The Good Post Gallery

[they don't love you like i love you]

I'm actually a little embarrassed now, I didn't realize that post was in this thread so I just quoted it, copied it, and then went to Forum Community and then back to this thread to paste it rather than just hit "quote->post"

[they don't love you like i love you]

But anyway Maher kind of reminds me of Christopher Hitchens in that some secular liberals will actually admire him just for what he said in his atheism despite the fact that otherwise he was an incredibly sickening individual (for f**k's sake that asshole endorsed Bush in 2004, that's really all you need to know how much of an utter scumbag he was.) Maher is nowhere near that level of course but it's not a reason to overlook all his flaws.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

In short, he doesn't give religion a get out of scrunity free pass? Absolutely scandelous!

No. In short, he doesn't treat people with, as I said, even the most unasked-for Victorian-scientist type of compassion. If you view giving folks' beliefs intellectual due diligence and engaging them with something at least resembling bona fide aesthetic and anthropological curiosity as the same as giving them a 'get out of scrutiny free pass', I'm sincerely sorry, because that's, to be frank, a staggeringly stupid equivalency to draw.

[The Mikado]

Maher's terrible, terrible pseudoscientific boosterism of any sort of "natural" food or health product and denigration and suspicion of medicine is part of a systematic denial of Western medicine that is responsible for large numbers of young people going unvaccinated and people going to homeopathic witch doctors rather than receiving medical treatment.  Anyone who talks about vaccines being linked to autism is every bit as much an opponent to rational thinking as the person who thinks the world was created in six days, and is doing the world considerably more harm than the creationist is in the process.  Maher is scum.

[Platypus]

Next person to mention Bill Maher in this thread gets to be Mayor of Detroit.

[Simfan34]

I just generally dislike Maher.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Congratulations, Mayor Simfan.

[Simfan34]

Congratulations, Mayor Simfan.

I've been following events in Detroit since 2003.

[Insula Dei]

Posting this directly into this thread: Simfan would be a horrible mayor of Detroit.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Slimy little scumbag. Wouldn't even piss on him in a fire.

I disagree.

Saxby Chambliss doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as "piss" or "fire".  Calling him a "slimy little scumbag" shows an enormous amount of disrespect to actual scumbags, who worked hard to earn the title "scumbag".  I know some scumbags, good sir, and I am personally insulted that you would dare associate Saxby Chambliss with them.  Scumbags are of an infinitely higher character than Saxby Chambliss.  Saxby Chambliss doesn't belong in the same country as scumbags, hell he doesn't even belong on the same continental landmass as scumbags!

Apologize.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I drove through just to check it out when I was in the neighborhood, touring the Badlands. It was quite desolate and depressing, like most rural areas. What was notably different was that many Natives were out walking around along the Highway, something no non-Native rural would be caught dead doing in their neck of the woods. FWIW, the tour guide at Rushmore said the gov't has given the tribe a bazillion dollars (precisely) in compensation for screwing them over back in the day regarding the Black Hills. But the Injuns won't take the money, so it just sits in an account somewhere getting bigger day after day. And yet they all live in squalor. Go figure out a Native.

Yes, they're hard to understand - having honor and pride and so forth..

[Antonio the Sixth]

I never really got how people elevate "constitutional" to the level of a moral imperative.  In what system of ethics does a very murky question of law affect whether or not something was right or wrong?  I get so weary of seeing people flog the Constitution in political debates as some kind of moral stance, when they're using it to conceal their support for truly vile institutions like segregation.

Alternately, "Stop quoting laws to us, we carry swords."  -Pompey the Great

This is so true.

[memphis]

Ok, Phil, here's what I don't get. The politicians you choose as your favorites, like Berlusconi and Santorum, are known for being bullies who roll over their opponents. Take a lesson from people like krazen and Sam Spade–you need to own that this is your preference. If you talk about how great someone like Santorum or Berlusconi is, when they pull stunts like this, then you need to be triumphalist and not complain that people aren't being fair to the poor guy. Santorum pounds his adversaries into the dust, like in this case - he doesn't play the victim himself. People aren't going to have sympathy that his critics are "mean" to him after he torpedoed a treaty defending the rights of the disabled. He did this, you should take pride or call out people who disagree with him for being weak. Not many people have a second act like Santorum did - Rod Grams and Conrad Burns lost in the same election and they're footnotes to history. Santorum's out killing treaties in the Senate and running for President as not-Romney.

I already know your response to this, but I don't care--if you think jerks make the best elected officials, then recognize that jerks can't be victims. Harry Reid is a jerk who takes no prisoners, and there's not a soul who would be taken seriously for saying "stop being mean to Harry!"

[k-onmmunist]

Ok, Phil, here's what I don't get. The politicians you choose as your favorites, like Berlusconi and Santorum, are known for being bullies who roll over their opponents. Take a lesson from people like krazen and Sam Spade–you need to own that this is your preference. If you talk about how great someone like Santorum or Berlusconi is, when they pull stunts like this, then you need to be triumphalist and not complain that people aren't being fair to the poor guy. Santorum pounds his adversaries into the dust, like in this case - he doesn't play the victim himself. People aren't going to have sympathy that his critics are "mean" to him after he torpedoed a treaty defending the rights of the disabled. He did this, you should take pride or call out people who disagree with him for being weak. Not many people have a second act like Santorum did - Rod Grams and Conrad Burns lost in the same election and they're footnotes to history. Santorum's out killing treaties in the Senate and running for President as not-Romney.

I already know your response to this, but I don't care--if you think jerks make the best elected officials, then recognize that jerks can't be victims. Harry Reid is a jerk who takes no prisoners, and there's not a soul who would be taken seriously for saying "stop being mean to Harry!"

about time someone called him out on it.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Ok, Phil, here's what I don't get. The politicians you choose as your favorites, like Berlusconi and Santorum, are known for being bullies who roll over their opponents. Take a lesson from people like krazen and Sam Spade–you need to own that this is your preference. If you talk about how great someone like Santorum or Berlusconi is, when they pull stunts like this, then you need to be triumphalist and not complain that people aren't being fair to the poor guy. Santorum pounds his adversaries into the dust, like in this case - he doesn't play the victim himself. People aren't going to have sympathy that his critics are "mean" to him after he torpedoed a treaty defending the rights of the disabled. He did this, you should take pride or call out people who disagree with him for being weak. Not many people have a second act like Santorum did - Rod Grams and Conrad Burns lost in the same election and they're footnotes to history. Santorum's out killing treaties in the Senate and running for President as not-Romney.

I already know your response to this, but I don't care--if you think jerks make the best elected officials, then recognize that jerks can't be victims. Harry Reid is a jerk who takes no prisoners, and there's not a soul who would be taken seriously for saying "stop being mean to Harry!"

about time someone called him out on it.

Yeah, I tip my hat to Brittain33 for that post.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Alas such an otherwise great post had to have the erroneousness mention of Rod Grams, who lost in 2000.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Heh, I admit to more or less being beyond hope. It appears that the illustrious Moses Maimonides (wow) seems to have gotten lost on me. I must have been reading up on rock layers, isotopes, the Vikings, or maybe Shakespeare. Mikado, do enlighten us. Should be interesting.

Your dismissal of the preeminent scholar of the 12th century (and certainly a writer at least equal in influence to Shakespeare) shows your own arrogance more than anything else.  Here's a Jew living in the Islamic Almoravid Empire writing to an audience that included most of the scholars of Christendom and the Islamic world.  He could draw on the works of his great contemporary, the Islamic theologian Averroes, as well as the ancient Greeks, as much as he could draw on the Talmud.  His work would influence thinkers Jewish, Christian (esp. including St. Thomas Aquinas, who was very familiar with his work), and Muslim alike.  Everyone who was a scholar in the High Middle Ages read Rambam's works, whether they agreed or not.

Rambam's most famous works are his commentary on the Talmud and his Guide For the Perplexed, a powerful book that takes on basically every major theological question.

The Talmud is a collection of centuries of rabbinical commentary on every word in the Torah.  It is tens of thousands of pages long and presents at least three or four interpretations of every rule, action, and symbol in the first five books of the Bible, formatted as "Rabbi X said a, but Rabbi Y said b.  Rabbi Z thought that Rabbi X had a point, but that he went too far..."  He boiled centuries of debate into a codification of the Talmud as containing 613 Laws, and enunciating exactly what those were and how one was to follow them.  The Mishneh (his summary of the Talmudic interpretation of Jewish law) is a critically important book in that it essentially is Judaism: it's still the binding authority towards questions of how an observant Jew follows the laws of Moses.  It's one thing to talk about the need for a head covering and fringed garments, but how should they be designed?  Consult the Talmud.  Can execution be justified without a Sanhedrin (Jewish religious court) carrying out the trial?  Consult the Talmud.  Why can't a Jew mix dairy and meat products despite that not actually being a law in the Torah itself?  Rambam has an answer for you.  Halakhic Law, even down to the very idea that there are 613 Holy Laws and not 612 or 614, is the product of Rambam.

The Guide to the Perplexed is a much more user-friendly document than the Mishneh, and is the document that the scholars of the ummah and Christendom were more likely to encounter.  The Rambam pioneered the mixing of Aristotle and religious texts, putting classical Greek thought to the service of monotheism in the same manner as Averroes did for Islam and Aquinas did for Christianity (both of whom cribbed from Maimonides).  His biggest target (much like the Muslims he lived among) was efforts to anthropomorphize the deity, emphasizing how God was so utterly alien and beyond human conception that the very language and thoughts we use cannot possibly capture him.  Much as Muhammad would often (as in, he says it all over the Qu'ran) say that "Allah is greater than the things men ascribe to him," Maimonides rejected the idea that people could even imagine or conceive of God in any way meaningful to the human mind, an idea diametrically opposed to the God who became a man that the Christians worshiped.  Maimonides grappled with all of the big questions, including the old classic, "why does evil exist?"

[SPC]

Alas such an otherwise great post had to have the erroneousness mention of Rod Grams, who lost in 2000.

Rod Grams did lose an election in 2006, just not a Senate election.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Of course, and I supported it in real time. The idea of branding cohorts of folks as second class, inferior, and unwanted, is facially just plain evil to me. It does not comport with my conscience. The idea that the libertarian right to control of property should be allowed to trump avoiding slapping scarlet letters on folks suggests a value system that lacks peripheral vision, to put it most euphemistically.

[Simfan34]

High turnout is not a good thing if a bunch of ignorant and uninformed people are voting.  I'd rather there be just 30% turnout if the 30% are very informed and engaged on the issues.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, look. The 'ironic' Uncle Tom cheers on the open racist.

[Keystone Phil]

Ok, Phil, here's what I don't get. The politicians you choose as your favorites, like Berlusconi and Santorum, are known for being bullies who roll over their opponents. Take a lesson from people like krazen and Sam Spade–you need to own that this is your preference. If you talk about how great someone like Santorum or Berlusconi is, when they pull stunts like this, then you need to be triumphalist and not complain that people aren't being fair to the poor guy. Santorum pounds his adversaries into the dust, like in this case - he doesn't play the victim himself. People aren't going to have sympathy that his critics are "mean" to him after he torpedoed a treaty defending the rights of the disabled. He did this, you should take pride or call out people who disagree with him for being weak. Not many people have a second act like Santorum did - Rod Grams and Conrad Burns lost in the same election and they're footnotes to history. Santorum's out killing treaties in the Senate and running for President as not-Romney.

I already know your response to this, but I don't care--if you think jerks make the best elected officials, then recognize that jerks can't be victims. Harry Reid is a jerk who takes no prisoners, and there's not a soul who would be taken seriously for saying "stop being mean to Harry!"

about time someone called him out on it.

Yeah, I tip my hat to Brittain33 for that post.

Yes, excellent post if you ignore some of the glaring factual inaccuracies! When pointed out to him, he didn't bother to respond. Instead, he just posted a link to anothe article that bashed Santorum. Looks like someone knows they were wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Won't be the last.

I'm also not totally convinced that brittain and memphis aren't the same person.

[Simfan34]

Oh, look. The 'ironic' Uncle Tom cheers on the open racist.

But this too:

High turnout is not a good thing if a bunch of ignorant and uninformed people are voting.  I'd rather there be just 30% turnout if the 30% are very informed and engaged on the issues.

I guess you don't quite get the point of democracy...

(obligatory "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others")

The solution, of course, is not to discourage turnout but to make sure there is both high turnout and an educated electorate.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

Ok, Phil, here's what I don't get. The politicians you choose as your favorites, like Berlusconi and Santorum, are known for being bullies who roll over their opponents. Take a lesson from people like krazen and Sam Spade–you need to own that this is your preference. If you talk about how great someone like Santorum or Berlusconi is, when they pull stunts like this, then you need to be triumphalist and not complain that people aren't being fair to the poor guy. Santorum pounds his adversaries into the dust, like in this case - he doesn't play the victim himself. People aren't going to have sympathy that his critics are "mean" to him after he torpedoed a treaty defending the rights of the disabled. He did this, you should take pride or call out people who disagree with him for being weak. Not many people have a second act like Santorum did - Rod Grams and Conrad Burns lost in the same election and they're footnotes to history. Santorum's out killing treaties in the Senate and running for President as not-Romney.

I already know your response to this, but I don't care--if you think jerks make the best elected officials, then recognize that jerks can't be victims. Harry Reid is a jerk who takes no prisoners, and there's not a soul who would be taken seriously for saying "stop being mean to Harry!"

about time someone called him out on it.

Yeah, I tip my hat to Brittain33 for that post.

Yes, excellent post if you ignore some of the glaring factual inaccuracies! When pointed out to him, he didn't bother to respond. Instead, he just posted a link to anothe article that bashed Santorum. Looks like someone knows they were wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Won't be the last.

I'm also not totally convinced that brittain and memphis aren't the same person.

[Brittain33]

Yes, excellent post if you ignore some of the glaring factual inaccuracies! When pointed out to him, he didn't bother to respond. Instead, he just posted a link to anothe article that bashed Santorum. Looks like someone knows they were wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Won't be the last.

I let it go because I made my point and your responses weren't particularly relevant - that you don't support Berlusconi as much as you used to, and that Santorum wasn't a "bully" in this case. Both objections seemed pretty pointless and would just lead to back-and-forth with no conclusion, but I can close the loop now.

1. Berlusconi's been a corrupt bully for as long as he's been in office, not just since Bunga Bunga came out, but if you don't support him, then sub in Chris Christie and Tommy Thompson, they fit the bill as well.

2. It's your opinion he's not being much of a bully in this case. That's debatable, but whatever, he's a bully in his normal behavior, it's why he was such an effective vessel for Republican rage in 2012 until he started making truly stupid comments about college educations, it's why Kerrey made that comment that you disagree with so much, and picking on the disabled who were supporting this treaty isn't a profile in courage. You can disagree, but I disagree, and there's no glaring factual error.

3. But I got Rod Grams wrong! I mixed up my Dem 1994 revenge cycles. True true.

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That's a nice comparison that does me more favor than I deserve. Memphis is a calmer guy than I am.