>> ^VoodooV:

gee, shiny resorts to harassment? color me shocked!
I'm sorry, but ill say it again, people like shiny need to be kicked out of here. It has nothing to do with conservatism or religion, these people simply don't contribute to civil discourse. I know plenty of conservative/religious people who are capable of engaging in civil debate and discourse, Shiny or QM, and others aren't among these people
They drop their talking points and move on to the next sift. That's not debate, that's not discourse. And you certainly can't have rational discussions with someone who no matter what, thinks you need to be saved and doesn't view you as an equal human being and him and his god are always correct and you're always wrong. It's not conducive to rational discussion and quite frankly, it's simply not healthy, period.
And yes, it is trolling.
Remember that even though they seem to be an endangered species, there are actual rational right wingers out there. You may disagree with them, but they can actually debate civilly without regurgitating Fox News or Theistic propaganda.


This is such an old response and thread, but I thought I'd say it anyway as I really want it said in here.

I've met, actually, a great many people that are very set in their theistic mindset, but like you said they also don't think I'm going to burn in a pit of fire come the end of time; in fact quite a few of them would be morally outraged if such a thing occurred--as they literally know, like me, that the difference between believing in God and not, is merely a thought away (or you could say, one neuron connection/pathway away).

There are a few that believe in fire and brimstone type things, but they only--typically--reserve it for the greatest of crimes (like an Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot). Even fewer still that believe that there is a harsh judgment remaining for a lot of people, but they tend to believe that there is a way to "return" or to repent there--in the "lake of fire" and come back a new person.

BUT, the ones that think there IS a hell, absolute and horrifying in all it's glory, these are ALSO the very same people that cannot have a rational discussion with you. It's very strange. It's as though their ability to actively decide whether actions in play are moral or not are by definition an unanswerable question until they have been told by someone ELSE what that answer is: either the Bible, other religious members, or talk show hosts, and you get my picture. THESE are the dangerous people.

It reminds me of the story in the Old Testament, in Numbers 15:32-36 (for those that wish to read it). Now I know many *newer* religions, get around this stuff by saying they use the New Testament (it has it's fun stuff too, but for now, let's just do this one) due to Christ's Salvation and his, yada yada yada yada yada--I heard this for a long time myself as a Mormon and in some Catholic services I went to.

This guy collects what is essentially firewood on the Sabbath (this was back in the day when not having a fire active in your house/hut/tent/whatever at night could literally mean death--in case you've never been out camping/hiking, fires are VERY important and are a DAMNED LUXURY with our matches, steel wool, sleeping bags made to hold in heat, and other items that make a night in the wilderness go by--gently and one could say comfortably fun).

Instead of just collecting this firewood, making a meal and going to bed, this guy gets caught for working on the Sabbath and is taken to Moses and Aaron. So we all know what that little commandment this is, the one EVERYONE disobeys now (It goes by either of these two definitions and there are more versions--trust me: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. -OR- Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.). So God buzzes Moses on the iGodphone™ and tells Moses the bad news, or well the good news and the bad news. The bad news is that "unnamed villager" will be taken outside the encampment, with what sounds like most of the people and then stoned to death. The good news, is they get to stone someone (sorry, but back then and with the regularity of which stoning happened I really think people enjoyed it when these edicts came on down...)!

SO, I've seen this tale said many a time and I CANNOT believe the amount of heads I see move up and down while this is repeated. They LITERALLY agree with cold-blooded murder in the first-degree, for GATHERING FIREWOOD!!! In the damned ages BEFORE the Dark Ages-life SUCKED! You NEEDED FIRE!!! It wasn't a question of maybe I'll skip it tonight it was a matter of when do I start it up--every night! So you can see why people like this can be dangerous as someone from on high that they think is their leader gives them what essentially is a crime, they don't think to long about it--they act, and carry out whatever truly horrifying act it was.

This has been abused by many Cult leaders, like the "Alien Comet riders" or also known as Heaven's Gate in California or something even MORE horrifying like Jonestown (something that was horrific--there are some GREAT documentaries on this to watch,; I suggest looking for them) or something semi-recent like (straight from wiki), "The 778 deaths of members of the Ugandan group Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, on March 17, 2000, is considered to be a mass murder and suicide orchestrated by leaders of the group.", so you can see while large religions don't do these WILD events they DO slowly in fact do smaller and incrementally increase their crimes.

You might ask what crimes, but it is literally crimes that we can point to that are AGAINST the VERY FABRIC of your own teachings. Use the Golden Rule in your life and get rid of the authority driven craziness, it will only lead you to sadness, if you're a zealot--fight it within yourself.
--------

So, anyway, what I'm saying is that I very much agree that there ARE many people that are theistic believers (not just Christan ones mind you) that are GREAT to talk to and many times you don't even have to argue with them you can have laid back conversations with them--it's amazing who you run into.

BUT, for the people I mentioned they are nearly lost causes. I don't know exactly what their problem is but it does have something to do with the fact that they MUST be told a "truth" by a "high-ranking-official" for them to change a stance. They are TRUE believers, ZEALOTS to their cause and dangerous.

A little bit the same as you said @VoodooV, but I thought I'd add a few more nails into that coffin.

yeah what the fuck was that? When did he sink to the depths of talk show host?

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^Quboid:
Dafuq?
Is this another hologram thing, or has politics really come to jamming with a late night talk show host to put across your side of the debate?
Can you really say this is more absurd than typical political debates?
If you want to argue that it's sad that this is what has to happen to get peoples' attention, then I'd probably agree, but typical political discourse is so insane that I can't blame people for wanting to wash their hands of it and walk away. The only thing worse than the idiots in office (and the idiots vying for office) is the "professional" commentators.
He's found an entertaining and pleasant way to get his message heard. I can't really fault him for that.


It's more absurd, but not as much more as it should be. This looks like a satire of modern politics being controlled by TV.

>> ^Quboid:

Dafuq?
Is this another hologram thing, or has politics really come to jamming with a late night talk show host to put across your side of the debate?

Can you really say this is more absurd than typical political debates?

If you want to argue that it's sad that this is what has to happen to get peoples' attention, then I'd probably agree, but typical political discourse is so insane that I can't blame people for wanting to wash their hands of it and walk away. The only thing worse than the idiots in office (and the idiots vying for office) is the "professional" commentators.

He's found an entertaining and pleasant way to get his message heard. I can't really fault him for that.

Dafuq?

Is this another hologram thing, or has politics really come to jamming with a late night talk show host to put across your side of the debate?

You know the way doctors are the worst patients? Talk show hosts make lousy guests...

Bill Hader is awesome

Check out his al pacino and alan alda impressions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHRIx0fbBSo

He also does a crazy good John Malkovich impression, which I can't really find any examples of, but he does do a little bit of it when playing an italian talk show host whose interviewing John Malkovich in this, kind of insane, clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0A3kAm6FLQ

ann coulter is a disgraceful cunt, we all know that already.

There's a talk show hosted by a priest??? wtf?

>> ^dag:

Totally agree with you. Best show on TV. Especially if you like the inside baseball world of standup comedy. Also check out Marc Maron's WTF podcast for this, which is excellent.
Louie was hilarious as usual on this, but I wish Conan wouldn't read off the talking points cards to set up the bits. This is my biggest pet peeve of talk shows - and why I prefer the interviews at the Daily Show.
>> ^Trancecoach:
Not me. I love his show. It's one of the smartest and funniest programs on television. There's often a very subtle, yet powerful message in each program about modern life -- usually something rarely seen on television.
And this clip is great, too. I appreciate how animated and angry he got, for the sake of the dog. It speaks to the positive side of male aggression (which doesn't get the recognition it deserves).
>> ^bookface:
Louis CK is one of the funniest stand up comedians out there... but that show, "Louie," almost never makes me laugh. This clip made me laugh harder than three episodes of Louie stuck together. I probably just don't get it yet but maybe I'm not alone? Peace.




I agree with you about the set-up cards, dag. That's one thing I love about Craig Ferguson--whenever a guest comes on his show he tears up a stack of blue cards and throws them in a protest against the conformity of talk show hosts.

what a pleasant surprise to see a talk show host speak about the elephant in the room.
very refreshing mr ratigan.keep up the good work!


UPDATE:msnbc has cancelled the dylan ratigan show.

Original 47 second vid, with lead-in title cards and timeshift footage

http://videosift.com/video/Dont-Mess-with-Buzz

Here's Wiki's coverage of this event:

"Most astronauts have refused to grant him interviews. The most infamous incident involved Apollo 11 crew member Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. According to Aldrin, he was lured to a Beverly Hills hotel under the pretext of an interview on space for a Japanese children's television show. When he arrived, Aldrin claims Sibrel was there demanding that he swear on a Bible that he had walked on the moon.

When Aldrin refused, Sibrel called him a "coward", a "liar", and a "thief".[1] An exasperated Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw, which was recorded. Sibrel later attempted to use the tape to convince police and prosecutors that he was the victim of an assault. However, it was decided that Aldrin had been provoked, and (based on Sibrel's unfazed, nearly instant reaction to his camera man) did not actually injure Sibrel, and no charges were filed. Many talk show hosts aired the clip, making Sibrel the butt of jokes.[2] Sibrel said later that he wrote a letter of apology to Aldrin."

Full Disclosure always helps.


Thom Hartmann is the #1 progressive radio talk show host in the US

New York Times:

Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz and Kathryn Edwards, all of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, are three such economists, and they have laid out their arguments against structural unemployment in a report released today.


How to Identify Liberal Media Bias

The left is shocked---SHOCKED I TELLS YA----about any suggestions of media-promoted VIOLENCE!

To wit:


A new low in Bush-hatred

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 10, 2006

SIX YEARS into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink?

George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.

What's left for them to say about Bush? That they want him killed?

They already say it.

On Air America Radio, talk show host Randi Rhodes recommended doing to Bush what Michael Corleone, in "The Godfather, Part II," does to his brother. "Like Fredo," she said, "somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw!" -- then she imitated the sound of a gunshot. In the Guardian, a leading British daily, columnist Charlie Brooker issued a plea: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?"

For the more literary Bush-hater, there is "Checkpoint," a novel by Nicholson Baker in which two characters discuss the wisdom of shooting the 43rd president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character fumes. Some Bush-hatred masquerades as art: At Chicago's Columbia College, a curated exhibit included a sheet of mock postage stamps bearing the words "Patriot Act" and depicting President Bush with a gun to his head. There are even Bush-assassination fashion statements, such as the "KILL BUSH" T-shirts that were on offer last year at CafePress, an online retailer.

Lurid political libels have a long history in American life. The lies told about John Adams in the campaign of 1800 were vile enough, his wife Abigail lamented, "to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world." But has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography?

As with other kinds of porn, even the most graphic expressions of Bush-hatred tend to jade those who gorge on it, so that they crave ever more explicit material to achieve the same effect.

Which brings us to "Death of a President," a new movie about the assassination of George W. Bush.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, the movie premieres this week at the Toronto Film Festival and will air next month on Britain's Channel 4. Shot in the style of a documentary, it opens with what looks like actual footage of Bush being gunned down by a sniper as he leaves a Chicago hotel in October 2007. Through the use of digital special effects, the film superimposes the president's face onto the body of the actor playing him, so that the mortally wounded man collapsing on the screen will seem, all too vividly, to be Bush himself.

This is Bush-hatred as a snuff film. The fantasies it feeds are grotesque and obscene; to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society. That such a movie could not only be made but lionized at an international film festival is a mark not of sophistication, but of a sickness in modern life that should alarm conservatives and liberals alike.

Naturally that's not how the film's promoters see it. Noah Cowan, one of the Toronto festival's co-directors, high-mindedly describes "Death of a President" as "a classic cautionary tale." Well, yes, he says, Bush's assassination is "harrowing," but what the film is really about is "how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush's divisive partisanship and race-baiting has forever altered America."

I can't help wondering, though, whether some of those who see this film will take away rather a different message. John Hinckley, in his derangement, had the idea that shooting the president was the way to impress a movie star. After seeing "Death of a President," the next Hinckley may be taken with a more grandiose idea: that shooting the president is the way to become a movie star.

It's not surprising, then, when liberals get bitter, they cling to government or environmentalism or antipathy to radio talk show hosts or anti-capitalist sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

OH THOSE PEACEFUL LEFT-WING LIBERALS.


I want to go up to the closest white person and say: ‘You can’t
understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my
mental health — New York city councilman Charles Barron


It's good (Michelle Malkin's) in D.C. and I'm in New York. I'd spit on
her if I saw her. -- Geraldo Rivera


I have a good news to report; Glen Beck appears closer to suicide - I'm
hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and
given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am
only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls
the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture
it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months. -- Mike
Malloy, radio "personality"


"It's about time that we have an intifada in this country that changes
fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every --
They're gonna say some Palestinian being too radical -- well, you
haven't seen radicalism yet." -- U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian
fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American
intifada


The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not
'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION,
the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." -- Michael Moore


In Vietnam, our soldiers came back and they were reviled as baby
killers, in shame and humiliation. It isn’t happening now, but I will tell
you – there has never been an army as violent and murderous as our
army has been in Iraq. -- Seymour Hersh


“I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like
many black men do, of heart disease.... He is an absolutely
reprehensible person.” -- USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk
show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, Nov. 4, 1994,
on PBS’s “To the Contrary.”

"This administration is waging war on poor children," said "The
reality is that they are steadily and surely trying to turn the clock back
on all of the programs and supports that working families and their
children need and deserve. --Hillary Rodham Clinton