ghomeshi has acknowledged there was violence, the question is whether it was consensual.

the problem i have with decoutere as a witness is that she's a cop. if you accept this sort of framing hypothesis as at the least likely given the lengths the conservatives have gone to to take over the cbc, the fact that she's a cop eliminates any sort of objectivity that should otherwise be there.

there are multiple other accusers, and to my knowledge none of them are cops. but this situation of a cop standing up to take down a liberal cbc host on sexual assault charges is very fishy to me....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkiLrFUS49M

i mean, i don't claim to know with any certainty what's going on here or who's being honest and who isn't.

but the perception i'm getting is that there's much more to this situation than is apparent on the surface.

it would be useful if jian could clarify what he means by "consensual" because the stories that have come out take the same form - he tries it, they're in shock, it doesn't continue. see, that's not consent. but, dudes often have weird ideas about consent. that would eliminate the contradiction immediately - he would misunderstand consent and be liable for the consequences.

but, the stories also have other constants that are sort of weird. now, i know they're the kinds of things that are often held up as examples of rape culture. i don't remember because i was in shock. i didn't file charges because i was embarrassed. it's often legitimate. but these are also the kinds of things that our legal system has difficulty with.

the reality is that there's a political context here, and these ambiguities need to be clarified before any kind of conclusion can be reached.

all i'm pointing out is that the situation is fishy.

yeah. flying cars. that's exactly what the world needs to get off oil.

we're doomed.

i'm going to reject being called a liberal (i'd prefer variants of anarchist, communist or socialist), but i happened to see the clip and while i think sam harris badly mischaracterized his opponents, and maher kept quiet on that when he shouldn't have, i don't recall anything racist coming out of anybody.

i do recall that ben affleck had a lot of difficulty in following the discussion, though.

that's right - craycray fundamentalist muslims, with their communist insistence that women go to work. we here in america will stand up against this islamo-communism and prevent our women from reaching their potential! 'MERICA!

if you're tired of arguing with zionists...this is the truth of it.

and while it's beyond surreal and absurd, and exasperatingly sad, it just exposes the absurdity of racism.

i'll explain, because i know most people don't really have the historical background.

about 1500 years ago (not quite, but almost), the area of israel passed from primarily roman (although sometimes persian) control to arab muslim control. there are some destruction events in jewish history before that, but the stories that they led to a "scattering" of the jews have very little archaeological support. we know there was substantial jewish migration to a few areas (ukraine, spain, iran, a few others) but there's never been any evidence to support the idea that the jews literally got up and left the area, or were expelled in any kind of significant numbers.

what recent genetic testing has upheld is really the logical answer - that there never was a substantial migration in or out of israel during the "arabization" of the region, which was roughly 700-1000. what actually happened was merely that the jewish population of the region converted to islam - as the spaniards or the indians or the iranians did.

what that means is that the palestinian people, who have been persecuted so horribly as "invaders on jewish land", are in actual fact the literal - and only true - descendants of the actual hebrew people. they are, in fact, the "real jews".

the amount of arab admixture into this jewish population has been as minimal as it is anywhere else in the islamicized areas. we speak of modern iranians as iranians, not arabs. likewise, we should speak of modern palestinians as jews.

get your head around this. the incredible upheavals, the global conflicts, the incredible suffering....it's all based on a misperception.

Paul Dettmann
You people are fucking morons. His words were intentionally taken out of context in this clip so you braindead losers could use it as another right wing talking point.

Here's what he actually said at 17:10 in the full video:
"We need better child care, day care, and and early childhood education policies.You know, in many states sending your child to day care costs more than sending them to a public university. True. And, too often, parents have no choice but to put their kids in cheaper daycare that maybe doesn't have the kinds of programming that makes a big difference in a child's development. And sometimes there may just not be any slots, or the best programs may be too far away. And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice we want Americans to make."

http://www.c-span.org/video/?322491-2/president-obama-remarks-economy

deathtokoalas
you're half right. the words are badly taken out of context, but this clip was a gift to the propaganda machine. he's gotta be more careful...

Divine Insurrection
Why is it all you people have is insults? Can you not see what these bastards are trying to do? Are you BLIND?  Or do you actually dig the idea of living in a Communist/Islamic nation?

deathtokoalas
absolutely. look at the communism they have in saudi arabia, where women are forced to go to work against their will.

the american free market system is all about making sure people don't have to go to work if they don't want to.

chaostic84
you are obviously a left side faggot, jump off a cliff and help America. Stupid queer.

deathtokoalas
if that was directed at me, you're correct in your accusations - but wouldn't it be easier if you carried out a public stoning?

Katherine
If you read the whole transcript (available on whitehouse.gov), he's talking about parents who are FORCED to stay at home because they CAN'T AFFORD childcare. He's not upset that people CHOOSE to stay at home.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/10/31/remarks-president-women-and-economy-providence-ri

Duncan
The puppet masters want everyone in the to broke to have at least one parent stay home with the children camp.  The agenda is a hybrid reservation/company town for the world

deathtokoalas
i think that's a paranoid exaggeration.

the reality is that there's a contradiction in liberal economic theory. on the one hand, we have this idea of self-ownership - and there's good arguments for this. one of the things that defines self-ownership in a liberal market society is the ability to generate your own income. there's a lot of freedom attached to this - relatively speaking, anyways. some women may give in to the existential dread and prefer to be taken care of, but the proper conclusion from market theory really ought to be that there should be a choice here between dependence and independence. and, yes, that's what obama meant to say, even if he gave his opponents a gift in the way he said it.

but, the flip side of this is that productive forces are constantly seeking to reduce the workforce, and have been succeeding pretty spectacularly over the last generation or so. this is set to increase. just a purely mathematical argument would demand that we'd need 55% (or whatever the percentage of women is) economic growth since 1960 in order to create enough jobs to accommodate for it. that's a hefty growth curve...

...and we're living through deindustrialization and mechanization. we've been pretty flat since roughly 1970, and likely set to decrease.

so, there's a contradiction, there.

one of the ways to resolve the contradiction is to try and convince women they don't want to work after all. this isn't likely to be successful on a large scale within a market system. there's just too much economic freedom attached to the idea of generating your income, and too much shit involved in tying your existence to somebody else's pay check. some women are lucky enough to find themselves in positive situations with this, but most women are smart enough to realize the possible consequences of getting stuck in that sort of situation. so, it's not going to happen.

but they keep pushing it because there isn't a way out besides making serious changes to the way we order the economy. mechanization isn't going to reverse itself. so, you're looking at things like job sharing. and when you play this out to it's conclusion, you're inevitably left with high levels of progressive taxation to administer it.

there's no other end point. and i don't think the democrats really get that either, i think they're mostly lost in delusions about unending growth curves.

you can't just double the labour market in a stagnant or even shrinking economy and expect it to keep going. but, self-ownership is fundamental to individual freedom in the market order. contradiction....

dswynne
First, family planning arrangements is none of the government's business.  Secondly, the reason why women have to make a choice to begin with is due to excessive taxation of the poor and middle-class.  Thirdly, there is a school of thought amongst feminists that hate the idea of stay-at-home moms because it a) lowers the earning power of women across the board, and, b) takes prominent "talent" out of corporate America, thus less feminine representation.  Finally, by empowering the daycare system, you have a perfect storm to unionize daycare workers.  Thus, what Pres. Obama said is disingenuous, even if this clip was "taken out of context", based upon the goals of this man (i.e. increasing the scope of government).

deathtokoalas
it's not a question of whether it's the state's business or not, so long as the state exists it will interfere, it's a question of what the state needs to do to protect it's own interests. there's a disagreement on this point, but the democrats and republicans are really equally delusional about it. the republicans argue that the state needs to foster a family-oriented type model in order to protect the wealth of the upper classes from being taxed to pay for the collapse of that system, whereas the democrats argue that the more workers you have the higher the tax base is. i'm several degrees to the left of the democrats, but i realize that the republicans actually make more sense on this point. they're at least acknowledging the basic arithmetic that comes from transferring wealth out of the nuclear family. the democrats are just projecting growth rates out of thin air and into lalaland.

the basic arithmetic is intuitive. consider two people: mary and mark. mary and mark are neither related nor are they lovers - they don't even know each other. if it were the past, mary would be expected to be taken care of by her husband. but, now mary wants to go to work and, because she's a better candidate than mark, takes mark's job away from him. now, mary had a husband to take care of her when she wasn't working. who takes care of mark when he's not working? the answer is that the government has to do this.

so, the basic arithmetic is a shift in responsibility from the family patriarch to the state.

now, here's the thing: maybe you can let mark starve to death. who cares, right? but, you can't let ten million marks starve to death. rather, ten million marks are going to raise an army and tear the state down. so, the state has no choice but to provide them with something or other. just enough to stop them from revolting.

we know what republicans want: to minimize the tax burden for the upper class. so, this is a problem for them. this is the reason they promote the policies they promote.

now, the democrats take this other crazy position that argues that mary and mark don't need to be competing for jobs. the market will adjust. it will create new jobs, so both mary and mark can be working. as a million maries enter the work force, a million new jobs are created. it's magic. then, there's a million new workers to tax.

there's a lot of smoke and mirrors around this, but these are the basic economic positions that drive the way the parties approach this.

i'm not going to respond to your other points, as they're too dumb to bother with and i think you know it.

what's missing in the spectrum is a realistic analysis of how to deal with the contradictory movements of increasing female economic freedom and degrowth caused be deindustrialization and mechanization. i think we can have both of these things, but only if we re-evaluate our calvinist concepts of labour.

dswynne
I think you are misconstruing my argument.  I am very much in support of women making the choice on whether or not they want to stay at home.  I am saying that Obama is not being sincere in his speech.  He doesn't care about whether or not women chose to stay home; he cares more about increasing government spending, while expanding the role of government (vis-a-vis daycare).  I also refuted Obama's argument that women who stay home to raise kids make less money.  I countered this by stating that tax policies (i.e. disposable income) is the reason why stay-at-home mothers is the reason why families generate less income.  The rest of my arguments were stemmed from what I know of the Democratic agenda, especially where the state of feminism is.  That part could be debated, but the rest of what I wrote is not.

And I would ask you to not respond to any of my posts that are not directed towards you, especially since you've decided to take them out of context, as a way of making a snarky retort.

deathtokoalas
both wings of the capitalist party seek to reduce spending as much as possible. historically, the democrats have been considerably more fiscally conservative. obama himself has a record of radical fiscal conservatism. further, as a statist institution, both wings of the capitalist party seek to increase the role of the state in society. it's a preposterous premise.

i think it's the third time now that i've stated that the democratic wing of the capitalist party seeks to maximize labour participation because they (incorrectly) believe that this is the way to get the highest tax return. they honestly think they'll make money off of this.  conversely, the republican wing of the capitalist party seeks to minimize labour participation because they believe this is the best way to minimize the need for progressive taxation (which they understand as necessary to prevent revolution).

i don't believe that you don't understand that women seek employment to reduce dependency on men, and there's consequently little reason to discuss the topic further. it neither has anything to do with taxation, nor does it have to do with combined income, it has to do with the innate desire that individuals have to exist independently from coercive relationships. what obama was stating was that you damage your career when you have to take ten-twenty years off to raise your kids and it's not fair to make women choose between a career in law and the well-being of their own kids. it was not a statement that had anything to do with the combined income of families, it was a statement that had to do with the individual freedom of women.

if you don't like my responses, you can go ahead and remove yourself from the thread.

ugh. so, i've been over this before....

the reason the drag community focuses on these absurd displays of sexuality is because they're expressing a dominant form of masculinity through a female costume. it's little more than a gay male fetish.

the archetype is madonna, but it's really diversified over the last few decades. if you're focusing your concept of "femininity" on madonna's ultra-masculine dominatrix shtick through however many levels of abstraction, you're not expressing a condition of gender dysphoria, you're merely playing out your male dominance through a kinky costume.

how many drag queens do you see do alice in wonderland or snow white? you don't. because it's not about gender.

so, if you're interpreting the transgender condition through this filter and then you look at me and say "she's not like that....", then of course you're going to get confused - because you're misinterpreting a dominant gay male fetish for a gender condition that encapsulates the exact opposite of that.

i have about as much in common with the average gay male as i do with the average christian fundamentalist. but i'm pretty sure i'd rather hang out with the latter, because i'm confident he isn't going to take his pants off in front of me. well, actually, on second thought, i shouldn't be so sure about that....

the point i'm getting at is that the idea of compressing mtf spaces into gay male spaces is just negating the concept of transsexuality. it's an oppressive implication - it denies that i don't identify as male, don't share experiences with men, etc. and i very well may snap on the next doctor that suggests it.

i want to hang out with a bunch of gay men about as much as any other woman wants to go to any other sausage party. i'm going to sit in the corner by myself, have no idea what they're talking about (probably video games) and hope somebody i can relate to comes in to save me from them. i know this because i've been through it. i'm old. i've lived a life.

like. fuck. if it was that easy, would i have made it so difficult? ugh.