Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Maher also (as Mrs. Not Bob mentioned to me last night) is one of the few people in his line of work who have intelligent people who disagree with him appear on his show. Like, for example, Rula Jebreal, who called him out on his bigotry in the most recent episode.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

A quick google of Maher and Arab gets us these gems:

"I'm for racial profiling."

"Arabs only understand force."

"Talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good. They have a sense of entitlement."

I could go deeper on the google page, but why bother? He uses "Islamic" and "Arab" interchangeably, in both cases ignorantly, too, in both cases with great bigotry. If you want to laugh with the racist, well, enjoy. I'm sure he, like racists everywhere, is just misunderstood.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

George Wallace rides again!

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Count me as one of the people who can't figure this issue out. To be honest, it may be because I love Obama and trust him to do the right thing (realizing of course that that is a naive stance to take and that it doesn't necessarily work when the next person takes office). I also think that (and I realize this argument has been used since the dawn of time) we live in a different world--one in which the line between the government's expertise when it comes to tech is really really close to some very evil people's expertise. And I wonder how much you or I would change our opinions and approaches if we had top-level access to just what is going on and how we can best battle it.

I'm also of the belief that from the day someone first used technology to write something down, governments have had ways to read it that you and I don't know much about. I think it has always been this way and every once in awhile, the curtain gets pulled back and we're all pissed off about it. But I don't think anyone really thinks the government hasn't been listening all along, no matter who the fucking President is. And that's not to say you shouldn't be pissed about it. I just think it's the way it is.

What does this mean? You'd rather he lost on principle than get what he got (which I will always remember as a huge win)?

I agree with you when it comes to Obama and the Democrats doing a poor job on selling healthcare reform. Truly awful, especially given the fact that every single person seemed to be in favor of what was in the bill when asked about the items individually. The Republicans did a great job of labeling it something else entirely, but given the fact that the citizens of this country are fucking maroons, it's much easier to scare when it comes to change than it is to sell.

On your second point, I simply cannot agree. Obama is a black man who is President. He has absolutely no choice but to stay above the fray. The minute he shows any emotion that isn't calm, he's an angry black man--the very personification of every white person's personal fucking nightmare. So he grins and grits his teeth and it comes off as aloof or condescending. But fuck that. I give the man all the credit in the world for not flipping over the desk in the Oval Office and saying, "Fuck this shit. You assholes deserve whatever you get."

Again, can't disagree more.

I'm with you there. Isn't it great how everyone knows every politician is owned by corporations and yet we can't change the fucking law in any way that makes an ounce of sense because THE CONSTITUTION! is sacred, even when our justices read it in the dumbest possible way?

We can't even pass a simple law limiting (not eliminating, limiting) assault weapons in this country. Instead, we watch children die so that some dumbass hick in Alabama can collect 40 semi-automatic rifles. This country is stupid.

Filling the vacuum? They created a market for fear of any kind of change and then hammered away at that while doing absolutely nothing and standing in the way of any progress at all. Then they pointed at Obama and said, "That condescending asshole won't work with us, thinks you're stupid, and hasn't accomplished anything!" It's a fucking joke. And it's not funny.

If Hillary wins, it's more of the same. Hell, if any Democrat wins, I think what we've been experiencing is the new Republican blueprint, because they'll just gerrymander themselves into office and threaten to blow shit up until they get their way. And it all comes back to the fact that our electorate is so fucking stupid that they can't remember why they're mad and who they're mad at from one day to the fucking next.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Agree. And it's appreciated. Although, to be fair, when someone takes the opposite side of an issue he is particularly fired up about, he quite often sticks his fingers in his ears, forces the last word, and moves on to another topic.

But I think the good outweighs the bad.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Yes. That's what I'm known for. Cuddling up with racists. Take a step back. Have a seat.

I don't agree with any of that shit that you posted. I know he's not for racial profiling generally (although maybe he is when it comes to Arabs--I suppose I can believe that). And I have listened to him very carefully, very often on this issue. And I have not heard those particular quotations and I haven't gotten the idea that that is his attitude towards Arabs. I know he likes being politically incorrect and provocative. But I wouldn't classify him as a racist and if I get a whiff of racism, I have no problem opening that up.

I think his problem is he absolutely hates religion and thinks it's the cause of all of the world's problems. And when he talks religion, he almost always talks in generalities. So when he focuses on Islam, when he should be focused on its extremist arm, he can't help himself. And he thinks all religious people are brainwashed, so it's an easy extension for him to make.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Why you always gotta be so angry, man?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

He is, allegedly, a giant asshole and a creep to work with, according to a number of female comics.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Hey, it's kind of interesting to see you defending the bigot. Has to be a bit uncomfortable, no?

His generalities lump together "Arab" and "Islam". The racial profiling quote is verbatim and from an interview he did with Larry King, who immediately focused him on a driving-while-black scenario, to which he said, no, not blacks, arabs (that is not verbatim, he made a point of sayings "terrorists" first and then pointing out that means brown people. Brown people, not blacks.

Surely, you are hostile toward any racial profile, whatever shade of color its based on?

The "speaking in generalities" is, to me, what racism is all about. It is the very core of it. Take an incident, attribute it to a race or ethnicity in general, use it to fuel hate. His fundamental point is that Islam is different than other religions and inherently evil, and thus so are its adherents, and those people are arabs (a word he uses to cover Turks, Persians, etc.). So speaking in generalities isn't an excuse - it's the problem.

--- Angry White Man

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Actually, I think that point on Obama is right on target. (probably a whiff, right?)

Think of the Cambridge cop incident. Obama showed both anger and sympathy for Gates, and took huge and disproportionate shit for it. Settling it out with the beer was genius, was it was to counter the Angry Black Man image he suddenly got.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm not a person people generally describe as being in a good mood, but I defy anyone from this board who has ever met me to claim that I am an angry person. So I have to say, of all the racist shit out there that I have experienced, that kind of casual comment--often receive during a heated conversation amongst people cursing or raising their voices much worse than I--is maybe the most annoying. And it makes me want to show some actual anger.

(And just in case, I realize you are intentionally making a joke about how ridiculous that type of shit is.)

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I can see that too. He gives off a very creepy vibe.

It really pisses me off when he talks down to the crowd who is cheering one of his positions or booing one of his dumbass Republican guests. Fuck that. Don't have a studio audience if you don't want any feedback.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Definitely a whiff, and yeah, Thurgreed is 100% right about this.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Okay. I can accept that. I apologize for mischaracterizing what you said.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Read about his position on the drones and the NSA spying. He has taken the position that he is the President, these are hard decisions, and he is making them, and that's all we need to know. In particular, read Charles Pierce's piece on the Predator drones. He quotes Obama's administration (I don't recall if it was the President himself) as saying that it is their position that he could send a drone to your house and take you out if he believed you were a threat to us, without any sort of process at all, let alone due process.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

No. Not really. I am very comfortable when it comes to discussing race and racism. And even though this is one of the few times I am defending someone accused of being a bigot, you haven't made me the slightest bit uncomfortable.

I feel like we are going in circles (although, I think your last paragraph is intentionally misleading when it comes to the generalities I was referring to (i.e., religion).

If Bill Maher thinks that all Arabs should be profiled, then it's one of the many things he's said that I think is stupid. I'm not going to track down and listen to the entire portion of the interview relating to this issue you've brought up, but again, I have listened to him many, many times on this very topic (including the most recent outburst when Assfleck* was on his show) and I have not heard him say anything racist. I have heard him paint Islam with a broad brush. And I've heard his arguments covering why he thinks that is okay. They're not very convincing, but I haven't heard anything that amounts to actual racism. And I'm not sure you've noticed, but I am fairly attuned to that shit.

TM

*Love his politics. Still can't stand him. This usually doesn't happen to me. I think it's his smarmy mouth and dead eyes that make me hate everything he says. And I realize those things aren't really in his control, but what can I say? I feel the way I feel.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I think we are in agreement on a lot more than we disagree on. Except for one thing.

We are a government of laws, not men. If the people in power see shit that justifies them raining death out of the sky, then they better be prepared to let us know. Otherwise, they are no different than the terrorists they profess to be protecting us from. Either way, it's just someone who believes all he needs to kill is a personal belief that what he is doing is right and, in the long run, for our own protection, and if a few people (or a few thousand) need to die, well, it's all in the game.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I don't think we disagree on this either. I am with you and have admitted I cut Obama all kinds of slack I wouldn't normally.

I don't think it's very realistic to think that the President will or should reveal any and all types of threats.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Why intentionally misleading? He conflates Muslims and Arab people, very willfully. He hates both of them. Broadly. Nothing misleading in there.

I don't watch a lot of him. I mostly watch clips others post. I've seen a lot of clips of him talking about his hatred of Islam. It sounds like you haven't seen those, and I haven't seen all that much (I've seen some obviously) of whatever you find amusing.

As to being attuned, no doubt. But you keep going back to hatred of a religion and its adherents as being something less objectionable. I don't get it. Is it somehow more ok to hate Muslims, if you think he doesn't conflate them with Arabs? Or do we just need a label other than racism for that, akin more to the anti-semitism label?

As to the Assfleck piece. None of them said anything really. It was just a bunch of white guys shouting out dog whistles.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Jesus, this is exhausting.

I said he speaks in generalities when it comes to religion and it gets him in trouble. You said he conflates Muslims and Arab people. I said I did not see him do that and I've watched a lot of his stuff. You then took what I said about his willingness to speak in generalities about religion and combined it with what you said about him always doing so with Arabs. Misleading.

I see him talk about Islam all the time. I don't see him talk about Arabs all the time. That is the basis of our disagreement.

Well then, let me explain. Religion is something one believes. Race is something you are (I recognize that people will argue that their belief system is more who they are than their race, but I reject that argument since you are born Asian, like one is born red-headed and you are taught religion). It's a choice to believe that there is a force in the sky that either dictates all that happens on Earth (or judges and punishes you for exercising the free will that that force has given you). I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that that is stupid, given the overwhelming lack of evidence of any type of god. And I think it's fine to point out all the evil shit organized religion is responsible for throughout history and all the evil shit people have done and do in the name of religion.

I don't know how I feel about how you phrased your question. I see that you are doing your best to have the conversation on your terms, but I don't think you're doing a very good job.

I think if you disagree more with the basic tenets of one religion over another, it's perfectly fine to talk more shit about that religion. I think if there are polls that reflect that the majority of the believers of one religion think death is an acceptable punishment for those who bad-mouth their prophet, then I think you may talk about them in generalities in a more negative way than you talk about Catholics who don't generally think that one should die if you say something negative about Jesus (and he talks a whole lot of shit about Catholicism).

I'm not buying what you're selling. If you believe that Judaism as a religion has a lot of dumb ideas, then go ahead and hate Judaism. If you believe that Jews in general have negative and unfair thoughts and approaches to dealing with Palestinians, then I think you may talk about them in generalities in a more negative way than you would Christians when it comes to that point. If you mean to imply that it's okay to talk shit about Jews as an ethnicity, then you're barking up the wrong tree. And I think that's what anti-semite implies. Where we part ways is on whether being completely anti-religion and being extra anti-Islam amounts to something along the lines of anti-semitism.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

It can't be that exhausting. After all, I've given you a bunch of specific quotes from him and told you where they come from and you're not going to look them up but rely instead on your memory of certain unspecified stuff you've heard him say. If you ignore the facts and don't trust my quotes, the rest is easy.

Frankly, I'm more interested in why you, someone clearly attuned to racist shit, doesn't find him blatantly offensive than in convincing you somehow that he is. I tired of trying to argue people into seeing bigotry a long time ago. It doesn't work.

I think the heart of the disagreement is that you don't perceive the conflation of Arab and Islam even when I give you specific statements and cites. The conflation is a fact, as those quotes show, it's just one you're choosing to ignore.

There's a second part of the disagreement that's really much less important and I don't have the patience to dissect, which is, once you get past the conflation, you find yourself able to say, hey, he just hates Islam - an awful lot - and that's ok. If he knew jack shit about Islam I might see that point, but he's just saying it off a shitload of prejudices and a few things he's found, like the polls he cites over and over again, to confirm his prejudices. Someone tries to school him on Islam, and his reaction is, wait a minute, before I talk to you, all I want to know is, in 50 words or less, what's wrong with the polls I found to justify my prejudice. It's like someone saying, shit, I have crime statistics broken down by race that say black folks commit a lot of crimes, before I talk to you about racism, explain those away in 60 seconds of good TV.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

It's what they did to Clinton in '92-'93.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Deco...economy-stupid
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2014-mid...e-had-an-edge/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/natio...ry?id=26688877
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...ent_obama.html

If you're working class to middle class, you're not enjoying this economy. If you're in the one half of this country making less than $40k, you're not enjoying this economy.

The overwhelming majority of this country is economically fucked, and pissed.

The data says otherwise.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm with Maher. I'd say it to a Muslim: Your religion has too many lunatics in it.

Sorry, but it's true. All religions are full of shit and fantasy, but yours is the problem child of the moment. It's fine for you to sit back and say nothing. You have no duty to police the maniacs of your faith who murder and brutalize women. But when a pundit notes that most of the worst atrocities in the world result from your religion - which they do - and you decide to defend your religion, you have entered the debate. And when you enter the debate, you don't get to hide behind the "Racist!" card.

And Arab culture does skew patriarchal. Maher isn't crafting that of whole cloth. Don't like uncomfortable facts? Turn the channel.

All that said, if a University's students are of such weak minded PC character it can't handle having a guest who said something it didn't like speak at its commencement, they have the right to vote to rescind his invitation. Maher has a big mouth. This sort of thing goes with the territory. Which he understands.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

He's one of the last talk show hosts who honestly engages opposing views, rather than bringing opponents on just to shout at them, like O'Reilly.

Jebreal may have called him out, but she did a piss poor job of arguing. Claiming that a Maher commencement address was unfair to students because they couldn't debate Maher (who wasn't even intending to discuss Islam) was embarrassing. I'd previously considered her pretty smart. In that instance, she appeared a whiffle intellect at best, most likely put on the show because she happens to be smoking hot.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

That strikes me as very different than what you've actually said over the years, about being the only guy on the board who has ever run a business and how the ACA was so damaging to people who own and run businesses. Maybe you intended the message to be what is quoted above, but that's not what has come across.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

And suddenly, I feel bad for laughing at Adder's post. But I think he meant it as "yeah, you are absolutely right about why Obama always needs to look a little detached."

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

actually I spoke of the people who work at my business who will have lesser coverage. the stuff about running the business was more directed to follow up attacks that I didn't know what I was talking about. Around the legal community here I understand I'm known as a socialist for how I pay people.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

And sometimes your comments have been focused on the secretary who loses out, but other times they have not been.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

then i expressed myself poorly, and that is my fault.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

This issue, or these two issues, have long been very difficult for me.

Over the years, I have had muslim friends, some very close -- from back when I spent more time doing martial arts than law and family stuff. We chose my son's middle name to honor one of these people (we chose the "Anton" rather than the "Salahuddin-al-Muhammad", it seemed to go better with the first and last name). I've had both traditional muslims and Nation of Islam members (guys who used an "X", one who was even a bodyguard for Farrakhan) refer to me as "family." It was truly something I treasured.

And yet, and yet. Try talking to one of these guys about the fanatics that abuse their religion, and you got nowhere, or it got ugly. Just try getting someone to say that blowing up a bus full of children was wrong -- just wrong, whatever the motivation or message, whatever the grievances it was intended to address -- and it was awful. I learned to avoid conversations like that.

Extremists are to Islam what the Tea Party is to the GOP -- they have taken over the conversation and fucked up the brand.

As for references to "Arabs", Maher's comments are at least sloppy and at worst virulently racist. I don't listen to him enough to have a strong opinion.

But to move past Maher specifically for a minute -- there is a distinction, often very difficult to see or to make, between saying something negative about a culture, or the effects that a culture has on people, and defining a people in a racist way. Long ago I had a nasty argument with Ty where we were talking about the conduct of soldiers in the Pacific in WWII, and I made a comment to the effect that Japanese soldiers behaved a certain way due to culture. I didn't see that as racist, he clearly did. Yet I do think that culture has a powerful effect on how people behave, especially insular cultures.

It's a difficult line to see, but it is there. If you believe that someone raised in a purely muslim and Arab world, as that world has existed throughout the recent past, is not "different" in many ways, try discussing their views on women, gays, etc. Does that mean that being born of Arab parents makes you a certain way? No. It means being raised in a particular culture, and taught particular attitudes, affects you.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

At this point, I can only conclude that your wife has hacked your account. You really aren't this nice, but she is.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I would not have said it if I wasn't certain he would take it as intended.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Now I think you're just full of shit. You did a quick internet search to back up your claims on someone you have admitted you don't watch or pay attention to at all. And you accuse me of closing my eyes to this guy's racism. The problem with your argument is, you quite clearly have ignored huge swaths of what the man has to say and have zero'd in on the 3 or 4 quotes that back your argument.

I did a "Maher Arab" search on google and I see I definitely see some negative shit. I also see that your research is really fucking lazy in that you clicked on the second link ( http://religiondispatches.org/8-bill...-commencement/ ) and maybe clicked through one more time ( http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...13/lkl.00.html ) and now you are acting like you have sufficiently marshalled your evidence. But there is a sea of results that run the gamut on his thoughts on the subject. And they seem to reflect a more layered and complicated take on how he feels about Islam and Arab culture that you have ignored. It seems to me, you're the one who isn't really willing to do any work. Because I'm the one who actually listens to the guy regularly. But let's take a look anyway.

Here's the Larry King piece:

MAHER: Well, yes. I mean, look, the fact -- it's true that 99.999 percent of all the Muslim Americans are good, loyal people who we don't want to hassle. But it's also true that all the terrorists, OK, are from Muslim, Arab countries, OK? When people make the analogy to Tim McVeigh, that is not an accurate analogy. Yes, that was a case of domestic terrorism from a white guy. OK? What was the pool of support that Tim McVeigh had in the world? It was a few hundred people at most. OK?

We're talking about a pool of support in the Muslim world that is wide and deep. It's not the majority, but it is millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people. So we are not talking about the same thing when you compare Tim McVeigh with Osama bin Laden.

KING: How about, though, when it leads to you throw a Secret Service guy off an airplane who is going to Texas to protect the president? You throw him off because he's Muslim?

MAHER: OK. He was an Arab guy with a gun.

KING: With a permit.

MAHER: A permit?

KING: With I.D.

MAHER: All right, but aren't we in the "let's be safe than sorry" phase now? An Arab guy with a gun wants to get on a plane. He flashes a badge. Now, I have police kind of badges.

KING: You question him, he says, call my leaders. Call the Secret Service, they'll tell you who I am.

MAHER: Well, and shouldn't he be willing to undergo that?

KING: They wouldn't do it. Right? They threw him off the plane.

MAHER: They threw him off the plane to check him out. Do we want the message to go out to airlines now -- because this guy called a press conference yesterday and was kind of whining about it -- do we really want the message to go out to American Airlines who I think did the right thing, do we want the message to be, look, if an Arab guy with a gun waves some kind of a badge and you are not quite sure, you know, you could get sued. So wave him on and get up in the sky.

In this interview: http://www.timeout.com/chicago/comed...aher-interview he says on racial profiling:

TOC: Speaking of that: Do you still believe in racial profiling at airports?
Bill Maher: I believe in profiling, not racial profiling. All police work is profiling. Instead of having robotic people treat an 82-year-old grandmother the same way they would a sweating young Muslim man, nervous, eyes darting, [airports are] doing what the Secret Service does. The Secret Service are trained to see somebody who might be the one who’s gonna kill the President.

TOC: How do you spot a young Muslim man? What does one look like?
Bill Maher: Well, it doesn’t have to be Muslim; I’m just saying—look, are all Muslims terrorists? Obviously no. The vast 99.999 percent of Muslims do not want to attack us and they’re not terrorists. But everybody who has attacked us was a young Muslim man. To pretend that that’s not the case is to be ridiculously naive and to lose this battle.

Finally, here is a piece that compiles what seems like everything he's ever said that was negative about Muslims: http://www.islamophobia.org/134-isla...ill-maher.html

The problem with these cites is that they only pull the most negative shit. I've listened to him talk about the topic time and again with muslims and non-muslims. It's just not as simple as "He's a racist." And let's be clear. I don't agree with everything the man says. I think he often skews the conversation to bolster his own views. And on topics that he is obsessed with, he tends to go a bit off the deep end (religion, drugs, nutritional choices). But I don't think he's racist.

I think he looks at Islamic states and Arab culture and often sees some insane treatment of women, a whole lot of violence, a gun culture in many places that makes our fucked up gun culture seem civilized, beheadings as a solution, honor killings, etc. He looks at this through a lense of deep distrust of all things religious and he comes out the other end shitting on Islam. Is he always right? Absolutely not. He's said some stupid, ignorant shit. But so often when he wants to discuss what's wrong with Islam, he is immediately shut down by the Assfleks of the world who only want to focus on what's positive about the religion. I think, on this point, they're both ridiculous because, like everything else, in the wide spectrum of Islamic beliefs there is good and bad. And you should be able to discuss it without going HAM one way or the other.

I find it comical that you think you're schooling me on bigotry. I think you think I'm okay with racism when it comes to Arabs or muslims or some shit. If you're getting that from this conversation, I think you may be a little delusional and a whole lot full of yourself.

Once again, misleading. And since I've spelled this out for you in my last post, I will try to be brief. If someone hates all religion and hates one religion the most out of all religions, I think that's fine.

This is just bullshit. You don't watch the shows. He wants to have a debate. He has people who will debate him on it all the time. He tries to back up his side of the debate and they do the same. The fact that he's not convinced doesn't make what you're saying true.

Yeah. That's the whole fucking show. And he does it with every topic. The people he has on know the drill and aren't coming in blind. They know the topics and prepare for them. That's the format.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I know. I didn't want him to think otherwise, which is why I added the parenthical.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Bump that $40K to $60K, $75K if you live in a major city and have kids.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Adder doesn't make a lot of good jokes, and you made him feel bad about it. That wasn't nice. It's like if Hank posted something decent, and someone responded that his account must have been hacked.

My Fucking God
 

I have sat back and stayed out of this debate on Islam and Bill Maher so far. Because I believed we are all very intelligent and reasonable people and it would sort itself out quickly and we could all return to decency and common sense. I am very sorry to say I was wrong.

Jew. Muslim. Christian. Same God. Same.Fucking.God.

Anybody wanna call me a Kike? Wanna call Sidd a Wop? And Thurgreed..., well, I won't go there.

But some of you have. You are pointing to the worst in a group of people. A very large group of people. In fact, if you want to talk numbers, the largest group of people in the Whole Fucking World. That's right. There are more Muslims than any other religious adherents, everywhere.

And you are going to paint them all with the same brush as you paint a relatively small group of them in a very small place? Shame on you.

Fucking get your heads right. You're making me sick.

But then, I'm just a Yid. We all know how emotional they get.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I have no issue with saying exactly what Maher did to every Muslim I know. I'm a lapsed Catholic. If you tell me my religious heritage is filled with pedophiles, cover-ups of pedophilia, horrendous discrimination against women, and unforgivable policies on birth control which harm the poorest and weakest, I'd say, "Yep. True, true, and-- True!"

Would a reasonable Black person told young black males are disproportionately involved in crime bristle and scream racism? No. He'd say, that's a fact. There are reasons beyond those Black youths' control which contribute to this stat, but it's fact.

Islam has a problem. This is fact. Maher notes as much. Does he go too far? Yep. He's a provocateur. But where a religion is the cause of mass genital mutilations of females, public beheadings, idiotic bloodsheed over the Sunni v. Shia rift, and cartoonists being threatened with death for drawing pictures of a "prophet," there is no unwarranted criticism, or racism, in saying, "Islam, get your house in order."

YMMV. Most of the Muslims with whom I've discussed this stuff readily admit, "Yep... We've got too many nuts in the fold." Then they usually say, "That's why I left the Middle East. It's a shit show."

Excellent. Best comment on this yet.
Agreed. But it is traditionally a staunchly patriarchal heritage. This is just fact. And for God's sake - would apologists stop making the argument, "Iran has women in government!" Guess what else? It's not an Arab state! Saudi Arabia is an Arab state.

I'd say your position is beyond debate. I see no logical way around it.

Man, you're good today. This is also excellent.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Was this pre 9/11? I believe there is a very bright line in how the Arabic people around here feel about attacks on/in Israel compared to attacks on the west, or the ISIS type wars on each other.