Paypal Founder Peter Thiel To Speak At Trump's Republican Convention (nbcbayarea.com) 268
Slashdot reader speedplane writes: The New York Times is reporting that renowned Venture Capitalist, Paypal Founder, and Gawker Litigation Funder, Peter Thiel will be speaking at the Republican National Convention. The original story does not state what Thiel will discuss at the convention, only that he'll be speaking the last day, but there's plenty of speculation.
Facebook issued a statement that though Thiel is on their board of directors, his appearance was "personal," saying Thiel "is not attending on behalf of Facebook or to represent our views." NBC reports Thiel will be the first openly-gay man to speak at the convention in 16 years, "as party leaders refuse to soften the GOP's formal opposition to gay marriage," noting Thiel "has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump's run for the oval office, previously supported Ron Paul for president and has identified himself as a conservative libertarian in the past... Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
Facebook issued a statement that though Thiel is on their board of directors, his appearance was "personal," saying Thiel "is not attending on behalf of Facebook or to represent our views." NBC reports Thiel will be the first openly-gay man to speak at the convention in 16 years, "as party leaders refuse to soften the GOP's formal opposition to gay marriage," noting Thiel "has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump's run for the oval office, previously supported Ron Paul for president and has identified himself as a conservative libertarian in the past... Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
I want to like Donald. (Score:4, Interesting)
I really want to like Donald but he makes it so fucking hard. He has so many bad points that it's gotten to the point I keep telling myself "at least he's not Hilliary, he's not Hilliary." I swear I hope a third candidate gets enough traction to make them viable.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Interesting)
I really want to like Donald
Just out of curiosity, why?
I hate Hillary with a passion, but any sentence out of Trump's mouth makes her look like Gandhi in comparison.
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I'm sure he has. I'm also sure that unlike you he understands that this is just something that they had to put in to keep the Religious Right from bolting, along with all of that anti-abortion stuff. Nobody in politics expects those planks to go anywhere, but they insist on them to keep their more naive followers (who don't understand) happy.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Insightful)
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What negative impacts would he suffer due to being gay that he does not suffer due to the insulation of his money?
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I don't think it's relevant whether he has money or not. This is another one of those "once it's here, it's not going away any time soon" kind of things. SCOTUS's ruling on gay marriage isn't going to be reversed any easier than Roe v Wade would ever be. It's thus no longer an issue. Sure, people will speak loudly and often about it, but that won't make it any more relevant.
Besides, among republicans I've seen anti-2nd amendment and pro-choice. Just because somebody differs on one or even two issues doesn't
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Interesting)
>"Besides, among republicans I've seen anti-2nd amendment and pro-choice."
Exactly. It seems popular here (and many places) to think that all Republicans are identical and believe the same things. They don't. Many Republicans do not support anti-abortion. Many Republicans support certain gun control. Many Republicans do not push a religious agenda of any sort. Also, despite the summary and prevailing theory, being anti-gay marriage doesn't mean being anti-gay nor does it automatically make it a religious issue. There is probably more variation in the Republican party than any other at this point (and one reason for things like the Tea Party splinter).
In the same light, not all Democrats think we should go further in debt, should prevent private gun ownership, have a forever-growing Fed, or that we would should tax everyone out of existence.
And it also doesn't mean that all Libertarians think we should have no national defense, have no regulations, should have no federal government, or should allow corporations to rape the environment.
>"The expectation that they MUST share ALL of the same views as their party is the whole reason we're stuck in this two party rut to begin with."
It is one of many reasons... of course the biggest reason we are stuck in a rut is because of a stupid two-party system, which can never change without changing to a ranked voting system... which itself can never change because the two-parties won't allow it.
So we are always stuck with voters having to pick between what they think is the lesser of two evils OR vote AGAINST the party they are most afraid of.... and usually fueled by single issues such as those I listed above.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Informative)
It's probably easier to think of him as someone who politically is rich and libertarian first, and gay only second or third at best.
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As for the bakery issue, it's amazing how people can tell themselves they support civil rights and then use that very argument to demand the government to force someone to give their labor to someone else against their will. Somewhere, you folks on the left forgot that freedom is about permitting the KKK to call black people animals, skinheads to call Jews various things I will not repeat, and -- yes -- permitting a business owner to refuse service for reasons you think are unfair. Especially when the "nega
Thiel wants a king (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember? This is the guy who advocates replacing the Republic with some sort of crazy dictator/king/something. Well, he sees an opportunity for it to happen, because if Trump is elected? There won't be elections anymore. Not in the way we think of them now. They'll be rigged sham affairs more like what goes over in places like Russia. THAT is what he's behind. Not that he probably thinks Trump specifically should be in charge, but once you've ditched the reality of people having a say in the system then gu
Re: Thiel wants a king (Score:2, Insightful)
One piece that mentions Thiel's neoreactionary associations: http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/06/peter-thiel.html
The act of associating with, or even funding, leaders of a strain of political thought do not necessarily indicate unconditional support for all aspects of every bit of those politics, but I'd be super surprised if Thiel wasn't at least highly sympathetic to them.
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But in Thiel's case, it would seem his sole issue is his money. I can't think of any other reason someone in his position would support the Republican Party.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Insightful)
he understands that this is just something that they had to put in to keep the Religious Right from bolting, along with all of that anti-abortion stuff.
You know what else they'll have to do in order to keep the religious right from bolting? Follow through on the anti-gay and anti-abortion stuff.
When people tell you who they are, believe them. The Republican platform is the document in which the Republican Party tells you who it is. Believe it.
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What actions are you afraid of? 2 constitutional amendments? This is an honest question. I have asked this honest question many times, both in this form and when I'm beating up the religious right for demanding actions.
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I didn't say I was afraid of anything; what I said was that the Republican Party platform is exactly that: the platform of the Republican Party.
You can be for it or against it, but if the parent poster is going through the document and saying "well this part is real, but this other part is only a meaningless sop to placate a constituency and would never actually be enacted", then I think he is only fooling himself. What you see is what you'll get.
Exactly why is this newsworthy? (Score:2)
Wow. A human being, in a free country with free speech, is going to speak at a public event.
*Why* is this news?
Seriously, if people can't handle this without shitting their pants, *that* is the story that needs to be reported...
The more that people crap themselves over people exercising their rights in our free country, the more appealing it makes the people they condemn seem.
All I can say is the level of hypocrisy is truly sickening when self-righteous losers claim to ascribe to basic principles of freedo
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Wow. A human being, in a free country with free speech, is going to speak at a public event. *Why* is this news?
It's news because so few human beings want to speak at this event. They're having trouble finding people willing to show up. [ap.org]
Sarah Palin is staying home. Ted Nugent has turned down invitations to appear. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock are going to be in Cleveland but are "too busy". They almost snagged Mike Ditka but he chickened out. A spokesman for Ben Sasse from Nebraska announced "Sen. Sasse will not be attending the convention and will instead take his kids to watch some dumpster fires across the state." [thefederalist.com]
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So Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin aren't going to be speaking at the bakeoff event at my local elementary school either.
No one gives a f__
Personally I admire people willing to make a public stand in this dumbf__ political climate of intolerance and idiocy we have.
In case you didn't know, people speaking up and sharing their ideas and beliefs makes us stronger and better. Intolerance is what makes us petty and weak.
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What actions are you afraid of? 2 constitutional amendments? This is an honest question.
On abortion, they will likely appoint judges to the supreme court who will reverse some decisions on abortion.
On gay marriage, they will probably do nothing because gay marriage is more popular, being against it is a losing proposition now.
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...what the Republican party has been up to for the last 5 years!
What did the Republican Party do in the last 5 years? I literally can't think of a single thing they accomplished or any change the Republican Party made to anything during that time.
Are you just complaining about "talk" you don't like? If so, then stop listening -- your life will improve.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't sell this, the 114th Congress short. They did accomplish something. They passed Public Law 114-152, the National Bison Legacy Act which names the bison as the national mammal of the United States.
They also voted to name no fewer than 27 post offices after people you've never heard of (probably donors).
And they voted to repeal Obamacare for the 60th, 61st, 62nd and 63rd times.
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That explains the exclamation point then. He must really hate bison.
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Have you ever had bison? It's delicious.
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Tastes too "gamey" for me to get into.
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The majority of people are dead.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its fashionable to hate Hillary, period. I personally don't hate her at all and the idea that I "should" is just bullshit propaganda. The controversies around her have been massively overblown. How many fucking times have the Republicans investigated Benghazi? Far more times (and spending much more tax dollars) than the government spent investigating 9/11. Fuck, Michael "I make movies for teenage boys" Bay even made a movie about it, but he never made a movie about 9/11. Then there is the email bullshit, she used exactly the same system that previous *republican* administrations did, and regardless as this is slashdot I assume people here are smart enough to know that email is in no way a secure messaging protocol. It doesn't matter who hosts your server, as soon as you hit "send" that email may well travel half way around the world before it gets to its destination, getting copied and stored by god-knows-who. For all the talk that folks on sites like slashdot and reddit make for "thinking rationally", why the hell is it so many seem utterly incapable of doing that when it comes to Clinton? How, for example, can you bridge the ideology gap between voting for Bernie Sanders (a socialist, who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a wide swath of issues) or Ron Paul (a staunch libertarian) and then switching to Donald Trump, a guy who has espoused no consistent stance on almost anything and has flippantly proposed dozens of blatantly unconstitutional actions? The mind fucking boggles.
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:4, Insightful)
For all the talk that folks on sites like slashdot and reddit make for "thinking rationally", why the hell is it so many seem utterly incapable of doing that when it comes to Clinton? How, for example, can you bridge the ideology gap between voting for Bernie Sanders (a socialist, who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a wide swath of issues) or Ron Paul (a staunch libertarian) and then switching to Donald Trump, a guy who has espoused no consistent stance on almost anything and has flippantly proposed dozens of blatantly unconstitutional actions? The mind fucking boggles.
I think it's just confirmation bias. I think in the mid-90s the right became really uncomfortable with the idea of a first lady exerting political influence. They figured that was going way outside her role and trying to usurp her husband's power so they started labelling her as lying and manipulative and really haven't stopped.
The thing with repeating labels like that is they don't really need to be accurate, you just need to keep repeating them and people eventually figure there's something to it (otherwise why would you be saying it?).
So now everybody is convinced that Hillary is really manipulative and deceptive, throw in something like the email scandal and if you already assume she's lying then it just re-enforces the whole narrative.
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I think it's just confirmation bias. I think in the mid-90s the right became really uncomfortable with the idea of a first lady exerting political influence. They figured that was going way outside her role and trying to usurp her husband's power so they started labelling her as lying and manipulative and really haven't stopped.
What, they didn't mind it when Nancy controlled Ronald Reagan's schedule?
Re:I want to like Donald. (Score:5, Informative)
Then there is the email bullshit, she used exactly the same system that previous *republican* administrations did,
100% false. Rice did not use email, and Powell did not use a server that he or his staff operated.
But my problem is not even that she used a server -- it's that every time someone asks her about this, she lies.
"It was allowed." (It wasn't)
"My predecessors did this." (they didn't)
"I didn't receive classified information." (over 100 documents...)
"Those documents were inappropriately classified after." (the 100+ documents were classified AT THE TIME).
She just keeps feeding into this mantra that she lies and is untrustworthy. No one else needs to paint this picture -- she is doing this all on her own stating easily provable lies. She's not total absolute 100% pants-on-fire like Trump is, but she makes it really difficult for anyone to vote FOR her.
This is largely a myth (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who's actually KNOWN Bernie Sanders (to the extent that I've lived in Burlington when he was Mayor, met the guy, argued with him, etc, I don't have any personal relationship with him) for 30 years, and greatly appreciated what he's brought to national politics in the last year or so, I believe this 'Sanders supporters hate Hillary' meme is mostly bunk. There may be a very vocal minority of people who became 'Sanders supporters' suddenly in the last 6-12 months because it was fashionable and they yell and squawk about how much they 'hate Hillary' because that's apparently fashionable too.
See, I would draw a huge distinction. I dislike the ESTABLISHMENT, and all the dirty tricks that the powers which be have used against Sanders IS galling. Clinton is ABSOLUTELY a pillar of that community. OTOH if you look at her in terms of an actually realistic view and not the bizarro-world distorto-vision that FOX News and etc have created around her, she's a relatively center-left candidate with fairly conventional views for a President. Nothing is going to change vastly, but its likely she'll implement some modest policy changes and programs that are part of the agenda for more left-leaning people. In fact she'll probably continue largely in the same vein as Obama, with increases in the minimum wage, labor-friendly policies outside of trade, some expansion of publicly funded healthcare, and otherwise she's probably closer to Nixon than to say Kennedy.
The bad things will be the environment, which Clinton seems to have little interest in at a critical juncture, and the military-intelligence-police-industrial-state that seems to have been building itself under every president of the last 70 years happily regardless of what policies they supposedly espouse. I'm not even convinced a President Sanders or somesuch could change those things.
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The bad things will be the environment, which Clinton seems to have little interest in at a critical juncture ...
That is true, but the she is an astute foreign policy person, and will have very good relationships with Angela Merkel, who very much understands what's at stake.
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Reading comprehension. This was specifically with regards to the environment.
For a conservative leader Merkel displays a surprising understanding of the dangers that global warming poses.
And long term this is a much more pressing problem than the refugee crisis.
If you think you have a refugee crisis now, just wait and see what happens in another fifty years, when global warming does its number on the climate in Asia and Africa.
You've seen nothing yet.
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Charming.
Always know I am doing something right when it gets ACs all worked up.
BTW Merkel's popularity is on the upswing again, your welcome.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
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Hillary is a lot like JavaScript- you hate her, you love to complain about her, but you have to go with her because there really is no other option, at least not in the near future.
Bernie Sanders drew in two separate contingents of people who dislike HRC: Liberals who consider Hillary to be too conservative, vs. conservatives who couldn't stomach any of the clownish GOP candidates and who saw Sanders as a lifeboat. The liberal faction will hold their noses and vote for Hillary, while the conservative factio
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OTOH if you look at her in terms of an actually realistic view and not the bizarro-world distorto-vision that FOX News and etc have created around her, she's a relatively center-left candidate
Being a warhawk is not being leftist. She votes for war consistently.
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> Just out of curiosity, why?
From my perspective -- he is childish, energetic and entertaining. Even his enemies often profit from crossing paths with him. Downside is he can say things that incite some of his supporters to say or do ugly things. Another is he's not much of a leader you can trust. The main upside is you can learn something from him -- how to convince people to accept your point of view using emotions. By contrast, I feel I have nothing valuable to learn from Hillary, and she's not a lead
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I am curious what you learnt from Obama and Bush. If either of those are leaders you trust. Genuinely curious.
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Gary Johnson is at 12% in national polls [redstate.com], this is across all parties. It is quite a rise for him, in the last elections when he ran as a Libertarian he barely registered 1% (1.2 million votes). 12% is 12 times better, 1200% better since the last time. He is a viable candidate in these elections, he is on the ballots of all 50 States.
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"Gary Johnson is at 12% in national polls [redstate.com]"
If Trump really steps in the deep stuff during the campaign, Johnson may actually have a chance.
Re: I want to like Donald. (Score:2)
It's not like that means there won't be a president. In that case, the house votes with 1 vote per state. Which given the current house and reasonable assumption they vote party lines means trump wins
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"If Gary Johnson prevents both Trump and Clinton from receiving 50% of the electoral college, then nobody wins the election!"
Remember 1992, when a Ferengi running as an outsider managed to deprive Clinton and Bush of a popular majority. It was the electoral college that decided it, though.
Re: I want to like Donald. (Score:2)
I think he's a stooge for the Clinton campaign to make her the only real candidate. I especially think so after he picked a lunatic for his running mate.
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How ironic. To this day I can't get myself to dislike the Donald. It's Trump the politician that I cannot stand, because his campaigns runs on resentments and stoking hate.
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In reality, this shows the tolerance of the GOP. They'll have debate, they'll welcome discourse with people generally on the other side of an issue.
And then they'll just go on the way they did before, working against the concerns of those same people. This is not tolerance, it's pandering.
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What kind of a convention is this? (Score:5, Funny)
"Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
WTF? Is this a presidential convention or the debut of some big-titted pop star's latest crappy album?
Re:What kind of a convention is this? (Score:4, Funny)
Even Tim Tebow backed out of speaking at the convention, and he probably could have used the paycheck.
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Even Tim Tebow backed out of speaking at the convention
Tim Tebow ...another narcissistic, empty-headed evangelical bullshitter with not a thought in his head and nothing remotely interesting to say. He was a 'legendary' player until he wasn't, and then he promptly sank into obscurity where he belongs.
Frankly, the idea of sports figures as 'heroes' or people to be looked up to and admired is a ridiculous joke; they've every bit as flawed as Joe Average and in most cases, much more flawed. Look at all the slack-jawed goobers who worship a drunken, abusive man-bab
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He should hook up with Taylor Swift, they'd make a perfect celibate couple.
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"Other speakers will include four of Trump's children, Las Vegas casino owner Phil Ruffin, and actor and former underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr."
What, no Kardashians?
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What, no Kardashians?
Apparently even Donald Trump has some standards below which he will not go.
You are the company you keep (Score:3)
Enough said.
If you're near the convention... (Score:4, Funny)
Try not to get any of that on you. It doesn't wipe off.
Not a libertarian anymore! (Score:5, Interesting)
Thiel "has been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump's run for the oval office, previously supported Ron Paul for president and has identified himself as a conservative libertarian in the past...
Anyone who supports Trump is certainly not a libertarian. In fact, it was clear that Thiel had abandoned libertarianism when he gave an interview [npr.org] two years ago. During the interview, he said that he was opposed to competition because "it's very, very hard to make money" when there's competition!
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During the interview, he said that he was opposed to competition because "it's very, very hard to make money" when there's competition!
You are taking what he said out of context. He said that as an investor, he prefers companies that are not exposed to direct competition (because of IP, market dominance, or whatever). He did not mean that he supported government action to inhibit competition.
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You are taking what he said out of context.
No I am not. He says directly in the interview [npr.org] that "capitalism and competition are ... really antonyms". In other words, Thiel believes that competition is incompatible with capitalism.
He thinks he is gonna talk at the convention (Score:5, Funny)
nasty (Score:2)
Now I feel like we dodged a bullet ... (Score:2)
... when one of his funds passed on my venture. Really wouldn't know how to deal with this guy. What a disappointment. Used to admire him.
Re: Marriage (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it so important to stop people doing what they want when it doesn't affect you in the slightest?
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Nobody wants to gay-marry you. You don't have to worry.
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If you need some Iron Age book to tell you that it's wrong to kill someone, you weren't brought up right.
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Yup. I wasn't brought up Christian. What is your point? Did you also miss the illegal part too? Or can you not address the entirety of a statement?
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The Ten Commandments are pre-Christian. So what's your point?
Is the reason you don't kill people really because God told you not to?
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Are your glasses dirty or something? This will be the third time i have mentioned illegality and you seem to have missed or ignored it the other two times.
And yes, The ten commandments are pre Christianity. It was a law of the Jews. What Christianity did was expanded the concept to all people instead of a select few already of a religion.
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Seriously? You just don't go around killing people because it may endanger you prospects in a hypothetical afterlife?
Charming.
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Yup. That and the illegal part has saved several people's lives. I doubt I'm alone in this restraint to. Isn't there anyone you wished would die but refused to cause the death yourself? If so, what stopped you?
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What stopped me is empathy, even in my enemies I recognize a shared humanity.
Seriously dude, if you feel that way there's something seriously wrong with you. Although the condition is not too uncommon.
I am dead serious, get yourself tested [psychologytoday.com].
And please don't take this comment as a reason to add me to your enemy list.
The condition is nothing to be ashamed of, in a sense it could be said it makes you more free in your choices than other people. But if you fall onto that spectrum you should know about it.
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There is nothing wrong with me. There are people who served no obvious purpose or value to society. There are people who piss me off, more trouble than they are worth and if it was livestock, they would have been culled a long time ago.
Your empathy is hollow too. It was empathy that was the driver behind Germany's T4, the modern euthanasia push for terminally ill as well as the old and aging in liberalized European countries. It is empathy that has legally killed. And note the legally part.
If you could ra
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It's called assisted suicide for a reason. So yes, empathy can sometimes lead to the act of killing.
Pretty straightforward with people since they can tell you what they want. Less so with animals. My 16 year old dog is not doing that well anymore, going to have to make a difficult call pretty soon.
Re:Marriage (Score:5, Insightful)
Things that heterosexual couples take for granted that gay couples could not prior the the legalization of marriage equality nationwide. Do this: Be in a heterosexual marriage for 15 years, and follow your spouse's ambulance to the hospital. Then have a nurse deny you access to their bedside because your "marriage" offends her sensibilities. This same shit had to be fought over interracial marriage as well.
Perhaps your spouse dies in that hospital. Now have their family swoop in and take away your home, along all the money from your spouse's bank accounts. Sure, they could set up trusts and contracts and PoA's, but the point is, I'm married, and if I die, my wife by default is my next of kin. I don't have to do any of that noise, and neither should someone else just because they're gay. Inheritance and capital gains were an even worse issue.
Try having a shred of empathy for people whose circumstances are different from yours, how does that sound? Gay people don't necessarily care if people "like" their marriage, but they should be equal under the law. Statements like yours sound like they're straight out of 1963 and just repurposed from "Coloreds" to "Homos".
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Tax benefits, hospital visitation, inheritance issues, insurance costs...and on, and on, and on.
FYI that won't be enough in the long run. We had that in Norway from 1993 to 2009, homosexuals could register as "partners" but not "married" but had equal rights in all of the above, though adoption was kept out of it. Despite being quite equal in law there was a strong emotion on both sides from homosexuals that felt their love wasn't regarded as equal and from fundamentalists who were quick to point out that this was not to be understood as marriage. So in our current law there is marriage and only marri
Re:Marriage (Score:5, Insightful)
In time, it is likely that such laws would have made it feasible to remove marriage laws, with their religious overtones, from the books altogether.
Re:Marriage (Score:4, Insightful)
Except of course that before "marriage equality" was imposed by the courts many states were passing domestic partnership laws. Domestic partnership laws solved all of those issues.
Water under the bridge now, but I always thought this was the right solution... as long as it was taken one step further: Establish standard legal structures for domestic partnerships that mirror existing legal structures for marriage but can be used by any pair (or more, for that matter) of competent adults, then classify all existing marriages as domestic partnerships and stop issuing marriage licenses. Just have civil unions/domestic partnerships for everyone.
That approach would have left "marriage" as a purely symbolic and religious act, and left it up to churches to decide how they wanted to define it. Undoubtedly, some churches would refuse to solemnize gay marriage while others would be fine with it... indeed some churches might be established precisely in order to provide that religious service for the LGBT community. No need to make anyone feel like their religious freedom is being trampled, and no need to treat any segment of society differently.
This was my position on the issue from the early 90s when it first started to get some traction. I knew from the beginning that there was no way the restriction on homosexual marriage could be justified under the 14th amendment, and that if the religious right wanted to preserve the institution of marriage the way they saw it they needed to get government out of it, but instead they tried to fight it head on, and lost.
Re:Marriage (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because treating same sex couples equally under the law--that is to say, not kicking them out of the ambulance; not having their homophobic relatives contest their wills and leave their widows and widowers nothing--somehow instantaneously nullifies and "fucks up" your heterosexual marriage, your rights, your recognized status under the law.
Are those rights now DENIED to you simply because they are recognized for same sex couples? You still don't understand. Your so-called "right" to be a pompous, bigoted asshole; your right to treat a group of people as inferior under the law, is not a right. The only thing that gets fucked up here is that you don't get to take out your prejudices against gays and lesbians and call that your "religious freedom."
This idea of needing to "protect heterosexual marriage" because it is somehow "threatened" by men marrying men, and women marrying women, is really a statement to the effect that straights regard their own marital bonds to be so fragile, so tenuous, that they need the security of denying other people their rights, to say to other people how THEY should be recognized when that has no bearing on their own status in society. How pathetic for you that you feel that way.
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Gay _female_ couples can have children, yes. Gay male couples can't. As to raising children, I'd be fine cutting them a tax break if they adopt, if there wasn't one already. I figure two dads is better than no one at all.
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I find it kind of endearing when an Anonymous Coward posts a reply to himself, thinking that no one can tell it's the same person.
Re: Just what the world needs (Score:3, Insightful)
From what I've seen about Theil, he doesn't come off as self loathing. It occurs to me that just because one is attracted to the same sex doesn't mean they want to be part of the gay scene or culture, nor do they want it to be seen as an integral part of their identity.
In other words, they don't want to be seen as a homosexual Hugh Hefner, which oddly seems to become the default behavior of openly gay people.
Theil seems to want to be in the "Yes I'm attracted to the same sex. Next subject." category, same w
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Thiel as a Republican speaker is a thumb in the eye to the Bible thumpers, besides being a representative of the nerd viewpoint.
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In other words, they don't want to be seen as a homosexual Hugh Hefner, which oddly seems to become the default behavior of openly gay people.
Since when? You hanging out in those campus bathrooms some of these people frequent? I know a fair number of gays, and they are all in monogamous relationships. Of course there are some sleazy people who are gay. There certainly are also enough sleazeballs who are confirmed heterosexuals. That's because there are some sleazy humans, regardless of where they want to put their parts.
Theil seems to want to be in the "Yes I'm attracted to the same sex. Next subject." category, same with other famous people like James Rhandi.
What bothers me is why this is largely viewed as self loathing in the media.
The problem, as always, is that the Republican party, after all of their issues with gays, including at least one ballot initiat
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It's not the thoughts (to the extend that there are any) but the hate.
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I think it's safe to say that Peter Thiel will be fine.
But just for the record, I don't hate the man, I am just disappointed. Not only for this, but also for using his money to destroy Gawker, while trying to keep this out of the public eye. [forbes.com]
He is not the man I thought he was.
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Why? Destroying Gawker is probably the single most noble thing he's ever done. It almost makes up for founding PayPal.
Gawker is a shitty, entirely morally bankrupt "news" website and needed to be destroyed. If every one of Gawker's website vanished tomorrow, the world would be a better place. No one will miss Gawker.
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To destroy any kind of journalism by clandestinely funding litigation is also morally bankrupt.
The way to destroy a media site is by denying it clicks.
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If you read the Forbes article that I linked. you will realize that the story is much more sinister than that.
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It absolutely does not matter -- once you refuse a judge's order to take down content, you're screwed. Gawker would have been just fine if they'd removed their illegally-gained content.
Re: Just what the world needs (Score:4, Informative)
As an European I haven't been following all the details, but if I am not mistaken, Trump is actually relatively supportive towards gays (especially if compared to others within Republican party) even if he does not support recognizing gay marriage at the moment. There was story about this issue on New York Times:
Donald Trump's More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P. [nytimes.com]
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As an European I haven't been following all the details, but if I am not mistaken, Trump is actually relatively supportive towards gays
Trump just announced as his Vice President a governor who openly advocates forcing "gay conversion therapy" as a biblical method to cure homosexuality.
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* Supported North Carolina's effort to stop transgender people from using the bathroom matching their identity: "I believe it should be states’ rights and the state should make the decision. They’re more capable of making the decision."
* Repeatedly said that gay people should not be allowed to marry or have benefits that heterosexual couples are entitled to.
* Selected as his intended VP a ma
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He has, as he does with most things, sat on both sides of the fence. In the anti-gay column, he has:
* Supported North Carolina's effort to stop transgender people from using the bathroom matching their identity
Hey wait a second. I thought that transgender people are the gender that they identify with. I mean, gender is a social construct, after all, right? While some transgender people may harbor an attraction toward the same gender they're transitioning to, many don't. Lumping all transgender people into the gay community is pretty damn disrespectful, both to the transgender community, and to the gay community, is it not? <outrage>You fucking bigot!<\outrage>
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Does this sound like anyone we know? (Score:3)
This is from DSM-V:
The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality (self and interpersonal) functioning and the presence of pathological personality traits. To diagnose narcissistic personality disorder, the following criteria must be met:
AND
Tell me that doesn't send shivers down your spine.
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Thiel? or Trump?
Yes.
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An arrogant idiot running on a ticket of bigotry isn't in the same league with "plenty of things to dislike". Most companies probably wouldn't feel any need for a disclaimer, nor to pull sponsorship for the convention.
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Citation? Or is this missing a sarcasm tag?