Thursday, January 26, 2012

The secret to ending political partisanship

"There's a Kool-Aid drinker born every minute" Z-man

When both sides finally realize that they're all full of shit. Gerald Ford probably was the only president who actually gave an honest State of the Union address: "The State of our Union...is not good." Politicians, they're shaking your hand with one hand and jerking you off with the other.

33 comments:

  1. Gerald Ford... look where it got him... he lost..

    Just as Mondale did when he said he'd raise taxes and so would Reagan... which of course happened...

    Honesty in politics does not pay...

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  2. Honest politician is an oxymoron;
    you know, like congressional ethics, intense apathy, fully empty and wireless cable. Perhaps
    public lie detector tests instead of debates?

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  3. "Practically speaking, at the present moment no honest man can become a government official. This is true everywhere. Unless one is a rogue, a dishonest person, one cannot maintain his governmental position. Therefore no noble man goes into the government. But what can you do?"

    -HDG A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

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  4. Politics in Washington is not nearly as partisan as they'd have you believe. They all come together for the Patriot Act, SOPA/PIPA, NDAA, raising the debt ceiling, corporate welfare, deficit financing, pre-emptive war, the Federal Reserve, et al.

    It's mainly all for show. Just like professional wrestling.

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  5. Too often what we are dealing with is polar idealism (e.g. Shaw) that my side is better than your side. I also like to mention Shaw's name from time to time because it bugs her and she feels compelled to respond.

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  6. What about the blatant hypocrisy? Politicians running on platforms of family values when their own lives resemble bad reality shows. Politicians who do everything they can to prohibit gay rights and then end up getting caught in a hotel room snorting coke with a male prostitute. The guy who came up with SOPA who had a copyright violation on his own website. Politicians who pay pissant in taxes on their millions while fighting for tax cuts for the rich and increases for the poor.

    When politicians, and please note that I haven't called any party names here, get into all this preachy shit against this or that and then we find out that they're doing it themselves... that's the point at which you call bullshit, and those in whichever opposing party it might be take that information and run with it. Happens on both sides. And really why shouldn't it?

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  7. Z-man: "Too often what we are dealing with is polar idealism (e.g. Shaw) that my side is better than your side. I also like to mention Shaw's name from time to time because it bugs her and she feels compelled to respond."

    Honey-chunks, I'm not bothered one bit by your mentioning my name in your cute little posts. You're the one who appears be "bugged" by moi, evident in how often you include me in your screeds.



    "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." --Oscar Wilde

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  8. I LOVE Oscar Wilde!

    "It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it."

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  9. Saty "experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."

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  10. Until lobbyists are a thing of the past, and ear marks are no longer for sale, then the status quo will remain.

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  11. Such things are merely symptoms.

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  12. My favorite Oscar Wilde quote:

    "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

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  13. Was that a State of the Union address? I thought it was a campaign speech, after all it was all about him.

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  14. There's an old expression that nobody wins when partisanship dominates politics.

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  15. What is it they'd be winning otherwise?

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  16. Ambrose Bierce is good for quotes and here's one for all those Ron Paul critics out there. So why do they call Ron Paul absurd among other things? Here from his Devil's Dictionary:

    absurdity - n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

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  17. I have the Devil's Dictionary on my Kindle.

    I have been insanely ill since yesterday morning. I hope the worst has passed otherwise I'll be heading off for IV fluids.

    This was supposed to be day#2 of a 12 day stretch. If I can't pull it together by morning I'm losing overtime.

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  18. Eli Manning recently had a stomach bug. That's just a nice way of saying he went to the john every ten minutes and it came out like an octopus shooting ink. So how does a Ring Ding and a banana you ate like 5 hours before come out as 10 gallons of food? The worst is when it's coming out of both ends!

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  19. Speaking of Kindles, I rooted my Fire thus making it awesome.

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  20. soapster,

    I'm reading a wonderful bio of Schubert in my Kindle.

    Today is the anniversary of his birth.

    To Franz Peter!

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  21. I'm between 5 books myself.

    Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (second time reading this)

    Elements of Libertarian Leadership by Leonard E. Read

    The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe

    The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

    Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry by H.C. Engelbrecht, F.C. Hanighen and Harry Elmer Barnes

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  22. Okay, the ring ding et al gets mixed up with all kinds of digestive juices and then the colon whose function is to resorb all the water and so forth doesn't do its job and hence you have high volume.

    That is not my issue. Since 0430 yesterday I have been able to keep down half a cup of sugar water and 1 cup of broth. I have heaved so many times I feel like I've done a million crunches. With my surgical history my big fear is small bowel obstruction and I am kicking around the idea of going to the ER to find out. I need IV fluids anyway I think. To get from my bedroom to the kitchen I have to stop and take a break in the livingroom. I feel like a ragdoll.

    Obviously I didn't go to work today and the odds for tomorrow are looking dim. I cancelled with my student on that presupposition and I hate it because we have quarterly med reviews tomorrow and I really wanted her to see that. But she can't be there if I'm not. :(

    Anyway this is just all f'd up and I'm not happy.

    What does rooted mean, Soap?

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  23. Rooting is a process allowing users of mobile phones, tablet PCs, and other devices running the Android operating system to attain privileged control (known as "root access") within Android's subsystem. Rooting is often performed with the goal of overcoming limitations that carriers and hardware manufacturers put on some devices, resulting in the ability to alter or replace system applications and settings, run specialized apps that require administrator-level permissions, or perform other operations that are otherwise inaccessible to a normal Android user. Rooting is analogous to jailbreaking devices running the Apple iOS operating system or the Sony PlayStation 3. On Android, rooting can also facilitate the complete removal and replacement of the device's operating system.

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  24. The Kindle Fire doesn't allow access to the full Android apps market out of the box.

    I rooted it and now I can install a new operating system if I want. What I really wanted was the ability to install all of the regular Android apps I can install on my phone.

    I loaded the Aldiko book reader app and now I can read my ePub files that I downloaded from Mises.org

    Previously I had to read them in shitty quality as PDFs.

    The Aldiko app kicks ass over that. Plus, the ePub files take up less space than their PDF counterparts.

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  25. Alrighty, then how does one root their Fire? Inquiring minds want to know!

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  26. Google and Youtube it. Root kindle fire 6.2.2

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  27. Best instructions here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ88CYWv0FU&context=C3b39974ADOEgsToPDskKiwGE_bPEBJ0zW89QXQINa

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  28. Once it's rooted it is simple to toggle between the Go Launcher Ex and the normal Amazon looking carousel as well as root and unroot (as you'll need to be unrooted to view Amazon's streaming video).

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  29. Soap what I remember about you and I always will is that you once said you read Atlas Shrugged three times. If you do nothing else in life that's quite an accomplishment.

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  30. I'm always aspiring to new challenges.

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  31. Reading Ayn Rand is like reading Stephen King, enjoyable but you always get the feeling they're a little too long.

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  32. I get way more out of a 1000+ pages of Rand or Mises than I do out of Stephen King.

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  33. I've dabbled in King but I ain't some aficionado.

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