>> ^jwray:
his shirt is not anymore disruptive or offensive than a shirt that says "kermitt is bert's best friend" or "2+2=5"
O RLY?
I disagree. His shirt could start a fight. No one would care about the two shirts you suggested.

in principle, how are the three any different?

all three are false statements. you happen to care more about certain nouns than other people (i.e. obama as opposed to bert or arithmetic) but explain to me how the concept is any different?

are you saying that a bert fan could not take offense at someone claiming that ernie is not bert's best friend? or a die-hard mathematician could not take offense at someone claiming 2+2=5?

just because you consider "obama" to be a noun worth initiating violence over, doesn't mean everyone else does.

his shirt is not anymore disruptive or offensive than a shirt that says "kermitt is bert's best friend" or "2+2=5"

O RLY?

And another thing: please stop creating endless rants in a near-british accent, illustrated by vaguely coherent, simplistic graphics. Just because Yatzee pulled it off with his zero punctuation series, doesn't mean it's hip and cool when you do it.

If you spent less time on each phrase in your so called instructional video, you'd cover a lot more of them.

YA RLY! GIEF! WTS!

Sean Hannity I think managed to spew more shit in a few minutes than I have heard in a while

"We all need to drill now, and he is wrong on that"

O Rly? Hannity is a McBush ass kisser with no opinion of his own.

Jesus Christ, The 4th Emergency Service...
Wow, so amazing to watch someone profress "Jesus will fix it" and then when it goes wrong "Satan, Its Satans Fault"

O Rly?

>> ^blankfist:
Outrageous! Certainly the use of fear by the government. Great post.
>> ^MarineGunrock:
O RLY? I think you would change your tune if you ever lived in a real police state.

I live in America. This is a real police state. You can start with why we have FISA, move to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and end with the Patriot Act. If that's not enough for you, I've got more! For someone who says they follow Ron Paul, you sure don't listen to what he says, gunner. I'd say start here. It's about as good a book I've ever read. I think everyone, no matter your party affiliation, could learn something from that book. Easy read.


MarineGunRock only reads books with pictures.

Outrageous! Certainly the use of *fear by the government. Great post.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
O RLY? I think you would change your tune if you ever lived in a real police state.


I live in America. This is a real police state. You can start with why we have FISA, move to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and end with the Patriot Act. If that's not enough for you, I've got more! For someone who says they follow Ron Paul, you sure don't listen to what he says, gunner. I'd say start here. It's about as good a book I've ever read. I think everyone, no matter your party affiliation, could learn something from that book. Easy read.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
>> ^BenjaminFranklin2u:
Crazy but not surprising, the US is a police state.

O RLY? I think you would change your tune if you ever lived in a real police state.
And good digging, A185. But charliem is right. If it's not legally defined at public space, then the people that rented it had the day. It essentially becomes private property.


As far as the law is concerned that sounds correct. But when McCain's campaign calls it a town hall meeting then it bloody well better be public and charging someone with trespassing based on the sign they are carrying is even more sickening for being done within the law.

>> ^BenjaminFranklin2u:
Crazy but not surprising, the US is a police state.


O RLY? I think you would change your tune if you ever lived in a real police state.

And good digging, A185. But charliem is right. If it's not legally defined at public space, then the people that rented it had the day. It essentially becomes private property.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

First, let me say I appreciate your honest attempt at "tearing me a new one". Compared to other replies, yours is a gem (a diamond with 250 written on it). You asked me some non-rhetorical questions, and I will gladly answer those that my two previous replies haven't, as they were not specifically aimed at your criticisms.

Oh, so having a college degree automatically exempts you from being lowlife scum

Sigh. Obviously not. You quoted me as saying "Not to say there aren't lowlifes in corporate America,". Did you not read the full quote or are you ignoring it on purpose? In the latter case, at least don't quote the embarrassing contradictory bit.

I'd rather have my blue-collar job over sitting in a tiny fucking cubicle any day.

Maybe so, and you may well hold a moral "relatively high" ground by doing so as far as I am concerned, but in light of america's global pursuit of economical happiness, I consider pretty much all jobs inside the U.S.A and some parts of Canada as "corporate". My usage of "corporate America" here was both a rhetorical and a conceptual synecdoche that played on the ambiguity of adjective-noun compound nouns in English (out of context, "corporate America" could mean both "the corporations of America as a whole" or "the whole of America as a corporation"). Sorry for the misunderstanding here, as usage should have required quotation marks to show I didn't use the idiomatic expression "corporate America" in its commonly accepted technical sense.

So now you're calling America's greatest generation lowlife scum? I would think that the veterans of WWII deserve nothing but honor and respect for their actions, and you should too.

I do respect them, and tried to make sure that what I said could not be construed as showing disrespect towards veterans of the two World Wars. Yet you have done so with a comment that is taken completely out of context as I implied it applied only to an ENLISTED army, specifically this one that is stationed in Iraq. As I pointed out, conscripts (and other time-of-war enlistees) are a different matter altogether. If you think they're not, may I just point out that officially, the United States has not been at war with anyone since WWII? Not in Korea, not in Vietnam and certainly not in both Iraqi "operations". The Congress may have voted funds and whatnot, but that is not War according to any international definition. Thus, only WWI and WWII will stand as examples of real modern wars with conscripts and ethically justified enlistment. Also, see my second post.

If it wasn't for them, you'd all be speaking German and saluting the Swastika right now.

Overused red herring. Please think of the Nazis and their children!

How can someone that honestly doesn't know of back-room politics and abuse of fellow humans be low life scum?

It is called guilt by ignorance (in christian terms, "Vincible Ignorance". Ask a theologian near you) You can be condemned in court as a consequence of it, if it can be shown that while you could have known the law, you didn't make the effort to for whatever reason (normally, you're suppose to know all law, but let's say you try to argue that it was somehow absolutely impossible for you to know it and that this should somehow absolve you of any wrongdoing). See also the concepts of "pluralistic ignorance" and of the bystander effect.

What if he did know about it?

Then that makes him guilty by association if he could prevent wrongdoing or if he refused to denounce it.

Maybe he would fucking want to join just to show that there ARE people in the military that don't beat on prisoners?

Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that people in the military did beat up prisoners. If he joins the army without denouncing those actions, how are we to know that he doesn't intend to perpetuate them?

Someone that honestly loves his country so much he is willing to put his life on the line is stupid?

If he is doing so blindly then yes, whether or not the thing he does thereby is wrong or not. Of course, that is only my (and I reckon most of the educated world, except some parts of the United States and some other really religious educated regions) ethical standpoint, and you may stand elsewhere on this issue.

O RLY? Care to actually back asinine claims like that up with actual fucking data?

Well, I haven't heard of any prisoners being tortured or beaten during the invasion per se, nor in the immediate aftermath, and my educated guess would be that the advent of such actions would indeed be sudden, but following a gradual increase in emotional detachment from the guards (refer to the Stanford prison experiment that I quoted two sentences later, which is more data than you'll ever need on this matter, I'd think). But what I wrote was not a scientific article. If I were to cite every paper I've ever read (most of which you probably couldn't understand right away anyway) to satisfy your misplaced need for "data", I would not be finished writing that first post yet. Relishing that thought may well please you; if so you are misguided indeed (misguided about how "science" works and also about the internets).

Again, O RLY? Moar data plz. Or should I say ANY data, please.
Again, have you not read what you had just quoted, where I referred you to a well known psychological experiment made in a prestigious school, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and repeated in countless psychology textbooks which happens to sustain my very point? Or are you just trying to rip off my leg off of my still warm body? Also, see my last answer about your misunderstanding of the process of science, which applies here especially to social sciences.

Maybe because the point of my fucking post wasn't to counter his points. "Troops are low life scum" isn't a point, it's a n opinion, in case that's what you were referring to.

Maybe so, but then so was my remark not a statement about the opinionatedness of the poster you replied to, but about your implicit attempt at refutation through a more or less carefully/consciously constructed exclamation of disbelief. Indeed, as it is difficult to ascertain scientifically that a certain person or type of person is "lowlife scum", such bold statements are to be classified as opinion. It doesn't change the fact though, that some opinions are more educated than others and thus may carry more weight, either subjectively through a shared worldview and knowledge base, or objectively by being shown to be closer to an established truth that the participants in this debate eventually come to recognize as such later.

What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING said here?

Yes indeed it doesn't directly relate, sorry. It is part of a previous version of my post that I forgot to erase entirely. Though the point it makes is now moot since it is not attached to the post as a whole anymore, the segment can be reconstructed as such: "[Your experience in your squadron may give you a different picture of the lowlifedness of the enlisted troops as a whole, since you generalize from your own, subjectively positive experience, but things may not be such when viewed from outside, and your own squadron may be a statistical anomaly.] Yes, you may have "heard [good] things" [about the rest of the army as whole], but there's a reason hearsay is not allowed as evidence in a trial: it's actually pretty unreliable. Also, keep and bear in mind that no one likes to think that he himself did "bad things" in a conflict. They always blame the other or perversely blame only themselves." For that last bit, see the concept of "pluralistic ignorance" that I quoted earlier.

Have I thrown a stone here?

I would say yes, and my whole post was, in a sense, a way to make this very point.

Basically, next time, if you don't have any data to back up supposed "facts", STFU.

Unfortunately for you, I had data, as I think I have shown here (too) extensively. But it was not to back any facts but to back opinion. I never claimed to have any facts concerning the lowlifedness of enlisted troops and neither did the original poster. The fact that I asserted my opinion as if it were fact is a rhetorical device of which you should be well aware of in "FOX-News America". It is one of the most simple, pervasive, transparent and perversely effective device in the whole of human speech (again, in my and some other people's view). It is also one of the easiest to catch, at least when you and your opponents are on different wavelengths: hence to need to train yourself to detect it even when people you agree with use it. I guarantee you it will save you from trouble in the long run.

>> ^Bidouleroux:
Why would they not be lowlifes when they represent the 18-35 American demographic, minus all the ones that actually have respectful or high paying jobs? Not to say there aren't lowlifes in corporate America, but the lowlife scum tend to stay "unemployed".

Oh, so having a college degree automatically exempts you from being lowlife scum? So all the other people in that demographic that don't have white-collar sit-in-the-AC-behind-a-fucking-desk jobs are lowlife scum, too? Just because they didn't have parents that were capable of sending them to college? OR because they had other matters in life that were more pressing and needed to pay bills?
I'd rather have my blue-collar job over sitting in a tiny fucking cubicle any day.


Anyway, a majority is fifty percent plus one, not ninety-nine percent. And these are enlisted troops, not conscripts, so you're gonna get only people who want to shoot muslims or people who want to serve their country so much that they want to put themselves in (h)arms way

You'd probably be right in that there are people that want to shoot Muslims. HOWEVER, people with this kind of mentality are the ones that are sitting with a huge confederate flag in their yard shooting at beer cans on a fence, not at the recruiter's office. I've never met ANYONE that said "I joined to shoot me some mooslims." And in the Marine Corps, the "why did you join" question gets asked even if you only knew the other guy for 5 minutes.

As for the people that joined because they want to serve their country? We don't do it because was want to do it so much that we WANT" to put ourselves in harm's way. We do it because we love this great nation, even for all it's flaws. We do it knowing that we could be put in harms way. We're not a bunch of masochists in uniform, ya fuckin know.


And I reckon anyone that WANT to shoot someone else, for whatever reason, is by definition a lowlife scum.

So now you're calling America's greatest generation lowlife scum? I would think that the veterans of WWII deserve nothing but honor and respect for their actions, and you should too. If it wasn't for them, you'd all be speaking German and saluting the Swastika right now.

Everyone that is so blind to politics, backroom machinations and human rights abuse that he still wants to enlist in a military without wanting to actually shoot anyone, is also a lowlife or at the very least stupid.

How can someone that honestly doesn't know of back-room politics and abuse of fellow humans be low life scum? What if he did know about it? Maybe he would fucking want to join just to show that there ARE people in the military that don't beat on prisoners? Someone that honestly loves his country so much he is willing to put his life on the line is stupid? This isn't rhetoric, I really do expect you to answer these questions.
Basically, what you just said is that as far as enlisted personnel, you're either stupid or a lowlife.


Put these two kinds of people together and you get shitty operations like Afghanistan and Iraq.

No, put a highly trained and welldisciplined fighting force against an unknown enemy using tactics and techniques that have not been fought against before and you get situations like that.

As we've seen over the past 7 years, the problems only start when you tell your enlisted troops NOT to shoot anyone anymore.

O RLY? Care to actually back asinine claims like that up with actual fucking data?

They tend to get frustrated and remake the Dumb and Dumber movies. As for those that start out "normal", please refer to the Stanford prison experiment.

Again, O RLY? Moar data plz. Or should I say ANY data, please.

Also, you're not countering his point with your question

Maybe because the point of my fucking post wasn't to counter his points. "Troops are low life scum" isn't a point, it's a n opinion, in case that's what you were referring to.

Yes, you may have "heard things", but there's a reason hearsay is not allowed as evidence in a trial: it's actually pretty unreliable. Also, keep and bear in mind that no one likes to think that he himself did "bad things" in a conflict. They always blame the other or perversely blame only themselves.

What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING said here?

And like your precious Jesus said: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.” I'm sure nowadays plenty of bible-churning rednecks would gladly obey and start throwing stones, but then again I'm sure that for all your other faults at least you're not that kind of person.


Have I thrown a stone here?


Basically, next time, if you don't have any data to back up supposed "facts", STFU.

O RLY?

Hulu must be in everyone's imagination, then.

why was the blue drive over the line anyway? cant he drive straight? "I swear the God done nothin' wrong"

O Rly?

Ya rly!

Upvote to balance out Bill O'rly