I saw a report on TV that said she was confronted by hikers in one park and when told she was doing permanent damage, she replied "I know. I'm a bad person."

The irony is that, the moment that cop left his vehicle to start an aggressive confrontation involving threats and intimidation...he was guilty of road rage according to colorado law.

I found it hard to believe that simple honking is considered road rage in Colorado, so I found a lawyers web site that quoted that road rage is "assault with a motor vehicle or other dangerous weapon by the operator or passenger(s) of another motor vehicle or an assault precipitated by an incident that occurred on a roadway”. They went on to list some actions that are considered aggressive driving. One was excessive use of your horn, another was "Exiting the car to attempt to start a confrontation."
So not only is the cop a colossal prick, he doesn't know the law in his own jurisdiction. Either that or he was willing to blatantly lie on camera.

You don't think that Trump won't make an unfair system even worse? Do you know what kind of scam operations he runs? Read up on Trump University, and if you don't think a mind like his won't immediately start eroding the as of yet intact elements of our government, then I have a bridge in the bay area to sell you. Not to mention that Scalia is not my definition of 'bright' by any standard. Bloviating quasi intellectual douchenozzle, sure, but not exactly a contributor to constitutional scholarship.

Hillary will be a boring drag; an uninspired and predictable apparatchik, but not remotely as harmful as the narcissistic psychopathy that's absofuckinglutely going to get us into severe confrontations around the globe that a Trump administration would bring.

Think about it. Yesterday the Russians put out a sabre-rattling presser about a US destroyer in the Black Sea (its international waters). Under Obama or Clinton, I can be pretty confident that any ruffled feathers will be smoothed and that things won't escalate. With Trump, if he has a bad morning because the viagra didn't kick in on time, or Ivana talks back or whatever, god knows what his decisions would be.

I like coming up with wild hypotheses and narratives, so here is one: The lizard saw its reflection in the camera phone. Being highly territorial, it therefore attempted to chase off the intruder who was staring him down in the reflection of the backside of the camera phone. Eventually, the "tree" supporting the camera phone reflected intruder stopped moving and the lizard ran up the "tree" and confronted the reflected intruder. However the camera phone was eventually moved for a side view causing the intruder to disappear. The lizard suddenly found itself upon a moving "tree" whose branches could move and grasp onto him, and it decided to get the heck out of Dodge.

@Mordhaus, yeah, good points. Thanks for the clarification of what lies behind the soundbite (nobody has time to explain what they really mean these days, do they?)

However (isn't there always a "however"), I don't agree with "valid to question the integrity of the second vet." Integrity? Pretty loaded word.

It presumes that someone can be gungho about something in the abstract but when confronted with the reality, can't learn something about the world and themselves they didn't know before.

You're right that he didn't know he was CO before. He learned he was.

It isn't integrity to turn away from a learning situation. To me, it is the utmost in integrity.
There are different types of bravery. The bravery to go into battle. And the bravery to decide in the closeknit world of "band of brothers" that you can't be in that particular band anymore.

Maybe it was cowardice in the face of death or maiming that he learned and he ran away. I would say, in this particular case, he honestly came to a new understanding. Otherwise he wouldn't be speaking up, right? He'd be hiding at home? Knowing what soldiers who stayed are saying about him?

War is hell. So many casualties, both physical and mental.

Makes me wonder who gave the green light for these two, the insiders of all insiders on MSNBC, to go into open confrontation with the DNC. Have their (credibility) ratings been so poor that they perceive a need to maybe, just maybe, tone down the pro-establishment horseshit a bit?

Also, look at how the media runs with the violence line, the thrown chair, etc. It's entirely made-up, and they know it. Everyone can look at the recordings and see for themself, yet they still run with it.

The warplane is designed to kill, but who is it killing - is it killing an evil dictator in order to save innocents? It might be on a peace keeping mission to discourage any killing. If it the warplane is killing only people who would otherwise be killing the innocent, then it's a tool used for good, it's saving more lives than it's taking, and more importantly it's saving lives that are more important to maintaining a civilized society.
I'd even say that it would be less moral to not build the warplane and let innocents die through inaction, when the consequences are well known.

Even further down the chain, killing isn't inherently bad, there are plenty justifiable reasons to kill someone.

It's the same with veganism -making choices which are less harmful, not necessarily perfect.


Non smokers are definitely way better people than smokers. Especially given that 2nd and even 3rd hand smoke causes cancer. Even if smoking only harmed the smoker, it's still a strange idea to be harming yourself. Perhaps they lack the appreciation of how lucky they are to be alive. I mean the odds of being born are like winning the lotto, let alone being born healthy, being born in this day and age, in a civilized country, being born to the dominate species, being born on the only planet that seems to have developed life. Some people have rough starts to life, but harming themselves isn't going to make it better, just shorter.


I agree that everyone is capable of making good moral stances, you've obviously drawn the line somewhere (otherwise you'd be going all Genghis Khan on everyone). But where the line is drawn is tends to be influenced a lot by misleading information and lack of information. And that makes it very hard to make logically sound choices. It's even harder when in order to understand the real impact means having to watch footage of animal cruelty. Most people find it confronting and uncomfortable at best, so it's easier to put it away, not think about it and continue consuming.

I know most people are moral, but if they don't act on it, it doesn't mean much to the puppies being strayed in the eyes with chemicals, or to the piglets being slammed into the concrete floor for the crime of being born male.


Regardless of how you categorize it, analyze it, or philosophize it, this always remains true: Animals feel and respond to pain, they will do their best to avoid suffering, and they have a will to live.

All in all, that's not very good anecdote. That one time you thought about saying fuck you in public to a widely despised, confrontational blowhard? It's a nice thought, but it didn't happen, it wasn't a very creative attack, and it wouldn't have been effective - not exactly the stuff of algonquin round table bon mots.

"Doing these things as a prelude to proselytizing means they aren't altruistic..."

Altruism isn't the right word. When people help others to their hurt, that is called agape love, a word the Christian community has owned for 2000 years. You're right of course, that more than a few churches out there are always trying to figure out how to get more members, more money etc. But that isn't all the churches, or even nearly so. For instance the churches in this community dont care who goes where; they all work together and no one is taking the credit for it. This is just one counter example to the broad brush strokes you're painting here.

I think you need a little more nuance here too, newtboy; for instance, would you say it is wrong for atheists to do good deeds in the name of atheism? Or, for the red cross to air commercials showing their accomplishments so they could raise more money to expand their mission in the world?

"And yet, here you are calling attention to yourself (and them), so you proved your statement wrong by stating it publicly. Oops! ;-)"

I didn't mention what I do newtboy, but I have no problem calling attention to the righteous who glorify God through their lives.

"Churches are for profit institutions.."

The church according to the bible is a non-profit organization. Whether churches in America reflect that or not is another question entirely. I know for my church, and almost any other church, you can request to see how the church spends its money year by year. None of the churches I have dealings with are making "profits"

"Once again I would ask, why do you question your god's clear wish that I (and others) not believe in him..."

Jesus Christ died for our sins, yours and mine. God already demonstrated His love for us while we were sinners, now the only question is, will you reciprocate? The insanity of the question posed to Stephan Fry, ie what would you say to God, is exposed by the answer "How dare you!" by Stephan. It seems that people believe God is a man who needs to explain Himself, who has something to hide. Yet, Stephan and every other human being have a lot to hide; the brutal and ugly truth of how we have all lived our lives here.

It's easy for a man to say to people who know nothing about him that he will shake his fist at God when they meet. Yet, what will he do when all of his lawless deeds are exposed and the secrets he has kept from everyone are brought to light? All the fight will go out of him immediately, this I guarantee you. Yet, this in itself is still ridiculous, considering that even merely being in Gods presence is enough to make the most hardened sinner fall to his knees and weep uncontrollably. But people won't be weeping because God loves them on that day, they will be weeping and gnashing their teeth after being confronted by the fact that they have missed the boat for eternity.

"Shirley.."

My name isn't Sherlock..

"Doing 100 good deeds and one incredibly evil deed makes one evil. No church in history has ever reached that level of goodness. Churches are evil. I hope that clears things up."

I'm glad you understand what I have been trying to explain to the sift for years; a relative goodness is no goodness at all. If you set fire to someones home, and then built 27 orphanages, would people call you good? Why is it then that people think that all of our good deeds should cause God to forgive us for a single sin? This is the reason Jesus died for us, because we can't earn Gods forgiveness and our good deeds can't erase our bad ones. Could you ever go to court and say "your honor, although I commited this crime I have done over 1000 hours of community service in my lifetime, so please dismiss the case; will that ever happen? That wouldn't be justice, and if God threw out our case without true justice, He wouldn't be a just judge.

What would I say about churches who have done evil? These are institutions; the true church is the body of Christ, of which every born again believer is a member of. That is what is happening in my community, is that no one cares about the institution of the church; they are just being the church. The reward is simply this, to serve God honorably by living a sacrificial life predicated on sacrificial love.

Oh yeah, I'm well aware that defending yourself can easily turn into a scene from a 70's kung fu movie with multiple attackers going after you for defending yourself...no matter how out of control the female attacker may be. There are many dumb, sexist douchebags out there just itching for a fight. My point is, there's absolutely no legitimate reason you can't defend yourself against a woman who's attacking you physically....idiot douchebags don't count as 'legitimate reasons' to me, but I don't disagree they're a consideration. EDIT: That said...I don't think black Rick Astley there would give me much pause.

My brother knows even better than I, he was attacked by a random angry drunk girl on the street in Austin, she threw her drink on him and sucker punched him in the face out of nowhere, over nothing (according to him), he slapped her, and woke up 5 minutes later face down on the sidewalk with a missing tooth and a broken motorcycle helmet, some 'bro' (read 'brah') sucker punched him in the back of the head and beat him with his own helmet, then probably went home to rape the drunk girl.

That said...if a woman wants to act like her sex isn't an issue and start a physical confrontation with someone much larger, they deserve the debilitating beat down they get and their sex and/or size should not be an issue. That's the logical outcome of believing in equality of the sexes in the eyes of the law.

Three pieces for your entertainment:

The Grauniad ran an opinion piece by former NYT executive editor Jill Abramson abtly titled "This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest". The headline is enough to make my head spin, nevermind the content. Not worth spending time on, really. You can guess what the comment section thought of it. Not surprisingly, it was closed after an hour.

Worth a read, however, is a recent polemic by Sean Kerrigan: Will We Elect Hillary After Her Many, Many War Crimes?

What made me laugh was this: the supposed presidential frontrunner would have been hanged if judged by the standards set at the Nuremberg Trials, yet Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer, holds a fundraiser for Clinton at $350k per pair for seats at her majesty's table. Who the hell needs satire anyway, not even Doug Stanhope could come up with most of the twisted shit reality confronts us with day in, day out.

Last but not least, Robert Fisk wonders why neither Cameron nor Obama seem to be celebrating the retaking of Palmyra from the IS.

"Here are the Syrian army, backed, of course, by Vladimir Putin's Russkies, chucking the clowns of Isis out of town, and we daren't utter a single word to say well done."

Unfortunately Newt, the ending proves the officer may be misinformed, but calling him a controlling dickhead is a bit much. There is a concept of "keeping the peace" that could be applied here. He mentions they were "doing tricks" which usually means skateboard-esque jumps and slides which could come into endangering the public.

Also, after the officer walks away, the kid tries to prod him into a real confrontation. The only reason I can see for that is YouTube views or he's just a mouthy little shit.

I was a big fan back in '92 and must have watched the toothache episode dozens of times. The bit about the cartoon confronting bodily fluids at the "height" of AIDS fears was bullshit filler, as I remember that was definitely mid to late 80s when people were at their most ignorant about the potential spread of HIV.

Otherwise good post.

Here's a short and interesting piece on a culture shift in western society, from dignity towards reverse honour aka a culture of victimhood:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/rhodes-must-fall-from-dignity-to-honour-values

Under the guise of hypersensitive offense-taking, the self-worth we once held intrinsic and inalienable is again becoming contestable and anxiety-inducing. Like in the old days of honor culture, self-worth is again understood as an internalised right to respect. No longer content with dignity as a remedy against injustice, people resort to confrontational and resentful tactics reminiscent of honor culture.