American politics and news thread 2.0

Paul Ryan's Quora experience didn't quite go as well as Obama's on Reddit:

http://mashable.com/2012/09/10/paul-ryan-quora/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwl4AfiQix8&feature=related

I know you know I couldn't make it through this day without posting something relating to 9/11. This one is particularly good. His closing lines are powerful.

Shot of the 9/11 tribute lights from my balcony. I took this with my iPhone, hence the shitty quality. Plus, it looks further away, but is actually only 5 miles from me.

Here's a day shot of the new WTC building (it's in the center, in the distance), from my location:

Jack Wade wrote:

You serious? Not all Muslims want us to die. Not even close.

Maybe not all Muslims want us to die, but enough of them are certainly ambivalent and cowardly to the point where the "fringe minority" feels safe to carry out terrorist attacks in Islam's name and get away with it:

US ambassador killed in consulate attack in Libya
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120912/DA186ELO0.html

These "misunderstood, lovers-of-peace" dragged the body of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya through the streets of Benghazi like a sack of trash they were about to throw in a dumpster and made sure to photograph it and upload it to the Internet.

You will NEVER, EVER make peace with Muslims because there can be no peace. They are not our friends; never have been, never will be. A thousand years of human history confirms that these people will not change. They do not understand the virtue of tolerance or the concept of free-speech and open disagreement and they have no use for freedom or liberty.

Krischin eggstremists routinely attack embassies too!!!

Hilary Clinton whining about how this happened "...in a country we helped liberate..." is the most pathetic display I've ever seen. Next time, how about about not handing a country to Islamist bandits just because their opponent happens to be *gasp* a dictator. Because obviously what people who pillage and murder over a movie need is more freedom to act on their quite rational beliefs.

This is tragic for the families of the victims, but it is the unfortunate end result of a moronic, supposedly moralistic foreign policy that's more concerned with trying to foist liberal democracy than actually pursuing national interests.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

You serious? Not all Muslims want us to die. Not even close.

Maybe not all Muslims want us to die, but enough of them are certainly ambivalent and cowardly to the point where the "fringe minority" feels safe to carry out terrorist attacks in Islam's name and get away with it:

US ambassador killed in consulate attack in Libya
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120912/DA186ELO0.html

These "misunderstood, lovers-of-peace" dragged the body of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya through the streets of Benghazi like a sack of trash they were about to throw in a dumpster and made sure to photograph it and upload it to the Internet.

You will NEVER, EVER make peace with Muslims because there can be no peace. They are not our friends; never have been, never will be. A thousand years of human history confirms that these people will not change. They do not understand the virtue of tolerance or the concept of free-speech and open disagreement and they have no use for freedom or liberty.

Nah, she probably wants us all dead, better nuke 'em.

Damn Christians. Nothing, but a group of intolerant assholes that have no concept of freedom.

Tubes wrote:

Damn Christians. Nothing, but a group of intolerant assholes that have no concept of freedom.

Having a barbeque and not seeing any visible evidence of sausages or marshmellows :affraid: I fear for the end of civilisation.

Tubes wrote:

Damn Christians. Nothing, but a group of intolerant assholes that have no concept of freedom.

Excellent analogy, but for none of the reasons you were probably expecting. The KKK were representative of a significant portion of The South and how they felt towards black people in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, just as the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan that are burning American flags, storming embassies, killing diplomats, and hanging the president in effigy ARE representative of a significant chunk of the Muslim population worldwide.

The KKK, unlike Muslims, lost influence both politically and culturally when hundreds of thousands of white people (and black) would regularly march in the streets of different cities in the 60's demanding civil rights as a form of COUNTER-PROTEST. Where exactly is the Muslim equivalent of a counter protest???? You won't find any because none exist nor have they ever. You'll find a few images of a random person holding up pro-American signs, but by and large the Muslim world's silence has been deafening.

The thing is that you watch the world through US tinted glasses which is strange as most of the world does not view the world in such a way.

There are a lot of people that dislike the US for their interference in their affairs, and when they say so it is called anti-American. Could it be that there are countries that do not want to listen to the US ideas because they think that what the US preaaches is good for the US and not necessarily for them being not America.

The current crisis is not so much the next ploy by those devilsh muslims but something concocted by what turns out to be a Christian Fundamentalist of Christian-Coptish descent . To be fair, the substance of the movie allegedly is that Mohammed was a homosexual/pedophile (it seems to equate the two as one and the same) who faked being a prophet in order to gain access to followers' children. The producer has defended it as being necessary to show people that - quote - "Islam is a cancer". It's about as inflammatory as I can imagine it could be. To be honest, if Egyptians put out a similar film about Jesus I'd expect some reaction against consulates (or anything that could be mistaken for something 'muslimy') in parts of the US.
Which does not mean I agree with the violence. However that said after lesser affairs of insulting the prophet one could predict the reaction towards this movie without having some special gift. Which leads me to wonder what this christian fundamentalist hopes to achieve with this product which is already being disavowed by most of the crew and actors. The movie being recut and dubbed with new lines in such a way none of the folks involved recognised the intended product in the final result.

Image in the link below may be NSFW.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto

Quote :

No One Murdered Because Of This Image

WASHINGTON—Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist, reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.

CJB wrote:

Image in the link below may be NSFW.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto

Quote :

No One Murdered Because Of This Image

WASHINGTON—Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist, reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.

There is the proof for you......................really??? :roll:

Nah, the proof is the simple fact that you never see Christians or Jews blowing up embassies and murdering people over cartoons or movies.

CJB wrote:

Nah, the proof is the simple fact that you never see Christians or Jews blowing up embassies and murdering people over cartoons or movies.

You are right, they go to war after some fabrication of weapons of Mass destruction and thereby destabilating an entire region. Out of the entitlement of being right and the muslim threat is wrong and dangerous. And while doing that making sure that the anti-western sentiment gets empowered by the many deaths that have NO direct baring on a conflict. Just citizens being at the wrong place at the wrong time, when you make an omelet......... you get my drift.

Both recent wars against Muslim nation have been a huge waste of life (western and muslim alike) & money, the only folks getting better out of these conflicts are weapon manufactors, private "military"companies & the anti-western sentiment.

The whole war and sentiment smells more like a crusade against the Islam faith than anything else. Having read up on the history of Afghanistan one is absolutely bewildered that anybody wants to invade that region, all external invasions turned into costly losses and little to nothing was gained. And the reason they went in turns out to be moot as the target was living in a state that is supposed to be an ally. ANd they were pissed of about the incursion on their soil as well.

We know by now that any excuse these days turns into a Western bashing party and yet we feel the need to protect those who start these conflicts. the current affair has the smell of being started on purpose to rationalise further conflict with this region. I am not saying that in any way I condone the reaction of ugly violence, but want the person held responsible for starting this mess to begin with. Some actions should not be covered by the freedom of speech like Koran burnings and actions like this.

CJB wrote:

Nah, the proof is the simple fact that you never see Christians or Jews blowing up embassies and murdering people over cartoons or movies.

I watched a couple of minutes of this "movie" on YouTube, and it makes Uwe Bolle look like Terrence Malick. Even Ed Wood is laughing his ass off at the amateurish, Z-grade production values of this straight-to-YouTube film.

I simply don't believe that the millions of burning, pillaging, raping, thieving Muslims that are out there around the world protesting against the United States this week have even seen one minute of this movie because if they had, they might not be bothered with the effort of committing so much wanton violence and destruction. It's amazing that anyone has gotten this worked up over something that looks like it was filmed in a basement.

It's also clear that some of the most inflammatory lines of dialogue in the movie were not uttered by the actors; their voices were dubbed over, badly, in many instances, where in other cases the film is edited in such a way that a new actors voice is being dubbed in while the camera is looking away from the actor saying the dialogue and instead focusing on the reaction shot of the other actors. I'd be pissed too if I was in this awful film and found out I had been duped into making a movie that was being used to incite terrorism. These actors must have already been on hard times if they were reduced to acting in this pile of shit, but now they've probably got a bounty on their heads from these wacko nutjobs radicals over in the Middle East.

I'm astonished that anybody has gone to war over this worthless "film". I guess it says something about the hair-trigger psyche of the Middle Eastern Muslim that they would be so quick to retaliate with murder over something so trivial and astonishingly bad as this film. The State Department and The White House have inadvertently, in their haste to make sure the American people know that it's not their policies that have created this chaos in the Middle East, elevated this film from completely unknown to cult-hit.

saint mark wrote:

Both recent wars against Muslim nation have been a huge waste of life (western and muslim alike) & money, the only folks getting better out of these conflicts are weapon manufactors, private "military"companies & the anti-western sentiment.

Really? How about the people of Iraq who no longer have to live under the rule of a psychopathic fascist who routinely tortured his citizens and committed genocide, and once annexed an entire country shortly after ending a long war with another (talk about 'destabilating an entire region'!)? How about the people of the western world who now have to worry about two fewer large countries being run by governments that sympathise with and harbour international terrorists?

The idea that a sensible person can mockingly say 'out of the entitlement of being right and the muslim threat is wrong and dangerous' - as if free, democratic nations are not morally superior to backward, fascist regimes that promote terror and commit genocide - really does worry me.

That's relativism for you.

saint mark wrote:

I am not saying that in any way I condone the reaction of ugly violence, but want the person held responsible for starting this mess to begin with. Some actions should not be covered by the freedom of speech like Koran burnings and actions like this.

The only people who should be held responsible are the individuals who partook in the violence.

But nevertheless, it's always amusing to see the people who claim to be liberal, such as yourself, standing up for illiberal, backward, anti-Enlightenment forces and you would so easily cast aside core liberal principles such as freedom of speech if it means not offending violent, irrational mobs who have comitted murder over drawings and movies about a long-dead kiddie fiddler.

CJB wrote:

saint mark wrote:

I am not saying that in any way I condone the reaction of ugly violence, but want the person held responsible for starting this mess to begin with. Some actions should not be covered by the freedom of speech like Koran burnings and actions like this.

The only people who should be held responsible are the individuals who partook in the violence.

But nevertheless, it's always amusing to see the people who claim to be liberal, such as yourself, standing up for illiberal, backward, anti-Enlightenment forces and you would so easily cast aside core liberal principles such as freedom of speech if it means not offending violent, irrational mobs who have comitted murder over drawings and movies about a long-dead kiddie fiddler.

As you say you defend any action against the Islam as shown by your contempt for their religion, and you are all in the anti Islam bs to take it as a fact.

The one thing I say is that in this particular instance I feel that the unrest has been created with a purpose and that should be taken seriously. But hey, by all means continue your one-dimensional islam bashing.

It seems that people that are looking beyond the notion of that there is more in this situation than just fundamentalist baddie from the one side are being called wrong.
If your neighbour is a 2 meters pro-wrestler with a bad attitude you do not throw garbage in his garden without the knowledge that he might get back to you. If he does you might have called this problem on yourself. The fact that somebody has fabricated a highly insulting piece of "moviemaking" with the sole intention of creating unrest makes you claim the freedom of speech as defense. This is so clearly something else that that defense should be rendered void & nil.

I defend freedom of speech and artistic freedom. I make no apologies for that.

Keep appeasing those totalitarians. It worked for you Europeans last time around.