Stephen Fry is a hero

[Skarekrow]

I agree with your assessment of our government employees. Meaning the politicians screwing us over. They screw us over from both sides. When I say liberal I mean those people that want to move away from capitalism toward all out socialism. I dont like socialism because as person part of a government like that, free will is essential null and void. You are told where you will work, how much you will be paid... you are told what medical services you can receive and who you can get them from etc... the list goes on and on. Plus the liberal agenda of today is to make sure people know how bad America is. Like anything there is good and bad to be had. My problem with liberals is not their ideals. I like the ideals they have to great extent, they just are not realistic in todays world. Throwing money at something and saying I want it does not get you that thing. You still have to figure out how to make it actually work. Something they never include in their tantrums. Pelosi " you have to read the bill to figure out whats in it....."
I know several teachers and I am told the school system is in fact full of this type of agenda. Its not that they are against it either.
I support Republicans in terms of their fiscal agenda, smaller government ideals etc... I do not support them in all things. As I have its always been about the lesser of two evils for me. Democrats do not breathe air from this world. They do not in other words live in reality.

Anyway I support cleaning up our government. Give me a plan and if its valid I might even follow you.

I actually don’t have a problem with Capitalism either…it’s when we get these “too big to fail” banks and corporations when I have an issue with it, and I feel the American public should have an issue with it. Real Capitalism thrives on competition…of which there is NONE. When you go to buy toothpaste you may see 30 different brands of toothpaste to choose from, but in reality there are three companies that make all those toothpastes.
This is exactly where we went wrong with Wall Street…REAL Capitalism would not have bailed out those companies that fucked up, it would have let them go down in flames…but we were fed lies like “If you don’t help us the whole economy will collapse and life will end as we know it!” So we gave them their bail out package and they divided it up into bonuses for one another.
Motherfuckers like Mitt Romney and probably Nancy Pelosi too (you better bet the tan man does) have millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts and they have the gall to call the middle class and the poor of this country entitled takers…fuck those ass clowns….$21 Trillion dollars altogether and we can’t fix out bridges, pay our teachers, feed our hungry? Bullshit.
And look at what the new Republican Congress has already done man…look up “Cromnibus”, it once again makes the middle class of America responsible to bail out Wall Street should they fuck up again.
I don’t want socialism any more than the next guy, but privatizing everything has only lead everyone to price gouge everyone else…it’s had the reverse effect than what it was intend to do.
Just greed.

 

[j654dgj7]

i hate to get in the middle of this, but i'm going to for a quick comment.

we can have both. a benign government that helps those less fortunate and crazy unhinged capitalism. there's so much money in the western world.

all we would need is for big corporations and companies to pay their share of taxes. that's it. personal income tax has gone up and government has been forced to cut programs because companies like google and apple weasel their way out of paying taxes.

last year apple paid single digits of tax on their billions of dollars of income -- legally! let's just change that. for sanity's sake if nothing else. that's all that i have to say.

 

[Lark]

can confirm that being bipolar makes you want to impose your constant pain, misery and convictions of cosmic meaningless and pointlessness on others.

sadly cannot confirm that atheists have common traits like being bores, hating imagination, humanity or themselves. to me they seem like a big and super diverse group.

stephen fry is a cambridge alumni that is mostly known in europe for his brilliant 90s comedy show "a bit of fry and laurie" with hugh laurie (house!). here's a sketch i like:

[video=youtube;Tm0LnZOf_O0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0LnZOf_O0[/video]

He's done lots of things besides that show, blackadder, jeeves and wooster, QI etc. etc. but it seems he's not interested in being known for any of those things any longer.

Dawkins is the over arching figure in this set and Fry regularly recycles his thinking, Dawkin's HAS said that he doesnt think kids should read Harry Potter, that those kinds of imaginative books will only make them susceptible to spiritual beliefs.

Another example of the same sort of thinking is Darren Brown, he is an arch athiest but hasnt stoped at trying to get people to doubt God, he has got them doubting themselves and human nature per se too, or anything like an objective idea of good and evil, demonstrating through his stage routines that people are all so easily deceived, programmed and reprogrammed like puppets.

They all seem to me to have similar profiles in terms of health or happiness and it, not surprisingly, shapes who they are and what they believe, then they seek to spread that, I think it would be absolutely tragic if they ever should win out.

Unfortunately their superficial and shallow attacks chime with a lot kids who've formed pretty superficial and shallow but very strong opinions themselves.

 

[Eventhorizon]

I actually don’t have a problem with Capitalism either…it’s when we get these “too big to fail” banks and corporations when I have an issue with it, and I feel the American public should have an issue with it. Real Capitalism thrives on competition…of which there is NONE. When you go to buy toothpaste you may see 30 different brands of toothpaste to choose from, but in reality there are three companies that make all those toothpastes.
This is exactly where we went wrong with Wall Street…REAL Capitalism would not have bailed out those companies that fucked up, it would have let them go down in flames…but we were fed lies like “If you don’t help us the whole economy will collapse and life will end as we know it!” So we gave them their bail out package and they divided it up into bonuses for one another.
Motherfuckers like Mitt Romney and probably Nancy Pelosi too (you better bet the tan man does) have millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts and they have the gall to call the middle class and the poor of this country entitled takers…fuck those ass clowns….$21 Trillion dollars altogether and we can’t fix out bridges, pay our teachers, feed our hungry? Bullshit.
And look at what the new Republican Congress has already done man…look up “Cromnibus”, it once again makes the middle class of America responsible to bail out Wall Street should they fuck up again.
I don’t want socialism any more than the next guy, but privatizing everything has only lead everyone to price gouge everyone else…it’s had the reverse effect than what it was intend to do.
Just greed.

Ok. I think we are fairly agreed then. Let me ask you though, you dont like foxnews , why? Because of whats said about them or what you actually know? Also I would ask, have you read or watched Atlas Shrugged? Why or why not?

 

[Eventhorizon]

i hate to get in the middle of this, but i'm going to for a quick comment.

we can have both. a benign government that helps those less fortunate and crazy unhinged capitalism. there's so much money in the western world.

all we would need is for big corporations and companies to pay their share of taxes. that's it. personal income tax has gone up and government has been forced to cut programs because companies like google and apple weasel their way out of paying taxes.

last year apple paid single digits of tax on their billions of dollars of income -- legally! let's just change that. for sanity's sake if nothing else. that's all that i have to say.

Ok so my question is, what is their share of taxes? Their share of tqxes is generally whoever happens to have control of Congress at the time they vote on it. So democratic congress might say thats 70 percent of income, Republican says less. Who dictates this and how to do they make that choice? Democratic congress says well we think you should be allowed x amount of profit so well take the rest, Republicans says different.

 

[Skarekrow]

Ok. I think we are fairly agreed then. Let me ask you though, you dont like foxnews , why? Because of whats said about them or what you actually know? Also I would ask, have you read or watched Atlas Shrugged? Why or why not?

Firstly, I try to to watch any of the major news networks but especially Fox - http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/0...of-all-statements-made-on-fox-news-are-false/
I don’t like them because I can sit there and watch the network and they say things - as I watch, that I know are just falsehoods (based on actual reading about the issues). The same goes for CNN and MSNBC, but Fox is the worst…they even had to retract and apologize to the city of Paris for fabricated news.
Yes, I have read Atlas Shrugged.
It isn’t reality…and the reality she presents is a cold one that I would never want to live in.

 

[Skarekrow]

Ok so my question is, what is their share of taxes? Their share of tqxes is generally whoever happens to have control of Congress at the time they vote on it. So democratic congress might say thats 70 percent of income, Republican says less. Who dictates this and how to do they make that choice? Democratic congress says well we think you should be allowed x amount of profit so well take the rest, Republicans says different.

Wal-Mart made $17 billion in profit…pure profit…and yet, they can’t pay their own employees enough to keep them off food stamps…so guess who benefits from that? Wal-Mart….instead of our taxes going to programs that could fix bridges and such….we are subsidizing their employees because they are greedy fuckers…plain and simple.
Tax them like they were taxed after the passage of the new deal….which also happened to be the most growth America has ever seen or has seen since.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Firstly, I try to to watch any of the major news networks but especially Fox - http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/0...of-all-statements-made-on-fox-news-are-false/
I don’t like them because I can sit there and watch the network and they say things - as I watch, that I know are just falsehoods (based on actual reading about the issues). The same goes for CNN and MSNBC, but Fox is the worst…they even hd to retract and apologize to the city of Paris for fabricated news.
Yes, I have read Atlas Shrugged.
It isn’t reality…and the reality she presents is a cold one that I would never want to live in.

That is awesome. I find foxnews to be the most accurate and truthful news reporting available. In that what they say can actually be verified as being accurate and correct. I cannot think of a single instance that has been deliberately misrepresented unlike cnn and msnbc.

Atlas Shrugged is not reality as you say. It is fiction but it is also a way of looking at the world that I believe is correct in philosophy. . So it is here we may disagree. Would I like the world to be different? Oh hell yes. But its not and it never will be. Ever. We live in a hostile universe. Its hostile in every sense of the word to life.
Maybe none of it matters though. We all find the end at some point.
Next movie suggestion. Exiestenze.
When I first saw it I was like wtf? Now its one of my personal classics.
Keep thinking for yourself and never stop. Always question.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Wal-Mart made $17 billion in profit…pure profit…and yet, they can’t pay their own employees enough to keep them off food stamps…so guess who benefits from that? Wal-Mart….instead of our taxes going to programs that could fix bridges and such….we are subsidizing their employees because they are greedy fuckers…plain and simple.
Tax them like they were taxed after the passage of the new deal….which also happened to be the most growth America has ever seen or has seen since.

Agreed. I am currently working for a company who I believe is the best case against capitalism if there ever was one. All about drawing blood from the stone and making 5he employees pay all costs associated with their operation.
STILL though, I do not have to work for them. Working for them is my choice. So in the end, I cant really say that much about it.