Lawndarter

I do enjoy the persistence of this myth. The Captain wasn't even on the bridge at the time, and a search of the vessel found two bottles of beer. More to the point about boycotts, boycotting a retailer of a fungible commodity is pointless, because you have no idea when you buy gasoline where it actually came from. Neither, in most cases, does the retailer.

This is absolutely priceless, good sir, and you can consider it stolen. If this was reddit I'd probably have gold for you.

Agreed.

They never had any intention of doing so of course, they just rebranded a couple of times. They, and the various other contractors involved in the business of war - DynCorp, Triple Canopy, Fluor, Blackwater/Xe/Academi, and so many others generate phenomenal profits by ripping off taxpayers with little or no oversight or accountability whatsoever. It was mindblowing to watch it happen in Afghanistan.

End it. Leave. There's nothing good coming of further involvement, it's an endless quagmire we cannot solve. And I say that as someone who served there. I wanted to believe we were doing good there and that there was some prospect of "victory". I don't anymore. It's time to leave.

And how many more flag draped coffins will come back from that lost cause?

Bingo! I've never met someone "up in arms" about BLM who was not (a) grievously uninformed about it or (b) overtly or subtlely revealing some level of prejudice. I've definitely seen some great legitimate criticism of some BLM "chapters" or "local leaders", for example in my home of Toronto where they got into a huge and utterly pointless spat with the organizers of Toronto's massive Pride festivities about the police being involved. There are also plenty of people who've done stupid shit (like chanting for violence against cops) while claiming the BLM mantle, but nothing in that movement's origins or stated goals endorses that. I'm an average white guy, and I think they have a pretty solid point about problems with policing, and some well spoken people looking to help solve that. I'm far, far more bothered by the KKK, neo-Nazis, all the crazies emboldened by the lunatic in the White House. I'm further concerned about the spread of that nonsense into Canada. Those statues were raised for odious purposes and commemorate men and ideas which have no nobility or merit. When you start to understand that whole "white privilege" thing, and to realize that this whole "standing up for the rights of those who don't have it" thing isn't zero-sum, it's not hard to understand and support their cause.

I'll buy tickets to watch that get demolished.

Oh I know, my question is rhetorical. I'm married to a Southerner, and it took some time to get her to give up the idea that that flag is anything but a symbol of treason. I know exactly when those statues went up and why. It's just something you don't generally find in most places. The sole state right they were fighting for was slavery, which, ironically, was states had no right to outlaw under the Confederate constitution. To suggest the war was about anything other than preserving slavery is lunacy, but this argument is frequently made by people who also don't get that the South started it.

The answers to this would fascinate me.

Overnight the City of Baltimore removed four monuments. And since North Carolina makes it hard to do by normal process, citizens of Durham decided to help them along by removing another. Where else in the world are monuments to treason sacrosanct?

You could get hit by garbage truck crossing the street and die just as easily. We aren't immortal. If you wanted to eliminate every risk of dying you'd live a very boring life.

This always makes me laugh. The Obama Adminstration was neither far left, nor socialist. It was centre to centre-right. There's no actual left leaning party in the United States. The price will be further misery for the kind of folk who think Trump will help them.

The great people at the Southern Poverty Law Center do a pretty good job of enunciating the differences: https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/07/19/black-lives-matter-not-hate-group While I'm no fan of the BLM for some of the same reasons you've listed, I'm finding it hard to lump them in with The New Black Panthers, The Nation of Islam, The Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, Israel United In Christ, and other black separatist hate groups (that for some reason or another seem to have a preoccupation with hijacking various religions - what's up with that?) I'm not so sure I'd even call them racist as much as I would the poster child for misguided anger. And they have. In 2016 465 white people have been killed by police, 148 were mentally ill and 22 were unarmed. 5 of those unarmed were also mentally ill. 233 black people have been killed by police in 2016, 34 were mentally ill and 17 were unarmed. 2 of those unarmed were also mentally ill. Granted, blacks are still killed by police at a higher rate than whites, but if you are going to take population into consideration, you also have to consider the higher population of police in larger cities where you're more likely to be killed regardless of your race, by police or otherwise - cities where the majority of black people reside. Same here. I've had 15 year-old white friends beaten by police because they were thought to be in a gang - the police were trying to get info. Another was handcuffed to a gurney and choked nearly to death for mouthing off to a cop. Another was handcuffed, beaten and maced repeatedly. Another one was on a bad mushroom trip and fighting 5 cops that surrounded him. (Long story, but we're thankful we can look back and laugh at it) But this was a long time ago, about 20 years ago. We didn't worry about cops killing unarmed suspects. It's a relatively new "phenomenon." I doubt my white friends would've fared as well today. There may have only been 4 or 5 unarmed people killed back then compared to 20 or more starting around 2014 and increasing to almost 50 in 2016. Billvon made a good point earlier. We just shrug it off as tragic, but understandable. This is where I think BLM is beneficial to society. They may only focus on black lives, but they're bringing attention to the issue. They don't just shrug it off. There has been a steady increase in police homicides since 2000 regardless of race. This leads me to believe that there has either been a change in policy or a change in the mindset of cops. Perhaps young X'ers and old millenials just aren't up to the task of being good cops. Maybe they're just too soft, too afraid, or not trained correctly. My dad is old school. He's been known to take a punch or two and then subduing some punk kid instead of just shooting him. Those are the types of cops we need. I just wish we could all come together and find solutions to the problem, rather than exploiting racism to gain an edge in the "us vs them" game that it is. Here are some solutions that might help. For starters. If you're a pussy, don't become a cop. Here are the others: http://useofforceproject.org/#project

Two sides which very richly and unequivocally deserved to lose, no less.

What are you looking to chat about? From my extremely limited capacity to give any opinions: beyond PFF, find good coaches you like working with keep making coach jumps - look into opportunities to jump with other people as much as you can. I didn't do enough of that at first, and now that I'm getting to do four-ways and other jumps it's helping me keep interested in progressing. My home DZ has a "mentorship" program you can spend a day working on skills you want to develop, for the low low price of the mentor's slots. I did one on four-way RW and it was an absolute blast. Learned so much, built my confidence in the skills I have, and is helping me hone in on what I need to improve on. And definitely pursue canopy coaching, it's worth it.

They can thank the Republicans they voted for for that - "employment at will" is their baby. And as they say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes!

Have you not figured out that no one will take anything from that website seriously, ever?

Let's put this a little bit in perspective - I think that gets lost sometimes. That is the equivalent of someone today writing down the life and times of President Abraham Lincoln and the civil war - if we didn't have written language back then and nothing was ever written down about those times. Now how many of us would believe that I or anyone could write (accurately) about what was said during the Lincoln/Douglas debates? I enjoy this challenge: https://ffrf.org/legacy/books/lfif/stone.php - tie the various tales of Easter in the Bible into one coherent story. And I remember as a kid in a Catholic school asking how Luke knew what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane if he was alone. No one even knows who wrote the books at all, other than none of them were contemporaries of Jesus.

Let's put this a little bit in perspective - I think that gets lost sometimes. That is the equivalent of someone today writing down the life and times of President Abraham Lincoln and the civil war - if we didn't have written language back then and nothing was ever written down about those times. Now how many of us would believe that I or anyone could write (accurately) about what was said during the Lincoln/Douglas debates? I enjoy this challenge: https://ffrf.org/legacy/books/lfif/stone.php - tie the various tales of Easter in the Bible into one coherent story. And I remember as a kid in a Catholic school asking how Luke knew what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane if he was alone. No one even knows who wrote the books at all, other than none of them were contemporaries of Jesus.

I don't really see any value in such a lofty but completely baseless claim. And yet that doesn't really square with the whole story of Jesus' death somehow "redeeming" all. Solid meh from me.

It's actually the same imaginary man in the sky.

No kidding. It's like whoever wrote that was blissfully unaware of the enormous amount of energy required to produce aluminum. There's a reason that aluminum production is concentrated where there's lots of readily available cheap electricity.

And the Romans used a whole lot of Pagan stuff to make Christianity up in the first place. They simply changed existing festivals to mesh with the story once they turned Christianity into something as coherent as they could to harness it. I don't get the attraction of it or any other religion, I just kind of like the tenets someone went with above, none of which require me to believe in anyone's mythologies.

I won't dispute that this has been a somewhat effective strategy, though no real big business seems to be getting done, Trump has accomplished nothing but getting a judge into the Supreme Court, and embarrassing himself and America on the world stage too many times to count. There won't be a second term, I'm pretty sure. I'm not sure he'll finish his first term. CNN isn't going anywhere. Hell, they might even start sounding more like journalists as they keep challenging the bullshit the administration spews like Jim Acosta did. Where do you live where being "killed by an illegal" is such a fear? Free advice: move! Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama are going to jail, and I can't believe anyone was stupid enough to think that was a thing. Healthcare isn't going improve - ACA/Obamacare was a small step to making it better, but there's a long way to go, and Trumpcare ain't it - people who voted for Trump might just start realizing that. The stock market soared under President Obama, as the American economy recovered from the 2008 disaster. Of course, the fact that the average working class American doesn't feel like it benefited them suggests that doesn't matter so much. North Korea isn't really an issue. And Russia, well, they're an issue because they colluded with the current, totally unqualified occupant of the White House (when he's there, anyhow, and not golfing) - but they didn't do it because they have or want influence over him, I suspect - they did it because they knew what a joke he'd be, and how he'd totally discredit America. It's working. The failed pathways that built most of America's prosperity? Okay. And what sad thoughts they are.