“How to Cut Down on Ransomware Attacks Without Banning Bitcoin”.
“The Fair Repair act would make it easier for everyone in America to fix their own stuff.”
“As Republican legislatures enact new voter suppression laws, Congress should reaffirm the House’s promise in 1965 to refuse to seat, or to unseat, members who benefit from discriminatory voting laws.”
“A CEO of a prominent aviation company has admitted that he helped invent a fake spokesperson for his company — and even gave interviews as that phony press representative for years.”
“I assure you, the Black Death was actually bad”.
“The decision by the bishops to take greater offense to a fellow Catholic over abortion than, say, the abuse of migrant children or the the state murder of prisoners by a grinning philanderer illustrates their real motivations.”
A great story about finding some of the still-missing box scores to Negro Leagues games, to help fill in the historical record and add to the database of Major League statistics.
“That 2009 climate bill, the one that President Barack Obama couldn’t pass? It required the U.S. to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 17 percent by 2020 as compared with their all-time high. Yet last year, our emissions were down 21 percent. The same bill said that the U.S. had to generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2020. Last year, we met that target. We will surpass it in 2021.”
Meet the pink fairy armadillo, an animal that really does exist.
“A majority of the 52,000 separate drinking water systems in the United States still haven’t inventoried some or any of their information technology systems — a basic first step in protecting networks from cyberattacks.”
James Hong, whom you know from Big Trouble in Little China and Wayne’s World 2 and the Kung Fu Panda movies, is finally getting a well-deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“Telling the people what they want to hear isn’t good leadership. It isn’t leadership at all. It’s pandering—and yet millions of Americans love it even though it harms them in the end.”
RIP, Sang Ho Baek, pitcher at George Mason University who died after complications due to ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, otherwise known as Tommy John surgery.
Three cheers for Carl Nassib, the first active NFL player to come out as gay.
“A unanimous ruling from the nation’s highest court might not be a death knell for the NCAA’s business model, but it clearly and devastatingly exposes the facade upon which the entire enterprise rests”.
“Facing both the rapidly spreading Delta variant and dominated by the somewhat vaccine evasive Gamma variant (formerly known as the Brazil P1 variant), these countries are being hit with a one-two punch of the worst variants evolution has yet cooked up, and vaccination programs that are either completely ineffective or short of high-efficacy vaccines. Things may be getting back to normal in much of the U.S., but mass graves and overflowing hospitals are still the rule in far too many nations. The pandemic is not over.”
Wishing Coach RC Slocum all the best.
“On the one hand this is totally insane. But it is also textbook incitement.”
“Trump lawyer and Ukraine conspiracy peddler Rudy Giuliani can no longer practice law in the state of New York: A state disciplinary group requested and was granted an immediate suspension of Giuliani’s license for lying to courts during his attempts to overturn the U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf.”
RIP, John McAfee, antivirus software pioneer and total whackjob.
RIP, Janet Malcolm, longtime writer for The New Yorker.
“U.S. government prepares to issue landmark report on UFOs”.
RIP, Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska and 2008 Presidential candidate.
“Three cheers for Carl Nassib, the first active NFL player to come out as gay.”
Why? Why is the fact that he enjoys having a penis shoved in his ass something to cheer about?
Wouldn’t it be better to celebrate a heterosexual that limits his sexuality to the bounds of matrimony with a woman who is his wife? Maybe that’s something we should be cheering for, vs. cheering for an avowed sodomite.
Maybe we should stop celebrating deviant behavior.
Kuff, surely WordPress, like Blogger, allows comment moderation. Can’t you shove Bill Daniels up his own ass while refusing to post his comments?
COGNITIO INTERRUPTUS
Why?
I would respectfully submit that it’s a legitimate question.
Why is homsexuality now valued more highly than heterosexuality of the traditional kind, i.e., penis-vagina intercourse, which is still a major and regular pasttime for the majority of the population and also remains the predominant method of procreation? To state the obvious, no society has a future without heterosexual reproduction, at least short of human cloning factories. And coupling and formation of functional family units are still desirable as means to socialize and bring up the next generation. Or so one would hope. What’s the alternative? Human hatcheries? Children farms or factories?
And why are folks being applauded and celebrated for engaging in same-sex relations as distinguished from the time-proven conventional statistically prevalent and morally normative ordinary fuck? – WTF !?
PRIVACY OF THE BEDROOM (OR CLOSET, IF PREFERRED) AS A VALUE
There is a good argument to be made that people should keep their sex issues, preferences, and practices private, one reason being that people have strong feelings about such matters and don’t concur in their moral judgment (a practical consideration), not to mention that sexual privacy is in and of itself a value worth protecting (a pricipled reason). Many folks certainly think so, many value their privacy, and courts have based their rulings on government regulation of sexual matters on the right to privacy, even without an express textual basis in the U.S. constitution.
Some folks, of course, are all too willing to “let it all hang out”, thereby voluntarily surrendering their right to privacy, but why should others — people who value privacy and propriety and decorum — be expected to applaud them, not to mention being denounced for not partaking in the clebration of same-sex merrymaking?
PROUD OF WHAT ?
Seriously, what is there to be proud about? The ability to achieve an erection and ejaculate into an orifice? That should be considered no more than normal sexual functioning and medical interventions, devices and pharmaceutic remedies, are available to address miscellaneous causes of malfunction.
It would seem, much rather, that reproductive success should be regarded as cause of pride, rather then mere ability to engage in copulation. Not only is conception followed by birth of a baby often a cause of profound joy for a man-woman couple, it is also vital to the propagation of the community, not to mention the species itself. And it gives at least a portion of the parents so blessed a sense of legacy and immortality of sorts.
TOLERANCE OF DEVIANCY
That said, if private individuals want to flaunt their sexual preferences and activities in public — including intimate activity with another member of the same sex — they should not be prohibited from doing so as long as their express and symbolic speech comports with the limits the SCOTUS has placed on the First Amendment. Nor should folks who espouse traditional notions of gender roles and sexual mores be silenced. Let’s not forget that professing such views is likewise an exercise of First Amendment rights.
And let’s not forget that there is still a place for community standards and proper etiquette even within the realm of that is legal, i.e. not prohibited, in public spaces.
THE CALL TO SUPPRESS DISFAVORED SPEECH ON SEXUAL CONDUCT
in his parsimonious interjection above, SocraticGadfly has offered no reason for suppressing the speech he disapproves of, whether principled or otherwise, and has himself chosen to use coarse language (“shove … up his own ass”).
So why should Kuff censor Bill but not Gadfly?
SODOMY
As for the position articulated by Bill on this occasion, let’s acknowledge that anal intercourse is not exclusive to men-men relations, and that its tolerance is consistent with the liberatarian viewpoint no matter how disgusting and offensive it may be to more traditional people. Bill has previously identified himself as a libertarian, if memory serves right. So why the objection to consensual sodomy now?
Let’s also point out that social mores have changed, and that, for example, “criminal conversation” (adultery) was legislatively de-criminalized prior to the SCOTUS striking down sodomy laws. Same for the related civil tort, alienation of affections (though not for-cause divorce on ground of adultery).
So, even those who are of the opinion that SCOTUS should have ruled differently in Lawrence v. Texas, the public policy judgment of the principal political branch of government was already moving in a liberal/liberatarian direction in Texas. Not to mention that sodomy laws that remained on the books (such as in Texas) were rarely enforced before they were struck down as unconstitutional.
CENSORSHIP OF ADVOCACY OF NORMAL SEX?
But the First Amendment obvioulsy also protects the right to disagree whith the reform and judgment of political authorities, the courts included.
In light of the excesses perpetrated by Republicans under the sway of Trump, it is depressing to witness how eager their opponents are to abandon principle and trash the freedom of speech.
BOTTOM LINE: Hold the applause and give a thought about what to be proud about. I hope it’s not zero-tolerance for speech you happen to disagree with.
Lobo, hate speech should not be tolerated. Bill engages in promoting spreading hate, and you do, also on occasions.
I am curious about how you and Bill know what kind of sexual activity Gay people engage in.
Why do you care what people do in the privacy of their homes?
Do you know who Plato considered the best warriors of his time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece
Wolf,
Libertarians generally believe in individual rights. So a libertarian would correctly support the right, for example, of two (or more) consenting same sex adults to copulate. A libertarian would support two homos entering into a contract to get the same governmental benefit and recognition as two heteros. Why should two heteros enter into a contract to get Social Security survivor’s benefits, but two homos can’t do the same thing? The government must treat all comers (pun intended) equally.
So I support gay marriage, knowing up front it will involve deviant sodomy. That’s not the same thing as celebrating it. I support the legalization of most drugs including pot….that doesn’t mean I celebrate drug abusers or drug abuse, another deviant behavior getting ‘3 cheers’ from the left these days.
It’s totally consistent to personally oppose, but legally support, deviancy. What’s that old saying, “I disagree with your speech, but I’ll defend your right to that speech?” That used to be something both the left and right could agree on.
Finally, even libertarians understand that kids are off limits for all this. We understand kids don’t get the same rights, or have the same responsibilities as adults. Kids shouldn’t be recruited into deviant lifestyles; they should be actively protected from all that.
Spreaders of hate can’t help themselves but to always promote hate, look no further than at Bill Daniels’ closing statement. Why does he not worry that his racist friends and himself have no problems taking children to hate events?
Libertarians support open borders. Bill Daniels is no Libertarian.
https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration/
Manny,
There’s a difference between big and little L libertarians. I haven’t been a big L libertarian since before they ran Bob Barr for President. I was a Ron Paul type libertarian, now a libertarian leaning populist.
So take two divisive issues, abortion, and, as you mentioned, immigration. The LP takes no position on abortion because people that ID as Libertarian have divergent views of it. Personally, I support abortion, for reasons already presented here.
As to immigration, there’s divergent views there, too. Yes, I believe individuals have the right to travel freely, but I also believe in sovereign nations. In other words, we, the citizens of the US, should have the right to determine who does and does not enter our country, just as Japan, or Iran, or any other country has the same right. We shouldn’t be restricting internal travel though, pandemic or not.
The LP’s support of open borders, and the crime, drugs, human trafficking, lower wages for citizens, overtaxing of our governmental systems, as well as the general chaos it causes, is just one of the reasons I am not a big L libertarian anymore.
As to taking kids to hate events, like ‘Pride parades,’ yes, I generally agree kids don’t need to be exposed to that kind of perversion and filth. I’d go further and say that kids below high school age, or at the very least, below junior high (assuming the kid is very precocious) should be kept away from partisan political events of all sorts. It’s abusive to trot out your little boy wearing a dress to promote homosexuality, and it’s also wrong to trot out your little boy to hold a sign that says “God hates fags.”
If you’re tempted to use kids for political purposes….just don’t, and on this, I’d say both the right and the left are guilty.
Hope that helps clear up stuff, Manny.
I was referring to the Trump-type hate rallies, where little children are taught to hate people different from themselves.
Ron Paul;
“Paul assumes that there is an unhealthy emphasis placed on granting citizenship to immigrants, noting that people emigrate to countries like Japan without any expectation of obtaining citizenship. This does not mean they forfeit their property rights, however. Moreover, he notes : “A libertarian society would put less emphasis on citizenship because there would be no specific rewards [for being a citizen].”
Paul then proceeds to attack numerous economic arguments made against immigration and free trade. In particular he mocks Donald Trump’s claim that it’s a bad thing that immigrants make money and “send it home.” “Economically, who cares?”, Paul asks. “They use that money to buy American goods.” And he goes on with McAdams to recount entrepreneurs and small business owners they worked with in Congress who relied on immigrant labor, and who should continue to be allowed to access labor, as in any reasonably free economy.”
Manny,
In the Ron Paul school of thought, there’s no welfare, it’s strictly sink or swim. So that means someone comes here, they don’t get treated at a hospital if they can’t pay, they don’t get food stamps, their kids don’t get free school breakfasts, lunches and weekend take home food, they don’t get minimum wage, OSHA workplace safety protection, they don’t get free refugee resettlement housing….there’s none of that.
In the Ron Paul school of thought, if visa holding farm workers, or McDonalds workers are bitching, shit, just import a bunch of fresh across the border folks to do those jobs and fire the complainers.
If you want open borders, and can get with the rest of the program, like, you get scraped off the sidewalk, but you can’t pay for the emergency room to treat you so I leave you to die out on the sidewalk, we can have that discussion, Manny.
And now, the rest of the story:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/28/2037494/-Carl-Nassib-comes-out-as-a-Republican
Are we still cheering for the queer footballer now that we know he’s a Republican, or nah?
Do you think I am like your family, Bill? I have insurance, have had insurance my entire life, that includes my childhood. My father was a WWII veteran and worked for over 40 years for the federal government.
I have no problem with Paul’s suggestion, do you have problems with that?
Actually, American citizens are allowed to perish on the streets, including in Dems-run Houston. Of hypothermia, for example. Other causes too, of course. It’s quite disgraceful, in a country capable of so much, and with such an abundance of wealth.
While not true of all, Lobo, quite a few of them do not want to be removed from the street to shelters.