The information the informants provided us also led to lost innocent lives. Are they despicable traitors with no common sense too?
What's it like, having no moral compass whatsoever? Do you actually comprehend what sort of people the Taliban are, and what they do to people who, for example, teach their daughters to read? An informant that's acting to undermine that brutal, medieval-minded, cruel theocracy and thugfest may indeed provide information that ends up getting some innocent person killed. But they're doing it to stop a movement that actively seeks to kill innocent people, and makes a public spectacle of doing so, on purpose, in the town square.
A faux journalist who loves media attention and fawning, politically-motivated fans is deliberately exposing information that is setting back the efforts to prevent the Taliban from once again running Afghanistan in their perverse model of Islamist insanity. I'm always amazed by people - especially those on the left who swear that women's rights are important to them - who think it's mean to "interfere" with a culture that's being subjected to the Taliban meat grinder.
Do hurricanes form from the large-scale environment around a tropical storm or from small-scale formations 100 kilometers from the center?
As we all know from the film, PowerPoint slides, books, and especially the promotional posters and advertisements, hurricanes come directly out of Evil Capitalist Industrial Cooling and Exhaust Towers. It must be true, not enough attractive celebrities have disagreed with it.
He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data
No. He and his source are both politically motivated, and have an agenda. The material isn't "raw," it was chosen by the leaker and then picked over by Assange. He is deciding what to redact and what not to, and he is decideing what - within that data - he says he thinks will endanger anyone, and he's using his "expert" analytical skills to choose what military intel and reports it's appropriate to air while people's lives are at stake. He's not reporting, or providing raw data. He's clumsily grinding an axe, and happy to have other people die so that he can stay in the spotlight. What a colossal douchebag.
The Taliban offered to try bin Laden if the US could provide evidence. We rejected the offer
Gee, I wonder why? Would be because the Taliban had a long history of being murderous, lying bastards? Or because they were plainly giving Al Queda material support, territory in which to operate, and their complete moral support at every turn?
Aren't you even a little embarassed for trotting out that bit of nonsense?
But, if an organization is going to try to influence an election, then it should have to be able to trace all of its capital to donations from American citizens
This is already the case, and the court's ruling did nothing to change it. Foreign based, foreign managed, or foreign owned companies cannot participate in election-related advertising. Domestic companies must document what they spend, and when and how they spend it. This has not changed.
I do not think ANYONE should donate to an American political campaign, besides American citizens
So, let's say that you three American citizens that love Italian food. They decide to pool their resources and open a restaurant. They incorporate, like any businesss would do. Then someone in their city decides to run for office on a platform of banning any restaurant that sells meals including meat, since it's mean to animals to eat them. You're saying that these three citizens shouldn't be able to run an ad, on behalf of their own business (which is how their local community knows them) pointing out that voting for this particular politician could ruin their business and remove a favorite restaurant from the city? I don't care how particularly plausible that situation is - in principle, it's not at all different than the AARP running an ad that says, "don't vote for candidate X, he's going to cut medicate benifits," or a labor union running an ad that says, "don't for for candidate X, he wants people to be able to vote in private when it comes to forming a union" etc.
Why should members of that union, or the AARP, or of the team of people who are running a small restaurant give up their rights to assemble, and to speak? Should you be stopped from acting in concert with another person who thinks just like you, and running an ad that neither of you could afford individually? Really? Why?
Who here really thinks all these multi-billion oil companies are going to let...
Yeah, just like they've used their secret fleet of black helicopters (which they lease from the Trilateral Commission) to fly around the country to squash all of the Free Energy inventions, especially the water powered car, and that one that gets double the mileage if you just use a different air filter.
No, you're trying too hard. It's just called "freedom of speech." Period. If you don't like it, why weren't you complaining about it when the law they ruled on was allowing it for some corporations/organizations (like labor unions) and not others? The "activism" was what they reversed. People who form groups (unions, associations, companies, clubs) don't give up their freedom to speak just because they decide to act together, as a group. The only reason the SCOTUS had to even say anything about it was because a law was passed that infringed on that right.
Don't like freedom of speech? Then don't let labor unions have it, don't let the Sierra Club have it, don't let the AARP, or the NAACP, or CBS/ABC/MSNBC/NPR/FOX/CNN/NYT/WSJ/etc have it, either. Is that really your preference? Don't bother answering - it's pretty clear already, how you want it.
Even a trained Special Forces operator isn't going to be able to defeat dozens of people before someone takes him down
How about half a dozen of them, each with a couple or three high-tech carbon/ceramic edged weapons that are invisible to magnetometry and chemical sniffers?
So some brave individual has to take up the job of deciding what was justly classified and what not
You're completely missing the point. They (wikileaks) are doing it behind closed doors, according to their own standards and agenda. Just like they're complaining that someone else is doing. It's the hypocrisy I'm talking about.
As for changing it... vote for somebody who can make a good case for changing it, if that's what you want to do. Don't throw some poor Afghan under the Taliban bus and have his hands chopped off in front of his wife and children.
Ah, and you consider a lefty political activist organization, operating behind closed doors as they decide what is and isn't appropriately shown to the media outlets they selected in advance to be the right people to decide which report about an anti-Taliban community leader in a village in Afghanistan should, or should not include information about who he meets with, or how he operates? Yes, those political activists, they should be the arbitors of appropriate classification.
You just can't do it, can you? You can't allow yourself to say it out loud: "You can also write of the Prius, in its entirety." Come on, you can say it. Or would that take all the fun out of pretending you don't understand the difference?
You've switched to the whole morality thing in a lame attempt to change the subject, since you've been caught BSing about that. OK, let's get past that, now that we're clear that you can write off an $80k truck, or $80k worth of ponies to pull your wagon, if that's how you'd prefer to get around. You don't have to say any more about that, if it's embarassing you.
So, let's take on your morality schtick, instead: I find the entire tax code to be "immoral," in the sense that it is used to punish success, punish risk takers who create jobs, and reward those to keep their level of activity below certain thresholds so that they don't have to even pay income taxes, as half the country does not.
What's amazing (if we can just boil it down, here) is your real, simple position: that the transferred cash being taken from one group of people and given to affluent buyers of nearly-useless electric cars is just fine... because businesses are allowed to record their costs as something that reduces their profits. Don't you see what a complete non sequitor that is? You dislike the fact that the tax laws provide businesses a way to state and account for their costs, relative to their profits... and so you cite that as the reason why a very select number of well-off private people are entitled to other people's cash as they go car shopping. I suppose you really liked the "cash for clunkers" program, too, which cost over $20,000 of other taxpayers' money for every car that got spiked and dumped by the program.
Regardless: You're not addressing the inequality of the thing you say you like. First: Every person who earns a profit in the business they've started has that profit's taxes reduced by virtue of what they spend on making that business run. Businesses that are losing money do not benefit from writing down their taxes... because the company only pays taxes on its profits. The pay that individuals take away from the company is taxed separately. Speaking of which:
Individuals, of course, pay taxes even if they're personally losing money. Well, the half of the population that actually pays income taxes, anyway (you know, the "rich" ones). You're advocating taking even more taxes from most of them so that you can reduce the taxes of a vanishingly small number of them when they happen to buy a fashionable car made by a certain car company which the government owns and runs. And you're trying to distract us from that by complaining about how all businesses' capital purchases impact their taxable profits?
Your statement that the Prius could not have made any contributions towards the tax base in the same way as the Hummer is nonsensical.
No, you're just not actually reading or comprehending, that's the problem.
If a business wants to buy $80k worth of Prius vehicles for business use, they can write that off, too. All businesses can write off their expenses against their profits. When they buy vehicles for the business, it's part of the business. If they can't document that the cost and use of the vehicle is 100% for the business, then they start to lose their ability to deduct it (and will pay fines, etc, if they've mis-represented it). In other words, you can't drive your business Prius to the beach for the weekend, unless you're ready to do the accounting that comes with that, and watch your tax deduction for the vehicle take a big hit.
Individuals don't get to write off vehicle purchases. So when the government decides to take money from one taxpayer, and give it to another taxpayer to help that second person with their personal vehicle purchase, it is substantially different than writing down a business expense.
That you think this is a matter of semantics shows how completely uninformed you are on the subject. That you spout off opinions (and scarier, possibly vote) based on that sort of ignorance is even worse. None of this is "taken from the treasury." It's taken from other people who pay taxes, and borrowed from their grandchildren, by way of China. A subsidy for a certain specific car for certain kinds of people who can afford to buy it, with that subsidy paid for almost entirely by other people who will not be scraping together the cash to buy that same car and getting the special transfer of cash - that is just delicious irony. Because that's exactly the sort of thing the left loves to do with other people's money, even as they bitch about the "rich" (who will be receiving the cash) being rich in the first place. Fantastic.
And, are you really unable to understand what a business would do with a vehicle? No, I know you're not. But feigning ignorance on that front isn't really helping you to make any sort of coherent point.
but you could have received an approx. $80k tax break on a Hummer
Right. If you had your business purchase it, and you could document the fact that it was used for your business. Which was also true of a pile of IT equipment purchased for your business with the same amount of cash. Why? Because the presumption is that when you make large capital purchases for your business, it's because you're trying to grow your business. Which is a good thing. Doing so contributes to the tax base in all sorts of indirect ways.
Getting a personal transfer of $2k from other taxpayers so that you can personally buy yourself a hybird car partially with their money is an entirely different matter. Of course, you know that, and you're being very selective in your "fact" citing.
Most new technologies end up in the hands of the rich first... it's just simple economics
There's nothing simple about the case being described. Average Joe tax payer is going to be subsidizing thousands of dollars for each of these "rich guy" purchases. If it's cool enough for rich people to want it, they can simply pay for it, instead of forcing me to help them buy it. That the cars are simply out of reach for most of the people who will be taxed to encourage six-figure income households to buy them is grotesque. But given who's running the program, entirely predictable of course.
cellphones have killed more people that way than by the radiation they emit
Why? Because if you use it while you're driving, it might explode or something? Otherwise, the cell phones don't kill anybody. The drivers are the ones that kill other people.
You see, the whole point of Sherrod's speech was to complain about racism towards whites.
No, her whole point (which she stated, not that you care), was that in her role as a civil servant, she's realized that it's all about the haves vs. the have-nots. The whole point being made by posting the video of the NAACP audience's reaction to her anecodote-in-progress was to very accurately skewer the NAACP's whole "racist elements" holier-than-thou schtick. Even in that small conference room, the NAACP's membership was populated by on-video "racist elements" and by a larger audience that didn't say a thing to shame them for yukking it up at the prospect of a white farmer getting handled less constructively than a black one. As her anecdote and speech continues, those same people sure are quiet.
manufacture lies, spout racist nonsense, complain about being called racists, and claim that anyone who calls them a racist must also be a racist. It's extremely childish
What's fascinating is that you're the one actually doing those things, right now! Fantastic.
You mean like when some race baiter gets up at a Tea Party event and spouts some nonsense, and the people in the room boo him and tell him to get out, and that he's full of crap? That sort of thing? As opposed to the people in the audience who weren't mistakenly cheering on the wrong aspect of Sherrod's speech but didn't scold the others in the audience who were vocally approving of race-based support (or lack of it) for farmers?
your laughable assertion that only a few fringe elements of the Tea Party are racists
Actually, that's as simple as talking to them and meeting them, which you clearly haven't done. Though it's funny that you are making an assertion that it's true without citing anything showing that racism is at the core of that movement. Typical nonsense: don't like the fact that a group is opposed to what you do (a la the left's policies, as acted upon by the current congress and the administration)? Quick! Call them racists!
it would not change the fact that racism is tacitly condoned there
Other than the fact that you're simply incorrect (well, that's not true - you know you're actually lying), we just saw video of a putatively anti-racism group (who, oddly, are organized around forwarding the agenda of people based expressly on their skin color - you can't get better irony than that) having plenty of people in one of their meetings displaying approval of the notion of racist behavior from an authority, and nobody complaining. I'm not sure what your point is.
this whole story is propaganda for the ludicrous and poisonous myth that minorities will always seek revenge against whites when they achieve positions of power
Really? I thought it was an excellent object lesson in extreme hypocrisy. And as a side note, a fantastic demonstration of how unprincipled the current administration actually is, preferring as they do to react to all things by sticking their finger in the wind for a sense of how they think something will play. Pure, blind, witless panic on their part. Really shows you what sort of judgement we're dealing with. Hate to see them in an actual crisis.
Please explain what a 24 year old video tells us about the NAACP of today, which has actually denounced even suspected racists in their midst.
What the video (which was taken three months ago) tells us about the NAACP is that in a room full of its members, there are plenty of them that - before the speaker has even made her point - will laugh and say "yeah!" at the notion of the speaker shorting the farmer because he's white, or referring to "his kind" when talking about white lawyers. This was about that audience and their clearly-not-race-neutral approval of a half-told anecdote about a white farmer Getting It From The Man because he's white. That's what this video tells us.
And that was the whole point of the guy who posted it in the first place: he's pointing out that just because a few loons show up in the margins of a Tea Party event doesn't mean the NAACP should make a national meeting issue out of it - not while their own members cheerfully encourage an anecdote about denying a farmer equal government services because he's white.
He's not an anchor. He has an opinion/entertainment show. Just like his counterparts on MSNBC, etc. On Fox, someone like Shepard Smith is an anchor. On CNN, Larry King is not an anchor. You do see the difference, right?
Fox News own anchors contradict themselves as much as any politician, how can they have any credibility to call others out?
Which anchors? And, are you saying that this doesn't happen on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest? More to the point: how much credibility (with YOU) do they need in order to roll video tape of VP Biden saying "there's absolutely no way that Iraq can ever have a central, democratically elected government" followed by another tape of him saying exactly the opposite, later? Do you care which network airs Obama saying (last time) that an extension to unemployment benefits must be paid for in order to be fiscally sound, but now contradicts himself, and is willing to add untold billions of debt to the picture? It's video tape, you know?
And does everyone deliberately commit credit frand (like this guy), the jump bail (like this guy), then lie to the court (like this guy), and then try a bunch of BS as a last-minute stunt to reduce his sentence (like this guy), and in the process of mocking the court and the process, really demonstrate contempt for everyone involved? Did I mention the part about deliberately stealing money from people?
Yes, that Taliban. So what? It was nice when they were making life uncomfortable for the invading Soviets (who had no interest in a free, constitutionally governed Afghanistan), and it was not nice when they went all the way Wahabist and started sponsoring people who were happy to destroy embassies full of people, office towers, etc.
No, Afghanistan didn't. The Taliban, who forcefully occupied it, worked together with Al Queda, who did do so, several times. So we went about removing the Taliban. The Taliban is not happy about that, certainly.
As for Iraq: they were forced out of Kuwait, which they murderously invaded for the sole purpose of taking over their infrastructure. As they were being pushed back, Saddam agreed to numerous things in order to keep his regime more or less intact. Among them, he agreed to no-fly zones. Of course, he never adhered to that in practice, and continued to have his forces shoot at the aircraft patroling those zones for years afterwards, right up until he was run out of town. He was attacking the US (and other) forces every week. He never actually ceased his own hostilities following his invasion of Kuwait. Of course, you already know that and you're just pretending not to.
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The information the informants provided us also led to lost innocent lives. Are they despicable traitors with no common sense too?
What's it like, having no moral compass whatsoever? Do you actually comprehend what sort of people the Taliban are, and what they do to people who, for example, teach their daughters to read? An informant that's acting to undermine that brutal, medieval-minded, cruel theocracy and thugfest may indeed provide information that ends up getting some innocent person killed. But they're doing it to stop a movement that actively seeks to kill innocent people, and makes a public spectacle of doing so, on purpose, in the town square.
A faux journalist who loves media attention and fawning, politically-motivated fans is deliberately exposing information that is setting back the efforts to prevent the Taliban from once again running Afghanistan in their perverse model of Islamist insanity. I'm always amazed by people - especially those on the left who swear that women's rights are important to them - who think it's mean to "interfere" with a culture that's being subjected to the Taliban meat grinder.
Do hurricanes form from the large-scale environment around a tropical storm or from small-scale formations 100 kilometers from the center?
As we all know from the film, PowerPoint slides, books, and especially the promotional posters and advertisements, hurricanes come directly out of Evil Capitalist Industrial Cooling and Exhaust Towers. It must be true, not enough attractive celebrities have disagreed with it.
He's doing something much better than that: providing authentic, raw data
No. He and his source are both politically motivated, and have an agenda. The material isn't "raw," it was chosen by the leaker and then picked over by Assange. He is deciding what to redact and what not to, and he is decideing what - within that data - he says he thinks will endanger anyone, and he's using his "expert" analytical skills to choose what military intel and reports it's appropriate to air while people's lives are at stake. He's not reporting, or providing raw data. He's clumsily grinding an axe, and happy to have other people die so that he can stay in the spotlight. What a colossal douchebag.
The Taliban offered to try bin Laden if the US could provide evidence. We rejected the offer
Gee, I wonder why? Would be because the Taliban had a long history of being murderous, lying bastards? Or because they were plainly giving Al Queda material support, territory in which to operate, and their complete moral support at every turn?
Aren't you even a little embarassed for trotting out that bit of nonsense?
I really like your straw man attacks on someone's straw man attacks.
But, if an organization is going to try to influence an election, then it should have to be able to trace all of its capital to donations from American citizens
This is already the case, and the court's ruling did nothing to change it. Foreign based, foreign managed, or foreign owned companies cannot participate in election-related advertising. Domestic companies must document what they spend, and when and how they spend it. This has not changed.
I do not think ANYONE should donate to an American political campaign, besides American citizens
So, let's say that you three American citizens that love Italian food. They decide to pool their resources and open a restaurant. They incorporate, like any businesss would do. Then someone in their city decides to run for office on a platform of banning any restaurant that sells meals including meat, since it's mean to animals to eat them. You're saying that these three citizens shouldn't be able to run an ad, on behalf of their own business (which is how their local community knows them) pointing out that voting for this particular politician could ruin their business and remove a favorite restaurant from the city? I don't care how particularly plausible that situation is - in principle, it's not at all different than the AARP running an ad that says, "don't vote for candidate X, he's going to cut medicate benifits," or a labor union running an ad that says, "don't for for candidate X, he wants people to be able to vote in private when it comes to forming a union" etc.
Why should members of that union, or the AARP, or of the team of people who are running a small restaurant give up their rights to assemble, and to speak? Should you be stopped from acting in concert with another person who thinks just like you, and running an ad that neither of you could afford individually? Really? Why?
Who here really thinks all these multi-billion oil companies are going to let ...
Yeah, just like they've used their secret fleet of black helicopters (which they lease from the Trilateral Commission) to fly around the country to squash all of the Free Energy inventions, especially the water powered car, and that one that gets double the mileage if you just use a different air filter.
What are you, twelve years old?
("freedom of speech" for corporations - WTF?)
No, you're trying too hard. It's just called "freedom of speech." Period. If you don't like it, why weren't you complaining about it when the law they ruled on was allowing it for some corporations/organizations (like labor unions) and not others? The "activism" was what they reversed. People who form groups (unions, associations, companies, clubs) don't give up their freedom to speak just because they decide to act together, as a group. The only reason the SCOTUS had to even say anything about it was because a law was passed that infringed on that right.
Don't like freedom of speech? Then don't let labor unions have it, don't let the Sierra Club have it, don't let the AARP, or the NAACP, or CBS/ABC/MSNBC/NPR/FOX/CNN/NYT/WSJ/etc have it, either. Is that really your preference? Don't bother answering - it's pretty clear already, how you want it.
Even a trained Special Forces operator isn't going to be able to defeat dozens of people before someone takes him down
How about half a dozen of them, each with a couple or three high-tech carbon/ceramic edged weapons that are invisible to magnetometry and chemical sniffers?
So some brave individual has to take up the job of deciding what was justly classified and what not
... vote for somebody who can make a good case for changing it, if that's what you want to do. Don't throw some poor Afghan under the Taliban bus and have his hands chopped off in front of his wife and children.
You're completely missing the point. They (wikileaks) are doing it behind closed doors, according to their own standards and agenda. Just like they're complaining that someone else is doing. It's the hypocrisy I'm talking about.
As for changing it
But only CORRECTLY classified works
Ah, and you consider a lefty political activist organization, operating behind closed doors as they decide what is and isn't appropriately shown to the media outlets they selected in advance to be the right people to decide which report about an anti-Taliban community leader in a village in Afghanistan should, or should not include information about who he meets with, or how he operates? Yes, those political activists, they should be the arbitors of appropriate classification.
You just can't do it, can you? You can't allow yourself to say it out loud: "You can also write of the Prius, in its entirety." Come on, you can say it. Or would that take all the fun out of pretending you don't understand the difference?
... because businesses are allowed to record their costs as something that reduces their profits. Don't you see what a complete non sequitor that is? You dislike the fact that the tax laws provide businesses a way to state and account for their costs, relative to their profits ... and so you cite that as the reason why a very select number of well-off private people are entitled to other people's cash as they go car shopping. I suppose you really liked the "cash for clunkers" program, too, which cost over $20,000 of other taxpayers' money for every car that got spiked and dumped by the program.
... because the company only pays taxes on its profits. The pay that individuals take away from the company is taxed separately. Speaking of which:
You've switched to the whole morality thing in a lame attempt to change the subject, since you've been caught BSing about that. OK, let's get past that, now that we're clear that you can write off an $80k truck, or $80k worth of ponies to pull your wagon, if that's how you'd prefer to get around. You don't have to say any more about that, if it's embarassing you.
So, let's take on your morality schtick, instead: I find the entire tax code to be "immoral," in the sense that it is used to punish success, punish risk takers who create jobs, and reward those to keep their level of activity below certain thresholds so that they don't have to even pay income taxes, as half the country does not.
What's amazing (if we can just boil it down, here) is your real, simple position: that the transferred cash being taken from one group of people and given to affluent buyers of nearly-useless electric cars is just fine
Regardless: You're not addressing the inequality of the thing you say you like. First: Every person who earns a profit in the business they've started has that profit's taxes reduced by virtue of what they spend on making that business run. Businesses that are losing money do not benefit from writing down their taxes
Individuals, of course, pay taxes even if they're personally losing money. Well, the half of the population that actually pays income taxes, anyway (you know, the "rich" ones). You're advocating taking even more taxes from most of them so that you can reduce the taxes of a vanishingly small number of them when they happen to buy a fashionable car made by a certain car company which the government owns and runs. And you're trying to distract us from that by complaining about how all businesses' capital purchases impact their taxable profits?
Your statement that the Prius could not have made any contributions towards the tax base in the same way as the Hummer is nonsensical.
No, you're just not actually reading or comprehending, that's the problem.
If a business wants to buy $80k worth of Prius vehicles for business use, they can write that off, too. All businesses can write off their expenses against their profits. When they buy vehicles for the business, it's part of the business. If they can't document that the cost and use of the vehicle is 100% for the business, then they start to lose their ability to deduct it (and will pay fines, etc, if they've mis-represented it). In other words, you can't drive your business Prius to the beach for the weekend, unless you're ready to do the accounting that comes with that, and watch your tax deduction for the vehicle take a big hit.
Individuals don't get to write off vehicle purchases. So when the government decides to take money from one taxpayer, and give it to another taxpayer to help that second person with their personal vehicle purchase, it is substantially different than writing down a business expense.
That you think this is a matter of semantics shows how completely uninformed you are on the subject. That you spout off opinions (and scarier, possibly vote) based on that sort of ignorance is even worse. None of this is "taken from the treasury." It's taken from other people who pay taxes, and borrowed from their grandchildren, by way of China. A subsidy for a certain specific car for certain kinds of people who can afford to buy it, with that subsidy paid for almost entirely by other people who will not be scraping together the cash to buy that same car and getting the special transfer of cash - that is just delicious irony. Because that's exactly the sort of thing the left loves to do with other people's money, even as they bitch about the "rich" (who will be receiving the cash) being rich in the first place. Fantastic.
And, are you really unable to understand what a business would do with a vehicle? No, I know you're not. But feigning ignorance on that front isn't really helping you to make any sort of coherent point.
but you could have received an approx. $80k tax break on a Hummer
Right. If you had your business purchase it, and you could document the fact that it was used for your business. Which was also true of a pile of IT equipment purchased for your business with the same amount of cash. Why? Because the presumption is that when you make large capital purchases for your business, it's because you're trying to grow your business. Which is a good thing. Doing so contributes to the tax base in all sorts of indirect ways.
Getting a personal transfer of $2k from other taxpayers so that you can personally buy yourself a hybird car partially with their money is an entirely different matter. Of course, you know that, and you're being very selective in your "fact" citing.
Most new technologies end up in the hands of the rich first ... it's just simple economics
There's nothing simple about the case being described. Average Joe tax payer is going to be subsidizing thousands of dollars for each of these "rich guy" purchases. If it's cool enough for rich people to want it, they can simply pay for it, instead of forcing me to help them buy it. That the cars are simply out of reach for most of the people who will be taxed to encourage six-figure income households to buy them is grotesque. But given who's running the program, entirely predictable of course.
cellphones have killed more people that way than by the radiation they emit
Why? Because if you use it while you're driving, it might explode or something? Otherwise, the cell phones don't kill anybody. The drivers are the ones that kill other people.
You see, the whole point of Sherrod's speech was to complain about racism towards whites.
No, her whole point (which she stated, not that you care), was that in her role as a civil servant, she's realized that it's all about the haves vs. the have-nots. The whole point being made by posting the video of the NAACP audience's reaction to her anecodote-in-progress was to very accurately skewer the NAACP's whole "racist elements" holier-than-thou schtick. Even in that small conference room, the NAACP's membership was populated by on-video "racist elements" and by a larger audience that didn't say a thing to shame them for yukking it up at the prospect of a white farmer getting handled less constructively than a black one. As her anecdote and speech continues, those same people sure are quiet.
manufacture lies, spout racist nonsense, complain about being called racists, and claim that anyone who calls them a racist must also be a racist. It's extremely childish
What's fascinating is that you're the one actually doing those things, right now! Fantastic.
When has a Tea Party leader ever done that?
You mean like when some race baiter gets up at a Tea Party event and spouts some nonsense, and the people in the room boo him and tell him to get out, and that he's full of crap? That sort of thing? As opposed to the people in the audience who weren't mistakenly cheering on the wrong aspect of Sherrod's speech but didn't scold the others in the audience who were vocally approving of race-based support (or lack of it) for farmers?
your laughable assertion that only a few fringe elements of the Tea Party are racists
Actually, that's as simple as talking to them and meeting them, which you clearly haven't done. Though it's funny that you are making an assertion that it's true without citing anything showing that racism is at the core of that movement. Typical nonsense: don't like the fact that a group is opposed to what you do (a la the left's policies, as acted upon by the current congress and the administration)? Quick! Call them racists!
it would not change the fact that racism is tacitly condoned there
Other than the fact that you're simply incorrect (well, that's not true - you know you're actually lying), we just saw video of a putatively anti-racism group (who, oddly, are organized around forwarding the agenda of people based expressly on their skin color - you can't get better irony than that) having plenty of people in one of their meetings displaying approval of the notion of racist behavior from an authority, and nobody complaining. I'm not sure what your point is.
this whole story is propaganda for the ludicrous and poisonous myth that minorities will always seek revenge against whites when they achieve positions of power
Really? I thought it was an excellent object lesson in extreme hypocrisy. And as a side note, a fantastic demonstration of how unprincipled the current administration actually is, preferring as they do to react to all things by sticking their finger in the wind for a sense of how they think something will play. Pure, blind, witless panic on their part. Really shows you what sort of judgement we're dealing with. Hate to see them in an actual crisis.
Please explain what a 24 year old video tells us about the NAACP of today, which has actually denounced even suspected racists in their midst.
What the video (which was taken three months ago) tells us about the NAACP is that in a room full of its members, there are plenty of them that - before the speaker has even made her point - will laugh and say "yeah!" at the notion of the speaker shorting the farmer because he's white, or referring to "his kind" when talking about white lawyers. This was about that audience and their clearly-not-race-neutral approval of a half-told anecdote about a white farmer Getting It From The Man because he's white. That's what this video tells us.
And that was the whole point of the guy who posted it in the first place: he's pointing out that just because a few loons show up in the margins of a Tea Party event doesn't mean the NAACP should make a national meeting issue out of it - not while their own members cheerfully encourage an anecdote about denying a farmer equal government services because he's white.
Glenn Beck and others
He's not an anchor. He has an opinion/entertainment show. Just like his counterparts on MSNBC, etc. On Fox, someone like Shepard Smith is an anchor. On CNN, Larry King is not an anchor. You do see the difference, right?
Fox News own anchors contradict themselves as much as any politician, how can they have any credibility to call others out?
Which anchors? And, are you saying that this doesn't happen on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest? More to the point: how much credibility (with YOU) do they need in order to roll video tape of VP Biden saying "there's absolutely no way that Iraq can ever have a central, democratically elected government" followed by another tape of him saying exactly the opposite, later? Do you care which network airs Obama saying (last time) that an extension to unemployment benefits must be paid for in order to be fiscally sound, but now contradicts himself, and is willing to add untold billions of debt to the picture? It's video tape, you know?
Everyone is a criminal.
And does everyone deliberately commit credit frand (like this guy), the jump bail (like this guy), then lie to the court (like this guy), and then try a bunch of BS as a last-minute stunt to reduce his sentence (like this guy), and in the process of mocking the court and the process, really demonstrate contempt for everyone involved? Did I mention the part about deliberately stealing money from people?
Yes, that Taliban. So what? It was nice when they were making life uncomfortable for the invading Soviets (who had no interest in a free, constitutionally governed Afghanistan), and it was not nice when they went all the way Wahabist and started sponsoring people who were happy to destroy embassies full of people, office towers, etc.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq never attacked the US
No, Afghanistan didn't. The Taliban, who forcefully occupied it, worked together with Al Queda, who did do so, several times. So we went about removing the Taliban. The Taliban is not happy about that, certainly.
As for Iraq: they were forced out of Kuwait, which they murderously invaded for the sole purpose of taking over their infrastructure. As they were being pushed back, Saddam agreed to numerous things in order to keep his regime more or less intact. Among them, he agreed to no-fly zones. Of course, he never adhered to that in practice, and continued to have his forces shoot at the aircraft patroling those zones for years afterwards, right up until he was run out of town. He was attacking the US (and other) forces every week. He never actually ceased his own hostilities following his invasion of Kuwait. Of course, you already know that and you're just pretending not to.