The Red White and Blue Pill
Rand Paul would not abolish the NSA
Does Rand Paul understand that the bulk records collection and all the other awful programs that people are objecting to are defended by the NSA and others as being activities “towards our enemies.”
It’s really hard to tell if he is naive or disingenuous.
Police Rethink Long Tradition on Using Force
Mr. Wexler’s group will meet with hundreds of police leaders in Washington this week to call for a new era of training, one that replaces truisms such as the 21-foot rule with lessons on defusing tense situations and avoiding violent confrontations.
Worth a read.
The Jade Helm Conspiracy Theories Are Moronic, but They’re Still Right About One Thing
Worth a read. Alex Jones is like pure, uncut, pharmaceutical grade Glenn Beck. His involvement in making the whole thing comedy gold. And before you warn me that he might be right, broken clocks and all, he is wrong way to often about way to much to view as anything other than a nutter.
Ted Cruz: ‘Liberal Fascism’ Threatens ‘Religious Freedom’
There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers.
Right wing victim narrative.
The joke was that Obama wasn’t joking
There are no jokes there. There’s just Obama saying what he has to say and Luther saying what Obama actually believes.
And what Obama believes is that the press is often sensational, trivial, and fearmongering. He thinks they hype negative stories for weeks on end and then refuse to admit their mistake when the horror fizzles. He thinks he gets the blame for catastrophes but little credit for solutions. He thinks the media has a deep bias toward negative stories (which, of course, we do).
Rand Paul goes full Strangelove: The “anti-drone” candidate is okay with droning American citizens
Greenwald also questions Paul’s larger strategy here of trying to tie up loose, dovish ends on foreign policy: “I don’t get his strategy: he’s never going to attract GOP hawks, so why dilute what makes him interesting/unique?” That’s the big strategic oddity hanging over all of Paul’s shifts to the right on foreign policy. There are now several politicians considering presidential runs and 501©(4)s being set up solely for the purpose of combating Rand Paul’s allegedly “isolationist” views, even as Paul has fallen in line behind the GOP’s more traditional, hawkish foreign policy. Why is Paul shedding what makes him unique and interesting on foreign policy, when the party’s hawks aren’t buying it anyway?
One posibility is that he, like his father before him; is a complete fraud and cares little to nothing about his rehtoric about freedom and liberty.
We’re Checking the Wrong “Privilege”
Cultural capital—what “privilege” often, but not always, refers to these days—is a seductive concept. It tells us that the rich stay rich through the discreet perpetuation of cultural preferences. Privilege isn’t just money or luxury goods; it’s also about the foods you eat, the shows you watch. When you first learn about it, likely in Sociology 101, cultural capital can seem like a way to explain everything. The problem, however, is that landlords, health providers, and universities don’t accept cultural capital in lieu of monetary payment.
Privilege is a bad argument. Whenever I’ve asked how “checking privilege” somehow leads to individual or collective action that affects positive change, the answer is always hand waving and platitudes.
Major Libertarian Thinker On Human ‘Failures’: ‘It Is Best They Should Die’
The fact that Cato and Reason both reacted so swiftly is a testament to the central place Spencer holds in the development of libertarian thought. According to Rothbard, who the elder Paul describes as the “founder of the modern libertarian movement,” Spencer’s Social Statics is the “greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written.” Yet this foundational libertarian text does not say what Root and Cato claim that it said. Indeed, if Social Statics is, indeed, the “greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written” then that is the most damning indictment of libertarianism imaginable.
This is why it’s a waste of time to argue with libertarians. Both Cato and Reason just flat out denied the text of the book said what it clearly says.
This is exactly how Reason reacted to being called out of publishing Holocaust denials. The PDFs are online but they claim they didn’t publish what you can clearly see they published.
Why not admit you were wrong; apologize and move on?