I didn’t say it was unfair to me; I said it was a waste of time and would settle nothing. I could spend five hours going thought the endless (oops, better make that ‘virtually’ endless…don’t want to trigger a furious demand for cites that Cheney mentions are truly without end :rolleyes: ) threads and posts that mention Cheney, find the cites that are in demand, post them, and not one. fucking. thing. would change! It’s not going to change anyone’s mind; no one is going to say, “Hey, SA is right. People here think Cheney is mean but no one can show proof…guess I’ll have to revise my own opinion of him.” Additionally, it would only lead to further derailment of the thread by the picking of nits with whatever was said in the posted cites.
So what’s the frickin’ point? I value my time more than to spend it trudging through hours of posts looking for information that will accomplish nothing.
Well, I don’t, and I got a few minutes to kill while Mrs. Shodan goes off to the charity car wash in her new bathing suit. So what the hell - let’s see -
Here we have two Dopers accusing him of conspiracy to commit murder.
There’s this thread, where Cheney gets called a scumbag and “the single most evil person to hold high office in US history”.
OK, now - are we going to try to find some meaningless semantic nitpick to dismiss them all, pretend that this wasn’t one of those “prove the sky is blue” time-wasters, or immediately claim that all these people think Cheney is mean because of his politics and therefore Starving Artist’s question was answered all along?
I’m betting on the last, since it tacitly denies that the request for cites was really a way to avoid debate.
It’s a win-win for the Usual Suspects. They pretend to raise some meaningless objection to something that they know to be true all along. If proof is provided, they can disregard the cites and return to the argument they were going to make anyway. If no proof is provided, they can pretend they won the argument.
It’s a form of trolling, although they can act the injured innocent by claiming they were really just asking for proof of an assertion.
It’s a nice try, Shodan, but the request was specifically for a cite for Cheney being mean. I don’t see that in any of your cites, although I’m open to correction if I missed it. Evil is not exactly the same thing as mean, after all, and nobody was asking for cites that Cheney is widely disliked. But Starving Artist put forward a very specific claim: that Cheney is widely regarded as “mean” by those who dislike him, and that there is no reason for this other than pure partisanship and a childish fixation on the man’s appearance. Now, to be honest with you, I don’t really doubt that there are plenty of posts out there calling Cheney “mean.” The question is, are there any posts out there that call him mean for reasons other than those attributed to his detractors by Starving Artist? SA’s first attempt to substantiate his claim was such an abject failure that the demand for cites shifted to the much less burdensome request for a cite that people call him mean at all, for any reason. SA didn’t even try for that one, which is puzzling, because I’m pretty sure there are plenty such posts out there. But if one seeks to rebut the claim that people who call Cheney mean have no reason to do so, you need some actual claims of meaness to analyze. And until you showed up, no one seemed interested in doing SA’s work for him.
Actually, based on long experience with the underhanded debating techniques employed by both yourself and Starving Artist, it was more in the nature of an attempt to define specifically what was being claimed to prevent the constant shifting of goalposts you both practice when your claims are shot down. Or, rather than prevent, let’s say “make patently obvious to any disinterested third party,” because we both know there is no force in heaven or on earth that will stop you from constantly changing the nature of the debate to get out of admitting how badly you’re being hammered.
No, asking for cites is a way to engage in debate. SA claimed that people who say Cheney is mean don’t have any concrete cause to do so. How can one argue that point unless they have specific posts to refer to? Posts that SA has been unable to supply, so he takes his usual course (after his first cite was shot down in flames) of saying he was “paraphrasing” (here’s a hint for you, SA: it’s not a paraphrase if you significantly alter the content of what is being said in your restatement), of saying he’s “not interested in a debate” (he sure posts a lot for someone who doesn’t want a debate, doesn’t he?) and that people are only arguing with him because they’ve got some sort of a vendetta against him (which ignores the fact that anyone who is as routinely dishonest as himself would be treated any differently. And by the way, how are you feeling today, Shodan?)
Am I one of the Usual Suspects? I hope so. I’ve always wanted to belong to a club.
An interesting insight into the Shodan lexicon! Apparently, you define “trolling” as “a liberal winning a debate against a conservative.” An enlightening lesson on the workings of your mind, but not terribly useful to the deabte at large, I’m afraid.
In fact, I started to warn Shodan that this difference-without-much-of-a-distinction was sure to be the response, but deleted it so as not to give the appearance of sour grapes. Sure enough, though, the semantic nitpickery I anticipated was not to be long in coming.
You’re nothing if not predictable, Miller!
Additionally, I don’t know for the life of me why you’re puzzled that I didn’t post cites of people calling Cheney mean. What part of ‘I’m not gonna waste my time proving the obvious’’ did you not understand the several times I said it? (An obviousness which you acknowledge yourself in the post just above. Are you not aware of the irony this admission creates, as you only illuminate yourself my allegations as to the disingenuous and obfuscatory motives you have in demanding such cites in the first place?)
Actually, y’all might want to lay off using that term, since you, Shodan, Starving Artist, and Duffer are in fact Usual Suspects yourselves, if by “Usual Suspects” you mean persons who, just like yourselves, habitually mischaracterize any politically arguments you happen to diagree with.
Re: the OP: I 've never had the slightest notion that being liked by the public was something that Cheney cared very much about. unfairly or not, I find him a person who appears to have no particular interest in civic life other than to accumulate wealth and power. Perhaps he has done something politically, as Vice President, that was of an altruistic nature, but I’m at a complete loss as to what that might be. I could imagine that, just like a mythical Mafia don, he believes that he has done what he needs to do to secure his family from want, but I personally see nothing much to like or admire in the man.
Oh damn, you caught me out! I’ve just admitted to something I’ve been saying since my first fucking post in this thread. Way to go, Colombo! You really nailed me!
It’s not a nitpick, you moron. You made a specific claim. Two, actually: that people call Cheney mean, and that they had admitted that they had no reason for it. Not evil: mean. The reason this distinction is important is, if I rebut one of Shodan’s links by pointing out that there are, in fact, some pretty good fucking reasons why that person feels that way (reasons you might not agree with, of course, but reasons none the less) then you’ll say, “Well I wasn’t talking about that post, I was talking about people who say he’s mean.” You know why semantics are important? Because you’re a weasel, and unless the terms of the debate are nailed down precisely, you will weasel away from your claims, just like you always do.
Yeah, you can always count on me not to swallow your bullshit.
Well, “puzzled” was me being generous. See, you only started saying that after you provided a cite, and it was shown that it didn’t remotely say what you claimed it did. That’s when this, “Oh, I’m not interested in debating this issue,” schtick cropped up. Funny timing there, eh? Soon as you realized you didn’t have a leg to stand on, you weren’t interested in a debate. But geeze, you sure have been posting alot to this thread for someone who’s “not interested in a debate.”
How am I being obfuscatory? I’m not making a particularly difficult request. I’m asking for evidence that the things you claimed happened, have actually happened. What is disingenuous or obfuscatory about that? The last three pages have been you tap-dancing furiously, trying to come up with some workable excuse for not having to admit you’re just making shit up. There’s only one person in this thread who’s scared of an honest discussion, Starving, and that’s you. Because if you had to use honest arguments, you wouldn’t have any arguments at all.
Oh damn, you caught me out! I’ve just admitted to something I’ve been saying since my first fucking post in this thread. Way to go, Colombo! You really nailed me!
It’s not a nitpick, you moron. You made a specific claim. Two, actually: that people call Cheney mean, and that they had admitted that they had no reason for it. Not evil: mean. The reason this distinction is important is, if I rebut one link by pointing out that there are, in fact, some pretty good fucking reasons why that person feels that way (reasons you might not agree with, of course, but reasons none the less) then you’ll say, “Well I wasn’t talking about that post, I was talking about people who say he’s mean.” You know why semantics are important? Because you’re a weasel, and unless the terms of the debate are nailed down precisely, you will weasel away from your claims, just like you always do.
Yeah, you can always count on me not to swallow your bullshit.
Well, “puzzled” was me being generous. See, you only started saying that after you provided a cite, and it was shown that it didn’t remotely say what you claimed it did. That’s when this, “Oh, I’m not interested in debating this issue,” schtick cropped up. Funny timing there, eh? Soon as you realized you didn’t have a leg to stand on, you weren’t interested in a debate. But geeze, you sure have been posting alot to this thread for someone who’s “not interested in a debate.”
How am I being obfuscatory? I’m not making a particularly difficult request. I’m asking for evidence that the things you claimed happened, have actually happened. What is disingenuous or obfuscatory about that? The last three pages have been you tap-dancing furiously, trying to come up with some workable excuse for not having to admit you’re just making shit up. There’s only one person in this thread who’s scared of an honest discussion, Starving, and that’s you. Because if you had to use honest arguments, you wouldn’t have any arguments at all.
Au, contraire. In this case (mean vs. evil, that is…which is the nitpick I referenced and not anything I said, moron) they are virtually the same. How so? Because while one may be mean without being evil, I don’t think it’s possible to be evil without being mean. Ergo, calling someone evil carries with it that the charge that they are mean.
Bullshit! “Puzzled” was you being sincere (for a change). You clearly were mystified, in your comment to Shodan, as to why I didn’t bother coming up with these cites, cites which you acknowledged yourself there were no doubt “plenty of”. Yet you continued to try to harangue me (without success, I’m happy to add) into wasting my time coming up with cites to show what you knew all along.
Bullshit, again. I started the not interested in a debate “schtick” when I began to be accused of improper debating tactics.
SA, old pal, you’ve been been pwned. Completely. You made an assertion and failed to back it up. I say this as someone who isn’t out to get you: If you assert something as fact, it’s your burden to support that fact when challenged, or concede that your opinion is baseless. Being in the Pit doesn’t give you a free pass to make an allegation, then claim proof of it because it’s so obvious that you don’t need to dig up cites.
It’s getting downright painful to watch you in this thread. You should study Bricker as a model of someone who will concede error when it’s proven to him.
Elvis, m’lad, I don’t know who your astrology lady is, but her interpretive skills bite it. Mars on a square like that doesn’t indicate “vibrant, stimulating” but somebody with some serious anger management issues. 4th house placement indicates strife in the home, conflict with parents (esp. the mother). Has his house ever burned down? Has he stopped beating his wife?
Simply put: this is a quite optimistic “spin”. Two bits says her interpretation of GeeDub is equally “positive”.
SA says he asked “several of the Cheney-haters” for some substantiation, and they answered with some vague hand-waving and some patently uncertain and prejudicial attitudes based on his party affiliation.
He claims to remember this. He cannot be bothered to substantiate. But we are to take him at this word, regardless, because his memory is faultless and he has a mind like a steel…you know…that thing that snaps closed on an animals leg.
I like to shoot guns and drink beer, or at least I did when I still resided in my native Texas. Emptying beer cans and plinking them with a .22 is good clean fun. I’m not about to shoot anything, or anyone, that might prefer that I didn’t. Bambi has enough damned issues to deal with.
But I would just flat out pure-D love to tell a Texas cop to come back in the morning for my breathalyzer! Lord yes, that would be a hoot!
Yes, I know what “nitpick” you were referencing. It’s the same one I was talking about in my last post. And, as much as you want to desperately deny it, words have specific meanings. You said people who think Cheney is mean have no reason to do so. You didn’t say evil, you said mean. And you have not yet provided one iota of proof for this claim. Because you have none. Because you are lying, and you know you are lying. And there are no lengths to which you will not go to avoid admitting this.
No, SA, I was not really puzzled. It was a figure of speech. As for you being so proud of not “wasting your time coming up with cites,” that’s a pretty pathetic thing to be proud of on this board. Especially since we’ve wasted far more time arguing over why you won’t come up with cites than would have been used if you’d just provided them when first asked. How this works out as a victory in your mind, well, that is genuinely puzzling.
Which is exactly what I just said: as soon as people started pointing out that your attempts at debate were nothing but lies and distortions, you stopped being interested in debate.
So you claim, but that places where you accuse me of being obfuscatory are, in fact, places where I was being precisely the opposite.
