What's your line in the sand?

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Okay A_J, do you want to reset our relationship on these boards with no more ad hominems and no more deflections. That would be an agreement to actually address in full the topics and questions put to each other?

Are you actually up for that?

You need to read around some other threads this morning.

You will see I address each and every poster as I, myself, am addressed.*

I don't HAVE to change for you to get respectful conversation. YOU HAVE TO CHANGE.



But, you don't see that anymore than you ever seem to notice Democratic malfeasance.







* even those 180 degree from me politically.

 

[zipman]

You need to read around some other threads this morning.

You will see I address each and every poster as I, myself, am addressed.*

I don't HAVE to change for you to get respectful conversation. YOU HAVE TO CHANGE.

But, you don't see that anymore than you ever seem to notice Democratic malfeasance.

* even those 180 degree from me politically.

I laid out some simple rules for both of us to follow to change the dynamic. If you don't want to accept that challenge, simply say no instead of trying to put all the blame on me.

Either you want to walk the talk or you don't, your choice.

 

[bronzeage]

The problem is that you are using pyschopaths and terrorists as a baseline comparison to elected officials. In that case, sure, lying seems far less severe. However, it should be completely unacceptable to the other members of the Senate (or congress) as well as to the voting public.

Of course the psychopaths are the extreme. No one disputes that. This is a question of the reaction to the acts of psychopaths which forward the political agenda.

If people will not condemn murder and bombs left on a public street during rush hour, why expect them to worry about a lie.

 

[busybody..]

FACT!

Not FICTION!


Rush: Obama’s Base is “Walking Human Debris”…

Heh.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

And don't be fooled. There are real costs to this careless courtship of the lowest common denominator. Without fact-based debates, politics can quickly give way to paranoia and hate. Our democracy gets degraded.Americans deserve better, and we should demand better, especially from our elected representatives. Empowering ignorance for political gain is unacceptable.

You're too late. That train left the station long ago. We don't demand more from our elected representatives, because we don't demand it of ourselves.

Most of this thread is ample proof.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I laid out some simple rules for both of us to follow to change the dynamic. If you don't want to accept that challenge, simply say no instead of trying to put all the blame on me.

Either you want to walk the talk or you don't, your choice.

On your terms?

Just follow my actual example. I demanded nothing of you, required no agreement and treated you as you would treat me, which, btw, you don't seem to like much.

Let's see if you can stick to your rules as I already stick to mine, known in many circles as the "Golden Rule."

Sort of a liberal layman's gold standard.

 

[busybody..]

Sorta kinda funny

How during the campaign when the vile anti American, anti White, anti Semitic rhetoric of Rev Wright was uncovered.....we were told, just cause Obama sat thru it for 20 years it meant NOTHING.......


and YET

so many SCREAM, including this thread starter, how Palin was ANTI SEMITIC cause ONE speaker ONE TIME spoke at a Church that palin attended





YEARS BEFORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Sorta Kinda Funny

Accountably now

yeah right

 

[zipman]

On your terms?

Just follow my actual example. I demanded nothing of you, required no agreement and treated you as you would treat me, which, btw, you don't seem to like much.

Let's see if you can stick to your rules as I already stick to mine, known in many circles as the "Golden Rule."

Sort of a liberal layman's gold standard.

You actual example is a figment of your imagination which is why I tried to come up with some extremely simple ground rules for both of us to agree upon.

I've offered you the opportunity to help define those terms if mine weren't to your liking. Yet you would rather cling to the illusion that you treat others (who aren't republicans or libertarians) well or fairly.

Why not simply agree to some common standards of interaction so there is no confusion later?

 

[zipman]

You're too late. That train left the station long ago. We don't demand more from our elected representatives, because we don't demand it of ourselves.

Most of this thread is ample proof.

I guess I expect more from an elected politician than a poster on a porn board.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Still trying to control and dominate I see.





Good luck with that...

 

[Peregrinator]

Can you provide a link back to the original article? I'd like to see what the comments on this piece say. Thanks.

http://*******.com/6yxw5hl

 

[Liar]

No wonder "people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke," as Will Rogers once said and Colbert increasingly embodies. But we can't keep depending on comedians to be the voices of sanity.

Comedians have, by-and-large, always been the best and most effective voices of sanity. A good comedian is a person who recognizes the follies of man and merely points at them.

You can't reason with hypocricy. But it's quite effective to ridicule it.

 

[Powertone]

How the fuck can you compare a bunch of whiners writing a network to what this moronic SENATOR lied about on the floor? This is stupid in the bonus round.

a bunch of whiners ? you voted for either Boxer or Feinstein who signed the letter .
your party blew over 30 minutes of senate time bashing a private citizen who was telling the TRUTH . you stupid ass .

get back on the Craigslist Skanks for Men page or sit in your car jackin' off to college hotties on their way to class

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I guess I expect more from an elected politician than a poster on a porn board.

I did, too, once upon a time. Eventually, I cut my finger trying to split that hair.

 

[zipman]

Still trying to control and dominate I see.

Good luck with that...

I'm not trying to control or dominate anything. I'm inviting you to agree on mutually determined changes in our posting relationship. How in the world is that controlling or dominating?

Your deflections and denial are speaking volumes. Like I said, you could just say "no" instead of doing this ridiculous dance.

 

[busybody..]

before teh JEW KILLING ZIPMAN bullshits about BULLSHIT

he outa worry about his heroz saying shit like this

Democrat New Tone: PA Politician Asks if She Can Kill a Colleague, ‘Blow His Brains Out’by Warner Todd Huston
Yes, it’s that new age of Democrat political civility rearing its ugly head yet again. During an April 12 debate on gun control Pennsylvania State Representative Margo Davidson of Philadelphia wondered aloud on the House floor if it might be OK for her to blow the brains out of one of Pennsylvania’s Republican Representatives.



Before we even go on with this story, imagine if a white, male, and Republican politician had asked during a debate on policy if it would be OK if he blew the brains out of a black, female, Democrat. Just imagine what would be happening to such a man should he have done this. Certainly his name would be on the lips of every TV newscaster for at least a week after he said such an outrageous thing. Movements would be born to oust him from his elected position. Colleagues would be condemning him. Race-baiters would be flocking to the state for vigils. Further his own party would be denouncing him in no uncertain terms.

But what we have here is a black female, a Democrat from a big city, and no one is paying any attention at all. Obviously it is not a big deal. Apparently we are expected to just move on as if there is nothing wrong with a black woman expressing the desire to kill her political opponent.

Double standard is the nicest thing I can say about it.


Anyway, all that said, the debate was about the expansion of the Castle Doctrine in Pennsylvania, an expansion that would give more citizens the right to protect themselves from attack. Representative Davidson was attempting to make a point on how she felt the Castle Doctrine was a dangerous law and to illustrate her point she made reference to Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R, Butler County). Metcalfe is a strong Second Amendment supporter and one of the chamber’s conservative members.

In open debate, right on the floor of the House, Davidson said, “If the gentleman from Butler County stood yelling, knowing that he’s a gun-toter, and I felt threatened, would I be protected under court law if I blew his brains out.”

After this outrageous utterance, the Pilly Inquirer’s John Baer reports that Rep. Davidson was so pleased with herself she “giggled.”

Coming only a day after our president went on TV to tell the nation that Republicans that want to cut the gross overspending of Congress and balance the budget are guilty of trying to kill old people and how anyone making over $200,000 a year are selfish jerks I suppose having another Democrat politician saying that she wants to murder a Republican really is no big deal.

Democrats, it seems, are wholly exempt from civility.

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
It's money for dope
Money for rope

Ah, I'm sick to death of hearing things
from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of reading things
by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

 

[eyer]

New York (CNN) -- And don't be fooled. There are real costs to this careless courtship of the lowest common denominator. Without fact-based debates, politics can quickly give way to paranoia and hate. Our democracy gets degraded.Americans deserve better, and we should demand better, especially from our elected representatives. Empowering ignorance for political gain is unacceptable.

The writer is exactly as loose with the facts as the one he convicts...

...America is not a "democracy".

 

[Luk]

a bunch of whiners ? you voted for either Boxer or Feinstein who signed the letter .
your party blew over 30 minutes of senate time bashing a private citizen who was telling the TRUTH . you stupid ass .

get back on the Craigslist Skanks for Men page or sit in your car jackin' off to college hotties on their way to class

Do you just hate being wrong all the time? Why would you think I voted for either of them?

What party do I belong to? What private citizen are you talking about?

Get back to ampics, semen. It's the only place where people don't know what a ignorant fuckwad you are.

 

[PannieMonster]

Anyone other than "the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike" care to comment?

Yes, why does the American taxpayer have to fund Planned Parenthood in the first place? Shouldn't every other health care provider also be funded by the government if this is the case? If not, why not?

 

[celiaKitten]

Anyone other than "the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike" care to comment?

Judging from these three pages, your answer is 'no'.

Sorry.

 

[Lancecastor]

The USA is a socially conservative nation.

This is a truth that the liberals on the east coast and west coast have a problem accepting.

You've all seen the maps...most Americans are conservatives.

Pointing out outlandish examples of political hyperbole as a way to negate all conservative values doesn't strike me as a very "liberal" way of dealing with the truth of America's Values System.

New York (CNN) -- "Not intended to be a factual statement."

This was the sound of the curtain coming back on what passes for political debate too often these days.

The now-infamous statement from Sen. Jon Kyl's office was released after he said on the floor of the U.S. Senate that abortions represent "over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."

It turns out that the actual number is 3%, a mere rounding error of 87%. But it was presented to the American people and enshrined in the Senate Record as a means of arguing that Planned Parenthood should be entirely defunded in the current budget.

This has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility and everything to do with the disproportionate influence of social conservative activists.

Their most compelling argument is that the American people don't support federal taxpayer money paying for abortions, which is true -- and why federal funding of abortion has been banned since 1976.

But the facts are inconvenient, and so they are ignored. Instead, talking points taken from talk radio are repeated until they take on a life of their own and eventually get the validation of a U.S. senator.

The news wasn't that Kyl made a mistake; it was his staff essentially acknowledging that in the current hyper-partisan environment, facts are a secondary concern, even on the floor of the U.S. Senate, even when they are paraded as statistics. The important thing is to scare the hell out of people so that they remember your political point and pass it on.

Like the mirror image of some hippies of old, emotional truth is more important than literal truth. It creates a political tower of Babel.

In this absurd spin cycle, there's one dependable place to look for sanity: satire. And on cue came Stephen Colbert, who took Kyl's statement as a challenge and dialed it up to 11. Using the Twitter hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement, Colbert unleashed a steady stream of Jon Kyl mistruths with the requisite denial. Among my favorites:

• Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.

• Jon Kyl can unhinge his jaw like a python to swallow small rodents whole.

• Every Halloween Jon Kyl dresses up as a sexy Mitch Daniels.

• Jon Kyl sponsored S.410, which would ban happiness.

• Jon Kyl let a game-winning ground ball roll through his legs in Game 6 of the '86 World Series.

• Jon Kyl once ate a badger he hit with his car.

You get the idea. But the problem is much bigger than Jon Kyl. Colbert is going to have to get a bigger hashtag. Because we're heading to a strange place where Daniel Patrick Moynihan's truism "everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts" no longer applies.

Exhibit B this week: Donald Trump's re-enflaming of the thoroughly discredited birther conspiracy theory. When he repeats this falsehood in interviews, he is too often treated as a man with an unorthodox opinion, not someone repeating a lie on national television.

As a result, more people are duped and the country more divided, not on the many rational reasons to oppose President Obama's policy agenda but on paranoid fantasies cut out of whole cloth.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a man responsible for pushing the birther myth -- and a reported recent Trump adviser -- Joe Farah of the fringe website World Net Daily freely admitted to Salon.com this week that his site publishes "some misinformation."

"Misinformation" is a fancy word for lying with an ideological agenda in mind. It has become more acceptable and more influential with the rise of partisan media. It preys on the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike.

The cycle of incitement that afflicts our politics ensures that this dynamic bleeds into both sides of the aisle. For example, the liberal Campaign for America's Future recently declared that "Congressman Eric Cantor wants to eliminate Social Security," a flat-out "pants on fire" lie, as described by indispensable PolitiFact.

A little-noticed local example of this strangeness caught my eye this week, courtesy of the website ThinkProgress. It seems that Texas state Rep. Leo Berman put forward a bill to ban sharia law in the Lone Star State.

When he was asked why such a step was necessary, he cited the city of Dearborn, Michigan, six times in testimony: "It's being done in Dearborn, Michigan ... because of a large population of Middle Easterners. The judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used sharia law."

This would indeed be troubling (and unconstitutional) if true, but when Berman was pressed about the source of his facts, here's what he said: "I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day. ... I don't know Dearborn, Michigan, but I heard it on the radio. Isn't that true?"

No, it's not, as Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly has been forced to make abundantly clear, stating that "these people know nothing of Dearborn, and they just seek to provoke and enflame their base for political gain."

But the misinformation percolating around the fringes of hyper-partisan media is creeping into state capitals and the U.S. Congress. Ignorance and incitement begin to blur, compounded by the civic laziness of speakers who don't care to fact-check.

"Not intended to be a factual statement" is an instant dark classic, a triumph of cynicism, capturing the essence of Michael Kinsley's definition of a gaffe in Washington: when a politician accidentally tells the truth.

No wonder "people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke," as Will Rogers once said and Colbert increasingly embodies. But we can't keep depending on comedians to be the voices of sanity.

And don't be fooled. There are real costs to this careless courtship of the lowest common denominator. Without fact-based debates, politics can quickly give way to paranoia and hate. Our democracy gets degraded.Americans deserve better, and we should demand better, especially from our elected representatives. Empowering ignorance for political gain is unacceptable.

 

[Super-Surprise]

My line in the sand.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldi7qnZk4W1qdxb94o1_500.jpg

 

[zipman]

The writer is exactly as loose with the facts as the one he convicts...

...America is not a "democracy".

There's a big difference between being loose with the facts (which is too strong a term for discussing the concept of American democracy) and blatantly lying or don't you realize that?

 

[zipman]

Yes, why does the American taxpayer have to fund Planned Parenthood in the first place? Shouldn't every other health care provider also be funded by the government if this is the case? If not, why not?

Planned Parenthood gets funding because Nixon signed a law that is still in effect to fund them.

Democrats liked it because it helped give poor people access to medical care and contraceptive services while republicans liked it because they felt it kept the welfare rolls down.

Just because one health care provider receives funding why should they all? I don't get your logic.