It’s amazing. Each sentence is stupider than the last. There’s an odd kind of symmetry to this post.
Er, did you bother to read the OP?
In light of this, I have to regard any video tapes provided by the police as skeptically as a teacher would regard an absence-excuse note written in crayon and signed “My Mom”.
HAH! I had never literally spewed crumbs all over my keyboard thanks to anything on the SDMB until today. Well done, sir! Well done!
(Now back to your regularly scheduled Pitting.)
Wow. I hadn’t read your quote carefully enough the first time through–I thought it was a mildly funny bit of sarcasm. That you were sincere in what you wrote makes it freaking hilarious.
Daniel
Yeah. “Oops!”
Did you notice that the word “arrest” is not synonymous with “conviction”?
And you may also want to notice that I did not claim that every one arrested in New York was a Democrat. I asked why one party seemed to attract a hugely disproportionate number of those willing to break the law to protest at the convention of the other side. Certainly “brownshirt” tactics is hyperbole, although not by much. Brownshirts used to disrupt their opponents’ political rallies illegally.
I am perfectly happy to accept Twin’s distinction if it helps, however.
:shrugs:
I suspect we are venturing into the area where people aren’t even reading all the posts before they react.
I presented a phenomenon as evidence of this as a conclusion, not an assumption.
Protestors against the Republicans seem to be far more likely to engage in illegal behavior than those who protest against Democrats. This has been shown to be true, although not to the extreme degree indicated by raw arrest numbers. But, considering only convictions in a court of law, the disproportion remains.
And I asked, “Why should that be?”
And you, apparently bothered by my post, present figures which reduce, but do not refute, my conclusions. The rest of your post seems to be a hunt for something you can use to explain away the established facts.
Irrelevant.
Actually, the raw numbers of convictions is all that is necessary to establish [ul][li]that their behavior was illegal beyond a reasonable doubt, and [*]that they were protesting against one political side or the other[/ul][/li][quote]
You don’t, and maybe can’t factor in possible differences between the Boston and NYC police departments.
[/quote]
Probably “can’t”.
Also irrelevant. We are talking about behavior, not motivations.
You may be correct that liberals are more motivated to break the law than conservatives. That is evidence in favor of my conclusions, not against them.
Regards,
Shodan
Tomato, tomahto. You’re still drawing illogical conclusions either way.
In the first sentence you deny the claim. In the second you confirm the claim. You essentially state that Democrats are willing to break the law. And you assume that since they were convicted, that they broke the law, whereas the OP throws doubt onto that right off the bat.
I get that feeling too.
You have an interesting definition of “evidence.”
Right, referring to a particular person. As I said, it detracts from your main thesis when you emphasize an individual over the general case. Particularly when done repeatedly.
So your original claim that this wasn’t a pitting of Shodan was simply an error? Or worse? This, along with attacking someone over something said months ago on which you couldn’t be bothered to comment contemporaneously, is what makes it petty.
The comments you’ve finally made would not have been appropriate for that thread anyway, so I don’t see what your participation, or lack of it there, has to do with anything.
You have shown no evidence that liberals were more willing to break the law. Getting arrested does not equal breaking the law. You have not proven that those arrested were liberals. You also assume that if conservative protestors don’t get arrested that they haven’t broken any laws or that they are unwilling to break the law.
Or you may have shown that police in NYC are more likely to arrest demonstrators over minor infractions than police in Boston. Clearly what we need is for the Dems to hold their 2008 convention in New York and the Republicans to hold theirs in Boston so we can compare and contrast. It may help if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton since she ticks off the right wing about as much as George W Bush does the left.
In what way does it detract from my point? You yourself conceded that the point had some validity. Does this change just because i happen to abuse Shodan after making the point?
No, it wasn’t an error, nor was it a lie, if that’s what you’re implying. I was pitting the general attitude that his post exemplified, and i wanted people to focus on the broader point i was making about the use of evidence and about the behavior of law enforcement officals. The fact that pitting Shodan was not the specific reason for starting the thread should not preclude me from calling bullshit on his bullshit claims.
You are fucking moron. There, happy now? You have finally said something in this thread that really is demonstrative of complete idiocy.
When you say that i “couldn’t be bothered to comment contemporaneously,” you seem to imply that i looked at the thread, saw Shodan’s comments, and decided not to get involved. The reality, though, is that i didn’t comment on that thread because i never saw it. Much as this might surprise, there are some political threads on this message board that escape my notice, either because i’m away from the Boards, or because i’m too busy participating in other threads.
Also, you suggest that commenting months later is petty. But look, dickhead, the New York Times article i cited only came out yesterday. So, while i could have questioned his generalizations back then—and done so quite justifiably—it was only yesterday that i saw the evidence that not only called into question his poor methodology, but provided refutation of his actual statistics.
Do you see how this works? Let me spell it out for you in short sentences.
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I never participated in that original thread.
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The reason i didn’t participate is that i never saw it.
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If i had seen it, i’m pretty sure i would have spoken up then.
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I did participate in other threads where suggestions were made about the violent tendencies of liberals. I also remember seeing such claim in the news media, especially from conservative commentators.
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I saw an article in the New York Times yesterday which noted the number of dismissals in these cases.
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I thought that the NYT artcile provided some counter-evidence to the earlier assertions i had seen.
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I searched for an appropriate comment to hang my argument on, and came up with Shodan’s.
You get dumber with every passing minute. I specifically put this thread in the Pit because i wanted to use some invective about the situation. I could have started it in GD and made similar points without the invective. And, had i participated in the original thread, i could have made similar points well within GD rules. But i didn’t want to. I wanted it in the Pit.
And let’s be clear on exactly how “petty” and abusive i was towards Shodan. Here are my points about him from the OP:
To tell you the truth, i can hardly see a thing there that wouldn’t pass muster in GD. Even the last sentence, while a little snarky, probably wouldn’t even earn a caution. About the only non-GD-appropriate stuff was my comments at the top about Bush and about “compassionate” conservatisim.
Really, if this is all you’ve got, you’re pissing into the wind.
Shodan, i’m interested in your summary dismissal of my points about statistics. Let me take one key point of your last post, and ask you something.
I said:
and you said
So, let’s take a hypothetical. Say we have two demonstrations, one consisting solely of liberals protesting against conservatives, and one consisting solely of conservatives protesting against liberals.
Say the first demonstration (the liberals) contains 100,000 people, and the second demonstration (conservatives) contains 10,000 people.
Say, also, that 2,000 liberals are arrested and convicted of breaking the law. And, at the other demonstration, 400 conservatives are arrested and convicted of breaking the law.
So, 2% of the liberal demonstraters were arrested and convicted, as against 4% of the conservatives. Do you contend that we need ignore these percentages and focus only on the raw numbers of people arrested?
Mussolini’s blackshirts used castor oil, as Cecil shows:
I don’t really have a horse in this race, especially after having blown my attempt at humor, but I have to comment on this. If one accepts that the motivations to a) not protest, b) protest and not do anything arrest-worthy, and c) do something arrest-worthy (and by that I mean really arrest-worthy, not some of the BS that NYPD was apparently picking people up for) are different, than your example is not useful.
I agree that Shodan has not shown a useful distinction or trend in his examples, but your hypothetical can also not show anything useful.
Good point. I remember quite well how Hitler’s brownshirts took over the Reichstag in the Great Pie-throwing Contest of 1934. :rolleyes:
Why not?
I mean, especially, in terms of whether or not we can draw conclusions (like Shodan has done) about certain groups’ propensity for illegal activity.
Your distinction between (a) and (b) might show certain differences among people, but it does not, by itself, say anthing about a person’s propensity of commit illegal acts. Simple participation in protests such as this does no not constitute prima facie evidence that a person is somehow less law-abiding than someone who chooses not to protest.
I should add that i didn’t offer my hypothetical in the belief that it, by itself, would constitute some sort of evidence for my case. I offered it simply as a counter to the belief that raw numbers tell the whole story, absent any context of percentages, participants, conditions, etc., etc., etc.
Shodan’s the one who’s made the direct connection between the statistics and broader issues of liberal willingness to use illegal methods, but so far he really hasn’t shown why any extrapolation from these numbers might be valid.
All I know is I’d rather have someone throw pies at commentators than people advocating violence against judges or murdering doctors doing their jobs.
Just to take one more whack at this dead horse:
You’re not even going to be able to get that.
A lot of those protesting in Boston seemed to have been liberals, too - the Kucinich campaign, Run Against Bush, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, etc.
There don’t seem to be as many conservatives at the RNC protests.
Again, the pattern seems to be that a mixture of liberals and conservatives protesting against Democrats produces very little provably criminal activity. A predominantly liberal batch protesting against Republicans produces much more.
I’m sure you can make up some other scenarios where this is not the case, but in the real world…
Regards,
Shodan