A.M. Links: British Pols Suggest 'Political Surge' Against ISIS, 'Dread Pirate Roberts' Convicted, Senior Aides Leaving White House

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White House A parliamentary committee has found the United Kingdom has no plan to deal with ISIS outside of following the U.S.-backed coalition, and suggests a surge of political experts to deal with the problem. A new report from the United Nations finds ISIS systematically torturing and killing children in Iraq, as well as using boys as young as ten as child soldiers and girls as sex slaves.
- Ross Ulbricht was convicted on seven charges related to the government's claim he operated Silk Road as "Dread Pirate Roberts." He faces between thirty years and life in prison.
- The health insurance company Anthem says it's been the target of a "sophisticated" hack attack. Tens of millions of customers could be affected but the company insists medical and financial details were not compromised.
- Two senior aides to President Obama announced they would be leaving the White House in the coming months.
- The president of Argentina sent out a tweet replacing r's with l's while meeting with the president of China, which some people found offensive. Tweets, incidentally, are going to start showing up in Google results soon.
- A sulfur-cycling micro-organism found off the coast of Australia hasn't evolved in more than two billion years and has survived five mass extinction events.
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Two senior aides to President Obama announced they would be leaving the White House in the coming months.
Rats. Ship.
I thought I gave you the day off!
Hello.
Mornin'
*except for those rearworlders.
Maybe:
http://www.wbtv.com/story/2802.....hite-house
The White House reshuffle also reflects the gradual merging of Obama's team with Clinton's as the former first lady lays the groundwork for a widely expected campaign in 2016.
Maybe not:
http://www.politico.com/story/.....12129.html
The possible moves are largely part of the natural post-election inflection point, and the exits that come six years into any presidency.
and the media wonders why the public has lost faith in it.
That's because nobody else wants their job, and eating them is an equally unpleasant prospect.
Well, their DNA wasn't sequenced. It sounded like the fossils just look a lot like the present-day organism. "Hasn't evolved" implies the DNA is identical, and every enzyme in their cells has kept the exact same sequence of amino acids for 2 billion years, which is...unlikely.
I was going to make a Douglas Adams reference about them having heard about natural selection but wasnt having any of it.
So long and thanks for all the sulfur?
Vogons.
"Hasn't evolved" implies the DNA is identical
Maybe not identical. DNA always changes. If it has a very stable ecological niche, then random mutations might not lead to significant change of the overall population's genetics since there is little advantage to change.
Maybe it's afraid of crawling on to land - it is Australia, after all.
Just shows good sense.
Cub Scout nature hike goes through San Diego-area nude beach
Protect them? Knowing that people are naked under their clothes?
Rerouted to protect BSA from legal action.
+1 Sam the Eagle
Did the kids get their anatomy merit badge?
They didn't perform an autopsy, so, no.
23) This is going to sound harsh, but is it worth keeping ISIS around as an examples? Now that ISIS has finally pissed off one of its neighbors enough to really get some heat, this time not a half-destroyed country like Iraq or Syria, but Jordan, with US equipment and US-trained troops that can probably really wipe ISIS out. But should it? Let's say Jordan defeats ISIS militarily, should it maybe let ISIS continue existing as an example to all the citizens of the region of what Islamic fundamentalism really leads to?
In the same way, Venezuela is finally falling apart, as it's been obvious it would for fifteen years, since Chavez was elected. (I only regret Chavez didn't live to see how his Bolivarian revolution completely impoverish his country, knowing it was his fault.) Well, the people there voted for it. But maybe it's worth having a country around that has really gone from prosperity to penury in one generation due to communism. By this point in time, Cuba and NK have been communist too long for people to remember they were once in far better shape than they are now. Is it wrong to wish Venezuela should stay in its current condition for a long time, so that others can see the true wages of communism?
let ISIS continue existing as an example to all the citizens of the region of what Islamic fundamentalism really leads to?
No. that's what history books are for.
History books cover things that took place over a hundred years ago, like our constitution and stuff.
A living example would be a far better warning to the type of people who don't read history.
So by living example, you mean we should establish a quota of ISIS-perpetrated beheadings to serve as a "living" reminder to the rest of us just what Islamic craziness is? Like, the holocaust would be so much more real if the nazis had been allowed to keep a few operational concentration camps set up in Deutschland?
Right, so when does that one hundred year clock start ticking? Once it's been gone for one hundred years?
Oh please. If anyone read those we wouldn't have to beat off a new push for socialism every 20 years.
Yeah, because there are no socialist historians.
Examples don't work that way, espeically socio-political examples.
Besides, it's pretty darn evil to willfully condemn one set of people to have to deal with these horrors 'as an example'.
OK maybe some innocent people will have to die, but at least they'll know who the bad guys are! /sarcasm
People don't accept the lessons of the past. Communism lead to so much genocide in the 20th Cenutry. People around the world STILL push for communism in their countries.
Evil wins because people are too stupid.
Well, that's what I'm saying. People don't remember. But if there's a living, breathing example in the world, might that prevent citizens in other countries from going down the same path? Something anybody can point to and say just one word: "ISIS", and people will know exactly what it means?
might that prevent citizens in other countries from going down the same path?
Nope. Because they'll say that the failures were a result of having the wrong people in charge. They'll get it right this time.
Exactly. There are enough fucktards in this world at any given time that we don't need to keep any particular group of fucktards in an "in emergency of mass forgetfulness or dissembling of political atrocities, break glass" box.
you do realize that your living, breathing example consigns a good many innocent people to death. People who by now have no clue what ISIS is do not want to know. They just want free shit.
Here's a crazy notion: how about WE DON'T DO A DAMN THING, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER?
I certainly won't. Other than pay my goddamned extortionist taxes which might partially fund the government doing something about it. Emphasis on might. It's more likely that most of my tax money will be used to pay the interest on the debt.
Hey, Old Man with Candy, Bill O'Reilly would like a word with you.
He'll give me The Last Word, interrupt me, make his idiot "point," then sign off.
I doubt he'd allow Old Man With Candy to speak.
Dang it - I was still typying.
Maybe we should have propped up the Soviet Union to show the world how communism is a total failure. I mean, look around. The lessons of the failure that was the Soviet Union are all but lost. Yeah, we definitely should have prevented the Soviet Union from falling. Totally.
I didn't propose "propping up" Venezuela or ISIS. I proposed letting them stew in what they've made of themselves.
I'm just carrying your idea to its logical conclusion.
They only stew other people. Or barbeque them. Are you volunteering? Your proposal is certainly flame-worthy.
Problem is that the areas controlled by ISIS are full of people who aren't evil fuckers and don't deserve to stew in what has been imposed on them.
"Is it wrong to wish Venezuela should stay in its current condition for a long time, so that others can see the true wages of communism?"
Not really. We have ample evidence through the Soviet Union, Cuba and North Korea - not to mention 'socialist-dictatorships' or 'socialist-democracies' - and people still believe or choose to not accept the cold hard fact of its financial and human waste.
Gotta break a few 10-year-old Yazidi eggs to make an example omelet.
No. Innocent people are suffering at the hands of ISIS and the others you mention. I don't think anyone is obliged to rescue people from their shitty governments, but it would be positively wicked to encourage such institutions to continue.
Also, the cautionary examples don't seem to be very effective. There are plenty of people who think that ISIS and Venezuela are just nifty.
it's worth having a country around that has really gone from prosperity to penury in one generation due to communism
The Bolivarian Socialist Revolution never claimed to be genuine communist movement, at least not in the Marxist/Leninist sense of the word.
Prior to the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela was not uniformly prosperous. Many of its residents lived in penury. Chavez' main objective was to redress social disparities. Now the entire country lives in penury. Chavez and Maduro have achieved the highest value of progressives: equality.
The health insurance company Anthem says it's been the target of a "sophisticated" hack attack.
Clearly, the government must regulate the internet to protect us from these criminal attacks.
/FCC
Yes I received my emails this morning. Uhg.
Me too. Glad I spent the time to come up with a strong password.
Passwords do not protect your data.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....lling.html
Bad. Ass.
He's just ripping off Independence Day.
He's going to attack them with Randy Quaid?
Sounds more fun than taking Bill Pullman.
Or Bill Paxton. Same thing, really.
Game over man!
So he's going to crop dust bomb the wrong people first?
fta:Hunter told the Examiner that no one in the king's meeting on Tuesday with members of the House Armed Services Committee made any mention of President Obama, who is seen by some anti-ISIS coalition partners as a weak and indecisive actor.
Go figure.
Please tell me he'll land, jump out, and walk up to a podium with a Mission Accomplished sign in the background
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....sh-US.html
If you'll consult your catechism, you'll see that I already addressed this in Thought Not Sermon #15.
Nobody cares.
I lol'd.
*consults binder full of JATNAS sermons*
I grew up on the edge of the ND prairie and I don't know how any of those old timers made it through a winter living in a sod house with no TV, radio or internet.
It isn't surprising to me that there may have been a few incidents of violence during winter shut ins. Fuck there are guys who I won't fish with because they annoy the fuck out me in my fish house in a mere couple hours. I'd kill them if I was cooped up for months in the winter.
My dad, who grew up in the panhandle of Nebraska, claimed that every winter, they would always have one dude who got cabin fever and offed his family with a shotgun.
You'd think after the second or third time he slaughtered his whole family, women would have stopped marrying him.
I lol'd
That's why they had 12 children I suspect.
There's a reason a lot of people back then could quote huge passages of the Bible from memory.
This is a sequel to Little Crack House on the Prairie.
nice
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....legal.html
Hooray for socialism!
I beg to differ!
Let go of me.......................
It's like a pop corn trail in the forest this path to tyranny and servitude to the state.
They leave all kinds for us and all we do is eat it rather than leave it on the ground.
I saw this and thought WTF are they talking about and then I realized the word they're afraid to use is gypsies.
Ah ha! That makes sense!
Will I be jailed for begging for their tears?
Does this include begging the question?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem.....-them.html
That's just fucking creepy.
"Hey, Mister! How's your sister?"
So... they're greeks?
Eh, it's still a far cry from Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 12 year old cousin. Great balls of incest.
Oh shit, sorry. She was 13. He was 22.
Old enough to bleed....
So she was an old maid then?
You know what? I'm not buying it!
They get pictures of two people with regular features captured in the same poses and say they look alike.
I guess since I am dating a girl with the same eye color as my brother who has hair, one nose with two nostrils and a mouth with a full complement of teeth, I must secretly want to marry him too, right?
Most of those were not very convincing. A couple were.
I'm with tarran.
1. Most of them are just the same sort of weird-looking that most British people are.
2. Shirley McClaine and Annette Bening looked nothing alike when they were younger, that's mostly plastic surgery. Which factors into most of the women pics.
3. There is some fucked up ratio skewing in a lot of those images.
Makes sense if you consider that research shows we're attracted to people who look like us
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem.....rated.html
John pron!
Real women look like pre-pubescent boys.
/ sarc
Is she a large girl? Roomy...big through the hips?
Lots of cushion for the pushin.
IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET!!!
Silence! The Musical: Put the @#$%!Lotion in the Basket (Lego Cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPnQ77a1UVk
Enjoy.
If this is the news story I saw this morning.... this chick is a good 25 - 30 lbs overweight (like a lot of "regular" people) and not particularly attractive in a bikini. Why the fuck they feel the need to shove their fat arses into an issue of SI Swimsuit is ridiculous tho.
There are a lot of chubby-chasers out there. I guess people are no longer ashamed to be seen tooling around on a moped.
Ya know and that's fine, everyone's got their own taste. But jeez just don't go around telling me how great they look when they just don't! The general public doesn't exist to soothe their self-esteem issues.
Pot Kettle...
12-year-olds are fair game: Michelle Malkin and the right's ugly new smear strategy
What was the group that put a bunch of ~10-year-old girls in an "I'm gonna get raped" campaign?
Or who booed a little girl on national TV for saying she liked Romney better than Obama?
Or who bullied an Olympic gold medallist over the gold medallist's food choices?
Or who booed boy scouts during a flag presentation at the Democrat National Convention.
I'm sure there's plenty of hypocrisy, but two wrongs still tend not to make a right.
Science, Bo, can't even get that quote without some equivocation?
Two wrongs do not make a right.
"Still tend"? As if you are uncertain that there are times when two wrongs DO make a right?
I was thinking of cases like when a car cuts in front of me to speed ahead, and then later they go into the right lane to try to get ahead of someone and I speed up just a little bit to keep them from getting back over.
I love that move. Fuck those assholes.
I think they are pointing out the hypocrisy, not claiming that makes it okay.
The problem is, half the things the Salon article is attacking aren't even wrong.
For example, they claim that right-wingers are 'smearing' Graeme Frost, a kid who claimed he got healthcare through the S-chip program. What conservatives did is look the kid up and they found that he attends a private school that costs $20,000 per child. Furthermore, his father owns his own business and therefore it's the father's own fault if they didn't have health insurance through the company he owns.
That's not 'attacking' Graeme Frost, unless you think fact checking a story being used by your political opponents constitutes an attack. Or can you just have children lie on your behalf without worrying that your opponents will ever fact check his claims?
Fair enough, if they're just pointing out that kind of thing that doesn't seem to be smearing to me. I'm just noting that there is smearing it would be bad despite the side that does it.
Clearly written by someone who did not take a look at the content and do an objective analysis of what Anita actually says and does.
Also, from what I've seen of the 'harassment' there are three types, people calling out her bullshit, false flag attacks by allies and a few of your general internet nutcases that anyone with a recognized name attracts who've been blown out of proportion.
It's Amanda Marcotte. A feminist could personally murder a small child and she were criticized, Marcotte would declare her critics to be misogynists.
Mandy had to reach back to 2007 to satisfy the rule of threes.
Tens of millions of customers could be affected but the company insists medical and financial details were not compromised.
O-kaaay.......
Of course, there won't be any liability when hackers breach government health databases, because single-payer is just so virtuous.
...suggests a surge of political experts to deal with the problem
Yeah. That'll help.
Well, they could be dropped from a great height, en masse, and do some damage.
Or they could be formed up into brigades and marched across the land like locusts. Lord knows there's enough of them to at least keep the troops occupied while the pros cleaned up from other directions.
Can't think of any better use for them, really.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys political experts could fly."
--Jordan's King Abdullah II
+1 Nazi & communist mine-clearing techniques.
a surge of political experts
Like a exultation of larks?
*an*
as well as using boys as young as ten as child soldiers
Where were these guys when I was ten. I would have traded my red Ryder for an AK in a heartbeat.
You'd probably still have both your eyes today as well.
Washington Conquers the Internet
Tom Wheeler bids to become the Frank Underwood of the Web
This is, of course, nonsense. Why, I've been told on these very boards that policies are neither made nor proposed with usurpation of power as the end goal.
Why aren't people talking about this more? Is Reason even covering this in detail?
Why aren't people talking about this more?
A) Fuck Comcast (Seriously, that's about as in-depth as most people can handle on this issue).
B) The NetNeut aspies tend to dominate any discussion on the subject by simply shouting over everyone else, desperately clinging to the idea that Net Neutrality means never having your torrents throttled.
Is Reason even covering this in detail?
They've done a passable job covering the lead up (this has been telegraphed for months, if not years), and had a post on it yesterday. I think it deserves a bigger focus, but if they paid me to generate website hits they'd have even less traffic than they do now.
I really can't get over how popular NN is in tech circles. It's like 3/4 of everyone in the business completely takes leave of their senses when it comes to understanding scarcity (network capacity).
Having spent my career on the periphery of IT, it doesn't surprise me in the least. They're generally not great at second-order thinking or politics, office and otherwise. Half of my CIO's time is spent beating these traits into his underlings, and getting his underlings to beat them into theirs.
This. Engineers know engineering plus anything else they consider interesting enough to be a hobby. Politics is rarely one of those things.
I guess that's pretty true.
You really haven't scrolled down H&R's main page in the past few days?
I took it as sarcasm.
Actually, I guess I haven't. Or maybe I've just somehow missed any articles about it...
When it comes to gaining power, government victories are permanent. So the old lesson applies: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Eventually your opposition will falter and you will obtain the power forever.
There is a reason it's called "House of Cards." ((PROBABLE SPOILER)) Frank gets the ring of power, fucks up royally by starting a bullshit war, and then gets assassinated by his wife and head of security. At least, that will happen if they keep following the British show.
If Frank lives in the end, however realistic, the whole show would have been another pointless exercise in misanthropy only rivaled by my own attitude towards my fellow man.
Finally we have found the missing link in the evolution of politicians and bureaucrats.
Sulfur in the atmosphere from burning coal will last foreeevvveeerrr! ACID RAIN!!!!!!!!!
A parliamentary committee has found the United Kingdom has no plan to deal with ISIS outside of following the U.S.-backed coalition...
They know to hitch their wagon to a thoroughbred.
Thoroughbreds are actually a very poor choice for pulling wagons, their frail leg bones mean they can't haul as much weight. You want a draft horse, not a race horse.
Fuck the draft, you racist!
'A new report from the United Nations finds ISIS systematically torturing and killing children in Iraq, as well as using boys as young as ten as child soldiers and girls as sex slaves.'
My knowledge of insurrection and military matters is perhaps one for a layman, but how do Arabs tolerate this? Moreover, I don't think it would cause too much of an international ruckus if the U.S. puts together and leads a coalition to wipe the fuckers right off the map.
They are a tribal people, and if it's the other tribe getting fucked, it's not your headache.
All humans are tribal people, which is why "principals, not principles" is generally the order of the day for most people.
I don't know about the Arabs, but how long until we read something from the Jezzies about how horrible it is that ISIS is engaging in blatant sexual stereotyping?
Why the fuck does ISIS think they can get away with selling the girls into sexual slavery? Don't they realize that those girls could be just as effective as child soldiers as the boys?
I had a very cynical response lined up about "funding and morale", but if you do a study of the use of children in modern warfare, the abuse was generally separated in the same fashion elsewhere.
A sulfur-cycling micro-organism found off the coast of Australia
Always waiting for that next nasty wave, I imagine.
Mummified 200-year-old monk 'NOT dead' but in 'very deep meditation'
Ha, ha.
So you could say he's just resting?
He's pining for the fjords.
He's getting better!
He's just tired after a long squack!
The president of Argentina sent out a tweet replacing r's with l's while meeting with the president of China...
So sorry?
A steaming hot mug of socialist derp: "Art should be, like, free, man."
Hamilton "Beefcake" Nolan
I'm going to continue to do this until something gets done:
Gawker links should have trigger warnings.
Hover over the link, see that it says "gawker" in the URL, and decide for yourself whether to click.
I'm on mobile right now. Check your hovertext privilege.
You're the one who chose the inferior browsing interface.
An article about intellectual property?
Oh man, looking at him, I'm ready to hand over my handle.
You should read his articles on exercise with that picture in your mind. It will be very amusing.
Like this one:
http://deadspin.com/5988408/th.....ually-need
Holy. Fuck.
Art should be free, and yet artists should also have the right to make a living at it.
Tweets, incidentally, are going to start showing up in Google results soon.
What's this I've been hearing about google becoming unusable soon?
http://www.duckduckgo.com
Better search engine, plus they don't turn over your searches to marketers and the NSA.
I need to make the switch full time.
More importantly, I need to train the wife-unit to do so.
Even cockroaches have different personalities, scientists find
"Hello, diverse group of quirky individualists, my shoe would like to have a word with you."
A new report from the United Nations finds ISIS systematically torturing and killing children in Iraq, as well as using boys as young as ten as child soldiers and girls as sex slaves.
It's going to be awkward when we're arming them in a few years to fight off a worse threat.
He can't even keep his Asians straight. It's the Japanese who have trouble with r's and l's. I guess they all look alike.
A little nostalgia for the old folks: "Not 'Craw'. CRAWWWWW!"
+99
She. The murderous leftist dictator of Argentina is female.
I apologize for my microaggression.
This is the face of true gender equality.
Jordan,
Why are you so sexist and think being a murderous leftist dictator is a job only a man can do?
Hey, I grew up in a different era!
And women never had the chance to be Mao or Pol Pot or Stalin in the past. Now they do.
Catherine the Great?
Lizzie the first?
Delilah?
Catherine was not a mass murderer. She was just a German chick who had to whack her husband and take over Russia because if she didn't he was going to kill her or send her to a nunnery. And you try ruling 18th Century Russia with a velvet glove sometime. Catherine wasn't bad. And she was by all accounts pretty hot and didn't let her morals stand in the way of a good time. What is not to love?
Additionally John, the rumors about "death by horse" were just vicious rumors which probably originated amongst French nobility.
Yes Charles. She really wasn't even that promiscuous. She just never could marry for political reasons and liked having lovers like any other normal person.
The big thing is that she was a friend of the enlightenment until it resulted in the French Revolution. Then she turned on it and the French in particular never forgave her. I mean, how can she get so angry over a little mass murder in the name of progress? They slandered her in the worst possible ways.
Catherine was not a mass murderer.
Ask the Poles and Ukrainians about that.
Ask the Poles and Ukrainians about that.
It sucked to be on the ass end of a war back then. And they would have done the same thing to the Russians if they could have.
It's not that they have trouble with l's and r's, it's that there's no "l" sound in the language. So when words from other languages are put into Japanese, the "l" is replaced with "r".
Anyways, doesn't the President of Argentina have better things to do than tweet, like have more prosecutors murdered so she won't be indicted for murder herself?
She's scouting exile countries.
The don't have an "r" either. They have a alveolar flap that sounds somewhat between an "l" and a "r," and depending on the person and the context, sounds more like one or the other.
I'm told by a couple of friends that lived and taught English there that it always sounds like an "r," especially amongst beginners.
I also noticed in my brief time there that all of the loanwords written in Latin had their l's replaced by r's ("tequira" was my favorite: you get the qu and miss the l? Huh?).
It's all about the sounds used in the first language, not what you think is more complex.
The Japanese R is some kind of cross among the Spanish trilled R, D, T, and yes even L. I can do it ok in the middle of words (arigato) but have the devil of a time at the beginning of words (ryokan).
Their F is half H. It gives me fits too, but not as much.
This is fascinating stuff to me. It's a shame that I really can't wrap my head around linguistics.
Well, yes. But I was being succinct.
No 'unpredictable erections' on SA's first legal nude beach
"Well, Officer, it was entirely predictable."
/Captain Obvious
lol!
As opposed to our throbbing approach.
Derek Jeter's girlfriend is on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I guess the "price" of fame is hot chicks fucking you so they can be famous, too.
That's just sick, man.
I feel so cheated.
Is it even possible to have a better life than Derek Jeter?
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Discuss...
Hugh Hefner, outside of some run ins with the Feds.
Your link goes to the picture of the creepy dude with "Obama Cares" written on his hands. Is that some kind of cruel joke or did you just SF the link that badly?
Cruel joke. I will think of something more creatively evil for the next one.
That was pretty evil.
Welcome to SubTropolis: The Massive Business Complex Buried Under Kansas City
Morloks?
Nope, CHUDs. Morlocks are fictional.
California lawmakers seek to end 'personal belief' vaccine exemptions
"Oh, did I say 'personal belief'? I meant '*religious* belief'."
Because saying religious might run afoul with the 1st Amendment. The free exercise clause doesn't cover "the prophet RFK Jr. told me that vaccines were the work of evil BIGPHARM."
Cat survives being shot with 2 dozen BBs in central NY
I hope somebody beats the living shit out of that fuck.
Or shoots him with a few dozen BBs.
Put him in the middle of the basketball court at the Carrier Dome on "everyone gets a BB gun" night?
You have to scale up for weight. I think that works out to something like 400 BBs.
wouldn't it be better to scale up for caliber?
How many BBs in a shotgun shell?
There you go, blast the idiot with some birdshot.
Someone get Dick Cheney on the line.
Me too.
I found a lead pellet in the hide of the 2nd to last deer I got. Ignorant on so many levels...
Gawker's hard-hitting look at the Brian Williams' scandal (in which they have deleted every reference in the comments of Hilary Clinton doing the exact same thing.)
Did they point out that when Brian Williams corrected the record by saying he was in the chopper behind the one that got hit, he meant "an hour behind"?
http://www.truthrevolt.org/new.....ng-viewers
I'm not feeling like Williams is being as repentant as he should be when he fails to include the fact that he was an hour behind the chopper.
It is bad enough that he lied, but Williams also bragged about it and lorded it over other reporters for years. Initially the helicopter crew, who knew it was a lie, didn't say anything. They figured it wasn't worth making a stink over and let the reporter have some glory. It was only after years of Williams bragging and being smug that it finally became too much for them and they ratted him out.
It would be one thing if in a moment of weakness Williams made up the story but didn't tell it much out of shame that it was a lie. Williams, however, kept telling it over and over again. That takes a real liar, not just someone who in a moment of weakness said something they shouldn't have.
Thanks goodness he is just a newsreader...it's not like if this were a managing editor at a major network being a socialpathic liar...oh wait...
*sociopathic
People are overusing the "sociopath" label. Williams is just an asshole and a braggart.
Yeah. He is not a sociopath. He just has an enormous ego. He figures the rules don't apply to him so it is okay to lie when it suits him.
I once had a friend - no longer - who was just a BSer. He would tell outlandish stories.
For example one time he claimed being mugged while visiting Chicago. Gun held on him and robbed. Two weeks later he tells the same story, but told it differently - that is happened to another friend of his... same parking lot... same hotel. I believe this second version was the real story.
When I called him out on the BS - he got super pissed and refused to tell the truth.
The problem with lying all the time is keeping your story straight.
Everyone lies sometimes. You can't help it. The difference is that people who are not liars, realize when they are lying, know its wrong and generally don't repeat it. They just try and make it go away. Real liars, however, don't think it is wrong and I think some of them convince themselves that the lie is the truth. People like your friend keep lying and lying. Williams seems to be that kind of person.
I have heard that an excellent technique to spotting a liar is to ask questions that force the story backward...like what were you doing in chicago? Why were you in the parking lot? that kind of thing.
That is clever gaijin. The thing about real liars is that they do it so naturally they don't put a lot of thought into their lies and would likely fail your test. Most people try to spot liars by testing their sincerity. That of course is useless when dealing with a real liar. The old George Costanza line about "its not a lie if you believe it" really is true. Liars for the most part convince themselves their lies are true and will usually seem to be the most sincere people.
That is where it begins to overlap with sociopathy.
I was visiting my girlfriend... Morgan Fairchild!
That sounds like a good technique. But the pathological liars I've known make it obvious to everyone that they lie eventually without much outside help. I found out one former coworker was one within just a few days of knowing her.
That's like claiming you were in a car accident because you were driving down the highway and saw the aftermath of a collision.
Senate GOP Works to Influence Court on Obamacare
A working group mulls a short-term Obamacare patch for a long-term Obamacare defeat.
The Stupid Party gets right to work living up to its name.
Harvard's Humanist of the Year Award goes to...
A 2nd wave feminist Jack Thompson with hoop earrings.
A living caricature? Seriously?
I guess that's why you should never take anything seriously if it comes from someone who came from Harvard.
China: Heavy smog caused over 250,000 premature deaths in 2013: report
A friend from high school is with the State Department in Bejing. He says it is unimaginable there. The air pollution is much worse than even Mexico City.
I have permanent respiratory problems from breathing the air in Ankara in the 1970's.
I roomed with a state-department brat in college for a semester, and he told me that Cairo was even worse than Ankara.
Cairo is the dirtiest, most insane city in the world I think. I have been there once and it is just indescribable. People talk about New York having energy. New York is a sleepy Mississippi delta town compared to Cairo. You either loath it as the little piece of human hell it is or you are a bit nuts like I am and find it compelling and seductive.
Istanbul is insane, and I never thought Ankara would be as congested as it is.
Cairo is the most disgusting backwards fucking dirty places I've ever been to and I was there when Mubarak was in charge can't even imagine how awful and stinky it's become. It's insane how people can literally travel a mile and be in the desert and yet just throw their trash right on the fucking ground and live in the filth like that.
It's insane how people can literally travel a mile and be in the desert and yet just throw their trash right on the fucking ground and live in the filth like that.
That is the entire Middle East sans Israel and Kurdistan. I guess because the Arabs are former nomads they are culturally incapable of using a trash can. I hate that more than anything about the middle east. The Arabs just throw their trash into the street and never clean anything up. It is disgusting.
Yes and no. Abu Dhabi is actually pretty clean for a big city, and where there is random garbage laying about, it's actually in the Filippino and Bangladeshi neighborhoods. That changes in Dubai (partly because it's WIDE OPEN to the rest of the desert - you wouldn't believe the shit that blows in during a sandstorm) and at various settlements near Liwa. Parts of Al Ain are filthy - others are clean.
Now northern Oman...northern Oman is freakin' immaculate, and poorer than dirt (go figure).
Do you write for J. Peterman? Lol.
Ankara seems to be pretty bad still. I never noticed it until I was invited to play some soccer a couple of evenings after work with some Turkish engineers (in the shadow of the CREEPIEST Soviet-looking railroad ministry building - almost looked like City 17).
Holy hell, did my lungs burn from all the diesel smoke from all the vehicles on the roads nearby. It was freakin' awful. The air had that sweet, acrid odor. I then realized why they played a much slower game.
tarran, when were you last in Ankara?
I can tell you that now, that place is spread-out like a motherfucker. No idea what it was back in the day, but it's like urban sprawl, Mediterranean-style (despite it being nowhere near the sea): pockets of dense mini-cities where the only residential accommodation is tiny, pastel apartment blocks separated by miles of nothing much (except very thin commercial districts running only right along the major roads).
At least that's the way it is to the west, where most of the development has been. The downtown area is very much east-of-center.
Traffic on Eski?ehir Road is horrendous in the evening.
1978.
We used to live on the eastern rim of the valley overlooking the downtown. I remember the smog was so thick that sometimes it looked like a brown river running over the buildings.
Yech.
I tried like hell to avoid any further east than Konya Road except when going to and from the airport. WAY too congested. That's a pretty area, though. One time we went drinking downtown pretty late at night and even with Turkish guides, it was an ordeal getting in and out.
I imagine things have changed a great deal from 1978, and my snapshot of a half-dozen visits over the course of a couple of years probably can't possibly give you an idea of how much.
We did have to venture east a few times on our way to and from ?orum/Merzifon because our flights were out of Esenbo?a and we pretty much had to stay overnight in town because of flight schedules, but that was relatively easy.
I had a tour guide in China try to pass off the smog as heavy fog. We were wise to it after the first couple days.
Suit: Man held 20 hours after asking to file TSA complaint
The TSA said it was concerned about the gear in his bag: what turned out to be the watch and the power bars, wrapped in a small PVC pipe for protection. Electronics and "organic mass" can be used to make bombs, TSA Supervisor Charles Kieser testified
"Organic mass", indeed. Like TSA Supervisor Charles Kiese.
Posted this yesterday. You left out the best part:
Obviously the footage is wrong. A government employee would never lie.
"(He said) I'll bring a bomb through here any day that I want ... and you'll never find it."
"Then he went "BWAHAHAHAAA!!"
Seriously, if Keiser is found to have lied about this, he should do prison time.
He did lie about it. I just don't think they can prove it.
Besides, he's not the one on trial here. /sarc
Some organic masses are more equal than other organic masses.
The Return of Evil
Unshakable moral certainty can be a troubling thing. Javert had it, for example.
No evil is a horrible thing. The problem is not moral certainty. The problem is doing evil. Moreover, without moral certainty, how do you even know what evil is much less fight it?
I think you have to always be on the alert that you could be wrong. Most great evils that exist in the world involve moral certainty on the side of the evil...
The best lack all conviction, and the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-William Butler Yeats
But Yeats thought this was a *bad* thing.
Sure. But at some level you have to make a decision and take a stand or evil will always win. It is really hard. If it wasn't, there would be a lot less evil in the world.
Yes, identifying evil is hard. But it's not as hard as moral relativists would have you believe.
Anyone who's still morally confused about the Islamonazis after the events of the last couple of years is simply too far gone to be helped by all the psychiatrists on earth.
Of course, who is more full of unshakable moral certainty than this Islamonazis?
I'm tolt that IslamoNazis are even worse than CommieNazis and I thought the CommieNazis were bad!
Is that someone who complains about Oxford commas?
Try asking a lefty who complains about the other side's moral certainty to give their opinion on climate change, the Tea Party, income inequality, etc.
Many progressives are the biggest moral scolds out there.
But you see, when they do it it's not rigid moral certitude, it's passionate commitment to social justice!
Someone insulted Rich Lowry's mancrush and he's having none of it!
Senate Republicans worry that it could be a pyrrhic victory. If Republican governors buckle under to pressure from constituents who lose access to the subsidies
"It's not FREE, you fucking dummies," would be my preferred response.
It would be. But we all know they'd buckle, don't we?
Twitter goes full censorship
Is this Ralph Retort guy one of those men's rights acrivists or somehting?
Anything but. Proggie who got fed up with the SJWs. That's how far they've gone. They're alienating proggies now.
The fuck cares? Twitter can censor all they want - it's their party.
Absolutely, and we can call them out when the lie about why they did it.
What are they lying about? I read the link I don't get it. They say they want to kick off trolls - is that a lie?
No, but they label people with disagreeing viewpoints from the SJWs, including people just trying to defend themselves from lies, as harassers. It's the whole point of the WAM partnership.
Then I would consider it a badge of honor to get banned by Twitter.
It's getting people tarred in the media. Needs calling out, just like any other media bullshit.
Part of what the left finds objectionable about Kyle is the unshakable moral certainty he brought to his fight.
You know who else brings unshakable moral certainty to their fight?
We are good and they are evil, so we have to be right.
Warty and STEVE SMITH?
STEVE SMITH BRING UNSHAKABLE SCHLONG TO RAPE!
Jesus H. Christ?
I do. Wait, no I don't. Sometimes I do.
Well, it's not James Bond.
My wife?
She still work at Rolling Stone?
In today's giant shocker, a year after the Winter Olympics, Sochi is a giant clusterfuck and the Russian government is on the hook for billions.
Why would any place want to host the Olympics again? To have the opportunity to pay bribes and go into massive debt?
The only recent olympics to do it right, Atlanta, caused the OOC to change their standards so that it cant be done that way again.
I'd think that in theory, most major US college town could do it, as long as the football stadium is big enough for the track and field events.
But of course the IOC doesn't want it that way.
Because politicians.
Used to be, back in Roman times, the politicians had to pay for the games out of their own pocket, and the lavishness was a sign of their generosity. Woe be the change where they got to pay for it out of our pockets.
*(Yes, I know Gladitorial Contests were not the olympics, bear with me on this)
You know who else brings unshakable moral certainty to their fight?
Everyone who has ever won a fight. That is who.
The left can't handle commitment and moral certainty whether it be good, evil or in between. They can't comprehend that ISIS really could be this evil and committed to their goals. To the left that just can't be true. They must be victims lashing out or in some way reasonable such that they can be bargained with. The idea that ISIS is committed to any end, let alone an evil and insane one, such that they are not interested in bargaining or being appeased is incomprehensible to the Left. Kyle is the flip side of that. They can't comprehend that someone could decide that killing someone is justified, do it, and then not worry about it without that person being some kind of a monster. They assume Kyle is a monster not so much because they don't like his cause, they don't, but because they can't fathom how someone could make a moral decision to do something and then live with it. Contrast how they react to Kyle with how they react to John Kerry. Kerry admitted to or claimed to have done much worse things in Vietnam than Kyle ever did in Iraq. But Kerry made himself into a victim and played the "what have I done" card. Kyle didn't. And the left loves victims and hates anyone taking responsibility for their actions and standing by them.
You can win a fight without 'unshakable moral certainty' John. Like I said above, 'unshakable moral certainty' seems more often associated with evil and atrocities.
So, if someone is morally certain that freedom is better than tyranny, and is willing to lay down his/her life for that belief, that someone is evil?
Well, I did say 'more often.'
But I see a devotion to freedom as kind of inherently striking out against unshakable moral certainty, and allowing people to do their own thing, even if I personally don't approve, as much as possible, largely with the realization that I have some not small chance of being wrong.
"Like I said above, 'unshakable moral certainty' seems more often associated with evil and atrocities."
Yes, and Hitler was a vegetarian who liked animals. So what?
More to the point, there's a difference between "certainty" and "murdering innocents". Just like there's a difference between "vegetarian" and "gassing Jews"
Unless the people being killed are kulaks and wreckers and they are the ones doing the killing....
But see when you see your buddys being blown to bits by IEDs your not supposed to admit how that makes you feel about them. You are supposed to profess empathy for the enemy just like the left does with anyone who disagrees with them.
There is that too.Leftists reporters are morons who have no understanding of how violence and conflict really work. Occasionally there really are sociopaths who join the military and go to war. Those people don't hate the enemy, they hate everyone. And they usually end up victimizing everyone around them not just the enemy. And even if they are smart sociopaths with good impulse control and don't do this, they don't develop any particular hate for the enemy. They don't need to.
It is only normal people with a conscience and a sense of morality that end up hating the enemy. They do so because it is a natural reaction to the enemy trying to kill them and their friends and because it is necessary to be able to kill and survive. What they don't do is bring that hatred back home. If Kyle had come home and taken up terrorizing Muslims as a hobby, he would have been a monster. He didn't do that however.
I do think it's silly for people to criticize Kyle for hating the people he fought, for precisely these reasons and some others. My only point is that unshakable moral certainty can be a troubling thing rather than a virtue.
In order to commit truly evil and monstrous acts, one first must believe one is Doing Good.
+1 Lord Acton
This is true. And the greater the good one thinks they are doing, the greater the evil they will commit trying to accomplish it.
That, however, doesn't mean there is no good or that you should never stand up and fight for what you think is right and against evil. It just means life is really hard and no matter how hard we try not to, we will end up doing evil at some point in our lives. We just can't help ourselves.
That is what original sin is. It is not that people are born bad people meaning to do evil. It is that the nature of life is such that everyone will do evil at some point no matter how hard they try not to do so.
This idea of 'well, no one's perfect' can too easily be used to provide some kind of absolution to people who recklessly do bad things. To err is human, yes, but the moral thing is to really worry about whether what you are doing in any instance is the right thing.
It is not absolution it is a fact of life. Not everyone who has done bad things did so recklessly. The leaders of the Vichy France thought they were doing the right thing and saving the French from the Germans. They ended up doing a lot of evil as a result. But they did intend good.
There are two types of evil. The first can best be described as impulse evil. This is when someone just refuses to control their impulses and base desires and does evil in pursuing them. These are your base and vulgar crimes like rape or murder. The second and really more insidious form of evil is when well meaning people either by well meaning mistake or reckless self delusions manage to rationalize how doing evil is really doing good.
But people use it as such. They do something with the attitude of 'well, I think I'm right and not harming anyone, but there's always a chance I'm wrong, but well, that's just life.'
"Doin' right aint got no end".
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"
Will Smith got a lot of shit for that one. Mostly because he's right.
He is. Hitler really thought the Germans were the superior race, the world would be better if they ruled it and the inferior races were standing in the way of that and needed to be killed or subjugated as a result. The problem wasn't that he meant to do evil. The problem was his idea of "good" was insane and twisted.
Yesterday, I mentioned the Letroy Guion arrest in a drug bust.
As you'll see, the Google search has all the police propaganda (scroll down to see the ESPN photo of the cash laid out in very tiny piles so that it runs to several tables' worth).
Now it's being reported that the gun wasn't loaded, Guion had a permit, and had proof of where the money came from.
Cops immediately release all the info whan a non-cop is arrested, and release nothing when one of their own is under investigation. And still they say there's no double standard.
But Ted, Letroy is a big scary black man and he had a gun. Don't you understand how the thought of an armed black man makes every white sports reporter pee their pants in terror? He is black and had a gun. He must be a dangerous thug.
Black people with guns and white people talking about church are the two things that unavoidably cause absolute chaos in the ESPN bullpen and heart palpitations amongst sports talking heads everywhere.
Yes it does. There are a ton of redneck rural white guys in the NFL, baseball and the NHL. All of them no doubt own guns and hunt. You don't think Bret Farve doesn't own a few shotguns living out his retirement in rural Mississippi? Or some Canadian NHL guy who grew up and still lives in nowheresville Manitoba in the off season doesn't own guns? Of course and that never matters. But let a black athlete own a gun and my God he must be a member of the Cripps or something. It is just disgraceful.
The left can't handle commitment and moral certainty whether it be good, evil or in between.
Lucy Van Pelt wants you to stop horning in on her turf.
Shroeder ever get any of Lucy Van's Pelt?
This was my worst commute in 4 years of working at this company. What the fuck? It wasn't even snowing until about 25 minutes after I left home.
Same here. I was forty minutes late, and that's after leaving twenty minutes early.
Waze made the commute amazing; it had me going down back-roads in Newton that were only wide enough for one car - easily shaved 20 minutes off my commute.
Last winter was much much worse... but at least back then I had a beater 4X4 truck.
I'm glad that I live less than 15 minutes away and I can get to work via side streets.
I'm tolt that IslamoNazis are even worse than CommieNazis and I thought the CommieNazis were bad!
Oh, piffle! Those guys are like a pile of fluffy kittens, compared to the dreaded PEACENAZI.
Waze made the commute amazing; it had me going down back-roads in Newton that were only wide enough for one car - easily shaved 20 minutes off my commute.
That includes stopping to assassinate a couple of traffic cops, I hope.
I didn't get the chance! The cops were all on the major streets that were gridlocked.
Maybe we should require the cops to use Waze to make them more easily accessed by assasins.
Hoisted on their own petard
You made this bed...
I think you meant to say Hoisted on their own retard.
If your gender has nothing to do with your anatomy, then how can anyone make a claim of gender discrimination? You can't have gender discrimination unless you have a gender and your boss knows what it is. Well, given what the left is now saying about gender, that it has nothing to do with your anatomy, how do we know that?
A woman claims I fired her because she was a woman. My response is "I thought she was a man, so I couldn't have fired her for being a woman". How do you say I am wrong?
That's why they are asserting it is sex discrimination. Sex is biological; gender is a construct blah blah blah.
You can't out-think doublethink, John.
Aren't most of these laws still 'sex' discrimination laws?
Sure they are. But if the definition of "sex" changes, that doesn't mean the same thing. Further, they say "sex" but they mean gender or if not the left want them to. If someone wakes up tomorrow and decides they are really a woman, I am pretty sure that the left is going to be on board with that person being able to avail themselves of the sex discrimination laws as a woman.
Not a terribly serious proposal, but I have often thought that a good way to both reduce actual discrimination and to defang the laws that force private employers to act a certain way would be to just let everyone legally change their sex, race and age. Then no one will know who to discriminate against.
That time is probably not that far away Zeb. If you can't get your skin darkened or bleached right now, it won't be long.
What happens when a white person decides they are going to be black? The progs' heads will explode. They already can't account for intermarriage and mixed race.
As the number of mixed race people rises, more and more "white" people are going to be able to pass as minorities. If you are white but have a bit of a dark complexion, why wouldn't you claim to be "black" to get the benefits of affirmative action? How would they ever stop you even if they figured it out?
If people ever start doing that, the whole thing falls apart.
Who made what bed? Is there some connection between women who want to breastfeed at work and transgender activists that I don't know about?
It's a shame that they used that reasoning and not the reasoning that employers shouldn't have to pay people to not work and that if you want to have children, you are going to have to sacrifice other things in your life.
The ACLU for one.
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