TooDrunkToFuck

Occasionally there's some good debate at this forum, but there's a lot of threads like this where people just point fingers without actually trying to be fair or accurate. It's like this place has become more and more of a flame forum ...

Bill O' Reilly does have a lot of similarities to the Nazis, although I don't have many problems with this. It's O' Reilly's views on basic civil rights and foreign policy that make the Nazi comparison appropritate.

Abe didn't start it, but he did violate the constitution more than any other president. Bush made plans to become temporary dictator with NSDP 51, but Lincoln actually had the balls the do it.

http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/national-security-letter Good article.

And one other thing ... Chomsky is NOT a socialist any more than he's an anarchist. He admires certain traits of socialism but doesn't believe in its literal application to the modern world. He has explained this before. In general, he's against most of the governments of the world and seeks to bring most of their crimes to light while suggesting logical steps to rectifying the problems. He thinks some countries would be better served as individual tribes rather than being forced into a nation-state system to begin with. Besides that, he also identifies with old-fashioned conservatism (not the fake conservatism of neo-cons). Trying to fit Noam Chomsky's views into one political party or another is ignorant as shit. Generally, he's an anti-imperialist who exposes the crimes of all governments and parties while looking for logical solutions. And he's considered one of the greatest modern intellectuals around the world for good reason.

There's a difference between not trading with a country and using your international leverage to force other countries to join you in sanctions. Likewise, there's a difference between fair trade and forcing them to accept trade terms that would fuck them economically, as is what tends to happen when puppet governments are set up. It depends on the reason. If you HELPED THAT DICTATOR GAIN POWER IN THE FIRST PLACE, overthrowing a democratic leader who granted more civil liberties in the process, then yes. Especially if it's clear that your goal is to gain a monopoly on that country's energy reserves. Hell, after the first Gulf War, the US had control of the sikies and could've easily given minor aid to the Shi'ites rebelling in Iraq. Instead, they let Saddam crush the rebellion. Saddam wasn't any more tyrannical in recent times than in the past. The difference was that he switched his oil currency to the Euro, signed deals with European powers, and was turning the control of the oil reserves away from the US. That's why France is pissed at the war. It's not because they're hippies. It's because the US declared that Saddam's previous contracts were null and void. Meaning fuck everyone else; oil will be controlled through our puppet government once we set it up. Who said this? What Chavez was calling for is treating all countries with respect. And who the hell HAS called for the US to police the world? If anything, most people including some Socialists prefer for the UN as a whole to place pressure on such countries. And really, who's calling for the US to attack Sudan or Saudi Arabia? You have obviously never read Chomsky. He is 90% facts and 10% opinion, compared to most idiot pundits whio are more opinion than facts. Chomsky is in fact THE most logical political analyst of our time. Anyone who's ever read his work is aware that it's almost all based on cold hard cited facts from reliable sources (often declassified government files or stories not widely reported although acknowledged by various governments), and he has almost NO emotion whatsoever. He analyzes everything based on the empirical method after taking in all the facts. A national interest as in lives at stake; NOT a national interest as in the US possibly having a challenge to its place over the rest of the world.

Have any of you idiots read Noam Chomsky? Unlike most of you, he backs all of his opinions up with cold hard facts directly from government sources around the world. You can cover your ears and say "lalalalalalalala" all you want, but it won't change the facts of the US' foreign policy. Hell, Clinton's bombing of the pharmaceutical company in Sudan, Reagan's disguisting attacks on Latin America, the sanctions in Iraq that killed more people than Saddam ever did, helping to overthrow more democratic leaders in Iraq and Iran in favor of Saddam and the Shah in the first place, acting similarly in Chilie, blocking a resolution for a ceasefire in the recent Israel/Lebabon "war" ... These are all facts that the US government itself acknowledges. And as for NazzNegg's ridiculous post, you can find dissent in any country in the world. This includes those you would label as "undemocratic" for no other reason than that they aren't US allies. Seriously, some of the posters here approach international politics with all the logic of a Party member from 1984.

You can't seriously be arguing that there's no possible way to end up homeless unless you're lazy and that all homeless people could easily get jobs if they tried. I mean, are you really trying to push such a broad generalization as the sole cause of homelessness or poverty?

My studies focused on the demographic gap between grades and scores. The pro-SAT studies you reference, barring the one by the people who make money from it (The College Board) basically say that people who tend to do well on it do well in school. Yeah, no shit. But I haven't seen anything to debunk the gap mentioned. Just because most people who can take tests well are bright does NOT mean that people in general who don't take standardized tests well are not.As for the bias, I've taken the SAT and know what the questions are like. As I've stated, one of the classic cases involved knowledge of a specific sport (I forget which) primarily played by upper class white males. WTF are you talking about? I look at sources from those with all sorts of political biases before I come to my own conclusion. Something it doesn't seem like you do. Yes, watch a hip hop video. It does encourage stupidity, similar to the white redneck culture. And you do realize that most sociologists don't actually believe in "IQ" as an objective measure of intelligence anymore ...? As for the intelligence gap, I agree in general. Given that white guys had hundreds of years longer to establish a decent economic situation in the US, and have had far greater civil rights until like 50 years ago, it makes sense. It's similar to women not being in exact equal places of power. Some people say that's evidence that there is still great bias at the workplace, but don't account for how long it takes to get exact equality. But for another point of view, look at the graduation rates in your own links. Asians have a higher graduation rate than whites; in fact by nearly the same margin as whites compared to blacks. Actually, we tend to be behind Asians in most studies of intellect that I recall reading. Why not go on about this? Should we all model our work ethic on Asian communities?

I think he's in his mid 30's. Steve Caballero is 40 I think.

I've researched the bias of SAT and IQ tests in the past and even wroted a 30-page term paper on it. Its design has been proven to be biased in many cases, to the point where females tend to score much lower on SAT math scores compared to males, despite their actual grades being much higher by comparison than SAT scores reflect. There have been examples of questions with clear bias toward the demographic who would be interested (one of which I recall involved a rare sport mainly played by rich white males), and this is aside from the fact that it is based on a relatively small time frame. The SAT and IQ tests are more about knowing how to take a test effectively than actual knowledge. It involved more of a person's ability to "guess" logically, know which questions to skip, etc. In many cases, the differences between SAT scores of people of different races/genders/economic ability and actual grades among the demographics have been vast. Even one of the founders of the College Board, as I recall, noted that the "SAT is bullshit." From what I recall of my research if the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, one of their complaints as well was the difference among demographics between SAT scores and actual grades. You're citing facts regarding SAT scores that have been debunked MANY times by a number of people. And you obviously haven't researched the origin of the army IQ tests that the SAT sprung up from. I'm not going to waste my time looking up all the facts I went through when I wrote my paper, but off the top of my head: http://www.fairtest.org/facts/satvalidity.html "Another study of 10,000 students at 11 selective public and private institutions of higher education found that a 100-point increase in SAT combined scores, holding race, gender, and field of study constant, led to a one-tenth of a grade point gain for college GPA (Vars, F. & Bowen, W. in The Black-White Test Score Gap, 1998). This offered about the same predictive value as looking at whether an applicant's father had a graduate degree or her mother had completed college." "The poor predictive ability of the SAT I becomes particularly apparent when considering the college performance of females. Longstanding gaps in scores between males and females of all races show that females on average score 35-40 points lower than males on the SAT I, but receive better high school and college grades. In other words, the test consistently under-predicts the performance of females in college while over-predicting that of males. Measuring the SAT I's predictive ability for students of color is more complicated since racial classifications are arbitrary. For students whose first language isn't English, test-maker research shows the SAT I frequently under-predicts their future college performance. One study at the University of Miami compared Hispanic and non-Hispanic White students. Though both groups earned equivalent college grades, the Hispanic students received on average combined SAT I scores that were 91 points lower than their non-Hispanic White peers. This gap existed despite the fact that 89% of the Hispanic students reported English as their best language. Extensive research compiled by Derek Bok and William Bowen in The Shape of the River highlights the SAT I's questionable predictive power for African-American students. The ability of SAT I scores to predict freshman grades, undergraduate class rank, college graduation rates, and attainment of a graduate degree is weaker for African-American students than for Whites. Such discrepancies call into question the usefulness of using the SAT I to assess African-American students' potential. The SAT I also does a poor job of forecasting the future college performance of older students. ETS acknowledges that the test's predictive power is lower for "non-traditional" students who may be out of practice taking timed, multiple-choice exams. For this reason, many colleges and universities do not require applicants who have been out of high school for five years or more, or those over age 25, to submit test scores." I'm not denying that some "black" culture encourages stupidity. A lot of the hip hop culture does, but so does the Midwestern/Southern pride "white trash" culture. My point is that trying to link race with inherent intelligence or physical ability is fucking retarded. It mainly has to do with the culture, recent ancestory, and economic standing you were born into.

This is fucking ridiculous. The US doesn't care about leaders being power hungry madmen; in many cases they install power hungry madmen when they present less of an opposition to US imperialism. The US is the world police because they gain more power that way, same as Rome, France, and England before them. Their support of Israel and Saudi Arabia are good examples of this. Iran is hardly as big of a threat as Israel, which the US is allied with. How often have they invaded countries? They're pissed at the US due to getting fucked over by them and at Israel for forcing Arabs to leave their lands. What do people expect them to do, be "yay America!" while they're surrounded and under constant threat of invasion? Given how often they're threatened, Iran would be insane to NOT look fior a deterrent of some sort such as nukes. They aren't going to start a war that they know will destroy their country. And again, if they were the raving maniacs that US propaganda portrays them as, they wouldn't be allied with someone like Hugo Chavez who is pressing hard for equality of all countries, Arab and non-Arab, regardless of size or religion. Iran is mainly being punished for going against the US in the 70's, similar to the treatment of Cuba since Castro decided to ally himself with the Soviets. They're being punished for being anti-US. It has nothing to do with any objective look at how oppressive they are compared to other countries. By the way, for once I agree with the majority of Hugo's points.

The US government isn't the best on the planet and revolting would be stupid. What needs to occur is there to be a truly democratic culture of people who research facts that aren't widely reported and understand that all the news you hear is pro-US propaganda, whether it's Democrat or Republican biased. When you hear about the crimes of other countries and various justifications for what's being done, do a frickin' google search and look up the full range of facts. If possible, look for reports from other countries as well. Don't rely on TV news for the majority of your info. Nonviolent protest in a truly democratic culture is more productive than revolt. That's how you get things like Gandhi's accomplishments, civil rights, women's rights, and end to "anti-sodomy" laws, etc.

Wait, how are you defining "skater" guys? I skateboarded in high school and still do the few times I get the chance. It's just fun. And I listen to punk rock; not "MTV punk," but mostly stuff with a real message. I don't think I acted anything like the typical MTV whore you're talking about. I think you're seeing "skater boys" as idiots who listen to Sum 41 or Good Charlotte and think they're cool for acting like douches. Like what you'd see Avril Lavigne sing about or whatever. Not all people who are into skateboarding are like that. Most of the "skater boys" you're probably talking about get into skateboarding for a short time and don't practice enough to get good. They're just poseurs who do it for the image.

Uh, Social Security tax cap, for example? Reagonomics? The obvious fact that you can't exactly walk into a McDonald's homeless, looking dirty as hell, and ask for a job? I didn't say that it's impossible for poor people to become rich; just that the system is being shaped in such a way as to care primarily for those who are already rich and to concentrate power further. I agree with less laws in general, with the caveat that there should be greater opportunities for the poor to get jobs. Hell, just programs to help homeless people get a job at a fast food restaurant since most employers would reject them on paper. I'm against handouts, but I do think we need to open more doors for the poor.