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...or he could just to Obama's thing and vote "Present".
Not exactly.
You seem to think that charity will solve all the problems unaided if government went away, and I do not. Some problems require government solutions, and some require private solutions.
Government or charity is simply a means to an end.
I view government as simply a way to pool collective resources on a national level.
When one sees charities, and the amount that some of them spend on fundraising and administrative overhead, I honestly can't tell the difference between that kind of inefficiency and governmental inefficiency.
...or he could just to Obama's thing and vote "Present".
Oh yes, let's.
In arguing with the bat insane 9-11 truthers, I came across a great resource on propaganda.Kurtz misrepresented Obama's 2004 remark on Iraq war stance
Summary: On Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz claimed that in a 2004 Chicago Tribune article, Sen. Barack Obama "said there wasn't much difference between his position and George Bush's position on the [Iraq] war."
But Kurtz left out three key words from Obama's quote in the Tribune -- "at this stage" -- as well as the context of the remarks, both of which indicate that Obama was discussing how best to stabilize Iraq from mid-2004 onward, not claiming agreement with Bush on the war itself.
One of the methods of propaganda is the "Lie By Omission and Half-Truths"
This one is more subtle. It has the advantage that you can't get caught in a lie, because everything that you say is true. You just happily fail to mention all of those bothersome little facts that do not support your point of view. Should a critic point out one of those annoying undesired facts, you can at least feign innocent ignorance, or claim that the fact is really just an unimportant, trivial detail, not worth mentioning.
For example: In 1908, the Lutheran minister Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman got into a squabble over money with the trustee committee of their ho e for young men in Philadelphia, and in an angry huff, Buchman resigned and got on a boat for Europe. He ended up at a large religious convention in Keswick, England, where he felt that he had a spiritual transformation. He felt moved to write letters of apology to all six of the trustees with whom he had squabbled, humbly asking their forgiveness. Buchman said that none of them even bothered to answer his letters.
That was rather unkind of them, wasn't it? No wonder Buchman had a disagreement with them, if they were really so haughty and so inconsiderate that they would not even acknowledge a man's humble apology and request for forgiveness...
There is just one small detail that Frank Buchman left out in his telling of that story: Buchman didn't put any return address on the envelopes that he mailed back to Philadelphia.
The lie here is a subtle one.
All one has to do is leave out "at this stage" and it becomes something else entirely.
If you have to lie about someone to make the case why I shouldn't vote for them, please don't do so to my face, it just pisses me off.
If you honestly didn't know the rest of the quote, I would then ask "why didn't you find the context of the remark?"
You got it wrong. Either you didn't bother to do any critical thinking about something you read, or you are purposefully lying.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 04-15-2008 at 02:17 PM. Reason: formatting for ease of reading.
How about because we've got a back and forth in a political blog on a basketball website, and I heard what I heard, and wrote about it?
I ain't gonna put enough time, effort or thought into this to begin parsing words. I dont' make apologies, or hide my true feelings/beliefs. Easy, RG.
You mean to say you aren't going to put enough time or effort into being truthful? It seems like you've spent plenty of time and effort doing otherwise.
Ok, fair enough. (deep breath)
I think we might have come out of this with some modi of respect for each other, if not total agreement.
Sorry if I was a bit harsh.
There is just so much out there that is just one side's or another's attempt at spin, it is frustrating to see it out there and know better.
One more thing about Obama's quote during the convention, however. Don't have time to see where I saw it, but I saw HIM questioned on it; and he said, basically, that he had to support the war because "his" nominee was. He didn't use the argument that his support at that time was temporal, or based on current cir stances. Again, don't know the details, but it was Obama's response to the original question that drew my attention the first time.
Hawk fan: stfu.
I looked it up; Obama has, in fact, not shown inconsistency on Iraq beyond the point that he did not want to pull out in '04, but does now (but that is certainly a defensible position).
That said, I searched, "Obama Flip Flop" and got a litany of hits on a variety of subjects. No doubt at least a couple of them would hold some merit. Point being, your point in not being able to support McCain because of an apparent flip-flop is honorable, but ultimately, could leave you with no POLITICIAN to support; unfortunately, they all do it.
(although I still hold out that McCain could still be consistent based on nuances in the two bills).
The politician who has changed his stances the LEAST as of late?
Bush - he doesn't change; political expedience and public opinion be damned; I thought that was a trait we WANTED in a president?
Didn't he tell us in '04 when we REELECTED him that he was going to stay in Iraq till the job was done? Didn't we ALREADY know there weren't any WMD's? Didn't he say it could take a long time?
Didn't he SAY he was going to cut taxes, and didn't he publish those tax cuts?
What EXACTLY has he done that he didn't say he was going to do? Where has Bush flip-flopped?
How has that stubborn refusal to stick to his promises and principals worked out for him?
Maybe THAT'S why they do it?
Wow... interesting wet dream you have. Sorry, I'm not participating in your fantasy. I'm strait.
Yes, I support the war. Over-runs have not been $3T. We don't know if it will exceed $3T, but I kind of doubt it. There is a cost to peacetime military operations already. Iraq is not the only place we are providing forces and support for "The War on Terror." We still might get payment back when Iraq starts making extra money on the oil. Hard to say though. With the leftist sissy talk of "going in for oil" any repayment we take from oil will be fuel for that propaganda.
I really wish people knew what facts were.
Sissies like you can just go to . If real men and women didn't put their lives on the line, where would sissies like you exist?
To answer the OP, I would buy a self-sustaining colony on Mars.
Estimated cost:
$100,000,000,000
Followed by a heavy investment in orbital infrastructure and bootstrapping orbital industrial capacity.
Estimated cost:
$150,000,000,000
Add a cool trillion for solar and wind generation, and you could almost completely relace coal as a source of electricity for the US.
Another trillion or so on energy efficiency programs and recycling.
, I would still have cash left over to say rebuild a few bridges, provide massively for education grants, and subsidize health insurance.
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