@transmorpher
i would say we disagree but i cant even say that.
you didn't counter ANYTHING i said,you just accused me of being dishonest.

which has been pretty much your position this entire thread.i thought i was doing you a solid by laying down some history,which helps explain some facets of radical islam.

notice my wording:facets.

do you realize that i taught comparative religion and cultural religious history?
do you realize just how foolish you appear to me right now?

you want to counter my argument....by not countering my argument,and implying i am being dishonest.

ok sweetheart,
i think i see the problem here.
YOU are seeing the dynamic through a singular lens.

you want to ignore the historical implications and simply focus on islam itself?
ok,that's fine.
i find it stupid,short sighted and incredibly biased,but whatever..

yoooou have an agenda to get to don't ya?

ok.
then let us just strip the dynamic of ALL historical implications and focus solely on islam itself.
(which is why you mentioned Maajid Nawaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, Hitchens )
you clever clever boy...
i see what you did there../ruffles hair.
you are SO adorable when you are being myopic and lazy!

so what would you like to discuss?
how islam is in desperate need of a reformation?
or maybe how the original intent of islam from a spiritual perspective was hi-jacked by his cousins and turned into a political conquest machine,that subjugated ...

you know what?
why am i bothering?
you have revealed yourself to be a condescending,sanctimonious know-nothing.who read a couple of books and thinks he 'get's it".

no dude..you read sam harris.

look man,
i am not here defending islam,because as religions go,islam is kinda shit.
but to ignore how neoliberalism and american interventionism have amplified,and worsened and already crappy situation.

that's not even intellectually dishonest.
that is just plain lazy.

whats next?
you gonna do some 'thought experiments" and try to argue that at least america's "intentions" were nobel?

you WERE! weren't you!!

and this little revisionist nugget "Those countries have had problems long before any western intervention."

oooh really?
because,unlike YOU,i actually know the history of that region.
so if you want we can compare how some cities and countries were considered "progressive" and even "liberal",and even some (granted,only a few) that were considered "secular" *gasp*.

how about this,instead of me repeatedly taking you to the woodshed to give ya some of that "learnin",how about you just go look up the history of kabul,afghanistan.

that's it.just one city.

and then come back and tell me that neoliberalism,colonialism and good old fashioned empire building hasn't been a major force in the rise in fundamentalism and radicalization in the middle east.

it looks like you really ARE going to make go all the way back to the dark ages!

and dude..seriously..hitchens ROCKED,but sam harris?
no..juuust no.
i don't do apologists as a counter argument.

edit:i will say that i agree with this "There are actual muslims (such as Maajid Nawaz)that say islam has a problem(especially particular strands of it), and it needs reform. Embracing the muslims who want reform is the only way forward."

you mean that islam may need a reformation?
*gasps*/clasps hands to face.
didn't i fucking already SAY that?

ah well,foiled by my pedantic ways.

Oh god, it's 2017 -- I was the one living in the past all along! *gasp*

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

I hear people liked this show, but this just seems like inaccurate, pandering dialogue. Is the joke that he has no idea wtf he's talking about? Maybe that's the joke...

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about?

<gasp!> Maybe I'm the joke??

Calling the double standard police, calling the double standard police -- Stephen Fry made fun of Scottish accents at the end of this video!!! I think you should make a big deal out of this. For shame. And it's at the top of the Videosift Top Ten! *gasp*

@Dumdeedum
seriously dude?
who is butthurt?
who is anti-PC?
i am sure there are some racist bigots who bemoan the good ol' days when they could just ridicule,berate and condemn whole groups of people but those people are becoming a sliver of a minority.

this video is not addressing normal regular folk who view PC simply as not being a dick and showing a bit of respect.

this video is addressing that band of fuckwits who are trying to shut down free speech by attacking the language and shutting down the conversation by abusing court systems and government to get YOU..to shut the fuck up.

so i am sorry that this video which is addressing complex and nuanced human interactions was not packaged in a condensed,easy to digest format,because we all know the younger generations predilection for perpetual A.D.D means that anything over 5 minutes has them scurrying for their Iphones.

god forbid anyone takes the time to actually examine the issues,which may *gasp* take longer than 5 minutes to unpack.

special little snowflakes need to have their information spoon fed to them,because "thinking" is hard and "examining" all points can be tedious.can't have that now..can we?

and you're "fine" with that?

*citation needed

and did you just conflate sanders ideas with ISLAM?
now THAT,my friend,is some seriously impressive mental gymnastics.

you do realize,or at least tacitly aware that america has MANY socialist policies and even institutions?

or have you been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the false belief that capitalism=democracy?

do i REALLY need to remind you that one:socialism.
is an economic system.
and the other:democracy.
is a political system.

that you could actually have a socialist democracy?
oh wait.
doesn't bernie sanders identify as a *gasp* DEMOCRATIC socialist?

come on bob,read a book once in awhile would ya please?
pretty please?

You join the air force and you then feel the need to speak out because they (gasp!) expect you to kill people. Your trauma comes from how distant your expectations are with the reality of the job you signed up to do. What the hell did you think you'd be doing, working on your tan? ... learning how to tango? What a bunch of bullshit.

Polyamorous feelings are hardly learned. You only like one person at any given time? Lies. Not even speaking about SEX, which always seems to be the trigger word for our collective fears. Why does it come down to sex? Most of my romance is asexual, y'all (society, the royal y'all) are oversexed because you're afraid of your feelings. Either you can't free your feminine self or your masculine self because you are afraid or embarassed, or lack the ability to think beyond that into nonbinary worldviews. Removing negative values from sexual acts so that they become naturally flowing, and not repressed sudden bursts of violence. Practice being asexual around people you're deeply attracted to. Treat them like *gasp* people.

Group hugs, anyone? Holding hands in prayer? I can't be the only one that feels that built in polyamorous tingle, can I? Sporting collisions? Animals born in litters crawling all over each other. Ain't sexual, is just a deep rooted desire to be among life close up and in that shit; protected and secure; loved. Any concert goers out there like getting close to the stage? That's a lot of sweaty people you're being sandwiched between. I know not everyone likes these situations, but it's enough latent desire, again not just for sex, but to be VERY close with more than one other person.

Haha... anyway! It's not all about dirty, sexual acts. If someone I hardly knew asked me or my wife to hang out and tried to have group sex, it wouldn't work anyway. Friendship and asexual romance are higher powers of coexistence anyway; more honest, less messy and ancient mammalian.

But... what is so wrong with bonds that form out of such natural human need beyond the twosome -- also think of all the lonely people out there who you're depriving of human touch, and just because you irrationally believe it's wrong. Shame on society. Shame.

This.. exactly

Instead of whining like a little bitch.. why not just sift videos of *gasp!!*

..good cops ACTUALLY doing their job correctly and professionally, @lantern53!

Guarantee you everyone would upvote those videos into the top 10.

*gasp!* omg.. lmao

You're learning, Bob!! This is a beautiful, special day!

Man, i almost want to hug you. Whew!

Conservative minds CAN be open to new sources of information.

This is an amazing epiphany that I congratulate you on.

Good job, buddy!

@bobknight33

Still waiting to hear how your clip constitutes an "ATTACK on Christianity".

Also got a few more:

Why is it okay to attack Islam or any other religion?
But not okay to specifically attack Christianity - unless it's something crazy like Moronism?


What makes your holy book correct? And all others incorrect?
How do you know?

How do you know you're not being TRICKED?! *gasp*
Like, what if some other religion's Lucifer "wrote the bible"?

How old are you?

Hey Lantern, why don't you tell us how "totally not racist" you are..

while claiming that black people are inherently violent, underachieving, thugs & savages.

Oh but wait, you "have a bi-racial relative" so you couldn't POSSIBLY be an unapologetic racist.

Nope, you just believe the first biracial president is "unamerican" because he spent 4 years as a child in -*gasp!* - a "foreign" country.

[You know, like how Republican Ted Cruz is a Cuban-Canadian with an untrustworthy racist father]

Or maybe you can tell us how the "black community" conspired to make certain that open racism and discrimination in EVERY facet of life was perfectly acceptable until the 1960s.

Pssh, seems EXTREMELY racist to still benefit from the enslavement of an entire group of people..
- not to mention the whole murdering & subjugating the indigenous population beforehand -
..then blame that group for not being able to "fix their own problems", doesn't it?

P.S. - It does. Because it is. Because you're a racist.

Just like my hispanic grandmother.. oh, and she has TWO bi-racial grandkids.

How so? If anything, it means gay people can normalize into family units, rather than choosing paths of rebellion against their families.

I've never understood your path of logic. The only thing I can imagine you mean is... well, sort of what this video is poking fun at. Gay marriage does not convince heterosexual people to be gay, nor does it convince them to somehow give up on the concept of the family unit.

Have you even really thought this out beyond some abstract belief that somehow *gasp* through the process of natural selection, we slowly EVOLVE into homosexuals... Is that what you're trying to say? That the hardwired heterosexual drive in some humans will fade out, sort like how eventually all white people will be gone because of all the Mexican and Chinese immigrants in America?

Who knew that the our final step in evolution is the break down of the family unit via gay marriage. I guess that means no more babies. Is this the end of the world God predicted for us? Gay marriage apocalypse!!

I can't speak to Canada's system, but I can weigh in on Medicare quality of care. My Grandmother, the woman who raised me, was diagnosed with lung cancer in her early 70's. Since I was helping to take care of her at the time, I got to see what I have to look forward to in my later life.

Consistently we had to wait for treatments to be approved and she was often delayed for patients that were not on Medicare. Additionally, every single therapy or quality of life aid was scrutinized beyond belief.

As an example, the doctor gave her a prescription for an oxygen tank and delivery system after they removed part of her lung that was not responding to chemo. Medicare refused to cover it without an 'oxygen saturation level test'. This 'test' was horrible. She had to try to breathe without the machine for multiple minutes, struggling and gasping for air. It was fucking brutal to watch, but the people that Medicare sent to verify didn't give a shit. They basically told me that if her saturation wasn't low enough after 15 minutes, she couldn't be covered for the machine. I couldn't take it, so I told them to fuck off out of her house and paid out of my own pocket for the rental.

These are just some examples, there were others before she died that made it quite clear that Medicare is not quality care. It's basically the bare minimum they have to give you to keep you alive. So this video comparing Canada's care to Medicare doesn't reassure me in the slightest and it's almost certainly an unfair comparison to their system. I can tell you I am dreading making the swap to Medicare in 20-25 years, let alone being forced into something similar sooner. As far as ACA, I don't really care. It's probably good for people who don't have good jobs or who are unemployed, but I will be more than happy to hang onto my extremely good insurance provided through my employment.