Poor bob. A wonderful libertarian information clearinghouse hasn’t become a home for right wing nonsense, lies, and propaganda. Tragic!

Still talking about Hunter Biden, eh? You still have nothing better? Another Benghazi nothing burger with fries….something fake to keep you mad at the right person. There’s zero credible evidence on that laptop, no evidence it ever belonged to Hunter, at best there’s evidence someone who hacked his email account at the same time the Russians hacked Clinton and the DNC created it, adding tons of fake information, photoshopped photos, fake and doctored emails, etc. Because the right had possession of it, and tampered with the contents for 9 months before “turning it over” (to Giuliani?), it’s nothing. Like a piece of evidence allegedly taken from a crime scene, washed, dipped in blood, exposed to close range gun fire, wiped with dna, tested at a filthy unaccredited lab with zero anti-cross contamination protocols, then handed to police and expecting a conviction. Just so stupid.

They don’t “vouch” for the emails….they say there are indications some of them are real….not all. Liars.

So family is fair game….now….but not Trump’s criminal family that undeniably took BILLIONS in bribes from horrific murderous dictators and Trump covered for them, directed his DOJ to not investigate or to just exonerate people like Mohammed bin Salman, even bragging he saved Mohammed’s ass from consequences for the live dismemberment of an American. Far from the only KNOWN bribe, Melania…..Don Jr, Eric, Jared, likely Barron too. Better investigate since this kind of stuff outrages you….but it doesn’t really, now does it? It’s just a crutch you cling to like an emotional support blanket, propaganda.

Oh wow! Right wing media isn’t reliable!? Who knew!? (EVERYBODY KNEW, YOU DUMB SHIT…for decades)

Whine some more, snowflakes. Why not create your own? (Because it would be chock full of insanity from day one, with zero real information or usefulness and you know it).

Yeah, the crutch of it for me is the UBI moniker.

What you describe at the end of your post, minimum income, is really just a rewording of the existing social security and welfare systems across the western world. I know they look different in each, but here in Canada what you describe is more or less our already existing system's design goal. Welfare money exists for those that straight up can not work, and an employment insurance system exists to protect those inbetween jobs, meanwhile other multiple programs are aimed at distributing financial assistance to the lower income groups.

Despite all of that already existing, UBI is still being heralded up here in trials as well as a replacement. The problem being that for the needy the UBI pitches are generally a step backwards.

Eg. $500/month is the UBI pitch, and they say it'll be great because everyone gets it no matter what so it's simple and fair and nobody is left behind. The trouble though is that the reality is the truly in need people were already benefitting more than the $500/month under the existing systems, and the cost was much less because it was targeted.

I here UBI and get very worried about folks just selling snake oil 'solutions' that in the end are just a demand to adopt their own particular flavor of wealth redistribution.

I see a pair of assholes in this video.

First indication:
"After I showed him my crutches he went on to call me a pussy and said are you backing out."

Fighting someone because they called you a pussy and then continuing to punch them in the head after obvious signs of brain injury...
Yeah, you're an awesome teacher.

Ya, I clenched up there too. Like WTF guys?

Apparently the one guy with the crutch made the jump last week...

Yet another crutch to not succeed.

Ask your friends and co-workers what your verbal crutch is. You may be surprised. (Edit: Not there there is anything wrong with a verbal crutch, you just need to know how to deploy it properly and when to change it up. "Um" doesn't sound good in professional communications, unfortunately)

What a weird verbal crutch. "Uh" and "um" make sense to me. "So, like" makes sense to me. "And everything like that" is too damn long to be tossing into conversation so frequently.

Slavery has ZERO impact to today's society.


Everyone has the opportunity to become what ever one desires.
To hang on to the past is nothing more than a self inflicted wound.

My GGgrandfather was a laborer.
GFather was a plumber.
Dad was first to finish HS.
I was able to finish college.


Each generation trying to make the next a little better.

Also Cubans flooding Florida over last fifty years doing better than black counterparts

Illegals traveling thousand of miles for a chance of making a better life for themselves and family.

Yet you give blacks a pass to hang onto the crutch of the past.

Micro aggression! Really MICRO. If you are offended by micro anything then you are too thin skinned.

no one is owed anything, these "nice guys" as you call them are not that nice if they lose patience with their flawed strategy, then attack women.

how nice a person is doesn't matter, most women want someone who excites them/makes them laugh/is an action man/follows through on promises.

these incel people are not an internet group by coincidence... the internet is killing people's ability to be social, especially those people who would have already had trouble, but could have worked it out pre-internet, now people have internet forums as a crutch to help them never have to speak to real people ever and everything gets magnified.

true story: the other week there was a student on crutches at the cafeteria, and when he got his food, he was struggling a bit carrying both the food and the crutches and hopping along. So a cafeteria worker comes along, offers to help, and takes his crutches instead of the food...
The student politely asked the worker to switch, and they went on their way.

^ @ChaosEngine: I think she makes perfect sense -- she just has some hang ups in regards to her own gender. (She's also really dumb.)

"Leave Hillary Alone, Bullies"

Sarcasm. Reference to an old meme regarding Britney Spears?

"Aww, c'mon guys, give her a break. Anyone can be out of commission.... for weeks on end... whilst in the heat of battle for the highest office in the land. No press conferences for nearly a year? No scheduled campaign events for days upon days? No statements, no answers, no accountability, no problem. Layin' low to run out the clock before November, but you're SEXIST for noticing it."

Sarcasm and calling out Hillary and the media for using misogyny and sexism as a crutch rather than ignoring the sexism like a good woman should in this man's world. Like Palin, who mans up and doesn't let her emotions show. (I don't believe in this viewpoint, but I believe Palin does.)

"And you're MISOGYNIST for questioning a female's fitness. Good thing media didn't hound the crap out of '08 candidate John McCain for his decades-old military medical records or I'd guess them to be hypocrites."

More sarcasm in regards to feminism, while calling out the hypocrisy of the media going after McCain's medical records, but excusing Hillary.

"Leave Hillary alone! All that email-evidenced yoga, and wedding planning, and cookie-baking-grandma-duty wears you out. Believe you me."

Sarcasm and misogyny in the form comparing Hillary's email scandal to typical female activities such as practicing yoga, wedding planning and baking cookies. Not exactly sure why she's focused on making fun of typical female activities. Palin clearly has some emotional issues she needs to work out. Maybe she wishes she was a man? lol. Anyway!

"Heck, even those of us claiming to be fit as a (seasoned?) fiddle, hit bumps in the wellness road. Even I. Especially I. (Remember Piper's middle name is "Grace"; mine isn't.)"

Is she referring to Trump as the "seasoned" fiddle? No clue.

Also not sure who Piper is... Piper Laurie from Twin Peaks? Piper Wright from Fallout 4? Pied Piper? Likening the Pied Piper to Jesus Christ, who by "grace" she is saved? Help me out here.

"Rock-running recently, I tripped over my own two feet and crashed & burned face-first. I recovered with the doc's SuperGlue, and now any man who asks "what happened?" I'll refer to as just a mean ol' SEXIST bully."

I think she's appealing to men by referring to stitches as "SuperGlue", sorta like duct tape fixing everything. She should have said the doc's duct tape. That would have been funny, actually. But for real, I think Palin may have an inner desire to be a man and not a "weak" woman.

"Glad for Hillary's protective media's precedence. The next woman running for POTUS has no need to answer to much of anything, for we've got weddings to plan, and Down Dogs to do, and cookies in the oven! So just leave us alone, boys."

Almost full circle to earlier in the message where she lists a bunch of typical female activities: wedding planning, yoga ("Down Dogs" = downward facing dog, a pose in yoga), and baking cookies.

I guess she's claiming Hillary is just a whiny girl so she might as well just do a bunch of dumb girl stuff. Meanwhile, Palin is doing "man" stuff like jumping on rocks, then she goes to the hospital, gets her head superglued together and back out on her feet doing more man stuff.

I'm gonna go bake some cookies now. That sounds like the best idea Palin's ever inspired me to do. Bake some motherfuckin' cookies.

Also, everyone should practice yoga and if you're going to get married, doesn't everyone help with the planning on some level? Why is Palin so dumb?

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

I do not mean to be rude, but the reason why you're feeling no empathy is because you assume that drug addiction is a choice that people make, turning away from better and brighter options and choosing the short road to an early death.

It isn't. It's generally a result of inability to deal with life, a job, trauma from their past etc. It is a result of social systems which allow people to sink to the point they need an escape. Look at any mental ward, most of the inmates (if allowed) will smoke. Same with various anon groups, smoking/coffee etc are almost encouraged as an alternate addiction to the one that will put them in a grave far earlier.

Addiction is a crutch, a way of escaping from something else.

The work by Carl Hart on addiction provides a lot of proof that when given social interaction and ways to reintegrate with society, addicts can and do have the fortitude to get off drugs. And that most drug addicts are fully functional, and drugs are a way for them to cope with the stresses or lack of control in their life.

http://www.drcarlhart.com/

To fix a problem, you first have to understand it. That does not require sympathy or empathy. That is basic science and it's based on evidence. That the DEA is freaking out over krokodil is because they don't understand that drug abuse in the US is a factor of the social situation people find themselves in. At least for the classes of people that will use a cheap and dangerous drug (not to put too fine a point on it, predominately black). It would not be unexpected that because of the supposed danger, users found with krokodil may end up with far harsher sentences than heroin users. Soaring African-American incarceration rates again?

Funny how we never see videos like this over oxycodone or cocaine abusers, or housewifes who will pop whatever prescription they can get their hands on. They are no less addicted, but it's a nice, clean, acceptable addiction that allows them to stumble on through life. Is that EIA?

Those crutches are from the 1940s. Do they still use underarm crutches in the states?

At what point will 'white privilege' be considered over? How many years / decades / centuries must pass? How many affirmative action programs / laws must be enacted to consider all races/ women on equal footing?
When sentencing certain individuals in our Canadian courts here, judges here are required to take their ancestry into consideration.
Here in Canada, there's also a big move afoot for governments to apologize for historical injustices -- Japanese, Chinese, Sikhs, natives, Jews, etc.
My problem is that we are looking at history through a modern lens which is crazy. How far back are we going to go? 50 years? 100 years? A millennia? Should Christians today should apologize for the Crusades?
PS. Before somebody accuses me of a hidden agenda, I have no axe to grind. I am part native but don't make a big deal of it. I certainly don't look at a white guy and think, "Hey that guy owes ME something because of what his great-great-great-grandfather did."
I think Bill is right... at some point people have to stop leaning on laws and affirmative action movements as a crutch/excuse and get on with working things out for themselves.