I understand what you're saying about people seeing what they want and manipulating a tragedy to their own ends. But I have no problem with the "court of public opinion" (as influenced on the Sift by TYT) supporting the family and deciding that the initial investigation was flawed, and that Zimmerman needs to be arrested and brought to trial. Now that's happening anyway, but people are going to follow it and discuss it like they would any popular murder case.

I believe Zimmerman is a pathetic Charles Bronson wannabe, but I'm not ready to convict him. One of my friends made a very convincing case just last night that he'll get off in the end. Either way, the outcome is going to be very politically relevant to every American, no matter how they feel about it.
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

But you've all tried Zimmerman, convicted him, and are demanding his head on a platter based on jack-squat except a bunch of what can only be described as OPINION PIECES.

coming from one of the most politically biased individuals to ever puke up worthless polarized talking points on the sift

I understand your fear and anger. When leftists encounter a conservative that puts forth simple, logical arguements that conflict with liberal ideology, your response is the default. Lash out. Attack. Insult. That's all the left has really got. We see it in the blogosphere right now with the Obamacare SCOTUS case. Liberals are literally gobsmacked at how Barry-boy's law has been so utterly and easily turned into swiss cheese - even though the arguments have been there for decades. Not having any intelligent, logical response to the simple, common-sense arguments, what do they do? Visit the leftist blog of your choice to see netizens stomping and bellowing like elephants - much like yourself. You suffer from the same malady, but on a smaller scale when you encounter me here on the Sift. I understand, and you have my pity.

But of course the truth is that I've never done any of the things you accuse me of. Like far too many on the left, you appear to confuse your hatred and anger towards an intellectual idea that contrasts your own with the persons present them. There is so much bologna flying around the internet about this Trevon case in particular that I have refused to take any stance whatsoever. I am not the guy tweeting the address of retirees to lynch mobs. I am not the guy putting out 'dead or alive' bounties. I'm not the guy making wild accusations based on 3rd hand internet stories, facebook comments, and media talking points which are based on rumors, innuendo, and theory. I'm just a guy saying, "chillax".

What I find loathsome is the tone of the discussion. It reminds me very much of the Duke Lacrosse case where the media latched on to a sensational story and ran with it, kicked out a narrative they liked, and pretended it was true. The whole nation tried, convicted, and demanded the execution of the Lacrosse team. The "evidence" was equally conclusive. How could a bunch of rich white boys NOT be guilty? Aaaaand then when the actual investigation happened the whole thing fell apart. I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm saying it is too early to say anything at all, and that there's a ton of agenda-based, race-inspired hype rush to jugement that is causing a lot of people on the indeological left to forget the first rule in US jurisprudence...

Innocent until proven guilty.

But you've all tried Zimmerman, convicted him, and are demanding his head on a platter based on jack-squat except a bunch of what can only be described as OPINION PIECES. The media doesn't know anything, and there are a ton of race-baiters down there in Florida that are very desperately churning up everything they can in order to advance the agenda that this was a hate crime. Frankly, I'm not buying it. I'll wait for the actual investigation. All this stuff flying around right now is obviously designed to establish a narrative before the trial - and I'm not listening to a word of it.

Why? Adam Corrola of all people nails it in his podcast...

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/03/29/Adam-Carolla-Media%20Bias

The entire story about that "poor persecuted gay student driven to suicide by his bigoted roommate"? Yeah - it was all bullcrap. So was the Duke Lacrosse case. Again - I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm saying let's wait for some REAL data as opposed to all this clearly agenda-driven bullcrap that is designed to establish a narrative. You all think you're smart, right? Prove it for a change and stop being parrots. There's a ton of people down there throwing gas bombs so you'll react the way they want. Stop being thier tools. Shut off the news. Ignore everyone who is shouting for your attention - because they're probably a charlatan or demagogue. Just go about your business and wait for the courts to take care of this.

>> ^charliem:

The type of lift in this video is the only kind of lift youll ever need...it works every single fucking muscle you have, even the ones in your jaw!!


Exactly! Best exercise ever, and imo of the three powerlifting 'lifts' (bench press, squat and deadlift) this is the most important because it has by far the least potential for cheating.

There are dozens and dozens of records broken every year in various categories and types of powerlifting - e.g. raw, single ply, double ply, knee wraps allowed, knee wraps not allowed, wide stance low-bar vs. narrow stance high-bar (position of the bar on your neck). But with deadlifting you just have to stand there and rip the weight off the floor with your brute man strength, the guys that have the biggest dead-lifts can truly considered to be pure athletes alongside the olympic lifters, and Benny is the strongest to have ever lived.

Plus he's from Iceland, so his Viking great grand-parents probably burnt down my pussy great parents village at some point, what a guy.

For anyone that cares, a deadlift suit simply adds some tension at the bottom of the lift, a bit like having a spring assisting you with the start of the lift - a good deadlift suit probably adds about 30-40 lb's to your lift, but that is debatable.

This story is from July last year. I wonder why MSNBC didn't cover it - I tried to search through the news archive and came up with squat. I bet conservatives who argue that Obama has created the "food stamp" generation wouldn't want this to air, because it shows that people are desperately looking for work and not at home slack, sucking up rich benefits from their socialist leader.

Ford Motor Company didn't get a bailout, but they did receive a $5.9 billion loan from the department of energy.

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/09/ford-motor-co-does-u-turn-on-bailouts/

Notice they keep saying near-darkness. Put this kid in a pitch dark room and he ain't seeing squat. His eyes may collect more light than usual but they aren't emitting anything. Cats eyes don't emit anything, they just reflect.

Just because one clip focuses on it doesn't mean that the entire movement is fixated on one stat.

All I ever see from the liberal left's ProgLibDytes are clips that focus on the 'wealth disparity' between the rich and poor. I've never seen the ProgLibDyte clip that focuses on something like median income. That's because focusing on median income tells a completely opposing story. The point is that ProgLibDytes and and left as a whole focus only on a narrow band of stats that drives thier agenda-based narrative. They ignore huge vistas of other facts, studies, research, thought, and evidence because it cuts the legs out from under thier world view and makes them look like idiots.

Barak Obama himself is a CLASSIC example of this narrow-minded kind of agenda-driven cherry-picking of reality. Every time that specimen opens his mouth it is to say, "The experts I have spoken to agree with me..." And what about the bazillions of experts he DIDN'T speak to which all disagree with him, or contradict him? Of course is his empty noggin such people don't exist - or don't matter. The same issue plagues neolib leftists across whole spectrums. Global Warming, Abortion, Economics - you name it - the left picks a tiny slice of carefully selected grain of sand to tell a story, and ignores whole beaches of sand that says the opposite.

Not that the right doesn't suffer from the same problem. It is not an issue limited to only the left. However, the left is more aggressively self-important, pious, and arrogant about their narrative - and far more inclined to try to base bad legislation on it.

How is raising the marginal tax rate on the super rich a few percentage points "communist" or even "socialist" on an objective scale?

The US tax rate (both corporate and private) is already one of the highest in the world. I counter your question with another. "What good is raising the marginal tax rate on the super rich a few percentage points going to do?" You could confiscate every penny the top 10% of America has and it would not get America's government out of the red even for one year - let alone for the 15 trillion we have in debts - and the SIXTY-FOUR TRILLION we have in 'unfunded liabilities' such as Social Security. There isn't enough money in the entire economy to pay for all the spending the government is doing and/or proposing with its leftist big-government agendas. The economic problem is one of spending - not taxation.

But you're pretending that the income gap between super rich and poor is static, which misses the entire point. It's not static. It fluctuates.

Irrelevant. The gap between the top 1% and the bottom 5% means nothing. It is immaterial statisitically speaking. If I earn a million a year compared to a guy that earns 30K then he makes 3% of what I do. A year later I am earning 1,050,000 a year and he is earning 28K for a new adjusted difference of 2.66% of what I earn. Head for the hills, Ma Barker! Since when is this -0.34% shift of any value. Or let's go the other way and now I'm only earning 950,000 and he's earning 32,000 for a 3.25% How is that helping either the rich guy OR the poor guy? Or let's take the real world situation that Barak Obama brought us and BOTH of them go down while the government's income skyrockets. Wow - that's really benefiting society isn't it?

The wealth gap is utterly irrelevant - static or dynamic. And for the record - I never assume ANY economic stat is static except for one. Government growth. Government baseline budgeting has created an untenable economic drag on the nation because it continues to grow at 8% to 10% Year over Year no matter what the economy is doing. That's the only static economic stat out there - and it is not a good one.

(BTW, what a good person you are to say whose jobs are of value and whose aren't!)

Right back at you Clyde. Who are you to decide what an inside-trader's job should or shouldn't be worth? The IT generates real profit for his company, and they compensate him to keep him doing it. Who are you - or Cunk - or any other ProgLibDyte to come along with the cheek to say they don't deserve it?

I'm advocating the gov't make it moderately more equal by raising the rich's taxes, and ease up on the poor and middle class.

The mistake you and the left make is that for some reason you think that 'taxes' make things 'more equal'. They don't except in one way... Taxes make everyone equally miserable. Money goes into government and dissappears. Taxing the rich doesn't make things better for the poor or the middle class. It only gives government more power - which is the last thing our bloated federal system needs right now. The poor pay virtually no income taxes - so it is quite impossible to 'ease up' on them except at the state & sales tax level. The middle class? Hey - anything helps but in the average budget we're talking a few hundred bucks a year. I don't have a problem with the rich paying thier 'fair share' (as leftists so vaguely love to put it). But the rich already ARE paying thier fair share and then some. If they jacked 'the rich' tax rate up to 90% it wouldn't do jack-squat for 'the poor' or the middle class.

Tax capital gains like it's income, subject to the same brackets, etc.

America's captial gains taxes are already the #2 highest in the world. Gapital gains are treated differently for a reason. This is another thing that most leftists prove themselves woefully ignorant about whenever they talk about it. And again - even if we did that how exactly is that going to 'help' anyone? All that does is provide you lefties with an ephemeral, meaningless sense of shadenfruede which you can suckle on as you trudge back to your government-mandated hovels - properly pacified with the meaningless knowledge that a rich guy is getting taxed some more. That is until you realize he's still rich, you're still poor, and only the government got something out of the deal. How leftists can be so stupid on the subject of economics I will never know, but I can only tip my hat to the depths of human gullibility.

>> ^enoch:

the flow and exchange of ideas is vital and one of the reasons the sift is one of my favorite sites to visit and contribute.
where is the fun in seeing the same flavor with no opposing view or argument?
thats when it becomes one big circle jerk and everyone squats in their own putrid righteousness.
i prefer that my opinions and conclusions are challenged rather than parroted.
to do otherwise is to stagnate.


I disagree, with the sole intent of proving your point.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

OWS=Fix Government... Tea Party=Destroy Government...
Based on - what exactly? Even the most cursory examination of the OWS goons shows they are a bunch of anarchists who would blow up the whole system if given thier druthers. The Tea Party has shown no such tendencies.
The Tea Party operates on the premise of influencing elections legally by voting for people who will reduce the size, scope and influence of government (a VERY necessary goal). OWS operates on the premise of illegal squatting, riots, and attacking completely innocent 3rd parties like cops, businesses, and private citizens.


The base message of each movement is government is bad vs. we need to take back government. The TP actually started out with the same base message as OWS but were unfortunately led astray by $$$.

I'm a (fully educated & employed) "occupy goon" and I only assaulted two people and one dog today. I couldn't fit in any more murder as my knives are dull. Go easy bro, I'm trying to live up to your exceptional T-Par-T standards but it's tough with all this blood-lust running through my crazy anarchist brain.

Watch more faux k?

OWS=Fix Government... Tea Party=Destroy Government...

Based on - what exactly? Even the most cursory examination of the OWS goons shows they are a bunch of anarchists who would blow up the whole system if given thier druthers. The Tea Party has shown no such tendencies.

The Tea Party operates on the premise of influencing elections legally by voting for people who will reduce the size, scope and influence of government (a VERY necessary goal). OWS operates on the premise of illegal squatting, riots, and attacking completely innocent 3rd parties like cops, businesses, and private citizens.

The squatting in a house in Minneapolis was the house of one of my Anthropology professors.

Too bad a college degree hardly means squat anymore.

The world's strongest material that ain't been used yet for JACK...SQUAT.

Drive boy dog boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a-lipstick boy
She was a-beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your inner space boy
You had hands girls boy
And steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you boy
And you just groan boy
She said come over come over
She smiled at you boy
[repeat]

Let your feelings slip boy
But never your mask boy
Random blonde boy
High density random
blonde boy
Blonde country
Blonde high density
You are my drug boy
You're real boy
Dog dirty dumb cracking boy
You're getting wet boy
Big big time boy
Acid bears boy
Babes and babes
And babes and babes
and babes
And remembering nothing boy
Do you like my tin horn boy
It gets wet like at Angel
derailed

You got a velvet mouth
You're so succelent and beautiful
Shimmering and dirty
Wonderful and hot time
On your telephone line
And God and everything
On your telephone
And in walks an angel

Look at me mum
Squatting pissed in the tube hole
At Tottenham Court Road
I just come out of the Ship
Talking to the most blonde
I ever met
Shouting lager lager lager lager
Shouting lager lager lager lager
Shouting lager lager lager lager
Shouting lager lager lager
Shouting mega mega
White thing
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega
Shouting lager lager lager lager
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
So many things to see and do
in the tube hole
The blonde going back
to Romford
Mega mega mega going back
to Romford
Hi mum are you having fun
On your way
To a new age tension headache

No one has the right to disobey a lawful order. You cannot have a rule of law that way. If it is an unlawful order, that is a different story. If you want to protest, you also have to be willing to take the heat, and to be civilly disobedient and risk arrest. What you're hoping for is to gain public support and enact some change in the mind of the public, which will hopefully led to a change in the system. That's the way it works. I don't buy that someones highfalutin ideals gives anyone the inherent right to defy the police. That's called anarchy. I feel the authorities here were not being entirely unfair, and did let them stay for a few days before asking them to leave. Why should people have the right to form impromptu tent cities and live in the public space for weeks on end? That's not a protest, that's called squatting.

I am speaking here of western style democracies. Totalitarian regimes are a different story. I believe God gives us certain inalliable rights, and if an authority is suppressing those rights, I believe we have right under God to transgress the earthly authority in those cases.

>> ^Kofi:
What you are saying is that if it is legal it is right. Legal positivism. If it is illegal then the police have the duty to respond with whatever power is within their means, not just what is appropriate.
Lets take that principle to its logical conclusion.
If the government says "You are not allowed to continue with the activity that you are doing. Therefore we are asserting our duty to protect the community at large and are going to forcefully prevent you from continuing in your unlawful act" Does this seem reasonable?
Google "Laws for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service"
This is the logical conclusion. What the protesters represent is a cause higher than that of the law. They are going about it in a peaceful manner with the minimal violation of laws and others rights (rights pertaining not to life, limb or property but of occupying public land. PUBLIC land).
If this is still unsatisfactory please ask why it is ok for police to do this and not ok for the lethal crackdowns we saw in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Tunisia.
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll preface this with the statement that I feel that police brutality is on the rise and unchecked power is never a good thing, however
This video is not shocking. What is shocking to me is that people seem to think they can defy the police and get away with it. They had no right to be there, and they were told to leave and refused to go. So therefore, the police had the right to use reasonable measures to force them to leave. Were some cops using more force than necessary here? Probably so, but the protesters made the conscious choice to resist which gives a police officer the right to use force at their discretion. If you are going to use civil disobedience as a protest, you should expect to be arrested. If you are going to openly defy the police, you should expect a response. In civil society there is a rule of law. I don't see why anyone is shocked at the police enforcing the law on people who are breaking it. It doesn't matter how peacefully they were protesting; their right to protest became null and void when they decided to refuse to obey a lawful order.

You can't say it didn't work before because unemployment was skyrocketing and then stopped when the stimulus kicked in.

Show me a US recession/depression in the 20th/21st century that didn't end after large doses of economic stimulus in the form of deficits. That's the part I just don't for the life of me understand how anyone can argue against a deficit when every previous recession in modern US history was ended after significant, sometimes massive, deficit spending. This recession wasn't caused by deficit spending during times of recession. It was partly caused by massive record deficit spending during boom times. Stop the idiotic labeling of stuff. You don't prove anybody or any idea wrong by attempting to use the label "prog-lib". I don't care if the idea is liberal, progressive, capitalist, or conservative. If it works, freakin' use it!

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Objection isn't to creating jobs. Objection is to raising taxes, which is all Obummer's 'job bill' really is.
1. He's already done this before. He did a 1 trillion dollar bill designed to create jobs for (get ready for it) construction workers, teachers, firemen, policemen, and so forth. What happened to that trillion dollars? Well, about half of it was given to the states, which they used to shore up thier own budget shortfalls. The other half-trillion? "What half-trillion?" says Obama. How about before we give him another half trillion, he accounts for every penny of the first trillion?
2. His previous efforts have not done jack squat - so why would we want to lather-rinse-repeat them?
3. How are a bunch of TEMPORARY 1-year construction jobs supposed to be a 'job bill' that puts America to work? No disrespect to teachers & temporary construction guys - but they aren't the jobs America needs. We need companies hiring scientists, computer programmers, MBAs, and other actual working professionals - not a bunch of temporary construction guys. Obama's bill is a joke because it hires a bunch of temps, and then a year later puts the burden of KEEPING them employed back on the states.
Obama's bill isn't designed to be passed. Even the Democrats rejected it in the Senate. Yeah - the Senate. Democrats. Rejected. Obama's STUPID bill. Not Republicans. DEMOCRATS. His bill isn't designed to pass. It is designed to get stupid idiots like Cunk a platform to say Republicans "hate teachers and jobs". That's all. And it also appears to be useful at getting stupid prog-libs to clap their hands like so many trained seals. Wake up.