DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on September 25, 2006, 10:05:38 PM
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What if a bunch of conservative billionaires started to worry about the growing power of China and India, and the future demand for and supplies of oil? And what if they figured out there might not be enough to go around? And what if they figured out that they had better grab some while they still could, before China and India got strong enough to stop them? Because otherwise they all might lose shitloads of money and the American economy might go down the tubes and the people might want to look for new ways of governing themselves and distributing the wealth, kind of like in the 1930s. And this wouldn't be good. For anybody.
So for the good of everybody (everybody in America, anyway) they might want to occupy Iraq and then Iran. And of course they couldn't tell the people of the U.S.A. "Hey let's go to war and secure us a long-term supply of oil," so of course they would have thought of other reasons to put to the American people as to why they were going to Iraq and Iran. For the sake of argument, say they came up with "WMD" and then later with "democracy."
Well, I'd say that in that case, Phase I of the plan was a success. A big success. They're in Iraq and they've got the oil fields. The cost in human life is (in their frame of reference) negligible - - 40,000 Iraqis (who are only technically human) and a couple thousand Americans, the lowest of the low, the unemployables, the drop-outs, the un-connected, 30% of them not even citizens, just desperate Hispanics from some Latin American shit-hole or other, risking their poor pathetic lives in the hope of surviving and being rewarded with citizenship and finally, escape from the shit-hole. (No, it isn't Cuba the Communist hell-hole that we're talking about, but the free-enterprise paradises of El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, etc. that these folks are literally "dying" to escape from.)
2600 American soldiers are NOTHING to these billionaires. They blew off twenty times that number in Nam before finally pulling the plug on that one. But maybe you think the price in dollars (half a trillion) is too high? NOTHING could be further from the truth. You see the half-trillion comes out of the public purse. It's EVERYBODY'S money so in a sense it's nobody's money. The PROFITS that will come out of this little escapade - - that is definitely NOT "everybody's money." What's Halliburton's is Halliburton's and what's KBR's is KBR's, and so on - - less a small cut (and I MEAN a small cut) for Uncle Sam and another slice to grease a few choice Republocrat palms. Big Oil (I just LOVE using that phrase!!!) is not one to share gladly. But - - but what if the "terrorists" prevent them from getting as much oil out of the ground there as they used to? Oy. You just don't get it, do you? Who gives a shit if THEY can't get it out of the ground? At least their Chinese and Indian competitors won't be getting any more of that stuff than they will, and if or when it finally DOES start to flow, just exactly where do you think it'll be flowing to?
The hell of it is, the Republicans can't TELL anyone that Iraq is a success. Not in terms that don't excite ridicule and disbelief. The Republicans, unfortunately, are now the prisoners of their own bullshit. Since they lied to the American people TWICE - - once, that they were going in for WMD, then that they were there to establish democracy and justice - - they can only evaluate the project in terms of its stated goals - - yet to do so only invites ridicule and disbelief for obvious reasons.
What's a self-respecting crypto-fascist to do? Fortunately, they don't give a shit. They don't have to. They don't need to WIN elections any more. Stealing them is good enough, and they have THAT down to a science.
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(http://www.dontfeedthetroll.de/images/dftt.gif)
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The more I see of conservative debate tactics, the more similiarities appear. When faced with inconvenient questions, Chris Wallace simpers and giggles amd sits back in his chair, you OTOH post a "Do not feed" sign. Really not so different after all.
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The more I see of conservative debate tactics, the more similiarities appear. When faced with inconvenient questions, Chris Wallace simpers and giggles amd sits back in his chair, you OTOH post a "Do not feed" sign. Really not so different after all.
I thought you said you didn't see Wallace's show?
As far as your post goes, it wasn't worth responding to. Just a load of BS, which is about all you can post in the last 6 months or so. Strawman arguments and such.
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I said I read the written accounts of the show (which included partial transcripts) on Huffington Post.
And you have absolutely no idea of the difference between a strawman argument and a reductio ad absurdum
And while I agree that the "What If?" post definitely had some trollish points embedded in it, you never seem to recognize or comment that just about every cartoon posted here by sirs is pure troll, as are many of the articles.
The serious point of my what-if post was that it is OBVIOUS that the invasion was about oil, as will be the coming invasion of Iran, and for good, solid geopolitical reasons requiring only total amorality and inhumanity on the part of the proponents. (which they possess in abundance) It's a hypothesis that relies more upon logic and circumstance than "smoking gun" proof (which is difficult to find and rarely unequivocal) but a hypothesis which fits the facts as well as any other and better than most.
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And you have absolutely no idea of the difference between a strawman argument and a reductio ad absurdum
Sure I do.
And, like most liberals, the "meat" of your argument is insulting your opponent, and sometimes your friends for good measure.
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No one who is a member or a guest here is a troll.
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No one who is a member or a guest here is a troll.
Do you know what the phrase means?
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<<And, like most liberals, the "meat" of your argument is insulting your opponent, and sometimes your friends for good measure.>>
Hilarious. Considering your sole response to my post was a "Do not feed the troll" sign.
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Hilarious. Considering your sole response to my post was a "Do not feed the troll" sign.
Because your post was an obvious troll. In that context, my sign was appropriate.
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Hilarious. Considering your sole response to my post was a "Do not feed the troll" sign.
That's because that was about all it was worth, in the manner of debate substance. Perhaps you should go back to your hypothetical of what if the President knew about 911 in advance, and did nothing. That'd make more entertaining Docufiction fodder than your current what-if
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<<Because your post was an obvious troll. In that context, my sign was appropriate>>
That's complete bullshit. It had some "troll" nuggets, sure, but in substance it postulated a serious explanation of the administration's persistence in an apparently disastrous policy.
You didn't want to deal with it for whatever reason, which is OK with me, but the reason had absolutely nothing to do with trolling. You never once gratuitously commented on ANY of sirs' cartoons posted to this site which were almost invariably 100% troll, with no substantive content, that's how I know what hypocritical bullshit your "troll" comment really is.
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That's complete bullshit. It had some "troll" nuggets, sure, but in substance it postulated a serious explanation of the administration's persistence in an apparently disastrous policy.
The definition of a troll post includes quotes that are of the form "my opinion is better than your opinion" - which your post contained in spades.
It was, therefore, a troll. As are a significant number of your postings - and virtually all of Domer's.
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You didn't want to deal with it for whatever reason, which is OK with me, but the reason had absolutely nothing to do with trolling.
Sure it did. The fact that it was nothing more than a troll post is the entire reason why I didn't deal with it.
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<<The definition of a troll post includes quotes that are of the form "my opinion is better than your opinion" - which your post contained in spades.>>
That's also bullshit. A troll post is one that consists only of provocative or insulting comments that are meant to elicit outrage and provoke hostile comments in return. The author is trolling for flames. It has nothing to do with "my opinion is better than yours" or anything of that sort.
Mine might have contained some provocative jibes (what I referred to as troll-like elements or something like that) but in substance it was what I said it was in my last post. Unlike a troll post, this had plenty to debate in it.
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<<Sure it did. The fact that it was nothing more than a troll post is the entire reason why I didn't deal with it.>>
You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about, and apparently don't even know what a troll post is. The discussion is useless and pointless.
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The discussion is useless and pointless.
As was your original post to this thread. Get some sleep, Tee
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You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about, and apparently don't even know what a troll post is. The discussion is useless and pointless.
Yes, a discussion about someone's trolling behaviour is usually useless and pointless.
However, from the Internet Troll section of Wikipedia, one of the examples of "trolling posts" is given as "Opinionated statements: Posting messages expressing their own opinions as generally accepted facts without offering any proof or analysis." This is an apt description of many of your posts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll)
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<<"Opinionated statements: Posting messages expressing their own opinions as generally accepted facts without offering any proof or analysis." This is an apt description of many of your posts.>>
Still more bullshit. The post in question was a SPECULATION, a theory, and clearly offered as such, even in the title. As for "an apt description of many of my posts," there's a lot of posts out there. I'll defend any one of them, or not, on its merits, but in your typical bullshit fashion, you prefer to spread blanket accusations indicting hundreds of posts without bothering to specify any. Typical bullshit conservative response - - can't answer the post, attack the poster.
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Still more bullshit. The post in question was a SPECULATION, a theory, and clearly offered as such, even in the title.
And you said a lot of the same things previously, claiming them as "fact" or "obvious." Just because you now try to coat the statements as "theory" (even though a theory actually requires evidence, which you have yet to provide for many of your claims) does not make this post any less of a troll.
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What if a bunch of conservative billionaires started to worry about the growing ...
What's a self-respecting crypto-fascist to do? Fortunately, they don't give a shit. They don't have to. They don't need to WIN elections any more. Stealing them is good enough, and they have THAT down to a science.
When you cannot prove a point does it help to gather a lot of other unproveable points together and present them all at once?
I am sure you do beleive that the root problem is American greed for oil , or more precicely , the rich Americans greed for the cash that oil produces but I think that the problerm you first postulated includes within it a better answer.
India and China are indeed resurgant and Americans with money are investing cash there prepareing to ride the surgeing economys of Asia like big league surfers.
Boeing has a big plant in China , many others too, though China is hard to qualify for,almost every Company in the western world has an Indian Branch.
Most of the large companys of Europe and the USA are eager to ensure that China and India have the resorces required to keep on makeing money.