I think you're failing the sh*t test with this line of reasoning, same as they have been. We either live in a world where people can deal with these kinds of questions, including when they're asked in ways many may deem offensive, or we can't.

I think you give the game away when you ask if I know what 'important rights' are, so much so that everything in your comment before and after is best interpreted as a kind of nihilism, not a real attempt to grapple with the rights or principles in play, on the merits. Even if for the sake of argument we concede that at the end of the day nothing profoundly bad happened as a result of name your incident (and to be clear, I'm not doing that), all it would mean is that left wing or progressive illiberalism is the weaker prong of a pincer movement. Which is something I'd have agreed with well before we started putting the theory to the test.

That was part of it but I think it may have also been an early indicator of otherwise highly obscure academic silliness becoming widely disseminated to non academic audiences via the internet. People like him and numerous pro-Palestinian/Israel skeptical types were in many ways the OG victims of 21st century cancelation campaigns. It's among the reasons that trying to treat everything from FedSoc judges or jurists to conservative provacateurs to just normal liberals who don't toe the line on some issue or another as safety threats was so self evidently a mistake from the outset. Anyone with a memory longer than a nat could see where this was going. People at these places are reaping what they spent 15 or so years sowing.

The irony about the Niemoller quote that's the subject of this piece is itself head spinning. When was the last time someone worked up about the current environment prominently stood up for the rights of someone they disagreed with, just on the principle of the thing? It just doesn't really happen anymore.

Speaking of Arnold one liners this brings to mind 'You're a f*cking choir boy compared to me!'

Still a good one even though it was a 'darker' 90s effort.

One full of and run by f*cking idiots.

LOL!

Yea I had totally forgotten about that one and I concur. It's all been sped up enough with the pitch clock as to not be necessary and it's absolutely against the spirit of baseball.

I am usually a traditionalist on matters of sport but have found myself agreeing that the rule changes are good. Attention spans are what they are and I feel a lot better taking my kids to games, confident that we will actually make it through the whole thing, which is convenient for me since otherwise I'd make it to fewer than half as many games a year.

Anyway I am also excited for the season. I'll also be hoping my O's can finally turn the corner in the playoffs, but we have many months before it's time to start getting worked up about that subject.

Anything resulting in fewer HRs is counter productive. I feel like this was settled in the 20s.

It's the deepest state, far deeper than president Biden's. No one has ever had a deeper state, not in the history of our country.

Always worth remembering that no Clinton has held office for 12 years or run for any office in nearly 10. Love them or hate them one can fairly ask what the statute of limitations is on the Clintons. 2030? 2040? Whenever they're both dead?

I'd give Trump a point for maybe not being as dumb as I think he is if he fired Waltz. Remember one of his big lines at the debate with Biden? 'He never fires anyone!' Well here you are Donald. Fire somebody.

Yea but that's kind of what I mean. Biden was apparently in a state of serious cognitive decline. As reluctant as I was to believe that* it's something I've over time been convinced very likely explains a lot of the more baffling turns of his administration.

What's Trump's excuse? That they're just as out of their depth as the administration's harshest critics have been saying? No possible answer is a good one nor is it the kind of thing that lends itself to keeping score.

*I can take an L, it is what it is.

Eh that may just be a point of disagreement. I would be surprised if more than 3 out of 10 American voters even know who Lloyd Austin is. A solid 8 out of 10 know who Donald Trump is and one of the things they know about him is 'he isn't like normal politicians.' That's been a boon to him but it's the kind of thing that can cut both ways.

I think looking at this as a set of side by side tally marks fails to capture what's really going on. Clinton's email server was damaging politically because it played into a larger, cross partisan narrative about her sense of entitlement to power and/or that the normal rules don't apply. Even Hilary supporters, if they're being honest, have to admit that this was a problem for her and her political brand. The Lloyd Austin thing was bad but I don't think it really registers the same way. At this stage it's a partisan talking point that may still play well on Twitter but in real life no one cares or remembers it.

Bringing it to Trump, this is a real problem for him because one of the narratives that he and his set of uh... unconventional cabinet officials are up against is the perception that they're idiots. Even if Republicans don't agree, or think it's something that can be worked around, understand could go cross partisan and overall is a liability that they can't let get out of control.

I assume they have multiple threads along the lines of the below:

https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/the-trump-administration-also-texted

Ahem. Phishing of course.

Not to totally rehash other comments I made on open mic but this illustrates the folly of filling up the senior ranks of the administration with people who have never really done anything, at least in terms of leading a big organization. This isn't to say many companies in the private sector have not found themselves in the position where they found out the dolt that clicked the dumbest fishing scam ever works in the C suite. However you hope that you put enough experienced people together that at least one of them will at some point in their career have heard of security protocol for sensitive communications, and either stop some screw up themselves or at least impress upon others the need to listen to those lower level people with the expertise. While I am sure that Waltz and Hegseth are fully capable of gutting a man in ways a civvy like me could never comprehend, there is in fact a little more to the roles they have found themselves in. And hell, if Vance can write a book, maybe he could also read the back of one sometime, or just the occasional email from the billion or so security personnel I assume he is now immersed in on a daily basis.

You guys are so cute.

AIM after dark.

Thank God for that.

There was this party I had at my house senior year when my parents were out of town when those cheap little disposable cameras were all the rage. Of course my folks left a camera of their own laying around and some sort of intermingling seems to have occurred. Oh the looks I got when that film was developed.

As much as I hate to ruin gay America's romanticized view of heterosexual dating I have to inform you that it was full of hook ups, friends with benefit situations, failures to commit, two timing, and various players and player hating of the most sordid variety, even before gay marriage was legal. Don't ask me how I know.

While amusing I think this is just what happens when you staff your admistration with whatever is worse than backbenchers (nosebleeders?) and media personalities who have never been accountable for anything of significance. Don't let Fox News fool you, the people on that chat are better understood as JV dilettantes with very low IQs. They aren't taking cues from the great unwashed involved in 1/6.

Heh I believe it is actually Christoph Waltz (Austrians require lots of extra words and t's) who drinks a glass of milk while the gestapo ransacks your farm house.

Beware the horse shoe theory of hate speech.