Charlie Kirk shot at (shot?) in Utah

[Elixir]

Of course the MAGGOTs would wallow in glee if someone like Stephen Colbert were injured, but they pretend, WITH ZERO EXAMPLES to show for their claim, that good-spirited Americans are as bigoted and evil as they are.

There was plenty glee on here when unvaccinated, ivermectin taking Americans died of covid.

So. When asked to substantiate your claim that A did B, you respond with non sequitur, making the (unsubstantiated!) claim that C did D.

No, don't bother blurting out that E did F. Save the neuronal effort for contemplation about your own cognitive inadequacies.

Gibberish.

No wonder you keep doing it.

 

[Emily Lake]

One of the points he makes is that cars are very dangerous, about 50,000 people each year die from automobile crashes. That's a cost that we, as a people, have decided is worth it in order to gain the benefits of automobiles. He pointed out that if citizens have the right to own guns, it's impossible to have zero gun-related deaths - it's not going to happen. His argument was that we should do everything we can to minimize those deaths, just as we do everything we can to reasonably minimize auto accidents and deaths. But if we wish to have gun rights in order to protect ourselves from a zealous government, then we as a society are accepting that there's going to be some deaths as a price for that right.

Too bad that we are not doing “everything we can to minimize” gun deaths.

The parallel of guns with cars continues to be used despite the absurdity of the comparison.

We could only hope that guns, designed for killing, were regulated as tightly as cars, not designed for killing.

First off... you've entirely missed the point, and you've snipped my post in order to support your wrong point. But I'm not surprised.

I support licensing, with required training. I don't support the removal of a constitutional right.

If you don't support the removal of a constitutional right, then you don't support amendments to the Constitution (which can add, remove or modify rights). With this approach you should be opposed to the Second Amendment, as it changed your seemingly preferred immutable Constitution. Now, of course, you are not opposed to amendments (which are themselves a process that is a part of the Constitution), but your sentence was careless, as it implied that the Constitution should not be changed.

You made the same error I did in reading the use of the article “a” literally when you should have contextually understood Emily to only be addressing the second amendment right.

Meh, it's actually somewhere in between. You both started with the assumption that I think the Constitution should never be changed, which is too much of an extension. On the other hand, you're contracting it too far by saying it's only related to 2nd Am.

To be more clear, there are no rights in the current constitution that I would support getting rid of - I think all of them currently present are good and should stay. On the other hand, I think there are things that could very reasonably be added as constitutional rights which aren't currently in there.

I don't think the constitution is immutable, but I do think that what's in there is appropriate and good.

 

[Emily Lake]

Yep. Free speech is dying fast.

To you and the five people who liked your post, seriously, you guys really need to chill, and then you guys need to remember it's important to apply critical thinking,

We aren't fanning flames of war.

That depends on how broad a set you have in mind by "We".

We don't have the head of the FCC threatening a corporate merger ax'ing in order to get someone fired from television because they don't like what they are saying.

Maybe not, but it was you anticapitalists who made it possible and maybe inevitable, when you handed discretionary authority to block corporate mergers to executive-branch bureaucrats. Whether a corporate merger violates antitrust laws should depend on objective criteria spelled out in legislation.

Perhaps it'd been easier for some to know what happened at the campus if Gov. Abbott knew and didn't post false information.

Abbott didn't actually post false information. He posted the truth, just not the whole truth. Charitably, he was being a petty dick indulging himself in a bit of schadenfreude. Or maybe, as Arctish suggested, he was being deliberately misleading in order to throw red meat to his anti-free-speech base.

This Administration has arrested a judge, has <snip>

This administration has exceeded its legal authority any number of times because it reports to another dirt bag; but it's illegal to help a criminal evade arrest and judges aren't above the law.

... and is targeting "the left" because some entitled white boy shot another white boy over something personal.

Can't say what's in Robinson's heart, but he called Kirk a fascist and hateful, and those are shrink-wrapped leftist slurs. Quack like a duck, don't be surprised if you're taken for a duck.

It amazes just how far right some of the "conservatives" are here.

What the actual for realsies fuck was "far right" in Bomb's post?

 

[Emily Lake]

And, yes, sex work.

Sex work is work in the same way that child labor is labor. Call it what it actually is: exploitation and commodification of women's bodies for the sexual gratification of men who don't give a flying fuck about the welfare of the people that they're LITERALLY using.

And that is somehow different than any other single-service hiring of any other worker?? I hire an electrician, I show him the wires and what I want done, I consider him far more qualified than me in judging the safety of the situation so I don't concern myself with it.

Yes, Loren, fucking someone who wouldn't otherwise be willing to touch you with a ten foot pole, and treating them as if their entire body is a commodity is different from hiring an electrician. Why don't you offer your electrician $50 to let you stick your dick in him, and see how he feels about it?

 

[Emily Lake]

Another thing is given the way Trump has been talking about leftists lately, not all leftist are willing to part with their guns just yet.

Nor should they. Nobody should part with the only means of self defense that overshadows sheer physical size and strength. Personally, I think a whole lot more women should be armed.

Except my sister. Love her to pieces, but she's bipolar, and I kind of think putting firearms into the hands of the mentally ill isn't really a great idea.

 

[Emily Lake]

Sex work is work in the same way that child labor is labor.

Bullshit. This view is infantilizing adult women, saying that they have as little agency over their bodies as children.

Call it what it actually is: exploitation and commodification of women's bodies for the sexual gratification of men who don't give a flying fuck about the welfare of the people that they're LITERALLY using.

Again, bullshit. If two people mutually agree to exchange sexual services for money, how is that "exploitation and commodification" any more than any other service profession? And just because one hires a hooker does not mean he does not care about her welfare.

And lastly, there are also women who hire sex workers, as well as male sex workers.

If your wife, or daughter, or sister, or close female friend or relative were to announce to you that she has decided to be a prostitute, would you proudly tell your friends and neighbors about her career choice in casual conversation? Would you recommend her services to your pals? Would you have any objection to your dad hiring her services?

How many women who have other feasible employment options do you think would consider a career in prostitution? How many retail workers do you know who were forced into that job on threat of being beaten or killed? How many plumbers do you think are raped or beaten and that's just one of the risks of their job?

 

[Emily Lake]

Objection: Most "mental illness" has no bearing on whether one should be allowed to own a firearm. Want to avoid the knee-jerk reactions, limit it to those whose problems are of a nature that suggests they might misuse guns. And beware of rebound--you'll keep people away from treatment to avoid getting banned. I do support denying firearms to the dangerous, it's just that we need a narrow definition, not a sweeping definition.

Conditions that express with delusions, hallucinations, or other psychoses. Subject to reinstatement if the condition can be shown to be cured.

 

[Emily Lake]

What, exactly, do you think the Spanish Inquisition was? And weren’t the Nazis ‘good Christians?! What do you think the Crusades were? What do you think ‘mission schools’ were? Oh, sure, they were only a part of the plan but make no mistake: the goal was to beat the Indian out of NA’s and exterminate those who would not be made into useful servants.

Are you seriously comparing the spanish inquisition, which was ~400 years ago, to the CURRENT ACTUAL POLICY OF JIHAD BEING ENACTED RIGHT NOW?

 

[Elixir]

To be more clear, there are no rights in the current constitution that I would support getting rid of

Phwew. For a minute there I thought you might be favoring intrusive monitoring of civilian behavior, masked thugs disappearing people, and extreme censorship with severe punishments …
/sarcasm

Few if any people here (none to my recollection) have advocated the revocation of Constitutional rights. You need to worry about the interpreters, not the text.

Think about who has the power to decide - capriciously if they are so inclined - what rights are constitutional or not. They don’t have to change the text of the Constitution to completely pervert it. QED, unfortunately.

I’m not okay with a bunch of bought off Justices doing the bidding of regressive billionaires. YMMV

 

[Elixir]

he called Kirk a fascist and hateful, and those are shrink-wrapped leftist slurs.

Can we sue the apricot for trademark infringement?

”I HATE MY OPPONENTS!”

 

[Emily Lake]

The reason why some people are stuck on two genders is inertia, in some part religious based inertia.

Nope, it's science and biology.

That is redundant. And likely incorrect. After all, geocentrism was supported by science and astronomy.

But thanks for doing your typical slice and dice and then leave a shit in the thread routine.

There are only two sexes in humans. There are only two sexes in all mammals, all birds, the overwhelming majority of vertebrates, and a sizable portion of plants.

Gender, on the other hand, is simply the way in which a person likes to express themself as it relates to the prevailing sex-based stereotypes of their culture. There's bazillions of ways for that to happen, and I support everyone's right to engage in them to their heart's content... but it doesn't change one's sex. Their sex stays what it was since about the 7th week of gestation, even if the exterior is manipulated to mimic the opposite sex extremely well.

Neither one's sex nor one's presentation and behavior should preclude a person from owning a home, renting a jet ski, ordering a steak, or studying a subject, or any number of other commonplace scenarios we can imagine. In most of the ways we interact in society neither of those are pertinent - They're irrelevant, and should be irrelevant in those situations!

But even so, there are some situations where one or the other of them actually do matter. A person's preferences and desires around how they wish to dress, or to present themselves, or to express themselves certainly matters when they're shopping and purchasing items related to those presentations - clothing, or jewelry, make-up, accessories, or all sorts of other things. There are probably other scenarios where they matter too.

There are some spaces and services where sex matters. And in those spaces and services, they happen to matter a whole lot more for women than for men. In spaces where we're naked or particularly vulnerable, it actually matters a lot that we're females, but it doesn't matter one bit if we like short hair and steel-toed boots. How "butch" we look is of little import when your vulnerability to a sexual assault is heightened. If you're in prison, or are confined somewhere you can't reasonably leave like a hospital bed, it can matter a lot if the person in the bed right next to you while you sleep is male... but it doesn't make any difference how you present. In athletics, the normal distribution of ability and strength of your opponents is what makes the competition fair and meaningful, so when the person across from you falls well outside the standard deviation of the abilities of similarly skilled competitors, that has a big impact.

I don't believe that a person's internal identity as it relates to their preferences around presentation should take precedence over the realities of sex in spaces and services where sex matters.

 

[Shadowy Man]

One of the points he makes is that cars are very dangerous, about 50,000 people each year die from automobile crashes. That's a cost that we, as a people, have decided is worth it in order to gain the benefits of automobiles. He pointed out that if citizens have the right to own guns, it's impossible to have zero gun-related deaths - it's not going to happen. His argument was that we should do everything we can to minimize those deaths, just as we do everything we can to reasonably minimize auto accidents and deaths. But if we wish to have gun rights in order to protect ourselves from a zealous government, then we as a society are accepting that there's going to be some deaths as a price for that right.

Too bad that we are not doing “everything we can to minimize” gun deaths.

The parallel of guns with cars continues to be used despite the absurdity of the comparison.

We could only hope that guns, designed for killing, were regulated as tightly as cars, not designed for killing.

First off... you've entirely missed the point, and you've snipped my post in order to support your wrong point. But I'm not surprised.

I support licensing, with required training. I don't support the removal of a constitutional right.

If you don't support the removal of a constitutional right, then you don't support amendments to the Constitution (which can add, remove or modify rights). With this approach you should be opposed to the Second Amendment, as it changed your seemingly preferred immutable Constitution. Now, of course, you are not opposed to amendments (which are themselves a process that is a part of the Constitution), but your sentence was careless, as it implied that the Constitution should not be changed.

You made the same error I did in reading the use of the article “a” literally when you should have contextually understood Emily to only be addressing the second amendment right.

Meh, it's actually somewhere in between. You both started with the assumption that I think the Constitution should never be changed, which is too much of an extension.

I made no such assumption. I was merely trying to parse your language and took you literally.

 

[Emily Lake]

Oh goody... our uncalibrated moral barometer is here!

Over the decade or two I've been posting here, I've found Jason Harvestdancer's moral and ethical code to be very consistent and well-thought-out. You certainly may not agree with is principles, but it's entirely inaccurate to imply that he doesn't have well-defined and consistent principles at all.

 

[Emily Lake]

The reason why some people are stuck on two genders is inertia, in some part religious based inertia.

Nope, it's science and biology.

Gender is a social construct. Why does society even need to pay attention to it? It's clearly relevant to romantic situations but otherwise I think it's not the government's business.

I don’t think it need be relevant to romantic situations. That’s not “clearly” true.

If we're talking about gender, I don't think disclosure is even a thing. I mean, gender is about how a person presents and behaves in society relative to the sex-based norms of their culture. I would assume that those means of presentation would be known prior to any romantic engagement, probably before romantic desire even really developed.

On the other hand, if we're talking about sex... well... I'm pretty sure it's relevant to romantic situations what combination of innies and outies is involved.

 

[ZiprHead]

More derails. Sex and gender discussions do not belong here.

 

[Emily Lake]

The constitution says whatever the Supreme Court interprets it as saying.

Are you really intending to say that if the SC woke up tomorrow and said that the first amendment of the constitution says that left-handed people can be purchased as livestock and eaten for food, you think that would actually work, and we'd all just be stuck selling our left-handed cousins and having "Lefty Lou Lasagne"?

 

[Toni]

Nope. There's no objective measure of who is on any part of the political spectrum,

The political spectrum is indeed a crude measure at best. The two-dimensional political compass is better, but still not perfect.

but as far as I can tell conservatives tend to believe highly in nationalism "'Murica is greatest country in the world!" (and whatnot),

They indeed do go overboard, but then again, the fauxgressives go overboard in the opposite direction about how horrible US is. Oh, and I have only ever seen "Murika" used by the left (Elixir is very fond of it for example).

a traditionalist belief system (blue hair is bad and scary!),

The hair thing is used to mock stereotypical features of a certain kind of fauxgressive. And likewise, fauxgressives will often mock conservatives for their stereotypical features like, I don't know, oversized pickup trucks.

"strong borders" (gubmit can do whatever they want to them illegals! And whatnot),

I think strong borders are important for a sovereign country. I can still object to things like sanctuary cities and "catch and release" and a the same time object to how Trump's ICE is going about enforcing immigration laws.

being "tough on crime" (i.e. basically allowing cops to do whatever the fuck they want),

Again, being a moderate independent, I see it in a more nuanced way. Cops should obviously not be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want. Not even conservatives advocate that. They do advocate criminalizing too many things though.
I am for smart approach to crime. On serious crimes we need to be tougher. Especially for teenagers who in many cases face hardly any consequences even for things like carjackings.
4 teens released to parents after arrest for carjacking in northeast Baltimore

Around 12:45 p.m., officials found the [carjacked] vehicle in the 5400 block of York Road where they arrested a 15-year-old girl and three 15-year-old boys.
The three boys are not strangers to law enforcement and have prior handgun violation, burglary and aggravated assault arrests, according to police.
Officers took all four teens to the Juvenile Justice Center where they were released to the custody of their parents, police said.

You don't have to be a conservative to find soft-on-crime policies like this idiotic.
But there are too many things made illegal that should not be. I am also in favor of bail reform, as long as it is implemented well. The NY law was definitely not a good one. It forbade judges from imposing bail or jail even when the suspect is arrested over and over again, which career criminals then use to maximum effect. The NY law also forbids judges from considering danger to community as a factor in bail/jail decisions.

to name a few things that can make a "conservative" a conservative.

All of these issues have extreme fauxgressive and conservative positions, but also a wide range of moderate positions in between the extremes.

Funny but I’ve never once heard anyone I know and think of as a progressive talk about how terrible America is. You seem to regard me as some ultra liberal and certainly I think the US is great, even if under abysmal management bent on destroying everything great about us. Offering criticism and calling for changes is vastly different from the comments emanating from those in peer and their supporters.

 

[Toni]

What, exactly, do you think the Spanish Inquisition was? And weren’t the Nazis ‘good Christians?! What do you think the Crusades were? What do you think ‘mission schools’ were? Oh, sure, they were only a part of the plan but make no mistake: the goal was to beat the Indian out of NA’s and exterminate those who would not be made into useful servants.

Are you seriously comparing the spanish inquisition, which was ~400 years ago, to the CURRENT ACTUAL POLICY OF JIHAD BEING ENACTED RIGHT NOW?

How is it different? Aside from 400 years or so?

 

[Emily Lake]

What, exactly, do you think the Spanish Inquisition was? And weren’t the Nazis ‘good Christians?! What do you think the Crusades were? What do you think ‘mission schools’ were? Oh, sure, they were only a part of the plan but make no mistake: the goal was to beat the Indian out of NA’s and exterminate those who would not be made into useful servants.

Are you seriously comparing the spanish inquisition, which was ~400 years ago, to the CURRENT ACTUAL POLICY OF JIHAD BEING ENACTED RIGHT NOW?

How is it different? Aside from 400 years or so?

The difference ***is*** 400 years! That's the entire relevant difference. Bilby and Loren both argued that current radical christianity is a bigger threat than radical islam. The four centuries difference makes one of them a much bigger threat than the other.

Radical Christianity is just as incompatible with US culture (as set out in your constitution) as radical Islam, and only the former is an existential threat to the USA.

No. Radical Islam is a few orders of magnitude more out there than radical Christianity.
But Islamism gets defended by the far left because of the latter's rigid oppressor-oppressed paradigm that identifies Muslims as "the oppressed" because they are not western.

Disagree. Radical Christianity is way out there, also. It's just we haven't seen much of their insanity.

 

[laughing dog]

What, exactly, do you think the Spanish Inquisition was? And weren’t the Nazis ‘good Christians?! What do you think the Crusades were? What do you think ‘mission schools’ were? Oh, sure, they were only a part of the plan but make no mistake: the goal was to beat the Indian out of NA’s and exterminate those who would not be made into useful servants.

Are you seriously comparing the spanish inquisition, which was ~400 years ago, to the CURRENT ACTUAL POLICY OF JIHAD BEING ENACTED RIGHT NOW?

How is it different? Aside from 400 years or so?

The difference ***is*** 400 years! That's the entire relevant difference. Bilby and Loren both argued that current radical christianity is a bigger threat than radical islam. The four centuries difference makes one of them a much bigger threat than the other.

Not in the USA. If Radical Christians were in power, I suspect your view would change.