A.M. Links: U.S. Troops Arrive in Ebola-Stricken West Africa, Obamacare Tax Credits to Be Cut, Climate Change Protest Hits NYC

• 

  Wikimedia Commons

  U.S. troops are now on the ground in West Africa helping to battle the Ebola outbreak.

• "The U.S. plan to step up attacks against militants in Iraq and Syria is being delayed until more Arab governments agree to contribute to the operation, the Pentagon's top officer said Sunday."

• Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets of New York City on Sunday to demand government action on climate change.

• Tax credits issued under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be cut for hundreds of thousands of recipients.

• The Secret Service is weighing new security measures after a man carrying a folding knife jumped a fence and made it briefly inside the White House on Friday.

• As the midterm elections near, some embattled Republicans are moving away from social conservatism and towards libertarianism on issues such as same-sex marriage and over-the-counter access to birth control.

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Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets of New York City on Sunday to demand government action on climate change.

A bigger scam than St. Patrick's Day.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The Secret Service is weighing new security measures after a man carrying a folding knife jumped a fence and made it briefly inside the White House on Friday.

It's like nobody had watched Olympus Has Fallen.

[Bee Tagger]

No one cared when it was a folding chair at the inauguration.

[Ted S.]

If there were no President, we wouldn't have to worry about threats against the President.

[Aloysious]

You may be on to something here...

[Free Society]

But without teh president who will build meh roadz?

[Jerryskids]

The Secret Service is weighing new security measures after a man carrying a folding knife jumped a fence and made it briefly inside the White House on Friday.

Let me guess, do the "increased security measures" include more funding for the expanded role of the DEA, IRS, EPA, OSHA, NHTSA, FDA, TSA, Pentagon, and the Ex/Im Bank plus some additional amendments to the AUMF, the Patriot Act, HIPAA, McCain-Feingold, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918?

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

Don't forget a folding knife czar.

[DJF]

Obama should give him amnesty and a room and job at the White House. Also Obama needs to get rid of that fence, fences are racist.

[Bam!]

That "new security measure" is a lock for the door.

[Zeb]

Every incident like this convinces me more that the president should just be kept locked in a highly secure room somewhere. There is really no reason he has to actually go anywhere to perform his official duties. If he wants to do anything else, he can pay for his own security.

[thom]

Then how will people understand how mighty and important the President is? Nothing beats it into your head more than an hour spent sitting on a freeway waiting for the President to get shuttled to a fundraiser.

[MegaloMonocle]

Every incident like this convinces me more that the president should just be kept locked in a highly secure room somewhere.

Guard towers, high fences, barred doors and windows.

To, err, keep the Bad Guys out? Right?

[Longtorso, Johnny]

I always feeeeeeel like the squirrrrrels are waaaaaaatching meeeeeeeeeee.....

The Squirrels Are Watching You

[expat]

... and I get no privacy

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Yea, but the guys calling the girl 'ugly', leaving aside the fact that it values women only for their looks, is a 'neg', which will make said drunk girl all the more hot for one of those guys....

University event says men can prevent rape through taco runs
A student event at Arizona State University suggested that intoxicated men just grab tacos with friends in order to prevent rape.

The event, sponsored by the student group I Always Get Consent, made the claim that teaching women self-defense techniques perpetuates "rape culture" and advised men to tell their drunken buddies at the bar that a woman is ugly to prevent him from going home with her and raping her....

[db]

*fish* tacos, natch.

[Ted S.]

Men can prevent rape by murdering women instead of having sex with them.

Not that this is a very good idea, of course.

[Invisible Finger]

Instead? Or before?

[trshmnster the terrible]

The train has arrived in crazy town, and there is no stopping it now!

[Lord Humungus]

full steam ahead.

[Bardas Phocas]

So encouraging the Obesity Epidemic.

[Ted S.]

advised men to tell their drunken buddies at the bar that a woman is ugly to prevent him from going home with her and raping her getting raped....

After all, you can't consent if you're drunk, and the hypothetical establishes that the man is drunk.

[WTF]

That shit only goes one way, because, Patriarchy!

[Doctor Whom]

You just don't get it, do you? The rules are completely different for men.

[antisocial-ist]

You can't have equality unless there's different rules for each gender.

[Auric Demonocles]

If you've got to worry about your friends raping if you don't go buy tacos, you should get different friends.

[trshmnster the terrible]

"gimme a fucking taco or ima rape somebody up in here!"

/nobody ever

[Swiss Servator, Grundgesetz!]

STEVE SMITH RAPE FOR TACO!

[T]

STEVE SMITH RAPE FOR TACO!

More accurate, I think.

[Roger the Shrubber]

Do you think an 'I CONSENT' T-shirt would be a good seller?

[toolkien]

What in the hell is The Onion supposed to do now? When the real world is more insane than their made up shit, they're out of business.

[MegaloMonocle]

Seriously, they think that "hey, if you're drunk and horny, get a bunch of your buddies together and grab a taco" is, umm, anti-rape?

[Lord Humungus]

Gabby Giffords gets mean

Gabby Giffords, irreproachable figure of sympathy, has fashioned an improbable new role for herself this election year: ruthless attack dog.

The former Democratic congresswoman, whose recovery from a gunshot wound to the head captivated the country, has unleashed some of the nastiest ads of the campaign season, going after GOP candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire with attacks even some left-leaning commentators say go too far. And Republicans on the receiving end are largely helpless to hit back, knowing a fight with the much-admired survivor is not one they're likely to win.

[Ted S.]

"Gets"?

[WTF]

"Cripple fight!"

[gaijin]

We must feel compassion for those who suffer from PTSD...mental illness is a terrible thing that often creates a sense of hostility in those it afflicts. Gabby deserves our help during these outbursts of anger and incoherence.

[Drake]

I'm not sure how we could legally help Gabby by getting her statist husband and handlers away from the poor woman.

[Zeb]

She does deserve our sympathy. The people using her as a puppet to push their agenda deserve a good kick in the nuts.

[MegaloMonocle]

No, she's a willing participant. She deserves no sympathy, and should be condemned equally with her handlers.

[Zeb]

I have no idea of her actual mental competency at this point. I'm just trying to be charitable. You are probably right.

[Drake]

These ads must not be meant for me. I really like Marilinda Garcia now - we seem to agree on every issue in the ad.

[Zeb]

Heh. I get a lot of fliers in the mail like that that have exactly the opposite of the intended effect on me. Though usually it's bullshit and both candidates actually suck.

Garcia seems pretty OK. I might vote for her simply because she is by far the most attractive person running for any office this year in NH.

[VG Zaytsev]

One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend.

"He had threatened her before. I knew. I just knew," Vicki says. A narrator then declares that McSally "opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun."

If Vicky really cared about the safety of her daughter she would have bought here a gun and trained her in it's use.

Instead she shilled for a politician.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Liver transplant plan could punish donor-rich South
"What they are wanting to do is take the areas of high donation rates, like the South, and turn them into an organ farm to send them from areas of high donation rates to areas of low donation," Wyatt said. "That is their proposal in a nutshell."...

[Ted S.]

The organs should belong to the estate of the decedent, which can sell them. Why should I be forced to give my liver to somebody 20 miles from me if I want to sell it to somebody 1000 miles away?

[Auric Demonocles]

Duh. Climate change.

Transplant local!

[DontShootMe]

All my organs are pickled in alcohol.

[Doctor Whom]

People who need organs should be honored to die for political correctness.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Tax credits issued under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be cut for hundreds of thousands of recipients.

Wasted money. Those people were already voting the way they want.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

"Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat."
-- Hillary Clinton

[Rich]

What are their lovers, chopped liver?

[Bee Tagger]

"What is this liver, chopped lovers?"
- hannibal lecther's dinner guests

[Notorious G.K.C.]

WTF?

[TwB]

Just like Ambassador Stevens, right Hillary?

[Mike M.]

This, times four. What the hell happened to "people die in war zones"?

[gaijin]

yes because losing a loved one is worse than death

[WTF]

"World ends tomorrow; women, minorities hardest hit."

[Zeb]

It sort of is. Dead people don't keep suffering. I suppose it is very much an open question that probably doesn't have a clear answer, but in some sense the most significant victims of a homicide are the people who care about the dead person.

[Invisible Finger]

Only in the sense of there being no sense.

[Zeb]

Dead people do indeed have no sense.

[db]

"Therefore, I vow to, with all my strength, think *really* hard about sending
people to war to die for my whims."

[Auric Demonocles]

"World ends: women, minorities hardest hit."

[John]

Yeah because losing your husband is so much worse than dying. And I thought girls can and men were no longer needed in society? How could losing your husband or potential rapist son be so bad?

[Doctor Whom]

You didn't even bother retrieving the mask from the trash, did you?

[Zeb]

But the experience of war has improved for women too. It is no longer taken as a given that all of the women will be brutally raped by an invading army (though it still happens a lot in some parts of the world).

[Spoonman.]

...What?

[ant1sthenes]

Why I am a misogynist, in a nutshell.

[trshmnster the terrible]

"men have always been the primary victims of rape. Men lose their wives' sexuality, self-confidence, and innocence during rape."

/soon to be political and social pariah

The fact that Hillary won't be shunned from politics for saying what she said shows how one way the street is.

[MJGreen]

When the mines collapse, I'm the real victim. I lose my minor miners, my orphan monocle-polishers, my sources of valuable tin.

[MegaloMonocle]

It makes perfect sense when you realize that Hillary and her ilk don't really believe men are people.

[Lord Humungus]

New Syrian Refugee Flight to Turkey Is Worst Since War Began: U.N.

Turkey is facing one of the biggest influxes of refugees from neighboring Syria since the war there began more than three years ago, the United Nations' refugee agency said on Sunday, as civilians continued to flee clashes between Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants and Kurdish forces.

ISIS fighters seized dozens of villages close to the border and advanced on the frontier town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, as Kurdish commanders issued a rallying cry to Turkish Kurds to join the fight. At least 70,000 people are confirmed to have crossed into Turkey in less than two days, and the real figure may be more than 100,000, Carol Batchelor, UNHCR's representative in Turkey told Reuters on Sunday.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Read 8 damning emails from behind the scenes of the Healthcare.gov meltdown
..."Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks," the report says. "There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view."

The worst look comes from the internal emails excerpted in the report (including one that from CMS chief Marilynn Tavenner that begins "Please delete this email.") Not many officials lost their jobs in the wake of the Healthcare.gov debacle ? CMS CIO Tony Trenkle's resignation was one of the only staff changes immediately following the launch ? but this report may change that. Things look especially bleak for Tavenner, who signed the approval saying the site could go live and also reportedly told her subordinates to delete emails in addition to deleting her own, a violation of federal record-keeping rules....

[gaijin]

continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with {insert any action by the administration here} from public view."

fixya!

[Ted S.]

Fake scandal!!!111!!!

[Jerryskids]

Remember, it was Congress that passed and funded the ACA. Don't be trying to blame this minor technical issue on some low-level employee in the executive branch!

[Fluffy]

Ezra Klein would tell you that they're entitled to lie, because if they told the truth the evil Republicans would use it to turn people against the policy, and the policy is Important.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

The War on Poverty Has Been a Colossal Flop
...Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that's three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

[WTF]

Oh, it has been quite successful at its true purpose, ensuring blocs of Democratic voters for decades.

[Jerryskids]

The WOP is a flop only because we haven't done enough to make sure nobody in the US is in the bottom 10% of the income distribution. Since somewhere around 10% of the population is still in the bottom 10% of the income distribution, we obviously need more distribution.

Of course, getting people out of poverty is just a start - the ultimate goal should be to make sure that everybody has an above-average income. Once they figure out the correct formula, 100% of the population will be in the top 50% of the income distribution.

[trshmnster the terrible]

Your Nobel prize in economics will be in the mail shortly.

[Doctor Whom]

An actual conversation that I once had:

"Fifty percent of all Americans are of sub-median intelligence."

"Sometimes I think it's at least that many."

[robc]

Its less than 50% any time we have an odd number of people.

[Lord Humungus]

Report: Brothers attack each other in fight over stolen okra

When one man accused his brother of stealing okra from his garden, a fight broke out and injured them both, according to Spartanburg police.

Police were called to the brothers' Edwards Road home on Thursday afternoon about a disturbance and arrived to find Anthony Kelly and Ted Kelly with scratches on their arms.

According to the police report, Anthony Kelly confronted his brother about the theft, who in turn hit him with a stick. Ted Kelly told police he hit his brother in retaliation because Anthony hit him first.

Okrahoma, Ok!

[TwB]

I could see it if the okra was grilled and sprinkled w/ dry rub. Delicious.

[Elspeth Flashman]

+ 1 Trigger warning: Rodgers & Hammerstein flashbacks.

[Ted S.]

Anthony Kelly confronted his brother about the theft, who in turn hit him with a stick.

As evil as Adrian Peterson!

[WTF]

Unfortunately, he only knew how to defend himself from a handful of loganberries.

[Bee Tagger]

towards libertarianism on issues such as same-sex marriage

Good, at least it's the single unifying issue in libertarianism, today.

[Ted S.]

You forgot about pot and Mexicans.

[Roger the Shrubber]

You know, Ted, ass sex need not be homo only.

[DontShootMe]

Oh please, I'm tried of paying for everybody else's birth control. Must I pay for their strap-ons too?

[Roger the Shrubber]

It's not fair that your wife can afford such an extravagant assortment.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...../15249645/
...Once a state where the middle class reigned supreme, the apotheosis of the American Dream, California now has the wealth distribution ? and, in some disturbing ways, the political underpinnings ? of a Third World country. In Silicon Valley, a group of super-wealthy tech oligarchs live lives of almost unimaginable wealth, while only a few miles away, illegal immigrants live in squalor.

[TwB]

It's what the voting citizens of Cali wanted, right?

[WTF]

It's all because of the wreckers, hoarders, kulaks, Republicans!

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

All 13 of 'em.

[Ted S.]

It's the far-right Republican governance what done it.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Yeah, this has been pretty obvious for a while now. California, in about 20 years, will resemble a banana republic--a few hyperwealthy swells surrounded by walls and armed security, in a sea of low-income trash who can barely keep their lights on and toilets running. And they'll continue calling themselves progressive because they can't see how their economy is actually propped up by trillions in international cash from outside the state's own borders.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

Children and firearm safety

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

That is beautiful.

[Lord Humungus]

Woman dubbed the 'world's sexiest criminal' charged with 114 COUNTS including theft and owning an illegal cache of weapons

Meet the beautiful cat burglar who's taking the internet by storm.

St?phanie Beaudoin was arrested last month in Victoriaville, Canada on charges she broke into some 42 homes in the area.

But Beaudoin's small-time scheming made international news when the Montreal Journal published a photo of the 'hot' hoodlum in a bikini.

[Bam!]

Is that Maureen Ponderosa from Always Sunny?

[Idle Hands]

Dead tooth.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

"Your heart isn't the only thing she'll steal."

[Terr]

"She stole our hearts but gave us a boner."

[John]

Canadian authorities believe Beaudoin worked with three underage accomplices - ages 13, 15 and 17 - to burgle residence in the Athabaska and Maple areas.

If the accomplices were boys, all charges should be dropped. There is no way a teenage boy can be held responsible for their actions when it involves a woman who looks like that. When I was 15, I would have murdered half my freshman class if I thought doing it would get me a little action from her.

[Lord Humungus]

Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity From Fossil Fuels

The family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses.

The announcement, timed to precede Tuesday's opening of the United Nations climate change summit meeting in New York City, is part of a broader and accelerating initiative.

[Swiss Servator, Grundgesetz!]

"We wish not to have voting shares where we could actually have some influence. Instead, we will rid ourselves of both dividends and influence - that will show those dirty capitalist running dogs!"

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

We're divesting the charity so that we can pick up the shares for our own portfolios on the cheap?

[Lord Humungus]

Cambodia Buddhist 'Meth Monks' Arrested for Smoking Ice in Pagoda Room

Two Cambodian Buddhist monks have been arrested in the popular tourist city of Siem Reap for smoking crystal methamphetamine along with two women in their pagoda.

The room of Pich David, 36, who has a history of erratic behaviour in the Buddhist community of Pur Langka, in Slakram commune, was raided by police who found alcohol, condoms and a pipe for smoking Ice, the other name used to describe the extremely addictive stimulant drug.

Commune police chief Khiev Sort told the Cambodia Daily newspaper that the monk had been under suspicion for some time for not following the Buddhist doctrine. Police also arrested another monk, 19-year-old Chan Bunna, two pagoda residents and two female market vendors for drug use.

[Ted S.]

"Our bodies, our choices!"

[Longtorso, Johnny]

'My sex life is better than ever': Mother left scarred by childbirth tries out new non-surgical 'designer vagina' procedure

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

Non-surgical? Without looking, does it involve inserting a cored out squash?

[Bee Tagger]

Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets of New York City on Sunday to demand government action on climate change.

I wish climate change had something to do with hot air because if so, I'd have a pretty good pun at the ready.

[Ted S.]

That's a first.

[Bee Tagger]

I get it. A sick burn on a thread about global warming.

[trshmnster the terrible]

It's such a hot topic that you can't go without a jab or two.

[Lord Humungus]

Gold crashes and is now tarnished for good

There's always a big argument for gold as the only alternative amid overpriced stocks, a weak U.S. recovery and a fragile dollar that will collapse at any time. If you want to make those arguments in the face of the facts, feel free to scroll down to the comments section and make fun of my receding hairline.

But for those interested in reality, it's important to note how much those arguments have missed the mark over the past few years and how they ignore recent data to the contrary.

The stock market, U.S. economy and the dollar are all doing quite well. Judging by recent data, all three look like they will improve.

Forever? Someone doesn't quite understand the word.

[Ted S.]

Dave Weigel is writing for Marketwatch now?

[DJF]

Anyone wanting to get rid of their gold before it becomes worthless can sell it to me for $10 an ounce.

[Lord Humungus]

Now that's a bargain.

[robc]

Gold/oil ratio about 13. In the normal range, maybe a touch high still.

Normal range is 5-20. Whenever it exits that range, there is easy money to be made.

[Invisible Finger]

I remember reading something similar around 2007.

[Emmerson Biggins]

Totally worthless opinion:

I don't think it's going up very much in the near term. But when I ever I see descriptions of of its fall from 1300 to 1210 over the last little while described as a "crash" it gives me hope. They are still scared of it or they the wouldn't bother to bad mouth it so much when it's pretty much just sitting there.

[Lord Humungus]

The Solution to Disposable Diaper Waste Is Apparently Mushrooms

To test the idea, researchers sterilized diapers containing liquid waste with an autoclave and added lingrin (needed for the growth of fungi). Thus resulted in a substrate suitable for fungi. Then fungus spores, grown on wheat or sorghum, was spread on the substrate, and the whole mixture was stored in a dark, temperature- and humidity-controlled environment. Then exposed to light, the resulting mushroom growth eliminated up to 80% of the diaper waste's volume and weight.

The researchers were even able to try out their diaper mushrooms.

[db]

What an atrocious abuse of English that paragraph is!

[John]

Thus resulted in a substrate suitable

That is terrible. Researchers created a substrate suitable for mushrooms by sterilizing diapers and adding lindgrin, a chemical necessary for mushroom growth.

It doesn't matter that they used an autoclave to sterilize them and call the damn things mushrooms instead of fungi and be consistent whatever you call them.

[Clich? Bandit]

A mushroom is one of the reproductive manifestations of a fungus. It would be inaccurate to call fungus a mushroom since that is only the bloom. Many fungus never bloom.

[John]

Sure. Not all fungi are mushrooms. But they grew mushrooms in the experiment. So call it a mushroom.

Zebras are also mammals. But if someone did a study involving the breeding of Zebras, you wouldn't talk about creating an environment conducive for the breeding of mammals. By using the word fungi here, that is what they did.

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

Couldn't we just put the mushrooms on the baby and eliminate the diapers completely?

[Elspeth Flashman]

I think I just threw up a little.

[Ted S.]

Only a little?

[db]

I bet we can grow mushrooms in that!

[Elspeth Flashman]

Grow them and then test them, and then throw up again! The cycle continues.

[Xeones]

I can't tell if The Diaper Mushrooms would be a good name for a band or not.

[Lord Humungus]

Is this the beginning of the end of climate change denialism?

But climate change deniers persist in telling us it just ain't so, like the tobacco industry claiming for decade after decade that nicotine wasn't addictive or that cigarettes couldn't kill you. It's been more than a decade since Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, once chair of the US Senate's committee on the environment and public works, told us that "man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He still says he thinks so and so do many of his allies.

Slick public relations and advertising campaigns are underwritten to fool the public and smear the truthtellers. Foundations and think tanks have been created by industry just to create doubt and hammer away against the overwhelming evidence of climate disruption. Last year, the British newspaper The Guardianreported that between 2002 and 2010, via two right-wing groups, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, billionaires had given nearly $120 million to more than 100 anti-climate change groups

[WTF]

Slick public relations and advertising campaigns are underwritten to fool the public and smear the truthtellers.

Fucking projection, how does it work?

[DontShootMe]

Didn't Bill Moyers die several years back?

[Jerryskids]

Somebody hasn't gotten the memo - it's not "climate change deniers" any more, it's "climate deniers".

There's no such thing as a skeptic, either. You either buy the whole nine yards of the imminent collapse of civilization brought about by catastrophic global warming that demands we crown Al Gore God King of the planet and immediately revert to a pre-industrial society or you don't believe there's such a thing as "climate".

[Zeb]

The worst, in my opinion, is that you are a "denier" even if you accept that humans might contribute significantly to climate change as a working assumption, but think that the proposed cure is worst than the disease.

[Steve G]

The U.S. plan to step up attacks against militants in Iraq and Syria is being delayed until more Arab governments agree to contribute to the operation, the Pentagon's top officer said Sunday

That's leadership right there. Foreign affairs via pledge drive.

[WTF]

Remember all the articles about W's 'phony coalition'?

[Swiss Servator, Grundgesetz!]

They did a great job of disguising Americans in several nation's uniforms, and teaching them to talk funny!

[Jerryskids]

I suspect most of the Arab governments are already contributing to the operation, it's just that some of them are contributing to the other side. You can't very well fight terrorists if nobody is willing to supply the terrorists, can you?

[Rich]

Passenger ejected from flight over notebook doodles

Tigerair has a zero-tolerance policy towards inappropriate and antisocial behaviour.

He didn't even draw a poptart.

ifh, got any comment?

[Ted S.]

Woulf that they really used an ejector seat mid-flight.

[Longtorso, Johnny]

From yesterday, what's wrong with this tweet?

1. They seem entirely too happy.
2. Weather?
3. The chick in the middle will eat the other two the second the camera is off them.

[Ted S.]

Nobody responded to me. 🙁

[Lord Humungus]

When the Republicans went insane: Newt Gingrich, Fox News, Grover Norquist and the roots of today's shameful intransigence

Movement Conservatives continued to insist that social welfare legislation was simply Democratic vote buying. When Clinton proposed a national healthcare plan, they worried that healthcare benefits would cement more voters to the Democrats, and they attacked it with the same sort of vicious misrepresentation that had worked in the Willie Horton ad.

But it was not just healthcare they opposed. A law designed to protect women against domestic violence was portrayed as an attempt to create more government jobs; support for education was called a payoff for teachers' unions or a plot to indoctrinate children into Liberal ideas. Movement Conservatives called for "school choice," the privatization of the educational system, or homeschooling to guarantee children's moral safety. Support for affirmative action for minorities was "reverse discrimination"; Movement Conservatives suggested that the real people at risk in America were white men, against whom the government had consistently stacked the rules.

[John]

The fact that these views are shared by millions of Americans has nothing to do with it. The Republicans had a duty to tell their most loyal supporters to go fuck themselves.

Movement Conservatives suggested that the real people at risk in America were white men, against whom the government had consistently stacked the rules.

No, the real people at risk was anyone who had a job and played by the rules. Does this guy think only white men do that? That is RACIST!!

[Ted S.]

1. Wasn't it Mario Cuomo in 1988 who first brought up Willie Horton (to the Al Gore campaign, I believe)?

2. VAWA was a horrendous contortion of the Commerce Clause, but fuck the rule of law.

3. Spending more money on something (eg. educatoin) only creates a bubble; it doesn't solve the problem.

[John]

1. Yes, I think it was. And regardless Willie Horton was a Democratic attack ad.

And as for number three, there isn't a single shred of evidence that shows any kind of positive correlation between education spending and student achievement. Yet, Progs continue to claim the solution to the problems of public education is more spending. Remember though, people like you and I are the "crazy" ones.

[WTF]

VAWA also violates equal protection by creating a special class of privileged victims. Violence against men? Not so bad, apparently.

[John]

The left honestly doesn't believe that "equal protection" applies to white men. They are crude materialists. All that matters is results in the material world. Thus, they can never support the application of a uniform rule of law. Applying the law uniformly produces unequal results in the real world. Since crude material results are all they care about, they cannot support a uniform rule of law. The law means whatever is necessary to produce the desired material result.

[WTF]

Actually, for the left, results don't even matter. All that matters are intentions and the feelz.

[MegaloMonocle]

See, also, "unintended consequences".

[Free Society]

I could only assume that was a Salon excerpt. This writer used every fallacy she could find. I mean ffs she's saying that opponents of the ACA "oppose healthcare", you couldn't possibly to fail to understand your opponents position any worse than that. I took the liberty of fixing part of her stupid statmeent;

A law designed to create more government jobs was portrayed as an attempt to protect women against domestic violence; support for a payoff for teachers' unions or a plot to indoctrinate children into Liberal ideas was called education.[...]

[Jerryskids]

So it's insane to suggest that Democrats do things for other than altruistic reasons but perfectly reasonable to suggest that Republicans never do things for altruistic reasons? Those sound like very similar arguments to me.

As much as I despise poiticians and question their motives, I do believe that most politicians on both sides do sincerely want to help people but just have a difference of opinion on how to go about doing so. Democrats tend to support proposals that rely on the innate goodness of people in working for the common good and the social welfare; Republicans tend to support proposals that rely on the fact that most people are greedy bastards and will only support the common good and the social welfare as long as it's in their own self-interest. Those two opposing views of human nature require two different sorts of approaches to dealing with problems.

I think it's far more common to see Democratic proposals fail on the grounds of costing far more and accomplishing far less than anticipated and being rife with corruption and abuse simply because they're mistaken about the fundamental question of whether people are basically good or basically bad.

Madison had his own answer to that question, I think whether you agree or disagree with him you have to at least consider his opinion as an informed opinion.

[Lord Humungus]

Ninja sister wives busted in violent Utah burglary: report

Ninja sister wives, wielding knives and stun guns, busted into a Utah home in search of a 15-year-old sexual assault victim expected to testify against their man, police and witnesses said.

The two female polygamists forced open the door and were stalking through the West Jordan house late Thursday night when they came face to face with one of the teen girl's male relatives, the man told Fox 13 News.

"I went to the bottom of the stairs and saw a couple of ninjas coming down," the man told Fox 13. "They were all dark gray or black, and they had black rubber gloves on and masks. All I could see was their eyes."

That's when the battle began.

[John]

The man wrestled the ninja polygamists to the ground and used a samurai sword to hold them until police arrived, he said.

They were not very good Ninjas. And someone might tell this guy winning a knife fight is a lot easier if you bring a gun.

[Auric Demonocles]

Oh come on, guns never stop crimes (unless they are being wielded by police, of course).

[MegaloMonocle]

On the other hand, you do worse than bring a katana to a knife fight.

[SusanM]

"Ninja Sister Wives" - best lesbian jazz trio evar!!1!

[John]

Yeah, that is one hell of a band name.

[Bardas Phocas]

Utah Ninjas.
I hate Utah Ninjas.

[John]

Has anyone else seen the Penn and Teller video on vaccinations floating around Facebook and such? I am not always as big of a fan of Penn as some other people on here are, but even I have to admit it is a fantastic video. Everyone in America should have to watch it.

[An Innocent Man]

Just watched it. I'm not always a fan of theirs either, but that really is a great video.

[John]

Penn can be grating vulgar and obnoxious. And when dealing with idiots who won't vaccinate their kids, grating, vulgar and obnoxious is just what is called for.

The refusal to vaccinate your kids is utter ignorant bullshit and there is no polite way to say that.

[SusanM]

This one: "even if they cause autism WHICH IT FUCKING DOESN'T!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

[John]

Yes, that one.

[The Late P Brooks]

The Secret Service is weighing new security measures after a man carrying a folding knife jumped a fence and made it briefly inside the White House on Friday.

Carrying a folding knife! Oh, the HUMANITY!

NEEDZ MOAR MACHINE GUN NESTS!

[John]

I would have thought "have someone watch the fence and stop anyone who jumps over it" would be something the Secret Service would have thought of before now.

[Auric Demonocles]

They're still working out the kinks. They had to get to the low hanging fruit first, like when a guy brandishing a gun walks up to one of them and asks where the President is.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

I thought they had guard posts at the White House? You know, like they have at every parking deck?

[Zeb]

Yeah, it's not like it's the Mexican border or something. It's not really that much of a challenge to have the whole white house perimeter watched.

[MegaloMonocle]

This just proves that fences never work.

Also, why isn't this guy being given a room at the White House? I thought hopping a fence meant you should be allowed to stay?

[Zeb]

Only if you are a minor.

[Stormy Dragon]

Guy jumps fence, ends up being arrested without anyone getting hurt, including the fence jumper.

Why is this being treated like a massive failure again?

[Lord Humungus]

Obamacare Has Failed To Collapse -- But Its Premiums Continue To Climb

Importantly, a set of Obamacare exchange provisions called the "three Rs"?risk adjustment, reinsurance, and risk corridors?effectively encourage insurers to offer premiums on the exchanges that are imprudently low. If you are an insurance company, and you lose money because your premiums were lower than your actual claim costs, Obamacare subsidizes that loss for you. It's this part of the law that Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and others have been calling a "bailout" of participating insurers.

The problem is that the "three Rs" are transitional. Reinsurance and risk corridors expire at the end of 2016, at which point insurance companies like Aetna, Humana, and Cigna will have to charge premiums in line with their costs. That may lead to a spike in premiums in 2017. Indeed, insurance companies heavily lobbied Obama consigliera Valerie Jarrett this year to spend more on the "three R" subsidies, threatening substantial rate hikes if they weren't accommodated. They were accommodated.

[MegaloMonocle]

Reinsurance and risk corridors expire at the end of 2016, at which point insurance companies like Aetna, Humana, and Cigna will have to charge premiums in line with their costs. That may lead to a spike in premiums in 2017.

Purely a coincidence that will be right after the next Presidential election.

[PBR Streetgang]

Coincidentally in 2017 when the White House has a different occupant.

[The Late P Brooks]

U.S. troops are now on the ground in West Africa helping to battle the Ebola outbreak.

They'll kill everyone who is infected and burn their bodies, right?

[LynchPin1477]

I assume they are bringing in some really, really good sharpshooters to target Ebola directly.

[db]

Read the news on the Sierra Leone "lockdown" and you'll find that it wasn't a "shutdown" of the country so much as a door to door sweep for the infected and deceased.

[jester]

They'll just kill everyone, period. War on Poverty plus War on Ebola. Win-Win.

[John]

http://moelane.com/2014/09/21/.....ack-obama/

Obama as the bad boyfriend. I kind of like it. Part of the reason why Republicans do so poorly with women is that they assume every woman in America is either Sarah Palin or Amanda Marcotte. The idea that maybe some women are single because they can't find a husband or that it is possible for a woman to be single without being a full retard feminist never occurs to them.

[The Late P Brooks]

The Secret Service detail assigned to watch the fence was diverted to carrying Michelle's bags to the helicopter.

[John]

Or something like that. Seriously, I could hire mall cops to guard the place and they would stop someone from jumping the fence and walking in the side door.

[Mike M.]

Or they were busy scoping out where the hookers are on the next scheduled overnighter.

[Obama's Buttplug]

Dirty Disney

[Lord Humungus]

Meet the respectable JFK conspiracy theorists

Fifty years ago this coming week, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and better known as the Warren Commission, published an 888-page final report that identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole gunman in Dealey Plaza and said there was no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.

Those findings were meant to put an end to the swirling conspiracy theories about the president's murder. Yet the theories persisted. Americans had difficulty accepting that the most powerful man in the world could be brought down by a troubled young man wielding a $21 mail-order rifle. And in the wake of the Vietnam War, Watergate and so many other scandals and national tragedies that followed the assassination, people grew increasingly skeptical that the government could be expected to tell them the truth. By the late 1960s, opinion polls showed that most Americans had rejected the findings of the Warren Commission's report. An April 2013 poll by the Associated Press found that 59 percent of Americans believed there was a conspiracy in Kennedy's death.

[Ted S.]

Kennedy denialists, not Kennedy conspiracy theorists.

[trshmnster the terrible]

The hardest part to believe is that our government is competent enough to keep a conspiracy on the down low for a week, let alone 50 years.

[Bobarian (dinosaur hunter)]

Let alone, be able to form a cogent conspiracy plan.

[Lord Humungus]

Students of the Obama Era of American Leadership

Freedom Industries, that company that spilled ten thousands gallons of chemicals into the Elk River, forcing 300,000 residents to stop drinking, cooking, washing or bathing in their tap water, will face a ton of lawsuits. Their management and leadership has been hard to identify, much less hold accountable; apparently no one with the company feels the need to stand before the public and face the consequences of their actions and inaction. (Notice this is a story tailor-made for even the left-leaning MSM ? evil corporation pollutes water of innocent people ? and yet there's been little coverage outside of West Virginia.)

These are all private sector scandals, of course. Every administration and every era has its scandals. What our current moment seems to feature is a bumper crop of (alleged) leaders insisting they can wait out he storm, often displaying a glimpse of indignation at suggestions that they resign because something terrible happened on their watch. Somehow tapes of criminal behavior never reach the folks at the top, nor reports of a defect in ignition switches.

Everybody's got rogue low-level staffers in Cincinnati, it seems.

[John]

The fish rots from the head. Leadership does matter and there is such a thing as an "ethical culture".

[John]

http://thefederalist.com/2014/.....-the-left/

Good article on the left's relationship with science. For whatever reason I have always found that "I fucking love science" facebook page to be a bit grating and odd. So, I found this to be very funny.

Now put these two together: the left's imperative to think of itself as a tradition of free-thinkers opposed to religious dogma, and their need for a scientific theory that validates their prejudice against capitalism?and you get the impetus for the whole mentality of what the blogger Ace of Spades calls the "I Love Science Sexually" crowd (a play on the name of a popular Facebook page).

I love science sexually. That is really funny.

[Auric Demonocles]

The left likes science until it says something like a fetus is a separate human being than the mother.

[John]

Or there is a correlation between races and IQs or says anything else that doesn't fit the political narrative.

[trshmnster the terrible]

Science is a tool for the right thinkers. Us proles have no business divining meaning from science. We're not the high priests!

[Zeb]

That's a pretty weak example. No one has ever claimed that a fetus is not a genetically distinct organism from the mother and the question of whether or not is has the moral status of a fully developed human being is not a scientific one.

[Auric Demonocles]

No one has ever claimed that a fetus is not a genetically distinct organism from the mother

No, they repeatedly do. It happens in every single abortion thread here on HnR. We usually don't get "clump of cells" here, but denying that it's a human happens every time.

the question of whether or not [it] has the moral status of a fully developed human being is not a scientific one

That's my exact point, which most of the pro-abortion crowd refuses to admit, while they bash pro-life people for being "anti-science".

[Zeb]

We're all just clumps of cells. What makes a particular clump of cells a human being is a very interesting question, but not one that science is equipped to answer. But no one who is even slightly familiar with basic facts about sexual reproduction denies that there is life genetically distinct from the mother in there.

I think we might mostly agree here. Both sides in the abortion debate try to improperly use science to support their position when the basic disagreement really isn't about any scientific fact.

[Doctor Whom]

The folks who look down on the STEM subjects and who until recently regarded postmodernism as Divinely inspired and inerrant now fucking love science. They fucking love social signaling, actually.

[DontShootMe]

I love science sexually

That's a crappy band name.

[Warty]

I find the I Fucking Love Science crowd unsettling as well. These people don't know anything about science. They don't know what it is, they don't know what it means. What they do is pretend to care about science facts and use that as a badge of status.

Another thing that bothers me: These are the same people who pretend to be upset that Pluto lost its planet status.

[John]

Wasn't Pro Liberate angry about that?

Yeah, they don't know anything. If they "love science" so much, maybe they should take a few classes in it or read a book about it once in a while. They "love science" on the same level as a five year old "loves science" after his crazy uncle shows him how to light his farts.

[Warty]

Maddox on this

People love science in the same way they love classical music or art. Science and "geeky" subjects are perceived as being hip, cool and intellectual. So people take a passing interest just long enough to glom onto these labels and call themselves "geeks" or "nerds" every chance they get.

[John]

Exactly that. One of the things you learn as you get older is how hard it is to really know any subject well. I am not talking about just the big stuff like physics and ancient languages. I mean even every day shit like NFL football or the arts. You can spend your entire life thinking about and listening to classical music and still not know it all.

One of the phrases that has really started to annoy me lately is "don't get down in the weeds". I find people who say it do so as an excuse to say nice things about a subject or problem without really knowing anything. The "weeds" as such are all there is. If you are not down in the details you are almost certainly talking out of your ass. Staying out of the details is how idiotic but nice sounding ideas are made.

[MJGreen]

I really hate that page and its little Internet movement. I'm surprised you and John weren't speaking more harshly about them. They're a bunch of losers tarnishing a beautiful thing.

[John]

Oh I hate it too MJ. I hate it too. Sorry I didn't make that more clear.

[Zeb]

Very few people seem to know what science actually is. The people who claim that "the science" tells us what policies are appropriate responses to climate change definitely don't.

[Xeones]

I saw a thing where someone pointed out that "I Fucking Love Science" could more accurately be called "I Fucking Love Pictures of Natural Phenomena."

[Emmerson Biggins]

The pluto thing kind of pisses me off.

Probably it's mostly due to the fact that Niel Vandergraff Tyson (or whatever his name is) was the guy I first saw explain it. And he came across as pompous jackass, as usual.

But it's one of those trivia-question kind of things that has always pissed me off. Like "What is the largest island" ? Either the answer is "Eurasia/Africa", or it depends entirely on the definition of "Island" and doesn't actually contain any information about the world except how much one pays attention to the findings of some group of bureaucratic doofus holes.

[Michael S. Langston]

It's not a trivial decision though - leaving Pluto would add a minimum of 14 other planets.

It might seem trivial to those playing science, but for those interested we didn't have this delineation before we knew we needed it.

Sort of like we had no point in having 75 mph speed limits when only trains exceeded 30 mph.

[Auric Demonocles]

Who's up for a NYC protest on alt-text change?

[Swiss Servator, Grundgesetz!]

ME!

[Bardas Phocas]

Lois Lerner breaks he silence!
http://www.politico.com/story/.....11181.html
She's just misunderstood -- and totally innocent.

[VG Zaytsev]

All she wanted to do was make the world safe for democracy... and she would have, if it weren't for those ratfucking teabaggers.

[John]

My father thinks they should grant her immunity and then water board her. If she is such a Patriot, I am sure she will take the water boarding so that when she says how it was all a big mistake, everyone in America will know its true.

[Stormy Dragon]

As the midterm elections near, some embattled Republicans are moving away from social conservatism and towards libertarianism on issues such as same-sex marriage and over-the-counter access to birth control.

You know I love you baby, you just make me so angry I have to hit you sometimes. Why don't you just come home; I've really changed this time, I swear!

[John]

For sure. I have no doubt at all that if the Republicans take the Senate, we will see a national ban on gay marriage or teaching evolution in the public schools.

You are really onto them Stormy.

[Stormy Dragon]

It's not gay marriage specifically, but just in generall. Late summer every two years, Republican go on this big charm offensive about how much they love libertarians and how we're best buddies forever. Which last until the day after election when they go back to talk about how much they'd love to drown us.

[Zeb]

I think that the party in general will probably have to evolve on particular social issues like that. It's more the economic libertarianism and promises of smaller government that they always fuck us on.