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An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Reagan's capitalism worked and that society's needs would be met while the standard of living increased. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Reagan's plan. There is only so much GPA to go around, so you'll all be competing for points out of a limited pool. I'm grading on a curve so there are enough points for everyone to get a C, but for every student who gets an A, three will have to fail. I'll allow you to trade points, so passing students can use theirs as currency to get failing students to do their bidding. Finally, all your coursework will consist of writing essays and you are allowed to turn in an essay written by one of your classmates, as long as you have their permission and it's on a different topic than the one they're turning in for their own grade." After the first test, the grades were averaged and the professor announced they were going on a class trip to invade Grenada. e: sort of beaten
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Jan 6, 2012 20:16
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Saw this posted on a local news website comment section:quote:Here is something for you and US all to consider: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the only reason Japan didn't invade a country ~6000 miles away across an enormous ocean was due to hunters. Also, this seems to imply that we can completely cut our entire military out of the budget, thanks to the fact that "The hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. The point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower." Sweet, that'll save us a lot of trouble and money. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 20:41
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Not an e-mail, but a phone conversation my mom had with my uncle. Yesterday she called to tell him about a new medication their mom is on. This somehow ended with him telling my mom, 100% seriously and unironically, "This warm weather isn't global warming, the seasons have just shifted by a month".  Is this a new talking point or has my uncle, who has previously blamed his business failing in December 2008 on Obama being president, just upped his stupidity game to epic new levels?
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Jan 6, 2012 20:51
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Well, warm weather is not particularly indicative of global warming just like cool weather is not particularly indicative of global cooling; weather within a given region fluctuates year to year. That said, the rising amount of extreme weather variances is a possible outcome of a global warming trend because the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere rises; I'm not sure how well researched that is yet though. It's one of the reasons the more appropriate term is Human Caused Global Climate Change; we're less concerned with short term weather discrepancies and more concerned with climate shifts that will disrupt ecosystems including the ones we rely upon. Seasons shifting by a month sounds like bullshit though as I'm pretty sure seasons are linked to the location of Earth in orbit around the Sun over the course of the year; a season can be warmer or colder than average (based on weather patterns for example), but Winter is Winter whether it's -20 F or 20 F. The concern is the average is shifting up due to our actions, not that any one particular year is warmer or colder than the last. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 20:57
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I'd like a conservative to actually spell out which policies of Obama's are socialist. He extended the Bush tax cuts. Why aren't they happy? TARP was hashed out before his presidency. I just don't get why I always hear about this country becoming socialist under Obama. Also, I've hunted in Wisconsin, and let me tell you that I've seen my fair share of the "hunter army", and there are tons of fatties that can hardly move. I had to drag a deer out of the woods for one because he was so fat he would've died of a heart attack. Not very menacing.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:04
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Yeah, the seasons are caused by the angle with which the sun's rays strike the surface of the earth near you, which is determined by the earth's tilt and position in its orbit. They're most definitely not going to randomly shift over by a month.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:04
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Well yeah, I know that, I was just quoting my crazy/stupid uncle. The seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth and the relative distance between each hemisphere and the sun at any given point in its trip around the earth. I was just wondering if that was some wider thing conservatives are claiming or if it's unique to my uncle. e;f,b on the explanation of seasons. drat you Facebook friends.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:07
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Kosmonaut posted:An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Reagan's capitalism worked and that society's needs would be met while the standard of living increased. I would forward this email
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Jan 6, 2012 21:15
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I'm going to go with "he doesn't know exactly what a leap year entails". 
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Jan 6, 2012 21:16
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Pfirti86 posted:Saw this posted on a local news website comment section: Hiding in those forests wouldn't have done them a lot of good, considering Japan planned to set them all on fire to help with their invasion.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:20
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Pfirti86 posted:Saw this posted on a local news website comment section: This part, specifically. 
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Jan 6, 2012 21:35
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Thenipwax posted:I'd like a conservative to actually spell out which policies of Obama's are socialist. He extended the Bush tax cuts. Why aren't they happy? TARP was hashed out before his presidency. I just don't get why I always hear about this country becoming socialist under Obama. Not to mention that 2011 was a year of record-setting public sector layoff. Nothing says big government like a shrinking bureaucracy. There we're in a jobs crises, and we're implementing the Republican strategy of eliminating jobs. Goddamn.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:37
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Pfirti86 posted:The I mean, I know the whole thing is crazy dumb, but it's not dumb enough to say that, is it?
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Jan 6, 2012 21:42
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Mo_Steel posted:To get a more apt example, you need to limit the amount of possible points available to the entire class. We'll set the student number at 100 for simplicity and the limit at 7,000 points per test so that if it was evenly distributed among all 100 students everyone would get a C on each 100 point test. Let's assume that the distribution of all points follows the current U.S. distribution of income. Here's how we end up: I really enjoyed this one; thanks.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:50
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Pfirti86 posted:Saw this posted on a local news website comment section: Am I forgetting my American education or were our 2 million troops not in Germany in December of 1941? Also, wouldn't able-bodied men who were drafted to fight the Nazis 1941 make up most of the hunting licenses? I'm starting to think some of these emails aren't properly scrutinized before being sent out. Edit: beaten like the Japanese army would have been if they'd invaded Michigan in 1941.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:51
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dur posted:Is this saying what I think it is saying? That, in December 1941, we had our 2 million man army and all our warships busy fighting the Germans? Yeah, I was a bit confused by that part too.
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Jan 6, 2012 21:52
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quote:Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships...all fighting the Germans. So, why did they not invade? I couldn't get any further than this. Our entire military was not over in Europe fighting Germans when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We didn't start fighting the Germans until after Pearl Harbor. And I suspect we didn't actually have a military of 2 million in December 1941. Prior to WWII we didn't keep a large standing army, and had to draft an army for WWII once we joined the war, iirc.
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Jan 6, 2012 22:00
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Its a really good thing that all the American fleet was in the Atlantic fighting the Germans, or there might have been a whole bunch of ships at Pearl Harbor to be bombed. Silly Japanese, bombing an empty harbor! That's how it happened, right?
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Jan 6, 2012 22:02
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quote:An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. No, it's totally cool that someone believes that a college classroom is an adequate and equal arena to fairly compare our current economic and taxation system. I want to respond with an edited version where the people who have A grades on the first test begin rewriting the class syllabus and guidelines to allow themselves open-book tests whereas anybody else must take the test in Latin. Edit: Oh, lord. People are taking this girl's post seriously and applauding it. Does anybody have some ready graphs or studies they can contribute in my response? I'm already linking our global ranking in education, our lack of social mobility, unemployment rates compared to other countries, and wealth distribution amongst the US population. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 22:15
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Sarion posted:I couldn't get any further than this. Our entire military was not over in Europe fighting Germans when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We didn't start fighting the Germans until after Pearl Harbor. And I suspect we didn't actually have a military of 2 million in December 1941. Prior to WWII we didn't keep a large standing army, and had to draft an army for WWII once we joined the war, iirc. Yep we declared war on Germany Dec 11 (3 days after declaring war on Japan) but somehow ARE TROOPS were already in Europe when the Time Traveling Japanese went back and bombed pearl harbor.
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Jan 6, 2012 22:16
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Blinkman987 posted:No, it's totally cool that someone believes that a college classroom is an adequate and equal arena to fairly compare our current economic and taxation system. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html Every graph on that page, but especially this one: Figure 4: The actual United States wealth distribution plotted against the estimated and ideal distributions.  People are being hosed, and they don't know how badly they are being hosed, but even compared to how badly they think they are being hosed they think it's already uneven. In reality it's much worse than they think and most people would be goddamn appalled by our distribution of wealth. Look at how much the lowest quintile would gain from the top bar graph to the bottom bar graph. They would own more wealth in the ideal distribution according to respondents than all three bottom quintiles own right now combined. Fathom that for a second. 
Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 22:54
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Ashcans posted:Its a really good thing that all the American fleet was in the Atlantic fighting the Germans, or there might have been a whole bunch of ships at Pearl Harbor to be bombed. Silly Japanese, bombing an empty harbor! That's how it happened, right? Edited because I'm a dumbfuck ContinuityNewTimes fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jan 7, 2012 |
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Jan 7, 2012 04:57
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Made the mistake of posting about politics on Facebook to anyone on my list and I've discovered that my brother-in-law's brother is probably a mild sociopath. He only posted a couple times, but man, it's a doozy. I'll try to truncate this somehow:armoredgorilla posted:I know that drug-testing people on welfare sounds like a really loving awesome idea to save money, but it isn't. It's a dumb snipe hunt. And based on who's doing the testing, it's either A) wasting more government money and tax dollars or B) giving poor non-drug-using people's money to rich corporations for no reason. Studies show that there's not significant change in drug use ratio from people on welfare compared to people who aren't on welfare. Not to mention, drug testing is probably unconstitutional since it's considered a search by law and oh hello 4th amendment. armoredgorilla posted:Idaho 2011 Study: http://magicvalley.com/article_29fb2c28-3628-11e0-a6d4-001cc4c03286.html - "Idaho's study estimates that if all 10,500 people in Idaho's child care assistance and temporary cash assistance programs were tested, the costs of the tests and subsequent treatment of those with positive results would range from $1.2 to $1.3 million, depending on whether state staff or contracted workers conduct the drug tests. Savings, however, would total just $1.13 million." well meaning guy posted:Amen. I see a lot of people happy about this and based on numerous accounts of studies like those you posted, I cannot grasp why they're so eager to embrace this nonsense. Dennis Reynolds |
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Jan 7, 2012 05:41
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posted:
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My crazy auntquote:August 2005 Condoleeza Rice caused Hurricane Katrina.
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Jan 7, 2012 08:10
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armoredgorilla posted:Made the mistake of posting about politics on Facebook to anyone on my list and I've discovered that my brother-in-law's brother is probably a mild sociopath. He only posted a couple times, but man, it's a doozy. I'll try to truncate this somehow: $5000 to get sterilized? What if you were born that way? Would the government still pay you? Because poo poo, that's free money for me right there!  Seriously though, what the gently caress is his problem?
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Jan 7, 2012 08:16
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Small Frozen Thing posted:$5000 to get sterilized? What if you were born that way? Would the government still pay you? Because poo poo, that's free money for me right there! I really don't know. I actually actively made sure I didn't start a full-blown argument with him and/or tell him "Hey, you're crazy" because you have to keep the family stuff together, y'know? I called it a truce, but there definitely was a hidden pile of crazy. He made some good points sometimes though. Dennis Reynolds |
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Jan 7, 2012 08:30
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They're making the jump from email to actual mail: Some excerpts (capitalization and emphasis theirs): Crazy NRA Letter posted:Will you sign the enclosed National Petition to Stop the U.N. Gun Ban? Crazy NRA Letter posted:Your Petition will put pressure on the gun-ban diplomats by calling on Congress to deny funding to the U.N. if they continue to attack our Right to Keep and Bear Arms. And so on. I like how it even has the random capitalization, bold, and underline of your average crazy email. TerminalSaint fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jan 7, 2012 |
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Jan 7, 2012 19:18
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Mo_Steel posted:http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html However, some sort of socialistic-level redistribution of wealth is the only way we're going to go from that first abomination to that third, more palatable setup.
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Jan 7, 2012 19:38
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TerminalSaint posted:They're making the jump from email to actual mail:
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Jan 7, 2012 20:13
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XyloJW posted:My crazy aunt There was something on the Bugle a few years ago, where John Oliver said that if gays could cause earthquakes and hurricanes, they might want to use them to stop their constant persecution.
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Jan 7, 2012 21:49
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Pitch posted:I'm pretty sure the NRA has been sending out that same basic letter since it was Bill Clinton taking the blame. Well, this particular treaty started in 2003 and is a sort of real thing (but is guaranteed to not be ratified by Congress and has nothing to do with regulating domestic firearms or addressing Second Amendment issues but rather is more about regulating international gun trading) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Small_Arms_Treaty It's also true that Obama and the State Department did reverse previous US opposition to negotiating a treaty - http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/10/15/us-arms-usa-treaty-idustre59e0q920091015 Which hey, I completely support. So gently caress you NRA.
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Jan 7, 2012 22:19
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The NRA also literally thought and told everyone Obama was going to take their guns and people loving stockpiled. How'd that work out for you NRA? Still got your guns? You see Obama pass pro gun laws and loosen restrictions? Hell he even sold guns to some Mexicans personally. So gently caress off.
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Jan 8, 2012 01:38
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Uh he sold those guns to Mexico so he'd have a reason to take are guns, duh.
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Jan 8, 2012 01:39
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dur posted:Uh he sold those guns to Mexico so he'd have a reason to take are guns, duh. He's taking are guns and selling them to Mexico? 
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Jan 8, 2012 02:18
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Bombadilillo posted:The NRA also literally thought and told everyone Obama was going to take their guns and people loving stockpiled. How'd that work out for you NRA? Still got your guns? You see Obama pass pro gun laws and loosen restrictions? Hell he even sold guns to some Mexicans personally. http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/nra-claims-massive-obama-conspiracy-not-to-ban-guns/
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Jan 8, 2012 03:06
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I had a facebook friend comment on one of my posts and I don't know how to respond. Here is what she said. how can we support obama, look at all our country is suffering from cause of his decisions the big one is that there are not enough jobs to go around second, people are losing their retirement funds, and social security three; we are too worried about caring for everyone else, what about the people right here at home third world countries should be none of our business, and we are sticking our nose where it does not belong
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Jan 8, 2012 03:07
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Pfirti86 posted:Saw this posted on a local news website comment section: In addition to the (apparent) time traveling Nazis that were already brought up, I'm pretty sure the Japanese had no serious plans to invade the continental US at the time of Pearl Harbor, or at any point thereafter. IIRC, the Japanese strategy in the Pacific was to make a series of quick surprise attacks on islands that posed a potential threat to them (anything with a British or American military presence), followed by a single, decisive naval battle to wipe out the US Navy in the Pacific. Once the naval battle had been won, the US would then be forced to sue for peace, and would hand those islands over to Japan. An invasion of Hawaii was planned in order to completely remove the US from the Pacific, but as far as I know, the Japanese never seriously considered invading the mainland United States. The Japanese military was generally pretty bad at coordinating things like large scale amphibious invasions (their Navy and Army bickered constantly, and often refused to cooperate with each other), and even at the height of Japanese power in 1941/42, they simply didn't have the logistical capacity to mount and support an invasion that required a 4,000 mile supply line. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jan 8, 2012 |
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Jan 8, 2012 03:48
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MadcapLaughs posted:I had a facebook friend comment on one of my posts and I don't know how to respond. Here is what she said. if he is talking about foreign aid, then just laugh.
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Jan 8, 2012 04:07
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MadcapLaughs posted:I had a facebook friend comment on one of my posts and I don't know how to respond. Here is what she said. I agree. We need to reduce funding on the military-industrial complex and get our hands out of foreign interests, and shunt those funds into domestic improvements and things like social security, welfare, etc. Secondly, we need to tighten up regulations on major corporations so they can't fire people without cause and then outsource the job to slave-labor in another country. Finally, if domestic manufacturers refuse to hire people, the government needs to hire workers. Obama is the worst republican president since Raegan.
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Jan 8, 2012 04:25
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MadcapLaughs posted:I had a facebook friend comment on one of my posts and I don't know how to respond. Here is what she said. This is a person who is legit upset and has no idea what any of it is about. Notice how she can't really give any specifics on anything. "obama's decisions" and then "There are no jobs!" She can't even link the arguments together, because she's just going by what her relatives/radio has told her. She says people are losing their retirement funds (correct) and social security (never happened). Tell her that when retirement funds are lost, social security needs to be increased. Republicans are arguing for making social security INTO a retirement fund. Don't even address the foreign aid thing. Even if you point out that it's 0.1% of the budget, she'll say that 0.1% could be better spent. I've been down that rabbit hole a dozen times. Basically, ask for specifics till she admits she doesn't have any, then provide her with some when she's more receptive and less angry.
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Jan 8, 2012 05:00
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