Oh, I don’t think it was just between the two of us, as the banning seems to indicate.
At any rate, the mods have said (and I agree) that he was enough of a jerk/liar/whatever to be banned. YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
It seems that it was successful.
I shan’t lose any sleep over it. I just think that in that one instance, you’re interpreting it wrong. YMMV.
The hostility between Desmostylus and me surely dwarfs whatever hostility might exist between him and Shodan, and I definitely understand that he was attributing only the phrase “brown skinned people” to Bush. I do not believe that its usage was racist on the part of Desmostylus, nor do I believe it was racist on the part of Bush. In fact, I believe that Bush used the phrase to indicate that any difference is trivial, as in, “So a person has brown skin, so what?”. Shodan, with all due respect, you are mistaken in this instance.
That’s how I read it, and that’s why I quoted it. He (Demo) was attributing the phrase, but leaving out the context which was the most important thing. The original statement by Bush was not racist. If anything, Bush was taking a swipe at the “white man’s burden” types.
IIRC, the Bush administration tried this at least twice. What they were trying to do was proactively undermine opposition to their efforts by introducing the idea that it was racist to oppose nation building in Iraq. Only people who were racist, i.e. who believed that brown-skinned people couldn’t engage in self-government, would oppose his plans to bring them liberty, was the thinking behind that. I don’t think that line of attack ever gained much traction, but you can’t say they never tried.
Maybe, but it all depends on how much we want to read into it. Bush wanted a regime change. He got one. It was not however based on racism - not about killing “brown” people. Liberation? Maybe. A more friendly govenment? Maybe. Deposing a batshit loony? Maybe. But not racist.
Here’s a thread where I pointed out Bush’s use of this preventative pseudo-race card playing gambit on three occasions - one in regards to the invasion of Iraq, one in regards to the Alberto Gonzales nomination, and one in regards to the Social Security plan. It seems a pretty standard ploy, and in the bigger picture, pretty typical for a Rovian strategy. Identify an opponent’s potential attack and pre-emptively turn it around.
Well, when two such tell me I am mistaken, I would be stupid not to reconsider.
I therefore withdraw the accusation that the dear departed was racist. Race-baiter, might have been more accurate.
And still very much a liar and a jerk.
I don’t really feel right apologizing to him, especially given the circumstances.
But I won’t pile on him either.
Regards,
Shodan
Amplification/tangent: Part of Rove’s MO is to focus his attacks on his opponent’s greatest strengths. An innovative and sound strategy. Unfortunately, Rove has a tendency to implement it with smears.
Decorated vietnam war record? Question his patriotism, his medals.
Nonprofit work helping abused kids? Start a whisper campaign alleging pedophilia..
It’s a pretty good approach, provided your employer lacks shame.
Don’t you sometimes with Rove had something so terrible, so awful and gross in his past? Don’t you wish someone someday could find out and blast it all over the media? Barring that, it would give a sort of grim satisfaction to see him be targeted successfully with his own tactics. In other words, utterly destroyed.
Personally, I won’t miss Desmo. He never seemed to be able to merely disagree, it had to become a total villification of the other doper when he was involved. He piled shit on me once and I ran a search of his recent posts, and found that he hadn’t singled me out, he was an equal-opportunity-hater.
While it’s foolish to think that we’re all going to agree about everything and have a big old spit-swap before singing Kumbaya, a number of you have chosen to disagree with my politics or views without launching an air strike on my person, and as such, you’ve earned my respect. Others are obtuse to that notion, as we’ve seen.
Are you conservative?
Yeah, more or less.
Are you pro-Bush?
I’m pro not the latest batch of dem noms.
Are you a Republican?
Yep.
Are you pro-war?
War is hell, let’s have less.
Do you feel the Board is hostile to the likes of you? Do you wish things were different?
Sometimes. Sometimes I wish “Don’t be a jerk” wasn’t enforced so selectively.
WeRSauron, I know you had the best of intentions, but this doesn’t help. It’s like a teacher telling the rest of the class that Timmy is sensitive and people shouldn’t pick on him. You know that some kids are just going to take that as a challenge and go even more out of there way to trip poor lil Timmy and kick his ass on the playground. Timmy would have been better off if there had been no intervention from grownups and learned to stand on his own two feet.
Let’s leave the mods out of it, besides slapping the obvious breakers of “Don’t be a jerk,” and let all the little Timmys on the board stand up for themselves.
Your post wasn’t the altruistic offering to the board you’d like for others to think; instead, your “little bird” is simply a gathering of malcontents intent on causing trouble just for the delight of doing so. What we will not have is you pushing for the banning of a poster at the behest of an anonymous grouping of posters at another board. You shall not import troubles from outside the SDMB.
Your short life as a junior mod has come to an end. In the future, should you feel the urge to make known a poster’s troublesome history so that the end result is a banning, you will e-mail a Moderator or an Administrator and not post it to a thread.
You’ve been officially warned, CarnalK. Do not bring troubles from other boards in here again.
Look. Yes, the origin of the research is indeed from a bunch of “malcontents”, if you will. But that under no circumstances changes what is obvious, and even more, demonstrable. Desmo was a cancer. He couldn’t get a hold of himself. He was needlessly inflammatory, he was stalkerish, and according to the rules laid out by the administration of the SDMB he was a jerk. That’s not idle speculation, that’s not smearing at the hands of “malcontents”, that’s an absolute fact, backed up with numerous cites that the administration itself provided.
If I have evidence that can prove that someone is guilty of something, does it matter that I am not completely innocent myself? Those “malcontents” have done nothing except to point out the obvious. And further, since it was allegedly precipitated by a group of “malcontents”, you are within your rights to tell them to suck wind. They have nothing to do with the administration of this board, so if you have a problem with what they’re doing you can ignore them. In fact, you can reinstate Desmo right this second. It’s your call. But to condemn someone for doing the legwork and calling attention to a specific problem that the administration themselves have admitted to with the actions they took is ridiculous in the extreme.
One more thing: I have never understood this whole “take it to e-mail” thing. If there is action to be taken, why shouldn’t it be above board? Is it that it forces you to take an action that you may not have wanted to take? If it’s kept private there is no accountability. You can studiously ignore anything you want with impunity. For a group of people that condemns obfuscation you seem intent upon maintaining that as a policy. I, for one, think it’s kinda silly. Calling people out for little stuff is one thing, and from what I’ve seen rarely happens. Calling people like Desmo out for the obvious happens rarely enough, and in my opinion should happen. It’s no coincidence that the people who get called out like this usually get the gate.
I know you don’t like the group that this originated with. I don’t either, with my family having been the target of attacks at their hands numerous times. But you know what? It doesn’t matter where it comes from. If I had done it would it have been any more or less legitimate? Absolutely not.
Desmostylus was banned, Airman, so it’s not as if we had a problem with the information itself. An oversight was made on our part, and it was corrected. No biggie.
You’re missing the point, however, if you feel CarnalK was warned for the information. He was warned because he was trying to stir up trouble just for trouble’s sake; that type of behavior is not acceptable here, nor has it ever been.
As for taking it to e-mail: we’re treating the call to ban posters the same way we treat accusations of trolling, and for the same reasons. If you have a problem with a poster, feel free to call him/her out in the Pit. Should you feel so strongly about a poster’s history that you prefer he/she be banned, then you need to e-mail us with your concerns. Banning is a decision made by SDMB Staff after much consideration; what is not needed are attempts at junior modding in a thread, even for the best of reasons. And when a non-guest member is banned, we’ll announce it to the board in ATMB as usual–it’s not like we’re keeping it secret.
And, finally, as I mentioned in my last post, we’re not going to allow troubles brewed in the anonymous communities to be imported here. Period. If people want to stir up crap there, that’s their choice, but that hateful, manufactured drama isn’t welcome here for very obvious reasons.
Could you explain that please, Skip? How does that work? How did you know — know — that he was “trying to stir up trouble just for trouble’s sake”? How could he have posted the information without your taking that inference?
Hardly better than stuffing it in your mattress? What do you have in your mattress, a printing press and dies?
Actually, you can get 4.7% Gross on an HSBC savings account, and ING has 5% - CD rates are somewhat higher. Of course having to deal with taxes in two countries sucks slightly but it’s not impossible. In any event, do you have any other 100% safe investments that make more than 5% right now?
I must say, this is total and utter bullshit. I did not “bring troubles from somewhere else”, something about this board got brought to my attention somewhere else. I posted about it in the appropriate forum and a very appropriate thread. I also made a point of only posting what I personally thought was pertinent- not just regurgitate someone else’s rant.
If you are trying to stack up a bunch of FOS warnings so you can ban an anon_poster, why bother? You aren’t fooling anyone.
And why the hell is the MPSIMS moderator giving me a warning here?
I take that back a bit, I was a little upset. I am well aware that mods share burdens. I just think Skip might not have the best handle on BBQ culture. YMMV.