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Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

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Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#101

Post by yummyfajitas »

illumin8 wrote: post #87
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrat's new website not exactly what he hoped it would be : "Today presently in our world you can notice a lot of instability in our Earth’s physic’s. Like now we are having a lot of Earthquakes, Tsunamis, we also have El nino on the equator and now something new like Iceland’s new erupting Volcano and this hasn’t happened since the 18 hundreds. I would also like to talk about how I thing we can possibly repair so…

Quit linking to insane blog posts and pretending it comes from an official DNC website. Anyone can create a blog at my.barackobama.com. It's like blogspot. Unfortunately, there is no mandatory mental health screening required to purchase an Internet connection or a computer.

I'm not pretending the content I cited was generated by the DNC. I'm pointing out that a site similar to the one currently under discussion, but with the opposite political affiliation, also has nutjobs posting on it.

That's not a very surprising fact, but considering the number of people here acting like it's a republican only problem, it's worth pointing out explicitly.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#102

Post by hugh3 »

grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action.

Great leaders? Resonating with the masses? That sounds more like a primer on how completely awful (in the gas chamber/gulag/killing fields sense) political ideas come about.

Most of the tolerable governments of the world have come about from a process of centuries of gradual refinement and consensus-building. Great leaders tend to screw things up more often than not. Great Britain made its way from monarchy to liberal democracy on its own and without the help (and occasionally with the hindrance -- I'm looking at you Mr Cromwell) of any "great leaders". The US constitution was just a somewhat refined offshoot of the British system.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#103

Post by anamax »

grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

> Great political ideas

are rarely the point.

Take manufacturing. The assembly line is a "great" idea that is useless without many tiny good ideas.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#104

Post by eru »

pyre wrote: post #81
smallblacksun wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be a Republican in a district represented by a Democrat.

Where is joining a particular political party (even 'independent' parties) a requirement for participation in the political process?

If it's the political process of that party, they may very well require joining them.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#105

Post by eru »

anamax wrote: post #103
grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

> Great political ideas are rarely the point. Take manufacturing. The assembly line is a "great" idea that is useless without many tiny good ideas.

Yes, we need common sense more than great ideas.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#106

Post by eru »

bartl wrote: post #58
justinph wrote: post #44

They had to go to Microsoft to get this? Reddit is open source. But I'm guessing they see open source as anti-american.

Don't you get it? Reddit is pro-Obama, so obviously they couldn't use this communist rubbish. True patriotic capitalists use proper respectable Microsoft software for everything. (note for the humor-impaired: I'm poking fun at both the typical Tea Partyer, and the the pointy-haired types (see Dilbert) that get to decide what software to use.)

I guess you have to try harder to get your humour across.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#107

Post by jerf »

pyre wrote: post #84
yummyfajitas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone doubts it would be different if the Dems made such a site: "We must not stop until the American people win the war on Health-Care [...] Our leaders today are nothing short of Angels. “Gods Elect” put in power by God for his people and his world." http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/dalecourtney?p...

I think the point that was trying to be made is that it seems like the majority of Republicans (or at least the majority of the vocal ones) hold views that border on self-satire to the point where you almost can't be sure if someone is trolling or serious. I think that you were be hard-pressed to find someone that believes that the majority Democrats believe that God put their leaders into power. Especially since (at…

Sorry, I totally feel that way about, say, the economic theories favored by Democrats, or the things that boil down to conspiracy theories in which Wall Street is 110% responsible for every bad thing that ever happened economically (and a good deal of non-economic things) while the pure-as-the-driven-snow government is blameless in all ways, which by the way is pretty much the official platform of the Democratic Party.

(Don't tar me as a Republican. Tar me as a libertarian.)

Of course you're hard-pressed to find a Democrat that believes an internet-troll-republican position. You need to be looking for one that holds an internet-troll-democrat position. If you need help finding them, I suggest the reddit politics board or the comments section on the Huffington Post. Or the comments section on any major newspaper that has comments.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#108

Post by tsally »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #90
grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

An almost exactly analogous argument could be used to "prove" that Wikipedia would entirely fail [1]. Replace "Great political ideas" by "High-quality encyclopedia articles" etcetera. I don't personally think much of Republican policies, but I'm glad they're at least giving things like this a go. I could wish, however, that they'd spoken with more people who have real insight into how social websites work. They could…

If only coming up with a great political idea was as easy as writing a high quality encyclopedia article. Quantitatively there are several orders of magnitude more article authors than great political thinkers. If we place all activities on a continuum based on intellectual difficultly, there's a point where crowd sourcing stops working. I think it's pretty clear where political thought stands compared to writing encyclopedia articles.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#109

Post by navyrain »

hugh3 wrote: post #102
grellas wrote: post #75

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. None of this is easy to do and it takes exceptional people even to make a credible stab at it…

Great political ideas come, not from committees or from random samplings of the uninformed or semi-informed masses, but from intelligent and forceful leaders who can think them through thoughtfully, who can articulate them in a way that resonates with people, and who can set out an agenda to carry them into effective action. Great leaders? Resonating with the masses? That sounds more like a primer on how completely a…

While I think you're right to say that bad ideas have been given more traction than they deserved by having an effective leader promoting them, I don't think this is a counter-argument to the grandparent.

Choosing the country's goals certainly should be democratic, but in an imperfect political system, it still takes tenacious leaders to navigate the rough political landscape to realize those goals.

Re: Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be

#110

Post by mynameishere »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #47
xenophanes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made a troll quality insult against Republicans ("Republicans sound like trolls" without any argument, details, quote, etc). Hmm. Trolling about trolling. Meta irony, I hope?

"We should not allow Muslims to enter the country." Is this statement a troll, or what someone actually believes? There's enough wrong with it that I could believe it's a troll, and yet I've honestly met people who would be completely sincere in saying it. Browse around a little more, and you'll find many other statements like it. Part of me hopes it's just idiotic trolls ruining what could have been constructive dia…

Should Persia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Spain, the Balkans, etc, etc, have allowed Muslims to enter their respective countries?
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