That's a pretty big can of worms you're opening there newt.

Do you REALLY want to make it ok for people to legally discriminate for any reason?

You'd be comfortable with shops refusing services to gays or non-caucasians or atheists or insert-your-own-prejudice-here?

"Awww, but we could boycott them!"

So, a libertarian market solution then? Those don't work. Because as soon as you allow a business to be racist or homophobic or whatever, you will have racist, homophobic assholes queueing up to support them.

Sorry, but you don't get to impose your values on your customer (regardless of whether your values are good or evil). Unless what you're being asked to do is actually illegal (and that includes hate speech, so asking a baker to make a KKK cake would cover that), you suck it up and do your job.

If you want to make a political point in your business, there are other ways to do it. Source your materials through fair trade. Tell this moron Trump supporter that the profits from his t-shirt are going straight to Hillarys campaign fund.

Dean Baker drops some MMT over at Truthout:

We Poisoned Kids in Flint to Keep Their Parents From Having Jobs

It a right for Americans.

With all the illegals , some 30 million an official ID is not a bad thing. Getting an ID is not that difficult.

Leftest crying foul.

But lets not over react when one baker does not want to bake a gay cake.

Tom Baker was the best...

My question is: Why? He could have supported local farmers/bakers/cheese makers etc and had a better sandwich to boot. If he has that kind of time/money/energy, he should share the wealth.

Your video, Brenna Baker - Glass Artist, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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As a gay man, I would like to not feel like a second-class citizen by being turfed out of a restaurant because the owner doesn't like my sexuality. But at the same time, if I were a baker who was asked to bake a cake for a KKK rally, I would like to be able to refuse. I genuinely don't know which one of those rights is more important to me.

I have to admit that I'm partially on the "wrong" side of this one.

Housing, not being fired for being gay, that kind of stuff, I'm with John Oliver 100%.

But restaurants, bakers, etc. ... I dunno, I'm a little torn.

Places like Big Earl's in the clip put up a sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason". I tend to think that is a right that we should allow private businesses (NOT things that are set up for the public good like utilities, gas stations, govt. agencies, whatever) to have.

That is NOT to say that I approve of the way that these clowns exercise that right. Dude doesn't want to make cakes for same-sex weddings ... fine. You're a retard, passing up potential customers for a really stupid reason, and also possibly discouraging business from other people that empathize with those that you are denying service to, but ... hey, it is your goddamn business. If you don't want to make a cake for people who's name starts with a Q, I'd support your right to make that (equally dumbass) decision.

Kinda the same thing goes for Big Earl's. That might even be one of the cases where the comfort of your standard clientele (redneck bigots) is potentially more important/beneficial to your bottom line than the potential lost business that your discriminating policy causes. In other words, from a purely capitalistic viewpoint, the policy might be a net positive to the business. Maybe.


The one thing that gives me pause on those more private businesses being allowed to "deny service to anyone for any reason" is shifting from LGBT equality to race equality. If that cake maker refused to make cakes for a black wedding, I'd be more accepting that we need some government intervention. I know that my opinion should be the same in both instances, but I can only honestly admit that at the gut level, I have a different reaction to those 2 scenarios.

I sorta think that even the racist cake-maker should be allowed to continue to be racist (so long as we're talking cakes, and not something more *necessary* to public good), because a racist cake maker will probably put themselves out of business without the need for any government intervention. BUT, I'm sure there are places in the US where that wouldn't have been true (and where it wouldn't be true today), and we needed the push of federal mandate to force such people to remove heads from asses. Maybe the same thing is true for LGBT discrimination.

But I do still feel conflicted about it. Even though I know I shouldn't.

I married into an Asian family that run restaurants, are professional bakers, and wow, even the bad cooks can kick my ass in the kitchen. No one I've spoken to in her family has a problem with Panda Express style food ON OCCASION because the horse it's really high but it's so much more comfortable just enjoying food. Go eat a goddamn big mac, but before you take your first bite SAY OUT LOUD, "I'm just a dumb slut living on the planet earth. Eat fuck and shit motherfucker" and then eat the frelling burger. Frack you. It's good, bitch. Just stop lying to yourself, you food slut

And drink a Pabst. Hey. Asshole! Yeah YOU. Not me i know me bad but u worse so you, this I say: Go buy a 6 pack of non-lite budweiser, smoke some shitty weed out of an apple, and proclaim to the sky and no one in particular -- FUCK MY TRADITIONS AND FUCK MY AFFILIATIONS -- I will eat anything that my SLUT taste buds will enjoy. My brain may proclaim "But people and science says" -- SCIENCE and PEOPLE aren't your taste buds, bud(ette). Stop thinking what can create competition and power, the red queen effect its EVERYWHERE. When you think you're making conscious choices about your perception of food matter reacting with your taste buds, in reality your brain is making complex judgements on the world around it, cut throat and always seeking gain. You will seem to just "know" your tastes. Liar. You're competing with your surroundings. Points within time and space colliding and reacting. You don't know the difference between a tastey butt hole and the centerfold back cover of a Mad magazine.

Ok, but, don't always not think. Sometimes you must think and get vaccines and stuff. Do that. Eat orange chicken. Smoke weed. Drink a steel reserve once a month. Then go to a grocery store, buy a bunch of meat and vegetables, and FUCKING COOK BITCH. That's really the only lesson.

Unfortunatly, it's not just Merkel and her cabinet. It's the press, it's the economics departments at universities, it's politicians at all levels. Call it an economic nationalism, hell-bent to defend what they know to be the moral way of doing business. Everything left of this special flavour of market fundamentalism has been systematically attacked and suppressed for at least 30 years.

For instance, our socialist party, still referred to as the fringe of what is acceptable, runs on what is basically a carbon-copy of social-democrat programmes from the '70s. Similar to the British Green Party and Labour. Krugman, Stiglitz, Baker, Wolff, DeLong -- they'd all be on the fringe in Germany. Even the likes of Simon Johnson (IMF) or Willem Buiters (City Group).

If you speak out in favour of higher inflation (wage growth) to ease the pressure on our brothers and sisters in southern Europe, you'll be charged with waging a war against German saver. "You want to devalue what little savings a nurse can accrue? Don't you support blue collar workers?"

The same blue collar workers have been stripped of their savings by 15 years of wage suppression, the same blue collar workers are looking at poverty when they retire, because the PAYGO pension system was turned into a capital-based system that only works to your benefit if you never lose your job, always pay your dues and reach at least age 95. The previous system survived two world wars without a problem, yet was deemed flawed when they realized how much money could be channeled into the financial system – only to disappear at the first sight of a crisis, eg every five to ten years.

Similarly, you could point out that a focus on trade surpluses might not be the greatest of ideas, given the dependence it creates on foreign demand, a weak currency and restricted wage growth domestically. But they'll call you a looney. "The trade surplus is a result of just how industrious our workers, how creative our scientists and how skilled our engineers are. It's all innovation, mate! Are you saying we force the others to buy our stuff? That's madness."

You simply cannot have an open discussion about macroeconomics in Germany. Do I have to mention how schizophrenic it makes me feel to read contradictory descriptions of reality every day? It's bonkers and everyone's better off NOT reading both German and international sources on these matters.


Any compromise would have to work with this in mind. They'd have to package in a way that doesn't smell like debt relief of any kind. People know that stretching the payment out over 100 years equals debt relief, but it might just be enough of a lie to get beyond the level of self-deception that is simply part of politics. If they manage to paint Varoufakis' idea of growth-based levels of payment as the best way to get German funds back, people might go for it. Not sure if our government would, but you could sell it to the public. And with enough pressure from Greece, Spain, Italy, and France most of all, maybe Merkel could be "persuaded" to agree to a deal.

As for Syriza's domestic problems: it's a one-way ticket to hell. Undoing decades of nepotism under external pressure, with insolvency knocking on your door? Best of luck.

Italy is hard on Greece's heels in terms of institutional corruption. Southern Italy, in particular, is an absolute mess. Given the size of the Italian economy, Syriza better succeed, so their work can be used as a blueprint. Otherwise we're going to need a whole lot of popcorn in the next decade...


Edit: Case in point, German position paper, as described by Reuters. As if the elections in Greece never took place.

I've always preferred Tom Baker in the "old" series. Tennant in the reboot.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'dr who, tom baker, best quotes, fourth doctor, bbc, classic quotes' to 'doctor who, tom baker, best quotes, fourth doctor, bbc, classic quotes' - edited by brycewi19

Not always. A person baker-acted is taken to jail for his own protection. He is cuffed and dumped into the back of a patrol car just like everyone else but few would say that someone taken in because he has displayed obvious signs that he will kill himself is hardly under arrest. After the normal 72 hours of substandard help he or she is free to go without a criminal charge.

Moving someone out of a particularly embarrassing/dangerous situation is another example. I won't watch the video so I don't know. It's too sad--that we have laws on the books for this. But it does make rich people feel safe I guess. My only legitimate reasoning is that the rich won't pay for housing these people in humane living conditions while they fear them.