I have to keep reminding myself that you’re not, like so many other posters here, blindly partisan, and having now been reminded of that fact, I’m not surprised to see you zap Byrd. Thanks, as always, for your consistency.
That’s certainly a defensible view. But it’s not the only view compelled by the evidence. It’s perfectly possible – indeed, common – to equate “strong on defense” with the traditional indicators of being willing to fund defense projects. It’s perfectly possible to equate a strong defense posture with being willing to attack Afghanistan and Iraq as potential or actual threats. Reasonable people may disagree about which strategies are best in the long run – I exclude both the “War is always wrong” crowd and the “Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out” crowd from the reasonable middle.
And "trafficking in hate"is exactly what every single thread on the RNC convention has been.
You people have systematically attacked, insulted, derided, and Pitted every single speaker at the RNC convention. No such series of corresponding attacks have been made by the Republicans on the SDMB.
So “trafficking in hate” is an exact and literal description of what the Dems have been doing.
You are trying to make it all not have happened. You seem to think that if you scream loud enough, and fling enough shit around, and post enough foam-flecked rants, that the speeches supporting Bush will never have happened.
You are trying to get control of the debate by shouting down the voices you don’t want to hear. Then, two months from now, you can pretend that you actually had any new points beyond I HATE BUSH I HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM HATE HIM
To use another appropriate Newspeak term, it’s"duckspeak". Look it up.
Shodan, I sincerely think that the Dems are just pissed off because, for once, the Republicans are finally willing to put up a fight. Well, at least we’re pushing back. It has been the custom for a while to just accept the attacks by the Dems but now that we’re catching them, spinning them, and throwing them back in their faces they seem to not like that. All these years they fought their battles with feelgoodism, emotion and scare tactics. Now when some of those tactics are being used against them they call “unfair”.
The Evidence being that most of the more vocal liberals/democrats on these boards jump on every Reblican/conservative that they can. Hate, slander, name calling and pittings galore. A vile bunch they’ve turned out to be. I bet there hasn’t gone a day that there isn’t a new thread started about some evil Pubbie.
The anti-right crowd around here is WAY more hateful and boisterous than the the anti-left crowd. When was the last time you saw a vitriolic pile-on from the right? I see ‘em comin’ from the left all the time. And you guys claim to hold the higher moral ground. Ha.
Just one quick question: exactly which alternate universe are you living in??
Apparently one where the Pubbies didn’t rake Clinton over the coals all through the 1990s for every little thing he did, starting with ‘Travelgate’ and ending with impeachment due to lying about a blowjob.
One in which they didn’t ridicule Gore in 1999 and 2000 over a whole bunch of things he didn’t even say (think Love Canal, Love Story, Internet).
One in which they didn’t smear Max Cleland, who lost three of his four limbs in defense of this country, as a traitor in 2002.
Man, I wish I had spent the last 12 years in that alternate universe. How do I get there? Where’s the gateway, Kenneth?
‘All the time’, huh? Feel free to open a Pit thread, and cite three threads with ‘vitriolic pile-ons’ from the left. Go for it, dude. Though I think you may be confusing fact-based, passionate argument (like some of Shayna’s posts over the past day or two) with vitriol. If so, that’s your problem, not ours.
It’s hard to shout down anyone on a message board, because no matter what you say, my post is still visible, and vice versa. Back in the bad old days of the Left Behind Message Board, I used to go over there and debate a whole bunch of 'em at once. I could do it, because my arguments were good, and theirs sucked.
Yeah, we all know what ‘duckspeak’ is. But you’ve been here for four years, and encountered many of this thread’s debaters in many threads. Do you think elucidator or Shayna or jshore or Apos or Elvis (my apologies to anyone I’ve skipped) even needs to repeat someone else’s arguments, or are they quite capable of making their own? Is there any reason to believe they’re repeating someone else’s glurge here and now, or do you think they’re taking the facts, and constructing their own arguments around them?
Because if it’s the latter, that ain’t duckspeak. And you can take that ridiculous claim and stick it in the appropriate place.
I, too, am quite impressed. The straight faced delivery was a nice touch. Its sort of implies “This is not perfect nonsense! I am a mature and sensible person, and this is a reasonable and sensible position. Also, these are not the droids you are looking for…”
So how’d it happen, guys? How many times have I heard you bewail your minority status on these Boards, without once, once, mind you, ever putting forth a plausible rationale for how such an implausible situation has come to pass?
How, on a Board devoted to rational debate and demanding of factual support, did your political opinion come to have a minority of constituents? Conspiracy? Is it one of the Ten Thousand Treachcerys of Hilary? Do liberals creep in, snatch an unwitting conservative, chloroform them and spirit them away?
Its a fairly simple question, is it not? How is it then that you never have an answer? By what nefarious means, outside of reason, argument, and evidence, did the liberal position come to dominate these boards?
I await your explanation, in the words of the Master, “with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces.”
RTFirefly: You might add, going back a bit further, that this alternate universe didn’t include the Willy Horton ad and that in this alternate universe, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and the rest of the lying hateful right don’t exist.
I was actually naive enough to think that the Republicans might actually come off as less strident and vicious in their attacks this year than the Dems, given that a re-election campaign is usually a referendum on the incumbent to some degree and given that the Democrats have a lot more to be angry for given how this president prevailed in the 2000 election and then governed. It just seems amazing to me that the Reps can have so much nastiness and anger at this point that they make us Democrats and our convention look so incredibly optimistic and nice by comparison is amazing.
I kinda liked 'cheeful enthusiasm. I figured you were referring to the sort of enthusiasm that Navajo policeman Jim Chee, from Tony Hillerman’s novels, would show.
The Straight Dope column runs in alternative newspapers around the country. Cecil Adams isn’t run in the Pittsbirgh Tribune-Review or the Wall Street Journal, you know.
Most of us got here by reading the column. Thus, it’s not surprising that the board is stoked with liberal City Paper or Reader readers.
I wasn’t aware we had such a thing. Since you seem to be clued in, why don’t you tell me which one you live in?
I suppose you’re right. Calling out a sex-driven-pervert-womanizer for his breaches of morality while in office is wrong of us.
You know, there ain’t much defense we can give up for the whole ‘Bush lied about the WMD’s’, yet you guys continue to defend Bill for the ‘petty’ things he did while in office. Hmm.
Weak, man weak.
I don’t think it’s right of you to throw in the ‘lost limb’ part to garner sympathy for the man. However, Max stated recently, “Turn your bitterness, frustration and anger into something positive and constructive. The campaign has been positive for me and it has given me hope”, in reference to the Kerry Campaign. He found time to Marry his fiance after he lost his re-election bid, took a long vacation and some needed time off and is now stomping for Kerry.
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I’m not one for starting pit threads, and it would only seem as though I was attacking the left and inviting a pile-on, which would sort of be a self-fulfilling prophecy, don’t you think?
John Kerry was not only willing to attack Afghanistan, but during a time when nobody else was criticizing the President except the anti-war crowd (you know, those leftists Kerry the most left Senator ever is supposed to be a patron saint of), he stood up on the Senate floor and demanded more boots on the ground: that our timid and long delays in attacking were letting Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban get away. As it turned out, he was dead right. So in that, he was MORE hawkish than Bush, and said so at a time when the right was damning anyone who questioned Bush, and the far left was damning anyone who favored war.
Kerry also voted to give Bush the authority to attack Saddam if necessary. His explanation for this makes sense. He opposed the way Bush rushed to war without proper preparation, after screwing up international efforts, tried to falsely tie Iraq to the war on terror, pulled resources AWAY from the war on terror to rush into Iraq with no urgent cause, and how Bush dishonestly tried to hide the cost of the war as well as put off paying for it. Bush threatened to veto the funding bill that Kerry supported, and Kerry voted against the pork-laden bill that Bush supported. Claiming that this makes Kerry against our troops and Bush for them is not only flat out dishonest, it’s vile.
Can’t disagree that that’s Zell’s belief. But matters of faith are hard to debate.
You agree with his assessment that Kerry’s voting record on defense was flawed. What is the basis for your agreement with him?
Zell has only been in the Senate since 2000, according to the link in my previous post. So he’s not personally familiar with most of the votes that he was discussing.
And it certainly appears that he relied on the (apparently quite misleading) research of others, based on his unfamiliarity with the details of it when questioned after his speech on CNN. And the fact remains that the votes by Kerry that were supposedly against particular weapons systems, were against an entire defense appropriations bill. As has been pointed out elsewhere, these votes could have just as accurately been interpreted to mean that Kerry believes we should eliminate our entire military. But that might’ve caused even the slowest voters to get a little skeptical, so Zell didn’t put it like that.
Similarly, Kerry’s alleged vote against body armor for our troops that Bush cites last night, was his vote against the $87B for Iraq last fall. As we know, he was for the appropriation itself, but against paying for it by maxing out the U.S. Government MasterCard - and that’s what his vote represents, and any informed person knows it. And most of the money for body armor wasn’t in the bill that Bush sent to Congress; it was added by Democrats, thank you.
But that’s the sort of rhetorical games the Republicans are playing this year: they’re running from any sort of honest debate, and doing their best to distort their opponent’s record into something unrecognizable. If ‘character counts’, this is the way to demonstrate a lack of it.
Okay, a plausible explanation (even if it discounts all the rightwingers who have shown up here, get their butts kicked, and run for the hills). But, then where do intelligent right-wingers go for message board debates that have the same relatively high standards in terms of the demand for evidence and cites and so forth?
Furthermore, people forget the deception involved in the President withholding this request for additional appropriations until after his 2003 tax cuts had passed. It was at least partly this mendacity that Kerry was protesting. That the President can make fun of a vote of Kerry that arose out of the President’s own deception is a prime example of “chutzpah”!
By Goddess, its a rationale! A sickly, wobbly rationale, it must be admitted, but a rationale nonetheless! But you missed the qualifier, its buried there in the word “plausible”.
It the Board’s FAQ, you will find a list of the “alternative” papers who carry the Sacred Texts. A noble collection, to be sure, but spare.
But let’s be indulgent! Let us look upon this effort with affectionate encouragement! Its an effort, after all, however feeble.
If, as you suggest without a hint of irony, the majority of Dopers arrived by way of the insidious corruption of the “alternative” press (it’s so nice to hear “the hippies” get blamed, we are so overlooked these days…), then would it not stand to reason that the vast majority of Dopers must reside in those self-same markets? Austin, Boston, Santa Cruz, Chicago…by your reasoning, these must be the “location” of the vast majority of Dopers.
Even the most cursory examination of GD, the Pit, etc. will show this to be drivel.
Your rationale throws a bowling ball to a drowning man: its worse than useless, but the poor bugger will cling to it, nonetheless.
Enjoying oral sex makes you a pervert?? Man, what sort of Puritanical universe do you live in? (I don’t want the address to that alternate universe!)
And “breaches of morality,” oh heavens! We can’t have a President who’s ‘breached morality’ while in office!
Well, there really is a matter of scale. Lies that lead to a lot of people dying really are a bit worse than lies that lead to a semen-stained dress.
Weak? I guess it all depends. If you can turn your opponent into a laughingstock (doesn’t matter whether it’s about stuff that actually happened), it saves you the trouble of having to debate him on the issues. The GOP pushed these sorts of fibs over and over and over again; it wasnt’ like they brought them up as a one-shot deal. I just Googled " ‘Gore’ ‘invented the Internet’ " and got 17,000 hits. Millions of Americans still believe he actually made that claim.
No, I think it’s right of me to throw it in because when it comes to defending his country, it shows he put some skin in the game. That’s why I include it.
I’m afraid that’s the appropriate forum for making such a claim. So I have to conclude you lack the evidence to support your allegations.
I think you know, as well as I do, that everyone lies about their location. :dubious:
And what was your rationale? That because there’s more of us then we must be right…?
You aren’t insinuationg that the numbers are equal are you?
My theory? I think younger people tend to be Dems, especially students. Access to computers pretty much non-stop.
Dems tend to fight with more emotion and energy. (See left demonstrations verses right). Maintaining a presence on a board such as this takes an incredible amount of time.
Because you are more emotionally driven you find the time to engage here.
Media coverage tens to lean ever so slightly to the left (the big three). Brokaw, Jennings and Rather, are undeniably lefties. Couric too.
“Aren’t most people in journalism, primarily, except for say on Fox, and in certain conservative publications, aren’t they for the most part, and of course the media is, are not monolithic, but pro-choice, you know, against prayer in school, probably favor affirmative action? I mean don’t you think that’s, that’s fairly typical? And if so is it, why isn’t it fair to say that liberals, sort of, are controlling the mainstream media?" --Katie Couric
This last one may be a stretch but I’ve been given the material by the left itself; The Pubbies are pro-rich/pro-business and against the poor. Rich persons, on the average, being more busy than the average poor person just doesn’t have the time to post all that often.
Oh, I get it. Rich people just don’t have all the leisure times of the poor people to come up with intelligent arguments and facts to support their views.
God, this claim would be sort of funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.