random off-topic thread

[TheIncredibleRox]

I can't give the hot babes preferential treatment, because "hot" is more or less the default here. It's rather incredible. Took me a couple months to adjust to the point of not being constantly distracted.

Damn, HF... wanna teach me Armenian and grab me a visa real fast?

[Heltonfan]

Students always look up to their teachers, in any culture, no?

This is where that pesky notion of "professional ethics" comes into play...

What do you show them, when you want to take a break from teaching syntax and grammar, HF?

Seinfeld. It's perfect. Ordinary conversation (i.e. things that are actually useful for the students), and hilarious to boot.

[Newman]

I wonder what they would think of The Family Guy. That's my new favorite tv show. I always resisted animation, but sometimes it is just laugh out loud funny. Probably would be too fast and over the head for someone learning the language though.

[indianadrew]

WOW... looks like obamas chances may now be in jeopardy. i can say that i will not vote for him. even though he denounced some inflamitory statements that rev. wright has made, i think he is done. what a load of crap. how can somebody spout that kind of hatred in the name of god?

i sure am glad that this came out before he became president.

[indianadrew]

Attachment 106

this is the ugliest little creature i have ever seen. it's called a mole-rat.

Attachment 107

[Newman]

Well, you can't vote for McCain, can you Drew? Yesterday he announced he wants us to stay in Afghanistan for 100 years as well. He is completely out of touch with reality. And he has ministers, like Hagge, who spout hatred as well. Hagge hates the Catholics.

McCain supports all the Bush policies. That would include the war policies as well as the economic ones. Bear Stearns? Run on banks in America. Is this 1928 or 2008? Are we headed to Potterville with the Republicans in charge? Surely you can't reward Bush with 4 more years under the guise of McCain!?

[indianadrew]

i could not vote for mccain. he is soft in immigration, and his stance on the middle east. i am hoping that ron paul makes a run on some independant ticket. otherwise i would vote another libertarian. i have softened my stance on obama, but i think that this whole preacher ting may hurt his chances. we'll see..


i miss roxpert

[BigRapidsJackass]

Yeah, Roxpert, your self-imposed exile period is over. C'mon back. It's getting dull in here. Purple Row is all right for Rockies news, but the girl who runs it is becoming a big-time homer. We don't need another Ringolsby.

As for Obama: here's the thing. I hate to say it because I like him, but here it is.

He's full of crap. He only joined that Rev Jeremiah Wright church to prove his African-American bona fides. He had to get elected to the state legislature in a 90% black/poor district. So he joined that rabble rousers congregation. He doesn't believe that crap. He's a sensible person. I also don't believe he's really against NAFTA, or any of that. Those are the things you need to say and do to get elected.

It's sad that things are this way. But the American electorate is now smarter than the pundits. Obama has a more liberal voting record than Clinton, but middle of the road Democrats and Independents find him much more in tune with their issues than Hillary is.

[Newman]

Jackass, YOU"RE full of crap, not Obama. Where do you get your info? From Fox? From that endless loop of God Damn America?

Didn't Obama join that church 25 years ago, long before he had any political aspirations (oh, yeah, he wanted to be President when he was in KG).

What crap doesn't he believe? That rich white men run America? Hey - I'm white and I believe that because it's true. Is that such an outrageous statement? Was Kenny Boy Ley a black man? Is the CEO of EXXON black? I don't think so.

The American electorate is not smart. The masses are asses. Bush got elected twice. Isn't that evidence enuf? We are in the 5th year of this stupid war, for no reason, and there is no outrage. When Cheney is asked about why we are still at war in Iraq when 70% of America wants us out, doesn't it matter what the people want, his response is "So?" As in, who cares what the people want. We're doing it our way.

Hillary is just another NAFTA favoring Republican.

[Newman]

I apologize Jackass. That sounded harsh.

I would like to hear exactly what crap the Rev was spewing that people think is wrong. Exactly what? ONe of my righty friends was parroting stuff he heard on Hannity or Rush, mocking the part in the speech where Obama calls his own white grandmother a typical white woman from that era. What was wrong with that? I can hear my own Mother echoing those kind of narrow or racist or stereotypical thoughts.

[BigRapidsJackass]

Newman, I'm watching Bill Maher now.

Barney Frank, of all people, is actually making sense. He defends Obama (c'mon, is everything your preacher says suddenly part of your political platform?), but he won't defend Wright.

I'm an unabashed Obama supporter, but I'm not about to pull a Maher and get all touchy feely about the Rev. Wright.

The good reverend said some things I don't necessarily disagree with. But there's a couple whoppers in there. That "chickens coming home to roost" thing from Malcolm X in relation to al Qaeda? How is that different from the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell formulation: the WTC came down because we are a country of sinners. Reminder: 9/11 was the product of a bunch of spoiled Saudi brats living off House of Saud oil revenue allowances. I'm not sure what we did to deserve their wrath. Wright says we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki without batting an eye, yet we cry over the loss of 3,000 on 9/11. Umm, sorry, not quite getting your point there, Rev. I guess it's about some kind of divine retribution. And a mad (no doubt white) scientist inflicted AIDS on Africa. Oh, that's an intelligent theory disproved by every reputable study ever done anywhere over the last 25 years. When someone strings together a bunch of idiotic "theories" all in a row like that, I have an old-fashioned kind of response: that person is an idiot.

Same idiocy, different color faces in the pews.
So it's a damn good question: why would an obviously intelligent man, who espouses none of these bogus theories, sit there and listen to them every Sunday for damn near 20 years? It's not a cultural thing. From what I've read, Obama's mother was a rather clear-headed atheist. Maybe it was some deep psychic longing for identity. After all, Obama really has no connection to America's racist past. His father wasn't even American, and his father's connection to America seems to be as the beneficiary of American educational largesse. Not a whole lot to gripe about there.

So I think the simplest explanation is mine. Why pay (through contributions) good money to hear an idiot? Well, he's entertaining all right, but that can't be the explanation. I love hearing the Rev say "Goddamn America," but I'm not getting up early on Sunday to hear it. So that leaves us with my explanation: he joined Rev Wright's flock because it was politically expedient to do so.

EDIT: Here's a very rich white (err, maybe not) man who was the harbinger of financial doom when he got caught up in a wild spending scandal a couple years ago. African Americans who lose their jobs in the next year or two based on the fallout of the subprime mortgage mess should be proud. Greed, ego, etc. know no color.

Franklin Raines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[indianadrew]

can you vote for someone strictly based on the fact you trust them? even if some (if not most) of their policies are against what you believe in?

[Newman]

No Drew, you can't. You can't trust a politician. Either side of the aisle.

Jackass, there's a big difference between what Rev Wright said and the rantings of Pat Robertson and those homophobes. What did Wright say that was wrong? The chickens did come home to roost. What's wrong with that sentence? Osama bin laden attacked us because he doesn't like American presence in his neck of the woods, and our bombing of his Muslims, and stuff like that. Cause and effect.

God had nothing to do with the hurricane that took out New Orleans. If He was mad at gays then he would have done the earthquake thing to SF, no?

Besides you're missing the big picture Jackass. We're not voting for the Rev. We're voting for Obama. The candidate. It's more important what the candidate says. Take Hillary, for example. She said she had to dodge sniper fire while landing in Bosnia with her daughter back then. Ooops, she misspoke. I guess anyone can confuse being shot at with being kissed on the cheek by an 8 year old girl!

And McCain...Mr. Senior Moment McCain...doesn't know the diff between a Sunni and a Shia, at this late stage of the game. And this is his strength?!

You're being manipulated by the media. They just focus in on the most incendiary phrases from the Rev. Are you going to argue that rich white men run America? Wasn't Kenny Boy Ley of Enron fame white? Isn't the CEO of Exxon white? Bush, Cheney, Rumseld and that cabal, aren't they all rich white men? What's the argument then?

[indianadrew]

does anyone know what "being on a distinguished road" means, as it pertains to this board.

also, what are reputation points?

[BigRapidsJackass]

First of all, I'm still a BO supporter. The fact that I think that he joined Wright's church largely out of political expediency means that I don't hold Rev. Wright's views against him.

Second: Good try, Newman. You did about as fine a job on the chickens coming home to roost thing as anyone could hope for. It's still stupid, since I'm not sure what -- other than setting our infidel feet on the holy sand! -- we did to offend them. I had thought we were there protecting the Saudi oil and, in turn, the Saudi allowances that go to their deadbeat young men, who then come to our country pretending to be students and then blow up our buildings to punish us for having the nerve to, umm ... to protect their allowances? Look, this chickens coming home to roost thing only works if you actually did something bad to someone. Not if you protected someone's most (only) valuable asset for them. Even if it was a mistake for us to do so ("no blood for oil"), it was a mistake that hurt Saddam, not the Saudis. And yet, curiously, no Iraqis signed up for kamikaze duty. When you do this Rev. Wright defense thing, you're really just doing what the Pres does: you're confusing Iraqi/Saddamites (who may very well have a beef with us, since we got involved in a trans-Arab border dispute) with Saudis (who, after all, have absolutely nothing to complain about, particularly with respect to the Bushes who love them so dearly).

But that's probably the easiest one to defend. AIDS as a conspiracy to unleash a virus against black people? I'd like to see someone defend the intelligence of that one.

As I said: when a smart person gives an idiot $25,000 for the pleasure of listening to his idiocy for an hour or two every Sunday, I must assume an ulterior motive.

This all reminds me of one of those John Stossel specials quite some time ago. It was about the whole "conspiracy mill" thing in black America. Remember when Snapple had to take a drawing of an old tall ship off their labels? That's because the rumor was that it was a slave ship. And Snapple supported slavery; after all, the label also had a big "K" on it, for KKK.

Snapple tried to explain: the ship on the label was from the Bettman Archives. It was a picture of the Boston Tea Party. Get it? Tea ... Iced Tea. And the K? That was a symbol showing that it was kosher. And all the rabbis seconded that.

Stossel told his black American focus group that there's a perfectly sensible explanation for the ship and the K. And (this has stuck in my mind ever since) one woman responded: "I don't care what Snapple says, or what your research shows. To me it's a slave ship." And she demanded they change the label. They did.

It's that kind of shameless stupidity -- stupidity of the "damn the facts, I've been a victim of racism and so my truth must be validated," even when that "truth" is a blatant falsehood, that Rev. Wright sells. Some believe it outright; some, like BO, excuse it. That's what his famous "speech on racial unity" was all about. It was a more eloquent version of what the woman interviewed by Stossel said: it doesn't matter what the truth actually is; it matters what I perceive the truth to be."