|
Armani posted:E: A six-year Iraq war veteran had to be escorted from our store yesterday because he kept talking about how Obama took away his American rights and life and was scaring children. He was incredibly pissed off because he felt no one else but him cared about American interests, and everyone else seems less human to him because they care about minorities and welfare. To be fair, that guy probably has some emotional baggage going on. Hell, my father fought in Vietnam and only within the last few years came to terms with his PTSD and how it has affected his entire life. What the reaction should be for that soldier is pity and hopefully some counseling (having political opinions is fine; ranting in public in such a way that you scare people in a public space is not).
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2014 22:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 11:50 |
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Oh man I'm so glad I didn't go to any restaurants on Veteran's Day where the staff was doing this. It's really irritating, in that the only people that go out of their way to do it are people that would never dream of joining the military. Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that sort of the point? People thank veterans because joining the military is seen as something extraordinary and as something of a sacrifice.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2014 03:27
|
|
|
spoon0042 posted:There was a guy on Fresh Air or something last week who, you know, does actual work helping veterans with the issues they face. He said that merely thanking a veteran for their service is the emptiest of gestures. Kind of like slapping a yellow ribbon on your car, big deal. On the other hand he did say that if "Thank you for your service" is the beginning of a conversation in which you attempt to understand what they're going through, go for it. Fair enough. The only veterans I talk to on a regular basis are family members, so obviously the conversations run a lot deeper than a shallow "Thank you for your service."
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2014 04:39
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Young people are less racist, but only because young people are less white (America's shifting demographics at work). Young white people are just as terrible as white people always are. gently caress off. A lot of young white people do recognize the racism and aren't happy about it. We also do our best to not perpetuate it. Yeah, there are young white people who are assholes, but we also aren't one monolithic whole.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
N. Senada posted:Maybe you young white people should be policing yourselves a little better I try. I call out people around me when they spout racist bullshit. It's not much, but I've engaged several people in honest discussions and helped change the opinions of people around me. There's a hell of a lot of entrenched racism, some of which I am guilty of. I'm doing my best to recognize and address it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2014 00:07
|
|
|
It's almost like there are two poles with different conditions or something.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2014 17:07
|
|
|
pentyne posted:Even better, once you change your mind, as so many 13-18 year olds will do repeatedly, adult conservatives will openly and aggressively insult you. Wait, did someone unironically suggest reading Atlas Shrugged as an educational material? What in the frefalling gently caress are they thinking? Also, amusingly, I was fairly conservative in high school, and then once I went to college and spent time around people who weren't also white and middle class, I suddenly had very similar realizations about how much bullshit had been shoved down my throat with respect to social conservatism.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2014 05:45
|
|
|
skaboomizzy posted:I remember seeing a poster about scholarship money for writing an essay about The Fountainhead every loving day in junior high in the classroom we had for "gifted" kids. Nobody ever read the thing, let alone wrote the essay. This would've been the early 90's (I am old). We read it in high school and there was a scholarship offered for it if I remember correctly. I think a few people submitted their in-class essays for it, but I have no idea what the results were.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2014 09:18
|
|
|
Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Before the 17th century people thought sperm carried tiny people that would grow in the womb. Aristotle even thought that females were formed because of too little heat in the womb. Females were thought to be, almost literally, half-baked men. Really neat biology thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature-dependent_sex_determination - some reptiles actually do have their gender determined by the temperature of the egg. Absolutely nothing to do with humans, of course, but neat nonetheless.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2014 06:42
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Sign language is a completely foreign language to English, and the competency of deaf people with written English varies widely for this reason (especially since congenitally deaf people have never even heard English and have to memorize written English like it's glyphs or something). Saying we don't need sign-language Bibles is much the same as saying "well, no point in handing out Spanish Bibles in immigrant communities, we have ESL classes right so just give 'em English Bibles". Fair enough. I was also under the impression that deaf people would universally have no real problems with reading, but it makes sense that without having ever heard a language, it might be much harder to speak it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2014 22:23
|
|
|
Dr. VooDoo posted:I mean sure the recent census of Birmingham puts the Muslim population at about 11-15% but who lets facts get in the way when there are scary brown people to freak out about? To be fair, he did issue a full apology later and promise to donate money to a charity in Birmingham, but the damage is already done. People at work were talking about this poo poo before, and it's just going to add more fuel to the fire.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2015 00:14
|
|
|
Shbobdb posted:As an aside, many of the "Great American Criminals" (like Jesse James) weren't stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, they were just hardcore ex-Confederates. Which American folk heroes aren't racist? Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan? As far as I know, one just likes planting trees and the other likes cutting 'em down (and has a blue ox, maybe?). I think that might be just about it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2015 08:55
|
|
|
Takoluka posted:Why are vaccinations the go-to boogieman? Like, why not something like air pollution? I mean, these people are hardcore about "NOT PUTTING CHEMICALS INTO OUR CHILDREN" and yet a little smog every day, all week long ain't no thing. Needles are scary.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2015 16:48
|
|
|
comes along bort posted:One of the bigger problems is all the slab foundation houses they'd built in Florida, and continued to do so after Andrew which is just insane. They'd have been better off slapping them on floating docks. There were some pretty amazing houses I saw built on Sullivan's Island out in South Carolina where the house was a hemisphere sunk into the ground. During a hurricane, the wind would blow over the building pretty easily, and since the ground floor was a garage, water could wash through it when necessary. It was a neat design and those houses lasted through some nasty hurricanes when the houses around them would collapse.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2015 03:17
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:Dear Matt Walsh, Be somewhat fair, he said elective plastic surgery. Reconstructive surgery is done under the guidance of a doctor after a disfiguring injury and wouldn't fall under what he says. He's still wrong, but at least he's not arguing against a legitimate medical treatment.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2015 03:27
|
|
|
Crowsbeak posted:I see it as a slippery slope to get rid of tenure completely. Why is this a bad thing?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2015 08:16
|
|
|
site posted:Shoot them in the back of the head. Quick. As painless as we can do it. Not great for the mental health of the executioner though. Maybe we could make a machine to do it?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2015 21:17
|
|
|
StandardVC10 posted:You heard it here first folks, New York City school children don't get Christmas or Easter off. To be fair, not getting Easter off would be a problem.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2015 20:43
|
|
|
mr. mephistopheles posted:No, they think they would all go away if black people would stop talking about being black. Of course, the hilarious thing is that even if everyone were white, we'd just go right back to hating the Irish.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2015 07:41
|
|
|
ErIog posted:Yeah, old guys just give up on life and stop enjoying looking lecherously at young women. That is certainly a thing older men are known for. Hey, speak for yourself! I'm only reading Hannity's Spring Break segments for the articles.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2015 01:32
|
|
|
Hazo posted:
Okay, Step 1 and Step 2 seem fine, Step 3 is iffy, but I can see where they're coming from (you may be hurting, but at least your immortal soul is fine or something?). Steps 4 and 5 are pure  however.Edit: I mean, Step 2 is to blame the older person, and Steps 4 and 5 directly contradict that. What on earth was the person who wrote this thinking?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2015 05:15
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:It's funny how conservatives are always about lowering taxes because "well you know what you need more than some government bureaucrat", free markets are perfectly efficient at moving goods to where they're needed, blah blah blah...but when it comes to the poor it's like "oh no we need a government run nanny service to watch over everyone because humans have no innate biological desire to consume food, and will spend all their money on DVDs and bling while starving to death" Poor = bad, therefore poor people = bad. Stupid = bad, therefore poor people = stupid. This means they can't be trusted with money. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2015 08:45
|
|
|
Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Yup this happened My mother and grandmother do that all the time? How is this a thing? Edit: Hell, my glasses are transition lenses, so if there's any UV around it looks like I'm wearing sunglasses inside.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2015 19:26
|
|
|
Bunleigh posted:Today David Brooks grudgingly wrote that body cameras are probably a good idea before writing an entire column about how sad it is we'll lose the Andy Griffith-like relationship he imagines America has with its cops. Holy poo poo, what a pile of dreck. Even as a white dude in a relatively affluent area, I still don't regard cops as my friends. I feel safer if they're around and I'm not driving, but all of the four interactions that I've had with them have been professional, and never an "intimate friendship." I want cops to be professional and to go by the book.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2015 04:08
|
|
|
Barudak posted:Are we sure that wasn't supposed to be 2.3 pullups? I think it was 23 pullups over the course of his lifetime.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2015 03:26
|
|
|
Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Cue Republican outrage in 3,21 Okay, wait, what the hell? How can a chimp challenge anything in court?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2015 19:50
|
|
|
FuzzySkinner posted:gas prices have done down during the obama administration though? Yes, but that was a good thing and therefore something that happened in spite of him and not because of him.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2015 21:42
|
|
|
paranoid randroid posted:I believe that unpacking the petty, vicious tribalism of a thread dedicated to wringing its hands over petty, vicious tribalism is a valid line of discussion. On the other hand, the soon to be blind guy got exactly what he voted for and wanted. He should be ecstatic! The system is working perfectly according to the political beliefs that he holds. Yeah, it sucks that he's going to lose his eyesight, and I'd prefer dragging him and all of his ilk kicking and screaming over to nationalized health care so that this wouldn't have happened in the first place (especially since he'd have seen a doctor at the first sign of trouble and avoided the whole mess). On the other hand, he was literally asking for the current outcome.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2015 00:13
|
|
|
It's funny. In an alternate world, this guy gets insurance at a reasonable rate thanks to the affordable care act allowing a diabetic person to get a premium he or she can afford. He then has a health issue, goes to the doctor, everything is covered and he goes right back to work. This could, and should, have been a poster story for how well the affordable care act can help people. Instead, he's going blind and blames the law that, had he complied with, would have saved his vision and livelihood.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2015 00:27
|
|
|
Popular Thug Drink posted:wait, are you saying his diabetes-related health problems are because he has incorrect politics Yes, actually. Had he bought health insurance (which he could afford, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act), then he would be fine. He didn't buy health insurance, and while it may not specifically be true in his case, there are plenty of people who hate Obama and don't buy health insurance out of spite. He's a diabetic smoker who somehow thought that being a diabetic smoker meant that he wouldn't need health insurance. In short, he's a complete and utter moron.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
Screaming Idiot posted:Exactly. The reason why I'm up in arms about this is because it's happened to a lot of people I know. Otherwise good, kind, charitable people who support awful politicians and terrible policies because they sounded good and because that what Their Side was doing. I do take issue with this part. A responsible adult will purchase insurance, especially any responsible adult with diabetes, and this goes double after the Affordable Care Act made it affordable for that to be an option.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2015 02:01
|
|
|
Nonsense posted:Or at least finance the treatments, and not go begging on the internet like some tween girl funding her trip to Europe. It gets even crazier when you realize that he is/was the sole provider in his family. He owes it to his family to have good health insurance and life insurance just in case something precisely like this happens. This isn't the case where you have someone who is too poor to afford insurance, or otherwise has something unfortunate happen. This is a situation entirely of his own making - he has a diagnosed medical condition that he fails to properly treat, and he presumably was informed that this sort of thing happens to people with diabetes who fail to treat their condition. He could have afforded insurance, only started to look for insurance after the poo poo hit the fan, and then got upset when he couldn't game the system and proceeded to call the whole thing "unfair." There's so little to sympathize with here, precisely because this is the sort of person who believes that people should rely on themselves, who then failed to do what he needed to do to keep himself healthy, despite being armed with the tools to do so, and even going so far as to break the law to gently caress himself over. Edit: Screaming Idiot posted:He thought he'd be asking for a handout. He's wrong, but he only wanted to stick to his values. Now he's learning just how wrong he was, and he's scrambling to make ends meet while trying to make sense of the situation. Purchasing insurance on the free market is anything but asking for a handout. It's what responsible adults who have the means to do so across the entire country do so that they don't get hosed over by medical conditions. We shouldn't be in this situation, but that's the way it is, and he had every opportunity to do the responsible thing for himself and his family. Dirk the Average fucked around with this message at 02:12 on May 13, 2015 |
|
#
¿
May 13, 2015 02:10
|
|
|
Intel&Sebastian posted:Blindy McBlinderson posted some updates to his gofundme acknowledging liberals helping him (while also "crucifying" him in the comments hahaha). He also acknowledged that he's "partly" to blame for his situation and said he should have bought insurance in an interview. Wow, that disingenuous fuckwit. He is entirely responsible for his own predicament, and doesn't even have the grace to admit it. What an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 01:32
|
|
|
Hazo posted:It sounds like the Islamophobic bigots in Idaho holding back the ratification will actually affect people across the country (and world?), but that article is so shittily written ("for parents' to get") it's hard to tell. Nor can I tell what exactly about the bill is sympathetic to Islam, other than "it involves people outside of the US, some of whom may be brown." The fear is that these child support agreements may be ruled upon in courts that fall under Shariah law. It's fearmongering bullshit because the treaty specifically calls out that anything prescribed by international courts has to be reasonable under US law, according to the article.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2015 03:47
|
|
|
Pharmaskittle posted:I dunno if I'm uninformed or just representative of my generation, but I'm in my late 20s and literally don't know what station I'd lIsten to if I wanted to hear national talk radio like Rush Limbaugh. I know that a couple local rock stations syndicate a couple shithead right wing comedians out of I think Texas and I listen to a local black celebrity talk guy on the way to work, but other than that I assume it's all on AM or XM? Used to be AM; the talk/news station I listen to when commuting (local news, so their views are oddly party-neutral and they stick to their own agenda) had Rush at one point. I think he moved from that station to a station called the Patriot, which was fantastic, since I no longer have to change my radio station during lunch. It was hilarious to listen to him freak out over poo poo he had no idea about though, especially since one of my coworkers would unironically parrot his bullshit like it was some sort of revelation. Thankfully, he has since learned that a lot of those talking points are bullshit.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2015 14:56
|
|
|
FuzzySkinner posted:I'm at a loss as to why we let people like the Duggar family have the voice and influence that they have in this country. Hey now, if innocent god-fearing straight Christians are molesting children, just think how much worse those godless gay heathens are!
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2015 10:59
|
|
patriot.
|
Thump! posted:For most cars you can do it with just an adjustable wrench and a drain pan. Probably the easiest bit of maintenance you can do on a car aside from maybe changing the batteries. Though you do need to dispose of the oil properly! If I remember correctly, most car maintenence shops do it for free.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2015 21:51
|
|
|
Tender Bender posted:I used Facebook for like ten years, I was in college when it rolled out, but I decided to "quit" and in the past year I've logged on maybe three times and I couldn't care less. Like I barely remember it's a thing, it's amazing how you don't realize how much stuff on there is just completely unimportant. Honestly it's mostly super convenient for organizing events.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2015 23:52
|
|
|
Dr. Faustus posted:So is my phone, or my e-mail. Minus all the public superficial drama and bullshit. Is there a good interface for a Google calendar like thing that allows coordination?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2015 00:35
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 11:50 |
|
|
Ghost of Reagan Past posted:I'm catching up on the Charleston poo poo I can't fathom the kind of person that would look at what happened in Charleston and say "nope, not a racially motivated crime." I work with people like this. The problem they have is that they watch Fox News for all of their news and are virtually incapable of thinking critically about anything. It doesn't take a hell of a lot of effort to convince them otherwise, but they're right back to thinking along Fox's lines the moment they get back to the nearest television.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2015 11:49
|
|