Some say that hell is filled with tires
Kieran, that's wonderful.
"Don't give up on your country. I've just adopted it, and I'm renouncing mine!"/i>
My first comment was not very carefully crafted, but I don't think it was so bad that you can read it that way without calling your own comprehension skills into question. I doubt you even read my second comment, being in such a rush to express your admiration of Dave's limp jab.
One more time (three's a charm, right?): my position was and is that there's nothing wrong with either Australia or the US that can't be fixed by what's right with them, and that there are not so many differences between them that, if you didn't like it in one, you'd be appreciably happier with the other.
Dave: you seem to have misread me somewhat (and on re-reading, mea culpa). You won't like me any better for it, but I'll try to explain myself anyway. I wasn't saying "Australia is horrible, rah rah the US". My point was that Australia is, in fact, a very similar environment to the US in many ways. Racism is a deep seated problem, homophobia is common (though there are notable exceptions -- parts of Sydney for instance), the education system is bad and getting worse, there's a strong current of anti-intellectualism/wilful ignorance in popular culture and the govt is steadily moving rightwards. A US citizen moving to Aus to escape the Bush junta, as Ajay suggested, would find him/herself in a dismayingly familiar environment.
I moved to the US for reasons that have nothing to do with my feelings toward either country; it was simply easier to move me to the US than my wife to Aus. If I'd stayed, I'd have been howling about Jackboot Johnny because I believed in an Australia that's better than him (and still do, kneejerk jingoism like yours notwithstanding). I'm here, so I howl about President Katrina because I believe in an America that's better than him.
I believe in people, and I believe that at bottom all people are made of basically the same stuff. So I don't care whether you call me an Australian or an American, and I don't much care if you get your nose out of joint because I wouldn't sing the praises of "your country" to a tune of your liking.
(I would like to retract "generally bass-ackwards" though. That was over the top. But I'll stand by the rest of it.)
May they be ashamed of themselves forever.
World without end, amen.
But I think Ajay's wrong, and I choose to stay and fight. I just got here, and if a big chunk of America seems to have abandoned the America I came here to join, well, that's no reason for me to do so as well. Not just yet.
(And Ajay, don't include Australia in your list of destinations. That's where I came from. You think the US is a racist society, go live in Aus for a while. It's also homophobic, wilfully ignorant and generally bass-ackward as far as culture goes, and moving rapidly to the right politically. There are some wonderful people living there, and I'd have stayed there and fought if I hadn't had extra reasons to come here (married a 'merican), but Aus is no improvement on the US in any way. And the US has the advantage that what happens here matters, no one really gives a rat's what Australia does or says.)
It baffles me that the reactionary noisemakers (political or religious) can still claim to be Christians with all their public noise.
Me too. The distance between what I know of Christian teachings and the behaviour of prominent (well, loud) Christians in the US never ceases to astonish me. I don't understand why their congregations don't simply turn away from the Falwells and the Phelpses, or why Bush's public piety, so at odds with his actions, is still a selling point.
Tim Kyger occasionally gets his head stuck...
Heh, didn't see this before I posted my 2:00pm comment. My apology stands, but: unstick, Tim, unstick!
if you pass Tim by and don't listen to him, how will you know that he isn't saying, "Hey, I'm hungry, does anyone have a sandwich?
Your point is well made, and my comment was in any case an over-reaction.
My apologies, Tim. (You're still wrong to sneer at the post that way, mind.)
Tim Kyger: taken purely as poetry (I'm an atheist) the quoted passage is apt, instructive and beautiful.
You're an idiot. Every time I see your name on the web, I am going to remember this and simply pass you by, as having demonstrated that it's not worth my time to listen to you.
I’m beginning to think that’s its point.
Jesus Patrick. You're scaring me. If they (They) have their shit that much together, we're doomed.
Which is to say: I think her unselfconscious depravity, like that of her son and his handlers and flunkies, is just that: unselfconscious, unconscious, unscripted. These people, the Bushes of the world, are so far removed from actual humanity that they think they're entitled to such attitudes, that they betray with such comments nothing amiss.
Hanlon's razor says nothing about sociopaths in whom utter lack of empathy and complete self-absorption result in the same sorts of behaviour that one might expect from active malice.
Avoid situations where the obvious rhyme-word is “maidenhead.”
I never liked Rogers anyway.
Boom-boom!
(Explanation for them as needs it.)
Remember all those useful things Technorati used to do?
Nope. I don't remember Technorati ever doing much of anything except timing out.
I still don't have any names. Who is doing all this for-a-good-cause spamming?
ask the Security Council to replace us by providing U.N. police assistance to the Iraqi government.
And pay for it. This was my first thought too.
But then you're asking UN troops/cops to die for US fuckups... and if you do pretty much anything else you're forcing Iraqi troops/cops to do the same...
Man, is he a . . . jewel.
I'd never thought of using that as an insult, but it's great. Much better than "dick".
You... you testicle. You easily damaged, ugly, dangly lump of flesh, as much trouble as you are benefit even at that rare moment when you're actually wanted for something.
(Of course, unlike the Bushes of this world, testicles do have a use, but a foolish consistency et c.)
Argh. When Fafblog is the best coverage around, we're in trouble. (We've been in trouble for some years.)
I'm this close --><-- to calling bullshit once and for all on the Dems. If it weren't for Boxer, Dean and Kucinich (yeah, I know, who's he?) I think I already would have. [pre-emptive: I know there are other decent Dems, but they don't make enough damn noise!]
But then who to vote/work for? A Canadian friend told me last night that he is dismayed by the apparent absence of a labour movement in the US. I wonder whether a genuine labour movement might not be able to position itself as a third US party along the lines of the Australian Democrats (original platform: "keep the bastards honest")? Are there any socialist democrats left in North America?
I still can't work out who is sending people all this politispam, and how y'all got on their lists. As I said, I signed up for a shitload of it, and I don't get mail from anyone I didn't sign up with (except the DCCC, who have apparently honored my unsub request so I'll sign back on with them as well).
Somebody name names, please.
(Also: another plug for fastmail.fm, whose spam filters keep nearly all the v1a@ra and pr0n stuff at bay.)
Oops, I signed up for DNC not DCCC, I just didn't bother unsubbing until now.
Unsolicited? I wonder how you got on the lists? (That's answered by Larry above in the case of the DCCC, but what about other groups?)
Just for a different perspective, I actively signed up for a bunch of political/social justice mailing lists (off the top of my head: MoveOn, ACLU, Amnesty, SpeakSpeak, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, DCCC, Barbara Boxer's PAC, NARAL, Architecture for Humanity). When they ask for money, I respond to things that really grab me and ignore the rest. Other than that, they send me news on issues that are important to me and opportunities to send letters/sign petitions about those issues. (I know it ain't much, but it helps me feel I'm at least engaged in the process.) Once you have the hang of them, those letters/petitions are really quick and easy.
That said, I'm going to unsub from the DCCC and if it doesn't work they're going to get several earsful.
It's hard to support everything that needs supporting.
Hoo boy, is it ever.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 25 |
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