One of our housemates has finally found a place of her own, so our little impromptu homeless shelter is at half-capacity.

Keul! I am so moving in with D. Sidhe! ;-)

I am practicing my Buddhism: “progressive and the wingnuts — mere players in a game, my friend, ephemeral as a dream.”

When the well dries up, I’m contemplating signing out with “Vraagh! EAT IT COBAGZ!!1!” I think it would be a nice touch.

Before the turn of the century, the “Three R’s” used to stand for Readin’, Writin’, and Rhetoric. As we’re in the age of robber barons and plutocrats, maybe we circled all the way around and we’re back again.

Speaking of which, can you believe Grover Cleveland’s ridiculous excuse? “We are only recording telegraphs of known Spaniards and Tippecanarians!” Indeed!

Elendil- Extremely well in my estimation, you revealed their \”OMG go tell it to CHINA they torture, like, a bizallion times more than we do!!!1!\” arguments for what they were, empty deflections.

My sincerest respect to you for sticking it out and trying to demonstrate the absurdity of their positions for so long, I would have just given up and called them all assholes.

What\’s with this fundraising shit anyway, the guy\’s got no job, thousands of dollars in the bank and he\’s asking people like me for money (after taking a swipe at people like me with the hand that isn\’t holding his begging hat)?
For what? So he can continue to argue for more death and hamfisted \”shock and awe\” destruction from the comfort of his new house where he gets to stay home all day with his son? I know people that would kill to be able to be at home with their kid(s) if only they could afford it. I\’ll help *them* out before that asshole sees a dime from me.

The really funny part is that he actually went through the comments section and posted edits, in which he denied he was asking the “moonbats” to give him money.

Yeah, but remember – that’s the crowd that actually thinks of Goldstein as a humorist, of all things. Bright bulbs they ain’t.

And Bradrocket’s right – it was freakin’ hilarious, though so was the “talk to the invisible hand” comment right after yours.

http://tinyurl.com/q5cut

Geez, that didn’t take long, did it?

There’s more to critical thinking than just the ability to construct a valid argument, I think. One of the things the left and right miss when they talk past each other is a failure to acknowledge our lack of shared definitions and assumptions. To use a vastly oversimplified example, if I were to talk about “making America strong”, I would be saying something about an America in which no one went to bed hungry and everyone had a shot at a decent education. Someone on the right would be talking about an America that could crush its enemies.

We just have *vastly* different conceptions of what government is, what its purpose is, what an economy is composed of, what work is, what human dignity is…and those are just off the top of my head.

And then to make it worse, people argue for their positions using logical fallacies, meaning you’ve got to strip the fallacious arguments away before you can even begin to address the root differences. But you can’t get rid of the fallacies, because your average joe wouldn’t recognize a logical fallacy if it walked up, bit him on the ass, and sent his kid off to go die in a pointless overseas war.

It’s why I tend to be pretty hyped on the idea of trying to improve the quality of education. If you can deal with the fallacies quicker and easier, you can get down to brass tacks. But it’s a generations-long project, I fear. Ignorance as massive as what we’ve created in ‘Merkuh doesn’t go away overnight.

But I admire you for sticking in there. What a bunch of schmucks.

Oh, and I was thinking about that comment you made a while back about the role of education, and I think you might be right. But could it be so simple? Does it all just boil down to logical fallacies? I need to sleep on it.

Gridlock, I don’t know about how well I handled the commenters at Protein Wisdom. Somehow I ended up discussing how I’m not a bad person who wants the Islamists to win, and that yes, I do care about torture in China and Syria and everywhere that’s not the US. Once I’d convinced (?) them that I wasn’t a bad person, suddenly I was a self-righteous pratt. And obviously I’ve got a problem with condescension. Really, I think that our resident trolls deserve an award or something. That’s not fun.

I could make some wonderfully insightful point about liberals and their commitment to kindness and charitable values despite their comittment to what conservatives call “government charity” versus conservatives who seem to think private charity can replace the social safety net, but only as long as they don’t have to be the ones donating.

But instead, I think I’ll just point and laugh. It’s so much more fun!

He should be aware, though, that we’re queer, pagan/heathen, liberal, pro-choice, cat people. No smoking, drinking, or hanky-panky allowed. And we don’t have room for him to park a car, so he’ll have to learn to take the busses.

Honestly. I’m about as big a doormat as you could find, but somehow I draw the line at sending cash to people who have more money than I do (and as an out-of-work motel maid, that’s pretty much everybody) and people who are prepared to mock me for so doing. Screw him. Screw him cold.

Shame his family has to suffer, but then, with him as a father/husband, they’re probably used to it by now. There’s always WIC.

Tsk tsk. His poor choices led to this predicament, and he has bootstraps that he can pull himself up by.

That is, if he hasn’t pawned his boots yet, because Teh Gubmint spent his hard-earned welfare check on some paint for a school in Kirkuk.

Cream rises to the top. The fact is that American meritocracy is alive and well when Golddigger’s blog isn’t blessed by the free market with ads and funding.

Tsk tsk. His poor choices led to this predicament, and he has bootstraps that he can pull himself up by.

That is, if he hasn’t pawned his boots yet, because Teh Gubmint spent his hard-earned welfare check on some paint for a school in Kirkuk.

Cream rises to the top. The fact is that American meritocracy is alive and well when Golddigger’s blog isn’t blessed by the free market with ads and funding.