#pgc's thoughts

Politically or personally?

Politically she’s a 9/11 conservative that is more about being reactionary than about knowing what conservatism actually is about. She’s loud, brash, likes guns, and likes to pretend she’s bucking the system because she wears leather pants. I don’t hate her, but she’s not anywhere near my top 10  of people whose political opinions I value. She’s too much of a social conservative for me to really care what she thinks. She’s a little too much of a caricature of conservatism for me to take seriously at times. 

If by “you guys” you mean me, ProudGayConservative. I’ve bounced ideas for plots off NAC a few times, but this is solely my own writing project, not connected with @conservativeleague at all. 

I don’t think I’ve even mentioned that series on here...mostly my writing is discussed on twitter. 

Honestly Spicer calling concentration camps "Holocaust centers" is not even the worst of that press conference, obvious proof of his own callous stupidity of course, but not the worst statement he made. I'd like people to focus on the part where he implied that Hitler is somehow not as bad as Assad because, as he attempted to clarify his statement that Assad is worse than Hitler, ‪"Hitler didn't gas his own people". So it's not as evil if you do it to another race?‬

Obviously he was trying to walk back his earlier ignorance and probably didn't mean it the way it sounded (then again, this is the Trump White House, so who knows), but damn...that is a chilling statement.

There’s no such category as “Even Hitler wouldn’t have done that!” Whatever it is, if Hitler had been in a position to have access to the science or tools to accomplish it, Hitler would have done it. 

You answered your own stupid question when you called it “white culture”. There’s no such thing.

Part of my family is from Ireland, there’s Irish culture that I celebrate and embrace as my own. Part of my family is from Scotland and I celebrate and embrace my family’s Scottish culture as well.

But there is no “white culture” and the very concept is racist simply because you are trying to shove the many and diverse cultures and histories of many groups into a box based on skin color.

The other problem is your use of “preserve”.

There’s nothing wrong with celebrating your own culture or the culture of your family. But the act of preserving isn’t celebration, it’s just trying to stop any advancement of society and culture so that you can keep everything in some idealized state.

I enjoy my family’s cultural roots, but I don’t live my life according to the culture of Ireland in whatever era that “culture” I’m celebrating was devised. That’s just regressive and insane. Culture and society change over time. You keep some parts and discard others and adopt new parts.

Enjoy whatever culture you came from as much as you want. Embrace it, research it, go travel in the lands your family came from and learn the language.

But don’t act like race is some overarching culture. Because that’s just showing how uneducated you really are about the cultures of every country and continent that people with your skin tone have ever lived on.

I have read easily a dozen stories about it and none of them make a bit of logical sense. The ban apparently only applies to certain airports/airlines in the middle east, not all airlines. It only applies to electronics in CARRY ONS, because apparently laptop bombs in the cargo hold won’t be a problem? (Even though, as far as I can tell, the only time a bomb disguised as an electronic device brought down a plane it was IN the cargo hold? Might be wrong about that, but I can’t find any reports otherwise.)

One would also think that a laptop as a carry on would be safer, because they could have the owner power up the laptop to check that it is really a functioning laptop rather than a bomb (I have had to do this before, because my podcasting microphone freaked the TSA out when I was flying to DC and they put me through a secondary screening process, always fun.) 

Also if there is a real security threat of Al-Shabab turning laptops or other large electronics into bombs, why would a ban on these on flights from only a handful of Middle Eastern airports be effective? Does Trump really think that terrorists will be like “oh, oops, can’t fly out of the Middle East with my laptop bomb that will apparently only work if I have it with me at my seat, I guess there’s no possible way I could modify it to work in the cargo hold or no way I could send these plans to someone and have them build it and fly out of another airport that will allow them to carry their laptop on the plane.” 

If there’s a credible threat, shouldn’t ALL airlines flying into the US, including airlines based in the US, have to comply to this rule as well?

For that matter if the issue is the threat to American lives, why aren’t all domestic or outbound flights being told to follow this rule? Can terrorists suddenly not fly from Topeka to Atlanta or buy laptops in the United States that they could modify based on plans from Al-Shabab?

Then of course there is this little nugget of news from February of this year. 

President Donald Trump told U.S. airlines he would help them compete with foreign carriers that are aided by their governments, a crucial signal of White House support for an industry campaign that began in 2015.

“A lot of that competition is subsidized by governments, big league,” Trump said at a White House meeting Thursday with the nation’s largest airlines, air freight companies and airports. “I’ve heard that complaint from different people in this room. Probably about one hour after I got elected, I was inundated with calls from your industry and many other industries, because it’s a very unfair situation.”

Active involvement by Trump would answer two years of prodding by Delta Air Lines Inc., United Continental Holdings Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. to act on claims that $50 billion in government support have enabled three Persian Gulf carriers to compete unfairly. While Trump didn’t name individual foreign companies, the U.S. airlines last week asked to meet with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss their allegations against Emirates, Etihad Airways PJSC and Qatar Airways Ltd.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-08/u-s-airline-chiefs-set-to-talk-jobs-traffic-control-with-trump

In case anyone was wondering, the electronics ban effects 9 airlines...includng Emirates, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways. 

So there’s that. Since this ban doesn’t apply to American airlines, which have no direct flights to the US from those airports, that’s convenient for them. Which maybe sounds like a conspiracy theory, but Alex Jones is supposed to have White House Press Credentials now so I figure conspiracy theories are “real news” now anyway. 

In any case, there are too many loopholes in this rule to really be effective at stopping ANY attack, whether this is based on credible threat intel or not (which is possible, since the U.K. did put similar rules in place immediately after the U.S. did, which could mean they have similar intel OR it could just mean they are responding to a perceived threat based on the U.S. action).