The Lief Reservoir of Simple Truths and Smart One-Liners

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

It's important to look critically at all such documents, even those considered sacrosanct.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Cruz should have lost in 2012 to Dewhurst.

[Antonio the Sixth]

To be fair, the American practice of calling someone "Irish" or "Italian" because their great-great-great-great-grandparents came from Ireland or Italy is pretty silly.

[Antonio the Sixth]

AAD is a perfect example of tribal mentality. They need to gang up on every critic they have and reiterate how much they dislike that person in order to keep the group together. The fact that everyone involved on both sides is a young politics geek on a tiny internet forum makes it kind of cute though.

[politicus]

What is it with Victorian Whig/Liberal Prime Ministers and being total creeps?

Most major figures of the Victorian era were total creeps.

[politicus]

Dead0man's boorishness is several orders of magnitude more tolerable than Gustaf's condescending alpha-male routine.

[Antonio the Sixth]

For now, at least, we have no idea what was said or even why the visit took place. Some conclusions are obvious, of course, but none of them tell us anything new.

That said, the expectations that some people have of Pope Francis are so out there relative to where the Church is that it's endearing. The idea of a belief system that sincerely opposes (certain forms of) social exclusion, environmental degradation, consumer culture, and so on while simultaneously barring women from positions of authority and rebuking gay marriage should not be so shocking. The contrast with the troglodytic, self-absorbed, sex-crazed style of religious conservatism that dominates cultural conversations in the United States is stark. Oh well.

(yes, I know, not a one-liner, blah blah)

[politicus]

Of course the problem with the liberal autarky is the freedoms you enjoy are entirely at the whims of your autocrat. At least in a democracy there is a way to escape, convoluted though it may be. Democracy is always better than no democracy.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I always love any theory that includes denial of its existence as proof of its existence.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Context needed:

I had a great sweater once. Really awesome, wore it everywhere. Unfortunately, one day I accidentally cut myself cooking and promptly bled over it. The stain didn't come out. I hard to discard the sweater.

[Miles]

I honestly have no idea of how to respond to this in words, I can only say that I'm absolutely horrified with the thought that someone could basically respond to someone who's calling them a fascist with "No I'm not a fascist, I'm to far right for that."

[Lief 🗽]

White Americans are dangerous extremists, as evidenced by this primary season [...]

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

I can agree with the thread title.  All of the guys are screwed.  Luckily Hillary will be fine though.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

How was Sanders more substantive? It's his same talking points just re-ordered for each answer.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Here comes a real triple threat:

Both equally.

For some reason there are 2 stupid myths about 1992. One is that Clinton only won because of Perot. The other is that Clinton was the only Democrat who could have won.

It is easy to single out two or three and hold them aloft as the height of evil to sanctify and absolve the others of their barbarity in a barbaric time.

Chinese reads better but Spanish sounds better!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ugh, white Europeans in this thread are (mostly) the worst. I can't wait until their entire continent is 40% minority, the sky doesn't fall, and we all really get to see what's in their hearts.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's really revolting how many people (read: out of touch white people) think that by saying "Black Lives Matter" you're somehow implying that only black lives matter.

It's sort of like, if during the Holocaust, somebody said "Jewish Lives Matter" only to be told "Yes, but All Lives Matter too! What about the non-Jewish Germans?"

[RINO Tom]

To be fair, the American practice of calling someone "Irish" or "Italian" because their great-great-great-great-grandparents came from Ireland or Italy is pretty silly.

Not to get off-topic, but I don't get this line of thinking.  I think we can all agree it's admirable or at the very least understandable that first and second generation immigrants from Asia or Latin America hang on to a lot of their ancestors' heritage and customs.  I won't be any less understanding in two or three generations if they still feel a need to do so...

Similarly, just because my great, great grandpa was the last one to be born in Germany doesn't mean I don't take a little pride in/think it's a little cool that my family is mostly still of German ancestry.  I certainly won't discourage my children from feeling the same.

[Joe Republic]

At least #CatLivesMatter was about something. This is just a grown man complaining about the moderation policy on an internet forum meant to make maps.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Sexist undertones should not be ignored simply because of a potential political risk. Another piece of common sense that Hillary acknowledges and the Sandersistas throw a fit about.

[Simfan34]

No. If anything, the American public needs to dress more like the president. Enough with the golf shirts at work and the sweatpants on airplanes.

I'd also like to see:
1. More variety of shirts and neckties. Why does a politician's shirt/tie have to always match the national colors? No other country does that.
2. Morning dress at inauguration and other major events like SOTU. Reagan was the last president to break out the waistcoat and tails.
3. More homages to regional dress. We don't really have a "national costume" like non-western nations. But it would be nice for, say, a congressman representing a large number of Native Americans to occasionally incorporate elements of traditional dress; or someone from Miami could wear a guayabera every now and then.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

HELL YEAH

I have long maintained that anybody using the words "fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" in any capacity other than to mock the phrase should be banned ASAP.

And what is wrong with being that mix?

It means you're stupid enough to actually believe that social and fiscal issues are independent from one another.

Yeah we get it you hate us move on to something else.

I'm not going to move on.  It's people like you who gutted my state's budget and stopped my hardworking parents from getting a raise in an entire decade.  It's people like you who've destroyed the public sector and made college completely unaffordable, causing me to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt, unemployed, and too poor to receive proper health care.  It's people like you who cause my friends to suffer so much, just because they were unfortunate enough to be born into a family that wasn't rich.  

You people literally destroy the livelihoods of millions of Americans, sh**t all over marginalized communities, and then expect us to tolerate you because you happen to think marijuana is cool?   off.  This country would be a better place if every "fiscal conservative, social liberal" were rounded up, shot in the back of the head, and buried in mass graves like the animals they are.

[sparkey]

Y'know, that got deleted, and the Internet became a bit smarter and nicer as a result.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The parties switched platforms.

I don't know you well enough to know if you are typing that ridiculous sentence sarcastically or not, but the troubling thing about that myth is that it's so comforting to several different groups.

It is a nice comforting narrative to modern-day liberal Democrats, as (in their minds) it absolves the party of any racism in its past, all the while stealing any Republican accomplishments on the matter and forking it right over to the endless, always-right social treadmill of "liberalism."

It's comforting to Black voters, as it completely justifies the demographic group's switch from the GOP to the Democrats.  It's a lot more noble in the history books to paint it as the GOP turning on Black voters one day in a spat of coded racism than Blacks being forced to vote their economic interests three decades before the CRA/VRA.

It's also pretty comforting to Southern whites, as they can justify their ancestors' (whom they otherwise seem quite proud of) support of an openly racist party by hiding behind things like "states' rights" or "small government."  Of course, things like the Dred Scott case show that Southern Democrats didn't give a crap about states' rights and were willing to take any avenue possible to preserve White racial supremacy.

That pretty much just leaves Northern Republicans and Democrats who are true students of history/not completely ignorant (which, I'll say, describes most on this forum) to try to refute this fairy tale and tell the much more complicated story.

This is a brilliant post, but especially the part about Southern Democrats not caring about states' rights and only using it as a cover for racism.

[YaBoyNY]

Y'know, that got deleted, and the Internet became a bit smarter and nicer as a result.

Why? Are you salty that lolbertarianism got justifiably sh!t on?