There have been lulls before, but active members are definitely disappearing.

He's just a troll.

When Obama was first in, Bob told us how he was a secret Muslim that would destroy America and enact Sharia law. Next election cycle, oh yeah, that was his game, he lulled everyone to sleep and NOW he's going to do it. Four years later and it was Hillary who's a secret terrorist. He's like one of those cult leaders who predicts the end of the world and when it doesn't happen just shrugs and says he's still right, just maybe got the timing a bit off.

I questioned him on his lack of historical accuracy and he just ignored my comment.

Didn't he say Obama was a terrorist who would convert America to Sharia law.

Then during the re-election campaign that the first four years were just to lull Americans into a false sense of security but if re-elected he'd absolutely convert America to Sharia law THIS time.

Also, he doesn't know the difference between a jar and a can.

Only in America could someone so stupid be so rich and popular. (eyeing Donald Trump)

This is precisely why a large part of me actually wants Trump to win.

We're way too complacent. There has been a slow, steady, gradual decline that has lulled us into apathy -- even though the state of politics and "democracy" in the US (and arguably globally as a result) is absolutely pathetic and appalling at this point.

It is looking more and more likely that the general election will be Trump vs Clinton.

First of all, that alone demonstrates just how fucked we are. Our final two choices are likely to be the two people with the highest negative opinion numbers out of all the candidates. The cream didn't rise to the top, and instead the two biggest turds managed to avoid being flushed. South Park seems oddly prophetic; we have really ended up with turd sandwich vs. giant douche. I just can't tell which is which.

Second, I notice that a LOT of people (including "establishment" Republicans) are scared shitless by the prospect of a Trump presidency. In a Trump vs Clinton election, they say that they would easily prefer to vote for Clinton -- perhaps couched with the "lesser of two evils" descriptor, but still vote for Clinton.

I agree with the idea that Clinton is the lesser of those two evils. But that, in combination with our current level of apathy, makes me MORE afraid of a Clinton presidency than a Trump one. Clinton is a slick, dirty politician. People think they are going to dodge the Trump bullet by voting for her, but she is the archetype of what got us into this situation. She tells people only what she thinks they want to hear, while doing exactly what her donors (megacorporations) want her to do whenever the camera isn't on. A Clinton presidency will keep the masses just placated enough to NOT boil over.

Meanwhile, Trump seems like enough of a perfect storm that he could actually screw things up bad enough to make the masses stand up and take notice. Maybe that kind of slap in the face is what we need.

Clinton presidency: "Fuck it."
Trump presidency: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"


In a hypothetical scenario where the general election was Trump vs Sanders, it would be much harder for me to be "pro" Trump. Because Sanders seems like maybe he's got the right mindset to change things for the better the *right* way. On the other hand, I kinda felt the same way about Obama. So, even in a Trump vs Sanders scenario, a big part of me would be "hoping" for Trump to win. Because *something* has got to snap us out of our apathy.

Very many people are completely oblivious, they spam their Facebook, Instagram and other Social Media feeds full with information on a day to day basis. Completely unprotected.

Usually they don't have any anti-spam plugin for their email client (and probably wouldn't even know how to install / configure it). Windows (and OS X) both have a great user interface which lulls the user into believing he has control of his system, when in fact he is not exerting any security and control on his own behalf.

As a person who has solar on their roof, our bills have shown a slight decline (and I live in a tropical location with no obscuring of the panels), but that doesn't offset the cost of production (both in labour and energy input which is mostly supplied by carbon based sources). I run a 6 KW/h array which is slightly overclocked as we are capped at 5 KW/h input to the grid (at 8c KW/h sell, 36c KW/h buy). I'm looking at a ROI in ~11-15 years

There are also many studies (and not just from people who are pro nuke or anti-climate change) showing that solar PV in general, and rooftop solar specifically, is small potatoes in terms of energy returns, even when considering possible future gains in panel efficiency and storage technology.

I am not bashing solar because I don't like it, I spent the money to get an array on the roof because I think we do need to do something, but I'm not kidding myself in to believing that we're saving the planet when the vast majority of solar PV going out these days is manufactured in countries that emit enormous amounts of carbon and pay people peanuts to do the work... When, as you say, solar is heavily subsidised or has rebates offered to drive take up.

Nuke is expensive, but it returns far more energy than is invested to build it. Hydro, similarly (although Cali etc shows why hydro might be a dead end in this changing world climate). We can invest an enormous amount of time in half measures, or we can do it right, at least until we crack large scale fusion power production.

If it worked as well as it's hyped to do, huzzah, happy days. But so far, the boom is mostly hyperbole. At the very least, f#ck off subsidies/rebates etc to households and instead build huge solar PV farms with helio tracking arrays which make a better return on energy invested and basically give far more bang for buck. Or sink it all in to wind and cut back on PV. It's a feel good technology with hidden baked in carbon costs that is lulling us in to a false sense of security.

I realize everyone is foaming at the mouth and positive of what happened here, but it should be noted that Israel denies hitting the hospital, and that the United Nations had not confirmed the source of the blasts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/world/middleeast/despite-talk-of-a-cease-fire-no-lull-in-gaza-fighting.html?_r=0

Everyone wants to paint Israel like this giant monster, but things are being way overstated. Let's get serious. If Israel was embarking on a program of "ethnic cleansing" they could easily kill every last person in Gaza. Seems clear enough to anyone that this is not what they're trying to do.

If Hamas was in Mexico shooting rockets at Texas half the people shouting genocide at Israel would be wearing little yellow ribbons hoping our soldiers all come back safe from our Mexican invasion.

I have a hard time imagining, or believing, that anyone purposely bombed a hospital full of children. But I can easily believe accidents of all kinds will happen in a battleground the size of Detroit.

There is no doubt that these people are disgusting, but thankfully they are also rare. Every society has their fringe crazies - the US has Westboro Baptist Church, for instance - and they generally get way more attention than they deserve by being controversial.

This isn't to say that there isn't a problem with Israeli society's attitude toward the Palestinians, it's just to say that I think it is a problem that is far more subtle and widespread. Focusing so much attention on a small percentage of religious fanatics can be important because it does represent a movement and ideology that is problematic, but it has very little direct relevance to the current conflict.

The real problem, in my opinion, is a unique mixture of nationalism and a lopsided insulation from the reality of the conflict that is very common in Israeli society.

Israeli society is uniquely coherent in a particular way that stems from the relatively homogenous cultural identity facilitated by Judaism, and this coherence is also strengthened by the fact that Israeli society was built in the face of and as a direct result of considerable adversity. I think that this does allow for a sort of groupthink that inhibits Israel's ability to treat the Palestinians in a humane manner, but the effect manifests itself through society as a sort of cultural blindness and it manifests through the political process as hawkish policy.

(Also, whether or not you think they had the right to build that society in the first place is beside the point right now, I'm only talking about the existence of the unifying influence of adversity, and the effect it has on policy and the national psyche)

The other component of it is the simple fact that Israelis are extremely insulated from the realities of the Palestinian sufferings.

Even in the heat of a conflict like this, Israelis can pretty much go about their lives unimpeded. It is true that the rocket attacks are disruptive and that there is on a whole an unacceptably high level of danger from external attacks, but Israelis have leveraged a security apparatus that minimizes these realities in day to day life to an astounding degree, all things considered, and this fact is a double edge sword that creates a perfect breeding ground for indifference.

One side of the sword is that these measures are extremely effective at improving the lives of Israelis in the short term. However the other side of the sword is that it obviously makes these measures popular and politically successful. Furthermore, with all the calm and prosperity, it is very easy to forget about the abysmal conditions being imposed on 1.8 million people just thirty kilometers or so from your doorstep. The only time they really have to deal with the issue is when there is an inevitable flareup of violence at which point, naturally, people tend to be less empathetic. The rest of the time, during the lulls, the prospect of empathy is just placed on the back burner.

These are the tendencies that need to be addressed.

However calling Israel the 4th Reich and placing so much focus on youtube videos that give Israel's religious fanatics undue prominence is just as useless and destructive as all the Israelis and Israel sympathizers who insist on viewing Palestinian society as an unchanging, violent monolith that is accurately represented by its extremist elements.

The fact of the matter is that there are significant movements within Israeli society that are in fact attempting to change these trends. The same is true of Palestinian society, however it is more difficult for those movements because of the repressions imposed by Hamas, culture and environment.

If there is to be any hope in this situation, Israel's role as the dominant, occupying force means that they have the first move. They will have to shift from focusing on isolation and self-preservation to one of empathy to the average Palestinian, an empathy that is so strong that they must be willing to take considerable personal risks and let up their stranglehold on Palestinian society and allow them to prosper.

Because only then will the environment be in any way conducive for Palestinians to take considerable personal risks and defy the status quo en masse. Only then will the false succor of violent religious extremism loose its appeal.

Until that happens, we'll the cycle seems to return to square one every two or three years and I expect to have this discussion again sometime around 2017.

Unfortunately, it is going to be a hard and unlikely road because it takes a lot of empathy and effort to rise up and take huge risks during the times of quiet when prosperity and security easily distract from the continuing plight of the Palestinians. These aren't common traits. Humans are a very tribal species and we're not good at this kind of stuff when it concerns someone different who you don't have to interact with. This challenge is hardly unique to the Jews.

CEs' right-The illusion he described is the only tangible evidence that the shit you've heard at the last pep-rally has any meaning other than to enhance or lull you into a somnambulistic satisfaction of the slave-mentality of, 'rah-rah, American way.' This bergs' been sold on the block already and you have the privilege of witnessing the pangs of chaotic birth-spawn and participating in planet now. That you are satisfied with your plight is evidence of an effective, Satanic pogrom.

That was.... That had zero artistic value unless you count the amount of effort to engineer and arrange the perfect melding of these things.
In the end, it's just cutesie gothic lolitas prancing around to lull the crowd into ignoring that it's a prerecorded music track, and superficial construct of media.
I guess that's art in some form.
For some reason I still dig it. I guess that's the magic of a pure distillation pop-production.

EDIT: Curiosity got the better of me and I downloaded the album. It's pretty funny, and often wanders more into the realm of regular J-pop and electro-synth music, and with one song, for some reason, gangster rap.

Hmmm, I'm not too sure. Probably just a lull in the cycle. I've mostly been just watching videos instead of sifting but maybe I'll get back to bidness...

....on a brighter note, The U.S. economy will probably spring back here soon to prepare the masses for the lull they will experience before the NEXT cycle of theft, and reduction of personal freedoms.

Issue at hand here notwithstanding, please try and get my point here _

LISTEN~to the words being used,in order to evoke emotions..KEY WORDS

LOOK~ At the piece of lying human garbage who is speaking it_(now look at the same language tools used here loaded to evoke a similar, opposite response.

EXAMINE-The motives and methods used by the people who made this mashup of conglomerated shit and then ask yourselves..
"Have I just been fucked in the ass??"

"I am that Stronger advocate...FucK YOU OBAMA, blow me and make a change."

In short, biggest piece of walk-up-and-slap-me crapola available designed to lull apes
into a somnambulance on par with the height of the middle ages.

Fuck the creators of this shit,you insult us all.

>> ^Auger8:

Ya I totally agree here I'm from Texas and sports get all the attention whatever money is left over goes to standardized testing which is a crock in and of itself. And people wonder why un-employment is so high in America.
It's because public schools teach absolutely nothing of value to kids whatsoever!
>> ^Boise_Lib:
>> ^Porksandwich:

Like I've always felt in the US that the sports programs and all the cost associated with them plus the competition they spawn within the student body and against other schools is not beneficial. Basically you end up with a small group of players who get the school to bend over backwards to make things possible for them and everyone else loses out on it, in fact they often have to pay for tickets to even see the events their parents tax dollars make possible.

I agree.
We've made our school system (including college) a farm team for the NBA, NFL.



But I'd argue, it's the system that those in power want and corporations want. Because it allows them the excuse to ship high school level jobs out to other countries. You see it all the time "We can't find any qualified candidates!" and then they need H1B visa restrictions lifted so they can bring people in or the job goes to another country after they milk the taxpayers for "tax breaks" on a building promising some jobs and conveniently forget to deliver on the jobs.

It's a systematic breakdown of all counters and checks to their ability to solely profit since no one can compete against them if they make consumers as dumb as possible in general, ship the jobs overseas, and bring all the products back at reduced prices until they kill any possible competition ....then jack the prices up. And now there's been a huge lull in jobs in manufacturing, etc...so the schools aren't preparing people for those jobs or training schools have went under and the general population education level has dropped to prevent it from easily being fixed.

And.......since they control lots of money (and therefore power), they can now keep it that way because they are "too big" to be told no. And now they are trying to privatize stuff to get even more cash out of people, and then they completely control the whole process and you will be just as educated as they'll let you be.

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Trolling" by the standards of the left is anyone from the non-left disagreeing.
It's easy for anyone to be lulled to sleep as the schools, Vancouverwood, 99% of the media and presently the White House all chant the same socialist claptrap, leaving out the verse about who has to pay for it.
You should be grateful to have your views challenged.

I welcome having my views challenged, but with you it's less of a "challenge" and more of a "confirmation that the American right are a bunch of troglodytes without an original thought among them"