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ForumsDiscussion Forum → Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
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Inauguration Day, Inauguration Hooooooraaay!
2018-10-24, 8:03 PM #12321
Ask why Youtube comments are stupid, and you're likely to get the same answer you did when you asked your bigoted teacher way back in the fourth grade why poor people smell like sour milk: they just are, Eric!
2018-10-24, 8:10 PM #12322
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Ask why Youtube comments are stupid, and you're likely to get the same answer you did when you asked your bigoted teacher way back in the fourth grade why poor people smell like sour milk: they just are, Eric!


True, important to remember though that Youtube is a massive outlet and on it is expressed a wide variety of real political views. The comments do give a slice of perspective into some people's minds. Just gotta keep your sanity when gazing into that abyss.
2018-10-24, 8:21 PM #12323
Don't avert your eyes!
2018-10-24, 8:29 PM #12324
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-media-insists-bomb-threats-against-clinton-obama-cnn-are-pure-bs-a-false-flag

[quote=The Daily Beast]
Devoted Trump supporters on forums like 4Chan and Reddit had similar reactions, claiming the bombs were set up by Democrats—or regretting that the bombs didn’t go off.
[/quote]

"The Holocaust never happened, but I'm sure glad it did!"
2018-10-24, 9:17 PM #12325
"Starship Troopers is a manifesto for Jordan Peterson's utopia."

This is unironically said in the video and advocated as a good thing.

No kind of reaction will do this justice. How can you satirize that which its own satire? My mind is torn asunder by how hilarious these people are
2018-10-24, 9:19 PM #12326
Originally posted by Reid:
"Starship Troopers is a manifesto for Jordan Peterson's utopia."

This is unironically said in the video and advocated as a good thing.

No kind of reaction will do this justice.
I can think of one:

“Yes, I agree, it is!”
2018-10-24, 9:21 PM #12327
Um ex-huh-yoose me, but I prefer the government that forces me to labor for the children of Nazi collaborators and slowly grinds me to dust to be a small one. Thank you.
2018-10-24, 9:42 PM #12328
Originally posted by Wookie06:
It's also pretty amusing to watch leftists pretend political violence in America isn't mostly perpetrated by leftists but it's also pretty sad to see people fall for it.


lol. Right-wing terror attacks in this country predominate over all other all other types (left-wing, Islamist, misc.) combined by somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1, and right-wing terrorists have killed about ten times as many people as leftists.
If you think the waiters are rude, you should see the manager.
2018-10-24, 10:22 PM #12329
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Let's not forget that I'm in at least one of the likely categories of domestic terrorists so take it for what it's worth.


I can count at least 4
2018-10-24, 11:09 PM #12330
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/413044-china-and-russia-listen-in-on-trumps-phone-calls-nyt

C'mon, where are you, honorable conservatives? Clinton's email servers, now Trump's phone is bleeding top security information to the Russkies and y'all are being quiet.

Tbh, though, if China is using their contacts to suggest Trump not ramp up the trade war.. then Chinese agents are helping us more than the president is?
2018-10-24, 11:12 PM #12331
Quote:
While Russia's efforts are reportedly less coordinated, they are listening in to conversations in order to seek insight into the U.S. president's thinking.


Huh, so I guess all of those dead Russian agents really did commit suicide.
2018-10-25, 2:36 AM #12332
Reid on himself on Massassi:

Originally posted by Reid:
Also, I post alot of low effort memes, yeah. This isn't where I think my hardest and defend beliefs the hardest. We're just going to have to accept that not everything I post here is some serious take


Reid on comments on Youtube:

Originally posted by Reid:
REAL OPINIONS TO TAKE SERIOUSLY!!!!!
former entrepreneur
2018-10-25, 4:11 AM #12333
I love how the bomb stuff feels like a smokescreen for the fact that the GOP and DOJ is literally taking away the rights of millions of people right now by making it legal to discriminate against them.

I mean, every time the administration pulls **** to throw the LGBT+ community under the bus, some other big "controversial" thing comes up that distracts everyone from it.

I guess by now I'm just used to seeing it and am skeptical.
2018-10-25, 4:56 AM #12334
Are they telling people with a penis to use the men's room again? Intolerable!
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2018-10-25, 6:52 AM #12335
Originally posted by Xzero:
I love how the bomb stuff feels like a smokescreen for the fact that the GOP and DOJ is literally taking away the rights of millions of people right now by making it legal to discriminate against them.

I mean, every time the administration pulls **** to throw the LGBT+ community under the bus, some other big "controversial" thing comes up that distracts everyone from it.

I guess by now I'm just used to seeing it and am skeptical.


Both the recent policy change regarding transgender and the bombings are big news. A solid majority of Americans are sympathetic to LGBT+ causes, and it does seem like one of the social issues from the past decade where Democrats have been genuinely successful at changing public opinion incredibly rapidly - not only among Democrats, but among a non-trivial portion of Republicans as well. That’s not to say that there isn’t still work to be done. But I do think it does suggest that the fact that the recent policy announcement was eclipsed by a massive (and unsuccessful) act of domestic terrorism can’t be rightfully seen as anything more than a deeply unfortunate coincidence.
former entrepreneur
2018-10-25, 7:29 AM #12336
Heh. The president of CNN said something like "maybe the president should stop attacking the media so much" and Sarah Huckabee Sanders was like "how dare you divide the country right now!"
2018-10-25, 7:31 AM #12337
Originally posted by Eversor:
Not sure I agree, but what do you mean?


Oops, I meant than, not on.

Should read: "Our relationship with Israel has a much larger effect than our relationship with SA. It might be the most important aspect [of our relationship to Iran]."
2018-10-25, 12:58 PM #12338
Originally posted by Obi_Kwiet:
Oops, I meant than, not on.

Should read: "Our relationship with Israel has a much larger effect than our relationship with SA. It might be the most important aspect [of our relationship to Iran]."


Israel is a hot button issue in the US, and there are many interest groups that have strong feelings about it. For sure, domestic pressure plays a role in US-Israel relations, and that's an important part of the picture.

So while there are domestic reasons why the US supports Israel, Israel is in fact somewhat peripheral to the US' strategic interests in the Middle East. The core of the US strategic interest in the Middle East is in promoting stability of Arab states, ensuring the free flow of oil out of the region, nuclear non-proliferation, and countering terrorism. Iran's interests are often is directly at odds with those interests of the US, and it has nothing to do with Israel: it has to do with the complexities of the state system in the region (most especially, that Arab states are collapsing because they are weak and incapable of securing a monopoly of power within their own borders, and Iran is taking advantage of the weakness to project its power). In fact, there are often times when US strategic interests conflict with Israeli interests and the US has no problem going over Israel's head (see, for example, the JCPOA), and when the US sees the US-Israel relation as a liability (you might recall some remarks that Mattis made years ago, when he said that the failure to secure a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians made it more difficult for the US to build coalitions in the Middle East -- a prevalent view for a number of years. But there are examples of this, especially if you go back in time. They range from bin Laden citing US support for Israel as a motivation for 9/11 to Eisenhower in the 1950s believing that close ties with Israel would be an obstacle to US relations with Arab states).

It goes without saying that it's all complicated. Regarding Israel and KSA's influence on US policy towards Iran specifically, certainly Israel and KSA were both on the same side when it came to the JCPOA. Both lobbied the Obama administration and the Trump administration (and, in the case of the Obama administration, neither was able to leverage their power into getting what they wanted), and there's some evidence that they've even acted in concert.

I don't know who's to say which one of KSA or Israel has more influence on US foreign policy than the other in general, or how you'd measure it. There isn't a simple answer, and it's also something that's changed over time and has varied from president to president. The US primarily fought the first Gulf War because it was worried that Iraq would invade Saudi Arabia, and it could not under any circumstances permit the fall of KSA. (Meanwhile, president Bush 41 insisted that the Israel not defend itself during the war, even though Hussein threatened to shoot chemical warheads at Tel Aviv. That whole episode was humiliating for Israel and made the country feel deeply vulnerable, which contributed to Israel feeling that it was imperative to come to an arrangement with the Palestinians. Oslo followed.) Back in the 2000s, during the early days of the Bush 43 administration, KSA threatened to radically change its relationship with the US because it didn't like how Israel was handling itself during the second intifada. In response, Bush promised KSA that it would officially endorse the view that a Palestinian state should be founded -- something the US hadn't formally done before. So there you go: it was a very different time than today, but there's an example where KSA was actually able to dictate to the US what it should do regarding Israel.

KSA used to have much more leverage over the US than it does now, now that the US is a net oil exporter, and, in fact, the same is true of Israel, now that the Cold War is over and the US no longer uses its alliances with Egypt, Turkey and Israel to keep Russia out of the region (in fact, Russia's back in, and its cozying up to both Turkey and Egypt, but especially Egypt). Despite whatever pro-Israel gestures Trump has made regarding Israel during his administration (many of them, very likely, done primarily for domestic political gain rather than any kind of strategic purpose, and not in such a way as to promote Israel’s own strategic goals, even as it understands them), there's also a strong isolationist bent to his foreign policy that is really an extension of the Obama foreign policy, and it's hard to imagine an American president being elected who advocates more intervention in the region. The US wants to get out, and so Israel is becoming less important (and so is KSA, which has something to do with why the two countries are becoming closer: they're trying to use their collective leverage, not only to convince to the US to take a more active stance in combatting Iran, but even just to keep the US engaged in the Middle East at all).

Anyway, Israel's becoming less important in US foreign policy, and it has less leverage over the US than it once did. (Furthermore, Israel is increasingly becoming a polarized issue in domestic politics in the US, and support for it is no longer as firmly bipartisan as it once was. Even the Jewish community is becoming more much divided in its support for Israel, a trend that began to pick up steam under Obama but is accelerating even faster under Trump. The most consistent support for Israel comes from evangelicals, and even that's slipping.) The smart money is on the idea that the US-Israeli relationship probably peaked during the 90s or the 2000s (there are reasons why Israel is trying to develop strong bilateral relations with Russia, India and China. It's a hedge not only against the decline of the US-Israeli relationship, but also against the decline of US power more broadly).
former entrepreneur
2018-10-25, 2:49 PM #12339
Get that balanced perspective off of Massassi at once! Unhinged polemics only, plz
2018-10-25, 3:26 PM #12340
What’s important is that we can never give up our military supply contracts with either country, because it creates too many jobs.

Just like the rocks-for-throwing-at-windows industry.
2018-10-25, 3:40 PM #12341
Originally posted by Jon`C:
What’s important is that we can never give up our military supply contracts with either country, because it creates too many jobs.

Just like the rocks-for-throwing-at-windows industry.


It's an argument from time immemorial. "What will happen to all of the hand loom jobs," said people fretting about machine looms. They're all still unemployed, legend has it.

It's more worth questioning why monetary policy is more focused on keeping ROI stable than on keeping people employed. But otherwise, the economy is actually pretty good at filling itself. Extra labor means there are more hands to work new projects.
2018-10-25, 3:44 PM #12342
It's notable that there's a strong parallel between how the Obama administration dealt with the Saudis and how it dealt with the Israelis. You probably remember that the Obama administration was known for having very troubled personal relations with Bibi Netanyahu; there were a series of scandals that seemed to point to very fraught personal relations between senior officials in both countries, which culminated with the speech that Netanyahu gave to congress about the Iran deal in 2015. As a result of all the high-profile friction, many criticized Obama, claiming that he wasn't a "pro-Israel" president. But the administration responded to the criticism by pointing out that it had committed the US to more aid to Israel than any other US administration, increasing the annual aid from something like $3.1 billion to $3.8 billion over the course of the following x amount of years (I think ten?). The idea was that the administration would do more to bolster Israel's defense capabilities and increase defense cooperation between the two countries than any previous US administration, even as they had sharp, and very public, political disagreements about the region. (The administration also was presumably trying to buy Israeli support for the JCPOA, signaling that the US would have Israel's back even as it committed itself to the Iran deal, which Bibi hated.)

With that in mind, this tweet from Ben Rhodes is interesting: https://twitter.com/brhodes/status/1054230539148750849

Now that Rhodes' full-time job is effectively defending Obama's FP legacy, it's notable that at this moment, he's claiming that Saudi-US relations were very similar to Israel-US relations during the Obama. However, there's a crucial difference in the spin: while in the case of Israel, chilly personal relations but increased defense support was supposed to signal the administration's pro-Israel stance, the very same arrangement between the US and KSA under Obama, according to Rhodes in the tweet, is supposed to signal distance. Huh!
former entrepreneur
2018-10-25, 3:48 PM #12343
Here's another parallel between the Obama administration's efforts at handling both Israel and Saudi Arabia. A key reason why the Obama administration condoned (and even actively supported) Saudi military intervention in the Yemen civil war was because it was trying to "buy" Saudi acceptance of the JCPOA.
former entrepreneur
2018-10-25, 3:58 PM #12344
Originally posted by Reid:
It's an argument from time immemorial. "What will happen to all of the hand loom jobs," said people fretting about machine looms. They're all still unemployed, legend has it.
Its a two-fer: lump of labor fallacy and broken window fallacy.

Quote:
It's more worth questioning why monetary policy is more focused on keeping ROI stable than on keeping people employed.
is this rhetorical or what

Quote:
But otherwise, the economy is actually pretty good at filling itself. Extra labor means there are more hands to work new projects.
don’t be stupid, our economy doesn’t fill itself. only a ~job creator~ can do that.

you know our markets are free because we’re so free that other people hate us for our freedom
2018-10-25, 4:13 PM #12345
Originally posted by Michael MacFarlane:
lol. Right-wing terror attacks in this country predominate over all other all other types (left-wing, Islamist, misc.) combined by somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1, and right-wing terrorists have killed about ten times as many people as leftists.


Okay Fake News.
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2018-10-25, 4:16 PM #12346
Trolling much?
2018-10-25, 4:18 PM #12347
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Okay Fake News.


��
2018-10-25, 4:19 PM #12348
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Trolling much?


I mean, he did vote for Trump.
2018-10-25, 4:25 PM #12349
Originally posted by Jon`C:
don’t be stupid, our economy doesn’t fill itself. only a ~job creator~ can do that.

you know our markets are free because we’re so free that other people hate us for our freedom


If by job creator we mean people who can knock out the competition by negotiating tax preferences with totalitarian nations and hiring the most impoverished laborers. Right?

Wait a minute.. George Lucas is a job creator. We forgot that TPM existed solely to employ moviemakers! Fascinating.
2018-10-25, 4:26 PM #12350
Originally posted by Jon`C:
I mean, he did vote for Trump.


Sure, he's basically a Trump supporter, but doesn't want the stigma of being a Trump supporter. It's the same conservative game. They want to say racist things but not be called racist, want to be Trump supporters but not be treated like one.
2018-10-25, 4:29 PM #12351
Eh, I think you're conflating Republican party apologists with enthusiastic Trump supporters. He voted for Ted Cruz iirc, and in something less stupid than our two-party system he could go off and support whatever purist variant of conservativism he prefers. Of course such a minority party would most certainly be in a coalition with the Trump government, so
2018-10-25, 4:30 PM #12352
OTOH under such a voting system (according to Jon`C) Trump would have lost, so

(also under a less Gerrymandered electorate...)
2018-10-25, 5:01 PM #12353
Originally posted by Reid:
If by job creator we mean people who can knock out the competition by negotiating tax preferences with totalitarian nations and hiring the most impoverished laborers. Right?
Right. Free market stuff.

Quote:
Wait a minute.. George Lucas is a job creator. We forgot that TPM existed solely to employ moviemakers! Fascinating.
It also employed mental healthcare professionals, film critics, gas station attendants, jerry can manufacturers, zippo employees

Originally posted by Reid:
Sure, he's basically a Trump supporter, but doesn't want the stigma of being a Trump supporter. It's the same conservative game. They want to say racist things but not be called racist, want to be Trump supporters but not be treated like one.
Hes an independent*
2018-10-25, 5:39 PM #12354
Reports of votes being flipped by machines in Texas and Georgia. Weird how this only seems to happen in Republican states huh
2018-10-25, 6:34 PM #12355
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
Trolling much?


Not too much, just responding in kind to him out of boredom. The "right wing terrorism" charge is pretty obviously fake though. First, they pretty much assign any type of hate crime to the "right" and the rest to nothing. Second, it's a well documented tactic of the left to troll others to commit violent crimes.

Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
He voted for Ted Cruz iirc,


Of course you do and he knows that too. He thinks lying about me by calling me a janitor or Trump voter is going to bother me. Thanks for pointing it out.

It also doesn't bother me that so many of you want to define what a conservative is. I've listened to the arguments here but the only reason you [plural] want to continue calling all manner of extremism and unintellectualism conservative is to malign it but you're doing so in an echo chamber. Now, I have noticed that Jon`C tends to be on the cutting edge of progressive propaganda which has made me curious what fringe sites he participates in. To me he's either very studied in Saul Alinsky or equivalent to him. I'm not sure but my great respect for his talent generally, in my opinion, points to the latter.

Originally posted by Jon`C:
Reports of votes being flipped by machines in Texas and Georgia. Weird how this only seems to happen in Republican states huh


Why would Democrats complain about it happening in their states?
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2018-10-25, 6:37 PM #12356
What're you talking about? Jon`C and I are NPCs, we get our scripts fed to us by the developers.
2018-10-25, 6:38 PM #12357
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:


Hitler saved the world through the Holocaust, by using survival of the fittest to breed a generation of super human Jews who would benevolently control the world though a new world order shadow government, and protect us from our self-destructive nature in ways we can't even fathom.

Also, aliens, probably.
2018-10-25, 7:03 PM #12358
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Not too much, just responding in kind to him out of boredom. The "right wing terrorism" charge is pretty obviously fake though. First, they pretty much assign any type of hate crime to the "right" and the rest to nothing. Second, it's a well documented tactic of the left to troll others to commit violent crimes.
Right, for example if Obama and Pelosi didn’t want to be sent letter bombs from a Republican, they shouldn’t have trolled him by existing.

Quote:
Of course you do and he knows that too. He thinks lying about me by calling me a janitor or Trump voter is going to bother me. Thanks for pointing it out.
I don’t believe you wrote him in for the general election and even if you did, Cruz isn’t much of a difference.

Quote:
It also doesn't bother me that so many of you want to define what a conservative is. I've listened to the arguments here but the only reason you [plural] want to continue calling all manner of extremism and unintellectualism conservative is to malign it but you're doing so in an echo chamber.
ok

Quote:
Now, I have noticed that Jon`C tends to be on the cutting edge of progressive propaganda which has made me curious what fringe sites he participates in. To me he's either very studied in Saul Alinsky or equivalent to him. I'm not sure but my great respect for his talent generally, in my opinion, points to the latter.
I have no idea who Saul Alinsky is. I’m also not a progressive. That word doesn’t mean what you think it does, but I doubt you’re biologically capable of comprehending what I stand for (let alone why).

I read mainstream economics textbooks and The Economist. Feel free to call them leftist propaganda. I don’t mind.

Quote:
Why would Democrats complain about it happening in their states?
Yeah, you didn’t really strike me as the kind of person who thinks voter suppression would be a problem.
2018-10-25, 7:56 PM #12359
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Now, I have noticed that Jon`C tends to be on the cutting edge of progressive propaganda which has made me curious what fringe sites he participates in. To me he's either very studied in Saul Alinsky or equivalent to him. I'm not sure but my great respect for his talent generally, in my opinion, points to the latter.


Honestly, the fact that you associate Jon`C with Saul Alinsky makes me think you've been somewhat brainwashed. Virtually nobody outside the conservative movement even knows who Saul Alinsky is.

It does seem to be true that Alinsky was an influential counter-culture figure, back in the `60's (he apparently wrote an influential book on effecting political change, called Rules for Radicals), but he mostly seems to be a right wing fascination. For example I remember hearing Mark Levin rant about him constantly on his radio show, and according to Wikipedia William F. Buckley was impressed by him (though I might add as an aside that that shouldn't have been too hard to do).
2018-10-25, 8:10 PM #12360
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/9qrci3/proud_boys_founder_gavin_mcinnes_puts_dildo_in/

What a ****ing world we live in. NSFW as ****.
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