Rimrocker, Major, judoka, a3p0 are strong D&D'ers with significant thoughts. There are many other good contributors here with strong niches, but the ones I listed usually direct conversation with their post. Hell even basso is considered decent in my book as a facilitator of newswire information and response by others. I consider myself fairly up to date, but this board can have its moments where you get more in one thread than another singular source. Here: 70% poo flinging and garbage : 30% good stuff Compared to TV news: 90% garbage : 10% useful stuff Complain all you want about this being the stinkhole of Clutchfans, but that's a 300% difference per time spent on getting useful info. Maybe that's why you get such a weird and twisted response by Gwaneco. If he seriously hates this place and subsequently the Rockets, why does he come back? To gain some semblance of respect and credibility among heavy hitters? It's like foreigners in third world countries like Egypt who are critical of the US but would jump at the opportunity to be a citizen here. They're disappointed and frustrated at Americans because they admire the ideal for whatever reasons...
thats what the title of the thread is, but for some reason the threadstarter is bringing up people like myself, manny and major...none of whom are republican. not really. and especially when its names of people who are not even the subject of the thread. i wasnt even keen on posting in this thread until the threadstarter invoked my name out of the blue. again, im not a republican and i wont be voting for bling-bling so i really have nothing to discuss here. its just odd how obsessed glynch is with me. labels are also lazy and in the case of glynch, a crutch to compensate for his lack of substance. as he has already demonstrated in this and other threads, his primary motivation is party affiliation. he will attack the koch brothers, but ignore soros...he will demean george hw bush's military service b/c he is a republican while praising the service of jimmy carter. he will single out ron paul super pacs for criticism while ignoring obamas. as best i can. pretty good, thanks! it depends on what kind of things you are talking about. but in the case of glynch it is all very superficial. he has a few buzz words and phrases he parrots over and over and over again and it really doesnt go beyond that.
I haven't been posting here long enough to refute this, neither do I have privileges to search old threads. Even if I did, I'm not sure any tabulation of how these people felt about past issues mapped on to the respective party platforms would satisfy you as proof to say so and so was a Republican or Democrat. I'll simply let those posters and their voting records at various points of time speak for themselves and won't deign to speak for either of them. Since you have presumably not voted in significant amounts more for Republican candidates for elected office over Democrats, I guess we just can't classify you at all. Maybe you are truly one of the illusive swing voters whose flighty flits of fancy bring him from party to party, never sure how he feels on the sum totals of party platforms, not especially driven by specific issues other than the economy, making a fetish of the "middle," and lauding compromise in all things. However, if you have voted for one group significantly more than the other, then it is likely safe to classify you as one or the other. So which is it? I've voted for Democrats, and, while I don't agree with their entire platform, most people would call me a Democrat. I have no problem with that label even if it does not perfectly encapsulate all that I am. It's for the ease of conversation and it does provide a general, albeit imperfect guide to how I feel about certain issues, like the purposes of federal spending, levels of taxes, balance of church and state, military spending, and the balance of federal vs. state power. If someone said to me, "You agree with this you right? You know since you are a Democrat," I would likely state with minor equivocations how I felt about the particular item or issue rather than spend the whole time fighting over whether the label Democrat was the best fit. So where do you fall? Which parties have you voted for? Have you always voted for the third party candidate or eschewed voting when there were none? Maybe you do not vote at all because no party has ever held the same positional configuration for every issue that you hold and you cannot broach compromise. You can personally reject party affiliations because you think they are lazy meaningless shorthand that don't capture your entire essence, and that's fine, but don't get all indignant when someone slaps when on you and especially don't get indignant if that label maps to your past voting patterns/other expressions of support. Instead, just express how you stand on the issue - that's the better way to show that a party label either does or doesn't map. I am gladdened that your little to no generalization life seems to be going so well for you, but I fail to see how you have cleaved to it in this thread. Calling something lazy is in itself a crutch for lack of substance and a generalization. So is saying someone's primary motivation is party affiliation. You are engaging in the very same thing you are decrying glynch for doing. It smacks of hypocrisy. Not that there is anything wrong with a little bit of hypocrisy as long as you are aware of it and hopefully letting that awareness blunt the strength of your zeal. I like to think that if you have ever had a point of view on anything, you have likely rendered yourself a hypocrite. It is somewhat odd that you both seem to be completely obsessed with each other. I have seen a couple threads now where glynch says something in reference to Libertarians, Ron Paul, or Yourself and you have sprung into action and accused him of being a partisan hack and then proceeded to dredge up something glynch said at some point of time about military service. It does seem like the military thing seems to have really stuck a nerve with you and continues to eat at you, let it go. All of us are living testaments to the fact that people say things are later forced to rethink their position. Another thing you have repeated that is more pertinent to this thread is that political affiliation is superficial, that it is meaningless. And you have yet to elaborate at all on what you mean. You have since hedged possibly suggesting that only when glynch uses party affiliations are they necessarily meaningless, though such an assertion leaves me asking why only glynch and why not others. Since you originally made the blanket assertion about political affiliations being meaningless, and that seemed odd to me, I asked you for clarification and gave a couple reasons why I thought they were not meaningless. So, now it is your turn to back it up. Other than the freebie that party affiliation is an imperfect description of an individual, is there some additional substance to what you are asserting?
Hey, just because liberals are trying to re-define the term doesn't mean I don't know it's true meaning. Unbelievable, you don't see a trend to socialism? Really? You guys don't see this? If that's the case there really is nothing more I can do or say to you folks.
and like you guys don't. you know, why don't you guys just look in the mirror once in awhile instead of out the window into your neighbors yard.
why do you need to "refute" it? major and i have both chimed in and said we are not republicans. manny started a thread saying he is a democrat now...do you not believe us? why would you need to search old threads when both major and i have said in this very thread that we are not republicans? if you want "proof" why dont you take the individual poster at their word when they say they are not republicans. good for you...glynch seems to be unable to do that. i vote for libertarians predominantly. ive never voted for a republican for president, which is why i was not participating in this thread before glynch invoked my name. im a lifelong independent...i actually registered as a democrat in 2008 to vote against hillary clinton in the primary, but i ended up voting libertarian in the presidential election. good for you, but what does that have to do w/ the thread topic? what are you doing here? i didnt ask for your backstory...i dont care. ill get "indignant" when someone takes potshots at me in a thread i wasnt even posting in. and again, discussing issues is great...glynch seems unable to do that. why are you getting so "indignant" in your defense of glynch? i fail to see why glynch invoked my name in this thread. nope. nope. nope. i dont pay attention to glynch unless he addresses me first (see this very thread). glynch constantly chases me around arguing w/ me and even invokes my name in threads im not active in (like this thread right here). and glynchs comments on bush's military service are indeed a testament to his partisan hackery and therefore worth pointing out in threads like this. he thinks its ok to attack george hw bush's military service simply b/c he is a republican...its speaks volumes about his mentality and where he comes from. his primary concern is the R or D infront of someones name. nope...i said glynchs attempts to label people are superficial. because glynchs labels are not accurate, thus they are meaningless. i didnt say that. i said when glynch does it it is meaningless. what seems odd to me is that you would come into a thread you were not previously posting in to go off like you are now. ok...so you are glynch, right?:grin: you are are putting alot of effort into defending him here. why? you were not previously posting in this thread and now you chime in to argue w/ me and post these long, rambling diatribes in defense of glynch. what exactly are you doing here?
yup...especially in glynchs case - he cant even categorize people properly. as major pointed out, in glynchs world unless you are an extreme liberal you are not a democrat. and libertarian is synonymous w/ republican. he is obsessed w/ labeling people and putting them in these ideological boxees of his own creation and then arguing w/ them based off the label he has slapped on you.
I dislike categorizing folks politically, as I myself don't really fit into any category. More to the point, the categories themselves are so ham-fisted nowadays that they don't mean a damn thing. However....some things are truly black and white. Or red... Jo mama, aka, "The Ron Paul of Chili", thinks that a free market of chili recipes is the only way to solve our chili crisis. Disturbingly, his "libertarian style chili" makes use of any old ingredient, including the dastardly legume, under the fairy-tale notion that chili consumers are the best way to regulate what is and is not a respectable chili flavor and aroma. Unfortunately for our resident Rothbard of the chili scene, his naïve agenda has allowed for massive pro-bean corporate influence, destabilizing the delicately balanced and finely nuanced culinary orgasm that is chili. Pretty soon we’ll see a pro-bean agenda run by ruthlessly efficient corporate machines, slowly eroding away the traditional meat-heavy masterpiece in favor of the more economically efficient overly bean-leveraged chili derivative. Soon we’ll all the pay the price of this folly, as the overabundance of bean-polluted chilis overextends the chili economy, leaving us either enslaved to our bean-soup loving neo-feudalists or financially wrecked on a “bean bubble” that enriched a few at the expense of everyone’s taste buds. Quibble all you want jo mama...we all know who you really are.
i dont put beans in my chili and im not pro-deregulate everything so your post is invalid. and if anyone is "corporate influenced" it is the republican and democrat parties, which have been co-opted, bought and paid for by the chili barons. to me, what is naive is thinking that the current two party monopoly will resolve the problems we are facing in this country. and this "bean bubble" that enriched the few at everyone elses expense has happened under republican/democrat control...not libertarians.
I never claimed you used beans yourself. Just that you're a libertarian chili deregulator. As for deregulation, we've discussed this before. The moderate libertarian position is as nonsensical as it is undefined. Ergo we have jo mama adamantly against beans in his chili, but pro deregulating the term "chili" to include bean soup without understanding the impact this has on the chili quality and economy. What's next? Dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria!!!! The libertarian chili-economy would only further empower those chili barons, as they seek to remove fundamental chili-regulations. Admittedly, these regulations have been eroded by our current politicians and their corporate-lobbied bean-heavy agenda, but a libertarian "free market bean economy" would only make this worse. More to the point, the libertarian chili platform needs a better motto than "the current guys burned the meat". More of the same. That's not an argument that libertarians offer a pleasantly smelling solution, just that the current bowl has too many beans and the meat is too tough.
The question is not asking what people are at the moment, the question is what happened to those people who posted here in the past espousing certain political beliefs, though I guess current political affiliation is part of the answer. As I explained, because current self-identified labels aren't the end all be all of what someone is or has been, it means that sussing out people's past positions and how they have changed can possibly give a better understanding of what party they identify most with. I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble, though because people can self-identify as they will and some people would have us take these self-identifications at their face meaning despite evidence to the contrary. No, I'm putting in a lot of obviously wasted effort trying to show you that you are not above the fray with the goal of getting you to possibly show some modicum of introspection, but obviously I failed to get through to you. I posted because posters like you frustrate me. Those who do not give substantive opinions about a topic, and then make blanket accusations of others for doing the same. Don't be afraid to give your opinion on actual issues that can be attacked; I'm curious to hear more substantive responses from the Libertarian mind-set. That might have to wait, however, for a different topic as there doesn't seem to be any further use for me to try to engage you further on this point.
yes, we have discussed this over and over and over and over again. im not really sure what you are doing here or what it has to do w/ the thread. and its odd that you constantly harp on the fact that i said about a year ago that i was a "moderate libertarian", but you dont seem to have a problem w/ others saying they are "moderate republicans" or "moderate democrats". ive seen the phrase "moderate republican" used in this thread and i dont see you calling that "nonsensical". the whole "no beans" argument is what is nonsensical - the people who actually invented chili had no qualms about putting beans in there so who are you to say that its not chili? i find it incredibly snobby to say that the poor tejanos around san antonio who actually invented chili were not really making chili since they put beans in there. you and the elitist chili barons sit up on your high-horses looking down on the poor who cant afford to put meat in their chili. i disagree and would point out that the current regulatory system has been totally corrupted and is owned and controlled by the very chili barons whom you decry. its more of the same b/c its true. you keep trying to start the same arguments w/ me over and over again and complain that my answer is "more of the same". of course its more of the same - you throw out the same point you have been and ill give you the same response. you want to criticize libertarians for things that R's and D's are actually doing. thats weaker than a cup o' wendys chili. you continually tell me that being unhappy w/ R's and D's is not a valid argument for supporting paul. well in 2008 lots of people voted for obama b/c they were unhappy w/ bush and the republicans - did you tell them that this was not a valid reason? i suspect not.
My current belief as to the question of "Where have all the Republicans gone?" is that as the economy has come into relief, the pre-existing Libertarian bent to Republican economic positions has come into more prominence. Specifically the positions of lower taxes (taxes are coercion), and less government regulation (government is necessarily wrong because it uses coercion), though not always couched in those terms. Even as recently ago as 2000, I don't remember any mainstream news outlet that was covering those who would claim that taxes are theft. Now this is a more common talking point - one that is expressed by many elected Republicans. At the same time that economic policy has become more of an issue, shifting demographics have resulted in less support for the traditional family values positions among younger voters. The Republican shift toward a larger focus on economic Libertarian positions within their big-tent has also resulted in many younger Republicans who would have previously identified solely as Republican, to begin to become more aware of Libertarian positions and self-identify as Libertarians as a way to signal their positions on social issues to their peers. This shift was accelerated due to the ruinous Bush years, which also proved embarrassing for many right leaning moderates and Conservative intelligentsia. I see the current right-ward swing of the party as being wrought by the party's base. I also see the right-ward swing as both evidence of a fear that the Republican party itself will do some sort of realignment on social issues in their lifetimes, as well as a push to limit the scope of any possible realignment. This swing has resulted in moderate Republicans, who have traditionally voted Republican in big elections, feeling pushed out from the party for the moment.
actually, if you go back and read the first post from glynch (you?), you will see that he (you?) actually was asking what people are at the moment. and again, im not a republican and im not voting for a republican in this election so i really dont have anything to say regarding the thread topic. what am i supposed to have introspection about? im not a republican and im not voting for romney so as far as this thread is concerned there is nothing for me to "instrospect" about. there is nothing here for me to give a substantive opinion about. im not a republican. i wasnt even posting in this thread until glynch (you?) invoked my name. im not. there is nothing here for me to give my opinion on - im not a republican. bye glynch!
Mainly all of what you just said proves my earlier point, that you have an fixation as well as a distinct inability to be self-aware. I'm not above name calling, so bye Basso! I feel sort of bad saying that as it is probably being unfair to Basso, since he at least seems self aware and his posts a do bring the simple joy of feeling indignant to others.
