One of the main problems with being a part of the vast liberal conspiracy is knowing you’re a part of it.
I mean, I never get meeting notices, and I have completely missed instructions as to our secret handshake.
But this conspiracy must exist. So many on the right are convinced that the only way they keep losing arguments and debates is because of the immense and powerful cabal of liberal elites who run the media, politics, and apparently even games and science fiction awards.
“Surely we aren’t losing these battles because we’re wrong,” they say, “or because our views are not shared by the majority of people involved. It clearly has to be because of the vast left-wing conspiracy machine.”
This great and powerful group rivals the Illuminati in what it can get done. For instance, it can make evidence about Benghazi disappear completely, as if there never was any evidence in the first place! In smaller doses, it can use its power to convince a majority of people to do the exact opposite of what the right wing wants, almost as if the majority of people were going to do that anyway.
And how does this conspiracy accomplish these goals? Very subtly, by using an underhanded strategy that has been dubbed by the media elite as “facts.” These “facts” are evil instruments that eat away at our society’s moral center, contradicting the world view that the right knows actually exists — where immigrants are all rapists and the vast majority on welfare are drug users and Obamacare has been unsuccessful. Facts contradict many right wing views, so clearly the fault lies with those who insist on stating facts — that vast and evil conspiracy on the left.
So I am really insulted. Since I am obviously part of that fact-loving majority, I need to know:
When do I finally get my membership card?
(Thanks to Michael Pederson for inspiration for this post)
Another crazed gunman, another shooting, another day. Big deal, this is America. Happens all the time and no one seems to care any more — or at least, not care enough to want to do anything about it.
Two more innocent victims
And I’m sick of debating it, too, because while there are indeed reasonable gun owners out there, the Gun Nuts shout louder and pay more money to politicians to prevent anything from being done about it.
Yes, I think guns should at least be regulated as much as cars are. No, there is no evidence that more guns means less violence (and in fact, it is the exact opposite). The 2nd Amendment is not absolute and even the Supreme Court says that regulations are Constitutional. No, laws about gun control won’t prevent every shooting any more than laws against drunk driving have prevented drunk drivers — but they do work to reduce gun deaths. There is ample evidence that gun control means less gun deaths and lack of it means more — but for some reason, we’ve decided that lots of people dying is less important than the right of people to own a deadly object without restriction. Go figure.
I’m just tired of arguing with people who can’t see reason — who think their guns are the only thing standing between us and tyranny. Waste of time.
This doesn’t mean I will ever stop trying to solve the problem. I’m just not going to argue with irrational people about it.
I am always more than willing to have a reasonable debate. My positions and arguments are clear — just read the links above. (But if you’re unreasonable and I don’t respond, don’t think that means you won the debate.)
Some Republicans are arguing that Hillary Clinton, who will be 69 in 2016, is “too old” to be President.
They then retreated to their evil lair, where John McCain (72 when he ran for President) and Bob Dole (73 when he ran for President) led the prayers to their God Ronald Reagan (69 when he ran for President, 73 when he ran for re-election).
Seriously, though, is this an issue? In some parts of the world, being older means being more experienced and wiser. Not sure that’s a bad thing.
So I decided to look up the ages of all of the major candidates. Here they are, from oldest to youngest, with the age they would be on inauguration day:
Bernie Sanders (D): 75
Joe Biden (D): 74 (not yet announced)
Jim Webb (D) and Donald Trump (R): 70
Hillary Clinton (D): 69
Rick Perry (R): 66
Ben Carson (R): 65
John Kasich (R): 64
Jeb Bush (R) and Lincoln Chafee (D): 63
Christine Fiorino (R): 62
Lindsay Graham (R) and Mike Huckabee (R): 61
Rick Santorum (R): 58
And then there’s all these young whippersnappers! (I say that because, like Obama, they’re all younger than me):
Chris Christie (R), Martin O’Malley (D) and Rand Paul (R): 54
Scott Walker (R): 49
Ted Cruz (R): 46
Bobby Jindal (R) and Mark Rubio (R): 45
I’m so sick of fundamentalist politicians and internet trolls. And not just the religious ones — the Constitutional ones.
These people view the US Constitution as if it were written on stone, never changing, and can never be questioned.
Like religious fundamentalists, they believe there is only one interpretation of their holy book and — here’s the amazing part — that interpretation is always exactly in line with their own personal views!
Most of us who study the Constitution for a living are aware that the Founding Fathers, though great men, were not gods. We know that the Constitution was written by politicians, who made compromises and wrote the thing to be deliberately vague in parts because that was the only way they could get the damn thing passed. That’s how politics works.
The most obvious example may be “The Virginia Compromise.” (Look, it even has “compromise” in its name.) The smaller states wanted each state to have an equal vote so that they wouldn’t be ignored. The larger states wanted it to be based on population which would obviously benefit them. In the end, we got both — a Senate where each state gets the same representation no matter how small, and a House where the states with more people get more representation.
Then there are the first ten amendments themselves (the “Bill of Rights”). Many states refused to ratify the Constitution without these protections, and it’s a good thing they demanded them.
But the clearest example of compromise in the Constitution has to do with slavery. Most of the northern states had already abolished it and wanted the entire country to do the same, but the southern states refused. The south was worried that as soon as this Constitution was passed, the northern states would outlaw slavery completely. Without some provisions to prevent this, the south refused to agree to the Constitution. Rather than split the country within the first ten years of its existence, a series of compromises were worked out. (Sadly, postponing this only led to the bloodiest war in American history seventy years later.)
First, there’s Article I section 9 which specifically prohibited Congress from passing any law outlawing the importing of slaves before 1808 (twenty years from the Constitution’s signing). Why 1808? Was there something magical about that year? No, that was just the number that compromise produced. (And as soon as 1808 came about, Congress did exactly what the south was worried about and banished the importation of any more slaves.)
Second, there’s the ridiculous 3/5ths clause. The south demanded that when determining how many representatives they would get in the House, that slaves should be counted as “people” even when they were property in every other respect under the law. The north rightly pointed out how stupid this was, but the south insisted and there was another compromise made. We ended up with a provision that held that 3/5ths of every slave would count. No mention as to which 3/5th of the slave counted, though, but apparently it didn’t include the head since the views of the slaves mattered not.
Third, there’s the 2nd Amendment, which allowed the southern states to keep their state “militias” which were basically armed gangs whose only job it was to intimidate slaves and capture ones who escaped.
Within a few years of its passage, there were cases before the Supreme Court to determine the Constitution’s meaning and its application. The Founding Fathers themselves were still around and they could not agree! To think that there is some magical interpretation we can know today, hundreds of years later, is ridiculous.
So anyone who claims to “know” the intent of the Founding Fathers — as if they all agreed completely — is either lying to you or just too damned stupid to realize they’re spouting bullshit.
Yes, yes, “family activist” Josh Dugger, the hypocrite who said gays are immoral while he was molesting his sisters, was one of the names that appeared on the hacked list from the Ashley Madison web page — like we didn’t expect something like that was coming, anyway. It’s always the loudest self-righteous ones who turn out to be committing the same “sins” they rally against.
I had never heard of Ashley Madison until it was announced that there had been a major hacking. The site is where people can go for secret hookups so they could cheat on their spouses. Recently, someone posted a list of their members.
Forget the fact that Dugger was there. I’m sure other prominent names may soon show up. While I am always thrilled when hypocrites are exposed, I cannot endorse the method by which this happened.
The vast majority of people on that list are not celebrities. They aren’t people who publicly shamed others while doing the same thing. They aren’t people who deserve to be exposed.
Some of them may have been in relationships that had already fallen apart. Maybe they were separated from their spouses. Maybe they were in an open marriage and the spouse already knew about it. And maybe it’s none of our damned business what private people do in the privacy of their lives with other consenting adults so long as they aren’t physically hurting another or breaking the law.
So would I support the hacking if it was just Dugger being exposed? Interesting question. On one hand, when you voluntarily throw yourself out in public, you don’t have the right to demand “privacy” in the same way the average person does. And if you’re a lying scum, you deserve to be exposed. On the other hand, two wrongs don’t make a right, and the hacking crime means that a business that was legitimate (as much as you may not like it) has been attacked and ruined for that. People will certainly think twice before giving their information to them again. (If it helps you understand why this is bad, pretend it was Target or some place you regularly shop instead of a sex site — would you continue to shop there knowing your information could be stolen?)
Meanwhile, speaking of Dugger, how about that Jared from Subway guy, huh? Too bad he’s not friends with Republican candidate Mike Huckabee like Dugger is, because then God could forgive him and he’d walk away free.
