@raphjd said in Party of family values part 1 :

HPV hides in the genital folds, regardless of sex. That is a medical basis.

Silly boy - HPV is a virus, not a bacteria... thus, it hides INSIDE your body, not outside. If you had some of the HPV virus trapped in the folds of the skin of your penis, it would quickly die.

• You cannot catch HPV by blowing an infected male - unless he cums (or pre-cums a significant amount)
• You cannot catch HPV from a toilet seat, or a pair of underwear, previously used by an infected person

Rather than go on, let me just say that HPV is similar to HIV in that they are both sexually-transmitted diseases... but the similarity pretty much ends there.

Most importantly, your body can defeat and remove HPV from your system

For more information, turn to a trusted source (apparently, for anything but COVID-19): The CDC

@chanelkokoro said in Party of family values part 1 :

@bi4smooth

So I'm Nigerian American and my family has a roman catholic background. Every male in my family has been circumcised. The reasoning behind it has nothing to do with religion but rather it's a matter of course. It's purely for hygienic reasons.

So, I would say that your claim that circumcision has health benefits is PROVEN false solely by the statistical analysis of populations of circumcised males vs populations of uncircumcised ones... which, in communities of like economic status, are virtually identical.

You might want to read this: article about the fallacy of male circumcision in American Culture written in the 1980s

Other than for religious or cultural "looks" reasons, there is no need or benefit to the practice - though it does surgically remove a LOT of nerve endings!)

@raphjd said in Party of family values part 1 :

@chanelkokoro

Just because you suck them, doesn't mean you actually know anything about them.

Have you read the Denmark study on penis health? The study was about 10 years ago when they had the least amount of mutilated men and had the world's highest rate of penis health.

As a nurse, you are severely behind in your medical literature. As far back as 2009 (probably even earlier) the National Institute of Health recommending male genital mutilation for HIV, HPV and Herpes. Many of these articles even said it should be mandatory to protect women's health.

Of course, no medical journal would ever recommend female circumcision as that would be suicide with all the vaginalists and liberals. However, if you read the literature, you will find that HPV hides in the folds of the genitals of both sexes.

In my experience, even medical journals from around the world are inconsistent as-to whether circumcision causes any harm, or has any inherent benefit. Most of those that DO come down on one side or another are denounced by others (other medical scientists) as being biased.

IMHO circumcision is a primarily a religious and/or cosmetic decision that is relatively harmless. (NOTE: There are rare instances where circumcision is medically necessary).

That said, tattooing a swastika on your children's foreheads is also medically "relatively harmless" - but I wouldn't recommend it!

For the record: I was circumcised as an infant.
For the record: I have 4 sons (and 5 daughters)... and NONE of them were circumcised!
Why? Because "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" -- there is nothing wrong with the way millions of years of evolution (or, if you must, "God") has designed and built the male human penis.

• Removing most of the foreskin does not demonstrably improve on the design, so just leave it alone!
• NOT removing most of the foreskin also does not demonstrably improve on the design or function either, so if people choose to do it, so be it! The US, at least, is a free country (at least in this area!)

@raphjd said in The Truth About Bill Gates:

@calatar

I have already proven that Wikipedia isn't a trusted source. You can find the thread here if you look.

Wikipedia isn't intended to be a "news source" - and the only bias is the bias of the 10's of thousands of contributors there!

You know, Fox News is a terrible kid's show! My 2 y/o granddaughter just won't sit through it, so I had to go back to Daniel Tiger & Teletubbies!

My hammer did a terrible job of putting in those screws... they fell out a few days later!

Right tool, right place!

A few comments:

1. Urine is not sterile (that's a common fallacy)
   https://www.healthline.com/health/is-urine-sterile
2. Urine does not cure Athlete's Foot, nor any other fungal, bacterial, or viral infections
3. Drinking urine will not cure hair loss, cancer, infertility, or halitosis
4. Urine is composed of water, electrolytes, and nitrogen compounds, such as urea.
   https://hscnews.usc.edu/urologist-answers-nine-questions-about-urine
5. Urine is your body's way of "rinsing out" your kidneys... so what's in there is waste (mostly, cellular waste) that your kidneys have filtered out of your bloodstream).

There is nothing wrong, IMHU, with peeing in the shower... so long as you are sure to rinse all of it down the drain... maybe less OK if your shower is in a bathtub and it doesn't drain as fast as the shower water flows. Most urine (especially the 1st pee of the day) will have a significant odor... that said, a REALLY strong odor is often indicative of an infection!

Finally, if you're in the shower WITH SOMEONE and want to pee ON THEM, I strongly urge you to ask them about it first! I, for one, would NOT appreciate being peed on in the shower... indeed, if done without asking it would very likely be the LAST time you were EVER in the shower WITH ME (and if it was my shower, likely the last time you would ever use that shower - or any other shower - in my home!)

@raphjd said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

Anyone who hasn't seen the video from the police cams and neighbor's CCTV really has no business telling us what's what.

Only a liar or an idiot would say that this conversation would be the same if it was a black cop who shot a knife-wielding white girl. Hell, this wouldn't even make the news.

I do love how little value liberals put on the girl in the pink's life.

Hell, no one is complaining about the guy doing a football kick to the girl on the ground's head.

Unlike you nasty liberals, I'm glad the cop saved the girl in the pink.

OMG - what a LIST OF false and misleading assertions here!

It's not an either-or equation!

• Why couldn't the cop have saved them both?
• Was a fatality a necessary component of this call?

It's not like the cop arrived and had a split-second decision to make: which one do I kill?

The question (the right question) is whether police misuse of deadly force (some force, and some lethal force, is necessary in policing - no doubt!) is out-of-control in the US today.

The liberal media are just the messengers here... are they biased? Maybe! But that doesn't mean the facts that they're reporting are false!

When the lunatic runs through the theater shouting FIRE, it's not a crime if there really IS a fire! (Neither does the fact that there really is a fire detract that he's a lunatic - the fact is, he's just a messenger!)

@raphjd said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

No matter what the cop did in this situation, liberals would have demonized him.

It's the way of the modern world.

A black cop repeatedly tazes a handcuffed black homeowner and liberals ignore it because they can't racialize it.

A black cop guns down an unarmed white teen who was no threat and liberals don't care because only black lives matter that can be racialized.

73yo white woman with dementia is brutalized by police, getting her arm broken and shoulder dislocated, liberals don't care about that either because she has the wrong skin color.

More than twice as many (both armed and unarmed) whites, than blacks, were killed by cops last year, by the narrative is that blacks are being hunted down.

I do wish you'd just stop the fantasy and start each sentence with "What about"....

We (@js76) and I weren't talking about race-based policing, we were talking about militarized policing!

What about inflation? Are we going to have to start paying higher taxes to pay for the new police anti-terrorist weapons? Won't that cost jobs? What about college education? Won't the higher taxes make that more expensive, too? What about all the kids being taken into foster care? Shouldn't their parent's have to pay?

@raphjd said in Party of family values part 1 :

We already had the Male Genital Mutilation discussion and its sexist attitudes in the US. You can find the thread here somewhere. 84% of MGM is ordered by the mother. The same women that would never, ever have their daughters circumcised.

Damn, dude! They've been snipping at the ends of boy's penises for over 3,000 years... (not hyperbole - three millenia!) and it's all been a feminist plot? Has even the past 100 years been a feminist plot?

I'm no fan of circumcision (and I do not object to the term male-genital-mutilation, as that's truly what it is)... but an ancient, barbaric, religious practice is not exactly a "tool of the feminists"!

Planned Parenthood is severely funded by the government. The claim is that they don't use any of that money for abortions, which is extremely dishonest. If they stopped getting taxpayer money, where would they get the money to fund their buildings, staff, etc, etc, etc?!

I am curious how the word "severely" can apply to government funding... but word choice aside, Planned Parenthood has had its government funding cutoff before, and the organization didn't wither up and die. Indeed, they offer many different kinds of programs: non-medical, as well as medical - including abortion services - that are often paid for by their clients' health insurers.

It's always easy to vilify an organization that does something you fundamentally disagree with (in this case, that would be abortion), but the real world seldom can be so easily categorized into good vs. bad.

The HPV vaccine was only given to females in the west for over a decade, despite males getting far more often than females. From memory, males got it 5 times more than females.

The identification of HPV as being a cause of cervical cancer was quite the shocker to the medical community. The HPV vaccine was, for most of its early years, seen strictly as a preventative for cervical cancer.... and any man who had a cervix was strongly suggested to take the vaccine.

It wasn't until later that they also traced other cancers - and genital warts (eww... can we change the subject... quickly!) that they started recommending it for boys as well as girls.

As the father of 9 (current ages from the 30s to mid-teens), I am pleased to report that all of my children: with and without a cervix, have been vaccinated against HPV.

Females still get Affirmative Action, despite overtaking males in every aspect of education.

I'll have to alert every Engineering school in America... their counts are wrong!
FACT: STEM enrollments are still predominantly male, with some exceptions - like medicine. But even then, you're looking at enrollments strictly in European and North American colleges... include the REST of the world (with far more population, mind you) and the numbers vary widely... Indeed, with the US pullout from Afghanistan, female education is destined to once again become outlawed there. Sharia Law, don't ya know!

In many countries, women can not commit sex crimes, domestic violence, and other things.

It is true: in Saudi Arabia, by way of example, a woman cannot be accused of raping a man. No such crime exists on the books. On the other hand, she can be killed by her husband's (or brother's or father's) hand on a whim - with no consequences to him (so long as he claims it was to protect his honor) - so, what's the point in charging her with rape? Just kill her! Silly westerner with such outlandish ideas! Why would you waste time and money on a woman! If she doesn't please you, just kill her and find another!

There is a laundry list of things where there is rampant sexism against men.

This is an area you and I fundamentally disagree on routinely: I don't mind competing on an even playing field - even if that field is slightly in favor of others. White men have been the privileged class for so long, and I am keenly aware of many areas of my life where I received (and, to be fair & truthful, I continue to receive) advantages.

To me it's just "evening up the competition".... to you, it's an affront to all that is masculine and a challenge to the "rightness" of the way things used to be - the way that favored you.

Whereas I welcome the competition - even if the playing field is not perfectly fair (as-if it ever was) - you appear to want to be victimized by it...

It is quite clear we will not agree here - for a very fundamental reason.

from my viewpoint:

Policing today is broken - the modern police have become militarized and overly aggressive towards the population. Further, they focus more on "enforcement" and less on "protect and serve".

from your viewpoint:

There is nothing wrong with the status quo - in fact, the police should "step it up a notch" because crime is "so bad"

Thus, I'm posing possible solutions to a problem you do not believe exists... and that is "a bridge too far"... to go on would be pointless.

Might i suggest you buy a bullet-proof vest... LOL

Unfortunately, you've found a torrent that has no seeders.

Look near the bottom of the torrent's page and you'll see that there are currently 0 seeders, and 1 leechers (that's you!).

At this point, your best bet is to click on the "Request Reseed" button just below the information above... With any luck, someone who has downloaded that content will still have it (and it'll still be organized the same way) so that they can help you get your own copy!

Good luck! I hope you get your re-seed!

@jsl76 said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

@bi4smooth said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

Honestly, in today's policing, the answers here are a) and a)... and that is frightening!

I think that's a bit too blithe, though. You're acting as if a high-level principle is all we need. That's a dangerously naïve view. For example, if a cop encounters an enraged woman flashing a knife, what matters is the context of the individual situation. If the woman is standing alone in a parking lot and a half-dozen officers have encircled her and keep 10 paces of distance, there's zero need for lethal force. If a woman is five feet from another woman she's actively attacking -- as with the Bryant case -- and there's one officer approaching from a distance, that's a completely different calculation.

It's intellectually dishonest to suggest that a context-free one-sentence scenario requires a specific one-sentence outcome when you haven't made any accommodation whatsoever for the tactical situation.

And it's not as if the police have sole accountability here. In that litany of "say their name" people, most of them were lawfully detained for some reason, and the situation got out of hand when they resisted arrest. That's not to suggest that resisting arrest ought to be addressed by lethal force, but it is to acknowledge that police go into a job with a reason to want to protect themselves. In 2018, law enforcement as a profession had a annual fatality rate of 13.7 per 100,000 workers -- the 16th most dangerous profession in the United States (see: https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/2020/01/24/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/41041127/). And that's with all the SWAT teams, body armor, and overwhelming responses. What do you think is the most likely outcome if U.S. cops act like British constables? Like it or not, the evidence is strongly suggestive that low socioeconomic status correlates strongly with criminal behavior and with resistance to apprehension. You can't just focus on the "supply" side of the argument (police violence) without accounting for the "demand" side (criminality with specific U.S. characteristics that don't easily map to other advanced countries).

So... let me get this right... it's OK in your world to shoot first and ask questions later if the person under suspicion is poor?

Look, I get it - I have a nephew in law enforcement. Believe it or not, there are plenty of officers who agree that they are under-trained, and often trained in the wrong ways.

And I'm not some "defund the police" guy... Contrary to your opinion otherwise, what's needed in America today is EXACTLY a change in the high level principles that apply to our police! And they need MORE funding, not less... but more funding for training... training in policing that focuses on DE-escalation, not escalate-and-take-control!

Many police jurisdictions have a motto akin to "To Protect and To Serve" imprinted on the sides of their vehicles... these mottos are not new - they date from the 1940s and 1950s.... when the image of a policeman was not so easily confused with that of a warrior.

Policing is a dangerous job... but sometimes (and more and more often recently), the danger (and the escalation of a bad situation) comes as much from the police as from the perpetrators. That doesn't mean there aren't violent offenders out there that need a strong response! The issue isn't all-of-one and none-of-the-other...

The system as-is is BROKEN ... not just for the communities tired of living in fear of the police (or tired of using tax dollars to pay-off multi-million-dollar judgements against local police)... it also isn't working for the men and women in uniform!

But, little tweaks aren't going to solve the problem either! We need a fundamental change in the approach to policing... it's taken decades to evolve to the policing we have today, and I doubt the public will have the patience to wait so long for it to "swing back"...

Regardless of the pace of change, we need find a way to return to police as protectors and walk back from police as enforcers.

@jsl76 said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

What it really boils down to is this: Under the current policing and use-of-force logic in most U.S. police departments, the shooting of Bryant was appropriate and justified. It's tragic, to be sure. But it fell within the scope of the officer's training. There's room to disagree as to whether this ought to be the logic of most police forces -- but that's a different, broader argument. People will disagree, but given the reality of the situation, I don't see an alterative that makes any sense. The Bryant case is a very, very weak hook for "police should be less violent" arguments, because there are many other, better, cases to shoehorn that perspective.

The real question isn't whether the officer did what he was trained to do: when presented with a potentially dangerous situation, escalate to the point of forced action, then overwhelm the offender with lethal violence. (Let's be clear: he brought a gun to a knife fight!)

No, the real questions are these:

• Are we properly training our police... at all (regardless of the role we want them to play!)?
• Do we want to train our police officers to be "protectors" or to be para-military "enforcers"?
• Are we enabling our police officers to do anything BUT escalate and control?
• Are we glorifying the "SWAT" and other violence-based, militarized police units (which have a role, no question) to the detriment of the increasingly rarefied "beat cop" who establishes relationships with citizens and seeks to "keep the peace" (vs. "enforce the law")....

When a cop today encounters an enraged woman flashing a knife, should he:
a) draw his weapon and eliminate the threat - real or potential - with lethal force, as quickly as possible, or
b) try to de-escalate the situation: try to calm her down, convince her to drop the weapon and then arrest her, or
c) get other people away from the situation (to safety) & then try to get more information about what led to the current crisis... try to understand the situation, and find a non-violent solution

When the situation is over, what is the desired (most likely to be rewarded) result?
a) the perpetrator is in a body bag and everyone else is safe
b) the perpetrator is in handcuffs and everyone else is safe
c) the perpetrator is in the back of the squad car, on the way to a hospital to be evaluated, and everyone else is safe?

Honestly, in today's policing, the answers here are a) and a)... and that is frightening!

Human sexuality is such a fluid thing...
Assuming you are a man:

• you can look at one man and be incredibly turned on, and find virtually no other man sexually attractive in the least... that doesn't make you gay!
• you can look at one woman and be incredibly turned on, and find virtually no other woman sexually attractive in the least... that doesn't make you straight!

As humans, we strive (both constantly, and futilely) to bring order to our own existence.

But the Universe isn't about order, it's about chaos!

The Kinseys found that there were VERY few men who never EVER found another man sexually attractive; and equally so, they found VERY few men who never EVER found a woman sexually attractive. And the same was found for women.

Interestingly, they found that women were culturally - in the 1950's and 1960's - far more open/receptive to accepting/admitting that they were attracted to something "not standard" for them.

The idea that "to be gay" you have to not (ever) find a woman sexually alluring, and "to be straight" you cannot (ever) find another man to be sexually attractive is purely a social construct.

There ARE rare exceptions (and you may indeed be one of them) - but if you're someone who claims "it's all of one, and none of the other", then you are probably (not definitely, just probably) deceiving yourself!

Statistically speaking, most of us are "fluid" - we have a preference, but we will find exceptions our own "rules"!

As the father of 5 boys, I'll tell you what I've told my children as they have grown:

• If your dick gets hard, you're attracted to it!

That doesn't give you license to ACT on that attraction, but it is what it is and you can't change it! The goal in life is to find someone who makes your dick hard, and for whom you cause the same reaction (clearly, not "their dick being hard" for a woman, but you get the point)....

@chanelkokoro said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

@bi4smooth

This seems slightly off. The military is much better trained than police are, they kind of have to be.

How is it "off" when you re-state my case?

US Police forces have been trained (in 30-second intervals) to behave like our military - and given some of the same weaponry and other "tools of warfare" - and then turned loose on our own population.

... with less training than a barber or cosmetologist!

And then we stand back and wonder why innocent (and hell, even guilty) people are killed by those same poorly trained, improperly trained (that is: trained in the wrong skills - for military operations, not policing ones!), overly equipped officers?

@chanelkokoro said in Party of family values part 1 :

@raphjd but contraception is healthcare,

exactly - which is why politics & religion have almost no place at the table when talking about these issues (IMHO)

@raphjd said in Party of family values part 1 :

@bi4smooth

You mean the same religions that have stonings and went on murderous rampages through the region?

Yup - same ones! Same ones that sanctioned slavery! Same ones that sanctioned genocide - multiple times throughout history!

Glad there's no confusion there...

Murder was wrong then, and its wrong now.

Men were sinners then, and they are sinners now!

@chanelkokoro said in Teenage knife fights are no big deal, say liberals:

@vmalar also we don't know why person a had the knife, it's possible she was defending herself, and it's possible she may have been the person to call the police in the first place.

to me it's just pathetic how cops shoot people to death the minute the situation becomes a little inconvenient. They rather someone else's life end than working harder to defuse a situation. This is what our taxpayer dollars are going towards?

Many American police departments use militarized training tactics:

• ELEVATE tensions and exert complete and total control
• civilians who resist - especially those with weapons - are treated as "enemy combatants" and are open ("eligible") for lethal repercussions

The vast majority of US law enforcement are never trained in de-escalation techniques, nor are they rewarded for non-violent interventions that defuse a situation, thus avoiding an arrest... to the contrary, they are often evaluated based on the number of arrests made.

A commonly cited, but equally true statement about US law enforcement training is sad, but telling: in most jurisdictions you need more hours of training to become a hair stylist than to become a police officer.

@raphjd said in Party of family values part 1 :

@eobox91103

Pro-Life is giving each person a chance.

Pro-Choice is killing people before they have a chance.

Clearly, you liberals are unable to understand that.

Let's try it this way:

Thou shalt not kill

It doesn't say: thou shalt not kill babies any more than it says thou shalt not kill murderers....

What really gets me are the pro-lifers who argue that rape & incest pregnancies should be exceptions. Sure, the kid's father is a criminal, so just OK their murder because of the actions of their father...

That's the American Way!

Just to set the record straight here:

Biden didn't kill the $15 minimum wage, the Parliamentarian of the Senate did when they ruled that that part of the legislation couldn't pass through the "budget reconciliation" rule - which is how they passed it without the "danger" of a filibuster.

Biden is a "tax and spend Liberal - the same as he was in the '70's... the biggest differences are

1. he is dreaming much bigger now! Who, in the 1970's, would have had the balls to propose spending at these levels! Not even the most daring liberal or socialist!
2. he is targeting his tax increases solely at "boogey men" - corporations and the "ultra-rich"

But, don't be fooled: it's still "tax and spend" liberalism!

@calatar said in Biden: "“It’s time we remembered that ‘We the people’ are the government.":

@bi4smooth Really interesting seeing your post - and I largely agree with you about your concern.

I do think though that we have had so many years of quantitative easing - without - the corresponding increase in inflation everyone was expecting... that we are likely looking at an update to how economics thinks about the topic. There are, of course, many reasons for this lack of inflation... but it is interesting to see that the vast supply of money that's coming in hasn't even remotely moved inflation.

Do you know of Mark Blithe? His book on austerity is well worth a read. And he has some pretty convincing ideas about why inflation is not happening ATM. Worth looking out a few of his lectures on YouTube if you are interested (and haven't already seen them!).

The term "quantitative easing" came from the 2008 fiscal crisis. The term was used for when the Bush administration realized that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the essential "vanishing" of huge sums of money OUT of our economy had to be "replaced", or things would potentially continue to collapse. That cash infusion did not work as expected - because it was "given" to the major banks - with the understanding that they would "loan" it out to "prop up" the economy. That did NOT happen: the cash wasn't used by the banks for loans - it was used (almost entirely) to "prop up" the cash basis of the banks, show "fake" improvements in their "profitability", and then proffer huge bonuses to the bank executives for miraculously saving the institutions!

The continuation of adding "cash" into the economy can be largely used to explain the US economy's unrivaled run of success (expansion - with minimal inflation) from 2009/2010 through the 1st quarter of 2020 (e.g. until the pandemic). This "slow growth" approach was experimental, but proved to be exceptionally successful!

However, the lack of inflation can be pretty-easily traced to the fact that the "cash infusions" through this time were relatively small. Unlike the THREE lump-sum payments of the covid-relief plans - which were not small, they were HUGE! The first two were demonstrably needed due to economic contractions similar to the fiscal crisis in 2007/2008. And, this time we learned: we didn't send the cash to the banks, we sent it directly to the people (who promptly SPENT it - exactly what was needed!)

The need for the 3rd (and largest) "infusion" (aka: stimulus check) was less obvious, but time will tell if it was "too much too fast"... but the early signs are that there are inflationary signs... significant ones. In the real-estate, home-building, auto-making, and dozens of other industries. Some can be attributed to short-term supply-chain issues, but all at once?

If Biden gets his way, and the Federal Gov't pumps another $2-4T into this economy, I think we're in for a bumpy ride...

BTW: I read recently where Warren Buffet is warning people about possible inflation. Mind you, that doesn't make me (or him) right - but I'm not embarrassed to have come to the same conclusion as arguably the most successful investor of all time....