Muda69

9 hours ago, gonzoron said:

Covington Catholic, disrespecting minorities since 2012.

Ahh, so "payback" by the members of the religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites in the form of racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse towards the children from Covington Catholic, is therefore justified?  Tell me Gonzo, what children from Covington Catholic that were in Washington D.C. are also in the above picture?

10 hours ago, gonzoron said:

Fixed that for ya

So you don't believe that members of the religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites had anything to do with this confrontation?

2 hours ago, gonzoron said:

Blame the black guy. 

Unfortunately in this incident "black guys" did seem to be an instigating factor:

FTA:

Quote

Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby. The BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best describes as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of white people, Christians, and gays. DC-area Black Hebrews are known to spout particularly vile bigotry.

9 minutes ago, foxbat said:

BTW, if you haven't see these robotics competitions, they are a lot of fun ... especially after you get past the qualifying rounds and the gloves come off.

I'm in.  If I can built a robot like Blendo.

https://mises.org/wire/decline-scholar-and-decline-academia

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The academic scholar, along with the great teacher, is vanishing from the faculties of the universities. Specialists occupy the places that they leave. The first victims of this process are the students. When the professorial specialists hold a lecture, they have little else to teach that goes beyond their tiny field of expertise. About the areas other than the field of specialization, the one-dimensional expert is as ignorant as the students. When the experts teach their specialization, the content is too advanced for the students to understand and should the experts go into the wider area of the discipline, their discourse becomes amateurish. The decline of wisdom in academia that has happened over the past decades results from this change.

Scholars, Teachers, and the Specialists

Of the three ideal types of university professors — the scholar, the teacher, and the specialist — the scholar is the one who combines both a profound knowledge of a field of expertise with a solid knowledge of other areas of knowledge. Until the 1970s, many universities in Europe and the United States had scholars. While only a few of these scholars enjoyed the serendipity that is the realm of the genius, many of them excelled in the same way as the great masters. The scholars spread knowledge combined with wisdom because a great scholar is not only a researcher but always also a great teacher.

With the scholar, the great teacher is also vanishing from university faculties. Different from the scholar, the great teacher in its pure form does not excel in a specialization. Yet his strength is a broad and accurate knowledge of the subfields of his discipline and his ability to bring his insights to the students. The great teacher opens the doors to knowledge. He knows about the many entrances that exist and the many ways of finding one’s way through the labyrinth of knowledge.

When there were still scholars and great teachers at the faculties, not only the students would profit but also the experts. The scholars and the great teachers in the departments were the promoters of communication. They brought the faculty together in a common discussion.

In the past, the great teachers and scholars would hold the introductory lecture. They would compare their chosen academic discipline with other areas and would help the students to go on with confidence or choose another path. In the modern university, this has ended. Nowadays, most colleges relegate the introductory courses to substitute professors. These assistants and adjuncts are at the beginning of their career and cannot be scholars or good teachers and that they likewise are also not yet experts. There are signs that this erosion is most advanced at the so-called “elite” institutions where also the dread of political correctness is most present and the cuddling of the American mind most advanced.

Rise of the Specialist

Over time, the lump-sum funding of the university had to make way for getting outside financing. The benefits of scholarship and teaching counted less while the new criteria for academic advancement favored the specialist whose competence is limited to a tiny field of expertise. To get funding, the disciplines had to put on the “mantle of science.” Scholarship had to make room for scientism.

While the paper output has grown, their quality has declined. Across the whole range of the natural and the behavioral sciences the so-called “irreproducibility crisis” has thrown doubts on the reliability of even the most prominent results. Failing to reproduce published research afflicts a wide range of disciplines, ranging from medicine and psychology to the social sciences. Investigations have revealed that subsequent studies cannot reproduce established findings. The problem encompasses the improper application of statistics, biased research techniques, lack of accountability, and political groupthink. The pressure of “publish or perish” has led to a scientific culture toward delivering positive results even if they are unwarranted by the data basis.

As some authors claim, most published research findings in medicine are false. Another study finds that researchers failed to reproduce most of another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own results. Other investigations show that outright fraud is behind the fabricated results. After the Sokol affair of years ago, new blunt hoaxes with made-up papers have revealed the political bias of some academic journals.

The more the specialists dominate in a university, the more the original purpose of a university to educate and advance knowledge will suffer. Numerical performance measurement, which is even misplaced in the business world, becomes a scourge in areas such as education that is much less fit for numerical evaluation than business. As Jerry Z. Muller explains in his Tyranny of Metrics, applying formal yardsticks to measure academic performance does little to advance knowledge but has led to gaming, cheating, and goal diversion. The cascade of rules and regulations hampers the attainment of the original purpose of the university. Misaligned incentives work in favor of the specialist, yet they drive the efforts away from the meaning of what a university should be.

In many areas, academic production has reached a stage of diminishing returns and scientific progress has become stagnant. Public trust in science is still holding up but the attraction of pseudo sciences is rising and there is only a small step from the popularity of pseudo sciences to anti-science. It is in the self-interest of the specialists who now dominate the departments that more scholars get hired.

A major step to diminish the rat race of publish or perish would come from phasing out public funding of science. It is a myth that scientific progress depends on public money. Without public funding the chance of innovative breakthrough does not diminish. On the contrary: public financing of research directs time and money not to innovation but to conventional research areas and traditional methods.

Conclusion

In many academic fields, the awareness is growing that the demise of the scholar has impoverished the intellectual life in the universities. The decline of the universities has accelerated over the past couple of decades. Driven by the encroachment of the state, the institutions of higher learning have succumbed to the government. Scientism has crowded out the scholars and the great teachers. The foremost victims of this process are the students who no longer receive a good education. Both in terms of the formation of students and of the research output that benefits do not justify the costs. The withdrawal of state intervention would be the first step to a rejuvenated academia, beginning with a cut and a stop of the public funding of research.

Agreed.  This specialization needs to occur outside the halls of academia, not in them.

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-video#comment

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Partial video footage of students from a Catholic high school allegedly harassing a Native American veteran after the anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., over the weekend quickly went viral, provoking widespread condemnation of the kids on social media. Various media figures and Twitter users called for them to be doxed, shamed, or otherwise punished, and school administrators said they would consider expulsion.

But the rest of the video—nearly two hours of additional footage showing what happened before and after the encounter—adds important context that strongly contradicts the media's narrative.

Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby. The BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best describes as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of white people, Christians, and gays. DC-area Black Hebrews are known to spout particularly vile bigotry.

 

Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion: The teens couldn't quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting. It's not at all clear this was intended as an act of mockery rather than solidarity.

One student did not get out of Phillips way as he marched, and gave the man a hard stare and a smile that many have described as creepy. This moment received the most media coverage: The teen has been called the product of a "hate factory" and likened to a school shooter, segregation-era racist, and member of the Ku Klux Klan. I have no idea what he was thinking, but portraying this as an example of obvious, racially-motivated hate is a stretch. Maybe he simply had no idea why this man was drumming in his face, and couldn't quite figure out the best response? It bears repeating that Phillips approached him, not the other way around.

And that's all there is to it. Phillips walked away after several minutes, the Black Hebrew Israelites continued to insult the crowd, and nothing else happened.

You can judge for yourself. Here is video footage of the full incident, from the perspective of the black nationalists. Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that "you give faggots rights," which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school's sports cheers.

It was at this moment that Phillips, who had attended a nearby peace protest led by indigenous peoples, decided to intervene. He would later tell The Detroit Free Press that the teenagers "were in the process of attacking these four black individuals" and he decided to attempt to de-escalate the situation. He seems profoundly mistaken: The video footage taken by the black nationalists shows no evidence the white teenagers had any intention of attacking. Nevertheless, Phillips characterized the kids as "beasts" and the hate-group members as "their prey":

"There was that moment when I realized I've put myself between beast and prey," Phillips said. "These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that."

Again, all the evidence suggests that Phillips got it backward.

He also claimed that he heard chants of "build the wall." While I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the kids indeed chanted this—those who were wearing MAGA hats are presumably Trump supporters—I did not hear a single utterance of the phrase in the nearly two hours of video footage I watched. Admittedly, the kids do a lot of chanting and it's not always possible to tell what they are saying. Their stated explanation is that they engaged in a series of school sports chants: That's what one student told a local news reporter. His account largely tracks with the video.

"We are an all-male school that loves to get hyped up," said this student. "And as we have done for years prior, we decided to do some cheers to pass time. In the midst of our cheers, we were approached by a group of adults led by Nathan Phillips, with Phillips beating his drum. They forced their way to the center of our group. We initially thought this was a cultural display since he was beating along to our cheers and so we clapped to the beat." According to this student, the smiling student was grinning because he was enjoying the music, but eventually became confused, along with everyone else. (Indeed, multiple people can be heard to shout, "what is going on?")

It would be impossible to definitively state that none of the young men did anything wrong, offensive, or problematic, at some point, and maybe the smiling student was attempting to intimidate Phillips. But there's shockingly little evidence of wrongdoing, unless donning a Trump hat and standing in a group of other people doing the same is now an act of harassment or violence. Phillips' account, meanwhile, is at best flawed, and arguably deliberately misleading.

Unless other information emerges, the school's best move would be to have a conversation with the boys about the incident, perhaps discuss some strategies for remaining on perfect behavior at highly charged political rallies—where everybody is recording everything on a cell phone—and let that be the end of it.

The boys are undoubtedly owed an apology from the numerous people who joined this social media pile-on. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest major media misfires in quite some time.

Updated at 8:30 p.m.: Nick Sandmann, the Covington student in the middle of the controversy, has released a statement. Here it is in full:

I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me.

I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.

When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I did not interact with them. I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group.

The protestors said hateful things. They called us "racists," "bigots," "white crackers," "faggots," and "incest kids." They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would "harvest his organs." I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.

Because we were being loudly attacked and taunted in public, a student in our group asked one of our teacher chaperones for permission to begin our school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group. The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature and sound like what you would hear at any high school. Our chaperone gave us permission to use our school chants. We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.

At no time did I hear any student chant anything other than the school spirit chants. I did not witness or hear any students chant "build that wall" or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false. Our chants were loud because we wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protestors.

After a few minutes of chanting, the Native American protestors, who I hadn't previously noticed, approached our group. The Native American protestors had drums and were accompanied by at least one person with a camera.

The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.

I never interacted with this protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.

I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation. I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict. I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand.

During the period of the drumming, a member of the protestor's entourage began yelling at a fellow student that we "stole our land" and that we should "go back to Europe." I heard one of my fellow students begin to respond. I motioned to my classmate and tried to get him to stop engaging with the protestor, as I was still in the mindset that we needed to calm down tensions.

I never felt like I was blocking the Native American protestor. He did not make any attempt to go around me. It was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I am not sure why.

The engagement ended when one of our teachers told me the busses had arrived and it was time to go. I obeyed my teacher and simply walked to the busses. At that moment, I thought I had diffused the situation by remaining calm, and I was thankful nothing physical had occurred.

I never understood why either of the two groups of protestors were engaging with us, or exactly what they were protesting at the Lincoln Memorial. We were simply there to meet a bus, not become central players in a media spectacle. This is the first time in my life I've ever encountered any sort of public protest, let alone this kind of confrontation or demonstration.

I was not intentionally making faces at the protestor. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation. I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me – to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.

I harbor no ill will for this person. I respect this person's right to protest and engage in free speech activities, and I support his chanting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial any day of the week. I believe he should re-think his tactics of invading the personal space of others, but that is his choice to make.

I am being called every name in the book, including a racist, and I will not stand for this mob-like character assassination of my family's name. My parents were not on the trip, and I strive to represent my family in a respectful way in all public settings.

I have received physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults. One person threatened to harm me at school, and one person claims to live in my neighborhood. My parents are receiving death and professional threats because of the social media mob that has formed over this issue.

I love my school, my teachers and my classmates. I work hard to achieve good grades and to participate in several extracurricular activities. I am mortified that so many people have come to believe something that did not happen – that students from my school were chanting or acting in a racist fashion toward African Americans or Native Americans. I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart, and did not witness any of my classmates doing that.

I cannot speak for everyone, only for myself. But I can tell you my experience with Covington Catholic is that students are respectful of all races and cultures. We also support everyone's right to free speech. I am not going to comment on the words or account of Mr. Phillips, as I don't know him and would not presume to know what is in his heart or mind. Nor am I going to comment further on the other protestors, as I don't know their hearts or minds, either.

I have read that Mr. Phillips is a veteran of the United States Marines. I thank him for his service and am grateful to anyone who puts on the uniform to defend our nation. If anyone has earned the right to speak freely, it is a U.S. Marine veteran.

I can only speak for myself and what I observed and felt at the time. But I would caution everyone passing judgement based on a few seconds of video to watch the longer video clips that are on the internet, as they show a much different story than is being portrayed by people with agendas.

I provided this account of events to the Diocese of Covington so they may know exactly what happened, and I stand ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation they are conducting.

A sad incident, for all involved.  But I contend if would have never made the MSM had the MAGA hats not been worn.

http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/25776964/insurance-market-football-evaporating-causing-major-threat-nfl-pop-warner-colleges-espn

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From the NFL to rec leagues, football is facing a stark, new threat: an evaporating insurance market that is fundamentally altering the economics of the sport, squeezing and even killing off programs faced with higher costs and a scarcity of available coverage, an Outside the Lines investigation has found.

The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma, according to multiple sources; just one carrier is willing to provide workers' compensation coverage for NFL teams. Before concussion litigation roiled the NFL beginning in 2011, at least a dozen carriers occupied the insurance market for pro football, according to industry experts.

The insurance choices for football helmet manufacturers are equally slim; one helmet company executive said he was aware of only one. Pop Warner Little Scholars, which oversees 225,000 youth players, was forced to switch insurers after its longtime carrier, a subsidiary of the insurance giant AIG, refused to provide coverage without an exclusion for any neurological injury.

"People say football will never go away, but if we can't get insurance, it will," Jon Butler, Pop Warner's executive director, lamented to colleagues after discovering that just one carrier was willing to cover the organization for head trauma, according to a person who was present.

Dr. Julian Bailes, Pop Warner's medical director and a member of the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee, told Outside the Lines "insurance coverage is arguably the biggest threat to the sport."

With youth participation rates continuing to fall, the insurance crisis adds another layer of uncertainty to the future of America's No. 1 sport. Insurance companies, which earn billions of dollars each year by taking on risk, are increasingly reluctant to bet on football and other sports associated with traumatic brain injuries. Some insurance industry executives compare the issue to asbestos, an occupational hazard that has cost insurers at least $100 billion. Traumatic brain injury "is an emerging latent exposure the likes of which the insurance industry has not seen in decades," Joe Cellura, president of North American casualty at Allied World, wrote in a blog post last year for the website Risk & Insurance. Cellura declined to comment for this story.

"Basically, the world has left the marketplace," Alex Fairly, CEO of the Fairly Group, an Amarillo, Texas-based risk management firm whose clients include the NFL and Major League Baseball, told Outside the Lines. "If you're football, hockey or soccer, the insurance business doesn't want you."

...

Last spring, the Maricopa County Community Colleges in Arizona, citing costs and potential liability, announced that they were eliminating football at four schools, including a three-time junior college national champion. A task force concluded that the teams, consisting of 358 players, accounted for nearly one-third of all insurance costs for the district's 200,000 students.

In Bakersfield, California, the North of the River Recreation and Park District terminated its tackle football program at the end of this season, citing plummeting participation and rising insurance costs.

Another recreation department, in Hawkins County, Tennessee, decided to keep tackle football this year, even though its longtime insurer refused to cover the sport. The department found a new carrier under a policy that drove up overall insurance costs 27 percent to more than $13,000. The department's director, Tim Wilson, citing falling participation and rising costs, predicted that youth football will disappear within a decade. "We have insurance now, but who knows for how long?" he said.

...

For this story, Outside the Lines hired legal researchers to document the growing universe of concussion litigation -- the primary reason behind the insurance industry's fears. Since 2005, when the first case of brain disease was reported in a former NFL player, thousands of concussion-related lawsuits have been filed in the United States, including class-action suits against the NFL, the NHL and the NCAA. Since the NFL settlement, concussion-related lawsuits involving at least 18 sports and activities have been filed in at least 29 states, Outside the Lines' research shows. They target not only professional sports but also youth leagues, school districts, athletic associations, equipment manufacturers, medical providers, coaches and athletic trainers.

The result is potentially catastrophic for organizations such as rec departments, youth leagues and school districts, as insurers seek to transfer risk back to those entities, which can least afford a major financial blow. In 2016, Pop Warner, which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit organization, settled a lawsuit with the family of a former player who died of suicide and was found to have had CTE. In Washington state, the family of a high school football player who suffered a catastrophic brain injury won a $5 million settlement after arguing that coaches violated the Lystedt Law, which prescribes protocols for handling head injuries. The law has been replicated in all 50 states.

...

Lee Gaby, an insurance consultant and former risk manager for hundreds of public school districts, said some insurance companies have begun to require concussion management plans and technology such as neuropsychological testing kits as "hammers" to encourage behavior that reduces claims.

But Gaby said he fears it won't be enough for some companies wary of huge potential losses.

"I'm tending to be on the side that this is going to be a lot bigger than we think. I don't know if I'd compare it to asbestos. I'm somewhere in the middle," he said. "But I just have a foreboding sense that there's so much more we don't know. No one wants to be the last to find out and be the one that's writing all the risk."

As claims mount, Gaby, who played high school football in Georgia, said he fears that an increasing number of school administrators will decide: "No more risk, no more football."

...

Dire times.  Maybe the risk, and the cost,  for youth tackle football is too great.

8 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Judging by how bad everyone in Indiana knows government, it would probably be best if some sort of change was done. When I went to BNL, government was a half-year course. Is that still the case statewide?

My government class in the 1980's was all year, and required for graduation.

11 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Everywhere I’ve worked, management chose the curriculum.

By "management" you means the State government, correct?

2 minutes ago, swordfish said:

I wish I had Muda's old "cats playing ping-pong" gif - it would apply here......

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-denies-pelosi-aircraft-for-foreign-trip-in-response-to-call-for-state-of-the-union-delay

President Trump on Thursday abruptly denied military aircraft to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a foreign trip just minutes before the congressional delegation was set to depart, in a stunning response to her call to delay the State of the Union address amid the government shutdown.

In a curt letter, Trump said her trip has been “postponed.”

“Due to the Shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed. We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the Shutdown is over. In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Trump wrote.

CLICK HERE TO READ TRUMP'S LETTER TO PELOSI

 

“I also feel that, during this period, it would be better if you were in Washington negotiating with me and joining the Strong Border Security movement to end the Shutdown. Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative.”

 

According to sources, the president pulled the plug on her aircraft as she was about to leave for her overseas trip. Her congressional delegation military aircraft was slated to leave at 3 p.m. ET.

A senior White House official also told Fox News that all congressional delegation travel by military aircraft is now postponed.

A source told Fox News that when moving to cancel Thursday's flight, the White House reasoned that the trip would keep Pelosi out of the country beyond next Tuesday night—when the next government pay period would occur.

"If she had gone on this trip she would have guaranteed that 800,000 federal workers would not receive their second paycheck because she would not have been here to negotiate any kind of deal," a senior White House official said Thursday.

Happy to oblige.  Watching Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Trump play petty political games is lot like watching these cats:

It's spelled "Ocasio" btw, not "Ocasoi".

And let's get they "AOC is dumb" stuff out of the way:

https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding

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...

Since America's beginning, there has been intense debate about slavery, precisely because it raises questions about this nation's dedication to liberty and human equality. Does the existence of slavery in the context of the American Founding, its motivating principles, and the individuals who proclaimed those principles make the United States or its origins less defendable as a guide for just government?

At the time of the American Founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40 percent of the population. Many of the leading American Founders-most notably Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison-owned slaves, but many did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was "an atrocious debasement of human nature" and "a source of serious evils." He and Benjamin Rush founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1774.

John Jay, who was the president of a similar society in New York, believed:

the honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.

John Adams opposed slavery his entire life as a "foul contagion in the human character" and "an evil of colossal magnitude." James Madison called it "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."

From his first thoughts about the Revolution, to his command of the Continental army, to his presidential administration, George Washington's life and letters reflect a statesman struggling with the reality and inhumanity of slavery in the midst of the free nation being constructed. In 1774, Washington compared the alternative to Americans asserting their rights against British rule to being ruled "till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway."

When Washington took command of the Continental army in 1775, there were both slaves and free blacks in its ranks (about 5,000 blacks served in the Continental army.) Alexander Hamilton proposed a general plan to enlist slaves in the army that would in the end "give them their freedom with their muskets," and Washington supported such a policy (with the approval of Congress) in South Carolina and Georgia, two of the largest slaveholding states.

In 1786, Washington wrote of slavery, "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." He devised a plan to rent his lands and turn his slaves into paid laborers, and at the end of his presidency he quietly freed several of his own household slaves. In the end, he could take it no more and decreed in his will that his slaves would become free upon the death of his wife. The old and infirm were to be cared for while they lived, and the children were to be taught to read and write and trained in a useful skill until they were age 25. Washington's estate paid for this care until 1833.

During his first term in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but the motion was soundly defeated. His 1774 draft instructions to the Virginia Delegates for the First Continental Congress, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, called for an end to the slave trade: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state." That same year, the First Continental Congress agreed to discontinue the slave trade and boycott other nations that engaged in it. The Second Continental Congress reaffirmed this policy in 1776.

Jefferson's draft constitution for the state of Virginia forbade the importation of slaves, and his draft of the Declaration of Independence-written at a time when he himself had inherited about 200 slaves-included a paragraph condemning the British king for introducing slavery into the colonies and continuing the slave trade:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

These words were especially offensive to delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, who were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery went so far as to violate the "most sacred rights of life and liberty." So, like some of Jefferson's more expressive phrases attacking the king, these lines were dropped in the editing process.

Nevertheless, Jefferson's central point-that all men are created equal-remained as an obvious rebuke to the institution. From very early in the movement for independence, it was understood that calls for colonial freedom from British tyranny had clear implications for domestic slavery. "The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white and black," James Otis wrote in 1761. "Does it follow that it is the right to enslave a man because he is black?" In the wake of independence, state after state passed legislation restricting or banning the institution.

In 1774, Rhode Island had already passed legislation providing that all slaves imported thereafter should be freed. In 1776, Delaware prohibited the slave trade and removed restraints on emancipation, as did Virginia in 1778. In 1779, Pennsylvania passed legislation providing for gradual emancipation, as did New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the early 1780s, and New York and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804. In 1780, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state's bill of rights made slavery unconstitutional. By the time of the U.S. Constitution, every state (except Georgia) had at least proscribed or suspended the importation of slaves.

Thomas Jefferson's 1784 draft plan of government for the western territories prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude after the year 1800. The final Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress (and passed again two years later by the First Congress and signed into law by President George Washington), prohibited slavery in the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. That same year, Jefferson published his Notes on the State of Virginia, which included this passage about slavery:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever ... I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

When delegates convened at Philadelphia to write a new constitution, however, strong sectional interests supported the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. "The real difference of interests," Madison noted, "lay not between large and small states but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination." In order to get the unified support needed for the Constitution's ratification and successful establishment, the framers made certain concessions to the pro-slavery interests. The compromises they agreed to, however, were designed to tolerate slavery where it currently existed, not to endorse or advance the institution.

Consider the three compromises made by the Constitutional Convention delegates and approved as part of the final text:

1. On enumeration: Apportionment for Representatives and taxation purposes would be determined by the number of free persons and three-fifths "of all other Persons" (Art. I, Sec. 2). The pro-slavery delegates wanted their slaves counted as whole persons, thereby according their states more representation in Congress. It was the anti-slavery delegates who wanted to count slaves as less-not to dehumanize them but to penalize slaveholders. Indeed, it was antislavery delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania who proposed the three-fifths compromise. Also, this clause did not include blacks generally, as free blacks were understood to be free persons.
2. On the slave trade: Congress was prohibited until 1808 from blocking the migration and importation "of such Persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit" (Art. I, Sec. 9). Although protection of the slave trade was a major concession demanded by pro-slavery delegates, the final clause was only a temporary exemption from a recognized federal power for the existing states. Moreover, it did not prevent states from restricting or outlawing the slave trade, which many had already done. "If there was no other lovely feature in the Constitution but this one," James Wilson observed, "it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the lapse of a few years, and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within our borders." Congress passed such a national prohibition effective January 1, 1808, and President Jefferson signed it into law.
3. On fugitive slaves: The Privileges and Immunities Clause (Art. IV, Sec. 2) guaranteed the return upon claim of any "Person held to Service or Labour" in one state who had escaped to another state. At the last minute, the phrase "Person legally held to Service or Labour in one state" was amended to read "Person held to Service or Labour in one state, under the Laws thereof." This revision emphasized that slaves were held according to the laws of individual states and, as the historian Don Fehrenbacher has noted, "made it impossible to infer from the passage that the Constitution itself legally sanctioned slavery." Indeed, none of these clauses recognized slavery as having any legitimacy from the point of view of federal law.

It is significant to note that the words "slave" and "slavery" were kept out of the Constitution. Madison recorded in his notes that the delegates "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." This seemingly minor distinction of insisting on the use of the word "person" rather than "property" was not a euphemism to hide the hypocrisy of slavery but was of the utmost importance. Madison explained this in Federalist No. 54:

But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another-the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others-the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.

Frederick Douglass, for one, believed that the government created by the Constitution "was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government." Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland but escaped and eventually became a prominent spokesman for free blacks in the abolitionist movement. "Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered," he wrote in 1864:

It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.

This point is underscored by the fact that, although slavery was abolished by constitutional amendment, not one word of the original text was amended or deleted.

Judging by the policy developments of the previous three decades, the Founders could be somewhat optimistic that the trend was against slavery. At the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman said: "the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States and that the good sense of the several states would probably by degrees complete it." In the draft of his first inaugural address, George Washington looked forward to the day when "mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another." And in one of his last letters, Jefferson wrote:

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Nevertheless, there was plenty of reason for concern. In 1776, Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and because slaves cost more to maintain than free laborers. But in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, making cotton production economical and leading to dramatic growth in the cotton industry, which greatly contributed to an increased demand for slave labor in the United States.

In 1819, during the debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state, John Adams worried that a national struggle over slavery "might rend this mighty fabric in twain." He told Jefferson that he was terrified about the future and appealed to him for guidance. "What we are to see God knows, and I leave it to Him and his agents in posterity," he wrote. "I have none of the genius of Franklin, to invent a rod to draw from the cloud its thunder and lightning."

The Missouri crisis was "a fire bell in the night," wrote Jefferson in 1820. "We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." But Jefferson gave no public support to emancipation and refused to free his own slaves. "This enterprise is for the young," he wrote.

Slavery was indeed the imperfection that marred the American Founding. Those who founded this nation chose to make practical compromises for the sake of establishing in principle a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. "The inconsistency of the institution of slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented," John Quincy Adams readily admitted in 1837. Nevertheless, he argued:

no charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.

"In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction," Abraham Lincoln observed in 1858. "All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon."

Lincoln once explained the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by reference to Proverbs 25:11: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." He revered the Constitution and was the great defender of the Union. But he knew that the word "fitly spoken"-the apple of gold-was the assertion of principle in the Declaration of Independence. "The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it," Lincoln wrote. "The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture." That is, the Constitution was made to secure the unalienable rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence.

As such, the slavery compromises included in the Constitution can be understood-that is, can be understood to be prudential compromises rather than a surrender of principle-only in light of the Founders' proposition that all men are created equal. In the end, lamentably, it took a bloody civil war to reconcile the protections of the Constitution with that proposition and to attest that this nation, so conceived and dedicated, could long endure.

Just now, DanteEstonia said:

Pretty much.

So again, please tell us why you choose to be an American citizen if you despise it's founding so much?  

1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Yea....I'm out on the no shave thing. Next thing you'll know you'll be wearing skinny jeans and getting your hair cut high and tight Muda. 

No hipster style here, IO.  I would prefer the Paul Bunyan look.

19 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

The idea that a bunch of slaveowners is “wiser” than us is comical and insulting.

So is that your supposedly college-educated opinion of the founding fathers and framers of the U.S. Constitution?  That they were just a bunch of slave owners and therefore their words and thoughts shouldn't be trusted for anything?    

Tell us again why you choose to be an American citizen?

The Shutdown’s Real Lesson: Government Has Taken Hostage Too Much of the Economy: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/shutdowns-real-lesson-government-has-taken-hostage-too-much-economy

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We are in the third week of the federal government’s partial shutdown. The shutdown is affecting the lives of many federal workers and may soon start disrupting the broader economy. Because the government exerts control over major industries, when the politicians butt heads, it damages activities such as aviation, tourism and recreation.

The problem with the shutdown is not that President Trump is holding the government “hostage,” as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, but that the government has taken hostage of too much of the U.S. economy.

Consider security screening at the nation’s 450 commercial airports. The government took over that function in 2001 when it created the Transportation Security Administration. Over the years, the TSA has generally done a poor job, caused congestion and wasted a lot of money.

And now, because the TSA is the only screening organization we have, the shutdown may affect the entire nation’s air travel. A spokesman for the TSA screener’s union said Tuesday: “Some of [my members] have already quit and many are considering quitting the federal workforce because of this shutdown … The loss of officers, while we’re already shorthanded, will create a massive security risk for American travelers since we don’t have enough trainees in the pipeline.”

He’s probably exaggerating the risk, but political battles would not impact such important activities if they were separated from the federal government. Many advanced nations, including Britain and France, have privatized their screening or moved it to the control of local airports. If we followed suit, there would not be just one “pipeline” for trainees because airports could contract services from numerous companies.

It is a similar situation with our government-run air-traffic-control system. The spokesman for the federal controller’s union said the negative “ripple effect” of the federal shutdownmay last months or years, while the head of the Airline Pilots Association said “the disruptions being caused by the shutdown are threatening the safe operations” of the nation’s airspace.

During the 2013 budget sequester battle, controllers were furloughed and thousands of flights were delayed before the politicians cobbled together a budget deal.

All of this is unnecessary. Dozens of nations have separated their ATC from their government budgets. Canada privatized its ATC system in 1996 as a self-funded nonprofit corporation. That structure has created financial stability, improved management, and generated innovation. The U.S. controller’s union has been so frustrated with federal budget instability and the slow pace of innovation under the current structure that it has backed Canadian-style ATC reforms.

Millions of Americans and the tourism and recreation industries are being affected by National Park Service furloughs. “National parks face years of damage from the government shutdown,” a National Geographic writer said. The national parks have long suffered from deterioration and mismanagement even under normal operations.

The solution is to restructure the parks as nonprofit organizations self-funded by fees and contributions, or to transfer them to state control. Today, while the government’s Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. is closed, the well-run and private Mount Vernon in Virginia-home of George Washington-is open for business.

As federal deficits soar in coming years, budget battles will worsen. That will cause more shutdowns, and it will mean that the national parks, air traffic control system and other assets will be starved for investment.

Our ATC system needs billions of dollars to upgrade to new technologies such as satellite navigation, but it is not clear where the money will come from under current federal control. As for the NPS, it faces at least $11 billion in deferred maintenance because appropriations must be spread over a bloated system of more than 400 parks and sites.

Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service are not affected by the shutdown, but they are losing billions of dollars on their inefficient operations and can’t make needed reforms because of Washington’s dysfunction. They should also be cut loose from federal control.

Privatization of such businesses may seem radical, but a privatization revolution has swept the world since the 1980s as more than 100 countries have moved more than $3 trillion of state-owned businesses to the private sector. Air traffic control systems, postal services, passenger rail and other activities have been successfully privatized abroad.

The federal government’s budget management is a total mess and getting worse. To limit the damage, it’s time to untether the government from as much of the economy as possible.

Agreed.

https://mises.org/wire/fdr’s-worst-perversion-freedom-four-freedoms-speech

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Franklin Roosevelt did more than any other modern president to corrupt Americans’ understanding of freedom. Last week was the 75^th anniversary of his 1944 speech calling for a second Bill of Rights to guarantee economic freedom to Americans. Nation magazine whooped up the anniversary, proclaiming that Democrats now have a “unique—and likely fleeting—opportunity to deliver where FDR fell short” with vast new government programs.

The 1944 speech, given as the tide in World War Two was finally turning, was a followup of his 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech which exploited Americans’ rising apprehensions tosee far more power for the government. Roosevelt promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship and then, as if he was merely enumerating other self-evident rights, declared: “The third [freedom] is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.” Proclaiming a goal of freedom from fear meant that government should fill the role in daily life previously filled by God and religion. Politicians are the biggest fearmongers, and “freedom from fear” would justify seizing new power in response to every bogus federal alarm.

....

And, while Roosevelt pretended to magnanimously recognize a right to freedom of speech, that did not include freedom to dissent: “A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups.... The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of government to save government.” Roosevelt sounded like James Madison had simply forgotten the asterisk to the First Amendment about using “the sovereignty of government to save government.” FDR’s “new freedom” would justify suppressing anyone who balked at the political ruling class’s latest goals.

...

Three years later, in his 1944 State of the Union address , Roosevelt revealed that the original Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” Roosevelt called for a “Second Bill of Rights,” and asserted that: “True individual freedom can’t exist without economic security.” And security, according to FDR, included “the right to a useful and remunerative job,” “decent home,” “good health,” and “good education.” Thus, if a government school failed to teach all fifth graders to read, the nonreaders would be considered oppressed (lawsuits over public school failures in Michigan and elsewhere against local and state governments have relied on similar claptrap). Similarly, if someone was in bad health, then that person would be considered as having been deprived of his freedom, and somehow it would be the government’s fault. Freedom thus required boundless control over health care.

Roosevelt also declared that liberty requires “the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.” In other words, government should inflate food prices high enough to keep the nation’s least efficient farmer behind his mule and plow. But FDR-style freedom also required unlimited federal control over every farmer. At that point, USDA was dictating to every wheat farmer exactly how many acres of the grain they could grow. An Indiana farmer exceeded his quota to grow wheat to feed to his hogs. The Roosevelt administration hounded him all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming it needed a free hand to "suppress ... a public evil." And what was the "public evil"? Wheat surpluses and uppity farmers who failed to kowtow to every USDA bureaucrat.

...

Pundits and progressives who are whooping up Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights almost always ignore perhaps the biggest surprise in that speech. While Roosevelt spoke gaudily of new rights, he scooped George Orwell’s 1984 by revealing that slavery was freedom - or at least “close enough for government work.” FDR urged Congress to enact a “national service law— which for the duration of the war . . . will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.” FDR invoked the “eternally just principle of ‘fair for one, fair for all’” to justify destroying the freedom of every worker in the nation. He promised that this proposal, described in his official papers as a Universal Conscription Act, would be a “unifying moral force” and “a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.” Presumably, the less freedom people had, the more satisfied they’d become. And anyone who did not feel liberated by federal commands was a bastard who deserved all the misery officialdom heaped upon them.

H.L. Mencken wisely observed, “One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.” Americans are still suffering because Franklin Roosevelt’s freedom bunkum was not immediately laughed off the national stage. Any politician who seeks more power today to bestow more freedom in the distant future deserves all the ridicule Americans can heave his way.

Evil.

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/16/how-scientology-recruits-inside-florida

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An organization connected to the Church of Scientology has run seminars in more than a dozen Florida correctional facilities over the past several years, public records obtained by Reason show.

The Florida Times-Union first reported in December that officials at Florida's Everglades Correctional Institution had greenlit a course offered by Criminon, a group that offers "betterment" courses to inmates based on the teachings of sci-fi author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

In December, Criminon put out a press release celebrating the graduation of two groups of inmates in Everglades Correctional Institution and Manatee County Correctional Institution from its course.

 

Criminon submitted an application to the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC), obtained by Reason through a public records request, in March of 2017 to continue running seminars in Florida correctional facilities. In its application, Criminon says it has run 42 seminars in 16 different Florida prisons, jails, halfway houses, and juvenile detention centers since 2011.

"We are dedicated to criminal rehabilitation and reintegration through our education curricula for offenders," Criminon president Brian Fowler wrote to the Florida DOC. "To accomplish our aims, we use the secular works of author and humanitarian, L. Ron Hubbard."

The main text of the Criminon seminars is Hubbard's book, The Way to Happiness, which outlines 21 principles or precepts. According to the application, the courses in its program cover "such subjects as how to study, how to effectively communicate, and how to identify antisocial people."

"The Criminon program is based on the fundamental assumption that the root causes of criminal behavior are lack of self-respect and self-esteem," the application reads.

While improving inmates' study habits and raising their self-esteem are rather unobjectionable goals, Criminon programming has been criticized and removed from other state prison systems because of its link to the Church of Scientology.

Numerous media investigations, ex-Scientologists-turned-whistleblowers, and documentaries have described Scientology as abusive, cult-like, and less a church than a business, and accused it of soaking its members for money and ruthlessly suppressing dissent within its ranks.

Scientology also rejects modern psychiatry, a theme which has also appeared in Criminon materials, a 2005 Los Angeles Times story found.

"If [inmates] are on psychiatric drugs, encourage them to get off. Psychiatrists are heavily into the prison system," Criminon training materials from a California prison obtained by the L.A. Times read. "Most jails and prisons have a staff psychiatrist that goes in daily and gives dosages of various and sundry mind-altering drugs to the inmates. Most of the time this is a ploy to keep the inmates sedated so that they don't cause trouble."

According to the Florida Times-Union and the Miami New-Times, Criminon has been active in Florida prisons since at least 2005, when the Florida legislature appropriated $500,000 for a "Criminon offender program." (The funding was vetoed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.)

The Florida Department of Corrections approved Criminon's application to continue running Way to Happiness seminars. However, it determined it would be an elective course.

"Based on a review of your application submission, we have determined your program would be categorized as an elective program," Kerensa Lockwood, assistant chief at the Florida DOC's Bureau of Applied Science, Research, and Policy wrote in March of 2017. "A review of The Way to Happiness program concluded that there is not sufficient evidence that the program meets a criminogenic need."

The Church of Scientology has been an advocate for criminal justice reforms. It endorsed the recently passed FIRST STEP Act. It has also lobbied Congress on criminal justice issues in the past. A lobbyist for the Church of Scientology, who in addition works on criminal justice reform, told The Daily Beast that he also informally lobbied for Criminon.

However, former high-ranking Scientologists say the group's main interest in criminal justice reform is using expanded rehabilitative programming as a recruiting tool.

"Criminon is just another front group for Scientology," actress Leah Remini, a former Scientologist who is now an outspoken critic of the organization, told The Daily Beast. "This is just a play for Scientology to get the government to pay for its Scientology technology with its Criminon program."

Criminon International and the Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meh, the Church of Scientology is just looking for fresh converts, much like the the Christians church looks for fresh converts via the prison system.

Gillette Tells Men They're Repulsive Creeps. Now Give Them Your Money, You Piece of Garbage: https://pjmedia.com/trending/gillette-tells-men-theyre-repulsive-creeps-now-give-them-your-money-you-piece-of-garbage/?fbclid=IwAR3vVS_AByKCM0AmOsjgan6mrc-GuaYQX_nRgkncEQyqYHUB1DkwSFyC1Cs

Quote

Are you a man? That is to say, are you a genetic male who also happens to identify as a "man," for some increasingly antiquated reason? If so, are you under the mistaken impression that you're not a rapist?

Our society has come a long way in shaming men for behaving in any way that anybody anywhere doesn't like, and reminding men that we're all complicit even if we don't behave that way. But it's not nearly enough. The mere fact of maleness is shameful and problematic. Men and boys everywhere need to be reminded that we're evil. We must learn to hate ourselves as much as everyone else hates us. The patriarchy must be castrated.

And who better to do it than a company that makes razors?

Alexandra Bruell, WSJ:

 

Gillette is embracing the #MeToo movement in a new digital ad campaign aimed at men, the latest message from an advertiser attempting to change societal norms...

“This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own,” said Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette brand director for North America in an emailed statement. “We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse. We want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and hope all the men we serve will come along on that journey to find our ‘best’ together.”

 

This is long overdue. #TimesUp, penis-havers!

Here's Gillette's first salvo in their war on men. WARNING: Contains depictions of male behavior.

See? See what you've done, you repulsive creeps? And don't you think you could use a shave?

If that didn't fill you with regret and self-loathing at being a man, then you weren't one to begin with. Masculinity is more toxic than the plastic in Gillette's inexpensive disposable razors. I didn't even realize how rotten and depraved I was until I saw this ad, and now I want to run out and buy as many Gillette products as I can carry.

Gillette has learned that in [current year], it's not enough for a company to make a product that people want. It's not enough to make them feel inadequate about themselves, and then sell them the supposed cure for that inadequacy. Consumers, men in particular, must be made to feel worthless. They have to be reminded that their needs and desires are wrong under any circumstances, that their instincts are loathsome, that their very existence is a malignancy, and that they're responsible for all the world's ills whether they want to admit it or not.

Now give them your money, you piece of garbage.

If past corporate scolding campaigns are any indication, Gillette will see some pushback from customers who don't know what's good for them. When Starbucks introduced their #RaceTogether campaign back in 2015, they were roundly excoriated by racists everywhere. And guess what? Racism continues to this day. Are you going to allow the same thing to happen with sexism, or are you going to go out and buy a Mach3?

I'm proud to be ashamed of being a man, and I applaud Gillette for refusing to let me get away with it. The best a man can get is the bottom of the barrel.

I'm going to stop shaving in protest.  Who's with me?

17 minutes ago, swordfish said:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/trumps_shutdown_trap.html?fbclid=IwAR1TTfuren5WzGQaEFbJmVWUxGokw6N27TPPkN3CjDnjHINWzxr1YbUZR4Y

Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? 

As an advocate for smaller government one can only hope....................

11 hours ago, Basementbias said:

Wondering if I can use this to discuss all the other IHSAA and even non sponsored that have no direct spot.

Go for it.  There is a reason this is called the Out Of Bounds Forum.

13 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

You are putting words in my mouth.

Then why your statement "Leave the pay issue alone."?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/betos-constitutional-folly/

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Yesterday, Beto O’Rourke made news. In her Washington Post article yesterday on O’Rourke’s immigration stance, Jenna Johnson made the rather interesting point that he often favors proposing debates and raising questions rather than proposing policies. “O’Rourke says he is being open-minded, as he wishes more politicians would be,” Johnsons writes. Exhibit A in her lengthy interview with him: He raised a question about the Constitution. In a quote that’s already flown through Twitter and conservative media, he said this, when pondering whether the United States is now, in Johnson’s words, “incapable of implementing sweeping change”:

"Does this still work? . . . Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?"

This is a variation on a theme I’ve heard countless times on the left — often in response to arguments over originalism and (more recently) in response to anger at the very structure of our government itself. Why shackle ourselves to the wisdom of the distant past? How could the Founders have foreseen the challenges of the present?

It’s worth taking these questions seriously. After all, the Constitution isn’t the Bible. It’s not the holy and inspired Word of God, and if its terms and structure are hurting our Republic, they can and should be amended. But I’d submit that, when one examines the United States and considers the failings that render our politics so dysfunctional, we in fact do have 18th-century answers to our 21st-century challenges and that many of our dysfunctions are the result of abandoning the Constitution, not of embracing it.

We’ve failed because we’ve refused to be managed by the “principles that were set down 230-plus years ago.”

Let’s take, for example, the issue O’Rourke raises about our nation’s military presence around the globe. The vast majority of Americans can’t possibly list all the nations where we’re engaged in actual combat. To the extent that some of those operations are classified, I can’t list all those nations — and following American combat operations is a key part of my job.

We’ve reached this point in large part because Congress has utterly abdicated to the president its constitutional responsibility and authority to declare war. It’s simply handed over one of its most important powers, and it stubbornly refuses to take it back. And that’s not the only power it’s given to the president. Donald Trump has lately been able to make sweeping, unilateral decisions about immigration (the travel ban, for example) and tariffs (our trade war with China) precisely because of previous congressional acts delegating an enormous amount of authority to the executive branch

These issues are symbolic of the larger constitutional challenge of a diminished Congress, where the branch of government intended to be the most powerful is now thoroughly subordinate to the executive and the judiciary. Congress is now — to use Jonah Goldberg’s excellent phrase — largely a “parliament of pundits.” They serve mainly as critics of or cheerleaders for the president and judges who make the truly significant national decisions.

One result of a diminished Congress is a profound sense of political alienation. If you live in a safely blue or red state, then, in a federal election, you may well never cast a single vote of true significance. The leadership of the two most potent branches will be decided by other men and women, the subset of Americans who live in our few truly swing states.

Moreover, our national government’s decades-long rejection of federalism has immense consequences during a time of profound geographic division and negative polarization. Even after 2018’s blue wave, Republicans entirely control 31 state legislatures, and Democrats control 18. That means there’s only one state (Minnesota) that has divided control of the legislature. A modern record of 37 states have “trifecta” governments, with one party controlling both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion.

But if you combine this level of geographic division with the continued growth of the federal leviathan, then you reach the intolerable point where citizens of Texas understand that Nancy Pelosi may have more political influence over their lives than their own governor. Conversely, citizens of San Francisco face a reality where Kentucky’s Cocaine Mitch may well have more real power in their state than Gavin Newsom.

A return to constitutionally mandated congressional supremacy places the federal government closer to the people, as the Founders intended. A restoration of true constitutional federalism would allow progressives and conservatives greater flexibility to build communities that reflect their values, without exacerbating negative polarization by imposing their values on unwilling, resistant cities and states all across the country.

An imperial president legislating through regulation, running myriad wars without congressional approval, and appointing federal judges who even at the lowest level are more powerful than any Senator is not the government the Founders intended. We are most assuredly not governed by the 230-year-old principles of the past but rather by the foolishness of the present.

There’s a path forward for America, but it requires us to look back and rediscover the wisdom of a political generation far wiser than our own.

Here! Here!  The answers are in the Constitution,  our Congress is just too cowardly to accept and take back it's responsibilities.

41 minutes ago, swordfish said:

https://apnews.com/d90578a1687049e9a67db01582ce4278

SF wonders - how does the shutdown slow growth in an economy like the US?  Except for the 800,000 employees, who will receive back pay after the shutdown, how does the growth of a capitalist based economy slow down because of a shutdown?

I would guess that those 800,00 employees aren't creating invoices to private companies for materials ranging from toilet paper to .50 caliber ammunition.  Unfortunately many private companies biggest customer is the US federal government.