Obama embarrassed himself, liberals. You better hope his stylistic talents carry him through to Nov 4, because he has nothing substantial to say.

Hey, Troof, how are the polls looking these days? Epic fail!

Are you then a South African living in New Zealand…? (All Blacks & Boks)

I suggest doing the reverse would also inhibit ones enjoyment of all the finer things in live, like living…

Another S,N! thread reduced to arguing with parody trolls.

Funny, I wasn’t getting a whiff of “parody troll” from the Mike K. unit, so much as a pong of “articulate-yet-myopic glibertarian crypto-fascist know-it-all” but YMMV.

I think parody trolls generally merit about as much tolerance as the real deal do … like I’ve said before, the better one mimics cerebral diarrhea the more likely one is in fact infected with it. Its presence alone is an insult, & it doesn’t look false to the more ignorant REAL trolls – it just looks to them like they have more support out there. If you’re enough of a sick fuck to think that giving moral aid to wingnuts in 2008 is just “part of teh funnay” you deserve the beatdown just as much as the bonafide wingnuts do. Besides which, folks here may have noticed that I have a certain sentimental soft-spot for well-deserved invective toward wingnuts … & this place lets me indulge that “guilty” pleasure.

Is S,N! supposed to be a debating chamber?

That comment is out of order, sir! Please wait for the troll’s rebuttal before submitting your query!

Oh wait – it got all butthurt & ran away when it ran out of sloganeering mindsludge & couldn’t answer anyone’s responses without looking (even more) hydrocephalic. Pity.

The challenge is respectfully withdrawn … carry on!

And I’m so close to a double major in political snark and scatology.

Win. I want to make a joke about “cramming for the finals” or “acing the oral exam” here, but my punning-mojo is broken.

Scatological in every way
And forever more, and forever more
That’s how you’ll stay, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why, darling, it’s topological
That someone so scatological
Thinks that I am scatological too

For some reason this made the song Unforgettable start looping in my head, except with the word “unforgettable” replaced with “scatological” . . . I’ve had 2 hours of sleep in 40 hours. Twelve hours of that time spent at University of Iowa hospitals with partner’s da. Saw and heard horrible things. No choice but to eat at IHOP at 5:00 AM. Hours driving on I-80. Scatological, the new hit song with a bullet on the charts of Candy’s frazzled brain, is the last straw. Bed now . . .

I think Obama stayed away from the Vet stuff, because he didn’t want to hand Grampa grandstand a prime opportunity to be offended. O made the right call. He needs to wait for it to come up in a more organic way. This was a smart pass by O.

Another S,N! thread reduced to arguing with parody trolls.

It’s a little like watching old “Odd Couple” reruns.

You know all the lines, you even know where the commercial breaks come in.

Except it’s not funny…

mikey

And I’m so close to a double major in political snark and scatology.

Is S,N! supposed to be a debating chamber? I had understood it to be more like a sports bar. If someone were to wander off the street into a sports bar and shout out “Feck the All Blacks! Go the Boks!”, then the absence of “room for growth or learning here” is going to be the least of their worries.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

We’ve got lots of room right here on this cuddly warm petri dish, pal. C’mon in!

Just don’t get too close to that nafcillin-soaked little disk over there. That neighborhood tastes funny.

Upon re-reading my post, I see it is a bit disjointed in the middle. I composed the first half, went off to do something that needed to be done (the unnameable Time Critical Task), and finished it. Feel free to offer connectives to the two muddling halves.

And to elaborate upon the Child Test: Children would understand Randian concepts as easily as Greenspan or any other blithering idiot since the idea of “That ball is MINE! Keep your paws off it!” is central to any child’s persona.

The Randroids never outgrow that stage. If Freud had been more aware of economic principles, he might’ve added Selfish to the Anal and Oral stages. (although he did identify selfishness as part of the Anal Stage)

1) everybody has already pointed out how socialized economic structures such as roads, bridges, electrical grids, etc make a mockery of the Selfish Simpletons’ “arguments”. Just ask them to pay $5 every single time they use a road – per mile.

2) a deeper point, and one that they will NEVER get, is the basic macro economic principle that the main measure of the vitality of any economic system is money velocity. Having “enforced” (for lack of a better word) economic activity by a Big Mover like the government via public works, and Bad Things like the military-industrial complex, keeps money velocity at some finite level.

One of the primary problems that kept the Great Depression going as long as it did was lack of money velocity. People sat on whatever tiny bit of money they did have because things seemed so bad that you had better save for even worse times ahead. People would use barter even if they had the cash to do something.

Wastefulness is central to a functioning capitalist system. This is one of the things that dooms capitalism over the long haul. The environment just cannot handle it anymore.

Another thing that dooms capitalism is less and less access to cheap raw materials to add value to. In 1880 you would just swoop into the Congo, for instance, and steal their bauxite, casually shooting the natives if they objected. Now it is harder and harder to find cheap (good) or free (best) sources of raw materials. You can’t keep invading countries and stealing their raw materials (sound familiar?) The natives fight back, and even with all the military technology we have managed to engineer to kill people with, you don’t win so easily or at all.

Sorry to be all serious and yadda yadda yadda, but the sancimonious and superior tone that the Randroids always seem to present seems to unnerve some of the steeliest posters here. Don’t worry. They have nothing. No understanding at all of the real world or of real economic principles.

A good way to estimate if you should be worried about some fascist idiot’s “argument” that wanders on here is to give it the Child Test:

Would a child understand their argument?

Since any 3 year old could discuss Randian concepts as well as Greenspan while he was slobbering over her at one of her “salons”, you can rest easy. The Randroids are as unthreatening to reality as Palin’s Brain To Nowhere.

That Davesey Broder! Such an alpha male.