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Ashcans posted:Mostly I think that people should be careful about arguing that way because 'You only believe this because you are stupid and ignorant' is a pretty bad way to begin any sort of discussion and basically poisons the dialogue before it begins. I mean if you don't give a poo poo about changing people's minds, ok, but if you are hoping to actually sway anyone it isn't a good way to start (or continue). Very much agreed. It's hard enough to change anyone's mind without, "Benghazi? Pfft, that's just your abnormally large fear receptor talking."
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Nov 23, 2012 20:04
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I'm sure the guys at AFRICOM would be surprised to hear just how many aircraft and personnel they apparently have ready to respond to any incident at a moment's notice.
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Nov 23, 2012 23:41
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quote:I'm sure the guys at AFRICOM would be surprised to hear just how many aircraft and personnel they apparently have ready to respond to any incident at a moment's notice. Yeah, people don't get it. For all of Africa there is only one jet fighter plane from AFRICOM to stop UFOs. Nobody has even bothered installing a laser beam or anything on it. When a UFO appears they do not even launch the plane. What AFRICOM really needs is a satellite over Benghazi.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:05
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Laminator posted:I was also driving through the DFW area yesterday and found a conservative radio station. Some dude was talking about how he was having drinks one day with an advisor for the Carter administration, and that the advisor said that "welfare is societies' payment for keeping the poor in their place." This, of course, has a biblical story to go with it - when Jesus was being anointed with expensive oils by his disciples, one of his disciples asked why they were using the oils for that, when they could instead sell the oils and donate the money to the poor. And do you know what that disciples' name was? Judas. John 12:4-6 posted:Then one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot (who was about to betray Him), said, “Why wasn’t this fragrant oil sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?” He didn’t say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of the money-bag and would steal part of what was put in it.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:09
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TerminalSaint posted:I'm sure the guys at AFRICOM would be surprised to hear just how many aircraft and personnel they apparently have ready to respond to any incident at a moment's notice. According to the conservative spin, every unit is a crack team of Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and the hardest of the hardcore Marines, just constantly on 24-hour alert with gear at the ready, and all planes are ones that can load up, take off and reach a target zone in 10 minutes flat. This is after the successful barrage of missiles that take out only the bad guys while leaving ARE BOYS unscathed. But no, instead our pResident left them all to die, while he sat on his throne of skulls and watched it all go down via drone camera, sipping the blood of pure white Christian virgins (from his specially-crafted Muslim silver chalice) and cackling maniacally. 
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Nov 24, 2012 00:28
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madlobster posted:Judas wanted to help the poor only so he could skim money off of it? Sounds like he has a place in the Republican party. To be fair John was kinda the crazy one, did the other gospels have him as a thief?
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Nov 24, 2012 00:29
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madlobster posted:Judas wanted to help the poor only so he could skim money off of it? Sounds like he has a place in the Republican party. I essentially broke that down to a highly conservative family member during a discussion about how Jesus really was a champion of the poor. I used everything from that verse, to the fact that Jesus said how tough it was for a rich man to get into Heaven, "blessed are the poor", giving everything away, blah blah, etc. Their whole argument was that a sign of how heathen the government was at the time was their absurdly large taxes. And that Jesus' commands are solely for the individual, and a truly saved person will listen to Jesus; good ideas. But that forced taxes are theft, and therefore sin. These people will literally go through endless mental exercises in order to live with their greed. Regardless of whether Jesus' rules are solely for individuals, the entirety of the Gospels is predicated upon bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth, in order to redeem our Fall. That is the whole reason for why Jesus arrived: so God and Man could be reconciled, not to just spread some nice ideas. I explained this to them, and their response was "That's just your average liberal intellectual brainwashing! College just over complicates things, faith is about trusting God and following Him now and He'll answer us and make everything perfect after we die." (I'm a religion minor). There is such an opposition between Christianity and Republicanism when it comes to the Gospels, they are genuinely willing to shove square pegs into round holes if it means sleeping at night. They can't face hell, but they can't give up their sin yet, either: the stereotypical lukewarm Christian.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:51
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Hastings posted:I essentially broke that down to a highly conservative family member during a discussion about how Jesus really was a champion of the poor. I used everything from that verse, to the fact that Jesus said how tough it was for a rich man to get into Heaven, "blessed are the poor", giving everything away, blah blah, etc. Their whole argument was that a sign of how heathen the government was at the time was their absurdly large taxes. And that Jesus' commands are solely for the individual, and a truly saved person will listen to Jesus; good ideas. But that forced taxes are theft, and therefore sin. These people will literally go through endless mental exercises in order to live with their greed. Regardless of whether Jesus' rules are solely for individuals, the entirety of the Gospels is predicated upon bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth, in order to redeem our Fall. That is the whole reason for why Jesus arrived: so God and Man could be reconciled, not to just spread some nice ideas. I explained this to them, and their response was "That's just your average liberal intellectual brainwashing! College just over complicates things, faith is about trusting God and following Him now and He'll answer us and make everything perfect after we die." (I'm a religion minor). There is such an opposition between Christianity and Republicanism when it comes to the Gospels, they are genuinely willing to shove square pegs into round holes if it means sleeping at night. They can't face hell, but they can't give up their sin yet, either: the stereotypical lukewarm Christian. People can get ridiculously obstinate even in the face of actual facts and figures. It stands to reason that they're going to perform even more mental gymnastics when it comes to something that's harder to verify scientifically, like theology and interpretation of religious texts.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:57
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Sydney Bottocks posted:People can get ridiculously obstinate even in the face of actual facts and figures. It stands to reason that they're going to perform even more mental gymnastics when it comes to something that's harder to verify scientifically, like theology and interpretation of religious texts. Oh I totally agree, I just find it fascinating that given how outwardly they give the impression of being devout and wanting a "Christian nation", you know, that they would try to not blaspheme and desecrate Jesus' own words.
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Nov 24, 2012 01:13
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Hastings posted:Oh I totally agree, I just find it fascinating that given how outwardly they give the impression of being devout and wanting a "Christian nation", you know, that they would try to not blaspheme and desecrate Jesus' own words. Well, that's just because the commonly accepted interpretation of Jesus' word (help the poor, love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc.) doesn't quite square with the typical right-wing view of how things should be (FYGM, "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too", "don't retreat, reload", etc.).It's easier for them to just reinterpret Jesus' teachings to fit their point of view than it is to admit they're wrong, and that they really are a bunch of greedy bastards who would rather leave everything in ruins than give a dime to those they feel are "less deserving".
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Nov 24, 2012 01:21
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What other media outlets don't want you to know! I've gone so long without receiving one of these "info graphs" from my friend. 
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Nov 24, 2012 01:24
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I thought that only the US used a Caduceus as a medical symbol.
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Nov 24, 2012 01:34
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anything576 posted:What other media outlets don't want you to know!
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Nov 24, 2012 01:45
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Also women are allowed to vote in every mid east country minus Saudi Arabia. However, starting in 2015 women will have the right to vote in Saudi Arabia, and they won't even need the permission of their male guardian!(If the polling place isn't in walking distance they'll just need a male to drive them to go exercise their right) Hamas was also democratically elected after the west demanded elections, then said they voted the wrong way.
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Nov 24, 2012 01:54
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The Israeli military Israeli casualties are low because
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Nov 24, 2012 02:06
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Hastings posted:to the fact that Jesus said how tough it was for a rich man to get into Heaven Fun little thing to throw around with this verse is that there isn't an actual Eye of the Needle that a lot of evangelicals think exist. The link below has more of an explanation, but basically the word that has been translated as "Camel" is more likely to be "rope" which makes a great deal more sense in context. Click It's truly at odds with the prosperity gospel that is still being preached in a modified format today. Edit: v You win v Ratmtattat fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Nov 24, 2012 |
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Nov 24, 2012 04:29
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Ratmtattat posted:Fun little thing to throw around with this verse is that there isn't an actual Eye of the Needle that a lot of evangelicals think exist. The link below has more of an explanation, but basically the word that has been translated as "Camel" is more likely to be "rope" which makes a great deal more sense in context. But perhaps the contemporary concept of "rope" included threads, and he meant that it was as simple as putting a thread through a needle for a rich man to enter heaven! And what about the giant needles used to sew things together with rope? Check and mate, commies!
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Nov 24, 2012 05:07
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What I always think is funny about when people try to weasel out a version of that passage where Jesus is saying that rich people can get into heaven if then kneel or whatever is that the rich dude was totally willing to do that. He is too attached to his possessions and chooses them over following Christ after which the camel through a needle line comes. You literally have to take that bit totally out of the rest of the story to even try at seeing it as anything other than "riches = bad." I almost want to sit in at an evangelical sermon just to see if they make sure no actual bibles are there in case one of the parish accidentally opens one and learns what the religion is really about.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:17
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Ratmtattat posted:Fun little thing to throw around with this verse is that there isn't an actual Eye of the Needle that a lot of evangelicals think exist. The link below has more of an explanation, but basically the word that has been translated as "Camel" is more likely to be "rope" which makes a great deal more sense in context. Not to be a douche, but while the article you linked to does a good job of pointing out "no, there was no gate named Eye of the Needle", it also spends a couple paragraphs explaining why the word could very well have been "camel", and why it's no more likely that it was supposed to be "rope" than "camel". In fact, the better part of it is in being able to point out that people are attempting to re-"translate" and reinterpret the Bible completely separated from the historical, cultural, and linguistic history of each part's respective era, and that modern Evangelical sola scriptura is devoid of actual argumentative merit, because it's based on an argument from ignorance (literally, "I don't need to know anything but what the Bible says"), and often only on what someone else has told them the Bible says. The number of people who think they can reinterpret the theology of a religion based solely on its English translation and various "textual trickeries", as that article puts it, are especially infuriating.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:22
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anything576 posted:What other media outlets don't want you to know! Liberal democracy? Sounds like a bunch of commies in Israel. That whole thing brings to mind the idea of "I beat up children, but its ok because I wear body armor and boxing gloves when I do it. Also, I'm not a homophobe, so you can tell I'm a good person." At some point I wish the US would stop with being a bunch of apologists for Israel and realize both sides are doing absolutely terrible things. It's never going to get resolved as long as we keep justifying horrible poo poo for one side and demonizing the other for theirs.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:24
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anything576 posted:What other media outlets don't want you to know! A. I thought conservatives were against homosexuality. B. More seriously, if other media outlets don't want us to know this, why do they keep putting on Israeli PR people who hammer these "facts" in over and over again?
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Nov 24, 2012 05:32
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Absurd Alhazred posted:A. I thought conservatives were against homosexuality. That image is from Canada, it's Sun News Network which desperately tries to be Fox News North. Us being Canada, even our crazy Conservatives don't dare touch gay marriage, and in fact have recently been going on an ad blitz talking about how they're supposedly standing up for gay rights overseas. Conservatives up here don't necessarily like gay people any more than they do in the States, but they have to pretend they do because the public is fully supportive of gay people being treated 100% equally.
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Nov 24, 2012 05:53
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:Not to be a douche... No douchiness taken. I get what you're talking about how the exact translation of the word in this context is likely never going to be had. While I would personally use Jesus' history of helping the poor and needy as context for a statement like this , I could appreciate what you're saying and would love to have a discussion about it.
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Nov 24, 2012 06:14
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anything576 posted:What other media outlets don't want you to know! Notice how they leave out the figures of the number of Palestinian deaths at the hands of Israelis vs. the number of Israeli deaths at the hands of Palestinians over the past 10 years. Amused to Death posted:Also women are allowed to vote in every mid east country minus Saudi Arabia. However, starting in 2015 women will have the right to vote in Saudi Arabia, and they won't even need the permission of their male guardian!(If the polling place isn't in walking distance they'll just need a male to drive them to go exercise their right) That's part of the other thing left out from that infographic, Hamas spends about 90% of its funds on welfare, food, and other things Palestinians need but aren't getting due to the apartheid perpetrated against them by the Israeli government. A huge portion of the healthcare received by Palestinians actually comes from doctors, dentists, etc. funded and supplied by Hamas. That's why they got elected, not because of the violence they perpetrate with the remaining 10% of their funds. If the Israeli government actually gave a poo poo about the Palestinians and wanted to do something that would actually hurt Hamas they would end the apartheid. As it is, they are only making Hamas more popular by allowing Hamas to engender goodwill by providing social services, while simultaneously giving them demonstrable evidence that the Israeli government is what is making the lives of Palestinians worse. VideoTapir posted:But perhaps the contemporary concept of "rope" included threads, and he meant that it was as simple as putting a thread through a needle for a rich man to enter heaven! I've always been a mixture of amused, perplexed, and aggravated by these people who act like God is some kind of TV courtroom judge who will totally let them off from their stint in hell if they can find some kind of semantic technicality that let's them get away with violating the spirit of what the Bible and Jesus meant. Seriously, if I were God, I'd be far more pissed at these kinds of people than those who admit their sins and are genuinely contrite about the things they have done.
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Nov 24, 2012 09:11
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But that isn't what Jesus meant. That's the point of the semantic contortions.
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Nov 24, 2012 12:26
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anything576 posted:What other media outlets don't want you to know! What dog do Canadians have in the Israel/Palestine fight? They don't have to militarily protect Israel or back their plays like the U.S., I don't believe they have the largest population of Jews outside of Israel, nor do they have a bunch of Evangelical nuts who believe the Jews play some critical role in bringing on Armageddon, as far as I know.
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Nov 24, 2012 16:29
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Am I correct in thinking that America's right-wing insanity permeates our border like a stinking cloud, thinning the further away you get? I would think old people (and young conservative gay webcomic artists) in Canada picked up America's idiocy largely by osmosis. E: I wonder if the same is true in Mexico? Do people in Juarez think socialism is the devil and FEMA death camps and Plucky Little Israel?
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Nov 24, 2012 16:38
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XyloJW posted:E: I wonder if the same is true in Mexico? Do people in Juarez think socialism is the devil and FEMA death camps and Plucky Little Israel? I would imagine people in Juarez are too busy not getting murdered to worry about Plucky Little Israel.
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Nov 24, 2012 17:36
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Zwabu posted:What dog do Canadians have in the Israel/Palestine fight? They don't have to militarily protect Israel or back their plays like the U.S., I don't believe they have the largest population of Jews outside of Israel, nor do they have a bunch of Evangelical nuts who believe the Jews play some critical role in bringing on Armageddon, as far as I know. XyloJW posted:Am I correct in thinking that America's right-wing insanity permeates our border like a stinking cloud, thinning the further away you get? I would think old people (and young conservative gay webcomic artists) in Canada picked up America's idiocy largely by osmosis. In Canada our culture may be about 85% American but socially we're waaaaay more liberal. Most Canadians I know (admittedly I'm a social democrat who hangs out with liberal students) are pretty disgusted by Israel but basically see it as not our fight. The Canadian right wing is just as gung-ho about protecting Israel as the US is, and right now our right wing is in power so there's been a lot of rhetoric coming from the right-wing media (which includes that Sun News Network graphic) about how great Israel is and how totally justified they are to be bombing civilians because they were attacked first  and and and they use precision guided bombs and and and etc. But at the same time I've seen a pretty serious backlash against our current government from certain segments of the population as people critically assess the current situation in Israel/Gaza and then wonder why the hell our government has publicly stated their unconditional support for Israel.Our conservatives are trying their hardest to absorb the right-wing crazy from the US and while a lot of it is catching on in more fringe right-wing circles it's by and large bouncing off a majority of the population who see your current political climate as completely insane.
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Nov 24, 2012 18:42
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Bruce Leroy posted:That's part of the other thing left out from that infographic, Hamas spends about 90% of its funds on welfare, food, and other things Palestinians need but aren't getting due to the apartheid perpetrated against them by the Israeli government. A huge portion of the healthcare received by Palestinians actually comes from doctors, dentists, etc. funded and supplied by Hamas. That's why they got elected, not because of the violence they perpetrate with the remaining 10% of their funds. Bruce Leroy posted:I've always been a mixture of amused, perplexed, and aggravated by these people who act like God is some kind of TV courtroom judge who will totally let them off from their stint in hell if they can find some kind of semantic technicality that let's them get away with violating the spirit of what the Bible and Jesus meant. But gay sex? INEXCUSABLE.
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Nov 24, 2012 19:06
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Last night on the news here in BC there was a segment about the Canadian government's growing debt, about 600 billion. They broke it down by population and said every Canadian "owes" the equivalent of a brand new car. And that our children and grandchildren, etc. are gonna have to carry the burden of paying down the debt. It seemed like a segment I'd see on American news, honestly. And it didn't say what the debt actually means or why it's such a bad thing. It was basically "wooAAhh look at this DEBT! Numbers!" and that's it. I'm completely ignorant about these issues, but is Canada's debt similar to the US in that it's more or a less a non-issue? Can the government borrow money at extremely low interest rates? Or does it work differently up here?
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Nov 24, 2012 20:20
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Ana Lucia Cortez posted:I'm completely ignorant about these issues, but is Canada's debt similar to the US in that it's more or a less a non-issue? Can the government borrow money at extremely low interest rates? Or does it work differently up here? It does not work differently and our debt is just as much a non-issue as the US debt is. Deficits rise in a recession due to decreased tax revenue and increased stimulus spending, and when the recession ends they return to normal levels. This recession is one of the best times to borrow money in history because interest rates are lower than inflation. Don't listen to conservative media/politicians that try and scare you with big numbers about debt, they're trying to get you to support austerity which is a terrible, terrible idea.
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Nov 24, 2012 20:31
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vyelkin posted:It does not work differently and our debt is just as much a non-issue as the US debt is. Deficits rise in a recession due to decreased tax revenue and increased stimulus spending, and when the recession ends they return to normal levels. This recession is one of the best times to borrow money in history because interest rates are lower than inflation. Don't listen to conservative media/politicians that try and scare you with big numbers about debt, they're trying to get you to support austerity which is a terrible, terrible idea. Okay thanks, that's what I thought. It felt really odd seeing that on the news. I always assumed the media in Canada is less biased and right-leaning than in the US, but perhaps I just haven't been paying attention.
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Nov 24, 2012 20:40
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Does it really work the same? I mean, I thought part of why US debt didn't really matter was because the US could print as much of the world reserve currency as we want. I know the Canadian dollar is as strong as the US dollar right now, but it's surely not as stable?
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Nov 24, 2012 20:45
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XyloJW posted:Does it really work the same? I mean, I thought part of why US debt didn't really matter was because the US could print as much of the world reserve currency as we want. I know the Canadian dollar is as strong as the US dollar right now, but it's surely not as stable? This is not the big reason why borrowing is a non-issue right now, though. It's true the US (or Canada) could just print a ton of money to pay off the debt, but that's insanely counterproductive and would tank the economy even harder. The big reason is that inflation is higher than interest rates. So if the government sells a $1 million bond at, say, 2% interest for 1 year, after a year they have to pay $1.02m to the holder. But if inflation is 3%, and the government spent their $1.02m wisely, they've actually generated $1.03m's worth of economic activity measured in 2013 dollars. If you're more interested in the Canadian example, I did an effort post in the Canadian politics thread a little while back about provincial debt for the Province of Ontario, you can find it here if you want a more detailed explanation using Ontario as an example.
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Nov 24, 2012 21:09
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My terrible inbox e-mails that I should delete posted:NEW FOREVER STAMPS COME OUT IN JANUARY - 46 CENTS BEGINNING 1/27/13 This one was a technicolor poo poo show with abysmal HTML and a format that would make e.e. cummings blush. The only part that I tried to reproduce was the "<ATT000011.jpg>" portion. There was no photo, only poor coding, and I don't care to reverse GIS for it. Just imagine it's something equally terrible based off this lovely racist e-mail.
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Nov 24, 2012 23:34
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ZappDash posted:This one was a technicolor poo poo show with abysmal HTML and a format that would make e.e. cummings blush. The only part that I tried to reproduce was the "<ATT000011.jpg>" portion. There was no photo, only poor coding, and I don't care to reverse GIS for it. Here it is:  There was another one...  ...the 1st of September, 2001! Obviously a signal from big gummint to the mooslims to carry out ninalevin ten days later 
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Nov 24, 2012 23:49
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ZappDash posted:This one was a technicolor poo poo show with abysmal HTML and a format that would make e.e. cummings blush. The only part that I tried to reproduce was the "<ATT000011.jpg>" portion. There was no photo, only poor coding, and I don't care to reverse GIS for it. I imagine it's just great to be a postal worker with dumbasses constantly going 'hey make sure I don't get no MUSLIM on my letters'. Do you eventually turn into the skid and tell them that their letter is already covered in Arabic numbers?
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Nov 24, 2012 23:53
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Urban Space Cowboy posted:Here it is: Actually there have been 8  The US Postal service - openly supporting President Obama for 11 years.
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Nov 25, 2012 00:18
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I literally got into a shouting match with my aunt during Thanksgiving dinner when she said that Hurricane Sandy (and the government's response to it) was just as bad if not worse than Katrina. That's right, she literally used the words 'probably worse.' How the gently caress she rationalizes that I still don't know but apparently those people in New Orleans who stayed behind deserved it. Oh and she has been talking to some friends in New Jersey and according to her crappy anecdotal evidence FEMA and other big name aid relief is useless and hasn't helped anyone at all compared to church group charities.  I know I shouldn't resort to a pretty temper tantrum but I just couldn't take it anymore.
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Nov 25, 2012 00:22
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