[uday]

Restart discussion as desired. Original topic archived due to excessive heat. uday

[matmat]

hehe... a WC thread got censored o_O.

[Al_U_Card]

That means it was deep sixed or that it is somewhere else?

Palin.....a no-brainer in all senses of the word.

[pclayton]

Awwww I don't log on for 14 hours and this get deep-sixed?

[gwnn]

Does me wondering about what the thread ended up make me a bad person or just immaturely curious?

[TimG]

gwnn, on Oct 9 2008, 02:38 AM, said:

Does me wondering about what the thread ended up make me a bad person or just immaturely curious?

Just curious, I hope...

[y66]

Some of the posts on that thread were definitely way out of line and somewhat jarring, but not as jarring to me as the decision to kill the thread.

With a few exceptions, I thought that was a pretty good thread. Fun to read, topical, and occasionally thought provoking. There was one post by a woman from Europe that was as poignant as anything I've ever read here. There was a reply to a particularly insulting post that could serve as a model for handling such posts on forums everywhere. And there were even a few on-point comments about Ms. Palin.

[dicklont]

Until now I didn't really care aboute the Palin thread.
But after Y66's post I just want to read the whole thing.

[Al_U_Card]

Prolly better this way.

I always prefer to have someone else tell me what I should be able to see and do.

Where does the line form for what I should think and say?

[helene_t]

I followed the discussion until three and a half hour before it was killed. Until then I hadn't noticed anything problematic (yes I know my threshold is higher than some other people's). Agree with y66.

Then again of course it is Uday's right to decide what kind of content he wants on a website of his company.

[uday]

We rarely delete such threads. Instead, we move them away to an inaccessible area of the board.

Someone said something that I found a bit much, even for the WC. It was something like ... you're a lying racist sack of blah blah blah

By the time i noticed, the comment had been quoted a zillion times ( relevant only bec. I might have been able to edit it out ).

[TimG]

uday, on Oct 9 2008, 08:28 AM, said:

We rarely delete such threads. Instead, we move them away to an inaccessible area of the board.

Is there a practical difference?

[Al_U_Card]

uday, on Oct 9 2008, 08:28 AM, said:

We rarely delete such threads. Instead, we move them away to an inaccessible area of the board.

Someone said something that I found a bit much, even for the WC. It was something like ... you're a lying racist sack of blah blah blah

By the time i noticed, the comment had been quoted a zillion times  ( relevant only bec. I might have been able to edit it out ).

So, if they had said: " Your prevarications can be disproved and their heinous nature only leads to the conclusion that your internal references leave much to be desired in terms of their referential humanity."

Could that have stayed?

(You know the old joke about the bar, the girl and the money?)

[Al_U_Card]

btw, Uday, your explanation was appreciated. My other question was if the individual in question received a warning or some other sanction. Thanks

[uday]

There are ways to have discussions, even heated discussions, without issuing personal attacks.

No warnings were issued. Sometimes I think we're all just too old to learn any new tricks.

[vuroth]

Knowing very little about Palin, is she clearly and irrefutably worse than, say, Quayle?

[jdonn]

Don't blame the moderators for doing something, but I think it would have been better to simply delete the offensive comment and the quotes of that comment, there was too much good stuff in that thread.

[awm]

vuroth, on Oct 9 2008, 10:54 AM, said:

Knowing very little about Palin, is she clearly and irrefutably worse than, say, Quayle?

Some of the negatives about Palin:

(1) She has very little experience. Her vaunted "executive experience" is being mayor of a small town (Wasilla population about 7,000) and being governor of a small (population-wise) state (Alaska population under 700,000) for less than two years. It's also arguable that the problems facing Alaska are pretty different from most US states since Alaska has a huge energy surplus, to the degree that Alaska charges no income tax, no sales tax, and sends a check to every resident for about $1,200 every year based on excess revenue from taxes on oil companies. In contrast, Dan Quayle had over a decade in the House of Representatives and a few years in the Senate from Indiana.

(2) Unlike Obama (who also has relatively little experience, although more than Palin), she does not have a law degree from an elite university. One could argue that Obama's educational background (law degree from Harvard) substantially improves his qualifications for a position in politics. Palin's educational background involves an undergraduate degree in journalism from University of Idaho, which it took her six years (and several transfers from one university to another) to obtain. In contrast, Quayle did have a Doctorate in Law from Indiana University.

(3) One of the good things about Palin is that she has fought against corruption in her own party. McCain talks about this a lot. However, she is currently under investigation for (guess what?) corruption based on her firing of the head of the state police in Alaska. There have also been questions raised about her charging per diem to the state while living at home and her tax returns. And she fired the Wasilla town librarian after the librarian's answer to a hypothetical question about banning books (librarian refused to ban books). In addition, Alaska receives more earmark money per capita than any other state (by far) and Palin has generally pushed for more earmark money and not less. Quayle was not really suspected of ethical issues.

(4) Certainly Dan Quayle said some dumb things. But usually he was mangling a quote, and you could tell what he meant to say (even though he botched it). He did plenty of interviews during the election. In contrast Palin is mostly kept away from the press. When she does do interviews (google her interview with Katie Couric if interested) her answers often come out gibberish. It seems clear that she just doesn't know what she's talking about which is a lot worse than garbling your quotes (Biden for example garbles a fair number of quotes too, although not as badly as Quayle).

(5) Palin takes the evangelical religious angle to an extreme degree. This is someone who believes that humans shared the earth with dinosaurs, that global warming is not caused by human activity, that creationism should be taught in schools, that abortion should be banned even in cases of rape or incest. Her minister is known as a witch hunter, having run (likely innocent, if you don't believe in witches) women out of their communities around the world. She believes in speaking in tongues and laying on of hands, and that the end of days is near and Alaska serves a special role in the end times.

(6) Currently Palin is accusing Barack Obama of being a terrorist, based on his association (living in the same community as, serving on the board of a charity with) Bill Ayers. Ayers was founder of the "Weathermen", an anti-vietnam protest group that set off pipe bombs to protest the war. So it can be considered that he was a domestic terrorist... forty years ago, when Obama was a small child. He is now a citizen of Chicago in good standing and involved heavily in education policy. He is not a particular friend of Obama's (but they do know each other). So this connection is a stretch, but perhaps you think this is "par for the course" for a presidential campaign. However, there are two things I'd note about this: first, people at Palin speeches are shouting out racist epithets and threatening to kill Barack Obama. She doesn't directly endorse this, but she doesn't say anything against it either and her "terrorist" rhetoric seems to encourage it. Second, Palin's own husband was a member of a secessionist party (the Alaska Independence Party) until quite recently, the founder of this party being a known domestic terrorist, and Sarah Palin herself was very welcoming to this party when they held their convention in her home town of Wasilla. So Sarah Palin arguably has distressingly close connection to a terrorist group.

(7) Palin has done some ridiculous things like winking at the audience during the debate. This seems rather unprofessional.

[cherdano]

I would have made a different list, starting with:

(1) Until she got nominated to VP, Palin wasn't even interested in politics outside of Alaska. You can't make this up in a couple of weeks. In many decisions she would make as VP, she would completely miss the context. Or just let her advisors make the decisions, which is a democracy disaster. (Elected officials have a direct responsibility to the voters, and despite all corruption, lack of accountability and lying to their voters, they know this. Advisor don't have such a responsibility.)

(2) She is a pathological liar, she just doesn't seem to care about saying the truth. Andrew Sullivan has a (by now outdated) list at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...twelve-odd.html .

But I also agree with every point Adam made.

[luke warm]

uday, on Oct 9 2008, 10:10 AM, said:

There are ways to have discussions, even heated discussions, without issuing personal attacks.

No warnings were issued. Sometimes I think we're all just too old to learn any new tricks.

evidently not, for some people