Fuck off then and leave the decent conversation to the grown ups. Apparently there's pictures of a royal with her tits out on t'internet if you're bored.

No. All this shows is a party attempting to paint Obama as weak on foreign policy even though he is largely just continuing their policies (just saw this). The main difference between Obama (and co.) and Bush (and co.) is in approach. Obama would never have reacted to 9/11 by promising to find those responsible and "kick their ass". His response would have been way more calm and articulate but would he have done the same as Bush? Absolutely.

Tell me about it! !!!- for what it's worth.
Not sure I agree 100% but I certainly wouldn't ever exclude myself from the political process because of its inadequacies. For example as much as I find myself angered by Labour's lack of response to the Tory government's mixture of dogma and incompetence and as much as they angered me when in power because of their many pro-corporation policies, I would have them back in power tomorrow if I could.

it's an accompaniment in afghanistan but not in pakistan-- i can't imagine what a clusterfuck would be if the US went to invade pakistan. even in afghanistan the drones are an alternative to troops that not just kill civilians but also urinate on corpses. at least drones don't have bladders.

here's a bit on the plans to invade pakistan-- a nuclear power for fucks sakes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-m..._b_600014.html

but yeah it's a shit situation no matter how you cut it. i just think the more rationality can be brought into the process the greater the chances for some sort of a temporary truce of the kind desperate people call "peace". if the pentagon is using drones because they think it's their best option, i might disagree, they have their own internal disagreements too== but if they are using drones because "it's the hammer of the gods, as fulfilling the prophecies of Ragnar 2, verse 36" that would be another fucking story.


on afghanistan, sure-- but iraq??? the iraq invasion was a neocon wet dream!!! completely manufactured. no fucking way. just-- no.

painting obama as weak is part of politicking of course but it's a proven fact that the republicans are much more grandiose and deluded when it comes to the international arena.


some of this makes a point and some of it is bullshit but that's too much to discuss on a tuesday morning.


here's larry summers on the subject. yes he may be a shill for the banks or whatever, and he said insensitive things about women, bla bla bla, he's not Jesus Christ IV, but he's a competent nerd:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...a4a_story.html

like you with labor, i'm pissed off at the obama administration for many reasons, from domestic espionage to not standing up with enough force against the republicans in the budget battles, but to claim that another obama term vs. having romney bring his incompetent self plus his coterie of right wing lunatics would be the same thing-- and therefore one shouldn't bother voting as suchfriends claims-- is just... well... fucking retarded.

Thank you for your resume, and while at this current time we don't have any position openings, we will keep you in our applicant pool for future consideration :)


You can call me a bitch, and you can pretend I only do this on the internet, but as you've pointed out from your experience, you and me both know I'm right on this. What I have been antagonizing on this thread is not the obvious reality of the ineptitude and inherent corruption of our political machinery, rather, its that folks like you who damn well know better still seem to shrug your shoulders can carry on perpetuating the myths. I know, you're tempted to believe them, they seem so very real, but as you've said, from your very real experience you know they are just that, myths. There is some truth to myth, and fact sometimes more truth in myth than fact. However, in this instance, the substance is the opposite. I applaud what you've done, keep it up, but stop being counter-productive to your own successes by promoting lame ass political partisanship and bullshit political jingoism and fear mongering :(
You can badger me all you like, it won't make me feel bad or suddenly vote for Barack, it only makes me wonder how you manage to live inside your own head with all that cognitive dissonance..

why don't you get a position yourself, mr. all-talk-and-no-show bongwater oracle?


Let's talk about your Jesus II:

It is ironic that Selassie liked to project an image of himself to the world of a kind, tolerant and benevolent soul, yet those in his country who detracted from this image were usually executed.

[...]

Haile Selassie was not God or a great reformer; but a callous, greedy, thieving autocrat, who should be remembered for the murdering leech that he was.

http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue48/haile.html

"All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it."

It surprises me that you would denigrate yourself to such immature and petty nonsense. Yes, HIM Haile Selassie is a complicated figure in history, and I am glad that you have enough sense to point out the contradiction, but in this instance, its not applicable, because true, you can try to discredit me as a speaker, but what I am saying stands true beyond any questions of my credibility. The fact that you've gotten so defensive that essentially you just put out a Super-PAC TV-AD style hit on me should embarrass you.
Let me reiterate the point, all bongs aside.

I have deep issues with certain aspects of Obomber's policies, but my absolute fundamental disgust toward pea-brained Romney is so great that I will, once again, vote Donkey this November.

I wasn't going to vote at all, because I very deeply believe your country to be beyond all hope of saving, and I know, that in Texas, voting Donkey is next to spitting in ocean, but I cannot conscientiously abstain from voting against the white devil.

That man-beast, and his cockamamie beliefs, would scorch the planet in the pursuit of 'prophecy'.

See, that is precisely the problem. You sir, are a robot, and so you don't have feelings, I understand how you can come to that conclusion. But !@#$%!, I've known him for years, and what is the saddest thing about Obama is that he has duped and lured so many bright, optimistic, and activist young adults into his flock to absolutely gut and disenfranchise them, removing all power. So many people I know are like !@#$%!, they are so intelligent, so active in their communities, usually so level-headed and speak such capital "T" Truths. Then they throw it all away by diving into this pointless political partisanship. Good cop bad cop is not a game that makes the cops any better, it only makes the citizens all the more deceived by the desperation of the circumstances..

im not flocking and i don't believe in man-gods like you do-- voting democrat is voting for a slightly less-crazy world, is all. get real, preacher.

"Everywhere I go, 'they holla keep it real G,' and my reply, 'till they kill me, act up if ya feel me' "

That's real democratic of you, attack a person's faith because you know you can't attack the substance of their argument because you also know your own argument for blindly kowtowinig to poisonous political partisanship and jingoism also lacks any substance to speak of..


Alas, it comes back to this voting myth. We had these chats in 2004 and 2008, in that regard I suppose I am just kicking around a dead horse to breath in the stench of decay and have a pity party. I will leave you alone to your cognitive dissonance, but in 2013 when Mitt Obama takes over the way Barack W.H. Bush II took over in 09, then who will you have to blame? Oh right, yourself ;)

It's more like so-so cop vs theocratic fucktard.

Obama may not be optimal, but he's far less likely to bathe you in nuclear fire.

Mark my words, thempresidentsbedangerous, Romney will bring untold woe.

Me? I'll be underground, laughing, and content that I tried.

You think that? Maybe you need to update your operating system or debug or something ;)

A glowing wasteland awaits your inaction.

Remember this moment as you watch your city burn.

Voting is the definition of inaction if not accompanied by direct community involvement. I just prefer to skip out on the voting middle-man and keep working in the community.

In regards to my city, its our city, and I'd like to see those fuckers try. The only people who are ever going to burn Los Angeles is LA itself, and we've surely had a good go at it twice yet ;)

so can we please get to the point and hear what kind of community work have you actually done?

Haha. this is the internet holmes, I ain't posting my resume. That was a rhetorical question, just because you answered it doesn't mean I am going to be naive enough to give ammo about my actual life to haters. You can either take my word that work daily in the community through all the less political channels we've been discussing, or you won't, but having an internet pissing contest isn't going to help any of us. Besides, whether I put my own resume up or not will not persuade you one way or the other, it will only make me look all the more sillier for exposing myself like that playboy ;)

the reason i ask you about it is not out of interest in your personal life but it's because i seriously doubt that you have actually done anything in the real world.

the reason i have that doubt is because you create a false dichotomy between "pure, authentic" community work and "corrupt, shitstem" larger politics.

that dichotomy is bullshit, fake, not real, hot air and empty theory, and anyone who has ever gotten into any kind of community involvement knows that, but you clearly don't. so i must conclude you have zero real experience. or maybe two weeks, tops.

you talk the talk. yeah, you're good at rhetoric.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Did you switch from drinking belgian-style to Porter?


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

You mean like this?

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

what i've been fighting is your claims that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

and Iran is not an Arab country.

that's in 5 days.

ps - please define "shortly after"

pps-




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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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