The Swamp

Jerloma wrote:I think Syb was being facetious.

Half facetiously being a pedantic dick, but I'm not bothered by the remark. Totally agree they specified North Korea, because who is going to defend them? OTOH, they do eat dogs, and it's socially acceptable. I think it's different than blacks and fried chicken, because of racial connotations, and N. Koreans are a nationality, not a race, but whatevs. How did BBQ, fried chicken and watermelon become racial slurs? Who doesn't love BBQ, fried chicken and watermelon?

Don't forget the Kool-Aid!

Might be my new favorite tweet ...

I get frustrated when people throw out the term "racist" when someone else insults a nationality or religion. But it's the kind of thing you really have to be careful about mentioning, so I almost always let it go.

Of course, it can get tricky when a nationality and race are closely associated (e.g. Mexicans or Indians). Of course, what constitutes a "race" can get tricky all on its own. I think when I was in school, we learned there were three - Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - but that never really made sense to me as race is clearly more nuanced. I'm rambling...

Shirley wrote:I get frustrated when people throw out the term "racist" when someone else insults a nationality or religion. But it's the kind of thing you really have to be careful about mentioning, so I almost always let it go.

Of course, it can get tricky when a nationality and race are closely associated (e.g. Mexicans or Indians). Of course, what constitutes a "race" can get tricky all on its own. I think when I was in school, we learned there were three - Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - but that never really made sense to me as race is clearly more nuanced. I'm rambling...

Did you go to school in the 1830s?

I trust Bernie Sanders with my tax dollars like I trust a caucasoid with tuberculosis to sight land from atop a frigate full of hardtack

Would it be better if I turned it down to general xenophobia?

Huckabee is a skid mark on American politics, and given the state of that entire area in general deserves all shit he gets and then some. It is hard for me to honestly believe this human piece of shit is a former governor. An actual elected official. I can only assume he got elected by appealing to the basest crazy notions of a severely gerrymandered and under-educated population of people.

I'll back down to xenophobia on the comment he laid out there, but I stand by my assessment that he is a racist, misogynistic, religious zealot, who isn't qualified to lead a shift at Wendy's, much less the state of Arkansas.

People like him are a fantastic case study in what makes religion such a powerful tool to control the masses. It's the 0.01% of religious folks like him that tear me up inside on how to think about anyone who can subscribe to that nonsense. The vast majority of religious peoples out there are just doing their best, hedging their bets against the concept of something they can't understand. But it's fuckers like him that keep me from live and let live about all of it.

How on earth can you detach yourself from reality so much that you do anything but condemn people like him and Ben Carson and Lindsey Graham? It has to infuriate people who have Republican ideals (some of which have merit!) to be lumped in with people like that. I just can't fathom. It makes me sad.

The Sybian wrote:

Shirley wrote:I get frustrated when people throw out the term "racist" when someone else insults a nationality or religion. But it's the kind of thing you really have to be careful about mentioning, so I almost always let it go.

Of course, it can get tricky when a nationality and race are closely associated (e.g. Mexicans or Indians). Of course, what constitutes a "race" can get tricky all on its own. I think when I was in school, we learned there were three - Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - but that never really made sense to me as race is clearly more nuanced. I'm rambling...

Did you go to school in the 1830s?

Yeah, it does sound like some ancient shit, but apparently it's still in use. I should be clear, it's meant as a high-level classification, so maybe I was wrong in calling those "races." It's been a while since I've had social studies.

Yeah, race is much more of a social concept. I don't think biology has any use for it at all.

Shirley wrote:

The Sybian wrote:

Shirley wrote:I get frustrated when people throw out the term "racist" when someone else insults a nationality or religion. But it's the kind of thing you really have to be careful about mentioning, so I almost always let it go.

Of course, it can get tricky when a nationality and race are closely associated (e.g. Mexicans or Indians). Of course, what constitutes a "race" can get tricky all on its own. I think when I was in school, we learned there were three - Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - but that never really made sense to me as race is clearly more nuanced. I'm rambling...

Did you go to school in the 1830s?

Yeah, it does sound like some ancient shit, but apparently it's still in use. I should be clear, it's meant as a high-level classification, so maybe I was wrong in calling those "races." It's been a while since I've had social studies.

Curious. Which do Native Americans fall under?

Rougeaderms.

P.D.X. wrote:

Shirley wrote:

The Sybian wrote:

Shirley wrote:I get frustrated when people throw out the term "racist" when someone else insults a nationality or religion. But it's the kind of thing you really have to be careful about mentioning, so I almost always let it go.

Of course, it can get tricky when a nationality and race are closely associated (e.g. Mexicans or Indians). Of course, what constitutes a "race" can get tricky all on its own. I think when I was in school, we learned there were three - Caucusoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - but that never really made sense to me as race is clearly more nuanced. I'm rambling...

Did you go to school in the 1830s?

Yeah, it does sound like some ancient shit, but apparently it's still in use. I should be clear, it's meant as a high-level classification, so maybe I was wrong in calling those "races." It's been a while since I've had social studies.

Curious. Which do Native Americans fall under?

Mongoloid, which is the non-PC term for "Asians." From some googling earlier today, some classifications add a fourth for Australoid, or something like that.

BSF21 wrote:Would it be better if I turned it down to general xenophobia?

Huckabee is a skid mark on American politics, and given the state of that entire area in general deserves all shit he gets and then some. It is hard for me to honestly believe this human piece of shit is a former governor. An actual elected official. I can only assume he got elected by appealing to the basest crazy notions of a severely gerrymandered and under-educated population of people.

I'll back down to xenophobia on the comment he laid out there, but I stand by my assessment that he is a racist, misogynistic, religious zealot, who isn't qualified to lead a shift at Wendy's, much less the state of Arkansas.

People like him are a fantastic case study in what makes religion such a powerful tool to control the masses. It's the 0.01% of religious folks like him that tear me up inside on how to think about anyone who can subscribe to that nonsense. The vast majority of religious peoples out there are just doing their best, hedging their bets against the concept of something they can't understand. But it's fuckers like him that keep me from live and let live about all of it.

How on earth can you detach yourself from reality so much that you do anything but condemn people like him and Ben Carson and Lindsey Graham? It has to infuriate people who have Republican ideals (some of which have merit!) to be lumped in with people like that. I just can't fathom. It makes me sad.

I'll sign off on all of this. I'm picturing a skit with Huckabee in a retro Wendy's uniform, a gunman sticking his gun in Carson's ribs, and Caron telling him he's looking for Huckabee. Then Carson leisurely strolls to a table and eats his Big N' Juicy, fries and large Frosty.

It has to infuriate people who have Republican ideals (some of which have merit!)

What is an ideal exclusive to Republicans which has merit?

Jerloma wrote:

It has to infuriate people who have Republican ideals (some of which have merit!)

What is an ideal exclusive to Republicans which has merit?

The general idea of smaller government in some areas. I believe many government resources are wasted on bureaucracy and that the government could run smaller and be more efficient to help the needs of more people. It's not so much number of programs, it's the waste overall which I think is of little concern to the Dems.

I guess I like the general idea of the independence of people, which I think is more of a GOP idea than a Dem one, but has been bastardized by those to the far right as being "freedom to do whatever you like except what our skyfairie and the people who give us the most money don't want you to be free to do". I'm a very live and let live kind of person. I think the GOP could get some traction on that if they'd drop the fucking religious right act and run with that idea.

I'm not sure if we will come together on these discussions even though we're on the same side. Given your thoughts on religion (of which we're also on the same side), I don't think there's a lot of place to find common ground on your views. But I'll hope.

Yeah so I think you're just focusing on the values that they espouse. I don't care about that. You can preach about personal freedom all you want but when you tell someone they can't get married or smoke some weed, it goes right out the door.

Small government, blah, blah, blah. Again...it's just words, man.

That's an interesting chart, but without delving into data on what qualifies as "government employee" and cross referencing to number of programs available, scope of programs, etc - it's hard to get a grasp on what the numbers actually mean. You get into a lot of questions like "does a contractor for the government qualify?" or "do temp workers factor in?". I'm not dismissing your point, I'm honestly saying it's too much research for me to do.

Generally, in my time that I've been old enough to be aware of politics, the left tends to lean towards broader government, which I'm not always sure is a good thing. It can be. It can also have its pitfalls when it comes to accomplishing tasks against say a local business.

Seeing through the lens of only one side is part of what makes the political process so harmful right now. You have people on both sides that won't even take note of anything someone talks about because of the symbol next to their name or how they feel about a certain set of issues.

No one out there is going to line up with any individual 100%. I think it's silly to dismiss anyone's ideas based solely on a political party or a belief that they have, no matter how backwards I think it is.

I reiterate, interesting chart. It would be something I'd be into researching if I had time.

BSF21 wrote:The general idea of smaller government in some areas. I believe many government resources are wasted on bureaucracy and that the government could run smaller and be more efficient to help the needs of more people. It's not so much number of programs, it's the waste overall which I think is of little concern to the Dems.

I don't think anyone likes or doesn't care about waste, but more that its seen as preferable to profiteering.

Right, the typical GOP argument is "smaller government no matter what". So if that means cutting IRS staffing to the point when it's impossible to catch tax cheats and for honest taxpayers to get help, which actually costs the taxpayers money in the short and long run, then too fucking bad.

(If hdo's experience with trying to get someone from the IRS on the phone when he needs to talk to someone is anything like my other friends who are CPAs, he can tell you some stories. And those cuts are under a Democratic president. Imagine what a Republican president with a Republican congress would have done.)

There's not a single person I can imagine, Democrat, Republican or whatever that wants the government to be wasteful, but I like my chicken to not have salmonella so I'm OK if the USDA has a couple of extra people on staff and if the SEC wants to go after stock scammers I'm fine with that too.

brian wrote:Right, the typical GOP argument is "smaller government no matter what". So if that means cutting IRS staffing to the point when it's impossible to catch tax cheats and for honest taxpayers to get help, which actually costs the taxpayers money in the short and long run, then too fucking bad.

This I totally get, but I think the IRS is a great barometer of my point. Cutting IRS staffing is not what I'm talking about, its the fact that we have progressively built up to the point where we "need" the current levels of staffing because we have allowed the US Tax Code to get so out of control that this is the only way to manage that. The real solution would be to fix the problem, but instead, we tend to spend all our time and energies treating symptoms.

This is my major problem with government that gets large and bureaucratized. Things get big, which is good for some people, but then when problems are fixed, needs come down. People lose jobs. Corporations sell fewer widgets. Our goal should be to streamline not expand, but that doesn't fit into the growth model of private business. Nothing about what we do in this country encourages people to actual solve problems. We add people, mitigate loss, and post a 3% growth rate for the fiscal year. Eventually things get too swollen and this is no longer sustainable. That's my fear. Not big government, but government that has gotten so bogged down that it ceases to be efficient in it's current state, so we make it a little bigger.


Here's something to ponder, just from my little section of small business and the private sector. I represent a smallish distributor of PVC products for the US and Canadian market. We are an efficient business. We make good products. We treat our people well. We are "certified" by no fewer than 8 independent agencies that test our products on a quarterly to yearly basis. Not because we want to be. We do our own testing. It benefits no one in the company for any of our products to fail, ever. It means lawsuits for one, and once you screw a project, you're likely to get a contractor, distributor or municipality to say "we will never use that product again". So why are we independently certified 6 ways to Sunday? Because in the territories we cover, local and state level officials have decided over a period of 30 years that every so often, that particular standard we test to isn't enough. We need a new standard. We need a new designation. We need a new delineation. And it costs our business money and by proxy, the end user, who 9/10 times is, you guessed it, the average local taxpayer.

I'm all for keeping high standards. I'm all for certification and testing and honesty in production. But you've now bloated this to the level that the company has to build in cost for these things that provided no tangible benefit. It happens at every level of government in this country at every turn. That is what scares me about expanding things. Expansion does not equal solving problems. Oftentimes it just creates more of them.

brian wrote: There's not a single person I can imagine, Democrat, Republican or whatever that wants the government to be wasteful, but I like my chicken to not have salmonella so I'm OK if the USDA has a couple of extra people on staff and if the SEC wants to go after stock scammers I'm fine with that too.

And I think you'd be surprised how many people make it their career ambition to make the government more wasteful. Waste goes somewhere. Typically into the pockets of large corporations.

Right. And the reason the tax code is so burdensome is because of the rich. Its almost as if a tiny subset is using "small government" as a mantra for furthering their own interests.

BSF21 wrote:That's an interesting chart, but without delving into data on what qualifies as "government employee" and cross referencing to number of programs available, scope of programs, etc - it's hard to get a grasp on what the numbers actually mean. You get into a lot of questions like "does a contractor for the government qualify?" or "do temp workers factor in?". I'm not dismissing your point, I'm honestly saying it's too much research for me to do.

That and the chart greatly exaggerates differences by setting the entire range within 1% (from 9 to 10).

mister d wrote:Right. And the reason the tax code is so burdensome is because of the rich. Its almost as if a tiny subset is using "small government" as a mantra for furthering their own interests.

I think their definition of "small government" is bastardized. "Government that only spends money on things that the majority of us are invested in instead of actual solutions and helping the less fortunate" is just so much harder to write out.

The GOP is not for small government. If that were the case, you'd see the US Military be forced to reign in spending and you know what happens if we do that? ISIS wins.

Shirley wrote:That and the chart greatly exaggerates differences by setting the entire range within 1% (from 9 to 10).

1% is pretty significant in that instance, no?

Please tell me this isn't permanent. (Note: it is.)

Wrong icon in that tweet. Should be this:

I made this same joke. Just not on Twitter.

Gay Hooters deactivating is a crippling loss to my twitter timeline.

Two leading conservative minds, this morning on tweeter...
First response to him was a picture of Trump meeting Muhammad Ali.

And then this, from superGenius/CNN contributor Erick Erickson (who called Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "child molesting goat fucker"):
Of course, this was after he posted this over the weekend, in response to the New York Times front page editoral about gun control:

10 second violation.

Poznanski just retweeted this, and called it "the greatest tweet in the history of the world" and he may be right.

howard wrote:Poznanski just retweeted this, and called it "the greatest tweet in the history of the world" and he may be right.

I hope he shows his work. I'd love to see the thinking there.

The Sybian wrote:

howard wrote:Poznanski just retweeted this, and called it "the greatest tweet in the history of the world" and he may be right.

I hope he shows his work. I'd love to see the thinking there.

Pretty significant assumption.

Just figured out I've been blocked by Barnwell. Not sure why - I think I tweeted a reply to him maybe twice in the fall about one of his tweets - apparently that did it, can't find my tweets now that must have offended.

tennbengal wrote:Just figured out I've been blocked by Barnwell. Not sure why - I think I tweeted a reply to him maybe twice in the fall about one of his tweets - apparently that did it, can't find my tweets now that must have offended.

You're not on Twitter until you've been blocked by Barnwell. Other Tweeps make a joke about needing to step up their block game to match him. He's the Jordan.