Summer LC thread

Thanks for the extra decade of life but Politically Incorrect came on in 1993 on Comedy Central. I watched that, reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Clive Anderson and then I’d switch to NBC for Conan. Then I would go to sleep, dream about Helen Hunt, and in the morning I would get up and go on the yellow bus to middle school.

I guess Maher could have been talking about the Gulf War a lot two years after it was over.

I have an original protest song written in 1991 about the Gulf War.

He got canceled from ABC after 9-11, and pretty soon he went to HBO for Real Time which he’s still hosting. He was a big anti-Bush anti-Iraq war personality from the start. I’m not sure exactly when this is from but this is pretty excellent

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Where is the DVaut1 show? The Matt Yglesias show?

There is no market for objective, well-informed smart people talking about politics. There is an ENORMOUS market for mediocre white people making other mediocre white people feel better about being mediocre white people. Bonus points for implying the racism as opposed to shouting n-bombs from the rooftops.

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I think this was what All In was referencing here:

That’s the frustrating thing about Libertarians: they’re definitely right about a number of things. Opposition to the Iraq War is for sure one of those things (PS: the far left was against that as well!). The difficulty is that he cashed in his credibility to spend the rest of his career demonizing Muslims, giving a platform for fascist garbage people, being an anti-vaxxer, and just generally being an annoying Boomer weed dad who thinks it’s okay to drop N-bombs if you’ve dated black women.

I mean, what is there to say about this kind of fuckery:

In 2019, Maher denounced the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, saying: “It’s predicated on this notion … I think it’s very shallow thinking that the Jews in Israel are mostly white and Palestinians are mostly brown, so they must be innocent and correct and the Jews must be wrong.”[86] He responded to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s call to boycott his talk show: “Some people have one move only: boycott. Cancel. Make-go-away. But here’s the thing, the house voted 318 to 17 to condemn the #BDS movement, including 93% of Dems. Does Tlaib want to boycott 93% of her own party?”.[87]

On the other old guy obsessed with identity politics front, this is a clip from Joe Rogan’s show concerning He Who Grappled with Apple Cider Vinegar. It was posted yesterday

And it has 1.1 million views. Everything these intellectual dork web dweebs say about Klonopin/clonazepam is wildly inaccurate, if people have an anxiety disorder and they watch this derp they may not seek appropriate treatment. There is some kind of cold/hot war between pot people and people who take legal drugs, which is weird, most drugs have their uses. I guess they blame big pharma for lack of good pot and the war on drugs and all that, but lay off the stuff that helps people with depression and anxiety maybe.

Also, the likelihood that JP used the medication even remotely as prescribed and wound up in rehab is next to 0.

Doing some gambling and reading tonight, stumbled upon this study revolving around the Kelly Criterion (a formula for determining optimal betsizing if %win is known).

"In one study, each participant was given $25 and asked to bet on a coin that would land heads 60% of the time. Participants had 30 minutes to play, so could place about 300 bets, and the prizes were capped at $250. The behavior of the test subjects was far from optimal:

Remarkably, 28% of the participants went bust, and the average payout was just $91. Only 21% of the participants reached the maximum. 18 of the 61 participants bet everything on one toss, while two-thirds gambled on tails at some stage in the experiment.[9][10]"

In other words, in a rigged game where Heads wins 60% of the time, 2/3 of people chose Tails. This is what we are up against people. WAAF

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The real supervillains here are the center Dems who put up no opposition whatsoever to the war in Iraq and let these various Libertarian/apple cider-swilling hucksters fill in the vacuum. Bill Mahr and Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson get to pretend that they’re smart guys because they think W sucked and weed should be legal. The reality is that these takes would be center-right in Amerca now if the centrist Dems hadn’t completely ceded the battle.

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They ceded the battle because they got bought. The individuals are scumbags of course, but there is an endless supply of scumbags. The problem is buying politicians is now entirely legal, and the GOP has figured out there are no electoral consequences if they pump the racism directly into their base’s collective veins.

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Let’s not let the American public off the hook. When the war starts 99% of people are cheerleading and thinking you’re a traitor if you say anything other than ‘support the troops’. The media immediately turns into the Military Channel talking only about how awesome our laser guided bombs are and they don’t do it because they are paid off or owned by defense contractors or because politicians would be mad at them, it’s because the American public will riot and boycott them if someone appears on the screen and says 9/11 terrorist weren’t cowards.

Like, we are that way because of a shitload of propaganda, but I think it’s probably a law of nature that the country that has the most powerful military is going to be populated with assholes.

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Honestly, I don’t even think they got paid. I think these dumbfuck moderates saw Republicans waving the flag around and accusing the Dixie Chicks of giving aid and comfort to terrorists and decided they had to support the war or get crushed by the massive wave of jingoistic bullshit. It is actually possible to underestimate the American voter, and Democrats did just that by cosigning all of the Iraq War Patriot Act idiocy. Like, Republicans knew all along the whole thing was bullshit, Democrats actually believed we were defending America by waterboarding random goat herders.

And then when Republicans did a 180 and Trump declared that the war a huge mistake, they’ve got no response whatsoever.

I’m trying to figure out how to phrase it because he doesn’t deserve fairness at this point, but to be fair I don’t think he’s a libertarian, he’s just a standard-ish rich old white liberal. I’m sure he thinks climate change and income inequality are the most important issues to solve and that he favors big tax, big government solutions to solve them. He’s for abortion rights still (I hope?), against money in politics, I dunno, other standard liberal stuff.

But there’s obviously something going on with 40-60 year old successful male comedians who can’t handle the fact that what made them a lot of money was low-hanging racisty, misogynistic, and homophobic material, which made the boys/guys 10-30 demo laugh, but now the entertainment universe is bigger and serves a more diverse audience, and they feel under attack and the resentment is kicking in.

I’m going to guess that he was always “pro Israel”, whatever that means, but I agree in recent times he has been folding a lot of odd reactionary derp into that subject as well. I don’t have a deep theory, he hates Muslims and doesn’t like “cancel culture” democrats, again whatever that means?

Hey, what the fuck, fuck this guy, new topic please.

Here’s where I think you’re wrong: I think ~half the people are warmongering fascists who understand that the whole ‘support the troops’ thing is complete bullshit and ~half the people are dumbasses who think that everyone really believes in that principled flagwaving bullshit. So they just go along with it because they think Americans are all morons.

So here we are in 2019 with the Democrat dumbasses trying to explain why they were pro-war and the fascists effortlessly shifting between being against the Iraq war and for a war with Iran.

Most of the politicians are full of shit most of the time. As far as the Republican on the street goes, I think it’s not that hard for them to, 16 years down the line, to say “yeah, Trump is right, that war was stupid”, but if bombs start dropping now, they’ll be on board and they’ll sincerely mean it.

They are fascists though. They never cared about the supposed objectives of the war. They just want the US to be powerful and show it. The German people didn’t care about the wheat fields of the Ukraine either, they just wanted glory.

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I think this is what moderates fail to understand: the fascists are clearly acting in bad faith. The Dems want to reach across the aisle and talk about comprise solutions to the Ukrainian wheat crisis when the other side just wants to kill a bunch of Jews. No one actually cares about the wheat, but the Dems act like they do.

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He has been annoying ever since he got booted off ABC.

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You could have it play over some photo essays of protests i did…

https://twitter.com/km/status/1175251235395399680

Mesmerizing

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