Who hasn't tried to do this when they were kids (or drunk adult)? I did this on an UP escalator when I was a kid (and unsuccessfully as a sobriety challenged adult). That kid has brass cajones for riding the DOWN rail head first.

Well, yes...but those are only some of the reasons FOR wanting secession. Many southerners have wanted secession since they were unsuccessful the first time they tried, and believe (rightly or wrongly) that they've suffered over a century of mistreatment...on top of the reason you mention.
On the other side I must imagine many 'Scottish' are of English lineage so don't feel as mistreated? (perhaps why their secession failed?)
I see the question differently, to me, it's do you have a right to leave...for ANY reason you find reasonable. You've added another layer. You've made me see that to the 'Democratic friends' it's likely only OK for reasons the 'Democratic friends' think are reasonable, not an absolute right a people may use for their own reason. That's a disappointing thought, but probably correct.

You make a point to be sure. And it is clearly being ignored. Regardless of how it came to the point, the USA for sure would go absolutely insane, and declare war on the attackers, as well as one or two of their so called friends.

We already saw this in 9/11. We saw a conflict that required far too long to come to an inconclusion. We also saw it used, politically, as motivation to launch an additional war against someone else. I might add, that I suspect many people would consider both efforts to have been unsuccessful.

The situation in Palestine seems far more similar to the situation with the Native Americans some time ago. Land theft and ethnic cleansing by virtue of superior technology and a racial superiority complex and an unwillingness on the natives' part to just roll over. I would have hoped that we had learned something since then.

I would

I'm interested to hear what people think about what these teens are saying regarding their generation, and the older generation, and how each one regards the other.

*quality for hopeful opinions/discussion and i enjoy slam poetry in general

Also would like to see the text if anyone can find it. I was unsuccessful.

...as I rightly predicted, you missed or overlooked the posts @ http://videosift.com/talk/this-site-is-being-removed, RIGHT, you don't get email notifications nor do you follow comment streams, RIGHT, AND the overlap of pertinence conveniently saves some typing, so....

"...pathetic self-deluded "little...thing" unsuccessfully, incessantly peddling his self-promoting, illusory, persecution complex effused, over compensatory inflated self-worth dribbling in a never-ending vain campaign of misrepresentation and deceit to unsuccessfully justify his existence to himself and to whomever else he deludedly believes hasn't the experience, acumen or awareness to know or see otherwise."

...AND...

"...self described "little...thing" whom with its adoption of this well earned moniker belies the slightest claim to any semblance of real self-respect or self-worth and further demonstrates Its inability to not only represent any idea he may borrow or steal but in the most banal, basest manner with no apparent capacity for self-awareness or objective perspective much less the truth. The question begs as to whether this incapacity is deliberate or if it is born of another pathology of which a number are glaringly obvious to many here and which is the subject of many frequent conversations here some of which I have copied and if the slightest ember of yearning to real self-awarenes exists in It I would be amenable to provide them...PUBLICLY ONLY,,, with the speakers names redacted of course. I WILL FURTHER PROVIDE THAT I WILL NOT BE A PARTICIPANT IN ANY PROVIDED CONVERSATION. As a further albeit futile stipulation I will only provide Lounge conversation as a anticipation of the pitifully predictable refuge to Its ascribing any such conversations to private conversations on profile pages that It prefers to paint in his persecution complex's inimitable fashion. OF COURSE, THIS WILL NOT BE ENTERTAINED."

...pathetic self-deluded "little...thing" unsuccessfully, incessantly peddling his self-promoting, illusory, persecution complex effused, over compensatory inflated self-worth dribbling in a never-ending vain campaign of misrepresentation and deceit to unsuccessfully justify his existence to himself and to whomever else he deludedly believes hasn't the experience, acumen or awareness to know or see otherwise.

Exchange...unworthy of but a shoe wipe on the grass.


chingalera said:

I have been here chicco, for many years in one iteration or another and have been ganged-up on by others like yourself-The only reason I would banned at this point is by those unwilling to see their reflection in the mirror, who would rather accuse than communicate, or burn bridges rather than build them.

I am not an enemy of anyone, or anybody on this site, sir. Deal with a reality through the eyes of your peers please rather than foment discord?? An humble and sincere request for change. I'm an amenable chap and always welcome two-sided conversations which you have continually and steadfastly avoided in exchange for continued dysfunctional cat-calls and attacks from the insulated comfort of your cozy computer-hole...

After this, there was a slightly unsuccessful "storming" of the justice ministry...

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Darth-Vader-storms-Ukraines-Justice-Ministry

Awesome. I've been listening to his podcast, DVDASA, for over a year, but I'd never heard of him before and have been very curious to see Thumbs Up. I've unsuccessfully tried torrents, but never thought to check YouTube.

*promote

And what you just said was relevant to anything other than your own narrow preconceived notions of what is or is not a worthwhile use of someone's time and property?

What I was doing was taking your initial argument and demonstrating the absurdity at it's core by extrapolating it's logical consequences. This is what one does when one has been taught to argue at a level beyond pre-school debating classes. I haven't just "read some Chomsky" I have spent my entire academic career studying Philosophy and linguistics/rhetoric.

Chomsky and I actually disagree on many things & frankly the fact you would choose him and not say Jacques Fresco, Jean Jacques Rousseau or Slavoj Zizek etc. with whom my beliefs have a much greater affinity suggest that you yourself have a paper thin grounding in the political and philosophical subjects you are trying to pull me up on. (and to be clear I don't fully agree with any of those people either, my political philosophy is based upon my own conclusions built up over years of study and consideration)


So lets be clear, generating $7000 of income is to you a pointless activity? (a point you have consistently refused to acknowledge as it undermines your entire argument). What about trying to entertain people? Are all attempts at comedy fruitless because they didn't make YOU laugh?

"Immature", "funny" and "necessary" are all highly subjective concepts.

Clearly YOU didn't find it funny, others (about 7 fucking million in fact!) did.

Clearly YOU thought the video creator lacked maturity, plenty of people would regard his sense of timing, context and dare I say it low level satire as indicative of a potentially very mature and cognicent individual. (not saying he is but the evidence supports either notion)

But most of all NOTHING in the universe is demonstrably necessary, not even the universe itself. The very concept of necessity or usefulness is entirely subjective in it's nature. We as humans invented it, nature has no such qualms, it simply exists and continues to do so (unless you wan't to bring God into this at which point my eyes will likely glaze over).

This did start as your observation regarding the "pointless" destruction of a phone, an observation I was suggesting had it's basis in little more than your own narrow preconceptions about what is and is not a laudable use of ones time and resources.

The point about other evils in the world was an (unsuccessful) attempt to point out the absurdity of getting your knickers in a twist about something so trivial it's almost funny. What you consider a serious problem on the global level specifically is less important than the simple fact that this dude smashing up a phone is utterly negligible by comparison to virtually anything one might care to mention. The best counter you have here far as I can see is to suggest that everything is pointless/subjective which would naturally be totally self defeating. (or to backtrack and redefine your position as one of mere distaste and aesthetic preference rather than an objective truth as you did)

Maybe your a Randist or an anarcho-capitalist or something. That's fine and while I might disagree with the premise of those positions their proponents would support my core notion just the same. i.e. getting angry and this dude smashing up his phone is by a country mile the most inconsequential and asinine point of contention in this whole discussion.


Also to be clear, I utterly reject the entire notion of the left/right wing paradigm and you're attempt to once again put my argument in a box of your own design (i.e. straw man again) is not going to work.

I'm not anti capitalist I'm anti Nepotism and Cronyism. My own ideas about how to fix the world involve both capitalist and socialist principles (along with replacing "democracy" with "meritocracy"). If you had enquired further rather than just generalising my suggestions into a straw man to support your own argument you may have had the opportunity to realise this and engage with the ideas intellectually (rather than as a reactionary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Learn to think critically instead of dressing up your own prejudices as objective facts (and attacking the arguer instead of the argument itself).

Some might consider an inability to separate subjective preconceptions from objective facts a far greater sign of immaturity. One of the reasons children are considered immature is because they cannot tell or control where their own Ego stops and other peoples begin. (though naturally this is itself a subjective notion and should probably never be defined as an objective truth either)

I don't expect you to respond like a Harvard professor but please at least engage with the content of the argument rather than painting me into a box and trying to assassinate my character. I'm sure you're probably a reasonably intelligent person and I'm always happy to back down or take back arguments if I'm presented with a well thought out reason why I might be wrong etc.

1; £50-£100 may not be much to you, but there are countries where the population exist on around 40 pence a day, I'm sure they would consider it a lot of money.

2; You saying; " smashing it with a hammer is no different to most of the mindless procrastination they get used for anyway," is rather silly. A Non-sequitur.

3; It doesn't beat "languishing in a drawer." Money - albeit a small amount- can be made from old phones or, if you care, given to someone who can't afford one. That, incidentally, is the major point I was trying -unsuccessfully it seems - to make.

I guess I must be out of the loop as far as how the Republicans see things. This is just me talking. I am bi-vocational. I work as a substance abuse and marital counselor and I also own my own business, These are just things I have thought through, not been told about.

I am wondering if there will be enough money to fund the ACA without the employer mandate.

I am wondering if there isn't going to be civil disobedience on a massive scale with our young people who don't yet have insurance but now must buy it.

I read the article from Forbes and also the one from Reuters on a Google search because I was having so much trouble trying to navigate the healthcare.gov website. After repeated unsuccessful attempts and some strange pages popping up I began to think it was more than just overloaded servers causing the problem.

Until you mentioned the Republicans wanting to delay the mandate for a political advantage in 2014 I hadn't really given it much thought. Honestly, I really don't care why the Republicans want to delay the mandate. You wrote that there is absolutely no reason that the current admin may want to delay. I thought of a few scenarios that might end up being good reasons to delay it.

And just an FYI, I need to sign up for this. So the delay is hurting me. I'm not for delaying it. But the delay for me isn't coming from the the Tea Party. It's coming from the freaking website.

What I don't get is how Hollywood has apparently ignored the lesson of Spiderman 3 where they simply tried to do WAY too much in one movie and unsuccessfully tried to pull off 3 villain plots.

Iron Man 3 was just all over the place, The extremis plot, the Mandarin plot, Tony's little mental breakdown thing, the kid sidekick thing. It was so unfocused. Instead of doing one story well, they tried to pull of 3-4 stories poorly.

Maya Hansen was pretty crucial to the comic book Extremis story, but in the movie she was completely useless and was nothing but another woman for Tony to flirt with.

Meh... Pretty sure that everybody's panties stay dry here... The announcers don't know what to make of him, Brand keeps trying unsuccessfully to get control of the situation...
Brand's 'manic' stick is annoying in the way that Robin Williams is when he's 'on'. I'll bet some British impressionists do a good job of him though...

i know this is rare but im with @bobknight33 in regards to the tea party.

when you understand how power reacts to social movements things become clear.

1.they ignore you
if that is unsuccessful?
2.they ridicule you.
and if creating a narrative that your movement is either a.batshit crazy or b.dumb as a box of rocks they
3.co-opt you

which is what the koch brothers did with americans for prosperity (sorry bob.these two douchebags dont give one fuck about you or your ideals)
and it was quite effective in taking all that frustration,anger and a desire to get the country back on track,and funneling that energy into the political process.
it worked extremely well.

but what many people do not know is that those who were co-opted were not EVERY person who identified as a tea partier,
many of those people saw what was going on and went in another direction.

you do not hear about them often because they do not have a few billionaires bankrolling the media to follow them around.

the occupy movement was treated in the exact same order.but they never got co-opted because they were set up in a much more amorphous and democratic way which made co-opting near impossible.
so the occupy movement made it to step:
4.intimidate,threaten and strong-arm.

a systematic tactical engagement to disperse the occupying people in the major cities where they were protesting.

and it worked.

but occupy is still around as is the tea party.
corporate media is just not covering them.

so this is the point i wish everybody to consider:

do you REALLY think the tea party was stupid,bigoted and a fundamental christian?
or that occupy was populated with unwashed hippies who didnt want to work but wanted the government to supply free food and strippers for all?

or is it more reasonable to assume that maybe a corporate media which is beholden to power created a narrative to set people against one another?

because ill tell ya what.
a tea party person has more in common with an occupy person than a wall street ceo or somebody at the white house.

there will be another movement.
and its gonna go global.
and i fear it will go to some very dark places that will be remembered for a long time in history.

people are waking up and they are not pleased.

More fun with exploding paint ...

Successful:

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Making-of-commercial-with-the-paint-explosions

Unsuccessful:

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Yogi-the-Corgi-dog-causes-paint-explosion-then-fire