Sorry to break it to the hippie crowd, but while SUV sales may be declining in the US, they're booming in Venezuela thanks to government subsidized fuel prices. Also, light truck sales continue to run strong in the US, and continue to increase on a yearly basis in Australia.
The need for large vehicles is, in many places, a fact of life. While this may put a crimp on SUV sales in large cities, it's certainly not going to be the death-knell of large vehicles. Not by a long shot.
So poor people are poor because, unlike you, they're lazy, and therefore don't deserve anything?
No. There are many reasons why people are poor. I could list most of them for you, and I could also explain why welfare and "aid" rarely help address the root causes of poverty, but I won't. I don't want to get into it because in the context of this conversation, those reasons are all irrelevant - none of them justify taking away my property and giving it to others.
Also, your emphasis doesn't show what you think it shows. I didn't state that poor people are lazy - only that they didn't earn MY money. Read it again and pay attention to the whole sentence this time.
Don't you find that world-view a tad naive and self-serving?
Yes, I find your straw-man quite naive, and very self-serving:)
I was only attacking your statement that your money was "hard earned". I honestly don't think so.
For the last time, "hard earned" does not mean what you think it means. I may work in an air conditioned office while some poor slob works his ass off in a hot field, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to work my ass off to get where I am. That's because I've dedicated 10 or 15 years of my life to improving my mind and being able to perform functions which our society requires, while he was busy drinking beer, watching football, and flirting with women. In the end, it's my skill-set which is more important to the survival and advancement of our species, which is WHY I make more money. YOU want to reverse all that - to reward everyone equally regaurdless of the importance or relative abundance of their skills. That's a self-destructive attitude for any society to adopt. If you can't understand this, I don't know what more I can say to you.
If there is a law that says you must pay taxes then that's exactly the difference, the fact that in one case there is a law decided by a society.
So it's better because it's LOTS of people all robbing me at once. Right. Just like a gang-rape is much better than a rape, since many people all decided it was the right thing to do.
Forget it, you're obviously not going to understand what I'm getting at. That's not unusual - few people understand the importance of preserving every gram of individual liberty, until they lose all of it.
Because most of the problems in the middle east come from a few badly taken and short-sighted decisions that have been made by the western powers a few decades ago
lol
Yes, middle-east history started in 1945.
Goddamn but there's a lot of ignorant people on here....
It's working swimmingly for France and Scandinavia though.
Ah yes, an 8.7% unemployment rate sounds fabulous to me!
As for Scandinavia... it's complicated, but the short answer is that instead of giving out welfare indiscriminately, they simply employ more people in government jobs. That keeps the unemployment rate down, while creating the illusion of productivity. It's a neat solution, but it's far from ideal.
Either way, neither system is any better than the US, and both are quite a bit worse in some ways.
Public services are wealth redistribution... I gain from the road that connects my house to McDonald's, and you gain nothing, as you continue to fly from your estate in the 'burbs to your corporate office.
You must be a Yoga master, 'cos that's one hell of a stretch!
I know you probably don't see rich people very often at your McDonalds drive-through window, so I'll let you in on a little secret: rich people use roads too!
Public infrastructure enables you to make money, as such the public is entitled to a portion of your earnings.
No, the GOVERNMENT is entitled to a portion of my earning in order to fund the infrastructure. Some of that money gets paid out as salaries for the workers who create that infrastructure, while other portions go to pay for materials. That's all fine. "The Public", on the other hand, is not entitled to a dime of my money. If you want a handout to sit on your ass and eat twinkies, or a subsidy because you're too incompetent to make money on your own, don't come whining to me.
And we want (some of) what's ours.
I have only one response to such demands: get fucked.
This is the 21st century: no matter where you are in the English-speaking world, no law provides for a tax collector to take money from you at gunpoint (i.e. by "force"). So can we dispense with the hyperbole, please?
Hyperbole?? If I refuse to pay the full amount assessed for my taxes, I can be arrested. If I resist arrest, I'll be physically assaulted or threatened with a firearm. If I respond in kind, I'll probably be killed on the spot.
It's no different than a robber walking up to me and saying "I have a gun, now give me all your money". The threat is there, regardless of the visibility of the weapon. It doesn't matter whether you threaten to shoot me, stab me, kidnap me, or just beat me with your bare hands, you're still using force or the threat of force in order to make me comply.
So it's pretty Pacific ocean-sized stretch to say that the government is taking your money by "force" just to then give it to idlers.
You're assuming I approve of subsidies, which is certainly not the case. I no more want my money going to fund failing corporations and select businesses than I want them going to deadbeat trailer-trash.
The one exception I might make is farm subsidies, simply because of the need to maintain a reliable internal food supply. However, even that I'm not so sure about. At the very least, farm subsidies should be kept to a minimum, and should encourage increased efficiency rather than stagnation and dependence on the government. With the technological advantage of the western world, there should be no reason why we can't stay competitive with cheap farm labour in third world nations. If that means scrapping "ma and pa" farms in favour of giant corporate operations, so be it.
The crux of your argument seems to be that you think welfare (and by some vague extension wealth redistribution) enables people to behave in immoral ways.
No, the crux of my argument is that I don't want people taking my money by force, and thinking of the government as a never-emptying bucket of cash which everyone can dip into whenever they feel like it.
I give about 4% of my total pre-tax income to organized charitable causes. I probably give another 1% on things that just pop up. I have no problem with giving money to good causes - but I should never be FORCED to give anything to others. If I want to be an asshole and never give another penny to anyone else, that should be my right. Just as importantly, people should never assume that they can get the government to take away my money and give it to them.
The point is, the more you look at how government actually procures and spends money, the less things look like taking money by "force" and the more they look like policy positions you disagree with.
And that's a problem - the more you look at it that way, the easier it becomes to justify yet one more government boondoggle or special interest group project. That's exactly why the US has gone from an ideal about minimizing the power of government, to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on things which the government has no business being involved in. It happened because numerous generations of citizens looked at government spending and said "... aww, why not. It's only a small fraction of what we're already spending!".
What role did the French play in the American Revolution? How about the American Civil War? Bet you don't know without looking it up.
Those are basic historical facts that anyone over the age of 18 should probably know. Please, don't insult me.
How's this: What country successfully invaded the United States and burned down its Capitol? (Hint: It ain't Al Qaeda)
That'd be MY country. Or, more accurately, British forces operating out of my country, accompanied by irregulars. Now can you stop being a condescending cocksucker?
Also, can you explain what ANY of the above has to do with what we were discussing?
Even more, the higher the grade I had, the least effort I needed to get it.
So the fact that you're lazy means that I don't deserve to keep what I earn?
If you had a rational point to make anywhere in that diatribe, I must have missed it. As far as I can tell you simply made the arguments that:
1. Lazy people can be rich. 2. Hard working people can be poor.
However, you spectacularly failed to explain just how exactly either of those facts justify having the government taking my money. Which seems to be status-quo for the socialist/communist crowd. So let's make it simple:
What exactly is the difference between the government taking my money by force in order to give it to someone else, and that person robbing me at gun-point and keeping the money?
Never mind the culture of dependence that your sort of thinking encourages - just answer that one simple question. How is using government force to steal my money any different than using a gun to do the same?
Name one tax that isn't a form of wealth redistribution.
Funding for public services which cannot be provided through private means, or which regulate necessary aspects of private enterprise. Primarily the military, policing, and judicial system, but also things like the FDA. Wealth redistribution is taxes used implicitly to raise the standard of living for a certain segment of society at the expense of another.
FWIW I think we need more redistribution
Yes, because it's been such a smashing success in the USSR and North Korea. What could possibly go wrong?
as soon as the GP can make some of his "hard earned money" without interacting with the rest of us tax paying citizens (who no doubt subsidize his work in one way or another) he can keep every penny he makes.
How generous of you. Please, sir, can I have some more?
Even if my entire income were 100% funded by taxes, your argument would still be invalid for the simle reason that I work for my money. I put effort into every penny I make, regardless of it's source. And if tomorrow I lose my job, I will find another way to make money without having to rely on the government to babysit me. I have never taken charity from the government, and I never will. That's because I take pride in my life, and would never dream of accepting money that was taken from other citizens by force. If I did that, I'd be no better than a common thief. I actually have more respect for thieves and con artists, because they at least have the guts to take my money themselves. People on welfare don't even do that much - they just bitch and whine and get others to do their dirty work for them.
Nope, not Israel, nope not the Palestinians, nope not Iran....it was...
Britian and France.
Thanks for the newsflash, Einstein!:)
Seriously, wtf does that have to do with my comment? I see you got modded "informative", but realistically you should probably be modded redundant, since I think there's very few people who aren't aware of England's role in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. That's got very little to do with the modern-day conduct of certain nations in that region.
Or are you saying that those damn Eh-rabs are too dumb to do anything on their own, and that therefore all of their mistakes and misbehaviour must be blamed on the white man? That seems to be a pretty popular way of thinking in certain circles, but I personally find it despicable.
And only people who compete in the Special Olympics are true athletes!
Go on, pull the other one.
I agree that it is harder to GET better jobs, it is harder to GET to a place where you are payed more. But you don't end up doing HARDER work, you may work hard, but people that's under you is working hard too, only that in worst conditions.
Which has absolutely dick to do with what we were discussing. The phrase "hard earned" does not denote only physical effort or discomfort. It's a judgement of total effort put into any given endeavour. Garry Kasparov doesn't need to exert a lot of physical effort during a chess game, and he gets to play them in a nice comfortable environment. Would you say that his victories are therefore not heard earned? It's easy to be a Chess Grand Master, right? Only the dickheads who chew on their game-pieces are truly hard working!
Another example: if I work my ass off in school in order to maintain an A average, is my mark not heard earned? Would you, in your infinite wisdom, propose that portions of my mark be taken away and given to the F average student? Clearly only the students who gets F's are really "hard working", right?
This leads to changes in climate and impacts life all over the planet. The more you alter the environment, the bigger the change in the inhabitants of that environment.
I'm thinking that the Ice Age which we're overdue for might have a wee bit more of an impact on "life all over the planet" than any amount of CO2 we can pump out....
There's something inherently heartless to argue that someone poor should be denied healthcare, so someone else who's already rich can buy a new barbecue grill.
It's quite a bit more heartless to take my hard-earned money through the threat of government force, just so someone who hasn't earned it can continue to suck up resources.
Seriously, I have no problem with wealth redistribution, but if you want to take my money by force you should be required to do your own damn dirty work. Pick up a gun and rob me, instead of sending the tax man and the police to do it for you.
Every coal-fired power plant in India, China, and the USA could be replaced with nuclear for the cost of the Iraq war.
Yes, yes, we know. We could feed all the children, house the homeless, clothe the African tribes, cure Aids, go back to the moon, and build interstellar spacecraft with improbability drives. We'd all be shiny happy people holding hands, singing and hugging and eating magic brownies and stuff. If only that big bad Bushitler had stayed out of Iraq.
Now, did you have something relevant to add to the discussion, or did you want to keep trolling?
Maybe you're a little too sensitive, especially as the GP was probably referring to the recent direct threats to sovereign nations that Israeli leadership was making in the last few days. Threats of military action.
lol
In case you haven't noticed, those "soverign nations" have been making threats against Israel for about six decades now...
In terms of the American political world, given how often what is called "paranoia" turns out to be close enough to fact twenty or thirty years later it's not really a surprise.
Sure - if you only count the hits, and discard the misses. That's the whole reason why people believe in nonsense - because they ignore the 10,000 theories which never come true, and are amazed when number 10,001 turns out to be true.
The rest of your comment basically just reinforces this point. You simply list things which were once ridiculed, yet turned out to have some basis in reality. That's a logical fallacy. As Carl Sagan so succinctly put it:
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Allowing real high speed trains in the US is a threat to our dependence on foreign oil, and the foreign lobbyists simply won't ALLOW it. At some point there will be no wide open spaces left for these trains, and then the public (nimbys) will be against trains on their own, without opposition from Big Oil.
It's amazing how much paranoia has become ingrained in certain subsections of modern western society.
You know, I too enjoyed watching X-Files in my youth... but if I had realized that it would help establish an entire generation of raving lunatics, I'd have gotten some funding set aside at the pentagon to have the CIA assassinate Fox Moulder.....
Not 'white people.' Incidentally, while the statement above is not entirely accurate
Not entirely accurate??? CONGRATULATIONS! You've just won the "understatement of the year" award!
What do you do for an encore? Defend the morons who keep insisting that Auschwitz had swimming pools for the prisoners? You know, their claims are also "not technically accurate", but Auschwitz really DID have swimming pools!
'We' being 'America'. Not 'white people'. Can you see a pattern emerging here?
Yeah, I see the pattern here - you're deliberately blinding yourself in order to prop up your beliefs. What Wright is doing is painfully transparent - he's no different than the fools who say things like "I'm not antisemitic, I just hate Zionists!".
Forget it. I'd have better luck trying to explain evolution to a creationist. At least you've helped me understand why people are so devoted to Obama - it seems to be a religious experience for many of you.
could you give an example of something that Rev. Wright has said you would consider analogous to your example above?
What are you, kidding? Every time the guy opens his mouth he accuses white people of committing one horror or another. For instance:
"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."
"They purposely infected African American men with syphilis."
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans"
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America."
"Weâ(TM)ve got more black men in prison than there are in college."
"We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God"
Etc, etc, etc.
Not only is he showing open racism by making such sweeping generalizations (and outright lies) about white people, but he's also suggesting that blacks who face the legal system are all victims who shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. He is - in effect - saying that blacks are naturally predisposed to act in this way, and that it's all the white man's fault.
If you think the man's not racist, you've managed to mislead yourself into a whole new level of ignorance. I don't think you'd even dream of making excuses for a white man who behaved in this manner, blaming blacks for all the ills of white society, so I'm not sure why you're coming to the defence of this scumbag.
The only thing I'll give Obama credit for is that he's done a decent job of refuting some of Wright's hateful rhetoric. However, I'm not sure if that's attributable to his political advisers or the man himself, and the fact that he's attended these sermons for decades certainly doesn't speak well for his character.
and thirdly, if I'm judging your friend by what you say and not you yourself, how often you say it may well be relevant.
That's true - the relevant "detail" here is the relationship. If you're a close friend of someone who's overtly racist, I'm deffinitely going to question your views too. It's even worse when your "friend" is really a religious leader whose sermons you regularly attend - when he's a man whose occupation basically consists of brainwashing people.
Erm... I think OJ did pretty well with his defense as it was. You're not great with these analogies are you?;-)
No, you just missed the joke. I'd explain it to you... but that'd defeat the purpose.
Bad analogy. The Rev. Wright can't reasonably be considered analogous to a neo-nazi who preaches racial segregation. Have you actually watched or read any of his sermons in their entirety? Do you actually know how often he went off on one? I suspect not, because if you had, you'd know it's not so much.
Ah, yes. So as long as I only say "Those fucking niggers are ruining our country!" every couple weeks or so, it's ok, since I'm not doing it too often. Nicely done! Man, OJ should have picked YOU to defend him...
The Rev. Wright isn't extremely racist. Bitter, yes, racist, not extremely so.
Right. And Hitler was just mad that he got a bad interest rate.
Mod me offtopic or whatever, I don't care, but I've been thinking about this for a few weeks. If our brains are so well interconnected, how is it that we instantly die if a bullet merely passes through it and destroys a few of those connections? We can shoot bullets through most parts of a computer and more than likely only a piece of it will be damaged
Have you seen the mess that a bullet going through a skull makes?
It's not the bullet that's the problem, it's the shockwave generated by it's passage that does all the damage. It's called "cavitation" - this video should help you understand it. If you carefully watch the last part of that video, you'll see that it causes the entire melon to explode outwards. Now imagine what that kind of force does to brain tissue confined inside a skull.
You can't compare that to shooting at computer components - they react completely differently, and are not affected at all by the shockwave. When you shoot a computer, only the part you hit is affected.
He's not trying to obfuscate the code, he's just not trying not to. Purposeful obfuscation implies organization. Hacking together humanity's brain is just a million billion messy miracles.
So you're saying the human brain is Open Source?:D
What about him? Do you think Obama had him baptise his children and conduct his wedding because Wright believes that?
It's a question of character. If you attended a church whose minister was a Neo-Nazi and who preached racial segregation on a regular basis, not only would I not vote for you, but I would probably question your sanity. Ditto for Obama.
It's only the people who've done their research but apparently lack the ability to assess it intelligently who don't want him to be president.
Heh. The guy attends the church of, and is good friends with, an extremely racist minister. He degrades his grandmother by basically calling her racist. He lies about the war record of his grandfather (or makes a mistake which reveals his ignorance of history). He has no experience. He wants to turn the US into a welfare state. Him and his wife seem to despise everything about the US. He constantly talks about change, yet never explains how his presidency will be different.
Yeah, elect that guy! I figure with the way he'll fuck up your country, MY currency will be worth double what it is today! I look forward to the day when I can cross the border and buy good shoes for $10 Canadian!
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry to break it to the hippie crowd, but while SUV sales may be declining in the US, they're booming in Venezuela thanks to government subsidized fuel prices. Also, light truck sales continue to run strong in the US, and continue to increase on a yearly basis in Australia.
The need for large vehicles is, in many places, a fact of life. While this may put a crimp on SUV sales in large cities, it's certainly not going to be the death-knell of large vehicles. Not by a long shot.
No. There are many reasons why people are poor. I could list most of them for you, and I could also explain why welfare and "aid" rarely help address the root causes of poverty, but I won't. I don't want to get into it because in the context of this conversation, those reasons are all irrelevant - none of them justify taking away my property and giving it to others.
Also, your emphasis doesn't show what you think it shows. I didn't state that poor people are lazy - only that they didn't earn MY money. Read it again and pay attention to the whole sentence this time.
Yes, I find your straw-man quite naive, and very self-serving
For the last time, "hard earned" does not mean what you think it means. I may work in an air conditioned office while some poor slob works his ass off in a hot field, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to work my ass off to get where I am. That's because I've dedicated 10 or 15 years of my life to improving my mind and being able to perform functions which our society requires, while he was busy drinking beer, watching football, and flirting with women. In the end, it's my skill-set which is more important to the survival and advancement of our species, which is WHY I make more money. YOU want to reverse all that - to reward everyone equally regaurdless of the importance or relative abundance of their skills. That's a self-destructive attitude for any society to adopt. If you can't understand this, I don't know what more I can say to you.
So it's better because it's LOTS of people all robbing me at once. Right. Just like a gang-rape is much better than a rape, since many people all decided it was the right thing to do.
Forget it, you're obviously not going to understand what I'm getting at. That's not unusual - few people understand the importance of preserving every gram of individual liberty, until they lose all of it.
lol
Yes, middle-east history started in 1945.
Goddamn but there's a lot of ignorant people on here
Ah yes, an 8.7% unemployment rate sounds fabulous to me!
As for Scandinavia
Either way, neither system is any better than the US, and both are quite a bit worse in some ways.
You must be a Yoga master, 'cos that's one hell of a stretch!
I know you probably don't see rich people very often at your McDonalds drive-through window, so I'll let you in on a little secret: rich people use roads too!
No, the GOVERNMENT is entitled to a portion of my earning in order to fund the infrastructure. Some of that money gets paid out as salaries for the workers who create that infrastructure, while other portions go to pay for materials. That's all fine. "The Public", on the other hand, is not entitled to a dime of my money. If you want a handout to sit on your ass and eat twinkies, or a subsidy because you're too incompetent to make money on your own, don't come whining to me.
I have only one response to such demands: get fucked.
Hyperbole?? If I refuse to pay the full amount assessed for my taxes, I can be arrested. If I resist arrest, I'll be physically assaulted or threatened with a firearm. If I respond in kind, I'll probably be killed on the spot.
It's no different than a robber walking up to me and saying "I have a gun, now give me all your money". The threat is there, regardless of the visibility of the weapon. It doesn't matter whether you threaten to shoot me, stab me, kidnap me, or just beat me with your bare hands, you're still using force or the threat of force in order to make me comply.
You're assuming I approve of subsidies, which is certainly not the case. I no more want my money going to fund failing corporations and select businesses than I want them going to deadbeat trailer-trash.
The one exception I might make is farm subsidies, simply because of the need to maintain a reliable internal food supply. However, even that I'm not so sure about. At the very least, farm subsidies should be kept to a minimum, and should encourage increased efficiency rather than stagnation and dependence on the government. With the technological advantage of the western world, there should be no reason why we can't stay competitive with cheap farm labour in third world nations. If that means scrapping "ma and pa" farms in favour of giant corporate operations, so be it.
No, the crux of my argument is that I don't want people taking my money by force, and thinking of the government as a never-emptying bucket of cash which everyone can dip into whenever they feel like it.
I give about 4% of my total pre-tax income to organized charitable causes. I probably give another 1% on things that just pop up. I have no problem with giving money to good causes - but I should never be FORCED to give anything to others. If I want to be an asshole and never give another penny to anyone else, that should be my right. Just as importantly, people should never assume that they can get the government to take away my money and give it to them.
And that's a problem - the more you look at it that way, the easier it becomes to justify yet one more government boondoggle or special interest group project. That's exactly why the US has gone from an ideal about minimizing the power of government, to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on things which the government has no business being involved in. It happened because numerous generations of citizens looked at government spending and said "
Those are basic historical facts that anyone over the age of 18 should probably know. Please, don't insult me.
That'd be MY country. Or, more accurately, British forces operating out of my country, accompanied by irregulars. Now can you stop being a condescending cocksucker?
Also, can you explain what ANY of the above has to do with what we were discussing?
So the fact that you're lazy means that I don't deserve to keep what I earn?
If you had a rational point to make anywhere in that diatribe, I must have missed it. As far as I can tell you simply made the arguments that:
1. Lazy people can be rich.
2. Hard working people can be poor.
However, you spectacularly failed to explain just how exactly either of those facts justify having the government taking my money. Which seems to be status-quo for the socialist/communist crowd. So let's make it simple:
What exactly is the difference between the government taking my money by force in order to give it to someone else, and that person robbing me at gun-point and keeping the money?
Never mind the culture of dependence that your sort of thinking encourages - just answer that one simple question. How is using government force to steal my money any different than using a gun to do the same?
Funding for public services which cannot be provided through private means, or which regulate necessary aspects of private enterprise. Primarily the military, policing, and judicial system, but also things like the FDA. Wealth redistribution is taxes used implicitly to raise the standard of living for a certain segment of society at the expense of another.
Yes, because it's been such a smashing success in the USSR and North Korea. What could possibly go wrong?
How generous of you. Please, sir, can I have some more?
Even if my entire income were 100% funded by taxes, your argument would still be invalid for the simle reason that I work for my money. I put effort into every penny I make, regardless of it's source. And if tomorrow I lose my job, I will find another way to make money without having to rely on the government to babysit me. I have never taken charity from the government, and I never will. That's because I take pride in my life, and would never dream of accepting money that was taken from other citizens by force. If I did that, I'd be no better than a common thief. I actually have more respect for thieves and con artists, because they at least have the guts to take my money themselves. People on welfare don't even do that much - they just bitch and whine and get others to do their dirty work for them.
Thanks for the newsflash, Einstein!
Seriously, wtf does that have to do with my comment? I see you got modded "informative", but realistically you should probably be modded redundant, since I think there's very few people who aren't aware of England's role in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. That's got very little to do with the modern-day conduct of certain nations in that region.
Or are you saying that those damn Eh-rabs are too dumb to do anything on their own, and that therefore all of their mistakes and misbehaviour must be blamed on the white man? That seems to be a pretty popular way of thinking in certain circles, but I personally find it despicable.
And only people who compete in the Special Olympics are true athletes!
Go on, pull the other one.
Which has absolutely dick to do with what we were discussing. The phrase "hard earned" does not denote only physical effort or discomfort. It's a judgement of total effort put into any given endeavour. Garry Kasparov doesn't need to exert a lot of physical effort during a chess game, and he gets to play them in a nice comfortable environment. Would you say that his victories are therefore not heard earned? It's easy to be a Chess Grand Master, right? Only the dickheads who chew on their game-pieces are truly hard working!
Another example: if I work my ass off in school in order to maintain an A average, is my mark not heard earned? Would you, in your infinite wisdom, propose that portions of my mark be taken away and given to the F average student? Clearly only the students who gets F's are really "hard working", right?
I'm thinking that the Ice Age which we're overdue for might have a wee bit more of an impact on "life all over the planet" than any amount of CO2 we can pump out
It's quite a bit more heartless to take my hard-earned money through the threat of government force, just so someone who hasn't earned it can continue to suck up resources.
Seriously, I have no problem with wealth redistribution, but if you want to take my money by force you should be required to do your own damn dirty work. Pick up a gun and rob me, instead of sending the tax man and the police to do it for you.
Yes, yes, we know. We could feed all the children, house the homeless, clothe the African tribes, cure Aids, go back to the moon, and build interstellar spacecraft with improbability drives. We'd all be shiny happy people holding hands, singing and hugging and eating magic brownies and stuff. If only that big bad Bushitler had stayed out of Iraq.
Now, did you have something relevant to add to the discussion, or did you want to keep trolling?
lol
In case you haven't noticed, those "soverign nations" have been making threats against Israel for about six decades now...
I guess you just don't take Arabs seriously, huh?
Sure - if you only count the hits, and discard the misses. That's the whole reason why people believe in nonsense - because they ignore the 10,000 theories which never come true, and are amazed when number 10,001 turns out to be true.
The rest of your comment basically just reinforces this point. You simply list things which were once ridiculed, yet turned out to have some basis in reality. That's a logical fallacy. As Carl Sagan so succinctly put it:
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
It's amazing how much paranoia has become ingrained in certain subsections of modern western society.
You know, I too enjoyed watching X-Files in my youth
*sigh*
Your lack of intelligence is not my fault, nor will attempting to mock me make you any more intelligent. Deal with it.
Not entirely accurate??? CONGRATULATIONS! You've just won the "understatement of the year" award!
What do you do for an encore? Defend the morons who keep insisting that Auschwitz had swimming pools for the prisoners? You know, their claims are also "not technically accurate", but Auschwitz really DID have swimming pools!
Yeah, I see the pattern here - you're deliberately blinding yourself in order to prop up your beliefs. What Wright is doing is painfully transparent - he's no different than the fools who say things like "I'm not antisemitic, I just hate Zionists!".
Forget it. I'd have better luck trying to explain evolution to a creationist. At least you've helped me understand why people are so devoted to Obama - it seems to be a religious experience for many of you.
What are you, kidding? Every time the guy opens his mouth he accuses white people of committing one horror or another. For instance:
"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."
"They purposely infected African American men with syphilis."
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans"
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America."
"Weâ(TM)ve got more black men in prison than there are in college."
"We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God"
Etc, etc, etc.
Not only is he showing open racism by making such sweeping generalizations (and outright lies) about white people, but he's also suggesting that blacks who face the legal system are all victims who shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. He is - in effect - saying that blacks are naturally predisposed to act in this way, and that it's all the white man's fault.
If you think the man's not racist, you've managed to mislead yourself into a whole new level of ignorance. I don't think you'd even dream of making excuses for a white man who behaved in this manner, blaming blacks for all the ills of white society, so I'm not sure why you're coming to the defence of this scumbag.
The only thing I'll give Obama credit for is that he's done a decent job of refuting some of Wright's hateful rhetoric. However, I'm not sure if that's attributable to his political advisers or the man himself, and the fact that he's attended these sermons for decades certainly doesn't speak well for his character.
That's true - the relevant "detail" here is the relationship. If you're a close friend of someone who's overtly racist, I'm deffinitely going to question your views too. It's even worse when your "friend" is really a religious leader whose sermons you regularly attend - when he's a man whose occupation basically consists of brainwashing people.
No, you just missed the joke. I'd explain it to you
Ah, yes. So as long as I only say "Those fucking niggers are ruining our country!" every couple weeks or so, it's ok, since I'm not doing it too often. Nicely done! Man, OJ should have picked YOU to defend him...
Right. And Hitler was just mad that he got a bad interest rate.
Have you seen the mess that a bullet going through a skull makes?
It's not the bullet that's the problem, it's the shockwave generated by it's passage that does all the damage. It's called "cavitation" - this video should help you understand it. If you carefully watch the last part of that video, you'll see that it causes the entire melon to explode outwards. Now imagine what that kind of force does to brain tissue confined inside a skull.
You can't compare that to shooting at computer components - they react completely differently, and are not affected at all by the shockwave. When you shoot a computer, only the part you hit is affected.
So you're saying the human brain is Open Source?
It's a question of character. If you attended a church whose minister was a Neo-Nazi and who preached racial segregation on a regular basis, not only would I not vote for you, but I would probably question your sanity. Ditto for Obama.
Heh. The guy attends the church of, and is good friends with, an extremely racist minister. He degrades his grandmother by basically calling her racist. He lies about the war record of his grandfather (or makes a mistake which reveals his ignorance of history). He has no experience. He wants to turn the US into a welfare state. Him and his wife seem to despise everything about the US. He constantly talks about change, yet never explains how his presidency will be different.
Yeah, elect that guy! I figure with the way he'll fuck up your country, MY currency will be worth double what it is today! I look forward to the day when I can cross the border and buy good shoes for $10 Canadian!
Now that's a conversation that is much too complex for slashdot