Well, it’s been twelve years. In the Sandusky/Paterno universe, that means Bricker can finally get some justice.
See?
Any one of these little jabs, taken alone, is negligible.
In the aggregate, they comprise a constant drumbeat of hostility.
I’m mildly bewildered as to why you consider the quoted post a jab. It seemed pointless to me. If you’re taking such contentless and meaningless attacks as something you should pay attention to . . . well, you shouldn’t.
You should pay attention to those of us who tell you that your beliefs are wrong. Sheesh.
Let it all out, Bricker.
Don’t worry, I promise I won’t think you’re being a little bitch if you do.
Is that like the drum solo part of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? That always made me really hostile.
Liar.
Find a dictionary; learn how “rounding error” is actually used in English; tell us if your usage of the term was informative, or just bullshit rhetoric.
Just to be clear: (and you can take this as a compliment if you wish. 
) it’s the incongruity in your diction that is so vexatious.
If you were just another right-wing drunkard throwing around words like “chump change” it wouldn’t bother me. But we were in a thread whose intent was to estimate numbers accurately, and when the subject turned to restoring taxes you pretended that there’s no difference between a half-trillion and a full-trillion because either “is a rounding error.” That’s just fatuous.
My calling you an “imbecile” was hyperbolic – I’ll guess you have above-average intelligence. However, when I try to explain that as a matter of simple diction “rounding error” was inappropriate and all you can do is post a non-responsive screed, it certainly demonstrates that you do not use your intelligence to understand other Dopers.
Dude, he called you the King of the Imbeciles. That makes Shodan your Minister of Gainsay & Contradictions.
Hijack!
That was pure hyperbole, Sam. The budget deficit in 2006 was about $260 billion. Round that up to $300 billion. Now divide $90 billion/yr by $300. You get 30%, which is not rounding error by any stretch of the imagination.
I took the figures from a time when we had chronic deficits under full employment: during times of economic slack, the Fed essentially buys the bonds so higher deficits don’t cut into private investment.
Arguably, your claim deserves ridicule, albeit of a higher quality.
Tantrums are bad form.
I think we’re talking about a different discussion. I was talking about the revenue that would be earned from raising taxes on the rich today, compared to the amount of revenue and/or spending cuts needed to get the current deficit under control and pay down the debt. That deficit is over $1 trillion per year, and the long term trend lines are even worse as the Medicare system starts to run out of money.
My actual point was that serious attempts to get the deficit under control are going to require both broad-based tax increases and spending cuts. My personal opinion is that you’re going to need something like a VAT if you want to balance the budget, or you’re going to have to make very serious, very deep spending cuts across the board.
In the context of the magnitude of the fiscal problem to be solved, the tax hike the Obama administration wants (basically, non-renewal of the Bush tax cuts, but only on the top 1% or top 5% or something) is estimated to raise a little more than 80 billion per year. That’s a lot of money, but all it does is turn a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit into a 1.22 trillion deficit. And as I said in that message, when the CBO or OMB blows the estimate of economic growth by a small amount, the difference in revenue swamps the size of the tax. Thus my comment that it was ‘little more than a rounding error’.
Really, if you guys are so sensitive that you’re going to carry around a grudge because I used a colorful word to describe a real issue rather accurately, then you’re again making my point that the standard for debate is set WAY higher for those on the right than those on the left. You’re elevating a nitpick to a high crime of debate. It’s ridiculous.
Well… rounding error is more like <1% or <0.1%, depending. $90 billion/yr isn’t in the same ballpark, so methinks a little rough language is in order. After all, “Not solve the problem alone” (which is more or less a straw man) isn’t the same as “Rounding error”. Then again, if this is the 3rd offtopic thread+ where it’s been brought up… that seems to be a little much.
Still, we’re in the realm of rhetoric here and a little slanting is par for the course.
I’d like to add something else. I see little wrong with linking to a right-wing website, provided they haven’t been shown to make suspect claims. It’s appropriate to evaluate your source. Fox News, for example, consistently screws up their facts: tabloids are also examples of poor sourcing. The WSJ news section is fine, albeit slanted to the extent that they focus on the business world and faintly tainted by their Murdoch affiliation in recent years (just look at their splashier front page). Bloomberg, the Financial Times or The Economist would be better. A lot of this turns on what sort of claims you’re making. Personally, I’d take a look at a Cato citation, but expect a heaping load of BS from Heritage. Shep Smith is very conservative, but he doesn’t just make shit up like Bill O’Reilly. Reputation matters. I wouldn’t cite a Michael Moore documentary either. To summarize, it is appropriate to judge sources of information -some care little about getting their story right- but it’s not sufficient to simply dismiss a source based wholly on their ideology.
I don’t want to discuss this ad infinitum, but Stone is still confused.
You may think it’s “colorful” but it is not accurate. If someone’s measuring something with a crude yardstick, we don’t worry about a millimeter – that’s a rounding error. Had you made your point with less “colorful” language there’d have been no argument but you did it in a way as to imply an extra trillion dollars would be irrelevant. :smack:
I was already annoyed with you, as you’d inflated a number in another thread and dismissed me as “nitpicker” when I pointed it at.
I offered to call a truce and be civil to each other and you said “Too late.”
And now you’re repeating your pompous idiocy that calling a trillion dollars a “rounding error” is “accurate.” I may retract my admission that you’re probably above average in intelligence.
Haven’t followed him for awhile, but I’ll second the misleading cites. And IIRC, he’s a recurring offender in the “pretending a link is a cite” department.
(JFTR: throwing a link into a post with the implication - even if true - that something at the link supports your point, is NOT a cite. A cite requires two kinds of specificity: first, what the link says that supports your point (can be done by quote or paraphrase), and second, where at the link, if it’s more than a couple hundred words long, that this supporting material can be found, in a way that enables the reader to unambiguously locate and identify the supporting text.
Fuck-all if I’m gonna play the game of “there’s something at the link that supports my argument; you go find it.” Then when you think you’ve found it and rebutted it, the poster says, “no, that wasn’t it, it was something else.”)
You didn’t read the “Awwwww…” as sarcastic?
Hmmm.
How about if you add the content of the next contribution:
Still not seeing a jab?
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Your deeper point is that I should simply ignore those craptastic jabs and focus on the substantive arguments. And in this, you’re quite right: I should.
But that’s a utopian sort of goal – for me, anyway. I cannot completely ignore them. I don’t say I lose sleep over them, or sit in front of the iPad with my lower lip termbling, mind you, but they impinge on my consciousness. Thus the drumbeat analogy.
Man, its tough having unpopular opinions. I have some experience in that, like, most of my adult life. But you have options!
You could switch teams, take off the “running dog jackal of the ruling class” jersey and get a “progressive struggle for peace and justice” jersey. That would be my recommended approach. Failing that, you could adopt the non-partisan posture, cushion your real opinions with caveats and trap-doors, well, I could be wrong, but on the other hand, maybe.
Then, if anyone has an opinion about you at all, it will be what an open-minded chap you are, always willing to see the other side of things. A cipher, a vacuum with skin. If you never hear the drumbeat of hostility, its probably because you aren’t saying anything worth the effort of saying it.
I suspect, however, you’re kinda like me, if you really think something, no force on God’s green is going to stop you, tie your hands behind your back and you’ll type out a response with your nose.
Nut up or shut up. Pretty much all there is.
Oh, quit your bellyaching.
And stay out of my post’s way, elucidator.
What, its my fault you’re a de-caff pussy?
Our posts have the same time stamp. I want a mod ruling on who was first, dammit.
Mine is longer, thicker and meatier. My post, I’m talking about, here.