Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Bark louder, little dog.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Their freedom requires your slavery.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans don’t trust women.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You are here: Home / Politics / Glibertarianism / Sunday Evening Open Thread: One Important Common Factor

Sunday Evening Open Thread: One Important Common Factor

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… They’re all douchecanoes.
***********
What’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  5. 5.

    RaflW

    Has the police union apologized for Tamir being dead?

    No?

    Oh, well, STFU, you bastards. Every time these cop unions demand an apology for a protest I just get a flash of blind rage.

    Protests are fucking legal, you shitstains. If Hawkins violated a Browns or NFL policy, well, that’s up to the Browns or the NFL. Not the trigger-happy cops to demand.

    Jeebus.

  6. 6.

    Violet

    @lamh36: MSNBC never does news on weekends. Well, maybe in the mornings, but not in afternoons and evenings. If there’s a big story they really have to scramble.

  8. 8.

    lamh36

    @raven: @Violet:

    yeah. it’s really sad that MSNBC does that though. I mean jeez, are they even trying to compete with competitors?

    I mean does prison weekend really bring in ratings?

    I guess so?

  9. 9.

    Violet

    @raven: I got sucked into one of those prison shows one time. It was kind of compelling. One poor guy clearly had mental issues. No wonder he kept ending up back in prison. We have zero mental health support for people unless they’re rich.

    @lamh36: Yeah, I think the prison shows are among their most watched shows.

  10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    @lamh36: They are not trying to compete. Putting that stuff on says, loud and clear, “we don’t give a shit, and neither should you.” It’s auto-pilot.

  12. 12.

    Linnaeus

    He missed: neofeudalists. But I suppose all three of the groups he named could fall into that category.

  13. 13.

    Redshift

    @lamh36: From the police union rep’s statement:

    It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law.

    If I had to choose who knows the law better between a police department that had been repeatedly under federal supervision and a random athlete, I think I’d go with the athlete.

    Asshole.

  14. 14.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @lamh36: Actually the Browns should apologise for their piss poor play. But Andrew Hawkins deserves praise. Oh BTW anybody watching Marco Polo on Netflix. Chancellor Sidao is a real dick.

  16. 16.

    RSA

    Seems like in America there are 3 groups of libertarians:
    1. Philosophy nerds,

    You know how some people magically become constitutional scholars when a civil rights issue is in the news, or an expert in environmental science when global climate change comes up, or an economist whenever someone mentions the price of gas… Philosophy-nerd libertarians are like that about everything.

  18. 18.

    Joel Hanes

    I think that not-rich small business owners who majored in Econ are a group of libertarians distinct from those listed above. They’re not really philosophic about it, although it’s their only real philosophy; they’re not neo-Confederate (all the ones I know are northerners, and many of those from the Yankee strain of American culture); and they aren’t rich, at least yet.

  21. 21.

    Elmo

    @Redshift:

    Okay, that’s it. For a while now I’ve suspected that this entire country is undergoing a gigantic Milgram experiment, with the police engaged in ever-greater abuses to see where people finally decide to put a stop to it.

    Now I KNOW that’s what’s happening. You can’t tell me that statement is anything other than performance art. Deliberate trolling. C’mon.

  25. 25.

    Schlemazel

    @Redshift:
    Unfair. I am a fan of RAH’s writing but I am also capable of separating science fiction from reality. It’s not unlike a 14 year old reading Asshole Shrugged and believing Ayn created a perfect world and then never maturing past that point. The difference is RAH could tell a story/

  31. 31.

    TheMightyTrowel

    From the guardian live blog: “Uber is reportedly charging users a minimum $100 to get out of Sydney CBD, Mashable is reporting. The price has been pushed up because of a surge in the demand. Uber has a deal in New York to cap their surge pricing duing emergencies but it does not seem the same agreement is in place in Australia.”

  32. 32.

    scav

    @Redshift:

    It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law.

    Well, for that matter, it’s pretty pathetic when cops think they create, enforce and enact not only the law but the entire judicial process standing in for trial, lawyers, judge and jury and carry out the literal execution all within seconds of arriving on the scene.

  33. 33.

    lamh36

    Don’t care what anybody says, I’m gonna miss Eric Holder as AG

    AG Eric Holder pays tribute to athletes who wore #ICanBreathe shirts pic.twitter.com/sZfawaPUyD

  34. 34.

    PurpleGirl

    @Schlemazel: Good point. I like Heinlein but I am able to keep his ideas separate from how I see reality. Although I do know some guys who haven’t been able to do that.

  37. 37.

    lamh36

    @2kdei 4m4 minutes ago
    BREAKING: Flag in #SydneySiege window confirmed to be that of Jabah Al-Nusra, says Islamic terror expert on 7News

  39. 39.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @lamh36: That was from earlier this morning and it’s been disputed quite widely. 7 are not a reliable news source. They’re all over this though because their breakfast show films across the street from the cafe so the earliest images came from them.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @lamh36: I turned it off because at this point it’s all speculation. Two years ago Lanza mowed down twenty young children and six teachers within minutes.
    Thanks for the link to the Jena 6 graduate and congrats to him.

  41. 41.

    Bob In Portland

    Because.

    This excerpt doc­u­ments the Free Con­gress Foundation—the orga­ni­za­tion that became the point ele­ment for the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions’ pol­icy in the for­mer USSR and East­ern Europe. As men­tioned above, the direc­tor of the FCF’s “lib­er­a­tion pol­icy” was none other than Las­zlo Pasz­tor, the king­pin of the GOP’s Nazi émigré com­mu­nity. The Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion became the embod­i­ment of the Third Reich-generated “Roll­back” or “Lib­er­a­tion” the­ory. That geopo­lit­i­cal tac­tic involved the uti­liza­tion of the var­i­ous eth­nic groups inside the for­mer Soviet Union in order to break the USSR into its com­po­nent eth­nic republics. This (obvi­ously) was real­ized. In addi­tion, the var­i­ous Third Reich-affiliated East­ern Euro­pean groups that achieved promi­nence in the GOP’s fas­cist émigré com­mu­nity ulti­mately recon­sti­tuted them­selves in their coun­tries of ori­gin and became agents of influ­ence in the post-communist soci­eties that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is impor­tant to note the evo­lu­tion of the Nazi emi­gres from the CFF (Cru­sade for Free­dom) into the FCF (Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion) and to note how the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions rep­re­sented the cul­mi­na­tion of the events that began in the imme­di­ate after­math of WWII. The Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments brought in by Dulles and Nixon blos­somed in the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions. With the ascen­sion of Rea­gan (the chief spokesper­son for the CFF), William Casey (the chief State Depart­ment oper­a­tive for the CFF) became CIA direc­tor. (Casey had been the man­ager of the Reagan/Bush cam­paign in 1980.) The Vice-President was George H.W. Bush, who had over­seen the per­ma­nent incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi emi­gres into the GOP dur­ing Nixon’s pres­i­dency. The per­son­nel who peo­pled the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion were selected from lists drawn up by Helene Van Damm, a pro­tégé of Otto von Bolschwing—brought into the US by Dulles’ CFF. The pol­icy embod­ied by Reagan—Rollback or Lib­er­a­tion Theory—had its gen­e­sis with the Third Reich’s Ost­min­is­terium. It was real­ized (in part) through the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion. The “Lib­er­a­tion Direc­tor” of the FCF was Las­zlo Pasz­tor. The FCF was very close to the ABN and the for­mer World Anti-Communist League, ele­ments of which were also deeply involved with the ille­gal Contra-support effort, which cul­mi­nated in the Iran-Contra scan­dal.
    (“The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion Goes East” by Russ Bel­lant and Lou Wolff; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin; Issue #35; Win­ter 1990–1991.)

    36. Con­tem­plat­ing the use of Under­ground Reich-related ele­ments in the clos­ing phase of the Cold War, the pro­gram reviews the World Mus­lim Con­gress, founded by the Grand Mufti. The WMC over­lapped the lead­er­ship of the Pak­istani branch of the for­mer World Anti-Communist League, with which many of the CFF “Free­dom Fight­ers” were asso­ci­ated as well. The WMC became a pri­mary ele­ment of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. “Another favorite IHR speaker and col­lab­o­ra­tor was Issah Nakleh of the World Mus­lim Con­gress (WMC). Based in Pak­istan, the WMC was ini­tially headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who, like his friend H. Keith Thomp­son, stood by the Third Reich until his death in 1974. A few years later, the WMC, then headed by Pak­istani Dr. Ina­mul­lah Kahn, mailed Holocaust-denial lit­er­a­ture to every mem­ber of the U.S. Con­gress and the British Par­lia­ment. The WMC’s offi­cial mouth­piece, Mus­lim World, car­ried the ads for The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The Inter­na­tional Jew. Dr. Khan’s con­gress also pub­lished Freema­sonry, a book warn­ing that Jews were using lodge mem­bers to extend secret con­trol over reli­gion and society—a para­noid the­ory that has long been pop­u­lar among Lib­erty Lobby sup­port­ers and neo-Nazi groups around the world. Acknowl­edg­ing their polit­i­cal kin­ship, WMC secretary-general Khan sent a let­ter to the Spot­light prais­ing its ‘superb in-depth analy­sis’ and stat­ing that the paper deserved ‘the thanks of all right-minded peo­ple.’ Dr. Khan also served as an advi­sor to the Saudi Ara­bian royal fam­ily, which lav­ished funds on the WMC. In addi­tion, the Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment retained the ser­vices of Amer­i­can neo-nazi William Grim­stead as a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist. . . . Soon, the World Mus­lim Con­gress began work­ing closely with U.S. intel­li­gence and Pak­istani mil­i­tary offi­cials, who were covertly sup­port­ing the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul. This effort was strongly endorsed by Dr. Khan, who served for many years as the Pak­istani rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nazi-infested World Anti-Communist League, which played an impor­tant role in the Rea­gan administration’s ‘secret war’ in the Golden Cres­cent.”
    (The Beast Reawak­ens; Mar­tin A. Lee; Copy­right 1997 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; ISBN 0–316-51959–6; pp. 225–226.)

  46. 46.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @raven: Yup. I’ve been there too – by ‘remote’ they mean 15 minutes outside the capital city. which, for the record, is in the middle of the bush.

  47. 47.

    sharl

    In response to the Sydney hostage situation, On The Media tweeted out the link to their list of precautions about how the media routinely fucks up breaking news:

    1. In the immediate aftermath, news outlets will get it wrong.

    2. Don’t trust anonymous sources.

    3. Don’t trust stories that cite another news outlet as the source of the information.

    4. There’s almost never a second shooter.

    5. Pay attention to the language the media uses.
    “We are receiving reports” – sources are claiming something has happened, but it has not been confirmed.
    “We are seeking confirmation” – the news outlet is confident, but still can’t confirm.
    “We can confirm” – information has come from multiple sources, and the news outlet feels confident that it can claim something as an actual fact.
    “We have learned” – how a news outlet declares it has a scoop.

    6. Look for news outlets close to the incident.

    7. Compare multiple sources.

    8. Big news brings out the fakers. And Photoshoppers.

    9. Beware reflexive retweeting. Some of this is on you.

  48. 48.

    lamh36

    @sharl: I knew it as soon as I posted it, but got distracted and missed the editing window.

    I actually haven’t been actively retweeting anything

  49. 49.

    Violet

    @sharl: That’s a really great list. So true. The “no second shooter” thing is eerily accurate. So often there are claims of more than one shooter and then…nope. There must be something really confusing about being in the immediate situation that leads people to think there’s more than one shooter.

  50. 50.

    Lurking Canadian

    Seems like in America there are 3 groups of libertarians: 1. Philosophy nerds, 2. Rich people, and 3. Neo-Confederates. Am I missing any?

    I’m thinking there’s a shitload of overlap in that Venn diagram.

  51. 51.

    sharl

    @Violet: Yeah, that ‘second shooter’ precaution brought back memories of the Navy Yard killings. I think the wrongness of early reports on that pretty much checked all of the items listed, including an alleged 2nd shooter.

  52. 52.

    sharl

    @lamh36: Yup, me neither,* though I have kinda learned the hard way about the risks of reflexive retweeting.

    *I did weigh in on Dan Drezner’s feed that I didn’t think that this should even be an international story, and did see a Muslim Australian complain that she saw lots of US-based islamophobic tweeters having a field day with this. I haven’t checked that claim myself, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @sharl:

    On the Media pisses me off as often as not, but this list is spot on. I think they codified it in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, but it could have been any of a hundred mass shooting/hostage situations. With slight modifications (missing Malaysian airplanes) it can be adjusted for virtually any situation.

  54. 54.

    Kyle

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    “The Dish” is about the radio telescope in Parkes, NSW which is a small town 200 miles west of Sydney.
    There is also a dish outside Canberra at Tidbinbilla but this is not the one in the movie.

  55. 55.

    Alison

    Okay, hivemind. I need your help puzzling this out. In today’s Ethicist column in the NYT magazine, there’s this letter:

    My sister has told us she wants to be cremated when she dies. She is single, in her mid 50s and counting on her siblings to carry out her wishes. The rest of the family, however, does not believe in cremation and does not want to carry out her directive. (The disagreement is philosophical — we believe in burial to preserve green space. It’s not a religious matter.) We have told her so, but she is insistent. Do we have an ethical obligation to carry out her stated wishes although we disagree?

    Now, aside from the main topic (to which I say, STFU and do what your sister wants), what I’m totally confused on is the parenthetical: we believe in burial to preserve green space. How in the fuck does burial “preserve green space”? In opposition to cremation? Like…that seems counter-intuitive, since when you cremate someone, you don’t need to use up land to bury them. Not to mention, it’s not like we’re burying bodies in national parks or some shit. Cemeteries aren’t open wilderness spaces being taken over by developers. And I doubt we’re in danger of so few people wanting to be buried that we stop needing cemeteries and thus all the land that would have been used as a graveyard is now going to turn into strip malls, McMansions and gas stations.

    I’ve never heard this “philosophy” espoused before and have no idea how they get from point A – “We believe in the preservation of green space” – to point B – “Therefore, we don’t support cremation.” The columnist didn’t elucidate this at all, merely acknowledging their stance as though it was common enough that we’d understand it, even if we disagreed.

    Anyone have any light to shine?

  56. 56.

    ruemara

    I hope this shooter in Australia situation is resolved with minimal harm to innocents. The shooter can go fuck himself.

    Looks like I’ve found a drivers side wiper arm and a replacement bulb for the shifter. And I have a video from what seems to be a rather country fellow, on how to lift the doohicky thing with the shifty thing in it and to replace the bulb. My holiday plans are now complete.

  58. 58.

    Botsplainer

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    The missus spends about two months a year in your part of the world, usually Sydney, your wine country, Melbourne and the nice parts of QLD. Her Sydney friends are taking it in stride.

    Fun fact – we know the Sydney Hoax collar bomber – his older daughter was our middle child’s best friend through high school and they roomed together in college. Dude was odd.

  60. 60.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison:

    How in the fuck does burial “preserve green space”?

    Cemeteries are unlikely to become condo developments. They would have to move the bodies or risk a “Poltergeist” situation.

  61. 61.

    srv

    @Noah Smith @ top

    He just missed 99% of them. All the tech dudebros. 98% of which aren’t philosophers, because they couldn’t debate Hayek vs. von Mises if they were in a wet bag in a canoe, underwater with a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

    @lamh36: Western media is complicit in covering up Muslim terrorism.

  62. 62.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mathguy: I don’t need to RTFA to say that I seriously doubt it. To be more evil than Cheney is to tip over the edge into madness.

  63. 63.

    Alison

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s the only thing my parents and I could come up with, but like I said, I doubt we’re nearing Peak Cremation where no one will want to be buried. These people seem to be making a fucking quantum leap in their thinking…

  65. 65.

    Mike G

    @Mike in NC:

    Sorry, but nobody can come close to the utter worthlessness of the American news media.

    Rupert Murdoch controls 65% of the daily newspaper circulation in Australia. That should give you some idea of how much worse it can get.

  66. 66.

    Joel Hanes

    @Alison:

    No, I’m with you; I don’t understand their reasoning.

    My family has a small area in the ancestral cemetery.
    In recent generations, we’ve gone in for cremation with burial urn, which lets us inhume many more family members in that small space.

  67. 67.

    scav

    @Joel Hanes: If they sincerely wanted to preserve green space according to their lights and honor their sister’s request, they could buy the space and cremate her. They sound to be arguing in bad faith and stretching things in their favor.

  68. 68.

    Tenar Darell

    @Alison: No idea, so weird. If you’re Jewish you’re supposed to be buried, but not all Jews follow those religious rules. (Though that can make the family plot and marker an issue). There’s a non-denominational “green burial” movement, where you get like a biodegradable coffin and aren’t embalmed, but those cemeteries are few and far between. (There even was an episode of Bones that used it as a plot point).

  69. 69.

    ? Martin

    @Alison: Easy answer:

    1) Buy a plot at the cemetery or some other similar investment in land. Nature Conservancy immediately comes to mind.
    2) Cremate her and leave the plot empty.

    Either the family is lying about their motives or they’re too cheap to do both, in which case their issue is no longer philosophical. It doesn’t seem like they’ve tried very hard to meet her wishes. But yes, they have an ethical obligation if preference has been stated and insisted upon.

  76. 76.

    Tenar Darell

    @efgoldman: I was feeling so sad after the report, now I’m just mad, but not sure what to do about it except yell at my representatives.

    I don’t really understand the full court press digging deeper tour these evil monsters are on. The more they speak publicly, the worse they sound. I feel like they’re daring us all to do something or GTFO. Instinctually they are obviously muddying the record, but even the Dunning School crumbled over time. (Now that’s a bleak and terrible thought).

  77. 77.

    Another Holocene Human

    @JMG: Hey now, don’t forget embarrassed Republicans, really gung ho for everything the GOP stands for (especially the white supremacy) but too embarrassed by the anti-gay demogoguery.

    As soon as enough of the fossils die off the GOP is going to change their position which will always have been their position on SSM (ha ha, you think they care about employment discrimination? long enough to overturn CRA, they do).

  78. 78.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Alison: there’s a new hipstery no formaldehyde pine box burial thing, dunno if that is a thing or just talk like growing edible mushrooms on corpses

    cremation is shitty for the environment but so are modern embalming practices

    why not just donate the body to science? they have this awesome body farm in TN where they study decomposition so you don’t have to be some pimply intern’s worst day

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    Ref the sister’s wish to be cremated, they’re just cheap, make up any reason not to spend $1200 or so.

    I’ll never forget, my Dad kept Mom’s ashes on his bedside table and wanted to be cremated and scattered with her ashes in one of their favorite spots in teh green rolling hills of WVA.

    So my brother and I sat down with the Houston yellow pages and started down the list of funeral homes. Do you handle cremations? How much, no ceremony, no casket or urn, just the cremation, give us the cremains.

    Some outfits quoted $12,000!!! We got it done for about $900. Had a picnic the next summer, friends and cousins, would be nephews and nieces of the parents. Big fun, in a way. I cried, of course.

    But you know some people only make one phone call, and pay that $12,000, which is $10K clear profit, blood sucking profit!

  84. 84.

    Anne Laurie

    @Alison:

    How in the fuck does burial “preserve green space”?… it’s not like we’re burying bodies in national parks or some shit.

    Well, some of them become registered Historic Landmarks. Mt. Auburn is a real treasure for Boston-area birders, for instance.

    Omnes is right, a “garden cemetery” is (usually) developer-proof. The attitude is probably more common here on the East Coast, where urban development tends to be more restricted by geography, and the “car culture” isn’t quite so well-developed.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @J R in WV:

    Wait, seriously? When we cremated my dad in Arizona, it was under $1,000, and that included them picking the body up at the hospital. The urn cost the same as the actual cremation.

  90. 90.

    joel hanes

    @J R in WV:

    some people only make one phone call, and pay that $12,000

    Some people have a substantial load of guilt, and have no good way of expiating it except to overspend on the funeral and burial.

  91. 91.

    EconWatcher

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m actually surprised and pleased about how much this seems to have rattled Cheney. And although I didn’t see the interview, it sounds as if Chuck Todd actually did his job.

    The focus on the 26 out of 119 who were apparently innocent is absolutely critical. Cheney made it clear that he doesn’t care even if some innocent people were caught in the torture net, “as long as we achieved our objectives.” That’s where I think he’ll lose even a few wingnuts. I used to argue the death penalty in public fourms, and I found it was always best to focus on risk to the innocent when trying to move the undecided. Even some pretty hardcore DP supporters blanched at that. It will be the same here.

  93. 93.

    EconWatcher

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I think it’s remarkable that, at least in the last years of the Bush admin, Cheny’s public support was signficantly below the crazification factor of 27%. If I recall, he used to log in at 9 or 10% public approval. I think it’s because, even among wingnuts who don’t know when they’ve gone too far, he really stands out as having no sense of the decent limit.

  94. 94.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    @TheMightyTrowel: “Just doing my part to make clear to world the absolute shittiness of the Australian media”

    Can’t be THAT bad…you got rid of Rupert Murdoch, didn’t you?

  95. 95.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Seems like in America there are 3 groups of libertarians: 1. Philosophy nerds, 2. Rich people, and 3. Neo-Confederates. Am I missing any?

    He missed government employees. I think I may have meet a Libertarian or two who worked in private industry, but they are the exception to the rule.

  96. 96.

    Jeffro

    @Lurking Canadian: What about Reagan kids – current 40-50 year-olds who have never known anything but “tax cuts fix everything”? They’re their own special breed of libertardiot.

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