Ferguson Activist-Turned-Legislator Resigns

Wait, you can block people here?

Discobot has made it possible.

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Yup, here’s a repost of the instructions I posted:
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cut here cut here cut here cut here cut here

Yup. You can reach it two ways. The first is to go up to your icon on the top right of the page and hit it, then select the little wheel on the right of the menu across the top, then select “Preferences”, then select “Users” from the menu on the left. Scroll down to “Ignored” and type in the user name of the person you want to block. Hit “Save Changes” and work your way back. Some folks are reporting that you have to log out and back in again, others not so this may be browser specific or just a lag issue inside the server software.

If that sounds too tedious for you, select the user name above one of their posts, which will bring up a popup menu. Select the user name again, then select “Normal” from the menu that appears. From the list that appears, select “Ignored”. That person will be Ignored going forward.

In either case, posts from the newly Ignored user will be hidden, as will reply text included by others in their responses. You can still click on a “View Hidden Reply” link to see the hidden messages, if you want to see what somebody is responding to.

One last wrinkle - if the last message in a thread is a Hidden message, it will show up as “Unread” in the summary count at the bottom. If you click on it and don’t open the hidden message, it stays as an Unread thread until you open it, and the last block of the thread (the five suggestions and the"Unread" and “New” links) remain hidden. This is a known bug, reported but not yet fixed…

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https://www.metrostl.com/bruce-franks-to-resign-from-mo-house-seat/

In January, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson began an investigation of a city jobs agency after KMOV-TV reported discrepancies in time sheets submitted by Franks, who did work there as a youth mentor. Franks has denied any wrongdoing and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch his resignation was unrelated to the investigation.

https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-lessons-for-future-leaders-from-the-sad-downfall-of/article_a28c26bb-9049-5cbb-9abb-fff8dd15a7a4.html

Franks cannot evade the truth: While collecting his salary as a state representative, he also was receiving paychecks for federally supported mentoring work performed on behalf of the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment, or Slate. He repeatedly filled out and signed weekly time sheets that billed his employer for specific work hours when he could not possibly have been working. Why? Because time-stamped photos, tweets and videos show him leading protests, holding press conferences and being handcuffed and arrested at the times when he was billing for taxpayer-supported work.

Flimsy excuses about not adhering to a 9-to-5 schedule do not explain the clear falsehoods. If he was performing mentoring work at, say, 11 p.m. or 1 a.m., the time sheets should have reflected that truth. They did not.

St. Louis city officials have alluded to a federal investigation involving Slate, while members of the Board of Aldermen have called for their own probe. State Auditor Nicole Galloway says Slate is under audit as part of her ongoing review of city operations. Slate’s embattled executive director, Alice Prince, resigned late last month amid heightened scrutiny of lax management practices.


Think about that for a minute — someone who has quite literally made a career out of the rightful notion that persons of color, especially youths, need opportunities to escape the oppression of the “establishment” was stealing funds intended for mentoring and job services to allow exactly those youths to have more opportunities. Despicable doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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A good rule of thumb: When someone tries to explain away a shady situation by appeals to “lived experience” and “personal truth” instead of facts and evidence, you can be pretty sure they’re a liar and con artist, just like someone who resorts to claiming “some people say” and “fake news.”

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I remember as well. I had just turned 12 a week before, was living away from my family for the first time. They moved on to Maryland and left me in Virginia with friends of theirs to take a marine biology/geology class for kids who excelled in science I’d been invited to take at a local community college.

Remember watching the small black and white tv they had, with them and their 4 kids. We were riveted.

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This doesn’t work if the user profile is blocked. In fact, I’ve never gotten it to work, I’ve had to go into my own preferences and block someone.

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Oops, you right. I’ll definitely add that if (when? :wink: ) I see a need to post this again…

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Thanks so much! :+1:

I was on patrol on night watch and thought, “Fuck the moon. Get me out of Vietnam.” Twelve and a half months in to a 13 month tour and I had lost all perspective on any reality but my own short timer’s paranoia.

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When my son’s mother went beyond the $5,000 limit to her arrears balance I signed it over to the DA and paid them I think 2% for collecting child support and all the problems were resolved very soon. Its not all deadbeat dads out there.

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Yeah and I’ve been retired awhile so I’m sure things have changed.

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Just down from Laughing Sal was a dive bar that had been the headquarters of US military command or Naval command during WWII. The best bar in SF until they renovated it and turned it in to a high priced burger and beer place in the late 90’s. It was about a block away from the windmill on the north side of Golden Gate Park.

St. Louis is still one of the most segregated cities in one of the most segregated states of the Union. Believe me. I’ve lived here my entire life.

Mark Twain warned us that things would not change here until the hearts of those who think they are so superior change. If anything, their souls are now even more corrupted by Satan today than they were during slavery.

Real Christians, Jews, Muslim, Hindus, etc. must step forward and confront the white supremacists in our communities and not be afraid to speak up in mixed company. It may seem awkward at first, but we cannot allow others to lord it over everyone else.

As we begin to reach out to our oppressed brothers and sisters in more meaningful ways instead of just giving this lip service, we must also call out those who reject all common decency.

Anyone who believes that migrant children must be abused to punish their parents for demanding a life that is safer, more productive and right for their families, you can’t hurt them by telling them the truth to their face.

They are already lost. That’s God’s problem not ours. Our mission is to stand the ground that Jesus cut out for us on this earth and nurture it.

We Christians haven’t been doing that. We must live the way we were told to do. No more excuses or timidity.

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Inability, yes. Unwillingness to work and/or pay, no.

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Are the writers/editors here required to have passed middle-school grammar?

“the peoples [sic] lives”

The lack of an apostrophe deserves a [sic]? Especially in view of the relentlessly bad grammar that is usual at TPM. Please stick a finger in your own eye!

No I’m not going to think about for a minute. It was yesterday’s non-news, we all got suitably outraged, and it’s time to move on to the real and threatening problems that confront us as a country. None of them involve a new member of the House from Ferguson who did some dodgy things during his short term in office.

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I was feeding my two week old son while watching the event. The 50 years went by so fast.

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Isn’t there a character like this in The Wire. A little different, but…“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

I remember seeing an interview with a former one-term Dem Rep - I can’t remember name or year. He said that he had been working on bills to cut pork. At one point, he was on the elevator and a senior Dem got in with him and pushed the stop button. The man backed the freshman into a corner and told him that if he didn’t stop, he would crush his Washington career. The freshman finished his term and then left politics.

Power is an opioid. A lot of good people with good ideas and good intentions get sucked up in the addiction. There are some who resist, and others that simply aren’t willing (or able) to deal with all the addicts.