>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Truckchase:
So what would you recommend to fix the problem? The Dems are'nt helping, and while some stand for a significantly slower societal regression than the 're-pubbies they're most definitely not a solution.
I'm not asking that question rhetorically. What do you want be done to fix this? I'll club a baby seal if it'll make you guys stop being apologists for apologists. Let's get this show on the road because we're running short on time.

Well, the short answer is that unless you're going to start stockpiling weapons for a revolution, you need to ultimately come up with a way to get what you want from political system through the mechanisms laid out in the Constitution. Namely, voting, and calling your congressman/senator/mayor/governor/President, etc.
As Michael Moore said, the 1% may have 40% of the wealth, but only 1% of the vote. Money doesn't actually buy elections, at least not yet.
Let's pretend for a minute that the Tea Party was some authentic grassroots movement. Look at how they went after their political objectives:

1. They were solely interested in getting conservatives elected
   
2. They were willing to put up primary challenges to Republicans who'd been disloyal to The Cause (and were very successful in winning those primaries!)
   
3. They were committed to showing up and voting for the most conservative person on the ballot in the general (aka, they supported the Republican, even if the Tea Bag favorite lost).
   

The net result was that they got a shitload of Republicans into Congress, as well as further increasing the ideological purity of the Republican party. Distilled insanity, and lots of it!
On the other hand, the left seems to be deciding that their big hat trick is to eschew voting, badmouth Democrats (as if none are good, and as if the party has never done anything good), and camp out in public parks all winter.
Again, don't get me wrong, I totally agree with the general idea of protesting wealth inequality, but at a certain point you've got to have some answer to "what do you want done, and who do you want to do it?"
I'm good if the answer is "End the War, Tax the Rich", but then the next point is Obama's in favor of those things, all his Republican challengers aren't, and the only people in Congress who want to do both are Democrats, and there's a national election next year...


1st: The tea-party comparison.
The tea-party was a bunch of blowhards who want to destroy government. They have seized well on misdirected rage. Destroying something is a hell of a lot easier than fixing something that is almost terminally broken. We can't expect results as quickly as those folks because we're constructive, not destructive.

2nd: The real issue. (money in politics)
I think you're missing my point. Why trash a movement that could very well be the beginning of a societal awakening? It took many years for most major causes to gain traction. (see: prohibition repeal, civil rights, suffrage, etc.) I never said don't vote and I never said don't take action. I do all of those AND actively back OWS. I haven't missed a caucus since I was 18. We're active; don't think otherwise. The OWS movement isn't perfect, but nothing we humans do is. It's a step in the right direction. Will this movement bring the all-encompassing triumph? Doubtful. Will the next? Increasingly less doubtful...


Why don't you come out here and help, or at the very least don't throw stones at those putting their neck on the line for you. When is the last time you personally got news coverage because you towed the party line? We need to get out of our armchairs. We need to make a difference!

>> ^Truckchase:

So what would you recommend to fix the problem? The Dems are'nt helping, and while some stand for a significantly slower societal regression than the 're-pubbies they're most definitely not a solution.
I'm not asking that question rhetorically. What do you want be done to fix this? I'll club a baby seal if it'll make you guys stop being apologists for apologists. Let's get this show on the road because we're running short on time.


Well, the short answer is that unless you're going to start stockpiling weapons for a revolution, you need to ultimately come up with a way to get what you want from political system through the mechanisms laid out in the Constitution. Namely, voting, and calling your congressman/senator/mayor/governor/President, etc.

As Michael Moore said, the 1% may have 40% of the wealth, but only 1% of the vote. Money doesn't actually buy elections, at least not yet.

Let's pretend for a minute that the Tea Party was some authentic grassroots movement. Look at how they went after their political objectives:

1. They were solely interested in getting conservatives elected
   
2. They were willing to put up primary challenges to Republicans who'd been disloyal to The Cause (and were very successful in winning those primaries!)
   
3. They were committed to showing up and voting for the most conservative person on the ballot in the general (aka, they supported the Republican, even if the Tea Bag favorite lost).
   

The net result was that they got a shitload of Republicans into Congress, as well as further increasing the ideological purity of the Republican party. Distilled insanity, and lots of it!

On the other hand, the left seems to be deciding that their big hat trick is to eschew voting, badmouth Democrats (as if none are good, and as if the party has never done anything good), and camp out in public parks all winter.

Again, don't get me wrong, I totally agree with the general idea of protesting wealth inequality, but at a certain point you've got to have some answer to "what do you want done, and who do you want to do it?"

I'm good if the answer is "End the War, Tax the Rich", but then the next point is Obama's in favor of those things, all his Republican challengers aren't, and the only people in Congress who want to do both are Democrats, and there's a national election next year...

This kind of social pressure fails for the same reason purity pledges do.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^ghark:
Besides, by saying the GOP made nice comments about Arab Spring then bad comments about these protests, aren't you highlighting their hypocrisy? So what's the big deal about highlighting hypocrisy when it comes from the other side?
Yes, I'm highlighting their hypocrisy, because they are actually being hypocritical.
Democrats are not. They are sympathetic to OWS. They are saying good things about OWS. They are not capable of issuing orders to the police protesters are clashing with, and they definitely are not ordering a violent crackdown on demonstrators who are largely arguing for Democratic proposals.
>> ^ghark:
I agree that Republican obstructionism is not good, but if Dem's had the significant majority in both the house and senate would it make a big difference? I think in the past it might have, when the corporate influence in politics wasn't so great, these days... I think it's a very hard argument to make, especially considering the fact they didn't do anything significant when they did have the numbers after the last election.
Let's do some quick math. Suppose the Democratic Party consisted only of clones of Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Further, let's suppose that in any given election, the Democratic party sends 80% Bernies, and 20% Joes to Congress. For simplicity, let's assume all the Joes always vote with Republicans, and that 100% of the Republicans vote against anything OWS wants.
You need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. How big does the Democratic Party's margin of victory need to be for there to be 60 clones of Bernie Sanders in the Senate? Answer: 75. You need Democrats to carry 75% of the Senate. That means a minimum of 25 of 50 states need to have both their Senators be Democrats. Are there 25 blue states? And that scenario also requires ALL the remaining states be purple, with no pure red states at all.
Now, if Republicans weren't filibustering everything and anything, then the math changes only slightly. Democrats could pass legislation with just 50 votes (plus Biden), but as long as the Republican party stays 100% unified against anything even remotely like what OWS wants, you need 63 Democrats in order to wind up with 50 Bernies.
This is my way of saying "Democratic purity isn't the problem" -- 80% Bernies would be a massive, massive leap forward in Democratic ideological purity, and it still wouldn't do jack shit for us, because the deck is stacked against us by a) the rules of the Senate, and b) lockstep Republican opposition to sane policy.
So, are you out there working to help give Democrats that kind of majority, or improve their purity, or at least doing something about Republicans? Fuck no, you're out there taking potshots at Democrats because you didn't get a pony from Obama.
It ticks me off, because it's part of what's killing this country. To quote Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."


I think the argument has to go a little deeper than that - you are talking about improving the number of 'rational-acting' Democrats which is a noble idea, and one which I of course support. However, at some point (if things stay the way they are) people are going to be unhappy with the system so you're going to get swing voters voting Republican. So unless both parties are brought into line we'll just persist with the current system where, no matter what anyone votes, there will never be enough Bernie Sanders' to make a difference.

The answer to both your Democratic problem, and the Republican problem can be mostly solved by just one change, removing the money in politics.

I don't think it should ever be about which side is better, it should be about 'how do we get the results we want' - talk is cheap after all.

The reason I don't think you can just hope for more people to vote Democrat and expect change that way is Obama had a huge wave of support in the last election; you'd just had years of Iraq war, Afghan occupation, colonialism just about anywhere there was oil, corporate looting, disastrous economic decisions etc by Bush, 2008 was the moment where the Democrats could have made a difference. But what have they done? I mean seriously, while we debate this nonsense people are getting slaughtered all over the world in the name of oil, by your troops, by your private armies, by your weapons and often with other countries support (including mine). There is a time for debate, but we must also realize that we are destroying our own livelihoods and the livelihoods of our children, we need to fix the path we're on sooner rather than later.

>> ^ghark:
Besides, by saying the GOP made nice comments about Arab Spring then bad comments about these protests, aren't you highlighting their hypocrisy? So what's the big deal about highlighting hypocrisy when it comes from the other side?

Yes, I'm highlighting their hypocrisy, because they are actually being hypocritical.

Democrats are not. They are sympathetic to OWS. They are saying good things about OWS. They are not capable of issuing orders to the police protesters are clashing with, and they definitely are not ordering a violent crackdown on demonstrators who are largely arguing for Democratic proposals.

>> ^ghark:

I agree that Republican obstructionism is not good, but if Dem's had the significant majority in both the house and senate would it make a big difference? I think in the past it might have, when the corporate influence in politics wasn't so great, these days... I think it's a very hard argument to make, especially considering the fact they didn't do anything significant when they did have the numbers after the last election.

Let's do some quick math. Suppose the Democratic Party consisted only of clones of Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Further, let's suppose that in any given election, the Democratic party sends 80% Bernies, and 20% Joes to Congress. For simplicity, let's assume all the Joes always vote with Republicans, and that 100% of the Republicans vote against anything OWS wants.

You need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. How big does the Democratic Party's margin of victory need to be for there to be 60 clones of Bernie Sanders in the Senate? Answer: 75. You need Democrats to carry 75% of the Senate. That means a minimum of 25 of 50 states need to have both their Senators be Democrats. Are there 25 blue states? And that scenario also requires ALL the remaining states be purple, with no pure red states at all.

Now, if Republicans weren't filibustering everything and anything, then the math changes only slightly. Democrats could pass legislation with just 50 votes (plus Biden), but as long as the Republican party stays 100% unified against anything even remotely like what OWS wants, you need 63 Democrats in order to wind up with 50 Bernies.

This is my way of saying "Democratic purity isn't the problem" -- 80% Bernies would be a massive, massive leap forward in Democratic ideological purity, and it still wouldn't do jack shit for us, because the deck is stacked against us by a) the rules of the Senate, and b) lockstep Republican opposition to sane policy.

So, are you out there working to help give Democrats that kind of majority, or improve their purity, or at least doing something about Republicans? Fuck no, you're out there taking potshots at Democrats because you didn't get a pony from Obama.

It ticks me off, because it's part of what's killing this country. To quote Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

@yellowc It really does seem like it could go that way, and thinking about it, I really wouldn't discount it as a possibility. I could really imagine panglish to become an official language of singapore, which would very well provide a common language for everyone there. However, for these people to become completely uninterested in english would require a complete disinterest in all english news & television, and for the world powers to stop speaking english =P. Otherwise, they'd have to be like western european countries, where they work very hard to preserve the purity of their native language...but for an ad-hoc language, I don't know how that's possible.

I don't get a super 'High IQ' vibe from right-libertarians, which isn't to say they are stupid - they are certainly more thoughtful than your typical conservative. But as far as intellectuals go, right-libertarians have a shallow bench. When Milton Friedman is your most revered intellectual, you've got problems...

I think part of the problem with finding young leaders is that in right-libertarian circles, it's generally considered taboo to question free market doctrine. While this kind of ideological purity is good at creating loyal and aggressive followers, it's not the kind of thing that inspires the critical thinking necessary for a good leader. That's why the younger leaders end up being creepy, dictatorial narcissists like Stefan Molyneux. Political fundamentalism isn't much different from religious fundamentalism in that respect.

I remember first year of art school where we had to unlearn all we thought we knew about colour and relearn about the nuances in colours that we were never exposed to as a non-artist.

There are the hues
Primary: red, blue, yellow (white and black)
Secondary: orange, purple, green
Tertiary: red-orange, red-blue, yellow-blue, yellow-green ect.
Or even further - Quad-clours: red-red-blue or yellow-yellow-green

The complements: colours the appear on complete opposite sides of the colour wheel.
red compliments green, yellow complements purple, orange complements blue

And then the variations:

Intensity: Intensity can only be controled by the purity of the pigment being used. You can never increase the intensity of a colour, you can only decrease it by the means of combining it with any other pigment. The reason why artists pay premium prices for pure colours such as cadmium.
Value: colour changes made when mixing with various degrees of complement colours - mixing red with green, yellow with purple, mixing orange with blue.
Shade: colour changes made when mixing with various degrees of white (tints) or black (shades) to a hue. Black creating low values, white creating high values.
Coverage: Opaque vs. transparent/translucent applications

Using this structure, all the colour terms an average person uses now means nothing to me. words such as teal, brown, periwinkle etc.

These colours can now be described using a more precise system which includes a higher degree of variation..
Brown: low-intensity, low-value, red-brown.
Auqa: high-intensity, high-value, blue-green

OK class dismissed... There will be no test on today's lesson

Plus, if you are unmarried and have a purity ring, it doesn't count as sex!

In reply to this comment by radx:
http://twitpic.com/6cltbx

You're right. It must have. Check etymology.com:

1922, originally used in English 1920 in its Italian form (see fascist). Applied to similar groups in Germany from 1923; applied to everyone since the rise of the Internet.

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. [Robert O. Paxton, "The Anatomy of Fascism," 2004]

AND

1921, from It. partito nazionale fascista, the anti-communist political movement organized 1919 under Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)


Oh wait, no. No, you're not right actually. That's still the definition we have today.

Man, the red on FDR's face when he, himself a fascist, declared war on his fellow fascist, Benito Mussolini! Oh, how embarrassing!

Unless, of course, your definition is simply a pejorative to put down another person through the use of redefining words as if the English language is your idle playthings like so many of your other comments times before.

Get your facts straight before you press your fingers on that thing you call a keyboard.

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Fascist" had a different meaning pre-1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticis
m_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Criticism_of_Roosevelt_as_a_.22Fascist.22
I'm glad you on the left revere Saint Roosevelt, as your children's children's children's children will still be paying off his and the Kenyawaiian's massive, failed welfare state.
>> ^brycewi19:
>> ^quantumushroom:
Ah FDR, that delightful 'benevolent' fascist whose policies prolonged the Depression and whose ass was saved by WW2.

I would downvote this comment 5 times if I could.
Fascist? My ass. Have some respect for the position.

LOL>> ^ghark:

(you'll just have to trust me that you can have sex in all those places)

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^smooman:
one more thing, if you honestly think that having sex with your S.O. before you marry em is what is gonna ensure you have great sex.......you really dont understand sex, at least on an intimate level. experience and time with one woman will produce mind bending sex, as opposed to experience from quantity of partners

I never said that. I said that if you're going to commit to marrying someone, you should not do so lightly. You should make an effort to get to know each other in every way and that includes sexually.
You don't know me or anything about me, so don't assume what I do or don't know about sex and intimacy. For the record, I have been married for several years, and before that my wife was my girlfriend for even longer.
This is really not that complicated. Or do you genuinely believe that it is better to wait until you're married to have sex?
Oh and SeesThruYou, you're a troll and not a very good one. We have world class trolls here like QM. Try harder.


who said that was directed squarely at you? lets try and not be so much of a martyr

"Or do you genuinely believe that it is better to wait until you're married to have sex?"
speaking of presuppositions, could you point out to me what words i strung together that you misunderstood as me championing abstinence till marriage?

>> ^SeesThruYou:

Marriage is about everything BUT sex, you worthless pieces of shit. You people are proof that the theory of evolution is a joke, because you obviously haven't evolved beyond the pond scum that existed "billions" of years ago.


Of course there are other elements, but if you were to choose between two equally amazing woman, but one didn't have a vagina, breasts, an ass, or a mouth, which would you choose? (you'll just have to trust me that you can have sex in all those places)

>> ^smooman:

one more thing, if you honestly think that having sex with your S.O. before you marry em is what is gonna ensure you have great sex.......you really dont understand sex, at least on an intimate level. experience and time with one woman will produce mind bending sex, as opposed to experience from quantity of partners


I never said that. I said that if you're going to commit to marrying someone, you should not do so lightly. You should make an effort to get to know each other in every way and that includes sexually.

You don't know me or anything about me, so don't assume what I do or don't know about sex and intimacy. For the record, I have been married for several years, and before that my wife was my girlfriend for even longer.

This is really not that complicated. Or do you genuinely believe that it is better to wait until you're married to have sex?

Oh and SeesThruYou, you're a troll and not a very good one. We have world class trolls here like QM. Try harder.