That's your response to a valid statement? I suspect this is the tactic you normally use when one has pointed out a GLARING inconsistency in your rhetoric and has finnaly made some sense to everyone, including you.

Is it my responsibility to fund AIDS research? Does the government have a budget for AIDS research? Ok, since you have an AIDS fetish and insist on projecting it, how about CANCER research? Could funds allocated to the insanely expensive war effort not have been allocated in part to Cancer research? Housing for the homeless? Education programs? Better hospital facilities?

MaKK, Spankling hit the nail on the head. Your rhetoric is failing because you don't have the populace on your B.S. train anymore. Being a Bush apologist IS finally taking its toll on you.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

Ok, I guess you could say all of your taxes could go to want you want it to if you subscribe to a libertine philosophy (I only use roads so I should only pay for the roads, I only use power so I should only be taxed on governmental regulation, etc.) So in that sense of only paying for what you use, since you have contracted AIDS from promsicuous sex with Hatian immigrants, and you cannot possibly pay back to society the medicals debts you will leave behind -a debt that will be shouldered by other taxpayers- YES you, Mikey, could wonder why your tax dollars are being wasted elsewhere.

In other news, tax dollars aren't split up into "this guy's payments" and "that guys payments". You can, however, offest your tax burden by donating to chairty. So in that sense, you could allocate a larger portion of your tax dollars towards, say, AIDS research, as long as it ended up in a lesser tax bill for you. Please consult your local CPA for more information.

Also you could donate to chairty regardless if it's such a meaningful chairty to you.

The populace? Am I chairman Mao now?

Also in other news, Bush is up in the polls, if that's what you mean. But I'd still have my opinions regardless. Really I don't see why me wondering why you keep bringing up AIDS research in the context of Iraq has anything to do with popular opinion. I'm just guessing at your points since your post is very vauge and wandering.

I don't remember apologizing for Bush. I even said bringing up WMDs in respect to invading Iraq was bad, and damaging national confidence in our ability to plan and execute military stragey is also bad. There is a good argument that the president should be getting reliable intelligence anyway. That's not apologizing, it's just making an argument.

Also I feel pretty good, I've been getting a lot of exercise and it's nice out, so if I am paying a "toll" for my thoughts then I'll start sharing them double-time.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

I think the press is posing Kerry's statements about Vietnam war crimes, and the other guy's denial thereof, as some kind of your-word-against-his situation. But I think there's an actual rational process by which we might invest more confidence in one account or the other. I lay it out at the risk of belaboring the obvious. In my defense, it seems someone has to.

Two guys come home from the same war, the same unit. Guy A says, "We committed crimes, and I am ashamed of my and my country's conduct." Guy B says there were no crimes, and he is proud of his and his country's conduct. Whom do you suspect of lying?

Well, right off the bat, we have something to go on: People seldom lie in order to make themselves and their friends look bad. On the other hand, people often lie to make themselves and their friends look good. Sometimes they even believe these lies. That's what I think, anyway. If anyone thinks the opposite, I'd like to hear it, but I think this rule travels pretty well. It probably holds up as well for Americans as for Chinese as for Arabs.

So immediately, I'm slightly more suspicious of Guy B.

Of course, if your operating asssumption is "America is always right," you're immediately more suspicious of Guy A. In fact, you probably regard Guy A as some kind of traitor. But I think my operating assumption is a little more believable than "America is always right."

That's just the face of the argument. Now we can go beyond that and ask, what is the record? Is there a record of war crimes? And I think we can lean, with some confidence, toward a "yes." Guy A says there were search-and-destroy missions and free-fire zones. Guy B says... the same thing! So we have a point of agreement. Now all we have to do is look at Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and see if we think it outlaws these things.

What's a free-fire zone anyway? Colin Powell, in his memoirs, paints a vivid picture of how they worked in Vietnam:

"If a helo (helicopter) spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM (military age male), the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so" (p.140).

(Colin Powell is Bush's Secretary of State, for those who think that such reports only come from self-seeking Liberal traitors.)

Now let's have a glance at Article 3:

"Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture..."

Is machine-gunning any "remotely suspicious" "military-aged male" covered here? I think so.

So that's a free-fire zone, which I recall Guy B as admitting knowledge of, although he denied knowledge of any war crimes. This is like saying, "Yes, we took people's money at gunpoint, but I don't recall any robberies." I suppose it depends on what your definition of "is" is.

And really, we're just playing with ourselves here, aren't we? America's conduct in Vietnam is a matter of abundant and very public record: carpet bombing populated areas, defoliating the countryside, "Zippoing" villages. Not just My Lai. Lots and lots of My Lais, and that was US policy, for years. And we're arguing about whether Kerry is lying about witnessing war crimes? From what we know about Vietnam, he's basically saying he saw the sun rise in the East and set in the West.

(The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, for those of you who are not into astronomy.)

In other words, he's saying something that is abundantly obvious to anyone whose operating assumption is not "America is always right." Making it into some kind of you-say/I-say, some controversy between one Presidential candidate and some other guy, is a dizzying display of collective denial on the part of the press. Ridiculous. There's no real controversy.

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What others say about boorite!

Once again boorite swoops in and smacks the shit out of everyone with simple, inarguable logic.

quote:

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(The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, for those of you who are not into astronomy.)

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You mean inarguable logic like this:

What about people who lie for attention? Or for political gain? Or social acceptance?

I agree his logic is "simple" because it exclude sitautions where his reasoning is wrong.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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I don't feel too hysterical.

In any event I was never too sure why being in the Navy was supposed to confer some kind of automatic sainthood to Kerry. I know people who have been in the Navy, and frankly some of them are idiots.

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I still don't understand what you're saying I'm whining or apologizing about.

Are you saying all people in the Navy are smart? Are you saying that me saying they aren't all smart is whining and / or apologizing? I don't understand.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

...

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Saddam swindled $10 billion from UN Oil for Food fund

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Please replace the handset, and try again.

People usually lie for attention to make themselves look good, or to be more specific for schmucks like MaKK, to make themselves look BETTER.

Also to make themselves look better. Either better than they look already, or at least better than the person they are running/debating/defending against.

Now you're just fucking around. Social acceptance? Isn't social acceptance looking better to the majority of people? To the 'POPULACE'? Which, by the way, is not a term specific to anything. Here's the definition, since you're so fucking dense:

pop·u·lace (ppy-ls)\Pop"u*lace\
n.
The general public; the masses.
A population.

His logic is simple because even a simpleton couldn't misconstrue what boorite said, but you obviously belong in a tier below even that.

If that was the most you could pull from boorite's argument to dispute, you need to go back to the drawing board.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

What about people who lie for attention? Or for political gain? Or social acceptance?

I agree his logic is "simple" because it exclude sitautions where his reasoning is wrong.

So you're saying Kerry went before Congress and on national television and falsely claimed he had participated in war crimes... for attention? Or for political gain? Or for social accecptance? Yes, I suppose those are alternative hypotheses, but they seem weak to me. What kind of attention or political gain or social acceptance do you get from making up a story about how you committed atrocities? It would seem an odd thing to lay false claim to, just on the face of it.

You're right that people often lie for various gains, but you sort of skip over the point that they seldom lie to make themselves look bad. The idea of lying is to make yourself look good. You don't generally get there by saying you killed women and children and burned villages.

And of course I don't exclude "exclude sitautions where my reasoning is wrong." I (unlike you) entertain the possibility that my first suspicion is wrong. That's why I (unlike you) check it against the record, which you (like this O'Neill) decline to comment on. Your argument about a decade of suffering we inflicted on Southeast Asia boils down to "Kerry is bad." Well, maybe he is.

Now, about that war. Our conduct in it was atrocious. That's a matter of record. And if Kerry says he saw it there, I find nothing startling or incredible about it, except the fact that he came out and said it. I'm indeed stunned by that, as (from what I understand) it is a totally unacceptable view of the Vietnam war in American public life. I would expect a Presidential candidate to avoid strident condemnations of US war policy.

Well, guess what Kerry did on "Meet the Press" last Sunday? Tim Russert confronted Kerry with 1971 footage of himself, using words like "atrocity" to describe his and our conduct in Vietnam. And so Kerry cracked jokes about his hair, and then said "atrocity" was a bad and inappropriate word. He scurried like a crab.

Nothing remarkable about that. I don't think you get elected President by making America uncomfortable about itself, no matter how deserved the discomfort may be. But it sure is odd, how the confrontation is posed. There is no talk about the substance of what he said. The big embarrassment is supposed to be that he said it. It's like, "Are you SURE you want to say THIS?" Nothing about whether it's true or not-- just a veiled implication that certain things are not to be said in public.

That's how it works.

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What others say about boorite!

Kerry has done pretty much nothing BUT avoid actually answering questions when confronted with hot-button topics.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

So you're saying I'm right.

Also to make themselves look better. Either better than they look already, or at least better than the person they are running/debating/defending against.

But boorite's argument was that surely you wouldn't make your associates seem bad in the process, which I completely dispute. Just turn on CSPAN for a few days if you don't believe me.

Also I really doubt you'd call everyone Kerry served with his friends. Did he name names? "So and so committed atrocities, and should be brought to justice?"

quote:

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quote:

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Or social acceptance?

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Now you're just fucking around. Social acceptance? Isn't social acceptance looking better to the majority of people?

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Saying "atrocity is a bad word, an inappropriate word" may not be an outright lie, but it's certainly cowardice. Kerry is recanting. If he weren't the type to chicken out like that, to generally compromise himself morally, I doubt he'd be in this race.

And if I vote for Kerry in spite of his faults, it's because I think Bush is worse. Certainly even you realize that if you're faced with a choice between two evils, the rational thing is to select the lesser of them. You seem to be assuming that Bush is good.

Now: You still don't seem to get that Kerry's account of Vietnam fits quite well with everything else we know about our conduct in that war. That's OK. I think most people can understand this point.

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What others say about boorite!

Oh, I wouldn't make assumptions about people understanding easy points, boorite. MaKK still manages to skew things. Just look at his rebuttal to my part of the argument. Instead of answering, he just took shots at me because he's got nothing rational or valid to say.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

I'm still waiting for a [u]legitimate[/u] answer from Makk to my question on page 79 about the "Get A Life, Morans" picture.

Good thing I didn't hold my breath.

And yes Makk, you turd-burgler...I looked back at pages 36 and 37, where you claimed the picture was photoshopped, yet offered ZERO PROOF.

quote:

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Originally posted by Makk on page 37
I don't know how you can wax philisophical and conclude an argument based on a photoshopped picture of a redneck, and then call me a troll.

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We're all still waiting for a legitimate answer to just about anything from mAAk.

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What others say about boorite!

Right on, Boorite.

I don't mean to discount everyone else's posts here, but looking back at the older ones, I really miss Bunner's. They made a lot of sense. Plus they seemed to get Makk riled up...which is always nice to see.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

Bunner left because i riled him up. He probably almost choked to death on a hot dog while reading one of my posts and screaming at the computer screen and decided to leave.

What exactly is your argument if that picture is real? That all people who support the military action are stupid? Because you place people in your own party on that side also.

I'm sorry you are not familiar with the concept of a political "plant". I'm sure those people in liberal rallies walking around with sign that said they are glad the World Trade Center is gone were totally and 100% not trying to sabotage those rallies also.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

I thought I gave a detailed response to pretty much every you've said, MikeyG. If you want to bring up a specific point to which I did not respond, bring it up in your post. Otherwise you're just making a typcial boorite "You're wrong because you're wrong" post.

I thought I gave a detailed response to pretty much every you've said, boorite. If you want to bring up a specific point to which I did not respond, bring it up in your post. Otherwise you're just making a typcial boorite "You're wrong because you're wrong" post.

Your "logic" was all over the place, and as best as I can understand, your argument boils down to "War crimes were committed in Vietnam, so if Kerry says he saw war crimes (even if he later denies it and is later challanged by someone) he did in fact see them".

I don't really care about arguing with that. I do care about pointing out that you constantly need to obscure ever single argument on here with paragraph after paragraph of flawed logic and assumptions you could drive a tank through.

"We must assume one would not lie if that lie hurt people the person making the statement once knew"

Yes boorite, I'm going to argue with that.

"We must assume that if you want to impress people socially that that group of people is the entire population of a region"

Yes MikeyG, I'm going to argue with that.

"Someone has a picture that says 'Morans' on it, therefore the war is not justified"

Do I even NEED to argue against that?

I notice you don't approach any of my points (which you say are not legitimate). Are you saying there was NO gain to attaching oneself to a political movement against the Vietnam War? Or that such a movement wouldn't hurt the sitting popular Republican president Nixon? Or that people didn't join in on anti-war rantings because it made them more friends than enemies? All those points are not legitimate? I can't believe you think that.

I'm not even arguing against what Kerry said, I'm arguing against your attitude that what he says is 100% infallible because of all the false assumptions you throw out. All you had to say boorite was "such and such constituted a war crime and was documented as occuring". Fattening it up with faux-logical-theoretical vomit just makes you look like an idiot.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Choking to death on a hot dog would probably [u]prevent[/u] someone from screaming.

To be blunt, that there are a lot of fucking "morans" who support Bush's invasion of Iraq. [/captain obvious]

Ok, now I really have an argument. You're proclaiming that the picture was the work of some dirty liberals making fun of the war supporters, right? All along you've been bashing anything posted here you consider "left-wing propaganda" Makk, but that sounds like some major right-wing propaganda to me.

Maybe you do remember seeing an article about the picture being fake Makk...well, the picture certainly didn't come from this fake pro-war rally, as there clearly is no blizzard going on.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

I wanted some answers to where that picture came from, so I did a Google search for "pro war moran" and came up with this. It's a link with the earliest date that I could find. The picture is at the very top, and here's the URL of it : http://www.stlimc.org/local/webcast/uploads/metafiles/boeing54kueuvg.jpg

I noticed the "boeing" part of the filename, so decided to do a Google search for "St. Louis Boeing protest" and I came up with this :

Boeing Protest. The pictures posted have the same feel as the "moran" pic, but I wanted to see a REAL story...

So I dug around the IMC site a little more and found the actual story... Boeing Demonstration on March 23rd, 2003, which was attended by both pro and anti-war protestors.

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Think classy, you'll be classy.

I imagine that he was screaming and pointing while stuffing his face, and when he went to scream he almost aspirated a giant chunk of hog anus. Then he realized I almost killed him and that made him more angry, and he went to make a post about how I am worthless and almost killed him, but then deleted it before posting it because he knew I'd enjoy it. And so he decided to take the secret to his grave.

I'm just guessing though. It could have easily been bologna. (I know he talked about eating bologna a lot).

The morans was directed to people not supporting the war. If you do not support the war, you = moran.

I think it is a political plant, but it is taken from the strategy right-wingers invented by planting people in rallies. Remember the people who held up a rebel flag at the Dean rally? You probably should remember it because Al Franken tackled them. They were obviously not pro-Dean, they were probably planted by a rival candidate or just plain right-wing agitators.

I think that guy was a plant, but I also said I think the atrocious posters in the real anti-war rallies are the work of plants too. I could just as easily say those are real, but the ones that make the right-wing seem bad are fake, but I'm not.

quote:

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Maybe you do remember seeing an article about the picture being fake Makk...well, the picture certainly didn't come from this fake pro-war rally, as there clearly is no blizzard going on.

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And now for the Reader's Digest Condensed Version:

George W. Bush led us into war on false pretenses. His handling of the economy, the budget, the environment, the war on terror, and international relations has been nothing short of atrocious. He is either grossly incompetent or purposely persuing an agenda without add odds with best interests of the United States for his own gain. Either way, he should be removed from office at the earliest opportunity.

Put that it in your pipe and smoke it.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

What happened to a free press? It is on the net at http://www.thememoryhole.org. Be patient as it loads. A lot of people are looking for the truth.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet