When is it not acceptable (if ever) to blame the other side these days?

C’mon, really? Is this a Question? Are you looking for an Answer?

I think not. I think this is a just a rant.

It may be a rant, but it would be interesting if someone could give me an example of something that Republicans wouldn’t blame on Democrats, that is indeed my question.

Or vice versa? It’s politics. Of course, they’re gonna blame each other. And they can because when laws get passed, there are always people of either side that vote for/against them. Each party therefore has some culpability, if you want to look at it that way.

LOL, dalepetrie, you crack me up. You made me stop working to respond.
My answers to your “question”:

Is there anything the Republicans won’t blame on the Democrats? Success

When nearly as many Democrats voted FOR the bill as Republicans voted against it, even though the bill was pushed by the President they don’t like or trust, when 2/3 of Republicans voted against it, Boehner had the audacity to say that it was all Pelosi’s fault? Well, this started with When and ended with a question mark, but I’m not really sure if it calls for an answer. If pressed, I would have to say: True

WTF? What does WhatTheFluther have to do with this?

I mean, don’t political attacks have to pass the sniff test anymore? Not really. Look at Swift Boats, Max Cleland, even Obama mocking McCain for not being able to use a computer…

C’mon, really? Really.

I mean, this is a Presidential campaign, I expect both sides to play a little fast and loose with the truth, but seriously? Seriously.

After 8 years of Bush letting Wall Street do whatever it wants, and after 26 years of McCain fighting for less regulations on Wall Street, not more…this is all Obama’s fault? I don’t think so, but it does seem to be politically expedient to say so, since the vast majority of Americans have no clue what happened

I mean, which is it? Depends on your political leanings, from the Right, it looks like Clinton’s fault for singing the deregulation; from the Left it looks like Bush’s fault for mismanaging the economy and going on a spending spree; from the Bottom it looks like everyone is to blame.

Is he a newcomer to Washington who has no experience, or is he singlehandedly responsible (well him and Pelosi) for our financial crisis? I’d say that we should all blame Monica Lewinsky, or Linda Tripp

Didn’t political finger pointing at least used to need “some” grounding in reality to be even considered by a Presidential candidate? I don’t think so, but i’ll have to do some research if i have time.

And I know both sides mislead, and deflect blame, but is anyone other than a Republican going to believe this? Only people who already want to find reasons not to vote for Obama could possibly confer this.

Isn’t this just going to make the Republicans seem even more out of touch with reality and make them even more likely to lose the election (at all levels)? Nah, they could be seen as trying to save the free market economy against the evils of the left. All depends on your original leanings

As you can see I’ve reworded it considerably and now it’s acceptable to the PTB, though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being provocative when the actions that prompted the question are even MORE provocative. So be it.

@fireside Great Answer

THIS IS WHY I HATE POLITICS.

At a certain point, given the complexity of what actually goes on, the blame is pointless anyway isn’t it.

No matter who actually did or didn’t do it, and there is enough blame to go around I am sure, people will believe what they want. What really happened wouldn’t matter even if we could figure it out.

Bri is right. While it is true that we were short 12 votes. And it is true that a huge number of Republicans voted against it. It is also true that a huge number of Democrats voted against it. Was pinning this failure on the Republicans so important that we couldn’t scare up an extra 12 votes? Could they not get news of that 705pt dip in that room? Of course they could. They have blackberries. Not passing the bill was ridiculous or sensible, but the point is, both parties are to blame or take credit.

I almost hate to admit this, but I work for the local government and I just got out of a meeting about the current budget situation. In my opinion, in times like these, we simply
don’t have the time or
resources to waste pointing
fingers. Regardless of who you think should be in office, if your
guy wins or loses, we are still going to be in a world of hurt
and it is going to take
everybody (republican and
democrat) workng together to get us out of the mess we are
in. We need to look forward
and find solutions, not look
back to place blame.

Fix the problem. Find the blame later. When you find the culprit. Hang em. Then partisan politics will go away. Until then… Welcome to the Game.

In the end we will have to look at how we got here to figure out how to avoid repeating the problem again. But, as has been said, now is not the time.

Seems the concensus is “fix the problem, THEN point fingers.” Great, so why aren’t Boehner, Blunt and Cantor telling us which 12 Republicans it was who were going to vote for the bill then decided not to because Nancy Pelosi insulted them, so that in 35 days, their constitutents can “fix” the problem by voting in people who will vote for the best interest of the country instead of out of spite for being insulted? Or if they lost those 12 seats, would that be Pelosi’s fault, too?

Not all of the republicans claim their vote was influenced by Pelosi’s speech.

Further, not everyone agrees that a government bailout is the right thing to do.

@dale, when you can calm down the rhetoric and take the time to think about what’s going on, maybe it’ll start to make sense.

Since the government was a major contributor (skip the final 60 seconds of the video to miss the partisan sales pitch) to this problem in the first place, I’m all about shying away from rash decisions and learning more before action.

robmandu

#1 – I never said “all of the Republicans” claim their vote was influenced by Pelosi’s speech. I SAID, Boehner, Blunt and Cantor said that the exact number of Republicans they needed to pass the bill would have voted for it if it weren’t for Pelosi.

#2 – I know full damn well that not everyone agrees that a government bailout is the right thing to do. I don’t even agree it’s the right thing to do, at least not in the way that’s been presented. But first off, that’s not the question. My question is about finger pointing and not whether the bailout is the right thing to do. Secondly, my point is, if Boehner, Blunt and Cantor are to be believed, there are 12 Republicans in the House that thought it was the right thing to do, but voted against it anyway because Pelosi insulted them.

#3 – I have used facts, not rhetoric to make my point. I am referring to things that these people have actually SAID, not my filtered version of events.

#4 – I completely agree with you, but again, not the point I’m making with this question.

Please do not attempt to put any more words in my mouth, thank you.

[ Removed by myself because it was pointless. ]

I hate politics

@dale: You place blame on republicans for saying they didn’t vote for the bill because they blame Pelosi, but didn’t Pelosi place blame on the republicans for this whole mess, and don’t democrats partially blame McCain for voting for a bill that Bill Clinton passed. As I see it both democrats and republicans seem to be placing blame. Actually it seems like your placing blame as well. As I right this I think I may be blaming you for placing blame.

@critter1982, I blame you for using right when you meant write. ツ

@critter- No kidding.

Dale, as I told your buddy AlanGreen, it would be much, much easier to take you seriously in your quest for political truth and justice if there was even a shred of impartiality in your posts. You’re a smart guy and it’s obvious you devote a lot of time and energy into the realm of politics. It’s unfortunate that you don’t see the irony in your blind support of Democrats.

I can guaruntee you you’re not going to be changing any minds by emulating the actions of a typical political insider and simply talking negatively about Republicans (or Dems for that matter). There’s a reason people dislike and distrust politicians.

How about when it is counterproductive to solving the problem and the problem will just keep getting worse.

Guy is in water drowning “you bumped him” “you bumped me” who the hell cares. Get him the hell out. His family would prefer that. Then you can work out what happened.

Read this:

—

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

—

Jiminy. That’s just plain crazy talk.

I don’t care who’s blaming who. I don’t care why they disagree. I would like to take a moment to virtually pat every congressperson who voted “nay” on the back.

My point is not sign the bill. Stop the blame.

How about study the problem, do the math, work together, talk about it, look at the options, but above all else, keep everyone informed.

The market and indeed the world responds out of confidence in what they believe may or may not happen. That does not mean they wont have confidence unless something DOES happen.

Just my opinion.

rob: I suppose I should review what I right. :)

critter – like I said, both sides play the blame game. But if you get 60% of your people to vote for something and the other side only gets 33%, if there IS blame to go around, doesn’t it seem positively ridiculous for the side getting 33% to blame the side getting 60% for the failure? As for your vague reference to something that we were talking about in another post (Dems blaming McCain for a bill passed by Clinton), if you’ll go back to the post where we were discussing it, you’ll see my position there. Essentially though the bill was written by one of McCain’s chief financial advisors, and was wholeheartedly supported by McCain as part of a 26 year long pattern of supporting deregulation. And all this really proves my point….some times people can point fingers and sometimes both sides stretch the truth…the 1999 bill in question being a prime example of how both sides can point the finger about the same issue and there can be a little truth to the viewpoints of each side. But this is one sided, not because I made it one sided, but because it was positively ridiculous in this case…not in every case where anyone has ever pointed fingers, but in this one specific case…the finger pointing seemed to me to be not only inappropriate, but only believable if you live in an alternate universe. As for me “placing blame”, I didn’t take a position saying that any individual did something they shouldn’t or did do something they should…my point is, was and shall remain, despite all these efforts to drag unrelated stuff into it, if you are bringing the minority share of something, and STILL can’t bring enough, you don’t blame the guy who brought twice as much as you did, it’s ludicrous, and that ain’t a partisan issue, that’s LOGIC.

camera – I’m actually very impartial, if you’d read other posts, you’d see I always try to be fair, and I think I’ve been fair here as well. I find your statement that my posts don’t contain a shred of impartiality to be myopic and out of sync with the facts…I guarantee you I could find you at least a dozen people who would tell you that they respect my writings because I have a knack for being impartial and seeing both sides. But if you look at this post, I posted FACTS. Hard, cold, incontravertable facts. Not conjecture, not biased information filtered through my lens. Go back and look at my post. This is not a partisan post…this is a post of someone who is offended by the complete lack of logic in the actions of a group of people…yes those people happen to be partisan in a way that I am not. But I GUARANTEE you (and please note the spelling of that word), that if a Democrat were to pull something that out of sync with reality, I would call him or her on it. Like I said several times, and I don’t know how to make this any clearer, both sides stretch the truth, both sides play fast and loose with the facts, my point is that Boehner’s comments and McCain’s comments were so far outside the realm of what I consider to be standard political discourse and into the realm of fantasyland that I had a hard time scraping my jaw off the floor. But I didn’t editorialize, I listed out specifically who said and did what. Do you need me to provide links? Because I didn’t lie, I didn’t exaggerate, and I guess if facts aren’t going to convince people. nothing will, and I can’t be too concerned about trying to convince people who don’t believe facts.

Bri L – I agree, some things blame shouldn’t even enter into, and blame is standard in politics, but there are times to rise above it, and to make a statement like Boehner did was not only in poor taste in my opinion but since it was demonstrably false, I really wanted to know if people thought this was standard operating procedure, or if this was as beyond the pale as I saw it. I don’t hide my bias, I admit it, but I can’t espouse an opinion I don’t believe in an effort to reach out to both sides…I can be factual and accurate, but I’m going to express facts and where I input opinion, I will identify it as such, which is what I did above. I agree with you in the “do the work and figure it out” part, and I agree with robmandu that this was not the right bill to pass.

All I’d like to ask of the right wingers is before you accuse me of not being impartial enough, actually flippin’ READ what I wrote, and tell me specifically what you disagree with. And if you disagree with my opinion (which was clearly labeled as such), that’s all well and good, but if you disagree with the facts, I’ll be more than happy to provide proof of the facts I posted. But if the facts belie a left leaning slant, then perhaps that should tell YOU something.

@ Dale – In my statement I was speaking to the problem with the government, not to any of your actions. Just wanted to clear that up.

@ CameraObscura – As someone who once said “It get’s tiresome being the lone representative of the other half of the country, which is why I’ve lost interest.” I have yet to see you put forth any real specific effort to give cause for being tired. Vague general statements like yours are hardly effective in discounting well documented and referenced points in political discussions like those of Dale and Robmandu. You are hardly the “Voice of the other half”.

@dale: Yes but don’t you think it is ridiculous that right before Republicans were going to vote in what many were calling a bipartisan bill, Pelosi would stand in front of the house and make a partisan argument in that Bush inherited a 600 billion dollar surplus from Clinton and ruined it within 2 years. Bush this bush that. This was a bill to improve the failing market and millions of peoples investments and Pelosi decided it was time to play politics and bash Bush. Dale there is a time and place to point fingers and give blame but right before the vote was bad timing and incredibly stupid on Pelosi’s part.

I am in no way advocating that it was appropriate for 12 Republicans to vote nay “only because of Pelosi”, but I have a feeling that her comments happened to be a scapegoat for what the majority of Republicans thought was a bad idea to begin with.

Though I agree with Pelosi on “what” she said, I do agree with you it wasn’t necessary for her to say it at that time. There are two issues here though…one is it wasn’t the time and the place for EITHER statement…I agree. But the other one, which is the one I actually made in my question was, aren’t these types of political attacks usually at least somewhat steeped in someone’s perspective on reality, and not on wholly ridiculous, stuff created out of whole cloth with absolutely no objective way to support one’s accusation.

Now the only justification I can see for Pelosi saying what she did, was look at it from the Democrats’ point of view. Even if you wholly disagree with what she’s saying (despite the fact that it is factual that a $600 billion dollar surplus was wiped out in 2 years and now we have a deficit larger than the combined total of every president up through what Clinton inherited), even if you want to say it’s not the time to talk about that and placing blame should be less important than fixing the problem, you’ve got to realize that from our point of view, this is a leap of faith. Bush came to Congress saying we need to do something and do it now and do it his way or else the consequences would be dire. It is not the first time he’s gotten Dems to go along with his plans this way, and as they say, fool me once… Dems believe they were hoodwinked into the PATRIOT Act and the war in Iraq by Bush using his surrogates to push for something that he said would be disasterous if it weren’t approved, but which proved to be overblown. As the person in charge of trying to get Dems to go along with Bush’s plan, Pelosi may have needed to throw a bone, she might have needed to say essentially, “yes, Bush has lied to use before, but this time we should believe him because he caused the problem.” Yes it’s biased, but it was meant to sell her people on something, and maybe she wouldn’t have gotten her 60% if she hadn’t said it. Now I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but again, I can come up with some plausible reason why maybe that was a necessary statement, and I can come up with facts to support that what she said contained a great deal more factual accuracy than what Boehner said. So, I’d just say that yes, it works both ways, and yes, your example is a good demonstration of that, but my comment is just more about severity and believability, and I have acknowledged every step of the way that both play the game…I’m just pointing out that one side doesn’t seem to be playing the game by the established rules.

Perhaps John Stewart can do a better job of adding perspective to my question than I was able to do myself:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=186754&title=kill-bill-volume-1

That was brilliant! Thanks for that, Dale.

I know, augustlan, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.

@robmandu: It’s good to know I’m not alone in being pleased the dang thing didn’t pass. 31 years old, and still I want to have a popular opinion.

@dale: While I appreciate your frustration with party politics, I don’t see a gain to be made by wasting energy over it. For now, it is what it is.

I, for one, direct my disgust toward the lack of accountability in our culture, right down to the people who took out these subprime mortgages and got in over their heads. If someone can’t afford something, they should keep on working until they can. If people in this country weren’t babied to expect hand-outs at every turn, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

Wasn’t part of the problem that there were tons of people out there who had things explained to them by experts in a manner that led them to believe they could afford a house when they couldn’t because of the conditions. Sort of like trusting a lawyer to look over a document for you and signing it only to find out they wrote something in there.

Weren’t there checks and balances written in the 80s that were meant to prevent these things that were just not enforced?

You can’t blame people if they were not properly explained things. If you go to a doctor and trust him to tell you everything about a drug he prescribes but then you find out after you turn blue. It isn’t your fault.

tsocyk – I agree with you, to a degree it is wasting energy, but I’m hoping that if I can wake even one person out of complacency, wake up one person to the sheer hypocrisy that goes on in our political system, I might be able to double the impact of my one vote. And if a million people like me do the same, well, remember the margin of ‘victory’ in 2000 was 527 votes!

Bri_L, I agree. Many that I’ve read about here in our area knew what they could afford and bought homes well within their range. But, as the ARMS adjusted and quadrupled or quitupled their payments, that’s when they learned the hard way.

@Bri: My husband and I actually had one of these mortgages ourselves, being in a bad credit situation as a result of our own bad choices. So we were one of the families that could have fallen into this trap, but we knew what we were getting into: at first I jumped at the idea of the ARM, but we decided to research it, and it didn’t seem sound. Buyer beware, etc. Instead, we bit the bullet, paid the highest possible interest and our “dues” to get our credit back on track. If I stepped it up and paid my share, I think we all can. I disagree, and I do think we can blame people for not being properly explained things…just as ignorance of the law doesn’t mean you aren’t subject to said law. The onus is on the person signing the mortgage, filling the prescription, etc. to educate themselves about what they are getting into.

@ SpatzieLover and tscoyk, I am not saying their are not exceptions to the rule. But the fact is there are laws to protect against those things. We are not lawyers. Or mortgage brokers.

My wife and I knew what we could afford. That didn’t stop the mortgage broker from trying to talk us into a monthly payment that was over $800 over our budget. That is criminal.

Ignorance of the law is not excuse its true. But if you take your car in to a mechanic and they misrepresent and take advantage of your ignorance do you want to tell me its your fault?

Not everyone should be off the hook. Just like with credit cards there are people who want to live beyond their means.

But there was predatory lending going on, the kind the laws of the 80s savings and loans laws were supposed to stop but were not enforced.

@Bri… I am in COMPLETE agreement with you. One couple in particular sticks in my mind. Their mortgage payment more than quintupled and they had no idea it was a possibility. They showed the stack of documents they signed…it looked about 1/2 a foot high to me. We had a 25yr fixed before we paid off. We had to ARGUE with our mortgage company because they used every tactic they could to try to get us into an ARM…If we weren’t as educated, we’d probably have given in.

@Bri_L: Agreed. 100%. Now I’m going to go read more about those saving and loans laws…I wasn’t exactly paying attention when we covered those in school. Ahem.

I just wanted to throw out a little tid bit, in regards to people knowing what they can afford. When my husband and I bought our first home, the bank prequalified us. The individual that we spoke with phrased the prequalification as “Here is what you can afford”. We were in our twenties and this person was suppose to be the financial expert. I looked at the number and thought, “wow, we can really afford that much”, after all this guy was the ‘expert’. Anyhow, I tend to be overly cautious, so I sat down and did some of my own ‘calculating’. I came up with a figure that was half of his figure and that is what we went with. As it turned out, it was a good thing we did, or we wouldn’t have had any left for retirement savings, home repairs, etc. Now, I’m not the most brilliant person in the world, but I do have an above average IQ I know you couldn’t tell by some of my blather and I have had exposure to financial sense from my family, if that was not the case, I would have trusted the ‘expert’, because I would have had more confidence in his judgement than my own. So, I can see where many people really believed they could afford the home they were trying to buy.

@ Marissa, Great job going with your gut and your calculations!

@marissa: Gosh, we sound like we could be talking about the exact same situation. Right down to our prequalification discussion and the finance-minded family. It is unfortunate that not enough people erred on the side of caution. HOPEFULLY, national lesson learned? Maybe not.

I still feel though, that ultimately, we as a individuals and as a nation should be more accountable for our actions. Sigh…

@ Marissa – Excellent! Good for you. That is what we did to.

They want to lend you as much money as they can. What is funny is a lot of the time, with in a year they will sell off the loan to a bigger institution like Country Wide (who currently owns ours).

We locked in a 30 year rate though so we avoided the whole mess.

But think of the number of people out there who take them at their word. “this is what you can afford”.

@ tscoyk – I respect that.

I think part of the problem is that folks don’t see these people as salesmen or women. They see them as professionals acting in the best interest of their client (like a doctor, lawyer, tax preparer, etc), they don’t realize that the are trying to ‘sell’ them a product (a financial service), because they don’t see a car, vacuum or some other tangible product sitting in front of them.

Exactly Marissa, and how many of these people that are in forclosure or have been foreclosed were working class that may or may not have understood this?

Ohio comes to mind on this one. Especially in steel towns-etc. How many are ‘low’ readers? I’d like to see Country Wide (they held my mortgage too, Bri & used & still try to use their tactis on us) et. al. investigated.

@ marissa – Yup, you got it

I was surprised how few of my friends didn’t even shop around to see what different rates they could get.

@ SpatzieLover – my point exactly

I just read through some of the previous posts on this thread, and I feel compelled to say this. I have participated in several ‘discussions’ that Dalepetrie has also participated in and I don’t always agree with him, however, I have never thought that he didn’t want to hear the other side of things. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I wanted to voice mine in regards to Dale.

@marissa, some of us tend to find it tiresome that dalepetrie is predisposed to dismiss opposing viewpoints as stupid, uncritical, frightening, and as a distraction not worth a rat’s ass.

I don’t hafta agree with someone here. But, for healthy discussion, there should be some allowance made for alternate viewpoint, especially around political discussion where there’s much under debate everywhere.

@robmandu, I read your links and yes, he does have a way with words, I understand why you feel the way you do, however, he still does listen to the other side of the argument and I have never known him to personally attack an individual he is in debate with, if I am wrong, please let me know

@marissa, it’s a dodge. He doesn’t call an individual stupid. He says that their ideas/beliefs/decisions are stupid. When I see that kind of thing, it makes me want to take up & argue the opposite viewpoint, especially in cases where it’s plainly not clearcut. In political gerrymandering especially, nothing is black & white.

@rob, you forgot to mention bullshit.

I find Dalepetrie to be far more interested in debating the issues than ripping on the person.

I looked at the links and yes, strong words were used, but as an adult, amazingly enough, I didn’t take them personally or personally on behalf of a group of people. You would have to be looking for a fight to do that. What I did notice about each link you listed were how frequently you made personal attacks on him, not addressing the issue at hand, full of sarcasm. That is very hypocritical.

I used to look at your points to help me see both sides of the story.

I have grown tired of your rants about Dale. Your attempts at rallying people to your side and cheerleading anyone who disagrees with him. You even admit to wanting to “take up & argue the opposite viewpoint”.

I am sure I could go through and find links on lots of people where they shoot off some passionate phrasing. We all make mistakes.

You clearly have a personal grudge against Dale that shows through on every thread you and he show up on. That just discredits you in my opinion.

I have only posted in a thread with this person once to my knowledge, and it was yesterday in the thread I have linked here.. He asked what we thought, and I gave my opinion, only to have it thrown back at me as “bullshit.” If there is any personal attack, I think it was him attacking me, not the other way around. If he only wanted to hear from those who agree with him when he is complaining about how the site is run, he should have included that in this question.

I will avoid him in the future so this will not be a continued problem.

Removed by me to go private

Wow, all sorts of Luuurve in this post. Funny how divisiveness stirs up the lurve, if the politicians ever figure this out we’re in trouble…

I’ve got to point out a couple of discrepancies above because I think it is only fair to say that just putting words with links that people may or may not read is a subtle way to distort the issue.

stupid and uncritical – Here dale wasn’t calling people who disagree with him that, he was making a blanket statement that the problem with elections is “the stupid, uncritical American voter” – that’s a fair enough opinion to have and it doesn’t seem to be limited to the right in my opinion. it was the reaction to this comment that made it personal, not the comment.

frightening – here he was saying that he was frightened by the overtones of the things that were happening. completely valid personal opinion in the middle of a very long point. not an attack on anyone’s opinion

distraction not worth a rat’s ass – don’t you agree that the whole flap over whether or not Palin can see russia was a big distraction? this was not an attack on anyone’s opinion, it was an observation about something the media was making a big deal of, which had carried over to fluther.

bullshit – this is the only one that was directed at someone. but haven’t you ever called bullshit on a friend? i don’t think that it was meant in a hurtful manner, but can see how someone may take it that way.

@ fireside – Lurve to you!

robmandu,

I’ve taken you to task on the other board where today you have without provocation jumped all over me. You are bringing into this board a disagreement we had WEEKS ago. I ENCOURAGE anyone to read the discussion robmandu linked to, and I will bet you agree with my assessment that he and I had a very long and drawn out back and forth. He and I did not see eye to eye on the issue. I eventually stated that I wanted to end the conversation because I didn’t think we were going to convince each other. He kept dragging me back into it. Finally I stated that even if I agreed with your point, which I didn’t, I wouldn’t care a rat’s ass about it, because it doesn’t change my mind. Well, then you poked me again, derided me for being so terse. So, I came back and calmly iterated that what I meant was that we were getting nowhere and there was no point to futher discussion, because we weren’t going to convince each other, and even if either of us did win the argument about the point, it wouldn’t change the big picture for either of us one iota.

Regarding the stupid and uncritical link, fireside nailed it. You basically said that I think anyone who disagrees with me is stupid and uncritical…that is deliberately twisting my words, and if you don’t know it, you should. I think you’re having a hard time seeing through your anger at a grudge you’ve been holding for weeks which I had all but forgotten about until now.

As for Scamp, you came onto a question I asked and insulted me right out of the gate. I was calm and peaceful with you at first. I told you specifically that you were entitled to your opinion. But as you kept pushing, with a shrill and sarcastic tone, you began to provoke my ire. But then when you did EXACTLY what robmandu is doing and outright accused me of not allowing people to express opinions if I did not agree with them, I called that as bullshit. Because it is bullshit, period. If you will look at ANY post I’ve EVER been part of here, you will see that when I have disagreed with someone, I’ve let them speak, I’ve given credit when they’ve made a point I disagree with, but I’ve respectfully disagreed.

It seems to me that you are both accusing me of not letting you get your points across, simply because I disagree with them. Well, that’s what this is about, if I disagree, I will say so. If I think words are being put in my mouth, I will fight back and use the truth to set the record straight.

But what I don’t do is come onto a board and insult someone without provocation because of a disagreement I had with them in the past. You both need perspective. You need to look at some of the back and forth I’ve had with people. You need to realize that I have been told by many people how they respect my ability to see more than one of any issue and how I don’t seek to shut people down because I disagree with them. I have my own point of view, and I defend it vigorously. But whereas I have said clearly and on many ocassions, I think you should be entitled to your opinion, your actions and those of robmandu send the message that you don’t think I should be entitled to mine.

I’m willing to be the bigger man here and apologize if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings or stepped on anyone’s toes, but I can assure you that in the future, if I disagree with you, I will say so. I will strive to prove my point. I will not however (and have never done so), tell you to shut up, call you a name or be intentionally disrespectful to you. I won’t call you an idiot, but if I think what you are saying is patently untrue, I will say so…whether I say “that’s patently untrue” or “that’s bullshit”, the message is the same.

I stand by my conduct here and suggest you both step back and try to get some perspective on this, because I’m not the monster you both seem to want to make me out to be, I assure you, and I can find many people who will back me up on this (including several with whom I’ve disagreed vehemently).