Ceaser Slaad's page

In another thread we were discussing Islamic doctrines. In order to make my point I cited some passages from the Quran. One of the other people active in the thread replied that they were afraid of me, apparently because I had quoted the Quran and had therefore been "radicalized" somehow and was some sort of "threat" to the LGBTQ community.

Really? And they honestly expected to be taken seriously?? One wonders how they can get through the day without piddling themselves constantly. Somebody needs to lay off the Kool Aid and get a life. It should also be pointed out that attempting to play the "victim" card in a situation where no one has been victimized makes one's position even more farcical than it would be otherwise.

The first thing to point out is that while lawyers can drone on for hours about the laws that relate to the use of force by civilians, the actual principles involved are quite simple. Ultimately they are derived from Biblical law which is why I, as a conservative Christian, am bound to obey them. In a nutshell I can only use physical force to defend myself from an actual attack by somebody else, or in order to aid a relatively defenseless person who is being attacked. That’s it. It doesn’t matter how much I dislike somebody or disagree with what they’re saying. If they’re not actually attacking somebody I don’t get to use physical force against them. So, if you don’t want to be afraid of me, then don’t go around assaulting people. You won’t have anything to worry about.

It should also be pointed out that I have made abundantly clear in my postings on the subject that LGBTQs have the same rights that everybody else does. That necessarily includes the right to life. This means that neither I nor anybody else has the legitimate authority to hunt down LGBTQs in order to harm/maim/injure/kill them “just because”.

However, it should also be pointed out that as a conservative Christian I am called to stand for God’s moral law. In standing for God’s moral law I can only use persuasion and argumentation. I do not have the legitimate authority to attempt to force anybody to do anything (except to stop physically attacking other people). Thus after having made my point by saying that people should not engage in homosexual acts because such behavior is sinful, then there really isn’t too much more I can do. Trying to convert hard core (dis)believers on the other side is usually an exercise in futility. I am also not a fan of beating dead horses any more than actually necessary. However, if for whatever reason somebody finds that simple moral argument more than they can bear, I have two alternative suggestions for them. The first is that they change their behavior as necessary such that they can live their lives with a relatively clear conscience. The second alternative is that they figure out how to grow a spine. While in context I would prefer that people chose the first alternative, either one would be a substantial improvement.

I should also comment that trying to draw some sort of “moral equivalence” between conservative Christians who are attempting to use persuasion and argument in order to support God’s moral law and what the Islamic fundamentalists are doing by executing homosexuals in job lots only serves to show that the person making that argument doesn’t know what “moral equivalence” is. There are incredibly significant differences between simply stating a position that some people find disagreeable and slaughtering people.

Last but not least attempting to control a debate by shutting down the other side, using the mechanism of falsely accusing them of inciting people to violence, only serves to indicate that the person making that argument is even more biased/prejudiced than the person they are trying to shut down. In spite of my various disagreements with LGBTQs, I have never argued that they should be silenced.

My two cents.

Third parties will be at a continuing disadvantage as long as we keep the number of Representatives frozen at 435. If I could wave my magic wand to change the system I would set things so that there would be no fewer than 1 Representative for every 300,000 people. This would increase the number of Representatives to about 1,000, shrink the size of legislative districts and give people more input into the system.

While it is true that "race" is not anywhere near as tightly defined as one would like it, nevertheless it is not a totally invalid concept either. Stainless steel artificial hip joints designed for use on "caucasoid" people can be worse than useless for those of "mongoloid" ancestry because of differences in various bone angles and curvatures between the two "races".

People of American Indian ancestry are usually at a disadvantage when it comes to metabolizing alcohol with a concurrently greatly increased chance of becoming alcoholics. It was one of the reasons why back in the day unscrupulous traders would get Indians drunk in order to better take advantage of them. It's also why Indian reservations today are almost invariably "dry", in an attempt to keep alcoholism down to a dull roar.

The connection between race and sickle cell anemia has already been touched on. However, given that blacks and whites in America have not been isolated breeding populations then the fact that somebody looks "white" does not necessarily mean that it is impossible for them to have sickle cell anemia. A couple of decades ago there was a scandal in the KKK when it turned out that one of their leaders had sickle cell anemia and thus some African ancestry in spite of the fact that one couldn't tell that simply by looking at him.

IMHO "race" is a concept that one has to be careful with. It is all too easy to read either too much or too little into what one means by it. But given that it can be a useful concept for such things as crime scene identification of remains, various medical procedures, and construction of artificial joints then I think that dismissing the concept altogether is probably not the best idea. One simply has to bear in mind the limitations of the concept and confine its use only to those areas where it can be demonstrated that it makes sense to use it.

It's been a long time since I've done any work in the field. But back in the day when I was studying Physical Anthropology and taking courses in human osteology from a Medical Examiner we used a 3 fold breakdown into "caucasoid", mongoloid" and "negroid" for trying to determine what racial group a skeleton had come from. This was determined by both certain visual cues based on the shape/morphology of some of the bones and by running measurements taken from the bones through a formula that was based on a linear regression analysis of "known" skeletons.

However, the main purpose of that was simply to try to identify whose remains we were dealing with. If the analyses we performed indicated that we had the skeleton of an approximately 30 year old "mongoloid" male then the remains were most likely not those of the 20 year old caucasian female who had been reported missing 2 years ago. It should be noted in this context that "mongoloid" referring to a racial group and "mongoloid" referring to somebody suffering from Down's syndrome are two totally different things.

I know that there have been a lot of advances made in the field since I left, and I assume it is now much easier to get DNA samples and run analyses on them these days than it was in the early 1990's. That could make things a lot easier.

As far as other things go, attempting to separate humans into various racial groups is fraught with a variety of difficulties. The "differences" between the various racial groups are such that when you start trying to analyze the data obtained from studying large numbers of people you realize that you are in fact dealing with data arranged in a continuum and there aren't any real clear dividing lines. Hence part of the reason for the 3 fold breakdown discussed earlier was an attempt to try to simplify things when one was simply considering skeletal morphology. To the extent that we can actually "read" DNA these days then that does give us a lot more information, but the increase in information does not necessarily "clarify" the picture. Instead it demonstrates just how truly complex things are.

In short, people like to sleep with each other too much for humanity as a whole to be much more than one gigantic, occasionally clumpy, mix of a myriad different varieties of Heinz 57's. While it is possible to break things down into certain smaller categories for the purposes of certain types of discussion and analysis, that doesn't necessarily mean that what one has achieved is actually significant.

I had to take my nitroglycerin pills. I actually found myself agreeing with I'm Hiding In Your Closet ;-) .

While there are decent people who are working as police/law enforcement, the problem is that the system itself has become both corrupt and corrupting of those who work in it. One has only to look at the relatively minor things such as police departments factoring revenue generated by issuing traffic tickets in their official budgets, and unofficially coming down hard on officers who don't meet their quotas for issuing traffic citations. Then there are bigger things such as the problem with Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws which effectively give police the power to "legally" rob people who for some reason or other have too much cash on them.

At one point in time I got to know some of the inspectors who work for the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries reasonably well. One of them said that if they were to take the massive list of codes they were responsible for enforcing and throw out everything that wasn't legitimately tied to actual work place safety and reasonable business practice ... that the regulations would be reduced by about 2/3. He also commented that if pressed to testify in a court of law that he would cheerfully state that he did not have a quota system that controlled the number of citations he issued. Then he went on to say that regardless of that, God help him if he didn't get his "numbers" for the month. Last but not least, there was one of the counties in the area which had building codes that were not in agreement with the state building codes. So if a builder working on a house set things up such that he was in compliance with the county level codes he would be penalized by the state if one of their inspectors caught him, and vice versa as well. Thus builders were under the gun to try to complete their projects as rapidly as possible as well as play guessing games with which inspector was going to drop by.

The other potentially big problem is that other considerations aside, the police are necessarily forced into making the simplifying assumption that the one "who done it" is the person they can build the strongest case against in the shortest amount of time. While more often than not this is true, it can and does generate situations where innocent people have been metaphorically ground to hamburger by the justice system simply because they didn't have a strong enough alibi.

Given that you will never know until too late whether or not you are dealing with Officer Friendly or Officer Himmler, the only safe recourse is to have the minimal interaction with the police that is possible. Don't be rude, be reasonably polite, and try to exit the situation as soon as you can without causing perturbations. If you are being arrested the best recourse is simply to submit and plan on doing all your "fighting" in the courts with a good attorney helping you. Realize that even passive resistance to arrest will open you up to the charge of "resisting arrest", and you can still be hammered for that even if all the other charges against you get thrown out.

The only other alternative is to go all out using as much force as possible, essentially exercising the "World War III" option. The problem with that is even if you "win" the initial engagement, you are now most definitely on the police radar and will likely have to spend the rest of your life on the run. Unless you know exactly how to handle such a turn of events and have a large off the books cash reserve, don't expect to be able to run successfully either very far or for very long.

Now you can really get someone's goat. :-)

Krensky wrote:

One of the National Archives warehouses.

What are they going to do with all that stuff, if not let people look at it???

How long does it take for documents to become de-classified?

That depends. If it's stuff that they think is still relevant and they see some potential advantage to keeping it secret, then they'll keep it secret indefinitely. As an example, a lot of the WWII code breaking stuff wasn't made public until 50 years after the war was over. I would also be willing to bet that there might be some stuff squirreled away somewhere dealing with that subject that's still classified for whatever reason even today.

As far as Korean War era dogfighting tactics go, I can't think of what would date from that period that they would still need to have classified. But then I'm not a fighter pilot and I don't know what they're sitting on. However I can say that USS Nautilus (SSN-571), our first nuclear submarine, was launched in 1954. 50 years later would take us to 2004. But as her reactor plant was the genesis of the designs for the lion's share of the submarines we still have in service I would be willing to bet you a cold soda that it's still classified.

This is a couple of days too late, but Anklebiter might like it if no one else does. :-)

There was a TV station in a small town in Minnesota that needed a new weatherman. However, as it was such a small market only one person took them up on the job. His name was Rudolph and he was a card carrying Communist. The folks at the station were not overly thrilled by that, but Rudolph did his job very well. And when it came to forecasting rain Rudolph was always spot on. One day Linda, one of the other news people, asked Rudolph how it was that he was always accurate when it came to forecasting rain.

Rudolph replied:

After you finish your first, I would suggest you make a bunch more to see the effects of different classes and builds. Then look to see what games are available in recruiting section. With luck, you can find one that has an opening that you could apply to with one of the characters you already made after tweaking it a little.

All ya need to handle flamingos is a lil' salt! Just spread it around yer lawn, and they won't sprout!

Yep, but then neither will your grass, your ornamental shrubs, your flowers, your herb garden, any shade trees you might have, etc., etc..

But on the other hand if you just nuke the entire city then no one will care about how bad your lawn looks compared to everybody else's. :-)

One other thing to mention in regards to trying to get into a game. There might not be that much going on until after the New Year's holiday is over. The games move at a slow pace anyway, but during holiday seasons people get busy with other things and real life has a tendency to take priority for some bizarre, inexplicable reason.

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

What do trolls need a real-world capital for? Isn't Twitter good enough for 'em?

Well, if they have a real world physical existence then they have to live somewhere.

Not if we get enough acid flasks together.

Well, if we're going to be throwing acid (as in sulfuric) at the trolls then we're going to need lots and lots of it. Greenpeace will get really upset about the hazardous waste dump we'll end up creating as a result.

If you mean we should end up doing acid (as in LSD) to convince ourselves the trolls are not that much of a problem, then we won't need quite so much. :-)

I don't know of any cure for lawn flamingos though. Nuking them from orbit perhaps? ;-)

The biggest problems with play by post games are:

1) They can end up taking a very long time to do what could be done in a face to face table top setting in a matter of hours. A large combat scene could take weeks to play out in play by post format. So you have to make sure that you're going to be comfortable with the relatively slow pace.

2) At least partly related to reason 1, people will end up dropping out of games with no notice after they have been going for a while. Sometimes that even happens with the GM. While this is frustrating when it happens, you simply have to be ready to find other games to try to join, or do the work to GM one yourself.

However, if one is fortunate enough to be able to get into a good group, one can have quite a bit of fun. And it is possible to do some things in posting on the boards that can't easily be done in face to face settings such as getting into detail about what the characters is thinking or feeling. Just make sure you go along with the conventions used to differentiate what a character says from what a character thinks. For example:

As Mundarion dodged behind a pillar to take cover from the opposing archers he said, "We've got to take these guys down!". He thought to himself, "This is not going well at all"

Though different groups might have slightly use slightly different methods to sort that kind of thing out.

What do trolls need a real-world capital for? Isn't Twitter good enough for 'em?

Well, if they have a real world physical existence then they have to live somewhere.

The USA citizenry and government decided to modify our Constitution to specifically abolish slavery and treat non-Caucasians as equal people (in legal theory anyway). We decided it was desirable that non-property holders and women should have the right to vote. We decided that citizens should have the right to divorce and remarry. We decided that people with different ethnicities would have the right to marry each other. And now we've decided that yes, people would be allowed to engage in same-sex marriages.

None of these were explicitly stated in the original Constitution, but we collectively decided that we would as a Union recognize these rights and enshrine them into our laws. Recognizing that minority rights need to be protected from the majority is not the creation of a "new religion"; it instead goes back to our Preamble and the written words of the country's founding fathers that All are created equal and entitled to same equal treatment under the law.

Equality and protection of others' rights is not a zero-sum game.

There are established policies and procedures for legitimately amending the Constitution. In most of the cases that you cite, those polices and procedures were actually followed. Hence, because proper procedures were followed, the changes to the Constitution were legitimate.

In the case of the recent Supreme Court decision those polices and procedures were not followed. The specific reason that those policies were NOT followed was because those pushing the agenda knew that they wouldn't be able to accomplish what they wanted to by following those procedures as they would never get the support they needed (actual ratification of a Constitutional amendment by the requisite number of States). So 5 out of 9 Supreme Court justices threw the established policies and procedures out the window and flat out did what they felt like regardless. Unfortunately that totally and completely invalidated the result of their efforts.

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

But as a democrat in general can't take a dump without creating government programs to regulate the amount of water the toilet uses per flush or the specific type of treatment that the sewage has to undergo then there isn't a whole heck of a lot of support that he can expect from Libertarians.

This is what makes me definitely not a libertarian; I place public health above profit on my scale of values. Because untreated sewage tends to lead to cholera outbreaks and the like, the "right" to not treat it is in essence an act of bacteriological warfare (i.e., unprovoked use of force) against the local population.

The libertarian position would not be that sewage should be untreated. The libertarian position would be that you did not actually need a government program to treat sewage. Sewage treatment could be handled better, faster, safer, cheaper, and more effectively by private industry than by the government. If this was a presentation that they had prepped for they could give you an impressive array of data, analyses, studies, etc., to demonstrate that if nothing else they had a reasonable case. If you have any interest in this at all beside trying to take me to task for a comment, check out what the CATO institute has available.

ceasar Slaad wrote:

Let me begin with tongue firmly in cheek suggesting that there is an extent to which turning to a "staunch Democrat" for instruction in Libertarianism is sort of analogous to asking a Jihadi Imam for advice on how to hold a Bar Mitzvah. Even assuming that the Imam tries to give you the best answer that he can based on what he knows, there are some things he is going to get wrong simply because there are important nuances he was never instructed in or does not properly understand

Isn't having a strict instructional heirarchy and vetting process of being a libertarian a bit of a contradiction?

Not really. As I said, the old school libertarians were arguably more interested in having an objectivist philosophical debating society than in creating a viable political party. From their point of view everything revolved around a proper understanding of objectivism and using that to craft policy with.

Also, you could have picked a less extreme example, like a football coach telling a soccer coach to kick the ball OVER the goal.

No. Football and soccer are simply two different games. They are not polar opposites. But when one compares and contrasts the ethos and policies espoused by the Democrat party with the ethos and policies espoused by the Libertarian party one would see that for all practical purposes they are polar opposites.

Baring that what you're working off of is a definition, which they're just as capable of knowing as you are. If you're in some "real" libertarian organization you can't just lay claim to the entire movement.

Well, unless and until somebody else shows up to carry the torch then I guess I'm it. I have yet to see anybody else argue anything even reasonably close to actual libertarian positions.

As for the rest, to keep it simple for now we're going to have to agree to disagree.

In another post on another thread a gentleman who described himself as a "staunch Democrat" took me to task for (among other things) being a "fake Libertarian" because of my stance on "Homosexual rights". At that time my response was simply that we would have to agree to disagree. There were several reasons for that.

The first reason is that I doubt that Mr. Staunch Democrat and I will ever be able to convince each other of anything. However, that is not the reason I am now responding. There are other people on this board who may be unfamiliar with what it actually means to be a Libertarian, and hopefully by giving a serious reply to Mr. Staunch Democrat they will be suitably enlightened.

The second reason is that I did not want to derail that particular thread with what was a sidebar issue.

Last but not least, I felt I owed it to the moderators (who do not always see eye to eye with me and vice versa), not to start something that could devolve into a flame war when they were not present to deal with the situation as they saw fit. However, the moderators are either now on duty or will be shortly, and I don't have to worry about derailing the thread that I just started.

Let me begin with tongue firmly in cheek suggesting that there is an extent to which turning to a "staunch Democrat" for instruction in Libertarianism is sort of analogous to asking a Jihadi Imam for advice on how to hold a Bar Mitzvah. Even assuming that the Imam tries to give you the best answer that he can based on what he knows, there are some things he is going to get wrong simply because there are important nuances he was never instructed in or does not properly understand.

I realize that there are people on this board who would take me to task and or disbelieve what I was saying if I were to suggest that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, having been a member of the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Alachua County Florida for several years I have this feeling that I might just know something about what it means to be a Libertarian. Even though I am no longer formally associated with the Libertarian party I also feel I have something of a duty to try to make sure that what they stand for is properly presented.

Libertarians, as is true of any political party, have several different groups within their ranks. One of these groups I will refer to as the "old school" Libertarians. These people are by and large die hard followers of Ayn Rand, take their objectivist philosophy seriously, and are essentially atheistic in outlook. Though I would be tempted to argue that in some cases their objectivist philosophy is their religion. Regardless, given a situation in which various people are doing various things on their own property that don't harm other people and don't damage anybody else's property then the old school Libertarians couldn't care less what was actually going on. From that perspective then Mr. Staunch Democrat might appear to have a point. Old school Libertarians could be interpreted as being supportive of "homosexual rights". Given that I have made posts that argue against certain interpretations of "homosexual rights" then I would appear to be in conflict with that.

However, like the Jihadi Imam trying to figure out what this Bar Mitzvah thing is all about, there are some things that Mr. Staunch Democrat was either never told about or doesn't understand. I will keep it simple and boil it down to three main points.

First, in order to become a Libertarian you have to pledge that you will never initiate the use of force. They are dead serious about this and it forms the core of their beliefs and the policies that they attempt to get implemented. Note that this is most definitely not the same thing as being a pacifist. A pacifist would never use force under any circumstances. But from a Libertarian perspective, once somebody has initiated the use of force against you, you are not only free to but actually encouraged to use that level of counter force you need to solve the problem.

Second, all government action is viewed as being based on force. Don't believe me? Just stop doing something that the government mandates you do (like pay your taxes for instance). Eventually the government will get around to sending people with guns to force you to comply or else. Which is an initiation of force that Libertarians are sworn not to undertake.

Lastly, old school Libertarians are good philosophical debaters (and I mean that in multiple senses of that term). Among other things it meant that they were actually more interested in having an objectivist philosophical debating society than they were in forming a viable political party. For another, they would never accept the argument that the ends justify the means especially when the means is the implementation of government programs and by extension, initiating force. Hence it is literally true, and I am dead serious about this, that old school Libertarians would not create government programs to save their own lives.

Now, what does all that have to do with "homosexual rights"? Quite simply a lot of what the current "homosexual rights" movement is all about has nothing to do with being left alone to cavort as they want to on their own property. This is especially true in light of the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision and subsequent actions that have been taken by various different homosexual groups. What the Supreme Court has essentially done is legislate from the bench (something they are Constitutionally prohibited from doing) in order to effectively establish a new "religion" (which the Federal government is prohibited from doing) in which homosexual marriage must be permitted or else.

Old school Libertarians would go into borderline frothing at the mouth hysterics over the government forcing people to do things that they didn't want to, especially where issues of conscience were concerned. While they might on some level agree with "homosexual rights" and or "homosexual marriage" they would never countenance the use of government force to implement anything, even something that they might potentially agree with. Given that Mr. Staunch Democrat's government policies that he might like to see implemented literally can't happen without the initiation of force by the government at some level, then Mr. Staunch Democrat would never get the support from old school Libertarians that he thinks he might.

The newer Libertarians are slightly different in outlook. A lot of them are former Republicans who wanted to become part of a political party that took minimizing government as a serious goal. They aren't anywhere near as hard core objectivists as the old school Libertarians are, and they are usually more socially conservative in outlook. They too would oppose a lot of what is taking place under the rubric of "homosexual rights".

So, if you want to talk about people being left alone to do things on their own property that don't hurt other people or damage anybody else's property, then yes, Libertarians would be in with that. If you want to talk about using the force of government to compel people do things that they wouldn't otherwise normally do, Libertarians (both types) would fight you tooth and nail. But as a democrat in general can't take a dump without creating government programs to regulate the amount of water the toilet uses per flush or the specific type of treatment that the sewage has to undergo then there isn't a whole heck of a lot of support that he can expect from Libertarians.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this.

My two cents. I asked for opinions and comment, and that's what I got. Granted that I don't agree with most of it, but it was not my intention to turn this into a debate thread. The situation with Trump is obviously polarizing and I see no need to start generating heat as opposed to light.

Some points were raised that I was not aware of, and we all seem to have handled this without getting too obnoxious. So from my point of view this thread is a "success", at least as far as things stand now.

I may from time to time in the future post threads/make arguments that would likely send some of you screaming up the walls. That usually isn't the desired effect I'm looking for, but from occasionally I feel that certain seriously conservative points have to be made. However, when I do that I'll try to do it when the moderators are around so they can have their cows early :-) This wasn't the time and the place and a defense of Trump wasn't the right subject.

Nevermind. Found it.

...

A couple weeks ago, Trump retweet an image that claimed to contain statistics on crime. It turns out the statistics were false, the listed "source" was fictional, and the image is most easily traced back to Stormfront, a website for neo-nazi's.

...

I would be interested to see if you could provide a link for that. I understand that might take a while for you to find so there is no big rush.

First of all let's see if we can have this discussion in at least a vaguely calm and rational manner such that Chris Lambertz doesn't have a cow when he comes in on Monday morning. I realize that may be something of a stretch, but I think there's at least a fighting chance that we can pull it off. I also realize that at best only a few of the people on this board are likely to agree with my analyses. Regardless, some of the points I am going to raise are ones that I have not seen discussed before and I would like to get reasonable feedback on them. So if I can get some intelligent responses to this sans name calling I would appreciate it.

There is an extent to which various labels can get in the way more than help. But there is also an extent to which trying to have certain types of discussions without resorting to them can result in much space being consumed simply trying to define what it is that one is talking about. It will not come as a shock to most people on this board that I would describe myself as a "conservative". But there are various types of "conservatives" and not all of them are in agreement as to what it is that should be "conserved". So, it might help people if they knew that I was coming from the background of having been active in third party politics since the early 1990's. At various times I have been active with either the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party. I would consider myself to be a "paleo" conservative who is much closer to Ron Paul or Rand Paul if I had to identify a "mainstream" politician that I would associate with.

Coming now to Trump, the topic of this discussion. There is an extent to which I would be "neutral" with a slight negative bias against him. At least part of the reason for that is Trump is going for the Republican nomination and I'm not a Republican. Neither the Libertarian Party nor the Constitution Party have had their conventions yet, so I don't know who their presidential candidates will be. Trump won't really factor into my analysis of who I'm going to vote for until the conventions have been held and I can compare and contrast the candidates who have been selected. If Trump makes that cut then I will look at him more closely than I have to date.

Some of the things that Trump has said I like, and some of the things that he has said have given me pause. The problem from my point of view is that Trump isn't a real "conservative". He understands business well enough, but he doesn't seem to understand the Constitutionally limited role of the Federal government anywhere near as well as I would like him to.

But there's potentially more going on than that. I am also something of a conspiracy theorist and I don't think it would shock that many people if I suggested there were one or more groups of "insiders" trying to rig the governmental and economic systems of this country in their favor. For lack of better terms I will define two of them as being "outside" insiders and "inside" insiders. The "outside" insiders are the ones most people know about and or could identify readily. These are largely the various different sorts of elected pests we have infesting the Congress, the Senate, and the Federal government in general. The "inside" insiders tend to operate more or less behind the scenes and use the "outside" insiders to advance their agenda(s). Think of the Koch brothers, George Soros, and others of that ilk. It is by definition not always obvious who belongs to that group and what they are up to is subject to much speculation. It is arguable that at least some of them are working at cross purposes to one another.

How this relates to Trump is that he has obviously been successful enough in business that he could potentially have a seat at a meeting of "inside" insiders. It should also be noted that at one point in time he explained away his connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton by stating that as a business man he bought politicians when he felt he needed to and Bill and Hillary were simply two of the ones he had paid off. Well, potentially give Trump some credit for honesty, but he also just admitted that he fit my definition of an "inside" insider. This gives me pause.

The second thing that has me somewhat suspicious is we all KNOW the media HATES Trump. How do we know this? The media makes sure that just about every waking minute on umpteen different television and radio programs we are bombarded with negative stories about Trump. Either that or interviews with other presidential candidates where the media is trying to get them to react to something Trump said. But consider that reverse psychology may be at play here. The "establishment" (both groups of insiders) know that they are on the "outs" with the electorate in general. What better way to channel this resentment against the "establishment" than by having the media hammer on an "inside" insider who's been a member of the club all along and portray him as a true alternative to the "establishment"? After all, as both Ron Paul and Rand Paul can attest, if the media really hates your guts/doesn't like your message you will NEVER get enough coverage to make a difference.

But a lot of that is supposition on my part. It is also true that Trump is something of a media mogul in his own right and he could have some of the mainstream media by the contractual short hairs. They simply can't ignore him like they could Ron Paul and Rand Paul and get away with it. So if they can't ignore him they smear him. Why? Come back to one of my previous points about the possibility that various insiders may be working at cross purposes to one another.

The stereotypical "inside" insider comes from a multi generational mega wealthy family that has so much money it has essentially become meaningless. All that really counts then isn't money, it's power. Such an individual is concerned only with increasing their own power to the best of his/her ability, and doesn't fear any consequences because within limits they are unknown and they believe that their mega wealth will protect them. These are the sorts of people who are at the root of pushing for things like the New World Order and a One World Government (NWO/OWG). Which if implemented according to the designs I have seen would effectively turn the entire world into a totalitarian hell hole run by faceless bureaucrats who are responsible, if they are responsible at all, only to people pulling strings from behind the scenes. But in order to do that they have to gut modern nation states as we know them and that most specifically includes America.

In this view of things Trump may simply be acting in his own enlightened self interest. He realizes that the NWO/OWG pipe dream can never actually be implemented because there are too many players in too many countries who will gleefully go along with weakening America as part of the plan and then reneg on their ends of the deal. Thus increasing their own power at the expense of those pushing for the NWO/OWG. To the detriment of everybody who had been caught up in that or was unfortunate enough to be living in a country that their own elites decided to throw under the bus. Trump could be the point man for "inside" insiders who have come to realize that if they gut the nation state that is their own power base, nobody else is going to have any use for them. So Trump crafts a "populist" message that he knows will appeal to a large percentage of those voters who rightfully feel they have been disenfranchised and goes about trying to get himself elected president in order to attempt to fix the problem.

Maybe. I honestly don't know. Trump could be channeling John Hancock in an honest attempt to fix some of the more serious problems we've got. Or he could be something far darker. My jury is out and my analyses are spinning in circles like a dog chasing its tail.

I will simply note for the record that had I bashed any liberal icon to anywhere near the extent that you guys are flaming Trump I would have moderators down on me for being "noninclusive" and other such assorted "bad" behavior. So, given that none of you will ever be seriously challenged in your Paizo created "safe place", flame on.

For the record, Trump would be neither my first choice nor my last one.

Posting in the middle of running errands can be problematic.

At any rate, I mention the game because it was created by a couple of fighter pilots who went into extensive detail on all of this. Never really caught on because you had to spend several hours going through some rather detailed rules before you could even start to play it. But if air combat was a serious interest for you, that game was well worth the time spent to get a handle on it.

Back in the early 80's Simulations Publications Inc (SPI) had a table top hex grid board and cardboard marker game that simulated jet combat really well. Darned if I can recall the name of it though.

Hope everybody has a happy holiday.

Would chucks shucking wood chuck charcoal briquettes in the fire?

There have been a bunch of things happening lately that have been getting my goat. There are so many interconnected problems that I am not sure where to begin. I find myself in the position of the person who when asked what time it is tells you how to build the watch. Unfortunately many of these issues can not be addressed with short sound bites. That is largely because in order to explain why a sound bite or slogan is invalid one has to do more than just shout a counter slogan or sound bite. In many cases one cannot really determine why a specific argument is generating so much heat without stepping back to look at the much bigger picture that the area under contention relates to. When one does that one usually finds that people are disagreeing about that specific point because it is symptomatic of how their world views differ from one another. But without addressing the larger issues all one can do about the point in question usually involves generating more heat than light.

I suppose the first place to start is by considering the question, what is law? There are several ways this question can be answered. One of the more popular ways that this has been answered throughout history is that the law is whatever the government says it is. Every tyrant, despot, dictator, leader, oligarch, monarch and all their various assorted henchmen will agree unanimously on this point. I suspect that there are even people active on this board who might give their knee jerk assent to this proposition without thinking about it. That’s all well and good if those people want to live as somebody else’s dog. Or perhaps they entertain the idea that they want to be the master holding everybody else’s dog leash? Regardless, that’s not the system I would choose to live under, and that’s not the way the system here is supposed to work.

So, what’s the system we’ve got here supposed to be all about? In order to deal with that one has to go back into history and look at what happened. I know there are many people who cannot be bothered with history. There are words which can be used to describe such people which are not pleasant. I will simply point out the quote attributed to Santayana that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it” (or words to that effect). I will comment that history does tend to repeat itself, and over the past couple of millennia the price has been going up each time it does so. Last but not least, I will note that one can’t even figure out whether or not things are getting better or getting worse unless they have enough of a background in various types of historical data to be able to plot a trend line.

With that in mind, let’s look at what the people who played a major role in creating our system said that the role of government should be.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

For those who are not familiar with such things those are the first two sentences of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. According to that government’s job is to help people protect their unalienable rights and government’s just power comes from the consent of the governed. From this it follows that if the government takes powers that the people have not consented to that such use of power would be unjust.

So, is there a way to determine which powers government can justly exercise? In this country that’s supposed to be determined by the Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, rule, regulation, whatever, must be in agreement with it in order to be valid. There are multiple Supreme Court decisions affirming that statement, and indicating that unconstitutional statutes, rules, regulations, whatevers, are void from their inception, not from the date of the decision so branding them as unconstitutional.

But given that last is the case then who gets to decide whether or not something is unconstitutional? The Supreme Court? That is normally considered to be standard operating procedure. But that overlooks a very important point. The Founding Fathers had been under British jurisprudence where things were governed by an unwritten constitution. They had multiple problems with that. So for their country they created a written Constitution. That way the average man on the street wouldn’t need to rely on the court system to figure such things out for him. He would just be able to read the Constitution for himself and come to his own decision as to whether or not the statute, rule, regulation, whatever he was being subjected to was actually valid. If as a result of this little exercise a large enough percentage of the population decided that the statute, rule, regulation, whatever, was in fact unconstitutional and refused to obey it, and or refused to vote to convict people of violating it in jury trials; then it was effectively nullified regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court ever actually ruled on it. No lawyer need be consulted. This is one of the more important examples of the consent of the governed being required as the basis for government action.

So, in what is arguably the most egregious case in U.S. history, we recently had 5 out of 9 Supreme Court judges legislate from the bench to redefine what marriage is in this country. This is totally unconstitutional on its face for multiple reasons. The first is that the power to legislate has been granted exclusively to the Congress. Therefore the Supreme Court does not have the legitimate authority to legislate anything. Neither has any portion of the federal government been given the Constitutional authority to regulate marriage. Last but most definitely not least, by acting in an area that had long been held to be the province of religion, the Supreme Court had just effectively established an unnamed national religion where homosexual marriage is valid. And if all that were not enough, in Kentucky upwards of 70% of the voters there had voted to amend the State Constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. So the consent of the governed in Kentucky and in other States where similar amendments had been made to their State Constitutions just got thrown out the window by the judicial fiat of the Supreme Court. But without the consent of the governed there can be no just exercise of governmental power.

However, in this case, there is actually an even more important matter to consider. It would not matter if all 9 Supreme Court Justices, all 435 Representatives, all 100 Senators, the President, the Vice President, all the federal government Department Heads, all the members of the American Bar Association and even an overwhelming majority of the American people were proclaiming that something was law. From the standpoint of traditional Judeo Christian religious beliefs there is no power on this earth that has the legitimate authority to override God’s Moral Law. Period. End of discussion.

When confronted with a situation where God’s Moral Law is in conflict with the statues, rules, regulations, whatevers of some earthly government the only recourse left to the sincere believer is to determine what level and kind of resistance they will offer. Period. End of discussion.

Now to consider the case of “marriage equality” on its face it will first be observed that for all practical purposes it is the intellectual and logical equivalent of saying that “2 plus 2 equals 5”. I will note first of all that the ancient Greeks who were no strangers to homosexuality and were definitely familiar with the concept of marriage would never have countenanced “homosexual marriage”. They would have viewed it as being logically absurd. And given that ancient Greek culture was seen as being especially acknowledging of homosexuality one could not simply brand them as being a bunch of foaming at the mouth raving homophobes.

Then the Romans came along. They had been left with an incredibly difficult task. But they managed to rise to the occasion and succeed. The Romans actually turned out to be more perverted than the Greeks. And even the Romans did not countenance homosexual marriage. I will state furthermore that I am totally unaware of any civilization level culture in any location at any time from earliest recorded history right up to a decade or so ago that would ever have countenanced homosexual marriage.

Now, if all we were dealing with was a small minority of silly people marching around proclaiming the intellectual and logical equivalent of “2 plus 2 equals 5” and then going home to perform whatever perverted acts turned them on, I really wouldn’t care that much. Also if all we were talking about was homosexuals desiring to have a “church wedding”, then God knows that there are more than enough apostatized and damnably heretical so called “Christian” churches that any homosexual “couple” anywhere should be able to find a place where they would be welcome to make a mockery of God’s sacred institution of marriage in something that resembled a Christian church. And again if that was all we were talking about I really wouldn’t care that much. God Himself will permit people to engage in acts which will result in their burning in hell for all eternity. Given that is the case then it makes little sense for me to get either overly concerned about that or even attempt to prevent it somehow.

Unfortunately for everybody concerned events of the past few months have shown that what was actually intended was far more of a serious problem than that. We have seen florists, bakers, restaurant owners and other service industry providers in several different States subjected to legal action and fined out of business. Not because they were totally and completely refusing to serve homosexuals and or other minorities under any circumstances. Not because they were being active on the forefront of attempting to oppress homosexuals and or other minorities. But simply because when they were asked to provide services for a homosexual wedding they stated that their religious beliefs prevented them from taking any part/having any role in such a ceremony.

Given that I have made clear above that for any sincere believer civil disobedience/passive resistance to statues, rules, regulations, whatevers that violate God’s Moral Law is mandated there should be no surprise at all over that sort of response. Indeed, a case could be made that the homosexuals in question were actively seeking out people who they knew in advance would be likely to be unable to provide services for their weddings for the sole purpose of subjecting them to court action when they refused. Thus what is at stake is not a question of a tiny minority of silly people attempting to do perverted things on their own. It is a question of the extent to which sincere believing Christians can be persecuted because they can not in good conscience go along with whatever the latest legal fashion that violates God’s Moral Law happens to be. In which case we are talking about setting in motion a train of events which has the potential to tear the country apart at the seams.

As if all of the above were not controversial enough, there is even more burning thermite and molten lava that needs to be played with. It is quite common for homosexuals to loudly proclaim that, “I was born this way”. By portraying themselves as helpless victims of genetically miswired genetalia/sexual desires they go on to claim two additional things as a result of that. The first is that they can not be held to be responsible for their actions. The second is that they are exactly the same sort of minority as any racial group would be.

The general rule though is that the more loudly a liberal shouts something, the more likely it is to be false. This is no exception. There is no valid scientific evidence which supports the homosexuals’ claim. In order to demonstrate this I will briefly look at two lines of evidence. The first is that it can be demonstrated that a person can change their sexual orientation over time by exercising a certain amount of will power and effort. But if that is the case then homosexuality has just been demonstrated to be something that isn’t genetically hardwired because it can be changed.

The second and more conclusive piece of evidence has been offered by identical twin studies. If homosexuality were either hardwired or the result of a significant genetic component, then it should be almost impossible to find instances where one member of a pair of identical twins was homosexual and the other was not. At the very least one would expect under those circumstances that if one member of a pair of identical twins was homosexual, the observed probability that the other twin was also homosexual would be well above 50%.

Well, identical twins have been very intensively studied through time. This is because observations about what things they have in common and what things they don’t can provide the sorts of insights into human genetics that you simply can’t get in any other way. Some of these studies have covered thousands of pairs of identical twins scattered over a dozen or more countries for time frames spanning decades. In some cases the twins were raised together, in other cases they were raised separately. While there was some variation in the observed probability that one homosexual twin would have a sibling who was also homosexual, the highest probability that was actually observed was … 14%. Thus the claim that there is a significant genetic component to homosexuality fails the test most likely to demonstrate that claim beyond a shadow of a doubt. Thus homosexuals are not “born that way”. Thus they have no claim that they cannot be held to be responsible for their actions. Thus they are not a “racial” minority.

It would be remiss of me if I did not mention the good news before I ended this rant. Because it can be demonstrated that homosexuals are not helpless victims of genetically miswired genetalia/sexual desires, then they can change. They do not have to burn in hell for all eternity. Their sins can be forgiven and they can have the same hope of salvation that any other person who becomes a sincere believer in Jesus Christ would have. But there are certain steps that must first be observed. They have got to decide that they want to change. They are going to have to earnestly and sincerely repent. This means that they have to admit that they were wrong and stop engaging in homosexual activities. They have to do their level best to live the remainder of their lives in accordance with God’s Moral Law. If they do those things, publicly announce that Jesus Christ is their Lord, and believe that he was raised from the dead then God will extend saving grace through their faith and they will be able to enter the kingdom of heaven just as anybody else could.

Clinically Depressed Poodle wrote:

Please, you can't fool me into believing anything I'm part of can bring happiness.

*From the abyss* You have no idea how much joy it brings to my heart to see you punted into orbit. In fact, I'll show you tomorrow if you want.

Hey, if you punt him to Korea I can get a refund on that plane ticket.

CDP, I'm sure there are people out there who would love you and invite you into their homes for dinner.

*Hands CDP a one way plane ticket to Korea.*

This will be a short and mostly polite rant. It's move-in for the college now and there are a lot of non locals wandering around town trying to figure out where they are going. And this year I have mostly managed to keep my cool. It's all good. But there are a couple of things that do get to me.

To the out of state cars who are slowing traffic to a crawl because you are confused by all our one-way streets: Chill. I know it seems confusing. Nobody expects you to have the city memorized. Just relax and trust your GPS. No matter how inane all those turns seem to you, that is the right way to get there. So stop trying to find a [expletive deleted] shortcut. Thank you.
To the obviously non-local pedestrians: Look, this is a very pedestrian friendly place, and we have lots of crosswalks that are well marked. So [expletive deleted] use them, you [expletive deleted] idiots. No, running out into traffic is bloody well not okay. And in a contest between car and pedestrian, you always [expletive deleted] lose. Use some [expletive deleted] common sense!
So that's about it. I'm sure we'll all get along just fine as long as we can all remember kindergarten level basic road safety. (Oh dear......we are all doomed....)

I would recommend modifying your vehicle with the installation of an aftermarket heavy duty bumper. As for GPS, not everybody has it and it can be unreliable as map updates are not always accurate.

*Throws a shoe at CDP.*

Beware the flock of Norwegian Blue Parrots.

Na, KC is more along the lines of Oscar the Grouch living in a trash can on Sesame Street, only without any redeeming characteristics.

The RNC has Trump. ;-)

I understand that Cthulhu doesn't form parties, and he usually gets everybody else to run ... away from him.

Convinces the DNC to run Darth Vader as a candidate for President. He's got the poll numbers, he's got the name recognition, and he's even undocumented. What more could they ask for?

Goes to Paris for a tango.

Listens to the sound of crickets quietly chirping in the background.

Then sets up a stereo system with truly humongous speakers and starts playing "Flight of the Valkyries" at max volume.

Is visible pacemaker parabellum.

<sigh> Autocorrect and Latin do not mix well. Let's try it again.

Si vis pacem parabellum.

@Irontruth: You have a right to your opinion, I disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it, etc.

I just...man. What did we do to you?

Possibly being so young they couldn't have all the booze they wanted lying around without having to worry about potentially getting busted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Sometimes it's not so much the immaturity of young people that is at issue (because some of them can act mature) as much as it is a question of legal liability.

Back in the day when I was in the Navy, the rule was that federal law with respect to drinking age applied on base. Which meant that 18 year old service members could drink on base regardless of the fact that the drinking age in the state the base was located in was 21.

To me this made perfect sense. Give the younger guys a chance to get used to alcohol on base where nothing seriously bad was likely to happen. The alternative being that they could end up getting their first experiences with alcohol in a foreign port where the drinking age was defined as the ability to hold a glass, $20 US could feed a family of 4 for a week, the locals had rolling sailors down to an art form, and the younger guys hadn't had a chance to figure out what their personal limits were.

Then they changed the regulations and drinking age on base was altered to conform with the drinking age of the state the base was located in. In addition to the increased potential for the sort of problems noted above, now you had to keep careful track of who you were partying with on base as you could get nailed under the UCMJ for having alcohol with people who were too young. I found the entire situation, especially as it pertained to some of the people I knew to be ludicrous. Case in point was one guy, 20 years old, married, had an infant son, studying to be a nuclear power plant operator, but God help him if he had booze in his apartment. Bah, expletive deleted humbug.

*Scrounges any leftover cheese and wine that looks like it might still be edible and wanders off to another thread.*

Redheads confirmed for genetic outliers

Wouldn't it be so stupid if we only categorized hair color in terms of blackness/brownness/blondness, and then in most cases completely overlooked the existence of redheads?

What about bald people? Are they somehow less than human, not even rating a place in your scheme? Are you some sort of Savalasophobe?

:-)

Make way! Make way! Preparations for Fimbulwinter and the coming ice age are in progress. We need to park the snow plows over here and put several metric tons of road salt in a great big pile over there. We should also ensure that we've got enough wood, charcoal, stove pellets, natural gas and propane supplies on hand that we can take care of people who might run out after the blizzards hit.

Oh! We also need a whole bunch of different styles and types of chains for people to put on their car tires. As well as bags of sand or cat litter so people can have some extra weight for traction in their vehicles. Not to mention all the ice scrapers that will be needed, and cans of pressurized alcohol to use for unfreezing door locks.

Darn! Almost forgot all the spare wool blankets that we need to have on hand just in case. Go ahead and pile them over there next to that guy sitting in the barca lounger not doing anything.

*Hands Blacque a French flag that has been designed so that the red and blue sections can be removed leaving only the white.*

There, now you have all your bases covered. You can wave the tricolor and surrender at the same time. :-)

lucky7 wrote:

I like rocking chairs, man. I wish I had one.

There might be one in our basement.

Or I could be thinking of someone else's basement.

Or I could be thinking of a rocking chair that's not only not ours but not actually in a basement at all.

My memory sucks.

I am in no position to throw rocks. While I can claim to have a photographic memory, trying to find the film can be a problem. :-)

I'll get you all for this...I'LL MAKE YOU ALL PAY! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

*Sitting back on his rocking chair on the porch, gets out a bottle of geritol.*

Says, "It will be right here when you need it lucky7."

:-)

Unfortunately there's a certain amount of truth in it. There are good basketball players out there. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.

Unfortunately there's a certain amount of truth in it. There are good car mechanics out there. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.

Unfortunately there's a certain amount of truth in it. There are good doctors out there. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.

Unfortunately there's a certain amount of truth in it. There are good oyster floaters out there. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority.

The majority of people in any given profession are average, or worse.

Those basketball players who are not good enough are not retained on professional sports teams.

The majority of mechanics did not graduate in the bottom 1/3 of their college classes. In the overwhelming majority of cases, whether or not a mechanic has actually fixed a problem can be objectively determined in relatively short order. Those mechanics who have a demonstrated inability to fix things in a timely manner are not normally retained as mechanics.

The majority of doctors did not graduate in the bottom 1/3 of their classes. Doctors can and do lose their licenses for malpractice.

The overwhelming majority of jobs/positions in the world are such that it can usually be objectively determined whether the people doing those jobs are worth retaining in those positions.

If after 12 years of "public education" the system produces a bunch of borderline drooling idiots who can barely read and write at the 8th grade level, have poor comprehension of what little they can read, believe that their feelings determine reality and that the only thing that counts is that they feel good about themselves, and have been pretty much programmed to do what they are told, everybody except the teachers and the public education system will be blamed. All the teachers, guidance counselors, administrators and curriculum producers will go on doing exactly what they were doing before with no significant changes. NEA and other unions forbid that teachers or any other part of the process be subjected to any sort of objective performance review.

Unfortunately there's a certain amount of truth in it. There are good teachers out there. Unfortunately they seem to be in the minority and more often than not are handicapped by curriculum that have become little more than platforms for inculcating political ideologies instead of actually teaching anything useful. As for the rest, the dirty little secret when I was going to college was that the dimmest bulbs on campus were the education majors. The statistic that was floating around was that they normally came from the bottom 1/3 of graduating classes.

It needs to be said
That it truly is a shame
How 99.9% of the lawyers
Give the rest a bad name