- OMG JC a Bomb!
- Jul 13, 2004
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We are the Invisible Spatula. We are the Grilluminati. We eat before and after dinner. We eat forever. And eventually... eventually we will lead them into the dining room.
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quote: In 1964 he graduated from the Judson School, a boarding school outside of Scottsdale, Arizona. At his high school graduation, Ronald Reagan introduced himself to his son by saying, "My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" He replied, "I'm your son Mike." "Oh," said Ronald Reagan. "I didn't recognize you."
Holy hell, Reagan was such an unbelievable rear end in a top hat. I can't even get mad at Mike anymore, no matter how lovely his opinions are. His whole childhood is a parade of suffering.
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Aug 28, 2013 03:35
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 18, 2024 02:20
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- Frostwerks
- Sep 24, 2007
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by Lowtax
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Did he start getting senile that early? What the hell?
Whether or not he was senile, the man suffered a life of profound stupidity. That much is certain.
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Aug 28, 2013 04:54
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- Borneo Jimmy
- Feb 27, 2007
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by Smythe
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Are there people who still think Foreign Policy is a serious magazine?
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/28/would_martin_luther_king_have_supported_a_syrian_intervention
quote:
n January of 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., en route to Jamaica for a vacation, picked up a copy of Ramparts magazine and sat down to read a story about the plight of Vietnam's children. According to his assistant, Bernard Lee, King froze as he saw the photos -- including one of a Vietnamese mother holding her dead child -- that accompanied the story. It was then, Lee claims, that King made up his mind to forcefully oppose the war in Vietnam.
The story of King's conversion into an anti-war activist is one worth considering today, amid war rumblings over Syria and commemorations in Washington of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Had he not been assassinated, King may well have woken up one day last week and been equally horrified at the images of dead Syrian children in the arms of their mothers.
While King had always been broadly opposed to the war in Vietnam, the tactical realities of the civil rights movement made outspoken opposition to the war dangerous. King and his broad coalition of civil rights groups were reliant on a cooperative federal government to enforce anti-discrimination provisions in recalcitrant Southern states. Wary of antagonizing his allies in the White House -- during both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- King bit his tongue as the war in Vietnam escalated.
But realities on the ground -- both in the United States and in Vietnam -- soon changed King's calculus. The waning of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s -- and the rise of a more militant Black Power movement hostile to King's message of non-violence -- freed King from the tactical considerations that had made opposition to the war difficult. And as a larger number of black Americans were sent to Vietnam to defend freedoms that they were denied at home, King could no longer stay silent in the face of what he viewed as a deeply immoral war.
Prior to his anti-war activism, King had adopted a more sweeping worldview that foreshadowed his stance on Vietnam. The Atlanta minister was well aware that he lived in revolutionary times. By this he meant not just the push for racial equality in the United States, but also the broader anti-colonial struggle playing out against the background of his own efforts. Around the world, oppressed people were throwing off the yoke of colonialism, and King fully embraced the movement. Early in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, for instance, King saw the protest as part of an "overall movement in the world in which oppressed people are revolting against ... imperialism and colonialism." In short, black liberation in the United States and in Africa were movements against similar forces.
It is intriguing to consider, then, what King would have made of today's revolutionary times. As during the period of decolonization, the Arab Spring has unleashed a new wave of revolutions in which oppressed people have clamored for rights long denied them. Though the toppled regimes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen did not stand for outright racist oppression, the yearning for freedom and the speed with which the revolutions spread bear similarities to the 1960s.
King may have found common cause with anti-colonial efforts, but he also grew disappointed with the violent turn that accompanied decolonization. Early in his career, King had traveled to India and tried to absorb the lessons of Gandhi's non-violent, anti-imperialist struggle -- rules that he applied to his own movement and hoped would spread around the world. When they did not, King's views became more radical. His commitment to non-violence remained, of course, but the violent reactions to the civil rights movement in America and armed struggles for independence elsewhere convinced King that the problems he sought to eradicate -- racism, poverty, and militarism -- were more deeply rooted than he had realized. This led him to conclude, in 1967, that there existed the "need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society."
In April of that year, King delivered his well-known denunciation of the American war in Southeast Asia -- a semon given at the Riverside Church in New York City and titled, "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence." In a speech that may have had as much to do with uniting his sputtering civil rights movement with the anti-war movement as it did with shedding his reluctance to make the war a central element of his activism, King condemned the United States as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Vietnam, King argued, threatened to corrupt the soul of America, as nowhere was the stark divergence between American values and actions more evident.
The speech generated the anticipated reaction at the White House. Upon reading the sermon, one aide reportedly exclaimed, "My God, King has given a speech on Vietnam that goes right down the commie line!"
For its time, King's speech was certainly radical. By openly sympathizing with Ho Chi Minh, King made no friends among the Washington establishment. But King had few options in denouncing the war: Expanding war-time expenses threatened to defund Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty and undermine the central achievement of the civil rights movement. As he put it later in 1967: "Here we spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight this terrible war in Vietnam and just the other day the Congress refused to vote forty-four million to get rid of rats in the slums and the ghettoes of our country." In his desire to ensure that war-time expenditures would not cannibalize social programs, King has something in common with President Obama, who has worked to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to "focus on nation-building here at home."
But amid soaring casualties and allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria, would King support airstrikes against the Assad regime? Like Obama, King would in all likelihood have sympathized with the rebels working to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But he would also have deplored their tactics. In King's day, the idea of humanitarian intervention had not yet taken hold, so it's difficult to evaluate how King would have responded to the use of nerve gas against civilians. He certainly would have been outraged, but would he have supported the use of retaliatory force? Given King's commitment to non-violence, it seems unlikely.
Still, it is important to remember that King was no outright pacifist. He was an avid student of the theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, who argued that in the face of tyranny and violence an armed response can sometimes be justified. Niebuhr is also one of Obama's favorite philosophers. In 2007, when asked what he had taken away from Niebuhr, Obama offered something of a prescient preview of his often-militarist foreign policy: "I take away the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world"; that "we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate these things, but we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction"; that "we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism."
It's a foreign policy King might have gotten behind.
While indeed King opposed America's war in Vietnam, but maaaaaaabyeeeeee hypothetically, you know he would totally get behind bombing Syria with drones and cruise missiles.
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Aug 29, 2013 19:48
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- MisterBadIdea
- Oct 9, 2012
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Anything?
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Those are two different situations entirely and comparing them makes you just as bad as the people writing these things.
Not sure what different situations you think he's comparing. Seems like he has a legit point to me.
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Sep 7, 2013 00:06
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- Asclepius Hot Rod
- Apr 5, 2009
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MLK's view on Syria?
Hell lets go further back, let's ask the founding fathers what they would think!
It would be just as relevant.
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Sep 7, 2013 00:46
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- Barlow
- Nov 26, 2007
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Write, speak, avenge, for ancient sufferings feel
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The bit about Reinhold Niebuhr is disingenuous, the idea that because Obama and King read Niebuhr they would agree is insane. Sure, King often cited Niebuhr, but mostly his later work on the nature of sin and on the potential to use nonviolence to further the cause of black rights. The key difference between Niebuhr and King, as Niebuhr noted, was that King was a pacifist. This also neglects the ties King had to Bayard Rustin and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which were explicitly pacifist.
From what we know of King's personal and theological positions he wouldn't have intervened. If we are going to assume King's views might have changed if he had lived why not just admit we're going to make poo poo up. The writer is a young, white editorial assistant from Sweden who just graduated Harvard. I suspect he must be trolling for article clicks.
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Sep 7, 2013 04:42
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- MisterBadIdea
- Oct 9, 2012
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Anything?
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Vietnam was a proxy war we fought with a large occupying army, we aren't even sending troops to Syria we are debating using a few drones strikes against military targets to get the administration to stop killing suburbs full of children with poison gas. Lets say we got a full on right wing government and they starting gassing suburbs full of families because they suspected members of Occupy Wallstreet were hiding there would you want Europe to try to stop them?
This has not a thing to do with Martin Luther King or anything he said about anything ever, which was the dude's point.
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Sep 7, 2013 04:50
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- Lee Harvey Oswald
- Mar 17, 2007
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by exmarx
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This brilliant piece appeared in my local paper a few days ago.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/sep/07/the-cardinal-zinn-of-anti-americanism/?opinioncolumns
quote:
Smith: The Cardinal Zinn of anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism is often synonymous with the Left. Whether it's the NAACP's hollow rhetoric about the lack of racial justice, the pathetic call from unions for more for government budget-busting pension programs, or Mr. Obama's deafening silence on American exceptionalism, they and their political benefactors never seem able to focus on the goodness of America.
The most "anti" of anti-Americanism, Howard Zinn, died three years ago, but his writings and influence are important to reflect upon as our children start another school year. He was a member of the Communist Party since 1949, and he left a covey of faithful admirers including some of the leading thinkers and historians of our time like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.
Celebrity worshipers will reel in horror as they read this. Anyone who knows anything knows that Matt is so-o-o-o hot that he couldn't be a charlatan ... besides, what's a charlatan? And Willie, how dare me vilify Willie with his star spangled headband holding his long gray pig tails in place? Yep, they all held up Mr. Zinn as a "hero of the people." He made them giddy with his "stick it to the man" philosophy (whoever the man is), and his book "A People's History of the United States" (2.2 million copies) is their Zinn Bible. In it Mr. Zinn writes, "The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history." He calls for wealth redistribution to the masses so everything will be "free -- to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation."
It's easy to dismiss such kooky ideas by wealthy elitists, but the concern is that such Zinnful thoughts have crept into our classrooms from liberal educators who subscribe to revisionist American history. They conveniently overlook thousands of indentured servants who came from the Old World to the New World in search of opportunities to work and worship and escape the heavy yoke of tyranny.
They neglect our Founding Fathers who put both their lives and honor on the line to pen their names to our Declaration of Independence. They ignore Horatio Alger stories that still abound in this country about poor people who rolled up their sleeves and used their God-given talents to "make it." Likewise, they overlook the contributions of folks who have made it in giving jobs and opportunities to tens of thousands of employees because of their success. You know the stories: Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Normandy, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Silicon Valley -- all remarkable records of successful Americans. Were they duped and under the control of the mythological "man"? I think not. Our children deserve to know about the real sacrifices and accomplishments of their countrymen; otherwise, as Cicero said, "Not to know what happened before you were born is to be forever a child."
How does the rest of the world view our opportunities? Despite what Mr. Zinn believed, our embassies are overwhelmed with people trying to immigrate to the United States. During my career in the United States Air Force, I spent four overseas assignments in Iceland, Germany, Japan, and Greece. All are progressive countries politically, technologically, and environmentally; yet, none enjoy the freedoms and opportunities we take for granted. If you are born poor, chances are almost certain that you will die poor, and if you are born rich, you will die rich, even if you are an incompetent buffoon. I witnessed first-hand the old expression, "Yankee go home ... but take me with you!"
A great country like ours must permit the free debate of ideas and opinions, but we must also remember the worth of an opinion is only as good as the facts upon which it is based. Mr. Zinn's facts and those of his revisionist liberal disciples are woefully inaccurate, divisive, and misleading. Our children deserve better.
Roger Smith is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a pilot with Southwest Airlines. He and his wife, Patti, live on Possum Creek near Soddy-Daisy.
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Sep 9, 2013 13:04
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- Nathilus
- Apr 4, 2002
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I alone can see through the media bias.
I'm also stupid on a scale that can only be measured in Reddits.
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Yup, that sure is unmitigated tripe that manages to be offensive in every way the author claimed Zinn's opinions are offensive.
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Sep 9, 2013 13:34
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- Your Gay Uncle
- Feb 16, 2012
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by Fluffdaddy
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Obama's deafening silence on American Exceptionalism. Reading that made me go cross -eyed.
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Sep 10, 2013 02:31
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- JDM3
- Jun 26, 2013
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Best $10 bux I ever spent on a total stranger.. who happens to be a fucking douchetube.
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It would be impossible to even have the simplest interaction with that guy beyond "hello". Where do you start? You just know that literally every opinion that you and he have are diametrically opposed, if they're even on the same plane to begin with.
Edit: ...and you even have different sets of facts and epistemological standards.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:15
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- cafel
- Mar 29, 2010
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This post is hurting the economy!
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I'm rather curious what opportunities the godless socialist hellholes of Japan or Germany lack.
Well Japan lacks quite a few opportunities if you're a woman, but I don't think that's anything that would really bother the author.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:28
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- Orange Devil
- Oct 1, 2010
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Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
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When I think leading thinkers and historians I think musicians and movie stars.
Also this is the type of thinking that would lead one to declare that Europe and Japan etc are not free because they don't have *the* Constitution. (must be capitalized because that's how these people think)
Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 10, 2013
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Sep 10, 2013 15:12
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- VideoTapir
- Oct 18, 2005
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He'll tire eventually.
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quote:What 0% unemployment looks like
By Annalyn Censky @CNNMoney May 15, 2012: 5:52 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- What if every person who wanted a job had one?
The entire United States may never be able to reach a 0% unemployment rate. But on a smaller scale, it's not entirely unheard of.
Simply put, 0% unemployment can occur when everyone who is looking for a job has one. It can happen in niche markets when there are more openings than there are workers to fill them.
Such was the case with Monaco. According to the CIA, the country had a 0% unemployment rate in 2005. The tiny nation -- which is smaller than a square mile -- has to import workers from neighboring France in order to fill the demand for service jobs at the local upscale casinos and hotels.
In the U.S., college grads who studied astrophysics, geophysics, pharmacology and actuarial science had zero unemployment in 2010, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. In these small and highly-skilled fields, many recent grads have job offers before they graduate.
That was the case for Bette Wiebke, who just graduated with a bachelor's in actuarial science from Drake University. She's had a job lined up with Travelers Insurance since September.
"The fact that most of us can get jobs coming straight out of college, definitely says something good about the occupation," Weibke said.
While obviously not all students find jobs right away, those who don't often choose to go on to grad school, and aren't counted as unemployed during their studies. About 97% of Drake University actuarial grads either have a job or internship, or are enrolled in grad school within six months of graduating.
"It's hard to imagine there would be zero percent unemployment in any field, but for certain segments, there is much higher demand for workers than there is supply," said Kerry Boehner, founder of KOB Solutions, a Pittsburgh-based recruiting firm.
The balance of jobs and workers can quickly change as more people enter markets with little-to-no unemployment. That's why Boehner cautions young people not to choose a career track in an advanced specialty simply because it's currently in demand.
"If you're going to school for 11 years, what's hot now may not be hot in 11 years," she said.
What should the unemployment rate be?
The U.S. job market currently has 8.1% unemployment. While almost everyone agrees that's too high, zero unemployment wouldn't be a good thing either.
An economy with no unemployment is like a stagnant real estate market, said University of Oregon professor Mark Thoma.
"Suppose every apartment in the country is full, and I wanted to move from New York to Los Angeles," he said. "I would have to find someone in L.A. who wants to move to New York, and we would have to do a trade. It's much more efficient to have some vacancies."
Job market dropouts
Some churn in the labor market is a sign of a healthy economy, said Chris Pissarides, a Nobel Prize winning economist at the London School of Economics. He estimates that even in the best of times, regular turnover in the job market leads to an unemployment rate around 5%.
Add on structural changes that can put people out of work -- for example construction workers after the housing bust -- and full employment is probably somewhere around an unemployment rate of 6%.
"In an economy that is really growing fast, there's always a need to reallocate workers either across the country, skill categories or industries. People may need to change jobs," Pissarides said.
"Therefore we have to accept there will always be some unemployment and it's good for the economy."
Full employment is like not being able to find an apartment in a stagnant market. A market where every apartment is taken is stagnant. Yup. (He's a professor of economics, BTW) I think he's confusing a market where every employee is spoken for to one where every job is filled.
edit: exactly what I expected:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=218244
Unemployment caused by a bubble bursting isn't the bad kind of unemployment.
VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Sep 11, 2013
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Sep 11, 2013 05:00
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- Okuteru
- Nov 10, 2007
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Choose this life you're on your own
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Does anyone here listen to the Planet Money podcast? They did a story today about the earning potential of college majors (Spoiler Alert:STEM=$).
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/10/219372252/the-most-and-least-lucrative-college-majors-in-1-graph
Seems pretty cut and dry, honestly. It's nothing we haven't heard before.
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Sep 12, 2013 05:35
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- Pope Guilty
- Nov 6, 2006
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The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.
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Rich people loving hate low unemployment because it raises wages and reduces their control over their employees, and many econ professors (like Mark Thoma) are basically lapdogs to power.
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Sep 12, 2013 05:42
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- Orange Devil
- Oct 1, 2010
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Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
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I love the "full employment is unemployment at 5+%, going lower is actually *bad*!" thing that certain economists like to tout. They tend to be Americans or Brits or some such. Meanwhile countries like the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway maintain(ed)* stable sub-5% (and in some time periods, stable sub-3%) unemployment rates and did fine.
Pope Guilty is absolutely right in explaining this of course, but it's still amazing how willing these so-called academics are to ignore relevant data and how nobody will call them on their bullshit. Of course if you would call them on it you'd get some vague "you can't compare those countries because of size/culture/history/politics" or whatever, but that still conflicts with their initial statements which read as if they are general economic truths. Even if the comparison is invalid, there needs to be some defined and specific factors as to why it is invalid and what the effects of those factors are for it to have any academic merit.
In sum, economics is all ideology, as usual.
*Unemployment in the Netherlands went all hosed up recently.
Edit:
Note, by the way, how his argument also works perfectly well the other way around. It'd be better if we had full employment and open vacancies at companies because then if I get laid off or my company goes under I can right away find new employment. Whereas if there is unemployment exceeding vacancies then if I want to change jobs, for example because I'm moving from LA to NY, then I first have to find someone in NY to swap jobs with me in LA! How terribly tragic, woo is us poor workers. Therefore national policy must at all times be to ensure full employment and 5-7% of unfilled vacancies. Except nobody makes that argument because of the implicit assumption of gently caress the workers, the bosses are infinitely more important and it is their wishes that the labour market exists to serve. That's also why if you would suddenly see full employment in the US and 5-7% unfilled vacancies those borders would open the gently caress up right quick.
Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Sep 12, 2013
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Sep 12, 2013 14:34
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- woke wedding drone
- Jun 1, 2003
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by exmarx
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Fun Shoe
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I love the "full employment is unemployment at 5+%, going lower is actually *bad*!" thing that certain economists like to tout. They tend to be Americans or Brits or some such. Meanwhile countries like the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway maintain(ed)* stable sub-5% (and in some time periods, stable sub-3%) unemployment rates and did fine.
I've pointed this out before, get ready for huffing and puffing from baby economists. "You can't give everyone a job."
gently caress you then, give everyone a wage.
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Sep 12, 2013 15:37
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- VideoTapir
- Oct 18, 2005
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He'll tire eventually.
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If you didn't read that professor review page, do.
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Sep 12, 2013 16:21
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- VideoTapir
- Oct 18, 2005
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He'll tire eventually.
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Wow, a ratemyprofessor page that contains reviews written only by people who really liked him or really hated him!
A lot more people hated him than others at his school. He's the guy the students hate, and not because he's tough, but because he's an rear end in a top hat. Even the ones who give him a good rating say he's a dick.
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Sep 13, 2013 02:15
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- get that OUT of my face
- Feb 10, 2007
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Unless you have actually served in war, you don't get to be war-weary
So many choice quotes here.
quote:
It is the phrase of the moment, dropping from the lips of television reporters and radio commentators, salting the columns of pundits, earnestly being spoken by furrow-browed politicians of serious mien.
The families of the fallen are entitled to war-weariness. So are those wounded in body or spirit, and their loved ones. The mother who has sent her son to war has a right to war-weariness, as does the father who prepares to send his daughter to battle again and again. But for the great mass of the American public, for their leaders and the elites who shape public opinion, “war-weariness” is unearned cant, unworthy of a serious nation and dangerous in a violent world.
The average American has not served in the armed forces, as a diplomat or intelligence agent in a war zone. Neither have his or her children. No one has raised our taxes to pay for war. Americans can change the channel if they find the images too disturbing — though our teenagers’ violent video games and gory movies are infinitely more graphic than what would be shown on CNN or Fox News.
“I am not going to send your children to fight this misbegotten war,” or words like that, come from politicians who know full well that our country has an all-volunteer force. No one is sending anyone who did not sign up. And anyone who volunteered for military service in the past decade had to know that meant signing up for war.
Service members or public servants who have served in combat, and had enough of it, have every right to be war-weary. They also have a right to resign their commissions or appointments — and should, because they are probably well on the way to becoming ineffective. By and large they do not do that, and not because they lack something better to do. In my experience, they are proud of their service and rather wish the rest of us would stop treating them like victims.
I have known fighters from crack outfits, including the 10th Mountain Division, 7th Marines and the Joint Special Operations Command, who are visibly war-weary. Almost all would consider it shameful to say so.
When retired generals, claiming to speak for active-duty troops (who usually resent having views put in their mouth that way), talk about war-weariness, they do not help American diplomacy. They hurt it, because the surest way for a president to negotiate credibly, and thus avoid war, is to have at his side a growling mastiff on the leash — not a tired bloodhound that looks as though it has had, for the moment, enough tussles with the other canines.
Above all, a president has no business confessing to war-weariness. Sending soldiers to war is a hard business. But President Obama knew he was going to be a war president; if that duty was too trying for him, he should not have run for reelection, because, as he has discovered, he might have to fight new wars and not merely end old ones.
For a president to confess to war- weariness is to confess weakness.
It is the business of the commander in chief to inspire, either with tempered optimism or grim determination. He fails in his duty if he tells his subordinates, his people and the world that he is weary of the burden that he assiduously sought. In their dark moments, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who presided over infinitely more consequential and bloodier wars than Barack Obama, were undoubtedly war-weary. Can anyone imagine them proclaiming it to the world?
I'd put this guy's Rate My Professors page but he doesn't have one.
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Sep 14, 2013 00:56
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- VideoTapir
- Oct 18, 2005
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He'll tire eventually.
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You don't get to be anti-war unless you served in a war.
So if you DIDN'T, that means you get to be as pro-war as you want, right?
I mean this is the exact opposite of the criticism of chickenhawks. It's a perverse justification of all the Ted Nugents and Rush Limbaughs of the world.
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Sep 14, 2013 01:01
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- Pththya-lyi
- Nov 8, 2009
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THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
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Today we are going to learn about the Chamorro, the native people of the Marianas Islands.
Some of the unspoken Chamorro rules posted:There may be no official rule book for being a Chamorro, but that doesn't mean there aren't rules. In fact the idea came from a columnist John Hawkins. There are actually quite a few rules Chamorro go by and the more politically active Chamorros become, the more rigidly they tend to stick to their own code of behavior.
These rules, most of which are unspoken, are passed along culturally and viciously enforced. Often times they have adhered to their way of spelling words for Chamorro.
Ironically, many Chamorro could not explain these rules to you and don't even consciously know they're following them. So, by reading this article, not only will you gain a better understanding of the Chamorro, you'll know them better than they know themselves in some ways.
• First, you justify your beliefs about yourself by your status as a Chamorro, not your deeds. By the way, Chamorro is not a race but a bastardized mixed of just about all ethnicity in the Marianas island chain. The most sexist Chamorro can think of himself as a feminist while the greediest Chamorro can think of himself as generous: "chenchule' this and chenchule' that!"
In the vernacular the word means gifts or donations, which is very much in vogue during special events. This is because Chamorro define themselves as being compassionate, open minded, kind, pro-science and intelligent -- not based on their actions or achievements, but based on their ideology. This is one of the most psychologically appealing aspects of liberalism because it allows you to be an awful person while still thinking of yourself as better than everyone else.
• What Chamorros like should be mandatory and what they don't like should be banned. There's an almost instinctual form of fascism that runs through most Chamorro. It's not enough for Chamorros to love gay marriage; everyone must be forced to love gay marriage. It's not enough for Chamorros to be afraid of guns; guns have to be banned. It's not enough for Chamorros to want to use energy-saving light bulbs; incandescent light bulbs must be banned.
• The past is always inferior to the present: Chamorros tend to view traditions, policies and morals of past generations as arbitrary designs put in place by less enlightened people. Because of this, Chamorros don't pay much attention to why traditions developed or wonder about possible ramifications of their social engineering. ... It's like an architect ripping out the foundation of a house without questioning the consequences and if the living room falls in on itself as a result, he concludes that means he needs to make even more changes.
• Chamorros believe in indiscriminateness for thought. This one was so good that we borrowed it from another columnist, Evan Sayet: "Indiscriminate of thought does not lead to indiscriminate of policy." It leads the modern Chamorros to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply -- if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse, then anything else then success is de facto unjust. There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and, we find, the greater the success the greater the injustice.
• Intentions are much more important than results. Chamorros decide what programs to support based on whether they make them feel good or bad about themselves, not because they work or don't work. After World War II, a DDT ban that killed some locals is judged a success by Chamorros because it makes them feel as if they care about the environment.
• The only real sins are helping conservatism or harming Guam Chamorro locals. Conservatives often marvel at the fact that Chamorros will happily elect every sort of pervert, deviant and criminal you can imagine without a second thought. That's because right and wrong don't come into the picture for Chamorros. They have one standard: Does this politician help or hurt my family? If a Chamorro politician helps the liberal Chamorros, he has a free pass to do almost anything, and many of them do just that.
• All solutions must be government-oriented. Chamorros may not be as down on the local government as conservatives are, but on some level, even they recognize that it doesn't work very well. So why are Chamorros so hell-bent on centralizing as much power as possible in local government? Simple, because they believe that they are better and smarter than everyone else by virtue of being Chamorros and centralized power gives them the opportunity to control more people's lives. There's nothing scarier to Chamorros than free people living their lives as they please without wanting or needing the local government to nanny them.
• You must be absolutely close-minded. One of the key reasons Chamorros spend so much time vilifying people they don't like and questioning their motivations is to protect themselves from having to consider their arguments. This helps create a completely closed system for Chamorros borrowed from the liberals mentality. Conservative arguments are considered wrong by default since they're conservative and not worth hearing.
• Feelings are more important to Chamorros than logic. Liberals base their positions on emotions, not facts and logic and then they work backwards to shore up their position. This is why it's a waste of time to try to convince a Chamorro of anything based on logic. You don't "logic" someone out of a position that he didn't use "logic" to come up with in the first place.
• Tribal/family affiliation is more important than individual action. There's one set of rules for members of the family and one set of rules for everyone else. Lying, breaking the rules or fomenting hatred against a liberal in good standing may be out of bounds, but there are no rules when dealing with outsiders, who are viewed either as potential recruits, dupes to be tricked, or foes to be defeated.
Adolf Peter Sgambelluri is a retired Marine, former Guam police chief and president of the Guam chapter of the National Association for Uniformed Services. Pththya-lyi fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Sep 14, 2013
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Sep 14, 2013 02:57
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- Mo_Steel
- Mar 7, 2008
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Let's Clock Into The Sunset Together
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Fun Shoe
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Jason Lewis gives us another wonderful treatise entitled "Black-on-white crime in America":
quote:When Daniel Patrick Moynihan zeroed in on the disintegration of the nuclear family as the root cause of African-American poverty and crime in the mid-1960s, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for black Americans was 25 percent.
Today, after a civil-rights revolution (culminating in the election of the nation’s first African-American president) and $15 trillion spent on a feckless war on poverty (the official poverty rate hasn’t budged), more than 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.
Wrap it up, our irresponsible spending on the "war on poverty" hasn't helped anyone. Poverty hasn't budged since the mkd-1960s. In 1965 the poverty rate for families was 11.8%, and as of 2011 it was 11.8%. It hasn't budged at all.
Except that 1965 was after the recovery of the early 60s recession (and in the middle of one of the longest sustained growth periods in NBER history) and 2011 is in the depth of one of the worst recessions since the 1930s. I'm sure he chose the mid-1960s and not the early 1960s for completely fair and balanced reasons, and not at all because 1960 (also a recession year) had a family poverty rate of 18.1%.
quote:Consequently, unemployment and poverty remain far higher for blacks than for the rest of Americans. More disturbing, however, is the elephant in the living room that no one in the public eye seems interesting in addressing — appalling levels of crime committed by young African-American males.
Appalling levels! Why, just look at this chart of black homicides:
It has sharply risen in the decreasing direction over the past two decades! 
quote:[...]
These acts of unspeakable violence perpetrated by black offenders on white victims rarely get much media attention, for fear of “subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion,” as one well-known newspaper editor recently put it.
Yet they are no statistical anomaly. While most violent crime is indeed intrarracial, 26.7 percent of homicides where the victim is a stranger are interracial. And in 2008, the offending rate for blacks (24.7 offenders per 100,000) was seven times higher than the rate for whites (3.4 offenders per 100,000), according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
This right here is a highly disingenuous arrangement of data, and given Lewis' history of being a hack I can't give him the benefit of the doubt of just being a moron. The way he arranges these statements makes it seem as though the rate of interracial homicide was 7 times higher for blacks than for whites; in reality, the data he cites is comparing total homicide rates by strangers, not just interracial. They show a graph (but no table that I saw) to show the distinct varieties:
Oh hey, it's actually more like 19% to 7%. This is of course if we accept Lewis' framing of only focusing on stranger committed homicides. If we look at homicides overall, black on white and white on black homicide rates are almost identical.
quote:
[...]
To be sure, poverty is still a significant problem in urban America, and a failed war on drugs does have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. But neither can fully explain the troubling trend in black criminal behavior that only genuine leadership — and a little honesty — can eventually solve.
But don’t expect that anytime soon. Acknowledging that a “gangsta culture” is responsible for greater self-inflicted wounds among young African-American males than the remnants of racial bias is especially problematic for those whose careers are built upon finding a racist under every bed.
My favorite part is that for gang-related homicides white offenders outnumbered black offenders, 53% vs. 42%. Must be that "gangsta culture". 
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Sep 15, 2013 21:44
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- Zeroisanumber
- Oct 23, 2010
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Nap Ghost
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I've grown to loathe Jason Lewis more than the other right-wing shoutbots. Partly because he's a local boy, but also because he's such a cherry picking, disingenuous, homophobic, racist piece of poo poo who tries to present himself as the face of modern "mind your own business" Libertarianism. It's shitbirds like Lewis that remind me that Libertarians deserve less respect than Moral Majority types, at least the god-botherers are open about their douchebaggery.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:40
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- Strudel Man
- May 19, 2003
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ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT
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Oh hey, it's actually more like 19% to 7%. This is of course if we accept Lewis' framing of only focusing on stranger committed homicides. If we look at homicides overall, black on white and white on black homicide rates are almost identical.
Of course, the other side of this is that if a black guy kills a totally random person, it's far more likely to be an "interracial crime" than if a white guy does the same thing. Correcting for that would be...hm. A trifle tricky. Let me think about it.
edit: Going by the information in the graph and sidebar, eyeballing where appropriate, it looks like the breakdown is something like
40% white on white
34% black on black
19% black on white
7% white on black
For killings by white people, the 40/7 split compared to the population's 72.4/12.6 split means that the rate of being a victim of a white stranger killing is 0.552 for white people and .556 for black people, units essentially arbitrary. That's...considerably more equal than I expected, actually. Weird.
For killings by black people, however, the 19/34 split means that the rate of being a victim of a black stranger killing is .262 for white people and 2.698 for black people. The bias is way, way, way towards intra-racial victimization; any higher rate of interracial offenses among blacks seems pretty clearly to be an artifact of the higher baseline offense rate, rather than any sense in which whites are being 'targeted.'
Oh, but worthy of note, in a 'lying with statistics' kind of way - if all artifacts of racism were completely dead and buried, if all groups committed murder at the same rate and targeted other groups at identical rates, you would still see 'differential rates of interracial criminality' for the reasons above. Specifically, whites would commit 72.4% of stranger murders, victimizing blacks 12.6% of the time (for 9.12% of stranger killings total), and blacks would commit 12.6% of stranger murders, victimizing whites 72.4% of the time (also for 9.12% of stranger killings total). Then you divide those 9.12% shares by each group's representation in the population, and voila! Blacks committing interracial murder at a rate 5.74 times as great as whites! Purely due to the different proportions in the population.
Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Sep 16, 2013
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Sep 16, 2013 08:33
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- Sephiroth_IRA
- Mar 31, 2010
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I was just surprised that Ronald Reagan gave anyone a raise, although I suppose the movie suggested it was for political reasons.
Also Alan Rickman played Reagan. I died laughing in my seat when I realized that.
Rich people loving hate low unemployment because it raises wages and reduces their control over their employees, and many econ professors (like Mark Thoma) are basically lapdogs to power.
Yeah I had to spell this out for my co-workers the other day, there isn't a single good reason for our (heck, any) employer to want unemployment to get better.
Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Sep 16, 2013
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Sep 16, 2013 13:37
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- Mo_Steel
- Mar 7, 2008
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Let's Clock Into The Sunset Together
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Fun Shoe
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That, uh, doesn't have the upshot that you seem to think it does. Blacks make up ~13% of the population, and whites ~74%; if 19% of stranger homicides are black on white and 7% are white on black, that means that their respective rates for such offenses would be 1.46 and .095, about a fifteen-fold difference.
Of course, the other side of this is that if a black guy kills a totally random person, it's far more likely to be an "interracial crime" than if a white guy does the same thing. Correcting for that would be...hm. A trifle tricky. Let me think about it.
edit: Going by the information in the graph and sidebar, eyeballing where appropriate, it looks like the breakdown is something like
40% white on white
34% black on black
19% black on white
7% white on black
For killings by white people, the 40/7 split compared to the population's 72.4/12.6 split means that the rate of being a victim of a white stranger killing is 0.552 for white people and .556 for black people, units essentially arbitrary. That's...considerably more equal than I expected, actually. Weird.
For killings by black people, however, the 19/34 split means that the rate of being a victim of a black stranger killing is .262 for white people and 2.698 for black people. The bias is way, way, way towards intra-racial victimization; any higher rate of interracial offenses among blacks seems pretty clearly to be an artifact of the higher baseline offense rate, rather than any sense in which whites are being 'targeted.'
Oh, but worthy of note, in a 'lying with statistics' kind of way - if all artifacts of racism were completely dead and buried, if all groups committed murder at the same rate and targeted other groups at identical rates, you would still see 'differential rates of interracial criminality' for the reasons above. Specifically, whites would commit 72.4% of stranger murders, victimizing blacks 12.6% of the time (for 9.12% of stranger killings total), and blacks would commit 12.6% of stranger murders, victimizing whites 72.4% of the time (also for 9.12% of stranger killings total). Then you divide those 9.12% shares by each group's representation in the population, and voila! Blacks committing interracial murder at a rate 5.74 times as great as whites! Purely due to the different proportions in the population.
Yeah, I was aware that I wasn't accounting for population differences; more just pointing out that his statements are poorly organized to give a worse view of the actual state of crime in the U.S. It's part of the reason I included the chart about black homicide rates falling off pretty strongly over the past 10-20 years: he's drumming up concern about a problem that, historically, is in a much better place than it has been, and all to argue that we should focus on some sort of culture war and shouldn't waste money on fighting poverty.
e: The more I look at the drop in the 1990s, the more confused I am. Does anyone have a good source for what could've contributed to the fall in black homicides and victimization rates? There's a similar trend in the data presented for homicides in large cities too, which makes sense if you consider the difficulties associated with gangs, poverty and drug use in large cities, but what happened in the 1990s to help facilitate the decrease? Given the 2001 and 2007 recessions it's not as though poverty fell off the map too, and while I haven't checked numbers I'd be surprised if drug use has fallen off in major cities either.
Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Sep 17, 2013
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Sep 17, 2013 01:35
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- Strudel Man
- May 19, 2003
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ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT
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e: The more I look at the drop in the 1990s, the more confused I am. Does anyone have a good source for what could've contributed to the fall in black homicides and victimization rates? There's a similar trend in the data presented for homicides in large cities too, which makes sense if you consider the difficulties associated with gangs, poverty and drug use in large cities, but what happened in the 1990s to help facilitate the decrease? Given the 2001 and 2007 recessions it's not as though poverty fell off the map too, and while I haven't checked numbers I'd be surprised if drug use has fallen off in major cities either.
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Sep 17, 2013 06:52
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- 7c Nickel
- Apr 27, 2008
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Fried Chicken wasn't sure where this should go, but I am.
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Sep 17, 2013 18:22
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 18, 2024 02:20
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- Walter
- Jul 3, 2003
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We think they're great. In a grand, mystical, neopolitical sense, these guys have a real message in their music. They don't, however, have neat names like me and Bono.
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I refuse to believe that Harry Binswanger is not a troll.
There's no way that (or his other editorials) can possibly be real. Is there?
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Sep 17, 2013 19:11
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Aug 28, 2013 03:35
