It is important to understand what we’re up against – those of us who oppose human interactions based on violence. And what we’re up against is . . . Clover. This Unknown Troll has plagued EPautos for years; but as annoying as he is, he does serve a valuable purpose. His posts give us insight into the mentality of the sort of person who believes violence ought to be the basis of human interactions.
What follows is a dissection of Clover’s most recent assertion of his belief that your rights take a back seat to his notions of “the public good” – as defined by him, enforced at bayonet-point – as well as a look into his jumbled thought process and general moral obtuseness:
Clover: It did crack me up when Eric said I’m a Libertarian, so I defend the free market. But without moral hazard – personal accountability. He says that car manufacturers (Clover references my recent article about the GM ignition switch recall; see here) should build without moral hazard? At the same time he believes the complete opposite should be done by drivers on our highways. He wants us to accept the added risk of dangerous drivers. Eric you make your own statements look like an idiot wrote them.
Ready to break out your scalpel? Ok, here goes:
Clover, read this one word at a time – very carefully:
Libertarians take the position that individual people should be held responsible for their actions – but only when their actions result in tangible harm to others.
They do not believe individual people should be restrained/punished because of the actions of other people.
The managers within GM who knew about the defective ignition switches caused harm to people and should therefore be held accountable for the resultant harm caused.
Your amorphous, subjective, undefined assertions regarding such things as what you believe to be “dangerous” driving – e.g., “speeding” – do not constitute harm caused to anyone.
GM’s defective products hurt people. Tangible harm to actual people.
Yesterday (like the day before and the day before that) I drove faster than the speed limit – and harmed no one.
Can you understand the difference?
Your belief – your worry – that my “speeding” might result in a wreck is merely your belief. It carries no weight, because the actuality is I haven’t harmed anyone.
And unless I have harmed someone, punishing me is unjust.
This is a principle beyond your ken, I realize. But it is – was – the core underlying tenet of Western civilization.
No victim – no crime.
This concept was a bulwark against the unlimited intrusion of authority (i.e., people with guns and the legal sanction they give themselves to use them) into other people’s lives. It meant a person’s right to be left in peace was sacrosanct unless it could be demonstrated he did something to cause harm to another person.
The principle at issue is critical – but you’re too thick-skulled to grasp its implications. How the things you advocate could one day be used in ways you might not like so much.
You worry about my “speeding.” Well, Clover, I worry about the harm you might be doing to little children in your basement. God only knows what vile images you’ve got stored on your hard drive. It’s entirely possible you’re a pederast. Anyone could be a pederast. Just as anyone out on the roads might be a drunk driver – just as anyone trying to get on an airplane might be a terrorist.
Therefore – using your own “logic” – for the safety of the children, the government should have the authority to randomly check your hard drive – and your home.
After all, it might save lives.
You believe my “safety” demands I buckle-up. That I be forced to buckle-up. Not only for my “safety” – but because if I wreck, I might be injured and those costs might end up being imposed on “society.” Therefore – as you see it – “society” has every right to force me to wear a seatbelt, for my own good and for the good of society.
Well, Clover, skiing – a hobby you’ve mentioned you enjoy – is arguably “unsafe.” People get injured and sometimes killed. It is not necessary to ski. Safety demands you be prevented from skiing – because you might get hurt – and might impose costs on society.
Do you begin to see?
No, of course not.
Clover: Thousands of words (Clover references my recent article about the cost of new cars; see here) and still I hear no solution to how Eric is going to maintain the roadway by his house. Libertarians do not have a clue! They want investors to buy and maintain the road. They can not make Eric pay his share though because that is against his religion. Eric, are you going to trespass over that private road in front of your house since you refuse to pay anything towards it? I do have to laugh with your thousands of words and you still do not show how you are going to maintain your local road. Eric the only thing you bring up is you want other people to pay for roads. By definition you are taking from other people when you do that. I thought Libertarians are not take from others.
Clover, your argument boils down to:
Because government roads were built, they must continue to be built. There is no alternative to government roads – built using coercion.
Slavery existed once, too. Would you take the position that, therefore, it ought to exist in perpetuity also?
New roads need not be built using coercion. And existing ones could be maintained without using coercion.
The fundamental issue here – which you refuse to deal with – is that you favor using violence to force everyone into various collective schemes, or to “help” pay for them. That makes you morally no different than a common street mugger or home-invasion thug.
It doesn’t matter what the ends are – the “good purposes” (as you define them) to which the stolen money goes.
The fact remains you’ve stolen it – or advocated that it be stolen on your behalf.
While you have every right to try to line up investors, to convince others of the merit of a given project, to enlist their voluntary participation – and so on – you have no right to a cent of any other person’s money.
You also have no right to forcibly interfere with any other person’s life, for any reason – unless that particular person has caused you a tangible harm – and then only to the extent of protecting yourself from that particular individual and/or holding him accountable for the harm caused to you or your property.
I doubt you’d try to impose your Clover Code on anyone yourself. No. You’ll vote to have it done by mercs. Paid thugs in special outfits, who will cite “the law.”
But underneath all that shuck and jive, there’s nothing more than the despicable assertion that you somehow have the right to control and direct other people’s lives. To do them violence.
Someday, Clover, that violence may provoke a response you won’t like very much.
Der tag kommt . . .
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Don’t jump to conclusions. Read the top and the bottom lines. Dating-Site-Murderer Meme.
http://www.urlesque.com/2011/03/23/dating-site-murderer-meme/
Engineers are not good at dealing with customers. I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGS2tKQhdhY
Boothe –
The deer, and other large cervids, often freeze where they are from being in your headlights. This happens whether on the road, near the road, or a ways of from the road.
When you are near enough to them, from their perspective they are no longer in your light beam. Because they are now on the side. Or because they are far enough off the ground that your head lights are now pointed at the ground and not their eyes.
Because of this, they do make their movements last minute and become more active in the very last moments. Especially if they are tall, or are at a different elevation than you on the road due to the landscape.
You can confirm this by watching deer in the headlight vids on youtube. The non-moving frozen deer are small in stature. The road and roadside is a flat plain.
Clover’s point about speed in such a case is exactly wrong. If you slow down as you try to pass the deer, elk, moose, you give him a much better chance to hit the side of your car or cross your path, once he feels free to act.
How to Avoid a Moose or Deer Collision – wikihow
http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-a-Moose-or-Deer-Collision
“Sometimes deer will freeze in car lights as you approach even if they are not directly in the roadway and then suddenly bolt into the roadway as you drive close by them. In some instances this will result in the deer hitting the side of the car. This is tough behaviour to encounter as slowing down could result in the deer being even more likely to hit your car.”
– When I lived in deer/elk country, I always liked to say “watch out for deer” when someone said they’re leaving the bar / going home. Kind of in an anti-clover way. “Drive safe” is annoying to hear. “Watch out for deer” used to get a smile and still accomplish the same thing.
@Tor- +1 That is exactly what happened to me. I saw & slowed for the one in front of me as he started to cross the road. His pal ran out from the brush right into the right rear quarter panel. After putting a nice dent there he got up & ran away. Friggen typical California hit & run deer.
I’ve reached the end of my endurance for Clover. You won’t be seeing his posts for awhile.
Why Black People Are Slaves Today More Than Ever Before
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siOBc3RVFks
Pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwygdFirE6c
Black People Have a Slave Mentality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JKeY-rUZtU
Ghetto Slave Mentality: Most Black People Today Are Brainwashed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b33yETLZt-Q
Black People Are Brainwashed By Christianity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AVz3thwc9M
Frederick Douglass – From Slave to Abolitionist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj-gz3u-1jM
― Frederick Douglass
“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
“I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land… I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of ‘stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.’ I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which everywhere surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods — her fertile fields — her beautiful rivers — her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong, — when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.”
“People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.”
“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
“Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.”
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?
I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
“The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.”
“The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.”
“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, – that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.”
“The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it’s privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it’s humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?”
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”
“It is easier to build strong men, than to repair broken ones.”
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”
“Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”
“In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.”
“The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”
“I had as well be killed running as die standing”
“A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnamity.”
“My hopes were never brighter than now. Allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put.
“I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.”
“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul, – and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”
“I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.”
“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”
“A woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.”
“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, – a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, – a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, – and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of the slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.”
“Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever…I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”
“Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning.”
“I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.”
“The silver trumpet of freedom roused in my soul eternal wakefulness.”
“We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country. … We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be remodified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be, What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.”
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”
“The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.”
“Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.”
“A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women”
“I have found that, to make a contended slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right;and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
“We have all met a class of men, very remarkable for their activity, and who yet make but little headway in life; men who, in their noisy and impulsive pursuit of knowledge, never get beyond the outer bark of an idea, from a lack of patience and perseverance to dig to the core; men who begin everything and complete nothing; who see, but do not perceive; who read, but forget what they read, and are as if they had not read; who travel but go nowhere in particular, and have nothing of value to impart when they return.”
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”
“Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.”
― Frederick Douglass
Funny how many great Black men existed, back when they actually HAD slavery, and in the Racist times of Jim Crow….
And how many niggers (black, white, etc.) exist today, when life is so EASY.
“Where wealth accumulates, men decay.”
Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Sojourner Truth, Daniel Hale Williams, Vivien Thomas, MLK, and Malcolm X – just to name a few – MUST be rolling in their graves!
Dear Jean,
Well said! Well said indeed!
I hadn’t heard of Sojourner Truth. A most unpleasant creature to be sure. Definitely my least favorite black personality type. Her kind of righteous anger will take many generations to absorb. Hearing her voice archetype is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Feminism is my least favorite part of anarchism.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1674/pg1674.html
Kerry Washington reads Sojourner Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq3AYiRT4no
In 1858, Sojourner Truth chose to bare her breasts to a group of white male detractors who tried to humiliate and discredit her as a black woman abolitionist and activist by calling her gender into question. According to Truth’s biographer, Nell Irvin Painter, rather than accede to their attempts at humiliation, Truth “turned the challenge upside down,” recounting for these men the numerous white male children whom she had suckled. She then boldly invited her critics to suck and in doing so infantilized them and unmanned them.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/melus/summary/v035/35.4.cooper.html
The lion who took a woman’s shape – South African folktale
http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/saft/sft39.htm
The Girls of the Knee -Maasai
http://www.johntyman.com/africa/folk/#5
Seems like I now know all I want to about Sojourner Truth.
In contrast, I once admired Booker T. Washington. I hope there’s not a reason not to, besides the fact he helped to establish public schools. How else was it to happen then, in that circumstance? The overlords surely wouldn’t have allowed private schooling.
From Wiki: “Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery […] Washington argued that the surest way for blacks to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate “industry, thrift, intelligence and property.”
It’s much like today.
How do we get to freedom from this point?
God, it must have seemed impossible to a black man (or woman) back then. Is that “impossible” the same as today, for everybody?
Do things ever really change?
I didn’t know a single thing about Booker T Washington until a few minutes ago.
Booker T. Washington – Mini Biography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07cispyOhWQ
Booker T – Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNiwuEuTA2Y
Facts about Booker T
http://sethpickens.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/10-facts-about-booker-t-washingto/
Booker T Bio
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_washington.html
Booker quotes
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington
You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Cool.
Dear Tor,
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
Amen to that.
Americans who endorsed or tolerated Abu Graib and Guantanamo, are now living under the TSA and FEMA.
Fantastic!
Clover’s ideal society already exists: Saudi Arabia. Somehow I don’t think he’d last long under real rules with real consequences enforced by Serious Arab People. #HeadsRollingInTheClover
No woman, no drive. A parody, or is it? Off with your head. jk. or am I jk?
In the eyes of some Saudis, music is haram. no harmonic male singing. no musical instruments.
http://muttaqun.com/music.html
From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks, and the use of musical instruments as lawful.
Allah will destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them, and Allah will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection
I agree with voluntary adherence to the Koran and other teachings but not mandatory adherence enforced by kings. Especially when kings are expressly forbidden in the Islamic texts.
Music: Halal or Haram?
http://www.muslim-power.0catch.com/music.htm
This video is not halal for some. It depicts adult women dancing with men. It includes musical instruments.
Pharrell – Happy British Muslims!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVDIXqILqSM
The Condition of the Muslim Ummah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_RT1KJ_CXk
When Allah Calls to Angel Jibreel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCOuEou6q4
Allahu (Heart Touching Nasheed)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_tjxz4yS_U
Shadows Of Liberty presents insider accounts of how journalists and their news stories have been censored, manipulated, and destroyed by corporate power.
Julian Assange, Danny Glover, David Simon, Amy Goodman, Dan Rather, and a host of award winning journalists and government experts all discuss their experiences at the dark heart of American news.
The overwhelming power of these private corporations has come through a series of important political handouts by government throughout US history, especially in the last 30 years. Stories of corporate distortions winning out over fundamental media values are laid wide open in this critically acclaimed film.
Shadows of Liberty
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/163160/Shadows_of_Liberty/
Meanwhile the EU has unveiled its future plans to force manufacturers to install yet more in the name of safety:
http://www.roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/3556.html
Anyway, I like the ad (hybrid cars) at the top of thread. Cool enough looking image.
You’re dong good with your ads, imho.
Especially with the one that says, “Find Out Why China Is Hoarding Gold” Well, hell yeah people should be learning about the “Why” of that!
Hmm, maybe except for the Clovers of the world, they should ignore that shtuff.
Bury lots of Dollars in #10 cans, Clover! Love your empire., and all the boots that go with it.
Here is the reality of Clover and Gil’s relationship with the government minus their lies:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/yZ4w41ZYY9A/maxresdefault.jpg
Somehow, they think if they pretend long enough that they became federal fuck toys of the government on purpose, we’ll start to believe them.
#livestockholmsyndrome #femmefederal
Good stuff (as always) Tor!
Of course, Clover-Gil believe they’ll be the Tops in this relationship… and we’ll be their Bottoms.
re this: “Your belief – your worry – that my “speeding” might result in a wreck is merely your belief. It carries no weight, because the actuality is I haven’t harmed anyone.
And unless I have harmed someone, punishing me is unjust.”
I think this is an overly broad assertion. It is akin to arguing that if someone loads a revolver with one (or five) bullets and puts the gun to my head and pulls the trigger — once — and no harm came to me because that was one of the empty chambers, that this does not constitute aggression.
So, let me define what I think would be a very libertarian definition how to handle “speeding” on a roadway — all the roads would be privately owned, and the owners could choose to decide how to define and enforce unsafe driving. Some owners might try to opt for the current government roads option of setting an absurdly low speed limit and enforcing it for anyone who goes 10-15 MPH over the speed limit. Some owners might set very high speed limits, and then only enforce those if their employees also observe what they define as reckless driving. Some might set no speed limits at all, but reserve the right to prohibit drivers from their roads with a history of accidents or reckless driving or complaints from other drivers.
And then the marketplace of customers choosing between road providers would result in a mix of enforcement rules reflecting what the drivers actually value in terms of the tradeoff between driver safety and minimizing commute times and maximizing driving pleasure.
Speeding is the cause of some very tiny number of crashes, of those they are usually single vehicle.
Speeding is a contributing factor to the severity of the crash, not the cause of it. But since we live in a society that has deemed crashes to be unavoidable acts of god/nature/aliens/whathaveyou, the focus is on the severity of the crash rather than the crash itself.
This results in misleading lines of thought like yours above. That someone exceeding government’s number on a sign is at least analogous to someone putting a gun to your head. Let me replace it with something is analogous:
Let’s say I am riding my bicycle on a four lane road. Eric is approaching me from behind going 80mph faster than I am. He puts on his signal and moves to the left lane and passes by. There is no issue. none. Zero. Alternatively Clover approaches me from behind doing 35mph faster than me, the posted 55mph speed limit. Clover can’t be bothered to move over and Clover passes me with six inches of clearance, which I created by moving further to the right upon hearing Clover’s approach. Which one of these is aggression? Who put my life in danger? Was it Eric driving 100mph or Clover driving 55mph?
Speeding is quite irrelevant to the question of aggression and usually irrelevant to risk. Someone may be going too fast for conditions, but that’s something different from speeding.
Hi Jim,
I agree that much of the problem arises from the notion of “public” property – an oxymoron, if ever there was one. If we had privately owned roads, the owners would have every right to set whatever speed limits (if any) they deemed appropriate – for whatever reason.
Clover could then own – or drive on – roads where the speed limit was 55 MPH.
I could own – or drive on – roads with no speed limits whatsoever; where drivers could drive at whatever speed they felt comfortable driving.
Neither of us could dictate to the other – nor punish the other.
That’s the way it ought to be.
In re your “overly broad assertion” comment:
Equating pointing a lethal weapon at someone (malice, intent to kill) with driving faster than a number posited by a bureaucrat makes no sense to me. I see no equivalence. Pointing a loaded gun at you is dangerous – objectively, lethally dangerous. Driving 80 MPH in a 55 zone?
C’mon.
The clarity of the Libertarian position on this issue – there must be tangible evidence that a specific harm has been caused – is very appealing to me, in part because it firmly stands as a shield protecting people from endless micromanagement by Clovers on the basis of “might” and “what if.”
The Libertarian accepts, openly, that life is imperfect, that risk exists; that occasionally, people will make mistakes – and even do bad things on purpose.
But he does not take the Cloveritic position – the hopeless position – that risk can be eliminated and that any step in that direction, no matter how vague or theoretical, justifies any limitation of the individual’s liberty, any punishment – even in the absence of any harm caused.
This is a great post. The sad part is that when you say that most people just laugh rather than taking it seriously like they should.
Ill second the above. The last paragraph of your post Eric is the definition of the victimless “crime”.
A Clover/statist mantra: “”We do have the stick if people don’t get it,” said Kim Loeb, natural resource conservation manager in Visalia, a city of 120,000 people that has hired a part-time worker for night patrols and reduced the number of warnings from two to one before issuing $100 fines.”
A few California cities start water-waste patrols
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_DROUGHT_WATER_PATROLS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-27-16-05-36
Clover government and taxpayer funded N.G.O. do-gooders strike again.
First (back in the day) they built dams to hold the snow melt, that farmers used to grow food you eat all summer ling. Things like oranges, watermelons, lemons, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, peaches, grapes and such.
Everything worked pretty well until Clover declded the dams and food growers bad, and created a law to give the water to some minnow fish no one eats. As an aside Clover is actively trying to dismantle the storage dams altogether because salmon fish have a hard time getting around them.
So now the farmers former irrigation water goes into Montery and San Francisco bay. The farmers pay big bucks to drill wells and electricity to irrigate some of the crops. Thousands of acres of formerly productive land is left a barren desert looking place for lack of reasonably priced water, food costs nationwide skyrocket, and the water table shrinks. The minnow could care less, but Clover looks at his work and is happy for a little while, until the usual drought years come. No no water for the humans, and the humans are bitching to Clover to fix it. The minnow could care less.
So Clover’s solution to the Clover induced disaster: Pay government workers to burn gas in government vehicles to tell people not to use the water clover has restricted for humans, but has sent to the minnow on its way to the ocean.
And clover thinks libertarians are evil? Enjoy your grocery bill Clover.
Really, Gil?
You actually believe that driving faster than a number on a sign and pointing a loaded firearm at someone are equivalent?
I suppose you do.
Poor ol’ Clover.
eric,
i know sometimes things can be learned from discussions with these mouthbreathers but arguing with them is often like playing chess with a pigeon.
http://thestrangestbrew.com/?p=9181
Why? Harm can only be defined when physical damage has been done. Claiming hurt sensibilities doesn’t count. You claim it’s okay because you haven’t harmed anything yet. You get a free pass to engage in dangerous behaviour so should others get to pick what they want.
If both parties consent to playing Russian Roulette, should that be illegal? I say no.
That said, I think what Gil is getting at is pointing a gun at someone and missing vs driving too fast and just so happening not to kill somebody. I don’t see how this is really comparable though, at least not in the vast majority of instances.
Eric doesn’t feel he has to get consent from other drivers and only feels his behaviour is only wrong until something physically goes wrong. Hence any behaviour that incurs no physical harm cannot be stopped.
You don’t like it that something that seems intimidating so it violates the N.A.P.? Your neighbour is stockpiling dynamite in his basement and should it suddenly ignite then you’re going to die? So what? Your rights haven’t been violated yet. You don’t like it that Muslim immigrants hold an extremist violent views about non-Muslims and are moving into your neighbourhood and are fast becoming a close-knit local majority? Until they engage in violence then they be as ideological extremist as they like. Eric and co. want to drive at any speed they like and others don’t like that because it makes traffic randomly dangerous? Aw suck it cupcake.
Notice how clover and gil never got the memo?
They keep force fitting life under free market anarchism into the old obsolete unworkable statist framework.
They haven’t figured out that under a free market anarchist system, private entrepreneurs would establish health and safety rules for their own updated versions of “gated communities.”
People would get to live in communities whose health and safety rules met their requirements.
Just like private schooling. Religious parents would send their kids to parochial schools. Secular parents to secular schools.
No, Clover – it’s not that I “only feels his behaviour is only wrong until something physically goes wrong.”
It’s that I don’t accept your feelings as a legitimate basis to do me violence. That you feel I’m driving “too fast.” And so on.
The objective fact is, I haven’t harmed anyone – yet I “speed” literally every time I drive. And I’ve been driving – and “speeding” for decades.
This is pretty compelling evidence that my “speeding” is no threat to anyone.
Yes, I might wreck. So might you. “Speed” is only one of many potential variables. It may very well be that you are more likely to wreck than I while driving below the speed limit than I am while driving faster – because I might be a better driver than you are.
But the point is, using might rather than did cause harm as the basis for interfering with other people is to create a Soviet society, in which anything and everything is at least in principle open to control and regulation – that is, to coercion. Threat and force. Administered not by some holy entity possessed of superior wisdom and moral judgment. But just other people.
You have no more right to deploy violence against me than I have to deploy it against you – whether you call yourself “Gil” – or government.
Eric you are exactly like the race car driver that killed himself and another person in Santa Clarita. Yes he was probably one of the most capable drivers in the USA and probably a lot better than you but with his actions he degraded his driving to among the worst in the country. Is that a smart thing and a libertarian thing to do?
It’s a tired – and silly – analogy.
If I point a gun at you, I have demonstrated intent to kill; if I fire the gun, I have attempted to kill you. Because a gun is a lethal weapon. The only way one can claim no intent to kill is to claim one does not know what a gun is – as, for instance, in the case of a 5-year-old child who accidentally found Daddy’s gun and shot someone with it. That would be an accident. But a 15-year-old who shoots Daddy? Murder.
A car can used as a lethal weapon, certainly. But that’s not what it is. And the act of driving it faster than a bureaucratically decreed maximum velocity is no more equivalent to pointing a loaded gun at someone and pulling the trigger than asking a girl out on a date is equivalent to rape.
Clover –
When a gun is pointed at another person, lethal violence is intended and necessarily (by definition) threatened. Those two elements constitute an act of aggression, against which the use of violence in self-defense is permissible.
Driving over a bureaucratically posited velocity isn’t “pointing” anything at anyone. The car is merely traveling at a certain velocity.
No lethal violence is intended, nor necessarily threatened.
To equate mere velocity – exceeding an arbitrarily posted maximum – with intent to kill (or necessary likelihood of killing) is absurd.
I’m betting you “speed,” too. Everyone “speeds.”
Do you put yourself in the same category as the person who points a loaded pistol at someone and pulls the trigger?
If so, you must feel awfully guilty.
Clover – I’ve repeatedly explained the objective standard (and differences) to you. Not gonna do it over and over.
When you point a lethal weapon at someone, you are clearly threatening to do them lethal violence.
A car is not a lethal weapon (as such). Nor is exceeding a bureaucratically decreed speed limit a violent act.
What you’re trying to do is package deal “speeding” (exceeding a bureaucratically decreed velocity) with dangerous driving – which is nonsense.
And then, to equate “speeding” with pointing loaded guns at people. Which is even more nonsensical.
Well, I guess Clover considers doctors, big pharmaceutical companies, and the FDA to be ‘lethal weapons’ because their actions kill far more people than those killed in car wrecks.
I’ll bet that just makes his/her/its brain hurt just to think about it.
Anyway, it’s time for me to shower, in my bathtub, which I’m sure the Clovers of the world think of as a ‘lethal weapon’, after all, more people die in bathtubs than they do from shark attacks. [Do I need a bathtub permit to take a shower? Or, do I just need a bathtub speed monitor?] Which reminds me, more people die from pig attacks than they do from shark attacks, does that mean pigs are lethal weapons, too?
More and more everyday, the Clovers of the world are turning the earth into Bizarro World.
Another interesting one- what got me from here is why they so oppose tinted windows:
http://www.northjersey.com/news/road-warrior-figures-show-no-rise-in-crashes-after-safety-inspection-changes-1.1004074?page=all
“Tinted windows make it harder for us to see inside a car for violations, like seat belts and handheld phones,” Pepe explained. Creepy.
What Eric’s position boils down to is that he gets to drive unrestricted in ways which stand a fair chance of eventually killing/maiming someone and then walking away after paying some chum change weregild comfortably within his ability to afford. That I will never accept. Kill one of mine and the only possible payback is the Life of the perp. If the State is not there to do the collecting then any personal moral restraint from collecting the Debt privately is also gone.
Nope hiding behind the so called NAP would not be permitted to those owing a Life for a Life.
MIke,
You’d be well within your rights to expect the full measure of justice were a reckless act of mine to cause the death of someone you cared for. Anyone, for that matter.
But you have no right to impose your subjective, arbitrary conceptions on me when I’ve caused neither you nor anyone else any harm. Such as “speeding,” for instance.
A rant is on its way soon.
MikeFromCan’sAss – An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth eh? Then you want a whole world of blind people unable to eat anything other than pabulum do you? If Eric, or I, or Clover for that matter, does demonstrable harm to another person (i.e. a real person, not “the state” or a “corporation”) then we / they should be held personally accountable. That means we / they are obliged to make reparations to the victim for real crimes; not that we should pay a “fine” to the state or spend time in a cage (other than to force the aggressor to pay reparations to the victim) for a civil or criminal infraction. What has happened to our country is it has morphed into Amerika; the state steps in to collect damages when an “infraction” occurs (i.e. the state steals). Not to see to it that the victim(s) of a real crime are compensated. The bureaucrats are self serving at the expense of the widows and orphans. Read Luke chapter 11 sometime and pray for comprehension.
Let’s say a couple of youngsters on 600cc sport bikes “breeze” the old man on his Z-1000 at about a buck twenty. And let’s say the old man hands them their ass at about a buck forty and they decide to try to keep up…and find out they can’t at around a buck fifty. And let’s say one of them wipes out and breaks his neck. Is that the old man’s fault for leaving them behind and their testosterone get’s the better of them (putting wisdom and prudence aside for the moment) and they try anyway? I say NO, because it is their individual choice to do something stupid and dangerous. In fact, this is how Nature weeds out the stupid ones from the herd.
Now; if any one of them rides beyond their ability and hits an innocent bystander and does them harm, then the aggressor is liable. These are very simple concepts that comport with what the founders intended. If you don’t like that then either (A) attempt to amend the Constitution, or (B) move to the UK. But otherwise understand that life if risky; often outright dangerous and no one’s going to take care of you but yourself. Here in America we were granted the most precious gift as a birthright: Liberty. It can be dangerous and messy, but it is priceless nonetheless. If you run counter to that, then you need to understand that you are my (and many others’ who frequent this venue) enemy. Choose your battles wisely my friend or you will lose in the long run.
One question Boothe, tell me why a person can injure me just because you say he has the right to drive dangerously? Our laws are set up to limit the risk of possible danger to others on the roadway. What gives you the right to increase that risk to others which often injures others? The libertarian motto is that you can do whatever you want as long as it does not injure others. Driving in a dangerous manner does injure others often.
With your views it is OK to shoot a gun in someone’s direction and only be held responsible if it hits the guy. If you have a gun in your hand and follow the law and do not point it and shoot in someone’s direction the chances of injury or death is very very low. What gives the libertarian the right to in effect shoot the gun towards someone to increase their risk? The law says it is fine to shoot a gun if you do it in a responsible manner. The same thing goes for driving a car. Driving in a dangerous manner risking life or injury to others is not a responsible manner. The true libertarian would say it is fine to shoot a gun as long as it is done responsibly.
Dear clover,
Is there no end to your straw man arguments???
http://thefiringline.com/Misc/safetyrules.html
Jeff Cooper’s Rules of Gun Safety
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
There are no exceptions. Do not pretend that this is true. Some people and organizations take this rule and weaken it;e.g. “Treat all guns as if they were loaded.” Unfortunately, the “as if” compromises the directness of the statement by implying that they are unloaded, but we will treat them as though they are loaded. No good! Safety rules must be worded forcefully so that they are never treated lightly or reduced to partial compliance.
All guns are always loaded – period!
This must be your mind-set. If someone hands you a firearm and says, “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded,” you do not dare believe him. You need not be impolite, but check it yourself. Remember, there are no accidents, only negligent acts. Check it. Do not let yourself fall prey to a situation where you might feel compelled to squeal, “I didn’t know it was loaded!”
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
Conspicuously and continuously violated, especially with pistols, Rule II applies whether you are involved in range practice, daily carry, or examination. If the weapon is assembled and in someone’s hands, it is capable of being discharged. A firearm holstered properly, lying on a table, or placed in a scabbard is of no danger to anyone. Only when handled is there a need for concern. This rule applies to fighting as well as to daily handling. If you are not willing to take a human life, do not cover a person with the muzzle. This rule also applies to your own person. Do not allow the muzzle to cover your extremities, e.g. using both hands to reholster the pistol. This practice is unsound, both procedurally and tactically. You may need a free hand for something important. Proper holster design should provide for one-handed holstering, so avoid holsters which collapse after withdrawing the pistol. (Note: It is dangerous to push the muzzle against the inside edge of the holster nearest the body to “open” it since this results in your pointing the pistol at your midsection.) Dry-practice in the home is a worthwhile habit and it will result in more deeply programmed reflexes. Most of the reflexes involved in the Modern Technique do not require that a shot be fired. Particular procedures for dry-firing in the home will be covered later. Let it suffice for now that you do not dry-fire using a “target” that you wish not to see destroyed. (Recall RULE I as well.)
Rule III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
Rule III is violated most anytime the uneducated person handles a firearm. Whether on TV, in the theaters, or at the range, people seem fascinated with having their finger on the trigger. Never stand or walk around with your finger on the trigger. It is unprofessional, dangerous, and, perhaps most damaging to the psyche, it is klutzy looking. Never fire a shot unless the sights are superimposed on the target and you have made a conscious decision to fire. Firing an unaligned pistol in a fight gains nothing. If you believe that the defensive pistol is only an intimidation tool – not something to be used – carry blanks, or better yet, reevaluate having one around. If you are going to launch a projectile, it had best be directed purposely. Danger abounds if you allow your finger to dawdle inside the trigger guard. As soon as the sights leave the target, the trigger-finger leaves the trigger and straightens alongside the frame. Since the hand normally prefers to work as a unit – as in grasping – separating the function of the trigger-finger from the rest of the hand takes effort. The five-finger grasp is a deeply programmed reflex. Under sufficient stress, and with the finger already placed on the trigger, an unexpected movement, misstep or surprise could result in a negligent discharge. Speed cannot be gained from such a premature placement of the trigger-finger. Bringing the sights to bear on the target, whether from the holster or the Guard Position, takes more time than that required for moving the trigger finger an inch or so to the trigger.
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
Know what it is, what is in line with it, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything you have not positively identified. Be aware of your surroundings, whether on the range or in a fight. Do not assume anything. Know what you are doing.
SUMMARY:
Make these rules a part of your character. Never compromise them. Improper gunhandling results from ignorance and improper role modeling, such as handling your gun like your favorite actor does. Education can cure this. You can make a difference by following these gunhandling rules and insisting that those around you do the same. Set the example. Who knows what tragedies you, or someone you influence, may prevent?
Excerpted from: The Modern Technique of the Pistol, by Greg Morrison, Gunsite Press, Paulden, Arizona, ISBN 0-9621342-3-6, Library of Congress Number 91-72644, $40
Bevin – Thanks. That is the basic credo of gun handling my dad drilled into us as soon as we were old enough to understand. Hence no one in my family has ever suffered an injury from negligent discharge.
Clover – Actually, if there were a “libertarian motto”, it would be the Non-aggression Principle. How many times have other people passed you clover? C’mon, how many? And of all those times, how many times were you injured by it? The short answer is you never were. If someone side-swiped you or rear-ended you then perhaps you did suffer an injury or at least a loss of property. But the mere act of someone else exceeding an arbitrary velocity to go around you has never done you, me or anyone else harm. It might not be a good idea to exceed a given velocity under specific road conditions at a particular time. It may even increase the risk that a negligent act will occur. But until someone actually suffers injury or can show intent that you were willfully attempting to injure them then NO crime has been committed. Consequently most driving “infractions” are civil rather than criminal matters (i.e. a means to collect additional revenue for the state).
Pointing a loaded gun at someone and pulling the trigger, whether you hit them or not, is a different matter altogether and I suspect you know that. In my case, and probably numerous others’ here, you may get immediate negative (and possibly fatal) feedback the same as if you attempt to run over one of us with your car. As Bevin so aptly and thoroughly pointed out, responsible gun handling never involves pointing ANY firearm at a target one does not wish to destroy. Someone overtaking you on the road at a higher velocity than you are traveling does not involve pointing their vehicle at you; they are directing the vehicle around you. And if you (or anyone else) is not present on the road, then the mere act of exceeding an arbitrary velocity carries absolutely no risk for anyone but the person doing it so there clearly is no crime being committed.
My original point was if someone else sees you, me or anyone else traveling at a given speed, decides to try it too, can’t handle their vehicle and wrecks, that’s their own fault. And if they injure someone else while doing so then they should be held responsible. Speed limits do nothing to dissuade those people from irresponsible behavior who are prone to it, no more than statutes against gun ownership (or even against murder itself) prevent murder. Self control and common sense are what prevent negligent behavior and crime, not written laws.
You don’t like the idea that fewer traffic controls lead to safer roads (it has been proven in Europe, and right here as BrentP pointed out). People are forced to think for themselves, pay attention and interact more closely with others when there are fewer signs, lights and markers, resulting in more careful driving; rather than just mindlessly responding to external stimuli like a flat worm. That’s counter-intuitive to your control freak nature isn’t it clover? You want hard fast rules that you can see, hear and smell because what you don’t have is self control and you don’t want to expend the energy to think for yourself. Since you are so dense, you figure everyone else must be just like you. You’re that demented first grade teacher who believes that if Johnny talks out of turn the whole class must be punished instead of just Johnny. You are a collectivist’s collectivist and a truly pitiable creature.
Dear Boothe,
“Someone overtaking you on the road at a higher velocity than you are traveling does not involve pointing their vehicle at you; they are directing the vehicle around you. ”
Quite right.
Clover repeatedly resorts to ludicrous non sequiteur arguments.
In fact, in the case of drivers attempting to pass clovers, the person who recklessly endangers others is usually none other than clover himself.
Clovers often take it upon themselves to enforce speed limits.
1. They sometimes do this by deliberately speeding up while in the right hand lane, making it more dangerous for those attempting to pass, especially on an undivided highway.
2. They sometimes do this by repeatedly changing lanes, creating a moving roadblock, artificially creating pockets of congestion, which put everyone in the vicinity at risk from a chain collision.
If anything, the clovers are the counterparts of unsafe gun handlers, not ordinary drivers who merely want to travel at a speed higher than the clover considers “acceptable.”
Boothe you are right that no one injured me by passing me. They injured and killed others instead. I had a lot of time waiting and thinking about it while I spent a few hours for them to haul away the bodies. Yes I was not physically injured by passing but I have had to slam on the brakes a few times and once went off the road by a hand full of idiots passing in a no passing blind zones. Yes I have never been injured but a lot of people have tried. Yes people do not treat their car like it is a loaded gun. Maybe they should? Would you hand a drunk a loaded gun?
Clover I have witnessed numerous incidents where other drivers have done really stupid things. Many of them didn’t involve speed, but they all involved poor driving skills, inattention or taking unnecessary risks. I’ve had people attempt to pass me when they couldn’t see or didn’t have enough room. Guess what? I slowed down and let them go on. I didn’t speed up and try to pace them like your ilk does, just so I “could show them.”
Last year I came head long into a situation where a dude with two kids in the truck with him was passing another vehicle cresting a blind hill. I had to come nearly a complete stop and pull my bike of the side of the road to avoid getting hit. He gave me a sheepish grin and waved. I didn’t flip him off or follow him; I just shook my head and went on. I was watching what I was doing at the time and avoided a collision that would arguably have been his fault; no harm done. What he did was stupid, but I saw no need to chase him down, take down his plate number and call the cops. Don’t get me wrong, it irritated me, especially setting that example for the kiddies, but he didn’t injure me. And if he’s the kind of person that drives and lives that way all the time, one more ticket won’t fix it.
So what would you want in situation like that Clover? Maybe have the cops give him a “wood shampoo”? Lock him up and put the kids in foster homes? Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe the kids missed the bus and he was hurrying to get them to school and decided to test the theory that the stretch of rural road we were on is mostly deserted that time of morning. I don’t know. What I do know is no law, no sign and apparently no common sense stopped this random act of stupidity. And no subsequent random act of violence could correct it. We’ve all made mistakes, sometimes really dangerous ones. If you’ve been driving any time at all, so have you. If you tell me that in all your years of driving you’ve never done something stupid, miscalculated or otherwise erred, then we all know you’re a liar.
But if you intentionally try to run me down, run me off the road or otherwise use your vehicle as a weapon against me, that’s a totally different matter. It’s no different than pointing a gun at me or swinging a ball bat at my head, whether you connect or not. At that point you’ve committed an act of violence and you can expect reprisal. In fact, if I’m passing you and have plenty of room until you decide to speed up and pace me, then once again you are the aggressor. I may decide to slow way down and cede the point to you. Or I may just decide to cut your stupid ass off and if you hit the ditch so be it. Because once you violate my rights and aggress against me, which is what you’re doing if you try to hold me in the passing lane with oncoming traffic, you implicitly forfeit your own rights. That is the same as pointing a gun at me. All bets are off, I will defend myself and let the chips fall where they may. You think about that the next time you attempt to pace or lane block someone that’s passing you regardless of what you think their speed should be. You may just get what every nosy-busy body self-appointed precrime custodian of “the law” so richly deserves.
Speaking of stupid….
http://jalopnik.com/holy-crap-i-cant-believe-this-motorcycle-rider-survived-1569371640
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FtbMr-hElDY
@BrentP – Speaking of stupid….
Nothing like recording your own demise for the insurance company to cancel you with. LOL
Clover, no one here says ” a person can injure me just because you say he has the right to drive dangerously?”
We do not advocate injuring anyone. Hasn’t that been made clear to you yet? You’re the one who constantly advocated injuring other people – by threatening to do them violence if they don’t do as you and your kind decree.
We advocate that people be held responsible for what they do. So, if someone does injure you, then they should be held responsible.
You want to punish people who’ve not injured you – on the basis of your entirely subjective, arbitrary opinion as to what constitutes “dangerous driving.” You hold that my driving faster than a bureaucrat decrees is “dangerous” – and yet, I have managed to not harm a soul. Over the course of decades of “speeding.”
How can this be, Clover?
Let’s say a reckless 17 year old boy killed your Mother. It was totally his fault, he was driving 120mph in a residential neighborhood because he had just got in a fight with his girlfriend and he was in an uncontrollable rage.
He lost control of his vehicle and left the roadway and killed her instantly in her own driveway.
How are you better off if they lock the kid up for life. Kill him in a gas chamber. Hang him from the neck from a construction crane in front of the whole neighborhood like they do in Iran.
Isn’t it a fact that there is no way for him to repay you for what he’s done. Wouldn’t financial payment at least be of some limited use to you. Wouldn’t making him spend the rest of his life working for your family be at least some kind of justice?
The NAP doesn’t really fit into the kind of primitive society we currently live under. It requires a complete overhaul of everything we currently practice.
In a NAP and self-ownership system, there would be responsibility parties, and there would be actions taken to reduce risk.
Perhaps the road could be deepened so there was no way for a car to get into a yard. There are no absolute victims, your deceased Mother would also have been considered to have failed to protect her own life. What could she have done to not get hit by the driver.
The point is, we are free to imagine a better world for ourselves. We need not think like helpless victims, the answers are all right there, if only we look for them and find a way to make tomorrow a little bit better day than yesterday.
Clover,
I want you to have things your way. Eric to have things his way. And me to have things my way. Why won’t you agree to that?
This is a very large world. There are all kinds of other animals living in all kinds of ways, and they all manage to live together. Why can’t you allow each man the same freedom to live how he wants?
When we’re in your vicinity, we’ll abide by your wishes. When you’re in our vicinity, you’ll abide by our wishes. Simple.
Stop believing in the tyrants who are in power, and have nothing but contempt for everyone. We will all be better off when we start respecting each other and cooperating with each other.
But, Clover – the issue is that people who aren’t drunk are treated as presumptively “drunk”! They are forced to stop – at gunpoint – and made to prove to the satisfaction of a cop that they “haven’t been drinking.”
You favor this with – with regard to “drunks.” That is, you think it’s ok to force every driver on a given road to stop and prove he’s not “drunk” in the name of possibly catching someone who is.
Ok. Please explain why you shouldn’t be forced at gunpoint to prove you’re not a child molester? After all, there are certainly child molesters out there. They’re a danger to kids, to society. You might be a child molester. Anyone might be!
Using the same logic as you’ve used to defend treating random drivers as presumptively “drunk,” I think (for the sake of argument) everyone should be treated as a presumptive pederast – until they prove they’re not.
Explain why they shouldn’t be so treated, Clover.
Dear Eric,
Exactly right.
Consider airline security measures against terrorists and hijackers. The goonvermin have arrogated to themselves the right to dictate what other people must accept as “safe,” i.e., “safe enough.” They have imposed a one size fits all policy under which everyone must prove to these self-appointed tyrants that he or she is not a terrorist or hijacker.
But consider this.
Suppose the airlines offered sensible, pre-9/11 “traditional level security flights?” The airline would announce in advance that it is willing to bear the allegedly increased risk that its plane would be hijacked. Passengers who booked seats on such flights would do so on the understanding “caveat emptor.”
Would the goonvermin ever allow airlines and passengers to assume the risk for their own lives and property under such terms?
Are you kidding me? Of course they wouldn’t! Clover goonvermin are controlling sociopaths whose overweening obsession is controlling other peoples’ behavior. They aren’t about to let people get away with exercising his or her personal discretion so easily. No way, Jose.
No Eric you are wrong. Treating someone as drunk is having them get out of their car, doing multiple tests and if you fail them they have their breath tested for proof of what they already know.
Having someone stopped at a checkpoint is no different than having them stop at a stop sign or stop light. I know, you blow through those also.
The police do not have to find a drunk in a checkpoint for it to work. Just the threat of having one keeps the drunks off the road.
Well, Clover, then would you object to being stopped – at gunpoint – while walking down the street, minding your own business, giving no one any cause to suspect you of any crime – and given a “quick inspection” by a cop, just to make sure you weren’t a child molester? Or perhaps an escaped con? Or whatever the excuse du jour happens to be?
How is this any different – in principle – from forcing people to stop and submit to a “quick inspection” by a cop to prove to his satisfaction that they’re not “drunk”?
The answer is, it isn’t different.
The principle is exactly the same.
As you see it, probable cause is too high a threshold for police – the men with guns and the legal power to use them to compel submission. The mere possibility that “someone” might be guilty of “x” – be it “drunk” driving or any other thing – is ample justification, as you see it, to forcibly stop/inspect people. To put them in the position of having to prove they’re not guilty of whatever “x” is.
Therefore, using your own sick logic, it would be justifiable to randomly stop pedestrians, in order to make sure they’re not (place “x” crime here). To have cops randomly “check” homes… have our crotches felt at the airport… and so on.
You’ve thrown the entire Bill of Rights, the entire legacy of Western civilization, in the woods… .
Because you think the men with guns can be trusted. That they would never expand their arbitrary authority beyond what you’re comfortable with.
But have you ever stopped to think how you might stop them, in that case? What would your argument be?
Having surrendered the principle, Clover, you’ve got no argument.
There is nothing to stop the men with guns from doing – literally – anything. All they need to do is cite “safety” – or that they are looking for/trying to prevent (insert amorphous whatever-it-is here) and you’re on the hook.
But you think only we’re on the hook. Us “dangerous speeders” and “drunks.”
One day, you’ll learn a hard truth, Clover.
I just hope I’ll be there to witness it. And not lift a finger to help.
Eric if you disagree that we should check to make sure you are safe to be on the road then I would guess you disagree with all driving tests to get your license. I would guess that even though you have a cow having older drivers out there that may not be capable of driving, that you would be against having them tested every year or two. I would guess you would be against a written test to get your license also. I would also guess that you are fine with a 10 year old kid driving also. Do you believe in any tests to be able to be on the road?
Well, Clover, there is DNA testing.
Clearly, you should be swabbed. Everyone should be swabbed. At gunpoint. After all, anyone might be a rapist.
Same goes for searching your home and computer. Might be evidence of pederasty – and anyone might be a pederast.
And back to driving: Why are you so fixated on alcohol? There are numerous other ways drivers might be impaired, yet you seem to be unconcerned about them. Why not have “vision” checkpoints, Clover? Just because you passed an eye test two years ago doesn’t mean your vision’s ok right now. You might not be “safe” to drive! Same goes for mental acuity, physical reflexes… just for openers.
Where does it end, Clover?
And how?
Why?
Clover, I am sure someone can create yet another quack device for law enforcement for that purpose. Lie detectors, radar guns, breathalyzers, etc and so on are all basically quack devices. The human animal hasn’t changed, just the way he believes in wizards have.
Anyone who really understands technology knows that as these devices are simply crap. They can give the operator whatever value the operator wants out of them.
WHoa, Clover! Attacking the driving abilities of 10 year olds? I can see you have zero familiarity with rural life in much of North America, and South America, and Africa, and Asia, and … Well, the whole got-damn world.
There’s plenty of farm boys (and girls) that I imagine would put your driving abilities to shame. Not too mention some city folks that would make you look silly.
Test this? Test that? There’s plenty of stupid people that can pass your test. Your “test” means Jack Shit.
That’s a horror for you, isn’t it?… That your test means Jack?
It’s something you’re afraid to face.
Why are you so afraid?
Do you expect to live forever?
No, I expect it’s just your psychopathic desire to control others.
You did not answer my question about if you should be tested to get your license or if the elderly need to be retested?
What is it Eric, you always bring up extremes that never happen? Are you a paranoid psycho?
Clover,
I do not recommend dismissing your average 10yr driver so quickly. Some 10yr old children can drive very well.
Driving is a skill. Age is not some magic arbiter that decides who is able to drive and who can not drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_R0NE1XwKw
Regarding the ability to see while driving: Being able to see clearly has not stopped some adults from driving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pUvJCfRUUQ
Although you do bring up a good point that some people might be too short to drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WpXXoMTKhA
Not relevant, but I thought this guy did a very good Bob Marley parody while I was looking through the net.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMbTFNp4wI.
Dear MIW,
Major confusion regarding statist law vs. anarchist order. Authoritarians and sheeple equate law with order. Hence the phrase, “law and order.”
In fact, as anarchist theorists from Laozi to Proudhon have explicitly noted, “Anarchy is order, government is chaos.”
Tough talk about exacting revenge against Eric merely shows a serious lack of understanding of free market anarchism. In the absence of government, no one would be allowed to drive in an irresponsible manner on free market road systems.
Free market anarchism would meet public demands for safety far more efficiently than government. We know this because the free market always provides what people want, including safety. It always provides what people want, because if it doesn’t, it goes out of business.
In fact there are many examples of private individuals driving on private roads, with reasonable safety. Here is one.
Track Day Travel – Where to Drive Your Own Car on a Racetrack
Freddy Sherman
Jan 5, 2012
For travelers who love auto racing and cars, a vacation that includes a track day at a real racetrack can be fun for the whole family. A track day is when drivers can bring their own cars onto the racetrack to experience the thrill of racing or just high performance driving. Many racetracks offer tours of the facility and museums and other exhibits, making them great family destinations.
http://voices.yahoo.com/track-day-travel-where-drive-own-car-a-10761995.html
Ya gonna love this
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/apr/26/self-driving-self-parking-cars-sweden-video
On a more positive note, I noticed a popular song with the younger dudes (and dudettes) these days which has a very freedomista twang to it that the Clover’s of the world might fret at.
It’s a remake of an old Stones tune with a few added twists:
Soup Dragons – “I’m Free”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVGf3ePIO04
Here’s the lyrics:
http://www.songlyrics.com/soup-dragons/i-m-free-lyrics/
Ha! Young, or old, you might relate?
Eat That, Clover’s of the world, and all you Edward Rooney wanna be types!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_Bueller%27s_Day_Off
Imho, that’s the message 3/4 of my generation has for the world.
Uff Da, and leave me the Hell alone!
Whoops, that shoulda been, “Uff Da!”
Exclamation points are Very important!
Can ya hear me now!?
Uff Da! Clover.
Seaside Donkey: 1000 miles around Wales, with a donkey
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hannahme/seaside-donkey-1000-miles-around-wales-with-a-donk
England is inhabited by Germanic Saxons. It is in Cymru(Wales) that you’ll find the true Brits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j617mImHVvk
1000 BC
The story of Wales begins with the Celts. The Celts began migrating from their central European homeland around 1000 BC.
48AD
The recorded history of Wales begins with the arrival of the Romans on Welsh borders. At that time people spoke a Celtic language – Brythonic, the language that would eventually evolve into Welsh.
550
The Germanic Saxon advance resumes in Wales.
784
Offa, King of Mercia builds a dyke from sea to sea, the first permanent boundary between the Welsh and English people. Offa’s Dyke shaped the territory of Wales.
1066
The Normans invade England. Wales proves resistant to the Normans’ power and the Welsh rise in revolt. By 1100 the Normans had been driven out of Gwynedd, Ceredigion and most of Powys.
1176
Lord Rhys holds a grand gathering of poets and musicians from all over Wales at Cardigan Castle. This was known as the very first Eisteddfod, a Welsh festival of music and literature that is still held all across Wales today.
1283
Edward 1 orders the building of castles in Wales. Between 1276 and 1295 he built or repaired 17 castles. Today there are over 600 castles in Wales.
1400
National hero Owain Glyndŵr begins his rebellion against King Henry IV to establish an independent Wales.
1404
The castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth fall to Owain Glyndŵr. Soon after he calls his first Cynulliad or Parliament at Machynlleth and crowns himself Prince of Wales.
1415
Owain Glyndŵr disappears. After his defeat he was never captured. No-one knows for sure what became of him but hills, caves and churches across Wales are claimed to be his last resting place.
1536
Formerly, Welsh Law emphasized the payment of compensation for a crime to the victim, or the victim’s kin, rather than on punishment by the ruler. With the first Act of Union passed between England and Wales. Wales becomes united politically with England and is governed by English law.
1856
Evan James and James James of Pontypridd compose ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ (Land of my Fathers).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kUnCwV3AYE
1885
Dan Isaac Davies founds the first Welsh language society to protect one of the oldest languages in Europe and to promote the use of Welsh in education.
1916
David Lloyd George becomes the first Welsh Prime Minister of the UK. He was also the only Prime Minister to speak English as a second language, Welsh being his first.
1935
The first radio broadcast in Welsh is made. The BBC begins to broadcast Welsh language programs from their studio at Bangor, Gwynedd.
1953
Famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas dies in New York City at the age of 39. His best known works include ‘Under Milk Wood’ and ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’.
1955
Cardiff is officially declared capital of Wales. Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital city.
1977
BBC Radio Cymru, Wales’s Welsh language radio station, is launched.
1982
Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C), the Welsh language television station is opened. S4C now has an animation catalogue that is broadcast all over the world, and has had two Oscar nominations for ‘Famous Fred’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
1997
The Welsh public votes yes to the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales, allowing Wales to become a distinct constitutional entity within the UK for the first time in 40 years.
Wales – Beginnings & early history
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4RwFuL3V1k
And you thought it was just the American South West-
Britain is staggering under a Third World immigration invasion which, left unchecked, will see the extinction of British culture and the ethnic cleansing of British people from their ancient homeland.
https://www.bnp.org.uk/news/destruction-britains-culture-and-tower-babel
Alan Watt – Immigration tool for destruction of British culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3MB3-N_h8A
I’ve mostly lived in the center of the US. So, never much of a culture existed to overrun. Everyone keeps to themselves, and there isn’t any consensus culture to speak of.
Both East Coasters and Californians seem to be under enormous pressure self-imposed pressure and to be miserable most of the time. I can spot them a mile away, and I try to avoid them here as best I can.
I’ve never felt a part of anything like that, nor tried to contribute or cooperate. Maybe its a product of living in a high population density area, I’m not sure. I’ve never had an ounce of Michigan or Nevada pride ever.
I’ve never once worried about keeping things the way they are. Or of my weight or health. Or the Blacks or Mexicans taking over. Or American not being the best anymore. Or abortions being murder. Or slave nations taking our jobs. Or of comparing what I drive or do for a living with anybody else.
I don’t see what self-loathers have against Muslims. They are really just a less intense brand of Muslim as near as I can tell. It’s a type of racism really. There’s this racist pride they get in saying, I’m better than these other people which I’ve never felt. Africans and Mexicans are different without a doubt. I have no desire for them to change, only that they not force their way of life on me.
Prior to 1914, anyone in the world could get in a boat and go anywhere else in the world, and no one tried to stop them. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. Any system that needs a border is false progress, as far as I’m concerned. I’m for gated communities, but not for gated nations.
I guess I’m more of a backyard bbq or barfly libertarian. I worry about not being left alone to do what I want to do. I worry about losing control when out of my element and surrounded by power-tripping clovers.
I guess to some extent I need the rational productive type of Muslims around to keep the clover Muslims control freaks at bay.
From my perspective nearly all of you are inexplicable control freaks as well. But these Clovers really take the cake. They are out of control locusts whipped up into a frenzy. They won’t rest until they destroy every decent thing that exists for their asinine ideas that have not a single shred of merit or possibility of success whatsoever.
I’m Welsh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYxWY1r7BiM
With the exception of ‘worrying’ {maybe, ‘thinking about’?} abortion being murder, that was a kick ass post, Tor. And, Ha! ” From my perspective nearly all of you are inexplicable control freaks as well.”
Yes, but of course.
Especially in my household.
Beyond that, don’t fuck with we and I’ll let bygones be bygones.
Anyway, today was the first time I went fishing in about ten years.
I swore off fishing when, for three years in a row on The Fourth of July, I went fishing and was swarmed by “conservation” officers demanding my papers and wanting to inspect my property. It sickened me.
I missed fishing.
Even if you as a land owner invited me onto your private waters, “The State” demands that I buy a license from them.
Should I even mention how The State demands a landowner buys a hunting license to hunt deer or turkey on their own property and such like that? Or that The State will trespass on your property if they suspect I am violating their laws?
No, probably not. I imagine most know about the ridiculous demands The State makes.
It all seems like some bad dream,… or a bad joke. “You Cannot Take a frog across state lines!” It’s like, WTF? I can’t take a frog – A FROG – across state lines? Yeesh.
And, I have to pay extra if I want to fish with three fishing poles instead of one?
And, I have to dump out the water my minnows are in and replace it with tap water, or throw them in the trash?
The State, has gone mad.
And, it’s ruined the fishing.
I try not to think about it when I fish. …Then the DNR rolls by in their brand spanking New $30,000 SUV.
Bastards.
What was that eric was saying about, “fuck ’em, and feed ’em fish heads”?
Anyway, I don’t really know anyone who lives in another country, I’m just another native american’t. A.k.a., a helot.
Or, in fancy terms: an american helot.
Same as it ever was.
I’m just glad I’m an american Rothbardian helot and not like every other helot that walks by.
Whaddya mean Tor? Californians get along with everyone.
A cooling-off period has been called in the fight between the makers of Sriracha hot sauce and the Southern California city that says its air is too spicy to bear.
The Irwindale City Council delayed a decision for two weeks Wednesday night on declaring the Sriracha plant a public nuisance.
If the council had finalized its vote Wednesday, Huy Fong would have had 90 days to stop releasing the spicy emanations that neighbors say are burning their eyes and throats.
http://news.yahoo.com/2-week-truce-hot-sauce-maker-california-city-070956675.html
The jerks trying to ruin California are probably the same jerks who’ve ruined the formerly awesome East Coast. Perhaps Nevada could institute a no-fly-zone and help keep the jetset jerks away.
I must admit I am deeply prejudiced against the type of people who scurry along crowded sidewalks like mice. Who line up for things in a human maze trying to get the piece of cheese first by clawing and scratching at their fellow men.
Rats running at night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjYG2jj4PWw
Thousands Line Up Outside California Expo Gun Show to Buy Ammo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysYV6T5A-r4
Man Shoots Thief Dead Waiting In Line For LeBron Shoes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX9noPLh5uA
So now there’s going to be Six California states?
http://www.calbuzz.com/2014/04/why-six-flags-california-is-draper-madness/
Hi Tor I’m also part Welsh.
Quadcopter over the Black Mountains, Wales
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dspSRSPlu68
How To Speak With A Welsh Accent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq-mEejECcU
Welsh Slang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ombyklkifIc
Y Rohirrin MC Cymru, Ride of the rohirrin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te8zMYMUoKo
Biker Funeral of John F*#k eye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDcSWlzslyE
Lucie Jones From Pentyrch Audition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1tjyJHJYR8
Croeso i gymru
http://imgur.com/0x4kQtP
Well cmon when people mention 50 million- ie were there that many accidents in the first place??
Now here’s some arguments Clover will agree with from the other side of the Pond- Wales to be exact- notice the figures plucked out of the air:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/hundreds-risk-lives-ignoring-seatbelt-7030687 Paul Evans, Gwent Police Roads Policing Superintendent, said the campaign showed that “a significant number of motorists and passengers in Wales continue to ignore this simple road safety law and as a result put their lives at risk.
He said: “The action of putting on a seatbelt takes seconds, and its effectiveness should not be underestimated.”
Police say that the offence of not wearing a seatbelt is one of the “fatal five”, meaning the five offences that cause the most deaths on our roads.
The others are careless driving, speeding, drink-driving, and driving while on a mobile phone. Drivers or passengers who are caught without a seatbelt could face an on-the-spot fine of £100 and a maximum fine of £500 if prosecuted.
Philip Goose, senior community engagement officer at Brake, the road safety charity, said: “You are twice as likely to die in a crash if you are not wearing a seatbelt.
“It is estimated that between 1983 when seatbelts were made compulsory and 2010 over 50 million lives have been saved.”
other side of the pond? way to sound gayer than a bag of dicks!
gnomesayin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN8VOsJCJLk
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/michael-s-rozeff/a-do-good-state/
Everything Clover is incapable of comprehending, all in one convenient place.
Despite your handicap, you should still give it a try Clover.
Another one of Clover’s favorite refrains is ‘you gotta pay yer taxes.’ Clover’s rationale on that front is that if armed government functionaries weren’t present to force everyone to hand over a portion of the fruits of their labor there wouldn’t be any rail lines, highways, bridges, defense forces, charity, mail service, etc. So let’s explore that line of thought.
A classic example of Cloverian doublethink on tax funded public works is exemplified by gun-vernment intervention in 19th century U.S. railroads: They were notoriously overpriced, poorly built, fraught with corruption and cronyism and put the taxpayer on the hook for it all. Even our illustrious King Lincoln was a “railroad lawyer” and worse yet, Thomas Durant’s chief lobbyist. After Lincoln was elected president, he decided that the Union Pacific terminus would be Council Bluffs, Iowa greatly benefiting Durant. Since the government (i.e. the taxpayer) was footing the bill, corruption was widespread to say the least.
The Union Pacific brass formed a construction company named Credit Mobilier and then essentially hired themselves to build the rail line for obscene “profits.” This boondoggle bilked the taxpayers out of $72 million for a rail line that only cost $53 million to build. The Credit Mobilier scandal was arguably the worst scandal of the 19th century. We haven’t even scratched the surface on the railroad / gun-vernment collusion in destroying the bison herds, exterminating the Plains Indians and stealing people’s land through eminent domain.
Yet somehow, some way, James J. Hill was able to build the Great Northern Railroad without the force of government, without stealing land nor killing Indians and did it profitably with private capital. In fact the entire British rail system was built with private funds. If you want something done efficiently, economically and quickly, you let private enterprise do it. History shows us beyond a doubt what gun-vernment does well; they break things, steal, hurt and all too often kill people.
Don’t forget about the safety of those early railroads! 🙂
Ever notice that everything too trivial for government to bother with runs smoothly and everything too important to leave to the free market is fraught with problems?
The less government there is the more people get for their money too.
“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.”
— Charles Bukowski
“To exist is to defy all that threatens you. To be a rebel is not to accumulate a library of subversive books or to dream of fantastic conspiracies or of taking to the hills. It is to make yourself your own law. To find in yourself what counts. To make sure that you’re never “cured” of your youth. To prefer to put everyone up against the wall rather than to remain supine. To pillage whatever can be converted to your law, without concern for appearance.”
— Dominique Venner
“I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude.” ~ Khalil Gibran
“Here is a man who spends his life cheating, stealing and robbing others. Is there something in nature which decrees that sooner or later he will suffer for these negative and unwanted actions? Studies indicate that there is no natural retaliation. While it may be true that some thieves will suffer; it is equally true that some will not. The miscreant has to protect himself from his outraged neighbors who know of his excesses, but the rain and the sun treat him the same way they treat others. All the laws of nature behave toward the thief exactly as they behave toward his victim.” – Robert LeFevre
“When the mass of the nation degenerates to the point where reasoning and prediction are useless. It is sick, and its illness makes it impervious to reason. It does not want to listen, it does not want to be influenced. The more you try to teach it, the more completely will its ears be sealed against you, and the greater will be the violence with which it will trample on those who try to preach to it. And it will not be cured until it suffers in its own flesh the results of its straying. This is what has always happened.
“Periods of decadence are those in which the directing minority of a people their aristocracy—have lost the very qualities of excellence which raised them to the rank of leaders. Against this corrupt and ineffective aristocracy the masses rebel, and justly. But then they begin to argue from the particular to the general, and try to make of their rebellion a rule of life. Instead of replacing the decadent aristocracy with another group of leaders who are more virtuous, they try to do away with the whole aristocratic pattern. They believe that social existence is possible without a directing minority; even worse, they construct political and historical theories which offer as the ideal a society devoid of leaders. As such a thing is impossible, the nation goes faster and faster along its trajectory of decadence…” — Ortega y Gasset
“Formerly, no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom” — Oswald Spengler
“Free, do you call yourself? Then I would hear your ruling thought, and not merely that you have escaped from a yoke.” – Nietzsche
“What can you trust in this world? Trust nothing. Even your senses and your mind can play tricks on you. Rather than trust, I suggest that you question everything. Question everything you have been told. Question everything you have been taught. Question everything you believe. Don’t believe what the media is feeding you. Don’t believe your government. Don’t believe… question. This is the difference between rebels and mindless drones. This is the difference between wolves and sheep.” – Dave Nichols
A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. – Dogen Zenji
“I think the largest obstacle to equality is the fact that people aren’t equal.” – Jim Goad
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
— Dean William Inge
Punishment–A strange thing, it does not cleanse the criminal, it is no atonement; on the contrary, it pollutes worse than the crime does. – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.”
— Hubert Reeves
“Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events.
For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported—battles, massacres, famines, revolutions—tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources.
What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion.
The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him.
All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.”
– Gerorge Orwell
There are three major centers for transsexual surgery – Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center. I wouldn’t be surprised if Clover had applied for sex reassignment at one or all of these, and been rejected.
Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Clover wasn’t born a killer, oh no, he was made one through years of systematic abuse. Our Clover hates his own identity you see, he always has and he thinks that makes him a transsexual.
But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying. He wants to be reborn you see. Our Clover wants to be reborn, and he will be reborn.
Thanks to Heartbleed, I was able to remotely access Clover’s webcam for a few minutes. Here’s the footage:
In the eternal battle against Clovers, the level of Libertarian endurance will be more important than the depth of our Libertarian truth.
Mickey Rourke’s speech – Barfly – 1987
Saddle Up Cowboys. Horseback is the original manual transmission vehicle. Gonna be a long ride
http://vimeo.com/78044759
Clover only sees the crocodile-smile mafiosi-guile faux-public-servant heads of the hydra. He is incapable of perceiving the apex-vampire hominiditarian-consuming-creature-of-state as it really is.
http://art.ngfiles.com/images/2/fatchaos_hunting-a-hydra-page-1.jpg
http://art.ngfiles.com/images/2/fatchaos_hunting-a-hydra-page-2.jpg
http://art.ngfiles.com/images/2/fatchaos_hunting-a-hydra-page-3.jpg
His flaccid primitive superstitious mind is a cautionary tale for us all.
One hundred and some years ago in he community I live in, there were before the white man arrived, trails made by the local inhabitants. Sadly the majority had been wiped out by smallpox in the two epidemics that raged, the first around 1800 next around 1850.
When you homesteaded, if a trail ran through your property it was up to you to maintain it and keep it in such repair that your neighbors could transit your property. If you were unable to maintain the roadway your neighbors had the work done and billed you for it. That was one of the costs of living in this community.
Roads, schools, churches, community halls benefited everyone and were built and supported by some or all of the community. If the road ran through your property, you maintained it, if you had children you paid for their education, if you went to church you supported it with donations, if you went to Saturday night dances you helped support the community hall.
Any who chose not to be part of the community were ignored by the community, if you did not want to do your part no one forced you but also no one had any time for you. If you did not participate it was as if you had already left.
There were no police, they were not needed, the community policed itself.
There is nothing wrong with people pooling their resources to build the roads, the problem is with having your money taken from you to build roads that do not necessarily serve you.
Well-said, Senior!
Violence, like a spoonful of shit in a gallon of ice cream, ruins everything. True community exists when people freely associate. When violence enters the pictures, it’s a parody of community.
I wonder where precisely Clover sits on the “suicide” debate. Somehow it’s illegal, but it causes nobody any physical harm. People die naturally all the time, doing the same intangible harm (grief) to all those that knew them – on different and unquantifiable levels. The only difference being it wasn’t a personal choice.
They’re most often kept alive on machines for months, being incapable of ever being part of society again. Their friends and family are tortured over this time, seeing the one they care for suffering in pain and misery – irrespective of morphine and sedatives – because Clovers don’t see anything seriously wrong with this policy.
To Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Dr Philip Nitschke and others, there are many things I can say. But it all boils down to a heartfelt “thank you”.
There’s nothing stopping anyone skydiving and then simply not bothering to pull the ripcord. Victims? None tangible, but the law somehow states otherwise. But just a few miles over the speed limit, with life preservation being highest on one’s priorities, suicide not even a thought, Clover and grabbermint go into conniption fits (grabbermint only because it’s a Statute THEY made up and it’s somehow been violated).
All of us here will wager that Clover has exceeded the speed limit many times, however somehow doesn’t manage to find the nearest cop and hand him/herself in.
Clover understands the difference between risk/intangible harm and actual, but refuses to be accused of the very intangible harms Clover likewise accuses all others of. If anything, Clover’s an obvious bare-faced liar and oxygen thief, no matter how righteous the appearance.
I’d take a car with belts, no bags, with reduced weight and good brake lines. I think that most libertarians would. They like choice as do I. On the other hand, you seem to need a padded cell.
My 1976 Trans-Am has virtually no Clover-mandated “safety” equipment and yet – somehow! – I have survived driving it for more than 20 years.
No Clover, as I said before you’re a bare faced liar. You won’t fight for anyone but yourself and your “higher than thou” belief system.
Note that most of your above sooking only applies to cars. I don’t wear a seatbelt on my bike – so call the cops on me squealer.
I like to wear my seatbelt – keeps me in place due to the high-g turns I love to do.
Never had a car with an airbag and can’t see how that would make any difference to anyone that doesn’t crash thanks to attentive motoring. Note that replying “but wot if” to that argument isn’t evidence of any kind.
Even top of the line brakes will fail without maintenance Clover. Ergo why mine never have on an ’87 car and ’90 bike.
Many people still use their older cars that never left the production line with seatbelts, airbags, passenger or rearview mirrors, ABS, reversing cameras, ESP or even radial tyres (<- English spelling). Many US states don't care for helmet laws – even for bicycles, not forgetting that there are no laws dictating bikies wear a particular stitch of clothing. All perfectly legal.
I suggest that if you're such a hopeless wimp behind the wheel, why not mandate roll cages – starting with you?
Your above argument was just murdered by a brutal gang of facts. Face reality and shut it.
Clover,
“Getting rid” of safety features isn’t the issue. It’s leaving people free to choose for themselves whether they want to buy things like air bags, etc.
Just because your default setting is force – forcing people to buy the “safety” equipment you believe they should buy – don’t characterize us as being in favor of denying people their right to buy such equipment, if that is their wish.
What is wrong with you, Clover? Why the lust to impose your preferences on others? Why can’t you be content to live your life as you see fit – and leave others free to live theirs as they see fit, provided they aren’t harming you?
I’d really like it if you’d answer this directly, without evasion.
eric, a friend just sent a large e with pics of everything from the first Benz and all sorts of cars up to about 1915. I’ll send it to you if you’d like to post it. They are all works of art, pure inspiration, not a nanny state mandated car in sight.
Hi Eight,
Please do!
Too much Clovering here of late; I need a break . . .
Dear Rev,
Using clover’s “logic” suicide should be illegal.
The penalty should be death.
Agreed Bevin. We were all born to die anyway.. 😉
I guarantee daum too you that helmets in cars would save lives.
lets do it…lets make everyone wear helmets in cars.
And 5 point harnesses…
and drive 10 mph.
NO ONE WILL EVER DIE.
Eff clovers.
One of the problems I’ve always had with attacking a speed limit by arguing that no harm is caused so long as a crash does not occur is that it fails to recognize that the possibility of increased risk (“Your belief – your worry – that my “speeding” might result in a wreck is merely your belief. It carries no weight, because the actuality is I haven’t harmed anyone”) is itself the very sort of externality that forms the core of the opposing (and central) libertarian principle that so long as you do no harm to another, there is no basis to curtail a given behavior. That’s not to say I agree with speed limits (I don’t); but I have to recognize that certain behaviors — while themselves not causing harm except on the eventuation of whatever risk they pose — can rise to the level of conduct (even absent the eventuation of the risk) that should not be permitted. I don’t know where that line is — I mean the point at which a speed become careless, reckless, severely reckless, or so reckless as to approach actual intent. But to suggest that an increased risk may unilaterally be imposed on another party without regard to the potential harm posed flies in the fact of classic libertarian theory.
“But to suggest that an increased risk may unilaterally be imposed on another party without regard to the potential harm posed flies in the fact of classic libertarian theory.”
Ah, in a word… NO. You don’t seem to understand libertarian philosophy (not “theory), which is very simple: Non-aggression. Period. That’s it. If you measure every single word, action, choice and situation by that yardstick, you will never intentionally harm another human being, nor agresss against their property. Accidents happen, life isn’t fair, some people are evil and there is no utopia, but libertarianism isn’t about “potential risk” at all.
All the rest of the junk people try to hang onto libertarianism is just window dressing and distraction. Or lies.
Who determines that “point” were speed becomes careless? Permitted by whom? If not you, FOR you, you must give control of your life to someone else to do it for you. If you wish to abdicate your natural and legitimate authority to another, you are perfectly free to do so, but you can’t do that for everyone else, no matter how good it seems to you. You own your life, and you are responsible for it, and your safety. It is up to you to take the steps needed to provide for that safety, defend yourself at need, and avoid as much risk as you can in your own life… but not by restricting the equal right and responsibility of others.
Yes, there are most certainly behaviors that present increased risk to other people. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort here at EPAutos talking about how that works, how it can be mitigated, why it happens. The well recorded history of “speed limits” and other “laws” prohibiting this or that behavior, ownership of inanimate objects, etc… show clearly that the laws do nothing to actually prevent the risk or bad behavior, but serve mostly to punish countless innocent people for what they “might” do in the future, rather than any rational accountability to actual victims of aggression.
Good point Mama. If Clover’s rantings are correct and we all MIGHT harm someone in the future (from now ’til death apparently), then Clover, surrender to the nearest cop and inform him of your fears. I’m sure he’ll either laugh in your face, or FIND something to pin on you.
Let all of society join Clover in jail, because we simply can’t be trusted.
I should add: “The state cannot diminish Rights of the people.” Hurtado vs. California, 110 US 516
and …
“Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.” Miranda, supra.
Crashes aren’t caused by speed Clover, as all independent (non-grabbermint) studies worldwide show. The main causative factor is inattention.
The University of Adelaide study into automotive crashes shows precisely that and, excessive speed or speeding as being #16 on a list of 22 causative factors. Note that this doesn’t include too fast for conditions.
The fact remains that ultra-low limits in school zones ensures that pedestrians are trained to blame traffic no matter who’s fault it is and jaywalk all they want as a result.
Don’t try to pull the guilt card on anyone about school zones Clover. It sounds like your brainwashing talking again. People do what they like through school zones anyway – speed limit or otherwise. Those that cause the crash should be held responsible, including children, teachers and their parents that should know better.
Just exceeding an arbitrary number on a pole that’s been decided by a committee of money grubbers and is far too low for the long, wide road is designed to ensure speeding occurs in the first place.
Who’s the criminal now Clover?
ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N you are brain washed by idiots.You say that speeding harms no one? A couple of months ago it was in the news of the movie star and an ex race car driver who got into an accident. All they did wrong was speeding. Like I said I have spent many hours on interstates waiting for the dead to be removed that by witness accounts was caused by people that were just exceeding the speed limit. That was all that was done wrong. To say that speeding does nothing is either a lie or said by someone so brainwashed that facts do not matter.
Clover, why don’t you hold government to safety standards?
On a 45mph PSL road there should not be fixed light poles a couple feet off the roadway. If the poles cannot be properly set back they should be of the break-away type. An old fashioned fixed light pole is more than deadly enough at 45mph.
Of course you defend poor government design Clover. If a tire blows out at 45mph an average american driver can easily lose control and slam into a pole a couple feet off the road way. Same with dodging an animal or a child. Perhaps the driver blacks out due to some medical reason? Maybe dodging another driver… the possibilities are endless.
What if, Clover? What if? Isn’t that your standard for demanding other people choose as you do? Why can’t government do what simple liability concerns would make a company selling a product do?
“tell me how someone is going to hit a light pole at 45 mph that is off of the road?”
Hey, Dummkoff, you never heard of the phrase, “a sheet of ice” or, “black ice”?
Or, someone swerving to avoid hitting a deer and hitting some loose gravel?
Or, someone on two wheels hitting a puddle of oil on a wet road poorly made with large smooth pebbles on the surface? That’s a winning combination partly brought to you by your ever-loving-prevention-god called, gooberment.
You’re a real work of art.
Clover, why must you constantly resort to lying? You write:
“Tell me why libertarian(s) … are fine with having drunks on the road with them?”
This Libertarian has never said or written any such thing.
You seem unable to comprehend the difference between assuming every person is a “drunk driver” until they prove otherwise and holding specific people who do drive drunk (or impaired for whatever reason) accountable for the harm they cause.
So, to repeat, I do not advocate much less defend “drunk driving” – as you idiotically assert.
I advocate the right of people to not be treated as presumptively guilty of any offense unless they’ve given reason to suspect they may be guilty of some offense.
Thus, Clover, I would object to cops randomly conducting an anal probe of you, just because you happened to be walking down the street – on the basis of “you might be transporting dangerous drugs” that you just might be selling to “the children.”
The principle is exactly the same – but you’re too dim to grasp it. Or simply don’t care – because you think such an atrocity will never be visited upon you.
You’re ok with the level of arbitrary intrusion/hassle you’re comfortable with – and other people be damned.
It’s purely arbitrary, entirely subjective. The Clover Standard.
But, dearest morsel, the problem with the Clover Standard is precisely that. It is arbitrary and subjective. If you reject the idea that a person has the right to be left in peace unless he’s actually done something to harm others – or there is very clear evidence/reason to believe he will harm others – then there is nothing to stand between you and a random roadside anal probing . . .except the for-now amorphous Clover Consciousness that anal probing isn’t “necessary” . . . yet.
But the moment one of your kind decides it is necessary, and other Clovers bray in support, then it will be “necessary.”
You think that’s exaggeration; would never happen.
Well, love muffin, 20 years ago most people would never have believed that they’d have to submit to having their children’s genital areas groped by a stranger at an airport in order to board an airplane. Not in this country! And the fact is that people are subjected – already – to anal probing subsequent to minor traffic violations.
It ought not to be necessary to say more.
But with you, it’s pearls before wine.
Though I suspect you really aren’t as dense as you seem to be. That, instead, you’re here to troll. Whether you’re paid to do so – or not – is largely irrelevant. You’re purpose here is not to debate, but to badger. To tire out; to annoy.
But I’ll wrassle you to the ground every time, Clover.
I may not – yet – be able to deal with your kind in the appropriate manner. But that day will come. And until then, I’ll box your ears (so to speak) until they bleed…
@Eric- Believe it or not, there are people who support DWI laws yet do not support the kind of random unconstitutional searches that clover supports. I remember when I was one to. I don’t support them anymore, because a dangerous driver will get pulled over for something else and a safe driver shouldn’t even be checked, and I do think its logically inconsistent to support them without also supporting the whole “pre-crime” mentality, but it is possible. That said, honestly, its not really the hill I’m going to die on. In most cases, people are going to have FAR bigger issues that need to be addressed in their political philosophy. And, if a person does not have bigger issues (in other words, they believe taxes are theft, drugs should be legal, preemptive war is wrong, gun control is wrong, etc.) than private roads probably would not be that hard a sell.
Notice how Clover changes direction and uses personal insult.
Clover, I notice things like that because I think rather than feel, because the conditioning didn’t work on me. You like other people like you are simply programmed repeaters of the things they are conditioned to believe. You can’t look at the problem objectively because you are emotionally conditioned to focus on speed, you are conditioned to see solutions to problems in only terms of what can the government force people to do.
It is my job to look at problems objectively and find the hazards and then correct those hazards. I have to do FMEA. Putting a solid light pole a couple feet off the road does not pass FMEA. The PSL is 45mph and it has to be considered that in a curve someone, someday, is going to slide off the road and hit that pole at the PSL for one reason or another.
BTW, over the last two decades CDOT has removed many hazards from the roadway and just off the roadway throughout the city.
Keep dancing and dodging Clover.
When roads are widened, amenities like street lights, traffic signals, and so on are usually changed out for new and relocated.
Poor road design kills people every day. But it is government design so people aren’t often critical of it. If it were designed by a private company then people would sue often.
Clover, the highways I drive every day had PSL of 55mph 20 years ago. If you drove faster than that, it was deemed “dangerous” even though that was bullshit since very few people drove that slow and many drove 30-40mph faster. Now those same roads, not improved on a lick, in fact, simply 20 years older have a PSL of 75mph and people commonly drive 80 and well above since there is very little traffic, few side roads and mostly visibility measured in miles. Everybody in this country correctly identifies the No. 1 danger as wild hogs and deer(the most dangerous animal in NA). It’s common to see people with roof mounted spotlights they can light up half a mile of roadway with at night. Even though they’re technically illegal to use on the roadways, nobody gets ticketed if they turn them off when opposing traffic is in sight. This ain’t rocket science.
eightsouthman we have deer here also. Spotlights do little on roads with turns or with hills. Idiots around here are the only ones that drive fast at night. More than half the time I go over to my brother’s house there are either deer on the road or along the road. I remember about a year ago or so I had a car tailgating me out in the country. I hit my brake lights a couple of times and he backed off. It wasn’t 30 seconds later that a deer ran out in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. The car behind me was also able to stop without hitting anyone including me.
clover, you have evidently never used a spotlight. Top mounted lights now have huge areas they light since the reflector is 8 x 4″. I have a spotlight that’s 20 million candlepower. It lights up the world.
eightsouthman wrote, “clover, you have evidently never used a spotlight. ”
What are you saying? That Clover is spewing shit and has no clue wHAt the fuck he/she/it is typing?
How could you say that? Don’t you know, All goobement representatives are supreme authorities in every subject they address. …Always. …Just ask a public school teacher. They will set you straight. You’re just ‘silly talking’ saying you can see with a spotlight. A person in league with the gooberment said it’s not possible! So, it Must be true!
Yeah Eightsouthman, I have couple of wide angle driving lights on the front of my Jeep. They’re down low enough that they don’t bother oncoming traffic, but they sure do show me deer or other critters running in from the side of the road far enough ahead for me to avoid them. On the other hand, last year I had a doe try to intercept me on my bike. If I had hit the brakes, she’d have nailed me. By speeding up (that’s right clover, I accelerated…hard) I was able to outrun her and avoid the collision. Sometimes speed and power will save your ass quicker than good brakes will.
Boothe you are stupid. For every deer that runs into you from the side or behind you there are a thousand times that you hit them and with any kind of significant speed you are still traveling you will cause a lot of damage. There have been well over a hundred times I have hit the brakes to prevent running into a deer. There was not one instance where I had the need to speed up. If you want to make your point with your one in a thousand or one in a million cases then I feel sorry for you.
As for the powerfull spotlights being able to see anything, that is a joke. Try driving 60 mph or whatever over a hill and see how well your spot lights work. Try turning a corner at 60 mph or more with cornfields along the road or trees. I agree with lights helping but they do have their limits. For the most part high beams are enough to see the deer far enough in front of you but you often do not have that choice. I have also had to hit the brakes hard on an interstate when I had my dims on due to traffic. I was lucky there was little traffic so I was not driving very fast at the time. I had two people in the car with me and it was so much of a reaction to hitting the brakes that I did not even remember seeing the deer in front until I was almost stopped.
Clover – I use “wide angle” driving lights around these parts, not “spotlights” to increase my field of view. Look that up clover; field of view. Better yet ask any middle-schooler about it. It’s right there with “peripheral vision.” Ever heard of that? Here let me explain: If you can see things approaching from the sides of the road you can avoid them more easily. So don’t hand me this crap about better lighting at night not helping.
In my experience deer tend to run in behind the headlights on a vehicle. Hence front fender and side hits occurred in many of the night time deer collision cases I’ve seen over the years. Last year a friend of mine hit a deer in the morning on his way to work. One of my slowpoke Cloverian coworkers asked how fast he was going. He said about sixty. Ol’ poke-along said “See, if you’d been running 55 you wouldn’t a hit ‘im.” My buddy responded “Sure. And if I’d have been running seventy I wouldn’t have hit him either.” (duh) Speed had nothing to do with it since the deer hit him in the side of the front fender and if he’d been traveling ten MPH faster the deer would have passed behind him. Which would have been safer than five MPH slower, because my friend would have slammed on the brakes seeing the deer run out in front, potentially causing a worse accident. Pull your head out clover, it’s dark and smelly in there.
I’ve even completely stopped for a deer, a big buck, and had it run back in the woods. As I proceeded (very slowly) it came back out of the pines, so I stopped again. It turned back and I proceeded and it came back out again. This time when I stopped, that’s right STOPPED the truck, the deer charged right into the passenger’s door, knocked itself silly and left three nice antler dents in the sheet metal. So tell me how speed (other than the deer’s) had a damned thing to do with that collision? We’re all anxious to hear you explanation of that one…
Hey Clover: before you demand street addresses from BrentP, how about you tell us what you do for a living.
Clover – There you go again with your “what ifs.” I couldn’t care less whether you are concerned about minor damage to a vehicle. The point I was making is that deer are unpredictable and will even run into a vehicle that isn’t moving. The first deer that ever hit me was on Rt. 1 in Virginia and I was only running about 45 MPH (10 under the PSL). She hit right behind the headlight on the passenger’s side and tore up the fender leaving the light intact, so don’t give me your know-it-all bovine hyperbole. I have seen a number of night time deer strikes over the deers that were well behind the headlight. My theory is that they see the headlamp as the moving object (not the dark vehicle following it) and try to run in behind it striking the vehicle. I acknowledge that some deer collisions are “head on”, just not all of them. Your theories, OTH, tend to be pure unadulterated bunk based on emotion and how you want things to be; the world according to clover. I have avoided numerous deer collisions because of good lighting and seeing the approaching animal well before it got to the road, your bogus ruminations notwithstanding. I find it difficult to believe you are this stupid. I suspect it’s just that you are being contrary for the sake of being contrary. (sarcasm on) That approach should serve you well in day to day life. (sarcasm off) I pity your family and coworkers.
Hey Boothe,
I, too, cannot accept that anyone not a Downs Syndrome victim or otherwise impaired could be as dumb as Clover appears to be. His characteristic refusal to acknowledge a factual point made – or to ever directly answer a question – strongly suggests he’s here to disrupt. Whether he does so for his own kicks or for a paycheck, I suppose we’ll never know.
Okay Clover – Here you go: State Farm (you know, those fine folks that pay deer collision claims every year) has the following to say about deer collisions and avoiding them.
Deer are most active during “the rut” (mating) and hunting season. November is the month with highest probability of collision, with October and December following closely behind. You are three times more likely to hit a deer in that time frame than you are from February 1st through August 1st.
Deer are most active between 6 PM and 9PM. Now even you have the mental capacity to understand that in October through December that means dusk to dark. I can assure you that deer can and do run at night. I encountered a really nice buck this March when I was leaving work, at night, that easily cleared a 4 foot field fence, landed in the middle of the highway in front of me and took off like he had nitrous. It was impressive, it was pitch dark out and he was flat ass gettin’ it. Right clover ‘deer don’t run at night.’ Sheesh what a schmuck you are.
Another thing to consider is that deer typically travel in herds, so when one crosses in front of you, you need to be looking for the other ones coming in from…wait for it clover…the side.
One more thing, State Farm also recommends that you use your high beams as much as possible, so you can see the deer on the side of the road before you get to them (high beams = better lighting; driving lights = even better lighting; overhead off road lights = the best possible lighting). Wake up and smell the Xenon clover.
And I’ll let you in on another little secret you babbling buffoon; I spent five years shooting deer on state issued crop damage permits for two farmers in Virginia. I’ve probably forgotten more about the night time behavior of the American Whitetail deer than you’ll ever know. One common belief is that deer simply stand there and let you shoot them when you shine a light in their eyes. That typically only works the first time on an uneducated herd. After that, when the light comes on the deer take off.
Often they sprint when they hear the truck pull up or even gravel popping; yeah, that’s right, in the dark. In case you haven’t noticed that beautiful glow their eyes emit when hit with a light, deer have much better night vision than humans. Their eyes have more rods than our do, that’s a scientific fact. As a prey animal that is essential to their survival since many predators like big cats, wolves and coyotes also have excellent night vision, and, guess what, run at night too! Wow! Who knew?! Is any of this starting to form some dim glimmer of understanding in that vacuous cavity atop your shoulders? I thought not. Once again little clover you have engaged your keyboard before starting your brain. So sad…
Can you really be that obtuse clover? There is not one single study saying 55 mph is the safest speed anyone can travel. The highway system was DESIGNED for a 100 mph average speed. Instead of doing any research, you mindlessly regurgitate what you hear on CNN, but that doesn’t make it so. 99.9% of drivers know when it is safe to exceed the gov’s arbitrary “speed” limit and when it is not. If the limits were removed, nobody would be doing 120 mph through school zones or doing 80 through a crowded neighborhood. Because, clover, we are not stupid, we actually know how to drive an automobile, unlike collectivists.
Slowest ship in the fleet. That’s why speed limits are often the realistic speed limit in bad conditions.
Often these crowded interstates are quite clear of traffic. This is when cops are issuing tickets. Not in rush hours, not in snow storms or rain. I’ve never seen someone pulled over for speeding in poor weather conditions. I rarely even see cops in such conditions. On a clear night, late at night, when traffic is very light and one can do 100mph easily without issue there are cops everywhere. I won’t see one or two, but a dozen. Same road, more traffic, in a snow storm? None to be found.
But it’s not just interstate speed where this is done. It’s throughout the society. The best performing people are punished time and time again. It happens in the schools, in the workplaces, in politics. It’s collectivism to limit everyone based on the worst performing of society and it eventually destroys a society.
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Brent I have no clue why you even comment because you lack any type of common sense. I feel sorry for the company you work for. Yes police do not stop people when there is a heavy traffic because it is dangerous to do so. Yes they do stop people when it is less crowded because it is a lot safer to do. There are also facts that the person that drives fast in light traffic is the same person that drives fast in heavy traffic. That is a fact. Like I have said before, the majority of aggressive drivers do not slow down when there is heavy traffic, rain or snow .
Explain Brent why it is a danger to Libertarians for light poles a few feet from the road but it is fine to have drivers tailgating, speeding, weaving through traffic and driving drunk? Libertarians say a drunk is doing no wrong 1 second and the very next second when his car totals someone else he should then be held accountable and punished? Tell me how a person can go from good to bad in less than a second? Wouldn’t you think if he was a model citizen one second that he would also be the next second?
Libertarians do not want seat belts or air bags or safe car design. Tell me why libertarians want more danger and they also want less? Is that logical in your mind? Since you live in the area of the dangerous light poles, when you drive to make a complaint about them also find out how it happened and get back to me. Until then I do not want to hear from you.
Clover,
According to your statement:
Police should only enforce the law when it is safe for them to enforce the law.
This logic of yours implies that if one plans to break the law then they should do it when the police consider it unsafe to enforce the law.
Please cite your sources for these “facts”.
I would consider the light pole to be equally dangerous to all drivers that collide with the light poles regardless of the cause.
Did Brent (or other posters on this site) promote driving drunk, tailgating, or weaving through traffic? (if yes please cite your source)
Why do you consider it poor form to hold those that actually harm others accountable for their actions?
If one does not harm others in a tangible manner, why should they be held criminally responsible?
One does not necessarily imply the other. (ie being against treating people as criminals for things that might go wrong. )
mithrandir I believe that pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is a crime no matter if they hit them or not. The same thing goes for a person driving in a dangerous manner which endangers others. Driving a car in a dangerous manner willfully endangering others is a crime. There is no difference between the two mithrandir. Are you saying it is fine to shoot a high powered gun in town and point it at a sidewalk where people walk all the time a half a mile away? They might not hit anyone so it must be OK to you? Tell me why a car is any different?
Tell me why you believe there should be no laws for people pointing a 3,000 lb deadly weapon at you?
mithrandir many months ago Dom posted a video of himself driving somewhat fast through the country on snowy roads with trees a few feet off the road. I am sure that was dozens of times more dangerous than the light pole problem but that did not seem to slow Dom down any.
mithrandir I am not going to go seek out studies where people drive fast with or without traffic or bad road conditions. Thousands of hours seeing it with my own eyes is enough proof for me and you do not believe any study anyway. I do know there was a study done in Illinois but I am not going to waste my time looking it up because facts do not matter to you anyway. You would just say it is not so no matter how much evidence there is.
Yes it is a fact that cops do not stop people with high traffic conditions. Ask Brent, he will back that up. Yes that is why there are often parking lots on major interstates around cities during rush hour because idiots that do not slow down cause accidents.
Clover,
I’ll agree with you that pointing a gun at someone and firing the gun is dangerous. It is also causing tangible harm towards the individual that is being targeted.
Regarding driving in a dangerous manner which endangers others. I think some clarification is needed.
There is need for clearer language to minimize ambiguity in meaning.
Driving a car towards an individual (or group of people) — not right, even if no one is hit.
The same if you run over an individual (or group of people) — not right.
Just to give two examples. Two cases where one is tangibly causing harm to one or more people.
Actually all crimes/infractions are not equal. Some are considered by the state to be more serious than others.
Also your final statement is inaccurate.
I never stated there should be no laws regulating vehicles (regardless of their weight).
Regarding Dom’s video:
I do not know the PSL of where the video occurred. If he traveled above the PSL, then he could have been cited for speeding.
If he ended in a crash, he could have been cited for driving too fast for conditions (assuming the state he was driving in has such a statute)
Otherwise, I do not think dom was tangibly harming other people. (Assuming that he did not run over rover or anyone else)
If you are not going to bother citing credible studies to support your position, then do not be surprised when others do not take your words as gospel.
One’s experience, while useful, does not always make the best foundation for making laws.
Regarding Police stops during rush hour traffic.
Brent might back up your experience to the lack of police stops during rush hour.
The cause may not solely be due to idiot drivers. There could be other causes for parking lot conditions during rush hour such as quantity of vehicles to name one alternate cause.
I’ll close by noting that you have not produced evidence of anyone on this site promoting driving drunk, tailgating, or weaving through traffic?
Usual lies, fabrications, insults, and misdirection mixed with a feeble defense of shit-poor government services from Clover.
Clover, your cops, your government does not ticket during heavy traffic where tailgating, weaving, etc happens. And since your system functions on a punishment model, what isn’t punished flourishes. It’s not like your system appeals to competency or morality or anything other than fear/punishment.
Oh and Joan Claybrook endorsed a lack of lane discipline because it forces weaving and weaving forces people to drive slower. So weaving through traffic is government approved.
I want government held to the same product design standards the free market holds me to. Of course you intentionally misdirect the desire to have market demand for safety to wanting danger. Either that, or the only language you understand is violence.
I work in an industry that presently has no significant government safety regulation. None. The products, even the chinese made crap from the competition is safe. Why? Because there are private standards and if those standards are ignored the liability will kill a company. Also many people won’t buy the product.
mithrandir, yes this site has promoted driving drunk, tailgating, or weaving through traffic. Brent has shown us many videos of his that show his tailgating and weaving through traffic. Mith, a picture is equal to a thousand words. 10 pictures would be 10 times that. Eric promotes drinking and driving by saying they should not be touched until they injure or kill someone. Leave them alone he says because there might be some person out there that is capable of driving after drinking a keg of beer or whatever. If you refuse to do anything about a problem then in effect you are promoting it. There have been hundreds of studies done on drinking and its affects but as I said before facts do not matter here.
You did not understand what I said about how Dom was driving. I could care less if Dom was breaking a law or not the story was about Dom driving fast on snowy conditions with trees 2 or 3 feet from the road. What I tried to explain to you was that was far worse and more dangerous of a situation than light poles here and there which were close to a 45 mph roadway.
I just looked up an example of traffic jams and it had videos of cars that were both tailgating and cars leaving more space between vehicles. It showed that when more space is left between cars it lessens the traffic jam situations because it leaves more space for cars to merge in and out of a lane thus reducing the accordion affect of traffic. Yes drivers like Brent often complain about traffic jams but it is driving like his that creates it.
Clover, you’re lying – again.
I’m getting ready to ban you – not because we disagree. But because you continue to lie. To deliberately characterize my position as other than it is, despite my having corrected you several times now.
Once again – and for the last time:
I advocate not treating people as presumptively “drunk” – forcing them to stop at checkpoints for no other reason than that they happen to be driving on that particular road – in order to prove to the satisfaction of some cop that they are not “drunk” – absent any reason (probable cause) to believe they’re “drunk.” Because – cue you – “someone” might be drunk.
Get it?
To use this profoundly un-American pretext – there might be drunk drivers out there! – to give cops the power to conduct warrantless/generic searches (however cursory) of persons and property at random – again, absent any specific probable cause that a crime has been committed by these people.
That is what I oppose, you got-damned asshole.
I’ve explained this to you multiple times, in clear language that even a half-bright 12-year-old ought to be able to comprehend. Criticize me for being opposed to probable cause-free searches; fault me for not believing that the ends justify the means. That it’s more important to “catch drunks” than to respect people’s right to be left alone if they’ve given no cause for anyone to suspect they might be “drunk.”
But do not fucking tell me I “support drunk driving.”
I support the right of people to travel in peace; to be at liberty to go about their got-damned business without having to submit to inspections at gunpoint by assholes like yourself who think someone might is warrant enough to treat everyone as though they actually had.
You advocate presumptive guilt – when it comes to driving “drunk.”
And you cannot – apparently – comprehend that the principle applies just as well to any other random, generalized, probable cause-free search.
If it’s ok to randomly stop and search motorists, please explain why it’s not ok to randomly stop and search pedestrians? After all, “someone” might be carrying an illegal weapon. Perhaps a “dirty bomb.” On what basis would you argue that random searches of people’s homes should be forbidden? After all, “someone” might be beating a child… Maybe we need to inspect your dick to make sure there’s no shit on it – to be sure you haven’t been ass-raping the little boy next door.
And so on.
Again: You’re either a liar or incredibly stupid.
I’ve got no more time for either.
Again Brent explain why you said “Also many people won’t buy the product.” referring to a product with a defect or made poorly?
Brent it really does not matter whether a product has private standards or Federal standards does it? Did I say it mattered? Now if those private standards resulted in dozens of people being killed or just injured then you might think the government might get involved right? Is that not the duty of government to look out for the safety of the people? Is that not what happened in the GM case?
Clover,
Your reply indicates that you are either an idiot or a liar.
Eric never promoted drinking and driving.
He has been against assuming all drivers are drunks and treating all as criminals without any objective evidence of any impairment.
(A similar analogy would be a policy of the police pat down every individual walking around just in case they were carrying illegal items without any reasonable suspicion.)
If some one is demonstrating poor driving (an objective standard, not driving in their driving lane as one example) then there exists a reasonable cause to pull some one over. If they happen to be impaired (regardless of reason), then they should be cited by the LEO and/or taken to the station as appropriate to the situation.
I have not seen Brent tailgate or weave through traffic in the videos posted. I have seen others tailgate and weave in the videos that he and others have posted.
It matters little if one hits a tree at speed or a light pole. Both will leave a lasting impression on your vehicle. However, some one (either from a government or private agency) decides on where to place a light pole. Trees tend to grow where they can grow.
Citing your traffic jam examples would have been helpful. Even more helpful would have been a cite from a properly conducted engineering study on traffic.
I’ll close by noting that you have not produced evidence of anyone on this site promoting driving drunk, tailgating, or weaving through traffic?
The lies, Clover, are coming off your keyboard – not mine.
Again: I have not claimed to be “fighting against drunks.” I have argued that it’s wrong to treat anyone as presumptively drunk, absent any reason to believe they might be drunk. Or impaired, for any reason.
You have a fetish about “drunk” drivers – but other forms of impairment, just as potentially lethal, seem not to bother you at all.
I’ve yet to come across a post from you advocating Senile Citizen checkpoints, for instance. Yet, it’s just as possible that someone might be driving while old as driving while drunk.
What about the children, Clover?
Clover, a design flaw like a solid light pole two feet off the roadway is like seeing a spike in the center of the steering wheel. Not a sub six sigma part defect rate.
When people rely on the government to ‘keep them safe’ they lose the ability to make decisions for themselves.
GM’s ignition switch failure to be anything more than an annoyance requires a specific series of events and conditions. Without millions and millions of them made probably there would be no deaths at all.
The federal government merely copies the existing private standards when they take over. They are interested in power and the ability to route business to cronies. They don’t care if people live or die beyond losing tax revenue when they die too early. If they are old then government would prefer they die.
The problem with you and those like you Clover is that you never create anything but think you know everything.
mithrandir wrote, “If they happen to be impaired (regardless of reason), then they should be cited by the LEO and/or taken to the station as appropriate to the situation. ”
Why would you say that?
That’s very minianarchist of you.
Borderline statist.
Leaving aside the validity of the idea of cops in general, if the person “impaired” caused no harm, other than offending some sensibilities by weaving around, going slow, or some such, why “take ’em down”?
No harm. No foul. Live and let Live, and all that.
Perhaps the idiot Clover cannot see the Forrest for the trees, and is getting his stance from these links?:
Legalize Drunk Driving
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2000/11/lew-rockwell/legalize-drunk-driving/
But then the Clover’s of the world conveniently forget or gloss over this take:
Drunk Driving Laws Cause Drunk Driving Accidents
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/03/mark-r-crovelli/drunk-driving-laws/
Prohibiting Drunk Driving Is Not Self-Defense
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/01/mark-r-crovelli/prohibiting-drunk-driving/
Drunk-Driving Laws Are Absurd
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/03/mark-r-crovelli/drunk-driving-laws-are-absurd/
I know a ‘Progressive’, she’s a Lot like Clover. I used to kid around and say she was like a twelve year old, but then I noticed: She Can’t Think!
Not only that, with a bit of encouragement: she refuses to think!
Her best defense is to yawn and walk away.
At least a twelve year old can think if given enough time and a bit of explanation, but people who are Clover’s, Just-Can’t-Think.
It’s hard for me to even imagine being such a person. It’s slightly humorous and mostly sad when such people lash out and claim the same of others in some desperate attempt to hold their failing world together.
Anyway, I still think the ‘clover’ here at Eric Peters Autos is also Economic Policy Journal’s, ‘Jerry Wolfgang’. And, I wonder if a big bank somewhere pays them/that person a huge sum to clog up the Internet? It wouldn’t surprise me.
I guess we’ll find out when The Wall comes down?
Brent what government official did you talk to about your pole problem and what did they say?
Brent if you are all for safety you would not be passing where you do, weaving through traffic, tailgating, speeding, trying to cut off a semi from a legal lane change and your other bad driving behaviors.
Brent if something along the road is so dangerous then why is it in Colorado the speed limit is 65 to 70 mph in the mountains with a drop off of hundreds of feet a few feet from the roadway? You have not even told me how many feet off the road these light poles are. In many towns there are poles feet from the roadway with speed limits usually in the 30 mph range. You have given me no facts about this road and poles that you are talking about but then again facts are not allowed here because made up stories back up what you complain about much better. How about giving an address where these are located?
Here’s a fact for you, Clover:
Brent’s an engineer.
What are you?
Helot,
Perhaps you are correct regarding my opinion as being mini-anarchist.
You make a fair comment.
As the laws are currently written in NJ, some of the laws that one could be cited for:
39:4-50 Driving while intoxicated.
39:4-88 Traffic on marked lanes. (not staying in your lane)
Depending on what statute the LEO decides to cite the driver or violating.
I am sure that other states have similar statutes in their respective law books.
Thanks for the links posted. When I get a moment, I’ll take a look at them.
I’m cool with that, Mithrandir.
I only wish that the Clovers of the world would read those links and contemplate things,… whatever their end thought was,…. at least they contemplated.
That’s all I can hope for, or ask, I suppose?
For most of ’em though, I’m guessing it’s just wishful thinking?
Eric the state that I live in has driving and vision tests when you reach a certain age every two years and when you get older it is every year. Yes I do believe in checking seniors and there are already tests for that. You must be pleased by that. On the other hand you believe no testing should be done for drunk driving. The elderly abilities do not change on an hourly basis as much as people who drink. A person who drinks their abilities can change from one hour to the next. Wouldn’t you think that you would treat them differently then?
No Eric libertarians show no common sense.
You think Brent is an engineer so he is more knowledgeable about driving and roads? His statements and driving actions have disproved that. I have more engineering experience than he does from the way he talks. I do not know what his engineering job entails but I do know that I would not hire him with his statements that he gives. Engineering is supposed to deal with facts and facts never seem to be part of what he is. Recently he brought up that there are light poles that he is worried about next to the road he travels. That is all the facts that we have though. A true engineer would give us the distance from the road, the location and road that they are on and why they are there. Engineers are supposed to be about details and Brent presents none of those.
But, Clover, an old person with poor vision (or some other issue) might be out driving, putting lives at risk. The only way to prevent this – using your logic – is to randomly stop and inspect passing cars for people over the age of 70. Then those 70-year-olds should be forced to prove they can see clearly, via a roadside eye test. Because, after all, the fact that the old coot’s vision was ok a year ago when he last took the test at the DMV is no guarantee it’s acceptable now.
It is exactly the same – in principle – as your boner to have every driver on a given road prove they’re not “drunk” at that particular moment.
But principles – and concepts – are beyond your comprehension.
Either that, or you’re just a vicious little bastard who takes the position that it’s ok to fuck with other people at random, for some arbitrary reason you approve of (getting “drunks” off the road).
Well, asshole, I worry about child molesters. They’re out there. You might be a child molester. It is certainly possible. Just as it’s possible one out of 50 cars stopped at random at a “sobriety checkpoint” might contain a “drunk” driver.
Therefore, in the name of “getting dangerous child molesters off our streets,” you must submit to having your dick inspected, so we can be sure you haven’t been ass-fucking the neighbor’s kid. Swabs must be taken. Your DNA checked against the sex offender database. Your computer’s hard drive subject to random spot checks. Just to be safe. Thousands and thousands of kids (to use your idiot argot) might be saved. Therefore, we should all not mind having our dicks and hard drives spot-checked, our DNA sampled and checked against the sex offender registry.The ends justify the means. The right of the individual to be left in peace must take a back seat to the safety of society. Etc.
The truly appalling thing is you don’t see it; you don’t get it. You cannot – or will not – understand that principles, once accepted, result in practice.
You’ll either be the goggle-eyed, uncomprehending “Jew” herded off to the gas chambers… or the guard shoving him in.
Helot I glimpsed at some of your links. I did not have to look past the first paragraph. The all took the stance of drunks are not dangerous until the instant they inure or kill someone and then they are bad. There is one question you need to answer, if you have kids would you want them to be on the road with people that just had a half a dozen drinks or more? Would you want them to be injured or killed to prove the point that the person that hit them should not have been there? For that person that hit your kid there are probably a couple of dozen out there at the same time that could have killed your kid if it was not done by someone else already.
The fact is that some states over the past few years have increased police patrols and DUI checkpoints over holiday weekends. The stats are huge that show that they work and decreased a lot of deaths and major injuries. In effect they kept the drunks off the road who cause around half of the major accidents.
Clover once again resorts to personal attack and misdirection.
The crash in which the actor you mention was killed occurred with an impact into a pole that was close to the roadway. It’s amazing how you can’t follow thread branch.
Brent the actor died because the car he was in was traveling twice the speed limit. Yes idiots say speed never causes crashes. Those idiots would be wrong.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/showbiz/paul-walker-crash-probe/
Clover, the earth is hurtling through space at several thousand miles per hour. So long as it does not hit anything, its speed – as such – is quite safe.
The reason the actor died is because – wait for it – he struck a pole. Had the pole not been there, his rate of travel at that moment would have been irrelevant.
You reflexively equate velocity with loss of control – and inevitability of loss of control.
In which case, Clover, there is no “safe” speed. The only “safe” speed is stationary.
As others have observed, your position is completely arbitrary. You feel that 65 or 70 is “fast enough” and “safe.” So that’s ok. But 80 or 90 – that’s “unsafe” – because you feel it is.
Well, Clover, I believe 40 is safer than 65 or 70. In fact, to be really safe, let’s impose a nationwide maximum of 25 MPH. That would really cut down on deaths and injuries. So why don’t you support a 25 MPH national speed limit?
Because you’d be inconvenienced. Because 25 is “too slow” … for you.
Clover, can you explain to me the degrees of dead?
Would he still be making movies if he was only 45mph impact dead?
Dead is dead Clover. He’s dead because the car hit a fixed pole. Had it been a break-away pole he could very well be alive today.
“The fact is the car would not have lost control if he was traveling the speed limit of 45 mph.”
You don’t know that. We don’t know what caused the loss of control. The car they were in is a twitchy thing to begin with.
The fact is even if for some reason he was not able to slow from 45 mph the chances of surviving a crash 40 mph slower is huuuuuuuge.
You’re quite unfamiliar with what a pole does to a car.
This is 20mph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pireJdVGMsU
Keep in mind the car they were driving was not designed to the standards that 2014 Chevy is.
Here is the damage from a break-away pole:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFK77cG5pU
Just a good sized dent.
Here’s what a fixed pole does to a bigger car:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTRMMqbZ8Ug
You’re just apologizing for crappy design because the government does it. Your entire world view revolves around violence. It’s your solution to everything.
Bent in my opinion only a stupid idiot would say the government is responsible for these deaths. If the driver did not hit the pole he would have and did hit the trees. All of the objects were many yards away from a very wide 45 mph road. Your driving is 100s of thousands of times more dangerous than this road and pole driven at the speed limit. If you think a road should be designed for cars traveling 45 mph over the speed limit then Chicago could not exist.
Tell me Brent was this the situation that you said poles were a problem next to a 45 mph road or where you talking about a location in Chicago. If it is Chicago then give the street and cross street you are talking about. If you were just referring to this roadway then you are an idiot.
Clover, your opinion is worth exactly… nothing.
We deal in facts, logic, concepts – things beyond mere opinion.
Something either is – or it isn’t.
Too much for you to deal with, I know.
Clover,
Why must you distort things? Why do you resort to insult? Is it because you are incapable of discussing the topic in a rational, logical, and informed manner? I think it is.
Answer the question: If if a crash type would typically be fatal at 45mph how is one less dead at 45mph vs 90mph?
The simple fact is if the pole had been of the modern break-away type they likely would have lived. This would be required for designing the road for 45mph. Interstates with 45mph posted speed limits in Chicago have break-away poles. Lake Shore Drive (PSL 45mph) has break-away poles. Proper design for 45mph has break-away poles.
I don’t know if we can say that speed limits “do nothing” (in other words, there probably are people who slow down because of them) but your point about driving 120 in a school zone is stupid. Is there someone who might do that? Maybe. 5 percent of the population? no. Get real here, please. Most people are not so stupid as to just drive in such a way as to kill themselves or someone else. Unfortunately, most people ARE so stupid as to believe that other people would do that in the absence of speed limits.
But… if you’re really worried about these extremes, why not at the very least make the laws to prohibit the extremes only? If speed limits were all increased by 30 MPH, i’m sure few, if any, people would even meet, let alone break, the limits. Except in places where the limits are really obscenely low.
Or better yet, listen to Eric because he’s right. Your coercion is immoral.
David have you ever seen the studies where differences in speeds cause a lot of accidents and severe accidents? Increase the speed limits by 30 mph and the death rate will go up a lot. If you believe differently I would call you a stupid person. For one thing I live in the freeze zones. If people were driving 30 mph faster they would be airborne half the time. I did have to laugh at some of the comments though. They said people are smart and only a few will drive 120 mph through a school zone. Yes there are a lot of smart people out there then there are libertarians. They believe things like they are better off without seat belts or airbags not that they are far safer and possibly save them from injury or death but the government said it would so they rebel and risk death or injury just to show a point. Smart? Do not touch the drunk driver until he kills someone? Yes there are smart people out there but that excludes a lot of libertarians.
When Montana removed speed limits in 1995, the death rate went down. When they brought speed limits back the death rate went up.
Yes Brent, here is why the death rate went down in the 90s. Get a life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OtgNn9OPo18
Clover,
Do you understand (or care) what is meant by death rate?
Clover, the fatalities in Montana dropped like a stone immediately after the speed limit was removed. The fatalities rocketed upwards immediately after a speed limit was again imposed.
The problem is that people don’t have the courage to just leave stuff alone.
@clover- Well, the vast majority of people who have IQs about 150 (triple nine society) are libertarians. I’m not sure how much that proves, but its worth noting.
Libertarianism is generally logically consistent. Not always, and there are lots of variations. But generally, it is. Conservatism and liberalism not so much. These are purely pragmatic worldviews. Thus, the conservative and the liberal alike has no real right to complain about any level of government control, they’ve already ceded the principle.
Is that OK? I can’t really prove that inconsistency is wrong without getting into presuppositionalism, which I know Eric doesn’t really want me to do since its a fast track to a religion discussion. But, at the very least, it is inconsistent. Are you comfortable with that?
David explain the libertarian consistent view? Is it everything I heard here? No government, no taxes, do whatever the hell you feel like, it is fine to endanger others until it does injure others then it is bad.
I have heard people repeat the same things over and over about the libertarian society but I hear nothing about what that ideal world is like. No details whatsoever. Just that it will be great but nothing how their world would actually work. How you are going to get along with others. Maybe that is why there is a large amount of libertarian preppers with guns in hand. They really do not know how the world would be without government and how they will get along with others. They hope that some day they do not have to live with others.
Yes, Clover – exactly.
Libertarians usually take the position that people have every right to do “do whatever the hell (they) feel like” … provided they do not harm anyone else.
As you yourself stated.
Your standard for justifying the use of violence against people is when you believe they are doing something that “endangers” others.
Which sounds reasonable – until you ask what, exactly, constitutes “endanger”?
Is it driving faster than an arbitrary speed limit? Of course not.
Is it carrying a loaded gun on one’s hip? By no means.
Is it growing – or smoking – pot?
Such things could possibly lead to harm, because almost anything is possible. But unless actual harm is caused, you have no right to harm those people first. To commit an act of aggressive violence, one intended to do them harm.
“Endanger” is to a great extent highly subjective – and that’s the problem. You worry, you fear. You feel. What if?
Harm caused, on the other hand, is objective. You either did – or you did not – cause harm.
Did I harm anyone by ignoring a red light and carefully proceeding after making sure the way was clear? Hell no. But you will screech that I “endangered” a hypothetical “someone” – even though no one was in fact harmed.
I agree that some people will act in ways that do in fact endanger others. But such people will do so regardless of laws – and I oppose open-ended justification of violence done to people who have not harmed anyone – because someone such as yourself is worried they might, based on his subjective feelings.
Clover writes:
“David explain the libertarian consistent view? Is it everything I heard here? ”
As we suspected, clover has never even bothered to learn what the political philosophy he keeps dismissing out of hand is. This despite the fact that the Internet has so much information about libertarianism one could never finish reading it in one’s lifetime.
Is anyone surprised? I’m not.
Bevin, I find that everyone who argues against libertarianism has no idea of what it really is. They’ve never read a single thing by any libertarian authors, they just repeat what the NYT or some other mainstream outlet has told them libertarianism is.
They argue against a cartoon version or at best the beltway version.
Dear Brent,
Yes! That has been my experience as well.
It all gets back to an ugly reality about human psychology. Namely, that what most adults believe is rooted in what is familiar, not in what is true.
By the time most people reach young adulthood, the worldview they have internalized is automatically equated with Reality with a Capital R.
That’s not the worst thing about it though. The worst thing is that they have also adopted a “Don’t confuse me with the facts!” attitude to go along with it.
They are no longer willing to “check their premises.” They are no longer willing to think anew, to wipe the blackboard clean, and start over from scratch, and subject their assumptions to reality tests, either logical or empirical.
Clover,
You distort and lie in your usual despicable manner.
Once again, the question is, if you are dead at 45mph how are you more dead at 90mph?
Risk has a variety of factors involved with it. Reduced speed can be more risk it can be less risk. All the factors must be evaluated to make that determination.
I think clover is using this:
http://www.averagemarrieddad.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/jump-to-conclusions-mat.jpg
No Brent I am not distorting anything.
The facts are You are much more likely to lose control at higher speeds. . It involves physics Brent. Something every engineer should understand. An example is driving 90 mph on ice you would fly off of it because you would lose total control. At 20 mph you would probably have no problems. I know, beyond an engineer’s comprehension.
Second, the braking distance or sliding distance at 90 mph compared to 45 mph is approximately 3 times longer distance. In effect, you can often stop before hitting something when traveling slower but you are unable to stop in time at higher speeds. I know, beyond an engineer’s comprehension.
Three, even if you lost control at the lower speed and you were not able to stop before hitting something, your speed would be so much lower that your chance of surviving the accident without injury are a lot better. I know, beyond an engineer’s comprehension.
Clover, you distort what I write into lies and strawmen. You do this intentionally because you are despicable. I’ve never seen a libertarian do this, so it’s not my writing that causes a misunderstanding. Only statists do this, either because they are despicable or they have mental impairments due to statism or both.
Tell me, if a crash is fatal at 45mph how is one less dead at 90mph?
The pole is two feet off the road. There is no space for braking.
Are you going to answer the question or continue to distort?
Dear Brent,
Case in point? Clover. He just proved my point with his behavior.
Brent with a modern car there is a good chance you could survive a crash into a pole at 45mph. But if the speed limit is 45 mph it is almost impossible to hit a pole not directly on the road at 45 mph.
Tell me Brent if it is dangerous for a driver to hit something at whatever speed with all of the safety equipment like seat belts, air bags and crunch zones of the car then how can it be safe for a person hit by that reckless driver on the bike path or sidewalk where the pole is?
Shouldn’t we outlaw reckless drivers so that they do not injure or kill others? Shouldn’t we get those drivers off the street?
I’ll let Brent deal with this one – although it was hard to resist . . like a freebie kick in the balls, so to speak.
” But if the speed limit is 45 mph it is almost impossible to hit a pole not directly on the road at 45 mph.”
Uh…clover…reckless driving is already illegal. How’s that working for you? You ever speed up and “pace” someone that’s trying to pass you? That’s reckless. Now texting while riding a motorcycle I’d call “careless driving” which is also illegal, like this guy: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/22709103/2013/06/27/tempe-motorcycle-cop-caught-texting-while-riding
Or maybe this one: http://www.kvue.com/news/state/SAPD-investigate-photo-of-officer-texting-on-motorcycle-255887031.html
Now some states just call it “careless and reckless.” But it doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you understand it’s already illegal and that doesn’t even seem to dissuade those who are supposed to enforce the law from doing it.
with a modern car there is a good chance you could survive a crash into a pole at 45mph.
I already pointed you to “pole” crash tests of modern cars at 25mph. There is significant passenger compartment intrusion. 45mph would at the very least intrude to the center of the car.
But if the speed limit is 45 mph it is almost impossible to hit a pole not directly on the road at 45 mph.
You’ve clearly never driven in winter or driven a car that was twitchy enough to be upset by pavement irregularities. It’s possible to slide off the road an hit a pole a few feet from the edge of the roadway at 5mph. Even more probable if one has a car where the ABS goes into infinite loop and won’t slow the car under 5mph.
Tell me Brent if it is dangerous for a driver to hit something at whatever speed with all of the safety equipment like seat belts, air bags and crunch zones of the car then how can it be safe for a person hit by that reckless driver on the bike path or sidewalk where the pole is?
Shouldn’t we outlaw reckless drivers so that they do not injure or kill others? Shouldn’t we get those drivers off the street?
You’re babbling and changing the subject again.
Laws don’t stop irresponsible people who aren’t concerned about consequences. Responsible people concerned about consequences weren’t a problem in the first place.
Brent when was the last time they had winter in Santa Clarita, CA? You have so many mental problems going on you should not be driving.
Tell me Brent, if it is dangerous for a driver to be on a 45 mph road with a bike path along it and then a sidewalk on top of a curb, then tell me why they should not remove the bike path and sidewalk? We have poles all over around here a few feet from the roadway. No no one hits them because they do not drive 45 mph over the speed limit. It is obvious in this case that speed does kill.
So, Lonestar . . . you have the ring… and I see your schwartz is as big as mine!
Clover is more so one of these guys surrounding Dark Helmet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhLqPfAylF4
@Eric – You are slowly wearing him down into compliance. 🙂
“And that is why evil will always triumph over good. Because good is dumb.”
I don’t understand why you need to ask that question. Can you think for yourself at all? I honestly question your ability to dress yourself in the absence of your clothes being laid out each morning by your mother.
Dear John,
It’s clear you lost track of who put others at risk.
It was not the libertarian. It was the statists who collectively manifested the “public” road system with its arbitrary speed limits.
Absent brute force coercion, i.e., violations of the NAP, the “public” road system with its arbitrary speed limits would never have come into existence. The public would never have been coerced into driving on them in the first place, because they were denied market alternatives.
In a free market road system, the concerns you mentioned would be part and parcel of a voluntary contractual agreement. Use the roads, follow the private owner’s rules. Violators incur any costs resulting from violations of safety rules.
The bottom line is a just solution is not possible within a coerced statist system. It, not libertarians, puts people at risk.
Hi John,
“Possibility” is an intangible, a subjective. The fact is, most people “speed” literally every time they drive – and yet, most people rarely wreck. In fact, most never wreck. Yes, wrecks happen. But most are the result of driver error – not “speed” as such.
Let me toss out an analogy that will hopefully make my point:
A man buys a case of beer. He could drink it all in one sitting. He might do something irresponsible as a result. Shall we pass a law forbidding any person to purchase more than a six pack within a 24 hour period?
Some people cannot “handle” their alcohol. Some are very impaired after consuming very small amounts. Others get violent. Most do not.
The point at which “a speed become careless, reckless, severely reckless” can be readily identified. It is the point at which harm has been caused to persons or property. Now you have a fact – objective, real. Harm has been caused.
Until that point, all you’ve got is conjecture.
And though it might make you uneasy to – as an example – see a guy driving “too fast” (in your opinion) it’s not sufficient justification to do him violence. If you believe it is sufficient, then you’ve opened Pandora’s Box – and out will spring Clover and his literally endless litany of “thou shallt nots” based on his asserted fear of what might happen.
Case in point Eric:
Back in ’86 there were 2 lanes Northbound and 2 lanes Southbound past where I was living at the time. The limit had been 75k for at least 2 decades and the area was considered almost rural.
One day, only the Northbound lane got a shiny new 60k sign. It didn’t take long to discover why. Day after day the cops were using brand new radar in the only hiding spot on the stretch, reason for only one side to be a reduced speed.
For the best part of a year, people lost licences, livelihoods and shitloads of money because there was only one 60k sign and it was easy to miss at the beginning of that mile stretch.
When the smoke cleared after a year, the limit went up to 80k’s, considering by now the old 75k limits were abandoned and replaced by 60, 70 or 80 – but mostly 60’s.
It was local council collusion – with the police wanting to justify the “necessity” of their new radars and the council drooling over the anticipated fine moola.
If Clover somehow can’t see this as criminal behaviour – outright fraud leading to legal blackmail – he/she/it deserves to be jailed for collusion to that very same fraud, blackmail and, advocating the continuance of such widespread crime.
Also, Clover fails to grasp many things, including that nature and physics don’t care whether speed limits are in increments of 5 or 10. If a crash occurs at a speed limit that’s too fast for a given stretch, the local authorities should be sued, but they’ll usually lie and say you were too fast for the conditions no matter what they were.
Eric says “The point at which “a speed become careless, reckless, severely reckless” can be readily identified. It is the point at which harm has been caused to persons or property.” Eric since you say no one does wrong until they harm others, tell me how a victim can be made right if they are dead or in a wheel chair the rest of their lives? Explain that simple observation Eric.
I believe in prevention. Someone driving poorly needs to be stopped before they cause a major injury that can negatively affect another person for life. That is your so called libertarian ideal of not causing harm to others. In ways I am more of a libertarian than anyone else here. I change my oil in my engine so I do not cause harm to my engine. Do you ever change the oil in your engine? If so, why? Why would anyone try to prevent engine problems but it is fine to not try to prevent a death to others?
“I believe in prevention.” – That’s the swan song of do-gooder’s everywhere. ‘Prevention’ must be like a god to them, just as Mars was for the Romans?
[It’s funny how spell-check says the word, ‘gooder’s’ should be ‘goober’s’]
So long as there’s a perception of prevention, do-goober’s get all warm inside. No matter if it’s a false perception or if the price is the liberty of everyone. However; there is one catch, one condition, for the perception to be visible to them.
If do-goober’s believe in prevention so much, why aren’t they screaming for helmets to be mandatory while driving a car, that the national speed limit be 5 m.p.h on Every road and hyway, and all light poles be made of Nerf material?
Answer: Because that’s an inconvenience to THEM or an expense too great for THEM. Do-goober’s have to realize some kind of benefit in their preventions, be it lording over their fellow man, or piles of money from a hidden speed trap they get to spend, or feel like they get to spend, or get to put into their pocket.
They Only believe in prevention when there’s something in it for THEM and they do not find it to be cumbersome.
Mang, it’s like that factory I worked in where they all claimed to feel safe because the fork truck drivers on the floor were commanded to honk their horns before they rounded a turn or every time they saw someone get close to them. It was as if a honking horn was protection – a prevention – and everyone should just ‘feel’ safe as a result. … Only, a honking horn protects no one from a two ton heavy thing swinging their way while the operator is oblivious. This ‘safety’ protocol was just an illusion bought into by most everyone. The Clover’s of the world just eat that stuff up like slop to a hog. None the wiser. All the while people let their guard down because they think there is a prevention looking out for them.
The interesting stuff you learn when you look at a bug under a light. I.e. this thread.
Forklift safety:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oB6DN5dYWo
It’s a parody. The reason it comes off so well is that those who made it got the guy who narrates a lot of safety videos in Germany to do this one. So the presentation has just the right tone and sound of a real safety video.
Thanks BrentP,
Klaus is my hero.
I enjoyed that parody.
Another interesting thing is that Clover claims to be an investor. Now I’ve never seen where he specifies what he invests in. But I’m confident Clover invests in what he considers to be “successful” companies. Like those that turn the highest profits when “old men lie and young men die” all at taxpayers’ expense . How much would you like to bet that clover holds shares of “sure-fire” stocks like L-3, Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon? After all, war is profitable. Right Clover?
It also wouldn’t surprise me if Clover favors big pharma as a “good investment” too. After all, they are making billions off anti-depressants alone. First you turn a profit by pushing SSRIs and stimulants on “troubled” (i.e. intelligent, imaginative and energetic) teenagers bored stiff and suffering cognitive dissonance from the statist pabulum forced on them in the publik skule system . Then when one of the victims, oh, sorry, “patients” freaks out from screwed up brain chemistry, “loses it”, steals mom’s gun, shoots up a school or a mall and then kills themself, you push for more gun control. From Clover’s twisted view of things that type of incident gives his gun control arguments more weight, never mind the actual root cause.
Of course big pharma also exploits a huge drug market that is active duty military and returning veterans. You shoot them full of vaccines before you send them off to some third world shithole. Then you load them up with “go pills” while they’re doing the Empire’s dirty work. When they come back with PTSD you give them Ambien and Cymbalta so they can sleep. You get your global perpetual warfare, a militarized police state at home, mind control drugs for every citizen and you can build your portfolio all at the same time! Wow! Talk about a win-win scenario for a statist control freak. I want to puke.
Boothe you said I invest in things that kill people. Sorry Boothe but there is not a single company out there that drives drunk and kills others thousands like libertarians. Not a single company that weaves in and out of traffic speeding and kills others like libertarians. There is not a single company that begs for less safety than libertarians do. There is not a single company that plans to go out and blow up a building full of people like libertarians do. It is libertarian extremist that we have to worry about that say it is OK to kill and injure people that work for the government or are in government buildings.
“It is libertarian extremist that we have to worry about that say it is OK to kill and injure people that work for the government or are in government buildings.”
I think this pretty much sums up your reason for visiting this site. Nobody here is interested in biting. Even if someone were, Eric or I would have their post deleted. You are pathetic!
Clover – listen to yourself. What are you on, anyway? Is there some kind of statistic that shows that libertarians are more likely to be involved in a car accident, drive drunk, weave in and out of traffic, and kill people in government buildings? You really need to rethink your positions, if that’s possible. Either that, or get a life.
Clover wants to control our lives, Swamp.
That is the essence of his life!
Just spouting rubbish doesn’t prove anything Clover, but you’re still uneducated to this fact.
Dear clover,
You can of course persist in fabricating straw men to knock down.
But if you really want to know how most anarchist libertarians think, watch this 4 minute video.
We know there is no need to blow up anything. We know that the real solution is merely to BECOME AWARE that we are not obligated to obey a bunch of people who call themselves “The Government.”
Well Clover – Let’s start with corporations that profit from death and destruction by remote control: “drone” Manufacturers.
1) Boeing – $80.5 Billion 2012 Income
2) General Atomic – $652 Million 2012 Income
3) Lockheed Martin – $ 47.2 Billion 2012 Income
4) Northrup Grumman – Sold $1.2 Billion in drones to South Korea alone.
5) SAIC – Developing underwater drones, but only took in a meager $2.87 Billion.
6) Israeli Aerospace Industries – Pioneered drone technology back in the 1970s.
7) Textron – As the rest of their business dropped, their drone division gained $61 Million.
8) General Dynamics – A major contributor to the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus (a.k.a. the “drone caucus”). Yeah, it’s for real: http://unmannedsystemscaucus.mckeon.house.gov/
So Clover, you say corporations don’t go out and plan to blow up buildings and kill the people in them do you? Well of course they don’t. Because corporations are artificial entities created on paper by the government to convey special legal immunities and privileges to the men who control them. But those same men most certainly do plan to profit by encouraging others to go out break things and kill people. War is most certainly “profitable” if you’re in the “right” business with the “right” connections. So make up all the bovine hyperbole that you want to, but corporations in the euphemistically named “defense industry” profit handsomely from mass death, destruction and general mayhem; so their leadership indeed plans for it and promotes it. You can deny that the grass is green and the sky is blue, but that won’t make it true.
Dear Boothe,
Good info. Here’s some more.
The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers
The Iraq war is many things to different people. It is called a strategic blunder and a monstrous injustice and sometimes even a patriotic mission, much to the chagrin of rational human beings. For many big companies, however, the war is something far different: a lucrative cash-cow. The years-long, ongoing military effort has resurrected fears of the so-called “military-industrial complex.” Media pundits are outraged at private companies scooping up huge, no-questions-asked contracts to manufacture weapons, rebuild infrastructure, or anything else the government deems necessary to win (or plant its flag in Iraq). No matter what your stance on the war, it pays to know where your tax dollars are being spent.
Following is a detailed rundown of the 25 companies squeezing the most profit from this controversial conflict.
1. Halliburton
Iraq-Halliburton
The first name that comes to everyone’s mind here is Halliburton. According to MSN Money, Halliburton’s KBR, Inc. division bilked government agencies to the tune of $17.2 billion in Iraq war-related revenue from 2003-2006 alone. This is estimated to comprise a whopping one-fifth of KBR’s total revenue for the 2006 fiscal year. The massive payoff is said to have financed the construction and maintenance of military bases, oil field repairs, and various infrastructure rebuilding projects across the war-torn nation. This is just the latest in a long string of military/KBR wartime partnerships, thanks in no small part to Dick Cheney’s former role with the parent company.
http://www.businesspundit.com/the-25-most-vicious-iraq-war-profiteers/
RE: “Following is a detailed rundown of the 25 companies squeezing the most profit from this controversial conflict.”
And there’s so Very many more.
How’s a guy to know (if he’s working at some fabrication shop in the Midwest or something) working hard at bending metal to a specific angle or cutting steel to .0001 of an inch, how’s he to know his work is going towards feeding the military machine? For the average guy, it’s not often easy to tell.
It’s not like it’s written in the blueprints: “Create this, and children and innocents in foreign lands will die as a result of your effort”.
Say that guy is making parts for Caterpillar, is that for a simple earth moving machine, or is it for a warmongering machine? How’s an average guy to know?
For the most part, they don’t.
And that’s all a part of why (pardon my misplace here) things, “keep on, keeping on”.
But for the ones that know,… well. What can be said? Maybe: they are a lost cause?
It’s no wonder they are so focused on sports and such, how could they live with themselves otherwise?
Clover says – “It is libertarian extremist that we have to worry about that say it is OK to kill and injure people that work for the government or are in government buildings.
Why limit it to potential libertarian killers Clover? Add your Extremist in Chief.
Bloodiest US and Yemeni attacks in two years kill at least 40 people
The security authorities stated that the air strikes, which lasted for several hours, killed around 55 terrorists from [AQAP], including three movement leaders,’ the interior ministry said. Including at least three civilians that were described as ‘construction workers‘ or ‘labourers’ by some reports. Unnamed US officials told the New York Times CIA drones were used in the airstrikes. The CIA declined to comment when contacted by the Bureau.
US senator says drones death toll is 4700
A US senator has said an estimated 4,700 people, including civilians, have been killed in the contentious bombing raids of America’s secretive drone war.
“the air strikes … killed … at least three civilians that were described as ‘construction workers‘ or ‘labourers’ by some reports”. [As if it didn’t really matter “by some reports”? They were just ‘nobodies’, who cares?].
And of course The CIA declined to comment
No, that doesn’t scream out, “Guilty”, no.
“A US senator has said an estimated 4,700 people, including civilians, have been killed in … America’s secretive drone war.”
That – This – Is Written by them (with a straight face) and yet those around me, and those in power just brush it all of as if it were No Big Deal, just astounds me.
“America’s secretive drone war” As if that’s ok?
Bastards. Every one of them.
@Helot – Clover & Co. wouldn’t brush it off if the “terrorists” killed 50 in D.C. (including 3 civilians) with a remote aircraft would he?
In fact Clover, there are a lot of companies that show very little concern for safety until it affects their bottom line. Let’s take one of my favorite companies, Kawasaki, for example. I had one of their insiders tell me years ago, that they have actuarial types on the payroll that calculate the number of deaths caused by a defective product that it will take to make a recall cost effective. Don’t believe it? Ford as much as admitted that with the Pinto by acknowledging that it would be cheaper to settle the individual liability claims than to issue a recall. Look at GM’s recent track record with their ignition switch revelation. Or their long time partner in crime, Toyota, with their attempted cover up of the “sticky accelerator” issue and “floor mat entrapment” issues. Toyota even had one insider acknowledge that if they kept lying about it, someone would go to jail.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of organized capital and the power of production at that scale. The problem is people Clover. Petty little tyrant bureaucrats just like you. They see a potential threat to their career and they’ll try to hide it or throw someone else under the bus. This goes on in corporations and their creator, government, every day. The corporate players will even try to blame other corporations as in the Firestone tire / Ford Explorer fiasco. Let the finger pointing begin so long as it doesn’t hit my bottom line, right Clover?
Corporations don’t “beg for more safety” or less safety. Corporations look for market share and when they get it, they seek to keep it. If that involves destroying competitors, lying about defective product, putting on a public face of concern for the consumer or lobbying for most favored status, they’ll do it. Corporations are controlled by men; usually ruthless, psychopathic men, because they’ll do whatever it takes to get their position without regard to the fingers they step on or the other climbers they knock off on their way up the corporate ladder. Psychopaths don’t care about safety (other than their own), they care about themselves and what they can get out of any given deal. You should understand this Clover, since you exhibit many of these “fine” character traits yourself. But based on your literary skills, you just aren’t smart enough to climb very high, now are you? Poor Clover.
Ford did no such thing with the Pinto. It was cloverish distortion from a government required calculation.
http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/archives/000023.php
The government regulators assign a value to human life. That value is not what a company may need to pay out in lawsuits. It’s the productivity value of the person (supposedly) to society. I believe it to be a value which is used to represent our value to government and those who own it. Slavery isn’t dead. Anyway, then this is compared to the cost of a new mandate. If the new mandate costs more to society that the dead people it doesn’t go forward. These are calculations the automakers do as part of the regulatory process.
Thanks for the link BrentP – That’s good information. I had been under the false impression (since the 80s) that Ford was the major player at fault. I was unaware (yet not surprised) that the NHTSA had a major hand in the whole mess. Want something really screwed up? Let government get involved. In my mind this goes along with seatbelt laws, motorcycle helmet laws and practically every safety regulation ever issued. I’m confident that some of the folks involved are genuinely concerned with our safety. Some of it is putting on a show for the public as well to show us how much they care (whether they do or not is irrelevant, it’s all about image and reputation). But I’m also very much aware that monetary values are placed on human life when deciding these matters because dead slaves don’t pay taxes.
“Sorry Boothe but there is not a single company out there that drives drunk and kills others thousands like libertarians.”
LOL, so being a libertarian means being a drunk driver?
“Not a single company that weaves in and out of traffic speeding and kills others like libertarians.”
Funny, most of the libertarians I know are very thoughtful as they have fully internalized the concept of self-control and personal responsibility.
“There is not a single company that plans to go out and blow up a building full of people like libertarians do. ”
What the heck? Kind of random….
“It is libertarian extremist that we have to worry about that say it is OK to kill and injure people that work for the government or are in government buildings.”
OK, I am laughing now. Clover, I really appreciate the entertainment. I wish you were a student in my econ class so I could help you put forth some reasonable arguments.
Boothe, I notice Lockheed posted a record first quarter this year. Couldn’t have a thing to do with the billions the fedgov has taken at gunpoint from the citizens and given to them for their very own “space shuttle”. Now that’s a sweet contract, sorta like all those Cheney arranged for Haliburton.
Eightsouthman, it’s bad enough that those of us that are actually productive are forced into involuntary servitude every year to fund the Empire. What truly adds insult to injury is the gun-vernment using the stolen fruits of our labor to maim, mutilate, murder and destroy folks all over the globe that haven’t done thing to us. The “private sector” tax-feeders standing by with their greedy little mitts sticking out to grab as much of our stolen money as they can are who really disgust me. Even if the Empire continued to steal from us, if no one would accept the stolen goods the tax man takes every year, their Imperial power would vanish. Trouble is, most folks can be bought, usually for damned little and they don’t care where the money comes from. Some things never change.
Boothe,
It looks like you are the winner of Online Psych profiling!
As indicated below by the nonsense reply of Clover, it seems you have hit a nerve and diagnosed the problem 100%.
Let’s see if I understand Clover’s “logic” by saying, and I paraphrase, corporations don’t hurt people, but people sure do.
Well, two things come to mind. One, the Supreme Court claims that corporations are people. (Except when they are not, conveniently enough for GM and the like, so they cannot be held liable like a person. Try putting “GM” in jail for installing faulty ignitions, or better yet, killing people by doing so.) Maybe we need some drunk driving citations for GE, GM, Halliburton, etc. Get them hoodlums off the street, stop the killing. Jail the corporations!
Two, think Fukishima and the choices made by General Electric to install a poorly designed nuclear (or would Clover say nuk-u-lar?) reactor in a tsunami zone, with a tsunami wall several meters too short for a HISTORIC event (Clover, this means that there was already an event in the past that had been much worse, tsunami-wise, but the geniuses at GE decided that the past was irrelevant), and all the other things that went wrong.
So this means that a person can weave in and out of traffic. Maybe, possibly, maybe hurt someone. Bad man.
But a corporation/company like GE can design and build a nuclear power plant with known design flaws, make decisions that REDUCE safety, and subsequently have a catastrophic meltdown (three, actually), permanently pollute the environment, kill anywhere from thousands to millions of people, if not totally pollute the world, practically forever, etc. and …. What?
Oh yeah, since it is a corporation, it cannot “kill others thousands like libertarians … not a single company … kills others like libertarians [sic]”. And this gem: “not a single company that begs for less safety than libertarians do.”
Besides, GE got the plans for Fukishima approved by the government, so not only must it be “safe,” it never had a meltdown in the first place, or anything else bad happened, since government makes everything good. No, not good. Great. Just slap a “government approved” sticker on anything and it goes from dangerous to “greatest thing ever!!!!”
Me thinks that Boothe is right, and Clover either works for one of these big “killer” industries, albeit as a lowly clerk with no author-ah-tay, or just makes a safe little bundle from investing in these businesses that kill with no remorse.
My bet is s/he is a lowly government puke, with less than no author-ah-tay, no skills to speak of (you can’t even write well, Clover). I base this broad assertion on this wonderful quote: “It is libertarian extremist that we have to worry about that say it is OK to kill and injure people that work for the government or are in government buildings [sic].”
Actually Clover, I never hear Libertarians say that. Only the mentally deranged (you?), the paranoid (you?), and the true perverters of freedom, the government stooges (you?), say this non-sense. Basically because they (you?) are afraid that when libertarians (and the rest of humanity) finally wake up and throw off the yoke of tyranny, you will be left without a means to feed yourself, since you have no skills to trade (force and demands are not skills).
Personally, I will not feed my previous slave masters, so go begging somewhere else.
Hi Big DP,
You’ve got Clover in your sights; well-said, sir!
Amen BgDP and kudos!
I know you, are the paranoid ones, (if not actually stupid) if you think the big bad old corporations like GE and GM sit around and “plot” to actually design nuclear plants and vehicles that are unsafe and fail like the one in Japan. That the car companies look at recalls as a matter of economics. That engineers sit around and design things that are bad for consumers, because the price is right. If you do, you are condemning a lot of good, sincere and hard working people.
I know you. You are the one (of many) who sit around and bad mouth everything you do not understand, or even take the time to understand. You don’t even understand the process of constructing an out house let alone a nuclear plant.
Nuclear plants are a bid process. The owner sets up the specifications not the supplier (GE). What the owner builds, we see. What GE or any other supplier recommends is often rejected because of costs or other factors.
As for “millions” being killed? I don’t think so and you know this is an outright lie. Just look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, after nuclear attacks of WWII. The pundits said they would be uninhabitable for at least 1000 years. Nothing of the sort today. The difficulty with science is it digs its heals in and when things don’t work out the way the scientists want they either “cook the books” e.g. global warming caused by human beings or the famous “Piltdown man hoax” (look it up dummies) or don’t talk about it at all. You notice how “global warming” is now
“climate change”?
Want to compare the Japanese nuclear plant to the Russian plant at Chernobyl? Don’t even go there. Completely different designs and security systems.
You seem to suffer from the same things many people of this age suffer from…fear. The old “boogie man” is not dead, he is just wearing different clothes.
You probably think that “fracking” for natural gas is going to pollute the water supply for the whole earth; and you don’t even know anything about it.
My suggestions to you readers from a 77 year old man who is still working and has worked for more than one major corporation. I have never seen such a stupid generation. We sit knee deep in information in the form of the internet and tons of literature, and still come up with stupid blogs with stupid ideas. Give it up. Get a life! Read a book (Samualson) on Economics. Get educated and get smart. Stop following the old “boogie man”.
As President Roosevelt said in the 1930’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”.
But.. But.. If you’d just follow the speed limit you wouldn’t have a problem.
Eric – Clover can’t face the fallacy of his belief system. I suspect it is because somehow, in some way, clover’s livelihood relies on the U.S. Empire and its corporatist dominated system. He has thoroughly imbibed the Flavorade of U.S. nationalism, crony capitalism and pseudo-socialism. Based on clover’s frequent allusions to “America: love it or leave it” he has no problem with U.S. imperial hegemony and the military-industrial complex that supports it. Further he supports the domestic arm of the empire, the surveillance-police state, since that makes him feel “safe” (or at least rationalizing it that way helps assuage his dull life of menial servitude on the cubicle farm).
Clover gives us every indication that he is a lower echelon government functionary or corporate middle manager (at best). He has reached his personal performance pinnacle and deep down he knows that. He can’t compete in a private sector job. That would require flexibility and innovation; you know the other C word – change! No, to succeed, to maintain his personal status quo, he is just trying to keep his head down and mouth shut, essentially doing nothing (thereby doing nothing wrong) for 30 years so he can “earn” his retirement. Since Clover is non-productive, he knows he must extract taxes (if only by proxy) from the rest of us to survive. As a minor functionary with control freak tendencies, it is reasonable to presume that our Clover is at least nominally a psychopath and hence slightly below average intelligence. Consequently Clover genuinely believes that he has all the correct answers in life. After all, these things have worked for him…so far…so they must be good for the rest of us. To him, it is obvious we are the ones with the problem, not him. Never him.
So anyone that disagrees with Clover he views as “stupid”, “mentally ill” or a “home-grown terrorist.” It is counterintuitive to Clover when we advocate non-aggression, voluntary interactions and minimal government. Why? It’s really quite simple; Clover has very little (if any) self-control so he must rely on others to make his decisions for him. Clover believes no one else can control themselves either and without the iron fist of authori-tay keeping us all in line, mankind will self-destruct and take him with it. He can’t grasp the concept that it has invariably been the collective force of government big government and big corporations, the powers and principalities down through the ages, which have wrought the most destruction of life and property. He loves government, and rules and structure; it’s his religion. I liken it to a doting mother that refuses to accept that her little Johnny really is an axe murderer even after seeing it on video.
The crux of the problem is that Clover is a specialized parasite; a tax-feeder. Like any parasite his survival instinct instructs him to resist being dislodged from the host with all his might. When we realize we have parasites and discuss their removal, they self-identify by screaming the loudest. Thanks for implicitly telling us who you are Clover.
And just why the never ending assertion made by “clovers” that libertarians don’t want to pay individually for what they get, such as access to the private road. Must be some sort of projection.
I asked Eric what is he going to do without taxes but what he said was we need to move back to the world of 500 years ago where we had dirt roads and no government in this country . He said he is not willing to pay for anything like roads. He does not want to pay to keep the bridges from falling down. Eric you do not need to worry about me complaining about your speeding because in your world the roads will not be good enough to drive fast.
“world of 500 years ago where we had dirt roads and no government in this country . ”
It really worked out well for the indigenous folks didn’t it, you worthless fascist bastard?
I look forward to the day your posts no longer show up here (which won’t be due to the fact that you grew weary of posting here).
I said nothing of the kind, Clover.
What I did say was that no one should be be forced to “fund” anything. That is not the same as saying “I am not willing to pay for anything like roads.”
It means: Leave people free to pay for that which they decide is of value to them.
In addition to being illiterate, you’re also a liar.
Eric – “I said nothing of the kind, Clover. ”
Clearly highlighting why Clover is a pointless waste of time, succinctly worded by old Bert below.
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” – Bertrand Russell
Really, Eric, why continue to dignify this trolltard’s verbal vomitus with responses? Not only is it beneath you (and beneath anyone else with a functioning cerebrum), but also akin to trying to discuss existential philosophy with a newborn infant: a silly, demeaning, and pointless waste of time.
@Clover – That is much too easy to answer. Pick a harder question next time.
The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. On average, as of April 2014, state and local taxes add 31.5 cents to gasoline and 31.0 cents to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 49.9 cents per gallon for gas and 55.4 cents per gallon for diesel.
In 2012, about 133 billion gallons1 (or 3.18 billion barrels) of gasoline where consumed in the United States, and another 35 billion gallons of diesel.
Hey Clover,
You should come by my twitter account some time and introduce yourself. My handle is @TurdBurglestein. We’ll have lots of fun…or at least I will.
Turd
Yes – without taxes – concrete would not exist.
Paved Roads: A technological marvel so complex only government could build them.