Thursday, December 11, 2014

THE LIBERTARIAN MOMENT, CONTINUED.

At libertarian flagship Reason, Scott Shackford:
In this politicized fight between the contents of hundreds of thousands of pages of reports and reviews, the actual debate centers on disagreement over two issues: How honest or dishonest the CIA represented what it was doing in communication with those charged with oversight; and whether enhanced interrogation or torture actually succeeded in accomplishing what the CIA claims it did. Strip out the torture and terrorism and you've got any other troubled government program. Was the Department of Health and Human Services honest with those charged with oversight about the state of Obamacare health insurance exchanges prior to their launch, and has it succeeded in providing affordable health insurance? It's the same argument.
"Strip out the torture and terrorism" and statist meat inspections are also tyranny.  Similarly, strip out the so-called racism and Eric Garner's death is about cigarette taxes. I used to think these people were raised in Skinner boxes, but now I think they spend their whole lives in them.

UPDATE. Speaking of Garner, Steven Hayward at Power Line takes the tax thing all the way:
LIBERALISM CAUSED ERIC GARNER’S DEATH
Has anyone argued yet that liberalism caused torture because, I dunno, moral relativism or Saul Alinsky or some shit?

157 comments:

  1. They are comparing apples to watermelonsboarding.

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  2. Strip out the torture and terrorism and Nazism was just the government bungling of a property dispute.

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  3. DocAmazing4:14 PM

    Strip out the virus and Ebola is just about how people spend time together.

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  4. Meh, torture, whatevs. If you're going to get hung over little incidentals like human suffering, then you could get outraged over anything.

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  5. BigHank534:19 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism


    There are several ways to deal with state-sponsored torture from a libertarian perspective. The first one is to argue that it's a power the State shouldn't have, because the State will inevitably abuse it. The second, more practical one is to try and figure out how to make the USA more libertarian by ensuring that this power is taken away from the State (thereby increasing personal liberty, eh?) and punishing whoever fucked up by letting the State get this power in the first place. Or you could argue that torture would be impossible in Libertopia, as nobody would consent* to it. (Do not try believing this without working your way up to it; amateurs are likely to sprain something.)



    Shackford, though, has chosen an entirely new tack: defending the torture (by omission) and attacking the State. Now, that's what I call suspension of disbelief. The man's a professional.


    *His inability to grasp the concept of consent is a sure-fire marker for an irredeemable shitwad authoritarian; and thusly a conservative.

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  6. dstatton4:31 PM

    It'd gratifying to see that abut half of the comments section is spam. Freedom!

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  7. DN Nation4:32 PM

    "has it succeeded in providing affordable health insurance?"


    Yes.


    Christ, they can't even do sophistry right.

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  8. Frank DiChutney4:34 PM

    Both sides seem to share the blame in ghis equally. One side a little more equally maybe, but both sides do it.

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  9. Strip out the murder and the ethical concerns over a snuff film are no different than any other movie.

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  10. Chris Anderson4:45 PM

    Many years ago, I met a guy who claimed to have been raised in a Skinner box.

    I was on a tourist boat off Alaska, of the kind that takes you glacier-watching. Before we reached the glaciers, I -- being a teenage bohemian sort -- struck up a conversation with a cool-looking dude. A strong proto-grunge or Seattle hipster presence, long tangled hair. (Why was HE on the boat?)

    So we talked about his Skinnerian father (I knew the idea in spite of being fourteen) and parents, and then music. When I told him how much I liked bebop and Stravinsky and Bartok, he was polite but said it was funner to just play Blondie songs (for example).

    (No, I have nothing to say about the CIA or torture.)

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  11. Nothing says freedom like supporting the government's right and ability to torture people. After all, how else will libertarians ever get anyone rational to admit that their proposed paradise is gonna work just great?

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  12. edroso5:07 PM

    (No, I have nothing to say about the CIA or torture.)


    Who needs it, when you have a story like that? Thanks!

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  13. And if you also strip out the government part it's about ethics in gaming journalism

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  14. Devolve torture to the states. 50 laboratories of "democracy" like this:

    https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1352&bih=586&q=evil+laboratories&oq=evil+laboratories&gs_l=img.12...1984.10887.0.14525.17.13.0.4.4.0.161.1249.9j4.13.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.60.img..4.13.835.yUqpRwgzXSw#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=tto24DWuQGv0_M%253A%3Bk-vuLHyz87XzwM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmichaelmay.us%252F08blog%252F0508a_franklab.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.blueinkalchemy.com%252F2013%252F04%252F%3B979%3B533

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  15. Chris Anderson5:14 PM

    Thanks, Roy. The idea of a Kurt Cobain(-ish) fellow emerging from a Skinner Box really stuck with me. Any further details would be fiction at this point, but it's a potent notion.

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  16. (Do not try believing this without working your way up to it; amateurs are likely to sprain something.)

    I would like to strip this sentence right out of the comment & slap it around a little until it spills the beans.

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  17. montag25:21 PM

    I see this recent tendency to link dissimilar things to just wingnut welfare job shop message discipline. They're supposed to be harping on immigration and Obamacare, and then this stupid torture business comes up, and... they just mash `em all together and hope for the best.

    Of course, the end result is as if the writer is suffering from both Tourette's and OCD simultaneously, but, hell, they don't read what they write, anyway.

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  18. Helmut Monotreme5:25 PM

    Yes if you strip out the torture part, I'm sure it's as well run as any secret military government project handing out $80 million dollar no bid contractors to connected insiders. You know what might be better? Not handing off anti-terrorist activities from the police to the same geniuses that engineered the bay of pigs invasion. They are the very same moral exemplars that decided the best way to fund their fascist death squads in central America was to sell arms to Iran. The same can-do yes men who built their anti communist organizations all over the world funded by drug smuggling. They may be good for propping up a dictator there or setting up the next decade's unforeseeable unfortunate consequence, But when you want a job done right, in way you could be proud of if the details came to light, I can think of a certain three letter agency who shouldn't be your first choice.

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  19. montag25:26 PM

    If you've spent your growing-up years in a Skinner box, when they finally let you out, is it called "coming out?" Do you get a coming-out party? (And, no, don't let me start on what the party favors and snacks might be.)

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  20. montag25:30 PM

    Oh, hell, yes. If you want things done right, and within the law, give it to the Social Security Administration. And they'll do it with less than 1% overhead.

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  21. Chris Anderson5:33 PM

    Well, my guy didn't grow up in the box. A few formative years is enough. So you want to imagine a kiddie-party, populated with tiny stormtroopers or Boys from Brazil or something like that. But no, that's wrong. This is confusing territory. They could eat pretty standard snacks, though. Standard decor -- call it ironic.

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  22. davdoodles5:33 PM

    But here's the thing: You don't just get to "strip out the parts" that make you bad, and then claim you are good.
    If you do bad things, or are a booster for bad things, or profit from them, or even sit silently and let bad things happen in your name, that makes you a bad person.
    When it comes to torture, the blood on your hands is tattooed there, at least as much as your torture is tatooed on your victim.
    Torture is forever.
    .

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  23. Gromet5:34 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism and John Wayne Gacy was like any other children's party clown.

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  24. montag25:35 PM

    I think they do get outraged over human suffering... when it gets too loud for their whining to be heard.

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  25. Gromet5:35 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism and John Wayne Gacy was same as any other children's party clown.

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  26. sharculese5:37 PM

    Not if you strip out the torture and terrorism he isnt!

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  27. Strip out the torture and terrorism and you've got any other troubled government program.

    So, apart from ramming things up people's asses and half-drowning them, this was just like tax policy. Yep.

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  28. Gromet5:39 PM

    Strip out everything he did after 1919 and Hitler was a decent enough sort.

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  29. "The State can't do anything right! Um, other than torture. Oh, and bombing. Love that bombing! What was I saying again?"

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  30. Strip out the radiation and fallout, and Hiroshima was just another bad day in World War 2.

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  31. Gromet5:45 PM

    They could eat cancer, when it turns black. (Cajun style! I assume it was a heart-shaped Skinner box.)

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  32. Bizarro Mike5:46 PM

    "His inability to grasp the concept of consent is a sure-fire marker for
    an irredeemable shitwad authoritarian; and thus a conservative."

    The Libertarian Man does not consent to your lack of consent. It impinges on his freedom. (This really is the philosophy of those incapable of empathy.)

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  33. hellslittlestangel5:49 PM

    Skinner boxes? More like xBoxes.

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  34. smut clyde5:51 PM

    He wouldn't be the only one.
    http://i1.huffpost.com/gen/1048066/thumbs/r-BF-SKINNER-large570.jpg

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  35. davdoodles5:54 PM

    Yer can't make a brain omelette without crackin' a few skulls. Amirite?

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  36. smut clyde5:55 PM

    Skinner in his wisdom designed two kinds of boxes, the wee ones with the treadles and the food dispensers, and a larger kind for infants that were like glass-sided hygienic cots with a few sterilised toys. I think he read Harlow's work on socially-deprived rhesus monkeys and incorporated it in his vision of Utopia.

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  37. salvagesalvage5:56 PM

    > LIBERALISM CAUSED ERIC GARNER’S DEATH

    I know, it's a cliche but goddamn, are they this stupid on purpose or is it genuinely natural?

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  38. Fats Durston5:57 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism, and ISIL just reflects the logic of populist self-determination.

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  39. montag25:58 PM

    Ah, a nature v. nurture problem. The answer is, as always, both.

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  40. BigHank535:59 PM

    I'm pretty sure their outrage is what keeps 'em regular, which is why they're such reliable mouth-sharters. If only they'd eaten some bran muffins...

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  41. Jay B.6:00 PM

    In this politicized fight between the contents of hundreds of thousands of pages of reports and reviews


    Was it the evens versus the odds or did they fight chapter versus chapter? Maybe it was a word free-for-all? Yes, they are shitty thinkers and shitty people but they are also GODAWFUL writers.

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  42. ken_lov6:01 PM

    'the actual debate centers on disagreement over two issues'.


    Actually the core debate is about the morality of torturing people in the first place. Libertarians don't seem to understand the concept of moral reasoning even at an abstract level. They have as one-dimensional a view of the world as any other zealots.

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  43. BigHank536:03 PM

    I don't think it's that unusual for someone to be born with the seed inside them. Most countries, though, don't have the Kochs and Roger Ailes spreading fertilizer and shining high-wattage grow lights on the stupid.

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  44. montag26:03 PM

    "Goddamn Eye-tal-ic furriners, go get `em, boys!"

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  45. John Wesley Hardin6:07 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism, and Vlad the Impaler was just another member of the House of Draculesti.

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  46. montag26:09 PM

    In the libertarian land of Overheated Hyperbole, yes, they're exactly the same thing. And shoving things down people's throats, let's not forget that one.

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  47. tigrismus6:24 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism and you've got any other troubled government program.


    Indeed, strip the torture out of torture and you've got a freshly washed face and just another visit to the proctologist. Anyhoo, if you're not using that torture, can the EPA have it? Wastewaterboarding polluters might be... useful.

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  48. JennOfArk6:31 PM

    Strip out the sex and drugs and the Rolling Stones were just another church choir.

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  49. See, those torture victims only needed to yell "I DO NOT CONSENT!" and they would have been immune under common law!

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  50. Gromet6:49 PM

    The more I think about LIBERALISM CAUSED ERIC GARNER’S DEATH, the more I like it. It is perfect. It could be the headline for any bad news. LIBERALISM CAUSED THE HOUSING BUBBLE. LIBERALISM CAUSED HIROSHIMA. LIBERALISM CAUSED BUBONIC PLAGUE. Conservatism, you see, means standing athwart events and yelling stop; any event that ignores this demand and occurs is by definition anti-conservative; and obviously, any tragedy or disaster is an event -- therefore everything bad is liberalism. QED, libtards.

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  51. Magatha6:52 PM

    Oh no. It IS my fault. LIBERALISM CAUSED CONSERVATISM.

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  52. Ivan Bezdomny6:52 PM

    "Has anyone argued yet that liberalism caused torture because, I dunno, moral relativism or Saul Alinsky or some shit?"

    Sort of! Behold, some asshole at First Things, arguing that torture is actually a product of pacifism (I wish I were joking) because pacifism means moral relativism means torturing people, not like good Catholic theologians would do:

    http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/12/our-partial-pacifism

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  53. You have to take into account that to these guys at the moment, failure to pay taxes makes it inevitable that a cop will choke you to death.

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  54. GeniusLemur7:08 PM

    Strip out the bullshit, and right-wingers don't exist.

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  55. AlanInSF7:18 PM

    Libertarians are also against stop signs, for the same reason, but it's okay because they haven't figured out how they would build a road.

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  56. mortimer20007:21 PM

    Strip out the torture and terrorism and Nazism was just the government bungling of a property dispute.

    With notably rare exceptions.

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  57. I was there during the battle of Helvitica.

    I... I... no, I can't talk about it.

    the serifs... the serifs...

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  58. mortimer20007:33 PM

    But but but... to a libertarian, paying taxes IS torture. They are forced by the liberal fascist government to ship their precious, innocent dollars to pecuniary death camps, a literal holocaust of... oh fuck it. You can't parody this shit.

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  59. Totally. I can't understand why they didn't turn over Abu Ghraib to Blackwater, for instance. Would have changed everything.

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  60. If Obama wasn't such a wimp we'd have single payer interrogation by now.

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  61. tigrismus7:49 PM

    At that point you began your descent.

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  62. Jonah cornered the market on that. Hopeless to try getting in.

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  63. Serif don't like it.

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  64. smut clyde8:14 PM

    That's grotesque.

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  65. smut clyde8:16 PM

    Brawndo! It's got what pliants crave!

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  66. Tell the truth I was thinking more Comic Sans but as always you're the classiest.

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  67. PersonaAuGratin8:41 PM

    Hayek predicted all this in The Road to Serifdom.

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  68. In reply, pacifism insists that all war is evil—that it is hell, so we
    must stay the hell out of it. This position is much derided, but more
    for the conclusions it reaches than the argument it makes. Many people
    believe along with the pacifists that war does indeed
    necessarily involve evil actions and so any attempt to impose a moral standard on our conduct is doomed from the start.

    What?

    War is evil, therefore evil things are done, therefore there's no limits on evil? And how... pacifism...

    The hell? I'm sincerely at a loss for words to see how the fuck this works.

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  69. These puns are getting awfully kerny.

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  70. so THAT's where the Death Panels went!

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  71. John Wesley Hardin8:50 PM

    They've definitely taken a kern for the worse.

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  72. tigrismus8:51 PM

    OK, now we know what they were going to make with the water boards.

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  73. c.f. Dante's Inferno, Eighth Circle, Second Bolgia.

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  74. John Wesley Hardin8:56 PM

    First Things is the site that calls the Wankoress (nee Elizabeth Scalia [those fuckin' Scalia's!]) a "Featured Author," so I'm not surprised to see it's a reliable batshit generator.

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  75. John Wesley Hardin8:57 PM

    It's an Ouroboros of bullshit.

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  76. But I did not shoot the derpity.

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  77. realinterrobang9:36 PM

    But I did not shoot the ITC.

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  78. realinterrobang9:39 PM

    I see what you did there.

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  79. Remember: To a libertarian, going to the DMV to pick up registration renewal forms is identical to going to the gas chamber at Treblinka--if you strip out the gas, the 1,000 other condemned Jews packed with you, and the dying part, there's simply no difference between the two experiences.

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  80. glennisw9:44 PM

    Did jaywalking laws cause Michael Brown's death? Where's the libertarian defense of our right to walk in the street?

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  81. Read the fine print: Doesn't apply if you're Black.

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  82. Listening to FBI interrogator of Abu Zubaydah, Ali Soufan, on MSNBC, speaking of torture is liberal and all: what I didn't understand is how privatized the interrogations were when they started the torture program designed by Jessen and Mitchell--those guys were all contractors in the $81-million contract program. If it had been left to big government Soufan thinks it never would have happened, they'd have gone on doing normal legal interrogations and gotten some actual information.

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  83. I read that. It's quite possibly the stupidest thing on the internet right now. No small feat.

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  84. redoubtagain10:25 PM

    Safeword--"Hayek"

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  85. redoubtagain10:34 PM

    Slaves. Of course.

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  86. AGoodQuestion11:03 PM

    Perhaps suspecting the thinness of his argument, Hayward turns the post over to the funny papers. "As usual, Michael Ramirez gets it." Dude, I've seen my share of Ramirez cartoons. The only thing he usually gets is his head lodged in his ass.


    That's not even getting into the helpful captions on the beatdown photo.
    "Wants more government" (Did you ask?)
    "More government" (Also more of a fungible commodity than I would have guessed)

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  87. AGoodQuestion11:04 PM

    That's why they cling to it so.

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  88. How hard is it to say torture is evil?

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  89. AGoodQuestion11:11 PM

    I see this recent tendency to link dissimilar things as just wingnut welfare job shop message discipline.
    This. No matter what crazy new circumstances might arise, you can never stop repeating that the sun rises in the west. Otherwise the great unwashed might get the silly idea that it rises in the east. That's what message discipline is.

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  90. Tehanu11:18 PM

    To the dismay of some on the left!

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  91. smut clyde11:26 PM

    Laboratory of democracy, lavatory, it's an easy mistake to make.

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  92. Oddly enough, that's exactly what my governor Cuomo appeared to be doing with his anti-corruption commission. "This has been totally successful--so much so, in fact, that I'm shutting it down early!" And yet those guys were evidently competent, so go figure.

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  93. Really! How can a cop feel safe without killing you when he's scared?

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  94. Another Kiwi11:52 PM

    Or just lazy. Dude he's 100 yards away!

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  95. Another Kiwi11:53 PM

    Indentured entrepreneurial transport contractors, you mean?

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  96. Genetic. Siblings should not reproduce.

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  97. Another Kiwi11:56 PM

    I'm sorry I could only manage as far as the bit where he asserts that the Catholic Church's relationship to torture is "complicated". Now I'll be sniggering all day.

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  98. Another Kiwi11:57 PM

    If you want to kowtow to the Genevians , well you do that!

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  99. Another Kiwi11:58 PM

    The fart levels are lethal too

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  100. sharculese11:59 PM

    The whole point of First Things is to find the most pompous way to say 'God is right, so you don't have to think about it.'

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  101. Another Kiwi12:02 AM

    "Just another visit to the proctologist" will be my new saying for family outings that go awry.

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  102. He can't feel

    1.) safe;
    2.) free, or;
    3.) second amendment-y.

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  103. Another Kiwi12:05 AM

    More like getting a dog license.

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  104. Now we know who's pulling the strings.

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  105. Another Kiwi12:14 AM

    Strip out the Bubonic Plague and the years 1346–53 were pretty uneventful.

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  106. Why can't you clone yourself if you have (are) a sibling?

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  107. You must admit, there may be as many as a couple of hundred other condemned souls in the DMV w/ you.


    And don't think the employees are happy either.

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  108. Also SCOTUS w/ the Voting Rights Act.


    Mmmm ... I see the murder rate's down. Time to repeal some irksome "regulations"?

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  109. BigHank5312:29 AM

    I'd concede the point, but you'd take a pica.

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  110. Ellis_Weiner1:04 AM

    Right. Or for anything that just screws up. "Fuck. We planned this picnic for twelve people and now it's raining. Well, it's just another visit to the proctologist, huh?"

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  111. jcricket2:06 AM

    Conservatives used to say that they wanted government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Now, the bathtub is unnecessary - a gallon jug of water and a sheet of saran wrap is all they need.

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  112. Depends on whether you do it or not.

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  113. montag23:26 AM

    Funny thing--they did privatize some of it (although not to Blackwater, AFAIK). CACI and Titan were two firms mentioned as supplying interrogators there, and they, of course, were all to eager to make it worse.

    But, y'know, there's got to be a reason why Erik Prince is living today in a place (the UAE) that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US....

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  114. montag23:46 AM

    Hmm. This is an interesting question. I wonder what Google's answer would be.

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  115. Donalbain4:00 AM

    Never mind those evil secular things.. have they ever read Augustine of Hippo and his Just War theory?

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  116. BadExampleMan6:08 AM

    sniggering


    Proof that liberals are the real racists.

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  117. Frank Chuttman6:31 AM

    How hard is it to remain silent about drone strikes on innocents?

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  118. Frank Chuttman6:35 AM

    You've said that about three hundred times, gogurt.

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  119. Frank Chuttman7:00 AM

    "What else am I gonna do?"

    -Eric Garner, when told by his wife to stop selling loose cigarettes.


    Liberalism is killing African Americans.

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  120. Come back to bed, honey. Let's do around the world.

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  121. Frank Chuttman7:35 AM

    Been a liberal all my life. Probably will be in my next one, too. Have to be honest here, though. We're just as guilty in this. We both do it. We're just like them.

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  122. tigrismus7:45 AM

    Family outings that end up(tee hee) like a visit to the proctologist have gone so far awry as to perhaps be considered torture.

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  123. I'm about to get obsessed with this--under our noses since 2009 and I had no idea. The torture program starting with Abu Zubaydah interrogation in 2002 really was privatization, presumably run by the $81-million rogue psychologists Mitchell and Nessen. Professional FBI interrogators like Ali Soufan complained private contractors were taking over and doing it wrong.


    As for Prince, if he's in danger in the US, Holder and Obama may be doing better than we know....

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  124. A Liberal Dose of Chutney8:56 AM

    Been a liberal since the moment of my inception, but I gotta call a spade a spade here. Both sides are equally guilty here. We both do it. Let's a stop pretending otherwise.

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  125. Chris Anderson9:38 AM

    It was interesting to learn that Keith Richards was a top-notch choirboy before his voice broke.

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  126. Halloween_Jack9:38 AM

    Everything I need to know about the legitimacy of Pulitzer prizes is the fact that they gave one to Ramirez, twice. (Yes, I know that many more deserving cartoonists got them, some more than twice; nevertheless.)

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  127. Halloween_Jack9:47 AM

    I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. Entire term papers in Freestyle Script on fire off the shoulder of campustowns. I watched Wingdings glitter in the dark near the Haettenschweiler Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like inkjet-printed lost pet flyers in rain.

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  128. Halloween_Jack9:50 AM

    "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the playmeeting a youthful, provocative advocate of states' rights?"

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  129. Darque Wing10:12 AM

    That's just as much BS as when you first cut and pasted that lame comment under your other sock puppet, at the other website you obsessively spam with your fake concern-trolling: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/morning-joe-serves-big-dose-both-sides#comment-1738585846

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  130. Howlin Wolfe10:14 AM

    Cons mouth this trope so often: "Liberalism caused X" where X is an unspeakable horror only sociopaths would commit, and X as approaches the asymptotic line it is ever more ridiculous.

    If someone criticizes conservative policy, say, reducing spending on infrastructure maintenance, and a freeway bridge falls into the Mississippi, it's considered the height of incivility to point this out.

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  131. Chut's Happ'nin?10:26 AM

    Does Truth Matter to the Feminist Left?

    http://t.co/wQfBenCe6S

    HINT: Two letters, starts with "N" and ends with "O."

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  132. Chut's Happ'nin?10:29 AM

    Please don't stalk other liberals. That's not who we are. It's what we do but not who we are, nor should be. Let's rise above out inherent pettiness, what do you say?

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  133. Strip out the meat and the head of a libertarian makes a fine place to stash loose change and paper clips.

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  134. And Denis Rader was an aspiring poet!

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  135. FlipYrWhig10:36 AM

    Served with a side of meat-eating orchids.

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  136. Darque Wing10:36 AM

    ... says the troll that devotes years to stalking liberal sites with his favorite right-wing talking points.

    Do you get paid extra for the profound hypocrisy, or is that just what you are all the time?

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  137. The real fun begins when some neocon in Congress starts repeating the gibberish verbatim.

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  138. FlipYrWhig10:43 AM

    Perhaps there are ways of _making_ them say it.

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  139. StringOnAStick10:43 AM

    Goddamn, that is a horrifying photo.

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  140. Admittedly, the author does mention the "just war" idea, but in a handwavey way to dismiss it before getting on to PACIFISTS!!

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  141. This section of the thread is the font of wisdom.

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  142. This theory nicely explains how the pacifistic teachings of Christ ineluctably led to Torquemada and the Inquisition.

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  143. BigHank5311:24 AM

    Everything in the Iraq war was about privatization--I still remember the story about US contractors stenciling their logo onto Iraqi forklifts at the Bagdad airport and charging the Pentagon full price for them. Straight up looting.

    Price is staying out of the US to avoid civil suits, like the one filed by the families of the Blackwater contractors whose deaths kicked off the Battle of Fallujah. Oddly enough, no US journalist has asked why the Iraqis were pissed enough at those four guys that they ambushed, executed, mutilated, and displayed 'em.

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  144. Re Eric Prince, maybe a little "extraordinary rendition" is indicated.

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  145. Another Kiwi12:45 PM

    Would this comment like to meet in the the stores cupboard, later on?

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  146. Another Kiwi12:51 PM

    Lemmee guess, it's for his sinuses, right?

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  147. Another Kiwi12:56 PM

    Also and too, this :"How honest or dishonest the CIA represented what it was doing in communication with those charged with oversight" would be red pencilled in the essay of a 12 year old. Oh maybe that's just the libertarians kickin' against the RULES, man.

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  148. Sparafucile3:07 PM

    Mendacious BS, or fundamental misunderstanding -- which do you offer?

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  149. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:26 PM

    Strip out the diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and bleeding from the eyes and every available orifice, and Ebola is just like the flu...

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  150. "... the actual debate centers on disagreement over two issues: How honest or dishonest the CIA represented what it was doing in communication with those charged with oversight; and whether enhanced interrogation or torture actually succeeded in accomplishing what the CIA claims it did."


    What a bunch of horse hockey. Unlike some folks in other situations, "it's not the coverup, it's the crime". That's because torture is a crime against humanity; no 'ifs', 'ands', and 'buts'.....


    As to the second point, the torture treaties cover that: There are NO extenuating circumstances. No exculpation due to 'supposedly' benign motives and/or 'positive results'. Period. For all those conservatives screaming about how the PPACA purportedly doesn't allow tax credits for those in states unfortunately run by Republicans, this language is a hell of a lot plainer.

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  151. I've seen cases like these before. Cliches.

    -dlj.

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  152. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:18 PM

    Nature already did that for you...

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  153. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:19 PM

    Heh. Shoulda did the CTRL+F thing...

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  154. Chutney Live at the Barn8:42 PM

    Been thinking about this one s lot and have come to the conclusion that both sides are guilty here. We both do it. With our silence over Obama's baby-killing program, we should shut up about EIT's that Democrats approved of.

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  155. Incredible how disciplined the Right is in their messaging. The memo has been passed around, and the message is "Well, what about drones? Really, aren't BOTH sides guilty here?" (Messengers probably receive extra points if they pretend to have arrived at this angle all on their own.)

    Chris Hayes has a good segment about this "Whataboutism."

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