I don’t. Notice that idiot boy didn’t provide links so the quotes would have a context.
Actually, I did. See the > next to your name in my post? That’s a link to the post that you made, which you can follow for context. Nice try, though.
Neither link worked.
That’s odd. All three of them worked for me just now.
Could you two get a room or something?
P.S. Hi, Scylla. I hope you and your family had a nice Easter. 
Ok Carrot brain:
I’m having issues with your links but I think I found the threads:
Your first example of me being a “whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner” is a thread in which I posted four times. So, that doesn’t work.
Your second example of a “whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner” is from a thread in which I have about a gazillion posts including one around 100 lines in length. Here’s that post in it’s entirety:
"Mmmmmm. A long time ago, I realized that the world wasn’t fair and that people didn’t always get what they deserved. A while after that I realized that I really wasn’t qualified to say what people deserved, nor was anybody else. It is simply not up to me, or you, or anybody else.
Historically, I think the attempts to limit to create an artificial balance have tended to go very badly and pushed things in the other direction.
But, I have some faith, and here’s why:
30-35 years ago, a car with airbags, crumple zones, power door locks, cruise control, traction control, fuel injection and what have you was a bit of an exotic animal. You could get a car with all that maybe in a very expensive Mercedes Benz available only to the very wealthy who had money to burn. Mercedes caters to those people. They want something new, better. Mercedes by selling such expensive cars can research it and pay for it by getting people to pay up.
Maybe those people deserve those cars, maybe they don’t. Probably they don’t. Probably the conspicuous consumption is offensive.
But now, even economy cars have all those features. People drive around in safer more reliable cars because some foolish rich people wanted something new and exclusive 30 years ago. Today, a working class family that buys a second hand Honda Oddyssey “deserves” to drive a safe car. And they do.
Did some 70 year old second generation trust fund man “deserve” to drive that Mercedes 30 years ago? Probably not. But he, and people like him created a demand that was fulfilled, and everybody benefitted.
Generally speaking, you can have wealth or you can display wealth. You can rarely do both. Most, choose to display wealth.
This same effect occurs whether we are talking about cars, DVD technology, computers, housing, or medicine. Generally speaking it takes an enormous investment to fund something new and bring it to market. That investment is impossible without people willing to pay for it.
So, the undeserving conspicuous rich serve a purpose.
The wealthy incent innovation.
You see rapid innovation as a direct consequence of capitalism. Innovation occurs primarily in capitalistic circumstances. It does not in socialistic circumstances, as a general rule. Countries that turn socialistic tend to fall behind.
I think the idea of creating a world that is perfectly fair and people’s fortunes and lives are directly in proportion to what they deserve is a really nice idea.
I also think it would be really nice if we could all flap our arms and fly, or be 18 years old and in love for the first time forever.
I think the latter two ideas are the more realistic ones. I’m concerned with what is, and what can be, not with what it should be and what I wish it was. I don’t waste my time with issues of deserve.
You left wing hippie types are always going on about the complexity of the planet, the fragility of ecosystems, and how ham-handed tampering with the environment is insanely dangerous and catastrophic.
And, I think you’re right. The problem is that the environment and the planet is reasonably strong and it can absorb a lot of punishment before it breaks down. It can take some abuse. Those that think you’re wrong point to such as evidence of it’s invulnerability. But, I think you are right to be sensitive to the fact that we are fucking with a complex chaotic system where the consequences aren’t immediately apparent.
Seeing as you guys are smart enough to understand that, I don’t see why some of you fail to understand that the economy itself is an ecosystem as well. When you fuck with it willy-nilly there are consequences.
This current crisis has its roots in such well-meaning interference. The Government deliberately created an innefficiency in the market with the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide housing to people that the free market would deny it too.
I beleive that that was justifiable and a good thing. That inefficiency benefitted everybody in society. People had houses, commerce increased, industry increased, general wealth increased for thirty years. Free markets seek out innefficiencies and close them. This one was held open and fed. It was managed poorly and eventually it blew up. Overrall, I think we are in better shape for having done it than we would be had he not. But it could have been managed better had their been more respect for the forces at work. This disaster is not a failure of capitalism. It is a failure or regulated capitalism. The good thing about it is that we tend to learn from our mistakes and won’t repeat it.
I’ll give you another example, more to point:
There are a whole breed of traders that do something called “arbitrage.” Arbitrage literally means “riskless trading” but in fact it’s very risky.
An arbitrageur might simply watch one set of securities on a variety of different exchanges. If you watch long and hard enough you might find that prices don’t always move in sync. You can find an innefficiency. Let’s say XYZ (it can be a commodity, a stock, a bond, a currency or anything) is selling for $49 bid and $50 offer in New York. In London though it might suddenly be trading at $50.50 bid due to a spike in local demand. Seeing this an arbitrageur buys all he can in New York and sells all he can in London simultaneously. His buying drives the price up in New York. His selling drives the price down in London. The inneficiency eventually closes. He has to buy and sell enormous quantities to do so and make this work. He makes an enormous amount of money. However, if he screws up he might end up with $10 million dollars worth of XYZ that he paid $50 for and is now worth only $47. He can lose tens of millions of dollars, or be bankrupted. The only reason to take the risk is for the potential reward.
If somebody isn’t doing this than you end up with a farmer tons of tomatoes rotting away in Idaho because Idaho is swamped with tomatoes and they can’t be sold at any price, while in Atlanta the price of tomatoes has gone through the roof because there aren’t any to be had. Everybody suffers.
Traders route goods and securities to where there is demand for them.
I don’t think a trader is more deserving as a person than, say, a farmer. However, I do know that in the ecosystem of the economy you need to have a lot of tomato farmers compared to a few tomato traders. It has to be easier and safer to be a tomato farmer than to be a tomato trader. It has to be riskier but more rewarding to be a tomato trader than a tomato farmer.
It’s not about deserve. It’s the way it has to be.
Chiefs and Indians. Everybody would rather be a chief, but if everybody was a chief, nobody would be. It has to both very hard and very rewarding to be a chief.
Earlier somebody brought up Nancy Pelosi’s jet costs. Does Nancy Pelosi “deserve” to fly around on a great big jet at taxpayer expense?
The correct answer is that deserve has nothing to do with it. It’s simply the best solution."
So… I think that’s a rather poor example of a “whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-line” Don’t you?
It’s for this reason that I consider you stupid. There are so many legitimately bad things you could say about me that it’s the height of stupidity and laziness to make ones up.
Hijack complete. If you wish to waste more time start another thread or something.
(sorry kaylasdad. Easter sucked. Family was away. I did yard work. I hope yours was nice.)
As nice as it could be, I suppose. Flew in from OKC on Friday evening, and had just about enough time on Sunday to take them out to brunch. Then I had to get back on a plane to OK. Training ends this week, though, and I’m home for the forseeable future.
Don’t worry about it. Have fun with your pissing contest. I hope you win! 
I guess I’ve missed a lot of your posts, Scylla. I withdraw the ‘one-liner’ part. However, it does seem to me that you’re a lot more critical and unforgiving of the left than you used to be. And for the record, I have greatly enjoyed your non-political writings.
Sounds better than our Easter-Dad had the flu and spent most of the day napping, and I had the most hideous migraine and spent most of the day in bed. We had to postpone Easter dinner until Monday night.
(Your post made me hungry for tomatos…)
So, to prove a trivial point about length of posts, you point out a 100 line post and then quote it in its entirety? I don’t think anybody else would do that, that’s weapons-grade Scylla, refined and purified.
Well, it is a thread about torture.
Americans as a people are no more evil than anyone else, governments are often called a “necessary evil” for good reason. The American government just gets more attention for its atrocities because it is the most powerful.
I agree that no people are intrinsically worse than any other. But certain peoples at certain points in history have coommitted crimes which others were not doing. Hitler’s Germany is a good example. The German people were among the most advanced and yet they collectively went nuts at that point. A couple generations later they had regained their senses (in great part due to having been defeated and condemned by the world).
America today is undergoing similar crazyness and likewise needs to be stopped and criticized. America needs to be told by the world that torturing is wrong and is condemned.
It is not that America is being criticized because its bigger. It is being criticized because it is doing things which are wrong and unacceptable. Once it stops doing those things and shows it knows they were wrong by punishing those who did it then the criticism for those acts will dissappear as it will not be possible.
Mea culpa! I will have to read your posts to fully understand your position. I hope you aren’t taking the position of the previous administration that torture isn’t really torture if we re-define it.
Essentially, that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s taking the “opinions” of the Bush Justice Department at face value.
Okay –Rand Rover you still haven’t answered the question. Do you think torture should be a legal means to use during military interrogations? Are some techniques acceptable but others are not? Do you think the interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration are torture?
That’s was my impression, but I couldn’t remember exactly what he posted. I can’t always trust my memory 
I understand, and sympathize. By the way, could you send along that thousand bucks you borrowed?
Courtesy of a persona we call the “Mop-top Beatle” Scylla, an affable wit whose rare contributions have far wider appeal than those of the brooding, unshorn, wearily politicized, sits-around-in-a-giant-trash-bag-subjecting-Yoko-Ono-to-Dutch-ovens Scylla.
Because things are generally the same everywhere. People aren’t just picked at random and dunked in a bucket, there has to be some association with the bad guys that can be exploited. It’s called intelligence, ironically. It’s not always good and there are definately some sadistic fucks walking around who ought to be put down, but I’d hazard that they’re not in the majority.
Define torture. Second, plausible deniability is the bedrock upon which modern politics is built. Americans don’t have the stomach to truly attack the attackers in the way that would keep them from ever trying to attack us again. What we’ve done over the last 15 years or so is just swat the hornets nest with our sticks, cave to the pressure from the pro-hornet groups and back out and wait for the hornets to rebuild the nests and workout attack plans. At least with deniability you put the blame on the guys lower down the food chain so you can keep YOUR hands clean and do the “right thing” while allowing that with which you do not “agree” to get done because it has to.
Again, that depends on how you define torture. We don’t use those kinds of interrogation techniques simply out of cruelty, but your ideas that we’re just sending monsters over there to torture innocent shop owners, grandmothers and kittens just reveals your ignorance.
You are a riot of contradictions.