he's a slandering asshole who just makes shit up on the spot to plant these awful seeds.
so a sorcerer of mis-truth and fanatical way of furthering ridiculous ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maH0nQDw0X4
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Toxic ToysAre you really taking my advice?Really?Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
I'm just waiting for some one to call this a terrorist act. It's sad that an all right dude died for some stupid shit. (as far as I know). They way he died points to the fact the killers wanted to incite fear into any other government workers in the area.
terrorism
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
This can stir up all kinds of shit, if the media gets crazy with it.
Toxic Toys on
3DS code: 2938-6074-2306, Nintendo Network ID: ToxicToys, PSN: zutto
For a lot of people the Census worker, rare though their visitors are must be one, if not the only contact they have with an agent of the State (or federal government in your case), it certainly is the case with me. For some reason when the Census or Jehovah's Witnesses visit me I almost always seem to have just had a shower and have a towel wrapped around my waist. I don't really know if that puts me on the back foot or gives me the advantage
This is also not the first such case this year. We had this argument in the wake of Dr. George Tiller's death. Even an entire thread about it. There was also the heavily armed woman scoping a national guard base in I believe New York after Beck fingered it as being a FEMA concentration camp or something insane like that. Also death threats against the President are up something like 400%...
While these pundits are probably deserving of some blame for both Dr. Tiller and this crime , I would say this murder will resonate much more. It is, probably, the first act of violence targeting a government official of it's kind, and I wonder if it will be the last.
So, this absolutist, almost objectivist notion of people forfeiting their humanity due to some arbitrary borderline is something I will continue to reject. If I allow myself to think of the world as operating in this fashion, I don't think there's a way I can ever really justify my continued existence, for one.
It is entirely possible that on this issue you are correct and I am incorrect. I honestly do not know what the "right' thing to do is with regard to issues such as this with the census worker being hanged. What do we do to the people who did it? How do we think of them?
I'm entirely willing to be wrong on this. But if I have to articulate a coherent system to be universalized to all cases? I'm going with what I posted. Because the other option, the other extreme, is so convoluted and self-contradictory at times that I really think it logically unsalvageable.
We can say they are still people and have some basic human rights. That's easy enough to say. But coherently articulating a system of punishments and laws to deal with "They killed a census worker because they were afraid of him" is...I don't even know how to deal with that if we maintain the hanger to be a human being, worthy of the basic rights of a human being.
It is entirely possible that I am incorrect and you are correct. I just honestly do not know how to make your system logically / legally coherent.
And that may very well be a shortcomming on my part.
Lest I be misunderstood by J depriving my quotation out of context, I wasn't saying that these people who lynched this guy, if that is what happened, aren't bad people.
What J quoted was me saying my own father, who ain't never killed nobody, wasn't a bad person despite being a nut and imparting a screwed up worldview onto his children.
The people who killed this dude are certainly bad people and should be held accountable for their actions.
Just want to make that clear, since J decided to twist my words and werehippy misunderstood me because of it.
I didn't mean to misquote you or imply that you wanted to have the guy who lynched the census worker over for sunday brunch. But you did seem to maintain that, while bad, the person still merited a degree of respect, or at least acknowledgement of his/her/its humanity.
And that's the part that, as I stated above, I've no idea how to articulate coherently. I mean, take this notion: "It's fine to lock him in a cage. But if you kill him that goes too far."
I've no idea how to rationally justify that.
Because there is a marked difference between imprisonment and death?
The two aren't equatable, unless you subject prisoners to some sort of barbaric, inhuman torture regimen to the point that they would wish they are dead.
Imprisonment offers a series of benefits that executing people doesn't. I'll go over with them, since you seem to be struggling with this idea.
1. The capacity for rectification of error. The legal system is imperfect and flawed. The capacity for error on the level of investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, and sentencing is collectively massive. If you execute people, even if that punishment is reserved for only the most abominable crimes, you have committed an act you cannot ever rectify to the person it was acted upon. Even if you believe there are some crimes for which a person should be forcibly executed by the state (a claim I dispute, but nonetheless) you must still acknowledge that possessing a death penalty creates the capacity to execute an innocent man for no reason other than someone fucked up or lied.
If you don't execute people, if you imprison people (even for life!) you have the capacity at some future point to rectify that situation if it was done in error. We have made drastic scientific, procedural, and logistic advancements in how investigation and prosecution of crime operates over time, and this is a trend that will always likely continue on some level or another. Someone you find guilty today, even if nobody maliciously falsified evidence or accounts to make it so, could still be found innocent by evidence or methods that bring it to light in the future.
Releasing someone from prison after you have falsely incarcerated them isn't the best thing in the world. Prison systems in even the best of countries fuck people up some, not to mention the psychological and emotional damage you inflict on an innocent person by wrongfully imprisoning them for what could be decades.
You can never give them the years of their life you took from them. You can never take away the humiliation, pain, anguish, and frustration they suffered at being convicted by a system in error. But they are still alive and even if you have no other capacity to compensate them beyond that, you still have that.
Hollywood likes to romanticize this notion of being executed as preferable to a "caged life", that somehow being imprisoned is a greater indignity and personal torment than simply having your life ended.
Let me tell you something: I once spoke to Steven Truscott about this very subject. For those of you who don't feel like navigating a wiki page, Truscott was wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for many years only for it to be revealed later he didn't do it.
I asked Truscott, given how terrible the feeling it must have been to be wrongfully incarcerated and subjected to the penal system of the mid-20th century, if there was ever a time during his sentence or after that he would have rather been executed.
His response was that he did feel that way, sometimes. When he was depressed and suicidal. When he had abandoned all hope of ever being found innocent. But those were only fleeting moments, he said, and he always found his way past that with the desire to be free one day and given justice.
So no, he wouldn't have rather died.
Imprisoning people instead of executing them afford you that luxury, as a society. Saying "whoops, sorry about executing you, innocent guy!" after the fact doesn't really give the person the state murdered any comfort, now does it?
2. Executing people is hinged on the idea that it is possible for a person to be simply "broken". You compared it to putting down a feral animal, like a person who commits certain levels of crime are no longer human or, quite possibly, never truly were in the first place.
Execution posits the idea that the status of a human being is a fragile or impermanent thing, that it is possible for it to break, change, or have never existed at all.
To say "I believe in execution" is to say "I believe there is a point where you must simply give up on a person as a person and acknowledge they are worthless and the only safe and humane thing to do is to destroy them like we would a rabid animal."
Let me explain to you the multitude of personal and ethical problems I have with this idea. For one, believing this idea means you have concluded that the capacity for mental illness to be rehabilitated or managed has an absolute finite limit. It means there is a point, in your view, where you can look at a mentally ill or psychologically damaged person, throw up your hands, and say "No point, they're fucked".
While you might try to justify this viewpoint within a utilitarian or objectivist framework, it is not only ethically bankrupt but actually logically consistent with our scientific understanding of neurology and psychology.
Unless you believe in the dubious idea of a separate cognitive "mind" or "soul" distinct from a person's biological composition (and even then, that such a "mind" could be irredeemably broken or evil), all societally-determined negative actions, including criminal behavior, can be linked to aberrant (more accurately, neuroatypical) neurological processes and psychological operation.
That means that any psychological or neurological issue, no matter how large or pervasive, is not beyond the theoretical capacity to be corrected or managed by medication, therapy, or in the most extreme possibilities, surgical correction.
While it is certainly the case at current that our understanding and capacities in these endeavors is limited, this will not always be the case and it is clearly visible that our capabilities for managing and correcting psychological behavior problems and neurological abnormalities is increasing and will continue to increase.
For example, look at schizophrenia. Schizophrenia was, at one time, considered a malady that was medically incurable, and people afflicted with this disorder were incarcerated in sanitariums and other institutions. Over time, research was conducted (some of it barbaric) to understand this disorder and how to rectify it.
In modern times, we have the capacity to ameliorate some levels of schizophrenia with medication. That's right, with a pill we can allow a person who decades ago would've been lobotomized to lead a relatively normal life and reduce or even eliminate the danger they present to themselves or others!
As someone who was personally (and erroneously) diagnosed with an "incurable" mental condition (anti-social personality disorder) I take this issue in particular quite personally. To suggest that a person can be fundamentally broken is to suggest that I, myself, should be taken around back and shot. Needless to say, I have an issue with that idea.
3. The idea that a person incarcerated for life is a drain on society. Again, allow me to use myself as an example. Due to brain damage I suffered from a stroke last year, and psychological complications from that event and other issues that I have encountered over the years, I am currently deemed medically incapable of working. I am on provincial disability assistance, with the entirety of my income and living expenses being paid for by the government (and, following that, the taxpayers in general and society as a whole).
I do not work. I am not a celebrity, a figure of esteem or widespread notoriety, except in unfortunate social circles. I have no artistic works that I have contributed, I have no great accomplishments for which I can be proud. I have fathered no children, and I have never conducted formal education of others. My personal contribution to society as a whole is, at this point in my life, minimal if any.
In fact, it can be safely argued given my past as a violent criminal and social deviant that my continued existence is (if measured exclusively by my deeds and societal contributions) parasitic and that I am not only not contributing, I am in fact a detriment.
Should I be eliminated, then? It can be argued I contribute about as much as a lifetime prisoner, after all.
Are we, as a society, prepared to enter some kind of harsh objectivist judgment system, where the weight of each man's deeds decides his right to live?
It's interesting how closely related right-wing survivalists and anarchists (who typically align left, though they'd never admit it) are becoming. It's just strange, because I have a lot of anarchist and anarcho-communist friends (many are going to protest at G20 tomorrow) and while I don't subscribe to anarchism at all, I have to admit that in some of our political discussions they have raised points that make a lot of sense, but then I hear about shit like this and I wonder how they would react, knowing that this is (most likely) coming from someone they have traditionally considered an enemy, and how scarily close their ideologies actually are.
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GoslingLooking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered Userregular
edited September 2009
You know what? Fine. We won't census Kentucky. We'll just count it as whatever we've got to this point.
Good bye to five Kentucky House members and five electoral votes. I'm sure Oregon and California would love to have them. Oh, yes, and that also means Kentucky gets jack shit in federal funding because, you know, it's not like anybody lives there anymore.
Really, just keep the census workers alive and let the idiots not fill it out if they're so afraid of the census. Let them find out the hard way.
Gosling on
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
holy crap.... i just watched that Glen Beck youtube clip.
Is that seriously what passes as reporting in US?
Please see the "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?" thread.
In short, NO, this is not what passes as reporting to anyone who knows what reporting is. However the answer is also YES as the most watched "news show" is Fox News, which features almost exclusively these tactics.
This is because people are stupid.
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Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
My mom gets ridiculous e-mails and it took me quite a while to convince her that yes, people can just make things up and say them, as she assumed that anything from an organization with "Christian" or "Conservative" in the name had to be real because it was illegal to lie.
I made a gmail account with a similar name and sent her one saying that Obama was going to be shutting down schools with 90% or more white students to increase integration.
She thought it was real until I showed her that I sent it.
Honestly it's a dangerous form of naivety and willful ignorance I think that makes it possible. In her case I doubt she'd be receptive to that kind of thing if she wasn't already a huge flaming racist. Needless to say Fox News is her favorite channel, although she shuts it off on healthcare shit because of her firsthand knowledge of just how utterly fucked up insurance is.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
No. Let them say whatever they want. Even the lies.
In the end they have no credibility anyway
It's debatable, but I think the last couple of years have shown this just isn't the case. For whatever reason, society simply isn't functioning properly when it comes to rewarding truth and punishing lies at this point. The birther movement, the death panels in the health care debate, the idea that Obama is a muslim, so on down the line. There is a non-negligible segment of society, that when presented a lie wrapped in even the slimmest form of legitimacy, will just believe the lie. And study after study have shown that once people believe something that isn't true it's almost impossible to convince them otherwise. Repeating a lie to debunk it leads to the people who believed the lie believing it even more strongly.
If we let people into the legitimate public sphere (on TV, in the press, at political rallies, etc) make these claims about insane things like FEMA concentration camps and the census being used to round up political dissidents (both ideas advocated on primetime national TV and by sitting members of Congress) then more people are exposed to the ideas and the layer of nominal respectability makes them ore believable.
Hell, a majority of Republicans don't believe Obama was born in this country or aren't sure. Facts and credibility literally have no importance in our political discourse or society generally. The two parties do not see reality in the same way. Truthiness reigns.
We have reached the point that there enough media (alternative or "mainstream") out there that silly things like the Obama birther thing can be sustained based on the attention of the crazies. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away as it would in the past, because there are enough people making noise and keeping it alive until the next angle comes along that vaults it back into the main for a few days.
Frank Schaffer had a good article the other day that was linked in one of these threads about how there is a conservative subculture in the U.S. now that's basically impossible to reason with, because they are so insular that you almost can't even say we're experiencing the same reality. Saying "Obama was born in this country and here is the factual documentation that proves it" means nothing to these people.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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HerrCronIt that wickedly supports taxationRegistered Userregular
I don't think my father would have hung a census worker. Pointed a gun at him and told him firmly to vacate the property, perhaps.
I think the part of this entire thing that is causing my brain to just stall and go '....whut' is this.
When did a census worker become the kind of threat that warrants the pointing of a gun at them?
I'm not saying your da is a bad person or anything, I'm just incapable of imagining a mindset where by a census worker is someone who must be repelled from your property rightfuckingnow.
It's so alien to me it makes this murder even more surreal.
I don't think my father would have hung a census worker. Pointed a gun at him and told him firmly to vacate the property, perhaps.
I think the part of this entire thing that is causing my brain to just stall and go '....whut' is this.
When did a census worker become the kind of threat that warrants the pointing of a gun at them?
I'm not saying your da is a bad person or anything, I'm just incapable of imagining a mindset where by a census worker is someone who must be repelled from your property rightfuckingnow.
It's so alien to me it makes this murder even more surreal.
As others have pointed out earlier in this thread, a census worker is one of the few times in their lives that some people have direct contact with someone from the federal government.
For people who hate the government, this individual is an anthropomorphized personification of a system they despise and fear.
This guv'ment man is showing up on their property, asking them questions about who they are, how old they are, how many children they have, etc. They are making note of where they live, how long they have been there, and so on.
For a lot of people it feels not only tedious and annoying (census workers, even at best, bear the brunt of the sort of hatred people in general have for door-to-door solicitors of any sort) but actually sort of menacing and worrisome.
For the sort paranoid about the government's interest in them, and afraid of the current direction the country is headed in, this guv'ment man, who comes from the guv'ment, the guv'ment has sent him is interested in cataloging and tracking them.
Why? They don't really understand why.
Why does the government need to know how many bathrooms I have? Why does the government need to know how long my wife and I have been married?
These sorts of questions, which for less educated and politically ignorant people are completely bizarre, carry a level of intrusion and disturbing "Big Brotherhood" that it freaks them out and makes them over-react.
Well, that, and the fact that they've heard directly from various authority figures that the census is a nefarious process that they probably shouldn't take part in.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
and potentially losing a congressional rep from your state I guess
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
What is Bachmann's response to this story? And if she doesn't have one, I hope someone in the press has the balls to press her for one. Not in the way of an admittance to causing this potentially, or thinking it is good. Just... let's see the bullshit.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
"I call it the Obama effect," said Gregory, 37, of Terrytown, La. "It always happens when the Democrats get in office. It happened with Clinton and Obama is even stronger for gun control. Ammunition will be the first step, so I'm stocking up while I can."
I don't think my father would have hung a census worker. Pointed a gun at him and told him firmly to vacate the property, perhaps.
I think the part of this entire thing that is causing my brain to just stall and go '....whut' is this.
When did a census worker become the kind of threat that warrants the pointing of a gun at them?
I'm not saying your da is a bad person or anything, I'm just incapable of imagining a mindset where by a census worker is someone who must be repelled from your property rightfuckingnow.
It's so alien to me it makes this murder even more surreal.
As others have pointed out earlier in this thread, a census worker is one of the few times in their lives that some people have direct contact with someone from the federal government.
For people who hate the government, this individual is an anthropomorphized personification of a system they despise and fear.
This guv'ment man is showing up on their property, asking them questions about who they are, how old they are, how many children they have, etc. They are making note of where they live, how long they have been there, and so on.
For a lot of people it feels not only tedious and annoying (census workers, even at best, bear the brunt of the sort of hatred people in general have for door-to-door solicitors of any sort) but actually sort of menacing and worrisome.
For the sort paranoid about the government's interest in them, and afraid of the current direction the country is headed in, this guv'ment man, who comes from the guv'ment, the guv'ment has sent him is interested in cataloging and tracking them.
Why? They don't really understand why.
Why does the government need to know how many bathrooms I have? Why does the government need to know how long my wife and I have been married?
These sorts of questions, which for less educated and politically ignorant people are completely bizarre, carry a level of intrusion and disturbing "Big Brotherhood" that it freaks them out and makes them over-react.
There it is.
Cheers for that, i won't pretend for one second i can sympathise or understand their position, it is totally alien to me, but it the thought process behind it is a bit clearer now.
It makes me wonder if there are people like this either here or back home in Ireland. I mean I know people in the last Irish census who tried to shirk filing it out because "ohhh gawd, it's so annoying" but I can't think of any stories of census workers being chased away by people on the grounds that the gubberment is commin'
I am having a hard time understanding this murder.
I can somehow see the humanity in people killing people because of personal or business reason, but people killing people because they are a part of the ill defined "them" is hard to understand.
You hate your wife and don't to pay allimony, you get drunk and beat your gf a little too hard, you want to kill a guy because he is selling coke on "your" corner. All of this I can understand to some degree(if not condone), I can understand why a person "might" think its a effective way of dealing with their problems(it isn't).
But how is killing a single member of the wast Fascist/socialist conspiracy that is the federal goverment going to do any good? And a low ranking member at that. Even if you belive in that shit, what possible gain can you get from such a small scale act of violence(relativly speaking). How can you belive it will do any good?
Because seriously, this should lead to some serious curbstomping of rightwing groups. Enough is enough.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited September 2009
It's the fantasy that it's the first blow struck that will start the revolution.
Have there been any "We do not condone this murder in any way, but some feel it may be indicative of a growing disatisfaction with this administration, who many feel are out of touch with blah blah blah" stories yet?
Have there been any "We do not condone this murder in any way, but some feel it may be indicative of a growing disatisfaction with this administration, who many feel are out of touch with blah blah blah" stories yet?
I don't think so, but if we get another Tiller "too bad" responses from the right then I will have no patience or understanding for anything with an R on it. For a while.
Have there been any "We do not condone this murder in any way, but some feel it may be indicative of a growing disatisfaction with this administration, who many feel are out of touch with blah blah blah" stories yet?
Give it some time, we're not through the denialism phase yet. If it's like Jim Adkisson murders we may not even get to the spin phase.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
A... census worker!?!
I'm not condoning hanging anyone (especially political statements) but a fucking census worker? At least when a cop is attacked I can at least see why someone might do that.
But what!?
I can't even bring myself to watch the video right now.
I wonder what could have given someone the idea that census workers are evil...
It might have been mentioned somewhere else in the thread, but I just wanted to say that you know someone is batshit crazy when Glenn Beck is sitting there shaking his head quietly and looking vaguely embarassed.
But yeah, Michelle Bachmann is mainly to blame for this. She went on a few census rants awhile back that'd provide an excellent way for some similarily insane wackos to vent their rage at the government over having a black president in office.
Posts
so a sorcerer of mis-truth and fanatical way of furthering ridiculous ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maH0nQDw0X4
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
This can stir up all kinds of shit, if the media gets crazy with it.
While these pundits are probably deserving of some blame for both Dr. Tiller and this crime , I would say this murder will resonate much more. It is, probably, the first act of violence targeting a government official of it's kind, and I wonder if it will be the last.
Because there is a marked difference between imprisonment and death?
The two aren't equatable, unless you subject prisoners to some sort of barbaric, inhuman torture regimen to the point that they would wish they are dead.
Imprisonment offers a series of benefits that executing people doesn't. I'll go over with them, since you seem to be struggling with this idea.
1. The capacity for rectification of error. The legal system is imperfect and flawed. The capacity for error on the level of investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, and sentencing is collectively massive. If you execute people, even if that punishment is reserved for only the most abominable crimes, you have committed an act you cannot ever rectify to the person it was acted upon. Even if you believe there are some crimes for which a person should be forcibly executed by the state (a claim I dispute, but nonetheless) you must still acknowledge that possessing a death penalty creates the capacity to execute an innocent man for no reason other than someone fucked up or lied.
If you don't execute people, if you imprison people (even for life!) you have the capacity at some future point to rectify that situation if it was done in error. We have made drastic scientific, procedural, and logistic advancements in how investigation and prosecution of crime operates over time, and this is a trend that will always likely continue on some level or another. Someone you find guilty today, even if nobody maliciously falsified evidence or accounts to make it so, could still be found innocent by evidence or methods that bring it to light in the future.
Releasing someone from prison after you have falsely incarcerated them isn't the best thing in the world. Prison systems in even the best of countries fuck people up some, not to mention the psychological and emotional damage you inflict on an innocent person by wrongfully imprisoning them for what could be decades.
You can never give them the years of their life you took from them. You can never take away the humiliation, pain, anguish, and frustration they suffered at being convicted by a system in error. But they are still alive and even if you have no other capacity to compensate them beyond that, you still have that.
Hollywood likes to romanticize this notion of being executed as preferable to a "caged life", that somehow being imprisoned is a greater indignity and personal torment than simply having your life ended.
Let me tell you something: I once spoke to Steven Truscott about this very subject. For those of you who don't feel like navigating a wiki page, Truscott was wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for many years only for it to be revealed later he didn't do it.
I asked Truscott, given how terrible the feeling it must have been to be wrongfully incarcerated and subjected to the penal system of the mid-20th century, if there was ever a time during his sentence or after that he would have rather been executed.
His response was that he did feel that way, sometimes. When he was depressed and suicidal. When he had abandoned all hope of ever being found innocent. But those were only fleeting moments, he said, and he always found his way past that with the desire to be free one day and given justice.
So no, he wouldn't have rather died.
Imprisoning people instead of executing them afford you that luxury, as a society. Saying "whoops, sorry about executing you, innocent guy!" after the fact doesn't really give the person the state murdered any comfort, now does it?
2. Executing people is hinged on the idea that it is possible for a person to be simply "broken". You compared it to putting down a feral animal, like a person who commits certain levels of crime are no longer human or, quite possibly, never truly were in the first place.
Execution posits the idea that the status of a human being is a fragile or impermanent thing, that it is possible for it to break, change, or have never existed at all.
To say "I believe in execution" is to say "I believe there is a point where you must simply give up on a person as a person and acknowledge they are worthless and the only safe and humane thing to do is to destroy them like we would a rabid animal."
Let me explain to you the multitude of personal and ethical problems I have with this idea. For one, believing this idea means you have concluded that the capacity for mental illness to be rehabilitated or managed has an absolute finite limit. It means there is a point, in your view, where you can look at a mentally ill or psychologically damaged person, throw up your hands, and say "No point, they're fucked".
While you might try to justify this viewpoint within a utilitarian or objectivist framework, it is not only ethically bankrupt but actually logically consistent with our scientific understanding of neurology and psychology.
Unless you believe in the dubious idea of a separate cognitive "mind" or "soul" distinct from a person's biological composition (and even then, that such a "mind" could be irredeemably broken or evil), all societally-determined negative actions, including criminal behavior, can be linked to aberrant (more accurately, neuroatypical) neurological processes and psychological operation.
That means that any psychological or neurological issue, no matter how large or pervasive, is not beyond the theoretical capacity to be corrected or managed by medication, therapy, or in the most extreme possibilities, surgical correction.
While it is certainly the case at current that our understanding and capacities in these endeavors is limited, this will not always be the case and it is clearly visible that our capabilities for managing and correcting psychological behavior problems and neurological abnormalities is increasing and will continue to increase.
For example, look at schizophrenia. Schizophrenia was, at one time, considered a malady that was medically incurable, and people afflicted with this disorder were incarcerated in sanitariums and other institutions. Over time, research was conducted (some of it barbaric) to understand this disorder and how to rectify it.
In modern times, we have the capacity to ameliorate some levels of schizophrenia with medication. That's right, with a pill we can allow a person who decades ago would've been lobotomized to lead a relatively normal life and reduce or even eliminate the danger they present to themselves or others!
As someone who was personally (and erroneously) diagnosed with an "incurable" mental condition (anti-social personality disorder) I take this issue in particular quite personally. To suggest that a person can be fundamentally broken is to suggest that I, myself, should be taken around back and shot. Needless to say, I have an issue with that idea.
3. The idea that a person incarcerated for life is a drain on society. Again, allow me to use myself as an example. Due to brain damage I suffered from a stroke last year, and psychological complications from that event and other issues that I have encountered over the years, I am currently deemed medically incapable of working. I am on provincial disability assistance, with the entirety of my income and living expenses being paid for by the government (and, following that, the taxpayers in general and society as a whole).
I do not work. I am not a celebrity, a figure of esteem or widespread notoriety, except in unfortunate social circles. I have no artistic works that I have contributed, I have no great accomplishments for which I can be proud. I have fathered no children, and I have never conducted formal education of others. My personal contribution to society as a whole is, at this point in my life, minimal if any.
In fact, it can be safely argued given my past as a violent criminal and social deviant that my continued existence is (if measured exclusively by my deeds and societal contributions) parasitic and that I am not only not contributing, I am in fact a detriment.
Should I be eliminated, then? It can be argued I contribute about as much as a lifetime prisoner, after all.
Are we, as a society, prepared to enter some kind of harsh objectivist judgment system, where the weight of each man's deeds decides his right to live?
Talk about death panels, man.
Good bye to five Kentucky House members and five electoral votes. I'm sure Oregon and California would love to have them. Oh, yes, and that also means Kentucky gets jack shit in federal funding because, you know, it's not like anybody lives there anymore.
Really, just keep the census workers alive and let the idiots not fill it out if they're so afraid of the census. Let them find out the hard way.
also, give up, pony. The americans are barbarians.
Is that seriously what passes as reporting in US?
In short, NO, this is not what passes as reporting to anyone who knows what reporting is. However the answer is also YES as the most watched "news show" is Fox News, which features almost exclusively these tactics.
This is because people are stupid.
To dumbasses? Yes. Yes it is.
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I made a gmail account with a similar name and sent her one saying that Obama was going to be shutting down schools with 90% or more white students to increase integration.
She thought it was real until I showed her that I sent it.
Honestly it's a dangerous form of naivety and willful ignorance I think that makes it possible. In her case I doubt she'd be receptive to that kind of thing if she wasn't already a huge flaming racist. Needless to say Fox News is her favorite channel, although she shuts it off on healthcare shit because of her firsthand knowledge of just how utterly fucked up insurance is.
Is this a joke or are you seriously that big of a retard
We have reached the point that there enough media (alternative or "mainstream") out there that silly things like the Obama birther thing can be sustained based on the attention of the crazies. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away as it would in the past, because there are enough people making noise and keeping it alive until the next angle comes along that vaults it back into the main for a few days.
Frank Schaffer had a good article the other day that was linked in one of these threads about how there is a conservative subculture in the U.S. now that's basically impossible to reason with, because they are so insular that you almost can't even say we're experiencing the same reality. Saying "Obama was born in this country and here is the factual documentation that proves it" means nothing to these people.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think the part of this entire thing that is causing my brain to just stall and go '....whut' is this.
When did a census worker become the kind of threat that warrants the pointing of a gun at them?
I'm not saying your da is a bad person or anything, I'm just incapable of imagining a mindset where by a census worker is someone who must be repelled from your property rightfuckingnow.
It's so alien to me it makes this murder even more surreal.
As others have pointed out earlier in this thread, a census worker is one of the few times in their lives that some people have direct contact with someone from the federal government.
For people who hate the government, this individual is an anthropomorphized personification of a system they despise and fear.
This guv'ment man is showing up on their property, asking them questions about who they are, how old they are, how many children they have, etc. They are making note of where they live, how long they have been there, and so on.
For a lot of people it feels not only tedious and annoying (census workers, even at best, bear the brunt of the sort of hatred people in general have for door-to-door solicitors of any sort) but actually sort of menacing and worrisome.
For the sort paranoid about the government's interest in them, and afraid of the current direction the country is headed in, this guv'ment man, who comes from the guv'ment, the guv'ment has sent him is interested in cataloging and tracking them.
Why? They don't really understand why.
Why does the government need to know how many bathrooms I have? Why does the government need to know how long my wife and I have been married?
These sorts of questions, which for less educated and politically ignorant people are completely bizarre, carry a level of intrusion and disturbing "Big Brotherhood" that it freaks them out and makes them over-react.
There it is.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
and potentially losing a congressional rep from your state I guess
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
#1 America armed, but guns not necessarily loaded
About an increasing ammo shortage in the US thanks to people stockpiling it before Obama comes to get them
#2 Feds probe US Census worker hanging in Kentucky
Eurrrrgh
"I call it the Obama effect," said Gregory, 37, of Terrytown, La. "It always happens when the Democrats get in office. It happened with Clinton and Obama is even stronger for gun control. Ammunition will be the first step, so I'm stocking up while I can."
Cheers for that, i won't pretend for one second i can sympathise or understand their position, it is totally alien to me, but it the thought process behind it is a bit clearer now.
It makes me wonder if there are people like this either here or back home in Ireland. I mean I know people in the last Irish census who tried to shirk filing it out because "ohhh gawd, it's so annoying" but I can't think of any stories of census workers being chased away by people on the grounds that the gubberment is commin'
I can somehow see the humanity in people killing people because of personal or business reason, but people killing people because they are a part of the ill defined "them" is hard to understand.
You hate your wife and don't to pay allimony, you get drunk and beat your gf a little too hard, you want to kill a guy because he is selling coke on "your" corner. All of this I can understand to some degree(if not condone), I can understand why a person "might" think its a effective way of dealing with their problems(it isn't).
But how is killing a single member of the wast Fascist/socialist conspiracy that is the federal goverment going to do any good? And a low ranking member at that. Even if you belive in that shit, what possible gain can you get from such a small scale act of violence(relativly speaking). How can you belive it will do any good?
Because seriously, this should lead to some serious curbstomping of rightwing groups. Enough is enough.
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probably not a good way to express dissatisfaction with your turrurist muslin president though
I don't think so, but if we get another Tiller "too bad" responses from the right then I will have no patience or understanding for anything with an R on it. For a while.
Give it some time, we're not through the denialism phase yet. If it's like Jim Adkisson murders we may not even get to the spin phase.
It might have been mentioned somewhere else in the thread, but I just wanted to say that you know someone is batshit crazy when Glenn Beck is sitting there shaking his head quietly and looking vaguely embarassed.
But yeah, Michelle Bachmann is mainly to blame for this. She went on a few census rants awhile back that'd provide an excellent way for some similarily insane wackos to vent their rage at the government over having a black president in office.
A joke, put down the shotgun.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Not every definition. This isn't the definition I'm a fan of, by the way
If only...
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
What?
That's ...
How? What?
EDIT: Turns out the murder was done on like 9-12 and is just getting a lot of attention now.
Things that make you go HMMM.