Sep 2nd bits & bobs

[Guest DeputyHawk]

Second, what's the Kyoto deal that's been mentioned? I'd like to know so I can argue about it effectively.

Very, very basically Kyoto is, or was, an environmental accord put forward in Kyoto, Japan almost five years ago requiring all industrial nations to cut their production of polluting gasses to below 1990 levels.

 

The US was hit hardest by the treaty, their target set at a 7% reduction before 2008. They rejected the treaty outright, claiming it imposed too great an economic burden to be viable - leading to the sustained, and somewhat unfair, criticism that America is slave to the Texas oilmen, not the good of the planet.

 

Of course, without America's participation the rest of the industrial countries began squabbling and the whole deal effectively collapsed in on top of itself.

 

Now, to be fair the treaty itself wouldn't have made that much difference to overall emmission levels, and it certainly didn't tackle pollution across the board but it was at least a start, and it frustrates me that the US effectively cut the beginnings of sweeping environmental change off at the knees before it could begin to go anywhere. I can understand why they did it - they had little to gain and a lot to lose, but I felt they should have considered the bigger game being played and showed some solidarity and commitment to change which could then be built on instead of simply producing in-fighting, disharmony and resentment. Or at least provided some sort of alternative suggestions having rejected the initial draft.

 

There's obviously much more to it, and wildly differing opinions, but off the top of my head that's a rough indicator of the basics. Try punching in a search for Kyoto treaty, Kyoto accord, Kyoto G8, something like that. I'm sure there'll be an in-depth discussion lurking somewhere on the information superhighway.

 

"Rose Bonbon" Loosely translated in high-school level Francais, most of which has been long since forgotten, means "Pink Candy." Considering that, and the subject of the book. All I've got to say is, eew. They've got no right banning it though. Few things sicken me as much as censorship.

 

Pink candy! Gotta love the French! Unless you're Marney. Or me. Or anyone, come to think of it.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

Old Indian proverb say "when you have dammed all the rivers, poisoned all the lakes, fished out all the oceans, cut down all the tress, then and only then will you discover money cannot be eaten."

 

Ai-ray.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I freely admit to having never read the Kyoto Protocol.  I was upset when Bush retracted from it, as I am very environmentally concerned.  I saw him as being isolationist, and as being greedy in regards to chosing profits over ecology.  While I can say that he choses profits over ecology more than I would like, the truth is that I did not read the treaty, and do not know what we were signing into.

Y'know, there's stupidity, and then there's...

 

I mean Jesus fucking CHRIST.

 

What the high holy hell is wrong with you? Even Congressmen aren't this clueless. Did your mom snort Thalidomide compulsively because she'd made a bet with her friends concerning who could give birth to the most staggeringly godforsaken example of crass irredeemable STUPIDITY in the history of the world?

 

Can we review for a sec? You're not only criticising the job the President's doing, you're impugning his character because he won't try to ratify something which has already been defeated 95-0 in the Senate. You haven't read the provisions, you don't understand the implications, you're probably BLISSFULLY UNAWARE that the overwhelming majority of economists and a substantial percentage of ecologists say it would be an utter waste of time at best and a GROSS and counterproductive misuse of resources at worst, but you think the President should support it SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU'RE "ENVIRONMENTALLY CONCERNED" and THE FUCKING PAPER MENTIONS THE ENVIRONMENT?!

 

...

 

Jesus wept, don't you even have the decency to be ashamed of your appalling ignorance on a subject you claim to care so very deeply about?

[Guest Cancer Marney]

First of all, I have to comment on that. We're American citizens, we have a right to do just that. In my opinion, it's not only a right, but a duty to question our leaders. We've elected them, after all.

It's not a good idea to take your ethical arguments from a movie. (Although I liked The American President too.) Yes, you have the right to question your leaders. Yes, the First Amendment gives you the right to express totally unfounded and insulting opinions about the President's character and intelligence. But the First Amendment does not say that anyone is obliged to take such stupid, knee-jerk, slanderous attacks seriously. Nor does the First Amendment say that his senior officials have no obligation to be loyal and respectful. By any civilised code of conduct, if an official has a criticism to make, she is obliged to do so directly, through internal channels, following proper procedure. Unless the criticism is rejected, and the official feels deeply enough about it to resign and THEN become a "whistle-blower," it is completely without justification to expect her to voice criticisms, especially of a personal nature, in a public forum.

 

As a civilian, you may criticise the President freely and publicly, in whatever terms you wish to use.

 

I will not.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

Y'know, there's stupidity, and then there's...

 

I mean Jesus fucking CHRIST.

 

What the high holy hell is wrong with you? Even Congressmen aren't this clueless. Did your mom snort Thalidomide compulsively because she'd made a bet with her friends concerning who could give birth to the most staggeringly godforsaken example of crass irredeemable STUPIDITY in the history of the world?

I yearn for the day I'm deemed worthy of receiving this kind of retort.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

On another tack, resident Zimbabwe psycho Robert Mugabe is pepping himself up for a verbal (hopefully) attack on Blair and Britain tomorrow, so that should be fun.

I am a tired little monkey working two jobs & too knackered to do a separate thread for todays nuggets, so to merely expand on this morsel Mugabe opened a can of whoopass on Britain's critisism of his brutal farm reclamations, as well as Blair's (I thought) generous offer of increasing developmental aid to Africa to £1billion a year.

 

OK, maybe Britain could have behaved a little bit better in regards to Africa within the dim & distant past, but for Mugabe to publicly say "So, Blair, keep your Britain and let me keep my Zimbabwe" is a little rich, considering he rigged his country's joke of an electoral system to the point where his regime is now under Commonwealth interdict. It's not YOUR Zimbabwe any more than it's not Britains', I think you'll find it belongs to the people you claim to stand up for whom you suppress and murder the moment they step out of line.

 

After he'd done with the Blair attack, I also particularly liked his "if I must" defence of Zimbabwe's environmental record: "We keep our forests, we keep our animals, we keep even our reptiles plus insects. We look after elephants and ivory, we look after our lions." Woop de fuckin doo. I think something got lost vocab-wise in his English translation because what he actually meant to say was "two thirds of my country's diverse wildlife has been wiped out in the last six months alone thanks to the army, the farm squatters and my lovely, lovely Youth Militia, thank you and goodnight." Wankfuck. He needs shooting in his pointy little head. NO! This board is getting to me.....

[Guest EricMM]

Shut the hell up Marney, it was past tense.

 

I was stupid in highschool, I freely admit that. That doesn't give you the right to ask if my mom smoked Thalidomide.

 

Did you even read the rest of my post? I fucking said that people can go to far and maybe I should have typed out that I meant that the Kyoto treaty was unreasonable which was what I meant.

 

You need to get off Bush's balls. He is my president too, and I know you'll probably get pissed off at this, but you shouldn't (I put can't there initially but heh you of course can) go into flame mode the second someone calls Bush greedy. I thought Bush was greedy, especially in highschool. Just because I mention that doesn't mean you should call me stupid.

 

I was "blissfully" unaware that everyone had said that Kyoto was unfair, I'm sorry if you're horribly offended by the fact that I was a 10th grader then. Boo Hoo.

 

Fuck it I don't even care about kyoto at this point, I'm more concerned that you go apeshit everytime someone denounces bush, or calls him an idiot. Fine, it's probably not true, none of us know him personally, and he went to a great school. But he is the PRESIDENT, a POLITICIAN. And there will be a lot of people who don't like him, and they are going to impung him. I didn't even do it much and you went loco. He's just the president, there will be another in 2-6 years, equally qualified and equally smart and stupid and everything in between. I think that one of the reason's America's great is that the country is more ruled by it's citizens than by it's leaders, it's citizens become leaders, and then step down. Bush is not a monarch, and there's no crime in disliking him, and nothing unamerican by thinking he's greedy.

[Guest EricMM]

I yearn for the day I'm deemed worthy of receiving this kind of retort.  

 

Just keep on posting. Eventually, THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN, you will piss her off, or F K Teale, or someone like it. Although there is noone like them.

 

Then you will be flamed. Unless you think like them, and then you're smart, and you won't be flamed. When I came here, it seemed to be Frank Zappa Mask versus Dr. Tom and his yes men (and woman). And other liberals come and go, I dunno if LesnarLunatic still posts here or not. Like the forum says it can get pretty heated, and I get the feeling that some people don't like to stay too long.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I freely admit to having never read the Kyoto Protocol... the truth is that I did not read the treaty, and do not know what we were signing into

That's not simple past tense, you dumbfuck. If you don't know the King's English and you misrepresent the facts it's your own damn fault when you get called on the carpet for it.

 

I'm more concerned that you go apeshit everytime someone denounces bush, or calls him an idiot

Be as "concerned" as you please. You have as little understanding of ethics and propriety and the conduct required in rational debate as you do (or did, whatfuckingever) of Kyoto. If it were a criminal offence for civilians to speak disrespectfully of the President, you'd be behind bars by now and I can't say I'd shed many tears. And no, it's not necessarily un-American to utter slanderous lies about your Commander in Chief without an iota of evidence. Just stupid and contemptible. But I don't expect anything more from you.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Eventually, THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN, you will piss her off

I get pissed off at people only for what they say and do, and that's always their own damn fault.

 

Unless you think like them, and then you're smart, and you won't be flamed.

DH and I agree on almost nothing (except bombing the French) but we still get along. Even when I flame him he responds intelligently. It's only crybabies like you who take themselves oh-so-seriously on the Internet who go into conniptions when someone says something mean. Get over yourself already.

 

I get the feeling that some people don't like to stay too long.

But those of us who realise that conflict and passionate debate are the foundations of our country do.

[Guest DrTom]

When I came here, it seemed to be Frank Zappa Mask versus Dr. Tom and his yes men (and woman).

Bah. I'd just like to add that I didn't need any yes-people to help me take on Chris. He always ended up digging his own grave, and I was the one who got to shovel the dirt back in after he'd gone ahead and jumped into the damn thing. But still, despite our persistent disagreements, complete philosophical differences, and occasional very heated flames, our exchanges were always quite civil.

 

Just pointing that out.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

Just keep on posting.  Eventually, THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN, you will piss her off, or F K Teale, or someone like it.  Although there is noone like them.  Then you will be flamed.  Unless you think like them, and then you're smart, and you won't be flamed

I have absolutely no doubt that I will be flamed at some point. If I can't defend my arguments though, it will be completely justified. I've not been using this forum long, though already I have had disagreements with both Dr Tom & Marney. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't been flamed nor have I flamed back. I don't consider calling someone an idiot for saying something one feels to be genuinely idiotic flaming. Hell, I think calling for Mecca to be bombed is an idiotic thing to say, but at the end of the day we're just venting our opinions on a message board, so try to remember the old sticks & stones adage. If the flaming given or received is totally unjustified, then it is the person dishing it out who will end up looking foolish, not yourself. If you have an opinion or a thought about an issue you want to share, and you believe in it, don't worry so much about people running it down. Just reiterate that thought and try to convince those who may be reading that you are in the right. Like I said, I have only been on the board a short time, but I find both Dr Tom and Marney to be intelligent, thought-provoking posters. I don't happen to agree with much of what they say, but that's what the spirit of debate is about. Enter into it rather than kicking against it. I'm right with them on the French though.

 

EDIT: To be fair though, you did kind of invite a backlash by infering America were wrong to pull out of Kyoto, then admitting you didn't even know what it was.....

[Guest EricMM]

And no, it's not necessarily un-American to utter slanderous lies about your Commander in Chief without an iota of evidence. Just stupid and contemptible. But I don't expect anything more from you.

 

And I think it's stupid and contemptible to be so gung ho about someone just because he had enough money to be president, (be that person, Bush or Gore, Clinton or Dole, Bush or Ducacus (sp?) or whomever the candidates are. I said bush was greedy, which was a shorter way of saying that he SEEMS to chose profits and business over environment which is something I consider stupid and short sighted.

 

Besides calling Bush greedy is ALSO no more stupid and contemptible than saying that Islamic people are evil. Ditto saying that America is the only signifigant country.

 

...

 

Anyways they should not have censored that book because the press will just make it sell like hotcakes around the world instead of possibly failing in France. I mean it could be a great book, but even shit will sell if you try to censor it, it seems.

 

*EDIT*

To be fair though, you did kind of invite a backlash by infering America were wrong to pull out of Kyoto, then admitting you didn't even know what it was.....

 

Actually the point of the post was to show how my opinions of Kyoto had changed since Highschool. I know more now than I did then, and I agree that the KP was a good idea but a bad treaty NOW. Then I didn't. Thats kind of what I was going for but it didn't seem to work *EDIT*

[Guest Frank Zappa Mask]

QUOTE

<<<When I came here, it seemed to be Frank Zappa Mask versus Dr. Tom and his yes men (and woman).

 

Bah. I'd just like to add that I didn't need any yes-people to help me take on Chris. He always ended up digging his own grave, and I was the one who got to shovel the dirt back in after he'd gone ahead and jumped into the damn thing. But still, despite our persistent disagreements, complete philosophical differences, and occasional very heated flames, our exchanges were always quite civil.

 

Just pointing that out.>>>

 

-Love you too, Doc

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I think it's stupid and contemptible to be so gung ho about someone just because he had enough money to be president

You obviously failed your Remedial English class. There is a difference between being "gung-ho" and maintaining proper decorum. Separately, I do like Mr Bush, both personally and as the President - but as I've made PERFECTLY CLEAR time and time again, the reason I won't criticise him in this forum has NOTHING to do with that.

 

I said bush was greedy, which was a shorter way of saying that he SEEMS to chose profits and business over environment which is something I consider stupid and short sighted.

Let's run through the logic again: you think he SEEMS to things you CONSIDER stupid, so you call him "greedy" without proof or further explanation. And then you wonder why you aren't taken seriously.

 

The valley girl in me keeps saying "duh."

 

Besides calling Bush greedy is ALSO no more stupid and contemptible than saying that Islamic people are evil.

Again, I've provided ample proof of the evils perpetrated by Islam and in Islam's name. You have provided no comparable proof for your insults about the President.

 

Ditto saying that America is the only signifigant country.

There is a difference between "relevant" and "significant." In context, I have defended my statements with clear facts drawn from national budgets, official oil consumption rates and importation ratios, and force projections issued by the Pentagon.

Evidently, you're too dim to remember any of this. Fine. But in that case, I really don't see where the hell you get off whining about others misinterpreting your fuckheadedly illiterate posts.

 

I guess what I was trying to say was this:

 

You're a substanceless effeminate hypersensitive sissy-boy. You make stupid statements and get upset and bitch and moan when someone takes you seriously and asks you what the FUCK you were thinking, and when you're ignored you bitch and moan about THAT as well. Would you kindly do me a personal favour and make up your goddamn miserable excuse for a crack-stunted mind, so I can at least try to hurt your little feelings consistently?

 

Christ. I'll bet you had your glasses stomped on regularly in junior high.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

our exchanges were always quite civil...

-Love you too, Doc

I should say that I noticed that too, and I was actually rather surprised by it, and impressed - with both parties (on that score).

 

Yes, I'm actually giving props to FZM here. If anyone starts to hyperventilate while reading this, please put a paper bag over your head and take deep breaths.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

First of all, I have to comment on that. We're American citizens, we have a right to do just that. In my opinion, it's not only a right, but a duty to question our leaders. We've elected them, after all.

It's not a good idea to take your ethical arguments from a movie. (Although I liked The American President too.) Yes, you have the right to question your leaders.

Didn't take it from a movie, for what it's worth, but having the right to say what one wants about our leader, of course also implies that you don't HAVE to criticise him.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Right. Not criticising someone in a public forum isn't the same as blindly agreeing with everything he says. I advise and argue, and I disagree constantly with his more senior advisors, but I keep it internal. As I'm supposed to.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

The valley girl in me keeps saying "duh."

Is that your girlfriend? or are you keeping secrets? I kid, I kid...

 

 

 

 

DH and I agree on almost nothing (except bombing the French) but we still get along. Even when I flame him he responds intelligently. It's only crybabies like you who take themselves oh-so-seriously on the Internet who go into conniptions when someone says something mean. Get over yourself already.

 

Destruction of the French. Truly bringing America together.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

No, my girlfriend was born in Lawrence Park. <g>

[Guest DeputyHawk]

DH and I agree on almost nothing (except bombing the French) but we still get along. Even when I flame him he responds intelligently.

your president still smells of poo poo.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Okay, I take it back.

[Guest DeputyHawk]

screw you for judging me!

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Screw you for saying "screw you" to me! I'm going to go away and cry now!

 

That'll prove I was right all along!

[Guest EricMM]

our exchanges were always quite civil.

 

I would love it LOVE IT if things would stay civil here. Oh wait no. That's impossible. Because a troll named Marney has to set fire to every thread she doesn't agree with.

 

You talk about decorum in your arguments, then flame harder and more consitantly than F K Teale could ever think of doing, except where he can interject some humor, all you have is garbage.

 

I never called you on it, because I didn't think it would do any good, but you fucking need to understand that you are not always right. You are wrong about so many things it's rediculous, you really should learn the following things:

 

1) America is no "better" than most of the countries in the world.

 

2) Bush is no more or less deserving of your respect than I am.

 

3) The Muslim world is not made of terrorists.

 

4) Just because someone thinks any of these things doesn't mean they're stupid, unrealistic, or deserving of scorn.

 

5) You act like the biggest idiot in the Current Events folder.

 

You wear this calm mask like you're some sensible poster, but then you lose it. You cause people to leave this forum. They don't leave because they were wrong, they don't leave because you won, they leave because you're as pleasant as raw sewage

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Sigh. Someone else calling me a "troll." Y'know, that's when all rational discussion ceases. Could you at least try to be original?

 

1) America is no "better" than most of the countries in the world.

Yes, actually, she is. See previous posts for examples of pure and effective altruism.

 

2) Bush is no more or less deserving of your respect than I am.

This is just funny. Of course he is, you pathetic pimple-faced little geek. He's the President of the United States and he's several times your age. He's done more with his life than you ever will.

Besides, I don't answer to you, and I do answer to the President. He gets more respect on that score alone.

 

3) The Muslim world is not made of terrorists.

Not entirely, no, because no group numbering over 1 billion could possibly be so homogenous. But certain kinds of terrorism are exclusive to Moslems, and a large portion of the "Ummah" funds or otherwise supports the more active extremists.

 

4) Just because someone thinks any of these things doesn't mean they're stupid, unrealistic, or deserving of scorn.

People who cling to comforting falsehoods even when they're confronted with the harsh truth are indeed deserving of scorn. Not all such people are stupid, no, but you most certainly are.

 

5) You act like the biggest idiot in the Current Events folder.

Nah, I think you have me beat there.

[Guest bob_barron]

Marney is on fire!!!

 

and since I must-

OH TAG!

[Guest Cancer Marney]

<blowkiss>

[Guest DeputyHawk]

and since I must-

OH TAG!

what the hell does that mean?

 

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[Guest Cancer Marney]

Check out this thread.