466 replies to this topic

[SuperBall]

remember South Park election? Douchebag or **** Sandwitch... whoever said that cartoon isn't educational??

[Maethos]

Gingo, on 15 August 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

He isnt. He very much isnt. You can only call him left in relation to the far right republicans. He's middle right.



Glad to. Altough, what you mean is socialist, its a step before true communism.

Chile (would have, if the US hadnt assasinated the leader and put their murderous little puppet in power), Cuba (would have worked without Embargo), Madrid (before Franco and his business buddies came barging in), Soviet Union before Lenin's death, East Germany (little factoid: 60-70 percent of east germans want socialism back).

Now, you see, for communism to work, truly work, it needs to be worldwide and needs at least 3-5 generations to start up.



Freedom fighters, please.

West Germans hated and still don't hold much regard for east Germans, They were considered lazy and not up to work standards that most Germans have. This also can be seen with non communist Serbs saying the same thing about their communist brothers. My personal view is I could easily see why people felt that way. I was in both countries in the 80s then again in the 90s and the difference was night and day. Will admit tho I was in the military and the people I came into contact may not have been a perfect example.

Communism would never work, and all the reasons you showed for it failure just highlight its weakness. Any governmental system is only as good as the people in charge and communist leaders tend to lean towards tyranny and corruption. As we can see Democracy is not to far behind by what has been posted, so I guess my point is muted.

Factoid a lot of Germany's politics relate to socialism and so dose the U.S. even before Obama came. We just never had a president caught on tape telling the Russian president that he needed to sound like american in front of the cameras, because its a election year, but after that was out of the way he could be more accommodating. On that ground alone don't know how any american could trust him and see why foreigners like him with all the lip service he gives them. I guess we would feel the same way if we wouldn't hear or see hypocritical actions. And yes it seems a reoccurring theme modern politics, sigh!

[Easy 8]

"Let's get out and vote, let's make our voices heard,
we've been given the right, to choose between a ****** and a ****.
It's democracy in action, put your freedom to the test.
A big fat **** or a stupid ******, which do you like best?"

Thank you Trey Parker and Matt Stone, for echoing my feelings so well.

[THORude]

I just wish we could have kept politics out of gaming in general. Would have been nice to have some respit for a little while.....

[EmptySkull]

HUH??

offtopic forum thread and you didn't have to participate.

[Insidious Johnson]

Even the Libtards have had enough. Game Over.

OWS:Supported by Obama, finally states what they are all about.

Edited by Insidious Johnson, 21 August 2012 - 03:13 AM.

[Dymitry]

Yeah, sure, an afterwork circle of 20 guys, making impossible claims will single handedly bring the red dawn on the US.
By the way, silly slogans aside, what is wrong in reducing the gap between rich and poor and trying to abolish wage slavery? I am not a big fan of banking speculations, not sure if the current financial situation hits any string.

Ah, it must be the red word down there.

[Catamount]

Oh god, is this thread still going? I'm all for political threads, but it feels like everything to be said here has already been said, twice. The religious stuff was interesting, but sadly that far less redundant conversation seems to have stopped

Insidious Johnson, on 21 August 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

Even the Libtards have had enough. Game Over.

OWS:Supported by Obama, finally states what they are all about.

A single factually inaccurate Newsweek article by a right wing scrub, and a sign written in marker? Oh, dude, I'm just like, TOTALLY sold. Game over man, Game over! (insert Bill Paxton's rant from Aliens)

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here, and assume this post was in jest (and if so, well done! High quality parody achieved! And I apologize if the parody went over my head if that's the case, but you know, sarcasm doesn't translate well over the interwebz)

Catamount, on 15 August 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

American Thinker, Heritage, et al, are basically tantamount to linking to Micheal Moore or AE911, but I'd also suggest being careful about your post reaching the level of an ad hominem attack. Keep the argument at the center of your focus.

Pht, on 17 August 2012 - 06:26 PM, said:

Nice claim. Care to actually back it up?

That was already achieved the moment the first critical look was taken at the articles already linked from those sources; even if explanations hadn't already been given on their grossly fallacious nature, anyone who actually read them wouldn't need that explanation. They betray their own nature as low-quality appeal-to-the-base propaganda with such a beat-you-over-the-head lack of subtlety, that it was almost redundant for me to say anything at all.

So when you say "back it up", do you mean again? Do you want me to go find an article on, say, American Thinker on a topic actually within my area of expertise and tear them completely asunder? Because I'd be happy to show these guys grossly misrepresenting science by digging up one of their more hilarious "global warming is a hoax" or "evolution is the new Atheist religion" articles, and give a line-by-line demonstration of how cosmically ignorant and/or woefully dishonest these guys are (because a third year bio student knowing more about science than AT's entire writing staff, combined, times a billion, isn't a testament to my knowledge, just their lack). I'm guessing, however, that you don't really want to go there

Edited by Catamount, 21 August 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[Insidious Johnson]

And as a result, you quote Paul Krugman? LOL! Sure, punt the one key fact on which the whole argument turns, victory at all costs! The CBO can only score what is placed before it. What was placed before them was a sugar coated fantasy. How could you let that little tidbit by in your attempt at psuedo intellectual bullying. If you are really going to put the mental smack down on someone, checked to see how out tonned you are first. MAJOR LULZ. I'll go there, alright. I'll leave what is left of you in the squalor of your own "thoughts". Keep on "guessing".

[BduSlammer]

who says the mag is wrong from what i have seen they dead on

[Chihuahua]

the next wall to fall is wall street

[Insidious Johnson]

Wall Street? Fall? Ha! Your argument has more bark than bite, Chihuahua.

[Catamount]

Insidious Johnson, on 21 August 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

And as a result, you quote Paul Krugman? LOL! Sure, punt the one key fact on which the whole argument turns, victory at all costs! The CBO can only score what is placed before it. What was placed before them was a sugar coated fantasy. How could you let that little tidbit by in your attempt at psuedo intellectual bullying. If you are really going to put the mental smack down on someone, checked to see how out tonned you are first. MAJOR LULZ. I'll go there, alright. I'll leave what is left of you in the squalor of your own "thoughts". Keep on "guessing".

You see, I'm still not convinced that you're actually serious. I mean, anyone who claims to "mentally out-ton" someone before posting "major lulz" in all caps can't possibly be serious, can they?


In the event that you're actually not trolling, however: When you have something more than one article that can't get its facts straight (a point your vague characterization of information provided to the CBO is irrelevant to; whether you like the CBO or not, Ferguson directly lied about their statements), and a sign written in marker, then maybe we'll have something to actually discuss besides the fact that your arguments consist of little more than direct personal insults. Actually, it's hard to know what you're arguing, because you really haven't actually said anything that would amount to outlining a thesis.

Edited by Catamount, 21 August 2012 - 03:16 PM.

[GaussDragon]

OWS and the Tea Party have something in common: They both started out as legitimate grievances about the the nature of 'fairness' in terms of taxation and spending. What happened is that they both got hijacked by radical idiots. Look in this very thread, there was a fellow who said he supported the Tea Party movement until the lunatics all showed up. OWS was afflicted by the same problem; a bunch of braid-haired tree-huggers with hacky sacks showed up and started spouting off nebulous, vapid statements about the nature of America's political economy. Their reciprocals on the right are just as un/misinformed, except that the main difference is that there's a lot more lunatics on the right than the left.

I have to laugh when people bandy around terms like 'socialist' without really understanding what it means. Even a cursory look at the policy positions of ANY President in the past... ever... was hardly a socialist. This is including FDR. Has anyone here even heard of a 'mixed market economy' or simply 'mixed economy'? It's what the VAST MAJORITY of nations use with varying degrees of free-enterprise vs government intervention. With very few exceptions, no state is one or the other anymore. Seeing the government as simply an impediment to trade is a very narrow view. You can find countless examples of governmental failure and success. Each example has to be context specific. However, people forget some important roles of government, like PROMOTING competition. Oligopolies and monopolies are naturally-occurring in the market and they hurt all consumers except the actual monopolists and oligopolists. This is why we have things like anti-trust legislation.

Too much regulation can be a bad thing, but too little regulation can be just as a bad or worse. We're all consumers, both people and enterprises, and having a vibrant, competitive economy benefits us all. I live in Ontario with a telecom duopoly. Back in when I first started playing MechWarrior 4 in 2001, I noticed that what we paid for internet compared to Americans was a steal. A decade later and the opposite is true. The American market has seen faster speeds and better prices. Ontario now has draconian bandwidth caps, lower speed increases compared to Americans and god-awful customer service. The cellular market is even worse if you can believe it. Ask any Ontarian how they feel about their cellular provider, the response will be chock-full of colourful language. This is what a lack of competition has gotten us. The provincial government has tried to tackle this problem but so far it has been doing a half-assed job. Every argument for and against regulation needs to be entirely contextual, not some worthless tagline like "government is the enemy of business" or "capitalism is the enemy of working people", both are examples of simplistic nonsense but this is what the political discourse has come to. The problem is, for us to have informed debates on these things, people need to understand how this **** actually works... and that's the problem; most people simply don't but they sure like to pretend they do.

Edited by GaussDragon, 23 August 2012 - 03:57 AM.

[Insidious Johnson]

Don't get me started on bandwidth caps... Comcast/Xfinity just started that August 1st. As for anti-trust legislation? How has Microsoft possibly avoided it except by massive campaign contributions? Look at Jeffery Immelt and GE then ask David Letterman about GE... lol. Now, after major cash allowances to the panderer in chief, he's on the cabinet. Seems every government is pay to play these days, after being P2W even after McCain Finegold "campaign reforms". The best thing that could happen for ALL of mankind is for every capital in the world to get vaporised by asteroids tomorrow. There is no platform tall enough on which reason can be heard above the pedestrian cults of personality, the education system caters only to the desires of the educators and hasn't the will to castigate bad parenting. "Lafeyette, we ain't coming back, ******".

[Pht]

Catamount, on 21 August 2012 - 12:34 PM, said:

That was already achieved the moment the first critical look was taken at the articles already linked from those sources; even if explanations hadn't already been given on their grossly fallacious nature, anyone who actually read them wouldn't need that explanation.

So your argument is ... we looked at them and we disagreed, therefore, content of said articles is wrong.

Quote

So when you say "back it up", do you mean again?

When you say something is wrong you actually back that up by showing how the content expressed in that thing is wrong by showing what fallacies it contains.

... in other words, you say it's (the content) is wrong; SHOW how it's wrong... at least if you care enough about having anyone take you seriously.

... and you don't do it by showing how some other content is wrong, either.

Quote

I'm guessing, however, that you don't really want to go there

This has to be the most interesting way to cop-out on making an argument I've seen ...

[Catamount]

PhT, are you trying to strawman?

Pht, on 24 August 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

So your argument is ... we looked at them and we disagreed, therefore, content of said articles is wrong.

No, my argument is that the logic was fallacious, because the conclusions didn't follow from the evidence provided (namely, that Obama was a "socialist", based solely on a sketchy set of associations), and it was stunningly obvious. Whether something is or isn't non sequitur has nothing to do with disagreement, as though it were a matter of opinion. I addressed those articles, and you didn't substantively respond on that point (you gave other points of evidence that you thought made Obama a "socialist", but they seemed irrelevant to the articles themselves). Right now, that's where we stand.

Quote

... and you don't do it by showing how some other content is wrong, either.

You asked me to show that the sources are unreliable; does it matter what topic one uses to show consistent ignorance and/or dishonesty? How so?

I, myself, made it clear that addressing sources wasn't what I was out to do, but you responded on that point. For my part, I shouldn't have solely focused on that response; mea culpa

Quote

This has to be the most interesting way to cop-out on making an argument I've seen ...

It might be, if it was anything of the sort. I already said I was willing to address a history of dishonesty within those sources, and if you really want me to pick a topic in which I'm knowledgeable and do just that, I'm still happy to.

This misrepresentation of my statements is so bizarre, I'm forced to wonder if you've even been reading my posts. The entire point here has been that this isn't relevant to the discussion, and it was a point I made upfront, very prominently.


So? Do you want me to go on a tirade against these sources or not? I don't see how it's especially relevant (again, that being the whole point of my original post on the subject), but it's not as though it can't be done. At this point I'm not even sure what you're arguing.

Edited by Catamount, 24 August 2012 - 05:45 PM.

[Insidious Johnson]

Don't argue with Catamount, he has a mind like a steel trap... that has rusted shut.

[Catamount]

Insidious Johnson, on 24 August 2012 - 02:20 PM, said:

Don't argue with Catamount, he has a mind like a steel trap... that has rusted shut.

I also drink the blood of kittens, and steal lunch money from toddlers, and am a hardcore scientologist. No, not really, but if you're going to turn the discussion into a narrative about another poster that you know nothing about solely to reduce your posts to nothing but personal attacks, well we might as well make that narrative interesting, no?

Edited by Catamount, 24 August 2012 - 02:29 PM.

[Insidious Johnson]

Agreed. He also sniffs donkeys and fondles elderberries.