Mooseontheloose posted:

Secondly, Nebraska isn't exactly proportional. Each district is voted on separately, and whoever wins the majority in the state gets the two senate votes. Exactly like Maine.

Turnquiet posted:

My mom just sent this to me. She converted to Beckism in a big, big way once Obama got elected, and now every interaction she has with me is veiled jabs at how stupid progressivism is.

Within the first five minutes I saw at least five old white people lamenting the loss of Rockwell's America, scary footage of with fear-mongering dialog, and the repeated assertion that judeochristian principles are the only thing that makes this the greatest country in the word.

I wanted to believe that the whole video was brilliant satire since it shows such contradictory images and narration as "they want to tear down our best institutions with rot!" is played over footage of a guy tearing down the Berlin Wall, and general "scary liberals suppressing ideas!" voiceover is paired with images from a book burning... in which titles from Lenin are plainly visible.

Brennanite posted:

Why exactly is progressivism supposed to be bad? I've never met a Tea Partier able to coherently explain it.

Brennanite posted:

Why exactly is progressivism supposed to be bad? I've never met a Tea Partier able to coherently explain it.

Edit: Mr. Interweb, your link isn't working.

Brennanite posted:

Why exactly is progressivism supposed to be bad? I've never met a Tea Partier able to coherently explain it.

Brennanite posted:

Why exactly is progressivism supposed to be bad? I've never met a Tea Partier able to coherently explain it.

Brennanite posted:

Edit: Mr. Interweb, your link isn't working.

quote:

Environmentalist: gotta warn ya...
I don't cotton to seeing misinformation such as "nukes are safe" on my facebook pages
and if you actually believe that...better believe I don't want to hear about it

XyloJW: I'm willing to have a discussion on this subject, if you're willing to be civil about it
i'm not closed minded

Environmentalist: absolutely not, thankls
that would be like having a discussion on whether homosexuality is a mental illness
there is no solution to the problem of nuclear waste, none.
and I'm not civil about stuff like this
but I thought I'd at least give you fair warnimng, if you care

XyloJW: Environmentalist, you know i'm not crazy, and i'm not a fanatic, and i'm not even conservative. is it really so hard to have a discussion, like reasonable adults, about a subject?

Environmentalist: not interested
I am staunchly anti-nuke, and have been since twice as long as there's been a you
I know a lot about this subject
and don't feel the need to type about it with you
sorry
lot of other things to do
just confine your promotion of nukes elsewhere, please and thank you.

XyloJW: i'm sorry too

XyloJW posted:

I didn't want to cloud up the Japan Nuclear situation thread with this. An environmentalist friend has been posting every single anti-nuclear news article he comes across. I started by pointing out it's very odd to see him linking to Daily Mail and Exxon press releases. After cussing me out on one post, he sent me a chat message:


I'm basically beside myself at how quickly the whole retarded mentality that leads to crazy political emails will spring out of someone.

quote:

I am staunchly anti-nuke, and have been since twice as long as there's been a you
I know a lot about this subject
and don't feel the need to type about it with you
sorry
lot of other things to do
just confine your promotion of nukes elsewhere, please and thank you.

XyloJW posted:

I didn't want to cloud up the Japan Nuclear situation thread with this. An environmentalist friend has been posting every single anti-nuclear news article he comes across. I started by pointing out it's very odd to see him linking to Daily Mail and Exxon press releases. After cussing me out on one post, he sent me a chat message:


I'm basically beside myself at how quickly the whole retarded mentality that leads to crazy political emails will spring out of someone.

revengeanceful posted:

Ugh, I hate "environmentalist"'s framing of this issue. By saying he's "anti-nuke" it makes it sound like he's anti-nuclear weaponry, not anti-nuclear power which probably makes people more likely to agree with him.

the posted:

This loving guy came to open-air preach at my college a few days ago. You can imagine how it went. I could go into more detail if needed (and I'm quite sure I'm going to end up on his blog since we had some words) but at one point someone asked him, "Is there anything I could present to you that would ever cause you to doubt that God exists?" And he said, "No."

Then why the gently caress are we even talking to each other?

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

This conversation sparked from my wife's status update. The religious individual is the curator for a crationist museum in a town in Alberta near my city.

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

This conversation sparked from my wife's status update. The religious individual is the curator for a crationist museum in a town in Alberta near my city.

quote:

The first mistake made was for some reason ceding the "marriage comes from the BIBLE!" point. A rational person can understand the argument that was being made there, but people like that are rarely rational.

When you argue, "well even if [X] was true, then [something else that negates their stupid argument anyway]" all they hear is the "[X] is true" bit. You can't concede anything to irrational people "just for the sake of argument" because they'll latch on to anything that supports what they're already thinking, including your hypotheticals.

The debate should have been about how marriage has been defined dozens of different ways by hundreds of different cultures (most of whom had never heard of the bible) and has been re-defined over and over again even in Christian-influenced Western cultures. Instead it turned into a biblical debate and the "beauty" of the Bible is they can interpret that poo poo however the gently caress they want to support their own arguments. (Though if you ever get trapped down that road again, perhaps you should ask whose interpretation of the Bible should be codified into law. Should a marriage have to be approved by the Catholic church? What about polygamy? Plenty of that in the Bible. Etc...)

Choadmaster posted:

You can't concede anything to irrational people "just for the sake of argument"

quote:

Can't pick and choose what religious rules to follow

50 Best Reasons Gay Marriage is Wrong posted:

Irony is a form of expression in which an implicit meaning is concealed or contradicted by the explicit meaning of the expression. Irony involves the perception that things are not what they are said to be or what they seem.

Socratic irony is feigning ignorance in order to expose the weakness of another's position.

That said, let's move on to:

50 Best reasons Gay Marriage is wrong!


1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, birth control and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all: women are property, matches are arranged in childhood, blacks can't marry whites, Catholics can't marry Jews, divorce is illegal, and adultery is punishable by death

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9. If we look to the word of God, His punishment for sexual immorality is equal to that of murder. Therefore, teaching kids to tolerate homosexuality is equal to teaching them to tolerate murder.

10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy (insurance, government, tourism, banking, retail, education, and social services), suburban malls, or longer life spans.

12. Gay marriage should be decided by people not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.

13. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “seperate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Seperate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as seperate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

14. There is no separation between religious marriage and legal marriage, because there is no separation of church and state.

15. Devout, faithful Anglicans should never accept same-sex marriage, because it is an affront to the traditional family values upheld by Henry VIII and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his wife, Anne Boleyn, and his wife, Jane Seymour, and his wife, Anne of Cleves, and his wife, Catherine Howard, and his wife, Catherine Parr. They all knew the meaning of marriage and none of them lost their heads over the matter.

16. Married gay people will encourage others to be gay, in a way that unmarried gay people do not.

17. Legalizing gay marriage will lead to legalizing dog marriage. This can be inferred from the history of other political initiatives for gender equality. For example, when American women got the right to vote in 1920, it led to terriers voting in 1925, and when Title IX was passed in 1972 to prevent sex discrimination in any federally-funded school, resulting in the creation of athletic opportunities for girls, it led to Bichon Frises on the basketball court during the Reagan administration.

18. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to legislative change in general, which could possibly include the legalization of polygamy, incest, medical marijuana, and unmuzzled pit bulls. Because we don’t know what might come down the next slippery slope, we should never change any law.

19. Legal marriage will inspire gays to mimic straight traditions, such as spiritual commitment ceremonies and celebratory parties, which is currently impermissible for them to do and which they have never done before.

20. Marriage is designed to protect the well-being of children. Gay people do not need marriage because they never have children from prior relationships, artificial insemination, surrogacy, or adoption.

21. Civil unions are a good option because "separate but equal" institutions are always constitutional. In fact, compared with marriage, civil unions are so attractive that straight people are calling dibs on them.

22. A man should not be able to marry whomever a woman can marry, and a woman should not be able to marry whomever a man can marry, because in this country we do not believe in gender equality.

23. If gays marry, some of straight people's tax dollars would end up supporting families whose structure they may find morally objectionable. Clearly, it is more just to continue taking gay people's tax dollars to support straight families, who are going to heaven regardless of what anyone else thinks of them.

24. Gays should hold off on the marriage question until society is more accepting of them, because they are not part of society.

25. The people's voice must be heard on this issue. Therefore, we must have a vote on a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, because we can't think of any other way to discuss the issue.

26. Each state should decide for itself whether gay marriage will be recognized, because there is no "full faith and credit" clause that requires states to recognize each other's institutions.

27. Gay marriage attempts to replace natural heterosexual instinct with a cultural institution. Morality demands that we subordinate institutionalized commitment to raw, unfettered, biological impulse.

28. Gay marriages could very well suffer maladies like domestic violence and substance abuse. That's why we invented the Quality Control department to pre-approve the righteousness of all marriage applicants.

29. Those who support gay marriage aim to overthrow the dominant culture, as evidenced by their enthusiasm to participate in it.

30. If the state performs gay marriages, Christians might become more liberal and divide into more mutually opposed parties. Since the government is an arm of the church and is responsible for keeping the peace in Christian leadership councils, it should not get involved with gay marriage.

31. After gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavian countries in 2004, more heterosexual couples realized they wanted to live together and bear children without marrying first. Banning gay marriage is a good way to prevent this practice, as is banning independent thought and mandating straight marriage by age 21.

32. Heterosexual marriage was invented in the Biblical book of Genesis. Written somewhere between 1500 and 500 BCE, Genesis came as a great relief to people in many cultures, such as China, who, prior to 1500 BCE, sat around waiting for the Mesopotamians to invent the family unit.

33. Gay marriage would allow more partners and children to sign onto the family breadwinner's healthcare plan. Given that 44 million Americans do not have health insurance, it is safe to say that health insurance is not an American value.

34. The possibility of getting a gay marriage might encourage some married heterosexuals to divorce and seek a gay union instead. These marriages were obviously happy and successful, and the justices who provide gay second marriages should be charged with alienation of affection.

35. Gay marriage may hurl the populace into existential crisis and cause spontaneous divorces. Divorce triggers our moral hemorrhaging, but we will keep it legal. It is easier to seek the criminalization of gay marriage than the criminalization of divorce, particularly because most of us have had a few divorces.

36. Gay marriage is tainted because some of the applicants might be divorcees marrying for the second time. We oppose remarriage, and would like to ensure that no one marries more than once; therefore we will oppose the entire institution of marriage, to ensure that no one ever marries at all. That casts the net wide enough to catch all the would-be second-timers.

37. The people have the right to demand to vote on a Massachusetts constitutional amendment against gay marriage. There is no reason for proposed amendments to go through the state Legislature first, as is constitutionally required, because the Legislature doesn't spend all that many paid hours sitting around discussing the legal ramifications on behalf of ordinary citizens who are too busy with their own jobs to figure out everything at stake.

38. The arguments for gay marriage are flawed because Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has made inconsistent statements about gay marriage, and he is known for his consistency on other issues.

39. Married gay couples will find it easier to adopt children, who might then be bullied and teased by other children for who their parents are. This reflects poorly on the judgment of gays who adopt children with the risk that their child could possibly be teased. It does not, of course, imply anything about the responsibilities of heterosexual parents, whose children only pick up rocks for geological interest and couldn't have been listening when their parents made those comments about their neighbors.

40. Children of married gay couples might suffer bullying and teasing more often than children of unmarried gay couples, because playground bullies are sensitive to the nuances of contract law.

41. It is reasonable and fair to institute "civil unions" that provide all the rights and responsibilities of marriage, but we cannot apply the holy, mystical word "marriage" to this contract. Deriving from the Latin maritare, "marriage" evokes the dignity of the typical Roman man who engaged in licentious sex with both sexes until he reached middle age, at which time he maritared a teenage girl to bear his children.

42. According to the three proposed "compromise" Massachusetts constitutional amendments defeated by the Legislature on Feb. 11 and 12, 2004, the best way to "protect the unique relationship of [heterosexual] marriage" is to institute civil unions that are in every way identical to it.

43. God created the institution of marriage, just after he created 2.9% APR automobile financing, student loans, HMOs, and divorce.

44. We must defer to the President's opinion on gay marriage, since the Republican party was given its authority by God. As it is written: "Republican and Democrat created He them." Paul elaborated: "Democrats, submit to the Republican."

45. In San Francisco, where renegade officials have married same-sex couples for the past several weeks, experts suggest that the city may suffer an earthquake in about ten years. Geological experts, that is. But good Christians don't recognize the opinion of Earth scientists, who falsely claim the Earth is 4.5 billion years old; they get their seismic information from their preachers, who say the earthquake's coming next week.

46. Allowing same-sex marriage could increase gay public displays of affection, because marriage has historically been proven to stimulate couples' interest in sex.

47. Making civil marriage available to same-sex couples could spur the wedding industry, and businesses would sure hate to pay taxes on all that profit.

48. Straight men are opposed to gay marriage because they would prefer that gay men try to be straight and compete with them for access to women, trimming down the pool of eligible dates to make courtship more challenging and exciting.

49. The country can't afford to provide benefits for any more married couples. That's why President Bush would never consider spending $150 million on programs that encourage more straight people to get married.

50. Gay marriage is wrong because children might be led to think that it is right and that would clearly be wrong.

Angry Avocado posted:

Alastor_the_Stylish posted:

My favorite is number 50, because someone actually wrote it and thought it was good enough to be the stinger.

Alastor_the_Stylish posted:

My favorite is number 50, because someone actually wrote it and thought it was good enough to be the stinger.

ErIog posted:

Talking with my stepmother this morning, she started going on about how academics can't possibly know what the real world is like. I asked her to explain what she meant, and asked her "They don't have jobs? They don't have to pay bills? They don't have families?" She refused to explain what she meant by it.

Asking her to defend the assumptions she lays out seems like it's worked pretty well in the debates I've had with her. So yeah, the idea that marriage comes from the Bible doesn't hold water.

The Macaroni posted:

^^^ Nebraska distributes their votes proportionately, because the Lincoln/Omaha metro area was tired of getting lumped in with the rural western part of the state (or vice versa).

Nevvy Z posted:

It's not?

To crazy people one of the worst things about gay marriage is that schools will teach their children tolerance.

RagnarokAngel posted:

I'm gay myself and I think it's kind of a bad zinger, because the kind of people against gay marriage do literally think that with no hyperbole.

I'm down with 1-49 though.

Cjones posted:

Only Omaha (the second congressional district) gets its own vote. Nebraska legislators are trying to change that though, because Omaha often votes for the disgusting commu-nazi liberals.

Angry Avocado posted:

Unless he never wore clothing of mixed fibre, ate shrimp, or looked at another woman lustfully, apparently yes you can! But hypocrisy is not a big deal if you're not gay, right?

Seeing as it's sort of on-topic, I'll post this here (especially 32 is relevant):

red19fire posted:

White, middle class male from the suburbs. Shocking! Calls Maher a "gutter sniping loony left coward," & also thinks we should bomb Libya from the safety of our couches. What does he care? He's never going to have to actually fight in a war.

I don't want to share the planet with these loving people any more.

tek79 posted:

"Gutter-sniping" and doing "anything for a buck" are ironic terms to use, since those seem to be the two things that circulate Palin's entire existence.

From what I gather Maher used the term "dumb twat", which is a pretty stupid thing to say on his part, to be fair.