Some excerpts of a recent exchange where BigD is trying to defend the notion that Obama stole the election. BigD has not allowed AlphaCat's last comment (at the bottom) to be posted.
***
More from the thread, including AlphaCats censored comments...OBAMA STOLE THE ELECTION
BY BIG DOG ON NOV 8, 2012 AT 17:38 Political
There is no doubt in my mind that Democrats used dirty tricks and broke the law to win. I will say it up front so the liberals can guffaw and then click over to Kos and pleasure themselves. The evidence is clear that Barack Obama and his Democrats did things that were illegal in order to win.
Republican turn out was 3 million lower than in 2008 and Obama hit his numbers? There is no way this is accurate and given the number of complaints of voting machines changing votes from Romney to Obama the loss of Republican voters and Obama holding his own gets clearer. The votes were changed so his numbers went up and Romney’s went down.
How else can one explain... the rest here
AlphaCat says:Blake says:
Tuesday Nov 13th, 2012 at 12:00
Oh, Obammy is a socialist, of that there is no doubt, and his obamascare law is going to make the nation poorer- of THAT there is no doubt-
RE “I myself am looking forward to doing a lot of things after you’re dead. If I can find your grave, maybe I will dance on it.”- How Christian of YOU- by the way< I an no hypocrite here- I am serious in that I would like to read your entrails someday, but you are doubtless hiding in some liberal pot-smoking brothel with the others of loose reputation.
Tuesday Nov 13th, 2012 at 12:46
RE “Obammy is a socialist”
Never minding your lack of doubt, do cite your evidence that Obama is more of a socialist than, say, Ronald Reagan.
RE “obamascare law is going to make the nation poorer”
And your evidence for this is…? Economists, the insurance industry and the medical industry disagree. On a side note, it’s interesting that you call it “Obamascare”. You tough-talkers are actually a bunch of whiny cowards. There is nothing else to explain– or back up– your rhetoric; science says it’s the way your brains are built.
RE “How Christian of YOU”
Ah, but you see, I was just being agreeable: Big Dog and I want the same thing. It is important to find common ground in a discussion like this. Also note that as an individual and as a liberal, I have never claimed the mantle of godliness, as you conservatives have. And since we know that conservatives hate Muslims (with their evil planted president), don’t trust Jews (with their liberalmedia and ties to the world banking system), have no use for Buddhists (damned peaceniks), apparently aren’t Hindus (they’d all come back as cockroaches)– well, that pretty much sticks you with that Christian godliness, which is not too keen on wishing suffering on the poor.
I hope you signed the Texas secession petition.
Reply
AlphaCat says:Big Dog says:
Tuesday Nov 13th, 2012 at 13:23
Obama said he hung with the Socialists in school and he told us he believes in redistribution.
I don’t know which economists outside the Obama toadies who agree. The CBO says it will cost more and I have only talked to one doctor who likes it. I heard another on the radio who said she did. All the other doctors I have spoken to do not like it (and I talk to a lot of doctors in my profession) not to mention the studies that show a few hundred thousand health care professionals might leave the profession. So think what you will but one only needs to look at Endgland to see the mess.
As for the assertions you make about Christians, i think you are mistaking them for liberals. Christians believe in live and let live. Jews and Christians do not kill Muslims for being Muslim but Muslims kill anyone not a Muslim.
Tuesday Nov 13th, 2012 at 14:19
RE “Obama said he hung with the Socialists in school”
So? I hung with the jocks in school, but I was not, and am not, a jock.
RE “he told us he believes in redistribution.”
If the best you can rely on is an out-of-context quote– and we see how well that worked at the Republican National Convention– go ahead. Obama was talking about redistribution of government resources at the local level in order to increase efficiency, not about redistribution of wealth.
RE “I don’t know which economists…”
Of course you don’t.
RE “The CBO says it will cost more”
I see you’re changing the argument from “make the nation poorer” to “costs more”. These are not the same thing. A Lexus costs more than a Malibu; it also is a better car. Obamacare is, like it or not, an improvement over the former status quo. Better health care for more people is good for the economy.
RE “I have only talked to one doctor who likes it”
Not that anecdotal evidence is useful, but I have talked to a lot of doctors and others in allied professions, and they all like Obamacare– but many of them would prefer a single-payer system. Thanks to the generous input of Republicans and the insurance and medical industries, Obamacare is quite the camel– but it is still an improvement.
RE “As for the assertions you make about Christians, i think you are mistaking them for liberals.”
Not at all. It is quite clear that I refer particularly to the Republican Party, evangelical Christians, and other conservatives who claim that they are Christian. You might or might not be a Christian yourself, but it doesn’t matter: conservatism has claimed the aegis of God Himself.
RE “Christians believe in live and let live.”
What is the chapter and verse on that? Jesus never said it. And as a claim that Christians are tolerant of other religions (which is not absolutely true), it does not address the issue of the un-Christian hope that people suffer.
RE “Jews and Christians do not kill Muslims for being Muslim but Muslims kill anyone not a Muslim.”
That is neither true nor relevant.
AlphaCat says:Big Dog says:
Tuesday Nov 13th, 2012 at 23:10
I think the quote to Joe the plumber was in context and dealt with redistributing someone else’s money. And to be clear, there are no government resources that do not come from taxpayers thus he will redistribute taxpayer money. He enacts Socialist policies and has Socialist ideas. If it walks… And was it Time or Newsweek that claimed we are all Socialists now? What made them say that, hmmm?
You can be condescending if you want but I have read plenty of economists who simply do not agree. Talk about taking a quote out of context, you did it right there.
If it costs more and we can’t afford it (we have to borrow the money) then it will make us poorer. If you can afford a Malibu and by the Lexus that you can’t afford, it makes you poorer.
It might be anecdotal evidence but survey after survey supports it. As a health care professional I am involved in it daily. My own physician told me of the burdens and that he might have to get out if he can’t keep up so it is not like the feeling does not exist. The health care system can certainly do with improvements but Obamacare is not an improvement. It is and will be a nightmare.
There is no proof of your accusations regarding Republicans claiming God for themselves. I have not seen this. I have seen many groups claim God for themselves. Liberals find God when it is convenient like when they are running for office.
Your last comment is simply false.
It is obvious that you require someone else to care for you.
What did we ever do as a nation before taxes on income and government mandated healthcare (that will still NOT cover everyone)?
Wednesday Nov 14th, 2012 at 15:43
RE “I think the quote to Joe the plumber was in context and dealt with redistributing someone else’s money.”
The famous and ubiquitously-repeated-in-truncated-form-by-the-vconservative-echo-chamber “redistribution” quote, which I took to be your reference because of the superficiality of most of your rhetoric, dates from 1998, long before Joe the Plumber’s fifteen minutes of fame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3aGJfDSg4
If there is another one, please provide a source for it.
RE “And to be clear, there are no government resources that do not come from taxpayers thus he will redistribute taxpayer money.”
Taxes paid is not personal wealth. It is the price paid by honorable, self-sufficient citizens for the privilege of using societal resources to become wealthy. The implication– and sometimes the explication– of the “redistribution” claim is that the Marxist usurper-President is going to take all of everybody’s money and dole it out. That is not the case.
RE “He enacts Socialist policies and has Socialist ideas.”
Like the military and interstate highways, you mean. I like the way you capitalize the “s” in “socialism”. It makes a big word look scarier and more impressive.
RE “If it walks…”
…then it has better legs than your argument.
RE “And was it Time or Newsweek that claimed we are all Socialists now?
Wow– you actually found something worth citing in Newsweek? Most conservatives label them as part of the liberalmedia and refuse to acknowledge the information, based on that label.
RE “What made them say that, hmmm?”
The author was making fun of Sean Hannity. Hmmm….
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2 ... s-now.html
RE “You can be condescending if you want”
Thank you. You are a kind host.
RE “Talk about taking a quote out of context, you did it right there.”
I was just agreeing with you. And in my defense, I must note that I didn’t then use it as the theme for a national political convention. Nor did I use it to bolster a false characterization of the President– or of you.
RE “If it costs more and we can’t afford it (we have to borrow the money) then it will make us poorer.”
If that is your argument, then the health care system before Obamacare needed to be ditched. It was the most expensive health care in the world,
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/oecd042111.cfm
out of reach for many citizens and creating financial ruin for many. Using the statistical pooling that makes the insurance industry work in the first place, Obamacare makes healthcare more accessible and less expensive, so that is an improvement.
RE “It is and will be a nightmare.”
Yet conservatives originated the idea. Obamacare has much of its basis– particularly the individual mandate– in work done by economist Alain Enthoven and the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s. Obamacare is very similar to the Republican alternative to Hillarycare. Obamacare is less liberal than Romneycare– which seems to work just fine. Obamacare was crafted with more substantive Republican amendments than Democrat, and its most controversial terms were negotiated in advance with the insurance and healthcare industries. Whatever you think of it, it will ultimately be less of a nightmare than what preceded it.
RE “There is no proof of your accusations regarding Republicans claiming God for themselves.”
I said that Republicans and conservatives claim to be the godly ones. No proof– other than the Dominionists, the Christian Revisionists, the demonization (literally!) of the Democratic Party and liberals in general as atheists, secular humanists, godless and so on, the heavy promotion of Republican/conservative candidates and issues in the Catholic and evangelical Protestant churches, the pamphlets I got in the mail, Mike Huckabee’s political ads,….
RE “Your last comment is simply false.”
Not at all. You said “Muslims kill anyone not a Muslim.” I have attended school with, in groups with, alone with, and generally around a lot of Muslims. Not one of them killed me– a non-Muslim.
RE “It is obvious that you require someone else to care for you.”
Not yet, but we built our house to accommodate mobility impairment and home health care, just in case.
RE “What did we ever do as a nation before taxes on income and government mandated healthcare…”
Levied other kinds of taxes. And government-mandated health care dates back to 1798. Better question: what did we do as a nation after we levied taxes on income? Won two world wars, built the greatest nation in history, created a notion of American Exceptionalism that the whole world believed (whether they liked it or not), outlasted the Soviet Union,…. And just think– we did that with higher top marginal tax rates than we have now– over ninety percent for a while. Rather makes you think– if you’re so inclined.
RE “…(that will still NOT cover everyone)?”
Someday we’ll have single-payer, which will solve that problem– not that you actually consider it a problem.
AlphaCat says:Big Dog says:
Thursday Nov 15th, 2012 at 07:42
Your taxes paid is quite interesting. First of all, taxes paid is the wealth of the person paying it.... [SNIP]
Thursday Nov 15th, 2012 at 16:44
RE “First of all, taxes paid is the wealth of the person paying it.”
Wealth is money one makes beyond what is required to meet living expenses and small savings. Taxes are a living expense. It’s how we pay for the privilege of living in a country with socialized military, local services, infrastructure, and whatever other amenities we decide as a whole to provide to ourselves. I should think a person such as yourself with pretensions to self-sufficiency and self-responsibility would understand that when he agrees to live in a society, he has to pull his own weight in paying for that society.
RE “Since the wealthy pay most of the taxes you admit they are honorable and self sufficient”
Up to a point. They also complain a lot and dodge a lot of taxes, even as they derive huge benefits from society.
RE ” And by implication you admit that the 47% who pay no income taxes ore not honorable and are not self sufficient.”
That’s not my implication; that’s your inference, and it is not correct. These people pay state income taxes. Most of them also pay payroll taxes. Many of them are retired, and live at such low incomes that they are not required to pay income taxes– having paid into Social Security all of their working lives, by the way. Many of them are disabled. Here’s a chart:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicd ... ly-chart-9
If you don’t like the income thresholds for federal tax liability, blame the Bush tax cuts, which raised the thresholds. If you don’t like the 47% number, blame the Bush tax cuts, which raised the rate of non-payers from about 33% to about 50%. That Bush– what a socialist.
RE “We will not have single payer someday because this nation will not survive long enough. The Republic is on its way out as more and more people take from fewer and fewer paying in.”
You call yourself a big dog, but you bark and quiver and you have bulging eyes like a chihuahua. I hope you live in a nice, safe cave.
RE “The nation did not have universal or government mandated health care that long ago.”
See http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/102 ... e-care-act#
RE “As the wage earners die off”
You must be confused. The people who are going to die off are the Social Security recipients and disabled among the 47% of people that you dislike so much.
RE “The military is not a Socialist organization”
Sure it is. All taxpayers pay for it, whether they like it or not. It protects even those who do not pay taxes. How is that not socialist?
RE “it matter not to me who came up with th eidea of a mandate it is wrong.”
Apparently not– it’s still in place. And how dare you dismiss our Founding Fathers like that?
RE “The SCOTUS had to ignore the Constitution…”
And of course you are more expert in constitutional law than the Supreme Court justices are. Perhaps Obama will nominate you for a seat on their bench.
RE “…and rewrite Obamacare to make the mandate a tax in order to bless it.”
They didn’t rewrite it; they reinterpreted it. And the Obama administration had anticipated the interpretation; they went with the penalty angle instead because, frankly, it would sell better.
RE “Of course, we fought the first revolution over taxes…”
Among other things. Talk about dishonorable– reneging on all of those contracts.
RE “rejecting the idea you claim they first came up with”
I don’t just claim that they did– they did. See http://healthcarereform.procon.org/sour ... ricans.pdf
RE “I can attribute to a liberal source when it is deserved.”
So an opinion piece making fun of an opinion deserves citation as proof of something, but a Supreme Court opinion doesn’t? Interesting. And you are going to tell me about consistency.
RE “He talks about a level playing field”
So did Mitt Romney. So do most conservatives.
RE “people with more money paying even more than they do for those who have less”
Actually, he talks about people with more paying at a rate commensurate with the benefits they receive from society. To the extent that he is talking about paying the same effective rate as people with lower incomes, he’s talking about the same thing as a flat tax.
RE “he studied under Marxist professors”
I had a few libertarian teachers, but I’m no libertarian. You used to soil your diapers. Do you still sit around in your own feces? (You don’t need to answer that.)
RE “parents were Commies…”
So? My father is a Republican– thanks to the Southern Strategy.
RE “When not using it to refer to the party I usually capitalize it to emphasize the word…”
As I noted.
RE “…or to maintain consistency.”
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Consistency is more important than correctness.” –Mediocrites
RE “I am sorry that you were scared by a capital letter…”
No more than when a frightened cat arches its back at me.
RE “Perhaps Obama can protect you.”
Insofar as he is a better, more steady president than Romney would have been, he probably can. Of course he will have help from our socialized military.
RE “Maybe but not if you are in Libya or the womb…”
Romney would have been more of a danger to me were I in Libya. Protecting pre-persons in the womb is not really the president’s job. His duty is to actual persons who are citizens.
AlphaCat says:Big Dog says:
Friday Nov 16th, 2012 at 07:55
The discussion is about FEDERAL Income taxes. It is always amazing to me how liberals will discuss FEDERAL Income taxes and benefits derived from the FEDERAL government and then when one points out that 47% do not pay taxes (in reference to the FEDERAL argument) liberals go off on the state and Social Security tangent. SS is what one pays... [SNIP]...
Friday Nov 16th, 2012 at 14:49
RE “The discussion is about FEDERAL Income taxes.”
You said “pays no income taxes. If you want me to respond to what you mean, you’ll have to say what you mean. It’s up to you.
RE “when one points out that 47% do not pay taxes (in reference to the FEDERAL argument)”
It doesn’t matter what the reference is; the claim that 47% pay NO income taxes– which is what you said– is incorrect, and so is either ignorant or an out-and-out lie. Moving the goalposts is one conservative trick; having no goalpost at all appears to be another.
RE “liberals go off on the state and Social Security tangent.”
Never minding state taxes for a moment, the payroll tax is not a tangent: it is a federal tax that is income-based; it has no lower threshold and an upper limit. It is a federal income tax that has more impact on lower incomes than on higher. It makes little difference whether the benefit accrues to the taxpayer in the form of a highway or retirement income, it is still a tax on income. Indeed, when the funds are raided by Congress (usually by Republicans) as a source of revenue, the difference is completely obliterated. Further, if you are going to include the Social Security and Medicare trust funds when you whine about the national debt, then you pretty well have to include the tax in the first place. That debt you carp about didn’t come from nowhere.
RE “In fact many people who get SS paid a minimum amount and get bac far more than they ever paid in.”
A couple of points. Some people become very ill and get far more back from their health insurance than they paid in premiums. That’s the way insurance works. And have you seen this chart?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/298 ... 7522_o.jpg
It’s the listing of states with the greatest imbalances between their contributions to the federal coffers and the federal funds they receive. Look at the number of red states that are net recipients.
However, that information is a bit out of date. If you can avoid the genetic fallacy and get past the source of this article (the data itself comes from the 2010 Census and the IRS), it is an interesting presentation of where tax dollars come from and where they go. The maps are interactive; you can click on each state in the maps to get specific information. Note that dollars received are given both overall and per capita.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... harts-maps
There are some good reasons (as well as bad) for the fact that some states get more back than they put in, but do you want to extend your argument to its likely conclusion– that states full of people who vote for Republican presidential candidates are, not coincidentally, full of lazy, greedy, non-producing layabouts?
RE “if we are discussing FEDERAL taxes then it is wise to stay on topic.”
It is also wise to make it clear that that is the topic. This statement of yours is also not accurate in terms of what you think you mean. Note again that the payroll tax is a federal tax. On income. If you want to bandy this inaccurate percentage about in a way that castigates almost half of American taxpayers, you should state it as follows: “Forty-seven percent of American taxpayers pay no Federal individual income tax.” It is still misleading (every one of them is at an income level at which payroll taxes are paid if they are working), but at least it is accurate. You’re welcome for the assistance.
RE “On the FEDERAL level, we are all in the same pool. 47% of that pool pays nothing.”
Again, you are not stating what you think you mean. On the federal level, the payroll tax is not nothing. And you ignore the people who have very low incomes (damned Bush tax cuts), are retired (and have paid their dues), and are disabled (lucky them!). Damn them all anyway– bunch of slugs.
RE “Here is what those items were for and why they are not mandated health insurance.”
Thank you for the link; however, I had read it. As the article notes, they were government mandates that covered healthcare. I didn’t say anything about insurance, and neither did you.
RE “I did not dismiss the Founders.”
Yes, you did. They passed laws that mandated health care. You try to blow them off.
RE “You took the writing of a left wing publication that does not apply and tried to pass it off as proof.”
Yet you pass off right-wing articles and try to pass them off as proof– on the few occasions that you offer anything more than your opinions.
RE ” See the debunking of it linked above.”
Debunking? I read a bunch of details about health care measures that were mandated by the government.
RE “The mandate did not pass.”
It is still a mandate: the government still requires that large employers provide insurance and that many individuals get insurance. The question was whether the mechanism for enforcing that mandate is a penalty or a tax. The fact that the semantics of describing that mechanism have changed does not change the fact that it is a mandate.
RE “do try to keep up.”
Pffft. Apparently I’m so far ahead of you that you’re confused. The footsteps you hear behind you are reality. Keep running– maybe you can escape it.
RE “We agree in that part”
Good for us. I like to agree with people when they are right.
RE “though Obama lied. He specifically said it was NOT a tax.”
Whether what he said was a lie is debatable, as the administration’s legal team believed that the penalty argument was more legally valid than the tax argument. The administration knew that Obamacare would be challenged in court, and would likely go before the Supreme Court; why would they deliberately defend it with a weaker argument?
RE “Since the law calls it a penalty and the Court called it a tax when Obama specifically said it was NOT a tax then the SCOTUS rewrote it.”
Oh, I suppose that is possible. Show me the passages in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court rewrote. If nothing in the law was rewritten, then it is an interpretation.
RE “George Bush could not possibly be at fault. His tax cuts were only for the rich. That is what Democrats have said since those tax cuts passed. ONLY FOR THE RICH.”
What many Democrats– and some Republicans– have said is that the Bush tax cuts inordinately favor the rich. Since Democrats agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts because they helped people with lower incomes, they are apparently aware– regardless of what you think somebody said– that they benefit all taxpayers to the extent that they keep money in people’s pockets. Obama now wants to end the Bush tax cuts only for the rich. That would leave them in place for everybody else. You need to get over your debilitating notion that just because you think you heard somebody say something, it must be true.
RE “As I have stated many times, those tax cuts helped the middle class the most but Democrats screamed differently so they have to stick with that line.”
The helped the wealthy the most. But regardless of who was helped most by the Bush tax cuts, that is a different argument from your claim that they were “only for the rich”– which is clearly false.
RE “You can’t prove an item like this, you can only speculate.”
I never said otherwise. Am I not entitled to express an opinion, even if a majority of Amercan voters share it? And of course you endlessly speculate about the impending fall of the United States. Which of us has a more valid speculation, and which speculation shows a more patriotic belief in the greatness and durability of America? (Hint: mine does.)
RE “If a child in the womb is a pre person…”
That’s what the Bible says.
RE “…then why does the government charge a person with two murders if a pregnant woman is murdered?”
Because lawmakers are panderers, and the law is an opportunity to impose religious belief. The federal law is of limited scope.
RE “And to finish, you know you are losing when you reort to ad hominem attacks.”
What attack was that, and what argument did it deflect? I’ll be happy to address whatever argument you think it was.
RE “Is your name Darrell?”
No. Is yours? Does it matter?
RE “You have the irritating habit of quoting everything”
It allows me (and you) to verify that I am responding to something that was actually said. Of course your claims about 47% of taxpayers, federal taxes and so on, and on other matters, are a bit slovenly; I suppose it is irritating to you to have your misstatements thrown in your face.
RE “going off on tangents with links to liberal claptrap.”
Please do cite examples of any tangent I have gone off on, and of “liberal claptrap”. I will note that, as you use it, that Newsweek opinion piece is, indeed, liberal claptrap– but that’s on you.
RE “I think you are one of those freethinkers”
I don’t know about “those freethinkers”, but I do like to have facts and evidence at hand when forming opinions.
RE “What brought you here?”
I’m not even sure. It’s just too easy to find uninformed whining on the Internet.
RE “Does not the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos commie site need toadies to suckle their toes?”
Probably not, but there are some big dogs out there who need their noses rapped with a rolled-up newspaper.
***
Thread here: http://www.onebigdog.net/obama-stole-the-election/
BigDog, not such a bigdog as usual. Still barking and still running from those who take the time to correct his errors.
