Putin's spokesman dismisses 'stupid' Asperger's claim

What's stuck up Putin's ass is cheap energy prices in a resurgent global economy combined with strengthening renewable energy source businesses claiming part of the market.

The fact that he is strengthening his ongoing coup of Ukraine as the ruble is bottoming out is frankly uncanny and ill-advised from every angle besides the messianic Russia worldview.

Fulgrim said:

Ah Ritalin, the cure all for a "misbehaving" kid who has problems in school. I remember being on that crap for a short time. Thankfully my mother was quick to take me off it. I was skinny as a rail to begin with as well as having Reactive hypoglycemia and Ritalin made me loose my apatite and subsequently I lost 8 pounds in two weeks. The shit also took away all of my energy. I simply couldn't stay awake and on the week ends it was not uncommon for me to sleep 18+ hours.

If only more parents knew how bad that crap could be.

Reading other people's experiences on that stuff depresses me; it serves only to help me realize even further WHY I suffered through some very specific issues that I did as a kid which carried all the way until even now. I too was scrawny kid that would put a staircase handrail to shame, however it was because I never had any appetite. After I got off that shit? Gorged. Utterly gorged on food for a long time but never gained much at all. That stuff is pretty much poison and it ruined my metabolism in the sense that it made it completely hyperactive 24/7.

I have on and off near chronic insomnia as well. I wasn't on just Ritalin back then, they had me on Ritalin, Clonidine, AND Adderal. All at the same time. How I didn't end up a permanent tweaker is totally beyond me. I could go on and on about all these different problems but really its just lame shit that is just upsetting to read. I learned to just get on with my life and move forward and find ways to cope and handle these issues. I guess it just kinda sucks that I had to even do that in the first place when fundamentally nothing is actually 'wrong' with me and I had only really learned that as adult.

Asperger's or not (so what if he did have it), it's creepy that the defense ministry of a country is doing medical studies about leaders of other countries. Doesn't help against otherwise hard-to-believe suspicions that US agents might have poisoned or contaminated world leaders, such as Chávez.

CorSair said:
More like stuck on past glory of the USSR.

Rather its huge military and energy sources, coupled with the realization that the current global financial order is a farce and the EU is mostly subservient to the US.

dew said:
American propaganda is on par with the worst reality-denying dictatorships and skanzens of Stalinism. Murcans buried Fidel at least ten times... in the last 5 years alone. Murca is no stranger to character assassination - even where there's no need of it!

Argentina faces a whole lobbying group (AFTA) paid by hedge funds that ruin foreign economies and finance GOP candidates that is led by ex-US government officials to try to destroy our debt restructuring scheme, feeding the media political slander or colluding with local opposition politicians. Luckily, Romney lost the presidential elections, or this could have been official US policy.

Oh, heh, I had a vague recollection and...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/29/hillary-clinton-cristina-kirchner-stress

AndrewB said:

But I can't save you from the embarrassment of the fact that you called me dumb, and then in the rest of your post, proceeded to completely agree with everything I said.

That's really dumb statement. You're denying existence of autism, I don't.

Let's see:

- worked his way into the KGB and became an incredible spymaster
- protected the Obligarchs embezzling racket
- was made president to secure their interests
- ousted Obligarchs for embezzling and resumed embezzling with his appointed puppets and the Russian Mob
- maintains iron grip on a world super power as a pseudo capitalist dictatorship

Yup must be that there assburgers, and nothing to do with being a manipulative, brilliantly gifted, Mastermind.

SYS said:

Let's see:

- worked his way into the KGB and became an incredible spymaster
- protected the Obligarchs embezzling racket
- was made president to secure their interests
- ousted Obligarchs for embezzling and resumed embezzling with his appointed puppets and the Russian Mob
- maintains iron grip on a world super power as a pseudo capitalist dictatorship

Yup must be that there assburgers, and nothing to do with being a manipulative, brilliantly gifted, Mastermind.

Its sort of like how the media portrayed George W. Bush as an incompetent idiot. I don't think he's a rocket scientist, but he did exactly what he had to do, for the people he had to do it for. Sure, one could point out that his policies hurt the United States. But he certainly did good by the power-elites of the USA. George W. Bush actually did a much better job of exacting the interests of his constituency (the rich, and super-rich), than Obama did for the left.

Kontra Kommando said:

George W. Bush actually did a much better job of exacting the interests of his constituency (the rich, and super-rich), than Obama did for the left.

Obama doesn't work for the left and never has.

Sodaholic said:

Obama doesn't work for the left and never has.

That may be true in a de facto sense.

Kontra Kommando said:

That may be true in a de facto sense.

Considering that what is considered as "left" in the USA would, at best, be considered "center-right" in the EU, Soda has a point there. In the USA, after all, voters are practically only given the choice between "right" and "righter", if not between "righter" and "rightest".

Kontra Kommando said:
Its sort of like how the media portrayed George W. Bush as an incompetent idiot. I don't think he's a rocket scientist, but he did exactly what he had to do, for the people he had to do it for.

Let's not confuse the administration with the person. Bush himself was the face of the Government but seems to have decided diddly squat in concrete terms, even in respect to the already limited role the (US) president may generally have. Then there was the wired Dubya incident in the 2004 elections.

Political Scientist, Gregory S. Mahler would classify it differently.


What is meant here is that the Right in the United States is classically liberal; which is really a moderate stance in a world that still has autocracies with hereditary rule. But relative to Europe, yes, the US Left is on the Center-Right, I'd say. Because it combines quasi-socialist ideas, ultimately to maintain a capitalist system. So do traditional Republicans in some areas though.

Liberals and conservatives aren't really in opposition anyway.

Better terms would be progressive vs conservative, or liberal vs authoritarian.

Conservatism is basically wanting to keep things the same. You want to conserve the society as it is. If they fight against a change towards a more right-wing society, conservatives are actually left-wing!

Then there's different domains. In the US, the right-wing is typically socially conservative (importance of "biblical values", opposition to sex education, same-sex marriages, contraceptives, etc.) but economically liberal (support of laissez-faire economics, opposition to regulations and wealth redistribution). Their ideal would be a government that regulates people's sex lives and absolutely nothing else.

Heh, that picture makes no sense to me. I don't mean just offsetting or reordering it in a different way, it doesn't represent the left-right axis as I understand it at all. It flattens the popular 2D Political Compass with left-right vs. liberal-authoritative axes into just one dimension and that distorts the meaning of the labels. I wouldn't be able to place the old Soviet bloc governments on it, nor a leftist conservative theocracy like Iran, nor classic European Christian democratic parties, for that matter.

I think the context of this left-right scale simply measures left and right as Reactionary meaning, old world ideas of monarchy and traditional order verse the idea of Republicanism, and self-rule of the people. (Though when I get home from work, I will check the context closer in the book.)

Basically, it goes back to the original meaning of Left and Right, as in parallel beliefs to Jacobins vs Royalists

Yeah, it would make sense in like 1800, but not now.

    R

P   C   E

    L

Interesting video about the broad political spectrum of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.

Gez said:

Liberals and conservatives aren't really in opposition anyway.

Better terms would be progressive vs conservative, or liberal vs authoritarian.

Conservatism is basically wanting to keep things the same. You want to conserve the society as it is. If they fight against a change towards a more right-wing society, conservatives are actually left-wing!

Then there's different domains. In the US, the right-wing is typically socially conservative (importance of "biblical values", opposition to sex education, same-sex marriages, contraceptives, etc.) but economically liberal (support of laissez-faire economics, opposition to regulations and wealth redistribution). Their ideal would be a government that regulates people's sex lives and absolutely nothing else.

I do recall Mahler's definition of the different terms, off the top of my head. It went something like this:

Radical- someone that desires immediate and significant change, and is willing to facilitate it outside of the cooperation of the established order. ("Society needs to change right now! Let's take to the streets.")

Liberal- someone desires significant change, but is willing to cooperate with the established order. i.e. compromising with the opposition in branches of government. ("Society needs to change, and we'll change it through our political institutions")

Conservative- someone that is willing to embrace slow change, after extensive deliberation. ("Society is mostly fine as it is, but there could be some areas that need reform")

Reactionary- Someone that desires society to return to a previous state of being. ("We were a lot better off before X happened; we should go back.")

Based on these definitions, one could say that the Nazis would be considered radicals, when they tried the Beer Hall Putsch. But when they were elected (Even though its likely they rigged it), there were behaving as Liberals. Ultimately, it was when they had established themselves as being the only game in town, did they conservatives.

The Bolsheviks and Fascist Black Shirts would both be considered radicals as well; since they forcibly toppled their predecessors to impose change on society. Same thing with the United States, and the Sons of Liberty. They were all radicals at some point. I guess these terms can best be described as divergent means to facility change for any given political ideology, in relation to the status quo.

You could just go by saying a radical is someone who alters the system instead of simply the rules within a system. It's not really something to compare linearly to other broad political positions because it's found in all of them.

A liberal likes change, seen as progressive or a betterment, in a way analogous with technological development. A reactionary, in opposition, wants to revert political changes. A conservative basically defends the status quo. But in Mahler's method, the issue of wealth or power distribution or focus, which is an historically essential aspect of politics, pretty much disappears. It turns left and right purely into a matter of liberality, when it has always had a "class" component.

myk said:

You could just go by saying a radical is someone who alters the system instead of simply the rules within a system.

Not necessarily, I believe. Because liberals, conservatives, and reactionaries could alter the system, via the rules. For example, many secessionist groups throughout the world try to vote for autonomy; essentially breaking down the old system, for a new one. Also, vise-versa, like formations of economic unions and confederations.

That applies to what I said, as those liberals, conservatives and reactionaries would also be radical. Most things are best divided in three. Especially in systems of opposition. It's basically two, but since there's two, a third forms where they clash or merge. The three can be radical when they push for revolutions, counterrevolutions and restorations.

Perhaps one could even use a political compass with three axes (that must be displayed in 3D). The third axis would oppose radical and normal.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/cia-psychological-profiles-hitler-castro-putin-saddam

Here are some more psychological profiles conducted by the U.S. government on world leaders, throughout the years.

"It is also difficult with Khrushchev to tell whether his anger is real or feigned."

I feel like I could relate to that. lol

There was an infamous care of some technical school in Greece using a translated US cold-war era probability theory text, which had an exercise asking the readers to calculate the probability of democracy being established in Cuba, given a possible death of Castro in the next x years. Simply sickening.

As for the US's psy profiles of other world leaders...well, I guess that's only fair, when probably the likes of Kim Il Sung say that Western leaders are corrupt capitalist pigs that exploit their people for their sick imperialist perversions, and the likes of Saddam (which place a lot of emphasis on one's image of virility) will say that all Western leaders are little sissies and fags.