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I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Dyson's big reason not to worry about climate change is that "I consider it likely that we shall have “genetically engineered carbon-eating trees” within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years. ... After we have mastered biotechnology, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed." I am not so sanguine about betting the world's economy on massive breakthroughs in genetic engineering technology. Maybe they're work out, but maybe this prediction will be about as useful as Dyson's designs for spaceships powered by nuclear bombs.

Just one of many examples.

You of course will not see it, because you cannot believe ill of those running your cult. But billions have been spent supporting climate research, data faked (which we know from leaked emails and more importantly source code). Sorry buddy, that's what you have signed up with and if you continue to associate with liars why should we all not assume you are one also?

I'll let you have the last response but I have no intent of reading whatever regurgitated mind-slime talking points you've spoon been fed. Do some research and educate yourself, it's not too late.

Push to normalize pedophilia, a 'conservative' publication defending that article.

Wow that is a great attitude to have. Good on ya. /notsarcasm

Thank you.

The US is so lucky to have a licensing system in place that guarantees all gun owners have the same do no harm philosophy and basic competency in handling firearms. Oh wait, I'm thinking of the license required to cut hair (http://www.beautyschoolsdirectory.com/faq/state_req.php).

Well in fairness, that is a licencing system, not a "guarentee" of anything much. :)

Pretty much anybody not recently incarcerated can have as many guns as they want in the US which is why we need our politicians to spend so much time and effort fighting gun control. /sarcasm

I get that feeling, and I understand the point of view that comes behind it...

On the other hand, you should consider the reasons behind the 2nd amendment and why we have it (and hunting wasn't it). The far right doesn't trust our government, and frankly it shouldn't, no one should. The US government has done many of the things that people complain about third world countries doing, including spying on its own people.

If you allow the US government to register all guns, it isn't much of a step to this:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

So what is the answer? That is a good question, all I can say is that many of the problems the US faces aren't the same as faced by nation states such as France or Germany (but that might change if they keep letting people in). We also don't have a unified public care system, either in benefits or healthcare, which is not the case of any other first world nation.

In some respects, the USA is the richest third world nation on the planet (unless you have money, then it is wonderful!)

That, and the fact that it's TORTURE, ....

Is the use of a knife on a body torture? Maybe when it is a sadist carving you up to cause pain, but what about when it is a surgeon removing a tumor? The US has routinely waterboarded members of its military. Are you claiming that it tortured them? That isn't what Eric Holder said when he was Attorney General. He specifically said that it wasn't torture. Coercive? yes. Torture? No, not as it was done.

...the sort of thing we prosecuted people for in the past as a war crime.

A common claim, usually made in reference to the Japanese, but it isn't true. What the Japanese did was different than what the US did to a total of 3 (three) members of al Qaida ending in 2002.

It's also completely useless for gathering information, because all you get is garbage - someone will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to make it stop, even making shit up.

That seems to rely on some big and potentially false assumptions, and doesn't appear to be necessarily true.

Waterboarding Has Its Benefits

U.S. and Pakistani authorities captured KSM on March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. KSM stayed mum for months, often answering questions with Koranic chants. Interrogators eventually waterboarded him ... KSM’s revelations helped authorities identify and incarcerate at least six major terrorists:

-----

Jesse Ventura put it rather well when he said something on the lines of "Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."

Jesse Ventura doesn't seem to understand the point of interrogation even if he does understand coercion. It is probably a bad idea to rely upon his views on this.

Your formulation isn't correct. You might start with these links*:

Obama Skips the Kennedy Tax Cuts
Was JFK really a supply-sider?
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates

*No doubt there are better ones, but time is short.

But the notion that prosperity for the rich leads to prosperity for everyone is no straw man - it's a well known part of right wing policy.

The description of the policy can be a straw man depending on how it is described. You've basically gone straw man there.

Some background for those that are interested:

Obama Skips the Kennedy Tax Cuts
The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates

Yes, they were. I see where you ran into trouble and got confused. You overlooked the qualifier "Northern" in the article you reference. I've indicated that in the second item below which is from the link you provide.

Crusades

The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Pope Urban II authorized the First Crusade in 1095 with the goal of restoring European access to the Holy Land, ...

Northern Crusades

The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were crusades undertaken by the Christian kings of Denmark, Poland[3] and Sweden, the German Livonian and Teutonic military orders, and their allies ...

The Crusades were an undertaking with much wider support in Europe to address the Muslim invasions and preceded the so called "Northern Crusades" by a notable period. I would also draw your attention to this sentence from the article on the "Northern Crusade":

Some of these wars were called crusades during the Middle Ages, but others, including most of the Swedish ones, were first dubbed crusades by 19th-century romantic nationalist historians.

You might want to follow up with this: The abuse of Christianity’s holy wars.

PS - Those Mongol-Tatars and Turks were something, huh?

The only part of your statement that is correct is your statement that you, "don't know". We can start to address the gaps in your knowledge with this:

The abuse of Christianity’s holy wars.

... The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world. While the Arabs were busy in the seventh through the tenth centuries winning an opulent and sophisticated empire, Europe was defending itself against outside invaders and then digging out from the mess they left behind. Only in the eleventh century were Europeans able to take much notice of the East. The event that led to the crusades was the Turkish conquest of most of Christian Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Christian emperor in Constantinople, faced with the loss of half of his empire, appealed for help to the rude but energetic Europeans. He got it. More than he wanted, in fact. Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095. Despite modern laments about medieval colonialism, the crusade’s real purpose was to turn back Muslim conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control. The entire history of the crusades is one of Western reaction to Muslim advances. ...

I admit it's a small start, but at this point you're slightly less ignorant than you were not long ago. I encourage you to continue to address the gaps in your knowledge.

Two minutes of Googling found this:

http://www.state.gov/secretary...

Which is the statement in question.

Um, nope. You are just confused. Really confused. That web page is called "Statement by Secretary Clinton on Developments in the Middle East" and it is a list of things said by Hillary Clinton. The "smoking gun" thing was Hillary Clinton asking for an email with remarks made in public by a foreign government official (perhaps Jose Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States).

So, basically, someone made modifications to a statement that was intended to be a public statement in the first place on a classified system - and then they couldn't get the statement out, because it was on a classified system.

The thing is, Hillary doesn't get to decide what should be classified and what shouldn't be. If something is in the classified system she damn well shouldn't be berating her subordinates for not "just email[ing] it" to her.

I absolutely believe that there is a ton of stuff in the classified system that doesn't really need to be in there, but it is still not Hillary's decision. If something is in the classified system she needed to abide by that.

do you seriously think trying to swing a load like this past people is going to turn people towards your side?

I'm not sure whether you are "trying to swing a load" or just really really confused, but do you think you are turning anyone towards your side?

And do you really want to fly the banner that your side is the side of "just elect the Right People and then trust them to do any damn thing they please: subvert Freedom of Information Act requests, degrade classified information and send it over an insecure system, and lie about it all"?

Are you really that in-the-tank for Hillary? Or are you so afraid that Republicans might do something bad that you are willing to look the other way while a Democrat spends years doing lots of bad things?

A friend of mine commented that maybe the reason why Obama has been so frustrated in the Middle East was that spies were reading his Secretary of State's emails. If Hillary's lah-di-dah attitude toward email security screwed Obama's policy, are you still in the tank for her?

Hillary Clinton is not stupid, and she's a lawyer. Before anyone is given access to classified information, my understanding is that they have to take a class in how to manage classified information and they have to sign an agreement saying they will abide by the rules governing classified information.

Now Hillary Clinton is saying that she doesn't really understand all this confusing stuff. "Wipe the server.. you mean with a cloth?" Oh sure, Mrs. Clinton.

About a week before the news broke about her private server, Hillary Clinton was on a talk show and she said: "So I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry." Then she said that the reason she set up a private server was so she could carry a single device. Now she's saying she was so busy saving the world that she didn't have time to think about what kind of server to use... which is why she didn't just use the server provided for her to use, but took steps to set up her own server and get everyone to use it?

I'm not buying it. The obvious reason why someone in her position would set up her own server, under her control, is to make sure that she would have control over which of her emails could be unearthed (e.g. by a Freedom of Information Act request). Notice that when she was finally forced to turn over emails, she picked and chose which emails to turn over, and then wiped the server to make sure nobody could ever get anything else.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3209380/Former-attorney-general-says-classified-email-scandal-disqualifies-Hillary-Clinton-serving-president-s-prosecuted-breaking-federal-law.html

Also, we can't be sure that her private server wasn't compromised. If her admins didn't get every security patch applied fast enough, someone could have 0wned it over the Internet; and if it wasn't guarded 24/7 someone could have gained physical access to the server in the middle of the night. Secretary of State is a high-profile job with access to a whole bunch of secrets; I think China and Russia probably both have copies of all her emails from her time as Secretary of State. (Whereas the USA only has the ones she turned over, printed on paper.)

And we just found out about a really bad smoking gun. Hillary Clinton has claimed that no classified emails were on her server, but we have evidence that she had one or more people systematically copying messages from a secured system and sending them to Hillary's server. Details here. The key quote:

The subject line of the February 10, 2010, e-mail exchange is "Insulza." The exchange is about a speech, apparently by a foreign official. Perhaps the subject line refers to Jose Miguel Insulza, a Chilean politician who has been secretary general of the Organization of American States since 2005. In any event, the U.S. government's internal reporting on the speech has clearly been classified (not surprising in light of what Shannen Coffin and yours truly explained earlier: foreign government information is presumptively classified). This is clearly very irritating to Secretary Clinton, who is anxious to read the speech. In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

So some group known as "ops" is going to "convert" a message from the classified message system to "the unclassified email system"? That's go-to-prison stuff right there.

If you are a fan of Hillary Clinton... are you okay with a

These busy-body FBI agents working on taxpayer dollars sure saved the country by keeping an eye on Bradbury. All those "subversive" books critical of comprehensive state surveillance and censorship could have had had a hugely negative effect on freedom and democracy (har). I wonder how many other people they've wasted their time and our money following around?

The biggest irony is what little clues there are about Bradbury's politics seem to lean to the libertarian side of things if not well to the right in later years, although I'm sure the details aren't as simple as that, and his views seemed to have evolved over time, like most people's do. Maybe in the 1950s it was more to the "left" side of things. Regardless, he was forever a critic of large, invasive governments and a big supporter of democracy and keeping people informed (e.g., libraries). How the FBI got red-pinko-subversive out of it is bizarre. It's pretty clear he was anti-authoritarian and wanted government to change. Maybe that's what frightened them, and by surveiling him they eventually proved Bradbury's point. It was (is?) out of control.

Besides the waste, I think these documents show that despite their investigation the FBI were pretty incompetent at understanding Bradbury's motivations.

I spent literally 5 seconds looking for an example and found this gem. So many good examples. Dare you to show me anyone else.... Anyone. Anyone that is trying to manipulate speech as hard as progressives. They are the number one world champions of fucking with language to try and manipulate the public dialog.

This is a funny list of stupid words, phrase,etc that progressives want banned:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

1. "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" The nursery rhyme... from the middle ages... racist apparently. Except it has nothing to do with race.

2. The word "master" in any context is racist... so a "master's degree" is racist. If you're a progressive moron.

3. Liking "white meat"... as in chicken breasts instead of thighs... is racist. If you're a progressive moron.

4. Hoop skirts are apparently racist... Because white southern women used to wear them. Do you know what white southerners also used to wear?... Pants, why aren't they racist? Fuckwits.

5. Lunch bags are racist if you call them "brown bags"... Apparently the words "white", "black", and "brown" are all racist in any context. Maybe we should ban colors in general? Oh wait, then we'd be color blind and that's racist too. Fuck.

6. Meritocracy in any form is apparently racist and sexist... basically this is just the progressives channeling their marxist roots.

7. The terms "liberty" and "freedom" are racist.... Which really does a lot of prove old Orwell right, no?

""George Orwell
âoeWar is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.""
- Orwell

We saw you morons coming generations ago.

8. Climate change is racism apparently as well... because... who needs to be rational.

9. Having a dress code that requires people to wear pants that fit or wear belts so their pants don't fall down is racist as well.

10. And any situation that is majority white people is also racist.

Its too easy, shithead. You can't win... you're wrong. Accept it and be less embarrassing specimen of the species going forward. The rest of humanity would appreciate it.

...what difference at this point does it make?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

"I have never understood the blatant lies coming out of the Russian military or their proxies ..."

Did you miss (pretty much) everything about the Soviet Union from 1923 until 1991? The entire system was based on the premise of the "big lie".
It is a major, persistent technique used by governments generally but elevated by Russians to an art form. I'm not sure if it's their cultural history of totalitarianism, some desperate nationalism that makes their people particularly gullible, or more likely a Slavic nihilism that doesn't really believe anything matters much anyway, but really, the "big lie" has been a staple of Russian government, well, FOREVER.

Probably because it works; their people don't care (or support the government blindly regardless of what they know to be true) and the west sees them as all barely-civilized savages *anyway* so how would the admission of some new barbarity surprise anyone? In any case, the West's attention-span is far shorter than Russia's, so ultimately the Big Lie becomes the story everyone accepts, in polite company, at least.

Viz:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
(Quote of the day: Kingsley Amis aphorism about Robert Conquest, that "...(he) told his American publisher that the first reissue of The Great Terror be titled, âoeI Told You So, You Fucking Fools,â)

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

I suggest reading someone who actually knows about this stuff, Thomas Sowell, on The Disparate Impact Racket.

To explain the Silicon Valley statistics with white racism, you'd have to conclude that white hiring committees discriminate against both African Americans and other whites in favor of Asians, a ridiculous proposition.

The most dangerous thing that could come out of that part of the world is a united empire run by religious fanatics or whose government is influenced enough by fanaticism that it looks away while people within the empire use its resources to cause inflame hatred and commit terrorism. Allowing ISIS to gain control of Iraq and Syria would be less dangerous to America than allowing Iran to gain control of Iraq and Syria because in the first case you have two nations who balance each other instead of one much larger nation trying to unify itself behind a shared hatred.

Iran is already making war against America both directly and by proxy. https://www.washingtonpost.com... http://www.wsj.com/articles/ir... http://www.nationalreview.com/... Does this deal do anything to end that state of war? Does this deal do anything to prevent Iran from gaining domination in Iraq and Syria? Or does it just prevent America and allies from stopping them?

Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place. . . .

Iran is not North Korea. It’s far worse. Pyonyang’s dictators never plotted terrorist attacks across five continents and in thirty cities, including Washington, D.C. Tehran’s Ayatollahs did. North Korea is not actively undermining pro-Western governments in its region or planting agents in South America. Iran is.

So why, then, are only Israelis united in opposing this deal? The answer is that we have the most to lose, at least in the short run. We know that the deal allows Iran to break out and create nuclear bombs in as little as three months, too quickly for the world to react. We know that the Ayatollahs, who have secretly constructed fortified nuclear facilities that have no peaceful purpose and have violated all of their international commitments, will break this deal in steps too small to precipitate a powerful global response. And we know that the sanctions, once lifted, cannot be swiftly revived, and that hundreds of billions of dollars Iran will soon receive will not be spent on better roads and schools. That treasure will fund the shedding of blood – of Israelis but also of many others.

Israelis know that, while the world might weather its deception by North Korea, they cannot afford to be duped by Iran. But neither, in fact, can the United States. Just last week, Iran’s President attended a rally in Tehran where tens of thousands of protesters chanted “Death to America.” The deal will better enable them to carry out that attack – if not today, then against future generations. And Iran’s Supreme Leader has publicly pledged to do just that.

I literally feel nauseous about this Iran deal. I feel nauseous because my daughter’s future is being seriously jeopardized by a deal that lifts sanctions that have been well designed to stop a state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons, in return for virtually nothing. Somehow, President Obama has convinced his fellow Democrats that infusing Iran with billions of dollars will make the world a safer place. But all it will do is exacerbate Iran’s aggression in the Middle East, and perversely enable western civilization to fund terrorism activities aimed at it.

We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived, and repeatedly and boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States. Any member of Congress who votes for this deal must have a death wish. But of course Congress, in typical fashion, gave away its constitutional power to ratify this as a treaty (with 2/3 of Senate support) when it passed the Corker legislation. Assuming the Republican-controlled Congress votes down the Iran deal and the President vetoes it, I cannot imagine that there are enough Democrats (13 Democrats in the Senate and 43 in the House) to join the Republicans in overriding Obama’s inevitable veto.

There’s enough political cover and ambiguity in the agreement that the real risks to U.S. and Israel will become known only incrementally, after the passage of years, and most likely only after President Obama leaves office. By the time the western world realizes what a mistake the Obama Administration has made, it will be too late. I guess that, once again, we have to pass it to reallyfind out what’s in it.

Mod up. Please.

Like this

Or this

Or this

Supporters of Scott Walker had police breaking down their doors at 4 in the morning and were prevented from even mentioning it by a "John Doe" warrant.

Support a Republican and a zealous Democrat will use a government sanctioned home invasion, that you can't even legally mention, to intimidate you.

It strikes me that making unfounded allegations of racism for political gain is pretty uncivil, and that has been done in the case of Obamacare, and other matters during the current administration.

“It isn’t about the administration, and it should not be about the administration of the state nor federal level when it comes to Obamacare,” she said. “But in fact it is. And why is that? I have talked to so many members in the House and Senate and you know what it comes down to? Are you ready for this? It is not about how many federal dollars we can receive. You ready? You want to know what it’s about? It’s about race. Now nobody wants to talk about that. It’s about the race of this African-American president. . . . It comes down to the race of the president of the U.S., which causes people to disconnect and step away from the substance of the bill.” -- head of the Louisiana Democratic party, state senator Karen Carter Peterson (New Orleans)

FDA bans frowns and criticism citing impact to healthcare costs

I think we've already crossed that bridge.

Oppose Obamacare? Racist!

No. It's about having better impulse control.

Poor people are also much more likely to have 5 children each with a different person. Maintaining a healthy weight requires some degree of effort and discipline. People that never adequately prepared for their future are simply demonstrating the same faults in their eating habits as they have done in other things.

Being poor doesn't eliminate the possibility of doing better. People like that are just less likely to stay poor (been there, done that).

As every good conservative knows, that's the same reason black people are poor.
" In fact, the same weak impulse control that leads to such high crime rates among young black males inevitably means more disruptive behavior in school."
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Gun control is gun control. Some of what you state is true, while some of it is just so much spin.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

"In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group."

So, yes, the Weimar Republic did indeed pass the laws which made it possible for criminals to threaten and intimidate law abiding citizens.

"In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. "

Hitler's party took full advantage of not only a generally disarmed citizenry, but he also took full advantage of the database to identify his potential opponents.

The Republic committed the initial evil, and Hitler simply built upon that evil. The end result being, gun control is demonstrably WRONG!

Because he is the one that arrogantly ignored the democratic process, stole a massive store of intelligence documents, incompetently encrypted them, and made them available for friend and foe alike, and then fled to be among Americas adversaries. Surely you must see some room for assigning culpability to him?

Our own government "ignored the democratic process". Even the author of the Patriot Act says the NSA is abusing the law by collecting (i.e. stealing) such a large amount of their citizens' private information.

The NSA didn't make the documents available to China and Russia. Snowden did.

You're overlooking the fact that the NSA and its allies are the ones who made Snowden available to Russia in the first place.

You mean the copies of the phone records of many, but not all, Americans? That was repeatedly authorized, including by courts.

Once again, I refer you to the author of the Patriot Act, who says: "No public court has ever upheld document collection that is remotely close to the dragnet at issue. . . . The administration therefore admits that its bulk collection is unprecedented."

CONGRESS. Snowden could have gone to CONGRESS. He didn't.

If he was that naive, he'd be spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement, and we'd still be in the dark.

"would have rivaled the old East German Stasi"

Are you kidding me? When was the last time you feared for your life because you said the president is doing a crappy job? How many of your relatives or friends have disappeared into the night?

Hear about what happened to political activists in Wisconsin when they went against the unions or supported those who did?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

If something similar is going on today, it would be illegal for anyone to talk about it.
So unless you have personally tried to take political action against the President or other entrenched powers, what makes you think you would *not* be given cause to fear for your life and those of your loved ones should you do so?

Break it down. Where do you get your information from?

From African American techie friends and boyfriends.

The only words of wisdom available now are "don't trust a conquerors history, listen to the oppressed."

Yes, why don't you?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

http://www.tsowell.com/spracec...

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The economic and social legacy of slavery is not the cause of crime and poverty in the African American community anymore. But instead of listening to reason, you listen to the self-serving lies of politicians and activists.

The "conquerors" are long dead. The fact that I (and you?) happen to have white skin color doesn't make us in any way related to the people who enslaved anybody. Check your racism.

Understanding why these things exist leads to one of two conclusions ... 2) their destruction was systematic, planned, and on-going, in such an extreme way that precludes all notions of a segregated society where everyone 'gets along'.

Well, it's clearly (2), carried out by the same people who have been carrying it out for a century: progressives and Democrats. Then as now, they view African Americans as inferior and incapable of succeeding on their own.

Break it down. Where do you get your information from?

From African American techie friends and boyfriends.

The only words of wisdom available now are "don't trust a conquerors history, listen to the oppressed."

Yes, why don't you?

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

http://www.tsowell.com/spracec...

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The economic and social legacy of slavery is not the cause of crime and poverty in the African American community anymore. But instead of listening to reason, you listen to the self-serving lies of politicians and activists.

The "conquerors" are long dead. The fact that I (and you?) happen to have white skin color doesn't make us in any way related to the people who enslaved anybody. Check your racism.

Understanding why these things exist leads to one of two conclusions ... 2) their destruction was systematic, planned, and on-going, in such an extreme way that precludes all notions of a segregated society where everyone 'gets along'.

Well, it's clearly (2), carried out by the same people who have been carrying it out for a century: progressives and Democrats. Then as now, they view African Americans as inferior and incapable of succeeding on their own.

What part of Sanders' is batshit crazy. Please have some examples.

You did seem to miss the joke, but to answer your question, Sanders is an economic idiot. He really thinks that "too much" consumer choice for deodorants or sneakers causes hungry children.

There are several words in English that adequately describe the post I made. Here is one of them: correct.

The problem here isn't that I'm "stupid" but that you are uninformed. If you can manage to follow links, and can follow up on the information you find, there is a lot of food for thought for you here:

In the Tank: A Statistical Analysis of Media Bias
Measuring Media Bias

There is plenty more on this subject if you care to look.

Your post has nothing to do with the thread and post you responded to. It is a non sequitor, an injection of a political attack against conservatives into the discussion. To correct you, "Bob" isn't making a point, he's making an argument, and a specious one at that. His writings in essense are a polemic which is riddled with errors or distortions from what I've seen. Oh, and what a surprise, it was written during the height of BDS - Bush Derangement Syndrom, of which he seems to be a carrier.

So if we are recommending literature that might provide some illumination on the qestion of authoritarians, there is a book that is far more useful and factual than Bob's book. You can find a review here and the book here.

The dirty little secret of that regulation, which is the same dirty little secret of Obamacare or Dodd-Frank or all of these other huge complicated pieces of regulation or legislation, is that they don't get written on their own, they get written in part by lobbyists for big companies who want to understand that the rules are going to work for them.... Who was in the middle of arguing for net neutrality? Verizon, Comcast, Google, I mean, all these companies were playing. They weren't saying "we don't need this," they were saying "we need it."

I think my grandmother could have done a better job running HP.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave its 2009 SmartWay Excellence Award to Georgia-Pacific, a Koch Industries company. “I commend Georgia-Pacific for its leadership in promoting sustainable transportation practices through the SmartWay Transportation Partnership,” said Margo T. Oge, director of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality. “These actions demonstrate a commitment to a cleaner environment and more secure energy supply.”

EPA gives an environmental award to a Koch Industries business unit. What Koch does is not cater to the Far left viewpoint of Environmentalist / anti Capitalist / socialist agenda. You know the "build wind farms, just not where I can see them" Kennedy types

So now "terrorism" basically means any kind of activity that might undermine the state's supremacy of power. Mark Rowley's candid admittance is perfectly in line with how, for instance, Missouri's police forces refer to protesters as "enemy forces". And of course, if you're not helping with enforcing this supremacy, actively betraying your own principles in the process (and, no Mr officer, saying 'Some days, I hate my job' while you break into an innocent's home and plunder their stuff, does not exonerate you in any way) then you are with THEM.

Good luck fixing it...all those that are in the game, don't want the game to change, and will do everything they can to prevent someone who wants to change it from getting in. Read this to see how far they'll go: District Attorney, Judge, and Police force persecuting political foes. Fascism is alive and well.

...Also, the cops should better assess the situation before invading people's houses at gunpoint.

And pass up an opportunity to be Rambo and play with guns? They live for this stuff.
Calmly walking up to the door, ringing the bell and asking if there's a problem - well that's just not cool.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Search for education, and get mad. What bullcrap. Nobody seems interested in stopping them. They give police a bad name.

STEM education is the worst! It's racist!

An African-American scholar says that emphasis on STEM education is bad for blacks.

They are a private company that has a published set of terms and conditions.

Can a baker, florist or photographer put forth a set of terms and conditions with regards to what kind of events they will provide services for?

The courts have been saying no for a while now in the case of some events they may disagree with: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

It is an interesting world where some people/companies are compelled to provide services equally (if they want to remain in business), while others are given a pass.

I'm still waiting for a case like this to happen in the US as it would be rather entertaining viewing: http://www.nationalreview.com/...

... or is that 'too nuanced’ of an explanation?

Maybe we just can't clean our way out of these attacks?

Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?

Gibson Guitars. Gibson imported wood guitar components that we legally harvested and legally exported. Eventually the US gov't admitted Gibson did nothing wrong. However to investigate Gibon's possible improper importation of wood a heavily armed SWAT raid was conducted to seize their paperwork and the wood in question.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

I love cool technology as much as next guy. The videos of railgun trials are very cool. But, the Pentagon has lots of cool technology projects that have turned into expensive junk. The F35 is the latest example, billions of dollars over budget, and it still doesn't work.

I am very much in favor of a strong defense and strong US military capabilities, but, I am very concerned by the Pentagon's seeming inability to make tech work on time and on budget.

I read the following in National Review (a very conservative pro defense pro military magazine), and I think that everyone who is interested in railguns and Naval Technology should read it as well:

Railguns: The Next Big Pentagon Boondoggle?
The Navy's replacement for traditional artillery may be an expensive fantasy.
By Mike Fredenburg on December 18, 2014

Mr. Fredenburg's claims include: railguns are nowhere durable enough; railguns will have serious trouble engaging mid-range targets; large-explosive rounds are better than the railgunâ(TM)s small, inert ones; railguns will cost a lot more to operate than more conventional artillery, and less extreme technology could produce results as good as railguns at a fraction of the cost.

I cannot vouch for the correctness of Mr. Fredenbug's claims, but given the Pentagon's poor record on new technology, I think they should be taken seriously.

No POTUS in history has cracked down as hard on immigration as he has

Sir, with all due respect, you're not being terribly honest. It's also widely reported (Outside of liberals blogs like thinkprogress.org, dailykos, etc.) that almost ALL the new jobs created since Obama took office have gone to immigrants.

Does anyone think the sponsors of this legialation have serioulsly considered the issues of user access and cost?

I sure do think so.

the mantra of "free markets"

Yes, leave it to Illiberals to criticize free markets. Government take-over did so well for railroads, public transport, and telephone-service, what could possibly be wrong about adding Internet to the mix?

This has resulted in a protected monopoly for these ISPs. [...] treat the ISPs as utilities so that their rates will be controlled

Yes, an earlier mistake of our government letting corporations have monopolies (of cable TV) still needs to be dealt with. But the price-control you are advocating in the next paragraph only makes things worse. Because the incumbents are much better versed in dealing with the government regulators, than a newcomer will ever be.

And, while you are accusing Republicans of baby-eating, it is the Democrats who are owned by the Big Cable.

This is really a free market in content

So, free market in content is a good mantra, but free market in service provision is bad? Or did you change your mind by the end of typing your post?

Look into the issue and you'll find that there's no real definition of "assault weapons" and it usually comes down to simple aesthetic components that have nothing to do with the lethality of the weapon.

If those components were purely aesthetic, the manufacturers would have simply removed them to circumvent a ban.

LOL. My favorite part about you looney lefters is that you don't even recognize the fact that you live in a self-parody world. I'm sorry to do this to you, well, LOL, I lie. i find it hilarious.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Yes, the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) was a socialist party.

I suggest watching the whole thing some time: The Soviet Story

Liberal Fascism

Benito Mussolini was a socialist and earned the title “Il Duce” as the leader of the socialists in Italy. When he founded the fascist party, its program called for implementing a minimum wage, expropriating property from landowners, repealing titles of nobility, creating state-run secular schools and imposing a progressive tax rate. Mussolini took socialism and turned it in a more populist and militaristic direction, but remained a modernizing, secular man of the left.

The Nazis too were socialists, “enemies, deadly enemies, of today’s capitalist economic system,” in the words of the party’s ideologist Gregor Strasser. The party’s platform sounded a lot like that of the Italian fascists. The Nazis wanted to chase conventional Christianity from public life and overturn tradition, replacing them with an all-powerful state. Both Hitler and Mussolini were revolutionaries, bitterly opposed to “reactionary” forces in their societies.

Leftists become incandescent when reminded of the socialist roots of Nazism

On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars. Rather, in the place of debased, Jewish Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht would deliver “der echte Sozialismus”: real socialism.

Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.

So total is the cultural victory of the modern Left that the merely to recount this fact is jarring. But few at the time would have found it especially contentious. As George Watson put it in The Lost Literature of Socialism:

It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.

. . . . Hitler told Hermann Rauschning, a Prussian who briefly worked for the Nazis before rejecting them and fleeing the country, that he had admired much of the thinking of the revolutionaries he had known as a young man; but he felt that they had been talkers, not doers. “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun,” he boasted, adding that “the whole of National Socialism” was “based on Marx”.

Marx’s error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity – to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order. His aim, he told his economic adviser, Otto Wagener, was to “convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists” – by which he meant the bankers and factory owners who could, he thought, serve socialism better by generating revenue for the state. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish,” he told Wagener, “we shall be in a position to achieve.”

Hahahahahaha you think tax money goes to pay for water and highways. No. Tax money goes to pay for stuff like this, this and this.

I know that *some* (not all) taxes go to stuff like that. If you are claiming that NO TAXES go ever to public infrastructure, then you are going to have to do better than just pointing at counter examples.

I never claimed that ALL TAXES go to public infrastructure. I claim that taxes PAY for infrastructure. That claim does not says "ALL TAXES go to infrastructure" or that "infrastructure gets funded PROPERLY by ALL TAXES."

As a result, your reply, by logical necessity, is misplaced and inadequate. Unless you can prove anywhere that I've said anything that warrants your reply, you have to admit, if you are honest, that you are simply building a strawman.

Haven't you noticed that America's infrastructure is crumbling?

Yes.

Now why is that?

Because its maintenance and expansion is not funded properly. This is no proof that taxes never go there. It is certainly not proof of the following statement:

And taxes are good, right? Not like that's stealing or anything.

People shouldn't expect not to be challenged when they post asinine shit like that without a context or at least some thought behind it.

Giving more tax income for the government is no better than giving a crackhead more money.

There is not one government. There is federal government, there is state and local government, and depending on the region, tribal government. Each operates differently, with different levels of efficiency and honesty (or lack thereof) when it comes to collecting taxes (and putting them to good use.)

In this specific context, this thread, taxation is being referred to state and local taxation. It is not accurate to describe taxation and public spending in such over-generalized terms. It is great from the point of rhetoric.

It has been a long time since the US government has made effective use of its money. Besides - all tax revenue is barely enough to cover the INTEREST on the deficit (even at these low low rates) - let alone the deficit. A few hundred million here or there will make zero difference to the ocean of pork.

Here you are properly elaborating a good point (finally). It still does not explain what states are to do with pot legalization, the war on drugs, state rights over their own taxation, their relation on that topic to the federal state, the nature of interstate commerce, free passage of citizens from one state to another to purchase an item and the arbiter role of federal government in such activities.

There are the goddamned subjects of this threat. Alcohol is already taxed with different sale taxes across the states, so logically legalization of pot by a state will imply its taxation by said state.

Inefficiency of (or even corruption during) taxation of an item by a government, be it local, state or federal, does not preclude a government, in particular a state government from exercising that sovereign power. If you oppose a state from taxing pot as a condition for legalization, you are going to have to do better than saying "taxation is bad or badly done."

Hahahahahaha you think tax money goes to pay for water and highways. No. Tax money goes to pay for stuff like this, this and this.

Haven't you noticed that America's infrastructure is crumbling? Now why is that?

Giving more tax income for the government is no better than giving a crackhead more money. It has been a long time since the US government has made effective use of its money. Besides - all tax revenue is barely enough to cover the INTEREST on the deficit (even at these low low rates) - let alone the deficit. A few hundred million here or there will make zero difference to the ocean of pork.