Posts by Craig Ranapia
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to James Bremner,
when Obama went of a wild spending spree with his absurd stimulus and across the board big budget increases
Oh, FFS… Look I get that in your book Obama can’t say or do anything that isn’t malignant and malicious, but while you’re entitled to your own opinion you’re not entitled to your own facts. And I really don’t think Republicans get to pretend their own voting records didn’t happen when they become politically inconvenient, especially when they seem utterly incapable of putting up any alternatives whose relationship with reality (or even plausible surmise) is distant.
The funny thing is that I'm happy to see tax cuts, but I don't live in some fantasy land where you can cut income and ramp up spending without something giving. Of course, the right-wing radicals who control the GOP (and are no conservatives) can't up with any solution beyond fucking over the poor and middle-class while dishing out corporate welfare and obsessing over non-issues like Obama's birth certificate. The problem with the Tea Party, like all ideologues, is that they exist in some wonderful purist pocket universe where they don't have to deal with messy, complex realities. For these people it was preferable to have the United States default on its debts than raise the debt ceiling. That's beyond cranky and downright irresponsible and dangerous.
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Hard News: Auckland, so much enormity to…, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
A highlight was coming back into the city – we just wanted to do the Fan Trail – I discovered that one couldn’t come back on the trains as I had thought one would. However a kindly driver took pity on us and gave us a lift in his drivers cubicle – so we saw what train drivers see as they errr, drive along. Very amazing. Many thanks to Mr Train Driver
Mr. Train Driver should actually be getting no thanks, and a pink slip. There’s actually a blindingly obvious safety reason why you don't carry passengers in the driver's van.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to James Bremner,
Craig, so Obama isn’t left of center?
If Fox News and the Tea Party are defining what the "center" is, then Ronald Reagan (who increased marginal tax rates while Governor of California) is a ranting commie along with Margaret Thatcher and pretty much every center-right government on this planet who doesn't regard public provision of healthcare and education as the devil's work.
Still, I'm delighted at the born again fiscal conservatism of Congressional Republicans. Funny how for eight long years they never saw a spending bill they couldn't stuff with more lard, but I guess it's different when Republicans do it...
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
We really need to work over the paradigm of male arousal as being really easy and instant because they’re all total horndogs all the time and ergo you never have to work out what works for a guy because everything does.
Quite - and without wanting to poke that sleeping bear, it's not actually a very healthy assumption for anyone. It's not really a very big step from "men have their brains in their perpetually tumescent knobs" to finishing that (non-)thought, "therefore Animal Penis Brains can't really be responsible for anything they do with their primordial erections, so women have to police everyone's sexuality - even rapists". Which is totally fucked up, and not in a good way. At all.
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Hard News: Auckland, so much enormity to…, in reply to Sacha,
Seriously, playing chicken with trains?
No, cars – it was pretty much all hands on deck for marshalling passengers who (for the most part) were pretty benign.
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Anyway, Dave was at work until 2pm on Sunday back at work at 11 and is taking today off. The asshole levels, again, were pleasingly low but one pretty serious complaint: Some folks really need to get a grip on the idea that playing "crossing against the signal" chicken is a game you're eventually going to lose.
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Hard News: Auckland, so much enormity to…, in reply to Russell Brown,
As Mediawatch pointed out yesterday, Sir Mad has been seizing media opportunities to sing the praises of his new best friend, John.
Um, yes… and? Stop the presses - Mad Butcher needs to start drinking more decaff with no sugar. Bug surprise there. :) Personally, I’m more concerned that anyone should be able to get a passport expedited by picking up the phone and called their Beehive bromance for reasons that should be too bloody obvious to require stating to intelligent people.
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I've just figured out what really fucks me off about the whole "sex training" meme -- why does sex seem to be the only area of life where some calm, fact-based education is presumed to invariably turn into "monkey see, monkey do - all the time"? Somehow, untold millions of children have been able to work their way through a science curriculum without turning into bomb-makers with trails of eviscerated small animals in their wake...
And, honestly, no amount of sex ed. would have kindled any interest on my part in taking my penis to Vagville. Really.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
These are areas where no one needs to be made to feel guilty for not attaining the mean.
No, because let's be honest - one size (or position or kink) does not fit all. I guess that's where sex education becomes a rather fraught area because "when Mummy and Daddy love each other they make a Bareback Mountain and go out and make a landing strip for Mister Stork" isn't quite the whole story.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Has stood surprisingly firm on requiring Gardasil
Though I suspect the only reason that happened was because it provided a conveniently weightly cudgel to beat Michelle Bachmann over the head with.
Oh, you also forgot that Perry also called Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake a traitor who would receive "pretty ugly treatment" if he ever showed his face in Texas -- which even Ron Paul said was out of order. (One should also note that George W. Bush appointed Bernake to the Fed Board in 2002, and later made him Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.)
And the most delicious irony: While wildfires were raging through Texas earlier this year -- and Gov. Perry had overseen massive cuts to funding for the Texas Forest Service and volunteer firefighters -- he attacked the federal government for not doing enough.
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