The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

2) Proposed defense cuts

Why not just answer them, Merry?
You were an editor/reporter for a newspaper, were you not?

[Note how I included the "past conditional" there?]

Om replied: Yeah; I did too, J.

U have 2 sentences there, J; thay r otherwise known as a "run on sentence".

That is not bad enuf. The first part of your run on sentence
contradicts the last part of it. The first part of it (up to your comma) is affirmative.
The last part is a question cast in the negative.
Crafting a sentence that way only creates unnecessary confusion.

If the reply is rendered "yes" or "no"
it remains unknown whether the answer is rendered
to the first part of the run on sentence
or to the end of it.

Years ago, an attorney told me of a murder case in whose trial
he participated. The only witness was asked something
approximately along the lines of:
"Sir, did u not see the defendant crush the decedent's head with a hammer?"
Witness says: "yes." After conviction, and after loss of the witness,
the case was appealed, arguing that the only witness had attested
that he had not seen defendant crush decedent's head with a hammer.

Why not just answer them, Merry?
You were an editor/reporter for a newspaper, were you not?

[Note how I included the "past conditional" there?]

Om replied: Yeah; I did too, J.

You did too, what, Dave? If you are referring to the last sentence in the material that quoted me, strike one.

U have 2 sentences there, J; thay r otherwise known as a "run on sentence".

You are a grammar idiot, Dave. There's no run on sentence and even if there was,
that has nothing whatsoever to do with English grammar.

Strike two.

You have something contained within that you often whine about
as a error [an error??] not only of grammar but also of logic. You are also an idiot where logic is involved.

That is not bad enuf. The first part of your run on sentence
contradicts the last part of it. The first part of it (up to your comma) is affirmative.
The last part is a question cast in the negative.
Crafting a sentence that way only creates unnecessary confusion.

A GRAMMAR IDIOT, Dave, that's what you are!

Have you ever heard of the exceedingly common grammatical device

known as a tag question? Let me give you a few examples.
You are an idiot, aren't you, Dave?

You don't know the first thing about how language works, do you?

You're an ignorant supporter of all manner of terrorism/war crimes, aren't you?

Strike three.

If the reply is rendered "yes" or "no"
it remains unknown whether the answer is rendered
to the first part of the run on sentence
or to the end of it.

Strike four.

I can't believe how dumb you are. Go ahead and explain your way out of this one.

Years ago, an attorney told me of a murder case in whose trial
he participated. The only witness was asked something
approximately along the lines of:
"Sir, did u not see the defendant crush the decedent's head with a hammer?"
Witness says: "yes." After conviction, and after loss of the witness,
the case was appealed, arguing that the only witness had attested
that he had not seen defendant crush decedent's head with a hammer.

Ummmmmm, Dave, different grammatical structures. There's no tag question in your example.
When you finally are able to discern the difference between an apple and an orange, we'll chat, okay?

This is as fine an example of any which illustrates that though
native speakers intuitively know their language, they don't have
the foggiest notion about the grammar of their language, how it actually works.

On behalf of realjohnboy, whose thread this is, may I appeal to your better sense and humbly request that you please quit feeding this JTT troll? Just concede that neither you nor anyone else is going to get the last word with JTT. And that should be fine with most people. Let's, please, end the hijacking of this othewise interesting thread.

I thought that u 'd get the point about the twisted negative, with no trouble.

OK, we 'll try it with the run on sentence "tag question" that u like so much.
Imagining similar forensic circumstances:
"Sir, u saw the defendant crush the decedent's head with a hammer, did u not?"
Witness says: "yes."
[ If I were the witness, I 'd say: "yes; I did not see that. " ]

Merry offers OmSigDave an easy out, Merry's favorite trick when he's up a stump and Dave, the drowning grammatical idiot, desperately clutches the straw Merry proffered.

It's noted, Dave, that you, like Merry, discussed not one issue of the English grammar.

Just watched most of the first half of tonight's NH debate (I found a live stream on an ABC affiliated site). One thing that jumps out at me so far is the way they are all letting Romney skate, and sniping at each other. Not sure what that strategy might be - any other debate I've seen both Dem and GOP, the frontrunner has had to have his/her loins girded up for an attack. Not here. Wonder why?

snood wrote:

Just watched most of the first half of tonight's NH debate (I found a live stream on an ABC affiliated site). One thing that jumps out at me so far is the way they are all letting Romney skate, and sniping at each other. Not sure what that strategy might be - any other debate I've seen both Dem and GOP, the frontrunner has had to have his/her loins girded up for an attack. Not here. Wonder why?

They're all fighting to be the "not Romney" candidate. Romney only polls at 25% in national polls. If one of them emerges as the alternative then Romney is beatable. If they focus on Romney and not each other then the 75% will continue to be split into less than 25% chunks.

A pro-Gingrich “super PAC” is planning to air a blistering new attack video in South Carolina on Mitt Romney, depicting the GOP presidential front-runner as a corporate “raider” whose firm “destroyed the dreams of thousands of Americans” by buying up companies and firing its workers. More