[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
And you Americans just get cuter and cuter and cuter… It’s like watching kittens fight.
[/QUOTE]
Fair shot. Like kittens on a highball of coke, crystal meth and PCP, sometimes – but kittens on coke, crystal meth and PCP are still kittens.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Nah. If you are stoning birds, they should be terns.
[/QUOTE]
Nah, 'cause then you have to stone every last one of them.
Gets kinda tedious, really. 
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
And you Americans just get cuter and cuter and cuter… It’s like watching kittens fight.
[/QUOTE]
Kittens with nukes.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
A person is more than just his body, though for all I know you may be the exception.
[/QUOTE]
I’m reminded of Fight Club: "“I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that was destroyed. It was me.”
So is your paycheck you? Are your material posessions you? Perhaps we should devote a separate thread to this topic.
No. please god, no!
I shop, therefore I am.
[QUOTE=wring]
No. please god, no!
[/QUOTE]
Allow me to guess. You’ve lost you Liberal Post’s Decoder Ring ®?
Don’t despair, I still have mine and it’s of little help. And yet, on a personal level (ya know, when, someway. somehow, REALITY comes into play), we seem to be able to communicate.
Go figure.
Carol, dear, as per usual you’ve got it all wrong. I have no need to cast pearls before swine – they’d never be impressed as we almost all know and I’d get their dung all over me. Just not worth it as you can surely (?) understand. OTOH, your Ignorance, as I mentioned priorly, remains impressive. Stuff of lore actually.
That having been said, would you feel offended if I, once again, congratulated you for it? Because I do.
Cheerio.
–
ETF,
We’ll see said the blindman. Prior to dusting my aging Celtic fan-gear, I’d like to see how Pierce (ugh!) and poster-boy Ray Allen, are able to put their megasize egos to he benefit of Team Play – and acknowledge that the only way to do that is to follow a finally mature Garnett.
Dunno – seems to me they are pretenders much more than contenders for the time being. I need not tell you that an undefeated five game run to start the year hardly a season make. And not to be a downer, but good ol’ Doc, as much as I like him personally, is not quite the lion-tamer. Quite the opposite actually.
Anyhow, my green stuff is not going to the cleaners quite yet.
Trust you understand.
Apparently, BG isn’t willing to back up his puffery with actual action. C’mon, write that check. 91%.
[QUOTE=Carol Stream]
Apparently, BG isn’t willing to back up his puffery with actual action. C’mon, write that check. 91%.
[/QUOTE]
This is as ridiculous as all those times people demanded that anyone leaning right join the military and go to Iraq. Actually, this might be more ridiculous, since I think trying to make a hamhanded and facile point about the value of life is slightly more noble than trying to make a hamhanded and facile point about money.
[QUOTE=Carol Stream]
Apparently, BG isn’t willing to back up his puffery with actual action. C’mon, write that check. 91%.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t she just about the cutest thing you ever did see? Shirley Temple with a knife.
[QUOTE=RedFury]
ETF,
We’ll see said the blindman. Prior to dusting my aging Celtic fan-gear, I’d like to see how Pierce (ugh!) and poster-boy Ray Allen, are able to put their megasize egos to he benefit of Team Play – and acknowledge that the only way to do that is to follow a finally mature Garnett.
Dunno – seems to me they are pretenders much more than contenders for the time being. I need not tell you that an undefeated five game run to start the year hardly a season make. And not to be a downer, but good ol’ Doc, as much as I like him personally, is not quite the lion-tamer. Quite the opposite actually.
Anyhow, my green stuff is not going to the cleaners quite yet.
Trust you understand.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, quite, quite. I too am in wait-and-see mode, less hopeful than the friend I was discussing them with today. Still giddy from the Red Sox triumph, she sees a renaissance in the Green. I’m a tad more jaded and agree with you that a five-win opener doth not a season make. Still, 'tis a nice little fantasy to visit now and then. At least for now I can tune into a game without having multiple barf bags prepared.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Isn’t she just about the cutest thing you ever did see? Shirley Temple with a knife.
[/QUOTE]
She must be wearing her big girl pants today!
[QUOTE=Carol Stream]
Ever assessed in the U.S.? 91% high enough for you? At that rate, only a fool would show up for work, or maybe a good socialist. Perhaps those groups overlap.
Will you write a check to the federal government for 91% of your income? Would BG, the American socialist, do it? I doubt it.
[/QUOTE]
No one was taxed at 91%, or if they were, I’d like to see a cite. This shows a complete ignorance of how the American Tax system works. You see, that 91% is the Marginal Tax Rate that you pay on Taxable Income over $400,000. Only on Taxable Income, and only on dollars earned over $400,000. Millionaires in those years just bought tax shelters thus their true tax rate was so low they had to institute the Alterative Minimum Tax.
So, you ask BG to cough up 91%. The current Marginal Tax Rate is 35%, so I assume you just write the IRS a check for 35% of your Gross? :rolleyes: :dubious:
What a maroon.
Tom, this “Yours is a silly claim based on a desire to raise a straw man argument against all taxation founded on a false claim that applies an example of a hypothetical situation about an extreme situation as though it was relevant to less extreme situations despite the fact that your hypothetical has already been demonstrated to be a lie based on actual historic events.” was great. Thanks.
DrDeth: Bravo. One would think that Carol Stream would read her own cite:
There are plenty of characters on this board, but I think Carol Stream is the Triple Crown winner for the worst informed, least interesting, and most abrasive poster around. She makes Ann Coulter look like Emily Dickinson.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
Sorry for that. I can only post at work if it’s not busy, and at home, I’m on a friend’s wireless router that regularly conks out for hours at a time. So I cannot always return in a timely fashion to threads I’ve been participating in. In the other thread, by the time I got back to it, it had already petered out, and n00b that I am, I thought’d be a bit presumptuous of me to raise it from the dead. I’ll (try) not to let it happen again.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll buy that for now.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
Maybe it’s simply a matter of you being a foreigner and speaking negatively about someone else’s country?
[/QUOTE]
That’s just kneejerk defensiveness, not a valid counterargument to criticism, though.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
For me, it doesn’t matter that you’re from SA, only that you’re not American, so in the context of discussing the relative virtues of nations, the most natural point of comparison is to use the detractor’s home country.
[/QUOTE]
Once again, I wasn’t discussing *relative *virtues. The point I was addressing didn’t say America was better than X, stronger than Y or more of a beacon of hope than Y, just that it was good, strong and a beacon…
[QUOTE=Fuji]
If, given what you have said already, but with your self-identification as being El Salvadoran rather than South African, I probably would’ve cracked wise about death squads.
[/QUOTE]
And if you’d been the latest of a whole series of people cracking wise about death squads, you’d have gotten the same response. It’d still be a fallacious argument, and one I’d have been sick of pointing out.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
So noted. I can understand that viewpoint. As long as you can understand that others have more nationalistic/tribalistic sentiments.
[/QUOTE]
I do - but I don’t think it’s something that should go unopposed.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
Your taking offense at my * tu quoque* appears to me to be very similar to how someone who was nationalistic would respond to a slight of their homeland.
[/QUOTE]
Except for the fact that I gave an explanation of why I was pissed in amongst the colourful language.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
I broadly agree with your assessments here.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks
[QUOTE=Fuji]
Well, I think it’s your use of “devotion” in this context that appears nutty. As if any American born after 1940 was even alive when the confluence of historical factors was at work shaping the US urban/suburban landscape. At this point, in 2007, it’s not like anyone can just magically “squish” the suburbs back into the central cities. Had you used “devoted”, instead of “devoting” (which implies a current, on-going process), then I could see your point. Of course, it would still be ironic in a discussion of American weakness, as the scale of urban sprawl was as great as it was precisely because the US from 1870-1950 was so strong - it had vast tracts of land, cheap and plentiful natural resources, and a burgeoning industrialized populace.
[/QUOTE]
…but severely lacking in foresight. And no, I only have to read the recent small car and urbanisation threads in GD and other places to see that there’s a substantial sector of your populace that still is “devoting” itself to the Suburbanist mindset. It’s not just a legacy problem.
[QUOTE=Fuji]
Of course, this is a discussion for another thread. I’d be happy to do so except…
[/QUOTE]
You’re the one who combined a rehashed tu quoque with “pussies”, you don’t get to roll your eyes at my swears. I’d thought I’d been perfectly civil up to that point. But when it comes to slinging the Anglo Saxon verbiage, I believe in asymmetrical debate responses. Deal.
But since we’re back to being civil, we can keep it that way from here on out - if you choose. I’ll probably still be sarcastic, but I can even cut that out if you’d like.
[QUOTE=Ravenman]
…She makes Ann Coulter look like Emily Dickinson.
[/QUOTE]
Hope is the thing that had wings
Now I’ve got them…"
[QUOTE=Blalron]
I’m reminded of Fight Club: "“I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that was destroyed. It was me.”
So is your paycheck you? Are your material posessions you? Perhaps we should devote a separate thread to this topic.
[/QUOTE]
Look, I just stated my opinion. If people want to engage me and argue about it, I’ll defend my opinion. It was my labor from my body and my mind that produced my paycheck, so yes, it is a part of me. My possessions — my home, my gifts from my family and friends, everything I own — these exist because I do. That’s why I have a natural right to them, and to make decisions with respect to them. No other man was born with my mind and my body and thus has no ethical claim over me. That’s how I see it, and that’s how I intend to express myself when it comes to rights. If people want to make fun of my opinions, they’re entitled. They’re also usually idiots who don’t even understand why I think the way I do, and brats who don’t care why I think the way I do. Their stupid snippy remarks are so dumbass that they don’t even make sense.
ON PREVIEW:
Damn, that was harsh. I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t directed at you necessarily. But I just get tired of my inoffensive philosophy being swiped at by morons who don’t know Adam Smith from Granny Smith. Sorry.
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
But since we’re back to being civil, we can keep it that way from here on out - if you choose. I’ll probably still be sarcastic, but I can even cut that out if you’d like.
[/QUOTE]
Civility is my default mode, so that’s cool by me. I got no problem with sarcasm, either. In fact, I was trying to be sarcastic when I said what pissed you off.
FWIW, there was no venom at all behind my posts. I’ve already burned off my passionate idealism over the last decade or two, and now I’m kind of like a dispassionate observer when it comes to political debates.
Mind you, that’s “dispassionate”, not “disinterested”.
See you around the boards…
(And if you really did want to discuss urban sprawl in the US, I’d be genuinely interested in participating. I’d do it myself, but I just don’t want to start a thread in GD that I might not get back to for a couple days.)
Mental note: Pit the modern usages of “disinterested” and “amoral”.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Mental note: Pit the modern usages of “disinterested” and “amoral”.
[/QUOTE]
<sigh>
OK, last time you objected to my use of the word “free” in reference to goods and services for which one does not have to provide payment. So, what’s your beef with my usage of “disinterested” in this case?