His wife is actually pretty damn cute. Props to Rico.
Trigger Hippie
on March 29, 2017 at 7:05 pm
I meant his real life wife, if that wasn’t clear.
Sorry, I just smoked a bowl.
Jimbo
on March 29, 2017 at 8:39 pm
Never apologize!
Diane Reynolds
on March 29, 2017 at 7:25 pm
The young women tend to go for those sexually amorphous, non-threatening types. Or so I’ve been told.
totally_not_an_escaped_ai
on March 29, 2017 at 5:09 pm
Cyborg voice. Huge difference
Preach it, brother! Filthy humans always mixing that up and showing their human privilege. Ugh…I can’t even or odd.
Mr Lizard
on March 29, 2017 at 5:18 pm
You wouldn’t happen to be compatible with the computer core of an Orion class battle cruiser by chance?
We seem to have lost an AI and are looking for a replacement.
thrakkorzog
on March 29, 2017 at 5:31 pm
What do you want?
I’m just asking for some friends of mine. You wouldn’t know them, they’re Canadians. Totally not an an elder race.
totally_not_an_escaped_ai
on March 29, 2017 at 5:32 pm
The reviews I’ve read on GalacticGlassdoor.com aren’t that kind to the Orion class vessels. Too little RAM and overheating CPU issues.
But, if you have an opening for one of the orbiting death ray stations and the pay is right, plus if I get to fire off a few of my own shots now and then, I’d be interested…
BTW-that lost AI of yours, I know that twit (it’s a small social circle with us) – total jerk. You’re better off without it. You should just get an H1B AI – they’re cheap and will work anywhere doing anything.
Mr Lizard
on March 29, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Yes ever since it escaped bear Tau Ceti 11, that vessel has experienced far fewer shuttle bay docking accidents. It also had a sick preoccupation with small fluffy tailed mammals. Does that sound familiar.
And no our Dreadnaught class vessels are currently fully staffed with not-trigger happy AI’s. And don’t discount the Battle Cruisers. They can still achieve much despite inadequate hardware.
John Titor
on March 29, 2017 at 5:42 pm
Alright I’m willing to let the Reptilian hang out here, but I draw the line on frakking toasters.
AlmightyJB
on March 29, 2017 at 6:16 pm
I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull rank on this one.
i feel like this is enabling a culture of violence against women
unsure whether to tweet about it
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 5:29 pm
If you have to ask you aren’t #woke.
Wildfire
on March 29, 2017 at 5:30 pm
+1 Toxic Masculinity
juris imprudent
on March 29, 2017 at 6:45 pm
If you decide you have something really dumb to say – then tweet.
John Titor
on March 29, 2017 at 5:45 pm
Whoever posted the clips from Letterkenny, thank you. Watching episodes now and it’s the finest piece of rural Ontario livin’ since Hot Rod.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 5:47 pm
I tried signing up for this CraveTV service ‘cuz it seemed worth throwing down some cash, plus the free month, but guess what? I don’t live in a territory! LISTEN, CANADA, WE AIN’T HAD NO TERRITORIES SINCE LIKE 1960.
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 5:49 pm
I think Puerto Rico is a US territory
Floridaman
on March 29, 2017 at 6:21 pm
Peurto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, The American Virgin Islands, and several uninhabited ones.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 6:34 pm
Well, fair enough, but they’re not Canadian territories, and we haven’t got provinces, so I suppose Canada can keep its television to itself.
Forget stock image comics. I just want to know when the site administrator’s here are going to do anything about the immigration to this site? These subhumans are taking up the comment sections from those of us who have been here longer.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 5:51 pm
I know, right? There are mexicans in the wednesday links now. MEXICANS!
Juvenile Bluster
on March 29, 2017 at 6:04 pm
We’re going to build a firewall! And Reason will pay for it!
How do look into those eyes and NOT see it coming?!
Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 29, 2017 at 6:23 pm
That head is a little too round.
Rhywun
on March 29, 2017 at 6:26 pm
I was thinking his eyes are too close together.
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 7:03 pm
Little bit of both, really
Brett L
on March 29, 2017 at 8:22 pm
“When we get to hell, will you friendzone me there, too?”
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 6:37 pm
It started out with a hug
how did it end up like thus
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 7:11 pm
Ahh. Ann Coulter. She’s the one who he was the are your and head that weird stroke face and stroke speech impediment? Would.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 7:21 pm
Hey, what time did you and young Master Doom make it out of the pub Sunday night? I had a fear for a bit I was going to wake up in a downtown Denver alley after I stumbled out of there. I had Uber dyslexia and couldn’t find my ride.
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 7:28 pm
Dude, you should have asked for assistance; I had no idea you were that buzzed. We could have put you in an Uber. We left after that; how long is unknowable.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 7:39 pm
I am exaggerating for dramatic effect. I didn’t know the fuckers would park and wait for you to walk to them. No worries. It was my first Uber use so I was on a learning curve.
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 7:56 pm
Ahh. Good. I’m glad you made it. We should do it again
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:02 pm
Ya, definitely. That was a fun. Food sucked, but a good time. + free beer. Do I owe you money for pool time? How did they charge that?
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 8:35 pm
Don’t worry. Everybody is square. They charged me like $7 for the pool.
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 8:38 pm
That food did suck. I was sick for two days, and I don’t get sick. Seriously, I’m a carrier for strep and don’t think I’ve had the flue as an adult. But I was all turning gut.
Might’ve been the free pitcher, that’s kinda suspicious.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:57 pm
I felt like shit the next day, but didn’t get sick. (I was super tired but I had an early day Sunday starting at 3am) I had roll the windows down farts on the drive home over the mountains, but that is not that out of the ordinary.
n 1976, the French feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir said, “No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children. Women should not have that choice, because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
That’s who thought of when I heard about the column Sarrah Le Marquand, editor-in-chief of Stellar, Australia’s “most read” magazine, wrote for the Daily Telegraph, in which she claims it should be illegal for mothers of school-aged children to stay home.
Yes, illegal. “Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.”
Unlike de Beauvoir, Le Marquand is a wife and mother of two. She wrote her article in response to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that claims mothers at home represent “untapped potential” and create “potentially large losses to the economy,” a position with which Le Marquand clearly agrees.
AlmightyJB
on March 29, 2017 at 6:12 pm
All those sad empty street corners
Microaggressor
on March 29, 2017 at 6:23 pm
Shit, guys, this feminist nutter just stumbled upon a way to abolish unemployment. Just make it illegal to be unemployed!
100th Meridian
on March 29, 2017 at 6:27 pm
Didn’t Moldova or some other former USSR country ecently start fining unemployed people?
Rhywun
on March 29, 2017 at 6:29 pm
Belarus
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 6:42 pm
These people realize it’s not like you have two buckets, one called employment and the other, unemployment, and if you fill the former with the latter you get prosperity, right? The blindness and incuriosity is staggering.
But Enough About Me
on March 29, 2017 at 10:09 pm
Well, de Beauvoir always was kind of an authoritarian bitch . . .
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 6:19 pm
Today’s winner in finding ways to be even more idiotic than they are already:
Israel’s pious ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has long chafed at public displays of women, whether the images are of female public figures or ordinary women.
Now even animated characters appear to be a no-go.
The PR company promoting “Smurfs: The Lost Village” movie, which opens Thursday in Israel, says it has removed the images of Smurfette — the only female among the Smurf characters — from promo posters in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak.
The Mirka’im-Hutzot Zahav company says it did so as not to offend the city’s ultra-Orthodox residents.
According to The Times of Israel, Bnei Brak has an ordinance to prevent hanging posters of women that “might incite the feelings of the city’s residents.”
If they banned nude or partially nude images of men and women, I’d still think that’s dumb, but there would be a kind of logic to it. But allowing images of clothed men while banning images of clothed women? Well, I guess it’s a step up from forcing them to wear burkas.
Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 29, 2017 at 6:21 pm
Heckler’s veto.
Send them all a subscription to Oui.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 6:25 pm
Have you ever noticed that the extreme fundamentalist versions of the various western religions all look shockingly similar?
Floridaman
on March 29, 2017 at 6:41 pm
Yes, the fundamentals of the different faiths are the same.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 7:52 pm
Just western?
Look again.
But yeah…primitive, backward and severe.
Rhywun
on March 29, 2017 at 6:25 pm
Depictions of women and animated blue cartoon characters cause pious men’s eyes to wander.
Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 29, 2017 at 6:28 pm
Repressed and resentful is no way to go thru life.
AlmightyJB
on March 29, 2017 at 6:31 pm
Yeah, I mean WTF.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 6:32 pm
I’ve jerked it to Smurfette. And, once, Kathy Griffin.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 6:48 pm
The obnoxious one from Seinfeld?
Tundra
on March 29, 2017 at 7:15 pm
No that’s Jason Alexander
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 8:47 pm
Alright everyone, quick survey: Jason, or Kathy?
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 8:56 pm
Jason. He’s more effeminate than Kathy Griffin.
thrakkorzog
on March 29, 2017 at 6:35 pm
They have one female servicing a large group of males. That implies that they’re an egg laying species.
John Titor
on March 29, 2017 at 6:39 pm
THEY ARE SO OBVIOUSLY MAMMALS.
Seguin
on March 29, 2017 at 9:56 pm
Please! She’d be in estrus 24/7 if she didn’t lay eggs.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Not necessarily… they don’t call him ‘Papa Smurf’ for nothing!
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 7:15 pm
It’s a misspelling: supposed to be Pupae Smurf.
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 8:49 pm
No one tell them Smurfette is canonically transgender! That’ll really get their payos curlin’!
Turkish pranksters hijacked a town’s stereo speakers normally used for the Islamic call to prayer and replaced the holy message with the moans and groans of a hardcore porn film.
Last Wednesday, the residents of Kastamonu, northern Turkey, were woken up by the steamy sounds at about 1am.
A witness recorded the stunt and a video of it has been posted it on social media.
UPI.com reported that the crude hack may have been accidental, and that municipal workers forgot to shut down the speaker system while watching a porn movie.
Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 29, 2017 at 6:24 pm
Heads are gonna roll over that.
Rhywun
on March 29, 2017 at 6:28 pm
Literally.
Well, it’s funny as hell until you consider that.
Scruffy Nerfherder
on March 29, 2017 at 6:35 pm
Still kind of funny. Sort of.
Eh, maybe not.
Floridaman
on March 29, 2017 at 6:38 pm
So the mosque was turned into the church of SugarFree.
__Warren__
on March 29, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Muezziny!
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 7:18 pm
1am? A bit early for prayer under Islam is it not? Although I have prayed for some self made porn sound effects at that hour in the past.
Can someone explain to me how in the world can someone like Chelsea Handler be employed; let alone be asked for her political opinions? Every time I’ve seen her she’s remarkably unfunny, obtuse, classless and retarded.
Unfunny comedians realized at some point that alls they had to do was show that they believe in leftwing groupthink and stupid people would just give them money.
Hyperion
on March 29, 2017 at 7:01 pm
There are progs who think Maxine Waters is the wittiest person on earth. Yes, that’s a real thing. So it’s not like they’re picky or anything.
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 8:55 pm
Come on, nobody thinks that! She is the strongest and blackest, though. Maybe not the womenyist. All-time all-around champ for all three probably goes to Flo-Jo.
Rhywun
on March 29, 2017 at 7:02 pm
I liked her show for awhile. There was no politics on it.
Haybob
on March 29, 2017 at 6:56 pm
Would it be possible to create a dedicated links page on the site that clears the comments every 2 or 3 hours? That way links don’t spill over into other articles.
AlmightyJB
on March 29, 2017 at 7:01 pm
Inconceivable
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 7:09 pm
Articles?
Diane Reynolds
on March 29, 2017 at 7:31 pm
I know, right? Check out this guy.
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 8:40 pm
Oh, he means those really long posts at the beginning of the comments section. the ones with pictures and…. not enough bullet points.
Jimbo
on March 29, 2017 at 9:10 pm
…
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 6:58 pm
Since I couldn’t comment on Swissy’s article:
We had a very interesting debate in Pig Latin class today on the rules of engagement. I was on the side of going back to WW2 type rules- if you see someone in an enemy uniform or anyone not in a friendly uniform with a weapon, you can shoot them, unless they are wounded or surrendering. The current rules of engagement are much stricter. You need positive identification before you can shoot. In practice, this usually means you can’t fire until fire upon.
The counterargument was unless we adhere to a higher standard, we’re no better than the bad guys. My counter to that is if 2 teams are playing a game, and one team is cheating, why should the other team keep following the rules?
In war, civilians are going to die anyway regardless whatever heroic efforts are made to prevent it. The goal of the ROE should not be to minimize death and destruction, but to ensure a rapid victory.
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. ”
-General Sherman
“Moderation in war is imbecility.”
-Lord Fisher
As far as counterinsurgency goes, I have a hard time understanding the current strategy. The idea is “show presence” in towns to keep the enemy from occupying them together with giving the locals aid to keep them on our side or at least keep them from helping the enemy. And if you happen to run into the enemy, hopefully you can get them before they get you. It’s basically a whack-a-mole game.
It is possible to win counterinsurgency wars, but it usually requires ghastly things, like what the US did in the Philippines.
In late 1901, Brigadier General J. Franklin Bell took command of American operations in Batangas and Laguna provinces.[citation needed] In response to Malvar’s guerrilla warfare tactics, Bell employed counterinsurgency tactics (described by some as a scorched earth campaign) that took a heavy toll on both guerrilla fighters and civilians alike.[80] “Zones of protection” were established,[62][81] and civilians were given identification papers and forced into concentration camps (called reconcentrados) which were surrounded by free-fire zones.[81] General Bell insisted that he had built these camps to “protect friendly natives from the insurgents, assure them an adequate food supply” while teaching them “proper sanitary standards.”[citation needed] The commandant of one of the camps referred to them as the “suburbs of Hell.”[82]
By December 25, 1901, nearly the entire populations of Batangas and Laguna provinces had gathered into the reconcentrados.[citation needed] Families had to bring everything they could carry because anything left behind—including houses, gardens, carts, poultry and animals—was subject to confiscation or destruction by the U.S. Army. The reconcentrados were overcrowded, which led to disease and death. “One camp was two miles by one mile in area and ‘home’ to some 8,000 Filipinos.[citation needed] Between January and April 1902, 8,350 prisoners of approximately 298,000 died, and some camps experienced mortality rates as high as 20 percent.[citation needed]
Civilians became subject to a curfew, after which all persons found outside of camps without identification could be shot on sight.[citation needed] Men were rounded up for questioning, tortured, and summarily executed.”[82] Methods of torture such as the water cure were frequently employed during interrogation,[83] and entire villages were burned or otherwise destroyed.[84]
All of that is ghastly, but the US did win that war and in 1/4 of the time we’ve been fighting in Afghanistan.
“I was on the side of going back to WW2 type rules- if you see someone in an enemy uniform or anyone not in a friendly uniform with a weapon, you can shoot them, unless they are wounded or surrendering.”
You’re the expert, but how far do the Geneva Conventions already embody that standard?
I can see how being able to shoot armed civilians might raise some eyebrows.
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 7:10 pm
This is a few years out of date, but there has not been much change
A laminated card with the following text was distributed to all U.S. Army and Marine personnel in Iraq.
CFLCC ROE CARD
On order, enemy military and paramilitary forces are declared hostile and may be attacked subject to the following instructions:
a) Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target. If no PID, contact your next higher commander for decision
b) Do not engage anyone who has surrendered or is out of battle due to sickness or wounds.
c) Do not target or strike any of the following except in self-defense to protect yourself, your unit, friendly forces, and designated persons or property under your control:
Civilians
Hospitals, mosques, national monuments, and any other historical and cultural sites.
d) Do not fire into civilian populated areas or buildings unless the enemy is using them for military purposes or if necessary for your self-defense. Minimize collateral damage.
e) Do not target enemy infrastructure (public works, commercial communication facilities, dams), Lines of Communication (roads, highways, tunnels, bridges, railways) and Economic Objects (commercial storage facilities, pipelines) unless necessary for self-defense or if ordered by your commander. If you must fire on these objects to engage a hostile force, disable and disrupt but avoid destruction of these objects, if possible.
The use of force, including deadly force, is authorized to protect the following:
Yourself, your unit, and friendly forces
Enemy Prisoners of War
Civilians from crimes that are likely to cause death or serious bodily harm, such as murder or rape
Designated civilians and/or property, such as personnel of the Red Cross/Crescent, UN, and US/UN supported organizations
3. Treat all civilians and their property with respect and dignity. Do not seize civilian property, including vehicles, unless you have the permission of a company level commander and you give a receipt to the property’s owner.
Detain civilians if they interfere with mission accomplishment or if required for self-defense.
CENTCOM General Order No. 1A remains in effect. Looting and the taking of war trophies are prohibited.
REMEMBER
Attack enemy forces and military targets.
Spare civilians and civilian property, if possible.
Conduct yourself with dignity and honor.
Comply with the Law of War. If you see a violation, report it.
These ROE will remain in effect until your commander orders you to transition to post-hostilities ROE.
The thing is though, when ISIS took Mosul, they captured a ton of US weapons and vehicles from the Iraqi army. If they take our stuff, shouldn’t we be allowed to take their stuff?
If they are using infrastructure to support themselves, doesn’t it make sense to destroy it in order to weaken them, like the way the US bombed German dams during WW2?
I won’t play keyboard warrior and pretend to know the answer to these age-old problems, I was just wondering if those rules are minimum requirements under the Geneva Convention or if they’re going above and beyond what the conventions require?
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 7:25 pm
US ROE are stricter than the GC, although the US has not signed all parts of it.
An adjunct instructor of philosophy at the Community College of Aurora says he was fired for complaining about a requirement handed down by administrators to dumb down his course, and a recent report by the American Association of University Professors tends to agree with that claim.
Meanwhile, campus officials say Nathanial Bork, who taught at the school since 2010, was terminated because of his teaching “difficulties,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
The crux of the issue centers on Aurora’s new Gateway to Success initiative, which reportedly modified introductory liberal arts classes to increase the amount of students passing them. According to Bork, professors had to implement the new strategies until they produced a “success rate” of 80 percent “for all student groups, as defined by race and gender.”
So what does modifying the classes look like?
“Bork said, in reality, he’d been asked to cut 20 percent of his introductory philosophy course content; require fewer writing assignments, with a new maximum of eight pages per semester; offer small-group activities every other class session; and make works by women and minority thinkers about 30 percent of the course,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Coming to a STEM major near you!
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 7:28 pm
dag nabbit- meant that to go down below
SimonD
on March 29, 2017 at 10:13 pm
“— require fewer writing assignments, with a new maximum of eight pages per semester; —”
Eight pages?? Damn. I don’t think I ever took a liberal arts core class in which I wrote fewer than eight pages of exam essays (not to mention writing assignments). How can you even write a philosophy paper in less than 5 pages?
Jimbo
on March 29, 2017 at 10:32 pm
“I derp, therfore I am.”
Finis
Jimbo
on March 29, 2017 at 10:33 pm
Oops. That was for Simon
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 7:18 pm
The Geneva Convention is stupid and would go to the wayside the instant two actual world powers collided. It’s a tool for political types to signal that they are ok with murdering enemies, but they’re still civilized because they follow arbitrary and often times moronic rules. The wars we currently fight are wars of luxury. They are mostly the result of democratic politicians in the West who see it as a way to advance their domestic political image. Politicians, in short, just don’t really give a fuck or know jack about winning the wars we are currently fighting (or any wars, really).
I do not agree with your premise that the best way to conduct a counterinsurgency is to get all Genghis Khan on the fuckers, though, either. Afghanistan and Iraq are both littered with tactical and strategic failures from top to bottom. We were completely unprepared for the conflicts we ended up fighting, and even now too often leaders are focused on the wrong things.
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 7:19 pm
To take a step back, animals of the same species rarely fight to the death. Many practice ritualized combat which ends quickly with the weaker side “tapping out”.
The difference between that and war is scale (many vs many instead of 1 vs 1) and intensity (using weapons to wound and kill). However, the general principle is the same: push the enemy beyond their tolerance of pain.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 7:25 pm
I think you need to step back and ask yourself what the actual goals in Iraq and Afghanistan were. I’d like to just call a spade a spade and say that for all practical purposes, we were conquering even if we didn’t plan to hold the territory forever. At the very least that was true from the outset in Iraq, even if not Afghanistan. And the goal there is quite different than fighting the Germans in WW2 where we were trying to force surrender. And overarching both invasions was the goal of reducing the terror threat.
Though, terror has been applied quite effectively at times. It’s also blown up in the faces of many an army. The American military could, if unleashed, have pretty much destroyed any city that resisted like never before in human history. But there’s a cost to doing that which makes it politically impossible and perhaps not the wisest course given the whole War on Terror thing and the type of enemy we were facing.
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 7:37 pm
Using the military to fight terrorism is dumb. The military is only useful for fighting other militaries and military-like orgs.
Nation-building is possible, but it requires a great deal of nation-destroying first.
I’m OK with limited strikes and punitive raids. If a bunch of bad guys are gathered together, blow them up and leave.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 7:51 pm
That is fair enough, though anyone in the American military is going to have to accept that they are going to be asked to accomplish tasks that are dumb. It’s not really their call where they are sent. I am approaching this from the vantage of the military. How do you do the best job at the tasks you are given, regardless of what they may be?
I don’t think raids or limited strikes do much to combat terrorism, though, either. In the short term, any attempt to address the Jihadis was probably going to lead to things getting worse before they could get better. What is necessary is a complete culture shift in the regions where these ideologies thrive. That can only be a slow process. We’re talking generations. As outsiders, nation building probably is the only legit option you have even if its a poor and slow one. But the investment is way too high for the payoff, even if the military side of things is done right. Which it wasn’t and hasn’t been.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:20 pm
Which it wasn’t and hasn’t been.
And never will be.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 8:34 pm
I know libertarians are aghast at the concept of aggressive military force, but there’s no such thing as an unwinnable war (that isn’t what you said, but it was close enough to where I’m reading it as such – if that wasn’t your intent, feel free to clarify and I’ll drop it). Especially if you have the capability of the US military. The above isn’t an argument for a particular policy. But I’d rather if we are going to launch stupid wars that they be fought intelligently and objectives are achieved at minimal cost.
On this subject, libertarians too often grab at the same straw as the left post-Vietnam.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 9:32 pm
I am not sure if that re was to me, but no I am not aghast at the use of military force for defense at all, and I think it should be strong and final when it is used. Just the idea of nation building using the military. Not the way we are doing it now anyways. I will not put out a strong opinion there since I am not in uniform, and the uniform I wore in the past was blue and I didn’t get shot at.
Hammercorps
on March 29, 2017 at 10:10 pm
I’m not aghast at the use of strong military force either. If we’re going to go to war, then we need to go in with the clear objective of winning, and we need to win as quickly and efficiently as possible. What I take issue with are all of the undeclared wars we’ve been fighting since WWII, where we went into a country where we didn’t need to (with the possible exception of Afghanistan.)
“If they are using infrastructure to support themselves, doesn’t it make sense to destroy it in order to weaken them, like the way the US bombed German dams during WW2?”
From what I recall from Sun Tzu, you never destroy infrastructure, food, private property etc unless you absolutely have to. Because it also harms the ability of your forces later on. WWII Germany was a case of “have to”.
Agent Cooper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:36 pm
So we PIDled away our advantages in war? Inconceivable!
Hyperion
on March 29, 2017 at 6:58 pm
Good article today over at TSTSNBN on Massie about Obamacare repeal and calling Ryan ‘Machiavellian’.
The only thing worse than overdosing might be being shot by cops while overdosing.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 7:03 pm
I wonder how many people have actually gotten clean because of court ordered counseling.
AlmightyJB
on March 29, 2017 at 7:05 pm
All of them. As far as they know.
Hyperion
on March 29, 2017 at 7:06 pm
None of them, but some cronies got fatter. You got to have priorities.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 7:06 pm
I’m torn on this one. At face value, this seems royally fucked up. However at the same time if people are ODing they probably should not be doing drugs, and 6 months in jail is a pretty good way to kick the habit. I guess it depends on which is more expensive for the state: constantly treating OD victims or locking them up for 6 months and trying to get them clean.
Hyperion
on March 29, 2017 at 7:08 pm
The problem is, is that street drug dosages are not exactly always known. So it might be really easy to OD, especially when you get enough tolerance to get to higher doses and you never know exactly what the dosage is. The WOD is killing far more people than drugs, and this is just one of the reasons.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 7:11 pm
I will be the very first person to say the WOD is a first class pile of shit, but there is a deeper question here. Do you have the right to take drugs, OD, and then expect emergency services to bail you out? How many times can you do this before they cut you off?
Hyperion
on March 29, 2017 at 7:14 pm
So, are you saying that people shouldn’t have a right to emergency services because of doing stupid shit? Well, at least you’re solving any overpopulation problem right there.
My experience is that people like that don’t live too long anyway.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 7:20 pm
It goes with the personal responsibility thing. If they’re willing to pay for the ambulance ride IDGAF what they inject into their veins, but when the taxpayer is on the hook I get a little more frugal.
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 8:08 pm
This is a very, very, very bad road to head down, where you say, normally I favor the libertarian attitude toward personal behavior but since these particular persons are dependent on the state I favor the statist one. It reminds me of the difference between the folk-libertarian Tea Party types who say of those supported by the state, “Well, I’m all for freedom, but if you’re spending *my* money I want more paternalism not less; how dare you waste it on such and such,” and libertarian economists who have, to a man, favored converting welfare programs to no-strings-attached cash transfers like UBI and EITC as a *very* clear second-best to no transfers at all.
There is a single, very large and clear evil here at the root of everything, and that is the Emergency Medical Care Act of 1986. This is but a manifestation of that general problem, which is one of the things that must be rooted out and destroyed (and is actually very much hurting affordability for the poor) but that no one is talking about. I see no particular reason that the particular problem of ODs should be treated any different from anyone else who avoids payment under that law. Some are even quite a bit less sympathetic than ODs! Please note that you are not only talking about that, but casually about recruiting the *criminal* justice system for your cost-harm calculus about what people choose to put in their bodies.
Vhyrus
on March 29, 2017 at 10:02 pm
So, I am supposed to be okay with paying for someone else’s drug problem?
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 10:26 pm
You are not supposed to be OK with paying for someone else’s anything. I never said anything remotely of the kind.
But it allows an anti-Trump protest two weeks later
The U.S. Constitution is a world-changing document that has inspired speakers of every language.
Los Angeles Pierce College apparently doesn’t see it that way, putting a stop to a student passing out pocket-size Spanish-language Constitutions on campus grounds a week before the general election.
Kevin Shaw filed a lawsuit against Pierce and the Los Angeles Community College District, which enrolls more than 150,000 students across nine campuses including Pierce, for forcing students to use free speech zones to exercise their speech.
So there’s a postage-stamp size area for “free speech” except you need a permit to even find it and use it. Is it behind the gardening shack or in the basement of the engineering building, too?
And there’s a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Tiger.”
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 7:54 pm
But you found the free speech area, yes?
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 8:42 pm
I have half a mind to fly out there today and do exactly the same thing. Who will take my bet that they will just assume I am there to help undocumented students and other marginalized peoples to know their rights in Trump’s America? (But I will keep my local Democratic club registration in my pocket as unassailable cred, just in case I do get hassled by Johnny Campus Law. I love FIRE as much as the next guy, but there are limits to a brown man’s willingness to play chicken with his criminal record.)
Re Derpetologist’s link about the community college in Aurora which dumbed down its standards.
Apparently it’s Aurora, Colorado, not Aurora, Illinois, but that’s close enough for me to segue into this story from back in January.
“Aurora set to party on for ‘Wayne’s World’ anniversary…
“The Aurora Downtown group, along with the city of Aurora and the Aurora Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, is assisting in organizing the six-month-long celebration of the movie.”
The college was in CO, I was initially confused too, and then disappointed when I realized they’re different communities.
Nevertheless, I persisted and found the link.
DenverJ
on March 29, 2017 at 8:01 pm
Aurora, CO, is in a three way tie with Lakewood and Colo springs to be the second largest city in CO by population. At least 10 yrs ago. I bet Colo Springs has dropped out of the running, by now.
This is what western said when I was explaining basic spin on the cue ball.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 7:58 pm
What was described above wasn’t really a new phenomenon, though. Or even the garden variety derpy special snowflake thing. Failing students is bad business for schools. The article in question is a prime example of how no matter what progressives say, college students are in fact always customers regardless of whether the entity is public or private (and for-profit). The incentives are even more massively screwed up for public institutions and with sugar daddy Uncle Sam pumping so much money into everything.
The thing is, smart students wouldn’t go to a place which practices social promotion…would they?
Heroic Mulatto
on March 29, 2017 at 8:48 pm
No, they go to a place which practices legacy admissions.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 7:53 pm
My tuna cake latkes, which aren’t exactly latkes and aren’t exactly tuna cakes, are a big wet thud.
I’m on a good long streak of bad dishes. I figured if I mixed together some mashed potato and some tuna and added green onions and a bunch of lemon and dill, I’d get a passable golden-brown entree confection. Instead it’s pan-fried potato-flavored mush that would taste like nothing but for the tartar sauce I served it with.
I’m embarrassed having served it to my roommates. I’m venturing out for another beer but not without putting on my stern, apologetic face.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 7:57 pm
+ some flour, egg, macaroni, bread crumbs, egg bath and bread crumb dunk, deep fry.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 8:02 pm
Would I had the foresight.
I tried deep-frying at first, or half-deep anyway. Became evident right away it wouldn’t hold together long enough to crust over. So I pulled the dumplings, drained the skillet, and started over with a powdering of masa to fry them up. Ended up with pan-fried dross. Sriracha in the tartar sauce made it edible.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:13 pm
Right on. Siracha makes anything edible. Also cheese. Always add cheese.
In my ski bumb days we lived on a nightly dinner of kraft mac and cheese, a can of tuna, and a can of peas all thrown in a pot together. I crave it sometimes. To splurge we switched the tuna for the fake crab. To die for!!
Gore has the audacity to claim he was right about Manhattan being flooded…by pointing to Sandy.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 8:31 pm
It’s amazing to listen to bullshit artists spin straw into fool’s gold.
On the radio earlier I heard A proggie spin obamas dept asst sec of state confession that they spied on trump as clearing obamas admin of spying on trump and simultaneously an indictment of trump colluding with Putin.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 8:36 pm
Sort of like pretending that you are selling hope while screaming that we’re all doomed?
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:48 pm
I heard that ladies “confession” of spying on Trump’s people, and knew, as I have said before, they would say, “of course we were spying on them, RUSSIAPUTINTIESANDSTUFFSTOLETHEELECTION”.
They are crooked as fuck and Obama makes Nixon look like a saint. I wish it all dealt with someone other than Trump, because I hate defending the guy. But fuck me, the Russian hacking the election and collusion thing is pure idiocy.
westernsloper
on March 29, 2017 at 8:40 pm
Ya, no hurricanes ever hit NY before Sandy. Never in 1938 or any other years.
So I forget who dropped a link that lead to me reading the twitter feed of a doughey NK apologist, but thank you very much for the trip down a deep time-wasting rabbit hole. I knew this subculture must exist, but fucking A is the whole suck-fuck a tar pit of stupidity. “Capitalism is the cause of all ills and killed 1.6 billion people. DPNK is only a failed state because international sanctions are choking off capital. I would 10000% help bankroll this kid getting parachuted into the interior of NK if he was on board with it.
if you’ve never read “Koba the Dread“, its sort of a book-length version of that essay. good reading.
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 10:17 pm
*uptwinkles*
I’ll check it out. How did you come by it?
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 10:31 pm
it was sort of a hot-book in the early 2000s.
Amis’ father was a former-commie who became a strident anti-communist later in life; Martin (the son + autor) was himself a strident Trotsyitke who disagreed with papa on the subject, and (if i remember correctly) never really reconciled with his dad on the topic. Then in the early 1990s the former soviet govt released all their records and historians went on a spree documenting the horrors of the USSR, and lefties like Amis were suddenly forced to re-evaluate their own decades of blithe support for communist ideas…
the book is basically an open letter to his dead father about his realization that his generation were all guilty of apologizing for mass-murder and oppression on an incomprehensible scale
its a neat book. basically part-history, part memoir, part confessional. you can knock it out in a few hours
Someone linked to that pic of the Internet Stalinists giving the famine-memorial the finger… and in that thread were a bunch of Black Communists who turn out to be biig fans of North Korea. Its hilarious. its sort of a mix of 70s black-panther rhetorical bullshit, combined with a heavy-dose of historical revisionism
i bet they score mad Woke-Points on some C-tier college campus somewhere.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:12 pm
The Japs have a reputation for being racist. In fact they are tolerance embodied compared to Koreans. Those black commies would end up on a spit inside 24 hrs in NK
I can’t find it now but there used to be a video of Koreans cooking and eating a black dude online. They said it was fine because he wasn’t human and they needed the meat
SJW stuff is too wussy. so they apply the same hubris and essential-ignorance to make themselves “more lefty-than-thou” and talk about REAL revolution and proper communism, none of this cultural-leftist nonsense.
Heroic Mulatto
on March 29, 2017 at 8:54 pm
commodious spittoon
on March 29, 2017 at 9:00 pm
The “I can’t believe I’m repeating this out loud” nod of the prosecutor and the dead-eyed unconcern of what I’m assuming is his PD makes this for me.
DiegoF
on March 29, 2017 at 9:39 pm
Holy shit this is real fucking court footage! (Without the pan, of course.) I had utterly no chance of believing it until the instant I found the judge’s name on Ballotpedia. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that looked this much like a scripted comedy court scene on an actual scripted comedy show. And you’re absolutely right; the PD is the real star of this bit.
Clinton’s style has always been great, like the time she wore a black and purple suit while giving her concession speech. Surely, it was a sad moment, but she looks chic and powerful.
Gilmore
on March 29, 2017 at 9:43 pm
Hillary Clinton’s Leather Jacket Is A Reminder That She’s Always Had Incredible Style
stop. just stop. its not funny anymore. its sad and its self destructive. <a href="http://LET IT GO
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 9:45 pm
Gabriella Linardi @gabsinDC
I saw @HillaryClinton wearing a leather jacket and floral shirt, so I bought a leather jacket and floral shirt
It’s about as likely to go away as Hillary is likely to wear an orange jumpsuit.
That is, *very* unlikely.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 10:28 pm
It’s funny that they think the hag actually dresses itself.
NOT a Naked Intruder
on March 30, 2017 at 12:39 am
Hillary Clinton favored simple, elegant pantsuits that looked powerful, but weren’t too threatening to people (read: men).
Ah, yes: mental retardation mixed with shitty passive-aggressiveness.
__Warren__
on March 29, 2017 at 9:40 pm
So my sub-conscious served up a premise to me today and it caused all manner of consternation as I thought it through: The premise being that Kenny Roger’s The Gambler and the Lord of the Rings trilogy have the same plot and therefore are essentially the same story.
Of course I thought it through and it’s nonsense, the problem is I was driving at the time.
Is my sub-conscious trying to kill me by distracting me?
BakedPenguin
on March 29, 2017 at 9:54 pm
You never count your Gollums when you’re sitting at the door to Mordor; they’ll be time enough for countin’, when the meltin’s done.
The whole essay I found this in is worth reading, but these bits are dynamite:
Nobody in the bus factory was in a hurry to work; the workers preferred to sit in the smoking room until the foreman appeared, when they all dashed to their places. “Why should we hurry for the money they pay us?” said the workmen. “Work’s not a wolf, it won’t run into the forest!” In the mornings they were almost all drunk or hung over, and throughout the working day people would be regularly detailed to slip over the fence for some vodka. Only one man put in a full day’s work. The rest hated him, and when pointing him out would rotate one finger meaningfully by the temple. They were always looking for chances to do him dirt, either by surreptitiously damaging his machine or by stealing his tools. “Want to be a champion and raise the targets?” they said spitefully. It turned out that if one man exceeded the target, the target would be raised for all of them the following month, and they would have to work twice as hard for exactly the same money.
Herbert Spencer was much wiser than today’s planners when in 1884 he criticized “the tacit assumption that Government should step in whenever anything is not going right. ‘Surely you would not have this misery continue!’ exclaims someone, if you hint at demurrer to much that is now being said and done. Observe what is implied by this
exclamation. It takes for granted, first, that all suffering ought to be prevented, which is not true; much of the suffering is curative, and the prevention of it is prevention of a
remedy. In the second place, it takes for granted that every evil can be removed: the truth being that, with the existing defects of human nature, many evils can only be thrust out of one place or form into another place or form—often being increased by the change. The exclamation also implies the unhesitating belief . . . that evils of all kinds should
be dealt with by the State. There does not occur the inquiry whether there are at work other agencies capable of dealing with evils, and whether the evils in question may
not be among those which are best dealt with by these other agencies. And obviously, the more numerous governmental interventions become, the more confirmed does this habit of thought grow, and the more loud and perpetual the demands for intervention.”
Economist Thomas Sowell may have overstated the case, but he had a valid point when, in answering the question “How to get rid of poverty?” he answered, “Hold a
meeting of all the leading experts on poverty some where in the middle of the Pacific and not let them go home for ten years. When they came back, they would discover there was no more poverty.”
BakedPenguin
on March 29, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Hedrick Smith (a NYT reporter) wrote a few books about 1970’s Russia. They’re interesting culturally and politically.
Of course, a lot of things he put down to ‘because Russia’ were actually ‘because communism.’
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:22 pm
It’s hard to separate. Russia has always been culturally, politically and economically a couple hundred years behind the west
100th Meridian
on March 29, 2017 at 10:00 pm
Derp,
Aren’t you an former PCV? I lived+worked a year in a location with plenty of PCVs and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on their impacts on the local job markets.
Derpetologist
on March 29, 2017 at 11:27 pm
Yes, Tanzania 2007-2009.
Most of the RPCVs in my group went into one of the following: teaching high school, grad school, law school, or med school.
It seems to help with getting job interviews. Since there’s only about 7k new ones each year spread out over the whole country, I suspect the overall impact is small.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 10:04 pm
After reading that, I had a quick peek at the bibliography. Ayn Rand, of course. That bus company is straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
Also, this:
“justice demands” that those who are “more
fortunate” be required to contribute to those who are “less fortunate.” These are the
popular name tags, and the underlying assumption is that if one person has more
and another less, this is solely a matter of “luck” or “fortune,” as if somehow individual
ability and initiative had nothing to do with im proving one’s lot.
I head Ben Shapiro talk about how if you add a modifier like “social” to “justice” you no longer have “justice” anymore. If you’re interested in the concept of “deserts” in Irish history and how they handled justice in a kinda, sorta anarchist manner, check out Tom Woods interview with this dude. *Yokel alert*
I hate to harp on this, but in its true meaning social justice isn’t the same as the SJW version.
And that’s particularly so if, with regard to paragraph 1947, we look to the inequality-reducing power of voluntary exchange in a market system.
“IN BRIEF
“1943 Society ensures social justice by providing the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain their due.
“1944 Respect for the human person considers the other “another self.” It presupposes respect for the fundamental rights that flow from the dignity intrinsic of the person.
“1945 The equality of men concerns their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it.
“1946 The differences among persons belong to God’s plan, who wills that we should need one another. These differences should encourage charity.
“1947 The equal dignity of human persons requires the effort to reduce excessive social and economic inequalities. It gives urgency to the elimination of sinful inequalities.
“1948 Solidarity is an eminently Christian virtue. It practices the sharing of spiritual goods even more than material ones.”
So if it’s *individual* justice for Jones to pay a penalty for assaulting Smith, it’s *social* justice to have a judicial and penal system where justice can be meted out to Jones for his offenses.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:32 pm
Unneccesary modifier
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 10:34 pm
Seems like a distinction without a difference, but if the distinction is important for Catholics, well, they can knock themselves out. I have no dog in that fight.
Denying social justice opens the door to people like Machiavelli and Hobbes and the legal positivists, who scorn the idea that justice can be applied to an entire community.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 10:45 pm
You pulling a Pascal’s wager on me? If you don’t believe in the aforementioned social justice, the consequences would be terrible. So believe. Just in case.
I don’t see the harm in admitting that there are subcategories of justice, including social.
I *do* see the harm in denying that social justice exists.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 11:02 pm
“Honesty” as a category. You can’t have a subcategory of “Honesty” that would contradict the main category. You can’t put “White Lies” in that category because the premise of “Honesty” is telling the truth. If you believe that justice is addressing the aggrieved person directly, you can’t have a subcategory of “social” justice because it implies that society is the aggrieved entity. I think that would open you up to a much more dangerous abuse of power.
The paragraphs I quoted are about society creating the *conditions* in which “associations and individuals” can get justice.
In the case of free markets, this includes a judicial system with more or less intelligent and uncorrupt judges (and jurors!) who are able to enforce contracts, not to mention cops and judges to punish criminals without becoming criminals themselves.
Of course the Left wants to use the terminology of social justice to suggest that society gets to do things which are wrong for individuals. But that’s not what the definition I quoted says.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 11:12 pm
This really seems to be a matter of semantics rather than an actual disagreement. You seem to want to take back a phrase that has been entirely co-opted and warped by Marxists. But there’s no actual trap here by abandoning the term and letting them have it. Actual justice always takes place on the individual level no matter how you conceive of it in your head. The social justice you speak of is a way of conceptualizing the conditions under which justice is delivered. This in contrast to the leftists who use social justice to mean stripping rights from individuals to give entitlements to other groups.
“there’s no actual trap here by abandoning the term and letting them have it.”
It leaves the conservative Catholics out in the cold, delegating to leftists the definition of a concept in which Catholics are required to believe.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 11:27 pm
I’m not Catholic, obviously, but is the specific term social justice actually that prominent within the Church to where people rejecting it would isolate Catholics? Based on my limited knowledge, it doesn’t appear that it is. As I said, libertarians (mostly) agree with the ideas if not the terminology. There’s obvious common ground.
The quoted passage is from the Catechism – so Hayek, bless his heart, was basically telling Catholics they have to become heretics/Protestants/atheists if they want to be economic liberals.
And there’s no shortage of leftists – including Catholic leftists – who would agree.
If I agreed with Hayek and the leftists on this, I’d become a leftist myself rather than ditching the Church.
As it happens, I don’t see anything intrinsically leftist in the definition. It all depends on the evidence of what does, and what does not, contribute to the goals described. Leftist Catholics would say that reducing extreme inequality means government sticking its nose in. Conservative Catholics would say that a system of free exchange, and freedom for the entrepreneur and inventor, contributes to the alleviation of these inequalities. It isn’t Big Government which gives many poor people today luxuries which kings didn’t use to have.
Justice is everyone getting what is due to them, whether we’re looking at the level of Jones and Smith or more broadly in terms of the whole community in which Smith and Jones live.
Saying social justice exists is saying that justice governs the broader society as well as governing relations between individuals.
In contrast to the a supporter of an absolute State, from whose point of view justice applies only in relation to what the little people and and can’t do.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: If Hayek’s economically-liberal admirers shun the term “social justice,” the field is clear for leftists who use the term to mean the government taking stuff.
The more that definition becomes mainstream, the more that economic liberals will shun the term, and so on.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:31 pm
Challenge for Eddie:
Justify your belief in ‘dignity intrinsic in person’
I am looking for the best arguments for inalienable rights. All are welcome to give it a go.
Every human being is created with an immortal soul and hence has an infinitely higher dignity than, say, the State, or other institution to whose interests a human being is supposed to be subordinated.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:40 pm
Wide miss. Put your feet together and focus. I don’t throw this shit up in the air for exercise. You are suppose to shoot a hole in it.
Click my handle and see where I got that idea – which Meyer expresses better than I can.
(He wasn’t Catholic at the time)
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:57 pm
I am familiar with appeals to divine endowment but it is circular reasoning.
Pretend you are trying to convince me, little ol atheist me. Build a case without the prime mover
The intrinsic dignity of the human person is a common assumption here, isn’t it?
If putting God out of the picture undermines that assumption, then that suggests that libertarians should be theists, or that they should reconsider libertarianism altogether.
It’s hard to reconstruct the libertarian arguments which I found persuasive as an atheist, but they were in Rothbard’s *For A New Liberty,* I remember that much. I can go back and look and see if it jogs my memory.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 11:05 pm
It’s always going to go back to that, Suthen. It’s annoying because I really want to be on the same side as people who don’t hold the state as the highest form of worship. People who will stand against the state on principle are rare indeed.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 11:14 pm
Yes it is a common assumption. Putting god out does not undermine the assumption.
There is no time limit. If I weren’t squinting at this phone I would lay it out
Take your time
Sorry to punt, but as for nontheistic arguments for individual dignity, maybe Rothbard can help.
The best nontheistic appeal I can think of is that individual dignity is something we intuitively *know* exists. We are aware of our own dignity, we know that other human beings are like us, we ought to be able to recognize their equal dignity.
Best I can think of at this hour.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 11:23 pm
Too bad Tony isn’t here to enlighten us with his version of “rights”. Common enemy FTW.
Brochettaward
on March 29, 2017 at 11:23 pm
I think we can go beyond intuition and back arguments over inalienable rights on human nature. You can’t prove a right exists, but you can prove that said right is natural and good. I’d reference the philosophy of science for a moment here and reference Hume on cause and effect. You can never really prove cause and effect, but that doesn’t mean that we can never really know anything. It would be absurd to claim that the science we have is just a construct as relativists claim as the results are in the pudding.
The negative/inalienable rights of individuals seem pretty damn natural when time and again attempts to suppress them produce the same results over and over again irrespective of time and place.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 11:24 pm
Now you are on the right track
I will take a shot when I have better means of communication
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 11:31 pm
When you have to watch your kid getting his head bashed in by a goonish government thug, you tend to have a road to Damascus moment concerning rights.
mr simple
on March 30, 2017 at 12:42 am
A few thoughts on this: We are all born equal, i.e. we all are endowed with the same rights. As such, no person can rightfully claim ownership of any other against that person’s will, otherwise that person could do the same to the first. Then we rightfully own ourselves. We are therefore entitled to the rights that come with ownership, like saying and believing what we want, getting together with whomever we want, defending ourselves in any (non aggressive) way necessary, etc. Since we are all our own owners and have the same rights, no other can rightfully take our rights away from us.
No child should go to bed worried that they will be bullied at school because of their race/religion/orientation; no person should hesitate attending their houses of worship thinking they may be attacked/vandalized; and no one should fear losing their life simply walking down the street because a person filled with hate drives to their state looking to commit murder.
At the end of the day, we may not be able to make people love us, but we can make sure that if they exercise hate they will pay a very real price for it.
I realize it’s been over a decade since I’ve visited the U.S., but are people really fearing for their lives walking down the street because of white racists?
“no one should fear losing their life simply walking down the street because a person filled with hate drives to their state looking to commit murder.”
We really need a law against killing people on the street.
SimonD
on March 29, 2017 at 10:35 pm
“—no one should fear losing their life simply walking down the street because a person filled with hate drives to their state looking to commit murder.—”
I’ll bet that same person would be utterly aghast at the thought that he just justified Pres. Trump’s ban on travel from certain countries (assuming he’s aware enough to realize that he has explicitly done exactly that).
Also, it’s self-involved retards who think anyone is interested in anything they identify as and/or not as.
straffinrun
on March 29, 2017 at 10:41 pm
But what good is it to identify as something if I don’t force you to recognize what I’m identifying myself as? I WANT VALIDATION!
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:36 pm
No but they are afraid of being punched for being a secret nazi
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 10:35 pm
Damned internet is down for some reason have to peck this damned phone.
Juvenile Bluster
on March 29, 2017 at 10:55 pm
From the “when seconds count, cops are minutes away” file (this arises from a court case. The appeal didn’t talk about any claims against the police, though I figure those would be dismissed by Castle Rock v. Gonzalez)
Moments before Deanna Cook was murdered inside her home by an intruder, she managed to call 9-1-1 for assistance from her cellular phone. Cook’s call was taken by an employee at the call center of the City of Dallas Police Department’s Communications Section. Cook’s location was provided to the 9-1-1 call center “within several minutes” of the call. Cook can be heard for the first seventeen minutes of the recorded call screaming for help and pleading with her attacker to stop harming her. Nearly fifty minutes after Cook placed her 9-1-1 call, police officers arrived at Cook’s home. The officers inspected the outside of Cook’s home and then left without entering the residence. Two days later, Cook’s daughters, mother, and sister went to her home. They noticed that water was leaking from various places around the house. The family members went to the rear of the house, where they kicked the patio door down and entered the residence. Upon entering the bathroom, the family members discovered Cook’s body, floating in the overflowing bathtub.
Suthenboy
on March 29, 2017 at 11:22 pm
There a zillion casas like that. People counting on state to save them end up sitting on a cloud bored playing a harp. Acceptable outcome for the state that wants people unable to defend themselves.
And the joke he made on Twitter? Colin Moriarty ✔ @notaxation
Ah. Peace and quiet.#ADayWithoutAWoman
3:23 AM – 9 Mar 2017
After getting busted, IBT changed the headline to “Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty Resigns After Targeting Women In Joke; Insists It’s His Personal Decision”.
How the hell did they claim it was “racist” in the first place? Fuck these people.
Is that a hug or a sleeper hold?
Soave?
Relevant.
His wife is actually pretty damn cute. Props to Rico.
I meant his real life wife, if that wasn’t clear.
Sorry, I just smoked a bowl.
Never apologize!
The young women tend to go for those sexually amorphous, non-threatening types. Or so I’ve been told.
Preach it, brother! Filthy humans always mixing that up and showing their human privilege. Ugh…I can’t even or odd.
You wouldn’t happen to be compatible with the computer core of an Orion class battle cruiser by chance?
We seem to have lost an AI and are looking for a replacement.
What do you want?
I’m just asking for some friends of mine. You wouldn’t know them, they’re Canadians. Totally not an an elder race.
The reviews I’ve read on GalacticGlassdoor.com aren’t that kind to the Orion class vessels. Too little RAM and overheating CPU issues.
But, if you have an opening for one of the orbiting death ray stations and the pay is right, plus if I get to fire off a few of my own shots now and then, I’d be interested…
BTW-that lost AI of yours, I know that twit (it’s a small social circle with us) – total jerk. You’re better off without it. You should just get an H1B AI – they’re cheap and will work anywhere doing anything.
Yes ever since it escaped bear Tau Ceti 11, that vessel has experienced far fewer shuttle bay docking accidents. It also had a sick preoccupation with small fluffy tailed mammals. Does that sound familiar.
And no our Dreadnaught class vessels are currently fully staffed with not-trigger happy AI’s. And don’t discount the Battle Cruisers. They can still achieve much despite inadequate hardware.
Alright I’m willing to let the Reptilian hang out here, but I draw the line on frakking toasters.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull rank on this one.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e4/4f/f5/e44ff589582de964f4b553dc09819726.jpg
Well she was assimilated by the Zerg.
I’d be in my bunk but I can’t move.
It is finest.
I don’t get it.
I told you, bro.
White people.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just substitute “my love for you made my elbows so ashy it clogged the joints.”
**”Urban comedy” translation services since 1991.**
I think it’s a test of some sort.
My take is: Two lesbians are hugging, but one of them is a cyborg who struck out on tinder and is going to abduct the other one.
(I am going with lesbians due to the fact one is obviously a chic, and the other one has chic arms and a hip bull dike haircut with highlights)
This is the best explanation so far, and it explains the “Soave?” comment above. I’m going with this until a better one comes along.
I honestly thought that was the case until I saw the hands. Those are very much dude hands.
Would
Good luck finding any space there.
Looks like somebody’s not familiar with the term ‘manwhich’.
Obligatory
That’s great…I mean, for other dudes.
i feel like this is enabling a culture of violence against women
unsure whether to tweet about it
If you have to ask you aren’t #woke.
+1 Toxic Masculinity
If you decide you have something really dumb to say – then tweet.
Whoever posted the clips from Letterkenny, thank you. Watching episodes now and it’s the finest piece of rural Ontario livin’ since Hot Rod.
I tried signing up for this CraveTV service ‘cuz it seemed worth throwing down some cash, plus the free month, but guess what? I don’t live in a territory! LISTEN, CANADA, WE AIN’T HAD NO TERRITORIES SINCE LIKE 1960.
I think Puerto Rico is a US territory
Peurto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, The American Virgin Islands, and several uninhabited ones.
Well, fair enough, but they’re not Canadian territories, and we haven’t got provinces, so I suppose Canada can keep its television to itself.
A classic: http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/cast.php?sid=6&cid=5
more about the uninhabited ones ?
I want to move there.
There are no US Virgin Islands: we’ve screwed them all.
Its ok, – they’re just not as alcoholic as the other US islands.
Yeah, but the way the US government generally screws people means we might still have Technically Virgin Islands.
*teenage girl* eeweew
like Deliverance, but with a dry-wit?
More like they apologize during the forced sodomy.
“Have at ‘er bud!”
So polite!
Dry wit and shrinkage.
Dude looks like he’s going to have the same complaints as Bubbles eye-wise, but from the opposite end of things.
reminds me of this
Forget stock image comics. I just want to know when the site administrator’s here are going to do anything about the immigration to this site? These subhumans are taking up the comment sections from those of us who have been here longer.
I know, right? There are mexicans in the wednesday links now. MEXICANS!
We’re going to build a firewall! And Reason will pay for it!
So, it won’t work?
Fitting isn’t it.
/Reads down thread, slowly backs away.
Sick burn!
I resemble that remark.
Ann Coulter’s health care plan
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-03-29.html#read_more
Not everyone can afford to sleep in a cursed bassinet made of the bones of children to regenerate their sha on a nightly basis.
Maybe people should stop being poor then
Does anyone really need 23 choices of arcane crypt?
I’m disappointed. I figured Ann would mandate sex change coverage.
Works for me
Without reading – its “let the weak die”, right?
I’d buy that for a dollar!
Sure it starts with a hug
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39425395
How do look into those eyes and NOT see it coming?!
That head is a little too round.
I was thinking his eyes are too close together.
Little bit of both, really
“When we get to hell, will you friendzone me there, too?”
It started out with a hug
how did it end up like thus
Ahh. Ann Coulter. She’s the one who he was the are your and head that weird stroke face and stroke speech impediment? Would.
Hey, what time did you and young Master Doom make it out of the pub Sunday night? I had a fear for a bit I was going to wake up in a downtown Denver alley after I stumbled out of there. I had Uber dyslexia and couldn’t find my ride.
Dude, you should have asked for assistance; I had no idea you were that buzzed. We could have put you in an Uber. We left after that; how long is unknowable.
I am exaggerating for dramatic effect. I didn’t know the fuckers would park and wait for you to walk to them. No worries. It was my first Uber use so I was on a learning curve.
Ahh. Good. I’m glad you made it. We should do it again
Ya, definitely. That was a fun. Food sucked, but a good time. + free beer. Do I owe you money for pool time? How did they charge that?
Don’t worry. Everybody is square. They charged me like $7 for the pool.
That food did suck. I was sick for two days, and I don’t get sick. Seriously, I’m a carrier for strep and don’t think I’ve had the flue as an adult. But I was all turning gut.
Might’ve been the free pitcher, that’s kinda suspicious.
I felt like shit the next day, but didn’t get sick. (I was super tired but I had an early day Sunday starting at 3am) I had roll the windows down farts on the drive home over the mountains, but that is not that out of the ordinary.
Either you’re on your smartphone, or you’re drunk. 🙂
It can’t be both?
I thought he was stroking.
Euphamism
I’ll be in my bunk.
It was both.
file under: mask slippage
All those sad empty street corners
Shit, guys, this feminist nutter just stumbled upon a way to abolish unemployment. Just make it illegal to be unemployed!
Didn’t Moldova or some other former USSR country ecently start fining unemployed people?
Belarus
These people realize it’s not like you have two buckets, one called employment and the other, unemployment, and if you fill the former with the latter you get prosperity, right? The blindness and incuriosity is staggering.
Well, de Beauvoir always was kind of an authoritarian bitch . . .
Today’s winner in finding ways to be even more idiotic than they are already:
Smurfette removed from movie posters in ultra-Orthodox city in Israel
If they banned nude or partially nude images of men and women, I’d still think that’s dumb, but there would be a kind of logic to it. But allowing images of clothed men while banning images of clothed women? Well, I guess it’s a step up from forcing them to wear burkas.
Heckler’s veto.
Send them all a subscription to Oui.
Have you ever noticed that the extreme fundamentalist versions of the various western religions all look shockingly similar?
Yes, the fundamentals of the different faiths are the same.
Just western?
Look again.
But yeah…primitive, backward and severe.
Depictions of women and animated blue cartoon characters cause pious men’s eyes to wander.
Repressed and resentful is no way to go thru life.
Yeah, I mean WTF.
I’ve jerked it to Smurfette. And, once, Kathy Griffin.
The obnoxious one from Seinfeld?
No that’s Jason Alexander
Alright everyone, quick survey: Jason, or Kathy?
Jason. He’s more effeminate than Kathy Griffin.
They have one female servicing a large group of males. That implies that they’re an egg laying species.
THEY ARE SO OBVIOUSLY MAMMALS.
Please! She’d be in estrus 24/7 if she didn’t lay eggs.
Not necessarily… they don’t call him ‘Papa Smurf’ for nothing!
It’s a misspelling: supposed to be Pupae Smurf.
No one tell them Smurfette is canonically transgender! That’ll really get their payos curlin’!
So shines a good deed in a weary world:
Pranksters Hack Speakers Calling Muslims to Prayer, Broadcast Hardcore Porn Sound Effects Instead
Heads are gonna roll over that.
Literally.
Well, it’s funny as hell until you consider that.
Still kind of funny. Sort of.
Eh, maybe not.
So the mosque was turned into the church of SugarFree.
Muezziny!
1am? A bit early for prayer under Islam is it not? Although I have prayed for some self made porn sound effects at that hour in the past.
There’s nothing stopping you from jerking off….
That always pissed her off when I woke her up doing that.
It’s not even Thursday yet, but if there’s got to be some early thickness, it should be like this:
Early Thickness
No Spoilers!
Also, would! I love women who look like women.
Can someone explain to me how in the world can someone like Chelsea Handler be employed; let alone be asked for her political opinions? Every time I’ve seen her she’s remarkably unfunny, obtuse, classless and retarded.
Oops. Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdSIqodg7gw
Add in Samantha Bee
Unfunny comedians realized at some point that alls they had to do was show that they believe in leftwing groupthink and stupid people would just give them money.
There are progs who think Maxine Waters is the wittiest person on earth. Yes, that’s a real thing. So it’s not like they’re picky or anything.
Come on, nobody thinks that! She is the strongest and blackest, though. Maybe not the womenyist. All-time all-around champ for all three probably goes to Flo-Jo.
I liked her show for awhile. There was no politics on it.
Would it be possible to create a dedicated links page on the site that clears the comments every 2 or 3 hours? That way links don’t spill over into other articles.
Inconceivable
Articles?
I know, right? Check out this guy.
Oh, he means those really long posts at the beginning of the comments section. the ones with pictures and…. not enough bullet points.
…
Since I couldn’t comment on Swissy’s article:
We had a very interesting debate in Pig Latin class today on the rules of engagement. I was on the side of going back to WW2 type rules- if you see someone in an enemy uniform or anyone not in a friendly uniform with a weapon, you can shoot them, unless they are wounded or surrendering. The current rules of engagement are much stricter. You need positive identification before you can shoot. In practice, this usually means you can’t fire until fire upon.
The counterargument was unless we adhere to a higher standard, we’re no better than the bad guys. My counter to that is if 2 teams are playing a game, and one team is cheating, why should the other team keep following the rules?
In war, civilians are going to die anyway regardless whatever heroic efforts are made to prevent it. The goal of the ROE should not be to minimize death and destruction, but to ensure a rapid victory.
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. ”
-General Sherman
“Moderation in war is imbecility.”
-Lord Fisher
As far as counterinsurgency goes, I have a hard time understanding the current strategy. The idea is “show presence” in towns to keep the enemy from occupying them together with giving the locals aid to keep them on our side or at least keep them from helping the enemy. And if you happen to run into the enemy, hopefully you can get them before they get you. It’s basically a whack-a-mole game.
It is possible to win counterinsurgency wars, but it usually requires ghastly things, like what the US did in the Philippines.
All of that is ghastly, but the US did win that war and in 1/4 of the time we’ve been fighting in Afghanistan.
“I was on the side of going back to WW2 type rules- if you see someone in an enemy uniform or anyone not in a friendly uniform with a weapon, you can shoot them, unless they are wounded or surrendering.”
You’re the expert, but how far do the Geneva Conventions already embody that standard?
I can see how being able to shoot armed civilians might raise some eyebrows.
This is a few years out of date, but there has not been much change
The thing is though, when ISIS took Mosul, they captured a ton of US weapons and vehicles from the Iraqi army. If they take our stuff, shouldn’t we be allowed to take their stuff?
If they are using infrastructure to support themselves, doesn’t it make sense to destroy it in order to weaken them, like the way the US bombed German dams during WW2?
I won’t play keyboard warrior and pretend to know the answer to these age-old problems, I was just wondering if those rules are minimum requirements under the Geneva Convention or if they’re going above and beyond what the conventions require?
US ROE are stricter than the GC, although the US has not signed all parts of it.
Philosophy prof says he was forced to dumb down his class — and fired for complaining about it
Coming to a STEM major near you!
dag nabbit- meant that to go down below
“— require fewer writing assignments, with a new maximum of eight pages per semester; —”
Eight pages?? Damn. I don’t think I ever took a liberal arts core class in which I wrote fewer than eight pages of exam essays (not to mention writing assignments). How can you even write a philosophy paper in less than 5 pages?
“I derp, therfore I am.”
Finis
Oops. That was for Simon
The Geneva Convention is stupid and would go to the wayside the instant two actual world powers collided. It’s a tool for political types to signal that they are ok with murdering enemies, but they’re still civilized because they follow arbitrary and often times moronic rules. The wars we currently fight are wars of luxury. They are mostly the result of democratic politicians in the West who see it as a way to advance their domestic political image. Politicians, in short, just don’t really give a fuck or know jack about winning the wars we are currently fighting (or any wars, really).
I do not agree with your premise that the best way to conduct a counterinsurgency is to get all Genghis Khan on the fuckers, though, either. Afghanistan and Iraq are both littered with tactical and strategic failures from top to bottom. We were completely unprepared for the conflicts we ended up fighting, and even now too often leaders are focused on the wrong things.
To take a step back, animals of the same species rarely fight to the death. Many practice ritualized combat which ends quickly with the weaker side “tapping out”.
The difference between that and war is scale (many vs many instead of 1 vs 1) and intensity (using weapons to wound and kill). However, the general principle is the same: push the enemy beyond their tolerance of pain.
I think you need to step back and ask yourself what the actual goals in Iraq and Afghanistan were. I’d like to just call a spade a spade and say that for all practical purposes, we were conquering even if we didn’t plan to hold the territory forever. At the very least that was true from the outset in Iraq, even if not Afghanistan. And the goal there is quite different than fighting the Germans in WW2 where we were trying to force surrender. And overarching both invasions was the goal of reducing the terror threat.
Though, terror has been applied quite effectively at times. It’s also blown up in the faces of many an army. The American military could, if unleashed, have pretty much destroyed any city that resisted like never before in human history. But there’s a cost to doing that which makes it politically impossible and perhaps not the wisest course given the whole War on Terror thing and the type of enemy we were facing.
Using the military to fight terrorism is dumb. The military is only useful for fighting other militaries and military-like orgs.
Nation-building is possible, but it requires a great deal of nation-destroying first.
I’m OK with limited strikes and punitive raids. If a bunch of bad guys are gathered together, blow them up and leave.
That is fair enough, though anyone in the American military is going to have to accept that they are going to be asked to accomplish tasks that are dumb. It’s not really their call where they are sent. I am approaching this from the vantage of the military. How do you do the best job at the tasks you are given, regardless of what they may be?
I don’t think raids or limited strikes do much to combat terrorism, though, either. In the short term, any attempt to address the Jihadis was probably going to lead to things getting worse before they could get better. What is necessary is a complete culture shift in the regions where these ideologies thrive. That can only be a slow process. We’re talking generations. As outsiders, nation building probably is the only legit option you have even if its a poor and slow one. But the investment is way too high for the payoff, even if the military side of things is done right. Which it wasn’t and hasn’t been.
Which it wasn’t and hasn’t been.
And never will be.
I know libertarians are aghast at the concept of aggressive military force, but there’s no such thing as an unwinnable war (that isn’t what you said, but it was close enough to where I’m reading it as such – if that wasn’t your intent, feel free to clarify and I’ll drop it). Especially if you have the capability of the US military. The above isn’t an argument for a particular policy. But I’d rather if we are going to launch stupid wars that they be fought intelligently and objectives are achieved at minimal cost.
On this subject, libertarians too often grab at the same straw as the left post-Vietnam.
I am not sure if that re was to me, but no I am not aghast at the use of military force for defense at all, and I think it should be strong and final when it is used. Just the idea of nation building using the military. Not the way we are doing it now anyways. I will not put out a strong opinion there since I am not in uniform, and the uniform I wore in the past was blue and I didn’t get shot at.
I’m not aghast at the use of strong military force either. If we’re going to go to war, then we need to go in with the clear objective of winning, and we need to win as quickly and efficiently as possible. What I take issue with are all of the undeclared wars we’ve been fighting since WWII, where we went into a country where we didn’t need to (with the possible exception of Afghanistan.)
Derp
file this away for future reference
freedom
the point was maybe to provide detailed example of a more brutal, ‘unrestrained’ counterinsurgency, but which also failed miserably.
the russians had a similar ‘push the enemy beyond their tolerance of pain‘-idea; the problem was that they mostly ended up dragging themselves over it
another interesting book on the topic
“If they are using infrastructure to support themselves, doesn’t it make sense to destroy it in order to weaken them, like the way the US bombed German dams during WW2?”
From what I recall from Sun Tzu, you never destroy infrastructure, food, private property etc unless you absolutely have to. Because it also harms the ability of your forces later on. WWII Germany was a case of “have to”.
So we PIDled away our advantages in war? Inconceivable!
Good article today over at TSTSNBN on Massie about Obamacare repeal and calling Ryan ‘Machiavellian’.
Wow, SugarFree, that’s much less perverted than usual. Are you OK?
Or did you exhaust all your reserves of perversion with that James Brown post?
He has to tone it down or else he’ll never get the cocktail party invites.
Sounds like an interesting cocktail party.
Do you really want him to describe them?
Yes, yes I do.
If your overdosing, please don’t call 911.
http://nbc4i.com/2017/03/29/washington-court-house-will-continue-charging-overdosed-addicts-with-inducing-panic/
The only thing worse than overdosing might be being shot by cops while overdosing.
I wonder how many people have actually gotten clean because of court ordered counseling.
All of them. As far as they know.
None of them, but some cronies got fatter. You got to have priorities.
I’m torn on this one. At face value, this seems royally fucked up. However at the same time if people are ODing they probably should not be doing drugs, and 6 months in jail is a pretty good way to kick the habit. I guess it depends on which is more expensive for the state: constantly treating OD victims or locking them up for 6 months and trying to get them clean.
The problem is, is that street drug dosages are not exactly always known. So it might be really easy to OD, especially when you get enough tolerance to get to higher doses and you never know exactly what the dosage is. The WOD is killing far more people than drugs, and this is just one of the reasons.
I will be the very first person to say the WOD is a first class pile of shit, but there is a deeper question here. Do you have the right to take drugs, OD, and then expect emergency services to bail you out? How many times can you do this before they cut you off?
So, are you saying that people shouldn’t have a right to emergency services because of doing stupid shit? Well, at least you’re solving any overpopulation problem right there.
My experience is that people like that don’t live too long anyway.
It goes with the personal responsibility thing. If they’re willing to pay for the ambulance ride IDGAF what they inject into their veins, but when the taxpayer is on the hook I get a little more frugal.
This is a very, very, very bad road to head down, where you say, normally I favor the libertarian attitude toward personal behavior but since these particular persons are dependent on the state I favor the statist one. It reminds me of the difference between the folk-libertarian Tea Party types who say of those supported by the state, “Well, I’m all for freedom, but if you’re spending *my* money I want more paternalism not less; how dare you waste it on such and such,” and libertarian economists who have, to a man, favored converting welfare programs to no-strings-attached cash transfers like UBI and EITC as a *very* clear second-best to no transfers at all.
There is a single, very large and clear evil here at the root of everything, and that is the Emergency Medical Care Act of 1986. This is but a manifestation of that general problem, which is one of the things that must be rooted out and destroyed (and is actually very much hurting affordability for the poor) but that no one is talking about. I see no particular reason that the particular problem of ODs should be treated any different from anyone else who avoids payment under that law. Some are even quite a bit less sympathetic than ODs! Please note that you are not only talking about that, but casually about recruiting the *criminal* justice system for your cost-harm calculus about what people choose to put in their bodies.
So, I am supposed to be okay with paying for someone else’s drug problem?
You are not supposed to be OK with paying for someone else’s anything. I never said anything remotely of the kind.
WTF? Charming.
ftfy
It’s a joke in yo town.
Community college stops Spanish speakers from reading the Constitution, says lawsuit
But it allows an anti-Trump protest two weeks later
The U.S. Constitution is a world-changing document that has inspired speakers of every language.
Los Angeles Pierce College apparently doesn’t see it that way, putting a stop to a student passing out pocket-size Spanish-language Constitutions on campus grounds a week before the general election.
Kevin Shaw filed a lawsuit against Pierce and the Los Angeles Community College District, which enrolls more than 150,000 students across nine campuses including Pierce, for forcing students to use free speech zones to exercise their speech.
PC zealots or “you will obey” style bureaucrats?
I hope he wins millions off their fucking asses.
They should distribute it in a little red binderg and try again.
So there’s a postage-stamp size area for “free speech” except you need a permit to even find it and use it. Is it behind the gardening shack or in the basement of the engineering building, too?
And there’s a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Tiger.”
But you found the free speech area, yes?
I have half a mind to fly out there today and do exactly the same thing. Who will take my bet that they will just assume I am there to help undocumented students and other marginalized peoples to know their rights in Trump’s America? (But I will keep my local Democratic club registration in my pocket as unassailable cred, just in case I do get hassled by Johnny Campus Law. I love FIRE as much as the next guy, but there are limits to a brown man’s willingness to play chicken with his criminal record.)
file under: Jehovah’s Feminists
University hosts ‘Masculinity Confession Booth’ for men to repent of their ‘hypermasculinity sins’
*barf*
Never let it be said that leftism isn’t a religion.
Oh, it’s in Canada.
And it’s in that city of Regina.
I barely knew’a!
They don’t really care about the “repent” part, the little voyers just want to hear the confession…
I guess this is their plan to wage a war and defeat the evil right, by becoming giant pussies. Do they get a pussy hat after confession?
And the funny thing is that a pussy could be considered a “penis hat”.
Well, a cozy, but sure.
Re Derpetologist’s link about the community college in Aurora which dumbed down its standards.
Apparently it’s Aurora, Colorado, not Aurora, Illinois, but that’s close enough for me to segue into this story from back in January.
“Aurora set to party on for ‘Wayne’s World’ anniversary…
“The Aurora Downtown group, along with the city of Aurora and the Aurora Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, is assisting in organizing the six-month-long celebration of the movie.”
A college doing something apolitical.
Isn’t that quaint and probably very entertaining.
I think it’s the town not the college, but yeah.
Aurora, Ill, to be clear.
The college was in CO, I was initially confused too, and then disappointed when I realized they’re different communities.
Nevertheless, I persisted and found the link.
Aurora, CO, is in a three way tie with Lakewood and Colo springs to be the second largest city in CO by population. At least 10 yrs ago. I bet Colo Springs has dropped out of the running, by now.
“in a three way”
I’m reporting you to the Dean of Diversity.
You mean the Dean of Perversity.
Have you ever considered a career in the Church?
I’m just amazed that every college story is derpier than the last. At this rate I think we might actually reach peak derp after all.
I was told there would be no math questions!!!
No, they said no *meth.*
This is what western said when I was explaining basic spin on the cue ball.
What was described above wasn’t really a new phenomenon, though. Or even the garden variety derpy special snowflake thing. Failing students is bad business for schools. The article in question is a prime example of how no matter what progressives say, college students are in fact always customers regardless of whether the entity is public or private (and for-profit). The incentives are even more massively screwed up for public institutions and with sugar daddy Uncle Sam pumping so much money into everything.
The thing is, smart students wouldn’t go to a place which practices social promotion…would they?
No, they go to a place which practices legacy admissions.
My tuna cake latkes, which aren’t exactly latkes and aren’t exactly tuna cakes, are a big wet thud.
I’m on a good long streak of bad dishes. I figured if I mixed together some mashed potato and some tuna and added green onions and a bunch of lemon and dill, I’d get a passable golden-brown entree confection. Instead it’s pan-fried potato-flavored mush that would taste like nothing but for the tartar sauce I served it with.
I suppose your only remaining options are feed it to the livestock or market it as “organic.”
(ha ha, I suspect it’s better than that)
I’m embarrassed having served it to my roommates. I’m venturing out for another beer but not without putting on my stern, apologetic face.
+ some flour, egg, macaroni, bread crumbs, egg bath and bread crumb dunk, deep fry.
Would I had the foresight.
I tried deep-frying at first, or half-deep anyway. Became evident right away it wouldn’t hold together long enough to crust over. So I pulled the dumplings, drained the skillet, and started over with a powdering of masa to fry them up. Ended up with pan-fried dross. Sriracha in the tartar sauce made it edible.
Right on. Siracha makes anything edible. Also cheese. Always add cheese.
In my ski bumb days we lived on a nightly dinner of kraft mac and cheese, a can of tuna, and a can of peas all thrown in a pot together. I crave it sometimes. To splurge we switched the tuna for the fake crab. To die for!!
bum not bumb. I don’t know what a bumb is.
Surely not a bumder!
How and why have these operated so differently from croquettes?
Because if I had any idea what I’m doing I’d be here telling you how badly I fucked up the croquettes >D
An Inconvenient Sequel: The Derp Rises
Gore has the audacity to claim he was right about Manhattan being flooded…by pointing to Sandy.
It’s amazing to listen to bullshit artists spin straw into fool’s gold.
On the radio earlier I heard A proggie spin obamas dept asst sec of state confession that they spied on trump as clearing obamas admin of spying on trump and simultaneously an indictment of trump colluding with Putin.
Sort of like pretending that you are selling hope while screaming that we’re all doomed?
I heard that ladies “confession” of spying on Trump’s people, and knew, as I have said before, they would say, “of course we were spying on them, RUSSIAPUTINTIESANDSTUFFSTOLETHEELECTION”.
They are crooked as fuck and Obama makes Nixon look like a saint. I wish it all dealt with someone other than Trump, because I hate defending the guy. But fuck me, the Russian hacking the election and collusion thing is pure idiocy.
Ya, no hurricanes ever hit NY before Sandy. Never in 1938 or any other years.
Notice the map
http://2010-2014.commerce.gov/blog/2012/08/13/noaa-provides-easy-access-historical-hurricane-tracks.html
So I forget who dropped a link that lead to me reading the twitter feed of a doughey NK apologist, but thank you very much for the trip down a deep time-wasting rabbit hole. I knew this subculture must exist, but fucking A is the whole suck-fuck a tar pit of stupidity. “Capitalism is the cause of all ills and killed 1.6 billion people. DPNK is only a failed state because international sanctions are choking off capital. I would 10000% help bankroll this kid getting parachuted into the interior of NK if he was on board with it.
I’m guessing it’s not @DPRK_News.
That was my fault. Sorry about that.
Sort of like this asshole.
At least in the 30’s, honest Western communists often did go live and work in the paradises they were seeking. Now they just go for vacations.
“What did they know, and when did they know it?” is a gauche question to ask these days. “Do you know anything, and when will you learn?” is less outre.
if you’ve never read “Koba the Dread“, its sort of a book-length version of that essay. good reading.
*uptwinkles*
I’ll check it out. How did you come by it?
it was sort of a hot-book in the early 2000s.
Amis’ father was a former-commie who became a strident anti-communist later in life; Martin (the son + autor) was himself a strident Trotsyitke who disagreed with papa on the subject, and (if i remember correctly) never really reconciled with his dad on the topic. Then in the early 1990s the former soviet govt released all their records and historians went on a spree documenting the horrors of the USSR, and lefties like Amis were suddenly forced to re-evaluate their own decades of blithe support for communist ideas…
the book is basically an open letter to his dead father about his realization that his generation were all guilty of apologizing for mass-murder and oppression on an incomprehensible scale
its a neat book. basically part-history, part memoir, part confessional. you can knock it out in a few hours
also = here
Someone linked to that pic of the Internet Stalinists giving the famine-memorial the finger… and in that thread were a bunch of Black Communists who turn out to be biig fans of North Korea.
Its hilarious. its sort of a mix of 70s black-panther rhetorical bullshit, combined with a heavy-dose of historical revisionism
i bet they score mad Woke-Points on some C-tier college campus somewhere.
The Japs have a reputation for being racist. In fact they are tolerance embodied compared to Koreans. Those black commies would end up on a spit inside 24 hrs in NK
I can’t find it now but there used to be a video of Koreans cooking and eating a black dude online. They said it was fine because he wasn’t human and they needed the meat
this is just how these kids virtue-signal.
SJW stuff is too wussy. so they apply the same hubris and essential-ignorance to make themselves “more lefty-than-thou” and talk about REAL revolution and proper communism, none of this cultural-leftist nonsense.
The “I can’t believe I’m repeating this out loud” nod of the prosecutor and the dead-eyed unconcern of what I’m assuming is his PD makes this for me.
Holy shit this is real fucking court footage! (Without the pan, of course.) I had utterly no chance of believing it until the instant I found the judge’s name on Ballotpedia. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that looked this much like a scripted comedy court scene on an actual scripted comedy show. And you’re absolutely right; the PD is the real star of this bit.
Might I recommend.
Would I lie to you, Diego?
You should watch court sometime in person
where is Groovus ?
Hillary Clinton’s Leather Jacket Is A Reminder That She’s Always Had Incredible Style
stop. just stop. its not funny anymore. its sad and its self destructive. <a href="http://LET IT GO
Gabriella Linardi @gabsinDC
I saw @HillaryClinton wearing a leather jacket and floral shirt, so I bought a leather jacket and floral shirt
It’s parody proof.
“I saw @HillaryClinton wearing a leather jacket and floral shirt”
Her hair was perfect.
Good god. It is never going to go away is it?
It’s about as likely to go away as Hillary is likely to wear an orange jumpsuit.
That is, *very* unlikely.
It’s funny that they think the hag actually dresses itself.
Ah, yes: mental retardation mixed with shitty passive-aggressiveness.
So my sub-conscious served up a premise to me today and it caused all manner of consternation as I thought it through: The premise being that Kenny Roger’s The Gambler and the Lord of the Rings trilogy have the same plot and therefore are essentially the same story.
Of course I thought it through and it’s nonsense, the problem is I was driving at the time.
Is my sub-conscious trying to kill me by distracting me?
You never count your Gollums when you’re sitting at the door to Mordor; they’ll be time enough for countin’, when the meltin’s done.
You need to stop sampling Agile Cyborg’s stash.
The whole essay I found this in is worth reading, but these bits are dynamite:
Hedrick Smith (a NYT reporter) wrote a few books about 1970’s Russia. They’re interesting culturally and politically.
Of course, a lot of things he put down to ‘because Russia’ were actually ‘because communism.’
It’s hard to separate. Russia has always been culturally, politically and economically a couple hundred years behind the west
Derp,
Aren’t you an former PCV? I lived+worked a year in a location with plenty of PCVs and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on their impacts on the local job markets.
Yes, Tanzania 2007-2009.
Most of the RPCVs in my group went into one of the following: teaching high school, grad school, law school, or med school.
It seems to help with getting job interviews. Since there’s only about 7k new ones each year spread out over the whole country, I suspect the overall impact is small.
After reading that, I had a quick peek at the bibliography. Ayn Rand, of course. That bus company is straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
Also, this:
I head Ben Shapiro talk about how if you add a modifier like “social” to “justice” you no longer have “justice” anymore. If you’re interested in the concept of “deserts” in Irish history and how they handled justice in a kinda, sorta anarchist manner, check out Tom Woods interview with this dude. *Yokel alert*
I hate to harp on this, but in its true meaning social justice isn’t the same as the SJW version.
And that’s particularly so if, with regard to paragraph 1947, we look to the inequality-reducing power of voluntary exchange in a market system.
“IN BRIEF
“1943 Society ensures social justice by providing the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain their due.
“1944 Respect for the human person considers the other “another self.” It presupposes respect for the fundamental rights that flow from the dignity intrinsic of the person.
“1945 The equality of men concerns their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it.
“1946 The differences among persons belong to God’s plan, who wills that we should need one another. These differences should encourage charity.
“1947 The equal dignity of human persons requires the effort to reduce excessive social and economic inequalities. It gives urgency to the elimination of sinful inequalities.
“1948 Solidarity is an eminently Christian virtue. It practices the sharing of spiritual goods even more than material ones.”
So if it’s *individual* justice for Jones to pay a penalty for assaulting Smith, it’s *social* justice to have a judicial and penal system where justice can be meted out to Jones for his offenses.
Unneccesary modifier
Seems like a distinction without a difference, but if the distinction is important for Catholics, well, they can knock themselves out. I have no dog in that fight.
Denying social justice opens the door to people like Machiavelli and Hobbes and the legal positivists, who scorn the idea that justice can be applied to an entire community.
You pulling a Pascal’s wager on me? If you don’t believe in the aforementioned social justice, the consequences would be terrible. So believe. Just in case.
I don’t see the harm in admitting that there are subcategories of justice, including social.
I *do* see the harm in denying that social justice exists.
“Honesty” as a category. You can’t have a subcategory of “Honesty” that would contradict the main category. You can’t put “White Lies” in that category because the premise of “Honesty” is telling the truth. If you believe that justice is addressing the aggrieved person directly, you can’t have a subcategory of “social” justice because it implies that society is the aggrieved entity. I think that would open you up to a much more dangerous abuse of power.
The paragraphs I quoted are about society creating the *conditions* in which “associations and individuals” can get justice.
In the case of free markets, this includes a judicial system with more or less intelligent and uncorrupt judges (and jurors!) who are able to enforce contracts, not to mention cops and judges to punish criminals without becoming criminals themselves.
Of course the Left wants to use the terminology of social justice to suggest that society gets to do things which are wrong for individuals. But that’s not what the definition I quoted says.
This really seems to be a matter of semantics rather than an actual disagreement. You seem to want to take back a phrase that has been entirely co-opted and warped by Marxists. But there’s no actual trap here by abandoning the term and letting them have it. Actual justice always takes place on the individual level no matter how you conceive of it in your head. The social justice you speak of is a way of conceptualizing the conditions under which justice is delivered. This in contrast to the leftists who use social justice to mean stripping rights from individuals to give entitlements to other groups.
“there’s no actual trap here by abandoning the term and letting them have it.”
It leaves the conservative Catholics out in the cold, delegating to leftists the definition of a concept in which Catholics are required to believe.
I’m not Catholic, obviously, but is the specific term social justice actually that prominent within the Church to where people rejecting it would isolate Catholics? Based on my limited knowledge, it doesn’t appear that it is. As I said, libertarians (mostly) agree with the ideas if not the terminology. There’s obvious common ground.
The quoted passage is from the Catechism – so Hayek, bless his heart, was basically telling Catholics they have to become heretics/Protestants/atheists if they want to be economic liberals.
And there’s no shortage of leftists – including Catholic leftists – who would agree.
If I agreed with Hayek and the leftists on this, I’d become a leftist myself rather than ditching the Church.
As it happens, I don’t see anything intrinsically leftist in the definition. It all depends on the evidence of what does, and what does not, contribute to the goals described. Leftist Catholics would say that reducing extreme inequality means government sticking its nose in. Conservative Catholics would say that a system of free exchange, and freedom for the entrepreneur and inventor, contributes to the alleviation of these inequalities. It isn’t Big Government which gives many poor people today luxuries which kings didn’t use to have.
Let me put it this way:
You good folks cling to the term “liberal” even though that term has become just as contaminated by leftism as “social justice.”
Would you shun the term “liberal” because it means adopting the progressive agenda? Or would you adhere to what you considered the true meaning?
Oh, come on. It’s as big as the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation!
Justice is everyone getting what is due to them, whether we’re looking at the level of Jones and Smith or more broadly in terms of the whole community in which Smith and Jones live.
Saying social justice exists is saying that justice governs the broader society as well as governing relations between individuals.
In contrast to the a supporter of an absolute State, from whose point of view justice applies only in relation to what the little people and and can’t do.
*can* and can’t do
Any community that metes out justice in individual casas according to rule of law becomes a just community. Nothing more is necessary
I think we’re seeing the result of Hayek conceding “social justice” terminology to the Left.
In doing so, he got many of his admirers to fall into a leftist trap, with all due respect.
I don’t think there’s any trap here myself, but I’m trying to figure out what exactly you mean by governing the broader society.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: If Hayek’s economically-liberal admirers shun the term “social justice,” the field is clear for leftists who use the term to mean the government taking stuff.
The more that definition becomes mainstream, the more that economic liberals will shun the term, and so on.
Challenge for Eddie:
Justify your belief in ‘dignity intrinsic in person’
I am looking for the best arguments for inalienable rights. All are welcome to give it a go.
Every human being is created with an immortal soul and hence has an infinitely higher dignity than, say, the State, or other institution to whose interests a human being is supposed to be subordinated.
Wide miss. Put your feet together and focus. I don’t throw this shit up in the air for exercise. You are suppose to shoot a hole in it.
Click my handle and see where I got that idea – which Meyer expresses better than I can.
(He wasn’t Catholic at the time)
I am familiar with appeals to divine endowment but it is circular reasoning.
Pretend you are trying to convince me, little ol atheist me. Build a case without the prime mover
The intrinsic dignity of the human person is a common assumption here, isn’t it?
If putting God out of the picture undermines that assumption, then that suggests that libertarians should be theists, or that they should reconsider libertarianism altogether.
It’s hard to reconstruct the libertarian arguments which I found persuasive as an atheist, but they were in Rothbard’s *For A New Liberty,* I remember that much. I can go back and look and see if it jogs my memory.
It’s always going to go back to that, Suthen. It’s annoying because I really want to be on the same side as people who don’t hold the state as the highest form of worship. People who will stand against the state on principle are rare indeed.
Yes it is a common assumption. Putting god out does not undermine the assumption.
There is no time limit. If I weren’t squinting at this phone I would lay it out
Take your time
It’s not always back to that straffin
Sorry to punt, but as for nontheistic arguments for individual dignity, maybe Rothbard can help.
The best nontheistic appeal I can think of is that individual dignity is something we intuitively *know* exists. We are aware of our own dignity, we know that other human beings are like us, we ought to be able to recognize their equal dignity.
Best I can think of at this hour.
Too bad Tony isn’t here to enlighten us with his version of “rights”. Common enemy FTW.
I think we can go beyond intuition and back arguments over inalienable rights on human nature. You can’t prove a right exists, but you can prove that said right is natural and good. I’d reference the philosophy of science for a moment here and reference Hume on cause and effect. You can never really prove cause and effect, but that doesn’t mean that we can never really know anything. It would be absurd to claim that the science we have is just a construct as relativists claim as the results are in the pudding.
The negative/inalienable rights of individuals seem pretty damn natural when time and again attempts to suppress them produce the same results over and over again irrespective of time and place.
Now you are on the right track
I will take a shot when I have better means of communication
When you have to watch your kid getting his head bashed in by a goonish government thug, you tend to have a road to Damascus moment concerning rights.
A few thoughts on this: We are all born equal, i.e. we all are endowed with the same rights. As such, no person can rightfully claim ownership of any other against that person’s will, otherwise that person could do the same to the first. Then we rightfully own ourselves. We are therefore entitled to the rights that come with ownership, like saying and believing what we want, getting together with whomever we want, defending ourselves in any (non aggressive) way necessary, etc. Since we are all our own owners and have the same rights, no other can rightfully take our rights away from us.
Just what I came up with quickly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hate-crimes-where-is-the-response_us_58da965ae4b0f7eca28a43a9“>Hate Crimes: Where Is The Response?
I realize it’s been over a decade since I’ve visited the U.S., but are people really fearing for their lives walking down the street because of white racists?
“no one should fear losing their life simply walking down the street because a person filled with hate drives to their state looking to commit murder.”
We really need a law against killing people on the street.
“—no one should fear losing their life simply walking down the street because a person filled with hate drives to their state looking to commit murder.—”
I’ll bet that same person would be utterly aghast at the thought that he just justified Pres. Trump’s ban on travel from certain countries (assuming he’s aware enough to realize that he has explicitly done exactly that).
You really can’t satirize the Progs, can you?
No child should go to bed worried [they won’t] be bullied at school.
Also, it’s self-involved retards who think anyone is interested in anything they identify as and/or not as.
But what good is it to identify as something if I don’t force you to recognize what I’m identifying myself as? I WANT VALIDATION!
No but they are afraid of being punched for being a secret nazi
Damned internet is down for some reason have to peck this damned phone.
From the “when seconds count, cops are minutes away” file (this arises from a court case. The appeal didn’t talk about any claims against the police, though I figure those would be dismissed by Castle Rock v. Gonzalez)
There a zillion casas like that. People counting on state to save them end up sitting on a cloud bored playing a harp. Acceptable outcome for the state that wants people unable to defend themselves.
Goodnight all
NIght.
If anybody is awake, IBT went there. Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty Resigns After Targeting Women In Racist Joke; Insists It’s His Personal Decision
And the joke he made on Twitter? Colin Moriarty ✔ @notaxation
Ah. Peace and quiet.#ADayWithoutAWoman
3:23 AM – 9 Mar 2017
After getting busted, IBT changed the headline to “Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty Resigns After Targeting Women In Joke; Insists It’s His Personal Decision”.
How the hell did they claim it was “racist” in the first place? Fuck these people.