The Simple Truths Silver Mine

[Mechaman]

Also PLEASE PEOPLE USE THIS THREAD MORE OFTEN!!!! There are plenty of posts in the GPG that should be here instead.

Dude, why the hell does this thread even exist?

It seems to be a redundancy on the already redundant nature of the Forum Community board to have threads for EVERY FINKSING THING.
If I didn't know better I would swear this was satire.

[Mechaman]

Well well well, I found a post that belongs here:

If I had to guess, I would probably say Southern whites, but not by much.  James G. Blaine had Irish Catholic ancestry and was thought to be able to make inroads with them in 1884 (at least until one of his supporters referred to Democrats as the party of "rum, romanism, and rebellion.") 

The more the Republican Party changes, the more it stays the same.  It really ought to do better among minorities than it does, but then some Republicans make some remarks guaranteed to PO the very people the GOP is trying to reach out to.

[Mechaman]

Funny how every time Walter Mitty makes a thread, the whole forum disagrees with him.

[Mechaman]

Awful partisan is awful, and doesn't even have an elected office. Why is this news?

Because this is the U.S. General Discussion, where controversial statements made by people no one's ever heard of always deserve their own thread.

[Mechaman]

Am I the only one who finds this snobbery competition amusing?

"I am better educated and more intelligent than you, which clearly makes me superior!"

I don't think it is a "snobbery competition."  It's more like a debating tactic.  The bottom line is the results.  If someone thinks that shutting down the government for no reason and shaving $24 billion off of GDP is a good idea they are either ignorant or stupid.  I don't know which.

Let's be honest.  These are Americans people we are talking about.  We all know the average American person doesn't know anything about science regardless of which political party they belong to. 

Corrected.

[Mechaman]

The most unequivocal, adamant, unshakable "no" vote humanly possible (not a boss-serving plutocrat).

Any Democrat voting 'Yea' should immediately switch their avatar to 'R'. Either those guys are Democrats or I'm not, because this is literally the most pivotal piece of legislation post-New Deal that has influenced American society, and not in a good way.

[Mechaman]

Can't believe I'm posting something from dead0man here:

Lets see....Lukashenko uses violence to crush critics, takes hostages to get things he wants, rigs elections, regularly blames minorities for the problems he's created, has one of the least free press in the world, is anti-union, anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-Pole, jails political opponents and then tortures them and thinks Germany was greatest when Hitler was in charge....but he's anti-west too so he's clearly a hero!

[Mechaman]

Can't believe I'm posting something from dead0man here:

Lets see....Lukashenko uses violence to crush critics, takes hostages to get things he wants, rigs elections, regularly blames minorities for the problems he's created, has one of the least free press in the world, is anti-union, anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-Pole, jails political opponents and then tortures them and thinks Germany was greatest when Hitler was in charge....but he's anti-west too so he's clearly a hero!

Oh come on. He was arguing with Tweed, who had, as usual, make a ridiculous outlandish statement nobody should bother enough to answer. This post would rather belong in the Obviousness Coal Mine.

Does such a thread exist?

[Mechaman]

False. Cannabis smells fantastic.

That's ridiculous. It smells like a skunk smoking a cigarette.

And coffee tastes like dog sh-t tacos.

.. . . . . . .   . .you would be right.

[Mechaman]

The last good Republican left office in 1877

Not even Robert LaFollette?

with a few exceptions. I was mostly referring to the White House.

So not Teddy Roosevelt?

Teddy Roosevelt was kind of a racist imperialist. Plus his "progressivism" wasn't much more than trying to rationalize capitalism into something that middle class voters could hang their hat on without much disagreement with the overall exploitative structure. The T.R. brand of "progressivism" was actually fairly reactionary in that it sought to wipe out some of the gains that working class Americans had made up to that point.

[Mechaman]

Say what you will about Sam Spade as a poster but he was the best moderator in this forum's history.

[Mechaman]

People who hate Chicago should be forced to live in St. Louis.

[Mechaman]

Another one from that great thread:

It didn't have to, and that's not the point. The point is that we are better off today because it won, and while, say, Pinochet was terrible, it was still better than allowing Allende and his ideology to take root.

My problem with what you're saying is that you're quite blatantly admitting you think, when the chips are down, capitalism is more important than democracy. You're happier with capitalism by the barrel of a gun and the rape of a dictator squad, than marxism by democracy. Your priorities are perverse.

Marokai, one of our biggest FFs.

[Mechaman]

It's a bit more complicated than that.  The real war is between the owning class and the working class.  The owning class does what it can to incite the working class into racial conflict as a distraction from the true conflict. 

[Mechaman]

On "the Wussification of America":

When I think of the term (not that I think of the term often) I don't think about people losing faith, values or morals.  I think about men getting manicures, being afraid to kill spiders, not knowing how to drive a manual, not knowing how to change a tire (much less a starter), mom's showing up to yell at teachers and bosses when their spoiled little brats get yelled at for being little bitches, asking to be banned from a message board because they can't figure out how to calm down, the NFL's wussy rule changes, giving trophies for competing, helicopter parents and Janet Jackson's nipple.

[Mechaman]

Romney doesn't even come close to Dewey and Dukakis. The first had it in the bag, so he relaxed and sat back, allowing Truman to pull his historic upset. The second led by a double-digits till the last couple of months, just to lose by a landslide.

[Mechaman]

Guys, it's 2014. Let's get past this Civil War "Your regions is more racist than mine!" spiel

[Mechaman]

The Greatest American.

So a failure vs. unquestionably the Greatest South African?

John Brown didn't fail. His actions sped up the destruction of slavery.

[Mechaman]

On World War I

We should not have gotten involved in that one.  There were no good guys.

[Mechaman]

Perhaps the best summary of Bush Jr. I've seen so far:

Obviously, I disagree with Bush on policy.  The Bush tax cut, invading Iraq, massive giveaways to corporate America while vetoing healthcare for children, scapegoating gay people, pandering to the Christian right, the list goes on.  He was awful on policy and on that alone I would vote HP.

But, beyond that, you have to question Bush's leadership and his competence.  There are four big events he completely botched.  Regardless of how you feel on policy, I defy anyone to say Bush did a good job on any of the following:

1.  He came into office thinking terrorism was Bill Clinton's pet issue so he ignored the issue until 9/11. 
2.  He botched the war in Afghanistan, letting Bin laden escape and eventually ignored the worsening security situation.
3.  He botched Iraq completely until 2007.  He didn't fire Rumsfeld or our incompetent generals, or set out a strategy to win in Iraq. 
4.  He was frozen during the financial crisis, couldn't get TARP passed quickly and his team, especially Hank Paulson, made huge missteps that worsened the crisis.

[Mechaman]

"Collectivist" is a cute little term used to describe anyone who so far as thinks about constructing a system that does not allow people to fall into complete poverty.

[Mechaman]

Just looks like a huffpo article that wants to take a factoid out of context for no reason.  Correlation does not equal causation.  There can be a third factor that causes both things to occur with no causation between the original two.

In this case, the richest districts are in major urban centers which skew Democratic by a large margin.  But, if you look within those cities, poor neighborhoods are more Democratic than rich neighborhoods.  Like in Brooklyn, Park Slope only voted for Obama 90% or something versus Brownsville which voted for Obama 99%.

[Mechaman]

A little big for a simple truth, but I think it's more fitting in this category than simply being "a good post":

As some above statements say, idealizing New England as some haven of the fiscally conservative that will vote GOP once we dump social conservatives is foolish indeed. I'm sure there's some myth purported and kept living by neo-secularist fiscal conservatives in the region that "once we drop those damned proles in the South, we'll win every election!" Yeah, that's a load of bees' wax as far as I'm concerned. Sure, you can count on most of them for votes, probably, in an election season where a socially "reasonable" candidate is nominated, but don't delude yourselves into believing that there's some grand coalition of people that only vote on fiscal issues (and as well only vote for the right on fiscal issues) out there that would side with you and only you. You're pumping yourselves full of happy-good-time myths to help reinforce your worldview. For God's sake, just, Jesus Christ people. I mean, just for one f#cking second consider that you sort of need a coalition of people to win an election, not just some sort of dumb "dump X group for Y group and everything will turn out hunky-dory" strategy. I mean, seriously, f#ck that.

[Mechaman]

There's really only one issue:

1. I don't think government should exist solely to serve the interests of rich white men.

[Mechaman]

As usual, our favorite TX WASP makes a good point

I think the idea that someone is a Pub these days because of the Dems past involvement in racism, prior to making a 180 degree course correction on that matter, is close to sui generis these days, to be honest. I mean, it is almost literally bizarre, and I say that as  Pub.

They may have made a course correction, but that doesn't change the fact that they did have a past involvement in racism.

And the fact that you would base your party affiliation on that is bizarre, yes. You're proving Torie's point.

How many times do I have to say that it's NOT the only reason I'm a Republican?

It might not be the only one, but it's clearly a major one for you, which is kind of bizarre. Especially considering the Republicans also had past involvement in racism...

True, but it was nowhere near as much as Democrats.  And the Republican party was established for the express purpose of ending slavery.

The people whose ancestors were actually enslaved have long since stopped considering that to be relevant. I don't know why you should.