In a speech yesterday, Hillary Clinton admitted what many have long suspected: She is an advocate of cat GIFs.
After reciting a litany of the horrible things Trump has said, she declared that his divisive rhetoric
makes you want to turn off the news. It makes you want to unplug the internet. Or just look at cat GIFs. I get it… I’ve watched a lot of cats do a lot of weird and interesting things. But we have a job to do and it’ll be good for people and for cats.
My own research has confirmed that one can indeed find many GIFs online featuring cats doing “weird and interesting things.”
Here is some of what I have discovered:
Feel free to share your own research in the comments below.
Or just us this as an OPEN THREAD to talk about whatever!
How does that even work? The populace can’t be trusted with any political decisions… except the collection of revenue that is the absolute foundation of any and all other government activity?
^It’s because taxes are the only way that a government actually interacts with its citizens, of course! Governments just take money away from hardworking men who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and then waste the money on useless things like welfare or laws (and occasionally on good things like the military, but that almost never happens.) Governments are functionally useless! All the infrastructure that society relies upon just HAPPENS, without any need for installation or maintenance or funds. Roads are just rocks in the ground, and you have to PAY for water and electricity, so that doesn’t count. Garbage pickup is gross, so it doesn’t matter how that works. So long as it’s not in one’s backyard, they won’t care. And stormwater just drains away from their homes and businesses all by itself, without any infrastructure in place to manage it and prevent flooding.
The only thing holding back (white, non-poor) men is the government, taking their money for all this useless shit! That’s why the most important issue is taxes, because it’s the only thing that actually affects
themanyone!/sarcasm
Oh no! What ever will the alt-right do now that their beloved frog has turned against them, claiming that they forced him to be a symbol of hatred?!
Pepe the Frog creator launches campaign to free meme from Trump supporters
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pepe-the-frog-donald-trump-presidential-election-meme-hillary-clinton-tweets-a7366291.html
@Imaginary Petal
Yeah, must be nice to take no responsibility for yourself.
Which is what they always say the left does. Project much, Republicanz?
This just popped up in my newsfeed:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/why-we-need-to-plan-for-a-future-without-jobs/ar-AAj3zz4?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
Some of you may find it interesting. I suspect that those who would are already familiar with everything in the article, but…
Thanks, it was a good read. I’ve been saying for years now that the 40 hour work is becoming obsolete and we need to do something about it. The wealthy are happy to shut their eyes and allow and encourage people to scapegoat immigrants, feminism, welfare users etc. But they need a stable society to safely retain their wealth, so ultimately clinging to the status quo is a losing strategy.
@Wwth
And the conservative commenters didn’t even read it with common comments of muh commies and muh government takin muh money and “protestant work ethic is the default I’m totally not ethnocentric.” The Prosperity Gospel is the biggest non religion in the US and honestly the most problematic.
Yeah keep parroting that, I’m sure the elite Protestant bishops and those with the money and political power over the US will surely grant you rewards for your loyalty.
And the article isn’t even saying people shouldn’t work! Just that the economy and how we compensate work and how we think of work is going to have to change along with technology. The 40 work week becoming obsolete =/= everyone sits around eating bonbons!
Sadface.
But if all the men aren’t working 40-hour shifts down the mines, where will people get their bonbons?
Blonde women with wheat running through their hands will pick the bonbons from the fields, the way God intended, while men race by in their high-tech maglev trains.
@WWTH: you’re welcome. I sort of wonder if we might be coming closer to some society where people are allowed to do whatever work they find fulfilling, but I’m very much afraid it won’t happen without a century or two of global meltdown.
@OoglyBoggles: Excellent point on the comments. I try to avoid them if possible.
@EJ: One thing Oogly said that you might be able to help me with: what is the relationship between ‘protestant work ethic’ and the ‘prosperity Gospel’?*
* I’m asking you because you’ve mentioned being raised in the Calvinist tradition on other threads, and as I recall, ‘protestant work ethic’ was once ‘puritan work ethic’, so you may have fuller knowledge of it than I would.
@IP: I just read the above page of comments, and you’re post about ‘I wish I was a Republican’ was awesome. Thank you.
@LG,
I don’t know about how to help, but for understanding purposes, there are a few things to realize about child sexual abuse dynamics.
People often say that abusers know to target the most vulnerable children. This is true, but it’s not because they have some kind of detection ability. What they do is scattershot groom all the children they engineer access to, and back away from those that threaten resistance.
Then they simultaneously spoil and abuse their chosen targets, leading to a jealous/uneasy feeling in the other children, even if they are unaware of the specifics of the abuse, because they see the “favouritism” (yes those are scare quotes)
So even the ones not targeted become part of a dysfunctional family of sorts, resentful or confused or just hurt.
I think he *should* get individual therapy with you being separated, so he can get on with working through his issues, every day he doesn’t delay is another day he gets back for *his* life.
It’s great you’re getting on with your life and independence, and make sure to only give what you *can* (says someone who burned out on giving too much to others myself)
Mom has come and gone, leaving me with several new sweater dresses and considerable annoyance. As predicted, she still consistently failed to address or refer to me correctly, while simultaneously gender policing like hell. A very stressful visit altogether, but at least I have something warmer to wear in the coming season.
@Dalillama
Well if it makes you feel any better the sweaters won’t judge you.
@Joekster:
I was raised in the Reform church, yes, but neither of those terms is something I was raised to believe in. What follows, therefore, is my best understanding of them from without rather than from within.
Kootiepatra would be a better person to ask.
The Protestant Work Ethic is best understood as an anti-Catholic slur which is used to suggest that Catholics (who are predominantly from poorer parts of Europe and, in America, from less privileged groups) are poor because they’re lazy. If only they worked as hard as Protestants, goes the reasoning, they would be as wealthy as them. In this respect it’s not dissimilar to the old “black people aren’t disadvantaged, just lazy” canard. It’s a fairy tale that a privileged group tells itself to justify its own privilege.
In South Africa we didn’t really have Catholics, so this wasn’t really a thing. Lots of Calvinists do believe in it elsewhere, however. As always, religion is a very local thing.
By contrast, the Prosperity Gospel is something believed in principally by Charismatic Christians. It says that God will reward the faithful with material gains in this life; indeed, that a lack of material well-being must indicate a lack of faith. If this feels to you like victim-blaming, or feels like it’s set up to let wealthy ministers justify their opulent lifestyles, then you’re not entirely wrong.
One must understand, however, that the Prosperity Gospel comes from a Christian tradition in which believers are encouraged to switch churches and ministers until they find one that they like. As such a sort of Darwinian pressure can be said to exist, in which churches tailor their sermons and messages to coincide with what people want to hear. If you have a choice between hearing about a God who will reward you with bliss in the afterlife, and a God who will reward you in this life with a flatscreen TV, and you pick the latter along with enough co-believers, then a sect will form and you’ll find a minister to preach that to you.
I’m not going to bash this too much, partly because it’s many people’s sincerely-held belief, but mainly because it’s a belief that’s strongly coded Black where I come from, and I don’t want to be the White guy attacking Black stuff. However, I will point out that it’s basically anathema to Calvinism as I was brought up to understand it.
Calvinists believe in a God who is a) unpredictable and b) not swayed by the actions of His believers. One of the absolute core beliefs of Calvinism is that you cannot bribe God, nor sway Him from His predetermined course of action. This belief grew up as a reaction to medieval Catholic corruption and the sale of indulgences, which requires its marks to believe that one can in fact bribe God, but also makes things like the Prosperity Gospel very difficult to incorporate theologically.
That isn’t to say that people haven’t done it, of course. Christianity leaves itself very open to being interpreted to justify what the interpreter was going to do anyway.
@Dalilama: that sounds frustrating. I don’t have any real advice, just sympathy to offer.
@EJ: Thanks for chiming in. I’d always wondered if ‘protestant work ethic’ was meant as a form of Catholic shaming. I didn’t know that the prosperity gospel was ‘coded black’ in South Africa. In the US, it seems to be largely Caucasian, although it doesn’t really pay to generalize anything over here.
@Dali
Ooh! Love sweater dresses. That is, I would rather eat one than wear one, but they’re cute ?
TFW somebody get they fuckery pointed out, get in a mood about it, and then go right on doing that same shit
This face right here actually:
Lotsa Hearts!
When I hear that, I usually respond with “Well, I won’t vote for Bill Clinton then.”
Just as a subtle reminder of who’s actually running.
My mom was the same too. It’s gotten to the point where I get really nervous and paranoid when I go clothes shopping, even by myself. I can’t handle not finding anything in my size, and then all the fat-shaming comes flooding back. I don’t like going clothes shopping with her, or anyone else in my family for that matter. (Not for all the same reasons though. One of my aunts is awfully picky about everything, and while she and one of my uncles have pretty good taste, they’d still never buy me anything I’d actually like to wear on a regular basis.)
What makes it worse is when my mom tells me she’s losing weight, and I’m not in a position (financially or otherwise) to do the same thing, and it’s like she’s making subtle jabs at me to do the same.
Or when my grandma saw me have a bowl of pudding (that she made, by the way) after dinner (my only meal that day, and for a few days before as well), she told me that I was “gaining weight” and I needed to stop eating so much.
@Dalillama, kupo, Paradoxy:
This cat thinks you’re awesome regardless of what anyone says about you:
http://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2013-10/enhanced/webdr05/15/9/anigif_enhanced-buzz-26358-1381845043-13.gif
@EJ (TOL)
I find that both of these are common in most religions (the second one’s common to all of the AFAICT), which is the sort of thing that honestly leaves me with great difficulty accepting the sincerity of people’s religious beliefs, tbh. Or, frankly, care how sincere they are or aren’t. The real question is if they’re fucking other people over with their beliefs (hint: the Prosperity Gospel invariably does). Usually, the answer to that one is yes.
So what? Loads of sincerely-held beliefs are total bullshit and/or actively harmful, and the sincerity of the believer doesn’t change that one iota. Plenty of people sincerely believe that I’m an abomination unto god who deserves to be killed painfully, and I’m gonna bash those beliefs right and left.
@Kupo, Paradoxy
*hugs* and sympathies.
@Axe
Check your email 🙂 <3
@Dalillama:
For sure, nobody should go around preaching hatred against trans people, gay people or any other disadvantaged group. I totally agree with that, and if anyone says that my friend Dali is an abomination then they are no friend of mine.
At the same time, I’m trying to back away from the style of atheism which mocks people merely for having a belief in the supernatural, and focus on the style of atheism which concentrates on opposing harmful actions. Hence, if someone happens to quietly sit at home and pray for a new widescreen television, they’re not hurting anyone and I don’t want them to feel that I am no friend of theirs.