I'm sick of fan-boy politics. Do you have any ideas of your own, beyond my team is better than your team? I'm sick of liberal fan boys, conservative fan boys and libertarian fan boys. Instead of insults and distractions, why not put forth a fucking original thought for once. Behind each of these political brands are real life ideas that we can talk about. Let's shut off Glenn Beck and Air America and ReasonTV and do some thinking for ourselves. These motherfuckers do not speak for us. These motherfuckers do not work for us. These motherfuckers do not think for us.

Glenn Beck is sick in the head, and if him calling for the execution of his opponents isn't reason enough for you to abandon him, then you've got problems. What if I said bobknight should be shot in the head and skull fucked? Would you find that to be enlightening discourse? Would you consider that left wing slant? Or would you consider that the unproductive words of a sociopath?

There is nothing wrong with political slant. You have a slant. I have a slant. Anyone with any understanding of politics has a political slant, and to attempt to hide that slant just makes you deceptive. The bigger problem with the concept of 'bias' or 'slant' is that it causes people to shut off their brains if they are exposed to anything outside of their own ideology. 'Bias' serves as a default argument for people not informed enough to form their own arguments. How many times have you seen an argument dismissed entirely because of 'bias'? Arguments ARE bias. Liberals should listen to conservative and libertarian slant, conservatives should listen to liberal and libertarian slant, libertarians should listen to conservative and liberal slant, if for no other reason than to challenge their own belief systems, to make sure they aren't suffering from the echo chamber syndrome.

Do you know that if you took a more intellectual approach to political discourse, that you'd get more respect and your arguments would be much more persuasive? Flush Fox news down the toilet and pick up a book. Surely the right must have their own Howard Zinns and Noam Chomskys, right? Take back your ideology from these manipulative corporate media clowns.

Talk to Geesussfreek. I don't agree with him, but he's obviously well read, intelligent and knows how to put an argument together. I'd like you to be a more formidable political adversary and to stop wasting your breath with "Glen Beck is great. Far better that any of the slanted leftest pukes on MSnbc". I know you can do better. I know you could kick some serious liberal ass on this site if you educated yourself.

Same goes for liberals. Enough with the namecalling. If we are going to take this country back, we are going to have to do it with ideas, not with insults. I've been guilty of all of this stuff too, and I'm making efforts to change. If I engage in useless idea-free insults in the future, you should call me on it*.

*Note for any future reference back to this comment: insults and criticism are not the same thing




>> ^bobknight33:

Glen Beck is great. Far better that any of the slanted leftest pukes on MSnbc

buy a rice cooker. cook yer rice and it shuts off into "warm mode"

>> ^gorillaman:
You obviously have a lot more faith in your government than I do, and yet you seem to be arguing that we should stick with them because they can't be trusted. If they're too corrupt to administer a basic competence test without undermining it completely why not just admit they've lost all legitimacy? Why not admit democracy has failed utterly?

I wouldn't really characterize my position that way. I remain convinced that the basic principles of democracy are moral, and I believe that the flawed implementations of democracy we've seen have produced vastly superior results to the flawed undemocratic governments we've seen.

The United States's implementation of democracy looks like it's pretty much been successfully killed. It's not dead yet, but I'm not really seeing a lot of chances for revival. But it's pretty much taken a massive propaganda campaign conducted over decades to convince enough people to vote it out of existence. They still don't know that's what they've been doing, but that's the power of a good propaganda campaign.

>> ^gorillaman:

Do you really think it's impossible or just difficult?

...

It absolutely doesn't require a perfectly advanced agent to begin an improving process. Where would science be were that the case, or education?

The improvement would compound itself naturally over generations. A smarter government will develop better procedures for selecting its successors. You don't need perfection from the start. Call it a political singularity. We're talking about the ultimate prize, the best possible society, at least until our species is smart enough to leave governments behind forever. It only needs to work once. If you miss the mark completely and get a self-perpetuating mafia state, well, that's no different to what we have today. Just try again.

I think it's entirely possible that you could pick a government that is composed entirely of people with golden souls. I think you might even see that government pick golden souls to replace them for a few generations. I just think before long, the power and recognition of a few generations of successful rule would go to their heads and hubris would ensue, followed by defensiveness, followed by tyranny, followed by revolution.

I think if you set up an institution that a) holds the traditional powers of government, and b) can control its own selection process, I think it's only a matter of time before they start seeing their own whims and desires as being the only purpose of government.

I just fail to see what the feedback loop is that results in continual improvement once you shut off democratic accountability.

>> ^gorillaman:

That's all I want from you, actually. I don't have a fully formed, coherent alternative to offer. It's the principle I'm endorsing, and the necessity of aiming our thinking toward its realisation. If you remember this discussion started with the proposition of limiting voting to people who could demonstrate they knew what they were voting for. It's simple little baby steps like that we should be considering, and if the only objection is, 'but that's undemocratic,' pfff.


I think you're confusing this conversation for the one dft linked to. This conversation started with you saying democracy was fascism because poor people might vote to redistribute wealth so they're not so poor anymore.

I can expand a bit on why I'm leery of "limiting voting to people who could demonstrate they knew what they were voting for". On the surface, that sounds good to me. However, the question I have is how do we discern who knows what they're voting for? A standardized test? Who writes the test? Who grades the test? How do we decide those people know what they're talking about?

It quickly reverts back to the need for a foolproof methodology for finding people with golden souls to write these hypothetical voting literacy tests. But then if we had a way of identifying superlative leaders, why waste them on writing rules for voting, why not just give them the keys to government directly?

We also have a chicken-and-egg issue. Absent a revolution, the power would have to come from our existing government. That means letting the likes of Harry Reid or John Boehner have ultimate say on who writes the test (or worse, what's specifically in it).

Even if they somehow picked the absolute best possible person for the task, I think the implication of the task is beyond mortal capabilities. They wouldn't just need to write a test that would be fair, they need to write a fair test that would also ensure that the resulting elected officials would appoint a successor who would be willing and able to write a fair test for the next round that produced good elected officials, and so on and so forth for all eternity.

What I imagine would really happen in that loop is that the whole thing would slowly (or maybe even quickly) turn into a tool for one party/ideology/family to consolidate power, and shut off any legal, nonviolent way for the people to get rid of them.

It's why I think that if your goal is to make sure your electorate is comprised of people who know what they're doing in the voting booth, then you should be fighting for policies that make the electorate smarter and more engaged, not smaller.

So they managed to get a tv camera up there, but it didn't occur to anyone to shut off the power?

"Or maybe "Chinese woman too old for climbing electricity poles, not too old to be grounded"" <--- LoL

Love these things. The military has had similar devices for a while - they're called green beam dazzlers. The military ones are much stronger and can cause eye damage at less than 150 feet, so they have range-finders that act as a safety shut-off.

>> ^budzos:
Sometimes I wonder about people. Are we all watching the same video?
You can't just decide a cop is in the wrong and start interfering with an arrest. The girl who got punched in the face DID grab the cop by the arm. I think the cop was perfectly justified in suddenly and forcefully asserting his authority. If he had failed to assert himself immediately, the situation might have gotten even uglier.
You can stand around yelling at the cops all you want, but seriously the moment you grab one, you've earned a punch in the face.


And then what would have happened to the camera? It would have been shut off and a story made up by each different "innocent" bystander. (I agree with what you say 100%)

>> ^campionidelmondo:

Shortening it to two days will only serve to shut off this site even more to people outside the core clique and eventually you can delete all but the 20 odd accounts that operate the site as it is.

It's been just about 48 hours since I posted this (closer to 50, to be more precise0, and 32 people have already voted. The lower participation is to be expected over the weekend, but 32 is still higher than the 20 odd accounts that you say operate this site. During a 48-hour period hundreds of different members log in, so access to any poll would not be that restrictive.


Your argument about the "core clique" is just vague enough not to impugn anyone, yet strong enough to suggest that shortening a poll would somehow be favorable to just a handful of members. An argument like that needs to be more specific, or else you're just playing the outsider-politics card.

Shortening it to two days will only serve to shut off this site even more to people outside the core clique and eventually you can delete all but the 20 odd accounts that operate the site as it is.

What if you left a pipe running through the plug so that the oil could flow up the pipe allowing you to ram it in and get a good seal. Then have a valve on the end that could be shut off once the plug is in place and sealed?

I'm pretty sure the CEO can't take the brunt of the blame for this.

The rig itself is owned by a contracting company called Transocean, who admitted anomalies in the pressure readings and the valve for shutting off the well - Transocean also owns all the equipment for the rig.

Another contracted firm, Halliburton, had done work on cementing drilling areas to prevent natural gas from escaping just hours before the blast, Halliburton were also responsible for cementing the well to secure it after it had been drilled.

Most of the workers on the rig/BP are contracted in from other firms, this was on a recommendation from ex-prime minister Gordon Brown.

Very few of the core workers or people involved on the rig appear to be actual BP staff, the majority being workers from Transocean and other firms. Yet it seems people are more angry at the sticker on the product than the actual components.

Yes, we get it, you're pissed. But try and be pissed at the collective failure rather than just one scapegoat figurehead pencil pushing numbers man.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

LOL. Issy and I actually shut off Sherlock Holmes halfway through and mailed it back to Netflix. Horrible.


I finally saw Sherlock Holmes a few days ago and it was exactly as horrible and ridiculous as this parody makes it seem, which brings up a question... If a parody of a thing is so close to its subject as to be almost exactly the same, does it cease to be parody and become mere mimicry?

LOL. Issy and I actually shut off Sherlock Holmes halfway through and mailed it back to Netflix. Horrible.

...Oh yeah, and then there's this video about how Exxon need only pay 1/10th the original settlement to the people of Alaska...

http://videosift.com/video/Good-day-for-Exxon-Child-Rapists>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Let's all give a big thank you to Dick Cheney for this one. His office granted BP the exemption they needed to avoid spending the extra $500k on a remote shut-off device for the well that would have immediately stopped the leak.
I bet that $500k is looking like a bargain now, right BP?

Let's all give a big thank you to Dick Cheney for this one. His office granted BP the exemption they needed to avoid spending the extra $500k on a remote shut-off device for the well that would have immediately stopped the leak.

I bet that $500k is looking like a bargain now, right BP?