Gatorade Frost

Today I finally came to the conclusion why I didn’t enjoy politics on the TFP. Not particularly that it’s extremely partisan, but because it’s based around he-said she-said of politicians and the like.

To me that’s relatively worthless. Instead of discussing in depth the actual issue, the ‘debates’ become fights about “Well Bush said this, therefore he’s a liar” or “Kennedy’s a drunken nut job” and the like. Does it really matter? What matters is how they vote, not what they say.

If you can talk about minimum wage in the sense that it deals whether minimum wage is important or not, or if it’s useful or harmful to the economy, you’re on the right track, but throwing out that it’s just a ploy to take people’s eyes off of what’s going on in Iraq is stupid.

The same goes with the flag burning amendment. What should have been a conversation about whether it should be illegal quickly turned into this:

“It's a Red Herring the GOP know will never get through, but it will take the press coverage and the heat from the scandals away, at least for awhile. Let's get some radical "patriots" all up in arms and pissed about flag burning and have them bitch and moan about that so people and the press will focus on that, until we can find another hotpoint to divide the people...... that way they don't focus on the scandals, on living wages, on the war, on the deficit, on the trade imbalances, on whatever.

In the end, we'll hear more about this for a week or 2 than we will about illegal immigration or liveable wages or whatever.

Politics at it's finest.”

How exactly does this help the discussion aside from tossing out a highly partisan opinion based around conspiracy theories that the GOP is using different amendments as distractions? Frankly, it doesn’t.

It’s important that it wasn’t passed by 1 vote. If 66 senators voted in favor of it, 11 over the number of Republicans in Senate, obviously people have strong feelings about it, enough to warrant it being noticed. If it was that close, it seems clear to me that it’s not a red herring that won’t get passed. It nearly was today. This is an amendment, 2/3rds majority. That was nearly achieved today, and what would have been said if it had passed in the senate? That it was a right wing conspiracy still? That’s 12+ Democrats/Independents voting in favor of the amendment, enough to make it not an entirely partisan issue.

These are issues that should be looked at not for their political value but for their value in importance to the American people, to its application with the bill of rights and the constitution, not looked at as left and right wing conspiracies.

Livable wages are important to be thought about and how it can be dealt with, but throwing out tons of quotes and news paper articles to try to prove that politicians suck doesn’t get anyone anywhere. People aren’t going to change their opinions in the face of unreasonable partisanship; it has to be done by dealing specifically with the issues and coming to working conclusions as to how to fix the problem.

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I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh, yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."
Emo Philips

pan6467

Gator,

You make a good point, perhaps my post could have been worded somewhat differently. But it was in reply to another.

Basically what it boils down to in politics, I believe, is whether an issue is truly an issue or a"Red Herring" a "distraction" and so on.

As for the Flag burning..... it really isn't much of an issue, therefore there isn't much to really talk about.

Wages, there is, and yes it has become very partisan. I used to believe you could leave partisan views out most of the time but anymore that idea is just a pipedream, perhaps it always was.

My point is, some issues are just fluff, herrings etc. that either party will use to take heat off of other more pressing issues that the party or Congress as a whole doesn't want to deal with. Flag burning is a good example.


Congress voting for the good of the country as a whole is how things are supposed to work, but in this country, today, partisan hatred of each other has gotten to the point where it is unreasonable, neither side listens to the other, both sides are refusing to make concessions and neither is working for the good of the country, but rather to promote their own party and power. The politicians are scared of voting their true consciences and not along party lines because they will be ridiculed, told how weak they are and lose party support.

Perhaps it has always been this way. The only way it will ever change is if the people truly want it and vote for change. But we don't. We complain how the parties are pretty much the same or how the politicians don't listen but in primaries where we have the choice to vote for better voices and original ideas, we, as a whole, refuse to and career politicians continue to win.

The parties want their agendas taken care of, and they are going to back the frontrunner rather than someone who rocks the boat or maybe a loose cannon.

And most everyone wants to believe their congressman is truly ok and voting for them it is everyone else's that is the problem. In actuality, your congressman is probably part of the problem, they all are. Until you get true men and women with spines that refuse to take orders and vote their consciences and for what they know to be best for their district and state.... this is what we'll continue to get.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

highthief

If we banned the words: "Bush", "Liberal", "Democrat", "Republican", and "Clinton", the talk would go a lot smoother around here and as Gator points out, more real issues would be discussed.

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

Bill O'Rights

Hmmmm...it's interesting that you also didn't choose to ban the word "conservative".
An oversight, maybe? Perhaps. Perhaps.


Actually, if I thought for one moment that it could be achieved, that might make for an interesting experiment.

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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

highthief

It just didn't come to mind - neo-con might be a better pick.

Can the boards controls be set to simply erase a given word? I know on other, all ages boards, I've seen boards autodelete swear words or it simply doesn't allow you to post such words.

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

pan6467

But isn't politics ALL in one's opinion and views.

Why delete (censor) words?

If someone (and I am very guilty) is being too partisan and you do not like what they have to say in a certain post is it not better to just skip it? Someone else may like or may want to read that OPINION, and find it helps them.

By banning or deleting words, ideas, opinions and arguments just because they muddy up the waters or are too one sided or don't meet your standards of debate, is censorship.

And who decides what words, thoughts, ideas, views opinions to ban? Because it would eventually get to not just words but all those other "divisive" and partisan and whatever that doesn't allow "debate" to run smoother.

Politics like religion are passion points to people and they will argue thier points, they are usually set in their views and very rarely switch. The only thing this board can do is allow views out so that people know why and how the other views a certain issue. And perhaps persuade the undecided or in some cases find common ground.

It all boils down to passion and wanting to have your view seen. By deleting and censoring you take away the passion and will eventually have nothing to talk about because you cannot have a politics board or debate issues without passion in your belief.... it's boring and is textbook. This is the real life textbook examples do not apply and without passion in your views and beliefs why care?

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

roachboy

i dont see the problem as one of superficial labelling.
it is more a problem of types of arguments that get presented and how these labels are used instead of argument, to short circuit them.

in the thread on minimum wage levels, you basically had two different positions.
one is influenced by the always foul milton friedman--which would claim that businesses act responsably when they generate profit and are not and should not be concerned with any other factors--these factors would include questions of whether wage levels actually enable workers to live. this line is as old as capitalism itself, and remains wholly afunctional (in that, over the long term, businesses have to accept the reproduction of its labor pool as a cost that it must bear). but no matter.

the motherlode for this position is a 3-page article friedman published in 1970 in the new york times magazine--have a look, if you havent seen it:

http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroup...-business.html

it is remarkably crude logically, but remains of considerable ideological interest in that folk seem to actually agree with it. what i personally like about the article is its crudeness. generally, the claims made in it seem more plausible if you encounter them piecemeal, framed in other ways. but seeing the thing itself is good, i think.


the other arguments tried to introduce factors into consideration that depart from the premise that business is not a separate zone of space-time, but is in fact a social function. as it is a social function, engaging in it brings along bigger social obligations than simply generating profit.

it is routine these days for this debate to be framed around the fiction of the heroic individual entrepreneur, the high plains drifter kinda guy, whose heroic solitude comes with limitations--among these limitations are marginal profits which would be threatened were these clint eastwood types of pay their employees enough to actually live. this is an ideological choice which does not reflect the problems facing the major actors in american economic activity, which are large scale firms.

but the problem in the thread was that neither position really engaged with the other--so began the talking-by process and with that the usual namecalling and so it goes.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Elphaba

Just an aside, there isn't anyone here that doesn't recognize a$$ for what it means. Banning certain words is easily worked around.

I can see no value in banning political group affiliation identifiers in a forum dedicated to political discussion. Perjorative identifiers, such as "looney liberal," are against the rules and that should be sufficient.

highthief

It was in repsonse to the "interesting experiment" phrase used previously. Of course, banning individual words doesn't work in the long run, it'd be interesting to see what happened, however.

I stand by my previous comments - ban anyone with an "o" in their screeen name, they ain't nothing but trouble!

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Si vis pacem parabellum.

frogza

In some cities you get rival gangs like crypts and bloods, around capitol buildings you get gangs called republicans and democrats. The only difference between the two is one uses guns to hurt their enemies and the other use their puppet news channels. They both regularly break the law to achive their ends. If we, the public, weren't caught in the middle it would be laughable.

host

Looks to me that what we have here, is another politics thread that centers on "feelings based" opinions.

Other examples of the clash between "feelings" driven posts and detail driven posts, can be observed recently on the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=105988">An interesting experience with a soldier</a> thread.

A poster who says he is a soldier serving in Iraq, posted that the insurgency is comprised primarily of foreign fighters. Opposition to this premise was provided in the form of linked citations to comments of U.S. military generals made between 2003 and late 2005 that state that the Iraqi insurgency is comprised of, at most, ten percent foreign fighters. Citations included links to quotes on DOD web pages.....

The response to these citations, in the "feelings" based posted opinions, was that the post that contained the quotes of generals and their details, were not worth reading, and that the post of the member serving in Iraq was more credible....and no supportive documentation, that could be examined by the rest of us was provided.....and it's similar to that kind of exchange....over and over....

On the minimum wage thread, the "feeling" in some posts, is that the government has no business setting a minimum wage. Those who "feel" that way, tend to oppose progressive taxation and inheritance taxes. They advocate a prohibition on the majority using it's superior numbers to levy progressive taxes on the richest, who are fewer in numbers.

There was no response on that thread to the documentation that I posted from a Federal Reserve web page, that shows statistics that tell us that. even with the progressive taxation and the inheritance taxes in place, up to 2004, the richest one percent held 34 percent of the wealth, the next nine percent held 36.1 percent, the next forty percent held 27.4 percent, and that the bottom half.....150 million people, held only 2-1/2" percent of the total wealth in America....and that their share was dropping.

There was no response, that contained any references that could be examined....... to a report from a consumer watchdog org that showed that the 18 wealthiest American families had originated and funded a secret deceptive campaign....spending their millions to influence passage of "inheritance tax" reform.

It seemed to me that a "system" that already allowed the wealthiest 30 million to hold 70 percent of the total wealth, and the poorest 150 million, just 2-1/2 percent of the total wealth, certainly would not be jeopordized by a legislated raise in the minimum wage, or by leaving current inheritance tax laws in place.
It also seemed that "trickle down" politics....where the employer is freed from government regulation to provide more and better jobs, if the figures of wealth distribution are any measure....are a failed premise. The "feelings based" POV, saw no need to acknowledge or discuss the wealth distribution figures, let alone provide any referenced information that is contrary to those
figures.....

In short....."feelings based" posts put me at an extreme disadvantage, because I can only know what I learn from my research and the research that backs the opinions of other posters. "Feelings based" posts provide nothing for me to check and verify. These posts have more of a religious flavor than a political one....as they take so much "on faith".

A solution would be to divide this forum into two sections....a "feelings" or "faith based" posting section, where everyone "knows what they know", but can't or won't supply the sources of where they learned what they "know", and a section for those who endeavor to post every link and documented excerpt that supports our opinion and leads others to examine validity and reliability for themselves.

I'm sick of doing so much research, then sharing it, and then being told in response, that I don't know as much as a responder who won't direct me to where he gets his "facts". I feel like I'm running in place.....I'd rather engage people who bring their evidence to the table.....then defend it....a process that might actually lead to conclusions, consensus....agreement!

Willravel

The 9/11 conspiracy thread in Politics could have been a disaster. While a few individuals did make an effort to get it moved, almost all of the posters not only were able to show respect for one another, but were able to argue the facts...as if we were in some sort of political forum. GF, yes things can get bleak in here, and it takes thick skin to survive, but over all, I feel this is the place to be. While certian individuals and I will probalby never see eye to eye, that doesn't make our discussions any less relevant or valid.

Also, that was an excellent post, Host. I like the idea of splitting up politics into cerebral and emotional halfs. If only our govnernment could come to a similar understanding.

Elphaba

Has anyone noticed that Gator started a topic that has generated much interest and several valid points and no verbal blood has been shed? What's up with that?

roachboy

i think the problem that host raises runs parallel to the one i tried to raise (less eloquently, i might add) in that there is no agreement about types of argument that work here, nor on the relations of argument to evidence, nor on the ways in which disputes involving divergent types of argument are to be addressed. because there is no such agreement, what almost always happens is a kind of frame-switching in which an argument outlined in one register is countered by another in a wholly different register.
so positions simply talk past each other over and over again.
it gets kind of tiresome after a while.

you see this most obviously in arguments about economics, during the course of which factoids which are obviously and thoroughly embedded in very particular assumptions about the role of the economy in society, the relation between economic and state actors and so forth are simply presented as if the logic behind them required no explanation. routinely in these discussions, things tank quickly because posters, particularly those who work (often without knowing it) within a neoliberal framework seem to treat their ideology as a fact of nature, and so apparently have no idea how to either articulate their assumptions or defend them.
this too gets tiresome, but very quickly.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

reconmike

You see Host just because you cant google something does not mean it is not "fact", now your a talking about someone on the ground in Iraq, and dismissing his facts as there are more outside insurgents on the ground than you can google, well my son in law just returned from his second tour there and he has told me the same thing, plus numerous friends I have that are higher ranking troops have told me the same.

Who says you to determine what is "feelings or faith based" information?

I guess experience has no effect on learning, if it can not be googled.

Just sometimes people know what they know because they lived it, and experience "IS" the best teacher.

So just keep demanding "facts" by the click of a search engine, while I will take someones experiences over a NYT or Washington posts op-ed piece anytime.

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Where is Darwin when ya need him?

Willravel

Recon, the other day I asked a friend of mine stationed in Bagdad what he thought about the soldier raping the Iraqi woman. His response was "What?!". His experiences in Iraq did not and do not encompas the whole of the situation, therfore he is not the ultimate authority on things. There are still soldiers in Iraq who believe that Iraq had some sort of connection to 9/11. These kids aren't journalists, or historians, or political analists. They are soldiers. They have guns and humvees and they are in a crappy war.

I think what host was saying is that soldiers are just like anyone else. They can be wrong about stuff just as easily as the rest of us. In recognising that, we can accept a lack of understanding and then move forward in an effort to understand. That's poltics. Communicate, debate, learn, understand, act.

tecoyah

I would ask a soldier how war "feels".

I would ask a journalist how war "seems"

I would ask a politician how war "happens"

I would ask myself how war "tastes"



.......and I ask my friends on TFP all of the above, information breeds insight....whether I agree with it or not.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

irateplatypus

The TFP ethos, the principles that make the other boards so fun/stimulating, damages Tilted Politics. TFP wants to include everyone in the discussion, it wants to give a hearing to each person with something to say. Newbies and old salty dogs alike are given opportunity to join the discussion. These are all great things and are why I love the TFP... but it drags the Politics board down.

The mods do a great job enforcing the rules of TFP it's just that the rules don't lend themselves to sober discussion in an arena so charged with genuine passion/controversy. The trouble with this board is, quite honestly, the volume of mind-numbingly stupid comments. I'm not talking about the posts challenging my views (trust me, there are many conservative-type posts that make me cringe in horror)... i'm talking about the ill-considered abortions that contain demonstrably false information. God-forbid something be considered a *gasp* personal attack on another poster (forgive my sarcasm). The root problem isn't invective it's that paranoia and erroneous information creeps its way into each thread. Bans are expected for those hurling insults yet no accountability is applied to posting falsehoods. Real discussion takes a back-seat (on all sides, i know) to stamping out the stupid.

Now, I know that fact-checking every post isn't the mod's job. And I also realize that conflicting information can be posted with complete integrity and goodwill from all parties. Still, much of what I read on here just can't be taken seriously.

Sorry. I realize this is more of an impotent rant as I'm not really proposing a remedy. This is something I've come to accept when discussing politics online. Short of altering TFP's guiding principles (please don't!), or creating an invite-only board (like Trampoline), I don't know of any good alternatives. As condescending as this post probably reads, I hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt. I'd sure like to see this board improve and am willing to take honest criticism/advice on how I can help.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Dilbert1234567

the 9/11 conspiracy post in politics was the only political discussion I actually got into, I felt that every conspiracy theory was answered completely and debunked, beyond that, other threads seem to go down hill to fast for me, and i just bail out.

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"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

host

reconmike, it might help for me to tell you that "google" was not involved in locating the following information. I went to U.S. military sites and looked for 2006 statements of U.S. generals. The following is the info that the generals told reporters, and then made available to our troops as "news briefings" and to the general public. It seems pretty clear that the generals on the ground in Iraq,,,,including the commander of our forces in northern Iraq, stated the exact opposite of what you stated in your post.

I am showing you why I consider what you post on this subject is "feelings", and not fact. There is a consistant record in statements from our generals, from 2003 until now...that "foreign fighters" make up an insignifigant number of those who participate violently in the Iraqi insurgency, or who are fighting against U.S. troops in Iraq. General Thomas Turner said that we <b>"still find very limited evidence of foreign fighters".</b> The generals have consistantly told the press the same thing during all of the last four calendar years.

If what you believe is accurate, wouldn't forces as skilled and effective as those that the U.S. fields in Iraq, be able to show mounds of "evidence", in the form of the bodies of KIA foreign fighters, and the wounded and other captured ones, also? They haven't been able to come up with evidence that
foreign fighters are fighting alongside the Iraqi insurgents in any signifigant numbers....because, in all probability, they are not in Iraq in a signifigant number...just 800 to 1000, in an insurgency estimated to be 20000 in number.
So....that is 4 or 5 percent, as the generals have said....and that is an indignifigant number...and it has not chamged since 2003.

That is the way it is, reconmike...anecdotal evidence from what you've heard from individual soldiers who have spent time in Iraq, notwithstanding.