Yeah. It was originally a Republican president that freed the slaves and Democrats controlling the South and passing and defending racist laws. It's funny how the two parties can so completely reverse on things in a half century. Now nearly all blacks and an overwhelming majority of Jews and Asians and others are welcome in the Democratic party. And so the racist asshats have fled-from and are terrified-by the minority-loaded Democratic party. They fled to, and now infest, the Republican party.
It's kinda sad really. I see many Republicans trying to court the black vote today, certainly many good non-racist Republicans trying to do good work and improve things, but the party is largely trapped by decades of the Southern Strategy pandering to and exploiting the white racist vote. Blacks are not prepared to switch over to The Racist Party, even when they more closely agree with many Republican positions. And with Republicans losing nearly 100% of the black vote, and losing most other groups by large margins, they would have no chance of reaching 50% of the general vote to win any elections if they were to publicly to condemn and alienate the racists in the party.
Hell, look at McCain for a perfect example. There was a racism-related flap over the Confederate flag. McCain said he considers the Confederate flag "offensive" and a "symbol of slavery", but answering a question during the 2000 primary he instead called it "a symbol of heritage", which he later admitted was lying because "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles." Non racist Republicans are forced to pander to (or at least tolerate) racists in order to win nomination, and in the general election non-racist Republicans need the racist vote to break 50% and win. As I said, they have the black and other minority votes going against them. If good non-racist Republicans were to alienate the racist asshats they'd be sunk.
They can't win over the minority vote that might be otherwise be inclined to the Republican platform until they boot out the racists, and they can't afford to boot out the fucking racists until they can win more of the minority vote. Catch-22.
>Republicans did this about 10 years ago, by pretending to be really annoying Democrats, calling people at inopportune hours, etc.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Searching republican "false flag" robocalls brings up hundreds of good hits on it. Here's the first hit describing a series of MORE THAN 20 harrassing calls, pretending to be from the Democratic candidate. The Republicans act like jackasses making harrassing robocalls, trying to trick people into thinking the Democrat is the evil jackass, so that people will get annoyed and vote Republican.
Republicans have done it countless times across the country. Here's the Slashot story on it. It cites it happening in 53 Congressional districts in 2006. So these false flag tactics are a common Republican ploy. The only problem with the original post is that it said "Republicans did this about 10 years ago". Republicans still do it. I hardly expect them to stop just for the 2008 election.
If you, or anyone you know, gets annoying robocalls "from Democrats", they are likely from Republicans. They also like to run bogus phone "polls". They will ask wildly biased questions like "Candidate X voted against a law to protect children from pedophiles, does this make you more or less likely to vote for candidate X?" Where of course candidate "X" is the democratic candidate. By inserting "facts" about their opponent into "questions", they make it sound like innocent neutral information from an innocent neutral source, to hide the fact that they are actually wildly biased and distorted accusations being flung by a Republican smear campaign.
One possibility is that is someone deliberately playing troll and mixing random offensive stuff, or it was obviously a racist Republican. Republicans routinely hurt their own cause with racist comments.... those evil Democrats make Republicas "unfairly" lose votes whigning about Republican comments.... so that would be a clumsy attempt at "turnabout is fair play" trying to make Democrats lose votes by pretending to be a Democrat making racist comments.... so that those stupid Democrats would whigne about it and vote Republican.
Yeah, I've been seeing a surprising number of "Democrats are the racist party" comments floatign around lately. Usually with some comment that Republicans are the party that freed the slaves (Lincoln was Republican), or some such, trying to infer that the Republican party isn't the disgusting racist haven(*) it currently is.
But I think I've figured out what's going on with this rash of posts. They are from racists, obviously, and they are all having a shitfit over Obama. The reason they are accusing the Democratic party of racism is because they think it is true.... they see the Democratic as anti-white racist. But of course their comments wouldn't fly very well if they explicitly mentioned that they meant anti-white racist, so they just make the generic accusation of racism. Which of course leaves most people like you and me wondering where they such a nonsensical idea.
If you're a racist fucktard.... let me clarify.... if you are an anti-black racist fucktard, then obviously anything vaguely approaching non-racist equality is going to look like anti-white racism.
So I'm pretty sure all of these "Democrats are racists" posts are really whigning in terror that whites are in danger and whites being discriminated against because a black man might become president. Yeah... those damn racists Demon-crats are racist and picked Obama just because he's black. And all those damn black people are voting for him just because he's black. And because Obama is an evil anti-white racist. Yada yada yada.
I have a feeling these inbred yahoos are going to increase their "Democrats are racists" rhetoric.
And just to toss in some sobering statistics, in Alamaba during the 2000 election cycle 40% of voters voted in support of an anti-interracial marriage clause in their constitution. Just two years earlier 38% of South Carolina voters voted against interracial marriage as well. Absolutely grotesque figures.
(*)Footnote: No, of course not all Republicans are racists. But yes, it is a simple fact that pretty much all racists go Republican. Something like 88% of blacks are in the Democratic side, Jews and asians and Muslims and pretty much all minorities go Democrat. A minor but notable majority of hispanics go Democrat. The Democratic party has a very high percentage of minorities of all sorts, and the Republican party has very very few. The simple fact is that a racist is not going to be inclined to join a party that is so loaded with objectionable minorities everywhere. The simple fact is that almost all racists are going to align themselves with the party that is nearly free from minority "infestation". And of course minorities are going to be disinclined to align themselves with the party that is infested by racists. So regardless of any merits (or problems) of each party on various issues, there does exist this feedback loop driving racists on to the Republican side and driving minorities onto the Democratic side. This is certainly an inconvenient fact for non-racist Republicans, but the percentage of blacks and others in the Democratic party is an undeniable statistic, and that most racists would therefore flee the Democratic party to the opposite side is pretty undeniable.
Regardless of any history or anything else anyone tries to cite, to the extent that either party today is a "racist party", that would be the Republican party. Again, not all Republicans are racists, and it must seriously suck for them seeing racists claim themselves as being on the same team.
Hmm, that "footnote" grew to half the size of the post. Chuckle. Oh well. Whatever.
YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of infringement and any lawsuit from the party filing the DMCA notice.
and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice.
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of harm or wrong doing in taking down the content.
In practice virtually every company institutes automatic rules of obeying takedown notices and counter notices, no matter how blatantly bogus they may be. If the Olympic Committee, or Scientologists, or Barbra Streisand, or anyone else files DMCA notices demanding the takedown of content which is not in fact infringing, or for any other reason the service provider would not have been guilty under pre-DMCA law for leaving up, then that provider absolutely can choose to safely leave that content up. And equally, if under pre-DMCA law a company would not have been liable for taking certain content down, they can safely ignore a counter notice and can keep content down.
One could, for example, send in a totally bogus takedown notice against a group organizing an event on a certain date, or against a business engaging in some time-critical dealings, or even against say a politician running for office. Virtually every internet business will follow a strict policy on taking down anything on a DMCA notice, no matter how blatantly bogus it is. The arrangement of law and business interests makes that almost almost impossible to escape. The DMCA makes it trivial to arbitrarily censor almost anything anyone dislikes and to bully people into submission, and to abusively achieve complete victory in any time-sensitive situation. I recall one case where stores were unhappy with their holiday sale prices being posted online. So they filed a totally bogus takedown notice claiming the sale prices as copyright infringement, and had the information taken down. And obviously a counter-notice to have that content restored several days later - after the holiday sale was over - would have been completely pointless. But imagine if one were to take advantage of this DMCA situation for political ends. A situation that is obviously quite date-critical and where counter-noticing a takedown does not solve or even diminish the damage caused by that takedown. One could anonymously send totally bogus takedown notices by e-mail or snail-mail screwing either candidate (even screwing both). Not only could you takedown selected videos from YouTube just before an election, not only can you have various crucial materials taken down from various websites, one could potentially even get a candidate's own website taken down.
Maybe in the described political campaign situation a company might override the strict corporate rule to comply with all DMCA notices, however that is a total crap-shoot and the law makes it against the company's interest to do so. Legally, the corporate interest is to just obey the bogus notice.
If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
If you are uploading legitimate material and someone is sending junk DMCA notices, YouTube could ignore the junk notices, could defend you, but legally it is powerfully against their interests to do so. Legally, it would be stupid for them to do so.
I don't know if this will lead to anything that supports a young earth theory
No.
YEC has always been proven wrong by pretty much everything on earth. If you dig in the arctic or antarctic icepack you can count the visible yearly layers. If you dig down 1929 layers you can find traces of volcanic ash from the famous volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. By digging and counting yearly layers you can find traces of every major volcanic eruption in recorded history. There are well over a hundred thousand visible countable yearly layers in the ice pack, and they are scattered with exactly the traces of volcanic eruptions you'd expect over that time span. Actually there's about 800,000 years worth of layered icepack, but beyond about a hundred-odd-thousand years down the layers get squeezed too thin and blur too close together to individually count.
So the earth is visibly countably well over a hundred thousand years old. In addition, there was no possible Global Flood, at least not within the last hundred-odd thousand years anyway. It would have melted underlying snowpack, and it would have left a huge visible layer of mud deposit in the ice. It's just Not There.
Another example is the Grand Canyon. Yeah, it's been suggested it was carved quickly by a huge fast torrent of water after Noah's Flood, but that suggestion is blatantly bogus if you think about it... a huge fast torrent of water would blast its way in STRAIGHT LINES cutting through anything in its way. It would easily wash up and over any minor dirt bumps in the way. If you look at the Grand Canyon, it is riddled with countless U-turns. Often tight U-turns twisting around trivially small bumps in the ground. Bumps that fast water would easily wash over. It doesn't take a geology PhD to see that the Grand Canyon was not carved quickly - it follows exactly the sort of winding looping path you'd get from a reasonably small slow flow of water twisting around every tiny obstacle.
There are hundreds and thousands of other examples, the basic point is that any sort of "young" timeline for earth is total fiction, and YEC'ers are twisting and bending the facts trying to support the answer they desperately WANT to get. The earth is Old.
Just a suggestion, but it sounds to me like taking the term "creationist" for yourself might not be such a good idea. In most common usage "creationist" pretty well means theist&anti-science-loon. If you're a theist-god-created-the-universe & science-substantially-accurately-describes-how, you're probably better off with just "theist" or, if you have looked at biology and are generally satisfied, "theistic evolutionist".
It may save you (and others) some unneccessary headaches.
Sorry, no. They removed that option when Goatse kept rolling over to MAXINT. Then even reading at threshold +5 couldn't keep that fucker off your screen.
Yes, you *do* deserve a troll mod. Your post did nothing more than play persecuted victim, and did it badly. The grandparent post gave a specific and valid basis for the "pander to the stupid lobby" quip. Your post didn't even bother trying. "both took shots at the other side", but your shot wasn't even wrong. It was empty.
Had you simple said "I don't know, it doesn't seem to bother the Obama supporters." and left it at that, that would have been a quite good +5 Funny. But no, you couldn't leave it at that. You weren't making a joke. Had you made the quip and bothered to come up with a half way decent example, which really shouldn't be *too* hard to do a passable job at, you could have legitimately earned insightful or some such. But no, you didn't do that either.
You are just a pissed off biased hack, and you just flung a completely vacuous attack at Obama, and then you went on a persecuted victim whinge. "WAAAAH! I can't think of a comeback, and I'm being peeeeeeersecuted by Slashdot biiiiiiias. Waaaaaaah!".
The fact that you're currently at +4, I can only imagine more "persecuted victims" jumped on in biased mod-ups. Nahhh.... not possible.... because we all know the only bad biased mods on here are done by moonbat Obamarama liberals. Snark.
Yes, you absolutely need scare quotes on "halves". Because you are absolutely NOT talking about halves.
I'm all in favor of doing that sort of division, so long as it is done fairly and evenly by population size. I haven't checked the exact demographic spread, but it would go something like:
2 Senators for rural upstate. 2 Senators for suburban downstate mainland. 2 Senators for urban NYC. 2 Senators for me on suburban Long Island.
I like that Senate make up much better.
Or better yet, Wyoming has a population of 522,830, so lets divide New York State into chunks of that size. That would split New York State into 38 pieces. That would be about 72 Senators for New York. Then you can have your two Senators, and a several other chunks of rural upstate could each get 2 senators, and downstate suburban would get a pile of Senators, and New York City could get 32 Senators, and Long Island would get a pile of Senators.
I honestly love your idea of splitting the state to get more Senators. In fact I was thinking about it a couple of years ago, except I used California as my example. California could be split into 70 states that way. The half-million-odd people in Wyoming get 2 Senators, and each half-million-odd people in California get 2 Senators. California is just too damn big anyway. So we split California into these 70 new states, and they get 140 Senators.
Because ya gotta admit, it's extremely unfair that a half million people in Wyoming get 2 Senators, and the 36.5 million people in California get 2 Senators. Most people in California are getting no representation at all. There are a lot of rural voters in California getting no representation. By splitting L.A. into a bunch of states and splitting the suburban metropolitan area into a bunch of states and splitting those rural areas into a couple of states, then rural red Californians would get a couple of those 140 Senators.
So the question is... Does she really believe this crap? or is she just sucking up to her base? [] if she is another one of these nut jobs that believes that this crap should really be taught as if it is science, then I am very scared.
She was head of her high school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes. So yeah, I think she she's kinda into the religion thing. Not to mention that she's rabidly Pro-Life (even in cases of rape and incest) and wants a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw gay marriage. Yeah, I think she's sincere in her reactionary social conservatism.
Also, one thing about her that she seems to be pretty big on the integrity thing. Miss Snow White. I don't think she would dishonestly pander to the wingnuts like that. Her big scandal is that she rats out corruption in her own party. If it weren't for lets-start-a-third-war-and-a-fourth-war-McCain being in the presidential slot and her right-wingnut social conservatism, I'd be pretty impressed with her.
For quite a while now I've been hoping the Republican party would tear itself in half, and if McCain wins the election then the consolation prize is that McCain will probably become a huge wedge against the social wingnut side and Palin will probabably rat out the corporatism and corrupt neocon side. The schizophrenia and fireworks in the Republican party would be entertaining to watch, and might just improve that screwed up party.
There will always be gaps in the fossil record and we will always be finding more fossils to form a more complete lineage.
I some good info you'll like. Things are better than you thought. I'm lazy, so I'm going to copy-paste from another post of mine:
Fossils. Much of the fossil record is indeed random spotty, however there is a good chunk of the record that is perfect continuous and complete. There are tiny animals in the ocean called Foraminifera. They are generally a tiny fraction of an inch in size, they grow intricate mineral skeletons called 'tests', and they literally number in the trillions. Vast numbers of them die every day and their tests settle to the sea floor in a continuous rain. A vast continuous rain of perfectly layered tiny fossils in the sediment that slowly builds up on the sea floor. In the 1970's deep see oil exploration lead to advanced deep see drilling technology, and that exploration drilling started bringing up sediment drill cores to be analyzed. Cores to be analyzed for oil purposes, but incidentally loaded with an effectively limitless supply of tiny Foraminifera fossils. A perfect continuous record tracing the branching tree of diversification and speciation over many tens of millions of years. Not merely a continuous sequence of transitional species, but a hyper detailed record of entire populations along each speciation split. Scientists are studying exactly how long each speciation split took, and examining in detail how populations behave and change during speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events. A perfect record tracing diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor.
A significant chunk of the tree of life that is absolutely gap-free.
He said "Evolution is an extremely simple concept". The basic concepts of evolution are pretty simple to understand, so long as one does not come in actively not-wanting to understand.
A high school biology class of course needs to teach recessive genes. But evolution would still work even if there was no such thing as recessive genes. You can teach the basic concept of evolution without even getting into genetics. You start with the simple idea that tall people usually have tall children and that short people usually have short children. That a redheaded couple will have redheaded children, then you gloss over recessives and just say that dark-haired people generally have dark-haired children. You can even gloss past the word mutation just by talking about rare random changes or "birth defects". That a baby can be born with no head, and obviously it dies. And that sometimes a baby is born with six fingers, and that six-fingered people *do* have six-fingered children. Good changes survive and bad changes die. Then get into some other examples, like how a monkey might be born without all of that hair on it's body, and how it would have children that were also not-hairy, and how that leads to us. There are many small differences between us and monkeys, but we're really just tall not-so-hairy really smart monkeys.
That's not so bad as summarizing the basic idea of evolution, and that is shoehorned down into one pretty short paragraph at a super simplistic level. Given 15 minutes to talk with someone and you can easily fill out the explanation. The basic idea of evolution is fairly simple, and it's not hard to target it to almost any level of understanding from a kindergartener up to college-graduate-who-never-learned-it.
The only real problem is people who want NOT to understand it. Obviously people who don't want to understand it can never be convinced it's true no matter how much evidence you present. On the other hand I've run into a few people who have been misled by all the anti-evolution propaganda and have doubts about the validity of evolution, but so long as they are honestly interested in seeing and understanding the evidence then I have won them over as 100% converts to the truth of evolution after presenting a couple of examples should just how much and just how strong the evidence is.
Even more great debate. Welcome to the democratic method. Now, how many of the voters in your state/local area support this barfing turtle thing?
Sorry, but that is a just plain stupid argument and position.
Shall we have a vote to take half of the time away from astronomy education in science class to spend equal time teaching astrology? Probably almost hundred million people read their horoscope on a regular basis. Should we have a vote to teach crystal energy&healing in science class? Doubtless there are communities that could drum up a 51% vote for it.
If I happen to live in the same neighborhood as Tom Cruise, and his scientology fruitcake buddies, and they drum up a 51% vote, should MY children have their science education taken away and replaced with lessons on how our bodies are infested with alien mind-control beings and that the earth was colonized by Galactic Emperor Xenu blowing up hydrogen bombs around all the volcanoes on earth?
I say no.
Science class teaches an overview of science as understood and practiced by professionals of those fields.
That is an absolutely INDISPUTABLE, absolutely FACTUAL, absolutely OBJECTIVE, standard for what should be taught in science class.
What is chemistry? Well chemistry as understood and practiced by 99.9% of professional chemists is founded on atom theory and the periodic table of elements, and we teach this is what is says and here is how it works.
It doesn't matter if atom theory is right or wrong. It doesn't matter if atoms exist or not. That *IS* the foundation of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. Any student who wants to understand anything about the field of chemistry, any student who wants to pursue any education or profession remotely related to chemistry *must* be familiar with those concepts and must understand them. EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG, it is impossible to get any education in the field or become a professional in the field without knowing it. It is impossible to do credible scientific work proving atom theory is wrong, impossible to do credible science proving atoms don't exist, if you do not understand the current science and understanding of chemistry.
There is currently NO REMOTELY REASONABLE, NO REMOTELY VIABLE alternative to the current theory of atoms and elements.
What is biology? Well biology as understood and practiced by 99.9% of professional biologists is founded on evolutionary theory and the tree of common descent, and we teach this is what is says and here is how it works.
It doesn't matter if evolutionary theory is right or wrong. It doesn't matter if the tree of common descent is true or not. That *IS* the foundation of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. Any student who wants to understand anything about the field of chemistry, any student who wants to pursue any education or profession remotely related to biology *must* be familiar with those concepts and must understand them. EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG, it is impossible to get any education in the field or become a professional in the field without knowing it. It is impossible to do credible scientific work proving evolutionary theory is wrong, impossible to do credible science proving common descent is wrong, if you do not understand the current science and understanding of biology.
There is currently NO REMOTELY REASONABLE, NO REMOTELY VIABLE alternative to the current theory of evolution.
Highschool science class must teach an accurate overview of each field of science. There is certainly social controversy over evolution, there is certainly political controversy over evolution, but among professional degreed biologists there is no scientific controversy. There is no scientific alternative to evolution. Rounded off to the nearest full percent, ZERO percent of professional biologists have any doubt over the fundamentals of evolution. Rounded to the nearest tenth of one percent, 99.9% accept evolution and 0.1% rej
I am now sending a federal law DMCA notice demanding you take my information down. BTW, please don't run a Slashdot front page story on my DMCA takedown notice & info.
I suspect you may agree with some or possibly even all of the below, so don't take the follow rant as aimed at you:)
SO yeah, under Bush, and ostensibly McCain,... at least I still have the right to more of my money and the right to invest where -I- think it should be invested.
Except that doesn't factor in that they currently have around $31,600 in debt hanging over everyone's individual finances. If for example you are the breadwinner for family of four then you have about $126,400 debt hanging over your head.
The US national debt is about $31,600 for every man, woman, child, and infant in the US.
And just like an irresponsible family that ran up $126,400 in credit card debt, your paycheck is getting wacked with taxes to pay the interest on that credit card.
The game by Republican politicians (and particularly Bush and McCain fiscal policy) is to pander to voters with all the talk of lower taxes, and to "follow through" on that talk by running up credit card debt to temporarily manufacture the illusion of lowering taxes.
The best way to give everyone a REAL tax cut is to pay off the goddamn debt. Then you don't need to pay interest on the debt. Then taxes ACTUALLY lower by the amount of that sizable interest bill.
The Republican party still loves to play the line about Democrats being the tax-and-spend party, but the reality has long since become Republicans as the lie-borrow-and-spend party to smack people with credit card bill later.
If it were in my power I'd forbid any politician to ever speak of taxes at all, because it is in fact impossible to make any real change in tax policy, it is in fact impossible to make an real change in tax levels per se. Sooner or later every dollar in spending has to be paid by either a dollar in taxes or a dollar+interested in even higher taxes. Well, either that or the nation implodes in the exact same manner and for the exact same reason the Soviet Union did when it ran up debt without collecting the taxes to pay it.
If politicians want to change SPENDING, if politicians want to make concrete proposals of what spending they plan to increase or cut, then fine. Then taxes eventually will follow the one and only possible policy - taxes will match spending or they will match spending+interest. It is IMPOSSIBLE to legitimately manipulate tax level policy, it is total bullshit for politicians to talk about tax levels. If a politician wants to advocate lower taxes, he should be FORBIDDEN(*) to do so, that politician should be required to state exactly what spending he intends to cut. If that spending is cut then yeah, that would ultimately have the effect of lowering taxes. But taxes themselves cannot be a legitimate subject of discussion. Only spending is a legitimate subject. Taxes are an unalterable result of spending. And for all their ranting about lower taxes, Republicans have become bigger spenders than Democrats ever were.
(*)Footnote: No need to bring up free-speech issues with forbidding politicians to discuss tax levels, and other problems. I know I know. I was just ranting a magic-wand fantasy solution to one of the common forms of political bullshit. It was not a serious proposal. It was just to illustrate my point.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. It was originally a Republican president that freed the slaves and Democrats controlling the South and passing and defending racist laws. It's funny how the two parties can so completely reverse on things in a half century. Now nearly all blacks and an overwhelming majority of Jews and Asians and others are welcome in the Democratic party. And so the racist asshats have fled-from and are terrified-by the minority-loaded Democratic party. They fled to, and now infest, the Republican party.
It's kinda sad really. I see many Republicans trying to court the black vote today, certainly many good non-racist Republicans trying to do good work and improve things, but the party is largely trapped by decades of the Southern Strategy pandering to and exploiting the white racist vote. Blacks are not prepared to switch over to The Racist Party, even when they more closely agree with many Republican positions. And with Republicans losing nearly 100% of the black vote, and losing most other groups by large margins, they would have no chance of reaching 50% of the general vote to win any elections if they were to publicly to condemn and alienate the racists in the party.
Hell, look at McCain for a perfect example. There was a racism-related flap over the Confederate flag. McCain said he considers the Confederate flag "offensive" and a "symbol of slavery", but answering a question during the 2000 primary he instead called it "a symbol of heritage", which he later admitted was lying because "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles." Non racist Republicans are forced to pander to (or at least tolerate) racists in order to win nomination, and in the general election non-racist Republicans need the racist vote to break 50% and win. As I said, they have the black and other minority votes going against them. If good non-racist Republicans were to alienate the racist asshats they'd be sunk.
They can't win over the minority vote that might be otherwise be inclined to the Republican platform until they boot out the racists, and they can't afford to boot out the fucking racists until they can win more of the minority vote. Catch-22.
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>Republicans did this about 10 years ago, by pretending to be really annoying Democrats, calling people at inopportune hours, etc.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Searching republican "false flag" robocalls brings up hundreds of good hits on it.
Here's the first hit describing a series of MORE THAN 20 harrassing calls, pretending to be from the Democratic candidate. The Republicans act like jackasses making harrassing robocalls, trying to trick people into thinking the Democrat is the evil jackass, so that people will get annoyed and vote Republican.
Republicans have done it countless times across the country. Here's the Slashot story on it. It cites it happening in 53 Congressional districts in 2006. So these false flag tactics are a common Republican ploy. The only problem with the original post is that it said "Republicans did this about 10 years ago". Republicans still do it. I hardly expect them to stop just for the 2008 election.
If you, or anyone you know, gets annoying robocalls "from Democrats", they are likely from Republicans. They also like to run bogus phone "polls". They will ask wildly biased questions like "Candidate X voted against a law to protect children from pedophiles, does this make you more or less likely to vote for candidate X?" Where of course candidate "X" is the democratic candidate. By inserting "facts" about their opponent into "questions", they make it sound like innocent neutral information from an innocent neutral source, to hide the fact that they are actually wildly biased and distorted accusations being flung by a Republican smear campaign.
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this kind of talk actually hurts your cause
One possibility is that is someone deliberately playing troll and mixing random offensive stuff, or it was obviously a racist Republican. Republicans routinely hurt their own cause with racist comments.... those evil Democrats make Republicas "unfairly" lose votes whigning about Republican comments.... so that would be a clumsy attempt at "turnabout is fair play" trying to make Democrats lose votes by pretending to be a Democrat making racist comments.... so that those stupid Democrats would whigne about it and vote Republican.
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Yeah, I've been seeing a surprising number of "Democrats are the racist party" comments floatign around lately. Usually with some comment that Republicans are the party that freed the slaves (Lincoln was Republican), or some such, trying to infer that the Republican party isn't the disgusting racist haven(*) it currently is.
But I think I've figured out what's going on with this rash of posts. They are from racists, obviously, and they are all having a shitfit over Obama. The reason they are accusing the Democratic party of racism is because they think it is true.... they see the Democratic as anti-white racist. But of course their comments wouldn't fly very well if they explicitly mentioned that they meant anti-white racist, so they just make the generic accusation of racism. Which of course leaves most people like you and me wondering where they such a nonsensical idea.
If you're a racist fucktard.... let me clarify.... if you are an anti-black racist fucktard, then obviously anything vaguely approaching non-racist equality is going to look like anti-white racism.
So I'm pretty sure all of these "Democrats are racists" posts are really whigning in terror that whites are in danger and whites being discriminated against because a black man might become president. Yeah... those damn racists Demon-crats are racist and picked Obama just because he's black. And all those damn black people are voting for him just because he's black. And because Obama is an evil anti-white racist. Yada yada yada.
I have a feeling these inbred yahoos are going to increase their "Democrats are racists" rhetoric.
And just to toss in some sobering statistics, in Alamaba during the 2000 election cycle 40% of voters voted in support of an anti-interracial marriage clause in their constitution. Just two years earlier 38% of South Carolina voters voted against interracial marriage as well. Absolutely grotesque figures.
(*)Footnote: No, of course not all Republicans are racists. But yes, it is a simple fact that pretty much all racists go Republican. Something like 88% of blacks are in the Democratic side, Jews and asians and Muslims and pretty much all minorities go Democrat. A minor but notable majority of hispanics go Democrat. The Democratic party has a very high percentage of minorities of all sorts, and the Republican party has very very few. The simple fact is that a racist is not going to be inclined to join a party that is so loaded with objectionable minorities everywhere. The simple fact is that almost all racists are going to align themselves with the party that is nearly free from minority "infestation". And of course minorities are going to be disinclined to align themselves with the party that is infested by racists. So regardless of any merits (or problems) of each party on various issues, there does exist this feedback loop driving racists on to the Republican side and driving minorities onto the Democratic side. This is certainly an inconvenient fact for non-racist Republicans, but the percentage of blacks and others in the Democratic party is an undeniable statistic, and that most racists would therefore flee the Democratic party to the opposite side is pretty undeniable.
Regardless of any history or anything else anyone tries to cite, to the extent that either party today is a "racist party", that would be the Republican party. Again, not all Republicans are racists, and it must seriously suck for them seeing racists claim themselves as being on the same team.
Hmm, that "footnote" grew to half the size of the post. Chuckle. Oh well. Whatever.
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Cucumbers listed as birth control at the counter would be the least of our problems.
It sounds like a kinky, but certainly effective, form of birth control to me.
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YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of infringement and any lawsuit from the party filing the DMCA notice.
and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice.
Incorrect.
The DMCA says YouTube gets a free pass against any claims of harm or wrong doing in taking down the content.
In practice virtually every company institutes automatic rules of obeying takedown notices and counter notices, no matter how blatantly bogus they may be. If the Olympic Committee, or Scientologists, or Barbra Streisand, or anyone else files DMCA notices demanding the takedown of content which is not in fact infringing, or for any other reason the service provider would not have been guilty under pre-DMCA law for leaving up, then that provider absolutely can choose to safely leave that content up. And equally, if under pre-DMCA law a company would not have been liable for taking certain content down, they can safely ignore a counter notice and can keep content down.
One could, for example, send in a totally bogus takedown notice against a group organizing an event on a certain date, or against a business engaging in some time-critical dealings, or even against say a politician running for office. Virtually every internet business will follow a strict policy on taking down anything on a DMCA notice, no matter how blatantly bogus it is. The arrangement of law and business interests makes that almost almost impossible to escape. The DMCA makes it trivial to arbitrarily censor almost anything anyone dislikes and to bully people into submission, and to abusively achieve complete victory in any time-sensitive situation. I recall one case where stores were unhappy with their holiday sale prices being posted online. So they filed a totally bogus takedown notice claiming the sale prices as copyright infringement, and had the information taken down. And obviously a counter-notice to have that content restored several days later - after the holiday sale was over - would have been completely pointless. But imagine if one were to take advantage of this DMCA situation for political ends. A situation that is obviously quite date-critical and where counter-noticing a takedown does not solve or even diminish the damage caused by that takedown. One could anonymously send totally bogus takedown notices by e-mail or snail-mail screwing either candidate (even screwing both). Not only could you takedown selected videos from YouTube just before an election, not only can you have various crucial materials taken down from various websites, one could potentially even get a candidate's own website taken down.
Maybe in the described political campaign situation a company might override the strict corporate rule to comply with all DMCA notices, however that is a total crap-shoot and the law makes it against the company's interest to do so. Legally, the corporate interest is to just obey the bogus notice.
If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
If you are uploading legitimate material and someone is sending junk DMCA notices, YouTube could ignore the junk notices, could defend you, but legally it is powerfully against their interests to do so. Legally, it would be stupid for them to do so.
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I don't know if this will lead to anything that supports a young earth theory
No.
YEC has always been proven wrong by pretty much everything on earth. If you dig in the arctic or antarctic icepack you can count the visible yearly layers. If you dig down 1929 layers you can find traces of volcanic ash from the famous volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. By digging and counting yearly layers you can find traces of every major volcanic eruption in recorded history. There are well over a hundred thousand visible countable yearly layers in the ice pack, and they are scattered with exactly the traces of volcanic eruptions you'd expect over that time span. Actually there's about 800,000 years worth of layered icepack, but beyond about a hundred-odd-thousand years down the layers get squeezed too thin and blur too close together to individually count.
So the earth is visibly countably well over a hundred thousand years old. In addition, there was no possible Global Flood, at least not within the last hundred-odd thousand years anyway. It would have melted underlying snowpack, and it would have left a huge visible layer of mud deposit in the ice. It's just Not There.
Another example is the Grand Canyon. Yeah, it's been suggested it was carved quickly by a huge fast torrent of water after Noah's Flood, but that suggestion is blatantly bogus if you think about it... a huge fast torrent of water would blast its way in STRAIGHT LINES cutting through anything in its way. It would easily wash up and over any minor dirt bumps in the way. If you look at the Grand Canyon, it is riddled with countless U-turns. Often tight U-turns twisting around trivially small bumps in the ground. Bumps that fast water would easily wash over. It doesn't take a geology PhD to see that the Grand Canyon was not carved quickly - it follows exactly the sort of winding looping path you'd get from a reasonably small slow flow of water twisting around every tiny obstacle.
There are hundreds and thousands of other examples, the basic point is that any sort of "young" timeline for earth is total fiction, and YEC'ers are twisting and bending the facts trying to support the answer they desperately WANT to get. The earth is Old.
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Just a suggestion, but it sounds to me like taking the term "creationist" for yourself might not be such a good idea. In most common usage "creationist" pretty well means theist&anti-science-loon. If you're a theist-god-created-the-universe & science-substantially-accurately-describes-how, you're probably better off with just "theist" or, if you have looked at biology and are generally satisfied, "theistic evolutionist".
It may save you (and others) some unneccessary headaches.
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Don't forget to save your semen stained shirt.
Chuckle.
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Or we could have a black boy...
Die.
Just. Fucking. Die.
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Could I mod this (-1, Nauseating)?
Sorry, no.
They removed that option when Goatse kept rolling over to MAXINT.
Then even reading at threshold +5 couldn't keep that fucker off your screen.
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Yes, you *do* deserve a troll mod.
Your post did nothing more than play persecuted victim, and did it badly.
The grandparent post gave a specific and valid basis for the "pander to the stupid lobby" quip.
Your post didn't even bother trying. "both took shots at the other side", but your shot wasn't even wrong. It was empty.
Had you simple said "I don't know, it doesn't seem to bother the Obama supporters." and left it at that, that would have been a quite good +5 Funny. But no, you couldn't leave it at that. You weren't making a joke.
Had you made the quip and bothered to come up with a half way decent example, which really shouldn't be *too* hard to do a passable job at, you could have legitimately earned insightful or some such. But no, you didn't do that either.
You are just a pissed off biased hack, and you just flung a completely vacuous attack at Obama, and then you went on a persecuted victim whinge. "WAAAAH! I can't think of a comeback, and I'm being peeeeeeersecuted by Slashdot biiiiiiias. Waaaaaaah!".
The fact that you're currently at +4, I can only imagine more "persecuted victims" jumped on in biased mod-ups.
Nahhh.... not possible.... because we all know the only bad biased mods on here are done by moonbat Obamarama liberals. Snark.
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I'm almost afraid to ask...
when you said "downer", was that deliberate pun or just a very unfortunate choice of words?
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The two "halves"
Yes, you absolutely need scare quotes on "halves". Because you are absolutely NOT talking about halves.
I'm all in favor of doing that sort of division, so long as it is done fairly and evenly by population size. I haven't checked the exact demographic spread, but it would go something like:
2 Senators for rural upstate.
2 Senators for suburban downstate mainland.
2 Senators for urban NYC.
2 Senators for me on suburban Long Island.
I like that Senate make up much better.
Or better yet, Wyoming has a population of 522,830, so lets divide New York State into chunks of that size. That would split New York State into 38 pieces. That would be about 72 Senators for New York. Then you can have your two Senators, and a several other chunks of rural upstate could each get 2 senators, and downstate suburban would get a pile of Senators, and New York City could get 32 Senators, and Long Island would get a pile of Senators.
I honestly love your idea of splitting the state to get more Senators. In fact I was thinking about it a couple of years ago, except I used California as my example. California could be split into 70 states that way. The half-million-odd people in Wyoming get 2 Senators, and each half-million-odd people in California get 2 Senators. California is just too damn big anyway. So we split California into these 70 new states, and they get 140 Senators.
Because ya gotta admit, it's extremely unfair that a half million people in Wyoming get 2 Senators, and the 36.5 million people in California get 2 Senators. Most people in California are getting no representation at all. There are a lot of rural voters in California getting no representation. By splitting L.A. into a bunch of states and splitting the suburban metropolitan area into a bunch of states and splitting those rural areas into a couple of states, then rural red Californians would get a couple of those 140 Senators.
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So the question is... Does she really believe this crap? or is she just sucking up to her base?
[] if she is another one of these nut jobs that believes that this crap should really be taught as if it is science, then I am very scared.
She was head of her high school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes. So yeah, I think she she's kinda into the religion thing.
Not to mention that she's rabidly Pro-Life (even in cases of rape and incest) and wants a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw gay marriage.
Yeah, I think she's sincere in her reactionary social conservatism.
Also, one thing about her that she seems to be pretty big on the integrity thing. Miss Snow White. I don't think she would dishonestly pander to the wingnuts like that. Her big scandal is that she rats out corruption in her own party. If it weren't for lets-start-a-third-war-and-a-fourth-war-McCain being in the presidential slot and her right-wingnut social conservatism, I'd be pretty impressed with her.
For quite a while now I've been hoping the Republican party would tear itself in half, and if McCain wins the election then the consolation prize is that McCain will probably become a huge wedge against the social wingnut side and Palin will probabably rat out the corporatism and corrupt neocon side. The schizophrenia and fireworks in the Republican party would be entertaining to watch, and might just improve that screwed up party.
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There will always be gaps in the fossil record and we will always be finding more fossils to form a more complete lineage.
I some good info you'll like. Things are better than you thought.
I'm lazy, so I'm going to copy-paste from another post of mine:
Fossils. Much of the fossil record is indeed random spotty, however there is a good chunk of the record that is perfect continuous and complete. There are tiny animals in the ocean called Foraminifera. They are generally a tiny fraction of an inch in size, they grow intricate mineral skeletons called 'tests', and they literally number in the trillions. Vast numbers of them die every day and their tests settle to the sea floor in a continuous rain. A vast continuous rain of perfectly layered tiny fossils in the sediment that slowly builds up on the sea floor. In the 1970's deep see oil exploration lead to advanced deep see drilling technology, and that exploration drilling started bringing up sediment drill cores to be analyzed. Cores to be analyzed for oil purposes, but incidentally loaded with an effectively limitless supply of tiny Foraminifera fossils. A perfect continuous record tracing the branching tree of diversification and speciation over many tens of millions of years. Not merely a continuous sequence of transitional species, but a hyper detailed record of entire populations along each speciation split. Scientists are studying exactly how long each speciation split took, and examining in detail how populations behave and change during speciation events, and studying how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events. A perfect record tracing diverse currently existing species back to their common ancestor.
A significant chunk of the tree of life that is absolutely gap-free.
To quote xkcd:
Science. It works, Bitches.
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To truly understand evolution
He said "Evolution is an extremely simple concept". The basic concepts of evolution are pretty simple to understand, so long as one does not come in actively not-wanting to understand.
A high school biology class of course needs to teach recessive genes. But evolution would still work even if there was no such thing as recessive genes. You can teach the basic concept of evolution without even getting into genetics. You start with the simple idea that tall people usually have tall children and that short people usually have short children. That a redheaded couple will have redheaded children, then you gloss over recessives and just say that dark-haired people generally have dark-haired children. You can even gloss past the word mutation just by talking about rare random changes or "birth defects". That a baby can be born with no head, and obviously it dies. And that sometimes a baby is born with six fingers, and that six-fingered people *do* have six-fingered children. Good changes survive and bad changes die. Then get into some other examples, like how a monkey might be born without all of that hair on it's body, and how it would have children that were also not-hairy, and how that leads to us. There are many small differences between us and monkeys, but we're really just tall not-so-hairy really smart monkeys.
That's not so bad as summarizing the basic idea of evolution, and that is shoehorned down into one pretty short paragraph at a super simplistic level. Given 15 minutes to talk with someone and you can easily fill out the explanation. The basic idea of evolution is fairly simple, and it's not hard to target it to almost any level of understanding from a kindergartener up to college-graduate-who-never-learned-it.
The only real problem is people who want NOT to understand it. Obviously people who don't want to understand it can never be convinced it's true no matter how much evidence you present. On the other hand I've run into a few people who have been misled by all the anti-evolution propaganda and have doubts about the validity of evolution, but so long as they are honestly interested in seeing and understanding the evidence then I have won them over as 100% converts to the truth of evolution after presenting a couple of examples should just how much and just how strong the evidence is.
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Even more great debate. Welcome to the democratic method. Now, how many of the voters in your state/local area support this barfing turtle thing?
Sorry, but that is a just plain stupid argument and position.
Shall we have a vote to take half of the time away from astronomy education in science class to spend equal time teaching astrology? Probably almost hundred million people read their horoscope on a regular basis. Should we have a vote to teach crystal energy&healing in science class? Doubtless there are communities that could drum up a 51% vote for it.
If I happen to live in the same neighborhood as Tom Cruise, and his scientology fruitcake buddies, and they drum up a 51% vote, should MY children have their science education taken away and replaced with lessons on how our bodies are infested with alien mind-control beings and that the earth was colonized by Galactic Emperor Xenu blowing up hydrogen bombs around all the volcanoes on earth?
I say no.
Science class teaches an overview of science as understood and practiced by professionals of those fields.
That is an absolutely INDISPUTABLE,
absolutely FACTUAL,
absolutely OBJECTIVE,
standard for what should be taught in science class.
What is chemistry?
Well chemistry as understood and practiced by 99.9% of professional chemists is founded on atom theory and the periodic table of elements, and we teach this is what is says and here is how it works.
It doesn't matter if atom theory is right or wrong. It doesn't matter if atoms exist or not. That *IS* the foundation of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. Any student who wants to understand anything about the field of chemistry, any student who wants to pursue any education or profession remotely related to chemistry *must* be familiar with those concepts and must understand them. EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG, it is impossible to get any education in the field or become a professional in the field without knowing it. It is impossible to do credible scientific work proving atom theory is wrong, impossible to do credible science proving atoms don't exist, if you do not understand the current science and understanding of chemistry.
There is currently NO REMOTELY REASONABLE, NO REMOTELY VIABLE alternative to the current theory of atoms and elements.
What is biology?
Well biology as understood and practiced by 99.9% of professional biologists is founded on evolutionary theory and the tree of common descent, and we teach this is what is says and here is how it works.
It doesn't matter if evolutionary theory is right or wrong. It doesn't matter if the tree of common descent is true or not. That *IS* the foundation of the field as understood and practiced by professionals in that field. Any student who wants to understand anything about the field of chemistry, any student who wants to pursue any education or profession remotely related to biology *must* be familiar with those concepts and must understand them. EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG, it is impossible to get any education in the field or become a professional in the field without knowing it. It is impossible to do credible scientific work proving evolutionary theory is wrong, impossible to do credible science proving common descent is wrong, if you do not understand the current science and understanding of biology.
There is currently NO REMOTELY REASONABLE, NO REMOTELY VIABLE alternative to the current theory of evolution.
Highschool science class must teach an accurate overview of each field of science.
There is certainly social controversy over evolution, there is certainly political controversy over evolution, but among professional degreed biologists there is no scientific controversy. There is no scientific alternative to evolution. Rounded off to the nearest full percent, ZERO percent of professional biologists have any doubt over the fundamentals of evolution. Rounded to the nearest tenth of one percent, 99.9% accept evolution and 0.1% rej
I'm fine with my side being effective bad guys.
Lo and behold, Bush's twenty-odd percent approval rating.
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My new RSA public key is this number times 3.
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The 80s and 90s called - they want their technology back.
The 80s and 90s called again - they want their joke back.
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Except for the Trusted Computing fans.
They still have the delusion of "fixing" that.
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Whew! Good thing you clicked the "Anonymous Coward" box when you posted that!
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Heay! That's my private info!
I am now sending a federal law DMCA notice demanding you take my information down.
BTW, please don't run a Slashdot front page story on my DMCA takedown notice & info.
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I suspect you may agree with some or possibly even all of the below, so don't take the follow rant as aimed at you :)
SO yeah, under Bush, and ostensibly McCain,... at least I still have the right to more of my money and the right to invest where -I- think it should be invested.
Except that doesn't factor in that they currently have around $31,600 in debt hanging over everyone's individual finances. If for example you are the breadwinner for family of four then you have about $126,400 debt hanging over your head.
The US national debt is about $31,600 for every man, woman, child, and infant in the US.
And just like an irresponsible family that ran up $126,400 in credit card debt, your paycheck is getting wacked with taxes to pay the interest on that credit card.
The game by Republican politicians (and particularly Bush and McCain fiscal policy) is to pander to voters with all the talk of lower taxes, and to "follow through" on that talk by running up credit card debt to temporarily manufacture the illusion of lowering taxes.
The best way to give everyone a REAL tax cut is to pay off the goddamn debt. Then you don't need to pay interest on the debt. Then taxes ACTUALLY lower by the amount of that sizable interest bill.
The Republican party still loves to play the line about Democrats being the tax-and-spend party, but the reality has long since become Republicans as the lie-borrow-and-spend party to smack people with credit card bill later.
If it were in my power I'd forbid any politician to ever speak of taxes at all, because it is in fact impossible to make any real change in tax policy, it is in fact impossible to make an real change in tax levels per se. Sooner or later every dollar in spending has to be paid by either a dollar in taxes or a dollar+interested in even higher taxes. Well, either that or the nation implodes in the exact same manner and for the exact same reason the Soviet Union did when it ran up debt without collecting the taxes to pay it.
If politicians want to change SPENDING, if politicians want to make concrete proposals of what spending they plan to increase or cut, then fine. Then taxes eventually will follow the one and only possible policy - taxes will match spending or they will match spending+interest. It is IMPOSSIBLE to legitimately manipulate tax level policy, it is total bullshit for politicians to talk about tax levels. If a politician wants to advocate lower taxes, he should be FORBIDDEN(*) to do so, that politician should be required to state exactly what spending he intends to cut. If that spending is cut then yeah, that would ultimately have the effect of lowering taxes. But taxes themselves cannot be a legitimate subject of discussion. Only spending is a legitimate subject. Taxes are an unalterable result of spending. And for all their ranting about lower taxes, Republicans have become bigger spenders than Democrats ever were.
(*)Footnote: No need to bring up free-speech issues with forbidding politicians to discuss tax levels, and other problems. I know I know. I was just ranting a magic-wand fantasy solution to one of the common forms of political bullshit. It was not a serious proposal. It was just to illustrate my point.
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