This comment comes with complete seriousness, and no snark…
I think there is a small possibility that people like you, Ann Coulter and Glen Beck will one day reveal themselves as satirists. And all this time they’ve each been playing a character like Stephen Colbert does, but never acknowledging it to anyone. They might then be hailed as the greatest performance artists in history.
It’s a long shot, and wishful thinking on my part, I know. But it’s what I think of when I read posts like this.
The answer to both of these is painfully obvious. When you force people to pay significant portions of their income into programs with the promise of future benefits (such as they may be), they naturally become protective of that investment and determined that when their time comes to get some kind of benefit from all those expenditures - expenditures that could otherwise have gone to care for and provide better for themselves and their families - they get what [relatively little] they’ve been promised.
In other words, the programs don’t still exist because they’re popular and well-liked; they exist because the government has forced people to buy ownership in them. And then of course, once they reach retirement age and have made no plans of their own because they government has forced its plan on them and left them without the money that could have gone to provide for themselves, they support it because thanks to the government it’s all they have.
Sorry about my part is helping this become the “everything was perfect in 1952 before you communists took it all away!” show. It should rightfully return to bashing Rand Rover.
You know, there’s nothing at all to keep you from contributing to support our art. A post office box where you can mail your contribution is available by PM.
SA, I see your critics offer only name calling instead of debate… I wonder why.
I can tell you exactly why. It’s the de riguer response for anyone not hewing to the liberal line. Been that way for decades.
Plus they have no defense. 
Take a look at the names that more serious and less frequent posters and debaters such as Sam Stone and Bricker come in for around here, and you’ll see that name-calling on this board is more a function of politics and less a matter of individual style.
You see it because you’re a delusional fucking moron.
SA is shown to be wrong in nearly every thread he posts in. He is uninformed and blindly ideological.
Are they all trying to impress each other?
Could they offer some rational arguement to sway the undecided?
This is an incorrect characterization. We offer debate along with the name calling. But more importantly - Starving Artist is a one trick pony. His claims have already been mercilessly run through the wringer and it makes no difference to him. Everyone knows what he’s about, and just about everyone dismisses him. Since this thread should be about bashing Rand Rover instead, I figured we could spare indulging SA this once.
OK, could you tell how he is wrong?
PS I’m not a moron, I graded far into imbicle territory.
Because this is the BBQ Pit and not Great Debates? :rolleyes:
Could there be more to it than that?
No, they’re all just expressing their outrage at somebody who dares to think differently than they do about things, and who dares to point out to them the damage they’ve done to this society.
To them, there are only two ways to think, which is their way and the evil/stupid way…and, being either evil or stupid (or even better, evil and stupid) they feel perfectly justified in their practice of name-calling. This is because their opponents don’t deserve respectful treatment you see. There is simply no way of thinking that differs from theirs that calls for anything other than vitriol.
You can see this in almost every post that Lobohan makes, where he invariably calls anyone who he disagrees with a moron, like he did with you, or otherwise casts aspersions on their intelligence. This is not only typical of the liberal thought process but in his case ironic as well, given that he is a truly stupid person and almost without exception less intelligent than the people whose smarts he is attacking.
I am here trying to understand their POV. Do they not believe that you get more of the behavior that is rewarded?
Lovin’ the Socratic dialogue, guys. Almost makes you look like two different people.
If it’s all right with you, I’ll just keep up my support of the NEA. Will that work? 
Earlier today I posted a comment in another thread about a poster who has some of the same feelings you do. I said I think he has a bit of a persecution complex, and actually desires to see himself as a kind of message board martyr.
I don’t intend this as name calling, although it’s possible you may interpret it as such. But the fact is, there is spirited debate on these boards. If you happen to be in a minority opinion a lot of the time, tough. But I certainly don’t want you to stop posting, or leave, or somehow “conform” to the prevailing opinions, and I don’t think most others do either.
Can we stop the whining along those lines? I welcome debate and dissenting opinions, but I also reserve the right to point and laugh when those opinions appear to be at odds with reality as I see it. I think we should drop this mini-meme of “the SDMB wants me to go away because I don’t agree with the approved opinions.” It’s just not the case.
Name-calling and insults would be the case in Great Debates too if they were allowed.
Not true. I post about lots of things, music, movies, health care, current politics. It only seems like I’m a one-trick pony to you because if there’s anything liberals hate, it’s being shown the error of their ways and how many lives have been lost or fucked up and how much society has declined as the result of liberal ideological and political influence, and so my posts on that subject take on a life far larger then either the number or scope of my other posts.
And further, to LavenderBlue and whoever else thinks I should shut up about the subject, I would ask why should I? The problems not only still exist but they’re getting worse, so why should a person get only so many passes at addressing them? This board is filled with the same old complaints about conservatives and Republicans that have been going on since long before I got here. And you’re all still going on about racism and homophobia, a couple of subjects which, unlike the problems I raise, have gotten much better. So why is their redunduncy not annoying to you as well?
I knew it! Those liberal artists get all the dough. 
This seems to be a common belief around here. Not to say this is the case with you because I believe you’re being sincere, but I generally tend to think of this kind of comment as an easy way to dismiss the conservative poster’s point of view…his points aren’t valid, he just has a persecution complex.
As far as why I post here, there are a couple of reasons. One is that for the first time in my life I can actually confront people whose way of thinking has had what I regard as a very harmful effect on this country; and two, I don’t like leaving things I disagree with to stand unchallenged. It makes them look like accepted fact. Still, I’m only one guy and there are dozens of threads and hundreds of posts every day that I could take issue with but simply don’t have either the time or inclination. I’ve often been surprised at how much certain people around here seem to think I’m in their face all the time. I can assure you all that you are in my face much more than I am in yours.
This is pretty much how I look at it. But I certainly don’t want you to stop posting, or leave, or somehow “conform” to the prevailing opinions, and I don’t think most others do either.
Have you missed the posts in this thread uging me to shut up, to stop posting about these things because I’ve posted about them before, to put me on ignore? That kind of thing? lissener even started a Pit thread once for the express purpose of trying to rally other posters to ignore me until I came to my senses and began to acknowledge that the liberal posters are right after all.
Besides, I don’t really post that much at all about how the board wants me to go away. What I post about is how any dissenting point of view is reviled and considered evil or stupid, and how liberals, both here and in society in general, seek to oppress opposition to their own beliefs through intimidation and insults and name-calling. That’s what I’m on about, and the reason for it is that I am very concerned about what the future holds when only one ideological point of view is tolerated. I have come to be of the opinion that liberalism is an utterly dictatorial and inflexible and unyielding ideology and one which seeks to utterly crush its opponents. We’ve seen this repressiveness taken to its logical extreme in countries like the Soviet Union and communist China and Cuba, and it’s enough to make me want to fight it tooth and nail every time it rears its ugly head.
http://www.gop.com/firepelosi/
It’s been nearly a day, and the RNC has yet to raise a $ million for its “Fire Pelosi” fund.
Has the fire gone out of the GOP base? Utah, Alabama, Idaho and Alaska in particular seem to be doing less than their fair share for the effort.
By the way, you owe me a new Irony Meter. Projection, much?