HXC Boards RSS - Politics / Faith / Philosophy

Liberal Media

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:13:31 +0000

Yeah, the Liberal Media faces off the "right" and "left" sides of the economic line with Ron Paul and Paul Krugman. http://bloom.bg/JNtoDp

Because a centrist Keynesian economist is the leftist equivalent (or as stated by the host, "far on the other side of the spectrum") of the guy who thinks all government is fraudulent.

Anyone here have any opinions on Anglicanism?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:34:17 +0000

I've been attending Sunday service at a local Episcopal parish for the past few months and I generally like it so far. I basically grew up in a fairly conservative/fundamentalist non-denominational church background (Calvary Chapel), but eventually grew out of that, years ago. This is my first real experience with a mainline denomination.

I like that it's sort of a middle ground between Catholic and Protestant. I like that they base their faith on scripture, tradition, and reason. I like that they are generally progressive people but don't seem to water things down to the point of being barely recognizable as Christian, the way some other progressive denominations do.

So, does anyone have any experience with the Episcopal church or the broader Anglican communion? Good? Bad?

Santorum is out

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:31:20 +0000

Santorum is out. Newt is most likely out as well.

And my Ron Paul friends still thing they have hope.

guess which country pays the most for healthcare

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:59:02 +0000

Yup it's the U.S.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/healthcare-spending-countries_n_1388306.html?ref=canada&ir=Canada#s825346&title=1_United_States

socialized healthcare is cheaper.

Privilege

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:52:55 +0000

Discuss.

Basic income

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:45:39 +0000

I learned some crazy shit today.

You know how conservatives, especially libertarian conservatives, are completely opposed to transfer payments for the poor because they don't deserve it or it dis-incentivizes employment?

Well, I learned that libertarian economic role models Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman both supported basic income, which is a transfer payment.

This is instead of a minimum wage. It is a government payment to every citizen for nothing other than being a citizen. It covers the costs of basic living expenses (food and housing). Of course this is a negative tax for the poorest, and the wealthier ones are paying for this.

I'm baffled. How do my libertarian friends explain this as it is in direct contradiction to the ideology they spout?

Hayek: "I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country." from Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue by F. A. Hayek

KONY 2012

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:12:08 +0000

lol jk

Conservatives are insane.

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 01:07:54 +0000

"sperm are people, too..."

Libertarians and the tragedy of the commons

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:27:22 +0000

This is a video that explains Hardin's Tragedy of the [unregulated] Commons from a syndicalist perspective. A libertarian response follows with my comments out of quotes.

Quote

In a true capitalist/libertarian society if a person infringes on the person of another through pollution or anything else they would be subject to sanction.

That's always the cop-out used by capitalist libertarians. They say that the markets should be completely liberated so there is no interference by the state, yet they also claim there should be strong property rights. But when presented with reality in the form of the tragedy of commons exploitation, they make claims that "they would be subject to sanction." So Ron Paul wants to end the EPA, but when an entity pollutes a river that entity is sanctioned ... somehow.

Quote

There is nothing incongruous about also advocating for a minimal state that provides negative protections of individual rights, including property rights and enforcement of contracts. The polluter of a river could be held accountable to all property owners that have established rights to the use of those waters. It's not that complicated.

It's not complicated, until you insist that there be no barriers to businesses and also that there would be sanctions.

When the libertarian insists we should not regulate the amount of pollutants an electricity company can put into the air, it's completely contrary to your assertion that that company can be held accountable for polluting the property of other entities. And certainly preventing a property from becoming polluted is preferable to penalizing a company after they're already polluted your land/air/water and made their profits off of your expense.

Quote

You are discounting the incentives provided by punitive property damage settlements on the behavior of firms. You are also using a double-standard on the nature of rule-making. On the one hand, you imply that the rules of ownership you prefer would prevent pollution from ever occurring (not true, rules don't prevent anything, they are always based on punitive measures) On the other hand, you criticize my preferred set of rules because they wouldn't prevent pollution.

I'm not "discounting the incentives provided by punitive property damage settlements." That's exactly what I'm saying the libertarians are opposed to in one breath and support in the next. Libertarians oppose rules that would prevent pollution though punitive measures, and a regulatory agency that makes sure the rules are followed, and then insist that punitive measures would prevent pollution.

Dave Mustaine endorses Santorum

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:49:09 +0000

The asshole behind Megadeth thinks Santorum is presidential. I think Santorum makes for a compelling mouthwash.

Quote

I'm just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can't bear to watch what's happened to our great country. Everybody's got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, 'Oh, Obama's doing such a great job...' I don't think so. Not from what I see.

"Looking at the Republican candidates, I've got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney's five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there's some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he's just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was � that angry little man. I still like him, but I don't think I'd vote for him.

"Ron Paul� you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide � 98 percent of it's inert gases, but it's the two percent that's left that will kill you. What that means is that he'll make total sense for a while, and then he'll say something so way out that it negates everything else. I like the guy because he knows how to excite the youth of America and fill them in on some things. But when he says that we're like the Taliban� I'm sorry, Congressman Paul, but I'm nothing like the Taliban.

"Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn't gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney's done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney� You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I'm hoping that if it does come down to it, we'll see a Republican in the White House... and that it's Rick Santorum.

House Republicans order Capitol Police to Arrest Journalists

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:05:37 +0000

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_1246971.html?mrefid=

Kind of funny, especially since Danny said something along the lines that we asswipe liberals sound like conservatives when we support free speech. Because conservatives obviously support free speech, especially when it's exposong how corrupt and full of shit they are.

(The jab is in good humor, Danny. Lol fag.)

State of the Motherfucking Union

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:48:19 +0000

I wish Samuel L Jackson would do a SotU.

Anyway, I watched it last night and I thought Obama did a good job hitting on a lot of important areas. It's just too bad it doesn't really matter that he said there is a "corrosive influence of money in politics" because nothing will get done.

I'll Take The Reactionary Over The Murderer

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:35:46 +0000

http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2011/04/ill-take-reactionary-over-murderer.html

Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I'll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn't protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn't overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the �crime� of revealing the government's criminal behavior.

Can the same be said for Barack Obama?

Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you'll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul's good on the war stuff -- yawn -- but otherwise he's a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who'd kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He's more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He's a Democrat. And gosh, even if he's made a few mistakes, he means well.

Sure he's a murderer, in other words, but at least he's not a Republican!

Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans � liberals � are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn't be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, saying they'd prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.

As someone who sees the electoral process as primarily a distraction, something that diverts energy and attention from more effective means of reforming the system, I don't much care if people don't vote for Ron Paul. In fact, if you're going to vote, I'd rather you cast a write-in ballot for Emma Goldman. But! I do have a problem with those who imagine themselves to be liberal-minded citizens of the world casting their vote for Barack Obama and propagating the notion that someone can bomb and/or militarily occupy Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya and still earn more Progressive Points than the guy who would, you know, not do any of that.

Let's just assume the worst about Paul: that he's a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the �status quo�). Let's say he dines on Labradoodle puppies while using their blood to scribble notes in the margins of his dog-eared, gold-encrusted copy of Atlas Shrugged.

So. Fucking. What.

Barack Obama isn't exactly Eugene Debs, after all. Hell, he's not even Jimmy Carter. The facts are: he's pushed for the largest military budget in world history, given trillions of dollars to Wall Street in bailouts and near-zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve, protected oil companies like BP from legal liability for environmental damages they cause � from poisoning the Gulf to climate change � and mandated that all Americans purchase the U.S. health insurance industry's product. You might argue Paul's a corporatist, but there's no denying Obama's one.

And at least Paul would � and this is important, I think � stop killing poor foreigners with cluster bombs and Predator drones. Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, Paul would also bring the troops home from not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but Europe, Korea and Okinawa. There'd be no need for a School of the Americas because the U.S. wouldn't be busy training foreign military personnel the finer points of human rights abuses. Israel would have to carry out its war crimes on its own dime.

Even on on the most pressing domestic issues of the day, Paul strikes me as a hell of a lot more progressive than Obama. Look at the war on drugs: Obama has continued the same failed prohibitionist policies as his predecessors, maintaining a status quo that has placed 2.3 million � or one in 100 � Americans behind bars, the vast majority African-American and Hispanic. Paul, on the other hand, has called for ending the drug war and said he would pardon non-violent offenders, which would be the single greatest reform a president could make in the domestic sphere, equivalent in magnitude to ending Jim Crow.

Paul would also stop providing subsidies to corporate agriculture, nuclear energy and fossil fuels, while allowing class-action tort suits to proceed against oil and coal companies for the environmental damage they have wrought. Obama, by contrast, is providing billions to coal companies under the guise of �clean energy� � see his administration's policies on carbon capture and sequestration, the fossil fuel-equivalent of missile defense � and promising billions more so mega-energy corporations can get started on that �nuclear renaissance� we've all heard so much about. And if Paul really did succeed in cutting all those federal departments he talks about, there's nothing to prevent states and local governments -- and, I would hope, alternative social organizations not dependent on coercion -- from addressing issues such as health care and education. Decentralism isn't a bad thing.

All that aside, though, it seems to me that if you're going to style yourself a progressive, liberal humanitarian, your first priority really ought to be stopping your government from killing poor people. Second on that list? Stopping your government from putting hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens in cages for decades at a time over non-violent �crimes� committed by consenting adults. Seriously: what the fuck? Social Security's great and all I guess, but not exploding little children with cluster bombs � shouldn't that be at the top of the Liberal Agenda?

Over half of Americans' income taxes go to the military-industrial complex and the costs of arresting and locking up their fellow citizens. On both counts, Ron Paul's policy positions are far more progressive than those held � and indeed, implemented � by Barack Obama. And yet it's Paul who's the reactionary of the two?

My sweeping, I'm hoping overly broad assessment: liberals, especially the pundit class, don't much care about dead foreigners. They're a political problem at best � will the Afghan war derail Obama's re-election campaign? � not a moral one. And liberals are more than willing to accept a few charred women and children in some country they'll never visit in exchange for increasing social welfare spending by 0.02 percent, or at least not cutting it by as much as a mean 'ol Rethuglican.

Mother Jones' Kevin Drum, for example, has chastised anti-Obama lefties, complaining that undermining � by way of accurately assessing and commenting upon � a warmonger of the Democratic persuasion is �extraordinarily self-destructive" to all FDR-fearing lefties.

�Just ask LBJ,� Drum added. The historical footnote he left out: That LBJ was run out of office by the anti-war left because the guy was murdering hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. But mass murder is no reason to oppose a Democratic president, at least not if you're a professional liberal.

There are exceptions: Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naiman has a piece in Truth Out suggesting the anti-war left checking out Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who's something of a Ron Paul-lite. But for too many liberals, it seems partisanship and the promise � not even necessarily the delivery, if you've been reading Obama's die-hard apologists � of infinitesimally more spending on domestic programs is more important than saving the lives of a few thousand innocent women and children who happen to live outside the confines of the arbitrary geopolitical entity known as the United States.

Another reason to root -- if not vote -- for Ron Paul: if there was a Republican in the White House, liberals just might start caring about the murder of non-Americans again.

I would how ronery he is now

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:45:31 +0000

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/18/world/asia/north-korea-leader-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Compare Israel and Native Americans

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:38:05 +0000

I need your help on this, guys. Even though conservatives say there's no such thing as a hate crime, and that special interests are taking over politics, every election the Republican candidates go to the Jewish groups and tell them how Israel is a better country than the USA, and how the USA exists to support Israel.

So many Americans just can't understand the Palestinian situation. They say things like, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian."

So I want to essentially gather together what it would look like if we took the 5 Native American tribes displaced on the Trail of Tears and moved them back to their native lands (as the Zionists did), and then use analogs in the people who are living there now for the Palestinians. You know, because there is no such thing as a Floridian, they all moved there from somewhere else.

I want to explore how people would feel being displaced to give homes to an ethnic group, and how those displaced would become second class citizens, etc.

Good idea?

Let's do this together.

War on Christmas

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:48:44 +0000

Fuck you and your baby Jesus.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-6-2011/tree-fighting-ceremony---war-on-christmas

House votes to end Election Commission

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 06:32:40 +0000

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/196613-house-passes-bill-ending-election-commission-public-financing-of-campaigns

Pish-posh, we don't need anyone making sure voting machines work anyway.

Protect IP

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:56:55 +0000

The Vatican criticizes the global financial markets

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Vatican wants reform of world financial system, creation of authority to manage world economy

As you can imagine, the dispensationalists are all, "Told you so! The pope is the Antichrist!"

The war is over

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:32:41 +0000

Obama announces all US troops will be home from Iraq by the end of the year. I'm sure they won't be sent to Afghanistan.

Limbaugh and the LRA

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:11:29 +0000

Transcript from show in which he criticizes Obama for sending troops to kill 'Christians' in Uganda:

Quote

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord's Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord's Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord's Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That's what the lingo means, "to help regional forces remove from the battlefield," meaning capture or kill.

Later...

Quote

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys -- and they claim to be Christians.

Guess one of these assholes pulled out their Android and located the wikipedia article.

http://www.hxcboards.net/public/style_emoticons/default/banghead.gif

Gold

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:09:05 +0000

I have no idea who this guy is. Some friend of a friend. He just repeated the phrase so many idiots keep saying:

Quote

The value of Gold has not changed since the time of the Romans... It still buys the same thing.

This in response to a video my friend posted where a reported accurately described why gold prices are down saying that gold isn't backed by anything, and the Dollar is backed by "the full faith and credit of the United States."

He also said,

Quote

Gold backs it isn't backed!

Gold backs what?

This is a religion to these people. That gold is currency, and even though we're not on a gold standard, our currency is valued based on the fact that gold is real money and everything else isn't money.

Occupy Wall Street

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:41:14 +0000

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/chris-hedges-occupy-wall-street-is-where-the-hope-of-america-lies/

Class Warfare

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:35:05 +0000

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/09/21/cg4e7933d157f83_custom.jpg?t=1316643147&s=4

The only way to really learn philosophy

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:03:03 +0000

FUCKING FINALLY
http://aya.shii.org/2011/09/17/european-philosophers-become-magical-anime-girls/

USPS

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:08:21 +0000

I think it's funny that the conservatives are piling on the Postal Service because it's not a profitable venture. It's a government office, they should never be profitable by their very nature of public service. But it's also ironic because they're always so "Read your constitution!"

Constitution of the United States of America
Article 1 - The Legislative Branch
Section 8 - Powers of Congress

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

Hitler

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:37:22 +0000

I'd like to have a historical thread on Hitler and the Nazis. I'm taking a course on Nazi Germany this semester from a professor who is an expert in the history of Eugenics. He's a really sharp guy and I'm learning some interesting stuff.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-57wOxV0dX1g/TiVWqjaV66I/AAAAAAAACYI/cqwnL9HQFe0/s1600/Hitler+school+-+Occult+History+Third+Reich+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg

Hitler looked like a dickhead as early as the third grade. Yeah, that's him at the top there in the middle.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Hitler/images/Hitler_schoolboy.jpg

Also, he wasn't much of a hands-on guy. He'd wake up late, hang around talking to his top-level underlings and just say stuff. About what he thought, or believed, or would like to see in the future. And then people who wanted to impress him or get on his good side would just go out and do stuff, without running it by him, and report back, and he'd be like, "great job, keep it up."

Joseph Goebbels cheated on his wife and got caught, and she went straight to Hitler with it, which kind of pissed him off, and to get back on his good side, Goebbels engineered the "night of broken glass," when people smashed up the windows of Jewish owned businesses and local synagogues. Obviously it worked and Goebbels got back into Hitler's good graces.

The really amazing thing about Nazi Germany is that it didn't fall apart before the war even began. The whole thing was run by the seat of its pants. Not at all the well-oiled machine it appeared on the exterior.

More Rick Perry lulz

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:23:52 +0000

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62780.html

After he cuts the budget allocations for firefighters, he asks the feds for aid to fight the wildfires.

If you ask me, he just needs to pray a little harder.

Support Our Troops

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:10:18 +0000

Here's a picture of dead Iraqi babies:
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2011/08/31/16/49/gmz1i.WiPh.91.jpg

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/31/122789/wikileaks-iraqi-children-in-us.html

GRACIOUS ALMIGHTY LORD, BLESS OUR TROOPS AS THEY GO INTO HARMS WAY BY SHOOTING INFANTS IN THE HEAD TO PROTECT OUR MANIFEST DESTINY.

Climate Change

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:44:07 +0000

http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Scientific-Guide-to-Global-Warming-Skepticism.html

Quote

The Guide explains the science in brief, plain language without getting too technical. For those who wish to dig deeper into the science, more detailed treatments can be found at the following pages (often presented with varying levels of complexity from Basic to Advanced):

Human CO2 emissions is tiny compared to natural emissions
Global warming stopped in 1998
It's cooling
Climate sensitivity is low
Climate has changed in the past
CO2 lags temperature
CO2 doesn't cause much warming
The warming trend is due to microsite influences
The temperature record is unreliable
The hockey stick is broken
Global warming is a good thing
Climategate shows there's a conspiracy among climate scientists
There's no scientific consensus