Reason.tv: What We Saw At And Who We Talked With at the One Nation Rally in DC: Rangel, Jackson, Sharpton, the AFT, AFL-CIO, & More…

Reason.tv reports from the "One Nation Working Together" rally for "Jobs, Justice, and Education" on Saturday, October 2 in Washington, D.C. The event was organized by the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, and other progressive outfits.

Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with Rep. Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the AFT's Randi Weingarten, MSNBC's Ed Schultz, comedian-activist Dick Gregory, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder Mitch Kapor, and other luminaries (including somebody who looked a helluva lot like Neil Young).

Click to learn what they had to say about the economy, the Tea Party, President Obama's tenure, whether the stimulus worked, race relations, and whether the United States is better off than it was in the 1960s.

Approx. 5 minutes. Shot and edited by Jim Epstein, with help from Josh Swain.

Reason.tv attended the 'One Nation Working Together Rally' on the National Mall on October 2, 2010. The crowd, representing a broad cross section of political left, included groups like the United Auto Workers, United Steel Workers, Service Employees International Union, the NAACP, anti-war activists, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Socialist Organization, and many liberal and progressive groups.

Priority issues for attendees were jobs, the cost of higher education and the economy. Though the crowd was evenly divided about President Obama's first two years in office, it seemed as though everyone agreed that it's time to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Interviews by June Arunga and Kmele Foster. Shot and edited by Dan Hayes.

Comments

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Hope you wore your boots, Nick.

[JB]

"I'd agree with anything Obama does."

He could shit in her mouth and she would like it.

Morons.

[Hayek not Bags]

Glen Beck could dip his balls in teabagger's mouths and they would like it.

[JB]

There are two types of people: tea baggers and tea baggees.

We know what type you are.

[Masturbatin' Pete]

Yeah, I don't think "teabagger" is much of an insult. I would be delighted to see what would happen to Barack Obama's "rich baritone" when he was gagging on my nutsack.

[Wild Biker]

I'm guessin' you would like it more.

[Suki]

Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with Rep. Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the AFT's Randi Weingarten, MSNBC's Ed Schultz, comedian-activist Dick Gregory, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder Mitch Kapor, and other luminaries (including somebody who looked a helluva lot like Neil Young).

Good thing Libertarians are good with proper amounts of protective clothing made of asbestos.

[Government of Wolves]

CUE MUSIC:
This is the Self Preservation Society,
This is the Self Preservation Society.

Na-Na-Na-Nah!

[Apogee]

Nice juxtaposition.

[Cyto]

I liked backing up Julian Bond claiming you can't believe Newt Gingrich because he lied when he promised to remain faithful to his former wives with an interview with Jessie Jackson. Nice.

[DelD]

Too bad Nick didn't immediately ask Bond about divorcing his wife of 38 years so he could marry a white woman.

[stupid republican]

I'm sorry you had to go through that, i couldnt do it, when i hear stupid i get uncontrollable punching spasms in my arm

[smart democrat]

Is that why your face is so bruised?

[stupid republican]

teehee how did you know?

[Bipartisanpartisanbasher]

Smart democrat? Is there such thing as one?

[Jorj X. McKie]

Don't start buggin' dood, he's only smartly dressed. A sartorial sort of donkey.

[Wild Biker]

I'm thinkin' your name is an oxymoron.

[Tman]

So, for the folks who were unable to attend the One Nation Rally, can someone explain to me what the One Nation Rally was about?

Obama is doing a good job, sort of?

Wall Street bad, got that.

Socialism, good?

Private schools will create a two tier system that will also be bad, so give more money to schools?

What did I miss?

[Yonemoto]

I kept wanting to tell that woman, "oh what, we don't have a two-tiered, segregated system now?"

[Tman]

We are only spending $46.7 billion on the Department of Education this year.
YOU WANT MOAR?????

[mad libertarian guy]

They got a 12.8% raise in revenue for the DoE.

I'll bet that anything less than a 15% raise in the coming fiscal calendar will be portrayed as a budget cut next year. MSM will shout it from the rooftops and blame it on team red and how they're depriving TEH CHILDRENZ.

[El Duderino]

I understand pencils and books cost money, but for that money, you could by a stealth fighter for each student.

[Sy]

You do make a good case for the DoED
"Sharpening Minds and Raising Cities." or some catchy shit.

[El Duderino]

You wouldn't need to recruit pilots either. Most kids would pay a fortune for an opportunity like that.

[Mr. Obvious]

It is always better to have a lousy system shared by all then to let anyone escape the misery. We must understand one another.

[Xenocles]

I'm actually interested in this school privatization plan they were talking about. Never heard of it from anyone in a position to move on it.

[Indy]

There can be no privatization of schools with the union involved.The problem is the union.

[frog in a pot]

What first world country doesnt have a teachers union?
Good luck dummy.

[Drax the Destroyer]

There is nothing wrong with a teacher's union per se. Unfortunately in the public sphere, unions have a tendancy to grab political leaders by balls demanding more money while delivering less. The trick is reducing their influence by making the system more fluid allowing students (and parents) to pick the prison they want to get raped in for 12 years.

And besides, if those assholes really cared about the children they would find ways to make school cheaper, not more expensive. In D.C. they spend 30K a year, and yet(normal)students can't fucking read. If these kids were in college they would have failed out their first fucking semester and found more lucrative ventures like assembly line worker or fry cook or prostitute. But at the grade school level, they deserve $360K for 12 years of baby sitting. Yeah, that makes sense.

[J]

That's what I was wondering, I haven't heard of this privatization plan that they all seem to think had a good chance of happening.

[Greyledge Gal]

Because a few of the candidates have stated they would like to abolish the Dept. of Education, somehow these people have decided that means that public schools will be closed. LOL.

They don't get it that the schools would just revert to state/local control like they used to be before the 1970s.

[Apogee]

Oh, they get it alright. They won't be on the payroll anymore, and that's all they give a shit about.

[El Duderino]

LOL, I participated in the two tier system. I went to a private school. My teachers got paid 20% - 30% less than public school teachers, we had zero budget for supplies so the teachers bought their own supplies. It was also cheaper per student (less than 2k per student than public school though my parents had to pay for it, it would have been more affordable if they didnt have to pay taxes that have gone to the failing public schools. I got a better education than most people and actually had teachers that took the time to teach me as an individual when I didn't understand something. I got a better education because the teachers cared and they had to work hard to ensure they would continue to get paid or get any kind of a raise.

And guess what, my private school accepted many "troubled" students from the public school (I was one of them) and it still outperforms the public schools year over year.

[Wright's nemesis]

+1

[MMM]

Yes! And I'm so tired of hearing about how we need ever more money "FOR THE CHILDREN" in education. I personally know 3 teachers from our city's cruddy schools who retired at age 55 and enjoy pensions not much lower than their ample full salaries. I don't know anyone in the private sector with any kind of pension, yet their attitudes are of entitlement: " I WORKED for MY money". (Ummm, so do the rest of us, without a pension...) Every time I see these able-bodied folks kicking back with a crossword puzzle and traveling, I see all of those tax dollars extracted "for the children."

[Mary Ann Ludwig]

You can thank the unions for the outrageous retirement funding no only for teachers, but for all public employees. Tax payers are stuck with the bill. That's the democrat way, my friends.

[SettleDown]

"Outrageous retirement funding"? Really? Since when have you seen a retired teacher or public worker living in luxury? Maybe officials but not the people low on the totem pole. And since when is retirement funding bad? Now that 401k is the "new way", pensions are bad? You people need to stop listening to these idiots who have no idea what they are talking about on Fox News. Yes, some union officials are corrupt but so are members of government. Unions are good for the economy. They keep wages high thus people consume more. Any economist will tell you this. Before you bash the unions because someone told to it was a good idea, think about what American life would be like without unions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=184NTV2CE_c

[AlexinCT]

"And since when is retirement funding bad?"

Since tax payers fund them, the people getting them usually underperform at levels that make Linda Blair spit pea soup, and they then these people get to retire at the ripe old age of 55, while those subsidizing their retirement will have to work well into their 70s to stay solvent?

Just saying..

[SettleDown]

@AlexinCT You cannot say the entire system is broken by citing a few examples. BUT, I do agree with you, there are people out there that ride the backs of society and have it easy while we bust our asses. But I will not place the blame on the unions because it is not the union's job to educate our children nor is it their job to determine the performance of the teachers. The public school system needs to be overhauled and I think that if the government worked with the teacher's unions, our kids would benefit greatly. If you look at the numbers, No Child Left Behind is ruining our kids education. Personally, I think some type of privatization would be good but it would have to be done carefully.

[Big Cat Kahuna]

I think that if the government worked with the teacher's unions, , our kids would benefit greatly.

Work to do what exactly? Haven't they been working together? Isn't the educational sky always falling except in the few week afterglow of a major funding event?

By "privatize carefully" I assume you mean 'don't actually provide educational opportunities' so as not to deprive union members of a job.

[Biff Wellington]

The simple truth about unions: giving 2 - 3% or your paycheck in exchange for false promises of a secure future, and guaranteed "pay raises" that fail to keep up with the cost of living but make great carrots to entice the imbecilic.

A statement to the failure of our education system, especially in the field of economics, is your claim that high wages keep consumption high, and therefore unions are good for the economy. What complete and utter nonsense. Rising wages and benefits make consumption cost prohibitive.

And retirement funding is not bad, if based upon profit sharing, and not on a Ponzi scheme of milking new members to fund the promises made to the older ones.

Unions exist today only because everyone cannot work for the government, the only other job where all that is required of the employee is the bare minimum. Mediocrity is the mission statements of the union employee, and has allowed every other country to surpass us in quality and productivity. They are hungry to grow, where we have become fat, lazy, and spoiled by our success.

Life in America without unions? Without the Teacher's Union, we would have more high school graduates who could actually read. Without the UAW, we would have a thriving automobile industry. Pick just about any industry in the US that has surrendered jobs to foreign labor, and you'll find that union label.

[SettleDown]

No Teacher's unions equal high educated citizen? I suggest you look up Finland's, Singapore's and India's education system (top three in the world). You may be surprised at what you find.

"Thriving auto industry?" We had a thriving auto industry until the auto companies decided to send plants over borders for cheap labor (GM CEO Roger Smith started this which is partly the blame of the inevitable failure of GM). Not a union idea. I assume you blame UAW for the recent collapse of the auto industry. What about Ford? Ford didn't go bankrupt. Ford was and is still a UAW shop. The unions had nothing to do with the auto industry collapse. Corporate mismanagement was the culprit.

"...Any industry in the US that has surrendered jobs to foreign labor ..... you'll find that union label." I've got two examples that debunk your theory. (1) Technology: IBM, HP, Dell; non-union shops; jobs outsourced all over the world. (2) Financial: accounting firms outsourced many jobs to foreign countries; non-union.

My friend, the corporatists have misguided you. Economists agree, the easiest way to stimulate an economy is to raise wages. The fact that wages have not kept up with cost of living is due to a capitalist/corporatist model, yet executive compensation levels have sky rocketed.

By the way, my father worked for Colt Firearms, a 100% made-in-America company, for 35 years before retiring at 66 1/2. If it wasn't for his union pension, he and my mother would be eating Alpo for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

[sycophantofthebourgeoisie]

That's funny. My great Aunt had over 4 million bucks in her IRA when she died. Living on a modest teacher salary and not spending like it's going out of style does a lot for you financially.

Of course she gave most of it to the church.

[math dunce]

Yeah, the cries for more funding for public schools has me thinking about how I managed to graduate from public high school and my state university without being able to do basic algebra. {begin sob story} My pre-algebra class in middle school was a complete zoo, and the hapless teacher was glad to have at least one student sitting quietly in her chair, even if she was just reading fiction and tuning out the noise. It's how I got through that class. My high school algebra teacher seemed to think I wasn't trying because I otherwise was a good student. In fact, I was truly baffled and embarrassed by my lack of understanding. Her scornful attitude kept me from asking questions. I then dropped the class and took "general math" instead. I got into college with a 1040 on the SAT, on the early '80s scale when a perfect score was 1600. I scored over 700 on the verbal/language section. I got an English degree because of the lighter math requirements. I finally took pre-algebra and algebra at community college, about 10 years after I got my BA, because I realized I needed to understand math. I wasn't great at it and I didn't love it. But I'm SO GLAD I did it. I sure could've learned it in high school if I had gotten the attention I needed for it, and I think my life could have turned out different (better) in a number of ways I won't bother to go into if I had believed I had more options in college. {end sob story}

[generic Brand]

I took naps in class because I was so bored by the curriculum... they can only go as fast as the slowest student. Yet my A's on tests and naps during the class got ME in trouble and into detention! Slept 70% of the time in Calculus AB, never did the homework (resulting in a B in the class... stupid HW is 10% of grade rule) and passed the AP Calc exam with a 5, the highest score you can get. Public school is a joke.

[mgd]

El Duderino|10.3.10 @ 12:56PM|#

I got a better education because the teachers cared and they had to work hard to ensure they would continue to get paid or get any kind of a raise.

I would bet another factor in the better performance of private schools in general is parental involvement. I haven't seen any research on it, but it stands to reason that parents willing to shell out money for private school tuition when "free" public schools are available will be more involved.

I was a public school teacher for five years in a (relatively) decent school system. During parent/teacher conferences, I almost never saw any of the parents I needed to see. The parents of students doing well were almost always there; the academic or behavior problems very rarely had parents show up.

This is not to knock your argument, El Dude, but another factor to look at if the interest is really improving student performance rather than spending yet more money per pupil.

[El Duderino]

I agree. My parents were completely involved. They forced me to do my homework, before I could go out. My father helped me with math and my mother helped me with English and History. Unfortunately, nobody could help me with the foreign language requirement.

Right now, the public school system is locked in this cycle where kids really only have one choice most of the time and this does not inspire anyone when the only choice is one of the worst choices in the area. Parents would be involved if they had some indication that they have some kind of control over the situation. I am not a good example of this, because my parents could afford the school they sent me to, but there were plenty of kids at my school that got a free ride from the church as charity and those parents were not necessarily involved until they were given the power to change the direction of their child's education. Parents and teachers are required to educate a child through a traditional school (not a home school obviously). The public school system treats parents like spectators. They dont want to have their methods questioned and moreover if you do question the methods, they usually have a response that has more to do with "the procedure handed down by the state BOE" than any kind of rational explanation of the methods. If parents were given choices they would all of a sudden have to participate in their child's education at least in the decision to send their kids to a particular school. The free market will suck the parents into participating even more. For a private school to survive, it cannot lose students, and it has to have students that can pass tests and get into college. Teachers at private schools know that their ass is on the line if little Johnny comes out of their system semi-retarded so they get the parents involved. When I was in public school, the only time the school gave one iota of a shit to engage my parents is when i became a "behavioral issue" they didn't call my parents to figure out some way to reach me, no, they called them to inform them I was being punished and could get expelled for being a class A asshole. This was not particularly useful to my parents except to say that they decided to move me to a private school. Now at the private school, I get one fucking bad test and the principal is on the horn talking to my mom well into the night. By the next day, I was now being held accountable for studying at home. My parents made sure I studied and they knew what I was supposed to study because the teacher sent my mom her fucking lesson plan. When I got to school, they called me out every damn time it became even remotely clear I didn't do my homework and after so many black marks, they called home. This fucking sucked and it turned my social life into a disaster, but at the end of 4 years, I went to a good college and then got a great job.

I dont know if this will work for parents who are less engaged tham my parents, but I have to imagine that at least some of the disengagement comes from powerlessness. How are parents supposed to help their kids if they only find out what their kids are supposed to be studying during parent teacher conferences.

[Rob McMillin]

Your moneyz iz ourz, suckaz. Cough it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, for the folks who were unable to attend the One Nation Rally, can someone explain to me what the One Nation Rally was about?

Four legs Team Blue good, two legs Team Red bad.

[Fiscal Meth]

Some parties are more equal than others.

[Jake Witmer]

Great comment: says everything you need to know in the fewest words possible. The strike throughs really show your attention to detail. I just want you to know I appreciate the extra effort. 😀

As a former petitioner for the Libertarian Party, I would say that the people at this rally are in the "liquid" category (because that's the kind of excrement they have between their ears). This might seem condescending, but it's a serious categorization. When I ran into a Republican who said he was in favor of a free market, and supported a return to the gold standard, but who was also a prohibitionist, I put them in the "solid" (excrement between ears) category. Such people have a core philosophy, but they are just too dumb to notice the blindly-accepted contradictions in it. Ie: Their shit stinks, and it is useless, but at least you can work with it, move it around, etc...

The liquid category is just stinking, formless, and you can't really work with it. You can't even scoop it up and move it out of the way. Since there is no philosophy of any kind, and no facts either, and just a serf-like conformity, you cannot do anything with that kind of stupidity and brainless evil worship.

The people who were only there because they were really against the war, or really opposed to the drug war have some hope. The people who are there complaining that Joseph Stalin's slightly weaker ilk don't have enough stolen money and power are simply a good reminder of just exactly how stupid the US electorate is.

Normally, libertarians get upset when they see this sort of thing. But not me, because I know how easy it would be to get libertarians elected and decontrol / reverse course.

Too bad Ayn Rand and SEK3 seeded the libertarian movement with defeatism. If they had not, we would have already returned to proper jury trials. Not one libertarian in 100,000 even realizes that this is a precondition of political libertarianism, so they continue to hack at the branches of tyranny,

When everyone who is nominally a part of the libertarian movement cares enough to show up at their local courthouse and prevent ONE SINGLE INDIVIDUAL from going to jail, by handing out jury rights information to incoming or recessed jurors, then the police state will fall.

However, doing this is dangerous. For instance, the State of Alaska has a law that prevents one from speaking the actual truth to jurors on courthouse steps, (the AK anti- "jury tampering" law) the First-Amendment-be-damned. Jury Rights Activist Frank Turney actually went to prison under this law.

...But that's how you know you're being effective. You do something that is so damaging to them that you FORCE the totally illegitimate part of their number to fight you (it doesn't get any less legitimate than prosecutors and ex-prosecutor judges who silence defendants from using constitutional arguments in court).

Too bad most of the libertarian movement is uneducated about fighting our legal system, jury rights activism, and how best to go about it. Even so, they should learn the basics, and pursue this path, associating the libertarian movement with jury rights activism.

Jury Rights Activism should be "what libertarians do". All libertarian candidates should run campaigns based on "restoring constitutional jury rights", and should be able to speak intelligently about the subject while wearing a suit and tie. When this happens, there will be a serious libertarian movement, and not before.

Those who are released from unjust prison terms will become 'true believers', as will their families. (However, if they are not able to be plugged into the libertarian 'system' then the outreach will be grossly sub-optimal.)

Oh, and the democide-enablers at the One Nation Rally? They should be made a public example of, by simply insulting them, stating that they favor an absolutely powerful state, and then proving this on video. It's easy to do, but I have been so fucking poor most of my time working for the Librarian Party that I couldn't ever even afford a video camera for the many times I have done it. (The libertarian party doesn't nurture its activists, treat them fairly or intelligently, etc. It behaves in a schizophrenic manner to them, damning them and treating them like an unnecessary component. Thusly, they are "dead in the water". Every living political movement --no matter the ideology-- does not do this. The people you employ as street-level communicators must be treated well, and given a specific and logical mission. If they are not useless, they will have their own ideas based on their shared ideology, but they must be trained and shaped. If this sounds like the nazis, democrats, and republicans, it is because political organization is separate from political philosophy.)

Doug Casey is right: most of the rich in the USA right now are worthless sycophants of the state who have a sense of entitlement, as are the poor. The middle class and people who are basically already libertarians are simply waiting for an organized LP (or libertarian movement) to "show them the light".

In closing, if libertarians don't want to defeat the state enough to get involved with politics, then they should all support AGI research. As this video shows, we desperately need more intelligence on Earth.

[joshua Corning]

What did I miss?

Tea party and Republicans and conservatives are racists.

Plus newt has two ex-wives.

[Tulpa]

If you look up "kid gloves" in the dictionary, there's a link to this blog post. Excellent job, if that's what you're into...

[Teachers union representative]

give me more more of your money and i'll promise i'll spend it.

[Max]

Notice how the crowd reflected the actual diversity of the country and how the folks attending didn't look and sound like utter morons? The political divide isn't left and right anymore, it's more along the lines of genes and IQ. The Tea Party represents that 5% who believe evolution is a myth and Elvis is still alive.

[Masturbatin' Pete]

This.

[Apogee]

The political divide isn't left and right anymore, it's more along the lines of genes and IQ.

Here's a site you might find interesting.

[Max]

Thanks. A very interesting site.

[Interesting, huh?]

Watch out, Max, the facade is slipping, your genocidal gene is showing through.

[Wegie]

Very important subject...that very few care about.
+5

[nope]

From the "Quotes We Just Happen to Like" page at that site:

"Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock."

- Wynn Cotlin

Isn't that cute?

[El Duderino]

This is nothing new. Progressives have always embraced eugenics, at least the more dedicated progressives anyway.

Eugenics is a natural extension of progressive thinking. You see, as population grows, government must divide its limited resources more. Since each citizen receives less and less, poverty therefore increases more and more. In order to feed every mouth, progressives need to eliminate mouths. If you are not useful to the community (smart enough) then you are a burden and should be eliminated.

On the other hand you have free markets which naturally find ways to feed every mouth through innovation. Innovation only happens when there is a positive reinforcement mechanism in place to allow it to happen. In free markets, that mechanism is profit. If you can sell more food to more people, you can increase your profits so it is a good idea to spend money finding ways to produce more food.

I have made this argument before and I had a progressive just change the subject to the fucking space race. They claim that the soviets produced innovations that were comparable to those made in America at the same time. First of all, these were both GOVERNMENT run projects. Second of all, these projects were in COMPETITION so both parties had a motive to innovate. Competition got us to the moon, not necessarily government spending even though the government spent.

What does this mean? If all societies suddenly became communist countries, there would be competition for citizens to go to that society which is able to provide the most. This competition will necessitate innovation and these governments will eventually move towards the free market as it will be these methods that will result in the greatest gains. I am not saying that all countries should go commie so that this can happen, I am saying that the mechanism would not disappear, it will just shift and exert its influence from a different direction until it finally asserts itself totally. You can dam up a river, but the water will just go elsewhere.

[Max]

The morons in the Tea Party were bound to resurrect eugenics. I mean, we can surely do better as a species. You have to ask why the right of the political spectrum is always crowded with people who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel. The fucking Christian right believes the earth is five thousand years old! Newt Fucking Gingrich is considered an intellectual on the right, for Christ's sake. Eugenics is pretty fucking tempting.

[joshua Corning]

Maybe you should propose a reverse atlas shrugged. The left should find all their own kind with the right genes and all move to Brazil to leave the rest of us to destroy our selves.

[sr7]

They've already done that several times -- USSR, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, Cambodia, etc.

[Max]

See, I consider all those regimes right wing. They involved a massive privatization of the whole economy, making the Communist party the only owner. Thier core ideologies were as pseudo-scientific as intelligent design and thier leadership cults had all the earmarks of religion. Right-wing libertarians share with the communists a dogmatic economic determinism but clearly don't have the talent or brains to ever hope to put any of it into practice (genetics again). For mean, the left is represented today by pragmatic progressivism that recognizes the role of the public sector in a market economy. We've enjoyed the greatest prosperity in a highly integrated mixed economy. Having everything owned by the state --it never withered away--doesn't work, and having no public sector has never been put to the test. Only a wide-eyed true believer would want to risk it. Fortunately such assholes (nothing personal) are still very marginal.

[Cytotoxic]

I see. Freedom=Slavery, Up = Down, War = Peace, etc. Anything else?

[35N4P2BYY]

Now that is a new one, comparing the religious right to the Soviet Union.

You do understand that the deductive conclusion to current policies, nationalization of industry, government determining private compensation, technocratic meddling, and a heaping helping of class warfare, is Communism.

[Jeffersonian]

See, I consider all those regimes right wing.

Holy. Fuck.

[You are not the real Max]

You must be joking here. What a bunch of gibberish. Pseudo, genetics, assholes, withered, privatization, left wing, right wing, progressive. All you missed was ethnic cleansing and Sharia Law. Stay away from Daily KOS, Huffington Post and The People's Cube. Broaden your horizons. Excape your tunnel vision. Blame it all on dead European males.

[seguin]

Your ridiculously stupid analysis of Soviet Communism renders any and all judgments from you on the intelligence of any other individual null and void.

You are a twit.

[Texas Mom 2010]

We have a micro example here in the USA, it explains why the blue states are losing reps and the red states are gaining reps. My fear is that all these dems moving here will start voting in all the crap that caused the rust belt, NY and CA to hemorrhage jobs. Texas is gaining several reps, unfortunately, that means more non-native citizens. Just hope we can continue to out-vote them and keep the socialist cr@p out of here because then there will be nowhere left to move. I just don't want to be forced to live that way.

[El Duderino]

This is called denial. Here is a 12 step program to get over denial:

1. Accept that all totalitarian regimes are essentially government power grabs whereby the ideology of the powerful presumes they have a monopoly on "goodness" and therefore must impose "goodness on the people. This is a progressive principal because progressives necessarily must see government as the granter of freedom, whereas conservatives and libertarians see freedom as the inherent state of humanity.

2. Accept the fact that although these regimes had good intentions, good intentions do not necessarily result in good results. Any good idea that has to be forced upon another to work, is not a good idea and therefore will not work. If you can accept this, you can move on to step 3.

3. Accept the fact that all life is essentially guided by individual rational self interests and the notion that one can control these self interests is patently insane. You can get people to stand in line by handing out potatoes, but you cant get them to want potatoes when other better options exist. People will try to innovate, they will find seeds and they will plant them. People will form black markets to satisfy demands that cannot be satisfied by the government.

4. Accept that black markets will grow until the government is overwhelmed in trying to stop them (war on drugs).

5. When the government becomes overwhelmed, the people will revolt. The revolution will be peaceful if possible, but violent if necessary and the people will always out number the government.

6. Immediately after the revolution, there will be two classes of people. The first class is the adaptive class, they recognize their own freedom and they use it to innovate and prosper. The other side will be the ones who are too stubborn to adapt because they have been heavily conditioned to believe the government must provide for them the way it has been for so long. The people who fail to adapt will become failures.

7. The freedom revolution has all the odds on its side. People inherently understand freedom, because it is their natural state of being and as such is the only state of being they can truly understand. Understanding natural liberty means being aware of the things you know you need to be able to do to survive (obtain food and resources, secure shelter and associate with others to enhance your efforts for the first two goals). If you can accept this step, then you may move on to step 8.

8. Once people begin to see that real freedom is possible, they will abandon the entitlements they have been told represents their "freedom" and they will commit their lives to real freedom because they will see that natural freedom has no limitations while forced "freedom" is nothing but limits.

9. If you accept these natural freedoms, and you are willing to fight for them, you will have become the antithesis of every single totalitarian regime that has ever existed. You can call yourself whatever you wish at this point, but to everyone else, you are a conservative free market libertarian.

10. Enjoy your freedom you have reached it three whole steps sooner than promised.

11. Why are you still reading, this process has been reduced to 9 steps.

12. Seriously, there are only 9. I started at 12, but really 9 is sufficient. To be honest, it could have been a 4 step program. Sorry.

[Hayek not Bags]

Maybe Teabaggers can go to Venus, where there is no global warming. What? The mix of atmospheric gasses makes it insanely hot? What? The levels of heat trapping gasses are rising on earth?

Libertarians must have a good answer for how do stop greenhouse gas build up. What? you want to follow the teabaggers denial strategy? I thought you were smart and liked rational thought? What? Didn't pass high school science classes?

Libertarians who can make a case on how the market can be harnessed to reduce greenhouse gas build up may have a chance to lead in this country. Deniers are as fruity as the fundamentalist 2000 yr old morons. To Venus!

[Masturbatin' Pete]

Maybe Teabaggers can go to Venus, where there is no global warming.

Wait, is it your position that there's "global warming" on Venus?

It's going to be hard to pin that on my SUV.

[Hayek not Bags]

Pretty much. Its damn hot there because of the make up of the atmospheric gases. Gases have physical properties, believe it or not, its called an atmosphere, it exists, it holds and reflects and releases a certain amount of energy based on the proportions of the gases. (ooooo facts!)

The concentrations of different gases are changing on earth. You can measure it in a variety of ways, just like you measure the length of your cock when you are masturbating. Ooooo, measuring!

The gas compostion is changing, the atmosphere's properties are changing, and it just happens to be changing in a way that makes it warmer! More in the direction of Venus for example.

You can beat off wondering why its changing, but to deny the change is as unscientific, as void of rational thought, as denying the raging stiff in your hand.

[Max hearts genocide]

Scratch Max and find the genocidal maniac underneath. Very close to the surface. Keep him away from the button.

[sicardia]

There is no group of Americans more wedded to the creationist viewpoint and downright hostile to intellectualism than blacks. If you don't believe me you're either willfully unobservant or literally don't know any black people in your life. God bless 'em but they be ignant. Trust me. I live with them. It always amuses me to hear the easy, cliched stereo-type of the white conservative bogey-man; a southerner (of course), probably inbred, proudly unschooled, clinging to his guns, bible, and sister, etc... Never a mention that a similar beast howls amongst the Democrats - just as incapable of adjusting to the requirements of the academy, just as plagued with ignorance and superstition, just as irregular in it's family structure, just as parochial in it's outlook. More so, even. But that beast is black. And you're not allowed to mention that I guess.

[Fiscal Meth]

People who look same have same brainthoughts.

[El Duderino]

You imagine a world where everybody right of Joseph Stalin is mentally retarded.

Thanks for proving my point dipshit.

[Sy]

" there would be competition for citizens to go to that society which is able to provide the most"

Uh, Iron Curtain?

[El Duderino]

Yeah, they fucking climbed over, went under and around the fucking wall until the goddamn thing fell down. East Berliners went through hell and back just to find a way to West Berlin and they found DESPITE the threat of DEATH.

Thanks for providing me with an opportunity to further reinforce my point dipshit.

Mexican border cough cough...

[El Duderino]

PS, sorry for calling you a dipshit. I am thinking perhaps I missed the point of your post. Not a bad thing, just means I didnt quite get it.

Are you suggesting the iron curtain would be a barrier preventing people from going elsewhere? If so, I think my point still stands minus the dipshit comment.

If you are saying something else, then I am confused and that is nothing unusual for me.

[Hank Perplack]

"The Tea Party represents that 5% who believe evolution is a myth and Elvis is still alive."

Every Tea Party sign I've ever seen does make reference to both of those points...every single one...

[Mr. Obvious]

Didn't you see the "Obama is just a black Hitler" sign?

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Ya mean the Lyndon LaRouche one? Do his guys count as Tea Partiers now? It's so hard to keep up.

[John C. Randolph]

Lyndon LaRouche is nothing but a low-budget L. Ron Hubbard.

-jcr

[numbers guy]

L. Ron Hubbard was just a less imaginative Cyrus Teed.

[seguin]

Cyrus Teed did not possess a) a yacht; or b) a nifty captains hat.

Hubbard 2, Teed 0.

[hmm]

We have vastly diverging opinions on what utter moron is. Those videos contained just as much stupid as the Tparty videos.

[TheLastBrainLeft]

Bullshit. These morons can't compete with the Beck rally attendees. Not even close. This is idiocy taken to new, epic levels.

[Jake Witmer]

I concur. Many of the people at the Beck rallies have solid fecal matter in their crania, these sorts are mostly formless liquid. Plus, you find a few libertarians and quasi-libertarians in the Beck crowd. You will find a few people in the Beck crowd who have read things such as Thomas Woods' "Nullification", and even a few who have read Clay Conrad's "Nullification".

Nobody but Gillespie was of that caliber here, (or if they read such material, they read it and totally and completely didn't understand it, totally incapable of thinking it through.)

Conformists are these --different sorts of people than you and I.

The beck crowd is inconsistent, intellectually dishonest and cowardly when they cling to war and prohibitionism, and thus very disappointing, but not totally-and-completely devoid of all logical political concepts.

For instance, talk about decentralization of power at a Beck rally, and you will find at least one person who is intelligent enough to talk with. As a matter of fact, you will find about 30% have something intelligent to say, but that they are largeley silent due to the event being hijacked by the religious enemies of freedom.

Find that same 30% at this rally. --You can't.

[Woodrow]

Max, what I saw were a bunch of socialists, rude assholes, and Obama sycophants. But of course I am being redundant.

[JohnD]

Don't confuse Max. He don't need no stinkin' facts!

[Ice Nine]

'Max, what I saw were a bunch of socialists, rude assholes, and Obama sycophants.'

Rather heavy on Negroes, too. Could it meeean something?

[Gene]

HUH?? What are you saying, are you in the real world with the rest of us??

[Your kind of crowd, Max]

Jesse, Charlie, Al and a bunch of self-loathing truthers, holocaust-denying worshipers of mass-murdering communists, and poorly educated, resentful middle-class zombies. Real diverse crowd. And if you're a Jew, not welcome. The only one missing was Obama, who had the decency to stay away.

[Jim Treacher]

Notice how the crowd reflected the actual diversity of the country

Yeah, they had socialists, Marxists, AND communists!

[El Duderino]

Progressives only count diversity in terms of ethnicity. If they had to consider ideology, they would have to say they are homogeneous.

Here is how it works:

Take this list of attendees
White Progressives
Black Progressives
Native American Progressives
Gay Progressives
Jewish Progressives
Catholic Progressives
Muslim Progressives
Asian Progressives

and take out the word "progressives" and then you have diversity.

[Jake Witmer]

That's actually a great insult to use when you are videotaping them. "Yeah, you guys are diverse when it comes to skin color, but your brains are all thinking the same boring obedient thoughts. So I guess you guys are the real racists, because you don't care what people think. You just view them as diverse if they have different skin colors. But you don't care about the real racism when it comes to racist ideas --drug prohibition doesn't bother you even though it has packed the prisons full of innocent people. You don't care! You're still giving them your money, and turning a blind eye to what it's really being spent on! You may all have different skin colors, and genders, but you are all united by the cowardice and conformity in your minds."

"Why, you're so cowardly that you think that the government should be able to deny laetrile and alternative treatments to TERMINAL cancer patients, against their own wishes. That means that you're intellectual cowards. Now, you might have big muscles, but it's worse to be an intellectual coward. An intellectual coward is someone who pretends that gross injustice is acceptable out of fear of social rejection from the group they belong to. You might not be afraid of being beaten up, but your fear of being a social outcast causes you to whimper and get in line like a whimpering slave who offers his wife and kids for punishment to escape the whip. You are all a total monoculture of mental cowardice and weakness."

I gaurantee you that noone will try to do battle with you in the form of argument if you attack them with this line of reasoning. At a rally like this, someone would physically threaten you.

Their entire argument has FORCE as the core of its argument.

Ayn Rand was right about that.

I got especially good at proving this when I was a petitioner for the Libertarian Party.

We need more videos of this on youtube. Too bad the LP doesn't care to win, or there would be a unified and gracefully-decaying strategy to that effect.

[Jeffersonian]

It's like havin' both kinds of music!

[seguin]

Country AND Western? Together? Under the same roof?

Perish the thought!

[El Duderino]

That ought to be illegal. All them dang cowboy boots stompin' at the same time could cause some sort of an earthquake.

[Dylboz]

Genes? REALLY? Genes. You're going to claim that the Tea Party is a product of bad breeding now? Apparently, "progressives" have not abandoned their commitment to eugenics. Margaret Sanger would be proud of you Max.

[Fatty Bolger]

Remember, no progressive idea is ever truly discredited. It's just a matter of having the right people in charge, and doing it better next time.

[Tom]

the folks attending didn't look and sound like utter morons

That's right, Americans are 1/6 of the world's population and consume 90% of the world's drugs.

That's not utterly moronic.

[seguin]

What can I say? We like to party.

[******]

if by 1/6 you mean nowhere near 1/6 then yes! Its actually closer to 1/18

[generic Brand]

But we do still consume 90% of the world's drugs, right? Please let that be true. I just couldn't handle it if the far east opium dens accounted for more than 10%

[Chony]

Exactly. Tea partiers say stupid things like the US has 1/6 of the worlds population. That must mean the world has 1.8 billion people, or America has 1 billion people. But, nevermind, You'd never hear that at this sort of rally.

And, at this rally, they had intelligent solutions like throwing more money at public schools, because that's worked so well in the past. Not stupid solutions, like giving parents a choice. Because, as we all know, Americans are too dumb to handle choice, or at least too spoiled to deserve it.

[Chony]

Oh, and I forgot the other very intelligent idea floated around, that school choice would lead to stratification. That is SO TRUE.

Can you imagine a system where the wealthy can send their kids to private school or move to neighborhoods with good public schools, but the poor are stuck with their lousy neighborhood school?

Worse yet, what about a system where the president sends his kids to a nice public school, while poorer families in the same city are stuck with one of the worst public school systems in the country?

That is exactly what school choice would bring about. It's far more intelligent to say let's keep the status quo, except spend more money and ask the unions to play nice.

[DelD]

Except that the New York Times found that Tea Partiers were much better educated than the general public.

[J.T.]

I thought the tea party was the rich? So you make money by being dumb? Guess we have the best education system in the world.

[#]

they really do need to stick with one meme... are they rich priveledged white people who hate that a black man is president, or are the dumb redkneck hicks? They got to pick one and go with it.

[Woodrow]

They switch between rich and poor at the needs of their haters.

[Brandybuck]

On the other hand, those at the rally all fervently believe in the myth called "Marxism", and support the idea that liberal politicians are genetically superior life forms.

[Max]

Oh sure I believe in genocide...of people who disagree with my smart, and informed opinions. Don't you libertarian fuck wits get it? I am smarter than you and will always be smarter than you. OK now I have to go to the local gay bar and suck off some AIDS infected cock.

[Stogie]

Max, you're right about the IQ divide, but the intelligent people are on the right. On the left we have people who believe that the way to create more jobs is to tax and regulate the employers out of existence; who believe in non-existent global warming when the earth is, in fact, cooling; who haven't a clue as to the most basic economic fundamentals.

[Mary Ann Ludwig]

What a typically ignorant democrat comment.

[Tulpa]

Though the crowd was evenly divided about President Obama's first two years in office, it seemed as though everyone agreed that it's time to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Four years ago, a crowd like that would have been shouting at the top of their lungs that we needed to stop the wars. It wouldn't have required skilled interviewing to come up with such an impression.

One wonders what happened in between.

[Almanian]

An election

[hmm]

Hope and motherfuckin' change.

[Tom]

I just shit my pants laughing.

[Tulpa]

You should get that looked at.

[Fatty Bolger]

The "right people" in charge.

[Hank Perplack]

All the archetypes were on display--including, my favorite, the lone bearded socialist.

They won't be happy in November...

[1.5"]

Is it the socialist that is lonely or his beard?

[Jake Witmer]

Being lone doesn't mean one is lonely. The beard was kept company by a moustache, so I think they were referring to "the socialist". Besides, he has his internal dialogue to keep him company (and continually explain --amid the cognitive dissonance-- why his anticipated result doesn't match reality).

[Hank Perplack]

It's a good thing there weren't any tar pits around there...

Or maybe a bad thing...

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Well, it would make sense. Groups of fossils are often found near tar pits.

[Jake Witmer]

LOL. Evolutionary dead ends. The last people to get into a pyramid scheme. The flatlands of the bell curve. 😀

[Paul]

"fund jobs, not war"

So is that a protest against Obama?

[Xenocles]

It's a protest against the Republicans in Congress who are using their minority status to ram through unpopular legislation against the wishes of the Democrats.

[JohnD]

1+

[Wegie]

You two enjoy being full of shit...like all Obama supporters. The Democrats control it all, therefore they get all the credit for this country's situation.

[Mike Laursen]

Umm, they were being sarcastic.

[Wegie]

Umm, one doesn't seem to know how to post!

[Xenocles]

The conventional wisdom in these situations calls for something more along the lines of "My bad, I missed the obvious joke." You should probably go with that instead of working from the douchebag playbook.

[Xenocles]

[Xenocles]

Should read "[slow clap]" but I put it in pointy brackets.

[Fatty Bolger]

If you had Max's genes and IQ you would never have made that mistake.

[Fatty Bolger]

If you had Max's genes and IQ you would never have made that mistake.

[alittlesense]

If you had Max's genes and IQ it would require thought to breathe....

[Xenocles]

I LOL'd at the double. Well done if intentional.

[Sy]

"It's a protest against the Republicans in Congress who are using their minority status to ram through unpopular legislation against the wishes of the Democrats."

WTF?! How can you be the minority party AND ram legislation through? My head hurts now.

[Mary Ann Ludwig]

It takes a majority to 'RAM THROUGH' legislation, idiots. That would be the DEMOCRATS. Most of the unpopular legislation being rammed through Congress is because of the socialists on the left.

[El Duderino]

So what that sign is saying is that military service isn't a job. Not saying war is good, but as far as government funding of jobs is concerned, military jobs are probably one of the only jobs they can effectively create.

[SFC B]

I keep this in mind every time I see the unemployment numbers ~10%. I keep waiting for some "brilliant" executive plan to help unemployment be massively increasing military end-strength and trying to get all those unemployed 18-24 year olds into the Armed Forces.

[El Duderino]

Of course the progressives could use this military as well, but the last time progressives were allowed to expand the military, we ended up with the National Socialist Workers Party using the military for census work.

Knock Knock
Papers
Jew?
Bang!
Mark negative one Fritz. We are almost at our quota.

[Sy]

Actually it's pretty much all going the way of civilian contracting. They're starting to reduce force numbers because of the cost now. One of the reasons I left the military was that there was no guarantee for a slot for my job. Then again, that was mid 2008, pre-Afghan surge.

[Jake Witmer]

When people naively expect the government to do something good, while protesting against something they think is bad (in this case, war), I like to tell them: "You don't get a choice, serf. Good thing you're not actually a threat to the war machine, or the war machine would crush you."

[Almanian]

Just for the record:

THEY TUK RRR JERRRRBS!!!!11!!1

[Anonymous Coward]

@ 0:03 Forcing black people to dance for their amusement. Obviously racist.

@ 0:24 Julian Bond doesn't believe in divorce.

@ 0:55 Dick Gregory is a drug warrior.

@ 2:39 Julian Bond doesn't believe in too much government interference.

@ 3:50 Ed Schulz: "They want to change this country..." Is he a closet conservative?

@ 4:07 Ed Schulz doesn't know what the motives or thought processes of Tea Partiers. But he does know they're bad.

Fun times. Fun, fun times.

[El Duderino]

@ 0:55 Dick Gregory is a drug warrior.

And he is on a hunger strike for three years. That must be an interesting hunger strike, he looks well ahh rounded.

[Jimbo]

You misunderstood his "hunger strike." His "hunger" is on strike.

[El Duderino]

LOL, and he isnt going to stop eating until he has surpassed Chris Christie. C'mon funnyman EAT like your life depends on it.

[Mr Whipple]

If you want to know what teachers and administrators are "earning" in NJ, here's a handy little interactive guide.

In my town, a first year High School English teacher makes $52,000 and teaches 8 classes. A 20 year teacher, that teaches one class, makes over $80,000. The median income in NJ is about $62,000. Teachers only work 9 months out of the year. Then there's the pension and benefits. Maybe it's time the residents start voting on what teachers' salaries should be. Ha!

http://php.courierpostonline.c.....e/edstaff/

[yup]

I know teachers in Palm Beach county that collect unemployment over the summer because they are not working. They have someone deposit the checks while they vacation around the world.

[Mr Whipple]

Damn. In NJ, they have the option to spread out their salary over 12 months.

[Madbiker]

Not true, not in every district. And teachers who get paid on a 10-month schedule are not allowed to collect unemployment benefits over the summer if they have a contract to return to work in September.

[Madbiker]

at least in NJ, that is. I don't know what the policy is for other states.

[clerical error]

I believe in NJ you are required to be a unionized construction worker in order to collect off-season unemployment benefits.

[Drax the Destroyer]

But you see Mr. Whipple, they deserve it because they have to watch your brats all day while recovering from hangovers. It's hard work being a worthless piece of shit.

[Jake Witmer]

There should be mobs with pitchforks and torches hunting these people down like the dogs they are. Over their protests, we should simply proclaim the truth: "Oh, you wanted my money by force, but now you don't want me to use force? You wanted to steal my money to build prisons, while insulting my intelligence by claiming that little timmy needs thousands of dollars for pencils and books? You're OK with the police destroying my life, stealing my home, and putting me in prison while my family is forced into poverty if I don't hand over my tax money, 100% of which is misspent, but now you want to eschew force? ..Fuck you."

Our side has always been too civilized, all the way to the gas chamber. The government know this, and exploit it. Sadly, I think it's because too few libertarians actually comprehend individual liberty, and "being sovereign". As much as Jim Davidson can be a hothead, he has exactly the right attitude to social parasites such as the ones at this rally: Give them the force they are asking for. When their argument is force, ...respond with force.

Avoid them, give them nothing of your labor, a pox on their homes.

[yup]

School shouldn't cost so much! More money for teachers!
Corporations charge too much! Pay the employees more!
Paying higher taxes is okay if you get everything for free!
You are only free if the ruling class controls everything!

What else did I miss?

[hmm]

Couldn't resist the Koch sign could ya.

[joshua Corning]

The irony is she said know one knows who he is...

Obviously she did not know that the Kochs had given money to the reason foundation.

[hmm]

The "Are you at your ideal body weight?" question was priceless. That retard didn't know what to say.

[Woodrow]

Dems are against divorce now?

[El Duderino]

Only with regards to Newt Gingrich.

[West Texas Boy]

I am so fucking tired of hearing - from both sides of the spectrum - that something needs to be done about "jobs."

FUCK "JOBS"

Jobs are a byproduct of healthy industry. They are not a goal in and of themselves and they most definitely are not something the government itself should be trying to encourage or create.

Jobs are what happen when someone has too much work to do by himself, so he gets someone to help. If you want to work, GO FUCKING WORK. Start a fucking business. Find something that you can do and do it and sell the product of your labor to others.

What? You don't want work for yourself? You want to work for someone else? Fine, but it's not businessowners' responsibility to employ people and its not the federal governments responsibility to somehow force them to. If you want a fucking job, then AGITATE THE FUCKING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO EXPAND BUSINESS AND "JOBS" WILL COME. Make it easier for the people who actually do business and jobs will come as a byproduct. Jesus Christ, and you're also asking for higher taxes on the very people you need to create your precious JOBS? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY? Why does everyone want to be treated like a child? And the goddam federal government ENCOURAGES this shit.

I am so fucking tired of this straight out of Marx shit that somehow the people are just entitled to share in someone else's fortune and capital in the name of "jobs." GO MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING JOB.

Businesses aren't in the business of making "jobs," they're in the business of CREATING VALUE FOR THEIR OWNERS. When you say that a business should be making more JOBS, you are saying that the capital of those business owners should not actually belong to them and belongs to the "workers". Thanks a fucking lot, Stalin.

"Fund Jobs Not Wars"

Has it every occurred to these people that only one of those is actually the responsibility of the federal government to fund, and its not "JOBS".

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I am surly this morning and this isn't helping.

[hmm]

Caps lock and bold. You kicked the cat didn't you!

[John]

Basically the message seems to be that they are pissed the government is stealing money to fund wars rather than give it to them.

Wars bad
Stealing good.
Giving the stolen money to them better.

Got it.

[nancy]

JOHN, Either you are a liberal making a joke (in your opinion) or someone that has no comprehension. The guy is pissed off that the government does not understand how to let the AMERICAN CITIZEN be responsible for themselves. We do not need to be held by the hand and have UNCLE SAM pay for our basic needs. THE GOVERNMENT needs to stop punishing BUSINESSES (large and small)so they can produce their products, thrive and here comes the part where you may be CONFUSED, and EMPLOY PEOPLE that feel responsible for their own destiny. NO ONE WANT TO BE INVOLVED IN WAR, but I am sorry to inform you that it looks like THE WORLD will be AT WAR WITH THE TERRORISTS for a very long time. The USA can not just sit back and hope for the best, we need to defend AMERICANS. It is interesting that you used the term 'the government is stealing money' to fund wars. You sound like a person that feels ENTITLED and will sit back and wait for his next HAND OUT. Why don't you man up and stand up for AMERICA and not SOCIALISM & IGNORANCE. Have a good day =)

[pete]

you know on this score this liberal agrees with the post- everyday i tell my daughter , " you don't have to get a job, instead you can make a job." Left wing economic policies are good at filling in the potholes of a rough road, but they stink at building the actual road.

[Tulpa]

Left wing economic policies are good at filling in the potholes of a rough road

We've had two plus years of leftist economic policies (yes I'm including the last year of Bush) on this rough economic road, and there are still a lot of blown tires and dislodged mufflers showing up.

[Contrarian P]

Just the last year of Bush? When were his economic policies consistent with smaller government, lower spending? I must have missed that part. I realize there was a tax cut in there, but there was no reduction in spending at all during the Bush years. In fact, he followed what had actually been a somewhat fiscally responsible democratic presidency with the biggest growth of government expenditures in my lifetime. The big achievement of his administration? Medicare part D. I can't ever see calling Bush's economic policies even remotely consistent with anything other than leftist ideals, except for the rhetoric.

[Mr. Obvious]

You forgot Bush's biggest accomplishment: pissing away vast amounts of money in a vain attempt to create two nations that will bring enlightenment to the ME.

[Pat Garvin]

I'm sick of every complaining about Bush. Bush is frigging gone, for Christ's sake. Let's move on. Yes, he spent a lot but that doesn't mean every Republican will ignore spending as the problem. And the answer to Bush's spending is not to elect a Democrat. That mistake has been made already.

[Jake Witmer]

Only a libertarian MIGHT make a difference. All chance of meaningful change is gone when D and R or G or ISO or Commiefuck or whatever is elected. But this nation isn't even starting to crawl toward liberty, when it's past time to run. The USA has become the USSA, and the rats don't even know the ship is sinking.

China is funding Hugo de Garis's artificial brainbuilding, and the USA is going the nazi route of "bigger = better on the battlefield". Sorry folks, brains win every war, and our crumbling dictatorship of the proletariat is going to find that out the hard way if we don't get honest QUICK.

[Mike Laursen]

This. And, in a thriving economy many would be able to retire, work fewer hours, take some tome out from working without worrying about the ever rising cost of living.

[Liberal Ignoramus]

But some people would be a lot richer than others! That's just wrong!

[Kathy]

That is the basis of a capitalist society... i.e. the United States. Fair smair.

[El Duderino]

The liberals are obviously not able to understand what you are saying, or they prefer not to hear it. Republicans who believe they can create jobs are just being ignorant, they will say "I am for creating jobs in this country" and in the same breath add "we need to stimulate job growth by creating tax breaks for companies that hire people" or fill in any other slightly less redistributive idea than the progressive idea here.

Cutting taxes and eliminating government regulations and red tape is the only way government can influence job growth because with more money and less paperwork people can more easily create their own jobs.

[Texas Mom 2010]

Trash the health care monstrosity, suspend all regulation and executive orders from last 4 years (yes 4), extend currents tax rates and cut federal budget back to 2000 levels and I guarantee that the private sector will take off and jobs will be created. Problem solved!

[Gay Communist Gun Club]

Dear Mr. FuckFuckFuckFuckFuck,

Thank you for the following fucking gems:

FUCK "JOBS"

That's right, if you can't find work in the formal job market, there's always fucking prostitution.

"If you want to work, GO FUCKING WORK. Start a fucking business."

Right fucking on! Everybody open a fucking gun shop! There's always a market for fucking guns. And if you can't find any fucking customers because people don't have any fucking money, because they don't have fucking jobs, then become a fucking pimp, and take your fucking ass to fucking Washington, DC or fucking Wall Street where at least some people are still making some fucking money.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

Exactly, then the more fucking "fuck fuck fuck fuck" fucking going on, the richer you fucking get.

Fucking problem fucking solved.

[Contrarian P]

Way to completely miss the guy's point. I agree that maybe he didn't have to use quite so much profanity, but his point is still valid. Government cannot create jobs. Jobs are created by business. Maybe, then, government should adopt policies that allow business to operate with a minimum of parasitic leeches, which might free up some cash for hiring?

If the country has 10% unemployment, 90% of the country is working. There are plenty of customers out there for new products and services. Seriously, check the drama. The craft beer industry is exploding, so perhaps the people should open a brewery instead of a gun shop or prostitution?

[Gay Communist Gun Club]

Sure, the answer is for everyone who doesn't have a job to start their own business. Simple as that. And make sure you hire plenty of Mexicans or anyone who will work for peanuts.

Or perhaps we should be more like China, and disregard any and all labor or environmental standards, or any other "parasitic leech" like burden, and cry, "Come back Apple and Hewlett Packard! We'll treat our people worse, and trash our environment even more! I promise!"

How low do you want to go?

[Gay Communist Gun Club]

I love guns because they can fit in my ass, the larger the better!

[Contrarian P]

If the guns can fit along with your head, I truly am impressed.

[Texas Mom 2010]

LOL

[Texas Mom 2010]

LOL

[El Duderino]

LOL ... I peed just a little bit...

[Contrarian P]

Perhaps those who do start their own businesses can hire the remainder? That's usually how it works. But maybe we should just jump on your bandwagon and all give up and shoot ourselves, because it seems to be the only thing you're adding to the discussion.

[Almanian]

How low do you want to go?

Somalia.

**glug glug glug glug glug**

[generic Brand]

The other thing your missing queer commie is that the entire country probably couldn't be employed at the same time. In other words 100% employment looks good on paper but probably won't happen with all of the problems currently in the way, like illegal immigration, amount of taxes placed on businesses, and the fact that some people simply feel it's more worth their time to not work and just get paid welfare/unemployment checks. You only have to "look for work" to keep receiving your checks.

10% unemployment really isn't that bad considering all the screwed up things the government is doing.

[generic Brand]

The other thing your missing queer commie is that the entire country probably couldn't be employed at the same time. In other words 100% employment looks good on paper but probably won't happen with all of the problems currently in the way, like illegal immigration, amount of taxes placed on businesses, and the fact that some people simply feel it's more worth their time to not work and just get paid welfare/unemployment checks. You only have to "look for work" to keep receiving your checks.

10% unemployment really isn't that bad considering all the screwed up things the government is doing.

[generic Brand]

The other thing your missing queer commie is that the entire country probably couldn't be employed at the same time. In other words 100% employment looks good on paper but probably won't happen with all of the problems currently in the way, like illegal immigration, amount of taxes placed on businesses, and the fact that some people simply feel it's more worth their time to not work and just get paid welfare/unemployment checks. You only have to "look for work" to keep receiving your checks.

10% unemployment really isn't that bad considering all the screwed up things the government is doing.

[generic Brand]

The other thing your missing queer commie is that the entire country probably couldn't be employed at the same time. In other words 100% employment looks good on paper but probably won't happen with all of the problems currently in the way, like illegal immigration, amount of taxes placed on businesses, and the fact that some people simply feel it's more worth their time to not work and just get paid welfare/unemployment checks. You only have to "look for work" to keep receiving your checks.

10% unemployment really isn't that bad considering all the screwed up things the government is doing.

[generic Brand]

The other thing your missing queer commie is that the entire country probably couldn't be employed at the same time. In other words 100% employment looks good on paper but probably won't happen with all of the problems currently in the way, like illegal immigration, amount of taxes placed on businesses, and the fact that some people simply feel it's more worth their time to not work and just get paid welfare/unemployment checks. You only have to "look for work" to keep receiving your checks.

10% unemployment really isn't that bad considering all the screwed up things the government is doing.

[Fatty Bolger]

You, sir, are one ignorant fuck.

[El Duderino]

Since when does the word fuck negate a valid argument?

Jobs are created by demand, not by stimulus. Stimulus is taking YOUR money and giving it to someone else to "create" a job they do not have any good reason to create.

Economics 101:

I have sold 100 cords of wood and I need to get it to the buyer by the weekend.

I need help hauling this wood here all I need are three able bodied people to help.

Hi sir, I am from the government and I will give you this cash if you HIRE five men instead of three.

Hmm let me see here. This man from the government is going to give me a temporary loan of money to hire 2 people who will probably not even fit in the fucking truck and then once I have spent that "stimulus" money on those two extra people, I will still have these two nincompoops sitting around the break table WITH THEIR THUMBS DIRECTLY UP THEIR ASSES BECAUSE I CANT JUST FIRE THEM. Hiring people is easy, getting rid of people is difficult.

Just because some senator says, "this bill will help save or create a million jobs" doesnt make it true. In fact, the very fact that a fucking senator is saying this should raise a fucking red flag. Senators have but one vested interest and that is the continuation of their careers. Every fucking program they come up with is essentially an "everybody gets laid" bill, or if that is too over the top to sell, a "chicken in every pot" bill. It's called pandering for votes and it works because politicians have but one set of positive and negative reinforcement mechanisms. Give people handouts at the expense of others (including the people getting the handouts)and you have bought their votes. Punish the bad "rich" people and you have satisfied the bloodlust of everyone who has been told to believe they will always be poor and you have won their votes. Its like some kind of fucking carnie game.

[RedGrandma]

As a struggling small business owner who provides jobs to 40+ workers I have only two words for you...

Woo Hoo!

[Xine]

+10000

[Xine]

That was for West Texas Boy's fuck fest.

[Wild Biker]

If I delete all the cursing, you have a reasoned argument on all points. I'd add these few points. We (as in my generation) have allowed the schools to indoctrinate our children (and grandchildren in some cases) with the idea that the government is here to help and the course to prosperity is through a job. They have intentionally demonized capitalism and entrepreneurism. So, we have entire generations who don't value liberty, capitalism and America. We also have a government that has burdened entrepreneurs with regulations that have nothing to do with the conduct of business.
So, is it any wonder even teachers and all progressives/liberals think the government can 'create' jobs? Or that a one-time tax credit will motivate hiring new employees? Or that if it isn't working, just through more money at it?
I also agree that 'privatization' of schools will not work with the teachers' union in the picture. This is just an attempt to co-opt what is happening out there: they want to force unionization of private schools.

[nancy]

The ANT
AND THE
GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different ...
Two Different Versions ...
Two Different Morals
OLD VERSION
The ant works
hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper
thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm
and well fed.

The grasshopper has
no food or shelter, so he
dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN
VERSION

The ant works hard
in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant
is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper
calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be
allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN,
and ABC show up to
provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant
in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears
on Oprah
with the grasshopper
and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages
a demonstration in front of the ant's
house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome."

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright
has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper's sake.
President Obama condems the ant
and blames

President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the
Pope
for the grasshopper's
plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid
exclaim in an interview with Larry
King that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the
grasshopper,
and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts
the Economic Equity &
Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of
the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number
of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar
and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper
and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,
crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken
over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses
bringing the rest
of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2010.

[Susan]

West Texas Boy for President! Man I love this guy!

[David S]

Absolutely agree with you regardless of the follow on comments. A little on the vulgar side, but hell, if I'd not had my coffee yet...But to the point, thanks for mentioning the get the hell off your ass and do it. Only problem we have now is that the Gov is trying to make that impossible. I recall a theory I had as a kid - if you have a problem, you must eliminate the source. In this term, it means we have to start working with our 'leaders' to make sure they are indeed our leaders and not looking out for themselves or some ideology. We need a return to Regan style trickle down - in my lifetime, it's all that has worked.

[Rich]

Would someone *kindly* post a transcript of what Jesse Jackson said? I listened to him three times and still couldn't dig meaning out of his affected mumbling.

Other than that -- nice work, Nick et al.

[dither]

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a beah.
The Tea Party's racist, did you heah?
Welfare blacks steal and rob,
keep Sharpton and me in a job.
We got Imus you can't deny,
We is democrats, could you die.

[JES]

Ah, ayum Sayum.
Sayum, Ah ayum.
Ah wiyo nawt eet
Green ex an hayum

[Troy]

[spittake]

[Harvard]

We don't want welfare;
We want our fair share!

[Susan]

then go EARN it!

[joshua Corning]

"In his day Republicans and Democrats had one thing in common, a common commitment to public accommodations."

Why a white man from Washington state, like me, understood that I have no idea.

[joshua Corning]

Wow that was a great question Nick gave Jackson.

Dr.Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, M.D. (4 March 1908 ? 1 May 1976) was an American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur and surgeon. He was one of the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Jesse Jackson,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._R._M._Howard

[Chumlix]

Ha! The vids I have seen of the Event in DC yesterday are hilarious: The Big Negro Machine in motion!

[WhereYou'reWrong]

Hey, look! It's a troll playing the let's-make-'em-look-racist game!

[Moby Chumlix]

Awww, you got me!

[Troy]

Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton

Ugh, three of the most disgusting human beings on the planet. I think I'd have to take a shower after talking to these pigs. And I think the only way I'd actually talk to them is at the point of a gun.

[Ice Nine]

And then, Dick Gregory. Wow, one of the planet's great thinkers, no?

[Mr. Obvious]

I find it offensive that you left out Julian Bonds.

[hmm]

Let the crowd estimate wars begin!

[FOX News]

There were at least 157 people there.

[MSNBC]

There were at least 800,000 people there.

[Chris Matthews]

I felt a thrill running up my ass!

[Barney Frank]

Chris, I seem to be one Gerbil shy. Can you please check and see if you can find it?

[Jerry Penacoli]

I got a couple extra you can have, but you'll owe me.

[Ice Nine]

You want it back?!

[Barney Frank]

Only if it's still breathing.

[D'MOCRACY]

That's not a thrill Chris, it's your pink slip for being unable to attract any viewers from outside the purple shirt crowd.

[Juice]

There was at least 1/6 the global population there.

[John]

Aging white socialists march on Washington nostalgic for a forgotten past and insecure over their loss of status. As state governments go bankrupt and the federal government hopefully steps back from the brink, a lot of these government jobs, these social and political activist jobs are going away and they are not coming back. These people are bitter about that. They cling to their socialism and their memories of a past that is not coming back. Somewhere a black guy or a Mexican or a redneck is starting a business and worrying about how high taxes are and how hard it is to get the government off his back. And that is the bell tolling for these kinds of people and their position of privilege in society.

[Mike Laursen]

Hope you're right about this.

[Mr Whipple]

I'd like to see just one of those MFers start their own fucking business and run it for 1 year. The thing that really pisses me off, is they claim that the unions are responsible for building a "Middle Class". It was entrepreneurs that created a Middle Class, if anything.

Maybe, at one time unions were necessary, but that was only because of the government's neglect to protect the life, liberty, and/or property of individuals. Now, it seems we've come full-circle. Unions are as antiquated as the steam engine, yet the government still doesn't properly protect our basic rights. In fact, they are taking more and more of them away, thanks to the unions. What a fucking waste.

[Tulpa]

Every time I see someone with a bumper sticker demanding that I thank unions for giving me a weekend, I want to tell the driver that he or she should thank Republicans for ending slavery, ending the Vietnam War, and ending double-digit inflation.

[Mr Whipple]

The first two of those "Republicans" were also responsible fiat currency, the first one - legal tender laws. Inflation was the result of Nixon breaking Bretton Woods and enacting price and wage controls. Paul Volker, who was nominated by Jimmy Carter, broke inflation. He was later fired by Reagan, and replaced with Greenspan.

You'll forgive me if I don't "thank" the Republicans, either.

[Yonemoto]

Although to Reagan's credit, the best of the Volker era would not have been possible without his collusion.

[Mr Whipple]

None of it would have been possible without the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, or the FOMC in the Banking Act of 1933.

Hmmmm?

LBJ really fucked everything up, and Nixon, instead of fixing it, just kicked the can down the road, and we've been kicking it ever since. Besides, I know old-time, hard core Republicans that despise Volker, to this day.

[Tulpa]

I wouldn't thank the GOP either. The point I was trying to make was that it's silly to thank someone merely for being marginally related to someone else who did something good in the distant past, which is what those union stickers demand.

[Mr Whipple]

Fair enough.

[joshua Corning]

Every time I see someone with a bumper sticker demanding that I thank unions for giving me a weekend

I never understood this.

I thought the Jews gave us the weekend.

"On the seventh day the lord rested" is in genesis. The oldest Book of the Old Testament. That shit is probably 4000 years old. Did i miss it when Unions invented time travel?

[Tulpa]

The sabbath is only one day.

[Mr Whipple]

I remember working in Jewish homes and we had to finish for the day before sundown on Friday.

I was working on this job once and an Orthodox Jew came over to me, outside, and asked me if I could come in his house and turn off the garbage disposal, or something. After a certain time, of a particular day, they were not allowed to operate anything electrical. If it was already on, like a light, that was OK. They weren't allowed to anything on or off.

[Jake Witmer]

Religion is very similar to obsessive compulsiveness and other mental disorders found in marginal intelligences. Sadly, religious dementia appears to be a communicable software virus for the human mind.

[joshua Corning]

So the unions allegedly improved the weekend...they did not create it?

[Harvard]

Point of fact: It was Al Gore that invented the weekend.

[El Duderino]

Jesus Christ invented the weekend. Blue laws were the laws written to accommodate Christians who believed God said to rest on the 7th day (that is Sunday).

Anyway, only fucking bankers and union workers have Sundays off so there are not really that many people thanking unions for their weekend.

[rriord2]

Hayek talked about unions in a similar vein to what Mr. Whipple is saying. He wrote about it in 1960 in his The Constitution of Liberty. Great book! I highly recommend it to everyone here:

http://www.amazon.com/Constitu.....amp;sr=8-1

[Mr. Obvious]

Life cycle of a labor union:
1. work to achieve reasonable goals for improving working conditions
2. achieve originally stated goals; lose membership due to mission success
3. change focus of union to promotion of unreasonable goals, e.g. lifetime employment and absurd retirement benefits, without rewriting mission statement
4. continue to lose membership
5. achieve some of unreasonable goals destroying industrial competitiveness and driving jobs out of state or overseas
6. continue to lose membership
7. become an advocate for and adjunct to government for purposes of self-preservation
8. (hypothetical) piss enough people off to get self banned

[El Duderino]

LOL, I can see you live by your namesake.

[They may be worried, but]

They may be aging and they may be worried, but they still have a strangle-hold on all the levers of power at all levels of government. They will use every legal, quasi-legal and illicit tactic to keep their power and privilege. It will take a generation to pry those aging, clinging hands away. But we'll probably just face the "next-gen" of usurpers after that.

[Rick Sanchez]

And the Jews!

[CNN]

Watch your mouth or you'll lose your job. By the way, who is this Rick Sanchez?

[Wise Ass]

Your future cabana boy?

[SteinBlum]

I sure cannot afford him. Wouldn't want him around the kids, anyway.

[White Bread USA]

And the Mexicans!

[Pan Bimbo]

Real white bread

[Oh My!]

John|10.3.10 @ 10:25AM|#
"Aging white socialists march on Washington nostalgic for a forgotten past and insecure over their loss of status."

I laughed, I cried, I wet myself a little.

[Jesse Jackson]

The consternation between procreation and the masturbation causation by industrial mechanization has created a probation of job creation realization throughout the nation due to Bush's non taxation fixation with democratic tax cuts personification.

[Jake Witmer]

Awesome

[Wha'?]

EFF founder Kapor? Doesn't he realize....?

[Isaac Bartram]

What the fuck was he even talking about?

Most of the answers seemed to range from semi-coherent (Rangel) to the batshit insane (Gregory).

[-]

comedian-activist Dick Gregory

How long does he get to be called a comedian?
The last time he said anything remotely funny was in 1972.

[Isaac Bartram]

How does anyone actually get to be call an activist?

What is all the activism for. For whom are they being active?

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who want all the free stuff these activists want given out (at someone else's expense), and for all I know some of them need and even deserve it. But for the most part it seems to me that the benighted masses these people claim to be all concerned about are pretty much oblivious to all this activity on their behalf.

Until someone gives me evidence to the contrary, I'm going to conclude that, for the most part, when all these activists collect in one place like this it's pretty much just one big self-congratulatory circle-jerk.

[Federal Dog]

"How does anyone actually get to be call an activist?"

Two steps:

(1) You must be a hermetically sealed narcissist for whom self-display is the sole value in life;

and

(2) You declare activist status.

The closest I come to a political philosophy is dedication to getting the fucking government and self-declared activists out of my life.

[Jake Witmer]

It's in my nature to agree with you, but that said, this is why the libertarian movement doesn't interfere much with tyranny in the USA.

Before I continue: Political activists of this kind don't do much but whine for other people's money from an entrenched tyranny. So your criticism of them is true. But your criticism also applies to libertarian activists.

A libertarian activist typically talks with 500 or so people per day. He gets them to sign petitions that place (typically inferior and unelectable) libertarian candidates on the ballot.

If he's a good activist, he describes the libertarian political perspective.

If he's a better activist, he takes the contact information of interested people who want to defeat some form of local statist tyranny, and unites them with other like-minded people.

If he's a better activist, he dedicates a lot of his time to disseminating jury rights information to jurors who are trying victimless crime cases, and urging defendants not to plea bargain (but chances are, he's not a lawyer, because if he was, he'd be barred and disbarred on the same day).

If he's a better activist, he takes a look at the ballot access laws and demographics in the various states, and formulates a strategy for taking over one state legislature with libertarians within 10-20 years' time.

If he's a better activist, he talks with high-profile thinkers, researchers, media personalities, and attempts to enlist them in the battle to defeat tyranny.

The EFF's Mitch Kapor is an activist. (Disappointing, because the EFF is so often right, and his comments here seemed so brainless.)

If a journalist tried to do all the things I just suggested, they wouldn't have a story at the end of the day to show for it, but they might have effected political change.

The fact that the Libertarian Party and movement as a whole hates its activists and doesn't support them, means that the work they do will not get done.

Too bad.

...That work can stop gas chambers and prisons from being built.

[marlok]

I think an activist is just a journalist who can't use a typewriter.

[Anonymous]

+1

[seguin]

No, that's Gerry Mak, walfare hipster.

[seguin]

welfare. I'm not sure what walfare is.

[Apogee]

Free sheetrock

[El Duderino]

LOL

[joshua Corning]

The last time he said anything remotely funny was in 1972.

That bit in the video about his doctor dying 30 years ago was pretty good.

[les clue]

I must confess. I didn't realize the interview was with a comedian. I thought it was just a random street person who had wondered into the rally looking to garbage pick some prime table scraps.

[J sub D]

Though the crowd was evenly divided about President Obama's first two years in office, it seemed as though everyone agreed that it's time to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Which doesn't quite explain the exactly zero anti-war protests I've seen in metro Detroit since January 2009.

I guess with Hope! and Change! in the White House, dead people in Mesopotamia and central Asia just isn't that important anymore.

[Ha Ha]

I think you see just as many anti-war protesters at a tea-party rally nowadays as you see at these big-government rallies. A very few. Strange, indeed.

[Let's change the subject]

seemed as though everyone agreed that it's time to end the wars......then again, maybe it seemed otherwise, wishy-washy, let's not bring too much attention to it, ok

[Jewel]

I liked their sign about ending the "fucking wars". That's class.

[Hazel Meade]

Yes. It's sort of the mirror image of the whole "where were these people when Bush was spending like crazy!" argument.

The left does the same thing. They shut up about Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as their side got into office.

[awwfuqit]

Julian Bond is Alan Colmes. I've never seen them in the same place at the same time.
Ponder!

[GMT II]

Just look at Alan's arse and you will find both of them.

[P Brooks]

I'm too busy to go back to the Indianapolis Star website to provide you indolent bastards with a link, but there is a story about the final act in a long-running drama debacle involving Motors Liquidation (formerly known as General Motors) and the UAW local.

The local, in defiance of both simple good sense and the national office, voted to reject a revised contract which would allow the sale and continued existence of a manufacturing plant in Indianapolis.

Apparently, the members of this UAW local are operating under the misapprehension that Government Motors Autonomous Collective will andsoon be ramping up production expanding their operations, and will transfer the Indy workers to other plants around the state at their previous lordly rate of compensation.

Nice work, Comrades.

[Darn shame]

What a shame about GM because they finally got some good designers. Looks like Obama-chosen CEO and the UAW (now the management?) are going to fuck it all up, permanently. Watching and waiting.

[seguin]

The REAL sad thing is that they were steadily improving from the ditch they were in in the early 80's, mostly starting in the early 90's. They had really gotten some good stuff in the pipeline (new Malibu, the Rendezvous, etc.) when this crap hit the fan and they got took over.

And when Whitacre exclaims that he wants the government out, he gets sacked. Yay. I'm going to miss GM's product...usually good designs albeit a little heavy. You can thank Congress for most of that.

[Jeffersonian]

And why wouldn't Government Motors be ramping up production, now that said government has arrogated to itself the power to compel each and every one of us to buy one of its products?

[Ricky]

Yeah, in response to crowd demographic, that's my question too... Why is it when a group of fiscal conservatives gather, the MSM writes them off as illegitimate because "there's a lot of white faces," but a predominantly black crowd supporting here congregates, whatever cause it is immediately is justified and credible? I'm not sure if people realize that 12% of the country is black and 65-70% is white. Statistics aren't racist, they're numbers. Doesn't it make more sense for politicians to pander to whichever group compromises the highest % of the electorate? I love these "a day without a Mexican" movies, trying to teach us how society would crumble without them. Someone should make a "day without white people." see how much tax revenue you can still collect on the backs of minorities to fund your social justice program then!

[Yonemoto]

"Statistics aren't racist, they're numbers."

Define black. Actually probably a good part of that 12%'s white, too.

[Azathoth]

"day without white people." ,

That would be insane. Could you picture such a movie?

Mexicans getting up and making their way to hardware stores--only to find them closed, with no gringos to hire them.

Nice cliche,no? I predict that such a film would start that way and quickly evolve into utter chaos--'when the cats away....'

When the power goes out--
The TV, radio, phones--all gone.

And I'm not making this a race thing--if 75% of the population vanished there'd be trouble no matter what their race.

But doing it this way might highlight exactly who's needed.

Something similar could be done wrt unions. Where would the UAW be without Henry Ford? A film that shows where the value actually is.

[left coast rebel]

Lots of links here including juxtaposed aerial shots:

http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/.....erial.html

[numbers guy]

The inevitable "mine is bigger" rally comparisons are meant to convey relative voter enthusiasm and overall political support, but size comparisons don't tell the whole story. Presumably most Beck supporters paid their own way to the Beck rally, while many of the lefty rally attendees were shipped in with either tax dollars or compelled union dues. Also, how can the size of the lefty rally indicate political support and enthusiasm when so many at the rally were complaining about Obama and the Dems?

[Size Matters]

8-------o

OO=========================D

[Amagi]

Libertarians are caught in the middle of this. The right likes war and unconstitutional drug wars and also glorifies the police state...and the left (those people) likes socialism, big-government.

[Anonymous]

"likes war and [...] drug wars and also glorifies the police state."

Sounds a lot like the left, too.

[Mr. Soul]

Have to ask...Did Neil Young stop by to pick up a Reason?

[algie]

CNN to the contrary the 2 crowds are a difference of magnitude that can only be explained as a severe case of either myopia or dishonesty. The attempts to equate the two crowds remind me of a story my grandfather used to tell about Rabbit Stew

RABBIT STEW

A man was walking down the street and spied in a restaurant
window a sign offering "OLD FASHIONED HOMESTYLE
RABBIT STEW". Being reminded of his mother and eating
her rabbit stew as a child, he went into the restaurant. Taking
a seat he asked the counter man is that sign in the window correct?

Absolutly he was told.

Well then I would like a bowl. Upon being served he took a taste.
He then asked the counterman are you Sure this is rabbit stew?

Well he was told there is a little horsemeat in it.

After taking another taste he asked again 'Some Horsemeat'?

Since you ask it's 50/50 horse and rabbit.

Taking a third taste he said are you sure it's 50/50?

Of course was the reply, one horse one rabbit.

....uuuu..'o^o'..nn!n....algie
Illegitimi nOn carborundum

[ch3cooh]

By far my favorite part of that was Ed Schultz' absolutely mortified publicist as Nick was talking to Ed.

You could absolutely read his mind, "don't say anything dumb, don't say anything dumb, don't say anything dumb, don't say anything dumb..."

I wouldn't mind playing poker against him.

[Jake Witmer]

Awesome comment, ...so true!

[Mary]

Oh spare me... ! It was the Marxist left and the Trotskyite neo-conservatives that pushed through NAFTA & MFN with China. The left and neo-cons wanted the US economy in the toilet, so they desired the bleeding out our of nation's economy, our jobs. Bill Clinton is the one who pushed this through, as well as pushing through the legislation that required banks giving mortgages to those who couldn't afford them. The same people who are crying about jobs, are the ones who wanted our jobs taken away from us, the same reason they demand our immigration laws not be enforced, and our visa programs be exploited to give what jobs remain to foreign nationals instead of citizens. Those same foreign nationals are being subsidized with our tax dollars, and while taxes on US businesses are skyrocketing, foreign nationals come here and get millions handed to them in grants, to start outsourcing agencies. We have US businesses who want to move back from China, who are denied SBA loans, and any other help at all. The Obama administration is discouraging banks from giving those businesses loans to bring jobs back to the US. It's the left and the neo-cons who want our economy bankrupted so as to force us under the thumb of the World Bank and the IMF.

[Yes]

Mary, not that I disagree with you but between Clinton and Obama was Bush W, who went to the same school. You can pin most of the same raps on him for going along to get along.

[MrFiveofHearts]

The Aftermath of the One Nation Rally. Clearly you can see how concerned they are about typical liberal issues like the environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZCWFBJ1nwA

[Hazel Meade]

The event was organized by the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, and other progressive outfits.

The crowd, representing a broad cross section of political left, included groups like the United Auto Workers, United Steel Workers, Service Employees International Union, the NAACP, anti-war activists, the American Federation of Teachers, the International Socialist Organization, and many liberal and progressive groups.

But, this is genuine grassroots outrage. No astroturfing here!

[AlmightyJB]

Save the democrats in November rally organized by the unions, comm/soc parties and black leadership. Yawn.

[SiVisPacem]

it seemed as though everyone agreed that it's time to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sigh. If only the extremists would agree to "ending" them.

Put otherwise: if we leave, the wars won't end.

[Tulpa]

Right, so in the name of peace we should keep military forces there forever.

[SiVisPacem]

Right, so in the name of peace we should keep military forces there forever

Once again.

Removing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will not "end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan".

Because the presence of our troops is not the cause of the wars.

I too would like to tell the rest of the world to go to Hell. Unfortunately, they have the ability to take us with them.

[Xenocles]

Q: What if they gave a war and nobody came?

A: "They" would win, I guess.

[Ron L]

Xenocles|10.3.10 @ 5:47PM|#
"Q: What if they gave a war and nobody came?
A: "They" would win, I guess."

Could be, but the "nobody" who didn't show up would the the Euro nations; they're not about to do more than strongly-worded letters.
If they had to pay for their own defense, the politicos couldn't afford to buy the votes.

[John C. Randolph]

Those "one nation" T-shirts remind me of a famous slogan... How did it go again? Oh, yeah: "Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein F?hrer!"

I don't trust anyone who calls for unity.

-jcr

[mentat]

x y = y

x = ?

[mentat]

a b = b

a = ?

[caller]

because xy = y

x must = ?

[caller]

woo-hoo! I found a way to get my previous post past the spam filter.

Sometimes spam filter is mysterious.

[Ron L]

Oh, oh, choose me! Can I answer?
x = 1.

[Masturbatin' Pete]

For almost all values of y, yes.

[Texas Mom 2010]

Not necessarily, if y = 0 then x could be anything

[numbers guy]

x is unity almost everywhere (i.e. except for a set of zero measure {0})

[juris imprudent]

Does anyone else note the irony of a bunch of lefties protesting FOR jobs? I thought they hated all that capitalist exploitation and worker alienation?

Or is that just for discussion inside the kaffeeklatsch?

[Gilbert Martin]

I saw a little bit of it on CSPAN.

The way some of those folks talked, one would think that having a job was some sort of Constitutional "right" that they were being "deprived" of.

[joshua Corning]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_orkX.....-libs6.jpg

Why does a Socialist banner reading "Jobs Peace and Freedom" have a hand holding a gun superimposed of the the globe on it?

Photos here:

http://directorblue.blogspot.c.....youll.html

[joshua Corning]

Oh wait its a white hand shaking a black hand.

Nevermind.

[Give me a job....]

....or else? Your first take was more accurate of the sentiment of the rally.

[Jake Witmer]

As comedian Louis C.K. said, (mocking the racist society and racist NYPD who repeatedly shoot first and ask questions later): "Their hands DO look like guns!" ...LOL

[jtuf]

To summarize:

Right Wing - "We want to preserve America."

Left Wing - "We are so tolerant and full of love, not like THOSE people."

[orangemtl]

I'm always struck by the overall politeness and at least tolerable demeanor of conservatives and Republicans (occasionally, they are the same person), while liberals seem always on the verge of leaping into a rant at the drop of a hat. Look at the interviews at the Beck and One Nation rallies, as fair examples.
Also: did NObody ever tell these Marxist geniuses to pick up after themselves? Regardless of their politics, I think I'd reflexively vote with the people who know to clean up after themselves. That alone speaks volumes about the two groups. Apparently, the world owes the slobs a living, AND a housekeeper. It's all about them. They owe society nothing: we owe them one of everything.
Says all I need to know about the One Nation's little Nuremberg rally yesterday.

[Binky]

the people who know to clean up after themselves

Progressives know to clean up after themselves, but prefer to help others by providing jobs for them. It's like breaking windows, but safer for the children.

[heller]

I'm struck by how dumb you have to be to think that there are no rude conservatives and that all liberals are insane. Hmmm, something tells me you are a conservative. I can't quite say why, just a feeling.

[Sy]

Where did he say there were no rude conservatives?

[jtuf]

He didn't mention "insanity" either.

[Mr. FIFY]

Ed Schultz is insane. Google what he's done just recently, twice, that almost got his ass Rick Sanchezed off the air. The man is truly the leftwing doppleganger of Limbaugh.

[Fecal McStool]

I like to talk about stool.

[Ryanxxx]

At school? Or perhaps in a pool?

[Jake Witmer]

Toadstool?

[lebron james shoes]

lebron james shoes

[heller]

Since when do socialists want more jobs, aka wage slavery?

[Jeff B.]

These videos are too short. Next time you guys cover a rally, don't feel the need to keep the videos at or less than five minutes.

[dkl]

Great segment Nick, but next time, skip the gum...not very professional.

[Apogee]

It goes with The Jacket.

[Mr. FIFY]

"whether the United States is better off than it was in the 1960s"

What the fuck kind of idiot would think we weren't better off now than in the 1960s?

Oh, yeah... the idiots who put together this pathetic shindig.

[DFW Mom]

Hey . . . West Texas Boy . . . I have a daughter enrolled in a very expensive and elite business school in the capitol of our great state . . . I think you need to be one of the professors at the elite university . . . U R "F"in' BRILLIANT! Seriously.

[Mr. FIFY]

http://www.examiner.com/conser.....ally-video

Heh.

[Cloud nine]

Ill tell you what I saw-the American communist party out in the open. The SEIU? Read Karls commie manifesto and its got the SEIU blueprint all over it. Sharpton-Remember Crown Heights, Freddies Fashion Mart and Tawana Brawley there, Fat Albert? Jesse Jackson,the faux "minister" who has never led a church or graduated(yes he attended one-so did Al Gore) a divinity school. Andy Stern-tell me Andy, why you running from the SEIU now? Got something to hide? And Fat Ed Schultz-the best thing said about Ed is they named two tv characters after him-too bad for him they were both MUCH more intelligent(Mr Ed-a Horse-easily smarter than NBC Ed) or Sgt Schultz of "hogans heroes" fame(he knew nothing, and he was only acting. Ed Schultz truly does KNOW NOTHING).

[Drunk Punk]

Why do niggers always want free shit?

[El Duderino]

After reading YOUR post, I have come to the conclusion that you are one of two things so I will address both.

1. You are a troll trying to paint people who prefer freedom minds and free markets as bigots. If this is the case congratulations, you have just opened yourself up to attack, whereby everyone who believes in REAL freedom will prove you to be the imbecile you actually are.

2. If you truly think your comment is a meaningful and useful comment, you are truly a moron. I don't care what you are for or against, you represent the antithesis of freedom. Freedom means consequences count for something. You can speak freely if you like, but everything you say can and in this case will alienate you if you use hate to express it.

Get lost asshole.

[Drunk Punk]

Get lost asshole.

You want to demonize and surpress somebody for exercising their freedom of expression? Want to impose your speech codes on others? Way to not sound like a typical leftist douchebag.

Allow me to challenge your perception, and play a little devil's advocate here:

If you refuse to recognize racial differences, IE generalizations, then how do you propose that we deal with affirmative action laws? If you believe in equality, then naturally you're going to succumb to logical absurdities.... but if you do not believe in equality, then what makes a man superior to another man? What makes a group superior to another group? Where do you draw the line?

[El Duderino]

I quite obviously didnt "suppress" you. I couldn't suppress you if I wanted to on this website, but for me to suppress you, I would have had to literally remove your ability to comment.

Regarding dealing with affirmative action laws, these are wrong SPECIFICALLY because they treat one group of people differently than others.

What makes a man superior to another man?

First, this depends on what you mean by superior and i will be glad to address all meanings.

If by superior, you mean that one man is NATURALLY better than another by virtue of their external qualities, social associations or philosophical beliefs (color, religion, sex, etc...) then no man is superior to another man.

If by superior, you mean what gives one man authority over another, then I say nothing but contract and free choice. One person must choose to submit to another and in that sense, they are subject to a superior. To be sure, this is a hierarchy structure much like one would find in a corporation, or the military and it does not confer any special value that makes one man superior to the other in the first sense above.

Finally, I believe in EQUALITY in that each person has an equal right to express their individual liberty. So as a result, only laws that protect natural rights can be justified since force and violence would be necessary to enforce any law. When laws are enforced they should be enforced equally for all citizens, THIS is the definition of equality. Affirmative action is not equality since it requires some people to get protections that others may not receive. Equality is not equality of means, nor equality of results, it is just equality of justice. It is up to the individual to do what they need to do, without violating the natural rights of others to survive.

Groups cannot be superior or inferior to other groups. The first definition of superiority does not apply to groups for the same reason it does not apply to individuals. The second definition of superior does not apply, because for an entire group to be superior to another, the inferior group must willfully submit. For an entire group to submit, force would be required, therefore only individuals may submit themselves to a superior individual. These individuals may form as a group, but it is the individuals themselves that do the submitting, otherwise the submission is by force of the group and not true submission, but rather slavery.

Finally, if it is your plan to use generalizations as a way to deal with the inequities of affirmative action, then I will caution you that this will force your argument to go down the road to racism. You will necessarily have to point to specific groups and use specific language to define those groups. By defining groups you will be suggesting that these groups are actually different in some meaningful way. If you use the N word to define those groups, nobody will even listen to you and rightfully so.

I am equally offended by all derogatory remarks that suggest inferiority due to arbitrary differences. Words like nigger, cracker, whitey, honkey, darkie, chink, gook, wop, dago, mic, along with many others that rely on arbitrary and superficial descriptions of certain people suggest inferiority, where none exists and this is racism.

On the other hand, there are comments that describe an actual objective quality, both negative and positive. The negative words, like asshole, fucktard and dipshit are used to describe a person who is stupid, irritating or ridiculous. Because you dropped the N word presumptively to make some kind of argument against affirmative action and other social redistributive machinations of government, then you are stupid because your argument does not hold water due to its reliance on arbitrary racial notions. You are Irritating because your post does not do anything but tug on social tensions to evoke an emotional response. Emotional arguments are just as invalid as arguments made on arbitrary racial notions. You are ridiculous because you believe that other people will actually agree with you, otherwise, why did you post?

Like I said, take a hike asshole.

[Drunk Punk]

Take a hike, race traitor. Go give obama your paycheck.

[El Duderino]

Nice rebuttal moron. Very convincing. You dont even know what race i am so how can you say i am a race traitor???

[Drunk Punk]

It doesn't matter what race you belong to. You're babbling about equality and anti-racism... that's hippie rainbow bullshit. To me you're a race traitor.

Ask some nigger that belongs to the New Black Panther Party what he thinks of a black man who wants equality and diversity with whites...

[Jake Witmer]

You wrote "It doesn't matter what race you belong to. You're babbling about equality and anti-racism... that's hippie rainbow bullshit. To me you're a race traitor."
So you don't favor western civilization's individualism over collectivism? You are unaware of the contribution made by black individualists and innovators, and only aware of black collectivists? Is being unaware a "white" value? I guess if you're claiming ignorance is a virtue, then we don't hold enough in common to have a conversation. Is all white trash so clueless?

You wrote: "Ask some nigger that belongs to the New Black Panther Party what he thinks of a black man who wants equality and diversity with whites..."
OK, so your racism is made acceptable because there is racism in a group you oppose? And what of blacks who are not a part of the New Black Panther Party? They get included with the racist blacks because your mind is too unsophisticated to judge people on an individual basis?

This is the nature of collectivism: it is a system that is grossly sub-optimal, grossly inferior to a system that judges people as individuals. Now, why would someone from "the master race" favor a grossly sub-optimal, grossly uncompetitive system? Could it be that "the master race" is just as mindless a collective as the Obamatons? Could it be that be that "the master race" actually derives what little strength it has from sheer numbers, displaying very little in the way of individual intelligence?

I think so. I think that just by displaying your willingness to be associated with a physical group, you reveal yourself to be in a lower mental group. After all, if you are inadequate as an individual, you might need a group to help you survive.

If you really were "the fittest", you wouldn't feel the need to claim membership in any group. You would simply dominate your environment, and would be a raging success on your own. Are people who are raging successes so insecure that they need to claim membership in the more intelligent group?

No. It is only people who have an unwitting tendency to self-destruction who rely on group identity to help them out.

The very mental attributes that you claim to despise in blacks are your hallmark psychological characteristics.

Debate the issue with Larry Elder, Edward Lawson, or Mark Dean, and you will see how limited you are as an individual. How humbling that would be. Sadly, it would probably drive you even further toward the safe refuge of collectivism, where your individual failings will be forgiven by people who hold your superficial physical characteristics (such as skin color) in high regard.

But can you compete against the best and brightest individuals?

My guess is, ...not without a handout!

[El Duderino]

So what you are saying is that both you and the fucking Black Panthers hold the same exact point of view. Well, I guess on this point we can agree. You are a racist and they are racists.

Koom by fucking yaa

[Jake Witmer]

The trouble arises when a group claims superiority to another _group_. The groups that actually are superior (ie: the scientists on the Manhattan Project) don't typically feel the need to proclaim themselves so. That's collectivism, and false authority, and you won't find many collectivists or authoritarians on this board. Unlike the leftist groups who claim to be in favor of the individual (since any group --especially political groups-- naturally sinks to its lowest common denominator), most of us actually are in favor of individual identity over group identity.

Moreover, if the basis for the group identity is not the mind, then the key element that sets human beings apart from animals is not being considered. What sort of group cares about animal physicality, especially as a precondition of "membership" or "identity"? ...Only a mindless one.

So, your comments seem to indicate such a mindless fixation.

Larry Elder and Mark Dean certainly don't want "free shit". Would you call them "niggers"? If you would, I'm sure they'd be happy to outperform you in every way, which might be humiliating for someone who believes that they are made valuable by their membership in a group.

Racism has no value here. And be careful, because racism has such a negative value associated with it, the coming artilects might not bother searching your file for updates when performing a pre-deletion search of your true name. They might simply say: We aren't really interested by physicists, much less racist primates with primitive weapons --zap.

If you are as literate as most racists, I imagine that last part will be an incomprehensible warning, which might be for the best. Suffice to say that Vinge's singularity will not long tolerate such chest-beating --especially not if it is accompanied by anything bearing resemblance to a real threat.

Said another way: "Our phyle is not racist. Please comment elsewhere."

[Bagley]

"Why do niggers always want free shit?"

Eat sh*t and die poster at 3:46PM.

The Aryan Nation is wondering where their favorite colonoscopy went. (But something tells me that you are a "progressive troll.")

That being said, outstanding post.

Regards,

Bagley

[Drunk Punk]

You don't have pride in your race?

[Jake Witmer]

No, I don't have pride in my race. My race contains human excrement like Chuck Schumer, Tom Daschle, Ed Schultz, Joe Biden, George W. Bush, and yourself.

Why would I be "proud" of something I have no control over, something without positive OR negative value? It would be like being proud that the sun had risen. Did I make it rise? No. Did I force my mother and father to fuck? No.

Only a blithering idiot and/or collectivist feels pride in something they have no control over. My white skin serves me as well as black skin serves a black man. It has no legitimate value beyond its function as an organ.

Am I proud to stand up for truth and justice, as a member of a group of accomplished people in the Witmer family? Yes, I am. Am I proud that the Witmers have (mostly) been able to understand and adopt the concepts of individual freedom? Yes, I am.

Those things took mental effort to accomplish, and I played a role in that.

So, I guess I'd rather be a "race traitor" than a traitor to the concepts of individualism. And, especially if this is Dondero I'm replying to, you can't claim ignorance of those ideas, you can only claim that you're either too stupid to understand them, or you reject them.

(The same goes for anyone who posts racist messages at Reason.com. After all, it's not like they haven't seen the names Murray Rothbard, Harry Browne, or Ayn Rand here. LOL)

[Bagley]

Correction poster at 5:51.

[Drunk Punk]

I am equally offended by all derogatory remarks that suggest inferiority due to arbitrary differences. Words like nigger, cracker, whitey, honkey, darkie, chink, gook, wop, dago, mic, along with many others that rely on arbitrary and superficial descriptions of certain people suggest inferiority, where none exists and this is racism.

Dude, you're a fuckin' faggot.

[El Duderino]

Okay, i can see now you dont know how to play the game.

The more stupid shit you say, the less respect you earn. Not the other way around. And anyway, i am not offended by you calling ME a faggot, because I know it really doesnt matter to me. It is when you use these terms on others where i get offended, because it is uncivil. You see even though i would defend your right to say these things, it doesnt mean i condone it and it doesnt make your comments gain any sort of additional value in that they do not advance your point of view or convey usefull information.

[nancy]

Is it okay if we just call you "DRUNK PUNK"?

[Jake Witmer]

I'm not offended by your brainlessness. I consider it a good reminder of how low the swamps at the edges of the bellcurve are in relation to truly civilized human beings. It's good to know that lazy group-identity-dependent primates like you are out there, even though much of the media is focusing more on the lazy group-identity-dependent negroes, now that Obama is in office. You make me feel better about all the time I've spent at the shooting range. The appropriate response to your comments is an insult, or a bullet if you're advancing the mindless force inherent in your rudeness.

If you are so intelligent, then why have all the responses on this very-well-educated board been so negative? Are you arguing with the racial group (blacks) you dislike? Probably not. Also, most of the negative responses to you are coming from whites who understand the foundations of western civilization far better than you do. Have you read Thomas Woods' "Nullification"? Are you familiar with Thomas Jefferson's Virginia letter on nullification, and the Kentucky resolutions that stemmed from it? Are you familiar with Kosciusko's compact with Jefferson? I doubt it. Are you aware that the same jury system that you proclaim to be superior allowed many blacks to thrive in the northern US, prior to the civil war?

...All these facts indicate that the system you proclaim to view as superior (western civilization) is totally based on individualism.

Do you seriously believe that your intellect is competitive next to that of individualist black intellectuals like Mark Dean, Thomas Sowell, Edward Lawson, Kenn Blanchard, etc? ...I think not.

Your collectivism is identical, and similarly indicative of low mental function, to that of the "New Black Panther Party" or the average black socialist. ...With one key difference: If you are white, the police have not been able to isolate you and your community for extra state harassment. So, where a black person may find refuge in the group in desperation for protection from legitimate outside threats and institutionalized LEGAL inequality, you have no such excuse for seeking the shelter of superficial group identity. You have done so, simply because you are an inadequate individual.

[Drunk Punk]

So do you think it is mere coincidence that black people are despised and thought to be inferior all over the globe? I guess in the ghettos of Brazil where niggers are spat upon and ridiculed must have something to do with white supremicist idiots, eh?

Many blacks that still reside in Africa that have not been persuaded by north american politics or "development" still live in huts and wear penis gords and practise animal sacrificing. Is this coincidental too? Or perhaps they read too much of Daniel Quinn's hippie bullshit to ever want to become civilized?

Left alone, the majority of blacks would never evolve. The only reason that they have been capable of "evolving", is because Nordic races have introduced, and forced civilization and assimilation onto them.

Still their culture is shit. A handful of blacks might impress white people on academic or engineering levels, but whites are responsible for the majority of science, art, philosophy, and technology.

Even blacks that are "given" opportunities, and are all but forced to behave in white culture, still turn their environment into shitholes.

There's only so much of their behavior and misdeeds you can blame on the "white system". It's pathetic.

There's political correctness, and then there's reality.

If there were no niggers in the United States, then we may lose a few decent guys that have contributed to humor, politics, etc... but overall the country would see an overwhelming abundance of improvement.

Your children wouldn't be confused by political correctness, and manipulated into accepting another races culture over their own heritage... and not be made to feel guilty for having a love of themselves and their family; and ultimately they wouldn't be met with violence and aggressiveness from a race of people who are clearly unfit for civilization.

[El Duderino]

I could waste time and dismantle every single ridiculous point you just made or I can just respond to this:

"Left alone, the majority of blacks would never evolve."

EVERY HUMAN ON THE PLANET EVOLVED FROM AFRICAN ORIGIN. Or do you honestly think that God just decided to spice things up so he made two people of every race just for shits and giggles.

[Drunk Punk]

EVERY HUMAN ON THE PLANET EVOLVED FROM AFRICAN ORIGIN.

Prove it.

[El Duderino]

Here is the Wikipedia entry. I dont particularly trust Wikipedia, but follow the reference links for the actual scientific studies. Two theories have significant evidence that human life began in Africa.

And anyway, you are the dipshit that said that Africans are incapable of evolving so PROVE IT.

[Drunk Punk]

The more stupid shit you say, the less respect you earn. Not the other way around.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You're more intelligent wha wha whaatver. I'm just saying you're a fuckin' faggot for lettin' words upset you. Get over it dude.

And anyway, i am not offended by you calling ME a faggot, because I know it really doesnt matter to me. It is when you use these terms on others where i get offended, because it is uncivil.

So you think others need you to cry for them and to enforce your view of civil for them? How compassionate of you! I bet they feel comfortable now.

You see even though i would defend your right to say these things, it doesnt mean i condone it and it doesnt make your comments gain any sort of additional value in that they do not advance your point of view or convey usefull information.

Value is subjective, nobody that would agree with me that niggers are useless would care about your points of view either.

What are you, the authority of time and the judge of what is valuable and what isn't in society?

Good try, libby.

[Drunk Punk]

Here's how you can tell if a race is inferior to you or not:

Take this scenario, and consider it honestly...

I go to a swinger's party with my wife who is a gorgeous white woman with a great smile and beautiful hair. If an Asian couple wanted to swap with me, and his wife was also beautiful, I would accept... I would feel like I got a fair trade.

However, if some black couple wanted to wife swap.. chances are some nigger is going to have a field day with my wife while I'm disgusted with his wife. It wouldn't be a fair trade in my eyes.

Therefore, black people generally are inferior to me and my wife, and therefore my race. You can cherry pick a few counterexamples, but for the most part the generalization holds merit in every day life.

[Jake Witmer]

I think Drunk Punk is Eric Dondero. The mention of wife-swapping puts too fine a point on it for it to be anyone else. Then again, abject fucktards like Dondero are a dime-a-dozen, so I can't be certain.

...But I highly suspect that this is Dondero. Dondero is a social darwinist, and what other brainless white supremacist is even going to know about this board?

This bullshit smells like Dondero! LOL.

BTW: I know that Dondero thinks blacks are mentally inferior because he told me he believes that at his home in Texas (2004) and in Montana in 2006. In both cases I was around him because he was working on the same free market causes I was, and I quickly developed a distaste for him, even though the first time (2004) he allowed me to crash at his untrained-dog-piss-reeking house.

If this isn't Dondero, then it is testament to how easy it is for nature to replicate Dondero's low-level thought process. LOL!

BTW: Dondero has an extensive punk rock collection, including Dead Kennedys, Ramones, and Black Flag. If he was drunk, he'd probably pay less attention to his internal censor, and feel he was protected by the anonymity of the internet. Moreover, he'd be bold enough to say something so stupid on such an inappropriate board, because he thinks his political understanding is better than that of "reasonoids". ...LOL!!!

Moreover, Dondero is one of the few "libertarians" who thinks there's a big difference between McCain and Obama, whom he despises.

...Have I made a rock solid case?

[El Duderino]

So somehow you think that because you wouldnt fuck a black woman at a swingers party, this is evidence of inferiority.

This is just evidence that you dont know how to enjoy a swingers party.

[Drunk Punk]

Or perhaps evidence that I have good taste in women.

[El Duderino]

So you are saying it is subjective and superficial by suggesting it is "taste". Way to dismantle your own argument dumbass.

[Drunk Punk]

No, I've mathematically and biologically engineered a reasonable explanation why I would rather fuck white women.....

Superiority based on Female Sexual Aesthetics:

1. Black women are ugly
2. Black women are nasty
3. Black women don't have blue eyes or blonde hair
4. Can't run my hands through a black woman's hair while she's suckin' me off (unless she has a wig).
5. Black women don't even give head.

Oh yeah, much better than a beautiful white woman.

[El Duderino]

This is all subjective opinion, not fact.

[Drunk Punk]

So the fact that most black women are born with nappy black hair and have dark colored eyes is, in reality, just opinion?

[El Duderino]

No, the fact that you are repulsed by these features is a matter of personal preference, your repulsion is not evidence of inferiority, it is only evidence of your personal preference.

[El Duderino]

I and many others are offended by words like nigger because this suggests that one person is less than another.

Anybody who uses racial distinction as a basis of determining the value of another human being must necessarily believe in the very same thing that progressives hold so dear. Racist morons like you are no different than the progressive morons who believe that certain races and certain groups of people need to be forced to submit to their way of life. How is your belief that black people are inferior to white people any different than a progressive who believes that certain races of people should be given more legal advantage than others because of their race. Both of you must necessarily agree that one race is inferior to the others in order for your values to have any merit. YOU ARE A PROGRESSIVE.

I am not telling you that it is my opinion that all humans are the same, it is a fact. Superficial and genetic differences do not make the value of a human any different, because a person has no intrinsic value to others. For person A to have value to person B, person A has to be owned by person B as property. Gold in the mountain has no value because it is not owned by anyone so its intrinsic value is unavailable to everyone and therefore will go unrealized. Gold is a mineral, it does not have a mind and therefore it is not capable of being self aware. Because gold cannot be self aware, it cannot see its existence as being valuable to its SELF. Humans are self aware and therefore they realize, individually, that their life has value to them as an individual. Because all humans are born with the same self awareness, they are all equally capable of recognizing their own value as it relates to their self. This is the basis for saying that all men are equal. Equal in this sense means only one thing, they are capable of self awareness, therefore self preservation and if all people have this potential, regardless of their success or failure in this regard, they all have an equal right to pursue this potential. If everyone were not seen as equal in this manner, then you could make any arbitrary laws you wanted to preserve yourself and force others to submit to your will, because you believe that your will is superior to theirs. Sound familiar? It should sound familiar, this is the basic rationalization for slavery and it is also the basic rationalization used by every single mass murdering dictator to have ever lived.

Furthermore, I am not a liberal, and you are not a conservative. I believe in individual liberty, small government, low taxes and free markets. You believe that black people are incapable of providing for themselves, and guess what, progressives believe the same thing. WHY DO YOU THINK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

"Value is subjective, nobody that would agree with me that niggers are useless would care about your points of view either."

This response is barely a complete thought. What are you saying, all racists would disagree with me? Good I could care less if they disagree with me, that is their fucking right to disagree with me. Anyway, people who do agree with me cannot be racists, you cannot agree with what I believe and what I have said and be a racist, it is a logical impossibility.

"I'm just saying you're a fuckin' faggot for lettin' words upset you. Get over it dude."

Racism is upsetting, because it is contrary to everything I believe. And anyway, you are hardly free from becoming upset. I have proven your ridiculous world view to be a complete failure of logic and reason and you have lashed out at me, this is a good indication you are upset. Or did you call me a faggot in the hopes that I might offer to let you suck my dick.

[nancy]

The ANT
AND THE
GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different ...
Two Different Versions ...
Two Different Morals
OL D VERSION
The ant works
hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper
thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm
and well fed.

The grasshopper has
no food or shelter, so he
dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN
VERSION

The ant works hard
in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant
is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper
calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be
allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN,
and ABC show up to
provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant
in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears
on Oprah
with the grasshopper
and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages
a demonstration in front of the ant's
house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome."

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright
has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper's sake.
President Obama condems the ant
and blames

President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the
Pope
for the grasshopper's
plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid
exclaim in an interview with Larry
King that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the
grasshopper,
and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts
the Economic Equity &
Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of
the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number
of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar
and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper
and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house,
crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken
over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses
bringing the rest
of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be careful how you vote in 2010.

[SettleDown]

Yes, be careful who you vote for because ALL grasshoppers are lazy and should die so that the ants will prosper.

[chance for america]

God help us all! chanceforamerica.blogspot.com

[Skip Cashwell]

I just love it when a good old Anglo-Saxon word is properly (and effectively) used!

[Dave]

Can't we find some common cause here?

http://www.truthdig.com/report....._20101005/

If we are ever to move the debate forward, to win hearts and minds, don't we need to?

While the author talks of taking care of the poor and unemployed, he also talks of dismantling the Corporate State. He is against the 2 party duopoly.

Honest Libertarians do not want government favoring business, as it impedes the cause of true competition and thus true opportunity.

Instead of preaching to the choir, why can't we find common subjects with others who think the status quo stinks, even if they are far from purists of our stripe, and show good faith by tackling some of the same corruption/failings we both see, using Libertarian principles and explanations, in good faith, and with patience. Waiting for everyone else to just jump onboard whole hog and come begging at our door for our wisdom, just doesn't seem productive.

There is so much skepticism and outrage at the system out there. I bet we'll never see this opportunity again in our lifetimes for so many to be so receptive to new messages, alternative outlooks, now that the status quo is exploding in their face.

We would be fools not to use this opportunity constructively, as opposed to burning bridges.

[SettleDown]

http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm

[Drunk Punk]

I and many others are offended by words like nigger because this suggests that one person is less than another.

How so? It just means that you're offended by words just like a puritan is upset by the word cock or a Christian is upset by the music of Eminem. You're just enforcing speech restrictions, or at least by extension, offering validity to speech codes? which is WAY progressive? dude.

I am not telling you that it is my opinion that all humans are the same, it is a fact. Superficial and genetic differences do not make the value of a human any different, because a person has no intrinsic value to others. For person A to have value to person B, person A has to be owned by person B as property. Gold in the mountain has no value because it is not owned by anyone so its intrinsic value is unavailable to everyone and therefore will go unrealized

So this means any sentient being regardless of genetic differences is equal to the next? You should join PETA if you haven't already. If you are not a member of PETA, shut the fuck up and stop being a pretentious hypocritical cunt. If you are a member of PETA, good, let's extend your "logic" even more to include microbiology. Is mycelium equal to that of human beings? Is it considered mass murder when I use Listerine to kill the bacteria in my mouth? Should I pray for forgiveness every time I jerk off because millions of sperm cells die on my shirt? Where do you draw your line?

Gold is a mineral, it does not have a mind and therefore it is not capable of being self aware. Because gold cannot be self aware, it cannot see its existence as being valuable to its SELF. Humans are self aware and therefore they realize, individually, that their life has value to them as an individual.

So by your logic, it is okay for me to commit atrocities against the mentally handicapped (those with memory disorders, schizophrenia, etc) because they cannot possibly hold value due to their lack of self-awareness. Furthermore, scientists believe that human children gain awareness of objects and the world and relate them to their own existence anywhere from ages 3 ? 5. Is it okay for me to rape an infant that is 6 months old because it doesn't comprehend itself yet?

Racism is upsetting, because it is contrary to everything I believe. And anyway, you are hardly free from becoming upset. I have proven your ridiculous world view to be a complete failure of logic and reason and you have lashed out at me, this is a good indication you are upset.

Sure, institutional racism is upsetting to some people? it is all a matter of subjectivity, though, when considering racism on philosophical levels. I don't advocate legal segregation; nor do I think blacks should be paid less for the same job, etc. I just think there is noticeable, empirically recorded datum that is worth investigating when it comes to blacks and their racial commitment to create violence and aggression in white communities. Also, it is worth questioning and challenging what we perceive. Why do you feel disgusted if you see a spider's nest under your bed even though you know its' a type that won't hurt you? Just like I wonder, why do big swarms of black people make me uncomfortable? Why do I look at mice and think that they're inferior to me just like I think blacks are inferior to me?

Or did you call me a faggot in the hopes that I might offer to let you suck my dick.

What does the term faggot have to do with dick sucking? See, you're perpetuating the negative connotations of the very words that you confess upset you; the same words that you seek to eradicate for their crime of causing offense. You should be ashamed of yourself, for real.

[El Duderino]

"So this means any sentient being regardless of genetic differences is equal to the next?"

Yes, but this does not mean all life forms with a brain are self aware. Only lifeforms capable of being aware of their own existence understand their own value.

"So by your logic, it is okay for me to commit atrocities against the mentally handicapped (those with memory disorders, schizophrenia, etc) because they cannot possibly hold value due to their lack of self-awareness. "

Mentally retarded people, children and those with memory disorders are still self aware, they are just less capable of rational thought and communication. Young children, including infants in the womb at a certain point become capable of basic consciousness and as a result have a high potential to become self aware, therefore they are human. A cow, in any state has zero potential of becoming self aware. All animals can do is react to their environment, there is no reason to believe they are capable of contemplating their existence in any way whatsoever. Retarded people, children, people with memory disorders, people with psychological issues can contemplate their existence or at least posses brain which has the potential to do this activity.

"You're just enforcing speech restrictions, or at least by extension, offering validity to speech codes"

I am expressing myself, for me to ENFORCE anything upon you I would have to use force. And by force, I mean violence or threat of violence. If I put a gun to your head and told you to shut up, this is enforcing speech restrictions. If I were enforcing speech restrictions you would not have been able to POST the dumb shit you are posting because you would have no choice.

"I just think there is noticeable, empirically recorded datum that is worth investigating when it comes to blacks and their racial commitment to create violence and aggression in white communities. Also, it is worth questioning and challenging what we perceive. Why do you feel disgusted if you see a spider's nest under your bed even though you know its' a type that won't hurt you? Just like I wonder, why do big swarms of black people make me uncomfortable? Why do I look at mice and think that they're inferior to me just like I think blacks are inferior to me?"

I dont know, but these sound like personal problems. Being afraid of other people is no mystery. My point still stands, people are people. External and genetic differences do not make a person who they are, it is the mind itself through experience that creates a person. Personal experiences may be different, but this doesn't make one race different than another in any meaningful sense. People can only be judged by their actions. Some people do good things for others, others do bad things to others, this has nothing to do with race, just personality.

"What does the term faggot have to do with dick sucking?"

Am I supposed to pretend I dont know what the term means? I am not calling anyone a faggot, I am pointing out that you called me a faggot and I offered an explanation why because you clearly believe you were not upset.

[El Duderino]

Oh and exactly when did I suggest I wanted some kind of speech code?

Here try this experiment:

You are a bigoted moron who is afraid of other races of people because you are mentally incapable of understanding that they are essentially the same as you. You lash out when people destroy your arguments and then you call them names like nigger and faggot to diminish them. In your mind, you believe that others agree with your assessment because you need them to agree with you so you can feel superior. When people inevitably take offense to your stupid remarks, you pretend to take the high ground and defend your stupid racist comments by saying it is "free speech", but you are too stupid to understand that while you are perfectly free to say these things, it is not a good idea to say them. And when your insistence that black people are different than white people is challenged, you trot out your overt fears of black people as a rational for "investigating" them. If anything needs investigation here, it is your irrational fear. You are an imbecile.

I bet you are mad. I bet you are feeling a bit hot right now. It is a natural response which was developed over time through evolution. You have been confronted and even though there is no real threat, you still perceive one and so your body goes into a fight or flight mode.

What are you thinking now... are the words faggot about to get typed? Does calling me a faggot resolve this aggression? Are you that stupid that you need to lash out right now? If so, maybe you are the one incapable of evolution. Ugga booga! another attack!

[Drunk Punk]

Yes, but this does not mean all life forms with a brain are self aware. Only lifeforms capable of being aware of their own existence understand their own value.

Hence the term "sentient".

Mentally retarded people, children and those with memory disorders are still self aware,

Prove it. What testable evidence do you have to support this claim? Is consciousness something that can be measured?

they are just less capable of rational thought and communication.

Touch?

Young children, including infants in the womb at a certain point become capable of basic consciousness and as a result have a high potential to become self aware, therefore they are human

So their capacity to have intellect and to become sentient is reason that all human beings are equal? That is a glib criteria for determining equality, no? So intelligence should be how we demonstrate authority and stewardship over other inferior animals? Let's imagine that anybody with an I.Q over 100 will rule over all people with an I.Q less than 100. Thanks, we can get the chains back out and put the slaves back to work.

A cow, in any state has zero potential of becoming self aware. All animals can do is react to their environment, there is no reason to believe they are capable of contemplating their existence in any way whatsoever.

Where is the scientific data that supports this assertion? A cow in any state has ZERO potential of becoming self aware? You're really pissing PETA off, not me. Please provide your definition of sentience, because I'm a little confused by you. For the sake of argument, take classical philosophy and metaphysics. According to Ren? Descartes, I have no reason other than inference to even believe that you have consciousness at all. If the metaphysical argument can hold weight, which it does in many avenues of thought, then how are you any more self-aware than a cow? If you can't decipher this with logic, try to use science. I'm very curious to see your explanation.

I am expressing myself, for me to ENFORCE anything upon you I would have to use force. And by force, I mean violence or threat of violence. If I put a gun to your head and told you to shut up, this is enforcing speech restrictions. If I were enforcing speech restrictions you would not have been able to POST the dumb shit you are posting because you would have no choice.

Well, yeah, technically you aren't enforcing anything physically, but you've joined the tormented logic of many progressives who advocate the abolition and banning of terminologies. "Bitch", "Cunt", "Nigger" so far has been banned in NYC. If you violate these precepts, then you will go to jail. Let's not split hairs here man, you're one of THEM.

I dont know, but these sound like personal problems. Being afraid of other people is no mystery. My point still stands, people are people. External and genetic differences do not make a person who they are, it is the mind itself through experience that creates a person. Personal experiences may be different, but this doesn't make one race different than another in any meaningful sense. People can only be judged by their actions. Some people do good things for others, others do bad things to others, this has nothing to do with race, just personality.

So you insist that genetics play no role in the way people act? For that matter, genetics play no role in the way animals behave either? Hmmmm. I really want to agree with you dude, but I have some doubts. How much research have you done on behavioral sciences and genetics? This sounds like liberal "we're all the same cuz I said so" talk. Provide evidence to support your claims.

Am I supposed to pretend I dont know what the term means? I am not calling anyone a faggot, I am pointing out that you called me a faggot and I offered an explanation why because you clearly believe you were not upset.

Am I supposed to pretend that a race of people who are obviously beneath me are some how equal? If we're in the market for make-believe, I guess I can do that. All bets are off when it comes time to leave wonderland though, Alice.

For somebody who is deeply offended by words, you shouldn't perpetuate the term's negative connotation. For all you know, I could have a homosexual here with me proof-reading my work, and you just offended him by belittling the act of sodomy to hurt me. For shame. Why don't you just assume I'm black and call me a nigger?

[El Duderino]

"So their capacity to have intellect and to become sentient is reason that all human beings are equal? That is a glib criteria for determining equality, no?"

A human mind is capable of reaching a higher state of understanding because it has the neurological complexity to support this sort of activity. The fact that some people are unable to reach that is a limitation caused by a failure of their physical mind to properly develop, or it is caused by trauma or some other issue which has nothing at all to do with the fact that they were born with a human mind. A cow cannot reach the same level of human thought and it has nothing at all to do with failure to develop or trauma, its brain is simply not complex enough to allow for the high level organization to emerge. A person with a deficient brain is still a person because they were born with the potential (albeit limited) to have a mind capable of high level rational thought. This is not a glib distinction, rational thought and self awareness is a significant difference betweeen humans and other animals, if we were able to correct the deficiency in the severely retarded mind, the mind would function normally and it would be capable of higher thought. I am not suggesting anyone knows how to do this, but the genetic code for the properly functioning mind could be reproduced with sufficient study the genetic errors could be corrected. You cannot take a cow's DNA and fix the errors so that it will suddenly become as smart as a human, because even the perfect expression of the cows DNA would not result in such a being. If scientists manipulated the DNA of a cow and made it into something else, something capable of rational thought then it would cease to be a cow, it would be something equal to a human. The human genome may have differences among the races, but those differences do not result in a genetic expression that yields a creature incapable of higher reasoning unless there is an error. Since genetic error (retardation or whatever other limiting factors a brain might suffer) is not unique to one race, then it is therefore a fault shared by all humanity. Humans respect all human life, even those aflicted by genetic or neurological error, because we recognize the potential humanity even though we are sometimes powerless to correct the error. Genetic heritage is something scientists can prove objectivly since superficial gbenetic expressions like skin color, deformity, sex etc... have no meaningful impact on the genetic expressions that result in a functioning human brain, these distinctions are useless in defining a human, otherwise a manequin could be considered human because it has all the right features. The mind is the only common and distinctive feature of humanity. Genetics is important, but only in so much as its expression has potential to result in a mind capable of self awarenes.

"According to Ren? Descartes, I have no reason other than inference to even believe that you have consciousness at all."

Consciousness is an emergent property of the human mind. While some mammals may have simplistic language ability or may exhibit a self awareness in that they recognize body alterations, their actions do not suggest imaginative thought, the only thing that comes close is weapon usage. Weapon usage is at best debatable as far as whether or not it indicates imagination since it relies on the subjective observers belief that the animal is weilding the weapon for a specific purpose, but even if I concede that weapon usage is a form of imaginative expression, it is not a higher form of imaginative self expression like art and no, singing birds are not performing art, they are at best using rudimentary comunications. Artful expression is a purposeful act that results in the artists subjective expression of their own self awareness, it is who they see the world and since I can recognize the same themes, concepts, emotional values and other subjective qulities,I can therefore state that that artists is sentient. The number of neurons in the brain is critical for the higher reasoning abilities to emerge, it is a matter of statistics. More neurons means greater possibility of higer reasoning ability. Humans simply have more neurons than other mammals and at a higher density of cortical neurons which have been shown to be the primary source of higher reasoning in humans according to neural activity recorded by various methods. This is still an expression of or genetics and only genetic error stands in the way. No other animal has a brain with these qualities and these qualities are not significantly impacted by race, gender or other superficial differences.

[Drunk Punk]

Personal experiences may be different, but this doesn't make one race different than another in any meaningful sense. People can only be judged by their actions. Some people do good things for others, others do bad things to others, this has nothing to do with race, just personality.

Just to let you know, this is an incomplete logic. You're simply stating that since a concrete way of determing racial superiority is difficult or unlikely, then that means equality must be a fact.

The incomplete logic is this: You're saying that the lack of evidence is the evidence of something. If you want to dabble in science, then you can't use this reasoning.

You might as well be one of these cranks that say, "God must be real because you didn't prove God isn't real"

[El Duderino]

"You're simply stating that since a concrete way of determing racial superiority is difficult or unlikely, then that means equality must be a fact."

I am not saying it is difficult, or unlikely. I am saying that the genetic expressions that result in racial differences are not useful in defining what is human because every human is different in these regards some more than others. Primates have nearly all the same features as a man, yet they are not as intelligent, there is a reason for that, see my post above. The mind is the only thing that differentiates humanity from other simmilar mammals.

[nikeshoes]

Nike Air Max LTD a ?t? introduit en 2002. Sa demande a ?t? en constante augmentation depuis 2002, sa visible Air Max et de conception qui combine ? la fois classiques et des id?es r?volutionnaires font toute la s?rie si populaire,

[David Roberts]

Take away the bad language and the man is pretty much on the money.

[Drunk Punk]

A human mind is capable of reaching a higher state of understanding because it has the neurological complexity to support this sort of activity.
The fact that some people are unable to reach that is a limitation caused by a failure of their physical mind to properly develop, or it is caused by trauma or some other issue which has nothing at all to do with the fact that they were born with a human mind. A cow cannot reach the same level of human thought and it has nothing at all to do with failure to develop or trauma, its brain is simply not complex enough to allow for the high level organization to emerge.

Even if a cow cannot reach the same level of human thought, why is that justification for why this animal becomes my dinner, for example? Just to play devil's advocate here, you're establishing a hierarchy of values based on what you believe is "superior", the same way I do as a racist. I look at the reality of a situation, or what I believe reality to be, then according to my assessment I attribute value to the objective world around me. I believe there are dominant genes; I believe there are recessive genes. On the grand scheme of history, black people have not met the criteria for what I consider to be an evolved or civilized culture. I do believe that black people are capable of evolution in slow paces as long as a dominant society guides them and forces them into assimilation, as we've done in North America. Your definition of superiority, unfortunately, is just as subjective as the racists.

A person with a deficient brain is still a person because they were born with the potential (albeit limited) to have a mind capable of high level rational thought. This is not a glib distinction, rational thought and self awareness is a significant difference betweeen humans and other animals, if we were able to correct the deficiency in the severely retarded mind, the mind would function normally and it would be capable of higher thought. I am not suggesting anyone knows how to do this, but the genetic code for the properly functioning mind could be reproduced with sufficient study the genetic errors could be corrected.

Being born with the potential for rational thought doesn't negate the fact that some people are born without rational mental functioning whatsoever. They may belong to a species that is capable of performing "higher level rational thought", but they themselves do not. Is it okay to treat this person as if they were a chicken or a cow? If not, then extend your empathy to other animals that may not be blessed with rational thinking. Become vegan, even fruitarian, see how far you can push your ideals.

You cannot take a cow's DNA and fix the errors so that it will suddenly become as smart as a human, because even the perfect expression of the cows DNA would not result in such a being. If scientists manipulated the DNA of a cow and made it into something else, something capable of rational thought then it would cease to be a cow, it would be something equal to a human.
The human genome may have differences among the races, but thse differences do not result in a genetic expression that yields a creature incapable of higher reasoning unless there is an error. Since genetic error (retardation or whatever other limiting factors a brain might suffer) is not unique to one race, then it is therefore a fault shared by all humanity.

Assuming of course that we all collectively agree that "reasoning" levels determine superiority.

Humans respect all human life, even those aflicted by genetic or neurological error, because we recognize the potential humanity even though we are sometimes powerless to correct the error.

This is what this sounds like to me?."I know you're a retard, but I have to look at the fact that if it weren't for this flaw in your creation, you would be just as normal as me, therefore I extend my compassion to you, retard."

Genetic heritage is something scientists can prove objectivly since superficial gbenetic expressions like skin color, deformity, sex etc... have no meaningful impact on the genetic expressions that result in a functioning human brain, these distinctions are useless in defining a human, otherwise a manequin could be considered human because it has all the right features.

Nevertheless there are genetic differences in mannerisms, skin color, hair texture, eye color, disease resistance, fecundity rates, etc, etc. They may not be "meaningful" differences in a purely scientific playground, but in reality, we attribute values to the sense-data we interpret, whether it is someone's skin color, or the fact that they are acting like a fuckup.

Regardless of the most "pure reason", naturally human beings are going to associate behaviors with groups of people (as well as things, events, etc) based on the propensity and tendency to behave in a certain manner. Tea Partiers are different than Anti-war protesters? Why? If 9 out of 10 black widow spiders cause fatalities to humans, wouldn't it stand to reason that black widow spiders are fatal to human beings? I know you're a liberal when it comes to race relations, and I respect your point of view to a certain degree, but be realistic.

Generalizations can be refuted with counterexamples, yes, I know this to be factual? I know not "all" black people are criminals or degenerates, and I even respect the few of them that have strived to become less-niggardly? but through wisdom we can make generalizations that do make sense? and the empirical datum that I've gathered about members of the black race is that they are generally uncivilized people that have the propensity to behave outrageously, commit acts of wanton crimes with unchecked and remorseless attitudes towards those actions. I don't have the science to back it up, but just because the science doesn't exist, doesn't mean that these people are the same as me and that I should welcome them as my equals.

Anyway, you defend your points well, but I still disagree. I feel that this whole "we're all equal" ideology is merely a principle that has manifested itself from liberal guilt and naivety.

[El Duderino]

In an effort to move this conversation along to some kind of reasonable understanding. I will address something that to this point has not been addressed with any degree of clarity.

You said: "I feel that this whole "we're all equal" ideology is merely a principle that has manifested itself from liberal guilt and naivety."

To a certain degree you are right about this. Liberals, understand equality through some kind of twisted carnival mirror that allows them to think that because we are all "equal", we should all have the same means and the same results. People are not equal in terms of means, I think that is quite obvious simply by looking at mental retardation. A retarded person is quite obviously incapable of many of the things that most humans are capable of. Beyond that, some people are smarter than others, some stronger than others and others more attractive than others. Stronger people have advantages over weaker people in physical efforts. Smarter people have advantages over dumber people when mental capacity is important to survival. Attractive people have numerous advantages over ugly people in that they may gain social status more easily. This is where progressives or liberals whatever they are calling themselves this week begin their exploration of "equality" they see one person having an advantage over another and seek to equalize it. In doing this, they have to use force and theft and all sorts of government machinations to effect their "change".

You have made some important points about the nature of equality. One of them is that you cannot totally rely on one specific quality to define humanity. I attempted to define humanity on the basis of cognition alone, and you rightfully pointed out that cognition is not unique to humans, so I clarified my point by extending cognition to high intellect and as a result I had to resort to genetics as a basis for defining retarded people as humans. I am not saying they are not human, but the fact is, if high cognition is the only objective basis for defining a human, then seriously retarded people (those lacking any ability at higher reasoning) could not be considered human. Therefore, genetics and human reasoning are both unique to humanity, but only genetics is unique to all humans. My logic was obviously flawed in this regard, but the flaws in my logic do not negate the fact that the majority of humans among all races are capable of higher rational thought. What liberals dont understand, or simply are unwilling to admit is that equality only exists in so much as law exists, but LAW does NOT create equality. Law can only be applied equally among all humans. If I steel a television and a black person steels a television and a retarded person steels a television, we should all be treated equally under the law, but 2 out of the 3 of us are mentally capable of knowing that the law forbids theft and that taking another persons television is theft. The retarded person does not understand this and therefore cannot be held accountable for his actions the same way I would be. It is unreasonable to punish a person for a crime if they are physically (brain wise) incapable of understanding this law. This does not excuse stupid people, just people incapable of rational thought. Stupid people are just ignorant and ignorance does not make them incapable of rational thought. Punishing a retarded person for a crime they could not have reasonably understood is like punishing a person for a crime they did not commit, because their mind is incapable of understanding the crime.

In another post, I made yet another logical error. I suggested that one person cannot be of value to another because they would have to own that person. At least half of this argument could be said to be true, but it relies on a very strict understanding of the term "value". I value members of my family because they have cared for me and I have a specific social bond to them. I value my pets because I have a bond to them, whether or not they have a bond for me is not an issue, because if I were hungry and it was between eating Fido or uncle Fred, Fido would go first every time. This understanding of the term "value" is based on subjective values, such as friendship, but also on common purpose values such as our cooperative efforts at survival. I help my family survive and they help me and sometimes Fido even finds a way to contribute. These values are all good, but they are my values. Other people do not necessarily see the same value as I do from these people. I only bring up these values because they are important aspects of my individual liberty. If someone kills a member of my family, I am losing these values which have developed due to our social bond (bonds which are my natural right to create since I am inherently capable of creating them). Cows and chickens and baboons do not participate in human civilization and while we like to think pets do, they really are mostly property unless you have a seeing eye dog or something. Because these animals do not participate in human civilization and because they are genetically different especially with regards to their potential ability to develop a mind capable of higher reasoning, they are not capable of participating in a human society in any meaningful self fulfilling way.

Civilization is an emergent result of humanities efforts to find and use resources for survival. One of the primary ways people find resources is through association (trade, contract, charity etc). Equality does not define the qualitative state of a humans mental, physical or aesthetic features, it simply means that they have the same right to live as all the other humans in a society, because they are human and because they are a part of our society.

Of course any philosophy can be taken to its absurd ends, but the emergence of society allows us to carefully define where those ends, well, end. I guess another way of saying this is that a free society is 99% ideals, 1% pragmatism. The pragmatism is necessary to allow for some use of violence (government) to establish and maintain basic law and order. The fewer laws we have the better as far as I am concerned, but zero laws is taking the ideals to their absurd ends.

My point about racial distinctions is this. While you are right in saying there are differences among races. These differences are superficial. The mind is not superficial, it has specific qualities and because all races share these qualities, all races are essentially the same. Fear of one race is irrational, but humanity more often than not is irrational. Groups of people may badn together and oppose, intimidate or threaten other groups of people, but if these groups are formed based on superficial differences, then their goals are irrational. If these groups form out of rational ideas, then the one with the truth (facts) backing them up will ultimately win, because they are the only group acting purely on a rational basis. Someone's skin color may be a fact, but it is a distinction of no particular value, because that person is also human in every objective way so their skin color can not be the basis of any reasonable argument against their individual right to existence.

[EJC]

Who are you people? I can understand a Marxist or socialist wanting control, but I don't understand morons. I don't see 13 year olds following the news. This is very disheartening.

[El Duderino]

Exactly who are you calling a moron?

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