This is not a Regards, Shodan pitting

Thus confirming my suspicions. You’ve never written a word remotely accepting of Obama, have you? But you have, as far as I (and your reading public here) now know, now lied about having professed anything positive towards Obama. You, of course, need produce nothing, not even something as simple as a link to a post, to prove you have. It’s just that the absence of your troubling to produce such a thread serves as convincing evidence that no such thread exists, depsite your protestations of fair-mindedness. You’ve got, IOW, nothing, but you have added to your long record of lying in your posting history.

And I was about to mention, as a matter of fact, the respect I have for Bricker, who just yesterday set me straight about a legal matter I was in need of information on. I rarely agree with him, sometimes find him smug and tendentious, but usually find him honest and fair-minded, and rarely feel in the right heaping abuse on him the way I do with you, or Shodan. Your posts particularly inspire me to work hard at ensuring that you and those you approve of remain far from having power in this society, are constantly reviled and mocked and ridiculed, and you personally have caused me to contribute some of Liberal’s hard-earned money to the Obama campaign. I can’t be sure, but I think all of his money, finally, was contributed to that campaign, and he himself felt so strongly about paying me to refrain from posting that he changed his mind and told me I could post AND keep the money, after which I informed him that I’d be donating most of it to Obama, anyway. So he and I are cool, far as I know. But bullies and ignoramuses like you and Shodan just serve to remind me that hateful, spiteful, willful blind partisans really do exist–you’re not some imaginary boogeyman invented by the left to keep liberal thinkers motivated. So I would never want to discourage you from posting, though I will of course keep reminding the mods of your (and Shodan’s) open admissions of trolling, which wastes people’s time and needs to be stronglly discouraged.

If anyone else, btw, can find a post of Starving Artist’s in which he displays a positive reaction to something Obama did or said, I’d appreciate being linked to it, since SA is far too busy to supply me with such, even though it’s fairly recent and fairly abundant. I would think it’s rare enough that it would also stick out prominently in his memory, but maybe it sticks out in someone’s. Just not in mine.

We are indeed. :slight_smile: You were a man of your word, and we both learned valuable lessons.

No, this is pretty much it. I post some things in spite of the fact that it drives the Usual Suspects batshit, not because.

I don’t post things that I don’t mean. But, on some topics and with some Dopers, if I didn’t say anything that would drive them out of their gourds, I wouldn’t be able to discuss the topic at all. And I refuse to be silenced in that way. I am a member in good standing, I am entitled to my opinions, I do my best to present them in an articulate and reasoned way, and I am distinctly in the minority.

Some people just want an echo chamber hereabouts, and react like assholes whenever someone interrupts their Two Minutes Hate at Bush, or Sarah Palin, or whatever. Tough shit. I derive entertainment from watching them go ballistic at any irreverence towards their sacred cows.

So you’re backtracking, are you? Now the entertainment value is not “sheer” (pure, unalloyed) but is in fact alloyed by such things as truth, sincerity, consistency, and so on? If you wrote something on the SD that did not get your antagonists upset but still represented your honest opinion, you would post it anyway? IOW, that you derive pleasures other than the pleasure of that “sheer” entertainment value?

Please check one:

LYING ABOUT “SHEER” ENTERTAINMENT VALUE BEFORE

LYING TO SAVE MY ASS FROM GETTING BOUNCED FOR TROLLING NOW

Or possibly he’s changed his mind, either because of some intellectual process or because he’s been touched by our concern. That would be a nice start, since otherwise he seems incapable of changing an opinion regardless of contrary facts and logic.

“Mind”? “Intellectual”? “Touched”?

We’re still talking about Shodan, aren’t we?

No, I haven’t changed my mind at all. Invisible Wombat accurately stated my position. This nonsense about how I don’t mean what I say is just crap whats-his-name made up.

Regards,
Shodan

Shodan explained what he meant. God almighty, can we not parse that fucking post for the next two weeks to provide evidence that he didn’t really mean that? Not every comment, written or spoken, is made with perfect clarity. I think his explanation is reasonable. I’m just as certain that there are those who will accept no explanation, despite the fact that there were several reasonable posters who read Shodan’s post exactly as he apparently meant it.

So, Shodan, did you lie in that earlier post or was it in the later one? And are you still beating your wife? Sheesh…

I don’t believe you ever gave a shit about anything anyone else has to say. But it sure would have made a fool out of me if you had linked to three strongly pro-Obama posts of yours in fifty-three seconds, wouldn’t it? Or even a single post demonstrating that you had actually listened to someone’s point, and conceded that it made the slightest impression on your world view. Now all we’re left with is the evidence that you can’t provide a single definitive cite for your open-minded acceptance of anyone’s ideas, given limitless time, and this is all due to

A) the fact that you were lying in the first place, or

B) the fact that you are highly principled and will not yield this information under my duress, no matter how much it shows me to be wrong.

To help you out, though, I will open the thread I asked you to open, about liberals changing their minds by talking through issues with conservatives. You can’t participate, of course (liberals, commies, pinkos, Democrats and Marxists only, I’m afraid) but maybe you can read it and learn a few things about changing your positions and still retaining your testicles.

Thanks.

I can accept that he didn’t express himself very clearly, that he overstated the absolute degree to which the entertainment value of observing idiots go berserk constituted his purpose in making some of his posts, and would be glad to concede that he, then, would not be trolling. But he insists on sticking to his original wording, so what can I do?

If it matters at all, fair enough from me. I hadn’t considered you trollish up until this point anyway.

You could consider this a trivial impasse over a meaningless issue between two posters who can’t stand each other, and move on?

This is not a Regards, Shodan pitting
This is only a tribute.


Regards, Terri Brosius

It doesn’t really matter a whole lot, does it? I’ve probably made too much of it already.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10446584&postcount=13

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10405345&postcount=80

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10405268&postcount=31

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10058424&postcount=28

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10037283&postcount=2

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9701909&postcount=847

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9697003&postcount=829

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9607554&postcount=185

I could likely find more but it’s an enjoyable and busy day and I don’t have time.

Or maybe I can learn them from you, eh?

I’ll be looking forward to both your retraction and your apology.

Three strongly pro-Obama posts?

When did it go from ‘You never said anything good about Obama’ to ‘Show me three strongly pro-Obama posts’? (And even this is in error; that silly ‘clocking’ thing you were doing was in regard to things I may have learned on the board.)

But having said that, you really are a dishonest little shit, aren’t you? I’m a conservative. Why would you expect three strongly pro-Obama posts from me?

Well, I’ll tell you why. You realized that I may…just may…have been telling the truth when I said I’d made comments favorable toward Obama, so you decided to move the goalposts.

Only problem is, you did it in a stupid way.

Okay, let’s review: in 15 -odd hours of searching you’ve unearthed several posts that praise Obama personally, for being well-spoken, likeable, charismatic, attractive, having a pleasant appearance, etc. To the extent that this what I was discussing, I owe you a profound apology. But piling up a heap of posts that mention Obama’s name without calling him a terrorist Muslim isn’t exactly what I asked for when I asked you to select your single most sweeping concession of Obama’s virtues:

“I’d really like to see what you consider to be your most generous, least critical post about Obama.” Why don’t you pick from that selection the one post that most nearly qualifies as praise of his abilities in his forthcoming role as President? For those who won’t wade through that heap of posts (I’m sure that was your intent in providing so many), most of them aren’t even in praise of Obama at all, except as how he shines in comparison to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hell, if **Starving Artist ** himself ran against Clinton, I’d have to think long and hard about whom to support.

An analogy for just a second: if I were asked to give a quote showing my high regard to John McCain’s abilities to serve as President, and I quoted myself as saying “After a braindead, spineless ball of shit like George W. Bush, even an an unqualified hack like McCain promises to restore honest government to the White House, however unlikely a prospect that is,” no one would claim that I was really praising McCain, right?" Here’s the most recent of SA’'s “pro-Obama” posts, for those of you who won’t bother opening any of them:

So that’s two paragraphs of vigorous Hillary-bashing (to which I say: “GO, SA!”) followed by one in which SA is “trying to keep a positive attitude about Obama” (as opposed to what? Threatening to assassinate him ASAP? The man has been elected President–for the sake of your mental health, you’d damn well better try to keep a positve attitude–it would be better if you could actuallly, you know, HAVE a positive attitude as well,) ending with some out and out bitching about his first two major appointments.

Now, normally, this would be no big deal, but since this is offered in the context of providing an ungenerous, uncritical comment about Obama as a President, not as a smiley dude with a nice family, and this is the kind of weak stuff he provides, I’d have to say, all in all, meh.

Still, you did manage to cough up a few hairballs that were closer to the middle of the political spectrum than I had remembered reading, and I am little surprised that you were able to embrace reality enough to acknowledge things which only truly crazy people would dispute (nice family, very likeable personally, effective low-key non-confrontational style, etc.). I had you pegged as deranged enough to be unable to acknowledge even simple truths like those personal ones you did acknowledge, but I’m still waiting for your first substantive agreement or concession that Obama’s talking sense on some subject.

If you like, I can supply a list of topics that I, or other Obama-supporters, expressed in posts here that McCain might provide good leadership on.

Just like you did with Bush. Eh? Eh?

As stated, I only asked for one, and only wanted one. I said that it would have been embarrassing to me if you had very quickly linked to three posts indicating some concession to Obama’s policies, because I was disputing your seeming claim that such posts were so frequent and so plentiful that anyone could easily locate your open-minded thoughtful posts about his proposed policies, most of which would be dissenting (because you’re a known conservative) but at least some of which would be respectful, if not positive (because you’re such a thoughtful open-minded sort of guy).