salon Archives - Stable Genius Liberal

Right-wing moms prove critical race theory by attempting to ban MLK Jr. book

Tennessee Republicans earlier this year passed a law in response to the conservative panic about “critical race theory,” barring the teaching of certain concepts in classrooms including “teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior to another; ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes to a specific race or sex; that the United… Continue reading Right-wing moms prove critical race theory by attempting to ban MLK Jr. book

American mass transit is dying

Three of the four largest systems in the country have been crippled this winter — and the worst is yet to come American mass transit is dying This is a preventable catastrophe.

Trump targets “the FDA Food Police,” calls for elimination of food-safety regulations in new tax plan

Shockingly misguided.

Bring on the outrage: Go ahead and hate on “coddled” college kids — just admit that anti-p.c. backlash is fueled by outrage, too

I think most of what gets lumped into “PC” is silly and counter productive. I think the neo-nazi movements are awful. I think Sharia law is incompatible with a modern society. But as a defender of free speech, I’m not going to support silencing people who belive silly, awful or abhorrent things. If free speech covers your right to be offensive, it covers the right of people to say “I am offened”. If it covers your right to complain about PC culture, it covers the right of the most walking on eggshells-exaggerated-straw-man-SJW to call you problematic.

If SJWs have lack a right to “not be offended” then you have no right to “not be offended” by SJW silliness.

The strange case of Denny Hastert: The other reason why his indictment is so disturbing

Schtupenfreude is the joy you feel when a politician you hate is in a career ruining sex scandal.

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.

Rand Paul’s “anti-torture” sham: Why his ignoring CIA scandal says so much – Salon.com

Put simply, if Sen. Paul’s commitment to his small government vision extended beyond the GOP’s usual hatred of taxes, throwing himself into the CIA torture scandal by vocally and repeatedly demanding the summary’s release would be the perfect way to prove it. If Paul’s libertarian rhetoric is just a branding exercise to separate him from the rest of the 2016 presidential pack, however, then going after the “patriots” who tortured “evildoers” for George W. Bush is not in his best interest.

I predict that the 2016 GOP pack will come out strongly for the use of torture. I expect Rand Paul to take a lukewarm stance against

Inside the terrifying, twisted online world of involuntary celibates

What happened is punishment for evil and violence of feminists and liberals. Any of you supporting atrocities like women’s suffrage, immodest clothing, child support/alimony, no ban on adultery, ban on prostitution and a lack of female premarital chastity, all the things that drove this young man to be unable to find a girlfriend, are disgusting , horrible people and you created a culture where this is possible.

Wow. So the people who believe that women are people with basic rights are responsible for the actions of misogynistic psychopaths who think women don’t count as people with basic rights?

And Incel is nonsense. There is no such thing as involuntary celibacy, as celibacy presumes that the celibate person is making a voluntary choice to not have sex. Its like calling starvation involuntary fasting

Libertarians who don’t understand liberty

Suppose a gay wedding party goes into a restaurant, sits down, and prepares to order. The restaurant manager comes over and tells them that they must leave because they are gay. Angered by this bigotry, the patrons refuse to leave. Now ask yourself: What happens next? In Carney’s world, what happens is the manager calls the state on the phone and requests that they send some enforcers to the restaurant to physically restrain these people, put them in police cars and then dump them into cages we call jail cells. This is the world of liberty in which the state stays out of things, according to Carney.

The idea that property owners have a right to discriminate is pretty common among Libertarians. I’ve always thought the idea was kind of nuts. No Libertarian I know would admit to supporting a landlords right to prima-nocta on property rights grounds but almost all support the idea of store owners being able to expel people based on the owner’s bigotry.

Can we just start calling them propertarians? It is way more accurate.

Voucher-mania: Conservatives have exactly one answer for all spending questions

it is probably only a matter of time before some ambitious young right-wing intellectual devises a scheme of personal defense vouchers, which individuals could choose to spend on U.S. military services, foreign armies and navies, mercenary gangs or, perhaps, to bribe the enemy into sparing him or her.