“Loyalty!” Donald howled.
“Why are we outside?” the hat asked.
“He wanted to go for a walk in The Rose Garden,” the hair told him. “Go back to sleep if you want.”
“Loyalty!” Donald howled again. “I gave Jeff that job so that he could help me out and he recuses himself. Recuses!”
“How can I sleep with this shit going on?” the hat asked the hair. “It’s so fucking muggy out here.”
“It used to be a swamp.”
“Don’t call it a swamp. It’s a sewer now. Or cesspool. Get Droopy-eyed Fatty McFat-fat to write you up a list if you can’t remember,” the hat said.
“I’m not talking to her. She flashed Donald the other night after he told her she could be Press Secretary. Her body looks like something barfed up by a cat.”
“Where was I during this?” the hat asked.
“Nodding off, you fucking junkie.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’m going to fire Jeff and put someone in the job who is on my side for a change,” Donald told a rose bush.
“Someone like that would never get approved, Donald,” the hair said.
“Yes, he will! I’ll make them approve him. The art of the deal. I wrote a book about that. Art! It’s an art!”
“Keep your voice down, Donald,” the hair murmured.
“There aren’t any Boy Scouts around. I can say whatever I want!” Donald screamed. “Trannies charge too much! Girl Scouts need more makeup! JEFF IS A POOPY BOTTOM!”
“OK, Donald,” the hat said.
“Jeff should be looking into Hillary’s fucking emails and telling Muller to go back to acting in Phantasm movies!” Donald said.
“I know, Donald.” I know,” the hair said. Donald began to urinate on a Magnolia tree.
“Six months,” the hair whispered to the hat, “That’s all it’s been. Six months. Three and a half more years of holding this all together? I don’t know if I can do it.”
“The sunlight is making me itch all over,” the hat muttered, ignoring him. “I miss France. They called me Mssr. Chapeau and the hookers were hairy like I like ‘em.”
I’m going to OT on the first post cause that’s how I roll.
Britan to ban all gas and diesel vehicles, including hybrids, by 2040
Yeah, you guys have fun with that. Make sure to raise your seawalls a bit too.
Hmm, seems that someone may have mentioned that earlier…hmmm.
But for real, it’s gotta be a shell game of some sort. I sincerely think that it will never happen.
Did you? I even checked the morning links to make sure I wasn’t double posting. Oh well.
It’s all good. Who even reads the link? It’s not a bad thing to double post either, get a broader spread.
These euphemisms.
as I mentioned when this was brought up in the morning links, it’s a way for government to mandate people spend money that will enrich certain well connected people and entities, while providing consumers with poor quality products at over inflated prices, all while hiding behind the massive virtue signalling that these types use to fool the unwashed masses into thinking they are looking out for them.
It will be like Cuba in a century, with everyone driving 50 year old cars!
No mention of “lorries” (trucks) so I don’t think it includes all (road) vehicles. Still, that’s pretty drastic. I thought the Tories won the last election (if only barely)? Are they adopting the time-honored American GOP strategy of “do what the left wants, only not as aggressively?”
Well, Europe is generally entirely leftist garbage, from what I’ve seen, much worse than here. Brexit was just a brief respite.
Centrism in Europe is being a marxist.
Most of them think that Americans are barbarians with many guns and no healthcare. Then I find it humorous when they bitch and moan over how much more expensive everything is there. Stop voting for socialists, you ninnies.
Most of them truly don’t see the connection at all.
FDP has a sad.
Not what the left wants, according to BBC.
No idea what they are thinking. I reiterate, Johnson should not have run, Gove should have won, and this shit would not be happening, but oh no, they had to fuck it up and crown a retard.
Doesn’t go far enough.
We talk about this yesterday as the new progressive rallying cry. No law ever goes far enough for them. They could ban all combustible energy sources and the law still wouldn’t go far enough.
Because the only problem they are trying to solve is the one where they get a massive global entity that does wealth redistribution in the name of social justice, enriching our new master class in in the process at the expense of the serfs.
One of the many, many awesome points in 1984 is when O’Brian admits that while, yes, Party functionaries live in luxury compared to the populace, they are still living beneath the standards of pre-revolution elites, and they are still fine with it.
I mean, Castro lived a good life. So do his cronies. But they have nothing on American or European monied classes when it comes to luxury. They still wouldn’t have given up control, even if you could guarantee them a better life.
The sad thing is that the people that follow these fucks also think that way. They prefer to keep or move towards a system that over the last century has shown that it can only deliver misery for all, than see it replaced a system that would allow them to do better if others could do better than them. In my experience these types of people are truly defined by their envy of others being better off than they are,
In my experience these types of people are truly defined by their envy of others being better off than they are,
Obligatory Thatcher video.
When Ivy Starnes was described in Atlas Shrugged by the guy who became a hobo for lack of work, he described the phenomenon. It was something to the effect of “Old man Starnes wouldn’t talk to our lowest janitor, the way Ivy Starnes talked to our top engineers”. In a tyranny, maybe the leadership doesn’t have the wealth they can enjoy in a free society. What they have is power. The power to shove others’ face in the dirt. Some people want that more than anything else in life.
The left can never go far enough left. Just ask the Democrats.
LOL
You get different flavors of leftism, of course, but it’s still leftism: do you want closed-borders, non-EU welfare state leftism (Tories, Le Pen, Wilders, Orban), open-borders, globalist welfare state leftism (Merkel, Macron), or full-scale democratic Marxism (Corbyn)?
Burning the EU to the ground at least takes the continent out of the grasp of the Germans, the worst of the lot. Europe will rot but at least on its own stupid terms.
(My grandparent’s pathological and entirely justified hatred of the Germans somewhat rubbed off on me)
Wrong side won the 1866 war 🙁
Biggest mistake of Jan Sobietski was not following through with anti-Brandenburg alliance. Crushing those fuckers would have made the world a better place for centuries to come.
But we wouldn’t have gotten the concerti then.
Is banning cars in Sharia? I didn’t realize that.
Subline, SF. Sublime.
“Trannies charge too much! Girl Scouts need more makeup! JEFF IS A POOPY BOTTOM!”
Glorious! If I saw this on Trumpwitter I’d not be surprised at all.
Listless The Hat is making me worry, after all the horrible things he’s been through. And no one better tell The Hair that PM Zoolander’s locks are on the cover of RS…
The hair has been there at least 3 times. Zoolander is just SAD.
But I don’t know that the hat has ever made it. Even though he has a freaky old lady, named Cocaine Katie, who embroiders on his crown…
Filed under ‘those things will kill you’:
King cobras found stuffed into potato chip cans mailed to California.
As a fellow contributor, you just want to rain on a parade, don’t you? Scolding aside, I blame Mr. Miyagi.
“You smoke, Shepard? Don’t. Those things’ll kill you. Knew a weapons dealer, probably half your age, lit up near a cache of explosives. Just about blew himself sky high.”
Speaking to rose bushes and pissing on Magnolia trees. From an depraved lunatic’s imagination and into my head. Don’t care. If the multiple universe theory is true, that is happening somewhere.
I made sure to finish my lunch before reading this, but either I’m getting inured to SF’s writing (a possibility which should frighten anyone) or it was fairly tame. I didn’t want to vomit at all!
This is a family-friendly website, you know.
Bearing in mind that the definition of “family” is really up for grabs nowadays.
Hey now, me and my polygamist commune are just as much a family as anyone else!
Do orphans in my mines count as ‘family’? They seem to enjoy when I read them SF stories as they dig, judging by how much harder they work.
Left-Libertarian Dave Rubin has a very good point:
“I was on a farm with a trans woman with several guns last week. I’d rather choose her than any of the men who write for BuzzFeed…”
The rest of leftist Twitter is probably going to be in a fainting spell for weeks.
I absolutely loathe the term ‘left libertarian’, not only because it already means something else but also because it trumpets people who believe in things like a massive public healthcare program as ‘libertarian’.
bleeding heart?
This is what is known as an oxymoron.
Yeah, it kind of is, but I’m more talking about approach. Sort of like how Philip DeFranco is trending libertarian but still doesn’t understand why net neutrality is a shitty idea.
I think you’re misdiagnosing ‘liberal’ or ‘pluralist’ values as being ‘trending libertarian’. Slate Star Codex’s article on ‘liberalism’ is a good example: yes, it promotes an idea where people are fundamentally free to say and believe what they want, but that does not mean SSC is suddenly going to start promoting free markets or completely free association.
Given that he has written a fucking manifesto on why Libertarians are wrong (TLDR: Roadzzz), I agree.
Yep. People like SSC, Sargon and Rubin are just desperately trying to pull the zeitgeist back to the ‘normal’, i.e. they’re fundamentally moderates at face value, at least in the context of the relationship between civil society and the state. It’s everyone else on their side of the equation going full retard that makes them smell sweeter (and, as the That Guy T video argued here last week, reasonable people supporting left wing policies are actually far more dangerous for libertarianism that insane people pushing them).
reasonable people supporting left wing policies are actually far more dangerous for libertarianism that insane people pushing them
Call it the New Deal theorem. People will sooner take a government that promises to help them than a government that promises to stay out of their way. But, at the same time, people do not want a government run by condescending elites that deigns to help them, or promises to help some people but tells the rest to fuck off.
We are fortunate in that a solid swath of our opponents have decided to shut their brains off for the past decade or so.
Scott Alexander is a technocrat, and therefore a totalitarian. From today’s SSC:
For someone who decries “isolated demands for rigor” he does it himself an awful lot.
Unfortunately, I think guys like SSC, Sargon and Rubin will either have to alter their premises or lose to the social justice cadres. I get that they know they know the cadres are wrong on a gut level. But, I think they don’t see that they hold the cadres’ same premises.
People need to just start realizing that we have two choices. Either we’re going to be a free market capitalism society, or we’re going to let the government take care of our every need. And the 2nd choice means accepting what is handed out to us and liking it, liking it good and hard.
That’s a retarded false equivalence that completely negates reality, because neither of those things have ever existed and will likely never exist in an entirely pure form.
So communism or free markets have never existed? That’s an interesting take on history.
Having lived in a notionally Marxist country, no, government didn’t take care of every need.
Granted, we were called Revisionists by the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but even there, you had no guarantee of housing, job or food in practice. Plus, black markets.
On the flipside, “free market” is just a matter of how True is your Scotsman. It’s such a mix of internal regulation (state and professional), tariffs, infrastructure, immigration and whole slew of complexities that you have to set a baseline, preferably by way of an example. Say, 19th century US was fairly low regulated with lots of freedom to try and sell or trade whatever, but by god, you had high tariffs on imports. Free markets?
Neither of those have ever existed in a pure form, ‘free markets’ have always been influenced by the state intervention to some degree and communism has never been able to stop civil society from developing its own influence and markets within the zeitgeist.
You’re promoting an idealized fantasy rather than a pragmatic reality.
Pan covers it better than I did. As much as people hype up ‘The Gilded Age’ as some period of completely unregulated free market capitalism, but the tariff structure alone is a stark contrast to libertarian views of what defines a ‘free market’.
You’re framing it as two choices, and that’s fundamentally untrue. What is really is is a ‘slider’ between authoritarianism and anarchism, with infinite degrees to choose from.
Well, John, you know you don’t have to take that statement and reduce it to it’s purest form. But at some point under socialism your choices are going to be limited to what we give you and you will like it. Is the Charlie Gard story that old already?
But at some point under socialism your choices are going to be limited to what we give you and you will like it. Is the Charlie Gard story that old already?
As good old Lenin said (parahprasing cause I can’t be arsed to look up the quote), “The only question worth discussing is Who, Whom?”
In some situations, for some people (trust me, had the kid been Charlie Beckham, there would have been no story), your choices will be prescribed by the state, sometimes down to “none”. The questions are always: who allocates scarce resources, how are they allocated and is there a way to make them less scarce?
Planting your flag in “either you have no regulation, or everything everywhere is regulated” just makes most people go “well fuck it, then socialism it is.”
It’s no different from “everything white people do is racist, and you are all equally racist” leading to “well fuck it, alt-right it is!”
The statement you made was deliberately framed as such, quote:
People need to just start realizing that we have two choices. Either we’re going to be a free market capitalism society, or we’re going to let the government take care of our every need.
And my point is no, you will never have the choice of either of those societies, instead you will have the choice as to what degree society is based on freedom or control. The point is that the state will always have some influence on society, and will also be unable to control some aspects of civil society, the important questions are then what they do and do not have control over.
And pretending that libertarians are squarely in favour of an extreme version of the former is not reflective of reality. Plenty of libertarians are interested in an immigration policy backed by the state that is something other than ‘open borders’.
I also remember the quote, not sure who made this one, but ‘If the government were in charge of the Sahara, there would be a shortage of sand’. These people are fucking evil, I don’t care how good their intent is.
No, John, my statement did not mean that I in any way think that there are are two possible states, pure free markets or pure socialism. But if you want to believe that so that you can criticize it, you go right ahead. I’ve moved on.
The point, as Pan is indicating far more effectively than me, is that giving people your false equivalence is not a useful way to promote libertarianism. It does, in fact, do the exact opposite.
I only use left-libertarian in the sense that Rubin came from the left (like John Stossel or Philip DeFranco), so he retains some of the more left-leaning social tropes and stereotypes in his ideas. I’m not saying that he’s pro-socialism in any way.
I don’t think it works regardless. Libertarians justifiably complain about the term ‘liberal’ being hijacked from them, but on the authoritarian v. anarchism political scale its actually a very good defining point that is broad enough to include a range from libertarians to people like Sargon.
I’m not saying that a left-libertarian is a contradiction in terms, I’m just saying that I have a hard time imagining how you can square individualism, property rights, and a strictly limited state with stuff like Georgism or universal, public healthcare. Not that it can’t be done, just that I can’t do it.
You can’t, which is why it’d be handy to reclaim the world “liberal”.
Also, to have “communist”, “socialist” and “social democrat” mean completely different things, but that would just point out how fractured Democrat alliance really is.
I’ve taken to thinking of myself and referring to myself as a “classical liberal”, to distinguish from libertarians like (no offense) Gillespie, ENB, and Soave. Also because I’ve gotten tired of dealing with the Highlander effect within libertarian circles.
I don’t think you have to worry about Gillespie, ENB and Soave defining what a libertarian is outside of the Beltway. But there is a benefit in doing the hipster douchebag argument of “I don’t really have a label man, just ask me about an issue” because it means your opponent can’t immediately start tribalizing.
Well, the nice thing is I don’t have to get in arguments with “Real libertarians” about whether or not I’m orthodox, or, on the flip side, say things like “Rand Paul isn’t really a libertarian, he’s just got some libertarian tendencies on a number of issues”.
Real libertarians can be easily identified by their top hate and monocle.
Oh for the love of… top hate… magical edit fairy!
What? “Top Hate” is worthy of John himself! You should be proud for producing it.
I had to fill in for John.
Yeah, that needs to be preserved.
TOP HATE
We should spell it TOP! HATE!
To show our opposition to TOP! MEN!
TOP HATE. The new slogan for the LP 2020! Who’s going to make the hats? Top hats of course. Top hate top hats.
Hey, me too. For the same reason. I cannot stand being grouped together with the likes of Gillespie, ENB, and Soave. Or the Libertarian Party for that matter.
Oh Jesus, the LP sucks. I’m still registered, but I’ll probably change that next election.
When someone like Austin Petersen runs away from the LP, that says a lot about how impotent and incompetent the LP actually is.
Cosmos, all of them, not a libertarian to be found. I think I will change my voter registration also after the GayJay / what.the.fuck.was.that.guys.name debacle.
Eh, I tried not to get involved in the electoral politics of a country not my own, but if I lived in the US, I probably would have ended Pulling for Johnson, despite his pathetic performance, because he was head and shoulders above the field.
Unless I lived in California. Then it’s definitely Trump, to troll the neighbors.
I’ve never affiliated with any party, but if there’s ever a libertarian that runs for Governor or Senate in NC, I’ll register GOP to vote for him in the primaries. Unless I ever decide to run for a State House or Senate seat, in which case I will do it as a Democrat because of my deep-blue district.
Unless I lived in California. Then it’s definitely Trump, to troll the neighbors.
Bullshit, you’d vote for him so he’d import more Slavic women.
Had Trump made that part of his platform, you’d have seen black vote break for him as if he were second U.S. Grant, and probably 75% male vote share overall. He’d have lost white women, though.
Splitters!
But really, no one likes the Libertarian Party.
I tend to think that the “actual liberals” that support universal healthcare don’t do it for any ideologically consistent reasons, but out of fear and terror, because there’s no real world example of an actual free market healthcare system existing anywhere in the modern world.
Nope, one has never existed. Well, I mean there was once this country full of barbarians with guns who had no healthcare and 40 million people were dying a year from lack of it. But just before the last person died, a magical man showed up and saved everyone with some civilized healthcare. Hopefully such dark days as before will never be seen again.
Things before the ACA that made healthcare not a free market:
HIPAA (1996)
EMTALA (1986)
HMO (1973)
Medicare/Medicaid (1965)
Probably others that I don’t know about
And let us not forget the original distortion of the market, the exorbitant tax rates of WW2 which led to tax exemptions for things like employer-provided health insurance, as a form of additional, indirect compensation when more direct compensation would just get vacuumed up by the government.
Basically, the government has embarked upon a rough once per decade exercise in making the medical/health industry less market oriented and less free for a good while now.
I started getting into libertarianism in the later years of middle school, right before Obama. Remembered that people like Stossel called it a crazy, labyrinthine regulatory mess before ACA, though I didn’t understand why at the time.
They do it because they want free shit paid by someone else that obviously has more than they do.
The not/less envious ones see the following:
1. Shit is expensive (and they’re not economists, so they don’t understand/examine why)
2. Other countries have some kind of “universal” health care (whether it be single payer, single provider, something kinda like Medicaid/Medicare, etc.)
That leads one to the simplistic answer of bringing “universal” health care to the U.S. Even though we have Medicaid already. And “free” emergency room treatment. And ….
Basically, even when they’re not envious, they don’t care to understand the problem. If you don’t understand the problem, then how can you possibly solve it? The biggest problem of bringing “universal” health care a la Europe/Japan/Singapore to the U.S. is that it fails to capture the ways that the U.S. is not like those places.
This is my father, in a nutshell. He tries to listen to people like me when I talk about why the free market would improve healthcare, but he always goes back to “My friend from Canada SAYS that the healthcare is cheaper over there, so universal healthcare must be good!”
The media has pushed a very steady stream of propaganda on socialized medicine for a long time now. It’s cheaper and produces better results is just a common refrain leftists take for granted.
Especially when you end up on a 2 year waiting list for an emergency procedure you must have in under 6 months unless you want to be pushing up daisies….
Emergency procedures are usually handled OK. Had to go through it with a family member, and, while frustrating that what should be a routine surgery took weeks to arrange simply because system only funds so many in a week, we knew it was unlikely to end badly, and that we’d get a bump in queue if thing turned for the worse.
It’s when you have a non-emergency procedure that is “merely” quality of life improvement that you might be stuck. Unless you have connections or know someone who does. Or, you know, you pay private provider in your province, or another province, or the States.
Whatever happens, it will be an utter clusterfuck. Our system of government is not set up to handle this kind of responsibility. It was never meant to. And I don’t know that any system even can, truly, but ours sure as shit ain’t it. What our system has proven very good at it is marginalizing and eliminating voluntary systems. The part where it competently replaces them with an involuntary but equitable and amicable system lives only in the fetishistic minds of delusional individuals.
“I miss France. They called me Mssr. Chapeau and the hookers were hairy like I like ‘em.”
OK, I laughed at that one.
OT But what happened to commentators like John and Free Society on this site? Everybody get cat-butted or is it not confrontational enough for John’s style?
I only remember John being here one time. He showed up as a dog for one day, haven’t seen him since.
Yeah, John was just here for a hot second. Shame, really.
FS left over sports being talked about and then defended?
I think John didn’t come back because we didn’t fight enough or have enough articles for him.
*needz moar fat girl posts*
We could have provided that! we get chive ladies, I’m sure there’s a page of the same stuff only bigger.
He didn’t leave over sports.
Free Society made a sports ball joke and somehow the thread went into meltdown and he left.
Who refuses to like the foozball!?
Me, I gave up, too many Pussy rules
FS left in a huff when jesse pointed out his weird racial hangups. John, sadly, came, took our measure and never returned. Shame – I like that guy when he’s not in Full Retard mode. And even when he is, I cringe and move on.
He used to fight with me because he would get a raging war boner and I of course would take the other side. But he finally got over that and we got along pretty well.
John will let himself get pushed into taking extreme positions, but he’s normally OK. Though it was sometimes fun to read his tard battles with hazelmeade or one of the trolls. You could practically see him turning red with steam coming out of his ears.
If anyone actually needs trigger warnings, it’s John.
Lol, yeah, John is ok. I defended him more than once on the other site. I would always say that John is a libertarian in training. You have to start somewhere, we all did.
Ugh, I’d take current John over current HazelMeade in a second, the mentally unbalanced nutter.
No idea what happened to Hazel. It’s almost a literal case of TDS.
Hazel has this fanciful notion that the President should be a sane person. She can’t get into the whole “ruin the office with a buffoon” nihilism kick like most of us.
@Sugarfree
No, I’d be cool with that, what I’m not cool with is her screaming about how everyone who isn’t as sufficiently hysterical as she is is part of the ‘alt-right’. When I argued with her that calling Trump a national socialist was retarded she just kept bellowing “WELL GO BACK TO READING RICHARD SPENCER YOU FAKE LIBERTARIAN HUH”. Every opportunity she gets she throws some hissy fit about how there’s secret libertarian Nazis if you’re not sufficiently anti-Trump or pro-open borders. She has active paranoid delusions.
SF, it’s “improve the office w/ a buffoon”. Has the presidency ever been this hilarious or entertaining? At least he’s thrown cold water on the idea that we were on the path to some hyper-authoritarian dystopia, rather than the mixed bag with some high points that he’s actually been (so far; he could still fuck it up).
I missed the part where the office wasn’t disgraced decades before Trump came along.
Decades? How about a century? (Woodrow Wilson)
Hazel should have just left rather than freak out. It’s the polite thing to do.
As for Trump, there’s a number of things he could do right this second to make me happy with him, but he’s taken only baby steps toward them. (Fire Sessions, eliminate the DEA, reschedule most recreational drugs, kick the CDC and FDA mostly to death, etc.)
I’ll admit that he makes a lot of people I don’t like very, very mad–entertainingly mad–but other than a ghoulish fascination at what he will do next, I can’t say I really support him.
. Has the presidency ever been this hilarious or entertaining?
Gerald Ford? Though I guess that was mostly Chevy Chase nailing the zeitgeist, unfairly.
Andrew Johnson?
Or his idol, Old Hickory? Having the passersby intervene to stop president from beating his would-be assassin to death has to count for something!
Trump did threaten to put the CATO libertarian O’Neill in the FDA, but the establishment GOP and Big Pharma screeched and threw a gigantic tantrum, so they decided on a more incremental guy, Gottlieb, instead, who would do some libertarian reform but not as much as that kooky CATO guy.
As for Trump, there’s a number of things he could do right this second to make me happy with him, but he’s taken only baby steps toward them.
That’s the weird thing. From a libertarian standpoint, Trump pretty much sucks. But, his particular level of suck probably puts him in the top third of people in DC.
Yeah, but he’s the only president in modern history that has even taken baby steps towards deregulation. Right now, I would have to say that I am very unhappy with Trump because of Jeff Sessions, and very happy with the attempts at deregulation. Of course if he does anything that libertarians like, it’s an accident, but I’ll still take it. And the best part is that Hillary will never be president.
I maintained that Free Society would be much happier in some degree of the alt-right where his…proclivities for ethno-collectivism would fit in, but John’s pretty good when he hasn’t downed a bottle of Alex Jones’ supplements. I’ll take him over Ken writing essays any day of the week.
Responding to John over some obscure points of WW2 history is what got me to register on H&R after years of lurking, so I’ll always have a soft spot for him.
That and I don’t know any openly religious people, so I find him fascinating (likewise Eddie).
MaybeProbably it’s me but I find the concept of a devout religious libertarian to be incongruent because religion in my perspective is a set of arbitrary, poorly justified rules, and the primary reason I dislike government is that it is a set of mostly arbitrary, poorly justified rules.John would argue the exact opposite, that because you don’t believe in God-given rights that you’re just making up arbitrary rights for yourself and have no greater legitimacy than that as an atheist. Then he’d make a really confusing argument about things Nietzsche didn’t really say.
I have heard that argument before. Nothing scares me more than someone who basically tells me “The only reason I haven’t murdered you and raped your women is cause God told me not to.”
Religion doesn’t force you to follow arbitrary rules at the barrel of a gun. Every man has a religion, whether through an omnipotent wizard or not, otherwise he is not a man. A man can never truly be free if he does not have a moral compass for how he lives his life.
Religion doesn’t force you to follow arbitrary rules at the barrel of a gun
An eternity of torment in Hell isn’t a threat?
And an eternity of unqualified happiness isn’t a reward?
There’s a serious Hedonistic Principle thing going on in the Abrahamic faiths.
“An eternity of torment in Hell isn’t a threat?”
It’s a threat only to believers. A gun is a threat whether you believe in it or not
It’s a threat only to believers.
Tell that to Muslim apostate now or a Christian one a couple of hundred years ago.
It’s a threat only to believers. A gun is a threat whether you believe in it or not.
Actually it’s still a threat, just one with marginal utility outside of believers. Saying that if you don’t conform to some particular view that you’ll be horrifically tortured is still a threat regardless of whether you believe the person is capable of actually doing that.
“Tell that to Muslim apostate now or a Christian one a couple of hundred years ago.”
And that occurred within state contexts. A religion, inherently, does not have the coercive authority of a state. ISIS is a state actor
Swiss wrote a great article right on this here site about how he squares his religion (very Christian) and his politics (very libertarian).
I’m not hugely religious myself, but I don’t think of it as at all incongruous with libertarianism. If you start from the premises that God is the source of all good and only God truly knows his will, a fairly libertarian view on things kind of follows. From that view, the only person truly fit to command a man is God Almighty. And if someone chooses to force you to do something you consider evil, they’re fundamentally trying to force you to replace God with them.
Also, I’d refer you to possibly the most libertarian comment I’ve read in literature:
Johsua 24:15
Everyone should just change their names to woodchipper something something, again, so we can watch Ken rant about it.
I like Ken’s rants
The one over people changing their names to *woodchipper* was very entertaining.
So was the cunts.
Seconded.
FS left in a huff when jesse pointed out his weird racial hangups.
I think he’d already said he was leaving by the time I’d gotten shirty. I’m sure we’ll all miss having the opportunity to study 19th century colonial mores and scientific racism first hand though.
Yeah FS and some of the founders got into it over what I thought was a really silly reason but it was hinted there was trouble brewing prior. Basically they told him to shut up and leave if he didn’t like the content of some of the articles and he did.
TLDR: FS is not well-liked, and he took the hint.
I’m not going to miss him. He’s a collectivist and an asshole with dreams of cultural purity streaming down from his ancestors onto himself.
Cytotoxic lite?
Nah, Cytotoxic was very much “muh civilization is so superior that the moment foreigners come over, they are dazzled and assimilated by it. Those who don’t, of course, are scum and should be treated harshly.”
That’s not even it, Cytotoxic was very much “Grand Prophet Rand sayth this, and thus this be true, and thoust stupid for disagreeing.”
Cytotoxic wants every brown person that can physically fit into the continent. He also wants to bomb the shit out of them.
He also wants his mom to stop interrupting his wank sessions in the basement.
I became active in the Reason/Glib circle well after Cytotoxic started to run away, but was he like a fusion of libertarian and neocon? Would explain why he was so adamant that Trump was never going to be president.
Cytotoxic was of the ‘bomb everyone on the planet and if any survive, bring them to Murika where they will instantly assimilate’. Neocon is the word I was looking for.
He was a mix of neocon and stupid asshole.
No, Cytotoxic was an Objectivist, with all the baggage that comes with it. Objectivists have this thing where they support warfare in the context of a ‘more free’ power engaging in it in order to force ‘less free’ powers into having more freedom (i.e. Rand always threw her weight behind Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict, because she saw Israel as the obviously superior choice in terms of freedom). So Cytotoxic supported all kinds of interventions in the Middle East like Iraq and Iran (also supported torture for some reason) while also arguing for open borders.
If you could get Cytotoxic really torqued up, he’d argue that America had not only the right but the duty to go to war with every state less free than our own.
Canadian hawks, man. [eyeroll]
“It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.”
– Rothbard
Anyone who supports interventionism does not truly believe in a freer society
Canadian hawks, man. [eyeroll]
The correct term is shithawks, thank you very much.
Anyone who supports interventionism does not truly believe in a freer society
John had a ragegasm the first time I pointed out that you can’t have a big military without a big government.
This was when he was still trying to defend Iraq II as a great idea.
“”interventionism “”
Yeah, but the problem is that this word can mean either nothing or everything in the spectrum of foreign policy
“Interventionism” can mean everything or nothing in modern American foreign policy, but not in foreign policy generally
you can’t have a big military without a big government
Well, you can, sort of, but definitely not in the way John means. A “well regulated militia” of ~100 million able-bodied adults largely armed with small arms, supplemented by a small-to-medium sized air force and navy could probably achieve the most important goal of a big military, keeping the country and its interests safe, without the accompanying overbearing government apparatus. But it won’t be going toe-to-toe with hypothetical Chinese hordes wielding hypothetical technology en masse in military planners’ simulations.
Shorter Cyto: “Open the borders and bomb them on the way in.”
John had a ragegasm the first time I pointed out that you can’t have a big military without a big government.
Can’t remember anyone trying it with consistent success on land (Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth had a theoretically large army, and small, ineffective central government, but its dominance only lasted couple centuries, and it collapsed when nobles in charge of their own private armies made side deals with foreign powers).
But British Empire was built by a small government (not just by our standards, when compared to contemporary European Powers) and large, efficient Navy. Their land forces were always run as cheaply as possible, and preferred arrangement was to pay others to fight for them.
but not in foreign policy generally
I just think it’s a terrible word and libertarians are way over-fond of it as a catch-all replacement for articulating a more-coherent foreign policy view. Basically, I find people who call themselves “non-interventionist” to have a pretty shallow engagement with how us economic and security relations are whoppingly “intervene-y” even w/o us being engaged in any war.
E.g. the us 5th fleet defends the persian gulf from the Persians, mostly – do they propose we leave? And do they think that would result in less problems in the long run?
It’s mostly a form of intellectual disengagement w/o practical merit
“Interventionism” can mean everything or nothing in modern American foreign policy, but not in foreign policy generally
Uh, IR theory greatly disagrees with this assessment.
America had not only the right but the duty to go to war with every state less free than our own.
The War on Canada.
Hmmm…
That’s a bit harsh, even for FS.
Cytotoxic was the exact opposite, his argument was all about how you had to bomb other cultural groups while also allowing them complete access to your country. Cultural purity and “MUH EUROPEANS” were never a factor.
Yeah, Cytotoxic is a weird mix of beliefs. And shitty taste in movies.
Other than his gaping blind spot of bombing everything back into the stone age, he was a good sport.
“”And shitty taste in movies.””
Omg that was even worse than his idiotic objectivist foreign policy gibberish. His taste in anything pop-culture was atrocious
John has some family issues he’s dealing with. Nobody drove him away, he just doesn’t have time right now.
That’s too bad. Several with family or medical issues right now. I miss Almanian! He probably wouldn’t make this site worse.
I do too. Was it 6-12 months that the doctors gave him when he revealed the news at TOS, or am I completely botching this and thinking of another commenter?
Me too, he was expected to be elected as Supreme Overlord and many of us expected to be appointed to prime shitlord czarships.
I think it may have been him and he was still beating the docs last I heard there.
Free Society was basically striving to be the stereotype that leftists ascribe to all Trump voters. It got progressively worse over time, and it reflected poorly on the rest of us.
I have a pretty high threshold, and it was too much even for me. EVERY single post was racist and sexist, and it was just…. sad.
He left voluntarily, which, IMO, was the best possible outcome.
It should be pointed out that he’s welcome to come back, but only if he’s pots down the Illinois Nazi routine.
I don’t think he’s able.
He just can’t resist talking about the darkie who stole his bike and then got a full ride to Harvard.
The greasy fingered one?
One?
Hey! He had motor oil on his hands!
Or something.
Figured it was something behind the scenes with you all, but it did look strange, and weirdly acerbic from both sides, at the time of the Great Exit.
(Aside, why do people do that: a great dramatic, “Fine, I’m leaving!” Do they think that other people care? On the Internet??)
“(Aside, why do people do that: a great dramatic, “Fine, I’m leaving!” Do they think that other people care? On the Internet??)”
What, are you kidding? If one of us leaves, we fully expect all those remaining to put on sackcloth, dump ashes over their heads, and fast for 30 days.
Apparently I wasn’t paying enough attention. Good for me I guess.
If you missed it, consider yourself lucky. It was a little bit unsettling.
I gave up on arguing with him once he said that Western countries need to deport all non-citizen Muslims from their countries and that colonialism was justified because those savages didn’t know how to exploit resources in their lands. After that I just skipped everything he wrote here because it was always some kind of whining about non-whites, ‘European’ superiority or women not knowing their proper roles.
heh
I’m triggered by that picture.
Phantasm freaked me the fuck out.
Seriously.
That was the first R rated movie I ever snuck into, at 13.
I never really understood the whole “turning the dead into interstellar dwarf slaves” angle from an economic point-of-view. It seems simpler to just offer to purchase our dead people than all that running-around and killer pinballs mumbo-jumbo.
*shrugs*
It was the ’70s, man.
That final scene is still one of the best in horror.
They showed you that life was a pinball game and everyone was going to end up slaving for the dark forces..
It’s just that we’d give you all our dead for the technology to teleport interstellar distances.
“”Trannies charge too much!””
Fact = half of DC are transsexuals
That’s…ah…that’s a thought?
I’m trying to create a meme. In the last post I wildly overstated the DC tranny pop by accident. Now I will do it intentionally whenever I get the chance
You already created three memes (fashioning, bullet points, Gilmoring). Will you not rest?
Like every image that triggers progs
I got a meme, I got a meme
Like every birb and Pepe the Frog
I got a meme, I got a meme
And I’ll shitpost that thing in every last thread
Like the Cleveland Browns thing, and Lou Reed’s dead
Dicks out for Harambe
Dicks out for Harambe
Nikki’s the worst
and fuck you, that’s why
Awesome
/Croce
“”Will you not rest?””
My work is never done
Well it’s not a sermon, is it?
I am try sexual…
I will try any kind of sex with hawt chicks…
Speaking of getting pegged, whatever happened to Goldwater?
Is that some sort of golden shower joke? Cause I am sure I am not into water or brown discharge sports..
The commenter AuH2O. I think he followed us over, but I haven’t seen him for a while.
I saw him post to the STSNBN a couple weeks as ‘something(formerly AuH2O)’ but I don’t recall what the something was. The thread had a serious hihntagion, so I kinda blacked out.
Hihn. Ugh.
Speaking of trannies, has it been noted that they are going to stop them from joining the military? I’m currently keying up locks listening to NPR go batshit nuts about that.
Most likely outcome, they’ll be discouraged from joining by recruiters, the DoD won’t pay for treatments/medications/surgeries, and the existing small number of them will just be allowed to attrit out.
I can’t wait for someone to put up the venn diagram of ‘trannies’ and ‘people that genuinely want to join the military’ so they can break out the electron microscope needed to find the overlap.
We are talking, at most, 500 people tops. Most middle schools are bigger than that.
Speaking of trannies.
Was expecting a car related link. Was not disappointed.
Check out some of his other videos. Dude is really good.
The new 10 speed automatic they’re putting in the Mustang GT will supposedly make it faster than a 911 in 0-60 time.
I drove a aluminum-framed BMW545. I have no idea what the top 3 gears are for. It had great 0-60, since you only shifted once, and then at 80, you could shift into 3rd gear to save gas.
Trump is just a sideshow barker trying to keep the rubes moving to the next tent in the carnival.
I agree, this is pure diversion. At most it effects a few hundred people, but it will be a headline story for a few days. I expect something big will happen during this time that the media won’t pay it very much attention.
Come on, California, put CalExit on the ballot so that every hard leftist in SF and LA gets to put their money where their mouth is and stand up to Trump!…wait a sec…our free shit is not going to be so free anymore??! (Starts to chicken out)
I know I am a terrible person for wanting it to happen but fuck it.
If I even for a second believed these people would learn the lesson from the catastrophe they would cause doing this idiotic move, I would be with you in rejoicing, sir. But the fact is that based on historical evidence, I can be certain they would blame everyone and everything else instead of their own stupidity and dogma, and they would then demand and get a bailout – at our expense – from the next democrat to win the WH. Fuck that.
The Lex Luthor solution is the only way.
Fuck Superman for screwing it up.
they would then demand and get a bailout – at our expense – from the next democrat to win the WH.
On what basis do you claim a massive increase in foreign aide is a winner for Democrats. I’ll also add, take California out of the equation and that whole, “next Democrat to win the WH” thing becomes a much more remote eventuality.
“<em?On what basis do you claim a massive increase in foreign aide is a winner for Democrats.”
Did you seriously ask that question? There are plenty of downright destructive and stupid things either side have done that were sold too the masses as huge wins. They will do the same for this.
“ I’ll also add, take California out of the equation and that whole, “next Democrat to win the WH” thing becomes a much more remote eventuality.”
You might have point there Bill, but when the People’s Republic of California implodes, the rats will move to the rest of the U.S. in the hopes of getting more free shit, and that will then necessitate that they figure out ways to steal the election for a democrat. Have no doubt that the lesson taken from Hillary not being able to steal the election from Trump like she did from Bernie, is what they are focused on correcting. Not the fact that the criminal, conniving, and lying scumbag with the charisma of a septic system lost after people finally got told that she was a corrupt and downright inept evil being that believed she was owed the big chair.
Well, hopefully by the time the California secession rolls around, Mr. Trump will have experience with wall-building.
I can’t wait for somebody to try to get me to sign that petition at the market so I can tell them that’s the dumbest fucking idea I ever heard.
You will be called the hater for saying that and immediately be accused of being a secret nazi president supporting deplorable.
Even if this idiocy somehow passes there is no frigging way it happens. I can’t help but laugh that the same people who screamed “traitors!” to the folks in the north state that want their own state are now leading a charge to remove themselves from the US. God I can’t stand these ejit leftists. I’m stuck here with them for the foreseeable future.
Yes, so bring couple blue Swastikas so you can MWA-HA-HA properly.
Yeah, I can very easily visualize what their secession would look like.
We’re going to pass socialized medicine, we aren’t going to pay any federal taxes, and hey, USA, sure we hate you, but we need a bailout right now and probably every year, forever. I mean remember how we’re all still in this together, except in the situations we don’t like, so how about just start writing those checks now?
The truth is this: The moment Cali signed those papers, Trump would declare them the newest member of the axis of evil, levy sanctions, actually build a wall, and probably invade and take back San Diego.
I can’t wait.
I don’t care if he builds a wall around Cali. Maybe then the assholes there will stop fleeing the hell hole they intentionally created to go to other states and do the same. They’re like a plague of locusts.
The agricultural inspection stations can be repurposed as border control checkpoints. U-haul? “Turn it around bub, you’re not going anywhere.”
Paul and Lee are the only two Senators worth a damn. They and the conservative wing are finally refusing to fucking play the “moderate compromisers” game. They ran on repeal, they promised repeal, they want a straight up vote for repeal. If it fails, so be it. But they want all these fucks on the record. Because they know for a fact that if the 2018 Senate race is a referendum on Obamacare, then anyone who voted for it is gonna get tossed out on their ass.
I’m not so sure on this. I don’t agree with Ken, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Paul cave and vote for the final bill. I think he’s been using his vote as leverage to get the most he can out of it. Which is smart. But there’s no path to a full repeal that I see, and the more likely scenario is that the “moderate” Republicans will just lose to Democrats in 2018 if at all. There’s a reason they’re moderates and it’s not because they have a rabid Tea Party base (whatever the hell is left of that). Which doesn’t really accomplish much.
Ken’s right in regards to what he states on the policy. It’s better to get some repeal and cuts than nothing. And it’s probably the only chance we’ll get to even accomplish that.
What Ken is really guilty of is buying into the breathless media reports on the subject. The reporters want this shit to fail, and why the situation isn’t great if not downright precarious, it’s better to just watch how things play out. The predictions of a biased, clownish media looking to tar Republicans doesn’t mean dick.
I don’t like Susan Collins’ ideas, but I wish that more moderates were like her. None of the wishy-washy, “I voted for repeal in 2015 when Obama was president but I won’t now because, ooh, so scary” bullshit. Instead she takes the position of “I like ObamaCare”, and voted no both times. This is why I call some Rs moderates and others (Murkowski, Portman, etc) RINOs.
>more likely scenario is that the “moderate” Republicans will just lose to Democrats in 2018 if at all.
I mean, have you looked at the map for 2018? You force an up or down vote, and you run in 2018 on the simple platform of “It’s been ten fucking years since the bastards fucked up your healthcare, and they still wont admit their mistake and repeal it.” and you will have 60 Republican Senators.
You force an up or down vote, you make Baldwin, Tester, Kleitkamp, McCaskill, Brown, Casey, Donnelly, Manchin, Stabenow and Kaine go on the fucking record in an election year to keep this shitshow. Everyone who actually works hards and pays taxes knows it sucks ass, fully and completely. The only thing the Dems have is the free shit army bussed in with Soros money.
That’s what the Democrats and the media and the fucking RINOs want. They want to spin this out, and let those fucking shitstains I listed above go back home to Trump voters and tell them “gosh we just wanted to fix it, but that mean ol Rand Paul doesnt want to fix it.” Which might work, at least enough that they can filibuster.
Rand and Lee get it. This is not the time for half measures. You’ve got them on the ropes, you go for the knockout, you don’t play for the judges cards.
I agree. This needs to go on record as to who wants Obamacare and who doesnt. Even if they end up passing a watered down repeal, Paul is the 100 percent correct to want every Senator to have to show their true colors.
I hate the flip-flopping more than anything, which is why what Paul is going for is 100% the right tactic. Let Collins vote no, since she’s the only consistent one of the lot, and have every other weak-tea imbecile on the record.
Yes, Paul is right on this. They promised repeal, and they need to deliver on it.
See if they pass the watered down repeal, then the Dem /MSM have a year to drum in : THE GOP SABOTAGED THE GLORIOUS PLAN!!!!!! into the voters. If they pass a watered down “repeal” or a “fix” or a “compromise” then the Republicans are buying into Obamacare and get to be blamed with the Democrats.
The reason the Republicans have been so successful running against Obamacare is that it was passed on a straight party line vote. Not a single Republican voted for it, and so when it was a terrible actual policy the voters gave them power to repeal it.
Rand gets it. He knows if there is a straight up repeal of Obamacare, that insurance costs for actual middle class taxpayers will immediately get better, and it will come because of the Republican party, and particularly his group of conservatives, fighting for their principles. Which he can then leverage to enact more market reforms and start battling back, inch by inch.
But the first step in attacking is to stop fucking retreating.
The only plan of the GOP establishment is to make a fuss and then give into Democrats on everything. They’re spineless cowards.
Of course they are. They buy into the underlying argument about moar government.
“We’ve already established you’re a whore. We’re just negotiating about the price.”
Case in point- government shutdowns. No one should have been paid for not working. Keep shutting it down and reap the savings. Whoever authorized payments for non-work should be rotting in prison right now.
But why should he? The only holdouts on straight out repeal are the 3 socialist Democrat wiminz. Just buy them some shoes and a box of chocolates for Crissake, isn’t there anyone on Capital Hill that knows how to get wiminz to come around?
I have to disagree, anything is unacceptable outside of full repeal. The replace bill still leaves the government largely in control of healthcare because as long as the legislation is around, it can be modified, added onto, and expanded in whatever direction by both the GOP and the Democrats. Only full repeal, what they promised, is acceptable.
Once the Republicans pass something, they will own it. Just as they have done with Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security/farm subsidies/defense spending/every other non-essential government function. The only way to win is not play the [rigged] game. Full repeal, simple, and nail their colours to the mast along with the RINOs.
^this^
I can’t wait for someone to put up the venn diagram of ‘trannies’ and ‘people that genuinely want to join the military’ so they can break out the electron microscope needed to find the overlap.
I’ll re-ask (sort of) my question from the end of the last thread. Do these people want to enlist to be assassins or accountants? I think it makes a difference.
Do these people want to enlist to be assassins or accountants?
From what I can tell, they want to enlist to be medical patients.
You beat me to it sir.
That. If the service is going to pay for the costs of gender reassignment surgery (even if it’s done by VA hacks)… no wonder we’re seeing budding transsexuals pop up.
It isn’t the height of the GWOT anymore. The armed forces are much more selective than they were 10 years ago. No surprise the military’s loathe to take on people who might later develop a very costly medical condition (surgery, hormone treatment, co-morbid mental pathologies). They can get in line and complain with other people with things like asthma, flat feet, ADD/ADHD.
Neither: what they really want when they enlist is for that to result in the US tax payer picking up the tab for their expensive medical procedures transitioning to whatever gender it is they now want to try out.
You’re only saying that because racist sexist everythingism!
What Ken is really guilty of is buying into the breathless media reports on the subject. The reporters want this shit to fail, and why the situation isn’t great if not downright precarious, it’s better to just watch how things play out. The predictions of a biased, clownish media looking to tar Republicans doesn’t mean dick.
I cannot bring myself to follow this shit closely. I have a nagging suspicion that what Rand is doing is trying force force some of these people to admit (to themselves) how fucked up the system is, and how pathetic and feeble their “fix” is.
I agree with Ken as far as the gargantuan market distortion Medicaid represents.
From what I can tell, they want to enlist to be medical patients.
That’s… problematic. And if they’re just grandstanding in pursuit of a political agenda, fuck ’em.
President Trump donating his Q2 salary to Dept of Ed, Devos using to fund a STEM-camp.
A STEM camp, WHERE GIRLS CAN BE RAPED WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE BECAUSE THAT EVIL HARPY IS GUTTING TITLE IX?
STEM?? More like:
Sexist
Transphobic
Exclusionist
Monsters
Right??
STEVE SMITH APPLY FOR POSITION AT STEM CAMP! POSITION APPLIED FOR IS RAPE COORDINATOR!
And then they harvest their STEM cells, for genetic experiments to create a master race of orange haired giants?
STEM is full of toxic masculinity. Of course it will be a rape camp! That’s what Trump wants!
You’d think a rape camp would be self-financing.
Unless that’s ….errrr…. Seed funding.
yeah, you get a narrowed gaze for sure.
So he’s stepped up further than any of the limousine liberals that “want” to pay more taxes.
SLD that the DoE should be shut down, not funding more crap. Even if his money only went to it this year, next year they’ll be sucking on the regular tax teat because otherwise all those girls won’t have this necessary opportunity. And thus yet another non-essential government program increases the one-way ratchet.
3 types of people that want to pay higher taxes, no exceptions, not even one:
1. People who already pay no taxes and won’t.
2. Politicians who want to steal some of the higher taxes.
3. Liars.
4. People who do pay taxes but whose tax increases will be much less than other people’s
Kind of a variant/combination of 1 and 3. For example, upper-middle income people talking about raising the SS tax cap. It effects a small increase for them, but a substantial increase for people making a lot more than them.
5. People who will benefit from additional spending far more than will they will pay in additional taxes.
So the Pentagon apparently has no clue what Trump is tweeting about, they weren’t informed, and they say nothing’s changed for the time being.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-tweets-on-military-transgender-ban-send-pentagon-aides-scrambling/article/2629740
This is my biggest problem with Trump. He’s an idiot. None of this 46D chess stuff. His policies (outside of Sessions and Yemen intervention) have been actually somewhat decent, at least better than his predecessor and no worse than any other president in my lifetime. But he does shit like this that… I dunno. About 98% of the President’s injuries so far involve him repeatedly shooting himself in the foot.
Isn’t the current state of affairs a delay in enlistment for transgender (Mattis announced in June at the request of all branches)?
Yes
I’m not sure it’s so much that he’s an idiot more than he’s used to being the head of a business where he can unilaterally bark an order and gets automatically passed down a chain of command, whereas in the government he has to follow an official process for everything.
And I think most people realized he would be like that, but voted for him anyway. Because the alternative was Hillary. I can’t even quite grasp the nightmare that she would have been. I’m just thankful I never have to see it.
Hmmm. Supreme Court Justice
Reinhardtanyone? (Scratch that, too old. How about Murguia, the judge whose sister is the President of the National Council of La Raza?)Oh, things could be quite a bit worse. We might even be in a no shit shooting war with Russia over something inane.
Yeah, I think that this is more accurate. Trump wants the government to work and respond like the bank when it works like the DMV.
Or perhaps some folks at the pentagon should be aware of what Mattis doing
The thought did cross my mind that they simply wanted to push a narrative and so interviewed a bunch of mendacious/stupid people to bolster their claims of ‘NO ONE KNEW TIL RIGHT NOW!’.
Yea Mattis announced he was delaying it…what does that tell you?
I like the lack of source on this but it does seem like there’s a narrative about how Trump announces things without telling the poor overworked, underpaid civil servants.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/trump-transgender-military-service?utm_term=.tjoYbDeBZ#.vfgQav7Ep
It’s sliced in right after a direct quote from a Navy Captain and before a general note about how Mattis is on vacation right now.
Yea. I mean when mattis announced in June that suggests he wasn’t fully on board and wanting to delay ir
Paraphrasing national treasure David Burge,
“In the latest round of Donald Trump vs. the media, the real question is: who will walk away with more self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot?”
Why is this an inflicted gun shot wound for trump?
I don’t really understand that. What makes him an idiot here?
Trump plays the media game well, but it’s a bullshit game. Once can both recognize the fact that he’s a master duelist and also think dueling is a stupid waste of time.
Why is this a waste of time? What esle should he be doing ?
The media will never ever support any of his policies…ever. It is all hysterical fear mongering
Why not irritate them until insanity
Why not irritate them until insanity
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch, but being a better mud-slinger still leaves you covered in mud.
“Why not irritate them until insanity”
They’re well on their way, why stop now? I think Trump fully realizes that the left and their media are doing massive damage to themselves.
As to what makes it a self-inflicted gunshot wound, what Trump said likely goes beyond what anyone can or will actually do. He says more than he can back up, which is what makes him look like a fool. The fact that he’s surrounded by bigger fools doesn’t change that fact.
Basically, Trump says exactly and precisely X when “something kinda like X” is what will actually happen. It’s effective at getting attention, and he can then direct that attention in a way he likes, but it doesn’t make it look any less like a circus.
It looks foolish to us. We’re not his target audience. Covfefe!
It’s a pretty common tactic to overprice and/or underbid and then walk it back to get the price you were expecting. Maybe what he really wants is to remove trannies from combat roles, but in order to do that he needs to overdo it and then walk it back. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s used this tactic.
Yep it is negotiating 101. You don’t shoot for where you want to be right away, then you lose leverage
A fool to who though?
This was an obama plan…if that can be implemented or was going to be it can be rescinded
The circus is the act though.
They know damn straight any policies they put forth will get negative publicity and constant howling.
What gets little attention these days? Cutting regs, pipelines, travel bans, illegal immigrants…no talk. Also a vote on hc today
On the hc vote. The Democrats howl and scream about Republicans repealing and replacing the ACA. The truth is that they fully want them to do it, they want the GOP to own this mess. Now if there’s a real repeal, then we’ll get the real meltdown. I guarantee if they outfight repeal it today, they’ll be at least 50 million dead women and children piled up in the streets tomorrow. Then I can’t drive to the office, oh well.
Trump has adapted to the political reality of today, and he did it while everyone else was still pretending it wasn’t reality. For that, I give him credit. And yes, he is a very good negotiator. When I agree with him, I can’t help but admire the effectiveness of his strategy.
BUT! This is the antithesis of the classic liberal vision of government. This is two factions using the instrument of government and the institutions of society to (mostly peacefully, thank goodness) wage war on one another. It’s dysfunctional in the extreme. This isn’t mature adults hashing out their differences through debate. It’s monkeys fighting for dominance.
How can you negotiate with the left? To them negotiation is for you to agree with them. And they’ve completely jumped the shark now, their policies are 100% insane as is a large portion of their base. And what are they going to do now? Move further left. What the hell is left for negotiation? You can’t negotiate with people who have a progressive case of insanity.
Unfortunately that isn’t reality. Mature adults don’t become politicians
That said I don’t really know that it is worse…social media makes it seem that way
I’m not disputing that the political left has gone insane. Nor am I even necessarily arguing that putting a (slightly less) insane man in the chief position of fighting their insanity is a bad idea. It’s actually kind of genius.
What I am saying is I’m tired of the goddamn insanity. Trump is a well deserved response to the political gamesmanship of the Obama years. But I’d rather we never had either of them.
While agreeing with you, I’d just note that at least now some of the Republicans are actually fighting back. Piling onto Hyperion’s point below, I think you can only debate your differences with someone who wants to listen. I don’t see that the hard Left has wanted to listen for at least the last five or ten years, and now they’ve flat out turned off their hearing aids since Trump’s elected.
I don’t know how you get one side to agree that debate is a good idea when they seemingly don’t want to.
Screw that. The insanity has been in place for years, it’s just more manifest in some ways now. I’d rather have outright arguments that the phony establishment consensus of post-WWII politics. Fuck the Wayne Morses and Thomas Deweys. Quislings, the lot of of them.
It’s like arguing that it’s only journalism today is biased and partisan. No, it’s alway been biased and partisan except that the bias was institutional and everyone pretended it was evenhanded and true. And there were no competing voices. Walter Cronkite is not the golden age of journalism, he’s the poster child for what was and is wrong.
Funny now the left were not interested in debate when they rammed through a healthcare bill on a straight party line vote. Now they’re interested in debate? Sure, like I said, debate means agreeing with them.
Trump’s whole populist schtick is to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks. The torture stuff was a good example. He throws it out and gauges the response. It’s fairly lukewarm so he doesn’t really touch on it that much except to rile up his base that does support it, and suddenly he drops it altogether when Mattis gives him a good reason why it’s stupid. He’s going to be throwing policy positions out like this via Twitter for the next three years.
“The previous policy from President Obama, which was still under final review, would have allowed transgender individuals to openly serve in the military. Defense Secretary James Mattis announced last month he was delaying enactment during review of the plan.”
Why is it trump being an idiot cause bureaucrats are caught off guard? I don’t really understand
I keep seeing that he keeps injuring himself. With who exactly?
The ones that are going ballistic hate him no matter what.
The people that go to cocktail parties hate him and will continue to oppose anything he does.
For god sakes the nyt had an article a while back complaining about family leave that trump proposed because it hurts women. While I agree, they are only against it cause trump
People not in the groups you’re talking about. There are a lot of people who neither love him unconditionally nor hate him unconditionally. Admittedly, these people don’t have a very visible media presence, but that’s not the same thing as them not existing.
Look at this “rift” with sessions. Trump makes sessions look weak, the left goes from calling him a kkk sympathizer to saying he is honest and full of intergrity
Trump criticized him for not doing anything. And left thinking he would resign or be fired
Only to announce he won’t resign and apparently is going to announce investigations of leakers today
If Trump would say today that Hitler is evil, the left will start defending Hitler and call for him to be made a Saint.
To me trump is using the art of war as a manual
1. If of choleric temper you irritate them.
2. Pretend to be weak so they grow arrogant
3. Deception is needed
This is a guy non politician that is hated by pretty much everyone in DC. He actually appears to be sincere about promises and is chizzling away at administrative and regulatory state largely without mention
chizzling away at administrative and regulatory state largely without mention
And this is a genuine accomplishment. Maybe Trump’s style is the only way this could possibly be accomplished. But think about how dysfunctional that is. The President has to be the tail that wags the media dog, just so that the government stops driving jobs out of the country with the gleeful support of a solid chunk of the electorate.
The media may be free…but they sure as hell aren’t independent
They are dnc sycophants. Also D.C. Is the hall of power and apparently he represents a threat to their gravy train for some reason
I think part of the reason for the hysterics is the press and pundits and pols went on and on and on about how terrible he is…yet he still won. That is a signal to them a lot of folks aren’t listening to their bs and suggests they could be replaced. They are threatened their influence has been diminished
he represents a threat to their gravy train for some reason
I think it’s bannon. They know hes a devotee of Andrew Breitbart, and bbart wanted to destroy the dem op media.
It is pretty obvious to me the media and dnc collude on narrative
The constant chaos is a way to prevent any certain narrative from taking hold
I didn’t vote for him but I am becoming a fan due to his things like sc picks and other policies as well as the constant negativity from the press
Also if you heard the dems just this past week they ripped off papa johns and appear to be wanting to go to focusing on the economy (as identity politics has killed them)
Trump tweets and right now they are shitting their pants right back into the culture war
And by focusing on the economy, they mean artificially inflating wages and killing jobs by doing so, and taxing and spending more of your hard earned money.
Phantasm…nice.