Mitt Romney and the 47% who support Obama

[shiney]

Believe me Jagos, based on what I see in the reported post forum, this is a very poignant and current topic.

Besides the Mitt Romney thing can be summed up as "pandering politican says what his current audience wants to hear, suffers embarrassment when candid truth is released to public, attempts failspin". There, thread over.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

- All people who act like shits in discussion are to be referred to this thread.
- In my humble opinion Fifth's modding style shows a complete disregard of respect for the banned and their opinions. Fifth is a cool fucka but not when he's modding, because his modding style goes against my principle of not simply dismissing people because I have the power to do so and I should instead attempt to discuss with them instead of just punishing them for having an opinion I don't agree with. I'm exaggerating here, mind you, and it's not my intention to offend Fifth (I mean, he knows I disagree with him there, so...) but things similar to this have happened to some extent. Like, call me a hopeless idealist, but this is not how I roll and I don't support that kind of behavior. In general. But when people in power act like this I think it's especially problematic. Also, I live in a country that sorta has a problem like that so I have strong opinions here.
- Best mod is Smarty, clealy
- I have noticed that at times the mods seem to be slightly biased against certain users, which I'm not a fan of.
- On the other hand, some people just have to learn how to talk to people without calling them stupid idiot fucks, even if this is how they and maybe the majority here feel.
- Don't let me post in discussion, I only troll you peeps for being American most of the time.

[Tev]

Originally Posted by shiney

Besides the Mitt Romney thing can be summed up as "pandering politican says what his current audience wants to hear, suffers embarrassment when candid truth is released to public, attempts failspin". There, thread over.

The saddest part will be having to listen to Ann Coulter crowing in a few months about how she was right all along...

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Jagos

I could swear I started this more for discussion on Mitt and his taxes but now it's a moratorium on what happened months ago.

Actually I think it's more a discussion of what's been happening lately, and is continuing to happen, in prototypical attempts at 'serious discussion' in NPF threads, including this one.

Originally Posted by shiney

The news forum has never really been a shining example of NPF. It's a great example of how intelligent we can be, but it reflects the opposite. There has not been a point in the news forum's existence that it hasn't been a giant pain in the ass. Not back when fifth went nuklear on me, not during the repeated attempts to shut it down or reform it, not now. Every time we close it, the topics bleed out into the rest of the forum.

I won't disagree that the News Forum has always had its liabilities, but I do think it's gotten noticeably worse lately. I think you know this too, as evidenced by your subsequent comments.

As for Fifth: None of my earlier comments should be interpreted as an explicit endorsement of Fifth's individual approach to Moderating. I love Fifth, everyone does, but I also dislike when attempts at serious conversation over what NPF looks like these days turns into a referendum on "How great (or how terrible) Fifth was." It's not always about Fifth, and Fifth shouldn't be brought up to automatically derail the conversation in the same way Liz's assumed hostility was often brought up to derail anti-bigotry conversations.

Fifth had a style as a Mod that even he would likely concede was 'acerbic,' but the more important takeaway from those who enjoyed the 'Fifth Era' (if you want to call it that) wasn't his style but rather the mere fact that he was active and imposed standards on the forum in a way that tended to (albeit not always) encourage positive conversations and shut down the bullshit. I don't want to debate Fifth's personality, instead I want to concentrate on how during that 'era' discourse in Discussion generally felt better handled and we were actually able to engage in sincere debates.

Subsequently, my suggestion that NPF has gone downhill lately isn't a call to reinstate Fifth -- he wouldn't want the job anyway, none of us would want him to take the job back, and this isn't about rehashing 2009 or whenever it was.

Nor do I think mocking or belittling those who've been banned is a necessary or integral component of what made NPF great 'back in yesteryear' or whatever. I do think it's important to call out inappropriate comments and discourage them, but I don't believe you have to do so the 'Fifth Way' - or via any other Moderators' specific template -- in order to ensure 'success.'

Like, in order to discourage the 2009 rehash of Shiney vs. Fifth Ultimate Showdown whatevs, the dialogue should be viewed constructively from the perspective of objective principles, as opposed to from the perspective of two opposing personalities.

It's not "Shiney's way" or "Fifth's way." It's that there's certain standards of discourse we should hold ourselves to in a Serious Discussion forum to ensure productive, rational and appropriate conversations that Shiney and Fifth and POS and Fenris and everyone else should aspire to. Fifthfiend's 'style,' for lack of a better way to put it, embodied many of these principles but not all of them.

TLDR: I tend to view NPF's present deficiencies as more structural and less personal, and y'all probably should too, or else a conversation about NPF will quickly turn into a war among factions loyal to past personalities and the conversation will quickly degrade into the same kind of emotional, ignorant and insulting ad hominem bullshit that's the whole problem in the first place.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I'm actually with you there for the most part. Like, I didn't want my post to be viewed as anti-fifth propaganda. I'm especially afraid it might be seen as such after I silently turned my back on Fifth's forum a month or two ago.

What shocks me most about the worse things that happen in news is actually the fact that it's mostly the people I agree with who step out of line and act like douches. Maybe it's just that a lot of people who share my views tend to be more aggressive or unable to respect other people's opinions, I don't know. Often they manage to make a perfectly fine point, then they say something stupidly unnecessary to ruin everything they wanted to say. Whenever I notice I simply can't hold back something like that I simply don't post. Except when I think it's really just too funny to not post. Which I don't think has happened yet.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by A Zarkin' Frood

Don't let me post in discussion, I only troll you peeps for being American most of the time.

Speaking of, Shiney has reinstated the mods' ability to ban people from the news forum, so this idyllic, Iggy-free discussion utopia that we could only imagine before is now one step closer to reality!

But in all seriousness, I feel as though we probably wouldn't be having this conversation if the mods had had this capability all along, but since we didn't here we are. My thoughts are that there is nothing we can do about for now. This is one of those things where we just need to relax and let time do its thing, since making a big public deal about how we can fix everything and go back to being one big happy family again is only going to serve to keep the wounds fresh.

[CABAL49]

Snake, whenever you make your text small I skip over it cause I have trouble seeing shit.

And why are we having a discourse about modding style now? How many times have we had this conversation? I don't really see NPF as being this oasis in the shit hole of the internet. But it certainly has less assholish tendencies than many other places.

That being said, give Jagos a thread for all the dumb shit Romney says. Like the Republican thread, but special for Romney. It is stuff we all kinda know, that Romney is an out of touch rich fucker, but it would help keep this organized. I think we can sum up NPF's feelings on Obama with, he could be worse.

[shiney]

I'm pretty sure I was the one who brought up fifth! I actually miss him. Time does strange things to a person.

I wish the forum community could be contiguous like before but...such is the life. As POS said...time. Perhaps scars will fade.

[Betty Elms]

Originally Posted by Jagos

Now this 47% is crucial to taking away Obama's support. But who makes up this 47%? Republicans. Think about it. These are the main people that don't pay income taxes. They use small amounts of their money to buy politicians for more tax cuts and keeping their taxes low.

Your last sentence is a touch ridiculous in this context, obviously lobbyists and the conservative elite comprise no significant portion of the 47% in question. It's just an easy shot against the wealthy, something I usually appreciate, but here only serves to mislead.

Speaking of misleading, one of my chief annoyances with the media reaction to this event is the consistent labeling of Romney's comments as an insult directed at Obama supporters. Mitt Romney alienating Obama voters is something that is traditionally filed under "nobody gives half a fuck." Even putting aside the fact that the 47% is comprised of what is perhaps the most integral part of the conservative voter base, using electoral terminology instead of economic was an irritating misstep on the part of the media. I'm quite glad that the gaffe was substantial enough to survive all the "OH NOOO ROMNEY BE SHIT TALKIN' OBAMA FANS" headlines.

And then of course, the 47% is indeed comprised of what is perhaps the most integral part of the conservative voter base. Which I find a lot more interesting than the revelation that Mitt Romney thinks letting people starve on the street is his idea of just fuckin dandy, because sociopathy in the upper echelons of anything has never been a surprising matter. So the question I find myself wondering is: Are certain aspects of Romney's language pointed deliberately towards the ultra wealthy in attendance? It's easy to assume that surrounding the man with the obscenely rich will instantly draw forth ThE rEaL mItT rOmNeY, but this is a fundraiser, he wants something from these people, and to actually run a campaign in the fashion that Romney's quote suggests would be a catastrophic decision.

I'm not calling into question the extent to which Romney hates poor people, but I am calling into question the extent to which high level conservative politicians eat their own shit.


Re: The Thing People Are Talking About Actually

If you can ban people from the news board then great. People often take temporary bans as far weightier things than they are, but a board specific one you could probably bandy about with relatively minimal backlash. Of course, the nature of this particular board means you'll get constant accusations of censorship and generally unseemly behavior (perhaps comparable to that of certain reichs and klans.) So you have to make it extraordinarily clear that the offense is hateful or non-productive speech, and not failure to toe the npf party line. An effort which will of course be met with limited success, but I guess then both moderator and member will be united by the ever lovely commonality of needing to "fuckin deal with it."

I'm glad that Meister stepped into this particular thread when he did, and made the comments he did. But I don't believe it was made clear exactly how fucking terrible the discussion at hand was, and how fucking unacceptable it was. The dilemma regarding the citation request didn't seem like this thread's problem, it seemed like an inevitable symptom stemming from its general rancidity.

(And on an unrelated note: sorry I'm not around here anymore. It's not that I think little of the people here, it's just that I am closer with people elsewhere and there's only so much time on my hands. I think this is still a pretty good forum.)

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Seriously the minute NPF proves that it's actually capable of rational conversation without inappropriate insults, ad hominem attacks, brazen trolling, GIFs and JPGs as substitutes for well-reasoned positions, conclusory arguments without factual support, and so-called 'subtle' sexism / ableism / racism / homophobia cloaked in empty rationalizations of said dispositions as 'socially normal' and therefore 'inoffensive', bells will ring, angels will sing on high, order will be restored, and NPF News threads will be a cool place to hang out again.

My fault.
This is at least half the reason why I don't read this section.

News sections on a forum like this, to me, are always full of people trying to put down other views, making threads only because they are upset about something, or political (wherein "political" in this usage is the American style of politics of just exposing the other's/other party's flaws without really making any argument). I am not a member of the party, but I've never really been a fan of stickying a thread to put down a group, though at least one was half-assed made for the Democrats later. Rarely do I see a thread wherein people discuss something positive or have a reasonable debate on the issues. Passions tend to flare up. These kinds of conversations, for me personally, work much better at the bar among friends and colleagues. Somehow they usually end up with various sides appreciating what was said and maybe even helping one another understand different perspectives.

And, well, I'm supposed to read this section. Too often I come to the forum and read the threads I want to read, dealing with any admin or mod shenanigans necessary in the process and then checking in on other threads. In reality, I should be poking my nose in everything, at least partially, and being proactive rather than just reading reports and being reactive here in the News section.

Like, for example, Robin posting an image macro shouldn't be happening, and I know that. And getting called out for a citation in a discussion thread in the discussion section and not providing it while also providing a snarky reason why you're not doing it is also not cool. So yeah, consider me reprimanded and motivated.