Obsidian Posted January 29, 2014 I seriously have no idea who either of these people are. Am I lucky in that aspect? 0 Share this post Link to post
Remilia Scarlet Posted January 29, 2014 ROFLMAO, that was incredibly entertaining. Bachmann is an idiot. 0 Share this post Link to post
Necromancer-AMV Posted January 29, 2014 Obsidian said:I seriously have no idea who either of these people are. Am I lucky in that aspect?In the case of Bachmann, all you really need to know about her is that in addition to being the prototypical 'shrink government 'till I need an electron microscope to see it' American far-right-wing conservative, she is also pants-on-head cuh-ray-zee. Examples: -Her belief that natural disasters are a sign from God that the wrong person is in the White House. -She's against women having access to the HPV vaccine because a woman came up to her at one of her rallies and said her daughter suffers from mental retardation as a result of taking it. Didn't bother to, y'know, VERIFY any of this. The woman couldn't possibly be wrong, or crazy, or anything like that. Nah. -Believes that Jimmy Carter was responsible for the swine flu epidemic that actually started in Gerald Ford's administration. This statement was made during that bird flu incident a few years back, because she was trying to connect Obama to that. -Believes that the Founding Fathers ended slavery. Also thinks that John Quincy Adams was one of the Founding Fathers. -Believes that we're 'running out of rich people'. -Believes that eliminating the minimum wage is good because then businesses can 'offer jobs at whatever level'. Awfully ironic for a woman who uses allegories to slavery as often as she does. And that folks, is just the highlights. 0 Share this post Link to post
Clonehunter Posted January 29, 2014 Conservatards vs Liberal-Douchebags: The Menacing Not-Much-Of-A-Phantom 0 Share this post Link to post
Technician Posted January 29, 2014 God that broad is dumb. I wanted to break her teeth-in every time she answers with "Ann needs a job." 0 Share this post Link to post
Grazza Posted January 29, 2014 Hey, don't blame me, I didn't vote for her. Still kinda embarrassing though... 0 Share this post Link to post
Merry Widow Posted January 29, 2014 Isn't Bernie Sanders from Vermont? 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted January 29, 2014 Sarah Palin 2: Electard Boogaloo. Why do the republicans let her talk where brain input is necessary? She's a walking cliche for the pretty murcan conservative housewife, they should only use her for posters, rallies and disputed sex tapes. I don't get how GOP still gets any votes with morons like her at the helm. 0 Share this post Link to post
myk Posted January 29, 2014 Needs moar "stfu bitch, don't interrupt". Sanders could hardly finish a sentence without her stepping on it. That's about worse than any of her arguments. 0 Share this post Link to post
Quasar Posted January 29, 2014 myk said:Needs moar "stfu bitch, don't interrupt". Sanders could hardly finish a sentence without her stepping on it. That's about worse than any of her arguments. Modern "debates" are never debates, where there is point and counterpoint and answers must stay on topic to the question at hand, posed by a neutral moderator. They are semi-scripted shouting matches where the two parties interrupt while sticking to their guns regardless of what is said by the other party. The death of civil discourse is only but a single symptom of the total dysfunctionality of American politics, but a telling one. 0 Share this post Link to post
myk Posted January 29, 2014 You mention politics, and I'm sure there are many issues in US politics (or from many other countries) yet this type of structured debate is mainly a tool of corporate media. CEOs and shareholders of dominant media choose the "nonpartisan" or "neutral" moderator setup to channel and "live-edit" the discussion, minimizing aspects that clash with their ideology and business, and chop debates up to subordinate them to advertising needs. Politicians that adapt to this are invited over and over and become mascots that form part of an intentionally short-termed agenda that's repeated over periods of time. Political debate on the screen then becomes a cynical and vapid exercise that's at odds with both street affairs and long term national interests. In the meantime, as the electorate grows distanced from such sterilized and myopic debates, politics gets influenced instead by privileged and rich lobbies that have financial and ideological ties with the owners and executives of these media companies. Bachmann interrupts continually in part because she's too stupid to organize a reply from every key bit of her opponent's discourse. She can't "take note" properly in her head and must answer before her opponent is done to keep up. But in part her technique also has a more proselytizing side stemming from an ideology of exclusion, which needs to silence the opponent, and attempts to naturalize this discourse or thought disrupting behavior so that people will repeat it. Place the marginalized and chronic poor somewhere we won't see them and silence whoever reminds us of them. 0 Share this post Link to post
Springy Posted January 29, 2014 Necromancer-AMV said:In the case of Bachmann, all you really need to know about her is that in addition to being the prototypical 'shrink government 'till I need an electron microscope to see it' American far-right-wing conservative, she is also pants-on-head cuh-ray-zee. Examples: -Her belief that natural disasters are a sign from God that the wrong person is in the White House. -She's against women having access to the HPV vaccine because a woman came up to her at one of her rallies and said her daughter suffers from mental retardation as a result of taking it. Didn't bother to, y'know, VERIFY any of this. The woman couldn't possibly be wrong, or crazy, or anything like that. Nah. -Believes that Jimmy Carter was responsible for the swine flu epidemic that actually started in Gerald Ford's administration. This statement was made during that bird flu incident a few years back, because she was trying to connect Obama to that. -Believes that the Founding Fathers ended slavery. Also thinks that John Quincy Adams was one of the Founding Fathers. -Believes that we're 'running out of rich people'. -Believes that eliminating the minimum wage is good because then businesses can 'offer jobs at whatever level'. Awfully ironic for a woman who uses allegories to slavery as often as she does. And that folks, is just the highlights. You have got to be fucking kidding me! Man, she sounds like a right twat and I haven't even watched the video yet. I mean the point about the 'natural disasters' really made me chuckle thinking it was some kind of joke until I read on. I can now verify that she must be one of the stupidest people to have lived on this Earth. 0 Share this post Link to post
myk Posted January 29, 2014 Springy said: I can now verify that she must be one of the stupidest people to have lived on this Earth. Most likely not, or she wouldn't be in Congress, but she relies mainly on cunning instead of what I'd call intelligence. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted January 30, 2014 Springy said:I can now verify that she must be one of the stupidest people to have lived on this Earth. Not as stupid as the people who voted her into Congress. Down here we call it the "donkey vote", supporting a particular party out of habit, family tradition or whatever other excuse may be offered for not pausing a moment to think before voting. 0 Share this post Link to post
Grazza Posted January 30, 2014 Her share of the vote was down dramatically in 2012, suggesting that quite a lot of people did actually take into account her craziness. And that's also against the normal trend whereby a nationally well-known political figure tends to increase their vote in their local area, and despite her opponent being greatly outgunned (12 to 1, apparently) in campaign spending. 0 Share this post Link to post
Waffenak Posted January 30, 2014 Never heard either of them, could be rodeo stars or tunnel workers for me. 0 Share this post Link to post
MajorRawne Posted January 30, 2014 Every time I hear people complaining about British politicians, I tell them to look at what the Americans are doing. British politicians call the police "plebs" (allegedly!) and claim expenses illegally. American politicians think everyone should own a gun for their own safety and that God is punishing their President. I can't really think of a sarcastic way to end a paragraph like that. 0 Share this post Link to post
Quasar Posted January 30, 2014 MajorRawne said:...think everyone should own a gun for their own safety... Which is why American politicians aren't British politicians. Exercise of responsible gun ownership took care of that back around the 1770's if I recall. 0 Share this post Link to post
Technician Posted January 30, 2014 British politicians are just as shit. 0 Share this post Link to post
Marnetmar Posted January 30, 2014 MajorRawne said:Every time I hear people complaining about British politicians, I tell them to look at what the Americans are doing. British politicians call the police "plebs" (allegedly!) and claim expenses illegally. American politicians think everyone should own a gun for their own safety and that God is punishing their President. I can't really think of a sarcastic way to end a paragraph like that. To be fair, at least we don't have the BNP. 0 Share this post Link to post
Radon Posted January 31, 2014 Is she the politician who was constantly parodied as a witch? 0 Share this post Link to post
Grazza Posted January 31, 2014 No, that was a different tea party crazy lady. They have quite a bunch of them.Technician said:British politicians are just as shit. It's tempting to take the view "all politicians are shit", but that doesn't mean that they are equally awful. And when you compare the levels of dishonesty and wilful ignorance, I think the typical UK politician will be viewed more favourably than his/her US counterpart. Partly because the TV media isn't divided into two groups of partisan supporters (that's the job of the print media in the UK, and by their nature they are less influential). 0 Share this post Link to post
MajorRawne Posted January 31, 2014 I never said British politicians were any good, they're generally about as much use as a proctologist with a sense of smell, just that our politicians don't present strange hoodoo arguments as some kind of fact. As for gun ownership, I still don't get why people never seem to question why everyone needs to own a weapon. Nobody I know owns a gun and we haven't all been murdered in our beds. People just get on with their lives. I can GUARANTEE you that people would be more scared if we introduced guns, because we'd have to ask why we actually need them. I guess if one country needs armed citizenry and another doesn't, one is probably doing something wrong. *Braces for gun fanatics arguing about constitutional rights* 0 Share this post Link to post
Necromancer-AMV Posted February 6, 2014 MajorRawne said:I still don't get why people never seem to question why everyone needs to own a weapon.Problem is, it doesn't seem to be just about the right to own a gun anymore; it's about the right to own any gun under any circumstance. A long long time ago, the NRA might have been a group of 2nd Amendment supporters, but the organization today is a highly politically charged, special interest group supporting the profit projections of gun manufacturers, a special interest group that has one political party in this country in their lap, and the other a little too friendly in certain states. Opponents of gun control aren't fighting against elimination of gun ownership, they're fighting against reinstatement of the assault weapon ban, they're fighting against barring access to certain kinds of ammo, and perhaps most ridiculous of all, they're fighting against universal background checks. People who have been convicted of crimes involving the use of firearms have proven to society that they cannot be trusted with them, and while we can't prevent them from getting hands on firearms illicitly, why the hell should we make it easy for them to do so legally? And let's not even get into the NRA's certain unofficial spokespeople like Ted Nugent. 0 Share this post Link to post
Technician Posted February 6, 2014 Necromancer-AMV said:Ted Nugent. It's hard to take a pants-shitting draft dodger seriously. 0 Share this post Link to post
Clonehunter Posted February 6, 2014 Background checks should be instated, but I think that as long as someone checks out okay, they should be allowed their civvie assualt rifle. 0 Share this post Link to post