311 – Jandros Says:There’s a difference between a mistake (which I did acknowledge) and a lie.

That is another lie.

Nobody ever called you an atheist or a Darwinist.

I’m just saying, there most definitely is a definable point where it becomes very personal. That’s a whole ‘nother level of “disagreement”.

Your reading comprehension skills are lacking if you think that Butler was implying that it was the media editing those tapes twelve years ago.

Richard Butler is clearly stating that his concern was with the Iraqis editing the video and it never implies that CNN was in any way attempting to deceive the viewing public.

Concerned about the potential for selective video editing making its way into the media, I asked for and received assurances that the tapes would not be released to the news media. Of course, within a few weeks, heavily edited footage from our discussions aired on Iraqi television and was later carried on international outlets, particularly CNN, which was well established as Iraq’s preferred Western media conduit.

What does that 12 year old incident have to do with your claim earlier in this thread that the MSM has a documented liberal bias?

In reality what your post illustrates is that the Iraqis reneged on their promise and does nothing to discredit CNN. In fact this shows CNN was beyond reproach.

This is not for the purpose of singling out CNN (or even to suggest motive

Ron Paul must’ve been somewhere near that long chain of stuff that you quoted.

Near only applies to hand grenades and horseshoes. I made sure before I posted those quotes that neither pags nor I mentioned Ron Paul.

Thank You, that has proved my point!
You are too intellectually lazy to go back and read the comments those quotes were taken from, despite the fact that I took the time to number which comments those quotes were derived from.

Do you realize how much time it took me to do that nearly every comment I have posted on this thread? I even posted them in chronological order so other posters could easily read them in their full context and in the proper order.

You still are having a hissy fit over that comment I made to Ralph much earlier in the thread that was clearly marked as snark and never accused you of anything. You took that one way out of context and I showed that in my rebuttal 2 days ago.

You lost all credibility when you went ballistic and threatened to sue Ralph and I because you disagreed with what we wrote. Stop playing victim.

“It turned out that Iraq had something new for us. At our December 14 and 15 meetings, five video cameras were aimed at our delegation to record our every word and gesture. I asked (Tarik) Aziz, ‘What is the purpose of this?’ He said that Iraq had decided merely to keep a video record of our (Baghdad) conference-room discussions and that we would be provided with a copy.

“Concerned about the potential for selective video editing making its way into the media, I asked for and received assurances that the tapes would not be released to the news media. Of course, within a few weeks, heavily edited footage from our discussions aired on Iraqi television and was later carried on international outlets, particularly CNN, which was well established as Iraq’s preferred Western media conduit.”

The preferred Western conduit for Saddam’s Iraq. This is not for the purpose of singling out CNN (or even to suggest motive), but was it that easy for Saddam to use them for his manipulations? I do think there’s a valid question or concern in there somewhere, especially alongside other examples that I truly wish I could reference, months or even years after the fact; again for background and accumulation, the building of general impressions over time.

if you had stopped opening so many of your posts with “LIE” “LIE” “LIE”

I proved beyond a reasonable doubt that you lied repeatedly. Instead of playing victim and threatening to sue, why don’t you repudiate the assertion I made at comment # 300.

Any reasonable person who reads this thread from the start will realize that I have documented each and every assertion with quotes from you in full context. To quote Stephen Colbert,“reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Your posts have all been long on opinion and extremely short on documented facts. From the very first post you made here your anger and disregard for facts has been obvious.

Show me one comment here were I failed to prove my point with documented facts or took any quotes out of their proper context?
YOU CAN”T!

I an still waiting to see you apologize to pags for making those false accusations.

Your position would carry a lot more weight, Jandros if you didn’t end each post with the exact thing you are railing against.

Read and observe the way Reggie has opened probably half or more of his posts. I haven’t actually counted, but “half” is actually a conservative guess. My response was regarding something very direct, very specific and very personal. Think about how YOU might feel or react if you were me. Just consider the balance of it. If you can’t understand any of that, then please don’t expect me to be very receptive to your advice.

Reggie, Ron Paul must’ve been somewhere near that long chain of stuff that you quoted. In case Hoodathunktick won’t see fit to say it to you, if you had stopped opening so many of your posts with “LIE” “LIE” “LIE”, then maybe even you and I might have gotten somewhere. I’ve seen stranger things happen. But as it is right now, I find it very hard to even give a fat flip.

This was as much my purpose for posting here in the first place: I see and feel a rapidly increasingly sense of polarization, a serious polarization, in a country that used to be able to get past its individual differences. And I partly (or maybe mostly) blame our “sacred” News Media for that. It’s like the stock markets back in winter and spring, up 300 points one day because of “good” news in the headlines, apparently because a headline represented a good sign or improvement or “not as bad as we thought”, so there was a sense of reassurance, and the markets responded accordingly. The markets thought there was some clear fact represented behind a particular headline or story. But then the very next day, a negative headline would appear, and down went the market by an equal amount or more. That itself is not the fault of the media, but I’ll try to get back to that. The point here is that it was all superficial, but even “superficial” was “good” or “bad”, and it had a real and direct affect on the economy, even though there might not have been any substance in either the positive or negative headline.

So now back to topics and blogs like this one (but really all politically tilted entities): Every attitude expressed in places like this (and other places) has a very real effect on a lot of people, especially in quantity and over time. Even if a comment has no substance at all, it can still have a very real and very direct effect, again in an aspect of quantity and time. And quite frankly, I see (or feel) more and more and more pure hate between and among people (all over the place) who have had nothing at all to do with the current state of the nation, except that we can incite or perpetuate some seriously bad feelings and extremely serious divisiveness, to the point that communication completely shuts down. I think that’s pretty evident here. And just for the record, maybe other people have “been here for years” and maybe for that reason they think they own this site or this particular thread, but sorry to inform, I think this public website doesn’t belong to anyone except the actual owners.

At any rate, I’m not trying to preach about anything, I’m just trying to explain why I think any politicized/polarized news headline in cyberspace, on TV or in printed news, disturbs me a lot, more and more almost every day. The last thing I want is for one side (either side) to pretend that they alone understand all the problems and only they have all the answers, which of course is not true and it will never be true.

But just because I couldn’t avoid seeing the last post, I want to say to Reggie, I can imagine that your cheap, petty, persistent, juvenile smugness will come back at you some day; again no substance at all, no effort at all, just pure hate in your last post. What goes around comes around.

Zooey Says:

It appears that “Jandros” thought he’d use the common tactic of taking a dump on an old thread, and have the satisfaction of the last word.

It didn’t work out all that well…

Nice work, my friends.

The troll keeps dumping and dumping and dumping………

THAT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE!

227 pags2 Says:
Libertarian is just another name for social Darwinism.That is the antithesis of Christianity. It is not a good way of forming a society when the poor, old and sick are left to their own devices. Consider the possibility that you are injured and can never work again. What would happen to you? Now imagine that happening to someone who is 20 years old.

Pags2 made it clear she was referring not to evolution but rather Social Darwinism, which in fact is the antithesis of Christ’s teachings.

234 Jandros Says:
I did not say any such thing. Your excessive theorizing and stereotyping are just making stuff up that is not true at all. I am not a Darwinist or a heartlesss whatever-name-you’re-trying-to-call-me.

266 Jandros Says: And also somewhere in all of that, I was called a Darwinist/Atheist (neither of which is true in the slightest) just because I mentioned “Libertarian”.

276 Jandros Says: And was it you who insisted that I’m an Darwinist-Atheist-Republican or something like that? I’m still having a hard time getting past that wild-and-hairy accusation.

288 Reggie Says:
I think that this poster isn’t intellectually capable of perceiving that Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

290 Jandros Says: I believe “anti-thesis of Christianity” was a follower in that Darwin post. Exactly what was I supposed to have misunderstood about that?

295 Jandros Says: Or what? Did I miss something else.

Yes you missed something, the definition of Social Darwinism.
If you had bothered to take time away from writing your rambling unintelligible gobbledygook and actually read the links at post #288 you would have learned that Darwin’s Theory and Social Darwinism are not related.

Now if Jandros was a gentleman, he would apologize to pags2

Actually there is just too much extraneous crap to read here and actually it’s not my life’s mission to do that, especially when it’s continually interrupted by so many outright inflammatory insults that just naturally get more of my attention: I’m a “liar” because I didn’t see any real point in nose-diving deep into a minimal part of Vietnam history, for example. On and on. Beating a dead horse into a bloody pulp. Cherry-picking.

Ron Paul was mentioned in that string of quotes that you formulated. That’s the only reason I brought him up, only because you didn’t make yourself clear and I had to guess what your actual complaint was.

Crap. It’s not worth going on any further.

Now I’ll just sort out some details and maybe get past some of this extraneous crap that only serves to confuse a few simple points, and even twists me around in circles, which I should always remember is a popular theoretical tactic:

I am conservative, and I have pointed out that the “anti” labels pug/thug/nut etc also synonymize with con/neocon and all of that categorical crap. But I will use “con” and “lib” just to save a few typing strokes, although I usually prefer to be more clear and exacting so that a newbie won’t misunderstand … so they won’t have to dechiper any code. But I do admit that I referred to the “Darwin” post using “short form” because it is indeed easier to type “Darwin” than “antithesis of Christianity”. Just to clear that up. I hope.

I do resent the fact that people claim “con” bias in Fox but then try to deny there is any possibility of “lib” bias in other MSM, a proposition that can be supported by surveys that show something like a 3-1 lib/con ratio among journalists. But then someone else countered that owners are largely conservative, but unless I missed it in all the clutter, that other person has not supported his/her assumption in turn.

I am also Christian, so conservative plus Christian, thus typically stereotyped as “Christian right”, which is repeatedly and blindly stereotyped as racist, violently anti-gay, ignorant, on and on. That has created an extremely offensive and even socially dangerous stereotype, which has (via expedience and mental laziness) been encouraged and encouraged and encouraged beyond belief.

Just because I don’t fit neatly into someone’s mold, academic formula or whatever, I get lectured from 2 or 3 sides that I “need” to do this or I “need” to do that. First, that is a classic way to indicating talking down to someone … like smug self-righteousness … that only infuriates me more. And I refuse to cram myself into a shoe that doesn’t fit.

Finally, this point about this particular article: It quite naturally fans embers by beginning with “Right Wing Concocts”. A journalistic flame. Of course it satisfies (and attracts like bees to honey) a generally “left wing” person, while it only serves to alienate people like me.

227 pags2 Says:
Libertarian is just another name for social Darwinism.That is the antithesis of Christianity. It is not a good way of forming a society when the poor, old and sick are left to their own devices. Consider the possibility that you are injured and can never work again. What would happen to you? Now imagine that happening to someone who is 20 years old.

Pags2 made it clear she was referring not to evolution but rather Social Darwinism, which in fact is the antithesis of Christ’s teachings.

234 Jandros Says:
I did not say any such thing. Your excessive theorizing and stereotyping are just making stuff up that is not true at all. I am not a Darwinist or a heartlesss whatever-name-you’re-trying-to-call-me.

266 Jandros Says: And also somewhere in all of that, I was called a Darwinist/Atheist (neither of which is true in the slightest) just because I mentioned “Libertarian”.

276 Jandros Says: And was it you who insisted that I’m an Darwinist-Atheist-Republican or something like that? I’m still having a hard time getting past that wild-and-hairy accusation.

288 Reggie Says:
I think that this poster isn’t intellectually capable of perceiving that Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

290 Jandros Says: I believe “anti-thesis of Christianity” was a follower in that Darwin post. Exactly what was I supposed to have misunderstood about that?

295 Jandros Says: Or what? Did I miss something else.

Yes you missed something, the definition of Social Darwinism.
If you had bothered to take time away from writing your rambling unintelligible gobbledygook and actually read the links at post #288 you would have learned that Darwin’s Theory and Social Darwinism are not related.

Now if Jandros was a gentleman, he would apologize to pags2

Why don’t you go back and actually read the all comments on this thread and not cherry pick?
If you had bothered to read my comments in full and in their proper context, it would be obvious to anyone with an IQ over 75 what comment #288 was about. It had nothing to do with Ron Paul.
You’re intellectually lazy and you have contradicted yourself over 20 times on this thread. It’s as if you don’t remember what you have previously posted.
I have kept a list of all of them and will post them once you are done making an ass of yourself.

Thanks for proving me right about your being a troll.

see post #288

And? I still need to guess exactly what specific point you’re trying to make? Well, here goes:

1. I don’t care for Ron Paul and actually I tuned him out a long time ago. I didn’t care for McCain either. And even though I might “like” Obama, I still don’t trust his motives, but even if his motives are pure, how is it all going to translate in 4, 5 or 10 years? So what does all of that suggest? Just so you won’t have to guess, my personal opinion is that there has been nothing good to choose from for the past several years. And that is a problem for me.

2. If I prefer minimal government, as opposed to what happened over the past 8 years, why should I call myself a Republican?

3. If I don’t believe in creating even more welfare programs that won’t work any better than the current ones (because apparently the government still has not figured out fiscal accountability or responsibility, and I know something about that because I was in government for 35 years) or if I don’t believe in letting the government grab more and more power while we’re all dazed and confused by the economy, then why should I call myself a Democrat?

4. Or are you simply daring to suggest that someone else has successfully defined me and I should just toe the party line with no allowance at all for individual thought? (But I think all current politics is a smelly bag of worms, and yeah, that definitely creates problems for me.)

5. Or what? Did I miss something else in this little guessing game?

Look, we have advisors and even military task forces in several countries right now,

You’re comparing apples and oranges because unlike Vietnam those other countries are not currently engaged in a civil war.