This comment right here officer

Lab coat? I thought it was a straight jacket.

#9 | POSTED BY GOATMAN AT 2019-10-02 05:28 PM | FLAG:

We weren't supposed to tell him!

In all seriousness after reading the article all the way through, I wonder if the relativistic plasma mirrors could be useful in laser ignited fusion.

What the hell? What happened to sending neutrons through the other reality?

But if you want to keep defending the corrupt, crazy man then I guess you will.
#91 | POSTED BY ZED AT 2019-10-02 04:02 PM | FLAG:

I wasn't defending Biden!

Oh, Trump. I'm not defending Trump either. Just attacking Dem stupidity. Trump is just what the Dems get for embracing a corporatist neo-con in a Democrat's pantsuit in 2016, and if he wins in 2020, he'll be what the Dems get for shrieking, wetting the bed over every perceived slight and conspiracy theory, and embracing identity politics over economic populism. He himself I find just to be a boorish narcissist, but that makes him a typical politician, only lacking the social graces to cover it. I don't support him. I simply support the religion of Woke even less. True Believers are the only thing worse than sociopathic narcissists.

#86 | POSTED BYSPEAKSOFTLYAT2019-10-02 03:42 PM|REPLY

Civil discourse, reaching across the aisle, engaging in rational debate sans hyperbole, having a positive position of one's own not defined purely by opposition to an opponent are in reality rarely done to win over the opposition. They are the show one performs to win over the undecideds, the all important swing states in politics, for example.

Your arrogance and unwillingness to understand your opponent, your black and white good vs evil politics reminiscent of the evangelical right but now endemic to the left however, is a truly effective way of driving away any centrist. If Trump wins a landslide in 2020, he'll probably need to send you a thank you letter.

Regarding the article - most Republicans have probably simply stopped following the news on Trump after 3 years of lefties with Russia under their beds.

Nor are they likely to be overly concerned. The head of the executive branch asked someone to look into the possibility of a crime having been committed. Had Trump demanded evidence, real or not, that certainly would have been corrupt. But an investigation? Surely if Biden did nothing wrong, he has nothing to fear, and the results wouldn't affect anything.

To be fair, after years of watching his father sniffing fat rails of dandruff off kid's heads, Hunter didn't stand a chance against the other powdery white stuff and everything he'd screw up on it. So Joe did kind of owe the kid a little help.

How could he not be? I mean, have you ever listened to Joe Rogan while on DMT?

Remember when Hillary warned Trump would refuse to accept her win as legitimate and blame the Russians for interfering? And when Obama told Trump to stop being a crybaby, that there was no way another country could influence US elections? Remember when they suddenly had to reverse their own playbook and blame Trump for everything they had made up and said couldn't happen?

This ought to be fun.

On that, I've noticed after being gone for 2.5 years much of the left on the DR has become meaner and more rabid. I was surprised.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed the change since it presumably happened slowly, but I sure did.

#38 | POSTED BYGOATMANAT2019-10-02 11:45 AM|REPLY| FLAG:

It's not just you, it's not just on the DR, and if this place is like most others, it didn't happen slowly. The left absolutely lost their ---- overnight the moment Trump won. The next day on, it was every Republican is a racist, and Russia had not, at the worst, dug up some dirt on Clinton they should have been mad she had rather than at the messenger, but might as well have hacked the ballots themselves, for all they were concerned.

I took a couple years away myself. The left had gotten so rabid, angry, and hyperbolic I found myself not wanting to be associated with it or affected by their toxicity online. When a few short months before that, I remember Corky lecturing me for always having to be "more lefty than thou."

A few years later, and without changing any of my views, I'm now apparently another fascist right-winger. Which oddly enough, doesn't bother me a bit, as they seem the only ones left with any positivity or capability for rational discourse or debate. I just find myself hoping I didn't sound as cringey and ready to wet the bed over every difference of opinion as the left does now. Or at least grew out of it lol.

As for SJWs -- after Hillary lost in 2016, Bernie said it best that the path to success for Democrats has to be through more than just identity politics.

....

What's bad for America is religion in the public square AND identity politics dominating over economic and labor policies.

#32 | POSTED BYPINCHALOAFAT2019-10-01 08:15 PM|REPLY| FLAG:Flag:(Choose)FunnyNewsworthyOffensiveAbusive

Agreed. And yet the primaries were practically the "who's the wokest of them all" contest so far. The change from the party that's supposed to support workers to the one that values illegal immigrants more than their own citizens is for instance, particularly jarring.

I'd say there's one more thing Democrats need to find that path to success. Get their jerking knees under control and stop hypocritically opposing Republicans even when Republican platforms switch, or one of their own is in power. Obama campaigning in part on the unconstitutionality of Bush's overreach with the NSA, and then increasing it, for instance, among all the other ways he quickly became Bush III. Anti war Democrats that suddenly become pro war when there's a D after the president's name, or Trump wants to actually do the right thing and bring troops home. Those of us that left the left - or were left by it - care very much about hypocrisy from the left, even while expecting it from the right. Despite his hypocrisy, I'd rather have someone like Trump where I can agree with or oppose policy based on the policy itself, rather than what he says, than a Democrat that claims to agree with me and gets a rubber stamp from the left to then go and do everything they claim to oppose.

Wait, it said "supermassive." Damn you lack of edit! I'm not a chubby chaser. No one's going to believe me. Oh God, the internet is forever...

Purely for research purposes, I believe I saw such a "documentary" once. Okay, maybe 3 or 4 times.

Punching was a little far - but I can't seem to feel bad for them lol.

I get vegetarian. I don't believe it's the healthiest option - a relaxed paleo that doesn't get all psychotic about grains we absolutely would have eaten seasonally, just not as year round staples before the shift to agrarian societies - makes the most sense to me evolutionarily. But given the cruelty of many factory farms, I still get vegetarians and don't see how humanely sourced animal products such as eggs and cheese would be a problem, just as many of them don't. Vegans though - they straight up passed ethical all the way to religious fanatic about their food. Looking for converts and ready to strike down the evil-doer with their noodly arms. (Not to be confused with the noodly appendages of the FSM. That's a real religion.)

Amazing article and exactly why my ragingly liberal self parts ways with the identitarian left. For me it's just about using economics as a tool to provide opportunity to more people. You don't have to worry about someone's race for instance - if minorities are less well-off than whites - you make a policy that helps all the poor, and it will help marginalized people more without disenfranchising poor whites and all the resentment and racism that causes. Of course, such logic doesn't work for the woke. It's never good enough for them to raise someone up, the "sinner" must be pushed down as well.

But of course, certain people can't see it. The same who have always been arrogant moral busybodies, telling everyone how best to live their lives - generally despite abject hypocrisy. The Puritans and Victorians of their era. Just like Christian and Muslim True Believers, they can't tell they're in nothing but a stepped-up cult and can't see how incoherent they are from the outside. It's not startling even some in this thread are zealots of both. That hole in themselves they can't fill without having to feel like part of the chosen few, the righteous elect. From even the left end of center, they look surprisingly alike.

I thought the series ended a few years ago?
#15 | POSTED BY GOATMAN AT 2019-09-23 12:27 AM | REPLY | FLAG

It did. Then they gave Aborted_monson script writing privileges as a prank and put out Season 8.

It's a 4chan prank. Many on the left who defend Islam also advocate feminism. They're just trying to play the 2 off on each other.

#17 | POSTED BYANDREAMACKRISAT2019-09-22 07:56 PM|REPLY| FLAG

An exchange that illustrates my point quite well and why I find myself siding with the right more and more. When I debate people on the right it feels like it always has - arguing the merits of opposing ideas with the same goal (what's best for individuals and society) and just different paths to get there. The free exchange of ideas. When I argue the left anymore it takes on the impression of arguing with a religious zealot.

I'm economically something like democratic socialist and socially libertarian - and I'm completely put off by how far they've moved socially left and their authoritarianism mixed with us-against-them hyperbole to demonize anyone not with them as some nazi or fascist. If I'm put off, I can only imagine how right moderates are being driven and how likely Trump has already got 2020 in the basket.

As so many other issues do, it just serves to make one wonder what it will take to get corporations to focus on long term profits and R&D vs the ongoing disastrous focus purely on what they can cut to maximize profits this quarter alone.

As a descendant of legal immigrants (who came here from Norway in the very early 1900's) I fail to see how the earlier question would be relevant. My ancestors neither took land from indigenous peoples, nor owned slaves. Well, not since Viking times anyway lol.

So strange how liberals now like to imply every white American is a descendant of slave owners and genocidal settlers. As if such "original sin" should matter. Also odd how virtually religious the left has grown. People calling Republicans a cult, while being dogmatic, holier-than-thou, moralizing, and obsessed with the sin people were born into ("privilege"). Almost like projection...

All 23 living down in Alabama? This isn't the 1960's. Who cares about race anymore?

#9 | POSTED BY SNOOFY AT 2019-09-22 02:12 AM | FLAG:

Back when the religious right was trying to censor anything they found immoral and tell everyone what they could do in society and their own bedrooms, I was a Democrat. When the ACLU fought to defend both offensive artistic expression as well as the free speech of even the KKK, I was a Democrat.

When Bill Clinton wanted stronger borders to protect the working class, I agreed, though I split with his globalist neo-liberal economic policies that went and shipped our jobs overseas.

When the Democrats - and I should mention virtually all of Congress failed at this, voting for the Iraq war - but when grassroots democrats were protesting Bush's illegal wars of aggression, I sided with them. When the grassroots were also screaming against him shredding the Constitution with NSA overreach and The Patriot Act, my voice was one of the loudest.

I voted Kerry in 04 and Obama in 08. I was in the Occupy Wallstreet protests at the beginning of Obama's tenure. "If I was ever a democrat." Please. By 2012 I was voting Stein because I was left enough I couldn't tell the difference between Obama and Bush. The same wars, the same propping up corporations while letting main street America go homeless, the continued expansion of domestic spying, of secret courts and sealed documents, the pushing through of a healthcare act that immediately took single payer off the table for a mandate written by insurance lobbyists.

I am consistent. Anti-war in all instances that do not involve a foreign power actively putting troops on our mainland. Protect the working class both from unfair illegal competition and globalist sellout of their jobs. Free speech absolutist. Protective of our Constitutional liberties, be they swift and fair trials as denied by FISA courts and illegal gag orders, fourth amendment protections shredded by the NSA and Patriot Acts. The right to self-protection, the right to bear arms as given by our second amendment, as taking that right away from our poor, our women and minorities is the most illiberal thing I can imagine. Anti-corporatist, all for breaking up the monopolies threatening our freedoms and way of life - particularly at this point, tech monopolies. (Who all seem perfectly okay censoring dissenting speech - which comes from the right wing these days.) Socially against any and all laws that discriminate against people based not he color of their skin, sexual orientation, etc. Still a believer that men and women are mentally equal, that the brain is not a gendered organ, putting me at odds with all the trans trenders in the news that want to reinforce and even add to the gender binary rather than erase it.

My positions have not budged one bit. Still essentially what Chomsky would term a "libertarian socialist." What has changed is the democrats are as bad as the republicans on NSA style overreach, are just as imperialistic and warmongering, yet have become even more authoritarian and puritanical, filled with moral panic and hypocrisy. Their "cancel culture" social style has left them incapable of debate, free exchange of ideas and rational discussion. They aren't concerned with unity and class issues, just pandering to and inflaming racial and social divides. Republicans have become the ones at least moderately concerned with protecting free speech and equality, if not any better on issues like healthcare and education. But at least you can debate them and they don't start screaming about racism and misogyny when they lose - even when the subject has nothing to do with either lol.

I'm caught between my disgust with the Chinese getting a free pass with libs for everything from being the worst global pollution source to their flagrant violations of human rights and unethical business practices, and my younger self's excitement with the idea of rounding up all religious people and placing them in re-education camps.

I've gotten more committed agnostic vs outright anti-theist with age though, as I learn to admit in a universe that may be one of infinite realities, impossible to know numbers of dimensions, or even a simulation or hologram on the face of an unknown event horizon that we don't even understand "material" enough to be an educated materialist - so I'm going to go with disgust at the Chinese government and the libs giving them their free pass.

The point of this thread was about how easily some people change their politics. Democrats may still support unions - good for them! But they have dropped their support for all the workers who don't need to compete against an underclass that can't find a legal foot to stand on in negotiating fair wages with their ridiculous support for effectively open borders. Guess they found a way to compete with Republicans on the point of paying workers less. And still get their union donations to boot!

Clinton wanted walls. Obama was the deporter in chief. While I disagreed a great deal with their imperialistic foreign policy, I certainly agreed with their domestic regarding border security. Yet one Republican comes in with the same policy, and Dems change their views in an instant 180 flip. Just like how they hate war when Bush was in, are silent or love it during Obama, and continue to love it when Trump goes most of his first term starting no new conflicts. And so the Democrats lose another voter.