I similarly did not know about Martin Hyde’s position. As someone who has studied psychology, I know it’s not only bigotted, but also makes no sense. Furthermore, his response in this thread shows me a further lack of intelligence.
So he’s an asshole who is too stupid to contribute to the conversations on this board. So there’s no really reason for him not to be on my ignore list. I may not be able to remove the world of his kind, but I can remove them out of my life.
Goodbye.
We’ll let you know when he breaks 90 on the IQ test, you may want to give him a second chance at that point.
I’m for disqualifying anybody who ever did anything wrong. Ever. Fuck 'em. Once you hit 18 you are responsible for anything and everything. If this disqualifies people, so be it.
The country would be a lot better off if 96% of the people running it couldn’t.
I also am a retired army officer. I am not glorifying military service, and am expressing my distaste for cowardice. Romney let someone else go to Vietnam in his place.
Kindly cite your knowledge of what Obama would have done. The Voices in your head?
Math. Not even once.
<moderating> You believe wrong. Posting whole articles, poems, short stories, novels, whatever, is a violation of copyright. You are allowed to post a short snippet of the item, and posting the link is a good way to back up your claim that the whole article says what you claim it says. A copyright holder has the right to publish the work. Everyone else has to ask permission to reproduce the work, which may or may not involve money. Many times the holder will just ask for credit (and possibly a link), but the holder MUST be asked before reproducing the whole thing.
This isn’t just my opinion. This is what the Reader’s lawyers have told the moderation staff here.
And I’m not going to get into what, exactly, constitutes “fair use”, other than to say you can only reproduce a very small portion of the item under discussion.
Lynn
</moderating>
psychobunny: The conservative lunatics got their panties in a twist a few days ago without bothering to check the preface of the book for the explicit disclaimer, intended to -yes- protect the privacy of the women he dated. cite: Barack Obama’s Composite Girlfriends – Mother Jones
Now how would a normal, decent person respond to this? They would question their original information sources, as they are demonstrably unreliable. But modern conservatives have extremely sensitive dispositions. They seek reassurance. So the fact that Romney’s an unrepentant bully inspires them. And they keep reading and watching media that whispers sweet and demonstrable falsehoods in their ear. They love that kind of thing. I think that’s fine and I defend the modern conservative. They are not evil and they are not stupid. They simply lack character.
Nixon et al were different though: they just wanted the goddamn facts.
I’m torn, on the one hand it is 50 plus years ago and I did really stupid and destructive things when I was a teenager.
On the other hand, it speaks to the mindset not just of Mitt, but the GOP. When they talk about a return to traditional values, this is the cost of those values: privledged white bullies terrorizing anyone who doesn’t fit in. Not only is it a cost of those values, bullying is an important tool to maintain the status quo of those traditional values.
Nope. Pussies are resilient. They take a pounding, can be pulled waaaaay out of shape and bounce right back, and are generally warm, inviting and friendly places where a large segment of the population hangs out on the regular.
He’s just a jackass.
It would depend on how the revelation was handled. If Obama blew it off and acted like it was no big deal, no, I wouldn’t vote for him. If he took responsibility for what he did and more importantly (and likely) used it as an opportunity to talk about bullying and about the safety of young people in schools and the right of young people to exist – as visibly queer, with nonconformist hair or wardrobes, as poor, as whoever they are – without fear of having self-righteous fucks putting a hand on them, then yes, he’d retain my vote.
And lo and behold, he’s already done just that. That was the basis of the video President Obama made for the “It Gets Better” project. He’s on record, while Romney can’t maintain a single, consistent viewpoint on civil rights from Wednesday to Thursday.
See, because that’s what makes a person presidential, when they can take a specific incident, a personal issue even, and make it applicable to others, show that empathy, show that broader thinking, de-center themselves and instead center a larger principle. Object lessons, meaningful guidance, leadership.
The only principle I’ve seen Romney center, to date, is that he somehow deserves to be president of this nation, because… well because he does. He just does. And that’s all.
The leadership is lacking. Big time.
Bingo. And we’re seeing it around the country, in political actions. Bullying minorities by putting civil rights up to a popular vote. Bullying people by playing political games with funding for healthcare. Bullying women by putting medically irrelevant and harmful hurdles in place for them to leap in order to access reproductive healthcare. Bullying children by breaking the public schools. Bullying the poor by putting costly hurdles in the way of getting meagre cash assistance and cutting food aid to maintain Pentagon funding. Bullying bullied children in school by opposing anti-bullying bills (in the name of religious liberties)!
What’d you think of the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act of 2009? Bonus points if you can link to a post of yours defending it on the Straight Dope.
Also, what do you gain from inhabiting a forum in which you think the majority of posters are beneath you? If, collectively, the SDMB cannot change your mind on any issue, do you expect to change other people’s opinions? Or do you seek only to humiliate and belittle posters here?
Hitchens in his memoir points out that Clinton was asthmatic and that his preferred delivery system was in brownies.
Shut up. Why don’t you try walking in their shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?
Martin, your feeling of superiority is not supported by the data.
Oh, he’s not walking in *my *shoes. I paid good money for them.
I blame liberals for bringing about the downfall of societal decency in the early 1960s. Mitt was just a victim of their corrupting influence. I think Starving Artist will back me up on that.
(Nah, actually I think SA would view Mitt’s type of behavior as regrettable, and something that could have been eventually eliminated without an accompanying loss of politeness, dignity and refinement. I find either position silly.)
I think SA would say that Mitt was unfairly accused and that it was physically impossible for him to hold down a person and cut hair as described.
Conservative: "It’s impossible to get your hair cut if you don’t want it. Natural enzymes will reel your hair back into your scalp if you aren’t willing to get it cut. This blonde fellow secretly wanted to get his hair cut, and Mitt and his chums just gave him what he was asking for.
In fact, if he didn’t want to get his hair cut while five men pressed him to the ground, why did he grow his hair out?"
This. And it’s a consistent pattern. Here’s a charming story Mitt tells (in Newsmax, that liberal rag) about his first encounter with his future wife:
[Emphasis added.]
Here’s the thing: It may or may not be obvious to the average person that throwing rocks at a horse being ridden across railroad tracks, with or without a saddle, is a dumb and dangerous thing to do. Mitt himself rides, so he definitely would be aware of that. At Cub Scout age? It’s jerk behavior, and somehow I doubt that any and every Cub Scout would choose that as their default reaction, but I’ll give him a pass on that; lots of little boys do jerkish things. But he’s telling the story as an adult, without a whisker of remorse or recognition that it was dumb and dangerous; no, it’s just a charming funny story.
By itself? As irrelevant as Mitt’s defenders insist the haircut story is. As part of an emerging pattern about Romney’s character? Another brick in the wall.
I posted earlier this month about how Mitt comes off like a sociopath to me. This story coming out doesn’t really do anything to dissuade me of that notion.
Indeed. As has been said, pretty much all of us have done stuff as kids that we are not particularly proud of.
When I tell a story about one of these times, I usually tell it as a cautionary tale, with emphasis on what I learned from it. Mitt seems to tell them as amusing stories, and one gets the impression that he learned nothing from it.
And I’ve known quite a few scouts during my time as a leader. I can’t think of a single one of them who would throw rocks at a horse with a rider on it. And if they did, none of them would think it was an amusing story to tell others about later. They would know that it was wrong.
Well, you restore my faith in little boys, sirrah.
Makes one wonder, among that pack of Cub Scouts, who it was who picked up and hurled the first stone, eh?