Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Toemeesleather]

The land of Democrat Utopia is acting soooo uncaring towards the poor/wimmens and coloreds.


The City of Detroit began shutting off water access to residents behind on payments Tuesday, with thousands at risk of losing access.

According to the Detroit Free Press, 64,769 delinquent residential customers owe the city’s water department a combined $48.9 million.

[hedge]

"Stalin and Lenin, yes. They are liberal in that they believe in the almighty power of the State over individual liberty"

That's an odd definition of liberalism...

[Toemeesleather]

So there is no Stalin-esque attempt to stifle free speech? The IRS - newly weaponized political arm of the moderate Obama administration - blatantly harrassed applicants for non-profit status whose names included "Tea Party" or "Patriot" but never names like "Union" or "Green." Nobody was ever punished for it either. That was some straight up Nixon stuff, Stalinesque minus the gulags.

For many Americans the term “speech code” sends shivers up the spine. Yet these noxious and un-American codes have become commonplace on college campuses across the United States. They are typically so broad that they could include literally anything and are subject to the interpretation of school administrators, who frequently fail to operate as honest brokers. In the hands of the illiberal left, the speech codes are weapons to silence anyone—professors, students, visiting speakers—who expresses a view that deviates from the left’s worldview or ideology. Speech that offends them is redefined as “harassment” or “hate speech” both of which are barred by most campus speech codes. At Colorado College, a private liberal arts college, administrators invented a “violence” policy that was used to punish non-violent speech. The consequences of violating a speech code are serious: it can often lead to public shaming, censoring, firings, suspensions, or expulsions, often with no due process.


From Kirsten Powers new book, "The Silencing....How the Left is Killing free speech".....and she is that RARE lib can has the ability to actually speak objectively.....much unlike the useful idiots here.

[hedge]

I wish you were silenced. Permanently...

[Toemeesleather]

....and of course Allan Bloom (no rwnj he) made the same points in the 80's......



“Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.”

[AlabamAlum]

Have you read those books, toe? If so, present some of their arguments.

[sardis]

"Stalin and Lenin, yes. They are liberal in that they believe in the almighty power of the State over individual liberty"

That's an odd definition of liberalism...

I think prof means liberals in the more modern social liberalism context, not the more traditional liberalism that is represented more closely by the Tea party.

[Toemeesleather]

I haven't read Powers' book, looking to order it presently.

[hedge]

I read Bloom's book 20+ years ago and have revisited several times over the years. He makes some good points, but for the most part he's mainly a cranky old man who is disdainful of youth culture and "modernity" (whatever that is). Kinda one of those "back in the good old days" kinda guys. He was also a closeted homosexual who died of the AIDS. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Professor Tiger]

Don't know about the Army, but the constant complaint I hear about Navy & Air Force chaplains is that 90% of them are to the right of Jerry Fallwell (that's what I hear from my members who are active duty USN & USAF, as well as from friends in my denomination who are active duty chaplains).

As an Army chaplain of 20+ years, I can say that this witness is true. The Army chaplaincy is totally run by the fundamentalist Protestants. The rest of us were there by sufferance, and only to give the appearance of theological diversity. When I was in Afghanistan, a rabbi, Catholic priest and I formed our own little mutual support group. I always wondered if this was true of the other services. Now I know.

I can't answer for army chaplains. I personally think that MOS or whatever should be eliminated.

The Army chaplaincy was legally challenged in court about 40 years ago as a violation of the separation of church and state. The winning argument was that, when soldiers are in combat zones, they don't lose their first amendment rights. The military must provide other constitutional rights like the right to vote, access to legal counsel, food, health care. So the Army must provide their personnel access to religious freedom too. That requires chaplains.

But if I was in charge, I would radically change the military chaplaincy. Service personnel have plenty of access to religious services at most stateside military bases. There are usually plenty of off-post houses of worship for soldiers to attend, and most of them do. And for providing for constitutional access to religious worship in combat zones, I would make chaplains like embedded reporters - given protection, transportation, food, shelter and medical care so that they can do their work. They would be paid by their own denominations, like missionaries. They would wear no military rank. After the deployment is over, they would be sent back to their churches, although they could return if needed. It would be rare for them to draw a military retirement.

[Johnette's Daddy]

But if I was in charge, I would radically change the military chaplaincy. Service personnel have plenty of access to religious services at most stateside military bases. There are usually plenty of off-post houses of worship for soldiers to attend, and most of them do. And for providing for constitutional access to religious worship in combat zones, I would make chaplains like embedded reporters - given protection, transportation, food, shelter and medical care so that they can do their work. They would be paid by their own denominations, like missionaries. They would wear no military rank. After the deployment is over, they would be sent back to their churches, although they could return if needed. It would be rare for them to draw a military retirement.

Most of the military chaplains I know are in it primarily for the benefits and retirement. I have three colleagues (all female, FWIW) whose careers as pastors had stalled. They all left pulpits to become chaplains (one regular Navy and two Army Reserve - but currently on active duty). We don't have a lot of women pastoring major churches in my denomination and none of those 3 were on a "fast track." They did the math and figured out that financially it was better to join Uncle Sam than to struggle at tiny churches.

[Professor Tiger]

That has been my observation too - that most military chaplains are in it for the pay and retirement. That becomes more true the higher in rank you go. The younger chaplains are pretty idealistic, and aren't necessarily committed to making it a career. That's why I would semi-privatize the military chaplaincy to get rid of the dead wood whose heart is not in the actual work.

[Johnette's Daddy]

http://justicenotjails.org/race-and-pol ... -286690069

Just an excerpt:

As a new officer with the St. Louis in the mid-1990s, I responded to a call for an “officer in need of aid.” I was partnered that day with a white female officer. When we got to the scene, it turned out that the officer was fine, and the aid call was canceled. He’d been in a foot pursuit chasing a suspect in an armed robbery and lost him.
The officer I was with asked him if he’d seen where the suspect went. The officer picked a house on the block we were on, and we went to it and knocked on the door. A young man about 18 years old answered the door, partially opening it and peering out at my partner and me. He was standing on crutches. My partner accused him of harboring a suspect. He denied it. He said that this was his family’s home and he was home alone.

My partner then forced the door the rest of the way open, grabbed him by his throat, and snatched him out of the house onto the front porch. She took him to the ledge of the porch and, still holding him by the throat, punched him hard in the face and then in the groin. My partner that day snatched an 18-year-old kid off crutches and assaulted him, simply for stating the fact that he was home alone.

I got the officer off of him. But because an aid call had gone out, several other officers had arrived on the scene. One of those officers, who was black, ascended the stairs and asked what was going on. My partner pointed to the young man, still lying on the porch, and said, “That son of a bitch just assaulted me.” The black officer then went up to the young man and told him to “get the fuck up, I’m taking you in for assaulting an officer.” The young man looked up at the officer and said, “Man … you see I can’t go.” His crutches lay not far from him.

The officer picked him up, cuffed him, and slammed him into the house, where he was able to prop himself up by leaning against it. The officer then told him again to get moving to the police car on the street because he was under arrest. The young man told him one last time, in a pleading tone that was somehow angry at the same time, “You see I can’t go!” The officer reached down and grabbed both the young man’s ankles and yanked up. This caused the young man to strike his head on the porch. The officer then dragged him to the police car. We then searched the house. No one was in it.

These kinds of scenes play themselves out everyday all over our country in black and brown communities. Beyond the many unarmed blacks killed by police, including recently Freddie Gray in Baltimore, other police abuses that don’t result in death foment resentment, distrust, and malice toward police in black and brown communities all over the country. Long before Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown last August, there was a poisonous relationship between the Ferguson, Missouri, department and the community it claimed to serve. For example, in 2009 Henry Davis was stopped unlawfully in Ferguson, taken to the police station, and brutally beaten while in handcuffs. He was then charged for bleeding on the officers’ uniforms after they beat him.

[sardis]

Ferguson is over 70% African American. Why didn't they vote in a mayor and town council to clean house on the department before 2014?

Same with all these large urban centers where the population is overwhelmingly African American, yet the police treat them badly. Maybe there are a large section of AA that don't mind the police being the way they are as long as the abuse is not turned on them.

[sardis]

ACA premiums in NC increased 13.5 % for 2015. Looks like will increase 25% in 2016.

http://www.wral.com/blue-cross-seeking- ... /14682626/

[Jungle Rat]

Sardis's new slogan. Everybody Should Enjoy A Good Beating Know And Then.

[bluetick]

Associated Press - House GOP Leader: Premature to Consider Hastert Probe

lol If Hastert had better control of his probe he wouldn't be out 3.5 mil..

[bluetick]

GOP House Leader McCarthy: Too Early to Speculate on Hastert Investigation

translated: "We've still got 3 or 4 more Benghillary hearings to go before we can consider a new circle-jerk"

[sardis]

Quite simple tick...First of all, Hastert has long been out of the House. Second, Denny was doing crossface cradle maneuvers on young pubescent males long before he was a congressman, I'm not sure what is congress' responsibility in the matter.

[10ac]

At this point what does it matter?