So you think my husband is a kook, do you? You don’t remember him calling in*, but you’re sure you would have laughed at him? All right then! Can I make fun of your SO, or whoever’s nearest and dearest to you, despite the fact that I never met them?
It’s partly my fault. I posted with Mr. Rilch’s permission, but it was my idea in the first place, and I should have known better to make him vulnerable in this way. Only a few people here have met him at Dopefests, and no one here knows him through posts. If you heard him discourse on art, baseball, home theater, or any of his other pet subjects, you would know that he is a well-spoken, insightful, stable individual. He thinks before he speaks, he backs arguments up with reasearch, and he’s not afraid to express an unconventional idea, because he arrived at it throuh rumination and study.
He also makes a mind-boggling steak marinade.
*Non-combative question: did you mean to use the plural? He only made one call. That’s one reason I’m proud of him: he was able to be concise, and get his point across clearly and quickly, so that Art didn’t have to recapitulate any of what he said.
Remember, folks–once you take your ideas out of your own brain and place them into the court of public opinion, they’re immune from criticism. Or something.
Oh, Gaudere. I misspelled “research” and “through”.
All right, I have to be more specific. He backs up concrete arguments with research. For instance, he won’t claim that Mickey Mantle was better than another player without statistics to support his claim.
As for his theory that a higher power deliberately neglected to intervene, well, Mr. Rilch is not the only person who believes we may be under observation. He’s not positing, as AB was careful to lead him away from doing, that one Little Green Man beamed down to earth for the purpose of confiscating the Phoenix Memo. But look at the clusterfuck that was national security for the last few years. The agencies were on their game when they arrested the cell that had been planning to blow up the bridges and tunnels. Changes took place shortly after that, leading to the breakdown in communication. Is it so impossible to believe that those changes were influenced by an outside force?
I’ve heard people say on this board that if the goverment had heeded pre-9/11 warnings, the public would have not have taken any new security measures seriously because they wouldn’t have understood why they were being implemented. And that if 9/11 had been thwarted without the conspirators actually being detained, they would have found another way to strike, maybe worse.
Another possiblity of an alternate timeline is this: Enron might have become sneakier than Microsoft, making an attempt at monopoly that would have taken even longer to untangle and sent the economy on a slow decline. Instead they were hit, like everyone else, by 9/11, and fumbled. Again, this was bad for many people, but it’s bringing about campaign finance reform, and calling business’ integrity to account, if you’ll pardon the pun.
I tell people I work with about the Art Bell Show. They laugh at me and I laugh at myself. Some of his stuff is pretty far out but I find a lot of it interesting. I have been tempted to call in a couple of times but have never. If you and your SO enjoy the show… go for it. This does not qualify you for “kookdom”. I think it is good to hear from people with a different perspective.
Phil: I called this to the Pit because someone made an unkind remark about my husband, who is not a member of this group. I don’t remember anyone posting about hir child and having anyone say “Gee, your kid’s dumb”.
The above post is being made on my behalf. I’m willing to defend this theory without taking rebuttals personally (and I know there’ll be plenty of them!). I hope, though, that if anyone wants to hurl epithets like “fuckwit” that they will direct them at me, not at Mr. Rilch.
Mr. Rilch is not the only person who believes we may be under observation. The number of people who believe in something has no bearing on whether or not that something is true. In fact, sometimes there is a definite inverse relationship.
**Is it so impossible to believe that those changes were influenced by an outside force? ** Well, it presupposes the existence of said force, doesn’t it. First, establish that said outside force actually exists. Then, establish that it for some reason is interested in us. Then, establish that it has the means to influence our affairs. Only then can we get to the point you’re talking about.
Instead [Enron was] hit, like everyone else, by 9/11, and fumbled. Um, no. Enron’s troubles were entirely unrelated to 9/11. Period. The seeds for Enron’s collapse were planted throughout 2000-01 (indeed throughout most of the 1990s) when they engaged in creative accounting to cover the fact that they were leaking money like a sieve while reporting earnings of billions of dollars. In the secon quarter of 2001, reported 6/30/01, Enron reported net income of $444 million. In the third quarter of 2001, reported 9/30/01, they reported net income of -$644 million. Unless you’re going to posit that Enron remained in positive net income from 6/30/01 to 9/10/01, then lost more than a billion dollars in 19 days, it should be obvious that the Enron debacle and 9/11 are universes apart.
You know, I really don’t think that Mr. Rilch’s theories or their validity is the issue here. The point is that is that a member of this board posted a thread about something that happened in her life that made her excited and happy, and another member used that thread to insult her husband. Usually, when someone here brings a non-member into a discussion, everyone is careful to point out that they don’t know this person, and usually tries to give non-members the benefit of doubt.
In this case however, obfusciatrist used his membership on this board to shit all over another member’s happiness, and to insult someone she loves. If that’s not being a total asswrench, I’d like to know what is.
Guin and CrazyCatLady: Thank you; you’re both so sweet!
Snooooopy: Didn’t see your post earlier. Guess again. We both liked ID4 for its spectacle, but Mr. Rilch scoffed at the Macintosh-compatibility plot device. And he was on the crew of X-Files for about a year and a half, so I think he knows that’s fake.
pldennison:
Yeah, but you just don’t know.
**
See above. If you’re not open to the possibility of an outside force, then you’re just not. You don’t have to be. But if you are, then you should be open to the possibility of interest and influence.
I’m not saying “Everybody must believe in this.” Just telling you what we believe.
**
All right, then. But perhaps the problem would have been dealt with differently under different circumstances. The story still didn’t break until after 9/11. If Dubya’s campaign finances had been held up to scrutiny without his having gotten such a tremendous credibility boost from 9/11, we could be looking at another impeachment, and soon we’d be impeaching every President.
No, I am not saying that the Bush administration purposely allowed 9/11 to happen for their own gain. We just think that the breakdown was not entirely mechanical. The attitudes of goverment agencies changed fairly rapidly, and it started before the Clinton-Bush transition; it’s not all him.
Asking for evidence (any evidence at all!) of something is **not ** the same as refusing to believe in it.
I don’t currently believe dowsing works, because every time it’s tested, it fails.
A keen dowser told me that he ‘knows’ dowsing works, although he won’t ‘submit to testing’. Apparently this is the official position of most Dowsing societies.
Refusal to be tested usually denotes a serious validity problem.
If you demonstrate it under scientific conditions, I’ll believe it! (and I’m sure pldennison will too.)
SmackFu, how many Christians/Jews/Muslims believe that certain tragic events were done for the greater good? I know that that was one of the explanations offered to me about the holocaust.
Due to my grand inability to use a forum properly, please ignore my previously vague and incomplete babbling. I’d remove it if I could, but I seem unable to edit it.
Anyway, as I was saying, since this is The BBQ Pit and this thread seems to be heading towards rational discussion as opposed to the traditional reckless cursing, I’d like to bring the focus back to pldennison’s first post:
Now, I haven’t been registered here long, nor do I past a lot, but I do enjoy reading this forum – as I alluded to in post #1. I’ve seen a number of Art Bell threads in the past and most of them break down into the same mockery of his show. Since you’ve been here for several years, I assume you’ve also seen such threads. Now, I ask you, what were you expecting to happen?
Everyone to say, “Good for you?”
Come on, if you’re naive enough to think your husband would be immune to the mockery that shadows Mr. Bell, it’s time to re-evaluate the world around you.
