Heh, I won't lie, this is kind of nice.Follow

...said gbaji into his mirror.





edit: Forgot a deletion...

Edited, Oct 2nd 2014 4:50pm by Bijou

Except he still hasn't stated that this is what his mom actually said (which ironically just required a three letter response to my question, rather than the three post tap dance that ensued). It's what he claimed his mother's motivation was. Which, as far as I know, is just him projecting his own assumption about race onto his mother. Not like I know Joph personally, much less his mom.



I didn't say you did. I said that it was unfair to paint everyone who chooses to not accept food stamps as having a racial motivation. You didn't say that. Joph did. You did, however, leap in to agree with him and call it "sad".

I'd call it less "sad" and more "ridiculously rare". That's simply not the motivation most people who choose to refuse food stamps (or other forms of government assistance) are acting on. And it's absurd that we're even talking about it.



Interesting. Maybe everyone you know knows this, but that's clearly not "everyone". I'll point out again that this sort of thing is precisely what Democrats have railed against with regard to the Religious Right for decades. But it's not only perfectly ok when it's a liberal message being spread, but you'll paint this within the context of race so you can attack anyone who points out the hypocrisy going on?



If it's equal, how can it "unfairly" target one particular group? This is another case of you interpreting based on the identity and me based on the action. And I happen to think it's a silly methodology on your part. We either think it's ok for preachers to influence the votes of their flock, or we don't. How about we make that decision objectively rather than assessing the skin color and party most likely to be affected by it? Crazy idea, I know!



It doesn't. I was speaking more broadly about election issues that the Dems and GOP tend to argue over and hadn't looked at the specifics of the Ohio changes. In Ohio, the issue is that they have a set number of early voting days and the governor choose to set a standard for all counties in the state rather than allow each county to set its own schedule (which may have resulted in increased confusion among voters who might think polls are open when they are not). The schedule was based on practicality and cost and was based on the recommendations by a non partisan Ohio Association of Elections Officials. In this particular case, it's about fairness, not fraud.



That was just me making an observation. But for the record, I'm a conservative at least in part because I believe that we should judge people based on their actions and choices, not their identity and/or skin color. So I find the conservative approach better than the liberal one. You're free to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character if you wish though.

Edited, Oct 2nd 2014 3:13pm by gbaji

I'm never actually going to litigate whether or not my conversations with my mother meet your standards for me to have an informed opinion or not. That's absurd. I'm not even going to humor you in that regard.

So still unwilling to answer the question? Is this some kind of perverse Catholic guilt thing going on? So you'll write a post that implies something and if others interpret it that way, you're ok with it, but you'll feel bad if you out and out lie about it? Cause that's what it's looking like to me.

How hard is it really to just say "Yes. I had many conversations with my mother and she admitted to me that she viewed food stamps as something black people did, and she didn't want to be associated with black people". If that's really what happened, why not just say it? What's so funny is that I have no way to refute your statement if you actually make it. You're doing it yourself by hesitating.


And the really funny part is that the whole thing is completely anecdotal anyway. Whether or not your mother refused to accept food stamps for a given reason tells us nothing about why other people might do so. It does, however, speak volumes about your perception of people who do this. So I guess there's that. And yes, I'm fully willing to acknowledge that my own mother's reasons for doing the same thing affects my perception of people who choose not to accept government assistance (my mother was quite clear with us why she didn't want to accept government assistance btw, so I'm not just guessing at her motivations here). In my anecdotal case though, I also have an aunt who made a similar choice (I've written about her before). She was on welfare for a time after getting divorced, but realized that it was a trap and chose to end her benefits even while still qualifying. She actually got charged with welfare fraud because the welfare office could not believe that anyone would willingly choose not to accept benefits they were qualified for. They assumed she had some other source of income she wasn't reporting. Similarly, a friend of mine was on welfare for a period of time. When he fell into a great paying job he decide to do the right thing (in his mind at least) and pay back the money he'd received while on welfare. He was also charged with a crime because they assumed no one would ever choose to do this (it was a "pay back my debts" thing for him, which is apparently rare among welfare recipients). They also assumed that he was doing this because he'd had some additional source of income all along and lied about it.


While my experiences are purely anecdotal (aren't they all, though?), every single person I've known who has either gotten off welfare, or chosen not to accept it in the first place, has had the same "want to stand on my own two feet" rationale for doing so. I have never once met anyone who viewed welfare with any racial association at all. So it's a bit bizarre to me that you went there. Now, maybe your mom is the rare exception, or maybe folks in Chicago are vastly more racist than folks in San Diego, but your claim is completely alien to me. It's not remotely within my experience of why people do this. So at the very least, it's wrong to assume that this is a typical motivation at all.

Ok. I'll take the victory then. So you admit to enjoying marsupial ****? Got it. Guess you should have read the post, huh?


Oh. And in all the fun and hubub about diets and foodstamps and whatnot, I forgot the most important bit. Grats Ari on getting all slender and sexy. Or slenderer and sexyer.

All threads should end up as "pile on gbaji" threads by page 2.

While my experiences are purely anecdotal (aren't they all, though?), every single person I've known who has either gotten off welfare, or chosen not to accept it in the first place, has had the same "want to stand on my own two feet" rationale for doing so. I have never once met anyone who viewed welfare with any racial association at all.

Have you ever met anyone who was even the slight bit racist? It seems far fetched that you wouldn't have, I mean, the fucking Polaks going on and on about how the czarnuchs are ruining everything...

Of course I have. Just as I have met people who are left handed. But that doesn't mean that everyone who chooses not to accept government assistance is left handed, nor that left handedness has any significant statistical effect on the choice. The two are utterly unconnected. While I'm sure there is some number of people who are both racist and who choose not to accept government assistance, there's no reason to assume that their racism is the reason for their decision in the face of a far more rational and logical reason like "I don't want to become dependent on government assistance". The fact that a racist might add "... like all those darkies" to that statement just speaks to their racism and not really to the choice itself.

Yes, we know, you'll "play" devil's advocate to any position just to keep the discussion going, no matter how silly, naieve, gullible, or downright pants-on-head retarded it makes you look. And when you take a ridiculous position, we'll ridicule you for it. I'm glad we have our roles straight.

I'd love to engage in actual interesting discussion, but what usually happens is that I say something that other people don't like, but they can't really form a strong logic based argument against it, so the thread devolves into name calling. It's a thing.

A result that bribery achieves quite well, as you know.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

Interesting. Maybe everyone you know knows this, but that's clearly not "everyone". I'll point out again that this sort of thing is precisely what Democrats have railed against with regard to the Religious Right for decades. But it's not only perfectly ok when it's a liberal message being spread, but you'll paint this within the context of race so you can attack anyone who points out the hypocrisy going on?

Since you were unable to connect the two sentences, I'll break it down for you.

I was being sarcastic with "everyone", to prove the point that YOU don't know what you're talking about. That's why removing a Sunday doesn't seem like an attack on voting, because you don't understand black culture. That's why you are assuming hypocrisy when the vast majority of black people that I know (which I assume is more than you) have no issues with religion in society. You are speaking from a white person's point of view and assuming that every Democrat is the same. The black church has ALWAYS been a political factor and I don't recall any movement from the left to change that. You're confusing two different concepts. Admittedly, times are changing, but that's pretty much the standard.
Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

I didn't say you did. I said that it was unfair to paint everyone who chooses to not accept food stamps as having a racial motivation. You didn't say that. Joph did. You did, however, leap in to agree with him and call it "sad".

I'd call it less "sad" and more "ridiculously rare". That's simply not the motivation most people who choose to refuse food stamps (or other forms of government assistance) are acting on. And it's absurd that we're even talking about it.

I didn't agree with anything. I simply made a response to a statement of a stigma that you somehow aren't aware of. I did not call anyone racist nor assume that anyone was racist.

So "ridiculously rare" that it made news last month of FOX news viewers assumed that a black woman having a third child was on food stamps from various men and playing the system?
Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

If it's equal, how can it "unfairly" target one particular group?

By definition? Equal != fair.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

This is another case of you interpreting based on the identity and me based on the action. And I happen to think it's a silly methodology on your part. We either think it's ok for preachers to influence the votes of their flock, or we don't. How about we make that decision objectively rather than assessing the skin color and party most likely to be affected by it? Crazy idea, I know!

First, let me clarify, preachers aren't telling people who to vote for, they are just telling them to vote. The probability that they will vote Democrat is inherently high, hence the attack on the Sunday voting. My problem has nothing to do with identity, but "action". The action of removing Sunday voting is hindering the actions of others voting. This is nothing about race. You're just making it about race to play the race card. I actually saw the clip in question a few hours ago and race was one sentence in an entire segment talking about elderly, students and the poor. Somehow, you only heard that one sentence and made it seem like the entire segment was about race. Why do you think in some places a NRA card is "legit" to vote with, but not a school ID? The answer is because of the demographics of who would more likely to vote for you. It's not about race/skin color, but about votes.
Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

It doesn't. I was speaking more broadly about election issues that the Dems and GOP tend to argue over and hadn't looked at the specifics of the Ohio changes. In Ohio, the issue is that they have a set number of early voting days and the governor choose to set a standard for all counties in the state rather than allow each county to set its own schedule (which may have resulted in increased confusion among voters who might think polls are open when they are not). The schedule was based on practicality and cost and was based on the recommendations by a non partisan Ohio Association of Elections Officials. In this particular case, it's about fairness, not fraud.

So, why not include the Sunday where many votes are cast?

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

That was just me making an observation. But for the record, I'm a conservative at least in part because I believe that we should judge people based on their actions and choices, not their identity and/or skin color. So I find the conservative approach better than the liberal one. You're free to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character if you wish though.

Says the guy who said that Treyvon ran because black people are taught to fear the law and run. GTFOHWTBS!