How Bitcoin is Reinventing The Monetary System: Q&A with Laissez Faire Books' Jeffrey Tucker

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How Bitcoin is Reinventing The Monetary System: Q&A with Laissez Faire Books' Jeffrey Tucker

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"We're talking about reinventing the world's monetary system…from the ground up," says Jeffrey Tucker, executive editor of Laissez Faire Books, and an enthusiastic proponent of the open source peer-to-peer currency system Bitcoin. 

After participating in a panel discussion on Bitcoin at Freedom Fest, Tucker sat down with Reason Magazine's Matt Welch to explain why he believes Bitcoin is an example of a new enterprise that can help create "a new world of liberty, despite the existence of the leviathan state."

Held each July in Las Vegas, Freedom Fest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians. ReasonTV spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks.

About 5.30 minutes. 

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher. Camera by Paul Detrick and Tracy Oppenheimer.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Comments

[MappRapp]

Frap Daddy says that will never happen!

http://www.World-Privacy.com

[Suthenboy]

You continually amuse. Whoever thought a bot could be charming?

[Dweebston]

I'm worried about this Frap Daddy. He sounds like the variety of lameass unidimensional psychotic villains Stephen King writes.

Speaking of, what the hell is wrong with this world when Carrie is reprised for a second go-around while Dark Tower sits on the back burner?

[Gene]

Maybe it's due to the shitty ending of the latter.

[hotsy totsy]

Te Dark Tower has an ending? Thank God.

[Fatty Bolger]

Does it? I quit after the second one.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

It ends with Bob Hartley waking up from the strangest dream.

[C. Anacreon]

I thought you were in your twenties. How in the world could you come up with that reference? The first show was on when I was a kid, and the "waking up" happened in 1990, when you couldn't have been older than six.

By the way, Newhart's wife in the second show, the late Mary Frann, was the college girlfriend of one of my current medical colleagues. Not that big a deal, but he brings it up all the time to people.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

I'm well over 30

[C. Anacreon]

Ok, sorry. I keep losing track of who the whippersnappers are around here.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

We need a Reasonoid compendium to keep all the personalities straight.

For my first year or so, I was forever forgetting who wrote the Pelosi slash fiction and who was the angry 50-something atheist who denied the existence of the historical Jesus.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

We're all sockpuppets actually.

[DesigNate]

Uh oh, you mentioned a historical Jesus. Sevo will be along shortly to beat you.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

I should specify that he's a NorCal atheist who denies the existence of the historical Yeshua.

Sevosignal . . . on.

[SIV]

Sevo is 70-something IIRC.

[SweatingGin]

The occasional name changes are what really confuse me.

[William of Purple]

registration solved nothing!

[Dweebston]

Shitty, yes. Worthy of adaptation, perhaps. Worthier than fucking Dreamcatcher or a second run of Carrie, definitely.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Am I the only one who enjoyed "The Stand" miniseries?

[Dweebston]

It wasn't bad, but it suffered from the terribly insufficient end that King wrote into the book: it goes nowhere. Just as soon as the stories gets rolling, King flattens the landscape. Disappointing. No heroic clash of good and evil, nothing to make sense of the drawing together between Boulder and Vegas. Were the Rockies a continental divide of moral proportions? Flagg's people had a purpose, but the good people of Colorado had none beyond getting basic facilities running again. What was the point? And then he wipes out the Away Team ignominiously, and that's the end of that. Oh, okay, thanks, King. Thank you for wasting like 700 pages of my time. That's terrific.

[np]

"DIY libertarianism"

I like that. More than just being academic or political. Taking action... and some risks.

[Suthenboy]

Nothing scares statists like people actually exercising their liberty. As this kind of DIY libertarianism appears more and more they will become increasingly desperate and nasty.

As an example, see how the establishment republicans have reacted to the rise of the tea party and especially to the rise of libertarian thought within the party.

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah, they're not exactly going to go quietly into the night.

[MJGreen]

Cocaine's a hell of a drug...

[AlmightyJB]

Quality where I'm at has gone to shit in the last year or two.

[Gene]

That's a great reason right there to stay away from the shit, quality control and cut. With homebrews and homegrows you always know what you're going to get.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The day I get lectured to by a guy in a bowtie and double-breasted suit and a guy who forgot his necktie entirely on the sidestepping of existing structures...

[np]

Jeffrey Tucker, upbeat as usual, relating to Adam Kokesh his story about being lectured on drugs at school:
http://youtu.be/VNkOI8dDmB0?t=9m40s

[AlmightyJB]

That dudes a hoot.

[Killazontherun]

Man do I have a metric shit ton of junior high stories. I had a friend, I even still run into him, and his family socialized with mine. Moms the same peer age, older brothers the same age. We had a health class in seventh grade, and the teacher knew nothing about this background.

His mother gets an article published and recirculated in the Reader's Digest about her beating cancer. Teacher wanted him to read the story to fill a class hour. He's pissed off, doesn't want to do it but has to. So, he's up there reading the article, and I grin and chuckle a bit the entire time. Teacher notices this, and she grows irate. I don't stop. I just keep pushing it.

She asks my friend to hold on for a minute. She stands up, turns to me, fucking pissed.

Yells, 'What's so damn funny?'

'Nothing's funny,' I reply.

'Then what are you smiling about?'

'It's an uplifting story.'

My friend interjects, 'he's kinda of my mom's favorite.'

Teacher was just stunned. Apologizes and she sits back down to lets him continue. Stupid bitch. Played her like a fiddle.

[Killazontherun]

down to lets him continue

[The Late P Brooks]

The Secret Service will be along shortly to explain the flaws in your system.

[Mike M.]

Atlanta has its coolest August 15 in over a hundred years, followed by its coolest high August temperature since 1986.

So, how's that global warming working out for everyone on the east coast this summer?

[Almanian!]

Midwest - other than one week of high 90's and way humid...nothing. Very cool again this weekend.

Me like

[VG Zaytsev]

It's proof of Climate Change?, you denier.

[Francisco d Anconia]

It got into the 90s for the third time all summer yesterday. Coolest summer I've seen in MT.

NOT complaining.

[Dweebston]

I'm an irregular Skeptic's Guide listener. Novella and the rogues interviewed Michael "hockey stick" Mann, who made an undisguised appeal to consensus bolstered by appeals to (his own) authority, then took pot shots at the crazy deniers and their zany denialism.

[np]

Bitcoin Exchange Berlin (BXB)

Bitcoin is drastically expanding in Germany and in particular the capital city of Berlin. Bitcoin Exchange Berlin will host their third meeting a week from tomorrow on Saturday, August 24 at the Platoon Kunsthalle Berlin to launch a marketplace to buy and sell a variety of products for BTC and additionally buy and sell BTC.
[. . .]
Specifically on August 24, BXB will provide a marketplace setting for attendees to buy many kinds of products for Bitcoin. Vendors are welcome to attend and on the spot, BXB staff and Bitcoiners will guide them through setting up wallets and printing out QR codes for their products

[np]

Sweet success for Bees Brothers, world's youngest bitcoin entrepreneurs

Most teenage boys are far too busy at school and interested in playing sports and computer games to set up a business on the side. But nestled between two mountain ranges in northern Utah, USA, there are three brothers who are possibly the youngest bitcoin entrepreneurs out there.

[. . .]

The answer is a flourishing business and three boys learning about finance and investing before they have even finished high school. Business is booming. From selling pots of their honey locally, their company, Bees Brothers now produces several different flavours of honey caramels, honey roasted almonds, beeswax lip balms and candles both at the markets and via their website.

It is through their online sales, that they have had the most success with bitcoin transactions, taking advantage of the absence of international currency exchange costs. By January 2012, they were selling their first products for bitcoin and now ship orders all over the world: from California and New York in the US to many European countries and as far afield as Russia and Australia. They say they have many repeat customers and a lot of positive feedback from the bitcoin community.

[VG Zaytsev]

How long till the FDA and Secret Service crush these criminals.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

taking advantage of the absence of international currency exchange costs

All the promise and danger of bitcoin wrapped up into one neat little verb phrase. Every state and money changer in the world is having a heart attack at how . . . how . . . economically efficient this insidious currency is.

[Dweebston]

No, they're lubing up the various implements of legal rape civil compulsion as an object lesson in never being cleverer than your betters. Nobody at the federal level is quaking in their boots: this is the next career-making casus belli.

[Dweebston]

Ugh.

of legal rape civil compulsion

And that, kids, is a lesson in using preview.

[Cytotoxic]

They'll be as successful in stopping Bitcoin as they were in stopping drugs. There's nothing they can do. At least nothing effective.

[Dweebston]

They can make these kids' lives miserable. The federal mandate in a nutshell: tamping down on innovation, hobbling the economy, and making people miserable, one lawsuit at a time.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

That'll just be another temporary prohibition and innocent lives ruined before the inevitable occurs. "Temporary" may mean a decade or four, but it's inevitable that these currencies will take root somewhere, and there's going to be a lot of pushback from day one when the state takes on bitcoin in earnest.

[SIV]

Check out the speakers at "Freedom Fest". There is an A-list(Welch, Gillespie, Joseph Farah, Jim Rogers,various Catotarians...) and a B-list (KM-W, some hair-transplant dude, a woman who recently learned what "libertarian" means and has a youtube channel, a Heinlein Fan Club guy...).
They do seem a bit light on anti-vaccine activists and vitamin hucksters this year.

[Almanian!]

So - when does the Bitcoin bubble burst?

[Gorilla tactics]

I dunno if its a bubble really, thats not to say there wont be any volatility, but bitcoins are so predictable (21 000 000 total-EVER) that I am willing to bet it will be pretty reliable into the future.

[Ken Shultz]

I'm getting pretty pessimistic after the NSA stuff came out, and I guess I don't understand why all that won't apply to bitcoin, too.

Digitizing things gives people more freedom for a while--just like the internet did for communications. ...but it also makes it easier for the government to track us and ultimately take control of things, too.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Net-.....et+Freedom

Somebody please explain to me why the NSA can't do to bitcoin what it did to the telcos.

[SweatingGin]

The key thing with bitcoin is that it's a distributed ledger. So, sure, you can see that address a sent to b, but tieing a or b to a person is much harder.

It's pseudonymous, if not fully anonymous.

Several bitcoin clients have provisions for
Connecting to the network via TOR, as well.

If you're careful, they can't tie transactions to you without plausible deniability. They probably can't get around that, or block it, without going beyond china-level filtering.

[Cytotoxic]

but it also makes it easier for the government to track us and ultimately take control of things, too.

It really doesn't. We have more and more tools everyday to get around this.

[Ken Shultz]

How many of them don't involve sending traffic across the switches the government monitors constantly?

[SweatingGin]

Encrypted traffic. And we make it peer-to-peer so we don't have to trust a provider's SSL certs.

[Ken Shultz]

"As part of its cable-tapping program, the NSA has secretly installed what amount to computerized filters on the telecommunications infrastructure throughout the country. According to the leaked inspector general's report, the agency has secret cooperative agreements with the top three telephone companies in the country....

The filters are placed at key junction points known as switches. For example, much of the communications?telephone and Internet?to and from the northwestern United States pass through a nearly windowless nine-story building at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco. This is AT&T's regional switching center. In 2003, the NSA built a secret room in the facility and filled it with computers and software from a company called Narus. Established in Israel by Israelis, and now owned by Boeing, Narus specializes in spyware, equipment that examines both the metadata?the names and addresses of people communicating on the Internet?and the content of digital traffic such as e-mail as it zooms past at the speed of light."

http://www.nybooks.com/article.....you-think/

Even the peer to peer stuff goes across the same switches, right?

You're telling me the Feds can't read this stuff because it's encrypted?

If using peer to peer and encryption could stymie the NSA, then Al Qaeda would just use that, and there wouldn't be any reason for the NSA to even bother with the rest of it.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

If using peer to peer and encryption could stymie the NSA, then Al Qaeda would just use that, and there wouldn't be any reason for the NSA to even bother with the rest of it.

I don't doubt that smart terrorists are using encryption (and if the NSA had somehow developed the means to crack the public key stuff that is in constant common use, it would've been the first thing out of Snowden's mouth--there are tens of billions of reasons why businesses and universities are sponsoring specialists to test those algorithms for weaknesses). And I'm sure bad guys are using encryption very effectively. But it's not like they couldn't just use a book cipher or something similar over unencrypted gmail and stymie the NSA.

The entire idea that these programs are going to catch terrorists with half a brain is batshit crazy, stupid beyond words, and we haven't heard that nearly often enough from media or security types. The state can't catch an idiot who sets his balls on fire even when his own father warns us about him, and now the NSA superspies are going to catch terrorists by scanning every email in the world for keywords?

cont.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

Whatever--it's clear enough to anyone who's paying attention that terrorism is irrelevant to the NSA's purpose in developing PRISM et al. There's zero legitimate security interest in saving the content of the Internet, zero reason to track and save personal browsing histories, zero reason to keep a file with millions of nudie photos teenaged girls are texting to their boyfriends. Unless, of course, you want to develop a database with a huge amount of incriminating, career-ending information you could use to blackmail or destroy the 90% of the American public who have an online or cell phone history.

Stuff like this is just what states do when you turn your back on them; that anyone would believe this has anything to do with terrorism is a testament to human gullibility.

[Ken Shultz]

When I look at the picture of the NSA building at Ft. Meade, at the top of that story I linked, I want at least half of those people in that gigantic parking lot to be unemployed tomorrow.

...and I say that as someone who grew up in Laurel, Md.

"Terrorism is irrelevant to the NSA's purpose in developing PRISM et al. There's zero legitimate security interest in saving the content of the Internet, zero reason to track and save personal browsing histories, zero reason to keep a file"

Looks like a huge make-work program at the very least. I guess that's what Obama's talking about when he says he wants to "create" more middle class jobs?

[SweatingGin]

Even the peer to peer stuff goes across the same switches, right?

You're telling me the Feds can't read this stuff because it's encrypted?

Like the artist formerly known as anonbot says, if the NSA could crack public key, Snowden would say so immediately. And the NSA would move away from using it (because if they can crack it, someone else can, too.)

Using gmail, you're vulnerable to the NSA showing up and forcing google to give them a tap after it gets decrypted, or to give them the SSL cert private keys, or any number of other possibilities. You're trusting google not to, but that's not something they can control/avoid.

With peer-to-peer (assuming some good design), there isn't a central org like google to visit. And since you have to assume people will mess with clients just for fun or profit, you don't have to entirely trust clients.

An example of a p2p network where you don't have to trust the nodes is TOR network. The browsing goes through three nodes between source and destination. You only need one node to be legit to be safe. Or, if nodes are compromised, just having them compromised by different parties is fine, too.

[Ken Shultz]

I really appreciate that explanation.

Thank you.

[Cdr Lytton]

OT: was watching CNN at the gym this morning and saw on the crawler something about a Maryland university is installing bullet proof whiteboards in case of a school shooting. WTF? Is the class supposed to unmount it from the wall and use it as some sort of mobile shield like something from a Monty Python sketch?

[Francisco d Anconia]

Wouldn't it be simpler to let the students shoot back?

[Ken Shultz]

Racist.

[Heroic Mulatto]

UMES Campus Police Chief Ernest Leatherbury noted the board, which weighs less than 4 pounds, is user-friendly. "This is so accessible," he said, "and it's not cumbersome."

They're not the wall-mounted ones.

Still it's a better solution than my institution's "emergency management plan," which is to cower in your classroom until the TOP MEN order you to do otherwise.

I have already formulated an alternative emergency management plan.

[Warrren]

Whee, they've reinvented the mantlet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantlet

[Warrren]

Whee, they've reinvented the mantlet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantlet

[General Butt Naked]

I'm wondering if it'll stop a bullet from an AR or higher.

[John C. Randolph]

Ah, yes. Cower behind a whiteboard, because shooters on a rampage are completely flummoxed by the need to take a couple of steps and get their victims in sight again.

-jcr

[Fatty Bolger]

At least it gives you something to use as a shield when you charge the fucker. Not everybody is passive in the face of danger:

Sandy Hook educators died trying to save the children

Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung lost her life lunging at the gunman in an attempt to overpower him, Newtown officials said.

Friday morning, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, threw herself into the danger.

Janet Robinson, the superintendent of Newtown Public Schools, said Sherlach and the school's principal ran toward the gunman.

Who knows, maybe a bullet proof shield would have helped. Maybe not, but I'd rather have one than not.

[Francisco d Anconia]

Who knows, maybe a bullet proof shield would have helped.

Just think what they could have done with a gun.

[kinnath]

shield and gun

[Fatty Bolger]

Well, yeah. But that's just crazy talk.

[Marshall Gill]

Who knows, maybe a bullet proof shield would have helped

And since someone else is paying for it, double good!

[Xenocles]

A similar plan for bulletproof blackboards was denounced as racist and shelved.

[AlmightyJB]

Ba doom boom

[Xenocles]

I appreciate that.

[Fatty Bolger]

Who Benefits from the Public Schools?

What if we look at public schools as profit-making ventures?

Imagine, if you will, that we were running a for-profit company in the same environment as a public school system: providing an essential service, with a near-total monopoly, in that even potential customers who choose not to buy are still charged full price. It would be massively profitable, until they caught us; the stockholders would make a real killing. Even more so if the quality of the product could be reduced with little impact on revenues.

A for-profit company would also be expected to distribute any profits that aren't retained to the stockholders. As we know, the New York City schools aren't awash in excess cash, so like a for-profit company, they must be distributing the profits somehow. If we find out who is getting the profits, we know who the effective stockholders are.

[Xenocles]

I would suggest that identifying the owners of the Mercedes and the Beemers in the faculty lot would go a long way toward identifying these effective shareholders.

[Episiarch]

The answer to your question is: the teachers' union. Quite simple, really, and explains a lot.

[Dweebston]

The article tags the administrative staff, but yeah, I'd be curious to see just how well-remunerated the union apparatus is.

[The Late P Brooks]

If we find out who is getting the profits, we know who the effective stockholders are.

Those schools are operated solely for the benefit and advancement of the precious little childrinz. Anybody who sez different is a racist.

[Fatty Bolger]

For sure. Almost 2/3rd of the students graduate, what more could you ask for? Sure, 80% of those graduates require high school level classes in college, but... but...

Look, what do you want? KKKorporations running the schools and teaching capitalist propaganda to your special snowflakes? I didn't think so!

[Acosmist]

Given genetic differences in intelligence, that's not the schools' fault.

[The Late P Brooks]

Somebody please explain to me why the NSA can't do to bitcoin what it did to the telcos.

I'm not sure it will take anything beyond a directive from the Treasury declaring Bitcoin transaction to be de facto money laundering.

[Ken Shultz]

Yeah, it seems like the decentralized approach was meant to make it hard for the government to serve a warrant to any particular entity, but since the government, apparently, doesn't feel the need to go through the same old warrant process anymore, I'm not sure that strategy is as effective as it used to be.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

The problem with doing so is that it will drive bitcoin transactions to nations that are less hostile to the currency and its evident benefits for online transactions. The US and other states can and will outlaw it and reduce it to a specialized agorist currency within their borders, but that just means that they're limiting domestic merchants and sending prospective customers overseas.

They could try to kill it with a 51% attack (as unlikely as that seems now), but there's nothing about bitcoin that couldn't be replicated and refined again and again in new digital currencies, and they can't kill all of them. It will be as messy as any revolution, but it's inevitable that a currency a lot like bitcoin will become a staple of the world economy sooner or later.

The inertia of the leviathan being what it is, I doubt that the bureaucrats understand just how dangerous digital currencies are going to be to the state not just in a century, but over the next ten or twenty years.

[Ken Shultz]

To me it seems like...online communication.

There's no need to outlaw facebook and twitter--especially when the government is savvy enough to use those tools to track down the ringleaders and whomever they associate with.

The worst case scenario isn't the government outlaws bitcoin; it's that the government embraces it and uses it against us.

[SweatingGin]

I'm not sure how much they could, though. It takes a click to create a new address, that has never been used before, and never has to be used again.

There are proposed extensions for anonymity (not sure of they will go in soon, but they certainly would after a crackdown). There are mixers (send coins to an address, get different coins from a different address, to a different address).

It wouldn't be impossible to have a client add in more anonymizing right in the client (to not let you use an address more than once, for instance.)

It's hard to see what they could do to use it against us with that kind of anonymizing capability.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

It's a valid concern, as all bitcoin transactions and accounts are necessarily public for the system to work, but bitcoin is more like a prepaid credit or phone card. No one knows anything about you until or unless you disclose it to them during the payment process.

Whereas facebook, paypal, or credit cards are a treasure trove of personal information for someone intent on spying on us, bitcoin transactions are just marks in a (public) digital ledger with zero personal content included. Depending on what's being traded, the parties don't even have to know one anothers' names. The biggest danger would be the state demanding merchants' logs and customer IPs, but that's not unique to bitcoin.

[Fatty Bolger]

Probably, but I think that option remains valid only until the major players start dealing in the currency. If somebody like Amazon or Ebay jumps on board, the floodgates will open. Then they will have to be content with going after the dodgier operators (which is how it should be anyway).

[NSA Luther]

This has been the most enlightening comments section so far today.

[Xenocles]

Anyone know anything about this inspection regime? I hesitate to trust the source since I've never been there and the comments sound a little kooky to me (then again, I can see how we might appear so to an outsider, so perhaps that's not a good indicator of anything).

[Fatty Bolger]

Looks like it's a grant program to states to give them money to expand their home visitation programs. With all the usual federal strings attached, which will require the state to consider gun owners and military families to be "high risk" if they want their sweet federal lucre.

[Xenocles]

But visitation to what end? I guess I can live (SLD applies) with people knocking on the door, as long as they go away when I tell them to.

[Fatty Bolger]

But visitation to what end?

Why, to "help," of course. You know, if you're fat, they'll tell you to be less fat. Or if you keep guns or "too much" alcohol in the house, they'll tell you to stop doing that. And if you refuse to let them in, well, a friendly visit from CPS wouldn't be out of order.

[AlmightyJB]

Stop resisting

[SIV]

I found this at your source. A new spin on the "Why I feel guilty for being White" essay.
The facilitator of the sensitivity training is held on $500k bail.

[VG Zaytsev]

How come the right to privacy that makes abortion restrictions illegal does not apply to this shit?

[The Late P Brooks]

then again, I can see how we might appear so to an outsider

Just what are you attempting to imply?

You'll find nothing but thoughtful, dispassionate, well-reasoned arguments on this blog, buddy.

[Xenocles]

You can only see "Kenyan" and "Muslim" used to describe the president so many times in a short period before you get suspicious of the whole lot. I see it here too but I know that it's mostly joking so I can discount it. I have no idea about this other group, that's all.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Weird, the people who tend to use 'Kenyan Muslim' in their writing are the progressives at Salon, ThinkProgress, and Huffington Post who are imitating what they honestly think Obama detractors sounds like.

[Xenocles]

They are correctly portraying a small but vocal subset of those detractors. We all know birthers are real, regardless of how unimportant they are. That Salon et al. would spend so much time on them is an indicator of the intellectual content of those publications, not of the group they are parodying.

But to get back to the point, it is perhaps completely wrong to judge a blog by its commenters, or even to judge the commenters without spending time getting to know them. But I don't have the time to really grok that blog. All I'm interested in is vetting the subject of the story.

[BakedPenguin]

Sure. That's exactly the kind of thing a Kenyan Muslim would say...

*eyes Xenocles warily*

[Ted S.]

That Salon et al. would spend so much time on them is an indicator of the intellectual content of those publications, not of the group they are parodying.

No, it's in indication that they're trying to portray everybody who disagrees with Obama's policies as that sort of person.

It's the same sort of reason why Fred Phelps and his family get such outsized coverage.

[Xenocles]

"No, it's in indication that they're trying to portray everybody who disagrees with Obama's policies as that sort of person."

And this differs substantially from what I said how?

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah how much of what gets said here is just parody or sarcasm. I have a pretty dry sarcasm everyday and even some people who know me look at me like I'm being serious when I'm not.

[PS]

Were you being serious there?

[William of Purple]

Blogger tries to explain to our "dear" friends on the Left why they should detest Obama

commenter:

Obama is not Progressive. Neither are most Democrats. News at 11? The entire government is center-right and we haven't had an actual Left wing during my lifetime, at least (if we ever did).

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

But don't you dare suggest that progressives are really just socialists!

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

He hasn't even nationalized the oil companies yet, so of course Obama's a center-right politician.

[Mike M.]

Obama is not Progressive.

Of course that's total bullshit. He's an Alinskyite true-believing socialist, easily the farthest left president since FDR.

The reason why he hasn't dismantled the NSA surveillance apparatus is because he's using it to his political advantage to spy on and destroy his enemies: primarily TEA party members and the very few people in the media who dare to scrutinize him and try to hold him accountable.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

Further left than LBJ?

[SIV]

Obama would be if he had the skillz.

[SIV]

Obama would be if he had the skillz.

[SIV]

Obama would be if he had the skillz.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is not Progressive. Neither are most Democrats. News at 11? The entire government is center-right and we haven't had an actual Left wing during my lifetime, at least (if we ever did).

No true Scotsman, I mean Progressive, would unlawfully surveil the American people, send troops to colonize Africa, launch drone strikes on American citizens, or wage war on the people's Constitutionally-protected rights.

Obama is, therefore, a right, ratbagging, teafucking, rethuglican kochtopussy!! It all makes perfect sense!!

[AuH20]

Hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen shows racial divide in the feminist movement

It was part of the outrage that accompanied the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. It was at the heart of the scandal that exiled Paula Deen from the Food Network and cost her millions in business deals. It has been a theme running throughout the reality series "Big Brother" on CBS. It was central to the news reports on a sales clerk in Switzerland who wouldn't let the billionaire Oprah Winfrey look at a designer handbag because the bag was "too expensive." And this week it became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter when Mikki Kendall originated the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen.

In 140 or fewer characters, the tweets about the racial divide in the feminist movement unleashed waves of pain, anguish, anger and guilt. And to be completely clear, as a white woman my feelings veered more to the guilt area of the spectrum as I read the posts.

My parents always emphasized the importance of getting along with people of all races, ethnicities and religions.

When I read tweets like this one:

#solidarityisforwhitewomen when they think they're not the second most privileged group in history

? imhiggins (@im_higgins) August 16, 2013

[AuH20]

[Snip]

My responsibility is to listen and to be honest, especially when revealing my own deficiencies. I may not spew hate speech but I am certainly capable of saying insensitive things. The one-to-one conversations can get emotional and even tense. Bridging divides can be a messy business.

As Shelby Knox put it so well in her tweet:

Fellow white feminists: #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is not for us to defend, explain, protest. It's time for us to take a damn seat & listen.

? ShelbyKnox (@ShelbyKnox) August 12, 2013

That's why it's important for the tweeting and blogging and crying and yelling and arguing on this issue to continue.

Perhaps the summer of 2013 will be looked back on some day as the time Americans stopped talking about having a conversation on race and actually started having it. But there's a lot more to be said before the conversation will be over.

[VG Zaytsev]

Fellow white feminists: #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is not for us to defend, explain, protest. It's time for us to take a damn seat & listen.

So feminism is all about telling womens to sit down and STFU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter when Mikki Kendall originated the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen.

In 140 or fewer characters, the tweets about the racial divide in the feminist movement unleashed waves of pain, anguish, anger and guilt.

Good, good. Give in to your anger. When you strike me down, your journey to the dark side will be complete.

#DarthFeminust

[The Late P Brooks]

there's nothing about bitcoin that couldn't be replicated and refined again and again in new digital currencies, and they can't kill all of them.

At some point, bitcoin must be convertible to a three dimensional (so to speak) currency. If the purchasing power represented by your bitcoin balance can be destroyed by government decree, who will accept it? Who will be brave or foolish enough to create a replacement?

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

At some point, bitcoin must be convertible to a three dimensional (so to speak) currency.

Bitcoin is already a currency in the sense that it's a good used for exchange. It's not a transitional currency that needs to be turned into dollars or yen to be spent; you can easily use bitcoins on all kinds of goods and services without ever so much as thinking about fiat or backed currencies.

The state can and will try to harm its market value by outlawing it, but even then bitcoin will still be around to serve the needs of agorists and outlaws who trade contraband with one another and need a safe medium of exchange. It's not like these people are going to throw away a more convenient and secure currency just because the state tells them to. And in the longer term, if there's even one business-friendly nation that doesn't outlaw bitcoin or one of its cousins--and there will be eventually, as getting rid of the transaction and exchange charges is a massive real-world benefit to business beyond the uninflatable, apolitical, anonymous angle that appeals to libertarians--that nation will have a significant competitive edge in the world's digital marketplace by cutting the banks out of all of its transactions. Then other nations either adopt the economically efficient digital currency or get left behind.

[AuH20]

Wait... why the fuck do federal workers get no-interest loans from the government?

FEEA, the Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund, helps federal workers when they need money. Now it's the one going broke.

FEEA provides no-interest emergency loans to federal workers. The number requesting loans is up sharply this year because of the unpaid furlough days that have been imposed on the workforce. The result ? FEEA is running out of money.

"So far, we have been able to help all qualified applicants who have come through the door," said FEEA Executive Director Steve Bauer, "but that may not be the case by the end of this month if we don't receive significant new donations."

The amount of money loaned and the number of feds assisted since the beginning of FEEA's fiscal year in May, about three months, is already half the total from all of fiscal 2012. FEEA has loaned $350,000 to 600 workers since May 1 compared to $600,000 to 1,000 recipients in the last fiscal year. About two-thirds of the requests this year have been related to furloughs.

[William of Purple]

because usury isn't halal?

[Warrren]

Open the money transfer doors, Halal.

[Cdr Lytton]

Where does the money come from? "Voluntary" contributions like Army Emergency Relief and similar outfits?

[Ted S.]

Sounds like federal employees are as competent as budgeting for their individual households as they are at budgeting for the entire government.

And somebody at the WaPo needs to learn the difference between "lend" and "loan".

[The Late P Brooks]

a sales clerk in Switzerland who wouldn't let the billionaire Oprah Winfrey look at a designer handbag because the bag was "too expensive."

Maybe he erroneously assumed she wasn't dumb enough to pay that much.

[Xenocles]

I suppose Oprah just gets a pass for playing the "do you know who I am?" card because she was able to spin it as a racial thing. What it has to do with the state of things in America is beyond me, though.

[William of Purple]

what kind of moron pays that much for a handbag

[Xenocles]

An excess of money (SLD applies) often accompanies a deficit of good sense. Alternatively, you spend that sort of money on a handbag "because you can."

[AlmightyJB]

People with more money than they could ever spend. They don't even need the handbag. They just want to to show off how rich they are. New money. They just don't get it.

[AuH20]

Well, it's not like Oprah has any kids to pass it on to, and her business is so personality driven that even if she did, it isn't like an oil or steel business where you can pass it on to your kids.

[BakedPenguin]

Actually, the Swiss clerk vehemently denied she said that. While she would have good reason to deny it, Oprah also has a movie about racism that just came out.

[DesigNate]

Double plus good, she (Oprah) later recanted that it was racially motivated. Of course that tidbit gets lost down the memory hole.

[Ted S.]

I suppose Oprah just gets a pass for playing the "do you know who I am?" card

Does anybody recognize this woman? She doesn't seem to know who she is.

[The Late P Brooks]

The number requesting loans is up sharply this year because of the unpaid furlough days that have been imposed on the workforce.

So... what- these people, who are not exactly working for peanuts, are living paycheck to paycheck, and missing a day's wages results in them having one foot in the poorhouse?

This country is fucked.

[Cdr Lytton]

They're doing the Lord's work in America's toughest federal government.

Please give. Any bit helps. God bless.

[Ted S.]

"For less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day you can save a federal employee!"

Where's the address for me to send them a pound of ground coffee?

[SIV]

Savers are chumps
/Federal Reserve

[SIV]

Savers are chumps
/Federal Reserve

[SIV]

Savers are chumps
/Federal Reserve

[AuH20]

Aren't Europeans, with their shorter campaigns and less money spent, just so much more civilized than us Ugly Americans?

"It's sensible to have a short campaign," said Heiko Geue, Steinbrueck's campaign manager, in an interview in his spartan office at the Social Democrats' red-bedecked Berlin headquarters, where a photograph of Karl Marx still has pride of place in a hallway. "People decide a few days or the day of the election whether they'll vote and which party to vote for."

The difference is striking to people who have worked on campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. campaigns, many note, are far more sophisticated but also more susceptible to the influence of big donors and to losing the attention of the electorate through sheer overexposure.

In Germany, a $10,000-a-head dinner with a candidate, a common fundraising tool in U.S. presidential races, is unimaginable. If Steinbrueck speaks at a dinner, Geue said, "he'll explain what he is campaigning for, the issues. And then people decide how much to give."

[AuH20]

The amount of money that will go into Germany's federal election this year is paltry by U.S. standards. Local news accounts put total campaign spending ? for the entire parliament, by all of Germany's political parties ? at $93 million, much of it coming from public financing. Each side of the U.S. presidential election last year raised roughly $1.2 billion. German campaign managers say they aren't even sure what they'd do with that kind of money. Maybe buy more posters, one said.

"When I talk to my U.S. colleagues and I tell them about the number of [television] spots we have in our campaign, they ask, 'Is that per hour?'?" said Klaus Schueler, Merkel's campaign manager. "I say no, that's for the whole campaign."

Even what counts as negative advertisements are tame when compared to the United States. Steinbrueck's cheekiest billboard is of a tired-looking Merkel and her coalition partner, with the slogan, "Best government since reunification .?.?. ? Vote for change now."

The difference, political analysts say, is that German culture isn't used to any sort of negative advertising at all.

"In Germany it's forbidden to compare two products. You can't put a Volkswagen next to a Ford and say one is thirstier than another," meaning it uses more gas, said Gero Neugebauer, an expert on German politics and an emeritus professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin.

[Cdr Lytton]

Those Germans, they just don't like confrontation.

[Gladstone]

You know which other German didn't like election campaigns?

[Gorilla tactics]

Kaiser Wilhelm II?

[AuH20]

If the AV Club could separate a piece of art from its creator gets a shockingly unshocking response

I am super-surprised I am the first one saying this, but I'd love it if someone else had written Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead. In my humble opinion, Orson Scott Card is a bigot whose skewed views on humanity are only available for public consumption because many years ago he happened to write two very, very good books (I could go on, but Sean O'Neal has already done it better). I'm less impressed with everything that came after, but if I could, I would transplant those novels and put them in the hands of someone more willing to accept other people's differences.

[AuH20]

http://www.avclub.com/articles.....,101672/2/

SF'd the link

[General Butt Naked]

Am I missing something or does it seem like most of the people answering the question don't understand what they were asked?

[Irish]

I am super-surprised I am the first one saying this, but I'd love it if someone else had written Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead.

What? You can't separate out the writer's work from who the writer is. It would have been great if so many writers in the 1920s hadn't spent the decade talking about how great fascism and Communism are, but that ship has kind of sailed.

[PS]

When you are a leftie, you get used to living in an echo chamber where all celebrities toe the party line. It really must be a shock to find out an author you like has differing views.

[Xenocles]

Of course you can separate art from the artist. A work of art's strongest influence is the artist, of course, but it has a life of its own following its creation. It is the nature of art to have a significant degree of ambiguity of message in the first place; it may not even have supposed to have had anything to do at all with other things the artist thinks. Consumers of art have a very important role in interpreting the art once the creator releases it.

Until Card comes out and tells us how Ender was a symbol for how we need to be crushing the homos under our heel, we have no reason to believe those books have anything to do with his loathsome views on homosexuality. And even then it's up to us to see if we can find those themes in the work - look at the "Dumbledore was gay" reactions, for example.

Ender and Speaker had some great themes on humanity and the conflict between compassion and combat, and they deserve to be read on their own, isolated from their author (who is a very talented storyteller, if nothing else).

[sticks]

Not that I disagree but replace 'art' with 'entertainment'. Now why the hell do we talk about 'art' and let courts define 'art'? get rid of the concept of art and courts can't say "that's not art. therefore it is obscene" or whatever the thing is that puts makers of piss and shit films in prison.

my point is people really really like to define art. not good for people making art/entertainment.

[Xenocles]

I don't agree with letting courts define either entertainment or art, or that there should be a legally meaningful distinction between the two. I don't think they're the same; I see art as a communication medium and entertainment as simple enjoyment; though they often overlap significantly.

[Corning]

Speaker For The Dead sucked.

In fact I am a cunt's hair away from hating Ender simply because of its association.

[Xenocles]

In matters of taste there can be no disputes.

[Fatty Bolger]

So, you're saying there can be no dispute that Corning has bad taste? Speaker for the Dead was awesome.

[Nazdrakke]

Favorite part of this whole Card saga is that he's been a lifelong Democrat, which seems never to get mentioned.

[Episiarch]

So it's Hempfest this weekend in Seattle. This will be the first Hempfest where weed is legal. There are already tons of stoners walking around Belltown, and I expect it's going to be a rather epic Hempfest just because it is the first legal one. As a pot smoker myself, I'm sympathetic to the stoners, except that by and large they are ridiculous backpack toting dirty stinking goofballs, and I expect them to create massive traffic problems and crowd up my neighborhood something fierce.

I guess I'll just have to get really stoned and watch them from my deck.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Enjoy Siskel & Ebert on Armageddon

[Episiarch]

That was surprisingly positive. I didn't enjoy that at all. NEEDZ MOAR SCORN

[The Late P Brooks]

Bitcoin is already a currency in the sense that it's a good used for exchange. It's not a transitional currency that needs to be turned into dollars or yen to be spent; you can easily use bitcoins on all kinds of goods and services without ever so much as thinking about fiat or backed currencies.

I am not particularly bitcoin-savvy, but I get that that part.

But if you're not in, you have to have a portal of currency conversion to get in. Likewise, if want to get out for some reason, you have to have a portal of currency exchange. If the United States Treasury, or the Bank of England, tells the banks under their supervision that any bitcoin conversions will be treated as evidence of money laundering, it will likely be a fatal blow, as I see it.

Now, maybe you will be able to find a black market moneychanger, but the risks rise dramatically.

[Cytotoxic]

At worst it slows down adoption. That's no fatal blow.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

What Cytotoxic said. Roughly, the state trying to kill bitcoin to favor fiat currency is like the state trying to kill the Model T because the president is in the pocket of the coachman's union. You can hurt Ford and even destroy his business, but once the idea is out someone, somewhere is going to start building cars and creating a lot of wealth in the process. If you want your cut of that money, you've got to give in.

The feds might be able to push the technology underground for a while for the sake of political gain, but it's too useful and ingenious not to catch on somewhere, and sooner rather than later.

[John C. Randolph]

if you're not in, you have to have a portal of currency conversion to get in.

Or you need to offer some good or service to someone who can pay you in bitcoin.

-jcr

[The Late P Brooks]

I guess I'll just have to get really stoned and watch them from my deck.

Water balloons.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Water Bongwater balloons.
.

[Episiarch]

If only that would have some effect, Brooksie. You...you need to see how dirty and filthy most of them are. They'd probably welcome it as a bath or something. They're going to turn the Sculpture Park area into a mass of patchouli and weed and body odor that I frankly would not want to be stoned in, but I guess that's just me. I'll just go lift and then get brunch in South Lake Union well away from them.

[The Late P Brooks]

I suppose you could get into and out of a bitcoin balance via a hard asset transaction, and avoid creating a readily traceable currency conversion, but that more likely than not increases transaction costs and "currency risk" substantially.

Let's say I spend down my bitcoin balance on a nice Purdy shotgun or a work of art; I am assuming a very real risk of losing money when I sell it for dollars. Same applies on the other end.

[Cdr Lytton]

Sad Beard latest tweet:

If we alienate Egypt's dictators they might make it harder for us to fight pointless wars in the Gulf. It's win-win.

Why would we want to make fighting pointless wars harder? Should we just not fight pointless wars in the first place?

[Irish]

If we alienated everyone in the world there would be no place for us to launch our attacks from. We should get on that.

Sad Beard's understanding of foreign policy is almost as good as his understanding of economics.

[Cytotoxic]

That's what aircraft carriers are for. Typically, alienation does not lead to peace.

[Xenocles]

He's wrong that it would be made harder, but I think he was saying that it making it harder would result in fewer wars.

[Cdr Lytton]

I know. On the other hand, if really pissed on Egyptians and they closed the canal to us...

[Eduard van Haalen]

CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION - These pictures are in the dictionary next to "NSFW." Even if your work for Larry Flynt, they may fir you for looking at these in the workplace.

These images were on the Web site of Alex Kozinsky, a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit court.

"Bush for President" - yes, it's as gross as it sounds.

http://www.uslaw.com/pop/konzi.....nski-bush/

"Cow girls" - Not Dale Evans (so far as I know)

http://www.uslaw.com/pop/konzi.....ing-women/

[Eduard van Haalen]

Someone takes the advice to "f yourself" a bit too literally:

http://www.uslaw.com/pop/konzi.....trubation/

Kozinsky comments on the Catholic sex scandals - not that this would compromise his impartiality on religious-freedom issues:

http://www.uslaw.com/pop/konzi.....est-child/

[Eduard van Haalen]

Judge K: "So long as we are willing to sell our privacy, I think that it's going to be very hard to complain that the government gets the same stuff that we're willing to sell so cheaply to third parties."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....07608.html

[Eduard van Haalen]

In other Ninth Circus news:

"Montana's chief federal judge [Richard Cebull] is retiring after emailing a joke about President Obama that was racist and involved *bestiality*.... [emphasis added]

"The appellate court posted a statement by Chief *Judge Alex Kozinski* on its website Tuesday announcing Cebull had submitted the retirement letter. [emphasis added]

"The letter comes as the appellate court's Judicial Council issued a March 15 order on the investigation into the February 2012 email.

"The council's order will remain confidential during an appeal period, the statement said."

The joke in question:

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the email said. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

http://rollingout.com/entertai.....ent-obama/

[The Late P Brooks]

"So long as we are willing to sell our privacy, I think that it's going to be very hard to complain that the government gets the same stuff that we're willing to sell so cheaply to third parties."

Fucking contracts- how do they work?

[Cdr Lytton]

1) Because Experian is totally like the government, able to imprison or execute you.

2) George Michael Maharis finally released Fakeblock for $200/month?

3) If you voluntarily engage in sex, you can't complain about being raped by someone else.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

In case any of you are worried, Obama pledges to make Obamacare work

CHILMARK, Mass. -- President Barack Obama is pledging to do everything he can to make sure the new health care law works the way he intended.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama is criticizing congressional Republicans, who he says are trying to confuse people about the law. He targets other Republican opponents for threatening to eliminate funding for the law or shut down the government if they don't get their way.

The president says a lot of Republicans think he'll suffer if they make the law fail. But if that happens, he says they'd just be "sticking it" to the people.

In the Republican address, West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito argues for a delay in the requirement that uninsured consumers buy health care coverage or pay fines.

I like how HuffPo has its own 'Lies and Distortions of Healthcare Reform' slideshow.

[Anonymous Coward]

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama is criticizing congressional Republicans, who he says are trying to confuse people about the law.

Comrades! Don't fall for the capitalist tricks like reason, or logic, or math, or history! Embrace only revolutionary truth! Obama's truth! Your truth!

[VG Zaytsev]

President Barack Obama is pledging to do everything he can to make sure the new health care law works the way he intended.

That's what scares me.

[The Late P Brooks]

The president says a lot of Republicans think he'll suffer if they make the law fail. But if that happens, he says they'd just be "sticking it" to the people.

Some idiot on MSNBC this morning was basically claiming the Republicans are terrified of letting Obamacare go into operation, because it will be such a huge success.

[Cdr Lytton]

Finally, a good reason to enroll in the VA (but not necessarily use it for medical care):

If you are enrolled in VA health care, you don't need to take additional steps to meet the health care law coverage standards.

http://www.va.gov/health/aca/

Get out of jail free card, beyotches!

[PS]

Wikileaks just mysteriously dumped 400 gigs of encrypted files without key as an 'insurance' torrent.

http://www.dailydot.com/politi.....encrypted/

[SweatingGin]

Neat. Pretty huge dump, then.

I find the dead man's switch so interesting. If you have one, and someone dislikes the US government enough (or whoever), it might make sense just to kill you to get the info out.

[PS]

Is the point of the dump that the Feds have the computing power to decrypt it, but no one else does?

[SweatingGin]

Nah, I'd,bet they couldn't even decrypt it. The point is to get it out to a bunch of people, then, if anything happens to Snowden (or whoever), release the key. Bonus points if it's automated.

The copies are already there, no way to stop distribution of it.

[PS]

Okay. I don't know how far ahead of decryption, encryption is these days. I just assume the Feds have quite a bit of raw computing power at their behest for such things.

[SweatingGin]

Looks like they used AES256, IIRC, in general, assuming there isn't a side channel attack... Fastest computer in the world, you're looking at 10 to the 56th years.

Heat death of the universe comes first.

[SweatingGin]

Good article on cracking AES.

Of course, if there is another attack, and the NSA had it, all bets would be off. They'd quickly switch away from it internally, too, though, as, if you can figure out how to break it, someone else can, too.

[PS]

I see, interesting.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Princess Di: Still dead.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

That candle burned out long ago...

[PS]

But the tabloids never did...

[crashland]

I thought the wind blew it out?

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Help, I've got three sexist children!

Did I metaphorically (and literally, one drunken girls' night) burn my bra, and take a feminist history module in the 80s, only to spawn patriarchal preteens 30 years later?

[Eduard van Haalen]

"At some point I get on to bra-burning ? how it was done as a symbol for women's liberation. Mery, seven, listens intently. When I finish, she appears to gather her thoughts: long pause, furrow of brow, a smile, lightbulb popping on in brain. "Mummy," she beams, "I think I know how the Great Fire of London started ?""

I laughed at that. These kids will be hard to brainwash.

[General Butt Naked]

Apologies to those present, but I really hate white people.

I'm so sick of never-had-a-bad-day-in-their-lives honkies and their guilt-ridden omphaloskepsis.

[Eduard van Haalen]

"never-had-a-bad-day-in-their-lives honkies"

As opposed to people like Obama with their deprived upbringing?

[Eduard van Haalen]

What I'm trying to get at is that whiny, entitled people come in all colors.

[General Butt Naked]

You don't think that motherfucker is honky through and through?

Fuck his cracker ass, if I had an albino confederate soldier for an uncle, he'd be Obama. The greatest trick the (white) devil ever played was convincing the world he was black.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Look, as a honky myself, I'm offended and I'm forming an Anti-Defamation League and organizing a boycott. That is, as soon as I get back from my tractor pull and finish my WonderBread and mayonnaise sandwich.

But in all seriousness - you're blaming everying bad about Obama on his white half? Seriously?

[Dweebston]

I think GBN is parodying misanthropy generally, and it's an odd sort of misanthropy, because apparently only white people qualify as people to the misanthropic leftist. Everyone else, every other ethnic group, is representative of a noble savage unmolested or uncorrupted by the contemptible whiteness of our culture. Leftists are simultaneously horrendously bigoted while hating on their own ethnic group.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

Haven't seen this posted here in a while, so as good a time as any:

"During the first Reagan administration, I participated in a number of press conferences on either a book or article I'd written or as a panelist in a discussion of White House public policy. On occasion, when the question-and-answer session began, I'd tell the press, 'You can treat me like a white person. Ask hard, penetrating questions.' The remark often brought uncomfortable laughter, but I was dead serious. If there is one general characteristic of white liberals, it's their condescending and demeaning attitude toward blacks."

[Dweebston]

He's like a poor man's Thomas Sowell. I read some book by him, ages ago. He though highly of Bill Cosby after the latter's NAACP speech about blacks taking responsibility for their balkanization from "White" culture.

Speaking of Bill.

[Irish]

It has gone 9pm, toothbrushing time. The kids and I are pondering how Peter Capaldi will measure up as the next Doctor Who as the toothpaste is dispensed. I express regret that a woman was not chosen. "Women can't be doctors, only men can! She would have to be his nurse or assistant," they squawk righteously. I am horrified. Did I metaphorically (and literally, one drunken girls' night) burn my bra, and take a feminist history module in the 80s, only to spawn patriarchal preteens 30 years later?

This is so absurd that I'm almost positive those kids realize their mom is a crazy feminist and just really enjoy screwing with her. When you have the kind of mom that writes articles about how patriarchal her children are, it is your duty as a teenager to say as many sexist things as possible just to make her sweat.

[Virginian]

Oh that's definitely true. My mom is a standard lefty Boomer and I have needled her mercilessly since I was 15. Often the refrain is heard "How did you turn out this way?"

Humor is the best way to puncture the Puritans, no matter how their Puritanism expresses itself.

[Dweebston]

Funny, I was just thinking of this. Leftism is the evangelical arm of a Puritanical culture they disavow as stultifying and authoritarian, but readily embrace when it comes to weeding out dissidents.

[Corning]

reading what the kids told her it is pretty obvious they were trolling her.

It is good to know a humorless feminist can still have kids who know how to tell a joke.

I dare to ask the kids the ultimate patriarchy-o-meter question: who's in charge of the family?

"Dad."

"The dog."

"Dad and the dog."

[Paul.]

Which reminds me of the most happily married man I saw... ever:

Driving behind an old American car, I see an old man (in driver's seat) and in the backseat, an old woman (presumed to be his wife). As I pull up next the car, I see a dog sitting in the front passenger seat.

That's a man who never surrendered. I held my fist up to him in solidarity as I drove past.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

The Seattle Police Department's plan to hand out safety flyers at this weekend's HempFest that people would actually want seems to have worked beautifully: the free Doritos attached to each flyer were gone in 10 minutes

[Jerry on the boat]

Nothing more dangerous than stoners getting the munchies.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Patton Oswalt goes ballistic on Twitter against 'right-wing hate mongers'

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

I have no idea what I just read.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Not agreeing with draconian gun control laws is the moral equivalent of letting pedophiles molest as many children as they want.

Not thinking that the South should be singled out for Federal voting rights scrutiny means you support the murder of 10 million minorities.

[General Butt Naked]

Don't know if serious:

Rap is performed by monkeys in expensive clothes. Sorry if I offended you, white conservatives, but it's the truth.

Eat the poor, disabled and hopeless. It's the only way we can insure our future.

AIDS is a gift from God. I don't know why people are still so backward in their thinking about this.

My grandchildren had better be WHITE. And I mean PURE WHITE, or we're not going to have a country anymore. #tolerance

Neggers out of government? Yes, please! (Sorry for any misspelling)

Women enjoy rape. Grow the fuck up, all of you.

Let NAMBLA members fuck anyone they want. Am I so crazy for wanting my kid to grow up in a safer world?

Hitler was absolutely right about the Jews. And I don't care how many "white power" redneck followers I lose by Tweeting that.

all abortion should be illegal, no exceptions. Just go ahead and UNFOLLOW me, you right wing hate-mongers.

and on and on...

I think he's using the medium to comedic effect and that some aren't getting the joke.

[Sidd Finch]

Naggers isn't that hard to spell.

[PS]

You are only allowed to use that word if you are also a nagger. Now, for the millionth time, take out the goddamn garbage.

[darius404]

Some of his tweets could easily be interpreted in really racist, "dog-whistle" ways.

In reference to "laundry":

whites and "darks" should be kept separate. Sorry if that sounds too "tree-huggy" to my conservative followers.?
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 17, 2013

For you simpletons who see everything in "black" and "white": if racism, misogyny, hatred and fear are BLACK, then?
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 17, 2013

My grandchildren had better be WHITE. And I mean PURE WHITE, or we're not going to have a country anymore. #tolerance?
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 17, 2013

This guy is hilariously NUTS, and probably easily trolled. I could probably get him going by calling him a "dog-whistle racist" and railing
against his "left-wing privilege" and "Hollywood privilege". It would be so easy, and so sweet.

[Irish]

Yawn. It's pretty common left-wing smuggery. The left is so braindead that even their insults are boring.

Honestly, for people who whine about machines taking jobs away from people, I'm pretty sure the jokes liberals use were actually constructed on an assembly line.

[SweatingGin]

Didn't he have a big twitter fight with slate not too long ago? Maybe just picking twitter fights with anyone in hope of comedic value?

[sticks]

He was baiting for trolls. Later on it was much more obvious. for example:

"God's greatest miracle? How about science? Penicillin? Gift from God. Polio vaccine? Gift from God. Even aspirin, Pepto-Bismol and ROL"

followed up by:

"AIDS is a gift from God. I don't know why people are still so backward in their thinking about this."

so rolaids is a gift from god. stupid. but whatever.

[SweatingGin]

I eventually read the article, and saw he had found the fun technique of breaking a sentence apart to have part of it be offensive.

Truly a master of humor for the modern age.

[sticks]

Truly a master of humor for the modern age.

yeah it was lame. But also funny. only b/c of reactions by some that "he could be easily trolled" when he is purposely baiting trolls. actually this is all to meta. fuck it.

[Eduard van Haalen]

If I'd known it was a *real* emergency, I'd have shot some dogs.

"In Harris County, Tex., sheriff's deputy Brady Pullen responded to a 911 call placed by Camina Figueroa from her Katy, Tex. home. While on the call, Pullen was attacked and injured by a man apparently high on illegal drugs. Now Pullen is suing Figueroa, claiming she "failed to adequately warn 9-1-1 of the dangerous situation he was walking into." [KRTK] Under the "firefighter's rule," which has eroded in some jurisdictions in recent years, emergency rescuers generally cannot sue private parties whose negligence is allegedly to blame for the hazards to which they are responding."

http://overlawyered.com/2013/0.....lted-home/

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Pullen says he suffered a broken nose, concussion, lacerations and bruises when the man in Figueroa's house attacked him. That man was ultimately shot and killed after investigators say he reached for Pullen's gun."

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/st.....id=9207650

[Agammamon]

Just *one more* reason not to ever call the cops.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

hey Chargers fans:

Adam Schefter ?@AdamSchefter
Chargers announced WR Eddie Royal sustained a bruised lung Saturday and also is being evaluated for a concussion.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Shake it off Eddie! Rub some dirt on it!

[Sidd Finch]

The Wookiee is releasing a hip-hop record featuring DMC, Iman Shumpert, and a bunch of people (presumably) that I've never heard of.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

it's a feeler for her presidential run in '16

[PS]

DMC? Nothing like staying relevant.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Here's one of the songs - Veggie Love - and the main puppets in the video don't look in any way like cockroaches, so put that thought out of your mind at once!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE0nDzQO28w

[Eduard van Haalen]

Get off the couch as soon as you are able
Go an eat a vege-table!
We got carrots and peas fresh from the garden
They'll make you grow taller and make your dick harden
Meat is just murder and it's the opposite of nifty -
Do you want to end up looking like Chris Christie?
Come on everybody, let's rap to the beat
Eat some asparagus, and eat a...

"Wait, I can't in conscience ask anyone to eat beets! They're just gross!"

"Next!"

[Eduard van Haalen]

Come on, baby, I'm begging you please
Put down that side of beef and pick up some peas
Beef has Mad Cow, bacon has trichinosis
Follow healthy habits, don't follow where your nose is
'Cause I'm the vegetarian Moses
Come to Vegetopia, that's where the hos is
Give up unhealthy treats
And they'll eat *your* meat...

"Cut! OK, don't call us, we'll call you."

[Eduard van Haalen]

The squirrels must have a sense of taste, since they ate my third verse.

[Agammamon]

The opposing view - 'Carrot Juice Is Murder'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Contributions or gifts to NARAL Pro-Choice America, a 501(c)(4) organization, are not tax-deductible. No funds will be earmarked or reserved for any political purpose."

http://bit.ly/1cVKbCt

Meanwhile, a NARAL video denounces Ken Cuccinelli (isn't he a candidate for some office? No, NARAL is above politics!) for funding Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which are accused of "lies."

The supposed "lies" are these:

"They say that birth control is liberating. No it's not. It's enslavement." (OPINION on a debatable question)

"Condoms don't secure you from STDs either." (TRUE)

"Condoms are naturally porous." (sometimes true though not the main risk of condoms)

"So the pill, any of that stuff is just not good for you." (either OPINION or TRUE)

"Frankly I don't think you should be having sex because you're not married." (OPINION - and one shared by generations of human beings in all cultures)

http://www.hliworldwatch.org/?p=2819

[SweatingGin]

It might be interesting to look at the various controls governments have over commerce, and which ones bitcoin effects, and how.

I don't have a comprehensive list of those controls, but maybe:

Capital controls
Price controls (and wage)
Limits on anonymous transactions
Lending controls
Monetary manipulation
Exchange rate controls (maybe falls under price controls,as well)
Others?

To me, capital controls are gone at this point. Move capital into BTC, cross border, move into other currency.

As it gets bigger, I think it hits all of the other controls, too, at some point.

[Caligula]

$50 says that no one on this thread can make it through the first four comments on this shitty NPR piece.

The fucking horror...

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

d Spinner Michael Johnson ? an hour ago
Somalia is the perfect example of libertarianism in action.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

William Barnett-Lewis Ron Shirtz ? 37 minutes ago ?
The Pseudo-Libertarian principle can be best summed up this way - "A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head. " Substitute anyone interfering with their greed for wrath.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Eh, a few comments are canny enough to recognize that libertarians are good for the GOP on civil liberties and social issues. And then there is this:

As a progressive liberal I find myself cheering Rand Paul one day (opposition to Drones in the US) and hating him the next (opposition to the voting rights act). I could never support a philosophy that walks over people in the name of individual liberty. We're better than that. Our society requires a social fabric of cooperation and interdependence for our very existence.

And this:

Michael Johnson ? 3 hours ago
When libertarians cheered and called out that someone who couldn't afford healthcare should just be left to die (it was during the GOP debates, based on a question asked to Ron Paul) I lost all respect for that political ideology.
41 3 ?Share ?
Avatar
Richard Spinner Michael Johnson ? an hour ago ?
Somalia is the perfect example of libertarianism in action.

[Gladstone]

When libertarians cheered and called out that someone who couldn't afford healthcare should just be left to die (it was during the GOP debates, based on a question asked to Ron Paul) I lost all respect for that political ideology.

So when is the next disingenuous article from Reason about the GOP shouldn't be so reactionary and mean? I mean it's not like someone from Reason said Chris Christie was the libertarian hope for the GOP. Oh wait....

[Dweebston]

Got a link, buddy? Sounds as if you're loosely interpreted someone's interpretations of Christie's GOP aspirations.

I could see Christie thinking that throwing himself to the democrats makes him libertarian.

[Gladstone]

http://reason.com/blog/2013/06.....ibertarian

Fortunately for libertarian-minded voters, Palin and Cruz are hardly the only fishes in the sea. As the recent report on young voters from the College Republican National Committee pointed out, the GOP is flush with next-generation leaders, among them Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal.

[Dweebston]

Right; one mention of Christie as a supposed front-runner among Republicans, who's not mentioned again because, lo and behold, others take center stage.

the GOP will need spokespeople categorically different from Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz [...] The GOP would do well to focus attention on people such as Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).

Gillespie used Christie, among others, as a foil against which "authentic" GOP libertarians should be measured. That should be obvious from the tagline to the article:

Sarah Palin is now trying to present herself as a libertarian. Don't be fooled, writes Reason editor Nick Gillespie.

[Virginian]

Reason did err badly on that one, and it wasn't like they were fooled by a slick operator like so many Reason writers were in 08.

Christie has always been a Giuliani type. I appreciated his attempts to take on the teacher's unions, but I never thought a big government RINO was the Great Libertarian Hope, and anyone who did is very badly mistaken.

Christie's love of gun control alone disqualifies him from any kind of libertarian cred.

[Dweebston]

Did you read the article? Here's the entirely of Christie's claim to fame therein:

As the recent report on young voters from the College Republican National Committee pointed out, the GOP is flush with next-generation leaders, among them Chris Christie, Rubio, and Bobby Jindal. None is more popular than the leader of what John McCain pathetically called "the wacko bird" caucus, Rand Paul, who has not only emerged as the public face of a more libertarian Republican Party, but is working to create a cadre of like-minded legislators, not just a one-man band.

Gillespie's clearly being diplomatic about the report he links to. The mainstay of his essay are Republicans less repugnant than Christie. In fact, Christie's mentioned exactly one time, in the quote above.

[Irish]

HOLY SHIT!

Time Magazine journalist Michael Grunwald tweets: "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange."

After being called on it, he says:

Michael Grunwald ? @MikeGrunwald
Fair point. I'll delete. @rober1236Jua my main problem with this is it gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in

I just said that I would defend the government murdering Julian Assange. I don't understand why you guys have to have a persecution complex over this!

[Irish]

And here's one of the responses to him:

Ellie M @kadybat

@MikeGrunwald is being a huge douche bag. No surprise from a wealthy cis American white male.

Real battle of the intellectual titans right there.

[Gladstone]

What the fuck does cis mean?

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

CISGENDER

[Irish]

Someone who identifies with the gender they were born as. As straight is to gay, cis is to transgender.

[Gorilla tactics]

so...normal?

[BakedPenguin]

Yup. Taken from chemistry.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Cisgender is a term some people use to describe people who's gender identity matches their biological sex. Apparently it gives all non-transgender people privilege.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

stop othering yourself

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

It's an aggressive tranny's way of othering you. You haven't lived until you've been called a breeder and cis by your bisexual ex-girlfriend's new five-foot, transgendered boyfriend who works at the DMV.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

You haven't lived until you've been called a breeder and cis by your bisexual ex-girlfriend's new five-foot, transgendered boyfriend who works at the DMV.

Go on...

[Ken Shultz]

"What the fuck does cis mean?"

It means it's politically incorrect to refer to people as "normal".

[Lady Bertrum]

Conor Friedersdorf's tweets were pretty good.

[SIV]

This place is totally skwerled up

[Gladstone]

Are they in your pants?

[SIV]

This place is totally skwerled up

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

ok everyone, tuck your pants into your socks

[SIV]

This place is totally skwerled up

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

This time it's real!

[Dweebston]

In other words, Voyager 1 is about 18 billion kilometers away from the planet. Thanks, scientists!

No, no, thanks, okay. heliopause and heliosheathe and questions appertaining to whether the probe has passed some arbitrary boundary aside, it's about 18 billion kilometers away. Thanks! Good to know. Glad to have some idea with reference to our home planet where this probe of ours is currently situated. No need to call this a controversy, because we have a good approximation as to where the fucking thing is.

Kidding aside, did we point this thing toward anywhere besides the edge of the heliosphere?

[William of Purple]

It was during an investigation into the record number of food stamp recipients that Fox News' John Roberts met Jason Greenslate, a surfer and rocker who is living the self-described "rat life" in California.

The 29-year-old signed up for SNAP and receives $200 dollars a month in taxpayer money for food. He put it simply, "I don't got a paycheck coming in, so I qualify."

[Dweebston]

Surprised you went with that. Here's the money quote:

Greenslate is trained to be a recording engineer, but he told Roberts he has no paycheck because holding down a steady job isn't for him.

I argued with a friend of mine, a Britlander with an essentially socialistic complex, who believs that nobody would choose a life of subsidy because the subsidies are so parsimonious and the lifestyle is so meager.

[SweatingGin]

Would calling him a welfare queen be a dog whistle?

[William of Purple]

Are you tired of wasting time writing out all three letters of the?

You're not alone.

Paul Mathis, an Australian restaurateur, shares your pain and has introduced a shortened version of the word for those of us who frequently text: ?.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

Take a number, ?. I'm still waiting for thorn and ash to make their way into texting so that I can relate monastic charms to my lucky peers.

[William of Purple]

In the orthography of Modern English, thorn (?), eth (?), wynn (?), yogh (?), ash (?), and ethel (?) are obsolete.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

I'm just another bitter clinger when it comes to my Beowulf.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

Man it's a good thing there's pre-season football to rid the NFL of extra players.

Adam Schefter ?@AdamSchefter 2h
Jags QB Blaine Gabbert sprained his right thumb.

Adam Schefter ?@AdamSchefter 12m
Ambulance on the field to take away Denver DE Derek Wolfe, who is strapped down.

Adam Schefter ?@AdamSchefter 50s
Dolphins TE Dustin Keller, who suffered what looked like a gruesome knee injury, is undergoing an MRI tonight.

[Dweebston]

Huh. One of these players combines my first name with my former employer's last name. It must mean... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

your real name is Blaine?

[Dweebston]

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

[Dweebston]

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

[Dweebston]

God damnit, I even refreshed to make sure the original hadn't posted.

[Archduke Trousersenthusiast]

is this kid a RACIST?

[Dweebston]

No, the child is merely reacting to the vacant eyeslits where once lit hope for the entirety of human-kind. The mother, however, is dreadfully racist for not holding up the mast to her own face, thereby showing her son that we all, in fact, are Obama.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example of why America needs common sense disarmament, I mean, GUN CONTROL:

Woman opens fire on group of robbers at Denny's

At around 4 a.m. Thursday, a man who does not want to be identified, said his brother was robbed by six men with guns at a Denny's off the Gulf Freeway in southeast Houston.

"I don't know if it was random or someone set him up. Because he got his own label," said the victim's brother.

His brother's wife was in the restroom at the time, but when she exited the restroom she saw the group of suspected robbers. Police said that's when she pulled out her gun and shot at them.

"She said she came out of the restroom and saw my brother on the floor. That's when she started doing what she gotta do. She got a license and she'll do anything to protect her kids and my brother," he said.

Police said there was a shootout, but it is not known how many shots were fired at the time. However, police said the gunshots did hit cars in the parking lot.

No bystanders or customers were injured.

The group of suspects fled the scene.

The married couple said they are still shook up, but their family said they're glad they made it out alive.

"Self-defense saved my brother's life," he said.

This maniac tea bagger wench probably would have gone on to shoot up a school to satisfy her gun-crazed bloodlust.

[The Late P Brooks]

I could never support a philosophy that walks over people in the name of individual liberty.

WHEEEEEEEEEE!

[MappRapp]

Dude seems to know what he is talking about. Wow.

http://www.Prime-Anon.tk

[ibcbet]

The federal mandate in a nutshell: tamping down on innovation, hobbling the economy, and making people miserable, one lawsuit at a time. You haven't lived until you've been called a breeder and cis by your bisexual ex-girlfriend's new five-foot, transgendered boyfriend who works at the DMV.