“He was 79, but his family says they wish he could live longer… but at least he lived long enough to see the Amazon catch fire. As for his remains, he asked to be cremated and have his ashes blown into a child’s lungs.”
Bill Maher
I have no good feelings for the Koch brothers, but I can’t bring myself to agree with this kind of thinking. It’s just revenge. I would celebrate if Koch’s death made the world better, but everything goes on as before, so I’m neither glad nor sad to see him go.
But that last joke is pretty funny.
The Bent
Glad to hear it sounds like you are doing fine.
Don, don’t you think as an educated Ivy League person that should be evident in you posts, and you shouldn’t have to tell people you have an Ivy League education?
Don:
Ivy League banker tells a lot. The fact you even point out ‘Ivy League’ points out the snobbishness. Let me guess, you had a little help from mommy and daddy with the cost and came from a privileged background? As if going to an Ivy League college changes facts and principles that you learn from the same books, with intrinsic motivation and skills could supersede, and isn’t just a farce expensive social circle. Tell me, did Julius Caesar actually rule over medieval Europe in the middle ages, instead of the Roman Empire in your book? Did the wave function not collapse in the quantum double slit experiment, and Einstein turned out right? I’m curious what value of knowledge you have name dropping Ivy League gives you over others?
And since you want to make comments about myself, education and jealous, I’m working on my second degree, have 17 IT Certifications, and am a well paid IT Engineer. Not that it matters, since I care about money about as much as I need to get through the day. I’m about as minimalist as it comes. I could pick up within 30 minutes and move to another city if I needed to.
I don’t do vacations, or nice cars, or golf clubs. Why? So I have this expensive thing to worry about protecting when in 100 years all of us in this comment section will be dust or in the ground? To spend thousands sitting in a hotel with and go out and stare at something and take pictures with my little camera which a ton of people have done so before, and buy little trinkets? It’s ironic you use jealousy to someone like me, considering I’ve told my associates my dream life would be to live in a bunker in Death Valley – isolated from people like you in this world. My views are as a defender of the persecuted I’ve seen first hand, and to do what I can to stop the inertia of this world going to hell. S
I had no one pay my college tuition, and get me out of debt. It was me. I had no one vouch for me because I played golf with their buddies, it was going in and explaining who I am and what I do, and that’s it. I spend my days mostly studying and doing research. Sorry, not on the golf course or out trying to be a wanna be captain on a boat or yacht.
That kind of rise from nothing, puts a fire, empathy, and perspective into you, that you wouldn’t believe. You want to help good, hard working people, into a better life. I’ve seen sharp engineering contractors who have more work ethic, skill, and knowledge than full time people in my group who got in years earlier and literally do not know what a taskbar is, and commit timesheet fraud.
These situations exist, not because of some stupid meritocracy myth, but because of incompetent management, and situational circumstances. There is no resource for these people, no tribunal, no debate to a higher independent authority, no ‘kumite’ challenge to prove they are better than someone in these capitalist environments. Its ‘sorry, you deserve a promotion and are better than this guy who knows far less and takes advantage of others work ethic, but he’s happened to fill a seat longer and we don’t want to rock the boat because we have to go through HR Approvals and things, so you have to go when your contract is up.’ Read ‘The Peter Principle’. Read ‘Success and Luck’ or ‘Winners Take All’, to understand these well studied occurances.
Deep down, ALL of us have these stories, and we’ve all seen it firsthand. You yourself cannot lie that you’ve seen good, hardworking people get the shaft in the workplace. What you choose to do about it is your choice. People will ask me about my education at times over the years, and say ‘wow I bet you’re mad about all the loan forgiveness, free college push going now, huh?’
I always respond, why, because I want others to suffer the pain because I did and do not want better for the future? That they would get something I didn’t, even though it’s the right thing to do?
Right wingers consistently have this mindset. I suffered, you shall suffer the same. You will not get something I did not get. Everything I’ve ever done is based on sure will and qualifications, not the fact I ran into a guy in my extended social circle who told me an opening that is closing in a week has come up and I can get you that job. I will freely admit the circumstances and logic regarding my various hirings did not make sense, I’m not going to pretend even though I do my job extremely well that it entitled me to a job due to the reasons why I was hired initially. I don’t consider myself worse than a VP, and I do not consider myself better than a struggling developer in India barely making $4,000 a year in a land of fire and little infrastructure. And I speak to each, exactly the same.
You make your own decisions. Not that I’m sure of such things, but just in case, when I leave this world I hope I have a better response to my maker about what I’ve done with my life is, “I had a huge bank account, and made sure that any struggling people that may be freeloaders get anything that I didn’t.’ Maybe you should consider that question going forward.
I think you may want to get help before you shoot up a school. Btw, you want to know the key tenet of right wing ideology? I don’t have to care about you or your family or your gripes or your anger. I go get mine and then I decide if I want to give to charity. That’s my money and my decision. Not yours. That’s the one thing that holds all conservatives together. We don’t need help. We don’t want help. And we don’t have to give help unless we want to. So when my taxes put your kids through college, you should simply say thank you and go about your day. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.
When I was a kid I listened to a lot of talk radio in the 1990s and was shocked and how nasty and mean-spirited a lot of the right-wingers were. Liberals were seen as “too nice” to fight against them, at least on the radio. It drove me to the left.
Now, with social media, you realize that there’s just as much mean-spiritedness on the left, it was just a matter of finding the right platform.
I’m not interesting in celebrating the death of a human being, especially a guy who donated billions to charity, just because I don’t care for his libertarian beliefs.
1.He’s worth $50 billion. As a percentage of his wealth, he actually donated a pittance to charity.
2.The idea that this is just a matter of a difference of political opinion is pure nonsense, an absolutely moronic talking point. The Koch brothers were significant in altering public policy in their favor that limited environmental and worker health and safety regulations. Countless real people have died as a result of this lobbying. This is not just a matter of abstract political differences.
Of the billions extra that the Koch brothers have made as a result of being able to use the environment as a free receptacle to their pollution they have donated a small amount to charity.
If you want to debate now that I’m being mean spirited, do so on the basis of these real facts and not on the basis of the mindless and false talking points.
Ah, the classic ‘both sides’ argument. See! The person/group actively trying to do harm to someone isn’t just mean, the people persecuted or trying to protect the persecuted said a bad word! Well, guess they’re both the same, lets not pretend any problems objectively caused by one philosophy is any worse, doing bad things is the same thing as protecting others. And how dare they claim they are tolerant! Right here, see they are not tolerant of intolerance! Why, we have a point of view to fuck some group over, they’re not being tolerant of letting us just do it!
As for me, I don’t celebrate someone’s death like this, nor mourn it. I just wish they would not do what they did. I don’t even ask they support my views, but just stay out of it, period. Same with Trump when he goes. He could have just stayed a crappy real estate conman. He didn’t have to enforce his views on others to hurt them.
As for libertarians themselves, I typically respect them a little more than Republicans, because they are usually at least consistently hands-off to a certain extent. Leave guns alone, but also leave abortion and minor drug restriction alone. Well, true libertarians have that approach, some just say they are and are just Republicans.
The probably with ‘true’ libertarianism is, they are just convenient anarchists. They want the ‘invisible hand’ of the market to guide things – as long as it end up in their pocketbook.
They want no government interference with market matters, but want the protection of a bankruptcy court to bail them out, or the FDIC to insure their funds.
They want to cut back regulation on consumer protections, but they want to have access to the citizens of the US consumer base, and use the Interstate Commerce System infrastructure freely to do whatever they want.
They want their intellectual property protected by the US Patent Office and the legal system. They want the legal system and law enforcement to protect them from any brand of street justice.
So basically, libertarians are just hypocritical anarchists. I want these protections freely, I do not want to pay tax for them, and I do not want to assist anyone in need. If I choose to grind a person or society into the ground with power and manipulation, I want to be protected from any legal, monetary, or physical repercussions that may occur due to that.
That’s libertarianism in a nutshell.
Both sides have equally valuable and valid ideology. You aren’t the good guy and all the righties are the bad guys. If you actually took time to understand the philosophical underpinnings of differing philosophies as opposed to ridiculous stereotypes like the ones you just ranted, you’d recognize that people like you ARE the bad guys because you don’t respect differing opinions. It has nothing to do with right or left. You are intolerant and that makes you the problem. You are an angry jealous person.
Look for openers, go fuck yourself. Opinions may differ, but that doesn’t make them equal. The Kochs were/are an effective force for evil and for making sure our grandchildren are screwed. Anger and jealousy don’t enter into it, there is an objective truth here. The Kochtopus isn’t “libertarian”, they are in favor of wholesale slaughter and standing by to make their 10% off it. Pretending otherwise is either delusion or self-delusion. In conclusion, go fuck yourself.
Well, I can’t speak for either the left or the right in general, but nobody should respect a differing opinion if that opinion contradicts or denies the facts.
“Truth isn’t truth” courtesy of Rudy Giuliani.
Scoopy, I’ve been trying to point this out in my own way for a long time. I’m amazed how many people seem shocked by it.
Scoop, I can find facts to support anything. I am specifically referencing being liberal vs being conservative. Both are perfectly valid positions. Hating the other side doesn’t make them wrong.
Shocker that once again, its the same old ‘both sides’ bullshit. Or the classic “no u are” what-about-isms to deflect any legitimate factual argument, because you yourself don’t have a response to any of the points I made.
As usual, the dumb, uneducated right wing supports really don’t have any counter argument to make. No actual points addressed. No actual debate. Just like when factual evidence is pointed to with Republican hypocrisy, the ineffectiveness and pure waste that the Trump tax cuts were, or the terrible basis that the trickle-down economic theory that Republicans fall back on is.
Logical fallacy after logical fallacy is the right wing’s only go to anymore. Deflect. Lie. Strawman. What-about-isms. Mirroring. Generalization.
The reason this is always a go to, because if you strip away the true motivation of any right wing nut job, in that moment of truth always exposes some spinoff of the ‘seven deadly sins’ as their motivation for what they do. Authoritarianism. Subjugation. Persecution. Greed. Hate.
You have no answer. I suggest you look in the mirror with everything you deflect back on someone else.
More stereotypical blathering. I’m an Ivy League educated New Yorker and an ibanker. But whatever helps your blind hatred find a home…..
Misguided.
Both sides have an equally valuable and valid ideology, Don? That’s just plain wrong. My god, you are very close to saying all ideologies are equal. I don’t know what is going on in your head, but that is awful.
And enough with the dime-store psychoanalysis. People are angry because they actually care about what is being done to this country, and they see it as being very bad for almost all of the people, except those who are as rich as the Koch brothers. You think people need to be intolerant and jealous to be angry when they see wrong being done? Why?
BTW, if you think the Republican Party (which people like the Koch Brothers own outright) respects differing opinions, you have not been paying attention for the last 30 or 40 years. Hint: That why they have the phrase “RINO”. They do not tolerate even different shades of their own opinions.
Libertarian ideology based on Austrian economics actually argues that all rights derive from property rights. However, most of the rest of what you wrote here ends up in the same place.
Libertarians claim to oppose government that coerces people through the ‘barrel of a gun,’ which they claim all philosophies but their own do. The problem is that’s not true and that’s one of the central contradictions of their philosophy. In reality, protecting property rights depends on the coercive power of the state as much as any other ideological belief.
Using logical arguments, since Libertarian claims are based on a contradiction, their overall ideology is invalid.
To all mainstream economists, Libertarian arguments are also unsound because they are factually wrong in that they deny what economists call ‘market failures’ exist.
Some ideologically based libertarians acknowledge that market failures exist and, therefore, support tort law as a way to address these when the market failures result in a harm to another person’s body or property, because those are damages to property rights which gets back to libertarian core belief.
However, I think it’s easy to realize that tort law is an impractical way to defend most property rights and most libertarians have gotten in bed with the Republican Party one of whose central goals is severely restricting tort law.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that libertarian ideals are completely invalid: believing that governments should act to address only proven harms makes sense to me.
For those whose attitude is that money is the measure of all things, here is a question: Which would you rather have – a million dollars or Maher’s nose full of nickels?
Fuck the Koch brothers, but Mahar is a piece of shit* and I wish that his brand of “comedy” would die.
*not nearly as big of a piece of shit as the Koch brothers
The death penalty is also just revenge but about 60% of people support it. The best hope is in the view that his brother and other evil people like him will notice how many people cheered David Koch’s death and consider if all the money in the world is worth it.
Oh, their answer will be “Yes, it is worth it.” I think their attitude toward people with significantly less money than they have is one of contempt. In their world, money seems to be the measure of all things. It may not be what they say, or even what they admit to themselves, but it is what they do.
Unfortunately, this attitude has seeped into much of American culture. (I do not pretend to be immune to it either.) Maybe it has always been there, and this is just a high-tide period for it, like the Gilded Age of the 1870’s or 1880’s. But thinking a billionaire was the best choice for President seems like an example of it.
I guess I am just meandering. I am tired, and I should not post when I am tired.
Your comment here proves that you are in fact the “evil” one.
Do you support or oppose the death penalty?
Failing to worship Big Money makes me the evil one? Want to explain what you mean, Don, or is this a hit-and-run?
I was responding to Tondowsky who celebrates a persons death while calling HIM evil. And Adam, I only support the death penalty in the most extreme cases.
What are ‘the most extreme cases’?
If you support the death penalty then you also celebrate a person’s death.
To quote the bard: ‘you see you’re just like me/I hope you’re satisfied.’