Fair enough. But then you really don’t care about someone’s “experience” or “stature”. You just want someone who you view is anti-war. That’s fine. We all want people who come close to our beliefs. But that doesn’t make those people more experienced or instill them with any greater stature.
Right. In your twisted view of reality the war was justified and everyone is better off. You are sure that the country does better under Republicans no matter what the facts say.
You have the perfect right to vote for any dipshit Republican because Dems are always evil. I’m just calling you out that this means you put party before country, and that makes you no better than those card carrying Commies for whom Stalin was right, no matter what.
Right. Notice my past history? I put that down to show that, unlike you, I do look at the facts and change opinions in response to them. You with your “left bad, right good” fixation have a lot of nerve calling anyone else unable to act based on the data.
Maybe there is a reason for this, as opposed to the McCain nomination. Fact is, even the left knows that McCain, though wrong and a sellout, is at least qualified to do the job. Palin isn’t, and we’re in big trouble if she ever gets to be president. And you and your type don’t care, since she energizes the base. Who cares if we elect someone who can’t do it, who will make us weak in the world, so long as we win. That’s unAmerican in my book.
Right. You and Bricker were just teetering on the edge of voting for Obama.
Cry little baby. You’re the one who is so dead set in his ways and views that you don’t care what happens to us so long as those nasty lefties don’t get in. And you’re calling yourself a font of tolerance? Fuck you. Like I said, I had a subscription to National Review probably before you were born. I know conservatism from the inside. It used to be a pretty respectable point of view, before we lost Bill Buckley and got Anne Coulter. Some conservatives who still have a shred of integrity, like Gary Wills, think she should quit. But you can’t answer any arguments, and you can’t even see that there are two. In your distorted world there is just good and evil, and you deny even the possibility that someone on your side could change. Shouting louder doesn’t make you right.
I am definitely anti war. The war and cut tax ploy has put our country into a financial position that is extremely dangerous. You can not separate the war from the financial disaster that they caused. We can not afford it.
Heres what Alan Greenspan says and he is mostly responsible for it.
So how do your beliefs stackup to the financial mess they caused. ? Do you ignore a potential meltdown to vote values. ?
See where I said Administration? Not president?
I’m not sure if you mean that there haven’t been hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, or that they were a force of nature. For the latter, it has been clear for a while that bad loans were getting made, and some states were even trying to regulate them, but the spirit of deregulation made the Fed prevent it. (I know they don’t report to the president, but I suspect some leadership from the administration could have changed their minds.)
During the Clinton years there were plenty of crises that could have hurt the economy, but competence and leadership got around them. You guys are like some poor shmuck in Galveston, trapped in his attic and calling 911 in the middle of the storm. “But I couldn’t know…”
My objection to him has nothing to do with politics. It is the “got to keep the reins of government away from the lefties, no matter what” statement. Sounds like the kind of person who would lead a coup against an elected government. Then there is “the country is going to hell because of you libruls” stuff, which sounds like Romney blaming our ills on the liberals in control of Washington for the past 8 years. Crime went down under Clinton, and didn’t go down under Bush, but who cares about the facts when you’re convinced the lefties are responsible for all evil.
I gave reasons and examples of how we’re worse off, but did he respond to that? No way. I gave my political history to falsify his contention that the left never changes opinion. Did he respond to that? No way. Anyone who disagrees with him is pompous. That’s something I’ve never been called before, so I can laugh at it.
Since I’m not running for president, I don’t have to control myself in responding to an idiot with a one-lane worldview. I’ve restrained myself long enough. He’s been spewing his drivel all over here and GD for long enough for him to get called on it.
I only have a few more minutes to post, but I have a whole ton of “my take of Sarah as an Alaskan etc” over in GD.
The thread called (IIRC) “And who is Sarah Palin”?
Here is the link to the thread. And again -- who IS Sarah Palin - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
Sorry I don’t remember how to link to specific posts, and I have to go start prepping for class tomorrow (and no, I can’t just leave it, I’m the instructor :D).
The christian nutjob one is the only one that I didn’t go over over in GD. I only saw a little bit of her speech to her former church. My thoughts on that are “?Christian nutjob? She’s addressing a church crowd, of COURSE part of her speech is going to encompass 'here’s our responsibility as a christian in this election” But then, I didn’t hear the whole thing, so maybe she encouraged sacrificing goats or something?
Yes, yes they do.
Oh Lord! Do NOT get me started on the stupidity of people who spend beyond their means, don’t read the fine print, don’t use common sense regarding their finances and then go crying to the gov’t (as if it’s their fault they didn’t do their homework when purchasing a home) when their $1000 ARM mortgages morph into $1700 after three years, and their wages didn’t keep up.
If Rev. Wright is an issue for Obama, why isn’t Pastor Kalnins an issue for Palin? She joined his church at 12 years old, and has been in close association with him ever since. Some gems from him: People who oppose President Bush are going to hell. And Alaska is one of the places that God will gather the faithful in the End Times. Palin was there when he said that last one, btw.
The loans were possible because of the lack of regulation. These loans were impossible to obtain without real wages and savings a few years ago. The loans were made because they could be . If we had kept regulating the financial industry and banks this crap would not have happened. Do you believe that the loan originators actually cared if they could keep the homes/ Once the paper work was done the loans were packaged and sold and no longer their problem. It should not have been permitted.
I don’t understand…are you completely and utterly voiding the blame for that of people that could NOTafford the homes they were buying? Couldn’t read “the fine print”?
Sarcasm?
That’s funny. I could have sworn it was you and your ilk that has been calling everyone with a different political opinion than yours evil. I don’t recall a single instance of a conservative around here calling someone evil. Nope, It’s all coming from the left. According to you - and an increasing number of your ilk- we’re evil simply by voting Republican. Yep, and according to you we’re evil if we vote Republican because:
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We want to kill brown people (despite the fact that many of us have loved ones there ourselves).
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We don’t care if people lose their homes (despite the fact that many of our number are losing homes ourselves, as are many of our own loved ones).
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We’re evil if we vote Republican because we want a return to slavery (despite the fact that many of us are mixed race couples…and that blacks are some of our best friends). (bird-flip smilie)
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We’re evil if we vote for McCain because he’s Bush #2 and will he will do everything Bush is doing and all will be lost!
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We are evil simply by virtue of voting Republican because how on earth could we vote Republican if we’re not evil to begin with?
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We are evil simply for being Republican, because how on earth could we be Republican and not be evil?
Etc., etc., etc.
Take a look at your own post which caused the response from me that FoieGrasIsEvil applauded:
See? I want to continue to see people lose their homes; I want people to be unemployed; I want Bush to chop wood instead of deal with Al-Qaeda (whatever the fuck that idiocy means); I want us to have a bad reputation; and I’m cool with 4,000 Americans deaths because at least lefties aren’t in power.
Quite a bit different than that lying little screed you posted above in which you try to sound more reasonable and merely offended by my lack of interest in your facts and my determination to vote so as to keep lefties out of power.
Now, why do I want lefties kept out of office? Because I’m sick of what liberalism and the permissive society it has wrought have had on this country.
You want to hold up 4,000 American deaths as evidence I’m evil? I’ll hold up millions of deaths over the last 40 years due to the permissive society you champion from drugs and drug-related crimes, not to mention many millions more whose lives have been ruined when someone in their family becomes a drug addict or is killed in a drug-related murder; from people raped and killed by criminals and murderers set loose on society by liberal judges and correctional systems; from drive-by shootings in gang-related killings caused by gangs that have been allowed to flourish, grow and propogate by liberal resistance to having them outlawed because to do so would be ‘racist’; from AIDS…deaths that are directly attributable to widespread homosexual promiscuity condoned and even encouraged by liberals in the early eighties; by second and third term abortion of perfectly sentient little babies who, with a little care and stabilization in the hospital, could have survived and been taken home way prematurely just like a full-term baby, and who instead are subjected to some of the most horrific deaths imaginable by the very same people who wail that using drugs on torturing, raping murderers is cruel because, who knows, they might feel something before they die.
Etc., etc., etc…ad fucking nauseum!
So yeah, I think if anybody in this country could be called evil it would be you guys, because millions upon millions of people in this country have suffered and died over the last 40 years because of you!
But you don’t see me or any other conservative around here screeching about how EVIL you are if you even think about voting Democrat.
And FACTS? Give me a fucking break! There are literally millions of facts that come into play on these issues, many of which are interwoven and bear upon each other in intricate and complex ways, and no single fact or group of facts that you could possibly present will come anywhere near putting things in their proper big-picture perspective. And even if they did, there would be disagreement between liberals and conservatives as to whether or not that big-picture perspective is what’s right.
So, when I say I’m not interested in this or that poster’s particular fact regarding some political issue, I’m merely recognizing the obvious: that some single random fact has been pulled out of the millions out there that come into play on the issue, and that that poster then thinks I should do a 180 degree turn-around and vote for a political ideology that I’ve always been vehemently opposed to because I was shown a fact that supoorts his side or makes my side look bad.
You know as well as I do that there is hardly a soul around here, right or left, who is going to change his or her vote because of any facts that I present or that anyone else presents.
You all know that perfectly well. There is absolutely no fact that exists that will cause a devout liberal to vote Republican, and there is no fact that exists that will cause a devout Republican to vote liberal.
So, what happens is liberals champion liberalism and conservatives champion conservatism, and both sides throw around facts purporting to give greater weight to their side…and the only thing that is accomplished is to make each side angrier at the other when its own version of the facts fails to change the others’ minds.
But of course, liberals, smug and arrogant in their self-righteous indignation and rage, then resort to calling their opponents names and asseting that they are ‘teh EVILLL’ by virtue of the fact that since they have all the pertinent facts at hand, anyone who fails to be pursuaded by them simply has to be evil because there’s no other explanation.
So which side has caused greater pain and suffering and harm to society over the last 40 years? I’m gonna go with you guys, but I’m not gonna call you EVIL.
Because that’s stupid.
Go check on the distribution of subprime loans over ethnic neighborhoods, including those with high incomes and who could qualify for goo loans.
And for some odd reason this increase in stupidity of the masses was correlated to deregulation and the increase in slicing and dicing and selling loans. To be sure, if everyone were as brilliant as you there would be no issue, but alas when some people are told by Mr. Mortgage Man not to worry, since they can refinance their more valuable home before the jump, they believed him. Why have widespread use of loans without documentation unless the mortgage companies intended them to be taken by people who couldn’t afford them? Oddly the borrowers didn’t have a gun to force the lenders (who have models of who can really afford loans) to lend them money. Add to that the fact that these people could never buy a house any other way, and in fact were getting further and further behind, and you’ll see many of the borrowers were acting in their own self interest. But why even have credit checks if borrowers are supposed to only apply for loans they can afford? Trust but verify should be the rule.
Credit cards might soon have the same problem. The credit card companies try to get their customers to have the maximum balance without getting into trouble. If something happens, and they do get into trouble, the credit card companies have nothing to do with it.
It does appear you don’t read very well. If you notice, I said I disagreed with McCain but that he was qualified. (We even gave him money in 2000, by the way.) As for the different political opinion stuff, I’ll state for the record once again that Bush Sr. did an outstanding job in both diplomacy and strategy in GW I, and that he was right where many Democrats were wrong.
Want to say something equally as nice about a Democrat, or do all they want to do is hook our kids?
Your points that followed were things that no one here has said. I’m sure some wacko blogger has. For homes, the ideological purity of deregulation overrules its affects on the people. It would be evil if the right could follow a chain of consequences from deregulation to taking risks to increasing profits to foreclosures. Never fear - I don’t give you that much credit, so no evil is implied.
I did say I voted for Nixon in '72, right? Or do you ignore that because it would make your tiny little head explode?
I don’t know if you want it or not. But it happened, and you either deny it or think it is of no consequence compared to those awful lefties getting in power. Think of it - the last time that happened the gap between rich and poor narrowed, and we can’t have that! Oh, and Clinton got a blow job.
[quote]
You want to hold up 4,000 American deaths as evidence I’m evil? I’ll hold up millions of deaths over the last 40 years due to the permissive society you champion from drugs and drug-related crimes, not to mention many millions more whose lives have been ruined when someone in their family becomes a drug addict or is killed in a drug-related murder; from people raped and killed by criminals and murderers set loose on society by liberal judges and correctional systems; from drive-by shootings in gang-related killings caused by gangs that have been allowed to flourish, grow and propogate by liberal resistance to having them outlawed because to do so would be ‘racist’; from AIDS…deaths that are directly attributable to widespread homosexual promiscuity condoned and even encouraged by liberals in the early eighties; by second and third term abortion of perfectly sentient little babies who, with a little care and stabilization in the hospital, could have survived and been taken home way prematurely just like a full-term baby, and who instead are subjected to some of the most horrific deaths imaginable by the very same people who wail that using drugs on torturing, raping murderers is cruel because, who knows, they might feel something before they die.
[quote]
And there you go again. The fact that crime went down during the Clinton administration means nothing to you, right? Guess what, there were drugs all over during the Eisenhower years also. I was going to say I personally have never touched any drugs, but in fact I was in college during the '60s, so I touched plenty. Smoke or take any, no, but touch yes. The War on Drugs seems to have gone on in both Republican and Democratic administrations, with little success. Hell, people drank during prohibition, but I wouldn’t blame Coolidge or Hoover for it. Humans have gotten drunk and taken drugs since the dawn of time. Exactly how is this the fault of liberals, and do you have any brilliant solutions, or are you just ranting?
I must admit that Republicans are stricter than Dems in one way - they want to make sure that cancer patients in California won’t get hooked on that Mary-Gee-Wanna, no matter what the majority of Californians want.
If I’m such a big fucking pusher, where the hell is my Cadillac, that’s what I want to know.
Let’s put these claims in their correct context.
On July 27th, 2008, an unemployed truck driver named Jim David Adkisson walked into a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tn., and started gunning down the congregation. He killed two people and seriously injured six others before being overpowered and wrestled to the ground. Here is how Adkisson later justified his actions to the police:
Sound familiar?
Here are some quotes from right-wing radio announcers, whose opinions are broadcast to millions, if not tens of millions, of avid fans, every day:
The idea that “liberals” on this board have somehow cornered the market in labeling their political opponents evil, and that conservatives are wholly without blame, is, of course, ludicrous. SA has quite blatantly demonized “liberals” in post after fact-free post, and is outraged his political opponents expect him support his views with facts or logical arguments:
That’s right! Facts? FACTS! We don need no stinkin facts!
The problem, of course, is that his debating opponents have not one or two facts pulled out of “millions”, but rather thousands of compelling facts supported by logical arguments, while he has literally nothing other than the opinion he’s pulled out his own ass to support his position. And he knows this, or course. His argument is nothing more than an exercise in sophistry, a pretense to a level sophistication he has not even understood himself.
With regard to the above quotes, see full report here.
Mr. Svinlesha, where have you been all my life? 
Oh, you know…out runnin around, havin pre-marital sex, spreadin STDs, abortin babies, doin drugs, talkin dirty, dissin authority – all the usual stuff we arrogant, intolerant liberals do.
By the way, it strikes me as well, the irony at the heart SAs view of what’s wrong with society. I thought conservatives were champions of idea of personal responsibility: if you do something wrong, it’s your own fault, and you can’t blame society. Yet, at the same time, he argues that it is precisely this allegedly permissive, liberal society that’s led to every individual being so fucked up, so for that reason he can blame the liberals.
Very strange.
Good job! It’s nice to see that you’re upholding the liberal agenda. As for me, I was out there encouraging promiscuous gay people to spread AIDS and immoral women to abort their third trimester babies (but it certainly wasn’t me who was depriving either of them of condoms… that was someone else). I was also campaigning against making gangs illegal, because you know I ain’t racist. It’s a wonder I have time to do anything else!
Why was I doing all of this? I blame society!
I’m not the first to say this, but some of the liberals here need to calm the fuck down.
If I was in America, and this was my only place of political debate, I’d be inclined to think along the lines of ‘if these assholes support Obama, then supporting Obama can’t be right’!
I don’t get it. None of this slowed down when Republicans were in power.
In fact, there’s no reason to believe it was any better BEFORE 40 years ago. The most destructive, family-wrecking drug of all time is alcohol, and a hundred years ago it was a plague on American society on a level that makes cocaine look like Gummi Bears. Are you calling for a ban on alcohol? Do you abstain from it yourself? If not, why not, when it’s obviously the worst drug that has ever existed? More Americans have been killed just in drunk driving accidents than could reasonably be attributed to ANY other single recreational drug that has ever existed, except tobacco, and tobacco addiction doesn’t also destroy families, ruin children’s lives, and wreak the economic devastation that alcoholism and alcohol abuse do. And it was way, way worse in the past than it is today.
What evidence is there that there is ANY difference between either political party in terms of how drugs affect American society?
Crime rates are down over the last 15 years, not up. Gangs are nothing new. What’s WORSE here, exactly?
Again, what evidence have you gays weren’t having sex prior to 1980?
You seem to have a very incorrect perception of how the world was prior to “liberals” being around. In fairness, this is a common belief; that prior to the 1960s, things were clean, no crime, no drug addiction. It’s horseshit. Substance abuse was unbelievably rampant, there was lots of crime, and things were a lot shittier in many ways that liberalism fixed.