But when He said “Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; you neither go in yourselves nor suffer those who are entering to go in!” He didn’t follow it up with, “Actually, the pharisees have been far more agressive then I have (feel free to weigh that our yourselves, surely you have the time and interest). And I’m mirroring what they say while giving signals and opportunities to lighten the tone – you got that right? Basically, I’m really striving for less hostile interactions with the pharisees even as I refer to them as hypocrites. Subtle, huh?”
Whatever, dude. I really wasn’t looking for a reason to stop taking your seriously but thanks anyway, I guess. Good luck with your Cunning Plan.
The apostles didn’t get all in his face with “Jesus don’t you think you’re being a little harsh there? Jesus you’re such a hypocrite? Jesus doesn’t this contradict your message of love?”
All I ask is that you accord me the same respect and benefit of the doubt as you would any other messianic figure. Is that too much to ask?
I’m basically a lurker, so this will just pass right on by, but Bricker is:
one dimensional
arrogant as all fuck
elitist (yes I said it)
an asshole
a troll
Every fucking thread I read as a lurker I read just to read, to listen, to understand, and without a doubt 90% of the time when a discussion gets derailed by some “expertise” that doesn’t even have relevance, and I look up, guess who the poster was?
Do we all think he posts in every thread as the cheery devils advocate of law/conservatism/religion on opinion matters because he cares? Or is it because he can further illustrate his worldly and superior knowledge of law/whatever (read, better than us) while pretending to not disagree with the substance, just pointing out the law in a thread about music tastes or how to grill chicken (hyperbole).
In the one matter of actual law I got into with him he was 100% wrong, but never had the balls to admit it. I’ll wait. He talked down to me and everyone that agreed, cause we are just mere simple folks, not Attorneys. But, really, how does he know we are not - cause we don’t advertise it like him?
And now here they are, defending trolling. His pit thread was trolling, most of his substantial argumentative contributions are trolling. He couldn’t find a pseudo legal thread to derail so he started his own “everyone look over here at what I am doing” thread. Stop feeding (yes guilty, see next line).
Because someone always has to look this sort of thing up, and because I am that sort of idiot, here it is. Given the post date of 10/8/03, I expect this is the accompanying pit thread.
TVeblen, I remember you as a fair moderator, and a good contributor of the SDSAB…your attitude in this thread is shocking and dismaying. What happened?
In my estimation, of all of Scylla’s 12,000+ posts during his entire Dope career, roughly, oh, 11,997+ of them have been “careless or clearly partisan.”
So, he’s admitting that anyone who ever responds to him is more than likely wasting their time. Highfuckinglarious.
I actually generally like Bricker. His contributions here far outweigh his negatives. However, a couple things:
He likes to stir shit. I’ve seen him argue in ways that I know for a fact that he knows for a fact are wrong. Presumably for his own amusement.
He was clearly asking for a pile-on in the thread you’re referring to and he got it. Where’s the outrage coming from?
You OP, Scylla, is absurdly dramatic. Just stick to entertaining us with your funny stories and stop trying to convince us of anything because you suck at any kind of arguing, implicit or explicit.
Fair enough. I clean missed them at the time and didn’t find them in a search. My search skills really suck because they didn’t pull up when I looked. But fair’s fair. Apologies to Scylla for saying he never responded at all about his Thanksgiving challenge. It was shortly thereafter he became scarce on the board but I was wrong and he did come through as promised.
After slogging through his long ‘analysis’ of the WMD report, I must say he kept going back and forth. He gamely admitted the report was false, Bush should have known, etc. then put in a ‘final’ exoneration of Bush, given the ‘ambiguities’. That was followed by another round of extenuating circumstances for Bush, including that he wouldn’t lie if he expected to get caught. But his final, last at-the-end part did flat out state Bush hadn’t met the standard. So good on him for that.
What I still don’t understand–the source of my exhausted fury–is how anyone can know this level of incompetence, if not flat-out corruption, exists but still support it. The fuzzy idealogical ‘team’ approach to politics baffles and infuriates me because so much damage is done in the name of theory. “Well, I have to support my party because they represent what I believe in!” Corruption? Incompetence?
The partisan labeling is also disgusting and ultimately exhausting. I refuse to enable the Rove/Bush legacy so hey, that means I’m a liberal! (Attach all the pejoratives on that side: tax-and-spend, soft on crime, immoral, etc.) I’m walking the floor at nights trying to figure out how the hell I can avoid laying off people–good ordinary folks who flat-out need their jobs to keep their homes. I have to find a ton of money to cut somewhere and I simply don’t know where I’ll be able to save their jobs. The reasons? Well, partly Bush/Rove’s unforgivably wastrel spending and the steady economic downward spiral. So that’s squarely on the Republicans.
My contempt and fury for them is matched and possibly exceeded by the corrupt, obscene bloated mess of Illinois politics–and that’s the ugly entrenched Democratic machine, baby. You want to see hatred? Get me started on helmet hair, Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor and career dirtbag. He’s in a pitched battle with the rest of his party and nothing, but nothing, is getting done while the state deficit soars out of control. This is the Democratic machine that sees nothing wrong with the practice of letting machine pols hand off their offices to their offspring. I’m not kidding. Elected offices are considered family property. I’ve voted for exactly one Democrat to state government. The rest have been Republicans. Hell, know those people who nominate their dogs? I’d vote for one as long as it wasn’t a Democrat. The current system is corrupt, it damages citizens, it’s evil and it needs to stop.
I don’t understand what’s so puzzling or radical about that. Or why people continue to support it mindlessly. Or even worse, when they rationalize, excuse; contort reason, ethics and even common sense to vote it power "because I’m an X!" Democrat, Republican, it doesn’t fucking matter. No theoretical political position trumps keeping proven shits in power. Both parties have them and by the time they get finished horse-trading, lofty philosophical stances often get shuffled aside anyway.
If people can’t see the basic wrongness, the real evil and criminal waste done in the name of rabid political team-playing then nothing I can say will change them. I’ve kept pretty quiet on politics on the board because apparently being a real Independent is too strange to grasp. That’s depressing as hell. And I’m more cynical by the day over the genuinely horrible outrages party animals on both sides put forth under the guise of governing their fellow citizens.
Feh. A long rant, and probably a pointless one. Well, it’s been said once. That’s enough.
Seriously? You are actually looking forward to, and hoping for an administration that will damage the country?
Even with only a few months left in George W. Bush’s term, I still hope that he will govern wisely. I hope that he will consider all viewpoints, seek out the knowlege of experts, and make decisions that will benefit the country and the world. I don’t think highly of him, and see little in his past that makes me think it’s likely, but I still want it to happen.
That someone would pray otherwise I find abhorrent.
You can try, but I pointed that out in the other thread and was ignored completely.
Apart from the fact that for many of those years Congress was in the hands of the Democrats, the essential reason is that the one has very little to do with the other. What damping or direction-changing impact did the election of Nixon have on the counter-culture movement? None, other than perhaps to push it further in the direction it was already going in anyway.
Presidents don’t play a very significant role in how people decide to behave. Hollywood, the courts (Federal and the Supreme Court, primarily) the news media, magazines, televison programs (All In The Family, for example) and talk shows, the university environment, indoctrinaire rabble-rousers, peer pressure and the desire to belong, etc., etc., do. And for most of the last 40 to 50 years those groups have largely been dominated by the left.
I don’t believe that’s what Jackmannii meant. An administration is made up of people, and people are fallible. Obama is not perfect, despite the standards his detractors want to hold him to. His cabinet will not be perfect. He will make some mistakes. Will they be Iraq-level mistakes? Probably not. But the mistakes will happen. McCain will make mistakes too. Will they be Iraq-level? I sure as hell hope not, but I trust him less than I trust Obama.
Even if they would make the exact same mistakes, however, here’s the difference: We’ve had 8 years of Democrats getting pissed off at the mistakes of a Republican administration. If McCain wins, that’s another 4-8 years of Democrats being pissed off at a Republican administration. But if Obama wins, then Democrats can stop being so pissed-off all the time, and Republicans will be the ones to get pissed off more often. Thus the equilibrium. It has little to do with wanting the country to actually be harmed.
Last night I made a “you’re a dum-dum” quip and tonight I’m saying “that was fuckin’ brilliant”. That “go away and kiss me!” season-ending-cliffhanger culmination’s gotta happen, babe!
I’m not sure much slack should be cut here. My post in that thread was restrained, but I have to say that somebody voting, then gloating simply out of spite is something that really pisses me off. I’ve no problem with people voting on issues. Kinda what you’re supposed to do anyways. I do have a problem with people using their vote to piss off others.
To be honest, I think there’s less of a hope of actually changing things with Diogenes than Bricker. Sure it took a six page pile on, but Bricker at least admitted that the spiteful reasons for changing his vote were wrong. Can’t imagine **Diogenes **doing the same ever.
I think it’d be closer to say different expectations.
More than enough. I think your indictment of this administration and conservatives/republicans in general is as careless and devoid of fact as your attack on me.
I think it’s just bad, sloppy, and angry thinking.
To be fair to Dio, he did retract his “Sarah Palin slashes funds to teen mothers” OP in GD. It took a bit of counter-cites for him to do it, but he did do in in one page.
I’m sure they don’t hate America. I think it’s just so far down their list of priorities that it might sometimes seem as if they do. Their first priority being themselves, they would rather have a guy from “their team” win so that they can do a taunting dance “in the face” of everyone else.
