Pre
sident Obama to Donald Trump:
“We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers who just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. I've got better stuff to do.”

This whole birther bullshit is simply Embarrassing. When you show such insane disrespect to the President of your country, based on racist xenophobia and partisan politics, you demonstrate an ignorance and idiocy of significant proportion.

You, like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and other conservatives, make the mistake of thinking your concept of liberty is objective. It isn't. And, until you understand this, you will always be at its mercy.

Can't you see the problem with defining narrow and partisan political beliefs as the perfect embodiment of liberty? Perfection is beyond the need for criticism. By believing free markets are the perfect embodiment of liberty, it prevents you from being able to judge them critically, much like the religious are not able to judge the Bible critically because of the perceived perfection of God. This, I believe, is why you get shut down so often in our conversations. This is why you have to resort to insults, jokes, silence or changing the subject when I go beyond your framework of understanding. This is why you have that long list of unanswered questions, because you can't comprehend how anyone could criticize liberty or freedom. If I disagree, I must hate liberty - where have I heard that before?

Free markets aren't liberty, brother. They provide a certain amount of freedom to those with means, but it comes at a cost of freedom to those without. I've made this point (the subjectivity of your concept of liberty) so many times and you never address it. Care to give it a go? It would probably be easier to just call me stupid again.

http://videosift.com/talk/Gov-t-stopped-funding-charity-private-donations-surge-500?loadcomm=1#comment-1186057

>> ^blankfist:

I'd like to think you're not an idiot. But then you say things like this and how do you expect me to look at you?
Obviously you've read zero of anything I've written on here gauging by the way you try to describe me or my politics. You're head is so filled with your party's nonsense that your understanding of liberty is not an understanding at all. It's a rehearsed diatribe.
Oh and for the record it's agorist not argoist.

You, like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and other conservatives, make the mistake of thinking your concept of liberty is objective. It isn't. And, until you understand this, you will always be at its mercy.

Can't you see the problem with defining narrow and partisan political beliefs as the perfect embodiment of liberty? Perfection is beyond the need for criticism. By believing free markets are the perfect embodiment of liberty, it prevents you from being able to judge them critically, much like the religious are not able to judge the Bible critically because of the perceived perfection of God. This, I believe, is why you get shut down so often in our conversations. This is why you have to resort to insults, jokes, silence or changing the subject when I go beyond your framework of understanding. This is why you have that long list of unanswered questions, because you can't comprehend how anyone could criticize liberty or freedom. If I disagree, I must hate liberty - where have I heard that before?

Free markets aren't liberty, brother. They provide a certain amount of freedom to those with means, but it comes at a cost of freedom to those without. I've made this point (the subjectivity of your concept of liberty) so many times and you never address it. Care to give it a go? It would probably be easier to just call me stupid again.


>> ^blankfist:

I'd like to think you're not an idiot. But then you say things like this and how do you expect me to look at you?
Obviously you've read zero of anything I've written on here gauging by the way you try to describe me or my politics. You're head is so filled with your party's nonsense that your understanding of liberty is not an understanding at all. It's a rehearsed diatribe.
Oh and for the record it's agorist not argoist.

@chilaxe, what sub-culture are you referring to? Why are you assuming that the only factor in hiring political appointees to cabinet-level positions would be cognitive ability? Seems to me management skills, loyalty, and ideological compatibility would matter a lot more, even to politicians I like, than cognitive ability.

In any case, I think you're fundamentally asking the wrong question. Someone working for Kasich must have mentioned that this would be an issue, politically. If it was a matter of Kasich wanting to appoint someone, but wasn't able to find even one qualified non-white conservative to give a position to, then I sorta sympathize with him. He's just a victim of the larger conservative movement's hostility to anyone who isn't Caucasian.

Thing is, he seems to be relishing the fight. Going so far as to respond to a black Democrat who offered to help him with building a more diverse cabinet, he said "I don't need your people." He later released a clarifying statement that by "your people" he meant Democrats, but the damage was already done.

You see, my theory isn't that Kasich himself is necessarily racist. My theory is that he, and the Republican party in general, seek the support of racists. Better still, they seek to portray white people as being somehow persecuted by minorities and their liberal allies.

That's why he pushed back when people questioned him about it. He's not excluding black people, he's just hiring the most qualified people, and obviously that means blacks won't make the cut. If he thought he could've gotten away with it, he'd have made the same bell-curve argument you were hinting at, but that would've been too overt. The dog whistle is only meant to be heard by the people who know what they're listening for, not by normal people who find racism abhorrent.

Now he gets the best of both worlds. The racists can think that he only let a black man in his cabinet because he got pressured by the black community (persecution!), and the rest of the conservatives can go "see, he's not racist, I don't know why those pesky Democrats made such a fuss about it."

It's the state of the art in racial politics. You undermine legitimate claims by painting them as partisan politics, while at the same time you push veiled racist arguments into the mainstream (I'm not hiring a token black guy...because that's all they could possibly be, a token).

It's genius. Evil, but genius none the less.

>> ^blankfist:

To me it's a non-issue.


Mostly my point was to offer up exhibit #3,670,495 in the case to prove that Fox News is a partisan political operation.

With your comment, it's also exhibit #60,243 in the case to prove that libertarians are just corporate shills who always call for us to stop questioning the actions of our corporate masters.

Thanks!

First off, it's very cool that you are tackling these tough questions. If you want to hit me up with a list of your own, I'll take a shot at them. Let's hash these out one at a time for the sake of clarity.

Funding - You seem to be tacitly conceding the fact that your highly principled, anti corporate movement is funded by corporations. This is at odds with your claim that market libertarianism rises above partisan politics and special interest groups. Instead you are saying Democrats do it too. Does that make it OK?

Let's take this topic a little deeper.

It is true that corporations fund viable candidates from all parties - though more money is spent on politicians on the right - but you don't see the same kind of funding behind liberal ideology. Current corporate funding of think tanks and front groups almost exclusively favors market libertarian/right wing organizations.

In the 90's, corporations attempted to create a Liberal mouthpiece for their message, called the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council). This group had much success early on - they are credited with helping their candidate, Bill Clinton, get elected to the executive office. They also nurtured the careers of Joe Loserman and Dick Gephardt.

Obama was briefly a member as well until he parted ways on ideological grounds. I find it interesting that in the 2008 primaries, Hillary (a DLCer) used the same arguments against Obama that right wing think tanks used against him, probably because the DLC IS a right wing think tank in disguise If you remember correctly, Obama barely wrestled the nomination away from Hillary with a clever strategy that won him the states that had a particular caucasing process. (In my own opinion, I think Hillary was the 'the chosen one' to become president.)

The fact that Obama and Hillary, two DLC candidates were the only contenders in this race does raise some questions, but to take that line of questioning further means you would need to take a more skeptical look at your own politics too.

I digress...

Anyway, since the 2000 elections, the DLC has become a dirty word among liberals, and no corporately funded front groups have been able to gain any traction among the liberal mainstream since.

Beyond the fact that corporations choose to give their money to libertarian/right wing thing tanks, Koch was actually once a vice presidential candidate for the libertarian party, which seems instructive.

How do you square the fact that corporations are so intimately involved with your party, ideology and its dissemination in a way that they are not with the Democrats?

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?

No. I do not. Not in the slightest. I think you and DFT are so polarized by partisan politics that you comprehend any anti-Democratic rhetoric as pro-Republican. My father does the same thing but with anti-Republican rhetoric.

>> ^blankfist:

I think you and DFT are so polarized by partisan politics that you comprehend any anti-Democratic rhetoric as pro-Republican. My father does the same thing but with anti-Republican rhetoric.


Title of blog post: The New Face of the Republican?

Quote from text of post: "Is this new Republican platform simply empty rhetoric? Or is the party shifting its political paradigm?"

Answer from me: "Are you fucking kidding me? You're falling for this shit?"

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

No. I do not. Not in the slightest. I think you and DFT are so polarized by partisan politics that you comprehend any anti-Democratic rhetoric as pro-Republican. My father does the same thing but with anti-Republican rhetoric.

...your point being? >> ^bobknight33:

My ancestors have nothing to do with this .
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Way to sell out your ancestors for a lame partisan political spot.

I'm not calling black's stupid just uninformed.
Prove the guy in the video wrong. Put up or shut up.

>> ^volumptuous:

bobknight thinks black people are so stupid they are blind to their own stupidity.



My ancestors have nothing to do with this .

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Way to sell out your ancestors for a lame partisan political spot.

Way to sell out your ancestors for a lame partisan political spot.

Boo, @dystopianfuturetoday, you're not even trying to comprehend free markets; you're simply labeling me as a misguided moron who prays at the alter of big business. When have I ever alluded that free markets are an "almost supernatural force"? It's like you're purposely trying to associate my politics with theism. Another subtle appeal to spite logical fallacy. Your favorite these days.

@mgittle's open-mindedness is what allows him to see another perspective on free markets vs regulated markets/corporate markets/crony capitalism, but you (as with NR and volumpy) are traditional Dems with traditional ideas of market based on partisan politics, and you'll never budge.

Remember, dft, I used to vote Democrat, so I've only recently changed my perspective.

>> ^NordlichReiter:

Ultra Conservatism is the exact same as Statism. Neither are good for the people, and neither understand the weight of their actions. This is not a case for partisan politics but of a corrupt system in general. A corrupt system that does not have the people's best interests at heart.

Actually, false moral equivalency is worse than puppy waterboarding and pelican oiling. Refusing to assign blame to the actual people who are corrupt in the system is part of why the "system" gets corrupted. Everyone is to blame, therefore no one is to blame.

Republicans have been behind every single major bad thing government has done in my lifetime. The worst you can really accuse the Democrats of is that they've been too willing to go along with Republican schemes over the last 4 decades, and have only halfheartedly fought for what they supposedly believe in.

Harry Truman nailed this 62 years ago:

"I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you
find out who's hitting you? It's about time that the people of America
realized what the Republicans have been doing to them."

- Harry Truman

Part of the problem is also what's conventionally known as "conservatism". They tell us over and over again that you can't expect the government to do anything but sell out to big business, and oh by the way, selling out to big business is actually awesome for the little guy anyways. Everyone is systematically told that they shouldn't expect better from their government, and as a result people don't demand better from their government, and since they don't demand better, they don't get better, and you get America circa 1929 2010.

>> ^NetRunner:

I feel obligated to mention that 6 of the 7 Ohio Supreme Court Justices are Republicans.
I guess Ohio is trying to one up Arizona in who can most rapidly turn their state into an unconstitutional police state.


Ultra Conservatism is the exact same as Statism. Neither are good for the people, and neither understand the weight of their actions. This is not a case for partisan politics but of a corrupt system in general. A corrupt system that does not have the people's best interests at heart.

There is case law stating that an officer cannot guess the speed of a vehicle from hearing the sound of the engine. How is that any different than this? How a judge can ignore that appellate decision is beyond me. The whole idea of case law is so that judges don't redundantly go over sections of law continually. I'm referring to Ohio vs Freitag. Holy shit! Ohio? That's surreal.

I don't know what happened to the Republic but it sure missed the mark.