Imagine the government hiring a private security force (made of ex-cops) to break into your house and search it (and report back!) without a warrant, then claiming there was no Fourth Amendment violation because it wasn't government that searched your house.
It's the same with every bureaucratic agency: just pass a vague "act" in Congress wherein the legislators say "do what you want, as long as you pinky-promise you have a good reason" and somehow that allows such agencies to exceed the authority vested in Congress itself?
Well, hopefully that phenomenon has had a brake-pump with the SCOTUS ruling on the EPA. But even so, big tech is the same problem except even more radical since it also represents an epistemological crisis.
Not to mention, electronic spying by the government, particularly in but imo not limited to, one’s domicile, is a violation of the Third Amendment’s proscription against troops being quartered in private homes without the consent of the owners.
Free association absolutism went the way of all things with the Civil Rights Act. Private entities (hotels, restaurants, etc.) were deemed "public accommodations" and their owners were no longer free to serve only those with whom they wished to do business. In a very real sense, when we (stupidly) allowed a few tech companies to create monopolies, they became modern communications "public accommodations." By simply adding Political Viewpoint as a protected class to civil rights legislation, the whole publisher vs. platform argument goes away and any legal speech becomes speech that may not be suppressed without incurring penalties for discrimination.
In other words, we have already decided that discrimination is an evil greater than the freedom of association--and can be remedied by civil legal action. Freedom of speech should be remedied in the same fashion.
All they have to do is enforce section 230 as is written. Either editorialize and be held accountable, or don't and enjoy immunity. Right now leftoids want (and are getting) both the control and the immunity.
I hope those "private contractors" are aware how mercenaries can be treated under the Geneva Convention 😟. While some might see combat, that's probably atypical. I was in the Army (a tech field) four decades ago. While I was never a contractor, I worked with them, and indeed could have been one upon discharge. Why do contractors exist? For several reasons. In the first place, generally speaking, government and especially military treats you like shit. Especially so in the military: you waive many rights when you sign on and you are subject to military discipline (sometimes even applies to civilians). Civilian workers might be treated better, of course. But the big reason is probably pay. Simply put, the government has never paid well and while they give bonuses and rewards for some special skills, in practice they probably don't compensate in line with a person's talents. For those who served in a highly technical specialty then, they often have been trained at great expense by the government/military, did their time, and often choose discharge. Also, for many skills they often hold a security clearance, itself a marketable asset. Then they may have the option to be a civilian contractor or a DoD Civilian (if the benefits are agreeable). They'll make many multiples the salary the military paid them. Note that what I've just described is mostly the techs, not likely to be doing real soldiering.
Now I enter an area in which I have no experience, only hearsay. Ah, but pity the "real" soldier, the infantryman or the Marine, or more likely an elite like a SEAL. These guys are closer to the traditional definition of a solider. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trained to defend or kill. Some of them may have done some of that. These guys can find post-enlistment work too, but it's likely to be more shadowy stuff. The pay may be quite good, but the risks are at times at least very high. THESE are the expendables, that do the dirty work of intelligence agencies and other shadowy groups. Shed a tear if you must for the grunts, they are often doing very dangerous work, but at least they are well paid for their trouble.
In black jack, if you want to have your best odds at beating the House, you should always hit on 16. Which means you can only draw cards with a face value of 5 or less. So there's not much of a margin of error. Nonetheless, over time, it gives you the best odds against the house.
I was using this as an example, as to why 1A becomes a slippery slope if you allow any exceptions.
Oh, I was thinking in a completely different context. Of course it depends on State laws, but when I was younger, 16 was a misdemeanor, 15 or less a felony 🤪. Am I being too abstract? I'm referring to sex with underage minors. Yes, prosecutions still sometimes happen and for the convicted they are no laughing matter, potentially several years in prison.
I'm on the other side of that one Ryan. Remember, if you bust and the House busts, you lose. To me that's their biggest advantage. Try to stay in the hand at all costs. Sort of like how, if the govt is wrong and you're right, but the govt says they're right, they litigate you into bankruptcy and you lose. Or sumpin' like that.
Your hypothetical isn't too far from the truth. As I understand it, under the rules of evidence, the government can use evidence that was illegally obtained, provided it was obtained by a third party. Just speculating here, but presumably the government cannot order such evidence.
To modify your example: Imagine instead that a "real" burglar breaks into a private home and makes off with several valuables. One of them, hypothetically, is a laptop with years of highly incriminating personal data on it. By some miracle, the government arrests the criminal and recovers the loot, including the laptop. Perhaps they're legally allowed to search its data. And viola! What a trove of incriminating evidence against not the burglar, but the home owner.
I'm not sure the analogy to 1st amendment is easily made, but clearly the private-government distinction can be abused, as Gato cites in the article, surely breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. But there are limits to free speech. In the 1970s the KKK (or was it Neo-Nazis) marched through a Jewish area (Skokie IL, if I recall correctly). It was controversial, but it was protected "speech." But I doubt anyone would claim an anti-Semite to have a right to spew his venom from the lectern in a synagogue.
Communism is a death cult, where the individual is completely subsumed by "the needs of the many", which, of course, are decided by the few murderous sociopaths that rise to the top of the cesspool of blood required to impose it.
Christianity is all about the individual. Worth, rights, duties, agency, choices.
Communism must deny the existence of the soul, for it is possessed by only individuals.
Live Free, you are brain dead. Commies, modernists (Pascendi has more) deceive, deceive , deveive. Plausible deniabikity. They'll say 5 pro life things, 5 pro baby killing yhings... howvyou don't know this? You're brain dead.
Many commie things he's done.
And his idiot followers cover for him.
So Mr brain dead, Pope Paul IV Cum_ex_apostolatus_officio... a non Catholic can't become Pope.
You're brain deaf on another count... you call Vicar of satan the Vicar of Christ.
You've apparently never read the Acts of the Apostles 😃. You should give it a try. Hint: It's in the New Testament. I'm not sure what True Communism was, but a lot of stuff in Acts sure sounds like it: All property and income was pooled, the poor and windows to be looked after and (eventually) the faith was to be spread to new ones (although not by coercion, I give them that credit.)
I tend agree with you upon Communism and Catholicism being incompatible belief systems, which makes the following observation all the more interesting:
It's a historical fact that Christianity as it developed bears almost no resemblance to what is expressly told in the Gospels, Acts and the rest of the official Bible. There is plenty of (non-Church) criticism available. The one I'm most familiar with is Nietzsche. In a few sentences: he asserts that the primitive Christianity (pre-Paul) was seized upon by St. Paul, who added aspects of [Neo-]Platonic philosophy as well as some of the "pagan" religions then popular in that part of the world, to make the new Christianity more appealing to the masses.
"Was Paul crucified for you?" writes St. Paul (1 Cor 1:13) Certainly not, but he beyond doubt wrote some of the New Testament and is believed to have written more. But the result, even the early Church, bears but slight resemblance to what the wandering carpenter from Nazareth taught.
When one considers that the assault on information freedom coincided with an assault on our ability to move and do business as we see fit, along with an assault on our health by suppressing working therapeutics, followed up by an assault on our lives by promoting and bullying people into taking an experimental and dangerous medical treatment, it starts to look a lot less like typical government malfeasance and a lot more like a war crime.
I suspect your method is the only way to get justice - trials would tie things up for years, and the public would start to heal, and forget the horrors, and lose their righteous anger. Most of the saboteurs would walk away with a wrist slap, if they got convicted at all. Normally I support due process, not this time, I hope murderous mobs get them before they slip away in a navy ship or private jet.
A blood bath cannot be ruled out. Disclaimer: not advocating violence. Just a student of history, including American history. Our nation, er, continent will have major problems the day that instead of one large military, we have two smaller ones. It's happened once, it can happen again.
History repeats ala rhymes. WWIII is live but most don’t recognize it because the technology has evolved faster than our understanding. Make no mistake, though, this is a blitzkrieg and those of us still standing are either NPC’s or forest rebels
I posted the following article by Berenson on Fakebook a few days ago. They immediately suspended me for thirty days for violating their "community standards on nudity or sexual content". I'm not kidding. Over the winter, they suspended me three times (one week, and two 30-day) for posting memes from some of the bad cat's articles...also for nudity or sexual content.
I've amused myself by contacting the Fakebook support team to remind them that the article does not, in fact, contain any nudity or sexual content (LOL). I always encourage them to enjoy their myocarditis. Not being a sociopath, I do feel a pang of remorse...but it passes.
Damn! That's incredible. That's good to know. I left FB in Sept 2021. Things have gotten so much worse since then. I was posting covid "dissident" type stuff every day. Nothing like that would have happened then.
I was on Twitter 2 months. Glorious fun. I noticed this one guy was on a higher level of obnoxiosness than me.... I looked up to him... for about 3 weeks... he got death penalty... I still smile at his posts incredibly obnoxious.
This is indeed a significant step toward truth and justice. Let’s just hope they don’t Hillary the documents prior to discovery.
On a similar note, I encourage people to demand that their legislators reject S.3737 before it gets off the drawing board. More details here along with instructions on contacting your representatives after the letter:
I keep thinking the same thing. If we accept that this is a plandemic, they are evil, and they will lie and kill people with reckless abandon, then shouldn't we assume that proof will be destroyed and hidden regardless of court orders or FOIA?
There's nothing wrong with contacting your rep/Senator and giving your opinion.
If it's any consolation, of the thousands of bills introduced in Congress each year, only a tiny fraction (way < 1%) become law. Most never get into, much less get out of, the various committees. This gives elected officials the bragging rights whether a libertarian saying "I introduced a bill to bring back the gold standard and abolish the Federal Reserve" or a Socialist to crow that his bill would instantly give us single-payer health care, whatever.
" just because i will not allow dog-supremacists to comment on threads because the clear truth is that #TheFutureIsFeline"
I am at a loss for words. The sense of betrayal is palpable. However, I will continue to be a true Sheepdog, and a guardian of the republic. The wolves shall not pass.
I guess now you will post a vid of a cat stealing my food. 🐶
My Russian will sit by the bowl until I make sure the bottom is covered with food, then she will rake out one piece, knock it around the house, and finally eat it...then do it again.
I remember someone in the current administration (perhaps the former press secretary) making the comment that "all the 'vaccine misinformation' is coming from about 12 sources" and shortly thereafter some of the folks I had been following on Twitter were axxed. It seemed wrong and terribly suspicious. Maybe you, Gato, were one of the 12 that were discharged. In any case, the government should not have this power.
I disagree that private companies are free to regulate speech on their platforms. Companies which are in the business of carrying communication may not censor that communication. Just as the phone company can't disconnect your service because of what you say to someone else on the phone, companies like Twitter should not be able to shut down your service because you say something that they don't like. When you speak on Twitter you are not speaking for the company.
No one should be able to tell the companies what to say or what not to say when speaking as the company or when their management or employees are speaking.
Your comparison to speech in your home is incorrect. A better analogy is to speech within a public square, shopping mall, etc. Twitter, Facebook and similar platforms are the modern day equivalent of the public square. Limiting speech in the public square has long been unconstitutional. This protection was extended to shopping malls and similar premises in the 70's based on them becoming the equivalent of the public square. That function has now moved online in much the same way that shopping has moved online.
both are forms of fallacy when addressing the question of "should?"
twitter is not a "public square" or a "public utility" dependent upon government rights of way or monopoly.
it's a private business.
it is not a "modern day public square" because it is not owned by the public.
it's a private park open by invite only.
you're basically advocating the public seizure of businesses because they have become useful and widely used.
i don't think that's a road you want to go down.
claiming "that's the law" or "they did it to this guy so we can do it again" fails to speak to the terribly ethical and economic precedent such actions represent.
it also prevents the real adaptation that needs to occur and traps the internet in an awkward adolescence.
In principle it's difficult to argue with this. It seems pretty likely, though, that social media companies are coming under heavy coercion from government to do their bidding. Not sure about Twitter, but Facebook is basically just an outgrowth of the CIA, populated by executives who used to be spooks.
They already have a government granted benefit in protection from liability for statements on their platform. If they want to give that up and be a business equivalent to an automobile company then fine, let them censor. As long as they are protected because they are effectively a public square then they need to behave like a public square.
Never forget that the Democrats are the party of slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK.
Coercion, oppression, and rejection of self-ownership has always been their core ideology.
They managed to successfully rebrand themselves as the saviors of minorities by imposing the welfare system, which has destroyed poor black and white families and created a vast constituency of dependents and apparatchiks - a vastly expanded plantation, if you will - who will always vote to expand their share of the loot stolen from the rest of us.
I find it darkly amusing when Dems blather on about "systemic racism", when the best argument that it exists are the results of their own policies. Par for the course with leftists...
Everything they have done, and do now, is to create dependence and implement divide and conquer politics, and the milquetoast GOP has not just let them do it, but actively participated, as the latest 2A infringement demonstrates.
I don't use this term often or lightly, but the DNC is truly evil.
"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."
embarrassed to admit i was a left leaning centrist, but the left are now dead to me. the right are not much better, politically they are as corrupt just in different ways
I was censored back in September 2020 by Facebook for posting a study by the New England Jounral of Medicine saying masks could potentially slow the spread of COVID-19. Back then it was "disinformation" to say a fitted N95 mask could help slow the spread of an airborne pathogen:
Started with the idiocy of "hate crimes." Here I am dead, and I should care why the hell you killed me? Willful murder is murder. You can't find a strong enough penalty just for taking my life?
When you don't have absolutism about rights, they ain't, as some have already said, rights. They're just permissions.
So tell me. Before The Plague hit, were you writing publicly on other subjects? 'Cause you're a really, I'd say, interesting sort of cat...
Likely an unpopular view, but it is the same for DUI, which is a victimless crime, and therefore is not really a crime at all.
People are detained and prosecuted not for harm they have caused, but for harm they *might* cause, based upon an arbitrary one-size-fits-all BAC standard.
If one causes an automobile accident that harm others, then intoxication is absolutely a relevant factor in determining negligence, but allowing the State to criminalize the contents of one's blood is neither wise nor moral.
So I got pulled over one time with friends. I had a test the next morning, so I told my friends, I would drive them, but that I'd only have two beers. Which is exactly what I did over the course of 2.5 hrs.
I went through a DUI checkpoint. And of course, I had to get out of the car to go through a field sobriety test. I passed it...well because I wasn't drunk. I even asked two police officers if I passed. They said, yes, you're obviously not drunk, but we need you to blow into a breathalyzer.
I refused. This was in CA when their were no exceptions. You had to blow or they'd take your license and take you to jail. So I spent a night in jail and had to get a cash advance on my credit card to pay bail.
I defended myself in court. I received an apology letter from the Dept. of Revenue and received my license back.
True story. That didn't keep me from driving around for 3 months during the time my license was suspended...
Exactly. That was a violation of your 14th Amendment right to due process. Red Flag laws are similar.
Now, how many people are falsely imprisoned overnight or longer and suffer other impacts like three months without a driver's license but are never compensated? Did the police go to prison for false imprisonment? Did the prosecutor? The more I learn, the less I would consent to government of any kind.
Drinking or doing drugs is done consciously and with full awarness and knowledge of how it affects and impairs ability (especially judgement of said ability...), which is what makes choosing to drive (or operate any dangerous equipment) while being intoxicated - or even just running a high fever or similar - a criminal hazard to your fellow man.
Any act which has a an immediate potential for direct bodily harm, death or material harm of another is an act it is the duty of any freedom-minded person to only perform as correctly and responsibly as possibly. Operating a motor vehicle (a car, not a lawnmower) is such an act.
Because the moment your freedom puts someone else at immediate risk of death, injury or loss, your rejection of the moral obligation of that duty is no different from the governemental or corporate logic of collateral damages.
And we as free and private individuals have no excuse to engage in such behaviour towards one another, do we?
So if a person is pulled over, arrested and charged with DUI despite not having been involved in any accident, who, exactly, is the victim?
Do try to be specific.
And it is not "freedom" that puts someone at risk, it is action. Such an action is, um, actionable if and only if it creates actual harm to an actual victim.
Otherwise, again, people are being penalized for what *might have been*. This idea is the root cause of an enormous amount of oppression and suffering in the world. Do you really think that is a good idea?
There is no reason for DUI to be a separate, standalone offense. If an intoxicated person injures or kills someone with their vehicle, they are guilty of gross negligence and/or vehicular manslaughter.
I think in this sphere an argument can be made for or against anything.
What gives anyone the right to point to a plot of land and say I've bought this with hard money and it's mine?
Everything since cave times has been a slippery slope. I can't argue against that. And I recognize that if I demand freedom in anything, I have no right to deny it to anyone on anything else, either.
So for me this is perhaps like an arbitrary determination of viability in gestation of a child. I assert that before that point, the woman has an absolute right, for any reason or none, to receive an abortion, and that after viability, which can, because of medical advances, only be legislatively determined, the state has the right to assert its interest in the life of the child.
In truth the woman ought to have the absolute right at any point before birth to kill her child. In morality (a sort of natural law, and not in my view attached to any dogma) I'd call that a crime once the child has reached a point of development of independent survival (though it's not really independent survival if extreme medical interventions must be used to save it).
You got a durable answer for any of this stuff? I don't. I'm just as arbitrary as anyone, anywhere, in asserting what I believe to be necessary, or acceptable.
Well, I'd feel the same if it applied to horse riders and ox-cart drivers.
As far as the fine points of law--Not qualified to argue that. But for me it's the same as handling firearms while impaired. A dangerous instrument that requires sobriety and foresight to handle safely in public.
Again, we are in agreement that riding horses, driving ox-carts, handling firearms or even wielding a butter knife when too impaired to safely do so is reckless, but again, how, exactly, is this different from being completely sober and riding one's horse into a crowd at a full gallop?
I submit that unless you can elucidate some substantive difference between these sorts of recklessness, there should be no special, additional punishment for simply riding a horse, or driving a vehicle, in a safe manner whilst having a BAC over the arbitrary legal limit.
Punishing people for the harm they *might* cause, even if it does not come to pass, is an invitation to tyranny and has no place in a truly free society.
Well, there is no truly free society. That's the bad news.
While it may be true that I find myself smelling the lovely slightly astringent lavender scent of libertarianism more than I did, say, in the silly idealistic days of my adolescence, I know that don't work, neither.
The thing in life is to fight for as much reasonable balance as you can, and then the kids have to do it all over. I've learned to be grateful for the foundational ideals of our nation in a way I never was before, because if you ain't got ideals you ain't got nothing.
You're a kid, you're always pissed off at your dumb parents limiting your born free rights. Then you become a parent and you're terrified your kids might emulate your dumb youth and you just pray to the Cosmos or whatever secret force you hope might be out there to save your kids from being just like you.
There's no durable solution to everything that goes wrong with human nature. That's why I ain't got patience for none o' them brilliant philosophers. In the end it ain't theoretical. It's just fucking up and how to fix it if we can.
Respectfully disagree. If I empty the magazine of my 9mm into a crowd and yet by some miracle hit no one, am I to be let off the hook, or perhaps just be charged for unlawful discharge of a firearm (usually a misdemeanor)? Intent to harm or negligence are entirely valid principles at law.
What an interesting interpretation; although my logical side supports the idea of dui laws (of course, limits of .08 - .05 are ludicrously low and verdictive, in my opinion), I see your point. No harm, no foul. As someone who had gunners who shifted for me, as a young and reckless lad, I always drove well or maybe I was just lucky; never got stopped or had an accident anyway. That said, I can see the reasoning for some sort of DUI laws (not the current laws where a small woman can't even have a single glass of wine with dinner!). p.s.: I fully support your last phrase, testing drivers randomly is a farce, legally and morally.
Your post demonstrates unequivocally that any BAC level is completely arbitrary, and that these laws have been abused, both ludicrously and vindictively.
I submit that you have made my point.
Laws need to be rational and not arbitrary to be valid. They also must have an actual victim other than "the state". This may seem like a rather academic point, until you realize that countless millions of people have been murdered and caged for a multitude of other victimless "crimes", like, say, possessing the wrong sort of plant.
Well, better than what is happening in other parts of the world....I think it's only a matter of time, his resignation..... fingers crossed...a win anywhere is a win here.....
Imagine the government hiring a private security force (made of ex-cops) to break into your house and search it (and report back!) without a warrant, then claiming there was no Fourth Amendment violation because it wasn't government that searched your house.
The first amendment works the same way.
It's the same with every bureaucratic agency: just pass a vague "act" in Congress wherein the legislators say "do what you want, as long as you pinky-promise you have a good reason" and somehow that allows such agencies to exceed the authority vested in Congress itself?
Well, hopefully that phenomenon has had a brake-pump with the SCOTUS ruling on the EPA. But even so, big tech is the same problem except even more radical since it also represents an epistemological crisis.
Abolishing them is the only way to ever rein them in. I’m all for it.
Not to mention, electronic spying by the government, particularly in but imo not limited to, one’s domicile, is a violation of the Third Amendment’s proscription against troops being quartered in private homes without the consent of the owners.
Interesting take, and a good one. I had not even thought about it like that before. That’s spot on.
Free association absolutism went the way of all things with the Civil Rights Act. Private entities (hotels, restaurants, etc.) were deemed "public accommodations" and their owners were no longer free to serve only those with whom they wished to do business. In a very real sense, when we (stupidly) allowed a few tech companies to create monopolies, they became modern communications "public accommodations." By simply adding Political Viewpoint as a protected class to civil rights legislation, the whole publisher vs. platform argument goes away and any legal speech becomes speech that may not be suppressed without incurring penalties for discrimination.
In other words, we have already decided that discrimination is an evil greater than the freedom of association--and can be remedied by civil legal action. Freedom of speech should be remedied in the same fashion.
Personally, I'd prefer to know the guy I'm doing business with is a racist so I can avoid the establishment altogether.
The racists are the establishment.
Or did you mean you want to do business with someone the establish calls a racist? That's an entirely different thing.
I like betting on the races, that makes me a real racist.
Good one Possum! Lol!
All they have to do is enforce section 230 as is written. Either editorialize and be held accountable, or don't and enjoy immunity. Right now leftoids want (and are getting) both the control and the immunity.
Not so. There are a number of problems with 230 as written. Please take a read here:
https://www.newsweek.com/reform-section-230-now-opinion-1542228
Sounds like sending ”private contractor” military apparatus to the middle east to NOT wage war, since they're not the military. 🤔
Surely that's not happening in Ukraine, either, correct?
Same feces, new day.
classic
I hope those "private contractors" are aware how mercenaries can be treated under the Geneva Convention 😟. While some might see combat, that's probably atypical. I was in the Army (a tech field) four decades ago. While I was never a contractor, I worked with them, and indeed could have been one upon discharge. Why do contractors exist? For several reasons. In the first place, generally speaking, government and especially military treats you like shit. Especially so in the military: you waive many rights when you sign on and you are subject to military discipline (sometimes even applies to civilians). Civilian workers might be treated better, of course. But the big reason is probably pay. Simply put, the government has never paid well and while they give bonuses and rewards for some special skills, in practice they probably don't compensate in line with a person's talents. For those who served in a highly technical specialty then, they often have been trained at great expense by the government/military, did their time, and often choose discharge. Also, for many skills they often hold a security clearance, itself a marketable asset. Then they may have the option to be a civilian contractor or a DoD Civilian (if the benefits are agreeable). They'll make many multiples the salary the military paid them. Note that what I've just described is mostly the techs, not likely to be doing real soldiering.
Now I enter an area in which I have no experience, only hearsay. Ah, but pity the "real" soldier, the infantryman or the Marine, or more likely an elite like a SEAL. These guys are closer to the traditional definition of a solider. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are trained to defend or kill. Some of them may have done some of that. These guys can find post-enlistment work too, but it's likely to be more shadowy stuff. The pay may be quite good, but the risks are at times at least very high. THESE are the expendables, that do the dirty work of intelligence agencies and other shadowy groups. Shed a tear if you must for the grunts, they are often doing very dangerous work, but at least they are well paid for their trouble.
Hit on 16 every time. Otherwise you lose to the House. That's what the Founders intended.
Hit on 16... I admit, I have no idea what this means
In black jack, if you want to have your best odds at beating the House, you should always hit on 16. Which means you can only draw cards with a face value of 5 or less. So there's not much of a margin of error. Nonetheless, over time, it gives you the best odds against the house.
I was using this as an example, as to why 1A becomes a slippery slope if you allow any exceptions.
Oh, I was thinking in a completely different context. Of course it depends on State laws, but when I was younger, 16 was a misdemeanor, 15 or less a felony 🤪. Am I being too abstract? I'm referring to sex with underage minors. Yes, prosecutions still sometimes happen and for the convicted they are no laughing matter, potentially several years in prison.
And yes satan...5 or less...er nuke upon receipt
I view all your post as abstract art!...:]]]
Righteous!
You're really good, they kick you out
I'm on the other side of that one Ryan. Remember, if you bust and the House busts, you lose. To me that's their biggest advantage. Try to stay in the hand at all costs. Sort of like how, if the govt is wrong and you're right, but the govt says they're right, they litigate you into bankruptcy and you lose. Or sumpin' like that.
BTW. I'm talking about the 1st ammendment.
You want to take your chances with that?
Sincerely. Not trying to be a dick.
You've let chance take over the odds.
This is why when I play, and I don't play often, I play craps.
Bet only on the hot shooters. The rest of the time, bet with the house.
Craps is more fun anyways.
You get my point though, right?
Yep.
Own the odds or they will own you.
Ha!...;]
Traitors deserve death
Your hypothetical isn't too far from the truth. As I understand it, under the rules of evidence, the government can use evidence that was illegally obtained, provided it was obtained by a third party. Just speculating here, but presumably the government cannot order such evidence.
To modify your example: Imagine instead that a "real" burglar breaks into a private home and makes off with several valuables. One of them, hypothetically, is a laptop with years of highly incriminating personal data on it. By some miracle, the government arrests the criminal and recovers the loot, including the laptop. Perhaps they're legally allowed to search its data. And viola! What a trove of incriminating evidence against not the burglar, but the home owner.
I'm not sure the analogy to 1st amendment is easily made, but clearly the private-government distinction can be abused, as Gato cites in the article, surely breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. But there are limits to free speech. In the 1970s the KKK (or was it Neo-Nazis) marched through a Jewish area (Skokie IL, if I recall correctly). It was controversial, but it was protected "speech." But I doubt anyone would claim an anti-Semite to have a right to spew his venom from the lectern in a synagogue.
“If the vast power of DC has wriggled tentacles...”. IF? There is no ‘if’.
Decentralize
Subsidiarity Now.
Local, wherever possible.
Catholic teaching. True Catholic teaching. Francis is NWO WHORE, false pope.
Also distributism, economist local level true Catholic economic model.
Just so.
Francis is a communist. Communism and Catholicism are in my view mutually exclusive.
YOU ARE A GENIUS!#@! THANK YOU 😊
Absolutely incompatible.
Catholic Church condemned communism over and over again thru Pope Pius XII.
What changed? Catholics lost Vatican in October 1958 to freemasons and commies.
Vatican II was an abomination.
Communism is a death cult, where the individual is completely subsumed by "the needs of the many", which, of course, are decided by the few murderous sociopaths that rise to the top of the cesspool of blood required to impose it.
Christianity is all about the individual. Worth, rights, duties, agency, choices.
Communism must deny the existence of the soul, for it is possessed by only individuals.
Great Apostasy
You are not correct about Pope Francis.
https://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-mixing-apos-marxist-141249694.html
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicnews/2015/07/pope-francis-apparently-not-amused-by-communist-crucifix/
https://www.cal-catholic.com/pope-francis-apparently-not-amused-by-the-communist-crucifix/
https://staycatholic.com/catholics-and-socialism/
Live Free, you are brain dead. Commies, modernists (Pascendi has more) deceive, deceive , deveive. Plausible deniabikity. They'll say 5 pro life things, 5 pro baby killing yhings... howvyou don't know this? You're brain dead.
Many commie things he's done.
And his idiot followers cover for him.
So Mr brain dead, Pope Paul IV Cum_ex_apostolatus_officio... a non Catholic can't become Pope.
You're brain deaf on another count... you call Vicar of satan the Vicar of Christ.
Beyond stupid
Well, if it walks and talks like a communist...
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article24867535.html
You've apparently never read the Acts of the Apostles 😃. You should give it a try. Hint: It's in the New Testament. I'm not sure what True Communism was, but a lot of stuff in Acts sure sounds like it: All property and income was pooled, the poor and windows to be looked after and (eventually) the faith was to be spread to new ones (although not by coercion, I give them that credit.)
I tend agree with you upon Communism and Catholicism being incompatible belief systems, which makes the following observation all the more interesting:
It's a historical fact that Christianity as it developed bears almost no resemblance to what is expressly told in the Gospels, Acts and the rest of the official Bible. There is plenty of (non-Church) criticism available. The one I'm most familiar with is Nietzsche. In a few sentences: he asserts that the primitive Christianity (pre-Paul) was seized upon by St. Paul, who added aspects of [Neo-]Platonic philosophy as well as some of the "pagan" religions then popular in that part of the world, to make the new Christianity more appealing to the masses.
"Was Paul crucified for you?" writes St. Paul (1 Cor 1:13) Certainly not, but he beyond doubt wrote some of the New Testament and is believed to have written more. But the result, even the early Church, bears but slight resemblance to what the wandering carpenter from Nazareth taught.
There was communal living in Bible. Voluntary.
Well, if it one thing that could be posited as a universal human truth, it is a lack of consistency.
I have read them, but it has been quite some time...
Yes. lol
When one considers that the assault on information freedom coincided with an assault on our ability to move and do business as we see fit, along with an assault on our health by suppressing working therapeutics, followed up by an assault on our lives by promoting and bullying people into taking an experimental and dangerous medical treatment, it starts to look a lot less like typical government malfeasance and a lot more like a war crime.
Hear, Hear!
A parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
- Walter Bagehot
We The People need to make them HEAR.
We are M'ericans! We don't sit idly!
Exactly right. And nobody is going to do it for us. Nice quote, Ryan.
You're DAMN FREAKEN RIGHT. AND TREASON, SABATEURS.
No trials needed for treason in time of war.
Edit: of course, a Junior officer should verify facts.
Basically, if you are not in uniform and are caught in enemy territory, you can be shot
No Geneva rights for SABATEURS.
Undeclared, cowardly war
I suspect your method is the only way to get justice - trials would tie things up for years, and the public would start to heal, and forget the horrors, and lose their righteous anger. Most of the saboteurs would walk away with a wrist slap, if they got convicted at all. Normally I support due process, not this time, I hope murderous mobs get them before they slip away in a navy ship or private jet.
It's really war time. And they have coopted damn near everything.
So Rules of War do apply....
Remember, they operated under cover of darkness, TO MURDER CHILDREN.
PEACE ✌️.
That's peace ✌️ to you. s 😂
A blood bath cannot be ruled out. Disclaimer: not advocating violence. Just a student of history, including American history. Our nation, er, continent will have major problems the day that instead of one large military, we have two smaller ones. It's happened once, it can happen again.
It will be worldwide, like Kansas Missouri border, civil war. A blood bath, to say it lightly
Here we go!
I write and say this shit. Anywhere
Stream of consciousness.
Almost.
Stream if UN consciousness
I meant here we go; game on. No disrespect
Absolutely!
And this is on top of the blatant and continuing treason that began with Brunhilda’s Russia collusion hoax.
History repeats ala rhymes. WWIII is live but most don’t recognize it because the technology has evolved faster than our understanding. Make no mistake, though, this is a blitzkrieg and those of us still standing are either NPC’s or forest rebels
Most people look at you with empty eyes when you say we are in WWIII
Anything said on Twitter against the WHO bullet points was WrongSpeak as early as April of 2020. Gato, you would know this, you were there.
This machinery was in place as soon as the first person was told to Stay Home, Stay Safe courtesy of Tom Hanks.
The Machinery was in place at Event 201.
People kicked off Twitter get 5 trust points
The bioweapon common cold me-too freakout dominoed throughout the world at "warp speed." The CCP sent marching orders and all governments complied.
I won’t be happy until those responsible are brought to justice and behind bars. This was a crime against humanity.
You've heard the figurative expression "the left eventually eats its own"?
Let's send the lot of them to Devil's Island and make the expression literal.
That’s a thought. I can’t tell you how glad I am that the left moved away from me. Much better company here.
Bars would be fine but I want the rope of satisfaction.
However, Yarvin has long argued for buying them off into early retirement. The catch being you need a USG “CEO” to make this happen.
I see a divorce before real Executive 🤷🏽♂️
O you mean iron bars not drinking bars. : ) sorry being silly
Not death penalty?
I posted the following article by Berenson on Fakebook a few days ago. They immediately suspended me for thirty days for violating their "community standards on nudity or sexual content". I'm not kidding. Over the winter, they suspended me three times (one week, and two 30-day) for posting memes from some of the bad cat's articles...also for nudity or sexual content.
I've amused myself by contacting the Fakebook support team to remind them that the article does not, in fact, contain any nudity or sexual content (LOL). I always encourage them to enjoy their myocarditis. Not being a sociopath, I do feel a pang of remorse...but it passes.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-and
Damn! That's incredible. That's good to know. I left FB in Sept 2021. Things have gotten so much worse since then. I was posting covid "dissident" type stuff every day. Nothing like that would have happened then.
Actually I was getting harassed all the time in 2020 by fb. Death penalty from youtube, Twitter spring 2020
You folks are awesome. I just spend my days alienating my “ friends”
Dr. Linda, my only friends are four legged, furry.
Btw, I was screwing around with my dogs at dog park....
Got down on all fours, banging my dogs with my head.
I looked up... I had broken some unwritten dog code... 3 dogs were staring at me, kinda not friendly.
I got up, sat at picnic bench like a good human...
Goodwood huuuman
I was on Twitter 2 months. Glorious fun. I noticed this one guy was on a higher level of obnoxiosness than me.... I looked up to him... for about 3 weeks... he got death penalty... I still smile at his posts incredibly obnoxious.
I followed him, a mo later
I know a violation of 1A when I see one...
This is indeed a significant step toward truth and justice. Let’s just hope they don’t Hillary the documents prior to discovery.
On a similar note, I encourage people to demand that their legislators reject S.3737 before it gets off the drawing board. More details here along with instructions on contacting your representatives after the letter:
• “Letter to US Legislators: #DefundTheThoughtPolice” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-us-legislators-defundthethoughtpolice)
I keep thinking the same thing. If we accept that this is a plandemic, they are evil, and they will lie and kill people with reckless abandon, then shouldn't we assume that proof will be destroyed and hidden regardless of court orders or FOIA?
There's nothing wrong with contacting your rep/Senator and giving your opinion.
If it's any consolation, of the thousands of bills introduced in Congress each year, only a tiny fraction (way < 1%) become law. Most never get into, much less get out of, the various committees. This gives elected officials the bragging rights whether a libertarian saying "I introduced a bill to bring back the gold standard and abolish the Federal Reserve" or a Socialist to crow that his bill would instantly give us single-payer health care, whatever.
Thanks, done
🙌
" just because i will not allow dog-supremacists to comment on threads because the clear truth is that #TheFutureIsFeline"
I am at a loss for words. The sense of betrayal is palpable. However, I will continue to be a true Sheepdog, and a guardian of the republic. The wolves shall not pass.
I guess now you will post a vid of a cat stealing my food. 🐶
it has been my experience that few dogs are actual dog supremacists.
it's mostly misguided humans.
https://youtu.be/tqxo3iIEN4A
Woof!
My Russian will sit by the bowl until I make sure the bottom is covered with food, then she will rake out one piece, knock it around the house, and finally eat it...then do it again.
*zing*
Ouch. : )
Great! Now do government collusion and Pfizer!
I remember someone in the current administration (perhaps the former press secretary) making the comment that "all the 'vaccine misinformation' is coming from about 12 sources" and shortly thereafter some of the folks I had been following on Twitter were axxed. It seemed wrong and terribly suspicious. Maybe you, Gato, were one of the 12 that were discharged. In any case, the government should not have this power.
I disagree that private companies are free to regulate speech on their platforms. Companies which are in the business of carrying communication may not censor that communication. Just as the phone company can't disconnect your service because of what you say to someone else on the phone, companies like Twitter should not be able to shut down your service because you say something that they don't like. When you speak on Twitter you are not speaking for the company.
No one should be able to tell the companies what to say or what not to say when speaking as the company or when their management or employees are speaking.
Your comparison to speech in your home is incorrect. A better analogy is to speech within a public square, shopping mall, etc. Twitter, Facebook and similar platforms are the modern day equivalent of the public square. Limiting speech in the public square has long been unconstitutional. This protection was extended to shopping malls and similar premises in the 70's based on them becoming the equivalent of the public square. That function has now moved online in much the same way that shopping has moved online.
that's just legalism and appeal to practice.
both are forms of fallacy when addressing the question of "should?"
twitter is not a "public square" or a "public utility" dependent upon government rights of way or monopoly.
it's a private business.
it is not a "modern day public square" because it is not owned by the public.
it's a private park open by invite only.
you're basically advocating the public seizure of businesses because they have become useful and widely used.
i don't think that's a road you want to go down.
claiming "that's the law" or "they did it to this guy so we can do it again" fails to speak to the terribly ethical and economic precedent such actions represent.
it also prevents the real adaptation that needs to occur and traps the internet in an awkward adolescence.
i lay this argument out more thoroughly here:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-cats-tale-how-getting-canceled
In principle it's difficult to argue with this. It seems pretty likely, though, that social media companies are coming under heavy coercion from government to do their bidding. Not sure about Twitter, but Facebook is basically just an outgrowth of the CIA, populated by executives who used to be spooks.
Obviously. (That wasn't what I meant.)
better still, build a swarm sourced peer to peer system that is owned by no one and render the idea of censorship anachronistic.
the more we squabble about how to demand to be allowed to play in walled gardens, the less impetus to realize this far greater system.
it will trap the internet in awkward adolescence.
I dig that.
I’d run my own “node.” ☺️
I’m totally for free stuff. (Not free beer)
The Carhedral & the Bazaar 🤔
I don't care whether I'm being censored by the government or a "private company", hang them from a tree either way.
They already have a government granted benefit in protection from liability for statements on their platform. If they want to give that up and be a business equivalent to an automobile company then fine, let them censor. As long as they are protected because they are effectively a public square then they need to behave like a public square.
this is, again, just legalism.
you're just saying "someone wrote a law that says X so X is right."
one could defend anything that way.
lability for speech should reside with the speaker so long as it is clear that the opinion of they who spoke. this is clearly true of social media.
curating some speech in your home does not make you liable for all speech in your home, nor should it.
Sunshine, indeed... the best disinfectant.
democracy died with the democrats
Never forget that the Democrats are the party of slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK.
Coercion, oppression, and rejection of self-ownership has always been their core ideology.
They managed to successfully rebrand themselves as the saviors of minorities by imposing the welfare system, which has destroyed poor black and white families and created a vast constituency of dependents and apparatchiks - a vastly expanded plantation, if you will - who will always vote to expand their share of the loot stolen from the rest of us.
I find it darkly amusing when Dems blather on about "systemic racism", when the best argument that it exists are the results of their own policies. Par for the course with leftists...
Everything they have done, and do now, is to create dependence and implement divide and conquer politics, and the milquetoast GOP has not just let them do it, but actively participated, as the latest 2A infringement demonstrates.
I don't use this term often or lightly, but the DNC is truly evil.
"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."
~ Thomas Sowell
embarrassed to admit i was a left leaning centrist, but the left are now dead to me. the right are not much better, politically they are as corrupt just in different ways
agree
Planned Urban Plantations.
Nice quote.
I was censored back in September 2020 by Facebook for posting a study by the New England Jounral of Medicine saying masks could potentially slow the spread of COVID-19. Back then it was "disinformation" to say a fitted N95 mask could help slow the spread of an airborne pathogen:
https://www.facebook.com/bboyneko/posts/pfbid02oBFM6afwQsHYh66Cn9kGhA16RxNu9USu33h45i3tZ9TGFg2oinDDQmmtjzWUopcfl
Started with the idiocy of "hate crimes." Here I am dead, and I should care why the hell you killed me? Willful murder is murder. You can't find a strong enough penalty just for taking my life?
When you don't have absolutism about rights, they ain't, as some have already said, rights. They're just permissions.
So tell me. Before The Plague hit, were you writing publicly on other subjects? 'Cause you're a really, I'd say, interesting sort of cat...
Likely an unpopular view, but it is the same for DUI, which is a victimless crime, and therefore is not really a crime at all.
People are detained and prosecuted not for harm they have caused, but for harm they *might* cause, based upon an arbitrary one-size-fits-all BAC standard.
If one causes an automobile accident that harm others, then intoxication is absolutely a relevant factor in determining negligence, but allowing the State to criminalize the contents of one's blood is neither wise nor moral.
So I got pulled over one time with friends. I had a test the next morning, so I told my friends, I would drive them, but that I'd only have two beers. Which is exactly what I did over the course of 2.5 hrs.
I went through a DUI checkpoint. And of course, I had to get out of the car to go through a field sobriety test. I passed it...well because I wasn't drunk. I even asked two police officers if I passed. They said, yes, you're obviously not drunk, but we need you to blow into a breathalyzer.
I refused. This was in CA when their were no exceptions. You had to blow or they'd take your license and take you to jail. So I spent a night in jail and had to get a cash advance on my credit card to pay bail.
I defended myself in court. I received an apology letter from the Dept. of Revenue and received my license back.
True story. That didn't keep me from driving around for 3 months during the time my license was suspended...
Thanks for sharing the exact sort of abuse DUI laws create.
Exactly. That was a violation of your 14th Amendment right to due process. Red Flag laws are similar.
Now, how many people are falsely imprisoned overnight or longer and suffer other impacts like three months without a driver's license but are never compensated? Did the police go to prison for false imprisonment? Did the prosecutor? The more I learn, the less I would consent to government of any kind.
DUI a victimless crime?
Drinking or doing drugs is done consciously and with full awarness and knowledge of how it affects and impairs ability (especially judgement of said ability...), which is what makes choosing to drive (or operate any dangerous equipment) while being intoxicated - or even just running a high fever or similar - a criminal hazard to your fellow man.
Any act which has a an immediate potential for direct bodily harm, death or material harm of another is an act it is the duty of any freedom-minded person to only perform as correctly and responsibly as possibly. Operating a motor vehicle (a car, not a lawnmower) is such an act.
Because the moment your freedom puts someone else at immediate risk of death, injury or loss, your rejection of the moral obligation of that duty is no different from the governemental or corporate logic of collateral damages.
And we as free and private individuals have no excuse to engage in such behaviour towards one another, do we?
So if a person is pulled over, arrested and charged with DUI despite not having been involved in any accident, who, exactly, is the victim?
Do try to be specific.
And it is not "freedom" that puts someone at risk, it is action. Such an action is, um, actionable if and only if it creates actual harm to an actual victim.
Otherwise, again, people are being penalized for what *might have been*. This idea is the root cause of an enormous amount of oppression and suffering in the world. Do you really think that is a good idea?
There is no reason for DUI to be a separate, standalone offense. If an intoxicated person injures or kills someone with their vehicle, they are guilty of gross negligence and/or vehicular manslaughter.
do you eat in your car? do you have engrossing conversations in your car?
both are proven distractions that can cause accidents. should we ban that to?
the crime is the accident, not what led to it
Them specious arguments, we can wear 'em as cheap necklaces, can't we? Lots of glitter but no value to 'em, really.
No, they are on point, as *anything* the State says *could impair* driving can be the subject of persecution, regardless of the absence of a victim.
That is the actual point, and arguing otherwise is an argument for statism.
I think we've got quite enough statism, would you not agree?
I think in this sphere an argument can be made for or against anything.
What gives anyone the right to point to a plot of land and say I've bought this with hard money and it's mine?
Everything since cave times has been a slippery slope. I can't argue against that. And I recognize that if I demand freedom in anything, I have no right to deny it to anyone on anything else, either.
So for me this is perhaps like an arbitrary determination of viability in gestation of a child. I assert that before that point, the woman has an absolute right, for any reason or none, to receive an abortion, and that after viability, which can, because of medical advances, only be legislatively determined, the state has the right to assert its interest in the life of the child.
In truth the woman ought to have the absolute right at any point before birth to kill her child. In morality (a sort of natural law, and not in my view attached to any dogma) I'd call that a crime once the child has reached a point of development of independent survival (though it's not really independent survival if extreme medical interventions must be used to save it).
You got a durable answer for any of this stuff? I don't. I'm just as arbitrary as anyone, anywhere, in asserting what I believe to be necessary, or acceptable.
I knew you could say it better...
No, I think you go too far here. Operating a potentially deadly machine while too impaired to safely do so is reckless behavior.
I don't feel this approaches Minority Report territory. But then I have zero tolerance for drunks and addicts whose behavior affects others.
"Operating a potentially deadly machine while too impaired to safely do so is reckless behavior."
Completely agree, but how is this sort of recklessness different from any other?
Why treat it differently, as a distinct "crime"?
Well, I'd feel the same if it applied to horse riders and ox-cart drivers.
As far as the fine points of law--Not qualified to argue that. But for me it's the same as handling firearms while impaired. A dangerous instrument that requires sobriety and foresight to handle safely in public.
Again, we are in agreement that riding horses, driving ox-carts, handling firearms or even wielding a butter knife when too impaired to safely do so is reckless, but again, how, exactly, is this different from being completely sober and riding one's horse into a crowd at a full gallop?
I submit that unless you can elucidate some substantive difference between these sorts of recklessness, there should be no special, additional punishment for simply riding a horse, or driving a vehicle, in a safe manner whilst having a BAC over the arbitrary legal limit.
Punishing people for the harm they *might* cause, even if it does not come to pass, is an invitation to tyranny and has no place in a truly free society.
Well, there is no truly free society. That's the bad news.
While it may be true that I find myself smelling the lovely slightly astringent lavender scent of libertarianism more than I did, say, in the silly idealistic days of my adolescence, I know that don't work, neither.
The thing in life is to fight for as much reasonable balance as you can, and then the kids have to do it all over. I've learned to be grateful for the foundational ideals of our nation in a way I never was before, because if you ain't got ideals you ain't got nothing.
You're a kid, you're always pissed off at your dumb parents limiting your born free rights. Then you become a parent and you're terrified your kids might emulate your dumb youth and you just pray to the Cosmos or whatever secret force you hope might be out there to save your kids from being just like you.
There's no durable solution to everything that goes wrong with human nature. That's why I ain't got patience for none o' them brilliant philosophers. In the end it ain't theoretical. It's just fucking up and how to fix it if we can.
Respectfully disagree. If I empty the magazine of my 9mm into a crowd and yet by some miracle hit no one, am I to be let off the hook, or perhaps just be charged for unlawful discharge of a firearm (usually a misdemeanor)? Intent to harm or negligence are entirely valid principles at law.
What an interesting interpretation; although my logical side supports the idea of dui laws (of course, limits of .08 - .05 are ludicrously low and verdictive, in my opinion), I see your point. No harm, no foul. As someone who had gunners who shifted for me, as a young and reckless lad, I always drove well or maybe I was just lucky; never got stopped or had an accident anyway. That said, I can see the reasoning for some sort of DUI laws (not the current laws where a small woman can't even have a single glass of wine with dinner!). p.s.: I fully support your last phrase, testing drivers randomly is a farce, legally and morally.
Your post demonstrates unequivocally that any BAC level is completely arbitrary, and that these laws have been abused, both ludicrously and vindictively.
I submit that you have made my point.
Laws need to be rational and not arbitrary to be valid. They also must have an actual victim other than "the state". This may seem like a rather academic point, until you realize that countless millions of people have been murdered and caged for a multitude of other victimless "crimes", like, say, possessing the wrong sort of plant.
More good news from ITALY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/another-mr-global-puppet-leaves-the?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Well, better than what is happening in other parts of the world....I think it's only a matter of time, his resignation..... fingers crossed...a win anywhere is a win here.....