Jump to content

divagreen

Senior Members
  • Posts

    124
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by divagreen

  1. While I am disappointed that Elaine Marshall did not win, I will not throw myself over a cliff because of it. Richard Burr is a moderate Republican who really does try to do the best he can with what he has. My only beef with him is that he hopped on the bandwagon, "I am going to help create jobs in N.C.!", yet voted against a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to create American jobs and to prevent the offshoring of such jobs overseas. (Okay, that is not my only beef with him.)

     

    That just makes me go :blink: .

     

    But he has been consistent with his statements such as this: "I don't think that any American should be critical of an individual that's president...They need to be critical of the policies but not of the individual."

     

    I think Obama will just have to find some way to compromise with the Republicans. I think that the best way to do this will be to take a step back from the green energy regulation agenda and focus more on how to keep corporatism in check. And he should start by looking in his own backyard...as in personal investments as they relate to the policies that he is trying to put forth. *whistles*

  2. Also, the numerical counter that we've been discussing for eight pages. That as well.

     

    No need to get snarky! :D :D :D

     

    I am well aware of the reputation points and how they are awarded, both positively and negatively.

     

    I was rather making a philosophical musing, that maybe a point system is not always the best way to gauge one's "reputation" on a website (it was intended for those who are unhappy with their reputation points).

     

    Perhaps instead, I should have resurrected and added this to one of the whinging, "Why am I getting negative reputation points?" that litter the lounge and the suggestions forum or even have started my own thread on it. However, since this is a pinned thread about reputation and the point system, I thought that this was the most appropriate place.

     

    Did I err in my judgement? :unsure:

  3. I think before any further discussion on TPM ensues, I would just like to put out there a little bit more information.

     

    The Tea Party has received a huge chunk of their funding from the Koch brothers.

     

    Maybe there is so much misinformation about the Tea Party because there is some obfuscation where they receive their funding:

     

    Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

     

    In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”

     

     

    But wait! Someone who draws a salary says something else:

     

    At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

     

    So where are these so called grassroots organizations getting their funding from again?

     

    The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

     

    So who are representing the Tea Party Movement again?:

     

    A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”.

     

    People like this:

     

    Keith Olbermann reveals.

     

     

    Okay, so you're saying that your assessment is based on news accounts, not personal interactions.

     

    Oh, stop trying to invalidate poster's position through asking for anecdotal evidence. The evidence of the popular political positions of TPM is there, just read their own websites and their representative's quotes.

     

    My opinion is that there is no Tea Party. Only a way to dress up a Republican agenda of corporatism.

     

    By the way...since taxes seem to be the rallying cry of the TPM, did you know that 47% of Americans did not have to pay income tax in 2009? Do you think members of the TPM are aware of this? I think not.

     

    /rant off.

     

    Back to the OP:

     

    At least this didn't happen to you:

     

     

    Oh, and here's the head-stomper (Local Campaign Coordinator, Tim Profitt) with Tea Party candidate Rand Paul (taken after the head stomping):

     

    105tx21.jpg

  4. This is one of the responses to your "sourced" article...

     

    That black elite jackass is just playing without money. He will spent over 10 billion of this lottery like spending before we can kick his as@ out.

     

    Uhm...okay...you might want to double check the article to be sure it comes from a credible source, rather than spew the remnants of hyperbolic diarrhea that centers around an already confirmed opinion. Sorry, but I dislike the spreading of misinformation.

     

    This one was interesting though...

     

    Trip to India and the politics behind it...

     

    VVVVVVVV Thank you Mr. Skeptic! That is weird...why did it come up that way?/divagreen

  5. Bmfy nx ymj xnlsknhfshj tk ymj szrgjw xnc? Uqjfxj wjuqd ns htij.

     

     

    Edit for correction...the above should read, "Bmfy nx ymj xnlsnknhfshj tk ymj szrgjw xnc? Uqjfxj wjuqd ns htij." /divagreen ;)

  6. CHICAGO (AP) - "An Illinois gubernatorial candidate's name was mistakenly listed as 'Rich Whitey' instead of Rich Whitney on thousands of Chicago electronic-voting machines and will be corrected, elections officials said Thursday."

     

    link

     

    And he is not even Republican... :lol:

  7. The Republicans are aware of this, so they do their best to spread as much fog, superstition, hysteria, obscurity, false information, and nonsense through the political process in the hope that the general public will become too confused to vote for its own best interests. Have you ever noticed how much dumber and sillier the leading Republicans are than the Democrats are? The Democrats have never had morons as stupid as Palin, Quayle, George Bush II, or Reagan, which is no coincidence, since Republicans are supposed to be stupid, since their electoral role is creating confusion rather than clarity, since that's the only way they can win.

     

    Probably a lot of posters have seen this, but I think that it is worth it with respect to the OP and in response to Marat:

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXclg6ZIVYc

     

    I would just like to say that Palin endorsed her... :blink:

     

    Since the Republican Party represents the interests of only the richest 5% of the population, in a truly sane, well-informed, open democratic process, they could never win a majority of the electorate.

     

    Did somebody mention the Koch brothers?

  8. It is characteristic of all primitive forms of thinking to believe that they have to have a foundation in the assumption of some thing existing outside the belief system to validate it. Thus everything from the notion that ethics can only make sense if there is some invisible bearded guy in the sky who says it is right, to the assumption that the only way to explain the propagation of heat is to assume that it is an invisible fluid or substance, such as was done in 18th century physics, reflects this pre-modern way of understanding how truth is established.

     

    But the modern understanding of the validity of explanatory systems is that they are based on their own internal coherence rather than correspondence to some assumed thing outside them. Thus Peano's foundation of mathematics has nothing to do with its correspondence to some external 'essence of number,' but to a logically structured, coherently related system of axioms which clarify how number is used. Similarly, Ben Franklin's way of explaining lightning operated by understanding it as a process which coherently relates a number of common phenomena, rather than by assuming it could be understood by its correspondence to some ontologically distinct entity outside the system, such as the Roman god Vulcan hammering a forge in the sky.

     

    Once we adopt this modern perspective with its shift to the coherence rather than the correspondence theory of validity, we can jettison all religions, which reflect the old-fashioned assumption that some other type of entity outside the explanatory system has to be found to valid the system by corresponding to it.

     

    I would like to point out that not all religions require the belief in a supernatural moral agent as a foundation for ritualistic practices. I think that the OP is making a good point as to why the non-Abrahamic religions might be the most enduring because of precisely this belief (or lack thereof), since it edits out the most prevalent question that the Abrahamic religions in the face of rational scrutiny must ask themselves, "Does God (as perceived as a supernatural moral agent) exist?".

     

    I think that Buddhism or some form of Taoism will be the last religion standing. Sikhism gave a good shot at it though. :D

  9. If you're really bored, a fun game to play is Six Degrees of Godwin.

    Take a topic - any topic - and see how quickly you can relate it to Nazis

    using legitimate topic drift methods. For example: a discussion about

    computers will eventually lead to discussions of keyboards and which are

    best, followed by a lot of complaining about the Windows key on 104-key

    keyboards, leading to complaints about Microsoft, forcing the standard

    MS-vs-government flamewar that I'm sure you're all aware of, leading to

    attacks on Microsoft's "fascist" tactics by one side or another, which

    will force the other side to start talking about the differences between

    fascism, capitalism, and, of course, Nazism! The fun never stops!

     

    :lol: :lol: :lol:

     

    Godwin's Law FAQ

  10. You're right. If I knew your family would be murdered and I would get money from it, and I went right along with it without attempting to alert the police, I don't deserve any punishment. I didn't kill your family members. :rolleyes:

     

    Uhm..with such a tight little knott, that strawman will never lose it's red bandanna. :lol:

     

     

    You keep speaking of her "low IQ". Once again, I heard her speak. She was not mentally incompetent. And even if she HAD the 72 IQ the tests claimed she did, she's STILL ABOVE the legal threshold that has been deemed viable by the federal government. Once above a 70, HER IQ IS NO LONGER AN ISSUE. Saying, "Oh, she's too stupid to know what would happen after those two guys killed them", is an Appeal to Emotion.

    That's what your entire argument has been.

     

    I guess by stating someone is making an appeal to emotion, without ever actually citing proof, constitutes as a legitimate argument which must surely be true. :rolleyes: Considering, "Oh, she's too stupid to know what would happen after those two guys killed them"<---- I never said this.

     

    I think that her IQ was an issue in the crime that she was charged with, masterminding; and the admission by one of the killers that they manipulated her into going along with it.

  11. Nor do I like Appeals to Emotion about the "poor, quasi-mentally-retarded lady" who was 'manipulated' into wanting to kill people for money.

     

    I am okay with you thinking that if someone wants someone to be murdered and they had knowledge of such ahead of time, they should warrant the death penalty. I am simply grateful that you are the minority.

     

    But if you are going to make a case that I am "appealing to emotion" rather than reason, I think that it is only fair that you back it up.

     

    I am addressing the fact that a person with a low IQ has limited capability for abstract consequences and has been pre-conditioned to follow those who are of a higher intelligence.

  12. I don't understand the other argument usually made' date=' which is that children are not ready for sex and so they cannot consent to it.[/quote']

     

    I think that one needs to consider that a power differential exists between an adult and a pre-pubescent child.

     

    I also can't imagine that a reciprocal amount of pleasure is derived, as the child has not fully developed physically, mentally or emotionally. It seems pretty one-sided to me.

     

    And I thought that consensual sex had to at least contain the possibility of mutual pleasure.

     

    But perhaps I am being pedantically non-gender specific.

     

    Children are certainly sexual beings' date=' though few societies in history have wanted to admit that.[/quote']

     

    Are you perhaps mistaking imitation with genuine sexual desire?

  13. Thank you for everyone's input, as the way that the topic was closed in the other thread left things a bit confusing.

     

    SFN moderators are marked as such (even though I don't see why it would be a problem if some were not).

     

     

    I believe in dual accountability on forum sites; from the users who cyber "sign" the terms of agreement as well as the posters who are in a position of power as administrators and moderators. One of the things that I like about this site is the way that the rules are enforced, the accountability that the moderators have demonstrated (in most cases), and the adherence to the process itself rather than the catering of egos. It is pretty stellar moderating IMO.

     

    As a user of this site, it is important for me to know who are the people in positions of power are, so that I know who to go to if I have a problem or a question. I believe in transparent processing when comes it to facilitating any type of group activity, forums being a form of "group activity".

     

    ***warning! tongue in cheek levity moment here!*** I also would like to know who else I can contact other than Swansont to correct my dreadful grammatical errors, as I have a terrible fear that I am going to call Swansont, "Swansnot", due to my mild dyslexia, and that he won't be very helpful at all.

     

     

     

    Is it posted somewhere who the moderators are in the chatroom? Because I had no clue. I think that I have only been a nuisance once or twice when I was abysmally bored and no one responded to "Hi!". I think that I argued with myself a bit...I know that chatrooms have logs and I was sincerely hoping that I entertained someone other than myself.

     

    Speaking of the chatroom...I notice that people can log in under different names? I would think that would be a deterrent to new users, as you have no idea whom you are really talking to and knowing whom you are talking to through their posts gives at least a frame of reference in order to find some type of conversation material. :D

  14. I don't mean to be a sh1t stirrer...

     

    But I have always felt that transparent processing is a good thing.

     

    I found this in another thread, that was closed:

     

     

    insane_alien wrote:

    no, thats just going to make you likely to get banned from the forum too. if you want a thread moved, ask a moderator.

     

    as to your ban, it was either scruffy, azurephoenix or mooeypoo who banned you. talk to them.

     

    okay, found out which ban was yours and removed it. won't be doing it again so behave .

     

    Uhm...I didn't know that Scruffy or Azurephoenix had mod privileges...or Insane_alien for that matter...

     

     

    I really don't care, but I think that it is nice to have it all out in the open, ya know?

  15. ***Prayer to the gawds of logic...

     

    Please forgive any hyperbolic rhetoric that I am about to speak here, and future posts regarding this thread...if it applies...

    Please forgive any conflation of topics that do not correlate to an anecdotal analogy...if it applies...

    I will endeavor to hold the highest of standards while arguing this case...please forgive me if I don't always measure up...if it applies.

    And if any transgressions occur, I solemnly swear to read Alice in Wonderland once again, in order to mainstay my knowledge of what logical fallacies look like.***

     

    She knew people would be murdered. She knew the men would kill them. She was ok with it, and she understood that they would die. She does not deserve life.

     

    This is a weak argument if taken at a legislative value. She wanted them to die, she understood that they would die, she stood by while they died, ...this is depraved indifference if one wants to dispense with the low IQ and manipulation factor.

     

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and good sex doesn't nesesarrily have anything to do with looks, sometimes kinky is more important than anything else and it did say sex with her and her daughter... kinky is as kinky does

     

    True dat...but wouldn't you think that the deciding factor for allowable kink would be held in the hands of the two men who performed? They did have to rise to the occasion.

  16. She probably didn't mastermind the intricate details of the murder. But she is more than capable of wanting to murder people and helping arrange such things. That's worth execution.

     

    I invite you to re-examine the last two statements through the lens of the knowledge that the woman had an IQ of 72, and people of lower intelligence (the woman was two IQ points above what would be considered mentally retarded) are more easily manipulated...they have a hard time thinking things through as applied to abstract thought, which includes fully comprehending the consequences.

     

    She used the "allure" of sex with her and her daughter and the promise of money to convince someone else to do the masterminding for her.

     

    Sex with what most people would consider an unattractive 51 year-old woman when the two men who actually did the killings were in their late twenties, seems a tad far-fetched to me when one is considering "allure" as one of the motivating factors for the two men to have committed the crime in the first place.

     

    I think that it was mostly about money. I think that the woman was either high on painkillers or drunk when she agreed to it and combined with her low IQ, it made her an easy target for two other people to step in and manipulate her into agreeing to a crime that she could not fully comprehend the ramifications of such.

     

    I am enjoying discussion, though. Thank you to the posters who have replied.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.