Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Italgato darlin,

You are your own worst enemy.

This is good news, however. You'd have some trouble finding a less intimidating enemy.

Lola- No referent or documentation.

sorry. Your comment is incomprehensible.

laughing..............

Italgato, I will refer you to your own posts. Just pick any one of them. Other than that, I have no time for responding to your childish and competitive comments.

Lola, I will refer you to your own posts. Pick any one of them. I do have time to label them as unsourced, pretentious, illogical, and petty.

I have fallen out of my chair and splashed into a puddle of my own tears of laughter.

Anybody ever wonder why it is folks put so much energy into playin' a game they say they don't like?

well, some of us do like it, Timber. I do, I'll speak for myself. But I can see it's unproductive, so I try to control myself. But I see we all break down from time to time. You included. That's my answer to your question. What's your answer? Just curious.

timber

I'll say this clearly and publicly one time only because I'm getting bloody angry.

There is no thread in which Italgato has contributed which has not suffered in both tone and content. His posts are not merely pardigm examples of logical fallacies, but are almost in all cases covertly insulting and rude.

You've lost Tartarin. You're about to lose me. Good trade?

As far as Italgato goes, I have learned debating with it is pretty much useless. It will never actually admit to errors in judgement. The fun part of reading its posts is counting the number of posts it presents to itself before someone else takes the bait. The record so far seems to be eleven. Perhaps it has seen "Spinal Tap" too many times?

I agree here with Blatham. Italgato's posts are consistently invasive and rude. He questions other's integrity, their motivations, and he seems to believe he can read other people's minds. In his insidpid way, he taunts others. I can ignore him. But he is ruining the political threads and running good people off. If these threads continue to lose good people and degrade as they have been because of one poster, I'll have to leave too. It's simply not worth it.

we lost tartarin? For good?

I figure there's a "guilty pleasure" thing goin' on there, Lola. Yeah, I'll admit I get swept up in it once in a while too. One thing I note though, an awful lot of folks seem to figure anyone who disagrees with them, or who has a divergent perspective, is some sort of ignorant, evil, lowlife scum bent on the destruction of civilization as we know it. Somethin' I read once comes to mind: "The minute you decide its 'Them' or 'Us', you become one of 'Them'".

IF we lost Tart, then perhaps thats a signal, eh? On another thread it wasted badwidth calling Frank a moron and an idiot, then posted a follow up asking how to delete a post, so it does know right from wrong, sort of.

Tart isn't gone, she's just staying off the political threads. I'll not dispute some folk here are smarmy, pedantic, irritating, and more or less non-contributory. There always will be such. It doesn't "Get Better" unless folks care enough to, and do, take the time and effort to "Make it Better". A problem isn't solved by walking away from it ... and flames are never damped by fanning and adding fuel.

Timber,

If you are referring to me in the highlighted sentence above, I have to say that I disagree. There are plenty of you guys who disagree with me or have a divergent perspective, and I get along with you fine. I appreciate disagreement because the discussion would be pretty boring without it. But I am speaking of something else, and I can't believe you don't know exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone else seems to anyway. Extreme, chronic, non stop rudeness on the part of any poster, whether she/he agrees with me or not is not conducive to good scholarship. This poster's comments offer nothing but insult, consistently, all the time. If you can't see that and make that distinction, then I don't know what to say.

And Timber, your comment about not losing Tartarin is not correct. She is out of here. I wish she would stay because she's a good contributor. But even if she is contributing on other threads than political ones (which she hasn't) the political threads are still impoverished without her. It seems a very poor trade to me.

And flaming is not the problem either. I differ with you on this one too. I agree that no matter who started it, rudeness is unproductive. However, when one poster is so relentlessly disrespectful and constantly attacking other posters and nothing is done about it, it is inhumane to expect others not to eventually break down and respond in kind. This is too much to ask of any human being. Anyway, whether I ignore Italgato or not does not make a difference in his behavior. He is impossible to respond to intelligently because all he writes are insults. I'm really fed up with it.

Honest, Lola, Tart ain't gone, she's just been busy off-line ... she mentioned that HERE just last night.
Precisely my point: Why respond?

Why do you think so many of us left Abuzz in the first place, timber?

Do you think we'll all just gut it out if the trolls follow us over here?

I'm kind of thinking that we'll have a much lower threshold for departure based on that experience. Besides, if ignoring them was effective we'd still be over there....