we got a conspiratard here folks

i'm sorry but the tea party is driven by people who actually believe what they say, as a genuine oppositional force, that you say does not exist

the struggle is real, the differences are real, the stakes are dramatic

and the difference in opinions results in dramatic differences in policy depending upon who wins

al gore would not have invaded iraq. john mccain would not have created obamacare. etc.

but don't worry about me. i'm a deluded fool who does not see The Real Truth (tm) like you: something something new world order. something something bilderberg group, teh j00s, etc.

i hate to break it to you, but politics was emotional, is emotional, and always will be emotional. the adults you seek never existed and never will. the only truth here is you fail to understand the ugly emotional game called politics. we're human beings, not robots

please don't shoot the messenger

they didn't ignore the data, they had bad data

the last couple of decades has seen the rise of conservative news sources. which is good for morale. you fudge the truth a little, make things look rosier than they really are, and you galvanize your base

the problem is when you start believing your own bullshit

romney was fed the fudges the conservative echo chamber feeds itself, and was kept in the dark. so they were overconfident

there's a respected solid analyst called nate silver at the new york times, who is very good at forecasting elections with his methods

he called the election early, in september, for obama

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n...

this analysis was pilloried on the right as a propaganda. even though he was just applying cold hard analysis

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

when in fact, the right was the one creating propaganda, and silver called them out on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

the decision makers around romney chose to ignore cold analysis as liberal propaganda. romney had a chance to buckle down and maybe do something with his message in october and maybe eke out a win

but just look at rove on election night: he couldn't believe the news about ohio. because the right wing media echo chamber was operating on its own bullshit, and kneejerk rejecting bad news as liberal propaganda

again, conservative media is great for the morale of the average conservative voter. but when the conservative media is depended upon by the decision makers on the right, the right loses, because decisions based on lies are bad, losing decisions

The Republican primaries were a gauntlet of Tea Party idiots. So everyone had to steer to the extreme far right to win their support to get on the ballot.

Then, during the general election, they had to steer to the middle. To, you know, actually get votes.

You can't appeal to the fringe and the center at the same time. Appeal to the base of Tea Party nutbags, and middle America won't vote for you, you disgust them. Appeal to middle America, and the Tea Party nutbags won't vote for you, just as you say in your comment. A house divided, yada yada yada

If the Republicans don't fix this problem, they are going to lose again in 2016. And 2020, 2024, etc.

Personally, as a Democrat, I love the Tea Party: sabotaging the Republican Party from within.

There is no bigger friend for Democratic domination of the Presidency (and, with demographic trends, increasingly the House and Senate in the long term, even with Republican gerrymandering) than the Tea Party.

the drug itself, not psychological factors, not social factors, nothing else except the chemistry of the drug itself, is the causative effect of the addiction

why are you so ignorant about this subject yet still speaking on it?

"fear you can't control yourself if the government doesn't tell you how to live"

hard drug addiction is a real biological effect. i am not afraid. i am simply apparently better educated than you on this subject

"Your weakness is yours alone."

i was not aware the pharmacology in all of those textbooks was just about my biology alone

why are you so blatantly ignorant on this subject yet still registering an uneducated opinion on it?

every single problem you can find with fighting hard drugs is smaller than the negative effects of hard drugs themselves (heroin, cocaine, meth)

we can of course find bad tactics in fighting hard drugs, and we should

but what we can't do is say there should be no fight. and we won't

addiction to hard drugs destroys lives. this is the primary and ultimate problem. if you don't understand that problem as the root cause of everything else, you're an idiot on the subject matter

i have no problem with criticisms of various malformed social reactions to drug problems

i have a very big problem with idiots who think these bad reactions are somehow the real problem

no, the hard drugs are the real problem

we can of course compare and find bad tactics in fighting drugs, and we should

but what we can't do is say there should be no fight

you really should educate yourself before you register an uneducated opinion on a subject

you really wish to represent your opinion that all substances have the same addiction potential? or inebriating effects? there's no difference? you think this intellectually dishonest know nothing approach tells us anything except something about you?

the problem was the drug addiction. the policy was a reaction to that. then the drug merchants force it further on your society, and steal some of your land

again, i simply don't understand people who think the social reaction the drug addiction, however malformed, is somehow worse than the drug addiction itself

the addiction is the root of the problem. not the social policy

right

the simple biochemistry of addiction and inebriation to substances like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine is a lie

that's not true

meth, heroin, and coke are for more addictive than alcohol

so it's as hard to quit as nicotine, but as inebriating as alcohol. meaning you can't quit, like nicotine. but unlike nicotine, which actually enhances concentration, on meth/ heroin/ coke, your focus is for shit. so you can't hold a job/ maintain a relationship

that's why society outlaws drugs

not because society is hysterical killjoys. but because highly addictive hard drugs really do destroy lives. just the drugs: not social attitudes, not personal psychological, the actual chemicals. no one is immune to basic biochemistry, no willpower is stronger than the pharmacology of addiction

marijuana, the hallucinogens, etc., they should be legal: not highly addictive + highly inebriating at the same time like hard drugs

and addicts should get treatment, not jail

but legalize meth? heroin? coke?

no, never

because even with the negative prohibition effects (funding drug cartels, etc), drug addiction itself to highly addictive HARD drugs, is still more harmful to society than prohibition

the war on hard drugs is not new. and will never end. it's just a maintenance function of civilization. no, we'll never get rid of hard drugs completely. but that's not the point. the point is just to minimize the negative social effects of drug addiction by minimizing the addict population. we're also never going to completely stop rape, murder, robbery. so we give up fighting that too?

we just need better tactics: portugal for example has a better attitude than the usa. but the war on drugs still goes on in portugal. dealers are still criminals in portugal. in fact, addicts are still criminals: they just get treatment instead of jail, as it should be in the usa

it didn't start with reagan. and the war has been going on every since we noticed droog would spend all day eating fermented fruit at the caveman campsite instead of helping with foraging and hunting. why does islam prohibit alcohol? too many useless wasted human shells on the street. why did the usa even experiment with prohibition? it wasn't just busy body prudes. because alcohol really does destroy lives

study the opium wars:

http://www.sacu.org/opium.html

the drug dealing british weakened and defeated china, and won hong kong, just so it could keep pushing drugs on china, destroying chinese society. something which china is still humiliated about, and gave rise to the boxer rebellion and the revitalization of modern china against imperialism. but the foundation of the rebirth of chinese pride and nationalism was a reaction was against imperial and colonial enforced drug addiction by british drug dealers. like fire water on native americans. drugs themselves are the actual problem. drugs are the tool of destruction

it was a problem then. it's a problem now. it always will be a problem. like war, slavery, racism, etc., drug addiction is just one of those timeless tragedies of the human experience

how we handle hard drug addiction? yeah, we need to change that. we need better tactics, absolutely

but the war on hard drugs will never end

it's just a maintenance function of civilization

Google DDoSed those hotmail accounts too yesterday?

I think Google should send someone over and do that for him.

As well as other general levels of groveling.

This guy has a real case against Google in the court of public opinion. He doesn't have to go legal. The simple PR value here is enough for Google to make a giant public act of contrition and gift the guy with something large, to make up for the troubles they caused him.

Hey... here's an idea: send over a high level Google engineer as this guy's personal lowly tech support guy for a month.

Heck, that sounds like it could be a sitcom, a Youtube web series.

Google: you can turn lemons into lemonade here, make it happen.

When you are being DDoSed by motherfucking Google .