Majick Thise: Senator Simpson, I'd like you to meat Speaker John Boehner

what exactly are you proposing?

Show me a guy with scissor hands and I'll show you a guy with no penis.

_{Cuz we like to touch our peni... often}

The Iconoclast: tenpoundsofcheese: whoa. a guy who is working for the 0bama administration has negative comments about the GOP!


Where is Rick Romero when there is breaking news like this!

So, is this cheese running out of your ears?

troll.

that is weak trolling even for you or your alt.

FloydA: [i105.photobucket.com image 240x232]
RINO

I freaking hate you right now.

Why do we even bother making elected officials take an oath of office?

The Iconoclast: sad tear rolls down face

I feel sorry for you.

You have my forgiveness. I forgive you.

I really do.

Doc Daneeka: What are you talking about? 1st amendment rights are (rightly) restricted in all sorts of ways.

You have freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to libel, slander, plagiarize, incite a riot, make threats against the President, etc.

You have freedom of religion, but the courts have ruled that doesn't mean you are allowed to incorporate illegal things (drugs, polygamy, etc) into your religious practice, even if that is a sincere part of your belief system.

If you believe that the freedoms and rights laid out in the Constitution should be completely unfettered and uncompromised, you are mistaken.

That was a perfectly good response right up until that last line that adds absolutely nothing but does detract from your entire posting by making it appear argumentative for argument's sake. You just lost the average reader who was reading "good point, good point... oh he's an asshole so forget everything he said". Gotta know when to quit while you're ahead.

Today's GOP got their negotiating skills from watching Roadhouse. And by watching, I mean fapping.

Okay, Alan - I'll show you EVERY SINGLE FARKING REPUBLICAN IN OFFICE TODAY.

Show me a guy with an itchy ass and I'll show you a guy with a stinky finger.

That's insulting to rocks.

hubiestubert 2012-05-28 06:09:26 PM

Veloram: He's a realist, and therefore impure in the eyes of St. Grover.

That's part of the problem with NeoCons as a movement, is a promotion of subjective reality. Not just as a way of explaining how belief systems can promote a narrative, but now pushed as a means of demanding equal time for bald faced falsehoods that they can then claim have equal footing with facts. It's made far worse, when you have an entire Justification Machine in publishing and in the media to push these beliefs as if they had any basis in reality. This is why Birtherism is still around. This is why Trickle Down Economics is no longer Voodoo Economics, we have an industry whose entire basis is to prop up and defend the indefensible, and make it at least seem plausible. Inconveniently not true, but it could be if you were to just ignore facts, figures, and just believe. Which is part, why NeoCons and the Evangelicals have gotten along so well. They both need to refute those pesky eggheads who have independent peer reviewed articles, and instead, have had to manufacture wholecloth, a chain of institutions and journals along with media and captive authors to generate the illusion of scholarship, full well knowing that a lot of folks don't actually check credentials.

By pushing this very subjective reality, and passing it off as if it were indeed fact, and entirely cutting it free from even the remotest of connection with the original use within their own movement of the term, we have the sh*tbag that is the current crop of manufactured journals and media support for asinine ideas, that just "ask the question."

The intellectual dishonesty was what turned me off NeoConservatives to begin with, a willful misrepresentation of the original material not withstanding, it is essentially looking to a misquoted, often entirely out of context passage in a wayward journal, and looking to promote THAT as a central premise to lie, cheat, and then claim, because they have a "belief" that it has to be given equal time.

It is a whining, puling, gut maggoty sort of cretinous malformation of intellectual process, and trying to paint this disingenuous asshattery as "noble."

And then to double down upon their "belief" and the insistence that it has equal footing with facts, and then to declare intellectual Jihad against those Unbelievers, whilst simultaneous trying to cry Holocaust when someone dares refute them.

This is what we are faced with. Grover Norquist and his ilk are not just poor scholars, not just willfully ignorant economists, distorting facts to accommodate a raiding of the Federal and State piggy banks, but they are whiny little girls who cry "HE HIT BACK!" when you call them on their douchebaggery.

It isn't confined to the Right, but Gottverdammt they made it mainstream...

[quoting from elsewhere in the Net...]

Journalist Ron Suskind relates a chilling conversation he had in 2002 with a senior aide to George W. Bush, who taunted Suskind for being a person from "what we call the reality-based community."

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as "people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."....

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," [the aide] continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Doc Daneeka: Virtuoso80: For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

What are you talking about? 1st amendment rights are (rightly) restricted in all sorts of ways.

You have freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to libel, slander, plagiarize, incite a riot, make threats against the President, etc.

This might be semantic quibbling, but those things are not First Amendment rights, for precisely the reasons you point out. So if someone asks me "is it okay to abridge free speech in some circumstances?," my answer is yes; if someone asks me "is it okay to restrict First Amendment rights in some circumstances?," my answer is no.

Now, did the poster you were responding to have that distinction in mind? I have no idea.

coeyagi: Cyno01: You dont compromise if someone is just plain wrong though. If youve got one side saying 2+2=4, and one side saying 2+2=6, you dont compromise and agree that 2+2=5.

I was unaware that most political issues were clearcut mathematical or scientific facts called into question.

(checks the record)...

Oh, there is that man-made climate change thing. Yep, still waiting for the Great Compromisers on the Right to come around to that one...

Nice...because you used the word 'most' rather than 'any' or no adjective at all, the rest of us are now expected to come up with a significant number of issues to fit your parameters.

*golf clap*

Simpson is still an inhuman butthole who wants to destroy Social Security. Just because you see Jason in a fight with Freddy Krueger doesn't mean that Jason has become a good guy.

tenpoundsofcheese: The Iconoclast: sad tear rolls down face

I feel sorry for you.

You have my forgiveness. I forgive you.

I really do.


The Taste of Banzo's Sword

Matajuro Yagyu was the son of a famous swordsman. His father, believing that his son's work was too mediocre to anticipate mastership, disowned him.

So Matajuro went to Mount Futara and there found the famous swordsman Banzo. But Banzo confirmed the father's judgment. "You wish to learn swordsmanship under my guidance?" asked Banzo. "You cannot fulfill the requirements."

"But if I work hard, how many years will it take me to become a master?" persisted the youth.

"The rest of your life," replied Banzo.

"I cannot wait that long," explained Matajuro. "I am willing to pass through any hardship if only you will teach me. If I become your devoted servant, how long might it be?"

"Oh, maybe ten years," Banzo relented.

"My father is getting old, and soon I must take care of him," continued Matajuro. "If I work far more intensively, how long would it take me?"

"Oh, maybe thirty years," said Banzo.

"Why is that?" asked Matajuro. "First you say ten and now thirty years. I will undergo any hardship to master this art in the shortest time!"

"Well," said Banzo, "in that case you will have to remain with me for seventy years. A man in such a hurry as you are to get results seldom learns quickly."

"Very well," declared the youth, understanding at last that he was being rebuked for impatience, "I agree."

Matajuro was told never to speak of fencing and never to touch a sword. He cooked for his master, washed the dishes, made his bed, cleaned the yard, cared for the garden, all without a word of swordsmanship.

Three years passed. Still Matajuro labored on. Thinking of his future, he was sad. He had not even begun to learn the art to which he had devoted his life.

But one day Banzo crept up behind him and gave him a terrific blow with a wooden sword.

The following day, when Matajuro was cooking rice, Banzo again sprang upon him unexpectedly.

After that, day and night, Matajuro had to defend himself from unexpected thrusts. Not a moment passed in any day that he did not have to think of the taste of Banzo's sword.

He learned so rapidly he brought smiles to the face of his master. Matajuro became the greatest swordsman in the land.

maniacbastard: I can has a rock brain?

Mongo only pawn in game of life.

gameshowhost: I'm imagining the set of candidates as a bluegrass band.

Michelle yodels.

"I'm pretty sure the Earth is spherical and not flat, but I'm willing to compromise!"

Super Chronic: Doc Daneeka: Virtuoso80: For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

What are you talking about? 1st amendment rights are (rightly) restricted in all sorts of ways.

You have freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to libel, slander, plagiarize, incite a riot, make threats against the President, etc.

This might be semantic quibbling, but those things are not First Amendment rights, for precisely the reasons you point out. So if someone asks me "is it okay to abridge free speech in some circumstances?," my answer is yes; if someone asks me "is it okay to restrict First Amendment rights in some circumstances?," my answer is no.

Now, did the poster you were responding to have that distinction in mind? I have no idea.

You're contradicting yourself there. You can't argue simultaneously that free speech can be abridged but the first amendment, which says that free speech shall not be abridged, cannot be restriced.

St_Francis_P: FlashHarry: he's right, of course. and his norquist quote is hilarious: "For heaven's sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he'll defeat you. He can't murder you. He can't burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we're in extremity, you shouldn't even be in Congress."

This man has no place in today's GOP.

He is today's GOP. Remember only yesterday when Democrats were saying his policies would force seniors to eat cat food? Obama put him on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform where he was immediately denounced by the non-compromising Democrats as a radical right-wing tea-party fanatic.

This only proved his corollary; Show me a man with a rock for a brain and I'll show you a Democrat.

InvertedB: Sad that he is "former" senator, not current.

That's the problem, he says this now, but he wasn't saying it when he was in office. If he had balls up before he and his type could have spared their party the effect of the Tea Party

Ah, the new "every belief must be tempered with compromise or it's extremisim" meme...


"Slavery is always wrong."
"Are you willing to compromise on that?"
"No."
"EXTREMIST IDIOT!"

Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-easonable Republican): "Show me a guy who won't compromise and I'll show you a guy with rock for brains"



(pops)

Virtuoso80: Compromise is neither always good or always bad. Our country and society are based on certain principles, and violating those principles in the name of compromise is not a positive thing.

For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

On the other hand, if the consequences of non-compromise are worse than the compromise, then obviously it's beneficial to compromise. For example: We need to pass a budget or else nothing gets paid for, so unless you really think letting the Federal Government grind to a halt is better (and some do), then obviously some kind of compromise has to be reached.

It's seriously not that complicated, but unfortunately all the partisan absolutism is this country blurs rational thought in favor of reactionary thought.

Your position seems to be equivalent to "the government should do whatever is best." But everyone agrees to that. I don't see how compromise plays any special role in the position you just stated. You started by saying that compromise was neither always good nor always bad. Then you said that compromise on the first amendment was always bad. Then you said that if non-compromise is bad, then we should compromise. That's a borderline inconsistent position, but I'm not sure where to be more charitable in my interpretation of what you said.

Chimperror2: St_Francis_P: FlashHarry: he's right, of course. and his norquist quote is hilarious: "For heaven's sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he'll defeat you. He can't murder you. He can't burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we're in extremity, you shouldn't even be in Congress."

This man has no place in today's GOP.

He is today's GOP. Remember only yesterday when Democrats were saying his policies would force seniors to eat cat food? Obama put him on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform where he was immediately denounced by the non-compromising Democrats as a radical right-wing tea-party fanatic.

This only proved his corollary; Show me a man with a rock for a brain and I'll show you a Democrat.

You can tap-dance around it all night long, but the fact is that this guy is talking about the Teabaggers, we both know it, and we both know he's right. Can't you ever make any adult, relevant contribution to a discussion? Must you always interrup every dicussion with your threadshiatting attempts to change the subject? just because you lack the interest or the intellectual tools to discuss the matter at hand, doesn't mean that the rest of us need to stop talking about what we are talking about, and talk about what YOU want to talk about - it's pretty obnoxious attention-whoring.
It's bloody rude, actually.

The problem with everyone adopting an all or nothing attitude is that mostly you end up with a lot of nothing that way.

the opposite of charity is justice: [reddogreport.com image 600x349]

Every single one of the above pledged on a nationwide broadcast that they would NOT accept even a 10:1 ratio of budget cuts to tax increases. And one of these brainiacs now has a shot at the Oval Office.

/actually, Huntsman *might* have dropped out by then, not sure

Lol. Buddy's not even up there.

Jeeeeeesus are we boned or what?

TofuTheAlmighty: Simpson is an idiot and an asshole. That he fails to dial the crazy to 11 doesn't make him "reasonable."

qorkfiend: Super Chronic: Doc Daneeka: Virtuoso80: For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

What are you talking about? 1st amendment rights are (rightly) restricted in all sorts of ways.

You have freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to libel, slander, plagiarize, incite a riot, make threats against the President, etc.

This might be semantic quibbling, but those things are not First Amendment rights, for precisely the reasons you point out. So if someone asks me "is it okay to abridge free speech in some circumstances?," my answer is yes; if someone asks me "is it okay to restrict First Amendment rights in some circumstances?," my answer is no.

Now, did the poster you were responding to have that distinction in mind? I have no idea.

You're contradicting yourself there. You can't argue simultaneously that free speech can be abridged but the first amendment, which says that free speech shall not be abridged, cannot be restriced.

Incorrect, as pointed out in the post I was responding to.

logic523: Virtuoso80: Compromise is neither always good or always bad. Our country and society are based on certain principles, and violating those principles in the name of compromise is not a positive thing.

For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

On the other hand, if the consequences of non-compromise are worse than the compromise, then obviously it's beneficial to compromise. For example: We need to pass a budget or else nothing gets paid for, so unless you really think letting the Federal Government grind to a halt is better (and some do), then obviously some kind of compromise has to be reached.

It's seriously not that complicated, but unfortunately all the partisan absolutism is this country blurs rational thought in favor of reactionary thought.

Your position seems to be equivalent to "the government should do whatever is best." But everyone agrees to that. I don't see how compromise plays any special role in the position you just stated. You started by saying that compromise was neither always good nor always bad. Then you said that compromise on the first amendment was always bad. Then you said that if non-compromise is bad, then we should compromise. That's a borderline inconsistent position, but I'm not sure where to be more charitable in my interpretation of what you said.

I see you've encountered Pragmatism for the first time.

Congratulations, it only gets more ambiguous from here, brave pilgrim.

Super Chronic: qorkfiend: Super Chronic: Doc Daneeka: Virtuoso80: For example, if you wanted to restrict 1st amendment rights, and I didn't, the solution is not, "well, let's just restrict them a little bit." The solution is to protect the principles laid out in that amendment without compromise.

What are you talking about? 1st amendment rights are (rightly) restricted in all sorts of ways.

You have freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to libel, slander, plagiarize, incite a riot, make threats against the President, etc.

This might be semantic quibbling, but those things are not First Amendment rights, for precisely the reasons you point out. So if someone asks me "is it okay to abridge free speech in some circumstances?," my answer is yes; if someone asks me "is it okay to restrict First Amendment rights in some circumstances?," my answer is no.

Now, did the poster you were responding to have that distinction in mind? I have no idea.

You're contradicting yourself there. You can't argue simultaneously that free speech can be abridged but the first amendment, which says that free speech shall not be abridged, cannot be restriced.

Incorrect, as pointed out in the post I was responding to.

1st Amendment: "Freedom of speech shall not be abridged." This cannot be restricted, or put another way, freedom of speech shall not be abridged. At the same time, freedom of speech can be abridged. You seriously don't see a contradiction there?

jso2897: Chimperror2:

He is today's GOP. Remember only yesterday when Democrats were saying his policies would force seniors to eat cat food? Obama put him on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform where he was immediately denounced by the non-compromising Democrats as a radical right-wing tea-party fanatic.

This only proved his corollary; Show me a man with a rock for a brain and I'll show you a Democrat.

You can tap-dance around it all night long, but the fact is that this guy is talking about the Teabaggers, we both know it, and we both know he's right. Can't you ever make any adult, relevant contribution to a discussion? Must you always interrup every dicussion with your threadshiatting attempts to change the subject? just because you lack the interest or the intellectual tools to discuss the matter at hand, doesn't mean that the rest of us need to stop talking about what we are talking about, and talk about what YOU want to talk about - it's pretty obnoxious attention-whoring.
It's bloody rude, actually.

Welcome to fark. Now go read the news on Alan Simpson and you will see what he spoke about last week. You can see what he spoke about over the weekend. He's a fiscally conservative and socially liberal Republican (OMG, RON PAUL). he takes issue with the morality wing of the republican party (and always has) and his biggest issue is with the lack of will to cut social security spending. Increasing taxes is a small nit and a compromise that he and Erskine Bowles made. The other side of that compromise was social security spending cuts that Democrats wouldn't vote for. Sorry but that's the facts. Huff Po just glazes over it. You can spin it around to tea party if you like but you would have your head in the sand. Simpson wants republicans to support the tax hike and dems to support the social security cuts that the commission proposed. Can't have one without the other. He's right, too.

Kittypie070: hubiestubert 2012-05-28 06:09:26 PM

Veloram: He's a realist, and therefore impure in the eyes of St. Grover.

That's part of the problem with NeoCons as a movement, is a promotion of subjective reality. Not just as a way of explaining how belief systems can promote a narrative, but now pushed as a means of demanding equal time for bald faced falsehoods that they can then claim have equal footing with facts. It's made far worse, when you have an entire Justification Machine in publishing and in the media to push these beliefs as if they had any basis in reality. This is why Birtherism is still around. This is why Trickle Down Economics is no longer Voodoo Economics, we have an industry whose entire basis is to prop up and defend the indefensible, and make it at least seem plausible. Inconveniently not true, but it could be if you were to just ignore facts, figures, and just believe. Which is part, why NeoCons and the Evangelicals have gotten along so well. They both need to refute those pesky eggheads who have independent peer reviewed articles, and instead, have had to manufacture wholecloth, a chain of institutions and journals along with media and captive authors to generate the illusion of scholarship, full well knowing that a lot of folks don't actually check credentials.

By pushing this very subjective reality, and passing it off as if it were indeed fact, and entirely cutting it free from even the remotest of connection with the original use within their own movement of the term, we have the sh*tbag that is the current crop of manufactured journals and media support for asinine ideas, that just "ask the question."

The intellectual dishonesty was what turned me off NeoConservatives to begin with, a willful misrepresentation of the original material not withstanding, it is essentially looking to a misquoted, often entirely out of context passage in a wayward journal, and looking to promote THAT as a central premise to lie, cheat, and then claim, because t ...

I like the way that the late, great, Dwayne McDuffie put it, when debating someone on his own forum who used these tactics:

"So, your argument basically boils down to, 'If we assume for the sake of argument that the world doesn't work the way that it actually does in reality, will you admit that I'm right?'"

Virtuoso80: Compromise is neither always good or always bad. Our country and society are based on certain principles, and violating those principles in the name of compromise is not a positive thing.

It's seriously not that complicated, but unfortunately all the partisan absolutism is this country blurs rational thought in favor of reactionary thought.

^THIS^
/keep it simple

St_Francis_P: FlashHarry: he's right, of course. and his norquist quote is hilarious: "For heaven's sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he'll defeat you. He can't murder you. He can't burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we're in extremity, you shouldn't even be in Congress."

This man has no place in today's GOP.


What's sad is how the bar keeps getting moved lower and lower for who qualifies as a reasonable Republican. Alan Simpson is a raving jackass, always has been. And now he's the Voice of Reason because the insane wingnuts have moved so far to the right even he can't stand them.

I am gods damned tired of these people who deliberately twist observable reality and call the twisted crap the "actual real reality" when even a f*cked up crazy person like me can see that their "reality" is constructed of SHIAT decorated with cheap plastic American flags and dollar store glitter made in China.

What the barking mad hatter hell is next, that they're going to claim that the daytime sky down here in the dirt is actually black with stars and only filthy satanic commie lib progressive collectivist hippies see a daytime sky that's illuminated by an arcane demonic illusion once described as the sun??

Lies plastered over with other lies based on previous lies, and such a mad mixup that they might never dig through to a usable truth....Where could such insanity have had its beginnings? Was it the Harkonnen's doing?

~~ Frank Herbert -- Heretics of Dune

Kittypie070: I am gods damned tired of these people who deliberately twist observable reality and call the twisted crap the "actual real reality" when even a f*cked up crazy person like me can see that their "reality" is constructed of SHIAT decorated with cheap plastic American flags and dollar store glitter made in China.

What the barking mad hatter hell is next, that they're going to claim that the daytime sky down here in the dirt is actually black with stars and only filthy satanic commie lib progressive collectivist hippies see a daytime sky that's illuminated by an arcane demonic illusion once described as the sun??

Lies plastered over with other lies based on previous lies, and such a mad mixup that they might never dig through to a usable truth....Where could such insanity have had its beginnings? Was it the Harkonnen's doing?

~~ Frank Herbert -- Heretics of Dune

So you're saying you want to be an axlotl tank?