Rick Perry is an asshole

he is damned sexy.

Smettingham Rutherford iVth finally coming out of the closet as a middle aged woman.

I bloody knew it!

  On 8/22/2011 at 4:53 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

ima go ahead and start shit by saying I am probably far, far, far more liberal than any of you hippie freaks.

 

 

 

flame war throwdown

I shall pick up your gauntlet, my flame-baiting friend...

I'm way more liberal than you.

  On 8/20/2011 at 4:25 PM, Rubin Farr said:

What more can I say except please America don't fall for the same country shit twice!

 

http://m.yahoo.com/w...=us&.lang=en-us

For some reason i read the thread title as "Rick James is an asshole". To wit i thought, no he isn't, he's Rick James biatch. But then i went to the article and the funky flame in my soul dimmed for a moment, oh, that git.

It was entertaining, in the few moments in the article, wondering why the hell rick james would want to change the constitution. But then reality is kooky enough, with people like rick perry around, eh.

edit : I just remembered that rick james is dead. Now i'm a little sad.

Voting for the "lesser of two evils" will just perpetuate the status quo. Both parties are equally crooked and bought. Vote for a 3rd party candidate or write-in, whatever else than voting for either of the two major parties.

Gary Johnson?

  On 8/22/2011 at 4:53 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

ima go ahead and start shit by saying I am probably far, far, far more liberal than any of you hippie freaks.

 

flame war throwdown

No way man, me and Jeferoo's gay salvia babies have you beat.

  On 8/22/2011 at 4:44 PM, azatoth said:

Voting for the "lesser of two evils" will just perpetuate the status quo. Both parties are equally crooked and bought. Vote for a 3rd party candidate or write-in, whatever else than voting for either of the two major parties.

It is an admirable thing to vote for a 3rd party candidate in general. However, just because someone is 3rd party doesn't mean that they are absolved from corruption. I don't think it is the smartest thing voting on a 3rd party ticket just because it is 3rd party.

If The Situation from Jersey Shore was the only contender running on a 3rd party ticket, it would be idiotic of me just to throw away a vote to make a point.

I think it also depends on what the numbers are and if there is a TERRIBLE candidate that would benefit from a vote for your 3rd party pick in a main election.

Also, there isn't anything wrong with voting for a candidate you like. A lot of "libertarians" will vote for Ron Paul, who is technically a republican. Does this mean they shouldn't vote for him if they like him AND if they want to combat the 2 party system?

You just need to choose your battles.

It is more meaningful to show your 3rd party support in primaries. If you feel passionate about this, I would hope that you campaign and volunteer in support of your 3rd party candidate of preference.

Voting for The Situation is definitely not throwing away a vote.

  On 8/22/2011 at 7:56 PM, jefferoo said:

  On 8/22/2011 at 4:44 PM, azatoth said:

Voting for the "lesser of two evils" will just perpetuate the status quo. Both parties are equally crooked and bought. Vote for a 3rd party candidate or write-in, whatever else than voting for either of the two major parties.

 

It is an admirable thing to vote for a 3rd party candidate in general. However, just because someone is 3rd party doesn't mean that they are absolved from corruption. I don't think it is the smartest thing voting on a 3rd party ticket just because it is 3rd party.

If The Situation from Jersey Shore was the only contender running on a 3rd party ticket, it would be idiotic of me just to throw away a vote to make a point.

I think it also depends on what the numbers are and if there is a TERRIBLE candidate that would benefit from a vote for your 3rd party pick in a main election.

Also, there isn't anything wrong with voting for a candidate you like. A lot of "libertarians" will vote for Ron Paul, who is technically a republican. Does this mean they shouldn't vote for him if they like him AND if they want to combat the 2 party system?

You just need to choose your battles.

It is more meaningful to show your 3rd party support in primaries. If you feel passionate about this, I would hope that you campaign and volunteer in support of your 3rd party candidate of preference.

^This - It sucks being pragmatic and voting for one of the two party candidates, but that's the reality of 2012. I highly doubt a 3rd party option, even a Ross Perot populist type, will show up. Besides, the Tea Party horseshit has both muddled up third party options and fucked over any possibility of a moderate being nominated.

For example, in Texas, party declaration/registration is required to vote for primaries. I vote for the moderates and libertarians in the GOP elections then usually vote for a Democrat in the actual elections. It's paid off, in one of the State Board of Education primaries a moderate Republican won over a creationist anti-global warming extremist. The GOP moderate then lost to a Democrat. So just try to fight the battles you can win.

If you are not showing the two parties in power that you are tied of their shit, then how else can you make them differentiate from each other and actually start listening to their voters instead of their corporate overlords? It has to start from somewhere. If a legit and sane 3rd party option would grow from the grassroots then maybe more people would take their votes from the two big ones and there would be some change in the political stage. Right now, this voting for either/or is doing nothing to change the current situation. But it seems to me that at large the Americans are very reluctant to engage in change, they are happy as long as they have their apple pie, cable and baseball. Even if it's clear that the largest part of the Americans are being fucked in the ass by big finance and the wealthy elite and they have a distorted idea of their position in society, they believe themselves to be on a higher social class than they really are. Is it the spin machines that are the media that is the cause of this, who keep feeding the illusion that they all have a shot at the "american dream"?

  On 8/23/2011 at 7:14 PM, azatoth said:

If you are not showing the two parties in power that you are tied of their shit, then how else can you make them differentiate from each other and actually start listening to their voters instead of their corporate overlords? It has to start from somewhere. If a legit and sane 3rd party option would grow from the grassroots then maybe more people would take their votes from the two big ones and there would be some change in the political stage. Right now, this voting for either/or is doing nothing to change the current situation. But it seems to me that at large the Americans are very reluctant to engage in change, they are happy as long as they have their apple pie, cable and baseball. Even if it's clear that the largest part of the Americans are being fucked in the ass by big finance and the wealthy elite and they have a distorted idea of their position in society, they believe themselves to be on a higher social class than they really are. Is it the spin machines that are the media that is the cause of this, who keep feeding the illusion that they all have a shot at the "american dream"?

I would say people in the US, for the most part, know where they stand economically. The disconnect is formed where the illusion is created that they will actually be able to climb out of their respective economic brackets and up to the monetary elite. Yes, the media feeds this idea.

  On 8/23/2011 at 7:19 PM, patternoverlap said:

  On 8/23/2011 at 7:14 PM, azatoth said:

If you are not showing the two parties in power that you are tied of their shit, then how else can you make them differentiate from each other and actually start listening to their voters instead of their corporate overlords? It has to start from somewhere. If a legit and sane 3rd party option would grow from the grassroots then maybe more people would take their votes from the two big ones and there would be some change in the political stage. Right now, this voting for either/or is doing nothing to change the current situation. But it seems to me that at large the Americans are very reluctant to engage in change, they are happy as long as they have their apple pie, cable and baseball. Even if it's clear that the largest part of the Americans are being fucked in the ass by big finance and the wealthy elite and they have a distorted idea of their position in society, they believe themselves to be on a higher social class than they really are. Is it the spin machines that are the media that is the cause of this, who keep feeding the illusion that they all have a shot at the "american dream"?

 

I would say people in the US, for the most part, know where they stand economically. The disconnect is formed where the illusion is created that they will actually be able to climb out of their respective economic brackets and up to the monetary elite. Yes, the media feeds this idea.

I agree with you both. There is a huge amount of ignorance and false security that. Most Americans don't vote. Of the few who do, many are, to be quite blunt, complete idiots, either voting for the GOP because they are draconian, religious nuts or the Dems because they actually believe that that party is just as ready to feed them false hope and bullshit.

Like I've said, I'm a pragmatic person. I can't simply say "we're completely fucked" because that's just cynical apathy. I'm still going to try to vote for the few people in the system I like and respect. And I can't attest for how bad things are in Washington or how things are overseas, but in the state legislation I work for, there are a fair amount of public officials who do the best they can without being demonized. In other words, the good guys lose elections, so many fake it and try to change things without getting kicked out. Just one the reason reform and progress is so slow here.

I apply sunscreen liberally

  On 8/23/2011 at 7:19 PM, patternoverlap said:

  On 8/23/2011 at 7:14 PM, azatoth said:

If you are not showing the two parties in power that you are tied of their shit, then how else can you make them differentiate from each other and actually start listening to their voters instead of their corporate overlords? It has to start from somewhere. If a legit and sane 3rd party option would grow from the grassroots then maybe more people would take their votes from the two big ones and there would be some change in the political stage. Right now, this voting for either/or is doing nothing to change the current situation. But it seems to me that at large the Americans are very reluctant to engage in change, they are happy as long as they have their apple pie, cable and baseball. Even if it's clear that the largest part of the Americans are being fucked in the ass by big finance and the wealthy elite and they have a distorted idea of their position in society, they believe themselves to be on a higher social class than they really are. Is it the spin machines that are the media that is the cause of this, who keep feeding the illusion that they all have a shot at the "american dream"?

 

I would say people in the US, for the most part, know where they stand economically. The disconnect is formed where the illusion is created that they will actually be able to climb out of their respective economic brackets and up to the monetary elite. Yes, the media feeds this idea.

If the people of the US knew where they stood economically, a third-party socialist candidate would win the presidential election by a landslide. Its all cognitive dissonance. You get the tax cuts that spur job creation, that creation never happens, the income gap widens, but due to our distorted sense of American exceptionalism and the increasing fantasy of the entrepreneur conquering everything, we are told to "pull ourselves up" and we buy into it, not realizing there is a gigantic finger pinning us to the ground.

If people were actually acutely aware of the increasing economic disparity and the failure of both the Obama and Bush neoliberal economies, this shit would end. The problem is we can't let go of our old fantasies.

I mean for fucks sake, unemployment is near 12% (the 9.2 number is juked stats), and Obama is playing golf and vacationing in the Vineyard. How the fuck does this not disgust the people that voted Bush out for the same reason?

Presidents need vacations. I never cared when Bush took them either.

Yea, I'd vote socialist, but again, we're in a two party system, there are laws that make it hard for 3rd parties to win, not to mention the media doesn't give a shit about them. That's why I vote democrat, even though I wouldn't consider myself one. Lesser of two evils, by a long shot. At least this time around.

Edit: Most Americans don't know shit. If a socialist candidate could even go up against democrats and republicans I doubt they'd win anyway. Americans associate Socialism with Communism and Authoritarianism for some reason, so it won't happen anytime soon.

  On 8/24/2011 at 8:12 PM, Murveman said:

Presidents need vacations. I never cared when Bush took them either.

 

Yea, I'd vote socialist, but again, we're in a two party system, there are laws that make it hard for 3rd parties to win, not to mention the media doesn't give a shit about them. That's why I vote democrat, even though I wouldn't consider myself one. Lesser of two evils, by a long shot. At least this time around.

 

Edit: Most Americans don't know shit. If a socialist candidate could even go up against democrats and republicans I doubt they'd win anyway. Americans associate Socialism with Communism and Authoritarianism for some reason, so it won't happen anytime soon.

How the hell is this administration the lesser of two evils?

-Expansion of wars and interventionist policy

-No repeal of the Bush tax cuts

-No repeal of the Patriot Act

-No REAL stimulus for the consumer

-We are gonna see cuts in SS and Medicare soon, I guarantee you

-Failed economic regulation policies (I guess you could argue this happened due to corruption and inefficiency of officials, but isn't that whole argument hypocracy?)

-Unemployment is so fucking bad now that the administration now admits that 8% unemployment is "structural"

-STILL second lowest corporate tax rate in the ENTIRE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD

-second lowest corporate tax rate in AMERICAN HISTORY

-No corporate tax loopholes fixed

-Ben Bernake is a fucking idiot, or at least pretends to be

http://www.bloomberg...-month-low.html

-The administration is priding themselves on the fact that they saved 2000 jobs in three months.

I know you guys said Paul's deregulation policies are batshit crazy, and you are right. But at least the motherfucker is up front about how he wants to screw it up. Obama is letting them do it anyway under the pretense of reaching across the aisle! I would say hes just as much of a puppet as Bush was at this point.

-Failed and greviously cut stimulus spending

-Fucked up healthcare proposal

-No investigations into the bloated derivatives bubble (which btw, is over 600 TRILLION dollars)

It is time to stop this embarrassingly ignorant posture of forgiving an utterly incompetent administration and adhering to the idiocy of partisan politics and shallow moralism despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. People need to grow the fuck up and get real.

http://nationalsecur...lenge-or-is-it/

Paid 640 billion dollars in defense expenditures in 2009....you think its gotten cheaper?

This is the "lesser of two evils?" What kind of crackpot planet do I live on?

http://krugman.blogs...ation-nation-2/

hey, check it out!

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/07/military-dod-panel-calls-for-radical-retirement-overhaul-072511

even the foot soldiers of the wealthy get nothing for risking their lives!

http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/07/ge-ceo-jeffrey-immelt-the-head-of-obama%E2%80%99s-jobs-council-is-moving-jobs-and-economic-infrastructure-to-china-at-a-blistering-pace/

Full article:

is it 'lesser of two evils' that Obama has literally prosecuted more whistle-blowers in the history of the united states than ANY OTHER previous president in history COMBINED.

what Obama has done is actually more dangerous than Bush because he's put a 'new normal' on all this horridness and everybody who hated bush and voted for him has completely let their guard down to the point of almost spreading out their assholes like a gaping porn star.

  Quote

here has been a lot of talk during the election frenzy about how "extreme" and ultra right-wing Rick Perry is. Many corporate news pundits are uniformly insisting that people of liberal persuasion must, no matter what, vote for Obama, simply because of how terrifying the other options may be: Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, oddly though never Ron Paul.

What is it about Perry's history that makes his supposed Republican "extremism" hard to believe? Like other opportunistic politicians before him (Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter), Perry once ran and won elections as a Democrat. The fact that he used to adhere to Democratic principles early on in his political career makes it hard to believe that he is indeed an extremist of any sort. Instead it appears more likely that he's a political tool who has been groomed for the last decade to become a PR pawn for Wall St. and the Presidential office of the United States.

Followers of the Bilderberg group might remember that

, which usually signifies picks for presidential hopefuls. The Bilderberg group is an uber elite neo-liberal think-tank that meets annually in different undisclosed locations worldwide. In previous years, John Kerry and John Edwards attended Bilderberg not long before Kerry won the primary and Edwards was chosen as his running mate. William Jefferson Clinton also appeared on the attendance roster when he was merely the Governor of Arkansas.

  Quote

nside Texas he’s one of the most successful politicians in the entire history of the state. George Bush lost his first congressional race. In a lifetime career of ten elections since 1984 Perry has never lost one. He has an acute sense of political timing. His defeated opponents readily attest to Perry’s relentless self-discipline as a campaigner , skills at raising campaign cash. He already has a huge prospective war chest for his first national foray. They all emphasize the fatal consequences of underestimating him. He has a team of campaign advisors, notably, notably Dave Carney, whose skills – ruthless in the crunch – have elicited admiration from professionals across the board. Prior to Perry the Texas governorship were a notoriously weak post, with decisive power wielded by the legislature and State Comptroller and state commissioners, Railroad Commission etc. Perry has changed all that across his three stints as governor, previously contentious posts now inhabited by his compliant appointees.

But above all, Rick Perry is one lucky son of a bitch. Not just once or twice, but at almost every decisive twist fork in the road Fate has given him a benign tap on the shoulder. “Give me lucky generals,” Napoleon once exclaimed. Looking at Perry’s CV he’d have made him Grand Marshall of France on the spot.Back at the pre-dawn of Perry’s political career Democrats were still the most powerful political party in Texas, and Perry began as a (an extremely conservative) Democrat. Son of tenant farmers (dryland cotton) in Paint Creek, sixty miles north of Abilene, Perry says he never met a Republican till he was 25. He was elected first as a Democratic state legislator and in 1988 was the Texas campaign chairman for (the extremely conservative) Democrat Al Gore who ultimately lost in the primaries to Michael Dukakis. Seeing scant future for Democrats in Texas Perry’s showed his aptitude for timing and shifted to the Republican Party, making straight for its conservative wing.

Obama is most likely some puppet put in place by some sinister shadow cabal running the show behind the scenes. He was too perfect of a "change" from Bush Jr. and the people ate it up like candy and the result is that he is pretty much the same as his predecessor, maybe even worse because he actually tries to act like he's something he isn't. The corruption in the administration is so blatant that they don't even give a shit to conceal it because there is nothing anyone can do about it. It's absolutely atrocious. And with the morons the GOP have as candidates it looks like Obama is going for a second term. It's like a reverse 2004 where the Dems only had a completely bland Kerry to run against an awful president.

its starting to get fucking moronic seeing the people who voted for Obama and are themselves dissatisfied backpedal to defend the guy for the exact same things they would have crucified Bush for.

Im not exposing "LIBERAL BIAS", nor am I establishing a lack of anything contrary. What I have witnessed on this board, in public, and elsewhere demonstrates that absolutely everyone in this nation is willfully ignorant of the situation they find themselves in, and STILL resort to voting for even worse, more corrupt and exploitative governments simply because they say they are on the right side.

*applauds*

i'd like to see Obama voters try to knock down the 'new normal' theory on torture, prosecuting whistleblowers, encroaching on civil liberties, and expanding wars

Cindy Sheehan, said something very insightful about 6 months back that she was convinced Palin was chosen as to be 'insurance for an Obama victory' well it seems like this time around

the powers that be want to see Obama stay in office for at least another 4 years, so why not make the insurance extra strong this time and choose to supposed 'crazies' like Palin instead of one.

Sheehan was essentially 'kicked out of' every mainstream anti war movement in the country because she didn't care if Bush or Obama was the president she wanted to protest the wars using the same techniques ie: going to camp david to protest the war for days at a time. She tried doing a similar thing at MArtha's Vinyard and was criticized for doing so because it was Obama, not Bush who was running the wars. She became disillusioned when she realized people like Michael Moore and other mainstream figures on the left wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with her, when they were heavily promoting her protests against Bush in his remaining days in office