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Addendum:
As of late, the frequency at which my comments fail to make it onto the site has increased alarmingly, in spite of the typical absence of offensive material. Unnecessarily heavy-handed moderation and outright censorship are quickly starting to prevail at this site, and while that's usually a complaint reserved for the conservative crackpot crowd, it's also coming true for the rest of us. Meanwhile, anyone who dances around the President's maypole gets a free pass to post total shit. I don't know what's worse; Huffington's yellowing tint as a journalistic enterprise, the average user that posts here, or the fact that moderators are actively degrading the signal to noise ratio in the comments section by selectively removing or permitting bad posters. (As well as purging any comments more than fifty words in length. So much for discussion!)
It's just so damn typical.
If anyone who watches me is wondering why my comments are shortening, this is why. Fun fact - Moderators won't pay attention to anything less than two paragraphs in length. I guess I'll have to move on to greener pastures soon, unless the folks that run this site get wise about their comment policy. A karma-rating system like Slashdot would sure be nice.
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Failmore at the Hurfington Durf:
The only reason I started coming here is because the Huffington Post used to be somewhat more pleasant than Alternet, which is almost like saying I'd rather take a bath in Drano than be on fire.
This morning, I read an article on this site about the Federal Reserve. It was a really interesting article, and you know, I might have had a thing or two to say about this article because I really liked it, but the minute that I stopped reading it, I made a mistake. I made a truly horrible mistake. I kept scrolling down. Down, into the seedy underworld of the comments section, where only the brave and the astonishingly dumb dare venture. Those may in fact be synonymous, and if so, the joke is on me.
I haven't even been visiting this site for a year and the rate at which the level of maturity here has disintegrated is amazing. It's in free fall. Okay, maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush. Some of you are alright. Some of you, and thanks to the Downing effect, unless I name names none of you will know it. Meanwhile, the grinning dope sitting next to you will suddenly feel warm and fuzzy inside, because he thinks I've complimented him, and that I don't wish he'd just go suck on a railroad spike.
I've come to this conclusion thus: The people that seem to post the most often... get this, they're usually the least intelligent and the most belligerent, but that's not all. Based on the frequency of their posting activity, I can only surmise that they seem to think that the inane babble that drips from their fingertips and seeps into my Internet browser every day - not unlike an oft-abused urinal cake - is actually worth posting fifty thousand times a day.
Let me put it this way, if I were a used car salesman, and I appraised cars as poorly as some of the fine posters here people appraise their own level of brainpower, I wouldn't make it. It would be like me showing someone a Ford Pinto that had just spent the past twenty years at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and then calling it a race car. Not only would I call it a race car, I would do so at least once every fifteen seconds, even when I'm alone, and when I'm told that it's not a race car... I'll call it a race car, louder, and then perhaps insult the customer's mother. I would then be fired.
That is how asinine this site is sometimes. Woe that I cannot fire some of you.
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A Classic:
"This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
Then, after spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drive back to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and the fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then log onto the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on Free Republic and FOX News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right."
