StrangeSox

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 07:59 AM) I find some of these new atheist movements to be more hateful sounding than most organized religions. But whatever, I'll just ignore them, too. It seems that it is typically people who were brought up in a fundamentalist, oppressive religion and then broke free. But they've replaced one fundamentalism with another. and they take their victimization/persecution complex with them.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 19, 2011 -> 07:50 PM) Was that a transformer exploding? looks like it. Who is that in your avatar?

Thanks for fixing my joke post?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 19, 2011 -> 11:38 AM) Only 10% have electricity and running water. You give them too much credit for 1984. Shave a decade or 10 off that you may be in the ballpark! I took it as 1984-land, as in Orwell's 1984.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Dec 18, 2011 -> 10:26 PM) Lennon had it wrong. We'd still killing over which Atheist organization has the better name. Oh absolutely, that was sarcastic. See: pz meyers and the "New Atheist" movement.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 18, 2011 -> 03:03 PM) Chiefs need about 6 yards to ice the game. Hope they don't run oob

Hope we never see hanie again

Well I made a good move picking up Seattle's def this week.

That said this repay did not look good, hope he is ok.

Hanie really needs to find a target besides knox. It seems like 80% of his passes go to him.

Funny Russian election pic (no good place to dump but here):

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 10:04 AM) What's stopping you from doing it? effort

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 06:41 PM) Menards sells frozen pizzas now? weird They have a small grocery section. It is weird.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 04:27 PM) Come on. You're a smart guy, I don't understand how you continue to ignore basic common sense. If you (1) work your ass of and (2) make proper life choices you will more than likely not be poor. The core problem is that this "basic common sense" is empirically wrong, and the rest of your wrong ideas flow from it. You continue to moralize poverty and insist that it is a result of personal failings.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 08:10 AM) A lot can happen in 34 minutes Oh I know, it was the juxtaposition of the excitement and anticipation with the simple statement of letdown and disappointment with no one else's posts in between.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 12:38 AM) Well, if you really think about it, Lowe's bread and butter are middle class American blue collar workers. I.E. union carpenters, plumbers, handymen, etc. I haven't done a "poll", but I'm going to go ahead and venture to guess most of them 1) don't give a s*** about muslims, foreigners, most religions, and 2) probably hate them all. In other words, Lowe's probably won't lose any business. I know this, and I'm not even a blue collar worker...but I've never liked Lowe's, I think Menard's is far superior...however, would this prevent me from shopping at Lowe's? No. Because I don't care about this, whatsoever. Menards is where we did most of our shopping after we moved in and were working on a million little projects. A box of drywall screws is right next to the frozen pizza aisle. Can't be beat.

QUOTE (Tex @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 10:09 PM) I hope one day all religions will not be unfairly attacked. It is sad when one religion attacks another, there are more than enough secular attacks. And let's not forget Christians are mocked and attacked regularly in our society. Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 05:56 PM) Well Boys and Girls, it's about that time...WHO CAN SET THE COURT ON FIRE?!?!? QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 06:30 PM) Bulls suck. these posts back-to-back made me laugh

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 03:18 PM) Maybe because the show sucks? Just sayin. This was more or less my response when BigSqwert posted this in the Dem thread. I saw one preview for it and rolled my eyes.

The problem is that that end result is trite and insulting and belittles the struggles millions of Americans face every day through no fault of their own. Laziness and bad morals are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for poverty. Hard work and good morals are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for not being in poverty. When you say that they are entirely dependent on society for what they have, you expose two ignorances. The first and most important is that the poor are not some separate group of others but one part of a continuum. Many if not most people below the poverty line are working poor, people who work their asses off just to barely get by, and sometimes even working two jobs isn't enough. It's not enough when some of the most important expenses, child care, food, medical care, education housing and energy, continue to climb at rapid levels. Many Americans above the poverty line are one or two bad events--the loss of their job, for example, or an expensive medical emergency--from falling into the economic pitfalls of poverty even if their income is above what the government uses to classify poverty. They aren't all or even mostly lazy, shiftless druggies (despite previous objections by you in the face of contradictory studies) being righteously punished for their poor ethics and moral failings. Economics is not a morality play. The second is that structures in the very society you say they are dependent upon are what create generational poverty. We have one of if not the lowest economic mobility ratings in the OECD. The idea of boot-strapping yourself out of poverty is one that is created from a view of class privilege. You can see this post for an illustration of this. Saying that the poor in this country "have it pretty good" is pretty damn insulting. edit: a timely addition from Andrew Sullivan!

It took that long?

I sort of forgot he was found guilty of anything.

They've become brazenly anti-environment at this point.

Urge to root...rising

Why is it that "those people" have to sacrifice everything to a grinding, miserable existence just to get out of that life while being judged and condemned by those in higher social classes if they do anything other than work constantly? Why should they have to live an existence devoid of joy while I can live one of relative luxury with minimal effort simply thanks to my birth? Poverty is a social issue, not an individual issue. The fact that it is not literally impossible to escape poverty, merely exceedingly difficult with little or no margin for error, is not exactly a strong defense of the current system. That not all poor people are literally starving to death is not a reason to put poor into scare quotes or decide that they don't really need medical coverage. The cost of a few of these luxury goods (luxury being defined as anything above subsistence living, in this case) that provide some entertainment at very low costs for an entire family are completely incomparable to healthcare or education costs. The report does not specify premium cable or high-speed internet. It doesn't specify smartphones with expensive data packages. It doesn't specify HDTV's or PS3's or iPods. It gives some catch-all categories for modern cheap consumer electronics and a few services, many of which can be had for very cheap costs and provide high entertainment/$ value for an entire family, and yet a significant number of poor people still cannot afford these things. The Heritage study does not support the idea that many poor people are spending hundreds of dollars a month on cable and internet and phones. What it does support is that electronics are pretty cheap these days, so cheap that many poor people can afford them. That is as far as you can really take these conclusions. Arguments that blame the poor for being poor because of laziness or bad morals are ignorant of the realities of poverty at best.