The funny thing is the right is always so anti-ACLU, and yet the ACLU will defend the right’s legal rights if they ever get violated, and have done that in the past. Just like the separation of church and state…they talk about that being a terrible thing, and yet religious freedom is better for it.
The ACLU is a broken organization for this very reason. They invest a great deal of their time and energy in trying to look nonpartisan by backing some of the most vile and irredeemable people in the country.
On the flip side, Democrats steer wide of the organization whenever it comes time to run candidates or appoint cabinet positions.
You’ll never see the head of the ACLU appointed to the DOJ or granted a federal judgeship. No more than a regional leader of Planned Parenthood gets to run for Senate in a bright blue state. They aren’t feeders to high office like the Federalist Society or the Heritage Foundation. All they are good for is fundraising from unhappy liberals.
The core premise of a right is that it applies regardless of who you are.
It’s not “the right to free speech unless we don’t like what you say”, it’s not “the right to due process unless the crime you’re accused of is really bad”, etc.
Protecting the rights of bad people equally with good ones is what they stand for. Rights aren’t conditional.
Protecting the rights of bad people equally with good ones is what they stand for.
It isn’t. When you’re describing is a revisionist mission adopted by the New York branch in the 60s and 70s.
The original mission of the ACLU was the defense of labor agitators, picketers, and organizers - common targets for right wing hate groups.
This article from Jacobin goes into the transformation of the radical labor rights organizer to centrist Free Speech absolutist.
The mission has shifted from defending working people to bad people as the ACLU grew divorced from its labor roots.
If you can remove the rights of people you don’t like, others can do the same to you.
If it’s not universal it cannot be a right. They’re mutually exclusive.
If you can remove the rights of people you don’t like, others can do the same to you
Except we remove these rights all the time, in large part because of the insidious bigotry that fanatics propagate. Defending the bigots does nothing to expand civil rights for the minorities they are marching to oppress.
FFS, the ACLU defended the Charleston tiki torch rioters. Whose interests did that serve?
If it’s not universal it cannot be a right.
Selective enforcement of civil rights is routine in the US. Hell, the same people crying about Campus Free Speech in 2022 ago were the ones calling for the heads of Palestine Solidarity protesters a year later.
Rights are rights for everyone, or they aren’t rights.
Rights have to be enforced. Enforcement is routinely selective and arbitrary, based on who is in power and who is enjoying a popular moment.
Yes, that’s what the ACLU does. Thank you for understanding. Now you know how you erred.
Yes, that’s what the ACLU does.
No, it isn’t. The ACLU has extremely limited resources and is necessarily highly selective with its caseload. Prioritizing fascists acting fash-ly deprives civil and labor rights activists of desperately needed legal aid.
Sounds like the Dems are broken in this case for not pulling from the ACLU?
Let’s make Musk a Healthcare CEO, please
Are you confusing insurance company for healthcare? An easy way to remember this is that the word care is in healthcare.
Large hospital corporations are arguably worse than insurance, or at least as bad. The two work together to create the circumstances where they get rich and we get ripped off.
Granted, I’m not crazy about political assassinations, I’m not saying ceos should be killed by random adventurists. In a country so desensitized to mindless violence, where our kids grew up with active shooter drills, I find the murder of the CEO very funny, but it isn’t a solution or a fix to insurance or healthcare. The problem is capitalism, and it will take more than a dead CEO to change anything about our pathetic, disgusting healthcare system.
They’re both bad, but at least the hospital provides a service for its money. The insurance company makes all of its money finding ways to not pay for services someone else provides.
The thing is, insurance is generally a good thing, it is basically the easiest way to make sure a group of people can afford healthcare in a free market. I would personally prefer if we had a single payer system, medicare for all, or some other way for everyone to receive high quality healthcare on demand that isn’t driven purely by the profit motive.
So its not the industry per se, it is the profit motive that drives those industries, and the political corruption that extends from big monied interests that wield our legislatures and gut any regulatory backstop to prevent these disgusting schemes to swindle every penny out of regular people who are just trying to survive and thrive in an unfair, unjust system.
I’m not sure I can agree that insurance is the easiest way. The other, more sane, systems require the same amount of administrative overhead at worst, function the same way, cost less, and are vastly easier to comprehend and predict.
Insurance without the profit motive is one of the universal healthcare schemes. It’s the industry part of the insurance industry that’s problematic, and the medical insurance industry in particular because with other insurance types, you can usually pause and be a rational actor. Medical situations often don’t give you that option, and sometimes you don’t even get to pick the things you’re supposed to be rational about. Without the ability to choose, caveats and conditions just make insurance bankruptcy pachinko.
Well, I’m no expert but ive heard convincing arguments. Step one is wrestling control of healthcare out of the hands of for-profit companies. By the time we do that we will have worked out a better way to do it, democratically and for the benefit of all people, not just the profit of the few
Some of them aren’t much better- wouldn’t surprised if all of these clowns start showing up with armed escorts
Sadly Musk has over 20 bodyguards that always clear the area for him before he goes in. If you are in a place where Elon Musk wants to be, they will usher you out and check the place for traps and bugs (listening devices, not insects. If they did for the latter then Musk himself would not be allowed in!).
If I’ve learned anything from Ukraine, no one is too hard to reach with a little hardware.
If they did for the latter then Musk himself would not be allowed in!
no they just have to make sure there are no bugs before he goes in. no capitalist can stand competition, you see
I really don’t think we should talk about assassinating anyone. For example, a drone with explosives would be a bad thing.
At his best our hero could probably only ever take on 3 at once.
Now, if only I had a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak.
Don’t insult bugs, they are critical to human society.
So refuse to leave and we keep the trash out?
Yeah defund all of their government funding which would reduce their funding by…… exactly $0. Musk is a fucking idiot. His supporters are even bigger, gullible idiots.
Thanks, I thought I was taking crazy pills for a second there. How is he gonna defund an NGO? lol
Exactly what I came to say… The ACLU isn’t funded by the US Government you absolute fucking knob.
People who agree with defunding the ACLU probably don’t contribute to the ACLU anyway, so they have no power to defund it. It receives no government money. I’m no psychologist but at this point Musk really seems like he’s in the late stages of some tragic mental syndrome, which is really a shame - he had the potential to accomplish so much - but I just wish he would STFU and stop sucking oxygen out of the room.
he had the potential to accomplish so much
No, not really. Everything he promises is either overhyped and underbaked, “ready in 3 years” every year, only viable in fiction, or some combination of all of them.
The people he pays had and still have the potential to do so much, though.
Experts in drug use and addiction told Business Insider, however, that taking some of the specific hard drugs mentioned in the Journal story would be risky for someone of Musk’s age, particularly if they have undiagnosed bipolar disorder, as he has previously suggested he does.
The Journal reported that the 52-year-old had taken cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, and magic mushrooms over the years, including at parties, citing unnamed sources who said they’d witnessed his behavior or had knowledge of it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-use-ketamine-microdosing-risks-2024-1?op=1
Late stages? You weren’t thinking this like eight years ago when started with the pedo tweets?
I mean… Who hasn’t tried to undermine actual professionals saving real lives by making up hypothetical solutions and when they do it successfully, call them a pedophile for weeks on end and get real butthurt?
He’s just a typical billionaire. Trump has normalized being a horrible person so now they’re comfortable being themselves
Lead poisoning is a bitch. I’m grateful that my parents managed to keep me away from the worst of it in the early '80s. Musk is almost a decade older than me, so he’s still a prime victim of lead poisoning. His parents didn’t avoid large cities.
Being around his Mum and Dad in apartheid south Africa is what did most of the damage.
The lead thing is mostly in America. Most places banned it LONG before the US did. So no, it is highly unlikely that Elon Musk, born and raised outside the US, has been exposed to lead as a child.
Elon is such a giant piece of shit
I know. Let’s hope he’s next.
Lowkey, I’d buy booze and weed and have a party.
Community Notes: This man is a giant crybaby
He looks like a crybaby
He looks like a science experiment.
Gone wrong
I donated today just to spite him. Thanks for the reminder Elon!
He doesn’t even say why–just defund it. Then again, if you actually trust that shitheel you probably aren’t looking for any better explanation than “thing bad, stop thing”
He needs to be UHC’d and I’m pretty real sure the perp will get a parade in their honor
Been a monthly donor for years. Still not stopping.
What am I missing here? Isn’t the ACLU a private nonprofit?
They still get funded. Just not by the government.
This is like saying “Stop donating to PBS!” I’m not sure that’s what Musk intends, though. He probably believes they are funded by tax dollars, because he suffers from the stupid.
I had a conservative professor bitch about PBS funding in the middle of talking about how awesome their programs on a certain poet’s life were.
At a state school.
Those who can’t do, teach.
Those who can’t teach, teach gym.
Those who can’t teach gym, teach 20th century English literature at a state college.
Only shitheads attack teaching itself as a profession, be better even in jest.
Isn’t this guy CEO of several companies? I’m just saying.
Edit for clarity using his own words: “It’s like nobody is even trying to kill her”
Elonia that is.
No greater confirmation of how much power you have then to have a billionaire threaten you
The ACLU have always been fighting and I don’t think they’ll stop any time soon.
When will we rise up and rid ourselves of these pesky billionaires?
I have never had my long running, monthly ACLU donation feel so good or be so validated. I can always count on being on the right side of something if Elon is against it. Get fucked Elon, we don’t need your funds, and never did.
