No. No I wasn't. Not at all. But this is what happens when you get all whooped up and excited about making your own point. You miss important things.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree with you, but is this similar to the phenomenon of Hobbes defending his political predictions which turn out to be completely and demonstrably wrong? By saying that, well, I'm not sure what he's saying because my autistic monkey translation skills are rusty, but it usually goes something like "I was actually right, in fact, but nobody could have taken into account that stupid Americans would believe all those lies, etc." Add a bunch of inccorrectly deployed commas and ellipsis.
No no, my point was more betterer than all that. MY point, as opposed to whatever the hell Big Balls was scribbling about, was a simple point of fact that can't easily argued away. Despite the wind in this thread. Simply put: when Barack Obama is asked to identify his own failings; or, when he's asked a question like, "Why do you suppose a majority of the people polled think your widget policy isn't working?" his stock answer is that he hasn't sold it well enough to the American public. A messaging problem. Doesn't even matter what the policy is, or whether or not the policy on the table has succeeded or failed. That ain't relevant to the one thing that SundayJackass loves about Barack Obama, which is where this hayride began. If there's anything Barack Obama has never been short on, it's the endless campaign for the policy of the day. The speeches. The snark. The rallies with staged backdrops - doctors wearing lab coats, or nappy-haired science nerds in plaid shirts and corduroy jackets, children with confused looks. One thing there's been no shortage of in the last seven years is messaging and pageantry. And this is the part where fair minds CAN disagree. Maybe he's right. Maybe his problem HAS been failure of messaging. But this, then, plays into my private little joy time away from lesbian porn: if his messaging is so often wrong, then I welcome more and more messaging. Serve it up. And therein resides the whole point about why I love Barack Obama.
I identified factors why some portion and it's not a majority think his policies are not working and all you have is ad hominem and condescension. That's obvious. You are not half as clever as you seem to think. Excuse me for thinking if you were you might have something of substance. Ftr for everyone else, recent polls now have him over 50%, and some portion of his negative numbers have always been from lefties who think he's too far to the right. And Big Balls? Well I guess it's better than having small balls. Still there's something odd about a mod here saying something like that in the context of whatever it is we are having here. Call me crazy. Maybe I have to have big balls in order to know that the two things Jack referred to that I have bolded are not the same thing.
I agree with you Jack but I also remember this being an issue with George W. towards the end of his term as well. They would ask him directly if he made any mistakes and the man couldn't answer. Shit I make multiple mistakes every damn day. everyone does. Ask me that question - its an easy one. So we've had 2 presidents in a row that towards the end of their term most people got completely sick of and they couldn't/wouldn't acknowledge mistakes. Maybe its just the modern times and not just anything specific about these 2. Maybe its the people really running things behind the scenes telling them not to acknowledge screw ups, who knows. I will agree though- Obama dips into the messaging / "american public" well way too often. His latest state of the union address though was a bit of a course reversal, you have to acknowledge that one. It was surprising.
Again, we're recording this? I see your problem, here. You bolded the parts that you like and left off the ones you don't. That works out really well when you want to make it about policy. Just bold the parts that works. But this wasn't ever about policy, and I know that troubles you. You were all wound up for a good long volley about Barack Obama's policies. But, again, my point was different. Here - I'll bold correctly and show you: Bold the full phrase - or phrases, if you like 'em both - and it all frames differently. Essentially you failed coloring before you ever got to the other stuff. Quite a thing. The point here is and was: messaging. Barack's messaging. And it wasn't a point I invented; it's a point Barack Obama has consistently made. So, your dispute isn't with me, it's with your president, and what he characterizes as his own failings when asked to identify them in any number of ways. You can argue with him whether or not he's right on policy. I hear he reads ten letters a day. I know, I know - you started out this morning by writing a dozen thoughtful paragraphs and you put a lot of effort into that. You need it to mean something. And they were great. They just weren't connected with any part of the original point, is all. So, to punish the world, you figured you'd take us all for a few laps around Retard Mountain. Well done, my friend.
Sunday, you know I heart you, bro, but if you give us all this great shit and then disappear for 2 years, I'm going to internet burn myself alive.
Agree entirely. And circling back to the original point - that's the appeal of a guys like Sanders and Trump. Those are two of the most UNpackaged candidates in recent memory. One looks like a hobo and just recites "millyunaires and billyunaires" over and over again; the other is, well, a millyunaire or billyunaire and says pretty much whatever the hell crosses his mind. Hillary, on the other hand, is manufactured daily on the factory floor by the Democrat Party Machine. Jeb Bush - same thing, different party.
Assuming arguendo (not that I see it as such, but as I said) you may have intended to focus only on Obama's role in his problematic poll numbers. But you in the same posts talked about his policy failures as if we all see the same thing (you again assuming facts not in evidence, as lawyers say), and blithely hop and skip without any perceptible jump from Obama's shortcomings to how large a group of haters he has. You may have a problem keeping track of what you say and how it comes across here, differing perhaps from that you intended. No doubt the mocking uncle pose can be problematic in that regard. It gets in the way of clarity. Or perhaps you prefer it that way. I tend to think it is the latter. But in your occasional forays into attempts to make a logical point, or at least appear to be making that effort, you seem to lose track of those hops and skips. As for Retard Mountain, don't know the place. What's it like?
These things need to be scheduled for Fridays. Alternating. Even numbered days only. Between the hours of 7:30am and 7:45am. In months that end in "e".
Putting present discussions aside, in general when someone responds to a substantive argument with ad hominem, who won the argument?