posted
Well Jeff just remember two things first Presidents don't affact the economny a ton. A little bit but not a ton ask anyone in economics. Second this downturn did start during Clinton and is now getting turned around now I am not going to blame the downturn entirly on Clinton because it started under him or give Bush's tax credits all the credit for bring it back. But if you want to blame the president for losing or getting a job than i don't know what to say.
So Bush removing an evil force from the world is a good thing or a bad thing. You have to choose you can't say Bush was so evil for taking out Saddam but I am glad he is gone. Sheesh if you didn't like Saddam you have to give him come credit for taking out an evil power.
I see you are pretty good at another O'reily tatic name calling to try and make a point.
Posts: 134 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Jeff, Bush has been a political disaster, but like all Presidents has little to do with the economy. Don't take this the wrong way, but the absolutes in your post make me wonder how old you are.
It's very well documented that the most recent downswing began in Q2 or Q3/99, and what few second-order effects Bush might have had reflected positive Keynesian expansion. Building up the military-industrial complex is foolish socially and far from the best long-term investment macroeconomically, but it does give a small boost -- ask all the laid-off IT workers which market segment is hiring.
Back to safety: a lot of key points have been hit. Even more significant in the long term, in my opinion, has been the insane way Bush destroyed the largest share of international political capital afforded to any U.S. President in recent memory. A colleague recently put it better than I:
quote:There was an unprecedented window of opportunity there for a while, but unsurprisingly the admin chose to target the one sure way to waste it all; a certain aching foot in some contexts known as Iraq. Maybe it's admirable that an administration is enough unto itself, but it's rarely a winning formula in the long term. Politics, and certainly the international version of it, doesn't work like that.
And here we are. An opportunity to reshape the confusing, ambiguous, still-not-quite-determined post-Cold War global system, scattered for the winds, and all for the privilege of occupying a sandbox and having sons and daughters die in places that even the talking heads can't pronounce right. Yeah yeah, world's smallest violin, and all that.
Some counterpoints, since I can't believe they haven't been hit yet:
quote:1) Saddam Hussein has been shown as evidenced by mass graves to have killed in the hundreds of thousands.
Anti war Answer: We could have contained him and not cost a single life!
Rebutt: No? Apparently Iraqi's don't count as human lives
I want a link on the 100K+ number. All the evidence I've seen points to 4-figures of Kurds in the late 80's. Regardless, though, the argument that the U.S. has formed its recent brand of interventionism based on a concern for human rights is pretty laughable. Direct political support of the most oppressive Muslim nation in the world (Saudi Arabia). Mass starvation in North Korea. Nearly a million Rwandans with nary a tear. Political aid to the military coup in Pakistan. Cluster bombing in Afghanistan. Direct funding of an Israeli military that's violated 10x more UN rulings than Iraq could hope to. Muslim genocide in Gujarat. 2 million civilian casualties in the Sudan civil wars. Mounting evidence that the majority of IRA terrorist funding originates in the U.S. The list goes on, and I've only scratched the surface of this decade.
quote:2) Saddam if left alone and the sanctions possibly lifted could rebuild his army and continue his WMD research without supervision.
Rebuild his army, doubtful as they are quite hard to hide. WMD, possible, but they're much better in the hands of a self-interested secular moron than in those of whichever crazy people he was able to sell them to at the last minute as he fled the country. (If they existed, that is, which most now doubt).
quote:3) He would have used said army to attack someone he had done it at least twice in the past and no reason to believe he would not in the future. (Many more if you count the bloody civil wars he fought to take over Iraq)
Not our problem, meaning "America and the nations it can finagle into granting token support." The oil-for-food program + weapons inspections + no-fly zone was the most ambitious and most successful operation the UN ever conducted. While that's not saying a lot, it did stop his pattern of random aggression for better than a decade, with his armies certainly in no condition to resume (not just because our tech was better this time) at their conclusion.
quote:4) We cleaned up a mess we should have finished off over a decade ago when Bush Sr. got weak kneed and thought the Iraqi's would topple Saddam by themselves. Sadly this miscalculation taken to reduce our role in overthrowing them cost many lives. Which is the price of imperfect peace. Peace at any cost is not a bright idea because at least in this case it cost thousands of lives. But hey they weren't American right so we could ignore them?
I like this argument, I really do. The question is this: when someone tries to overthrow a government, where do you draw the line at calling it a terrorist action? A lot of people around the world think the Republican Party is oppressive -- probably more than the number of Americans who thought Ba'ath Party was oppressive -- but we'd have slight issues with them trying to change our way of life via military means. There's a reason international sovereignty was thought up, oh, 1000 years ago. Which isn't to say rules can't be bent, but hopefully I'm starting to make the case that deciding which rules apply when shouldn't be done unilaterally, at least if you want to keep your friends.
quote:It has a positive impact on the war but that figured little in my decesions to support it.
Aha, back to the point of the thread. In theory a long dissertation about the history of Wahhabism would go here, but since I get the impression it's actually never been debated in full here for quick UBB/memory searching, I'll refer you to Google for the time being. Two quick conclusions: (1) as some Administration sources have tried to trumpet recently, Iraq and al-Qaeda did have a brief relationship; this is as you'd expect given the political presence of the latter...and the talks ended quickly since the sides had nothing in common and hated each other (2) the psychological effect random invasions (remember, only impressions matter!) into the Arab world have on the 1 billion Muslims needs no explanation, although for the extreme factions it probably still pales in comparison to the atrocities in Israel.
odouls: I haven't seen [D] spoonman post in ages; might have to escalate things to email.
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quote:Well Jeff just remember two things first Presidents don't affact the economny a ton.
Oh no? An $87 billion war relief doesn't affect the economy? A humungous tax cut for the wealthiest 1% doesn't affect the economy?
What, pray tell, would affect the economy if these things won't?
quote: So Bush removing an evil force from the world is a good thing or a bad thing. You have to choose you can't say Bush was so evil for taking out Saddam but I am glad he is gone.
I absolutely can and I do!
Your argument implies that the end justifies the means, no matter what. You should think that through very carefully.
If a reaaaaally big hornet broke into the house and started stinging (or biting: I forget which they do) people, and I grabbed your head and, using it as a hammer, smashed the bug, would that be justified? I mean, after all, the hornet's dead, right? The fact that I've injured you in the process is irrelevant, right? The ends justify the means.
quote: I see you are pretty good at another O'reily tatic name calling to try and make a point
quote: Jeff, Bush has been a political disaster, but like all Presidents has little to do with the economy. Don't take this the wrong way, but the absolutes in your post make me wonder how old you are.
Don't take that the wrong way? How should I have taken it? Because to me your statement reads, "You so clearly have no idea of how the real world works that you must be a child."
quote: It's very well documented that the most recent downswing began in Q2 or Q3/99, and what few second-order effects Bush might have had reflected positive Keynesian expansion.
Has it been well-documented? Please find me some major, reputable, and neutral (or liberal, if you prefer) source that states this clearly.
quote: Building up the military-industrial complex is foolish socially and far from the best long-term investment macroeconomically, but it does give a small boost -- ask all the laid-off IT workers which market segment is hiring.
Absolutely. There have been some local maximums resulting from Bush's actions, but that doesn't mean the overall direction is positive.
posted
I agree that Bush(43) has not caused our current economic downturn. Blaming presidents for the economy only makes sense when they have done something major enough to affect it drastically. We had a declining economy before 9/11, so your comment, Jeff, that the $87 billion for the Iraq war is responsible for you and your friends' current woes seems to lack evidence. Also, very recently the economy is on a substantial upswing, (although we are nowhere up near our late 90's numbers). The Fed has announced that the upswing will result in raising interest rates again (if you think Alan Greenspan is a moron, I would need a LOT of evidence). Has that upswing been caused by the Iraq war? Doubtful. Just as doubtful, that the Iraq war caused the major downturn.
People have been comparing the war in Kosovo with the Iraq War. There is at least one major difference. The action in Bosnia was taken with support from the United Nations, with a majority of the nations supporting us, same as in the Gulf War I back in '91. Invading a contained country without the backing of a majority of the nations of the world, or even of Europe, like we have recently done in the Iraq War is just pure arrogance. We have just shown that we have absolutely no respect for the sovereignty of nations. I'm sure that really helps our credibility when dealing with other nations.
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote: I agree that Bush(43) has not caused our current economic downturn. Blaming presidents for the economy only makes sense when they have done something major enough to affect it drastically. We had a declining economy before 9/11, so your comment, Jeff, that the $87 billion for the Iraq war is responsible for you and your friends' current woes seems to lack evidence.
Ah, but that's not what I was saying. I was saying that the President has the ability to affect the economy, and that the $87b I-get-to-spend-money-on-whatever-I-want package is an example where a president can do so.
quote: Also, very recently the economy is on a substantial upswing, (although we are nowhere up near our late 90's numbers). The Fed has announced that the upswing will result in raising interest rates again (if you think Alan Greenspan is a moron, I would need a LOT of evidence).
Greenspan raising the interest rates, after he dropped it the incredible number of times that he did, is hardly proof that we're in a boom. Like I said, we may very well be heading for a local maximum: if I counted down from 1,000 to -1,000, and then counted up from -1,000 to -500, you could correctly say that the numbers are increasing ... even though they are much lower than where I started. [quote]
The fact of the matter is that we had an enormous budget surplus before Dubya stole the presidency from Gore, and now we have a record deficit. Is this the way "President" Bush is building our economy? That's like losing your job and then going on a spending spree.
You keep mentioning how bush stole the presidency. He won through something called the electoral college, which is what the presidential elections are based on. Stop throwing that around as if it means something. If Gore had won his own damn state where the people know him best he would be sitting in Bush's shoes right now.
Now that I think about it, I guess he wouldnt really be sitting in Bush's shoes, because that'd just be strange.
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No, Bush was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court, which was in his brother's pocket. Bush would have lost the recount had it continued. Only in the most biased way possible of counting votes could the recount have possibly gone Bush's way.
By the way, remember when Fox News prematurely declared Bush the winner, prior to the completion of the counting of the votes? Guess who was in charge of the news desk when that declaration was made? Dubya's cousin.
No, the election was stolen. The scary thing is that not only is Dubya eligible for election in 2004, but he's also eligible for election in 2008! (He hasn't been elected yet, so he's still eligible for two more terms! )
posted
Yeah, because Fox news is usually the deciding factor when it comes to who takes the presidency...
Also if you remember correctly, the whole country democrats and republicans alike were pushing for a decision. There had already been many many recounts that agreed Bush won. What was the supreme court to do? Ignore what the majority of people wanted and let the count continue for months? After all this is a democracy and we cannot ignore the desires of the majority.(Please note my snide sarcastic tone)
No, Bush was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court, which was in his brother's pocket. Bush would have lost the recount had it continued. Only in the most biased way possible of counting votes could the recount have possibly gone Bush's way.
By the way, remember when Fox News prematurely declared Bush the winner, prior to the completion of the counting of the votes? Guess who was in charge of the news desk when that declaration was made? Dubya's cousin.
No, the election was stolen. The scary thing is that not only is Dubya eligible for election in 2004, but he's also eligible for election in 2008! (He hasn't been elected yet, so he's still eligible for two more terms! )
Jeff
Wow, such stunning ignorance. First, the Florida Supreme Court (majority Democrat appointees, I believe) ordered a recount. This decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court, which Jeb Bush has NOTHING to do with, ever.
Second, the subsequent recounts have found the Florida election to be either too close to call (with the margin of victory less than the statistical likelihood of error) or in favor of Bush (but only slightly).
The only recounts that had Bush winning counted “dimpled” ballots, which do not meet the standards for countability established by the election commissions before the election. Both parties participated in setting those guidelines.
56,000 ballots were discounted because the person voted for two candidates for president. These would NEVER have been allowed to go to Gore under ANY recount scenario.
Did more voters intend to vote for Gore than Bush? No one has any way of knowing. But the election apparatus put in place in the most contested districts were overseen by Democratic local governments (that’s why those districts were more heavily Bush). The rules were clear; changing them afterward is a far worse affront to democracy than anything else that happened in that election would have been.
quote: Yeah, because Fox news is usually the deciding factor when it comes to who takes the presidency...
Also if you remember correctly, the whole country democrats and republicans alike were pushing for a decision. There had already been many many recounts that agreed Bush won. What was the supreme court to do? Ignore what the majority of people wanted and let the count continue for months? After all this is a democracy and we cannot ignore the desires of the majority.(Please note my snide sarcastic tone)
I noted your snide sarcastic tone. I also noted your spelling, Promethius.
BTW, you seem to have confused a democracy with a majority. If nothing else, the electoral college proves that the two are not synonymous. There is no question whatsoever that Gore won the majority of the votes. Therefore, if you were to have your way, Gore again should have been president.
Don't be so hard on yourself, Dagonee. That's why we're all here: to educate misinformed people like yourself.
quote: First, the Florida Supreme Court (majority Democrat appointees, I believe) ordered a recount. This decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court, which Jeb Bush has NOTHING to do with, ever.
The extremely conservative US Supreme Court did indeed overturn the recount ... once it looked like Gore was going to win it.
quote: Second, the subsequent recounts have found the Florida election to be either too close to call (with the margin of victory less than the statistical likelihood of error) or in favor of Bush (but only slightly).
Again, this is a popular misunderstanding. I have to get back to you on my source (don't have it handy, alas) but yes, Bush would have won the recount ... but only if every possible judgement call were made in his favor: whether to count absentee ballots, discount dimples, etc. That is, the margin of ambiguity within the guidelines permitted a Bush victory, but you'd have to be dead set for him to win in the first place to make all those judgement calls in those ways.
Provided that you don't call me ignorant again in your next post, I'll try to follow up with sources later. However, if you insist on insulting me again, you may do your own research and I'll rest on an argumentum ad ignoratium fallacy.
quote: Jeffrey Getzin said: There is no question whatsoever that Gore won the majority of the votes. Therefore, if you were to have your way, Gore again should have been president.
Wrong again – Gore won a plurality of votes: 50,999,897 of 105,405,100 votes cast, or 48.4% of all votes cast. Bush won 50,456,002, or 47.9% of the all votes cast. Neither is a majority.
All this righteous outrage would be more effective if it were accurate.
quote: Jeffrey Getzin said: Provided that you don't call me ignorant again in your next post, I'll try to follow up with sources later. However, if you insist on insulting me again, you may do your own research and I'll rest on an argumentum ad ignoratium fallacy.
When you say something so inaccurate as “No, Bush was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court, which was in his brother's pocket,” I can assume either you don’t know the facts (i.e., are ignorant on the subject) or are deliberately lying. I picked what I considered the more charitable of the two.
You’re statement was explicitly wrong in that the Florida Supreme Court ruled for Gore on the recount issue, not Bush, and in its statement that Jeb Bush had the court in his pocket, since 6 of the 7 were appointed by Democratic governors.
I couldn’t have assumed inadvertence here, because your claim that it was the Florida Supreme Court was augmented by the mention of Bush’s brother, who could only influence the Florida Supreme Court.
I have done my own research. We are unlikely to agree. But any mention of counting “dimpled” ballots is pretty concrete proof that our sources will come to stunningly different conclusions from the same data.
quote:Don't take that the wrong way? How should I have taken it?
"Do you remember 1990-91?" Here's a sample paper studying unemployment in the previous 3 recessionary periods: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1994/06/art2exc.htm The definitive history of 2001 downturn (note it didn't span any years, just 3 quarters) can't be written yet, but all signs point to a shallower dip than any since WWII. Job recovery has been hurt mostly by record productivity, not by economic contraction.
quote:Has it been well-documented? Please find me some major, reputable, and neutral (or liberal, if you prefer) source that states this clearly.
In the quarters surrounding the election and the inauguration, GDP growth went from 6.4% -> 0.5% -> 2.1% -> -0.2%.
As for the election itself, debates about the popular vs. electoral vote make me chuckle. Circa September-October 2000, all the experts were predicting that Bush would win the popular vote and Gore the electoral vote; all the Bush advocates were whining about the College and all the Gore advocates were high-and-mighty about the Constitutional mandate etc. etc. Come November, they reversed positions in about 3 days. It was hysterical.
Too bad, really. For all of my disagreements with Gore, he sure would have made a better Pres.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Richard Berg's last post was awesome because of those links to sources! Did you see how the sharp consecutive quarter decline in GDP in 90/91 caused a much larger effect than the evenly spaced much smaller, incremental decline in 2000/2001? We only thought the 2000/2001 "downturn" was large because of how much sustained growth we had previously! Numbers are cool!
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quote: Wrong again – Gore won a plurality of votes: 50,999,897 of 105,405,100 votes cast, or 48.4% of all votes cast. Bush won 50,456,002, or 47.9% of the all votes cast. Neither is a majority.
All this righteous outrage would be more effective if it were accurate.
Dagonee
Don't be a twit. Gore won a majority of the votes that were divided between him and Bush. You can try to play "let's define the problem away" all you want, but the problem still exists: many more people voted for Gore than for Bush, and more voters voted for Gore than for any other candidate. This is clearly a majority, in very many senses of the word.
posted
Yes, and in the quarters following the election, the numbers went from 2.1% -> -0.2% -> -0.6% -> -1.3%.
But I don't understand the signifance of these numbers. Can you explain the GDP please? I would like to see numbers such as the national debt thrown in there, too, and the unemployment rates, especially considering that this subject came up specifically to address my concerns about employment.
You know, now that I think about it, the only other time in my life I was unemployed .... it was during the Reign of George Bush I. Dem Bushes just ain't lucky!
posted
The GDP is the total value of everything produced in the U.S. during the period, as measured at current prices. If we only produced 10 $1 hamburgers and 2 $2 cheeseburgers in 2001, then the GDP for 2001 would be 10x1 + 2x2 = $14. The figures are the percentage increase in the amount produced from one period to the next.
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Ah, thanks. So it's a useful value to use in conjuction with others when evaluating the state of the economy, but not a useful indicator in and of itself.
posted
Generally economists talk about GDP, the unemployment rate, and inflation rate as the main three indicators. GDP is very useful if you are concerned with maximizing the total amount produced by the economy (and therefore taken home in paychecks.) But it can be misleading in times like now when a lot is being produced, but many are still unemployed for whatever reason.
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posted
Well, we can put one of my hypothese to the test. My guess is that under Dubya, the GDP may have risen, the interest rate will initially have plunged and then start to rebound, the employment rate soared initially and then stabilized and decreased.
My reasoning? Companies have been laying off tons of workers and farming work offshore. These cost-savings will boost net revenues, causing stock prices to rise. As the stock market rebounds, the Fed will probably restore some of the numerous percentages points taken away to help stabilize the spiralling economy of the past two years.
Meanwhile, the unemployment numbers should have surged initially as lots of people were laid off, then stabilized as people started using up the entirety of their claims and not being to file for more, and then decline as more claims became ineligable and the hemoraging of jobs began to finally dwindle, added to a recent boost in the job market in defense and some forms of manufacturing.
Anyway, that's my prediction. I don't know how accurate it is.
quote:Jeffrey Getzin said: Don't be a twit. Gore won a majority of the votes that were divided between him and Bush. You can try to play "let's define the problem away" all you want, but the problem still exists: many more people voted for Gore than for Bush, and more voters voted for Gore than for any other candidate. This is clearly a majority, in very many senses of the word.
Jeeze, can't you do better than that?
You’re the one playing fast and loose with facts in this thread. First your ridiculous claim about the Florida Supreme Court, then your factually wrong statement about Gore getting a majority.
It is not a majority, it is a plurality. There is a difference, and it’s not trivial in an argument about the Electoral College and the legitimacy of a president. Bush got half a percent fewer votes than Bush. Gore lacked a majority by 1.6%. No matter which way Florida’s electoral votes went, the person in the white house would have been the first pick of less than half the voters.
Put it this way – if the original Florida count had been exactly accurate with no controversy and come out the same way, Bush would have been legitimately elected President without a plurality of the vote. This may or may not be a problem, depending on your political science views of elections. But there are people who believe winning with only a plurality is a problem with respect to the legitimacy of a leader. Some states and many countries do not allow this to happen; they hold runoffs instead. Under their view, Bush I, Reagan, Carter (by .1%), and Nixon are the only presidents elected by the will of the people since 1970. Many runoffs lead to the second place winner in the first election winning in the runoff.
There is a very strong possibility (near certainty) that Gore would have won a runoff, given how many votes Nader got and assuming Naderites didn’t abstain in the runoff as a protest. But there’s also a possibility, depending on how 18 million Perot voters would have voted, that Bush I would have overcome his 4.8 million vote deficit to win the ’92 election had we required a runoff.
So when discussing alternative election systems (and popular vote is an alternative scheme to our Electoral College), it is very important to distinguish between plurality and majority.
Nevertheless, had you not made the Florida Supreme Court claim, I wouldn’t have called you on this. But you’ve been throwing around factually wrong accusations; I’ve been correcting you. Your accuracy is highly suspect now, and I don’t intend to let you inflate your arguments with imprecise language when the imprecision is relevant to the topic of discussion.
posted
All of you have no clue what you're talking about. The Florida Supreme Court rejected Gore's claim for a recount. The US Supreme Court upheld the FSC's decision. The FSC IS mostly comprised of Democratic appointees from the Bob Graham/Lawton Chiles era. ALL independent studies have shown an eventual Bush victory regardless. Why did we need to recount the votes again anyways? How many times do you need a recount before you get a winner. If it was most other states there would never have been a recount because they don't have automatic recounts in close elections.
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posted
And if you read the FSC's decision, you'll find it was for a very simple reason: after the first manual recount, recounts of subsamples of election ballots showed a clear discrepancy with the totals that had been reached in the first manual recount, with a distinct bias towards Gore. Hence the possibility that the earlier manual recount may have been incorrect, a possibility determined through basic statistics.
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quote: Nevertheless, had you not made the Florida Supreme Court claim, I wouldn’t have called you on this. But you’ve been throwing around factually wrong accusations; I’ve been correcting you. Your accuracy is highly suspect now, and I don’t intend to let you inflate your arguments with imprecise language when the imprecision is relevant to the topic of discussion.
Dagonee
Oh gee, I'm shaking in my boots now. DAGONEE suspects my accuracy.
posted
Sarcasm aside, I just want you to be honest. Which you've not been in this thread.
The majority/plurality thing can be ascribed to careless wording. The Florida Supreme Court thing cannot. It was a lie or, as I originally called it, stunning ignorance.
posted
Oh boo hoo, now DAGONEE is calling me ignorant and/or a liar. I don't know if I'll ever recover from the emotional anguish of .... say, are those donuts?
Dagonee, just get over it. Your "president" is a sham. He wasn't elected, and he hasn't accomplished anything since he stole the office except lie to gullible, greedy people such as yourself. I bet you're still waiting for the money to start rolling on in from Dubya's tax cut for the wealthiest 1%. I bet you really believe that Hussein had WMDs and ties to Osama Bin Laden, too.
You can call me a liar if it makes you feel better about yourself. In fact, I bet it does. But to quote an unattributed military source itself quoted on the Babes Against Bush website, "When you're getting a lot of flak, you know you're directly above your target."
posted
Still not choosing between lying or being stunningly ignorant, huh? I didn’t think you would. Nothing you say about me or Bush changes that fact that you’re one or the other. You don’t even know me, yet you’ve called me “gullible” and “greedy.”
You don’t know my position on the tax cut; you don’t know my position on welfare; you don’t know my position on estate taxes; you don’t know my position on corporate accountability. Yet you know I’m gullible and greedy.
Calling you a liar doesn’t make me feel better about myself – I like myself just fine, thank you very much. And I haven’t called you a liar yet. I’m waiting for you to pick if you want to be a liar or stunningly ignorant.
I haven’t had a lot of time in the last two weeks to get involved in any issues on the board that require deep analysis or research. I know this doesn’t affect how you post, but I hold myself to a higher standard. So I’ve been cherry-picking the easy targets. Hmmm, wonder why you keep popping up on my radar like that? Because you either lied or were stunningly ignorant.
posted
Jeffrey, you've demonstrated quite adequately to my eyes as well that you're rather ignorant on the subject.
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posted
Like I mentioned on another post, he's just baiting at this point, now that he's been proved wrong. Ignore him.
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quote:Again, this is a popular misunderstanding. I have to get back to you on my source (don't have it handy, alas) but yes, Bush would have won the recount ... but only if every possible judgement call were made in his favor: whether to count absentee ballots, discount dimples, etc. That is, the margin of ambiguity within the guidelines permitted a Bush victory, but you'd have to be dead set for him to win in the first place to make all those judgement calls in those ways.
You mean the absentee ballots that were postmarked late? The ones that Gore, Champion of Liberal-rules Recounts, wanted to discount? And dimples? DIMPLES?
You blatantly ignore the opposite of your statement, that for Gore to have won, one would've had to have been set on him winning.
Your boy lost to a moron or a Machiavelli, depending on what day it is. Get over it.
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posted
Wow, did this get derailed. Not that I wasn't asking for it with a political thread topic, but...oh well.
JG, you were wrong about the Florida Supreme Court. Please acknowledge this. I'll still love you.
Rakeesh, glad to see you. You seem to be saying that for Bush to win, everything would have to be counted his way, but adding that the same is true for Gore. So if the votes were counted fairly, by someone not "set on" either candidate winning, who would win? Buchanan? Nader?
For that matter, you say
quote:Your boy lost to a moron or a Machiavelli, depending on what day it is.
It really can be both at the same time, if a moron and a Machiavelli teamed up. Like Bush and Rove.
The last time you posted in a thread I started, you said it was obnoxious to assert or deny the existence of Jehovah. And then refused to be labeled an agnostic.
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quote:So if the votes were counted fairly, by someone not "set on" either candidate winning, who would win?
Actually, the most compelling study I've seen on this is that either would. The difference between the two is smaller than the probable error in counting the ballots.
Elections are imprecise: the ballots are marked by humans, collected by humans, and counted by humans. Mistakes are made in all 3 stages.
It's like trying to measure two stretches of road. If the difference between their actual lengths is 1 inch, then tape measures marked in feet will not reliably be able to determine which is longer. Any judgement (such as, this one is farther past the 100 foot mark, so it's longer) is using some other measuring device.
posted
I dont think quoting the 'babes against bush' website lends credibility to any argument. I mean, dont get me wrong, i often get my financial planning advice from the strip club, but still, i dont go admitting that in public.
quote:The last time you posted in a thread I started, you said it was obnoxious to assert or deny the existence of Jehovah. And then refused to be labeled an agnostic.
Huh? When did I say that? I don't recall ever saying such a thing. What was the context? And I'm not an agnostic.
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quote:Equating belief in God to belief in the existence of a small china teacup in "far solar orbit" is offensive, not to mention puerile (and I'm not even sure what I believe)
quote:There are infinite reasons to believe in Jesus Christ as God, just as there are infinite reasons otherwise, I suspect on both counts. You believe one thing, they believe another. I believe neither.
I'm not an agnostic, I'm a theist. That is, I more or less believe something is upstairs, but I'm not sure what. I have no doubts within my mind that there is something upstaiers, though. When I said I wasn't sure what I believe, I did not mean that I wasn't sure if I believed in God or not. I meant that I wasn't sure what kind of God is upstairs, but I can understand why you misunderstood. That part was a lack of clarity by yours truly.
quote:The last time you posted in a thread I started, you said it was obnoxious to assert or deny the existence of Jehovah. And then refused to be labeled an agnostic.
This is actually incorrect, and I think you know it. The thread's title was, "A troll speaks: a religion/philosophy question," and it was appropriately titled.
First you equated believe in Jesus with belief in Zeus, which was deliberately offensive and frankly stupid, and I'm being blunt because you're rehashing what you admitted was a troll topic. At the very least, Jesus Christ did exist. Historical record. People have been on top of all the mountains in Greece, and no Zeus. We know where lightning comes from, and it ain't Zeus. Zeus has been proven debunked. The things attributed to Zeus have been proven to be due to natural causes. No real proof-the closest you came to addressing this was Homer's Illiad-has been given that Zeus ever even existed. The big JC certainly did, no matter what you believe about his stature or life after death.
Then there was the china cup in far solar orbit. This is offensive because no one alive has any reason to even hypothesize that this is true. This is not true for believers in CHrist, or any religion. Whatever you say, they've at least got some experience or thought process or something that leads them to believe in their particular religion. Yes, their evidence is all subjective, so far as you and I and courts of law are concerned. Yes, it can't be proven. But there aren't billions of people worldwide who pray to a teacup in a far solar orbit and think they're answered back, either.
That's something, and it's much more than any evidence or even hope for the existence of a tea cup in far solar orbit.
You knew the comparison was offensive when you made it, so if you're expecting an apology for getting what you gave, it's gonna be a long wait. After all, you did ask for it .
THen there was this nugget
quote:While I certainly don’t want to be offensive, I feel that the more important your beliefs are to you, the more right I have to critique them.
"Right"? What you've got is a feeling that, through oratory or logical analysis or whatever, you have the duty to show the faithful the error of their largely stupid, inconsistent, and tragic ways.
quote:Incidentally, I think the Iliad’s track record is fairly extraordinary, in that it predicted the existence of Troy ages before it was discovered by scholars who thought it a myth.
This is interesting. You're suggesting that the Illiad "predicted" the existence of Troy? Nonsense. It was written thousands of years ago, when there really was a city of Troy. Just because so much mythology was thrown into it that later scholars thought it was all myth (and they didn't, people were searching for it for a long time before it was found) doesn't mean that the core of the story-a war occuring in and around an ancient fortress-city called Troy-never happened.
You could just as well make the argument in a few thousand years that there were no such thing as samurai and bushido because the film The Last Samurai contained many embellishments and mistellings of literal history, therefore the core of the story must be myth as well. Then, a few hundred years after that, people would say the Last Samurai "predicted" the existence of friction between conservative and Westernizing Japanese elite in the mid-to late 19th century, because historians of the time discovered it to be true.
quote:There’s no reason to suppose there’s specifically a teacup there, and there’s no reason to suppose specifically Jesus is Lord.
There are many reasons for followers of any religion to believe in their own faiths. Just because you think they're stupid or...
quote:But its still important to me that many people live their lives by the precepts of religions that appear to me to be wrong. Tragically and transparently wrong, in most cases.
doesn't mean there's no reason to suppose Jesus is Lord to some people.
But as usual, dkw stated it more succintly and more politely than me.
quote:No Honore, you did not ask about the foundations of anyone’s belief system. You asked, “Why don’t you believe in Zeus if you believe in Jesus,” and then made assumptions about what and why people believe. To me your “rhetorical” question makes about as much sense as if you’d asked, “why can’t you read German, since you read Latin?” Two things that are similar, but one doesn’t imply the other.
If you want to know why people believe something, you ought to try asking them.
That explanation enough?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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There's the definition for the word agnostic. I do not fit that definition in any way shape or form. I am not "an agnostic regarding Jesus", because that would be impossible. The correct thing to say would be "Rakeesh is uncertain whether or not Jesus Christ is any form of God at all".
Those are two different things, which is obvious from the definition. You just chose to create a new definition for the word and then say he's agnostic.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Agnostic. N. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
Your link.
You are doubtful and noncommittal about the divinity of Jesus. This is not incompatible with theism. For the purposes of my discussion, you were an agnostic because you were undecided.
When I refer to "believing in Jesus," of course I mean "believing in the divinity of Jesus," just as when I write "believing in Sun Myung Moon" I don't mean affirming his existence.
I think this clears up some of your problem with me talking about Zeus. Zeus's existence and Jesus's divinity, and continued existence after A.D. 33, are parallel concepts.
On behalf of some the greatest thinkers of the human race, I am scandalized by your disdain for belief in Zeus. You clearly think everyone who believes or believed in Zeus is or was stupid, and all you have to back that up is your so-called "scientific reasoning" and insufferable arrogance.
I bet you have similarly arrogant reasons for saying that Mohammed Atta was "wrong" in his actions. There are an infinite number of ways one could justify mass murder. I suppose you think he did it out of stupidity, or weak will? I suppose you have "objections" to his logic and faith?
Rakeesh, in that thread asked people why they believed in Jesus. I specified that I didn't want general theistic arguments that could apply equally well to Zeus (although you're welcome to email them to me if you want), or to any unfalsifiable fact. Everybody who understood that responded, with historical or personal evidence and arguments.
Maybe I should have made it more clear that that wasn't a rhetorical question. But if you read the thread, some people got it.
What really annoyed you, though, was this line of mine.
quote:I feel that the more important your beliefs are to you, the more right I have to critique them.
I acknowledge I'm in the minority in this belief. However, it is a sincere article of faith on my part that open, civil, aggressive proselytizing, on issues of faith and on other issues, will eventually improve the lot of the human race.
Posts: 535 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Anyway, proof of my post's original assertion: threat level raised to code orange. We're right back where we started.
Posts: 535 | Registered: Sep 2000
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