Sam: What you said was:
** And the point of my cite is that it showed that United Airlines was already in deep financial trouble way before 9/11, and that in fact you cannot prove that UA is bankrupt because of 9/11. If you have a cite that shows otherwise, by all means, trot it out.
My cite ended with:
- Notice that this does not say, “Almost immediately United went bankrupt.” No, it says, “Almost immediately United cut back.” “Cutting back” is not the same thing as “going bankrupt”. Duh.
This cite is not irrelevant bullshit. I did not argue your point by “agreeing with it”–I refuted your point. Now, if you want, you may certainly go and find a cite that says, “United Airlines went bankrupt because of 9/11” and then we can discuss it. I don’t have a monopoly on using Google. But unless you’re willing to go to the trouble to go find some cites to back up your position, all your whining about “irrelevant bullshit” ain’t gonna get you anywhere, argument-wise.
And the intent of your remark, given its context, was clearly that United was finished, all washed up, dead in the water. Thus I felt it was important to remind you that they aren’t dead yet, that they aren’t technically “bankrupt”, that your statement that “United Airlines is bankrupt” isn’t factually true. Many people don’t understand this distinction.
You said the economy was hurt by 9/11–no, actually, what you said was that 9/11 “damaged the economy heavily”. My cites showed that this was not the case, that actually the economy improved in the last quarter of 2001 and in subsequent quarters.
Yes indeedy, they sure did.
Your comment about Christmas sales was clearly in relation to 9/11. The whole subject of the friggin’ thread, Sam, is “how terrorist attacks could threaten the economy”, and you were talking about how 9/11 tanked the economy, and then you went on to add, “Today the economy is barely struggling back to life, but consumer confidence is very low, and we just had the worst Christmas season in 30 years.” We were talking about “terrorist attacks and the economy” and you brought up an “economy” factoid in support of your position that “terrorist attacks threaten the economy”. Far from “choosing to attack a point you never tried to make”, I chose to attack a point you tried to make, and incidentally will never be able to make–there is no connection between 9/11 and the 2002 Christmas retail season.
I “chose to get all literal and narrow of interpretation”, as opposed to making wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statements such as, “If Europe had shown some backbone to Hitler, WWII might have been avoided”, because unlike some people I could name, I dislike wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statements. And BTW, please be so kind as to explain to me why it is somehow unfair debating tactics to address the literal meaning of a wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statement, to deconstruct it, to break it down to its lowest common denominator. I know what the answer is–the answer is that it’s unfair tactics because when you break a wide, sweeping, categorical, empty statement down into its literal components, it suddenly sounds like complete horseshit.
Which is what happened here. So you’re pissed that I didn’t automatically agree with you that Saddam Hussein is as bad as Hitler, and that if Bush doesn’t stop him now, "who knows what the grim harvest will be? :eek: " Sorry you’re pissed, Sam. Not my problem.
My point about the “surrogate” thing was that when I encountered the word in the article, I interpreted it in its most common usage, which is as “stand-in”, and thus the comment didn’t make sense. But you just couldn’t let that slide, could you? :rolleyes: You couldn’t say something like, “Um, I think maybe he means…” Elucidator managed it–why couldn’t you?
**I hereby challenge you, here and now, you useless whiner, to go and find three (3) cites of SDMB threads where I indulged in pointless and biased Bush-bashing. G’wan, I dare ya. Here, use www.boardreader.com it’s faster, put in “straightdope” first and then your search string.
Betcha can’t, because contrary to your less-than-clueful opinion, I have never indulged in pointless and biased Bush-bashing.
You seem determined to interpret my criticism of Bush as coming from a member of some sort of kneejerk Anti-Bush Cabal, which is stupid, stupid, stupid, as I have NEVER contributed any pointless and biased Bush-bashing to any of the yammering, hammering Bush/Clinton/Gore-Stoid/December/Scylla & Company multi-page political threads. I don’t give a damn about Politics, and if you’d been paying attention, instead of being so anxious to rush in with your “grasping at straws” shot, you’d have known that.
