Seattle Says It Will Ask Protesters To Voluntarily Leave 'Autonomous Zone.' What Happens If They Don't?

Plus: Trump tries to cancel skilled worker visas, Seattle repeals "prostitution loitering" law, Pennsylvania makes cosmetologists prove "good moral character," and more...

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is putting a halt to the city's autonomous zone, an area recently claimed by protesters as a police-free sanctuary within the city. Since it was set up on June 8, the six-block area—alternately referred to as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP)—went from a "block party atmosphere" to seeing 19-year-old Lorenzo Anderson fatally shot within its borders and two others injured in shootings there. "It's time for people to go home," Durkan said on Monday.

She added that Seattle cops would be returning to their precinct in the area but would not be clearing out protesters. "Rather, Durkan said, they'd ask people to leave the area voluntarily at night, offering resources for homeless people and working with community groups to try to cajole people to leave the area," reports The Seattle Times.

Durkan declined to say what city authorities planned to do if people refused their polite requests.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., protesters attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Johnson that sits in Lafayette Square, a park in front of the White House. After being confronted by police, they declared an area in front of a church there the "Black House Autonomous Zone" (though this appears to be largely symbolic).

After trying to pull down a statue of Andrew Jackson, protesters outside the White House have set up the "Black House Autonomous Zone" pic.twitter.com/bQPAX144ik

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 23, 2020

"Welcome to BHAZ" pic.twitter.com/7D1rpMbx5P

— Ebony Lewkovitz (@ebonylewkovitz) June 22, 2020

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FREE MINDS

Seattle repealed a law against "loitering" for the purpose of prostitution. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously on Monday to repeal the law, after Councilmembers Alex Pedersen (District 4), Tammy J. Morales (District 2), and Andrew J. Lewis (District 7) requested it be repealed, following a 2018 recommendation from a working group on reentry problems faced by people exiting incarceration. "The prostitution loitering ordinance has a discriminatory legacy that impacted primarily people of color, women and our LGBTQ community," said Lewis in a statement. "I've received hundreds of emails from constituents almost uniformly in favor of repealing these ordinances."

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FREE MARKETS

Pennsylvania requires licensed cosmetologists to prove they have "good moral character." The state has rejected qualified applicants for having any criminal record, no matter what the charges were, the circumstances behind it, or how long ago the offense happened, reports NBC News. And "the moral character provision of Pennsylvania's cosmetology law is one of tens of thousands of regulations used by states and local governments that make it harder for people with criminal records to find work," notes NBC's Tyler Kingkade. "These rules affect about 1 in 3 American adults who have a criminal record and can increase recidivism, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded in a report last year."

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ELECTION 2020

Among Trump voters, the economy, his stances on China and immigration, and his judicial appointments are all considered strong reasons to back him.

But there is drop-off re: his handling of COVID-19 and race relations…and a HUGE drop-off re: his social media use. pic.twitter.com/Xv7CuHuJNg

— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) June 22, 2020

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QUICK HITS

• The Trump administration is extending immigration restrictions put in place in April (which suspended the issuing of most permanent residency visas) and freezing all visas for skilled workers as well, it announced yesterday.

• "Masks matter. So does good science. Let's do both."

• Police reform proposals in Congress are supposed to see some action this week:

A) It all comes down to Wednesday and Thursday in the Senate and House this week with police reform.

The House and Senate have prepped dueling legislative proposals to curb police abuse. The House will debate and vote on its bill Thursday.

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 22, 2020

•  "Just eight months after the Trump administration invoked an obscure provision of the 2001 Patriot Act to hold him indefinitely," the government's case against Adham Amin Hassoun, a man from Palestine, has fallen apart, reports The Daily Beast.

• Protecting and serving:

So those cops didn't just imagine a nonexistent "crime", they investigated this imaginary crime lengthily and thoroughly, and naturally, at a fair amount of taxpayer expense. Plenty of room with some budget cuts here. https://t.co/YCtzmqS55t

— Mistress Matisse (@mistressmatisse) June 23, 2020

New: ProPublica Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky's family saw an unmarked NYPD cruiser hit a Black teenager. He tried to find out how it happened, and instead found all of the ways the NYPD is shielded from accountability. https://t.co/xXWo9pzlcd

— ProPublica (@propublica) June 23, 2020

• When it comes to police reform, don't forget about federal cops, writes J.D. Tuccille.

• Russia is lifting its ban on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Seattle Says It Will Ask Protesters To Voluntarily Leave 'Autonomous Zone.' What Happens If They Don't?

Like taxes, it's all voluntary.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Hello.

People getting shot and raped. Statues being toppled. Wholesale destruction of property. But Elizabeth insists on calling them protestors.

Hoo-kay.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Note that in the other cities where people tried to set these up, the mayors who proactively shut them down, hard, haven't had to worry about civil insurrection. Wheeler is Antifa's creature in Portland, and even he noped them the fuck out when they tried to set one up on his doorstep.

Fuck 'em. Seattle, and DC for that matter, can wallow in their own shit like the pigs they are. They're starting to get in shootouts and maybe even a serial killer stalking people in Seattle, Minneapolis had over 100 people shot in the last month, more black people were murdered last weekend in Chicago than all the unarmed black people killed by cops in a single year.

Considering they're calling themselves "autonomous" and are effectively declaring that they're not part of the US, I'd be all for smashing these idiots with a few Hellfire missiles and follow it up with some deliveries of 105 shells from an AC-130. With any luck, though, this will be a self-correcting problem for the morons who end up indulging this stupidity, as people get in fights and kill each other.

If this is what the blue cities want, then fine. But if they try to bring that shit into your safe rural/suburban communities, you better be ready to expel them with force, or they're going to fuck up your nest, too. That goes double for any spineless mayors or city council members that might indulge these idiots by appealing to "common values" that these chum simply don't share with you.

[Rufus The Monocled]

And they're armed to boot. That's a cess pool of violence and crime.

Absolutely go in there and clean that shit up. You have to nip this kind of insurrection IN THE BUD. You don't pander to it.

Durkan is a cunt supreme. Same with Wheeler.

But the people voted these retard Dems in so....let them deal with the consequences.

[darkflame]

DC's "autonomous zone" got shut down this morning according to Telegram. I wouldn't go with the hellfire missiles just because there are some innocents who live there and didn't get to choose to be part of this shit show, but I wouldn't be adverse to, say, the national guard rolling up and mowing down any rebel who refused to submit to arrest

[Ben of Houston]

Once it was set up, any force used against them would backfire. If they had nipped it in the bud, that would have been best. However, you don't want to make them into martyrs. After they set it up, letting them fail was the correct action.

The CHAZ was actually the best thing that could happen to the opponents of the "Defund the police" movement. New York Times put out an article saying how they wanted to abolish police, and they got what they wanted. A lawless place with armed private security (essentially, secret police who quelled dissenters and actively attacked journalists), multiple shootings, multiple rapes, rampant theft and violence. These spoiled rich kids realized just how necessary these services are.

It was essentially a police strike on a small scale with a national spotlight on it. No matter how the media spun it, they couldn't hide the fact that it had dystopian levels of crime, dystopian enforcers, and it almost instantly fell apart due to complete and utter incompetence.

Everyone involved can see just how badly they failed and begrudgingly accept that emergency services are necessary. It was a painful lesson for all involved, but any other choice wouldn't have taught the lesson and would have probably cost more lives in total.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Turns out that building A Society That We Live In is a hell of a lot harder than Generation Participation Trophy anticipated.

[buybuydandavis]

" even he noped them the fuck out when they tried to set one up on his doorstep."

On his doorstep. Riots are all fun and games until it might know over his planter.

[issomax]

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[The White Knight]

Good thing, you are here at Reason fighting the good fight against the writing staff!

Ooh, ooh, I'll do one. She wrote "Andrew Johnson" instead of "Andrew Jackson".

[Sevo]

Fuck off and die, asshole

[cnadal]

I quit working at shoprite and now I make $65-85 per/h. How? I'm working online! My work didn't exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…GDe after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn't be happier.

Here’s what I do….............new Income Opportunities

[darkflame]

I wonder if Ashley Webster, a billion-dollar investment firm, leaving Seattle for Phoenix has anything to do with the cops moving in? Cause the CHAZ certainly has to do with why AW is leaving.

[tlapp]

It will work if they say pretty please.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

The easiest way to fix this problem is to air drop booze, drugs, and ammo into Chaz. Then cut off the electricity and water, and build a wall around it so Noone can leave. It will sort itself out

[Vernon Depner]

What was that drug in "Jacob's Ladder"? Do they still have some?

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

The problem here is that progressives don’t act like reasonable adults. Whether they are antifa thugs, or Seattle municipal leaders. So it’s just two groups of idiot adult children bickering.

[Ken Shultz]

"Seattle Says It Will Ask Protesters To Voluntarily Leave 'Autonomous Zone.' What Happens If They Don't?

The city council holds an emergency drum circle?

[Ken Shultz]

Special Session of the Seattle City Council:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnt5Ogiiw98

[Aloysious]

Okay. That was funny. On several different levels.

[Longtobefree]

Drums are often made from animal skin. Not allowed in Seattle.

[Vernon Depner]

They'll be forced to escalate to harsh language.

[Rat on a train]

A stern tweet with emojis?

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

To which councilmember Sawant will respond with a “pots and pans protest”. I wish I was kidding.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Durkan declined to say what city authorities planned to do if people refused their polite requests.

Old fashioned hippie head busting, one imagines.

[SilentSkies]

Perhaps they'll use tanks like the communists they are.

[Ron]

If they were Christians or a bunch of ranchers in a secluded building that wasn't being used they would be in there with tanks guns helicopters there would be nothing to stop them.

[Nonstopdrivel]

Are you allergic to punctuation or something?

[Rat on a train]

Punctuation; speling and Capitalization are tools of oppression.

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

And white privilege. Can’t forget white privilege.

[buybuydandavis]

She won't use tanks against her own terrorist street militia.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

She's likely trying to set things up so that Inslee has to call in the National Guard and she won't have to take responsibility for what happens. "Welp, we tried talking to these people, but they won't listen! I just don't know what to do!" That would certainly epitomize modern American society--no one wants to take any responsibility for anything, and expects someone else to handle the problems.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""Welp, we tried talking to these people, but they won’t listen!""

One of my favorite lines from The Simpsons.
We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas - Ned Flander's dad talking to a shrink about dealing with Ned's uncontrollable behavior.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Another telling nugget of Simpsons genius were the episodes where:

1- Lisa, despite knowing the truth about Jebediah Springfield, decided to not tell it to the public after realizing how the myth made people happy. What was going to be the point of taking that spirit away from people?

2- Marge defending Michelangelo's David from the tyranny from the mob having realized how her innocent protestation based in a personal principle could quickly spiral into mob rule. The ending of her marvelling at the statue was a moving moment.

Now look at what's happening.

[Compelled Speechless]

Lousy beatniks! That's an all time classic.

[The White Knight]

That's a nice paranoid conjecture.

[darkflame]

question, is "white knight" in reference to you being a virgin or is it in reference to you being a closet Klan member?

[The White Knight]

It’s in reference to someone calling me a white knight for defending Reason from the daily whiny criticism here. They meant it as some kind of slam against me, but I embraced the identity.

[Nardz]

As he cries himself to sleep every night

[The White Knight]

Hahaahaaaha

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I'll take your passive-aggressive mewlings for what they're worth.

[The White Knight]

Nothing passive nor aggressive about my mewlings. Just calling out Trump supporters here on their b.s.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Nope, definitely passive-aggressive. With a smattering of inferiority complex to boot.

[The White Knight]

Project much?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

No, that's basic observation.

[The White Knight]

Assertive maybe.

Annoying, definitely. But meant to annoy the smug Trump supporters here.

[soldiermedic76]

What is annoying is your repetitiveness, unoriginality, banality, and puerility.

[The White Knight]

You Trump fans might not have noticed, but you are extremely repetitive in the whining you do every single day.

[soldiermedic76]

Not a Trump fan. Voted for Johnson and am voting for Jorgenson.

[The White Knight]

Noted. Cyto has also said he is not.

Sevo, JesseAz have most definitely asserted that they are.

[soldiermedic76]

Nice display of exactly what I was stating by the way.

[The White Knight]

I used to care.

[Compelled Speechless]

That's human nature, but we've allowed to run rampant in all of modern politics. All the incentives for our leaders now lean towards taking all the credit for the good and blaming someone else for the bad. Put another way, its the exact same as our current monetary policy in practice. Privatize profits, socialize losses.

[Gray_Jay]

Just amazing that one day after Trump said at his rally that this was a city and state issue, Seattle's mayor decides to tell the bait, I mean protesting anarchists, to go home.

No federalized Kent State for you today.

[De Oppresso Liber]

Seattle will cheer for the tear gas and rubber bullets this next time. Everyone is sick to death of these guys. I'm going over today to check it out before the hammer comes down.

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

All the way from Toronto?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Seattle repealed a law against "loitering" for the purpose of prostitution.

Prostitution busts are about to go up.

[H. Farnham]

No, no, no... they're "human trafficking" busts.

[Compelled Speechless]

Yep, people haven't caught on to that euphemism yet.

[Nardz]

But if it's rape in an "autonomous" zone tent, it's totally ok

[Nonstopdrivel]

Especially if the tent is red.

[Compelled Speechless]

How do you think it got to be red?

[Nonstopdrivel]

That had me howling at work, you asshole.

[Compelled Speechless]

I'll chalk that up as a win.

[darkflame]

Hell damn son

[soldiermedic76]

Only if she is legally deaf.

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

Well, to be fair, this law was, (much like global warming and every other malady known to man) affecting “people of color” the most. So it had to go.

Wait, did the author just imply that most of the ho’s in a very white city are not white? Racist!

[Fist of Etiquette]

...and a HUGE drop-off re: his social media use.

As long as it's huge.

[Nonstopdrivel]

Don't you mean "yuge"?

[Fist of Etiquette]

I DO NOT.

[The White Knight]

It's the price Trump pays for keepin' it real.

Real unhinged.

[Sevo]

Fuck off and die, asshole.

[The White Knight]

Hmm, why would someone who habituates a libertarian website be bothered by someone taking a jab at President Trump?

[Sevo]

Fuck off and die, asshole.

[damikesc]

It does demonstrate the long-claimed desire for President's to not use talking points in all communications was such utter bullshit.

[The White Knight]

Talking points and being really careful about not stirring the pot would be a really good idea in the midst of a potential race war.

[Finrod]

Black Pawn thinks it's a White Knight.

[The White Knight]

That was kind of clever. Kind of racist, too.

[Nardz]

Finrod with the ko!

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

That’s African American pawn! And check your white rook privilege!

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

‘A jab’...... yes I’m sure that a fantasy of yours. As you bitterly masturbate to your 8x10” glossy of Trump.

[Nonstopdrivel]

I just found out that transnegress Rachel Dolezal (alias Nkechi Amare Diallo) was a graduate of Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School (CLASS), the same high school from which I graduated . . . proving yet again that politics is more a horseshoe than a continuum, and that a radical leftist and a radical rightist have more in common than not.

[MikeT1986]

Horseshoe theory proves the NazBol.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

I just found out that transnegress Rachel Dolezal (alias Nkechi Amare Diallo) was a graduate of Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School (CLASS)

I bet if you could find her HS year book photo she's be a perfect candidate for one of those "feminism: not even once" memes.

[Nonstopdrivel]

We didn't get a high school yearbook, I'm afraid. But she seems to have been a pretty cute, slightly chubby, strawberry-blonde girl next door.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

That would still work for meme purposes. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if someone already used her "before and after" photos for one of those.

[The White Knight]

that a radical leftist and a radical rightist have more in common than not

Eric Hoffer called it in, "The True Believer".

[Azathoth!!]

There is no 'horseshoe'

The idea that anti-collectivists will somehow become collectivist by progressing to extremes of individualism is yet another idiocy created by leftists to obscure the reality that every single murderous regime of the 20 century was leftist.

[Nardz]

Butbutbut... Pinochet!

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

Fun fact: both Rachel Dolezal and Melissa Click live within fifteen minutes of me.

Why couldn’t it be Gal Gadot and Emily Ratajkowski?

[Earth Skeptic]

In other news, Seattle health department experts have released new pandemic guidelines. Doctors are now instructed to ask the corona virus to leave infected patients.

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

And ask without using trigger words, or micro aggressions.

[Nardz]

Our Establishment is revolting – in fact, it stinks on ice. What you see out there is our alleged betters struggling mightily to hold onto the power that we Normal people dared to wrest away from them in 2016. One component of their campaign is the burning and looting information operation conducted by black-clad pawns. The other component is the soft power corporate/media/cultural conspiracy to silence dissent and enforce fearful conformity to their narrative. Usually, a revolution is conducted by the peasants to throw off a tyrannical ruling class. Here, the ruling class is waging a political and cultural war to retake and then tighten its grip on the masses. They are no longer even pretending to seek the consent of the governed. And once they retake power, that’s it – they will never give up power again.

This is about casting off the “tyranny” of you having rights and interests that get in the way of the best and the brightest doing whatever the hell they want, a continuing theme in my new book The 21 Biggest Lies about Donald Trump (and You!). And a key component of this cynical plot is systematically denying you the protection of norms and laws, all while subjecting you to them where it benefits the elite.

Let’s review.

Remember free speech? That was fun while it lasted. Oh, it still exists, to the extent that you may speak freely as long as your free speech conforms to the Establishment narrative. Do you feel like you can say whatever you think freely and without restraint? Or do you experience a twinge of fear of the consequences if you get online and state that no, you do not support the Marxist goals of Black Lives Matter? If so, their plan is working. You are supposed to be afraid and intimidated – and while the endless list of people cancelled, abused, and fired from jobs because they refused to kowtow to the mob serves to outrage us, it also serves to teach us that there is a fearsome price to be paid for failing to go along and cheer the Emperor’s new duds.

Remember the big lie that Trump is the great destroyer of norms? What about the norm of free speech? Not the First Amendment – that’s a constitutional guarantee. It’s the norm, the general consensus that people will not be punished for their views even outside the law, that’s dead, and not at the hand of The Donald.

Maybe you can appeal for support to the neutral truthtellers of the media, the brave firefighters who ensure the little guy gets a fair shake. Nah. Our garbage media is dedicated to reinforcing the status quo – instead of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, it afflicts the afflicted and sucks up to the comfortable.

Hey, maybe academia will stand up for truth, justice, and equality. And maybe you just took an enormous bong hit.

Ok then, the objective science people of science will tell us the truth because science is important and science is scientific and they surely would never get involved in politics. Except they lie about global warming, and about masks, and they give a free pass to woke protests while scolding those gnarly (and probably racist) Ozark proles about how their pool party will become an orgy of death. Never mind that a month on, there’s still no pile of pangolin flu corpses to point at.

Well, at least our military remains above the fray. Oops. In an era when our Navy ships can’t keep from running into other boats and turbaned banditos continue to roam freely through the Hindu Kush after two decades, we see the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs appear on video to apologize for appearing in public with the guy we elected his commander-in-chief. The military cannot be political, the guys who can’t win a war tell us, as they become super-political. The ChiComs, who have a serious military unlike our shamefully frivolous one, would be wise to time their inevitable devastating sneak attack for when our armed forces are on a three-day diversity training stand-down. If only our armed forces had a recent track record of victory to match its track record of wokeness.

How about our police? We’ve seen some signs of push-back, like in Atlanta, but if they won’t even protect their station house from the woke mobs, are they going to protect your house? And don’t think some are not eager to join in the petty oppression – how many cops obediently hassled mommies for letting their kids play outside during the pandemic panic?

And don’t think you can rely on constitutional guarantees. You can have guarantees all day long and they don’t mean a thing unless they are enforced by the courts. Do you see the courts enforcing your rights? Look at Chief Justice John Souter – I mean Roberts – and his antics. Yeah sure. DACA is one (preferred) president creating a law via decree that overrides an actual law – you know, one of those “I’m Just a Bill” laws – but it can’t be undone by a subsequent (non-preferred) president. Huh?

Oh, and remember your right to worship? You might think that a right to practice your religion means some bureaucrat can’t ban church while clapping like a trained seal as thousands of woke protestors mix n’ mingle, but no. According to Souter II, the First Amendment doesn’t make your silly Jesus hootenannys special, even though it expressly does. Why, your church can be treated just like a movie theater or bowling alley – that is, much worse than, say, massive political donor Walmart.

What are the chances that the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Grown-In-Office, would again construe the Second Amendment’s admonition that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed to mean the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed? We should be glad that the Supreme Court hasn’t taken up a gun case in a decade.

And forget equal justice under criminal law. It’s dual justice. Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit commits crimes that would get you locked up but she gets a pass. McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Comey and the rest lie and walk free, while Mike Flynn commits no crime and has to fight the power to even get a dismissal of a plea obtained by the rankest prosecutorial misconduct. Rioters and criminals get released with a wave and a smile; cops get threatened with death row for fighting back when a career criminal tries to taser them. It’s all a lie and a scam.

This is all part and parcel of a strategy to strip us of any kind of refuge or recourse from abuse. We cannot look to the marketplace of ideas to make our case because our case has been declared verboten. The institutions are arrayed against us. The law means nothing because it will not be enforced neutrally. So why again do we consider ourselves bound by the social contract the establishment has been using like Charmin?

What we are seeing is the elite’s ruthless pursuit of the power we stripped them of back in 2016 when we made the Hillary fans cry. And since then, despite it all, we have made progress – some good judges, no more wars, trade realism with China. But this is intolerable to the leftist Establishment.

We the People must be overthrown. Now the question is whether We the People are going to let that happen.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/06/22/the-elites-are-revolting-n2571007

[Rufus The Monocled]

Shaun King said Jesus is fair game now. Keep pushing and it will end ugly. What's next? Legit works of Western art like Michelangelo's David? Maybe shut down the 'SistIne Chapel'? Knock down Stone Henge? Etc.

The day those Confederate statues went down a couple of years ago, was the day you knew it was going to expand into other figures.

This isn't about justice anymore. It's literally about dismantling the West and disconnecting it from its heritage.

And people are still drinking Brawndo thinking 'meh'.

This is Reason's weak point to a certain degree. A little too naive in their 'nothing to see here' approach. It may indeed be a passing dark cloud and hopefully when those clouds lift, people will go back in and clean the mess up and put those 'symbolic' statues up and defend and respect their heritage rather than feel guilt for it.

Tyranny of the minority is far worse than Mill's tyranny of the majority.

[Nonstopdrivel]

The irony is that the people do are leading this movement idealize failed societies and shithole countries, even as they try to topple the closest thing to paradise that will ever exist on this planet.

[John]

They pulled down the Cervantes statue in Seattle. Cervantes was a slave himself for a while. They are just animals and they are coming for everything.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

LOL! The irony of these idiots toppling a statue of Cervantes is completely lost on them.

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."

"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.

[Rufus The Monocled]

The wealth of European and Western literature is DEEP. No civilization took to the pen like we did.

But we have to 'decolonize it'.

Over my dead body. I took my wife to Rome. It was her choice. When she saw the Sistine Chapel she damn well teared up.

But the narrative is trying to compel us to feel guilty for our history. The funny part is they have nothing to replace it with other than cult musings about social justice. There's no soul or any kind of genius in what they pimp. It's just ugly, arrogant, anti-intellectual, pseudo-scientific, faux righteous bull shit.

Think of it. A morally bankrupted hustling grifter loser like Shaun King has 1.1 million Twitter followers while barely anyone knows Thomas Sowell.

Let Spike Lee and David Chappelle go wallow and stew in their misery. They're just angry guys. Fuck them.

That's how we should play it.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

We are seeing today the results of a game the Soviets started 75 years ago when the news reached Stalin about Hiroshima and he realized that the US would never by conquered by force. The Marxists understand that the great works of literature and art created by Western Civilization are so inspiring and so resistant to destruction that the only way to limit their influence is to transform them into a source of shame.

The plan goes something like this - tear down confederate statues because racism. Tear down Columbus because colonialism. Tear down Jackson because of the Indian wars. Tear down Jefferson because didn't free his slaves. Tear down Washington because he didn't free his slaves fast enough. Tear down Lincoln because of the myth of the white savior. Tear down Jesus because of the myth of the white Savior.

If you doubt for a second that is where this leads, look no further than 'the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' trying to change it's official name because the word 'plantation' triggers people.

[Rufus The Monocled]

It's definitely a slippery slide careening out of control.

I'm telling you, up until now the giants have been spared. But if we don't pay closer attention to this, Socrates, Dante, Da Vinci, Newton, Goethe, Mozart etc. will be marked for death. They've already moved on to Jesus of Nazareth. This shouldn't even be remotely a part of our civil discourse.

Watch.

[De Oppresso Liber]

I disagree with erasing Columbus or the founders, but I think confederate statues are fair game. They were placed mostly in recent time, within the last 60 years or so. They were put up during Jim Crow to remind the darkies their proper place, even if the law finally said they were free, and to glorify the confederate cause.

And we don't typically erect statues of enemies and traitors. The south had no right to secede, were fighting for an immoral cause, and ultimately lost. There is no good reason to memorialize and honor the leaders of a failed slave-economy state.

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future

[Procyon Rotor]

The south had no right to secede...

This, said unironically on an allegedly libertarian website. Spooner wept.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

The irony of these idiots toppling a statue of Cervantes is completely lost on them.

"It's like O. Henry and Alannis Morissette had a baby and named it this exact situation."

I should probably put that quote in a .txt file so I have it for later. Something tells me it's going to come in handy a lot these days.

[Rufus The Monocled]

I should add, the biting sarcasm of Don Quixote would go right over the heads of this miseducated bunch of nihilists and loons.

[soldiermedic76]

Well, these are the same idiots who think Blazing Saddles should be banned because of the racism, without understanding that the whole point of the movie was parodying the idiocy of racism.

[soldiermedic76]

They pulled down a statue of Grant, a man who fought against slavery, who advanced civil rights as President, who fought the KKK. Yes he abused his powers in office, but if anything his abuse mainly aligned with the beliefs of those who attacked his statue. Supposedly they pulled down his statue because he once owned a slave. The slave was a gift from his slave owning father-in-law and was meant to take care of Grant's wife, they freed the slave later and Grant was always opposed to slavery and came from a line of militant abolitionists (his family was even associated with John Brown).

[Ken Shultz]

Last week, we were talking about them pulling down a statue of a conquistador in New Mexico--for things he did before New Mexico was part of the United States, before Mexico broke off from Spain, and before the first Pilgrim landed on Plymouth rock. It was actually the descendants of the conquistadors defending the statue against younger social justice warriors.

Point being, it isn't really about the civil war or the facts of history or the peculiarities of the African-American experience, or any of that--because the same thing is happening everywhere regardless of history, culture, etc. What it's really about is the virus, the economy, and the fact that 40 million people lost their jobs in eight weeks and the rest of them are scared.

When the economy goes bad, this is what happens. When the economy goes bad and there's a progressive in the White House like Barack Obama, maybe it takes the form of the Tea Party. When the economy goes bad and there's a populist in the White House like Donald Trump, maybe you get BLM, anti-fa, and anti-statue wrecking crew.

But we shouldn't get sucked into arguing with them about the details. The reason they're doing what they're doing isn't for the reasons the media narrative is giving us, and the solution to all of this stuff--including the problems of African-Americans--is all about economic growth, good jobs, and prosperity. We should try to change the subject to the economy every chance we get.

[soldiermedic76]

Pointing out the stupidity and historical ignorance may not persuade the activist but may convince fence riders of the pure stupidity of the movement.

[Ken Shultz]

You can't win an argument with fence sitters against anti-fa charges of racism. Talk about the economy. That's what the fence sitters are worried about. Tell the fence sitters that the reason anti-fa shows up in CdA isn't because of racism. Tell them it's really about the economy--which also happens to be truth.

[darkflame]

Yep, rabid animals. And you know what happens when a rabid animal attacks someone...

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

This is exactly why hippies need beatings when they start running their mouths. When tat doesn’t happen, this is the eventual conclusion.

[Nardz]

Reason isn't naive, it straight up panders to progressives and covers for leftists.

[God]

Jesus dude, check your pants.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Your shit fetish is none of our business, vermin.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

This isn’t about justice anymore. It’s literally about dismantling the West and disconnecting it from its heritage.

I've said something similar before, but I guess it bears repeating.

These people are attempting to tear down one of the few, if not the only, civilization in history to voluntarily abolish slavery and guarantee everyone equal rights under the law. At a time when there are slaves being sold in Libyan slave markets and slavery is still a fact of life in much of the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention how they treat women and any of the "alphabet people" in those societies and yet these fucktards want to destroy the closest thing to a free and equitable society that has ever existed on this Earth. It's Kafka's world, we're just stuck here living in it.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Honk, honk.

[soldiermedic76]

Not bad other than your assertion that the ChiCom military is serious. If you look at their actual capabilities and training, they spend like 80-90% of their time in political indoctrination and outside a few elite divisions are poorly equipped and trained. They have numbers and that is about all. Most units are equipped with 1950s and 1960s era equipment (not even updated) and spend no time in the field. Pilots rarely actually get flight time and most of their aircraft are severely outdated and irrepaired.

[darkflame]

wait, really? I mean, I guess that makes sense since they don't want the military getting ideas, but on the other hand, didn't we wargame some scenarios where we fought the chinese, and ended up losing each time? I'm a little worried about any cyberwarfare capabilities they might hold over us, especially since the USA is one big soft target.

[soldiermedic76]

I think they main reason was because the Chinese can't invade the US or many of our allies, so we would have to fight a war on their field. They have numbers and as the Korean conflict, they are willing to throw mass waves of bodies to try and overcome superior forces.

[Commenter_XY]

Do not underestimate their capabilities, soldiermedic76. They are rapidly modernizing their force. They can make life extremely difficult if they choke off the South China Sea. We could 'fight our way through' at great cost.

Would the American people be willing to pay that price?

[Nardz]

I dont think they can fight all that well.
They haven't done anything for 40 years.
Theyre basically a massive, glorified police force.
But they will be a pain in the ass

[soldiermedic76]

I don't underestimate them, nor do I overestimate them. As for their modernization, from what I've read about it, it is more on paper. A few elite divisions are being modernized, while most units are not. It is the same game the Soviets played (and the Iraqis did before Desert Storm, and the Iranians currently do). A huge poorly trained conscript army, with a few elite, well armed units. It follows a similar pattern that seems to be the MO of large totalitarian governments. The military is used to indoctrinate large swaths of their youth while a few well trained loyal troops maintain the tyrants power.

[soldiermedic76]

Also, as for closing the South China Sea it may be better to allow the Japanese and Vietnamese deal with it, while selling or lending them naval equipment (both are already expanding their navies and Air Forces). Hell, India and Thailand would probably join a coalition to wrest control back from China. Not to mention South Korea and Taiwan who have prepared for war with China for decades, and have well equipped, well trained Air Forces, and decent naval capabilities.

[Fist of Etiquette]

And "the moral character provision of Pennsylvania's cosmetology law is one of tens of thousands of regulations used by states and local governments that make it harder for people with criminal records to find work..."

If they don't like it they shouldn't have been convicted of breaking one of the thousands of laws the Pennsylvania government has put on the books.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The Trump administration is extending immigration restrictions put in place in April (which suspended the issuing of most permanent residency visas) and freezing all visas for skilled workers as well...

Everyone wanted him to make a show of taking the Rona seriously.

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Masks matter. So does good science. Let's do both."

Modern America doesn't do nuance.

[Earth Skeptic]

Stupid is as stupid does.

Also

You can't fix stupid.

[Don't look at me!]

Suddenly, thin cotton bandanas stop virus particles.
Because science!

[Longtobefree]

But only the Communist Chinese Virus particles.

CDC statement on masks and the 'real' flu:
Background; Masks are not usually recommended in non-healthcare settings; however, this guidance provides other strategies for limiting the spread of influenza viruses in the community.
Unvaccinated Asymptomatic Persons, Including Those at High Risk for Influenza Complications
No recommendation can be made at this time for mask use in the community by asymptomatic persons, including those at high risk for complications, to prevent exposure to influenza viruses.

So there is something magical about the Communist Chinese Virus that a single layer of fabric, not sealed around the mouth and nose is not only effective, but effective enough to be required by law, while that same object has no recommendation for anything else.
Or just possibly, it is all political posturing to benefit a fascist takeover of the USA political process.

Boring details: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/infectioncontrol/maskguidance.htm

[docduracoat]

As a doctor I do have to disagree with your statement.
The Reason we wear masks in the operating room is because bacteria and viruses travel in respiratory droplets.
So it’s not a tiny free virus traveling in the air.
it’s an actual water drop contaminated with viruses and bacteria.
You don’t need a sub micron filter, the kind that would stop an actual virus particle.
you only need a paper filter that can stop water droplets.

[Azathoth!!]

As a blind idiot god who can hold an appendage before any of my mouths, cough while wearing a mask, and feel warm humid exhalate in my 'palm', I do have to disagree with your simian posturing.

A cloth or paper mask can stop some droplets.

But the real evidence speaks for itself.

When talking about a virus that has not been hideously politicized, the CDC does not recommend masking for asymptomatic people.

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

Some viruses are more equal than others.

[John]

You wear masks in the operating room because you are standing over an open wound for those droplets to penetrate the person's body. Most people don't walk around with open wounds.

If you are a doctor, you are not a very good one.

[Vernon Depner]

Most people don’t walk around with open wounds.

You obviously never go to Walmart or Waffle House late at night.

[Anomalous]

Thank You Mask Man!

[Fist of Etiquette]

The House and Senate have prepped dueling legislative proposals to curb police abuse. The House will debate and vote on its bill Thursday.

And you thought Capitol Hill gridlock was a positive.

[John]

Someone painted "Fuck The Police" on the statue of that great confederate racist Stevie Ray Vaughn in Austin. Don't these dumb asses know Andy Summers was the guitarist for the Police not SRV?

[Anomalous]

All those white boys look alike.

[Shitlord of the Woodchippers]

Fuckin’ honkies!

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Just eight months after the Trump administration invoked an obscure provision of the 2001 Patriot Act to hold him indefinitely," the government's case against Adham Amin Hassoun, a man from Palestine, has fallen apart...

Bolton leaves and the whole war on terror goes down the tubes.

[Nardz]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16118/western-history-culture-stand-up

"Antiracism is no longer the defense of the equal dignity of people, but an ideology, a vision of the world," said the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, son of Holocaust survivors.

"Antiracism has been transformed... At the time of the great migration, it is no longer a question of welcoming newcomers by integrating them into European civilization, but exposing the faults of this civilization".

He referred to "self-racism" as "the most dismaying and grotesque pathology of our time".

Its capital is London.

"Topple the racists" consists of a map with 60 statues in 30 British cities. The removal of the statues is being requested to support a movement born in the United States after a white policeman, Derek Chauvin, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck.

In Bristol, a crowd pushed the statue of philanthropist and slave-owner Edward Colston into the harbor. The act was followed in London by protests vandalizing statues of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. London's Mayor Sadiq Khan, after removing the monument to Robert Milligan, a Scottish slave trader, from outside the Museum of London Docklands, announced the creation of commission to review tearing down statues that do not reflect "the city's diversity". Two more statues were ordered to be removed from two London hospitals.

Vandalism and self-hatred are quickly gaining ground. The epic of great discoveries associated with British Empire has become shameful. The protests are not about slavery. No one in the UK today would cheer that period. It is rather a call for cultural cleansing of all the works contradicting the new mantra: "diversity".

"A new form of Taliban was born in the UK today", wrote Nigel Farage, referring to two giant ancient Buddha statue that were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

"Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won't be worth living in".

The list of statues to be removed includes the names of Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson, two major figures in British history, as well as Nancy Astor, the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament and take a seat in 1919. Also on the list were the names of Sir Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus and Charles Gray (the prime minister whose government supervised the abolition of slavery in 1833).

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, expressing opposition to the removal campaign, said:

"We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come."

British post-colonial guilt is, however, having repercussions far larger than statues. There is, for instance, still total silence about persecuted Christians, according to a UK bishop leading a government review into their suffering. There is also, notably, a retreat from the world's stage.

"When the West loses confidence in itself, because of excessive or misplaced guilt over colonialism, it turns to isolationism", noted Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science.

"We are afraid that anything we do is colonial. There's plenty of countries willing to step into that global governance gap: China, Iran, Russia, Turkey".

Post-colonial guilt is also suffocating freedom of speech in the UK. The former British "equality watchdog" chief, Trevor Phillips, was suspended from the Labour Party after allegations of "Islamophobia". Phillips' guilt? Being critical of multiculturalism. According to Phillips:

"In my view, squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long."

Phillips also claimed that British politicians and journalists are "terrified" of discussing race, thereby leaving multiculturalism to become a "racket" exploited by some to entrench segregation. A man of Guyanese origin, a Labour Party veteran and an equality commissioner spoke the truth to the multiculturalists.

The activists who campaign to remove the statues want radically to change the look of the British capital. The clash seems to consist of, on one side, violent censors who bully everyone, and on the other side, cowardly, appeasing politicians, who are afraid and bow to the vandals. Monuments are a vital and visible part of a global city; they embody their place in the history of a city, otherwise only bus stops and Burger Kings would remain there. These protestors appear to wish for a revised, sanitized history. If we do not quickly understand that, if we erase our past, as the former Soviet Union tried to do, it will be easier for people to create their vision of our future with no rudder to anchor us or our values. We will be left with nothing in our hands but shattered pieces of our history and culture.

This movement of hating the West -- which has, as all of us do, an imperfect history -- seems to have begun in British universities. In Cambridge, professors of literature asked to replace white authors with representatives from minorities to "decolonize" the curriculum. The student union of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) asked to remove Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hegel and others from the curriculum, because they were "all white" -- as if the color of our skin should be the sole determinant of our thoughts. In Manchester, students painted over a mural based on Kipling's poem "If".

A scholar of colonialism, Nigel Biggar, said that a "climate of fear" has returned to British universities. The University of Liverpool recently agreed to rename a building honoring former prime minister William Gladstone. At Oxford, meanwhile, the statue of Cecil Rhodes, philanthropist and founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), risks being the next to go.

"There is a bit of hypocrisy," Lord Patten, the chancellor of Oxford, commented, "in Oxford taking money for 100 scholars a year, about a fifth of them from Africa, to come to Oxford, and then saying we want to throw the Rhodes statue... in the Thames".

He said that his own view remained the same as one "expressed by Nelson Mandela at a celebration of the Rhodes Trust in 2003": that despite the "problems associated with Cecil Rhodes in history, if it was alright for Mandela, then I have to say it's pretty well alright for me". But not for the revisionists.

Western history is seemingly being remade to portray all of Western civilization as just one big apartheid. It is as if we should not only pull down statues but also pull down ourselves. But a successful democracy, cannot be built on just erasing the past.

The statue in London of Churchill -- who stood against the Nazis during the Second World War and saved Europe from barbarism -- was covered up by the city authorities during recent protests. Its visual erasure reminds one of the nude statues in Rome covered up by authorities to please Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, or the "disappearance" of portraits in the former Soviet Union, of people whom the Politburo decided had fallen out of favor. There is a falsity in erasing one's history. One may not have a perfect history, but it is one's history, nevertheless. As the historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote, a country "does not have to be perfect to be good." Excising the distasteful parts does not change what happened; they may even be replaced with parts that are more distasteful.

Some London museums already adopted this covering-up and self-censorship a while ago. The Tate Gallery in London banned a work by John Latham that displayed a Koran embedded in glass. The Victoria and Albert Museum showed, then withdrew, a devotional art image of Muhammad. The Saatchi Gallery featured two works of nudes overlaid with Arabic script, which prompted complaints from Muslim visitors; the museum covered the works. The Whitechapel Art Gallery purged an exhibit containing nude dolls.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary just revised the definition of "racism" to include "systemic racism", presumably meaning that the entire society is guilty and unjust.

The censors seem to want to control our mental universe, as in George Orwell's novel, 1984:

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right".

This process of Western self-abasement began long ago. The Labour Party councils in the UK, for example, began to examine all the statues under their jurisdiction. The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, instead of defending the rule of law, called the violent removal of the statue of Colston an act of "historical poetry". When vandals started to destroy statues, many applauded. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it "politically correct iconoclasm".

A week before the statues row, people in the UK knelt in the name of George Floyd. It was as if there was a collective claim that Western society as a whole had to repent. It seemed a form of ideological hysteria, not so distant from that of the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials: those who knelt were presumably supposed appear as if they were more moral, on the "right side" of justice. There were even British policemen kneeling, as, in the US, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats knelt to their overlords. Both were acts of irresponsibility and capitulation. A few days later, the British establishment kowtowed to the new Taliban.

What is this macabre ideological game aimed at accomplishing? Not taking down monuments as such, like the statues of Christopher Columbus which have been torn down or beheaded. It is more than that. It is a power-grab to create a cultural revolution, to prevent anyone from saying that cultures are not all the same; to put Europe's past on trial; to instill perennial remorse into consciences, and to spread intellectual terror to advance multiculturalism.

How many people will refuse to go along with this coerced suppression of history? If many kneel to this new totalitarianism, who will have the courage to stand up for Western history and culture?

[Earth Skeptic]

Where is Hitler when we need him?

[Nardz]

Telling people to topple statues

[Compelled Speechless]

I'm glad you mentioned that. I've been scratching my head recently thinking about how our society and education system have a completely myopic focus on WWII and the Nazis and wondering why that seems to be the only part of the last century we ever discuss.

It was the bloodiest century in human history by far and saw the spread of a large number massive, violent and unaccountable central governments who are all responsible for untold numbers of murders of their enemies both foreign and domestic. They used various tactics to consolidate and grow their power and yet the only warning signs that we are told to look for are the ones that look like Nazis. Considering how all of the regimes - Mao, Pol Pot, Lenin, Stalin, the Kims, the list goes on and on - turned out for the vast majority of the citizenry including most of the political and media class, you would think it would be wise for all of us as a society to learn to recognize the signs of takeover at the hands of extremists for all of our safety. We don't, we just want to talk about Nazis.

Chris Matthews decided to use the Brown Shirts as an analogy about Bernie bros instead of the far more obvious and accurate comparison to either Bolsheviks or the Red Guard. The criticism he received for doing so had nothing to do with it's accuracy, just that he would even dare make a comparison at all despite the fact that we're constantly being told that the alt-right is coming for all of our rainbow colored babies.

I can't figure out if this ignorance is the result a decadent and completely ineffective education system that's incapable of prioritizing what's important to learn or a carefully coordinated sabotage to make sure we don't see what's coming. I know the latter is an extraordinary claim, but there are definitely writings by well known and influential self-proclaimed socialists making road maps for long-term societal take over and control of the education system is on the list. Considering how much these movements are starting to resemble the Red Guard, (student-led, desire to burn old tradition and history to the ground, focus on culture above economics) I have to wonder if the reason we never talk about the Chinese revolution is because that's the one that the left has been planning on copying for decades.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Here's the thing about the Red Guard, though--they were enabled by Mao until they became too much of a pain in the ass for him to deal with anymore. After that, they were packed off to the hinterlands to starve to death, and the people who ran the Cultural Revolution were either exiled or murdered.

Radical left activities are tolerated only as far as they don't inconvenience the powers that be. Wheeler shutting down Portland's CHAZ is a microcosmic example of that. If these people were pulling a Charlie Hebdo on CNN, I guarantee they'd get shut down with extreme prejudice.

They don't have a problem with the mobs trying to storm the White House to Get Blumph because he got kicked out of the elite as soon as he went after Obama.

[Compelled Speechless]

That's the best part of watching something like the CHAZ. Assuming that they ever actually get their way and the socialist revolution come to their neighborhood, the men with guns will put them up against the wall first. They have nothing to offer besides gross amounts of spare time and a willingness to stand outside government buildings holding signs taking positions on issues they have almost no real understanding of.

Again, this leads back to their education. Why are they not aware that this has all already happened before and it didn't turn out well for them?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Again, this leads back to their education. Why are they not aware that this has all already happened before and it didn’t turn out well for them?

Because it wasn't covered. Seriously. Unless you take a course specifically devoted to modern Chinese history, you're only going to get a smattering of what's happened. Time availability has something to do with it, but it's typically more down to the professors deliberately pushing a propaganda line. The only totalitarian regime that educators care about these days are the Nazis, and that's because every bad thing is portrayed through that lens.

[Nardz]

"I’ve been scratching my head recently thinking about how our society and education system have a completely myopic focus on WWII and the Nazis and wondering why that seems to be the only part of the last century we ever discuss."

It's no wonder.
After WWII, the Soviets seized on "racism" as the West's Achilles heel.
Hitler is useful because he was the loser, and because Marxists switched to race as the basis for class strife. The holocaust allowed "racism" to be elevated to the one unforgivable sin.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Stalin's and the NKVD systematic and deliberate starving and cold blooded executions of kulaks, Belorussians, Poles and Jews was every bit - if not worse in some cases - crimes against humanity seen with the Nazis.

The thing about the Nazis is they committed a genocide against one people (including others of course like gays and gypsies) so it's a clean narrative to use as an analogy for lazy fucks like Matthews and his illiterate sea lions who watch him.

Stalin and Hitler were both serial killers it's just that Stalin - through pure circumstance - ended up fighting with the Allies.

That's why they focus on Hitler.

That's why they cocksucked and cock blocked for communists. And they still do to this day. The left don't give a shit about Jews and still shill for commies. Just look at the NYT and the NBA.

[soldiermedic76]

Despite the Rape of Nanking and other atrocious behavior during WWII (bayonet practice on live prisoners of war, beheading POW for sport, forced prostitution of Korean, Chinese and Filipino females, bayoneting babies, ritual cannibalism etc) the Japanese somehow escaped the same stigma as their European Allies, also.

[Gray_Jay]

Thank MacArthur, George Kennan, and containment of the Soviet Union.

I understand the practical reasons for not having as far-reaching a set of Nuremberg-type trials in Japan, but an awful lot of completely evil bastards in the IJA and IJN got to die in bed.

[soldiermedic76]

Including the Emporer who was completely culpable for the actions of the military, and who was not nearly as powerful a god atevar as MacArthur made out.

[Rufus The Monocled]

You know things are a tad askew when Gatestone makes sense.

I get their stuff in my inbox and gotta say, they're onto something.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, expressing opposition to the removal campaign, said:

“We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.”

He's not wrong. Which probably means he's a literalnazi racisthitler and so am I for agreeing with him.

[John]

St John's church that the BLM rioters tried to burn down. They have turned one of the most historic churches and parks in America into a camp full of fucking bums. And ENB cheers it on. She should go spend a few days there. I am sure the bums would find a skinny white girl nice to have around. I wish her luck with that.

[Don't look at me!]

But, free food!

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I wouldn't fret too much over St. John's, to be honest. The Episcopelians are basically a left-wing social club now that are obsessed with worldy asspats rather than bringing people to Christ.

[John]

It is still a church. And those idiots didn't know that. They burned it down because it was a church and they will do the same to any other church.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

That's the point, though. Do an internet search for an article from Time back in 1942 called "American Malvern". There was a Federal Council of Protestant churches that year outlining what their parishes would be promoting for the conceivable future.

I'm not going to do a wall of text on the list of items they agreed to promote, but suffice to say that none of them, quite tellingly, have anything to do with Christianity or even spirituality. It's all worldly, carnal things like international control of all militaries and a global currency, with John Foster Dulles himself front and center saying, "Shame on the US."

There's no point in a church if it's producing poisonous fruit, and they've been pushing this line for nearly 80 years. That's a big reason why church attendance is a shell of what it used to be, and the ones that remain are almost entirely focused on worldly rather than heavenly matters. Even the "conservative" ones, which are really just venues for the Prosperity Gospel and are just as bad as the left-wing churches.

[John]

I agree with you. I am just saying these people will burn any church. It being a prog one really doesn't matter.

[BYODB]

I mean, when your church only exists as an offshoot of another sectarian group that only existed to rubber stamp one divorce in particular...what exactly would one expect?

Might as well call their church the 'Church of Kingly Divorce'.

[Earth Skeptic]

Meh. Religion is just collective delusion with different laws about hats and cutting off body parts.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, but when you try to eliminate it from public life, what replaces it always seems to be worse.

[soldiermedic76]

In many ways, my church, the ECLA, is just as bad, if not worse. I am not a fan of our current bishop. American Catholics, and Methodist also are growing disillusioned with their leadership. Much like how the progressives infiltrated education, they have done the same with religion and have managed to work their way into leadership roles, implementing programs that conflict with dogma and their parishioners.

[Rat on a train]

It is a benefit of congregationalist churches. National and regional organizations are voluntary. Dogmatic differences result in a church withdrawing or being expelled, but the church decides what it wants.

[soldiermedic76]

It is one of the reasons I maintain my Lutheran membership (besides I agree with Luther on many things outside his latter racism/anti-Semitism). Despite the wokeness of our Bishop, individual parishes still have veto power over most of it. Take gay clergy for example, the decision is left to each church council, not made from above. The same with gay marriage etc. We have bishops but not near the centralized power of the Catholic Church (not surprising as this was one of Luther's biggest complaints). This may also be why we schism so often. Get two Lutherans together in a room and you'll hear three different opinions (and since we are mainly German and Scandinavians, probably fairly stubbornly and passionately, with lots of coffee involved).

[TrickyVic (old school)]

I wonder what Mariann Budde has to say.

[Rufus The Monocled]

That's my take. If ENB insists on this then maybe she should get off the porn beat and go to the areas like Andy Ngo does.

If she determines all is a-otay so be it. But to fricken insist as if there are only a few bad apples....come on. Get real. This stuff is serious.

When Churches get attacked that's BY DESIGN because it's a symbol of our identity.

Maybe to the hipsters at Reason this is nothing but I've visited many Churches in Spain, Italy and France. They're marvels of the human soul.

If we can't defend that, then maybe we don't deserve shiny ponies.

[Smithsonian SWAT $park¥]

If we can’t defend that, then maybe we don’t deserve shiny ponies.

If they’re your churches then maybe you should go defend them. Not everyone has to care when your religion is attacked.

[BYODB]

"And then, when it came time to defend our own, there was no one left to help."

[soldiermedic76]

Destroying any church/temple/mosque etc, especially a historical one is a detriment to humanity. It doesn't matter what religion. It doesn't matter if it is a Shinto temple, or a Buddhist Khmer temple or a Roman Catholic Cathedral or a Mosque.

[Smithsonian SWAT $park¥]

Oh, bullshit. Destroying somebody else’s property is bad. The fact that it’s a church is irrelevant.

[soldiermedic76]

It is destroying culture and history. I also wouldn't support the destroying of the Collisieum despite the horrific history of it. Fuck off with your militant anti-theism. You are just as bad as the fucking woke crowd. You don't like religion therefore you don't even bother to try and understand beyond "religion bad".

[Smithsonian SWAT $park¥]

How very simple-minded of you to think it has anything to do with what I think about religion. I don’t support churches being destroyed as you seem to believe, I also don’t think that churches are any more worthy of special protection than journalists are. You dorks rightly call out Reason writers when they whine about “muh journalists!” then go whining about “muh churches!”

[soldiermedic76]

I am complaining about destroying cultural heritage. It just so happens that churches are the target. But hey, keep up the good work...

[The White Knight]

Got it. Reporting on = cheering on.

[Don't look at me!]

^ I guess this is the work they assign to the interns .

[Compelled Speechless]

It actually would make a lot of sense if White Knight were actually Binion or Boehm and they were using the name without the slightest hint of irony.

[The White Knight]

Sure, if you want to believe that, go for it.

[Finrod]

STFU, Black Pawn.

[darkflame]

it is amazing how many dumb white leftist bitches want no cops, anarchy, and the rule of the strong. They do understand that declaring themselves "strong empowered women" doesn't actually make it so, right? That the laws and cops they detest are the only things protecting them?

[soldiermedic76]

Studies on female pornography viewing and fantasies show that BDSM (female submissive) and rape/consensual non consensual routinely are in their top five choices, often 1st and 2nd, with the ranking depending on the study.

[Nardz]

The rate at which events are accelerating makes prediction a fool’s game. But I’ll take a shot at it, since I’ve been called a heck of a lot worse than ‘fool’ in my life.

Since the rioting began after the death of George Floyd it’s been obvious to anyone with any experience in covering global politics that these have been a directed operation aimed at undermining the presidency of Donald Trump here in the U.S.

The formation of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in downtown Seattle is the latest in a series of provocations and escalations intended to goad Trump into invoking the Insurrection Act of 1878 and deploying the military to put down these riots endlessly promoted by a complicit media in the West as mostly ‘peaceful protests.’

They are anything but that.

This is a situation that, because of the subsidization of it by the Mayor, Jenny Durkan, and the Governor, Jay Inslee, that will persist just long enough to descend into violence and chaos. Note how I don’t use the word anarchy.

Because we’ve already seen a form of government form in the CHAZ, with a governing council, a constitution of sorts and decrees of white people paying reparations to black members of the community.

Raz Simone, like a latter day Issac Hayes – the Duke — from John Carpenter’s now prophetic Escape from New York, is passing out AR-15s and AK-47s to keep the peace of the gun. And in no time some pigs will become far more equal than others.

But, even if my worst predictions about the CHAZ do not come to pass, since it is very much a tactical operation in the grander strategy to undermine and delegitimize Trump, there will still likely be violence.

All we have to do is look at what happened in other so-called color revolutions that piggy-backed on legitimate protests against existing, corrupt governments.

This reminds me of the situation in Ukraine in 2014 where the protests on the Maidan plaza in Kiev turned violent when snipers began shooting from rooftops. And to this day there are questions as to who shot who and what actually happened.

But given that a peaceful stability in the CHAZ serves no one in power, on either side of the political divide, the likelihood of a similar provocation is very, very high.

The way I see this, the people in the CHAZ are pawns in a much larger game being played by the power elite many of them want to overthrow.

All it takes is one agent provocateur, one guy with a rifle and a narrative springs into being.

If there is one thing that is abundantly clear after four years of watching this escalation in the U.S. it is that there is nothing Trump’s enemies won’t do to make things worse.

Because, in the end, this is about far more than Trump. This is about moving the U.S. into a failed political and economic state. The economic destruction is already well underway thanks to the persistence of the COVID-19 insanity.

The new normal of face masks and social distancing highlight the sheer cowardice of the corporate managerial class and the complicity of the corporate leadership, as The Saker pointed out in a recent post. He asks the question that if money isn’t the object of this corporate ‘bowing to the mob’ what is at stake.

The answer, of course, is power:

Specifically, the U.S. deep state – at a major faction within that deep state – is clearly desperate to get rid of Trump (and *not* for the right reasons, of which there are plenty).

There are plenty of signs that illustrate that Trump is even losing control of the Executive, including Secretary Esper contradicting Trump on what is a key issue – restoring law and order – or the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea voicing support for BLM (I consider that these actions by top officials against their own Commander in Chief border on treason). Needless to say, the pro-Dems neo-libs at Slate immediately began dreaming about, and calling for, a military revolt against Trump.

And that new normal now separates Americans along yet another vector, one much subtler than wearing a MAGA hat or sporting a ‘Coexist’ bumper sticker on their hybrid.

And that’s exactly why I think there’s going to be some kind of Maidan-like event in the CHAZ if President Trump continues to refuse to take the bait and roll the tanks in, metaphorically, to break it up.

But, ultimately, this isn’t Trump’s job, it is the job of the local elected officials to provide services to protect the property and livelihoods of their constituents. But that’s not what’s on display in Seattle.

It isn’t on display in New York City either where Mayor Bill DeBlasio is doing everything he can to disarm and delegitimize his own police force and enflame tensions by allowing looters to run wild while enforcing social distancing rules against Hasidic Jews trying to worship in peace.

This is a movie whose ending I’ve seen before and I didn’t like it the previous times I watched it. What’s sad is that the people who’ve released this one are the same ones who released the previous ones.

It’s a tragedy which, frankly, as I’ve talked about ad nauseum. Trump has invited this onto himself because of his own weakness to confront his attackers while engaging in similar behavior against countries he doesn’t like – Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela.

No one in the international community will shed one tear if Trump is deposed in November or during his second term. Many of us Americans recognize his faults and what they’ve wrought but still understand that the alternative to him is the restoration of the worst parts of the Empire.

His only true accomplishment to date has been staying in power in a White House where his power has steadily eroded to the point of near irrelevancy. If he doesn’t make substantive moves to neutralize those behind the CHAZ he will be the one blamed when it explodes.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/06/22/chaz-is-setup-as-next-maidan/

[John]

They have had two murders at CHAZ in the last week. It already has turned into chaos. The city could end it tomorrow if they wanted to. They don't want to because they want Trump to come in and do it for them so they can play heroes to their derranged base calling Trump a tyrant while getting the benefits of Trump doing their dirty work.

Trump isn't going to do it for them. Trump has said he will come in with federal forces if asked to do so but not until he is asks. That leaves the mayor and the governor owning the entire festering mess of bums, criminals and insane people in the middle of the state's largest city. There have already been two murders and at least one rape. It will only get worse as time goes on and the mayor and the governor only look worse for not doing anything. But, the moment they do, their zombie woke base will turn on them. They were betting Trump would overreact and save them. Sucks to be them.

[Nardz]

I'm looking forward to their attempt to clear it out.
It should be difficult, but I'm guessing orders will come down to the chazchop warlord(s) to end it without much fight since the optics have turned against the left

[John]

From what I have seen there are some legitimately crazy people there. I don't think the dumb asses who started this have much control over it anymore. I don't think they can just call it off and tell these loons to go home because the optics are bad. Someone is going to have to go in there and use force to clean it out. And it is going to make for some very bad optics. They are screwed because Trump isn't going to do it for them.

[Nonstopdrivel]

Leftists caterwauling about Trump's supposed penchant for authoritarianism, but whatever meager shreds of credibility they retained have completely evaporated in light of this situation. An authoritarian would have had snipers posted on rooftops surrounding CHAZ within hours, and shortly after that would have been blocked off all entry points with up-armored HMMWVs and started arolling in APCs and even tanks to quell the insurrection. I can't imagine a Democratic president demonstrating this kind of restraint. Trump is letting the leftists choke on their own manna.

[John]

Pretty much all that.

[Ron]

We have the WACO and Ruby Ridge and two Bundy episodes to know how democrats deal with people they disagree with. If Trump did that there would be hell to pay.

[Dillinger]

Fred Korematsu on line 2

[soldiermedic76]

Ruby Ridge was Bush Sr, but he might as well have been a Democrat.

[Commenter_XY]

The Mayor and the Governor both have culpability for the murder of one, the shooting of another. Their deliberate indifference and inaction lead to that shooting death. The only one who sounds like she has any brains at all is that police chief (Carmen Best).

Want this solved? Sentence the Mayor and Governor to CHAZ for a week.

[soldiermedic76]

One of the City Councilman in Seattle tried blaming the shootings on "Right Wing Militias attacking the peaceful protesters" already.

[Roberta]

Is 2 murders and 1 rape significantly above average for such a period in that area?

[Gray_Jay]

The murders are, for that particular six block hunk of Seattle. The rape, probably not. Those are only the reported crimes, anyway. I am guessing there will be quite a few more bodies that turn up when order is finally restored. ODs will be most of them, I'd guess.

Nardz's quoted point about a few hidden rifles giving the CHAZ's backers the lefty bodies they wanted, is an interesting one. Will CNN spend any time at all pointing out that it's Inslee's guys doing the shooting, not Trump's? Or will they just go play in the blood instead?

[Nonstopdrivel]

ad nauseam*

[BYODB]

He asks the question that if money isn’t the object of this corporate ‘bowing to the mob’ what is at stake.

There is this thing you might have heard of before called 'public relations' where you piggyback onto any cause du jour in order to keep your company name in the news attached to popular causes. Or, in some cases, causes that leadership thinks are popular that can end up burning you.

Since Corporate leadership isn't great at knowing which is which, and public relations people are generally morons, this is what you end up with.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

No offense intended dude, but seriously? You're making me miss the days when there was a character limit on comments.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Imagine being a DIPLOMAT or AMBASSADOR and publicly stating you support a grifting, racist, Marxist ate group like BLM.

These people REPRESENT A NATION. I'd fire that ambassador. Out. You're a threat. At this point, take no prisoners.

Let that stew in the mind a little.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Plenty of room with some budget cuts here.

OR, do we need to seize Shake Shack's physical assets so that police can make their own shakes?

[Longtobefree]

That is what they get for abandoning donuts - - - - - - - -

[Fist of Etiquette]

When it comes to police reform, don't forget about federal cops...

That's a lot of armed alphabet agencies to worry about.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Russia is lifting its ban on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

Looks like Putin found a backdoor.

[Anomalous]

Putin found Trump's back door.

[John]

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/jimmy-kimmel-n-word-snoop-dogg-imitation-george-wallace-comic-podcast

Jimmy Kimmel get's the knock at the door cutesy of Fox News. Couldn't happen to a more deserving douche bag.

[Nonstopdrivel]

I still can't figure out why blackface is so offensive. It's a fucking costume, for godsake.

[BYODB]

I guess vaudeville left it's scars.

[John]

It isn't and never was until a bunch of white people decided otherwise. But Kimmell is one of the most sanctimonious woke assholes in Hollywood. He is getting exactly what he deserves. Hopefully, we will never have to hear from him again.

He was never funny anyway. His act was basically playing your sister's asshole boyfriend that you never got around to beating the shit out of even though he deserved it because it wasn't worth the family drama. Even before he became such a whinny woke bitch, he was still annoying and never funny.

[Nonstopdrivel]

I wouldn't know. Television has never been a significant part of my life, and I've definitely never gotten into the late night comedy shows. So I'll take your word for it.

[John]

I have never watched his late night show. But I have seen enough clips that he is the kind of guy that begs to be punched.

[Dillinger]

if they're canceling people for the past, Kimmel should never work again for the Man Show

[Finrod]

Kimmel surrendered his Man card, he's ineligible.

[BYODB]

The irony of Kimmel being the backup guy to Adam Corolla, who was mildly funny if crass and annoying, has never been lost on me. If not for the Man Show would we even know who the hell he is?

I'm also not so sure that Corolla's podcast doesn't have more viewership than Kimmel's show.

I do wonder how one co-hosts something like the Man Show then go on to become a moral scold, though. Must have been a fascinating process.

[John]

Being that big of a hypocrite, must do really strange things to your mind.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

A lot of entertainers that did this kind of edgelord shit, back when they thought they were pissing off the religious right, have shifted since Obama took office and the radical left took that as its cue to start asserting its position more within American society. Stuff like the Man Show that might have scandalized the old blue hairs is something that isn't supported by the young blue hairs, either, and those are the people writing Kimmel's checks.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Corolla for a long time had the most downloaded podcast in the world.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

His act was basically playing your sister’s asshole boyfriend that you never got around to beating the shit out of even though he deserved it because it wasn’t worth the family drama.

That's not a bad description. I remember him and Joe Rogan both getting their starts on The Man Show on Comedy Central. I find it kind of interesting that he's become this super woke douchebag. My guess is he's only doing it as a way of apologizing for his previous "misogynistic" douchebag character from The Man Show. The one constant: he's always been a douchebag. I suspect it comes naturally to him.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Actually now that I think about it, I think prior to The Man Show he was actually second fiddle to Ben Stein on Win Ben Stein's Money. Funny how I can remember shit like that but can't remember to call my mom on her birthday without my wife reminding me.

[soldiermedic76]

Ben Stein looked like he wanted to hit him most of the time.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

If you want good similar to Adam Carolla man's how stuff, look up Fernwood tonight. Martin mull and Fred Willard, rip, are amazingly funny

[BYODB]

Ah, yes, the irony of creating an 'autonomous zone' where police aren't allowed to tread having shootings when it's announced that law no longer exists.

One might wonder if these protesters will investigate themselves.

[Longtobefree]

The investigation is complete; It was Trump's fault.

[Compelled Speechless]

They will investigate as long as witnesses describe the perp as having white skin.

[Nonstopdrivel]

It does not escape my notice that the majority of "protestors" in Lafayette Square are lily white. How is it not racial appropriation for them to carry the standard for the black community?

[BYODB]

Because, and I'm not joking here, it's the soft racism of low expectations. After all, it's been just about two centuries and black people still haven't defeated institutional racism. Even with a Black President a mere 4 years ago, it's already been forgotten. They need to be saved by their morally perfected white communist brethren. (Nevermind that Obama was 'supposed' to give all the white people money to black people, as they envisioned when he was elected. So, yeah, disappointment on their part.)

Oh, what's that you say? You don't want to topple the government and institute a white-run communist utopia? Well then, guess you're an Uncle Tom and need to be unpersoned huh?

It's like living in opposite world. Kind of like how those same white communist utopianists don't want black people to own guns, but somehow that's not racist because they don't think any prole should have a gun. (But especially not black people, because crime and violence and because cops in the future socialist state need to feel safe when cleansing the ghettos.)

I mean, just look at New York's stop and frisk and tell me that they aren't targeting black people specifically on orders from way above the police. The people giving the orders are shifting the blame to the police to keep their jobs so they can keep the transformation rolling. Once they achieve their dreams, limits on police power will vanish to be replaced by total police power. Obviously, all they need is some other group to demonize in order to excuse the abolishing of police limits, say terrorism or BLM or conservatives or illegal immigrants or...well you get the idea. It's a bottomless well of 'others'.

Notice that New York governors seem to be rock stars of the left, and yet the places they actually run are precisely the kinds of places they try and demonize. If that doesn't say 'fuck you' to minorities, what does?

[TrickyVic (old school)]

I'm waiting for them to go after the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. There was a protest a couple of years ago and Cuomo wasn't having it.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Something tells me he'll bend the knee this time. Possibly literally.

[Compelled Speechless]

He does enjoy a good photo op.

[Vernon Depner]

Where's the Mafia when we need them?

[TrickyVic (old school)]

In Cuomo's office.

[Nardz]

"The people giving the orders are shifting the blame to the police to keep their jobs so they can keep the transformation rolling. Once they achieve their dreams, limits on police power will vanish to be replaced by total police power"

Which is why liberaltarians jumping on the police "reform" bandwagon with the leftists is a foolish joke.
But liberaltarians love nothing more than gazing at a tree and denying the existence of any forest

[BYODB]

Police reform is probably a good thing since it's indirectly a limit on strong executives, but so far the politicians that ordered them to do systemically racist enforcement remain untouchable because they are heroes to the nobility class. And obviously, no, I'm not saying police can't do racist shit all on their own too. Welcome to humanity, where everyone is at least a little racist.

Nevermind the irony of them pissing on the underclass or productive classes while jumping in front of every camera to claim their support for the same. It's clearly a figment of our collective imagination.

Sort of like how unlimited immigration is a giant middle finger to Black America (and rural America, coincidence?), but nobody really cares about reality do they.

[I, Woodchipper]

I don't follow your comment.

Are you saying libertarians are wrong for wanting to change the police state? I'm pretty sure we've been consistent on that for a long time.

[Nardz]

Not at all.
I'm saying that hitching reform efforts to the leftists current movement is both foolish and dangerous.
It will not have the results you desire

[I, Woodchipper]

"hitching reform efforts to the leftists current movement"

What does that mean? Sometimes different people from different groups align. Should libertarians reject the concept of police reform just because now some non-libertarians have joined the party finally? I'm sincerely asking, as i'm confused by the point you're trying to make.

[I, Woodchipper]

It will not have the results you desire

Also let's all be clear . None of these proposed reforms will change a goddamn thing overall.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Because, and I’m not joking here, it’s the soft racism of low expectations. After all, it’s been just about two centuries and black people still haven’t defeated institutional racism. Even with a Black President a mere 4 years ago, it’s already been forgotten. They need to be saved by their morally perfected white communist brethren.

THIS IS WHAT WHITE PROGRESSIVES ACTUALLY BELIEVE

[Tony]

We don't come to your job and knock the Trump cock out of your mouth. But you're concern is noted.

[soldiermedic76]

Yes, you do or have you not been paying attention?

[soldiermedic76]

Hint: cancel culture and it's more militant cousins we've seen lately. What about the proggie activist who bought up the seats at the Tulsa rally to deny Trump supporters access?

[Rufus The Monocled]

'What Happens If They Don’t?'

Whaddya gon' do huh? If I punch you eh? You gonna hit someone with - puts glasses on - who wears glasses? Are you gonna hit a girl. Look, I'm burning this building down. I'm demonstrating! I dare you to stop this peaceful exercise of my rights!

Lord of the Flies.

[BYODB]

Our modern world is as if Lord the Flies and Animal Farm had a baby and called it reality.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Nice one, I'm gonna have to steal that.

[Compelled Speechless]

I think right now it's more Kafka than Orwell in terms of absurdity. Dead on with Lord of the Flies though. Unfortunately, Twitter basically is the modern media. Twitter is a bunch of kids killing each other to hold the conch to control what's left of a society that not a single one of them has any actual idea how to run.

[Longtobefree]

Not sure about the glasses yet, but if you refuse to hit a girl (either male or female) in a situation where you would hit a boy (either male or female), you have committed sexual discrimination.
Thus sayeth the supreme court of thee dis-united states.

[BYODB]

And, since that is a hate crime and hate crimes are way worse than normal crimes you have a situation where actually harming someone is less terrible than the victimless crime.

[Nardz]

In Lafayette Square last night they had a bunch of people armed with homemade shields. These people were sent to the front line.

They were all women, and the men hid behind

[BYODB]

So, Taliban tactics? The idea is that soldiers might have a tough time firing on women. Too bad cops don't have that compunction. Different training, you see.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Well, if the men had insisted that they have the shields and go to the front then they would have been sexists, which is the second worst thing one can be in 2020 America after being a racist.

[Vernon Depner]

If they were just a little older, they would have their children taking point.

[Ken Shultz]

One of the big questions hanging in the background of BLM attempts to defund the police and decrease the number of people's interactions with the police generally is what kind of impact that would have on crime. As libertarians, we would love to believe that if there were fewer police interactions, the crime rate would stay more or less the same.

Apparently, the first study of this was led by Roland G. Fryer Jr., (an African-American economist at Harvard if that's important to somebody), and the statistics his team found were pretty dramatic. They looked at what happens to the crime rate after an investigation of the police department for systemic brutality after a "viral" incident of deadly force--like the George Floyd case. I'll quote the abstract:

"All investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%.

----"Policing the Police: The Impact of 'Pattern-or-Practice' Investigations on Crime"

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324

In other words, as the police become increasingly worried about being accused of brutality against minorities, they become increasingly reluctant to interact with people, and as the police interactions with people decreases in frequency, the general crime rate increases--up to and including the number of homicides.

I remain a small state libertarian (rather than an anarcho-capitalist) because I still believe that there is a legitimate libertarian purpose of government in protecting our rights. We have a military to protect our rights from foreign threats. We have courts to protect our rights from the police. We have police to protect our rights from criminals.

Another way of saying the same thing might be that the only legitimate functions of government are those that increase our liberty. There is no doubt that the military, the courts, and the police all make mistakes in individual cases, but if there were any doubts in your mind about whether the presence of the police actually increases our liberty, look no further than the results of the study I linked in this comment.

I'd take the police out of the drug policy enforcement business and a few other distractions tomorrow if I could, but limiting the police and their interactions with people otherwise does not maximize our liberty. Rather, our liberty is minimized when the police are reluctant to interact with people. It should be noted that the defunding of the police and limiting their interactions is probably unsustainable over the long term for this very reason. Eventually, people will have enough of the crime, and they'll either demand the police back or they'll flee the city.

[John]

This should surprise no one who understands how the world actually works. Criminals don't just commit a crime and then lay low. If they were smart enough to do that, they would likely not be criminals. Criminals are criminals because they have poor impulse control, poor decision making skills, and have a hard time following rules and getting along in society. So, most of them end up being caught not because some flatfoot figures out who the real killer is Columbo style, but because they do something stupid and get pulled over by the cops and the whole thing unravels. They pull the guy over and he is a felon in possession of a handgun, is arrested for that, and the gun turns out to be the murder weapon in another case. That kind of stuff happens all of the time and is the kind of dumb luck that get's the most cases solved.

Take that way and have the police not interacting with people, and they don't get that dumb luck, fewer cases get solved and the criminals commit more crimes before they are caught.

You have to understand that most Libertarians are retarded. They have no idea how the actual world works and assume that everyone in the world is just like them. So, they think retarded things like not having cops interact with the public won't result in crime rates going up.

[Ken Shultz]

Thanks for differentiating between large "L" Libertarians and libertarians--although they may be more likely to think the Libertarian Party is the answer the less ideological they are. I think you may have meant "anarcho-capitalists" when you wrote that, ". . . most Libertarians are retarded".

When I see progressive claim that Somalia is a libertarian paradise, the reason I think that's stupid is because they don't seem to know the difference between libertarianism and anarchist lawlessness. One of the reasons Somalia is such a failure is because the police there fail to protect people's rights from criminals. That isn't an excellent example of small state libertarianism at all. Somalia is more like an example of what the progressives want to do in Minneapolis now.

[John]

I mean doctrinaire Libertarians who honestly believe stupid shit like we don't need a police department or courts and are basically anarchists who won't admit to being so.

And yeah, Somalia's problem is that it has a failed state not that it has a small one. There is a big difference that leftists can't seem to grasp.

[Tony]

Name a small state that has succeeded, anywhere, ever.

[John]

The United States, West Germany, the UK before World War I. Pretty much any state before the 20th Century was tiny by today's standards.

You really don't know anything about history do you?

[Tony]

Not tiny by the standards called for by libertarians. Let me be more specific: name a libertarian state anywhere at any time that has succeeded.

I suppose we'll both acknowledge that the idea of running a modern self-governed civilization the size of the US with a small and hobbled state is a ridiculous notion.

[soldiermedic76]

Name one libertarian state period. Can't prove a negative and all that.

[soldiermedic76]

I would settle for just a return to Constitutional Federalism.

[Ken Shultz]

P.S. Somebody tried to intimidate me the other day by saying that the police were looking for him. I said, "Is that because you did something smart or because you did something stupid? And why did you tell me that? Should I call them and let them know you're here?" I'm in state where recreational marijuana is legal. I know among some people, having done time is a status symbol. I'm not intimidate or impressed by the intelligence of people who have the police looking for them all over town.

Stray cats can figure out how to get by without getting picked up by animal control and they have the intelligence of . . . cats. It's mostly just about not fucking with people. If you can't figure out how to not fuck with people past a certain age, a) you're probably not very smart and b) you probably should be locked up in a cage somewhere. You're right. The reason people past a certain age do things that have the police chasing them all over town isn't because they're so smart. It's because they're really stupid.

[BYODB]

Plus, the police are literally not much smarter which is why accidents seem to be how cops 'solve' most crimes.

Police don't catch the smart crooks, or at least they don't very often without the crook making massive mistakes. How long did Madoff operate again? And how often do the police catch, say, high-end art thieves?

[Rufus The Monocled]

JFC, John. All people have to do is read Dostoevsky to know this.

Boggles my mind.

In East Moline IL, a police chief stopped a program a local pizzeria owner had going with police. He basically came up with the idea of having police hand out pizzas in tough communities to rebuild trust. It was apparently working but some guy named James Ramsey killed it.

Nothing nourishes the soul like PIZZA.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

So, most of them end up being caught not because some flatfoot figures out who the real killer is Columbo style, but because they do something stupid and get pulled over by the cops and the whole thing unravels.

That's basically what happened with Rayshard Brooks. The guy had a rap sheet a mile long, pled guilty to five counts of theft on his last major crime spree, gets put on three years of probation in 2016 with a suspended sentence, violates that probation in 2018, finally gets caught in January of 2020 but has his probation re-instituted.

The day before his daughter's birthday, what does this waste of life do? Gets so drunk off his ass that he ends up pulling into a Wendy's drive-through and passes out. The cops stay with him for 40 minutes, calmly trying to get him oriented and get him in the car so they can get him off the street and book him for a DUI (it apparently wasn't even his car). At some point, the fog starts to lift a bit from this ballonhead's skull, and he realizes that if he gets pulled in for driving drunk, he's going back to jail.

[John]

There is a million of these type of people out there. And they spend their lives in and out of prison until they either die or get so old they somehow age out of being a moron.

Tryvon Martin is just a younger example of Brooks. He had been in and out of trouble as a juvenile and was sent to live with his father. So, one day Martin runs into another idiot playing junior policeman who starts following him. Rather than just go back to his dad's house and let it go or turn around and ask the guy what he is doing, Martin decides he has been "disrespected" and circles back around and attacks the guy. Unfortunately for Martin, the guy was George Zimmerman and Zimmerman had a gun. So as Martin is being Mr. Toughguy and beating Zimmerman's head into the sidewalk, Zimmerman pulls his gun and blows Martin's head off. Tryvon wasn't disrespected anymore because he is now dead. And if Zimmerman hadn't shot him, Martin would have hurt him bad enough to earn Martin a long stay in a Florida prison since he was over 18 and no longer had the juvenile get out of jail free card.

For people like Brooks and Martin, it is death or prison. There isn't much anyone can do to save them.

[Rufus The Monocled]

And gets a public viewing.

Arkham runs Gotham.

[soldiermedic76]

Many lawmen during the frontier west were themselves former criminals. The old set a thief to catch a their and also criminals had reputations and the reputation were often enough to deter other criminals. Your mention of Arkham made me think of Suicide Squad, which led me to this comment.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

I’d take the police out of the drug policy enforcement business and a few other distractions tomorrow if I could

Wouldn't that alone decrease the number of interactions with police? I can't speak for anyone else, but when I think of "ways of decreasing the interactions between people and cops", this is the kind of thing I immediately think of.

In more general terms, abolishing some, if not all, "victimless crimes" such as drug possession (note that if someone who's high causes harm to someone else because they're out of their mind, then they're no longer committing a "victimless crime" - although that should go without saying). That would also free the police up to concentrate more on investigating and punishing actual crimes where there's an identifiable victim whose rights to life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, etc. have been violated by a criminal.

Not only that, but I think such reforms might increase people's trust and respect for cops because now they're actually spending the vast majority of their time doing what they claim to do - going after actual violent criminal perps instead of hassling relatively harmless people over their choice of substances or acting as glorified revenue collectors.

I suspect, although I don't have any hard data to point to, that part of the problem when police "pull back" after one of these viral incidents, is that they not only decrease their overall interactions with people, but they also don't increase their efforts to investigate violent crimes either. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds, but that's only a guess on my part.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Cops are the enforcement arm of the legislative branch. They harass harmless people because the busy bodies in the legislature created a law that needs enforcement.

[Roberta]

So when it comes to policing, all there is is a volume control, no tuning?

[Ken Shultz]

"I’d take the police out of the drug policy enforcement business and a few other distractions tomorrow if I could, but limiting the police and their interactions with people otherwise does not maximize our liberty."

There are all sorts of things the police shouldn't be involved in at all, but there are other areas where the police need to be involved. If the government weren't wasting its time with distractions, it could focus more on legitimate crime, being a deterrent, patrolling, etc. The things that they do that protect our rights are the things they should be focused on, and limiting their interactions with suspects across the board works against that.

[Echo Chamber]

AOC primary day today vs. a former CNBC anchor.
She barely won a no-turnout primary last time.
Fingers crossed there will be something to celebrate tomorrow

[Rufus The Monocled]

Seriously. My dream is to walk into a NY bar one day and see AOC behind the counter. And then ask with a grin, 'Mojito please'.

[A Thinking Mind]

You're delusional if you think she's ever going to do an honest day's work again in her life.

[I, Woodchipper]

again? that seems to presume that she ever has in the past.

"Being a hot bartender" just doesnt' count either. It's the easiest job in the world with the highest pay available for doing almost nothing.

[Finrod]

Make
Alexandria
Bartend
Again

[Sevo]

Perhaps there's an opening for bartender in Brooklyn.

[BYODB]

It's possible she's received enough air time at this point that people will vote for her out of blind obeisance, but it's also possible if her opposition airs ads of just her speaking she might lose in a landslide.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

She's got too much stroke with the media establishment now for her to get pushed out for anyone. Anyone thinking she's getting primaried out of her seat is being wildly optimistic.

[BYODB]

Don't underestimate Nancy Pelosi and those in the Democrat party that hate these upstart bitches almost as much as they hate Republicans.

They've been pulled further than to the left than even they're comfortable with, and I don't think they appreciate the far left 'true believers' in their midst one iota.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Nah, Pelosi's not going to ratfuck her at this point. Remember that little conference they had a few months ago, right around the time she and the rest of the Squad speds were shooting their mouths off and conducting purity spirals on other party members? Notice how AOC is really the only one getting media attention now, and the other members have kind of faded to the background?

They did a nice little photo op for that meeting, but I guarantee Pelosi called her in to dress her down, reinforce the importance of party unity, and let her know that if she and her buddies continued going after Democrats and media-whoring, they'd find themselves isolated and hung out to dry.

[BYODB]

You could be right since the alternative for AOC is probably talk show circuit with a book deal then a quick fade into the memory hole. That, plus her Congressional income, is probably reason enough to shut up and fall in line for most rational humans.

I'm not convinced she's rational enough to see the writing on the wall, though. We shall see, I certainly don't have high hopes for any area that would elect her in the first place.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Note that it wasn't too long after that meeting that she fired her chief of staff, who was egging on a lot of her worst behavior and was under investigation for fraud. I wouldn't be surprised if Nancy pulled up a bunch of oppo research in that meeting, showed it to her, and said, "Look, you little shit--you have a bright future, but you're just a freshman congresswoman and there are a lot of people in this party who don't care for your lip, nor for your self-defeating crusade to "clease" it of unbelievers.

If you and your buddies stop going after Democrats and get with the program, we won't use this to crucify you. The caveat is that your chief of staff has got to go; he's a liability and we don't need him acting as a loose end. Keep fucking around and we'll make sure you, Omar, and Tlaib can't get elected as dogcatcher."

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Durkan declined to say what city authorities planned to do if people refused their polite requests.

Maybe offer them a juice box and a blanky? And if that doesn't work, send them to timeout?

I figure if they want to act like children, treat them like children.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Blood on her hands?

[Longtobefree]

Abort them?

[Don't look at me!]

SARS blankets.

[Compelled Speechless]

Clearly these people will drink any Kool-aid that is offered to them, so..........

[Vernon Depner]

BZ

[Fats of Fury]

Jenny is the common name for a female ass. The Seattle mayor is aptly named.

[Sevo]

Think Kim will pitch the weight-loss advantages of starvation?

"KIM WARNING North Korea vows ‘retribution’ as it prepares to drop 12million propaganda leaflets on South amid escalating tensions"
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11920636/north-korea-retribution-south-propaganda-leaflets/

[Longtobefree]

"Words are violence"
So if he drops propaganda leaflets, we drop bombs, right?

[BYODB]

Well, one might rationally think South Korea wouldn't be super happy about North Korean aircraft violating their airspace. They're touchy like that.

[I, Woodchipper]

"silence is violence"
so if he DOESN'T drop leaflets, that's also an attack ?

[Griffin3]

But ... but ... what could the propaganda leaflets possibly be saying? Can you imagine?

"Come to the people's paradise of North Korea! Be so much happier without having to worry about having possessions! Your life will be so much sweeter for being that much shorter!"

[Sevo]

Wine-snob snowflake triggered!

"Court of Master Sommeliers, facing racism charges, to eliminate ‘master’ address"
[...]
"...First, Atlanta wine professional Tahiirah Habibi addressed her experience taking the court’s introductory exam in New York in 2011. In a June 16 video post on Instagram, Habibi recalled how the exam proctors instructed her and other candidates to address them as “master,” an honorific that recalled for her the power dynamics of slavery..."
https://www.sfchronicle.com/wine/article/Court-of-Master-Sommeliers-facing-racism-15353437.php?cmpid=gsa-sfgate-result

Oh.
Em.
Gee.

[Rufus The Monocled]

BLACK WINE MATTERS.

[lap83]

You misspelled "whine"

[Rufus The Monocled]

It was done on purpose! It was a double-entendray!

[Sevo]

The dead horse which needs more whacking:

"California’s bullet-train project faces unprecedented woes"
[...]
"SACRAMENTO — Even before the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t clear how California would pay for its dream of running 220-mph bullet trains from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Now, the project is as close to the precipice as it’s ever been. The California High-Speed Rail Authority faces two new threats: Its largest source of funding is evaporating and state legislators have attempted to derail the agency’s plans en masse..."
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-bullet-train-project-faces-15356051.php?cmpid=gsa-sfgate-result

Please, take moonbeam's choo-choo out behind the barn and kill it with a pitchfork.

[BYODB]

And please don't forget, Moonbeam was the rational voice of California politics. Yes, the bar is set that low.

[Sevo]

Moonbeam was first elected governor in the late '70s, during a long drought.
He was elected governor again early this century during another drought.
Coincidence?
Seriously, it should have been obvious the first go-round that CA needed to increase its water-storage capacity. He did nothing.
By the time he was again governor, the population had doubled and neither he nor any of the state's officials had done one damn thing to increase the water storage.
CA does not have droughts; CA has government-designed water shortages.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

Moonbeam was first elected governor in the late ’70s, during a long drought.
He was elected governor again early this century during another drought.
Coincidence?

I'm pretty sure chronic dehydration has been linked to memory loss and poor cognitive function, so that might explain why the voters were dumb enough to elect him twice.

[Don't look at me!]

So what if we don’t have the money? We can still do this!

[Vernon Depner]

You just pay for it!

[Sevo]

Mr or Ms American, do you favor fair treatment by police?

"AP-NORC poll: Nearly all in US back criminal justice reform"
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-norc-poll-us-back-criminal-justice-reform-71400766

Gee, now you want to sort of fill in the details?

[I, Woodchipper]

Yeah maybe it'll work THIS TIME. Suckers.

[Jacqueline Onassis]

Hey, I know, let's stop holding black people accountable for the colossal amount of violent crime they commit, and then tell citizens they can't arm themselves or defend themselves. Almost like we did in the 1970s when people started resorting to vigilante violence and started electing politicians that began dismantling the two tiered justice system in which kiddie fuckers and gang banging black thugs went completely unpunished. Should work out just about as well as it did the first time.

[Brandybuck]

Seattle: Making San Fransisco seem radically conservative.

[The White Knight]

But finally giving Portland some real competition.

[Brandybuck]

I once planned to escape California by moving to Portland which still has a lot of tech jobs. I'm so glad I didn't. The rest of the state is nice, but Portland itself is fucking nuts, and Eugene is not far behind.

Which is weird because Portland used to the White Supremacist capital of the West not all that long ago. The city is whiter than mayonnaise. You see any Black people in Portlandia? Of course you don't.

[BYODB]

I mean, you might note that there isn't a whole lot of daylight between 'white supremacist' and 'rabid socialist'. There was once a party that included both at the same time, and it nearly wiped out Europe.

Once you've decided to implement socialism or communism, the question of which race is most fit to rule seems to become pretty important to the 'science based progressive' I.E. eugenicist.

If you're a socialist or communist that believes in total equality of outcomes, I'll show you someone that'll be first against the wall when they get their way.

[The White Knight]

Isn’t it still true that it is simultaneously a progressive stronghold and has a strong white supremacist element, too? The place is nuts.

[soldiermedic76]

Progressives were the driving force behind eugenics and many of their early "heroes" like Wilson, Sanger and FDR were rampant racist, even by comparison to their peers at the time.

[The White Knight]

Yes, that is true.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

I'm waiting for the anti-statue crowd to go after FDR.

[The White Knight]

See mention of Eric Hoffer elsewhere in these comments.

[Jacqueline Onassis]

Portland used to the White Supremacist capital of the West not all that long ago.

From which episode of Dateline did you obtain that information dumbfuck?

[Ra's al Gore]

“Court of Master Sommeliers, facing racism charges, to eliminate ‘master’ address”

They're going after the "Masters" golf tournament also.

Lets #CancelUniversities for giving out Masters degrees.

[Compelled Speechless]

That's as good a reason as any I guess. All of the legitimate reasons fall on deaf ears so we might as well give them a reason in their new clown language so they can understand it.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

If you watch the streamed video of the shooting, it's interesting not only how awful the self appointed armed "security" gets in regards behavior, but the fact that they get there at light speed.

Fuck these people. Fuck 'em and everyone that looks like 'em.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Oh, quit using daytime pictures of svelt, hip, fit protesters in revolutionary cos-play with a backdrop of power-to-the-people-baby posters and graffiti. Start using the more scary night time pictures of armed 'self-appointed' security snatching phones from live-streamers because the reality on the ground fucks the narrative in the ass.

[The White Knight]

Hey, all the conservatives here should start their own news site.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Here's one.

[The White Knight]

Oh, man. Warn when you link to a video.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

You're lucky it wasn't gay porn.

[Jacqueline Onassis]

Since this is a shreek sock and he's been busted and banned for posting kiddie porn, somehow I doubt he'd be all that offended.

[The White Knight]

Thought I was supposed to be a Billy Binion sock or something.

[Compelled Speechless]

I doubt he agrees with that.

[The White Knight]

Is calling someone gay supposed to be an insult? This isn't a conservative website.

[Dillinger]

somebody call Pearl Jam they can help.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Isn't Vedder a blathering left-wing prog?

[Dillinger]

probably. wasn't really expecting results.

[Freddy the Jerk]

No. Actually he's a whiny left-wing bitch.

[Agammamon]

Andrew Johnson that sits in Lafayette Square

*sigh*

[AlmightyJB]

"What happens if they don't"

First thing you do us shut off the cell phone towers and internet. Then you set up a parimeter and don't let anyone in, only out. No water, no food go in. Set up water and food trucks outside the parimeter within sight of borders.

[Formerly Cynical Asshole]

First thing you do us shut off the cell phone towers and internet.

Something something... "cruel and unusual punishment" ... mumble mumble...

Nevermind that and internet/ social media detox is what most of these clown shoes need.

[The White Knight]

That’s brilliant.

[Truthteller1]

They'll just hug it out. It's all peaceful.

[The White Knight]

Maybe not, but in all seriousness it’s worth trying first before strong-arming.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

How many days of just hugging out an not leaving is considered trying before you agree strong-arming should be applied?

[The White Knight]

Five.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Is today day one? Or do they need something like an official communication from the Mayor's office.

I'm just curious. I don't think they are going to leave so easily. Hopefully they will.

[The White Knight]

Why don't you decide. You are the one who wants a precise time schedule.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Cop out.

You said five days. That's the time schedule you applied. I'm just asking a followup question of when that would start.

[Curly4]

What will Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan do if the people in the Zone does not voluntary leave. Well unless she has developed a pair since the Zone was taken over she will repeat the same thing all over again

[Hattori Hanzo]

Who cares? Let the "progressive" cities crumble. Natural Selection is a wonderful thing.

[The White Knight]

I’d respect Trump more for saying that than for threatening to send in the troops out of phony concern.

[ThanksForTheFish]

"What Happens If They Don't?"

Wildfire?

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Maybe the BATF handles it.

[Kimberly23]

These rules affect about 1 in 3 American adults who have a criminal record and can increase recidivism, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded in a report last year grand rapids electricians

[Jacqueline Onassis]

Just in case anyone was wondering just what kind of a fucked up vindictive psychotic worthless cunt Elizabeth Nolan Brown is, she has been on a Twitter bender doing victory laps over the NYT doxxing Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex, getting his blog driven off the internet, and destroying his career as a psychiatrist because he wrote a piece 3 years ago about her doxxing a guy and getting him fired from his job for quipping that she should make him a sandwich was wrong.

[New signup]

I have requested explanations of this, and will keep doing so until satisfactory explanations are received.

Also, Reason's funding must be stopped by whatever effective means we have available to us, unless and until they cease funding leftist attack dogs like ENB. If nasty pieces of shit like her are going to lie about their alignment so they can claim to be the public face of libertarianism, they can do it on their own dime in their spare time.

[Jacqueline Onassis]

The CHAZ/CHOP and BHAZ have been extremely useful as a case study in libertarian self-government. I really honestly can't wait to see all of you pathetically cowering behind the mangled, bleeding, lifeless bodies of your Black Bloc ''''''''''security'''''''''' guards, pissing your pants and begging some deplorable redneck Bible thumper to spare your pathetic fucking excuse for a life, seeing that delicious glint of terrified panic flash across your face for the last time as your brains disappear in a mist of red fluid out of the back of your skull illuminated elegantly by the muzzle flash of a scary black AR-15 with a shoulder thing that goes up.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""The CHAZ/CHOP and BHAZ have been extremely useful as a case study in libertarian self-government.""

Uh, no. A study in libertarian self-government would require libertarians.

[Harvard]

Is there any chance at all that the Democrat National Convention could be held in Chicago? Shades of '68.

[Harvard]

Summer of Love.

[Harvard]

If you're going to San Francisco. Wear a Flower in your hair.