It's not like they're flippantly reacting to any stimulus when they're like this, and a lot of the time they are acting to protect you as well as their territory. Cat's are smart enough to know the difference between a threat and their owner trying to reassure them.
I used to have a cat who would body-slam the window at full speed and scream at any cat she saw outside, she was so insanely violent. We would reassure her all the time, pet her and tell her it was okay. She never turned on us, nor has any other cat who has been in fight or flight mode that we would try to reassure.
It's when the fight starts that you don't want to be near them, because then they can't make the distinction and you're liable to come away with a shredded limb.

I'm a stimulus junky, as I'm sure we all are, but I've gotten to the point where there are too many musicians, film makers, video game makers, for me to possibly pay all of them the asking price.

Last year I decided to stop stealing music. I spent well over $1,000 on iTunes. I torrented a lot of movies, but I also purchased a good number of blue ray discs. I also purchased a shit ton of games off of Steam, as well as illegally downloading a couple. (I also paid ~500 dollars on live concerts, including an Iron Maiden show that cost me $150.)

There are very few things I can stand to listen/watch/play more than 2 or 3 times, then I need to listen/watch something else, but I can't afford ALL the required stimulus to keep me sane.

I also need my drug money and gas because THERE IS NO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION WHERE I LIVE. So inevitably I have been car obsessed, so there's more money that I'm freeing myself of.

Am I a bad person? If I didn't torrent a video, does that mean I'm going to buy it? At some point you run out of frivolous spending cash... And then how do you consume the junk that artists create? Do I just stop? How does that help an artist? I dunno, just rambling. I'm depressed and addicted to entertainment.

Personally, I think artists are talented scam artists with an unnecessary product that I LOVE and will steal if I can't afford it.

Ignorance is blind.

This economy has been held together by unsustainable government spending and Federal Reserve manipulation. If a true bottom had been reached in this economy, the Federal Reserve would not need to be intervening again and again. While some hopeful signs have emerged in housing and in other areas due to the stimulus and QE3 programs, that is likely to unravel in 2013. The real Obama economy (not the one that has been artificially propped up to win an election) and austerity is coming to America, whether it is induced by politicians or by the markets.

The marked drop 316 points the day after election for a reason. Obama is bad for America.
>> ^EvilDeathBee:

Maybe America will be alright after all...

spon·ta·ne·ous (adj.) 1. Performed or occurring without premeditation or external stimulus

Because this is a chemical reaction caused by the addition of superglue to cotton, it is not "spontaneous".

Unless Darken is signing my paycheck, I answer however I damned well please. And my side business selling straw men, well, I didn't build that, Obama did.

Many on that list are Obama 'accomplishments' only for leftists.


Ears didn't end anything in Iraq, it was already happening when he took office.

He had nothing to do with Moammar and would support whoever came out on top.

The stimulus, particularly the bank bailouts, did nothing except put us in greater debt.

The Chevy Volt is a failure.

Government takeover of healthcare?...I only wish ALL the new taxes Obamacare will hit us with would happen at once, so the oblivious can experience the rotten deal and betrayal of Constitution.

FDA regulating tobacco? Another step backwards from ending Drug Prohibition.

The two UNqualified affirmative action judges added to Supreme Court.

Billions lost to green jobs scams/putting the kibosh on the Keystone pipeline.

...and so forth.

Obama running on his record? Go right ahead. It's why he's where he's at today.


>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^quantumushroom:
An "enraged" Maddow doesn't bother me in the slightest, nor is her blather worth commenting on.
It's just nice to see the left dick-punched with their own tactics, the righty version of lib lies like "trickle-down" and "tax cuts for the rich" (and calling everyone a racist).
You all think Obama has a record worth running on? Let him know. Cause even he don't believe it.
"Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about "creating jobs" with one plain and inescapable fact — "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office." Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost."
>> ^DarkenRahl:
Do you EVER respond to the actual video and/or discussion? You must have a side business selling straw men.
>> ^quantumushroom:
The FORMER big three networks were all liberally-biased for decades (and are still in denial about it).
It's a miracle there are as many righties as there are, with leftists controlling government schools and hollywood.
The internet has saved this nation from the former "fourth estate" who betrayed and murdered real journalism to stump for taxocrats.
There's something wrong when FOX holds one point of view but ALL THE OTHER networks parrot the same line of socialist claptrap.
Oh, I almost forgot. Man-made global warming--or even plain global warming, continues to be a sham.
And fk castro.
THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE RIGHT HAS SPOKEN!



So the answer to @DarkenRahl 's question is...no.
It cracks me up that the right thinks Obama isn't or can't run on his record. He's been running on his record since day one. The right continues to pretend to live in an alternate universe. I know you listen to fox news and they're demonstrably mis-informing people on a regular basis, but you've either missed or willfully ignored his many accomplishments
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ma
gazine/march_april_2012/features/obamas_top_50_accomplishments035755.php

QE, stimulus and holding the line against austerity paid off. Thanks Obama.

Tired of that $2.6 Million Program that Teaches Chinese Prostitutes to Drink?

by John Ransom


Liberty is about a lot of things; it’s a deep topic. But at its core liberty can be summed up in one simple and reciprocal concept. That concept is respect.

You know the 2010 last election was about many things, but it was mostly about respect.

It was about starting to restore the respect that people have in government, by getting the government to restore the respect that they show to you…by taking liberty seriously.

If you are like me, you think that many of our elected officials from both the right and the left truly believe that what they think of you is much more important than what you think of them.

If you’re like me you’re tired of a trillion dollars in so-called stimulus spending that went to mob-connected asphalt contractors rather than the pockets of working families who own businesses and pay taxes and do all the working and dreaming in this country.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of a $2.6 million program that teaches Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly while unemployment soars across the country.

If you’re like me, you're tired of an arrogant federal government which pays out $47 billion in fraudulent claims in Medicare every year while they lecture the rest of us about healthcare economics.

If you are like me, you’re tired of the US Postal service wasting $30 million on a program that pays 1100 employees to do nothing. Yes, today, the US Post Office sat 1100 employees in empty rooms, as they do every day, and literally paid them to do nothing. They can’t play cards; they can’t watch TV, in fact they can’t do anything at all. To the tune of $30 million per year.


Yet this very same federal government comes to us now and proposes to manage our healthcare, our retirement, the education of our children, the auto industry, the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, the mortgage industry and lectures the American people that they are under-regulated.

If you’re a middle American like me, from the grassroots, I bet you know someone who owns their own business; if you’re like me you probably know someone who has paid employees of that business on time every week, but hasn’t been able to pay themselves a dime. Yet these very same people who provide half the new jobs in our economy, who have lost money over the last few years, still owe the government tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. People wonder where our jobs have gone? They’ve been crushed by a system that doesn’t honor job creation; by a system that doesn’t honor liberty; a system that gives no respect.

And if you are like most of the voters I speak to, you are tired of insiders from Washington and Wall Street on both sides of the aisle, and their wasteful spending schemes that don’t even propose to solve the very issues facing Main Street and working families.

Let’s suppose global warming is real; I don’t think it is, but let’s say it's so for the sake of argument. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard-- which will cost American families $1800 per year-- please show me how it’s going to lower the earth’s temperature. They can’t because the Renewable Electricity Standard wasn’t created to combat global warming and it won’t lower the earth’s temperature.

Ok, so let’s suppose the issue is carbon emission; that carbon is really bad and we have to get it out of our atmosphere. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard is going to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. They can’t. It wasn’t designed to do that and it won’t do that.

The government doesn't write legislation with solutions in mind, but rather with power and control of your very lives. And it is inside of your lives where you will wrestle back that control.

I’m often reminded that it’s with readers just like you where many of the seminal events of our country happened. It’s in rooms just like you’re in right now that a small group of patriots in Massachusetts planned the Boston Tea Party; it’s in groups just like you are a part of today that was born the Mayflower Compact; it’s in the free association of our citizens, for the common good and with common respect, that the greatness and goodness of our country will always be found.

And as long as people like you, freely associate for the common good and meet in respect, our country will always remain both great and good.

But ordinary people are paying attention, actually reading the Constitution; people are actually asking questions about the 10th Amendment, asking: What kind of power does Washington really have over us?

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who have been awakened to that yet, that’s why readers like you are so important. Each individual reading this is so incredibly important because the job you have this year as a citizen has never, ever, ever been more important. The 2012 election is going to determine what it’s like to live in this country for a long time. It’s going to be people just like you, having conversation just like this, in rooms across America that are going to make a difference.

This is the chance to turn the tide. The chance we have today is to bury that last vestiges of big government in our country; to reclaim our liberty from a new deal and replace it with a true deal.

I’ve been very fortunate because over the last half dozen years I’ve been able to travel all around the country working with grassroots activists just like you. I understand, I think, better than elected officials, what makes the grassroots so special. It's you and your ability to communicate.

We have all these new tools available for citizens to communicate that just a few years ago we didn’t have. A few years ago readers wouldn’t have been as energized and as informed because we didn’t have the ability to communicate as we do now. We have been so fractured and fragmented all around the country and around the nation that we feel like we can’t do anything, that Washington is so big and out of touch that we can’t do anything.

In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now is the time we really do have the opportunity. For the first time in our history ordinary citizens have the ability to communicate with one another over the heads of the media in publications like Townhall. We are networked on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter that expose us to thousands of people for free.

But when I was growing up there were three TV stations and two newspapers in every town that decided what the news was. There were probably a dozen people in any town that picked our news for us.

Those days are over.

This election isn’t about voting for the next person standing in a long line of elites who will rule over us; it’s about what kind of country we want to be in the future.

It’s about preserving the American dream right here right now. Because when they mess with our liberty, they really mess with our ability to dream.

I believe that the ability to dream is worth handing down to our kids.

I believe that it’s our dreams that makes us the most dynamic country in the world.

It’s the dream that brings jobs and prosperity to the US.

It’s a dream that treats promises like they really matter.

And it’s the dreams that are the promise of America.

Because when politicians treat the promises they campaign on like they matter, when they are held accountable to those pledges-- by us-- we will restore the respect they owe us.

Vetoing the 2012 NDAA would have held up the military budget and would not have stopped the detention clause. It was a lose/lose game of political chicken and Obama chose pragmatism over idealism.

Obama has greatly helped the country by creating a healthcare program, by passing stimulus, by using quantitative easing to keep the recession from going depression, by ramping down military operations in the middle east, by favoring diplomacy over sabre rattling in Iran.

As far as promises go, he has kept (or at least attempted to keep to the best of his ability) most of his big promises, like ending combat in Iraq, creating a health care system, ending the use of torture, putting needed financial regulations into place, restricting warrantless wiretaps, ending denial of health coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and signing an executive order to shut down Gitmo. Congress blocked his order to shut down Gitmo, which means the timetable is dependent on getting Republicans out of congress this November. Contrary to popular belief the executive branch is not all powerful. I know you don't like Obama, but can you at least admit these are positive changes for the better that would not have happened under a McCain or Romney administration? What were the broken promises you were talking about?

I love intellectuals like Chomsky and Chris Hedges and respect their criticisms of Obama. I think it would be much more productive to be informed by intellectuals, rather than slumming it in the right libertarian gutter. This video is just as frivolous as the Jackson video, if not morso.

I wish Obama was could be more progressive too, but that isn't going to happen in a conservative country where big business and the military industrial complex wield as much power as they do. We need both idealism and pragmatism if we are going to make progress. The country is far from how I'd like it to be, but I am happy that Obama is moving us in the right direction.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

This is a popular argument among lazy armchair pundits, but it isn't true. With selective editing, you can find similarities between any two people. On the issues this propagandist chose to make his point on, most of it (The bailouts, stimulus, quantitative easing and healthcare) was good policy.
There is much ignorance on what the NDAA actually is. It's a military budget bill. John McCain attached a rider that authorized indefinite detention and it was passed by congress with a veto proof majority. Obama did what he could to get it taken off, but there wasn't much else to be done, aside from defunding the military. It's a game designed to make Obama look bad, and you've fallen for it.
Big downvote for this kind of bullshit propaganda.


You mean down voting bullshit propaganda that doesn't fit in with your narrative. Your upvote record has plenty of bullshit propaganda in it...and so does mine

This is a popular argument among lazy armchair pundits, but it isn't true. With selective editing, you can find similarities between any two people. On the issues this propagandist chose to make his point on, most of it (The bailouts, stimulus, quantitative easing and healthcare) was good policy.

There is much ignorance on what the NDAA actually is. It's a military budget bill. John McCain attached a rider that authorized indefinite detention and it was passed by congress with a veto proof majority. Obama did what he could to get it taken off, but there wasn't much else to be done, aside from defunding the military. It's a game designed to make Obama look bad, and you've fallen for it.

Big downvote for this kind of bullshit propaganda.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/08/20/paul-ryan-argued-for-the-stimulus-when-it-was-bushs-idea

The Stranger blog agrees with you.
Excerpt: Apparently, Chris Hayes is MSNBC's newest Rachel Maddow impersonator?


>> ^VoodooV:

I don't disagree with the reporter, but why does he sound exactly like Maddow?

"Message received loud and clear. Now what answer do you want to hear?"

Did this guy go from an alcoholic to a tea-totaller based upon what would make him the most popular or was it for a more authentic reason like one we would look for in the leader of the richest and most powerful nation in the world?

Oh, and feel free to ignore all the other points in the video. Best stick to the most basic and oversimplified premise you can find.

>> ^lantern53:

I knew a guy who was an alcoholic. Now's he a teetotaler. What a flipflopper!
Anyway, 'economic stimulus' for one, is not the same as Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan.
We definitely need stimulus, but all we got was debt, $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the US.
Romney ain't the anointed one, like Obama, but I think he's gotten the message from people that realize Obama's plan has failed.

I knew a guy who was an alcoholic. Now's he a teetotaler. What a flipflopper!

Anyway, 'economic stimulus' for one, is not the same as Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan.

We definitely need stimulus, but all we got was debt, $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the US.

Romney ain't the anointed one, like Obama, but I think he's gotten the message from people that realize Obama's plan has failed.

Wow, how unsafe was this experiment. Try and get drivers to intentionally swerve on the road based on an unexpected stimulus. Idiot.

I guess we will have to wait for roadsigns to all become electronic in some fashion.. then, we can switch to metric.

invest in LED and solar technology to power our new sign overlords and make this happen. We already have adjustable speed limit signs new on some major freeways here in WA. Maybe its the only way besides a stimulus to recalculate and repaint... interesting>> ^NaMeCaF:

>> ^00Scud00:
I remember discussing why the U.S. still hasn't switched to the metric system in science class one day, our professor figured it came down to cost, if we switched to the metric system then every highway sign, street sign, everything really, would have to be replaced.

True. But why not do it gradually - like have a dual system for a few years while you slowly replace signs, etc?
Get with the program America.