I Told You So

[samclem]

@Scylla

If you mean that neither Kerry nor Clinton would have reacted or endorsed a reaction as extreme and immediate as Bush’s to the threat they beleived Saddam presented, than you are probably correct.

You hit a home run, there!
And, if Bush hadn’t invaded, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion about rancor.

See! It’s all Bush’s fault.

[elucidator]

Why, goodness, Milroyj, I care about what you think almost enough to finish this sen

[Scylla]

@elucidator

Why, goodness, Milroyj, I care about what you think almost enough to finish this sen

“sensimilla bong?”

[milroyj]

@elucidator

Why, goodness, Milroyj, I care about what you think almost enough to finish this sen

Hey, it ain’t me you owe the apology to, but whatever. Still, you’re going around other threads (sorry, I’m not bored enough to gather links) calling other people liars, like you have room to talk. At least Dio is finally chilling, why don’t you?

[elucidator]

@Scylla

“sensimilla bong?”

Hell, yes, Scylla! Damn fine idea! Gotta say, though, you’re about the last guy I figured…oh, wait. I see. Never mind…

[Starving_Artist]

@elucidator

Or to rephrase it another way, neither Clinton nor Kerry would have gotten a thousand of our best and brightest killed for what proved to be a chimera.

Really, its just a matter of phrasing. Except, maybe, to them.

Ain’t it funny how for every liberal or conservative belief there’s an equally ernestly held belief that is just the opposite? Clinton got 3,000 of our best and brightest killed on 9/11 by not going after Bin Laden the three times he could have simply because his advisors deemed it politically inexpedient.

This is precisely what Bush is not doing by going after terrorism in the way he is now. You want to blame somebody for our actions around the globe, blame Clinton. The proper action by him at that time would likely have avoided all this now.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Scylla

Well you bring up a couple of interesting points. I think this feeling of betrayal is poorly placed on this issue. We need to face a couple of unpleasant facts: The subject of gay marriage was brought up seperately on numerous ballots and it was shot down by an overwhelming and presumably bipartisan majority. Secondly, John Kerry lest you forget was against gay marriage as well. He basically echoed Bush’s sentiments in the debate.

So, while you may have felt that this was the main issue in the presedential election, it really wasn’t. They were both saying the same thing. Clinton signed DOMA to. Gay marriage is not really being supported meaningfully by anyone of consequence in either party.

Kerry supported civil unions. The amendment would have prevented them.

[quote]
I think it got shot down as an individual issue on the ballots because of the way it was presented to the public. The first attempt at gay marriage was not a legislative one, it was a sneak attack. We had judges legislating and Mayor’s and such taking initiatives to try to ram it down the throats of the public. I think the natural reaction to this is hostile regardless of the merits of the position, and I think the backlash against it was caused by it.[.quote]
This is baloney. Judges were not “legislating.” They were not creating new laws. They were finding existing laws to be unconstitutional and striking them down. That’s what they’re supposed to do. If a state legislature tries to ban interracial marriage, and a state court strikes it down on constitutional grounds, the court is not being “activist” or “legislating from the bench,” they are being constructionist and responsible.

Those state legislatures never had the right to ban SSM in the first place and those bans wer rightly stricken down. All the Mass. Supreme court was doing was enforcing its own state constitution. it had no choice. Blaming the court is blaming the messenger.

And let’s not forget that the juduicial branch is a branch of governent with just as much authority and gravitas as the legislatures and the executives. It is their duty to protect the constution and they are doing their duty.

So many people on these boards support gay marriage, both conservative and liberal. Why do you think that is?

Because it’s right.

I’ll tell you why I think it works. I think it is an idea that wins and works. Why try to force an idea like this judicially when it works as an argument by itself, as an idea? Why try to demonize the people that oppose it? It’s a strong enough idea that most people can be convinced. They’re not going to be convinced by being attacked and called bigots though, or told that they are bad people.

Once again, this betrays a misunderstanding of the judicial system. The courts are not creating new law, they are striking down laws which are unconstitutional. That’s they only thing they can do. It would be improper for them not to strike those laws.

The merits of the idea should be the message, not that people who oppose it are bad.

This approach worked during the civil rights movement, and indeed it works for most ideas if they make sense. This one makes sense. Argue the merits of the idea and it will win. Argue against the people who oppose it, call them names, demonize them, and they will never consider the merits.

This thing is going to happen because it is right. People will be convinced if they are exposed to the idea in a manner that does not threaten or attack them.

No one is asking for new rights or new legislation. They are simply asking that they not be excluded from the existing benefits afforded to others. They are asking for bad laws to be removed, not new ones to be created.

Hopefully we can disagree rationally, but again Saddam as a threat and posesser of WMDs was a pretty bipartisan idea. Bush had a mandate on this to use his discretion to enforce the UN resolutions.

Wromng. Bush did not ever have a mandate for regime change.

Kerry wasn’t against this either. He maintained in the debates that Saddam was a threat. His main contention is that he would have done what Bush did except smarter and better and more effective and with worldwide support.

Kerry did not ever say that Iraq was an imminent threat which could only be dealt with by a preemptive attack on sovereignty. Kerry thought Iraq was a “threat” like North Korea is a threat and Iran is a threat and China is a threat. He thought Iraq needed to be dealt with but he never said it needed to be invaded.

Personally, I believe we needed to do what we did in Iraq, and I beleive it’s gone rather well. It went better than I expected so far. I know the costs are high. I expected it. So, I don’t see the failure of WMDs in Iraq as a lie. I think he was wrong. There were many reasons for invading Iraq. I think Bush’s failure and Bush’s lie was in taking the easy path and allowing the debate to be recharacterized as solely one of WMDs, and for stating as a certainty something that was not. That was a negligent lie.

Self defense is the only legal justification for an attack on sovereignty. The Bushies had no choice but to formulate their “imminent threat” theory of self-defense. Even that turned out to be bullshit but framing the justification any other was was legally dead in the water.

And i guess it goes without saying that I don’t agree for a second that the war has gone well or that it’s been worth the cost.

I think he fucked up on this and made a bad mistake. I think the less of him for it. I would have voted for Lieberman or a centrist Democrat. I think Kerry was a very very bad choice. I think the mistake that the Democrats made was in not offering a palatable alternative. I think Kerry was very very liberal. I did not respect and could not support what I thought was a far worse lie than Bush’s, which was the betrayal of his fellow veterans and the lies he told while he was with VVAW. I did not think that Kerry was arguing ideas. I said a year ago his major campaign them was “Bush Sucks” and that he was the worst of the candidates presented by the Democrats. He never really argued what he stood for and wanted he wanted to do. I felt that he was saying things that he thought people wanted to hear, rather than his true feelings.

I don’t know what’s so liberal about Kerry. He wasn’t nearly liberal enough for my taste. Liberalism as a political force in the US died with the defeat of Jimmy Carter. We now have a conservative party and a moderate party. The fact that we call somebody like Bill Clinton or John Kerry “liberal” is seens as rather a joke in Europe.

Your guy W is not exactly a centrist, btw. He’s far more to the right than Reagan ever was. He borders on the radical. He’s not Falwell, but he’s within arm’s length of Falwell…and now he thinks he’s got a mandate and he’s got both houses of congress. Does that worry you at all?

Take gay marriage for example. You say this election feels like a betrayal. Why? I think implicitly that you believe and many liberals beleive that Kerry’s stance on gay marriage was actually different from what he said in the debates and such. That he was coming out against it, because he needed to do so not to commit political suicide. Am I wrong to think this?

Yes, you’re wrong on this. Kerry supports civil unions. The Bush amendment would make even civil unions impossible.

I think it’s probably true. I think Kerry is much more sympathetic to the issue than he states. That’s one of the reasons why I have a problem with him. What’s he going to do, pretend one viewpoint to get elected and once in do something different?

What he was going to do was simply not attempt to change the COTUS the control what choices the states could make.

If I don’t know what he really stands for, how can I vote for him? Bush does have some unpopular ideas and some ones that I don’t like. On balance he has more that I agree with, but he is far from ideal in my eyes. But, I don’t think I have to be afraid that he is actually secretly for abortion, or doesn’t really have strong religious convictions. I think he argues his actual ideas. Disagreeing with some of them to me is less distasteful than feeling that I’m getting a con job to get my vote.

I don’t find it very convincing when conservatives say they don’t know what Kerrys stands for, especially when they call him a radical liberal in the same breath.

Kerry would have been more or less a poll driven centrist, just like Clinton. He isn’t Timothy Leary. He’s a politician but a sane one. He would have supported some traditional Democrat values such as choice, and labor and health care. He would not have legalized LSD and public nudity. I think you could more or less guess what sort of positions he would have taken if you’re really honest about it. I don’t think he was all that inscrutible.

I think the Democrats could have won this election with a better candidate.

I don’t know that there really was a better candidate. Well, there was one, but we have a stupid amendment that won’t let him run again. That’s too bad really. One of these days, you guys will figure out just how good you had it under Clinton.

We can argue this, but if you want to know my opinions and what went in to my decision, there it is. I hope you don’t see it as a betrayal.

I believe that Bush deliberately used the homophobe card as a strategy to put him over the top and that it worked. Does that make you guilty of betrayal? I don’t know. I don’t feel personally betrayed, I guess, but I also know that some people do and saying that Kerry was also against gay marriage is really a semantic defense rather than a substantive one.
I think it might go a ways to salve some hurt feelings if some of our more intelligent conservatives would at least acknowledge that Bush (or probably more accurately, Karl Rove) used homophobia and that it was wrong and that you won’t rubber stamp any further attempts to disenfranchise gay people.
[skipping down because I’ve already addressed the WMD stuff]

This thing has to work. We have to make it work.

No one is saying otherwise, but that doesn’t mean that Bush should not have had to suffer some consequences for his mistake.

I also think there is an issue of HOW to “make it work.” We need Europe and Bush has alienated Europe.

So, I can’t understand how it can be opposed now. It baffles me. I feel betrayed and angry about the anti-war thing and sentiments. I’m not just saying that, either. It’s one of the very strong reasons why I can’t respect Kerry. He betrayed our best efforts.

How so? By saying the invasion was a mistake and that we need help to fix it? How is that a betrayal?

I realize that not everybody agrees with me. I realize that you hold a different opinion on this, and I believe that you hold it sincerely and validly. I just think you’re wrong. And, at least most of the time, well, some of the time, I don’t take out my frustrations at our differences by assuming that you are stupid or evil or a bad person.

It bothers me though when others do it to me, and those who feel as I do.

I don’t think you’re stupid or evil or a bad person, I just think that you’re maddeningly, stubbornly wrong. I constantly feel like if I just find the right way to explain things to you (and others like you) that the light will go on and you’ll get it.

But that’s probably exactly how you feel too, so there we are.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Scylla

“sensimilla bong?”

Ok, that was pretty good. You made me laugh.

[Sam_Stone]

Quote:
Originally Posted by minty green
Please, somebody just tell me that I don’t have to read Atlas Shrugged.

Not all of it. Just John Galt’s radio speech.

So that would only be… About half the book.
As for the ‘tone’ around here, I’ve been yapping about this for a long time. All it got me was a label of being a ‘whining pussy’ who couldn’t ‘take it’. But the fact is, the obnoxious left on this board ran off a lot of very good, very thoughtful posters who either left the board entirely or simply abandonded Great Debates. And I’ll bet it alienated a lot of other intelligent posters who looked at the train wreck in GD and decided they had better things to do with their free time. Much to the detriment of the Straight Dope, which used to attract the best thinkers around because it was an island of sanity and thoughtful debate on a wild and wooly internet, and as of late had morphed into Democratic Underground Lite.

I’ve been heartened by the change of tone in the last few days, and the fact that a lot of Republicans seem to have been encouraged enough by the election to start showing up again in GD. Maybe we’ll get a little balance back.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I think you need to tone down the sanctimony a little bit, Sam. It’s a little disingenuous coming from the guy who takes the Swift Boat book into GD as his personal Bible.

[elucidator]

Oh, horsehocky, Sam. You mean those guys who kept dragging the latest news flash from Fox News into the GD, about how they got the smoking gun, the proof positive, and every damn time it turned out to be a steaming load? You mean those guys? Guys who cut and paste pages out of the Freepers and then claim it as a cite to be respected?

So they couldn’t take it, huh? Tough noogies, I can. I’ve been ankle bit by wing nuts all over the place, its like being nibbled to death by ducks. I cry myself to sleep, wake up good as new. Hell, Dios been called every name in the book, a good half of them entirely undeserved!

Are you looking for balance, Sam, or reinforcements? I thought you were the tough guys, the hard headed realists. Bunch of hippies ran you off? Bunch of effete wimpy liberals took your lunch money and kicked sand in your face? I mean, if you got done in by a bunch of wimps, well, what does that make you guys?

[yosemite]

Diogenes, you’re kidding, right?

You may have thought that Sam was full of shit (or worse) in some of his stances, but his tone was not one of crazed-loon and spittle-flying.

Your tone, however, has much to be desired. You know I love you, but I’m calling it as I see it. Sam hasn’t done anything to bring down the tone. You and many others, alas, have.

[yosemite]

@elucidator

Bunch of effete wimpy liberals took your lunch money and kicked sand in your face? I mean, if you got done in by a bunch of wimps, well, what does that make you guys?

“Effete wimpy liberals”? I’d say raving loons. Negative, angry, sometimes irrational, and you keep on and on and on and on and on. And there’s so many of you.

I don’t know about all the issues you’ve discussed. As I’ve said, I’ve been partially out of the loop. But I do know that Sam and Bricker aren’t starting multiple threads saying stuff about how Democrats are mentally ill, or evil, or selfish, or stupid, or whatever. I’m not saying that they’re always perfect, or right. But the “tone” I get from them is not making me want to scream “SHUT UP YOU LUNATICS!!! STOP BEING SUCH ASSHOLES!!!” (Okay, maybe Brutus sometimes makes me want to holler at him, but that’s a different story. ;))

[milroyj]

Oh well, no admission of lying on your part, which was probably to be expected. If you’re going to carry on so, at least you could have the cajones to deal with it.

Guess not. :dubious:

[elucidator]

Did I mention ankle-biters? I did, didn’t I? OK, good, just checking.

[Sam_Stone]

elucidator: If I couldn’t ‘take it’, I could have gone off to greener pastures a long time ago. This isn’t about ME. It’s about seeing a place that used to be a civil debating society degenerate into a place where people yell and scream and call each other names. You know what? The Internet is FULL of places like that. The SDMB is (was) different. It’s still that way in the non-political threads. But once again, you miss the point and go for the personal. Why am I not surprised?

[elucidator]

…It’s about seeing a place that used to be a civil debating society degenerate into a place where people yell and scream and call each other names…

Its both! And neither! Maybe I haven’t been here as long as you old-timers, but thats one of the qualities that attracted me in the first place. Some high-tone, snooty rhetorical displays, with crisp citing and pungent irony, hell, I love that kind of shit!

I also don’t mind a little rock 'n roll, long as everybody is playing table stakes, can dish it and eat it both. Mostly, its fun, but most importantly…I got the same things to say. I care about politics, I don’t much give a shit about whether or not Scott Fitzgerald wanted to suck Hemingways dick or not.

My problem with you is, just like now… half the time I talk like that to you, and you take it with the same jocular honesty with which it is offered. The other half the time you sniff about getting personal, all of a sudden you’re a virgin, wouldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful of it.

I mean, didn’t it even occur to you that you were whining about the whining liberals? I thought we were supposed to be the dewey eyed wimps, and you guys are the hard headed realists?

[elucidator]

Besides which, this is The Pit! You wanna serve tea, you don’t go to the Steel Cage Death Match.

(Well, maybe you do in Canada…given what you got for beer, I can kinda understand it…)

[Sam_Stone]

Hey, I’ve never, ever complained about personal insults in the pit, you sniveling goat felcher.

See?

[elucidator]

Well, its a start. Lacking some verve, some snap maybe. A bit like being insulted by Garrison Keillor. Still, shows promise.