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/\ A better one for concealing underlying psychosis than "Nutella."Bob Nudd posted:This is a nice example of how right and left are both inclined to use human-scaled, anecdotal stories of zero significance to prop up their conceptions of the world. Except when 'the left' does it, it isn't some Alzheimer's-ridden hack washout trumpeting a zero-significance anecdote that wasn't even remotely true despite it becoming a completely accepted meme that is pervasive even after almost 40 years.
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Oct 24, 2012 10:45
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Walter posted:Maddow's approach, and frankly, Jon Stewart's as well, works because it's evidence-based. She doesn't call names, but she calls bullshit when she sees it. Stewart does the same thing. This is also why her book is loving incredibly good. It's highly impartial when it comes to pointing fingers (which she does, at practically every major US political figure since WWII) and is backed up solidly with sources. The thing is, it's a narrow enough topic to allow for a certain kind of approachability that comes with writing a full book about ~50 years of removing all safeguards against just going to war/killing people whenever a president says so. Basically, when it comes to the typical Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly books, they're pablum to be consumed by people who already agreed with them, whereas Maddow - at least in print - makes an argument which transcends "hurr durr bad <party>" and attacks apolitical distinctions like executive power. That's sort of the core of the difference between people like Maddow and people like Hannity. Maddow doesn't start with "Democrats are great and conservatives are poo poo" whereas Hannity starts from "Liberals want to enslave everyone."
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Nov 25, 2012 17:51
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800peepee51doodoo posted:I was being sarcastic. It seems to me that a lot of people like to gloss over the horrors of past wars but find it harder to ignore the savagery of contemporary war so there is a tendency to think that it's somehow different now. I think the big difference between past wars and present wars in the US' history is that once WWII ended they stopped being as morally pure in terms of ends. Stopping fascism, freeing slaves, protecting the neutrality of Belgium and keeping France from becoming a German acquisition, etc. This isn't to say all wars or military action prior to 1945 were any more morally sound than now - see the Philippines, the Spanish-American war, various deployments of force to protect despotic governments from popular rebellion due to favorable trade treatment under the incumbent regime - but we certainly have lost the moral rampart we used to occupy when we fought against fascism and slavery. We engage in war as an early out rather than after ultimatums and deadlines or god forbid actual belligerence against the country by uniformed forces. A slow creep of changes to the way pur country fundamentally operates and carries itself is to blame for that, and it absolutely was not a novel direction by the time the USSR was our chosen enemy.
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Dec 2, 2012 06:59
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Mitchicon posted:Fixed. Nail on head. "The West," as an entity, was sticking its dick into the Mideast for generations even before really going at it in WWI. We drew lines that in similar fashion to Africa took no heed of ethnic boundaries or religious divisions or desires of actual citizens. Nearly every source of enmity between groups in the region is a lie used as a loving distraction from the fact that it's been outside imperialism pitting people against each other for centuries now. Do you think that after all the history of Abrahamic adherents living more or less peaceably together it would suddenly start being a valid excuse? No, the reason is and always has been anger against subjugation, interference, invasion, occupation, and remote denial of self-determination. The poo poo about irrational hatred based on one intangible reason or another is just a convenient smokescreen, meant to lend credence to the still-extant and no-less-horrific doctrine of the White Man's Burden. We're basically down to the point where we (The West, again) must interfere with the people of the Arab world and Mideast in general in order to restore order or peace or whatever, never mind that it was this same imperialism that drives the unrest. We are not a natural element in the region and the sooner we realize that maybe we have no business using it as a playground the better.
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Dec 2, 2012 08:31
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colonelslime posted:This is exactly why I get irrationally angry at some people in my class when they talk about how Egypt is turning away from the US. What's worse is that a lot of people use the anger and rage that these regimes generated as a justification for why the dictators were a better option than democracy. This is exactly why they hate the west, because we keep loving with their governments and then blaming their "backwards" religion when they get justifiably angry. This kind of stuff is what pisses me off - what you're talking about, not what you're specifically saying. US-based Con media will gripe and piss and moan about how "we saved Europe" and how they're being such jerks despite that, but completely ignore poo poo like how the US has been explicitly supporting Israel in very material form ever since the Johnson administration. All that poo poo we say about how Iran supports this or that group in the Mideast? That's all true about the US. Not the same groups, but we've got one hell of an operation running interference over there.
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Dec 2, 2012 10:32
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Dopilsya posted:I don't know where you're from when you say 'we', but one thing I want to add is that the United States was actually quite popular in the Middle East in the early 20th century. It was seen as the one country that didn't have imperialistic designs on their territory. IIRC it wasn't until after WWII that the Americans were seen as taking over Britain's role as coloniser when the relationship began to sour. I mean 'we' as in quote:"The West," as an entity because you're more or less correct about the US, Britain and France were doing the main part of the fuckery clear up through the early 50's, as you are saying. Then came the anti-Soviet craze and we saw commies wherever people started telling dictators and royalty they could shove it up their rear end. Which is what we're doing now except instead of communism it's  "islamofascism" standing in for "people telling dictators and royalty to shove it up their rear end."Warcabbit posted:So, exactly how long would we have to be there, sticking our dicks into things, to be a natural element in the region? Has it been lawless theocratic warfare for thousands of years? I had always thought what war there was was just local conflicts and/or uprisings against whatever imperial power attempted to "unite" the place. Iran's run by Twelvers and many of their neighbors are Sunni, but even when they invaded Sunni-governed (Shi'a majority) Iraq, it was over territorial disputes, not some loony crusade deal.
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Dec 3, 2012 04:11
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Pope Guilty posted:Wingnut Welfare is hardly a new thing. It's also, I think, a big driver of how crazy the party doctrine is becoming. Get tossed out on your rear end by a public that thinks you're loving nuts for thinking women deserve to be raped and forced to bear the resultant baby should they stray from the kitchen? That's okay, come take a job driving party discourse in our media empire, you'll have a loyal audience and we'll pay you well! It's like they just bounce back from losing elections by saying "gently caress you" to the sensibilities of the voting majority and get taken in by people like WND and Fox who then let them whip the faithful into an even crazier frenzy in time for the next election.
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Dec 4, 2012 04:37
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FAN OF NICKELBACK posted:The damage from the horrific bomb (IED) (Iraqi Death Machine) that needs to be under 24/7 media coverage for the sake of our national security? A small fire was almost immediately put out and a metal door frame was blackened from the smoke. Well by now you should be aware that they have a massive problem with anything being black.
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Dec 4, 2012 09:34
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Myrdhale posted:How can the crazy nutso base have enough money and assets to support these guys though? The corporate base are rich enough to insulate themselves from conservative social policy and know they will benefit from favoritism on taxes and regulatory/labor policy. Foreign policy for elected conservatives basically goes along with the poo poo Smedley Butler lamented some 80 years ago or so, making various regions safe for business interests. Of course it's with the exception of Ronpaul on the foreign policy front alone, but he's retiring anyway. So yes, the crazies get bankrolled by the business plotters just like the rest of them. It's just a marketing type of setup - fund candidate with social message x to get economic plan y implemented, profit. Same with news channels - editorialize to shape an ideologically uniform audience, then sell that market predictability to advertisers. The advertisers on FNC don't care about the audience's ideas on abortion or prayer in schools, but you bet your rear end they'd at least consider buying their gold futures or Chevy Tahoes or post-apocalyptic hermit gear.
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Dec 5, 2012 00:49
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Unless it's more rich corporate backing that's driving all of it, but drat, you'd think they'd want a better return than driving off 7/8ths of the possible electorate demographics.
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pangstrom posted:It's not his "style", it's that the guy is impossible to employ and unbearable to work with or for. You can say the same about any talented person who flames out of multiple jobs and can't get anyone who has shared a working environment with him to pipe up for him. Yeah, the way he set up his MSNBC show with special comments and Friday night literature made it seem like he would have been a big ol' Objectivist (as in it screamed "I'm ALWAYS loving RIGHT, and this spotlight is ALL MINE gently caress YOU") were he not seemingly interested in the well-being of other human beings. His heart and a good part of his mind may have been in the right place when it came to considering others as at least human beings, but his show really came off as a bit egotistical, as though he saw himself as the next Ed Murrow.
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Dec 5, 2012 08:00
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Lycus posted:My joy over Limbaugh's ratings plummeting is tempered by the fact that his #1 spot is being taken by Savage. I'm not sure if terrible radio shows are ever not going to be the most popular. Limbaugh is falling because he's a bad person and people are finding out. Savage can have the same thing happen to him if he joins in with the shock jock who honestly believes the racist/misogynistic poo poo they're saying.
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Dec 7, 2012 03:25
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I must have been an odd kid. I grew up in a somewhat wealthy household as well as a working poor household and a solid middle-middle class one - parents divorced when I was 6, Dad was/is a lawyer, Mom a Winn Dixie deli hand and later a medical assistant married to a beer warehouse super. I knew what taxes meant, and it was my father who told me taxes buy civilization, I never knew where the line came from but he always quoted that line. I grew up with a respect for the safety net as I and my siblings were assigned to my mother for primary custody. No family issues outside of money, and that went away by the time I was in middle school. Lived on food stamps, knew what WIC was, etc. Also had been to Europe, Australia, the Caribbean, Central America and all but the most depopulated states by the time I went to high school. Suffice it to say I didn't run across Rand until college and after a short tryst rooted in self-worship and conceit (I was the smart kid in school, academic decathlons and poo poo, got praise from teachers, so the whole self-importance complex took root) I realized that Objectivism was a bunch of psychobabble frippery designed to give awful people an esoteric excuse to be lovely and never accept their fallibility or even acknowledge their common humanity. I had an odd childhood in that sense. Grew up in a poor household but simultaneously never wanted for anything. Got a sort of philosophical education from my father who, while being decidedly fiscally conservative, is practical about it - knows the savings of UHC, gets the tax problems, just thinks we spend too much on dumb poo poo. I don't quite know how best to explain it other than I grew up simultaneously privileged and poor and have a political mindset that is both socially and fiscally liberal in the sense that I believe in the right of the government to equalize inequality through taxation and transfer payments, but also fiscally conservative in the sense that we spend too much on the military and spies and the subsidization of dirty industry. I guess that goes with the social part, though.
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Dec 8, 2012 08:37
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Zeroisanumber posted:He took over in 1991 when he was fairly young, in his early forties. He's 64 years old now, so he has plenty of time to act like a jackass in the future. Not to mention battiness is the elixir of immortality.
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Feb 14, 2013 20:04
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A Winner is Jew posted:Reminder that playing golf as president is fine, you just need to give a speech to the press before you tee off. God drat, he never once gave a gently caress. I've seen that video before, but not in years. Brings back all the ol' piss and vinegar like it was yesterday.
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Feb 19, 2013 09:08
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Cheapsteaks posted:We should restrict presidents from playing golf so they can find REAL sports to play. Woody Harrelson couldn't.
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Feb 19, 2013 12:56
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Minorities posted:Isn't Woody Harrelson a libertarian conspiracy theorist?  I know you're probably too young to get the reference, but if you just Google where Woody Harrelson and Basketball coincide, you find that X marks the spot at the movie White Men Can't Jump.
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Feb 20, 2013 15:59
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Warchicken posted:We really need to outsource our death squads to save money. Thus capitalism will have reached its true peak. Iran-Contra, Been there, done that, had a trial, Oliver North got famous. They (Reagan and crew) were using the funds from the missiles they sold to Iran (for hostages) to fund the Salvadoran death squads. The holding corporation (non-governmental because they routed the whole scheme through Israel and who in their right mind wanted to be seen selling first-world weapons to revolutionary Iran anyw-oh wait) was outside government oversight because Congress told him to shove his plans up his old wandering rear end once they realized he wasn't just in another one of his ambulatory fugues and was honestly asking to go all Clear and Present Danger on Salvadoran popular-movement leftists because commies.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:46
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Warchicken posted:Why is the right convinced that Iran loves him, he hates Jews, and he will destroy Israel? I thought they were just being obstructionist poo poo heads, I didn't realize they had an ostensible reason for it. Because Obama. No, seriously, that's why. They're just full of irrational hatred and stopped conducting themselves like adults, or even adolescents by that token, a long time ago.
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Feb 27, 2013 09:42
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Zewle posted:The rural areas of the south were crushed because their aristocracy got its poo poo wrecked by less horrid people. They've survived in 3rd world-esque conditions since, but we tried to be cool with them with the new deal and they went out of their way to vote for the dismantling of safety nets for the guys promising to stick it to black people. I think we spoiled them with the Tennessee Valley authority. They were spoiled by nobody listening to Sumner and instead being all lovey-dovey. Which was noble, we normally don't need vindictive politicians, but the South decided they'd ignore the whole 'stop being fuckers' aspect of Appomattox. Instead of coming to their senses or bleeding their hatred all out in the war, they just cloaked their bigotry behind economic and locally civil disenfranchisement. If they couldn't own slaves then bah gawd they would still treat black people like animals. Then Plessy came along and they had to treat black people like humans, but they didn't need to accept them as a part of society as opposed to quarantining them. Then Brown came along and they had to accept black people as members of society, but bah gawd they didn't have to let them vote and bah gawd they would make sure they kept them darkies in line with intimidation, economic alienation, and violence. Then that was illegal and now all they do is act like fuckers around the edges of the law, and if it means they beat down on poor people of all ethnicities, then bah gawd it hurts the darkies more because they spent a loving century making sure they never made it past being janitors and dishwashers whereas whites were not so encumbered.
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Mar 1, 2013 01:33
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:If he had looked, he presumably would not have stepped in front of a car. Maybe he, you know, expected the loving car to stop at a goddamned red light. I don't believe in victim blaming, and that poo poo loving bothered me.
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Mar 1, 2013 08:00
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foot posted:"the" Southern Accent Sorry, the Southern basket of accents. It isn't like you hear someone twanging away and start wondering if they're from Wisconsin.
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Mar 9, 2013 13:21
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e: /\ That's because the NYC accent sounds like you're getting yelled at by someone with Down Syndrome.cheerfullydrab posted:The real Jefferson would be so, so, so upset at the president being black. I like to think Jefferson sounded like Boomhauer from King of the Hill. Just straight-up unintelligible Appalachian mumbling.
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Mar 9, 2013 14:32
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ponzicar posted:Wait, I thought most conservatives were against Jefferson's last point there? I assume they mean the PPACA birth control thing, not the problem with forcing christianity on citizens through force of law.
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Mar 9, 2013 21:36
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The GOP talk about bootstraps is in line with the straitlaced (dare I say conservative) view that beating your kids makes them more successful adults.
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Mar 10, 2013 07:47
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Mr Interweb posted:Hey, that song was pretty catchy. Rush dropped oxy and watched the time cop TV series where the Nazis figured out time travel. It is there that future-hitler made a quip about lahvink ze Obahmacaer.
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Mar 18, 2013 06:44
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tractor fanatic posted:I think it's just troubling in general to hold 16 year olds fully responsible for even the most serious of crimes. We would find it barbaric to execute a 16 year old murderer. 16 is getting pretty close, if not well into tried-as-an-adult territory. Hell, it's almost a given that they would have been were it not for the 17-year old's Alabaster Skin of Innocence. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 19, 2013 16:40
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Jack Gladney posted:One of them is black: this is much closer to how sports-worship teams up with rape culture to cause huge swaths of people to team up against a victim of rape because they love a game where a man throws a ball. The 17-year old is white. An oversight on my part.
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Mar 19, 2013 17:01
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Sean Archer posted:Be sure to look up some quotations from him on the subject, particularly the one where he describes getting a "crusader cross" tattooed on his arm to show he was a "Christian" and stick it to the "savages" he fought against. Well, if you're going for "decent person" and you find your way to "Going on a holy crusade against the Mohametan Untermenschen" you could call that misguided. On the same token he's got two first names. You can never be too careful around people with two first names.
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Mar 20, 2013 10:38
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SoSimpleABeginning posted:The "walls of meat" often bench and squat well north of 500 and 700 pounds, respectively, and run sub 5-second 40-yard-dashes while weighing 300 pounds. I'm pretty glad a lot of people are pointing out the actual athleticism of O-Linemen. They may look like Shrek but remember their job is to prevent another Shrek from getting by without actually grabbing onto them, plus being able to react to and block poo poo like blitzes and running plays that take the carrier through the line. That weight is intentional and serves as extra volume and mass, and they train constantly to keep their musculature and skeleton up to the task of keeping it all way more agile than it would look to a layperson. It's not something you would want to use to justify some slob being the lazy kind of fat, because the amount of calories these guys take in to keep their weight up is staggering, almost a daily workout in itself.
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Mar 21, 2013 22:21
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Isn't there something to be said about the size of our armed forces being necessary as the armed forces of so many of our allies have been scaled down? In order to take on a rising superpower like China, we need to constantly be ahead of them in terms of armaments and in order to maintain our footholds around the world. Call me a Classical Realist, but isn't it better that we be the world hegemon and not somebody else? That world hegemon bullshit is what has turned the mideast into a shitshow (ever wonder why dirt-poor people in the sticks are so religious?) and lent a lot of fuel to the fire that bore Al Qaeda. Do people just lack the personal awareness of how incredibly loving stupid they sound when they mewl about our government being dicks to us domestically while cheerleading for our government to be dicks to other countries around the world, cost and all? Did you go to the beaten wife school of political science or am I missing where you provided a reasoned foundation for your double standard?
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Mar 22, 2013 11:15
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Please always preface noted war criminal Oliver North's name with 'noted war criminal,' thank you god bless. I think it would ruin the fidelity of a quote, though.
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Aug 7, 2014 23:27
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FMguru posted:Nirvana's output really tailed off after that period, I wonder why. So does Courtney Love. E: Democrats are Audioslave, Conservatives are Lana Del Rey, Teabaggers are DragonForce. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 08:36
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pentyne posted:Someone like that could never happened again. The degree of Reagan's dementia/Alzheimer's during his second term is debated, but no one can really dispute the fact that major red flags started showing up. Darkman Fanpage posted:quote: So they've elected a senile president, then with Bush they elected a completely fried president. Maybe they'll go for the trifecta and elect an autistic president.
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Aug 9, 2014 18:29
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