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So as you may or may not know, the Queen of Porn, Jenna Jameson, came out as a supporter of Mitt Romney. It's apparently based purely on a 'tax breaks for millionaires' platform.@jennajameson posted:I want the days of major tax breaks back! Come one Reagan era! quote:I am a small business owner and I look to grow my brand and provide many jobs to Americans.Obama has taxed me so much that I may not be abl- So late last night, just for fun, I replied: quote:@jennajameson I too want the Gov't to sell arms to Iran so as to fund rape and murder of nuns by nicaraguan guerillas. #OneIssueVoter #Murka I then go to sleep,  in the knowledge that I have a better understanding of politics than the most famous pornstar in the world. I then wake up to this tweet, from some random lunatic in Arizona:@ArizonaLuke posted:@chaydenphoto @jennajameson So you're backing Obama whos giving aid & $$ to AlQaeda who rape & kill nuns. #LogicOfObamaSupporters  I don't even understand how he got to this opinion. It's like anything I could have said that Reagan actually did, whether funding the Contras, tripling the national debt, etc; the automatic response is OBAMA DID THE SAME THING SO ITS WORSE!I'm willing to bet the guy would fly to my house and kill me with legally-purchased assault rifles, so I'm not going to respond. And I imagine he believes every single email forward in this thread is the gospel truth, too.
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Aug 6, 2012 19:35
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Man, my cousin who occasionally posts dumb political stuff on Facebook really went for it the past day or so:quote:
 "Gun Control: Here's a straw man I made up about it."  "America: Worship It Unconditionally And Don't Be Critical of Its Faults Like an Adult Would"
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Aug 6, 2012 19:43
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red19fire posted:So as you may or may not know, the Queen of Porn, Jenna Jameson, came out as a supporter of Mitt Romney. It's apparently based purely on a 'tax breaks for millionaires' platform. The only thing you should have said was that a return to Reagan tax levels would have required a tax hike. Throughout the 1980's the Federal Government took in over 25% of GDP as taxes, usually hitting around 27%. We're currently only taking in 24% of GDP. So if what Jenna Jameson is asking for, is to increase taxes by 2% of GDP... I agree.
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Aug 6, 2012 20:01
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red19fire posted:So as you may or may not know, the Queen of Porn, Jenna Jameson, came out as a supporter of Mitt Romney. It's apparently based purely on a 'tax breaks for millionaires' platform. You should have just pointed out that tax rates were higher under Reagan.
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Aug 6, 2012 20:03
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@lizzysingz4u posted:@chaydenphoto HELLO! a Border Patrol agent dead thanks 2 Holder/Obama #fastandfurious ..Shame on u 4 attacking @jennajameson on Reagan <3 What the gently caress does this have to do with Reagan? Iran-Contra actually happened, while Fast & Furious has been thoroughly debunked as a Conservative hit piece.It's amazing to me that political discourse has devolved into who can yell the loudest and change the subject most drastically without actual debate. But I guess that's how you 'win' in politics in 2012, make any attempt at debate so completely distasteful to a reasonable person that they have absolutely no interest in a war of attrition.
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Aug 6, 2012 21:58
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red19fire posted:So as you may or may not know, the Queen of Porn, Jenna Jameson, came out as a supporter of Mitt Romney. It's apparently based purely on a 'tax breaks for millionaires' platform. Pornstar has little functional knowledge about things that don't involve blowjobs, shocking.
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Aug 6, 2012 22:11
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Glitterbomber posted:Pornstar has little functional knowledge about things that don't involve blowjobs, shocking. Doesn't the adult industry, whether porn, strippers or prostitutes/escorts, tend to be really drat libertarian as well?
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Aug 6, 2012 23:31
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red19fire posted:
The thing is, no one on the TV is interviewing anyone whose interested in debunking F&F. That's not even what the person responding to is talking about, though. Obama supports Al Qeada? What?
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Aug 6, 2012 23:43
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Sarion posted:Don't know who PA consulting is, but they are terrible. Don't have time to really dig into it, but here are two things I immediately noticed. I didn't even make it through the entire thing but there are serious problems with many of the graphs I've seen, ranging from unlabeled axes, to including clear outliers (e.g. Greece) in linear regressions (page 4) because they obviously confirm the point/thesis the authors are asserting, to comparing variables that don't necessarily have internal validity with other variables (they haven't established what the % of men living with their parents has to do with 5-year CDs, whether that relationship is statistically significant, whether there actually is causality between the two and not some other kind of relationship, nor do they even properly label the y-axis). Just look at page 3, the graph on the right has an unlabeled y-axis and for some reason every nation's per capita GDP converges at 100 (100 what?) in 1992 (the lowest value of x). There's no way those seven nations ever all had the same per capita GDP and especially not in 1992. You can't arbitrarily put values in just because you want all lines to have the same starting point. It's obvious that they did this to buttress their point about how massive China's and India's GDP increases have been, especially in comparison to first world nations in the west, but it's deceptive and methodologically unsound. Another part that I really like is the graphic where it juxtaposes a quote from the Deputy PM Nick Clegg with one from Deng Xiaoping (page 23): quote:Western attitudes to high earners contrasts with some other countries: But on pages 42-46, the problems they cite hurting competitiveness for the West include obscene and disproportionate banking sector profits and CEO compensation. Which is it, are Nick Clegg and this paper correct about executive compensation and banking profits being problems for Western society and prosperity or are they wrong and these are symptoms of problems with our perspective towards success and wealth (e.g. "punishing" rather than encouraging success and entrepreneurialism)? red19fire posted:So as you may or may not know, the Queen of Porn, Jenna Jameson, came out as a supporter of Mitt Romney. It's apparently based purely on a 'tax breaks for millionaires' platform. It's the "NO, you're stupider!" argument. Obama's not only not funding Al Qaeda, he's actually killing those motherfuckers on a near daily basis with drone strikes and other military operations. Reagan was specifically supporting the Contras and actually subverting laws that explicitly prohibited funding the Contras, which means he not only broke the law but also committed treason by providing arms to an avowed enemy of the US, i.e. Iran. red19fire posted:
Very good point but that doesn't really absolve Obama of responsibility for using executive privilege to cover Eric Holder's rear end. I'm aware that the entire F&F issue is just being used by assholes like Darrell Issa as partisan gamesmanship (which is obvious and explicit if you've seen Issa on TV literally claiming that F&F is a conspiracy to restrict gun rights, if not a full repeal of the 2nd Amendment), but executive privilege is just a bullshit cover to obfuscate the incredibly lovely and unethical work being done in presidential cabinets and is a slap in the face of transparency. Moreover, I'm sick of the argument "Well, Bush did it, too, and far more frequently." Obama shouldn't be doing it and I don't want the issue to be dismissed with some childish reasoning that Obama should be allowed to do terrible things because did them, too. That's fine for pointing hypocrisy among conservatives and the GOP for criticizing Obama for something for which they defended Bush, but it's not an excuse for Obama's behavior. It's the same logic being used fallaciously used to compare what Reagan did in Iran-Contra to what Obama has done with Al-Qaeda, i.e. we shouldn't be allowed to criticize Reagan for something that Obama is also doing.
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Aug 7, 2012 01:42
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Came across this gem on a friend's fb feed, had to share research it. be aware.
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Aug 7, 2012 02:12
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 Ugggghhhh, this sentiment is going to have me unfriending a lot of people.
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Aug 7, 2012 02:24
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I really wish that there was a magic button that I could press and it would remove all the awesome things science has done from the lives of those people. Oh and it would also work retroactively, if they got any major medical stuff. Welp.
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Aug 7, 2012 02:34
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red19fire posted:
Do note that this is only Appendix III to the full report, and is only written in rebuttal to your article.
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Aug 7, 2012 03:05
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Loving Life Partner posted:
Literally infinite money spent on NASA.
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Aug 7, 2012 03:09
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PhazonLink posted:I really wish that there was a magic button that I could press and it would remove all the awesome things science has done from the lives of those people. Make it also remove all access to tax-funded projects and government services and I'd just love it.
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Aug 7, 2012 03:14
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Loving Life Partner posted:
Well technically it's only $2.5 Billion, provided employment and support for workers in the US, and is the largest rover ever landed in human history but it's not x so gently caress it! Welfare and the Space Program are the two most hated programs because hateful people get to see them.
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Aug 7, 2012 03:19
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Loving Life Partner posted:
You could point out that the actual cost of the project was around $2.5 billion. Or that NASA's annual budget is only around $18 billion, and has been cut every single year since 1993. Or ask whether every last bit of the $700 billion in US military spending helps us poor people on earth.
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Aug 7, 2012 03:20
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h_double posted:You could point out that the actual cost of the project was around $2.5 billion. Or that NASA's annual budget is only around $18 billion, and has been cut every single year since 1993. Or ask whether every last bit of the $700 billion in US military spending helps us poor people on earth. But Iraq is so much happier now with Saddam gone!
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Aug 7, 2012 04:19
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h_double posted:Came across this gem on a friend's fb feed, had to share I really love the irony stemming from the stark contrast between "You shouldn't label all Christians as haters, there's a lot of diversity and nuance there you're missing, but most Christians are good people at heart" and "All faithful Muslims are violent homophobes and misogynists who will kill anyone who doesn't obey the one strict, true interpretation of Islam." Loving Life Partner posted:
Ask for some source on that lovely graphic, because NASA's annual budget is pretty sparse and nowhere near $100 billion as other posters have already pointed out. Even better, just Photoshop in "landing a man on the Moon" in place of "landing a remote controlled buggy on Mars," because the research, tests, launches, and programs necessary to put Apollo 11 on the Moon cost $100 billion in 1994 dollars. It's still kind of amazing to me how much hypocrisy and how many double standards there are in work in the criticisms against Obama from conservatives. There are plenty of things about which to be legitimately critical of Obama, including extension of the PATRIOT Act, targeted extrajudicial killings, indiscriminately killing civilians in military strikes but absolving his administration of guilt by simply labeling every adult male killed as a terrorist solely by virtue of being an adult male killed along with suspected terrorists/insurgents, executive privilege w/r/t F&F, obfuscating White House visitor records by meeting lobbyists off-site, perpetuating the Drug War by shutting down legal medical marijuana dispensaries despite campaign promises not to, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, etc.
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Aug 7, 2012 05:22
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Bruce Leroy posted:It's still kind of amazing to me how much hypocrisy and how many double standards there are in work in the criticisms against Obama from conservatives. There are plenty of things about which to be legitimately critical of Obama, including extension of the PATRIOT Act, targeted extrajudicial killings, indiscriminately killing civilians in military strikes but absolving his administration of guilt by simply labeling every adult male killed as a terrorist solely by virtue of being an adult male killed along with suspected terrorists/insurgents, executive privilege w/r/t F&F, obfuscating White House visitor records by meeting lobbyists off-site, perpetuating the Drug War by shutting down legal medical marijuana dispensaries despite campaign promises not to, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. It's because the people who you're talking about either don't care about or like those things (but wouldn't say that because Obama is on the other team so they just keep quiet). Do you think some dude making <$20k and lives in a lovely trailer in the middle of nowhere cares about any of that stuff? No, he just cares that Obama doesn't hate gay people, supposedly supports higher taxes, and is black.
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Aug 7, 2012 05:43
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Countblanc posted:It's because the people who you're talking about either don't care about or like those things (but wouldn't say that because Obama is on the other team so they just keep quiet). Do you think some dude making <$20k and lives in a lovely trailer in the middle of nowhere cares about any of that stuff? No, he just cares that Obama doesn't hate gay people, supposedly supports higher taxes, and is black. I'm aware of why many people don't criticize him for those things, my point is that the things for which they actually do criticize him are bullshit (a perfect example being the "You didn't build that" out of context lies), but just because a person thinks these things are inconsequential bullshit doesn't mean they're some kind of diehard Obama supporter that thinks he can do no wrong. It's this fallacious argument that conservatives go to whenever someone defends Obama against one of these idiotic smears, i.e. your position can't be trusted because you don't think Obama can do anything wrong and just apologize for everything he does. The left has serious misgivings about Obama because he's such a conservative politician, but right-wingers don't recognize this because they are so much further to the right than even Obama is that they don't recognize any contrast between Obama and real liberals/leftists. It's kind of like when you're so far away from two blurry points that they look relatively close, but when you start moving towards them to examine them in detail, you see how far apart they actually are. The problem is that right-wingers will never move towards those points even if only to see what they're like, so they'll never see the nuance involved.
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Aug 7, 2012 05:56
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The right doesn't hate Obama because of his positions and policies, it hates his positions and policies because they're his. It's all about tribalism and spite, except for the non-true believers, who let it pass because both sides do it or some poo poo.
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Aug 7, 2012 08:03
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Bruce Leroy posted:I didn't even make it through the entire thing but there are serious problems with many of the graphs I've seen, ranging from unlabeled axes, to including clear outliers (e.g. Greece) in linear regressions (page 4) because they obviously confirm the point/thesis the authors are asserting, to comparing variables that don't necessarily have internal validity with other variables (they haven't established what the % of men living with their parents has to do with 5-year CDs, whether that relationship is statistically significant, whether there actually is causality between the two and not some other kind of relationship, nor do they even properly label the y-axis). Just look at page 3, the graph on the right has an unlabeled y-axis and for some reason every nation's per capita GDP converges at 100 (100 what?) in 1992 (the lowest value of x). There's no way those seven nations ever all had the same per capita GDP and especially not in 1992. You can't arbitrarily put values in just because you want all lines to have the same starting point. It's obvious that they did this to buttress their point about how massive China's and India's GDP increases have been, especially in comparison to first world nations in the west, but it's deceptive and methodologically unsound. Yeah I really don't understand how any business could have put out such a piece of garbage. Its so completely unprofessional, and really the perfect example of someone trying to use statistics to say what they want them to say. Of course to do so, they have to use the statistics incorrectly. I saw the "men living with their parents" and the "5 year COD" graph and had the same reaction. It was like they just decided, hey lets graph two unrelated and randomly selected sets of data! quote:Very good point but that doesn't really absolve Obama of responsibility for using executive privilege to cover Eric Holder's rear end. While my knowledge of F&F is limited, my understanding is that the use of executive privilege in this case was to protect documents regarding internal discussions of how to respond to Congress's questions. It didn't actually block anything relevant to F&F itself. There are times when executive privilege is important in order for people working in the executive branch to be able to discuss all options in a way that isn't going to bite them in the rear end later just because they made some suggestion that was never actually carried out. Documents relevant to actions actually carried out are important; but Issa was just digging for more dirt by going after these documents that would have provided nothing regarding what happened in F&F.
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Aug 7, 2012 14:11
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You could seriously change this to "spending $X trillion on killing people on the other side of the world" and asking how it helped poor people in the US get jobs and it would be a lot more accurate. Not entirely accurate, since there's plenty of defense spending that results in economic activity in the US and even research that we benefit from. But a lot of that money is spent blowing poo poo up and then rebuilding it for no real purpose. Meanwhile, when we send a rover to Mars, we're not taking $100B (or $2.5B, same thing!) and dumping it as piles of cash on Mars. All of that money was money spent here, not just on Earth, but in the US. Every last penny was spent here. Ignoring the incalculable benefits from the research involved that may benefit us years/decades from now; all of the money spent on the rover was economic activity that benefited people in the US.
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Aug 7, 2012 14:22
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I'll put good odds that that person also joined in the 'OBAMA IS LITERALLY KILLING NASA' horse poo poo too.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:10
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NASA is every bit as much of an unneeded cold war relic as the MI complex, hth.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:31
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Are you saying space exploration is pointless?
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Aug 7, 2012 15:34
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Poizen Jam posted:Are you saying space exploration is pointless? Any effort that goes further than immediately caring about putting food on the table is amoral.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:45
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Sarion posted:You could seriously change this to "spending $X trillion on killing people on the other side of the world" and asking how it helped poor people in the US get jobs and it would be a lot more accurate. Not entirely accurate, since there's plenty of defense spending that results in economic activity in the US and even research that we benefit from. But a lot of that money is spent blowing poo poo up and then rebuilding it for no real purpose. In a way, blowing poo poo up just to rebuild it does create jobs. (And putting all the unemployed people in the military to go and do the blowing up reduces unemployment. If they die, that's sad, but it opens a spot for someone else.) It's awful, but it's essentially the GOP platform.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:53
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CellBlock posted:In a way, blowing poo poo up just to rebuild it does create jobs. I guess I should have qualified, "in other countries". If they want to blow up lovely bridges and then rebuild them in the US, that's something I can get behind.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:58
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Poizen Jam posted:Are you saying space exploration is pointless? Yes. What are we going to accomplish? "New technologies!" can be funded in a way that doesn't involve the overhead of having to send something to Mars.
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Aug 7, 2012 15:59
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CellBlock posted:In a way, blowing poo poo up just to rebuild it does create jobs. (And putting all the unemployed people in the military to go and do the blowing up reduces unemployment. If they die, that's sad, but it opens a spot for someone else.) It's sad that military spending is the only politically viable Keynesian stimulus considering how much more productive it could potentially be.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:01
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Goatman Sacks posted:Yes. What are we going to accomplish? "New technologies!" can be funded in a way that doesn't involve the overhead of having to send something to Mars. I'd say exploration has some pretty self-evident benefits, but I think you're missing the fact that technology isn't developed in a vacuum for no reason other than 'new technology'. There needs to be a reason to develop a piece of technology, a purpose it serves which will later be adapted to serve the general populace, unless by 'new technology' you mean the 'iPad 4' rather than anything that constitutes innovation. Our technology would probably be a generation behind now if it wasn't for the driving forces of the World Wars and the space race.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:10
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Goatman Sacks posted:Yes. What are we going to accomplish? "New technologies!" can be funded in a way that doesn't involve the overhead of having to send something to Mars. "Here's $30 million! Go invent something new"
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Aug 7, 2012 16:22
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Goatman Sacks posted:Yes. What are we going to accomplish? "New technologies!" can be funded in a way that doesn't involve the overhead of having to send something to Mars. I think you fundamentally misunderstand how technological development works. Lots of technological advances occur as a side-benefit to other advances that were never initially planned, or as the result of running into a unique problem that needs solving. Substitute "Space" for "Mars" in your statement and we wouldn't have GPS or weather tracking satellites or any number of advances in medical technology. Here's a few examples. NASA didn't set out to create technology to improve golf clubs or help infants in distress or improve imaging technology for breast screening procedures; but that's the result of pushing the envelope technologically in a challenging environment. Even if the technology used to go to Mars doesn't directly lead to new inventions, it will probably contribute tangentially to them.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:36
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Taerkar posted:"Here's $30 million! Go invent something new" I've talked with engineers before that believe that is a legitimate alternative to basic scientific inquiry. 
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Aug 7, 2012 16:59
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Kim Jong III posted:I've talked with engineers before that believe that is a legitimate alternative to basic scientific inquiry. You know some pretty horrible engineers  Adding on to what others have mentioned; sending the rover to Mars requires overcoming all kinds of challenges, such as finding more efficient means of transporting the rover to Mars (Curiosity is much larger than other rovers), landing the bloody thing, communicating over the massive distance between the rover and Earth, operating a car-sized rover on a planet with completely different gravitational and atmospheric conditions than Earth, or powering a mobile laboratory for years in a location where no human will be able to go to repair or refuel it. Completely ignoring whatever benefits may come from the actual experiments carried out using the rover, just building it and getting it to Mars already forces scientists and engineers to innovate in ways they never would working just on Earth-based problems. Innovations that could potentially have future impacts on telecommunications, energy efficiency/production, secure and redundant computer systems, or even automotive design. Challenges drive innovation, and it doesn't get much more challenging than Space.
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Aug 7, 2012 17:33
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I can't help but think of that argument coming out of some douche noble's mouth in the Spanish court when Columbus was seeking investors as a reason to not give him the money needed to field the expedition. And if Columbus is too charged an example because of the path of atrocities and destruction he left in his wake then pick a different state funded explorer at pretty much any point in human history.
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Aug 7, 2012 17:42
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There were some super libertarian folks on my FB feed today circlejerking about how it was a waste of government funds, the free market could do better, the government has a monopoly, so on and so forth. A choice quote: quote:I do not like government funded anything. However, I am glad humanity is exploring Mars. I am excited to hear what we will learn. Nevermind that no one would have bothered to go into space in the first place because there was no profit in it. The only reason people are bothering now is the publicity and immediate potential for profit. Additionally, all the research on how to get to space was funded by the government in the first place and I'm gonna give myself a stroke if I keep thinking about it. I didn't bother responding because I don't like being dogpiled upon.
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Aug 7, 2012 17:55
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I find that most engineer-autistic types slobber over space exploration more than most. I'm not saying just give money and say "make something!", I'm saying provide goals that are more useful at the present. Like, I don't know, finding a way to make mosquitoes incapable of carrying malaria, for example.
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Aug 7, 2012 18:08
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