Hurlshort

Looked at the sun, didn't lose my eyesight, so it was a good day.

I am a bit surprised, and this isn't just for Trump, that there isn't more oversight and approval needed for travel when it comes to people under the Secret Service umbrella. For example, a business trip that doesn't involve state business should probably be at least partially covered by the business itself, and there should be some sort of cap when it comes to vacation travel, or at least a percentage that is put up by the private party. I do remember what a hullabaloo was raised over Obama's Hawaii trip. Funny how those sources are probably all pretty quiet now.

No. Who is arguing for that?

A lot of your examples seem to imply that there is one set law for both the Islamic world and the Western world. They vary tremendously all over the place. edit: To elaborate, I'd say society constantly has to push for progress, no matter what the dominant religion is. The idea that western society has protected the rights of gay people is a fairly new one. Heck, you don't have to go back very far to find a time in Western society where women and children had few rights.

Wait, are you implying that the Spanish Inquisition wasn't as fun as Monty Python made it out to be? Heretic!

kill them no, but if they want to live their lives with a medieval mentality, they should do it in their homelands instead of coming here and expecting us to bend the rules for the sake of their culture A lot of this comes down to economics as much as culture. That is why so many of these extremists are often second generation immigrants that have been radicalized. They are vulnerable BECAUSE they lack a real understanding of their culture and they feel disenfranchised in their Western home country.

That's just the thing, you could have made the same statement about Protestants and Catholics a number of centuries ago. There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, we'd better hope we can find a way to co-exist.

Seems like the game has been out long enough to not expect more content though.

Sorry to hear that Bart.

I've really caught the Lord of the Rings Online bug. The storytelling in this game has always been a notch above other MMO's for me, and after I got over my dislike of the mounted combat, I'm enjoying my time in Rohan and looking forward to moving onto Gondor soon. My captain just hit level 88 and is an inspiration for all these gloomy Rohim.

WoD, I'm curious who you think is in the right here (if the quote is accurate.) Bannon or Trump? I'd probably agree with Bannon myself in this scenario. I'm not sure I'd word it the same way, but the Trump White House does seem to be completely disconnected to the Republican party at this point.

That's commitment to the craft, that amount of sheet cake can't possibly feel good to eat. I'd be hurling.

Wow, Bannon out. Is there any precedent for this type of turn over? After the election I was like, "Ok, gotta give the guy a chance to do his stuff." But it just seems to be getting worse and worse every week. How about just stopping with the tweets? That would seem to be an easy first step.

I'm the first to complain when history textbooks get politicized (interestingly enough, California and Texas tend to be the worst offenders in regards to this.) I'd even go so far as to say I'd vote against removing the statue of Lee if I sat on the city council (I'd suggest alternative ways to change the message of the memorial.) But I don't live in Charlottesville, and I'm not on the city council, and if they want to change their public parks, that is their right. And honestly I have a very similar view of the Berkeley protests against conservative speaker. The difference is I'd say the Berkeley protesters (Black Bloc excluded) seem to not understand that they are increasing the exposure of the speakers by trying to shut them down, and the alt-right seem to be more interested in attention than the actual cause.

Well said GD. I find it interesting that all the people defending Lee's statue seem to know nothing about the guy.

My attention span is about 3 weeks and caps out around 40 hours.

Ducktales, woo-ooo, is on sale for Steam. I might need to grab it.

24% think the ideal length of an RPG is 100+ hours? Those people need to get a life.

Heh, always interesting to hear from the actual subject of all the controversy. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/robert-e-lee-thought-confederate-220734970.html

Also just because someone isn't a conservative, doesn't mean they are a liberal. We could do with a heck of a lot more moderate voices out there.

There is a pretty big message difference between a group protesting against police brutality and racism and a group of white supremacists, though. Police brutality and racism are real issues that need to be addressed, and so Obama condemning the BLM movement is a much trickier situation. Nazis, KKK, and the like should be pretty easy to condemn. That should be an automatic thing. They think moving a statue is some sort of attack on the white race. It's ridiculous.

BLM should definitely do more to distance themselves from extremism, but their message is pretty dang tame compared to Neo-nazis and the KKK. Here is a look at what they say they stand for: http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles/ As I said, not exactly crazy stuff. Now when that message gets overridden by violence and vandalism, they need to respond better. Just like I want to see Trump respond better.

Extremists gonna extreme.

I had an interesting conversation with my wife about the job situation this morning. She doesn't like that they are losing their jobs, it seems like a slippery slope. As a teacher, there are a number of things that can put our careers at risk that have little to do with our effectiveness in the classroom. Of course, as a parent I also see why you don't want a white supremacist teaching your kids. That being said, go back 20 years and I'm pretty sure I could lose my job for being in a Gay Pride March. It's a tough situation. Hard to sympathize with these guys, but it's also hard to preach tolerance when you are blacklisting people.

yeah hippies sure are prone to violence and firestarting, rioting and demolishing public property... Ah, you are talking about anarchists. Yeah, those folks are terrible, I don't think you will find anyone here defending them. You do seem to have a few people here defending the white supremacists.