I am really depressed over this (really, this kind of ruined my day).
I wish he would have been defiant to the end, but I can only guess he's had several years of people regurgitating the same message to him in captivity; "you were wrong", etc.
I hope this is just a plea for a lighter sentence, and I hope he knows how right he was in doing what he did. He's sacrificing his life for higher morals.

I don't knooow Yogi, i think the park ranger's kid is able to read-He's regurgitating trivia he's probably consumed since he became literate, he's simply attached himself to the Presidential train. How about a 3 year-old-promise who by the time he was seven knew more about Vucanology (having devoured every printed page on the subject available via his parent's $$) than a university Junior? His second favorite book was an Oxford English Dictionary on CD ROM, so the kid learned some of the most difficult and obscure words in the lexicon as well as their meanings. There's probably 25 million Chinese children on the planet sharper than this kid, same age. Oh, and we're all trained regurgitates of the same clan my friend-

He's got moxie-Love the way he stands up in that school desk, be nice to see more folks' children utilize theirs similarly.....

This kid is adorable. He's a trained monkey who is regurgitating facts given to him by his parents, but he's adorable while doing it.

If you're not singing the establishment's praises and regurgitating government talking points, then clearly you're not a journalist. Or was that a propagandist? Damn, I always mix those up...

Maybe I should ring up the Minitrue and ask for clarifications.

Whenever I see WILLiAM anymore the only song I can think of is this parody from the Boondocks:




He's such a regurgitant-formula pop-schlock, that black pea hack!!

death education?

yeah. I was with the video for the first couple minutes, but then it degenerates into paranoia and conspiracy theories.

Education system sucks, but it's not quite that bad. There is plenty of dissent in our system, maybe there isn't enough critical thinking, but this video acts like it's squashed utterly which is bull.

it just seems to me that the guy went through boot camp and is confusing it with the rest of the world.

His example of the TV anchors regurgitating the same headlines verbatim is just a bit unfair. sure it's a bit depressing to hear anchors repeat the same line exactly but that's what anchors are. They're paid to look good and read the news and that's it. if you're just trying to stay in touch with what's going on, that's all you need. If you want in depth analysis. That's not what your daily news is for.

@Jerykk said "gross generalisations based on no evidence and a complete lack of understanding of how society currently works (or, in this case, does not work)."

The mentally ill: I live in Switzerland and, while our politics are far from perfect, you will not see mentally ill homeless people because they are cared for and given work by social institutions. If the mentally ill are homeless, it is society's fault.

The uneducated: almost unequivocally poor as well; it is the responsibility of any self-respecting, "civilised" society to make sure their entire population gets proper education. This doesn't mean everyone should have a PhD; learning a trade is also an education (& no useful job a human can do should be denigrated).
The way you say it, it's as if you're blaming uneducatedness on the uneducated, but would you know anything about how our societies work, you'd know that is completely illogical.

The irresponsible: considering what you follow up with, you basically mean here "the poor/uneducated", and you regurgitate the Fox News cliché of the dumb and reckless poor person wasting money and making all the wrong decisions. Yes, people with limited-to-no education (see above) will be easier to dupe into debt, bad credit/mortgages, etc, and they will also be less likely to know of (or accept the use of, you asshole Christianity) contraceptives, nor be able to afford abortions should they need one.

Second chances and recidivism: there's an interesting quote from an article on recidivism (taken from the Wiki): "Former criminals rose to become some of America's greatest leaders in law, industry, and politics. This possibility seems to be narrowing as criminal records become electronically stored and accessible."
The fact that, the more you treat a person who has committed a crime as a criminal, during and after hir internment, the more that person will have hir choices narrowed to exactly that. Especially when, on leaving detention during which nothing was learned (countries with the lowest recidivism have their inmates work and learn trades), society still brands them as criminal and refuses to let them survive in a legal fashion. Not to mention the ridiculously out-of-proportion rates of incarceration in the US, and for a number of non-crimes as well; what a great way to harden and anti-socialise your youths.

Are there lazy moochers and irreconcilable criminals out there? Definitely, but they are not the norm.

Defending the poor is all well and good but that costs money too. If the poor aren't contributing to the economy, who ends up being penalized here? The inherent problem here is with irresponsible people. People who have children when they don't have enough money to support them. It seems like such a simple consideration yet so few seem to heed it. Don't start a family unless you have a steady and secure job that can support one. Think of the long-term expenses that a family entails, save your money whenever possible and make safe investments. If people did all this, both poverty and crime would decrease significantly.

Also, the pledge of allegiance is ridiculously antiquated. What exactly is it supposed to accomplish? Loyalty to the nation? When kids only regurgitate it as a matter of routine at the start of the school day, it holds no meaning. It's not like religion which is ingrained through constant reinforcement and conditioning both at home and in church.

Why? Because you say so? I don't think you even know what that means.

Gun nuts choose to believe this is all about taking their guns away so they can't fight back when the government comes knocking on their doors for... some reason. Or that it's some furtive attempt by the government to track them and get them in some national database for mysterious and spurious reasons. This belief is often revealed via terse bullet points and catchy, oft-metered phrases that don't require a whole hell of a lot of memorization or deep understanding. Just short, simplistic regurgitations of bullshit from the rightie cesspool they are drowning in.

Authoritarians? Really? An authoritarian would want ALL your guns. Are you saying any government control is authoritarian, or does the term "government control" give you the "1984" willies? Are the old ladies behind the counter at my local DMV authoritarians, or just slaves to them? How about the building inspector? Passport office? Fish and Game Department? The person who decided there needed to be a red light at an intersection where I'd never had to stop on my way to work before? IRS? Why do I need a license/permit for everything? I mean, with the exceptions of my driver's license, passport, tax returns, fishing license, trail park pass, voter registration, car registration, smog certificate, and their records on the amount of water and electricity I use, I just wish they'd respect my privacy, right?

But, this isn't a privacy issue with you guys, is it? This is about the Alex Jones/Bachman/Palin/Beck/Limbaugh (the Thousand-Yarders) fantasy world where the government is out to get you and throw your children into liberal indoctrination camps. This is about "taking your rights" from you. This is about being prepared for the coming post-zombie apocalypse you hope is right around the corner so you can justify the thousands of dollars you spent prepping. A whole industry has sprung up around prepping, and they are happy to stoke your paranoia and reinforce your belief that you really do need all this gear, not to mention the boxcar shelter buried in the back yard with a year's supply of MREs. Money in the bank.

The 2nd Amendment? It's not a holy relic. The Amendments are subject to interpretation and limitation by Congress. If Congress passes an assault weapons ban, it's not denying you your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. It's simply defining it, just as the 1st Amendment has been further defined by the legislative and judicial branches of government since it was ratified. The 1st Amendment doesn't give you the right to slander someone, yell fire in a crowded theater, or reveal state secrets, etc., just as the 2nd Amendment doesn't necessarily give you the right to arm yourself with anything you please, wherever you please.

Good troll, btw.

Your first two posts to this thread were trolls. You don't get to take the high road now because you were called on it, and you don't get to imply that people are uninterested in serious discourse just because they disagree with you or recognize your "facts" as regurgitated bullshit. Intellectual dishonesty, indeed.

As a bona fide VS troll, (I've read through some of your previous posts as well), you will always only be a source of entertainment for me.

Edited: sentence clarity to closer reflect reality

Don't mind the name-calling boobage-Don't even care about the regurgitated "NRA" "GUN SELLERS" nyah, nhya, nyah's...
The same yakka-yakkka comes out of the most virulently neurotic and hopelessly programmed to comply with misdirection and half-truths geeks-Don't let it get you down, if yer called a troll then yer pushing buttons stiff from years of disuse!
*promote

This wasn't presented in a very scientific way. Can we get a professional to do these studies and present the findings instead?

I'm worried about the extremes this country is going through because it closes discussions. I can't have a conversation with some people because they're so propagandized to with simple political blogs they read. This is what happens when schools are practically destroyed until they're unable to teach students how to fucking learn shit. How to test theories and make hypothesis, it's just scary how many people see something, swallow it and then regurgitate it over and over without ever LOOKING IT UP!

Are you kidding me?
Real life doesn't even have Elves, Dwarves, Wizards & Magical Beasties.
(or spaceships, or new worlds, aliens, or dragons and so on)
Real life history is about as dry as hay.

For me - I have little energy to spend in memorizing the ongoing mistakes of human history.

You're thinking, "But knowing our history lets us learn from our mistakes - It's so important"
Me: I will never have any influence, nor do I want to have, on the direction humanity will take. Some people make policy, laws, go to war, sign treaties, make deals etc. Those are the people that should benefit from human historical facts. I'm just a guy who doesn't want any part of it. So loosing myself in fiction works just fine for me - It's a lot more interesting to explore in one's mind the creative possibilities of something than to just regurgitate the facts that actually happened.

In the spirit of Godwin, I propose a new internet law that describes the inevitability of the MSNBC false equivalency whenever a comment or topic criticizes FOX news.

I love ya, choggie, and VS is way better and more interesting with you here, but this dog just don't hunt.

I think the days of intrepid journalism are largely over for most of the news sources you mentioned, but there still are pockets of resistance to the inanity that passes as news in America. Regardless of whichever political ideolgy you most identify with, you cannot dismiss MSNBC as opposite but equal to FOX. MSNBC is most definitely liberal/progressive, but they wear it on their sleeve, and their spin is backed by facts and reality. FOX spins everything, and completely misinforms it's viewers fans by simply making shit up, not to mention the ubiquitous fear-mongering, the subliminal programming of their crawl, the always-angry, paranoid, petty, spiteful, and shrill talking heads, and the daily memo'd bullet points that are regurgitated verbatim and hammered into the brains of their veiwers all day long from show to show. The dolts on FOX and Friends have got to be the three DUMBEST people ever to thousand-yard stare into a camera. FOX is "news entertainment" at best.

There are infinite shades of gray between black and white, and MSNBC is definitely biased, but you can't say it isn't factual (the vast majority of time). If there was a true "equal but opposite" version of MSNBC, I would watch it. Unfortunately, FOX serves only as a source of amusement for me. "No Spin Zone" makes me giggle every time Papa Bear says it. It's brilliant parody.

That said, we agree that Americans are largely low information because low information is exactly what we get from the news sources readily available. But the "truth" is out there if one cares enough to go look for it.

For starters...
Al Jazeera
CBC News
BBC News
Christian Science Monitor
Reuters

Exactly. This is the result of living in a bubble, receiving only positive reinforcement of one's delusions from like-minded individuals. This is not just some righteous nutter regurgitating gun lobby dogma. It's religion.