The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

As a moderator, I'm torn between non-interference in what are, formally, non-administrative matters, and the desire to maintain proper forum culture and etiquette (such as deleting ineligible posts from the GPG, for example).

Realistically, none of these post galleries should exist because they will just descend into either petty trench war or petty circle-jerk.

Such is the point of an Internet forum.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As a moderator, I'm torn between non-interference in what are, formally, non-administrative matters, and the desire to maintain proper forum culture and etiquette (such as deleting ineligible posts from the GPG, for example).

By all means please intervene.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

McKinley, easily (not a racist, xenophobe, or radical).

But pro-child labor and worker-exploitation, with supporting a party equally (in action), racist and exploitative to minorities.

Were they perfect on race?  No.  Neither were the Radical Republicans.  Were they better than Democrats?  Absolutely...

[Ebsy]

Not the worst thing, Chavez has done a lot of good things for Venezuela and the poor. Maduro not so much, they're still better then they're opponents though.

Will you continue saying this when Venezuela's poor start starving to death? I guess, most likely, you will.

"Their opponents" at this point, is a catch-all for pretty much everything and anything in Venezuelan politics, starting with pretty far damn left. The only thing that unifies them, is the realization that Venezuela is rapidly approaching a humanitarian and social disaster. At this point, it is not clear how the country is supposed to survive till the end of the year without, literally, people going hungry. Frankly, it is hard to see how that would be possible without a massive international aid program. It is not about beer, for god's sake: it is bread we are talking about. Bread and arepas. Venezuela is collapsing to the point that we should be thinking of how to help Colombia deal with the refugee flows. This ongoing collapse is entirely self-inflicted: caused by a series of insane government policies (though, I am afraid, at this point we may be past the moment when merely stopping those policies would rectify the situation). 

And you, meanwhile, are still talking of "Maduro doing some good" and "being better than his opponents". At this point, I am afraid, whatever your ideological preferences, the only sense in which Maduro could be better than even the more unpleasant than his opponents, is the same sense in which smallpox is "better" than chicken pox. I guess, you always can find some upside. For instance, smallpox is "better" in that it guarantees more work for the undertakers.

[Badger]

As a moderator, I'm torn between non-interference in what are, formally, non-administrative matters, and the desire to maintain proper forum culture and etiquette (such as deleting ineligible posts from the GPG, for example).

By all means please intervene.

by all means don't

[Badger]

It really amazes me to watch people who have voted Republican all of their lives, who endlessly cheered on the likes of Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes (especially the second one - have we forgotten already??) as they did much to wreak havoc on America (and the rest of the world!) through destroying the social safety net, launching pointless and devastating wars, appointing thousands of right-wing hacks to the federal judiciary and the federal bureaucracy; who nodded in approval as congressional Republicans have, without exception, blocked much of President Obama's legislative agenda in an unprecedented display of bitter sore-loserdom; who have stoked the ugly, base, racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, chauvinistic instincts of White America, long before Donald Trump cared about being a politician; and who, more than anyone else, enthusiastically endorse, promote, and intellectually rationalize the modern American conservative ideology - the single most destructive ideology in American politics, not least of all to black Americans and other minorities, immigrants, women, the LGBT community, the poor and the working classes; it really amazes me, to watch these people be horrified by the out-of-control Frankenstein(Trump) that they are directly responsible for creating.

Donald Trump may say a lot of outlandish and awful, bigoted bulls-it, but that's par for the course for the Republican Party for the last 50+ years. Take a good, hard look at the other Republican candidates in the race: John Kasich? The "moderate, sensible" Governor whose favorite pastimes have included not allowing gay people to get married, wrecking the public education system in Ohio, and  quietly slipping vile anti-choice/anti-abortion provisions into larger, less controversial budget bills? Marco Rubio, the Republican Senator from the state that recently gave us such "moderates" as Jeb Bush and Rick Scott? Ben Carson? Ted Cruz? Are you f-cking kidding me?

I have no sympathy for the Republican Establishment as they utterly failed to see the likes of Trump coming. I have no sympathy for people who focus obsessively on Trump while ignoring (or worse, promoting) other, equally vile Republican candidates. I have nothing but contempt for wealthy, elite Republicans who themselves have nothing but contempt for the less well-off or less-educated members of their own party who have been gravitating to Trump in large numbers.

As far as support for Trump goes; for me, it is strictly schadenfreude at the inevitable consequences of Republican electoral strategy, the right-wing media (National Review, FOX News, etc.) and other lifelong water-carriers for America's main right-wing party being utterly discredited, and other Establishment pricks who failed to take Donald Trump's candidacy seriously - until it was too late. No, I don't actually support Donald Trump or what he stands for (I'm a liberal Democrat, FFS) , but I fail to see how he is any worse than the Republican Party as a whole - and that most definitely includes the so-called "moderate" Republican Establishment.

If Trump is a fascist, then the Republican Party as it has existed for the past several decades is directly responsible for creating and enabling fascism in America. They can't wash their hands of that, no matter how hard they try.

rename the mine, this one's a winner

truth be told, it should've been renamed long ago. Spade had flashes of brilliance, but his unrepentant homophobic a$$hole posting on AAD shows he was overrated to begin, and fell low since.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

It's slightly more than flashes. Keep the name. Spade's glory must live on here too even though some don't have access to his gorgeous posts.

[Santander]

Clinton will try to frame it this way, but Trump is no David Duke.

i think i trust david duke's opinion on who is the most david dukey more than i trust some internet rando's.

David Duke wishes he had the appeal and charisma that Trump somehow has. David Duke is 100x worse than Trump ever has been and ever will be. Despite what Atlas and others on the web may tell you, Trump really isn't a fascist. Calling Trump a fascist downplays actual fascists, like Duke.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

A good pretzel

That doesn't exist.

Sacrilege! A proper Brezel (if you are going to import our food, Americans, please spell it correctly!) is one of the best things in the world - if I think of those fresh brown dough wonders that they sold at the bakery at my school, sometimes still fresh and warm an crisp straight from the oven... That first bite into that deliciousness is a piece of heaven on earth...

Coming back to the original impetus of discussion, the consumption of mustard together with a Brezel - I wouldn't necessarily put mustard on a Brezel, but when you eat that to cheese or ham or similar, mustard on the side together with the rest is quite good - especially with the sweet sorts of mustards we have over here.

[Oakvale]

It's slightly more than flashes. Keep the name. Spade's glory must live on here too even though some don't have access to his gorgeous posts.

^ Spade is one of the all time greats and his name should forever be attached to this thread.

[Badger]

It's slightly more than flashes. Keep the name. Spade's glory must live on here too even though some don't have access to his gorgeous posts.

^ Spade is one of the all time greats and his name should forever be attached to this thread.

Was maybe, but I'm just unimpressed with posters who "ironically" sprinkle their posts with calling people f****ts and unapologetic racism. Oh, plus combining it with pseudo-Oracle like hints that mean nothing but implying I'm SOOOO much smarter than you plebes (but without having to put an actual prediction on the line to potentially fail).

And even his ratio of insightful good posts have dropped off dramatically in recent years. There are others far more worthy to have this hall named after them.

But....AAD folks gotta circle jerk, so.....

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

A lot of 2016 board posts operate under the assumption that every working class white is a raging racist, and most that vote for Democrats do so only because they don't believe the Republicans are racist enough, and are just waiting for the most blatantly racist candidate since after the civil rights era* to finally jump over to the Republicans, and there's no way any white that doesn't have a college degree can't be disgusted by racism and juvenile sexist rhetoric. As someone pointed out if you follow this logic then the best way for the Republicans to max out their white support is to become an out and out neo-Nazi party.

*Even more hysterically, many of these posters at the same time also believe this same candidate will win 20-30% of the black vote.

[Santander]

I think we have a fundamental ideological divide in what society and nation mean to people. To some of us, society is something passed down from us - and although adding outsiders can and has enriched that inheritance before, people are not inherently entitled to a place because of white guilt, especially when they do not enrich that society. Others have a very different conception.

[Asian Nazi]

The latter. Thermal Coal is dead - domestic US coal plants are being shuttered one after the other, even without the government and the export market doesn't look much rosier, with a huge oversupply. The coal in West Virginia - especially the worker friendly, union-led and genuinely economically empowering kind that people hark back to - is impossible, economically speaking. The coal industry wants its employment to be short, its mines opencast and its workplace ephemeral. You can't rebuild communities around that.

At least Hillary has a plan to go beyond coal, and the barons that have run the state into the ground.

[RFayette]

I think we have a fundamental ideological divide in what society and nation mean to people. To some of us, society is something passed down from us - and although adding outsiders can and has enriched that inheritance before, people are not inherently entitled to a place because of white guilt, especially when they do not enrich that society. Others have a very different conception.

Kind of amazing how we got such a good post in that dumpster fire of a thread, eh?

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Also, isn't it amazing that supporting the same position as the main leader of one of the two major political parties in the United States now gets you branded as some evil monster? 

That being said, I think Xahar is fundamentally a good person.  I don't think poorly of all Muslims, as much as I dislike the religion and what it stands for.  We disagree strongly on many issues, but I want to make it clear that I do not hate him.  He can hate me, and that is fine.

Adolf Hitler was the main leader of the chief political force in Weimar-era Germany in the 1930s and, yes, anyone who was a supporter of his was, in all likelihood, an evil monster who is responsible for the Holocaust. There's hardly any difference between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Trump celebrates torture, touts military solutions to diplomatic solutions, supports mass population transfers for the sake of maintaining purity, believes in a "stab in the back myth" in which a small clique of politicians/elites are responsible for the downfall of America etc. Trump, like Hitler, is a lunatic who has a number of mental disorders.

So yes, I hate you for being a waste of life. I hate fascists. I've hated most Republicans for most of my life; they were the kids who called me a beaner and taunted me by calling me a "fence hopper" and asking if "my mom was an illegal". Your kind promotes a deeply disturbed worldview in which it is perfectly acceptable to demean and debase immigrants and their children for having the deeply discourteous desire to maintain cultural traditions or to fly the flag of their native country. Further, your kind promotes a deeply disturbed worldview in which Muslims refugees are clearly worth less than Christian refugees and where universal human rights are, in fact, privileges for those who had the good luck to be born with white skin in a European state or a state founded by European settlers.

None of this even mentions the fact that you've repeatedly exalted yourself as some sort of Galt-like figure who deserves to make millions while the poor live miserable existences because, in your view, they are inferior to you. Clearly, you need help and treatment for your asberger's friend. As it turns out, systematically insulting entire classes of people is a bad way to "Make Friends and Influence People". It's, generally speaking, a bad practice to advocate for steep immigration barriers on the basis of the inferiority and danger posed by immigrants, which insinuates that immigrants and their children are inferior to you!

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Obviously if someone is addicted to something there are underlying emotional reasons.
Most people who don't smoke have a disturbing sanctimonious attitude toward those who
do whether the smoker does it public or in private, the latter not hurting anyone but themselves. People who are not addicts themselves rarely have any compassion for people
that are and can't even bring themselves to shed crocadile tears for those to whom they feel morally superior. It is doubtful that any but a small number of people here have a clue as to any of this, as usual. Non smokers may have an addiction to something else (drinking, drugs, food, ocd, etc) and yet fail to see the hypocrisy in their sanctimonious hatred of smokers.

No, I'm not defending smoking, it is not good for one's health, but there are many other things that make a person unhealthy. Yes, people of various political persuasions are smokers.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I hope if Hillary wins we can make West Virginia our new nuclear waste disposal area. It's certainly more deserving than poor Yucca Mountain. We can rename it Waste Virginia.

If the Democrats are serious about claiming any degree of moral superiority over the Republicans at all, this cannot be the party's attitude towards any part of the country, regardless of how much reason there is to dislike the people living there. The American left cannot turn into Margaret Thatcher deliberately pursuing policies that will hurt unsympathetic demographics and justifying it with 'they are not our people'. It is neither morally justifiable nor, in the final analysis, politically efficacious.

[IceSpear]

From a political point of view, I think I agree with many or most positions of TYT, but every time I've had the misfortune of watching them, I find I can't stand them in the slightest.

Same here. It's like seeing the "Bernie can win if he gets 81% in CA" posts. Yes, it is mathematically possible to him to get a majority of pledged delegates. It's not going to happen though. People that actually believe it are just setting themselves up for disappointment. It's a testament to the Sanders campaign that he was able to win states other than Vermont and New Hanpshire. I figured he was basically going to be Bill Bradley 2.0 with the addition of two states. Instead he's won something like 20 states and has had and will have a yooj impact on the Democratic Party Platform and the ideas that Democrats espouse. But instead, people have deluded themselves into thinking that he can still win. Sanders isn't stupid. I guarantee that he knows he can't win and that he's known that since at least March 15th, if not earlier. He says that he can win to drum up support for his ideas, which was ultimately why he ran in the first place. People are talking about his ideas and Hillary is taking notice, as she should. I have no doubt that any Bernie supporter that actually believes in a majority of his platform (especially in regards to civil rights/minorities) would want Trump as president, even over Hillary. That kind of Bernie supporter (see Paul 2008/2012 as well as Trump 2016) is basically the anger at the establishment type that has no real political ideas aside from opposing the status quo.

At this point, it will drive down enthusiasm for Hillary. TYT and the like are basically doing the Republicans work at this point. Hillary definitely has her flaws, but they're nothing compared to the Donald's temper tantrum of a campaign. Hell, Bernie has his flaws. Namely his lack of major support for candidates that share his views, such as John Fetterman.

All of that said, I still marked Bernie for President on my mail in ballot today.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

A solid majority of working class whites (outside of the South) are loyal Democrats, and most have more liberal views in general (but particularly on economic issues) than middle and upper class whites (which are the bulk of this forum's posters, so...).

This might be true if you set the income level low enough - it really depends on what constitutes "working class" - but even among the $50k and less crowd, whites are quite surprising in some states.

And holy crap: look at those "white working class" states that are supposedly voting said way because of racism. Look at West Virginia. Of course Atlas doesn't get it:

[BundouYMB]

We had a LOT of Syrian refugees at the Arab festival I attended today, they all looked like they had regular phones and we nice people. I wish TRUMP wouls actually meet some of them.

I wish we didn't help assist in the destruction of their country so they wouldn't have to be refugees in the first place.

This.

BTW, is it really that unreasonable for folks to think that ISIS will attempt to infiltrate a massive number of refugees with its own operatives, poised to wreck deadly havoc on America?

Yes, it is.

In the very unlikely event that ISIS has KGB-style "deep cover" operators who could successfully pass as Syrian refugees, having them rot in refugee camps for months or years in the hope that they somehow end up getting into the US and then take effective action, instead of being accepted by some other nation, when they could just enter the US legitimately using other methods, or participate in other operations elsewhere, is idiotic beyond words. (Which makes it SOP for Trump Miller cultists.)

BTW, if you really believe in "Better safe than sorry!" over intelligent balancing of costs and risks, you should know that there's a small chance typing on a keyboard could cause a blood clot in your fingers that would be fatal if it moved to your brain. Better stop using computers right away!

[IceSpear]

Maybe Republicans don't care. But there's a reason he has the worst favorability rating of any nominee...ever.

Yeah, and you're a 23 year old man supporting a 69 year old woman who quotes Maya Angelou.

Huh? Sorry to break it to you, but under 30 voters are going to support her in the general, no matter how many imaginary anecdotes (which are about as predictive as Dick Morris electoral maps) you pump out.

How is this relevant to my initial post anyway?

I just find it funny that young white guys on this forum seem to be supporting an old white woman who panders to minorities.

In other words, the reason why I do not want Hillary President is that she offers nothing to me. As a white male what in the hell do I have in common with feminism, black lives matter, or inclusiveness? Hence why we have the gender gap.

..I just don't know where to even begin with this. So, based upon your "logic," only old white women should vote for Hillary because.. she's an old white woman? Wow. How.. Pathetic.

Using your, um, whatever you want to call it: And Donald Trump has nothing to offer me. As a gay white male, what do I have in common with Islamaphobia, racism, sexism, xenophobic, and exclusiveness? Hence why we have the sanity gap.

Yeah, forgive me if I don't want a president who panders to angry old racists, misogynists, bigots, and just downright gullible, low-information imbeciles who have fallen hook line and sinker for the Republican/Trump greatest lie ever told: that the cause of the white working class man's problems isn't trickle down economics, income equality, decreasing wages, too little government regulation, etc., but rather is all those dirty Mexicans coming here illegally and taking our jobs and bringing their drugs and crime with them, all those smart Asians getting accepted into our schools, all those b*tches and wh*res known as women who want free birth control and to be paid the same as men, all those dangerous Muslims coming here secretly plotting to plan another 9/11 and convert Americans to ISIS, all those sick and disgusting homos waging a war on Christianity and destroying the "sanctity" of marriage and "traditional family values," I could go on and on..

So yeah, forgive me if I haven't been blinded by the Republican Party/Trump pulling the wool over my eyes. I'm a young white male and I'd gladly support an old purple bisexual handicapped Buddhist duck that ran as a Democrat for President over Trump or any Republican for that matter.

Yeah, see how silly your hogwash sounds now? Jfern's Hillary hating posts aside, that was probably the dumbest thing I've read on here.

[The Last Northerner]

He was sure friendly to Muslims when he voted to invade Iraq. Or voted for Gitmo. Or voted for the PATRIOT Act and other laws that target Muslim Americans.

I am not shedding any tears for this prick. He was a Bush II era Republican in every sense of the term, and when the cracks started to form in the dam, he didn't lift a finger to plug them. Which is why, when the dam broke, he was the first to be carried away in the tidal wave. One sob story that I'm sure his children (who grew up in the elite Washington/NoVA bubble) made up to show that he was above the rubes doesn't do any justice to him. Bob Bennett was part of the problem, and not the solution.

RIP HP.

[IceSpear]

Most of BRTD's posts in this thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=237243.0

[The Last Northerner]

Hard as it must be for the blue avatars who live in wealthy, well-educated white/Asian bubbles to understand, the GOP would do worse in elections if it ignored the culture wars. The GOP would not have taken Congress in 1994 or in 2010 were it not for the culture wars and social issues, and likely would not have won the 2000 or 2004 presidential elections without them.

(1) Most Americans are too poor to have a reason to vote for the GOP on fiscal/economic issues alone.



The GOP has nothing to offer households that don't clear at least $100,000 a year. Their tax plans provide no tangible benefits to middle-income households. Their offers to cut or eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes do nothing for the 99% of Americans who don't get any income from dividends or capital gains. Most Americans will never be able to retire or live a non-impoverished life in old age without "Big Government" stepping in with Social Security and Medicare.

The GOP loses 80% or more of the country on tax policy alone.

Even if you restrict yourself to the share of Americans who vote, only 28% of 2012 voters were from households making more than $100,000 a year.

(2) The GOP needs the "poorly educated" more than they think.

Less than one third of American adults have at least a bachelor's degree.

In 2012, 53% of voting Americans had never even attended college.

(3) 42% of Americans are Creationists. While that isn't a majority, the GOP would have to compete with the Democrats for the other 58% of Americans, and that would likely require taking a more nuanced approach to issues like global warming.

Throw these people overboard and they will stay home.