This happened…
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
Now this:
So this?
God is just fucking with them now.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]Reader Interactions
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[…] and dads, and they were all under five years old.”“Wait for it. … Wait for it. … Tee-hee!”“It’s not about your right as a gay person to dignity. It’s about our right to […]
Xecky Gilchrist
It does get awfully confusing, how God flip-flops so much. Maybe Romney really is made in His image!
Zifnab
And it looks like the one true religion is…
The Mormons!
/South Park
Linda Featheringill
There is a good bit of anecdotal evidence that God has a wicked sense of humor. Really luvs Him some practical jokes. And his justice is frequently very, very funny.
How come I’m not laughing?
McWaffle
It works for Romney too, just make the God image kinda fractal out recursively.
Jay C
“Tee Hee”??
In most of these cases, wouldn’t it be more of “LOL!!!” ?
Elizabelle
Love the graphics.
scav
God’s yoyo or God’s laser pointer? I can’t decide which image to go with.
Violet
I think instead of “Tee-Hee” it would be more like “I smite thee!” Followed by an evil cackle. And a chorus of angels doubling over in laughter.
lamh35
Wow talk about a picture saying 1000 words.
Romney’s Stadium Speech Today Dwarfed By Obama Stadium Speech In 2008
Who’s bright idea in the Romney camp was it to stage this speech in a football stadium half of which Romney never had a chance of filling!
Mark S.
I guess Craig James is running for Senator of Texas and said in a debate that he believes being gay is a choice. I always wish people asking the question would follow up with, “So do you remember when you chose to be heterosexual?”
Raven
@Mark S.: I could quote Randall P Mc Murphy but it probably wouldn’t go over very well.
smintheus
Gallup just released a survey that really looks like a polling train wreck, and it calls into question their methods. Compare these results from Gallup with the radically different results in this poll just released by Pew.
Gallup’s approval/disapproval numbers for the auto bailout are 44/51. Pew’s numbers (for a similar question, is the bailout good or bad for the economy?) are 56/38. Obviously vastly different. Gallup’s results look like the numbers Pew reports from back in 2009. The only way that you could get Gallup’s results from the current Pew survey would be if you took only the Republican respondents into account (Pew has them at 44/52).
Gallup’s results are so far outside what other recent polling has shown for the auto bailout that I have to wonder what the heck they are doing.
Betty Cracker
@lamh35: Wow, that’s embarrassing. Tee-hee.
BGinCHI
@smintheus: Calling land lines?
Steve
@lamh35: It was supposed to be at the Detroit Economic Club but they ran out of room, so they looked for someplace larger. You’d think they could have found some middle ground.
smintheus
@BGinCHI: Land lines tend to get you elderly respondents. Weird thing is that the bailout remains least popular with the young.
Felinious Wench
My Loki is an awesome Loki.
Lee
@Mark S.: I’ve asked that. They become truly and completely stumped by the question. It like like the pathways in their brain are not ready to handle those connections.
Lee
@smintheus: I thought it was determined that Gallup has been in the bag for the Republicans for quite sometime.
Did I miss-read the memo?
Amir Khalid
@Mark S.:
I have to ask, being somewhat obtuse about certain things: Do these right-wing types believe that being gay by choice is more sinful than being naturally gay? Or don’t they believe in the latter at all?
Violet
@Steve:
I read that elsewhere. How big is the Detroit Economic Club? Does it mean Mitt’s actually drawing a crowd, but his team can’t do planning?
Also, saw on 538 that Mitt’s actually up in Michigan.
Lee
@Amir Khalid: Typically they do not believe at all that you are born gay. Even if you can get them to accept that faulty reasoning behind gay being a choice, then they fall back on ‘then it is a choice that they ACT on their homosexuality’ (meaning that if you are gay you should be celibate).
DanielX
Hey, no big deal. Pat Robertson has been getting these erroneous messages from God for years. You’d think that He (or She), being God, would have fixed this communications problem by now. Could it be that Pat and the rest of these people have just gone off their medications?
terry
really wish media would really question people who say god talks to them. it’s always so fascinating that god seems to want what they want, and hate what they hate (don’t come at me with that love the sinner bullshit, i’ve known it was crap since I was six.) How very convenient!
but, they won’t. bummer.
Amir Khalid
@Steve:
I raised this very question a few threads down, and got this response from commenter 252man:
ruemara
God is kokopelli. Erect dick and all. It certainly explains things, no?
Rafer Janders
@Mark S.:
The better question is “so when did you decide not be gay?”
Rafer Janders
@Mark S.:
The better question is “so when did you decide not to be gay?”
BGinCHI
Funny God won’t even talk to Randall Terry. Not even to fuck with him.
kdaug
@lamh35: Ah-yup.
jl
@smintheus: The questions are worded so differently in the two polls that I think it is difficult to compare the results.
The Gallup question specified ‘federal’ government (whose approval rating is in the toilet along with the banks and the news media), and focused on the bailout itself.
The Pew question just said ‘government’ and specifically asked about the ‘economic effects’ of the bailout.
The methodology was different. Gallup results were from a daily tracking poll, Pew was a five day poll. Can’t find details of Gallup survey, but daily tracking polls expected to be smaller than a five day national poll, and more suseceptable to effects of one day news cycle (imagine if Gallup poll was done right after the GOP joke of a debate, with the confused dishonest rantings of Romney in the air.)
Margin of error for Pew is 5 percentage points, tracking poll margin of error probably larger, since sample size is probably much smaller. So may not be a significant difference between the results.
Those kinds of details can make a difference.
On general principles, Gallup is sketchier than Pew because (unless I missed a link someplace), you can’t find the survey questionnaire or technical description for Gallup.
In fact, I cannot find any links in Gallup site to descriptions of survey methods or questionnaires. That is really cheezy, and not what I remember last time I checked their site, though last time I remember was a couple of years ago.
Mark S.
@Amir Khalid:
Oh sure. If God created you gay and being gay is a sin, well, God’s kind of an asshole. That’s why a lot of anti-gay people argue it’s a choice.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, pretty much accepts that being gay isn’t a choice. Their solution is for you to just be celibate all of your life.
Cermet
@Amir Khalid: To admit that God makes Gays would be to admit that either God is evil or approves of being Gay. Do you honestly really believe any one in those cults want to face such a choice?
John M. Burt
I seem to recall a theologian’s saying something to the effect that, “If life is a joke, then let us serve the Lord by making it a funny one.”
They also serve who only stand and get pied . . . .
Jennifer
I think the above cartoons would be funnier if in the first panel of each, God is saying, “(Insert loony-tune GOP candidate here), I want you to run for president. Now, pull my finger!”
West of the Cascades
@Xecky Gilchrist: re: God flip-flopping, see the whole Old Testament v. New Testament thing. Shit like “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Funny that it’s the reactionary Christianists who don’t get that God is pwning them for their own good, to teach them NOT TO BE STUCK IN THE FUCKING OLD TESTAMENT MINDSETS.
It’s like President Obama has said on a few occasions, that it’s not flip-flopping to make a reasonable change of mind when presented with new information. The GOP and their fundamentalist supporters have missed out on the “new information” in what they purport to follow as a faith.
Calouste
@Mark S.:
Anyone who’s read the Book of Job would think that the God depicted there in can be an asshole.
Jennifer
@West of the Cascades: Yeah, and they’ve only had about 2000 years to get up to speed. Truly, the ultimate “slow learners.”
tz
@Mark S.:
My guess he is trying his damnedest to choose heterosexuality.
redshirt
My God is a delicious God, and brings forth Holy Sauces to delight the Faithful.
Interrobang
@Rafer Janders: Actually, even that’s not a done deal: I heard one of these guys answer that question and he said “All the time,” more or less. Those of us who live in actual reality might figure out that if you have to work at being straight “all the time,” you’re not straight. Somehow, these people are such twistoids that they think living a life of self-deception, shame, and repression is a good thing.
Chris
@Mark S.:
Not only do they say gays are condemned to celibacy, but they then ban them from the priesthood, one of the few places in the Catholic community where people are supposed to be “called to celibacy.”
scav
@Interrobang: I would be in such trouble. Anybody said he tries to be straight all the time, I’d be right back with “wife that unattractive?” bad, bad scav
zadig
Not to quibble, Calouste, but anyone who’s read the book of Job needs to come to the conclusion right quick that Job’s God had his psychotic break long since, and should quickly be taken down by Batman-deity and hauled off to the heavenly Arkham Asylum.
What kind of deity says “To reward your loyalty, here’s a whole new family every bit as good as the old one I killed.” It’s the Joker all over again.
kindness
I’m thankful my FSM will drop the f-bomb and g-faw when he/she/it pulls a punk prank like this. Tee Hee is kinda gay (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Amir Khalid
@Chris:
I understand that this is partly for fear that gay priests are more likely to sexually abuse children (well, boys). If that’s true, then the Catholic Church is conflating homosexuality with pedophilia. And, of course, it is straight male priests who sexually abuse girls. And whose bright idea was it for the Church to have celibate clergy, anyway?
redshirt
@zadig: I love the Book of Job – straight up God gambling. “Hey Satan, betchya I can fuck this guy over completely and he’ll STILL worship me!”
kindness
@Amir Khalid: The Catholic church started their ‘tradition’ of not allowing priests to marry in 1100 C.E. Prior to that Priests & Popes alike married and had kids. What happened was an 1100 era Pope tried to make their kid the next Pope as a hereditary thing and thus the encyclical not to allow priests to marry was started (the morans).
lamh35
Ok seriously, I know I know Mark “Da Dick” Halperin is a hack, but is there anyway to find out if he is actually being paid by the Romney campaign to jerk Romney off the way he does.
“Da Dick” is trying to claim that Romney “econ 101” speech in Detroit, the one where the Romney campaign optics of not being able to fill stadium is terrible, that the local TV will all be about how “the local-boy-made-good who fancies cars speaking on the field of their beloved football stadium about his ideas for jobs and replacing Barack Obama…”
http://thepage.time.com/2012/02/23/econ-101-take-2/
That’s a direct quote! Seriously, is that guy married cause I pity the life of anybody woman or man who would be married or partnered which such as hack-tastic individual.
I know, I know, it’s Halperin, but geez with his hands so far up Romney’s ass, how can he manage to type such drivel?
Yutsano
According to Catholic doctrine Jeebus never engaged in teh sexytime during his time as a human Amir. So to emulate a Christly life priests are required to be celibate in all matters. With predictable results.
Rita R.
@Chris:
Actually, celibacy is their preferred default for everyone. All single people, all gay people, priests, nuns. Even married couples are supposed to refrain from the base business of sex unless they are engaging in a three-way with God to create new life. If pressed, they’ll concede the role of sex in bonding — for husbands and wives only, of course — but it should mostly be about creating new little Catholics for Holy Mother Church.
As for gay priests, even though gay men weren’t supposed to be allowed in the priesthood, a blind eye was usually turned toward it, under the reasoning that celibacy dictated that they’d be refraining from sex just like straight priests. But the Church needed a scapegoat for the child sex abuse scandal, so they’ve cracked down on not allowing gay priests at all, instituting all kinds of testing to keep teh ghey out.
fasteddie9318
@Mark S.:
Which makes total sense, because the experience of the Catholic clergy demonstrates that a pledge of celibacy completely prevents any future sexual activity.
geg6
@Steve:
Don’t they have a hockey arena in Detroit? It might still be too big, but it certainly wouldn’t be that cavernous emptiness of Ford Field.
Mark S.
I’ve never understood the Book of Job. I can’t tell if it’s trying to make a deist type argument that the Supreme Being of the Universe doesn’t concern Himself with every problem us human ants encounter. Sort of like the ending of Candide where the dervish says that the sultan doesn’t concern himself with the comforts of the rats on his ship. But this interpretation is lacking because of the whole bet between God and Satan: God does greatly concern himself with human affairs.
So God just comes off as a defensive asshole at the conclusion of the book. I’m not sure that’s what the author intended.
Amir Khalid, does Job figure prominently in Islam? How is the story interpreted?
The Other Chuck
@kindness:
Another bonus of celibate priests was that the church would receive all the priest’s property, with none of it being inherited by such inconveniences as a family. This added up to a substantial amount since the church tended to recruit from rich families.
reality-based
geez – BJ gave me a heart attack.
Since my given name is Michele – even spelled the same as the Minnesota Loon, although I had it first – I opened my browser for my afternoon Juicer fix, and there is God, commanding me to run for president!
– but it was only a rehash of his commandment to/joke on Bachmann.
Whew!
– because if God ever starts talking to me – or posting me messages on the intertoobz – my family has strict instructions to lock me up in the nice padded room hotel.
BTW – have you ever noticed that when God starts talking to men, – David Koresh, Joseph Smith, etc – pretty much the first thing he says is “By the way, you get to have all the women you want. In fact it is MY COMMANDMENT that you immediately go forth and screw every female you can find.”
funny, that –
lamh35
@lamh35:
Oh and BTW, per Greg Sargent, seems Romney barely was able to fill the fold-up seats upfront.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/frontiers-in-advance-work/2012/02/24/gIQADEL5XR_blog.html
Chris
@Rita R.:
Actually, I think it used to be okay to be gay if you were in the priesthood. Benny changed that at some point during the last decade. And yeah, your explanation of needing a scapegoat makes sense.
eemom
On the flip side, An Open Letter to Rick Santorum from Satan.
Ya gotta read it, it’s effing brilliant.
smintheus
@jl: I think only the difference in wording could legitimately account for such vastly different results…and only in theory. Practically, I don’t see how the wording could produce almost diametrically opposed results. If you think the bailout was good for the economy, how likely is it you’d disapprove of it?
Gallup’s results for Republicans as a whole are much more negative than what Pew found even for the most conservative Republicans.
There are other things in the polls that don’t match up. Gallup has mostly uniform disapproval by region, whereas Pew shows considerable differences by region…with only the West being less than strongly supportive. Pew shows support in every income group, Gallup has the opposite.
The fact that Gallup isn’t transparent is as you say suspicious.
bemused
@Interrobang:
Oy, this person’s total lack of self awareness is astonishing.
fasteddie9318
@Rita R.:
Who could have imagined that a religion co-founded by a self-loathing gay man would have some really fucked-up issues around human sexual behavior?
Mark S.
@Rita R.:
Yeah, that is pretty much how they see it.
elmo
@Calouste:
It’s actually the Book of Job that convinces me that the so-called “Bible-believing Christians,” the ones who insist IT IS ALL TRUE HISTORY AND WHAT IS THIS WORD ALLEGORY YOU FAG, must all be narcissistic sociopaths completely lacking in either empathy or imagination.
The Book is about Job, right? He’s the POV character, so you’re supposed to identify with him and his suffering. But there are other characters too. His wife. His son. From the POV of the Book, those people were “taken from him,” sure, and he suffers as a result.
But if this is true history, those were real people, and they were killed. Murdered. For no reason, no sin of theirs. Their only sin was being too close to some poor schlemazel that God wanted to fuck with. And they died.
Who were they? What were they like? Did they get along? Did they like music? Did the son like to go fishing? I’m supposed to believe that they were real people, with dreams and goals and loves and tastes, who enjoyed sunsets and moonlight and flowers. And God killed them, for no other reason than to win a bet.
I have never once heard one of the Bible-believers talk about them. About what was done to them. Only what was done to Job, which happens to include their untimely deaths. Because Job is the POV character, and the other characters don’t matter. Even if they were real.
And I have to believe that’s how their own lives are. They are the POV characters in their own story, just as each of us is in our own lives. But the other people around them are just supporting characters, bit players, cardboard and meaningless. Or else they would wonder about Mrs. Job and young Jobson. And no way in hell would they worship the monster who killed them.
wrb
The Amalgamated Curia of the Profitable God will soon issue Jesus’ Big Book of Jokes, which will include the ones about the Good Samaritan, the camel and the needle and other shit he said when he was just kidding.
Amir Khalid
@Mark S.:
Yes, the story of Job is also in the Quran, much as it is in the Bible, and with more or less the same moral drawn; although it would take me a bit of time to dig up the specific reference. But as I recall from my own religious education, we don’t make as big a deal of him as the Christians do.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark S.:
I think there’s a lot of hand-waving in the Book of Job, and anyone who says they understand it is full of shit. But there’s some really good poetry therein.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
Yep. I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that technically a vow of celibacy is a vow not to marry. A vow of chastity is a vow not to have sex, and that’s the one that nuns take.
The church tries to argue that they’re essentially the same thing since you’re not supposed to have sex outside of marriage, but the actual vow is to not marry, not to never have sex.
jl
@smintheus:
I think the bigger issue is that fact that the Gallup poll was a one day tracking poll, so could have been affected by news cycle in last 24 hours, while Pew is averaged over five days.
Impossible to know how important the difference in wording and focus is in this case, but seemingly minor differences do make a difference, and can make a huge difference. There are whole books written on how question order and wording of questions can bias survey results. Which is why Gallup polls won’t mean much to me anymore if they don’t release the actual surveys they use.
For example, Pew had an approval rating question for federal government, media, banks, etc. as first question, but randomized which respondent rated what. What if Gallup had similar thumbs up thumbs down set of questions at top (which is common since a rule of thumb is to do most general questions first to avoid biased responses further down the survey), but everyone rated the federal government, and everyone was reminded that they are pissed at the feds? That could make a huge difference. But we don’t know what Gallup did.
I review survey questionnaires as part of my day gig, and if someone brought in a survey questionnaire like the latter example, it would definitely get returned for a redo.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: They say they don’t believe the latter. Thus ‘choosing’ to be gay is bad (say it in the voice the counseler in Southpark uses)
Arclite
I keep waiting for Santorum to live up to his name and pull a Larry Craig.
jl
Little known fact: Tunch wrote Job.
Rita R.
@lamh35:
Halperin:
What a craptacular collection of fail.
“betcha” “Wolverine State Republicans” “beloved football stadium” “dig it” — Here’s regular Joe, one-of-the-guys Markster keeping it real instead of those elites in “Georgetown and Midtown.”
“fancies” “smart set” — But wait, Markie Mark doesn’t want us to forget that even though he’s “down” and all, he’s still one of our betters. (He went to Harvard you know.)
His “analysis” — Wishful thinking BS of course — has there been any evidence at all that Michigan voters see the born-to-privilege Romney as a “local boy made good”? — but it is the kind of blather I could see Tweety and the Morning Joe crew viewing as an insightful look at the Michigan contest.
Yeah, he’s in the tank for Romney — the good news is he’s bad at it and I doubt anyone outside of the Beltway is paying him a bit of attention.
Schlemizel
GEE! If I didn’t know better I’d say God does not really talk to any of those jackals. Its almost as if they are either delusional or heinous lairs. Someone should ask them which it is.
wrb
It was inevitable. In the Middle Ages younger sons who had no calling whatsoever were sent into monasteries with other such young men and told they couldn’t ever have sex in this life because their marriage would dilute the family’s property. What happened next is natural.
I’ve been wondering if there was actually a tradition within the church that carried forward from that time to this. It makes this global boy-bothering less incomprehensible. If you were gay priest, either debauched or in love, and at the time of Counter-Reformation were told by the church “ok from now on you’ve got to be actually, truely celibate ’cause we’re drawing too much heat” would you have complied or gone underground?
A factoid that got me wondering about this: a friend who was extensively abused by her Congregationalist priest father says that he told her that he was persuaded of the rightness of sex between the clergy and children by a Catholic Priest who served as a chaplain along side him in the Navy. He claimed that the Catholic guy had this whole developed theory about how sex with children was a right and obligation of the clergy.
Egg Berry
@wrb:
That is some fucked up shit right there.
Amir Khalid
@geg6:
I just don’r buy the excuse that there was no place of the right size available in Detroit. It looks like s decent-sized auditorium — on a high school or university campus, say — or concert hall could have done the job without those embarrassing visuals. Booking a venue is a routine campaign task, and Romney’s people in Michigan mucked it up big time.
gogol's wife
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s my reaction to it too.
Arclite
@Egg Berry:
Wow. I know, right? It’s bad enough to have designs on children, but to also have a position of power and authority that puts you in continuous contact with them as well is a recipe for disaster. If anything the churches should be even more careful and vigilant than society in general, but they take the opposite road. It’s no wonder thousands and thousands have been abused.
wrb
@Egg Berry:
I gathered it was a “children deserve to be introduced to this holiest of mysteries in the presence of God by a gentle man of God” sort of rap.
Joey Maloney
@Rafer Janders: Better still: “so when did you decide not to admit you’re gay?”
Egg Berry
@wrb:
And that makes it less of some fucked up shit how?
(not saying you’re making that argument, but fer reals?)
wrb
@Egg Berry:
I’m not.
Edit:
It isn’t hard though to imagine how seductive that could be to the ego of a priest who believed himself good and exceptional. His duty is to impart this gift.
Which makes it more fucked up, especially if institutionalized, even if in some underground, group folklore way.
Rita R.
@fasteddie9318:
There’s also a big anti-woman component in the Church’s anti-sex pathology. Even as a child, I remember wondering why the highest thing a Catholic woman apparently could aspire to do was be a virgin. Mary is the constantly present and revered Catholic female role model, and her name is always said with “Virgin” in front of it. She is defined as being only two things — a virgin and Jesus’ mother. Is it any wonder the Catholic Church has, let’s say, issues with women’s sexuality?
Look at the whole Church freakout over “The Da Vinci Code.” Putting aside that it was an acknowledged work of fiction, so what if Jesus was married and had children? How does that demean in any way anything he said or did? The only reason this can be so upsetting to them is if they believe being in an intimate relationship with a woman — even in the bonds of matrimony — is somehow lessening.
Egg Berry
@wrb: The mind, it is boggled.
Rita R.
@wrb:
In defense of the Church — and I can’t believe I’m saying that — that twisted, horrific justification was probably that priest’s own and that of his NAMBLA buddies, priests and not, and not some kind of Church tradition. That said, the Church willingly and vigorously enabled and protected those sick f*cks.
wrb
@Egg Berry:
The argument was persuasive enough that her father, no idiot, a Harvard Divinity School grad, was persuaded.
He didn’t lack ego.
cintibud
I just saw a post from a conservative FB friend linking to a chart released by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions entitled “America’s Per Capita Government Debt Worse Than Greece”. It seems I had seen that debunked in the past, so I did a google search on that title to see if someone would give me some pushback. No way would I take Sessions word for anything.
I gave up after looking through about 18+ pages of breathless doomsayers repeating the same thing over and over and didn’t find one source refuting this claim. It looks like the talking point went out, but I’m not seeing any pushback. Anyone know what is up with this?
Here is the link to the chart, if anyone wants to check it out
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/serve.jpg
Mark S.
@Rita R.:
The obsession the Catholic Church has regards to sex is pathological. Most religions advocate a bit of moderation, and maybe abstinence for a few members, but Catholicism is demented in its hostility to anything sexual.
The Church decided long ago to thrive on guilt and shame: We are all sinners. The problem is: most of us are pretty good at not killing and not stealing. How to make us feel guilty all the time? The answer: make 95% of sexual activity a sin!
God it’s hard to type with a band-aid on your index finger.
Some Loser
@Mark S.:
Consider that your punishment, sinner.
Nutella
@Mnemosyne:
Someone who should know tells me there are priests who define chastity as ‘no screwing around with women’ so feel perfectly justified to be active homosexuals and priests. A Jesuitical viewpoint, both literally and figuratively.
Bex
@cintibud: Try Snopes.
Violet
Way back when the priest pedophile stuff was in the news all the time, Sully (I know, I know) had a link to some very old text, maybe graffiti or something. It was a young man warning other young men about a certain priest and not to get too close to be alone with him or something. This was centuries ago. Some things never change.
Rita R.
@Mark S.:
Dictating how and when followers can have sex is also a good way to exercise control and power. Cults know this too.
cintibud
@Bex: No luck on Snopes.
This is a very recent report btw
wrb
@cintibud:
and utter bullshit.
Weak and transparent trolling.
daniel thomas macinnes
In the “tee-hee” panels, you should replace God’s face with the Trollface. Even better, have the candidates speak like the LOLcats. “I can has Preznit?” Then you’ll have a perfect webcomic.
cintibud
@wrb: WTF? I’m looking for facts to refute what I believe is a deceptive attack by wingnuts. If you think that looking for assistance in shooting down wingnuts is a troll, you must be a Koch sucker
wrb
@cintibud:
The numbers are the current official ones. However Session’s presentation
misleads because:
– Debt per capita isn’t a useful comparison because US citizens make a lot more per capita. Debt/GDP is meaning full.
For the US, the ratio is 100, for Greece 160 (see Krugman’s blog today).
Greece is vulnerable to crisises in confidence. It needs someone to lend it Euros to pay its debts. If they won’t, it is bankrupt. It can’t produce Euros. Investors know this, so they see lending to Greece as risky. So Greece either can’t get money or pays high interest rates. It is a self-reinforcing cycle.
US debt is denominated in dollars. The US, and only the US, prints dollars. The US could only go bankrupt by choice, if it chooses to not print dollars. Investors know this and have been so eager to park their money in the US that the US is making money by borrowing, because the investors are paying negative interest rates. The US should take that better-than-free money and invest in the country in ways that will pay off, and also put people to work.
– Sessions claims to know where the debt will be in 2022. Where it will be depends on choices. Invest in the country, getting the economy humming and tax revenues up; tax inheritance and the 1% at higher rates and debt could fall dramatically by 2022. It is choice, not destiny.
cintibud
@wrb: Thank you. That is the kind of information I am looking for
fuckwit
@wrb: I am here on this planet because my great-grandfather was a priest who fucked the maid in the rectory.
It was the rule in Italy at the time: the FIRST son was sent to the priesthood, the second son to the military, the third, etc. got to inherit the property.
This was kind of along the lines of the adage in software to “throw the first one away”, because you were clueless and your first attempt turned out crap. By the time you get to the third time around, you know what the fuck you are doing.
My great-grandfather was such an unlucky first son, and off to the priesthood he went, no choice in the matter. The maid was apparently young and hot as, well, hell. So he boned her, she got pregnant, they either failed at or lost the nerve for the infanticide and infant abandonment that was rampant for most of the history of Catholic Europe, she became my great-grandmother, he got kicked out of the priesthood, they had a bunch of kids together, and, as the story goes, they lived happily ever after.
Religion is a fucked up thing. Religion and rigid social conventions are a very bad combination.
Schlemizel
a couple of things, first is that the correct spelling? I just went phonetic & am not sure,
WHile I am no Job I can assure you that many people around this schlemizel (schlemazel) have suffered simply from proximity.
People who don’t know the bible (most Christians) have no idea what a fucked up story the book of Job is. Worse and much less explainable then most of the other horror stories in there.
Schlemizel
@fuckwit:
Similar story in my background. In the middle 1800’s the village priest impregnated a young girl. She was forced to leave the village but ended up with a distant relative who had failed at home so ran to America.