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Stormrider wrote:Those same Tea party people are the "common man"

Not really. They're just a vocal minority even locally. Most of them are pretty nutty too, with hideous misconceptions about government in general and Obama in specific. Hell there's a lot of "tea party" douches that still think Obama's not a legal citizen.

Fateweaver wrote:The Dems have Obama. That throws your logic out the window MasterDRD.

Your post has blatant troll. That throws your logic out the window Fateweaver.

Melissia wrote:

Stormrider wrote:Those same Tea party people are the "common man"

Not really. They're just a vocal minority even locally. Most of them are pretty nutty too, with hideous misconceptions about government in general and Obama in specific. Hell there's a lot of "tea party" douches that still think Obama's not a legal citizen.

Thank you, couldn't have said it better myself. And to build upon my original assertions, part of the Conservative lack of faith in the common man is fed by the fact that a good bit of the 'common men' in their end of the political spectrum ARE as stupid and deluded as they think they are. It creates a sort of vicious circle. (I'm not saying ALL politically right are morons, but... Palin. Bachmann. Tea Party.)

Frazzled wrote:Again, Sebster hasn't pointed to anything Australia has actually done. At least Japan tried to conquer half the world, A for effort. Australia, the world's strip mine.

Wow. You used to at least try to debate. This is pathetic.

I am not actually my country, just as you are not yours. The national policy and capabilities of my country are a reflection of it's population base and it's wealth, just as yours is. You can observe this in the fact that just because the US as a whole spends like a drunken sailor, that does not mean you are necessarily any better with your credit than a citizen of Australia.

But it's alright, you made a guess about my country to try and deflect a comment I made, and your guess was wrong, wrong enough to make you look a little silly. So now you're trying to hide that with this very strange insistance that people living in small countries are incapable of assessing the successes and failings of big countries. Perhaps instead you should just let this go?


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The Dreadnote wrote:This is basically the same argument as "you can't sculpt a better model than this, so you aren't allowed to say bad things about it", isn't it? I reject that argument.

It's much, much dumber than that. It's 'you come from a country that doesn't sculpt models, therefore you can't point out facts about any miniature ever, even when those facts are accepted within the nation that produced the miniature.'

Which actually wouldn't be too bad, if Fraz. It'd keep him out of Israel threads, out of Iraq & Afghanistan threads. Unfortunately I think this new standard of Fraz might not last past this thread. In fact, he's currently posting all kinds of silliness in the monarchy thread...


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Frazzled wrote:No its the argument that your big claim to fame was high school drama class, so don't throw tomatoes at the Shakespearean actors playing at the Globe.

Umm, you're not the US, just as I'm not Australia. You do get that, right?


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Melissia wrote:I don't think bashing Bush was cool even when he was in office. Frankly, I doubt a Democratic president would have done all THAT much different when it comes to the major decisions (Such as invading Iraq and Afghanistan, for example) given what we know about what they knew back then. And that's with me having more sympathy for the dems than the reps (mostly because I live ina very heavily republican area, and I get exposed to lots of rep idiocy instead of dem idiocy).

Afghanistan almost certainly would have been invaded.

There is almost no chance a Democrat would have invaded Iraq. The briefest reading on the Bush administration's build up to Iraq will show you they wanted that from the moment they won office, and then spent as much time and influence as possible building a case for it.


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Stormrider wrote:Have you ever heard of a concept of "false conciousness"? Those same Tea party people are the "common man" that class warfare cannard throwing individllas like yourself love to stand up for, but then excoriate them for disagreeing. Make up your mind who you claim to care so much about.

Umm, "false consciousness" is a Marxist term, and refers to the common man being decieved into supporting political factions against his own welfare. I don't particularly like the term, as it ultimately feels like a lazy way addressing unpopularity by assuming people just don't know what's good for them, instead of really thinking about why communism doesn't appeal.

None of which has anything to do with the issue that the wingnuts in the Tea Party actually have a clue as to how government works on the most basic level, and even less of a clue as to how to solve it's problems.

Hey, Fateweaver's back!

sebster wrote:

Frazzled wrote:No its the argument that your big claim to fame was high school drama class, so don't throw tomatoes at the Shakespearean actors playing at the Globe.

Umm, you're not the US, just as I'm not Australia. You do get that, right?

This is not the first time today he's been brought up on this. As he put it earlier..

Frazzled wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Right because I'm responsible for the actions of my government arent I.

Frazzled why don't you just change your name to the united states. That way whenever someone makes a negative observation about your country it can be like they are attacking you...oh no wait that's already what you do right? Sorry.

Exactly. I am a Texan (the other states just folllow along). Someone has to, and the quarter said "heads."

sebster wrote:There is almost no chance a Democrat would have invaded Iraq. The briefest reading on the Bush administration's build up to Iraq will show you they wanted that from the moment they won office, and then spent as much time and influence as possible building a case for it.

We knew they were attempting to obtain some form of NBC weapon. We learned in hindsight that they had failed to do so, but hindsight is 20/20.

The world was a different place shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and our mindset was extremely different than it is now.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Hey, Fateweaver's back!

And in 'style' too.

Melissia wrote:We knew they were attempting to obtain some form of NBC weapon. We learned in hindsight that they had failed to do so, but hindsight is 20/20.

The world was a different place shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and our mindset was extremely different than it is now.

While the on-going efforts of Saddam’s government was a concern for intelligence services and the international community, there were absolutely no independent experts arguing for the need to invade.

The Bush admin directly leaned on analysts, requiring re-submission of any work that didn't favour the need to invade, because they wanted the analysis to fit their already decided policy to invade. When analysts gave findings that didn’t fit the administration’s drive to invade, they were penalised – such as with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Melissia wrote:We knew they were attempting to obtain some form of NBC weapon. We learned in hindsight that they had failed to do so, but hindsight is 20/20.

The world was a different place shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and our mindset was extremely different than it is now.

Oh no! Another drone fallen to the bourgeiose propaganda!

Well, didn't I poke the nest.

"False conciousness", as I interperet it, is a case of someone so conviced that their belief system is right that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow uneducated or went to the wrong school or is just too stupid to grasp the argument. It couldn't be that maybe that person disagrees with them diametrically and finds their belief system to be anathema to what the US was founded upon. That's my definition, and it's group think that is rampant among the American Left to consider anyone opposed to them as rubes.

Which is funny since their message is, "less taxes and less spending". Not really all that complicated but very vital as our country is on the precipice of a debt bomb of epic proportions.

As for the citizenship issue, even if he isn't a citizen (which he is, regrettably) it is irrelevant as he is the president, but it causes people to be suspicious when he isn't forthright with anything from his past.

As for the WMD issue, that wasn't the only reason to get involved in Iraq, it's made out to be, but it wasn't the only reason.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf - Here's one, Iraq's dealing with para-military and lesser Terrorist organizations that hated America as much as Saddam did. Sure, not burn down the world worthy, but these extremists only have to get lucky, we have to be right all of the time.

Stormrider wrote:Well, didn't I poke the nest.

"False conciousness", as I interperet it, is a case of someone so conviced that their belief system is right that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow uneducated or went to the wrong school or is just too stupid to grasp the argument. It couldn't be that maybe that person disagrees with them diametrically and finds their belief system to be anathema to what the US was founded upon. That's my definition, and it's group think that is rampant among the American Left to consider anyone opposed to them as rubes.

Which is funny since their message is, "less taxes and less spending". Not really all that complicated but very vital as our country is on the precipice of a debt bomb of epic proportions.

As for the citizenship issue, even if he isn't a citizen (which he is, regrettably) it is irrelevant as he is the president, but it causes people to be suspicious when he isn't forthright with anything from his past.

As for the WMD issue, that wasn't the only reason to get involved in Iraq, it's made out to be, but it wasn't the only reason.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf - Here's one, Iraq's dealing with para-military and lesser Terrorist organizations that hated America as much as Saddam did. Sure, not burn down the world worthy, but these extremists only have to get lucky, we have to be right all of the time.

Rather than respond to your hit on Liberals and Obama, I think we can all agree that the REAL reason we invaded Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with WMDs.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Hey, Fateweaver's back!

I, for one, am very excited by this news.

Stormrider wrote:Well, didn't I poke the nest.

Not really, you just used a term in an interesting way.

"False conciousness", as I interperet it, is a case of someone so conviced that their belief system is right that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow uneducated or went to the wrong school or is just too stupid to grasp the argument.

Which is probably not a bad interpretation of the term, albeit it’d be a fair move from the original, and kind of funny considering it’s origins. Personally, I kind of like the idea if only because it kind of makes of fun of all those lefties who scream false consciousness when they should be thinking about why people really don’t like their ideas.

So it’s a funny use of the term, but it doesn’t actually mean that.

Which is funny since their message is, "less taxes and less spending". Not really all that complicated but very vital as our country is on the precipice of a debt bomb of epic proportions.

Yes, and it’s a good thing that the deficit has become important enough to knock all the trivial stuff off the national debate. But the message of lower taxes and lower spending is just a slogan, and a particularly lazy one at that. There’s no substance to any of the follow up debates, no-one has given an actual tax rate that they believe would be enough to sustain the minimum level of government spending (in part because these people are celebrities more than legislators, and in part because at the absolute minimum level of government spending taxes would have to be at their current levels at best).

As for the citizenship issue, even if he isn't a citizen (which he is, regrettably) it is irrelevant as he is the president, but it causes people to be suspicious when he isn't forthright with anything from his past.

But he is a citizen. It is obvious to anyone with any interest at all in determining if he was a citizen that he was. As such, it can be deduced that the people who believe he wasn’t a citizen are people who are choosing what they want to believe over what is factual.

These people should, and need to be, mocked mercilessly until they’re out of the debate.

As for the WMD issue, that wasn't the only reason to get involved in Iraq, it's made out to be, but it wasn't the only reason.

It was the reason they used to sell the war to the general population. To the admin, it was a minor issue at best – they wanted the freeing of Iraq to be the first step in wave of democratisation that would sweep across the Middle East and turn the region into a US loving wonderland.

It didn't work.

sebster wrote:

As for the citizenship issue, even if he isn't a citizen (which he is, regrettably) it is irrelevant as he is the president, but it causes people to be suspicious when he isn't forthright with anything from his past.

But he is a citizen. It is obvious to anyone with any interest at all in determining if he was a citizen that he was. As such, it can be deduced that the people who believe he wasn’t a citizen are people who are choosing what they want to believe over what is factual.
These people should, and need to be, mocked mercilessly until they’re out of the debate.

In other words, they are exhibiting a perfect example of 'Truthiness'.

MasterDRD wrote:

Orkeosaurus wrote:Hey, Fateweaver's back!

And in 'style' too.

I'll be watching his posting.

sebster wrote:

Melissia wrote:We knew they were attempting to obtain some form of NBC weapon. We learned in hindsight that they had failed to do so, but hindsight is 20/20.

The world was a different place shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and our mindset was extremely different than it is now.

While the on-going efforts of Saddam’s government was a concern for intelligence services and the international community, there were absolutely no independent experts arguing for the need to invade.

It was the policy of the US government under Clinton for regime change in Iraq.

Frazzled wrote:
But it does take an actor, not some two bit rent a wreck from the Dumpwater Community Theater.

Wouldn't that person be an actor?

You contradicted yourself.

Moreover, having the ability to do X is not having the ability to do Y.

Person 1 can have the ability to discern good acting from bad, and person 2 can have the ability to act well. There is no reason to assume that person 1 must have the abilities of person 2, or vice versa.

If there were, then any professional athlete would be, by default, a better coach than any coach that was never a professional athlete. And that's plainly not the case.

Frazzled wrote:
It was the policy of the US government under Clinton for regime change in Iraq.

By external support and economic sanctions, with a little bit of fairly insignificant bombing. Not quite the same thing as invasion.


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Stormrider wrote: Those same Tea party people are the "common man" that class warfare cannard throwing individllas like yourself love to stand up for, but then excoriate them for disagreeing. Make up your mind who you claim to care so much about.

You can care about someone and find their opinions foolish. Supporting a group of people does not entail listening to that group.


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Stormrider wrote:
"False conciousness", as I interperet it, is a case of someone so conviced that their belief system is right that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow uneducated or went to the wrong school or is just too stupid to grasp the argument. It couldn't be that maybe that person disagrees with them diametrically and finds their belief system to be anathema to what the US was founded upon.

That doesn't eliminate the first point. If you vehemently believe that you're right, then anyone who disagrees does so because they're stupid. In other words there is no such thing as "simply disagreeing" once you become emotionally committed to your own position.

Which, honestly, tends to be the way of political discourse in America. People buy the myth, and then proceed from there.

Stormrider wrote:
Which is funny since their message is, "less taxes and less spending". Not really all that complicated but very vital as our country is on the precipice of a debt bomb of epic proportions.

Doesn't it then seem odd that you would want to decrease taxes? I mean, I know the Laffer Curve is a part of the Conservative myth, but its really just an economic joke.

Stormrider wrote:
...but it causes people to be suspicious when he isn't forthright with anything from his past.

How has he not been forthright about his past? He provided a birth certificate, and often talks about his childhood abroad. Well, at least as most Presidents have mentioned their childhoods.

There really isn't any rational reason (used as a reference to common reason) to be suspicious of him. Not unless we should also have been suspicious of GWB due to booze soaked past, which he rarely if ever mentioned.

Stormrider wrote:
As for the WMD issue, that wasn't the only reason to get involved in Iraq, it's made out to be, but it wasn't the only reason.

It pretty much was, at least rhetorically. That's how the Bush administration packaged the invasion.

Stormrider wrote:
Here's one, Iraq's dealing with para-military and lesser Terrorist organizations that hated America as much as Saddam did. Sure, not burn down the world worthy, but these extremists only have to get lucky, we have to be right all of the time.

Why? We have 300 million people, and some of them are going to die; that's simply the way the world is. That doesn't mean spending billions of dollars on the invasion of a country we had long ago neutered was at all necessary.