Lest you add me to your pile-on list, I have mainly dealt only with your interpretation of the polling data and urged you to get back to the more important debate: what should be more important?
I’m disappointed in you Sam.
You convienently ignored my post, and continued to reiterate the same unsupported conclusions based upon your misreading of the question you quoted.
Again, the question is:
“Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted today?”
It does NOT ask which is the most important issue.
It asks which mattered most in deciding how they voted.
Even someone who does consider terrorism the most important issue in the world today might place it last for this particular question, because they think any of their favored candidates would do equally well against terrorism.
I had hoped you would just admit you misread the question. Instead, you start a pity party for yourself. Sad.
litost: It comes from a simple summing of the responses in the question John linked. But let’s get off this, okay? I don’t want to bash Democrats, especially in light of John’s cite, which shows that only 36% of Republicans think it’s the most pressing issue. If you’d like, I can rephrase it like this:
“What the hell are those idiot Republicans thinking? Here they are championing the war on terror, and defending Bush’s trampling all over civil liberties with the Patriot act, and only 36% of them even think it’s the most pressing issue?”
Does that make everyone feel better? I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Democrats vs Republicans on this issue, if in both parties there are only a minority of people who think that the war on terror is the most pressing issue facing us. Because I happen to think that terrorism and our response to it is the defining issue of the nextg 20 years, and it is going to have a severe impact on our security, our civil liberties, our economy, and ultimately what the world is going to look like in fifty years.
Some people seem to think that it’s just business as usual - there was a terrible attack, people got worked up, and now it’s time to put it behind us. Apparently, this attitude exists among both Republicans and Democrats. And I garan-damn-tee that the average Canadian feels even more ambivalent about it.
To me, this is dangerous. Because if you don’t think terrorism is any more dangerous now than it was 20 years ago, you’re going to vote against funding it, you’re going to put the CIA back in a straightjacket at some point, and we’ll try to sweep the problem back under the rug like we’ve done for the last 20 years (and I include Reagan and Bush I in that - Reagan’s running out of Beirut was incredibly damaging).
Anyway, if we do that again - forget about it, stand down, and ignore the problem, then at some point there will be another attack, and this one will make 9/11 look like a warm-up. And the increasing power of technology is going to put ever-more destructive weapons in the hands of people who want to kill us. Biotech, nanotech, computing power… Terrorists are getting more dangerous each year, and more able to communicate and organize larger and more devastating attacks.
Don’t let a couple of years of relative domestic calm lull you into thinking the problem has gone away - because it hasn’t.
Gee, would you really? Are you covered should you have need of medical attention? I’m not, because I have NO HEALTH INSURANCE. Neither do a few of my friends and relatives. Still wanna trade just because you have to wait for six months to see a freakin’ eye doctor?
If we had a better system of social services in this country, I would not have had to choose between seeing a doctor or paying my rent.
Well, I’m glad that your family had the luxury of choosing their pride rather than their stomachs, allowing you to put food on the table without accepting that nasty icky welfare money. Sadly, not everyone is even that privileged. Kindly talk to me when you’re so poor you don’t have a CHOICE but to accept welfare, lest you and your children starve or get thrown out of your apartment. Due to a disability I’ve been through periods of extreme poverty like that, and hunger was a daily companion. Eventually I grit my teeth, bit back my pride, and accepted what little the government could give me.
Of course, I’m not alone in needing assistance. However, thanks to the efforts by our kindly Bush administration and republican congresspersons, people who have been desperately looking for jobs are not able to extend their unemployment insurance payments. This will give Bush the ability to brag about job statistics, “hey, fewer people are on unemployment!” while ignoring the fact that they’re all still UNEMPLOYED.
And you don’t think that THAT is one of the major issues we have to worry about? Not being able to afford to put food on the table thanks to a craptastic social services system led by a government that cares more about publishing phony optimistic statistics than the actual people who are suffering?
Wow. (Blinks) Just … wow. Well, congratulations. You came this close to being the subject of my very first pit thread. (The reason you’re not is that I’ve only got like 15 posts to my name, and I don’t think anyone has “earned” the right to start a thread in the Pit until s/he’s been much more active at the SDMB.)
Look buddy, I live in NYC about a mile from the place where 3,000 brutally, tragically lost their lives. Friends were in the WTC when the planes hit; fortunately they escaped. When I hear a plane or helicopters overhead I still feel nauseating lurch in my gut.
So yeah, terrorism is a major issue. But it is not THE major issue to me, and obviously to many of my fellow citizens. Sure, we can hide in a bunker behind sandbags afraid that every day will see a new horror thrust upon us; we can tremble as we pull down the lever to vote for Bush, willingly giving up our freedoms according to his fascistic master plan aka the PATRIOT act.
OR, we can actually lead a life that’s worth living, focusing on feeding & educating our children, paying our rent, having a meaningful or at least a decent-paying job, and even demanding that our government seek to repair our woeful international reputation so that we aren’t quite so hated and detested, which is partly why we have a huge-ass bullseye on our backs in the first place. (One way of doing that might be to stop invading countries and deposing their rulers without the sanction of the UN or any freakin’ provable reason. Hence the higher percentage of people mentioning the Iraq War in those exit polls.)
The truth is, when it comes to fighting terrorism, I trust all the major Democratic candidates faaaar more than I trust Bush. This confidence will give me the ability to focus on other issues when choosing a nominee, and I suspect that this is how many of the Democrats who voted in the primaries feel.
Besides, if we don’t have these other priorities … if we don’t care more about maintaining our families & communities than obsessing over fear and allowing our government to abridge our liberties … what exactly will we have left to save from terrorism? We’ll already have destroyed everything we value in our nation.
So kindly don’t you dare sit on your lofty throne up in Canada and presume to decide what should be uppermost in MY mind, or the mind of any American.
I want to keep the U.S. worth saving.
Nighttime: Sorry I missed your original post. You are of course correct. John alluded to the same problem in his first message, and I conceded the point. John’s cite showed that this attitude is shared by the public at large, which I also conceded. It’s CLEARLY not just Democrats, okay?
Sam:
Oh, and don’t forget –
the sky is falling, too!
What I can’t figure out is why nobody’s worried about all the tree pollution out there. I mean, think about it: the Smoky Mountains got their name from all that tree pollution. Why, did you know, trees pollute more than SUVs! That seems like a major problem to me, and nobody’s doing anything about it at all!!
We ought to get to work sawing the fuckers down ASAP!
This sounds so suspiciously like the shit Bush & Co. were saying prior to invading Iraq, that ever-so-dangerous country that posed no threat to the US whatsoever. Hell, they hardly even have any trees there. How could they have constituted a threat to world peace?
Hentor:
Yeah. Months later, and Sam hasn’t a single bad word to say about all these politicians who lied to us. But he’s ready to smear “Democrats” again at the drop of a hat, because of one lousy exit poll at taken during a caucus.
Sam:
Poor Sam. We’re all so terribly unfair to him.
Again.
Now now, what’s this all about?
I protest my innocence!
As an aside, has anyone noticed that virtually no other “ideologue” jumped to Sam’s defense? A year ago, this thing would have turned into a free-for-all. Nowadays its like Sam’s become the Lone Right-Winger.
Choie: Your post is a hijack, so I’m not going to argue it in depth. Feel free to start another thread if you’d like.
But I do want to say that I would not disparage anyone who accepts welfare, and that was not my intent. I’m also on record as supporting a limited amount of welfare, by the way.
My family chose not to accept welfare for our reasons. I continued to shun government handouts like student loans and business grants (I was offered a development grant for my small business, and turned it down) simply because it would be hypocritical of ME to accept them if I don’t approve of those programs. I’ve got no problem with anyone else accepting them, okay? The only reason I brought this up at all was because of a baseless accusation of hypocrisy by someone else, which I didn’t want to go unrefuted considering that I’ve gone to considerable personal expense to avoid being a hypocrite.
But I suggest you don’t try comparing your poverty to mine or anyone else’s. You have no idea how I grew up or how much money we had. Let’s not make this personal. If you feel you really need to take a shot at me, go ahead and open your first pit thread. It would be my first too, and after almost 8,000 posts I’m overdue.
Mr. Svinlesha: Again with the trees? What, are you trying to bait me? Do I have to link those tired old threads again? Let it go, man. It’s old history.
A small correction: I had a student loan. What I turned down was ‘remission’. The Canadian government offered to forgive 40% of a student loan upon graduation, just by filling out the remission form. I refused to fill it out, and paid the extra 40%. In retrospect, it was probably a stupid thing to do.
Sam:
This isn’t to the point of the thread, but is just one of those observations I make from time to time. I’m quite sure that when you posted this topic you had no conscious intention whatsoever to be offensive, or partisan, or piss people off, or whatever. But again, this is one of those instances in which you fail to grasp the way in which your own actions affect others. So I hope you don’t mind if take out the time to try to explain it to you.
To begin with – as you have admitted yourself – the title of the thread is, almost by definition, going to draw an irate response from people who feel that they are 1) Democrats, and 2) concerned about terrorism. That’s obvious. If I had started a thread entitled “Do Canadian Libertarians felch goats?” and introduced it with a survey of goat-felching Libertarian Canadians (over 53%!), then, at the very least, I might expect non-goat-felching Canadian Libertarians to find my OP slightly offensive – especially if I drew misleading/specious conclusions from the survey I had presented. And I do not think it would have helped matters if, while introducing the topic, I had hedged my assertions by asking, “Is this a phenomenon exclusive to Canadian Libertarians alone, or is goat-felching common to all Canadians?” In other words, sticking a small qualifier into an OP that is fundamentally offensive to begin with doesn’t really help matters all that much.
See what I mean? No, of course, you probably don’t.
Between your first (OP) and second post in this thread there were eight responses. None of them were particularly snarky; they were all level-headed comments about your OP, pointing to things like the deductive fallacies wedged into your reasoning, the basic rationality of placing economic worries ahead of fear of international terrorism, the fact that the issue had been done to death over the past year, the fact that the falloff represents a national trend, etc.
The first lines of your second post read:
Now, you see, you have:[ul]
[li]failed to address any of the specific counter-arguments to the conclusion drawn in your OP, [/li][li]grossly oversimplified and mischaracterized the views of those who have replied to your arguments thus far, and, to really top it off,[/li][li]insinuated that everyone in the thread who disagrees with you is ignorant.[/ul][/li]
You conclude this second post with a little statistical sleigh-of-hand, ostensibly geared to continue impugning Democrats as being less concerned about the threat of terrorism than Republicans, and finish with yet another rather weak protestation of innocence – “who, little ole me, biased? Naahhh. Just trying to strike up a conversation, you know.”
After 3 more responses, we come to the first reply that might possibly be classified as snarky – i.e., minty green’s acidic observation of your Canadian-ness.
You claim, “Thereafter followed a couple of snarky comments from others that had no place in the thread, about me being Canadian, about how I no doubt take advantage of all kinds of government services, etc. I then responded to those charges in my third message, and to Stoid’s comment that terrorists ‘aren’t a pressing concern of the average person, nor should they be.’” In fact, there were 8 messages between your second and third posts, the majority of which were polite and rational. But, having chosen to ignore the 8 polite responses prior to your second post, you continue by ignoring the following polite responses after that post as well. Instead, the only thing that jumps out at you, apparently, are the snarky comments; all the rest is background static.
Not backing from the OP a minute, you return in this second post ( #19) to insist that Canada is actually “right in the middle” of the “War on Terror,” that you don’t take advantage of Canada’s social services, and that Stoid’s one response exemplifies the “head-in-the-sand” thinking that will cause “us” to “lose the war,” blithely skipping over all of the intervening objections to your arguments to conclude:
. In your next post ( #21) you go on to assert that:
…grossly exaggerating and distorting the replies you have thus far received and again ignoring rational counter-arguments. Your response indicates that you intend to selectively exploit the replies from this thread to try to bolster your claims, even after a number of posters have repeatedly demonstrated that you drew false conclusions from the survey in the first place.
By this point, things begin to spiral downward a bit, not surprisingly. Replies start to get a bit snarkier, as posters realize they’re arguing with a post. Now, having successfully provoked your debating opponents into taking pot-shots at you, the time comes to play the poor victim. We start by focussing not on the continuing rational (if, perhaps, somewhat exasperated) responses to your claims, but rather by wasting an inordinate amount of time on replies that express a gut-level negative emotional reaction to your entire presentation thus far, such as Hentor’s.
Finally, at post #39, the meltdown arrives and you “drop the bomb.” We have the fullscale “displaying of the wounds,” as you quote virtually every response in the thread that might be construed as an offense against you, while once again ignoring the vast body of responses that were polite, well-reasoned, and rational, especially at the beginning of the discussion. The “I’m-just-another-conservative-martyr-here-at-the-SDMB” mantra is deployed as the last line of defense, while you whine (rather pathetically):
Thus, at least when I review this thread, what I see is a group of posters patiently and rationally responding to an essentially flawed and inflammatory OP, who over the course of a long series of responses are subtly manipulated by the thread’s protagonist (that’s you, Mr. Stone) into more and more irrational and aggressive replies. Having successfully engineered this state of the affairs, you throw it back into everyone’s faces and take to the high road, once again playing the victim in a drama you’ve skillfully crafted for yourself:
Sam:
Since I sincerely doubt you are yourself aware of this pattern, I’ve decided to bring it up for your consideration. It is not my intention to offend you or “pile on you” in any way. You have often expressed your feeling that you are treated “unfairly” in these debates, but in my opinion you shake the “left-wingers are irrationally rabid” totem all too often here. Nobody in this thread has gone “absolutely apeshit” thus far, on the contrary: you posted an extremely inflammatory OP and were met with a great deal of tolerance and rational argument, which you more or less consistently ignored. When this defensive maneuver in turned provoked a gradually rising tide of aggressive responses, you dropped the rational side of the debate to focus on the personal attacks you suffered, having cunningly saving all of them is some dark little corner of your soul. You then mischaracterized the entire tone of the debate and, in so doing, literally transformed yourself into a victim of savage Democratic demagogues.
Comments about a poster’s personality or behavior belong in the pit, generally, but since my views hardly seem pit-worthy, I decided to post here “at the scene of the crime,” so to speak. Hope that’s okay.
Taking a few snippets from a poll, or taking any information out of context and generalizing it into what a person or entire group thinks is naturally going to get you criticized for being disingenuous.
For example, CNN today reports that the President’s budget has
cut all funding for building detoxification research. I guess Senator Frist would just have to learn to live with the ricin.
So based on this one piece of information, I guess we can safely say that Bush no longer cares about fighting the terrorists.
See how ridiculous it is?
Back to the op …
Basic point Sam, what was the question asked? What helped decide your vote today? NOT what is important to you. The Dem canidates are not differentiating themselves based on who will provide better homeland security. As a Dem I assume that all my candidates will accomplish that as well as anyone. If I got a chance to vote in a primary (which looks doubtful, since it seems like it will be a wrap by the time it gets to me) I would not decide between these candidates based on that, even if it was job one in my mind.
Is terror job one? No. Healthcare is up there. A less unilateral foreign policy is. An exit strategy in Iraq. A stable MidEast with true democratic reforms and native science and industry with employment opportunities and jobs growth and education is (as I think that the lack of such is the largest root cause of Islamic fundamentalist extremism and thus terror). The economy a bit less so to me, mainly because I think it is really more like the weather and rather unaffected by anything a president does. Terror? Do some numbers Sam. 9/11 was tragic but in numbers of lives lost over the size of this country we are all at very little risk compared to the impact of many other issues on our lives.
So you clarify by saying you didn’t really mean to slur Democrats only, you meant to slur the integrity and even the basic intelligence of *all * Americans? *That’s * what you call an apology? Nope, that deserves only a two-word reply, if any at all, too.
**Mr. S ** is way too patient with you. The issue you have is a more fundamental one, and one that has been pointed out to you multiple times in the past as well: Refusal to accept responsibility for your own statements and their consequences There are still lessons you can learn from the example of december, who was as you know finally banned for a thread not all that dissimilar in nature from this one.
That is just plain ridiculous. Dec’s thread was a deliberate troll. The OP is one of the mildest attacks on one political party you’ll find in this forum. And it clearly leaves the door open that the problem exists in both parties.
That’s it for me in posting stuff “about this thread” in this thread. I’ve brought up several points with Sam where I still disagree with his conclusion. If he cares to address any of them, I’ll jump back in.
Perhaps most people realize that, Al Qaeda or no Al Qaeda, their odds of being killed in a terrorist attack don’t even come close to their odds of being hit by lightning on the day they win the lottery. Not that it’s not an important issue, but it’s not realistic to be afraid of it every day and not prioritize the issues that DO affect your life every day, like your job and perhaps healthcare.
Densensitization HAS to be an issue. It’s become part of politics and it’s no longer very real in that sense. We’re over the shock of September 11 and it’s clear that most of the time, when it comes up it’s only to justify policy.
John, call it “ridiculous” if you like, but you do seem to acknowledge that the difference is one of degree only. There aren’t many different words for a fact-flouting, broad attack on the character of a large class of people. The fact that he extended it to more large classes of people, with the same disinterest in factual basis, is hardly to his credit in that regard, although you say otherwise.
He’s had every opportunity to turn this into a reasonable, respectful discussion, but has taken the opposite tack instead - what does that imply about his intentions in the OP? That he meant to have a real debate here? Pshaw.
John Mace:
?
Strange, I don’t see any attacks on the Republican party in this forum at all.
There is one in the Pit, complaining about the Pubbies misuse of pop-ups – hardly a viscous attack, if you ask me – but maybe that’s where this should have been posted in the first place, anyway.
Having said that, I do of course agree with you that comparisons between Sam and december are a bit over the top, at least in regard to this thread.
Sam Terrorism just isn’t as important as health care, education, and the economy. If you had lived in UK or Northern Ireland you would still feel the same way even if you had seen the results of Terrorist attacks with your own eyes. Yes terrorism is terrible, yes terrorism needs to be stamped out, but if you let it dominate your life and become more improtant to you than health education and economy then you are letting terrorists win. The terrorist wants to cause terror, of yopu let them, then you are playing their game the way they want you to.
Perhaps more a matter of an unexamined premise.
For instance, I have a relative who’s political persuasions are just to the left of Kublai Khan. Say he were on these boards. He comes across a thread “Why Do the Democrats Want to Give All My Hard-earned Money to the Welfare Queens?” he might very well think “What an interesting topic! Why do the Democrats love welfare queens?”
Those of us who know and cherish Sam, the Canadian Eagle, are well aware that his political inclinations…lean to the right. It is entirely possible that he viewed the question as perfectly valid, and saw nothing inflammatory or derisive at all.
I, of course, being of the conservative wing of the extreme left, instantly saw the OP title as being both inflammatory and derisive. Then I saw it was Sam.
Ah, well, says I, that’s very different. Never mind. I further note that friend Sam has been adequately instructed as to his error, further remonstrance from me would be superflous, not to mention ineffective to the point of futility.
Be assured, Sam, that your name does not appear on the “To The Wall!” list. I would even oppose a stint in the Jane Fonda Re-education and Corrective Indoctrination Camp. Perhaps a sinecure in a historical museum: “This Way to the Conservative Curmudgeon!”
Welcome to the SDMB.
You are getting the december treatment. Criticism of Republicans is “debate”, criticism of Democrats is “trolling”.
So what else is new?
As regards the OP, Bush and the Republicans are to some degree the victims of their own success. The Taliban is history, al-Queda is on the run, the threat posed by Iraq to its neighbors is eliminated, Libya has agreed to de-nuke, North Korea is coming back to multi-lateral discussion of disarmament, and international terror has received some significant body blows. The threat is by no means ended, but Bush has had significantly more success than previous Presidents, and therefore the American electorate feels justified in transferring its limited attention span to other topics.
For Democrats, it is even more important to change focus. Any admission that international terrorism remains a significant source of concern would almost inevitably bring to attention the successes of the current administration. Which is partly why they so strenuously disregard the effect of the conquest of Iraq on Libya et al, and their continuous repetition that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. And why discussion of the term “Axis of Evil”, after some initial deriding, was quietly dropped by the far Left. Because then, they might have need to discuss what has been happening lately with the AoE, and it is not to the credit of anyone they would like to support.
Besides, Dean based his whole campaign on not being Bush when it comes to the war on terror, and look what happened to him.
Sorry about the pile-on. Look for some Pittings, in an attempt to goad you into bannable behavior.
Regards,
Shodan