The poll doesn’t prove that 37% of Democrats are truthers. But, as the salon article mentions, there are other polls.
But rather than playing nitpick the source, what percent of Democrats do you think, your guess - your opinion - do you think Bush knew about 9/11 and intentionally let it happen?
What percent of the two main political parties do you think are comprised of “the fringe”?
Hahaha really? I defy anyone to read your blog and come to that conclusion.
Why golly gosh gee whiz Brad, you just don’t say.
Swing vote independents and people who were disinclined to vote without a compelling candidate certainly didn’t like Kerry, that much is for sure.
No, but it sure creeps you out. The way he’s, you know, popular. Famous people, I mean yikes, right?
Brad, I did read your blog. All of it.
UND NOW ZE FINDINGS. ACHTUNG!
Let’s get this one out of the way first: “Liberals, liberals, LIBERALS!” That was part II of a 2-part series. Part I Starts it off awesomely:
Disclaimer: If you are one of those people who determine who they like based on esoteric political views you should probably not read further and moreover, might want to reconsider your priorities.
lol
Oh, here we go, I guess this is what you mean:
The above link deserves a pull quote:
HAHA PWND J00 KIDS
Ah, found it.
I…that speaks for itself.
Yes, it’s often liberal, or conservative - like these guys you link to in one blog entry (titled “Obama’s America. Is This What You Signed Up For?”). Come on now, do better.
Then again, sometimes it’s not!
liberal/Democrat
Mmm, slashfic.
Right-wingnuts…like this?
Oh wait I think you liked what that guy said about the US becoming a totalitarian regime (Nazi Germany NOBODY SAID THAT, NOBODY SAID THAT).
You really titled it “Going John Galt on Obama.”
We have a winner.
If I seem like I don’t have a lot of compassion, that is probably because I don’t have a lot of compassion.
I don’t really like humans in general.
:(
I read the articles and nothing in them suggests that a percentage of Democrats who suspect that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance is the same as saying that they believe that Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.
They do suggest that the number is the amount of Truthers. But a “Truther” doesnt just mean someone who believe that 9/11 was caused by the American government. It just means that they are suspicious of the mainstream interpetation of the events. Its a huge generalization that includes everyone from the extreme that believe Bush or Aliens are behind the attacks to the moderate that believe the American government isnt revealing all the facts (that someone in a department somewhere received a credible threat and ignored it).
I don’t believe its fair to paint the whole group with a single extreme belief.
Which brings me to the republicans. Just as with the “Truthers” a slight lean is taken as fanaticism. I think I understand what you are saying in this thread, but their is so much dogma in the water that isn’t hard to separate moderate questioning and idea sharing from loyalist devotion that religious leaders are envious of.
Holding these conversations on internet forums doesnt help (where people often assume others arguments are as extreme as possible).
Back to the topic of policy vs personality, I think thats normal when any leader is popular enough. If the leaders popularity is high enough they use that as a selling point to push policy. The last time I think it happened at the American presidential level was probably Reagan. But I think ti happens at lowers level all the time with extremely popular Governors, Mayor and Congressmen.
Re liking Obama more than Bush
Bill writes:
I defy anyone to read your blog and come to that conclusion.
Well for starters there was the blog post: “I like Obama more than Bush, I just don’t agree with him.”
The rest of your response is the typical “hey look how clever I am, I can make fun of people who disagree with me on a forum where 99% of the people share my values”.
Bravo, sir. You are a true hero of the people. Thank you for adding to the discussion…
As I’ve said previously, I’m a libertarian leaning conservative. I make no bones about it.
Back to the topic of policy vs personality, I think thats normal when any leader is popular enough. If the leaders popularity is high enough they use that as a selling point to push policy. The last time I think it happened at the American presidential level was probably Reagan. But I think ti happens at lowers level all the time with extremely popular Governors, Mayor and Congressmen.
I agree. All politicians try to build on their persona. McCain certainly tried to make his character a center point.
With Obama, as I’ve repeated throughout this discussion, crosses that threshold of comfort when he has a symbol created for himself and promotes himself as a brand so explicitly.
His supporters (especially here evidently) don’t have a problem with that. And it’s not something I lose sleep over either. I just, like the beginning of the discussion, find it creepy.
The Scripps poll does not sufficiently separate truthers out; it’s just a rewording of the Rasmussen poll. “took no action because they wanted to go to war in the Middle East” is far from actually knowing the plan for 9/11 and letting it happen.
The 9/11 commission itself reported that the administration took no action on intelligence that Bin Laden was going to attack.
Now, I would not ascribe the Bush administration’s inaction as due to wanting to invade Iraq, just mere incompetence. But it is well-known that right after the attacks, that very same day, Rumsfeld was making plans to strike Iraq as well as Bin Laden.
I’m sure well-constructed polls have been done about 9/11 truthers, but I’m also sure the results aren’t very interesting. My eyeball polling of protests show that 9/11 truthers are most closely associated with Ron Paul, a fringe minority of a fringe minority.
Incidentally, I am a hobbyist beekeeper and it’s already illegal for me to sell my honey without jumping through a bunch of hoops. No biggie for me since it’s just for fun. But to put things in perspective, one beehive can produce around 80 pounds of honey. An 8 oz. jar of honey can sell for about $4. Or put another way, a single beehive could make $320 a year. Point being, the people most affected by this red tape are people who are poor who could make some extra money growing things on a small scale for local consumption.
I love this. So where do I put my bees in the apartment Brad? Three hundred and twenty dollars a year, really? That’s more than 25 dollars a month. OMG! How much would the land cost to put down those bees?
Edit: In case that’s too subtle. If people are so poor that whatever slim margin (if any) that comes from a small garden or bees (how much do those bee suits cost?) is a significant increase in income, they are probably better off just eating what’s from the garden or going dumpster diving…
There is not one entry in your blog that speaks better of Obama than “I like Obama BUT…”
Hey, look at you, you can make fun of poor people on your blog. What’s your point? I’m sorry I’m better at this this than you are. As a Libertarian, I thought you’d admire that.
Seriously though, like wow, man.
It works in my favor, and yet I’m still horrified to see you doing it every time.
Have you ever done anything else? Are you capable of doing anything differently? Even as conservatives snicker at you and tell you to your smug fat faces that you’re making a gross strategic error, you continue doing so just the same!
That’s from a blog posting implying that Palin was done in by liberal slander.
This too:
The Ronald Reagans and Sarah Palins surprise you, because you just can’t even conceive of them.
Palin was quite inconceivable as a running mate, that much I concede to you.
Sigh. They always go meta.
See, now you have to go and make me bring out the big guns.
Obama isn’t merely unqualified for President, he’s incredibly unqualified. He’s 40 some years old and what exactly has he done? What has he done in his life other than seek ever higher office? He’s simply a guy who is good at reading speeches off a tele-prompter.
“There’s no circumstance that I would vote for him.”
“Personally, I don’t think the man likes the United States at all.”
Brad Wardell: totally likes Obama more than Bush.
…but he likes Palin even more!
Lastly, I was going to post some links/quote of you saying you dislike Bush back when he was still in office, but there aren’t any.
It is not a well-constructed question, but the allowed/aided because they wanted to go to war in the Middle East makes it quite a bit more Truthy than the Rasmussen poll. As you say, I think you have to go with the Ron Paul/Larouche/John Birch Society gang to find genuine Truther-ness, but that poll is still plenty disturbing if we assume its methodology is statistically sound.
Matt, for a guy who made this post:
You seem to have an amazingly selective need for precision when it comes to results you don’t like. When it comes to trying to paint the right as a bunch of wackjobs your standards are much lower when it comes to evidence.
BTW, in that very same thread, Blackadar who was outraged, OUTRAGED that anyone would even hint at comparing Obama - the man - to doing something similar to what happened in the Third Reich into a discussion wrote this regarding intelligent coworkers who disagree with him on politics:
The scary part is that they’re not uneducated idiots. They’re pretty highly educated, but don’t realize that they’ve been indoctrinated to the point that they’ve gone off the deep end. I hate to Godwin this thread, but they’re very similar to the German populace in the 1920s and 1930s. hey’ve steadily moved further and further right after listening to the propaganda spewed by talking heads like Hannity and Limbaugh.
And this isn’t some ancient thread I dug up. This is one of the current threads in this forum.
This is what happens when group think takes over a forum. Pretty soon, you delude yourself into thinking that anyone who disagrees with you is just some nut or has been indoctrinated.
Sure, it’s perfectly okay to compare Rush Limbaugh to Goebbels and Hannity to Nazi propaganda explicitly. That’s just, that’s fine because it’s true right? I mean, conservatives are really just Nazis right and those who agree are just indoctrinated or stupid or just ignorant. But if a conservative takes issue with something Obama does that strikes that conservative as being reminiscent of the same sort of thig, oh, horrors. We end up with a 7+ page thread about it.
A little bit of honesty can go a long way. American politics is pretty nasty these days. The “fringe” is not small on either side.
Lastly, I was going to post some links/quote of you saying you dislike Bush back when he was still in office, but there aren’t any.
Yes, this took seconds to Google…
From 2005:
Bush’s latest Supreme Court nominee I think pretty much seals it that Bush is really just an idiot. I’ve had misgivings about him and was not a fan of his in the past but this nomination reeks of arrogance.
The Roman emperor, Caligula, made his horse a senator. I suppose now we know that reincarnation is possible though at least Bush’s advisors managed to thwart any ideas of nominating a favorite horse to the supreme court.
Bush’s croneyism is possibly the worst in the modern era. He may be fairly moral in most respects but his professional ethics certainly are in question.
Frankly, I’m disgusted with Bush.
There are plenty more like this but you would, you know, have to actually look.
I’m not even sure what point you’re even trying to make. That I’m a conservative? Absolutely.
Incidentally, Bill, it’s pretty despicable to quote things that were originally quoted in my blog and then pose them here as if I wrote them.
I think this thread is creepy because everyone is piling on Brad.
I wouldn’t worry about him. He’ll have his Xanadu soon enough.
I love how Brad has moved on from trying to defend his statement to trying to point out that everyone else is a hypocrite.
He’s gotten the reaction he hoped for. He needed the attention or perhaps he just felt like being passive-aggressive. He knew what he was posting and the context in which it would be received. So when it was derided on any internet forum, he was ready to pounce…and thus we have this thread. So he got to play his victim card (“oh look, I’m being attacked”) and then try to give the appearance of defending himself. The only real problem with this strategy is he didn’t count on being factually incorrect with numerous examples pointed out on various ways politicians have employed much stronger symbolism in the last 60 years. Hence we have the misdirection to the “everyone else sucks worse than me” tactic we’ve seen the last two pages.
sigh
He should have just taken my advice and shut up. After all, what does he care about a bunch of groupthink, dickhead, asshole, mindless forum posters think?
The closest thing I’ve ever had to deal with to a real boycott of Stardock stuff wasn’t from left-wing moonbats but from right-wingnuts.
First link, bitch.
You do realize that not all poor and low income folks live in apartments, right?
Get out and drive around the country a bit. I mean more than 100 miles inland from the coasts. You’ll see a lot of folks living in small towns and rural areas with anywhere from a fraction of an acre up to something rather larger. It may indeed shock you that some of the dwellings on these properties are NOT in fact palatial, and the residents MAY NOT earn as much as, say, a Seattle-based web developer. I would in fact hazard a guess that relatively few of those with roadside produce stands haul their produce around in Volvos.
In the meantime, I think I’ll exit this thread for a while. I have a legally purchased version of Gal Civ 2: Twilight of the Arnor game to play. There’s a pesky civ called the “Wardells” that need to be exterminated.
:D
Too much thread for me to take in at once. But when I see this logo:
What I see is the outline of this:
Obama is Black Manta!
Oh, you sure told me. You voted for him twice. I’m wondering when you’re going to get the point that you have made a no-win argument in this case.
Bzzzzt thanks for playing. You’ve been stating that you like Obama, citing your blog as reference. That’s an utter fallacy. That’s my point.
Incidentally Brad your hair looks stupid like that. It was a mistake, yes what a low blow I have struck against your sterling honor. My bad, that one time I did that was definitely not you. Here’s you, the first word you typed after that rant had played out:
Sorry, you only wish you’d written it. Also, you not liking anything I have to say to you is no big surprise. This is why I love politics. It makes intelligent men enemies of each other by exploiting their own false sense of relatively superior intellect. That’s despicable.
I spent a large part of my youth in a rural agricultural area (population 6,000 when we arrived, about 7-8k when I left) and before that living in cities in and out of weekly motels, cars, shelters, and even dumped on the street. Heck, I even lived on a property in Texas with a crazy dude that did raise bees for living. I’m not arguing against people selling produce at roadside stands, but his scenario is laughable. If you can afford to rent a home with the land necessary to start a “garden” that would appreciably affect your income (compared to say even getting a minimum wage job), you are not poor. His 320 dollars a year amounts to about an extra hour a week at minimum wage… woo? You’d be better off getting second job than trying to manage bees in your back yard.
You know when that guy who raised bees finally died and left the property to his son was worth? It was worth over a 100,000 dollars.
Edit: Thinking back on it now, trying to find the smallest place we lived, it was a town of 300 people (that I believe was wiped out in one of the southern California fires awhile back). We lived in a trailer on someone else’s property. And you know what, we did do things like raise rabbits, but it was for meat, so we could eat…