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Jul 9, 2009
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Scott SoCal said:
I understand. I'm not a social conservative so in theory (according to your posted study) I might even be as smart as you.



Oh wait... so the article WAS directed at me.



Gee, but what does it say about the hyper-educated liberal stooping to having an interwebz discussion (political of all things) with someone so intellectually inferior?

Surely liberal brainiacs can find someone other than a mental midget to spar with?

Oh, uhm sorry, what?
I was distracted by "Famous Wardrobe Malfunctions"
 
Jul 4, 2009
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Scott SoCal said:
I understand. I'm not a social conservative so in theory (according to your posted study) I might even be as smart as you.



Oh wait... so the article WAS directed at me.



Gee, but what does it say about the hyper-educated liberal stooping to having an interwebz discussion (political of all things) with someone so intellectually inferior?

Surely liberal brainiacs can find someone other than a mental midget to spar with?

...lets assume for a second that I am a fire-breathing hyper-educated liberal type of guy....if that were the case, having an interwebz discussion with someone so intellectually inferior would be akin to shooting ducks in a barrel..

...problem is that I am not what, in your mind at least, would constitute would a liberal, so the point is moot...

...as for beating up on sub-par opposition??? it is safe to say that that is a thrill that has no political boundaries...

...as for how smart are you?...well youse seem to gots lots and lots of smarts...but youse is wrong a lot too...which is a bit of a quandry...the study continues unabated...

...btw...how is monkey doing ?????...I ask because I really like having him around...

Cheers

blutto
 
Jun 16, 2009
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blutto said:
...amateurish ?????....ooo....that's rich even for someone such yourself...

...my advice is you should take to heart a saying my dad used to use....that is...the best way to appear foolish is to talk about something you know very little about...because from where I'm sitting you are, in fact, the one who reeks of the stench of the most foolish of know-it-all amateurs, covered as they usually are with rotting blowback from their half-baked theories...

...and btw...speaking of amateurs there was way back when, a term, which they applied to supposedly amateur athletes that competed at the highest levels ( the Olympics as an example )...they were called gifted amateurs...and I'm sure that in your heart of hearts, you believe that you are one of those gifted amateurs, because it allows you, on a technicality, to compete at a level reserved for the best professionals in the field...in point of fact, you are a rank amateur, with the accent on the former...

...so, go back to your playground, and leave the heavy lifting to the pros....this stuff is too important to be mucked with by the likes of folks such as yourself...

Cheers

blutto

So all you could provide was ad hominem attacks? Well done.:rolleyes:
 
May 18, 2009
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blutto said:
...lets assume for a second that I am a fire-breathing hyper-educated liberal type of guy....if that were the case, having an interwebz discussion with someone so intellectually inferior would be akin to shooting fish in a barrel..

.....

Cheers

blutto

Fixed that for you. Carry on.
 
May 18, 2009
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patricknd said:
he meant to do that :D

I guess it would be easy to shoot ducks in a barrel initially right after you remove the lid. It would get much more difficult in relation to time after removal of lid. I doubt it is a linear relationship; probably at least difficulty shooting duck cubed vs time. Blutto should qualify his metaphor within timeframe parameters.
 
Jul 4, 2009
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ChrisE said:
I guess it would be easy to shoot ducks in a barrel initially right after you remove the lid. It would get much more difficult in relation to time after removal of lid. I doubt it is a linear relationship; probably at least difficulty shooting duck cubed vs time. Blutto should qualify his metaphor within timeframe parameters.

...thank you so very much for pointing out the short-coming in my response...

...to remedy the situation we are putting an extensive effort to devising a strict duck shooting in a barrel protocol...unfortunately we have run into a major snag...there seems to an almost total lack of right wing ducks...

...in fact when we contacted The Royal Society of Ducks we were informed that almost all ducks were not only left leaning but firm believers in the idea of climate change...the response, rough translated from quackish, was something along these lines...you humans are ****ing nuts and the sooner you morons extinct yourselves the better it will be everyone else on this planet ...**** your test....

...efforts to continue the experiment using computer generated facsimiles are now being undertaken..but early attempts to produce a right wing duck have failed miserably....they just don't seem any idea how to interact effectively with their environment....they foul their nests...can't operate as a simple community...and keep flying into things....bottom line they are lousy examples of ducks... will report as soon as things move forward and results are available...

...your patience in this matter is greatly appreciated...

Cheers

blutto
 
Sep 10, 2009
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auscyclefan94 said:
14 years certainly is an indicative time regarding climate, Ferminal considering there is a slight decreasing in global temperatures even though we have been in a long term warming phase, it actually is rather significant. 14 years is significant when you consider alarmists like Al Gore, Tim Flannery and other UN Climate scientists have been saying 'if we don't act within the next few years global warming will be unstoppable'.
Nope, it's a blip. Check out what happens when you increase the time scale (Fig 4):

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm

The 14-year period chosen is entirely arbitrary, and chosen to reflect what the deniers want you to believe. Shift the time scale a bit - as that graphic shows - and you get an entirely different trend. Which is why the only scale that really counts is the longest-term that the data can accurately portray. And that one clearly shows an upward trend.

Majority of Himilayan glaciers, which were predicted to be on the sharp decline by the IPCC are either stable or growing even though we in the long term going through a warming period.
Nope.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/himalayan-glaciers-shrinking/

The only reason the Karakoram glaciers have stabilized is because they're so small now that they're protected by the insulating layer of rock and dirt above them. Otherwise glaciers throughout the Himalayas continue to shrink.

Due to our boom in population, demand for electricity is also increasing rapdily. Why aren't CO2 concentrations or temperature levels following?
They are.
 
blutto said:
...thank you so very much for pointing out the short-coming in my response...

...to remedy the situation we are putting an extensive effort to devising a strict duck shooting in a barrel protocol...unfortunately we have run into a major snag...there seems to an almost total lack of right wing ducks...

...in fact when we contacted The Royal Society of Ducks we were informed that almost all ducks were not only left leaning but firm believers in the idea of climate change...the response, rough translated from quackish, was something along these lines...you humans are ****ing nuts and the sooner you morons extinct yourselves the better it will be everyone else on this planet ...**** your test....

...efforts to continue the experiment using computer generated facsimiles are now being undertaken..but early attempts to produce a right wing duck have failed miserably....they just don't seem any idea how to interact effectively with their environment....they foul their nests...can't operate as a simple community...and keep flying into things....bottom line they are lousy examples of ducks... will report as soon as things move forward and results are available...

...your patience in this matter is greatly appreciated...

Cheers

blutto

Brilliant, that...
 
Mar 10, 2009
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It's funny to see that in the US the right to assemble - as a corollary to freedom of expression - can be regulated, whereas campaign financing apparently seems off limits.

http://nyti.ms/xRrjpC

If money is free speech, and time is money, then evidently 'spending time' in public places as a protestor should also be unfettered and unregulated, perhaps? Why do they need permits at all? A prohibition on camping to exercise the right to assembly into indefinitely appears to be analogous to prohibiting unlimited amounts of spending in elections.
 
Well it snowed on Friday in Rome for the first time in 27 years. Since 1985 and before that 1971 and before that 1962.

Why am I putting this in a general politics discussion, because the chaos that ensued (280 klms of traffic, 6-7 hours to cover jusr 10 ks (!) to get home from work), invariably was accompanied by all the cries and denouncements against the mayor and against the government, for not having adequately dealt with the situation, when there was something more fundamental to the problem: our own lack of collective sanity.

It made me reflect upon something singular to our age: namely, how much we expect and feel entitled to move around constantly and at will, as if it were our biological right, engrossed as we are in keeping the machine endlessly grinding forward that is the business (both concretely and metaphorically) of our existence. As if to pay heed to the vicissitudes of nature and simply choose, under probable prohibitive circumstances in a city that simply lacks the forces to overcome them, "not to go to work" is beyond the realm of our mental outlook, decision making processes and sense of entitlement; just as it was beyond those of the city authorities, who should have shut down public transportation and services. Because, today, nature is no longer a force which humans once (intelligently) needed to respect, but a mere nuisance before our own megalomania and the all-powerful call to open the next business day.

To move around in our cars continuously, to travel at will is an advantage of our times. But it is not a right. There is no technology, social organization, illuminated government that can always guarantee the possibility of crossing a city (Rome isn't Buffalo NY) or a territory (central Italy isn't the frozen tundra). At times the tempestuous seas, snow and ice, simply limit our freedom to move.

In all the complaints and controversies that I heard over the last couple of days about how the authorities and the forces of mobilization totally abandoned the people to their miserable fate (although when it’s raining at morning rush hour, but then suddenly it’s snowing at noon and everyone, in a mad, precipitous rush, simultaneously takes to their cars to return home, in a city as tortuous and clogged as Rome even under normal circumstances, how is there even the material time and physical space to salt the roads?): one consideration was missing. Amidst all the inveighing against the municipality and mayor at the first inconvenience, it never occurred to anyone that a voyage, when it's in flesh and blood and within a contorted reality, isn't something that’s guaranteed under contract. Sometimes you are simply forced to stop, even against your own will. Sometimes it just happens that we're not omnipotent and omnipresent.
 
May 18, 2009
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This made me laugh.

gop-trilemma-chart.jpg
 
May 23, 2010
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""REPUBLICANS UNLEASHED WALL STREET WITH Gramm's Commodities Futures Modernization act

Last edited Thu Feb 2, 2012, 07:33 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Don't believe any **** that Democrats were all for deregulation. It was the GOP who have always been lobbying for crapshott capitalism.

Phil Gramm leading deregulator of the deregulators (the GOP have always been crying for deregulation and still are) slipped in the Commodities Futures Modernization act in as a rider (something sneaky, like an ear-mark) to the Omnibus Funding bill, 2000. The CFMA had not been able to get out of two committees because Democrats were suspicious of it. Nobody in Congress was aware that the CFMA was in there when they voted to keep the Government from running out of money. The CFMA could not get out of two committees so Gramm used this stealth legislation approach.
""

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=114&topic_id=46775

REPUBLICANSREPUBLICANSREPUBLICANS
 
Jun 22, 2009
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Where is the world's outrage about what Assad continues to do to his own people??:mad:

Yeah, I know, he has no oil. This is (in a limited way) starting to remind me of the Khmer Rouge. The world then also cried shame, but no one was prepared to step up and actually do anything until the Vietnamese neighbors decided to take matters into their own hands. Maybe Turkey need to act unilaterally? The position of the Russians is an absolute disgrace and, as far as I'm concerned, disqualifies them from being taken seriously as members of the international community. The Chinese veto was equally shocking, but no surprise.

The amateur films coming out of Syria are horrible and tragic.
 
Jul 4, 2009
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Amsterhammer said:
Where is the world's outrage about what Assad continues to do to his own people??:mad:

Yeah, I know, he has no oil. This is (in a limited way) starting to remind me of the Khmer Rouge. The world then also cried shame, but no one was prepared to step up and actually do anything until the Vietnamese neighbors decided to take matters into their own hands. Maybe Turkey need to act unilaterally? The position of the Russians is an absolute disgrace and, as far as I'm concerned, disqualifies them from being taken seriously as members of the international community. The Chinese veto was equally shocking, but no surprise.

The amateur films coming out of Syria are horrible and tragic.

...there are a couple of things to consider when looking at this situation...

...first, the situation here, while admittedly horrible and tragic is not much different from the situation in every country in the Middle East...they all seem to be run by dictators of varying levels of ugliness...is the West's position in Afghanistan that much different from that of Russia vis a vis Syria?...so there is really no moral high ground here just some more Real Politik, the application of which will result in the slaughter of countless innocents...

...the prize here is not democracy or some such thing but simply the taking down of a key Iranian supporter ... as for the coverage we have been subject to...look at it as same tail wagging that has been so effectivelly used for the last decade in virtually all coverage of Middle East issues by the Western media...

Cheers

blutto
 
Jun 22, 2009
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blutto said:
...there are a couple of things to consider when looking at this situation...

...first, the situation here, while admittedly horrible and tragic is not much different from the situation in every country in the Middle East...they all seem to be run by dictators of varying levels of ugliness...is the West's position in Afghanistan that much different from that of Russia vis a vis Syria?...so there is really no moral high ground here just some more Real Politik, the application of which will result in the slaughter of countless innocents...

...the prize here is not democracy or some such thing but simply the taking down of a key Iranian supporter ... as for the coverage we have been subject to...look at it as same tail wagging that has been so effectivelly used for the last decade in virtually all coverage of Middle East issues by the Western media...

Cheers

blutto

Have to disagree. I think what's been going on in Syria for nearly a year now is not really comparable to other md-east centers of unrest. People are trying to oust yet another autocratic family dynasty that has suppressed its people for decades. My outrage is also not (entirely) based on western media coverage. There is enough independent evidence of Assad's atrocities against his own people available on youtube, posted directly by the people who shot the films.

The way the Russian foreign minister was greeted in Damascus was quite sickening. Surely, the Russians must also realize that this regime's days are numbered? What is the f***ing point of having a UN if it cannot act against the kind of murderous repression we've been witnessing for far too long now?

Latest reports (yes, in western media) suggest that things are deteriorating even further in Homs, with widespread artillery and tank shelling of residences.

Syria has been ruled by the al-Assad family since 1970. When last year's "Arab Spring" protests spread to the country in March, the government responded with escalating force, but has struggled to put down what is now a widespread uprising.

The Syrian National Council, the major opposition umbrella group, repeated its call for outside intervention to halt the killing and lift the siege of cities like Homs. And Amnesty International called on Russia "and other countries with influence over Syria" to take action to end the assault on Homs, where they said the majority of the dead were unarmed civilians.

In particular, Amnesty urged Moscow "to make it clear to the Syrian government, both publicly and in private, that the military assault on the city of Homs must end immediately."

"The situation in Homs is critical, and is turning into a major humanitarian crisis. Russia has blocked international efforts to stop the massive human rights violations in Syria, stating that they have a better plan for resolving the crisis," Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary-general, said in a written statement Wednesday.

Russia, which joined China in vetoing a proposed U.N. resolution aimed at stemming the crackdown, has stood by its Soviet-era ally. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov touted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's commitment to ending the violence during a visit to Damascus on Tuesday, and Prime Minister Vladmir Putin said Monday the situation is for the Syrians to resolve.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/08/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
 
I have always thought that a European Union based solely on a monetary and economic alliance was a bad one from the start and, ultimately, deleterious. On the one hand because the cold, mathematical laws of the economy and the markets, and of course the liberal ideology behind them, was unbefitting of those principles of equality and solidarity for which the Continental brand of democracy has been fabricated since the Second World War and, on the other, because the liberal market of competition and growth was destined to condemn this civilization (or civilizations) to an appalling colossal business enterprise and cementification of its territory (which is called growth).

The apparently irresistible forces of globalization are, in this sense, a new and more insidious form of colonialization, not exercised by dint of armies and chancellors, but the banks and the world's financial institutions, which have, as is presently taking place, usurped the role that politics once had in governing within the interests and aspirations of the various forces of popular groups. Now it is solely the markets, which means the liberal demands of profit and competitiveness, that establish the political agenda and the criteria upon which decisions are made, which has with frightful alacrity cancelled about 200 years of social commitment, struggle and conquest. In short it is capital, and those oligarchs who control it, which irresistibly reigns over the powers of labor and production, instead of it being put to the use of creating work and social well-being. In short finance, which means drawing profit from capital investments for profit's sake alone and that isn’t put back into the real economy, has taken the place of Keynesian investments to stimulate the job market and common prosperity, because finance has no other regard, has no social consciousness whatsoever, than in maximizing profit at the gambler's markets and casino economy.

This began in the 80's under Reagan and has reached a point at which Europe is quite willing to sell itself off to the oligarchs of world finance and banking, for which Mario Monti is perhaps the perfect incarnation of just where we stand socially and democratically today: which is the state of the contract between government and society.

Having said that it's interesting to see why the EU, based on a monetary and economic union alone, isn't a workable solution. Europe, as is well known, suffers from a poor competitiveness that's accompanied by a public spending that's too high, at least in regards to the cold, mathematical laws of financial capitalism. Now leaving aside the economic model in question (or at least accepting that no alternative exists now, or in the foreseeable future) let's take a look at why politically Europe, as it is currently operating, simply is unworkable.

For a Europe based on monetary union to work presupposes a common economic policy, which itself presupposes a common political agenda. None of which is presently the case. In fact Europe, in this moment, is without leadership and without solution. An unsolvable rebus. To ask Greece, for example, to pay down its debt by razing everything to the ground doesn't work. To ask Germany to pay for the southern States doesn't work either. A union of economic policy without a political consensus won't work. To try and obtain a political consensus without political union won't work either. And to try to obtain a political union without a political consensus (which means one based on popular agreement), again, won't work. The only way is to, in fact, take the political union and consensus out of the equation, by having a supranational power, i.e. the banks and financial oligarchs, bring the necessary pressure to bear on the legislative bodies to pass laws which force money to go where it's needed to save nationally insolvencies and defaults to avoid a catastrophe (which will be first financial, as the oligarchs know and is all they care about, and then social, which is what everyone else cares about). But what dreadful consequences this has for Europe’s democracy!

Yet it seems that this is precisely what Europe, pushed by global financial powers and the IMF, of which the US is the biggest shareholder, and the US political-economic establishment, is willing to do. In the end, the only thing that has prevented Europe from already arriving at the foregone conclusion, are the residual forces, much attenuated, of political and popular voices that were once called the powers of democracy. But the aplumb with which the same Mario Monti has maneuvered through the shark infested waters, because he is in fact not bound by consensus at poles and featherbagged by the same banking establishment of which he himself is a product, has only made the continued bickering and calculating of the traditional democratic political forces like Merkel and Sarkozy seem pathetically ridiculous. Result in the struggle of finance vs. democracy: democracy KO. The financialization of the economy has simply put democracy on a systemic overhaul, for which the political forces are dominated by the interests of investment capital, which itself isn’t put to the tangible benefit of society, but the abstract growth of the secondary markets, wherre risk and avarice are the only governing principles (or at least those most rewarded). Now this may have triggered an unprecedented financial growth over the last 30 years or so, which had its effects on the primary market (but what ghastly effects they were with all the ugly cemetification of what used to be beautiful, uncorrupted territories –all those building crimes! - and inane and useless products of conspicuous consumption). But we should begin to ask ourselves: is this world condemned to eternal growth and in which finance has taken the place of democracy, a world we want to live in?

Finance may have given the West all the comforts of an incredibly boring and numbing consumerism, but life is much more powerful than that. It would be enough for society to remember it.


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/fiscal-union-cannot-save-the-euro/249093/
 
What a tremendous story about the young Saudi poet, Hamaza Kashgari, condemned to death by the Salafist fanatics for having dedicated to Mohamed a few verses retained "blasphemous" and who is today detained in Malaysia, where he had fled, though also where the authorities had ordered his arrest. But even more tremendous is the most trying effort, to save his life, of which his family and friends are constrained to endure, who weary themselves exceedingly just to disprove the "blasphemous" nature of those few verses: because saving the life of the youth can't of course simply be based on freedom of speech, nor intellectual dignity, or the right to thought; but only the humiliation of getting down on your knees before your executioners.

To attempt to discuss your own words before he that not only doesn't intend to understand them, but wouldn't even be capable had he wanted to, because words, for the religious fanatic, are merely the empty nut shell that's necessary to protect himself from reality; and it’s precisely this that's the insupportable destiny of the "blasphemer" before his censor: to cancel the appearance of himself before his censor, which is to cancel himself in the hope that the censor - at whose side stands the executioner - concedes mercy upon him and saves his life. Hamza Kashgari is 23-years old. He's not the first person, nor will he be the last, to have risked his life for having addressed his words to his God, without first having asked permission from the constituent power.
 
Jun 14, 2010
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rhubroma said:
What a tremendous story about the young Saudi poet, Hamaza Kashgari, condemned to death by the Salafist fanatics for having dedicated to Mohamed a few verses retained "blasphemous" and who is today detained in Malaysia, where he had fled, though also where the authorities had ordered his arrest. But even more tremendous is the most trying effort, to save his life, of which his family and friends are constrained to endure, who weary themselves exceedingly just to disprove the "blasphemous" nature of those few verses: because saving the life of the youth can't of course simply be based on freedom of speech, nor intellectual dignity, or the right to thought; but only the humiliation of getting down on your knees before your executioners.

To attempt to discuss your own words before he that not only doesn't intend to understand them, but wouldn't even be capable had he wanted to, because words, for the religious fanatic, are merely the empty nut shell that's necessary to protect himself from reality; and it’s precisely this that's the insupportable destiny of the "blasphemer" before his censor: to cancel the appearance of himself before his censor, which is to cancel himself in the hope that the censor - at whose side stands the executioner - concedes mercy upon him and saves his life. Hamza Kashgari is 23-years old. He's not the first person, nor will he be the last, to have risked his life for having addressed his words to his God, without first having asked permission from the constituent power.


good post rhub. indeed very sad stories like this. things were better centuries ago.
 
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