Or better yet, if you want to live in anarchy where the government can't tell you what to do, just replace the word "government" with the word "warlord" and bingo, you now live in anarachy. There is no government to protect you, but one of the more powerful warlords is really a jerk. He keeps taking 36% of my stuff every year, but for some reason he forces me to buy health insurance. Go figure.
The Feds killed a bunch of innocent people at Waco, including kids. The direct blowback from this was Timothy McVeigh who had no qualms blowing up a building including a day care center under the notion that anyone who worked for the Federal Government, including their families, was complicit in the Waco atrocity/debacle/fuckup/whatever.
If you are going to say "The Feds killed the kids at Waco". Why not take it one step further and say that they also committed the Oklahoma city bombing since they caused Timothy McVeigh to commit the bombing with their actions at Waco?
The government has a bunch of fuckups working for it. They botched a hostage situation. They are partly responsible for the deaths of the children inside because they could have handled the situation better. The other part of the blame goes to the religious nutjobs who don't feel like they need to obey the law and would rather endanger a bunch of kids and have a shootout with the government.
This is quite different than saying the government assumes the authority to kill whoever they want without any danger of accountability. This is quite clearly an exaggeration.
Well considering both the first time they tried to kill him, he was in a car with members of al-Qaeda (2 of which were killed), and when they actually killed him, he was a in a car with 3 al-Qaeda members, I wouldn't say there was "no evidence at all" that he was a terrorist.
I agree that it is possible he was innocent. I agree that killing him might have been a violation of the constitution. I agree that maybe we shouldn't be killing people in other countries. But I don't think there is 0 evidence Al Awlaki was a terrorist. I am not saying that this is conclusive evidence or even good evidence. I am saying that it is enough evidence to suggest that he *might* have been working with al-Qaeda to some extent.
In case you haven't noticed, we are both participating (I use that word loosely), in a political debate in a public forum. We are sending text to each other over the internet and waiting for a response before sending more text for our own response. This in itself is an act of civility. We aren't in a fist fight or a shootout. If you want to be uncivil, you can just stop participating in the discussion.
Unfortunately, there were only two candidates for president on my ballot, so that meant either vote for Obama, or leave the space blank. On an electronic ballot, one can't do a write-in candidate.
That's why I do paper ballot. I wrote in Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012.
That's is an outrageous lie. I gave an explanation by drawing a parallel to what would happen to a non-black President under similar circumstances.
Repeating an assertion is not the same as an explanation (much less a coherent one). If I claim that "GW Bush was actually a secret Hindu", and you ask for an explanation of why I would come to that conclusion, and I say "I already explained that he's a secret Hindu, you're a liar for saying I didn't provide an explanation", that's not a coherent explanation.
Oh, you don't know because it's too hypothetical? That's your argument? Obama himself drew a scenario (before being elected to his 1st term) of what would happen if the economic situation were as dire as it ended up being at the end of his 1st term. In his own scenario, he admitted that if any President did as poor a job as he ended up doing, he would have lost. Doesn't take crystal ball to be aware of history.
Firstly you need to provide citations, secondly Obama cannot predict alternate futures any better than you can.
The fact that enough voters were willing to vote for a black President even if they would have voted for the other guy had both of the candidates been white.
1. doubt you have proof of this.
2. Even if you did, this doesn't contradict my assertion that this group of people would be cancelled out by the people who would vote against him because he was black.
3. You *do* need a crystal ball to say what *WOULD HAVE* happened under different circumstances.
BTW.
Aha. Doesn't need to. Your accusation of racism, your claim that it is mainstream... It's utter crap. Cultural trends are not discoverable via absolute arguments. They are discoverable only through statistical evidence. And statistical evidence points to Obama having an advantage from being black rather than having his chances diminished. That's a fact. Anyone who is offended by facts, offends those of us who are sane.
My "accusation" was that *some* people are racist, not that it is mainstream. Not to mention that you are also claiming that people voted for Obama based on his race. This is also racism. I believe that voting for Obama because he is black is racism. According to your logic this is very offensive to accuse people of racism. Or is it only offensive to accuse people who oppose Obama racist?
The fact that enough voters were willing to vote for a black President even if they would have voted for the other guy had both of the candidates been white.
Do you have any good evidence at all? Or are you just going to keep repeating it?
You don't deserve civility. Don't blame it on others when you don't get it. It's you. The treatment you get is the result of what you say. It's just that sane people have been civil to you and not treating you the way you really deserve to be treated for a long time now. It's over. I was giving an example of another twerp who thinks that his snide makes him clever. You are not clever.
I wasn't asking you to be civil. Civility is what civil people do. All I did was disagree with you. If all it takes for you to lose your civility is opposition, then I would argue that you are just not a civil person to begin with.
I can say whatever I want, and you can say whatever you want. I never claimed any other different system does or should exist.
You are perfectly free to spout whatever nonsensical garbage you want. I am choosing to try to have a discussion as adults, but you don't seem to want to do that. It seems you'd rather just ramble like a crazy person, and argue against things I never said.
Pointing out that you and your ilk no longer deserve civility is enough. Majority of people are not racist. Saying otherwise is not offensive because it hurts. It's offensive because insults our intelligence.
I never said the majority of people are racist. You need to work on your reading comprehension. I said *some* people are racist. Are you retarded or something?
The fact that you thought it important enough to bring it up states that you believed it to be a significant number of his opposition
Yes a significant number of people are racist. This is the claim I am making. You can find it deeply offensive if you want. That's your problem to deal with. It's not my job to be politically correct to spare your hurt feelings.
It clearly was a factor for many people. There were many people for which Obama's blackness was the deciding factor in their vote. For some people it resulted in a vote for Obama, for some against.
What I am saying is that I don't think his blackness on average was a deciding factor (i.e. many of the the votes for and against based on blackness cancel out), and just based on the numbers of black presidents we've had in the past, I am assuming being black actually hurt him on average.
Be honest with yourself, and admit that race played a part in Obama's career.
Race plays a part in all aspects of everyone's life for both good and bad.
Go on, admit that blacks can be just as racist as any skinhead White Supremacist - it will be good for you soul.
I was not aware that anything I said would lead anyone to believe I don;t think black people can be racist.
If you followed this thread you'd see that I said that many black people voted for Obama *because* he was black.
Being liberal is another large part of what got Obama elected.
Being liberal doesn't get you elected. Lots of liberal people lose elections and lots of conservative people win elections. This country is split almost 50/50 between liberal and conservative voters.
Being approved by the Powers That Be was the deciding factor.
Being young, healthy, and seemingly attractive to a lot of females didn't hurt him.
That is such a loaded piece of crap question and anyone who asks it is an ass hole. I am sorry tired of being polite to people who are obviously doing nothing but insulting those who do not deserve insulting and who think that their passive aggressive eloquence somehow makes it ok
I am flattered that you think I'm eloquent.
No, Obama being black was by no means the sole reason he was elected. Nor did my comment suggest anything of the kind.
It suggested that he received an advantage from being black, without any explanation.
Events have multiple consequences. In much the same way, they have multiple contributing factors (multiple outputs AND multiple inputs if you want to think of life as information processing). Had he not be been black, that contributing element would not be present as a contributing factor in his election.
Of all these many contributing factors, the only one you mentioned initially is Obama being black. I'm already of the opinion that this is a complicated system with many contributing factors and consequences. I am also of the opinion that knowing exactly which contributing factors lead to which consequences, and how things would have turned out under different circumstances is a pretty hard thing to do, if not impossible. It is certainly impossible to verify what would have happened according to you in an objective way.
Given that under the circumstances under which he ran most white Presidents would have lost, a conclusion must be drawn that being black helped his chances rather than diminish them.
I am going to pretend that you have a crystal ball, and that it is even possible for you to know something like what would have happened if Obama was white or if a white candidate ran in his place and ask...
What were those circumstances that allowed Obama's blackness to help him win, where most white presidents would have lost?
You are as dumb as everyone who posts the answer "just google it" to every question in a forum... you know the forums... the ones whose questions come as search results when you google... I love finding half of my google searches pointing to questions which have a random "just google it" answer from a twerp like you.
Did someone traumatize you by telling you to google something? Holy shit you've got problems.
Considering key parts of his campaign rolled around it
Considering that he's the first US president who wasn't 100% white, I think it's fairly safe to say that in general being black does not help your chances of being president.
I am not denying that his being black helped get him some votes (especially among black people), but what I am saying is that it actually probably cost him a lot more votes. Even if every black person voted for him, that's only about 13% of the population (who already traditionally vote democrat). There are probably at least as many, if not more, people that voted against him because he was black.
and there's no shortage of to this day "If you're against any part of whatever Obama is doing, you're a racist."
We live in a country of 300 million people. For just about any crazy statement, you can probably find at least 50 people willing to say it on TV.
There are people out there who will say that anybody opposed to anything Obama wants is racist. There are also people out there (many of the legislators), who will refuse to support anything Obama supports just to be in opposition to Obama. I think it probably has to do more with politics than racism, but for some of those detractors, the animosity probably stems from racism. I don't know what percentage, but it's probably bigger than 0 and smaller than 100.
Our murder rates are nearly the lowest they've been in all of human history... Maybe they are still high compared with what they should be, but they certainly aren't high compared with the past.
Reaching the 21 million cap is basically a steady state condition for bitcoin (except for gradual loss die to lost bitcoin wallets).
The calculation to add new transactions to the block chain grows exponentially harder to compensate for the fact that computers get exponentially faster and more efficient. So the carbon footprint is linear as well.
Once we reach the 21 million cap, bitcoin will have a nearly 0 carbon footprint. I don't see a problem with bitcoin deflation. Gold deflates too. So what? It's not like everyone is forgoing investment in the traditional economy in order to horde gold and bitcoin even though those options both currently exist.
Maybe all the people making over $250,000 should all help eachother get to at least $1million/year before helping people earning less than $250,000. Afterall, you have to help yourselves before you can help others.
You could infer that conservatives are more charitable from this data. But there are other alternatives.
Conservative states donating more money is not the same as conservatives donating more money. We all know conservative states are poorer than liberal states. Maybe there is more charitable giving within those states because more charity is required. This would also mean that there is also more charity being received by red states.
Total money donated to charity is only 1 measure of charitableness. Another one might be charity donated minus charity received. If we used this measure I suspect the blue states would be on top just because they have more money and therefore will give more than they receive while the red states tend to receive more than they give.
They do not need to have their money taken from them in order to do good.
I think people are very well intentioned. However I think the money they donate to charity is not well spent. People donate money to all kinds of inefficient or misguided charities all the time (churches being a good example). When 9/11 happened everyone donated so much money that each family of 9/11 victim would get millions of dollars on top of whatever insurance they would get. People killed in other ways get typically only a few hundred thousand $ of life insurance. When the Boston bombing happened, people donated so much blood they had to throw most of it away. The rest of the time there isn't enough blood.
People are irrational. Their good intentions don't always translate into effectively helping people who need it. I am not saying the government is perfect or even better, but sometimes it's nice to have some central planning to tell people things like "we don't need any more blood now, but we will in 6 months" or "9/11 victims' families are now financially secure, but there are kids whose parents died in other ways, that are just as orphaned as those whose parents died in 9/11", etc.
I actually agree that the government should probably mostly remove itself from the charity business, although I think it should focus on a few key areas like healthcare, housing and meals, etc for people who can't afford it. Private charities can do this too, but usually with lots of gaps in who they can help, because their efforts are not well coordinated.
Slashdot Mirror
Or better yet, if you want to live in anarchy where the government can't tell you what to do, just replace the word "government" with the word "warlord" and bingo, you now live in anarachy. There is no government to protect you, but one of the more powerful warlords is really a jerk. He keeps taking 36% of my stuff every year, but for some reason he forces me to buy health insurance. Go figure.
The Feds killed a bunch of innocent people at Waco, including kids. The direct blowback from this was Timothy McVeigh who had no qualms blowing up a building including a day care center under the notion that anyone who worked for the Federal Government, including their families, was complicit in the Waco atrocity/debacle/fuckup/whatever.
If you are going to say "The Feds killed the kids at Waco". Why not take it one step further and say that they also committed the Oklahoma city bombing since they caused Timothy McVeigh to commit the bombing with their actions at Waco?
The government has a bunch of fuckups working for it. They botched a hostage situation. They are partly responsible for the deaths of the children inside because they could have handled the situation better. The other part of the blame goes to the religious nutjobs who don't feel like they need to obey the law and would rather endanger a bunch of kids and have a shootout with the government.
This is quite different than saying the government assumes the authority to kill whoever they want without any danger of accountability. This is quite clearly an exaggeration.
Well considering both the first time they tried to kill him, he was in a car with members of al-Qaeda (2 of which were killed), and when they actually killed him, he was a in a car with 3 al-Qaeda members, I wouldn't say there was "no evidence at all" that he was a terrorist.
I agree that it is possible he was innocent. I agree that killing him might have been a violation of the constitution. I agree that maybe we shouldn't be killing people in other countries. But I don't think there is 0 evidence Al Awlaki was a terrorist. I am not saying that this is conclusive evidence or even good evidence. I am saying that it is enough evidence to suggest that he *might* have been working with al-Qaeda to some extent.
In case you haven't noticed, we are both participating (I use that word loosely), in a political debate in a public forum. We are sending text to each other over the internet and waiting for a response before sending more text for our own response. This in itself is an act of civility. We aren't in a fist fight or a shootout. If you want to be uncivil, you can just stop participating in the discussion.
Unfortunately, there were only two candidates for president on my ballot, so that meant either vote for Obama, or leave the space blank. On an electronic ballot, one can't do a write-in candidate.
That's why I do paper ballot. I wrote in Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012.
Firstly (once again), I did not say America is divided along racial lines. I said *some* people are racist.
Secondly, you also implied that people in America are racist because you think people voted for Obama based on skin color.
That's is an outrageous lie. I gave an explanation by drawing a parallel to what would happen to a non-black President under similar circumstances.
Repeating an assertion is not the same as an explanation (much less a coherent one). If I claim that "GW Bush was actually a secret Hindu", and you ask for an explanation of why I would come to that conclusion, and I say "I already explained that he's a secret Hindu, you're a liar for saying I didn't provide an explanation", that's not a coherent explanation.
Oh, you don't know because it's too hypothetical? That's your argument? Obama himself drew a scenario (before being elected to his 1st term) of what would happen if the economic situation were as dire as it ended up being at the end of his 1st term. In his own scenario, he admitted that if any President did as poor a job as he ended up doing, he would have lost. Doesn't take crystal ball to be aware of history.
Firstly you need to provide citations, secondly Obama cannot predict alternate futures any better than you can.
The fact that enough voters were willing to vote for a black President even if they would have voted for the other guy had both of the candidates been white.
1. doubt you have proof of this.
2. Even if you did, this doesn't contradict my assertion that this group of people would be cancelled out by the people who would vote against him because he was black.
3. You *do* need a crystal ball to say what *WOULD HAVE* happened under different circumstances.
BTW.
Aha. Doesn't need to. Your accusation of racism, your claim that it is mainstream... It's utter crap. Cultural trends are not discoverable via absolute arguments. They are discoverable only through statistical evidence. And statistical evidence points to Obama having an advantage from being black rather than having his chances diminished. That's a fact. Anyone who is offended by facts, offends those of us who are sane.
My "accusation" was that *some* people are racist, not that it is mainstream. Not to mention that you are also claiming that people voted for Obama based on his race. This is also racism. I believe that voting for Obama because he is black is racism. According to your logic this is very offensive to accuse people of racism. Or is it only offensive to accuse people who oppose Obama racist?
The fact that enough voters were willing to vote for a black President even if they would have voted for the other guy had both of the candidates been white.
Do you have any good evidence at all? Or are you just going to keep repeating it?
You don't deserve civility. Don't blame it on others when you don't get it. It's you. The treatment you get is the result of what you say. It's just that sane people have been civil to you and not treating you the way you really deserve to be treated for a long time now. It's over. I was giving an example of another twerp who thinks that his snide makes him clever. You are not clever.
I wasn't asking you to be civil. Civility is what civil people do. All I did was disagree with you. If all it takes for you to lose your civility is opposition, then I would argue that you are just not a civil person to begin with.
I can say whatever I want, and you can say whatever you want. I never claimed any other different system does or should exist.
You are perfectly free to spout whatever nonsensical garbage you want. I am choosing to try to have a discussion as adults, but you don't seem to want to do that. It seems you'd rather just ramble like a crazy person, and argue against things I never said.
Pointing out that you and your ilk no longer deserve civility is enough. Majority of people are not racist. Saying otherwise is not offensive because it hurts. It's offensive because insults our intelligence.
I never said the majority of people are racist. You need to work on your reading comprehension. I said *some* people are racist. Are you retarded or something?
The fact that you thought it important enough to bring it up states that you believed it to be a significant number of his opposition
Yes a significant number of people are racist. This is the claim I am making. You can find it deeply offensive if you want. That's your problem to deal with. It's not my job to be politically correct to spare your hurt feelings.
You don't get to make that suggestion anymore
Stop me.
GROW SOME THICKER SKIN!
I didn't say race wasn't a factor.
It clearly was a factor for many people. There were many people for which Obama's blackness was the deciding factor in their vote. For some people it resulted in a vote for Obama, for some against.
What I am saying is that I don't think his blackness on average was a deciding factor (i.e. many of the the votes for and against based on blackness cancel out), and just based on the numbers of black presidents we've had in the past, I am assuming being black actually hurt him on average.
Be honest with yourself, and admit that race played a part in Obama's career.
Race plays a part in all aspects of everyone's life for both good and bad.
Go on, admit that blacks can be just as racist as any skinhead White Supremacist - it will be good for you soul.
I was not aware that anything I said would lead anyone to believe I don;t think black people can be racist.
If you followed this thread you'd see that I said that many black people voted for Obama *because* he was black.
Being liberal is another large part of what got Obama elected.
Being liberal doesn't get you elected. Lots of liberal people lose elections and lots of conservative people win elections. This country is split almost 50/50 between liberal and conservative voters.
Being approved by the Powers That Be was the deciding factor.
Being young, healthy, and seemingly attractive to a lot of females didn't hurt him.
Being a charismatic speaker helped a lot.
That's where I would agree with you
That is such a loaded piece of crap question and anyone who asks it is an ass hole. I am sorry tired of being polite to people who are obviously doing nothing but insulting those who do not deserve insulting and who think that their passive aggressive eloquence somehow makes it ok
I am flattered that you think I'm eloquent.
No, Obama being black was by no means the sole reason he was elected. Nor did my comment suggest anything of the kind.
It suggested that he received an advantage from being black, without any explanation.
Events have multiple consequences. In much the same way, they have multiple contributing factors (multiple outputs AND multiple inputs if you want to think of life as information processing). Had he not be been black, that contributing element would not be present as a contributing factor in his election.
Of all these many contributing factors, the only one you mentioned initially is Obama being black. I'm already of the opinion that this is a complicated system with many contributing factors and consequences. I am also of the opinion that knowing exactly which contributing factors lead to which consequences, and how things would have turned out under different circumstances is a pretty hard thing to do, if not impossible. It is certainly impossible to verify what would have happened according to you in an objective way.
Given that under the circumstances under which he ran most white Presidents would have lost, a conclusion must be drawn that being black helped his chances rather than diminish them.
I am going to pretend that you have a crystal ball, and that it is even possible for you to know something like what would have happened if Obama was white or if a white candidate ran in his place and ask...
What were those circumstances that allowed Obama's blackness to help him win, where most white presidents would have lost?
You are as dumb as everyone who posts the answer "just google it" to every question in a forum... you know the forums... the ones whose questions come as search results when you google... I love finding half of my google searches pointing to questions which have a random "just google it" answer from a twerp like you.
Did someone traumatize you by telling you to google something? Holy shit you've got problems.
what I actually I said was:
for *some* of those detractors, the animosity probably stems from racism.
I didn't think this was even up for debate that *some* people are racist.
And yet those who criticism him are met with derision
You would prefer people be prohibited from deriding you? I would suggest you grow some thicker skin if you want to participate in a public forum.
Considering key parts of his campaign rolled around it
Considering that he's the first US president who wasn't 100% white, I think it's fairly safe to say that in general being black does not help your chances of being president.
I am not denying that his being black helped get him some votes (especially among black people), but what I am saying is that it actually probably cost him a lot more votes. Even if every black person voted for him, that's only about 13% of the population (who already traditionally vote democrat). There are probably at least as many, if not more, people that voted against him because he was black.
and there's no shortage of to this day "If you're against any part of whatever Obama is doing, you're a racist."
We live in a country of 300 million people. For just about any crazy statement, you can probably find at least 50 people willing to say it on TV.
There are people out there who will say that anybody opposed to anything Obama wants is racist. There are also people out there (many of the legislators), who will refuse to support anything Obama supports just to be in opposition to Obama. I think it probably has to do more with politics than racism, but for some of those detractors, the animosity probably stems from racism. I don't know what percentage, but it's probably bigger than 0 and smaller than 100.
Our murder rates are nearly the lowest they've been in all of human history... Maybe they are still high compared with what they should be, but they certainly aren't high compared with the past.
I don't think anything can be *objectively* offensive.
Had Obama been any other President he would have lost in shame. Yet he won.
Are you seriously saying Obama won *because* he was black?
There have been lots of black people in the history of America that were not able to pull of being elected president by virtue of being black.
In Soviet Russia, joke makes you!
Reaching the 21 million cap is basically a steady state condition for bitcoin (except for gradual loss die to lost bitcoin wallets).
The calculation to add new transactions to the block chain grows exponentially harder to compensate for the fact that computers get exponentially faster and more efficient. So the carbon footprint is linear as well.
Once we reach the 21 million cap, bitcoin will have a nearly 0 carbon footprint. I don't see a problem with bitcoin deflation. Gold deflates too. So what? It's not like everyone is forgoing investment in the traditional economy in order to horde gold and bitcoin even though those options both currently exist.
You used to be cool...
name one what?
Maybe all the people making over $250,000 should all help eachother get to at least $1million/year before helping people earning less than $250,000. Afterall, you have to help yourselves before you can help others.
This is why it is important to cite sources.
You could infer that conservatives are more charitable from this data. But there are other alternatives.
Conservative states donating more money is not the same as conservatives donating more money. We all know conservative states are poorer than liberal states. Maybe there is more charitable giving within those states because more charity is required. This would also mean that there is also more charity being received by red states.
Total money donated to charity is only 1 measure of charitableness. Another one might be charity donated minus charity received. If we used this measure I suspect the blue states would be on top just because they have more money and therefore will give more than they receive while the red states tend to receive more than they give.
They do not need to have their money taken from them in order to do good.
I think people are very well intentioned. However I think the money they donate to charity is not well spent. People donate money to all kinds of inefficient or misguided charities all the time (churches being a good example). When 9/11 happened everyone donated so much money that each family of 9/11 victim would get millions of dollars on top of whatever insurance they would get. People killed in other ways get typically only a few hundred thousand $ of life insurance. When the Boston bombing happened, people donated so much blood they had to throw most of it away. The rest of the time there isn't enough blood.
People are irrational. Their good intentions don't always translate into effectively helping people who need it. I am not saying the government is perfect or even better, but sometimes it's nice to have some central planning to tell people things like "we don't need any more blood now, but we will in 6 months" or "9/11 victims' families are now financially secure, but there are kids whose parents died in other ways, that are just as orphaned as those whose parents died in 9/11", etc.
I actually agree that the government should probably mostly remove itself from the charity business, although I think it should focus on a few key areas like healthcare, housing and meals, etc for people who can't afford it. Private charities can do this too, but usually with lots of gaps in who they can help, because their efforts are not well coordinated.