>> ^CaptainPlanet420:
When in this thread or video did I imply Obama was Muslim? Never. I said his backers are.

It is illegitimate.

Some of his backers are Jewish and Israeli, so are we going to start a Hebrew Channel?

Some of his backers are German. What next, a Teutonic tag?

Some of his backers are Gay, some are straight, some are veggitarians, some are deer hunters.

I usually don't get all huffy about the tag and channel thing, but your reasoning is defenseless.

>> ^imstellar28:
^Iraqi kurds is an example of a force differential. Chemicals weapons versus light arms fire. Same thing happens when you have light arms fire versus unarmed fists. Genocide cannot occur when both sides are equally armed.

Well I hope you've got some pretty huge guns then, because right now your force differential is looking pretty bad versus the mightiest army in the world.

if the CIA/secret service decides to round me up, what else are my options? Surrender and walk myself to the gas chamber? At least with a firearm I would have some sort of chance to fire back and flee the state/country, and they would be hesitant to round people up if at every house they were met with a barrage of gunfire

They might hesitate for about ten minutes whilst they wait for the flame tank to burn you out. How many people do you think would resist after the first 100 or so were slaughterd with their families. Causing hesitation isn't enough. The end result is the same.

the government could have killed Japanese-americans, but they were deterred in part by the threat an armed American populace who does not condone genocide. if the government is already okay with rounding people up into prisons based on race, is it really that unthinkable that the next step would be genocide? there are roughly 300,000 active troops, but there are almost 300,000,000 citizens holding 150,000,000 guns. that is a very powerful deterrent that is also rather transparent to most people.

The deterrent is perfectly transparent to me thank you very much. If I was China/Russia thinking of a US land grab I would definitely think twice against a 150,000,000 man war. My whole point is that in a domestic situation the people being oppressed are usually the minority so half of those guns are actually pointing AT you. Your notion that Americans would've risen up against their government if it commited a Japanese genocide is very honorable, but not realistic IMO. My original point was that many Americans didn't much care for "Japs" and would probably have swallowed whatever propaganda the government fed them about "spies" etc. Let's not forget that exactly what we're theorising about did happen in Germany and barely a handful of people did anything about it. It wasn't because they lacked guns, they lacked knowledge and those that had it lacked will. At the end of the day when most people are faced with a choice between their morals and their life they choose the latter.

There are at least two dozen examples of mass genocide in the last century with full, detailed historical accounts available. There are plenty of books on the subject, one of which is the one I sourced above. Please read it into yourself, you know what they say about history and those who do not learn from it.

I can't guarantee I will find time to read it, but if you post the name and author I'll see if I can find it this side of the pond.

when you become defenseless and depend only on the government for protection, you are essentially living your life on faith--and I don't believe in faith, I believe in facts. a gun will protect me, faith will not.

On the contrary; you are the one that has faith in your gun. Guns are offensive weapons, not defenses. You can have your shoot-out, but the best you can hope for is to kill a few bad guys before they get you.

^Iraqi kurds is an example of a force differential. Chemicals weapons versus light arms fire. Same thing happens when you have light arms fire versus unarmed fists. Genocide cannot occur when both sides are equally armed.

if the CIA/secret service decides to round me up, what else are my options? Surrender and walk myself to the gas chamber? At least with a firearm I would have some sort of chance to fire back and flee the state/country, and they would be hesitant to round people up if at every house they were met with a barrage of gunfire.

the government could have killed Japanese-americans, but they were deterred in part by the threat an armed American populace who does not condone genocide. if the government is already okay with rounding people up into prisons based on race, is it really that unthinkable that the next step would be genocide? there are roughly 300,000 active troops, but there are almost 300,000,000 citizens holding 150,000,000 guns. that is a very powerful deterrent that is also rather transparent to most people.

There are at least two dozen examples of mass genocide in the last century with full, detailed historical accounts available. There are plenty of books on the subject, one of which is the one I sourced above. Please read it into yourself, you know what they say about history and those who do not learn from it.

when you become defenseless and depend only on the government for protection, you are essentially living your life on faith--and I don't believe in faith, I believe in facts. a gun will protect me, faith will not.

Right before he clamps his kitty fangs down onto defenseless Hankey's neck.


In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Love your avatar. Mr. Hankey gets a kitty hug!

>> ^BillOreilly:

There's a big difference between defenseless unborn children and terrorist organizations and axe murderers. Or is that so difficult to see?


I had no idea that the 96,000 people that have died in Iraq were all terrorists! My god, our 'enemy' is more formidable than I had ever imagined!

As far as axe murderers, pass the axe and I'll take care of him.

>> ^dag:
The argument is framed wrong. Of course a 50-cell blastocyst is alive, so are yeast cells and paramecium. Better to ask when is a developing fetus a human being.
And also yes the amazing dichotomy of a "culture of life" that promotes bombing countries and the death penalty is a huge mental disconnect.


No, your argument is framed wrong. There's a big difference between defenseless unborn children and terrorist organizations and axe murderers. Or is that so difficult to see?

>> ^MINK:
lithuania has a fairly free market because it's fucking corrupt, and i can tell you it's not beneficial to the consumer. the lies they get away with in unregulated advertising are shocking. of course they do it, because they can and it works.
corruption is what humans do unless someone with a bigger gun tells them not to.
individual freedom will always fuck up the common good. crime does pay. if you legalise business practices which are currently criminal, you'll get more of it, not a magical balanced free utopia.
Imstellar, in your version of a free market, who would stop Microsoft dominating the place with shitty software? I think we need MORE regulation there, not less. How is it efficient for microsoft to keep churning out that crap? you are asking for everything to be a marketing, bribery and advertising contest.
here on the sift we have a free market of ideas and video uploads, and look what happens, a bunch of cliques and lolcats and vote whores and the noise level is so high that you can't find the good shit without watching 10 crappy videos. Can you imagine what it would be like here if siftbot stopped checking for sock puppet accounts?


You're confused, I blame the all-encompassing buzzword of the day "regulation" for this, people don't understand the markets and have come to take it as meaning "government making it all better and overseeing greed." Government indeed has desirable functions in law enforcement and offering recourse through courts for disputes. They should NOT be price-fixing, monopolizing money, or handing out taxpayer money under socialist ideals of directing industry or "enhancing market confidence," this has collusion and corruption written all over it. Politicians are humans and someone spending millions of his own money to get in a low-salary position of controlling other people's money is probably going to be a more harmful source of greed than any businessman. Because even though Henry Ford became a millionaire, thousands of people got cars out of the deal. Not sure the same would have come from government expenditures...

But many would consider this form of corporate wealth redistribution "regulating" the market. I don't.

Your example of false advertising is an example of where law enforcement should take place. Can I sell a product that purports to do something it doesn't? No, that's a swindle, the contract was not upheld, and you can go to government-provided courts to be compensated. Similar things apply to other swindles, though in most cases even the government can't prevent you from falling for some e-mail scam to a Nigerian clearing house. Unless, of course, you agree to have them snoop all your incoming e-mail to check for this stuff. I'd hope you understand that that's a pretty stupid of you, though, for giving up your privacy in order to protect yourself from being gullible. Not understanding cost/benefit ratios is a huge socialist mistake. They're always missing the potential costs and focusing on the benefit.

Gun bans, for example, have the intention of reducing violence but in reality remove the deterrent criminals otherwise have against a society that does have them, causing crime to increase. Plus, it makes you defenseless to oppressive government. The utopian allure of creating a "perfect" society where no gun crime exists and everyone can live in peace and trust is what gets them to miss the greater cost incurred that any thinking man would have foreseen.

The Fed is another one. Fractional reserves caused a lot of bank runs in the old days. Instead of banning this practice, they backstopped it with a central bank, but the central bank price fixed interest rates, causing a crash in 29. Further temporary socialist measures turned it into a fifteen year depression, a nuclear explosion compared to the firecrackers of the original problem. Then the FDIC was created. This incentivized a lot of risk and borrowing, which has helped the current problem fester. See how the failure to correctly solve one problem has led to a cascade of "solutions" that create even more problems that beget even more solutions? That's socialism, my friends. It just builds and builds until eventual collapse.

I would say that another socialist mistake you are making is that law enforcement itself is a proper regulatory measure. Not when they're selective, they're not. There is plenty of legislation out there that legalizes something for one industry, but not the other. Banks can loan out money they don't have at interest. Any other industry, and you're thrown in jail for fraudulent lending practices.

LOLskers at your Microsoft argument, too. Who prevents Microsoft from churning out crap? Consumers, mayhaps? People were free to not adopt Windows ME or Vista, and that's exactly what happened, their sales were disappointing for both. Anyone investing in Microsoft don't like failures leading to lost earnings. But Microsoft is smart and continues to sell XP, which is a perfectly good OS even today. But if they currently get any tax credits or subsidies, they shouldn't. No company should have access to forcibly appropriated money, period.

I think the real scary thing about all this, besides the fact that you don't understand it, is that you seem to be implying that a government office operating on forcibly appropriated money is capable of greater efficiency than the private sector. Maybe it comes close for laying pavement and picking up garbage. But in the grander scheme, no. It wasn't the case with Chernobyl and it ain't today, buddy. You take a hell of lot of innovations and products for granted if you believe that.

What is it with Vice Presidents shooting defenseless animals with semi-automatic weapons from vehicles? Didn't Cheney shoot quail in a box from a car with a rifle?

They haven't actually used it (to smash atoms) yet.... so to say "I told you so" is a bit premature... however I don't think it would cause a catastrophic end to us all just because they're smashing the shit out of some poor defenseless atoms.

I say spend the $3,000 on baseball bats and go to town on whoever threw that defenseless kitty into highway traffic.

I wonder what his views on gay porn would be, seeing as they don't have any frail, defenseless, only-have-a-choice-because-men-give-them-one women being degraded in them.

All of his nonsense implicitly assumes that sex is bad---or at least vulgar, that women don't actually enjoy sex on the same (base/animal) level as some men, and that porn is only there for the pleasure of men.

Sexist, old-school poppycock, all of it.


PS: Chomsky, who reads every major US paper daily and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things America (among other things), has never even heard of Hustler magazine? Larry Flynt? For someone with such a strong opinion on pornography he seems uncharacteristically ill-prepared to talk about it.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Bush is a lot smarter than the left will ever give him credit for being. And if he's not, it just makes the left look even more incompetent.Trill, he's not a movie star/empty suit like the Obamessiah. He's done well considering the American media is 90% leftist and wants him to fail. At least have the temerity to admit he's never gotten a fair shake from the press, even to oneself.
"If Bush is "stupid", even with test scores higher than Frenchy Kerry's, then it's a very poor reflection on your taxocrats in Congress that they DANCE to his tune; most Bush legislation has passed handily and easily."
I don't see this as being an argument for anything but your own biases. Not that I'm overly concerned. You're entitled to your opinion of Bush. At present, our American Congress is overrun with wannabe-Euros (called Democrats, taxocrats, victicrats) and they've got lower approval ratings than even Bush. All the same, just as Bush is given credit for the stuff libs call bad, so it goes he gets the credit for the legislation he passes.
"Torture" of head-sawing terrorists is fine with me. If you're not an enemy soldier of a standing army, you have no rights under any code of law. It's embarrassing that anyone would try to invent rights for the very scum that seek to destroy civilization. Good riddance.
Phone tapping in wartime? Yawn. There's 300 million Americans, good luck sifting through the transcripts, feds.
Americans are stupid? Dumb is everywhere, but Europe's finished, has been for a long time. You're not a model for humanity, you're a warning. Socialist economies have high unemployment and are grossly inefficient. Without a fight, you've surrendered any economic edge you might have had, kow-towing to "global warming" charlatans. You've lost your individual national identities in that despicable EU. Nanny-state government cancels tobacco, seizes your guns--without resistance--leaving you defenseless sheep to be culled by criminals and your lefty propaganda media, the model which our American bastard media likes to imitate, covers up the resulting mess. With the death of religion, which the "intelligentsia" of Europe deem a triumph, the last remnant of your ability to transmit cultural values is gone. You might as well start bowing to Allah now.


Again and again you use sweeping and deflecting terms like "the left" "the liberal". Every piece of criticism is swatted by the same gaping maw. This lends you no credability whatsoever, especially when it's so blatant. Racists have better slur propaganda than you have - at least they've thought it out. In the same way you swat every criticism of bush as "left" and "liberal" bullshit, we should treat you with the same lack of intelligence you treat us, and refer to any compliment of bush as "right" or "conservative" or whatever the respective terms are.

You STILL fail to address the point. People have been filming, recording and watching bush for 8 years, and the worldwide opinion (not just lefties, liberals, whatever other buzz word you'll throw out) is that he is a moron. I'm NOT going to say that he has never gotten a fair shake from the media when i've seen the man stand in front of an audience and claim to know the name of a general, and sit there flaccidly saying "his name is........general!" When i've seen the man make an empty, ventriloquistic speech about terrorism, and then demand that we "watch this drive!"

Sifting through even more of your propaganda and buzz-words, i see you make yet another basic error:
"just as Bush is given credit for the stuff libs call bad, so it goes he gets the credit for the legislation he passes."
-- But i haven't done that, don't you see? Again your gaping swatting maw has landed you in the wrong. I'm not a lib, and i never said he gets all the credit for what passes through congress good or bad. I say he's as involved with the good as he is with the bad - ie. not that much.

Firstly the problem with torturing "head-sawing" terrorists is that you're assuming everyone to torture is guilty. Not necessarily true is it? That's why most suitably evolved countries/states have gotten rid of it. People......

you know what? half way through this i realised that i could spend days talking to you and you'd still not get it. you're an idiot, and unfortunately the world must survive with idiots. i tried to show you where you were wrong and instead of reading it you just said more stuff that was wrong. you don't even discuss it - you just throw words like "lib" and "left" around like it answers all questions in the same way people cling to arguments for religion.

i'd just like to finish by saying that i never said americans were stupid, and by assuming i did, it only lends weight to my opinion that you don't read things, you don't pay attention, you are incapable of discussion.

you've made this a very hollow victory perhaps thinker has the stamina to set the record straight

Do you genuinely want me to believe that Bush is actually incredibly intelligent but there is a huge scheme (even at his own conferences and interviews) subscribed to by thousands of people worldwide, elaborately concealed and orchestrated to hide every shred of evidence that the man is intelligent?

Bush is a lot smarter than the left will ever give him credit for being. And if he's not, it just makes the left look even more incompetent.

There'd have to be 1 million hours of footage of him being intelligent to countermand all the evidence that he's a buffoon. People have been following, listening, recording and filming him for what, 8 years? And most of what we have as a record of him is him talking bullshit or making an idiot of himself.

Trill, he's not a movie star/empty suit like the Obamessiah. He's done well considering the American media is 90% leftist and wants him to fail. At least have the temerity to admit he's never gotten a fair shake from the press, even to oneself.

"If Bush is "stupid", even with test scores higher than Frenchy Kerry's, then it's a very poor reflection on your taxocrats in Congress that they DANCE to his tune; most Bush legislation has passed handily and easily."

-- A number of things here. Firstly, you're under the impression that George Bush comes up with every single thing that passes, becomes law, or is an ethic that his administration works toward. Secondly, you appear to also be under the impression that "Congress" (i am not american) is free of interpersonal politics, bias, or policy-buying. It'd be the first governmental body that was in the history of this planet. Thirdly, you're arguing that Bush must be intelligent because people follow him, which is the biggest error of judgement. I don't think i need to elaborate here. This is not an argument in favour of bush being intelligent. Whatsoever.

I don't see this as being an argument for anything but your own biases. Not that I'm overly concerned. You're entitled to your opinion of Bush. At present, our American Congress is overrun with wannabe-Euros (called Democrats, taxocrats, victicrats) and they've got lower approval ratings than even Bush. All the same, just as Bush is given credit for the stuff libs call bad, so it goes he gets the credit for the legislation he passes.


There were no attacks on American soil the first time you pissed off the countries that are currently trying to attack you. It took them 20 years or more, but when they made an attack, they made the most devastating terrorist attack ever seen, which affects america and americans and freedom in america (tapping phones, torture) years and years after the event. Comments like this are the reason why americans are viewed as stupid.

"Torture" of head-sawing terrorists is fine with me. If you're not an enemy soldier of a standing army, you have no rights under any code of law. It's embarrassing that anyone would try to invent rights for the very scum that seek to destroy civilization. Good riddance.

Phone tapping in wartime? Yawn. There's 300 million Americans, good luck sifting through the transcripts, feds.

Americans are stupid? Dumb is everywhere, but Europe's finished, has been for a long time. You're not a model for humanity, you're a warning. Socialist economies have high unemployment and are grossly inefficient. Without a fight, you've surrendered any economic edge you might have had, kow-towing to "global warming" charlatans. You've lost your individual national identities in that despicable EU. Nanny-state government cancels tobacco, seizes your guns--without resistance--leaving you defenseless sheep to be culled by criminals and your lefty propaganda media, the model which our American bastard media likes to imitate, covers up the resulting mess. With the death of religion, which the "intelligentsia" of Europe deem a triumph, the last remnant of your ability to transmit cultural values is gone. You might as well start bowing to Allah now.

>> ^HadouKen24:
I don't know what's nerdier.
Those guys... or the fact that I just know I could take them.
I mean, seriously. No defense at all. No thrusts to speak of. And apparently no sense of the strategic value of whacking the other dude's arm or legs off. (When that one dude raises his arms to strike? Perfect time to go for those arms. They're defenseless.)
Not to mention their horrible footwork or unbalanced, unpracticed swings.


alright..dude.. We're talking a fun tournament.

No thrusts, because if you thrust with a sword at a guy with a suit of armour, you'll most likely penetrate the armour and wound them. Yes, that' strategic, as is cutting off arms and legs. But again, remember. THIS. IS. NOT. FOR. REALY.

it's a game, it's not thunderdome. Both participants will walk out, limbs intact.

Don't act so tough about swordsmanship over a movie where they were probably told "No blows to the unarmoured arms, or legs, and no thrusts"

I don't know what's nerdier.

Those guys... or the fact that I just know I could take them.

I mean, seriously. No defense at all. No thrusts to speak of. And apparently no sense of the strategic value of whacking the other dude's arm or legs off. (When that one dude raises his arms to strike? Perfect time to go for those arms. They're defenseless.)

Not to mention their horrible footwork or unbalanced, unpracticed swings.