|
shotgunbadger posted:The REAL wizards and druids are gone, you know, the ones with...real magic? Like, did he seriously just say the guys Rome killed were somehow 'real' wizards? And how is what Jews, Christians, or Muslims believe somehow less absurd or stupid than what Wiccans or Neopagans believe? Christians worship a guy who was the son of God, was born of virgin birth, and performed miracles like literally bringing people back from the dead. They believe that priests are literally turning bread and wine into the guy's body and blood and then consume them. Yeah, that's not at all silly or absurd. The climate change denial is just his way of trying to discredit science by associating it with religion, which is a classic dick move. It's also extremely telling that this retard mocks the use of "green bullets," as there actually are "green bullets," which are frangibles made from non-lead materials. Lead contamination is actually a practical concern, especially in outdoor firing ranges. The author is a loving moron who doesn't even have the veneer of being informed and intelligent, he's just spouting off bullshit without actually doing any research.
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 04:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
shotgunbadger posted:Aren't these people living there? Yeah, they are cadets at the Air Force Academy who live there the whole time they attend the school, so it's somewhat unrealistic to expect them to go off-base every time they want to attend their respective services. But don't forget that the Air Force Academy has problems in recent years over aggressive proselytizing by Evangelical Christians, including forcing cadets to attend screening of "The Passion of the Christ" and trying to coerce them to attend religious services. Cal Thomas and other Evangelicals are probably just butt hurt that other religions are given equal standing, which likely hurts their recruiting.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 07:21
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:This isn't just the Air Force, and it's not recent. If you're in Marine boot camp, you are given additional chores during services if you do not attend (christian) religious services and are referred to by instructors as a "heathen". This isn't an insult or whatever, it's basically your designation and instructors will give you extra poo poo at every available opportunity, in order to wheedle you into going to church. They basically punish non-religious or non-Christian Marines with more work while the Christians just veg out in the chapel pews? How is that legal at all?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 07:40
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:NO ATHEISTS IN FOXHOLES Yeah, except that's not an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 07:50
|
|
|
AKA Pseudonym posted:Everything is "pandering" or "giving in" or "appeasing" with these people. That's because allowing or even accepting any faiths other than the one true lord Jesus Christ Superstar is basically the same as appeasing Satan-Hitler.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 07:51
|
|
|
SmugDogMillionaire posted:Pretty much not true. See, that sounds much more reasonable. Kaal posted:No they knew, but the young adult males in New Orleans refused to leave. Probably criminally. Even worse, it seems he's implying that blacks rape, murder, and loot while leeching off the government, while good, Christian, white people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This completely ignores all the crimes perpetrated against black people by white NOLA police officers and how white people across the bridges in the communities surrounding NOLA used violence against black refugees fleeing the city to keep them out of their communities. The "small government" bullshit from that guy is priceless, as the whole reason the levees broke during Katrina is because the government didn't do its job in repairing them despite ample notice before the storm. What does he expect people to do, build their own levees?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 10:14
|
|
|
To contribute, here's an old one from notorious moron and piece of poo poo Dinesh D'Souza that I only recently encountered from a different lovely editorial that cited D'Souza's editorial as a source for historical facts.Dinesh D'Souza in 2006 posted:Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history Anyone with even cursory knowledge of 20th Century history might become apoplectic from even just the parts I bolded. He spends so much time pointing out that crimes committed by Christians aren't necessarily crimes of Christianity, but he won't even broach the idea that the same could be true of atheists and atheism. Also, it's almost cute that he's so dumb and misinformed to think that Hitler was a "self-proclaimed atheist" and that Nazism was a "repudiation of Christianity."
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 10:49
|
|
|
WeaponGradeSadness posted:I was kind of with D'Souza at first at the "In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts – in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka – show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse" part, because describing any of those conflicts as being religious in basis is an over-simplification at best--while there is a religious component to each of them, characterizing these conflicts as "hurrrr kill the infidel" is disingenuous. I totally agree with you, but isn't it kind of a "chicken and the egg" thing with these conflicts over what their true "bases" are? E.g. how do we determine whether it was ethnic tensions or religious conflict that came first in engendering the hatred that led to violence in the Balkans? We know that both are important causes for the conflict, but how do we know which came first and which is more influential and fundamental to the hatred and conflict? Was the sentiment among the Serbians that committed genocide against Muslim Bosnians (A) "We hate those filthy Bosnians and they're evil Muslims, too" or (B) "We hate those loving Muslims and they're even worse because they're Bosnian, too"?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 23:32
|
|
|
RC and Moon Pie posted:There was a letter in a later edition against this notion, but here's a beaut from the Gainesville (GA) Times, printed on May 13: Honestly, is the person who wrote this mentally ill and living in some kind of institutional facility, because that kind of reasoning is just insane and illogical as hell? downout posted:You should write a letter back with plenty of quality quotes of what is actually posted in conservapedia. As soon as anyone with two neurons to rub together reads that link, their eyes should immediately roll back into their head as they move on to the next editorial. Just point people towards this VVVVVVV thread. The Best (Worst) Of Conservapedia
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2011 00:52
|
|
|
WeaponGradeSadness posted:Right, it does get murky, but--correct me if I'm wrong, somebody--my impression from Balkan goons in the Mladic GBS thread is that it all originated after WWII, with the Serbian belief that Bosnian Muslims were Nazi collaborators. The Kashmir conflict is over control of Kashmir with some religious overtones. The Tamil conflict didn't have anything at all to do with religion, it was on ethnic lines--although the Tamil Tigers did try to push Muslims out of the north, it was because they thought the Muslims, as a group, supported the Sri Lankan government, not specifically because they were a different religion. The Middle East conflict can be laid more at the feet of European colonialism than Islam. Same goes for the other conflicts Dawkins mentions: religion is a component, and saying it isn't would be dishonest, but so would calling the conflicts religious in nature when it's only partly so. Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking but I still sort of wonder if there weren't always some lingering tensions in the 20th century before these conflicts arose simply due to the historical antagonism between religions. Anyway, the Hitler thing was far more egregious than the stuff about Northern Ireland or the Tamil Tigers. The stuff about Mao and Stalin is almost a bad. I bet D'Souza has written other editorials where he's blamed Mao's and Stalin's crimes on communism, completely neglecting his argument here that atheism is the cause of their crimes. Logical consistency and historical accuracy don't seem to be priorities for him.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2011 02:36
|
|
|
lonelywurm posted:To be fair, most places in the world follow the English rule, which provides that the loser in a civil suit be liable for the legal costs of the winner. In Canada, this is generally only waived in certain cases as described here: The idea behind being against tort reform, besides enriching trial lawyers, is that those kinds of systems to which you refer where the loser pays the legal costs of the winner potentially disenfranchise poor litigants. If there is always the threat that you will be forced to pay the exorbitant legal costs of the person you are suing if/when your case is deemed frivolous, then poor people may be less likely to bring suits or even be able to find lawyers to take their cases unless they are slam-dunks, as they will not be able to pay the other party's legal costs if they lose. Conversely, the rich generally already have the means to not only pay for their own legal teams but also enough to pay for the opposing legal counsels' bills if/when they lose their "frivolous" cases. Thus, the legal restrictions of tort reform would likely not discourage any litigants that are already wealthy from filing their lawsuits, no matter how "frivolous" they may seem, unlike that which would likely occur for the poor and middle class. Personally, I think the real answer to problems with the tort system can be at least partially solved by incorporating technical experts into proceedings, such as mandating that medical experts (e.g. physicians, medical ethicists, medical and science academics, etc.) be included as part of the jury or some kind of panel in any medical malpractice lawsuits so that the verdicts and judgments are based off of medical and scientific facts and not just pathos appeals to laymen juries.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2011 21:55
|
|
|
Uncle Wemus posted:What about the Star Tribunes leading subhuman shitstain Katherine Kersten Right, so when "traditional marriage supporters" voice their opinions against marriage equality for gays and lesbians, it's a righteous expression of their 1st Amendment rights, but when gay marriage supporters do the same of their positions/opinions it's "bullying." She must really hate all those people that "bullied" the Montgomery, Alabama bus companies back in the 1950s, right? Katherine Kersten posted:The Star Tribune's recent editorial on the marriage amendment was typical. "Don't put bigotry on the ballot," its headline ran. How dare they call us "bigots" for saying that homosexuals are "unnatural" and that two gay men or two lesbians are inferior to a man and woman?!?!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2011 11:11
|
|
|
Borneo Jimmy posted:And here's a goodie It's not just a poor understanding of specific historical facts that's the problem, it's a lack of understanding proper historiography. That's what allows for crazy-rear end, mendacious assholes like David Barton to get away with his complete fabrications of history in conservative circles. There's also a much more fundamental problem that the history taught in US schools and popularized by conservatives isn't actually faithful and accurate to what actually happened in US history. This causes people to have such warped perceptions of historical events that when they learn the real history (which has been known all along), it looks like "new evidence" or revisionist history to them. Seriously, any time you hear or read of someone talking about what "the Founders" believed or said as if they were in unanimous agreement, you can pretty much ignore what they have to say and reason that they are severely ignorant of history.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2011 09:37
|
|
|
Taerkar posted:It shouldn't have any credibility from the get-go. He's seeking to imply that a conflict can only be because of atheism or religion. Therefore if the conflict isn't due to religious differences it must obviously be because of atheists. I already kind of mentioned this, but it's even worse than that. He's perpetuating a gigantic double standard in order to excuse religions(especially Christianity and Judaism) of violence committed by their adherents while at the same time blaming all of atheism and atheists for any crimes committed by atheists. He's saying "not all crimes committed by Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. are necessarily crimes of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc., but all crimes committed by atheists must not only be motivated by atheism, they also reflect the inherently violent nature of atheism and atheists as a whole." I'm actually not entirely disagreeing with the first part of that argument, but the second part about atheists is incredibly frustrating as it doesn't accurately reflect history or reality at all. If that weren't bad enough, D'Souza isn't some kind of marginalized right-wing hack, he's very prominent within the conservative movement, which just laps up his horrendous, demonstrably false, character assassination of pretty much any group that doesn't agree with him or the conservative party line.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2011 08:07
|
|
|
Lets Pickle posted:Yeah this article is terrible but it raises an interesting point that with or without religion people find reasons to otherize and kill each other. You mean like authoring a book titled, "The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11"?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2011 08:10
|
|
|
Saint Sputnik posted:Clifford May is loving insane. Without providing any context whatsoever he just launched into this imaginary letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri the other day: So, is the point of the editorial to assert May's views about the various people and topics contained (e.g. Iran's government, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its role in post-Jasmine Revolution Egypt, etc.), but to do so in the voice of Ayman al-Zawahiri so there is a caricature affirming and justifying his neo-con perspective? It's one of the most stilted, awkward editorials I've ever read, which is truly saying something in a world of absolutely horrible editorializing.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2011 11:11
|
|
|
Quetzadilla posted:
Hey Socrates, drink this, it's only .5% hemlock. It'll help you forget how much water is wasted to release natural gases that will cause the rest of our water to catch fire.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2011 04:56
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:I love the way it's worded- you know, sand, water, a variety of fruit flavors, and oh yeah, BENZENE. Another hilarious thing is how the author claims that there is little to no danger because of regulations in place to protect the environment, water supply, and other potential sources of chemical contamination, but they fail to mention that the Bush Administration exempted these fracking companies from many federal regulations including the Clean Water Act.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2011 10:48
|
|
|
CaptBushido posted:I thought the point of opposition to fracking wasn't that they're pumping harmful materials into the ground, but that by pumping water they loosen up petroleum, heavy metals, etc. that are ALREADY in the ground which then flows into the water supply. It's pretty standard for fracking advocates to claim that any of the harm caused by fracking was already present in those areas before fracking began. So, if you watched Tom Ridge, current fracking lobbyist for the natural gas industry, on Colbert a couple of weeks ago, you'd have heard him claim that the video evidence of flammable water in areas with heavy fracking isn't the fault of fracking because the natural gas in those areas was already doing that before the fracking began and most of the fracking material is water and sand. This is all extremely disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, but the lobbyists and energy industry don't give a gently caress about the truth, they just want to profit without any kind of regulations getting in their way.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2011 22:27
|
|
" an astonishingly ignorant response to controversy? wait, don't answer that...
|
Abandoned Toaster posted:The Columbus Dispatch is pretty typical in the editorial department. I see Cal Thomas every now and then, and most letters published seem to follow the news formula of "give both sides equal time". Most of the "crazy" ones are relatively tame talking-point pieces, although I have seen straight-up chain e-mails sent in and printed. More importantly, he's completely ignoring the point of the letter he's responding to that actual research and statistical analysis don't bear out a conclusion assumed by people fearmongering about voter fraud. It's a pretty classic response from fearmongers when they get challenged with real evidence to use some (often tangentially related) anecdote in their defense, as if the plural of "anecdote" is "data." This often comes up in discussions about healthcare reform where right wingers, who against any kind of universal healthcare system like those used by every other first-world nation, use some horror story anecdote about someone who had a bad experience in one of those systems (usually stuff about "lines" and "death panels") to refute all the statistical evidence about lower costs, better health outcomes, and overall social improvements from those "socialized" healthcare systems.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2011 10:31
|
|
|
Quetzadilla posted:Hahahaha jackpot. I loving hate these kinds of xenophobic, anti-immigration screeds. The worst part is that they are selectively leaving out all the information that would show how their opinions are the polar opposites of what actual facts and research demonstrate. E.g. that author claims various costs endured by the state of California from illegals, including "criminal justice," but he fails to tell the reader that a study from 2008 found that, in California, "Immigrants are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to commit crime in California." quote:Among men 18 to 40, the population most likely to be in institutions because of criminal activity, the report found that in California, U.S.-born men were institutionalized 10 times more often than foreign-born men (4.2 percent vs. 0.42 percent).
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2011 10:49
|
|
|
Neptr posted:Lady wrote to the local paper complaining about how the Massachusetts State Senate voted 6-32 against an amendment to Romney-care requiring identification when accessing medical care. So what would happen if the amendment passed and an illegal still needed medical care? To busy screaming "MY TAX DOLLARS" to see the answer to that one. That's not really an ice burn because the author is ignorant as hell of our tax system and how healthcare and medicine work. Socialized healthcare systems like those in every other first-world nation actually cost less and insure each nation's entire population while the US spends wildly more (in absolute terms, per capita, and as a percentage of GDP) than those nations to insure a fraction of its population. If that writer really cared about the American tax payer, they'd be in favor of socialized system like that of Massachusetts. That author is also implying the conservative trope about how only something like 50% of Americans actually are "taxpayers," which is to say that a large portion of Americans aren't net payers of federal income taxes. This completely glosses over the fact that the reason for this is that those "non-income tax payers" only don't pay because they are so loving poor. It's also ignores the fact that those poor people still pay their other taxes like FICA, sales tax, and property tax, which are the regressive taxes that hurt the poor far more than the rich. As for your question about what would happen if illegals still needed medical care, these kinds of conservatives give zero fucks about illegals and view them as subhuman scum. If they think what Joe Arpaio does to illegals is ok, they probably aren't in favor of providing medical care to illegals with tax dollars, even if illegals are a crucial part of our economy and providing healthcare to them saves us money on and cuts the costs of doing business.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2011 10:35
|
|
|
Here are two absolutely awful and hateful editorials from neo-con PR executive Eliana Benador. The links are to the rightwingwatch.org entries about the articles because the first one was pulled from the Washington Times website and the second one requires you have an account at Tea Party Nation. Eliana Benador on the Anthony Weiner scandal posted:Congressman Weiner‘s indiscretions, however, might end up inconveniencing the present Administration’s plans. “How?” you might ask. Eliana Benador on non-European immigrants posted:Some may agree that we have forgotten the lessons taught by slavery -and may be prone to not identify it even if it knocks at our doors, when we see a silent invader roaming our streets and we don’t dare call it as it is: It's pretty obvious that Benador is a racist and anti-Muslim bigot, so it says volumes about Tea Party Nation and tea baggers in general that they would embrace this awful person.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2011 07:35
|
|
|
I've read my local newspaper for years and one of my favorite sections is always the "letters to the editor" section, simply for the sheer stupidity and insanity expressed in the letters. I recently started going online to the paper's website, where you can actually comment on the letters that have been printed. Interestingly, most of the comments on the website are quite intelligent, sane, and insightful critiques of the printed bullshit. So, does this mean that the newspaper's editorial staff just sucks, that most of the people writing to the newspaper (you can submit the letters via email, too) looking to have their letters printed are stupid and crazy, or that there is some kind of age divide between the reactionaries that write to the paper and the younger, more sensible people that comment on the paper's website? Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 7, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2011 01:13
|
|
|
RC and Moon Pie posted:It may be because of where I'm from, but I've never run into an intelligent online newspaper audience. THIS is the talkback section of the Athens Banner-Herald. It's a universe where the letters (which are on the paper's actual website) are more sane than the comments. That stated, in Athens if it isn't associated with directly UGA or directly with the Banner-Herald, there is a 95% chance it's insane. That makes sense. My local paper also gets a lot of "letters" from different groups that are basically just press releases reworked to sound like they aren't generic forms just slightly reworked for the dozens of newspapers they are sent to. Even worse are the ones that are sent in by actual citizens but which are actually those form emails that conservative groups get their members and readerships to send in under the guise that they are legitimate grassroots support/criticism when they are actually just obvious astroturf. Recently, one particular astroturf letter was submitted multiple times by different people with the exact same wording and all of them were published by the paper just a month or so between each. I checked online and several other readers pointed this out but somehow the paper missed it. Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Jul 7, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2011 06:51
|
|
|
Ned posted:Do you post on there? I do as Ned, obviously, and let me tell you that I am so happy I have moved half way across the world from those idiots. Are the newspapers where you currently live any better with their editorial content and letters/comments from readers?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2011 10:13
|
|
|
Lets Pickle posted:http://ohiocitizen.org/?p=7479 The absolute worst was when Tom Ridge was on The Colbert Report and said that he's not a lobbyist for the natural gas industry, correcting Colbert who said he was. Then, Tom Ridge goes on to describe what he does for the natural gas industry, which is pretty much the textbook definition of what a corporate lobbyist does. He also pulled all that bullshit about fracking that "it's mostly sand and water" and he claimed that all those people who have flaming tap water after fracking began in their communities were wrong to blame it on the fracking and that it was already happening before the fracking began.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2011 07:51
|
|
|
Babby Formed posted:Holy crap, spreading this around to everyone I know. I have family down in southern ohio who have seen people approached by these assholes. The bit where they go so far as to tell agents to never compare db levels to anything tangible, while minor, is hilarious in it's depravity. How exactly do conservatives maintain their deregulatory, laissez faire positions when poo poo like that happens? How does all that cognitive dissonance not put them into vegetative comas?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2011 10:55
|
|
|
Saint Sputnik posted:I'm not gonna post Jay Ambrose's whole column from my paper today but this right here is a loving gem: Someone needs to start a website collecting all of the absurd metrics used to supposedly simplify things for the "common man." "There are a billion people in China. If you had a billion toothpicks, you could make a really cool scale model of the Great Wall of China!" Saint Sputnik posted:Suck the devil's dick in hell Cal. Jesus Christ, Cal Thomas is loving awful. That poo poo reads like something Ayn Rand would write, just replace "achievers" with "producers."
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2011 11:10
|
|
|
Nathilus posted:If your bills are millions, pretty much the smallest denomination used in the federal budget, your stack won't be nearly as high. Could you quantify that in how close we could get to Saturn from Earth using Big Macs bought with the money?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2011 11:29
|
|
|
Junior G-man posted:And this is a good thing according to Friedman. It's surely not another inflated bubble that will have to be bailed out, nooooooo. Don't forget that those valuations are based on some super-secret formula for internet revenue. It's almost as if the formula is basically nothing but hype, with Facebook and Twitter having little in the way of monetizing their popularity.... Remember how "valuable" youtube was perceived to be when Google bought it?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2011 11:53
|
|
|
tehllama posted:If I remember right, Facebook wasn't even cashflow positive until 2009(by which time its value was like $40 billion, despite never having turned a net profit). On the other hand, its net revenue is like $2 billion a year now. But Facebook isn't a publicly traded company, so its valuation isn't hugely important. Whenever economists, business journalists, tech journalists, etc. talk about social media companies like Twitter and Facebook as if they are some kinds of economic giants worth ungodly amounts of money, all I can think of is that South Park episode where they have various internet meme "sensations" like Tay Zonday and the Star Wars kid trying to cash in on their "internet dollars." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e-VDXhXPSE
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2011 04:18
|
|
|
fishmech posted:Tay Zonday got like a million or so all told from that one video and stuff that developed form it, as well as a decent job. Just saying dude. Isn't that because he's one of the few internet meme "stars" who actually has some talent? The Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa guy, Tron guy, Chris Crocker, and the rest of them were only popular because they were goofy and people were laughing AT them. There's not much money to make or a career to be had for lip-syncing to a song (excluding Britney Spears) or pretending to be Darth Maul.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2011 05:20
|
|
|
fishmech posted:Yes, and Twitter and Facebook (and LinkedIn for that matter) are far more like Tay than star wars kid et al. True, there is value (and great potential) in Twitter, Facebook, etc. but that's a far different matter from monetizing that value. It's a far more ambitious, ambiguous, and difficult task than having a guy with a distinctive voice and musical talent endorse Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper. Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Jul 15, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2011 05:50
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I've read one of his books. The key to understanding Cal Thomas is getting that "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" are what American was actually like in the '50s, and then the hippies and druggies and coloreds came and destroyed Western civilization. A lot of older conservatives who grew up during the 50's or were young adults then have that warped, nostalgic, revisionist history. I wonder what they would do/say if you showed them all the evidence about how middle class white families were rampantly abusing amphetamines like benzedrine inhalers during the 1940s and 1950s. If "Leave it to Beaver" was realistic to the 1950s, Mrs. Cleaver would have been high on black beauties all day.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2011 23:22
|
|
|
eviltastic posted:This is completely new and interesting information to me and if you've got a link I'd appreciate it. Some basic googling is giving me enough that it seems pretty credible, but it's just basic 'hey this is when we saw reports of abuse starting to happen' stuff. There was this really great mini-series on the History Channel a few years ago about illegal drugs that devoted each episode to a different drug. http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-Illegal-Drugs-History-Channel/dp/B000WDQ1NA http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=history+channel+hooked&aq=f The amphetamine episode details how various amphetamines became hugely popular during World War II, especially among the Nazis, as they used the drugs to keep their soldiers energized and awake to allow for the Blitzkrieg. Amphetamines were very popular among civilians after the war in the US, with very easy access as they weren't a controlled substance like marijuana. People used to take these benzedrine inhalers, that were originally used as a powerful decongestant, and break them open to get at the concentrated amphetamines inside. They'd dissolve the drugs from the cotton into a liquid and drink it to get a single huge dose of amphetamines at once. There were also various pills prescribed by doctors for virtually any illness or affliction, kind of like how doctors in California will give you a medicinal marijuana card for pretty much any medical complaint. The most interesting part of the show (to me at least) was how the prohibition of certain drugs was directly linked to racism. The prohibition of opiates was directly due to anti-Chinese sentiments among Whites that began during the Yellow Peril. Whites (especially white women) began going to segregated Chinese areas of cities on the West Coast to obtain opiates, which shocked White society, moreso to due with Whites associating with Chinese than actual drug use, as evident by anti-miscegenation laws barring marriage between Whites and Chinese. The first bans on opiate possession and use actually only applied to the Chinese, Whites could still freely possess and use opiates. Cocaine prohibition is linked to racism against Blacks, as cocaine was popular among Black laborers in the South, especially those that worked on docks and shipyards. Urban legends began to spread among southern Whites of cocaine-crazed Black laborers that were going to rape White women and kill White men, motivating Whites to push for prohibition of cocaine. Cannabis prohibition is directly a result of anti-Mexican racism in the Southwest. There was a very strong racist sentiment against Mexican immigrants among Whites in the Southwest, similar to that found today, e.g. taking the jobs of White Americans, causing crime, spreading disease, and other fallacious scapegoating. It was common for Mexican laborers to smoke cannabis to relax from their back-breaking jobs, but cannabis back then was extremely weak compared to today's strains, so it really wasn't all that intoxicating or "dangerous." So, the racist Whites sought to go after this particularly distinctive habit of certain Mexican immigrants, which is apparent from the propagandist change in nomenclature from "cannabis" to the Spanish "marijuana," the latter word being extremely uncommon among Whites prior to those anti-cannabis efforts.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2011 01:36
|
|
|
Here is pretty much the worst thing I've read all week from Star Parker.Star Parker posted:A Chicago Sun Times article, headlined "The disappearing black middle class," reports on the disproportionate impact of these hard economic times on blacks. I'll repeat the important bit if anyone missed it amongst the bolding: Star Parker posted:Almost a half century since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, too many blacks still don't want to be free and accept the responsibilities that go with it. Too many blacks still believe that the condition of their lives is caused by what someone else does or has.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2011 02:56
|
|
|
Saint Sputnik posted:Yeah my paper runs her and I can't stand it. That's the first piece of hers I've ever read, are they all that bad? I don't understand how anyone with a conscience could run any piece like the one I posted.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2011 20:51
|
|
|
Saint Sputnik posted:They're all like that. "Poor black people are all brainwashed into slavery by the liberals, they'd be happier if only conservatives had complete and utter control over every aspect of their lives." Ah, so she's like Alveda King? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveda_King What so aggravating is that all the higher unemployment, lower net worth, lower pay, etc. for Black Americans is basically because conservatives fight anti-poverty measures and affirmative action policies tooth and nail. She's basically being an apologist for the group causing these things that she's laying at the feet of liberals.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2011 02:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:31 |
|
|
Saint Sputnik posted:Yeah looks like it. Maybe conservatives have hiring quotas? Jay Ambrose posted:Concerning entitlements – mainly Medicare and Social Security – the amount we owe on them beyond revenue projections is $61.6 trillion... Where the hell does he get that figure from? My understanding of social security is that it pays for itself and regularly runs surpluses, the only problem being with the program is that the trust fund gets raided by politicians to pay for other programs, just like when they raid teachers' pension funds. And aren't a significant portion of the unfunded liabilities for Medicare due to the Bush Administration expanding prescription drug coverage but not setting up any way to pay for it, incurring trillions in liabilities? Jay Ambrose posted:and you couldn’t pay that off if you confiscated all the income and wealth of every rich person out there. Try to borrow our way out of it, and you’d have to give China the United States as collateral. Anyone who refers to taxation as "confiscation" is a loving rear end in a top hat. Jay Ambrose posted:The House Republicans are at war, not with government, but with government abuses, including an irresponsibly accumulated bipartisan federal debt that could spell ruination. That’s not just the Tea Party talking, but top thinkers at institutions like Harvard. It's deceptive and intellectually dishonest as hell for him to say that the debts are "bipartisan," which is his way of pawning off responsibility onto Democrats, as it acts as a dogwhistle to conservatives that says, "our deficits and debts are due to those dirty, tax-and-spend liberals."   The vast majority of our debt was accumulated by Republican presidential administrations and due to Republican congressional policies of cutting taxes while increasing spending on their pet projects (wars, Medicare expansions to pander to elderly voters, military boondoggles and spending like Star Wars, etc.) Republicans are just the biggest hypocrites, especially those that were in Congress during the Bush Administration and suddenly became deficit hawks when Obama got elected. Seriously, Paul Ryan is an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2011 06:03
|
|