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Wanted to make this my new avatar, thinking it appropriate:

"There is no misandry on DU"

Make jokes about the size of men's genitalia? Fine. Prison rape jokes? Celebrated.

Suggest that one of the biggest misandrists on DU has ulterior motives? Hide.

Some completely honest and well intended questions.

Gun advocates, I am sincere when I ask you this.

What can we do to stop these killings?

I've been trained to shoot. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I believe in the right to self defense. I accept hunting as a source of food and as a sport. There are legitimate uses for guns, and I believe in the Second Amendment.

But dear God, something has to be done.

In one week we've seen three mass shootings - one of which killed over a dozen children - and at least two more thwarted that we know of.

This cannot become the new normal. This is not acceptable.

What are the answers? How can we respond? How do we prevent this sort of thing in the future?

If we can't find solutions to this, then the obvious and distasteful one is likely to be forced upon us.

Can we talk about the existence of misandry on DU for a change?

There are a few posters on here who, let's face it, are just anti-men. I'm not talking about anti-misogynist or anti-sexist, I mean they just honestly seem to be anti-men.

We know their names. The ones who take any criticism of any woman ever as misogyny. The ones who feel that men can do nothing right. The ones who assume that any joke must have a deep-seeded hatred of women at its core.

We saw it during the early S.E. Cupp threads. We see it now with the LOLCat massacre. We will see it again.

We've started to address the racist, antisemitic, anti-Islamic, misogynistic, and homophobic veins on this board. Can we now start to address the misandrist tendencies, too?

Oh? And we're the sexists?

When we say that S.E. Cupp only got her job as a commentator at Fox News because she was an attractive woman, we're the sexist ones?

http://samuel-warde.com/2012/11/fox-news-anchor-we-hire-from-victorias-secret-catalog/

The whole Hostess debacle made me think of this TV show:

It wasn't the union that killed the Twinkie. It was vulture capitalism.

Before you go blaming the union for Hostess' demise, look at the facts.

In 1995 a company called International Bakeries, which was essentially a vulture capital arm of a computer company called Data Processing Financial and General Corporation, went on a massive spending spree. They not only bought Hostess but the San Francisco French Bread Company, John J. Nissen Baking Company, Drake's, My Bread Company, and tons of other companies.

They did this by borrowing like batshit crazy and eventually defaulted on their loans, leading to bankruptcy in 2004.

In 2009 they emerged from bankruptcy by BORROWING MORE FUCKING MONEY. They borrowed from Ripplewood Holdings, Silver Point, Monarch, and GE Capital. All these loans caused more payments and more interest accruing, leading to more and more debt. It was this debt that caused their collapse.

If it hadn't been for easy credit, merger mania, leveraged buyouts, and greedy conglomerates whose philosophy was "if you can't beat them buy them out," then all the little brands (including Hostess) that this group of predators bought with borrowed money might still be small and innovative enough to survive financial hard times with little or no debt of their own.

So always remember: it wasn't the unions that killed the Twinkie, it was the modern vulture capitalist culture.

When I posted this election night, it got lost in all the traffic and noise

so I'll say it again.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered on Democratic campaigns this time around. People like you are why we won so big.

Romney cancelled campaign credit cards right after conceding.

Dixie's long reign of terror has finally ended.

Last night Barack Obama did something no other Democratic President other than Franklin Roosevelt has ever done: he managed to win more than 270 electoral votes in two elections without a single Southern state.

At 11:15 pm, Ohio put Obama over the magic number by bringing his electoral total to 274 and ensuring his re-election. When that happened the southern "swing states" of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida had yet to be called. Even though Virginia eventually fell into his column and Florida is likely to do so once absentee ballots are counted today (North Carolina returned to form by going back to Romney), their votes were icing on the cake. A coalition of Northern and Western states soundly broke the pattern formed by Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and laid to rest 236 years of terror pushed upon this country by reactionary southerners.

In 1776, American Independence was nearly scuttled by South Carolina over the issue of slavery; only after the removal of a reference to slavery from the Declaration of Independence and a tacit promise to preserve the "peculiar institution" did the resolution declaring Independence pass. From that day up until the Civil War, the Southern States held an effective stranglehold on American politics through the three-fifths rule (which counted slaves toward population, and thus representation and electors, while not granting them voting rights) allowing them to block any legislation that might negatively impact them. After Reconstruction, the "Solid South" formed by racist white Democrats in the former Confederacy gave them effective control of the Democratic Party.

The adoption of a civil rights platform plank in 1948 began the defection of racist whites from the Democratic party with the formation of the "Dixiecrat" party, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to a nearly complete exodus of this bloc to the Republicans. Richard Nixon courted these votes to carry him to victory in 1968, and from that day until the election of Barack Obama the southern states have either joined the landslide or provided the winning edge in every Presidential election.

With the building of an electoral coalition that can carry a Democrat to victory without having to pander to the South, the effective control of American policy by Dixie has ended. The racist elements of the Old Confederacy have been shown that in the end they are irrelevant. We don't need you, so you don't get to have a veto over our candidates or our policies any longer.

So whither the South? Who knows. Perhaps the progressive elements in some of the states will reassert themselves (as has happened with Virginia twice now, and happened in 2008 with North Carolina). Maybe the moderates in those states will finally come to the table to collaborate rather than dictate. Maybe the last of the old guard will die out and demographics will overtake them. The South may still prove itself a political force, but Dixie no longer will.