Northern Ireland. Protestants vs Catholics. Multiply by ten.
I missed this last time I was here.
Go search for my last 100 cites. If more than 10% of them are links to right-wing blogs and opinion pieces, I will send you $20 in the mail. Deal?
If not, you can retract your comment. Of course, if a ‘righty’ said something factually wrong like that, he’d be accused of being a liar, and the post would go into the ‘evidence of said righty’s lying scummy nature’ file, to be repeatedly thrown back in his face to derail arguments which he otherwise might be winning.
The math don’t work on that, Sam. For instance, if you post seven or eight times defending the validity of the Austrian School of Economics, blessings and peace be upon them, you are not likely to link to the original cite each and every time. That would be OCD, Obsessive Canadian Debate.
From: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14184579&postcount=187
Supply-Siders Voice Concern About Bush
I found the first one. Someone else can find the other 9 out of his last hundred cites. I expect a tooney out of the deal when the payoff cometh.
Here is my contribution:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14146934&postcount=125
In which Sam says
The numbers he is contradicting are from the OMB, via the White House website.
Sam’s cite (US Government Finances: Spending, Deficit, Debt, Revenue since 1792) is the product of Christopher Chantrill:
Right wing claptrap, and dubious numbers.
I will pay $20 to whomever posts the 10th example of Sam’s shoddy, deceptive research. I will donate Sam’s $20 to the Scleroderma Research Foundation.
So let’s see… So far, after going back to last August, we have one cite to an old opinion piece, in a thread discussing what the political opinion was at the time. In other words, given the discussion topic, the cite was factual, and not opinion masquerading as fact.
The other cite you’ve managed to dredge up is neither a right-wing blog nor is it an opinion piece - it’s a web page containing data pulled from official sources. Specifically:
All verifiable, all accurate. This proves the point I made earlier - the standard for a cite from someone on the right is very different than the standard on the left. You attack this cite because you did a bunch of spelunking and found that the person who put it up is on the right, and therefore it’s ‘Right-Wing claptrap’, despite the fact that he’s merely compiling data from government sources and presenting it in searchable tables.
In the meantime, the people on the left on this board routinely cite Media Matters, Paul Krugman opinion pieces, the Center for American Progress, The Nation, and other left-wing sources as if they are unimpeachable.
In any event, keep digging. Maybe you’ll find that 10%, and my perception of my own posts is wrong - I didn’t check it myself. But even if you do (and I don’t think you will, because I rarely use such sources and don’t have to), are you going to retract your claim that my cites are “usually right-wing blogs and opinion pieces”? In matter of fact, the large majority of my cites are to academic papers, journals, and government data sources. The fact that you think that I post mostly right-wing opinion pieces tells me that you either don’t read my messages, or your bias is so strong you can’t even recognize reality when it disagrees with what you so desperately want to believe.
Oh, and by the way - it’s pretty cheap of you to try to farm out your own search work. You were the one who smeared my character - man up, and prove it. Or retract the claim. Hey, I’ll even throw a bone to you - I DID use the Heritage Foundation as a cite a few months ago - but I acknowledged the potential bias of the cite, and only cited it as a counterpoint because posters before me had been posting ‘facts’ from partisan left-wing sources. But hey, I’ll be magnanimous and give you that one.
…or at least retract and revise with a defendable claim. It would be good form, Fear Itself.
I don’t have a problem with Sam going on hiatus – I think that’s healthy. I don’t have a problem with putting valid pressure on Sam. For example, bright people should regularly mark their beliefs to market, and I’ve seen little evidence that he’s met that bar, which admittedly is a lofty one by SDMB standards. Now I haven’t interacted much with Sam over the past year or so. But the challenges to his POV don’t sound right to me, which tends to strengthen the characterizations he’s made about his experiences in this thread. [1]
One liberal’s prayer:
Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength…
-John Stuart Mill Solid conservative arguments focus minds and advance the commonwealth; lazy or bogus ones just waste our time.
[1] And OBTW, I skimmed page 11 of Sam’s post list (from ?Jul 2011) and it didn’t support Fear’s characterization, IMHO.
That is the point. There is no point unless somebody has fun.
Wow! 12 pages of complaints about this guy and I’ve hardly noticed him on the board. What am I doing right?
M4M, I honestly don’t understand why you and Sam waste your time.
Oh boo hoo.
I never had any intention of poring over hundreds of your posts like some trained monkey, as I wouldn’t think of cutting in on your action as the board jester. As for a retraction, don’t hold your breath. Most of your cites are right wing blogs or opinion pieces; that is my observation, and if it hurts your feelings, well guess what, this is the Pit, grow a thicker skin. Or else take that used condom that passes for your character and go back under the covers and cry yourself to sleep. Maybe next solstice, when, as is your custom, you come out to do a vanity search to see if anyone still remembers who you are, you can get Shodan to give you a back rub with a happy ending.
Yuck-o-rama! Did you have to do that?
Sam: Oh, I’m sorry Shodan, I shot some on your mullet.
Shodan: It’s okay, it makes me feel pretty.
Sam: If only the liberals would die so we could cut taxes on the rich, then it could be like this forever!
The serious liberals in this thread must hate it when they spend pages making the case that their side is generally open-minded and reasonable, only to have clowns like Lobohan or Fear Factor or Hentor the Barbarian bombard the thread with nonsense that confirms everything the people on the right have been saying.
It really is. Not that I’m grouping myself that way, but any crowd of people will have bad examples that fit whatever the stereotype is that you want to put over the whole group, so they ruin it for everyone else by giving just enough reinforcement to solidify the assumptions about their group.
Works both ways, of course. Shodan can make it harder for you or Bricker in the eyes of people who like to generalize rather than take posters as individuals.
OTOH, I wince at posts like #591 and glady condemn them, rather than rushing to defense of anyone even vaguely on my side as part of a partisan solidarity.
The serious conservatives must hate it when you claim to speak for them.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
The serious conservatives must hate it when you claim to speak for them.
[/QUOTE]
Are you talking about Sam? AFAIK, all the ‘serious conservatives’ wouldn’t have any problem with Sam speaking for them. Quite the contrary really, leaving aside the more flaky ones perhaps. Sam is pretty well respected by most of the board ‘conservatives’ (possibly even a few board ‘liberals’, though that’s even more a guess), again AFAIK.
From the perspective of board ‘moderates’ who are considered arch-conservatives and with first names who start with the letter ‘X’, I’d say that we are generally in favor of Sam speaking for ‘serious conservatives’ on this board. 
-XT
Yes, I am taling about Sam, and if he is your standard bearer, you really need to rethink your standards. He is consistently wrong in his predictions for the economy and foreign policy (How’s that rosey Iraq prediction working out for you Sam?), and he is always mining dubious “facts” from sketchy right-wing bloggers to support the conclusions he has already cast in stone. And no, I am not going to go through hundreds of his posts to prove my observation, because he is impervious to any kind of evidence that contradicts his ideology, and just hand waves everything that is presented to him. I simply won’t waste my time. If that means all the good conservatives won’t question their own sycophancy on the basis of my personal observations, I can live with that.
So, IOW, you are going to stick with dubious claims that you don’t feel like backing up, and your opinion on this is set in Stone (heh)? Well, if you can live with that as your standard then I suppose I can as well. I disagree with your unproven assertion of observation, and counter with my own unproven one that indicates that Sam, while not MY standard bearer, is never the less a good poster with a lot of interesting opinions, and one I wish would start posting more often again. Though, on reflection from the posts of some 'dopers in this thread, it’s unsurprising why he doesn’t, given the level of hostility directed towards him.
-XT
Just stop right there. If you can’t respond to my words, I see no reason to respond to what you wish I had said.