THIS is why I am a Democrat "bounce:, , .....!!!!
Dems need to talk like this more. Man that was awesome. This is "plain talk/straight talk etc." Not telling people you understand their concerns because you drive a pick up truck a la "downtown scotty brown" ....

Gobama ...We had been unhappy about many of the president's economic policies (with regard to the management of the bailout) etc. but this is what we need to see more of...
No more blank cheque concessions to the anti-science, anti-environment, anti-common sense, conspiracy mongering, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-education/intellect, faux populist, moronic, religious fascists of the GOP!

(Idiotic site comment not directed at the owners of the site but at the sort of internet rabble that pollute every site with their moronic non-contributions).
Predictably imbecile responses as always unfortunately Amborin. It isn't that I would mind lively discussion for or against specific issues within the animal welfare/rights movement, it is the dumb shit like "Yeah you know Hitler was a vegetarian neener neener neener.."



I haven't logged on in many months but I have this to say about leaving this site-it makes sense for any serious progressive to do so (well ok except for reading the actual articles and news items posted and original stuff by many of the prolific writers ). Participating in the discussions and comments here is just not worth it. There are many serious progressives/moderates here, but there are also many people who seem to lack any sort of actual life and appear to spend their time living out fake controversies, battling over trivialities or just enjoy trolling (not just conservatives; there seem to be many here who just like baiting for the sake of baiting).
The comments, in-fights, back biting, personal battles or drama that one descends into (or even just ends up wasting time observing-I know I spent an hour or two observing the drama at places at like the Lounge (let alone in GD and GD ) since it just had such a horrible, train-wreck reality show quality) if you participate in the "community" here is just not worth it.

Quitting this site and spending that time on more activism in the real world is one of best decisions I ever made. And way better for one's mental health (directed at cool people like Lorien etc.) than listening to morons troll...

I am logging off for the next 6 months...I logged on after months, read this thread, got irritated and realized that unlike obnoxious conservatives one has to deal with in real life, these losers one can just turn off by logging off and never bothering to read their b.s. again . Its not like there is any getting through to them ever.

Even say you do believe it is sexist etc., why don't these people find some actual women's issues that they can get this POed about . For a lot of them it is about the drama. Posting on DU is mostly about drama anyway.
(To be honest I have no idea if people have been having a fit about the Palin thing . This website has become too dumb, tabloidy and focused on trivial nonsense, personal dust-ups etc. to be vey interesting for most actual politics junkies I suspect. But, I check in here occasionally and the first thing I thought when I saw this thread was-"Ah yes! I know exactly the sort of 24/7 DUer who is OUTRAGED over this bullshit story."

Seriously....to all serious political junkies, stick to LBN here and move over to places like TalkingPointsMemo for actual important stuff. This place is to politics what the National Enquirer is to news. Its mostly a bunch of not very bright people with too much time on their hands projecting their personal problems here. Move to TPM or Kos lurkers. This place is shit. No fault of the admins/mods. Something about the format attracts the worst kind of faux politics junkie here.)

There are a lot of people who shop at Walmart just because they don't care about how slaughterhouse wortkers/animals are treated and will drop a big chump of change on something else (my boss fits this description) but buy the cheapest food they can get....

All this thread proves to me is that in general stereotypes suck...

Sure there are Whole foods types like that, but shopping at Walmart is still not some awesome thing just because "champagne liberals" exist...
I care about the environment and animal welfare and so I spend a lot of money on food. To afford that, I cut back on other stuff...


Stereotypes are fucking stupid....

A message board should never be "too much", "something to laugh off" etc. at least IMHO.
The internet shouldn't be a substitute for an actual life.
Politics is serious and important stuff but the squabbles on DU are really not. These are mostly about personality plays and OTT hatred or love for political figures.

as another poster observed upthread, it seems to be more about a failed relationship.

Sorry you had such a lousy relationship. This probably doesn't apply to you, but imo one issue related to having kids that is completely separate from the choice issue,is that both parents should discuss whether they want a kid or not to make sure they are on the same page. This is in the kid's best interest.
No man has the right to force a woman to have an abortion or not, but expressing an opinion on the matter is an entirely different thing. If I were a man, I would be one that doesn't want a kid. In that scenario I would be upfront with anyone I dated or married about not wanting kids and expect them to be straight with me. Not everyone wants to have kids and that is fine. What would not be fair is to consider a man who always said he didn't want kids an asshole for not becoming enthusiastic about it once his partner becomes pregnant. Obviously, it is the woman's choice about what to do, but I can't blame one half of a couple for not having the warm fuzzies about an unexpected baby, if they were always upfront with their partner about their views on having kids. Of course once the kid is born you would have to be a prick to not take up your responsibility to this child.

I knew this girl that ended up marrying her long time bf after college and she (like me) always said she never wanted kids. Her bf didn't want kids and thought they were on the same page. Then they got married and a year or so later she felt like she wanted kids now. Not sure what got into her since she seemed perfectly sincere all the years all of us would talk about how we didn't want kids. Well..her husband still felt the same and though they still loved each other, he suggested they break up if she really wanted a biological child. Since, he wanted to adopt and not have a kid. She did something I consider really shitty and went ahead and told him she was on birth control and got pregnant "accidentally". He is a nice guy and so they are raising the child together now and of course he is a great dad (and he doesn't even know how that "accident" took place-she told me like I should think it was a cute little trick she played).
I feel bad for the guy in instances like this where his choice was taken away at an earlier stage. What she did was dishonest and wrong. A desire for a cuddly little baby or whatever should not mean you have so little respect for your partner that you lie to then about something this important just to get your way.

That is not cool...Not sure who Megan Cardle is /what The Atlantic is but this person is basically using oped space to justify a terrorist act...a murder.
How is this ok?


http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archiv...

Let me start off, in the obligatory way, by announcing that I am pro-choice. I don't think abortions before, say, eight months are even arguably murder. Moreover, I don't think many other people believe it's murder, either, for all that they profess to. They mostly don't, for example, want fourteen year old girls who have abortions hauled off to lengthy juvie terms, which is what we'd do if they'd committed infanticide. They wouldn't turn their own daughters, sisters, or friends in if they found out they'd had an abortion, as I hope they would if said dear ones had murdered their own baby.

I don't think that this is an obviously crazy belief--I can see the argument for life beginning at conception. But ultimately I don't think it works, even for most people who profess it.

So. Now I can move onto the observation that if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense. Putting up touching anecdotes about people he's helped find adoptions, etc, doesn't change the fact that if you think late-term abortions are murder, the man was systematically butchering hundreds of human beings a year--indeed, not merely butchering them, but vivisecting them without anaesthetic. I'm sure many mass murderers have done any number of kind things over the course of their lives, to which the correct response, if you're trying to stop the murders, is "so?"


Wtf is wrong with this person?

There are many professions that have way too many way overpaid people in them imo. Finance/banking for one....thats an easy one these days.
Doctors actually work their butts off, med school is fricking BRUTAL and expensive and doctors actually have real skills. I have to confess I can't help thinking often when I think of the financial crisis, how some of the most sleazy/least competent people I knew in engineering school ended up in business management, financial consulting/something finance related. Why not? Those don't seem to be uber rigorous fields (like most fields stemming from the social/soft sciences) and you make way more money than the average scientist or even engineers.

At least imo, in medicine, engineering, any hard science you actually have to know wtf you are doing/wtf you are talking about/possess actual skills.

I think some of the most overpaid people out there are the sleazoids with "people skills" that pick up some job in business management/finance. I am not saying there aren't some competent people in those areas, but I do think a lot of them are overpaid for the so-called skills they bring to the table.
Whereas becoming a doctor is really pretty hard, intense and involves working round the clock (well at least the average doctor in my experience-I dated a string of 'em in grad school and I was in an applied physics program that was pretty hard, but nothing compared to what they had to go through I felt a lot of days).
But then again, I am a particularly rude/socially inept engineer/physicist, so maybe it is that people in some of these other fields I am dissing have skills I can't even fully appreciate given my neurochemistry .

http://www.reuters.com/article/mnEnergy/id...

and it never has had...

This place is kind of interesting to check in on once in a while, but at the end of the day, even during the Bush years, the kind of topics that get most traction here are things like "teen had sex with dead kitten" or something flamebaity regarding smokers, vegetarians etc. etc.

It has become even more tabloidy after the election possibly due to a surge in numbers. I got the most utility out of DU honestly before I actually registered and started posting or reading comments/recognizing user names etc. LBN and E&E (thanks to posters like hatrack and a few others) are DU's most valuable resources. And then there are a few posters here who do put together some legitimate good diaries. But by and large this place is teenbeat and I doubt it will ever change.

And the biggest cheerleaders for the dumbing down of this place are some of the rude curmudgeons who in their own estimation at least are the most mature pragmatists around. The funniest thing about DU's self-styled pragmatists is that barring a certain type of obnoxious tone I am not sure what makes these people the intellectual pragmatists they claim to be. They have been wrong about just about everything as far back as I can remember. It is amusing to remember how these same types were telling everyone a few years ago how there is no recession, no real financial clusterfuck coming down the pipeline etc.

I posted about that a few days ago here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

I think we are supposed to assume they are intelligent realists because they keep spouting some empty party line.
"You don't get it child-it is way more complicated than you think" etc. etc. Ladling out braindead bullshit by the shovelful. These are some of the stupidest people you would find anywhere and they are as prone to groupthink within their own little group as anyone else, but if you keep repeating over and over again (and in fairness to them, they do spend a fuckload more time here than anyone else) that you are the pragmatic realist you will eventually gain some traction I suppose.

Posting misogynistic stuff etc.


Just you know, while we are going about tabulating all the things that are not allowed on DU.

Your ilk reduces every argument any concerned citizen makes to a petty "Oh waaaah you don't get exactly what you want and so you are bitching".
It isn't about getting exactly what one wants...for many people they are disturbed by a lot of what they see from mainstream Dems. What should they do if they still believe they live in a representative democracy? Not even voice their displeasure to their elected officials and yes also vent on a message board.

Oh yes...I know..it is just a stupid message board. No one is paying attention blah blah blah...Then why do glorious, brilliant pragmatists like most of you even grace it with your exalted presence? Shouldn't you be doing something much more valuable with your erudite, brilliant self?

I will agree that most of it isn't only Obama's fault or the fault of any one Democrat. But sticking one's head in the sand about many of the egregious systemic problems in just about every branch of governance in this country is not a solution to anything.

Also you know what, most of you self-styled pragmatists on this board have been wrong about just about every fucking thing up until after the fact. A few years ago you types were saying "There is no recession...there is no economic crisis." A few years before that it was how there is no climate or general environmental crisis. All in self-important capitals a lot of the times to boot.

Give me a fucking break . Most of the self-styled pragmatists on this board are the biggest fucking morons I have ever come across.
It is a testament to the power of group think and a fascinating phenomenon sociologically speaking, that most of you seem to be able to convince others that you are the voice of sanity or anything close to it given your disastrous track record, just by sneeringly asserting how pragmatic and intelligent you are. You are as much of a joke as any stereotypical "far lefty" who considers anyone to the right of Kucinich a Republican.


One problem with many of the "far lefty" responses on this board to you people is that people tell you types that you are cold-hearted DINOs/Repukes etc. Whereas what they should point out is that you are mostly self-important morons who don't actually know anything about anything, but through the sheer power of your obnoxious online personalities try to shut people up.

I will gladly admit I don't know a whole lot about anything but science, but at least I know that. Most of you I suspect don't fucking know anything about anything except being self-important jackasses. Oh but *you* are the pragmatic Dems...
Bull fucking shit...

Oh and also, please stop buying your own BS about how the "pragmatists" on this board are any less stereotypical or any less prone to group think than anyone you dub as "far lefty". After reading this board even for a brief while, for most of you, just as much as any other group here, one can predict the responses to just about any fucking thing without even clicking on the user name. And yet you are the ones most loudly proclaiming what rugged individualists you are who are just not prone to groupthink like all those other people...

Again bullshit...

This is just plain painful to watch.

http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff/2009/04/re...

Rep Joe Barton Thinks Oil in Alaska Disproves Global Warming

Category: Off The Deep End • Politics
Posted on: April 22, 2009 5:57 PM, by Dave Bacon

Okay, well he didn't exactly say that, but he certainly is a smug son of a gun who asked a grade school question to a Nobel prize winner in physics, apparently expecting a "gotcha" moment (via TPM):


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/...


You know I really wonder what Steve Chu makes of these people. Steve Chu is an absolutely brilliant physicist and he is a pretty nice guy for the most part I believe, but he was always one of those professors who had the reputation of being someone who has zero tolerance for slowness/stupidity. And his standards are pretty high.

We always heard this urban legend about him that if you were one of his research assistants and he merely sneered when he stopped by your desk, you were doing good.


I really wonder how he feels about being around people like this Barton guy....

Yes, I did.

P.s.: Hi "Hanse" -I believe we were speaking earlier today Socko? Peekaboo! I see you....

A bit cheesy but still rather fun :

http://www.dnatube.com/video/23/Keratocyte...

Keratocytes are cool. If I am not mistaken they are some of the fastest migrating cells (approaching 60um/s) but I could be wrong. That is some beautiful DIC imaging.