It’s been a full year since Donald Trump was elected by Russian hackers to be President of the United States. As the country has plunged headlong into the darkest time anyone who’s never read a history book can imagine, being to the right of a ‘center’ that to the #resistance drifts inexorably leftward has become increasingly dangerous. Punching Nazis, white supremacists, and anyone who disagrees with Karl Marx has become in vogue, as has shooting at Republicans, and lately, one more person to the right of Lenin has been sent to the hospital. Rand Paul was attacked by an irate neighbor, suffering broken ribs and bruised lungs. Major news outlets will tell you this involved some sort of long-standing personal matter between the two neighbors that had nothing to do with their differing political viewpoints. The neighbor’s lawyer has made similar assertions in an attempt to protect his client from likely harsher charges. Fortunately for seekers of truth, Elie Mystal, the Executive Editor of the website Above the Law, has sussed out the real culprit: Libertarianism itself.
In his piece Libertarian Hero Meets The Justice Of The Streets (Err.. Suburbs), Mystal engages in victim blaming so obvious that he himself admits to doing so towards the end of his piece. He shrugs his self-acknowledged hypocrisy off because in his view the natural, inevitable outcome of a libertarian society is that people will physically attack each other over matters their lawyers will later describe as ‘trivial,’ because there will be no other options for people to settle disputes. The ignorance of libertarian thought he displays throughout his article is as garish as a neighboring barn painted hot pink accented with neon green lightning bolts; It’s ugly to look at, and one wonders what the person who created it was thinking, or even if they were in their right mind to begin with.
Mystal describes the atrocities Paul was allegedly committing that would, were it not for the benevolent hand of laws that would mysteriously be absent in Libertopia, naturally cause one to resort to physical violence to solve. Rand Paul allegedly grew pumpkins on his property, you see, and sometimes pumpkins smell bad. He also perhaps liked to compost on his property, which can also (if not properly done) become noticeably malodorous. And if that weren’t enough to drive perfectly normal people into fits of violent rage, there may have been lawn clippings where Paul’s neighbor thought they shouldn’t be. In Mystal’s view, the only available options someone living in Libertopia would have is to either move away or start cracking ribs. Libertarianism just leaves people with no other options, he presumes.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with anything other than the grossest stereotypes of libertarian thought knows this to be false. Paul’s home, and his neighbor’s are part of a Home Owner’s Association, which would certainly still be permitted to exist in Libertopia. Home Owners’ Associations represent a great example of an entirely voluntary exercise in collectivism. People who buy or inherit a house in an HOA know of its existence before moving in. But if you’re in the market for a house but don’t want to be in an HOA, you do research and avoid looking at homes under an HOA. If you inherit a house in an HOA and you don’t want to be part of it, you sell the house to someone who doesn’t mind being in one. The formation, operation, and dissolution of HOAs are a valid exercise in the freedoms libertarians recognize.
This particular libertarian lives in a condominium and is the president of the association. HOAs and condo associations have rules that owners are expected to abide by, but the association cannot force compliance. What associations can do is levy fines for noncompliance until the property is no longer violating established association rules. If the problem persists and fines left unpaid, the association can, through the court system, place a lien on the offending owner’s property until such time as outstanding fines are paid up. This is something that happens pretty regularly depending on how bad an owner is regarding paying their dues to the association. The association also has some discretion in when fines should or should not be assessed, and that is laid out in rules that every owner has the right to peruse at any time. By contrast, an association representative cannot, for example, force entry into a unit to confiscate an unapproved decoration on the owner’s balcony. The association cannot call the police to have them do it unless the owner or occupant is violating the law in some way–for example, if someone is cooking outside on a grill too close to the building, the association can call the police because it violates a city ordinance. If a dispute cannot be resolved this way, owners and the association can take each other to court and have the court render judgments. But if a unit owner simply pays the assessed fines along with regular fees, the association cannot do anything further concerning rules violations unless laws or ordinances are also being violated.
My condo is on the second floor of a two-story building, with windows facing east and south. It tends to trap heat, which is great in the winter, but awful in the summer. Each unit has a permanent wall mount for a window-mounted air conditioner in the living room, but nothing in the two bedrooms. The layout of the unit makes having a cross-breeze all but impossible. So in the summer months, my unit is often hotter on the inside than it is on the outside.
I have tried to solve that by buying the most powerful A/C I could find that will fit in the wall mount, buying sun-blocking drapes for the windows, and having double-paned windows and a triple-paned glass sliding door. The sliding door did not come in an exterior color approved by the association, but I wanted triple-paned so I painted it myself after installation. I have literally spent thousands of dollars trying to fix this problem in a way that doesn’t run afoul of association rules. The problem is better, but no one who comes by in the summer thinks it’s been solved.
So I purchased a portable AC that goes up in a window. This is a violation of association rules; because they strive for the exteriors of the units to be consistent and fairly uniform, they prohibit hanging air conditioners in windows. My air conditioner is of the type that sits on the floor, with a penal for the exhaust that hangs in the window. I’ve been open with the Board of Directors about having the unit there when it’s hot. They have the option to fine me for noncompliance, and I’ve told them that I value my health and the health and comfort of my guests over the monthly fine. I wouldn’t complain or abuse my power as president to avoid paying the fine if the BoD decided to assess it, but in four or five years it hasn’t even come up. I’m aware that this may not be the norm for HOAs, as they tend to attract the sort of petty tyrant who couldn’t be elected in a one-person race, but that’s not my point.
My point is that, unlike the presumption espoused by Mystal, Paul’s neighbor had a recourse other than blind-side tackling someone who doesn’t follow HOA rules, and that recourse would have existed in Libertopia. If Paul’s neighbor has addressed his grievances to the association directors, their legal option was to assess Paul fines based on noncompliance. If Paul is paying those fines, and assuming he is breaking no local laws, there’s nothing more the association can do, and neither is there anything Paul’s neighbor can do. In this case, Paul would be complying with association rules by paying fines as directed for noncompliance. The neighbor’s next option is to see if Paul were violating any local ordinances and pursue matters with the local authorities. Those ordinances may or may not have existed under Libertopia, but the court system involved would remain.
Mystal really needs to do a bit more research into libertarianism.
Comments
366 responses to “Broken Bones are the Price We Pay for Being Libertarians”
The State is our new god, apostasy is a heinous and unforgiveable crime
Would he forgive Rand if he administered the justice of the streets by blowing his attacker’s brains out the next time he goes to the mailbox. I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.
Next up, Mystal explains why Harvey Weinstein is really the fault of the culture of sexual deviancy inspired by social conservatives. See, lefties assault women because conservatives made having frank, open conversations about sex entirely impossible. And gay celebrities molest men only because the right hates gays. It’s really very obvious if you don’t think about it.
I hope Rand wasn’t expecting to retire on any settlements against his attacker.
In Minnesoda you only get $675K for being shot and killed by a chickenshit cop.
opens the door to healing
Not of course for the guy this fuckwit ventilated.
So once again, the taxpayers pay some cash, and nothing actually happens to the police officers or the department.
You can pretty much set your watch to the outcome of these kinds of investigations.
Police shooting –> Police chief mutters something about “concern” and/or says officer did nothing wrong but they’ll investigate –> Officer placed on
paid vacationleave –> DA decides not to prosecute –> IA decides officer does nothing wrong –> Officer returns to work –> Family sues –> Taxpayers pay settlementThey did put Yanez (the cop) on trial. He was acquitted and I’m sure the DA didn’t work as hard as he would have if Castile had shot Yanez.
But yeah, the taxpayers are the only one who have been disciplined for this shit.
NOT IN MY LIBERTOPIA, BUDDY!
Not just permitted to exist, but the state would be powerless to stop a group from forming an HOA. No government permission is necessary.
If you subscribe to the belief that people can be reasoned with and have their minds changed through rational, civil discourse, you’d find yourself frustrated to the edge of sanity by people like the author of the linked article. Mutual understanding has never been their motive, though. They know that the grotesque caricature of the gun toting, social contract abusing libertarian is preposterous, but it is instrumental in aiding the defense of their own belief system which has no solid moral foundation. If they were to ever concede that their illustration of libertarianism is based on falsehood, they would have to concede their own false premises in short order afterward.
their own belief system which has no solid moral foundation
“But we want to help people! That’s why we handicap them, so we can hand them crutches and call ourselves compassionate.”
It’s not about being right or wrong, it’s about controlling the narrative. Wrong or right is not relevant to leftists, the only thing that matters is power and control.
If you subscribe to the belief that people can be reasoned with and have their minds changed through rational, civil discourse, you’d find yourself frustrated to the edge of sanity by people like the author of the linked article.
That was sort of the impression I got. The author blamed Paul because his preferred reaction to someone not doing what he wanted (HOA or not) would be to blind-side tackle them. Essentially, progressivism is an ideology that gives bullying a moral sanction. It’s based around saying that its followers are morally superior by virtue of their ideology and therefore fit to impose their wishes on lesser beings.
Yeah, the author is writing as if Paul’s alleged “libertopia” actually exists and that the violence was a consequence of it, when in reality the violence is most damning of the ineffectual rules and regulations that purportedly exist to prevent it.
“Impose” is the operative word here. It’s always “do what we say or else” with these clowns.
It’s always “do what we say or else” with these clowns.
Isn’t it always with bullies? As I said above, progressivism is an ideology that gives bullying a moral sanction. It shouldn’t be surprising that it attracts an inordinate share of bullies.
That’s very true. And the interesting thing about bullies is that they don’t stop when they get their way. Giving in makes them want to torment you even more.
Yup. And what do progressives do when you give them what they want?
Politely thank you and leave you alone?
god i hate elie mystal
Every time I glance his name I keep reading it as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb2mnDp68S0
This ain’t for no small boo-teez…
In other stereotype news…
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/study-white-men-facing-money-trouble-tend-to-cling-to-guns-for-power-identity/
It’s well-known that black gun owners have no money problems.
And never kill each other, with guns.
I think it’s pretty weak to tie “economic distress” to ideas about guns for a specific group of gun owners based off a fucking poll. The people conducting these studies have ingrained biases and its showing here when they try to create this causal relationship. But I find it entirely believable that white gun owners justify their ownership of guns more in terms of ideology than someone who lives in a shitty neighborhood and feels the need to defend themselves. That guy is going to use more pragmatic notions to explain himself.
Of course, the questions most likely didn’t ask any problematic questions that would actually explore the culture of black gun ownership. And they likely weren’t sampling gang bangers.
Most of my friends are pretty well off and, shockingly, they still cling to their guns anyway.
Anyone would think that 96% of the guns being clung onto were Raven Arms 25 caliber or High Point 9’s.
It’s true! Of course when I don’t have money trouble I cling to guns for power and identity as well….
I just bought a new M&P Shield 9mm for funsies and next up is Mossberg 590 Shockwave. Hooray for guns!
http://www.fox29.com/news/controversial-bill-would-force-business-owners-to-take-down-bulletproof-glass
Idiots.
Meant to be it’s own thread, but I guess it sort of works here too.
Put her ass alone behind the counter at 2am and see if she’s okay with no gun or plexiglass. What a wench.
A swing and a miss.
What possible justification do they have for this?
It’s quite literally and explicitly meant to drive businesses out of town.
This is one of the most sadistic power-grabs I’ve ever seen.
FYTW is their justification.
Methinks Blackwell has no clue what she’s talking about.
Interesting article.
Yup.
Well, that was depressing.
I love that these two bangers are laying it down – having stores is good for the neighborhood, but, damn, make ’em easy to rob, and we’ll rob them ourselves.
I’m reading Black Rednecks and White Liberals, and this sounds like a quote from the “Are Jews Generic” article.
The guy whose actions make the least sense to me are the nominal Republican developer who interjected himself into the story the day after pushing the narrative that the dispute was over HOA rules. He made the first appeal to Rand’s politics and disrespect for his neighborhood’s rules. Did he think a dispute over politics between neighbors would look worse than one over petty rules?
Probably just another establishment Republican never Trumper with a bad case of TDS.
^^^ This.
Remember – the Kentucky GOP, the McConnell types, hated Rand from the get-go and fought hard to defeat him in his first primary. That developer was some kind of former functionary in the Kentucky party apparatus – secretary, treasurer, something like that. He might well hate Rand as much as the lunatic who attacked him.
dum, dum, dum, another one bites the dust…..
So would we say all lefty pundits are above average at sexual misconduct
Above the median, yes.
Garrison Kellor wrote this yesterday
“Al Franken should resign? That’s absurd.
All of the major news outlets have been going all out to out cognitive dissonance the others. Most of it some version of ‘Ray Moore needs to go, but Al Franken totally needs to stay!’.
I am still waiting for the real evidence that Roy Moore did anything inappropriate.
With women, I mean. One could argue that some of his activities and policies as a public figure were inappropriate.
True but consistent trump also has been accused plenty.
That article is retarded, I wonder if there’s a correlation between stupidity and the inappropriate behavior?
*strokes chin, contemplates applying for grant*
I realize that I’m treading dangerously close to crediting Trump for this phenomenon, but I honestly can’t see any of the recent allegations coming to light during a Clinton administration.
Well the mammal with the hat and the hair used to be all over Hollywood. One could surmise that he had old friends that knew the score, and would happily blast out Weinstein story. It is pretty much how the proggies do it except their friends show up on cable news every night… hmmmmmmmm funny how this working out.
Of course these follow-ons were probably a happy bonus.
This #metoo thing going on is like a giant enema flushing out the colon of the media. They needed a good cleansing.
I have to wonder if there’s a natural selection bias for lefties to get accused of this stuff, especially entertainers since practically the whole field is operated by people from the left. Are lefty women more likely to make these accusations than righty women?
That may be a part of it, as the lefty women may consider a drunken pass to be sexual harassment, while the righty woman would just brush it off. However, I’d lean more towards it being projection. Most of these progs appear to believe that everyone has the same demons that they do, and project their flaws on the public. Look at how many “male feminists” are being/have been accused of inappropriate behavior.
Everything with progs is projection. It’s an Iron Rule.
I have to wonder if there’s a natural selection bias for lefties to get accused of this stuff,
I’ve been noodling on a theory about why lefty institutions seem to be correlated with institutions that harbor sexual harassment. The bullet points:
Some institutions don’t really have quantifiable measures of quality or productivity. These include academia, media, government. In these institutions, you can get by just fine without ever having solved a problem or improved much of anything.
These institutions are also in high demand as employers – the line for jobs literally is out the door. This may be because they are unaccountable in the usual way, or it may be for other reasons.
With a line of applicants out the door, and no real standards to judge applicants or current staff by, the jobs get doled out based on other reasons – nepotism, cronyism, or “personal” relationships. So far, we have a recipe for sexual abuse/harassment, and indeed these institutions have long-standing reputations for sexual harassment.
So, how do the lefties come in? Because once they have a foothold and become gate-keepers, they filter out anyone who isn’t a lefty. The institutions that are petri dishes for sexual abuse/harassment are also vulnerable, for the same reasons, to being taken over by lefties. If you can gate-keep to extract sexual favors, you can gate-keep for ideological purity.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Progs gravitate to positions of low to non-existent accountability because this facilitates their ability to wield arbitrary power over others, which is the point of the progressive mindset. They also use their gate-keeper status to create cults of personality around themselves, which also facilitates wielding sexual power over their subordinates.
Also: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/28/567026934/npr-chief-news-editor-departs-in-wake-of-harassment-allegations
I’ll never look at those horrible pre-teen days of being trapped at my parent’s cottage and having to listen to A Prairie Home Companion the same again.
Oh man, I had a high school English teacher who used to make us listen to Prairie Home Companion in class sometimes. The agony….
Write them and ask “Where is your Keillor now?!”
Yeah, I’ve been subjected to this torture, too. The only thing I remember being even mildly amusing were the “Guy Noir” segments.
My kid sister used to work for MPR and she has a bunch of great stories about the lunacy that would go on before he would do a live show in Minnesoda. She was one of their professional beggars and when a live show would go on, people who had donated would call up desperate and in tears to try to get her to help them get tickets to the show.
The kid sister is pretty liberal, but even she couldn’t believe the adoration he got around here. Especially since she met him a few times and thinks he is pretty snooty.
He sure isn’t a good neighbor. (they settled out of court about a week after this story)
My girlfriend used to work at the local PBS station and it was misogyny all the way down. Then again, she’s a prog too.
An old SNL/Weekend Update quote:
“A new study shows that drowsy driving is responsible for nearly 17 percent of all highway fatalities. That’s a lot of blood on your hands, ‘Prairie Home Companion.’ ”
Yea, fall asleep while driving, and people feel sorry for you. But have a couple or a dozen drinks and you’re a monster.
In Lake Woebegone, where all the women are strong, and all the men are scared shitless.
Just in case it’s not clear, I’m just loving watching the left’s new fetish – autophagy.
So you’re sayyin that Woe be goin before the fall?
The Rand Paul incident was a case of self defense. We all know that the things Paul says are LITERALLY VIOLENCE.
Everyone knows libertarians want to go back to the way of the mongol steppes
If it includes driving my enemies before me and hearing the lamentations of their women I could get on board.
YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING?
It’s the NYT, so take it as you will. My only question is, is there a time when it’s ok to take pleasure in someone’s imminent death? Surely there must be a real Hell for someone who would put their own pissy hissy at being a loser, much like Hillary, over the welfare of their constituents and the entire country. Fuck, I hate this fucking cunt almost as much as Hillary, maybe more.
You should see what their twitter account is doing this morning.
https://www.twitter.com/nytopinion
I didn’t click yet, but if McCain is once again being hailed as the left’s newest hero, I won’t be surprised at all.
“a tax bill that hurts the middle class”
Yes, because letting people keep more of their hard earned money is really harmful.
I’m more appalled that the left is actually trying to talk about the impact on the deficit again.
Their hypocrisy is without limit.
I love how they hide behind the fact that it’s their “opinion” twitter feed. Like it has nothing to do with their news, and everyone on their editorial board is just in lockstep because they’re such a neutral organization.
That’s what I saw, Neutral my Ass!
It’s easy for people like Hillary and McCain to engage in this behavior and continue to see themselves as principled actors. Especially in the case of McCain. He lives in a bubble where people applaud him for what he’s doing simply because they agree with it. I doubt he’d even admit to himself that he’s being driven by ego, and no one around him would ever force him into the uncomfortable position of even having to defend himself against the accusation.
Most people would probably admit some people deserve to die. John McCain is an asshole who has spent decades pushing batshit insane and immoral policies that have led to the deaths of others. I may not want to pull the trigger, but I sure as shit am not going to have sympathy for him or any other cretinous political type who has pushed destructive policies. Does McCain care about innocent people who die in some drone attack or bombing he advocated strongly for? They don’t pull the trigger, but they’re the real reason for it.
I’m pretty sure Jahn McCain knows that he is a horrible human being.
I don’t have time to find the link now, so I’ll just report from memory. his behavior in the matter of his wife forging prescriptions in the names of her staffers for opiates was utterly despicable. He essentially tried to ruin the staffer who raised the alarm. The staffer who was effectively being set up to take the fall should the DEA come sniffing around. Is shouldn’t’ say tried; he did ruin the man.
If you ever want to get the measure of a man, look to the episodes where he would get a personal benefit for doing the wrong thing at the expense of a man who is powerless. On that metric, John McCain has shown his true colors to be that of an utter, worthless piece of shit.
Keating 5,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
Did Welch cover that in his book?
And wow, has it already been 10 years?
“I doubt he’d even admit to himself that he’s being driven by ego, and no one around him would ever force him into the uncomfortable position of even having to defend himself against the accusation.”
It was only a couple of months ago, I believe, when a reporter took McCain to task by suggesting that he opposed a policy (I think it was probably the GOP health care bill) based not on principle, but as a petty grudge match with President Trump.
McCain flipped the fuck out on the reporter.
It’s all based on Hillary syndrome. The asshole lost to Obama and followed that up by being humiliated by Trump. There’s nothing he can do to Obama now, so he’s taking out his Hillary syndrome on Trump.
John McCain is the Nick Gillespie of the Republican establishment.
I’ll flat out say it; I’m glad he has brain cancer. And I hope he spends his last hours in incredible agony, cold, alone, soaked in his own effluvia, and alternating between blubbering like a child and keening like an injured animal while his supposed caregivers openly laugh at his misery. Not quite The Boats, but that would do it. He’s Bible-level wicked and the fact that he hasn’t been struck down is evidence of either an atheistic or maltheistic universe.
The brain cancer would explain a lot if he’s been dealing with it for 40 years.
Fuck John McCain to death with a red hot poker
McCain is a horrible human being whose lust for power has played a role in the deaths of a helluva lot of people and he seems to be hell bent on being a complete bastard while running out the clock. When he kicks it I’m cracking open a bottle of champagne.
I’m saving a bottle of vintage Cachaca for the occasion. I might have the entire bottle. The reveling shall continue far into the night…
This libertarians dont want laws is a.sort of muh roadz crap. I am willing to make a deal. Lets keep the roads for the government. Get rid of excessive bureacracy wellfare govermnet healthcare and pensions. Lets keep the roads. What % of gdp is that?
I would love for the US government to only send tax payer money on what the constitution allows it….
Pro-tip: “General welfare” doesn’t mean, you know, welfare/charity. It means “stuff that benefits everybody, not stuff that benefits only a few”.
The rich should be ground into meal and fed to the oppressed!
Or even a significant majority. It should benefit literally everybody.
My point is that, unlike the presumption espoused by Mystal, Paul’s neighbor had a recourse other than blind-side tackling someone who doesn’t follow HOA rules, and that recourse would have existed in Libertopia.
Maybe I’m going to sound extreme here, but given that the Pauls have reported not having had occasion to talk to his attacker in years, wasn’t there also the option of walking up to Paul and simply asking, “Say, Rand, I know you’re busy being a Senator and all, so maybe you haven’t had the chance to notice, but your pumpkin patch and compost pile, kind of, well, stink. I know you don’t mean anything by it, but the HOA has rules that you can’t have a pumpkin patch and compost pile. I’m not trying to bust your balls or anything, but can you do something so that I don’t have to deal with the odor?”
DON’T fall for the “Landscaping” crap: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rand-pauls-neighbors-rip-media-landscaping-dispute-reports/article/2640090
Oh, I’m not. I’m just addressing the ostensible issue the article and the one it references focus on.
Is landscapping anything like landsnatching?
*EDIT FAIRY RESCUES GLIB STAFF*
Landsnatching is what your girlfriend has to do once a month with a certified aesthetician.
Oh baby, you know what I like
Is this edit fairy available for a landsnatching?
God, I love it when she makes an appearance!
Any man named Rene is not to be trusted, and is probably a communist.
Odo would like a word with you.
Like I said, not to be trusted and probably a commie.
Does anyone have a copy of the HOA rules that specifically ban pumpkin patches and composting? Because I assume those rules don’t exist unless I see otherwise.
I’m inclined to believe you’re right. That said, there probably is a rule about having your property put off a smell that bothers your neighbors. On the other hand, none of his other neighbors, at least judging from Swiss Servator’s link have been bitching.
This is all bullshit excuse making by people that cheered Paul getting hurt and feel obligated to defend the indefensible because they are rooting for the asshole that committed this assault…
Pretty much.
My original point was that any sane person who had a problem with the way Paul was behaving has a neighbor would simply go up to him and address it. And the same people pushing the narrative that this is what happened are the same ones who snarking about him “deserving it” when the news first broke.
Как дела́, пизда́?
Hey, pal, I don’t want to see anyone hanging their penal out a window!
Admit it, you edited his article just to make that joke.
If I had, I would have made it worse. I am not sure what the word is supposed to be…portal?
Panel.
Panel
Pinhole
Panel.
Panel.
Penile.
I think it might be panel.
Penal – as in penal colony – duh.
Penis, clearly it’s supposed to be penis.
Penaltax.
Panel. Damn.
Plenum. The word you are all searching for is Plenum.
*cool gaze*
Over under on Mystal suddenly thinking street violence is horrible and throwing a hissy fat over what a monster Rand is if he shot and killed his attacker?
Rand would be given the full Zimmerman treatment–worse, probably–if he’d shot his lunatic neighbor, rather than being uncomfortably ignored by the media.
There is no over-under, because the chances would be 100%.
I saw an article in that super-authoritative source, GQ, claiming Rand drives his mower the wrong way, so the cut grass discharges onto the neighbor’s property.
RAND STARTED IT. HE INVADED POLAND!
Free compost! What a nice neighbor!
I had a neighbor, well still do, just that I don’t live there now, who would blow all his leaves across the street onto my property. I came home a couple of times and caught him doing it, and he would scurry off somewhere before I could confront him.
How did you resist Jap tackling and curb stomping him?
There are laws against it. That’s the ONLY reason.
To be honest, no. The dude was just some annoying old fuck. I mean on the day I moved in, he’s the first person over there when I’m standing in my driveway. Nosey fuck. Then after my other neighbor, who is a really nice guy, came over and talked to me. He wound up saying to me ‘You’d better watch that fucker over there across the street, I don’t trust him, and I don’t like him’. I tended to just avoid him. He once came over and ask me if I intended to plant trees across the entire front of the property ( which would obviously block his view) and I just said ‘Yes’. I’m not sure what bothered him more, that I was going to block his view, or block his view of watching whatever it was I was doing on my property.
My old boss once told me about building his current house. The next door neighbor came over and said, “You have to watch out in this neighborhood. Everyone here is an asshole.”
My ex-boss thought to himself: “Maybe you’re the asshole.” And that’s what the neighbor turned out to be.
When you have a problem with everyone, chances are high the problem is really you… My ex-girlfriend didn’t like when I pointed that t her.
GQ = WRONG! http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rand-pauls-neighbors-rip-media-landscaping-dispute-reports/article/2640090
On some news program a couple of days ago, Sen Corker was expressing worry that the Tax bill would increase the deficit, and he implied that there needs to be a mechanism for auto-repealing the tax cuts.
Why not a mechanism that auto-cuts spending, instead?
Because you can never cut sending, DUH!
Because FYTW.
Huh. Rand was growing pumpkins?
This year, I invested in pumpkins. They’ve been going up the whole month of October, and I got a feeling they’re gonna peak right around January. And bang! That’s when I’ll cash in.
Chasing that lucrative pumpkin spice demo, I see.
Savvy.
I expect Raven Nation or Mexican Sharpshooter to get the reference.
The rest of you, please try to keep up.
I’m horribly disappointed you didn’t include me there.
I won’t forget next time. In fact, I’ll be subtly testing you.
Seasons 1-12 only.
I think I stopped at 12, primarily because it was at that point when purchasing a season on DVD was taking up way too much space with no end in sight and Blue Ray was the new hotness.
Technology has a solution.
The FXNow app on AppleTV. It has every episode on demand. Ever.
Meh. I started losing interest in the show after that too. To paraphrase Seth MacFarlane: after so many seasons its just not the same show, it can’t be.
Yeah, I got it. Just read the post an hour too late.
It’s been a looooooong time singe I saw that episode.
“And bang! That’s when I’ll cash in.”
Your wife appreciates it.
You can pile Mystal on the heap of pundits (Naomi Klein, et. al.) who don’t understand a goddamn thing about libertarian thoughts and ideas, intentionally or otherwise.
Also, I thought urban farming and composting were supposed to be virtuous in left-land.
Those are only good when you’re a leftist. If not, it’s bad.
Paul’s guilty of appropriating leftist culture. All the more reason he should be blind-side tackled.
/progderp
Sounds about right. I think you’ve got progthink down.
I mean, they’re just following the standard proggie rulebook:
1. Identify an enemy of the proletarian revolution that is sure to happen, any day now, just you wait and see.
2. Ignore what said enemy has actually professed or done in the service of his or her principles.
3. Instead, invent a position for the Enemy that is much easier to attack. Proceed to attack this false position instead of the Enemy’s actual words and deeds.
4. Make sure all your proggie buddies get on board to drown out any possible rejoinder.
I mean, some birdcage liner just the other week was talking about how Charles Manson got some of his wacky ideas from reading sci-fi novels, like the ones written by Heinlein, oh by the way, Heinlein is really popular with those libertarian types, who can be lumped in with the alt-right because I mean come on they’re all over there on the other side of the political spectrum.
The thing about Manson was especially laughable considering he was a hero of the Far-Left hippie types for years.
And Oswald was a right-winger. Say what you will about Kennedy conspiracy buffs, at least the acknowledge basic, ineluctable facts.
Sorry if this has already been posted:
Anti-Trump Media: White House Christmas Decor ‘Spooky,’ Like a Scene from ‘The Shining’
Yeah, my retard prog friend was freaking out about this. I swear, the progs are like little kids playing soccer; just bunch up around whatever ball their overlords tell them to.
Also, how anyone could dislike Melania is beyond me. She seems so mild-mannered, cultured and refined (not to mention va-va-voom), that you just have to have malice in your heart to hate her.
I would actually give Michelle a pass on a lot of things, because she seemed relatively classy while Zer0 was in office, but I judge her based on the anti-American stuff she wrote beforehand.
And the FOOD CZARINA crap too.
Especially this. The thing is, is that even Melania could turn out to be a total beeotch before it’s over, because there seems to be this tradition now that the FLOTUS needs to be some sort of social justice warrior.
It’s funny to me that when the secret service guy that wrote a book about the Clinton years made it very clear Hillary was an angry bitch ready to crucify any of the plebes that didn’t respond the her royal demands at the drop of a hat, the same people now trying desperately to make Melania a bitch went berserk on the author for daring to point out a woman behaved like a tyrant. It’s almost like these dnc operatives with bylines suffered from a double standards.
Stomachs rumbled across the land.
A positive note on that front – USDA just released new rules allowing greater flexibility around whole grains, sodium, and milk. Now kids can have 1% FLAVORED milk versus non-fat only!!
Whoa, back up. The previous regulations mandated nonfat milk for children? Please tell me you’re kidding.
They could have low- or non-fat milk, but only non-fat flavored milk. Yeah, that’s some high-level nutrition science…
Bullying Gabby Douglas on The Tonight Show was utterly classless.
Near the top of the list of the shittiest things done by the wookie.
I don’t much care about FLOTUSes, but it’s amusing how the same people who bent over backwards to lavish praise on Michelle Obama for nothing in particular (especially her wardrobe, which was often hilariously ugly) work every bit as hard to criticize Melania Trump for nothing in particular.
It’s just standard and predictable now, everything entirely normal (at least for the Presidency) thing the Trump Administration does is really an example of something nefarious with a secret meaning that only the cabal of journalists can properly determine. Since the legacy media is dying I guess reading the augurs is a decent niche.
The photo in question is poorly lit and apparently looks “creepy” to those with overactive imaginations:
Not seeing how an overactive imagination is need to see that creepy hallway as “creepy”
All of the major news outlets have been going all out to out cognitive dissonance the others. Most of it some version of ‘Ray Moore needs to go, but Al Franken totally needs to stay!’.
Al Franken means well. Roy Moore is a monster.
QED, motherfucker.
Never you mind the photos of Franken and his tacit admissions.
Fingered by Franken – Directed by Toby Hooper
Why won’t Roy Moore simply give in and admit to whatever he is being charged with?
Because that won’t work for a Republican.
Hey, pal, I don’t want to see anyone hanging their penal out a window!
That’ll get you a penal-ty, for certain.
Why not a mechanism that auto-cuts spending, instead?
What? And call down the wrath of Keynes, the One True God of economics?
Not to defend him too much but Keynes did call for government spending to be counter-cyclical. That part often gets missed by government officials.
That government officials would ignore the part about cutting spending was pointed out to Keynes at the time.
There is no Economist but Keynes and Krugman is his prophet
Krugman is more of the Ezekiel type prophet.
Needs a better beard if he wants to be called a prophet.
Scruffy, I believe I owe you a reasonably priced item of Glibs swag for doing up an avatar for me.
So, what’ll it be?
*The thong. C’mon, you know you want it.
Mystal describes the atrocities Paul was allegedly committing that would, were it not for the benevolent hand of laws that would mysteriously be absent in Libertopia, naturally cause one to resort to physical violence to solve.
To Mystal’s point, how many people do you think are arrested every year in Somalia for assaulting their neighbors while their neighbor is mowing his lawn?
Zero. They can’t afford lawns, lawnmowers or grass seed in Somalia.
/Pedant Mystal
Exactly! Checkmate, QED.
More so than that win, winning over Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) represented the day’s big triumph. Trump predicted Corker a “nay,” but, as though to spite him, the retiring Tennessean voted “yea.”
That’ll show him.
From the same article:
Already, the Senate has whittled down the cut on top individual rates from the 35 percent Trump requested to 38.5 percent, which makes for an anemic cut from the current 39.5 percent rate. Expediency may require alterations. But some changes seem desirable in their own right.
This makes me so very angry, even though I will likely never be in the top income bracket.
Perhaps not, but almost assuredly the person who employs you is.
The whole issue with getting good tax legislation through is that all of the most important Senate members are either swamp dwellers (McCain, Graham, Flake, Corker, Murkowski) or professional saboteurs (Collins). Good tax reform is only really possible in 2019.
Except that the failure to pass anything big, including tax reform, makes it less likely that the GOP retains control of the Senate, meaning they won’t be able to pass anything in 2019.
I for one am hoping AZ will oust both our shitty senators for people onboard the MAGA train.
OT: For a change of pace, how bout some sexual her-ass ment?
https://archive.is/QYlxp
It’s a beautiful world, Q. Just sublime.
Yasss
Uffda! 43 please
Holy shit, Q, those are some nice asses. 14 FTW! Legs like those should be mandatory.
The squats will continue until morale improves.
Imma go back to sleep like Rip Van Winkle until all of this “bruised peaches” madness has run its course. Five years ago this was a laughable meme, now it seems pandemic.
Waiittaminute…. I thought libertarianism was about acquiring guzzoline. And rape. And torture.
::stomps off::
Don’t worry, we’re still all about getting profits from working orphans 16 hours a day.
And dogs of war
We’re all men, so rape is a given.
Surprise sex.
“Avolitional intercourse”
According to The Guardian, Libertarians are lining-up behind “Moscow-backed nationalists”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/19/trump-russia-fake-news-libertarians-autocrats-democracy
It’s news to me. Is this site really a secret-gonzo-Russian outfit that’s warping minds? If so, where is my cut?
It’s in the mail,
tovarish, er, I mean, buddy!Kahk-de-lah pizda?
I want to make a crack about the disappearance of Groovus, but honestly I just hope he’s okay.
Too busy single handedly repopulating Ukraine.
Would he then not be using his hand, single or otherwise, to erm… never mind.
“In the era of digital politics, an odd alliance has sprung up: anti-state campaigners and Moscow-backed nationalists are combining to disrupt liberal institutions”
Liberal institutions? Yeah, I think I’ve read enough.
Between the checks I get from the Koch’s and the ones the Kremlin is sending me I can now double my chocolate rations from 4oz to 2oz!
Plus good!
Razorfist covered this a couple days ago, but there’s a move from both some governments and states to regulating video games due to the ‘lootbox’ model being seen as gambling.
Despite not actually fitting the definition of gambling under U.S. law and having no understanding of the law in the first place, gamers screams “I WANNA” anyway because they’re desperate to lash out at major companies out of petty anger with the justification that they’re ‘ruining the industry’. I’ve seen a couple advocates for regulation openly mocking the concept that the market still be influenced by consumers being disillusioned with these practices. Well I mean, Battlefront 2, the center of the controversy, only has a 60% loss in comparison to the original (not posting link to avoid verification, but you can google it). So of course companies (who I’m told are evil because they just want your money) will ignore that trend and continue to operate at a loss.
Just goes to show that most gamers are actually screaming lefties when it suits them, despite the right-wing fondness for Gamergate.
Yeah, when I first heard the news about anti-lootbox legislation, the first thing I thought was, “Man, EA just took it in the shorts for Battlefront 2, you really think they need a reason not to do that stupid crap again?” At best, a law against random loot purchases would be useless and unnecessary. At worst, it’d actively make games less fun.
As a tangential point, what the fuck, EA? You had a guaranteed money-maker there. All you had to do was re-release the original Battlefront 2 with some cosmetic tweaks and maybe some new maps or something. Nostalgic fans of the old game would flock back to it, Star Wars fans would flock to it, and you could go back to diving into your giant swimming pool filled with money. But you just had to, you just had to reach a little farther and put Darth Vader behind a paywall. Idiots.
Keep in mind, this is EA we’re talking about. The company that managed to kill SimCity and Dungeon Master through terrible decisions.
I still play Sim city 4, the mods are bigger than the entire game 🙂
As a tangential point, what the fuck, EA? You had a guaranteed money-maker there.
As Shamus Young (Pan’s video game commentator man-crush) pointed out recently, the problem with EA isn’t corporate greed, it’s that they’re so fundamentally incompetent and bad at operating in their chosen industry that they can’t utilize their greed properly. They’ve been doing retarded moves that sunk other franchises for years. Remember when they basically mandated some kind of co-op in every major single player title for a year or two and managed to kill off several financially successful products, like Dead Space and SimCity?
Excellent point. EA has some weird habit of seeing what they think are patterns in the gaming industry and blindly aping them as if they’re just some money button.
They have to be seen as if they’re “DOING SOMETHING!!” rather than just being the typical tax-parasites they are; so they pick some utterly inconsequential and useless thing to go after. Ignore the ever expanding debt, we have to do something about these evil lootboxes!
Maybe they could just not buy the game? That’s what I did after experiencing the ridiculous system of leveling classes by cards in the beta.
“No way, games are a right, man!”
The responses you get for that is either “BUT THIS IS A PREDATORY PRACTICE, THINK OF THE CHILDREN” (hilarious coming from the people who were against regulation because of violence in video games, and when you say “alright, what if they just make it so in-game loot boxes count as gambling and thus give it an adult ESRB rating?” they scream “NOT GOOD ENOUGH”) or “THIS IS RUINING THE INDUSTRY AND GAMES AS AN ART MEDIUM” (you know, because the true art of the genre I expect to come from AAA cash-ins to existing franchises made by people like EA).
They’re tards, nuff said.
I’m old school. I paid my quarter for three ships of Defender. This is the line! No further!
I always find it funny that the first thing journalist do when arguing against libertarians is to ask them about how anarchy can possibly work. I think a good answer would be I don’t know, I’m not an anarchist, why don’t you ask Antifa, they’re supposedly anarchist. Yes, I know many here are anarcho-capitalist and I’m not poo-pooing those ideas (right now), just making a point about journalist who won’t allow a conversation that involve not increasing federal government budgets and power.
I’m with you. I like the idea of AnCap in theory, but it strikes me as a bit Utopian (I’d be happy to be proven wrong). I usually consider myself to be a minarchist/Night Watchman State kinda guy, however that inevitably runs into the problem of government unavoidably growing of its own accord. Maybe there is just no human social arrangement that is completely stable and rights-respecting that can last an arbitrary amount of time. Even with very strict, explicit limitations on Federal power, the US govt has managed to grow to monstrous proportions.
AnCap/Mincarchist is a fight so far down the road as to be effectively irrelevant. It’s like discussing whether our spacecraft should travel at light speed or faster-than-light speed. Both are so far away from anything we have the ability to put into operation that its’ strictly theoretical.
This, though I do enjoy the theoretical debates.
I agree 100% which is what makes those journalist who ask libertarians about sidewalks ridiculous. You cut the budget 25% and I’ll leave your sidewalks alone. How about that.
The natural answer is to treat government workers like helots. They already have great pay and benefits. I don’t see why we should also have to pay them pensions.
I like the idea of shrinking the government until there are negative consequences. We have a long way to go.
Even for us anarchists, the answer is frequently “I don’t know”. Because the order that arises will be emergent, with thousands of authors. We can’t conceive of how it should work anymore than the Chairman of the Politburo in the Soviet Union could conceive how to make the Communist utopia reality.
You raise a fairly good point, there. It is a little absurd to ask an anarchist to, essentially, centrally plan how an anarchist society would operate.
Tarran just admitted that ancaps don’t know what they’re doing.
/prog
There’s a good term for this which is slipping my mind, but there’s a phenomenon whereby a person who will excuse the failings of a system or idea he or she supports without hesitation will at the same time expect competing ideas or systems to account in total and with complete success for every possible issue. So people will criticize libertarianism for not keeping people out of poverty while excusing socialism for the same thing.
Either you accept the total state, or you’re an anarchist. Those are the only 2 options, according to progressives.
You see, because we have (some) Federal involvement in stuff like ‘Roads and Schools’ (but far less than they assume), this means it makes perfect sense to have no objections to Federal mucky-muck in everything. If you disagree, you’re an anarchist who wants the world run according to the law of tooth and nail where man literally rapes everything to death in a brutal exercise of will-to-power.
For sure, the only thing that keeps me from just shooting my neighbors and taking all their stuff is a law or two.
When taken to task in such a manner, I always go the Harry Browne route (very roughly paraphrasing): “The architects of the all-encompassing state, from Wilson to FDR and onward, were never asked what the upper limits of their government expansion would be. They just kept piling on programs, taxes, etc., incrementally. Likewise, I feel no obligation to map out for you ,my ideal size of the minimalist state. Let’s start cutting back on stuff and see where it goes.”
That has to be a euphemism.
You mean, slap Darryl Hannah around?
Oh. Harry.
Never mind.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trump-tweets-out-snuff-film?source=twitter&via=desktop
Overheard at the oval office this morning:
Trump: Oooh, this is great. I’m going to Tweet this
Kelley: No- let me see it first, before you Tweet it
Trump: General Kelley- you’re great. Really. We love you. Don’t we all love General Kelley?
(silence)
Kelley: (looks around) There’s no one here
Trump: Some might even say, that you are the best chief of staff to ever work for the best president. That’s what I’ve heard
Kelley: From who?
Trump: Anyways, it’s just a GIF of me hitting a golf ball at Hillary. No reason to be worried.
Kelley: Seriously, let me see what you’re sending out
Trump: Too late
Kelley: I got keep up with all your nonsense
Trump: WRONG. I’m great for ratings. You love Trump
Kelley: What ratings? Where do you think we are? What is going on in your head?
Might as well post this here:
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!
8:14 AM – Nov 29, 2017
25,832 25,832 Replies 14,761 14,761 Retweets
All right; to,what “unsolved mystery” does he refer?
Nevermind, I think I found the story.
Times Jobs
Contact us
email this story
printer version
Aide found dead had said she felt ill
A U.S. representative’s aide confided in those who saw her at the district office.
By BILL ADAIR
© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 28, 2001
A congressional aide in Fort Walton Beach told people she was feeling ill the day before she was found dead, according to a police report.
The Fort Walton Beach Police Department report says Lori Klausutis, an aide to Rep. Joe Scarborough, told a co-worker on July 19 that she was not feeling well, but did not elaborate. She made a similar comment to a mail carrier.
She was found dead in Scarborough’s district office the next morning by two people who came to seek help with an immigration case.
If only Mika were so lucky.
From Just Sayin’s linked story:
There can be no doubt about the motivation of Fransen in posting those videos. She is the deputy leader of an ultranationalist party that holds anti-Islam rallies and stages “Christian patrols” through British streets during which she and her followers shout abuse at non-Christians.
Sucks Marmelade Donut Holes
“She is the deputy leader of a pro-Sharia party that holds Muslim Supremacy rallies and stages “morality patrols” through British streets during which she and her followers shout abuse at non-Muslims.”
See? No problem here.
It also says she is a “hateleader”.
How do you get that job?
Probably have to do 10,000 hours of study at a community college get a qualification in shitlording. Then, get your State Permit to offer Shitlording Services, after , and then you can join the guild and gain standing within it. THEN you get awarded the title in a secret meeting.
Being an old white male(46), doesn’t that give me enough credit to skip the college?
Nope. I’m older and whiter and more curmudgeonly than you and it didn’t work for me.
You gotta be properly credentialed and licensed, otherwise it’d be just like living in Somalia.
Dammit!
It sounded like a cool job
*Kicks pebble and stubs toe*
So, the Daily Beast is jealous of CNN?
I larfed, Just Say’n
It is a little absurd to ask an anarchist to, essentially, centrally plan how an anarchist society would operate.
Where is your plan? How can we move forward if there is no plan?
This is why there are no anarchist Russkies.
You want the five year plan? Or the three year plan?
Better for these degenerate junkies to die in the street than treat their condition with evil meds.
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2017/11/28/Over-60-percent-of-people-who-OD-on-opioids-and-die-have-chronic-pain-Study/1431511895568/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=3
NO.SHIT.
Drug warriors are horrible people
In an email to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Keillor said, “I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”
~Garrison Keillor
The part they don’t tell you is the reason the woman was unhappy was Keillor was naked and put his dick into her chicken salad.
She said she would handle the tip, and he totally misunderstood.
But he did it in a folksy way, right?
Let’s just say he’s the one kid from Lake Woebegone that’s not above average IYKWIMAITYD.
“We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”
Toldja. This is about money and will continue unabated. I even saw the slimy shyster tv lawyers doing their “If you or a family member has been…call xyz-1234” advertisement this morning with ‘sexual molestation’ pasted in place of ‘taken Xarelto’. They must be coming in their pants.
Xarelto made me do it.
I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches.
I’m a little unclear about how patting someone on the back results in your hand moving up under their clothes.
I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it.
Naturally, he provided a copy of the email. Right?
We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.
#BelieveHim?
Could be the truth, but there are reasons to be skeptical. Just like her going after a payoff gives reasons to be skeptical of her story.
I’m a little unclear about how patting someone on the back results in your hand moving up under their clothes.
A wardrobe malfunction of course!
My landlord didn’t inform me that window air conditioners aren’t allowed in a window that faces a fire escape so now I have to use a vastly inferior portable AC in my living room. No one who comes by in the summer thinks my problem has been solved. The alternative, I guess, is to put a real AC back in and hope I don’t get a lead sandwich from Officer Friendly.
People get irritable!
Maybe get a penal unit.
Hopefully you are discharging The Condenser air Outside of the house, and stretch that hose out to get the unit away from exterior walls.
If you know it will be hot that day, turn it on as soon as you wake up, it’s far easier for a unit to coll 70 degree air than wait til its 90+
I’m looking at mine about 3 feet from me right now.
/AC Guy
Cool not Coll, EDIT FAERIE !
And insulate the Pipe that goes outside
Yes, it’s installed all proper-like. It works “OK”… I shouldn’t complain too much. But on really bad days it struggles.
Here in Romania we just have pretty women fanning us while feeding us grapes. Or you know pretty men if thats your thing. But AC is okay I guess
We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.
This sent chills up my spine. And not in a good way.
Here’s where this is going. Women are going to find it more and more difficult to get a job because of the risk. “I’m sorry, but we had 5 applicants for this position and we went with a more-qualified candidate.”
Of course. I couldn’t think what could serve as a check on this shit but you are exactly right. That will do it.
Yup.
Hard to fire, hard to hire.
You still have to report your diversity quotas to the govt. Will companies be able to skate by, hiring tansgendered women (actual men) instead of women-at-birth (as determined by the unwoke doctors)?
Segregated facilities.
As someone postulated the other day we are cycling back to victorian era rules of propriety.
But without the Christian underpinnings.
Right. Legal and financial ones which will be more compelling.
Reason posted an article on Facebook about Hawaii disarming medical marijuana users by cross checking it with their gun registry. Of course, they simply appropriated the work of others and pass it off as original content. So I figured I’d just link to that instead.
I would like to see this challenged in court. Lord knows that the 9th circus would let it stand, but the Supremes might reverse it (though with their shameful punting on the Maryland AR ban might indicate otherwise).
No one could ever see anything like this coming.
Would they be easier to round up,considering it’s an Island?
Well, yeah, because people would be running in circles.
“I’ll chase him, you stand here. When he comes back around snag him with the butterfly net!”
A plan which has been continually thwarted by nap time.
I hadn’t heard this story, it’s fucking shameful. It seems like HIPAA protections would apply here.
Every part of that sentence is scary as all hell, and unconstitutional as well. But Hawaii is the farthest left you can get and still be in the US.
We talked about this on here a few weeks ago. Somebody said I was being paranoid thinking that the givernment would use a medical MJ card to take away someone’s guns. I don’t remember which one of yall it was.
Smells like something from TOS. I’m shocked it’s taken this long for them to cross-reference those two databases and start taking guns away. Which is why there should be no “permit” for either. People talk about drivers permits as proof that it’s okay for the government to require permits for doing dangerous things. Bullshit! Punish misuse of anything that causes harm to others, but proactively prohibit nothing is my stand. It is the act of harming someone else that is a problem that needs to be addressed, not potentialities.
I am increasingly taken to one of R. C. Dean’s Iron Laws, “foreseeable consequences are not unintended”. I have repeatedly seen matters in the news or heard them in conversation, where taking the libertarian position in the first place would have prevented the issue from ever arising. But, frankly, people don’t give a shit that their policies could have consequences they don’t like unless and until they come around to bite them in the ass.
Garrison Keillor, in a letter to then-candidate Donald Trump, August, 2016:
“When this is over, you will have nothing you want.”
He’s a shitty, pretentious writer.
” a Queens boy trying to gain respect in Manhattan ”
Well Gary, if you wanted to light a fire under his ass and get him to fight twice as hard you just did it in spades.
To most people’s surprise (including my own), Trump actually won,
Russian spy confirmed
Its funny how Keillor quickly went from NPR’s champion of folksy midwest small-town values, to a sneering urban elitist who thinks “queens” is beneath contempt
I have heard for years from people that have met him that he is an insufferable elitist prick.
An insufferable elitist prick who is only marginally less gauche than the people he’s sneering at. Holding Queens beneath contempt generally means you feel the need to announce to the world that you’re not from Queens. If you’re well raised, that isn’t a thing you really feel the need to do. Queens is just some place that some people live (and that your train out to the Island stops at). For the well raised, being a Manhattan person isn’t the height of breeding and culture. You know neighborhoods in Queens that come closer to that than the hipsters in the LES.
It really wasn’t that quick, it’s just that he managed to keep the two personalities somewhat segregated until about 2001.
Books were scrupulously edited for neutrality, and the ‘tells’ on the radio show were ring-fenced off and given plausible deniability, but he always came off as being somewhat slippery and disingenuous to me.
I always hated him. I could see right through his act. My parents loved listening to Prairie Home Companion and I couldn’t stand it.
I suppose. He was doing PHC on NPR when i was in college (mid 90s). Which is probably the last time i *intentionally* listened to him.
Speaking of sleazy “entrepreneurial” lawyering, this morning I read an article in the Bozeman paper about how Gallatin County is considering filing suit against pharma companies over opiods. It’s a pure and simple shakedown. Sent me into a ranting rage.
It seems that at some point the layer upon layer of thousands of regulations governing the behavior of those companies they would be completely insulated from litigation.
Who am I kidding.
One of the counties in my area (well, at least in the local TV market) is thinking of doing the same thing.
Rand Paul allegedly grew pumpkins on his property, you see, and sometimes pumpkins smell bad. He also perhaps liked to compost on his property, which can also (if not properly done) become noticeably malodorous. And if that weren’t enough to drive perfectly normal people into fits of violent rage, there may have been lawn clippings where Paul’s neighbor thought they shouldn’t be.
Too bad the counter-narrative that this didn’t have anything to do with politics, but happened because Rand Paul was a bad neighbor, was instantly vaporized by Rand and his other neighbors.
Rand was just on TV today and said that the ‘lawn dispute’ narrative is a complete fabrication. He looked right in the camera and said the neighbor was politically motivated.
Violent leftists trying to hide their violent proclivities cant afford to have this happen so soon on the heels of the Hodgekinson shooting. The press is fully on board with the agitating radicals. They are straight-up covering their asses for them. They know exactly what it was about.
In other words – They are liars. They deserve every bit of what Trump has been dishing out.
It’s really hard to do a compost heap ‘wrong’. Nature’s pretty good at it, and I’ve never had a compost heap – even one that was augmented with chicken shit – smell bad if you were more than about 10 yards downwind of it. A newly dumped pile of horse manure is maybe the worst I experienced, and that went away after a day or so, and again, more than about 20 yards and it’s undetectable.
Which is why I discount that narrative as being – well – horse shit.
That’s only true for people who don’t get their news only from “mainstream” sources. My GF will never be convinced that it wasn’t because of him being a bad neighbor. It’s impossible to convince progs of anything, so I’ve stopped trying.
What’s the over/under on how long until Psycho’s proggie GF goes all #MeToo on him?
That depends on how much money he has.
Danger, Will Robinson. We’ve had a lot of fights about this in the past and we’re at a point where I’ve told her not to bring up politics with me.
Well, at the risk of sounding like a dick, people who only get news from one source probably aren’t in the market for anything other than the reaffirmation of their existing opinions. And in a society where political affiliation has become a fundamental and public part of one’s identity, I find it hard to fault people for not taking the more difficult path of actively seeking out contrary opinions in an effort to arrive at a better understanding.
Besides, with Progressives specifically, they’re strict post-modernists, so you’ll get absolutely nowhere with reasoned argument or discussion. They literally believe that there is no such thing as truth and that objective reality doesn’t exist, meaning that each individual’s separate perception of reality is equally valid. It’s a pile of sloppy thinking and excuses, but taken as a whole it also lacks any means of internal verification, meaning that if you buy the principles you can never really prove them wrong, since that would imply an objective truth, which doesn’t exist. Funny how that works.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate and Columbia University Professor, discusses Bitcoin and explains why the digital currency “ought to be outlawed.” He speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”
Video starts with question of whether Bitoin were regulated, would it be viable. NO, the professor exclaims! It’s the governments privilege to create money, and Bitcoin provides no social function. The question I would have, I suppose, is why there is any need to ban it then. The only attack he has on the long term viability of Bitcoin stems from the fact that the government can crack down on it tomorrow and all value will be lost.
It’s a pretty circle he has there.
It’s the governments privilege to create money
Only recently. It used to be that anyone could create money by literally digging it out of the ground.
You still can. Not money, but wealth. Wealth is what matters. Money is nothing without wealth.
True, but back when we had specie-based currencies, digging up an ounce of gold was functionally equivalent to printing off the equivalent in gold-backed notes.
+1 Deadwood.
Yeah, I noticed that also. People used to do fine trading and bartering without there being any such thing as currency, although people could make up their own currency, like has been done with gold or other metals, and there’s no reason why that wouldn’t work. Fiat currency is prone to inflation anyway. I bet this guy would love currency free system where everyone just gets a chip and he’s in control of the entire deal. Fuck these commie dinosaurs.
“Bitcoin provides no social function”
Does everything have to provide ‘social function’? What does that mean anyway? Is he complaining that bitcoin isn’t taxed? Because as far as I know, you would be just as liable for taxes on any profits from bitcoin as you are with dollars. I’d like to ask this guy some questions, but I bet he would refuse to engage.
Bitcoin provides exactly the same social function as any currency. Pls., Herr Doktor, tell me the social function provided by Venezuela’s currency that is not provided by Bitcoin.
If it provided no social function, people wouldn’t be plowing their money into it. This is self-evidently free market action at its finest.
Well obviously it’s to protect the ignorant rubes from trading their valuable pieces of government paper for a bunch of worthless 1s and 0s.
Mr Stiglitz can go fuck himself.
Is he related to Hugo?
Joseph Stiglitz is a smarmy authoritarian cunt.
I don’t think people really appreciate how progressives see the world. It’s not that they’re pretending appearances are more important than substance–they really believe that. Taking the confederate flag down in response to a mass shooting is perfectly reasonable cause and effect response in their universe. They are far more interested in how people present themselves and the signaling than we generally appreciate. Controlling speech, hate speech, stopping people from talking on campuses, etc., isn’t a sideshow to them. It’s the main event.
Just a moment ago, I read this over at CNN which is emblematic of what I’m talking about:
—-CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/29/opinions/donald-trump-has-gone-too-far-again-brian-klaas-opinion/index.html
They’re not kidding about that. To my eyes, and I lot of other libertarians, I suspect, I don’t give a shit about what Trump tweets–and that’s what the article is about, Trump’s tweet!
All I care about is taxes, spending, health-care policy, foreign affairs, etc. I don’t give a flying fuck what Trump tweets about anything. I just wish Trump were a funny as Zardoz and Steve Smith, but that isn’t the way progressives see it.
What people say and how they say it is of paramount importance, and they want images of people like Rand Paul being beaten up in the media because that’s the narrative they want. They want libertarians to be hated, to feel hated, they want to signal that libertarians are unacceptable–and that is far more important to them than any issue we have or any issue they have.
I’m extremely unhappy with Rand Paul because of his no vote on the infamous replace bill–because I don’t give a shit what Rand Paul says, certainly not anywhere near as much as I care that he votes to cut Medicaid at every opportunity. That isn’t the world progressives live in. For them, the world of politics is a never ending struggle between the good guys and the bad guys. You can tell the good guys from the bad guys, not because of what they do but by who approves of them and who disapproves. There’s no greater sign of approval than to promote someone as a righteous victim of the bad guys, and the very definition of a bad guy in the progressive mind is someone who doesn’t deserve our sympathy. This is what they’re expressing by showing Rand Paul’s suffering nothing but contempt.
I’ve taken to asking simple questions in response to progressive exaltation of righteous victims and shows of contempt for the suffering of their enemies. I ask things like, “What makes economies grow?” I have to get them to change their frame of reference because once they’ve identified in their minds who the righteous victim is and who is and isn’t worthy of their sympathy, they’re gone forever. Just remember, it doesn’t have anything to do with reason and logic. It’s not about that. It’s about perceptions of good and evil.
Ken, where did Rand touch you? Do I need to get a doll?
A Ken doll?
When I said I was pissed off at him for voting against a big cut to Medicaid spending, I wasn’t kidding. Get over it.
I support people like Rand Paul because I think he’s the one guy I can count on to vote to do things like cut Medicaid. When Liz Warren votes against cutting Medicaid, it doesn’t disappoint me at all–because I had no hope that she would do the libertarian thing to begin with.
It wasn’t like that with Rand Paul. I expected him to do the right thing. He and his cohorts in deep red states voted against cuts they should have been fighting for. If he and his deep red state allies that voted against that replace bill had voted for Medicaid cuts instead of against, there would have been 49 votes for it–with three outstanding an a ton of pressure just one of them to vote for it.
Like I said, I support Rand Paul (or any other politician) based on what they do–not on some other perception of them, who they are, whether they deserve my sympathy apart from what they do, etc. You want me to support you over other presidential candidates, then you better not go up against somebody that voted to cut Medicaid when you voted against it. You voted against cutting $1.02 trillion in entitlement spending? I’ll listen to whatever else he has to say, but nothing he SAYS can make up for what he did. That’s what separates me from the kind of progressives I was talking about.
Ken, a word of honestly well-intended advice:
Let it go. Its just too easy to pull your string and watch you go off on Rand’s OCare vote. So naturally, some *glares upthread* can’t resist pulling your string on this one.
Well, it’s a serious thing to me.
It should be more important to more people.
With Rand Paul and his cohort’s support, we were one vote away from cutting $1.02 trillion in entitlement spending, $770 billion of it from Medicaid.
There aren’t any more important political issues.
The First Amendment and the Second Amendment, etc. are important, too, but we weren’t within a single vote (with Rand Paul and company’s help) of doing something sane for the first time ever. If Rand Paul isn’t there to cut entitlement spending, then why should I should I support him over some other Republican who is?
All that being said? Please note, I was just using it as an illustration of what I was talking about.
The reason I’m pissed off at Rand Paul and the reason progressives are pissed off at Rand Paul are fundamentally different, and the differences are telling. They don’t see the world the way we do, and if we’re going to get a critical mass of them to see things our way, we’re going to have to change their frame of reference. To them, Rand Paul is just another Redskins logo or Confederate flag. It’s really just about signaling.
That isn’t the way it is for me at all, and libertarians like me want to understand why progressive say shit like this about Rand Paul, we need to understand their worldview. It’s different.
That got scrambled.
“The First Amendment and the Second Amendment, etc. are important, too, but we weren’t within a single vote (with Rand Paul and company’s help) of doing something sane for the first time ever [on the First or Second Amendment]”.
But we were on Medicaid. It would have been the most libertarian thing that’s happened since the Soviet Union collapsed and China joined the WTO. And if it didn’t happen because Rand Paul opposed it, then I’m not likely to forget it anytime soon.
It doesn’t help that Ken slips into just about every unrelated post he can.
Pointing out how my libertarian perceptions of Rand Paul are different from progressive’s opposition to Rand Paul has nothing to do with this thread?
Have you read the article?
P.S. Have we ever had a thread that stayed on topic for more than ten comments?
There is a difference between commenting on off-topic matters and monomania.
–
someone call the papers, we have breaking news
Honestly, I think you guys are making a bigger deal out of this than . . .
That was one line from a pretty huge post. It was an illustration you guys were already familiar with.
I could have said something about Obama instead.
I judge themman based on his policies and actions.
When they said people opposed him because he was black, they weren’t smearing us as much as they were telling us something about themselves.
Many of them honestly did support him in spite of his decisions and policies because of what he represents–because of what supporting a black president signals. Not being susceptible to those signals is a big part of what they mean by “racism”.
Using that illustration about Rand Paul–when the whole subject is Rand Paul and why people oppose him–seemed quite natural.
. . . but fer cryin’ out loud, it was just one sentence in a sea of text.
“. . . but fer cryin’ out loud, it was just one sentence in a sea of text.”
It’s always a sea of text.
I actually appreciate your walls of text on many subjects, but I think that we are all perfectly aware of exactly why you have a problem with Rand Paul on this subject. You don’t have to keep explaining it to us. You get trolled about it because you keep telling us the same thing like we are stupid children that can’t understand you. We understand your argument. Many still don’t agree with it. I don’t think that’s going to change.
I kinda agree with you, but I’m assuming that you understand why Rand voted against it? Republicans didn’t win both houses of Congress by promising to make Obamacare better, they ran on repealing it. If the bill had passed, it would have cemented Obamacare as a permanent, bi-partisan part of the political landscape. It may be too late to get rid of it, in which case your position has merit. But Rand voted the way he did out of principle, unlike McCain who just wants the media to call him a maverick again.
I don’t want to rehash old threads.
Suffice it to say, I see those as unpersuasive rationalizations, like his dad voting against free trade agreements, and there was so much to like about that bill, it would have struck an enormous blow for freedom, fiscal responsibility, small government, and capitalism.
Oh, and the alternative to that bill wasn’t repeal. The alternative was ObamaCare.
So, in short, no, I don’t understand why he voted against $1.02 trillion in spending cuts and hundreds of billions more in tax cuts, but his opposition is better explained by Kentucky’s status as a state with a large number of Medicaid enrollees per capita and a serious opioid problem than it is by any kind of pro-capitalist rationalization.
And that’s all I got to say about that.
no, its the opposite. we’re having a laugh over something inconsequential and already well-understood
Torpedoing $1.02 in spending cuts was not inconsequential.
It won’t be inconsequential when Rand Paul wants me to go to the polls and vote for him in the primaries either.
“Torpedoing $1.02 [trillion] in spending cuts was not inconsequential.”
I swear to Cthulhu, Ken, you could not have done a better job of showing how pulling your string on this produces a WoT.
Oh, well, I tried.
I hope my point is getting across about the way progressives see Rand Paul and why.
The illustration I briefly mentioned was supposed to be in contrast to that.