A friend of mine posted this on FB:

 

He was absolutely correct. Yesterday, government snowplows came through my neighborhood and terrified us under the guise of "being helpful". It was truly frightening.

After the plows left I was able to hop in my car and drive over to city hall to complain in person. 

 kurtster wrote: 
I inferred from your posts in the evolution thread (points 1 and 2).

Proof is for maths.

You are off by around half a billion years (no biggie). The age of the earth comes from evidence of radiometric dating which by its very nature has a margin of error. I don't/can't do radiometric dating or have access to such really old material, so I'll have to rely on those people have repeatedly done so and keep doing it to get closer to a more definite answer/estimate.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
I may be a few things, but I am not a creationist.  I have no idea whatsoever where you got that one.

From what I've been told, the earth is 4,000,006,033 1/3 years old.  Alas, I have no proof of that.

Do you have proof of how old the earth is ?  or just a best guess ? 

 RichardPrins wrote:RP...#3 is a little, ah bit "Canadian"  of you... .  My goal is to retire to Newfoundland if my SO will have it, but she wants tropical so I compromised with Cape Breton...PEI in a pinch. Southern Quebec (near VT)  in a double pinch. (Louise Penny territory.  I will find Three Pines.)

 kurtster wrote: 
The term denier has been around since the 15th century, and is to deny what a stealer/briber is to steal/bribe. A Holocaust denier is but one specific type of (historical) denial of genocide (there are also Armenian and Palestinian genocide denial among others). Evolution and anthropogenic climate change deniers are other types.

People who:

1. say/post that evolution is "just/only a theory",
2. post something like this (full of creationist bunkum) as a response, and
3. are American

usually, though not always, are creationists one way or another (old or young earth, or more general i.e. their god created the universe, life, and those special animals called humans) that reject the scientific theory of evolution (or at the very least think that their particular god meddles in it).

Of course there's always the possibility that they could merely be trolls as well. I say white, you say black.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
?!?!?!?  WTF are you talking about now ?  

obtw the most common use of the term denier has to do with the Holocaust.  

 kurtster wrote: 
Not even remotely similar. A denier is someone who denies (well-established science in your particular case).

And that's simply based on your own statements w.r.t. both climate science and evolutionary biology. No interpretation/extrapolation required. Just facts.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
as are you fond of doing the same now and then.

The accusation of denier comes to mind ... and I'm not smiling ... 

 kurtster wrote: 
And yet you're fond of using similar arguments in a different context...

Irony?

aflanigan wrote:
You've got a lot packed into this and I have a houseguest on the way over and a stupid amount of work to get finished by monday so I don't have time to rip this snide little bundle of innuendo and insulting insinuations to the shreds it deserves. I'll just try to hit the high points.

The Civil Rights Act, affirmative action, and set aside racial quotas were not the goal of the civil rights movement, they were tactics. Tactics which have gotten enshrined in our political consciousness as sacred relics of the era that (like the Voting Rights Act) cannot be criticized in any way without incurring a charge of racist.

Disagreeing over tactics is not a disagreement over the goal.

Murray Rothbard was a cheerleader for Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panther Party and criticized Martin Luther King for not being radical enough. By the time of the quote you have there he had broken with the libertarian movement;  Right Wing Populism is not at all compatible with the movement then or now.

As for the rich white privileged charge—just like you, dude. Just like you.

Getting really fed up with this  if you are not a Democrat, you are a racist  crap.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Who was it that sent federal troops to protect civil rights protesters and blacks who had been brutalized and intimidated by local police during the civil rights era?

Oh, yeah.

Murray Rothbard, a libertarian thinker and voice during the civil rights era, meanwhile, seemed to be fully supportive of the kind of militarized policing we are seeing more of these days:  His treatise on Right Wing Populism stated that "Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment . . .unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society"

As for the civil rights movement, like Rand Paul (who indicated he would not have voted for the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act), Rothbard was apparently not a big fan, either:



No surprise to me why libertarians tend mostly to be Caucasian, male, and privileged.

 n4ku wrote: 

Oh I am well aware of this, just like any other politician and I have called him something similar before in the past.   Nevertheless he is pushing forward legislation and probably doing more to help minorities than a lot of Democrats.  My main point is that that article was wholly unfair and dismissive to Libertarians in general and felt like propaganda in its own right with a specific agenda.  I just wanted to stress that there may be Libertarians who participate in militias, but militias themselves are not representative of the Libertarian party or even philosophy.  Just because one supports limited government, is anti statist and worries about the militarization of the police force this does not make them a racist, anti government weapons hoarder and bunker builder waiting for the big apocalyptic showdown any more than all those that consider themselves liberals are whiny, wealthy, arrogant, dismissive urbanites who drive hybrids and look down upon the great unwashed giving to charities and progressive causes while never having to dare touch or rub shoulders with anyone who earns less than 6 digits or has a skin color other than their own.   As a matter of fact, I would suggest that Libertarians have more to offer working with persecuted minorities than the traditional Democratic party who feeds the beast of persecution that is known as the federal government.

 lily34 wrote: 
That one was Montgomery. And his only use for senators is collecting, not being. 

 2cats wrote: 
i was thinking from the simpsons.

 n4ku wrote: 
You mean Frank Burns from MASH?  If so, 

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Rand Paul speaks with a forked tongue. So far he has gotten away with his views that change with the winds, sometime several times in a day. He is one of my Senators, but I don't feel he represents my interests. Nor do I trust him. He is a weasel. And I am insulting weasels when I make that comparison. He is the Frank Burns of the US Senate.

 n4ku wrote:
Excerpt from this article:    Some libertarians have responded, unpersuasively, that, yes, they are talking about Ferguson, albeit in very constricted terms. Libertarians are happy to talk about police militarization, but they’d prefer not to talk about institutional racism, because racism is a problem for which they have no answers, and when the subject comes up, their shoes tend to get messy.


   "When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

"Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them."  Rand Paul

Careful with the broad brush there, every Libertarian I know explicitly knows that minorities have long been on the front line of the struggle for civil rights and liberty.  I challenge you to find any post that I have made to suggests otherwise.

The Guns of Ferguson: When Tyranny Really Comes into Town, the NRA Goes into Hiding
 

Ship leaking oil after colliding with Morecambe Bay wind turbine

 

A SHIP is leaking diesel after crashing into a wind turbine off the coast of Morecambe Bay.

Liverpool Coastguard has been in attendance since just after 9am this morning co-ordinating the recovery of the stricken vessel which collided with part of a turbine at Walney Wind Farm.

OMS Pollux has since been leaking marine gas oil, or diesel.

The Danish-registered vessel, with a crew of around 18 on board, remains afloat and there are no reported injuries.

The coastguard revealed that since hitting the turbine pile it has managed to move under its own power to a location north of the port of Liverpool, taking it away from 'environmentally sensitive areas'.

The Barrow lifeboat attended the incident and the ship was escorted in relay by the Barrow, Lytham and Hoylake lifeboats.

A 'surface sheen', 5 to 10 metres wide and around 0.7 nautical miles in length, is now trailing the vessel.

However, the coastguard said the diesel 'should evaporate or disperse naturally'.

The OMS Pollux will remain offshore outside the Liverpool Port Authority limits until the leak has been stopped.

The multi-agency Environment Group set up to respond to this type of incident – and comprising local authorities, emergency services, government agencies and other stakeholders - has met this afternoon to assess the local situation.