And you will stop posting insults in Great Debates.
[ /Moderating ]
Waldo Pepper, well done, my congratulation. New information is very good.
I had not realized that subsequent to just asking for the emails to be forwarded without further instructions, they had done exactly what I had suggested, which was to say “Please refrain from submitting any individual’s personal information, including their email address, without their permission.” My error, I was 100% wrong about that, and AFAIK you are the first person to point that out on this thread. Five pages of discussion, and you’re one of the few to do something more than just attack me. My heartfelt thanks.
So now we know that the Administration has done what I suggested, and what most of you have resisted them doing so strongly. Topics for further discussion:
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Since the claim has been made ad nauseum that the Republicans will attack us no matter what we do, can someone point to anyone attacking that action, of asking people not to include personal data in the emails? And if not, could you please drop that mantra? It hurts us immensely to take that stance. It is merely an attempt to shut down discussion, and it insults people whose support is important to us.
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Was it wrong of me to say the Adminstration should do what I suggested? Does it make me not an Obama supporter, because I strongly argued that they should do something that they ended up doing?
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Was my asking for this action “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”?
But the statement made by Obama made such a statement.
Reasonable. Rational. I’m afraid these wonderful political buzzwords are lost on some. But thanks for the effort.
Back to the OP, the short answer is: yes, clearly.
Since in this case the action proposed by my “fanatical, irrational opposition” was exactly what the White House ended up doing, I’m not sure what your point is here. But it may be I’ve misunderstood what you are saying. Perhaps you could explain further.
And given my post above regarding the Democrat’s loud and vocal opposition to the education speech by Bush Pere, I’m not sure what double standard you are saying “yes” to. The Demos investigated Bush’s education speech with a Congressional committee. The Republicans screamed about socialism and brainwashing. I’m not sure which one is worse, but I don’t like either one. The problem is not a double standard. It is that the standard is set so low.
You sure about that? If I look at the headers on an email that’s been forwarded to me, I see the details about how it got from there to here, a Reference designator, etc., but no info at all on who sent it previous to the person who sent it to me. That’s only in the body of the message that gets forwarded, as plain text that’s easy to delete if you want to.
Oh. I thought you were ignoring me. Can I have my cite now?
No, not ignoring you, although your repeated abuse was getting boring. I was going to provide the cite to Obama’s statement, but Kimstu beat me to it, just two posts below your call for a citation. He also provided a fuller quotation. I assumed you had noticed that, guess I was wrong.
um,…Somebody has probably pointed this out already but in case you missed it
Asking people to spy on their neighbors …IS THE LIE.
In case you missed it, we’re long past that discussion. Been there, talked about that, and the capital letters bring no new ideas to the table. You might consider re-reading the thread.
You might consider thinking for a second. You are simply mindlessly jerking knee.
You can’t spend your time worrying about offending someone who is looking to get pissed off.
They aren’t collecting email addresses. They are collecting lies. In fact, this whole, spying on your neighbors thing would be something reasonable to mail to them. Maybe I’ll e-mail them this thread. 
Oh noes!!!
No, they asked for stuff that seemed “fishy”, and now are asking for feedback, questions and suggestions; some stuff that seems “fishy” is false, but some stuff that seems “fishy” is true.
I think the point is that you haven’t shown that he is collecting them. It’s reasonable to assume they are getting some email addresses in forwards but that doesn’t mean they’re being collected does it?
Well I thought that was the case but since you phrased it that way after being told it wasn’t true several times it seemed to need repeating. If you’re now convinced it’s not true then that’s good.
You seem to consistently step away from the specific conversation to these broad generalizations as if it’s relevant. Nobody is talking about **everything ** the other side says and does. We’re talking about a specific and very obvious lie.
I agree with you on this in part. It was a mistake for Pelosi and Ried to imply all the protests were contrived. The smart thing would be to state clearly that they want to respond to real concerns without being sidetracking by the contrived portion.
Well there is that choice of fighting for health care. There were lots of town halls after that specifically dealt with those with real concerns.
Heck, I don’t know, depends on what you mean by “being collected”. To me, if they’re collecting emails, and some of them contain email addresses, then they’re collecting email addresses. I invited you to propose an alternate word to “collected” to describe the fact that they end up with email addresses. You have not done so, you’d rather harp on “collected” as if it made a difference.
I don’t care about the words. Pick another word to describe what happens when you ask people to send you emails containing email addresses. The end result is the same. No matter what you want to call it, the government ends up with a list of email addresses and corresponding “fishy” ideas.
Could you get back to the issues?
I imagine some dust settles on horizontal surfaces in the WH now and then. Shall we then say that the Obama administration has been collecting dust?
Say what? People are talking about “they’ll oppose us no matter what” in this thread. It has been stated several times in this thread that no matter what Obama does, he’ll be attacked for it.
After JDelirious suggested that there be no lesson plan:
It is this mantra, oft-repeated in this very thread, that I was referring to, the idea that it is useless to try to negotiate with the Republicans as they will only attack no matter what we do.
Regardless of whether it is true or false, the mantra that “no matter what Obama does the Republicans will attack it” is very damaging to the Democrats. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that encourages Democrats not to even try to negotiate … and guess what happens when you do that?
It also leads our party to see everything through a lens of “we don’t have to pay attention to that, it’s the predictable Republican attack”. Doing this with health care led to a bad and very damaging misperception of the public’s view of Obama’s health program. It was not all astroturf and orchestration and Republican attacks as was claimed ad nauseum, there is a deep and broad stream of real concern and public mistrust of the health care program that was shined on as “predictable Republican attacks” when it was nothing of the sort. Foolish and costly, we’re paying the price now.
If you want your opponent to attack you at every occasion instead of negotiating with you, the very best way to do that is to say “it’s no use negotiating with you, you’ll attack me anyhow.” At that point, since you (not them, but you) have ruled out negotiations, what’s left for them to do but attack?
Well, if they had asked us to forward them our dust, or something containing our dust, I’d say yes …
If the government asked people to send in their used shoes, so they can give them to poor people, by your reasoning, one could say
"They are asking people to send in their shoes. Most people will not take the time to clean their shoes before sending them, thus leaving dust and several dead skin cells on them. The government can collect the dead skin cells so that it can create a database of people’s DNA, and also collect and study the dust on the shoes to figure out where these people have been to.
Oh no! We must stop this! The government is collecting your DNA and tracking your every move. **The government is asking you to forward your DNA! **
This whole request must be cause for alarm, because that’s exactly what a totalitarian government would do with the stuff.
I’m actually an Obama supporter, but he screwed up on this issue, and you guys know that if Bush had requested people to send in their DNA, you would be all up in arms about it. This is dead serious stuff.