genner: Stay classy liberals.

enik: Liberals are classy and not at all vindictive.

Conservatives are both repetitive and vindictive.

Again, apparently I'm the libbiest lib in the world for not adoring Margret Thatcher.

I may respect her for being England's first woman prime minister, and having the resolve to more or less successfully win the Falkland's War.  But her economic philosophy is not popular with me and her actions implementing it were horrid.

But since I'm not falling over myself lionizing her I'm a lib and all libs are classless.

You ever stop and wonder WHY people hate her?  WHY so many people don't like her or other conservative policies?

It's so unfair!  We hate things that harm us!  We should be so much more respectful of those that spit in our faces, take our money for the rich, tell us we're going to hell, question our patriotism and make our lives worse!

Marine1: The difference between the people that hated Thatcher and those who aren't dancing on her grave is that the ones who have a modicum of respect for her are doing something with their lives that doesn't include impotent rage on the internet.

Wut?

Her policies hurt millions of people who are still struggling with the affects of her privatization which enriched a relative few at their expense.

Britain is reeling from the choice to outsource manufacturing. That helped cut labor costs for the already well-off but that put millions out of work. Those millions not working then don't have money to spend to support the wider economy.

Without a healthy middle-class there is no healthy economy. There is only shuffling of benefits to keep the lives of the unemployed from completely exploding while blaming them for not working.

At some point the house of cards collapses and we start hanging bankers and politicians who started this mess from trees.

genner: Stay classy liberals.

enik: Liberals are classy and not at all vindictive.

There are assholes on all sides of the political spectrum.

There's no need to make this a liberal vs. conservative pissing match.

lordaction: More proof on how intolerant and sexist the leftists really are.

Because criticism of one woman means you hate them all? What are you? A Feminazi^TM?

You can sure pack a lot of logical fallacies in one little sentence.

Unpacking, it basically says:

All leftists are intolerant and sexist.

I doubt if you could say that of Nazis or bigoted right-wing nuns, let alone liberals. They may be rare, but some Nazis were feminists, and some bigoted right-wing nuns are feminists of a sort as well.

An additional bonus fallacy of special pleading is committed if you ignore how many conservatives are intolerant and sexist. It is beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, a larger percentage of conservatives than liberals. Liberals are supposed to be tolerant and non-sexist. No doubt some fail but conservatives hold inherently intolerant and distrustful views of humanity, let alone women. It's tradition. It's also inherent in the conservative ideology (insofar as the various groups of people who shelter under that label have anything in common).

Take Hilary Clinton ... please! (rimshot)

Speaking for myself, as a dyed in the wool, registered Thatcher-Hater, there are plenty of women, even obnoxious women, whose qualities I respect.

Laura Bush is charming even if she married George Bush, but Ma Bush is a battleax in any political camp.

Hilary Clinton is abrasive and annoying, but she has some admirable qualities and thus even Republicans might occasionally respect her authoritah. Olympia Snow does not raise my ire whether she is a liberal or conservative, and she has voted as both. Although a Conservative and Texan, you can't help liking the late maverick Governor Ann Richards, even though it was not she who came up with the quip about George H.W. Bush Sr. being born with a silver foot in his mouth (she admitted she was quoting someone else).

In my native Province, the former Mayor of Saint John, MP, and erstwhile half of the Conservative Rump left when the Conservative Party collapsed to a historic low of two MPs, Elsie Wayne is a rabid reactionary on social issues, but has been occasionally quite amusing and shown great spunk. She once dressed as a (male) waiter to get into an event that was closed to her as a woman. And she has a formidable collection of tacky Christmas sweaters, some of which light up. You have to respect her moxy even if you deplore her stupidity. No liberal that I know of has a problem with Mary Robinson of Ireland or Mrs. Brundtland of Norway.

People who dislike Lucretia Borgia, Carrie Nation, or the fictional Lady MacBeth don't necessarily disrespect Florence Nightingale, Madame Curie, or Queen Victoria.

Everybody found Bella Abzug somewhat funny, but that doesn't mean that the whole female sex is funny, or that feminists are funny, or Jews are funny (although you might get a pass for that last one) and it doesn't mean that she was not a lady of some worthy qualities. A sizeable miniority of the female sex is less charming than Ann Coulter. They must number in their scores. But what one feels about Ann Coulter does not translate to her sex or ELSE THE FARKING HUMAN RACE WOULD BE LONG EXTINCT.

It's arrant nonsense to claim that one side of a partisan divide bases its antipathies entirely on the sex or race of their opponents and enemies, even when that side of the partisan divide is notoriously gynophobic, sexist, chauvinistic, bigoted, and racist, as American Conservatives have long been. Some liberal and moderate conservatives, at least, are smart enough not to put down women. They wisely fear them. Even a stupid woman can be a relentless and dangerous adversary.

I refuse to allow any person to equate my well-grounded loathing of that biatch Ann Coulter with a universal gynophobia or even a universal loathing of specifically conservative women or conservatives generally. It isn't strong conservative women who are hated. It is evil Conservative women. It is stupid conservative women. And Ann Coulter is evil and shamelessly and unrelentingly partisan above and beyond the call of duty, or common sense, or reason. She is inherently hateful because she is a professional hater and attention-whore. A website that ranked political pundits on their partisanship found she was the most extremely partisan conservative, with Paul Krugman as the most extremely partisan liberal. But Paul Krugman is a pussy cat compared to Ann Coulter. He may be a partisan but he is also a thinker and reasonably polite and honest.

It as as absurd to claim that the intense dislike that Margaret Thatcher continues to inspire (even among Conservatives, and for that matter, her own former cabinet minister and her own sex) is the product of sexism as it is to claim that antipathy to Adolf Hitler is a product of anti-Germanism or an antipathy to Pol Pot's genocidal policies is pure hatred of, let's say Buddhism or Cambodians or socialism. I doubt if he was even a bad Buddhist. He certainly wasn't a Good Buddhist. He wasn't even a Good Socialist. He was pure evil, like newspaper comics.

Thatcher's strengths were also her vices. She was fearless and strong, but she was a bully. She was moral but she came off as self-righteous, hectoring, a Church Lady. She was sincere in her conservatism, but her conservatism was callous, intolerant and judgmental. She was "patriotic" but also jingoist and chauvinistic, a Little Englander heart, mind, body and soul.

She was larger than life, but like the heroes and heroines of a Greek Tragedy, she was possessed by a tragic flaw that made her a tragic hero--certainly tragic for anybody who got in front of the wheels of her chariot. To those she was Juggernaut, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Cream of Meat: Can a resident limey give me a primer on this lady.  I'm guessing she's the female GWB from the comments above.

She made GWB look like a bleeding-heart limousine liberal. Even Reagan looks like a pussy-cat beside her.

She was the kind of British Conservative who mourns for Ebenezer Scrooge going "wet" after the three ghosts of Socialism Past, Present and Future visit him on Christmas eve.

Marine1:

Dude. It's been thirty farking years. If you can't find a way to escape a situation in that length of time, it's not Margaret Thatcher's fault that you're where you are.

Right working retail service jobs with no pension was a way out.

Note the same has happened in the US.

we used to have a stable manufacturing sector which provided reliable employment and a pension so you wouldn't be eating dogfood on the street after age 65.

Most of that is now gone.

No pensions. Companies neglecting their contractual obligations to fund retirement plans only to have their responsibilities to their employees excused by bankruptcy courts. In the case of UAL they tried to have the government take over the pensions (privatized gains, socialized losses) Savings and "safe" investments destroyed via bank deregulation and insolvency. Seniors having to work to survive keeping jobs out of the hands of the younger generations. Etc.

The destabilization of the middle class also reduces the ability to contribute tax revenue to feed our ever growing debt payments -- mostly for wars we didn't need. Note the deficit and debt skyrocketed during the 80s as Reagan put our "prosperity" on a credit card his generation didn't have to pay off. But no. The wealthy need more tax cuts and offshoring of assets.

The US and the UK are banana republics with a huge gap between the haves and the have nots with the worst social mobility gap since the 1930s.

If you look at the wealthy class in these countries it's usually people from the financial sector and foreign oligharchies with the wealth, not the bootstrappy smart guy who won through a meritocracy.

skullkrusher: Mrtraveler01: Cataholic: Fart_Machine: Cataholic: Hiro-ACiD: Nice win for Nelson Mandela. I imagine he cracked a tallboy and did a little dance.

Amazing that the left has completely whitewashed his reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe

The ANC was the best of both worlds, communist and terrorist.

We get it.  You're still butthurt about the fall of Apartheid.

Careful, your false dichotomy is showing.

I miss Apartheid too.

Nelson Mandela was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Umkhonto we Sizwe engaged in terroristic activities. Looks like it is possible for reality based entities to both oppose Apartheid and call ANC a terrorist organization. At least for the part of its history where Thatcher would be commenting on their activities.

And from the occupying British forces perspective the American rebellion was a bunch of terrorists interfering with crown rule.

We get it. Nelson mandela is black.

cirby: Actually, I have a great idea. We did an equivalent thing here in the US, and it ended up with the same results - a temporary housing bubble, a whole lot of poor people living in houses they couldn't afford, and a bad economy. The Brits did it by selling old housing at low prices.

We did it by "encouraging" banks to loan money to people too poor to actually own homes,

This bullshat again.

If by "we" you mean "private banks that bundled those loans into private securities," and "too poor" you mean "not actually poor, but couldn't afford the loan obligations in a declining market (middle-class with ARMs, speculators, etc)...

cirby: We did it by "encouraging" banks to loan money to people too poor to actually own homes, instead of selling them a bunch of government-owned flats at below-market prices (which led to speculation and a housing bubble, along with a bunch of temporarily-middle-class people who then wasted all of that money).

Ah yes, this debunked derp again.

Anything to get peoples eyes off of the fact the GOP drafted the repeal of Glass-Stegal huh?

Marine1: Irregardless: Thatcher's tenure in a numerical nutshell via Wikipedia.

GDP and public spending by classification - % change in real terms 1979/80 to 1989/90
GDP.                                        +23.3
Total government spending     +12.9
Law and order                          +53.3
Employment and training         +33.3
Health                                      +31.8
Social security                         +31.8
Transport                                 −5.8
Trade and industry                  −38.2
Housing                                   −67.0
Defence                                   −3.3

Looks like a relatively good run to me.

UK GDP doubled in that time, so did pound inflation. So it should be more like a 100% real GDP increase, 0% nominal increase.

Norfolking Chance:
The entire country was up shiat creek with rampant unemployment, nationalised industries that had dragged the country into bankruptcy and unions whose leadership were living the good life and wanted to be more powerful than the elected government.

While her medicine may have been bad something needed to be done and Labour had no idea what to do.

Well congrats on making a bad situation worse.

The unemployment numbers were a myth. They took all those workers and instead of calling them unemployed (which would have made the policy change look as bad as it was) they put people on "benefits" intended for those unable to work through disability. Now the number of people out of work is actually worse than before but masked because they were reclassified. Sound familiar? The US has a similar smoke and mirrors game where people who are underemployed or fall off the other end because they can't find work aren't counted.

Offshoring manufacturing so that the remaining local workforce has to compete with 3rd world labor rates creates a 3rd world standard of living here. Look at our roads, bridges, rail, education, healthcare infrastructure. All crumbling because of a severely reduced middle class wage earner tax base to pay for the trappings of civilization. Only the top 10% have the security our post WWII parents and grandparents had.

We're now a "service economy" with crap benefits and no retirement plans and poor safety nets for those who really need help. Welcome back to 1870.

rufus-t-firefly: So, if our dislike of Thatcher means we're sexist, does that mean that everyone who dislikes Obama is racist?

It works the same way, yeah.

UNC_Samurai: genner: Stay classy liberals.

Somehow I don't think political ideology is the underlying factor with mining towns and other segments of the population that got the business end of her policies, but by all means continue to lay down your partisan trolling hackery.

I was just remembering how the mines and other government owned businesses were models of efficiency and how great the Britsh economy was doing before Thatcher took office.

LewDux: Mrtraveler01: Smoky Dragon Dish: Infinity370: To all whining rightwingers. You all celebrated when Chavez died, you hypocrites.

I didn't.

I was pretty indifferent when he died. I mean he was a big loudmouth who liked to start shiat for no reason. But outside of Venezuela, he wasn't harming anyone.

Inside Venezuela though, he was hurting a lot of people and caused the two sides to drift further apart.

He even helped people abroad, for example farcers in Colombia

He provided free heating oil to the United States.  Citizens Energy, run by Joe Kennedy, ran ads about this on TV here in the Northeast, where heating oil is pretty commonplace.

Cream of Meat: Can a resident limey give me a primer on this lady.  I'm guessing she's the female GWB from the comments above.

Not a Brit, but she was more like Ronald Reagan than GWB.

Smoky Dragon Dish: Infinity370: To all whining rightwingers. You all celebrated when Chavez died, you hypocrites.

I didn't.

I was pretty indifferent when he died. I mean he was a big loudmouth who liked to start shiat for no reason. But outside of Venezuela, he wasn't harming anyone.

Inside Venezuela though, he was hurting a lot of people and caused the two sides to drift further apart.