Radical Griff posted:

Crime rates plummeted (and were at a 26 year low by the time he left office) and his gun control policies decreased gun crime by 40% by 2001. He also retooled the military to post Cold-War effectiveness, and if Bush had paid attention to any of the Clinton administration's terrorism reports, 9/11 would have almost certainly been prevented.

He wasn't perfect, but he's probably the best Democrat in Presidential Office in recent history.

NatasDog posted:

Not only that, most people in his charge are awaiting trial and not convicted of anything yet. I miss HidingFromGoro's old prison thread because it did an excellent job showcasing just how terrible Arpaio and his policy of institutionalized racism is.

XyloJW posted:

I'd always heard that green skies mean there's a tornado. So when my aunt posted about the green skies during a storm, I looked it up before I responded. The page I found said that while it's not associated with tornadoes, it is associated with thunderstorms in general and offered some possible reasons why. What then followed was everyone studiously ignoring science in favor of folklore.



I just don't get it. It's not like I was posting Snopes or Media Matters or saying "That's not true!" and being contrarian. I posted it before anyone even mentioned tornadoes, and the actual link gave some really interesting information. I'm used to people ignoring information in an argument because it hurts their ego, or ignoring information because they're not interested in the subject.

But to ignore information and then try to invent your own explanations?

TURN IT OFF! posted:

That Scientific American article is literally the same article as the one in the screen shot, so I don't think that's the problem.

vyelkin posted:

I'd be tempted to respond with this graph:



Yeah, socialism looks sooooo bad that a vast majority of Americans prefer literal Communism with exactly equal wealth distribution to the current American system of rampant inequality.

Guilty Spork posted:

I'm pretty sure Muslims don't work like vampires or werewolves. Adding pork to things doesn't make them shrink away or kill them gooder or whatever like garlic or silver does to supernatural monsters.

Also, I don't know much about guns, but lubricating a machine with pork fat just plain sounds like a bad idea?

Handsome Ralph posted:

As a person who works with statistics on a daily basis, this one pisses me off. The Govt. actually stopped collecting stats and conducting research because of a law banning the CDC from funding gun violence research. Though Obama signed an executive order allowing federal funded research again, I'm not sure if we'll see anything substantial for some time, if it's even allowed to go on for at least 5-years or so.


But no, keep telling yourselves that the government only stopped doing the stats research because they figured out it was just gangs shooting children and the subject just wasn't worth researching further.

GrabbinPeels posted:

Is anyone starting to get saturated with "Obama is so lazy, look at all these vacations!" posts recently? Most of it is stuff like this from Breitbart that I'd ignore but they posted this one straight to my wall and I'm not sure what to say about it. I've tried to point out that he's taken comparatively few vacations compared to his predecessor and that the economic situation isn't as pressing as it was when he took office but I'm not sure that's working. Normally they're pretty reasonable too.

quote:

It's nothing new. Franklin Roosevelt was judged for spending too much time aboard his Presidential yacht, the USS Potomac. Theodore Roosevelt was said to have left Washington, DC for months at a time, and our fourth President, James Madison, took a four month vacation back in 1816.

Here's how Mr. Obama stacks up against more recent Presidents, if he keeps pace with 168 vacation days over eight years. President George W. Bush took all or part of 297 days at his Texas ranch. Bill Clinton took 174 days at Martha's Vineyard and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Ronald Reagan vacationed 349 days at his California ranch over eight years.

quote:

In 1798, President John Adams left the capital for seven months to care for his ailing wife Abigail; his enemies said he practically relinquished his office.

· Thomas Jefferson and James Madison routinely went away for three- and four-month stretches.

· Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, was blasted for spending about 25 percent of his time away from the White House.

· Dwight Eisenhower took long summer breaks in Denver and spent almost every single weekend at Camp David.

· John F. Kennedy rarely spent a weekend in the White House, staying at family homes in Palm Beach, Hyannis Port, and the Virginia countryside.

· Lyndon Johnson spent 484 days in five and a half years at his Texas ranch.

· Ronald Reagan was away for 436 days, usually at Rancho del Cielo (his mountaintop retreat in California) or Camp David.

· Bill Clinton, who didn't own a vacation home, loved to party with his elite friends in Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons.

· George W. Bush spent 32 months at his ranch (490 days) or Camp David (487 days) — an average of four months away every year.

JoshTheStampede posted:

That's not related to his political identity though. He's a pretty outspoken libertarian with socially liberal views, but he's been rightly criticized for sexism and privilege by people of all political stripes. Yet he's always held up by conservatives as a Liberal Champion or something, as if he's universally liked by people left of center, which is far from true.

U.S. Barryl posted:

I've got a lot of "natural remedy" people on my feed lately. I'm user #3 and nobody will listen to me. I don't want to come on too strong and tell them that I'm actually studying medicine, since they seem to distrust medicine anyway.

TinTower posted:

Dioxins! :sunburn:-


Christ, the FDA is useless.

peak debt posted:

There's a not easy to ignore number of blue dog democrats who all have their pet issues that they will go against their party for. Just look at how the recent gun show background check vote turned out. A nominal majority can't get you everything.

Pope Guilty posted:

Does anybody have a good reply for this "Obama treating Marines like golf caddies" horseshit?

Dr Christmas posted:

I looked at his Facebook page for responses to this comic, nothing too noteworthy. Sme BENGHAZI, stuff like that, and some pushback.

I did notice that people took issue with that Obama "ranked" enough to call the marine a "boot." They are getting mad at the real Obama for the actions of this fictional portrayal.

muike posted:

I always assumed it supposed to be in the fuel or something, but I guess not? Wow it's even dumber than I thought.

KillerJunglist posted:

This is the ultimate "I'm not racist, I just thought it was funny!" email. God drat.

TerminalSaint posted:

She admits to using it 30 years ago while referring to a man who robbed her. She claims not to have used it when discussing the racist as gently caress wedding plans, and that's good enough for conservatives.

I'd bet a dollar that it's such a normal thing to her that she said it and doesn't even remember.

Dirt posted:

This has popped up THREE TIMES today, all from soon to be mothers that I am friends with on Facebook.





The reaction to my criticism has been odd: Two were straight up hostile, one even called me a shill for big pharma! The other used the equally annoying "I'm just asking questions" bit.

I want to know if there is ANYTHING that works to talk sense into these kind of people? I usually just laugh at the conspiracy poo poo, as most of it is harmless, but the anti-vax movement is actively endangering people. That bothers me.


Also another guy responded to one of theses posts with a image macro from the GBS thread about the anti-vax movement, that brought up animal fat and proteins being in vaccines, and then told them to go to meatspin for more info. I laughed pretty hard about that. The might be the best way to handle these people, as you can't really reason with them.

RagnarokAngel posted:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/30/2556301/burrito-chain-pays-entry-level-workers-10-hour-pay/

It might be faint praise but there's a few listed here. Boloco (in Boston), In-N-Out, Dick's Drive-In (Seattle) and Moo Cluck Moo (Detroit) all pay at least $10 an hour for entry level workers. I guess that's also commentary on how shameful labor is in general, but it's a start.

Axetrain posted:

This has been mentioned before but the best response to this type of horseshit is "you know for the party of "personal responsibility" Republicans sure do like to blame everyone but themselves for their election defeats". Also anyone who brings up how much Americans hate ACA then just ask "well if they hate it so much why did they re-elect Obama instead of that political loser who said he would repeal it day one". If they use the former as an excuse for the later then just use the former reply I mentioned, if they mention something about how most Americans these days are just stupid low-info parasites the just say "Well then looks like future Democratic victory is assured/How do you expect to win those necessary votes to your side when you keep insulting them". I went down this line of reasoning with a Republican relative of mine and it sent him into a catatonic state so I consider it a smashing success.

Nathilus posted:

It's not healthy to stop being friends with people because of their politics, doing so only ensures you'll live inside an echo chamber. That assumes their politics aren't clearly abhorrent of course. I have a hella conservative friend who I can agree with more than disagree, and he's the kind of guy who thinks all his opinions through. Meanwhile I know a LOT of people who are "conservative" but don't really think about or discuss it much, which is also fine. I'm not terrified enough of the other team that I go straight for my disemboweling daggers.

darthbob88 posted:

I think there's some island in the Caribbean, Aruba, Antigua, something like that, that doesn't have an income tax. They get by on sales tax and profits from gambling. Except recently they had to enact an income tax to pay for hurricane damage or something.

ETA: Must have been Anguilla I was thinking of. And apparently there are quite a few more; Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Brunei, Anguilla, the Caymans, the Bahamas, among others, have no income tax. Would you care to guess what qualities those countries share?

Soonmot posted:

So it's really some sort of weird messiah complex?

\/\/\/This is what you people did in LF all the time, right?

Mister Bates posted:

The only problem with the Paulbomb is that a lot of his supporters will read that and go, "yes, and?" Most Libertarians I've talked to are fully aware of his positions and are perfectly okay with them.

Of course, the Ron Paul club is a borderline political religion at this point, and he could probably literally eat a baby and still have people defending him.

Wojtek posted:

Hmm I wonder if there is a reason it's not higher

There were cougars sighted and killed within a half mile of my childhood home (a town of ~30,000). Not everyone lives in big cities where dangerous wild animals are nil.

I have a friend whose dog was grabbed and eaten by a coyote while on a walk. This is in Reno less than 5 years ago.

LtStorm posted:

Another issue is that people that spread these letters hear that gang violence is high in an area and don't realize that violence is mostly between gang members or between gang members and people living in lower-income housing in the inner city. The people that spread the letters are incredibly self-absorbed and as soon as you mention gang violence is high, they assume that means feral urban youths are leaving the city to terrorize their white flight communities.

quote: