The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[MT Treasurer]

I suppose the key to the question is would Iraq have occurred under a Gore presidency. (Afghanistan would occur regardless if 9/11 still happened). Given his vote for the Gulf War (at a time when the Democratic base was rallied against it) and his constant pushing for strikes on Iraq as vice president, it's not totally out of the question that Gore might have invaded Iraq.

YES.

I would even go as far as to say that up to when Bush became President Gore might have been the biggest cheerleader for war against Hussein.

In fact on the 1992 Campaign Trail one of his favorite memes was to bash George HW Bush for "not going all the way" in Iraq and punishing the "vicious tyrant" Sadaam Hussein.  His comments in the following video are probably one of the few real sincere moments I've seen from him in fact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDitSbkQKIs

Oh, that's unfair you say?  1992 is too early?  Well how about the 2000 Presidential Election, where he pretty much defended his record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chn1qAn1f3w

Oh how quickly people forget.

[SATW]

^ that is indeed a very good post. interesting stuff.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

He was saying as a moderator that he wouldn't allow the comments. I don't think Eraserhead's defence holds up very well.

On this topic I'm not sure there is much need for this other forum, beyond maybe the Update stuff. I do think that it's a bit ungrateful to Dave to spin off his forum with the intention of killing the original (as some people seem to want)

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Just a reminder: We do not ban people on Good Atlas. We don't even really delete posts (I think we've deleted a total of two, maybe three). Please join us if you want a forum run fairly, where posters are treated with respect and moderators don't spend their days playing detective and trying to ban posters.

Or you can post here, where posters are banned without being given the chance to defend themselves because they all happen to be posting from the same city of 8.5 million people.

[The Dowager Mod]

Just a reminder: We do not ban people on Good Atlas. We don't even really delete posts (I think we've deleted a total of two, maybe three). Please join us if you want a forum run fairly, where posters are treated with respect and moderators don't spend their days playing detective and trying to ban posters.

Or you can post here, where posters are banned without being given the chance to defend themselves because they all happen to be posting from the same city of 8.5 million people.

That may be the funniest thing Lief has ever posted.

[RR1997]

How about we just stop interacting with CCSF entirely? Let's get this thread back on track.



I've been euphoric for the past several hours, but after seeing some people bring this up, I feel that I've gotta share it here:

It's sombering that there are a lot of LGBT people who aren't here to see this day. A lot of LGBT people have killed themselves, thinking there is something wrong with them, not knowing how to reconcile their sexuality/gender identity with the horrible sh*t society threw at them, not knowing how to keep themselves alive after being thrown out of the house by parents who put their bigoted beliefs above their own children.

Let's remember everyone who was murdered, shot, beaten, stabbed, dragged behind cars and crucified on fences, because of their actual or supposed sexuality/gender identity. Remember all those LGBT people who lived their whole lives far away from any accepting and understanding society over the thousands of years humans have been on this Earth, who surpressed their identity and never got to be themselves before they passed away of natural causes. They never got to see this day.

This day is also a day to remember all those who died of HIV/AIDS since the 1960s. One of the prinicple motives behind the fight for marriage equality was the fact that during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, many LGBT people in their final days and hours were denied seeing their partners by their families, because their partners did not have spousal rights to visitation and medical decisions. Though to many of us young LGBTers who have been bombarded with safe-sex information for all of our lives and know that if we are infected there are ways to manage it and survive, the horrors of the HIV/AIDS crisis that raged just as recently as 20 years ago, cutting down hundreds of thousands of people both LGBT and not, still casts a pretty long shadow. I'm sure posters like Torie have quite a bit to share with us about those times.

I saw in some news reports about how many of the non-profits and advocacy groups that fought for marriage equality are going to wind up their operations and shut down. I hope many of them move on to related issues like anti-discrimination legislation, educating people about LGBT issues, and fighting the still very real and serious problem of LGBT youth homelessness.

The SCOTUS ruling doesn't change the fact that homophobia is still a huge problem, and that millions of LGBT kids and millions of non-LGBT kids currently are suffering from torment and bullying for their actual/supposed sexual orientation/gender identity, that many of them will still silently sit in church/ mosque/ temple/ synagogue and hear messages of intolerance directed towards people like them for something they cannot change. Many will be so torn with this internal and external conflict that they will develop serious mental and emotional issues that will tear them apart. Many of us (like myself) will still live in fear of being fired if our sexual orientation is revealed or even suspected. Many of us will silently celebrate tonight in a house where we are not accepted or understood. Many will still suffer from hurtful comments and even physical attacks, and many will attempt and regretfully succeed in committing suicide.


I'm sorry to rain on the parade (hey, that can be a pun, right? Smile, dammit) and bring such negative thoughts and emotions into this day that should be about the celebration of love and equality, but we cannot forget where this fight started. A lot of us younger LGBTs seem to forget what older generations of had to suffer through to get the ball rolling. While we should celebrate this extremely important achievement to honor those who came before us, we should also remember all those who never got to see this day that they deserved. We should also take this momentum and use it to keep fighting the good fight, for equal protection laws, helping homeless LGBT kids, ending violence towards LGBT people both at home and abroad, challenging our L and G brothers and sisters to accept the B and T people, and to continue opening peoples' eyes to why this is such an important issue and why they should be on our side.


So yeah, end of jumbled, emotional rant. I'm tired as sh*t and drained from the past several hours. Let's have an argument about Illinois' state budget tomorrow, then go crazy at Pride on Sunday. Have a good night y'all. Life gets better.

[retromike22]

Clarko95 is on a roll with good posts.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I never thought I'd put a Lyndon post here.

I've been generally sympathetic to the Greek plight, but this is pretty reckless behavior by Tsipras.  I think that the referendum is a good idea in principle, but pulling out of negotiations and springing this on everyone like this is highly irresponsible.

Most people in the pro-European camp realize now that Tsipras's plan all along was to waste time with a sham negotiation until the last minute, then denounce them for being unreasonable and use the subsequent turmoil as an excuse to leave Eurozone and return to drachma.

Let's face it, these people are far-left ideologues, real ones, not like those imagined by Republicans. Most of them were members of Communist Party for many years. They never liked Greece's participation in the EU, let alone the Eurozone. They now have the chance of their lifetimes to transform Greece into Venezuela, and they aren't afraid to divide the Greek people into patriots and traitors in order to succeed.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Very interesting to listen to a straight person rail against a member of the queer community for "not listening to the arguments" of people who are against same-sex marriage.

Um, we're the ones who are on the receiving end of this crap all the time. Whatever backwards justification a person can come up with to legitimize their opposition to marriage equality really doesn't mean anything. With respect, same-sex marriage is about people who have same-sex attraction, and only people who have same-sex attraction. So we're the ones who get to be the barometers for whether hate is an active part of the equation. While it may be true that some anti-SSMers genuinely believe they can be against SSM without hating gay people (and perhaps some actually don't hate gay people), what they believe in this situation is moot. Because their words and actions impact the LGBT community whether there's intentional hate or not. And those viewpoints are oppressive, unjust, spread misconceptions, fuel distrust, encourage harassment, beat gay people into submission, nurture self-hate and depression, and, in general, make life worse for people who are not straight. So, for the last time, whether a person "intends" to hate means piss-all. It's a consolation prize. Because their actions and attitudes are hateful either way.

So no, I will not accommodate this garbage just because a few bigoted imbeciles can't get over themselves and accept positive change that has nothing to do with them. If you oppose equal marriage, you are either a bigot or stupid. Prove me wrong.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Maybe the whole idea that we can make vast judgments about people's character based on what they watch is dumb or something.

Also the idea that only little girls can watch My Little Pony is sexist, and the idea that adults can't watch and enjoy kids cartoons is the reason most children's television sucks.

[TDAS04]

Here is the thing I just really don't get, and that is why people need a government ruling to back up their religious beliefs?  Doesn't that violate the First Amendment?

I mean, I really don't get this idea of how if we have legal equality between straight and gay people it is somehow harming the freedoms of Christian America.  Nobody ever openly calls divorce laws "anti-Christian" or how bad and evil it is that people aren't thrown in jail for committing straight adultery.  What makes the concept of legal (emphasis) equality between straight and gay people so much worse?

To Paraphrase: If you don't like Gay Marriage don't get one.

[patrick1]

Maybe the whole idea that we can make vast judgments about people's character based on what they watch is dumb or something.

Also the idea that only little girls can watch My Little Pony is sexist, and the idea that adults can't watch and enjoy kids cartoons is the reason most children's television sucks.

...Cough

[YaBoyNY]

Historically, socialism has never worked.

See: Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and practically the entirety of the developed world for flavors and variations of substantially socialist policies. The US invented the largest and most socialistic program in the history of the world - it's called Social Security. I'm sure there will be a cadre of right-wing and socialist posters alike screaming "this is not socialism!11", but they are in fact elements of socialism isolated from a purist system - and they are superior to capitalist "equivalents".

In addition to the obvious examples of the Eastern Bloc during World War II, socialism has also failed in modern-day Europe, which is suffering far worse than the much more capitalistic United States, and, prior to the early 1990s, India and even "socialist utopia" Sweden, which only recovered from their recession by reforming to a less socialistic model.

Europe is suffering today because they pursued policies of austerity far deeper than the United States. Europe enacted austerity. The US enacted a stimulus (albeit milquetoast and minuscule in nature; the main element here is that we didn't shoot ourselves in our already-wounded foot). During the height of the global recession, Europe as a whole cut spending; the US increased spending. Even before the recession, European countries as a whole had a lower debt to GDP ratio than the US. Today, the US has the highest rate of economic growth for any first-world nation when balanced with population size. Half of Europe continues to teeter-totter on the brink of recession. Yes, Europe is faltering: now look at the policies they pursued during that time.

Socialism slows down economic growth.

This is quite debatable, but the rate of economic growth is not all that important - where that growth goes is important. A 4% rate of GDP growth in a country with levels of economic inequality like the US is objectively inferior from the perspective of a consumer-based economy than a country with 2% GDP growth that has economic inequality comparable to that of Denmark. Why? Because in the former, wages and earnings for >90% of the country remain flat or decline when measured across decades; in the latter, real income continues to grow and tangible standard of living increases. Rich people do not grow the economy; they redistribute wealth from others to themselves.

It causes unemployment to rise by raising taxes to an unsustainable level. It makes the people dependent on the government by having the government provide everything, funded by taxpayers. Socialism requires the establishment of a nanny state and increased authoritarianism to function. Socialism is ineffective because the government is inherently inefficient at managing industries. Just look at AmTrak, which has never turned a profit.

Everything doesn't exist to turn a profit. Believe it or not, many public services exist to improve quality of life, which almost always have an impact on the standard and cost of living for the people it influences. AmTrak's NE Corridor results in stations being within 25 miles of 30% of the country. Over 12,000,000 passengers use it annually, with 70% of them travelling 100-300 miles per trip. In smaller trips and along different routes, many people leverage the infrastructure to be able to work in higher-paying areas and export that income into more rural and suburban areas, even after absorbing the cost of the train. Along the NE corridor, it is sometimes actually quicker to take the train than drive. This is just one example. If tax cuts, profusely and almost meaninglessly distributed throughout the country to millions of people to create drips and drops of quality of life improvement while simultaneously resulting in expanded deficits makes economic sense to you, then this shouldn't be any more difficult to understand.

Finally, socialism is bad because it increases government overreach. My views on welfare can be summed up as "Government has the responsibility to provide what individual citizens cannot do for themselves", but socialism goes far beyond that and attempts to provide all basic necessities for everyone even if they can afford it themselves, resulting in a secure life where all basic needs are met, but people live in perpetual poverty.

First of all, please abandon your buzz-words like "government overreach". Secondly, why is the free market afraid of a little competition? Because it knows that government can in many instances provide a comparable or superior service at a lower rate than the private sector, merely because profit is not the objective - merely breaking even will do in this case, and sometimes, not even that is necessary - and overhead costs are lower. More choices, I say!

This is such a beautiful post.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Zionism is a problematic term because it gets used by anti-Semites as coded language.  When you append the word "scum" to Zionist, it adds to that impression.  To many people's ear, saying "zionist scum" will make people think you're an anti-Semite. 

It's like how racists will call people "black thugs" instead of using the n-word. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I agree that Leip's lackadaisical approach to this site is kind of astonishing and he needs to prune plenty of boards. But many of the complaints from people who keep sucking AAD's dick are pretty unpleasable, and if what a lot of you guys really want is some sort of social club, your time for an elections focused site has long passed and this forum will be better off without you. What is worst about this site, by far, is its people devoted to "Atlas culture." That aspect of this site is a cesspool. The attachment to the stories from Bushie or Libertas are honestly sort of gross, and if you mainly stick around a place to take glee in someone's absurd self-destruction, just go watch reality television.

I mean, let's take Lief's complaints. What are they, even? His posts about CCSF highlight that he's all over the place. He wants trolls banned, until he doesn't. He wants active moderators, until he doesn't. What do some of you guys actually want? I'm genuinely curious. It's easy to chime in with complaints all the time, but what do people actually want done?

[Simfan34]

I agree that Leip's lackadaisical approach to this site is kind of astonishing and he needs to prune plenty of boards. But many of the complaints from people who keep sucking AAD's dick are pretty unpleasable, and if what a lot of you guys really want is some sort of social club, your time for an elections focused site has long passed and this forum will be better off without you. What is worst about this site, by far, is its people devoted to "Atlas culture." That aspect of this site is a cesspool. The attachment to the stories from Bushie or Libertas are honestly sort of gross, and if you mainly stick around a place to take glee in someone's absurd self-destruction, just go watch reality television.

I mean, let's take Lief's complaints. What are they, even? His posts about CCSF highlight that he's all over the place. He wants trolls banned, until he doesn't. He wants active moderators, until he doesn't. What do some of you guys actually want? I'm genuinely curious. It's easy to chime in with complaints all the time, but what do people actually want done?

I was coming to post this.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I agree that Leip's lackadaisical approach to this site is kind of astonishing and he needs to prune plenty of boards. But many of the complaints from people who keep sucking AAD's dick are pretty unpleasable, and if what a lot of you guys really want is some sort of social club, your time for an elections focused site has long passed and this forum will be better off without you. What is worst about this site, by far, is its people devoted to "Atlas culture." That aspect of this site is a cesspool. The attachment to the stories from Bushie or Libertas are honestly sort of gross, and if you mainly stick around a place to take glee in someone's absurd self-destruction, just go watch reality television.

I mean, let's take Lief's complaints. What are they, even? His posts about CCSF highlight that he's all over the place. He wants trolls banned, until he doesn't. He wants active moderators, until he doesn't. What do some of you guys actually want? I'm genuinely curious. It's easy to chime in with complaints all the time, but what do people actually want done?

I was coming to post this.

I, for one, enjoy the segregation of Atlas culture and legitimate Atlas activity. If I want to read the Update, I go to AAD. If I want to actually inform myself on what is going on in the world, I come here.

[politicallefty]

I don’t know why I missed this.

Ultimately, action against unwanted sexual advances is determined by what statistics say. And what statistics say on this issue is ultimately meaningless. So you have social science saying ‘a woman has a 1 in x chance of rape’ based on surveys and then the legal system spitting out statistics on arrests/convictions for said offences. And because they can never fit together and the arrest/conviction rate is low, the action is to evoke the law into ensuring that arrests/convictions increase. The problem with this is the assumption made that the correct course of action is to prosecute more men, when perhaps the more productive method is to increase education about appropriate sexual behaviour.

The idea that there is consent of any nature in a sexual act (and I’m not saying consent isn’t a real and tangible thing) is based on the legal definiton of consent. It pays little attention to actual social and sexual interactions that people have. It is for the very same reason that the age of consent itself is entirely arbitary and pays little attention to whether someone is physically/psychologically capable of sex and capable of consenting to that. However there is no other method that can be applied that can safeguard the vulnerable.

As Marokai touches upon in any human interaction, even those of a non sexual nature, verbal consent is not the only means by which someone consents to an action. From experience I’ve found myself in bed with someone without either of us muttering a word about it.

If you are arguing for affirmative verbal consent, you’re asking someone to clarify their intent in every step. The logical extension of this is that  you cannot chat someone up unless you both verbally agree. You cannot kiss them unless both parties agree. You cannot fondle unless both partes agree, no touching until both verbally agree, no oral until both agree, no penetrative sex until both agree. Do you check in in every few minutes to make sure it’s still okay? It’s absurd.

Saying no is much more powerful. And when you say no, even after doing all of the above, it is clear and is a strong expression of sentiment that you wish for the action to stop. And if you keep going after someone says no, there is absolutely no ambiguity about that and you can can rightly, and through legal means, throw the book at them if you have to.

I don't think I could've responded better to that topic myself.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I thought this was a really good perspective on Nixon-Reagan-Bush

Building a base of moderates and corporations who are basically paid off via whatever ridiculous spending they sign off on allows them to go hard in the paint (as my JV basketball coach might say) on foreign policy. Also, I mean, even Nelson Rockefeller was considerably anti-communist while being for the most part liberal (not to be confused with genuinely "left-wing", and except for drugs, of course) domestically. It basically creates a "big government" ponzi scheme wherein money is flushed out of the treasury and into both wars and domestic spending, making voters content enough to continue signing off on whatever their leadership is doing. Winning candidates of the right have been using this playbook since at least Nixon, probably Eisenhower. I mean, did even Reagan ever really threaten the New Deal, or even legalized abortion?

Yeah, basically it pleases as many interest groups as possible.

The George W. Bush presidency would have been a better example were it not for the divisive lip service to SoCon causes and the fact that he was so intent on making people less supportive of big government by picking incompetent cronies to run everything.

My assumption for the time being would be that Dubya abused the Nixon Doctrine, and has ruined it, at least for the right. If or when the GOP re-emerges victorious will be the time to test that hypothesis. I do hope it's right, though I'm not entirely sure what it would be replaced with. Anything too actually conservative ("conservative" in the sense of actually conserving this country, not its modern, warped definition) is out of the question for reasons of electability and modernity, so they'll have to think of something.

Nixon didn't care about anything but foreign policy. Domestic policy was mundane to him and he never formed a coherent governing philosophy on domestic issues. Since he faced a center-left Congress, he signed off on the expansion of the regulatory and welfare state, and in return, Congress more or less looked the other way while he bombed Cambodia and went to China and conducted Cold War chess matches in the Third World. If there had been a Republican majority in Congress, he would no doubt have gone along with whatever they wanted (New Deal rollbacks or whatever) in return for a wide berth in foreign affairs. Nixon as our "last liberal president" is more an accident of history than any deliberate agenda on his part.

I don't think Dubya was a Nixon in the sense that domestic affairs were something worthless to him that he realized could be a useful bargaining chip. I think he was more like LBJ - someone with very clear and distinct objectives at home and abroad who reconciled them by pushing through a Santa Claus grab-bag of legislation and spending to keep Congress from stopping him. For LBJ, the Great Society was his "gift" to the liberals, while escalation in Vietnam assured Republicans that he wasn't going to give the farm to the Soviets. I think LBJ was genuine in his support of civil rights and in terms of the political damage it did to his party in the short-term, he wouldn't have signed that legislation if he didn't genuinely believe in it.

Bush subscribed to what might be called "romantic conservatism." He had this quasi-Reaganesque vision of a nation of homeowners with steady, well-paying private sector jobs who were also "people of faith" (not necessarily Christian faith), buttressed by a social safety net where private charity and faith-based groups played an outsized role. He didn't deify free-market capitalism as something to be exalted in and of itself the way the current Republican Party does; he believed it was merely the means to the end. His domestic agenda was his father's noblesse oblige and protection of the status quo, made more idealistic and given a moral framework.

His foreign policy was very much a throwback to Woodrow Wilson's activist idealism and the notion of "a world made safe for democracy." The Iraq adventure is the sort of thing Wilson would have endorsed. Reagan essentially did the same thing when he enacted a "regime change" in Grenada (obviously the circumstances made that endeavor far quicker and easier to accomplish). But it would have abhorred Nixon - to him, the logical thing to do would have simply been to find a general in the Iraqi army who was sympathetic to the US, load him up with money and weapons and wink and nod and let him stage a coup. Iraq would then be under the control of a pro-American military dictator rather than an anti-American military dictator.

Bush's foreign policy was a set of beliefs held by a man who was too young to believe, as Nixon did, that people in the Third World were essentially lesser beings who could simply be crushed under the heel of whichever authoritarian the Great Powers chose for them, but too old to believe, as most people of our generation do, that people in the Third World are not helpless noble savages, that they should have the power of self-agency and they do not need to be "liberated" by other countries.

[Antonio the Sixth]

An utterly pathetic individual, and a phony to boot. He can talk the revolutionary talk all he wants, but when it comes down to it, tweed is nothing but a trust fund baby masquerading as some kind of radical while in reality being little more than a predator willing to take advantage of people for personal gain. I don't know what to 'believe' about tweed other than that he's a deeply cynical, pathetic person who would take advantage of another person for his own amusement, which is more or less the marker of someone who shouldn't have the privilege of being a member of this community.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Moderators should certainly be active posters, but I agree with Alcon that it is an important strength of the moderation team that they are specifically not part of the social community of this forum for the most part. Being a mod should have a certain distance from the stupidity and cliquishness that pervades certain parts of Atlas' community. Being well liked is not, and should not, be a job requirement. If the job was all about pleasing people, nothing would ever get done.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Jesus would probably be banned after the first time he advised someone to cut their hands off in order to prevent themselves from trolling.

[Anti-Bothsidesism]

No. Just stop this effing nonsense. Please effing stop. There are two forums. Do what you want to on ADD. If there's nothing you want to do here, don't be here. Why is this so effing ideological to you people? Both forums are cesspools. Guess why! Just effing guess! Because we post on them! We, us, humanity, in all our glorious imperfection! "Oh, here's a stupid thread!" If the mods on this forum are so awful, or the posts are, or what have you, then why be here? Are you getting effing ideological about an effing Internet forum? I'm sure you have a job. Maybe you have friends, even! Focus on those, not this! If I were a praying man these days, I'd pray for your soul. But yours is too trivial a matter to bother taking to God. Peace.

[kcguy]

There's a stereotype of Canada, that Canadians don't know what their national culture is, except that they're not the United States.

That's was AAD reminds me of.  More than any other identity, they define themselves as not Dave Leip's Atlas.

Of course, that's where the analogy breaks down.  Last time I checked, Canadians are too polite to drive down to the US for the sole purpose of telling us Americans how superior they are.

I don't object to AAD's existence any more than I object to Canada's, but I do object to the way they act when they travel abroad.

[Ebowed]

There's a stereotype of Canada, that Canadians don't know what their national culture is, except that they're not the United States.

There's a stereotype of Americans, that Americans think everything has to do with them and that everyone is defined by them.

I don't object to America's existence any more than I object to Canada's, but I do object to the way they act when they travel abroad.