Do you disagree with what I said above? You cut it from the quote without comment.
Getting Osama bin Laden was a different thing than preventing 9/11, right?
The trouble is you post nonsense. Your attacks are full of rage and spit, yet don’t hit anywhere near the target. Your shrill, ideological cries aren’t decried because they are “something a poster doesn’t like”, they are decried because they make no sense and you are too much of a weenie to admit when you are wrong.
You are a retard with a bullhorn. Strutting around singing your little retard song.
Herpity Derpity Roar!
The question is why the moderator community has granted you immunity. Do you have naked pictures of Ed or something?
And yet in this very thread, you say otherwise:
You’re admitting that you’re not staying on the boards for rational discourse. You’re staying here to try to drive people crazy. You’re admitting that your behavior in the OP was not an honest attempt to critique a position or hold an argument, but to troll me into a response.
I don’t even have to leave the thread to prove you’re full of shit.
I’ll respond, but I want to point out I was addressing IdahoMauleMan, not Shodan, in my previous post.
I see, so for you it is simply inconceivable that you could somehow respond to something you disagree with without riling people up. Got it.
Really, you’re a Romney man? I would have thought Gingrich was much more your style. Hunh, well, now I’ve learned something.
Yes, instead of of me disagreeing with a point, I “don’t like” it. That makes it much more personal, and aligns me more with the degree of emotionalism you bring to discussion. Got it.
Anyway, it would appear that you are equating asinine with “posting something I don’t like”. I’m just sayin’.
Meanwhile, as long as we’re talking, all friendly-like, could you name a few Usual Suspects? I’m dying to know.
This thread is totally interesting and you all totally don’t look like idiots.
Enjoy my humble regards,
Carnalk
Nope, still wrong. There are some Dopers (not you) who are capable of rational discourse. Them, I rationally discourse with. People like you, I make fun of.
And much of what drives you crazy is that I do it persistently. I give back (as I have mentioned) as hard as I get it, or harder.
And I am laughing while I do it. And that drives you craziest of all. Because you can’t bait me into doing something ban-worthy, or shout me down, or intimidate me into leaving, or drive me out of discussions on political topics. I continue along as merry as I please.
Tough old world, ain’t it?
You (and dunces like you) want a nice little cozy echo chamber where nobody challenges you, and the shit flies only one way. It’s not going to fly only one way - it’s going to fly right back at you, and then I am going to rub your face in it.
Nope, never said anything of the sort. Just the opposite, in fact - I am fully aware that many of my opinions are unpopular. I go ahead and post them anyway, but, again, that is not trolling.
Yes, pretty much, but making it personal is your burden, not mine.
Not for anyone fluent in English. What’s asinine is your belief that I am trolling because you don’t like what I post.
Still trying this one, eh?
You’re an idiot. Be content with that.
Regards,
Shodan
You are admitting, then, that your behavior as outlined in the OP of this thread was trolling then, and not an attempt to add to the discussion?
The funny thing is that you think you’re trolling because you’re just so good at pointing out liberal hypocrisy that it enrages us. When it’s actually the “I can’t believe I live on the same fucking planet as people this stupid” sort of rage.
It’s funny how you’ve managed to not learn a single thing about me despite my extensive descriptions of my views and motivations, and have access to my entire posting history. An echo chamber is exactly what I don’t want. My highest cognitive priority in life is to attempt to achieve perfect skepticism - to critically evaluate all of the ideas and biases I might hold and strengthen or change my views therein.
I’m one of the very few people that actually comes to this board to have my mind changed, and I have changed my mind. I came to this board originally as a strongly libertarian anti-progressive/liberal 10 years ago.
And you say I want an echo chamber. Ha.
It’s weird because I’m one of the relatively few here that actually can be reasoned with. I can tolerate nuance, I can honestly consider my own biases, I can listen to counterarguments with a genuine willingness to learn - because if part of my world view is defeated by something more sound, then my world view strengthens. And yet you hold me up as the prime example of the opposite.
I’m actually accusing you of trolling because you just admitted you were a troll at the beginning of this post. Look up.
When you post, I don’t even think you know who it is you’re posting to. You just sort of address every person as “liberal” in your mind. You clearly have no knowledge whatsoever as me as a unique poster. I don’t think your behavior on this board would change at all if literally your version of the board just said LIBERAL instead of a user name above every post.
I want to address this further.
It hasn’t “flown back at me”. You have never defeated me in debate. You’ve never said anything that was simply more correct or smarter than anything I’ve said.
You’ve only lied and used insults. Do you think your behavior in the OP, where you just completely made up absurd strawmen arguments that weren’t even remotely related to the actual content of the thread was throwing it right back at me? Is that the best you can do?
You don’t get under my skin because you’re right. I’m way, way smarter than you. I am far more intellectually honest than you. I could defeat you in any fair debate under any circumstances.
No, you’re annoying because you deliberately thread shit. You lie. You derail the thread by making people address your shits and lies. You degrade the quality of this board by being here. You’re too stupid to realize how stupid you are.
It’s not that no one has yet to make you do anything banworthy. You’ve done plenty that’s banworthy. It’s just that this board has a rather ridiculous moderation policy. They’re overly concerned with precedent, and they give long time members too much leniency.
If someone signed up today and started posting the way you did, they’d be banned in a day. The ironic thing is that they won’t ban you because you’ve been here ruining the boards for so long that there’s no single incident where they can say “Okay, this is the last straw, you’re banned” - because your behavior has been consistently assholish that you’ve established that as your norm. Due to their moderation policies, you’ve effectively made yourself ban proof by making this board worse consistently for so long. It’s perverse.
Then again, I thought that about Dio, so here’s hoping.
Doper Literature 101
Mid Term essay question
“Is Shodan’s satirical style more reminiscent of Wilde or Swift? Discuss. Give examples.”
Not sure, I haven’t really looked into the hand-off between administrations. But, even though I voted for Clinton and did not vote for Bush, I think it’s pretty tough to take a complex situation like that and assign blame to Bush - I don’t personally believe any president could step into that situation and make all the right moves to prevent what happened.
Yes I did, on purpose, because that statement appeared to be making the point that Mr. Moto was wrong, that we could have had a president that made all the right moves, detected the attack and prevented it.
The other statements after that one seemed to be making the point that the Bush administration did not properly respond to the terrorism threat - which may be true - but even if true, I still don’t think they would have detected and prevented it (knowing what laws were in place to prevent information from different agencies being shared, etc.)
Uh…no?
If we had taken out OBL in 1996, do you think 9/11 would have still happened?
I think it’s easier to say that AQ’s activities would have been altered and that 9/11 would not have played out the way it did, then to say it wouldn’t have changed anything with respect to 9/11.
No, I said just the opposite.
But there is much of the problem - one of the many reasons you are incapable of rational discourse is that you cannot bring yourself to read for comprehension.
Nope, like I said, wrong again.
You aren’t that unique - just another loudmouth with an inflated sense of the importance of his opinions.
Regards,
Shodan
More like the poor man’s Nelson Muntz.
If, prior to 9/11, anyone had offered me the serious suggestion that a plot to train pilots to fly (but not take off or land) an airplane, then take over the aircraft with box cutters, and then fly the aircraft to crash into a specific target…that a plan like that was not only feasible, but would actually be mounted, and actually succeed…I probably would have thought that here was positive proof that no one should read Tom Clancy novels while stoned.
Compare this:
and the OP of this thread.
You are admitting that your posting targetted at me in the Romney thread was not an attempt to engage in rational discourse. It was an attempt to “make fun of” me, and to drive me crazy, and that you were laughing while you did it.
When what you actually did was thread shit and lie.
You are describing the very act of trolling, admitting you do it, and then saying “WHAT? NO THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF TROLLING”
Are you trying to do meta-trolling now?
The funny part is that you think you’re “making fun of” me, but you’re never actually said anything that’s funny or really mocking. You just sort of make up shit, try to imply I said it, and then attack that, often poorly.
You are successful and shitting in threads and derailing them. No doubt you’re proud of that. But you’ve never successfully made fun of anyone.
I just read about Iran’s involvement, and possibly masterminding of the attack, which I had not heard about before. But it shows they were in contact with OBL also. So it’s hard to say what the impact of taking out OBL in the 90’s would have had, previously I thought it would have disrupted their operations, but with Iran behind it, maybe not.
Don’t know about satire, but in the photo I saw he didn’t look anything like Olivia or Taylor.
That’s something you’ve made up in your head. Hell, I hardly even bother to post to most political threads, and when I do, looking for an echo chamber is the furthest thing from my mind. I’m just kind of interested in why you seem to think you are somehow going to earn respect for your opinions by spewing an endless stream of seething hostility. Christ, if I was as angry as you seem to be all the time, I’d be worn out inside a week.
You deliberately choose language, and make up straw man arguments, that are by your own admission intended to get a rise out of people. Other than feeding your own ego, what’s the point?
Oh, yes, you’re far too clever to fall into the trap I think I’ve so cleverly laid. Er, what trap, exactly? Look, it’s a simple, straightforward question; I will not even comment on it if you ever decide to answer. It’s a phrase you use all the time; presumably you have someone specific in mind. Kindly name some names. That’s all I’m asking.
Here’s an alternative question, if you dislike the other one so much: what, specifically, makes you not a Usual Suspect in political threads? Again, I’ll make no comment at all, just lay it on out there.
No, actually I’m not an idiot at all. In any event, you have not built up a history that would lead anyone to give your opinion on this matter any weight. Maybe a stronger insult next time, something about my mother, perhaps, or my appearance; maybe that will get to me. You never know.
Sigh. Once again.
Seriously, how was I suppose to know what you were referring to? I made some substantiated remarks, and said explicitly that others were a mere assessment. Your first post wasn’t an argument, your second was a weak argument – and your third …well that was ok actually (not that I agree, but it was a real argument). Sorry to keep score, but the thread is about proper and bogus argumentation right?
No, you missed the point. Firstly, the blue dogs aren’t anywhere near the modern Republican party who voted last year to phase out medicare. Your characterization is way way out of date. Secondly, you are characterizing a level of enmity within the Democratic party -without evidence (though I concede that it could be gathered)- while I’ve established that Republican moderates are summarily given the boot.
There’s a difference, right? Under Reagan, Republicans liked to call themselves of “Big Tent”: that phrase was applied specifically to abortion. But now Republicans with highly conservative voting records who show the slightest inclination to follow the founding fathers’ framework by negotiating with the opposition-- those are primaried away. Saying that some members of a club don’t like one another is one thing. Pointing to a group that is routinely and summarily rejected from that club is another.
…and let’s not pretend that the Bush administration didn’t oversee the worst distortion of intelligence in modern history.
[See? Now that’s a cite! Seriously, that’s the sort of thing we’re here for. That’s why posters with a range of POVs are an addition to the board.]
Here’s the problem though. There will always be hyperbole in politics. But Alan Grayson never gained any traction with his “Want you to die” claim. And that’s the difference: surveys show an incredible amount of credulity among Republicans vis a vis long form birth certificates, and the death panel smear formed the basis for a lot of conservative buzz. What you would have to show is Dems rushing to defend these characterizations -and that just didn’t happen to a significant extent.
Yes, both sides have their hysterics (middle example), clowns (first example) and hyperbole (third example). The difference is that the nutters no longer get traction among dems, while on the Republican side, it is sanity which is considered unforgivable, as seen by the John Huntsman campaign.
Wha? The Dems have a stranglehold on racebaiting? You don’t see anything racial about Newt’s strawman assertions? I mean the one where he said that he’d debate the NAACP any time about whether getting a job is better than collecting food stamps. Hey, I can play that game too: I’ll debate Newt any time about whether marital fidelity is profoundly better for American civilization than being a deadbeat dad, like he was to his kids. We can have a Lincoln-Douglass debate on that one.
In reverse order:
There’s obviously a huge difference between preventing a particular terrorist attack and taking out ObL. The Clinton Administration succeeded in preventing the Millennium attacks, for instance, but failed to get bin Laden.
It’s hardly “a stretch to speculate” that “any president would have prevented 9/11.”
It’s a stretch to assume that. But it’s hardly a stretch to conclude that a Gore Administration, continuing the antiterrorism policies of the Clinton Administration, would have had at least a decent chance of preventing the 9/11 attack.
FBI agents in various locales were alarmed about these Middle Easterners who were interested in learning to fly jumbo jets, but not land them. And we had Zacarias Moussaoui and his freakin’ laptop in custody from August 16 on, with the Minneapolis FBI office begging Washington to get a FISA warrant so that they could check out the laptop’s contents.
The problem was, Washington wasn’t interested. The people at the bottom had big pieces of the puzzle, but nobody at the top was very interested in that particular puzzle.
And this was ten days after Bush got the infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” PDB.
A Gore Administration would have been interested even without the damned PDB.
If a Gore Administration had gone to the FISA court on August 16 and gotten that warrant, could they have put enough of the pieces together in 25 days to foil the attack? That’s the part we’ll never know.
But it’s reasonable to assume that President Gore and his national security team would have been rather forcefully sending the word down through all channels that if any part of the government knew anything that might be relevant, it should be pushed up the ladder without delay. That’s what they did at the time of the Millennium plot, and that’s what they would have done in the wake of the August 6 PDB, had it even come to that.
Maybe the 9/11 plot would have succeeded despite all that. But dismissing out of hand the very real chance that a Gore Administration would have had to prevent it is, IMHO, a totally baseless piece of bullshit, and one that I’m really, really tired of seeing.