Where do we draw the line between political discussion and ideological spam? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ottopilot · 12-26-2007, 12:48 PM

Where do we draw the line between political discussion and ideological spam?

IMO - the most frequent authors of political threads here are essentially using this forum as a personal blog space.

Is this forum the appropriate place to establish such a soapbox?
What are reasonable solutions or alternatives.
Should these questions be raised elsewhere?

The answer for me is to ignore them and try not to be like them...because I'm also part of the problem if I participate at that same level.

roachboy · 12-26-2007, 12:59 PM

i'm unclear what you are saying.

what exactly is "ideological spam"?
it sounds snappy but is lacking in the actual power to refer to something.
is it:
political views that you don't like?
long posts that you actually have to read to understand?
or is it the quality of "discussion" that ensues?

if it's the quality of "discussion" then the problem lay with each of us.
but somehow i dont think this is about self-criticism.

no, somehow i think this is a potentially not productive at all kvetch about other members----but if that's all this is--or if that's what this becomes---i'll shut it down in a heartbeat.

The_Jazz · 12-26-2007, 01:20 PM

I agree with roachboy on most all of his points. I'm not sure what "ideological spam" is. Philosophical viagra? Socratic penis enlargement? Nigerian economics?

And he and I, along with the entire staff, especially agree with this part

Quote:

no, somehow i think this is a potentially not productive at all kvetch about other members----but if that's all this is--or if that's what this becomes---i'll shut it down in a heartbeat.

If you think that Politics is being used inefficiently, you're more than welcome to try to use it more efficiently. This space - Tilted Politics - can be shaped in any shape the membership wants. So long as all users stay within the rules that are laid out in the stickies, it can be anything you want it to be. If you don't like what it is, change it.

jewels · 12-26-2007, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

the most frequent authors of political threads here are essentially using this forum as a personal blog space.

The answer for me is to ignore them.

Since you have the same freedom to post your opinions, I take it you disagree with the "frequent authors"? Why not become one of them so you can be heard as well? For every post, there are two sides.

Try not to take things personally. This is politics, after all. Things should get heated.

Or take your own advice and ignore them.

dc_dux · 12-26-2007, 01:29 PM

I suspect one person's ideological spam here is another person's credible source to support an opinion.

If the forum ever becomes solely a place to share personal opinions without allowing any external resources (ideological spam?), I'll be gone.

I've become more informed as a result of many of the links provided here....from both sides of the political spectrum. I know which links are "ideological spam" and most other TFP politicos are equally intelligent and open-minded to evaluate the credibility of posted links. On the other hand, I've learned very little from undocumented, ideologically-drive personal opinions and snippy one-liners.

If I may kvetch at a general level, what I find frustrating here is when I respond to a post that I know is factually incorrect or a misrepresentation of the facts (and I can support with credible source information) and ask the person to reply to my documented response....and I am met with silence.

I have concluded that there are some here who dont want to debate and discuss the issues if their posts are questioned for credibility or if factual information is provided that is counter to their own opinions.

Ustwo · 12-26-2007, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Where do we draw the line between political discussion and ideological spam?

IMO - the most frequent authors of political threads here are essentially using this forum as a personal blog space.

Is this forum the appropriate place to establish such a soapbox?
What are reasonable solutions or alternatives.
Should these questions be raised elsewhere?

The answer for me is to ignore them.

Welcome brother.

Sometimes its fun to poke their cages, but the chance of any serious political discussion here is pretty slim these days. This wasn't always the case, but I think its our reality for a while, current moderators and administrators don't' see it as a problem so instead we get what we have.

I found your PM to me sort of sad, but it only reinforces my opinion of you as no one with a full deck of cards would continue

Don't do what others have and just bow out of TFP once they figure out how the politics board works, there can be some good posts on the rest of the board.

dc_dux · 12-26-2007, 02:51 PM

Ustwo.....help me understand how there can be more productive discussions here if some are unwilling to respond when their posts are questioned or challenged in a reasonable and respectful manner?

Or why "poking the cages" is the best way for some to contribute to this forum?

The_Jazz · 12-26-2007, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

This wasn't always the case, but I think its our reality for a while, current moderators and administrators don't' see it as a problem so instead we get what we have.

Again, this space is what you make it. If you the membership don't like it, then you have yourselves to blame. We do not pre-approve topics or require that everyone have the same views. We simply ask that you exibit a modicum of respect for each other and enforce that when necessary. If you could manage to keep personal insults out of the conversation, then you'd never see the colored script that we have to resort to using.

We'd love to see more debate and differing viewpoints. Let us know how we can attract that and still uphold the basic principles of the site. But don't blame us because you don't like the product you have created.

Ustwo · 12-26-2007, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Jazz

Again, this space is what you make it. If you the membership don't like it, then you have yourselves to blame. We do not pre-approve topics or require that everyone have the same views. We simply ask that you exibit a modicum of respect for each other and enforce that when necessary. If you could manage to keep personal insults out of the conversation, then you'd never see the colored script that we have to resort to using.

We'd love to see more debate and differing viewpoints. Let us know how we can attract that and still uphold the basic principles of the site. But don't blame us because you don't like the product you have created.

As long as this is the type of thing that this board brings...

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=129296

You will continue to lose moderate/right posters and just have a little daily KOS.

roachboy · 12-26-2007, 04:17 PM

that's great ustwo.

please stop being coy.

if you have something to say--and can manage to say it without getting the thread shut down--just lay your cards on the table.

Charlatan · 12-26-2007, 04:59 PM

I have to agree with Jazz that the forum and the board in general is what you make of it. The mods and admin are here only to make sure some simple rules are followed.

You aren't always going to read things that you like. I read things on here from across the political spectrum that I don't agree with. Does it get my blood boiling? Sure. That's politics.

There are some people on here with varying degrees of knowledge and experience, from across the political spectrum. I have been sad to see some drift off over the last while. While it may seem that it has largely been those from the "right" that have left, I would say that we have also lost many from the "left" as well. These people have left for different reasons but from what I can see they have left for a couple of reasons:

1) People come here to give their opinion and when someone with a different point of view calls them on their opinion they don't like it. Many people do not like to be challenged in their world view. Some stick around to scrap for a while, other's leave right away.

2) People come here to have a discussion but find the discussion devolving into partisan squabbles, and quickly. I have feeling that many would like to have two Politics boards. One for the "left" and one for the "right" where each side can devour their own tails in endless backslapping and finger pointing at the other camp. The only way to solve this is for people to raise the level of discussion (i.e. where people actually discuss rather than just whip off one liners or post voluminous tracts that leave little room for debate). The key to debate/discussion is both reading the other person's words and making a genuine attempt to understand what they are writing before you reply.

3) Some people's tone of writing is extremely arrogant and off-putting. There is a reason why many moderates do not even dip their toes in the water here any more. The derisive and dismissive tone of many posters here is horrible. The arrogance that some have in their positions is unconscionable. The quickest way to lose a debate is to piss off your interlocutor.

There are other reasons but most boil down to these points.

Here is my New Year's wish...

Take these three points to heart and raise the level of discussion.

1) Respect the other person in writing even if you don't respect their point of view.

2) Support for your position is important but not always essential. The thing to remember is you can go too far in either direction.

3) Try to see things from the other person's point of view.

Happy New Year.

filtherton · 12-26-2007, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

As long as this is the type of thing that this board brings...

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=129296

You will continue to lose moderate/right posters and just have a little daily KOS.

If you're disappointed by the fact that the politics board can't be brought into pep-rally formation at the snap of the fingers then i'm happy that you aren't satisfied with it.

I appreciate the work of the military, but i also think that it's important to acknowledge the murky moral and ethical areas in which their work and the desires of the people who make them do that work reside.

The_Jazz · 12-26-2007, 05:03 PM

Ustwo, I happen to agree with everything that uber said in closing that thread. It was a drunken sailor. It had no idea where it was headed, only that it was lurching from side to side and spoiling for a fight. When I originally saw it, I thought very hard about moving out of Politics but decided that it was best left alone, which is what we do with over 99% of all the threads here.

I suppose I could throw this back in your lap and say that if you would actually speak your mind on subjects like you used to, you could have turned that thread into something interesting, but I won't. roachboy, ubertuber myself and the rest of the staff have had many discussions on how to build Politics. So I WILL throw this into your lap - how do you propose we do that? Or should we just get rid of it altogether since it's broken beyond repair. And please, no name calling and no driveby posts. They will irritate us equally.

ubertuber · 12-26-2007, 05:06 PM

We should all bear in mind that we live in the world that we've created.

Baraka_Guru · 12-26-2007, 06:54 PM

The only interpretation of the problem issued by the OP I can come up with is this: The creation of discussions in Politics is done with a distinct bias. There is no debate structured without bias--it is always leaning in one direction; it is framed in such a way that disagreeing with the OP is inherently divergent of what is "acceptable."

In a way, it reminds me of Foucault's concept of Gouvernementalité in that the threads created in Politics act as a form of overreaching governance in which the OP (and its adherents, no matter how loose) seeks to control the detractors through means of restricted and exclusive "knowledge" (savoir). Anything that disagrees with this knowledge is not only automatically wrong, it is already accounted for with a complex system of watchers who refer to the OP as the single source of power.

Basically, to disagree with the OP is to be wrong....because the OPer is not only entitled to their ideas, they hold the power over the ideas and how they govern the thread. This causes the thread to go nowhere (logically) and no real debate can arise.

If we want debates in Politics, we need them to be formally set up through a panel of moderators, and the posting needs to be done formally and with a sense of order.

So, the question is: Do we want to go that far? Or, we could ask: How can we move closer to the formal model without losing the accessibility of the medium of Internet forums?

EDIT: This does not refer to all Politics threads, merely threads that the OP would consider "ideological spam."

host · 12-26-2007, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

......2) Support for your position is important but not always essential. The thing to remember is you can go too far in either direction.

3) Try to see things from the other person's point of view.

Happy New Year.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=106130 post #11

Quote:

....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.

Charlatan · 12-26-2007, 07:26 PM

The key, host, is to be able to tell which is which and respond accordingly.

ratbastid · 12-26-2007, 07:58 PM

Sooooo... I guess we're all going to close our eyes and pretend that the OP isn't a veiled personal attack on host? Or is it just veiled enough to fly? Has it successfully tested the line? Is it just vague enough that only 90% of regular Politics posters know who he's talking about?

It's a shame. If the people who whine about the length of his posts actually read them, the foundation of their views would be utterly rocked. Sadly, his medium makes his message all but indigestible. He and I have talked about that in PM, I'm pretty sure I'm not surprising him by saying this is how I feel about his posting style. The content he posts is challenging and hard for people to deal with, AND you couldn't really do it justice any other way, AND doing it this way ensures they don't have to deal with it but can instead bitch about their worn out scroll button. Catch-22.

Laying that aside and addressing the "issues" raised in this hit-job of an OP:

This is really simple. It's not like TFP is going to run out of threads. Don't like threads others started? Start some of your own. Ain't nothing perfect in this world, and TFP Politics is DEFINITELY in this world.

Trying to change the way others post is as futile as trying to push water back into a fire hose. And when the ones you're complaining about happen to disagree with you, it's just downright suspect. So stop either a) whining or b) trying to put a fence around content you disagree with, and start generating some content of your own.

Ustwo: Just because the world has provided ample evidence that now makes it impossible to defend your beliefs doesn't mean there's no quality discussion anymore. It just means it's gotten vanishingly difficult for you to win an argument. Blaming it on the damn liberals is poor sportsmanship. And it's just inaccurate. You'd do better to blame it on reality--which as Colbert points out has a well-known liberal bias.

Personally, I think the Christmas-to-the-troops-in-Politics thread was really interesting. The big reaction to how political it got was SO perfect, given what people were posting about how politicized the troops have become. That thread TOTALLY illustrated its own point. We hardly ever get anything so symmetrical around here.

Charlatan · 12-26-2007, 08:14 PM

Ratbastid, I think yes, the post is directed mostly at host, however, I have been following ottopilot's posting here and don't feel it was an attack per se. Rather, I feel it was a genuine query (unless I have completely misread ottopilot).

ottopilot · 12-26-2007, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Ustwo.....help me understand how there can be more productive discussions here if some are unwilling to respond when their posts are questioned or challenged in a reasonable and respectful manner?

Or why "poking the cages" is the best way for some to contribute to this forum?

dc_dux, if this is in reference to me, I apologize because I left the house for several hours (computer on).

These are the questions I asked:

Is this forum the appropriate place to establish such a soapbox (idealogical spam)?
What are reasonable solutions or alternatives?
Should these questions be raised elsewhere?

What are your responses to the questions? Here are some brief answers from me.

I see some frequent OP authors as very agenda driven with deep biases. The delivery and shear volume of information reminds me more of political blogging with comments rather than trying to foster a genuine discussion. A "discussion forum" is not the appropriate place to establish a personal blog. Would it be more appropriate to blog in the journal spaces provided? You can disagree with that assessment, agree, and we can discuss it if you like.
I edited the OP with this response regarding some of the comments that followed. Until things change, here is my response: "The answer for me is to ignore them and try not to be like them...because I'm also part of the problem if I participate at that same level." Only a few responses have attempted to provide any feedback regarding reasonable solutions or alternatives. Besides what I may think, I hoped to get some constructive input.
I'm letting the moderators know that I understand how this thread may not be appropriate for politics, and that I am cool if they move it or shut it down. What do you think, should this be discussed elsewhere?

Ustwo · 12-26-2007, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Ustwo.....help me understand how there can be more productive discussions here if some are unwilling to respond when their posts are questioned or challenged in a reasonable and respectful manner?

Or why "poking the cages" is the best way for some to contribute to this forum?

dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either. There are certain posters I do always read, as they often have something interesting and perhaps not typical to say, but that list has gotten smaller and smaller since I joined tfp. Again back when I joined tfp and had more energy for this I quickly discovered the moderators at the time didn't read a lot of the posts either from certain posters with perhaps the most amusing being I had to point out to moderators that telling me to 'get Karl Roves cock out of your mouth' wasn't in fact to board protocol, and that they had to even defend me as not trolling by predicting Bush would win in 2004.

As for poking the cages, sometimes its fun to point out some follies on the other side, even if I know it will get the expected response. When someone says 'hey remember the troops on Christmas' and you KNOW how it will end before the first response, there is a problem.

Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

Willravel · 12-26-2007, 11:36 PM

If you can't be bothered to read an OP or a response directed at you, there are lighter parts of TFP—General Discussion, Nonsense, Entertainment, etc.—that can engage you and that you can engage in a smaller time. I can't see myself making a 12,000 word post in Found on the Net, but here? It's happened. If, for example, host created a thread which has several linked and posted articles along with a great deal of his own thoughts, and you can't see yourself giving that your full attention and reading it, there's a nice thread about the new Batman movie in Entertainment. Posting "I didn't have time to read the OP, but..." is a disservice to everyone.

To address the OP, this is a highly subjective question. One man's 'ideological spam' is another man's brilliant thesis on life. Aside from infantile posts including things like name calling, personal attacks, fallacies, etc., many of which break the rules of TFP, it's hard for us all to come to a decision about the quality of a topic.

FoolThemAll · 12-27-2007, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

It's a shame. If the people who whine about the length of his posts actually read them, the foundation of their views would be utterly rocked. Sadly, his medium makes his message all but indigestible. He and I have talked about that in PM, I'm pretty sure I'm not surprising him by saying this is how I feel about his posting style. The content he posts is challenging and hard for people to deal with, AND you couldn't really do it justice any other way, AND doing it this way ensures they don't have to deal with it but can instead bitch about their worn out scroll button. Catch-22.

I'll blame 90% of it on my own unrepentant laziness, but as for the other 10%...

Sometimes host's multipage sources just don't bear any significant relevance to the topic at hand. Sometimes I'll take the time to peruse what he's posted and I'll come up empty-handed. I'll cite that Haggard-themed post of months ago - and I'll search it up if you want - where his lengthy reply to me didn't actually address my argument whatsoever.

Again, it's mainly laziness... but it's also a not entirely unreasonable fear of wasted time. I don't buy it - I think increased brevity could do more justice to his posts in at least a few cases.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog.

Why post in the discussions if you consider them impossible? Is there a reason, other than trolling, that I'm not seeing?

host · 12-27-2007, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either.....

.......Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

Ustwo, consider that, compared to your posted POV, the reactions in the last two quote boxes in this post is quite a bit closer to what a reasonable person might think after reading what is REPORTED between this point in this post, and the two quoted "considerations" of the troops. I read that the troops are "fighting to preserve our rights and to keep us safe", in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I know I have less rights and there is no evidence that combat in either country has contributed to "our safety" here in our "homeland". In fact, the record supports the opposite conclusion.

We don't want harm to come to them, we just cannot support, in view of the record, their decisions to be part of what has and is still happening. They volunteered to do this, and, at least since then end of 2003, they had the potential to be aware of what they have been volunteering to do:

The 9/11 attacks, if you accept the government's official accounts, took place because 19 airline hijackers, 15 of them from Saudi Arabia, were able to breech airport security and then muscle their way into the cockpits of 4 large airline passenger jets....

Quote:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/cr_036.htm
September 11, 2001 : Attack on America
Congressional Record Senate Airline Safety; October 31, 2001

AIRLINE SAFETY -- (Senate - October 31, 2001)

[Page: S11280]

---

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, we are fiddling while Rome burns. The headline in this morning's Washington Post, ``Airport Security Crackdown Ordered,'' particularly galls this Senator. I have been with the FAA since its creation. I have been on the Commerce Committee for right at 35 years. I worked with the old Civil Aeronautics Board. We tried our best to get this entity in ship shape over many years.

It was only the year before last that we finally got the monies that should have gone to airport safety and improvement to go to airport safety and improvement.

We had, in 1988, Pan Am 103. We had extensive hearings. And what did we come up with? What we came up with is exactly what they write in the editorial here, that what we really need is more training and more supervision--``help wanted.'' And then we had further hijackings.

We had the TWA Flight 800 in 1996, and we had further hearings. We had the Gore commission. What did they recommend? The same old, same old of more training and more supervision, more oversight. Got to get stern about this. Crackdowns.

Last year, we passed the FAA authorization bill. And what did we call for? We called for more supervision, more training, and then 5,000 people were killed. And we have folks over on the House side, most respectfully, who do not understand that we have lost these 5,000. Terrorists came along with cardboard knives and committed mass murder, and everything else like that, but they say don't worry about what happened on 9-11.

What happened just this last week? Last week, a man boarded a plane with a pistol down in New Orleans. The individual remembered he had the gun and said: Oh, my heavens. Then he turned it over to the airline crew, or otherwise. And the same airline security firm that was fined last year in Philadelphia for hiring criminals is still hiring criminals.

The Senate reacted. We got together. We had hearings. We had the airline pilots, the airline crews, the assistants, the airline executives--everyone connected--and they endorsed the approach of federalization; that this was a public safety role, need and responsibility. This coalition determined resolutely that we could not toy with this anymore after that tremendous loss on 9-11 and continue to play games with more oversight and more supervision and more training.

And ordering crackdowns: Can you imagine that, ordering a crackdown 7 weeks afterwards? Why not that afternoon, that night, or the next morning? A crackdown? Oh, no, they had to think of the airlines first, while the airlines themselves are begging for safety because they realize that ensuring passenger safety is essential to reviving the industry. The Senate passed our bill 100-zip; every Republican, every Democrat voted for it. Our measure is, more than anything, an airline stimulus bill.

Americans are not going to get on these planes as long as there is fear, and we have the insecurity that we have. They are not going to get on the planes as long as they have U.S. Air Force planes flying over them ready to shoot them down.

With our bill that stops immediately. Once you secure that cockpit door, not to be opened in flight, there is no reason for hijackings because you can't.

All you can do is start a fight in the cabin, knowing that the order to the pilot is to land at the nearest airport where law enforcement is going to be there and you are going to prison. That is the Israeli El Al approach. We outlined it. We provided the diagram for the El Al plan that I still have. If I had time this morning, I would show it. It is a perimeter defense. In 30 years El Al has not had a hijacking.

Don't talk to me about European private airport security. Sure, European security personnel is better paid because all the European folks are supported for retirement and health care. These minimum wage folks have no retirement, no health care, no security, no anything. And the security firms are worried that they may quit. They all are quitting. That has been the experience at the Hartsfield airport in Atlanta. There has been over 400-percent turnover there. They don't stay there longer than 3 months.

Yet the opposition to real airport security has stories going around. The reason I came to the floor is to again bring attention to the commonsensical, thorough, and bipartisan fashion with which the Senate approached airline security. They are still talking about the Democratic bill on the House side. You can't get it any more bipartisan unless we are going to let the pages vote. Maybe we ought to do that. I mean, can't we get the truth to the American people that we are ready, willing, able, and glad to pay for it, $2.50 per flight? The polls show people would be willing to pay $25 added to a ticket, glad to do it. But we can take care of it with $2.50 so there is no question about being paid for.

The fundamentals of safety have to be hammered home to our colleagues on the House side. We are not playing games anymore. Noone wants to contract out the FBI. I wonder what the President wants? We were told a month ago that the President would go along with our bill. We felt absolutely secure. But they have some political machinations going on over there with Mr. ARMEY and Mr. DELAY. And Mr. ARMEY says: I don't want them all to join a union. Well, they all can join the unions under the private contractor. In fact, a third of them have. The reason the other two-thirds have not, is they can't read the application in order to join. They are refugees and immigrants. The application is in English. Go ahead to the airports. I go through there regularly, almost every week. They just cannot speak the language. That is no fault of their own. They are getting what jobs they can. But we can't do this with Americans' and the airline travelers' safety at risk.

We would not contract out the Capitol Police or the Border Patrol or the Secret Service or the FBI or defense. What is the matter with the Government? You just heard about a bill--all the defense workers at the Charleston naval shipyard, all the ``navalees'' belong to a union. You just heard the majority leader talk about laying down to conservative interests. I am not talking pro-union or anti-union. I am saying federal public safety officers cannot strike and they can be fired. This particular Senator supported President Reagan when he had to take that approach with the airline pilots. But we fiddle while Rome burns.

Would we ever not just contract out? Would we ever give our safety to foreign corporations? Can you imagine taking the defense and contracting it out, or the FBI, to the Swedish company or the Secret Service to the Netherlands company? These are the firms responsible for airline security now. The airlines get the lowest bidder, and they couldn't care less.

That English company, they were fined for hiring criminals

and falsifying their background checks. And since the time of the court fines, they have continued to hire criminals and not give the background checks. Yet they say: Well, let's see what they want. Let's get flexibility. You aren't going to have flexibility with the FBI or Secret Service or the Capitol Police. There is not flexibility. It is safety. That is what they have to understand over there, that we are not going to give it to the foreign companies.

We are not going to have the momentary safety checks or the European system. We are going to have the El Al, the Israeli system that has worked, proof positive, for 30 years. Once you secure that cockpit and they know there can't be a hijacking, you can take all these F-15s and F-16s and National Guard reserves that are flying all night long over Washington and New York and wherever and say: Save the money and save the time. Let them go back to their work. There is not going to be a hijacking. There is not going to be a plane shot down. If there is an attempted hijacking, it is down to the first landing and on to jail. That is where they are headed. They know that. So our terrorist adversaries will find some other way, like the mail and anthrax, but not the airlines.

[Page: S11281]

Security has to be comprehensive. Under El Al, they check thoroughly and rotate the screeners from the boarding gates, to the tarmac and to cleaning out the aisles.....

And this is what it costs because industry lobbyists bought congress in the name of the greedy agenda of airline execs, instead of emulating Israeli airline security experience of nearly 30 years:

<a href="http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/WarFundingFactSheet11-20-07.pdf">$66.8 billion</a>

<a href="http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:bP6f4YxuicEJ:www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm%3Findex%3D7506%26type%3D1+war+appropriations+since+2002&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us">Estimated Appropriations Provided for Iraq and the War on
Terrorism, 2001-2006
(Billions of dollars, by fiscal year)
</a>

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122601542.html
<h3>Wars Cost $15 Billion a Month, GOP Senator Says</h3>
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2007; Page A07

.....His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year.

While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month that the Bush administration's request for the 2008 fiscal year of $189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006. .....

...."Stevens is being realistic," said Gordon Adams, who served as the senior national security official at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1997, in the Clinton administration.
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Pointing out that Bush's request comes out to $15.8 billion per month, Adams said: "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror are not getting cheaper. . . . This will go down some, as the surge comes home, but not as much as people think."

He added: "More and more of these so-called emergency funds are being used to repair and buy new military hardware," because "the Pentagon is worried that defense budgets will start to go down next year."

The CRS reports that a good part of the increased spending is not only for replacing lost equipment but "more often to upgrade and replace 'stressed' equipment and enhance force protection." It noted that a recent Congressional Budget Office study "found that more than 40% of the Army's spending for repair and replacement of war-worn equipment" was "spent to upgrade systems to increase capability, to buy equipment to eliminate longstanding shortfalls in inventory" and to convert new combat units to more flexible organizational structures.

Stevens made it clear that the $70 billion in the omnibus bill for the wars will cover only costs for the six months ending March 31, when Congress will again have to wrestle with a supplemental spending bill to pay for the wars. By then, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, will have presented Congress with their update on the situation in Iraq.

Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that he hopes troop levels, which drive costs, could continue to go down in 2008. But he warned that they would continue only "if conditions on the ground" permit sustaining "the gains we have already made."

One indication of how fast costs are rising is that operations and maintenance costs for all of fiscal 2007 were $72 billion, and the entire fiscal year 2008 request was $81 billion, according to the CRS.....

Spending since 2001 on Iraq war and the rest of "war on terror" will reach $600 billion, in addition to a rise in annual military spending to nearly $500 billion annually. It was $250 billion in year ending 9/30/00.

The expenditures for the war do not include more than $100 billion that the VA will require to provide medical care and benefits for wounded troops.

...and the president's family and cronies make a mint off of the war spending:
(Documented in the lower portion of the post): http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...08&postcount=8

Consider that, with the exception of Bush's uncle, his brother, father, and numerous cronies began to make huge amounts from war related opportunities, by late in 2003. Four years have passed since most of the details reported at the above link.

Bush administration approved, human rights violations and a vigorous coverup that dumped the consequences on enlisted military personnel have been well publicized:

Quote:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/story/17167.html
Commentary: Re-open investigation of Abu Ghraib
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Wednesday, June 20, 2007

We were reminded again this week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can’t be hidden until it’s forgotten.

The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh’s on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.

Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, U.S. Army retired, was an accidental choice to conduct one of 17 Pentagon investigations of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was grabbed because he wore two stars, and they needed someone of that rank to probe a case that involved a one-star general.

The trouble was that Tony Taguba was honest and thorough and reported in detail, early and often, to his superiors on the evidence he was uncovering - film and photos of abuses far worse than those the public saw. There was sexual abuse of female prisoners by their American military guards and forced sex acts between a father and his young son.

He wasn't authorized to investigate any higher up the chain of command than the hapless Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, and so he didn't.

But when his report was completed, Taguba had a hard time getting anyone in the Pentagon - where the powers that be were determined to push responsibility down to a staff sergeant and even lower ranking guards - to read it....

The flawed post invasion planning, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and lack of justification for invading two sovereign nations which never attacked the US, has resulted in tragic loss of life to 4000 US troops, with 12 times as many injured, huge numbers of foreign civilian casualties, and as close to the opposite of what our elected officials claimed to be achieving, as it is possible to measure, at this point:

Quote:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/...24military.php
Billions in aid to Pakistan was wasted, officials assert
By DAVID ROHDE, CARLOTTA GALL, ERIC SCHMITT AND DAVID E. SANGER
The money the U.S. spent to bolster the Pakistani military effort against militants has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, officials said....

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004964.php
State Dept Document from 2005 Shows Fraud in Blackwater's Iraq Contract
By Spencer Ackerman - December 21, 2007, 11:40AM

....Yet despite its own internal watchdog's finding of fraudulence in Blackwater's Iraq contract, months later, the State Department re-signed a deal with the company to provide security for U.S. diplomats.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...121802262.html
<h3>All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows</h3>

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007; Page A14

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month.

That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically [propagandistically] concluded, <h3>the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs"</h3> that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.... <h3>[Did Stephen Colbert write that?]</h3>....

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/wa.../25policy.html U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: November 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections....

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,5019026.story
Iraq's bid to pass bills dead for year Parliament suspends its session, but may extend it into January to take up legislation deemed crucial by the U.S.
From the Associated Press
December 7, 2007

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi legislators suspended parliamentary sessions Thursday until Dec. 30 because of Muslim religious holidays, ending efforts to pass U.S.-backed legislation aimed at achieving national reconciliation this year.

The Sunni speaker of parliament announced the decision after days of debate over a draft bill that would allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to government jobs. The measure is among the 18 benchmarks set by the United States to encourage reconciliation.

Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani said many lawmakers would be making the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which culminates with Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice. Others were expected to leave the capital to spend the festival with their families elsewhere in Iraq or abroad. The holiday begins around Dec. 20.

Dec. 30 is one day before the end of the current term for parliament. Lawmakers normally would take a recess for two months at that time, but they were expected to extend the term by a month so they could meet in January to pass a budget and other important measures, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject....

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4503892.story

The U.S. troop buildup has brought down violence, but that has failed to spark cooperation among politicians. If anything, the country appears more balkanized into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2007 .....

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/wo.../30afghan.html
Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban
By DAVID ROHDE
Published: October 30, 2007

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”

In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.

In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.

Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.

The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.

Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.

But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.

At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.

Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.

“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”

Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.

“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”

In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.....

Quote:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WOWII/
Baghdad Bonanza
The Top 100 Private Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

By Bill Buzenberg

KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company, according to a new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the Center's list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds.

Another private security company, Blackwater USA, whose employees recently killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in what the Iraqi government alleges was an unprovoked attack, is 12th on the list of companies and joint ventures, with $485 million in contracts. (On November 14, the New York Times reported that FBI investigators have concluded that 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, and that Justice Department prosecutors are weighing whether to seek indictments.) First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, which immediately precedes Blackwater on the Top 100, came under fire in July after a pair of whistleblowers told a House committee that the company essentially "kidnapped" low-paid foreign laborers brought in to help build the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. First Kuwaiti and the U.S. State Department denied the charges.

Other key findings from the Center's analysis:

<h3>• Over the three years studied, more than $20 billion in contracts went to foreign companies whose identities—at least so far—are impossible to determine.</h3>

• Nearly a third of the companies and joint ventures on the Top 100 are based outside the United States. These foreign contractors, along with the $20 billion in contracts awarded to the unidentified companies, account for about 45 percent of all funds obligated to the Top 100....

<h3>Consider that the US now has 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, plus much smaller forces fielded by NATO allies, and remember that in 2001, US "victory" over the Taleban government in all of Afghanistan was accomplished with several Special Forces "A" teams, a rag tag indigenous rebel army, which was nearly eliminated by the Taleban just before 9/11, and by the US air power available to the "A" teams coordination.</h3>

Consider that US administration threats against Iran and it's nuclear threat and involvement in Iraqi resistance was intentionally exaggerated:

Quote:

http://dni.gov/press_releases/20070202_release.pdf
Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead
January 2007

...Iraq’s neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics. Nonetheless, Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq.....

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021201537.html By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; Page A18

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Pace told Voice of America during a visit to Australia. "What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this."

Special Report
America at War

Washington Post coverage of the U.S. military and its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."....

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200707181...97,print.story
Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency outlined Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.
By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer

July 15, 2007

BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers....

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

Consider the waste, corruption, and lack of progress achieved in two avoidable invasions and occupations "of choice", versus unmet needs of our own domestic population:

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/us...gewanted=print
December 24, 2007
In Kentucky’s Teeth, Toll of Poverty and Neglect
By IAN URBINA

BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.

He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers.

He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.

But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.

Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.

“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.

Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less than a fourth of the state’s dentists regularly take Medicaid, according to 2005 federal data.

Until August 2006, when the system was revamped, the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate was also one of the lowest in the country. Experts say this contributed to the shortage of dentists in poorer and more rural areas.

The state dental director, Dr. Julie Watts McKee, said that last year, Medicaid reimbursement for children’s dental services was raised by about 30 percent.

But even with this increase, which was paid for by cutting orthodontic benefits, reimbursement fees remain about 50 percent below market rate, said Dr. Ken Rich, the state’s dental director for Medicaid. And for adults, Dr. Rich said, they are about 65 percent below market rate.

“Not much has changed over the years here, really,” said Glen D. Anderson, who for two decades has made dentures in Corbin, Ky. He sells a pair of dentures for $400 that many dentists sell for more than $1,200. Like his brother, father and grandfather, he makes them without a license.

“Bootleggers exist here for a reason,” Mr. Anderson said. “People need teeth, but they can’t afford to go to dentists for dentures.”....

Consider "the troops"....since as far back as late in 2003, did they sign enlistment contracts in the midst of an information embargo, or did they know what they were likely to be doing, and the ethics and motivations of who would be commanding them? Are they responsible individual adults? Is it not possible to be ambivalent about them, and their "service", under the circumstances I have just outlined and documented, while neither "supporting them in their decision to participate in this ongoing clusterfuck, nor wishing them harm, and NOT be LABELLED "Far Left", or a "Traitor", or "unAmerican"?

Quote:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015663.php
By Steve Benen 07.21.07

Aside from the tragedy of the war itself, one of the more disconcerting elements of the ongoing political debate is just how little progress we've seen in nearly five years. Vapid arguments that were absurd in 2003 are still used routinely. Offensive talking points that were discredited before the invasion even began still appear in major news outlets.

Take, for example, the <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/901rhkhq.asp">latest diatribe</a> from William Kristol.

<i>"With the ongoing progress of the surge, and the obvious fact that the vast majority of the troops want to fight and win the war, the "support-the-troops-but-oppose-what-they're-doing" position has become increasingly untenable. How can you say with a straight face that you support the troops while advancing legislation that would undercut their mission and strengthen their enemies? You can't. [...]

Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support.... [The troops] are our best and bravest, fighting for all of us against a brutal enemy in a difficult and frustrating war. They are the 9/11 generation. The left slanders them. We support them."</i>

The point of Kristol's piece was to denounce The New Republic and The Nation for pieces that cast some U.S. troops in an unflattering light, but instead of just questioning the articles themselves, Kristol feels justified in rehashing the notion that to disapprove of a war is necessarily to condemn those fighting it. It's an "argument" -- I use the word loosely -- that has a child-like sophistication.

It's apparently impossible for Kristol to conceive of the failure of the so-called surge, or realize that the only thing "strengthening" our enemies is <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003714521_alqaida20.html">the status quo.</a><h3>[1]</h3>

Indeed, to see the world as Kristol does, most Americans, a majority of both chambers of Congress, a considerable number of veterans, and even a growing number of Republican lawmakers, all stand in opposition to the men and women in uniform because they believe the president's policy is a mistake. All deserve to have their patriotism questioned because they have the audacity to see conditions as they are, not as Dick Cheney wills them to be.

But taking a step back, and simply looking at this as a matter of rhetoric, this notion of support-the-troops, support-the-mission was transparently ridiculous years ago, and Kristol, had he the ability, should be embarrassed to be repeating it now. Why is conservative discourse stuck in 2003?

<h3>[1] Iraq a "big moneymaker" for al-Qaida, says CIA</h3>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...alqaida20.html
By Greg Miller

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said al-Qaida's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash from Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered al-Qaida's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of al-Qaida funds, with the leadership surviving to a large extent on money from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.

Al-Qaida's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding.

Little more than a year ago, al-Qaida's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.

"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said....

Quote:

http://www.sharpsand.net/2007/07/21/...rt-the-troops/
I Do Not “Support the Troops”

Posted on July 21, 2007

The phrase is a cliché & buried in the cliché are a pair of pernicious ideas: 1) That individual soldiers are without moral, existential, responsibility for their acts; 2) that to <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/015663.php">argue the Iraq war is wrong</a>, misguided, ill-conceived, badly managed, stupid, indecent, horrifying, & damaging to US interests is to somehow wish harm to “the troops.” Each “troop” is a <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/editors">moral agent</a> & though we make certain allowances for individuals acting under military orders, one of the benchmarks of civilization is that we hold soldiers to a moral standard of responsibility. (Unless we secretly wish the “troops” to carry out our atavistic fantasies of violence, in which case we will exempt them from morality; that is, we will turn them into beasts.) I hate the war & I understand those fighting it to be participating in an immoral undertaking; that does not mean I wish them harmed. On the contrary, I wish that they <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges">would come to their moral senses</a>. The cliché “support the troops” is simply the most obvious node in a self-congratulatory web of patriotic discourse threatening what the patriots claim to believe in. And it is a very successful discourse, since even opponents of the war must kneel at the alter of the sanctified “troops.” So, neighbor, take your magnetized Support the Troops ribbon & shove it up your ass. I hear that magnetism has magical properties. Maybe that will do some good against the cancer growing on your conscience.

This is how it "works" here. "Ustwo" makes "everybody knows" statements, that turn out not to be what he believes that everyone "knows" or "should" conclude. "Host", labelled and consigned by Ustwo to a slot in the "far left" category, responds with a thoroughly and reliably documented (ALMOST all sources are from government and major news linked pages.) "presentation" that a reasonable person could identify with, that is nearly the mirror opposite of what Ustwo believes is "centrist".

dc_dux · 12-27-2007, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

dc_dux, if this is in reference to me, I apologize because I left the house for several hours (computer on)....

These are the questions I asked:
Is this forum the appropriate place to establish such a soapbox (idealogical spam)?
What are reasonable solutions or alternatives?
Should these questions be raised elsewhere?

....[*]I'm letting the moderators know that I understand how this thread may not be appropriate for politics, and that I am cool if they move it or shut it down. What do you think, should this be discussed elsewhere?[/LIST]

Otto.....My comments about persons who participate in a thread discussion but then choose not to continue if/when a post of theirs is questioned for credibility was a general observation with one particular person in mind (not you).

As to the questions raised, I already answered indirectly (see #5).

I would just let the thread play out at this point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either. There are certain posters I do always read, as they often have something interesting and perhaps not typical to say, but that list has gotten smaller and smaller since I joined tfp....

As for poking the cages, sometimes its fun to point out some follies on the other side, even if I know it will get the expected response. When someone says 'hey remember the troops on Christmas' and you KNOW how it will end before the first response, there is a problem....

Ustwo....I have to say I find this response a bit disengenuous....particularly in light of your active participation in this forum at various times of the day and night and the fact that the volume of posts here has not been overwhelming in numbers lately. It seems to me to be a convenient cop-out ("I'm too busy to reply to every post") when you dont care to respond to a post that challenges your position or sources.

In any case, I'm still interested in your response to my direct questions to you in the Interesting Climate Model thread since it is a topic in which you have expressed interest. You suggest others here only represent an extremist position. You might review your own posts and honestly acknowlege that most of your links represent the other extreme.

But its cool if you dont want to reply to my post about reasonable proposals to address the US' 25% contribution of the world's CO2 emisisons...it just reaffirms my belief that you have no real interest in discussing moderate solutions, but would rather continue the battle of the extremes.

I must admit that my response to your post in the 1000 Attorneys thread was a poke at your cage....since your post was a baseless misrepresentation of the facts....something which you seem to attribute only to the far left

Ustwo · 12-27-2007, 06:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

Why post in the discussions if you consider them impossible? Is there a reason, other than trolling, that I'm not seeing?

Heh, it would be ridiculously easy to troll this forum if thats what I intended. No, I still reserve the right to drop off my opinions now and then, even if the responses will be predictable, and every now and then I try something different for fun (which is usually what gets called trolling). Interestingly some people think if you don't include a link with your post it doesn't belong in politics.

Just imagine a politics board where no linking was allowed. If you wanted to bring in an outside source you had to type out the important parts yourself, where a posters opinion is what we talked about instead of some reporters.

loquitur · 12-27-2007, 07:17 AM

--> post deleted because it didn't make sense when I went back and read it

host · 12-27-2007, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Heh, it would be ridiculously easy to troll this forum if thats what I intended. No, I still reserve the right to drop off my opinions now and then, even if the responses will be predictable, and every now and then I try something different for fun (which is usually what gets called trolling). Interestingly some people think if you don't include a link with your post it doesn't belong in politics.

Just imagine a politics board where no linking was allowed. If you wanted to bring in an outside source you had to type out the important parts yourself, where a posters opinion is what we talked about instead of some reporters.

Don't have to imagine it.....this is a variation on "how it's done", too many times to count:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

...Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

It stands on it's "own two feet", or it doesn't. Every post on every thread is it's own "display window".

ottopilot · 12-27-2007, 09:08 AM

Again, are we having a discussion here, or is this an individual blogging or spamming a discussion forum? How should we classify posts from individuals who camp out on political threads for the purpose of dumping volumes of copious articles and links?

Post #24 http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=24

spam.

Ustwo · 12-27-2007, 09:13 AM

host was post 24 meant to be ironic?

If, not, well, ok then.

roachboy · 12-27-2007, 10:00 AM

ok so let me see if i can sort this out so far.
i'm going to try to keep this neutral, put it out as an assessment of the thread so far. please tweak what you think needs tweaking.

===================================================
what it seems is happening is basically a strange plea from some of the more conservative types for agreement about how to approach political questions that would come from their side of things.

this is the only way i can interpret the business above complaining about "political bias" in threads or posts---"political bias" appears in the context of this thread to apply only to the views/positions of people who are not deep in conservativeland---so then it appears that both ustwo and otto, each in a different way, posits themselves as the non-bias point and judge everything relative to themselves, and so everyone but each of them appears with a warp or bias.

interesting trick.

then we have a second complaint about style of argument.

what ustwo in particular seems to be asking for, in a roundabout kinda way--or fantasizing about at the least--is a politics area in which the community had agreed that information from outside sources was not to be allowed.
but this is to my mind just another way of saying the first point.

what we have is a curious little view of how larger ideological patterns operate.

here i abandon summary-boy for a moment:
i find the mode of argument adopted by ustwo and others to be unproductive at a number of levels:
at the individual level
1. that ustwo fro example will post---repeatedly---that he hasn't read the material relevant for a debate, but will participate in that debate anyway.
"my scroll wheel..." is not an argument.

but moving to a more collective level:
2. there is a basic difference between the way some of the conservative folk here argue and the ways that others do. there is also a difference in the ways of handling information.
a. arguments operate within a frame of reference that individual conservative posters refuse to acknowledge and/or cannot defend.

---->from the start of my engagement here, my operating assumption about contemporary conservative ideology has been simple: it is primarily an identity politics. so the central feature that orients at least some conservatives is the fact that they identify as conservative---this functions as a sorting mechanism. it seems that particular political contents are presented within the conservative ideological apparatus as simply following from "being-conservative" and so can be taken over without accompanying argument.

this seems to me ustwo's basic mo. there are a few others who operate in the same basic way. the characteristics of their posts fall coincide with the above.

but when i started here, i would tend to assume that this WAS conservative politics--and in this i was wrong, at least insofar as the microcosm of tfp was concerned.

there are--or were---or sometimes are, it's hard to say--a number of other folk who identify on the right (at one level or another) who tend to be foreign policy "realists" in more or less a neocon sense. this group of folk works from entirely different premises and it is possible to have often quite interesting debates across political divisions with these folk, once the sparring that seems to characterise the beginning of any debate settles down.

and there are yet other folk who post and who seem to be relatively conservative==on the order of loquitor--who i have trouble pinning down but whose contributions are often, to my mind, quite interesting and varied.

so we are not talking here about a conservative bloc, and we are not talking about one type of posting style--what we are talking about in this thread is the objections of folk who have adopted a PARTICULAR type of persona which is linked to the PARTICULAR TYPE of conservative each is.

so what we have so far in the thread that hasn't been touched on but which lay at the bottom of ustwo's posts (and to a lesser extent otto's posts, because of the qualifications added since i last looked in on this) is the claim that they ARE the conservatives in the tfp-ishbowl. and a symmetrical claim, regarding "the left"...

because we are also talking here about a highly reductive understanding of the politics of this fiction called "the left" here.

it appears that when ustwo or otto (it's harder to say in otto's case because the persona varies with the issue--on climate change, there is one set of premises, for example, while on other issues, he appears differentially, with less information presented, for example) look at the politics forum, all they see is their word "the left" or, in ustwo's delightful terms "communists"....

which is curious.
1. i dont see anything like the identity assumptions that support the construction of political positions from the range of folk who comprise "the left" in this fishbowl....so i dont really have a sense of how much agreement there really is amongst us. it seems that if you look at what "the left" contains here, there are folk who are progressive democrats, quite a few who would probably be social demcrats in the context of an actually pluralistic political context (which the americans do not have, fundamentally)....and a few who one might position further to the left than that, myself included.

2. speaking for myself, i operate here mostly in critique mode. my own politics are caught up in a theoretical project which is informed by the assumption that the older forms of left politics have collapsed and that there should be a new type/new types of oppositional politics...so much of what i am do links to that. here, what that entails is a suspension of belief in most operative political alternatives and an attempt to sort out how they function. so my politics are fashioned as a kind of experimental project.
there are assumptions that i think important, and i have positions on particular issues, but not on all, and they are not necessarily consistent one to another.

host for example works in a very different way----and his political views seems shaped by assumptions that i understand but no not necessarily share--but i appreciate the work he puts into his posts. they could be edited in a tighter manner, but as a messageboard phenomenon, host can be forgiven that, i think. his posts require critical reading. i think being awake requires critical reading, and i dont see the point of constructing oppositional political viewpoints that disable critical reading.

this last sentence loops around to my primary objection to the populist conservative mode of "debate"--the refusal to enter into a self-reflexive mode of writing, the refusal to examine their own premises, the preference for towing the party line. that is how i see it. what obscures matters is that the populist conservatives here also project this onto those who oppose them politically, so in their imaginations the conflict is symmetrical, with two clear, easy sides engaging in mutually exclusive forms of empty interaction.

but i dont see the projection as legitimate.
i suppose here the question would devolve onto perceptions and the relation between perception and political committments, which is complicated....but i don't see the problem in the terms outlined just above.

no the problem seems to me that debates always engage in the same way, that there are mutually exclusive styles, but they are not symmetrical one with the other. i think that the populist conservative emphasis on identity as the central organizing feature of political committment simply provides no prompt to trawl widely for information--rather the opposite--identity-as-conservative seems to come with filters that prompt one to look mostly at friendly press sources, when information from "outside" is required to make a point or refute another's.

so there is a differend concerning what constitutes legitimate information, how to use it, when to use it---a differend concerning the basic rules of the game.

debates themselves unfold in a more or less static fashion as well.

contextual factors play a role in all this as well, i think.
speaking for myself, there is a kind of exasperation with the populist right. i look around and i see an ash-heap left in the trail of neoliberalism in general, and by the bush administration in particular. i see a broken administration floating like debris after a shipwreck, held in place SOLELY because the machinery of governance itself has no mechanism for dealing with political implosion in the context of a very closely divided congress--the system is designed to simply repeat this. the persistence of the bush administration is a function of this repetition.

i see an entirely delegitimated administration floating atop a debris field of its own making and nothing to be done about it because we're free that way in america. the situation is also structured so that none of us can actually say or do anything to change the present pathetic state of affairs--so some of the exasperation plays out across debates in the microcosm.

there seems to me little doubt that this is the case and this perhaps explains something of the tone that conservatives are greeted with from time to time.

it seems clear that while some of this we can do something about, some of it we cant, we should consider what we can do and implement it.

so what do we do?

host · 12-27-2007, 10:01 AM

roachboy, I think the best recent examples of what you describe are the answers to the death penalty and the taxes questions in the "6 questions" thread. Those who favor the death penalty and believe that taxes are only for the purpose of raising enough revenue to fund government operations, mostly shun discussion of whether any authority is uncorrupted or reliable enough to be entrusted by "the people", with the authority to determine who is guilty and administer a non-revocable (death) penalty. The soluition for most is to refuse to consider it as a significant consequence or as a problem.

On the problem of growing wealth inequity and the role of politics in confronting and attempting to mitigate it, there is a refusal to link it as a consequence of taking the position that taxation is not to be used as a tool to remediate inequirty. From this POV, there seems to be a refusal to accept or discuss what politics is...that it is the peaceful way of dealing with power and wealth sharing, as opposed to the alternative....violence coming from factions that eventually anticipate no possibility of a political remedy. When it is an increasingly vast and poorer majority, the consequences of a POV that refuses to consider politics as a solution to the problem, will result in shocking effects on the wealthy minority.

But they do it....the death penalty and taxation are compartmentalized neatly away from the way they actually influence the social structure. I don't know how or if, in this compartmentalization, the issues of wrongful or unequal capital punishment or growing wealth inequity could or would ever be addressed.....and it's a similar compartmentalization....decoupling of almost every issue we attempt to discuss, solve, identify.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Again, are we having a discussion here, or is this an individual blogging or spamming a discussion forum? How should we classify posts from individuals who camp out on political threads for the purpose of dumping volumes of copious articles and links?

Post #24 http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=24

spam.

Again, ottopilot, what is the appropriate way, in your opinion...to respond to this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either.....

.......Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

Did you read and think about my response (post #24). If you did, what do you think my strongest or weakest point was? If you had to choose a post that could be called "name calling", would it be #21, or #24. Which of the two more closely approximates "discussion", as in, sharing opinions, making your points of fact, and backing them up?

If you "operate" in a different way here, than I do....if it is more like the way the statements in the quote box are "structured", than what is it? What do you call it? Is it political discussion, "chatter", "hot air", slurs and more, or slurs and nothing more?

What does "quality of discussion", mean to you? Is it closer to name calling, labeling, or "this is my opinion", and these are the influences shaping it. Did you read them, what do you think? Do I have it mostly right or wrong? Are my sources weak, are the authors of the pieces I excerpted, biased? Do you have other examples of their bias or unreasonableness? Or....do you use a different process to digest the posts of others? I show you how I do it.

Post #24 potentially brings details to you that you may not have already been aware of. They either affect your opinion of "how things are going", or, they don't. If they don't, do you ignore them without weighting them or trying to refute them....or do you operate in a different way?

Is the "war on terror" going well? Is it too expensive to be sustained, considering the "progress". Is the US military and diplomatic effort exacerbating or diminishing the "threat". Do you have anything I can read that tends to counter what I've posted in #24, <h3>or, do you agree that I'm "ultraleft" because of some reasoning process that you've gone through that you cannot or choose not to post here?

What is it? All of my cards are ALWAYS on the table, are yours? Are Ustwo's?
</h3>
This could be a simple of a process as "raise", "call", or "fold". Pick one and show your cards. If you won't show your cards, you fold by default, or does it work some other way?

Willravel · 12-27-2007, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

Again, are we having a discussion here, or is this an individual blogging or spamming a discussion forum? How should we classify posts from individuals who camp out on political threads for the purpose of dumping volumes of copious articles and links?

Post #24 http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=24

spam.

This is kinda what I was talking about. It has nothing to do with the collective good and everything to do with you disliking a fellow member's posting style.

This thread should be closed. Immediately. It seems to essentially be a veiled personal attack on a certain member.

FoolThemAll · 12-27-2007, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Heh, it would be ridiculously easy to troll this forum if thats what I intended. No, I still reserve the right to drop off my opinions now and then, even if the responses will be predictable, and every now and then I try something different for fun (which is usually what gets called trolling).

When you post with the conviction that you'll get predictable responses and no real discussion, you self-fulfill that prophecy. You help. Your one-liners may not injure my mouse wheel, but brevity/laziness create something different from host-at-his-worst that is just as useless to real discussion.

Maybe it's not quite trolling, but in light of your comments in this thread, I think it reeks of a "can't beat 'em, join 'em halfheartedly" mentality. And that's assuming that 'they' are really as closed to discussion as you say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

This is kinda what I was talking about. It has nothing to do with the collective good and everything to do with you disliking a fellow member's posting style.

Do you consider post #24 to be on-topic? I mostly don't agree with otto's critique, but what I see is host providing one great anecdotal example for otto's argument in this very thread.

The_Jazz · 12-27-2007, 10:45 AM

Let's be perfectly clear about something here - spam has a very strict definition. There is no spam in this thread.

That said, the staff has been watching this thread very carefully (as roachboy warned you all the way back in post #2) for personal attacks. Thus far we've seen none.

Post #24 may not (or may, if you read it in a certain light) be perfectly on the topic posed in the OP, but if we handed out warnings for wandering off the topic as posed in any OP, we would have no one left. host was well within the rules of both TFP in general and Politics in particular to post that comment. Anyone who thinks differently should PM me with the exact rule that he's broken, and we can discuss it in that format rather than here.

host · 12-27-2007, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

When you post with the conviction that you'll get predictable responses and no real discussion, you self-fulfill that prophecy. You help. Your one-liners may not injure my mouse wheel, but brevity/laziness create something different from host-at-his-worst that is just as useless to real discussion.

Maybe it's not quite trolling, but in light of your comments in this thread, I think it reeks of a "can't beat 'em, join 'em halfheartedly" mentality. And that's assuming that 'they' are really as closed to discussion as you say.

Do you consider post #24 to be on-topic? I mostly don't agree with otto's critique, but what I see is host providing one great anecdotal example for otto's argument in this very thread.

FoolThemAll, it is as if there is no recognition, or a deliberate refusal to recognize that "post #24" is the "bastard child" of post #21:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

dc I have only so many hours in the day. I say my peace and sometimes respond but if I responded to every liberal who decided I was wrong about something on this forum it would be a full time job and fruitless. As a habit I've ignored some posts as by not reading so I don't feel the need to respond. Since I know I'm pissing into the wind here anyways, I don't feel too bad about it either. There are certain posters I do always read, as they often have something interesting and perhaps not typical to say, but that list has gotten smaller and smaller since I joined tfp. Again back when I joined tfp and had more energy for this I quickly discovered the moderators at the time didn't read a lot of the posts either from certain posters with perhaps the most amusing being I had to point out to moderators that telling me to 'get Karl Roves cock out of your mouth' wasn't in fact to board protocol, and that they had to even defend me as not trolling by predicting Bush would win in 2004.

As for poking the cages, sometimes its fun to point out some follies on the other side, even if I know it will get the expected response. When someone says 'hey remember the troops on Christmas' and you KNOW how it will end before the first response, there is a problem.

Sadly I don't think the problem can be solved. The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

....because there is no right or wrong way to respond to "post #21", so, the choices made in what to include in "post #24" are as good, as any.

I'll be blunt. There would be no post #24, authored by "host" on this thread, if post #21 did not exist, or did not contain:

Quote:

The politics board seems to have attracted some rather vocal members of the far to ultrafar left, people who really have no bearing on politics in the US. It is impossible to have a real conversation with them as their points of reference are to far out for there to be a dialog. It would be like trying to have a conversation on the finer points of evolution with a creationist. There is no middle ground.

...and we go through it, again and again, because there is no right or wrong way to respond to statements such as the one above. They are "beyond the pale", IMO.

Over and over:, "YOU ARE AN EXTREMIST"....ohhhh, no I'm not, "HERE IS WHY I AM NOT". The underlying current...."the sources of information about the outside world have a liberal bias", is always open to dispute. Since it is always there, and since I believe that it is the opinion that is at the root of the disconnect, I think that it should be challenged relentlessly.

roachboy · 12-27-2007, 10:50 AM

there is no reason to allow the projections from ustwo to shape how this conversation unfolds.
the point has been made in a number of ways that these projections are particular to him.

i would think, ustwo, that the responses to the thread indicate that, despite everything, your posts are taken a bit seriously.
perhaps it is time for you to reciprocate.

FoolThemAll · 12-27-2007, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Jazz

Post #24 may not (or may, if you read it in a certain light) be perfectly on the topic posed in the OP, but if we handed out warnings for wandering off the topic as posed in any OP, we would have no one left. host was well within the rules of both TFP in general and Politics in particular to post that comment. Anyone who thinks differently should PM me with the exact rule that he's broken, and we can discuss it in that format rather than here.

For my own part, I'm not concerned with whether post #24 breaks any rules. I wasn't arguing for any disciplinary action, even if warranted. I was only agreeing with otto's 'spam' label - or the thrust of that label, if 'spam' isn't quite the right word - and I stand by that agreement, although I'll agree with host that he wasn't really responding to much of a post either.

And on that note, I'll only add that two wrongs don't make a right, and that ignoring #21 would have been much more efficient and much kinder to (brace yourself for the hilarity) my poor little mouse wheel. Better than going off on a tangent, especially when that tangent already has four or five topics at arm's length.

Willravel · 12-27-2007, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll

Do you consider post #24 to be on-topic? I mostly don't agree with otto's critique, but what I see is host providing one great anecdotal example for otto's argument in this very thread.

In legal proceedings if a topic is brought up in questioning it can be brought up again in cross. Ustwo brought up a topic and host responded.

roachboy · 12-27-2007, 12:03 PM

it's the case that the thread is basically nothing but tangents at this point.
but there are underlying issues that might be worth pushing through the tangents to get to.

summary:

a. there is no agreement about what constitutes a political discussion.
that is obvious.
what do we do about this?
anything?

b. there is equally obviously a conflict happening within the thread about how to frame this problem.

ustwo (for example) invokes an imaginary "mainstream of american politics" and then uses that "mainstream" image to argue--=-well what really? the actual argument is not even made--there's just an annoying coyness game in which he runs up to the edge of saying something, then runs away from it again. given the vacant space where argument should be, i figure that what he's saying is that there are folk are here who should not be allowed to speak--this because the "mainstream" as ustwo asserts it (without content) is basically the range of acceptable opinion AND relations to opinion.

others, including myself, raise questions about this move---they are ignored.

c. so there's a third dimension to what is happening here: a mounting irritation over the fact that discussion is problematic, but one in which the real problems are in fact being demonstrated live---and the problem is not only host's posts, their length and their organization--the problem is every it as much the refusal to engage on the part of the house populist conservatives--who paradoxically are the ones doing the complaining about how their positions are not taken seriously.

d. but none of this is what bothers me about this thread.

what bothers me is the following: i think the real complaint that prompted the thread is that the range of political positions represented in the tfp-microworld is too wide for the personal and political tastes of some.

in this view, host is a whipping boy-----the real problem is that there is a plurality of views---and that this pluraity extends outside the confines of cnn/fox news presentations of the boundaries of "legitimate debate".

but if that's correct, then the entire thread is a tangent simply because the comrades from the right do not avow what they seem to actually want--a shutting down of the range of debates.

but that's basically what i see this thread as doing--arguing for the narrowing of the range of political options---but it's an argument made by folk who do not want to accept responsibility for that argument by making it outright--so this is what we get: nothing but tangents.

but hey, maybe that's a misreading.
feel free to correct it.
i'm just working off what i read.

12-26-2007, 12:48 PM	#1 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	Where do we draw the line between political discussion and ideological spam? Where do we draw the line between political discussion and ideological spam? IMO - the most frequent authors of political threads here are essentially using this forum as a personal blog space. Is this forum the appropriate place to establish such a soapbox? What are reasonable solutions or alternatives. Should these questions be raised elsewhere? The answer for me is to ignore them and try not to be like them...because I'm also part of the problem if I participate at that same level. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 10:21 PM..

12-26-2007, 12:59 PM	#2 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i'm unclear what you are saying. what exactly is "ideological spam"? it sounds snappy but is lacking in the actual power to refer to something. is it: political views that you don't like? long posts that you actually have to read to understand? or is it the quality of "discussion" that ensues? if it's the quality of "discussion" then the problem lay with each of us. but somehow i dont think this is about self-criticism. no, somehow i think this is a potentially not productive at all kvetch about other members----but if that's all this is--or if that's what this becomes---i'll shut it down in a heartbeat. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-26-2007, 01:29 PM	#5 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	I suspect one person's ideological spam here is another person's credible source to support an opinion. If the forum ever becomes solely a place to share personal opinions without allowing any external resources (ideological spam?), I'll be gone. I've become more informed as a result of many of the links provided here....from both sides of the political spectrum. I know which links are "ideological spam" and most other TFP politicos are equally intelligent and open-minded to evaluate the credibility of posted links. On the other hand, I've learned very little from undocumented, ideologically-drive personal opinions and snippy one-liners. If I may kvetch at a general level, what I find frustrating here is when I respond to a post that I know is factually incorrect or a misrepresentation of the facts (and I can support with credible source information) and ask the person to reply to my documented response....and I am met with silence. I have concluded that there are some here who dont want to debate and discuss the issues if their posts are questioned for credibility or if factual information is provided that is counter to their own opinions. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 12-26-2007 at 02:28 PM..

12-26-2007, 02:51 PM	#7 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	Ustwo.....help me understand how there can be more productive discussions here if some are unwilling to respond when their posts are questioned or challenged in a reasonable and respectful manner? Or why "poking the cages" is the best way for some to contribute to this forum? __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 12-26-2007 at 02:53 PM..

12-26-2007, 04:17 PM	#10 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	that's great ustwo. please stop being coy. if you have something to say--and can manage to say it without getting the thread shut down--just lay your cards on the table. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-26-2007, 04:59 PM	#11 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I have to agree with Jazz that the forum and the board in general is what you make of it. The mods and admin are here only to make sure some simple rules are followed. You aren't always going to read things that you like. I read things on here from across the political spectrum that I don't agree with. Does it get my blood boiling? Sure. That's politics. There are some people on here with varying degrees of knowledge and experience, from across the political spectrum. I have been sad to see some drift off over the last while. While it may seem that it has largely been those from the "right" that have left, I would say that we have also lost many from the "left" as well. These people have left for different reasons but from what I can see they have left for a couple of reasons: 1) People come here to give their opinion and when someone with a different point of view calls them on their opinion they don't like it. Many people do not like to be challenged in their world view. Some stick around to scrap for a while, other's leave right away. 2) People come here to have a discussion but find the discussion devolving into partisan squabbles, and quickly. I have feeling that many would like to have two Politics boards. One for the "left" and one for the "right" where each side can devour their own tails in endless backslapping and finger pointing at the other camp. The only way to solve this is for people to raise the level of discussion (i.e. where people actually discuss rather than just whip off one liners or post voluminous tracts that leave little room for debate). The key to debate/discussion is both reading the other person's words and making a genuine attempt to understand what they are writing before you reply. 3) Some people's tone of writing is extremely arrogant and off-putting. There is a reason why many moderates do not even dip their toes in the water here any more. The derisive and dismissive tone of many posters here is horrible. The arrogance that some have in their positions is unconscionable. The quickest way to lose a debate is to piss off your interlocutor. There are other reasons but most boil down to these points. Here is my New Year's wish... Take these three points to heart and raise the level of discussion. 1) Respect the other person in writing even if you don't respect their point of view. 2) Support for your position is important but not always essential. The thing to remember is you can go too far in either direction. 3) Try to see things from the other person's point of view. Happy New Year. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

12-26-2007, 05:03 PM	#13 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	Ustwo, I happen to agree with everything that uber said in closing that thread. It was a drunken sailor. It had no idea where it was headed, only that it was lurching from side to side and spoiling for a fight. When I originally saw it, I thought very hard about moving out of Politics but decided that it was best left alone, which is what we do with over 99% of all the threads here. I suppose I could throw this back in your lap and say that if you would actually speak your mind on subjects like you used to, you could have turned that thread into something interesting, but I won't. roachboy, ubertuber myself and the rest of the staff have had many discussions on how to build Politics. So I WILL throw this into your lap - how do you propose we do that? Or should we just get rid of it altogether since it's broken beyond repair. And please, no name calling and no driveby posts. They will irritate us equally. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

12-26-2007, 05:06 PM	#14 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	We should all bear in mind that we live in the world that we've created. __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

12-26-2007, 06:54 PM	#15 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	The only interpretation of the problem issued by the OP I can come up with is this: The creation of discussions in Politics is done with a distinct bias. There is no debate structured without bias--it is always leaning in one direction; it is framed in such a way that disagreeing with the OP is inherently divergent of what is "acceptable." In a way, it reminds me of Foucault's concept of Gouvernementalité in that the threads created in Politics act as a form of overreaching governance in which the OP (and its adherents, no matter how loose) seeks to control the detractors through means of restricted and exclusive "knowledge" (savoir). Anything that disagrees with this knowledge is not only automatically wrong, it is already accounted for with a complex system of watchers who refer to the OP as the single source of power. Basically, to disagree with the OP is to be wrong....because the OPer is not only entitled to their ideas, they hold the power over the ideas and how they govern the thread. This causes the thread to go nowhere (logically) and no real debate can arise. If we want debates in Politics, we need them to be formally set up through a panel of moderators, and the posting needs to be done formally and with a sense of order. So, the question is: Do we want to go that far? Or, we could ask: How can we move closer to the formal model without losing the accessibility of the medium of Internet forums? EDIT: This does not refer to all Politics threads, merely threads that the OP would consider "ideological spam." __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 12-26-2007 at 07:23 PM..

12-26-2007, 07:26 PM	#17 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	The key, host, is to be able to tell which is which and respond accordingly. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

12-26-2007, 07:58 PM	#18 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	Sooooo... I guess we're all going to close our eyes and pretend that the OP isn't a veiled personal attack on host? Or is it just veiled enough to fly? Has it successfully tested the line? Is it just vague enough that only 90% of regular Politics posters know who he's talking about? It's a shame. If the people who whine about the length of his posts actually read them, the foundation of their views would be utterly rocked. Sadly, his medium makes his message all but indigestible. He and I have talked about that in PM, I'm pretty sure I'm not surprising him by saying this is how I feel about his posting style. The content he posts is challenging and hard for people to deal with, AND you couldn't really do it justice any other way, AND doing it this way ensures they don't have to deal with it but can instead bitch about their worn out scroll button. Catch-22. Laying that aside and addressing the "issues" raised in this hit-job of an OP: This is really simple. It's not like TFP is going to run out of threads. Don't like threads others started? Start some of your own. Ain't nothing perfect in this world, and TFP Politics is DEFINITELY in this world. Trying to change the way others post is as futile as trying to push water back into a fire hose. And when the ones you're complaining about happen to disagree with you, it's just downright suspect. So stop either a) whining or b) trying to put a fence around content you disagree with, and start generating some content of your own. Ustwo: Just because the world has provided ample evidence that now makes it impossible to defend your beliefs doesn't mean there's no quality discussion anymore. It just means it's gotten vanishingly difficult for you to win an argument. Blaming it on the damn liberals is poor sportsmanship. And it's just inaccurate. You'd do better to blame it on reality--which as Colbert points out has a well-known liberal bias. Personally, I think the Christmas-to-the-troops-in-Politics thread was really interesting. The big reaction to how political it got was SO perfect, given what people were posting about how politicized the troops have become. That thread TOTALLY illustrated its own point. We hardly ever get anything so symmetrical around here.

12-26-2007, 08:14 PM	#19 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	Ratbastid, I think yes, the post is directed mostly at host, however, I have been following ottopilot's posting here and don't feel it was an attack per se. Rather, I feel it was a genuine query (unless I have completely misread ottopilot). __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

12-26-2007, 11:36 PM	#22 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	If you can't be bothered to read an OP or a response directed at you, there are lighter parts of TFP—General Discussion, Nonsense, Entertainment, etc.—that can engage you and that you can engage in a smaller time. I can't see myself making a 12,000 word post in Found on the Net, but here? It's happened. If, for example, host created a thread which has several linked and posted articles along with a great deal of his own thoughts, and you can't see yourself giving that your full attention and reading it, there's a nice thread about the new Batman movie in Entertainment. Posting "I didn't have time to read the OP, but..." is a disservice to everyone. To address the OP, this is a highly subjective question. One man's 'ideological spam' is another man's brilliant thesis on life. Aside from infantile posts including things like name calling, personal attacks, fallacies, etc., many of which break the rules of TFP, it's hard for us all to come to a decision about the quality of a topic.

12-27-2007, 07:17 AM	#27 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	--> post deleted because it didn't make sense when I went back and read it Last edited by loquitur; 12-27-2007 at 07:21 AM..

12-27-2007, 09:08 AM	#29 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	Again, are we having a discussion here, or is this an individual blogging or spamming a discussion forum? How should we classify posts from individuals who camp out on political threads for the purpose of dumping volumes of copious articles and links? Post #24 http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=24 spam. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

12-27-2007, 09:13 AM	#30 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	host was post 24 meant to be ironic? If, not, well, ok then. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

12-27-2007, 10:00 AM	#31 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ok so let me see if i can sort this out so far. i'm going to try to keep this neutral, put it out as an assessment of the thread so far. please tweak what you think needs tweaking. =================================================== what it seems is happening is basically a strange plea from some of the more conservative types for agreement about how to approach political questions that would come from their side of things. this is the only way i can interpret the business above complaining about "political bias" in threads or posts---"political bias" appears in the context of this thread to apply only to the views/positions of people who are not deep in conservativeland---so then it appears that both ustwo and otto, each in a different way, posits themselves as the non-bias point and judge everything relative to themselves, and so everyone but each of them appears with a warp or bias. interesting trick. then we have a second complaint about style of argument. what ustwo in particular seems to be asking for, in a roundabout kinda way--or fantasizing about at the least--is a politics area in which the community had agreed that information from outside sources was not to be allowed. but this is to my mind just another way of saying the first point. what we have is a curious little view of how larger ideological patterns operate. here i abandon summary-boy for a moment: i find the mode of argument adopted by ustwo and others to be unproductive at a number of levels: at the individual level 1. that ustwo fro example will post---repeatedly---that he hasn't read the material relevant for a debate, but will participate in that debate anyway. "my scroll wheel..." is not an argument. but moving to a more collective level: 2. there is a basic difference between the way some of the conservative folk here argue and the ways that others do. there is also a difference in the ways of handling information. a. arguments operate within a frame of reference that individual conservative posters refuse to acknowledge and/or cannot defend. ---->from the start of my engagement here, my operating assumption about contemporary conservative ideology has been simple: it is primarily an identity politics. so the central feature that orients at least some conservatives is the fact that they identify as conservative---this functions as a sorting mechanism. it seems that particular political contents are presented within the conservative ideological apparatus as simply following from "being-conservative" and so can be taken over without accompanying argument. this seems to me ustwo's basic mo. there are a few others who operate in the same basic way. the characteristics of their posts fall coincide with the above. but when i started here, i would tend to assume that this WAS conservative politics--and in this i was wrong, at least insofar as the microcosm of tfp was concerned. there are--or were---or sometimes are, it's hard to say--a number of other folk who identify on the right (at one level or another) who tend to be foreign policy "realists" in more or less a neocon sense. this group of folk works from entirely different premises and it is possible to have often quite interesting debates across political divisions with these folk, once the sparring that seems to characterise the beginning of any debate settles down. and there are yet other folk who post and who seem to be relatively conservative==on the order of loquitor--who i have trouble pinning down but whose contributions are often, to my mind, quite interesting and varied. so we are not talking here about a conservative bloc, and we are not talking about one type of posting style--what we are talking about in this thread is the objections of folk who have adopted a PARTICULAR type of persona which is linked to the PARTICULAR TYPE of conservative each is. so what we have so far in the thread that hasn't been touched on but which lay at the bottom of ustwo's posts (and to a lesser extent otto's posts, because of the qualifications added since i last looked in on this) is the claim that they ARE the conservatives in the tfp-ishbowl. and a symmetrical claim, regarding "the left"... because we are also talking here about a highly reductive understanding of the politics of this fiction called "the left" here. it appears that when ustwo or otto (it's harder to say in otto's case because the persona varies with the issue--on climate change, there is one set of premises, for example, while on other issues, he appears differentially, with less information presented, for example) look at the politics forum, all they see is their word "the left" or, in ustwo's delightful terms "communists".... which is curious. 1. i dont see anything like the identity assumptions that support the construction of political positions from the range of folk who comprise "the left" in this fishbowl....so i dont really have a sense of how much agreement there really is amongst us. it seems that if you look at what "the left" contains here, there are folk who are progressive democrats, quite a few who would probably be social demcrats in the context of an actually pluralistic political context (which the americans do not have, fundamentally)....and a few who one might position further to the left than that, myself included. 2. speaking for myself, i operate here mostly in critique mode. my own politics are caught up in a theoretical project which is informed by the assumption that the older forms of left politics have collapsed and that there should be a new type/new types of oppositional politics...so much of what i am do links to that. here, what that entails is a suspension of belief in most operative political alternatives and an attempt to sort out how they function. so my politics are fashioned as a kind of experimental project. there are assumptions that i think important, and i have positions on particular issues, but not on all, and they are not necessarily consistent one to another. host for example works in a very different way----and his political views seems shaped by assumptions that i understand but no not necessarily share--but i appreciate the work he puts into his posts. they could be edited in a tighter manner, but as a messageboard phenomenon, host can be forgiven that, i think. his posts require critical reading. i think being awake requires critical reading, and i dont see the point of constructing oppositional political viewpoints that disable critical reading. this last sentence loops around to my primary objection to the populist conservative mode of "debate"--the refusal to enter into a self-reflexive mode of writing, the refusal to examine their own premises, the preference for towing the party line. that is how i see it. what obscures matters is that the populist conservatives here also project this onto those who oppose them politically, so in their imaginations the conflict is symmetrical, with two clear, easy sides engaging in mutually exclusive forms of empty interaction. but i dont see the projection as legitimate. i suppose here the question would devolve onto perceptions and the relation between perception and political committments, which is complicated....but i don't see the problem in the terms outlined just above. no the problem seems to me that debates always engage in the same way, that there are mutually exclusive styles, but they are not symmetrical one with the other. i think that the populist conservative emphasis on identity as the central organizing feature of political committment simply provides no prompt to trawl widely for information--rather the opposite--identity-as-conservative seems to come with filters that prompt one to look mostly at friendly press sources, when information from "outside" is required to make a point or refute another's. so there is a differend concerning what constitutes legitimate information, how to use it, when to use it---a differend concerning the basic rules of the game. debates themselves unfold in a more or less static fashion as well. contextual factors play a role in all this as well, i think. speaking for myself, there is a kind of exasperation with the populist right. i look around and i see an ash-heap left in the trail of neoliberalism in general, and by the bush administration in particular. i see a broken administration floating like debris after a shipwreck, held in place SOLELY because the machinery of governance itself has no mechanism for dealing with political implosion in the context of a very closely divided congress--the system is designed to simply repeat this. the persistence of the bush administration is a function of this repetition. i see an entirely delegitimated administration floating atop a debris field of its own making and nothing to be done about it because we're free that way in america. the situation is also structured so that none of us can actually say or do anything to change the present pathetic state of affairs--so some of the exasperation plays out across debates in the microcosm. there seems to me little doubt that this is the case and this perhaps explains something of the tone that conservatives are greeted with from time to time. it seems clear that while some of this we can do something about, some of it we cant, we should consider what we can do and implement it. so what do we do? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-27-2007, 10:45 AM	#35 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	Let's be perfectly clear about something here - spam has a very strict definition. There is no spam in this thread. That said, the staff has been watching this thread very carefully (as roachboy warned you all the way back in post #2) for personal attacks. Thus far we've seen none. Post #24 may not (or may, if you read it in a certain light) be perfectly on the topic posed in the OP, but if we handed out warnings for wandering off the topic as posed in any OP, we would have no one left. host was well within the rules of both TFP in general and Politics in particular to post that comment. Anyone who thinks differently should PM me with the exact rule that he's broken, and we can discuss it in that format rather than here. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

12-27-2007, 10:50 AM	#37 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	there is no reason to allow the projections from ustwo to shape how this conversation unfolds. the point has been made in a number of ways that these projections are particular to him. i would think, ustwo, that the responses to the thread indicate that, despite everything, your posts are taken a bit seriously. perhaps it is time for you to reciprocate. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

12-27-2007, 12:03 PM	#40 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it's the case that the thread is basically nothing but tangents at this point. but there are underlying issues that might be worth pushing through the tangents to get to. summary: a. there is no agreement about what constitutes a political discussion. that is obvious. what do we do about this? anything? b. there is equally obviously a conflict happening within the thread about how to frame this problem. ustwo (for example) invokes an imaginary "mainstream of american politics" and then uses that "mainstream" image to argue--=-well what really? the actual argument is not even made--there's just an annoying coyness game in which he runs up to the edge of saying something, then runs away from it again. given the vacant space where argument should be, i figure that what he's saying is that there are folk are here who should not be allowed to speak--this because the "mainstream" as ustwo asserts it (without content) is basically the range of acceptable opinion AND relations to opinion. others, including myself, raise questions about this move---they are ignored. c. so there's a third dimension to what is happening here: a mounting irritation over the fact that discussion is problematic, but one in which the real problems are in fact being demonstrated live---and the problem is not only host's posts, their length and their organization--the problem is every it as much the refusal to engage on the part of the house populist conservatives--who paradoxically are the ones doing the complaining about how their positions are not taken seriously. d. but none of this is what bothers me about this thread. what bothers me is the following: i think the real complaint that prompted the thread is that the range of political positions represented in the tfp-microworld is too wide for the personal and political tastes of some. in this view, host is a whipping boy-----the real problem is that there is a plurality of views---and that this pluraity extends outside the confines of cnn/fox news presentations of the boundaries of "legitimate debate". but if that's correct, then the entire thread is a tangent simply because the comrades from the right do not avow what they seem to actually want--a shutting down of the range of debates. but that's basically what i see this thread as doing--arguing for the narrowing of the range of political options---but it's an argument made by folk who do not want to accept responsibility for that argument by making it outright--so this is what we get: nothing but tangents. but hey, maybe that's a misreading. feel free to correct it. i'm just working off what i read. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite