Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
Oh, I didn't know that. When my sister went to college in Buffalo for one year, everyone said she was going to college upstate. I didn't think it was a big thing.Ah but being called upstate when you are from the Buffalo area is one of the biggest pet peeves there is.
Maybe that's why she had to transfer; she called it upstate once while she was there and after that the Buffalonians ostracized her
.EDIT: Probably everyone else was smart enough to know this already, but don't read the comments on that video. Just don't.
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GasBandit
Staff member
Virginia court official tells atheist couple they have no right to be married because they don’t believe in God.
Oh, that seems reasonable.
I'm so sick of people being so fucking stupid.
Yeah. If he got to his thirties without realizing there are people in the country that haven't been to a real restaurant, he's just been blind and (willfully?) unobservant. You can be a republican and live in the world outside.
You know that the author is a complete idiot when they take Asimov's 3 Laws as a good idea for real life, rather than a plot device that makes good stories. I stopped reading after that.
So, @GasBandit, your thoughts on the KFNS situation?
GasBandit
Staff member
It's difficult to say. Despite being in the industry, I'm well removed from exactly what is going on there at St. Louis. I don't have an "inside scoop" as to what's going on there. I will say that radio is a dying medium and keeping a station afloat can sometimes be a herculean task. There are also plenty of incompetents in the industry who can easily run things into the ground, and there are also plenty of vulture opportunists who enrich themselves by stripping the bones of a station and moving on. I don't know the players in this drama at all, let alone well enough to judge whether Marshall is a villain or just a guy who gave it his proverbial best and it didn't work out. What he says about people who need to be weeded out is often true in my experience, and I've not met anyone in my professional life that has been as big as a prima donna crybaby as some radio jocks I've worked with - they don't really understand or care about the whole picture, they just know they don't get the recognition/compensation/whatever they think they're entitled to so they go grousing around to other people at the station behind closed doors, poisoning morale. But on the other hand, if you contractually agree to pay someone x amount and then don't deliver on that... is there not genuinely valid reasons to grouse?
Zappit
Staff member
Hey, some Tea Party Brat just ousted Eric Cantor.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index....ives_tea_party_a_bi.html#incart_river_default
http://www.masslive.com/news/index....ives_tea_party_a_bi.html#incart_river_default
We agree on this at least
GasBandit
Staff member
So... basically ISIS (Al Qaeda) is once again rearing up in Iraq and has taken one, then another city under its control, and now threatens Baghdad. They are estimated to have looted $500 million. There are calls for the President to fire all his national security advisors. But hey, the president kept his word promptly to get us out of Iraq promptly, no matter the cost, right?
Don't blame Obama for this mistake. Short of burning those cities to the ground and reducing them to sand or turning Iraq into the 51st state and moving in, there is nothing we could have done that would kept those cities under Iraqi control.
GasBandit
Staff member
Not now, probably not. Who knows what staying until withdrawing was a military decision - instead of a political one - might have accomplished. Or, for that matter, the absence of the 5 years of active sabotage on the part of Democrats before Obama got elected. The long and short of it is, between this and the hostage gaffe, a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking Obama's on his heels and basically giving up all the ground that's been won in the blood and mud of the middle east since 2003.
But at any rate, Prime Minister Maliki's apparently been begging for US airstrikes, and the Obama administration has been declining.
Notice how, even if it's a polarization on both sides, there is a clearer effect on republicans: the peak of the first distribution moves a lot more for them. Although overall, part of the effect is because democrats seem to have polarized positions more progressively over the last 20 years (i.e. in 2004 they were more 'polarized') whereas republicans have mostly done so in the last 10. I guess it has to do with whoever controls the government. (Didn't go beyond page 1)
This is a problem of the two party system, isn't it? A third party with some representation would allow the main parties to regain centrality.
This is a problem of the two party system, isn't it? A third party with some representation would allow the main parties to regain centrality.
Or it would force them to become more partisan to keep a hold of the outliers. If you look at European politics, many parties with actual representation are fucking coco... but they got representation by appealing to someone that no one was appealing to. When you start talking more than two parties, it becomes a mad rush to get ANY seats.
But usually, unless there's some sort of anti-government push or whatever, the bigger parties are more centrist, and the whip parties on the extreme ends are smaller.
It does, however, open options of having a government be center-left, center-right, far-left, far-right, centrist, more liberal, more economically inspired,.... depending on who forms a coalition. In a 2 party state, it doesn't matter. Either A wins or B, and since you never need a coalition (pretty much), you always get "all left, all the time" or "all right, all the time". With a ""right" party that's pretty much a collection of nuts (seriously, what do the Tea party, deep-religoious Southerners and eceonomically liberal people have in common, other than all three being called "conservative"?) and a "left" party that's decided the way forward is to take over all of the center (I know, I know...But despite what you might like, Gas, the Democrats would still be considered a center-right party in any other Western civilized country, not some bunch of leftist hippies.), there's not much choice.
The problem in American society is that we are hard-wired to be "for" or "against" something. It's rooted in the religious upheaval that sent many of the "forefathers" here in the first place. Even though many Americans are "True Neutral", we don't see ourselves as that because we define ourselves on a handful of "black-and-white" issues.
I disagree!
GasBandit
Staff member
Actually, the Democrats market themselves as left, but they're really just statist plutocrats. Fascism with a happy face. The Republicans market themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, but they haven't walked that walk for at least as long as I've been old enough to vote. What needs to happen is an overhaul (or perhaps just flush) of how congress handles committee membership/chairs, and the adoption of instant runoff elections. But that won't happen from within the system, because the two controlling parties benefit from how it is now, and can't be expected to weaken themselves for the good of the nation.
Amazing how when a prime minister refuses to renegotiate the status of forces agreement with America then America doesn't leap to his defense.
It is just an armed populous letting their gov't know that they are unhappy with their liberal ideology.
GasBandit
Staff member
Actually, most of them came across from Syria.
Who came in from Iraq before, who came in from Syria again before that.
GasBandit
Staff member
But, truly, Prime Minister Maliki does bear some responsibility for this situation, seeing as how he chose to try to exclude Sunnis from the political process as much as possible. A disenfranchised majority doesn't make for a very stable democracy.
GasBandit
Staff member
Welp, the supreme court basically just said willful lying in a political ad is protected speech.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/abortion-lying-politics-supreme-court#52723
And here I thought that was called libel or slander.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/abortion-lying-politics-supreme-court#52723
And here I thought that was called libel or slander.
Who gets to decide what is true? Do you want -THE GOVERNMENT- to decide if something is true or not?
The Justices are right: just because a private citizen could conceivably silence another's speech doesn't mean the government gets to. Even if it's a lie, unfortunately.
GasBandit
Staff member
That's a good point. I guess it's more of a civil matter really - if they make claims that falsely defame someone, it's up to the defamed to take them to court, I suppose.
In other news - Well golly gosh you guys, in this whole IRS investigation, they just can't seem to find 2 years worth of Lois Lerner's e-mail! Shucks!