Forgot: about my screen name…Nothing to do with what you and others here suggested.
It is simply the name I gave to my favourite horse. A brown Arabian horse, of course.
Aldebaran.
I don’t like this sort of response, usually, but we really ought to examine this tripe:
I’ll accept this as a valid statement.
What you call them is irrelevant. By lumping all Protestants together, you ignore that many of those denominations opposed the war while others supported it. The various major Protestant groups tended to have their origins in Europe, not the U.S., and any educated person should be aware of both the origins and the differences. You did not merely say that Graham and Bush were Protestant, you said they were the same. (G W Bush may have received counselling from Billy Graham, but that is not the same thing as saying that their beliefs are identical.)
The Graham who influenced Bush many years ago is the father of the Graham to whom you are currently objecting. You may wish to claim that this is of no importance, yet the reality is that the younger Graham is quite different than his father, both in his beliefs and in his personality (which is reported to be quite hateful). So, based on nothing more than a family connection, you have leaped to the incorrect conclusion that they are “all the same.”
It contradicts nothing: you have demonstrated your ignorance–which has a direct bearing on your thesis in the origial thread–and you have claimed that you are not interested in eliminating that ignorance, as you state in you next point:
One does not need to be schooled in the “thousands of sects” in order to avoid making stupid statements of ignorance that diverse groups (some who supported and some who opposed the war in Iraq) are all the same. You have also claimed that you “learned” about the various denominations by visitingmessage boards. I submit that that is a pretty poor way to get to know any group, given that most message boards are dominated by argumentative personailities that are not necessarily the same as the adherents of the denominations. I further submit that any intelligent person should be aware of that limitation and not draw false conclusions based on being exposed only to message boards.
Yeah, yeah. you claim to be dyslexic, so you are also too lazy to use copy and paste to repeat the word denomination. OK. We understand that you are lazy.
No. We do read your posts and respond to the actual words that you post (rather than to the tortured thoughts careering about inside your head that don’t make it to the page because you do not take the time to review them and edit the errors). Whatever you think you have tried to say, we are responding to what you actually said.
We are meeting your childish tanturms at your level. You are the one who has played the “guess where I’m from” game and other childish pranks.
As noted, we meet you at your level.
We do not chase off intruders. (If we did, we would not have as many posters as we have. You will also note that many of the posters (even on this thread) are relatively new to the board. We do tend to harrass people who post drivel and begin name-calling as soon as they arrive. Your generalized comments about “PROTESTANTS” and “Americans” and other groups you attacked, without providing any more substance than your own unsupported beliefs, fall into the category of the sort of childish name-calling that does get attacked, here.
However, the horse’s name had an origin and you were clearly ignorant of its source, missing the irony between your username and the accusation you made. (By the way, what do you call the front of your horse?)
Og is not going to be happy that he now has to fight for attention with Hod.
Hi, Aldebaran–
Ha, common ground! I also used to have a brown Arabian named after a star. (Arcturus. I didn’t name him, though, he came to me with that name.) But I don’t know why you say, “of course,” it sounds like the theme song from Mr. Ed.
Maybe this is an obscure way of saying you yourself are a Mr.E?
I really recommend reading comprehension classes for you. Let’s walk through this slowly, and with small words to help you understand.[ul][]In his GD rants, he implies that Americans are mindless sheep who follow their warmongering president on a crusade of conversion. Still with me?[]At the start of this thread, he virtually dares anyone to identify what his name means.[]I was amused by the relationship between the origin of his name and the attitude he conveys; i.e. calling us followers while his name means the very same.[]And you came along a while later and completely missed the point of the entire thing.[/ul]There. Now we can be friends again.
I feel so sorry for Aldebaran.
He seems convinced on the one hand that we are deliberately trying to chase him away and on the other hand that we are interested enough in him to want to play games to figure him out.
It’s so pitiable.
What a sad little man he must be.
The thing about the white van was a joke right? And his claim to be a well-known “lunatic comedian” sounds a little preposterous and wacky. Either that stuff was a joke, or Aldeberan is a joke. Of course, maybe he is a joke. He’s clearly the stupidest, most annoying, obnoxious, braindead pile of shit to grace the boards in quite a while.
Anyway, let’s keep it up. The more hostile and dismissive we are, the quicker this moron gets bored with us and departs to annoy another message board elsewhere. The only person I saw in those other threads who seemed to like this guy was Susma, who only used the post as yet another fucking plug for his one-trick-ponyish bullshit “postgraduate Catholicism” that he mentions in every fucking one of his posts on any subject. If Susma likes somebody, I think that speaks volumes about that somebody’s lack of intellectual merit. We’ve had a few posters recently come on strong with 40+ posts per day to start out, and they all degenerated quickly into trolls who were quickly banned. So I think we know what to expect from this latest idiot.
I feel sorry for Aldebaran, actually.
I get the feeling that somewhere, underneath the mangled English and the confrontational attitude and the overall lunk-headedness, there’s someone who wants to ask the tough questions and genuinely learn about how things work – in short, the quintessential GD-residing Doper. Heaven knows he’s not the first person on the SDMB to criticize the Bush Administration and/or Iraq War II.
The problem is, that fundamental proto-doper is buried under six hundred feet of mangled English, confrontational attitude, and overall lunk-headedness. I don’t have the energy to try to dig through all that crap, and I suspect most other folks here don’t, either.
And thanks gosh for now. The last thing we need are bones with intelligence and conscience.
[/quote]
- GW Bush was saved by the oldest Graham from his alcoholism. GW Bush sees graham has his spiritual leader. GW Bush sees himself as “inspired by Hod” and whatever.
[/quote]
And so…?? It has been established GW Bush is a METHODIST whereas Billy Graham is of a DIFFERENT denomation. Does that makes GW Bush a member of the non-existent sect of Graham?
Then you shall have tagged this line when you said “Protestant”. It seems that I am using a different dictionary from yours.
The first part of point 4 is right, the second part is wrong - even if you don’t know about Christanity in US you still think you can make unfounded statements about it and get away with it. If you want to make statements about Christanity in US, especially in debates, then you have to study it, or else you have no business to state those unfounded statements.
I did.
You, so far, has displayed excellent behaviour, but you still get your facts wrong.
It’s funny, but after reading the GD thread, and this thread, I keep hearing a song:
…The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paperboy brings more…
You, so far, has displayed excellent behaviour, but you still get your facts wrong.
I never claim I have “all my facts” right. Life is a learning experience. Yet the way people respond on this forum is everything but mature.
So this makes me conclude that I’m still in the lead here because excellent behaviour is what builds the foundation of constructive dialogue and even heated debates survive the test if excellent behaviour remains the guiding line.
So may I suggest some people here change their behaviour in a normal adult, and mature one and the rest will fall in line and into the right perspective.
Aldebaran.
By the way: I fall backwards of the childishness of the reactions here even when I post a joke, like admitting I’m seen as an excentric lunatic (which is coming close on how some of my family members must perceive me) and an ambulance waiting to get me locked away in a safe place (which is what some people in my entourage may dream to be able to do in the hope to get rid of me).
People even don’t seem to get it when I lead them on a bit (see comments on “Aldebaran”) to avoid giving information about myself I don’t want to give at the moment.
I must conclude that those people ar that self-observed and focussed on coming across as as hostile as possible that their brains fail to function as they would do under normal circumstances.
Well, I’m again leading, since I have only one functioning braincell which suffices to not only write in a language I don’t master, but to read all these rants here in that same language and to make me smile.
Aldebaran.
And yet you insist that your opinion is the correct one, even after you admit that you don’t know.
In the lead? Thus far you haven’t proven yourself to anything but an America basher. We’re just not impressed. Others have done it better than you.
The “right perspective”? Is that synonymous with “What Aldebaran thinks”?
Maturity, by the way, also means accepting that you may not be right. It also means understanding that people will disagree with you. Let me know when you figure that out and then we can talk.
Airman,
May I suggest that you re-read my posts and figure out what you seem to miss.
Aldebaran.
:rolleyes:
I have a better idea. How about you tell me what you think I’m missing and we’ll go from there?
Well you miss for example what I say in the post you answered on: that I never claim to have “all my facts right” because life is in its nature itself inevitable a never ending learning experience.
That gives then immediately the insight that your remark
“The “right perspective”? Is that synonymous with “What Aldebaran thinks”?”
floats on a looking from a wrong perspective at what I try to transmit as my opinion.
Aldebaran.
Aldebaran, what profession are you in that allows you to keep such a nice horse? If you won’t tell us what country you’re in (my guess is Belgium) how about letting us know what you do for a living? That’s a great way to break the ice around here.
I’m an editor and researcher for a scientific journal in NYC. There!
Oh yeah, while we’re waiting: Gobear, defending or trying to explain beliefs that you yourself don’t subscribe to is a very classy thing to do and really in the spirit of this Board. A big hug for the fuzzy wuzzy Gobear! 
And Aldebaran, your name appears in nice big black letters alongside your post, so there’s no need to sign it too. Mark of the amateur around here. A sig, or signature, is different. If you’ve made your name a sig in your sign-in field, please go in and remove it. And oh yeah, fill in your Location field while you’re there. No, it’s not mandatory, but it’s a nice thing to do.
Oh well… I can give you some insight I suppose, although I prefer to stay on the surface when in comes to give personal information.
As for my studies: I got while exhausting my one working braincell a doctorate as Arabist and last year finished what you call Masters in European History. Now I’m supposed to procede with my research for a doctoral thesis, which is a comparitive study on the social- economical impact of the Crusades on both societies involved.
Why do you think I live in Belgium?
Ah, about that signing with my name: I always do that. To me it is a matter of being polite to the reader who makes the effort to decipher my writings.
Aldebaran.
I thought Belgium because of the French and Dutch, although I suppose the second language would properly be Flemish, which I know is pretty close.
Hmm…a full-time student that can keep a purebred horse :dubious:
The student loans in your country must be pretty generous. I’m jealous.
And really, there’s no need to put your name on your posts. The reader knows who you are already and it just wastes bandwidth.