Leaper, what you do about the situation depends upon your convictions and the level of commitment you choose to make. If what you hear frightens you, the last thing you should do is to try to silence the people who are speaking up.
Do your own homework using the most independent and reliable sources that you can find. Then address the issues by speaking out yourself through writing newspaper editorials, letters and emails to your Congressional Representatives and Senators. Calling them is another option. It is not as good as writing a letter, but it is better than sending an email. Write to the White House. Show up with a sign the next time a candidate visits. Donate to the party of your choice – write a magazine article or a book – run for office – make an independent film. Read or reread the essay “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau.
We can’t say with any certainty that what is said here never changes anyone’s vote. This message board is one of the ways that news is conveyed. Not all of us catch everything. I’ve certainly read things here that I otherwise would have missed.
Maybe the votes of some of us who are the most out-spoken aren’t likely
to change, but perhaps there are silent eyes reading who will decide that it is worth the trouble to vote this year.
Oh, now I get it! Since the people who disagree with the estimable Shodan are deranged and unreasonable, this relieves him of any responsibility for sound debating techniques and permits him to say anything he wishes, without proof or substantiation since, as every reasonable person knows, liberals are all poopyheads!
Well, that certainly clears that up, now doesn’t it!
So, just to be clear here, Shodan, old top, you don’t really have any substantiation for those claims you made, your contention is that you don’t need them, because if you had them, we wouldn’t listen anyway.
But you still don’t actually have them.
OK, then, here’s the New Rules: Shodan gets to say whatever he wants, without any cites or proofs, because he is defending The Leader, and therefore must be assumed to be right. Paranoid and deranged freedom-hating poopyheads, however, must supply proof and cites, which can be ignored anyway.
Close, but not quite. A baseless assertion made by the right is not like a fact, it is a fact. A quibble, really, a rather minor point, but that’s the trouble with quibbles…
Me, I don’t care for the many juvenilistic sex threads in these fora. Nor do I think much of thread titles containing obscenities for the sake of causing such words to appear “in print” (get a grip and/or a life, kiddies).
Give me a week and I’m sure I could think of other things at SDMB I don’t care for.
But guess what?
This is a shared space. We all have to put up with things we personally don’t care for.
So, Leaper, I must say to your OP: tough shit. We all gotta share space around here.
If Bush-bashing threads, or Kerry bashing threads, or Junior High beaver-shooting threads, or @(#+(#!^ thread titles have an audience, then they will flourish.
Long live diversity (or is that a political sentiment?).
Hey, thanks! Never heard of these guys before, though I go to that Comics site everyday for Boondocks, Sylvia, Doonesbury, etc. New addition to the list of subversive humor!
Look down from Heaven, Walt Kelly, and smile. You done good, and it goes on.
Sometimes when a hot political issue comes up which is occupying much of the OP’s the mods make a special thread so all who wish to post on that subject can and are directed to post under that single thread.
I think it’s time for the following a ‘Why Bush Sucks thread’ in each forumn and be done with it.
What the hell, Shodan. Do you think that if you just keep saying it over and over it will come true? Or are you just hoping that we’ll give up asking you for cites? Sorry to disappoint you, but that won’t be happening, especially not in GD, nor even here in The Pit when it’s carried over.
Here, let’s pick your post apart, in its entirety, shall we?
Okay, but only if I get the straw concession.
This is what is known as a strawman. I’ve challenged you repeatedly to show us who made such a claim in the 57 posts prior to your’s, to prove that it wasn’t a strawman. You have failed to do so, in both this thread, and in the original. Until you do so, it remains a strawman. Not because I say so, but because anyone here can go read that thread, and find out for themselves.
If the quote above this one had actually been posited by a previous poster, you might find more people agreeing with you. It wasn’t, so you won’t.
Skip the naked part, but we’ll call you on this if it happens. Prior to your post, no one said that they would postpone the elections no matter what, nor did they say that the administration would actually carry out the attack, but plenty of folks found many ways they thought the law could be abused. Politicians misusing laws for political gain? Stop the fucking press. I wouldn’t trust the Democrats with that sort of power either.
Sure, if you actually back up your claims in the first place. You’ve thus far failed to do so, and we’re still waiting for that to change.
Dig through the archives, especially the stuff from the last year or so. Miller is unabashedly political at times, and lands smack between Doonesbury and The Boondocks, which should be right up your alley. The fact that he’s funny as hell doesn’t hurt, either.
After my post, we got people chiming in to say that my characterization of their thinking was indeed accurate. So, to paraphrase Aldebaran, the thread is my cite.
I fully realize you probably can’t see that, for reasons I have already mentioned. But it won’t be possible to prove to you that your ideas are weird.
I am trying to share the viewpoint of someone who isn’t paranoid. If that doesn’t resonate with you, it may be beneficial to ask yourself why.
Or not. I am sure you will have a completely plausible explanation when the elections are held as scheduled.
Plausible to you, no doubt.
Is this the plan? Are we being proactive so that, if Bush wins, the looney Left has a new excuse to discount it? In 2000, it was “Bush didn’t win the popular vote!” So in 2004 it will be election fraud.
Cite? (“The thread is my cite” doesn’t work for Aldebaran, nor will it work for you).
Look, we had a perfectly fine debate, with people on both sides being both for and against planning for potential delays, debating the potential for abuse (by both parties), etc. Then you come along and try and derail it. It gets back on track, then you come along again with:
Finally, after a lot of debate, you finally get a nibble with:
While I disagree with BrainGlutton, he/she did not post in the first 57 posts, which is where your mind-reading occured.
And we still have no cites from Shodan to any post by a paranoid loony leftie claiming that the Bush Administration is going to “cancel” the election, and engineer a fascist coup d’etat. For reasons known only to Shodan, he persists in confusing “postpone the election in case of a terrorist attack” and “cancel the election.” Better rhetoric, one presumes.
[aside]Remember, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean there isn’t someone following you around. [/aside]
Let me rephrase: no cites from any of the loonie lefties on the SDMB. If you want to go off-site, you can find people who will espouse almost any viewpoint. You could probably find a right-wing website that maintains that the administration should cancel the election, just to make sure those dangerous Democrats don’t get into power (no, I’m not going to go searching for such a place!). Nobody said there aren’t crazy people out there. But Shodan was responding to a thread here.
Which is not the same as accussing Bush of planning or not stopping an attack in order to do so. Hell, I wouldn’t trust the Democrats to not postpone elections due to some “Heightened Terrorist Alert”, so why would I trust Bush to behave better?
