You're saying I didn't mean it as a joke when I said it? Even after I said I was just joking, you're saying "no, you weren't joking, because I'm a mind reader" ???

Nice try Flint, but you'll never buy a new car again at less than 17% interest.:headshake
Is that what you really think "Being an American" is about?
He asked that because it's an extremely common problem, as you damn well know. If you think it's a problem with "liberals" you are sadly naive.
More likely he doesn't understand shit, but one of these days some bureaucrat will ponder it, while trying to figure out a way to advance his/her career.
Nice try but the fact remains, you don't need a license to use that radio, so confiscation is the only solution for the government. Maybe sending everyone that has demonstrated a working knowledge to Gitmo, too.
So terrorists that learn to fly a 767 are too dumb to operate a ham radio?


No, I don't think they'll be going after ham radios but I'm pointing out it wouldn't affect me a bit, while I'm sure you would be livid.
The same way if they said cars couldn't have more than 200hp, the majority wouldn't care but I'd be very pissed off.
The point is, that taking away any freedoms from anyone affects us all. :cool:

= on those items we do see a "Made in America" label, we wonder if there is a city in China that is named "America" and may even MapQuest or Google it to check.

= we most likely do not object to strangers taking photos of our cars or nice toys but get combative if that said stranger even suggests that we appear in the photos with that cool thing.

( Outside the US = we actively encourage [foreign] strangers to take photos of our vintage rust free cars or goofy/outdated toys and get combative if that said stranger even suggests that we NOT appear in the photos with that cool thing)

There is a city named Usa in Japan that once labelled its products "MADE IN USA".

Quite a straw man. Attribute an extreme position to the opposition as a hypothetical and then exclaim how extreme it is.
Learning to steer an already-flying 767 into a building is pretty damned easy...it's not rocket science. But my points were that 1) there's much easier ways today to get better communications under most circumstances and 2) the strategic significance of HF radio is already recognized.

And nobody believes that it's possible to choke off all communications between any two people on the planet.

Unless crotchety 80 year olds are considered terrorists, I'm certain ham radios are safe from government concern.

Thank you. :heart-on: I do have good taste.








When I 'post sternly' it will be after thinking a harsher word than 'retard'.

now that's funny ! :lol:


Thank you for the nice post slang.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d/Khamenei.jpg

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will be 67 in july.

Actually not all hams are old guys.

http://www.phil-mont.org/fd2005.jpg

http://www.phil-mont.org/fd2005album...s/PICT0100.JPG

Those ladies look like they're having lots of fun. :D And nice people too!

They teach more than that at Embry-Riddle. No more of a straw man than you trying to change the subject to gun control. :p

Come now...you wanted to wave a bloody rag about some mythical security-based confiscation that would upset me, and had to flee to *ham radio* of all things, because gun confiscation was too obvious, too implausible from the Bush administration, and completely resonant with liberal dogma.

You made up a radio confiscation out of whole cloth and attributed it to Bush, while Dianne Feinstein has already come out publically in favor of wholesale gun confiscation (of course *she* gets to keep *her* permit!).

*That* one is reality. Which should worry me more? And which is a straw man?

You're so busy wrapped up in all about you, you missed the point completely.
Of course I picked ham radio because you are involved with them and it wouldn't affect me at all. That was that god damned point.

You better start yearning for the kind of freedoms others want if you expect other people to care when they come for your freedoms. That's the malaise that's going to fuck this country....me, me it's all about me.:rolleyes:

Most hams really are. Very helpful, too, and willing to teach. And MaggieL is right -- the hobby has plenty of young people these days.

You're missing the point that your hypothetical is hypothetical...as well as overreaching.

Gun confiscation is a real, acknowleged element of liberal policy. I ask again: should I care more about your hypothetical boogeyman or the real threats actually made by the Democrats?

One important thing it means to be an American is that we all arrive at political judgements based on our own values and beliefs. It's pretty lame for you to claim I'm selfish because I won't climb on your collectivist fantasy FUD bandwagon. You're selling an agenda that serves your own political self-interest; the fact that I won't buy gives you some moral high ground only in your own eyes.

The difference is my "own political self-interest" is concern about your rights and freedoms as well as my own. :eyebrow:

The vast majority of hams are great people. Check out our celebration of the 100th anniversary of voice on radio.

Well, that's the self-righteous flag you're wrapping yourself in...and it's a standard collectivist pitch.

My concerns over issues are driven by my own assessment of which are important, and how to interpret the platforms of various competeing candidates and parties relative to those issues..

Your fundamental thesis seems to be that the Democrats have more respect for "rights and freedoms" than their opposition, and I just don't buy the assertion. I've seen them in action, and my opinion is the performance doesn't live up to the advertising.

Not at all. My fundamental thesis is that all politicians are scum and should be watched carefully because they will screw me for their own benefit in a heartbeat. The ones in power are always my biggest enemy at the moment, hence Bush & Co are the threat and I will never accept the loyal opposition would have been worse. That's the lamest excuse possible for accepting oppression from the party in power.:(

Well, that's where we disagree. When the "loyal opposition" had control they pushed as hard as *they* could for exactly the same kinds of powers. and I don't think they used them as effectively when they had them.

But then I don't think we even agree on what "worse" is. Where we agree is that all pols should be watched.

But criticism that's shrill or overreaching doesn't enhance credibility of those who deliver it, and so much of the anti-Bush stuff that's so trendy and considers itself so clever strikes me at the same time as vacuous. It may have a shallow popular appeal, but I think it's devoid of any real content.

Shrill doesn't make it untrue and overreaching is your opinion. If you think Bush & Co are on your side, you're delusional. :headshake

I like you maggie but Bush is the antichrist.

Yes I am a socialist democrate who will probably vote for McCain if he runs.

My perspective is I have never liked him and he gave me nothing to change my mind.

I see nothing redeeming. Here are the few of my reasons. He used the Christian right to get elected. He ran on the banner of 'compassionate conservative' He said we would not be the policemen of the world. He hasn't funded no child left behind. The states are either cutting classes or raising taxes or whatever to comply with the law. Your federal taxes went down but your social security taxes doubled. Mentally ill people are out in the streets. We didn't have to invade Iraq. Iran was always the threat. I don't even need to go into the corruption part of the mismanagement.

I don't think people are being unreasonable alarmists. We as a nation need to recognize the ripple effect. We should not do things 'just because we can'.

shallow? people are scared or frustrated

clever? I see lots of restraint. If I give you a rope and you hang yourself with it it isn't my fault.

devoid of real content? probably dumb struck. It isn't the time for rhetoric as usual. There's too much at stake.


I am curious. What do you think this administration has been good at? Where is the positive that you see because I am not seeing it.

Being American is about being extreme. And about being passionate about those extremes.

You're either Republican or Democrat -no middle ground.
You're either a civilian of the freeest country on Earth, or you've had all your freedoms stripped by anti-terrorist overreactions
You're either so fat you're wider than you are tall and need a scooter to get round Walmart, or so healthy you consider a soyburger in a whole wheat bun a once-a-year moment of gluttony
You either live in a cookie cutter neighborhood with perfect lawns and regimented petunias, or in a messy hillbilly cabin surrounded by a car graveyard
You either have perfect teeth or no teeth
You're either a regular church-goer or spawn of the devil

......


Seriously, though (well more seriously anyway) What it is to be American surely must depend on which cultures you are comparing it to. Apple Pie's Pretty popular in the UK too, you know!

I felt I had more personal freedom in the UK than I do here. But there's certainly a lot more freedom here than in Afghanistan, for example. At least by Western standards of freedom. Brits don't know you think they have bad teeth and bad hygeine. They think the French are pretty poor in that area.

America is so completely different from the UK, it's almost impossible to make comparisons/pick traits that belong uniquley to one nation, but the one thing that does strike me is that Americans do everything full force. Full commitment. Always.
.....Americans don't go to their kids' soccer games and just watch. They scream, yell, cheer, find a way to make a positive comment about a totally lost situation, make sure they have all the right equipment, take chairs, blankets, snacks, refuse to mention the score if they lose.......
Unfortunately, the same thing can we said about political situations where a quieter, more understated approach might be more effective.

So it's neither a good or a bad thing, but it is a very American thing, from the point of view of this Brit. Nothing American is done quietly, understatedly, half-heartedly and no admission of error is ever made.

good post oh wise monster

Well, that's the kind of closely-reasoned insightful criticisim I'm talking about. It's become trendy in the small very Blue-colored social spaces that cluster around the social-service ecological niches of Democratically-controlled urban centers to Bush-bash. But it consists basically of a lot of handwaving about how horrible Bush is and how much better things would be if the Democrats were in control. Everybody tacitly strokes each other about how much more hip and sophisticated and enlightened they are than those hateful selfish rednecks, and enjoys a warm fuzzy feeling for having struck another Blow Aginst the Empire. .

"What the Bush administration has been good at" is doing a better job of responding to the demanding times we're in than the Dems would have, given their track record.

As I've mentioned here before, I voted for Gore...but realized on 9/11 that I'm glad he didn't win. He doesn't have the chops to be commander-in-chief and certainly neither does Kerry. With the Cold War over a lot of us--me included--indulged in the wishful thinking that the CinC role had become a much less important part of the presidency.

We were wrong.

I think the Bush administrations policies suck on a number of issues, including among other things immigration and gay rights. Bush himself certainly doesn't come off well on TV. But...

That's pretty much how I feel about Bush. Appalling, but still better than any available alternative. People who hate his obvious whoring after the Christian Right might consider the possibility that he does it to counter the Democrats whoring after the Socialist Left.

Shrill may perhaps not make it untrue but it certainly severely damages its credibility...if the argument was actually convincing it wouldn't be necssary to scream it. And yes, overreaching is indeed my opinion. Obviously Bush isn't completely on my side. But the Dems are even less so.

Well, there's the Republican campaign strategy in a nutshell. "Sure, what you're saying may be true, but at least I can damage your credibility!"

What I said was "Being shrill doesn't make something untrue", agreeing with Bruce's point. But that's not a concession that it's true. Do you use logic like that in your everyday life? If so, how do you survive?

The problem with the shrillness is that it's annoying and counterproductive--unless you're only preaching to the choir, in which case it's merely pointless and self-congratulatory. It has nothing to do with the actual truth of the argument, except insofar as it projects that the speaker is breathless and hysterical...which in the case of the Dems can't be blamed on the GOP; the Dems are damaging their *own* credibility.

~ Shrill<>!true

~ !(shrill==true)

~ shrill=true or shrill<>true

How can you fail to follow Happy Monkey's logic? He paraphrased you and you confirmed it, what's unclear? His logic is sound.

Furthermore, his political observation is worthwhile too.

This current derailment is about the difference between shrillness and truthfulness. That is a discussion about the difference between form and content. And I agree that the grandstanding by the current political newsmakers is vastly more about form than content. And that's a stance that practically begs to substitute "Sure, what you're saying may be true, but at least I can damage your credibility!" for dialog.

Shrill and true are disjoint. His logic is bogus. So is yours.

"may be"

What's disjoint is trying to apply strict rules of logic to a conversation like this. If you wish to declare shrill and true to be disjoint, your own introduction to this conversation of the word "shrill" in response to xoB's political opinion is a poster child for illogic, and an ad hominem attack as well. "We disagree, and you're shrill." I read his post, and your response and I didn't find it "shrill". You clearly disagree, am I being shrill now?

As to my logic, I specifically called the comparison of shrill and true misapplied. They're not disjoint, though. They're complimentary. The first is about form, and the second is about content. They're NOT the same thing, but they absolutely overlap.

Additionally, I made a distict separation of the "logic" of the conversation and the political opinions being voiced. I happen to agree with xoB and HM, and clearly you do not. That seems to be the source of friction here, not "logic". MaggieL, you are in the difficult and uneviable position of defending this administration's actions. Good luck disengaging from that tar baby.

"You're shrill" is an ad hominem. "Attacks on Bush that use the words 'Nazi', 'mental midget' or 'antichrist' are shrill." is merely descriptive....and if not turning "A does not imply B" into "A implies not B" is too formal, then Goddess save us all.

Well said V. even if you conjured the metaphoric "tar baby"...is it coming back into common use?! trendy.

Americans are trendy.

Really, I was just going to note the American almost universal ideal of "the lawn" particularly in the front. A very uniform presentation. You can get a bit funkier in the back, but dont break the vast chemical green expanse.

Being American means that even though it is legal, we don't want anyone knowing what porn sites we visit or which phone sex services we use. :blush:

It also means, however, that we want to know what sites other people are looking at.

well, I wasn't screaming the word 'anitchrist' and waving my hands running in circles. :p


And I would never call Bush a Nazi. I reserve that word for Rumsfield. :handball:

Yeah, I know.

The problem here is there's an ongoing debate spread across two or three threads; since I'm stubbornly not responding to the standard Bush-bashing normative pressures, many feel a need to to show me the Error Of My Ways and collect their communal strokes for being seen to be Right Thinking Progressives.

Oh...sorry...I mean "Correct Thinking Progressives".

So some comments from me that may seem to apply to you personally actually are partly responses to stuff going on elsewhere.

Honest, there's nothing like being a gun-owning bisexual to keep one from being poltically doctrinaire.

not a problem ;)


I got to love ya. You're the only person who talks to me. :heart-on:

Then how do you explain the popularity of FOX News.:lol:

Being able to start wars does not require any special intelligence, especially after Congress gave him blanket authorization. By every other measure, he has failed so far in Iraq.

As for immigration and gay rights, I wouldn't go around mentioning those two in the same sentence or else someone in the White House will get the bright idea to offer the conservatives in Congress a deal - amnesty for the 11 million in illegals in exchange for shipping an equal number of gays to Mexico.

Jamaica Blue Mountain
 

As I began to read this thread, I poured myself a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, the best in the world.

I watch it and also CNN and listen to PBS as well as WPHT...it's not hard to explain. If you've never spent much time with other news outlets you might believe PBS and CNN don't lean, but the relentlessly liberal spin of CNN and PBS turns a *lot* of people off outside of the Blue zones.

The whoring for Christianity on Fox (and the whoring for sensationalism of O'Reilly) at least are intermittant and obvious.

Would you like a paper bag to breathe into? I mean really...

SPEAKING OF American...
it's merely pointless and self-congratulatory. And poisonous.
You're talking about those parts between the commercials, right? Yeah, I noticed that too. Very considerate of them to alert the viewers in that way.

= Seeing large numbers of non-Americans flood into what you used to think of as your country while seeing large numbers of what you used to think of as American jobs fly out with the same velocity.

That ain't me, Kitsune. :lol2:

Well, okay, it isn't me, either.

We don't mind prime time television showing people being shot to death, but we fear the nipple.

I'm not American , so I cannot say what it feels like to be an American . I can however give you an outside-looking-in idea . The thing I find extraordinary about Americans is how they work so hard . You hardly have any holidays , compared to the holidays we have in Europe . And yet you all seem to radiate relaxedness . Very paradoxical .

Wow. That's the nicest thing I've heard about American's in a damn long time.

And, we radiate relaxedness because of the :fumette:

We appear to be relaxed because we don't have to think. Our busy lives are laid out for us, all we have to focus on is the doing - and that's easy.

6:00 am get up, void bladder.
6:10 am eat breakfast.
6:20 am shit, shower, shampoo, shave, and shine.
6:45 am leave for work.

See, it's relaxing when you're too busy to think. :3eye:

When you radiate all your relaxedness, you don't have any left for yourself.

Wow, that's busier than my schedule! I take time to do most of those things separately!

oh noes, you got me started.

the first american principle is greed. we are greedy by nature due to our second rate capitalistic ideals. we will push any one or anything out of the way without a second thought of the long term reprocussions to get what we want. (i.e. foriegn oil)

secondly most americans are emphatically uneducated and far too trust worthy of our corrupt system. people are too ignorant to even see ro care that we're being conditioned on a mass scale daily to keep us fat, happy, and submissive.

which brings me to my third and final. americans are some of the most gluttonous, lazy creatures in exsistance. we are unhealthy both mentally (but hey why not just pop a pill) and physically (gastric bypass is a quick fix). we expect big brother to keep us safe just as long as we dont have to lift a finger or figure anything out for ourselves.

i mean no offense to any one remotely patriotic on this forum but plz, wake up.

Nice job, Primal...and don't apologize for seeming unpatriotic....bottom line, the real patriots are the critics...without them, we'd lose our democracy - or what's left of it.

That isn't relaxedness...it's apathy. Caring is too costly in this country.

we dont have one :(
thomas jefferson said that deomcracy probably wouldnt last for more than 200 years. he was right.
i dont even see why people bother to vote. its complete symbolism of freedom. unless the electoral college ok's the vote of the majority of the people then to hell with that. or in some cases if you have a brother who is a governer in a certain state it doesnt matter what the rest of the country says.
they leave us under the false pretense of having freedom of choice and take it away very subtly.

we work so hard so we stay distracted from the bigger picture.america tries to uphold capitalistic ideals, if you arent being productive in some form or another then that screws the whole system up.

i probably sound like an uber conspiracy theorist but i swear im not. its just the way things are.

No question, we're losing our guaranteed freedoms everyday. But one good thing about this democracy is that it cycles historically. There are social movements that keep and/or restore democratic principles on a fairly regular basis. Some are more notable than others, but the history of this country says they go on far more frequently than in most histories. I think that's the problem....we're long overdue....it's been building for quite a while...I don't know about you, but I have a sense of pressure building, of something imminent. Many of us seem to be holding our breaths, waiting for the upheaval. I'd rather have that than this suffocating, paralyzing disintegration of our rights. And if we handle the upcoming upheaval intelligently, we might be able to prove Jefferson wrong...and wouldn't he be proud!