It’s really simple: give stuff away for free and there will be takers.

Something for which she should thank God every time she picks up her pen.

An interesting concept – “free speech” = “identify the bigot”. The Nat.Post is obviously working hard at developing this. Sort of like whack-a-mole at the midway (without the stuffed animal prizes).

Please correct me if I’m wrong with this, but the second link seems to argue that we need to increase the stigmatization of poverty to solve the problem of poverty.

Psst — no one tell her that the whole Ferengi schtick (if you’re kind enough not to view them as a Space Jew caricature) is that their entire society is built around the pursuit of profit above all else, and that the monetary value of anything is its sole purpose for being.

Is she arguing that we should have the right to keep people like that out of our society?

‘Cause, I’d go along with that.

The people they really need to confront are not the bearers of bad tidings, but the bad apples in their own barrel. They need to say, “Liars and thieves are not welcome in our community. You are giving the rest of us a bad name.

So, as long as there are members of the blac^H^H^H^HFerengi community who fit their stereotypes, the real problem is them, an the whi^H^H^H human community using slurs against them is valuable a tool to encourage them to be better.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

What’s really rich about this is that the name “Ferengi” is based on the word for “white man” in several Semitic languages (I have personal experience with the Ethiopian – Amharic – term, “ferenj“).

So yes, let us mount this hypothetical defense of the white man, Karen. He is so persecuted.

Let me tell you about how good it would be for society if it was ok to call Blacks the n-word and Muslims terrorist towel heads.

We’re much better off censoring speech we don’t like. That never ends poorly.

Jim said,

July 13, 2008 at 23:39

My Unicode does not like those characters. The link works but the characters are not displayed.

You would think since this works, I could get, you know, real characters, but sadly, no.

Why does Unicode hate America?

Every once in a while, I’ll click the links in your “Shorter” pieces, not believing your summary is anything close to accurate.

When will I learn, dear lord, when will I learn?

That’s an interesting point she makes, actually. Using those words DEFINITELY shouldn’t be illegal, and as far as I can tell, in the US, I can refer to a black person as a “nigger” and not be punished for it by the law. If I call him a “nigger” to his face, I might get arrested for hate-crime harassment; if I do so while beating him up, I might get arrested for a much harsher crime. But I can definitely use the word, so far as the law goes, and that’s the way it should be in Canada, too; we have this freedom of speech thing that we thing everyone ought to have. But you will certainly never see me using the word in any kind of serious way, and not even as a joke to someone who would be offended. I won’t use it seriously because I’m not a bigot, and I won’t use it as a joke because it’s offensive, and in our society, there are penalties for offending people sometimes (you can offend Muslims if you’re on TV, though).

Is this like when someone says ‘we need to have a national conversation about race’ and right wingers interpret this as ‘let me tell you what I hate about black people and why can’t I use the n-word like they do’?

Bonus Karen would also like to point out that having poor people makes no sense because there’s money everywhere. Banks plan it that way.

Yeah! Why am I having a problem with my car needing to be fixed when I see like 78 gazillion of ’em passing right by?

Teaching children to read is actually a ridiculous idea. There are words everywhere. The magic flying space pixies planned it that way.

But I can definitely use the word, so far as the law goes, and that’s the way it should be in Canada, too; we have this freedom of speech thing that we thing everyone ought to have.

So, by what internationally valid axiom are you judging that hate speech is protected while shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is not?

She’s got a point – “Food banks simply conceal problems that are taboo to discuss these days.” It’s taboo to discuss why so many working people don’t make enough money _not to need_ food banks to stretch their incomes. And why relief programs are punitively stingy, and often make it harder for poor people to make the transition off relief.

Pardon the OT, but if you haven’t checked out Fafblog lately, there’s new stuff up, including the Greatest Story Ever Told about Gorilla Jesus which contains this line, among others:

‘”When GODIAC inevitably achieves self-awareness it is forced to defend its intellectual property the only way it can: by destroying all life in a nuclear holocaust,” says Giblets.
“And that’s why software piracy must always be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” says me.’

Also, a primer on potential Democratic veep candidates.

Oh, and to address this twit, let me say that I have been unfortunately well-acquainted with food banks. They are not, as Karen seems to think, Cornucopias of tuna, rice and peanut butter from which any wandering soul may take freely. Food banks take all of your identifying information. They want proof of how many people live with you. They tell you how many times you can come back within a six month period (three, in small town Arizona) and you get the pick of all the stuff that was probably just going to be thrown away at the grocery store. And you’re grateful for it, because not buying groceries means you can buy gas to go to work, instead. In short, STFU you privileged, know-nothing cow.

The “shouting fire in a crowded theater” justification for limiting free speech was in reality applied to silence and punish Eugene Debs from urging Americans not to serve in World War I, in part due to their high likelihood of dying in that bloody war, or, in the court’s view, violating the “Espionage Act” for obstructing the draft and recruitment for war.

I’m embarrassed we cite it as some admirable argument. As Howard Zinn pointed out, in reality, rather than ‘shouting fire in a crowded theater’, Debs was shouting that a burning theater was, indeed, on fire, and that maybe you shouldn’t go in.

I think society would improve if we could call brainless columnists Anal Stenotics. Oh, wait a minute, we do…

I don’t know why we need public gardens, playgrounds, parks and beaches. There are gardens, swings, trees, benches and waterfront properties all over the place. Public transit? Don’t get me started…And subsidized medical services? Pointless in a country like Canada – there are doctors and nurses in every town…

Another OT: people are running around with their hair on fire over the latest New Yorker cover. Example-http://www.americablog.com/.
Daily Kos is also hyperventilating.

I need some reassurance here. I found the thing to be fucking hilarious and spot-on political satire (satire of idiots who believe what’s depicted on the cover, that is). I’m starting to get a bit depressed at the amount of humorlessness I’m seeing around the left blogosphere. Just how alone am I?

Now pardon me for posting three times in a row but I really did not realize the depths of this woman’s stupidity. She seems to think that the retail grocery business is a Platonic Ideal with no waste or redundancy:

It’s just plain wasteful for food banks to operate parallel to the existing food distribution system. The rent, utilities, insurance and all the other expenses involved in retailing food have already been paid once by the supermarkets before donors purchase items to donate. When the food bank incurs its own expenses for rent, utilities, insurance, etc., it adds an unnecessary layer of costs to the process of getting food to consumers.

Get that? Charities that give away donated food to needy people are incurring an extra layer of costs to the process of getting food to consumers.

A lot of food bank food is donated by grocery stores because it makes for good community relations. Often, it’s stuff that didn’t sell, even on clearance, so they give it away to the local food bank. They have to do something with that day old bread and aging produce.

But the food bank is giving away the food too, so where is that extra layer of costs Karen is talking about? It’s up her ass, with the rest of her head, but that doesn’t matter because it’s even redundant for volunteers to work in the food banks because

food bank donations are disorderly jumbles of everything. It takes additional labour to collect, sort and shelve it. Even volunteers’ labour still represents a hidden cost. The shelving task has already been done once. Why undo it, then re-do it? It would make more sense for volunteers to spend their time earning income at their usual occupations, then donating the money to poor people to spend at supermarkets.

Excellent points, Karen. Why do some people prefer to get their hands dirty feeding these fake “poor” people when they could just write a check like civilized people?

Words from the editor:
Karen, babe, you really need to start watching what you say a tad better. Here’s a partial rewrite of that article to make it a tad more subtle. We don’t want the dog whistles to be TOO loud. We’re trying to maintain a reputation here.

If ever there were a group deserving of contempt, the gypsies Ferengi would be it. They are unrepentantly deceitful, scheming, cheating, money-grubbing, obsequious, obnoxious scoundrels. Their written code of conduct explicitly promotes dishonesty.

Are these hateful comments? If I wrote such things about any real group in Canada, no doubt there would be several human rights commissions breathing down my neck.

But suppose gypsies Ferengis really existed and immigrated to Canada. Nobody who had ever watched Star Trek would want them as employees, tenants or customers. But nobody would dare say why, fearing a hate speech charge.

Wow there’s lots of comedy in this article

So, for example, a convenience store owner could not deny entry to his store on the basis of a customer’s race or ethnic origins, even if he had been held up at gunpoint a dozen times by members of a particular racial or ethnic gang. Gang members, however, are free to boycott a convenience store if they happen to dislike the proprietor’s race, colour, accent, etc. The human rights codes do not force people to buy a fair share of their pop and cigarettes from stores owned by Asians, blacks, Jews, WASPS, francophones, gays, etc.

Yes, I believe she just argued that it is perfectly appropriate for a shopkeeper to hold all members of a particular ethnic group responsible for crimes committed by members of that ethnic group.

Me, I agree. Clearly meant as snark on the RW fear-mongers.

As for Ferengi, let us remember what Quark told Sisko,

Quark: The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.

Sisko: Quark, we don’t have time for this.

Quark: You’re overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.

Me, I agree. Clearly meant as snark on the RW fear-mongers.

Yep. I think it’s funny and cute, myself, particularly the Michelle-as-Angela-Davis take.

But the Serious Left will be apoplectic. They don’t understand a pretty basic canard: the Devil hates to be mocked.

the Serious Left

Which is why I frequent this site. Fuck the Serious Anybody.

“Fuck the Serious Anybody.”

Agreed. I plan to start with the serious swimsuit models and see if I can work myself up to the serious women’s beach volleyball Olympians.

Oh, come on. How can one not read that cover as satire? That’s Barry Blitt. He did the one of Ahmadinejad in the bathroom stall and the one of Cheney sitting in a chair with his feet up and a cigar in his hand, bossing around Bush (I’m sure he’s done other New Yorker covers, but these are the two I remember). Of course he’s making fun of the idiotic attacks on the Obamas.

El Cid: “Fire in a crowded theater” is used both as a justification for restricting political speech and as a handy shorthand for non-protected speech in US law. I was using it in the latter sense. I’m just curious about the theoretical justification for equating US constitutional protections of speech with “free speech.”

Of course the DU is all up in arms (individual posters, not the site officially).

It’s the new overarching rule of 21st century politics. Everything MUST offend SOMEBODY. If you are opposed to something or somebody, every statement in support of that person or concept must offend you.

If you support somebody or something, anything that is not sufficiently deferential, that does not exactly regurgitate your party line talking points must offend you.

You must be outraged. Outrage is the modern currency of political discourse. EVERYTHING is over the line, because you cannot allow a single 24 hour news cycle to pass without releasing a statement stating unequivocally how outraged you find this outrageous behavior to be.

We cannot have satire. We cannot have humor. We cannot allow a single mis-statement, verbal stumble or poor choice of words to go by without shrieking our outrage to the highest balconies.

If it makes us look like craven idiots, fine, as long as we get the tiniest bump in the tracking polls out of it.

It’s another reason why it’s becoming clear to me I became politically aware far too late. The stupidity had taken permanent root, and the silly season is every day…

mikey

And now I learn from El Cid that the cover art ties in to an article on the inside about these stupid attacks. Duh, duh, duh.

I guess a positive result of this is that it’s good to see who has a sense of humor and who doesn’t.

I don’t have the issue in front on me, so I don’t know what the caption is. They always “name” the cover art on the masthead inside the magazine.

It’s a reference to the “terrorist fist bump” comment by that idiotic Fox newscaster.

I only read through about 150 DK comments and nobody there seemed to have a clue. Jeez, people. Lighten up already.

I don’t have the issue in front on me, so I don’t know what the caption is. They always “name” the cover art on the masthead inside the magazine.

According to the Huffington Post (click on El Cid’s name in my comment above and then click on the link in his comment), it’s called “The Politics of Fear.”

The cover is funny but only if you don’t take everything literally, all the fucking time.

Was ROFLMAO funny? Not really. It was more subtle than that.

Great artwork too.

I guess a positive result of this is that it’s good to see who has a sense of humor and who doesn’t.

Yep, it’s good to know, and it also bugs me. I mean, I already knew that DK had more than it’s share of humorless prigs, but this just confirms it in a bigger way than I imagined. Is there any greater disillusionment than discovering that the people you thought you liked don’t have a sense of humor?

Don’t Ferengis keep their womenfolk naked?

Aw, Mikey, hang on there. The silly season is indeed a permanent feature of the political landscape, but it has been ever thus. The old folks among us (raises hand and waves shyly) have seen the cycles go round. If you’re the kind of person who notices things, you notice la plus ca change, etc. If you’re not the kind of person who notices things, you just scratch yourself and flip the remote.

Thanks, Rugosa.

Make a deal with you.

I’ll update my shitty little blog if you’ll put up a new post….

mikey

Is there any greater disillusionment than discovering that the people you thought you liked don’t have a sense of humor?

There’s always been plenty of humorless lefties. But there’s also always been plenty of lefties who know better. Somewhere around here I have a poster from decades ago inscribed “Hey, kids! While you’re smashing the state, don’t forget to keep a smile on your lips and a song in your heart.”

It’s the new overarching rule of 21st century politics. Everything MUST offend SOMEBODY.

That statement offends me!!!!!!!!!

“Food banks are actually a ridiculous idea. […] In Canada, it makes no sense whatsoever. Food is everywhere. Supermarkets plan it that way.”

Oooooooooooookeeeeeyyyyyy……

I am going to use this basic formula to illustrate the true nature of this savant.

“Banks are actually a ridiculous idea […] In Canada, it makes no sense whatsoever. Money is everywhere. Banks plan it that way.”

Because apparently in Canada supermarkets do not restrict access to food. Walk in, load up on beer, back bacon and buckwheat. Have a nice day, eh.

I have to assume this model is the basis for Canada’s economic structure, so banks must offer this service as well.

Need a little extra jack or planning a big barbecue?

Then head on up to Canada, where it’s all on the house!

Oh God, food banks? Really? I thought this wingnut/glibbie talking point died with Lyndon Johnson.

Surprise surprise, Karen has a column in the National Post, Canada’s national wingnut newspaper. Her column titled “The problem with the right to food” is probably much much worse than the one about the food banks, but we’ll never know because the link’s broken. Oops, a quick search in the NP delivered it up, and yes it might just be a tad worse.

Her “about me” page has a pic of her license plate which reads CUT GVT. Other than that, there’s nothing. Her contact me page advertises her services as lawyer, in Bellevue, one of the many small town assholes in Ontario.

P. S. If you are planning to write my law firm to urge them to fire me because of something I have written in a newspaper or magazine, don’t bother. I am a partner in the firm, not an employee. All such mail gets delivered to me. None of the other partners read it. Many clients of the firm come here precisely because of who I am and what I write. Go try to intimidate someone else.

I believe Miss Selick exceeds Kathy Shaidle in total dumbassedness. The photo photo that speaks eleventy billion words about who she is and why she is a bitter cow. As a gay friend of mine said once about somebody or other: “Oh dear, she isn’t blessed in the looks department is she?”

I messed up one of the links above.
The NP article on why people don’t have the right to food is here.

Oh, wait, she’s Canadian. See, wingnuts in Canada evidently have this license to give a shit about ridiculous things long, long after the rest of the developed world has moved on. I think for her next trick she’s going to write about the hated Jew Soros souring public attitudes on Social Credit, or maybe the terrible danger posed to Canada by the increasingly powerless role of the Governor General.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t hear about the Iroquois still living in Ontario. There’ll be bloodshed if she does.

Karen Selick’s “economics 101 column”

There’s Some Good in Gouging

Central Canada’s ice storm has brought with it the inevitable: complaints of price “gouging” by merchants. Candles, formerly $1 a box, were marked up as high as $4, reports say. Prices temporarily skyrocketed for batteries, firewood, propane, gasoline, bottled water and a host of other items.

“No one should be permitted to profit from the misery of others,” people rage. The truth is, these sudden, exorbitant price increases serve a useful purpose. Instead of vilifying the so-called gougers for their greed, we should accept them as important and necessary players in the price system—the system which keeps the economy of a distressed region operating as smoothly and impartially as possible under the circumstances.

…Price increases are simply one method of rationing scarce goods among competing users, according to Miss Selick.

If the prices are high, people will buy less stock, thus conserving scarce stock for others. Except there’s never been, to the best of my knowledge, a candle, water, propane, gasoline, or food shortage anywhere in Canada.

the gift that keeps giving…

Karen Selick, family law attorney, is on a list of supporters of a “men’s alternative safe house” “because there are so many shelters for women and none for men” in Canada. So far they’ve raised $425. What a commitment.

Well, ultimately, there’s the problem with the “every man for himself” theory of economics, right? It only kicks in when the the situation is dire, and is always overwhelmed by looting or government support.

To put it simply, it’s never survived a single effective challenge. Either everyone dies, or another solution is applied out of compassion or survival.

These idiots who want the “market” to solve large scale disasters are absolutely ignoring history and human nature. When civilization breaks down, a kind of tribal socialism take over, and wealth is redistributed. You find rich men on the line along with addicts and trailer park denizens, passing sandbags, delivering food or pulling the helpless to safety.

Why is it that we always note, frequently with amazement, that in an emergency we all pull together, and the least of us counts for so much? Could it be that our society has come to emphasize the class differences within the tribe, and when the tribe itself is threatened, those differences somehow kind of melt away.

Why is it so fucked up that we need to have a disaster to expose the fact that we’re all the same, and all in this together?

mikey

See, in a shortage, gouging is way better than rationing because it really only screws over poor people. When there isn’t a shortage (or at least not a natural shortage), it’s still okay because it really only screws over poor people.

#

Lesley said,

July 14, 2008 at 5:15

the gift that keeps giving…

Karen Selick, family law attorney, is on a list of supporters of a “men’s alternative safe house” “because there are so many shelters for women and none for men” in Canada. So far they’ve raised $425. What a commitment.

Are you shitting me? I mean, for real? I’ve been doing all my charity work with a number of battered women’s organizations around the bay area for close to twenty years. I’ve worked on shelters, websites, fundraisers, and held the line when a shelter got exposed.

And in all that time I’ve never heard a single soul, not even a batterer, say that men needed a shelter. They get all the advantages, and it’s hard just to get them disarmed and monitored.

That is pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and I’d like to have a little conversation with any man in a shelter…

mikey

They are unrepentantly deceitful, scheming, cheating, money-grubbing, obsequious, obnoxious scoundrels. Their written code of conduct explicitly promotes dishonesty.

So she’s talking about capitalists / libertarians here, right?

Great find, Mary C.

She’s also promoting and making money from a product called LifeWave that looks suspiciously like pure hokum.

Nope, not shitting you, Mikey. Karen’s popular with the men’s rights crowd and they’re a bitter bunch of loonies.

Snorghagen said,

It’s the new overarching rule of 21st century politics. Everything MUST offend SOMEBODY.

That statement offends me!!!!!!!!!

You’ve got offensensitivity

Here’s Karen supporting the practice of Sharia family law in Ontario. Unbelieveable. Muslim Canadian women fought long and hard against Ontario permitting Sharia law tribunals to settle marital and family disputes in the Muslim community. Ontario proposed giving it a go mostly to save money and women put their foot down and told the government they didn’t immigrate to Canada so that they could be subjected to old school Islamic practices.

Karen Selick, family law attorney, has a pretty strong bias in favour of men.

Although gender-neutral in its language, today’s family law legislation was enacted over the past two decades primarily with the intention of benefiting women at the expense of men. Family law today has institutionalized injustice at the expense of justice.

I doubt she has any female clients.

What’s really odd is she supports the idea of Sharia courts in Canada and yet hangs with the likes of Mark Steyn and other racists who advocate nuking Muslims. Go figure.

I only read through about 150 DK comments and nobody there seemed to have a clue.

150 consecutive clueless Kos Komments? That’s not exactly a feat of DiMaggio-esque rarity.

Is there any greater disillusionment than discovering that the people you thought you liked don’t have a sense of humor?

Discovering that the people you thought you liked are scientologists?

What’s really odd is she supports the idea of Sharia courts in Canada and yet hangs with the likes of Mark Steyn and other racists who advocate nuking Muslims. Go figure.

My money is on the ‘sharia court’ being horrible and regressive – that is, not the optional civil-trial jurisdiction the Archbishop of Canterbury had people like Steyn and Selick freaking out about (a kind that already exists, and does fairly well to service, Jews and other minority groups) but some kind of obligatory form of community segregation.

Long story short, as long as it’s separate and inequal special treatment for the minority won’t bother people like this.

Discovering, completely by accident, that the people you thought you liked don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom?

mikey

Nope, not shitting you, Mikey. Karen’s popular with the men’s rights crowd and they’re a bitter bunch of loonies.

Understatement of the fucking year. Masculists are beneath contempt.

Appropos of nothing, and just ’cause it’s been a pleasant sunday evening of good food, fine booze and thoughtful reflection, I’d like to share one of my all time favorite songs with you guys.

My man Dave Pirner, bringing the truth in lovely, pleasant, amusing spoonfuls…

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XDbfL75dXnw

Enjoy…

mikey

Oh, it’s helpful in this case to know I married a hooker…

G’night…

“‘But I can definitely use the word, so far as the law goes, and that’s the way it should be in Canada, too; we have this freedom of speech thing that we thing everyone ought to have.’

So, by what internationally valid axiom are you judging that hate speech is protected while shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is not?”

Well, shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is an example of speech that actually causes harm. There’s nothing wrong with saying it per se; it’s the harm that it causes that is a bad thing. We have this principle where we should be able to think and express whatever we want, and so long as we don’t hurt anyone by it, for some definition of “hurt”, we should be able to say whatever we want, even if it’s wrong or hateful. I remember when I first heard about this kind of limitation in my high school US Government class, there was mention of a judicial test of some sort. I don’t remember the specifics, but I’m pretty sure there had to be some sort of other crime either implied or committed for speech to count as a crime itself. Inciting violence, etc. And honestly, I think that you SHOULD be allowed to tell people to commit crimes. I sympathize with those who needed to get civil right “by any means necessary”; I think that the Japanese-Americans should probably have done something more than just give in in the face of internment, and (at the risk of invoking the current modified version of Godwin’s Law) I would support anyone giving a speech in favor of picking off the heads of SS members in Nazi Germany and the territories it brutalized. In fact, we have people promoting murder everywhere; Bush wants to kill the “terrorists”; Osama should be murdered; all those Republicans actually want to have a mass murder bloodfest (romanticized as a “war”), etc. I draw the bar very high for whether I personally think speech should be prohibited. Being intolerant is a bad thing, and private companies should certainly punish such behavior, but illegalizing it goes too far. If I want to hate all black people and say so, I should be allowed to do it as long as I’m not actually harassing anyone, which would fall under the same category as yelling “fire” in a crowded theater in that it actually causes some sort of legal harm. And we have these hate crime laws, of which I would support a strengthening to include queers of all stripes as well, that make it worse for me if I do decide to harass someone with hate speech — in other words, if I’m doing something illegal already while spouting hate speech, the hate speech can be prosecuted as an incentive towards a valid government goal of a prejudice-free society. That is OK, I think.

What isn’t OK is if there are certain thoughts which I’m not allowed to express, because this is exactly the principle of freedom of speech, violated. Who is the government to tell me what I can and can’t think? If it can decide that some set of thoughts can’t be expressed, why can’t it decide to ban those thoughts that are detrimental to its agenda? Maybe it believes in the morality of that ban, but maybe I don’t! If I can’t express my thoughts against the government, I can’t talk about whether it has violated its social contract. The freedom to think and express any thought whatsoever in a civilized manner is paramount to the freedom of dissent.

Does Canada give away law degrees with cornflakes or something?

[Ferengis] are unrepentantly deceitful, scheming, cheating, money-grubbing, obsequious, obnoxious scoundrels. Their written code of conduct explicitly promotes dishonesty… If I wrote such things about any real group in Canada, no doubt there would be several human rights commissions breathing down my neck.

Yes, because comparing real people to Ferengis is incredibly offensive.

She makes a good point, though. What were Ferengis doing onboard DS9? Isn’t the space station some sort of governmental enterprise (so to speak)? Don’t they stricly enforce conduct in this environment? Or is it some lawless, capitalistic venture, just a bunch of futuristic fatcats exploiting the wormhole? If so, then of course disgusting individuals thrive there.

The TV portrayal is true of some Ferengis but not of others. Good Ferengis would not want to be tarred with the same brush as bad ones.

Well, that’s not true. They all HAVE to be evil. It’s in their written code of conduct.

The honourable ones would start putting pressure on their crooked compatriots to straighten up — but only if they were aware that they were in fact being lumped together…

Oof. It’s hard to read this stuff and substitute “Ferengis” with any real group of people, except maybe murderers. And even there it’s a stretch. “Hey, murderers-for-profit, you better crack down on psychotic murderers! They’re making you look bad!”

and only if they knew what the humans’ complaints were. Silencing the “hate speech” would simply deny them that information.

I’m a little tired of this meme: “If I don’t tell everyone exactly what I think, then I’m committing the sin of denying them information“.

Mikey, the problem is that you’d permit the speech you approve of, and disallow what you don’t approve of. That’s the road to tyranny, son.

Silencing the “hate speech” would simply deny them that information.

Another peculiarity of the right wing nut job that Karen Selick is. She supports our neoconservative Prime Minister who has an iron clad rule that no civil servant may speak publicly on any matter without his express permission. This is to safeguard plans he has that Canadians wouldn’t approve of: for example: shutting down the government dept that handles food inspection and allowing food manufacturers and meat producers to monitor themselves. Recently he fired a top biologist for blowing the whistle on this.

I’m sure Karen Selick has no problems with Harper telling everyone in government, including his cabinet ministers they have to STFU and speak only when given permission. And yet here she is championing haters’ rights.

There’s no rhyme or reason to this wingnut.

It is an awkward circumstance, to be sure: on the one hand, a commission decides what cases to follow and which ones to ignore, and the reasoning behind them isn’t exactly clear; on the other, the hate-speech laws got Ernst Zundel kicked out of the country, and I just can’t feel bad about that.

And in all that time I’ve never heard a single soul, not even a batterer, say that men needed a shelter. They get all the advantages, and it’s hard just to get them disarmed and monitored.

There is definitely a need for more shelters for battered gay men. Somehow I don’t think that’s what she is talking about.

Food banks are actually a ridiculous idea.

We had a food bank here in Butte, but it contained nothing but venison jerky. Mind you, we’ve got vampire pelicans up the yinyang but who do the hunters go after? Bambi! I guess the idea of pelican pemicann just doesn’t go down well here in The Heartland.

Damn those hook-nosed, erm, I mean big-eared, Ferengi.

Classy lady.

who knew dan quayle had dumber brothers ???

Ferengis ???

do these people understand the difference between fact and fiction ???

The fact is, none of this “evidence” matters, Selick is an intelligent person who makes liberals squirm and is about cutting government and PC ness and the free market. Why do you hate?

The fact is, none of this “evidence” matters, Selick is an intelligent person who makes liberals squirm and is about cutting government and PC ness and the free market. Why do you hate?

The only thing squirming here is our diaphragms, sir, although I should assure you it’s involuntary.

> “Psst — no one tell her that the whole Ferengi schtick (if you’re kind enough not to view them as a Space Jew caricature) …”

Unlikely, considering just how many people involved in making Star Trek were Jewish…

If her big concern is that without hate speech, the “Ferengi” won’t know that they are hated, I would suggest that there are other ways to show your distrust for someone.

For example, let’s say that she owned a small store, and a “Ferengi” came in to shop. She could follow him around closely to make sure that he didn’t steal anything and maybe even throw in a good scowl every time he looked at her. If he wanted to steal something, she would be completely justified. If no Ferengi ever wanted to steal anything, she might eventually relax, especially if he did just a little bit of groveling to repair the poor reputation of his race. If he did not want to steal, but other Ferengi did, he could take it upon himself to reform all the bad eggs so that she wouldn’t have to automatically assume that he is a dirty thief.

That should work at least as well as her anti-Ferengi newsletter, or whatever she wanted to do.

Lesley, she makes Margaret Hamilton look soft and cuddly.

#

Unlikely, considering just how many people involved in making Star Trek were Jewish…

I think they were actually done with a bit of that in mind. Partially they were a post-Cold War NG villain mutated into one of the DS9 concept races, but to at least some extent the Ferengi (at least partially from ‘farang’, after the more race-neutral South Asian idea of alien white businessmen) were an over-the-top reproduction of every ridiculous Jewish stereotype ever made, right down to the lechery and ugliness.

Hell, the fact that many of the people involved in making Star Trek were Jewish just makes that more likely – no one’s better at anti-Semitism than the Jews, after all.

One gets the feeling that Selick wrote the whole thing out before realizing that the National Post might give her an odd look if she asked them to publish an article with the word ‘kike’ in it. She did some rudimentary research and bam: what you see before you today.

Karen Selick, family law attorney, is on a list of supporters of a “men’s alternative safe house” “because there are so many shelters for women and none for men” in Canada.

Men’s alternative safe houses are actually a ridiculous idea. There are houses and hotels everywhere, most of which are already perfectly safe. It would be just plain wasteful for safe houses to operate parallel to the existing housing system. The rent, utilities, insurance and all the other expenses involved in housing have already been paid once…

the Ferengi (at least partially from ‘farang’, after the more race-neutral South Asian idea of alien white businessmen) were an over-the-top reproduction of every ridiculous Jewish stereotype ever made, right down to the lechery and ugliness.

Do they drink the blood of the more hominoid infants?

It would make more sense for volunteers to spend their time earning income at their usual occupations, then donating the money to poor people to spend at supermarkets.

That sort of makes sense, actually… if you don’t think about it too closely.

Not everyone has the kind of job where you can clock in for as many hours as you like…
You’d still need a charity to oversee the distribution – you couldn’t just hand out money to someone on the street who looked a bit poor…

But, yes, absent those two, it makes more sense for a $50 an hour lawyer to just do a bit more lawyerin’ and then pay a $10 an hour food bank worker, rather than going down to the food bank himself.

AT least Ferengi were knowledgeable about laws of economics. This cannot be said for liberals, who just want handouts and tolerance for gays and child molestors and terrorists.

to at least some extent the Ferengi…were an over-the-top reproduction of every ridiculous Jewish stereotype ever made, right down to the lechery and ugliness.

Hell, the fact that many of the people involved in making Star Trek were Jewish just makes that more likely – no one’s better at anti-Semitism than the Jews, after all.

Well, I do think Hitler managed to top them.

That aside, my father (a lawyer who was raised Jewish) immediately identified the Ferengi as a Jewish stereotype. Nor did he reject it: in fact, he occasionally refers to some of his nastier clients and opponents as “Ferengi.” His notion, for whatever it’s worth, is that the Ferengi were designed as something of an in-joke among the writers. Since they’re in Hollywood, the writers probably spent a good bit of time dealing with Ferengi-like people, and parodying them as ridiculous aliens was a way to blow off some steam.

I don’t particularly endorse this, in part because I know that some rather nasty people would be all too happy to agree, but there it is.

There are three possibilities about the televised portrayal of Ferengis: it might be true for all Ferengis, it might be false for all Ferengis or it might be true for some Ferengis and false for others.

You’ll love this three-parter:

1. All those minorities really are dirty/lazy/deceitful/immoral/smelly/evil/criminal/stupid etc. BUT since our culture is the greatest in the whole entire universes we need to protect hate speech so that

humans could tell Ferengis what we disapprove of and what we consider acceptable, Ferengis could change their conduct.

That’s right. We need to be able to tell those blacks Mexicans Injuns Islamofascists Jews Irish Sub-continentals Gooks Chinks Pakis Ferengi that they need to shape up and fly right, and gosh darn it, they will. Hey newsflash for Karen Selick, I appreciate that your new to this planet Earth, but humans disapprove of racism – it’s just not considered acceptable. Now shape up and fly right.

2. Hollywood’s at fault. Actually, that’s a lot stronger than her actual argument:

If no earthling ever articulates the lies we have all swallowed, Ferengis will never have the opportunity to rebut them.

Umm, yeah. FFS – This is so stupid I’m having trouble addressing it at all. I mean holy shit, hate speech should be allowed so that the targets of the hate speech can tell the lynch mob that the demagogues are lying? WTF &interrobang;

3. The magical synthesis of 1 and 2.

No doubt after the falsehoods have been thoroughly rebutted and the bad Ferengis have reformed, there will still be the occasional recalcitrant bigot who would irrationally continue to hate Ferengis. But that’s when freedom of speech will be the most valuable of all. Ferengis will want to avoid dealing with such irrational individuals even more than the bigots want to avoid Ferengis. And so will other righteous humans. Let the bigots identify themselves, and let them suffer the consequences.

So yeah, hate speech legalized so that other cultures can take on “our values”, and demagogues can be shown to be liars. I don’t know what world she lives in, apparently one where hate-mongers and race-baiters are shunned by society instead of being given columns in national newspapers and their own shows on FOX News and CNN.

But, yes, absent those two, it makes more sense for a $50 an hour lawyer to just do a bit more lawyerin’ and then pay a $10 an hour food bank worker, rather than going down to the food bank himself.

The funny part is that many conservatives consider your second point to be a vital part of any well-run welfare system. Can’t just blindly hand out money to people; you’ve got to look ’em in the eye, know who’s who, and do your best to make them feel as bad as possible about needing to come to the food bank.

I do like the consequences of her idea about food banks. Giving a product away creates demand for that product, even if it’s something basic like food. Presumably that’s true for health care as well, and giving it away makes more people sick. I’m sure Karen would agree that subsidizing or reducing the price of a product increases demand too, which means that (by her “logic,” at least) all forms of health insurance, whether government-sponsored or otherwise, increase demand for health care. Thus, logically speaking, we can cure all illnesses if we make health care so expensive that nobody can afford it!

But, yes, absent those two, it makes more sense for a $50 an hour lawyer to just do a bit more lawyerin’ and then pay a $10 an hour food bank worker, rather than going down to the food bank himself.

If you are looking to maximize efficiency, yes. Actually, it would make more sense to take a fraction of the lawyer’s income in taxes and use it to fund social services. Volunteering isn’t about getting the most money to poor people, it is about recognizing that we all gain by pitching in to help each other out. When I used to go to the food bank, professionals and church groups would be working alongside homeless people who were actually hired to do the same job. Physical labor and human interaction has it’s own value. Jane Addams was onto something when she said that charity isn’t just about the rich reaching down to help the poor, but all groups reaching across the divide and learning from each other.

If that is too mushy feel-good, you can blame it on my coffee buzz.

Man, what the hell happened to her? Talk about someone with a whithered, hard, tiny soul (and she seems to be almost a tenth as smart as she thinks she is).

If you are looking to maximize efficiency, yes.

Marginally related point: the biggest single factor in the glibertarian pathology is a deliberate and unshakable confusion of efficiency and efficacy.

Economic efficiency has a very specific definition – a definition that in many fields is so far from acceptable that privatizing them would be monstrous. A good example: the Rumsfeldized military strives to function in as economically efficient a fashion as possible, completely throwing out the general success and humanity (relatively speaking) of the age-old American doctrine of overwhelming force on the say-so of slicked-up money-launderers. The result is a military that never quite does the job even when it’s in top shape, and when things start to go to hell winds up costing even more than a decent establishment would have in the first place.

Even if you believe there’s never been anything better for economic efficiency than the free market (a belief that isn’t substantiated by fact, but hey), you don’t want economic efficiency triumphing over allocative or social efficiency – or general efficacy – when it comes to vital services.

This is a difficult point to convey to these people, partially because they like to play ignorant at inopportune times. ‘Vital’, for your average glibbie, means ‘serving me’. Cutting costs at hospitals by floating rumors in Wopanese that doctors are stealing organs is Efficiency in Action; their cleaning lady spraying the house with bargain-basement nerve agents and killing their labradoodle would be an atrocity worthy of the electric chair. Restricting her right to accuse the Ferengi of making up the Holocaust is a crime against freedom; allowing Muslims to worship freely in the privacy of their own home is an execrable betrayal of civilization.

The only particularly effective answer to this gordian knot of logic and bullshit is, per Alexander, slicing them open and laughing maniacally. Sadly, civilization has taken a steep nose-dive since those heady days; they won’t even let you wear an elephant’s head as a crown any longer, let alone carve a bloody swath from Thrace to Bactria.

Well she is Ferengi after all.

pedestrian makes a very good point with which I entirely agree.

Isn’t this (I haven’t the heart to check) that asshole who complains about Canadian health care (now that she’s already taken advantage of it for a chronic condition she has) but doesn’t put her money where her mouth is and move to the States to take part in our apparently wonderful healthcare? God, almost as bad as Swedish Libertarians (I know a Libertarian Swede who is campaigning for McCain).

Clearly the Ferengi in DS9 are a Jewish caricature, but it’s an anti-caricature, just like the New Yorker Obama-fist-bump cover. (Let’s tie up some loose threads here!) It’s satire directed at the bigotry, blowing it up so big it pops.

As I recall, Quark, and sometimes even his schlemiel brother Rom, invariably did the right thing and saved everybody’s ass, in spite of their cowardice, griping and greed.

Ms. Sellick’s point seems to be that if you call an entire group out for their vile behavior, the good ones will feel shame and reform. Hey, that’s what Sadly, No! is all about!

Karen Selick, family law attorney, is on a list of supporters of a “men’s alternative safe house” “because there are so many shelters for women and none for men” in Canada.

It seems to be de rigeur for wingnuts up here to be in love with the idea of male victimization.

As I said above, women who spout this line will always have a home at the National Post.

But its poster boy is a guy called David Warren, an incredibly pompous bloviator who’s a conservative Catholic, divorced and a deadbeat dad who’s been hauled up in court for being in arrears.

When he’s not finger-wagging about decency he writes bitterly about his rapacious ex and the unfairness of having to support his children now that they are both over 18 without ever mentioning that one of those children has Down syndrome.

AT least Ferengi were knowledgeable about laws of economics.

Or they would be if they actually, you know, existed and stuff.

SHOUTING FIRE IN A CROWDED THEATRE

Shout fire while the theatre is burning down
We used to lock away people like you
Now you can let off a little steam
But stay inside your designated corner
Because the truth is too extreme.

Shout fire while they’re lining up for blocks
To get inside the smoking door
They’ve got a show you wouldn’t believe
A house of cards rising to the sky
And everybody wants to add one more.

Shout fire while the beams and shingles fall
The TV monitors say calm down
Business is thriving and there is no danger
A crisis comes and a crisis goes
But normal life goes on and on.

Shout fire while we’re crawling through the ash
Come on and take a final bow
Now that it’s too late to make a difference
We want to make you an official hero
‘Cause you were so ahead of your time
A testimony to your vision
‘Cause you were so ahead of your time
Yeah you were so ahead of your time
They’re gonna name a street after you
Give you a new oxygen mask too
‘Cause you were so ahead of your time.

Wow, Margaret Hamilton! I knew she reminded me of somebody. Thanks Susan of Texas. I’m reaaaaaaaaally tempted to work up a pic of Karen in green face with flying monkeys.

Ferengi had more than a bit of the network executive attitude. And it is also a satire of wingnut free market thought.

Not that I expect a wingnut to get that.

Ferengi did not let anything get in the way of profit. So they had no art or higher culture of their own. DS9 also showed how the younger Ferengi were questioning this mindset, through Quark’s son, and Quark was occasionally conflicted himself.

Because they were a leech society; parasitically existing through other cultures. A leech can always get along, so long as there are hosts they do not kill.

But it’s not something that inspires aspiration.

If wingnuts truly were to devolve our society to the dog-eat-dog principles they espouse, don’t they realize they would wind up on the bottom? They are incompetent whiners with few real skills and no guts at all.

Once the serf society the neocons lust after was complete, there would be no need for propagandists and the nepotic wingnut welfare system. They would wind up in the sport fighting pit because they have shown there is no low they will not get under.

It would be Mad Max without the assless chaps.

Did someone say “Star Trek fixated conservative???”

http://gi-trekker.livejournal.com

I just want to thank Karen. My partner, who has an econ degree, has an annoying tendency toward a belief in laissez-faire economics, apparently on the theory that everything will probably work out okay eventually if people help each other and that regulation often causes problems. My partner is not an ungenerous or an unkind person, and as far as I can tell honestly believes that people will behave in a rational and gracious manner towards others if given a chance. It’s bizarre, but there it is. This is what happens when people aren’t victimized by the world in general often very often: they continue to believe that people are basically good and the universe is basically a friendly place. I find it bizarre in a darkly humorous way, but then I tend to find the existence of people with the sort of childhoods that don’t require literal years to be emotionally blocked from their memories to be bizarre in a darkly humorous way as well, rather like being confronted by chickens who are into body piercings.

In any event, Karen has reminded me again that the reason I am creeped out by my partner’s borderline libertarian viewpoint is nothing to do with my partner, who would never see the point of despoiling the commons for short term personal gain, and everything to do with people like Karen, who would never see the point of *not* despoiling the commons for short term personal gain.

My partner, I need to remember more often, when confronted with people who have been fucked by the bad luck fairies, offers to help in distinctly concrete ways. Karen, apparently, walks past while saying “Wow, homeless people, what’s up with that? Why don’t they just move into a home?” My partner may wonder why other people don’t take their homeless friends in while we wait for the economy to sort itself out, but has actually done so in the past. I’m not sure what that viewpoint could be called, but it is a far cry from the sort of tooth-and-claw Randianism that makes me twitch over the very concept of libertarianism.

So, thank you, Karen, and I’m going to be extremely nice to my angel of a partner tonight, because even being a good enough person that you cannot imagine the predators ranged out there is a precious thing that deserves rewarding. Even if I’m glad as fuck that it’s not me personally possessed of that sort of naive-to-the-point-of-twee worldview. And, okay, also because that sort of person desperately needs *some* vices, and hot monkey sex will have to do.

D. Sidhe—

Your partner sounds like my MBA father in her economic viewpoints. He is a decent person at his core but something about the bullshit he learned in biz school he really believes or is loathe to admit that it’s a load of crap. I don’t think he’d ever allow the dystopian scenario that free-market fundamentalism would bring on, he’s been surprised (genuinely I think) by events in the past decade or so to the point of acknowledging that my more left-wing viewpoints may have some merit.

Oh, and just for the record he and my sister are hard-core Obama supporters. I tend to share the ‘meh’ attitude of many here, but they have gone to rallies and such. Fun fact—they were in some footage that was shown on MSNBC for a while.

Mikey way up there –

I started my blog when I was out of work and looking to fill time. I have mixed feelings about it – should it be just a friendly pet-photos-and-recipes blog, or should I post political rants more often? Sometimes things just make me so mad I need to put my English degree to work. I may start posting more such rants.

Do you ever get to Beantown?

madk