Comments by Caudimordax

Comment #265354 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 1:38 pm

In any case, do the statistics count those underage? I thought they only started counting unemployment for those of working age (generally around 15 , legally anyway).

Well, any kid who isn't running a lemonade stand or doing a paper route should be sent to bed without supper. So, yeah, if they're just playing softball with their friends or reading a book or something, I would lump them into "the unemployed." Same with kids who don't help clear the table after dinner. Put them in camps where they can be put to some useful labor. Call it DP's New Deal.

252. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265345 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 1:28 pm

DP - the percentage of your salary going to freeloaders will be determined by US. YES!!! After the election you entire salary will be at the mercy of bleeding heart LIBERALS!!! Everybody will get a Prius and a flat screen TV!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry everybody - I really did get carried away there.

253. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265339 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 1:23 pm

19,852,782 freeloaders?

Nobody said 6.5% of the POPULATION wasn't interested in working (and you added "other" in there). It was 2.9% of the UNEMPLOYED - and I don't know off hand what percentage they are of the general population. The statistics also did not include those freeloaders who aren't working because they are under the age of 12;-)

254. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265330 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 1:09 pm

2: Daddies all the way down?

H4D - I think you're asking about the reference? It refers to the myth that the world is a flat disk (like Discworld ;-))supported on the backs of four giant elephants which are standing on the back of a giant tortoise. When asked what the tortoise is standing on, the believer says, "another tortoise." And then? "Well, it's tortoises all the way down."

Thanks for the stats.

(Sorry if that was a long-winded explanation for something everyone already knew - maybe the question mark was from the original post - so again, sorry)

255. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265315 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 12:34 pm

She had achieved two of her three goals. She had earned a college diploma (a two-year associate's degree), and she had gone from a homeless shelter into her own house (owned mostly by a bank). The third objective, ''a good paying job,'' as she put it, still eluded her. Back in the mid-70's, she earned $6 an hour in a Vermont factory that made plastic cigarette lighters and cases for Gillette razors. A quarter century later, she earned $6.80 an hour stocking shelves and working cash registers at a vast Wal-Mart superstore.

''And that's sad,'' she declared. ''I'm only making 80 cents more than I did more than 20 years ago.'' Or less, taking into account the rise in the cost of living.

She was not the victim of racial discrimination; she was white. She was not lazy; she was caustic about colleagues who were. She was punctual, rarely out sick, willing to do night shifts and assiduous in her work habits. The Wal-Mart manager, Mark Brown, called her ''a nice lady'' with lots of enthusiasm. ''She's self-driven,'' he observed. ''She's always willing to learn and better herself. She's got potential. She can definitely move up.''

But she did not move up. She had never moved up. And that ceased to amaze her; it had been going on for so long, in job after job after job. She was astonished only by Mark Brown's praise. ''I'm surprised,'' she remarked when I told her what he said. She was stacking blank videotapes on a shelf. ''I didn't think they liked me here. People don't usually say nice things about me.''
...
''I work my butt off, excuse my language,'' she said sharply. ''I'm there most of the time, but that don't matter to them.'' She was paid a dollar an hour more during nighttime shifts, nothing close to what her flexibility was worth to a store that stayed open around the clock. Trying to get ahead, she always made herself available to change hours and fill in, even during evenings when she had to leave her 14-year-old daughter, Amber, home alone. Without a car, Caroline had a 20-minute walk each way, trekking back and forth at odd times of night in all kinds of weather. One cold February day, walking gingerly along icy streets, worried about her temperamental back, she trudged from her house to her job at her normal time of 10 a.m., only to be told to come for a shift beginning at 1 p.m. instead. So she made her way home and then returned to the store: three trips consuming one hour before earning her first dime of the day.

The people who received promotions tended to have something that Caroline did not. They had teeth. Caroline's teeth had succumbed to poverty, to the years when she could not afford a dentist. Most of them decayed and abscessed, and when she lived on welfare in Florida, she had them all pulled in a grueling two-hour session that left her looking bruised and beaten. Under the state's Medicaid rules as she understood them, a set of dentures would have been covered only if she had been without any teeth at all; while some of them could have been saved, she couldn't afford to do less than everything. In the end, the dentures paid for by Medicaid didn't fit and made her gag, so she couldn't wear them. An adjustment would have cost about $250, money she didn't have.
....
Determined to move up, Caroline applied for good office jobs and, when she failed to be hired, called to find out why. The answer was always the same: the winning candidate had a college degree. So she decided to get one, too. Gathering credits from community colleges in Vermont and Florida, she ended up with a two-year associate's degree in office technology and information processing. She also ran up a debt of $17,000 in student loans, a sum that rose to $20,000 as she deferred payments. It turned out to be a bad investment; she never landed a job in her field of training, never got one that required anything more than a high-school diploma. A full bachelor's degree would have been a door-opening credential, of course, but the associate's degree proved useless.

I think that's enough for now.

Al - loved the logic story.

256. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265311 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 12:24 pm

Also, wut r thees reasons peeps has toughr tiems an y iz someone elsez fault?

A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class

257. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265308 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 12:16 pm

life is not perfect, and I'll add, it never will be, but what's wrong in working towards that?

Before I completely gave up religion, I used to say I'd rather be a fool in heaven than a mean-spirited smartass in hell. We should work towards a better, fairer world, and if a couple of undeserving people get a free ride because of it, I'm not going to lose sleep gnashing my teeth over how they're not being properly punished. I guess it has to do with what you believe about human nature. I think the vast majority of people want to work.

I'm suddenly suspicious - why would someone be so sure that the mere possibility of public assistance would guarantee that hordes of people would quit work and take to their sofas unless he felt a strong tendency in that direction himself?

As Gandalf so wisely said, "The treacherous are ever distrustful."

258. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265301 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 11:57 am

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he will spend every weekend drinking with his fishing buddies.;-)

259. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265298 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 11:53 am

So did "anybody" look at A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class ?

People who did everything in their power to succeed (and didn't).

260. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265296 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 11:46 am

2 - I am honored to have been extended the privilege!

But you are completely wasting your time - anyone whose atrociously bad concepts of grammar are so deeply entrenched that he can't change them after being corrected regularly throughout almost 7000 posts is certainly not going to be capable of grasping any of the finer points you make about the moral responsibilities of individuals.

Loved "Daddies all the way down."

Edit: I wonder if DP's mediocre writing skills are on display in his resume or in cover letters to prospective employers - or maybe he's living on his hard-working Daddy's dime.

261. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265284 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 11:14 am

Al - that was even funnier than the SNL thing (although I wish I could find a video clip of it - I remember Laraine Newman's wonderful delivery as the fired air traffic controller)

262. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265278 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 10:58 am

Every year, thousands and thousands of perfectly nice, incompetent people are fired from their jobs merely because they lack the qualities to do these jobs well. And why? Why should someone who is already good at their job win out over someone who is poor at theirs? Effective workers don't need the job. They already know how to do it. If they're such hot stuff, why don't they try doing something they're bad at? How will society ever grow if people are just hired to do what they already do well? Just listen to these heartbreaking testimonies.

It's a joke - old Saturday Night Live skit

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77dincompetent.phtml

But seriously, the assumption that America really is the land to equal opportunity is so naive it boggles the mind. College? Student loans? So many kids start out with a ton of baggage on the first day of kindergarten, through no fault of their own. The culture of poverty continues from one generation to the next and many kids do not have the good fortune of meeting a good role model, or having some sort of epiphany that enables them to embrace a different way of thinking. But even if they do, there's always pure good luck or bad luck getting into the mix.

263. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265270 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 10:36 am

R2S - I really know what you mean. I know a woman who lives in a multi-million dollar home in one of the tonier areas of Connecticut, has never had a job of any kind, whose husband is a venture capitalist, and has actually said, without any irony detectable, "We've worked very hard for everything we have."

264. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265267 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 10:28 am

A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class
An interesting story about what poverty in America really looks like: working hard and not getting anywhere.

Edit: Yay - finally get how to edit those URLs!

Edit: Well said R2S!

265. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #265260 by Caudimordax on October 16, 2008 at 10:04 am

According to the Economic Policy Institute, 14 million people are working for $7 an hour or less.

Ever heard the term "working poor?"

You could read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," but I guess you wouldn't read a book by some "whining liberal."

266. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264988 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Yes, thank you bonzai for that link to the dailybeast article!

267. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264962 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Gosh you people are amazing! The newest coding humor I know is 20 goto 10! (definitely part of the hypothesized algorithm)

268. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264938 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 1:25 pm

"Twice" is how I usually see this phrased. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Updated for the digital age when clocks specify AM and PM. And the burning was just a little absurdity.

R2S sent me the link to ThinkGeek - I knew of them, not the shirt.

269. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264937 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Laurie - I'm trying to figure out what the algorithm is that makes bizarre claims, twists the rebuttals into corkscrews, translates the results into LOLcat-speak and then pastes them into the thread. Also occasionally inserts HAHAHAHAHA in the mistaken belief that it creates the impression that there is a human on the other end.

270. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264906 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Because 3 plus 3 does equal 7 for very large values of 3.

Hey! You stole my joke!

Nevertheless, as profound a truth as "A burning dog needs no chimney."

Edit: But seriously, a source that claims dogs have 7 legs and also that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is useless as a source of information. As I noted before, sort of like the bible.

Edit: And even a burning clock is right once a day.

271. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264883 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 11:21 am

Maybe some of the things he wrote are generalizations or maybe lies, but that doesn't discount the things that are true.

Sounds like what believers say about the bible.

272. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264879 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 11:08 am

Yeah you're right you can link back to Gorilla Mask from that website.

Was that a typo? You CAN link back? How?

273. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264867 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 10:33 am

Thanks TWP - since I work at home I don't think of things like that.

No expert, but it doesn't seem that you can get from the link back to Gorilla Mask unless you already know of the connection.

274. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264864 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 10:25 am

Al - Actually Root2Squared first posted it a few pages back and I just repasted. I'm afraid to ask: Not Safe For Women? Nationalist Socialist Fat Watchers?

Edit: Al - Do you know if Gorilla Mask created the page or just linked to it? These things get so weird. My friend sent me some dumb video of a harmonica virtuoso that turned out to be hosted by a particularly yucky (to me) porn site - then I noticed she'd also sent it to her church's pastor. That's what you get and served her right, associating with people like that.

275. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264858 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 10:12 am

TWP - no - missed that one!

276. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264854 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 10:06 am

It promises to be updated every day until the election - I can hardly imagine what else could be added!

Bridge to Nowhere added since this morning.

277. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264853 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 9:56 am

Now the fiend seems to think it is entitled to both canned wet food and my hand as dinner.

You're not the only one with a biting kitty problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qit3ALTelOo

278. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264844 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 9:45 am

SSO - I dunno - is it a Fourbucks latte?

H4D - I clicked on EVERYTHING - including the carpet ("genuine baby seal") and the globe gives you about 4 different "-stans" - like "North Koreastan"

I wasn't the first to post that link -

It promises to be updated every day until the election - I can hardly imagine what else could be added!

Edit: Root2Squared first posted the palinaspresident link a couple of pages ago. (I might have known!)

279. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264837 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 9:29 am

awww, Bambi and Thumper...how sweet.

Anybody click a third and fourth time on the door in http://palinaspresident.com/ ?

280. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264801 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 8:31 am

Why is the tiger on the replytodawkins website wearing a party hat?

Edit: Because the website designers there are no more careful than the designers who selected the famous fishhook photo for AoC.

281. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264798 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 8:25 am

Consider the following without prejudice and ignorance:

Done.

Conclusion - author of Comment #264791 is a certifiable fruitloop. Is this deliberate disingenuousness? Or do you really not understand the first thing about science? Others have suggested that you read a book or two - something along the lines of The Blind Watchmaker, but I'm sure you won't bother.

Broke my own rule about not getting involved with trying to refute blatherfesters

282. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264783 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 8:09 am

Comment #264778 by hawt4dawk

Yikes!! Hadn't seen that one in Johnstown PA. Hearing excerpts of Obama's rallies on the radio, I notice he gets 'em laughing - a lot healthier, I think.

283. [UPDATED] Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Comment #264765 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 7:53 am

Comment #264712 by tieInterceptor

Thank you for that YouTube link - I've been looking for something like that to share with friends for a long time.

284. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264754 by Caudimordax on October 15, 2008 at 7:26 am

LGS -

p.p.s. I heard Paul Krugman this morning on PBS radio berating himself for not seeing the financial collapse on Wall Street. How could he? His not a serious economist.

Paul Krugman earned his Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. and is currently a professor of economics at Princeton. Isn't that serious enough?

285. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264551 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 6:49 pm

Ummm - isn't it Keith OLbermann?

286. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264550 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Steve Zara - *shriek!!!*

Oh gosh, I LOVED that homeopathy thing. (I find myself frequently confronted with this - the person in front of me at the health food store having it explained to him that "it's like reverse logic." So, like, nonsense?)

But, I think DP is just breathing his last sighs having been well and truly and finally ticked off by Al-Rawandi. (This should get him going again)

287. Richard Dawkins at Conservative Party Conference 2008

Comment #264394 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 10:39 am

I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a witchhunt, just a death-spiral of bad feeling all around.

288. Richard Dawkins at Conservative Party Conference 2008

Comment #264372 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 10:07 am

TWP

I wonder though, how it is that someone "discovered" he had been posting on nicedoggie.net

It wasn't clear to me how or why the thing got started - I thought I was returning to a lively debate about Sarah Palin and found the bloodbath.
Sort of like looking into your refrigerator for some milk and instead there's a burning pyramid and a voice saying "Zool."

289. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264352 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 8:53 am

Al - I don't know what the mechanism is, but alcoholism is also a huge problem on reservations in the lower 48. (Edit: maybe it's the no jobs, no prospects, no hope of a future?)

Philip - Did you notice that on the site you linked to about "pray away the gay," you can vote: favorable or not on Palin, favorable or not on "curing" gays. I thought the results were bizarre: 57% to 43% favorable to Palin, 60% to 40% UNfavorable to trying to cure gayness.

290. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264347 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 8:32 am

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N'-Fetch-It, "darkie musical" swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska's Aboriginal people as "Arctic Arabs"; how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description ; as well as the more colourful "mukluks" along with the totally unimaginative "f**king Eskimo's," according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/gossip/sarah-palin-is-racist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean/

Thanks, Philip, for those links - but maybe you should have posted some excerpts (like the one above) because ya know, some people don't notice the links.

Edit: fixed link Edit: or thought I did - see Philip's post

291. Richard Dawkins at Conservative Party Conference 2008

Comment #264340 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 7:41 am

ukvillafan - You'll find the Fanusi stuff on "Palin: Average Isn't Good Enough," somewhere in the 3600s through 3900s.

Edit: Things got very heated when someone discovered that Fanusi had also been posting on nicedoggie.net.

292. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264308 by Caudimordax on October 14, 2008 at 5:50 am

Galactor - I don't know if anyone read my post (several hundred ago) but worse (or better) definitely could have happened. My brother-in-law's friend saw Palin at her hotel in Philly wearing a RANGERS jersey and gave her an Eagles jersey to wear instead. Need to have a chat with that "friend."

293. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264037 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 2:52 pm

In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization. Lesser officers were given such names as Grand Dragon, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclops.

From PBS series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_kkk.html

294. Why Evolution is True

Comment #264034 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Comment #264013 by rod-the-farmer

I thought pretty much everyone agreed that evolution is true. Only the cause of evolution was in dispute.

Two words: Adnan Oktar - sorry two more: Harun Yahya. See example of un-evolved fishing lure, still exactly the same millions of years after god created it.

295. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #264032 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 2:28 pm

In fact the KKK has both grand dragons and a grand wizard, grand dragons (and grand titans) being in rank beneath the leader, or grand wizard. Quite a few of their practices - such as cold-blooded murder - are outside of mainstream christian belief ;-)

296. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #263930 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 11:05 am

TWP -

But on a serious note there is something about using "you people" to address a group of individuals that bothers me.

Agreed - but what about in the sense of "you humans as opposed to me the faulty lolcat speak translator module"?

297. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #263923 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 10:48 am

There we go again with "you people".

Maybe it means "you people."

298. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #263911 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 10:29 am

And to borrow a phrase from our mutual acquaintance...BASIC is so 1980s ;)

I was learning it in the '70s

*SIGH*

299. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #263904 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 9:49 am

Is this what you meant?

Because they (geniuses) deal in the realm of reality and fact. They (geniuses) think with their heads and not with their intuition. (Whereas with "average" Americans)It all boils down to namby pamby "feelings".

Edit: changed "people" to "average" Americans

300. Palin: average isn't good enough

Comment #263887 by Caudimordax on October 13, 2008 at 9:05 am

Please, somebody prove me wrong about what I said about her, I really want to know where I have gone wrong with the facts.

Nooooooo - Philip, Philip, Philip - haven't you read the last 127 pages? There are lots of proofs - they look like this:

10 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
20 GOTO 10

I'm sorry to say I know who's responsible for Palin's appearance at the Flyers' game - my brother-in-law's friend was staying at a hotel in Philadelphia, and Palin and her entourage got into the elevator with her. She noticed Palin was wearing a Rangers jersey, and said "Uhhh - you're not thinking of going out into the street like that, are you?" and gave her her own Philadelphia jersey.

How different history might have been!

Edit: BIL's friend was a female wearing a McNabb jersey.