The Glade 4.0

Admittedly my blood-sugar is low right now, but I had a tough time following this paragraph. I need to reread it later and think on it.

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The Dude abides.

Of course you weren't. And here's a clue - Trump (although he IS an *******) is not a sex assaulter.

The reality of Hollywood and the seamy circles Trump runs in is that there's plenty of hangers-on that are perfectly willing to let a 60-year old with ridiculous hair grope them, or whatever. It's called "sleeping your way to the top." The only person to ever actually accuse Trump of a sexual assault was his wife, when she stood to gain in divorce proceedings, and she re-canted later.

This is not because Donald Trump would not try to grope women, but because he knows his own social circles well enough to know which women he can get away with it with. There's a reason we don't want our daughters running in those circles - because there's money and power that can be pretty **** tempting when you figure out that you can access them by taking your clothes off, something that requires a lot less skill, education, and effort than getting there by building a business, inventing something, or whatever.

(Also, this isn't to say that this doesn't happen with same-sex situations, or with a powerful woman and a willing male, just that it's a lot less frequent.)

Trump's braggadocio is definitely more extreme than any actual locker-room, or FOB tent, or any other similar environment I've ever been in with a lot of young men that haven't been laid in months (or ever in some cases), but not by all that much. Comments that could be taken as simply naked sexual desire, or could be interpreted as willingness to assault occur regularly, and a lot more regularly when the comment-makers are speaking Spanish.

And while female "locker room chat" tends to have somewhat different characteristics, it's pretty **** raunchy too. I've had enough female officer friends over the years to know that what goes on in "the female tent" where the officers and enlisted are together (because there's a need to consolidate the females to conserve space) would curl your **** hair.

We live in a society where Amy Schumer (for example) makes a career out of naked casual sexuality and thinks it's funny to call out octagenarians at an awards ceremony for being a little bit put off by her crudeness, or Lena Dunham makes a living parading her *** all over the television set on a show about essentially nothing except "hey I'm a not-skinny chick and I can get naked too!". This pearl-clutching over Trump is amazingly hypocritical, not because Trump is anything but crass, crude, and seamy, but because we tolerate it everywhere else.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No he probably shouldn't, but more importantly, I don't care if he is. He's going to lose business that way, because A) blacks will go elsewhere and B) other people will go elsewhere bcause they'll object to that regardless.

What ought to concern you more is the idea that, if someone produced reasonable evidence to justify such a pricing scheme, that the response would be "but that's racist!" There's quite a few good arguments relating to both the enlightened self-interest of the owner and to the unfairness (depending on the exact circumstance, such as if its a place where that business provides an essential service and no alternative is reasonably available), but your main concern is the ability to keep using the word "racism!" Furthermore, this over-the-top scenario is not in any way representative of what's normally called racist, which is almost always far more nuanced, complicated, and debatable than your example.


The problem is that the left continues to claim it gets to set its own standard, and then change that standard any time it pleases. The country at large has a right to hold Trump to a standard due to his candidacy for President, but



There isn't any such thing as "illegal racism". It's discrimination, and what you've done is highlight a serious problem with the law, since it is impossible to follow this law. The left isn't "closer to right"; all it's done is manage to create a legal standard that is impossible to consistently comply with.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Despite Johnson's head-spinning level of inability to handle interview questions, I'm back in the undecided column again so I may be voting for him just on the justification that if the Libertarians can get enough support to get Federal funding that will force a re-alignment of the other 2 parties much more rapidly. I'm pretty sure the Libertarians can be corralled into reasonableness once they're faced with the reality of having to hold on to some meaningful support. It's not like he's going to win Texas, much less the election, so "get him over 5% so his successor can shake things up in 2020" seems like a reasonable tactical move at this point.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

*chuckle* Yeah, I wasn't really happy with the phrasing myself. Basically, I'm saying that most people on the left don't come right out and say they have an instinctive, automatic prejudice against conservative Christians, but it's pretty easy to recognize that it's there when you listen to the way they talk about conservative Christians and the issues on which they disagree. Similarly, most people with instinctive, automatic prejudices based on race, nationality or gender don't come right out and say it, but it's likewise pretty easy to recognize it in the way they talk about minorities/women and race/gender-related issues.

The thing is, they have just as much of a right to do this in reverse - and you taking it upon yourself to determine that they're a racist based on your assessments of their commentary justifies them in doing the same thing to you, and assessing that you're a self-righteous leftist who sees racism when and where it's convenient.

What you're doing here is really just justifying an endless ad hom argument on both sides - justifying in the sense that this inevitably devolves into



And yet, the only time that this behavior is called out, is now - when it's convenient to criticize Trump.

For years, the left has been denying anything of the sort was going on with regard to males/whites/Christians. Now all of a sudden its convenient to admit to it, but really it's totally ok because Trump.

Look, let me put this a little more simply. You can pick one or the other. The left can stop trying to proclaim what is and isn't bigoted by fiat, or it can stop trying to pretend its own versions (according to its own standards) don't exist. The present situation isn't sustainable - someone much more clever than Trump at exploiting frustration with the hypocrisy will be along in pretty short order once he gets done losing this election.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And my opinion is that people are not prejudiced against Christians, at the core they're prejudiced against a certain type of behavior which they attribute mostly to Christians because that's where they see it most. I'm sure you know many Christians who you consider good people and your prejudice doesn't drive your interaction. My pastor is a black man and he's one of the best men I know. My friend's brother is a rap-listening, wannabe gangsta who sells drugs in a poor neighborhood in Tucson. I'm uncomfortable around him because he fits a thug's profile in every way. He's white. I suspect your own biases aren't applied as broadly as you feel those in the South do. But when you do encounter somebody in a group who epitomizes what you despise, your confirmation bias makes you feel comfortable applying it more broadly, even though it likely would not drive your interaction on an individual basis.

People speak different ways in different places. Most people don't word vomit their motivations, biases, or preferences. They tend to take precautions against tipping their hand. You are much less guarded with your family than you are at work or a crowded restaurant. I don't see how you can assume you're seeing into somebody's deep-seeded biases based on a few sentences when they tend to choose words specifically to avoid that. Besides that, they may be choosing words they don't see as problematic the way you do. I suggest to you that the loads of innuendo and connotation you see dripping from your opposition have more to do with your own biases than theirs (same goes for a lot of us).

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The Dude abides.

This isn't a right vs. left thing. This is a rational thinking (evidence and facts are all that matters) vs. ideological thinking (promote tolerance toward bullshit) position.

I'm far from the left (I'd vote Johnson if I were American), and I have nothing but disdain toward all of Christendom, Islam, and hell, I'll even throw in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and {insert any faith of your choice here.} I wear my anti-theism like a medal.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Your personal disdain towards beliefs you don't share is yours; it isn't like anyone else needs your approval to be rational. "Wearing it like a medal" is about your issues, not rationality.

Furthermore, it is pretty normal for "anti-theists" to engage in all sorts of shoddy (at best) reasoning, and typically to be no better at reasoning than the people they are criticizing. This is not at all about rationality at all; it's about special pleading for a particular type of bigotry.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is pretty much the response I expect from a victim of religious brainwashing.

Which every religious person is.

I've been where you are. I understand the cognitive dissonance required to rationalize belief, and how you can be made to trick yourself into thinking you're being rational. I've been there -- I was once a true believer. It's not something you have any choice or control over. So it's okay. I don't hold you responsible.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Well, we solved the no fly zone debate in the third debate at least. We won't get into a war with Russia because the inauguration is still 3 months off, and then we'll impose it "Carefully" thus letting the Russians get done bombing so we can impose it after they're done and talk about how we totally exercised "leadership" in "ending the violence".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I saw somebody on my Facebook feed comment that Hillary was killing Trump like Seal Team Six killed Bin Laden.

I wasn't watching, but couldn't help but think that the more apt comparison was to Hillary killing (via surrogates, sure) Gaddafi -- messy for everyone involved, and leaving an entire country divided, furious with each other, and in utter chaos for likely a generation to come while Hillary celebrated giddily (and rather inappropriately, regardless of your view of her) over how awesome her foreign policy chops are.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If there was one thing that wasn't happening, it was Hillary killing Trump. Trump showed some improvement from the previous 2- not the same marked improvement as his change from debate 1 to debate 2, but still a stronger performance. Hillary, by contrast, was visibly weaker than the first two. If Trump lost, it was because he committed two unforced errors at the end - one, failing to clarify (which he did today) that by not stating in advance he would accept the results of the election he was merely preserving his right to ask for recounts and such as in any other election and (I think worse, although it's getting less attention) his completely unnecessary "such a nasty woman" comment. If Trump lost it was by fumbling twice when he had the ball in the 4th quarter, not because Hillary beat him. Charles Krauthammer (no shill for either candidate, by any stretch) pointed this out - Trump was winning on technical debate points right up to those questions. That said, the media frenzy over the comment about accepting the results of the election is silly; Al Gore didn't either, and tried the "Recount until I win" strategy, and much of the left continued to deny reality even after the New York Times investigated and stated there was no fraud - and if Trump did mean he'd somehow go beyond legal recourse, it's irrelevant. His running mate and his daughter have already contradicted him in that regard, and no one would support him. The Republicans will drop any modicum of support for him the moment the first network announces Hillary over 270.

The debate reminded me very much of the first Obama-Romney debate. Hillary clearly figures (probably rightly) that she has this in the bag and that merely losing a debate won't change that. Trump clearly knew this was his last shot, and he took it. Unfortunately for him, Donald Trump isn't capable of the breakout performance he needed, and it was almost unfathomable that Hilalry would **** up badly enough to change things. This was also likely the least-viewed of the debates, so his improvements will be missed by the substantial number of people that didn't trouble themselves to watch.

I almost didn't myself, but I ended up watching it with a mind to largely ignore the interplay between the candidates, and try to pretend either one was debating someone utterly pedestrian from the other party.

It was hard to do this with Trump. He demonstrated significantly stronger command of the facts than in the past (admittedly, a mighty low bar to clear), and seemed to do a much better job of paying attention to what the question actually was, and managed to avoid being baited by Clinton (less so by Wallace). Still, it was very hard to evaluate what his performance would have been like if his opponent were say, O'Malley or Webb, or Tim Kaine because of Hillary's performance.

Hillary's performance ranged up and down from mediocre to jaw-droppingly bad - and not in the sense of her positions, but that her arguments for them were often outright dumb. By that I mean that there are commonly-made arguments for those same positions she could have simply repeated (she has done so in the past) , and done much better, at the risk of sounding boring. Some of her arguments were outright lazy; they clearly indicated not only contempt for Trump, but for the intelligence of the audience. This was not the case in either of the previous two debates.

She was clearly annoyed to even have to be there, probably a combination of regretting not just bowing out of the last one, anger that she had to stand there and respond to this guy, and thanking her lucky stars she wasn't running against any of the 16 other Republicans or Mike Pence. Her facial expressions, body language, and tone were that of the Hillary that people can't stand - the combination of bombastic lawyer and obnoxious suburbanite soccer mom, mixed with far less competence than she or her backers pretend she has and a willingness to take any position to get where she wants to be. It was Cersei Lannister in all her glory.

The two most prominent examples were on abortion and the no-fly zone.

On abortion, the question pertained specifically to late-term abortions. Hillary made the case that, essentially, late term abortions can't be regulated because reasonable regulation is allowed only where the mother's health is not at risk, and late-term abortions totally never happen when the mother's health isn't at risk. One wonders how the current regulations have survived so long if that's really the case.

This would have counted merely as extreme and insulting the audience's intelligence, and not really been notable as a jaw-drop moment except for what came next. She actually then tried to make the case that because Romania and China have had laws at various points making childbirth and abortion (respectively) mandatory that therefore any regulation at all is a bad idea. This was such an unbelievably stupid argument that I couldn't believe it actually came out of Hillary's mouth. "Oh yeah because dictatorial regimes have had terrible laws on this subject we totally can't have any." That's like arguing that because North Korea puts stifling restrictions on use of the internet, that therefore we can't have laws against stealing people's identity online.

The second "amazingly stupid" moment was in relation to what I posted earlier about the no-fly zone. Wallace pointed out that a general (I don't remember which one) had stated what I have said about a no-fly zone - it's either going to provoke a fight with the Russians, or its meaningless. I was shocked that someone actually had the temerity to point this elephant in the room out, since no one had bothered even back when 4 or 5 Republican candidates were espousing it (and it was a bad idea then too).

Clinton's answer started with "well it wouldn't happen on day 1..." or words to that effect and went from there, mainly with a lot of carrying on about how awful things are in Aleppo. However, it does not take a genius to see that Aleppo is getting bombed now and inauguration is 90 days off; it may be irrelevant by that point. If it isn't, now you're going to let Aleppo sit there and get the **** bombed out of it while you **** around negotiating with the Russians - which in other words means you're going to let Putin drag it out till he's done, then you're going to pretend your no-fly zone had something to do with it, until of course the Russians violate it and then it's going to be back to negotiating pointlessly.

Again, anyone can figure this out - you hardly have to be a military expert to read the timeline and realize that Russian airplanes are involved.

This was a confession, essentially, that she literally has no plan at all other than trying to save face and not admit that Russia has already outmaneuvered us in Syria, and frankly, wants the place a lot worse than we do. A large portion of Americans are really ok with that - even if people deplore what's happening in Aleppo, not a lot of people are willing to go to war with Russia over it. The problem with her answer was that she, for all intents and purposes, said "Well I'm going to not do jack ****, but I'm going to talk about it a lot and then take credit later for putting an end to what the Russians and Assad were done with anyhow." It was much more obvious if you were actually watching her; she was visibly annoyed that Wallace had brought up the implications of a no-fly zone that actually might get enforced.

It revealed something else - Hillary had a policy weakness exposed, and a serious one. Her stated policy is either pointless or incredibly dangerous, and she was unprepared to address that - even though it was revealed that she said similar things about the no fly zone back in 2013. Hillary has skated along this entire time without her policies being seriously challenged by the press. The press is "not supposed to do that." They're only supposed to hit her on personal conduct, hers or Bill's. Then she can trot out the customary defenses. Her policies are supposed to be above criticism because so many of Trump's are

In this case she didn't even try to hide that her stated policy was retarded. Either that's unintentional, in which case she just admitted she's the raging incompetent Trump claims she is, or its intentional, in which case she admits her sole concern with Aleppo is how to get some political cred out of it at minimal cost.

Speaking of Aleppo, that also led to Wallace's sole weak moment of the night. He tried to call into question Trump's characterization of Aleppo as having "fallen", which it hasn't, but Trump artfully pivoted that into making it look like Wallace was merely nitpicking semantics, while Trump was truly concerned with the situation there and guilty only of using the wrong word to describe it. More to the point, that's exactly what Wallace was doing. Trump demonstrated clearly that he did know what was going on in Aleppo, making it a minor misuse of the word "fallen" and positively trivial in the litany of Things We Can Criticize About Trump.

Other than that, though, Chris Wallace was the clear winner last night. His moderator performance was superb; he maintained control as well as anyone could have, pushed the candidates, asked specific pointed questions and to the best of his ability demanded they behave themselves (aside from one 30-second trainwreck of all 3 of them shouting over each other.) He positively embarrassed every debate moderator before him for the last 3 election cycles at least. I expected Wallace to be tough, but he laid down the law there, even with the audience.

This debate won't change the outcome of the election, but it did set the standard for 2020 debates, and it highlighted Hillary's problems (Trump's were already do highlighted they could ahrdly have gotten worse baring him taking a swing at someone). Her underlying arrogance, and the overplay of her expertise and experience were in full bloom last night. Hillary looks good this election cycle because her opponents have been a crazy socialist and a sleazy, crass "entertainer"/businessman. The fact that it's taken this long for her to get a ~6 point lead over the likes of Trump itself is an outright condemnation of her fitness.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This has been largely missed.

Salient points:
A) The actual response time for ICBMs following a launch order is classified, regardless of whether it has been previously published
B) It is also not that hard to make a reasonable guess
C) With that said, confirmation of an estimate is a valuable piece of information for adversaries; Russia and China in particular
D) While it is not necessary for the Secretary of State to be read in on launch procedures, it would not be unreasonable either, and the SoS would certainly be in a position to be aware of the information even if they were not explicitly told
E) This is the sort of poor judgement that gets excused because Trump clearly knows very little about the subject; he's obviously learned what he does know in just the last few months. Clinton does know what she's talking about - what's been missed is that she shouldn't have been talking about it, at least not using specific numbers. It is not necessary to reveal, or even appear to reveal, exact capabilities in order to make the point she was making. "Just a few minutes" or "very rapidly" or "extremely quickly in a crisis" would have served.

The one thing the article misses is that while Hillary might or might not know exactly, Bill Clinton definitely knows, and she could easily have learned it from him.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Two things:
"4 Minutes" has been 'common knowledge' since the late 70's as far as I know. I may have even read something to that effect in a Clancy novel. Read something about Zbigniew Polishlastname (Nixon's dude) that talked about the 4 minute thing.

Also,


They can **** have it as far as I'm concerned. We got bigger fish to fry at home. Let someone else police the shitbox. But, I'm probably terribly naive here

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Holy shitsnacks!

Like I said, it's not that hard to figure out. However, confirmation from a major public official is still valuable intel to the enemy, and if she did reveal it based on classified sources, it's illegal regardless of how long is been common knowledge. It was an extremely irresponsible comment to make regardless and one that she should have known better about, but she expects to be excused, and she simply does not value the nation above valuing her own leadership of it.

Also,


No, you're actually not, although having bigger fish to fry at home (we do) and elsewhere in the world (also true) are irrelevant. Even if we didn't, we should GTFO. There is nothing for us in Aleppo besides humanitarian concerns and there's 2 problems:

A) We are simply not going to have a free and opwn Syrian society any time in the reasonably near future. It would literally take a century, bare minimum to heal the wounds
B) It is not worth fighting Russia over. Period, full stop

The issue here is Clinton's simple refusal to admit it, not because trying to play for a little undeserved credit is unusual for a politician, but because she's doing it in a situation where the American electorate understands what I just stated above just fine and can clearly see that "oh well we'll ease into a no fly zone over time" is a non-plan. The answer may as well have been: "It's bad if Trump has no plan but ok if I don't because at least I'm pretending to have a plan."

It's amazing how willing people are to have their intelligence insulted to keep believing she's actually competent. She's Cersei Lannister (thankfully) without the body-double nude scene.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."