Hate Speech

352 thoughts on “Hate Speech”

1. We don’t have to imagine how these laws would be applied.

   Again, from Orwell’s Animal Farm:

   All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

2. “and Canada, our very own stray piece of Europe in the Americas”

   Hey, my country resembles that remark!

   1. Not the part I live in. You’re thinking of Montreal and Toronto, where the poisons of European Socialism bubble and fume, carefully tended by our rulers. Vancouver and BC generally seems to be more California style than European.

      Most of Canada is conservative, including the suburbs of our three big cities. (Including a lot of the immigrant-filled suburbs of Toronto, incidentally.) Those three cities have been voting themselves more goodies at our expense since Confederation.

      One wonders where the breaking point is going to be.

      Off-topic, I must say I’ve been enjoying the sight of Trudeau The Younger bumble and fumble his way into doing the right thing with Saudi Arabia. We should not be doing business with those assholes. Seeing them withdraw all their money and students from Canadian universities is particularly sweet.

      1. Right now Alberta has a socialist provincial government, under a socialist federal government. And Calgary has a socialist mayor to boot.

         1. True, and Ontari-owe has only just climbed out from under the nightmare that was Wynn, and we’re all standing blinking in the sunlight wondering how things got to be such a mess. If the jackass Patrick Brown hadn’t been falsely accused of #MeToo, we’d most likely still be under Wynne’s heel.

            But once you drive a mile outside the Calgary city limits, you can’t find a socialist. At election time you can’t find an NDPee lawn sign. Same thing in Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal.

            That’s why Liberals love them some gun control. They sell it to the townies, and they punish their opposition out in the sticks.

            1. That’s always a safe assumption as to why some laws get passed. Just as the tax plan capped salt, something where a minimal number of constituents of the voting members would be affected by, the attendant crime, poverty and more of many leftist actions are not felt by the constituents of the ‘important’ voters.

               It’s part of the divide. Its easy and fun to stamp on your enemy and activities and jobs are sufficiently disparate that there is no shared pain.

               1. Thankfully the pepper remains uncapped. 😛

                  1. Clearly aacid14 should have been more clear about the “salt” caps. He wasn’t talking about seasoning. He was talking about SALT — the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

                     There’s nothing more satisfying than telling New York, California, et al that they can only have so many hours to talk about how to limit our strategic arms!

                     😉

      2. You seem to be operating under the premise that California is somehow a part of the United States while for a good long time now they have been doing their darnedest to prove that assumption wrong.

         1. With any luck they’ll have a little revolution, declare independence, and then the rest of the country can wave “buh bye!” while eating yummy popcorn.

            But you’ll need an extension of the Mexico border fence, for when they all start to try running back.

            1. Baja and Haha California.

            2. California secession is relatively easy to deal with. Much easier than the earlier insurrection led by slave owners.

               Invade up to the mountain passes, fortify those, cut off the water and electricity. I predict cannibalism within two weeks.

               Okay, I’m not a nice guy…

               1. But a good strategist. Most of California (by land area) is friendly territory. The Greater Los Angeles area can be interdicted by cutting I-5, I-15, Highway 101, and Highway 14. The first 3 will have to be cut north of San Diego as well. The SF Bay area, similar approach.

                  And, of course, shut off the California Aqueduct. Then sit back for a week and watch the fun.

                  1. For those of you not familiar with California, those highways all pass through mountainous terrain. They are pathetically easy to block.

                     1. I drove on a couple of those when I was touristing (okay, doesn’t seem to be a word, but should be) there. Even without any training (unless you count novels and movies…) one could see that. 😀

               2. One wonders just how well Mexico would manage California if we returned it to them.

                  1. It would look like the rest of Mexico in twenty years. The Imperial Valley already kinda looks like Mexico.
                     People wondering what that looks like should google street view the border point in Nogales Arizona. Its evident from the satellite view, but the street view really brings it home.

               3. I’d predict cannibalism if all you do is cut off the Food Stamp cards. Close the highway? That’d be like Hiroshima.

                  Why do all that work? Let them kill each other (its what they want to do, apparently) and then let the survivors all run SOUTH and invade Mexico. That would be some karmic payback, right there.

                  We should probably try not to let that happen. It’d suck.

                  1. Actually, that might be a good quick-and-dirty way to get rid of all the illegals… cuz once you get thirsty, suddenly Mexico is your only recourse.

                     Border needs some of those one-way gates like we use in vermin traps.

               4. Nah. They’ll beg their neighbors to the south for help. Who will gladly come in guns blazing … only not at the target the elitist think. Mexican government & cartels are not suicidal. Homicidal yes, suicidal, no.

               5. Naw. I have a two month supply of emergency food and a hell of a lot of ammo. No one is eating me.

                  1. But how much WATER do you have?

                     1. Eh, anybody that makes sure to have two month’s worth is going to remember the water– even before you consider things like the toilet tank.

                        When I was short of space, I put the bottled water supply under the TuffBoxes of food, and then used the gallon jugs to fill out the hard to reach places.

                        If someone is in an apartment type situation, I’d suggest using a double layer of the under-the-bed boxes, and the “tall” bed lifts you can get for like four bucks a pack at Walmart.

                        Then organize the bug-out boxes by medical and cooking type supplies, food, and then the bottom layer is water. I highly advise to have at least a hip-flask sized bottle of whiskey (or a half-dozen of the 99c single shot bottles) and a d’oro instant espresso container in there, even if you’re a hard-core Mormon, because it is a serious morale boost for folks who you might discover you care about.

                  2. *gets the giggles due to the nom d’web here*

               6. What, are you crazy?!? Why in the world would you want to cut off water and electricity so that they would be forced to resort to cannibalism*?

                  We want to provide them *incentives* for them to stay independent! We don’t want them crawling back for help! Thus, we *insist* they need to find their own water, and generate their own electricity, but, well, ok, we’ll give you *another* extension, but Just This Once, wink wink. What, you still want to be independent? Well, ok, but Some Day you’ll be crawling back asking for Statehood again, just you wait and see!

                  Sadly, even if we were to provide them with water and electricity, there’s a good chance they’ll be asking to return anyway….

                  At least we can be satisfied that there would be a good chance that, at this point, the good parts of California would have already seceded from California, and have become States in their own rights….

                  *As opposed to Californians deciding to do it on their own accord, because it’s woke, or the Next New Thing, or some such nonsense.

            3. *cough cough* https://www.amazon.com/Calexit-Anthology-J-L-Curtis/dp/1978308329/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1533908821&sr=1-1&keywords=Curtis+Calexit Be careful what you wish for…

               1. Not so much wishing, as (probably in vain, true) hoping to get through to at least enough of the idiots to avoid the necessity.

                  “Do you see that extremely sharp pointy thing right over your head? Do you see that very thin thread that is holding it there? Now, please pay attention to the real world, at least for a little while, hmm?”

         2. I seem to remember quite a few of the more vocal flavour of Californians suggesting California (and Oregon and Washington as well) would secede then join Canada. Stipulating for the sake of discussion that seccession was a viable option for California and the rest of the US, what on EARTH makes them think WE’D want them? California’s population is 39 million; Canada’s is 36 million. We’d cease to be masters in our own house on the instant.

            Frankly, if ever California, Oregon and Washington ever actually got serious about this, I’d be loudly advocating a wall along the 49th parallel at least the width of Washington’s border with Canada.

            1. We’ll throw in Detroit too

               1. Canada can also have Chicago. But I don’t blame Canada if they don’t want Chicago. 😉

            2. As long as we’recreadjusting things, we need the Canadian coast of the Great Lakes, too.

      3. One of the issues I never see brought up in the ongoing arguments about oil is, maybe we want to use up middle eastern oil first, and then let them sink back to the 13th century lifestyle they seem to prefer? If we’re really concerned about their Human Rights record (and we aren’t, to we’d be occupying them) we could put a cordon around the country and insist on letting any woman who wanted out, out.

      4. You might like it now, but know that both the situation and Pretty Pony’s bumbling look a whole lot like Jimmy “The Feckless” Carter and Iran, circa 1978.

3. “Hate speech” is defined as “speech not approved by the authorities”.
   The concept exists in many other countries because those places have no Constitution, or no functioning one.
   For example, in her Christmas 2006 speech, then-queen Beatrix of the Netherlands stated that “A right to offend does not exist. Nor is freedom of religion a license to injure.” Those speeches are official statements of policy, vetted and approved by the elected government. And sure enough, it’s quite clear from the Dutch “constitution” that it offers no protection for freedom of speech.

   1. A right not to be offended does not exist either (nor could it, since offense is different for everyone.) A right not to be injured does not exist, when those injuries are emotional and subjective.
      A necessity to grow the heck up already DOES exist.

      1. Theoretical rights cannot exist in conflict with each other. But we can see that demands can be forced on people by power and fiat. And courts have amended the Constitution to the point thst that is ok. That is where all this comes from. Some think it’s thrashing. I dunno. Paper armor is just that. And the constitution is sadly just paper unless it’s defended by those with any ability to affect change.

   2. I’d phrase it as “Hate Speech is anything the Government doesn’t like” (same thing as you said).

      The sad thing is that many otherwise nice people can’t imagine their “milder definitions of hate speech” could be used against them by the Government. 😦

      1. The standard Left delusion (I call this the Trotsky Delusion) is their belief that these things are ok, because *they* will be in charge so it can’t be used against them.

         1. Maybe the ‘Trotsky Premise’ – I’d say the ‘Trotsky Delusion’ was “I won’t be hunted down thousands of miles away from home where I’m hiding and murdered via an icepick in my head for disagreeing with that Georgian fellow.”

            1. It was an ice axe. Some years ago I saw a play, “The Death Of Trotsky”. I one playing him walked on with an ice axe already in his head, which he didn’t notice until someone asked him about it. Five or six times.

               1. I normally give people that one, unless they wish to argue the point. It was the pick side of the ice axe that did the deed.

                  The name itself is a misnomer to me, because the other side of an ice “axe” is technically an “adze” – the blade is perpendicular to the handle. (Then, of course, we have the implements that have an “axe” side and an “adze” side. Very handy when you need to do several different things with a big chunk of wood.)

                  1. the implements that have an “axe” side and an “adze” side.

                     Isn’t that a Pulaski? Most useful for firefighting in the forests?

                     1. That’s it! If I ever knew the name, I’d forgotten it. Most useful for clearing brush, which is why firefighters carry it.

                        I once watched my grandfather, though, chop down what was left of a lightning hit tree, trim the branches, split the log, and then hollow out one of them with the adze end. Put a tarp in it, and it was a watering trough.

                        (BTW, I didn’t take that from his tool collection. I am far enough away from brush and close enough to city FD that I don’t have much worry about that. And if I ever develop a crying need for a watering trough, I think I can find something at Home Depot that will work well enough.)

                        1. Clearing brush but also dig firelines into soil like a hoe. Surprisingly we don’t carry them on out brush rigs but we tend to work more level ground that can drive on and hit with water.

                           1. “Dig” is not so much an operational term where I was on crews in my not completely misspent youth. We used the adze end to chop burro bush off at the base, smaller mesquites, and rip up clump grasses.

                              Then someone would come along behind with a flat shovel to throw the burnables to the side.

                              Preferred to be on the chopping crew myself; not so hard on the back.

                     2. Yep. And there’s another implement called a MacLeod, which looks like a rake on one side and a flat-bladed shovel on the other, good for clearing duff and loose brush.

                        I was wildfire-trained for summer camp (45 minute minimum response time from Forest Service), and actually had to use the skills once.

                  2. Main reason it’s convoluted is that “ice pick” calls to mind the cute little mayhem thing to an American English speaker, not “like a freaking PICKAX but for ice” type thing.

                     /shrug

                     Since they’re both pretty nasty, I usually let it slide as well. The mental image of one of the used-for-an-ice-box type icepick in the skull is nasty and brutal enough to only offer the “like a pickax” modifier when someone tries to figure out how that works.

                     1. well, the thing is, the variety that was used was rather specific to Russia, it was sending a message.

                        1. Like using a rare radioactive compound to poison someone?

                           1. yep pretty much.

                           2. Russia:
                              stealing plots from B movies since before there were B moves.

         2. Which is why they’re now screaming about Trump doing things that Obama did – except those things are things the Left claims is horribad no matter what it actually is, simply because it’s not Obama doing them.

            We’re seeing constant repeats of “You’re not going to like that very much if someone else gets power, you know?” and they go “HAHAHAHAHA never happen.” So suddenly the Electoral College is evil and oppressive and has to go – but was totes okay when Obama won, and chiding to everyone “Accept the result of the elections” went out the window when Shitlery didn’t win… and so on and so fort.

            If the Left didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have standards at all – sure, very cliche, but also VERY TRUE.

      2. “The sad thing is that many otherwise nice people can’t imagine their “milder definitions of hate speech” could be used against them by the Government.”

         The obdurate idiocy of that still bumfoozles me. The Feminists (for example) KNOW that anti-obscenity laws (which they seem to want to revive) were used to target Feminist birth control information. They KNOW that when anti-porn laws were passed in Canada one of the first businesses raided was a Feminist bookstore. And they STILL don’t make the connection.

         There are times when I begin to think Leftism is a form of brain damage.

         1. More and more evidence may support your observation; a lot of what they want has no grounding in reality, and cannot be supported by reality at all.

   3. Aside from the other issues in Her Majesty’s nonsense, I love the fact that she apparently can’t imagine why someone would, for example, say something negative about Sharia law other than the desire to offend people. That offensive speech also serves other purposes doesn’t seem to cross what passes for the royal brain.

   4. There is a reason why the Democratic Party voted in lockstep (before they lost control of the Senate) to effectively repeal not only the First Amendment but the entire Bill of Rights. They hate the fact that people have individual, natural rights that exist not as gifts of grace from government but as inherent rights as individuals. They want us to be subjects, not citizens.

      1. This. And despite that, the general idea people have of them is that THEY are ‘for the people!’

         #WalkAway is scary to them, for all the reasons above.

         1. Because Republicans only for the rich.

            I swear, can these idiots learn to show people how they help. They can’t figure out how to even form a narrative.

      2. Cardshark I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The liberals want to be subjects (even effectively serfs). At the core it’s almost as if they’re royalists longing for the strongman/King/Lord of the manor to take care of them and for them not to be responsible for their own lives. If you’re a citizen/free man (no offense intended to the ladies, or other sentients) you are responsible for yourself. There is also oddly a bit of what the Puritans were accused of by Mencken I think. They are afraid that somewhere someone is getting more than they are or is having more fun than they are. It’s like when my cats line up for treats. Everybody watches to make sure no one gets more than they do, and to steal a treat on the side if they can.

4. I stopped being polite years ago.

   1. Hear hear! Me too. I actively hunted professors when I was back at school in the 1990s. I was a master of the inconvenient question. ~:D

      1. Too many times of blood libel, and demanding I then be civil.

         1. I find looming over them with the patented Crazy Scotsman face works wonders at increasing academic civility.

            These are office workers with the most delicate and moist little hands. “But you’re attacking me!”

            “No, this is just intimidation.”

            1. I once had a similar claim of attack. I was likely rather looming.
               “You just lied about me and you expect me to not yell at you for it?” {expletives deleted . . . lots of them}
               My temper was rather more volcanic back then. Now I tend to vent earlier and use it to keep blood pressure down etc.

            2. “But you’re attacking me!”

               “No, I’m attacking your jejune, ill-considered argument. If I were attacking YOU, you would require stitches.”

         2. I have actually seen a leftist get snippy about right-wing complaints about uncivil conduct and say — remember when you told us that Political Correctness was wrong?

            1. Being leftoids, they are too stupid to diferentiate much anyhow.
               And as of late, more and more are learning they don’t like it at all when we use their rules against them.

      2. That can backfire on you, if you hit a Professor who actually THINKS.

         My Father used to teach a survey course on History of Science every year. And every year some student who wanted to embarrass the Professor (admittedly usually a Fundamentalist Christian student, but the impulse was the same) would wait until he got to Darwin and ask “What about the Theory of Creationism (or whatever the phrase was at the time.) and my Father, the adopted son of a Methodist Minister would answer “I have never understood why you would want to call the Revelation of Genesis a ‘Theory’.

         Very few of them ever went any further.

         But Question Authority. Because if you DON’T however are you going to find out what the Authority KNOWS?

         (Puncturing the stuffed shirts of false authorities is fun, too)

         1. “That can backfire on you, if you hit a Professor who actually THINKS.”

            A professor who actually thinks is a rare treasure, to be cultivated and protected from all harms. You have a guy or a gal who responds to inconvenient questions with reasoned, insightful answers, that person is a pearl without price.

            I think I may have met two, in my schooling. Maybe three.

            1. My Father was lucky; he got in on the ground floor of his discipline in the 1950’s, worked hard and published often. By the time the PC vermin started trying to take over he had a reputation for solid scholarship, high productivity, and an acid tongue. They were scared of him, and stayed scared of him until he retired. How he would fare now, I have no idea.

               1. Wouldn’t be able to get a job now, I don’t think. I had friends on both sides of the political aisle telling me I would make a wonderful teacher. Maybe, except that I’d probably never make it past student teacher level because of the crippling over-use of political correctness (the ones of my friends in the left hated that, honestly) as a bludgeon to determine whether or not you actually got work.

            2. I went to a Jesuit college. There were quite a few, most of them in clericals. Though the Old Testament professor was actually a minister in some Protestant denomination (one that is fine with textual criticism)—he happened to be an expert in Ancient Hebrew, and told us all the puns, cultural knowledge, and so forth that gets left out of even the annotated versions. Like how Ehud the “Left-Handed” got close enough to assassinate a king who was “washing his feet.”

               1. THAT is why “father Mitch” is so popular on EWTN.

                  ….ok, he may not go too deep into the “left handed” and “washing feet” thing, but the totally PG-13? Yeah.

         2. I would’ve had trouble not jumping up and down and squeeing if a teacher did that….

            Now, the obvious (but unlikely to be recognized by a troll) answer would be something like “because that’s the term used in science for an idea of what might have happened” and go from there.

            So it’s double-clever because it makes it so you’re not punishing the folks who really mean it and you WILL annoy the trolls!

   2. Hmm. Guess they’ll just have to settle for my trying to not be actively rude.

      1. All too many earned outright rudeness.

5. Their next step is to say we should be administered by computers. I’ve heard it already from the derpier fringe. It’s like they never read stuff like Caidin’s The God Machine

   Heck, watch freaking STAR TREK! Or pretty much any scifi, it doesn’t even have to be a tough one– or that obscure movie, the Matrix?

   1. The Matrix is transphobic propaganda that no woke person would dare watch, for fear of the red pill.

   2. That thought had occurred to me. If they think of it at all they will solemnly tell you that kind of thing will only happen if the wrong people set up the computers, and not their enlightened selves.

      1. In many cases because they understand neither thermodynamics nor controls nor information science.

         1. Their educations have been sadly lacking, and they have no idea how much fun it can be to learn.

            There are times that I think that certain powers that be really don’t want us to enjoy learning. Other times I know it.

            1. “There are times that I think that certain powers that be really don’t want us to enjoy learning. Other times I know it.”

               Are those even powers like squares, or odd powers like cubes?

               1. ‘Is the number seven odd, or just different?’

         2. I did a facepalm on part of a comment thread on ZeroHedge. They were running Yet Another Tesla Post, and
            Person A touted hydrogen power for cars.
            Person B noted that it takes more energy to get the H2 than it provides.
            Person C: “Citation?”
            Me: I’m out of here!

            I guess Physics for Dummies ain’t taught anywhere, anymore.

            1. Hydrogen power for cars might make sense, if a significant amount of the petroleum that is made into gasoline can be made into something else we need. I would want to know where the energy to refine the hydrogen is coming from, and what will be done with any byproducts.

               So, say that tomorrow, all previously gasoline powered vehicles are replaced with ones that run on something else. I know that petroleum is not monolithic; that it is many fluids and only some can become gasoline. The question is, can those same parts of petroleum become something besides gasoline, that we need?

               1. Another way it could make sense is if we have a massively overabundant energy source (say, a bunch of big nuke plants) so that the relative inefficiency of converting the energy generated to a transportable mobile storage medium like hydrogen isn’t a killer (assuming we’re breaking down water rather than converting natgas, which is how most H2 gets made these days).

                  That said, hydrogen is an absolute bloody pain to work with due to its small molecular size and the fact that it tends to make things brittle.

                  1. It’s like windmills– they are great for stuff like pumping water up into a tank. Especially in locations where it’s hard to get power all the time- that’s why they’re popular for water tanks in Nevada, for an example. Rarely, you get a pump out there to fill the tank.

                     Stuff like on-demand power supply? Not so much.

                     I love the idea of using the “excess” power (say, from off-peak demand times, or from really nice days) to make vehicle fuel.

                  2. If we converted all the cars to run on metallic hydrogen, we wouldn’t be worrying about the hydrogen diffusing into metal or permeating through plastic.

                  3. One of the reasons I find thorium power appealing is the idea of converting water and atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, which can then be burned as fuel. If I recall correctly, ammonia has three hydrogens for every nitrogen, so it’s practically burning hydrogen anyway, without the headaches straight-up hydrogen provides….

            2. As part of his senior year project in engineering, my brother got to work with a company testing fuel cells. His presentation right before graduation included “why I’m not investing in fuel cells right now.”

               This was the late 90s. And yep, he was right to not invest in fuel cells.

      2. Yah, not happening. I do not want to live under a computer configured and programmed by people who are bad at math and logic.

         Hmm, then again. considering how bad they are at this stuff, the computer just might end up sitting at a BSD and not direct anything. . .

         1. Oh, it would get used – if there was a computer-in-charge, the hackers would fight it out for the position of Supreme Hacker. In the end, there can be only one.

            1. Can’t hack a computer at a BSD 🙂 Though if you can get physical access at that point you’ll be in a much better position to ‘own’ it when it comes back online.

               1. Truth there! I run BSD for years. (Only thing “facing the internet”)

         2. “Not good at math or logic”

            Got the visual of the androids from original ST, where plain ole human non-logic shut them down in infinite logic loops. Yep. Anything programmed by left is not a worry.

            Although a lot of my co-workers at my last job aren’t idiots, they program, & darn it, they are way more left than I’d appreciate … well carp & darn.

            1. On the other hand, nobody said coders had good sense. I’ve dealt with too many UAV control stations that were clearly programmed by someone who had not the slightest clue about aviation to deny that little fact.

            2. I noticed that as well. We had regular debates between the coders and network staff. Most of the network team was conservative and most of the coders were prods. No idea exactly how it worked out that way.

               1. Because network staff sometimes have to get their hands dirty, and coders never do.

                  1. Hey!!! Coder here! Well okay retired now, but still … OTOH really felt lonely politically at work (I could go hang out with IT occasionally …)

                     1. And you probably code in COBOL, too 😀

                        Updated filk: “I never pulled cable”

                        1. “Cobol” … well yes. Sometime ago. But, yes.

                  2. Housemate is both. He can code, and regularly recalls having to service telecom pits in insanely hot Adelaide weather. Or set up networking cables in office buildings.

                     If any of you ever run across the story of ‘two network admins getting lost in a building because their radios AND cellphones didn’t work (because of building infrastructure), and started shouting “PING” to each other to find the other (and eventually doing so; it was a big open plan multi-floor thing), that was the Housemate, and a coworker.

                     1. I think it’s based on what appeals to people– my husband use to be one of those twit-youth hackers, though with at least a fig leaf of good intentions. (Imagine getting spammed with “your network is vulnerable, here is how I accessed it” messages. Obnoxious, but useful.)

                        He also wanted to know the physical side, because the “cool” factor was in DOING stuff.

                        Contrast with those for whom doing stuff that others don’t want is the appeal– the requirement to physically access the hardware isn’t going to be as awesome to them.

                        So you get the noisy on the coding side being solidly on the “I want to have POWER” rather than “I want to have ABILITY.”

         3. Problem is a chunk are not bad at math and logic. The second most poisoned environment is probably software. And its very attractive to think that the right steps (program) can pump out a human being of the right intent.

            1. OMG. Look at the leadership of Silicon Valley if you want to see a Leftist Stronghold.

               1. Yep.

               2. But how drone-proof are those strongholds?

                  1. Depends. May not be a safe assumption that the drones would get targeted at them. And the hqs ate relatively deep into secured territory

                     1. All one would have to do is aim hypothetical drones at top floor corner offices and you’d decapitate most companies.

                        Maybe that’s the real reason why Apple’s new spaceship HQ building is donut-shaped with no corners.

            2. And its very attractive to think that the right steps (program) can pump out a human being of the right intent.

               I get regaled on occasion about attempts at robotic AI, and invariably they apparently try to kill themselves in order to try understand what ‘death’ is.

               The results for ‘preserve humanity’ isn’t very pleasant for humanity either. The Matrix breeding bubbles was NOT far from the results in some simulations, so I hear.

         4. There was that HILARIOUS short story in that Dangerous Minds anthology where the mission to Mars was mostly filled with check-box quota socjus zealot demands … and Larry Correia got stuck as the engineer, who HAD to go.

   3. It’s like they have never seen any SF/F movie either. Terminator? Yes please, we’d like place all the nukes under control of a computer. Ex Machina was really recent. Are these people blind?

      1. Dr. Strangelove

      2. Colossus.

   4. I prefer Colossus: the Forbin Project. Dunno if the book or the film was more frightening.

      “The truly liberal mind is by definition uncertain; it admits it may be wrong, but once set and the decision made the wavering stops, and no sort of hell can sway it.”
      — D.F. Jones, The Fall of Colossus

6. What about “Be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet”? Are you racist against persons of Mattis preference? Am I simply trolling with non sequiturs? Have I become what I purport to oppose?

   1. I generally have an escape plan, in case someone else has the kill-everyone plan. Childhood trauma, I expect. I’ve done it since I was a teen. The problem with that is, it gets tiring. So you end up not going out as much, because constant vigilance takes too much energy.

      On the whole I don’t mind, because meeting new people is also tiring.

      1. It drives everything out of you after long enough. You need somewhere you can let guard down but getting to be fewer and fewer places you can. Everything must sing from the rulers hymnal.

         1. Well, that’s why I come here. ~:D I can recharge from the Big Battery after a long day of scanning for danger and keeping my teeth clamped on my tongue.

            It helps to have a large vehicle too. Everyone is equal on the road, and those of us with crew-cabs are more equal than everyone else.

            1. Those of us with big vans are more equal than crew-cabs.

               1. The lumber haulers own the roads! (Far better than hay haulers, who seem to get into amazing screwups. OTOH, lumber haulers have to drive on “roads” that might make a cat driver blanch, so a paved road is wonderful for them.)

                  1. I “have” a IH 175C, and I know how to use it……. 🤣

                     But they ALWAYS yell at me for tearing up the pavement. 😲

                     1. My JD 790 bows in respect. 🙂

                  2. Lumber/Log haulers might have physics on their side, but have you ever seen one turn white? He was bragging about tailgating a woman on the highway on his first trip to the landing. Said woman walked into the Log Scaling shack, looked right at him, then the others & stated “Uhhh guys, how long can we make him sit here?” The truck drivers that were done, left, in a hurry, all the others were very quickly to disown & throw the driver under the “truck”. This was a situation that for truck drivers = M O N E Y. Their whole pay then was how many loads they could haul during the day. FWIW, pretty sure he lost at least one or two loads that day, & the other scalers backed me (but then they not only had to work with me, but my husband too, so …). Point made Also, no one tailgated me up the hill the rest of the month I was assigned to that Scaling location … & they had plenty of chances.

                     1. Yeah, not a good idea to get that aggressive. 🙂

                        I’ve been quite impressed with the log drivers in Klamath and Jackson county; mostly on SR 140, but also county roads. They’ll drive briskly, but not overly aggressive. It’s the hay haulers who get a bit crazy; had to work one major oops where the driver thought the 25 mph turn warning was bogus. He didn’t lose the rig, but lost most of his load, and I assume his job. Not sure if it’s hay or cattle haulers who get heavy on the Jake brake coming into our town. We’re far enough from the road so that it doesn’t bother us inside, but it’s noticeable at 10PM outside. No local lumber trucks are on that road at night–no reason, but we’re on the hay route to Portland as well as to California. Annoying, but it’s not a priority for the woefully understaffed law enforcement.

                  3. As Pat McManus memorably noted, the three greatest dangers to outdoorsmen are cigars, logging trucks, and know-it-alls.

               2. Respect to the Van, yes indeed.

                  But none of those mini-vans, they are the instruments of the Devil.

                  1. What do you mean, “That isn’t a grill ornament?”.

      2. No one in my family gets into an elevator with anyone dressed like a member of the Religion of Peace™. And in crowds make sure to keep other targets and fixed objects between their bodies and ours. People not dressed that way are less likely to suddenly explode. We also swerve around unaccompanied bags and luggage. Doesn’t take much effort. Like writing or riding a bicycle. After a while, you don’t think consciously about what you’re doing, it just gets done. Oh, we also avoid bad areas of towns and cities, especially after dark. And avoid certain types of concerts and festivals.

      3. Me too. Which is why in my long list of disreputable achievements, I lack “being arrested.” It’s also why I’m alive.

         1. Came in handy pretty often when I was a kid, kept me out of pointless fist-fights and ugly situations in a variety of scuzzy bars etc. I was a roadie, and I learned from watching other people’s mistakes that:
            -hitting a drunk is like hitting a fence post. It hurts you, not the post.
            -cops are not your friends, despite everything you learned in school.
            -there is no honor in winning a bar fight, just pain.
            -drunks have friends.
            Knowing where all the exits are and having a wall behind you, very handy.

            I also learned that you don’t talk to the strippers. Because they are -crazy- and not in a good way. Very important lesson for a young man to learn early. Lucky me, I learned by watching some other guy put his hand in the hamburger machine.

            Now get off my lawn, whippersnappers.

            1. I learned about cops the hard way.
               I was very unpleasantly surprised to learn that not having done anything wrong and being cooperative, didn’t offer much protection.

               It did once I stopped tying to clear up the misunderstanding and hired a lawyer.
               But it was still entered into the system, and I had to explain it every background check for nearly two decades.

               1. Cops have a brotherhood. If you’re in, you’re in. If you’re not in, then you’re Out, one of Them. They do stuff -for- each other. They do stuff -to- everybody else. Nice guys, good neighbors, yep fer shure. But you’re not -in-.

         2. Never arrested. Apprehended and detained for a while, but not arrested. Really doesn’t matter, they still stick you into their database.

   2. I’m a little afraid of Mattis. He could impregnate me with one look. Despite my having had a radical hysterectomy.

      1. I was looking for the like button for this…..

         1. wordpress reader

      2. As opposed to a mainstream hysterectomy

   3. I do both threat assessment and plan accordingly.

7. Does the left realize that they’re revealing their own deep seated racism, in that they think only black people look like apes?

   I would post an examples of anti-Irish propaganda cartoons from the 19th century … but, lest I get Our Esteemed Hostess in trouble for allowing the posting of ‘hate speech’ I suggest any interested check out the Wikki article –
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment – and take a gander at ‘Mr. G. O’rilla…’

   1. My copy of “The Gangs of New York” has a lot of contemporary engravings from the 19th century, and yeah, serious anti-Irish racism going on there.

8. …for the left it’s always the nineteenth century, and only white men have power.

   Which totally explains why it it is called the Victorian era, no?

   1. I didn’t say they were accurate.

      1. If you had I would start looking for where you left the pod. 😉

   2. Was Victoria yet another one of those white Mormon males with a great rack?

   3. Yup.

      Actually, I think a ruling queen may have an easier time than a king, since she’s not in competition with the gentlemen of the court.

      1. O, yes, she is. In important respects. It has to be juggled very carefully.

   4. Victorian Equal Rights Amendment? 😉

9. I’m pretty sure I’d prefer living under Cromwell or Pinochet sequels than the current form of the Left.

   On second thought, scratch the word “pretty”.
   #notyourhelot

   1. When I was in college a fellow student was thankful to be there.  True, he appreciated that he was getting a chance at an education.  More than that he knew he was very fortunate to be in a land that was free.  By being in college at that time he escaped the coup d’état and the subsequent rule of Pinochet.  His family back home was not so lucky.

      1. Yes.
         And many of my ancestors cursed Cromwell’s name.

         Yet I can’t help but notice that Allende was as bad or worse, and that Pinochet is a major reason why Chile is successful, while most South and Central American countries remain economic and social basketcases.

         1. That was the situation *before* Pinochet, though. The roots of that particular difference go all the way back to colonization, and boil down to “colonization by slave labor-using aristocrats creates a worse country than colonization by yeomen.”

            1. And the fact that Spain sent soldiers there to fight the AracundIans. Soldiers tend to be no nonsense and rather down to earth.

               1. Eh. The men who marched with Cortez and Pizarro were soldiers, too. Unless you mean the Spanish sent professionals rather than hidalgos to fight in Chile, in which case I agree with some reservations.

      2. When I was in college we had several African exchange students (very small college; I knew all five of them). My doctor was trying to adopt the young man from Ethiopia because if he was forced to go home, he would have been killed. (I don’t remember what was going on in Ethiopia at the time; I was eighteen and away from home for the first time). Tareke definitely appreciated being in the United States at that time.

         1. The glorious rule of Meghistu and the commies most likely

            1. Yeah. My late uncle was the last Anglo doctor (Sudan Interior Missions) at one of the hospitals. The staff literally chased him out and ran him down the hill behind the hospital as the communists came up the hill. They killed every patient, doctor, and nurse who couldn’t get away.

10. “All of which means from their extreme left perch, the left sees everyone else as Nazis…”

    No. The Left do not see everyone as Nazis. The Left Establishment is almost certainly aware that they, themselves, are Nazis. Maybe the Antifools in the street don’t realize it, but the people steering the movement pretty certainly do, and are calling their opposition Nazis to forestall the table being (aptly) applied to them.

    The Left sees everyone as Peasants. Stupid, mouth breathers who can be lied to with impunity. Which is why they are so very outraged that those same Peasants had the nerve to ignore the lies and vote for Trump.

    1. People are stupid. They must be controlled. The Lefties see their formerly absolute control slipping. Being the degenerate scum that they are, they fear that we will do to them what they had planned for us.

       Hence their current blind panic. They had some really bad shit planned.

       1. There are days when I think you are right about what they had planned, and there are days when I think their over-the-top reaction is simply the modern version of the snobby swivet the British Aristocracy threw when it became clear that the Lower Orders had severely limited respect for them after the way they had screwed up World War I. The Upper Class Twits very quickly found cover in the new(ish) Progressive Movement, but you can catch some echoes of it if you look closely at some early 1920’s stuff that hasn’t been sanitized.

          1. The two situations are not mutually exclusive. If you look at the Soviet Union, or at N. Korea now, their aristocracy lives and functions in a way that is very similar to the pre-War British aristocracy. Grand houses, many servants, a complete disconnect both mental and physical from the working people. North Korea has a ski resort for the rich, or so I gather.

             None of that is far distant from how the American aristocracy lives, except in terms of reach. The aristocrat in the totalitarian state can get literally ANYTHING he wants, without limit. The Americans (and Canadians) are still somewhat bound by the strictures of common decency, and if #MeToo is any indication, they chafe against it.

             1. The well to do plumber or carpenter can also afford to reach these same places. They then have to suffer the presence of those lesser creatures. They want bigger walls than Trump does

             2. I would be cautious of assuming that #MeToo is indicative of much of anything. Harvey Weinstein may well be a scumbag. I don’t like him. But I have serious issues with claims being made against him so long after any possible facts. It is currently fashionable to claim that you were sexually predated. That doesn’t mean that the people making such claims are honest.

                1. Especially since he went down after he no longer produced hits.

       2. Phantom, a recent quote captures this perfectly.
          “Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate
          every aspect of people’s lives.” — Councilman Jason Dominguez (Santa
          Barbara, CA, city council, 7/17/2018

          1. That guy is an example of somebody speaking the perfect, unvarnished truth in a rare moment of candor. He should become the poster child for the DemocRats forever more.

       3. Yep, and if we let them steal the election, we’ll see it too.

       4. The Left wish to control, or exterminate.
          The Right just prefer to ignore them until they can’t.
          The Libertarians just want to be left alone, period.

    2. “Antifools” – Oh, I like that term. I shall plan to use it at every opportunity! Thanks, csps!

       1. My pleasure. Please, do spread it.

       2. Ah, but that suggest anti-fool, rather than them being the fools, alas. Still, a nice twist of phrase.

          1. Switch the I to an A– then it sounds even more like how they say the name. “Ant-ah-fools.”

       3. Might I suggest “Klantifa”, for the covered faces, violence, hatred of “those people” (i.e. anyone not them), and *burning* desire to suppress/control those they hate?

          1. OOoohhh! *** LIKE! ***

          2. I’m so stealing that 🙂 I call them CompeteFa — they are just a different brand of real fascist…

          3. “New, Improved, SA Brownshirts”

             1. More like Brownpants.

                Seriously, Ernst Romm and his boys would eat these idiots for breakfast.

       4. I prefer “Pantifa — always in a bunch.”

    3. But the majority of population has not only been maleducated but had minds shut to the difference. The only definitions people have experienced of Nazis are white men who looked down on ‘lesser races’. Doesn’t matter that half of the platform is identical to the Dems with maybe a quarter to reps if you spot them race stuff. But the minds are made up.

       But the uppitiness of Trump and voters is exactly why they are enacting such scorched earth.

       1. I’m far from convinced that they intend it to work, in the sense of regaining control of the Government and the Debate. But I think they DO have their eyes on retaining control of the Liberal Establishment. I think the popularity of Sanders in 2016, followed by Her Shrillness’s loss, spooked them. I think they may be scared that their base might come to them and say something along the lines of “You rat bastards foisted Shrillary on us, and she lost. Up out of those chairs; we’re replacing you.”

          *shrug*

          Or they may believe that fielding an updated version of the SA Brownshirts is a way of attracting the uncommitted voters. They’ve believed dumber things in their day.

          1. The they i was referring to was both parties. Reps are trying to take a fall so they can go back to being pampered princes who do nothing without expectations. Otherwise there would actually be aggressively advertising on the positive benefits that have occurred for everyone. And have the data to defend against the ‘its just a continuation of the Obama economic genius’.

             And I think they are trying for a mix of 2006 and 10. Think they can beat the scandal drum to both energize their troops and demoralize reps. Meanwhile they run chameleons in red districts that mouth the right platitudes. And crying about Trump’s evil laws and policies that, other than trade, match the R platform as far as i can remember they hope to call their mobs the new tea party.

    4. Actually they are Communazis, because they are using Nazi/Fascist means to achieve race/identity based international socialism.

    5. I’ve seen credible reports that the Antifags are supported by and largely funded by the Muslim Brotherhood (and funding from Soros may actually originate with the Saudis).

       Leslie Fish has a good essay up on various street conflicts, written from the viewpoint of a former political organizer and activist… she’s like, hmmm, I recognise these tactics…

       Can’t find it offhand, but this week’s blog post is interesting too…

       https://lesliebard.blogspot.com/

11. c4c

12. “Follow these easy steps to make the world a better and less hateful place”.

    The instructions are how to punch someone. But don’t call it hate speech.

    .@kickstarter, I'm curious about this project. This comic literally has instructions for assaulting people on the street. Would you allow a project called "Always Punch Commies"? https://t.co/SWmvzgLvrj pic.twitter.com/yIaDBJJznI

    — Robert Kroese (@robkroese) August 9, 2018

    1. “Your speech is violence, our violence is speech.”
       And remember that the government agrees with and supports them.

       1. I’m old enough to remember when the Left piously lectured everyone that violence was never the answer.

          Was that only (flips through calendar) three years ago?

          1. They’ve never stopped, and they have also never behaved as if they thought it applied to them.

             1. Antifa and BLM are the brownshirts/stormtroopers of the Democratic Party which at times has expressly and implcitly endorsed the actions of those groups and provided polticial cover for them. It is simply part of the 1984 and Animal Farm as “how to” guide playbook for them,.

          2. Probably a bit before that. 2015 the admin was itching to go fight for al Qaeda and Iran. Never mind the desire to war with Russia

       2. Which means shooting them when they start yelling is perfectly acceptable, just like shooting them when they are rioting is.

          1. Sadly doesn’t get applied that way. And it’s not a riot. Just a protest. Unless police can call it a riot to shut down a non far left gathering, even better if they can direct unarmed nonlefties thru armed mobs.

             1. The media won’t even call it a riot when the police do. Look at the #NoDAPL protests. And sadly the courts won’t back the police, even when presented with video evidence.

                1. Whitewolfpack admits that Elizabeth Warren is not Native American.

                   I’ve seen some people using the old line “Those who make peaceful change impossible render violent change inevitable.” (Paraphrase from memory, JFK I think) as justification for things like Antifa.

                   What they fail to realize is that it cuts both (indeed all) ways.

                   1. Where did that come from. The quoted text was supposed to be:

                      And sadly the courts won’t back the police, even when presented with video evidence.

             2. Which is precisely what they did in Charlottesville.
                https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/04/charlottesville-report-tells-us-what-happens-when-police-fail-do-their-job-glenn-reynolds-column/917521001/

                1. Among other locations.

                   And Glenn is wrong. They didn’t fail to do their job. They did exactly what their masters told them. If the roles had been reversed you probably would have had dead bodies of the aggressors

       3. Citation needed, seeing as the cops ended up using force against Antifa in Portland.

          1. Charlottesville, the first few rounds of occupy ICE in Portland (PDX PD refused outright to provide aid, iirc even in cases of crime with imminent threat. Wasn’t reopened until federal LE brought in), the last round in Portland where the feds did well but Portland was held back, the numerous cases of lenient to no charges for various levels of battery in DC, Berkeley and I will be surprised if not Portland in this case too. Also see how the Portland govt comes down on the police for being “heavy handed” since I believe investigation has started.

             1. And on the other hand we have the lack of charges for the Bundys or the Malheur boys, and the fact that even those charges that were brought ended up going down before what was essentially jury nullification.
                You’re going to do yourself a mischief.

                1. He’s been on this streak lately. It’s beyond pessimism and it’s starting to worry the living cr*p out of me.

                   1. Just keeping my expectations down so it’s less likely to get negatively surprised. Can’t wrap my head around people right now since the crazy amped up to 11. Could be that scales are falling from middle America, could be the left going around battlefield shooting survivors. Both are plausible with evidence to weigh.

                      I was optimistic in 2008, 2012, Virginia, Ohio, and Alabama this year. I learned better.

                      1. I definitely don’t understand what the current level of crazy means.

                         I’m also trying not to invest in any particular outcome.

                         But my emotional bankground is that I’m coming out of a extend period that was rather dark. I’m deliberately trying to break with that. I’ve got plenty of my own business that I don’t understand.

                2. Admittedly I have absolutely no idea how those didn’t end in shooting.

                   I had forgotten the two charged ones getting nullified. Not sure about the Bundy’s themselves since it was the feds lies and misdeeds that saved them.

                   1. It did end in at least one shooting under dubious circumstances:

                      https://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/03/oregon_standoff_fbi_agents_und.html

             2. The investigation is because the Portland mayor ordered them not to show up.

                They ended up ignoring him.

                He then tried to say that them not showing up right off the bat was their idea, against his orders…..

    2. Follow these easy steps to make the world a better and less hateful place.

       It could be a line out of a comedy. Really it would be hilariously funny if they were not dead serious. I doubt they see the humor. This is what keeps me from being able to laugh — much.

    3. Reminds me of this video, except the video is a parody and I suspect the ones responsible for the kickstarter are quite serious. I’ll call them Shirley, then.
       1. I am saddened that they feel it necessary to provide an apologetic introduction to the cartoon.

13. The Russians are sure the USSR isn’t around because Gorbachev is a traitor bought but the CIA

    1. Hence the case for why the current opportunity to exterminate the Russians should be taken.

       But the Democrats may only be faking outrage, in which case it isn’t a real opportunity.

    2. As does Hollywood.

       Note that the Paean to the KGB that was “The Americans” ended well before the end of the USSR, preventing any reckoning with reality for the brave and noble deep-cover KGB agents.

       The Hollywood version of history skips right over that tragic fall.

       Purely by happenstance, of course.

       1. I still wonder how the hell “The Death of Stalin” got made and released.

          1. It wasn’t a Hollywood movie and IIRC there has been a faction of the Left who dislike Stalin.

    3. The CIA wouldn’t have the ability to buy a kitten. Also the USSR was dying. And a horrible place.

       1. I think the fact that everyone who actually lived under communism and escaped it is horrified about how the US, Canada, and Western Europe are moving towards Soviet style systems should be the alarm siren that reminds people that communism, and indeed socialism in all its forms, completely sucks. Nevertheless, because the left dominates education and media, there are swaths of the public that dream of creating a Soviet Socialist States of America.

          1. It had been a serious cultural shock that some Israeli intellectuals were sad that the USSR went to the ash heap of history

       2. Oddly the CIA did purchase a kitty for about $20 million in the ’60s (see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty) Needless the to say they did poorly. Tradition has it that the feline wired for sound was released and struck by a taxi. Other data seems to indicate the cat was untrainable (I’m suprised suprised to find you can’t train a cat like Lassie) and the assorted hardware was removed. The subject of the experiment lived to a ripe old age as someones pet. I like that ending better…

       3. I’d disliked it, you’d too

14. The left has in fact been in a position to control all discourse for fifty years before about the last decade.  And what happened?  It set a course ever more hard left, and enshrined Marxism in teaching, in the study of history and in all social discourse,…

    AND

    I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called a Nazi for advocating minimal government, personal freedom and the equal application of law. 

    Given: the left has largely taken over the control on what is studied in history. 

    They have replaced history with social studies and propaganda.  They avoid any real depth in the study of history.  Many places the requirements to study Classical, European or American history are being minimized or eliminated.  Various ethnic and gender history studies are being promoted in their stead. 

    I have no problem seeing how students of such an educational system can call you Nazis for the reasons you mention without the slightest qualm.  They have no understanding of the political theory behind the Nazis or Fascists and know very little of what they did.  

    1. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called a Nazi for advocating minimal government, personal freedom and the equal application of law. ”

       Of course! Only an all-powerful government is strong enough to protect the people from fascism! /sarc

       1. The gross miseducation that has been perpetrated by American schools and universities is no more evident than when the people who believe in small, limited government whose role is to preserve and protect individual liberty are called Fascists and Nazis by people who advocate a large central all poweful government that has control over the minutae of everyones’ lives “for the communal good”,, i.e. Fascism. Talk about Orwellian abuse of language.

    2. And students are baling out of the Humanities in droves. Only hyphenated-studies are not bleeding (yet). Even history is seeing a decline in majors. Part of it is the push for “jobs that pay right out of school” with majors like engineering or business. But I suspect a lot is also “why should I pay money to be scolded for four [or six] years and then have to wait tables for the rest of my life?”

       1. Utility aside, my historical knowledge grew astonishingly once I was free of school’s version of history. Still recovering, lo these many years later. The bastages.

       2. I looked at my passions and came up with a decision between getting a degree in history, getting a degree in engineering, or going for a career that didn’t require a degree. Even then I could tell that the history I was interested in would not be welcomed by academia. I’m into the history of American political violence. I was inspired by some convenient oversights in the telling of local political history. So I haven’t had formal training in history, and haven’t had the health or the funding to do any real historical research.

       3. Physics major: Why does this work?
          Engineering major: How does this work?
          Accounting major: What does this cost?
          Humanities major: Do you want fries with that?

          1. Critical/Feminist Studies Major: How dare you ask anyone to work.

             1. Rather:

                It is obvious that you are an unenlightened tool and are a slave to the traditions of the patriarchy in your hiring and promotion practices because you have no women in the forefront of the command and control decisions of your company or its board. Do you mind moving over a few feet to the side so the cameras can get a better shot of my protest sign?

          2. Humanity major more like ‘stamps care denied on medical file’. These are the future govt functionary class. Not sure if they will be above or below the head crackers, but either second or third in hierarchy.

    3. My laugh during 2016 were those who said that Trump’s election was like that of Hitler. Yeah, no it wasn’t.

    4. All is explained:

       http://bwcentral.org/2013/11/prentice-hall-and-pearson-educations-libyan-ownership-and-islam-biased-textbooks/

       1. They’ve been doing this in Europe, including BIG glossy coffee table books on the wonders of the Islamic civilization for DECADES.

15. Reminded me of a post I saw:
    Q: “What is racism?”
    A: “Racism is prejudice plus a position of power.” (The definition they’re trying to sell.)
    Q: “Okay, what’s a position of power?”
    A (should be): “When you don’t get fired for the tweets.”

    1. Iowahawk, as usual with particularly pithy lines:

       Q: how can you tell if a tweet is racist?
       A: it depends, true racism can only come from a position of power
       Q: how can you tell if it's from a position of power?
       A: when the tweeter doesn't get fired for it

       — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 2, 2018

       1. Interesting, because the real world “white supremacists” almost entirely are utterly powerless.
          The left’s racists are a different matter. Consider Sarah Jeong, newly minted NYT Editor, who is cherished by her organization in spite of her very explicit racism. (Or, as the WSJ’s Jason Riley suggested, *because of* her racism.)

          1. That was the context of Iowahawk’s tweet, yes.

          2. And the few that get any power or acclaim, there usually is no association between their beliefs and what gives them that recognition. Meanwhile there are wreckers famous for being leftist callout artists.

16. “Saying anything that anyone on the other side deems racist, including comparing Michelle Obama to a gorilla? The most hate-speechy thing ever.”

    I always thought she looks more like a Klingon shield maiden. ~:D Her callouses come from much batleth practice!

    “So far the big tech companies went after truly repulsive people.”

    Google informed -me- the other day that one of my blog posts would not be visible in Europe, it was one about some lady waving a sword around in a school in Florida. This week the big story is Alex Jones, but I have to tell you I link to InfoWars fairly often. Anything to do with the Southern US border, or local non-national stories, those guys always have it first and they FOLLOW UP on stories too.

    That’s why they’re getting shut down. Because most of the time, absent Alex Jones’s blustering presentation and yelling at the camera, they are delivering the real goods. Remember the Dept of Agriculture SWAT team? InfoWars. Dept. of Education SWAT team? InfoWars. SanDiego district school board getting MRAP armored vehicles (yeah they do!) to secure their schools, InfoWars. Ongoing hundreds-of-deaths-a-month on the Mexico border coverage is from InfoWars.

    Even more fun, the agitator who claims to have brought this Alex Jones ban into being works for People for the American Way. Which was created by Hollywood mogul Norman Lear back in the 1980s to fight the Moral Majority. Want to guess who their major donor is? If you guessed George Soros, you win the cupie doll.

    In Canada of course the Hate Speech laws and their non-judicial enforcement system in the Canadian Human Rights tribunals are a naked application of Liberal Party power. Anybody who lifts their head gets the hammer, and there’s no appeal.

    1. Why am I not surprised to find Soros involved in this somewhere?

       1. Well, being a little cautious, I’m not going Full Conspiracy Nut just yet, because some guy claiming something in an interview doesn’t make it so. Also, these Silicon Valley sharks can tell Soros to go pound salt if they feel like it. I don’t see Tim Cook for example jumping up just because old George whistled.

          But… since Tim Cook probably hates Alex Jones on general principle, and since the boardroom at Apple probably looks like a meeting at the Ministry of Truth, maybe a couple million Soros bucks could buy some congenial lobbying time. I’ve no doubt they were all looking for an excuse, and this was it.

          WorldCon is in Silicon Valley this year, within shouting distance of San Francisco. Look what happened to them. And they’re hard core supporters. That’s the culture.

    2. I don’t even know enough about this crisis actors claim to know if I would agree or disagree with it.

       1. Looks like I disagree with it.

17. > Because if we don’t stop this train it’s going to end in the cartridge box, and once it gets there, even if we win, we lose. If people have to actively fight the left, for real, physically, the regime that comes after will be all those horrible things the left thinks we are. It’s normal human reaction.

    Yes. If they get the civil war they want, it definitely will not end up in their Marxist Utopia (hell, these people can’t even run a small science fiction convention competently, much less carry out a successful coup against a major country). It’s like they have no idea of the political leanings of the military, and the police, and the private gun owners, and the people who grow all their food, supply all their energy, and (in the case of California) provide their water.

    If they succeed in bringing down the republic, the best possible outcome for them is something akin to Pinochet’s Chile or Franco’s Spain. Now, I will not like that, but they definitely will not like it.

    1. What scares me and what i expect is that it takes a lot of effort to create and manage well. It takes little to destroy. Collapse society into fiefdoms and it all breaks unless you are self sufficient.

18. So far the big tech companies went after truly repulsive people

    There’s that quote from H. L. Mencken: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” I’d add “oppressive corporate policies by monopolies or near monopolies” to that “oppressive laws”.

    1. Except they haven’t gone after people who are far more repulsive than Alex Jones; for instance, Louis Farrakhan, Hamas and Hezbollah (both of which openly call for the worldwide genocide of Jews and use social media to express that goal), Fatah/PLO as they openly advocate for murder of Jews, etc, Antifa’s express calls for violence, etc., (need I go on). Calls for violence that clearly violate the terms of service are not punished when those doing so are groups or members of groups the left likes. In essence by exercising such editorial control over content, they are endorsing the violence by the leftists.

       It should be noted that the reason Facebook, Twiter, etc. have been able to avoid being sued for slander and libel is that they claim to be platforms that exercise no editorial control over content, rather than publishers who do. Clearly they fall into the publisher category, making them libel for things said on the platforms. Likewise, while the First Amendment does not apply to a private company, restraint of trade and tortuous interference with business, do apply. Hopefully they finally get sued by someone with deep enough pockets to take them on on these types of claims (and don’t do it in the Ninth Circuit)

       1. That someone may be Alex Jones. Infowars reportedly has a stellar legal department that routinely wins the many lawsuits brought against it.

    2. Yes. The NSPA may march.

       You have the right to free speech.  There are recognized limitations on that right.  They have not included rationality, reasonableness or rudeness of the speech. 

       That right does not obligate me to finance your speech, or force me to listen to it, and it certainly does not require me to affirm the content.

19. > The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels.

    Someone on another blog mentioned Ernesto Miranda, a total scumbag whose career of armed robbery and sexual assault began in eighth grade, and ended with him being stabbed to death in a bar fight at age 34.

    Not only that, the dude was so breathtakingly stupid that when presented to one of his rape victims in a lineup, he said something like “Yeah, that’s her.”

    Nonetheless, he’s the reason Miranda rights are a thing.

    1. Miranda rights are a judge invented right, not in nor even implied in the U.S. Constitution.

       The founders assumed a nation of educated citizens would know their rights and exercise them accordingly. And if they didn’t educate themselves and exercise those rights, well, that’s their own individual problem, not the people’s problem.

       1. While they are not in the Constitution, they are implied by the right to not incriminate yourself. They are needed because the cops were using borderline torture to get confessions such as sleep deprivation (sometimes real torture as well), so having the courts able to throw out that evidence was essential to stopping the abuse.

       2. Be careful with the “right that isn’t in the Constitution”. The Constitution isn’t a complete enumeration of all rights. Instead, it is a complete enumeration of the powers of the government; anything not listed isn’t permitted to the government. The rights of the people follow from that.
          The purpose of the Bill of Rights (which Neil Smith calls the “Bill of Prohibitions”) is to restate, redundantly, a few things that the government really isn’t allowed to do. For example, freedom of the press is implicit in the fact that Article 1 Section 8 grants no power over the press, but the 1st Amendment states it a second time for good measure. The same applies to the 2nd Amendment — when it came up for ratification, the convention in Massachusetts pointed out it was redundant. And so it is.
          Quite apart from that, there is the 9th Amendment, which states very explicitly that the rights enumerated in the other articles of the Bill of Rights are merely examples, and that the BoR is *not* an exhaustive list. This is what Bork forgot, as do so many others.
          Take the “right to privacy”. It’s not mentioned in so many words, which is what led some foolish judges to toss around BS terms like “penumbra”. If they had any respect for the Constitution and the 9th Amendment in particular, they would simply have talked about the rights protected by that amendment. I suspect that was a can of worms they didn’t want to open, since it really gets in the way of being a good statist.

          1. As far as the privacy, the far better argument is that it is part of the Fourth Amendments rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, which starts “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects….”

             1. “Secure in persons” cuts a bit too two-way for supporting abortion. You really don’t want to bring up the word “person”.

          2. There is no question in most people’s minds that the right to privacy is one of those non-enumerated rights that preexist the Constitution. It fits right in with the right to be secure in one’s home. Hard to be secure if the state can come in and see what you’re doing without a warrant. I’ve had this discussion with many.

             It is, however, a real stretch to include the right to abortion under the shadow of right to privacy. It’s funny that every single European nation that liberals love and admire have abortion restrictions that our judges would find intolerable. Well, at least one judge- and that’s all it takes as that judge’s reasoning is then upheld by multiple appeals courts…

             Some decisions, like Miranda, like abortion, come out of very thin rarefied air.

             I do remember when I was younger people pooh-poohin the idea that an amendment was required to make English our official language. Everyone already knew it was, an amendment was unneeded. Becuase of judicial rulings Califonia ballots and voter explanations are now available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Panjabi (Punjabi), Hmong, Syriac, Armenian, Persian, and Arabic.

             Quote from the CA SECSTATE: “”Elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and voting rights include access to voting information in a voter’s preferred language,” said Secretary of State Alex Padilla. “These new language requirements will better serve voters who prefer their ballot in a language other than English and will help local elections officials better serve their diverse communities. For the first time, we will expand ballot translation into six new languages to better meet the needs of our state’s increasingly diverse population.”

             I have a much better idea. Make the diverse population of the state learn English like my German, Dutch, and Italian ancestors did. That way they can fully participate in the public discourse which is conducted primarily in English. (Possibly my Irish and Scottish ones also, but I can’t be sure of that. )

             1. I’m still amazed that “Ebonic” isn’t an official language in Crazyfornia…

                1. I’m not. The illegals that make up the Democratic base there wouldn’t stand for it.

          3. Re: the right to privacy –

             Exactly. The big problem with Roe v Wade wasn’t the invention of a right to privacy; that already existed, and the fourth amendment is based on it. The big problem with that decision was that it made an unsupportable logical leap: a right to privacy does not entail a right to murder. Okay, the *two* big problems with that decision were the unsupportable logical leap, and how it completely failed to consider the right to life (which is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, and assumed in the Constitution) of the other human being involved: the fetus.

             The silly language about “penumbras” was really a minor problem compared to the rest of the issues with that decision.

             1. Heck, even the oft-forgotten third amendment is based on the right to privacy. Your home is your own private space, where you have the right to control who stays there and who doesn’t. And you should not be forced to let others use it without your permission, even agents of the government.

             2. And when I said “even agents of the government”, I should have said “especially agents of the government”.

             3. I have always wondered why there is a right to privacy with an abortion doctor even though abortion is illegal (just not prosecutable due to the above “right”) but no right to privacy with an assassin who does basically the same job. One day I hope to see someone who has no other defense try this one. I will be interested in the judicial reasoning used to throw it out, if it is thrown out.

                1. Even another doctor. That’s the whole thing for the “right to try” laws. Can’t get something from the doc unless the .gov has said ok.

                2. In the case of abortion the present presiding legal view has been that the right of the woman upon whom the procedure is to be done supersedes any right of the unborn child to continue its residence within the woman. 

                   I do not agree with this argument, but there it is. 

                   1. My understanding of Roe is that it turned on the right of the woman to not have the fact that she had an abortion revealed. Thus she cannot be prosecuted for having that which must not be revealed. That is why it is a “Right to Privacy” that the court discovered in Roe, not a right to your own body.

                      1. This may have been the principle with Roe v. Wade (1973), but that has been long since expanded upon in subsequent cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016).   

                         Even so, at the time of Roe the fact that the issue of viability was discussed regarding when and if the state may restrict the procedure indicates that there was something more than the issue of the woman’s right to keep her decision private behind it.  The Roe decission did not come alone.  Doe v. Bolton (1973) established the principle that abortion could not be restricted if the mother’s life or health were threatened, and as we have seen since the concept of health here is now taken as a carte blanche.

                   2. Which, of course, has nothing to do with privacy.

                      If you force someone into your home, and impose such a condition on him that he can’t be removed safely for a period of time, you’ve just lost the right to evict him. Even if you had the curtains up so no one could see.

                      I’ve heard people try to claim that the baby wasn’t forced to take up residence.

                      1. Last one of those a bit over 2000 years ago methinks

             4. For those wondering, the “right to privacy” goes back to Griswold v. CT.
                https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496?_escaped_fragment_=&_escaped_fragment_=&_escaped_fragment_=&_escaped_fragment_=#!

                If you are looking for quick, clear summaries of Supreme Court case decisions, I highly recommend oyez.org

                1. *swipes for Elf King Horde Leader*

    2. I’ve noted that while Hollywood loves to make movies about exciting court decisions (e.g. “Gideon’s Trumpet”) no one has been eager to make a movie casting Miranda as a hero.

       1. They already did Trayvon; just give it some time…

20. An additional point: Do we want “hate” to go the way of “racist”? Over the Obama years, “racist” went from an insult to a complement. If “hate” goes the same way I shiver to think of the implications. One of those is that calls to exterminate certain groups would become acceptable, because “It is only hate speech.” Another could be Jim Crow laws against various groups (not only racial).
    We were lucky that racism as a force was pretty well spent by the time that Obama came along and made racism (at least the accusation) respectable. Hate however never goes out of style, I suspect that we will not be as lucky again.

    1. If you have a problem with calls to exterminate people, you are a racist. Exterminating people is part of certain cultures. It is racist to judge anything that is a value of any culture, and to be willing to use government force to oppose that value.

       People may be confused whether my calls to slaughter are a joke or serious. Yes. Most of the the time, I mock the people who are dishonest about their willingness to impose their culture’s values by government force, or who lack the conviction to impose their culture’s values. There are absolutely cases where I have weighed the alternatives, and found slaughter the best. Had Japan not unconditionally surrendered, for example. If the reservations and government schools had not worked to pacify the indians. These are generally based on a choice by the leadership of the population in question, and indirectly by the population choosing to tolerate that leadership.

       1. If you have a problem with calls to exterminate people, you are a racist.

          Communists and Useful Idiots come in all races, right? So if we start (and perhaps end) with them, that’snot racist, right? Besides, Communism is Marxism and Marx is a Dead White European Male… so all good, yes?

    2. Racist has never been not-an-insult. But people certainly stopped caring so much because it became substantively useless as a descriptor.

       Two reasons for that. First, because any policy disagreement with Obama was called racism. Not impressed with Keynesian economics? You’re a racist. Clearly. And second, it became useless as a descriptor because of a concerted effort to change the meaning in a way that excused supremely privileged Ivy League Korean-Americans for their behavior. Racism is no longer based on your opinions or your actions but on your… race.

       It’s still an insult, but no one with any ability to reason or any portion of dignity just rolls their eyes.

       And of course if someone holds racially based animosity and prejudgment towards others, people think every bit as badly of them as they ever did.

    3. I don’t agree that racism was force pretty well spent by the time Obama came along. That’s if and only if you define racist as something that can be practiced only by people of the Caucasian persuasion. We’ve seen the discussion here before on how well Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese get along. And honestly, when you get a bunch of white liberals together where they think it’s only people like them in the room- well, what they think of others of different skin pallor mirrors that of the KKK.

       1. You have a good point. While I don’t agree with the “only whites can be racist” argument, it is still only white racism against blacks that this country cares about.

          1. Well, white racism against any of the higher caste races. No other identity group has power donchano.

21. The USSR collapsed because it was a massive oak rotten in its core. Money and force could hold together the polities for almost a century but eventually the power struggles and lack of goods tore it apart. But how long can a world economy resting immensely on cheap US money and debt stand. Especially since the route the ruling class has taken has been to make barista and doctor equivalent in people’s eyes as ‘value added’

    1. The USSR collapsed because it was managed via central control in major comportment with a philosophy of lies, and eventually the errors induced by the resulting unavoidable mismanagement exceeded any capacity for self-correction.

       The strength of the western system is decentralization – when something is mismanaged, there will be a different approach that works better, which will outcompete and take its place.

       The danger in the western system is that the current winner will get a government to centrally lock in their success as a protected monopoly, preventing any self-correction from occurring – think Ma Bell still as the US mandated communications monopoly providing the one approved mobile phone, not for sale but as Ma-Bell-owned piece of network equipment, which mobile phone weighing in at five pounds with service costing $1,000 per month.

       Or just look at the space launch service contracts pre-SpaceX – United Launch Alliance could charge whatever they wanted, and as the sole US government launch provider they were completely protected, and had absolutely no incentive to increase capability or decrease charges.

       The USSR was all central monopolies, in the form of governmental bureaus, and thus brittle.

       The way to make a society resilient is to reduce or eliminate these central government monopoly grants.

22. Did anyone hear that Berkeley PD released the picts and names of those antifool protesters they arrested?

    1. Yes. Saw the pics and they looked pretty much like what you would expect antifa to look like under the masks. (Is ‘unwashed escaped mental patients redundant?)

    2. Yes, I saw that. I was rather surprised, but I think it was progress in the right direction. People who cause public damage should be publicly ‘outed.’

    3. http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/08/09/for-the-sake-of-all-that-is-decent/#comment-1136733

       Kate says could they please have their masks back.

       1. I do happen to agree with Kate!! 😨

       2. I like her blog.

       3. I see two people of color and a zombie.

          1. You noticed that also?

    4. Apparently they were surprised and annoyed at that. I guess they didn’t know that arrest records have always been public records, and newspapers (remember them?) have had a “police blotter” section since time immemorial.

23. If one says, “Kick all black people.”
    then one is racist.
    If one says, “Kick all brown people.”
    then one is racist.
    If one says, “Kick all yellow people.”
    then one is racist.
    If one says, “Kick all red people.”
    then one is racist.
    If one says, “Kick all white people.”
    then one is racist a Hero for our time of the New York Times.

    I saw a bit of CBS “News” this morning, where they are proclaiming ‘Real News’ supposedly in answer to the ‘fake news’ labeling. That they feel such a need to label themselves Real News gives me the same sort of confidence I have about dining at places that feel the need to proclaim ‘Sanitary Restaurant.’

    1. You mean the New York Attacker.

    2. Except that “kick all yellow people” is not racist if it is Harvard doing it.

    3. The phrase ‘Sanitary Restaurant’ puts me in mind of the similar phrase that appears on certain manhole covers, ‘Sanitary Sewer.’

       1. And it brings up the question: Does a Sanitary Restaurant use Sanitary Napkins?

       2. That’s to differentiate them from “Storm sewer”. Makes a difference. It’s important for workers to know which they may be cleaning….

          1. Of course, the “Sanitary Sewer” is the more apt to be UNsanitary.

             This Reality thing… has most misleading labels.

             “There’s no hash or pot in hash pot-aters; Gatorade contains no gators!”

             1. And a “People’s Democratic Republic” is not any of the above.

             2. Perhaps Gatorade is for Gators? Hanging out in fresh water all the time is going to pull the electrolyes out of you so the Gatorade is to put it back? Otherwise you’d have lots of prune wrinkly alligators…

                1. Actually, Gatorade was made for Gators. 👿

                   It was originally made for the Florida Gators (sport teams of the University of Florida). 👿

                   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatorade

24. “Usually the more the haters (real haters) speak, the more they foam at the mouth and reveal their biases. So it’s a good thing for them to be out in the open and not some enticing forbidden fruit.”

    I’ve been pleased to see the stupid, horrible things that come out of the mouths of Leftists lately. Their evil bombast and pointless inanities may make me cringe, but they are making a lot of other people cringe, too, and wonder if they really want to be associated with those fools. Tools. Whatever.

    1. Yup.

       It’s all… “Keep talking, uh huh, what about this other thing, talk about that, too. Here, do you want a megaphone? Let me share your tweets forever because this is amazing and people should hear it.”

       But you know, left-winger activists *also* retweet and amplify anything they find that is really awful. The people who have to be silenced are those who will say normal things from another point of view. Like people planning a Free Speech rally or a prayer rally or some little dweeb of a Jewish guy who’s smarter than anyone else in the room, or a flamboyant gay fellow who might be given the chance to answer and expand on what he means when he says bla-bla-bla and sound reasonable when he does it. Or some old psychologist and professor who is not impressed with their bull shit.

    2. Aaaannnnddddd . NAACP… really? Racist? Look at ALL of the black walkaways that are on yubtube…….

       https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/blacks-approval-of-trump-reaches-a-high-of-21-and-naacp-charges-racism

25. Forest fires. Yesterday, I went shopping with my mom. Got to the parking lot and looked South. Saw a HUGE cloud of smoke coming over the mountains. No other cloud in the sky. Turned on the news today and discovered that one particular fire had grown from 6K to 17.5K acres yesterday. Because drought, wind, and not being able to manage the forest and range lands properly to keep flammable, dead trees to a minimum. So good, live trees are going up along with all the tinder.

    1. When I lived in California, I used to take dates to a little park I knew that jutted out from the side of a hill. When the wild fires were going, there was a nice secluded, comfortable spot where you could put down a blanket and the view looked like you were nearly surrounded by the wild fires. It was an amazing sight. Sad, but amazing. It was all an illusion of course, because the fires were miles and miles away.

    2. If you check national park webcams through the west, a lot of them are showing haze from forest fire smoke. It looks from the maps like there are dozens of forest fires in the west at the moment.

       1. Had it earlier this year in central OK. Smoke blew in from some of the big fires north of us. News posted reminders because 911 was getting hit hard with smoke investigations from it. Beautiful sunset though.

          And stepping into a just extinguished brush fire is almost otherworldly.

    3. In defense of the “let it burn” crowd, at least locally. A lot of the burns in wilderness areas, at least in the upper Cascades (a lot last summer) the fires are (were) in areas where any ability to control, if it can be gotten to, a wild dream.

       OTOH when those fires get to areas where they should be controlled, it is too late. I remember in 2003 points south & back east were screaming for a fire up off 126 pass to be controlled. It jumped the freaking road. Not some two lane narrow highway, but the road at the top of the pass that has not only passing lanes on both sides, but a large middle turn lane (South to Big Lake, North to the PCT access trail head parking lot) AND both sides with huge pullouts for trucks to check breaks before heading off the pass.

       Oregon State has research (no specific cites, heard this in presentations with cites presented) that shows with managed forests there is more timber now than when the first pioneers traversed Oregon, due to forest management & fire suppression. Now, due to lack of forest management we are headed back to default fire to decrease timber.

       For some reason people get irritated with me when I point out that trees that are (only) 175 years old, did not exist, or were tiny seedlings, when my ancestors settled in Oregon (given they got her about 1842/1843-ish).

       1. * here, not her *

       2. Can’t remember if it was last year or the year before, but they had a crew on site when the fire started.

          Head guy begged for permission, on the radio, to stop it. He could SEE it was going to get away.

          The bird b***h denied him permission, and got quite nasty about it.

          A lot of people in my folks’ valley have scanners and heard it… record setting fire, there. 😦

          1. We had a fire like that about 20 years ago. Fire started by some kids on the side of the hill. A guy clearing land on private property with a bulldozer saw it and called in saying he could get to the point where the fire was and doze a break. They said “No. Let the professionals do it.” By the time the fire trucks and other equipment got there, it had hit a small canyon with an updraft.

       3. Should have used controlled burns before the big fire got there.

          1. Problem is with the buildup you’ll probably have a good chunk that get away and gen pop doesn’t understand backfires. They think pour water, not remove fuel.

             1. Proof that socialists manage forests and handle fires as poorly as they handle anything else except propaganda.

                1. Eh, that ones a more general issue. Been a century long folly. Environmentalists added fuel by preventing logging but aggressively stopping fires let lots of little fuel build. One thing that Bumbles got right was to suppress less. But you need to clear more to do that, especially after the time with bad conservation

26. Hate speech laws just push hate speech underground where it festers and grows into something worse. (Real) hate speech should be pulled out of the shadows and into the light of day where it can be examined and answered. That is how old prejudices can be conquered an society made better.

    Leftists don’t LIKE that answer though, because they don’t want old prejudices to die, because there is a lot of power to be gleaned from the fight. That goes away once the problem is fixed. They also don’t like the idea because if SOME of the things they call “hate speech” is dragged out into the light, people will notice the straw poking out around the edges.

27. **flips back through history quickly**

    Ah, CBS is the station Dan Rather was employed with when he and and the station were touting “Fake but accurate.”

    1. I know a lot of people who quote him approvingly these days. I’m not saying anything, but I’m not reading what he’s selling either. You torpedo your credibility that badly, I don’t think you’re ever getting it back with me.

28. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called a Nazi for advocating minimal government, personal freedom and the equal application of law.”

    Because words have meanings. /sarc

29. Rule by computers?

    Watching the movie, “Colossus, the Forbin Project”, should be required viewing in school, followed by “War Games.” And 3 or 4 Star Trek: TOS episodes where computers ran entire societies.

    1. The last few seasons of Person of Interest provide a more modern example. Samaritan is enough to give anyone nightmares.

    2. Serious, find The God Machine and read and understand..

    3. How about a real-world example? https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me Or search for “automated call center hell” for ,minute-by-minute micromanagement horrors…

    4. Recently reread(well listened to) Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Even that most gentle and cooperative of AI Mycroft (aka Mike, Mychelle) starts to start sticking the camel’s nose in the tent and was doing things FOR the revolution. If he had stayed it might not have been so pretty (and thank you I will basically ignore The Cat who Walked through Walls, even though pixel seemed like a darned nice cat).

30. “Because if we don’t stop this train it’s going to end in the cartridge box, and once it gets there, even if we win, we lose. If people have to actively fight the left, for real, physically, the regime that comes after will be all those horrible things the left thinks we are. It’s normal human reaction.”

    What worries me more is the path of blood to get there. What the Left has in mind in another French Revolution…including extensive use of the guillotine. An American Terror, followed by a Great Terror. Wholesale massacres. It gets ended by an authoritarian regime like Napoleon’s…if we’re lucky. And Bonaparte was no lover of liberty. People supported him because he provided order and security, where the Left provided nothing.

    1. And by ramping up the violence and the incessant screaming about “Traitor Drumf” the left is trying to get a large enough contingent of fence sitters to agree, or just as good want to give into the tantrum to return to the scandal free, economically bright and calm democrat years.

       I think that there is still a lot of space to allow the left to continue replacing population and inch by inch step by step make opposition impossible. Not sure they’ve got the water set too hot.

31. I’ve been thinking of something you wrote a few weeks ago, Mrs. Hoyt, and it’s starting to get to the point where I’d *like* to see the left spanked with an axe.
    Which is a personal problem on my part. I need to pray for charity.

    1. That really depends upon the angle of the axe. And I suspect the preferred angle is, shall we say, less charitable and more… final?

    2. You’re not alone.

32. It seems like there should be something between “We’ve seen them applied in” and “Because”. Did WordPress eat part of the post?

33. Way off topic. Twitter has four proposed Space Force logos. https://twitter.com/AndrewHClark/status/1027645896006270976/photo/1
    Bloomberg has six different ones. At least four are explicitly No Trump! or Space Farce Stupid.
    Certainly people here can come up with better.
    Also, the Navy has one they have used since 1983

34. Woke the Vote?

    How Long Will You Tolerate Having Your Franchise Deprecated and Nullified?
    By Sarah Hoyt
    Apparently, in Ohio – lest their loss mar a narrative of an inevitable blue wave – several uncounted ballots have been “found.”

    Of course, everyone knows these ballots will be uniformly Democrat, and will keep being “found” until the race tips to the Democrat. Which is weird, since both of these events, in a rational world, are as unlikely as a three headed eagle coming through my window right now. And I don’t even see a hint of feathers.

    So why do we all know this?

    Because this is not the first time, this is not the second time. …

    1. How long before “ballot boxes” post proper count are found… to be bombs? The hard way, that is.

    2. As long as it takes. Its not like they will ever be punished and even thinking of auditing voting will get every federal agency looking for something to take you down with.

       The techniques are well known, whether it is cemetaries, nursing homes, double voting or just plain ballot stuffing it all happens. Sorry, but the techniques to put scanned ballots in a locked box ate not too hard. Even including early. Should have no ‘oopsies i left it in my trunk’ cases. But the Democrats benefit and the Republicans are well cowed into silence and agree with the Socialists right to rule.

       And forgive me if a district with a 2:1 R registration that hasn’t had a democrat my entire life going 50/50 doesn’t seem to negate a blue wave. We can do all we can but there is still a heady risk. I know I tend to be debbie downer like this, but its the exact same thing I watched at Ace in Virginia and Alabama.

    3. What baffles me completely is the inability of some people to care AT ALL or to seem to have a concept AT ALL that confidence in the voting process matters.

       So don’t tell me that Voter IDs are racist, tell me what you’ll do *instead* to ensure that anyone casting a ballot is entitled to do so in the election they are casting a ballot in. Don’t tell me that purging the voter rolls of felons or dead people or people who moved might accidentally purge the wrong person, tell me how you’re going to get felons and dead people off the voting list while protecting people with the same name.

       And I’m definitely with Sarah… vote on the day at the place. Dip our thumb in purple dye and mark the danged ballot with it. People who really and truly can’t do that should have their mail in ballots handled with extra care and extra steps to ensure that they actually get counted, each and *every* one, and that they weren’t filled out by other people, even if that takes a bit of work to do. And overseas military ballots must be counted, too.

       The idea that “oh, our records say you already mailed in a ballot but you can fill out a provisional one…” results in the provisional one only getting counted if the race is close is outrageous.

       And “found” boxes of uncounted ballots should result in an outside audit, investigation, and total recount. Every. Single. Time.

       1. Oh, they’re explicitly maintaining that depriving felons of the vote (and, you know, prosecuting crimes) is a deliberate conspiracy to undercut the black vote. Treating it as a widely known fact disputed only by the malicious. I’ve run into it twice from unrelated sources lately.

          1. Because of course, black people have natural criminality. OMG.

       2. Perhaps the ballot boxes themselves should be serial numbered, tracked with the same procedures that we use for nuclear weapons and the count does not start until they are all accounted for. If they cannot be accounted for, the election is redone and the person in charge of the missing boxes goes directly to jail. Oh, and each box is certified as empty by an observer from each party as it is being put into service in the polling place, then sealed with the seal signed by the same observers before being taken out of service to count.

       3. Because people feel, not think. They just want convenience and assume that everyone is as trustworthy as they are. Because there is no recordkeeping or the like there are rarely examples to use. Because govt and the dems will lie thru their teeth that all these voters could never get to the polls and that they could never produce an id (or that paying $5 for it is an evil poll tax).

          It doesn’t take much to actually secure elections. But it is another area where even Europe is less liberal than us.

       4. That court order forbidding the Republican Party from accusing the Democrats of Fraud.

          There is a reason beyond my opposition to Trump* for my argument that the Republican Party needs to be replaced.

          *I think he is a Democrat.

35. Popcorn, anyone? https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/08/protesters_storm_portland_city.html Violent protestors attacked the security guard in order to get into the city council meeting to protest “police brutality and violent tactics used by the police against peaceful protestors.”

    1. That “newspaper” should show pictures of those “peaceful protesters”.

       They looked like IMO they were ready to start a riot. 😦

       1. Agreed. When you show up with ball-bats, and projectiles for throwing at people, while wearing helmets and masks, you are not there for a peaceful protest.

          1. I saw a picture of them holding “riot shields”.

          2. But if people accept that redefinition of peace protest, they may be willing to accept the redefinition of minimal police force to include bayonets and flamethrowers.

    2. “Violent protestors attacked the security guard in order to get into the city council meeting to protest “police brutality and violent tactics used by the police against peaceful protestors.””

       Moments like these I’m so grateful that I set my Coke down and swallowed before scrolling past it.

       Consider just how many non-uber-liberals could possibly be on the Portland city council….

36. It is really quite simple. “Their” speech is “Truth to Power” and must be accepted for the good of the nation. “Our” speech is “Hate” and must be suppressed lest the nation’s civility end.

    Orwell analysed it best, of course. In Modern Progressive Parlance, “Fascist,” “Racist,” “Sexist,” “Homophobe,” “Islamophobe” and the like all have the same meaning” “You’re a big doody-head and I’m gonna tell on you!”

37. Vote time:
    https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/176652-what-horror-book-shall-we-read-in-september

    1. Mary Shelley, please.

       http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84

       1. Nominations are closed, now.

38. “Their next step is to say we should be administered by computers. I’ve heard it already from the derpier fringe.”

    In H. Beam Piper’s Junkyard Planet/The Cosmic Computer, there was a faction of “Cybernarchists” who marched around in yellow shirts, shouting “Hail Merlin” (the name of the eponymoust legendary supercomputer).

    1. Yep. Then it turns out they’re being funded by people who don’t want Merlin found.
       Conn Maxwell’s thoughts on the subject express mine perfectly–if a computer were enforcing the law, everyone on the planet would be in jail inside a week.

39. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called a Nazi for advocating minimal government, personal freedom and the equal application of law.”
    This reaction is always so mind-boggling to me, I want to memorialize the way Sarah said it.

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