That's just, like, your opinion, man. ;-)


Anyone sharing the opinion that they are protesting the flag, anthem, or America got that idea directly (or by proxy) from Trump who spouted that vitriolic lie from day one, and they were all duped by him. Sorry, that's simply fact.

I've seen plenty of interviews with active military who said the right to protest is a large part of what they serve to protect.

You should maybe talk to veterans instead of standing on what you believe they think (with no evidence). They take a knee for flag draped fallen comrades themselves, as a sign of respect.
I cannot understand anyone who's taught proper flag etiquette disagreeing with other people following proper flag etiquette.

It's far more disrespectful to wear the flag as clothing, but I would bet 1/4 of those complaining have worn the flag as underwear, wiping their shit soiled asses on and pissing on it directly, but they think kneeling is disrespectful? Come on, you must admit that's moronic.

Honorable knowledgeable veterans don't think that....they know better.

Yes, if you ignore all your training, written flag rules/etiquette, common sense, national identity, and the clear, unambiguous words describing the intents of the protesters in favor of politically motivated divisive rabble rousing from consummate liars, that's definitely unreasonable...yes.

Big surprise. Another totally fake racism story presented as truth.

God damn, @C-note, you're starting to convince even me that racism doesn't exist except in lies and stories, and I know better. Every time you spread a false story of racism or create one out of nothing (racist faucets) you let 5 real ones be ignored and dismissed. Please stop, or at least do minimum research before crying racism.
I chastise you because I believe racism is a problem....one I believe you are making worse with these easily *debunked posts.

And now maybe she knows better.

He parked correctly beside her, hardly treating it as "some kind of huge crime". She'd keep doing this if it didn't affect her.

Bob, do you really think you can politicise Weinstein in defense of Trump here? Of all places?
You should know better.
They're both pieces of shit that need to be fired and sued into poverty.

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

I should know better than to watch trailers for things I'm planning to watch anyway. Now I'm impatient for 10/27... Damn / thank you Netflix!

Thanks for looking into it, @lucky760. I'll know better what to look for next time.

it's not under debate; he did obstruct justice; if it was Hillary, she'd be impeached, but Republicans have no backbone

the excuse that he doesn't know better doesn't fly; he had two months to prepare for the job and ignorance isn't an acceptable excuse anyway

I understand, and "pollution per capita" is a logical argument. But from my point of view there are some critical problems and many flaws with following such reasoning. For example:

The US isn't the greatest emitter of Co2 per capita, but when that's brought up...the argument falls back to emissions in absolute terms. Many would say that that's hypocritical.

Wealth inequality is particularly bad in the US, with the top 20% of the population holding upwards of 88% of all wealth (while the total wealth of individuals isn't GDP, it does correlate with income flow). Doesn't this skew GDP per capita, holding the poor in the US to an unfair standard, vis a vis emissions? If it doesn't, then how is it unfair to poor, rural Chinese?

No international organizations agree on the definition of a "developing" country. Without this, aren't these types of arguments extremely subjective and open to abuse? The point being that there are very, very few "apples-to-apples" comparisons available. For example, would it be a fair comparison if I told you that China's per capita Co2 emissions exceeded the per capita emissions of the EU starting back in 2014?

But you're right...in that the US has polluted the most in absolute terms historically (with China catching up pretty fast). We didn't have a "God-given" right to do it; for most of it, we didn't even know that "it" (Co2) was a pollutant.

You're also right that as individual Americans we have more power to demand change. I understand and accept the dangers of climate change, and I very much want to do something about it. This is why I'm so frustrated with our current administration.

I just want you to understand that I'm not strictly pro-US and/or anti-China. In my opinion, climate change is giving us one resource to either take advantage of or to squander. That resource is time. And time isn't going to make accommodations for any nation, big or small, rich or poor.

This is why I'm troubled by a government like the CCP, that has plans to accelerate their emissions. We know better now (re. Co2), and so such actions on their part are unreasonably selfish. They know their actions will likely hurt or kill all of us, and yet they continue...with the hope that other nations will sacrifice so much as to be properly weakened while they themselves are strengthened.

I understand that in a perfect world, we'd have an equality of outcome. Wouldn't that be great? But we don't have the time left to make most of South America, much of Asia and virtually all of Africa economic equals. What we can do is get our own emissions down to as close to zero as possible, and help these nations build up an infrastructure using green energy. In this way, maybe we can try to foster at least an equality of opportunity energy-wise. The Chinese government has the funds to not only fully transform their own nation, but also to help to some degree in the aforementioned global initiative. But instead of being honestly proactive, they're creating a new cold-war mindset. This is not only wasting time, but also resources (both their own and those of the US in seeking to maintain their strategic edge militarily) that could be better used to help the less fortunate.

So what do we do? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But I can tell you that having other countries paint the US as a villain in this issue, and China as a saint certainly isn't helping.

Sweet zombie Jesus, that's fucking awful.
They actually said on the record that they think their training makes them better at detecting drugs than a blood test?!? And this bullshit doesn't get tossed every time?
I just hope those 3 all start multi million dollar lawsuits against the force, county, and him personally for violating their civil rights. He needs to be homeless, carless, and pensionless, and that force needs to learn this isn't acceptable.
Astonishing he's getting accolades just for arrest numbers and not convictions. You would think people would know better. We should never give authority an incentive to abuse their authority, and that's exactly what this M.O. is.

A comment from Youtube:
"So, this horrible and blatant act of racism happened to occur to a former ACLU civil liberties counselor who majored in Critical Race Studies -- described as a major aimed at "naming one's own reality" by "using narrative to illuminate and explore experiences of racial oppression." Isn't it ironic and unfortunate that this would happen to her of all people?

What's also a little ironic is that Ms. Suh not only received these texts from a "Tami," but also happens to have a Facebook friend named "Tami" who posts on Facebook about "Tiny House Listings" -- a house rental service.

Speaking of which, it's kind of interesting that Tami showed up as "Tami" on Ms. Suh's phone, rather than as a phone number, isn't it? And there's a photo for Tami too. That means Tami is saved as a contact. It's a little odd for some random Airbnb host that Ms. Suh never met in-person to be a contact with a photo on her phone, isn't it?

Interestingly, if you look at Facebook-friend "Tami's" photos, they're all sort of artistic, colorful photos of inanimate objects -- just like Tami's photo in the texts.

If I didn't know better, I would almost, almost think that this stilted, formal, perfect little racist exchange between house-renter Tami and critical race studies major Ms. Suh, and the passionately tearful speech in the rain that followed -- why was she making speeches in the rain anyway? -- was, in fact, a carefully constructed "narrative" that Ms. Suh conspired to create with her Facebook-friend Tami.

But hey, that couldn't be right, could it?"

Hmmmm...

If you're going to bring rationality and logic into the laws of religions, we can get nowhere.
I agree, logically the laws make no sense, but neither does an invisible sky daddy who's all love, and wrath, infallible but infinitely confusing, all knowing but constantly testing us anyway with torturous tests, capable of the impossible daily but never performs in public, etc. Being irrational when thought through doesn't invalidate it, by the rules of religion. It just means you don't comprehend the mysterious plan that will, miraculously, make it work in the future. Claiming logic demands you interpret the words to mean nearly the opposite of their clear meaning is akin to claiming to know the mind of God, or to know better than God...neither is allowed.

It clearly said different:
"until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished"
NOT "until I die". Earth sure still exists, (not sure about heaven, but it said "and") so every letter of the law is in effect, and anyone teaching different is thought of as "the least" in heaven. I found that indisputable by reading it, it was pretty clear on that to me.

Edit: It's like you're saying they read the words of God, think them through and see they lead to disaster, so say "God didn't mean what he said, he just wants to make us think". I disagree with the contention that that interpretation makes sense....and if it did I would suggest that Aesop is a much better teacher.

I find the reddit thread to be more logical. I pretty much tossed out credibility for the video, and the freethought link, when I noticed their primary source were people from the 'Delta Paranormal Project'. Plus, I mean, statements like "...Mississippians know better than to taste the bitter fruit fertilized with the blood of atrocity." and "excruciating conditions akin to Nazi concentration camps" don't exactly lend themselves to rational discourse.

I believe we did create camps to most likely protect the former slaves from a hostile populace of southerners angry over the loss of the war and the freeing of the slaves. There is a good likelihood that 1000 or so freed slaves died from conditions in those camps. I can almost guarantee that if they had been left to wander the area unprotected, you would have likely been able to walk across the Mississippi River on the bodies of dead former slaves killed by a vengeful local populace.

They are not me me team. I'm not a democrat.
Faux is so far beyond biased that, for over a decade, it's repeatedly been proven that watching Faux makes you LESS informed.
CNN is far from perfect, but Fox is the grand champion of fake scandals....birth certificate, Vince Foster, WMDs, Benghazi, .....nothing else need be said.
If he ran as a democrat, he would probably have been screwed just as hard or harder than Sanders, he would absolutely not have won, democrats don't believe any insane thing their leader tells them like republicans will, because democrats are more likely to be college educated (22% more) so they know better.

I lost before the election started when Sanders was cheated out of the nomination.

Trump bashing will go on for his lifetime, he has ensured it with his bat shit crazy rhetoric. You might note that Faux was leading the charge against him, calling him an idiot, a liar, and completely unqualified to hold office until it started looking like he would win, then they changed their tune.

Fake news and biased media are FAR worse from the republicans, just look at the myriad of fake stories about Clinton in the last 6 months, then compare with the fake Trump stories, and there's no comparison, no one has accused him of running child slavery rings, or of murdering numerous close allies over some made up secrets, or of intentionally abandoning diplomats and military personell in hostile foreign countries, but Clinton has dealt with fake news since the 90's (dealt with it poorly, granted).

I am adult, Bob. Ask your president elect to grow up, he won the electoral college (not the electorate by 3 million votes though) but he's still acting like a spoiled 2 year old.

Edit: You might notice that the story that set Trump, and therefore you, off was NOT a fake story, it was a piece about a real report on what MAY or may not be a fake accusation about a foreign government having blackmailed the president elect (that they helped get elected), a report produced by the intelligence community for, and given to Trump (who may well be the one that leaked it, in order to distract from it with his outrage, knowing it would come out eventually). Maybe that's a good reason a president elect might want to not throw a tantrum at the intelligence community, they can destroy him with no effort if they choose just by reporting claims they've heard....like he does. Not good....sad.