The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Antonio the Sixth]

RIP this thread.

[Türkisblau]

RIP this thread.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I wonder whether IceSpear is on Hillary's campaign payroll (money that could be better spend) or he's just a pitifully weak individual with no ability to think on his own, so he must unconditionally worship a political figure for life to have any meaning.

[Lief 🗽]

hahah the anti-hillary hacks mad now

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

hahah the anti-hillary hacks mad now

Actually, as you've said yourself, I'm more of an anti-hack hack

[IceSpear]

hahah the anti-hillary hacks mad now

Indeed. And notice they can't actually describe why it's not a good post and instead resort to one liners or ad hominem. Typical.

[Türkisblau]

hahah the anti-hillary hacks mad now

Indeed. And notice they can't actually describe why it's not a good post and instead resort to one liners or ad hominem. Typical.

I'm writing an entire story about you wtf

[IceSpear]

hahah the anti-hillary hacks mad now

Indeed. And notice they can't actually describe why it's not a good post and instead resort to one liners or ad hominem. Typical.

I'm writing an entire story about you wtf

Okay, I'll take it back if your story includes an in depth critique on why that post was bad.

[BaconBacon96]

It was a very good post, IMO.

[IceSpear]

It was a very good post, IMO.

Thanks.

I think Kal is just upset that he's getting taken to the cleaners with each new page of the GPG. First Beet, and now myself. I wonder who will claim page 8?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is mostly confined to a few problem posters, but it seems more prevalent than ever now. You people know what I'm referring to, and if you don't, there's a problem. Remember that this is an educational site, and any content that might get the site blocked by a middle school is obviously unacceptable.

In other words, before you post, think about what you post is appropriate. If what you are posting is a "Hot or Not" thread, the answer is no, and in addition to being inappropriate it's creepy and gross besides.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This divides men (I guess women have no personalities or live in some alternate realm of completely different personalities) into 4 basic categories. Narcissistic psychos who are perfect, failures who are still trying, failures who have given up and then people who care about nothing.

Plus the "negative" versions of these types, but they're obviously just part of the scam aspect. There is no room for alternate goals in life, no room for actually being a normal, relatively successful person who is decently satisfied with their life.

And then the scammy scientology descriptions - buy my book and you can upgrade to Gamma+!

I'm not perfect, not even if narrowly defined as American Psycho. Nor is my dream to be a mindless follower fawning over such a person. And I'm also not ridiculous enough to think I'm some liberated philosopher, independent of the rest of humanity. And thankfully I don't spend my time collecting stamps in my mother's basement either.

What's sad though is that real people fall for this kind of BS and damage their lives over it.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

When it comes to determining why the Democrats did so well in a few areas of the North one must really keep in mind more issues than slavery.  Especially in regards to a lot of the demographics, especially groups like the Dutch, the Germans, and the Irish all who had cultures that many of the Puritanical Anglo New Englanders found to be profoundly immoral and enabling of vice.  Research the history of the Temperance Movement as well as social conservatism on Wikipedia and be shocked to learn that many of the advocates of such things tended to identify as Whigs when there was not a strong third party alternative like the Anti-Masons or the Know Nothings around.  Hell, you go back to the Alien and Seditions Act and you will find Federalist New Englanders warning of a vicious Fenian tide overflowing the shores of America if the Alien and Seditions Acts were not passed. (yes I know I have made this observation dozens of times, but it is very relevant to the voting patterns in these states)

You also have to keep in mind that places like New York and parts of Connecticut were originally settled by the Dutch, whose influences on the governance of the colony of New York (defense of religious freedom was one of the concessions the conquering British made in that area) ran counter to the supremacist nature of Puritan society.  Namely, strong support for civil liberties such as free speech and freedom of religion.  Arguably, one of the original influences on "social liberalism" in this country at least in regards to defending political rights and expression that would later carry over to even many of the middle-upper class protestants who might have been descendants of Mayflower settlers but be wary of the connection between Church and State.

Not to mention, you also had some latent anti-French racism still around from the time of Jefferson.  I would suspect that many Franco-Americans, particularly those from Canada, would resent the treatment they would get from the nationalistic Feds who used the ghost of an invasion by Frenchmen to justify their antagonistic agenda.  Vermont has always had a significant French/French Canadian population, so this would not surprise me if that was a factor during the time of Jefferson.  Not to mention, New Hampshire and Maine also had large numbers of "Scots-Irish" that settled in those areas to work on the mills and such.  Vermont had very few of "Irish" settle there post Democratic-Republican era.  Up to about the late 1830s very few people differentiated between the largely dissenter protestant "Scots-Irish" and the overwhelmingly Catholic "Irish".  It would only be when the latter increased greatly in number and became pariahs that people started differentiating the two, particularly many of the Scots-Irish who wanted to avoid the discrimination that came from being regular "Irish".  But before that though they generally shared both the same ethnicity and were generally hostile to the "native" Anglo-Protestants for obvious reasons.

You also got to keep in mind that Lower New England had some very strict voting restriction laws for the time:



These taxpaying and property holding qualifications disqualified a very large number of people from voting.  Given the economic nature of these restrictions, it is very obvious as to who they disadvantaged.

TO the surprise of many people, even I won't use that aspect to blanketly label the Whig Party as "anti-immigrant", especially given that some members (like a young Abraham Lincoln) actually condemned nativism when they saw how morally inconsistent it was with being supportive of abolitionism (though I should note again that many abolitionists were anti-immigrant, especially against the Irish, precisely because of their strict moral views).  Really, I would go more along the lines of Shua's point that generally the Whigs fell more on the old school economic nationalist wing of the spectrum that happened to share an interest in defeating the "slave power" with many of the abolitionist of the North.

But in regards to the observation about Democratic performances in the North: influenced largely by reactions to the moralistic governance of Yankee conservatism with a heavy helping of immigration patterns.

[Lief 🗽]

Here's a novel idea: don't proactively go out of your way every time you think a poster who has just joined is "weird" to call them a "creep", "weirdo", "freak", make multiple threads about them in this capacity, malign them at every opportunity when they've done nothing personally to you, talk behind their back, and then - after months or even years of this sustained behavior - cry like a little bitch because they finally decided to have some fun at your expense.

This is a well-documented trend from the same group of people on this forum. They immediately begin to throw gas on something with the vaguest spark, encourage it to smolder and then freak out like a bunch of cats when the gas-soaked pyre they've constructed bursts into flames (although I hypothesize the freaking out is just an uncoordinated yet totally predictable act to finish off what they've started). Apparently, this kind of thing is acceptable now.

It's bullying, pure and simple, and it's almost always condoned by the power structure of this forum. It's sickening. Maybe it's because I don't hide who I am or maybe because I'm not a complete ass outside of politics, but generally I don't come on here to personally attack and repetitively antagonize the actual people on this forum. Outside of Fantasyland (which might be more volatile than the rest of this forum the more I think about it) and occasionally Bushie (who quite literally asked for barrages of attention), I try to treat people like human beings when they're not treating others like garbage. Because of that, I also don't fear for "my safety" or whatever - and hey, someone obviously thought enough of me to put me in a virtual "0rgy" on the Atlas board with my photos last week, and I still don't care - because I know I'm not trying to proactively make people feel like shit in their personal lives.

Maybe if all the posters to which this pertained actually existed on this forum with their real names known, they'd abide by the same general behavior and not jump so quickly to be predictably terrible to others. Unfortunately, we instead have a bunch of antagonistic cowards who - once they've decided they don't like someone - will bang the drums of "creep" until they get the reaction they want out of them, which gets them purged from here. It's either that, or they're the biggest autists on the forum who can't read nor comprehend basic human behavior and social cues.

As far as I'm concerned, these people deserve every iota of negative attention and focus they get from the people they habitually harass, and one day, their little self-fulfilling prophecy might actually manifest when they send the wrong person over the edge: a forum ban won't save them from repercussions if/when that happens.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

dead0man has pretty much got it right. I pay $250/week for my son's day care. When he's 2 years old, that'll drop to $205/week, and at 3 years it'll drop to $185/week. In Maryland, the ratios look like this:

<2 years: 1:3
2 years: 1:6
3-4 years: 1:12
5 years: 1:15

A bit more stringent, but the same basic thing. So for my 16 month old, he's in a class with 5 other kids of the same (ish) age, each paying $250 a week. That's $1500 a week. Each of those kids is in care for probably 40-50 hours a week. Let's lowball that and say 40 hours. They have to be cared for by two teachers. So splitting up $1500 between two teachers, we get an hourly rate of $18.75 (if we go with 50 hours per kid, then we get an hourly rate of $15; also, this doesn't really deal with the case where, let's say, you've got 4 kids there. You still need two teachers because there's more than 3 kids.)

But that's if all of the money went directly to the teachers, which we know is obviously not the case. Some goes to center upkeep and administrative costs. Some goes to the snacks and other food that are provided to the kids. Some goes to the toys and art supplies that the center provides. Etc. Even if the provider doesn't take a very big profit margin, we can still see how infant care makes almost no money for caregivers.

This is paradoxically why universal pre-K proposals have wound up driving up prices for day care, too. Because of these ratios, the kids who get covered by universal pre-K were previously the most profitable kids for centers to take, and centers could spread out their fee structure a bit more and take a bit more of a loss on infants. But if those older kids get free pre-K, then all of those costs have to shift up to compensate.

Basically, as I'm finding with my son (and my daughter, on the way in two months), day care is the worst of both worlds: insanely expensive for the customer, and barely subsistence-level earnings for the provider.

[afleitch]

Normally if you have a ceremony officiated by a clergy a civil ceremony is not required.  What I am saying is that the state could make it so that clergy who oppose same sex marriage might have their civil authority removed by the state.  Under this they might still have the marriage ceremony, but they'd have to go to a judge and have it performed there as well.   Wouldn't be the end of the world from my perspective considering what we've seen already, but that's where I see this headed.

Except no one is going to do that?

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Yeah, I don't see the problem here. You can't abuse religious freedom as a trump card so you can violate others' secular rights.

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Really pathetic that you have to outright lie about this now.

I and many others on this forum have explained to you several times that 1.) the Indiana law was not a "generic" RFRA, otherwise this would've been an issue in the late-1990s/early-2000s. The Indiana law specifically granted corporate personhood and extended the "religious freedom" defense to civil suits, in addition to the people who helped write the bill openly bragging that it will allow discrimination, and 2.) the reason it has no precedent is because this is the first time an RFRA law was passed with such provisions.

Why do you keep ignoring these arguments? This is the third time I've had to explain this to you. Do you not want to acknowledge them? Are you unable to mentally comprehend what I am saying?

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No, because discrimination is a pretty serious issue, and supporting it is not a legitimate "concern".

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

when i see posts from liberals saying the gop will die off when the old folks do, i laugh(and i'm very liberal)...right now, the only branch controlled by the democratic party is the executive; the gop control everything else..they also control 31 governorships and 30 state legislatures....and thanks to gerrymandering, that control will not be relinqushed anytime soon..and as for demographics, white support for democrats is collapsing at an astonishing rate..so much so that we could see a situation whereby the only white people who vote democratic are gay people and jewish people...because of all this, i predict a republican gain in the house and senate in 2016

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What does it matter what a person did in life to affect the rights of the grieving bereaved relatives of that person? Even your Lee Harvey Oswalds and Timothy McVeighs have relatives and loved ones, and while you might justifiably think that the world is a better place for not containing Timothy McVeigh, that doesn't affect his loved one's equally valid right to mourn.

In this case, an alleged petty criminal who was never brought to trial or convicted was extrajudicially killed by law enforcement, even if out of self defense. We'll never know for sure if he was actually guilty under the rules of our criminal justice system because Michael Brown never got his day in court. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not aware of "shot by law enforcement without a trial" as a valid punishment for theft in the United States.

Anyway, I thought the whole debate about the mourning of a loved one vs. society's hatred of that loved one's actions was solved way back with Antigone, Sophocles' amazing dramatic tale of the daughter of Oedipus going out of her way to give her half-brother a proper burial despite his status as a traitor and Thebes' king Creon decisions that Antigone's brother Polynices' corpse should be exposed and eaten by animals. Antigone's moving respect for her loved ones and family over all the rules of society, risking death itself to show the proper veneration of her family even in direct contravention of all the rules of the world she lived in, is directly relevant to this case. Does it matter what Michael Brown did? Does it matter who he may or may not have tried to kill? He is the child of mourning parents who have the right and even the duty to mourn publicly. Mourning and grief are fundamental and bedrock principles of any decent society, and even the wicked dead are truly unfortunate indeed if not even one person wails and moans about their passing.

[free my dawg]

Anyway, I feel like the anti-smoking crusaders don't realize that people who oppose these laws don't believe that cigarettes aren't unhealthy...they just believe that people should be allowed to engage in unhealthy behavior if they so choose. One's personal lifestyle is just a matter of cost/benefit analyses. Do I value the pleasure of smoking more than the negative health risks? Do I value the pleasure of eating more than fitness and physical attractiveness? The pleasure of playing contact sports more than the risk of injury? The answer to these questions is different for every person and the moral crusaders who want to regulate personal behavior are just assholes who can't mind their own business and feel the need to impose their own values and preferred lifestyle choices onto others.

[Lief 🗽]

Nothing will help. No one is listening. No one cares about these communities. Baltimore's public officials are powerless to act in the face of Maryland's Police Officers' Bill of Rights (I've posted a link to the implications of this). Baltimore's residents are powerless at the polls: they're a small portion of Maryland's population and have entirely different concerns than African-Americans who live in Prince George's County. At this point, I don't have any public policy prescriptions or strategies to offer. These people are powerless in the face of a system that has been rigged against them at every possible point. Baltimore has de-industrialized, the welfare state has been gutted, incarceration rates continue to increase and the police have the carte blanche authority to do as they please. When has the fabled "median voter" expressed the slightest inkling of a concern about these facts? America's once great industrial cities are as impoverished and dangerous as parts of Central America. We've known this for decades. What has been done about it? Nothing. We had the ability to stop urban blight, white flight, the carceral state and slow the pace of de-industrialization: we didn't do anything because Americans don't care.

With this in mind, I understand the unalloyed sentiment that is embodied by throwing a brick through a payday loan office or a police car.

(I'm aware of the irony of posting this in the Sam Spade memorial good post gallery)

[Arturo Belano]

Election Stealer vs. Governor who is unpopular on Atlas.

I'll take the governor.

Election Stealer vs. Governor who is unpopular on Atlas.

Election Stealer

LOL, Election Stealer

http://www.cagreens.org/alameda/city/0803myth/myth.html

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Please return to Gore 2000 Propaganda HQ, post haste.

[Türkisblau]

As a Christian, I oppose the death penalty on religious grounds because I believe it is inconsistent with the mercy and forgiveness that God shows us and calls us to share.  Nobody is beyond redemption for God, so for the government to decide that someone is puts them in His place.  The Lord's Prayer says, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."  When Jesus was on the cross, he said, "Father, forgive them."  And when an adulterous woman was brought to Jesus, He forgave her and told her accusers that "He who is without sin should throw the first stone."  Yes, I realize that God provided for the death penalty in the Old Testament, but He was the one doing it, not the government.  And besides, we are no longer under the Old Covenant.  Furthermore, we all deserved to die for our sins, but Jesus came to cancel that punishment and to forgive us.  If God didn't put us to death, then why should we do it to others?  If an unrepentant, unbelieving criminal is executed, then we are cutting of his/her chance at salvation.

Plus, I would argue that life in prison without parole is a more severe punishment.  Personally, if I were convicted of a crime, I would rather die than spend the rest of my life locked up in a prison cell.

As for the political side, I do recognize that there are some cases where convicts will not repent or change their hearts, and may even request death, so I believe it is best left to the states.  I'm not comfortable with the federal government using a "one size fits all" policy of death penalty or no death penalty. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I, for one, have no interest in entertaining the turgid, dry arguments that have been exchanged over this issue over the past few hundred years. The debate between theists and anti-theists reminds me of the depiction of theodicy in Candide, which is characterized as an absurd debate held between windbags who are uninterested in societal problems. Frankly, I question whether attending to this question is worthwhile: who cares?

"We must cultivate our garden."

My argument is as follows:
1. If you are an atheist, this question should not be considered important. There are social scientific methods that may yield empirical evidence about this question but no system of analytic philosophy predicated upon truth claims or physical science can disprove the existence of God because the very nature of God is predicated upon a metaphysical realm that is inaccessible. No one can be sure that their religion is correct. I'd argue that this is part of its appeal.
2. I can no longer relate to those who are religious but their response to this question, and rightly so, is that it's a foolish one. Most people who are religious are aware that they cannot be sure that their religion is correct. They understand this and don't care to debate it. The appeal of religion is that most theologies are quite explicit that there's an element of faith involved. If you want to understand this appeal, consult social science, don't engage in a Socratic discourse on epistemology and the nature of truth or whatever.

[SWE]

No one is telling you what you can't say. People are just calling you a racist when you say racist things.

I think it's ironic that Internet "progressives" who routinely call Republicans "Rethuglicans" are now lecturing people that the word "thug" is racist.  Especially when the word "thug" derives from India, where it described professional robbers and murderers who strangled their victims.

The PC police need to be stopped at every turn, especially when they are the ones who are warping the meaning of neutral words, claiming they are "racist" when they are not.

Here is a fun and interesting fact about language: the signified meaning of words changes, depending on the context. When a DailyKos user calls the Republican Party, the Rethuglican Party, there is no racial connotation because Republicans are typically white. When a CNN news anchor calls African-American rioters "thugs", it racist because it is referring to African-Americans. It is racialized because the term "thug" is rarely used to signify anything that is outside the context of Black culture. The DailyKos use of "thug" is used because it is a pun.

Referring to a group of white Harley-Davidson riding types as "thugs" is an archaic usage of the term. Referring to a group of Blacks as "thugs" is the contemporary usage of the term. I don't need to point out that rappers frequently refer to themselves as "thugs" and that the term has been popularized because of hip-hop. This does not mean that the term is socially acceptable: the Black community says "nigga" as well.

[Simfan34]

I actually think that, over the course of the last month, Ed has become damaged goods.

The narrative even within the party seems to have gone from 'He means well and could surprise people' to 'When's his next misstep due?'.

The irony in the events of the last month seems to be that Heywood has scared the PLP so much that it's damaged Ed more than Clacton's damaged Cameron. There's a lot in saying that the Tories expected to lose Clacton.

There's a bit of fear that 2010 wasn't Labour's floor. That it could sink further below what it got. The polls themselves don't show a great deal of CON to LAB switchers. There's an over-reliance on Lib Dem 2010 voters leaking back to Labour where it counts and an over expectation that UKIP won't damage them. What you could find is that in traditionally suburban seats like Bolton West that Labour hold by a gnats wing, the Lib Dem voters who have stayed with them from 1997, could leak disproportionately back to the Conservatives, gifting them the seat from Labour. There is also a problem in Scotland, which while it may be fleeting, currently shows Labour performing as badly (and the SNP performing as well) at Westminster as they are at Holyrood, with voting intentions at 2011 levels. While Labour are maxed out in Scotland, they can't really afford to fall back.