote. It would be hard to imagine the country ever recovering from it.

If you do feel that way, in a sense, that makes me feel good because it means we both agree on the principle of democracy. That's something we have in common as Americans, and I think we've spent too much time focusing on our difference in recent years and not enough time talking about the things we have in common.

But what if it's not true that the elections were fraudulent? In that case, those who would deny the legitimacy of that vote would be doing the same thing they fear others are doing to them--stealing the election from the rightful majority and more fundamentally, undermining democracy for us all.

So it's a very serious thing to deny the integrity of an election and to try to overturn it because if a person who does so is wrong, they're actually doing the very thing they fear others are doing to them. In other words, if you are wrong about the election being stolen and deny its legitimacy, all of the feelings that you have for those you accuse of stealing the election are feelings that others should rightfully have about you. However dangerous and un-American you think they are, that's actually what you would be.

So with that in mind, when you think about the fact that Trump's lawyers challenged these elections in over 60 lawsuits and essentially lost in all of them because they had no actual evidence, does that give you pause? Or think about Attorney General Bill Barr--who was as big a Trump defender as there was. Barr was privy to more information about the election than anyone as head of the Justice Department, and after looking at all the evidence he declared that there was no evidence of fraud and resigned because Trump refused to accept the truth. Does that make you wonder whether you may be wrong? Or think about Georgia, where the people running the election are almost all Republicans who have insisted there was no fraud at all. Does that make you wonder at all whether or not you might be wrong that these elections were stolen?

Or think about the sheer impossibility of the plot you are describing. One that involves, as you say, "foreign and domestic" conspirators that somehow planned for "several decades" to overturn Trump's election in 2020. Why not overturn his election in 2016 in the first place? And how did they even know Trump would be President several decades ago?

Here's where you get into something called the Soviet Communistic Goal Document of 1963 that is somehow the current blueprint for communist China as evidenced by all sorts of generic observations. Where is this document and have historians verified its authenticity? Frankly, this sounds exactly like baseless conspiracy theory, which is what you say you're not into.

I sympathize with your feelings of betrayal, Cool, specifically because the evidence clearly shows these elections weren't rigged. To me, it is the people these days who deny the legitimacy of this election and who have actively tried to overturn it who are actually the ones undermining the will of the majority and our democracy. They may think they're doing the right thing and defending democracy, but if they're wrong, which the facts clearly show they are, they're actually the ones undermining it.

It's ironic. We both believe in the principle of democracy. We both believe someone is trying to undercut it. But you believe it is a decades-old international communist conspiracy, and I believe it is the people who believe that conspiracy theory and thus have mistakenly tried to overturn a legitimate election.

When you think about all of the court cases that failed due to a lack of evidence; when you think about the fact that many of the judges who threw those cases out were actually Republican- and even Trump-appointed judges; when you think about the fact that Trump's own Attorney General Bill Barr said there was no evidence of voter fraud; when you think about the fact that many of these elections were managed by Republicans and that many Republican leaders like Bush, Cheney, even Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell have come out and said that Biden is the legitimate winner; when you think about all those things, and when you think about the fact that if you're wrong, you're just as bad as the people you accuse of undermining our country, doesn't that make you hesitate and want to make sure to look again at actual evidence?


Also, Wiggins sucks.

See Abe, we can keep some basketball talk too.

[Wolvesfan21]

A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing

Written by Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.

The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook...rican-policing


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

But if slavery ended why do we have more police today then ever? It hasn't.

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave." -Leo Tolstoy

So no surprise that the police are STILL slave patrolling today. Try failing to pay your property taxes and who shows up? The slave patrols to take your house. Slaves are not allowed to own property, which is why you cannot really own land. If you own it, then why do you have to pay for it perpetually and infinitely?

Not to mention people really ignore how much taxes they really pay. Tariffs themselves can be 25-50% on goods. igher income earners pay around 65-70% in the U.S. Again, people are failing to add EVERYTHING together. From Tariffs, hidden taxes, both state and income taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, fees and fines and regulations and licenses, property taxes, taxes on investments (inflation really).

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -Thomas Jefferson

"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.
There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the
International bankers" -- Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)

"A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world, no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." --President Woodrow Wilson

[Coolbreeze44]

Drew, I appreciate you taking the time to write your response. I agree and disagree with a lot of things you have in there. We could debate point by point and I'm sure it would be spirited. But as I mentioned it's not my intent to get in a back and forth over this. You're right, I feel helpless at this point and just wanted to take a stand and share my viewpoint with my friends on the board. But I will just repeat my basis for the whole diatribe. To me, it's obvious for many reasons the election was stolen. And of course I'm not alone in that belief. But I respect and can understand voters with an opposite perspective.

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

Drew, I appreciate you taking the time to write your response. I agree and disagree with a lot of things you have in there. We could debate point by point and I'm sure it would be spirited. But as I mentioned it's not my intent to get in a back and forth over this. You're right, I feel helpless at this point and just wanted to take a stand and share my viewpoint with my friends on the board. But I will just repeat my basis for the whole diatribe. To me, it's obvious for many reasons the election was stolen. And of course I'm not alone in that belief. But I respect and can understand voters with an opposite perspective.

We just want literally any evidence supporting that mass voter fraud occurred. Something. Literally anything. 2 whole months of lawsuits and digging and not a shred of evidence that it happened. The entire Republican Party has spent 2 months dedicated to this effort and have nothing to support their claims. Most of the claims are in states that are Republican led that just lost the Presidential election only. Stop thinking with feelings and look at the actual facts when you are attacking our democracy that has held strong long before Trump and is showing it will still hold after his bullshit gets out of office.

You spit in the faces of the volunteers who risked their lives in a pandemic to ensure we had a free and fair election by claiming they didn't do their job which by the way they've been doing successfully and accurately since the beginning of American democracy. You don't get to convict criminals because you feel like they are bad people. You have to prove it so it's on you and everyone else who believes this election was stolen to actually prove it before you get to claim the end of democracy.

This democracy is stronger than your feelings. The people who run the election in these states have integrity. Calling them liars with no proof makes you the fool.

There is no logic that supports election fraud. There is no evidence that supports election fraud. Even leaders in the Republican Party in McConnell, Graham and Vice President Pence have validated this election and do not believe fraud has occurred. 92-7 was the vote that PA was accurate and should be certified. Be better. Otherwise we just might as well not use stats anymore to support our basketball arguments because we don't need them. Only feelings matter if that's the case.