You're lying. I did no such thing. I am not saying you don't know your opinion, I am saying you are knowingly and intentionally lying about what your opinion is.

You're a liar.

You're a liar. The fact that you cannot address, let alone rebut, my arguments doesn't make them false.

You're a liar. There was not a single insult in there.

You are also wrong that I offered any arrogance, but you could actually believe that. But you cannot believe I insulted you, unless you think "you're lying" -- a true statement, since I said it in regard to the false claim that we "rolled back every regulation we possibly could" under Bush (which I charitably interpreted as a reduction in regulation) was either the result of intentional dishonesty, or reckless disregard for truth or falsity, and either way I hold you responsible for the claim sufficient to justify a claim of lying -- is an insult. But even if you want to claim that as an insult, that would be the only one. Nothing else even refers to you except to identify you as the person I am talking to.

I didn't say it was. I said it was pure ad hominem. Whether it was an "attack" is uninteresting: the point is that you responded to my comment, which was all about the topic of discussion, and instead talked about me, personally. That is the definition of "ad hominem."

You probably don't know this (if you do, you would be lying), but the comment history doesn't actually show all the comments you've posted on your account. Take a guess what comments aren't shown!

You're a liar. I made no such choice: it literally and explicitly was personal. It was nothing but personal. It was all about me, and not at all about the discussion.

You're a liar. I just provided the evidence: I posted a reasonable reply to your arguments. You then replied with pure ad hominem.

That wasn't what I said though. He was the one saying my view -- that, in essence, the President is essentially indistinguishable from the "deep government" -- is unreasonable. If the "deep government" were that powerful, wouldn't they want one of their own in charge, rather than a puppet that had the power to do things they didn't like?

His argument is that the moneyed powers are distinct from the people with the actual legal authority. I am saying there's no reason to assume a difference exists.

Yes, you dishonestly stated it to be your opinion.

It can be if it is not your opinion. But I'm on to you. You know what you're doing. You know that I gave you a reasonable response to your comment to me, and that you responded with pure ad hominem back, whining about a disagreement over what began as your ad hominem directed at me.

I don't believe you are self-deluded enough to believe that I am the one who took this conversation sideways, that I am the troll, that I am the one out to waste your time. I think this is not your opinion, but that you are lying when you say that it is.

You're lying. I never, ever, do that. I do nothing less than you: I make assertions that I believe are true. Of course, my assertions are more often backed by facts and reason, but that's beside the point.

False. I read that, and responded to you with more arguments, mostly refuting your claims. Then you replied with no more arguments, but went full frontal ad hominem, and then dishonestly claimed that I was the one who was not wanting to have a discussion.

I have no such list. Please stop lying. I have a list of people who repeatedly demonstrate the inability to have reasonable discussions, and yes, you're on it (for reasons you're proving again).

You're a liar.

You're a liar.

You're a liar, as evidenced by the fact that -- as usual -- you don't back up this claim.

You're a liar, as evidenced by the fact that -- as usual -- you don't back up this claim.

You're a liar, as evidenced by the fact that -- as usual -- you don't back up this claim.

That is clearly a declaration of winning.

You're a liar. I never said I won. I said I beat you up. Not the same thing. I don't see it as a contest at all, but I do see it as opposing sides battling, not for victory, but for shared enlightenment. Unfortunately, sometimes -- as happened here -- one side is dishonest or otherwise abusive to the discussion, and gets its ass handed to it in due course.

You're a liar. Now truth be told, I do not want to have a discussion with you; but I do want to have reasonable discussions, with whomever else wishes to engage in them; but you demonstrate a lack of ability to do so, as proven by your rejection of my reasonable replies to you with ad hominems and obviously false claims that I was the one who was rejecting reasonable discussion.

Um. Smitty started it. And you replied, and then I replied to your confused and false statements with corrections. Are you new to the Internet? That's how it works, and it is not evidence of trolling.

You're a liar. I was the one who was responding to your arguments with arguments, and you are the one who ended the actual discussion to make it purely personal.

Again: says the guy who refused to respond to my arguments and then resorted to pure ad hominem. You can't simply ignore that fact and hope that no one will notice. We all noticed. You took a disagreement over what categorized a "long dry spell" as proof that I don't "actually want to have a conversation with" you. Come on. No one takes a garbage claim like that seriously, especially given that I had just written a significant reply with many serious claims in it. You were the one bowing out of the discussion, not me, and to protect your ego you said I was the one with the problem.

Everyone knows what you did. You can stop pretending.

I agree there is some truth to what he is saying, but the part that is bizarre is that he assumes the moneyed interests controlling things are necessarily distinct from the people with the legal authority, that the President is necessarily a puppet rather than the master. There's no reason to assume that.

Not to me, since the Congress would necessarily have to bend to the shared will of the Congress and President, if they asserted it upon the Fed.

Only a few clips.

You're a liar.

You're a liar. I replied with not a single instance of any of those things.

You're lying.

This is where you are deluding yourself: my replies to you do not take you into account. They have nothing to do with you. You are not the center of my world. You're barely on its periphery, and I do not do or say anything in particular regards to you. I am simply responding to your comments as they are.

You're a liar on both counts. I rarely if ever get angry on Slashdot, and I don't recall that I've ever lied near you, nor that if I had, you'd exposed any such lie.

But the other way around? Hell, I regularly expose your lies. You're lying throughout this conversation, as usual. The difference is that I actually identify your lies and point them out to the point where you cannot rebut my identification. The opposite doesn't actually happen.

Provide a single example of me lying, or insisting that "up is down." Just one.

And -- again, you realize this, don't you? -- that you are the one who sidetracked this discussion. Anyone reading along knows this. I responded with a series of reasonable comments, and you responded with nothing but ad hominems, as you continue to do now.

Dude, who do you think you are convincing with your lies? I didn't declare myself a "winner," and you never even attempted to "show" that I am not here to have an actual discussion, you merely asserted it.

I don't generally call people trolls, because I don't care why they say what they say, as long as they are making somewhat rational arguments ... but the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

You're lying.

I respond to what is in front of me. That's all I can do. He chooses to go off on personal-attack tangents.

Yes, but that is not the problem. The problem is you are incapable of actually presenting an argument that backs your view of reality. (ProTip: this is a sign that maybe your view of reality needs adjustment).

I am neither. Please stop lying. Thanks!

You do realize -- don't you? -- that I am the one who made serious arguments to you, and you're the one who responded with ad hominem ... right? I mean, anyone looking at this knows that I am the one engaging in honest conversation, and you're the one who isn't.

False.

False.

Translation: "I got my ass handed to me. Again. And I have no rebuttal that won't sound stupid, so I'll resort, as usual, to ad hominem."

False.

False.

You're confused: I never said or implied it was the other way around. You're just saying that the people who control the money, control the government; I didn't contradict that, I am just saying that the President and Congress control the Fed, which controls the money.

Monarchists can be either left or right. While Arker is correct about the aristocrats being on the right, so too were many merchants, just like today: those that wanted the government to be the servants of capitalists and grant favors or be generally activist were on the left, while those that wanted a more laissez-faire model were on the right. And yes, they were all opposed to centralized monarchical power. But that said, a monarchist could be in favor of more or less activism in the government, more or less power to the people, and so on.

To put it more briefly: the form of government is largely, though not wholly, distinct from its political leanings.

False.

Nonsense. The movement, begun over 100 years ago, was heavily rooted in a Marxist understanding of the economy and labor. Wilson certainly held those views. Despite your protestations, this continues today. Obama believes -- or claims he does -- in the fundamental conflict between labor and owners, that owners primary gain wealth through exploitation of labor, and that government has all authority and responsibility to regulate owners in any way they see fit, without regard to morality or liberty.

You're a bit confused. First, they didn't leave the Democratic-Republican Party, which had ended 30 years before the Republican Party began. Mostly, they left the Whig Party, but many of them were Democrats or came from other third parties.

But yes, the one unifying position they shared was opposition to slavery.

The words and deeds of the founders of the party, including their first platform in 1856, which was dominated by anti-slavery language.

I'm not familiar with this new meaning of "partially" that you are applying here. The Fed was created by an Act of Congress, signed into law by the aforementioned Woodrow Wilson. Period.

So according to you, there aren't many laws on the books governing the behavior of the Fed. OK. I don't know why you are expressing such an obviously false position, but OK.

Unless the President demands them to. In fact, all executive authority belongs to the President. Therefore, all the power the Fed has, belongs to the President. That's what the Constitution very clearly says.

Nonsense. The original point was that "un-elected knobs" are granted the power. The criticism of that point was that the Fed is outside government. I pointed out that this is false, and further, that government could step in if it wanted to, because it is under the authority of the President and Congress, regardless of what anyone wants to pretend. All you are saying is that they are not usually overruled by the President, which isn't arguing against any point being made.

Further, no less than JFK himself wrote an executive order asserting control over the Fed, and the assertion isn't controversial: he literally did have power over the Fed. (I do not hold to any Fed involvement in any conspiracies to kill JFK; I agree with those that claim the executive order ultimately enhanced the power over the Fed, but it did so through asserting that the Fed is under the authority of the President.)

Please stop lying. In fact, the amount of regulation significantly increased during the Bush years, including financial regulation.

On the contrary, the federal government was explicitly saying what the financial institutions should do, and the increased regulation contributed to moral hazard, which was the real cause of the collapse. There was nothing inherently wrong with what most of these financial institutions did, other than the dishonesty: the problem was that people trusted that the investments were sound because they thought that if government allowed it, it must be sound. Government created the problem.

It seems to me that you answered the question.

But spiritual growth involves embracing and extending societal confusion. It isn't efficient, but it's worthwhile.