[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

 

it's working out okay, since this is planet earth and we gotta do what we can with what we've got. i went to the organic farmer's market and even they didn't sell olympian ambrosia--they only had dead vegetables.

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

You can believe whatever you'd like, you already believe in several concurrent fairy tales, why not add your self-aggrandizing assertions about my own credibility to the list

this is not about my "assertions". it's your own silence on the subject of actual work done that shows your lack of real world experience. since you're all theory, you can shirk the demands of the real world in the name of unattainable ideals of purity and fantastic man-gods. if anyone self-aggrandizes here is your holy other-wordly holiness hovering above the mortals.

the truth is that your dead god-emperor, our current president, you, me, and everyone's mother, are/were/will be just humans with our own flaws and limitations, capable of good great deeds and capable of errors and atrocities as well. there are no perfect people and there is no perfect government-- burying your head in dreams of an imaginary world isn't going to change the fact that we all shit and our shit stinks-- get used to the stench and maybe you'll be able to do something more than preach the tiresome cynicism of disappointed romantics.

[floatingslowly]

True story: I'm voting against Romney because not only I am a hateful bigot, but when asked overseas "how America could ever vote in another giant prick", I can casually shrug, proclaiming my innocence.

I used to be like you, suchfriends, but then I grew dark and bitter.

Who else here wants to talk about the giant fucking magick-casting white salamander that Romney and his kinfolk believes to reside somewhere in the woods near Chicago???

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

I used to be like you, suchfriends, but then I grew dark and bitter.

Did you switch from drinking belgian-style to Porter?

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

it's working out okay, since this is planet earth and we gotta do what we can with what we've got. i went to the organic farmer's market and even they didn't sell olympian ambrosia--they only had dead vegetables.


this is not about my "assertions". it's your own silence on the subject of actual work done that shows your lack of real world experience. since you're all theory, you can shirk the demands of the real world in the name of unattainable ideals of purity and fantastic man-gods. if anyone self-aggrandizes here is your holy other-wordly holiness hovering above the mortals.

the truth is that your dead god-emperor, our current president, you, me, and everyone's mother, are/were/will be just humans with our own flaws and limitations, capable of good great deeds and capable of errors and atrocities as well. there are no perfect people and there is no perfect government-- burying your head in dreams of an imaginary world isn't going to change the fact that we all shit and our shit stinks-- get used to the stench and maybe you'll be able to do something more than preach the tiresome cynicism of disappointed romantics.

No, that just fits nicely into your own creative narrative about assertions about my own experience. Again, this is not a pissing contest, and I could give a FUCK about what you believe about my own experience. Let me understand your position. I start a thread attacking the character of our current president because he is a dick, and you instead of posting credible evidence to correct my own arguments against the president, instead you rely on false accusations and personally driven insults about me? While I did indeed insult your opinions, I don't ever recall making it personal about you, whereas all you've done is send out bombastic criticisms about my own character, but have been surprisingly quiet on defending the credibility of the president, which is the original topic. Let revert back to the original argument I pointed in your direction, which you've been stalling and diverting for some time. I THINK YOU ARE WRONG TO PROMOTE POISONOUS PARTISANSHIP AND POLITICAL JINGOISM AND FEAR-MONGERING. To suppose that "anything but Mitt" is acceptable is the wrong solution, it empowers the sitting president to continue to scoff the needs, interests, and demands of the constinuency. I like you acknowledge the world is an imperfect place, and indeed shit stinks more than roses so we tend to notice it more, even a single piece of shit in an immense garden will ruin the vibe a bit. However, my ARGUMENT IS THAT WE SHOULDN'T PRETEND SHIT ISN'T SHIT JUST BECAUSE SOME OF IT STINKS A BIT LESS THAN OTHER PIECES OF SHIT. A for trying to distract the issue, but epic failure in trying to make me feel stupid whereas I feel quite vindicated by your devolution towards casting stones rather than substantive arguments, and you just look as petty, hypocritical, and stupid as you've been sounding

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Murmer99

I'm much more interested in exploring the distinctions between various pieces of shit and their scents.

 

You mean like this?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

D Let me understand your position. I start a thread attacking the character of our current president because he is a dick, and you instead of posting credible evidence to correct my own arguments against the president, instead you rely on false accusations and personally driven insults about me?

suchfriends, you're so addled you don't know what you're arguing. whether the president is or isn't a dick is NOT the issue here.

what i've been fighting is your claims that:

1) the democratic system is worthless (it's not),
2) voting is worthless (it isn't)
3) it makes no difference who is in power (it does).

and yeah, i think your perspective stems from immaturity and placing unrealistic expectations upon what's always been the world.

and of course i may be bombastic and a dick and all that when i say what i say, and you might feel butthurt about it, but i'm still right and you're still wrong on this one.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

suchfriends, you're so addled you don't know what you're arguing. the president is/isn't a dick isn't the issue here.

what i've been fighting is your claims that
1) the democratic system is worthless,
2) voting is worthless
3) it makes no difference who is in power.

Actually, sir, you have it all wrong. Go back to page 4 and read what I initially said to you which started this quarrel in the first place. You may just be surprised to find out that all I was doing on this thread was criticizing the president, and it is your ugly partisan politics which made in an either/or issue, which muffled and distracted from the original topic, which as I said, was to criticize the president and the Democratic Party. My later assertions about the lack of efficacy involved in voting should be seen as the tangent, which is why I brought it back to the original argument. And yes, considering that is just good-cop bad-cop, and that so many of the crooked Republican agendas have dominated the policies of the Obama administration (including passing GOP versions and agenda regarding Wall Street reform and of course signing what is essentially Newt Gingrich's healthcare reform proposals from the mid-1990s all while continuing the Bush Tax cuts unabated and escalating several hot theaters of war and scapegoating the blame on Bush when it is rightfully his own to bear)

Its not about ideological purity or living in a world of political fantasy, is about holding our incumbent leadership accountable for not even living up to the core fundamentals of their philosophies, all the while pandering and posturing out of poisonous partisanship divides and inaccurate and exaggerated fear-mongering about the opposition. Once we get this bullshit election out of the way we can continue to criticize and demand from whatever president we get our needs as a community and a society. In the meantime, we shouldn't be to gushy over the sitting president or his deceptive political party, because when we are duped by them, we empower them to disenfranchise ourselves. When we shrug our shoulders and gave to their fear-strategies, we do nothing to stop the Democrats from deporting ANOTHER 450,000 next year. We don nothing to stop the Democrats from expanding the War(s) into Korea, Iran, Yemen, and Pakistan. We do nothing to stop the Democrats from pissing on our leg and telling us its raining why their policies fire HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pubic-sector workers. We do nothing to stop the inherent corruption of the system which favors greedy corporate interests and hawkish war-mongers who are forever married to the devastating military-industrial complex.

Brother, when you blindly support one party simply to thwart another, you DO NOTHING FOR YOUR SOCIETY but shoot yourselves in the foot, the difference is you are just choosing which foot to shoot, the left or the right. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not quite ready to disfigure my body and disable my walking just for political convenience and a bunch of feel-goodism wishful thinking

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Go back to page 4 and read what I initially said to you which started this quarrel in the first place.

i got in on page 2 when you said that obama had "allowed" the bush tax cuts to continue.

he didn't "allow" them for the fuck of it, he had to eat them along with other shits so that in exchange unemployment benefits could be extended by the teabagger congress.

it's your all-or-nothing simplistic thinking that i find so irritating. life is complicated, for fucks sakes. just let that fact register in your consciousness and all will be well. less baptist, more jesuit please.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

it's your all-or-nothing simplistic thinking that i find so irritating. life is complicated, for fucks sakes. just let that fact register in your consciousness and all will be well. less baptist, more jesuit please.

Its not about all-or-nothing, and what I find so irritating is that you can so easily overlook war crimes, mass deportations (1,200,000 in the past three years we're talking about fucking Hitler numbers ), extensive tolerance of corporate fraud and corruption, all the while relying on feel-good speeches and wishful thinking about shoulda-woulda-coulda futures while in the meantime allowing this terrible machine to carry on as ever. My brother, understand the world is not perfect, but those are some glaringly dangerous flaws to overlook so casually. Further, I think it is rather disingenuous of you to rely upon the Democratic talking point of villafying, scape-goating and outright lying about the Republicans to generate and perpetuate fear-mongering based politics. If as you've suggested that GOP obstructionism is blocking a Democratic agenda, then how exactly is FURTHER alienating us from them going to bridge the gap and lubricate the negotiations? Sounds to me like drawing increasing lines in the sand will other further provoke hostility, antagonism, and four more years of political bickering and in-house fighting. Fuck that.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

all the while relying on feel-good speeches and wishful thinking about shoulda-woulda-coulda futures while in the meantime allowing this terrible machine to carry on as ever.

i don't listen to speeches and i don't give a fuck about feel-good. all i do is perform a cost-benefit calculus to figure out which candidates and parties are more likely to support an environment that is most beneficial to my interests, which are, more or less, the unfulfilled promises of the enlightenment (reason, tolerance, secularism, human rights, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, etc). <-- that's what i want but won't happen in my lifetime.

i have to weigh the current administration's war crimes vs. the crimes of the previous + future administrations, and the democrats come out on top. i have to weigh the "godless' democrats vs. the "American Taliban" republicans and teh democrats come out way on top. human rights crimes are split 50/50 in the international arena, but in the domestic front the democrats look like st. francis of assisi when you compare them to the republican policies (not saying they aren't both flawed, st, francis only by comparison). individual liberty is split: democrats win on the personal morality front and the repukes win on economic freedom. scientific inquiry, democrats hand down-- republicans are anti-science. the environment, which wasn't a concept of the enlightenment-- both are hypocrites but democrats pollute less. internationalism, a cause dear to your beloved mr. selassie-- again the democrats (teh repukes would love to dismantle the UN). peace-- both are war criminals but the democrats are less bloody and gloat less about their crimes and do less rah-rah flag waving.

neither party is going to revolutionize life as we know it (unless they start a nuclear war), but it's going to be one or the other who will rule for the next 4 years, so IN THIS cONTEXT all we can do is choose who to vote for. this doesn't prevent us from operating in other contexts, like advocating reform or fomenting revolution idf that's what you want, but in this one context, it's choice A or B i'm afraid, for now anyway.

so as a non-omnipotent human being all i get to do IN THIS CONTEXT is to ask "who can do more good? who can do less harm?" and give them my support, warts and all. they don't have to have my total faith ad they don't need to be my personal saviors-- they just need to do their job a little better than the other side-- i'll take a 51/49 split if i have no other choice. then i refocus onto other contexts and operate within them and maybe the landscape will change for next time. for my expereince, the democrats ar emore supportive of community grassroots efforts and causes that are compatible with my values anyway.

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Further, I think it is rather disingenuous of you to rely upon the Democratic talking point of villafying, scape-goating and outright lying about the Republicans to generate and perpetuate fear-mongering based politics

Sheeeeeeeeit son, i don't need anybody to monger my fears and i don't need anyone's talking points, i've seen the bastards run the congress the past couple of years, they've done nothing but harm, and i've seen their international politics the whole first decade of teh century, i've read their plans for the economy, and I AM SCARED SHITLESS without anyone having to tell me about it. first thing they're going to do is kill health care reform, which it's not everything i wanted but it's way way better than what we had before.

do you really need someone else to tell you to get scared when you hear romney talking? you don't do this on your own? seriously? who needs talking points when romney himself is terrifying enough?

gotta tell you, if there was such thing as a reasonable republican party these days i might be tempted to vote for them at some level because i tend to favor the tenets of economic liberalism (in the classical sense)-- however, it's the religious lunatics and policy extremists and xenophobe fanatics who have hijacked what used to be "the party of lincoln". so, fuck no, they need to fuck off, we need a less-demented congress.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i don't listen to speeches and i don't give a fuck about feel-good. all i do is perform a cost-benefit calculus to figure out which candidates and parties are more likely to support an environment that is most beneficial to my interests, which are, more or less, the unfulfilled promises of the enlightenment (reason, tolerance, secularism, human rights, individual liberty, scientific inquiry, etc). <-- that's what i want but won't happen in my lifetime.

i have to weigh the current administration's war crimes vs. the crimes of the previous + future administrations, and the democrats come out on top. i have to weigh the "godless' democrats vs. the "American Taliban" republicans and teh democrats come out way on top. human rights crimes are split 50/50 in the international arena, but in the domestic front the democrats look like st. francis of assisi when you compare them to the republican policies (not saying they aren't both flawed, st, francis only by comparison). individual liberty is split: democrats win on the personal morality front and the repukes win on economic freedom. scientific inquiry, democrats hand down-- republicans are anti-science. the environment, which wasn't a concept of the enlightenment-- both are hypocrites but democrats pollute less. internationalism, a cause dear to your beloved mr. selassie-- again the democrats (teh repukes would love to dismantle the UN). peace-- both are war criminals but the democrats are less bloody and gloat less about their crimes and do less rah-rah flag waving.

So long as you've taken it into consideration that is all I can ask for. Myself, when I analyze previous administrations, the very same things which I have criticized the Kennedy/Johnson, the Nixon/Ford, the Carter, the Reagan/Bush I, the Clinton, and the Bush II are EXACTLY what the Obama administration has done, and with a bit more swagger and panache I might add

Where we have both done the analysis, I am afraid we've come to very different conclusions. Shit is shit. Romney's shit stinks so bad it is quite self-evident that the GOP has decided to throw in the towel and continue to do what they've done best the past few years, run the country from behind the scenes. I am not asking you to support them, what I am asking you to do is much more critical of the failings of the political parties which you do support. Its not just Barack Obama who has failed us, it is the entirety of hundreds of Democratic politicians at every level of government, because they are all the complex machinery which has constructed and perpetrated these crimes.

Sheeeeeeeeit son, i don't need anybody to monger my fears and i don't need anyone's talking points, i've seen the bastards run the congress the past couple of years, they've done nothing but harm, and i've seen their international politics the whole first decade of teh century, i've read their plans for the economy, and I AM SCARED SHITLESS without anyone having to tell me about it. first thing they're going to do is kill health care reform.

I think you missed my point. I'm not accusing you of solely targeting Republicans in fear-mongering, rather that by perpetuating the myth of "its us against them" you are inadvertently promoting the party-line fear-mongering which only stokes partisanship. It is a political distraction to point out how much stinkier someone else's shit just may happen to be to cover up the stench of your own shit. So for now, the Democrats would love to rowel up our animosities and frustrations with some of the more backwards and backwoods thinking folks in our society, so that we will inherently support them and their own evils. I say, fuck them both. We should be putting equal pressure on ALL the corruption in the political machinery, not getting caught up in partisan partiality in judgment. We shouldn't be concentrating on trying to make people afraid of Mitt Romney, we need to be focusing on making Barack Obama intimated by us, otherwise he will just carry on like the Democrats did in the 50s, letting deportation and war carry on as ever until the shit really hits the fan. Maybe as a community we can prevent that by working on it now, today, and not simply kicking it down the road. That requires us not only to stand up to the GOP for our priorities, our values, our convictions, but to the Democrats too.

Honestly, I am as afraid of Barack Obama as Mitt Romney any day, because what makes me nervous is that behind closed doors how much the smoke and mirror rhetoric disappears and how much their policies are the same. The Republicans are really going to gut the country or end abortion, they are just pandering to their base, just like we know the Democrats aren't going to end the war or regulate our corrupt and exploitative market, they are just pandering to their labor-oriented base. In the long arc, their policies tend to meet in the reality of the fucked up system we have today, where both parties mutually support the very policies which I am heavily criticizing, which is an increasing appetite for war, economic exploitation through "free" trade programs, institutionalized racism (it used to be Jim Crow, not it is the "undocumented" folks who number equally in their millions and live in the same kind of limbo that freed slaves lived in during the early 19th century), and callous police-state enforcement (see 2.1 million incarcerated Americans and counting, let alone the nearly 10 million on probation or parole). See, where is any of the change we can believe in? In the past four years there have been MORE wars, MORE deportations, MORE growth of capitalism yet a decline in jobs and real income for the working class, and MORE incarcerations on trumped up political agenda related laws.

The slogan is "Yes, we can." The question is what exactly are we doing?

[!@#$%!]

okay but right now in this presidential and congressional election it's time to put the democrats back in control so we can actually hold them accountable ans not go back 2 steps wth teabagger programs and economy-killing austerity. after november, once maybe the democrats control the house again we can have fights between progressives and blue dogs and unions about energy policy or the domestic budget, just like once we bickered about getting single payer vs. mandatory insurancs vs. public option (oh, the luxury of that discussion, if they take health reform away!).

right now we just gotta move the needle and make sure that the point of departure for all debates on the political situation is slightly more human-friendly next time. just look at the republican vs democrat take on immigration for gay couples, for fucks sakes. we still have a category of people not afforded equal rights because of outright bigotry. and this is 2012.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Arab countries are massing forces to attack Israel(with the help of Russia and China). Our president is systematically dismantling Israel's only ally. Why is Congress so quiet and impotent through all the abuse of the Executive Branch powers. In all the rhetoric against the president should there not be some outrage about the congress doing little more than picking up their own paycheck. Congress controls the funding on all of the programs. Ask your congressman what he or she was doing while the president was playing golf.

I think you have that entirely backwards. Arab countries are too busy imploding on themselves to planning mass attacks on anybody. The reality is that ISRAEL with all their bellicose campaigns and childish and selfish demands of red lines, is trying to drag America into a war we don't want. Israel is a bigoted and prejudiced society at the top, 2/3s of Israelis disagree with the conservative and hawkish governments there. Why should we support such bullshit? Right now Israel sees how actually WEAK their neighbors are, as again the Arab Spring is IMPLODING Arab countries, not strengthening them. Israel wants to attack their neighbors while the chips for them are down, kick them in the balls a few times and show them they are the real bully in the world, that the US plays second chair to Israel's demands, and that the Jesuits really were right, and considering what Christian Zionism and Manifest Destiny have brought into the world, maybe just maybe the Protestant Reformation was indeed the most dangerous event in world history

[fugazifan]

and Iran is not an Arab country.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

The cards have been dealt and we will see how the hands play out. I look for something to happen on or shortly after Yom Kippur.

that's in 5 days.

[!@#$%!]

ps - please define "shortly after"

pps-

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

 

that's not the big yom kippur invasion you're predicting, right? this type of shit happens on a daily basis.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by fugazifan

and Iran is not an Arab country.

I know the difference, I'm in LA, we have not shortage of Persians

Iran may not be an Arab country (neither is Libya or Tunisia for that matter) but they are Arabized through Islam and further have had their share of Arab Spring uprisings. Iran isn't the only country I think that Byron was referring too, Israel has a lot of enemies, but the reality is she is stronger then just about all of them put together. ONLY Iran can compete with Israel, and the only reason that neither Iran or Israel have gone to war is their respective international allies and trade networks wouldn't tolerate such.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

The cards have been dealt and we will see how the hands play out. I look for something to happen on or shortly after Yom Kippur.

You seem a bit to happy about that. I would hope that Israel is smart enough not to dust up the Europeans and the Russians, but if they wan't to play, see how quick Iran snaps back. There is good reason nobody has tried to invade Iran since Saddam, and there is good reason Saddam lost. It is the SAME reason the US didn't invade Iraq in the 1990s, and we found out the hard way after we did why we shouldn't have, which is the same reason all huff and puff aside, Israel would never want to fuck with Iran. Their only hope is that the US would back them up, which we would, and which is why I dislike Israel for milking it for all its worth, meanwhile accepting BILLIONS of US subsidy dollars while my own state of California is short a BILLION in university education, and FOUR BILLION in public education and most Israelis go to great schools

[afreespirit]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

I know the difference, I'm in LA, we have not shortage of Persians

Iran may not be an Arab country (neither is Libya or Tunisia for that matter) but they are Arabized through Islam and further have had their share of Arab Spring uprisings. Iran isn't the only country I think that Byron was referring too, Israel has a lot of enemies, but the reality is she is stronger then just about all of them put together. ONLY Iran can compete with Israel, and the only reason that neither Iran or Israel have gone to war is their respective international allies and trade networks wouldn't tolerate such.

Actually geography is a far more important reason. You should try looking at a map sometime, it can be very instructive.

[floatingslowly]

I, for one, hope the lizard people save us. I'd totally vote for lizard people.

The biggest threat to world peace are radicalized fundementals who are ready to die for their fantastically created mass hallucinations.


And Jesus said "my wife"--ker-POW!

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

I know the difference, I'm in LA, we have not shortage of Persians

Iran may not be an Arab country (neither is Libya or Tunisia for that matter) but they are Arabized through Islam and further have had their share of Arab Spring uprisings. Iran isn't the only country I think that Byron was referring too, Israel has a lot of enemies, but the reality is she is stronger then just about all of them put together. ONLY Iran can compete with Israel, and the only reason that neither Iran or Israel have gone to war is their respective international allies and trade networks wouldn't tolerate such.

YES. russia needs israel and it needs iran, to let them mutually annihilate would be idiotic on their part. russians are doing very well in israel, where the business is technology, unlike iran with its fossil fuels which russia doesn't need (they like the caviar though).

anyway, war is for fucking morons! whenever intelligence ends there begins war.