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Rick Downer

@rkdowner.bsky.social

7.3K followers 4K following 9K posts

Just a lump of thinking meat made from stardust. Life begins at first breath. Abortion restrictions violate the 1st Amendment. Trans rights are human rights. Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump - the Axis of Evil. An #EnemyWithin

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Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · Nov 16

"the Bible does not clearly condemn abortion; it simply does not rule on it. It does, however, unequivocally demonstrate, within its own cultural constructions, that a woman’s life was considered to have more value than that of an unborn fetus, and that life begins at first breath."

The Bible is Silent on Abortion, but Vocal about When Life Begins - TheTorah.com

Egyptian and Mesopotamian abortion-inducing recipes attest to the practice of abortion in the ancient Near East. While the Middle Assyrian Laws prohibit the practice, the Torah offers no ruling. Never...

www.thetorah.com

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Larry 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇵🇦 🇬🇱 @larry-065.bsky.social · 3h

How soon before DJT claims he has solved the Pakistan / Afghanistan conflict?

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Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 1h

Lock the phone so they can't install unapproved apps.

Also: make turning off their body camera a fireable offense. Make body cameras subject to FOIA requests.

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John @localcelebrity.bsky.social · 1d

Modest reform idea: Ban police from carrying personal mobile devices while on-duty. Give them work devices and lock them down with MDM tools like a Fortune 500 corporation would lock down their employee devices.

Monitor all of the traffic. Ban them from installing unapproved apps.

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D. Earl Stephens @dearlstephens.bsky.social · 9h

📌“The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on.’
“Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?”

-Pope Leo in a direct rebuke of the hideous Trump

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Alt USAID/ USAID Forever @altusaid.altgov.info · 4h

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Patrick Lovell The Producer @patricklovellpresentsthecleannewdeal.com · 5h

Instead of being played by propaganda of CBS and 60 Minutes and capitulating mainstream media and even @maddow.msnbc.com and @lawrenceodonnell.msnbc.com who stepped over this monumental revelation, I highly to encourage you discover what you may have missed about #Epstein youtu.be/sky4amhdYn4?...

A discussion with David Enrich of The New York Times regarding JPMorgan and Jeffrey Epstein.

YouTube video by Patrick Lovell Truth Bombs The Con

youtu.be

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 5h

Translation: they gave him a plane and filled his family’s pockets

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pissed-off-g.bsky.social @pissed-off-g.bsky.social · 3h

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badwebsites @badwebsites.bsky.social · 3h

Does she? I don't know much about her- outside of the fact she's proud of KILLING PUPPIES.

Debra Rowley @rowley-825.bsky.social · 6h

Noem suffers from body dysmorphia.

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Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 @reshetz.bsky.social · 3h

An air raid starts while you’re at the railway station at 5am and you just think “but what if WE are their preferred war crime for today”

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Marcie Lipsitt @mlipsitt.bsky.social · 5h

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Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @nothoodlum.bsky.social · 5h

Well Idaho, you DID vote for this.

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Angie @angieispissed.bsky.social · 4h

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Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 1h

The sort that we should all cross the street so our shadows don't fall upon his devine embodyment.

Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 1h

I don't belong because they consider me "woke" - and I'm an old white dude. Frankly I'm delighted to not belong to that group. I'm enlightened enough to know that 'woke' doesn't apply to me, at least not in its original meaning.

Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 1h

My favorite was that woman who wrote an anti-woke book, and when asked to define "woke" she couldn't.

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Joe Tambien @joetambien.bsky.social · 14h

The problem is quite simple. Ideologies that tell you that you are better than other people. Better because you’re white. Better because some god favors you, better because your gender supposedly rules over other genders because some god said so. It is all narcissism and imaginary thinking.

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Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 1h

MAGAts think government can impose culture on society. Culture doesn't work that way. They can outlaw Cinco de Mayo but they can't stop people from drinking margaritas and eating nachos on May 5th.

Rick Downer @rkdowner.bsky.social · 2h

They do want small government. They want the government to consist of the police and the military and nothing else.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 18h

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 15h

My version of this is that Vought, Yarvin etc represent a kind of braindead right-Gramscianism, which leaves out all the interesting subtleties and treats civil society _only_ as a realm of indoctrination, where one ideological master-narrative can readily be substituted for another.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 17h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.