@blankfist

Right. I try to illuminate the discussion with a detailed understanding and interpretation of what the right to assemble means and you label me a statist?

Bravo.

Except that nothing I have said indicates that I believe the state should have a role in economic or social policy. Your label is completely non sequitur.

Read up on the strict scrutiny test. The state doesn't have the right to stop you from protesting based on the CONTENT of your protest. However, local and state governments may pass ordinances or require permits for certain areas or times of day etc.

This is what allows the Klu Klux Klan to assemble and protest - even though the general public and those in government dislike their message.

Furthermore, the false analogy you maintain between the USA and Soviet Russia is even more of a joke. You know what would happen to all the protesters, you, and any bystander who didn't flee immediately in old Soviet Russia? Siberia.

I think you didn't laugh because this wasn't funny. LCK gets into an issue and illuminates the truth of it. He puts himself into the middle of it.

This woman, who I have heard before, denigrates women and their culture. She doesn't identify and illuminate -- she denigrates and identifies with men.

Not funny.

I'd like to see LCK take on this same topic -- he has daughters. He knows this stuff. I'll bet he could find a way to make this funny. And I'm an old school feminist. Patriarchy has nothing to do with LCK

And I thought the title was great -- I got it immediately. Laughed out loud. Only thing I laughed at, but still. The perfect Sift title!

The location where Trayvon was shot. The only illumination in the area from photos taken were the back porch lights of people's apartment doors. Most barely lit their small yard. And it had some light blocks, like walls, high hedges, etc. All I remember from the photos at the time is that it was pretty dark looking from the photos.

I know having some guy get out of his vehicle and follow me in an unfamiliar neighborhood would put me on high alert..and add in a dark area. With no one really able to see what was happening...it'd be in the back of my head that this guy is after me.

Radium has a half-life of 1600 years and stops glowing after about 20-It's behind glass (watch crystal) so one was shielded from direct bombardment-The casualties from the process came with the paint girls in the preparation and assembly of the illuminated faces and hands, who used lippointing (brush-lickers) to straighten their brushes....that we're dipped in radioactive paint-Nasty bone cancer of the jaw in worst cases.

200 old watches in a display case isn't anything to worry your testicular function over, but you don't want your cat lying on a pile of em...

Well, I'm about to get down voted into oblivion, but I have to state this as bluntly as possible.

This is the most perverted kind of propaganda that can be trotted out by someone, and it sickens me to see it. Glen is absolutely correct in every fact he points out, and is in that respect, doing nothing but telling the truth and educating his audience with things they likely didn't know before, and should have. It would seem that should be an unqualified good thing then, but it's not.

What makes this offensive propagandizing to me is the absolutely deliberate omission of equally true, relevant and significant facts that Glen can't help but be aware of. His sole purpose for the omission is that it suddenly shifts things from black and white into the gray that audiences don't like as much.

I'll start from the most important point, and the very premise of the talk, why do they hate us? There is a bigger question though that is even more illuminating, and it is why to they(jihadist terrorists) hate and kill their fellow Islamic countrymen and neighbours? The fact here is that jihadi terrorists before 9/11 and even more so since, have killed tens and hundreds of times as many middle eastern muslims than they have white western infidels. Glen points out plenty of reasons people can have to be upset with America over it's past actions, which is legit in itself, but NONE of those reasons explain why these jihadists target there own fellow middle eastern muslims for the exact same violence and retribution America faced on 9/11. The fact this makes plain is that the jihadi terrorists will hate not only us, but everyone who is not willing to join them unconditionally. They are not the misunderstood, historically slighted and unjustly maligned people Glen's talk might lead people to think of them as. They(jihadi terrorists) do not deserve our sympathy or apologies, their countrymen and neighbours that are their biggest victims do.

Glen also goes on to list the deaths from sanctions on Iraq as an American crime. Apparently Saddam's horrific(then American approved) war on Iran, his genocide of the Kurds, his extensive use of chemical weapons in both, his complete seizure of Kuwait and his genocide of Iraqi Shiites are not relevant to the discussion of placing sanctions on his country. In Glen's discussion, despite this laundry list of crimes against humanity, Saddam is entirely innocent and not in anyway to blame for the children starving in his country while he continued to build himself new palaces and kept his personal guard and secret police forces well equipped and well fed. How is one to take this seriously?

Finally, Glen omits a terrifically important American crime in East Timor that Bin Laden listed. No, sadly it's not our tacit support for the pro Islamic genocide of the people there in the past, but it was America's support for an end to that genocidal repression and support for a free and independent East Timor. This was listed near the very top of American crimes. When Zarqawi blew up the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, he was very clear that it wasn't for Iraqi children dead at the hands of American sanctions. It was because Sérgio Vieira de Mello(killed in the blast) helped over see the transition to a free East Timor.

I'm afraid I am beyond disappointed by talks like this, I find them offensive and contemptible.

Sure, there is no need to speak in terms of civil war. Unless you're one of these guntoting, armed to the teeth nutjobs who think it would be a good idea. You know, the kind of people who buy an *assault rifle* for self defense.
However, no matter how well trained your riot police is, their less than lethal tactics are only useful up to a certain amount of people, they can become rather useless if the crowds get too big to contain or simply too violent themselves. That's when it gets interesting, that is when protest can turn into riots.
When the cops face huge, somewhat peacful crowds, they might enter Tiananmen Square. At what point would american cops or military personnel start thinking that it's unwise or inhuman to start firing into the crowd? Before the first shot? After the second magazine? On day three?
It's not the 1960s anymore but the sixties are not forgotten. Not by those who faced police officers willing to fire into the crowd. You know, black people. The kind of people whose parents and grandparents are still alive to tell them about their fight against oppression. This is still alive in the american concious, it shaped your country and it won't go away soon. Just ask Barak about his birth certificate.
Civil unrest is part of your recent history, the seed is there. Even under a President Stalin all you'd need go from isolated, contained riots to complete and irreversible shitstorm is a Martyr, a Neda Agha Soltan or a Treyvon Martin. No matter what ethnicity (although african american would be nice), that would present a tipping point.
Your police can bring out the tanks on Times Square if they want but if half of NY shows up, these guys inside the tanks might want to get out ASAP.
The Erich Honecker regime of the German Democratic Republic was basically brought down by somewhat peaceful demonstrations of people shouting "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore" in east german accents.
The StaSi, the Ministry of State Security, who was efficient enough to make *every* citizen a potential informant in the eyes of their opposition, ran from the protesters like little girls. They used to imprison and torture people who spoke up.
The east german border used to be the most secure in the entire world. It was protected by minefields and guards who shot and killed anyone who tried to cross it. Before David Hasselhoff even had a chance to put on his illuminated leather jacket the government caved and just fucking opened it. People just strolled through Checkpoint Charlie and bought Bananas as if it was Christmas.
This was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. You know, the guys who lost over 20 Million people in WW2 and still kicked the Nazis in the nuts.
Nobody brought a gun. All the east germans had was shitty cars and lots of anger. They tore down not just a dictatorship, they tore down the iron curtain.
And they didn't even have a Nelson Mandela. Or Lech Walesa.
I still stand by my point: strength in numbers, not caliber.

Aye, there's the rub. Who's at fault for successful candidates who become disappointing office-holders... candidates who make promises they, alone, don't have the power to deliver (thereby just saying whatever it takes to get elected), or people who vote for said candidate, actually believing he/she can/will do everything they promised to do? So many (all?) of our elected officials, including Obama, are simply best-of-a-bad-lot, emotional, or litmus test selections. "Hope" was a brilliant campaign slogan. What else can we do?

You want to impeach Obama, choggie? (@chingalera) Why? We probably dislike him for very different reasons, but he'd just be replaced by another pod-Pres, no assembly required (strings pre-attached). I could get behind a Grayson, Warren, or Kucinich, but the machine would never allow such a monstrosity to exist, as it's still trying to self-correct from the last two deviations. Like you said, nuke it from orbit, double-tap, start over, same docs. Only way to be sure. Hopefully it won't come to that, but I have little hope for a country more familiar with McDonald's dollar menu and Kanye's Twitter than said docs that started it all. Is our children learning? Nope.

@dystopianfuturetoday Lefties don't see this as a scandal. At least I don't. Scandal or not scandal is not the issue here, and I think the term diminishes just what has been more fully illuminated in the last week for many people. The way the government of/by/for the people/people relationship has devolved into warden/inmate; the way money has infected and rendered ineffective our political process; the complete dissociation of electorate and elected, the lie that is representative government; the treatment of those who risk everything to expose abuses of our privacy and other freedoms (all legal, as interpreted by the abusers); Patriot Act... greatest product name ever marketed. For me, this was the straw. I've had it.

"If we are going to fix it, it will require thought, discussion and hard choices.

Check. Check. Public will bears easy choices. Pen or sword? Now, there's a hard choice.

@Confucius
maybe i am reading your comment wrong.
i feel this is important because manning had the courage to expose the hypocrisy and malfeasance of the state department.

i feel this is important because it brings to light how the obama administration has used the espionage act 6 times.which is more than any other administration combined in the 100 yrs of precedent.

my hope is that this trial will illuminate the absolute hypocrisy being practiced by an administration that speaks of liberties and constitutional rights but in actuality does everything within its power to squash those very rights it pretends to champion.

so..yeah.while it may be sad it is very important.

@lantern53 i dont understand you man.
you profess to be all about smaller government and more liberty but are absolutely fine with an authoritarian governmental style.
government social programs are bad but fascism is ok?

you are a walking contradiction my friend.

Well I was mostly only interested in Jim Norton because I'm a fan of his. I've come down on the side of too much freedom of speech is a good thing. I thought everything she said was incredibly valid, however some of it isn't provable. I'm not willing to give the state the power to regulate speech is all. I've heard Jim talk for hours and hours about freedom of speech and comics so I already knew where he was coming from and basically agreed.

That being said Jim is of course biased because his livelyhood is the one being affected. He gets threatened with losing his job on Sirius constantly, and he works with two people who did lose their job once or twice. I totally understand what he's coming from, I'm trying to understand where she's coming from but I think having a penis is blocking me mentally.

The bottom basement point is that this is all good. Not comics, but PEOPLE should understand certain things about the world and them finding out that women don't walk a darkened street feeling safe is illuminating.

Also you like Louis CK but think rape jokes aren't funny? He has like 3 that are great jokes and make you think. How he tells those jokes matter, and apparently he understands it better after having been raised by a mother, having 3 sisters and having 2 daughters.

Man, look at those stars though. Not a single source of illumination to ruin the star field...

Either way, we live in a wonderous time.

Hey Stormsinger,

There are plenty of studies on how the diet affects heart and circulatory health. Here is a compilation of some of them:

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/105/7/893.full

They conclude:

The most important dietary recommendations are as follows:

Keep an energy balance, indicated by a body mass index below 25 kg/m2.

Consume <10% of energy from saturated fat.
Consume <2% of energy from trans fat.
Eat (fatty) fish at least once a week.

Eat ≥400 g of vegetables and fruits per day.

Limit salt consumption to <6 g/d.
If these recommendations are followed, coronary heart disease can be eliminated to a large extent in the population aged <70 years, and by implementing these recommendations at middle-age, there will be lower annual costs for medical care in older age.

The data continues to pour in that diet can prevent and reverse heart disease. To the extent people eat healthily, they can benefit from the truth those studies serve to illuminate.

You feel illuminated ? I was not going to allude to my illuminated illusions of light until someone else did.

illuminating

The trouble here, besides ignoring basically everything I've said, is that you're going off on an unrelated tangent. This doesn't have anything to do with whether absolute knowledge in the context of understanding "physical" reality is inherently superior. Obviously it's better in every conceivable way to know there is a God than to remain ignorant of it, but in any case, you can understand physical reality just fine without knowing that God exists. This is actually the point. If you can follow me here, I'll try to be brief:

You live as if certainty exists. When you jump, you never do it in fear that you'll never come back down again. When you turn on a light, you don't worry whether the light waves will instantaneously illuminate the room. Yet, there is no justification in your worldview why any of this should be so. You cannot justify even one piece of information that you know without using circular reasoning. You live in a world of certainty yet everything you know is actually uncertain. Your beliefs are in total contradiction to reality. Therefore, because of the impossibility of the contrary, God must exist. That's the argument.

They probably have a state ordinance that would get in the way, but changing the flashing yellow lights to red would probably help a lot. Either that, or add illuminated flashing letters that say STOP! TOO TALL!. I agree that ultimately, it's the driver's fault, but the warning signs that are there are so commonly used that I don't think they stand out enough for something that has such a history.