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The man who taught me US history in high school had these things to share on facebook: Let's see what he thinks about murdering 16 civilians. quote:Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is in Afghanistan, one assumes on yet another Obama Administration apology tour, this time to President Karzai and his kleptocratic clan government. The overseas BBC is reporting that the village in which a U.S. staff sergeant on his 4th tour shot 16 "civilian" Afghans was a well-known Taliban bomb factory, and that the children killed were the bomb-makers and the women their caretakers and screen. Meanwhile, at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Marines herded together to hear a speech by the SecDef were pulled back out of the mess tent, disarmed, and sent back in. (SOP in Afghanistan is that no one goes anywhere without a weapon.) Welcome to the twilight of the U.S. Raj in Southwest Asia. Ah they weren't civilians they were terrorists making bombs, especially the kids. Well that's pretty despicable. I wonder what he thinks about killing innocent American children... quote:The reason Trayvon Martin was in Sanford, Florida, staying with his father when he was killed was that his hometown high school had suspended him from school for 10 days. I taught public school---junior high and high school---for 16 years and don't recall anyone ever being suspended for two entire weeks. Anyone else curious as to the circumstances of his suspension? The news media is not covering this.
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Mar 26, 2012 06:10
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How long has he been retired? He'd be shocked what kids get suspended for or even charged with crimes these days. If I'd been born ~15 later, I'd probably have a juvie sheet.
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Mar 26, 2012 06:41
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spidoman posted:The man who taught me US history in high school had these things to share on facebook:
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Mar 26, 2012 06:41
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He's been retired... Five years maybe? Don't know for sure, he retired some time after I graduated. It's wild to think that I used to respect him; now he's the one person who I just think "Well at least he's old and will die soon. I would try discussing stuff with him but he's an old marine who falls back to "I sacrificed for my country, what have you done?" whenever anyone disagrees with him.
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Mar 26, 2012 07:03
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spidoman posted:He's been retired... Five years maybe? Don't know for sure, he retired some time after I graduated. I remember some time back, before the Iraq War and Operation America gently caress Yeah, my brother was in the Army, and he was stationed in Germany. At one point at work I made mention of this, mostly to make fun of the fact that he had been in Germany for almost a year and spoke not a lick of German, and one of my coworkers started gushing about how awesome it was that he was sacrificing for his country, how brave and wonderful he was, what a patriot! I didn't have the heart to tell her that my brother got out on a dishonorable discharge, that he hated the military, and that he had only joined because my mom told him if she bailed him out of his run-away-from-home-to-smoke-weed troubles again, he was joining the military or going back to school. The entire Worship The Troops and Support The Troops is really loving weird. I don't think any other first world country does this. Maybe Sparta did.
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Mar 26, 2012 07:39
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Cowslips Warren posted:The entire Worship The Troops and Support The Troops is really loving weird. I don't think any other first world country does this. Maybe Sparta did.
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Mar 26, 2012 08:15
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Bryter posted:No, I'm pretty sure the general feeling is common all over the first world. Take a look at any Sun headline about "OUR BOYS" for an example of it in the UK. The pro-military sentiment in America is definitely stronger than most places though, but perhaps that's just because the military itself is stronger and more active. Real America economies are dependent upon the MIC. If having a military base in town suddenly no longer meant hundreds or thousands of civilian jobs on-base, and a similar number at car dealers, payday lenders, bars, and even the places where the intelligent troops spend all their money; if you just had a big space that doesn't give anything to the community, or worse just spilled out hundreds of horny dipshits every weekend, still without giving anything back, I don't think you'd see nearly the support. America just knows what side its bread is buttered on.
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Mar 26, 2012 08:57
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So even if we lived in an insane world where a kid posing in a Facebook photo and being suspended made it legal to shoot him in self defense, are they suggesting that Zimmerman saw the kid, checked his Facebook and school records, then shot him?
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Mar 26, 2012 09:11
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I'm pretty sure it's backwards Just World logic. Kid gets shot. Guy who was stalking kid before shooting him claims self defense. Guy must be telling the truth since the not racist police didn't charge him so kid had to have attacked him. Since kid attacked him, there must have been a reason so he was certainly caught in the middle of some kind of illegal action that just isn't being reported. The "he was suspended for stuff" is just evidence to support their logic that he had it coming, not the reason he was killed. Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 12:10
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spidoman posted:The man who taught me US history in high school had these things to share on facebook: What the gently caress is it with high school history teachers? Almost everyone has a "yeah all of my school's history teachers were crazy far to the right" story. Is it something about the curriculum that draws in right-wingers like moths to a flame? Radish posted:The "he was suspended for stuff" is just evidence to support their logic that he had it coming, not the reason he was killed. I know it gets cited often, and probably a lot in this thread, but Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians touches on this quite a bit. Authoritarian thinkers first make decisions, then look only for evidence to reinforce that decision. So yeah, you're absolutely on it. People who are thinking like this have immediately decided that Zimmerman's shooting was justified - maybe because the kid was black, maybe because he "was acting suspicious" (in other words, because he was black), or maybe even because The Other Side thinks it's wrong so we think it's right. Now their brains are hard at work picking out anything they can to reinforce their He Got His narrative.
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Mar 26, 2012 14:36
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Kim Jong III posted:What the gently caress is it with high school history teachers? Almost everyone has a "yeah all of my school's history teachers were crazy far to the right" story. Is it something about the curriculum that draws in right-wingers like moths to a flame? Oversimplified reading of history in which America is awesome all the time? And you get to talk about it all day, every day for the rest of your career? Just guessing here.
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Mar 26, 2012 14:42
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Kim Jong III posted:People who are thinking like this have immediately decided that Zimmerman's shooting was justified - maybe because the kid was black, maybe because he "was acting suspicious" (in other words, because he was black), or maybe even because The Other Side thinks it's wrong so we think it's right. Now their brains are hard at work picking out anything they can to reinforce their He Got His narrative. The difference comes once a person realizes they are prone to that sort of thinking and when they can have it pointed out to them by others. It comes from a willingness to consider that you and your opinions might be wrong. I won't argue that higher education and exposure (and acceptance) of different cultures tends to instill that sort of mindset, something that seems much rarer with conservatives as a whole and almost universally with regressives.
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Mar 26, 2012 15:08
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DarkHorse posted:Making a decision and then looking for evidence to justify it isn't limited to the right, it's pretty much the human condition. It takes a lot of learning and training to consciously overcome that habit, and even then people will rarely act in a purely rational manner. Think of all the people that buy a Prius or other hybrid without accounting for the heavy metal processing required for the batteries, or the people that spend $10,000 on solar panels when $1,000 of better insulation would save them more money (and do more for the environment), or people skipping Reduce and Reuse to go straight towards the least-beneficial Recycle. I'm not saying it's strictly limited to one side, and I don't want to attribute any such claim to Altemeyer, either. But his research indicates shows that right-wing authoritarians are, in fact, more likely to make logical mistakes & experience confirmation biases than non-right wing authoritarians.
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Mar 26, 2012 15:27
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DarkHorse posted:Making a decision and then looking for evidence to justify it isn't limited to the right, it's pretty much the human condition. It takes a lot of learning and training to consciously overcome that habit, and even then people will rarely act in a purely rational manner.
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Mar 26, 2012 15:50
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quote:Michael Mohan Ugh Mr Ice Cream Glove fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 16:17
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Kim Jong III posted:What the gently caress is it with high school history teachers? Almost everyone has a "yeah all of my school's history teachers were crazy far to the right" story. High school history teachers are just plain crazy; sorry you got the crazy right variety. Mine had me reading Daniel Quinn and told stories about how incredibly dumb people were during the Cold War. In an AP class no less. The real reason is that you can teach high school history with like no qualifications beyond being able to read the textbook for next week's class. Some other courses require genuine expertise but not history, at least at the high school level.
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Mar 26, 2012 16:19
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spidoman posted:Well that's pretty despicable. I wonder what he thinks about killing innocent American children... Jesus, that's as bad as rape apologists pulling the "She was asking for it going out dressed like that" card.
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Mar 26, 2012 16:19
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Ugh I don't see what's so terrible about this one. It just seems like generic non-partisan anti-establishment rhetoric.
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Mar 26, 2012 16:38
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Ugh Apparently heaven's campaign manager sucks?
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Mar 26, 2012 16:51
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Newish addition to my Facebook friend posted something about Obama being the last American president and the first American dictator. I respond with this: Sulphuric Sundae posted:Considering Obama's done only a few things of significance while in office, I don't know what freaks people out about him. Name for me one thing Obama's done in the past 3 years to curb our freedoms. He responds with this: Tea Partier dude posted:Obamacare is the giant umbrella over everything that will kill our freedoms for good, also, the unconstitutional recess appointments of officials, killing our domestic energy supply (specifically the Gulf of Mexico and the Keystone XL pipeline, which he lobbied against) - just to name a couple...Obamacare takes away personal choices, and lets the government tell us how to live our lives, curbing our energy supplies keeps us contained. New farming regulations will severly limit crop production, water regulations limit water usage...it goes on and on And one of his friends responds with this: Tea Partier dude's friend posted:SUNDAE - For me personally, The Whitehouse mandate to tighten restrictions and requirements for small business loans (while saying publicly that he was going to make it easier for small businesses to get loans) has limited my ability to EASILY expand my business. I emphasize "easily" because I've done it anyway, despite his making it more difficult. That's how it works for entrepreneurs. We overcome obstacles all the time that get put in our way. That's why we get taken advantage of all the time by government. I became self-employed in a bad economy... for that I'm taxed more than people who are employed. I created two jobs (besides my own)... for that I'm am ADDITIONALLY taxed. I succeeded... for that I pay an even HIGHER tax rate (a higher rate than people with my same income who are employed by someone else rather than self-employed). Now I'll admit that many of these things were there before Obama took office, but while saying he will "make it better", he has increased every existing and created new ones, while making it impossible for me to get any venture capital. I have seen it get much worse in the last three years. Now, the dude I responded too is just nuts and I think I can type up a well-written comment that he will ignore anyway. But the friend, I don't know what to say to her. I've surely never owned a small business, and I'm not master of taxes for small businesses. Edit: Another friend of his responded. This is what she had to say: Tea Partier dude's other friend posted:To answer Sundae's question: 1) He’s taken away the jurisdiction of certain area’s in Arizona from the state by declaring it federal land - thus making them off limits to local government. 2) Obama ordered the FCC to give the federal government control of the Internet. This does not promote freedom, free thought or speech and can easily impede one's search for even basic information. 3) He ignored the Constitution (designed to protect our freedoms), by appointing the Director to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 3 members of the National Labor Relations Board, without putting them through Senate confirmation process. I've tried to avoid addressing the more obvious examples because some people are genuinely unaware of HOW our freedom has changed in the past 4 years. Having mentioned these things......most of you know I'll defend sides to almost anything just to establish broad thinking and I'm not attacking or defending anything here. Truth is truth and has no bias. Sulphuric Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 18:03
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Sulphuric Sundae posted:Newish addition to my Facebook friend posted something about Obama being the last American president and the first American dictator. Ugh, the net neutrality poo poo. The crazy thing is, America's biggest ISP owns Fox News' biggest competitor, and therefore has actual, financial incentive to throttle traffic to their sites. You think that would make them all for it.
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Mar 26, 2012 19:08
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Sulphuric Sundae posted:For that last person, just post this. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/04/397589/president-obama-has-made-far-fewer-recess-appointments-than-any-recent-president/
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Mar 26, 2012 19:19
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Michael Mohan posted:So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell... Manual labor: worse than fire and brimstone.
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Mar 26, 2012 19:33
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People talking about personal choices in regards to healthcare is just so loving  I don't even know man. I have employer provided health insurance and it's a pretty nice plan. I have two options. Take it, or leave it. If I leave it I can go into the market as a reasonably healthy individual with my reasonably healthy wife and instead of paying 300 a month for both of us I can pay up to 1000 a month.That's not a loving choice. I'm a huge proponent of single payer but I'll take what I can get for now. The worst I heard was on NPR this morning they interviewed some preacher from Salt Lake City outside the Supreme Court who opposed the ACA because it reduced personal choice and freedom. What about GODDAMN JESUS? gently caress, these people make me mad and I have resolved to not respond to facebook people saying things 
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Mar 26, 2012 19:35
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Kim Jong III posted:What the gently caress is it with high school history teachers? Almost everyone has a "yeah all of my school's history teachers were crazy far to the right" story. I don't. My AP European History teacher may have leaned to the right, I'm not sure, but he kept his politics out of the classroom and made us actually work. My AP US History teacher was very religious and swerved towards proselytizing at least once, but had us reading A People's History and didn't seem terribly biased within the context of the class. Then again, I'm from the East Bay, so maybe it's a regional thing.
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Mar 26, 2012 19:40
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xwonderboyx posted:People talking about personal choices in regards to healthcare is just so loving Haha, I never even thought of it that way. I really don't remember getting a whole suite of options with my healthcare package. Different vendors, perks, and competition based incentives. No. My work has A Health Care Plan, and I am "in it", that's it. I recently changed to the lower deductible plan at my enrollment time, because my wife booted me off hers to save cash, but that's it. They're arguing against people having the ability to choose no insurance basically, and that doesn't stop people from availing themselves of healthcare at all. In my younger no-healthcare teenage years, I did the dirtbag thing when I had a panic attack, I went to the ER under a pseudonym and got some diagnostics done and skipped out on the bill, I'm sure it'd have been several thousands of dollars, but what else could I have done? Now that I'm an adult, I've actually tried to track down the debt and make payments but nobody could help me with that 
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Mar 26, 2012 19:45
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Crackbone posted:For that last person, just post this. That won't do anything for them. The complaint isn't about Obama making recess appointments, it was him doing so while the Senate was still in session. Of course the Senate being in session consisted of a guy coming in every few days to announce the Senate wasn't conducting business for the next few days and leaving. There's really nothing you can say to them other than how is someone able to appoint candidates with the advice and consent of the Senate when they refuse to bring candidates to a vote that would normally pass, and the only reason why Congress is in session is by using a parlimentary rules trick. Explain to him what a pro forma session was and see if he understands just exactly what transpired. OJ MIST 2 THE DICK fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 19:53
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Sulphuric Sundae posted:Edit: Another friend of his responded. This is what she had to say: 1.) It's actually the states that are trying to take what has historically been federally managed land. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/03/23/20120323arizona-federal-land-takeover.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/us/utah-bill-asks-government-to-give-back-more-than-20-million-acres-of-land.html 2.) This never happened, this is Alex Jones level conspiracy bullshit. On the other hand, they have pushed for increased privacy measures for end users: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-internet-privacy-ftcbre82p0pf-20120326,0,1800567.story 3.) See above post. Keystone. The Keystone project currently ships oil to the central US, where it is processed into gas. The Keystone XL proposal would see that oil shipped to the coastal US, instead, so that the gas could be more easily sold to foreign nations. I'm just not sure how "killing our domestic energy supply" is born out by record oil production in the US, especially when rising gas costs are largely a factor of market speculation http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/chris-cook-the-ghost-of-enron-past-explains-oil-market-manipulation.html quote:Truth is truth and has no bias. I'd ask the small business person as to what changes specifically have made things worse with some sort of numerical quantification and which changes in the law make it harder to get a small business loan and if it applies specifically to small business or if it has to do with banks being required to have more cash on hand to try to prevent them from collapsing again. Also ask if self employment tax deductions that apply to things like interest and home ownership offset most of the increases in payment on things like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, or that if not, how much of an impact to these ancillary savings have on the increased costs of self employment. And yeah, that first person is a nut. He'd probably prefer we over-fish the seas until there is nothing left because catch limits that keep fish stocks stable year to year are socialism. zeroprime fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 26, 2012 |
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Mar 26, 2012 19:54
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US Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 posted:The President shall have power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session. I hate it when Presidents defy the Constitution by using their Constitutionally derived powers.  More generally though, demand specifics. Don't even try to refute them, just ask questions. Especially the friend claiming to be an entrepreneur. What taxes do they pay that have increased, when did they increase?
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Mar 26, 2012 20:57
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Sarion posted:More generally though, demand specifics. Don't even try to refute them, just ask questions. Especially the friend claiming to be an entrepreneur. What taxes do they pay that have increased, when did they increase? If they are paying more in taxes as a percentage of income, then in all likelihood they are not performing their accounting correctly. Owning a small business is a tax trap, so you have to be diligent with your record keeping. Most people are not.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:34
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I responded as much as I could. I asked for clarification on the Arizona thing, and now I have more on it from here. But the original poster responded with this, which gets a little  Tea Partier dude posted:The recess appointments aren't the problem, it's the illegal ones that bother me - if Congress is not in recess, he cannot recess appoint, yet he did just that. He has built an entire shadow government through his czars that don't answer to anyone but him, yet they're funded by the taxpayers. And net neutrality is nothing more than a way to censor the internet, force you to go to government approved sites, much like China has. Obama has continued many of the Bush policies on the War on Terror, and good for him for that. But due to his ineptness and his epic weakness, the middle east is on fire once again because he's seen as weak and has told our enemies when we're leaving. All they have to do is sit back and wait, which they have. Ol' Barry is a marxist idealogue whose policies are intentionally crippling us. He believes we're the evil in the world, and it's his duty to destroy us - and he'll be there to pick up the pieces and install himself as king. Fast and Furious: This has nothing to do with the Bush policy. This was designed to force the public to react into curbing the 2nd amendment. It is criminal behavior that reaches up to the Attorney General, if not higher. We supplied weapons to criminals, and dozens of people have been murdered, including a Border Agent. Holder's people didn't even try to trace the weapons. These people are evil, and I don't use that word lightly... I don't wanna pull out the smug "I'm in IT, so I know more about the internet than you" card, but this guy isn't gonna be swayed. I should've defriended him when he posted about how much of a slut Sandra Fluke is. However, I may end up doing some theatre stuff with him again soon, so I don't wanna completely cut him off.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:42
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Sarion posted:I hate it when Presidents defy the Constitution by using their Constitutionally derived powers. To be fair, the appointments of Cordray and the others weren't technically in recess, Congress was pulling a fast one by having pro forma sessions to prevent blocked appointments.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:45
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The tea partier friend is clearly off the deep end (2Fast2Furious2StealAllAreGuns) but the other people who read his wall may not be. Don't call him out on being insane, just continue on the conversation politely with the other people there who are willing to discuss things grounded in reality. Maybe engage him on the net neutrality issue to explain what it actually means, acknowledging that the information on what net neutrality means (and how it has been misused in the naming of bills) is confusing to the general public and that the main reason you even have a grasp on it is because this has been an issue for people in the tech field (much like you) for a number of years, predating any of the politics that have arisen around it. You can highlight that you may indeed know more about an issue due to your work/interests without it having to be a smug argument from authority I'm right/you're wrong kind of thing.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:53
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BrotherAdso posted:To be fair, the appointments of Cordray and the others weren't technically in recess, Congress was pulling a fast one by having pro forma sessions to prevent blocked appointments. Except that pro forma sessions do not qualify to prevent recess appointments according to the rules. It only counts, for the purposes of appointments, if there is enough of a congress there to debate and vote to appoint nominees.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:55
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People being appointed as 'Czars' of something have been around since at least Reagan, right? Edit: Since the 1930s at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czar_%28political_term%29
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Mar 26, 2012 21:55
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jojoinnit posted:People being appointed as 'Czars' of something have been around since at least Reagan, right? Try Roosevelt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars
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Mar 26, 2012 21:56
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Anubis posted:Except that pro forma sessions do not qualify to prevent recess appointments according to the rules. It only counts, for the purposes of appointments, if there is enough of a congress there to debate and vote to appoint nominees. It's a gray area. Other presidents have appointed in pro forma sessions, but these sessions were called specifically to delay those appointments. I agree that it is a losing issue ultimately and the precedents of Senatorial procedure are against them, but they do have a little bit of an ability to fight with this case.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:57
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Anubis posted:Try Roosevelt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars It's a dumb way to put it. Why not call them policy office directors or something? Czars are inherently bad-sounding.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:58
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BrotherAdso posted:It's a gray area. Other presidents have appointed in pro forma sessions, but these sessions were called specifically to delay those appointments. I agree that it is a losing issue ultimately and the precedents of Senatorial procedure are against them, but they do have a little bit of an ability to fight with this case. Doesn't matter if they were called with the attempt to delay (read: block without a vote) the appointments. The rules clearly state that a pro forma session does not keep congress in session in regards to presidential appointments. There really isn't a legal fight to be had, which is why there isn't anyone seriously trying to form a legal fight against the appointments. Just a bunch of bitching and whining that they weren't allowed to get their way forever. BrotherAdso posted:It's a dumb way to put it. Why not call them policy office directors or something? Czars are inherently bad-sounding. Because it's what they have been called since the 1930s? Before 2008 no one had a problem with the term, the only people who have started to complain about the name is Rush and Hannity claiming that it's somehow reserved only for Russians. As far as I can tell, no one cared that Regan called his guy a czar and it would have been a lot more hostile back then towards anything Russian. Quite frankly the only reason I can think to complain about it is because they already don't like the president.
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Mar 26, 2012 22:06
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jojoinnit posted:People being appointed as 'Czars' of something have been around since at least Reagan, right? I didn't hear the term czar itself until Obama was in office, and I'm sure that has something to do with the mental connection one would make and its use in smearing Obama. Presidential appointment = czar = Russian monarch = COMMUNISM!!!!!!!!
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Mar 26, 2012 22:08
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