quote:

ORIGINAL: subtee

Any apologists for SP care to answer the question?

quote:

 
Travelling in Britain this week, I've been asked repeatedly by close followers of US politics if it can really be true that Barack Obama might not win. Thoughtful people cannot get their head around the idea that Mr Obama, exciting new pilot of change, supported by Joseph Biden, experienced navigator of the swamplands of Washington politics, could possibly be defeated.

They look upon John McCain and Sarah Palin and see something out of hag-ridden history: the wizened old warrior, obsessed with finding enemies in every corner of the globe, marching in lockstep with the crackpot, mooseburger-chomping mother from the wilds of Alaska, rifle in one hand, Bible in the other, smiting caribou and conventional science as she goes.
...

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps.

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

quote:

ORIGINAL: subtee

Any apologists for SP care to answer the question?

          You started out so well with this thread, Tee, and then you put this line at the end.  Isn't the whole notion of labeling her proponents and defenders as "apologists" just another bit of talking point spin?

        Yes.  An astute reader of the forum posts can often determine where others are getting their basic information, as well as those basing from near total ignorance and blind prejudice.  I found it really amusing a while back, when a certain prolific poster (now absent and, I hope, living well) would consistently accuse others of taking their comments from Limbaugh, when she was quoting the talking points of Daily Kos.

        While working my last job, my primary source of information was the radio.  Might I be struck by something I heard there and turn it into a topic here after a bit of secondary research online?  Sure.  In the new career, I have a high speed connection from my desk, and might hear an hour of talk radio every six months or so.  Might I still wind up with the same take on a piece of news that one of the talking heads went with?  Yep.  Does that make it plagiarism, or just multiple people reaching the same conclusion, from seeing the same raw material?

      

quote:

apologist
Nouna person who offers a formal defence of a causea person who defends, in speech or writing, a faith, doctrine, idea, or action.
A person who argues in defense or justification of something, such as a doctrine, policy, or institution.