Ditto, ditto, ditto. Same goes for the Great Decider, He wraps himself up in that to justify all his shit too. We need a term, like Godwinizing, to cover this sort of shit.
If the point was “I am incapable of advancing my argument on its merits, and must therefore resort to cheap demagoguery”, you have succeeded.
Okay, let’s recap: Here’s is your post that I commented on:
with this:
You then replied:
Which was a brilliant response. :rolleyes: Then, aside from the obvious fact that I posed a hypothetical (if you don’t know what “hypothetical” or “if” mean, I suggest you look them up), when I asked you for clarification you said:
So, since you didn’t object to my first sentence, I assume you are okay with what was a statement of fact. Good, as it was a simple fact. Then, we move to the hypothetical (indicated by the word “If”), to which you brilliantly point out didn’t happen. Well, congratulations, you’re amazing powers of observation and deduction have revealed that the hypothetical I posed didn’t actually happen!! Give that boy a lolly!
Which leads to your next stellar observation: that another hypothetical posed by someone else didn’t actaully happen, followed by a whine of, to paraphrase, “Don’t use hypotheticals if it might validate “The Great Decider’s” latest complaint.”
And finally you close with a a defensive accusation in an attempt to take the heat off yourself. Not only did I not “act like [you were] going to wander off on a tangent”, I was trying to find out if you even had a real point to make and what the hell it was. Which, evedently you don’t. Other than, of course, sticking you’re fingers in your ears and whining “no hypothicals, no hypotheticals, no hypotheticals because they may make Bush look like he isn’t an asshole”.
I think that about some things up.
What point? Screaming “SEPTEMBER ELEVEN!” over and over like a broken record is pointless, shithead.
And if we use this tragedy as an excuse to take away our freedom and our rights, then guess what? The terrorists WIN, you bloody cuntrag piece of shit!
They hate us for our freedoms - so we better get rid of them because I’m scared!!!
Scared shitless! 9-11! 9-11! Someone call 9-11 because I’m crapping in my pants scared. Look at these pictures of the Twin Towers! They make me scared!
No more freedom of the press. No more individual liberties or the Enemy will hate us even more!
Everybody Run!!!
SteveG1, mhendo, Giraffe, Steve MB, Revenant Threshold, and anyone else that would like to sweep the incident of 9/11 under the rug and never utter it—even in a discussion about a program that was instigated it and seeks to prevent it from happening again—tell me, is it EVER appropriate to bring up those 3,000 deaths? Ever? What type of discussion might you envision where it might be relevant?
Have you all lost your fucking minds? Or are you so blinded by your hate for Bush that you seek to quash any utterance that might justify anything that comes out of his mouth? Or is it both?
Three thousabd people were murdered on 9/11 that effected the course of the world. Whether you agree or disagree that the event justifies the war in Iraq, it was the seminal event. One that has changed the world we live in. And your collective attempt to classify the event as out of bounds IN A DISCUSSION ABOUT A PROGRAM THAT INSTIGATED IT AND SEEKS TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN is disgusting.
God forbid we recall the event and remind ourselves what we are fighting against and what is at stake.
And just for the record, it’s not just the pictures some find so “inconvenient”, complaints of the mere mention of the event have gone out throughout the thread at any mention. And while I understand the inclination to rail against a gratuitous appe to emotion, in this discussion it is absolutely relevant. Just ask yourselves: "why might the governement have even contemplated such a program?
And then try to answer it honestly.
The total shit-headedness of magellan’s shameless emotional appeals do provide an interesting insight into his mind and the minds of similar administration defenders who let no facts or reason penetrate their heavily protected and constantly reinforced worldviews. He obviously thinks he was achieving some sort of valid argumentitive goal with those photos, as if the events of that day had somehow been forgotten by everyone else in the thread and it was his job, or more than that, his duty to put everyone else in their place with the “point” that he was charged from on high with making.
The same hysteria is gripping many conservative media pundits with their accusations that the New York Times engaged in some kind of treason with the publication of articles which illustrate the criminal transgressions of the current governing class in this country. Again, this is as if the editors and journalists of that paper, whose home of Times Square (named after the presence of what newspaper again?) is one of the most famous New York landmarks, and thus one of the most likely targets in future attacks.
These people must really be shitting their britches every day without the security blanket that is an authoritarian state led by a man who happens to share the same political affiliation that they do. Never mind more than two hundred years of a free press in this country, never mind that the president has repeatedly announced before this article that the government has long attempted to track the money of terrorists, never mind the Wall Street Journal’s role in this affair, never mind that the cries of outrage from those paid to be outraged have made the original story about a hundred times more visible than it was originally; “In Bush We Trust” has become their motto, their callsign, their religious mantra. He is the only one who can take their fear away, and so they’ve given him a blank check, and anyone who disagrees must obviously be a “traitor”, because the government, in their eyes, is no longer based on the constitution, but is instead based on a new cult of personality.
What’s most disappointing about this is that some of the programs, like the one original reported in the USA Today, might even be accepted by the American people if the government didn’t attempt to implement it illegally. I personally don’t have much of a problem with a database tracking phone calls if there’s a possibility that the data collected could help identify multiple terrorist cells through calling patterns if you input the telephone number of a single known terrorist.
But there is no middle ground for these people. Either you believe that this president is the new messiah, send by god to deliver us from the dirty furriners, or you’re a traitor. Their religious devotion to the leader doesn’t allow the possibility that we might be totally for networks of observation that can save lives, but against the implementation of these networks through illegal means. Their minds simply cannot hold such a concept, even though it isn’t particularly nuanced or abstract.
On preview, I see that magellan is still a total shithead. And that doesn’t make me angry. It makes me sad.
Sigh.
Of course, what I meant to say in the second paragraph was:
Again, this is as if the editors and journalists of that paper, whose home of Times Square (named after the presence of what newspaper again?) is one of the most famous New York landmarks, and thus one of the most likely targets in future attacks, have somehow been able to forget the danger they face every day when living in that city.
Sorry to blow your two-dimensional world view, asshole. But I am absolutley no fan of Bush. The fact is, as I’ve stated on the boards numerous times, I voted against the man twice. And I would vote against him a third time if it were possible.
So, it looks like you are guilty of the very thing that you incorrectly accuse me of, you fucking hypocrite. So take your broad brush and your reflexive adherence to the Hate Bush Doctriine and shove it up your ass.
Yes, 3,000 people were murdered on that awful day. Yes, the world was changed in drastic fashion, but it wasn’t the victim’s fault. They won’t be any deader if we retain our civil rights. That attack was nearly 5 years ago. Exactly how long should we allow you and the GoP to gratify your necrophiliac lust by sodomizing those 3,000 bodies to justify any half-baked power grab you want to make?
I am glad.
That rant started with you, but I quite deliberately shifted the scope of it toward those Bush supporters accusing the New York Times of treason. Nowhere did I accuse you of being such a Bush supporter. If you aren’t one, then those parts obviously don’t apply to you. I see exactly where I could’ve made that shift more obvious to you, but your attitude in this thread makes me not care overmuch. Your demogoguery has been disgraceful and repugnant. No one has forgotten the destruction of those buildings, least of all newspaper folk in New York.
We are concerned about terrorism. It can’t be said any clearer. But we are also concerned about the civil rights that have guided this nation since its inception, and if you are not similarly concerned about those rights, regardless of your opinion of this president, you are a clod and your contributions to this board, and to the world in general, will continue to be totally shit-headed.
I always find it appropriate to mention the WTC/Pentagon attacks when discussing actions we should take.
Of course, I notice that when we went into Afghanistan (where the leaders of the group that actually staged the attack were living in the prtotection of that government), President Bush was very clear that “nation building” was a bad idea and that we should not get embroiled in a sideshow effort when we needed to keep our eyes firmly on our primary goal of fighting a War on Terror.
I then notice that he pretty much abandoned Afghanistan (where we had some small hope of actually attempting nation building, given that 98% of the nations of Earth thought we were justified in our assault on Aghanistan and that we had offers of help from many of them) to fall back into the same troubled war lord squabbling that had allowed the Taliban to come to power in the first place. Following that debacle, we were then encouraged to make war (in violation of the charter of the United Nations, the charter we pretty much wrote), on a separate nation, a nation that had only the most tenuous ties to one or two groups that could be remotely connected to al Qaida, a nation that had nothing to do with the WTC/Pentagon attacks, and in order to pursue this war of aggression, we had to alienate the majority of countries who had supported us in Afghanistan and bribe or coerce a host of tiny countries to give token support for our assault so that we could pretend that there was a coalition of “the willing” that actually supported us, all based on a constant theme of “9/11”–which was nothing but a lie to rationalize our desire to invade a country that was, at best, a minor player in the world of terrorism. Our “allies” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had provided far more support, in terms of finance, intelligence, and manpower for al Qaida than Iraq ever had. Sudan and other nations were more actively involved in terrorist actions.
The issue is not that “9/11” is something some of us wish to ignore. It is that the actual network that produced “9/11” has been ignored by this adminstration while they used the false cry of “9/11” to go out and wreak havoc on other peoples with no idea of what their actions would produce.
Anyone who links “9/11” to Saddam Hussein and Iraq is either a blatant liar (V.P. Cheney) or an abysmal fool.
Wow! You’re seriously fucked up to write that, dude. So, anyone who brings it up—again, in a thread discussing a program that was instigated by 9/11 and seeks to prevent a similar disaster from happening in the future—is “sodomizing those 3,000 bodies” due to “necrophiliac lust”?
Tell me, how do you feel about films showing the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or any war footage. How about the Arizona Memorial? Why the desire to sweep the ashes of the victims of 9/11 and the memory of the event that took their lives under the rug? (Again, in a relevant discussion.) Simply unbelievable.
To even write that sentence you did is so beyond the pale. I just hope none of the family members of those 3,000 victims are on these boards and will see that sentence. I just hope someday when your syphillated mind stops frothing with hate long enough for you to remember what you wrote and are as disgusted by it as a normal person would be. May the memory of it haunt you to the last day of your miserable existence.
Just wow. About both the sentence and the degree to which you are scum.
I’ve been called called worse, by better men than you.
As for the familes of those 3,000 victims, I’m pretty sure some of them, particularly the ones mentioned by Ann Coulter, would agree with me. In case you missed it, my point is that the GoP oughta be ashamed of the way they exploit the victims of 9/11 to justify the steady erosion of civil liberties. They’re saying that because 3,000 people were murdered nearly 5 years ago, it’s perfectly reasonable to monitor private phone calls, bank accounts, emails, library records and any other damn thing the want. I’m saying bullshit.
And besides all that, I wanted to call you a corpse-humper. I’ll probably do it again. God Bless America.
I commend you on a well thought-out, well-written post.
That said, Iraq has little , or nothing, to do with this discussion of late. The seminal event was 9/11. We were put on notice that people wanted to blow us up. With that realization, the administration set out to take steps that would prevent something like that from happening again. One step was to go into Afghanistan. Another was finding away to put a stranglehold on the finances the make terrorist acts possible. (Going into Iraq is not important to our discussion as both the seminal event and the financial tracking program in question predate that decision. Even if we never went to Iraq, we would have been tracking their finances, as we sought to do it prior to going.)
So, while I agree with much of your analysis, and even assuming it is 100% correct, it has no bearing on the little shitstorm that is being spewed by some at a couple mentions of the 3,000 people who were killed. Mentions which I maintain were 100% relevant and appropriate in this thread.
I am gratified by your opening line. Not because it proves me to be right, which it does not. But because it may give pause to those who wish to quash the mention of that event and wish to write off my willingness to bring it up as, well, you can read as well as I.
I think your opening line:
Combined with this:
And this:
point to a different conclusion. But I will take you at your word.
Unfortunately, the abuse of “remember 9/11” in which this administration has engaged, has poisoned the use of the phrase.
People who note that the first implementions of the PATRIOT ACT were directed, not against terrorists, but against mid-level drug dealers (who were not part of any finance chain to terrorists) and people who have seen expanded surveillance measures employed to go after Oh, the horrors! purveyors of internet pornography (and not kiddie porn, either), have a right to be concerned that “9/11” is merely camouflage for a desire among members of this administration to abuse the rights of citizens in pursuit of specifically Right-wing election goals. It may not quite justify the anger demonstrated in this thread in the last few hours, but it is not unprovoked.
No doubt.
And you might be correct. But you’re shifting the argument. The question is in discussing whether or not any of the things you list is wise or not, bringing up the seminal event that is the cause for any of those things being proposed and debated is completely in bounds.
Knock yourself out. I would just ask that you leave the 3,000 victims out of it.
ROFLMAO. Good one.
Tell ya what, you stop digging them up to further your mental masturbation, and I’ll stop commenting on it. Deal?