The Good Post Gallery

[Antonio the Sixth]

Such cute revisionist fantasies.

The most "moderate" thing HW did was raise a gasoline tax.  Yeah, much further left wing than the oh I don't know, multiple tax raises undertaken by Mr. Conservative Hero Ronald Reagan.

HW's presidential re-election bid, where he addressed most everything with "targeted tax cuts", was hardly the definition of "moderate".  Neither was his bending over and having Pat Buchanan deliver his infamous "culture wars" speech at the RNC.

[WMS]

WMS: I don't think I've celebrated anyone's death in a giddy fashion, and if I have, I'd like to think it was a long time ago and I'm better than that now.

(thread was locked. Not hijacking, just clearing my reputation)

Fair enough, t'was a hypocrisy test of not just you (you just happened to be the one who posted it), but also the Chavistas on there (who didn't respond ). Hypocrisy tends to really annoy me, but usually I don't bother posting about it.

[Lief 🗽]

(this isn't in reply to the post above or anything; just a coincidence)

Hypocrisy is overrated as a vice. Some people are simply confused about what they believe in.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I refuse to interest myself in who might be a 'sock' of whom - I mean who the hell cares about that?  We should take 'people' and posts at face value - if it is witty and amusing, it is gold.  If it is interesting, that's good too.  Who it 'is' doesn't interest me at all, and I can't imagine why it interests those tiresomes who make it their business to investigate such nonsense.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Belongs here as well:

Plato would be hated on the election boards, as his longwinded posts, featuring dialogues between semi-fictional characters, would constantly dismiss the importance of electoral politics and try to steer the conversation toward justice.

GLAUCON: Isn't it good luck that we've run into you, Socrates, on our way to the Agora. We're in the middle of a seeming intractable dispute that you can help us with.
SOCRATES: What is your dispute about?
GLAUCON: It's about who will carry North Carolina in the 2012 American presidential election.
TENDERBRANSON: I say Barack Obama will probably win. The newest poll has him leading by 3 points.
UMENGUS: Everyone knows that's just junk. That poll has a sample 7 points more Democratic than the electorate of North Carolina in 2010.
TORIES: I wouldn't put it so strongly as Umengus, but another poll from Rasmussen does have Mitt Romney leading by 2 points. We just can't be sure at this point.
SOCRATES: So one poll says that Obama is leading, and another says that Romney is leading?
GLAUCON: That's right.
SOCRATES: Now, can it be that in the real election, both candidates are the winner?
GLAUCON: No, that couldn't be.
SOCRATES: So it must be that the polls do not capture the form of the election in its true nature, but only a changeable appearance of it?
GLAUCON: That must be right.
TENDERBRANSON: Your logic is clear, Socrates.
TORIES: That's how it is.
SOCRATES: So perhaps another approach would be better. Now, would we not say that if a man is to be a lover of wisdom and have harmony in his soul, the rational and philosophical part of his soul should be in command?
GLAUCON: Clearly.
SOCRATES: So should we not look to North Carolina's most rational and philosophical citizens?
TORIES: Well, North Carolina has a lot of high-income seculars, working as computer programmers in Raleigh or bankers in Charlotte, and these I think will trend hard to Romney. This is why I think Romney will carry North Carolina.
SOCRATES: Who are these "high-income seculars" of which you speak, Tories?
TORIES: They are people like me, who've made lots of money filing suit in the court of Argon and trading with the Persians, and who don't believe that there are any gods.
GLAUCON: Wait, what? Surely we all believe in the gods atop Mount Olympus.
TORIES: No, not me.
JMFCSTES: There is only one God. Currently He is only worshiped by the Jews, but four hundred years from now he will send his only son to redeem us all. For it will be written, in a few centuries: "yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."
BRTDES: No way I'd believe that. Maybe after a couple of thousand years their services will get more interesting, but for the first nineteen centuries or so it will be just a bunch of old men talking. Why would I go for that when I could go see the hot new Oracle of Delphi predict the future while waving her hands in the air?
NATHANES: I too believe that there is just one God, but the truly sophisticated position is to realize that the importance about religion lies not in the so-called objective truth-value of whatever metaphysical theses about the external world it might be interpreted as making, but rather in its providing structure and guidance to a personal spirituality that I recognize also is present with many adherents of Olympian polytheism.
GLAUCON: Now I'm totally lost.
SOCRATES: As am I. But luckily we don't need to settle these issues about Gods, as I see another problem with these "high-income seculars". Did you not say, Tories, that they were merchants, who had obtained a lot of money?
TORIES: I did.
SOCRATES: Now, would we say of a man who was ruled by the love of money that he was wise, or that he did not recognize what was truly valuable in life?
TORIES: The latter.
SOCRATES: So we should look instead to the philosophers. How do the philosophers of North Carolina vote?
TENDERBRANSON: I'm not really sure, but I think they live in a town called Chapel Hill, where they support Obama.
MEMPHES: Wait, what? In America philosophers live outside the big city? Crazy! They must be a lot smarter than our philosophers. All our philosophers want to live right in central Athens, even though a stone hut will cost you ten drachmas a month, just because they think it's the "cradle of Western civilization" or some crap like that.
SOCRATES: So the philosophers support one candidate, and the merchants another?
TENDERBRANSON: Yes.
SOCRATES: And didn't North Carolina vote for one party the previous time in 2008 but the other party in 2004?
TENDERBRANSON: Yes.
SOCRATES: Truly a state with a disordered soul. And is not Mitt Romney likewise the candidate with the most disordered soul, given that he claims to oppose all the more liberal things he said he supported as governor of Massachusetts.
TENDERBRANSON: Yes indeed, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And does it not follow that a state with a disordered soul will vote for a candidate with a disordered soul, so Mitt Romney will carry North Carolina?
GLAUCON: Your logic is clear, Socrates. Thank you so much for settling our dispute.

[Antonio the Sixth]

True!

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

Typical lib attitude against our foundation. Sad.

What 'foundation'?  Slavery and killing Indians?  Your country is built on blood.  Its foundation is crime and deception.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

2. Frederick Douglass was a Republican liberal, and it was Republicans liberals who fought to end slavery and segregation.  If Terry knew the history, he would be a Democrat conservative, especially since he had a George Wallace button.

2. Frederick Douglass was a Republican, and it was Republicans who fought to end slavery and segregation.  If Terry knew the history, he would be a Democrat, especially since he had a George Wallace button.

Ever wondered why scumbag racists like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms switched parties? Liberals ended slavery, and southern conservatives happily fought against that... just like they opposed the Reconstruction amendments, women suffrage, segregation, and several more dubious social crusades that establishment Republicans pretend to have never happened.

We took the Deweys and Rockefellers of the world, you took the Thurmonds and the Wallaces and the Byrds.

That is one hell of an oversimplification justified on political grounds.

There is such a thing as a Pro-Civil Rights Conservative, arguably both Bob Taft and Everett Dirksen could be counted as such. The reason such unsavory people (like those you mentioned, not implying Taft or Dirksen were unsavory by the location of this sentence) joined the GOP wasn't because it full throated embraced dixie, but instead because it was the "lesser of two evils", as the party more inclined to advance a conservative ideal set, as opposed to the Democratic party, which was being pulled more and more to the left. A process that the GOP leadership encouraged through the use of specific and select issues that could just as easily by motivated by legitimate ideological views as they could by being a racist hater (the so-called "Southern Strategy"), which was adopted as a means to break out from its two region imprisonment and gain access into the SE and SW, both of which were more fertile ground for a conservative poltical party, then a party isolated in two regions dominated by unions, liberal ethnics and so forth.

The reason the GOP was more inclined to a conservative mindset in the 1960's, wasn't because of a hijacking but instead because of conservative influences in the Northeast (shocking as it may seem now, there were such bastions at the time. For many, Abolition and Prohibition were espoused by fervent Protestants wanting to export their beliefs to other people as means to "civilize them". Sound familiar?) and Midwest. Exemplified by the fact that as far back as Alexander Hamilton's (who gets counted as a Conservative and legitimately so) and John Adam's (another obvious conservative) Federalist Party, the party opposed to the Democrats (or Jefferson's party before them) had a conservative element of some form. That would include Lincoln's opposition to Popular Sovereignty on the basis of the promised freedoms being universal and thus untouchable to a transient majority opinion in a particular locale, which sounds a lot like the conservative view that the popular majority isn't always acceptable and should be checked by institutions (like constitutionally guarranteed and promised freedoms for one, or even just institutionalized precedents regarding such and those did exist at the time. They were ignored by the Supreme Court at the time which violated the Constitution, prior precedent and the Seperation of Powers to hand down Dred Scott. Sounds like a conservative complaint to me. Thanks to Mecha for finding the full Curtis dissent, I would recommend it to a friend).

Oh, but conservatism in the GOP came about because a bunch of racist Southerners hijacked the party in the 1960's, like that Ohioan name William McKinely in 1896 or that Ohioan Warren Harding in 1920 or that Massachusetts man Calvin Coolidge, who won not a single Southern state amongst them (save for TN in 1920 of course). There is something wrong with this statement, which should be obvious to anyone with objectivity, and that is basically a symbolic represenation of what you are saying. The notion that the party's just switched is one of the most blatant and stupid misrepresentations of history and is about as unnacceptable as blaming the Democrats of today for what Jackson and the boys did in 1830. Though, if I had to find a way to connect such to those unfortunate events of the past to the Democratic party of today, it wouldn't be based on nominal affiliations of a rotting corpse wearing a gray uniform (the oldiesfreak approach), but instead based on the designs regarding the critical institutions of our system and the long term risks from removing them. It would be more accurate to say that two parties with ideological diversity, subsequently went through a period of ideological polarization and thus resulted in a political realignment based on "current regional demographics", which in many cases had changed considerably over the decades. I am shocked, SHOCKED to find Irish in Massachusetts.

Conservatism in the Republican party wasn't the result of a hijacking, stupidity, that is a different story.

In fairness, I have simplified here as well, but the reason wasn't to misrepresent. It was to avoid a tl;dr post and to save hours that I don't have today. If anyone disagrees with what I said, I will be happy to defend anything posted here.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Dumping on Shakespeare should not be protected by the First Amendment. I consider that akin to treason - worse because it disrespects the English language (which he more than anyone else in its modern form gave birth to), rather than a mere political entity.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A couple from our discussion of the 2013 papal conclave:

[snip]

These were very interesting reads indeed.

I'll add this one:

It's backed by a pretty authoritative Argentine journalist though.

I hope you are not talking about Horacio Verbitsky, because calling him an authoritative journalist is pretty hilarious.
He's a Kirchnerist hack who regularly ignores corruption of the people he agrees with and completely destroys the people he disagrees with. And while a lot of his investigations during the Menem government were good, during the next decade he started to resort to baseless accusations as a regular modus operandi.

Plus he was a terrorist, so excuse me if I take the things he writes about with skepticism. And Antonio knows that I'm not exactly a right winger, so my opposition to him has nothing to do with his ideology, but more to the fact that he is a scumbag.


Also, several people involved in human rights causes (people who investigated and tried the last military junta, for example) have defended him. His only criticism might be that "he didn't do enough" which is something easy to say decades after the fact.


By the way, the election of Francis had quite some hilarious consequences around here. Since Bergoglio has been a longtime opponent of the Kirchners a lot of their allies went to the media the minute he was elected to destroy him and propagate the Verbitsky story (Kirchnerist "piquetero" Luis D'Elia for instance, wrote a tweet that basically says that Pope Francis was appointed by the imperialist United States to fight against the great South American revolutionaries, similar to what they did when they chose John Paul II to fight against the Soviet Union. I don't know if it's more hilarious the fact that he thinks Obama appoints the pope or something like that or the apparent feeling in the tweet that influencing people against the Soviet Union in a peaceful manner was bad )

But a large number of die-hard kirchnerist went the opposite way and pondered him like he was Jesus Christ himself calling the story bullcrap.
So, not only they are bipolar on this issue but considering that Cristina met with the Pope today and they were acting like buddies, it appears a lot of Kirchnerists were left hanging in the wind, and frankly, anything that puts the Kirchnerists into disarray (no matter how small or dumb the issue might be) is a good thing in my book.

Also beware of some of the pictures circulating around the web that apparently show Bergoglio with Videla. At least a few of them were "Fakes" (in the sense that it wasn't Bergoglio in the picture but some other guy).


I'm an atheist and I was very much opposed to the role Bergoglio had in the whole Gay marriage affair, but everyone I talked to in the past few days that has even a remote connection with the church or with him have told me he is a great person. So, I'm optimistic he will do good things for the people on issues like poverty, though unfortunately I don't expect much to really change with the church itself, but I hope I'm wrong.


Of course I'm not saying all these accusations are necessarily untrue. it's just that I question  the source and until we are presented with actual evidence of this, he should be considered an innocent man in this regard. Also, considering that the kirchnerists are all too happy to prosecute anyone, even though they might have had only an indirect relationship with the junta, I'm guessing that if there were factual evidence of crimes committed by bergoglio, the government would have tried to prosecute Bergoglio years ago.

Don't know why I bother since most of what I posted apparently is in Wikipedia too but in any case, I should say as a fellow fan of the San Lorenzo de Almagro Football club that even though we don't have any international cups, we have a Pope (and Viggo Mortensen )

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

A big reason Shakespeare comes across as boring is that it has often been performed so boringly.

I think very few people can understand the language today.  Its rather like listening to people from the North of England talking - you get some very rough idea what is going on, but it isn't fun after about five minutes.

^^^^^^^
Biggest waste of high school. And that says a lot. He gets crazy respect because he's old.  The iambic pentameter is an impressive feat, but it's also a pretty stupid literary device that I find very distracting. It's like somebody is dribbling a basketball during every play. His storytelling isn't all that imaginative. He took a lot of ideas from others, as the idea of plagiarism wasn't yet a thing.  

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

A big reason Shakespeare comes across as boring is that it has often been performed so boringly.

I think very few people can understand the language today.  Its rather like listening to people from the North of England talking - you get some very rough idea what is going on, but it isn't fun after about five minutes.

^^^^^^^
Biggest waste of high school. And that says a lot. He gets crazy respect because he's old.  The iambic pentameter is an impressive feat, but it's also a pretty stupid literary device that I find very distracting. It's like somebody is dribbling a basketball during every play. His storytelling isn't all that imaginative. He took a lot of ideas from others, as the idea of plagiarism wasn't yet a thing.  

That's an amazingly terrible post, even by memphis's high standards.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Really not wanting to get into these same arguments but I'll bite.  If you are looking for a foil here, I'll stand up and be counted.   I support Sinn Fein and aims the Republican movement stretching back to before most of our posters were born. I'd still support the cause of a non sectarian united Irish Republic today. It goes without saying that many of the actions from people on all sides of the conflict were appalling. It is also a 1000% improvement that  the stakeholders have put down the gun and moved forward to peace.

Yes, and those were the actions that people who thought it was badass to donate to NORAID were funding.

From one perspective, you had a blatantly sectarian government and police force, an occupying army that clearly picked their side in the conflict and a failed civil right movement that was quelled with violence.

The local communities were burning people out of their homes

From the other side, you had the fear that they were going to have all their rights, history and and lives taken from them.  All sides descended into violence and felt that violence was the only answer.  These parties were funded and supported monetarily and organizational on both sides of the Atlantic.

You may have had some Americans buying guns under false pretense but you cannot overlook that the British government was supplying intelligence and weapons to loyalist hit squads.  Or that apartheid S. Africa supplied the loyalists while Qaddafi supplied the IRA.

It was an ugly conflict that really shouldn't be brought down to a petty talking point.

I may have posted this years back but here is a video with interviews from both side of prisoners of HMS Maze. I think it captures their motivations well.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-g5Rad_MKA

[opebo]

Moving to the center on social issues won't help the GOP. It'll just send their white working class voters into the hands of the Democrats, who actually would do a better job representing them anyway, at least on pocketbook issues. If the Republicans want to make themselves electable and make inroads with minorities, they don't need to move to the left on social issues. Rather, they need to stop being the elected patrons of plutocratic privilege.

Of course that will never happen. The Republicans have been in plutocracy's grip since 1876, and every time they nominate a reformer (T.R., Ike) they ultimately get outmaneuvered by the bone-headed business elites that want to drag the country back into the Gilded Age. If by some miracle the GOP could move to the center on economics, or even the center-left, they'd have a good shot at rebuilding themselves as a mass party, conservative social positions or not.

Correct, and this, coupled with the possibility that the Democratic party could someday move left due to the browns makes me anticipate some form of (further) anti-democratic alteration of the State - as our own pbrower has often predicted.

I'd say that's more likely than most people assume. The wealthy aren't just going to allow the Democrats to waltz in and start redistributing their piles of cash. We're already seeing the champions of cheap labor mobilize to deny the poor the vote again in the South and the periphery regions they control by implementing Voter ID and trying to change the rules that govern the electoral college to make it even less representative than it already is.

That, and they already own the courts. That much is obvious. The United States Constitution is the greatest ally the plutocrats have, as it breaks up and divides power without democratizing it. And they own the media and the universities, contrary to conservative ballyhooing about the "left" owning the media and the academy.

There are a lot of ways that the plutocrats can conspire to limit the impending Democratic majority. They've already gerrymandered the House to be their's for at least until 2020. They're deliberately sabotaging the economy in hopes of taking the Senate in 2014. Should they gain control of the White House in 2016, they'll be ripe to prevent that Democratic majority from ever emerging by passing such awful things like a national right-to-work bill, national voter ID, means-testing everything, and expanding the influence of globalization in the American economy.

tl;dr -  Don't get cocky, Democrats. Even with the public scared sh**tless at the moment by the GOP doesn't mean that the GOP will become completely unelectable and unable to win, even while remaining on the far-right. They'll just do as they always have - change the rules to continue the domination of American society by a plutocratic elite.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Ah, defending the liberty of the businesses exploiting their employees and the liberty of oppressing minorities and poor people.

I suppose this isn't the place to argue this, but you need to put more faith in the markets, my friend.

Right, so the top 10% of Americans can control 100% of the wealth as opposed to the 80% they control now.

Government and political structure has a lot more to do with the wealthy having so much money than the markets do. Absent bailouts, insider deals, subsidies, etc the people would have a lot more power. Adam Smith knew what he was talking about. Are you sure you're a libertarian?

I'm 100% sure I'm not a Libertarian and I'm wearing the avatar for ornamental purposes.

What you fail to realize is that long before Government was the "big, evil, awful" thing that Libertarians view it as, markets were making people richer than would ever be necessary. Tell me, how would the free market resolve wealth inequality? The answer is, it doesn't.

Libertarians like to believe that the free market is the answer to all of America's (and the world's) problems, when in fact it caused most of those problems in the first place. It was the free market that created wealth inequality, and encouraged/encourages it in modern society. The first "rich" people--the ones that made more money than others when America was first becoming an industrial nation--did not hold that much more wealth than say the "poorer" Americans. What happened was, the industrialization expanded and corporations were born.

Corporations exist to ensure that a sort of oligarchical system be upheld throughout the monetary system. Meaning, the CEOs of the biggest companies are ensured a lot more money than the lower classes (about 350-400 times as much money, to be exact) for doing quantities less work. They deliver a cheap, but "okay enough" product onto the market, and consumerism ensures that it is eaten up without questioning exactly what it is or how it was made.

The problem is that such a small amount of people control such a disturbingly large portion of the wealth in this country (and world) and will only end up controlling more. Is Government doing anything to stop it? Not really, and certainly not as much as we should be doing. But that's because corporations have the power of Government. We need leaders that will not be afraid to stand up to corporations and strip them of their power. The voice needs to be returned to the average citizen, and the wealth with it.

I'm not talking about full-fledged socialism, I'm talking about equality. Where the poor aren't as poor and the rich aren't as rich. No one in this world could possibly need a billion dollars for their own use. They just invest it so they can make more money that they won't spend.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

No. If anything, the American public needs to dress more like the president. Enough with the golf shirts at work and the sweatpants on airplanes.

I'd also like to see:
1. More variety of shirts and neckties. Why does a politician's shirt/tie have to always match the national colors? No other country does that.
2. Morning dress at inauguration and other major events like SOTU. Reagan was the last president to break out the waistcoat and tails.
3. More homages to regional dress. We don't really have a "national costume" like non-western nations. But it would be nice for, say, a congressman representing a large number of Native Americans to occasionally incorporate elements of traditional dress; or someone from Miami could wear a guayabera every now and then.

3. could potentially come across as appropriative in some instances, but is on principle a very good idea, and I strongly agree with the post as a whole.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

To say that oil and gas extraction is the best thing about the planet--which provides, in addition to 'one of the foundations of modern society' (which, in its present incarnation, is so wonderful--why, exactly? This is one of those things we often see asserted and seldom actually argued for coherently. Conservatives didn't used to be pat modernists, or at least weren't so insufferably triumphalist and smug about it), all of our food, all of our water, all of our air, all or nearly all of our mineral wealth including but not limited to oil and gas, all of our physical living space and nearly all of the conditions of our physical existence and sense of place and rootedness and embodiment (things about which conservatives have traditionally cared very strongly), and directly or indirectly the majority of the inspiration for our literature and music and art--is, in addition to being incredibly crass and frankly insane, in fact downright dangerous. You, of course, don't care, you rebarbative futurista worm, whether out of ignorance, malice, or both I have quite given up trying to ascertain.

This is a rather odd run on sentence, but in any case, much of Nathan's food, Nathan's water, Nathan's mineral wealth and Nathan's physical living space is of course partially dependent on oil and gas. This is especially true given that Nathan grew up in privilege and wealth not available to most of the world's population.

It's not a run-on sentence, you blithering moron. It's a very long and complex one. There is actually a difference for people who have a reasonably advanced understanding of how English works. Do you want me to make you a syntax tree? While we're on the subject of your education level, what kind of knuckle-dragging troglodyte thinks that access to oil and gas precedes access to food, water, other kinds of mineral wealth, and physical environment, or is more important to the sustenance of human societies? Or, if you'd prefer, what kind of dishonest, amoral POS pretends to think that in a valiant but failed attempt to score debating points? For that matter, how dare you pretend to give a flying [Inks] about privilege? Your own politics are almost literally fascistic. You're exactly the kind of 'conservative' George P. Grant was trying to warn us about. I think I'm beginning to see why you hate teachers so much. Yours certainly didn't do you many favors.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Mikado, I don't think rationalism seeks to crush or negate the importance of human emotions. I think the need for rational thought is perfectly compatible with acknowledging that the human mind is much more complex than what science can describe of it. And I consider myself a hardcore rationalist.

That's just it, though.  The very desire to know or understand the Universe is a fool's errand, especially if you reject the metaphysical and the philosophical to myopically focus on the physical Universe around you.  It's not just the human mind, talking about stars as hydrogen slowly fusing into helium producing a nuclear fusion reaction that generates massive amount of energy may be true for one value of truth, but sealing that as the only definition and ridiculing others for solar worship or the view that the sun is Helios pulled by a chariot is narrowminded in the extreme.    The Rationalist viewpoint tries to freeze out all approaches to truth that don't revolve around the Scientific method as not legitimate avenues to truth: in the same vein as Christianity, it is the ultimate in small-mindedness to say that one approach is right and the others are empirically wrong and prima facie absurdities. 

I have no problem with science itself, I have no qualm with it as one approach to knowledge, my problem is the outright rejection of the irrational and, in fact, turning irrationality into a derogatory term.  Many of the most valuable parts of human experience and the universe in general are inherently irrational, chaotic, unorderly, and downright messy.  Rationalism deprecates old wisdom and proclaims the value of new "knowledge," and attempts to see further and further into the tiniest particles, the most distant corners of the Universe, the creases of the human brain, and the most deep depths of the Earth's core, but loses the knowledge of the human spirit, the soul, in the process, and ridicules what it can't understand, abuses the "irrational."

Irrationality is freedom.  Freedom from the formalized structure of the scientific method, freedom from the hypocrisy of scientists who proclaim that they are working to better mankind while they perfect weapons with which to better kill vast swathes of mankind, freedom from the arrogant idea that the old gods of yore, whether they be named Zeus or Thor or Jesus, will be replaced by a new pantheon of Newton, Tesla, and Einstein. 

[Napoleon]

I agree with opebo.  In the end, this is just prudery.  America is so immature when it comes to sex it's unbelievable.  

How is it "prudery" to say that you don't want to pay for other people's sex classes?  Will you send me a check to pay for part of an oral sex class?  How does $5 sound?  That's not too much.... I'm sure you can afford it.

We publicly fund all sorts of education!  This is a public institution.  Sex Week certainly sounds like it would be more useful and productive than a lot of the other classes that your tax dollars pay for.  This would probably be a lot of fun, too!  Nonetheless, a few prudes get skirmish about it and there's no way it can be done.  Because, you know, a lot of people don't approve of sex... which is inherently pretty stupid. 

[traininthedistance]

Why attack Ben? We should welcome him.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It is also factually inaccurate depiction of the history. It is ironic that Inks bemoans us applying modern biases onto the Dred Scott decision, when in reality that is exactly what the Supreme Court was doing in 1857, applying the biases of Southern polticians from that 1850's onto the 1780's.

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This is factually innaccurate as they were in fact treated as such in Massachusetts stemming from the 1780 Constitution and subsequent interprations by the State Supreme Judicial Court in the years following its adoption. These were prior to 1787. There were other examples as well, that Justice Curtis points to in his dissent, but MA is the best case study in my opinion.

One has to remember that the extent of the racism at play grew over time. In Jefferson's time, slavery was considered as an evil that was dying of its own accord. In the 1820's, it was a consideed a "necessary evil", thanks to the growth of cotton after invention of the Cotton Gin. Around this time period, you had a shift in Southern Churches, who had been critical of slavery, but now switched and began to promote it, mostly to keep their flocks coming, who didn't appreciate being told they were going to hell because they owned slaves. The changed in the church as well as the reaction to Nat Turner's rebellion created a new generation of Southern politicians who thought that not only was slavery not immoral, but was in fact a moral, civilizing institution. That was the view of Jefferson Davis. John C. Calhoun and likely Justice Roger B. Taney as well, shifted from the "necessary evil" opinion that defined their generation of poltiicians and came into line with the view of the 1850's. There is a quote from Calhoun from 1838 indicating this shift.

The people of this "de-generation" of Southern Politicans were desperate. It is hard to describe them as anything else. As you move closer to the Civil War, their demands and their views became more extreme, more demanding and less alligned with any kind of principles. They willingly embraced things like states rights to protect the slave states, and then abandoned them (some went as far as to insist that only through the embrace of slavery by the north, could the South's rights be preserved), when it served their purpose.

Thus I get to nine:

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This was the height of hypocrisy and in my view, the classic case of covering yourself by accusing someone else of doing the exact same thing that you are doing.

In my view, the Supreme Court was projecting its own biases onto a Constitutional Convention for the purposes of convenience. There were states that granted as much as the right to vote to blacks in the 1787, and nothing in the Constitution stips these persons of that right. The insinuation otherwise is that Elbridge Gerry and his collegues from MA, were either voting in ignorance of the consequences for some of their state's citizens or willfully voting to strip person's within those states, or that well known Abolitionists such as Ben Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were purposely affixing themselves to a document that would have forceably implanted on a group of states, someone else's views regarding who was and was not a citizen in those states.

If anything, the delegates of the convention were envisioning an America one day free of slavery, but that for the moment the best path towards that end was to structure a union that could stand the tests of time, even if that meant accepting the three-fifths compromise as a way to get started on that road without a breakup. That would certainly be more reflective of the true views of Washington, Franklin and many of the other delegates there.

[minionofmidas]

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[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Remember, you’re blessed in having Inks, and I believe in him as strongly as I did before I was banned.


Thank you.

Simfan34

[/quote]

It's not all good.  But he is right about BRTD and whoever that other woman is.-+

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Exactly. The liberal counter-culture of the 60s and 70s became the biggest share of the Romney 2012 electorate.

Incorrect. 

The liberal counter-culture of the 1960s was a very loud minority made popular by its radical and newsworthy nature.  For every hippie dancing in the Bay Area, there was a kid in Mississippi protesting busing and school integration.  For every veteran who tossed his medals in protest, there's a Vietnam vet angry we didn't keep going until we won the war.  Oh, and then there's this:

Age 18-24 Exit Polls (became 18-29 in 1988)
1976: Ford 51%, Carter 49%
1980: Carter 45%, Reagan 44%, Anderson 11%
1984: Reagan 61%, Mondale 38%
1988: Bush 53%, Dukakis 47%

As you can see, only in 1980 did the Democrat do better with youth than with olds, and much of that was because 18-24 voted most for the John Anderson option, another Republican, instead of Reagan.

If you really want to see the trend, you'll see that the 1976 18-24 demo barely changed at all over the course of their lives:

1976: Ford +2 (18-24 group)
1980: Reagan +2 (24-29 group)
1984: Reagan +21 (30-39 group)
1988: Bush +8 (30-39 group)
1992: Clinton +2 (30-39 group)
1996: Clinton +7 (40-49 group)
2000: Bush +2 (40-49 group)
2004: Bush +7 (40-49 group)
2008: Obama +1 (50-64 group)
2012: Romney +2 (50-64 group)

As you can see, the youths of 1976 have been consistently 2 points more Republican than the population as a whole in every election except 1980, most of that caused by John Anderson, a Republican, receiving double digit support among this group.  Reagan likely would have won young people by 12 points in 1980 without that third party candidacy.   Jimmy Carter was elected by older Americans of the day not young ones.

The idea that people become conservative as they grow older is a huge myth.  Every conservative in Congress today was a conservative when they were in college, you can just ask them.

The olds of the past were the New Deal Democrats, the youths of the past distrusted government post-Watergate and Vietnam.  Today, the youth demand a better federal government.  The olds still distrust government.

[Napoleon]

I don't even use Facebook but this is a nice little post.

Political arguments on Facebook are just about the worst thing on the Internet; even moreso than YouTube comments, because this time it's your own friends and/or family that you're discovering to be moronic assholes.

Its true, the internet allows us to see some of the best and worst of people at the same time.