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Just Where Is The Lincoln Memorial, Anyhow?
John3 writes "Searching Google Maps for the Lincoln Memorial is returning the location of the FDR Memorial instead. Conservative bloggers smell a conspiracy since Glenn Beck is holding his 'Restoring Honor' gathering at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow (August 28). Notes for the map listing on Google state 'This place has unverified edits'; so, did someone claim the listing and edit the location?"
REAL AMERICANS don't need a map to tell them where their landmarks are located. Anyone that needs to use google maps to locate this rally is a communist or socialist anyways.
Why the hell DOES it redirect to FDR memorial? http://www.google.com/search?q=lincoln+memorial
Looking at specific searches, searching for the Lincoln Memorial gets you the FDR Memorial, but searching for the Lincoln Monument gets you the Lincoln Memorial.
I would imagine that it's simply a matter of the word memorial being attributed to FDR more than Lincoln, for some reason.
I have a relative that lives several miles from the Grand Canyon, and told me the story of a local who one day ran into a lost tourist, looking for that gorge. He gave the tourist directions, and the tourist asked, "how is it?" The local had to reply, "I don't know I've never been there. I've been planning to go one of these days....."
They talked for a bit and soon found out the tourist was from New York. The local said, "Oh, I've been there. I visited the statue of liberty." The New Yorker said, "Oh, yeah. I've been planning to go there one of these days....."
Qxe4
Don't be a toolbox. Red State makes no mention of a conspiracy, and WTH is "Moonbats" anyway? A real leading conservative blog there. Beck is an entertainer, not a serious voice, yet so many on the left and right moon over him. The summary is just a another smear of conservatives, and since that fits your world view filled with hatred you consider it valid.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Really, if a self-proclaimed conservative—a jingoistic, flag-lapel-pin-wearing, Go-America!-shouting patriot—a dyed-in-the-wool, red-blooded American doesn't know where the Lincoln Memorial is and can't remember a penny long enough to figure out what it looks like while in Washington, DC, he or she might as well give up right there and then, thrown down his or her misspelled, Obama-Iz-An-Atheest-Moslim-Commie-Crony-Of-Wall-Street-Not-Main-Street signs, exchange his or her copy of Going Rogue for a Socialist party membership card, and get in line to be shipped off to the FEMA internment camps, because some re-education is patently and sorely needed.
Get off the Metro at Smithsonian. You're probably facing the Capital. Turn the fuck around and go straight.
It's actually "Glenn"... not "Glen."
If you look for the Jefferson Memorial, the same thing happens. The Washington Monument and the White House work fine though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh shit they're on to us. Come on guys, like we said at the last meeting of the Evil Liberals Who Hate Freedom League, you got to be more careful. Today it's the bloggers, tomorrow it'll appear in forwarded e-mails in 80 point comic sans font, then we're really screwed. Before you know it, they'll break out the ALL CAPS, which as we all know everything is absolutely and unquestionably true if it appears in ALL CAPS.
Also remember: we're forcing people to get gay married and buy health insurance, not hide the Lincoln Memorial. Stay on message guys.
And if those maps come out to 99c, you'll get a free picture of it with your change!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Good thing we have the voice of reason here! I mean you only suggested the OP should be shot for a comment! That's very reasonable. Why would anyone want to stereotype conservatives?
You bring up another great point too. Why on a site that is "News for Nerds" would people mock creationists? It's just not fair! Teach the controversy!
A dirty trick would be putting billboards up giving the wrong date for an election, or bugging your own office and blaming it on a competitor. Someone editing a google map entry, is pretty weak on the 'dirty trick' scale.
Google tries to stay out of politics. Glenn Beck is getting the message not to piss off those who contribute to Wikis.
If you drive around randomly, you'll probably end up in a random traffic jam.
meters? commie! true AMERICANS use yards or feet. you know. It takes 50 feet to cross my yard.
"it's showing how a political event can be disrupted by those who disagree with the event's sponsor with a simple misinformation"
Glenn Beck fans cannot be fooled by simple misinformation, they have no need for geographical facts, their gut instincts will lead them directly to the rally.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Wow. Put a label on someone and then you can treat them as sub-human. You're well on your way.
The Statue of Liberty trip is practically an in-joke among New Yorkers. Many (most?) New Yorkers have never been to it, though everybody can see it when you're driving around the bottom of the FDR or West Side Highway. I actually have a beautiful view of it from my living room (I live right on the Hudson River), and have never actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty proper, though I once took a ferry trip to Ellis Island, and that boat took us around the Statue for a fairly close look.
The lines to take the ferry to Liberty Island are ridiculously long on weekends (like 3-4 hours), I walk by them every weekend on my morning walks through Battery Park, so unless you have a weekday off in the city, it actually takes as long to go to the Statue of Liberty as it does to drive to Boston.
Same reason I've never been to the top of the Empire State Building - ridiculous lines.
Make sure you buy your $699 Ed Hardy handbag, you coc...
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
He sells lots of books, gets a lot of money for a TV show and has many, many minions. Wait, how is he an idiot again?
Look, I have no use for the guy, but he's accomplishing more than you or me. We may not agree with what he's accomplishing, but that's irrelevant. I wish I had thought of it. *I* want minions, dammit! I need to find an underserviced fringe of my own to cater to.
You really think he believes half the shit he says? He's playing to the hyper-right niche. Same with Ann Coulter, or Michael Moore for a lefty example. They have targeted an audience and feed them what they want to hear. If Sarah Palin has any brain at all she'll just play the lecture circuit for the rest of her days and put out more books.
Oh, and people like him *LOVE* people like you. Your dislike and insults just play to his cause and give him legitimacy in the eyes of his target market.
Is that MOST people suck at it. Europeans like to laugh at Americans because they generally know the correct locations of more countries... Forgetting that America is bigger than Europe and knowing the correct locations of some states would be the same relative amount of knowledge. Their geography outside of that area is usually fairly limited. Most know where the US is since it is large and in the news a lot, but often little more.
For example I guy I chat with online from the UK had visited Brazil and was thinking of visiting the US. He wanted to know where various people he knew lived so he could decide if he was going to try and visit. I knew there was a good chance he didn't know where Arizona was since it doesn't make the news a lot (the new anti-immigration bill non-withstanding). So I told him it was "Just east of California, and just north of Mexico." He said that didn't help. I though he meant he didn't know where California was so I clarified. No, he didn't know where MEXICO was. He thought it was in Central America, near Brazil.
Thing is, geography is just kinda boring. It is route memorization, and not all that necessary to most people. This is even more true now, what with maps online and so easily accessible. If you need to know where something is, from a countries down to a street, it is easy to locate.
I also get a little tired of geography snobs because it is exceedingly rare that someone can properly locate all the countries in the world. Never mind the amount of time spent, most people lack a memory that accurate. So when people get snobby about parts of geography but can't do other parts, to me that is just saying "What I know is important, what everyone else knows isn't."
Allow me to respond to your inquiry with youtube links!
Glenn Beck on 9/11 victims:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruzvmqbTpPI
That pretty much sums up the ridiculousness of his message. Also may I point you to the Daily Show link which basically rips the "WHO IS FUNDING THIS TERRORIST MOSQUE!?!?" to shreds:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-23-2010/the-parent-company-trap
And here's a few more of The Young Turks on Glenn Beck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbgsYV9DXk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-aBUoO7aSA
TYT frequently rips open arguments with facts - and they do it to "both sides" [sorry if the links I posted don't have a lot of fact checking in them. I've been very critical of TYT but past clips do have plenty of facts to back up their claims]. Though lately it has been a lot of Fox News and republican bashing (can't really say there isn't a good reason for it lately).
Before healthcare reform conservatives/right wingers were bitching and moaning about "poor/cheap/unemployed/lazy" uninsured people bringing down the system and raising costs for insured citizens because they can always get healthcare, insured or not. This bill forces them to get insurance. If complaining right wingers really want to fix the problem, they should propose a law banning all healthcare for uninsured citizens who can't pay out of pocket. See how well that goes over.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Before healthcare reform conservatives/right wingers were bitching and moaning about "poor/cheap/unemployed/lazy" uninsured people bringing down the system and raising costs for insured citizens because they can always get healthcare, insured or not. This bill forces them to get insurance.
This bill forces everyone to buy insurance whether they want to or not, and worse, forces them to buy it from a private third party under penalty of law. Not even the most extreme reading of the Commerce Clause justifies that, and I look forward to your excuses when SCOTUS throws the mandate out as unconstitutional.
If complaining right wingers really want to fix the problem, they should propose a law banning all healthcare for uninsured citizens who can't pay out of pocket. See how well that goes over.
If we really want to fix the problem... to the extent that it can be fixed... then we'll propose what we've proposed for years... for Congress to use the Commerce Clause in what is actually a productive, Constitutional manner and ban states from restricting interstate health insurance competition, which most of them do. This is one of the few issues where the states are wrong about the 10th Amendment. The states don't have a right to tell me I can't buy from a company in another state, and opening up a national market would mean national risk pools. Health insurance would then become more like car insurance. If car insurance were restricted by the states in the way that health insurance is, then no one could afford to drive either. There's a real market for auto insurance, though.
As for your concern about the poor, I might be moved more if I didn't suspect that your solution was probably "let the government handle it". You can help the poor without screwing the rights of everyone else, which this "reform" bill did. Further, this isn't an issue of "the poor", and never was. The poor have had access to paid healthcare for years. That's what Medicaid is, after all. In addition to that, most states have a program for uninsured children if you don't meet the poverty criteria but still have limited income. In Alabama it's called AlKids. The real issue is affordable health insurance for the not poor-and yet-not rich. Which *gasp!* a real market would go a long way towards helping.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel