Four more years!

[hypehat]

Yo TRBB, you should probably explain how every Obama voter is racist.

Well, considering how the Democratic Party is the same party that led to the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, and morons like Jesse Helms and David Duke...I'd say there's plenty to back up that claim. In an effort to save face, the guilty white liberals of the Democratic Party decided to endorse Obama...you know, since he talks and looks like them. I think that's horrible and reprehensible. When Democrats hear about folks like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan...let's just say they don't respond in kind. sh*t, there were a bunch of Democrats on the Huffington Post who referred to Allen West (GOP Congressman from Florida and NOT a guy I like) as "Uncle Tom" and "the plantation negro". Seriously? Because he doesn't belong to the "party of tolerance" he's just another ****** from the South? I think the way the Democrats exploit the so-called "minorities" is horrible. It's a backwards policy and it needs to stop. Then when people come along who say that they want to let the market work and let people have an equal shot, they're referred to as "racists". The War on Drugs is a race war, and the Democrats have escalated it.

I mean hey, believe what you wanna believe, but the Democrats need to stop going on like they're the party of tolerance. They're the party of tolerance as long as you toe their line.

If you want to judge the Democrat party on the 1800s, be my guest. Yeah, if I was thinking about that time I'd be all for Republican politics. Thaddeus Stevens, that man laid it down. It's 2012 now, btw

Jesse Jackson is a major Democrat (or at least Obama) advocate! You clearly don't get the paper edition of The Guardian, he wrote a very passionate defence of Obama in that paper the day before the election. And I have heard no sh*t about him from all quarters. Cite some sources on yr 'Uncle Tom' claims. I've seen none.

Minorities voted for Obama. You're going to have to deal with that.

Huffpo is back to our Daily Mail problem again. Bad journalism is bad journalism. But show some proof, please?

You are projecting a hell of a lot onto this whole thing. There is going to be no political party that toes your specific line (although a 1% for Gary Johnson means the Libertarian thing is getting traction. I never said you were wasting your vote, you voted!)

 Sure, Obama is not perfect (those acts you cited are fine examples) but you do not accept the fact that he has done socially progressive things, and you dismiss with saying 'he is trying to get vote's, to which to I say bullshit, because if they are what the voters desire, then responding to the populace re: gay marriage and womens rights is his job as President. If he allows gay marriage and rights to abortion, he is OK in my book.

If progressive stances on gay and womens rights get you elected, then yippe-kay-ay, motherfucker. I like that. f*** the Tea Party and GOP. They are dangerous swine.

[hypehat]

Erik H & rockandroll - laying it down this evening.

[SMiLE Brian]

Erik H & rockandroll - laying it down this evening.

I love your quote on Thad. Stevens.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

The idiot who drinks raw milk and isn't fit to digest it is weak and should be eliminated from the gene pool. That's called evolution.

well, no, they should just not drink milk. though yeah, if it's causing you to die and you dont stop drinking it, you probably should just die, because intelligence.

But considering all the private companies out there (booze/cigarette/fast food) raking in massive profits on betting that people will continue making bad decisions.....shouldn't we have just a bit more respect for those making such bad decisions that keep the free market kicking?

[Jason]

[Jason]

The idiot who drinks raw milk and isn't fit to digest it is weak and should be eliminated from the gene pool. That's called evolution.

well, no, they should just not drink milk. though yeah, if it's causing you to die and you dont stop drinking it, you probably should just die, because intelligence.

But considering all the private companies out there (booze/cigarette/fast food) raking in massive profits on betting that people will continue making bad decisions.....shouldn't we have just a bit more respect for those making such bad decisions that keep the free market kicking?

No one's going to hold a gun to your head if you don't buy a Big Mac with a large fries and 32-ounce Coca-Cola. Someone will if you don't comply with government regulators.

[hypehat]

Erik H & rockandroll - laying it down this evening.

I love your quote on Thad. Stevens.

sh*t, Thaddeus Stevens wanted total war with the south to end slavery, shot down attempts to block the public school system and disenfranchise the vote to African-Americans, tried to impeach the President for not advocating the rights of African-Americans, and had an underground railroad station under his office. That man is a credit to America.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

No one's going to hold a gun to your head if you don't buy a Big Mac with a large fries and 32-ounce Coca-Cola.

What's your point?

Someone will if you don't comply with government regulators.

That's a lie.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

The idiot who drinks raw milk and isn't fit to digest it is weak and should be eliminated from the gene pool. That's called evolution.

well, no, they should just not drink milk. though yeah, if it's causing you to die and you dont stop drinking it, you probably should just die, because intelligence.

But considering all the private companies out there (booze/cigarette/fast food) raking in massive profits on betting that people will continue making bad decisions.....shouldn't we have just a bit more respect for those making such bad decisions that keep the free market kicking?

No one's going to hold a gun to your head if you don't buy a Big Mac with a large fries and 32-ounce Coca-Cola. Someone will if you don't comply with government regulators.

OK, then if the CDC or the FDA were private companies who told you not to buy a Big Mac or Jalisco cheese (and thus regulated such companies) and not the Government: what the "F" would the difference be?

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I mean, if we're reducing everything down to just base primal intelligence, then what the F good is education or any steps mankind has taken since we crawled from the ocean?

You simply can't make your way though life without putting yourself at some sort of risk. Each time you get in a car, you might be the smartest most careful person in human history, but that doesn't mean some drunk asshole won't plow into you or a rotting bridge won't collapse and send you plummeting to your death. I guess because you didn't think ahead and trick up your car with an ejector seat and parachute you're so stupid you should be removed from the gene pool, right? C'mon, you can't remove all possible risk without seriously infringing on human rights/liberty: correct, but SOMETHING has to be done to assure that all possible dangers and the facts regarding such dangers are made available to the citizens of the country and thus the world and that such dangers be eradicated or at least reduced through prevention and knowledge..... If the free market doesn't like this F*ck the free market.

[halblaineisgood]

I guess because you didn't think ahead and trick up your car with an ejector seat and parachute you're so stupid you should be removed from the gene pool, right?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
best sentence ever

[halblaineisgood]

I guess because you didn't think ahead and trick up your car with an ejector seat and parachute you're so stupid you should be removed from the gene pool, right?

That would make for a great signature, I think.

[Dunderhead]

You guys just habitually conceptualize what "the market" is in very prejudicial way. You hear the words "the market" and you have all these associations polluting your understanding of the pure concept of the thing. You're conflating the market with the stock market, corporate profits, shady executives, and profit margins. None of those things are inherent to the actual concept of the free market, they're just actualities that need to be separated from the abstract idea. By being able to look at the concept and the reality individually you can actually determine how the two things deviate and discover the reasons why they've deviated.

The concept of the free market is not morally wrong, the free market is completely impartial, it's not a *thing* that floats around up in the air like God and decides who lives and who dies. The concept of the free market is just a concept that describes the natural way in which members of society mitigate between how they want things to be and how things actually are. People value things according to their own preferences, that's just human nature, and you can't think of these things as just material objects with a price tag in dollars. You define who you are and which part of society you identify with through the things you own, the clothes you wear, the style of furniture you have in your house, the books on your bookshelf, even the food you eat. People use these things to create the appearance of themselves that they project into the world, and these appearances, taken in aggregate, form our culture.

The idea of the market is not purely utilitarian, cold, calculating, and profit driven. There are fields of economics that go far beyond this basic understanding of the market. The malformed understanding that many people have of capitalism is based more on the frequent repetition of a very simple formulation of "the invisible hand", "if everyone does what's best for himself society will improve", but this is very misleading if you don't have any greater experience with the finer ideas of economics. Doing what's "best for yourself" is *not*, and I really have to stress this point, *not* measured by dollars and cents. When students of economic theory say that, they don't literally mean that the world will be a better place if everyone is a ruthless buisnessman who slits his brother's throat for a quarter. Doing what's "best for yourself" means doing what makes you the happiest, if working 20 hours a week instead of 40 makes you happier, if you *value* leisure time more, even though you're making less money, you're still ultimately participating in the free market by making that type of decision. In economics, studying these types of tradeoffs, understanding why people make sacrifices and do things that don't directly contribute to their material wealth is called Price Theory.

When everyone participates in society according to his own values, doing the things that satisfy him the most, and living the life that makes him the happiest within society, society improves, but only when he's allowed to make his own free decisions and isn't compelled to make certain transactions by an outside party. Someone who's a starving artist isn't rejecting the concept of the free market because he didn't go to business school, he's doing what gratifies his own tastes, what brings him the most satisfaction.

The free market typically produces more progressive outcomes than the government does using legal measures of control. The film and music industries are two great examples. Those are capitalist, profit driven industries, industries where black artists gained recognition for their talents long before the government repealed the laws that it had established in the first place legally condoning institutional racism.

The government can't save everyone, people are going to die regardless of what the government does. Should the government have infinite control over our society and be able to regulate all of our actions completely in order to save lives? Where do you draw the line, how do you fairly determine what's reasonable? The government could save us all from diseases and carcinogens and poverty by putting us all in protective bubbles and feeding as concentrated nutrients in paste form. How much money is too much to spend to save a single life, why is it fair for the government to take money away from taxpayers and make them worse off in order to save others. Where does the responsibility end?   

[Awesoman]

Yo TRBB, you should probably explain how every Obama voter is racist.

Well, considering how the Democratic Party is the same party that led to the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, and morons like Jesse Helms and David Duke...I'd say there's plenty to back up that claim. In an effort to save face, the guilty white liberals of the Democratic Party decided to endorse Obama...you know, since he talks and looks like them. I think that's horrible and reprehensible. When Democrats hear about folks like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan...let's just say they don't respond in kind. sh*t, there were a bunch of Democrats on the Huffington Post who referred to Allen West (GOP Congressman from Florida and NOT a guy I like) as "Uncle Tom" and "the plantation negro". Seriously? Because he doesn't belong to the "party of tolerance" he's just another ****** from the South? I think the way the Democrats exploit the so-called "minorities" is horrible. It's a backwards policy and it needs to stop. Then when people come along who say that they want to let the market work and let people have an equal shot, they're referred to as "racists". The War on Drugs is a race war, and the Democrats have escalated it.

I mean hey, believe what you wanna believe, but the Democrats need to stop going on like they're the party of tolerance. They're the party of tolerance as long as you toe their line.

I agree.  The Democrats have been leading minorities around on a leash for decades.  The sad thing is, minorities have willingly put themselves on said leash.  It's a pretty sad state of affairs that, despite how far we've progressed, we're still hung up in matters as trivial as the color of one person's skin. 

[Awesoman]

If progressive stances on gay and womens rights get you elected, then yippe-kay-ay, motherf***er. I like that. f*** the Tea Party and GOP. They are dangerous swine.

*Sigh*

I always shake my head at the stupidity of the argument that the GOP/Republicans/Conservatives are against women's rights.  There are plenty of women that are involved with the GOP...are they self-loathing then?  Then of course, there's the asinine argument that if you chose to be pro-life,  you automatically hate women.  Yes, because God forbid we might value the life of an innocent, unborn baby!  Sure, there are contentions where compromise is in order (rape, incest, mother's life is in danger, etc.), but I think you'd find that most pro-lifers would be willing to make such exceptions. 

What bothers me more is that we're living in a society of people whom can not only not accept a viewpoint different from their own, but must take it so far to villify that person or group of people over it.  Mitt Romney wasn't perfect, but he was hardly the "villain" that the left painted him out to be.  The GOP regularly gets trashed on, and while some of the criticisms might be warranted, the group as a whole are no better or worse than the Democrats.  There are good and bad people on all sides of the political spectrum; we don't need to lash out at them just because we might not agree.  Please don't be so ignorant.

[Mendota Heights]

OK, then if the CDC or the FDA were private companies who told you not to buy a Big Mac or Jalisco cheese (and thus regulated such companies) and not the Government: what the "F" would the difference be?

I have not read all of your posts and I do not know where you stand politically, but the difference would be companies are not forced to follow "regulations" ("certifications" is a better word) set up by another private company.

If I am not completely mistaken ISO certifications are a good example of "private regulations".

What it all boils down to is the initiation of force, anarcho-capitalist Stefan Molyneux (http://www.freedomainradio.com/) talks about this a lot. A private certification company does not initiate force should you not request their services - the state for sure would(!). The state would even put you in prison.

A hamburger place probably wants to be certified by a certification company if that attracts more customers, because otherwise they would lose customers. Thus the state's regulations, initiations of force and severe punishments are not needed.

[hypehat]

If progressive stances on gay and womens rights get you elected, then yippe-kay-ay, motherf***er. I like that. f*** the Tea Party and GOP. They are dangerous swine.

*Sigh*

I always shake my head at the stupidity of the argument that the GOP/Republicans/Conservatives are against women's rights.  There are plenty of women that are involved with the GOP...are they self-loathing then?  Then of course, there's the asinine argument that if you chose to be pro-life,  you automatically hate women.  Yes, because God forbid we might value the life of an innocent, unborn baby!  Sure, there are contentions where compromise is in order (rape, incest, mother's life is in danger, etc.), but I think you'd find that most pro-lifers would be willing to make such exceptions. 

Maybe so, just not Senate Republicans! Do I need to post the .gif or are you aware of the downright stupid views of Todd Akin and the ilk?

Men who are pro-life hate women. It's probably that simple. Tied up with a lot of religious hokum. It's their right to choose, for either way, and men should gtfo of it unless they are the potential father. But that's it.

[hypehat]

You guys just habitually conceptualize what "the market" is in very prejudicial way. You hear the words "the market" and you have all these associations polluting your understanding of the pure concept of the thing. You're conflating the market with the stock market, corporate profits, shady executives, and profit margins. None of those things are inherent to the actual concept of the free market, they're just actualities that need to be separated from the abstract idea. By being able to look at the concept and the reality individually you can actually determine how the two things deviate and discover the reasons why they've deviated.

The concept of the free market is not morally wrong, the free market is completely impartial, it's not a *thing* that floats around up in the air like God and decides who lives and who dies. The concept of the free market is just a concept that describes the natural way in which members of society mitigate between how they want things to be and how things actually are. People value things according to their own preferences, that's just human nature, and you can't think of these things as just material objects with a price tag in dollars. You define who you are and which part of society you identify with through the things you own, the clothes you wear, the style of furniture you have in your house, the books on your bookshelf, even the food you eat. People use these things to create the appearance of themselves that they project into the world, and these appearances, taken in aggregate, form our culture.

The idea of the market is not purely utilitarian, cold, calculating, and profit driven. There are fields of economics that go far beyond this basic understanding of the market. The malformed understanding that many people have of capitalism is based more on the frequent repetition of a very simple formulation of "the invisible hand", "if everyone does what's best for himself society will improve", but this is very misleading if you don't have any greater experience with the finer ideas of economics. Doing what's "best for yourself" is *not*, and I really have to stress this point, *not* measured by dollars and cents. When students of economic theory say that, they don't literally mean that the world will be a better place if everyone is a ruthless buisnessman who slits his brother's throat for a quarter. Doing what's "best for yourself" means doing what makes you the happiest, if working 20 hours a week instead of 40 makes you happier, if you *value* leisure time more, even though you're making less money, you're still ultimately participating in the free market by making that type of decision. In economics, studying these types of tradeoffs, understanding why people make sacrifices and do things that don't directly contribute to their material wealth is called Price Theory.

When everyone participates in society according to his own values, doing the things that satisfy him the most, and living the life that makes him the happiest within society, society improves, but only when he's allowed to make his own free decisions and isn't compelled to make certain transactions by an outside party. Someone who's a starving artist isn't rejecting the concept of the free market because he didn't go to business school, he's doing what gratifies his own tastes, what brings him the most satisfaction.

The free market typically produces more progressive outcomes than the government does using legal measures of control. The film and music industries are two great examples. Those are capitalist, profit driven industries, industries where black artists gained recognition for their talents long before the government repealed the laws that it had established in the first place legally condoning institutional racism.

The government can't save everyone, people are going to die regardless of what the government does. Should the government have infinite control over our society and be able to regulate all of our actions completely in order to save lives? Where do you draw the line, how do you fairly determine what's reasonable? The government could save us all from diseases and carcinogens and poverty by putting us all in protective bubbles and feeding as concentrated nutrients in paste form. How much money is too much to spend to save a single life, why is it fair for the government to take money away from taxpayers and make them worse off in order to save others. Where does the responsibility end?   

wrt this - going 'yeah, the free market has such potential for good if it weren't for the people who run it' is not really the most convincing argument. CEO's, bankers, and the ilk aren't noble sorts. If it's a case of 'hate the player, love the game' sure, but I really don't like the players.

Also lol at using the film and music industries as models of accepting, caring social models.

[Dunderhead]

If progressive stances on gay and womens rights get you elected, then yippe-kay-ay, motherf***er. I like that. f*** the Tea Party and GOP. They are dangerous swine.

*Sigh*

I always shake my head at the stupidity of the argument that the GOP/Republicans/Conservatives are against women's rights.  There are plenty of women that are involved with the GOP...are they self-loathing then?  Then of course, there's the asinine argument that if you chose to be pro-life,  you automatically hate women.  Yes, because God forbid we might value the life of an innocent, unborn baby!  Sure, there are contentions where compromise is in order (rape, incest, mother's life is in danger, etc.), but I think you'd find that most pro-lifers would be willing to make such exceptions. 

Maybe so, just not Senate Republicans! Do I need to post the .gif or are you aware of the downright stupid views of Todd Akin and the ilk?

Men who are pro-life hate women. It's probably that simple. Tied up with a lot of religious hokum. It's their right to choose, for either way, and men should gtfo of it unless they are the potential father. But that's it.

1. Women do not have a right to their bodies. I wish that they did, I wish that I had a right to my body, it seems very constitutional to think that anyone actually does have that right, but unfortunately that right is gone. Precedence just isn't on the side of people who talk about women having a "right" to their bodies. What you do with your body can and is regulated. The constitutional right that women have that allows them to take birth control and have abortions is the same right that theoretically allows people to smoke, eat junk food, drink soda, use marijuana, take medicines that haven't been approved by the FDA, drink unpasteurized milk, and avoid vaccination. What you do with your own body should be your own choice, but it's not. It's a constitutional issue, and by not supporting this right being infringed in other circumstances they've only opened the door for current "war on women"

2. You're being naive if you think US politics really works like you're describing, where politicians vote based on the principle of their beliefs. Members of the congress have only a very limited independence from that political positions they're told to mouth by their party's leadership. Republicans are against whatever Democrats are for, and Democrats are for whatever Republicans are against. A bill that is, in one year, supported by liberals, is, the following year, decried by them. It's a game of strategy played by corporate interests and high level political leaders in which most lower ranking members of the legislature are only pawns. Bills are not read, issues are not studied, debates are not paid attention to. In order to get appropriations bills passed allocating governmental space change for a pet project back in your district, you are forced to vote as the party leadership tells you. The "war on women" is a purely political issue, both parties are vocal about it because it's an issue that plays well with their respective bases. To talk about a member of congress really "believing" in this or that position is faintly ridiculous. Some certainly do, but it's a growing minority of members as local communities have been so completely undermined that the days of being elected as a public official based upon personal reputation within your community are over. The real cause of congressional gridlock isn't ideological, it's the fact that members of congress have become completely dependent upon leadership and are no longer concerned with being critically minded or doing the right thing. The problem isn't that the principles are too uncompromising, it's that there are no principles. Every issue will cause a standstill because either party will always take the opposite position of their opponent party regardless of anything else.

[Dunderhead]

wrt this - going 'yeah, the free market has such potential for good if it weren't for the people who run it' is not really the most convincing argument. CEO's, bankers, and the ilk aren't noble sorts. If it's a case of 'hate the player, love the game' sure, but I really don't like the players.

Think hypehat, use your head, develop some critical thinking skills. You aren't reading, only reacting.

Also lol at using the film and music industries as models of accepting, caring social models.

The film and music industries led the way for desegregation. If the US Government had controlled the Academy Awards, Hattie McDaniel would never have won her oscar.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

You guys just habitually conceptualize what "the market" is in very prejudicial way.

And here we go with yet another post where you define "the market" in yet another way. This, like always, is about as convicing as your attempts to suggest that "There's nothing particularly Kantian about Welfare." In other words, you attempt to define something not in terms of what it is really like but rather in terms of the way you would like it to be. But let's pretend for a moment that you are correct - that the free market is simply "the natural way in which members of society mitigate between how they want things to be and how things actually are." I suppose my question to this is, where does this exist? You say: "When everyone participates in society according to his own values, doing the things that satisfy him the most, and living the life that makes him the happiest within society, society improves, but only when he's allowed to make his own free decisions and isn't compelled to make certain transactions by an outside party." Give me an example of this society and demonstrate how "society" has improved.

[Awesoman]

Men who are pro-life hate women. It's probably that simple. Tied up with a lot of religious hokum. It's their right to choose, for either way, and men should gtfo of it unless they are the potential father. But that's it.

Hypehat, I'm beginning to think that rational thought is beyond you.  You clearly think with your heart, but you should try thinking with your head, because you can say some truly ridiculous things sometimes (such as Eric Clapton being some horrible racist. Remember that humdinger?).  Try this one on for size: I consider myself pro-life, with a few obvious exceptions.  I am not religious.  I simply believe that if a couple is sexually active, then they are taking the responsibility with it.  I don't view it as any rights being denied here (except maybe the right to life).  There are plenty of things a couple can do to responsibly avoid procreation.  Please, explain to me how that makes me hate women?  Go on...I'm waiting...

[Bean Bag]

My problem with Obama ...He's the same man who signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, which allots dictatorial authority to the president to detain American citizens without trial, due process, or charges.

Mmm.  Good point.  As in the "YouTube Video" guy who was recently detained by the Obama SS.  He made the now infamous video that Obama blamed for the whole Benghazi debacle.  Oh, sure...they say he was detained for "parking tickets" or something...yeah.  Al Capone was too.

Unbelievable.  In the land formerly known as America, nonetheless.  Put this on in the "can you freakin' imagine if Bush did that" bucket.

[Bean Bag]

Hypehat, I'm beginning to think that rational thought is beyond you.

The jubilant thread title:  "Four more years!" was a dead giveaway.  Anybody excited about four more years of this mess has clearly already had a "rationality abortion."  [insert obamaphone lady video]

Why one might assume they "hate" rationality.   

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

"The film and music industries led the way for desegregation. If the US Government had controlled the Academy Awards, Hattie McDaniel would never have won her oscar."

- Fishmonk


Gotta admit, this one made me smile Fishmonk!

But I wish we would stop with the morality/immorality line. I don't think it's much of a concern really. I mean, what good are those words if one has no innate concept of them beyond the words used to quantify what they are intended to mean?