The Lief Reservoir of Simple Truths and Smart One-Liners

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

One of the worst 'things' to emerge over the last 10-15 years, is the knee-jerk response to anything vaguely suggestive or sensual and think "sex", or worse of all, to see paedophilia in everything.... everything is "inappropriate".

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

More to the point, it is generally never a very good idea to call any woman a "bitch" unless either a) she is literally a dog, or b) you are writing a what-if timeline and this is uttered by a pissed off character.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The oldest boys in Lord of the Flies were twelve. I lacked the knowledge and skill with language to post intelligently at that age, but I was definitely a better person and almost certainly had more interesting thoughts than I do today. The same is probably true for most of us.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

This is stupid of course, but I find the right wing outrage much more disturbing. ARREST THESE COMMUNISTS AND CUT THEIR HEADS OFF WITH A CHAINSAW - summary of the comments on the article.

In fairness, the comments section for most websites tend to draw the mentally disturbed of all ideologies.

Like the comments section of Dave Liep's Political Atlas.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Why do appeasement never work?

Because if it work it's not appeasement.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Well, I strongly dislike the idea of future generations finding it hard to get to grips with their cultural inheritance because of the meddling of utopian nitwits. Additionally, I don't think there's anything wrong with English as it currently is. I like its oddness and its fundamentally illogical nature and I don't see the benefit of trying to alter that. Particularly as there is no standard English dialect.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I agree that the law against "structuring" is a terrible law.

A pretty basic principle of a free society should be that you can be prosecuted for disobeying the letter of the law, but you can't be prosecuted for disagreeing with the laws you obey. So it had better be that obeying the letter of the law is enough to be free from persecution, even when your sole motivation is to avoid prosecution. The idea that you can have one law and then another law that makes it illegal to obey the first law when your psychological motivation is only to avoid criminal investigation and penalty, rather than to further the broad, vague purposes of the law, has pretty authoritarian implications.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

PowerPoint? Really? If that's not a sign of barbarians at the gates, I don't know what could be.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I don't think a lot of the Pub candidates have received the memo yet, that on a lot of foreign policy issues, all of the options out there suck, and it's a Hobson's choice. The US is just not in a position anymore, and really never was from a prudential standpoint (as we learned at great cost), to just make and enforce the rules of the road for the planet. So it is a frustrating, lengthy process, often with bad outcomes. The trick is to try to avoid disastrous outcomes. Yes, I know, an "all of our options suck" platform, is not a good marketing strategy politically.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

...A lot of folks still aren't too thrilled with the field - Kasich offers a breath of fresh air.

Twenty people running for President and nobody is satisfied?

The Republican primary field is like the menu at The Cheesecake Factory: too many choices that try to please everyone and aren't very good for you.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I completely agree that we ought to give convicted murders a chance at redemption if possible and that their lives are of equal value (I am against the death penalty), 

People like John Wayne Gacy don't deserve a second chance. Take Gacy and everyother cold-blooded killer out to the backyard and fill them up with led.

Another thing I don't get is how liberals can support the killing of innocent babies through abortion but get angry when disgusting monsters get theirs.

Deserves? That's a different question than whether or not we ought to give it to him. I take the Tolkien approach:

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By that logic if we capture Osama Bin Laden we shouldint kill him. I can tell your a moral person but theirs people that are so evil they don't deserve to live.

then yes it would be wrong for us to kill him. It doesn't matter what he deserves; life isn't fair. It matters that he is human and his life still has value whether he deserves it or not.

Than why keep him alive? what value does his life have? Someone like that has no value.

The value of a man's life is not contigent upon what that man can do for you or what contribution he can make to the GDP or taxation, etc. The reason why his life would have value is because he is a person, which is fundamentally the same reason why all human life has value. Now, sure, one can argue that human life does not have objective value, but I suspect he will find that philosophy rather ugly if considered honestly. Indeed, if human life does not have value after all, there would be much less reason to want to kill Osama Bin Laden in the first place.

I think when you commit a act that evil like Bin Laden you have no humanity and you deserve to die. But also don't you think the pyschopaths/serial killers arint human. Theirs definitly something going on with them man look at every pyschopath/mass murderer they all look the same and have that same dead look in their eye.

Plenty of people 'have a dead look in their eyes'. Amazingly, people who 'have a dead look in their eyes' are still people.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Christie: "I'll get more revenue by lowering taxes"

You have a Bernie sticker. Not surprised how you do not understand this.

You missed.  That belongs in the Theatre of Absurdity if it must be reposted.  We're nowhere near the part of the Laffer curve where tax cuts increase government revenue.

In terms of corporate tax rates and the way they are structured, yes, we are, since we are competing internationally for revenue. 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I propose an interesting new possibility to those ITT:  See people as complicated human beings rather than as monolithic angels to be worshipped or demons to be condemned.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Technocrats are dictators with a fancy name.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Good Lord.  In before Classic Conservative defends this piece of garbage.  If I lived in his district, I'd vote Democrat for the first time in my life in a major election.

Forget my shame he's in my party, he's a disgrace to Americans.

Let me know when you stop being a RINO and come home to the Democratic party where you belong?  Your GOP membership status is literally rino at this point.

LOL, GMAFB.  Every time Torie, Shadow or Walter Mitty posts one of their economic views, someone posts an "R-NY/FL/MA" avatar.  Centrists have a comically small amount of power in both parties.  Hillary Clinton is a standard liberal; if you want to see how centrists - or more importantly someone with even more liberal views than I have - gain traction in the Democratic Party, look how Chafee and Webb fared.

I'd go so far as to say there are more elected *moderate* Republicans (especially governors) than *moderate* Democrats.

Atlas is a strange place, where they want all moderate Democrats to become Republicans, and all moderate Republicans to become Democrats.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'd be offended by the idea of a break room TV. Seriously, must we have boob tubes shoved down our faces in all public places? It was just marginally acceptable in the era before people could use their own personal electronics to feed their video addictions. Fight Big Brother, eliminate telescreens from our public places!

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Also, if the burkini as such a manifestation of Islamic oppression to women, why has it suddenly become so popular among non-Muslim women worldwide? And don't f**king say "the patriarchy."

This is a good example of how 'patriarchy' has been misused to the point of meaninglessness. Putting frat boys and guys who won't let their daughters be educated together in the same box as if they have the same worldview is ridiculous.

This is like somebody saying the word 'precipitation' is meaningless because snow and rain are different

I dispute the analogy. There are sufficient differences in worldview between male dominated libertines and actual patriarchs to indicate they are different ideologies. Put another way, Barack Obama and Rosa Luxemberg might agree on two or three things and they are both opposed by the right, but calling them both socialists is just silly.

     The social justice left has constructed a perfect bogeyman for themselves. They have defined "patriarchy" in such broad terms that they can identify almost any aspect of any culture as being resultant of the patriarchy, with little hope of escape from this evil god. The problem is that it is not a useful way of breaking down the world.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Regardless, Kirk's brash idiocy, braggadocio, and suave with the ladies is that same spirit that sent mankind and his absurd ego propelling into space. Without the world's Kirks, there would be no Jean Lucs.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

A scandal a day numbs the pain.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It seems to be a key difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives always think they're winning, even when they're losing. Liberals always think they are losing, even when they are winning.

By definition, it should be the reverse.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

McMullin worked for the CIA, the Republicans in Congress and Goldman Sachs. If you vote for him you are probably a terrible person. Also, wasn't it cool to make fun of Mormons a few years back? Why the Lou Dobbs hate? If he did it in 2011 and 2012 he would be celebrated. 

Millions of decent people are going to vote for all of the candidates.  A handful of loonies will vote for all of the candidates.  The people of America are much better than their Presidential candidates in this election, and are doing the best they can do with what they have to work with.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

posting for the last part

This is some serious hilara-garbage.  I like how he just vaguely states that he knows from "Wharton admission requirements" what Trump's IQ is.  I assume he found the average SAT for Wharton admissions, or something, and correlated that to IQ tests.  But I have no idea, since he doesn't even bother to explain the methodology behind his most crucial claim in the article.  He then goes on to babble a bunch about Maslow's concept of self-actualization, which has absolutely nothing to do IQ or anything, besides the fact that the author and his wife seem to like the idea that Trump is a "self-actualizing man" or something.  This is total trash, and the sort of thing for which the Goldwater Rule was created.

FWIW:  I think Trump is a pretty irrational and disorganized thinker, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has a reasonably high IQ.  I very much doubt Obama has a low one.

What is it with partisans arguing not that their side is right but that their side is smarter?

It's simple, TJ.  People who agree with us ideologically, for some unexplained reason, happen to have a bunch of favorable personality traits, even though there's no logical reason to assume they'd have any association with ideology.  People who agree with my beliefs are more likely to be smart, honest, clean, and they always return their library books on time.  I know this because I notice people I don't like having bad traits all the time!

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

These conversations inevitably wind in this impoverished, accusatory, onanistic direction, don't they? Is [x identity] more or less oppressed than [y identity]? Which has more privilege points?

A person isn't reducible to some quantifiable collection of identities that can be measured against anyone else's. It's a useless method of understanding people in context, and a piss-poor means of doing politics.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I voted for the top two.  The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked in a "Woodshop" which was actually a stake-manufacturing plant.  I used all manner of saws and woodlathes, dodged forklifts, and got many splinters in my fingers.  Later, in summers between university academic years, I worked for a cable TV company one summer that was putting in a new section in a new subdivision.  I did calculations to determine which amplifiers should be placed and where along the line.  I got to wear a hardhat and drive and use a bucket truck.  I think these two qualify me for the top two.  That was in the 1985-89 period. 

angus has done everything.