The Russia probe announced that they are ready to make indictments, and possible arrests starting Monday. Rachel Maddow seems to be gleefully anticipating some high level Trump people to get caught in this, but with the Fusion GPS story starting to turn towards Democrat funding of the Dossier, I'm t...

Yeah, this is getting weird. I've never really been a Republican (or Democrat, for that matter). I had my objections during his administration, but I thought the left went a bit overboard. President's seem to get more credit and more blame than they deserve. It's kind of nice that they've softened t...

Not really a review, but Mark Wahlberg says he's prayed for forgiveness for starring in Boogie Nights. It's been a while since I saw that movie, but I did not find it to be a glorification of the porn industry. The guy's life rides high for a bit, then he crashes and burns, taking other lives with h...

Well, it's hard to measure specific corruption from a specific source without knowing that person very well both before and after attaining power. BUT the idea that power is corrupting is generally uncontroversial. Unless we are arguing that women are somehow special and saintly to the extent that t...

I say, that's The one thing we really ain't never tried, so how do we know? What's the evidence that power corrupts women when they're able to live on their own terms outside patriarchy? Gaining physical power is obviously an incomplete toolkit for destroying patriarchy, but I'm willing to roll wit...

Not sure how to phrase a search for it, but one of my favorite anecdotes back in the day was that after the Free Tibet concert a group of musicians did a similar event for Bosnia. Some of them walked out of it saying "f--- these people. everywhere we've been there's someone dragging you to a bu...

Haven't finished watching it yet, but you should always take things said in the Balkans with a grain of salt. There was another doc 20 years ago called Death of a Nation. Milosevic's big rally where he said "you will not be beaten again!" was discovered to be a staged riot. Serb sympathize...

Loves his kids. I feel like this is violating the spirit of the thread, but that just may be my awareness of some of his disturbing comments. On the positive, the market seems to be doing pretty well, which was part of my criteria when judging Clinton. Fair is fair. He's said he wants to work on in...

The candy just barely hit the shelves at my grocery store. I'm still wondering where anyone lives that they aren't "allowed" to say Merry Christmas. I say it and no one bothers me. But I say Happy Holidays if I don't know you or won't see you till after New Year's. Pretty simple, and I hav...

Seems petty in the context of nukes, but is here early. And once again, boilerplate GOP talking points come out of the President's mouth like Biff Tannen trying to be witty.

I also acknowledge the vulnerability of such systems to outside interference, something which is also possible in more centralized forms of government(Russia hacked our election, remember?). Generally though, it's harder to invade decentralized nation's than it is to invade a state, as while they m...

I understand some reluctance to want to call it a right. It's not a word to throw around lightly. Regardless of the verbiage, we currently live in a society where people seeking "emergency" medical services for whatever reason cannot be turned away. By law, people can seek and receive med...

Kind of depends on what you mean by right. I have the right to free speech. I do not have the right to make you speak for me. Or to force you to listen. I clearly have the right to medical care. The police can't stop me from staunching a bloody wound, because that would be wrong. Do I have the right...

I tried with Swiss Army Man. I hit my threshold for fart jokes after about 15 minutes.

Ex Machina was pretty good.

Predatory men seem to accumulate a lot of wealth and power. Which is why I laugh at the idea that markets are somehow inherently moral. Central planning is usually worse, but let's not kid ourselves.

Ah, the good old Doctrine of Relative Filth. Either we're all saints, or nobody's a sinner. Sadly, I'm a patriot. While there's a ton of things we need to improve, especially in the ME, that does not make us equivalent to Putin. For one thing, we've never nuked a journalist for saying mean things ab...

Just as a reminder, there are two groups of people that Trump has yet to insult... White Supremacists Putin I will NEVER understand why people think its in the best interest of the country/world for Trump or any world leader to start taking personal shots at other global nuclear powers. oh no peopl...

What would law without a state look like? Tribal, I'd imagine. One of the problems I see with law predating government is that the old ways were a product of their conditions. Tribes worked very well when there was a lot of room and you could be nomadic. If we'd never discovered agriculture, I thin...

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Not everyone who is demanding trigger warnings has PTSD. You don't even need to have a verified traumatic event to claim that you were triggered by something. In the moment that someone is attempting to leave the discussion, you can be prohibited from asking the...