Moonbox
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Posts posted by Moonbox
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My guess---
Tory 163
Liberal/Coalition---136
Canadian Extreme Wrestling Party - 225
Bloc Quebecquois - 60
Whatever else is left - How many seats are there again?
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It isn't just corporations. Unions fill the NDP's coffers all the time. It annoyed me when I was a union member that part of my dues went to a party I have never, and will never, vote for.
Yep. Is it a coincidence that Barack Obama, for example, bailed out the UAW members and their pensions after they ran the companies they worked for into bankruptcy? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that Obama's biggest campaign contributor was *gasp* the UAW?
Election contribution limits help keep politicians honest.
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And the Conservatives want to play the sanctimoniuous high road as if they are above a smear campaign???
Contemptuous low lifes...
Nobody can really play the hypocrisy card here Jack lol. None of them have shown themselves above the smear campaign.
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The electorate eats this stuff up unfortunately.
Dumb ads for dumb people I guess.
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/yawn.
Another completely riduculous and totally pointless rant. It's almost like you post here to practice your creative writing 'skills' rather than to say anything worthwhile.
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The saying, "two wrongs don't make it right" applies to all governments. Besides, both governments are on their way out, are they not?
Most recent polls suggest Harper will stay as a minority but McGuinty is almost certainly finished. Ontario is slowly turning into hostile territory for Liberals.
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Though I must say that I'm having a bit of trouble fiquring out what "hilariously poorly spoken" means in english...
The grammar police! Ha!
Well, let me explain. Hilariously, in this sentence, is describing the subsequent adjective, which in turn is describing the word 'spoken'.
In English, when you say, "He's well-spoken." That usually means "He's articulate and speaks intelligently."
Poorly spoken, on the other hand, would mean the opposite. In this case, it's also funny, thus I added hilariously.
Basically what I'm saying is that it's really funny seeing all the dumb things you post. My personal favorite was when you told us that the amount of tory/ndp threads was indicative of how afraid those groups were of an election, when you all by yourself probably post more than half of this forum combined.
You make me laugh buddy!
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No, what your argument actually declares is the following:
Any use of metaphor, up to and including analogical devices, is perfectly fine.
Until one uses them negatively to portray interests whom Moonbox admires...say, the gangsters who run American foreign policy.
I'm sorry bloodyminded, but you're just digging deeper and deeper into semantics. I'll start by saying analogy isn't taboo in my mind or anyone's. We all use it. Sometimes they can be very apt at clarifying confusion, particularly in the legal system (precedence). I'm sure you'll consider that a massive victory for justice by getting me to admit that, but again you'd just be playing with semantics. I'll let you feel you've proven something.
On the other hand, I will maintain that analogy is, the vast majority of the time (bolded so you don't get confused) abused and poorly formed in persuasive arguments and can easily be picked apart to show that the writer/speaker has nothing more intelligent to say.
I still think it's really funny that you chose to bring this up on this thread. You just couldn't wait!@
You also argue that "metaphor" and "comparison" are fine and dandy for "regular discussion"...but not analogy, apparently.
Well, analogy is "metaphor and comparison," by definition
First of all, you've decided that simple use of metaphor in every day speech is the same thing as analogy in persuasive arguments. There's a pretty big difference, for example, between me saying, "She's a fox" and me trying to argue selective design by comparing the world and its ecosystems to a carefully crafted machine. Read a few things by David Hume and maybe you'll appreciate what I'm talking about. In the first example I'm using a clichéd metaphor to explain that I find a woman attractive (tbh I don't even understand the metaphor but that doesn't matter). There's nothing to argue there. It's just a metaphor. On the other hand, assuming I was a religious nut, and I tried to assert that the world was designed by an intelligent being because all of its inhabitants and ecosystems functioned just like a well-oiled machine, I'd be presenting an analogy. Hopefully you can tell the difference now because thus far you seem to really struggle with it. Let's move on from there now shall we?
But "gangsters"? Not an issue. It's perfectly fine.
Now, the point at which "gangsters" becomes a bad analogy is when a Canadian patriot will claim gangsterism for the United States...and simultaneously claim or imply that Canadian policy is built entirely on justice or altruism or benign motives. Then the analogy is damaged through its selectivity, when in fact it must point logically only to the general.
No. An analogy falls apart way before you bring up selectivity and hypocrisy. It's interesting that you bring up selectivity when discussing bad use of analogy, because that's usually where they fall apart. Your gangster analogy that you defend, for example, holds no water because not only have you not supported the analogy with a rational argument, but it's far easier to think of differences between them than similarities. Other than your opinion that they're bad people and you find it helpful to your argument to project the image of Al Capone and Tommy Guns on western governments, how is the analogy in any way apt?
If you seriously want to persuade anyone with your analogy and if you're going to back it up, you have have some reasoning behind it and some pretty strong links between whatever concepts you're comparing.
In other words, an analogy can be both workable in and of itself, but unfair when used in a partisan manner, implying that other analogous Targets or Sources are not applicable, even when they are.
I can compare trying to get you to understand the difference between simple metaphor and inductive analogy is like teaching a monkey to write. They're both very difficult and since they share that characteristic my analogy is a valid argument. That's what you're saying.
But I wasn't doing that; I wasn't, for example, implying a pristine foreign policy apparatus for America's official enemies. So it wasn't a bad analogy.
You're saying that your analogy was valid because your argument wasn't hypocritical??? It's no wonder you're struggling to connect the dots on this if you think that. Hypocrisy has nothing to do with it.
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Actually, there was quite a bit of interest in buying the Arrow, or at least all its development technology. It seems odd today that you can't google up confirming info but if you read some of the books or talked to some of the old employees you quickly see that this is true.
The British weren't interested in the Arrow. They were interested in the Iroquois engine tech and even then only briefly because they had their own project coming to product shortly after the Avro would have entered production.
Perhaps the lack of cites to confirm this point is further proof of a conspiracy?
I'd say it's more likely because it was back in the 1950's and we had no internet then, along with the fact that most of what has been written by the Arrow since then has been written by former employees and people enchanted by the legend of the craft the Arrow never really was.
First, the Avro Jetliner could have saved the company's ass. It was produced first and the prototype flew like a dream. Howard Hughes flew it as his personal jet on an indefinite load and was prepared to place a production order on the spot.
There's definetly something to be said of that. The Canadian government absolutely screwed Avro and it was THEIR fault that they had them focus on designing and building a plane they wouldn't need.
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His only "amazing move" is with the help of Metamucil every morning.
Hahahaha you're on fire right now.
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Deltas can certainly be designed to dog fight. The Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen are all delta canard designs.
Yes THOSE planes are all very agile, but the AVRO's airframe was not. They don't have the same sort of fat, swept wing that the AVRO did and they are also all canard-designed.
Avro would have had lousy flight performance at lower speeds which dogfighting usually required.
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Still seems a pointless waste of $300 million dollars given all the polls point to pretty much the same thing, another minority conservative government - unless the opposition is willing to form another Gang of Three and try to govern between them.
This, I believe, will be the end of probably 4 different leader's careers. Harper will be out without a majority and it couldn't come sooner considering how far he's abandoned his principles. Layton will be out because he's nothing but hot air and bluster and he's done nothing in several election attempts. Elizabeth May will be done because she's just a rude slob and Ignatieff will be out because he's a total lame duck.
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Thank you guyser. I'm glad I'm not the only one rolling my eyes at this.
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Thanks for proving my point. Again.
Thanks for fueling the fire! Your clever wit is really shining through!
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I was recently informed by somebody--who was it?--that analogies are inherently poor forms of argument.
They are bad arguments. They show an inability to logically elaborate your argument from point A to point B and instead reduce/simplify it through comparison to a largely unrelated concept. It is, however, highly successful against people who cannot detect flawed reasoning.
But you did make the claim, and I should think you'd hold yourself to an equally rigorous standard of proper versus improper rhetoric.
If you could pinpoint the argument I was trying to make here you might have a point. If you read through the thread however, absolutely nothing of consequence was mentioned (OP included). I wasn't making any argument. I never said that analogy was evil and that you should never use it. I said it's weak argument that's easy to disassemble.
That you had difficulty understanding analogy's irreducible relationship to metaphor generally doesn't absolve you of at least the attempt to adhere to the "glass houses" construct of ethical behaviour.
I'm sorry. What's really sad is that you took my disdain for weakly formed arguments and concluded from it that any form of metaphor or comparison in regular discussion (or mocking banter) was taboo. That's the same sort of lame duck logic that leads to bad analogies!
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No doubt. Since you can't make any sense, "fun" would be the next logical step.
You're right! Making 'sense' of your ridiculous ramblings and bumblings is about as futile as digging a hole to China. Making 'fun' of you is much more productive!
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You should contact Greg or Charles since you seem to love the moderator role so much. Maybe, if you don't a moderator position, you could try for the boss position.
I've been suspended too many times for making fun of you and chartered.rights to ever be considered for such a role.
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Topaz. We can read the news ourselves. You don't have to link every article you read here. Seriously.
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Plop!
Seen a Doctor about talking to yourself yet?
Found anything worthwhile to do with your time GWiz? 1500 posts and counting since the end of january. Almost 30 posts a day! I think you're our most avid (and at the same time hilariously poorly spoken) poster on this forum!
Congratulations!
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/yawn.
Keep it up Topaz. You've posted on average about 20-25% of the threads on this forum lately. All of them have been VERY interesting and extremely though-provoking. You don't seem obsessed with Harper at all....
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As for me I ignore all that hype and BS provided by the parties, media hype and polls, as well as political ads and concentrate solely on the facts I garner to make my dicisions...
Your posts are so full of BS you don't need to follow the party hype. The opening post of this thread was by far and away the dumbest part of it.
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if I were running a campaign against the government I don't think I'd play my hand before the election is called...corporate tax cuts, 30 billion dollar airplanes, unknown multi billion dollar prison expansion, healthcare...all these things will come to light in an election campaign why tip off the opponent as to the method and timing of the attack?
The prisons are something that are easier to justify and explain. The 'tough on crime' stance is something that wins a lot of politicians elections. That's the last issue you'd want to make a campaign about. The aircraft...yeah you could spin it...but the fact is that the CF-18's need to be replaced and the fact that there wasn't a bidding process isn't going to win over a lot of minds.
The corporate tax cuts, however, that IS something that every Canadian really understands and can relate to. With the largest deficits in history, what possible justification is there for corporate tax reductions when our rates are already considered pretty low?? I'm sure you can come up with BS reasons, but are there any that actually make sense?
The income disparity in Canada is higher than ever. The middle and upper middle class are vanishing and we're considering corporate tax cuts? Wtf are they thinking?
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I dunno about M Bernier but I'd vote for his girlfriend any time!
lol I don't know if voting is what I'd do for her...
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It is really hard to watch/support Harper lately. I can't really find a lot of good to say about him. We have a long list of him borking things up and I can't say he's done a lot of good. Starting with Maxime Bernier, we've seen a long list of crooks and snakes slinking around in shame after they've been discovered. We've seen him blow his load on anything and everything people beg for (particularly Quebec). With all of his spending increases and his total lack of fiscal restraint, the nail in the coffin for him as far as I'm concerned is his corporate tax cuts. I have no idea why the opposition isn't coalescing behind this because if presented properly he could literally be crucified for it. There is no reason for corporate tax cuts right now whatsoever.
I wish there was someone with a shred of political sense that could oppose him.
Coalition: September 2004, December 2008 & Now
in Federal Politics in Canada
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That was really awkward to watch. The reports were out to fry Ignatieff on that.