I fear you’ve made a minor tactical blunder that Sam will leap upon as a means of “refuting” everything else you wrote, to wit:
To which Sam is almost certain to respond: “See what I mean? In fact, I’ve admitted I made an error in this very thread.” Which he did.
The problem with Sam lies not with the fact that he is incapable of admitting a minor error now and then; the problem is that he never makes the connection between these numerous errors and his general point of view. For example, the evidence he presented in the recent Sarah Palin thread, to demonstrate that Palin wasn’t a religious fanatic, turned out to be false. This doesn’t affect Sam’s fundamental assertion in the least; he simply moves on to posting misleading quotes from Obama, as if the previous discussion had never taken place.
Svin, in all fairness, that’s just an example that Sam, like many of his loyalist compatriots (as we saw throughout the Bush years), considers tu quoque to be a valid argument.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you are Sam and are in a position to modify his assertion for him. There are still a couple of facts to get in the way of that.
25 years ago was 1984, right? Reagan was president. Using the methodology you yourself argued for, Reagan still tops both of them. Further, the assertion was made in 2004. 25 years would put the timeframe at 1979. Carter was president, and as we’ve shown with your methodology of proportional change in nominal dollars, Carter tops G.W. Bush.
So, if Sam had said, in 2004, “Go back and look at NASA funding over the last 15 years…” he would have been on safer ground, and we would only be debating whether Clinton’s funding could be fairly described as “constant erosion.”
Thing is, he didn’t say that, and he never acknowledged any problem. He tried to argue for differing methodologies (none of which ended up supporting his assertion), he cast aspersions on my character, and he ultimately left the issue lying there. All he would have had to do is what you are suggesting, perhaps with a little “Oops, got it wrong there.”
Of course you’re correct, and to be honest, I did consider that. All I can say, in weak defense against that type of manipulative and deceitful strategy, would be to say that his first attempts to address error in both the Palin thread and this one have not been truly apologetic or adequate. You’ve described his initial reaction there. Here his first reaction was to say, “Oh I inadvertently included 1992,” which of course did not resolve the error, but compounded it (in my opinion).
The details don’t matter. Sam will call you a liar, crow that the entire discussion is now concluded because you’ve lied, declare victory and beat feet (probably). Or, well, he would have…if we hadn’t had this discussion. Don’t rightly know what he’ll do after reading this…ah, the inevitable problems of a scientific psychology. Controls.
I should have stopped. I didn’t realize I was going to get sucked into this stupid vortex of no-win argumentation.
Your questions to me *assumed *that Sam’s statements were false. I didn’t think they were false, or at least you hadn’t proved it enough. How else to answer a “How does it feel to be such a sucker? I’m genuinely curious.” question.
And no, I don’t care to offer any more information or speculation. I don’t want to do more rounds of this idiocy. Like I said, take my opinion for what it’s worth. If you think my refusal to answer makes my original opinion worthless, well, you’re welcome to feel that way. God willing, I’m done.
I see. You are that smartass that when I ask if I can borrow 2 bucks, you look me right in the eye and tell me “I don’t have 2 bucks”, because you actually got 5 in your pocket.
You’ve got to admit, though, that the one area where argument from authority is valid is when someone is saying what they themselves believe. If Sam Stone says he now supports gay marriage and whatnot and didn’t used to, it’s sort of hard for you to reasonably argue the contrary unless you have some fairly convincing evidence.
Anyway, the search function doesn’t seem to go back through the Board’s whole history so it might not even be possible to find some of these things.
Well, what I noticed is that you were posting to this thread, so you couldn’t have been too busy.
Yeah, you said that, and I responded. Again, I’m not opening a new thread, because the meta-point is about your proclivity to make up whatever shit supports the point you’re currently trying to make. That belongs here.
If you support your position, I may change my mind. In the meantime, your opinion here seems rather uninformed.
Look, if you have a lot of interesting things to say about Obama’s budget being BS, open your own thread. My point is about you making shit up. That goes here.
Of course, even if you’re right about this, it doesn’t follow that Obama will run trillion-dollar deficits forever. You need some numbers to back that up. Numbers you haven’t even attempt to provide yet. And furthermore, the elephant in the middle of this room is that you’re assuming, for no good reason as far as I can tell, that Obama can’t react to changing circumstances and change course. If revenue he’s expecting doesn’t materialize, you’re just assuming he’ll keep the course on the spending side. Why?
I’m not opening a new thread because my point is that… oh, forget it. If you haven’t figured out why I’m not opening a new thread yet, I can’t imagine repeating it a fourth time is going to help.
Shall we get into the chickenhawk thing, too? This board had no more ardent, even belligerent, proponent of sending the US military into Iraq and pretty much just taking charge of the place than our friend Sam. Granted, that’s part of his embracing the Bush lies so totally that it made him unable for literally years to acknowledge it to those many of us who could see through it far more easily. But still, it was the most notable example of his view that there is no price so high, no cost in lives so great, that the Americans should not be urged to bear it.
But was it worth risking his own sweet ass, not those of thousands of other people whom he happened not to know so well? Would he take the challenge to come down himself and enlist and fight for what he believed to be a moral imperative? No? Well, would he explain why not? No? Would he then tell us how he can believe in a moral imperative that requires others to die but not himself? No, not that either.
So don’t be fooled by his lofty, simplistic Randish/Heinleinian claims to ideals and morals. It’s all bullshit, but he can’t admit that even he doesn’t believe it when it really matters.
I don’t disagree with you ElvisL1ves, but the thing that troubles me most about Sam is his pulling assertions out of his ass to give an air of authority to his bullshit. We had many people agitating for war, but most were straightforward and didn’t make assertions of fact in the same fashion.
Consider this: How many of those types of posters would a self-proclaimed progressive come here to defend as “persuasive”?
The whole “chickenhawk” argument should be shit-canned. If the argument is about whether a course of military action is reasonable or needful, that is the argument. If the argument is valid, it makes no difference if the advocate is a craven coward or Sgt. Rock.
I find your characterization of me hilarious. In a thread about accuracy, you toss out the notion that I have a habit of calling people liars, then you cover your ass by saying, “well, he won’t now that I’ve pointed it out”, thereby making it impossible to disprove.
But I’ll tell you what… You seach for the number of times that I’ve called someone a liar on this board, and I’ll do the same for the number of times Hentor has, and if my count is greater than his, I’ll send each of you $100.
I’m tempted to say that if my count is 1/10 as great, I’d do the same, because I don’t have a habit of calling anyone a liar. But that’s maybe going a little far, as my memory sometimes fails me in recalling details of conversations I had on a message board years ago. However, I’d hazard a guess that I’ve accused people of lying fewer times in my entire life than the number of accusations that the two of you have leveled at me on this board. So I think you’re characterization is pretty unfair.
And now I could play your game and say, “Oh, but he won’t retract that, because that’s the kind of asshole he is - he’ll never admit when he’s being grossly unfair,” but the truth is I don’t think that, because I don’t hold grudges. You’re not my friend, you’re not my enemy. You’re a Turing machine I converse with on the internet. The next time you make a good argument, I’ll join your side. If someone attacks you unfairly, I’ll defend you. The same goes for Hentor, or for ElvisLives for that matter. Hell, if we ever run into any of you in real life, I’ll buy you a beer. Life is far too short for this kind of crap.
I feel a little sorry for you, carrying around the weight of all these hatreds and enemies and past perceived sleights. Lighten up a bit.
When on earth did I accuse you of having the “habit of calling people liars”?
All the while blithely ignoring the substance of my post. Just like I said he would.
There are matters where one can have a disinterested and light-hearted debate and go out for a beer afterward, sure. But then there are serious matters. Advocating that the US go to war, that Americans spend treasure and spill blood, is a serious matter. Okay, you were on the wrong side of that debate: but your behavior after this became obvious has been, let us say generously, ignoble.
You will at least be glad to know that I’ve never thought of you as a machine.
Finally, point to a single time in the ten years of our association in which you’ve joined my side in an argument. I sure can’t remember an instance.
Okay, I just spotted something, so I have to go back to this post. I can’t believe I’m going to dig into this one more time.
Hentor’s claims below appear wrong to me, because the dataset he’s using seems to have an error in it. If you look at the NASA budget for 1991-1993 in both constant and nominal dollars, it looks like this:
See anything wrong with this picture? I spotted it instantly as soon as I actually bothered to look at his data. The problem is unless the U.S. had hella inflation in 1991, then deflated itself in 1993, the number for 1992 constant dollars is wrong.
Note that when you remove the error in his dataset (always double-check Wikipedia, Hentor), his Oopsie! goes away, and the numbers look very different.
Then I used the CPI adjustment tables from the same source. I then built a spreadsheet and did my own conversion, and generated my own graph showing the budget change in constant dollars under each president. I will link to them.
Remember, the assertion that has been getting me called a liar for five years now, is that Bush I and Bush II were better for NASA than Clinton was. That Bush I and II increased NASA’s budget, and it saw constant erosion under Clinton.
Feel free to check my numbers with the spreadsheet if you’d like. All sources are linked in this message. There’s no hidden data, no partisan sites. We’re using constant 1996 dollars, so we’re comparing apples to apples.
The Result:
NASA Budget during term of each president:
Starting Budget Ending Budget Absolute Change % Change
Bush I 13,307.61 15,218.01 1,910.40 14.36
Clinton 15,229.43 12,587.32 -2,642.11 -17.35
Bush II 12,883.91 14,416.94 1,829.62 11.90
As for whether Clinton’s changes were ‘constant’, NASA’s budget saw a small increase in 2 of 8 Clinton budgets (1996 and 1997), and decreases in all the rest. If Hentor wants to call me a liar because of that, well, have at it.
Now, unless someone can spot an error in my spreadsheet, I’m done with this.
Graph: NASA Budget graph for Bush, Clinton, Bush. The green line, in constant dollars, is the one we’re interested in. I overlaid it with the graph of nominal dollars just to be complete.
Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it was your assumption that I would call Hentor a liar, that the discussion was over because he lied, yada yada yada. What would make you think that, unless you believed that this was my modus operandi? Surely you have some evidence that I go around calling people liars, right?
Otherwise… You’d be guilty of pulling assertions out of your ass, making claims you can’t back up, and all the other things you lot are accusing me of.
You have to admit, that little message of yours was a pretty nasty attack on my character. Especially since I can’t remember ever doing what you just accused me of, in nearly 20,000 posts on this board.
