Bill Maher is entirely correct; being an irrational, unthinking, crazy extremist has become a proven formula for success in American politics. Therefore, whenever any bill is introduced in Congress in the future, I'm going to lobby for it to contain amendments that state that Jesus Christ was just an ordinary person, and require that free abortions be made available at every McDonald's drive-through, in the form of RU-486 pills on the menu, at no cost. :willy_nilly: Don't get mad. Get even. People on the left can check our intellects at the door too. Whatever it takes... After watching Maher's show yesterday, my boyfriend bet me that if I made this thread and another one about the most absurd sexual subject I could think of, the second one would be the most popular. I said he was wrong.
Guess your boyfriend was right...politics vs. sex at the HF will lose out every time. Having said that, Bill Maher is indeed correct. Politics has become dominated by a fairly small number of very loud people that appeal to the less informed, simplistic answer seeking portion of the population. It's a shame...I used to be interested in politics but the rhetoric from the wingnuts has made it too frustrating...great post, Karen J.
It happens even when you try to make the sex thread as ridiculous, absurd, and offensive as humanly possible! In spite of my best effort to set it up for failure, it has became a halfway interesting thread. How did the Democratic Party forget how to play that game and win? We invented it! We used to always convince working-class people that we would try our best to give them what they wanted and needed, while the other party was only looking out for the rich. Now most of those people are voting the other way, even though they are being offered nothing of real value by the other side. The Dems seem to have forgotten that politics is a dirty business, and you have to do whatever works. Now they come across like a bunch of aloof college professors who know all the right answers but don't know how to communicate them to anyone except each other. I suppose one of the worst problems is that the concept George H.W. Bush once called "voodoo economics" has become a kind of Republican gospel, which people are expected to accept on faith, no matter what the evidence. It's a propaganda masterpiece. I never thought the poor would fall for it.
You hit the nail on the head...the dems used to appeal to the working class, hard working everyday "Joe the Plumber" types. The extreme right has cleverly found a way to reach out to them through social (emotional) issues (guns, death penalty, prayer in school, etc.). I believe the upper class simply tolerates the nutty people like Palin, Bachmann, etc. because they understand that garnering the votes of the lower classes will ultimately result in financial gains for them. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity (if you can tolerate them). They appeal to the very people who benefit the least economically from Republican policies. "Mega dittoes, Ruuuuuuuuuuuuush from the heartland of the good old USA..."
In the last few years, if any bill manages to get thru Congress, I've noticed that it generally incorporates the third or fourth best idea out there. Congress has become a place where good ideas go to die. Now, I gotta find that absurd sex post ....
Well said sunfighter...especially the part about "they might create jobs". Although strong businesses do, in fact, create jobs, I work with many businesses and know for sure that creating jobs is not their primary goal. Simply put, business owners, including huge corporations are interested in being as profitable as possible while spending as little money as possible. It's the way our system is set up.
( ^^ Don't forget the biggest one - abortion ) The political right figured out how church works. What you believe is more important than what's real. Faith is hard to fight, because facts and evidence don't matter at all. :willy_nilly: I've visited a few extreme right-wing church services, when I was very young. If you haven't been to one of those in the South, all I can say is it's an eye-opening experience. There is absolutely no connection with reality. Those preachers make Michele Bachmann look rational. You might find it scary to be in there, even though they're not going to hurt you. It makes you think twice about democracy, because those people's votes count the same as yours. I used to think Rush was funny, but I can't laugh about this shit anymore. Politics is getting so seriously fucked up. We are in a dire situation. Where is the passion on the left? I don't think you can do well in politics if you can't match the energy level of the other side. We need somebody besides the flaming gay activists from SF and NYC. That isn't enough. The Left needs a faction that is just as mean and nasty as their counterparts on the Right, and not focused just on a single issue. Where are all the Christians who believe that Jesus wants them to put their highest priority on helping the poor? Where are all the unionized coal miners from years past? They used to shoot and kill conservatives and businessmen like it was taking a drink of water. Are they all dead or totally mellowed out? Even 30% of their past anger would be helpful now. We are so intimidated by the Right that we sometimes don't even dare to state our own opinions in public. It's now popular on the left to say, "I'm against abortion, but I think it should be the woman's choice." What are we so afraid of? I confess to giving in to that intimidation in the past, but no more! I think an abortion can be wonderful, if you really need one. And a lot of other women secretly agree with me. http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=433023&f=165 If we're not careful, we're going to mess around and match that post count here. I could get my $20 back.
agreed. If you are left but if you believe in God anyway, then the values of the church are for War or for nationalist chauvinism. Thus in politics being against war and for higher corporate Taxes (yeah; that's the serious agenda for budget result planning) means that either you become a humanistic religious fanatic, or agnostic for avoiding church rituals.:2thumbsup:
Absolutely right. I am a business owner myself, and I have a vested interest in having as few employees as possible. There's nothing wrong with that system. It just needs to be regulated properly, by politicians who like to see more jobs created. If the business opportunities are there, the job creation will be automatic. I would love to have so much business that I have no choice but to hire more permanent employees. Tax cuts won't do it. If my small business got a 50% tax cut tomorrow, I wouldn't hire another employee. That's not why you hire somebody. Not even a registered charity hires people just because they can afford it. You hire an employee because you have more work that needs to be done. The customers decide that for me. I staff at whatever level is required by the workload. The tax cut would mostly go into my 401k to replace part of the shitload of money it has lost in the last two weeks.
Well, maybe instead of asking for more wingnuts (left or right, who cares? the crazier they are on both sides, the more they start to look and sound exactly the same), maybe you Americans should try to move towards the middle of the road. Stop listening to sound bites from retards, and start listening to the very quiet but insistently rational voices that are only just left or right of centre. You know, like we do up here in Canuckistan. Wingnuts generally don't survive in our political landscape, and despite being a so-called socialist republic nanny-state etc., as some of your wingnuts claim, we're in great shape. Of course, our fortunes rely somewhat on your prosperity, so why don't you smarten the hell up? Outlaw the wingnuts (or at least stop voting for them).
Cant agree more with Bill Maher and every post in this thread. The left has to start electing some fanatically liberal politicians of our own. We need to find the left alternative to church, someplace for the left to organize and become just as fanatical about issues as the teabaggers are. The right is getting extremely dangerous the more organized the become and we need to answer back louder. The numbers are on the left side but the right has more passion, and that sucks. How much corporate greed and irrational religious bullshit are we going to put up with. I consider myself a pretty mellow, difficult to piss off kind of person, but I have reached the point were Ive had enough. Not really sure yet how to constuctively direct my growing displeasure though.
Too many people like hearing simplistic slogans that they can identify with through bumper stickers than stating and standing for their own opinions. Those who choose to represent themselves for the people, let the people do the talking for them. Those who are in power now are just those whose opinion and face is satisfiable only to idealistic people who cannot stand for open minded discussion and thought on the topics thay they can barely grasp.
That's Obama's approach, and it has almost destroyed him, and seriously weakened the party that he is supposed to lead. To be frank, this isn't the time for foreign input. We have to solve this ourselves. That's going to be hard to pull off, in a group that places a value on independent thinking and respect for other points of view. It's much easier to lead a group if you are an evil liar, targeting a group that is easily manipulated. If you convince socially backwards, under-educated people that they can have eternal life after death if the jump through all the right hoops, they will be eager to do it. They're afraid not to. You can get them to do almost anything, if you know how to present it, tying all the concepts together in a neat package. That's what we are up against. An army of those people is a formidable foe. They don't hold back. They don't compromise. They don't listen to anyone who disagrees. You can deliver to them the most eloquent, persuasive arguments against their position in the history of the English language, and not one person will switch to the other side. You just have to defeat them. They aren't bad people. They just serve others who are bad. I've been in church services where the preacher so thoroughly held his congregation in the palm of his hand that he could have told them to go next door and burn a building to the ground, and they would have done it without hesitation. And on Monday morning, those same people would go to work like everybody else, and look and act normal. It's creepy. You could almost say that the Right has invented its own religion. The Republican gospel is nominally about Jesus Christ, but the mentality is very much Old Testament, with its focus on following strict social rules, and going to war with any group that is not subservient to you. The New Testament's global themes of love, generosity, and forgiveness are nowhere to be found. The black church in America hasn't really bought into this new gospel, so I'm hoping they will get their asses in gear before the election. Maybe they can serve as a good example for white people to follow, as they did during the Civil Rights Movement. Surely there are a few old hippies still around that understand that today's Republican Party is The Man and The Establishment. They will know exactly what I mean by that. Not to say that Democrats are all love children and creatures of the light, but they are by far the best available option. Do you have one more fight left in you? Same here. I used to be bored with politics and avoided it as much as possible, but we're standing at the edge of a cliff here. I'm afraid that one morning very soon I'm going to wake up in a country that requires me to live my life like a conservative, in every imaginable way. If I haven't fought hard against that, I'm going to hate myself. One local tea party activist recently said that his goal is nothing less than the complete eradication of everything that liberals have done in the last three generations. He said you don't compromise in a war, especially when you are winning. He quoted Ann Coulter, who said she wants the next generation to grow up in a world where liberal thinking and liberal moral values are just things that you hear about in a history class. When the congressional campaigns get going next year, they are going to need volunteers and contributions. Do what you can. Don't wait until November 2012 and say "I should have done more" after it's too late. Of course, posting online is far from worthless. The internet has become a key political battleground.
Bernie Sanders/ Barney Frank ticket for 2012 But your right, getting out and getting involved and above all else voting is our best resource. A massive march on Washington would be a good start, maybe not such a bad idea either. But putting it into motion might be pretty tough, something ti think about anyway.
Geez, don't I wish that was true! While our wingnuts in office aren't as extreme as theirs (yet), they are damned hard to get rid of. In Alberta, they have had only one change of government in 75 years!
Only about three weeks after I started this thread, the Occupy Wall Street movement began its protest in New York, though I didn't find out about it right away. As soon as I saw some of them on TV dressed as zombies, I knew that my wish had come true!
Meh... these political discussions. Anyway, what do people who call themselves liberals even want? It seems like most of them play into the hands of the power structure by wanting more government, which inevitably results in more rules, more control, and less freedom. You would think liberal-minded people would actually champion less government, but then again there is that liberal fallacy that government somehow stands between the evil corporations and the people, when in fact the government is run by corporations and banks. I find the more moderate Obamanoids like Bill Maher, whose show has become nothing more than a propaganda outlet for Democratic Party talking points, are just as much off the mark as the socialists on the radical left, who, to me, are as clueless and ill-informed as they come, yet so many would appear to fashion themselves as intellectuals and radical thinkers, which of course they're not.
Like the conservatives say: with Obama (who listens to the President for advice on educational matters); "we don't have opinions anymore, just values.":sunny:
