AstroProdigy

Guess what. You could have done the same thing with Bill Clinton and gotten similar results. Correlation=/=Causation. Also "going on the streets" sounds like this guy ignored anyone who knew anything about politics and edited out those parts that aren't convenient to the point he went there to prove, but I could be wrong there (although I seriously doubt it). If he said "Obama is anti stem cell research" and someone called him on the lie don't you think that part would be quietly removed in editing? It's like the guy proving Americans are retarded with geography. You just know he edited out the parts that didn't prove his point and it's not like this is a scientific study where his experimental procedure is laid out for anyone to try to replicate.

Small tax burdens? You mean negative tax burdens, right? Damn those students. They're such a drag on our economy right at this moment. Screw the future. By the way are you only referring to the income tax or all taxes and are you using statistics to back you up or just guesswork?

That's a fair philosophy to have. I can't understand how you can know your belief is wrong and not bother to change it. This doesn't even require you to do anything, just to have reality in your brain. Personal problems are no excuse to hate millions of people for their political beliefs.

The problem is food, clothes, and utilities take up a much bigger percentage of a poor person's money than of a rich person. Therefore, taxes on those goods are actually regressive. The point is that the rich a-spend a much smaller percentage of their money on taxable goods since they can cover their needs and then some and still have most of their money afterward and b-have lots of ways to get around taxes that the poor don't have. A proper balance would have a system where the rich overall pay a fair share of taxes when including all their accounting tricks, but of course anyone who tells you they know what that balance is going to be is either lying or delusional. The thing that bothers me is how many people throw the very notion of trying to get to that balance out the window and throw long lists of unsubstantiated claims and meaningless slogans at you.

I was referring to Aileron who made that statement. There's no point in responding to the rest of your comment because you can't speak for Aileron.

You know if you can no longer disagree over politics with a group of people without hating them then you really need to take some time to reflect on how unChrist-like you've become. I may think conservatives are utterly wrong, but they're still human beings. How can you hate millions of people you've never met? We're all human beings. If you spent more time trying to see issues from other people's perspectives rather than just trying to dehumanize them then maybe you wouldn't be filled with so much hate. What do you think that makes you as a Christian? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Sever doesn't hold unusual views in my opinion. They just seem unusual to you due to your frame of reference.

I thought this would be a good link to share.

I skimmed through the comments and saw the wall of letters so I decided I'm just going to say that while an "eye for an eye" is a form of justice it's also simplistic and I would rather see a more sophisticated system in place than the one thought up thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia.

Glenn Beck is a giant hypocrite and that's to be expected. "Beck has often railed against International law, as somehow endangering our constitution. So, it’s ironic that he seeks relief from an international Internet governing body. And the reason he is doing so, is that he is unlikely to win a civil lawsuit for libel in the U.S. As a public figure, parody and satire are clearly protected forms of speech under the First Amendment." For anyone who reads this and still takes Glenn Beck seriously as a political commentator and not the "performer" that these guys admit they are you really should just remove yourself from politics altogether. Never participate in protests or even discuss politics or even vote. Until you can understand basic logic your participation in the political system automatically harms the country and everyone in it.

The Venus Project is a load of shit for two reasons. 1) Is it requires a post scarcity society which is conceivable in the far future if we had technology unimaginably more advanced than what we have now plus a limitless or near limitless source of power. That all may be nice and good and we should move in that direction regardless, but it doesn't require this venus project bullshit to do it. In fact our scientific community is already advancing rapidly under our current system. 2) The whole thing requires computers who keep us around to enjoy ourselves even though we'd be useless. If you've ever read Iain Banks' series about the Culture then it's basically what "The Venus Project" envisions. The unrealistic notion that we'd stay as regular humans being useless and just enjoying ourselves while artificial intelligences much more advanced than we are waste resources to keep us happy sounds as absurd as it is. They'd be better off destroying us. A more likely future involves a large segment of humans taking on mechanical parts to form some sorts of cyborgs while some humans actually make the plunge and become full on artificial intelligences. In this scenario humanity can't be destroyed by machines because there would be no dividing line between man and machine. Overall this guy ignores all the details to set up a utopia as if we could only advance under this imaginary utopia. It's the same as all utopian visions it should be kept in the margins because utopias don't work and when people take power to try to make impossible utopias work it usually leads to unfathomable death and suffering.

The link was fail.

But that's my point. It's not that the elites can't take over and we wouldn't be docile enough as a whole to let it happen under the right conditions. The major roadblock is that they're too divided and most aren't interested in totalitarianism. Besides unless you're old our lifetimes is a very long time in which a country can go totalitarian. I don't know about Iran; there are many states on a similar or greater level of authoritarianism than Iran China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, and a few others as well as lots of somewhat less authoritarian states. North Korea on the other hand is probably as close an example to the world of 1984 that currently exists.

I never thought it was really the people who could successfully rebel against the system alone. You almost always need a disgruntled portion of the elite to go along with it. Even the emancipation of the slaves was done by a portion of the elite. Otherwise the slaves in the south were an incredibly sheepish group with no serious revolts. The only successful slave revolt was in Haiti and that was because the slave population was many times larger than the rest of the population and the condition they were put under makes 1984 look like a paradise. Even that revolution was thoroughly crushed and isolated in the end and today we have Haiti as one of the poorest countries in the world. Without a divided elite or an incredibly small and isolated elite you won't get successful rebellion. That's the one part I find impossible to destroy; the greed and ambition of the elite as individuals.

Just read 1984 (never had it assigned in any class) and while I found the notion of an enslaved outer party with all its members' every action and even facial expression watched and controlled with no happiness outside the party a very plausible scenario along with an 85% majority of proles who are ignorant, destitute, and subservient. You can see in the UK already kids being told to rat on their parents for "suspicious activity" in the name of terrorism and there's no reason human beings can't turn into such sheep as to act the way 1984 people acted under just the right conditions. I also see the present building up of supranational entities as potentially a fulfillment of the scenario with only a few dictatorial states. The way technology has progressed today it would be even easier to watch and control people than it was then. Even the permanent war scenario is already being experimented with (war on terror). I even agree with the way the world is described having upper, middle, and lower classes as well as the way they're generally set up (although I think it's not absolute and we've seen that pattern often broken). The one thing I can't possibly believe is the situation in is their description of the inner party which is entirely devoid of individuality and content with a system in which they are all only moderately well off and none are able to improve their situation. In my opinion the only reason we can't have that type of system anywhere which can also be everlasting is because of the ambitions of individuals at the top. I don't doubt the utter stupidity of the vast majority of those not on the top and you can see from America how you can gradually dumb them down with no consequence, but a single unified elite devoid of greed and ambition. What do you guys think of the book and whether it's plausible.

Well as we've seen from tobacco when the government can tax a drug to raise money it will do it and then some. Now that smokers are demonized the government taxes the hell out of them to help fill tax holes and won't do things like ban smoking or at least ban some of the chemicals put into cigarettes to make them more addictive. That would be unprofitable. As for other heavy drugs there would always be the temptation to actually use addicts as a source or revenue rather than try to help them quit. Selling the drugs rather than just taxing them would only make it more problematic. You need to be very careful when you talk about making a profit off of this although the general concept of legalizing and taxing drugs would be sound if done correctly. As a starting point you'd need to legalize just marijuana as it's much more socially accepted than any other illegal drug and doesn't have the addictive qualities brought by withdrawal. I'd also decriminalize the use of heavy drugs, but not the distribution and selling of said drugs.

And if he smashes himself on the head with a brick will it take more money to send him to the hospital or put him in prison for 10 years?

And lol. As I've stated there is only one way to end democracy and you would need ALL 3 branches of government in perfect synchronization to do so. No president, does, will or can have the power to do so. Does it hurt? I mean a lot? You take things off the deep end so often, you must be in a lot of pain. You're honestly trying to compare the Bush administration to 3 of the 5 most devastating events in the 20th century? Not even to mention that they are not even remotely related to this situation. At least Obama has some common sense. Well Nixon never got a serious sentence. That's the problem in the first place. Officials directly from the Nixon/Ford administrations learned from this and became leaders of the Bush administration. There's a difference between Nixon's vice president of the same party, Gerald Ford, pardoning him and Obama of the other party with no indebtedness to the Bush administration pardoning Bush.

The funny thing is you need this funny thing called an investigation to get evidence. You yourself say that it's refreshing that Obama's not touching this issue, but if you don't touch it then you can't get evidence. It defies all logic to say there should be no investigation to find proof and in the same breath tell people you can't do anything without proof. I don't give a damn about Hillary she's shown herself to be willing to do or say anything needed to win no matter how immoral the same way as McCain. If this is about Obama not wanting to cause himself this kind of trouble that you're arguing then fine, but don't pretend its right or that its not what should be done. Obama just changed US policy to no longer allow torture, but even in doing that he's saying the President has the right to decide if we torture and there are no consequences. When the next Bush comes into power and builds on what Bush did to make an even worse disaster you'll again say "stop beating a damn dead horse" assuming he leaves power and at this point building more authoritarianism into Bush's system might just be enough to end democracy and you won't even be free to say what you want. By your logic there really is no point to knowing history because it's just "beating a damn dead horse" and we should instead look to the present and future. WW2? A damn dead horse. The Cold War? A damn dead horse. The Holocaust? A damn dead horse. Who cares really?

Speak for yourself. If lying about a blowjob is enough to almost get you impeached then causing the suffering of millions and getting hundreds of thousands killed for something that you knew was bullshit and for ulterior (not American interests) motives justifies a war crimes tribunal. I'm sick of the only people getting prosecuted being the losers. You might as well not prosecute at all if people think success will make them immune. It's like telling a carjacker that if they manage to actually get the car home then they're free to go.

Notice that whenever crimes by the government aren't properly investigated and prosecuted it gives excuses for future governments to do that and more. It all builds up if its allowed to. Funny enough some of the Nixon/Ford era officials who saw a lack of serious persecution of Nixon who only got caught by some fluke of having incriminated himself on tape learned from those mistakes. What they learned was that if you're more careful you won't get caught instead of learning that if they commit crimes they will get caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Who were those officials again? Oh yeah Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. Oops. What happens next time when Bush era officials come into power with another conservative government. That is the consequences to the future. It's like letting all the criminals go free and hoping no one will try it in the future. It boggles the mind how much people will ignore the past and hope history won't repeat itself without trying to make it not repeat itself.

Then have a good day helping make the world a worse place through apathy.

No its because you are a moderate who hates politics and has become a moderate simply because you hate the party establishment. You'd be a legitimate moderate like NBVegita if you became one by looking at the issues and deciding that is where you fall instead of deciding to become a moderate simply because you think parties are corrupt and there are only 2 parties in our political system. I personally don't like the labels at all because they tie people down and pressure them to automatically take on the mainstream opinion of their general group instead of thinking about it logically and possibly coming to a different conclusion. These labels tend to box us into harmfully rigid positions on everything. Not to be insulting, but it's for your own good and the good of everyone else if you go back to why you decided you had to be a moderate and think it through carefully and clearly and ask yourself "does this actually make sense?" You need to come to opinions on each issue through logic and while certain general ideals you have (everyone should be self sufficient, people should not be greedy, etc.) will influence your take on many issues the "I hate this particular two sided American party establishment so I'll take the middle ground" reason is just a load of crap. Imagine if there were three parties with a corrupt middle party what would you do then? By your logic you'd have to take a center left or center right position to not be part of any party establishment, but then you'd be taking a different position than you do now with no difference in the issues so you're not actually looking for what's the best position on issues and you're not helping anyone.

No NBVegita is a moderate because he's carefully weighed in all the issues and decided his place is around the middle of the American political spectrum. You admit that you hate politics and you automatically think both sides must be bad and therefore the middle is the only place to go. You've made your decision without looking at the issues because you see two corrupt parties. Just because the two parties (the only ones capable of winning because of a flaw in the founding fathers' thinking) are corrupt that doesn't mean liberal and conservative ideas are automatically wrong. You're correct in hating the two party system as do I. I don't stand behind either party I just find the democrats less distasteful. The funny thing is that "moderate" position you force yourself to take based on a flawed analogy is entirely shaped by the two party system. The strength the Republican party has had since Reagan means "moderate" has taken a distinctive tack to the right. Obama's presidency combined with Democratic control of Congress means "moderate" will take a leftward turn in the years ahead. I bet you'll follow just to be a "moderate". The funny thing is you're just as much a slave to the two party system as the people who follow one party or the other blindly. That's what pisses me off about moderates (sorry to NBVegita). Most of them just become moderates out of ignorance and unwillingness to take a serious look at politics. At least conservatives care about something no matter how misguided I think their beliefs are.