Forum posts made by monocle

Having a slight position of authority here does not mean that I can no longer have an opinion on the threads posted here. I ALWAYS treat people with the utmost respect in all of my interactions with them, here and in real life. Only after someone treats me with disrespect does my attitude change. As a person, I give back as I get. Would it be your preference that I just start deleting things and giving people time-outs? But then, I'd have everyone complaining about all the deleted posts.

Hmm. What's a fellow to do?



There are steps between taking it on the chin and cutting off the other guy's head - verbally or through mod action. Taking on the job of Mediator, you should know them and practice them.
"Giving back as you get" is precisely the opposite of a Mediator's job.

I'm so glad we're all listening to LadyX's words.

I may have to modify my statement if a "Mediator" is different or has different powers than a "Moderator". If a mediator's jobs and powers are less than those of a moderator, and you can't close/delete threads or censure/remove posts, or warn or ban users, you have my sincere apology for any incorrect assumptions I've made. I'll gladly eat that crow.

If a "Mediator" is only supposed to mediate a thread, e.g. remind people to keep people in the rules and/or maintain civil dialog, you're still a bad one. "Responding in kind" is the antithesis of mediation, and you, NP, should not have those privileges or that title either.

In all honesty, Brooke, I think I've been more than patient with the aforementioned poster. I treated her fairly, and without rancor, even AFTER she called me those names. Now, I'm simply tired of her attitude, and I'm done with letting her address me any way she sees fit without responding in kind.


Translation: I don't abuse my power unless I'm really annoyed, which by definition makes abuse of power OK. Then I'll get away with acting a bully and ass because I have the power to do so with impunity.

Moderators don't "respond in kind". They moderate. They close or remove threads, they warn users on improper conduct, or edit term-breaking posts, or if need be censure/ban/report to the admins. NP, you're a bad moderator and don't deserve the title or the power that goes with it.

Hypothetically speaking, if the President ordered this to happen (which I doubt) or if he knew about it but did nothing (more likely), what should happen to him? Does he qualify for impeachment or any other punishment?

Both are highly unlikely to have happened. The IRS is not part of the administration, and has overreached its authority plenty of times before Obama took office.

That's his favorite way of arguing. He's like Rush Limbaugh. He spins things, claims you said things you haven't, and then claims that you're just not intelligent enough to see why you're wrong. It's actually kinda funny, if you look at it the right way.

Lies. But no surprise.

The bridge I'm trying to build is to get people to think for a moment, about just what the laws they're proposing will actually do to fight crime. So far, the answer is nothing. If anyone can come up with a new law that actually will help, I'm all ears.

You're not trying to build bridges, NP. You're building platforms to stand on to harangue those who disagree with you, or to cry personal persecution from. Your "The answer is nothing" is proof by assertion, and nothing else.

Leif Ericson Galactic Cruiser

frank dot bol dot ucla dot edu/le.html#

You guys don't know what you're missin', which is fine - I'm sure other genres have large followings elsewhere but not here. It's a whole subculture, not far removed from aliens/monsters/weres and assorted scifi/horror erotica.

I get a kick out of people who defend the Washington petty dictators who are trying to change our country into a wonderland like nazi Germany or China.

I get a kick out of people who make up stories by pulling fictions out of their asses.

And again you are trying to say i dont know about politics just because my opinion defers from yours. If you ask me insulting someones inteligence in the think tank its the lamest way to disagree with someone.


That's not at all what I've done, though I'm not surprised you've interpreted that way.

Yes when your views and your opponents views are completely different, you are a fool for thinking either of you are gonna change the way they think to cooperate with each other. Especially when politics in the US its such a money making franchise!


For most of the last couple centuries, opposing parties in this country have gotten beyond their divides to actually run the place. the last 4 years have been more unusually dysfunctional in that area than, I'd say, in the previous 40 or 50 or so.

But as you've described your level of familiarity with the US political system and history, I'm neither surprised nor moved by your opinions.

If i compare that an apple and a pear are both fruits, am i saying that they both are the same? NO, i am comparing characteristics that both of them have in common! I dont think that Obama is a socialist, but i do think that they have more than a few characteristics in common.

LOL then he is a moron for ever even thinking that Republicans were gonna work with him and push all his agenda on...

How exactly do you know if im ignorant of the last 4 years of US politics? i hardly ever speak about other countries politics, so i wonder how could you know if im informed or not about them. Because i disagree with your point of view? great way of reading people!



Yeah, a politician is a moron to propose to work in good faith with his political opponents. What a fool.

I didn't say anyone was actually ignorant. I wasn't being that nice. I said if one could not see the president trying to find solutions with his opponents they would have to be _willfully_ ignorant.

Im not saying he is like Chavez

Actually, yes you are:

This is exactly the same excuse everyone ever used on Chavez.


, im just pointing out the similarities that they use in the way to approach their failures in to actually doing what they promise to do. As they say Dont let your mouth write checks that your ass cant cash. He promised tons of things on his campaign and now that he actually cant deliver, then ill blame someone else, poor me they are not letting me be the president.

Pah. If I promise to work with my opponent to create solutions, and then my opponent decides they will do everything in their power to make sure no solution can happen, yeah, I'm at fault for too much optimism, but their destructive childishness is all their own, no matter what tantrum and mud they'd like to throw.



Nice putting of words in someone else's mouth. And I can see how one might see the president as not trying to find solutions to the problem - if one were willfully ignorant of the last 4 years.

and just to clarify, im Venezuelan so i cant be Democrat or Republican, BUT if i were American i wouldnt be either!! i think both parties are just a big joke to the intelligence of Americans.

Opinion noted.

Obamas foreign policy is his, not Bush's. he owns it, and rightfully gets all blame and all credit. He did not open the Guantanamo prison, but he also can't hide behind congress when the question comes up: why are we still detaining "enemy combatants" there? There's nothing in the constitution that prevents him from acting on that without congressional approval.

The entire concept of "enemy combatant" outside of a traditionally declared war is the larger problem. Obama didn't start it, but he's continued and expanded this dark arm of US foreign policy. The republicans have done him no favors, but that doesn't excuse much of his administration's actions.

If liberals have any integrity, and I count myself as fairly liberal myself, they'll protest Obama's library just as they did for Bush's last month.

I don't disagree with anything you've said except maybe the library thing. P\THe entire concept of a presidential library has become silly in the modern era.

This is exactly the same excuse everyone ever used on Chavez, "He is not at fault, he has been foolish, he is been misguided" you are the fucking president! if all of this things are true then you dont deserve to be the president, because obviously you are not strong or smart enough to be it. BUT the truth is that they know exactly what they are doing!

Chavez? Don't make me laugh. Obama _is_ responsible for the actions he could have taken and didn't, and I said as much in the quote you cite. I _don't_ excuse him. for failing to act on Guantanamo now. But yeah, to blame him for the fact that the opposition party would rather shut down all government function see than him succeed - I can see how that's entirely his fault. WHat a fucking laugh riot.

... i just wonder for how long can you blame the person before you, before it starts to be you that person?
As long as the damage they've inflicted is hurting people. What's hard about that?

Fundamentally, overreach is overreach, and abuse of power is abuse of power, no matter the perpetrator or the victim. This is not the first example nor will it be the last. This is a fairly rare example of the more conservative side being subject to this kind of profiling, but even that's not necessarily unique.

Government is, lest we forget, composed of people, and ideologies are bound to interfere occasionally, which is why it's incumbent upon the rest of us, right, left and center to watch and call out overreach - and not only when it happens to cross our favored ideologies.

And while this example is certainly one of overreach, to call it "Stomping on rights" would be a inaccurate at best.

That whole "75 is/is not a quarter of 300" is also hilarious. Since 75 is exactly a quarter of 300, I read the spokesperson's response as obvious sarcasm. I wonder who 'noted' that 75 being a quarter of 300 was incorrect. _There's_ a math genius for you.

What about all the people that have been ridiculed for thinking that the government is simply getting too comfortable with overstepping their bounds? Could it be said that maybe those people have a right to fear an overbearing government?

I'm fully in support of anyone's right to fear anything they want to be afraid of. When the government outlaws fear, only outlaws will be afraid, and we can't have that.

"Need" has nothing to do with it. When the government gets to dictate what private citizens can purchase based on "need" then everybody will be driving around in Yugos and eating Ramen noodles for dinner. Because why would you "need" a car with more than 84 horsepower? And why would you "need" a Porterhouse Steak?

I have no problem that you make that argument, stupid as I think it is. It's the other crap that violated your own thread rules (again).

Good God, you'd have to be a total, bloomin' idiot to not be able to understand the link between one person saying that the government won't ever infringe on a person's rights, and a rebuttal post showing the government doing just that. Are you a total, bloomin' idiot, Mon? if you are... well, they shoot horses, don't they?

Passable baiting. But really, It demonstrates total lack of ability to contextualize or the most willful ignorance I've encountered on the net since usenet days.

Sprite's question:
why is that such issue? do you really NEED to own something like that? if so, tell me why - and don't tell me it's to keep the government from stomping on your rights - please don't insult my intelligence like that.
It is painfully obvious she's asking why you'd need weapons of a particular kind, and her question about government overreach is to head off one of the classic answers. That you conflate it into something so completely other is really pretty damn twisted.

I didn't bring it up. I guess this one's aimed at you, Sprite.

You didn't bring it up? First mention of the IRS in this thread is you, NP.

My friend made a statement insinuating that one would never need fear the government "stomping" on one's rights, but here government workers are, stomping away... I fail to see how that was unclear to you.

I fail to see how your or anyone's possession or lack of possession of any particular firearm would have prevented or in any way at all affected the IRS actions or sped their apology. The IRS situation has absolutely nothing to do with the topic or discussion of this thread. It's a complete non sequitur.

I guess it's OK for the original poster of a thread to diverge completely from the thread's original subject while chastising other people when he thinks they're drifting off topic. God job demonstrating the concept of 'double standard'.

As for the IRS, pretty dumb of them. Unprofessional and partisan. Your insinuations about who could have 'ordered' them to do it a *perfect* example of tin-foil hattery.

Whatever you say, spin doctor.

Ad hominem. And unsurprisingly inaccurate.

Of course she did. And I'm not alone in feeling this.

If you're talking about the "They shoot horses" line, that's complete bullshit. If it's some other line, show me.

Okay, to clear things up, I deleted three of Kristin's posts. They were all in the thread I started, and I deleted them because I refuse to let anyone who has called for me to be shot to post in my thread.

She didn't. Your reaction to your mistaken interpretation is childish, and you broke your own thread's editing rules because of your misinterpretation and vindictiveness.

It has been done. By him or not, I am not "in the know." But it has, and those that actually follow a debate, no matter how heated, know it to be so. I've even called others on certain erasures on other threads, but it happens and not just in this neck of the woods.

Indeed. This is why my post count is is still negative. Threads and posts vanishing. Even what I'm writing now doesn't really exist, either.

I think it stems from her use of the saying "they shoot horse, don't they" - used, I'm pretty sure, in the context that it's cruel to let him go on like this and if he was a horse he'd have been put out of his misery.

If that's where the accusation comes from it demonstrates a fantastic failure of comprehension and irony, and an overboard reaction.

As to this:
You, on the other hand, (and I use the generic "you", because while some people may not feel this way, in my opinion the vast majority of you do) you do believe that it's proper and right to hurl insults, call names, act boorish...
This, in direct parallel to Snell demonstrates tremendous, generic, and utterly false assumptions about the vast majority of people one is disagreeing with, while failing to recognize even occasional similar behavior in oneself.

Here's my ultimate answer to 'Can "gun people" and "anti-gun people" ever come to the table together and talk': No.

Here's why.

I interpret "Gun People" to be the extremists on the gun-loving side - Snell and NP self identify as members of this (small relative to the US population) group. "Anti-gun" people are that (also very small) group of people who actually do want all guns gone. These two groups will absolutely never see eye to eye and will never come to the table for anything productive. I'll go so far as to say that neither of these extremes will ever be productive in discussion with _moderates_ of the opposing side, because the extremist point of view, despite any protestations otherwise, has no latitude for compromise.

Can moderate gun advocates who want fewer restrictions, and moderate gun-control advocates those who want more restrictions come to the table and be productive? Yes, and they have and do. But they'll _never_ satisfy the extremists of both sides.

So, if I posted that you should be shot because of your viewpoints, and you objected, could I fairly say that you have a persecution complex? Or should I more honestly say that a post advocating someone's death isn't appropriate for this venue or subject matter?

If you posted I should be shot I'd call you moron and a hypocrite, and dangerous, since I know you're plenty well armed. I wouldn't lament about anyone else not calling you out for it, nor tar everyone I disagree with as taking your murderous side.

You could then call me whatever else you wanted, but after already saying I should be shot, any additional verbiage really would be meaningless.

Calling out someone's language as being hypocritical and inappropriate is just fine and dandy, but you went way, _way_ beyond that.