The Good Post Gallery

[patrick1]

Interesting and informative reporting from Dibble.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/exclusive-investigative-reports/harry-reids-dirty-laundry/

By his own account Reid entered Congress a man of limited assets, drew the modest salary of a Congressman/Senator, paid for 100 semesters of college for his four sons, yet amassed a net worth over $10,000,000. Those are numbers that just don't add up.

LULZ. When Reid entered Congress in 1983 the salary of a representative was $69,800 a year, which would be $140,769.89 adjusted for inflation. By what standard is that modest?


Anywho, did some checking because this thread lacks any real analysis, and it's important to note what assets Harry Reid actually has - having assets is not necessarily the same thing as having cash at hand. It should be noted that Reid's assets are not necessarily worth $10,360,000.00 - in fact they could be less. In fact, the same source that the article in the OP mentions, opensecrets.org, specifies that range:

Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00009922&year=2010

Assets: 58 totaling $3,402,053 to $10,360,000

The $10 million figure is the high estimate, and isn't likely an accurate figure. It's likely closer to the middle - $6.8 million average according the site. That's still a lot of course.

As mentioned real-estate makes up 80% of his total assets. Real estate values can change drastically in either direction depending on the prevailing conditions, and it can be quite profitable even without insider information if you know what you're doing. On a Congressman's salary it wouldn't be unusual for someone to be able to buy some promising land on the cheap as an investment.

One real estate asset of Reid's particularly stands out - he owns 160 acres of land in Bullhead City, AZ that is valued at $1,000,001 to $5,000,000. That's almost a third of the low total and almost half of the high estimate.

Since this is his largest asset, it's the most worth investigating. I managed to dig up some history in regards to this land:

1. Reid initially purchased the 100 acres of the land somewhere between 1979 and 1982 for $150,000. (somewhere between $356,120.21 and $473,355.37) His friend Clair Haycock bought the other 60 acres in the same period for $90,000. (they actually bought it together as one parcel, and that's just how the numbers work out)

2. In 1987 Haycock turned over his interest in the land to an employee pension fund he was the trustee of.

3. In the early 1990's an investment group bought the land from Reid and Haycock for $1.3 million, but ended up defaulting and the land returned to Reid and Haycock.

4. In 2002 Haycock sold his interest in the land to Reid for a mere $10,000. The Mojave County assessor valued the whole parcel at $339,620, so Haycock's portion would have been worth ~$127,000 at the time. Six months later Reid introduced a bill that would help lubricants dealers that had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. Haycock runs a lubricant distribution business. The bill failed. However, this may be unrelated to the sale as records do indicate that Reid had been pushing for such legislation since the mid 90's. The pension fund was also closed out having met it's obligations, so the land being sold under market value may not have been an issue and Haycock may have just been eager to get it off the books.

5. In 2003 Reid - at the time a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's transportation subcommittee - acted on a request from the town of Laughlin, NV,which borders Bullhead City, and secured $500,000 to do a preliminary study on building a new bridge between the two towns. In 2006 he sponsored an earmark for $18 million to build the bridge. The bridge is actually close to his land, and the bridge would likely make the value go up.

Sources:
http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Profiles/Senate/Nevada/Harry_Reid/Scandals/Bridge_Earmark/
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/28/nation/na-reid28


So Reid's history with the land isn't entirely spotless, but it isn't definitely damning either. Haycock selling him the land for less than market value could have been greasing his palms for legislation, but given that there are records that Reid was already pushing for that legislation it could be unrelated. The bridge earmark certainly benefits Reid personally, but the bridge apparently does have legitimate support from a Nevada town so his support for it was not necessarily tied to his interest in the land. His ethics in regards to this land isn't entirely clear.

However, this does show some things that address the question asked in regards to Reid in the opening of this thread:

Reid's single largest asset by far was purchased before he entered Congress in 1983. Costing $356,120.21 and $473,355.37 in today's dollars, it's clear he had a good amount of money before he entered Congress. He also couldn't have gotten insider information from being in Congress when purchasing the land either. Potentially he might have gotten info at the time from being the Nevada Gaming Commission chairman, but anyone would have had access to the knowledge that Laughlin is a casino town and that buying nearby land would be a potentially good investment.


I'm going to err on the side of him probably not having used insider knowledge and that he's largely just a savvy real-estate investor.

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

Paul Ryan is the first national ticket candidate to have been born in the 1970s. That means he was among the first generation to spend their young adulthood in an era when suits were no longer regular, everyday attire for men, and, increasingly, weren't even worn to work.

Every man used to know how to wear a suit properly. Even a blue-collar worker would wear one to church on Sundays. Today, I'd venture to guess a large swathe of American men could go a year or more without ever being in a situation where they would be expected to wear a suit. They aren't required in the office anymore. They aren't required in church anymore. People don't dress up to go to the movies or get on airplanes anymore; the glamor of both of those activities has long since faded away. We've become a nation of elastic waistbands and Crocs and flat-brimmed baseball hats.

I have visions of a horrific future in which people campaign for president in badly fitting short-sleeved golf shirts and rubber-soled shoes.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nathan, you wear suits?

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

Nathan, you wear suits?

Sometimes. Not as much as I'd like to. I think people in leadership positions should, since more formal and ceremonial styles apparently aren't an option any more.

[Lief 🗽]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=157910.0

Meeker's trolling in this thread is exquisite.

[minionofmidas]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=157910.0

Meeker's trolling in this thread is exquisite.

Amazing that nobody caught it. The "internet" post (and the thread creator's otherwise functional brain) ought to have been dead giveaways.

Full disclosure: I skimmed the thread when it was about half its final length and didn't spot it either.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

This is truth.  The Left has this horrible infantile tendency to lionize and venerate anyone who fights the same people they dislike, turning that figure into a hero, a saint, and, inevitably and always, a martyr.  The modern hard Left has more hagiography going on than the Venerable Bede published in a lifetime, and you can tell they're hungering for Assange to die a horrible death so they can pin him up with Trotsky and Che Guevara on their "martyrs in the heroic struggle" Tumblr background while continuing to not actually do anything other than talk about their masturbatory fantasies of life "after the revolution," when suddenly scarcity, hunger, and unemployment will magically disappear.  Assange's sins will, nay, must be pardoned, just like the Trotskyites have forgotten the Kronstadt Mutiny when Trotsky murdered the sailors who helped make the Revolution a reality in the first place, because the idea of Assange is more important to them than Assange the man is.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Generalization aside, it's unfortunately very true.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Torie had a valid critique of Mikado's post, but still, it and Nathan's reply belong here.

My current identification is "none," not atheist.  Atheist is so constraining, leaving atheism was like taking off a straitjacket.

I would be interested in "hearing" more about your personal story as to the bolded part, if you are willing Mikado.

Atheists tend to be impossible to talk to regarding everything I'm interested in and passionate about.  I love to debate theology, but (afleitch and Dibble are good examples) tend to always go "that never happened," which is totally a nonstarter and besides the point of what I'm trying to talk about (I always approach works from an in-universe analytical point of view, and "God doesn't exist" is frustrating in the same way as "Raskolnikov doesn't exist").  If I want to discuss whether Krishna's argument with Arjuna that he is a divine, all-seeing entity is an appropriate backing-up for his claim that Arjuna, as a Kshatriya, has to follow his Dharma to go into battle (is "I'm Vishnu and you're not" an argument with legitimate moral force?), I'd always get a response of "Krishna/Vishnu and Arjuna never existed."  If I'd try to talk about the ethics of Jesus' pronouncements on divorce, I'd get some "Jesus never existed/didn't say that" response, which is basically the reason I stopped going into the Religion and Philosophy board.  It's intellectual sophistry of the first order on the part of the atheists to dismiss arguments from Sacred Texts as illegitimate because they weren't authentic: that doesn't address the actual meanings of the words at all.  I've read the Bible (Old and New Testaments), Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada, as well as extensive works by Augustine, Aquinas, some Schleiermacher, some Kierkegaard, etc. and anytime I try to talk about them I get a "God doesn't exist," followed by the person going to talk about the new Batman movie.  I've refrained from posting "Batman doesn't exist" over and over again. 

The existence/nonexistence of God is utterly irrelevant to the validity of religion and its study and the contemptuous dismissal of it leads to social diseases like positivism, the utter contempt for the past, and the slavish worship of the new God Science that are endemic in certain well-educated parts of modern society.  Michel Foucault writes in The Birth of the Clinic in specific and throughout his works in general how the medical and other scientific institutions have assumed the language and rhetoric of Truth from religion and have attempted to invalidate all truths other than the materialist, physical "reality" they peddle in order to enhance their own power, and its worked stupendously.  Foucault's "biopower," the power that physicians and scientists have gained through their obsessive categorization, classification, and prying into the most private and intimate aspects of human life down to our cells, nay, down to our DNA, has led them to have an amazing degree of control over all aspects of our lives, and the destruction of the substitution of religious truth and power with theirs is one of the key aspects of that rise.  His History of Sexuality Part I, Civilization and Madness, and The Birth of the Clinic in specific and his entire works in general have shown the huge disadvantages of accepting scientific truth as a cultural replacement for religious truth, and is one of the big reasons why he ended up fanatically supporting Ayatollah Khoemeini in his last days despite clearly not believing in God himself.  In many ways, Science is a far more dangerous master than Religion ever was, and the twentieth century has already clearly demonstrated that the road to Progress leads straight into the gates of Auschwitz.  "Modernity" and "Civilization" are orders of magnitude more gruesome and morally repugnant values than anything "Savagery" ever offered.

TL/DR I have no problem with the disbelief of God, I have a problem with the summary dismissal and rejection of religion and the blind worship of the false gods of Science and Progress, and that's what modern atheism entails.

I'm reminded of my Japanese language instructor, who's from a Zen priestly family from a very rural part of western Japan. Japan is what we'd call a religious society in a lot of ways but being given to much explicit religious thought isn't one of them. At some point between the Tokugawa era and the post-war (there's a lot of debate over this) most of the religious institutions in Japan stopped being taken really seriously in terms of truth-value, but what happened here is that many Japanese people stopped caring very much about the truth-value of their metaphysical and cultural narratives. Obviously this has led to problems. We can probably think of a really obvious one right off the top of our heads. But what this has meant is that aesthetically and culturally elements of this society have stayed more or less constant despite surface-level extreme secularization (and I do think that secularization is a process that admits of getting extreme or going way too far). This isn't in all ways a good thing but the last attempt to reverse or redirect the set of processes going on here led to State Shinto, which was at its core an attempt to rationalize--and, not to put too fine a point on it, contextualize within Modern ideas of the nation and the state and what constitutes 'reasonable' public reliogisity (this was of course a fascist context but fascism is still a type of modern context)--a religion that originally...well, the Atlantic recently ran a surprisingly good article on the subject of the De Beers cartel and I couldn't take it as seriously as I would have liked because it used the phrase 'Shinto law'. That's what Shinto is. It doesn't use that language. Christianity and Buddhism do, but that's not really what they should be about either.

I'm a little inarticulate right now both because I'm more tired than I am at this time of the evening and because my Internet is slow as sh**t right now and I don't know why, but I think it's worth considering the idea that the mechanisms for self-validation that modernist metanarratives claim are somewhat crueler than religious ones, because they don't validate themselves on their own terms but in terms of so-called positivist or rational ideals that everybody is supposed to hold or something. Which puts those of us who partially agree with those ideas but aren't willing to make them the absolute acme of values in an odd situation. Religious ideas may be more flagrant in their lack of immediately obvious resemblance to the level of reality that most people perceive most of the time but at least, except in particularly toxic examples of theocratic academia or government, they at least have that benefit. Since they're self-referential, as Mikado said, even if you don't believe in them, using your unbelief to shut down conversations about them is a dick move. Not even Paul of Tarsus did that, and he used other dick moves relatively frequently.

Beet: I think that we as a people privilege the idea of personal belief a little too strongly in some of these types of conversations.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

dead0man impressed me today

I have no problem with this.  I'm sure they won't be letting this scum out in 21 years.  I'd have no problem with them hanging him from the nearest tree either, but I understand the desire to be more civilized.

[Joe Republic]

Infracting for trolling at the 2012 Election board is like giving speeding tickets at Indy 500.

[opebo]

[opebo]

Whites will be less than 74% of the electorate. Their percentage is declining in every election and I don't see why this trend will be reversed now.

Voter ID laws.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not a small technicality.  Putting all of your eggs in one basket, just to have that basket fall to the ground means you don't have any eggs left.  Putting most of your eggs in one basket means you still have eggs left.  It's not a technicality - it's a huge difference.  Time after time you've been dishonest with the forum, and your story never stays the same.

All of a sudden your sure-fire plan falls through and WHAMO! there's a sudden back-up plan.  But we can't know what the company is?  For someone who compulsively shares details of his life with the forum, that seems strange.  So why all of a sudden is there secrecy with this company and none of the previous ones?  Is this another Rainbow incident?

Alright, fine, I'll disclose the name of the company - Aetna Insurance.  Jr. Web Developer for Aetna Insurance located in Layton, Utah which is 12 miles south of downtown Ogden.  This position has been developing since Xerox was still in play back in early August.  It has slowly materialized and I was actually accepted a week ago, but I just kept it under my hat because I really wanted to go to Kansas.  Since I am not going to Kansas, I am going to Utah, instead.

Either you're lying to us or someone is lying to you.

Here's why!

• The three Aetna Insurance offices in Utah are located in Salt Lake City, Sandy, and Taylorsville. None of these are very close to Ogden or Layton.
• Looking at the Aetna website, jobs with the prefix "junior" seem to be exclusively for college interns.
• There is no "junior" position that exists in their web team.
• Aetna doesn't call the position "Web Developer", they call it "Web Engineer."
• None of Aetna's three Utah offices are currently hiring Web Engineers, or any other jobs in the IT field for that matter, besides a few random non-web IT jobs in SLC.
• Oh, actually, the entire Web Engineer team is based solely out of their national headquarters in Connecticut, so there's literally no reason for them to ever be offered in Utah or anywhere else.

You will be interviewing for a non-existent job in a non-existent office, and if the job were to exist it would effectively be a minimum wage internship, and instead of being at the non-existent office near Ogden it would actually be in Hartford, Connecticut, on the other side of the country.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

At least in part, Sam, yes. I would rather the contest be over which political-economic paradigm to pursue, not whether social policies should be somewhat permissive or ethnocentric with a hint of repression. I actually consider capitalism less of a threat to individual rights, equality, and social justice than conservatism as pursued - no offense being intended - by the GOP's Christian right. And at least an Obama-Johnson contest would provide a clear political mandate on what sort of role government should assume in the years to come and how our debt ought to be addressed.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Despite the complaints from some people, before this thread and during the brief period when it was locked, any time someone made a particularly absurd, ignorant or bad post, it would either get posted in the Comedy Goldmine instead (resulting in other complaints) or someone would make a poll about that post saying something like "Is this one of the stupidest things you've ever read on the forum?" and a lot more bickering and flooding would result. The most notable example I can remember is when Harry made a poll just to point out that South Park Conservative claimed that oil is not a fossil fuel.

So it serves a purpose. Something even Inks seemed to have learned due to his unlocking of it.

[Lief 🗽]

I'm gonna print this post out, frame it, and put it on my wall:

Pretty much every economic indicator has improved since the end of the recession in mid-2009. Unemployment is down, unemployment claims are down, jobs created are up, corporate earnings are up, total debt is down, the deficit as a percentage of GDP is down, GDP growth is up, credit card and mortgage delinquencies are down, TARP has gone from a $700 billion bailout to $66 billion with a project profit, the banks are in better shape, AIG has turned to no taxpayer loss, Fannie and Freddie have gone from multibillion-dollar quarterly losses to profits, the housing market has bottomed and is turning, the automakers are revived and sales are growing, manufacturing is up, industrial production is up, consumer spending is up, real personal income is up, exports are up, we are more energy independent, and interest rates are down.

Policy is better. The financial system is better regulated, banks are required to have higher capital, more children are covered under health insurance, another estimated 30 million people will be covered by health insurance at no cost to the deficit, standards have been raised for for-profit student loan institutions, numerous successes have been achieved in foreign policy. The only major outstanding policy incomplete is long-term deficit reduction, but there is already an outline for a deal based on the Obama-Boehner agreement of 2011 and/or Simpson/Bowles.

So many predictions haven't come to pass. The predictions of bond market vigilantism from not just the likes of Niall Ferguson but more respected names such as John Taylor back in 2009-- didn't happen. The predictions the economy would never recover without a much deeper liquidation from people like Peter Schiff and Karl Denninger-- didn't happen. The predictions of high inflation-- didn't happen. The predictions of a double-dip recession that seemed to reoccur every season-- didn't happen.

So many disasters have been survived or averted. The Arab Spring. The Japanese tsunami. The euro crisis every season.

The ironic thing about Obama? Back in early 2008, when he was an overrated empty suit with nothing but a couple of corporate slogans that everybody now admits was hollow and false, when he hadn't achieved anything in his life worthy of being his party's Presidential nominee, and much of what he had achieved frankly was aided by a kind of affirmative action, everybody loved him, he walked on water, he could do no wrong. But after 3.5 years of actually working so hard and achieving so much good substantively for this country, it seems that a lot of swing and moderate voters aren't impressed at all. They loved him when they should have hated him and they hate him when they should at least recognize that he turned this country around, even if we're still travelling too slowly.

"Disappointing." Sigh. In the end, that's what it all comes down to. "Disappointing." Life may not be fair, but you sure wish it was.

[fezzyfestoon]

I'm gonna print this post out, frame it, and put it on my wall:

Pretty much every economic indicator has improved since the end of the recession in mid-2009. Unemployment is down, unemployment claims are down, jobs created are up, corporate earnings are up, total debt is down, the deficit as a percentage of GDP is down, GDP growth is up, credit card and mortgage delinquencies are down, TARP has gone from a $700 billion bailout to $66 billion with a project profit, the banks are in better shape, AIG has turned to no taxpayer loss, Fannie and Freddie have gone from multibillion-dollar quarterly losses to profits, the housing market has bottomed and is turning, the automakers are revived and sales are growing, manufacturing is up, industrial production is up, consumer spending is up, real personal income is up, exports are up, we are more energy independent, and interest rates are down.

Policy is better. The financial system is better regulated, banks are required to have higher capital, more children are covered under health insurance, another estimated 30 million people will be covered by health insurance at no cost to the deficit, standards have been raised for for-profit student loan institutions, numerous successes have been achieved in foreign policy. The only major outstanding policy incomplete is long-term deficit reduction, but there is already an outline for a deal based on the Obama-Boehner agreement of 2011 and/or Simpson/Bowles.

So many predictions haven't come to pass. The predictions of bond market vigilantism from not just the likes of Niall Ferguson but more respected names such as John Taylor back in 2009-- didn't happen. The predictions the economy would never recover without a much deeper liquidation from people like Peter Schiff and Karl Denninger-- didn't happen. The predictions of high inflation-- didn't happen. The predictions of a double-dip recession that seemed to reoccur every season-- didn't happen.

So many disasters have been survived or averted. The Arab Spring. The Japanese tsunami. The euro crisis every season.

The ironic thing about Obama? Back in early 2008, when he was an overrated empty suit with nothing but a couple of corporate slogans that everybody now admits was hollow and false, when he hadn't achieved anything in his life worthy of being his party's Presidential nominee, and much of what he had achieved frankly was aided by a kind of affirmative action, everybody loved him, he walked on water, he could do no wrong. But after 3.5 years of actually working so hard and achieving so much good substantively for this country, it seems that a lot of swing and moderate voters aren't impressed at all. They loved him when they should have hated him and they hate him when they should at least recognize that he turned this country around, even if we're still travelling too slowly.

"Disappointing." Sigh. In the end, that's what it all comes down to. "Disappointing." Life may not be fair, but you sure wish it was.

It's sad that not getting worse is worth voting for, however muted and unimpressive the "positive" results are...

[Pingvin]

we're here to promote logic: if you purposely stand in front of a moving bulldozer, then you can't blame anyone but yourself

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Mr.X says what we're all thinking:

any jew who votes for this party is like a jew who votes fro the Nazi party.

This thread is so bad it should have stayed at the 2012 Election section.

Krazey and NYJew have really sunk in new lows. Too bad that Stark isn't around anymore. It would've been fun seeing the pigs duking it out in the mud.

majority of your partys delegates in the room just admitted to either being atheists or anti Semites.  50 years ago the almost every single elected democrat would have condemned every single person who vote this way.
the modern day democratic party explains how a evil nut job like Hitler came to power through mostly through democratic means.

though maybe I should drop the Nazi rhetoric would you prefer Soviet rhetoric.

NY Jew, this has been a long-time problem with your posts, this isn't the first or even the fourth or fifth time you've done something like this and it needs to stop.  The way that you often casually compare anyone you disagree with on any issue even remotely connected to Judaism and/or Israel to "Jews who vote for Nazis", "anti-semites," etc is a disgrace.  It is bad enough when gentiles compare political opponents to the Nazis, but when Jews such as yourself do it, its one of the worst possible insults to the victims of the Holocaust and the many other atrocities that have been committed against the Jewish people throughout our history.  Someone as concerned about the welfare and dignity of the Jewish people as you claim to be would never trivialize the Holocaust and desecrate the memory of its victims the way that you did.  And no, "Soviet rhetoric" is not any better.  The fact that in your mind people who disagree with you on the inclusion of a plank in a party platform are equivalent to a government whose first leader alone killed over 20 million people means that there is something seriously wrong with you.  How about you stop comparing stop comparing people who disagree with you minor and inconsequential political issues to mass murderers.  And if that's too much to manage than just help yourself to a nice glass of shut the **** up!

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

(sexualizing Fluke).

seriously, dude? 

"Hey, I like to fuck.  I like it alot.  So you should pay for my birth control."

Guess what, sister:  We all like to fuck!  But we don't necessarily all go on national TV and brag about how we have such a grand sense of entitlement that, even though we can cough up enough money for law school and tropical vacations and trendy clothing, we expect Uncle San to cough up nine dollars a month for birth control.

Let's re-focus.  We got nothing against women who stay on the pill.  When I was single I'd have been glad to meet up with her.  Really glad.  No one is sexualizing herself except herself.  And good for her.  You go, girl.  She appears to be feisty, in reasonably good health, experienced, and she definitely comes off as though she likes it rough and often.  Nothing wrong with that.  What we're ridiculing, though, is her cause.  Well, actually, all we're ridiculing is her speech.  It was a shameless, grievance-obsessed, bitter diatribe.

Still, I'd probably do her.   

[Donerail]

What a joke country we live in if not agreeing that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv [makes you] anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Or not putting God in the platform of a major political party that has members of many religions is somehow anti-God.

[SPC]

I think part of the reason these people might feel this way is because when you look at the fundamentals, Israel was a really really stupid idea. The premise that one group has a right to some land because their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago is quite laughable. That's why I've always considered Zionism as absurd as the drivel written by Ayn Rand and about equal in what value it brings to public discourse.

And it doesn't help that Israel was founded by some pretty disgusting people, can anyone explain what makes the Irgun and Lehi in any way better than Hamas?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The underlying issue is the number of significant digits in the result. In general, you only report a result with a precision on the same order of magnitude as your error, ie. if the result has an error of ±3 points, they would report down to the 1% digit. This convention is not quite practiced universally and some people prefer to include one extra digit so you know if a result is 44.6 ±3 or 45.2 ± 3 instead of saying just 45 ± 3, but it looks weird.

In polling, I think it becomes a bit trivial to include extra digits because even the statistical uncertainty in the measurement has additional errors built in from various biases that make polling results fairly unreliable in general.

When a polling company does this it makes it look like they missed the 10th grade lesson on sig figs or at the very least are using a non-standard form of notation.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Let's all be honest with ourselves here -- the only reason BRTD made this poll is to get a favourable result for a "Christian" party.
The same way he polls opebo vs. any number of horrible people, or Jesus vs. NYJew.

Presumably, he wants the illusion that people agree with him on everything.