GeesusFreak: There are plenty of private prisons. Once you drown democracy in the bathtub, business will be free to make up their own laws, and lock up who ever they want for whatever reason they desire. You take so much for granted.

blankfist: you are so caught up in partisanship. We need corporate money out of all politics, out of libertarian/right wing front groups, and out of Republican/Democrat/Libertarian campaigns. Also, do you see how corrupt your own ideology has become. At one point you were against corporate power, and now that I've finally convinced you that your ideological influences are heavily funded by corporations, you've tossed that integrity out the window, falling back on the sad and disappointing sentiment, 'It's OK because everyone else is doing it too.'

Do you and G. notice that corporations use the same arguments you do, about government and tyranny and deregulation and self regulating markets? Does this not give you even a moment of pause or self reflection? If we all agree that corporate influence is corruptive, then why do you two parrot their talking points as if they were your own?

Is it possible that you've been manipulated, that marketing executives have figured out what makes you tick, and bent you to their will with self serving pie-in-the-sky rhetoric about liberty and individuality? I can't understand why anyone would argue against representative democracy? If the power doesn't rest with citizens, then who? Do you realize what life was like before democracy? Kings, Dictators, Dukes, Chiefs, Barrons and emperors? You take so much for granted.

This government is the result of 30 years of deregulation, easing of campaign finance laws and the realization of foolish market concepts like trickle down economics. The government we have is a direct result of the types of ideas you both champion. This is the government you deserve.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I can't believe there are people trying to justify stomping on a woman's head. Partisanship is one thing, but condoning violence against women is just sick.


I hate to nitpick, but is it any less sickening if a muscular guy had been stomped on? Unjustified violence is unjustified violence.

It shouldn't matter if it was a woman, or does being stomped on build character in men?

I can't believe there are people trying to justify stomping on a woman's head. Partisanship is one thing, but condoning violence against women is just sick.

You give the impression that you believe your own personal politics are somehow above partisanship. I think it is linked with your inability to see your own thinking as subjective. I believe Ayn Rand had the same problem when she titled her movement 'objectivism'.

As far as 'liberty' goes, haven't we discussed this ad nauseum? You believe in 'free market' liberty. I believe in 'democracy' liberty. I see the free market as intrusive on the liberty of the working class, the poor, the sick, the handicapped, the elderly, minority ethnic groups, women, etc. You see democracy as intrusive on the liberty of business and 'the individual'. I'm not trying to convince you that you are wrong - because that is a lost cause - just that your concept of liberty is limited and subjective.

....and it's not just you, this is a common problem among American-style free market libertarians. They see the 'libert' in the title as objective moral authority and see anyone who opposes them as opponents of freedom. That's how it appears to me, anyway, in my own completely subjective mind. I could be wrong.

LOL. You don't get to use the term 'pro liberty' and then accuse others of partisanship. Claiming that your ideology is the ideology 'of liberty' is as partisan as it gets.

>> ^blankfist:

Do you honestly think helping John Boehner replace her as speaker will end the wars and prevent future bailouts?

>> ^Engels:

ya, really, adding the fail tag on this one shows partisanship that I thought didn't exist with sift administration


Channels and Tags have nothing to do with site administration.

ya, really, adding the fail tag on this one shows partisanship that I thought didn't exist with sift administration

>> ^NetRunner:


He the war in Iraq is ending. He's been trying to give Guantanamo detainees trials, but Congress has thrown up numerous, massive roadblocks in his way, led by Republicans and turncoat Dems that the Democratic base hate (e.g. Joe Lieberman). The Bush Doctrine is completely and utterly gone, over the loud objections of the Republicans, who clearly intend to reinstate it if they get power again.
What the fuck are you smoking?


Haha. Partisanship keeps the blinders on. Obama is the new Bush. Embrace it.

This really isn't an issue beyond partisanship. For better and for worse, conservatives are pro-market, anti-regulation. Liberals, as compared to conservatives, are much more pro-regulation. They won't say so in so many words, but liberals would like to see *more* red tape, and more bureaucracy, just so events like these are less likely to happen, even at the cost of some inefficiency.

You can debate the merits of each position until the end of time, but you need to be honest with yourself: this is the cost of letting business do what it wants, relatively free of oversight. Multinational corporations have no concern for the welfare of a town, city, state, or even country, save for what will cost them actual business. As the Exxon Valdez incident proved, you can cause a horrendous environmental catastrophe and still remain in profitable business, so there clearly isn't enough of a bad PR disincentive to actually put in place the expensive safeguards to better prevent these occurrences.

Given that you can't count on BP, or any corporation, to look out for your best interests, you have to have another body step in and fill that role. That's the role of big government, which liberals support, and conservatives do not (with exceptions, like the military).

Obviously voting won't help *right now,* but a shift in the political map today would very likely reduce the chances of this happening 10 years from now, and so on.

What saddens me almost as much as this video are the comments made my Nithern. This is well and beyond any partisanship. Will voting for anyone help them now or reverse the damage that has already been done?

Please, wake up and realize that the problem is the disconnect between those in Washington and the rest of us. It doesn't matter what party they're with, their world is not the one we live in.

I guess it goes to the type of society you want to have.

I don't like the idea of banks, HMOs, real estate agents, home owners associations, and other private sector entities being able to create an apartheid society via exclusion of certain racial and ethnic groups.

What you say sounds somewhat good on paper, but where has it actually worked in real life? America has been down that road before; I for one, don't want to go back.>> ^blankfist:

Wow, we must be getting close to election time again, because the anti-popular-Republican smears are out in full force. Go partisanship!
I believe people should have the right to discriminate in the private sector. Why not? Isn't that part of freedom? I don't personally condone racism, but I wouldn't want to police it either.
People can be racist and discriminatory all they want as long as they don't inflict violence on someone. That's the point about that old-timey racism I think some of you are leaving out; the part where people were killed and made into slaves because of their skin color. There's a huge distinction between that and some bigot with a small business.
To me, this is a nonissue. And for the record I don't support Rand Paul.

Wow, we must be getting close to election time again, because the anti-popular-Republican smears are out in full force. Go partisanship!

I believe people should have the right to discriminate in the private sector. Why not? Isn't that part of freedom? I don't personally condone racism, but I wouldn't want to police it either.

People can be racist and discriminatory all they want as long as they don't inflict violence on someone. That's the point about that old-timey racism I think some of you are leaving out; the part where people were killed and made into slaves because of their skin color. There's a huge distinction between that and some bigot with a small business.

To me, this is a nonissue. And for the record I don't support Rand Paul.

^But you do 'believe' in scientific consensus. You 'believe' every other conclusion scientific consensus has ever come to. You don't question gravity, or plate tectonics, or photosynthesis, or the reality of the ozone layer, do you?

Why defy science on this lone issue?

Could it have anything to do with the billion dollar PR campaign designed to put these ideas in the public mind?

Video Analysis:

I can't speak to the validity of the science, because I am not a scientist, but I can certainly speak to some of the political manipulation found within this video.

-The video replaces the term 'climate science' with the less accurate, more politically charged term 'global warming'.
-Science is described as 'opinion' to downplay the research that defines it.
-'Public opinion' is put on an equal footing with science.
-The "debate" is framed as one of equals, using the image of two men with cannons firing at each other. In reality, this is science vs. rich guys who don't want to clean up their factories.
-The video pretends to differentiate itself from, and rise above these two warring factions, despite its overt partisanship.
-The video condescendingly reminds scientists of the importance of evidence. WTF?
-At the end, the video reaches conclusions that were not satisfactorily proven, and then displays the image of a judge pounding a gavel in an attempt to invoke the mental frame of officiality and authority in the mind of the viewer.

The debate on this issue has nothing to do with science, it is pure *politics. The scientific process has already reached the consensus that climate change is real, man made and potentially harmful to organic lifeforms. I find it disturbing that you would put politics on an equal footing with science within the context of a scientific debate. Putting your 'belief' in experts is a good thing, and I imagine that outside of this political bizzaro world, you probably do just that.

If you need medical attention, you go to a doctor, not a lawyer.
If you need your car fixed, you go to a mechanic, not a gourmet chef.
If you need information on climate change, you go to climate scientists, not greedy industrialists!

Yeah democrats who are attempting to have a conversation about health care and include republicans really do have to say that they tried. Shep is probably right that there's no damn chance republicans will want to cooperate. But they still have to be given the opportunity.

And reconciliation will kill bi-partisanship? If repubs have demonstrated anything over the last year it's that they're aggressively not interested in bi-partisanship. They collectively have their reelection strategy in place; criticize everything and pass nothing. And why weren't they concerned with reconciliation killing bi-partisanship when the Bush administration used it TWICE to pass tax cuts for the wealthy? Surely the Obama administration has at least one coming their way.

Though honestly I wouldn't care if they just nuked the filibuster. Or whatever they like to call it. It has always seemed like a weaselly abuse of rules.

@NetRunner, I'm not sure I understand what you mean seeing me "do these things countless times". If you're remarking about my consistent desire to use words based on a word's original lingual connotation as the prime factor in determining someone's meaning, then I'm guilty as charged. You may continue to enjoy language as a memorization technique no doubt taught to you lazily by a teacher whose idea of educational integrity was to grade based on ability to commit to memory rather than deconstruct the sum of its parts.

On that topic, anyone who believes being against big government and for more individual freedom is demonstrating partisanship, then I think we've discovered another grand achievement from our lackluster public school system.

It's true Jefferson was a man who spoke of "the people", and he practically coined it. He was a self avowed Republican, however. Not to be confused with the modern Republican, but of the root meaning of republicanism. He also believed in a strong democratic core whereby the choice of the men and women entering and exiting office would be chosen by a majority as opposed to an aristocratic minority, which is how elections were conducted at the start of the US. I agree elected officials should be selected by a majority. I don't believe, as didn't Jefferson, majority decision gives right for the popular group to take away rights and liberty and instill dependence and tyranny in its place, which is the democracy rule that Democrats and Republicans enjoy today.

I believe in persuasion over coercion; voluntarism over compulsion; individualism and self-governance over collectivism and dependence. Look how your precious system of big government has failed us routinely and driven us into entangled alliances and wars abroad. Your continued answer to this will surely be "but we can make it better." No. We cannot, otherwise it would've been better by now. It's only gotten worse.