december (pro-Bush) and Aldebaran (anti-Bush) were banned for being dishonest in their use of citations.
Collounsbury (anti), Dogface (pro), Lissener (anti), milum (pro), Desmostylus (anti), and milroyj (pro) were all banned for excessive abuse toward other posters, regardless of politics. In fact, I cannot recall any poster being banned for having the wrong political outlook. I am sure that with enough selective memory and creative interpretation, someone could build a case that the staff is virulently anti- or pro- any aspect of the political spectrum. In reality, the staff just wants you kids to play nice. The political leanings of the board are driven by the demographics of the posters.
Right. Like your stubborn support of the Christian Democrats in Germany is any secret from the rest of us. I have your number, tomndebb. Plus I’m pretty sure debb is just tom’s sock.
I’m laughing almost too hard to type. The notion that I could get Deb to say anything that went against her grain–particularly on just my say-so–is just too absurd.
Do you even know any PDS or SPD posters that I could ban?
I don’t want to come off as a Ditto Sam, but he has a lot of good points.
Take the “religious right” issue and the last election. Liberals got it into their heads that if not for Rove droning out the “religious right”, the election would have gone their way. Religious people have been a part of this country for a long time before '04. Maybe, just maybe, they (and a good amount of others) just don’t agree with the Liberal agenda?? I’m not religious, but Rove never called me. I don’t know of anybody who “got the call”.
Given the quagmire of Iraq and other factors like economy (gas prices, jobs, deficit, whatever), the Dems should have been able to win outright. You know, like all those “exit polls” suggested. But still, even with his popularity flagging, Bush won. As did House and Senate races. Now even if the voters hated Bush, they still put both houses in Republican control. And blaming it on the “religious right” just won’t cut it. Bottom line, even with a less than stellar President, people still rejected the Liberal agenda. Sorry.
So now the Dems don’t have enough political clout to block the nominations of judges without a filibuster. All they would need to do is tone it down a notch or 2 and they could have won enough elections to regain that clout. But they lost, and are not too happy about that.
So (some) liberal posters here just attack, tooth, fang, and claw. Religious, right, conservative, Republican. They are ALL the enemy. It never dawns on them that, maybe, just maybe, more people would buy their arguments if they could find a smidgen of middle ground.
I’m not a political genius, these are just the way I see the situation. I sympathize with many of the viewpoints of the Liberals on the board, but man! You guys just don’t. Let. Up.
During a time that could have been a source of great gains for the Democrats, they just lost. And lost. And lost. And posters here try to attribute this to some (don’t make me say "vast right wi…I won’t say it) boogeyman of religion, or rightist propaganda, or talk radio, or something. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe, lots of people just don’t agree with them of their own free will.
And as I’ve said before, I don’t apologize for the current administration, or agree with 100% of their agenda. I just hate to even enter into any political discussions here, I’m not a hyper-political person like some here are.
Very well put. The rjungs of this board just don’t get it. It’s always some else’s fault if the Democrats lose. Limbaugh, Rove, Diebold, etc., etc., etc. You’d think it was 100 years ago that Clinton won two terms, handily. Had Clinton been eligible to run again in '00, I have no doubt he would’ve trounced Bush Jr. But you gotta pick a good candidate and run a good campaign. Nobody is going to hand you the presidency on a silver platter.
Ahem…Clinton wasn’t impeached on the basis of a “blowjob”; he was impeached on the basis of lying to a federal grand jury and for obstruction of justice! Further, as a result of his actions he was disbarred from practicing law for five years in his home state of Arkansas. Pretty serious stuff for just a “blowjob”, don’t you think?
You’re free to express your anger at Bush, in appropriate threads to do so. What you’re not free to do is express your anger as insults directed at your fellow dopers for not believing as you do, or spamming other threads with irrelevant anti-Bush screeds.
Here we go. Now comes the naked assertion that yes, the whole issue of “WMDs” was nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the American public, along with the slimy insinuation that “Yes, I knew it all along – ‘WMDs’ were never the issue.”
You know, Sam, prior to the invasion, you had every opportunity in the world to clear this confusion up for us. In the countless threads in which we bumped heads you could have simply stopped to say, “Wait, Mr. S! Don’t you understand? You’re missing the entire point! This invasion isn’t about the ‘WMDs’! We must invade Iraq to protect ourselves from the terrorists!”
But no, you lying sack of shit. For someone who knew that this invasion was never really about “WMDs,” you sure spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince people that Iraq had them, and was thereby an imminent threat to the US.
Never mind the fact that you have yet to proffer a single consistent, reasonable argument to support the contention that a war on terrorism requires the US to invade Iraq.
Sure.
Do you have any evidence with which to back this claim up, or is it just another one of your convenient suppositions?
Jesus, Sam, you really are a fuckin idiot.
Now I know you are aware of studies which have demonstrated a clear correlation between support for the war and ignorance of the facts about the war (PIPA, anyone?). Having not bothered to read the study, you nevertheless feel comfortable shrugging off its results as “biased.” Nevertheless, it’s absurd to suggest that just because a majority of ill-informed voters support the war, those of us who opposed it are wrong, and need to reconsider. After all, you have been consistently wrong in your analysis of Iraq from the beginning – and yet your position on the war hasn’t budged an inch. Not an inch.
How incredibly convenient for your argument! The only way to avoid war was to employ “muscular” diplomacy – that is, to deploy troops. But once we had deployed troops, there was no way to avoid war! A perfect circular argument! You win!
Actually, invading Iraq without reason, along with torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, has proven to be the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has ever had.
You mean the programs that had been emasculated by the UN inspections? The only remains of which consisted of a single vial of botulin in a refrigerator, and a lone part of a centrifuge buried in some retired scientist’s backyard? Whoo. I’m shaking in my boots.
Oh yes indeed. See how much more peaceful the middle east has gotten since the invasion!
So what if the government had to manipulate the public to get the invasion up and running? Quite an interesting stance for a “Libertarian” to take, I must say.
Yes, you do. Apparently you are too fuckin loopy to understand that these two positions contradict each other. Rat:
Rove didn’t “call” anybody. His political strategy did involve exploiting the religious right, which he felt consisted of an “army” of 4 million potential voters. Democratic strategists, I seem to remember, laughed at him for that, but he had done the math and proved them wrong.
Let’s not forget as well how effectively the Swiftees smeared Kerry’s war record, successfully undercutting a second block of voters, namely veterans.
You know, as well, Rat, you don’t have to agree with the “Liberal Agenda,” whatever that might be. But don’t you think it’s about time that you and your fellows started holding your leaders accountable for their words and actions? Here we have Sam bald facedly admitting that the crap about the “WMDs” prior to the invasion was employed solely to manipulate the UN and the US public. I don’t understand how you can support an administration after that, even if you do otherwise agree with their politics.
Why should we? The right sure doesn’t. Look at Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly, Fox in general, etc., etc., etc.
And you should have been around prior to the invasion, Rat. Oh how quickly these guys assume the role of whiney martyr! But believe me when I tell you they dish it out better than the take it, and were there more of them, they would still be dishing out it fast and thick.
As for myself, I don’t think that I am known for getting too personal or name-calling – although I’m certain there have been exceptions. When I’m talking about “political nastiness,” I’m not talking about verbal aggressiveness toward other Dopers. I’m talking about remarks about politicians, POV, issues, and so forth.
Zoe: I was speaking of the generic ‘you’, not you personally.
Mr. Svinlesha: Once again, you misunderstand me. I’m not saying the WMD argument was a smokescreen. I certainly believed it. What I’m saying is that support for the war wasn’t solely because of the belief in WMD, but rather that a lot of people were willing to uncritically accept the WMD argument because they already bought into the idea of military force. A counter-example would be environmentalists who uncritically accept a flawed report on global warming, because the already believe that global warming is happening.
In any event, if you go back before the war and read my posts, you’ll see that i made all the same points I made above. I specifically said that once the U.S. ‘pulled the trigger’ by stationing 75,000 men in the Gulf, there was no turning back unless Saddam completely rolled over. Go and read what I was saying.
As for evidence that the American people didn’t trust the Democrats on security, go look it up yourself. There were zillions of polls before the election breaking down voting patterns, and when it came to national security Bush held consistent 20-30% advantages over Kerry - more than any other category, as I recall.
And no, my two positions don’t contradict each other. You can believe that the government will do a lousy job of cleaning up after a war and still think the war is necessary. Apparently you’re too thick to understand that simple point. I would not have supported the government ‘manipulating the people’ - I thought the WMD argument was legitimate.
As for calling me a liar, I expected no better from you, so I won’t bother to comment.
Talk about circular! Why even bring up WMDs if the support for military force was already there? Just say, “We’re going to invade Iraq,” and the populace says, “OK.” What bizarre reasoning you have.
Apparently you missed Svin pointing out that circularity. A lot of people bought into the idea that force was required because they believed Bush’s WMD lies. That includes you more than perhaps anyone else here - no one has been more insistent on having the Americans spend money and lives in support of those lies. A more honorable person would be a little more cautious about continuing to defend his, or anyone else’s, continued belief in those lies.
You are a reliable lie-believer when those lies are told to you by your favorite RW blogs. Do you need to be reminded of your gallant fight against the fight against ignorance in the Swift Boat Vets matter? Have any of your confrontations with reality forced you to consider your own gullibility?
You claim the war was unavoidable. Bullshit, utter bullshit, not the result of any of the “facts” you still claim even if they were true. The war had been successfully avoided for a decade. Now there are thousands of our own people dead, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, a country in worse shape now than when we started, and with no end in sight. Do you feel any responsibility for that whatsoever? Any at all?
It is not a defense to say that many others were and are as thoughtless and irresponsible as yourself. Yet you offer that as a defense anyway.
There is no circularity. Saddam could have blinked. More to the point, had certain parties not been deliberately sabotaging the diplomatic process for their financial gain, he probably would have blinked. That was an acceptable solution and would have been better all around.
They weren’t lies; he just didn’t have them in the amounts we feared. Saddam, intentionally or no, managed to fool intelligence services around the world, including some with much closer contactcs than we. Congress, despite having the same access as Bush, was fooled. And Bush did not lie. He may have ignored some reports in favor of others, but he was doing so in the context of a contradictory reports, where one side had the weight of years of evidence.
In any event, this is exactly what the post is about. People don’t just disagree with us, they accuse us at all times of the basest of motives and/or being a zombie, sludging through life obedient to our dark sorcerous masters. Is it so hard to believe we might have opinions based in reality at least as much as you, and might enjoy some respect? Everything I do, don’t do, or think about doing is interpreted through the screen of my being an unholy monster.
I had no particular problem with most lefties until I came to this board. I have a handful of asshole righties, but have faced constant degredation at the hands of people who don’t like politics and think I have no right to have opinions different from theirs. Frankly, it makes me not even want to associate with lefties IRL, because I now wonder what they’re really thinking about me.
At no point did I suggest that support for the war was thoughtless and irresponsible. Not is it circular reasoning to claim that if you’ve already accepted the need for war, you’ll look less critically at evidence that supports your position. This is human nature, and it happens on this board all the time. How many breathless reports of anti-bush evidence have shown up on this board by people who desperately want to believe any dirt on Bush? How much mileage did the fake National Guard memo get here, even long after there was solid evidence showing them to be forgeries?
Every anti-Bush screed that makes it into print is usually replayed here within hours, and the pattern is that the anti-bush types buy into it, and the critical analysis is left to the people on the other side. The same happens with pro-Bush stuff. When the Enron story broke, the left instantly accepted it as fact, while the right was hesitant and dug like crazy to find out if it was accurate. On the other hand, the left is very suspicious of claims in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, while the right accepts the evidence on its face.
Going with the analogy, let’s say you’re a staunch environmentalist. Along comes a new report that says global warming is even worse than you thought. You take a cursory glance at the credentials - hmmn… Big think tank, well respected, report seems thorough. There. It’s ammo in your arsenal, and you trot it out as evidence for your position. If that report subsequently gets debunked, are you going to abandon your belief in Global Warming? Are you suddenly going to go, “I’ve been an idiot! My god, what else that I believe about the environment is wrong? I’m no longer an environmentalist!” No, you’re going to grudgingly abandon that particular report, while still maintaining that the basic truth underlying it exists, because you held that position before the report was ever written.
This is just human nature.
If you want to start a long debate about the Iraq war that revolves around something other than “Bush Lied - People Died”, go ahead and start it, and I’ll abandon my rule about discussing the war on this board and throw my .02 in, unless it gets abusive and snarky again.
In closing, I’ll also point out that luminaries such as Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman have excoriated the Bush administration for their handling of the war, and for the WMD cock-up. Yet both supported the war, and still do. For the same reasons I do, btw.
Ahhhhh! So it’s out in the open. There was going to be war, come hell or high water, and “the public” was deliberately lied to. Shit. I’ve been saying that for a looooong time, as have many others, but we were just being paranoid(?). So much for protecting the US against the boogeyman Saddam and his Weapons Of Totally Fer Sure Like Oh Mygod Doom.
A manufactured and preemptive war fought for party, not the country and hell not for protection from Amuricahaters and Freedomhaters.
A bullshit war based on lies. Now the bullshit war based on lies is the justification for the abuses at Gitmo - which are verified by AI and the FBI.
Who the fuck will protect us from Bush? What has Bush really accomplished to make anyone more secure, except to dredge up a (by your own admission) fake boogeyman. And fuck the religious right, the christian reconstructionists, the dominionists, the false prophets. Read up on Rushdooney, Gary North, and the rest of them. They are fucking nazi bastards. Theocratic state. World conquest. Bibilcal law (except when it would apply to them). A priestking caste. Fuck them bastards. Fuck the security moms (and security dads) too. It’s easy for them to demand someone else die, but I didn’t see too many of them signing up (put yer money where yer mouth is).
It was all a fucking lie, but that is OK. It was not OK with people of conscience, including many high ranking military officers, both active and retired. Everyone (the right) likes evidence that fits, even when they have to invent the evidence.
All they needed was a “Pearl Harbor”. I bet they all creamed their pants when they saw those poor people jumping from the Trade Center. May these “great leaders” rot in hell.
Cool. Start a war to prevent a war. Invent a “credible” threat and when it fails to pan out, switch to a different set of slagans. Ike and MacArthur would have kicked some people’s asses personally for that one.
So where the fuck IS Bin Laden?
All this, if it happened in some other country, would be denounced as treason, and the offending parties would face a firing squad.
