Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder >>Can the people not govern themselves?<< Currently, no. Hence my paralysis answer.
Originally Posted By dshyates Donny, I was going to respond, but your last post was such a mixed bag of rhetoric, that it's not worth trying to explain where you are wrong. You really have eaten up the talking points. I'll just leave it with saying just about everything you said is factually incorrect. You really are an emotionally driven ideolog with little grasp on reality. Your post is a perfect display of why we should be very afraid of the tea party.
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 "It seems stupid to blame the people who warned you that the U.S. was headed for trouble waters a few years ago.I guess you would rather call us racists and traitors but really as a Tea Party person myself I find it sad that you all would rather just keep spending our way out of this problem or even worse you think that taxpayers should be burdened with more taxes." The Tea Partiers weren't warning anyone about anything until Obama got elected...that is when they suddenly had issues with massive spending. While Bush was in office, and the damage to the economy was being done, you were absolutely silent. So don't blabber on about how you warned us all. Really. As for spending cuts and tax breaks...I am all for them when we can afford them. But with every economist says that spending cuts and tax cuts will make the economy worse, I am going to say that we probably should't go there. Unlike the Tea Partiers, I am not okay with destroying the world economy for ideological purposes. You guys don't like to listen to the people who actually are experts in their fields...you think you know more than the economists do. Guess what? YOU DON'T! When they say "not raising the debt ceiling will be detrimental to our economy" or "Short term deficits are stimulative, and further stimulus is needed" and "further spending cuts will hurt the economy" and "Spending cuts alone will not do anything to the deficit, you also need revenue increases" you guys need to listen...these are the people that went to school for a very long time to become experts in economics, and you Tea Party jokes think that you know better? Take a look at the stock market numbers for the past week and the credit rating downgrade...how's your plan working out?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 >>It can also calcify positions and cause people to stop listening. << <Already happened. Which is my point. You're all closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.> Not everyone has calcified their position. Most Tea Partiers? Sure. But the vast American middle? Not at all. Many are being seduced by the dark side, and we can't just be bombthrowers or Ann Coulters of the left if we want to get through to them. Reason really does work with a lot of people. >>Because post 20 MIGHT, just might, get Donny to look back at his original link<< <Horse pucky.> I refuse to believe that nearly anyone is unreachable. Although after reading post 38, Donny has clearly drunk a few vats of koolaid without ever stopping to ask what the ingredients are. >>I'm old enough to remember the Civil Rights Movement ... and MLK saying that white people were win-over-able and potential allies.<< <civil rights =/= economic policy the white south =/= corporate America the WCC =/= the right-wing noise machine> No, but the principle remains. And MLK didn't have to win over the WCC types themselves; he had to win over those who didn't think much about it or who didn't question the assumptions of the WCC's - by reasoning with them and forcing them to question the assumptions. We don't have to win over Roger Ailes. We have to win over people who are infected with the assumptions he throws out there (whether they watch Fox or not), and we have to do it with facts and a better argument. Calling people idiots isn't going to do it.
Originally Posted By hopemax I think we need a mixture of both. We need to isolate when people believe something because they just haven't bothered to think things through. And when people are being pig-headed. I think it's fair to sometimes call out the stupidity for what it is. One big problem, is I think that conservatives have been really successful in creating an environment where they don't have to prove anything. It's always turned so the basis of proof falls on the liberal argument. We need to do more of turning it back on them. Force them to really think about what they are really asking for. But I don't believe that most tea party supporters really want what is the logical conclusion of the things they want. And given enough evidence, they will end up thinking, "but that's not what I want." For example: Tea partiers want the elimination of SS, Medicare and all the social programs. But I don't believe they want what would be the result of the elimination of those. Or like I mentioned in the other thread. I don't think the debt reducers actually want to live in a world where debt is reducing. There will be too many people, and too few jobs once you remove goods and services financed by "debt dollars." They really don't want us to go back to what we had for all of human existence except the past 60 years: people working until death, or older people living with their children. They don't want to only own 2 pairs of shoes, a week's worth of normal clothes, and one set of "Sunday clothes." They don't want to go back to every meal being eaten at home, except maybe an occasional lunch out on Sundays or celebrations. They don't want to go back to the time of life where people took, if they were lucky, one vacation in their whole life. They don't want their loved ones to die or become incapacitated by something that is treatable. Perhaps, they don't believe that anything like that could happen. Especially, considering how good we have it. But if a good chunk of our economy has been built on X number or years of "wasteful spending" (whatever definition someone wants to apply), eliminating "wasteful spending" is most certainly going to have an effect on jobs, wages, standard of living and quality of life. And they need to know what kind of effects those will be.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <I think we need a mixture of both. > So do I. I think the forum in question matters greatly. <I think it's fair to sometimes call out the stupidity for what it is.> I agree. But even there, there's a difference between "that argument makes no sense and here's why," and "you're stupid!" With most people, the latter just closes their mind even tighter. <One big problem, is I think that conservatives have been really successful in creating an environment where they don't have to prove anything. It's always turned so the basis of proof falls on the liberal argument. We need to do more of turning it back on them. Force them to really think about what they are really asking for.> Abso-freaking-lutely. <Tea partiers want the elimination of SS, Medicare and all the social programs. > Some of the leaders and manipulators do. A great many of the people holding the signs most assuredly do NOT (remember the "Government hands off my Medicare!" signs?) but - as you say - do not think things through. They don't realize that they're supporting policies, and people, who would bring about the end of Medicare, for instance, or turn it into a wholly inadequate coupon in which seniors are turned over to the "tender mercies" of private insurance. And they damn sure haven't thought through what that would mean.
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 "<Tea partiers want the elimination of SS, Medicare and all the social programs. > Some of the leaders and manipulators do. A great many of the people holding the signs most assuredly do NOT (remember the "Government hands off my Medicare!" signs?) but - as you say - do not think things through. They don't realize that they're supporting policies, and people, who would bring about the end of Medicare, for instance, or turn it into a wholly inadequate coupon in which seniors are turned over to the "tender mercies" of private insurance. And they damn sure haven't thought through what that would mean." I think the problem there is that we have two groups of Tea Partiers. We have the politician/Koch bro. financed/ Fox News commentator Tea Partiers who are the ones doing the actual damage, They are the ones that are behind all of the legislative stuff that is ruining the country. Then there are the people at the rallies in the silly hats who are actually buying what the people in the first group are selling. They hear the talking points, which sound good to a lot of people, but don't actually do the research to find out what it would mean if those talking points turn into something more tangible. Drastically decreasing spending, slashing taxes to create jobs, etc, all sound really great as soundbites, but in reality are not good policies at all. It that reality the people in the silly hats have a hard time grasping.
Originally Posted By dshyates Why after hundreds of pages of trying to explain to Donny that Prop 8 was a bigoted initiative are we surprised that we are once again beating our heads against a brick wall trying to explain how the tea party is wrong?
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 In fairness to Donny I never really saw him have a take on that particular issue.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 In regards to Senator/Candidate Obama's comments on the war as opposed to President Obama, the fomer was armchair quarterbacking, the latter was actually receiving the playbook. So it's not a surprise that he's changed his tune about things.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 It's simpler than that, DD. One set of comments was on Iraq, the other on Afghanistan.
Originally Posted By dshyates Oh, I am sorry Donny. I got you confused with UtahJosh. My bad. Please ignore my previous comment.
