Since I pretty much will openly admit that InTheNet and Karl are basically crazy, I wonder if you'll take this opportunity to admit that SuperDave and Ratdog are pretty much, well, insane?
Oh, puhleeze. Cut the amateur psychologizing. You're out of your element. I wouldn't begin to call Dave and JoeP crazy. Nope, they're not crazy. Nope, it's this. When it comes to politics, economics, history, and culture they are simply really really stupid. When doltish becomes equivalent to deranged, I am sure your perspicacity will set us all straight.
I'm really disappointed that this tread didn't begin "Bojendyk is an offensive, idiotic jerk." Sigh. I must not be trying hard enough. Believe it or not, I have sometimes disagreed vehemently with superdave and ratdog (regarding the economic contributions of DINKs with the former and over communism with the latter, to name just two examples). Furthermore, I've sometimes agreed with Karl. (I actually like some of Karl's posts about the arts.) I probably agreed with IntheNet at some point, but I can't remember what it would have been about. Three of these four posters sometimes have that ugly and childish tendency to attempt to own (excuse me, pwn) every issue they discuss. When that virus infects them, they're not crazy; they're just blowhards. Some of them also carry political disagreements with fellow posters into other arenas on the boards. Ian McCracken, now there was a conservative poster who never, ever had anything good or smart or interesting to say. Probably the dumbest and craziest guy on the left was verybdog. Ian's posts usually consisted of the day's anti-Kerry headline from Drudge or of spam that he had been emailed. Verybdog once insisted that you can't determine the health of an economy using numeric data; instead, you just needed to ask people you know how they thought the economy is doing. He also got off on the beheading videos.
I wasn't going to comment here because one of these guys I don't give a damn about and one of them I like very much, but I can't resist because it makes a point. dave is just stupid. I don't say that because he's a liberal, I say that because he's stupid. His thought process, his writing, his lack of anything approaching an idea beyond his regurgitation of some moronic mewling he just got f=done reading on some leftie blog, all of it: he's just stupid. Pakovits is a guy I really like, and I think it's tragic what someone did to a bright guy like that. See, in a reaction to traditionally glowing and sentimental American history lessons of the past, someone pointed out that America was not perfect. Our history had some serious, ugly blotches on it. Teachers, who are among the worst informed and worst educated people on the planet, began telling their students all about it. The indians. The Japanese internment. Jim Crow. Slavery. Selma Alabama. All of it. And it was a healthy thing. Kids should definitely learn the truth, the whole truth, about their country, warts and all. Heck, in Japan they don't tell schoolchildren about the Rape opf nanking or biological experiments on Koreans or any of it. WWII was forced upon them bu the nasty Americans, they were just innocent victims, boo hoo. And oh yes, the Hiroshima bomb was the worst offense in world history. They refuse to even acknowledge that twice as many Chinese were slaughtered like cattle at Nanking than were killed by the US A bomb. And it wasn't in one fell swoop, with the pull of a bomb release: it was one by one, by hand. Having betting parlors devoted to gambling on what gender of baby would fall to the floor when you cut open a pregnant woman. Contests to see how many chinese heads you could lop off in ten minutes with a sword (there are pictures). Infecting rats with vicious pathogens and releasing them in Manchurian communities and keeping records (which still exist) of how long it took for the entire community to die. Japanese children learn none of this. And it's wrong. So it's a good thing that the US is honest with kids about the ugly spots on our history, and there are plenty, no question about it. And I know more about them than most of you. No brag, just fact. But then American teachers, who are "Education" majors, not history experts, figured that this was the point: that America was evil. Never mind the incredible record of achievvement. Never mind that those "dead white guys" literally invented representative government and introduced it to the human race: the IMPORTANT thing is that a few of them owned slaves. Nothing else really matters. Never mind the fact that 2/3 to 3/4 of American citizens never owned slaves or apporved of slavery or that a million white Americans gave their lives to end it: a few Southern states allowed slave owning, and so America is a slavocracy. Never mind that settlers moving west created gleaming cities out of the prairie and built the greatest, most prosperous civilization on Earth, one which gave it's people a standard of living and a level of personal freedom unknown on Earth. What's really important is that we callously pushed aboriginal peoples out of the way and destroyed their cultures. Never mind that America came to the rescue of civilization, saving Europe from a thousand years of Nazi tyranny. WWII was really bout the fact that the US overreacted to a (very real but somewhat limited) Janpanese-American threat and moved a hundred thousand people into the interior to protect our coasts from a sabotage threat that, while provably real, was somewhat overblown. They stopped teaching the good part, and started filling students with only the bad part, as if that was all there was. College students of the 60's, who learned as teens that Amerikkka was an imperialistic corporate beast devouring ti's young, became the college professors of the 80's and the lies became the truth. As a reeult of this, Joe and a whole bunch of guys like him, have learned to hate America. And he does hate America, down to his bones. It's a horrible, evil place full of raacist Klansmen and Christian nutjobs and rubes with guns and all the rest. Operated by a secret cabal of superwealthy industrialist whose fondest wish is to grind poor people's bones into fertilizer they can sell to the Saudis. It's sick , it's disgusting and they completely believe it. JoeP is obviously a very bright guy, but he was handed the Kool Aid and, with no other evidence being presented, he gulped it down and asked for more. A tragic waste of a perfectly good mind. I hold out hope that someday he will stumble across some perspective about what America really is and what it's meant to the world and will wake the hell up. But I'm an optimist.
Oh no, I agree that probably all 4 are smart or at least well read. Karl and ITN are a little too far to the right for my tastes and like to call people names, even before being provoked. Is it deserved sometimes? Yeah, but all too often these guys sink to the level of.... Superdave, he works for the Democrats and he spouts the Democrat party line thru and thru. Never will he concede a republican is right about anything. Joe is a very smart person, but like you said, he thinks everything about the U.S. is bad. He never says anything nice about this Country. All his threads are about how bad things are. If you never came here and just looked at his posts, you would think (as you noted above) that America is on fire, run by the KKKlan and there is no middle class, just poor minorities and rich white CEO's. Which would be fine to think like that, because only about 2% of this Country actually agree with him, but point out that perhaps Friedman knows more about economics than he does (he claimed - laughably - that Friedman has been disproven) and he will call you names. I think 'Microdick' is was the last one. If you think anything about America is good then you get called a right wing nutjob. The thing is, I recognize alot of the bad in the US and we do need to change some things pretty quickly. I am no fan of GW Bush (sorry Bill) and I think our Health care system needs major overhaul. I think tax cuts combined with massive military spending is not a great idea....so I have no idea why I would be called a right wing nutjob for simply pointing out that Noam Chomsky is wrong about alot of things.
I have lots of issues with George Bush, but they're based on philosophy and policy and fact and purpose. What I can say with assurance is that the country would be a lot worse off if Gore or Kerry were in the White House, so I'm content with who we've got. When the Democrats can come up with a decent alternative I'll listen. They just can't seem to to save their lives. And there's nothing wrong with our "health care policy" that getting government and lawyerrs out of it wouldn't solve. Government involvement in health care is what's wrong with it. It's the problem, not the solution. It's simply irrational to suggest that since a little government screwed it up a lot of government would fix it. But that's another discussion. Those guys don't like Bush because he's a profit-driven corporate puppet bent on world domination and hatred of black people and love of war and stupidity and blah, blah, blah. It's all just nonsense, utter rubbish. Guys like you and Karl try to engage them in rational discussion. I gave up on that because it's futile. They are so twisted with hate that reason is impossible. And really it's wrong to say they hate America: they just hate Americans.
Bill, I think you give JP too much credit. How can you think a guy smart who believes that John Kenneth Galbraith was actually a good economist? An interesting social commentator, perhaps, and a pretty good administrator, but an economist? No way. The problem with the lefty pessimists in this country is that they are simply not very observant. This country has made such unbeleivable progress in the last 60 years that all they would have to do is open their eyes to see it. But they can't. They are so entrapped in their peculiar pessimistic myopia that the they simply don't see what a great nation this is -- economically, socially, spiritually, morally. You see, they would love to see the USA decline. That's secretly, or not secretly, what they want. They want the USA to fail. For them it's all about the bad and the wrong -- the war is bad, the environment is bad,the econony is bad, Wal Mart is bad, health care is bad, the deficit is bad, yada yada yada in an endless drone of pessimistic drivel. The good news is that the world is going to pass them by. They are going to wake up one morning and realize that they completely missed out on the greatness that is the United States. And I won't feel a bit sorry for them.
I think that you have it backwards - I think that JoePak and his ilk think that America, the system, is so irredeemably flawed that any change that makes it worse will hasten the day when they, the enlightened, can pick up the pieces and build a utopia anew. So, they favor anything that will surely make things worse. The funny thing about these folks on the hard left is that they think that they are the true champion of the common guy. They get very disappointed with the common guy, though, when he is indifferent to their brilliant plans. Then, the common guy becomes a clod who takes orders from Limbaugh and Fox News. I don't know how many times I've seen the JoePaks express bewilderment that people could vote so obviously "against their own interests." Give these guys half a chance, and they would set up re-education camps to teach us the magnitude of their brilliance at gunpoint.
Bo, you know you’re somebody in BS when you get a thread named after you. The problem is none of the posts are about you.
Hmm . . . that's true. Let's steer this thread back in the right direction. Here is a story about the latest case of cruelty to animals to sicken me. Discuss.
That's actually pretty funny. I like how the protester was rumored to be a meat eater, making one wonder why he would engage in such a protest.
So one guy can upset the plans and fun of hundreds or thousands (perhaps) of citizens? Just because he is 'offended'? I have a plan. How about if he stays home that day. Jerk.
I'm not part of this thread? Man, I feel so left out. I know I've insulted everyone here repeatedly, and still no love? Tough crowd. I guess I'll have to wait for ManUtd fans to start another thread about me being the spawn of Hitler, or something. Which, for the record, I'm not.
So you're telling us that you're not the guy who protested the pork roast by painting himself pink and showing up wearing only an apron? Color me disappointed.
No, despite being a Lazio fan (long story) I'd be a spawn of.......hmmm......I dunno, Kaganovich, I guess. Or maybe Sharon. (Son of Sam was adopted, thank you very much!)
If I repeated that, I would send shivers down the spine of my entire office. Which may not be a bad idea, come to think of it.
Nope. Spawn of Stalin and/or the Rothchilds/the international cabal of Jewish bankers set on installing a communist New World Order government/elders of Zion.