Trolling is just one tactic of the disinformationalist, which Sam most definitely is.
Posted on 05/21/2004 10:31:48 AM PDT by Mudboy Slim
I was not referring to you specifically. I was in fact pointing to my perception of mainstream liberalism. I would agree that "liberals have that impression, mainly because the Religious Right has such a strong-arm approach to American politics", because we as a society tend to judge groups based on the performance of their more radical members. It works both ways, no matter which side of the fence you are on. You and I agree on that.
I would also agree that there are social taboos in Christianity, but they are based less on scripture than on tradition and personal prejudices. My church is similar to yours, but we have a defacto "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Sexual orientation would not be the among the first things discussed with someone visiting the church. If someone came in flaunting it, it would be perceived as being an attempt at activism, or "shock and awe" to use recent terminology. What happens in the privacy of our bedrooms is between us and God, not something that needs to be put on public display.
The tendency to categorize people based on their sexual orientation undermines the equity with which we all want to be treated. The same holds true for biases based on color or nationality.
How so, 'Dru?! I don't think JimRob or FR.com should be so dismissive of rational debate that we should ZOT posters who argue fer different things than what we propose. Sam's not a "troll" as he is openly admitting to his love of Socialism and Big Guv'ment Lib'ralism and ne'er-do-well DemonRAT politicians (not unlike liberallarry and MurryMom). And as fer Sam not being the least bit interested in finding out "The Truth," you could be 100% correct in yer assessment. However, despite his protestations to the contrary, I don't think Sam can help but to begin to recognize the faultlines in his political ideology. Not that Sam will ever admit it publicly, but I gotta think some of "The Truth" has gotta seep into his consciousness at some point.
FReegards...MUD
ROFLMAO...great picture of a Lefty!! Sam is an unrepentant Lib'ral and Socialist, but aren't "trolls" folks who pretend to be something they're not? Sorta like the folks who claim to be something they are not, like saying "I'm a life-long Republican who simply cannot abide by Bush's Illegal War and will be voting fer Kerry!!" That's a TROLL, 'cuz I don't know of any "life-long GOPers" who would vote fer a Socialist like Kerry!!
Thanks fer setting him straight, though...those of us who read both sides of the discussion can decipher the Truth from the Spin.
FReegards...MUD
"Yo Mud, do I assume this line was for my benefit, or both of ours?"
LOL...my FRiend, I can assure you that THAT karate kick to the gut was aimed directly fer me...MUD
No, that distinction belongs to the Clinton administration. In fact, the Reagan tax cuts were a huge disaster. I'll quote at length from Robert Freeman's article on the subject, who put it much better than I could:
In the early 1980s, Reagan promised the nation that if we lowered tax rates on the wealthy, the economy would grow so much the federal budget would be balanced "within three years, maybe even two."
Sober people were skeptical-and rightly so. Reagan's Republican opponent for the 1980 presidential election, George H.W. Bush called it "voodoo economics." His own Budget Director, David Stockman, called it a "Trojan horse," a scam intended really to funnel more money to the already rich. Stockman was quickly dismissed.
The results, we now know, were a disaster. In 1982, the first full year after the tax cuts were enacted, the economy actually shrank 2.2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression. And the effect on the federal budget was catastrophic.
Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $77 billion. Reagan's first deficit was $128 billion. His second deficit exploded to $208 billion. By the time the "Reagan Revolution" was over, George H.W. Bush was running an annual deficit of $290 billion per year.
Yearly deficits, of course, add up to national debt. When Reagan took office, the national debt stood at $994 billion. When Bush left office, it had reached $4.3 trillion. In other words, the national debt had taken 200 years to reach $1 trillion. Reagan's Supply Side experiment quadrupled it in the next 12 years.
Is there anything to compare this to? When Bill Clinton took office he intentionally reversed the Supply Side formula, raising taxes on the wealthy and reducing them on the lowest wage earners. Supply Side true believers predicted the arrival of the Apocalypse. Bob Dole said the stock market would collapse. Newt Gingrich said the world would fall into another Great Depression.
What actually happened?
Between 1992 and 2000, the U.S. economy produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. history. It created more than 18 million new jobs, the highest level of job creation ever recorded. Inflation fell to 2.5% per year compared to the 4.7% average over the prior 12 years.
Real interest rates fell by over 40% producing the greatest housing boom ever. Overall economic growth averaged 4.0% per year compared to 2.8% average growth over the 12 years of the Reagan/Bush administrations. Most impressively, Clinton reversed the mammoth deficits of the Supply Side years, turning them into surpluses. He used these surpluses to begin paying down the national debt.
By virtually every meaningful measure-employment, growth, inflation, interest rates, investment, deficits and debt-the economy performed better once the Supply Side experiment was terminated and replaced with a more honest economic policy where we actually pay our bills as we go.
Trolling is just one tactic of the disinformationalist, which Sam most definitely is.
While I agree that Sam spews disinformation by the bucketload, I think he actually believes it. Fer instance, in his post above, he links to this Freeman character, who actually argues against many years of evidence to the contrary. You and I recognize it to be nonsensical blather, but it's manna from heaven fer a Big' Guv'ment Socialist like Sam.
FReegards...MUD
Deficits are good. In theory they should reign in spending. The perception that we had a surplus a few years ago resulted in spending away that phantom. When politicians perceive they have extra money, they do what any irresponsible person does, they spend it. This is true on both sides of the aisle.
Silly boy, silly question.
"I don't think(1) JimRob or FR.com should be so dismissive of rational debate that we should ZOT posters who argue fer different things than what we propose."
Is that so?
Well you're asking the wrong person about that, pal.
And since you're under some kind of illusion, lemme tell you right here & now your opin doesn't count.
The clown's here to disrupt -- albeit nicely -- but disrupt, nonetheless.
Be that as it may, let's ask the Old Man himself what he thinks about fecal matter such as your buddy *Sammy* & what he's said so far on this site, shall we? :o)
Jim?
"Sam's not a "troll" as he is openly admitting to his love of Socialism and Big Guv'ment Lib'ralism and ne'er-do-well DemonRAT politicians (not unlike liberallarry and MurryMom)."
You're right.
The idiot's not a troll, he's worse.
That assumes it's a "He" now, doesn't it?
Because after all we *are* talking about an avowed Liberal-Socialist, eh. :o)
"And as fer Sam not being the least bit interested in finding out "The Truth," you could be 100% correct in yer assessment."
Could be!?!
HA!!
>thick<
"However, despite his protestations to the contrary, I don't think(2) Sam can help but to begin to recognize the faultlines in his political ideology."
Look sonny you're no Dr. Phil, y'hear.
So knock off the psuedopsychoanalysis, for chrissakes.
It's -- well -- beyond laughable.
This youngster, *Sammy* boy, minimally needs a platoon of Dr.Phils, a partial labotomy and one (& probably) more swift kicks in the ass.
Even after all that I'd bet'chu It'd STILL be spouting Its leftist shtick.
~& you'd be right there, indulging it too.
"Not that Sam will ever admit it publicly..."
Geee, y'think?
"...but I gotta think(3) some of "The Truth" has gotta seep into his consciousness at some point."
You do, huh.
I don't.
I can't help noticing you think a lot, have a tremendous confidence in what it is you think, too.
Said it three (3) times, so far.
Well I don't have your confidence, either.
So now what, bucko.
Gonna continue to -- royally -- piss me off by pinging me to your senseless, useless moronic *dialog* with the asshole, just so I can waste my time as you've -- apparently -- decided you're going to waste yours?
You got some chutzpah, pal.
...keep it up.
The economy grew so rapidly in the years following Reagan's tax cuts that balancing the budget would have been no problem whatsoever, except fer the outta-control growth in spending. Sure, we had to win the Cold War and we did it by outspending the Soviets on defense spending, but the DemonRATS who controlled Congress insisted on lavishing money on wasteful social spending in record amounts. If I was Reagan, I wouldda demanded that Social Spending be brought under control, but the Gipper obviously made a Faustian bargain in order to get the necessary military spending. However, make no mistake, SupplySide economics worked like a charm in enlivening the economy, and I'm 100% in support of Tom Delay's promise to cut taxes on Americans in every year of Bush's second term!!
FReegards...MUD
The "no incentive to work" argument is the oldest one in the book against socialism, and is based on the assumption that people are, by nature, selfish. However, this behavior is mainly driven by conditions that are temporary and would be eliminated under socialism. Capitalism generates "dog-eat-dog" behavior: your interests are set unnecessarily at odds with others. You have to be a bastard to get ahead in your career or business. Your success is someone else's failure. Because socialism is based on cooperation rather than competition, it removes much of the conflict between our needs and those of others. Socialism not only removes the incentives to act against the common good, it generates the motivation to actively serve it. Work is transformed into a desirable activity performed for its own sake and people feel part of society rather than alienated from it.
The Soviet Union failed despite plentiful natural resources and a once-energetic and once-resourceful labor pool, simply because it was based on Socialism, a form of resource allocation that has failed miserably each and every time it has been tried.
The socialism that failed (or, to put it more accurately, "defeated") in the Soviet Union was not very developed. In fact what was defeated was scarcely socialism at all, but something far more embryonic. The conditions were so unfavorable that virtually none of the collective and individual aspects of ownership were achieved. What was achieved can be described as prerequisites for socialism, or a few steps in the general direction. These measures included expropriating the old capitalists, the collectivisation of agriculture and some degree of unified control of the economy.
In fact, the "socialism" that was defeated in 1989 had stopped being socialist long before, but was closer to being state capitalist. As I said earlier in the thread, we are very, very far away from being able to embrace a world socialism. The transition from feudalism to capitalism took about 500 years, and is still not complete in the Third World. There's no reason to expect a transition to socialism to take any less time.
FReeMarketCapitalism, OTOH, works whenever it is free from corruption and monopolistic manipulation (aka fascism)!! I'm surprised that someone as articulate as you hasn't come to understand this undeniable fact of life yet.
Actually, I believe that socialism will replace the "invisible hand" of the capitalist market with the "visible hand" of cooperative production. And this will mean a far more efficient use of resources. But frankly, it's hard to prove me wrong when we haven't seen it tried yet.
We've gotten pretty far off-topic from defending Kerry, haven't we? =)
Maybe. Or maybe he thinks that somehow he will receive some sort of reward for his work in promoting Marxism in America. Of course, we know full well that his reward will be at the end of a rope, with the other end held by the very tyrants he supported. People like Sam aren't called "useful idiots" for nothing.
Whatever the reason, I'm not expending any more time on him.
Back to work,
Heh heh heh...if I've told ya once, I've told you a dozen times, "If you wanna save souls, you gotta go where the sinners are!!" And while I really don't have any misconceptions about changing this particular Socialists viewpoints, it will help lurkers on Black to see his Lib'ral ideology debunked by the wise RightWingers who deem arguing with Sam to be worth their time and effort.
"More importantly, does The Old Man know you're entertaining the asshole in question on his website? Yeaaa..."
Say what you will about his confused view of the political world, Sam's never really been an "asshole."
"Sometimes I think you're pulling a fast one, given the curious coincidence of these kinds of shameless, imbecilic, brainless dirtballs showing up & always seeming find their way to you & Black, y'know? My nose. It's twitchin', sonny."
Rest assured I have some things up my sleeve, but I'm not "pulling a fast one" if you are implying that I am doing anything other than move the ball a little further starboard.
"Be that as it may, just wanted to let you know today I recieved two CDs via UPS, both from Ice Age."
Can't wait to hear yer review of this Band...I like their politics, I like their willingness to rumble, and I look forward to seeing if I like their music.
"A "Must See" (at Amazon?) Mud, trust me."
I'll check it out...thanks.
FReegards...MUD
Gee, where have I heard that before.
Look, if it really bothers you that much that someone who has a viewpoint other than your own is here, then stop wasting your time thinking and talking about it, whether or not you talk to me or to someone else about me. Or engage me and answer the call for evidence I gave you a long time before. (You do have evidence for your beliefs, right?)
But whatever you do, spare me the quasi-threats and childish insults. When I talk to you, I put my preconceptions about you at the door. Maybe you could extend me the same courtesy.
Ah, spoken like a true neo-con. =)
It doesn't appear our current deficit is reigning in spending now, does it? And that's even when Bush leaves the war in Iraq out of the budget. The best practice is to do the same thing my family does: pay the bills as you go, and spend only the money you have. It worked in the '90's, and it would work now.
So what makes you think the surplus of a few years ago was a phantom, anyway?
You're right, It's not a asshole.
You are.
I've seen the light.
Now remove my name from your ping list boy, 'cuz I'm not gonna play games with your sorry ass anymore.
...now git.
>"...One of the things that struck me is that the Islamic faith reveres Jesus Christ as a gifted prophet (while rejecting his claim that he is the son of God). Therefore, it would seem that strict adherence to Islamic faith would preclude ..."<
- Muhammed started out using Christianity, but it was rejected by the Arabs. He then basterdized it to write his Qu'ran, in an effort to appeal to the barbaric tribalism of 7th century Arabia.
He used passages from the Old Testament to write his little book of lies.
Let me rephrase it.
Deficits should serve as an indicator that we are spending too much, not that we are not collecting enough taxes, and if taken to a reasonable conclusion should lead to reigning in spending. In that aspect they are good, but I am not for a state of perpetual deficit, that is stupid.
On the other side of the coin, a surplus should not serve as a blank check to go ahead and spend. It should be an indicator that too much revenue had been received (i.e. overtaxing) This is one of the areas where George Bush pisses me off. He appears to be just another spending monkey. Another is the lip service he gives to the 2nd ammendment (but I won't go there now).
I consider the "Clinton surplus" as being a phantom because it seemed to happen overnight, just like magic, and was comprised of "moving" money from the "so called" Social Security Trust Fund to the General Fund. There is no way that you could go from deficit to surplus in the time that it allegedly happened on Clinton's watch. Our government is just not that efficient. What they are really good at is tweaking the books.
My pleasure, Mud. Glad you liked it!!
Heh heh heh...you ain't on any of my pinglists, Ol' Man...MUD
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