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"How can you not call CNN fake news when the majority of their programming is all about Trump in a negative light?"

This is because in reality, Trump is a piece of shit. Accurate reporting does not have to make something seem balanced when in reality it is not. This is why the majority of news media, not just CNN, report Trump in a negative light. There is nothing good to report about cancer.

This is why most international news media in the western world, who are not affected by domestic US partisan bias, report Trump in a negative light. Read the BBC if you want. Trump is just as shitty in Britain as he is in America.

There are two possibilities: one is that there is some sudden massive coordinated conspiracy by the once respectable and honest media to lie about Trump. Or two, the media is just exposing a life long immoral compulsive liar in the Oval office for the piece of shit that he is.

Just because you don't like hearing negative things about Trump doesn't mean that those things are fake. Don't be gullible and let Trump's lies fool you into believing that anything negative against him is a part of some agenda. That is the first step any communist or fascist dictator uses to blind their people to the truth.

It doesn't work because there is an intrinsic group think personality in the Nordic region. Most people in that region that were born and raised there are very sensitive to profit making and ostentatious displays.

Which means that people are glad to simply 'get by'. There is not a mass drive to be better than your neighbor or own more toys than them. Of course there are outliers, but the bulk of Scandinavians are very used to the accepted norm. They are more willing to accept massive tax rates because they know they will be taken care of by the government. They aren't necessarily concerned about 'getting rich'.

Contrast that to other areas, especially the USA, and you will find out that it would never work here because we are an individualistic nation. Even the bluest liberal wants to be rich here. It's more cutthroat, more selfish, than you will find in a Scandi nation.

Another huge reason it would never work is that they do not spend anywhere near the percentage of their budget on defense that we do. Denmark spends about 20 billion per year on defense. Norway, an oil rich Scandi nation that is considered one of our most important NATO allies, spends about 6 billion. Less than 1.2% of their GDP. This is one thing that Trump was actually right about. We spend around 700 Billion, roughly 3.5% of our current GDP.

"Half the alliance — 16 of the 29 countries — don’t even spend 1.5 percent (of gross domestic product) let alone 2 percent that we all agreed on four years ago (at a NATO summit) in Wales,” Michael Fallon, who served as secretary of state for defense from 2014 to 2017, said. In 2017, only the U.K., Greece, Poland and Estonia reached the 2 percent target.

Whether that level of spending is needed is another argument altogether. I personally think we overspend way too much on defense, but regardless it is a huge factor as to why we can't offer the same level of 'socialism' that the Nordic nations do. If we spent the same percentage as Norway, we would be saving close to 460 billion dollars a year that could be applied to other programs. Such as paying for college for qualified students or trade school for ones that are not college minded. Or providing benefits to new mothers that we currently don't.

You wouldn't be a Spartan... While all the men would be doing manly things, you'd be whining about how no one cares about your feelings and how oppressed you were. Fuck, even the women would be more manly than you. And the children. Possibly also the domesticated animals (seriously, Spartan chickens would be badass...)

But I like where you're going with the whole "caring, tolerant leftist advocates mass infanticide" shtick. Really gives you tonnes of moral high ground to ride that high horse around on. X D

I also don't get this "dogs were domesticated by humans, cats domesticated themselves" bullshit. Dogs were domesticated the exact same way as cats, the only difference is we discovered cats are only useful for rodent control, as hunters. Dogs could be hunters (terriers), hunter-helpers (pointers, retrievers), protectors and herd control (shepards, collies), beasts of burden (Rottweilers), etc. Of course we spent more time working with dogs. They had useful abilities already. Cats are much like rats, racoons and other animals that thrive in the presence of humanity. They're just at the top of their respective food chain, like we are.

One way to resolve the issue might be to redirect some of the immense intelligence focus from Islamic terrorism to domestic terrorism.

That is what this is, domestic terrorism. It may not always have a manifesto behind it, but that is not relevant. There were numerous people who said this person was probably a school shooter in the making. He was doing things with white power groups and militias. Why didn't our mass spying that we do catch that? Because it wasn't an Islamic group.

We can ban assault rifles or put limits on them, we can make mandatory psych evals required for gun purchases, or we could do any number of things. While we look into what we can legislate, we should also be looking into how we can use resources we have in place to STOP JUST THIS SORT OF THING.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am a hardcore supporter of the right to bear arms. I am not an NRA member, because they aren't really concerned about the right to bear arms, just that they keep getting money from gun manufacturers. I still think we can keep AR type rifles, but we should have a national mandate on clip size, number of clips allowed, and we should have a mandatory psych eval required if you plan on purchasing anything other than a hunting rifle. Yes, that includes handguns.

i was an attorney for victims of domestic violence for a couple years under a federal grant. fun job. eye-opening for sure.

Yeah there's a pretty broad range of shit out there, and yeah the details often dictate whether ur a just a bro-tard or whether ur going to jail for a long time.

Do I have to watch it? This vid, I mean?

Star Wars is about rebels fighting a powerful empire that governs the galaxy. It glorifies taking down the establishment by a group of (well funded) gun-toting terrorists.

I suppose you could draw a parallel to the American war of independence against the British...

But in a modern context this would be like a group of domestic insurgents blowing up an aircraft carrier ("Death Star") while staging an armed rebellion against the US government (now a subsidiarity of "Gov-co," a joint venture of the Disney, Viacom, Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan Chase, and Koch Bros. companies).

Simply put, that's just not going to happen.

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edit: Okay I just watched the above clip. That guy made even less sense than the BS that I just made up.

Cassowary attacks

Cassowaries have a reputation in folklore for being dangerous to people and domestic animals. During World War II American and Australian troops stationed in New Guinea were warned to steer clear of them. In his book Living Birds of the World from 1958, ornithologist Ernest Thomas Gilliard wrote:

The inner or second of the three toes is fitted with a long, straight, murderous nail which can sever an arm or eviscerate an abdomen with ease. There are many records of natives being killed by this bird.

This assessment of the danger posed by cassowaries has been repeated in print by authors including Gregory S. Paul (1988) and Jared Diamond (1997). A 2003 historical study of 221 cassowary attacks showed that 150 had been against humans. 75% of these had been from cassowaries that had been fed by people. 71% of the time the bird had chased or charged the victim. 15% of the time they kicked. Of the attacks, 73% involved the birds expecting or snatching food, 5% involved defending natural food sources, 15% involved defending themselves from attack, and 7% involved defending their chicks or eggs. The 150 attacks included only one human death.

The one documented human death was caused by a cassowary on 6 April 1926. 16-year-old Phillip McClean and his brother, aged 13, came across a cassowary on their property and decided to try to kill it by striking it with clubs. The bird kicked the younger boy, who fell and ran away as his older brother struck the bird. The older McClean then tripped and fell to the ground. While he was on the ground the cassowary kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm (0.49 in) wound which may have severed his jugular vein. The boy died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary

But why though? As detestable as we can all dismissively think these pet-dumpers are, at least hear WHY your friend did why she did. Sometimes the reasons are more nuanced. Maybe financial/domestic troubles can be a factor.

It takes a really special type of asshole to do that to a domesticated animal.

No, not take Weinstein for example, that is an entirely different case and it undermines your position to use such an obvious straw man.

Society promotes the concept that men are violent, women are not. Any man that uses physical violence on a women is evil and if a woman raises a hand to a man and he strikes her in defense, he would still be the one that had to explain himself. Look at the Duluth model re: domestic violence sometime to see how truly baked in the myth that men are the perps and women are the vics...

https://medium.com/iron-ladies/men-are-still-pigs-the-politicization-of-domestic-violence-2cfa7488c204 (written by a woman for noting)

Particularly salient.

[i]It’s clear to me that despite the fact the Duluth Model has proven to be worthless, programs still adhere to the same principles. Men are still the automatic perpetrators, women are always victims. What’s worse is the men under attack by violent wives have no way of protecting themselves. Their right to self-defense in domestic violence cases has been cancelled.[/i]

I'm all for acknowledging that differences between the sexes is an absolutely real thing, but the long and the short of it is that women are basically allowed to assault men almost without consequences, but in the reverse situation the man would (justifiably) have the book thrown at him. And while men do have the physical advantage (although not always), they are hamstrung by society. The mere threat of a rape accusation (or far worse, the accusation that the husband has been abusing the kids) would silence most men in a heartbeat because they understand that the police, the judge, the social workers will believe the woman first.

Violence is wrong as is giving women a free pass because they rolled vagina in the game of life.

I get what you're trying to say but you don't really have to be bigger to abuse someone. You're ignoring the fact that women are typically given the benefit of the doubt in domestic violence situations because of that sort of thinking. Abusive women can and do use that fact to their advantage; a man can feel powerless to defend himself for any number of reasons: fear of mob-justice, criminal charges, loss of job, financial ruin, etc.

It's interesting that the people they interviewed after the roles were reversed felt that the man must have done something to piss off the woman and that somehow justified her behaviour.

Uhhh... you are aware of the atrocities Japanese soldiers committed less than a century ago during WWII, right? And I think you're confusing psychopaths (who may or may not be violent) with those suffering from a psychosis (a complete mental break with reality).

Either way, mental illness is a huge problem in Japan and in fact treatment of mental illness is one area where their socialized medicine is sorely lacking behind other countries.

I don't know of any credible studies that say that mental illness rates are lower in Japan than in other developed countries, but I do know that the overwhelming majority of crimes in pretty much any country are actually committed by people who are legally sane.

So, despite what you may believe, "genetic" predisposition is an unlikely factor in explaining Japan's crime rate. Besides which, criminologists agree that whatever role genetics plays in people becoming criminals it isn't nearly the most important factor and is dwarfed by environmental factors (see this for a scholarly article on the topic and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29760212>this for a popular news article).

You're trying to paint this as two equal parts of the recipe for crime when in reality it's more like "add two cups of environmental and a dash of genetics/personality/whatever."

Crime does happen here. The kinds of stuff I hear about on a daily basis in the news: crimes of desperation (homeless guy stealing to survive), thrill-seeking crimes (stealing a bike because you're young and stupid and the chances of getting caught are pretty low), crimes of passion (i.e. domestic violence, drunken bar fights, etc.), organized crime (i.e. yakuza), and the big one--sexual assault.

Sexual assault is so prevalent in Japan that there are actual signs warning women of areas where they are likely to be groped or have men expose themselves. There are train cars for women only so they don't have to get groped on the way to work or school. I mean, how fucked up is that?

So it isn't all rainbows and unicorns over here. Crime happens, and unfortunately is much more likely to happen to you if you're a woman. Still, even accounting for that the crime rates here are ridiculously low, for the reasons I stated above.

I don't think anyone suggests that civilian disarmament encourages tyranny, merely that civilian armament discourages tyranny.



In any case, there are a variety of applications that aren't "fighting hitler".

No country goes on forever without some domestic strife. Could be domestic war, could be economic collapse, could be the government scapegoating "your kind", could be a weather disaster, could be whatever.
In such an unlikely event, if you happen to be around at the time, you may wish to guard your family, food, fuel, etc.

Note that these events affect a LOT of people when they do happen (as in millions at a time).
Even though they are less frequent than a random shooting, the sheer quantity of people makes them significant.

Eg. The last Houston destruction by hurricane was in 1979 (38 years ago). That's not so infrequent, in a city of 2.3 million people (ish).
That's an upper bound of 60'000 people affected per year on average.
Either way, it's a lot of people that need to guard their homes from looters, etc.
Granted not everyone is on a destroyed street - but you see what I mean.

There have been plenty of disasters and riots in the last few decades where you wouldn't want to be caught helpless - just in case.

That's also a commentary on society. During the Fukushima disaster, nobody was looting or robbing, or whatever. Japan has a better behaved society.

-scheherazade