Elected Officials Riling Up the Masses

[ParanoiA]

Uhh' date=' not that I support this sort of thing as I think a troop increase in Afghanistan is warranted, but the anti-war crowd is protesting Obama:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_507159.html[/quote']

 

You're talking about the same Cindy Sheehan who was arrested for helping lay coffins outside the White House at that same protest last month?

 

At least eight people' date=' including activist Cindy Sheehan, were arrested by U.S. Park Police at the end of the march, after laying coffins at a fence outside the White House. Friday marked the seventh anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

 

*facepalm*[/quote']

 

Ouch. I do stand corrected. You are right, they are being more consistent with their protest and less partisan for sure.

 

Have you ever watched video of the 9/12 protests? You should really watch the one in my previous post. Their concerns aren't exactly legitimate or well-reasoned.

 

Not that one, but I've seen them. What I see more than anything is the 'Jaywalking' edited videos of simple minded working folk being made fun of and ridiculed because they can't intellectualize their concerns. As if that means they're wrong, or that they don't matter. Somehow, if they can't articulate every detail of a given issue, then they're ignorant and to be dismissed. Then they use the assocation fallacy to indict them all. Maybe they watch Maddow and Olbermann too, to learn that technique.

 

Personally, I love the tea party protests and I hope they continue. I want it to grow and grow and motivate more liberty driven folks to step up and be heard. I love that 16 states are set to challenge the healthcare bill in court.

 

I love the potential for liberty to stand up and shake off all the fleas. Even if it isn't the grass roots libertarian movement I wanted it to be - it's better than the quiet compliance I'm getting from my willfully subordinated countrymen.

[bascule]

You seem to forget Bush dealt with his own recession following the .COM bust that had an almost identical hit to tax revenue.

 

Yes, the .COM bust, DAMN YOU CLINTON (or rather, Greenspan)! 9/11 had nothing to do with it.

 

Where I fault bush is in his spending in general, but his explosion in spending after 2007 when Medicare Part D, TARP, and a few other programs went into full bloom.

 

I'd be happy to repeal Medicare Part D and the new Health Insurance reform and replace them both with something sane...

 

I would too. Meanwhile the teabaggers want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

 

Obama didn't cut spending by a dime...

 

That seems like a very backhanded way of referring to Obama's spending freezes...

 

for as bad as Bush's spending was, Obama took that and piled more bailouts and entitlements on top of it.

 

What exactly was it that Bush did to combat the deficit, exactly?

 

Had McCain won in 2008 and done the same things that Obama did there would still be a Tea Party movement today... it would just be lead by Democrats.

 

Thank you for making my point about teabagger partisanship.

 

Also, keep using the "teabagger" line, bascule. It helps put your points in proper context.

 

That these people were dumb enough to refer to themselves in such a context in the first place? Sure. They called themselves teabaggers. I don't see anything wrong with using the same expression.

[jryan]

What specific measure did Bush present to deal with the .COM burst, can you tell me?

 

He didn't do a thing. That was the smart thing to do. When an industry starts hemorrhaging value due to poor management you don't bail it out, you let it die. What Bush did was simply send everyone a check and let them spend that money on whatever they wanted to, thereby stimulating the economy organically.

 

Obama's targeted incentives only serve to reward bad behavior and prolong a bankruptcy or closing that is inevitable. It's bad for the economy and bad for the business itself in many cases.

 

I also would like to point out that citing the Heritage Foundation for facts is not a good tactic in trying to persuade anyone who is not right wing.

 

Why should I really care? If they want to question the validity of the Heritage graph they can feel free to, but I would guess they wouldn't because it does show a major increase in federal spending under Bush.

 

So "non right wing" people can cast out the Heritage graph if they choose due to their own biases... but that's their own problem to deal with.

 

I would assume they were fine with the left leaning USA Today article?

[bascule]

Not that one, but I've seen them. What I see more than anything is the 'Jaywalking' edited videos of simple minded working folk being made fun of and ridiculed because they can't intellectualize their concerns.

 

I'll accept that concern to a degree, except the thing about the NLM coverage is it's just one guy, and he has several "outtake" reels of interviews that don't make the main video because there's simply too much stupidity to fit into a short clip.

 

But yes, they should be taken with a grain of salt...

[moth]

it seems like more than just being inarticulate, many teapeople seem very mistaken about factual data.

[Pangloss]

Uhh, not that I support this sort of thing as I think a troop increase in Afghanistan is warranted, but the anti-war crowd is protesting Obama:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/thousands-protest-in-dc-f_n_507159.html

 

Okay, I didn't know that. Must be because it's the anniversary of the war. But fair enough, just as the tea party people are fighting some Republicans, the anti-war crowd is protesting against the Obama administration. Got it.

 

 

Pangloss, have you watched videos of their protests? I watched your video. I think you are giving the teabaggers far too much credit.

 

What credit am I give the tea party movement when I say that 47% of the American people aren't paying any income tax? And do you really think I couldn't dig up videos of idiotic statements from the anti-war crowd? Come on.

 

The question of THIS thread is:

1) Are our politicians encouraging bad behavior?

2) Is such encouragement, by members of EITHER party, acceptable?

 

And perhaps we could expand that question to the media as well. How is what Jon Stewart does any different from what Rush Limbaugh does?

[jryan]

Yes, the .COM bust, DAMN YOU CLINTON (or rather, Greenspan)! 9/11 had nothing to do with it.

 

You think 9/11 had nothing to do with the recession? Are you serious?

 

 

I would too. Meanwhile the teabaggers want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

 

Your worthless comment is self defeating.

 

That seems like a very backhanded way of referring to Obama's spending freezes...

 

Spending freezes with a record setting budget and gigantic new entitlements? Oh... you mean the spending freeze on a few small departments while the overall spending grows? I never thought I would actually meet someone who actually bought that line.

 

What exactly was it that Bush did to combat the deficit, exactly?

 

Who here claimed he did?

 

Thank you for making my point about teabagger partisanship.

 

That's not a knock on the Tea Party movement, bascule, just the opportunism of politics. Republican leaders are late comers to the movement.

 

That these people were dumb enough to refer to themselves in such a context in the first place? Sure. They called themselves teabaggers. I don't see anything wrong with using the same expression.

 

Care to provide examples to show that they refer to themselves that way, and in numbers great enough to establish it's a common term among them?

 

It lessons the discussion, and you.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Please, let's not start fighting on page 2 of a thread. We can stay civil for longer than this.

[jryan]

Please, let's not start fighting on page 2 of a thread. We can stay civil for longer than this.

 

I think most people here agree that both parties are equally to blame for riling up crowds. Somehow that was spun into arguing the validity of the two protest movements rather than a discussion about the initial topic.

 

I'd suggest a moratorium on the "teabagger" pejorative moving forward as it is meant to serve no purpose beyond inciting anger or imparting ridicule.

[bascule]

I think most people here agree that both parties are equally to blame for riling up crowds.

 

As I've made clear in the past, I feel treating both Republicans and Democrats as equally depraved is giving the Republicans too much credit.

 

You claim they're equal, but can you demonstrate it?

[jryan]

As I've made clear in the past, I feel treating both Republicans and Democrats as equally depraved is giving the Republicans too much credit.

 

You claim they're equal, but can you demonstrate it?

 

How about you go over to that thread and prove that point there. At this point you have done a poor job of supporting your position in either thread... which isn't a justification for derailing this one.

[Mr Skeptic]

Meanwhile the teabaggers want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare.

 

I thought the teabaggers were protesting people shoving stuff down people's throats.

[bascule]

... which isn't a justification for derailing this one.

 

Given the topic of each thread is effectively the same, with this one focusing on a case instance, it's not derailing the thread. Furthermore, you made the claim:

 

I think most people here agree that both parties are equally to blame for riling up crowds.

 

So if anyone's doing any derailing, it's you. Furthermore, that's an argument from popularity, a logical fallacy. You made the claim. You back it up. Can you actually demonstrate the equivocacy here, or do you think it can't be measured and therefore we should just assume it's equal?

[Saryctos]

As I've made clear in the past, I feel treating both Republicans and Democrats as equally depraved is giving the Republicans too much credit.

 

You claim they're equal, but can you demonstrate it?

 

what demonstrable measure do you intend to use to verify any such claims?

[moth]

Well of course income tax revenue is down. According to this Associated Press article posted earlier today, 47% of Americans don't even pay income tax!

 

 

 

In fact the bottom 40% RECEIVE money:

 

 

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

 

So you wanna try and tell me again why the anti-war crowd has a valid point and only wants what's best for everyone, but the "teabaggers" can only be bad for the country?

 

are you saying you support the teapeople because people should pay more tax?

 

i think maybe everyone should just watch fritz the cat again to remember after a suitable amount of inflamatory rhetoric things will get out of control.

[bascule]

what demonstrable measure do you intend to use to verify any such claims?

 

I don't know, I'm not the claimant and therefore don't have the burden of proof. I've only shown counterexamples where I see them.

 

I think it's completely ridiculous to assume two things are equal simply because you can't think of a way of measuring them, though.

[Saryctos]

I don't know, I'm not the claimant and therefore don't have the burden of proof. I've only shown counterexamples where I see them.

 

How can one person claim proof of equality? Isn't it the duty of the person seeking such a claim to deem the 'proof' an acceptable example thereof? Certainly the burden of proof is on the claimant, but proof of what exactly will constitute your definition of equality?

 

I think it's completely ridiculous to assume two things are equal simply because you can't think of a way of measuring them, though.

 

All things are equal until you define some way of differentiating them.

[bascule]

All things are equal until you define some way of differentiating them.

 

WHAT?!

 

Would it be prudent to assume that the masses of all of the elementary particles are identical until we come up a method for measuring them? (yes this statement is demonstrably false as we do have a means of measuring the masses of elementary particles)

 

No, the correct approach is to assume a quantity is unknown unless you have some way of measuring it

[Saryctos]

WHAT?!

 

Would it be prudent to assume that the masses of all of the elementary particles are identical until we come up a method for measuring them? (yes this statement is demonstrably false as we do have a means of measuring the masses of elementary particles)

 

No, the correct approach is to assume a quantity is unknown unless you have some way of measuring it

 

The very idea of mass is a way of satisfying a method of inequality.

The ability to quantify this difference does not have anything to do with my statement.

[bascule]

The very idea of mass is a way of satisfying a method of inequality.

The ability to quantify this difference does not have anything to do with my statement.

 

So you're saying we should assume things are equal until you have a "method of inequality"? No. Wrong. The correct answer is unknown, not equal.

[Saryctos]

So you're saying we should assume things are equal until you have a "method of inequality"? No. Wrong. The correct answer is unknown, not equal.

 

You've done a marvelous job dancing around a misrepresentation of my comments while avoiding the question posed to you.

[bascule]

You've done a marvelous job dancing around a misrepresentation of my comments while avoiding the question posed to you.

 

I'm open to any methods to quantify it but I'd like to evaluate the proposal first.

 

That said, trying to quantify it is silly. However, so is saying we should assume they're equal by default until demonstrated otherwise.

[Dudde]

I think we'd be better off if the US had more people like these guys

 

The question of THIS thread is:

1) Are our politicians encouraging bad behavior?

2) Is such encouragement, by members of EITHER party, acceptable?

 

1: I think as long as it benefits them, politicians encourage a ridiculous amount of bad behavior - fueled by large amounts of misinformation. And who cares if a previous democratic or republican party did it too, that's largely irrelevant to fixing the issue at present

 

2: No - but I agree with much of what Bascule has been arguing in this thread in regards to the tea party movement as well as the anti-war protests.

 

Protesting war and laying out coffins in front of the white house is arguably different than calling someone 48 times to make threatening phone calls, or threatening to kill your representative for voting on the HC bill (there are two links here, one dem, one rep) - these kinds of actions should at least be backed by correct information and legitimate fears, something more thought out than what they're going to do before they kill you (I believe in relieving fears about the bill, but have you tried explaining some of the issues they have with the bill? They didn't read the bill, but they seem to know what's in it, and they seem to know everything I know is a lie)

[moth]

sorry for my part in dragging this thread so far off-topic. i'm kinda new to argument.

 

when was the last time a democrat suggested their state should secede from the union like rick perry recently did in texas or the former governer of alaska's husband in a.i.m.

 

i believe the hyperbole on the right is disproportionate.

 

though john stewart uses humor more, and rush limbaugh uses anger more, i think they both use ridicule to do the same job with opposite polarity.

 

as far as i'm concerned the time to talk about revolution is when the status quo is worse than anarchy, because anarchy is what well get afterwards.

[Pangloss]

All things are equal until you define some way of differentiating them.

 

No, I'm failing to agree with you that Republicans are worse just because Jon Stewart says so, or because you've posted a dozen examples here instead of three.

 

 

The correct answer is unknown, not equal.

 

It was my impression that your position isn't that the answer is unknown, but that Republicans are worse, or as you put it, "giving Republicans too much credit". But if you're just saying that that's just your opinion, that's cool with me.

 

 

are you saying you support the teapeople because people should pay more tax?

 

I don't support the "teapeople", and I don't think people should pay more tax.