See, liberals can learn. Once the M1 Abrams was viewed by the left as a waste of money, ineffective, unreliable, and unnecessary.
<dabbing a tear from my eye> That’s my Boris! <sniff>
“I love compliments, we all do - burglars, humorists, Congressmen - all of us in the trade. Why, I can live a week on a single compliment! But I was near dumbstruck by this complimentrary thunderbolt! Never have I heard a compliment to gracefully worded, or so richly deserved!”
- Mark Twain
Ah, thanks for the assist Milossarian, but I’m afraid I must be reading a different thread. The one you pointed out has no one ‘slinking away like pond scum,’ that I can see.
Nor does it have a page 3.
Must be those partisan blinders again, eh?
Also, I am amazed that anyone remembers or cares who called whom ‘knee-jerk’ a year ago. You grudge-carrying capacity is quite revolutionary.
Aside to Natasha: Cnyeshna, xhorosho! Ya looblu!
Just one thing: you are rather more, ah, sophisticated in these things than I. I am somewhat perplexed by what connection, if any, there is between my shorts and pldenizen. Is there some kind of subtext here? My, uh, orientation can’t be suddenly changed, can it? Is there some kind of surgery involved? Don’t I have to come out of something? And don’t I have to be in it in the first place?
After all these years of devotion to the Jade Yoni, I don’t think I can handle such, never mind explaining it to my son! I have no concept of interior design, buy my socks by the bag (white, K-mart, $4.99 for 6), and have never had the remotest sense of “style”.
Hell, m’am, I’m just a country boy from Waco…I never been to Austin and don’t even know any Aggies!
Time to page Dr. Kervorkian?
DIE THREAD DIE!!
I had NO intention of this being a sludgefest for partisan politics. ( In fact, in all on my liberal naiveté I thought that this would be a “please stop calling me stupid”) thread.
PLEASE MODS, I’M BEGGING YOU, KILL THIS THREAD!
Dear, sweet Gobear,
Just a gentle note to remind you that dishonest is different from dishonorable. Not to imply that you aren’t either, of course. As a compliment from me, for proving who the liar is, please accept this dictionary of your choice, at no additional cost to your packet of crow.
Your thoughtful critique of my posts has caused me to amend my original description of you in the interests of both accuracy and comity; To “disingenuous, dishonorable” I humbly submit the addition of “childish, inaccurate, and yet mildly amusing in-a-P.J.-O’Rourke-kind-of-way.” May the corrections be recorded before the termination of the thread.
Regards,
Ace
Bio did you e-mail the mods? I don’t know that they watch every thread.
Beagle: I’ll have to check that out. Villified Crusader style?
Not until you REPENT your icky touchy-feelly liberallness!
Before this thread is killed:
Gobear said: “It would seem to me that sensible liberals and conservatives have the same goals in mind; to create a society that generates the greatest good for the greatest number. I can respect a disagreement over the methods used to achieve this goal–liberals believe in the redistribution of wealth, whereas conservatives believe that the free market, untouched by government interference, will generate wealth and jobs for society overall.”
The problem here is that the disagreement has a strong empirical content and conservatives often seem rather disinterested in (eg) the measured shape of the labor supply curve.
I think it’s a disagreement about values, not data interpretation. But I don’t want to go into too much detail (or thought) in a soon-to-be-killed pit thread.
Why people believe what they do is a bit of a puzzle.
You’re welcome for Sontag, btw (p1). (Thanks for the graciousness.)
This sounds strangely like a euphemism for something else. What, I cannot determine.
I could not find the political debate on the internet. I remember (barely) the controversy from when I was a (very young, really) child. This contains some of the other criticisms.
There are thousands of other M1 cites. It’s like the Britney Spears of tanks. I guess the M1A2 version is post boob job, to strain the analogy to its breaking point.
Let me summarize the debate as I remember it. Conservatives: commies, Fulda Gap, guns! Liberals: poor, inner-city, butter! Repeat ad infinitum ad nauseum. That may be a slight oversimplification. Speaking of euphemisms, we should have buttered our guns early on to satisfy everyone.
Share our values and goals? Since when?
To the conservative mind, it makes perfect sense to insist that a welfare mom work forty hours a week for chump change, and leave her to find day care from the free market system.
Its rather like the old stereotype of the stern dad, throwing his kid in the lake to teach swimming in the sink-or-swim mode. With the extra kick of chaining a bowling ball to his leg. Heartless, cruel and contemptible.
Share thier values? What values have they to share? Beside thier deep conviction that the Sermon on the Mount was primarily a defense of property rights.
Let me state it more baldly: there is nothing, repeat, nothing that any human being could do, no labor he can perform, that would justify a personal possession of a hundred million dollars.
Its shit like this makes the Baby Jesus puke His little guts out!
Arrgh!
So what’s the cap? I want to know how far I have to go to reach it.
Marc
But its obvious, isn’t it, grasshopper? It always precisely one dollar more than you have.
OK, (No offense, Elucidator, I’m waiting for the even-handed and absolutely fair criticism of Elucidator for saying the polar opposite of a statement I caught merry hell for.
(looks at watch)
C’mon, admit it, Big E – you’d like a hundred million dollars, wouldn’t you? If nothing else, you could give it away to people less fortunate than you are, and assuage your sense of guilt over eating while others are starving. (One wonders how one can live with oneself!) A hundred million dollars would buy an awful lot of smug righteousness combined with self-loathing guilt. Bill Gates has given billions to charity – you’ve got a lot of catching up to do!
I wonder if an effective vaccine against AIDS would be worth a hundred million? Or tens of thousands of units of ultra-low-cost housing for the working poor? I bet Jonas Salk was worthy of a hundred million bucks.
Again, you exhibit your lack of reading ability. Isaid
Thereby equating the terms disingenuousand dishonest, not dishonorable and dishonest.
Of course, I’m none of these things, but you wouldn’t understand that. Heck, you didn’t even listen when your own side asked you to shut up. If you were merely misinformed, there would be hope for you, but you are too irretrievably stupid to benefit from any further correction.
Attempting to undermine an argument by suggesting that the advocate is unworty of, or insincere about, his argument is the very definition of ad hominem, is it not?
So lets just cut the crap, I’ll plead guilty. I’m a loathesome, grasping, venal scoundrel who only posts these things in an attempt to undermine all that is good and noble in Western Civ. I attack the very foundation of all that is worthy, the sacred principle of Property (Praise Mammon!) which all right thinking men hold most dear!
Now, as to the actual arguments…anything?
An excellent example of the Rosewater Principle (see Vonnegut, Kurt) After a certian point, the man no longer possesses the money, the money possesses the man.
If I take it into my head to do so, I can get up, go out and bowl a couple of lines, have a beer and one of those shit-ass bar pizzas. Bill G. cannot. His entire life has become a gated community, his children hostages to an untold number of potential kidnappers. As always, an emperor has no friends, only Praetorians. Wish such misery upon yourself, if you are so foolish, but not me.
Quite so. We have such money, we Americans, such money is chump change for us. Why haven’t we done so?
Your agument is based on the fundamental principle of the Church of Mammon, that all men are greedy and grasping, and all is but a struggle in Darkness, red in tooth and claw. Which is to say, we are damned, and well deserving of it.
Kindly refrain from suggesting that you can peer into my soul and take the inventory. Such men exist, from time to time, but the list is short, and your name is not on it.
Oooh! Ooooh! I am on the list?