News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:27 am

shadzar wrote:Yeah, but this is Alaska. Remember Palin was shooting moose from a helicopter...for sport.

I could see it if the moose had his own Apache or Hind as being sport, but come on!

Hunting wolves from a helicopter is a time honored tradition there...

I'd rather hunt Palin from a helicopter...

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:38 am

How about hunting.....well see for yourself. It does have helicopters in it.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike- ... e-hits-web

Data Vampire · Post by **Data Vampire** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:21 am

Thousands mob Detroit center in hopes of free cash

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:41 am

I was going to yell at you, Data Vampire, but then I found out that that is the actual title of the Yahoo article.

What an obnoxiously misleading title that was. Seriously, that makes me want to scream.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:03 am

Shadzar: maybe they're like the kangaroos in Australia, who have AA missiles? So it could have been a legitimate sport.

Data Vampire: the sad thing is I can already see the Right preparing an article on how "those damn homeless/poor people are so violent in their clamber for free money - our hard earned free money - that they blew their chance and don't deserve it! If Obama wants to do some redistributing, he should redistribute it into my wallet!"

As for Mao, it's weird: many people in China love him (or the memory of him). As do people who come here from China. One of my favourite places to eat in Melbourne was the Chairman Mao cafe. It had a large painting of him and one of his speeches on a wall, a pretty Asian girl standing outside to convince me I wanted to go there to eat, and the manager considered me a regular customer the second time I went there.

Anyway, I digress as always. He has a good reputation, considering, well, his reputation. Likewise Stalin, he is considered a hero/deity in Russia, and I hear Lenin gets a fair amount of love as well.

Now consider Mussolini, Pol Pot Slobodan Milosevic and of course, Hitler. Okay, in Serbia Milosevic has some love (because they still have a very real hate-on for the Albanians)... while the others hate him because they feel he led them into their current situation. But there's no cult following or deification of Mussolini or Pol Pot, and the closest Hitler gets is uneducated idiot Neo-Nazis, mostly found in Britain as opposed to Germany.

I'm just wondering why it is. It can't be the magic of being a Communist that does it, surely.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:43 am

It probably has to do with the raising of the median living conditions and doing what hadn't been done in a thousand years - uniting a large country.

The United States didn't have to do that in the last hundred years, so our memory of our founding fathers and such is a bit more dim... But we do have a mountain carved with several of them, you might note.

No one holds against them the hundreds of thousands who died because of their actions. Why should people not on Mao or Stalin's hit-list hold it against them?

-Crissa

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:47 am

Koumei wrote:Now consider Mussolini, Pol Pot Slobodan Milosevic and of course, Hitler. Okay, in Serbia Milosevic has some love (because they still have a very real hate-on for the Albanians)... while the others hate him because they feel he led them into their current situation. But there's no cult following or deification of Mussolini or Pol Pot, and the closest Hitler gets is uneducated idiot Neo-Nazis, mostly found in Britain as opposed to Germany.

I'm just wondering why it is. It can't be the magic of being a Communist that does it, surely.

They lost.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:01 am

My gf says, citing Civ4 as a source, that it IS the magic of Communism.

Which suggests that if I become a Communist dictator, I'll be able to get away with anything and people will still look back fondly upon me. Bring on the all-female scantily clad personal guard.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 10:43 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Oh you so know that could be argued... any state that has a law that basically says "as long as your kid has a reasonable chance of survival and it's done to protect them, you can hit them" might actually listen to that arguement....

No that can't still be argued.

Just like every obscenity law in existence can't be argued to include everything possible.

Because "reasonably necessary and appropriate" has a legal meaning. And that legal meaning is told to the jury by the judge, who got their job after going to law school, and so actually knows what the legal meaning is.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:25 pm

Crissa wrote:The United States didn't have to do that in the last hundred years, so our memory of our founding fathers and such is a bit more dim... But we do have a mountain carved with several of them, you might note.

No we do not, we have a mountain carved with two of them; the other two are definitely not "founding fathers." "Two" is not "several."

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:04 pm

Kaelik wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:Oh you so know that could be argued... any state that has a law that basically says "as long as your kid has a reasonable chance of survival and it's done to protect them, you can hit them" might actually listen to that arguement....
No that can't still be argued.

Just like every obscenity law in existence can't be argued to include everything possible.

Because "reasonably necessary and appropriate" has a legal meaning. And that legal meaning is told to the jury by the judge, who got their job after going to law school, and so actually knows what the legal meaning is.

Ok, would be argued.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:07 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Ok, would be argued.

No, it wouldn't be argued either. Arguments are made by competent lawyers. Competent lawyers never attempt to defend the shooting of a child in the knees as "reasonable and appropriate."

I understand you wanted to make a cute point about how people in alaska are all retards. Great. Pick an example that is even remotely close to true.

Juries in all 50 states are asked by the laws to determine what is reasonable for the situation at hand. Alaska is not unique.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:16 pm

Koumei wrote:My gf says, citing Civ4 as a source, that it IS the magic of Communism.

Which suggests that if I become a Communist dictator, I'll be able to get away with anything and people will still look back fondly upon me. Bring on the all-female scantily clad personal guard.

I would look fondly on that right now, due to the fact that I would do something very similar.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:25 pm

Crissa wrote:It probably has to do with the raising of the median living conditions and doing what hadn't been done in a thousand years - uniting a large country.

The United States didn't have to do that in the last hundred years, so our memory of our founding fathers and such is a bit more dim... But we do have a mountain carved with several of them, you might note.

No one holds against them the hundreds of thousands who died because of their actions. Why should people not on Mao or Stalin's hit-list hold it against them?

-Crissa

First, I don't think calling it genocide is acceptable, if only because there were economic reasons for the killing rather than ethnicity. Genocide as a term is a function of intent, not just magnitude or the victim's demographies. "Mass death" is appropriate and I've seen the term "democide" used as well, but it wasn't genocide.

Also, the majority of dead came from disease, rather than war or the camps - the push west was also a pull, in that the plagues running around naturally created power vacuums that opportunistic Americans were keen to exploit. I don't think its possible to imagine a scenario in which America maintained its borders and didn't push west while at the same time the Native American population was plummeting due to mass disease.

I also don't think you can lay the 13+ million deaths of Native Americans on the founding fathers; my understanding is that they actually relied heavily on them for alliances and trade. Small wars against this tribe or that came up, but I don't think "everyone West of the Mississippi" was a target until later, after the foreign powers were knocked out of America and the east coast settled sufficiently for earnest westward expansion. You can hit them for not tackling slavery head-on, though.

So, there's blame and shame, but to characterize it as owing to the Founding Fathers isn't appropriate, and I also don't think its appropriate to call it genocide. Finally, the founders of America were patricians but they were also a collection of people rather than a single person. Laying blame on them collectively for anything that wasn't undertaken collectively (maintaining slavery is a prime example of a Bad Thing you can pin on them) is just "I like taking pot shots at what I perceive to be easy targets of (American) patriarchy".

And then there's Mao, who killed a few million people on purpose for not being Han Chinese.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:50 pm

I don't know, I would consider what we did to the indian to be genocide.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:06 pm

Genocide is a war against an ethnicity, though - that wasn't an issue in America, since the deaths were predominantly due to disease. The proverbial "smallpox blanket" just isn't enough to cover the tens of millions that died simply due to exposure to European diseases.

You can say that there are specific examples of genocide in America history where its clear that tribes are specifically being targeted simply for being Native American, but you can't extend that to include the whole depopulating of the North American native population without basically being a douchbag who thinks that genocide is a great term to throw around when you want to call someone an asshole.

It's seriously like calling someone a Nazi. Unless they actually are a Nazi, you just come off like an idiot.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:58 pm

But the Trail of Tears and the Buffalo depopulation were completely bald-faced ethnic cleansing attempts. There are many such instances. Yes, not every red man got killed in a concerted genocide, but that doesn't mean that genocide didn't happen. It did.

Remember: Custer got killed because the natives "trapped" him by convincing him that there was a village full of defenseless women and children, thereby provoking him to attack. That's ethnically motivated mass murder intended to eliminate an entire people. If you won't agree that is genocide, you're splitting hairs to the point that it no longer makes any sense.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:29 pm

Yeah, they happened, but their magnitude and defined instances are such that you can't say shit like, "the founding fathers are responsible for hundreds of thousands dead" and have it mean anything.

There were responsible parties and they deserve shame and recognition, but you have to get those parties right.

I definitely don't think you can say, "what happened to the Native Americans was genocide", but I'm not sure if that was Crissa's implication or not. This thread is all off-topic bullshittery anyway so I figured a segue to just start talking about what that assumption could be wasn't that big a deal.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:41 pm

mean liar wrote: Yeah, they happened, but their magnitude and defined instances are such that you can't say shit like, "the founding fathers are responsible for hundreds of thousands dead" and have it mean anything.

Uh... Slavery. You totally can. Hundreds of thousands of dead is low balling it. Not repealing slavery in 1785 is directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:56 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Uh... Slavery. You totally can. Hundreds of thousands of dead is low balling it. Not repealing slavery in 1785 is directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

-Username17

No you can’t Frank. In the time of the Founding Fathers, Abolitionism was only a movement among various groups of Quakers. Sure that included Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine but it never had the full momentum various states until 1804. By that time the Constitution was already carved in stone. New York, for example, didn’t abolish slavery until 1799 and this was done gradually. New Jersey in 1804 was the last northern state to abolish slavery (again in gradual fashion).

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:07 pm

I don't consider slavery to be genocide. Because it isn't.

Slavery as an institution included white slaves and Native American slaves - ethnicity didn't matter. The fact that most slaves were coming from Africa meant that the vast majority of slaves were black, but even then it wasn't a genocidal attempt to eradicate black people.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:15 pm

mean_liar wrote:I don't consider slavery to be genocide. Because it isn't.

Slavery as an institution included white slaves and Native American slaves - ethnicity didn't matter. The fact that most slaves were coming from Africa meant that the vast majority of slaves were black, but even then it wasn't a genocidal attempt to eradicate black people.

No, Slavery isn't genocide, but I wasn't commenting on genocide. You said it was unfair to hold the founding fathers feet to the fire over "hundreds of thousands of dead" and it fucking isn't. Africans, Native Americans, Chinese. Beaten and worked to death. In the millions.

Not genocide in the strict sense, but again I didn't say it was. Saying that it was a dick move and that it happened is nothing like unfair.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:31 pm

Oh, yeah. In that case, yes, you totally can.

Though its worth mentioning that the Constitution wouldn't have been ratified if slavery had been abolished and therefore there wouldn't have been a United States. You might as well go ahead and blame White People, since it wasn't the enlightened autocracy necessary to outlaw some significant percent of a country's economy.

Lincoln only released the Emancipation Proclamation as a "fuck you" to the Confederacy and the 13th Amendment came around after the war made that "fuck you" permanent.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:15 pm

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:I don't know, I would consider what we did to the indian to be genocide.

What's this we shit white man?

Not sure how I got into this or who said it about "slavery not being genocide", but to counter...

I think it is. It is a way to turn people into animals, and then deny them of humanity, and they might as well be dead. No different than stripping them of their sentience. I think therefore I am. When someone else does all the thinking then, you are not; and might as well be already dead.

I know Native Americans also had slaves, but after the trail of tears they were so fucked in the head they didn't know what to thank and were just angry, and coming from the south it may sound weird for someone to say the above...but I am who I am and think that slavery is genocide, because you have killed the person and just turned them into something other than human. Not to mention the destruction of any culture caused by slavery.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:13 pm

Can we just kill all the stupid old people already? Those fuckers that can't leave other people alone?

http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.as ... 03&catid=8

6 year old being evicted from a retirement community where she lives with her grandparents and home owners association....yes this isn't a old folks home, but a community...wants to evict the child, not the granparents they can stay.

FUCKING 6 years old!

Can we legally send those 5 teens that set Michael brewer on fire to visit these people trying to evict a 6 year old child?

They probably wouldn't even need rubbing alcohol cause the HOA is probably so drunk on schnapps and sherry .....grrr just fuck it!

Stupid fucking people. I hope those old fucks lose their medicare and medicaid!

:pissedofftonoend:

It's fucking FLORIDA! If you had younger people there you wouldn't have to recount your damn votes. What's next that want to get rid of the Disney theme parks?