Geeto67

These are contradictory statements. You do know that even during slavery in this country there were wealthy Black Physicians, black sea captains, Black Farmers, black merchants...etc....there are always going to be exceptions and outliers. Think of it like this - the world is a casino, and white people are playing blackjack, Roulette, or craps table - highest payout and highest odds for winning, but minorities are stuck playing Wheel of Fortune or slot machines - odds of winning are much lower and even when there is a payout it's more likely to be less. Not everyone playing it going to win, but those playing the better games and going to get more opportunity. And they get to play better games because those in charge of the different areas of the casino took efforts to make sure whites play only or mostly the good games and other races don't. And when they were told to stop doing that, they found ways to still do it where it looked ok, but still had the same effect of discriminatory policies. If you don't think there is inherent racial privilege built into the system, then I can't help you - you are just choosing to willfully ignore some thing that is a fact of life for many Americans, because a few isolated outliers exist. You might as well be saying the earth is flat in how much evidence you are ignoring.

That's an awesome mustang.

Explain this: if employers are less likely to call back and hire based solely on how ethnic a first name sounds - how is that the person with the ethnic sounding name's responsibility? How are they a sorry excuse for the racism of other people?

Hey, I'm just pointing out the double standard that when a black person mugs someone Tim is quick to call them a turd, but a white senator who very likely enabled an environment where someone was aloud to rape and sexually molest athletes in his charge is a "stand up guy" being unfairly burned at the stake. But please tell me again how Jordan is not a turd? or at least suspected of being a turd?

So white guy who enables a pedo rapist, not a turd? Remind me who are the turds again?

do you hang out with people that hate you? I would assume no. Can you clarify this statement please? because it sounds like you are saying hate groups are a liberal invention. I think you need to parse out something here. When Progressives talk about institutional racism, they aren't talking about active hatred. Maybe at one point these things were driven by hate, but those people are dead. What is more problematic is that there are people that are apathetic to making the changes to remove that institutional racism, or they just don't believe it exists because of lack of knowledge or wilful blindness due to inconsistency with personal views. That's not hatred, but it's still a problem and one that gets called out constantly. There are people who take this call out as a form of pointing out hatred, when it may in fact lack the intent to be hurtful. Still...being too stupid to be racist doesn't feel like a good excuse. If you are an affected individual, and you hear people talking about how they aren't going to address a problem you know exists because they refuse to believe it exists - it can certainly look and feel like hatred, and even in some cases it can actually be that because white supremacy has had about 100 years of practice in disguising some really ugly racist policy as benign. If you want to gauge intent, a good indicator is how much someone is willing to lie about something, to willfully distort the truth, in support of their message. In the case of Alex Jones - the answer is a lot. I don't know that there is an "equal" amount even percentage wise due to historical support for the clan and suppression of black nationalism by the us government, but sure those groups do exist. The secret here is power. Clans men held political power at the highest offices in the country for over a century (and even in my lifetime, maybe yours), and wrote laws and government policy that in a lot of cases are still in force today doing what was intended. Black Nationalists have had no such power to oppress white people. What are they going to do? not sell us the drugs that the us government sold to them in the first place? Black Nationalists can't secretly and legally inject white people with Syphilis like white Supremacists in the US government did to poor black alabama farmers. That's the big difference here - it's not how many, it's who had the power and what can be done with it.

That is a very simple question with a very complex answer, but if you want a simple answer then: No they don't COMMIT more crime. They do however get arrested for more crimes, get wrongfully convicted for more crimes, get penalized more heavily in the system during sentencing, get forced to take unfair plea deals more often, get pulled into repeat offender status more often, and generally raked over the coals more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline Page 10, footnote 31: These statistical tests assume independence of callbacks. We have however verified that the results stay significant when we assume that the callbacks are correlated either at the employer or first name level. Pahe 20, footnote 49: We formally tested whether this variation was significant by estimating a probit regression of the callback dummy on all the personal first names, allowing for clustering of the observations at the employment ad level Also see page 39 and 40 where they published statistics by First name. I hate to tell you, but your last name won't make as much of a difference as your first name. Please do me a favor and actually read the study before jumping to conclusions. My assertion is that black people have shittier credit, and that is due to racial bias inherit in the system Your comment here is just restating what I said. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/how-algorithms-can-bring-down-minorities-credit-scores/509333/ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/13/your-credit-score-is-racist-heres-why That chart you posted tracks growth but not actual net earnings. Growth might still be the same and net earnings be differential. In other words they may still be paid less then men, but their wages increase at the same percentage rate. In most cases when women's earning potential is extrapolated to exclude the age 30 drop off, women still come up short of men. Let me ask you this: Do you think White Privilege exists in America? If yes, then we are just debating to what shade and what root cause. In the case of Brandon, based on what he posts, I don't think he believes it exists at all, which is what prompted the post you are replying to. It's one thing to debate the severity of a known problem, it's another entirely to debate it's existence. based on your comments before about living in South Africa, I belive you think it exists, but base on ones you make here I am not so sure now.

How often were you hassled by the police when you were just driving around? https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/ How likely were you to be tazed/shot by the police when you were stopped? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-police-kill-more-whites-than-black-people/ How much easier was it to find a job? https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf how hard was it for you to open a bank account or get a credit card? https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/race-age-gender-statistics.php How hard was it for you to get hired for what you were worth? https://www.aauw.org/aauw_check/pdf_download/show_pdf.php?file=The-Simple-Truth I mean...this is just the low hanging fruit, there are so many different metrics we could discuss.

I don't think that is true, unless you want to count the mere existence of minorities, gays, and women as an affront to your straight, white, maleness. But assuming that it is, do you think it is entirely undeserved? How much do you know about history? Seeing white manhood as under siege is a very "white supremacist" view point. A lot of people are really just looking for equality, not supremacy, and if you feel like people's call for equality is an attack on your existing supremacy - well... I don't know what to tell you. Fits your other opinions about Islam though since White supremacist organizations are usually christian organizations.

I think the underlying point in all of this is that Infowars was objectively lying and misrepresenting statements of facts to an unsavory end. That's not feelings, that's dis-information. It doesn't hurt that a lot of people also have feelings against him stemming from those mis-representations, but at the core of all of this is lies. Again, this is the ugly side of the free market that "free market people" don't like to think about - mob mentality. Piss off enough people with hate mongering and lies and they get tired of your bull shit. Nobody is forcing you to defend Alex Jones. If you have a good moral reason to defend him then by all means do it. I just haven't heard any one yet. If we were just talking about Alex Jones opinions, I think you would have a stronger argument, but we aren't - he lies about facts to support his opinions, Crowder lies about facts to support his opinions, and that is the rub. Not that I think Vox is credible, but I don't think anybody has to work that hard these days to make conservative pundits sound racist.

No, the OSU investigation could still say there is evidence he knew and didn't act, there is just may be no penalty because the statute of limitations might have run on him being charged criminally or sued civilly. So basically he could have aided and abetted a pedophile rapist and won't pay society for it because he beat the clock. Not serving time for a crime committed doesn't magically transmute you into a good person. I don't think there is any amount of money that can fix the cultural misogyny problem in this country. Plus, there are exceptions to every rule. 1) you are speculating. This country has a long history of censoring socalisim and the pushback wasn't as outrageous as you somehow think it would be. It's only just recently (like the last 5-10 years) become socially acceptable to discuss socialism or communism in polite conversation thanks to the cold war, mccarthyism, the FBI persecutions, and state sponsored propiganda. I get that I have pairs of pants in my closet older than you so you mised living through the cold war, but this is what a good education in history would teach you. It would also teach you that yes, extremist positions on both sides generally get socially censored. It is not ok for anybody to preach hate and advocate violence against innocent people on both sides and Alex Jones is just more proof that society doesn't really tolerate that noise and does it without government intervention. 2) Let's be clear about something - Alex Jones isn't pushing an alternative political theory like socialism. He's not pushing an ideology and calling for a rethinking about political theory. He is openly lying about specific things he presents as facts with the end goal of inciting action by his followers. Saying the democrats run a child sex ring isn't an ideology, it's not political theory, the fear mongering. 3) If you think the sole purpose of an ideology of Islam is to spread hate then you are bigoted and ignorant. By your definition Christianity, Judaism, hell even Buddhism are all ideologies of hate because they have been misrepresented and misused by people to perform hateful acts. Human nature being what it is, you will always find people exploiting religion for selfish and ugly ends, it's just an absolutely ignorant position to judge the religion based on it's worst actors. Calling out your particular brand or ignorance, or pointing out someone is actively and openly lying is isn't bashing or isolating everybody. But you genuinely should feel ashamed for some of the views you openly share publicly with the world because they are objectively bigoted. Calling an entire religion an ideology of hate is an objectively bigoted statement. If you don't like the label, then maybe make an effort to improve yourself through knowledge. But I don't have to accept or respect it or you for being comfortable with bigotry, and I am frankly done with being polite to you about it.

He's not "extreme" in his views so much as he is another source of consistently false information which can be looked at as a different form of "extremeism". https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/louder-with-crowder/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/steven-crowder/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/louder-with-crowder/ I get that no media pundit doing opinion commentary is completely bias free or accurate, but come on...why are conservatives so accepting of such complete charlatans? Steven Crowder is entertaining to watch but part of what makes it entertaining is it's laughably ridiculous on a fundamental level.

check your figures O'Connor spending: Personal $2.4 Million DCCC $700,000 DNC; $300,000 Local Dem party: $100,000 Total: $3,500,000 Balderson Spending: Personal: $600,000 RNCC: $1.4M CLF PAC: $2.7M Total: $4.7M https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/live-updates/midterms/live-primary-election-results/ohio-12th-democrat-oconnor-holds-15-point-lead-over-republican-balderson/?utm_term=.858959789127 by comparison Tiberi spent $1.9M on a race that was so decidedly his that his opponent spent $22,000 just to lose. Balderson spent less personally because the RNC is spending like crazy right now to stem the "blue wave" and at least in ohio it's working. the CLF PAC is Paul Ryan's superPAC and it had no problem spending a lot of money on a seat that could have been seen as a symbolic victory for democrats, because of how long republicans have been squatting in the seat. Honestly I wish Balderson had spent less than O'connor because then it wouldn't be a close race - O'connor would have buried him. As it stands the old adage is true - you have to spend more to win.

Actually the joke is on us who live in the 12th (which is you and me Tim) because we ended up with a weak, morally bankrupt, coward for a house representative. moral culpability left the republican party a long time ago. I don't think anybody is pretending, people are just being polite. I mean I could tell Tim he is a supporter of child rape because of this comment: and he is letting his rooting for his home team mess with his moral compass making him morally bankrupt as well, but I won't because it's not polite. I'll think it for sure, but I am not going to say it :gabe:

Sounds like Jim Jordan aided and abetted a pedophile and rapist while he was a coach at OSU - yeah sounds like a stand up guy by conservative standards. He's not actually under a formal investigation or indictment, just OSU's internal investigation, so he'll never be "cleared" of anything. Still there are a lot of people who aren't politicians and don't have a stake in the outcome saying they told him, he was present, and he knew. This is coming out now because of the OSU investigation. I am not an insider, but likely this actually came about because of Larry Nasser. I heard from a lot of people working at colleges (including my mother who is a professor) that a lot of universities started doing a look back at their sports programs in the wake of the Larry Nasser sex scandal to see if they had lingering liability. It's not unreasonable to think OSU would do this, and it's not unreasonable for them to find something under one of the rocks they kicked over. esp since they probably had reason to know about it since the 1990's: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180716/former-ohio-state-student-says-he-filed-sexual-assault-complaint-about-strauss-in-90s Is the timing bad for Jordan? yeah, but it could have equally been bad for him in 2006 when he was running the first time, or at any other crucial point where he opposed something. Are his opponents seizing this opportunity? sure, and why not - I would say turning a blind eye to someone raping college students pretty relevant to his character. You can't blame politicans for being opportunistic - they all do it and it's not partisan. Did the "evil left" actively dig up this dirt and force OSU to investigate? That's an Alex Jones level of conspiracy theory. If we are learning anything, it's that there are a few pedophilic rapists hiding in high school, college, and Olympic sports programs and leveraging their position to silence their victims. Jim Jordan looks like he was a part of the problem that enabled this behavior. Is it relevant for a reporter to ask Troy Balderson whether he is going to back a person who seems to have aided and abetted a rapist? yeah, because Balderson gets to vote on that as part of his job responsibilities - and you know what, maybe some people don't want to vote for someone who is so weak they are visibly ashamed that their answer is yes they are going to back a person who is mired in a sex scandal involving college athletes. I mean he could have easily done what you have done - said Jordan is a stand up guy and there is no reason for him to believe JJ knew based on current evidence, other GOP politicians have had no problem saying this so he wouldn't even be the first - but he didn't. He ran and hid in his office.

Colbert tapes before the election results were in so at the time he didn't know the results. Know how I know you didn't watch the video? because he outright states that in the opening seconds. Balderson running and hiding away from a reporter happened days ago and it has been making the rounds - it's hilarious. The guy is weak as wet toilet paper.

Found this funny last night: Seriously, watch the second video - it’s hilarious to watch Balderson cower and hide in the corner....

I didn't see it as tongue in cheek, my bad. Progressives are shouting at shop owners discriminating against CLASSES of people based on a general classification, where the standard for service is a case by case basis unless the denial of service was based on a protected characteristic (e.g race and gender). Those progressives are arguing that gay as a class should be added to the other protective classes and for the same reason those protected classes exist in the first place. I bring up race and gender here because race and gender are the standards for protected classes, and the question at issue is sexual preference a class like race and gender or not? I think it is, but supporters of discriminating against gays don't. BTW, religion is also a protected class, but I didn't bring it up because it can get kind of confusing considering that religion is at the heart of why the shop keeper is discriminating and whose public interests win out when there is a conflict. Spoilet Alert: the public at large always trumps the merchant. there are many religions that have many restrictions, but there are also implied requirements when people decide to be merchants. Judaism has restrictions on bacon, but that doesn't mean nobody should sell bacon. It also means that if a jewish individual wants to work and maintain his faith restrictions, he should probably seek work in a field that would minimize his contact. Same thing here - if a person's religion prevents them from interacting with gays then they should probably seek out a field that minimizes that interaction. there are exceptions to discrimination rules made on a case by case basis - for instance racial discrimination when a part in a movie calls for a specific race or gender (why we don't see brad pitt as Othello or Nathan Lane as Lady MacBeth) or when race is necessary for authenticity (e.g. a Chinese restaurant hiring a Chinese chef). Religious organizations also get somewhat of a pass, so in the case of our baker friend - if he wanted to discriminate based on religion, he should have set up his business as a religious organization, but then he can't keep the profits. So how is Alex Jones different? Contracts. When a person walks into a store, there isn't much of an implied contract between the merchant and the seller until there is a transaction. But when a user signs up to Facebook there is a very specific set of user agreements that one enters into. The problem was that despite Alex Jones always being in breech of his user agreement with FB, FB choose to interpret their agreement as leniently as possible to actually allow him to stay, and the social pressure they are feeling is from people disagreeing with their standards and using economics and social pressure to encourage Facebook to act. FB let infowars slide on their terms because they drew a crowd and made FB money. But when they turned from an asset to a liability, and the revenue went down, it was now in FB's self interest to drop infowars. You want to complain about a bias, the bias is allowing infowars to stay as long as they did in violation of the policy when they knew he was in violation because of how high profile infowars was. Truth is this isn't a case of partisan bias, it's a case of money bias. When infowars was drawing people in they were happy to look the other way, when infowars became poison in the context of FB's activities they were (begrudgingly) happy to act. At any rate, this isn't a matter of whether I agree with his opinion or not - his specific brand of lying was actively destructive and intentional hurtful to some pretty vulnerable people, and I am pretty ok with the social pressure to drop him like a bad habit. Yeah, in almost all cases it is chosen by someone (most often the parents) because society doesn't really have a way of dealing with it. You are forced to choose between male or female not because you are male or female, but because someone tells you you have to be. seems unfair to me but what do I know?

It's a moot point. FB is lousy at censoring nudity as it is at censoring anything else. It's user based reporting and only the biggest noise gets the attention. That's not true at all. In a free market the prices and availability are determined by unrestricted competition. Basically the tenants of supply and demand are unrestricted. In this case the audience demand for consuming Alex Jones has to compete with the audience demand for denying access to Alex Jones, and the demand for denying access won out because it was greater. The "free market" you are talking about isn't realistic - it's an idealized concept based on perfect morality and objectivity of the audience - which we know people aren't because people are people. In your model snuff films should also get no views but the reality is despite being all kinds of illegal snuff films exist and there is a market for them. Social pressure is a form of market demand. the Whataboutism is your statements about how Alex Jones is being denied access while there are more dangerous liberals allowed to remain as a means of setting up that this is an attack on conservationism. In reality, there are plenty of conservative extremists equally as toxic or more as AJ that aren't being removed either, probably because they don't have the same visibility. Social media companies are de-platforming Inforwars, and infowars alone for the moment. Whether they tackle any others remains to be seen and we can make bias determinations then. But to say "well what about these people over here doing the same or worse shit" as a way of supporting that you think removing Alex Jones is an attack on conservatisim....well that is whataboutism. Yeah, if there are toxic people on the left as bad or worse then AJ, they should be removed too and maybe Social media will get to them in the coming months....that still doesn't make it wrong for them to remove Alex Jones.

And yet you opened the door to this discussion in defense of someone who is being singled out for constantly making shit up. Hypocrisy is a weakness of character you and Mr. Jones seem to share. I'll just set this here, whether you read it or not is up to you, but I will add willful ignorance and gullibility are also weaknesses of character: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/business/media/alex-jones-free-speech-not-protected.html

Actually yes, except when it comes to race and gender. There are actually laws against race and gender discrimination because...surprise...there was discrimination against race and gender for hundreds of years and it fucked our society. If you want to be an unenlightened homophobic asshole about the gay wedding cakes thing, there isn't a law preventing sexual preference discrimination, which is why that indiana baker didn't really get into trouble. But there is certainly a lot of people doing society shaming because, quite frankly, they feel it should be part of the protected class of people who shouldn't be discriminated against because so many of them are discriminated against. Again, you are seeing libertarianism and democracy at work - the masses are exerting social pressure in the absence of government intervention, but you don't like it because you don't like gay people. Except gay isn't a protected class, and the US hasn't figured out how to properly deal with intersex (which is a real medical condition, BTW), so that wouldn't help him. I think what you wanted to say was he should turn black, but didn't.

MZ's press conference where he addressed this specific issue caused the shares to tank. Youtube, Twitter have all seen similar declines in the wake of statements made about Alex Jones, Holocaust Deniers, etc... That's actually not true. Porn is notoriously difficult to determine and the gray area is quite wide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio under your definition Botticelli's The Birth of Venus is considered pornography. Same with the venus de milo, Michelangelo's David, etc... Here is what I don't like about this statement - you are implicitly accepting Alex Jones as mainstream conservatism for the purpose of making your "bias" argument. don't do that. don't legitimize what is clearly a stand alone fringe organization. I agree there is bias, the bias is against Alex Jones and largely his bullshit conspiracy theories, but don't pretend like this is the left coming after the right. This is society regulating itself without government intervention, for as much a libertarian as AJ is himself - he is getting a taste of his own medicine when the mob turns against. Also, nice whataboutisim. You are claiming a double standard, but I don't see a "double standard" so much as I see a singling out on the nail sitting the highest.

The truck is looking great! Good job. just to throw my unwanted 2 pennies into the wheel opinons - I like what Nick has on his S-10. Get those.

They already do large scale censoring of things like pornography and other items which violate their terms of use. Alex Jones is still allowed to put his stuff out there, he just has to do it without the help of social media platforms. He isn't the first affected by this, and he isn't going to be the last. Keep in mind - this isn't partisan, he's crazy by conservative/republican standards too. But let me ask this: You recognize that private companies have the right to act in their own best interests, right? So how is continuing to allow him on the site the right thing? This is literally the invisible hand of the market at work - the social media companies lost stock value, revenue, users, over this specific issue and responded by removing the content that the broad base of their customers/users had an issue with. The terms of use do not guarantee any user a right of free speech or freedom from censorship, you are in their house and you play by their rules, he didn't and the only problem I see here is they had to wait for it to cost them money before they did something about it, and they aren't going far enough by singling him out. This isn't just economic free market either - this is what libertarianism looks like. How? well this is action without government intervention. Private companies on their own have decided that enabling Alex Jones is not in their best interests. They are not a government so they have no commitment to free speech, so he goes away. This is exactly what it looks like when you don't have a regulation or requirement and the mass will of the people are able to gain leverage in the situation. If you are a true libertarian, you should support this.

Everyone is free to their own opinion. Nothing about that has changed. Nobody is taking away Alex Jones opinion, they just don't want to participate in his nonsense anymore. He can still be a hate tank of intolerance and bigotry, he just has to find a new megaphone. You can't force your opinion on me, and you can't force it on private sector companies who are not the government. To do so would be facisim, surprised you don't know that. Oh wait, it's because you listen and believe Alex Jones (see previous post), so I am not surprised you don't know that. Just because you have a shitty opinion doesn't mean the rest of us have to put up with it. You are confusing the right to have an opinion free from government restriction, with the dumb idea that others have to support your shitty opinion which isn't a right or a privileged, or a requirement of any kind. I am pretty sure Alex Jones didn't change his opinion - they banned him and he didn't suddenly say "I'm just kidding" (no that took his ex-wife's divorce attorney to do that, lol... what a chickenshit), no he doubled down and leaned into that garbage: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/07/636237821/alex-jones-infowars-site-accuses-big-tech-of-censorship he still has his opinion, he is still broadcasting on the open web, you just now have to work a little harder to get your daily dose of unhinged nonsense. Boo fucking hoo