Here's a fun writeup of Reason's recent DC bash celebrating our 45th anniversary (we've held other events in Philadelphia and New York and will be hitting other cities throughout the course of the year to mark the 1968 founding of the nation's only journalistic outfit dedicated to "Free Minds and Free Markets.")
From Betsy Rothstein of Fishbowl DC:
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch fucking hate each other. Put them in the same air space and you're likely to hear them discuss their persisting feelings of blind rage for each other. Without even a trace of a smile, Gillespie, dressed head to toe in his signature black frock, explains the dynamic between the two. "We have a tight relationship that usually ends in physical violence," he says.
Welch, who is editor-in-chief of the magazine, casts a weary glance in Gillespie's direction: "He's from New Jersey."…
Fishbowl, Austin Price
One senses that the above scene between Gillespie and Welch has played out in variations before. No less funny, whatever the case. Gillespie, who edits the online publication and Reason TV, has been at Reason for 19 years. Welch, since 2002. "I took two years off for bad behavior at the LA Times," says Welch.
When I bring up their searing hatred to another employee, it's explained that they couldn't possibly have that much friction between them — Gillespie spends a portion of the month in Ohio, where his kids live, and Welch moved to Brooklyn a year ago, but visits D.C. often…
By far the weirdest thing in the newsroom is the male pants-less mannequin located by the bar in the main newsroom. It's showing off the black Reason T-shirt….
In the back of the office is a library complete with a gargoyle and skeleton head. The library is the place where journalists go to "think great thoughts," Gillespie explains.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com
posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary
period.
Subscribe
here to preserve your ability to comment. Your
Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the
digital
edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do
not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments
do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and
ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
It is too bad the Kochs didn't take over Reason instead of CATO and move it to Wichita. I think moving them out of Washington would do wonders for Reason.
But there offices are in Washington. It was a big deal when they moved from LA to Washington. The editors all live in Washington. The foundation is in LA but the magazine is in Washington.
My nephew said he wasn't worried because there is so much noise in an all pervasive data capture. I shook my head and told him, maybe ten years ago that made since, but he needs to understand the leaps and bounds in software and hardware technology that have been made over the past decade. A 64 bit file updated daily on every American can easily be accommodated in a modern top of the line system that is running at over a quadrillion calculations per second. If they wanted to use that data to round up a thousand random deviants for their on-line behavior one fine day, all they have to be concerned with is the man power to issue warrants. The computation indexing of who those people are is a breeze. At that point, he looked worried.
A 64 bit file updated daily on every American can easily be accommodated
That reads like I mean one file with 330 million entrants. No, 330 million individual files updated and read for comparative analysis, no problem at all.
I can't think of any society where pervasive, surreptitious surveillance led to anything good.
It is funny that the NSA's incompetence is forwarded as an argument *for* such a program. The onus should be on them to explain their program, not on us to explain the harm of a surveillance state.
Funny aside, the only comment I've gotten on my shirt(s) which I wear about town whenever they bubble up to the top of the drawer, was a props from a young black dude in Walmart. And here I thought we were all white, male and curmudgeonly. However, he didn't know the secret monocle polishing routine, so I don't think he's one of the H&R circle.
Wore mine to work the other day. Place is rotton with obamabots, but they're so beaten down with all the scandals and spying that no one said a word. Probably only a few that would recognize it, though.
I ran into one of the commentariat here once. I was helping my brother move. We were repairing his water well when the realtor showed up to appraise his house.
I noticed his vehicle had libertarian stickers on it. I introduced myself and said that I liked his stickers. I mentioned that where I live sporting those would probably get your car keyed.
I dont remember the conversation exactly but he became suspicious that he might know who I was. He kept looking at me funny with squinted eyes and I could tell he was dying to ask. Then he stood back watching my brother and I for a while. I noticed a couple of times he started to say something and then didnt. I did the same.
I am pretty sure he figured out I am Suthenboy, but I am clueless as to who he is.
Secret code/password - My wife suggested Umfitty noonah.
I dont remember who posted the link to the Tarvuism website the other day, but I showed it to my wife and she went nuts over it. She loves octopuses and in Tarvuism they are sacred. She has adopted the Tarvuistic saying Umfitty Noonah, which means 'be nice'. I guess we could make up an equally bullshitty saying meaning 'be free'.
Oh, and we have to have a nerdy secret handshake too. Gotta have that.
EDG and I hang out from time to time. He and his lovely wife even came to our wedding and came out here a few weeks back so we could drink...a lot. The rest of you bastards are welcome at Casa Sloopy any time you want.
In fact, we were thinking of having a dinner at our club one night this fall for all of the reasonoids that want to come. And there will be drinking in the bar, card-playing in the card room and other activities for the wives and kids in the pool area.
Seriously though, I'll keep everyone posted and give at least a month or so warning. And we will be putting a few people that want to come out. Our hospitality has no bounds...unless you're a cop from Seattle that thinks he's invited.
Too obvious. Just talk about how you recently got off disability an are working back up to your old weightlifting record. Add in how everyone loves you and respects you and you're good.
That's how I thought we were supposed to wear our reason t-shirts.
Yes, Donald Duck was in fact a hardcore libertarian and we should all emulate his fashion sense with our reason t-shirts at least once a year...preferably in an office of our choosing.
The momentum behind efforts to release Aamer ? who has spent more than 11 years without trial inside the camp ? mounted sharply last week
Who the fuck do we think we are? This isn't the America our founders established. Thanks a lot, Bush and Obama. You two turds are the cause for so much hatred of America around the world because you talk so much about freedom but lock someone up for 11 years without charge and refuse to even say why.
I really, truly hate having to say - but I'm not proud to be an American, where at least I used to be free.
Srsly. Our government has done so much bad shit in my lifetime, I just have a hard time with...everything. It's gotten so I won't say the Pledge of Allegiance any more - cause I'm not pledging allegiance to the fucked up mess our Overlords are inflicting upon us citizens and the rest of the world.
On the other hand, I wear my Reason, Free and Accepted Masons, and college t-shirts proudly.
Let me expand just a bit - America damned sure IS the central govt. I reflected on this in the store today - picking up a couple things, and realized EVERY fucking thing in there is controlled in some way by the govt, mostly central.
There's effectively no escape now, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to truly go off the grid. So the government effectively IS the US of America - it's everywhere and controls or influences everything.
I don't see that ever changing till we have full societal collapse and whatever follows (probably US of Somalia).
It's funny (sad) to me, but the most free places in America are in the bluest of blue states: the local flea markets.
I go there and buy shit that never came through customs (goods) or got inspected at a USDA facility (produce) and have even bought some livestock there that was raised on a farm and sold on the side.
And the only reason they're freer is because the feds are too lazy to come in and do an INS sweep and deport about 75% of the people there. Laziness on the part of the government makes it free. And the taco trucks outside are nothing but tents with a grill. No grade in the window and straight cash. But if you wan to open up a small takeout place at the mall, you've got to jump through hoops for months at great expense, because they want to steal as much of your revenue as possible because you're a "legit" business.
Ahh?he's Guy Bentley, the greeter and the guy whose key fob card is letting guests upstairs.
Nice controls. If something happens and they audit the security logs, it's going to show the intern let the perp into the secure area. Honestly, reason.
Above, footage of a protester's quadcopter in Gezi Park getting shot down by the Turkish Police. Below, the footage of police violence the drone had been capturing (complete with music that sounds like it came out of an orc-fighting scene in the Hobbit). Ahead of us: a long, weird future history of protest.
But Islam is a religion of peace Mulatto. For douchebags like Doctorow, what is going on Turkey doesn't compute. Those protestors must be tea baggers or something.
Well, the Maldives are pretty "peaceful". When your culture and government proscribes death for any dissent, you get the peace of docile obeisance under the shadow of the sword blade.
According to the Constitution of Maldives, "The judges are independent, and subject only to the constitution and the law. When deciding matters on which the Constitution or the law is silent, judges must consider Islamic Shari'ah." Article 15 of the Act Number 1/81 (Penal Code) gives provision for hudud punishments. Article 156 of the constitution states that law includes the norms and provisions of sharia.
Islam is the official religion of the Maldives and open practice of any other religion is forbidden and liable to prosecution. Article 2 of the revised constitution says that the republic "is based on the principles of Islam." Article nine says that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen"; Article ten says that "no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied". Article nineteen states that "citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia [Islamic law] or by the law."
In Saudi Arabia translating the Koran will get you death. We wouldn't want anyone reading the thing and getting any ideas that it might not say what the Imans tell you.
The constitution states that all Maldivians must be Sunni Muslim. On 14 December 2011 a group of ten men attacked peaceful demonstrators in Mal? calling for religious tolerance. Sufi Ismail Khilath Rasheed sustained a skull fracture and was later arrested as his calls for tolerance were unconstitutional. No effort was made to arrest the attackers. On 5 June 2012, Rasheed was stabbed in the neck. Reporters Without Borders stated that it appeared that he had been deliberately targeted for his journalism. A minister of the Maldivian government condemned the attack, but also added "Hilath must have known that he had become a target of a few extremists ... We are not a secular country. When you talk about religion there will always be a few people who do not agree."
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs is the only body which grants licenses to imams, and sermons must be approved. They also control religious education and have the power to deport any non-Muslim. Non-Muslim foreigners must practice their religion in private.
Flogging is a frequently imposed punishment, and carried out behind the court buildings. 96 people ? over 80% of them women ? were sentenced to this mode of torture in 2010 ...
Flogging is a punishment imposed upon women for extramarital sex. On 5 July 2009 an eighteen-year-old woman was sentenced to 100 lashings for sex with two men outside marriage; her pregnancy was used by the courts as proof of guilt. The two men were acquitted. Journalists reported that she fainted after the punishment was carried out and taken to a local hospital.
According to the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief's February 2007 report, "members of local congregations on some of the islands do not allow foreign manual laborers to attend the mosque." She was also informed that "expatriate school pupils who choose not to study Islam are unable to pass their end of year school exams." The government denied these allegations.
When the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief visited the Maldives' only prison, she found non-Muslim prisoners "unable to perform their prayers due to the objections of their Maldivian cellmates." There were no accommodations made for Hindu prisoners with dietary restrictions.
Most citizens regard Islam as one of their society's most distinctive characteristics and believed that it promotes harmony and national identity. The President regularly encourages all citizens to seek unity through their shared religion.
On Human Rights Day, 10 December 2011, protesters led by Ismail Khilath Rasheed, calling themselves 'Silent Solidarity', gathered at the Artificial Beach to protest religious intolerance in the Maldives. They were attacked by Sunni Muslims who vowed to kill them.
On 12 February, 2012, the National Museum was stormed by a handful of men who then destroyed priceless Buddhist statues from the nation's pre-Islamic era of over eight centuries ago, which "effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past" according to a senior museum official. Authorities banned footage of the aftermath, to prevent harm to the nation's image.
Find a neighbor with ducks and get some eggs from them. Eggs Benedict with duck eggs is the closest thing I've had to pre-noon culinary perfection in my entire life.
I got some duck eggs from the Chinese store once and they were the foulest (no pun intended) thing that I ever tried to eat. They smelled horrible and tasted worse,
If the Maldives have all these rules, how come all the supercelebrities keep going there on their honeymoons? I can't believe they'd go somewhere they couldn't have booze.
I'm with Doctorow if he's mocking the musical choice. (It's also possible he's somewhat in favor due to his nerd bona fides but nevertheless WTFing a certain unavoidable amount.)
Even though I know, intellectually, that shooting a an RC helicopter is just property damage, I felt weird sympathy pangs for the quad-copter. Like, as if it had the capacity to suffer.
I almost cried when my Kawasaki ZRX 1100 got taken out by a truck in Toledo. I lived - the bike was seriously killed.
I've since bought another one - a couple years newer 1200 - but can't help but think about the one that was killed. I hope someone at least pulled the motor and used it for a go kart or something...
If you're looking for a clean, safe, English-speaking tax haven, with a mild, maritime climate, and an advanced, Western lifestyle, Norfolk Island should be on your radar.
. . .
Norfolk Island is the only place in the world I have ever been where there is no income tax, no company tax, no property tax, and no municipal taxes. The only tax that currently applies on the island is a 12% goods and services tax (GST).
The air is some of the cleanest I've breathed anywhere in the world. It's never too hot, and never too cold. Temperatures rarely drop below 12 degrees Celsius (54F) in winter, and rarely climb above 28C (82F) summer.
Is Lee's chicken still as good as it used to be? That's way more important.*
*I always found it funny that Lee's, whose patrons are probably 95% black, is just two blocks from the Lee statue on Monument. And not a soul in that city gives a shit.
When I lived in SC, there's a medium-sized barbecue chain that gives out Southern apologist propaganda and "the South will Rise Again" tchochkes and League of the South literature.
I have personally witnessed a large party of African-Americans go in, make a sizeable order, eat (and seemingly enjoy) their food, and be treated amiably, courteously, but mostly left alone.
I'm assuming your talking about Maurice's. The southern apologist stuff has been toned down quite a bit the last few years. Although you can still get yourself a copy of The Truth About Lincoln or whatever.
The moral is that self interest pursued via voluntary cooperation produces more social, including racial, harmony than government coersion possibly can.
Love of money will move a racist businessman to gladly sell to people that they hate, and in doing so, their hatred will erode at least little bit.
This thread will be worthwhile if just one non-reasonoid comes on here and reads ^^this comment^^. It's a fundamental part of libertarian economic theory and it's the one the left most intentionally lies about.
Bingo. I always like to bring up mass transit in the South. When it first started, it was run by private companies, and integrated because being a bigot is a cost for businesses.
Once the government took over, it became segregated.
IIRC, we had one or two near where I grew up in Cincy. But the one in Richmond was just head and shoulders above and other fried chicken joint in town.
Damn, I miss the RIC. I may have to go back for a visit soon. All my old friends have either moved away or crossed over to the dark side (Chesterfield County). But I'm sure I could find some trouble to get into.
This thread is great. Lee's pretty much got through undergrad with the hangover curing powers of fried chicken and hot sauce and Maurice's got me through law school, pretty much because it was down the street from my apartment.
...At the corner of Pump and Patterson in Rare Olde Times. But I just couldn't go in there much after Martin died.
*And if anybody knows that place well at all, could they give me an update on Andy Jennings. And Gerry Collins as well. I know he went to become a deputy sheriff for Henrico and I haven't seen him since he was getting ready to arrest me at Strawberry Hill for mooning the horses until he recognized me.
Also, I've lived ex-pat and I've lived on an island. I strongly recommend that anyone considering moving to this place try both first. Pretty sure you'll change your mind.
I agree with Ice Nine. I've lived on Puerto Rico and it was fine. When I went over to Vieques for a few weeks to ty it out, I wanted to go crazy because it was just too small and slow and everyday conveniences were hard to come by. Same for when I went and checked out Dominica. There's a lot to be said for being able to say, "I'd like fried chicken tonight. Do I want to go to a restaurant and get it or do I want to go to the grocery store?" It can be a lot better than "I'd like fried chicken tonight. I better go catch a chicken, kill it, process it, brine it, and then fry it up.", because the alternative is "I'd like fried chicken tonight so I'll get a chicken the next time I go to the mainland or the next time the food ship comes in, which will be next Friday."
I have lived in remote areas. It gets old. You really take conveniences for granted. You have to be wired just right to live in a place like that. Most people are not.
There is a big US air force base on Kwajaline Atoll. It is like four miles long. A couple of thousand employees, contractors and Air Force people live there. It is a tropical paradise. But they also fly everyone on the Island back to Hawaii for a long weekend once a quarter. If they didn't, they worry people would go crazy and start killing each other.
I knew a lot of tough, adventurous ex-pats where I was. Most of them bailed and went home after 4-5 years. What John said. It takes a very specific type that has some special intangible thing to make that work for the long term.
In 2008, the United States government passed a rule governing the procedure of renunciations. They deemed that a 'covered expatriate', i.e. a person of some wealth, would have to pay an exit tax before renouncing on the mark-to-market gains across his/her entire estate.
. . .
Despite these existing rules, however, some US Senators are now working to reintroduce legislation that would bar covered expatriates from entering the United States. And, it would retroactively apply to covered expatriates who renounced ten years ago (when the term 'covered expatriate' didn't even exist.
In a way, it seems kind of good. Shows that they're getting desperate. They're flirting with ex post-facto laws, and trying to squeeze more.
I'm sure someone like Schumer would go for it just to hurt people who dare to decline to pay him, but I'd expect some others are starting to realize they're running out of money to steal. Kind of like the various agencies that are stepping up suits against companies.
They are just nasty and mean spirited. The measure wont' even raise any money. This is the result of politics becoming about punishing your opponents. They just want to fuck people they don't like. It is the ultimate expression of politics in the age of Obama. It is always about getting some designated other.
"It is the ultimate expression of politics in the age of Obama."
When he said he/they were going to punish their enemies and reward their friends I was aghast. I couldnt believe he would say that out loud and reveal himself to be so transparently a banana republic dictator wannabe. As soon as I heard him say that I thought surely this will make his support evaporate and the press will be all over this.
I think part of it is the media just never reports or emphasizes that stuff. Most people have no idea and would be shocked to learn he ever said anything like that. Most people don't pay attention and believe what the media tells them. And thus, they think Obama is a moderate pragmatic nice guy.
Most people have no idea and would be shocked to learn he ever said anything like that.
I don't think so. When the IRS story came out tons or progllodytes were defending the IRS saying the tea baggers deserved it. And a lot of conservative would have done the same thing if it had been progressive sounding groups that were singled out.
The sad truth it that most people are ok with fascism, so long as it delivers the bacon to them.
Nah, the partisans care about who's ox is being gored. But we're talking about LIVs. LIVs know that Mitt Rommney hates the 47% but they don't know about Obama's promise to punish his enemies.
That's the difference, and the true power of the media. When most people only consume ten minutes of news a day, the stuff that makes it into that ten minutes is incredibly powerful.
We live in a society where those that push the memes best win the elections.
We need a Houston event. I'll have to keep my real name secret during it tho, or RCD (where the hell has he been lately, anyway?) will know how many times I've been kicked off Samizdata.
Just thought you guys woulld want to know, I'm on my way right now to one of the IHS Summer Seminars. David Friedman is going to be there as a lecturer!
...It might be purely accidental that the government targeted precisely this biggest threat to the president. It may just be that a bureaucracy dominated by liberals picked up on not-so-subtle dog whistles from its political leadership. Or, it might be that direct orders were given. In any case, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously. The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign. Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated....
The fact is the Tea Party got huge turn out in 2010 and didn't in 2012. Why? One answer is that Romney was bad. Maybe. But usually turnout is driven by hate of the other guy. And people hated Obama more in 12 than they did in 10.
The circumstantial case is pretty compelling. The head of the IRS and the Chief of Staff of the IRS, who was a political hack with no knowledge of tax law, went to the White House and the OEOB hundreds of times leading up to the election for meeting that included the leadership of the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, the IRS is out holding up every single Tea Party application.
And the IRS was asking for donor info perfect for creating a parallel social network of Obama's opposition to be data mined w/ the same tools developed by the Obama campaign's friends in Silicon Valley, which just happen to also be NSA vendors.
You can target your marketing not just at your soft supporters but at the other guy's soft supporters to demoralize them and keep them from showing up. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is being prevented from fighting back. Remember, he only one 52% of the popular vote. It doesn't take that much to flip an election.
While all of that may be true, Romney was bad. This was a major demoralizing factor. He is a fucking east coast liberal, gun control supporter, global warming hack, designer of obamneycare....for fuck's sake. They put that guy up there and painted 'conservative' across his forehead when everyone knew he was obama-lite.
It aint called the party of stupid for nothing. Goddamn I get mad thinking about that.
They just don't have any balls. They are so easily intimidated by the media. Most Republican establishment types are terrified of the media painting them as being unreasonable or extremist.
But Romney being bad doesn't make people hate Obama less. The challenger doesn't matter. It is about the incumbent. And the incumbent was a disaster.
Think about it this way, Obama is the first incumbent to ever win re-election with fewer votes than he got the first time. It is totally unprecedented. Maybe that is the new normal or maybe something very strange was going on.
But Romney being bad doesn't make people hate Obama less.
Actually, he did, by not offering any contrast and constantly talking about what a nice guy Obama was. That might not have affected the hard core Obama haters, but it did affect the marginal middle that Romney needed.
Romney also played into Obama's strategy of suppressing white working class voters. Romney offered those people nothing. His investor experience didn't appeal to them at all, in fact it turned off a lot and culturally he was seen as the same as Obama to those people and he made no attempt to appeal to them on guns, religion, lower taxes etc.
The challenger doesn't matter. It is about the incumbent. And the incumbent was a disaster.
Yeah the white working class is icky. Even though a very slight percentage pickup there would have delivered him a smashing victory.
No, better go more and more left and then try to appeal to Hispanics. Forget about the Reagan Democrats. What kind of loser thinks they're the key to electoral success?
Suthenboy is dead-on. "Swing" voters that straddle the parties had no reason to switch horses if there was no substantive difference between Obama and Romney. Team Red royally fucked up when they didn't get 100% behind Ron Paul when he got a little momentum early. He was the only starkly different pol up there from a scope-of-government perspective. Sure there were some hardcore SoCons, but they weren't gonna drum up support from anyone other than the dedicated Team Red base...and those people would have voted for Paul over Obama anyway. Meanwhile, you peel off some anti-war folks, some hispanics because Paul may have come through with immigration reform and some in the middle that are just tired of the traditional two-party mess.
Paul would have won with 40+ states in his pocket.
Paul could have won if he had just kept his mouth shut about defense issues. He is a closed border guy, so immigration wouldn't have hurt him. And he is anti abortion so the SOCONS would have bought in.
The only thing that would have hurt Paul was that the youth would have been brow beaten into abandoning him. The popular culture would have gone toxic against him and that would have caused the youth vote to leave him.
I just don't see ho the popular culture would have gone toxic on him. He could have beaten his anti-interventionist drum all day long with that crowd and they would have jumped in line to vote for him. For god measure, he could have trotted out a few choice comments made by Obama admin people that said we need to reinstate the draft...people like the VP. The youth don't want to get blown up because Obama wants to keep fighting Bush's wars...or expand them to other nations like he had done already.
Paul would have siphoned a lot of youth voters on that issue alone. Then he could have gotten to decrim of some drugs and at least forced Obama to defend his fighting of the drug war. That would have siphoned off black voters of all ages.
I'm telling you, Paul would have slaughtered Obama.
I just don't see ho the popular culture would have gone toxic on him.
Hollywood and the media would have destroyed him as an out of touch crazy old man who believed in conspiracy theories and don't forget the newsletters. They would have portrayed him as a complete racist.
Look at it this way, they managed to portray Mitt fucking Romney as a woman hating radical conservative. Romney, the most liberal establishment PC Republican there is, and they made all of the low information voters think he was some kind of conservative crazy. What do you think they would have done to Paul, a guy who actually does hold some radical views?
The media will always always always portray the GOP candidate as a radical extreme conservative. So the GOP needs stop nominating mushy moderates that turn off their base's enthusiasm in an attempt to get the approval of the Northeastern chattering classes.
Take the hit of the media disapproval, and keeping making the case of small government and fiscal responsibility. Don't answer the wedge issue bullshit, because thats what the Democrats feed off of.
Yep, the only way to effectively deal with the media bias is to directly confront it.
Reagan won doing so and so did Gingrich in the 90s.
The establishment compulsion to try appeasing the media is ridiculously naive. Starting with the fact that the attacks are complete bullshit that even the media doesn't really believe.
How many parents would Paul win nationwide when it came out that he would repeal Federal laws against coke, heroin, ecstasy and meth?
Um, he was talking about taking pot off the Schedule A list, not making all of that other stuff legal. He would have left all of those issues to the states.
How many farmers could he win after it comes out that he's against the Ag Dept?
Probably a lot of them since they would be free to farm as they see fit and not be beholden to idiotic policies. Sure there would be a bit of butthurt over the corn subsidies going away, but the benefits of that are still less than the harm all of the curent regs cause them.
How would the military feel after they realize a whole bunch of 'em--enlisted men, officers, contractors--are just going to lose their jobs?
He never said any of our military would lose their jobs. He just wanted to bring them all home and cut the equipment (read: idiotic shit like the F-35) budgets for bad gear.
How would the seniors and near-seniors respond to the impending abolition of Medicare and Social Security?
It's gonna get restructured or implode anyway. At least he had a plan to restructure it. The current alternative is to keep it afloat until it topples the entire federal budget.
How would professors, students, administrators etc. react to the abolition of federal aid to higher education?
How would professors ... react to the abolition of federal aid to higher education?
I would have reacted just fine, thank you. Some people can but principle before self-interest. But I agree with you that they're not enough of them out there for a Paul victory.
How would the military feel after they realize a whole bunch of 'em--enlisted men, officers, contractors--are just going to lose their jobs?
Probably pretty fucking good since they'd have known Paul was a lot less likely to mince about with half-assed wars where a bunch of our boys get killed for no reason other than to bolster the political fortunes of the people in charge. Paul would have gotten them home within the shores of America back into a defensive posture, which is where every soldier prefers to be.
The war hawks are the politicians. Soldiers prefer peace.
Yeah one of my roommates is a much bigger Paul fan then me, which is saying something. He's got a parachute badge and a CIB. Is fond of declaring that various things are "shittier then fucking Iraq".
Paul wouldn't have won -- not a chance. I like the guy, but he was... doddering, to put it politely. Too much crazy shit in his past and stupid shit coming out of his mouth, and almost no administrative ability.
The President said no one needs more than three million dollars to retire on. The rest of that money is just them hoarding it. And you know what happens to hoarders don't you?
Reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau have a long piece on the Obama administration's transparency--or rather its lack thereof, which goes by the name Insider Threat Program. This bit is priceless:
The Peace Corps, which is in the midst of implementing its program, "takes very seriously the obligation to protect sensitive information," said an email from a Peace Corps official who insisted on anonymity but gave no reason for doing so.
What secrets could the Peace Corps, of all the ridiculous bureaucracies, have to hide? Well, other than who they are and why they don't want you to know.
Someone made the observation that the peace corps and other NGOs employ many more people and meddle in the affairs of 3rd world countries more than the colonial administrators of the 19th-20th century European empires.
...'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends ? and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "...
That is some massively creepy shit. Remember Obama won low information voters by huge numbers. This would go a long ways to explain that. This sort of thing is perfect for getting low information low interest voters to turn out.
and Michele M. Leonhart, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration
From: David G. Evans, Executive Director of the Drug Free Schools Coalition
Dear Mr. Holder and Ms. Leonhart:
Parents across America are waiting for you to enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act in the states of Colorado and Washington, which have legalized recreational marijuana, as well as in the 19 states where "medical" marijuana is legal. These laws were passed as the result of a well-funded lobbying campaign by the marijuana industry. The public has been misled by this campaign to see marijuana as harmless, natural, and medicinal, just as we were misled years ago by the tobacco industry, which claimed that tobacco was not addictive and that smoking had no ill effects.
In addition to the harm being visited upon our children by recreational and medical" marijuana, your failure to adequately enforce federal law is also in violation of international law ? the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, to which the United States is party. America has been warned by the International Narcotics Control Board about this violation. The UN can place sanctions on the US for violating the treaty. How could you let that happen?
Maybe we could get the Blue Helmets to come and save our children; they do such a good job everywhere else they go.
Look what happened to Holland when they legalized weed. They were totally kicked out of the international community right? Lots of countries have effectively decriminalized pot. Hell, a good number of pain pills are over the counter in Latin America. What a lying sack of shit.
random thought I had while driving from home: why the push for immigration "reform" right now? I mean the Democrats could have done this in 2008 but didn't. Why?
Do they want to the Republican House to kill it to gin up Hispanic support for 2014/2016? Or if it does pass, the Democrats still get the glory. It's win-win really.
They are pushing for it because they have to. In 09, they didn't give a shit about hispanics. They knew they were voting D in 2012 no matter what. So they went after healthcare and stealing as much as possible.
Now, Hispanics are starting to realize Dems don't give a shit about them. So Dems are pushing for immigration reform. The Republicans are insane if they agree to it. It failing will just cause Hispanics to lose faith in Democrats and stay home or vote for other reasons in 14. Passing it, will just allow Dems to take all of the credit and reward Hispanics for voting for them.
Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants
The release of a previously unseen document suggested that Labour's migration policy over the past decade had been aimed not just at meeting the country's economic needs, but also the Government's "social objectives". ...
... The original paper called for the need of a new framework for thinking about migration policy but the concluding phrase ? "if we are to maximise the contribution of migration to the Government's economic and social objectives" ? was edited out.
Another deleted phrase suggested that it was "correct that the Government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy". ...
Leftists want to create an oppressed base. This is why they support multiculturalism and do everything they can to ensure Hispanics never assimilate. The idea is to bring voters in who will stay marginalized, poor and dependent on the government.
not to get all "Yokeltarian" but could someone point out a modern welfare state where bringing in large numbers of low-skilled foreigners worked out really well?
I know historically speaking, it did work out great for the U.S. but those were different times without a massive welfare state.
No welfare state and a society that was committed to assimilating immigrants. We didn't have a victim industrial complex back then. Immigrants came here and did everything they could to become like everyone else. Now, we have an entire educational and political establishment designed to make them into victims and outsider groups.
Exactly. The other thing that worries me is the public education system. Why on earth would anyone push bilingual education if their purpose wasn't to ensure that the group never assimilated and never succeeded?
It seems to me that immersion does tend to work. I know that every language class I ever took was a joke, because none of the teachers ever stopped me from just speaking English.
If my sensei or my Spanish teacher had pretended to not understand English, I think I might have picked it up better.
It seems to me that immersion does tend to work. I know that every language class I ever took was a joke, because none of the teachers ever stopped me from just speaking English.
You're right. You do need to be immersed in a language to acquire it, but that's not what "English Immersion" refers to in this case. It means the kids are only instructed in English (be it Math, Science, History, etc.) with the lessons designed to provide support for learning the language. Again, those kids are only hearing English 6 to 8 hours a day, and then probably going back home to speak their home language.
Bilingual Ed, maintains the home language and adds English to it. The problem I have with English Immersion is that the kids are developing their academic vocabulary in English (CALP) but not in their home language (which stunts their growth in their home language). While you might ask "who cares?" The point is that's one reason why we have to wait 6 months for an Al-Qaeda communique to be adequately translated because we don't have a large enough pool of competent speakers.
It sure does - ask any exchange student. Also, I had an "immersive" semester of French in college that was more effective in making me comfortable speaking it than the four semesters of Italian I took from an old-school prof.
You're right VG, your anecdotal evidence is far superior to my decade and a half of research and scholarship into that exact field of inquiry.
You don't need that fancy-pants, city slicker book larnin' VG, you have "family experience!" And you come to the subject with absolutely no cognitive biases at all! Because you're VG! You're a special little snowflake!
I think that the best way would be for ESL students to get a year long course to bring their English level up to where they could just go to normal school next year.
But I claim no expertise or knowledge in the field, and SLD applies as always.
The right answer is to end government schools and let the parents decide how to educate their children.
SLD, duh!
Interestingly enough, the golden age of Bilingual Ed, during the 19th Century, was destroyed by the Progressives, who feared those dirty Papists weren't Americanizing their children by sending them to Parochial schools that taught half the day in French/Italian and half the day in English.
Yes, one might be fairly conversant in a language after a full year's worth of intensive study, but is that enough to study a cognitively demanding subject in that language?
For example, after a year of Japanese, you might be able to have a conversation about what is your favorite food or how the weather is, but could you follow a lecture on the Meiji Restoration in Japanese or Quantum Electrodynamics? Could you write the 5-paragraph essay without sounding like "Me learn. Me know stuffs"?
When it comes to language instruction, we must be aware of the fact that languages have two "flavors":Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). (See here for a quick and dirty explanation). Current research shows it takes 5 to 7 years of instruction to master CALP.
For example, after a year of Japanese, you might be able to have a conversation about what is your favorite food or how the weather is, but could you follow a lecture on the Meiji Restoration in Japanese or Quantum Electrodynamics? Could you write the 5-paragraph essay without sounding like "Me learn. Me know stuffs"?
You realize that we're talking about grammar school children, not graduate students, right?
I'm gonna agree and disagree on this one, HM. Bilingual ed done right can work wonderfully, but the way I was taught in PR (and the way it is taught in many schools today) is woefully lacking.
The pedagogy of bilingual education is somewhat more complex than standardized education -- who among us really expects the asswipes teaching in public schools across the nation to get it right?
That said, my wife does homeschool bilingually and my kids speak and write English and Spanish (esp English) at a very high level, and my wife is far from being a native English speaker. (Same here for that matter, but my accent is mostly gone after working for the Chair Force for so many years.)
The pedagogy of bilingual education is somewhat more complex than standardized education -- who among us really expects the asswipes teaching in public schools across the nation to get it right?
Yep, though I get paid trying my damnedest to try to make those asswipes competent. 🙂 I think we can agree that it's not the theory but the practice that is what's at issue here. If we allowed for greater school choice, in immigrant communities, I think we would slowly see a return to the 19th century bilingual parochial school model, I mentioned upthread. You already see this in many Muslim American communities. (Madrasas! Well, madaris, actually.)
And here's the point VG, if you assert that the past 50 or so years of research, done by hundreds of scholars, into a field I'm intimately familiar with is "bullshit", you better be prepare to support your argument with verifiable facts, research, and evidence.
Otherwise, you're just the quack screaming about the suppressed cure for cancer in front of an oncologists' convention.
I'm saying that the result or bi lingual ed have been a complete failure in CA. A disaster of enormous proportions. And it's not like we didn't have hundreds of years of experience doing it the other way,including both my and my wife's parents and their siblings as points of comparison.
So to this igrunt yokeltarian, your studies 'proving' it's efficacy sound like the socialists that claim communism never worked because it wasn't done right. And I'm reminded of the quip that 'it's hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not'.
Beyond that, I agree with robc that government needs to get out of the providing schooling business and let a market develop.
Firstly, define what you mean by "bilingual ed" and what you mean by "success". I feel we might be arguing from two different definitions.
And it's not like we didn't have hundreds of years of experience doing it the other way,including both my and my wife's parents and their siblings as points of comparison.
Actually, we haven't. The Bilingual Ed. model has a much, much older history in America than "sink or swim" or English immersion, as I pointed out upthread.
So to this igrunt yokeltarian, your studies 'proving' it's efficacy sound like the socialists that claim communism never worked because it wasn't done right.
And again, you provide no evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, you seem to be accusing me of lying and academic fraud, so excuse me for being a little hot under the collar.
And I'm reminded of the quip that 'it's hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not'.
Heh. Nevertheless, even if Bilingual Ed. were declared illegal tomorrow, I'd still have a job. Bilingual ed is not the only 2nd language pedagogy out there. But to argue that it is inferior to structured English immersion, by any metric, is nonsense. Furthermore, you seem to be only arguing from the perspective of California's experience with it. I've visited programs across the country and around the World, so my sampling is larger.
Beyond that, I agree with robc that government needs to get out of the providing schooling business and let a market develop.
Indeed, and I wager it would look a lot like the 19th century parochial "golden age of ESL" model.
Heh. Nevertheless, even if Bilingual Ed. were declared illegal tomorrow, I'd still have a job.
I was referring to the studies authors, not you.
Furthermore, you seem to be only arguing from the perspective of California's experience with it.
Yes, I have extensive first hand knowledge of how it's played out in this state. And I am speaking about that experience, not theories of the concept or how it has been developed elsewhere.
Firstly, define what you mean by "bilingual ed" and what you mean by "success". I feel we might be arguing from two different definitions.
Perhaps,
I was speaking of it in response to John's point that it is failing to socialize 1st and 2nd generation immigrant children into the the broader english speaking society.
In CA in the 1970s it was sold to the public as doing that more effectively than the immersion approach (setting aside whether or not that is something that government schools should be doing in the 1st place). And on those terms it has been a failure as the students subjected to it have had worse outcomes across the board than students that haven't been subjected to it. So much so that ironically it is immigrants themselves that are pushing back against it.
I started to google up studies to post but decided that I didn't want to get in a confirmation bias war with you. Any one can find hundreds of articles and studies regarding the negative effects of CA's bilingual education experience.
Also ironically, i agree that it seems like a great idea, makes common sense and has any number of studies demonstrating its efficacy.
But the experience of how its actually been implemented here by government schools is irrefutably negative.
Oh, you're totally right of course. I'm speaking from an idealist perspective. My plan is totally out of the realm of possibility...at least until the government implodes.
We're not getting rid of the welfare state. So the solution is to hand out lots of work visas. That pisses off the unions and does not create new Democratic voters, however, so it's a non-starter in the current environment.
I would go for that. Give anyone who wants them a ten year work VISA. At the end of the ten years, they either apply for citizenship or they go home. Most people who come here don't want to stay anyway. They just want to come and make some money and go home. And if they want to stay, after ten years of not being a criminal and working, let them.
I'm for this, Fatty...especially if you forbid them from applying for or receiving any form of state or federal welfare.
How would you set it up if they get married while here, though? Or if they have a child who is then an American citizen jus soli. After 10 years when their visa is up and they don't want to become a citizen, what do you do with them? What do you do with their American citizen kid?
Lots of questions to be answered, but your proposal is a very good starting point.
Yeah that's my issue with visas. At some point, the state has to use force to move someone.
Just open the borders, restrict welfare to American citizens only, and require any citizens who wish to be naturalized to make a cash payment of 50,000 dollars.
Of course this will never happen in a million years because it doesn't give the Dems new voters, and puts the entirety of the immigration industry out of work.
not to get all "Yokeltarian" but could someone point out a modern welfare state where bringing in large numbers of low-skilled foreigners worked out really well?
Doing well for whom? I assume the question was about the citizens of the country. As for Qatar, they're not chopping heads, but the way the guest workers are often treated, it's not all sweetness and light.
As far as I know, the Bahraini protests are "Arab Spring"-type protests by native citizens against the draconian laws on free expression and religion. (The majority population is Shia, but the monarch is Sunni.) I haven't seen much evidence about it being due to labor issues.
I know someone from Qatar. He's Qatari and seems fairly well off (not necessarily wealthy, but he's not starving or being oppressed as far as I can tell; not sure about his situation on the whole though), so knowing him doesn't give an indication of how they treat immigrants or guest workers. I could ask him though; he's libertarian too, so he should be relatively unbiased on the matter.
Do they want to the Republican House to kill it to gin up Hispanic support for 2014/2016? Or if it does pass, the Democrats still get the glory. It's win-win really.
Limbaugh has been saying exactly that for several months.
But those banks are now so large (much larger than they were when they almost melted down five years ago), have such a monopolistic grip on our financial system, and exercise so much power over Washington, that we have cause for concern. The fact that not a single Wall Street executive has been held legally accountable for the excesses that almost brought the economy to its knees five years ago and continues to burden millions of Americans, that even the Attorney General confesses the biggest banks are "too big to jail," that the big banks continue to make irresponsible bets (such as those resulting in JP Morgan Chase's $6 billion "London Whale" loss), and that the Street has effectively eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank legislation intended to rein in its excesses and avoid another meltdown and bailout, all offer evidence that the Street is still dangerously out of control.
I wonder why he did not believe it to be useful (much less necessary) to mention the role of the FDIC in the expansion of those megabanks.
and that the Street has effectively eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank legislation intended to rein in its excesses and avoid another meltdown and bailout, all offer evidence that the Street is still dangerously out of control.
Clearly the solution is more regulation. It has to work this time.
It is rare in these harshly partisan times for the political left and right to agree on much of anything. But the reason, I think, both are worried about the encroachments of the NSA on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, as well as the depredations of "too big to fail or jail" Wall Street banks on our economy, is fundamentally the same: It is this toxic combination of inordinate power and lack of accountability that renders both of them dangerous, threatening our basic values and institutions.
That neither Republicans nor Democrats have done much of anything to effectively rein in these two centers of unaccountable power suggests that, if there is ever to be a viable third party in America, it will may borne of the ill-fated consequences.
The government is too large and powerful. this state of affairs can be remedied by making the government larger and more powerful.
Surprise! Not everybody at the Christian Science Monitor site is stupid or crazy:
After years of grim revenue news, state tax collections are surging. As they do, governors and state legislators are making decisions about how to manage the unfamiliar windfall. Some governors, including California's Jerry Brown, are husbanding resources, trying to hold down spending and paying down one-time debts. Others, such as New York's Andrew Cuomo, are falling victim to the siren song of targeted tax cuts.
Cuomo is not cutting tax rates across the board, like some Republican governors. Instead, he's doubling down on a strategy of growing the state's economy through targeted tax breaks even though there is little evidence that previous economic development subsidies paid off.
Tax incentives merely create churn without actually increasing jobs in the aggregate? Mindboggling!
So the solution is to hand out lots of work visas. That pisses off the unions and does not create new Democratic voters, however, so it's a non-starter in the current environment.
La Raza gets a fifty million dollar slush fund, the Democratic Party gets a slew of new voters, Republican national security bully boys get a brand spanking new fence in which to keep us all in and an improved documentation regime to further harass us, what do libertarians get out of this heap of shit? Why we get to support it or be called names by the establishment media. In other words, a split in our rank and file. I guess it would be imprudent of us if we actually expected to get something out a deal given we never do get anything out of them. But if we elbowed our way in, after all, we are equal in number to the hardcore progressives who ALWAYS get a huge slice of the pie, what would we ask for? Maybe an end to laws that penalize employers who don't give a rip where their employees come from or what their legal status be it undocumented or outlaw happens to be? That would be a good start, right?
Our goals are incompatible with theirs. The statists can get the papieren bitte and the government cheese, but there's no way to accommodate liberty with this monstrosity.
Here's the thing for me. La Raza and Cato or the Reason Foundation should at the very least be comparative in terms of political clout. I understand the political reality that the two libertarian organization live under that they have to support a bill that is perceived as pro-immigrant. However, when you are in a minority position but have some political clout (which again, should at least equal La Razas) you don't have to be asked to give up that ass for free. Instead you assert a little sway to get poison pills and contradictory language written into a bill. Say, my demand above is too ambitious to be accommodated. How about making weekend landscaping and babysitting services will no longer be subject to labor law? That's reasonable, right?
Completely agree. Libertarians should be more politically potent than they are right now -- about on the level of hardcore proggies, who don't get everything they want but certainly get plenty of bones tossed their way.
CATO and Reason shouldn't fold on this one so easily. They should explain what they want out of an immigration bill, and use their influence to attack bills that don't get even close to that standard -- or as you say, have some leverage over what gets in the bill and what gets tossed out.
You are high if you think Cato or Reason could currently match the political clout of La Raza. La Raza is basically the NAACP of Hispanics. Cato and Reason are think tanks.
La Raza is nowhere near NAACP in terms of clout, and I am talking in terms of demographics. You can bet that Brookings wouldn't have endorsed a Republican-led healthcare bill without first getting the bill in a more favorable condition.
La Raza might not be near the NAACP in terms of political clout, but it has far more than Reason or even Cato. It's an organizing non-profit while Reason and Cato are think tanks.
Not that hate using the card, but that I would rather use it for something more useful for my purposes -- 'oh, you don't sleep with white guys, well, technically speaking . . .'
Instead you assert a little sway to get poison pills and contradictory language written into a bill. Say, my demand above is too ambitious to be accommodated. How about making weekend landscaping and babysitting services will no longer be subject to labor law? That's reasonable, right?
Absolutely.
Better yet get rid of that fucking permission from the feds to work proviso.
Seriously, how can any libertarian support any bill that has that monstrosity in it.
I see nothing in the bill about unskilled labor or a guest worker program, both of which would substantively address the issue with the biggest demographics as far as illegal immigration goes.
Raising caps on an already bad system does not magically enable such individuals to emigrate freely for work.
Bo Cara, if you find yourself in disagreement with me on a libertarian position, it is only because you haven't done the heavy lifting to think a matter through. I wont tolerate amateur hour snip, and you seem very trollish at this point.
The free movement of people is a long time core value for libertarians. This bill lessens restrictions on that. Is it perfect? No. Are there tradeoffs in it? Sure. But if some don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater that doesn't mean they have somehow turned their back on libertarian values.
If you want to take a stand that the tradeoffs in the bill are unacceptable, or even that any tradeoff is so, I can respect that (I've been around the libertarian movement enough to be familiar with that). What I don't get is when you can't do the same for libertarians who think they are getting something here worth holding their nose at over the other stuff.
Yeah the whole national database of workers for purposes of controlling labor is so libertarian. Almost as libertarian as the digital face mapping database called the "photo tool" that's in there.
Fuck that. I wouldn't support a thousand page bill for anything, let alone this shit sandwhich.
But it doesn't give free movement. It doesn't let people who want to come here come here. It does the opposite. It just legalizes people who are already here. Sure that is good and all. But not good enough to justify making every American have to get a work permit from the government. Isn't the ability to work without the permission of the government important too?
Im not sure that is good. I dont want to arrest those people or anything, but they should have to leave and apply properly for the unlimited supply of work permits.
Heck, if they are Mexican or whatever, they dont even need to go home, just go to the border town and apply and then head back to work.
Agree with robc. Under the immigration system I would prefer, current violators would just have to book a weekend trip to El Paso or Nogales and get screened for disease/crime and issued with their work permits.
Far better than "path to citizenship" nonsense which simply exacerbates the problems currently present. Like Virginian said, I want to import workers and contributors, not voters.
How about scrap the "pathway to citizenship" and E-verify, and institute something similar to the Bracero Program? Illegal immigrants could then apply to that program easily, and it would stop future problems with folks immigrating illegally for work, since they can then do so legally.
Why is it so vital to allow illegal immigrants the right to vote, anyhow?
Because voting is, fundamentally, an act of violence, and it is vital that the franchise be restricted to those who can exercise this duty circumspectly. Those who are insufficiently informed to handle such a task should not be voting -- period. Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level. I was certainly not at that level when I first came to the continental US.
Voting should be understood as a civic duty, NOT a door prize to be handed at will.
"voting is, fundamentally, an act of violence, and it is vital that the franchise be restricted to those who can exercise this duty circumspectly. Those who are insufficiently informed to handle such a task should not be voting -- period. Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level."
Oh my Lord.
We're done here. I don't find debating V-Dare people to be worth my time.
I'm a Hispanic immigrant myself, and the only person who's brought up race in this discussion is you, you fucking race-baiting piece of shit. I realize that scum like you are ill-equipped to discuss the question of voting as a duty lucidly and thus cannot be expected to understand why uneducated, poor immigrants from a country with no jury trials and precious little history of civil rights should be assumed to magically understand everything there is to know about the US' system and to vote in a way that won't oppress the people living here. It is not your fault that your poor education and upbringing taught you to reduce arguments you don't understand to neanderthal gruntings about race that don't apply.
You should, however, endeavor not to make your lack of good manners and education so obvious to all. I recommend a discreet silence next time you don't understand my arguments or the arguments of any of your betters on this board. Who knows, you might actually learn something.
I disagreed with Bo Cara but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I cannot believe that he is honestly arguing that when people claim Mexican immigrants are poorly educated it is because of race.
Mexican immigrants are poorly educated because they are from an unbelievably poorly run country that does not effectively educate its citizens. Moreover, the people coming here are from northern Mexico. Central Mexico is relatively urban and is comparatively well educated, but the north Mexicans are the worst educated people in a country of poor education. They live out in an area with few schools, and the ones that do exist are atrocious in ways that Americans cannot even comprehend.
I am in favor of open borders as regards movement of labor, but citizenship must be earned by new citizens. To do otherwise is to allow a limitless influx of poorly educated individuals to to choose the victor in elections that effect all of us.
Do you really want people from that kind of educational system electing the sort of leaders they elected in Mexico? Are you kidding me?
"Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level."
Yea, most Hispanic immigrants (and emigrants!) are simply not "at the level" to be allowed to vote. Nothing that could be construed as racist there. Ask yourself: why would it be particularly Hispanic immigrants that would be "not at the level" to vote? I guess Asians or Russians somehow magically know about jury trials and the history of civil rights in our nation.
In your need to get every fact wrong in your diatribe I'll point out that it was YOU who first brought up race by singling out Hispanics, I said nothing about it until then (check the time stamps professor).
Now go back to your Tea Party bullshit.
"the question of voting as a duty"
I understand that a lot of Tea Party types seem to congregate here on this libertarian site, but for a libertarian you've got this ass-backwards. The people don't have to be "worthy" of voting for those who get to rule them, it's the other way around.
And for you to lecture someone on good manners when you curse someone for not finding your desire to limit the vote of those who live under our system is especially rich.
Hispanic isn't a race, puta de madre. It's an ethnicity, and a racially varied one at that which includes Meso-American, African, Caucasian, and Asians. YOU brought up race by bringing a racist site into this discussion, you dumb dildo.
FWIW, I don't think fresh-off-the-boat Asians and Russians make good citizens, either but since I am neither Asian nor Russian (and since *most* of those being offered a path to citizenship are in fact fellow Hispanics) I didn't consider them germane to the conversation. Now go fuck a donkey or whatever it is you do when you're not busy fabricating arguments not addressed or made in a conversation.
"They're working and living here, paying taxes here, why not let them vote?"
Late to the party as usual...
I am a permanent resident in a country other-than-the-US and agree that I do not have a right to vote here (in this country - not the US) BECAUSE as a non-citizen I have not hitched my star to the future of this country. If and when I make the commitment to become a citizen then I should get the right to chose the path for this country - and not before.
The '86 bill so many people hold up as a model created the documentation regime we live under now. That bill weakened the civil rights of undocumented immigrants by making them a less desirable class of people for purposes of employment. It created the shadow economy they live under by putting an onerous burden on employees. This bill entrenches that cultural divide even more by spending more monies on the e-verify regime. It wont make undocumented workers a thing of the past (and the ability to live undocumented while retaining your civil rights was a healthy part of what made this nation thrive for many generations), it will exacerbate the problem.
The caste system these immigration laws have created undermines free movement as a right.
I don't think you can just say 'more immigration, therefore more libertarian.' If you allow more labor movement and it requires a massive expansion of government and a national database of workers, I am loathe to call that a step in the right direction.
It's a perfect bill for Democrats. It increases their voting base and massively expands government, therefore helping to further coerce people into voting for them. Anything that good for the Democrats, who at this point are essentially the fascist party, can hardly be called positive for libertarians.
This is only if you assume that when people move here they are going to be enamored with the Democrats or government programs. I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, especially in the long term.
Maybe not in the long term, but first and second generation immigrants are consistently Democrats. There are obviously exceptions, such as Cubans and some Europeans, but it's safe to say they'll help the Democrats in the short term.
I'm in favor of immigration, for the record, but a government expansion and national database which sharply expands the voting base of an increasingly totalitarian party is something that we should at least view with suspicion.
Do you suffer from a mental impediment, or merely stunning levels of historical ignorance? Irish specifically noted that trend in voting. Just in case you missed it the first time:
Maybe not in the long term, but first and second generation immigrants are consistently Democrats.
Even if they were a group that, for some reason, voted Republican or conservative (say, a hypothetical where poor Afrikaners emigrated to the US and started voting Republican out of a belief that they are the white man's party or somesuch), would that be acceptable?
Inducting a whole class ignorant voters and encouraging them to vote makes a sham out of the notion of consent of the governed. Consent must be informed to be legitimate; ignorant voters cannot be considered to be meaningfully consenting. My first vote was for Ronald Reagan, and it was cast in complete ignorance of American politics and the American tradition of limited governance, and mostly in ignorance of the issues at the time. I was in no way invested in the result in a meaningful way -- can that really be considered consent?
Well, I think the Republican party is fairly fascistic too, so if they were voting Republican it still wouldn't be particularly good.
Personally, I think that anyone who wants to should be able to come work here and to make money working. We should be the nation that everyone who wants to better themselves sees as the place to go. But I don't think that we should just allow people to come here and vote in our elections. If we just allow anyone who wants to to come in and vote, then the very idea of citizenship is eliminated.
Moreover, as you said, people from third world nations will be unbelievably ignorant and poorly informed when they first arrive. Their children and grandchildren will be better educated, but I don't want products of northern Mexico education coming to America and impacting the people who represent me in Congress.
The worst educated Americans, even people from the absolute joke that we call the inner city schools, are better educated than people in the third world. We can't just allow anyone who wants to to come here and immediately have voting rights.
Then because you fear some short term benefit to Democrats over Republicans libertarians should not support a program that would improve the lot of millions of people to go where they want to live? I sense those partisan things are likely very important to you, but perhaps you can excuse those of us libertarians who don't let that make up our minds.
No, dipshit. I DO support a law that would make the lives better for millions of people, because I support a law that would allow anyone to live and work here.
That's all that's required for someone to improve their life. Why the hell should they be given the vote just because they crossed a border? Should we just allow whoever wants to to influence our elections? Should Saudi oil barons be allowed to come over here and vote?
Jesus. The issue here is the trappings of citizenship, not the issue of whether people should be allowed to live and work here. We're all in favor of free movement of labor and in the ability of Mexicans to improve their lives by working in America. The argument here is over the issue of citizenship and giving anyone the vote just because they crossed the border.
Get over yourself and argue with my actual position instead of the voices in your head.
Many new Irish immigrants voted Democrat, a few generations later their descandants were voting for Reagan.
And the Kennedys and Faux co hauntus. I have a number of business associates of Irish decent that have a bizarre fondness for socialist politicians and their rhetoric.
There are some among us who would hold up the '86 immigration bill as a model. The one good old Ronnie Raygun supported. And damn, if it was good enough for Raygun, why, what are you, a troglodyte? That bill weakened the civil rights and liberties of both undocumented workers and American citizens. It was a temporary good for some immigrants, but in the long run it got us here to the 'your documents, please' state.
Gary Johnson was a guest on Friday morning's RedEye (hosted by "libertarian" Greg Gutfeld, who recently condemned Snowden. Hope Levy gave him a swirly or ten).
"If it were not for a now famous scene in a hospital just blocks away from the White House, it is unlikely that James B. Comey would have been standing in the Rose Garden on Friday to be introduced as President Obama's nominee for the director of the F.B.I.
Despite the showdown, in which Mr. Comey refused the request of White House aides to reauthorize a program for eavesdropping without warrants, he was later willing to go along with most of the Bush administration's surveillance operations. He and his allies, including Mr. Mueller, eventually backed down from their threats to resign in protest after the White House made modest adjustments.
Mr. Comey did not object to the key element of the Bush administration's program ? the wiretapping of American citizens inside the United States without warrants. Instead, he focused on trying to curb a large data mining operation inside the United States, similar to the data mining programs at the center of the current controversy over the National Security Agency.
A former senior intelligence official who played a role in surveillance programs during the Bush administration said that Mr. Comey "never expressed any concern" about the warrantless wiretapping program."
You almost have to appreciate how evilly clever this nomination is. It aims to remind the public "this NSA stuff is nothing new, Bush did it" and at the same time claim "I'm hiring the guy who stood up to Bush on this, see?"
That Obama promised to act differently and that Comey went along with most of what Cheney and friends wanted are supposed to be forgotten.
Remember when the left went crazy about the Bush administration considering prosecuting leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act?
"The Obama administration has shown a particular propensity to go after leakers and has launched more investigations than any previous administration. This White House is responsible for bringing six of the nine total indictments ever brought under the 1917 Espionage Act. Snowden will be the seventh individual when he is formally indicted."
The comments are as usual a riot. Liberals are all about the flag and the American way these days. The same people who held up the NYT as heroes in 2005 for exposing a smaller program under Bush, now think Snowden should be shot.
Hope and change means using a 1917 war bill passed to go after anti-war protestors and one rarely used to go after people who leak information to....the American people.
Criticism of gay conversion therapy from back in February - published in *First Things,* a clerico-fascist magazine which supports right-wing religion.
A recent article in *First Things* celebrating the closing of Exodus: "This is one reason why, as a Christian who embraces a traditional biblical ethic of sexuality, I rejoice at the closure of Exodus International. I rejoice not *in spite of* my traditional moral beliefs, but *because* of them." [emphasis in original]
"Michael Bloomberg gun control group site registered to NYC
"The name "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" is well known as Mike Bloomberg's gun-control arm, which he spends his personal fortune through on ads. Yet the group's website is registered to, and handled by, official city government servers and staffers.
"Domain names for MAIG were registered in 2006 by the New York City Department of Information and Technology, and have remained on official city web servers ever since....
"At minimum, the use of a city web server and city employees underscore what critics have long derided as a blurring of the lines between government resources and Bloomberg's own multi-billion-dollar fortune, his company, and his pet interests in his three terms as mayor....
""While the campaign activities may be supported and coordinated by the mayor's office, given that it's an independent nonprofit it is always cleaner to have a separation of operation like having a stand-alone website," said Dick Dadey, head of the New York City-based good-government group Citizens Union."
The expansion of government results in rich fuckers using their positions of privilege to further entrench their power and stifle the opposition? No fucking way.
Once in a while a liberal mag gets it. And when they do, they generally take down their own kind better than anyone.
We live in an age of what William James called "medical materialism," so instead of fretting about a fallen world, we speak of a poisoned one. In a modern version of original sin, the corruption of our environment is so thorough that it defies individual efforts to transcend it: "Even those making good lifestyle choices still shower with city water, eat meals at restaurants, and live, work, and shop in buildings that have been cleaned and fumigated with toxic chemicals," writes Junger. We might add to his list other features of daily life that we suspect may be dangerous but haven't been banned by the authorities: cell-phone signals that may lead to brain cancer, endocrine disruptors that drive our hormones crazy, probably leading, again, to cancer. Distrustful of our surroundings, we try to close ourselves off to malign influences and to purge them. It is no accident that Clean dwells obsessively on defecation and elimination. Junger wants us to flush out shit, "toxic waste," even mucus, which he says has "a dense and sticky quality; it resonates with and attracts dense, toxic thoughts and emotions."
The incidence of cancer has actually dropped substantially since 2000. If cell signals and endocrine disruptors are causing cancer, they sure are doing a shitty job of it.
I've got an ape drape, yes, I do
They're giving them to anyone and that means you
You can go to Riverside and get one too
And then you'll have an ape drape like I do
I've got Hockey Hair, yes I do. They're giving them to anyone, that means you. You can drive to Canada and get one too, then you'll have hockey hair like I do.
Look at that fucking guy. Look at him. Now, he comes up to you in WalMart while you're with your eight year old girl and starts talking to you. What do you do?
Me, I have my hand hovering over my right hip, and am moving immediately to call the cops. This stupid cunt let a strange man take her daughter out of her sight.
Thank you, Reason Magazine, for being the prime mover that transformed the libertarian perspective from a fringe radical idea into a permanent feature of the national political landscape. It's impossible to overstate your importance to the libertarian movement (although I certainly don't object to those who wish to make the attempt).
Reason Magazine is certainly unparallelled in terms of sucessful libertarian publications. I visit it alot for all the examples of bloated, hypocritical government. But it still urks me the level of political correctness(cosmotarianism) in this magazine. It thoughtlessly followed the liberal left in criticizing Richwine, refusing to even consider that he might be right because that would be "racist."
I discovered Reason while searching for different perspectives in the aftermath of 9/11. Haven't regretted it. Especially since it's marginally older than me. Happy birthday.
Tory Burch anna Satchel abysmal dejected als has this affectionate of absolutely beauteous logo arresting cavans about navy, it is so lovely. I aspect top of Tory Burch backpack success for you to its alert implementation. The ould - Satchel is a signature contour additional a backpack basal just about every woman accept to have.these reva tory burch auction absolutely in added words chichi central the advancing winter. Tory Burch boots and shoes are beginning tory burch outle online a part of the account of cast sneakers, you will get the accessible luxury. get? these Tory Burch shoes Sand, you will action specialist abatement Tory Burch.Tory Burch has developed women's admired designers, Simple appearance and architecture and exceptional adore accustomed support.
up to I saw the bank draft which was of $8085, I did not believe ...that...my father in law could actualy receiving money in their spare time from there labtop.. there friends cousin had bean doing this 4 less than twenty one months and just cleard the mortgage on there home and bourt themselves a Acura. this is where I went, Go to site and open Home for details http://WWW.JOBS31.COM
Happy Birthday to "America's Leading Cosmotarian Magazine"!
It is too bad the Kochs didn't take over Reason instead of CATO and move it to Wichita. I think moving them out of Washington would do wonders for Reason.
It is too bad the Kochs didn't take over Reason
They didn't? I kinda thought they did....
No. They took over CATO if I am not mistaken. That was the big intramural Libertarian cat fight last year; the Kochs running CATO.
David H. Koch
Koch Industries
New York, NY
From list of Reason Foundation board of trustees.
Just because they are on the board doesn't mean they run it. I am talking buy the thing lock stock and barrel and move it to Wichita.
Auburn, Alabama wouldn't be so bad ;^)
Reason is based in California.
Jacob Sullum's hometown (Dallas) wouldn't be a bad move either
Dallas would okay. I just think Washington is the hunger games city. It is a complete bubble walled off from the rest of the country.
You do realize the Reason HQ is in LA, right? I swear it is. I was just there this past week.
Yes. They're based inLA now.
But there offices are in Washington. It was a big deal when they moved from LA to Washington. The editors all live in Washington. The foundation is in LA but the magazine is in Washington.
It sits right on DuPont Circle.
The foundation runs the magazine. And there are writers in LA, reason.tv is in LA and so are almost all of the support staff.
REASON SHOULD BE BASED IN THE MIDDLE OF AN IDAHO TRAILER PARK SURROUNDED BY ARMED UNDERAGED BISEXUAL CHILDREN OF POLYGYMOUS MARRIAGES
Honestly, you yokeltarians have done gone and lost your cotton-pickin' minds. (That's how you talk, right?)
Nick and Matt aren't racist enough for an Auburn based libertarian think tank.
So, if I'm reading this right, you think reason is too influential? This is correct?
So, if I'm reading this right, you think reason is too influential? This is correct?
No. How could you possibly read this thread and think that?
So, if I'm reading this right, you think reason is too influential? This is correct?
No, he's saying that Reason is so deep in the beltway bubble that they are being influenced by the group think in it.
Which applies to you to, judging by the last two comments.
No, what he's really saying is reason isn't Republican enough for him. Which also applies to you VG.
Yeah, I'm Boehner and Preibus fan boi.
I'm saying that there's a reason (no pun intended) that think tanks and ideological magazines don't locate themselves in Wichita.
Those last two comments were trying to make the point with humor and sarcasm but I appear to have failed miserably. (It's not the first time.)
Because a bunch of Kansas city faggots is going to impress anyone?
Dagnabit
Reason's recent DC bash celebrating our 45th anniversary
I demand an accounting.
By far the weirdest thing in the newsroom is the male pants-less mannequin located by the bar in the main newsroom.
That's how I thought we were supposed to wear our reason t-shirts.
Well, now I have "reason shirt cock" in my search history.
And on NSA's servers.
I don't believe in an omniscient God but I do believe that the NSA is watching me. I'm going to have to change everything about my personality.
My nephew said he wasn't worried because there is so much noise in an all pervasive data capture. I shook my head and told him, maybe ten years ago that made since, but he needs to understand the leaps and bounds in software and hardware technology that have been made over the past decade. A 64 bit file updated daily on every American can easily be accommodated in a modern top of the line system that is running at over a quadrillion calculations per second. If they wanted to use that data to round up a thousand random deviants for their on-line behavior one fine day, all they have to be concerned with is the man power to issue warrants. The computation indexing of who those people are is a breeze. At that point, he looked worried.
A 64 bit file updated daily on every American can easily be accommodated
That reads like I mean one file with 330 million entrants. No, 330 million individual files updated and read for comparative analysis, no problem at all.
I can't think of any society where pervasive, surreptitious surveillance led to anything good.
It is funny that the NSA's incompetence is forwarded as an argument *for* such a program. The onus should be on them to explain their program, not on us to explain the harm of a surveillance state.
How about Santa Claus? His pervasive, surreptitious surveillance leads to good children getting more presents.
Dammit, you're right.
You win again, Kris Kringle.
Yeah but look at one happened to Robot Santa Claus.
And even a link:
http://theinfosphere.org/Robot_Santa_Claus
Funny aside, the only comment I've gotten on my shirt(s) which I wear about town whenever they bubble up to the top of the drawer, was a props from a young black dude in Walmart. And here I thought we were all white, male and curmudgeonly. However, he didn't know the secret monocle polishing routine, so I don't think he's one of the H&R circle.
Wore mine to work the other day. Place is rotton with obamabots, but they're so beaten down with all the scandals and spying that no one said a word. Probably only a few that would recognize it, though.
I ran into one of the commentariat here once. I was helping my brother move. We were repairing his water well when the realtor showed up to appraise his house.
I noticed his vehicle had libertarian stickers on it. I introduced myself and said that I liked his stickers. I mentioned that where I live sporting those would probably get your car keyed.
I dont remember the conversation exactly but he became suspicious that he might know who I was. He kept looking at me funny with squinted eyes and I could tell he was dying to ask. Then he stood back watching my brother and I for a while. I noticed a couple of times he started to say something and then didnt. I did the same.
I am pretty sure he figured out I am Suthenboy, but I am clueless as to who he is.
Then he stood back watching my brother and I for a while. I noticed a couple of times he started to say something and then didnt. I did the same.
This is why we need a secret code!
"Do you travel?"
I really only wear my monocle for special occasions.
I thought the secret code was, "Pel? of anal"?
Secret code/password - My wife suggested Umfitty noonah.
I dont remember who posted the link to the Tarvuism website the other day, but I showed it to my wife and she went nuts over it. She loves octopuses and in Tarvuism they are sacred. She has adopted the Tarvuistic saying Umfitty Noonah, which means 'be nice'. I guess we could make up an equally bullshitty saying meaning 'be free'.
Oh, and we have to have a nerdy secret handshake too. Gotta have that.
EDG and I hang out from time to time. He and his lovely wife even came to our wedding and came out here a few weeks back so we could drink...a lot. The rest of you bastards are welcome at Casa Sloopy any time you want.
In fact, we were thinking of having a dinner at our club one night this fall for all of the reasonoids that want to come. And there will be drinking in the bar, card-playing in the card room and other activities for the wives and kids in the pool area.
That's cool as hell. I'd expend vacation days to travel to a Reasonoid event.
That's cool as hell. I'd expend vacation days to travel to a Reasonoid event.
Oh, um are you Roman Catholic? Then I'm afraid you can't come.
/Bishop Pickering
Roman C? Oh, come ON! Presbyterian - like having no religion at all! Perfect for a libertardian!
"Oh, um are you Roman Catholic? Then I'm afraid you can't come"
Well, the world needs ditch-diggers too.
Really didn't want to go to the Youth-eran center anyway,
your eminence.
Seriously though, I'll keep everyone posted and give at least a month or so warning. And we will be putting a few people that want to come out. Our hospitality has no bounds...unless you're a cop from Seattle that thinks he's invited.
Ha, OK. Now I have to show up and introduce myself as Dunphy, just to see your expression.
You'd better start getting ripped now, or everyone's gonna know....also, bring Morgan Fairchild.
Too obvious. Just talk about how you recently got off disability an are working back up to your old weightlifting record. Add in how everyone loves you and respects you and you're good.
I think I would go just to pretend to be Tony.
I think I would go just to pretend to be Tony.
So you're going to sit in the corner and masturbate furiously to a picture of Obama? Well at least wait until after dinner is over.
Tony would never show up anyway. Not enough TOP MEN at libertarian gatherings.
"This is why we need a secret code!
"we need to ask politicians tough questions and post the videos on youtube."
thats old school maybe
This t-shirt will be arriving for me in the mail this week.
For those too lazy to click: it's the Statue of Liberty holding the Eye of Sauron as a torch.
Ha. I ordered one of those too. First time I ever bought a tshirt online.
That's how I've been wearing mine.
That's how I thought we were supposed to wear our reason t-shirts.
Yes, Donald Duck was in fact a hardcore libertarian and we should all emulate his fashion sense with our reason t-shirts at least once a year...preferably in an office of our choosing.
They have a bar?!
Obama's torture machine turns the screws tighter at Gitmo
Is this worse than waterboarding? I say yes.
If true.
Sounds like a hit piece. I suspect there is significantly more to the story.
Is anyone still pretending that shitweasel is the prince of peace? That we dont live under tyranny and have the rule of law?
No-fucking-bel PEACE Prize, bitches.
Read 'em and weep.
The momentum behind efforts to release Aamer ? who has spent more than 11 years without trial inside the camp ? mounted sharply last week
Who the fuck do we think we are? This isn't the America our founders established. Thanks a lot, Bush and Obama. You two turds are the cause for so much hatred of America around the world because you talk so much about freedom but lock someone up for 11 years without charge and refuse to even say why.
I really, truly hate having to say - but I'm not proud to be an American, where at least I used to be free.
Srsly. Our government has done so much bad shit in my lifetime, I just have a hard time with...everything. It's gotten so I won't say the Pledge of Allegiance any more - cause I'm not pledging allegiance to the fucked up mess our Overlords are inflicting upon us citizens and the rest of the world.
On the other hand, I wear my Reason, Free and Accepted Masons, and college t-shirts proudly.
America =/= the Federal Government
whatever
Let me expand just a bit - America damned sure IS the central govt. I reflected on this in the store today - picking up a couple things, and realized EVERY fucking thing in there is controlled in some way by the govt, mostly central.
There's effectively no escape now, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to truly go off the grid. So the government effectively IS the US of America - it's everywhere and controls or influences everything.
I don't see that ever changing till we have full societal collapse and whatever follows (probably US of Somalia).
/depressed
It's funny (sad) to me, but the most free places in America are in the bluest of blue states: the local flea markets.
I go there and buy shit that never came through customs (goods) or got inspected at a USDA facility (produce) and have even bought some livestock there that was raised on a farm and sold on the side.
And the only reason they're freer is because the feds are too lazy to come in and do an INS sweep and deport about 75% of the people there. Laziness on the part of the government makes it free. And the taco trucks outside are nothing but tents with a grill. No grade in the window and straight cash. But if you wan to open up a small takeout place at the mall, you've got to jump through hoops for months at great expense, because they want to steal as much of your revenue as possible because you're a "legit" business.
It's fucking sickening.
America =/= the Federal Government
Huh. I wonder who voted in the shitclowns?
Sounds like you agree with Obama that government is us.
It pretty much is, if you're talking raw numbers. My non-vote, however, exempts me.
If you voted, IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
it's not Obama's torture machine. it's Bush's torture machine that Obama either can't find the off switch for, or refuses to look.
That's not it. It's just those darn Rethuglicans distracting and pressuring him, so he's never had the time to look.
If you inherit a torture chamber and then not only refuse to dismantle it, but then continue to use it, you OWN that fucking thing.
Why, he just found out about that machine on the news yesterday.
Nice controls. If something happens and they audit the security logs, it's going to show the intern let the perp into the secure area. Honestly, reason.
See, Nick and Matt have learned something about passing the buck.
http://www.latimes.com/news/wo.....6686.story
We are not training and arming radical Islamists. What could possibly go wrong?
OT: Welcome to your sci-fi future.
Above, footage of a protester's quadcopter in Gezi Park getting shot down by the Turkish Police. Below, the footage of police violence the drone had been capturing (complete with music that sounds like it came out of an orc-fighting scene in the Hobbit). Ahead of us: a long, weird future history of protest.
HA HA! The people risking their lives to prevent their country from further sliding into a fascist Islamist shithole are sooooo zany!!!!!!
Fuck you, Doctorow, you fucking hack. I hope you die scared and alone from a slow and agonizingly painful liver failure.
But Islam is a religion of peace Mulatto. For douchebags like Doctorow, what is going on Turkey doesn't compute. Those protestors must be tea baggers or something.
Well, the Maldives are pretty "peaceful". When your culture and government proscribes death for any dissent, you get the peace of docile obeisance under the shadow of the sword blade.
In Saudi Arabia translating the Koran will get you death. We wouldn't want anyone reading the thing and getting any ideas that it might not say what the Imans tell you.
Bonus: Modern, Moderate Maldives!
Thanks, HM. Looks like I won't be eating those eggs benedict I just took 45 minutes to make.
Eggs Benedict. That makes me hungry. I love eggs benedict. I dont have any eggs to make the hollandaise....or to make the eggs part.
Damn. Off to the store later.
Find a neighbor with ducks and get some eggs from them. Eggs Benedict with duck eggs is the closest thing I've had to pre-noon culinary perfection in my entire life.
do you have any horse sized ducks?
I got some duck eggs from the Chinese store once and they were the foulest (no pun intended) thing that I ever tried to eat. They smelled horrible and tasted worse,
Well, in short, fuck the Maldives.
If the Maldives have all these rules, how come all the supercelebrities keep going there on their honeymoons? I can't believe they'd go somewhere they couldn't have booze.
Weren't we supposed to weep for the Maldives as they will be submerged by DUR GLOBEL WARMINGSSS!!!!11!!11!, or something?
I'm with Doctorow if he's mocking the musical choice. (It's also possible he's somewhat in favor due to his nerd bona fides but nevertheless WTFing a certain unavoidable amount.)
I do question whether the cop shooting the drone had sky or a building behind it to absorb his miss/shoot-through.
Regardless of whether it did or not, you can be sure the thought never entered his mind.
Regardless of whether it did or not, you can be sure the thought never entered his mind.
^^This^^ is why Reason needs a "Like" button.
Even though I know, intellectually, that shooting a an RC helicopter is just property damage, I felt weird sympathy pangs for the quad-copter. Like, as if it had the capacity to suffer.
Fucking anthropomorphization, how does it work?
I almost cried when my Kawasaki ZRX 1100 got taken out by a truck in Toledo. I lived - the bike was seriously killed.
I've since bought another one - a couple years newer 1200 - but can't help but think about the one that was killed. I hope someone at least pulled the motor and used it for a go kart or something...
"I lived"
Whew. I was living in suspense there for a minute.
I can't believe the House seems to be killing the farm bill. Did someone kidnap Republicans and replace them with thinking human beings?
Don't get too excited. The socialists and rinos will come together to pass a craptastic bill soon.
John,
That didn't go 'cause of the food stamp cuts.
It'll be back with more pork.
You seem to think they are killing it because it is awful. They are probably killing it because it isnt awful enough.
I have learned to expect the worst.
So I suppose my invitation to this party got lost in the mail? Serves you right for using the Postal Service. Just FedEx me the invite next time.
"By far the weirdest thing in the newsroom is the male pants-less mannequin located by the bar in the main newsroom."
This would never happen if Postrel were still here!
I hear she's the one who had it placed there, back when SHE was in charge.
They haven't had an original idea since she left....
*glug, glug, glug*
A hidden paradise with no income tax or property tax?
Three by seven miles, NE of Australia, huh. Yeah, that wouldn't be stultifyingly provincial or anything. A foreigner would fit right in.
Population in 2011 was 2,169.
Can't have everything. At this point, if you want to live with minimal interference from government, it's not going to happen in an urban area.
Believe me, you, Mr. Foreigner, are not going to be doing anything on Norfolk Island that those two thousand people don't approve of.
Well I wouldn't move to a Commonwealth island.
A deserted one, or some theoretical American island with a liberty trending legal regime, would be more my style.
I thought h&r is moving en masse to Honduras once the tent stakes are driven down. I've already got a line on a food truck from a guy in Tegucigalpa.
Not even in The Fan? I thought the hippies would have walled themselves in by now and set up their utopian paradise.
Hehe so there are now some bars on Broad between Lombarday and the museums, and the city is towing cars after years of not enforcing the signs.
The crowd of Obama voting government lovers does not like this. I remain quite amused.
If they put a bar next to the Lee's Famous Recipe right in the area you're talking about, I may be tempted to move back. Their fried chicken was tits.
There's one across the street dude. Called The Republic. It's ok.
Yeah, but it's Republic In Name Only, sooo....
Is Lee's chicken still as good as it used to be? That's way more important.*
*I always found it funny that Lee's, whose patrons are probably 95% black, is just two blocks from the Lee statue on Monument. And not a soul in that city gives a shit.
When I lived in SC, there's a medium-sized barbecue chain that gives out Southern apologist propaganda and "the South will Rise Again" tchochkes and League of the South literature.
I have personally witnessed a large party of African-Americans go in, make a sizeable order, eat (and seemingly enjoy) their food, and be treated amiably, courteously, but mostly left alone.
Nobody thought anything of it.
This story has no moral.
I'm assuming your talking about Maurice's. The southern apologist stuff has been toned down quite a bit the last few years. Although you can still get yourself a copy of The Truth About Lincoln or whatever.
That's Maurices, man. My parents live in Hilton Head and I've eaten at the one in Savannah. The Confederacy shtick isn't that bad.
This story has no moral.
Actually it does.
The moral is that self interest pursued via voluntary cooperation produces more social, including racial, harmony than government coersion possibly can.
Love of money will move a racist businessman to gladly sell to people that they hate, and in doing so, their hatred will erode at least little bit.
This thread will be worthwhile if just one non-reasonoid comes on here and reads ^^this comment^^. It's a fundamental part of libertarian economic theory and it's the one the left most intentionally lies about.
Bingo. I always like to bring up mass transit in the South. When it first started, it was run by private companies, and integrated because being a bigot is a cost for businesses.
Once the government took over, it became segregated.
Lees is still great. Apparently it is a chain. It's just the one in Richmond is the only one in Virginia. Or in WV or NC for that matter.
http://www.leesfamousrecipe.com/location/search
IIRC, we had one or two near where I grew up in Cincy. But the one in Richmond was just head and shoulders above and other fried chicken joint in town.
Damn, I miss the RIC. I may have to go back for a visit soon. All my old friends have either moved away or crossed over to the dark side (Chesterfield County). But I'm sure I could find some trouble to get into.
This thread is great. Lee's pretty much got through undergrad with the hangover curing powers of fried chicken and hot sauce and Maurice's got me through law school, pretty much because it was down the street from my apartment.
Short Pump, dude. Liberty lives in Short Pump.
Liberty lives in Short Pump.
...At the corner of Pump and Patterson in Rare Olde Times. But I just couldn't go in there much after Martin died.
*And if anybody knows that place well at all, could they give me an update on Andy Jennings. And Gerry Collins as well. I know he went to become a deputy sheriff for Henrico and I haven't seen him since he was getting ready to arrest me at Strawberry Hill for mooning the horses until he recognized me.
http://www.legacy.com/obituari.....bLoggedOut
Condolences.
Aw, fuck. I'm gonna have a short cry now.
And I know what my first pint of the night is gonna be and who it's gonna be dedicated to.
Also, I've lived ex-pat and I've lived on an island. I strongly recommend that anyone considering moving to this place try both first. Pretty sure you'll change your mind.
I agree with Ice Nine. I've lived on Puerto Rico and it was fine. When I went over to Vieques for a few weeks to ty it out, I wanted to go crazy because it was just too small and slow and everyday conveniences were hard to come by. Same for when I went and checked out Dominica. There's a lot to be said for being able to say, "I'd like fried chicken tonight. Do I want to go to a restaurant and get it or do I want to go to the grocery store?" It can be a lot better than "I'd like fried chicken tonight. I better go catch a chicken, kill it, process it, brine it, and then fry it up.", because the alternative is "I'd like fried chicken tonight so I'll get a chicken the next time I go to the mainland or the next time the food ship comes in, which will be next Friday."
Bingo, dude. You worship Safeway when it's gone. And Trader Joe's? - fuggedaboutit.
I have lived in remote areas. It gets old. You really take conveniences for granted. You have to be wired just right to live in a place like that. Most people are not.
There's remote and there's remote island. In one case you get a bit stir crazy. In the other you end up like Billy Zane in Dead Calm.
There is a big US air force base on Kwajaline Atoll. It is like four miles long. A couple of thousand employees, contractors and Air Force people live there. It is a tropical paradise. But they also fly everyone on the Island back to Hawaii for a long weekend once a quarter. If they didn't, they worry people would go crazy and start killing each other.
I knew a lot of tough, adventurous ex-pats where I was. Most of them bailed and went home after 4-5 years. What John said. It takes a very specific type that has some special intangible thing to make that work for the long term.
Where's the chicken hunting best?
US Senate to retroactively punish runaway tax slaves
In a way, it seems kind of good. Shows that they're getting desperate. They're flirting with ex post-facto laws, and trying to squeeze more.
I'm sure someone like Schumer would go for it just to hurt people who dare to decline to pay him, but I'd expect some others are starting to realize they're running out of money to steal. Kind of like the various agencies that are stepping up suits against companies.
Or the musing about all the money just sitting around in 401ks.
God, don't even joke like that.
Dude it's already begun.
I dunno - I honestly can't see them going that far. If they do, it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Right?
They are just nasty and mean spirited. The measure wont' even raise any money. This is the result of politics becoming about punishing your opponents. They just want to fuck people they don't like. It is the ultimate expression of politics in the age of Obama. It is always about getting some designated other.
"It is the ultimate expression of politics in the age of Obama."
When he said he/they were going to punish their enemies and reward their friends I was aghast. I couldnt believe he would say that out loud and reveal himself to be so transparently a banana republic dictator wannabe. As soon as I heard him say that I thought surely this will make his support evaporate and the press will be all over this.
Yes, sometimes I can be a complete naive idiot.
I think part of it is the media just never reports or emphasizes that stuff. Most people have no idea and would be shocked to learn he ever said anything like that. Most people don't pay attention and believe what the media tells them. And thus, they think Obama is a moderate pragmatic nice guy.
Yeah, they mostly ignore it, and when they do cover it it's almost always along the lines of "here's what the President really meant.
Most people have no idea and would be shocked to learn he ever said anything like that.
I don't think so. When the IRS story came out tons or progllodytes were defending the IRS saying the tea baggers deserved it. And a lot of conservative would have done the same thing if it had been progressive sounding groups that were singled out.
The sad truth it that most people are ok with fascism, so long as it delivers the bacon to them.
Nah, the partisans care about who's ox is being gored. But we're talking about LIVs. LIVs know that Mitt Rommney hates the 47% but they don't know about Obama's promise to punish his enemies.
That's the difference, and the true power of the media. When most people only consume ten minutes of news a day, the stuff that makes it into that ten minutes is incredibly powerful.
We live in a society where those that push the memes best win the elections.
We need a Houston event. I'll have to keep my real name secret during it tho, or RCD (where the hell has he been lately, anyway?) will know how many times I've been kicked off Samizdata.
It's too bad they kicked you off and not the insufferable Paul Marks.
Just thought you guys woulld want to know, I'm on my way right now to one of the IHS Summer Seminars. David Friedman is going to be there as a lecturer!
http://www.theihs.org/summer-s.....nd-society
Yes, IRS harassment blunted the Tea Party ground game
...It might be purely accidental that the government targeted precisely this biggest threat to the president. It may just be that a bureaucracy dominated by liberals picked up on not-so-subtle dog whistles from its political leadership. Or, it might be that direct orders were given. In any case, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously. The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign. Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated....
The fact is the Tea Party got huge turn out in 2010 and didn't in 2012. Why? One answer is that Romney was bad. Maybe. But usually turnout is driven by hate of the other guy. And people hated Obama more in 12 than they did in 10.
The circumstantial case is pretty compelling. The head of the IRS and the Chief of Staff of the IRS, who was a political hack with no knowledge of tax law, went to the White House and the OEOB hundreds of times leading up to the election for meeting that included the leadership of the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, the IRS is out holding up every single Tea Party application.
And the IRS was asking for donor info perfect for creating a parallel social network of Obama's opposition to be data mined w/ the same tools developed by the Obama campaign's friends in Silicon Valley, which just happen to also be NSA vendors.
You can target your marketing not just at your soft supporters but at the other guy's soft supporters to demoralize them and keep them from showing up. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is being prevented from fighting back. Remember, he only one 52% of the popular vote. It doesn't take that much to flip an election.
While all of that may be true, Romney was bad. This was a major demoralizing factor. He is a fucking east coast liberal, gun control supporter, global warming hack, designer of obamneycare....for fuck's sake. They put that guy up there and painted 'conservative' across his forehead when everyone knew he was obama-lite.
It aint called the party of stupid for nothing. Goddamn I get mad thinking about that.
They just don't have any balls. They are so easily intimidated by the media. Most Republican establishment types are terrified of the media painting them as being unreasonable or extremist.
But Romney being bad doesn't make people hate Obama less. The challenger doesn't matter. It is about the incumbent. And the incumbent was a disaster.
Think about it this way, Obama is the first incumbent to ever win re-election with fewer votes than he got the first time. It is totally unprecedented. Maybe that is the new normal or maybe something very strange was going on.
But Romney being bad doesn't make people hate Obama less.
Actually, he did, by not offering any contrast and constantly talking about what a nice guy Obama was. That might not have affected the hard core Obama haters, but it did affect the marginal middle that Romney needed.
Romney also played into Obama's strategy of suppressing white working class voters. Romney offered those people nothing. His investor experience didn't appeal to them at all, in fact it turned off a lot and culturally he was seen as the same as Obama to those people and he made no attempt to appeal to them on guns, religion, lower taxes etc.
The challenger doesn't matter. It is about the incumbent. And the incumbent was a disaster.
Yeah the white working class is icky. Even though a very slight percentage pickup there would have delivered him a smashing victory.
No, better go more and more left and then try to appeal to Hispanics. Forget about the Reagan Democrats. What kind of loser thinks they're the key to electoral success?
Suthenboy is dead-on. "Swing" voters that straddle the parties had no reason to switch horses if there was no substantive difference between Obama and Romney. Team Red royally fucked up when they didn't get 100% behind Ron Paul when he got a little momentum early. He was the only starkly different pol up there from a scope-of-government perspective. Sure there were some hardcore SoCons, but they weren't gonna drum up support from anyone other than the dedicated Team Red base...and those people would have voted for Paul over Obama anyway. Meanwhile, you peel off some anti-war folks, some hispanics because Paul may have come through with immigration reform and some in the middle that are just tired of the traditional two-party mess.
Paul would have won with 40+ states in his pocket.
Paul could have won if he had just kept his mouth shut about defense issues. He is a closed border guy, so immigration wouldn't have hurt him. And he is anti abortion so the SOCONS would have bought in.
The only thing that would have hurt Paul was that the youth would have been brow beaten into abandoning him. The popular culture would have gone toxic against him and that would have caused the youth vote to leave him.
I just don't see ho the popular culture would have gone toxic on him. He could have beaten his anti-interventionist drum all day long with that crowd and they would have jumped in line to vote for him. For god measure, he could have trotted out a few choice comments made by Obama admin people that said we need to reinstate the draft...people like the VP. The youth don't want to get blown up because Obama wants to keep fighting Bush's wars...or expand them to other nations like he had done already.
Paul would have siphoned a lot of youth voters on that issue alone. Then he could have gotten to decrim of some drugs and at least forced Obama to defend his fighting of the drug war. That would have siphoned off black voters of all ages.
I'm telling you, Paul would have slaughtered Obama.
I just don't see ho the popular culture would have gone toxic on him.
Hollywood and the media would have destroyed him as an out of touch crazy old man who believed in conspiracy theories and don't forget the newsletters. They would have portrayed him as a complete racist.
Look at it this way, they managed to portray Mitt fucking Romney as a woman hating radical conservative. Romney, the most liberal establishment PC Republican there is, and they made all of the low information voters think he was some kind of conservative crazy. What do you think they would have done to Paul, a guy who actually does hold some radical views?
John's right on this one I think.
The media will always always always portray the GOP candidate as a radical extreme conservative. So the GOP needs stop nominating mushy moderates that turn off their base's enthusiasm in an attempt to get the approval of the Northeastern chattering classes.
Take the hit of the media disapproval, and keeping making the case of small government and fiscal responsibility. Don't answer the wedge issue bullshit, because thats what the Democrats feed off of.
Yep, the only way to effectively deal with the media bias is to directly confront it.
Reagan won doing so and so did Gingrich in the 90s.
The establishment compulsion to try appeasing the media is ridiculously naive. Starting with the fact that the attacks are complete bullshit that even the media doesn't really believe.
Sloopy, you're so smart, and then you start talking about electoral politics...
How many parents would Paul win nationwide when it came out that he would repeal Federal laws against coke, heroin, ecstasy and meth?
How many farmers could he win after it comes out that he's against the Ag Dept?
How would the military feel after they realize a whole bunch of 'em--enlisted men, officers, contractors--are just going to lose their jobs?
How would the seniors and near-seniors respond to the impending abolition of Medicare and Social Security?
How would professors, students, administrators etc. react to the abolition of federal aid to higher education?
Ron Paul would not have won one state. Not one.
How many parents would Paul win nationwide when it came out that he would repeal Federal laws against coke, heroin, ecstasy and meth?
Um, he was talking about taking pot off the Schedule A list, not making all of that other stuff legal. He would have left all of those issues to the states.
How many farmers could he win after it comes out that he's against the Ag Dept?
Probably a lot of them since they would be free to farm as they see fit and not be beholden to idiotic policies. Sure there would be a bit of butthurt over the corn subsidies going away, but the benefits of that are still less than the harm all of the curent regs cause them.
How would the military feel after they realize a whole bunch of 'em--enlisted men, officers, contractors--are just going to lose their jobs?
He never said any of our military would lose their jobs. He just wanted to bring them all home and cut the equipment (read: idiotic shit like the F-35) budgets for bad gear.
How would the seniors and near-seniors respond to the impending abolition of Medicare and Social Security?
It's gonna get restructured or implode anyway. At least he had a plan to restructure it. The current alternative is to keep it afloat until it topples the entire federal budget.
How would professors, students, administrators etc. react to the abolition of federal aid to higher education?
Show me where he proposed that.
I would have reacted just fine, thank you. Some people can but principle before self-interest. But I agree with you that they're not enough of them out there for a Paul victory.
How would the military feel after they realize a whole bunch of 'em--enlisted men, officers, contractors--are just going to lose their jobs?
Probably pretty fucking good since they'd have known Paul was a lot less likely to mince about with half-assed wars where a bunch of our boys get killed for no reason other than to bolster the political fortunes of the people in charge. Paul would have gotten them home within the shores of America back into a defensive posture, which is where every soldier prefers to be.
The war hawks are the politicians. Soldiers prefer peace.
Yeah one of my roommates is a much bigger Paul fan then me, which is saying something. He's got a parachute badge and a CIB. Is fond of declaring that various things are "shittier then fucking Iraq".
"The war hawks are the politicians. Soldiers prefer peace."
My Marine friend is an outlier, then?
Ron Paul would not have won one state. Not one.
Obama still wouldnt have broken 40% in KY.
And it isnt the only state he would have carried.
I mean I think Paul would have won Texas, the deep South, KY, TN, AZ, perhaps NV, UT, MT, ID.
But none of the swing states and none of the mid Atlantic or upper south.
Ky isnt upper south?
Well, I seem to recall a certain War of Northern Aggression in which KY was on the other side of my own beloved Commonwealth.
If you didn't raise the rebel flag, you're not in the South in my book.
To people north of us, Indiana is part of the south.
Paul would have won with 40+ states in his pocket.
What color is the sky in your world?
Most people would've been convinced that Paul was the Second Coming of David Koresh. He would've made Goldwater '64 look like Reagan '84.
Paul wouldn't have won -- not a chance. I like the guy, but he was... doddering, to put it politely. Too much crazy shit in his past and stupid shit coming out of his mouth, and almost no administrative ability.
Plus what John said about defense.
^ this ^ X 10.
It also stopped the use anti-Obamacare ads.
usually turnout is driven by hate of the other guy.
Disagree. Turnout is driven by having someone you can support. The Rs had bad turnout in 2012 for the same reason the Ds had bad turnout in 2004.
Running awful candidates that no one supported. Anybody but Bush and Anybody but Obama were bad strategies that relied on hate.
musing about all the money just sitting around in 401ks.
We need that money for our infrastructure bank.
The President said no one needs more than three million dollars to retire on. The rest of that money is just them hoarding it. And you know what happens to hoarders don't you?
The same thing as kulaks and wreckers?
this sounds like a Tony proposal -
Steal from the savers. Steal the estates of those trying to pass on money & real estate to their families.
They get ridiculed on cable television?
Reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau have a long piece on the Obama administration's transparency--or rather its lack thereof, which goes by the name Insider Threat Program. This bit is priceless:
The Peace Corps, which is in the midst of implementing its program, "takes very seriously the obligation to protect sensitive information," said an email from a Peace Corps official who insisted on anonymity but gave no reason for doing so.
What secrets could the Peace Corps, of all the ridiculous bureaucracies, have to hide? Well, other than who they are and why they don't want you to know.
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....TopOpinion
Taranto is a great writer. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of him before reading his piece on his university censorship experience.
Someone made the observation that the peace corps and other NGOs employ many more people and meddle in the affairs of 3rd world countries more than the colonial administrators of the 19th-20th century European empires.
Data Miners Liken Obama Voters To Caesars Gamblers
...'We asked to see [voter's Facebook] photos but really we were looking for who were tagged in photos with you, which was a really great way to dredge up old college friends ? and ex-girlfriends.' The Times also explains how the Obama campaign was able to out-optimize the Romney campaign on TV buys by obtaining set-top box TV show viewing information from cable companies for voters on the Obama campaign's 'persuadable voters' list. "...
That is some massively creepy shit. Remember Obama won low information voters by huge numbers. This would go a long ways to explain that. This sort of thing is perfect for getting low information low interest voters to turn out.
Holy sanctimonious scumbags, Batman!
To: Hon. Eric Holder, US Attorney General
and Michele M. Leonhart, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration
From: David G. Evans, Executive Director of the Drug Free Schools Coalition
Dear Mr. Holder and Ms. Leonhart:
Parents across America are waiting for you to enforce the federal Controlled Substances Act in the states of Colorado and Washington, which have legalized recreational marijuana, as well as in the 19 states where "medical" marijuana is legal. These laws were passed as the result of a well-funded lobbying campaign by the marijuana industry. The public has been misled by this campaign to see marijuana as harmless, natural, and medicinal, just as we were misled years ago by the tobacco industry, which claimed that tobacco was not addictive and that smoking had no ill effects.
That letter is a masterpiece of sophistry and bait and switch.
It's not?
More:
In addition to the harm being visited upon our children by recreational and medical" marijuana, your failure to adequately enforce federal law is also in violation of international law ? the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, to which the United States is party. America has been warned by the International Narcotics Control Board about this violation. The UN can place sanctions on the US for violating the treaty. How could you let that happen?
Maybe we could get the Blue Helmets to come and save our children; they do such a good job everywhere else they go.
Look what happened to Holland when they legalized weed. They were totally kicked out of the international community right? Lots of countries have effectively decriminalized pot. Hell, a good number of pain pills are over the counter in Latin America. What a lying sack of shit.
If the CS Monitor had any courage of conviction, they'd allow comments on that page.
random thought I had while driving from home: why the push for immigration "reform" right now? I mean the Democrats could have done this in 2008 but didn't. Why?
Do they want to the Republican House to kill it to gin up Hispanic support for 2014/2016? Or if it does pass, the Democrats still get the glory. It's win-win really.
They are pushing for it because they have to. In 09, they didn't give a shit about hispanics. They knew they were voting D in 2012 no matter what. So they went after healthcare and stealing as much as possible.
Now, Hispanics are starting to realize Dems don't give a shit about them. So Dems are pushing for immigration reform. The Republicans are insane if they agree to it. It failing will just cause Hispanics to lose faith in Democrats and stay home or vote for other reasons in 14. Passing it, will just allow Dems to take all of the credit and reward Hispanics for voting for them.
Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants
The release of a previously unseen document suggested that Labour's migration policy over the past decade had been aimed not just at meeting the country's economic needs, but also the Government's "social objectives". ...
... The original paper called for the need of a new framework for thinking about migration policy but the concluding phrase ? "if we are to maximise the contribution of migration to the Government's economic and social objectives" ? was edited out.
Another deleted phrase suggested that it was "correct that the Government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy". ...
Leftists want to create an oppressed base. This is why they support multiculturalism and do everything they can to ensure Hispanics never assimilate. The idea is to bring voters in who will stay marginalized, poor and dependent on the government.
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
not to get all "Yokeltarian" but could someone point out a modern welfare state where bringing in large numbers of low-skilled foreigners worked out really well?
I know historically speaking, it did work out great for the U.S. but those were different times without a massive welfare state.
You have it precisely
No welfare state and a society that was committed to assimilating immigrants. We didn't have a victim industrial complex back then. Immigrants came here and did everything they could to become like everyone else. Now, we have an entire educational and political establishment designed to make them into victims and outsider groups.
Yeah the fact is that immigrants, for the most part, work the jobs that would be worked by the people who currently sit around on the dole.
It's insanity to pay people not to work and then complain that immigrants are being hired to work these jobs.
So the solution is to have open borders and to abolish the welfare state, not to punish the people who want to come here and work.
But the welfare state will never be abolished. Open borders might happen. But the welfare state will never end.
^^this, unfortunately, also
^^this
Absolutely. But that's not going to happen.
I'm not worried about importing workers, I'm worried about importing voters.
Exactly. The other thing that worries me is the public education system. Why on earth would anyone push bilingual education if their purpose wasn't to ensure that the group never assimilated and never succeeded?
The claim is that bilingual education will transition the children to English speakers more effectively than the traditional immersion approach.
Which has of course been demonstrated to be absolute bullshit. But it provides enough propaganda cover to keep idiot voters supporting bilingual ed.
You say this with such utter conviction, as if you have any fucking idea as to what you are talking about.
It seems to me that immersion does tend to work. I know that every language class I ever took was a joke, because none of the teachers ever stopped me from just speaking English.
If my sensei or my Spanish teacher had pretended to not understand English, I think I might have picked it up better.
Or maybe not. I don't know.
You're right. You do need to be immersed in a language to acquire it, but that's not what "English Immersion" refers to in this case. It means the kids are only instructed in English (be it Math, Science, History, etc.) with the lessons designed to provide support for learning the language. Again, those kids are only hearing English 6 to 8 hours a day, and then probably going back home to speak their home language.
Bilingual Ed, maintains the home language and adds English to it. The problem I have with English Immersion is that the kids are developing their academic vocabulary in English (CALP) but not in their home language (which stunts their growth in their home language). While you might ask "who cares?" The point is that's one reason why we have to wait 6 months for an Al-Qaeda communique to be adequately translated because we don't have a large enough pool of competent speakers.
It sure does - ask any exchange student. Also, I had an "immersive" semester of French in college that was more effective in making me comfortable speaking it than the four semesters of Italian I took from an old-school prof.
Yeah, I should believe some self serving academic study instead of my lying eyes and family experiences.
You're right VG, your anecdotal evidence is far superior to my decade and a half of research and scholarship into that exact field of inquiry.
You don't need that fancy-pants, city slicker book larnin' VG, you have "family experience!" And you come to the subject with absolutely no cognitive biases at all! Because you're VG! You're a special little snowflake!
Thin gruel, my friend, thin gruel.
To be fair, you're arguing two different things.
I think that the best way would be for ESL students to get a year long course to bring their English level up to where they could just go to normal school next year.
But I claim no expertise or knowledge in the field, and SLD applies as always.
You are both wrong.
The right answer is to end government schools and let the parents decide how to educate their children.
SLD, duh!
Interestingly enough, the golden age of Bilingual Ed, during the 19th Century, was destroyed by the Progressives, who feared those dirty Papists weren't Americanizing their children by sending them to Parochial schools that taught half the day in French/Italian and half the day in English.
SLD exists as an acronym because it isnt a default!
Well, okay, maybe. I assumed you all were there, but just wanted to point it out.
99.44% of all education arguments end by separating school and state.
Why do you think it takes only a year?
Yes, one might be fairly conversant in a language after a full year's worth of intensive study, but is that enough to study a cognitively demanding subject in that language?
For example, after a year of Japanese, you might be able to have a conversation about what is your favorite food or how the weather is, but could you follow a lecture on the Meiji Restoration in Japanese or Quantum Electrodynamics? Could you write the 5-paragraph essay without sounding like "Me learn. Me know stuffs"?
When it comes to language instruction, we must be aware of the fact that languages have two "flavors":Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). (See here for a quick and dirty explanation). Current research shows it takes 5 to 7 years of instruction to master CALP.
For example, after a year of Japanese, you might be able to have a conversation about what is your favorite food or how the weather is, but could you follow a lecture on the Meiji Restoration in Japanese or Quantum Electrodynamics? Could you write the 5-paragraph essay without sounding like "Me learn. Me know stuffs"?
You realize that we're talking about grammar school children, not graduate students, right?
That comment was directed at Virginian, whom I assume is not in grammar school.
However, high school students and adults do immigrate to this country and want to learn English to they can attend college, yes?
I'm gonna agree and disagree on this one, HM. Bilingual ed done right can work wonderfully, but the way I was taught in PR (and the way it is taught in many schools today) is woefully lacking.
The pedagogy of bilingual education is somewhat more complex than standardized education -- who among us really expects the asswipes teaching in public schools across the nation to get it right?
That said, my wife does homeschool bilingually and my kids speak and write English and Spanish (esp English) at a very high level, and my wife is far from being a native English speaker. (Same here for that matter, but my accent is mostly gone after working for the Chair Force for so many years.)
Yep, though I get paid trying my damnedest to try to make those asswipes competent. 🙂 I think we can agree that it's not the theory but the practice that is what's at issue here. If we allowed for greater school choice, in immigrant communities, I think we would slowly see a return to the 19th century bilingual parochial school model, I mentioned upthread. You already see this in many Muslim American communities. (Madrasas! Well, madaris, actually.)
And here's the point VG, if you assert that the past 50 or so years of research, done by hundreds of scholars, into a field I'm intimately familiar with is "bullshit", you better be prepare to support your argument with verifiable facts, research, and evidence.
Otherwise, you're just the quack screaming about the suppressed cure for cancer in front of an oncologists' convention.
I'm saying that the result or bi lingual ed have been a complete failure in CA. A disaster of enormous proportions. And it's not like we didn't have hundreds of years of experience doing it the other way,including both my and my wife's parents and their siblings as points of comparison.
So to this igrunt yokeltarian, your studies 'proving' it's efficacy sound like the socialists that claim communism never worked because it wasn't done right. And I'm reminded of the quip that 'it's hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not'.
Beyond that, I agree with robc that government needs to get out of the providing schooling business and let a market develop.
(Goddamit, Reason, stop eating my posts!)
Firstly, define what you mean by "bilingual ed" and what you mean by "success". I feel we might be arguing from two different definitions.
Actually, we haven't. The Bilingual Ed. model has a much, much older history in America than "sink or swim" or English immersion, as I pointed out upthread.
And again, you provide no evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, you seem to be accusing me of lying and academic fraud, so excuse me for being a little hot under the collar.
[cont]
Heh. Nevertheless, even if Bilingual Ed. were declared illegal tomorrow, I'd still have a job. Bilingual ed is not the only 2nd language pedagogy out there. But to argue that it is inferior to structured English immersion, by any metric, is nonsense. Furthermore, you seem to be only arguing from the perspective of California's experience with it. I've visited programs across the country and around the World, so my sampling is larger.
Indeed, and I wager it would look a lot like the 19th century parochial "golden age of ESL" model.
Heh. Nevertheless, even if Bilingual Ed. were declared illegal tomorrow, I'd still have a job.
I was referring to the studies authors, not you.
Furthermore, you seem to be only arguing from the perspective of California's experience with it.
Yes, I have extensive first hand knowledge of how it's played out in this state. And I am speaking about that experience, not theories of the concept or how it has been developed elsewhere.
Firstly, define what you mean by "bilingual ed" and what you mean by "success". I feel we might be arguing from two different definitions.
Perhaps,
I was speaking of it in response to John's point that it is failing to socialize 1st and 2nd generation immigrant children into the the broader english speaking society.
In CA in the 1970s it was sold to the public as doing that more effectively than the immersion approach (setting aside whether or not that is something that government schools should be doing in the 1st place). And on those terms it has been a failure as the students subjected to it have had worse outcomes across the board than students that haven't been subjected to it. So much so that ironically it is immigrants themselves that are pushing back against it.
I started to google up studies to post but decided that I didn't want to get in a confirmation bias war with you. Any one can find hundreds of articles and studies regarding the negative effects of CA's bilingual education experience.
Also ironically, i agree that it seems like a great idea, makes common sense and has any number of studies demonstrating its efficacy.
But the experience of how its actually been implemented here by government schools is irrefutably negative.
Oh, you're totally right of course. I'm speaking from an idealist perspective. My plan is totally out of the realm of possibility...at least until the government implodes.
We're not getting rid of the welfare state. So the solution is to hand out lots of work visas. That pisses off the unions and does not create new Democratic voters, however, so it's a non-starter in the current environment.
I would go for that. Give anyone who wants them a ten year work VISA. At the end of the ten years, they either apply for citizenship or they go home. Most people who come here don't want to stay anyway. They just want to come and make some money and go home. And if they want to stay, after ten years of not being a criminal and working, let them.
Works for me.
I'd be fine with letting anyone it under the proviso that they can't get welfare and can't become citizens.
The problem is that they will have children here, who will be indoctrinated into socialist beliefs by the public school system.
Yeah but all the children are indoctrinated in public school to believe in socialism.
The key is deprogramming them with thinks like Scouting and those awesome YouTube videos.
I'm for this, Fatty...especially if you forbid them from applying for or receiving any form of state or federal welfare.
How would you set it up if they get married while here, though? Or if they have a child who is then an American citizen jus soli. After 10 years when their visa is up and they don't want to become a citizen, what do you do with them? What do you do with their American citizen kid?
Lots of questions to be answered, but your proposal is a very good starting point.
Yeah that's my issue with visas. At some point, the state has to use force to move someone.
Just open the borders, restrict welfare to American citizens only, and require any citizens who wish to be naturalized to make a cash payment of 50,000 dollars.
Of course this will never happen in a million years because it doesn't give the Dems new voters, and puts the entirety of the immigration industry out of work.
United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar (where only 15% of the population are Qatari nationals), etc.
Jus' sayin'
Is Qatar doing well? I know other Arab governments have been rather harsh toward foreign workers.
Is Qatar like the Saudis, cutting heads off when some of their "servants" get uppity?
Doing well for whom? I assume the question was about the citizens of the country. As for Qatar, they're not chopping heads, but the way the guest workers are often treated, it's not all sweetness and light.
I mean are they having civil unrest, crackdowns, riots, etc. I don't know much about Qatar.
I mean, I fully expect at some point before 2050 that the Euros will have a final solution to their own immigration/assimilation issues.
As far as I know, the Bahraini protests are "Arab Spring"-type protests by native citizens against the draconian laws on free expression and religion. (The majority population is Shia, but the monarch is Sunni.) I haven't seen much evidence about it being due to labor issues.
I know someone from Qatar. He's Qatari and seems fairly well off (not necessarily wealthy, but he's not starving or being oppressed as far as I can tell; not sure about his situation on the whole though), so knowing him doesn't give an indication of how they treat immigrants or guest workers. I could ask him though; he's libertarian too, so he should be relatively unbiased on the matter.
thanks all for the replies - didn't participate sooner because of hangover post-drinking rest and recuperation.
Do they want to the Republican House to kill it to gin up Hispanic support for 2014/2016? Or if it does pass, the Democrats still get the glory. It's win-win really.
Limbaugh has been saying exactly that for several months.
these days I don't listen to Rush... back in my rah-rah days, yes.
I only started listening to him after the Fluke brouhaha. I find him mildly entertaining and pretty accurate in his political analysis.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Best.....-1-catcorr
Nice little Kindle book. 2.99 or free to borrow for Amazon Prime members.
Dwarvish dementia
But those banks are now so large (much larger than they were when they almost melted down five years ago), have such a monopolistic grip on our financial system, and exercise so much power over Washington, that we have cause for concern. The fact that not a single Wall Street executive has been held legally accountable for the excesses that almost brought the economy to its knees five years ago and continues to burden millions of Americans, that even the Attorney General confesses the biggest banks are "too big to jail," that the big banks continue to make irresponsible bets (such as those resulting in JP Morgan Chase's $6 billion "London Whale" loss), and that the Street has effectively eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank legislation intended to rein in its excesses and avoid another meltdown and bailout, all offer evidence that the Street is still dangerously out of control.
I wonder why he did not believe it to be useful (much less necessary) to mention the role of the FDIC in the expansion of those megabanks.
and that the Street has effectively eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank legislation intended to rein in its excesses and avoid another meltdown and bailout, all offer evidence that the Street is still dangerously out of control.
Clearly the solution is more regulation. It has to work this time.
Yeah, the moron refuses to see that the intention of Dodd-Frank was to further entrench TBTF financial firms.
Reich is an idiot. His criticism of the bailouts amounts to "they should have done even more economically stupid shit."
It is rare in these harshly partisan times for the political left and right to agree on much of anything. But the reason, I think, both are worried about the encroachments of the NSA on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, as well as the depredations of "too big to fail or jail" Wall Street banks on our economy, is fundamentally the same: It is this toxic combination of inordinate power and lack of accountability that renders both of them dangerous, threatening our basic values and institutions.
That neither Republicans nor Democrats have done much of anything to effectively rein in these two centers of unaccountable power suggests that, if there is ever to be a viable third party in America, it will may borne of the ill-fated consequences.
The government is too large and powerful. this state of affairs can be remedied by making the government larger and more powerful.
QED
Surprise! Not everybody at the Christian Science Monitor site is stupid or crazy:
After years of grim revenue news, state tax collections are surging. As they do, governors and state legislators are making decisions about how to manage the unfamiliar windfall. Some governors, including California's Jerry Brown, are husbanding resources, trying to hold down spending and paying down one-time debts. Others, such as New York's Andrew Cuomo, are falling victim to the siren song of targeted tax cuts.
Cuomo is not cutting tax rates across the board, like some Republican governors. Instead, he's doubling down on a strategy of growing the state's economy through targeted tax breaks even though there is little evidence that previous economic development subsidies paid off.
Tax incentives merely create churn without actually increasing jobs in the aggregate? Mindboggling!
So the solution is to hand out lots of work visas. That pisses off the unions and does not create new Democratic voters, however, so it's a non-starter in the current environment.
But guest workers are worse than slavery!
Limiting the franchise means you hate democracy, which basically makes you Hitler.
Why are you Hitler?
The only right that matters is your right to vote for socialists. Everything else is up for negotiations.
La Raza gets a fifty million dollar slush fund, the Democratic Party gets a slew of new voters, Republican national security bully boys get a brand spanking new fence in which to keep us all in and an improved documentation regime to further harass us, what do libertarians get out of this heap of shit? Why we get to support it or be called names by the establishment media. In other words, a split in our rank and file. I guess it would be imprudent of us if we actually expected to get something out a deal given we never do get anything out of them. But if we elbowed our way in, after all, we are equal in number to the hardcore progressives who ALWAYS get a huge slice of the pie, what would we ask for? Maybe an end to laws that penalize employers who don't give a rip where their employees come from or what their legal status be it undocumented or outlaw happens to be? That would be a good start, right?
Our goals are incompatible with theirs. The statists can get the papieren bitte and the government cheese, but there's no way to accommodate liberty with this monstrosity.
Then why is it editorial policy for Reason to support it?
Does it make sense to back something of which your political clout has been entirely neutered?
I keep asking that and am informed Reason doesn't support it. It sure looks like they do to me.
Judging by some of the other articles Reason has seen fit to publish, I'd say their political clout isn't the only thing that's been neutered...
Here's the thing for me. La Raza and Cato or the Reason Foundation should at the very least be comparative in terms of political clout. I understand the political reality that the two libertarian organization live under that they have to support a bill that is perceived as pro-immigrant. However, when you are in a minority position but have some political clout (which again, should at least equal La Razas) you don't have to be asked to give up that ass for free. Instead you assert a little sway to get poison pills and contradictory language written into a bill. Say, my demand above is too ambitious to be accommodated. How about making weekend landscaping and babysitting services will no longer be subject to labor law? That's reasonable, right?
Sorry for the many typos and grammar mistakes, I hit submit accidentally instead of preview.
Completely agree. Libertarians should be more politically potent than they are right now -- about on the level of hardcore proggies, who don't get everything they want but certainly get plenty of bones tossed their way.
CATO and Reason shouldn't fold on this one so easily. They should explain what they want out of an immigration bill, and use their influence to attack bills that don't get even close to that standard -- or as you say, have some leverage over what gets in the bill and what gets tossed out.
You are high if you think Cato or Reason could currently match the political clout of La Raza. La Raza is basically the NAACP of Hispanics. Cato and Reason are think tanks.
La Raza is nowhere near NAACP in terms of clout, and I am talking in terms of demographics. You can bet that Brookings wouldn't have endorsed a Republican-led healthcare bill without first getting the bill in a more favorable condition.
La Raza might not be near the NAACP in terms of political clout, but it has far more than Reason or even Cato. It's an organizing non-profit while Reason and Cato are think tanks.
La Raza is basically the NAACP of Hispanics.
La Raza is not my NAACP by a long shot.
Shut up you stupid wetback, the nice man is telling you what you think about the issue. Shut up and listen to him.
I hated to pull that card but he had to go there.
Not that hate using the card, but that I would rather use it for something more useful for my purposes -- 'oh, you don't sleep with white guys, well, technically speaking . . .'
I'm not saying I like it that Reason has less clout, just that it does.
Instead you assert a little sway to get poison pills and contradictory language written into a bill. Say, my demand above is too ambitious to be accommodated. How about making weekend landscaping and babysitting services will no longer be subject to labor law? That's reasonable, right?
Absolutely.
Better yet get rid of that fucking permission from the feds to work proviso.
Seriously, how can any libertarian support any bill that has that monstrosity in it.
Free movement of people is a pretty fundamental libertarian value. It was one of the few questions on the original World's Smallest Political Quiz.
And yet it is the one thing that the immigration reform bill, curiously enough, does not address substantively. Funny, that.
Doesn't it raise the cap for new high and low tech visas and create a path to citizenship for millions?
I see nothing in the bill about unskilled labor or a guest worker program, both of which would substantively address the issue with the biggest demographics as far as illegal immigration goes.
Raising caps on an already bad system does not magically enable such individuals to emigrate freely for work.
"I see nothing in the bill about unskilled labor or a guest worker program"
I think this is what the W visa is supposed to do
Foreigners aren't "people" for purposes of most political philosophies.
Bo Cara, if you find yourself in disagreement with me on a libertarian position, it is only because you haven't done the heavy lifting to think a matter through. I wont tolerate amateur hour snip, and you seem very trollish at this point.
Yeah, complaints about immigration reform that start with cries about La Raza are usually coming from a principled libertarian place...
Exactly the response I would expect from a bad faith drone.
Strike two.
Whatever.
The free movement of people is a long time core value for libertarians. This bill lessens restrictions on that. Is it perfect? No. Are there tradeoffs in it? Sure. But if some don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater that doesn't mean they have somehow turned their back on libertarian values.
If you want to take a stand that the tradeoffs in the bill are unacceptable, or even that any tradeoff is so, I can respect that (I've been around the libertarian movement enough to be familiar with that). What I don't get is when you can't do the same for libertarians who think they are getting something here worth holding their nose at over the other stuff.
Yeah the whole national database of workers for purposes of controlling labor is so libertarian. Almost as libertarian as the digital face mapping database called the "photo tool" that's in there.
Fuck that. I wouldn't support a thousand page bill for anything, let alone this shit sandwhich.
I wouldn't support a thousand page bill for anything
If I was president, I would have two veto stamps.
First, the main one, which would be well used, that just says "VETO".
The second would be "TL;DR -- VETO".
I realized after hitting submit, that the TL;DR version might get used the most.
But it doesn't give free movement. It doesn't let people who want to come here come here. It does the opposite. It just legalizes people who are already here. Sure that is good and all. But not good enough to justify making every American have to get a work permit from the government. Isn't the ability to work without the permission of the government important too?
Sure that is good and all.
Im not sure that is good. I dont want to arrest those people or anything, but they should have to leave and apply properly for the unlimited supply of work permits.
Heck, if they are Mexican or whatever, they dont even need to go home, just go to the border town and apply and then head back to work.
Agree with robc. Under the immigration system I would prefer, current violators would just have to book a weekend trip to El Paso or Nogales and get screened for disease/crime and issued with their work permits.
Far better than "path to citizenship" nonsense which simply exacerbates the problems currently present. Like Virginian said, I want to import workers and contributors, not voters.
I'm not sure we are that far from that now with our I-9 system.
From what I understand the e-verify thing was put in there to get enough GOP votes to accept the 'pathway to citizenship.'
How about scrap the "pathway to citizenship" and E-verify, and institute something similar to the Bracero Program? Illegal immigrants could then apply to that program easily, and it would stop future problems with folks immigrating illegally for work, since they can then do so legally.
Why is it so vital to allow illegal immigrants the right to vote, anyhow?
The American Dream has always been about creating a permanent Democratic majority, don't you know that?
Why is it so vital to deny them it?
They're working and living here, paying taxes here, why not let them vote?
Because voting is, fundamentally, an act of violence, and it is vital that the franchise be restricted to those who can exercise this duty circumspectly. Those who are insufficiently informed to handle such a task should not be voting -- period. Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level. I was certainly not at that level when I first came to the continental US.
Voting should be understood as a civic duty, NOT a door prize to be handed at will.
"voting is, fundamentally, an act of violence, and it is vital that the franchise be restricted to those who can exercise this duty circumspectly. Those who are insufficiently informed to handle such a task should not be voting -- period. Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level."
Oh my Lord.
We're done here. I don't find debating V-Dare people to be worth my time.
I'm a Hispanic immigrant myself, and the only person who's brought up race in this discussion is you, you fucking race-baiting piece of shit. I realize that scum like you are ill-equipped to discuss the question of voting as a duty lucidly and thus cannot be expected to understand why uneducated, poor immigrants from a country with no jury trials and precious little history of civil rights should be assumed to magically understand everything there is to know about the US' system and to vote in a way that won't oppress the people living here. It is not your fault that your poor education and upbringing taught you to reduce arguments you don't understand to neanderthal gruntings about race that don't apply.
You should, however, endeavor not to make your lack of good manners and education so obvious to all. I recommend a discreet silence next time you don't understand my arguments or the arguments of any of your betters on this board. Who knows, you might actually learn something.
+1111
I disagreed with Bo Cara but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I cannot believe that he is honestly arguing that when people claim Mexican immigrants are poorly educated it is because of race.
Mexican immigrants are poorly educated because they are from an unbelievably poorly run country that does not effectively educate its citizens. Moreover, the people coming here are from northern Mexico. Central Mexico is relatively urban and is comparatively well educated, but the north Mexicans are the worst educated people in a country of poor education. They live out in an area with few schools, and the ones that do exist are atrocious in ways that Americans cannot even comprehend.
I am in favor of open borders as regards movement of labor, but citizenship must be earned by new citizens. To do otherwise is to allow a limitless influx of poorly educated individuals to to choose the victor in elections that effect all of us.
Do you really want people from that kind of educational system electing the sort of leaders they elected in Mexico? Are you kidding me?
"Most Hispanic immigrants and emigrants are not at that level."
Yea, most Hispanic immigrants (and emigrants!) are simply not "at the level" to be allowed to vote. Nothing that could be construed as racist there. Ask yourself: why would it be particularly Hispanic immigrants that would be "not at the level" to vote? I guess Asians or Russians somehow magically know about jury trials and the history of civil rights in our nation.
In your need to get every fact wrong in your diatribe I'll point out that it was YOU who first brought up race by singling out Hispanics, I said nothing about it until then (check the time stamps professor).
Now go back to your Tea Party bullshit.
"the question of voting as a duty"
I understand that a lot of Tea Party types seem to congregate here on this libertarian site, but for a libertarian you've got this ass-backwards. The people don't have to be "worthy" of voting for those who get to rule them, it's the other way around.
And for you to lecture someone on good manners when you curse someone for not finding your desire to limit the vote of those who live under our system is especially rich.
Hispanic isn't a race, puta de madre. It's an ethnicity, and a racially varied one at that which includes Meso-American, African, Caucasian, and Asians. YOU brought up race by bringing a racist site into this discussion, you dumb dildo.
FWIW, I don't think fresh-off-the-boat Asians and Russians make good citizens, either but since I am neither Asian nor Russian (and since *most* of those being offered a path to citizenship are in fact fellow Hispanics) I didn't consider them germane to the conversation. Now go fuck a donkey or whatever it is you do when you're not busy fabricating arguments not addressed or made in a conversation.
"They're working and living here, paying taxes here, why not let them vote?"
Late to the party as usual...
I am a permanent resident in a country other-than-the-US and agree that I do not have a right to vote here (in this country - not the US) BECAUSE as a non-citizen I have not hitched my star to the future of this country. If and when I make the commitment to become a citizen then I should get the right to chose the path for this country - and not before.
Yeah so from a libertarian perspective we get both a new tool of State control over the people and ten million newly minted socialist voters.
Gee, where do I sign?
The '86 bill so many people hold up as a model created the documentation regime we live under now. That bill weakened the civil rights of undocumented immigrants by making them a less desirable class of people for purposes of employment. It created the shadow economy they live under by putting an onerous burden on employees. This bill entrenches that cultural divide even more by spending more monies on the e-verify regime. It wont make undocumented workers a thing of the past (and the ability to live undocumented while retaining your civil rights was a healthy part of what made this nation thrive for many generations), it will exacerbate the problem.
The caste system these immigration laws have created undermines free movement as a right.
I don't think you can just say 'more immigration, therefore more libertarian.' If you allow more labor movement and it requires a massive expansion of government and a national database of workers, I am loathe to call that a step in the right direction.
It's a perfect bill for Democrats. It increases their voting base and massively expands government, therefore helping to further coerce people into voting for them. Anything that good for the Democrats, who at this point are essentially the fascist party, can hardly be called positive for libertarians.
This is only if you assume that when people move here they are going to be enamored with the Democrats or government programs. I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, especially in the long term.
Maybe not in the long term, but first and second generation immigrants are consistently Democrats. There are obviously exceptions, such as Cubans and some Europeans, but it's safe to say they'll help the Democrats in the short term.
I'm in favor of immigration, for the record, but a government expansion and national database which sharply expands the voting base of an increasingly totalitarian party is something that we should at least view with suspicion.
Look at your own handle. Many new Irish immigrants voted Democrat, a few generations later their descandants were voting for Reagan.
Do you suffer from a mental impediment, or merely stunning levels of historical ignorance? Irish specifically noted that trend in voting. Just in case you missed it the first time:
I also pointed out that exceptions exist, such as Cubans and some Eastern European groups that have been fucked over by Communism.
If you look at voting numbers right now, Mexican immigrants are not one of those exceptions.
Even if they were a group that, for some reason, voted Republican or conservative (say, a hypothetical where poor Afrikaners emigrated to the US and started voting Republican out of a belief that they are the white man's party or somesuch), would that be acceptable?
Inducting a whole class ignorant voters and encouraging them to vote makes a sham out of the notion of consent of the governed. Consent must be informed to be legitimate; ignorant voters cannot be considered to be meaningfully consenting. My first vote was for Ronald Reagan, and it was cast in complete ignorance of American politics and the American tradition of limited governance, and mostly in ignorance of the issues at the time. I was in no way invested in the result in a meaningful way -- can that really be considered consent?
Well, I think the Republican party is fairly fascistic too, so if they were voting Republican it still wouldn't be particularly good.
Personally, I think that anyone who wants to should be able to come work here and to make money working. We should be the nation that everyone who wants to better themselves sees as the place to go. But I don't think that we should just allow people to come here and vote in our elections. If we just allow anyone who wants to to come in and vote, then the very idea of citizenship is eliminated.
Moreover, as you said, people from third world nations will be unbelievably ignorant and poorly informed when they first arrive. Their children and grandchildren will be better educated, but I don't want products of northern Mexico education coming to America and impacting the people who represent me in Congress.
The worst educated Americans, even people from the absolute joke that we call the inner city schools, are better educated than people in the third world. We can't just allow anyone who wants to to come here and immediately have voting rights.
Then because you fear some short term benefit to Democrats over Republicans libertarians should not support a program that would improve the lot of millions of people to go where they want to live? I sense those partisan things are likely very important to you, but perhaps you can excuse those of us libertarians who don't let that make up our minds.
Good Lord.
Too bad this bill doesn't do that at all.
No, dipshit. I DO support a law that would make the lives better for millions of people, because I support a law that would allow anyone to live and work here.
That's all that's required for someone to improve their life. Why the hell should they be given the vote just because they crossed a border? Should we just allow whoever wants to to influence our elections? Should Saudi oil barons be allowed to come over here and vote?
Jesus. The issue here is the trappings of citizenship, not the issue of whether people should be allowed to live and work here. We're all in favor of free movement of labor and in the ability of Mexicans to improve their lives by working in America. The argument here is over the issue of citizenship and giving anyone the vote just because they crossed the border.
Get over yourself and argue with my actual position instead of the voices in your head.
Many new Irish immigrants voted Democrat, a few generations later their descandants were voting for Reagan.
And the Kennedys and Faux co hauntus. I have a number of business associates of Irish decent that have a bizarre fondness for socialist politicians and their rhetoric.
That is about it. That bill is a horrible monstrosity of various awful people's wet dreams.
There are some among us who would hold up the '86 immigration bill as a model. The one good old Ronnie Raygun supported. And damn, if it was good enough for Raygun, why, what are you, a troglodyte? That bill weakened the civil rights and liberties of both undocumented workers and American citizens. It was a temporary good for some immigrants, but in the long run it got us here to the 'your documents, please' state.
Why are you Hitler?
Hitler? Pfft. I have a much better moustache.
So...Stalin?
Gary Johnson was a guest on Friday morning's RedEye (hosted by "libertarian" Greg Gutfeld, who recently condemned Snowden. Hope Levy gave him a swirly or ten).
https://www. youtube. com/watch?v=tg6BqHaJLDk
"Reason Mag Turns 45, Editors Have Managed Not to Kill Each Other"
Example number 200,245 of Libertarians failing to achieve tangible results.
Meet the new boss....
"If it were not for a now famous scene in a hospital just blocks away from the White House, it is unlikely that James B. Comey would have been standing in the Rose Garden on Friday to be introduced as President Obama's nominee for the director of the F.B.I.
Despite the showdown, in which Mr. Comey refused the request of White House aides to reauthorize a program for eavesdropping without warrants, he was later willing to go along with most of the Bush administration's surveillance operations. He and his allies, including Mr. Mueller, eventually backed down from their threats to resign in protest after the White House made modest adjustments.
Mr. Comey did not object to the key element of the Bush administration's program ? the wiretapping of American citizens inside the United States without warrants. Instead, he focused on trying to curb a large data mining operation inside the United States, similar to the data mining programs at the center of the current controversy over the National Security Agency.
A former senior intelligence official who played a role in surveillance programs during the Bush administration said that Mr. Comey "never expressed any concern" about the warrantless wiretapping program."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06.....l?hpw&_r=0
They are all the same. They all know each other. So much of what you see on TV is a show.
You almost have to appreciate how evilly clever this nomination is. It aims to remind the public "this NSA stuff is nothing new, Bush did it" and at the same time claim "I'm hiring the guy who stood up to Bush on this, see?"
That Obama promised to act differently and that Comey went along with most of what Cheney and friends wanted are supposed to be forgotten.
And of course he didn't stand up to Bush. he just whined and stayed on the job.
Remember when the left went crazy about the Bush administration considering prosecuting leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act?
"The Obama administration has shown a particular propensity to go after leakers and has launched more investigations than any previous administration. This White House is responsible for bringing six of the nine total indictments ever brought under the 1917 Espionage Act. Snowden will be the seventh individual when he is formally indicted."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ml?hpid=z2
The comments are as usual a riot. Liberals are all about the flag and the American way these days. The same people who held up the NYT as heroes in 2005 for exposing a smaller program under Bush, now think Snowden should be shot.
Hope and change means using a 1917 war bill passed to go after anti-war protestors and one rarely used to go after people who leak information to....the American people.
FORWARD!
So is anyone considering going to a "Restore the Fourth" rally?
Best fiends forever? Was that a Freudian slip, or do you want to learn which of us losers has the most free time to read alt-texts?
Criticism of gay conversion therapy from back in February - published in *First Things,* a clerico-fascist magazine which supports right-wing religion.
http://www.firstthings.com/ont.....on-therapy
A recent article in *First Things* celebrating the closing of Exodus: "This is one reason why, as a Christian who embraces a traditional biblical ethic of sexuality, I rejoice at the closure of Exodus International. I rejoice not *in spite of* my traditional moral beliefs, but *because* of them." [emphasis in original]
http://www.firstthings.com/ont.....for-exodus
First Things is not fascist.
I was being sarcastic.
Sorry.
I doubt it takes a position on economics at all.
"Michael Bloomberg gun control group site registered to NYC
"The name "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" is well known as Mike Bloomberg's gun-control arm, which he spends his personal fortune through on ads. Yet the group's website is registered to, and handled by, official city government servers and staffers.
"Domain names for MAIG were registered in 2006 by the New York City Department of Information and Technology, and have remained on official city web servers ever since....
"At minimum, the use of a city web server and city employees underscore what critics have long derided as a blurring of the lines between government resources and Bloomberg's own multi-billion-dollar fortune, his company, and his pet interests in his three terms as mayor....
""While the campaign activities may be supported and coordinated by the mayor's office, given that it's an independent nonprofit it is always cleaner to have a separation of operation like having a stand-alone website," said Dick Dadey, head of the New York City-based good-government group Citizens Union."
http://www.politico.com/story/.....93182.html
The expansion of government results in rich fuckers using their positions of privilege to further entrench their power and stifle the opposition? No fucking way.
Once in a while a liberal mag gets it. And when they do, they generally take down their own kind better than anyone.
We live in an age of what William James called "medical materialism," so instead of fretting about a fallen world, we speak of a poisoned one. In a modern version of original sin, the corruption of our environment is so thorough that it defies individual efforts to transcend it: "Even those making good lifestyle choices still shower with city water, eat meals at restaurants, and live, work, and shop in buildings that have been cleaned and fumigated with toxic chemicals," writes Junger. We might add to his list other features of daily life that we suspect may be dangerous but haven't been banned by the authorities: cell-phone signals that may lead to brain cancer, endocrine disruptors that drive our hormones crazy, probably leading, again, to cancer. Distrustful of our surroundings, we try to close ourselves off to malign influences and to purge them. It is no accident that Clean dwells obsessively on defecation and elimination. Junger wants us to flush out shit, "toxic waste," even mucus, which he says has "a dense and sticky quality; it resonates with and attracts dense, toxic thoughts and emotions."
http://www.newrepublic.com/art.....t=9235678#
The incidence of cancer has actually dropped substantially since 2000. If cell signals and endocrine disruptors are causing cancer, they sure are doing a shitty job of it.
That's because they were too busy murdering LUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCYYYYYYYY!
Then they got some explaining to do.
ol' Nick looks like he woke up from the crypt, got drunks on cocktails, and then decided to give the death stare to a Yokeltarian.
If you don't think we live in a better world, here's pictures from a mall in 1990.
I've got an ape drape, yes, I do
They're giving them to anyone and that means you
You can go to Riverside and get one too
And then you'll have an ape drape like I do
I've got Hockey Hair, yes I do. They're giving them to anyone, that means you. You can drive to Canada and get one too, then you'll have hockey hair like I do.
Now I remember why I didn't hang out at malls in 1990.
What's the problem? I still dress like that.
You still wear clothes? Fascist.
I thought for a second it said 1900.
I didn't know Portland had malls.
So then people dressed poorly because they didn't know better, and now people dress poorly because it's ironic.
Change!
So now maybe you all have some idea why I left the US a couple years after that.
Look around now and you can see why I don't have plans to come back yet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....82750.html
What the fuck kind of parent lets a creepy old man take her daughter to McDonalds after 11 PM after having just met him?
Drunk ones?
The perpetrator is in custody now and led the police to the little girl's body. He's a former sex offender.
Fuck.
Look at that fucking guy. Look at him. Now, he comes up to you in WalMart while you're with your eight year old girl and starts talking to you. What do you do?
Me, I have my hand hovering over my right hip, and am moving immediately to call the cops. This stupid cunt let a strange man take her daughter out of her sight.
They ought to throw her in the same cell as him.
This situation reads to me like Mom was desperate for male companionship. Nothing else comes even close to making any kind of sense.
Mom has two more kids. Not a big fan of CPS, but if ever there was a time for them to intervene...
Happy Birthday, Reason.
Thank you, Reason Magazine, for being the prime mover that transformed the libertarian perspective from a fringe radical idea into a permanent feature of the national political landscape. It's impossible to overstate your importance to the libertarian movement (although I certainly don't object to those who wish to make the attempt).
Reason Magazine is certainly unparallelled in terms of sucessful libertarian publications. I visit it alot for all the examples of bloated, hypocritical government. But it still urks me the level of political correctness(cosmotarianism) in this magazine. It thoughtlessly followed the liberal left in criticizing Richwine, refusing to even consider that he might be right because that would be "racist."
I discovered Reason while searching for different perspectives in the aftermath of 9/11. Haven't regretted it. Especially since it's marginally older than me. Happy birthday.
Tory Burch anna Satchel abysmal dejected als has this affectionate of absolutely beauteous logo arresting cavans about navy, it is so lovely. I aspect top of Tory Burch backpack success for you to its alert implementation. The ould - Satchel is a signature contour additional a backpack basal just about every woman accept to have.these reva tory burch auction absolutely in added words chichi central the advancing winter. Tory Burch boots and shoes are beginning tory burch outle online a part of the account of cast sneakers, you will get the accessible luxury. get? these Tory Burch shoes Sand, you will action specialist abatement Tory Burch.Tory Burch has developed women's admired designers, Simple appearance and architecture and exceptional adore accustomed support.
up to I saw the bank draft which was of $8085, I did not believe ...that...my father in law could actualy receiving money in their spare time from there labtop.. there friends cousin had bean doing this 4 less than twenty one months and just cleard the mortgage on there home and bourt themselves a Acura. this is where I went, Go to site and open Home for details
http://WWW.JOBS31.COM