wow. Looks like Arizona needs a new congressman. Kinda hard to legislate with a bullet in your head (and several also dead assistants. Jason, still think we need the 2nd admendment, as is?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
My favorite part is how in the last election, the teabaggers used lots of gun targeting analogies for the people they didn't like. And they talk about "revolution" and getting rid of those who disagree with them. Well, this is the beginning of that fallout. Anyone who didn't see it coming was deluding themselves.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
What a shame, I was hoping she would have pulled through.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
wow. Looks like Arizona needs a new congressman. Kinda hard to legislate with a bullet in your head (and several also dead assistants. Jason, still think we need the 2nd admendment, as is?
Er...you got the wrong poster, guy. I hate our gun laws- here in Flori-Duh it's jsut as bad as Arizona. Maybe worse with the "stand your ground law".
I really think that, despite the sheriff's statement taht the congresswoman was targeted, that the Federal Judge was the main target. The shooter had been questioned in 07' by federal marshalls for saying that judge "needs to be killed". It seems that judge had allowed a civil rights violation lawsuit to proceed against some local rancher, which got the local right-wing nutter radio shows ramping up the rhetoric and having callers voice their death threats against this judge.
The extreme right-wingers have been pushing the possibility of violence as an answer to the country's problems- and I'd call that inciting violence.
That dingbat Jan Brewer has released a statement saying how "Heartbroken" she is- this after all the lies and fear tactics she's been useing to push her discriminatory Immigration Law.
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: My favorite part is how in the last election, the teabaggers used lots of gun targeting analogies for the people they didn't like. And they talk about "revolution" and getting rid of those who disagree with them. Well, this is the beginning of that fallout. Anyone who didn't see it coming was deluding themselves.
Sarah Palin's website even had a bunch of targets with crosshairs over districts that they were trying to beat.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: What a shame, I was hoping she would have pulled through.
No, she's not dead... the articles aren't saying much at this point, and she's apparently in bad shape, but her condition is apparently not (necessarily) fatal.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
she might as well be dead, with the probable lose of ability she has suffered. You know, they looking for another accomplise, a older man. think his old man dropped him off with no idea WTF he was up too?
or is this gonna turn into Operation: Mindcrime?
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
She's not dead. Just read it on Space.com. Expected to recover. A 9 year old girl was not so lucky.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
"Recover" is relative- Jim Brady "recovered" after getting shot too. I mean, reports are that she was shot through the head. CNN has good coverage on this.
The sheriff had some choice words to say, which are as true as they sad.
quote:"This has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in and I think its time we do the soul-searching," he said.
"The anger, the hatred the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately, Arizona has become the capital. We have become the mecca of prejudice and bigotry."
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Yeah that sheriff was phenomenal.
Posted by akb1979 (Member # 557) on :
This is so sad, and a 9 year old girl was killed, her life barely begun. The world is a strange place, and the human race cruel at times.
Posted by HopefulNebula (Member # 1933) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: "Recover" is relative- Jim Brady "recovered" after getting shot too. I mean, reports are that she was shot through the head.
And Phineas Gage took a railroad spike through the brain, and recovered fully. He had severe personality changes, but he recovered his abilities and memories. And this predates modern surgical techniques as well.
The thing with injuries like this is, there's really no telling what will happen until the swelling goes down. Last time she was awake (before they coma-tized her to give her time to recover) she was able to recognize her husband and respond to simple commands. That's a good start, at least.
As for the politics of it, all I have to say is that this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum, and the people who have contributed to this culture of violence need to own up to their parts of it. (In re: Palin removing her "target" map from the Web: My seven-year-old cousin knows that when you put things on the Internet, you can never truly delete them. Why doesn't she? It would be so much classier for her to say "yeah, they went too far" than it is to pretend that either the map didn't exist or that they're surveyors' marks. Especially since she's described them as bulls-eyes in the past.)
Also, can I say how sick and fucking tired I am of hearing the shooter dismissed as "just a crazy?" I'm crazy. That doesn't make me a murderer.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I'm tired of hearing how the world is sliding into moral blackness every time somebody gets shot. People have always killed each other, and people have even always killed each other randomly and senselessly. It will happen again too. I can't pretend to be *appalled* that something like this would happen, no matter how *tragic* it is, nor can I pretend that it's the 'fault' of some particular group of people (no matter how vague and nebulous that group is imagined to be) or political ideology or state of moral decay. I mean, so what if the shooter isn't 'crazy' or IS 'crazy'? What are we gonna do, pump pure Goodness into people's hearts so Evil doesn't happen? Of course we're gonna dismiss it. It's dismissible. I (Which according to spellcheck isn't a word, but it SHOULD be.) It happens *every day.* This time just happened to involve a prominent person so we all hear about it and talk about it.
So..y'know. My two cents. ...On the internet, so I guess it's worth even less Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
And this whackjob decides to show up.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Fred Phelps and his entire family should be locked away from the general public. Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
If they keep it up (and something along the lines of accusations of Incest or other evil-doing occurs), they just might see jail time for soemthing. I assume they are NOT officially part of the catholic church/methodist/spegetti-fucking organizations, are they?
Posted by HopefulNebula (Member # 1933) on :
No, they're their own "church." Not affiliated with anyone else.
Of course, most of them are lawyers and their real MO is to provoke people into touching them so they can sue for assault.
Yes, they're professional trolls.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Pensive: No, the Westboro Baptist church is an organization of nutters who have nothing to do with real Christians whatsoever as far as I can see. They proclaim that, for example, 9/11 happened because God hates fags and we're soft on 'em.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
yeah, nut jobs. Lord help those fuckers if they & me will meet. likely I will get busted by the cops fucking up one of those gobshites. i try to be as lawfully moral as i can but theses guys? ill take a shit on their car, given the chance*...
* of course, i never did do what i always wanted to do in the past, go pee on the side of the PETA building in Norfolk...
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
So... the nine-year-old was gay? Or is Phelps just branching out into other areas of lunacy?
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
They don't just picket gay people, they picket any deceased person and claim that person died because of America's toleration of gays.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Hmmm...If the cemetary is a privately owned property, the owner can close it to public access, allowing only the family entrance (and cops can enforce that). The jackasses could still protect outside the grounds of course.
The real galling this is taht these vultures must watch tragedies and say "This is a media oppourtunity!"
Someone should put surveyors marks on them. Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
Every time I hear of WBC I want to puke. I want to go to Kansas one sunday, barricade all the fire exits, and light the whole church on fire. Then, if anyone managed to survive or escape, throw them back in...
Either that or go to one of their protests and super soak them with a mixture of rancid milk and human feces. Both sound good to me.
Someone really needs to do something about Phelps and his cult before he goes totally Waco on everyone (pun intended, sorry, but how often does that come along?). Be proactive for once and get him before he literally crucifies someone for being gay. If they haven't already.
Bleh, sorry I had a bad day today. But yeah, if anyone happens to be in the Kansas area, do everyone a favor and do one of the things I mentioned above...
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
1. Phelps and his ilk should be destroyed, slowly, and with pleasure by the destroyer.
2.
A. I question the intellect and law enforcement capabilities of a sherriff who would ascribe such specific political motive to a crazy person in such willy-nilly fashion.
B. According to the Daily Kos folks, Giffords is a conservative Dem by their measure, and according to old classmates and acquaintances, the shooter's a left-wing nut who smokes pot and is against religion.
And yet somehow, this guy's a right-wing nut and it's Rush Limbaugh's fault?
Based on what I've seen of the writings of the lunatic-assassin, he's not so much left or right as he is off-the-map in psycho-land, like most true lunatics, with little apparent rhyme or reason to his views.
But leave it to the left-wing media types to always try to claim that lunatics are right-wing, like the airplane guy Stack and now this nut.
The list in the link below, and especially the paragraphs after, speak better to the point than I have:
Yeah? What about that other nut that killed someone? You know...the one that flew his plane into the IRS building? That guy was "Mr. anti-tax" and was as right wing as they come.
The Sheriff's comments are dead on- Giffords herself spoke out against the hate during the election- the same election she recieved death threats in and where Palin put crosshairs on her district. You take someone with mental illness and feed them such "facts" like "they want to take your guns away" or "They want to put people in concentration camps" and you get violence.
Limbaugh himself (that turd) said, just today that " He said that now the government will take away your guns, along with "as many political freedoms as they can manage."- that is not only a total lie, it plays into the fears of gun nuts everywhere.
Limbaugh could care less that his words draw hate to democrats- but when someone critiques him on his drug addiction he said "Words mean things- you cant just say thing without facts to back them up".
NOw Rush is suggesting that sheriff is helping the suspect in some way:
quote:“This guy clearly understands he’s getting all the attention and he understands he’s got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder.”
Rush Limbaugh is a piece of shit- every bit as vad as Fred Phelps.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Yeah let's all talk about how we hate people that hate people and how we want to hurt them cuz we're obviously better than they are
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
we're not, Dan. The only way we can justify 'our better standards' is by our conduct. Rush, Beck... others (both left & right) are ACTORS, paided money to spout thier views, regardless of what the percentage of Bullshit-per-parts-per-million it contains.
we can all agree on a few things:
Toxic Avenger Guy(TAG)(cause i can't think of a better name for him) is, like Jason describes, off-the-map psycho, totally a tool (think Mind Crime), by whom ever fed him his insight (tv? the drugs? his culture?. Nothing much different from how suicide bombers work (someone arms them with bullshit & TnT, pats em on their head and laughs as they leave [Better them than me])
Those Incest-Monkies from Topeka (TIMT) will eventually fall apart because either they will be jailed for something, or another nut job will kill them. The states law's in reaction may or may not hurt either way.
The reterec from both sides, Left or Right, will continue to feed the opinion machine, in turn feeding the top two above...
uh, someone hit the flame retardant button before this turns into a real, honest-to-goodness flame war?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
President Obama today took a higher moral stand on the issue:
quote:"Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "When I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath."
Jared Loughner, 22 is charged with multiple counts of murder and investigators are trying to determine the motivation for the shootings. Obama said we may never know.
"For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind. Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do," Obama said to a standing ovation.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin issued a teleprompted speach which all but decalred herself the victim- calling it a "Blood Libel" against her. Fuck, could she be more offensive? Look up "Blood Libel" and you'll see that it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with persecution of jews- making her comments doubly offensive as congresswoman Giffirds is jewish.
Whoever wrote that for her needs to get canned- whatever the intent was, it failed badly.
Majority Leader Boenner issued a nice speach- I can forgive his weepyness on this one...and as a show of solidarity, both republicans and democrats accompanied the President to visit with GIffords and the other wounded, then with families of the dead.
Leonard Pitts had a great op ed piece today, talking about how the nine year old girl that was shot on saturday was born on 9/11- a day where partisan differences were put aside for the good of the nation, and how far rom that spirit we are today.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Dude...."Speech." /hammerofgrammar
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
Dude...? as in "Free Speech"? That applies to you & me, the working class serfs. when you're a politician? or hideously rich? in situations that cry "JUST STFU, don't say a word!", she says that, all that in her speech. 'Blood Libel' i never even heard the term.
but i hope people remember it next year if she runs... :/
oh. wait. you meant for Jason to spell-check first... *smiggles* nevermind!
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
Grammatical Fascism FTW!
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
EIN VOLK! EIN REICH! EEEEINNN SPELLINGSYSTEM!!
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
If I'm not free to spell shit wrong, the terrorists win! Our founding fathers spelled "color" with a "u" for God's sake- it's an implicit American freedom! Glen Beck was right- George Soros is trying to limit our grammarical freedoms ....and then take away our precious, precious guns!
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Yeah? What about that other nut that killed someone? You know...the one that flew his plane into the IRS building? That guy was "Mr. anti-tax" and was as right wing as they come.
There are a lot of things I like about you, but good grief you are so politically misinformed. I don't know who you've been listening to, but if you ever bothered to read his manifesto, you would very quickly realize that Stack was not a right-winger.
To him, corporations were thugs and plunderers, the Catholic Church was vulgar and corrupt, he was against bailouts but only because the little guy (read: him) wasn't included, he dissed "GW Bush and his cronies", and, the trump card, of course, is that the man was explicitly anti-capitalism.
Surely you don't really think those are right-wing beliefs? Isn't it possible, just possible, that you have been misled into the fabulously false claim that Stack was "as right wing as they come"?
quote:the same election she recieved death threats in and where Palin put crosshairs on her district.
Oooooh! Crosshairs on the district! No doubt for her followers to target ICBMs! Of course, Kossacks putting bulls-eyes on states and so on is completely harmless.
Give me a break. I'd bet hard cash that Sarah Palin has received more death threats than this poor lady.
Hell, I've received more than my fair share from my (predominately-leftist) adversaries over a frickin' science fiction debate. You'll be hard-pressed to convince me of the sanity of such types.
quote:You take someone with mental illness and feed them such "facts" like "they want to take your guns away" or "They want to put people in concentration camps" and you get violence.
Please feel free to demonstrate to me that a "liberal" "left-wing" flag-burning pot-smoking reject obsessed with mind control and 2012 nonsense was getting such information from right-wingers like Limbaugh.
Seems more likely to me that he was listening to the Daily Kos types who had literally targeted Giffords, decried her as too conservative, and called Giffords "dead to me" and so on a mere 48 hours before the shooting.
I mean, seriously, just pull back for a moment. I realize that the left has tried to make Limbaugh and Palin polarizing figures, holding them up as examples of the right and then lying like hell about them to make them seem as evil as possible . . . that is part of the Alinsky playbook. But in the process of buying into that you're getting sucked into so many other lies that you're being told it's just sad.
Step back, ignore that tripe, and look at the original sources before blindly accepting anyone's statements, be it from right-wingers like Limbaugh, Beck, or Palin or from left-wingers like Kos, MSNBC's gang, and the like.
You'll find things are a lot different than you've been led to believe.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: President Obama today took a higher moral stand {...} Meanwhile, Sarah Palin issued a teleprompted speach
I'm sorry, but that's funnier'n hell, there. I mean, to contrast TOTUS with someone and decry that someone for using a teleprompter . . . you can't buy irony like that.
Jon Stewart and Joe Biden and everyone else on the planet have joked about Obama's dependency on teleprompters, but all of the sudden he's somehow flawless in this regard?
quote:which all but decalred herself the victim- calling it a "Blood Libel" against her. Fuck, could she be more offensive?
Yeah, she could've held a pep rally at the memorial, filled with applause and cheering. Oh, wait, that was Obama.
In any case, you are contrasting someone NOT blamed for the event with someone who WAS blamed for the event. You can hardly expect the same attitude, and you can hardly expect her to not respond (and if she hadn't responded, you'd have bitched about that anyway).
So respond she did, while also outclassing Obama in regards to the moral high ground.
quote:Look up "Blood Libel"
Why? It describes the libel correctly, and the use of "blood" as an adjective is as correctly used as it is for such recent ideas as "blood diamonds". It may be something of a play on words, but it is both a correct description and also correctly conveys the fact that conservatives (like Palin) are improperly persecuted by the leftist media's lies.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
uh, IMHO, palin would have us fuck sheep for the benifite for the rich, if such beastiality helped the rich. That's why i agree with some of Jason's POV.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Not sheep, moose! Get it right. ;-)
Anyway, that whole class warfare garbage is part of the problem with liberalism/Marxism/otherstupidisms.
But that's a topic for another thread.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000:
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: President Obama today took a higher moral stand {...} Meanwhile, Sarah Palin issued a teleprompted speach
I'm sorry, but that's funnier'n hell, there. I mean, to contrast TOTUS with someone and decry that someone for using a teleprompter . . . you can't buy irony like that.
Jon Stewart and Joe Biden and everyone else on the planet have joked about Obama's dependency on teleprompters, but all of the sudden he's somehow flawless in this regard?
I point it out because the biggest critic of Obama using a teleprompter is Palin herself. You recall, the night she got caught with her notes written on her hand? I guess she decided teleprompters were not so bad after all.
quote:Yeah, she could've held a pep rally at the memorial, filled with applause and cheering. Oh, wait, that was Obama.
You can call it a "pep rally" if you want to- the families of the victims sure did not see it that way- anymore than those gathered at the site the World Trade center did when Bush delivered his speech there. Funny how no one from the supposedly "leftist" media critiqued Bush's speech while hawks on the right had started talking trash before Obama's speech ended.
quote:In any case, you are contrasting someone NOT blamed for the event with someone who WAS blamed for the event. You can hardly expect the same attitude, and you can hardly expect her to not respond (and if she hadn't responded, you'd have bitched about that anyway). So respond she did, while also outclassing Obama in regards to the moral high ground.
Yeah it was pretty classy to deliver a taped message about how she's the victim on a day reserved for honoring the dead. Of course, you probably also buy that those were “surveyor’s marks” and not crosshairs too.
quote:Look up "Blood Libel"
Why? It describes the libel correctly, and the use of "blood" as an adjective is as correctly used as it is for such recent ideas as "blood diamonds". It may be something of a play on words, but it is both a correct description and also correctly conveys the fact that conservatives (like Palin) are improperly persecuted by the leftist media's lies. [/QUOTE] Sure. And if she said she was a victim of a media "Holocaust" instead, that would have been just fine with you too, right? After all, even though it describes a particular thing, the words could mean anything if you don’t know their context. But for people affected by that type of slander, it's pretty offensive.
It's laughable that people like Palin and Limbaugh can decry the power and consequence of their own words while playing the victim when confronted with them- Rush Limbaugh said "words have power" when reporters asked him about his drug addiction but blatantly telling lies that the Democrats are trying to het Gifford's assailant freed from prison is okay? You talk of media's lies. well, there it is. hardly from "'the Left".
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Please feel free to demonstrate to me that a "liberal" "left-wing" flag-burning pot-smoking reject obsessed with mind control and 2012 nonsense was getting such information from right-wingers like Limbaugh.
You calling Stack a "liberal "does not make him one. Stack was obsessed with the government supposedly "taking over" and how he wanted people to "rise up and revolt". -add to that mix people like Glen Beck airing three hours of "investigation" on "Obama's concentration camps" and Sharon Angle talking of "Second amendment alternatives to big government" and Rick Perry pondering secession from "government takeover", Darrell Issa calling Obama "the most corrupt president in history" or Limbaugh telling his audience that Obama is going to take their guns away and you have a small sampling of the right wing hate and fear mongering that provokes nuts too violence.
It's not a hard line to draw between such vitriol and the actions of nutters.
And, YES, there is and has been trash talk from both sides, but right wing fringe is far more extreme- or at least they have a far more visible platform in FOX News to spew their ideas than the leftists do. On FOX, no accuzation or conspiracy theory is to extreme to go on the air- no vetting or checking of facts required. Their own pet racist Brian Kilmeade has said such obvious lies as "Ten percent of muslims are terrorists" on numerous occasions. really? Ten percent? that's 150 million muslims, Brian. Fear sells- sometimes it provokes.
To the President's credit, he's calling for civility from BOTH sides- and, as usual, getting villified on the Right (Pat Buchanan in particular in last Sunday's op ed)for doing so. Guilty consience, I guess.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Not sheep, moose! Get it right. ;-)
Anyway, that whole class warfare garbage is part of the problem with liberalism/Marxism/otherstupidisms.
But that's a topic for another thread.
it's not stupid when there are more folks making less than 30k a year than folks making 3mil a year just farting. It's always been like that, always will. i just dislike those who only give a shit about the 3mil+ people...
I don't want extreme leftist shit (Free rein!) but i also don't want the Extreme right where the rich rule absolute, either. I just want the majority to rule, and to me, the majority is lower-to-middle class. i want THEM to prosper. the rich can prosper simply because they can buy morality (and anything else). i just dont want the rich to have too much (which is what they have now)...
and because of the all the shit that both sides spew, the only ones who win are the politicians. Assassins might not kill for political reasons mostly (just fame) but politicans still reap from the actions of assassinations...
in other words, Operation Mindcrime. always a patsy, always a suicide bomber for someone else's benifite...
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
What's funny is that it's the defenders of the uber rich and big corporations that decry "class warfare"- if it's warfare to make the super wealthy pay their fair share, then the super wealthy are winning the war easily. Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: You calling Stack a "liberal "does not make him one. Stack was obsessed with the government supposedly "taking over" and how he wanted people to "rise up and revolt".
I'm sorry, I tried to give you an "out" insofar as being misinformed. But despite proving yourself misinformed, you've only dug in your heels regarding Stack.
To him, corporations were thugs and plunderers, the Catholic Church was vulgar and corrupt, he was against bailouts but only because the little guy (read: him) wasn't included, he dissed "GW Bush and his cronies", and, the trump card, of course, is that the man was explicitly anti-capitalism.
And yet you are calling him a right-wing terrorist.
That can only suggest to me two possibilities:
1. That people of that calibre aren't left-wing enough for you, which would make you so uber-left that you'd probably already be violent, instead of just loony-angry.
2. You aren't even trying to maintain a grip on reality. Which, of course, is the same thing in the end as #1.
Put simply, you've lost all credibility you might've ever had with me. It can still be regained provided you start by admitting that Stack is no right-winger, but the fact that you're digging your heels in on that settled question makes me worry.
Your "the sky's not blue!"-isms and always-feigned-outrage-at-righties thing may persuade some, but you'll never have dibs on reality at the rate you're going.
And reality, young man, is the final arbiter. Even if loonie lefties like Stack kill us all, the truth will remain the truth even if no one alive recognizes it.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: What's funny is that it's the defenders of the uber rich and big corporations that decry "class warfare"- if it's warfare to make the super wealthy pay their fair share, then the super wealthy are winning the war easily.
I'm not defending the uber rich and big corporations, though I like that well-poisoning. I simply think that individual rights don't stop based on how big your bank account is, or how small. I want individual rights for all, applying equally to all. You have no interest in equal rights.
There's a flawed philosophical notion that if you steal a dollar from a poor man you've harmed him more than if you steal it from a rich man. That's a foolish idea, because you've stolen the same value from each.
That "rich pay their fair share" thing is completely retarded, because the only way to do that is to have everyone do a flat tax, rich and poor alike. This graduated tax system, with something like 40% not paying anything at all, only hurts us all.
It will destroy our democratic republic, because as soon as the majority can vote themselves the money and property of a minority then we're on our way to nothing but corruption. And while it's been happening only in little nibbles that slowly increase in size, make no mistake that it's happening more and more
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: And if she said she was a victim of a media "Holocaust" instead, that would have been just fine with you too, right? After all, even though it describes a particular thing,
I'll be kind and assume you knew that holocaust /= The Holocaust. The latter is the evil Nazi thing, the former is not.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"There's a flawed philosophical notion that if you steal a dollar from a poor man you've harmed him more than if you steal it from a rich man. That's a foolish idea, because you've stolen the same value from each."
Okay, differences of opinion on how wealth should be distributed are one thing, but that statement was patently absurd. If you steal a dollar from a man who only has a dollar, you've stolen all his money. If you steal a dollar from a man who has $10 billion, he probably won't even notice. If you honestly believe that stealing 100% of someone's money is exactly as harmful as stealing 0.00000001%, just because the absolute number of dollars is the same, that's really messed up.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN:
"There's a flawed philosophical notion that if you steal a dollar from a poor man you've harmed him more than if you steal it from a rich man. That's a foolish idea, because you've stolen the same value from each."
Okay, differences of opinion on how wealth should be distributed are one thing, but that statement was patently absurd. If you steal a dollar from a man who only has a dollar, you've stolen all his money. If you steal a dollar from a man who has $10 billion, he probably won't even notice. If you honestly believe that stealing 100% of someone's money is exactly as harmful as stealing 0.00000001%, just because the absolute number of dollars is the same, that's really messed up.
That's the mantra of the ultra right- that big corportions and super wealthy people are hurting as much as everyone else in a recession- those "poor" billionaires should not have to "suffer" by paying the same taxes they did waaaaaay back under the Clinton administration.
Also, the right complains about letting the tax break for billionaires expire (which they stopped)while, for the first time in history, we have LOWERED taxes during a war. Fuck- TWO wars- with hawks on the right calling for attacks on Iran to bring it up to THREE. All this while decrying how the Democrats supposeldy are "big spenders".
Guardian, you want a Flat tax, fine- first you'll have to get all those corporations and billionaires to declare all their assets instead of being incorporated overseas. Many big businesses pay less in taxes than small ones because of that crap- and that's what paying their fair share is all about- paying what they REALLY owe, If they did that, and paid 2%, they would be paying far more than they did under Clinton and so the notion, while popular in conservative circles, will never happen. The very people you're defending will never allow it.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000:
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: And if she said she was a victim of a media "Holocaust" instead, that would have been just fine with you too, right? After all, even though it describes a particular thing,
I'll be kind and assume you knew that holocaust /= The Holocaust. The latter is the evil Nazi thing, the former is not.
Bullshit. Really, go look up the use of the term- it's almost completely a slander against jews. Only this year, from republicans, has the term been applied as a gerneral term.
quote:To him, corporations were thugs and plunderers, the Catholic Church was vulgar and corrupt, he was against bailouts but only because the little guy (read: him) wasn't included, he dissed "GW Bush and his cronies", and, the trump card, of course, is that the man was explicitly anti-capitalism.
A sick mind believing all those things does NOT make him Liberal- he was not for social justice or elevating poor people- he just hated some of the things the far Left rail against, and so the right calls him "Liberal" as some slander against those who are.
Liberals are not "anti-capitalism", and if that's what you tink, then it's time to watch someting besides FOX News. you're confusing "socialism" with "Liberalism"- just like you've been told to do by the right's spin machine. They aren't interchangable.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
So, in other news, Ms. Giffords is recovering rather well.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
That is the better argument, her condition slowly improving. has her piece of skull that was removed for swelling been reattached then?
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
1. Wealth should not be distributed except by those who create it.
If I choose to give a beggar a dollar it is my choice. But to steal my wealth at the point of a gun and give it to the undeserving is a crime.
2. If harm is based on percentage, then why harm the rich more as we do now?
The answer, of course, is that they are the minority. There are more moochers than producers, and so individual rights get trampled.
"But they still have a good absolute-number-of-dollars", you say. But didn't you just suggest that the absolute value didn't matter?
Further, there are issues of context. Stealing a dollar from a homeless guy hurts one. Stealing a dollar from an industrialist hurts many. A wisely invested dollar may double in a short while, and double again soon after, and so on down the line.
3. Jason, the word "holocaust" is not some Republican invention this year only. It was ridiculous for you to even say so.
4A. The 400 wealthiest paid a lot more than 2%.
4B. Corporations would have no reason to be overseas if it weren't for our ridiculously high tax rates and burdensome regulations (a fact so obvious even Obama is paying lip service to it).
America will only regain former glory if the slow leftward stumble is finally righted.
5. Liberalism is not defined as being "for social justice or elevating poor people" . . . not that liberals even do such things to begin with. Though I appreciate your desperate attempt to move the goalposts.
In any case, liberals and other left-wing types like socialists and communists are indeed pretty staunchly anti-capitalist. It goes with the territory. The fact that you can rail against the rich and rail against corporations and demand excessive taxation of them while claiming not to subscribe to leftist economic theories is truly astounding.
I suppose in your warped little noggin, a pot-smoking hippie in a band driving a little foreign car covered with bumper stickers like "Buck Fush" and "Make Love Not War" and so on is a card-carrying conservative Republican. But as we've seen well-established in this thread, you and reality aren't really on speaking terms.
6. By the way, did you hear the news that the Tucson shooter really hated Bush?
Seems like that Bush Derangement Syndrome that you liberals suffer from even to this day is really bringing out your violent streaks even more than usual. Maybe if you guys were more civil with your violence-laced vitriol, none of this would have happened. Indeed, the blood of Tucson is on your wretched little hands. Yours, personally, Jason, even though you didn't know the guy and he never heard you speak.
...
...
...
Annoying to be falsely accused of inciting violence, idnit?
That said, though, leftist violence is on the rise, even as the media ignores it or tries to pretend that it's right-wingers.
Borrowing a list from elsewhere:
* It was not the fear of conservative violence that caused Ann Coulter's speech to be cancelled this week. * It was a liberal who bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on healthcare. * It was Obama-loving Amy Bishop who took a gun to work and murdered co-workers. * Joseph Stack flew his plane into the IRS building after writing an anti-conservative manifesto. * It was liberals who destroyed AM radio towers outside of Seattle. * It's liberals who burn down Hummer dealerships. * It was progressive SEIU union thugs who beat a black conservative man who spoke his mind. * It's doubtful that a conservative fired shots into a GOP campaign headquarters. * In fact, Democrats have no monopoly on having their offices vandalized. * Don't forget it was Obama's friend Bill Ayers who used terrorism as a tool for political change. SDS is still radical, with arrests in 2007 and the storming of the CATO Institute in July 2008. * It was a liberal who was sentenced to two years for bringing bombs and riot shields to the Republican National Convention in 2008. * It was a liberal who threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated her Austin-based group that planned to bomb the RNC. * It was liberals who assaulted police in Berkeley. * It was liberals who intimidated and threw rocks through the windows of researchers. * The two Black Panthers who stood outside polls intimidating people with nightsticks were probably not right-wingers. * Every time the G20 gets together, it's not conservatives who destroy property and cause chaos.
Go spew and spittle your angry leftist fail somewhere else. It is not related to reality, and so I'm not falling for it.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
the problem, Guardian, is if we let the Right (and also the rich) have their way with rule, law & what not, you invite side-stepping & short-cutting to get that double-your-buck faster.
Had what i say, that simple reality, NOT been true, then (1) ENRON wouldn't happen (because TPTB at ran ENRON wouldn't allow the fanancial FUCK-UPS by screwing the shareholders while the CEO's rape the quick buck),
(2) all the bank's woo's wouldn't have happened (because they would have been honest, said no to all the very-likely-to-fail loan askers & told them why; wouldn't agree to so many credit cards & credit card scams) and
(3), heavy industry wouldnt have such a shitty or shifty safety record (because when the site foreman in the powers of a Safety Quality Assurance Rep, if he downed a machine that was critical to production, then the higher-ups would SUPPORT HIS DECISION, and cut any red tape to get that machine in a RFU statis.)
instead, we do have a corperate POV that is VERY $ over anything else, thus rather going overseas, taking US jobs away because they care more for the cash than their integrity to the job or their nation; that would rather be dishonest than honest.
instead, we have bank institutions making billions on shitty loads, doing legal magic to confund & deceive, giving loans to anyone & everyone without ryhme or reason, credits cards for your FUCKING cat. you name it, in the past 4 years, they pulled it off. how many bank CEO's fled with the cash instead of falling on their swords?
instead, we have mines that go boom, we have oilrigs that go boom. all because the rush to produce overides everything. If the foreman SQAR at the that WVA mine site said something (I dont know if he did or not), he'd probably lose his job because he would have been viewed as non-company. the problem, in many cases of disaster that could have been prevented. Fear of being the whisle blower. fear of being reviewed badly because of his actions, production was down instead of even or up.
this is why i have a distrust for anyone with more money than they know what to do with. If you got enough in the bank to survive short term (like me), that should be the best you get. anything else is waste. do you REALLY FUCKING need a 1-mil+ home? why? because you dont want to hang around the poor? the middle class? because YOU THINK YOUR better than the poor, middle class, ME?
this is why we cheer when the famous fall. Comeupance instead of humility & honesty. Greed instead of integrity & ethics.
Guardian, until your right acts with morals, ethics, humility (Ask Not what your country Can do for you...), then i dont think things will ever get fixed.
There's the Right side (Conservative), The Left side (liberalsism), The Middle ground (made of both sides) and Anarchists. Attena's being dropped? Bombs being planned at holiday parades? are you certain that anything in your POV as Liberal also voted Demacrat? or something else...
/grumbles...
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I don't want the rule of law abrogated. However, I also think that flagrant abuses of the law (e.g. Enron) are a symptom of the problem, and not the problem itself.
The more squeeze you put on businesses large and small, the more desperate their ploys to make money. Hence the gambling game that was a contributing factor to the financial crisis, and hence business-owners who have no ethics whatsoever.
Imagine an America with a more proper tax system, where a small business owner doesn't feel the need to be a quick-buck sleaze-bucket to make enough to pay for all the taxes and regulation-required costs of doing business.
Oh, and regarding the oil rig, were you not aware of the federal regulators (your guys, ostensibly) who weren't doing their jobs? And what of that boom system that the government claimed to have ready from the 90s on but failed to deploy? I think BP got more screwed on that deal than most care to admit. And I live here.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I think BP got screwed more than their two accomplices, but only time will tell if they got screwed enough- there's a lot of oil still down there and no one has a clue what the environmental damage reallly is.
The government regulators had been in bed 9sometimes literally) with oil lobbiests for years- it was a failure all around, in every way....but consider the 700 plus safety violations BP had that year alone and comapre that record with Exxon's ONE violation.
Hopefully, BP will clean up it's safety standards like Exxon did.
As to Enron and ethics, do you agree with the Supreme Court's striking down the Honest Servies law? That move is going to get a lot of Enron's executives (and shady politicians) out of jail (or at least a new trial).
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
The world is a strange place, and the human race cruel at times.
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)