Taking Down a President
The date: Halloween, A.D. 2017. The time: late afternoon, as long shadows crept across the garden and dead leaves fluttered to the ground. The place: my slowly darkening study here in Philadelphia.
Let me make an honest and abject confession: I’ve been haunted lately by a spectre so unholy that I almost dare not mention it. But mention it I must.
I’ve been starting to feel a perverse sympathy for Donald Trump.
There… I’ve confessed. But why, you wonder (and I’m sure you’re wondering), would a diehard moderate feel anything other than contempt for the man who, in the space of nine months, has already established his legacy as arguably the worst president in American history?
I suspect it’s the same emotion that causes some of us to sympathize with Frankenstein’s monster, or King Kong, or a British fox trying to elude the well-dressed killers with the hunting horns. It’s the spectacle of a lone misunderstood creature chased to its doom by a bloodthirsty crowd.
Trump, for all his faults (and there are too many to name here) has been hounded so mercilessly, doggedly and even sadistically since his election that, for me at least, he’s beginning to elicit that Frankenstein response: yes, he’s a monster, but it’s possible that he’s not quite as monstrous as the crowd that seeks his blood.
Was Trump really so monstrous when he called La David Johnson’s widow and told her, “He knew what he signed up for, but it’s still sad”? (The mainstream media generally omitted the last part of the sentence.) Was he a monster when he tossed those rolls of paper towels to the Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Maria… or when he jokingly said to one of the trick-or-treaters who received his presidential Halloween candy, “You have no weight problems — that’s the good news”?
Substitute Obama for Trump, and you can bet the press and the Democratic faithful would have been charmed to the verge of tears. Yet in each case, Trump’s well-intended but socially awkward gestures unleashed a torrent of anti-Trump tweets, memes and amen-corner articles.
Does the man bring all this heavy opprobrium on himself? Well, he’s done enough of it without assistance; I have to give him credit for digging his own holes in his reputation. Trump’s narcissism is his Achilles’ heel; his pathological need for winning while others lose makes him a dodgy choice as president. (A national leader should want everyone to win.) I don’t see him as a racist, or a fascist, or even a stupid man. He’s a grotesque, clueless character — like Frankenstein’s monster, like King Kong — but, like them, he’s also hounded and persecuted beyond reason.
Granted, most sane Americans would argue that a blundering, blustering, arrogant president deserves to be hounded and persecuted — much like a giant gorilla leaving a path of destruction in New York City. How much more recklessness and petty vindictiveness can we take from our commander in chief? If only he could have delivered on his promise to “drain the swamp” or create “millions of jobs,” we might have forgiven his faults.
But now that Mueller’s investigation is closing in on Trump’s henchmen, and even Steve Bannon is fomenting rebellion among the GOP right-wingers, the president looks like a doomed and desperate creature.
The Democratic party machine, aided by Hillary Clinton and even Obama, tried to ruin him both before and after the election. The once-moderate CNN has essentially turned into NTN — the “Never Trump” Network. Even Jimmy Carter opined that the media have been harder on Trump than any other president in his memory. Where does a thinking moderate draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable criticism of the president?
I looked up from my laptop for a moment and glanced at a small white plaster bust of George Washington that sits in my study. His gaze is steady, his chin determined, his sterling character evident in every contour of his face. An idealized visage, no doubt, leaving out the pock marks and faulty dentures of the mortal man — but an image of natural nobility and courage.
And yet, as I write this, even the indispensable General Washington has been taken down a peg in our current revisionist climate. As a Virginia planter and slaveholder, he offends some of our more sensitive Americans despite his many virtues.
Washington held relatively enlightened views on race and slavery for a planter of his time and place: he came to respect the black soldiers in his army, he refused to engage in the slave trade or break up families, and he not only freed his slaves in his will but provided for their care and education. Yet it’s also known that he didn’t take kindly to runaways; they were his legal property, after all.
So should we condemn Washington despite his irreproachable character and incomparable contributions to the founding of the republic? Of course not. If we were to measure the worth of a man strictly by his faults, all of us would be condemned.
If we’re going to judge anyone at all — and I suppose we’re entitled to judge our presidents — we need to ask ourselves whether their virtues outweighed their flaws. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Eisenhower and a handful of others would pass with flying colors.
Donald Trump doesn’t merit such generosity when we measure his virtues against his flaws; he is, always has been, and probably always will be a brash, dishonest, shockingly ignorant overachiever unsuited for high office. His flaws gleam like the shiny brass plating in Trump Tower. He’s more brand than statesman. And yet…
The public gang-assault on Trump since he upset Mrs. Clinton has been virtually unprecedented in our time. He may or may not have been guilty of collusion with Russia to win the election; at worst, he was no more guilty than the DNC. His narcissism and thin skin will be his undoing, whether he’s eventually removed from office or simply collapses in an ugly heap. Yes, he’s a monster, misunderstood or not — but it still saddens me to watch the airplanes circle him and conspire to bring him down.
Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate and author of Lifestyles of the Doomed, available wherever e-books are sold.
Dump Drumpf and make America America again!
A possible maybe,but not when your talking about the man responsible for not just 350 million of his own people but possibly the setting fire to the whole world.
On the plus side, he hasn’t dropped the bomb yet. I know he’s a disaster on many levels; I just thought his critics were engaging in overkill. (The media response to the girl who “didn’t have a weight problem” is probably what set me off, finally.)
Trump haters have no sense of humor about the guy. He often says stuff like that, and it’s obvious to the casual, RATIONAL observer that he’s kidding. It’s also true that this is the way that he’s been all of his life. Anyone who ever watched “The Apprentice” knows that this is the way he communicates. It’s not presidential, but, at this point, there are millions of people who say “So what? It’s action, not words that we want.”
“Overkill” is precisely what his critics do. They’re not even critics ~ a critic analyses the relative strengths and faults of a person. Trump’s so-called “critics” are more like mortal opponents, who hate everything about the man, and want him driven out of office, by any means possible, legal or not, ethical or not.
My concern is that, should they succeed, the thrill of victory will be very short-lived, as this sort of thing will happen to all of his successors, on either side, and will ultimately result in the collapse of our political system as we know it. (I know that many will say, “Good! That’s what we want,” but I think that we should all be careful what we wish for”.
“there are millions of people who say “So what? It’s action, not words that we want.”
There are many more millions who say ENOUGH!
Trump Job Approval CBS News Approve 39, Disapprove 55 Disapprove +16
Trump Job Approval Gallup Approve 35, Disapprove 61 Disapprove +26
Trump Job Approval Reuters/Ipsos Approve 36, Disapprove 60 Disapprove +24
“Trump haters have no sense of humor about the guy. ”
Have you got one about bill and hillary? I’ll answer for you, No! So, pleeeeaaase. Cry me a river.
I find nothing funny about having a pathological liar and sexual predator in the oval office. A while back I would not have thought you would either.
“They’re not even critics ~ a critic analyses the relative strengths and faults of a person. ”
Start with yourself. Have you Really made such an honest assessment of trump, especially his weaknesses? If you have, you have kept it to yourself here. The thing that sets me and Jay off about you is that you reduce his weaknesses by 95%. He is a sexual predator. You won’t admit it. That is denying reality, just something for you to argue about. 70% of GOP voters have been consistently saying in polls that trump is uniting the country. That is one huge excursion from reality most GOP voters are taking. Drunks are in the driver’s seat while the GOP has control of all the levers.
“Trump’s so-called “critics” are more like mortal opponents, who hate everything about the man, and want him driven out of office, by any means possible, legal or not, ethical or not.”
That would be a subset of trump’s critics, some of trumps critics. It is not for example, me, much as I loathe the man and his presidency. Nor is it the never trump conservatives and moderates and even some of the liberals. It is possible to loathe the man and still live within the Constitution. He will NOT be driven out of office illegally, see below.
“My concern is that, should they succeed, the thrill of victory will be very short-lived, as this sort of thing will happen to all of his successors, on either side, and will ultimately result in the collapse of our political system as we know it.”
A. Our political system as we know (knew) it has already collapsed. That is what many were hoping for, Pat Riot and Dave for example. Yeah, be careful what you wish for. Ain’t this revolution fun?
B. “This sort of thing” started happening with Clinton. A BJ from an intern was not worthy of impeachment, much as I despise Clinton. What was worthy of impeachment about bill clinton was not the subject of his impeachment hearings, because there was no truly solid proof of it.
C. Most importantly, everyone who is hyperventilating over the prospect of trump being illegally driven from office is ignoring one important fact: It ain’t gonna happen. As your good buddy Dave has said to me on 1000 occasions, get a clue! If he is successfully impeached it will be only with the sort of participation from GOP congress people and GOP voters that brought down Nixon. It won’t happen unless he is caught doing something so hideous that even you, Priscilla, abandon him. It seems impossible at this point that you and 25-30% of the voters but 70-80% of the GOP, the party in power, will ever abandon him, no matter what he does. So, he is safe. He can give an address to congress in his birthday suit while being made happy by an intern and you guys will say, well, bill clinton did worse and where does the Constitution say that a POTUS can’t do that? So, all this hand wringing about him being tragically removed from office is based on nothing. He is with us for 4 years unless he quits.
What can happen and what is happening is that he is being made ineffective and being opposed, ridiculed, and exposed. Which is his own damn fault. If he behaved presidentially he could fix that. Don’t blame “the resistance” for his ineffectiveness, that was a given once you GOP voters foisted this joker off on us.
Perhaps this exercise will make this clear: Write out a believable scenario under which trump gets impeached. If you take that task seriously you will find that any non fictional scenario involves the participation of the GOP, which means you. Will that happen? If so, wouldn’t it assume that he did something so utterly wrong that even you can see it?
You should worry about more real problems than trump being illegally impeached. That is a phony crisis and we have real ones, big ones.
“There are many more millions who say ENOUGH!”
Jay, where I differ from you is that in my opinion trump being impeached is not going to happen. Disapproval is not the same as approving his impeachment. If he were hypothetically to be impeached he will have done something so large that even half his base deserts him.
What is true is that 60% at least do not want the trump revolution, so he is being opposed tooth and nail and that is what is really driving his supporters crazy. Impeachment is a red herring. Many of them seem to believe that it is damned near unConstitutional to oppose the POTUS, If He Is Their POTUS.
Just like the loony left, they are planning to cram their unpopular revolution down our throats and are beside themselves that they have not been making much progress with that.
Here’s a song about revolution. I had some fun with the ending, you’ll like it Jay.
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright, alright, al…
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Donald Trump
your head is pretty damned far up your rump
Roby, I agree removal through Impeachment is highly unlikely. But the continual push for it is a positive encouragement, like cheer chants at a football game:
Come On America!
Show Some Class!
Get that tRUMP!
And Kick His Ass!
IMPEACH! IMPEACH! YAY!
When your team is trapped against the wrong endzone, and has been the entire game, and you are losing 42-6, the cheerleading tends to collapse.
Roby, you are totally missing my point about impeachment ~ actually, I didn’t even mention the word…I simply said that Trump’s enemies are intent on driving him from office by any means, legal or not, ethical or not. There was a time when something like that would have bothered YOU.
As the Russia collusion narrative collapses, we hear more and more about the 25th Amendment, which provides a framework for replacing the president in the case of his incapacitation from illness or injury. Left wing “artists” write songs and make videos and films encouraging and celebrating the idea of Trump’s assassination. All of these liberals howling at the moon over a lost election!
It’s actually pretty pathetic if you ask me, because what it says is that these people cannot evaluate the evidence that indicates that Trump won because Obama moved the country too far left, and Hillary was a terrible candidate who blew the election. And they are apparently unwilling to rally around the idea that in 3 years they can have another chance at nominating someone who can win fairly. Just destroy the duly elected president and all will be well?
Talk about having your head up your rump….
In my lifetime people have been “destroying” presidents since LBJ. Its called politics. As you have nothed several times, its a blood sport. Opposition was virulent against LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, W, and Obama. The first Bush was not destroyed by the left, instead he was destroyed by the Grover Norquist’s on the GOP side because he was too moderate.
I don’t want Bernie Sanders Damned Revolution and I don’t want trumps Damned Revolution and there are majorities with me in both cases.
This is what it looks like when a majority does not want what you want. Opposition, often virulent. Let a Bernie Sanders Lefty become POTUS and conservatives will be every bit as worked up as the trump opposition. I’ll even be with them. Yeah its getting worse as times goes on and trump only solidifies and amplifies the trend by his own actions, among which he took the unprecedented step of telling his supporters that if he lost the election was rigged. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
How many times during the campaign did you state that it seemed clear to you that whether hillary or trump won they were going to be impeached, so we might as well not get too worked up because they could always be removed, or words to that effect? That was then, this is now. Your trump got in and people even talking about removing trump offend you now.
Hell will freeze before I sympathize with the complaint that there is a very high level of opposition to a person like trump being president, as well as a person with his agenda being president.
Assassination is crazy talk, disgusting. I’d feel a WHOLE lot more sorry for your complaint if you had not quietly tolerated your buddy JBs frequent gory death wishes for Obama. Like you tolerated Dave’s scatelogical rants directed towards liberals but using his same words brought me a rebuke. You will tolerate or not be able to see damned near anything at all, as long as its coming from your side, so I feel zero sympathy for you.
I think that it’s entirely possible that Trump could be impeached if Democrats win the House. Impeachment is a political ~ and perfectly constitutional~ way of removing an elected official.
You’re not getting my point, Roby. I don’t want your sympathy…I don’t think that anyone deserves “sympathy” for casting a vote!
Trump is not trying to do anything revolutionary, unless you consider undoing much of Obama’s agenda revolutionary. Obama was the one (“The One”) who said that he would fundamentally transform America, would slow the oceans’ rise and lead us to the promised land. Ok, that last part is not true, but if you would just cool down, stop letting hysterics like Jay influence your outlook and read what I write, you’ll realize that I am not saying anything that’s not true. Hell, Jay has openly fantasized a Trump death as a positive outcome. You want revolution? That’s the mentality that gets you revolution.
Put the shoe on the other foot for one hot minute. What would you have said to me, if I had said that I would applaud with glee if Obama tumbled from the top of Trump Tower in Manhattan to the city street below?? You know damn right well that you would have said that that was evidence of a sick mind. But, Jay says exactly that about Trump and you cheer him on?? Come on.
Priscilla, “I think that it’s entirely possible that Trump could be impeached if Democrats win the House.”
There has to be something illegal that the President has committed before they can be impeached. And think about this. If they started the process it would take them until the summer of 2018 to get something started (as slow as those asses move) and then maybe impeached by 2019, just before the election. If they remove a weak president and replace him in office before the election in 2020, that would put Pence in office and make him the incumbent and a much stronger opponent, one who could take down a Warren/Booker or Ellison.
There is not going to be any effort to impeach prior to Jan, 2019.
I doubt there will be one then.
Frankly this entire hate trump nonsense is incredibly dangerous for the left.
It burns its own people out and energizes opposition.
I would have thought that by now people would have grasped that there is nothing to this Russia Collusion nonsense. But polling suggests the public response has been different from what I expected. Instead of grasping there is no “collusion” the majority of people beleive there was, and do not care.
I will also note dangerously on most of this polling the polpular split is incredibly partisan and polarized.
Polls are coming out where 72% of democrats beleive X and 83% or republicans beleive not X.
A recent poll on McCain had 63% favorable with democrats and 65% unfavorable with republicans.
Democrats could impeach Trump, but removal requires 2/3 of the senate.
Impeachment is also a politically dangerous tactic which is why Pelosi is actively trying to shut democratic discussions of impeachment down.
Priscilla, given all the absurd trump rationalization that goes on at TNM, and the idea popular here among you and Dave that opposition to trump is of the nature of the worst examples and basically verging on illegitimate, Jay for me is a welcome voice of reason. I don’t think he has spent much time wishing trump dead, perhaps it’s a blind spot of mine. Ron brought up the idea of assassination recently, much to my surprise. I am clearly not for wishing for assassination. I have said many times that there are a large number of divisive public figures I would not mourn if they happened to choke on a sandwich. I have a sort of mean streak perhaps.
trump ran such a campaign that this level of opposition was inevitable and natural. It may indeed backfire, especially since the dem party has dissolved into chaos and half of its members want a revolution every bit as unpopular as the trump revolution. I have mentioned my theory here many times that highly divisive unpopular presidents get reelected. When they are brought down, its because they are unpopular with activists from their own side, Bush 41, LBJ.
The chances of the dem party breaking open the 2018 election as the GOP did in 2010 midterms is very, very slim. They might just possibly get a slim majority in one or both chambers. If they get some bigger turnaround, that will be a rejection of trump/GOP rule and be the voice of the people. In that case I guess it is not impossible that the House could impeach him. It would take a considerable number of GOP defections in the Senate to remove trump. He is going to have to be caught awfully red handed at something or completely have a psychological melt down before that would happen. There will be no illegal/unethical removal of trump form office. Its a red herring.
I read the spirit of your commentary here to be that the opposition to trump is some astonishing, unnecessary, unexplainable aberration, an insult to decent workings of democracy. You find trump somewhat heroic; in your own GOP-loyal universe you seem to have truly lost the ability to comprehend how he looks to someone like me (or never trump conservatives, etc.). Pat Riot at least could understand how someone could reasonably loathe trump and said so repeatedly. The opposition to trump is far from consisting only of liberals/democrats, as you make it sound. Democrats make up 28% of the voters. Disapproval of trump is at nearly 60%. You seem to think its some monolithic group under something like organized control. You are in denial about the actual nature of the opposition and its reasons for being. No one can stop it, it’s a natural force of nature. Its worst elements should be disavowed by its better elements and frequently are.
If you had merely voted for trump holding your nose that would be one thing. You go much further, you seem to like the guy personally, deny his worst faults, and very often try to rationalize away stuff like his comments and behaviors towards women and his perpetual lying, which utterly shocks and disappoints me to the bone. You find those of us not in that state to be guilty of bad taste or something. So, for me and Jay, if not for Dave and Ron, (dduck has his/her own category) that is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. And then you are astonished that the bull charges. Can anyone truly be so innocent?
Roby
Get a clue.
What in the world is “Trump rationalization” ?
He was elected – without my vote.
Just the same as Obama.
There are things about him I like and some I done.
Just the same as Obama.
There has been absolutely Zero thus far to justify removing him as president,
The rationalization is on the left – concocting ever more bizzarre justifications for your actions.
Oppose Trump or republicans on specific policies and actions – and some of the time I will join you. Just as some of the time I supported Obama’s policies and actions and others I opposed them.
But you have gone all in on hysterical nonsense.
This whole left meme regarding Trump has been a farce since the begining.
You sought to prove Trump.Russia collusion.
Thus fat we have multiply instances were the Trump campaign was Trolled seeking dirt from Russian on Clinton.
Meanwhile Clinton who previously said she knew nothing is admitting that she and he DNC paid millions for Dirt on Trump that ultimately came from the Kremlin
We also now know why FBI/DHS were not given access to the hacked DNC servers.
The DNC was terrified that the FBI would find that Clinton had bought and paid for the entire DNC.
How many times do we have to refute the DNC hacking story before you are clueful ?
Finally, we have all you lefities going banana’s because some fake Social Media Accounts might have been created by Russians who might be acting for the Kremlin.
So ?
The underlying thesis is still that there is a cause and effect relationship between advertising and peoples votes.
No actually not even that. Because given that the “russian” advocacy seems to have been both tiny and distributed across all candidates. how did it effect anything ?
I think it is twitter that is now claiming that 1.4M people saw these adds
Can you remember a single political add from 2016 ?
Is there any political add that changed your mind as to who you were going to vote for ?
Clinton spent twice what Trump did – why didn’t she win ?
Get a clue somebody – anybody running political adds does not constitute improper influence.
If it did we are going to have to completely shut down the Media, as it is titled ridiculously to the left.
Your freedom rests on allowing others freedom to.
Including the freedom to make up their own minds as to who they are voting for, for their own reasons, It means you are not entitled to control what others see and hear.
Roby;
The left has argued (falsely) that republicans opposed Obama because he was black, and that was wrong(true).
The left is now inherently doing the same thing.
You did not want Trump and did not vote for him.
In most elections a very large portion of us do not get the candidate we wanted.
That is the norm. That is not a justification for a revolt.
That is what we have from the left.
You say Trump’s campaign drove this ? I do not agree, but I also do not care.
That is no different from saying Obama’s campaign drove opposition to him.
I think that character matters. I got my chance to vote on that – and the nation rejected that. the election is over.
You are not required to support Trump. You are free to oppose his actions.
But you are opposed to his very existance.
You claim that his campaign is the problem – if that were True – you are on the wrong side.
Those who elected Trump are entitled to what they voted for – not you or I.
Your argument and the actions of the left since the election are focused on reversing the election, on depriving those who elected Trump of the person they elected.
It is quite weird because while democrats in congress are monolithically opposed to GOP legislation, and the GOP is having legislative difficulties because of fractures in its own members – all that and more with respect to legislation and policy is not really the focus of the anger of the left.
I am not saying there is not opposition to Trump or GOP policies but that is not where the energy is, where the story is, where the media is.
Each day we wake up to hours of nonsense from all sides over the latest Trump tweet.
I Think Trump should have tweeted more carefully regarding the NYC terrorist attack.
I do not think he should be impeached for that.
I do not think we need endless hours of debate over that.
I think there are far more important things than the latest Trump Tweet that offends the left.
The left has also gone after Trump regarding misstatements – and sometimes they score a few points. But the credibility of the left and media has taken a huge hit at the same time, because your accuracy is no better than Trump’s
The DNC is being exposed as completely corrupt in 2016. Even the sex scandals are destroying the left. The latest is a Sorros affilated financier.
There are republicans whose treatment of women is abysmal.
But the left has been attacking the rest of us for mysoginy for decades, and during that time was engaged in covering up sexual harassment, assault and rape
It is called hypocracy.
The left has not succeeded in making Trump look worse.
But they have succeeded in making themselves look disgusting.
Who is “rationalizing Trump ?
Someone here claim he is not a mysoginist ?
Regardless, don’t piss on me. I voted for the candidate who thus far has not been exposed as treating women vilely.
I am not interested in your hypocritical whines of misogyny. When the left is not hiding the systemic harassment, sexual assault and rape then I will listen.
Less evil than Hillary is a poor standard for a president.
Regardless, you are just making the rest of us angrier at you as you keep up this nonsense.
Your argument essentially is that everyone not just shy of encouraging assassination is morally repugnant, because our idea of the lessor of two evils is different from yours.
I did not vote for Trump, and I do not regret that.
But if someone put a gun to my head and said you must vote for Trump or Clinton,
there is no way I could vote for Clinton. For mostly the reasons you are frothing over Trump.
I would also note – had Clinton been elected – we would have much the same investigations. And these investigations are bearing Fruit regarding Clinton.
While they fizzle regarding Trump.
“But you have gone all in on hysterical nonsense.”
Which is?
I don’t think trump will be impeached. I doubt the dems will be big winners in 2018. I think trump could be reelected. I think the dem party is broken. I think the sanders wing of the dems is economically insane. I can’t stand the clintons. I’ve said all these things repeatedly
Where is my hysterical nonsense?
I loathe trump, its not hysterical, its quite common and transcends ideology.
You are unable to have a rational opinion about me or about anything that involves something you can lump together as “the left.” Your obsessiveness blinds you.
If you and I discuss politics it will dissolve into a lengthy useless battle. You and I are not fated to be able to have a constructive conversation, 10 years of evidence shows it. The noise we make when we discuss politics is painful to the ears of anyone listening. It embarrasses me.
You hate my opinions, think that I abuse you, find my posts empty of substance but you still perpetually wish to engage me, starting oh so nicely with “get a clue”. Its obsessive, pathological.
Leave me in peace.
Not just I but everyone here will be happy.
We are not all that far apart on what you think will happen.
Regardless, the relative quality of our future political predictions is not an important issue.
I have said what I think the political future will be and why. I could be wrong.
Any of myriads of possible disruptive events could occur.
I do not care that you loathe trump.
Though I will note that the left accused most of us falsely of loathing Obama,
The hateful, hating haters, are primarily on the left.
What I do care about is how you wish to act, and how you act.
We have been at this for over a year. There is nothing there.
Trump is the same flawed person he was the day he was elected, there is no more evidence of actual misconduct. To the extent we know more about Russia – that is really a fizzle.
And yet you want to invalidate the results of the election.
I do not care that you loathe Trump, but you are pretty much an all access 24×7 loath Trump channel. You are harming yourself. Not Trump, not me.
That something is common and somewhat crosses ideologies does not make it rational.
Though I would note that on myriads of issues including Trump there is not that much crossing ideological lines. What is so dangerous right now is that on issue after issue 90% of republicans beleive X and 90% of democrats beleive not X.
Regardless, most people including the concensus of scientists beleived Galleleo was wrong. Facts are not decided by concensus.
As to us. The fundimental “political” disageement between us is your intention of using force to impose your views on those who disagree.
That is it. Otherwise we agree more than you admit, and I really do not care that much about what we disagree on.
It is not “politics” that is the flashpoint of our conflict, it is your willingness to use force.
Please quit telling me what I think. You are not good at it.
Until you chose to use force to impose them, your ideas are merely interesting points of discussion.
I do not care that you “abuse me”. I note fallacy and ad hominem because it is obviously not argument. I sometimes insult you – more than I should, as part of arguments.
What I care about is the argument, the debate.
I wish you actually had the capacity to argue your opinions well.
Opinions ideas, arguments are tested in the crucible of discussion.
I want your best arguments and I am disappointed that you offer none.
Roby
I very rarely attack you out of the blue.
I respond to your posts.
You are free to say whatever you wish.
You are not free to say whatever you wish and demand silence from everyone else.
I thought we were here to discuss ideas ?
But your back to trying to impose yours by force.
Free speach for thee, but not for me.
“As to us. The fundimental “political” disageement between us is your intention of using force to impose your views on those who disagree.”
There is not a soul here other than you who does not believe in using force (government) to impose their views. You have obsessively focused on me to such an obsessive extent that I believe you are mentally ill.
“I wish you actually had the capacity to argue your opinions well.
Opinions ideas, arguments are tested in the crucible of discussion.
I want your best arguments and I am disappointed that you offer none.”
Ad hominem. Just nonsense.
No one else here in my ten years has made this complaint about me. Its only you who think that. You won’t get a single person here to agree with you on that if you poll them, even those that I am at political odds with.
This is just another one of your extreme opinions, like the opinion that there should be no regulation whatsoever and that regulation by government is immoral, period. You won’t find another soul here who will agree with that extreme position. But, you insanely focus on me because you have insanely lumped me in with Chairman Mao.
Dave, you are interested in have an insult festival with me. I am not interested and no one else here want to suffer through it either.. You are not worth my time.
Leave me in peace.
“There is not a soul here other than you who does not believe in using force (government) to impose their views.”
Oh, ?
Who here beleives that we can enslave people or commit genocide through govenrment ?
Absolutely no one here not even you beleives that we can impose whatever views we please by force on others.
Even I do not beleive that absolutely all uses of force by government are impermissible.
Most of us grasp that some uses of force are permissible and some are not.
Regardless, you are making an idiotic argumentum ad populum.
Another fallacy.
You must justify your use of force to impose a specific view.
It is not something you can assume.
This is a fundimental question of morality.
You can not elide it.
Your consistent efforts to do so leave genocide and slavery moral by your standards.
Most of us have not thought this out that far, but it is inherent to philosopy, as well as to western politics.
When the declaration of independence said that the purpose of government was to secure our rights – was that just flowery rhetoric ?
Or was that a cornerstone to the argument the declaration made that colonists were free to form their own government because that or Britian had failed them ?
We have a constitution of enumerated govenrment powers – why are their any limits to government powers ? If as you say we can impose our views on others as we wish by force ?
For what reason do rights exist, except as an absolute bar to the force of governnent or the will of the majority ?
If imposing ones viewpoint on others by force is inherently moral – then genital mutilation is moral.
How is it that you determine which actions of which governments are moral and which are not ?
You refuse to answer any of these questions – because you can’t.
Each of us here may not in detail agree on when the use of force by government to impose a point of view is moral and when it is not. But I do not know anyone who thinks it is always moral. That government can impose any view it wishes on others by force.
Your entire claim is not merely an argumentum ad populum, it is also a justification for tyranny. For that is what Tryanny is – the use of force against other to impose ones views without any requirement for justification.
“I wish you actually had the capacity to argue your opinions well.
Opinions ideas, arguments are tested in the crucible of discussion.
I want your best arguments and I am disappointed that you offer none.”
Ad hominem. Just nonsense.
Nope, you clearly do not know what ad hominem is.
“No one else here in my ten years has made this complaint about me”
More argumentum ad populum fallacy.
So ?
Each of us is unique. Ron makes different arguments than I do.
“This is just another one of your extreme opinions,”
Extreme because you say so ? It it is extreme demonstrate how ?
My “extreme” opinions are shared by about half the founders, Adam Smith, John Locke, Voltaire, Thoreux, Mill, Kant. Some of the most influential thinkers of history.
“like the opinion that there should be no regulation whatsoever and that regulation by government is immoral, period.”
A priori regulation of conduct is immoral, and impractical – i.e. it does nto work.
As I noted you do not even have the skills necescary to argue your own views.
You do not know why you beleive what you believe, you are just sure you are right.
Please find an example of any regulation ever that made a positive change in a trend.
Absent such and example, at the very least you fail the real world test of practicality.
“You won’t find another soul here who will agree with that extreme position.”
Another argumentum ad populum fallacy
“But, you insanely focus on me because you have insanely lumped me in with Chairman Mao.”
Then you should find it easy to distinguish yourself from Mao on some principled basis.
“Dave, you are interested in have an insult festival with me. ”
Again back to the mind reading.
“I am not interested and no one else here want to suffer through it either..
You are not worth my time.”
You make your own choices about your time.
No one forces you to respond to me.
“Leave me in peace.”
If you speak in a public forum you have to right to the enforced silence of those who disagree.
Dave, you are alone in your beliefs here about government, regulation, and the morality of regulation as a concept. That is not a fallacy, its a fact. You focus insanely on me, but, unlike you, everyone else here and nearly everyone in the larger world accepts that there must be some governmental regulation. People argue about how much, how, when, etc. but you are alone at an extreme in saying that the whole idea of regulation is immoral and destructive. That is a fact, not a fallacy.
You misuse the logical fallacies to shut facts like this out, its how you got to be alone at the extreme libertarian part of the spectrum. You can rage at me all you wish, it will do you no good. The world is not as you want it and never will be.
There are places on TNM where you sound sane, but when you debate me, you sound like a nut.
Only a hypersensitive libertarian nut would take the words “Leave me in peace”, as an attack on their rights. Any normal person can understand and respect the idea that some other person is completely sick of fruitlessly talking to them. Some conversations are fated to be futile and angry. Why do it? Why make others suffer through the noise of our endless pointless pathological debate? If libertarian means not giving a damn about other people’s wishes its not going to get very far, in any form.
Morality is no more fungible than the pythagorean theorum.
It is not an arbitrary creation, The first principle I espouse is the foundational principle of morality throughout time and throughout the world.
We all intuitively know that the use of force against others to get what we want is wrong.
We know that for many reasons, That is also the first principle of the social contract – All government is illegitimate without that principle.
That principle is itself founded on the importance humans place on individual liberty.
You can reject that fundimental value of individual liberty if you wish – but in doing so you open pandora’s box – slavery and genocide become morally acceptable.
You seem to think that all of this is fungible.
Maybe you are correct and you can reject the primacy of individual liberty – but not without consequences.
We can not construct the laws of mathemtics and science willy nilly as we please.
If you choose not to accept the laws of thermodynamics – the universe does not alter its behavior to suit your whim. The same with foundational principles of morality.
BTW this concept that all values and principles are equal – that is post modernism.
You do not have to know what it is to ascribe to it.
And it has consequences to.
You wish to “believe” that we can each beleive as we please, that some fungible majoritarian principle – i.e. we abide by the will of the majority – why you are in the majority, defines, but you are unprepared to take ownership of the consequences that result.
And you wonder why I think you are morally challenged ?
You want to accuse me of anarchism – but you are a proponent of essentially totalitarian chaos. Because that is what you have when you have no principle but power.
“Only a hypersensitive libertarian nut would take the words “Leave me in peace”, as an attack on their rights. Any normal person can understand and respect the idea that some other person is completely sick of fruitlessly talking to them.”
Note hypersensite – not particularly sensitive at all.
Like it or not “leave me in peace” is a demand. It is not something you are entitled to – further it is absolutely not something you give to others when they actually are entitled to it.
Respect is not an entitlement either, It is something that is earned.
Some ideals and values have earned respect and others have proven to be evil.
If you do not wish to speak, you are free to not speak.
I have not tried to take that right away from you.
You are not entitled to the silence of others outside your own private space.
You continue to beleive you are entitled to make the rules for all. Worse still that you can make them based on your own arbitrary and self contradictory feelings.
“Some conversations are fated to be futile and angry. Why do it? Why make others suffer through the noise of our endless pointless pathological debate?”
You are demanding to be left alone – a right you absolutely have within your own private life. But I right I have asked from you and that you deny.
I ask to be left in peace from your interferance – in my home, in my personal relations, in everything that I do that does not involve the use of force or fraud against others.
And you deny that. So why are you entitled to be left in peace to IMPOSE your will on me by force ? Such incredible hypocrisy.
You want for yourself far more than you are willing to give others.
And you wonder why I think you are immoral ?
“If libertarian means not giving a damn about other people’s wishes its not going to get very far, in any form.”
If does not mean not caring about others. It means not being obligated by force to care about others.
Free exchange is inherently about caring about others. If I sell you a hamburger, I must care what you want to get from you what I want.
But your mere existance imposes absolutely no positive duty on another that can be accomplished by force.
I have no problem with positive moral duties – but they are outside the scope of government, they can not be imposed on others by force.
As well as being immoral, that is also impractical. We can not “save the world”.
“You misuse the logical fallacies to shut facts like this out, its how you got to be alone at the extreme libertarian part of the spectrum. You can rage at me all you wish, it will do you no good. The world is not as you want it and never will be.”
If you make an argument that is a logical fallacy that means it is not a valid argument.
If I say “the ocean is full of water because you are stupid”.
That is a fallacious argument – it is obviously invalid – it happens to be true that the ocean is full or water, but the cause is not someones stupidity.
Further the alternative argument “the ocean has no water because you are stupid”, has the same merit – none.
An element of critical thinking is to be able to reason without fallacy.
Fallacious reasoning is not inherently false – but it is also not inherently true.
A fallacious argument is often no argument at all, and sometimes worse.
We endeavor to reason logically – absent fallacies – because conclusions derived from true premises conforming to know rules of logical argument are themselves true.
In mathematics we have a very small number of axioms – things we must assume to be true because they are self evident by unprovable. From those axioms we can prove all the rest of the laws and theorums of mathematics, further we can then use mathematics in the real world and rely on the results.
The purpose of logic and reason – critical thinking is to get us to logical conclusions that we can trust. That are not the whim of one person. that are not “opinions” or beleifs but Truth.
For the most part I have gotten to my “extreme” positions, pragmatically – not theoretically.
Though I alternate between pragmatic and theoretical arguments.
You advocate for regulation. You belittle and berate me because I assert that a priori restrictions on conduct – beyond you may not initiate force or fraud against another are wrong, and do not work. You constantly assert that it is common sense, self evident that a priori restrictions are more often good than bad.
It is entirely possible that there are instances were a priori restrictions are net positive, but that is rare to non-existant.
Just to be clear – an a priori restraint – a regulation would be something like “you must have a plexiglass guard arround a bandsaw because someone might cut off their finger.
Remembering that even absent that regulation torts continues to exist.
The tort rule would be something to the effect of – if someone working for you cuts off their finger on your equipment, then you are obligated to make them whole.
Torts – the fact that you are always responsible for the harms that your actions – and more rarely inaction causes others is a legal principle hundreds of years old.
It requires no regulation, or law.
Anyway I have asked you for an example of an a priori regulation – that is either not already a tort when violated, or results in a demonstrable net benefit.
The assertion “See if there are plexiglass guards people will not cut off their fingers” is not a demonstrable net benefit. A positive change in the trend of cutoff fingers after passing your regulation would be evidence.
A part of what I would note – and why regulation is a bad idea, is that the fact that you are responsible when your actions or (sometimes) inaction causes harm to others inherently means the motivation to protect employees from dangerous band saw blades exists with or without the regulation. Completely absent the regulation many maybe most employers will likely put a plexiglass sheild arround band saw blades – if they determine that is the most effective way to prevent injury – or maybe they will find an entirely different way.
Maybe they will construct a force field ala star trek. Maybe they will use robots to do the cutting. There are systems for power tools that will actually detect when human flesh comes in contact with a cutting blade and stop that blade so quickly that your skin does not get cut. Each of those and myriads of others will meet your duty under torts to do no harm.
But most of those will not comply with regulations.
In the real world regulations do not work – because they nearly always attempt to prevent something that the law already disincentives. But they direct specific ways to solve problems precluding finding better ways.
Workplace safety has not increased because government has passed lots of regulation, but because for myriads of reasons employers do not want to harm their employees.
And those existing motivations on the part of employers grow as their employees become more skilled and therefore more valuable, and as standard of living rises.
After that diatribe, the quesiton is can you find an example of a regulation that has demonstrably altered a prexisting trend ?
That is not an extremist demand. That is not a theoretical demand, that is a highly pragmatic real world demand.
If you can not merely come up with an example – but actually demonstrate that is true nearly all the time, then regulation is self evidently a bad idea. on a purely pragmatic basis.
argumentum ad populum is still a fallacy even if it is a paragraph long, and even if you say it is not.
You do not seem to grasp that something can be both a fact and a fallacy.
It is a fact that many people do not share my views.
It is a fallacy to pretend that fact makes a valid argument.
“Like it or not “leave me in peace” is a demand. ”
If so, then your oft repeated “get a clue” is a demand. Hypocrite.
You constantly use the imperative case on others, by definition that is giving an order. But you will invent some mythological reason why your case is an exception.
If you think I have used force on you, go call the police.
Just nutty.
Leave my in peace is a request. Will it work better if I say, for gods sake, will you kindly leave me in peace? Very doubtful.
Much as the fact that I can get you to type out it 3 or 4 or more humongous posts every time I cough could be sort of intoxicating (and I suppose I could just enjoy it and have a contest with myself to see how few words I can type to send you off in a frenzy), it would be better if we just accepted that we are at odds and left everyone here in peace rather than this inane useless conversation. But I doubt that reasoning with you will work either.
No hypocrisy,.
I am free to make whatever demands I wish of you.
I am not free to use force to compel them.
I have no problem with imperatives.
I have a problem with your beleif that you are entitled to them.
I have no expectation that you will listen when I say “get a clue”
And I claim no power to force you to.
No mythological reason.
My arguments virtually always resolve to the same principles.
You may not use force against others.
The hypocracy remains yours.
If you actually use your force against me – I may well got to the police.
Though self defense is also legitimate.
Our constitution BTW does not have police in it anywhere.
Police were non-existant in colonial times,
and quite rare until the 20th century.
If you attempt to use the force of government against me I will oppose you politically, legally, constitutionally, and if those do not work, then I am free to respond to that force with my own force in self defense – as our founders did.
The latter is highly unlikely, but it is something you should always keep in mind.
The use of force in self defense is always justified.
It is even justified in opposition to a lawless government.
“Leave my in peace is a request. Will it work better if I say, for gods sake, will you kindly leave me in peace? Very doubtful.”
As a request – why are you free to speak your mind on a public forum – without anyone responding ?
Sorry, Roby it is not really a request. It is a demand for an entitlement.
It is a demand for something you do not give to others – not that you are obligated to.
It is the pretense that your remarks are sufficiently important they are entitled to be unrebutted.
It is no different from the snowflakes on campus who demand safe spaces.
Your safe space is your home. It is not a public forum.
This should not be hard. Your flawed world view is leading you to beleive you have a right to something you do not.
You are also trying to cast yourself as a victim. You are not.
You are free to speak or not. You are not free to control whether others do or not.
Nor is their some rule of curtesy or politeness that permits some of us to say what the please and requires others to remain silent.
Your idea of “reasoning” is simply making others do as you wish.
That is why we are at odds.
We will remain at odds as long as you believe that.
“Your idea of “reasoning” is simply making others do as you wish.”
Making implies force. Where is my force? My “Leave me in peace” is exactly equivalent to “your get a clue. ” Neither one of us has any intention of using force to make the other comply.
You are the most pathologically intellectually dishonest person I have ever encountered. Its pathetic, on the most trivial and obvious matter you cannot be wrong. Not being able just to admit to the obvious reality in such a trivial case only makes it clear, as if it wasn’t already that you cannot be intellectually honest in cases that are not trivial. You are a phony intellectual, hiding behind a wall of ridiculous arguments and evasions.
You have the most bizzare idea of pathogical – or honestly the meaning of most words.
Regardless, there is a difference between “get a clue” and “leave me alone”.
i do not expect you to get a clue.
Even if you are not expecting me to “leave you alone”, you actually beleive you are entitled to be. And you likely would use force – atleast that of government if you could.
If something was trivial or obvious – we would not be disagreeing.
Most of these disagreements are rooted in your confusing word meaning laden with false but common assumptions, with actual meanings.
Fine if you are writing fiction of poetry, not acceptable in argument or law or govenrment.
When it involves the possible use of force accuracy and precision and narrow meanings are necescary.
I am being perfectly intellectually honest and that is where the conflict is.
You are not.
“You have the most bizzare idea of pathogical – or honestly the meaning of most words.”
I’ll assume you meant pathological. In any case my understanding of words is not weak. How did I happen to get into grad school to study molecular biology in spite of being a math and physical science and not a biology undergrad major? When I finished my undergrad degree I decided to take the GRE on a whim. I did not prepare. I do have and always have had a talent for taking tests. Still, I was knocked down with my results when I got them. 790 verbal, 730 math 710 logic. The verbal score was well inside the 99th percentile; that started at 760 if I remember. The pool was not simply citizens; it was college grads who intended to get an advanced degree.
I make a nice living rewriting Russian scientific papers in English, I have for more than a decade. That living depends on understanding not only English but Russian.
No one here tells me over and over that I did not understand or misinterpreted what they were saying. Posters here are perpetually telling you that you do not understand english and misinterpret them, its a constant comment on your posts. You have a problem, the test has been done for ten years, the results are long in.
The word pathological applies quite comfortably to your pattern of behavior. You are obsessive and intellectually dishonest. Well, I am obsessive too, or I would not be responding to you. All the same, my output here is dwarfed by yours and I have some rational sense of the futility of it. Further, you are specifically obsessed with me. Although there is nothing exceptional about my particular acceptance of the basic idea of the 20th-21st century level of government and regulation, you have focused obsessively on me. For all the obsessiveness of your attention to me, you have not come close to understanding my politics and ideology and have a wildly distorted view of my opinions. I am hardly one who is authoritarian. nor am I one who never questions regulation. In fact I have given many examples here, even of environmental regulations I find absurd. You are enraged selectively with me because I do not find the entire idea of environmental regulation absurd, destructive, you have even used the word evil. I suspect that your outrage with me is comes from the fact that I have struck a nerve with my criticisms of the master criticizer. Your purpose in life seems to be telling people that they are wrong. Yet, let someone try that on you… furious repetitive denial results in a stream of posts.
Although you have shown plenty of evidence of intellect, its a distorted, dishonest, obsessive intellect.
That is pathological.
My closest friend, as it happens is a coder, he is self employed. He makes a fantastic living, has done projects for organizations that astound me, all quietly and unpretentiously from his living room, and is not the least bit underutilized, as you confessed to being. He is wldly talented at everything he tries, music, art, sport, life. He knows how to focus on constructive things. I am sure that he has no time for making a career of telling people obsessively, uselessly, and repetitively that they are wrong and he is right on internet blogs. I am sure that your pathological habits have interfered greatly with your life and career.
“Although you have shown plenty of evidence of intellect, its a distorted, dishonest, obsessive intellect.”
That concisely sums him up!
Which is why it’s useless to expect he’ll do anything but nitpick and distort everything you address to him obsessively.
But it continues to be fun to use him like a defective robotic punching bag: each time you slug it, it haphazardly spews out long winded obsessive responses from it’s disconnected-from-reason database.
I’ve just finished watching “Manhunt” on Netflix, a series that follows the crimes and investigation and arrest by the FBI of Ted Kaczynski, better know as the Unabomber. It focuses on FBI criminal profiler James “Fitz” Fitzgerald, who traces and finds Kaczynski through his idiosyncratic use of language in the ‘Manifesto he insisted on being published in a major American newspaper to prevent him from blowing up an airliner. Kaczynski’s intellect and thought processes are detailed in the series. A mathematical prodigy who entered Harvard at age 16, he was brilliant at rationalizing his hideous bombings of innocent people as justified anarchy for the greater good.
Watching that unfolding TV I kept thinking: that’s the Dave Mind At Work! Clever obsessive piecing together of erudite bits and pieces of errata into explanations divorced from reality. And no rebuttal no matter how ‘reasonable’ can shake him from rigid adherence to that philosophy (substitute Kaczynski’s Neo-Luddism for Dave’s Libertarianism).
No Dave, I don’t think you’re planting bombs in public places… but hijacked emails? Hummmm…
“Although you have shown plenty of evidence of intellect, its a distorted, dishonest, obsessive intellect.”
That concisely sums him up!
Actually it says nothing.
Distortion and dishonesty are things you can demonstrate.
They are also claims that bet your own integrity against others – with the burden of proof on you.
Kaczynski is nearly certainly a paranoid schizophrenic.
While he is ideologically a sort of left anarchist, ideological consistency in schizophrenics is not common, and you can not draw ideological inferences from schizophrenics.
Regardless, do you think this tendency to attempt to conflate others with infamous mental health problems is meaning argument or reflects well on you ?
One could attempt to diagnose you based on your fascination with identifying others with infamous criminals with serious mental health issues.
Roby;
I have never scored below the top 1/4% in any standardized test of any kind ever.
So I am not impressed by top 1%.
Regardless, there is a difference between mangling the meaning of words – often deliberately and verbal skills.
I know nothing of your ability to translate russian scientific papers into english.
Regardless, that is not a skill that has any bearing on anything we are discussing.
If you are happy and successful – more power to you.
If you did well on GRE’s in logic – I am shocked – you have shown incredibly poor logical skills in your posts here. Worse you have shown repeated that you really do not give a damn about logic. I am not finding an actual GRE in logic.
Nor am I the slightest impressed by degrees.
I judge you based on what you post here – not what you claim.
I do not care what others tell you or do not – here or otherwise.
If you actually were any good at logic at all, you would know that too, is just another stupid fallacious argument. If you want to be beleived regarding your claims, then you should not base an appeal to authority on an argumentum ad populum.
Based on the evidence of your posts here, you have the poorest logical skills of any poster here. Those few arguments you make are pretty much always fallacious.
Your posts are just streaming examples of logical fallacy.
back to the idiocy that you can diagnose someone over the internet.
Do you actually have a degree in psychology ? A license ?
If you did you would know that it is unethical for a psychologist to make a diagnosis without meeting the person.
Regardless, you are lobbing word grenades as if by saying something you make it true.
Pathological: caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition
Sorry, Roby, but I have no mental health issues. I was required to see a psychologist as part of the process of adopting my children – there are all kinds of things you must do to get the permission of the state to be a parent if you do not do so through procreation,
Anyway, I am mentally healthy.
Yes, you and Jay, are constantly spraying ad hominem as a substitute for argument.
Lacing your posts with lots of derogatory adjectives does not make those true or meaningful.
Yes, I quite often respond to the posts other make based on what they said rather than what the likely meant. And that is deliberate.
When you are discussing the use of force against others – you need to say what you mean.
Regardless, a multi paragraph stream of ad hominem is not an argument.
It is not the work of someone who claims to have advanced degrees and is fluent in multiple languages. It is not the work of someone who claims to be to be in the top 1% in intellect.
I beleive I made the mistake of responding to one of your stupid self agrandizing posts by citing some of my own accolades. I regret that.
The measure of our arguments is their merit, Not My IQ, or My degrees, or my Accolades – and not yours.
If you can not make a non-fallacious argument – then whatever degrees you have – you did not earn them.
Based on your arguments (or lack there of) here – I highly doubt you are in the top 1% of pretty much anything. Regardless, you show no evidence of it.
Whether I can trump your creditentials is irelevant, if I can not better your arguments.
Which I have had no trouble doing.
Your nonsense about
extremism
intelectual dishonesty,
obsession,
misrepresentation
unpopularity
are all meaningless. While I have on occasion countered your appeals to authority or popularity with my own authorities or popularity
That is still fallacy.
Adjectives are not argument
Assertions of extremism are not argument, and argument is true or false, whether it is extreme.
I find any claims of my intellectual dishonstey and misrepresentation by you farcical.
Regardless, Prove it.
If I have lied or made false statements my credibility is actually shot.
But remember when you claim someone else has lied – you bet your own credibilty against theirs.
I am not in a popularty contest. I am seeking the truth.
Regardless, my posts to you are pretty close to universally responses to your posts.
If you do not want to be sliced and diced – do not make errors.
Your post is “a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
Strip the adjectives and adhomimen from your post – and there is nothing left.
Calling me names over and over is not argument.
Combining insults together – does not make an argument.
The remark below is choice – it is a stream of fact free insult compounded on insult.
“The word pathological applies quite comfortably to your pattern of behavior. You are obsessive and intellectually dishonest.”
It says no more than – I do not like your posts – with lots of adjectives.
No roby;
I do not have any particular obsession with you.
I have an obsession with hypocracy, and fallacious argument.
When you rarely avoid those, I usually leave you alone.
Frankly, I find you a disappointment.
If you actually were able to argue your viewpoint you would be far more interesting, and challenging.
Roby,
I am not especially interested in your friend.
If he is as capable as you claim – he would be insulted being called a “coder”.
If he is successful – good for him. I would note that Trump is incredibly successful too.
Regardless, I am not after your life advice, or your diagnosis.
To the extent that I do “obsess” over you it is that your are stupid and arrogant enough to beleive you are free to muddle in other peoples lives.
If I actually was whatever it is you are painting – that still would not be your business.
Nor would it be an argument.
You seem utterly incapable of addressing real issues.
You make every argument about the person.
That is what ad hominem means – arguing the person, not the issues.
You have spewed an assortment of crap about me that you can not know, as if that somehow meaningful.
I do not care what you think about me.
I do not think much of you.
If you want me to think better – make a valid argument.
If you do not want to be called a hypocrit – do not act hypocritically.
If you do not want to be called immoral – do not advocate for immoral acts directly or through proxies.
“Even if you are not expecting me to “leave you alone”, you actually beleive you are entitled to be. And you likely would use force – atleast that of government if you could.”
That is absurd. You claim to be able to read my mind (but you got it wrong) and predict the future (and were wrong again).
The idea that I would use government and force to get you to leave me in peace in a blog conversation is as nutty as nutty can be. Its based on your hysterically fearful and distorted ideas of how a very mildly liberal man thinks.
Of all the weird accusations you have made about my beliefs and opinions this one may win the prize as the most extreme and bizarre.
You are completely uninterested in knowing and understanding what I actually believe. Your conversation isn’t really with me; its you having a conversation with you about your worst fears. I’m just a prop.
No Roby;
After accusing me of reading your mind – when I am only reading your words,
you go on to another riff of reading my mind.
You have made it clear – repeatedly and explicitly that you believe government is free to use force to impose the views of the majority.
No mind reading involved. You have stated that in the last day or two.
Liberal means one who values individual liberty – you do not.
I do not think you know enough about the left or its values, principles and philosophy to know what you are. Atleast you have not shown evidence of that knowledge.
If I have misrepresented your beleifs – you should be able to demonstrate that easily.
I do not think – based on what you post here – that you know that much about what you beleive. I have asked you, begged you for those things.
If I am lucky – and that is rare, I get some prefered politcies, once in blue moon a value.
I have no clue what your principles are – I do not think you have any.
Sometimes you are a prop – you choose to be.
You make a stupid assertion that provides the opportunity to say something I wish to say.
Regardless, I do not control what you post. I just respond to it.
“But it continues to be fun to use him like a defective robotic punching bag: each time you slug it, it haphazardly spews out long winded obsessive responses from it’s disconnected-from-reason database.”
Oh, if I only I thought it was fun. If it was 1/10th as obsessive it might be fun to argue with him, and if he could be a lot less rigid and at all honest.
If you enjoy playing with him, perhaps we can get him to transfer his full attention to you and leave me in relative peace? I was tired of my conversation with dave years ago.
If Dave is not in argument mode half of what he says is even interesting. But once he has locked in on a target he believes is from “the left” forgetabout it, any intellectual honesty goes out the window, interminable booooring and absurd harangues commence and never stop. He will tell you what you “must” believe without any interest in actually understanding what you believe till the cows come home.
If you are not having fun, then you should stop.
“If it was 1/10th as obsessive it might be fun to argue with him, and if he could be a lot less rigid and at all honest.”
In otherwords if only Dave would agree with me I would have more fun.
Your problem.
Rigid: 1+1=2, or is there some flexibility in that ?
honest: Again, if you accuse another of dishonesty, you bet your integrity against theirs with the burden of proof on you.
So what have I been “dishonest” about ?
I think this is just another example of shucking and jiving on your part.
When you can not make an argument – resort of vague insults that you do not think you have to support.
Do you even have a definition of “intellectual honesty” ?
If you want accepted as top 1% that would be about the same IQ as Kazyinski – who was not a very high IQ person by harvard standards, then you have to do better than this.
We can debate beleifs. – but you are free to believe as you wish.
The only imperative is that you can not impose your beliefs on others by force.
I do not need to understand what you beleive to know or assert that.
As to what you beleive – I do not have evidence that you know what you beleive.
Ha, it took you nine posts to tell me that you are not obsessive. I wonder how often you have used the phrase “I am not…” in your life? I wonder how often people fail to roll their eyes when you say it?
Dave, you are obsessive as hell, conceited to the point of being in danger of bursting into a thousand pieces, repetitive as a talking bird, dishonest as a pair of loaded dice…. and an extremist loon to boot. I am just going to have to take Jay’s advice and find a game in getting you going.
The obsessive nutters of the world have found their king in you!
Roby
I am not interested in ad hominem – that is arguments to the person.
Which is what you do with everything.
I do not care and it is irrelevant what you think of me.
I am not interested in debating “me” – which again is what you turn every argument into.
In fact that is what you and Jay do with everything. You talk about obsession, the only things you post about are either what is wrong with me – or personal attacks on Trump.
Pretty much the only thing you do is personal attacks.
And you are so certain you know the motives and thoughts of others.
I have made the mistake of engaging you on that level and it makes me look as bad as you.
I do not care what your background is – it is not a valid arguments.
I do not care what your GRE scores are – it is not a valid arguments.
I do not care what some friend you claim to have makes as a coder – it is not a valid arguments.
I do not care what you think of me – it is not a valid argument.
I do not care what you think I think – it is not a valid argument.
I can go on and on.
Yes, you have successfully managed to get me to engaged in the completely irrelevant nonsense you spout.
You wish to beleive a bunch of nonsense about me – I can not stop you.
“you are obsessive as hell, conceited to the point of being in danger of bursting into a thousand pieces, repetitive as a talking bird, dishonest as a pair of loaded dice…. and an extremist loon to boot. I am just going to have to take Jay’s advice and find a game in getting you going.”
All of the above is stupid and obvious ad hominem.
It is all a vile form of argument designed to distract from any debate of substance and drag the debate to personal. Almost none of it is true, but even that is irrelevant – not a single part of that is relevant to any debate about issues.
I have stupidly engaged in your personal competition
If you all the things you say about yourself and all the things you say about me are all true – it does not change the fact that your argument is fallacious.
If your IQ was actually higher than mine – it does not make your argument valid.
I am highly skilled at many things.
I am also unskilled at many many others – even some I wish I were.
I can not play any instrument, I am not good at any sports, ……
Does not make your argument valid.
I have made a serious mistake following you down your rathole of making everything an argument about the person.
I am going to try to avoid that in the future.
The dark place this argument has gone – each of us hacking away at the other is the direct consequence of your pretense that ad hominem is argument.
Long Robotic Response.
Blip Blip Blop.
New Processor Needed!
“I have made a serious mistake following you down your rathole of making everything an argument about the person.
I am going to try to avoid that in the future.
The dark place this argument has gone – each of us hacking away at the other is the direct consequence of your pretense that ad hominem is argument.”
I asked you quite a few times days ago and many, many times in the past just to let go of arguing with me, its futile we simply irreconcilably disagree about government and regulation, not to mention climate science and trump. If you have finally seen the light and wish to disengage, that is great. Ad hominems have come just as fast and furious from you as they have from me. If you were to cease and desist your sneering and stifle your rage at people who disagree with you then in the future you might get a better reception here. I will try to do likewise. We will see who succeeds most, not in our own eyes, which is hardly an objective standard, but the eyes of other posters.
You are totally clueless.
What I just said is that I am going to try to refrain from following you into your dark rathole of personal attacks.
Not that I am going to leave you alone.
We are irreconcliable because you are blind to reality.
I can not fix that – but I can continue to argue reality – relentlessly, whether you like that or not.
Your conception of government does not work. It is inherently totalitarian in your own expression.
That we may never agree is irrelevant to the fact that your construction of govenrment is inherently evil.
I am not looking to “disengage” – not even a little.
I am going to try to avoid chasing you down into your stupid ad hominem fallacies.
Aside from being fallacy ad hominem is vile specifically because it inherently drives the discussion to further insults and away from anything of substance.
There is no rational response to personal insults.
There is no response to “but I have a phd in molecular biology, or some scores on GRE’s” that does not come off even more arrogant that you.
I do not fixate on puffing my resume.
I do not think that having been blessed with some skills or traits from god, or my DNA is proof of merit.
The merit of an argument rests on facts, logic reason, and I am going to try to stick to those, rather than let you drag me into your spittle spewing contest where my choices are between worshiping your mediocre acheivements or responding in kind and looking even more pompous puffed and arrogant than you.
I am not going to cease calling vile ideas vile.
I am not going to desist in anger that you wish to use force unjustifiably against others.
I am not going to pretend that all opinions are equal and we merely disagree.
I do not give a flying fig how you “receive” me.
Nor do I care what you try. You have almost never managed to make an argument that is not a simple and obvious fallacy and by far your most common is ad hominem.
How magnanimous of you to offer that others will think better of me if I behave as you wish.
Get a clue Roby – this is not about you. It is about my personal regret for stooping to your level.
There is no rational means to deconstruct an ad hominem through argument.
My attempts to do so merely make me as bad as you.
I am going to try not to go there. That is a personal choice – it is about me, it is not about you.
My view of you has not changed in the lightest.
And I certainly do not want the advice of someone whose only means of discussion is ad hominem and fallacy regarding digging out of that dark hole.
I am angry at myself because I read some of my posts here and they sound too much like you.
The last person whose advice on how to not be you I would want – is you.
Appeal to the good opinions of others – is just another idiotic fallacy.
“You are totally clueless.”
Pure Ad hominem. As was the bulk of your post. As usual. Too obsessive to stop?
“You are totally clueless.”
Pure Ad hominem.
It is ad hominem – it is also quite obviously a statement of fact.
As your myriads of responses make crystal clear.
You are not able to discuss issues, everything for you is about people.
As was the bulk of your post. As usual. Too obsessive to stop?
I did not say I was going to stop.
I said I was going to try to not get into shifting to the stupid argument inside the ad hominem.
I will engage you with respect to any actual argument.
Or I will engage you with regard to your own personal conduct.
But I am going to try to avoid explicitly following you into that lose-lose rathole of “mine is bigger than yours”
If you wish to make it personal – then it will be personal about you – me.
“It is ad hominem – it is also quite obviously a statement of fact.”
Well, at least for once you were honest about your ad hominem attack. As I have freely been all along here about my own all along with little attempt to dodge the fact that I use ad hominem arguments on you (often but not always exactly in response to you own sneering insulting statements.
Even if your obsessive bitching about me WAS fact (not much) it would not excuse you according to your standards. If you stop trying to rationalize and excuse your own use of all the same forms of argument that you jump on others for using you may have more luck here. Just try to be consistent and avoid being a hypocrite.
When you have to explain the joke it is not funny.
Clearly you do not understand what a fallacy is.
It is not something false – though it may be.
It is something that is not a valid argument with respect to what is being debated.
It may be a valid argument – for a different topic, and it may be true.
The mistake I am trying to avoid with you is chasing you down the ad hominem rathole – switching the argument to a debate about you and I rather than the topic.
But with you it is worse still, you seem to actually think that a valid argument demonstrating that you are wrong is an insult.
That should not surprise me as the left has incredibly thin skin.
Regardless, I do not care what you think of me. I do care about what I think of me.
I did not offer you some agreement.
I decided unilaterally not to chase when you shifted from the argument to the person.
I do not care whether you think that is honest. I lost respect for your perception of integrity long ago. You spray false attacks on integrity like candy.
I do not care whether you characterize something as an attack. You respond to every argument as if it is personal. If you take having your arguments criticised personally – I can not help that. Frankly I think that much of what you claim to beleive reflects character flaws, but that is your problem not mine.
I am not interested in your advice as to how to argue. What I want to change in my own arguments is to avoid doing the things you do all the time.
I do not want to read what I wrote and think – Roby could have written that.
So the last person I want advice from is you.
But I am going to explain how I read some of your language.
When you say “your rationalizing” – I hear you are making arguments that I can not find flaws in so I will call them “rationalizing”.
What you say “intellectually dishonest” – what I hear is your ideology tells you that can not be true so I must be lying.
There are myriads of other examples, but the point is they are not valid arguments.
If you think something is false – prove it, facts, logic reason, not sprays of fallacies.
And BTW no do not initiate the same form of arguments I criticise others for.
I sometimes respond to you by chasing you into your fallacy.
That is a mistake – it is not a character flaw, it is just a mode of arguing that will not get anywhere.
You really should not be calling anyone a hypocrite.
Regardless, I can not stop you from offering stupid advice, that you should really think about yourself.
Let me give you a clue what turned the light on for me.
Based on your GRE’s, you can look up your IQ online and it should be in the lower 130’s.
About what Ted Kazinsky’s is. Based on exchanges with you I think that is a high value, but presuming you are not misrepresenting your GRE’s it is probably correct.
Most standardized tests are essentially IQ tests.
Well I have an excellent and true rejoinder for that, but I am going to let it go.
I allowed my self to go too far into your “whose hands are bigger” nonsense.
For each of us some things are easier than others.
I find it difficult to grasp that others are not as good at logic, but in my life experience I have found they are not.
I expect you to be as capable with logic, but you are not, and insulting you will not fix that.
Just as I doubt I am near as good with music as you are and nothing will fix that.
To the extent there is a difference – atleast I know I am not any good at music, even though I wish I were.
Regardless, your giving me advice on logic and argument is like my giving you advice on playing musical instruments.
dave I knew you were a logical fake long ago. As only one very clear example reductio ad absurdum does Not lead to the principle that if a lot of something is bad then a little of it is bad (even with your caveat about lacking some other overriding principle). Its just bullshit that I asked you to prove since there is not one word of that anywhere online and I just got a wall of your evasions. I have little doubt you can speak to computers. Computer logic is not the logic of politics. Mostly you take logical principles that do exist, ad hominem for example, and apply them simply as a means of rejecting anything you do not wish to acknowledge.
Why should I care if someone like you believes that I am devoid of substance? You are ready to throw the entire international community of climate scientists into a pile you label morons, or retards, or simply not scientists (in spite of all the high academic degrees). So I am happy to be in their company, its an honor to have my substance insulted by you. If you were not insulting my abilities I would have to ask myself where I have gone wrong to be on your good side.
I have no reason at all to believe you know your ass from a whole in the ground outside of computers. The conclusions you come to using your logic are often completely absurd, regulation is immoral, environmentalists are evil, insults are ad hominems in my hands but permitted in yours, if I say leave me in peace you conclude that I would use force on you if I could to shut you up because I am supposedly of the left. The Bushes are progressives (jeez, must be a LOT of us then). You are an artist. Bullshit is your medium.
So, I laugh at your pompous pride in your logic skills. You abuse logical principles to hide from reality.
You don’t like my style, fine, I don’t like yours. I can admit to being somewhat obsessive and plenty of other faults, you can admit to nothing and resort to abusing logic to hide from ever being wrong here. Its not impressive, at least not in any positive sense.
Well, continue, throw more bullshit at me. I’ll just laugh at you and ask you why I should care what someone like you thinks.
Roby;
Actually, yes, if you can take any argument or position and get unacceptable results by carrying it to the extremes, then you have failed that argument.
You have said you have a phd in molecular biology – then you know this.
The laws of gravity do not only work some of the time – and were that the case, we would be obligated to revise them.
That “limiting principle” is the means by which you fix that – when that is possible.
If you offer an argument that does not work at the extreme without any meaningful definition and explanation for its limits then your argument is false.
You can disagree with me – but you are disagreeing with Einstein, John Stuart Mill, and science.
You do not seem to grasp that most propositions, arguments, opinions are false.
Truth is the rare exception not the rule.
It is easy to falsify things that are false, and takes little effort.
It is much much harder to find things that are true.
And there are some things that are true some of the time, however unless you can define the limits, they are no more useful than if they were false.
The fact that you are trying to challenge this is why I know that your logical skills are poor.
This is not some obscure subtly.
Roby
Yes I think that people who beleive something and offer as science models that are 2.5 std dev’s away from reality should not be calling themselves scientists.
No do not beleive that high academic degrees count for much.
Frankly today, I think that they are proof you are unable to make it is the more difficult real world.
If you are translating Russian scientific papers to english and doing that well enough that someone pays you well for it and continues to employ you – particularly outside of the academic world – that is something I can respect much more than any phd.
You are having a fit because I mentioned my GREs. Why did I mention them? Because you claimed I have little understanding of words. The scores say otherwise. A simple matter, you make it so complicated. The translation work is just another example. I have language skills, not small ones.
“If you are translating Russian scientific papers to english and doing that well enough that someone pays you well for it and continues to employ you – particularly outside of the academic world – that is something I can respect much more than any phd.”
Dave, well its progress. I have complemented your posts (always when you are in the non-argument mode) dozens of times over the years. At times I have thanked you for one. Much as you drive me nuts, my testicles did not fall off to say a good word about something you wrote quite a few times over the years. This is the first time you have ever said a positive word about my abilities (or actually, I am pretty sure, any poster’s).
Are you incapable of making an argument that is anything but emotional.
I am not having a fit. You keep projecting emotions onto me badly.
I do not care that you mentioned your GRE’s.
It is technically still a fallacious appeal to authority.
Your scores were better than I would have expected and better than your posts here evidenced. But they were not impressive.
Regardless, my claims with respect to your use of language is relatively narrow.
It is that you misuse or overly broadly use words.
I do not think any of us wish to be sipped at for grammar or spelling,
And you are capable of writing a readable sentence.
All things that many people – including some of the experts you often cite, sometimes are not.
We are debating rights, government, ideology, philosophy and law.
Those are contexts where using words with clear and narrow meaning is critical.
There is a reason that technical professions have “jargon” – because scientists, doctors, engineers, etc. need to be able to communicate precisely.
We are not debating fiction or poetry, and as is typical of those on the left, you use words in the broadest and mushiest possible way. It is the only means by which your ideology is not rife with self contradiction. And even misusing words in that way – you still end up with lots of contradictions.
If as you say you are a molecular biologist – you would use words with precision in reading and writing on that subject.
If as you say you translate scientific texts from Russian to english – then you should have a great deal of experience trying to preserve the precise meaning particularly were there are not exact equivalent words – though my expectation is that scientific jargon is universally in english.
Force, coercion, power, rights, liberty, freedom, duties, harm, equality, property, individual, society, government, law, justification, these are some of the more critical words when we are dealing with law, government, philosophy.
You can not communicate, you can not even think about those topics, without clear and narrow meanings to those words – or more accurately – precise words to reflect clear and narrow concepts – because if you choose to define force differently than I do, then you must replace force with some other word, that means what I and philosophers, lawyers mean when we use “force”.
You will find that if you assign clear meanings to the critical words used for discussing these topics that your ideology will self evidently fail.
To be clear this is purely about the clear use of words in a specific context.
Just as you use some words with very narrow precise meanings when refering to molecular biology.
I word note that this issue with respect to words and their meaning would also apply to legal and constitutional interpretation and the role of judges.
If you are translating a Russian scientific paper written 200 years ago – the author certainly did not use the russian words in the same way as they are used today.
It would be an error and a misrepresentation of the work to translate those words using todays meaning.
Roby;
You still do not get it.
Nearly all your posts are about people, about emotions, about mostly meaningless things tangential to any of the arguments.
To a very large extent you make your posts about YOU.
That is a fallacy and that is the rathole I am trying to avoid.
You seem to need your ego stroked constantly, you take personal offense easily, and you think everyone else is the same.
To the extent I am angry at the moment – I am angry with myself for getting sucked into that.
Beyond that I am interested in debating the issues – not people.
I am sure that at lunch in a diner discussing many other topics we would get along fine.
But we are not discussing weather, or music, or art, we are discussing topics like law, philosophy, and government.
Would you even conceive of imposing your opinions on art, music, literature, poetry, weather on others by force ? Do we determine the effect a van gogh has on each of us by voting democratically ? We can have passionate differences of opinions on myriads of subjects – because none of those subjects involve the use of force to impose ones opinion on the other.
Law, government, and philosophy as it applies to government are about the use of force.
The more broadly you are prepared to use force to impose your opinions the greater the conflict you are going to have with others, and the more likely that not only it the conversation going to turn violent – but the real world could get violent.
You seem completely oblivious to this.
I also find it extremely odd that you target me/libertarianism the most vigorously.
Libertarianism is the political ideology with the most minimal justifiable use of force.
You become absolutely apoplectic because I will not agree to allow you to broadly use force. Yet, you are relatively pleasant to other posters who would use force broadly and against you. This is again typical of the left, and why libertarians have a less volatile relationship with conservatives, and republicans.
Conservatives and republicans as a whole accept that govenrment is limited.
They are not always clear what the limits are, but there is no disagreement between me and those here not on the left, that government can not do anything it/or we please.
You are absolutely unwilling to cede that there are limits to government.
You take personal offense at that assertion.
You froth and fume because I assert that the use of force without justification is immoral.
Something most of us take as a tautology.
Even using your own self contradictory nonsense that all opinions are somehow equal,
The assertion that those who use force without justification are immoral would in your world be just another opinion – but clearly it is not.
Clearly being “identified” as immoral deeply angers you.
Yet, you have no problems “identifying” others as rascist, fascist, homophobic, mysoginist,
Aparently all opinions are acceptable – including those that are derogatory to others, EXCEPT those opinions where you do not come out angelic.
All opinions are not equal.
Most propositions are FALSE – again if you knew anything of either reality of logic you would know that. Truth is rare.
While we can not determine absolute truth, we can determine relative truth.
And from that we can use those things we are most certain are true to falsify those that are inconsistent with what we know to be true.
We can do that in mathematics, logic and science – starting with axioms, and we can do that in government, law, philosophy, economics, even sociology.
If you are a molecular biologist then you know that you can not just make up some cellular mechanism. That not only does what you conceive have to comply with a raft of constraints from chemistry – all of which derive from axioms. But that it most also integrate with all other known cellular processes.
More simply you do not just get to pull things out of thin air, claim they are opinions and are worthy of equal consideration to every other opinion.
Finally “identifying” such conduct as stupid – is ad hominem. It is also fact.
Roby
It really is all about you for you isn’t it ?
With rare exceptions posting is enjoyable for me.
IF I am actually angry – I will say so.
I do not want to say my posts are emotion free – emotions are an important part of human life. But they have no part in the decision making process involving the use of force.
You seem to be saying that if I stroke your ego periodically – we will get along better ?
I do not need my ego stroked.
If you need more – There are things I am very good at, and those I am not.
You say you translate scientific papers. That implies skills with multiple languages.
My son has that. I do not. My GPA went up a full point in HS, when I dropped german.
But give me a computer language – any computer language and I can program in it in a few hours and be proficient in a few days.
We are each different. Most of our abilities are improved with practice.
But no amount of practice or desire will ever overcome my lack of skills with regard to music and make me a musician.
I do not take it as a moral failing that I am not musically gifted.
Nor do I think my natural abilities in other areas are some reflection of moral superiority.
I do not see intelligence, IQ, logic skills, as any different from athletic or musical ability – except that I was blessed by god or DNA with the former and not the latter.
In fact one of my greatest difficulties, is grasping that everyone does not have the same logic skills. Logic is automatic to me, like breathing. I do not understand why you have trouble breathing.
Very well written and thoughtful. What else to expect from an eloquent moderate?
Thank you, sir. My liberal friends will probably crucify me, but I’m used to taking grief from both sides.
Rick;
You can feel sympathy for whoever you want, for whatever reason you want.
I do not feel sympathy for Trump. He is who he is.
Just as I have no sympathy for the left that assured his election, I have no sympathy for him as so many hate him.
That does not mean I do not cheer him on sometimes when he chews up the press.
My concern about taking him down is that it is done within the rule of law.
That is not being done.
That will have long term consequences.
I think much of the outrage over Trump is stupid – but I do nto care if Trump is the victim of stupid outrage. I do care that a significant portion of the left are prepared to undo a legitimate election over their inability to accept the result.
Put most simply – I have no sympathy for Trump.
But I have a building anger with the left.
As this proceeds it is increasingly obvious that the conduct of the Obama administration was much more corrupt than I had thought.
I care alot about that – because nothing is being done to prevent that in the future.
If we do not do something about political spying, and unmasking, we will see ever more of it in the future.
A significant part of this Trump stole the election meme is out of 1984 – the left ranting that they get to control what people get to hear. What political expression influences them.
I do not think that Russia was a consequential influence in the election.
But I am very scared of efforts to assure that they are not in the future.
Secure voting machines – I am behind you.
But start discussing who can engage in political expression and who can not – and I am seeing 1984.
If you can stop Russia from running political content on Facebook – you can stop anybody the same way.
Twitter has just banned Roger Stone for Life – Stone is an ass, and I support private actors uninfluenced by government doing what they wish – though I will head for the platform where no one is censored, or where the rules are clear and absolute, and uniformly enforced.
I do not want an internet where someone chooses which voices we get to hear, even if real freedom means Russia gets to speak too.
Well said!
A thoughtful response, Dave, and I agree with most of it. I was shocked by the revelation that the DNC, Hillary and even Obama were actively engaged in sabotaging Trump even after the election, and that the Russian “dossier” was their idea. Of course, we don’t see much about it on the mainstream media.
I’m concerned about the serious (and unconstitutional) attempts to take Trump down, but I think it was the trivial nature of the recent media flaps that pushed me over the edge: the call to the gold star widow, the scuffle instigated by the ornery mayor of San Juan, and finally the response to Trump’s lighthearted comment about the girl who didn’t have a weight problem. It just never lets up.
The only issue concerning Clinton’s involvement in the Steele Dossier is the hypocrisy inherent in claiming that Trump’s efforts to secure dirt on Clinton from the Russians were somehow less moral or legal than here own.
The Steele Dossier and the Clinton campaign primarily serves as a firewall denoting activities that Trump can not be found at fault for when Clinton has been exhonerated for the same.
Where things go to hell is when the Obama administration is involved.
What Clinton the candidate or Clinton the private citizen can morally and legally do, is much broader than what can be done using the machinery of government.
That the FBI took interest in political opposition research is disturbing, if they used it as the basis for a wiretap or investigation, without verifying the contents would be worse than watergate.
Nixon formed the plumbers because he could not get the FBI to investigate his political enemies.
The unmasking – which is a euphemism for spying on americans, is equally disturbing.
Then we have the AG Lynch interactions with Bill Clinton and then with James Comey.
Then we have the entire Uranium One mess.
The right makes a big deal about the sale of uranium to the Russians.
Sorry, that is inconsequential,
What matters is the bribery, corruption, and coverup that went along with it.
And that fact that large portions of the Obama administration appear complicit in covering up the bribery and corruption.
The fact that all of this appears to have been an Open Secret in the administration – yet specifically hidden from congress.
And finally that Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, and many of Muellers staff were all part of this.
Investigations of Russian have an extremely high probability of touching the same areas and the same people as were part of the U1 deal.
Can these people be trusted with an investigation that is likely to lead them to investigating themselves ?
I am not a big proponent of Special Prosecutors.
But it is self evidently necescary for an investigation into the handling of Russia related issues by the Obama administration, and that investigation must be conducted by Washington outsiders.
That does not require a Special Council. But Sessions should appoint a US attorney – probably from some state AG office with no ties to washington, and task them with an investigation into the entire Obama administration Russia corruption mess.
At the very least those currently in DOJ, FBI and other agencies who were turning a blind eye to bribery, corruption, or even just the coverup, should lose their jobs.
You will not “drain the swamp” until there are consequences for mistakes – much less corruption and coverup.
I do not especially trust Trump in that regard. He has kept the same IRS commissioner that should have been impeached, because he is a personal friend.
For me his Social awkwardness is not of the sympathetic composition of Frankenstein, but more like the obnoxious repulsiveness of Jabba the Hut, or the nasty petty evil of the Wicked Witch of the West.
And I’m certain I’d dance with pleasure like the Munchkins did when she dissolved in a puddle of despair if tRUMP suffered a similar public demise. Or applaud with ironic glee if he tumbled from the top of Trump Tower in Manhattan to the city street below, my comment to fellow Americans watching paraphrasing the last line in the King Kong movie:
“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was narcissism killed the beast.”
I know, I know. What can I say? I’m the kind of guy who felt sorry for King Kong. Trump is no innocent savage, and yes he’s a multi-headed monster, but on some level he’s just a raving 8-year-old boy. Someone should have given him a good spanking (maybe those Russian prostitutes?).
Jay;
If you take Trump down within the rule of law – few will care much.
Almost everything that has gone on for the past several years has been the rule of man, not the rule of law.
The rule of law is not merely following the letter of the law – but it is applying it narrowly and the same for everyone.
Sessions properly recused himself for smaller conflicts that it is now apparent that Mueller and Rosenstein have. We are 6 months into this and there has not yet been an actual crime alleged that has anything to do with Mueller’s brief.
Further Mueller was not tasked with investigating a crime, he was given esentially a counter intelligence brief. We do not need and can not lawfully appoint a special council to investigate “russia” or even Russian election interferance.
The SC statute as well as the constitutional constraints on criminal investigations – require the investigation of a crime.
This is the kind of crap I am concerned about.
Was our federal government manipulated by political actors outside of government to turn the investigative powers of the federal government on Russian and Trump ?
And worse still was it done with fabricated evidence.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/russia-perkins-coie-clinton-dossier-meet-the-democratic-law-firm-behind-the-russian-collusion-narrative/
Why are moderate voices like Rick’s so hidden in society today?
Good question, and I think that there are several main reasons, but I’ll note one in particular:
In our poisonous political climate, any sympathy or defense of Trump or his agenda ,no matter how moderate or reasonable, is met by a level of hate and vitriol that is so extreme that it gives the sympathizer/defender pause.
And it doesn’t even have to be an affirmative declaration of sympathy/defense for Trump. In this morning’s National Review, former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy writes about the Manafort indictment, which, on Monday, he called much ado about nothing, explaining that the charges listed had nothing to do with Trump or Russia:
“Some commentators took this to mean that, being in the tank for Trump, I am pooh-poohing Mueller’s opening gambit. Not so. Readers who follow these columns know that I am not knee-jerk pro- or anti-Trump. I’ve opined that “Paul Manafort is a sleazeball.” And, while I concededly have strong political views, I try to be coldly clinical about legal questions and prosecution theories. That is my professional training, and the skill of being a prosecutor involves recognizing weaknesses in the case — you never want the defense lawyers to spot them first.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453305/paul-manafort-indictment-mystifying-enigmatic
McCarthy may not be a knee-jerk pro or anti Trumper, but many of the comments that met his reasoned opinion that Mueller’s indictment was not a condemnation of Trump were knee-jerk expressions of blind hate (or blind support) of the president…so much so, that McCarthy felt it necessary to re-assert that his first column was his professional legal analysis of the indictment, nothing more, nothing less.
I think that we have reached a point at which Newton’s Law “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” can be applied to Trump ~ “For every statement of support/opposition to Trump there is an equal and opposite statement of opposition/support.
EX: Dave has been commenting here for almost as long as I have. He was and is a libertarian, who ~ I think ~ has voted for the Libertarian candidate in every election since this blog began. He is not a Trump supporter, never was. But, almost daily he is accused, by some here, of “enabling” Trump or “defending” Trump, simply because he points out weaknesses or contradictions in the accusations against Trump. And those accusations are often over-the-top or personal in nature. (I would add that I get the same treatment, but at least I “deserve” it, having voted for the man).
We have left the political age in which national politicians looked to appeal to the center, and entered an age in which all national politics is focused on “turning out the base.” Obama won twice this way, Trump once, and we moderates (sorry Roby and Jay, but I AM a moderate) are, for the moment, cast into the exterior darkness.
Great column, Rick. Really terrific.
Priscilla, there are some people who believe one could vote for Trump and still be moderate. Those individuals are the ones that know the choices suck, but vote for political ideology and not the person. I had a hard time not voting for Trump due to SCOTUS seat, but I finally did vote for the best person with the ideology I support. Most people think that was a wasted vote. I dont a feel good today about my choice. I know had the Libertarian won, we would be much better off than we are now.
Reasonable citizens of good will have the right and, indeed, the obligation to cast their own vote, according to their own conscience.
All of us made reasoned decisions on how we would vote in the recent election. And, for many of us, the decision was not an easy one, but it’s hard for me to understand how people can blame their fellow countrymen (and women 😉 ) for anything that goes wrong under a particular president, simply because they voted for him. It never occurred to me, ever, to blame anyone who voted for Obama for many of the problems that I think were a direct result of Obama’s presidency. I actually find that a ridiculously illogical and needlessly divisive thing to do. When the South couldn’t accept the election of Lincoln, they seceded from the union….that didn’t turn out well for anyone (And, I’m not comparing Trump to Lincoln, just the idea that “resisting” the result of our democratic election process is counterproductive).
You and Dave voted for Johnson, Jay and Roby voted for Clinton, and I voted for Trump (as did Pat…even though he’s gone for now, he did talk about his reasons at the time.) We are all here to discuss politics, so we are all open about our reasons for voting as we did. And, honestly, I think we all had pretty good reasoning, despite our disagreements.
“but it’s hard for me to understand how people can blame their fellow countrymen (and women 😉 ) for anything that goes wrong under a particular president, simply because they voted for him. ”
Blantent cop out.
I agree. tRUMP voters can’t be blamed (or the ding dong president) for things that go wrong independent of his judgements or actions. But you tRUMP voters sure as hell can be blamed for the overall disastrous tenor of his actions, for his divisiveness, his buffoonish unpresidential behavior- all that was evident during the primaries. You knew that. You remarked on those defeciencies yourself, but rationalized voting for him anyway because he wasn’t Clinton. How bad could he be, you further rationalized. But now that you know how bad he is, you’re still shunning responsibility for your support of him, past and present. Unlike other Conservatives who supported him during the election but objectively realized they were wrong afterward (Scarborough for instance) and now are responsibly confronting him.
You don’t get absolution for voting for tRUMP any more than those who voted for George Wallace or Joe McCarthy, even less, as you knew what a divisive retard he was BEFORE you voted for him.
Jay, there is no doubt in my mind that Trump, for all of his faults, is a more decent human being and a better president than Hillary could have ever been. No. doubt. at. all.
I can’t do anything about your sneering hatred toward Trump voters or your emotional tantrums over the fact that Trump won the election fair and square.
But I can take satisfaction in the certainty that it’s people like you who will increase the likelihood of his re-election.
Priscilla, “there is no doubt in my mind that Trump, for all of his faults, is a more decent human being and a better president than Hillary could have ever been”
Everyone here knows I am not a Trump fan. But I agree with this 100%. You know what Trump thinks. He tells you every morning on twitter. The bitch is anything but open and will silence anyone that may be a threat in anyway in her political life. Just ask Vince Foster.
Mr. Foster was unavailable for comment.
Rick, where do you get your facts on police killings of black american ; they are way off count. In 2015 307 blacks were shot by police according to the guardian UK; 259 blacks were shot by police according to Wash.Post . 94 were unarmed by Wash. Post . Try get your facts right before you sermonize your message .
My source was Newsweek, 1/4/17 — and their stats came from the Washington Post. Apparently there was a big drop in the fatal shootings of unarmed blacks by police from 2015 to 2016.
I am not specifically aware of 2015-2016 changes but all violence Trends except RECENT trends in major cities have been down for decades.
The US had a spike in the 60’s, but over the longer term all forms of violence have been trending down for centuries.
I’ve no sympathy for trump or his supporters. At some point one has to choose sides. I am on the other side but not the loony left side either. At this point in my life I am probably more like a never trump moderate republican than anything else. I can agree with the dwindling number of honest conservatives on one thing, the need to control debt and not pile it on our children. Any conservative who’s greatest political interest is a balanced budget who does not support trump is a hero in my book. Otherwise the right itself is the frankenstein monster and trump is just a hideous practical joke they have played on us. Its hard to find sympathetic players in this drama, the never trump conservatives and moderates are my one set of heros here.
It is a well written piece and your comments on the media are on target.
I don’t know that trump will come down. It will take an extraordinary series of events to impeach him one that would involve his base GOP voters leaving him. If they don’t he is safe. If he does not somehow rise to the presidency and do some good then it is history that will savage him and his enthusiastic supporters.
Its an epic war between trump and the media. I can’t remember which one declared total scorched earth war on the other first and at this point it does not matter any more but at the end of the day they will both likely be bloodied but standing, its just America itself that has been lowered and degraded and weakened.
9/11 was the match that lit the fuse of growing left-right alienation. Its destructive cancer has weakened us more than bin laden could have dreamed it would. Huge impersonal forces are also at work, as always, that no person can control but demagogues can provoke. We remember the destructive historical figures who provoked them. trump is provoking them. I am scared.
Patients do at times recover from serious cancers. I can hope America does.
Excellent piece Rick, and I get it with the sympathy/whatever part. King Kong was a victim in my eyes. You want to bring a wild animal into your sphere, you reap the consequences.
Frankenstein should have stayed in his grave and all would have been well, but hey science needs experimentation and people (drug trial folks) who advance our understanding of things. I know guys like Qaddafi did horrible things but seeing someone beaten or tortured to death still bothers me.
Trump is what you said, and he is the curse that keeps giving to himself and all those around him that wind up contaminated. I can not at this time sympathize with him as he is real and screwing us all, but I get what you are saying in a philosophical way. Too many don’t see nuances.
A different permutation of my “there can be no collusion” argument.
http://theweek.com/articles/734070/mueller-running-amok
A dose of reality for most of us
If you want something to become more affordable, reduce regulation
https://fee.org/articles/why-large-screen-tvs-are-affordable-and-health-care-is-not/
Note the further left you are the more free you are to speak your mind.
That would also mean that those on the right are more tolerant of those on the left than visa-versa
That so many people do not understand how terribly dangerous this is.
Anyone in govenrment threatening to force others to censor people, if they do not do so themselves has violated their oath to uphold the constitution.
Wow, The DNC/Clinton campaign pay Perkins – Coie something like 10M for the Steele dossier.
P-C pays FusionGPS 1M for it.
FushionGPS pays Steele 168K for it.
Steele got ripped off.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/01/heres-how-much-the-clinton-campaign-and-dnc-paid-for-the-trump-dossier/
So here we have actual collusion to influence the election
Twitter censoring pro-trump and anti-clinton content
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-01/twitter-admits-it-buried-leaked-clinton-email-tweets-last-two-months-campaign
Rick, great column. dhili, enjoyed your banter and input. All I can say is Mr Smith will never go back to Washington again.
Thanks (belatedly), Bill. I appreciate the appreciation.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/11/another-stunning-liberal-lie-exposed-facebook-says-russian-ads-comprised-004-newsfeed-election/
http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/01/behold-the-work-of-russias-evil-advertis
Dershowitz on Scalia
For those of you strongly advocating for regulation – it is rare that out laws and regulations are truly enacted for good purposes.
Minimum wage laws were intended to deprive blacks of jobs – and they continue to do so through today.
Here is another example.
https://fee.org/articles/dancing-is-finally-legalized-in-new-york-city/
Liar Liar pants on fire!!!! Middle class family of four making $50,000 to about $100,000 will have increased taxes under reform. Standard deduction now $12,500. Personal exemptions $4,050 each. Total for four $16,200. Total exempted income $28,700. Reform, standard deduction $24,000, no personal exemptions. Increased taxable income $4,700. Both years rate = 25%. Total tax increase $1,175. But remember, the middle class can still deduct mortgage interest expenses of $500,000 per year!!!rr
Ron,
The Dems have been pushing this.
But even WaPo eventually gave this claim 4 pinochios.
WaPo found that the think tank analysis that most everyone under 87K/year will see a tax cut was correct.
I have not done the math. I do not really care to, what we see now and what we get will not be the same. And I am not interested in debating this – until I know what it really si going to look like.
Further – honestly if they are dramatically simpler – I do not care if my taxes go up.
Radically simplifying taxes would be a huge economic boost – forget cuts.
The simpler taxes are – the easier it is to hire people.
Last, we know from the Bush cuts that middle class cuts do not pay for themselves economically.
But we do know that corporate tax cuts and upper marging tax cuts are stimulative.
The degree depends on how high the current taxes are, how big the cut is, and what the tax rates are elsewhere in the world
Dave, I will say that probably 20% of the people will buy that this is an increase. I will say that probably 20% will buy this as a decrease hook, line and sinker. Then 60% will sit back uninterested and be surprised when they file their first return and find out what thebtrue results are. I did mis represent the % tax. The filers in the range I quoted now are in the 10% and 15% range. Part is 15 and part is 10. The nes rate is 12%.
What people need to do is take their basic info and compare last year using new rules. Its nkt that hard and then they could voice their thoughts to their reps BEFORE any legislation is final. What good does it do to complain after it is signed by the president.
This is very long. There are many interesting points, but they are spread throughout much of the video.
Laci’s remarks effected me in one way regarding our interchanges here.
I am particularly hard on Roby, Jay, Mooggie and the left as a whole.
Roby in particular keeps making the point that much is a difference of opinions.
That point is absolutely valid in every context except where we are discussing the use of force to conform another to your opinions.
Hillary Clinton has argued that “women should be beleived in their claims of sexual assault” – unless it is by her husband.
And she is absolutely correct – except when it comes to sanctioning the person they claim assaulted them.
Roby and Jay and anyone else is free to have whatever opinions they wish – even if those opinions are demonstrably false. They can run their own lives on the basis of feelings of opinions or whatever they want. The entire realm of their human action that does not infringe by force on the equal rights of others is entirely outside my right or power to do anything about.
I have stated before that you can form and join a voluntary commune if you wish.
Government must be limited – because government is the sphere in which we impose our will on others by force.
It is only when we are prepared to use force against others that we are precluded from making choices based on emotion, religion, or opinions that can not withstand logical criticism.
My fight with Roby, Jay and the left – is not really about emotional decisions or illogical opinions, it is about their belief that the sphere of government action is large. The bigger govenrment is the more it is going to interfere with the rights of others driven by the emotion or illogical opinions of others.
I would note that the left for the moment is railing that Trump controls many of the reigns of power. I do not want anyone to have that kind of power over others. Not Trump, not Clinton, not obama. I want people to have power over their own lives – including the power to completely ignore anything I say – inside their own lives.
I hope this comment breaks through the fatberger:
AMAZING. Hey Dems, please tell me this Politico article by Donna Brazile is fake. It is a very disturbing portrait of any U.S campaign, let alone Hillary’s campaign. Her people are truly deplorable if it is true. Please tell me it is not true:
https://www.politico.com/ma…
Link isn’t operative,I’m getting error message..
here it is again: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
dduck, is this really a surprising action by the Entitled Bitch?
It’s true, if Donna Brazile is telling the truth in her new book. She is saying that Obama bankrupted the DNC, Hillary bailed it out and, in the contract she made it sign, basically took control of it, laundering money through the Party apparatus, cheating Bernie out of money and delegates, and insisting that all DNC communications be approved by her campaign.
It’s less surprising now that the DNC refused to let the FBI gain access to its server, after it was “hacked by the Russians.” The investigation was done by a company called Crowdstrike, which was paid by the same law firm that Hillary used to pay for the Steele Dossier.
Makes the claim that the hack was an inside job by Bernie supporters within the DNC sound a lot more plausible…
President Foot In His Mouth keeps shoving Foot & Head up his Butt.
The ignoramus doesn’t understand the legal gravity of his words:
“President Donald Trump called for the execution of the suspect in the New York City terrorist attack Wednesday after learning that he had asked to hang an ISIS flag in his hospital room.
“NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!” Trump tweeted.
Trump’s bold prescription could actually hurt prosecutors’ efforts. Presidents typically don’t weigh in on ongoing criminal cases because defense attorneys can then argue that their client has lost his right to a fair trial.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16597552/trump-death-penalty-new-york-terror-attack-saipov
You are correct that Trump should not be commenting on ongoing criminal investigations.
But that shipped sailed long ago.
Obama declared Clinton innocent when the email investigation had barely gotten started.
I’m sorry to say, I wish the cop was a better shot.
This a_______ will cost hundreds of thousands over his lifetime, not counting his trial, and serve as a martyr example for future martyrs.
Agreed, dd12.
This is what Russia is doing to sow discord in the US.
President ShitForBrains doesn’t get it.
He refuses to address the Russian interference.
He refuses to sign the Russia sanctions approved by Congress.
Discord in America benefits him and his buddy Vladdie.
How HUGE a Fortune will Donald RUMP reap from his proposed tax cuts?
Millions?
Billions?
How is keeping what is already your “reaping a fortune” ?
” When given two hypothetical policies—lower taxes on the rich resulting in more revenue to help the poor versus higher taxes on the rich but less money for the poor—one in six people preferred the second, more spiteful option. This willingness to hurt the poor to pull down the rich was predicted only by the individual’s proneness to envy.
http://humanprogress.org/blog/support-for-redistribution-shaped-by-compassion-self-interest–envy?utm_content=buffer73d97&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
How is doubling or tripling or quadrupling your ‘fortune’ not ‘reaping’ (raping) the system?
How is it ?
First your argument was that keeping your own money was “reaping massive profits”,
That is logic and fact free nonsense.
Now you are arguing that increasing your fortune is rape. Do you have any idea how people actually increase their fortunates ?
It is not magic. It is simple – by creating more value for others.
Try learning some basic economics.
“First your argument was that keeping your own money was “reaping massive profits””
Where did I argue that?
You don’t understand multiplication?
My argument is massively increasing your own money as President as a result of being President IS reaping/raping.
I understand multiplication perfectly.
I also grasp that the absence of subtraction at gunpoint is not multiplication.
Regardless, there is no black box, and no mathematical function that takes wealth and multiplies it.
Increases in wealth are the consequences of actions that deliver greater value to others.
The argument you are now making, is not the tax based argument you started with.
Regardless, the argument requires proof, and as you made it, it requires proof that mysterious money multiplier actually exists.
Increases in wealth as a consequence of delivering value is not consistent with the argument you are making. and certainly not anything I care about.
Idiot
Not an argument.
So ?
free speech is a right – and even Russians and Russia have it
Should I care that protestors and counter protestors show up at the same place ?
So long as everyone refrains from violence – why should I care ?
I do not have a problem with competing ideas being publicly debated.
We – as protestors and counter protestors are responsible for our own actions – not Russians who succeeded in persuading us to be at the same place at the same time.
I am far more worried at the demands of left and congress that Social Media censor itself.
The right of private actors to self censor ends when govenrment demands it.
Government may not do by proxy, what it may not do directly.
I am far more concerned about the growing concept in this country that some are entitled to choose who and what others get to hear, than I am about what Russia might do on Facebook.
Regardless, is facebook some US sovereign domain ? Are only americans permitted to use facebooks ? Is the internet a Russia Free zone ?
Are you capable of thinking what the bad consequences of what you want are ?
Impeach President Menace
Great ~ PPP polling claimed that Hillary would win in a historic electoral landslide, with Trump winning only 5 states, lol!!
Priscilla, so now jay wants to impeach trump based on polling data. That’s worse than the snowflakes not knowing what is required for impeachment, but I doubt even they would think polls could be a basis for impeachment.
Impeachment is political. Polling is sufficient justification for impeachment if democrats wish to go there. I would not advise it. The price for impeachment is also political.
The polling is a reflection of the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the current Menace in Office.
“Impeaching President Trump is more popular now than impeaching President Richard Nixon was at the start of the Watergate scandal, according to a Monmouth University poll.
The poll, released Monday, found 41 percent of Americans support impeachment for Trump. In comparison, 26 percent supported Nixon’s impeachment six months into his second term, as the Watergate scandal was breaking.”
41% was back in July. Now up to 49%.
Maybe (hopefully) Mueller will turn up impeachable evidence.
Stay tuned.
More of that “hopey” stuff – how well did that work the past 8 years ?
narcissistic nincompoop is at it again:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358573-trump-on-lack-of-nominees-i-am-the-only-one-that-matters
Typical left wing nut – cutting govenrment is somehow inherently evil.
I have no problems with the reduced staffing at State or elsewhere.
I have a problem that Obama holdorvers are not being replaced.
I beleive that Tillerson early on, on his own decided that he was severely cutting back at State. I think many other Trump cabinet members are trying to do the same.
This is precisely the approach Romney was pummeled for in 2012.
Like it or note cleaning bloat out of organizations often makes them more effective not less.
But again a typical lefty – throw money and people at problems and pretend that solves them.
Douchebag Donald didn’t say he was REDUCING surplus employers, stupid; he said he was the only one who mattered. You too dense to understand the difference between genuine reduction of bloat, and “I Am The State!” ?
Donald Trump is not the state.
However ALL executive power in the US is constitutionally vested in the president.
So he is correct.
Some critiques of Facebook censorship.
Do we wish to join countries like Iran ?
https://www.popehat.com/2017/11/02/sorry-facebook-blasphemy-is-not-apolitical/
sigh. Two out of three of my last comments have vanished.
President Undignified Turd is Again at his most presidential self:
So you do not like the language Trump uses to state the Truth ?
Dave “So you do not like the language Trump uses to state the Truth ?”
Message for snowflakes today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMzd40i8TfA
My post was specific to Jay’s Trump quote.
I am not giving anyone a blanket endorsement that there statements are true.
Dave How do you do it? Miss the point so many times all together.”So you do not like the language Trump uses to state the Truth ?”
“You can’t handle the truth” was directed toward all those snowflakes that buy the liberal crap hook line and sinker and then when Trump makes his points in common daily language anyone can understand, they throw a hissy fit.
Now if jay considers himself one who will not accept what Trump says and how he says it, then everyone can make up their own mind as to where he falls on the snowflake scale.
I do find it very interesting that Trump calls Hillary “crooked Hillary” and now the truth begins to really come out as to how crooked she really is (buying the nomination) and not more than a peep from the liberal media concerning Donna B’s book.
Yes, we have even more evidence of Hillaries corruption today than during the election, but when was there any doubt ?
Kenneth Starr has noted that he was constantly frustrated as Independent council – because each crime he investigated lead to Hillary. He considered indicting her, but as first lady she is not a government employee and not really in the scope of his investigation, and he did not think he could get a DC jury to convict.
What has surprised me as this has progressed is not additional Hillary malfeasance – with few exceptions there is no new Hillary misconduct since the election, there is just more evidence to support previously known misconduct.
What has come out is the misconduct of the Obama administration – myriads of people, including Mueller, Comey and Rosenstein.
That has surprised me.
We have a very very serious problem in Washington, even more serious than was beleived before the election.
Jay wants to rant that it is somehow wrong for Trump to seek to open investigations into all this misconduct. If so – how are the investigations into Trump or others during the Obama administration proper ?
Oh yeah, the You Can’t Handle The Truth meme.
Uttered by Conservative Commander Jessup to those snowflake military officers at the trial.
But Ron, you remember how that ended, right?
Jessup is arrested, for murder.
Turns out he was a liar and a scam artist and a PERJURER.
Notice any similarities to the current liar scammer in the White House?
Jay well I think I will put you in the same political group as Joy B (The View) along with most everyone at MSNBC. It is one thing to dislike Trump and comment on his actions that have to do with legislation. It is something else to be pathologically impacted that the only thing someone can concentrate on is Trump, period.
I dont like Trump, but like him much more than the bitch. I would not vote for Trump. At the same time, I do not trust Mueller to prosecute anything he finds about Clinton in his drag net, but I believe he will prosecute a Trump supporter if they were the cause off a protected squirrels death on federal property.
Why do some people believe some politicians should be protected and hands off and others no limit to the amount of money and time to find something illegal?
Because some people are hypocrits, or beleive that the ends justify the means or have no actual moral compass.
Again what part of the statement is false ?
As to your “narcisisum claim”.
I would suggest reading the constitution.
All executive power is vested in the president.
While free to delegate, the president is not obligated to do so, and is personally responsible regardless.
Correct, I don’t like an undignified Buffoon President speaking like Trump does. But you’re OK with it, right?
Therefore you don’t have a problem with members of Congress Tweeting that tRUMP is a sexual deviant who inappropriately fondled his teenaged daughter (photographic evidence says that’s true too) and should be investigated for it. Or a problem with others in the media as well constantly referring to him as Deviant Donald, correct? Or for future Dems referring to Republican competitors with snide or vile nicknames in the future, like Cunnilingual Carley? Peckerwood Pence? Crudhead Cruz?
Oh right, Libertarians have no problem with reducing the national political debate to the level of the lowest World Wrestling Federation vulgar shouting match. Dickhead Donald has lowered the standards; Republicans agree it’s ok; let’s all join in with joyous namecalling
“Correct, I don’t like an undignified Buffoon President speaking like Trump does. But you’re OK with it, right?”
No, I just do not think Trump’s style or remarks warrant frothing at the mouth.
“Therefore ..”
Given that your premise is false your conclusion has no meaning.
This is what happens when you decide what someone else thinks and then construct castle in the sky arguments arround it.
“you don’t have a problem with members of Congress Tweeting that tRUMP is a sexual deviant who inappropriately fondled his teenaged daughter (photographic evidence says that’s true too) and should be investigated for it. Or a problem with others in the media as well constantly referring to him as Deviant Donald, correct? Or for future Dems referring to Republican competitors with snide or vile nicknames in the future, like Cunnilingual Carley? Peckerwood Pence? Crudhead Cruz?”
Again you seem to think all of this is binary.
If members of congress are tweeting offensively, you can call them out if you wish, but the available remedy if their actions are not criminal is to vote them out of office in Nov. 2018.
“Oh right, Libertarians have no problem with reducing the national political debate to the level of the lowest World Wrestling Federation vulgar shouting match. Dickhead Donald has lowered the standards; Republicans agree it’s ok; let’s all join in with joyous namecalling”
The national political debate will occur at the level that the american people chose.
Given that you have chosen a very low standard, Criticising others for the same low standard is hypocritical.
Regardless, there are lots of things I would prefer that I do not get.
I do not go frothing at the mouth because I can not force others to live as I wish.
Ron in addition to the other links I cited before, here is another peep from liberal central, The View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Hd7KCj8vE
I am impressed with them all except Joy since their comments were on systems and not specific to one person or party for the most part. Joy was trying to redirect attention onto Trump. Have the other big three news outlets started to over this yet?
I would like to hear something of substance on the senate investigation into Russia. I find the silence from Burr and Warner disturbing as they have had long enough to determine what the devil was going on. Mueller is just trying to hang someones ass on the cross to warrant his existance.
And we wonder why only 25% to 55% of eligible voters actually vote.
“Mueller is just trying to hang someones ass on the cross to warrant his existance”
Where did you come up with this subjective denigration of Mueller’s motives?
Coming into the investigation he had strong bipartisan approval for honesty and integrity.
What has changed your mind?
The House is in the process of drafting a bill to ask Mueller to resign.
The release of the information regarding Mueller, Comey and Rosensteins involvement in the U1 investigation and coverup requires anyone with actual integrity to resign.
There are numerous observations that the Indictments were rushed because Mueller and company’s involvement in the U1 investigation and coverup came out.
The Manafort indictment gets weaker as we get some distance and analysis of it.
The money laundering claim is by far the most egregious sounding, but as many – including Manafort’s council have noted, there is and can be no money laundering – there is no precedent crime whose profits are being laundered.
If this is anything it is tax evasion. There are no tax evasions charges – likely because Manafort resolved those with the IRS in 2014.
That leaves the FARA claim. Manafort was not engaged in direct lobbying for foreign countries. He essentially brokered the actual lobbying to the Podesta Group and another firm. It is highly unlikely the FARA claim will survive appeal.
I would note that Manafort’s lawyer noted that none of this had to do with the Trump Campaign. That was a not so subtle message to Mueller and Trump that no one was Rolling.
Mueller is playing hardball with a weak hand to try to seriously restrict Manafort’s freedom prior to trial. If he loses that, he is in serious trouble. Manafort has the resources to fight this for the rest of his life and he will likely win.
Manafort is not somebody I would want to be associated with, but the indictment looks much weaker today than it did monday.
Alot of people who have at one time had strong bipartisan respect for their integrity and honesty have fallen substantially over the past few years.
Lorretta Lynch was supposed to be a lawyer of incredibly integrity.
James Comey was supposed to be the epitome of integrity.
You can add Mueller and Rosenstein to that list.
The more we learn about the Comey ambush of Ashcroft in the hospital, which appears to have been quite different from the myth sold by Comey and Mueller, as well as their involvement in the U1 Coverup, calling them men of high integrity today is dubious.
It Mueller had integrity – he would resign, as would Mueller and anyone involved in the U1 coverup.
I would note that we have Trump being investigated even though we still do not have an actual crime, by Mueller – who clearly was involved in the actual crime of hiding the russian corruption and bribery involved in the U1 deal from congress.
Sorry Jay – there is more reason for Mueller to go, than for the SC to exist.
Jay r”What has changed your mind?”
Did I ever say I approved of an Independent investigator to start with?
The majority of these things lead no where and only capture people doing things that have little to do with the real reason for their existence. Iran contra resulted in little. What did Whitewater deliver? Did Reagan or Clinton (either of them) get prosecuted or impeached?
Manafort, Pop,…….., Flynn and maybe a few more will get tried for lying to the investigators or some other crap, but removing Trump will nt happen, no matter how many prayers you say.
Getting Trump is not happening – because there is no there there. There can not be.
The think the left is trying to find not only does not exist – it can not exist.
If Trump got opo research on Clinton from Russia:
He would have used it
He would at worst no better than Clinton.
If Trump conspired with Russia to hack the DNC in April of 2016 then why was he still trying to establishing some contact with Russia in July of 2016 ?
Why would Trump go to enormous trouble to get Russia to post 6500 in Social Media adds when he was spending about 600M himself ? Just trying to get opo on Clinton likely cost him more than 100K
Whoever is the next Democratic Presidential Candidate to publically call tTRUMP Douchebag Donald gets my vote!
President Shit Head works too!
Groper In Chief as followup as well.
Hopefully Keith Olbermann will run – and addresses him as he has online as PRESIDENT MOTHERXXXXXXX TRAITOR!
So you will vote for the next democrat that is a worse potty mouth than Trump ?
What’s good for the Goosehead GOP is good for the Gander
Everybody’s doing it doing it..
Destroying records and loving loving it..
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-emails-documents-515120.html
The records of the activities of our government and public servants belong to the public.
Private records do not, and are protected by the 4th amendment.
We grant far to much latitude to courts and government to demand private records, without warrants.
As to lawsuit tactics – if they are legal, there is no issue, if they are not prosecute.
I have been involved in requests for business documents. In a legal proceding were documents may be lawfully demanded, when they are not produced the jury and the court are free to decide that what they contained was damaging.
I am not going to judge a bunch of spitballed allegations about Trump without knowing more about each allegation.
What I know about Clinton – is the documents were govenrment workproduct – therefore not hers to destroy, and were the subject of FOIA requests, subpeona’s and the order of courts to preserve, and that records that belonged to the public were destroyed by Clinton without permission, or authority.
Those “pro trump” FB adds
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/russia-facebook-dumb-think-we-are/
Russia SYSTEMATICALLY hacked the Dems
https://apnews.com/dea73efc01594839957c3c9a6c962b8a
“An Associated Press investigation into the digital break-ins that disrupted the U.S. presidential contest has sketched out an anatomy of the hack that led to months of damaging disclosures about the Democratic Party’s nominee. It wasn’t just a few aides that the hackers went after; it was an all-out blitz across the Democratic Party. They tried to compromise Clinton’s inner circle and more than 130 party employees, supporters and contractors.
While U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the email thefts, the AP drew on forensic data to report Thursday that the hackers known as Fancy Bear were closely aligned with the interests of the Russian government.
The AP’s reconstruction— based on a database of 19,000 malicious links recently shared by cybersecurity firm Secureworks — shows how the hackers worked their way around the Clinton campaign’s top-of-the-line digital security to steal chairman John Podesta’s emails in March 2016.
It also helps explain how a Russian-linked intermediary could boast to a Trump policy adviser, a month later, that the Kremlin had “thousands of emails” worth of dirt on Clinton.”
All you and the AP are doing is echoing very old crap that has long ago been refuted.
CrowdStrike has claimed FancyBear (their name) otherwise known as APT28 came from Russia many times.
It has been used in several exploits.
It is typically installed using a zero day exploit – this was Guicifer2.0’s claim,
and not Phishing.
The attribution to Russia is now deeply suspect, and the APT28 attacks are no longer credibly attributed to Russia – not the DNC, Not the TV5 not the BundesPost not ….
You are selling rehashed old crap.
The left seems to think that recycling only nonsense that has been discredited is somehow meaningful.
Separately the US Intelligence community did not do any independent assessment.
They merely echoed CrowdStrike.
Most of CrowdStrikes modern claims – not just the DNC attacks, but other attacks they have attributed to Russia or China are now discredited or seriously disputed,
It is now generally accepted in the security community that determining the source of an exploit is no longer possible. That there has been widespread availability of the tools and toolkits of major hacking groups, that each borrows from the others and deliberately uses the code of others to mask attribution.
Put more simply everyone has access to the source for FancyBear and the ability to construct a permutation of it, and it is therefore not possible to tell where a FancyBear penetration actually came from.
Most are familiar with StuxNet – which the US created to interfere with the Iranian centrifuges. The US deliberately used code to make StuxNet appear to be of Israeli origen.
Of course all of this ignores the fact that we now know the DNC emails were leaked not hacked.
Read the article:
“An Associated Press investigation into the digital break-ins”
The AP did not investigate. It interviewed people.
Only Crowdstrike actually got access to the servers, though other forensic services have been able to refute the Crowdstrike claims based on the data provided by CrowsStrike or Guiciffer II or Wikipedia.
I would note that the DNC called Perkins Coie – and THEY brought in CrowdStrike.
Further that PC was pushing the meme’s the AP is citing before there was evidence.
Regardless the AP is on the wrong side of the forensics.
The claim that this was the result of Phishing has been refuted – even CrowsStrike beleives the DNC was first penetrated in mid 2015, mot March 2016.
Further there is evidence of atleast 3 distinct efforts – two exploits – that are not the result of Phishing, and atleast 1 leak.
The exploits, have now been fairly well established did NOT come from Russia.
And the leak was in the US.
I am sure that the DNC received myriads of phishing attempts – I get several everyday.
The receipt of “29” phishing emails just proves the DNC is connected to the internet.
One questions how incredibly guilible you and these reporters are ?
Here is Nate Silver’s composite of the polling data on trumps popularity. This is not Nate Silver’s polling, this is a composite of everybody’s polling. Nate Silver’s polling called the election popular vote within a percent or two and predicted that trump was gaining and had a significant chance. So, bashing polling as a thing or Nate Silver as a pollster is going to be futiile.
As of Jan 25 trump was in positive territory, about 48 approval to 42.5 disapproval. So, In spite of the nastiness of the campaign and people being well aware of who candidate trump is America as a whole was willing to give him a shot at being president.
His fortunes changed in three discrete fairly brief periods. By mid-May it had fallen into a range that has been pretty much stable ever since, more or less 56 disapproval to 38 approval according to Silver. More like 60 to 35 according to Gallup. If every registered democrat was against trump that would be 28% disapproval. That is only half of the disapproval. Since Jan 25 he has lost 10 points of approval and gained 14 points of disapproval a 24 point swing, that has remained stable for 6 months. No president since polling began has achieved (ha) anything like this level of sustained disapproval at this period of their presidency.
This was not the media’s doing, the media had already thrown the kitchen sink at trump by Jan 25 and he was still to the good side by 5 points. This is purely and simply the nature of trump and his administration. It is not due to liberal democrats they are disliking trump only at slightly higher levels than they would dislike any conservative president. The record setting disapproval is due to moderates, independents, and even conservatives.
The country as a whole can tell shit from shinola even is 80% of GOP voters believe he is doing great, while 70% of them believe that he is unifying the country.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Roby
Nate does not do polling.
He uses polls by others to do complex analysis.
Nate has on occasion been incredibly good – he nailed 2012 better than anyone else.
But sorry Nate entirely blew 2016. He was predicting a 92% chance of a Clinton victory on Election day and still a 70% chance of a win at the time Clinton conceded.
I like Nate, but pretending he is infallible is nonsense – even Nate would not make the claims you are making for him.
BTW we get this “no XXX ever” nonsense all the time.
It is common in CAGW. Offering it is a pretty clear misunderstanding of statistics.
the data that we have today dwarfs what we had 10 years ago, which dwarfs that of 10 years before that.
For many many things we have not had the ability to do the kind of Data analysis we do today in the past
Beyond that neither Today, not Trump are the same as the past.
Trump was the product of an electorate that was divided in ways we probably have not been divided since the civil war. That division was not caused by Trump – it started in 2008 and grew under Obama.
It might be the consequence of Obama and his policies.
It might be the consequence of the end of “the great sorting”.
Regardless, in myraids of ways the country is different than in the past.
More importantly – why do I care about Trump’s popularity ?
Goldberg on the hypocracy of the right and left.
For the record, I think Trump’s threats to use the power of Federal government to persecute his enemies – such as to revoke licenses are wrong.
If I actually belived he was attempting them I would be outraged.
There is no difference between Trump stalling the FCC license of CNN and Obama stalling the 501c3 approval of a right leaning group.
The fundimental difference is Trump is all hat no cattle on these issues,
While Obama actually did them.
Worse those on the left here only recognize such acts as wrong when they target the left.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452671/harvey-weinstein-donald-trump-hypocrisy-mitt-romneys-binders-full-women
Who is responsible for the destruction of the DNC
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/03/dnc-donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-barack-obama/
https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarian+party+cartoon&safe=off&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS692US692&hl=en-US&prmd=inv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjO7pKNp6PXAhUR-GMKHaPtBa0Q_AUIEigB&biw=1024&bih=653#imgrc=YC3WQRjGcIPfKM:
A bit more complex.
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/lpn/pages/1/features/original/issues-nevada-libertarian-party-of_nevada_5.jpg?1448440586
This is an incredibly bizzare claim:
First, there is actual evidence of a crime and more than enough for probable cause, and the targets are not political opponents.
As President Trump can order DOJ to investigate anything for which there is sufficient cause for an investigation.
There is plenty of cause for everything Trump has asked to be investigated.
Second, why would you be going after Trump for doing something he is actually allowed to do – because there is sufficient cause, when Obama did the same WITHOUT sufficient cause.
Trump is asking for an actual crime to be investigated – one in which there is ample evidence that the crime has occured.
Obama went Fishing for a crime – after almost 2 years there is still no actual crime, but there was and remains an investigation.
Put more simply, If Trump is actually guilty of something, then Obama is unbeleivably egregiously guilty.
BTW given the election is over, Clinton is not a political opponent. She is merely a political enemy.
All of us, myself included as well as Trump were prepared to let all of this go after the election. The only reason anyone is calling for an investigation of Clinton or political and criminal misconduct prior to 2017 is because the left is continuing to attempt to dig where there is nothing.
Regardless, this entire claim is the most ludicrous bit of political hypocrisy I have ever heard.
At least NPR has a pair and has a follow up to the Brazile/DNC story:
http://www.npr.org/sections…
NYT: Crickets
The Clinton/DNC stuff as I understand it is internecine warfare among democrats.
It stinks to heaven but I do not think it is criminal.
I don’t know about that, Dave. Campaign finance laws restrict the amount of money one can donate to a single candidate, but that person can still donate to the party. If all, or most, of the money being raised for the DNC was effectively being funneled to the Hillary campaign, I think there may be legal issues with that….
” If all, or most, of the money being raised for the DNC was effectively being funneled to the Hillary campaign, I think there may be legal issues with that….”
And who do you think s going to investigate? Trump has not turned loose the DOJ on anything else she supposedly did. And Mueller will not look at anything that would tie his investigation to the DNC takeover, unlike anything a Trump supporter may have done.
So this will just be news on Fox for the next 6 months and then it will fade away like everything else the Clintons have done in the past.
You seem to think campaign finance laws are constitutional.
ABC, NBC, CBS: Crickets
FOX: Pounced like it was loose in a chicken coop: http://www.foxnews.com/ente…
Tulsi Gabbard: https://www.realclearpoliti…
WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost….
WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/article…
DD – NONE of your links are working for me
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561768006/book-reveals-clinton-campaign-effectively-controlled-dnc-as-early-as-2015
I read what Donna had to say about Hillary.
this sums it up:
“The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.”
And almost all the money she’s talking about being ‘unethically’ misdirected to Clinton’s campaign, was RAISED by the Clinton campaign. And that money, Donna says, kept the DNC from going under. It was deep in debt. Clinton’s money rescued it.
Hard ball politics? Yes. Big deal? Not really.
Jay ” Hard ball politics? Yes. Big deal? Not really. ”
Would this REALLY be your comment id the name was Trump and the party the RNC? Please be honest!
But it is a big deal when you think about all the younger leople that supported Sanders and now see how manipulated our political systems are and how one can buy a nomination. How many of those younger people will say ” to hell with voting, they will nominate who they want anyway” so why vote?
We need more people voting, not fewer! Even if they are Sander liberals, we need them particilating in the process, not being turned off by millionaires buying elections.
If you’re a registered a Democrat (I’m not) the question you should be asking is how did the DNC finances (under Schultz) get so screwed up the Clinton campaign had to step in with loans and other cash infusions to keep it from going BK?
And I’m happy Bernie didn’t get the nomination.
He would have been slaughtered in the election.
And if tRUMP had that kind of a mandate, fascism would rule, the MSM would be silenced, and the fires of revolution and Insurrection would match the natural wildfires we’re seeing now.
Jay, no, the question is not how screwed up the DNC has become. The issue is the impact on people who thought they were making a difference and now they find out that anything they did, from hours of volunteering to a few minutes that they normally would not have spent voting, was all pre-planned as a waste of time.
Thats the problem with everything in this country today. There is no thinking about the future. It is all about the past or the present. The future is what is important. And you, as a hysterical anti-Trumper should know this better than anyone due to the thoughts you have about Trump and his impact on the future of this country.
I don’t care one bit why the DNC was bankrupt. The Democrats should not care that much because they can’t do anything about that. But what they can do is put into place internal controls (like any common sense run business would do) to insure that this could not happen again, that multiple signatures would be required for all legal documents which would require collusion to recreate this issue and to have yearly audits of finances so everyone knows where the money is coming from, where its going and how much is in the bank that has been confirmed by the banks themselves.
People, especially younger people with attention spans of a gnat, need to know what they do is making a difference or they will drop out like so many moderates have done in this country because their positions have been totally ignored or abandoned. Do we really want 25% of the people voting and electing the government?
It is extremely common for a party to be deeply in debt after a major campaign.
The amounts being discussed are tiny compared to the $1B plus Obama spent on 2012 or something like 1.6B Clinton spent in 2016
How would “fascism” rule ?
What would be different if Trump had more political power ?
tax reform would be easier.
ObamaCare would be dead.
The wall would be being built.
Immigration restrictions might be worse.
I do not agree with all of those – but they are not fascist.
Real fascism would require more govenrment interferance in out individuals lives.
Like laws limiting the size of the sodas we could buy
or restricting our ownership of guns,
or requiring us to pay for free college for others.
or reducing the number of deodorants of sneakers in the delusion that would aleviate poverty.
Trump is not some perfect libertarian.
But he is LESS fascist than any democrat.
I oppose Trump rhetoric of censorship.
And it bothers me.
At the same time, it is still just rhetoric.
The real force of censorship in the US today is on the left.
It is those who think they know what hate speach is, and that it can be prohibited.
It is those in congress threatening media companies if they do not reign in unwanted political expression within social media.
Trump just says stupid “fascist” things.
Those on the left do them.
Is there anyone who doubts that if this were about Trump not Clinton that the left would be frothing and Mueller broadening his investigation ?
No we need less people voting because out govenrment is boring and limited and it does not matter whether it is run by republicans or democrats because the limits prohibit either
from screwing us.
Neither govenrment nor elections should be our lives.
In the US and throughout the world all the gains of the past 400 years are the consequence of greater individual liberty – particularly economic liberty.
To the extent govenrment has mattered that would be that those govenrments fostering greater liberty have served us better, and improved standard of living the fastest.
A severely limited monarchy would be superior to a big government democracy.
“The issue is the impact on people who thought they were making a difference and now they find out that anything they did, from hours of volunteering to a few minutes that they normally would not have spent voting, was all pre-planned as a waste of time.”
Its a very strong comment. In fact your entire comment is very strong. I particularly like this part too:
“I don’t care one bit why the DNC was bankrupt. The Democrats should not care that much because they can’t do anything about that. But what they can do is put into place internal controls (like any common sense run business would do) to insure that this could not happen again, ”
But there is another side (this is not a defence of the clintons or the DNC). Bernie was a progressive pirate and not a democrat. Every election many people put their efforts in and do not get the POTUS they worked for. If Bernie’s supporters had seen their hard work pay off and won, well it would have been justice, perhaps. How happy would you be right now with a Sanders presidency? I suspect you would be miserable and me too.
Things seem to have hit a high point of rottenness. That may be an illusion, things may have always been this rotten, but there is at least a perception that they are even more rotten today than previously in my lifetime. For the moment our system is creaking and groaning but still functioning. It does not seem to me to be impossible that if things continue as they are going at some time in my lifetime the system may fail. If it does, people are going to miss what we had under the old imperfect situation, it will be clear to all but a handful of extremists that we needed a functioning 21st century government.
The second of your paragraphs that I quoted is a blueprint for a sane way out of part of this mess. I hope that at some point enough people will recognize that the consequences of putting political warfare first are truly the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.
It won’t, unfortunately, change the fact that the bases of both major parties are incredibly naive and are pulling for things that will never happen and would be catastrophic if they did happen. Maybe from the standpoint it of history it will all pass somehow, like William Jennings Bryan and free silver.
I have some problems about the fact that both the democratic and republican parties are government protected monopolies.
But beyond that the DNC is just a bunch of people coming together voluntarily for a common purpose, no different from the catholic church, the AFL-CIO, or Amazon.
Many of the suggestions are probably good ones.
Regardless, the DNC and its members can run their organization as they see fit.
They can make their own rules.
What I do not want is the government stepping in and deciding to make conduct that is not already criminal, criminal.
There is not a need for government so step in and regulate the DNC.
Whether Sanders has a place in the democratic party or whether he is a pirate – is up to the DNC.
Outside those legitimate functions of government The DNC and Amazon should all be allowed to conduct their affairs as they see fit.
This applies exactly the same regarding the RNC and republicans.
Freedom is often messy and does not usually produce perfect outcomes – though it comes closer than all other alternatives.
You and I are free to make sugestions regarding the DNC or Amazon, we are not free to impose them by force.
Dave, “There is not a need for government so step in and regulate the DNC.”
Libertarian or not, we are a country with laws. Laws should be applied equally. Suspected illegal activities should be investigated equally.
If there are suspected activities that broke campaign finance laws, they should be investigated regardless of your name being Joe Blow or Hillary Clinton.
“What I do not want is the government stepping in and deciding to make conduct that is not already criminal, criminal.” …,,……………..But I WANT government investigating conduct that appears to be criminal and so far our DOJ looks as if ” Clinton” is a buzz word for “hands off” like “Clinton that investigation”.
We are a country of laws – and those laws should be as few and clear as possible.
Every possible human action is not the realm of the law.
The democratic party can organize itself as it pleases.
It can go bankrupt, borrow money or strike deals with private actors in return for bailouts.
As best as I can tell Brazille is correct – nothing done here was illegal. But alot of it was unethical.
Every reprehensible act that humans can do, is not within the scope of government.
Only those involving the initiation of force or fraud.
People are free to acts stupidly and to their own harm.
Sander’s has no right to a DNC free of Clinton control and influence.
He could have run on a socialist ticket.
Given that I do not beleive campaign finances laws are constitutional, I am not going to be bent out of shape over them.
Anyone who wishes should be free to give whatever amount they please to whoever they please for whatever reasons they wish – political or otherwise. And they should be free to do so secretly if they wish.
The only legal issue is that those within government – elected or appointed can not trade their influence for money.
Though I want to make clear it is the government actor that commits the crime.
Roby “How happy would you be right now with a Sanders presidency? I suspect you would be miserable and me too.”
I suspect I would be in the same frame of mind as I am with Trump, but still less miserable than with Obama. I suspect nothing would be different other than a more moderate SCOTUS appointment. I say that because a true liberal would never get through the senate and I am not so sure we would not be better off with another Kennedy in place of Gorsuch. And I say the other stuff would ge the same. Congress has passed nothing of substance so far and that would have been the same under Sanders.
Oh, also the psychotic tantrums on TV would be on Fox News and not MSNBC. The other change would be Jay drinking in celebration of Sanders instead of drowning his sorrows.
It is a bit early to say with certainty, but Gorsuch may prove to be the most important contribution of Trump’s presidency.
While broadly sharing the originalist approach fo Scalia, Gorsuch less democratic about it, more committed and more means than ends driven than Scalia.
I think Scalia was a great justice – but he is also responsible for a number of bad decisions
Kennedy is an absolute disaster. He is the epitome of what is wrong with what many here consider “moderate”.
The right answer to most questions is NOT the middle way.
Quite often the “middle way” is worse than the wrong way.
The hardest errors to fix are “compromises”
I think Kennedy is a nice guy, but he has presided over more than a decade of decisions that are completely absent any underlying principles – not even bad ones.
That is precisely what we do NOT want out of SCOTUS.
Right or wrong SCOTUS’s job is to draw BRIGHT Lines.
Nuance, subjectivity and discretion should be as distant from Government and law as humanly possible. while on occasion not entirely avoidable they need to be as minimal as possible.
O’Conner was similar when she was on the court and has wisely expressed regret over exactly that.
SCOTUS decisions should provide answers, not more questions.
This is equally true for the left, and one of the problems with the left. Those on the left rarely provide bright line answers to anything.
Third try
Dave , “That is precisely what we do NOT want out of SCOTUS.”
Please use the proper noun when making a comment such as this. Please use “I” and not “we” as I want a complete court made up of justices that base decisions on the constitution and not political leanings. I am tired of decisions made based on some liberal or conservative position that the court “interprets” the constitution supports. I am tired of decisions made by the court based on how the court will be viewed in the future by historians or what negative impact it may have on some perceived “right”.
Freedom to bear arms is just that. No state or local government should infringe on that right.
Freedom of speech is just that. Twitter and Facebook is yesterdays town square where your right to say most anything was not infringed on.
The right to privacy is just that. No company should be required to give the government “keys- to evryones “locked” data just because they need to look at one persons specific data.
Based on the current members and a one judge switch in political positions, each of these issues could find a different decision since they no longer make decisions based on the constitution.
Kennedy may not be perfect, but he is better than the rest.
You have a point regarding we. That said – “we’ really do. Bur “we” may not all understand that.
“we” – you and I – agree that SCOTUS decisions should be made based on the constitution. But that is an insufficiently precise definition to meet the requirements of “rule of law” those who buy a “living constitution” – it.e the meaning is what the words mean now, can have both constitutional conforming decisions and ideology.
Gorsuch is a textualist.
First comes the plain meaning of the words.
If necescary as understood at the time they were ratified,
by those who ratified them,
if that is insufficient, the appropriate application of natural law.
If at any step along the process things are unclear the answer is no the government does nto have that power, or yes the individual does have that right.
Sorry Ron, I like Kennedy, but he is the worst not the best.
He does not root decisions in the constitution.
He seeks to compromise competing views – maybe with a slight right tilt, but still his value is compromise, not the constitution.
Supreme court compromise decisions are the most common examples of where compromise is bad.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
Ron, you hit the nail on the head:
If right now, the news story was Reince Priebus writing a book about how Trump essentially bought the RNC, forced all party communications and contributions to go through the Trump campaign, and essentially spent RNC money, as if it were his to campaign with, evading campaign finance laws and spending it as only she saw fit? Hoo, boy! Jay would be spewing every foul epithet he could come up with, and claiming that Trump was debasing the system. But, of course, if Hillary does it? Oh….no big deal.
And how about Biden? He would have had the best chance of beating Trump, but Hillary likely boxed him out too, because it was Obama’s debt that she was paying, and Obama decided to back her. Biden’s son’s death surely was a factor, but he now says that he regrets not getting in. My guess is that it’s not only Bernie supporters who are pissed….
Donna Brazile may think that the whole arrangement was unethical, but there are plenty of lawyers who think that the arrangement was criminal. Funny, how everything that the Clinton’s touch is corrupted…….
It was MOSTLY the Clinton Campaign money, filtered into the DNC bank accounts TO KEEP IT SOLVENT. The Clinton Campaign was greedy. They took over the flow of money (almost all of it flowing in after they made the DNC solvent, a RESULT of continuing donations through the Clinton Candidacy.
Did Bernie supporters donate money to the DNC? Or as Donna suggested, send donations directly to him? If so, they weren’t acting as Party Democrats, but exclusively as Bernie supporters.
Bottom line — what’s illegal about any of it?
What is there for Mueller to investigate?
What’s it have to do with Russian interfearance in the election?
It’s a BS story to divert attention from tRUMP.
First, Mueller should not be investigating no matter what.
The only things an SC should be involved in are those where there is a clear conflict with the DOJ/FBI.
That would be something like investigating the president, the AG, or the FBI director.
Almost any other conflict can be resolved by shifting people arround, or hiring people from outside washington into DOJ or FBI.
Next, I agree with you there is nothing in the DNC mess that I have seen that is a crime.
Unethical ? Sure. Despicable ? Absolutely.
But this is business for the democratic party to sort our on its own.
Priscilla seems campaign finance law violations – those just prove the error in our campaign finance laws.
It is not a “BS” story though.
It is an excellent story that an unbiased media would chase down.
There is not and never has been any consequential story regarding Trump and Russia.
You just keep flogging a dead horse – and implicating the Obama administration ever deeper in misconduct.
“Priscilla seems campaign finance law violations – those just prove the error in our campaign finance laws.”
I agree that there are problems with our campaign finance laws ~ but,on the other hand, they are LAWS.
The Clinton’s have always considered themselves above the law.
Using party funds to circumvent the laws that restrict political donations, if that is what she did, is illegal. Obama’s DOJ prosecuted ~and JAILED ~Dinesh D’Souza for campaign finance fraud for donating too much money to a NY Senatorial candidate (He asked friends to donate in their names and reimbursed the money). Of course, the real reason they went after him was because he made an anti-Obama film… but it was lying about political donations that gave the US Attorney in NY an opening to prosecute him
You may be right, and everything that Clinton did was on the legal up and up, but I would be surprised if Hillary’s unethical power play didn’t involve some laws being broken. I wonder if the Clinton Foundation gave some of its “charity” to purchase the DNC? Excellent use of Russian money….
Also, Jay, are you saying that Hillary saved the DNC with her personal money, not with money from her campaign donations or from Clinton Foundation cash?
Because I don’t think that we know that, and I think it’s relevant. There are FEC guidelines, meant to keep the election process fair, and if Hillary was using the DNC apparatus, and money donated tp the DNC ~not to her ~ to rig the primaries, so that Bernie couldn’t gain any traction, then she was in flagrant violation of those guidelines.
Not to mention that the DNC leadership, which was apparently made up of Debbie W-S and Hillary’s campaign was required by federal election law to remain neutral in the nomination process.
I do not think the FEC is constitutional, or that any restrictions on political contributions are constitutional.
Government can “regulate” the conduct of elected and unelected officials. Not the private people who contribute to them.
We have our entire concept of bribery and corruption upside down.
It is government and those in it that we must constrain and punish.
Jay, it is a serious story, I’m sorry if it detracts from Trump thrashing, he deserves even more, but try this one on:
I ask you, what would have happened if Biden had decided to run when Hillary controlled the DNC. Would he have been screwed by the DNC as Sanders was. Of course it was OK to shut Sanders, a crazy old coot, out, but many say Biden could have beaten Trump.
I held my nose to vote for Hillary, but I would have enjoyed voting for Biden.
My thoughts like yours – in fact I was pushing for Biden online. But HE said he wasn’t running, too close to his son’s death. Clinton was definitely the WAY LESSER of two evils.
Tho I didn’t hold my nose as tight as you did.
I remember her as NY Senator (were you in NYC then?) – she was a decent Senator I thought, Middle-Left-Moderate, and willing to compromise across the aisle with Republicans. I gave her a C+ rating. I thought she’d be C+ President, compared to Douchebag Donnie, who I had at Z-.
dd12, I thought it was awfully odd that Obama endorsed Hillary so early on in the process, before his own VP had decided whether or not to run.
Looking at it now, from the perspective of Brazile’s book, it’s obvious that Hillary made a deal to pay off his debt to the DNC, but he would have to back her. $28M is a lot of money. And, of course, since she was “guaranteed” to be president, she had no concerns about getting the money back..the money was going to flow freely.
Biden has said that he regrets not getting in the race. My guess is that, had he had Obama’s strong support, he would have done it.
If Hillary was even the slightest bit competent or charismatic as a candidate she could have beaten Bernie fair and square, not to mention that the DNC’s system of super-delegates, which was set up so that the party could block any future McGoverns from getting the nomination, would have ensured that Bernie lost.
But the VP, running with the blessing of Obama? She could have never overcome that.
Oh, I think it is a big deal – but it is a big deal for democrats.
Ethics criticisms from Brazille are a bit hollow though.
But then again it is hard to find anyone ethical on the left,
of course not all that easy to find anyone ethical in politics
Yet you think that we should give these ethically challenged people vast power and control of our lives ?
Republicans continue to try to screw the Middle Class.
From AP:
“A day after the GOP unveiled its plan promising middle-class relief, the House’s top tax-writer, Rep. Kevin Brady, released a revised version of the bill that would impose a new, lower-inflation “chained CPI” adjustment for tax brackets immediately instead of in 2023. That means more income would be taxed at higher rates over time — and less generous tax cuts for individuals and families.
The change, posted on the website of the Ways and Means Committee, reduces the value of the tax cuts for ordinary Americans by $89 billion over 10 years compared with the legislation released with fanfare Thursday.
As wages rise, middle-class taxpayers would have more of their income taxed at the 25 percent rate instead of at 12 percent, for instance.
“The bill’s like a dead fish: The more it hangs out in the sunlight, the stinkier it gets,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer pronounced after word of Brady’s change. “The more people learn about this bill, the less they’re going to like it.””
Schumer would not be my go to person.
Further the entire debate is fundimentally flawed.
There are two important and related purposes to tax reform:
Cleaning up a disasterously messy and expensive tax code.
There will inherently be winners and losers to that.
But the results will be net positive.
The less government decides which choices people make should be favored and which should be discouraged, the more free we are to make the choices best for us without regard for taxes.
This also has a small net economically stimulative effect, as greater economic efficiency results in higher standards of living.
The 2nd objective is purely economic.
Tax cuts for the middle class, are not economically stimulative.
I wish that were not so, but it is the facts.
The primary stimulative effect of the proposed cuts will be reductions in corporate, business, and upper margin income taxes.
These are also the only tax cuts that stand a chance of paying for themselves with higher tax revenues. Middle class tax cuts do not stimulate the economy much, and do not pay for themselves,
If you want middle class tax cuts you must cut government spending.
I am not all that sure of the Republican plan. I think it is too heavily stacked towards popular appeal rather than real benefits.
But Tax reform is like health insurance reform. What you start with and what you end up with are quite different.
Given a choice between a personal tax cut and an increase in economic growth of 1% – I will pick the latter.
tRump A Bump On The Rump Of Incompetence
Given that I believe it was Jefferson demanded that his AG prosecute Burr for Treason and very nearly prosecuted the case himself, I think that Trump’s conduct is well inside presidential norms.
Corker does not seem to grasp that the constitution vests ALL executive powers in the president. There is no inappropriately pressuring the DOJ.
If the prosecution itself is legitimate then Trump’s pressure is legitimate.
I do not think you can get bent out of shape as Trump’s actions are tame compared with those of Jefferson.
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/06/belligerent-president-accusations-treason-stolen-supreme-court-seat/ideas/nexus/
Regardless all federal executive power vests with the president.
It is only improper for the president to order an investigation if that investigation is improper.
I keep pointing out to you that the Mueller investigation is improper and lawless.
That is because – there is no specific crime being investigated.
But even that is not sufficient – there also must be sufficient evidence that the specific crime has actually been committed, and that the person being investigated actually did it.
Mere allegations and wishful thinking do not reach these standards.
The U1 Allegations reach the level sufficient to be a legitimate investigation.
I am confused about something, Dave…maybe you know the answer.
So, if U1 allegations merit an investigation, even a Special Prosecutor (and I agree that they do), why can’t the president order the DOJ to begin that investigation?
I understand that, if Jeff Sessions considers himself recused from all matters involving Hillary, the next person to open the investigation would be Rod Rosenstein, who is compromised by his own involvement in the U1 scandal, so that’s a problem. But there are ways around that ~ insist that Rosenstein recuse, and let him resign, if he won’t. Or ask Congress to appoint a Special Counsel…maybe that’s where this is going?
Priscilla, let me try to answer your question. I believe Trump can appoint a SI. But if he did it would set precedent so when he leaves office, he is fair game or his cabinet is fair game in future investigations, along with any future administrations. Right now there are unwritten agreements between parties. “You cover my ass, I’ll coover yours”
A “special prosecutor” Is only different from an ordinary prosecutor in that:
They are not typically someone currently in the DOJ.
They are answerable typically to the AG.
They are supposed to be narrorwly bound to the investigation of a specific crime, typically one where there is a conflict that precludes the normal US Attorney’s and FBI agents from prosecuting.
They are supposed to be used only when the target of the investigation is a person normally inside the normal chain of command of the DOJ/FBI.
Unlike an Independent council – which we no longer have, they are still answerable to the AG and ultimately the President.
There is absolutely no reason for an SC to investigate Clinton or even the former administration.
There is HOWEVER good reason for DOJ to take an investigation of Clinton or the former administration OUTSIDE the hands of washington insiders in DOJ and FBI.
But that can be accomplished without a Special Prosecutor.
The AG can just hire a US Attorney from outside the federal government – some State AG or former AG.
As President Trump can direct DOJ or the FBI or nearly all other agencies to do as he pleases.
There are several constraints on that:
Some entities – the FCC, the Federal Reserve are purportedly actually independent.
The President still appoints their boards, but he very little control beyond that.
The FBI is NOT independent – it just has a tradition of independence which has no legal merit.
The next constraint is that the upper tier of government administrators must be approved by the Senate, and those below that are very hard to fire.
The next constraint is impeachment. There is really no binding definition of what Congress can impeach and remove a president for. Therefore it can remove the president for doing his job as he sees it.
The next is that if he directs someone to do something they believe is illegal or unconstitutional – they are supposed to object and if forced resign. But we have had a spate of people who just ignored the presidents direction daring him to fire them.
This is a part of why I beleive that Trump needs to fire alot of people. He should probably stay away from those such as Mueller for now where that could trigger congress to act stupidly.
But he needs to establish that he will fire people.
At the same time he really should quit making stupid statement about things like pulling peoples FCC licenses.
If he wants to get people to do as he orders even when they do not like it, he needs to distance himself from clearly unconstitutional and stupid threats.
Sessions BTW has only recused himself from all matters involving Russia and the Election campaign. Sessions can go after Hillary.
Rosenstein needs to resign – he is tied into the U1 coverup. If there is an investigation he will atleast be a witness and probably a target. I think we are past recuse with Rosenstein.
I would finally note that DOJ/FBI can not investigate willy nilly – neither can the SC.
Rosensteins mandate for the SC was unconstitutional.
If you want a wide ranging investigation unconstrained by the constraints of criminal investigations, you need to conduct it from congress.
But you also need to note that Congress can not prosecute, it can only investigate.
Congress does not appoint Special Counsels.
Using the older Independent prosecutor law – which has expired, Congress could appoint the special prosecutor. But the IC law had constitutional issues – as I noted before congress can investigate, it can not prosecute.
But we elide the constitution all the time – The executive can not legislate or regulate, but it does all the time. That is done through unconstitutional delegation,
But it is not likely you are going to get SCOTUS to reverse on that.
Roby,
Each of us is “alone” in our views – no one has exactly your views either,
To the extent that these things are common – I am far from alone, and I have hundreds of years of history, philosophy and most of the great thinkers of the west and many of those of other cultures.
But morality and truth (and science) are not decided by consensus.
The roots of classical liberalism emerged in Germany following Martin Luther.
New religions appeared all over and barons and kings each adopted different ones.
As is common even today, within each political entity tolerance of minorities was low often resulting in persecution and violence. But where a group was a minority in one division it was often the majority in a neighboring one, with the result that neighboring rules felt the need to go to war to support their co-religionists in the adjactent state.
Decades of wars like this exhausted states. Victory was impossible, and constant war little better.
Eventually toleration of religious minorities evolved as a government principle.
Not because people believed in it. Not because there was some strong value placed on religious pluralism, but because the alternative was violent and impracticle.
This was the birth of classical liberalism. It has never been the majority perspective.
The desire of the majority – people like you, to use force to impose their wills on the lives of others has always been two high.
In fact meddling in the lives of other is WORSE in democracies that in more autocratic states. It is easier for a single ruler to grasp that conflict with a minority of their people is not worth the trouble than it is for a political majority. Both democratic and republican parties seem to beleive that the impramatur of 51% of the people allows them to do as they please. Obama’s assertion that “Elections have consequences” – taken to mean we won, we get to impose our rules on you is quite vile.
Today the tables are turned – the left seems completely unable to accept that same dictate applies to them and Trump, despite the fact that most of Trump’s actions are to undo the crap Obama imposed.
Look arround you. Our world has changed radically in the past 50 years.
Many of those changes are reflected in our politics and government.
But the successful changes are driven by the people as a whole – not government.
We have changed radically with regard to issues of sexual orientation, and we have done so in a short time. We have done so for the most part without laws, and to the extent the law has been successfully involved that law has been libertarian law, not progressive law.
The remaining battle grounds are those involving the respect for other minorities, the understanding that the rights of people to their own choices regarding sexual orientation end at the rights of people to their own choices regarding religion.
The bars against Force and fraud are the line that prevents one set of rights from conflict with another.
It is irrelevant whether the details of my views are shared by all or one.
My principles, values and morality are the only ones that work. Further all other arrangements work ever worse the more pluralistic society is.
Ultimately you have two choices – continue this nonsense of trying to get your own way by force, with the resulting constant ebb and flow of power between possibly shifting groups.
Trump and “trumpism” are the consequence of the success of the left. That is your future. Defeat Trump, regain power return to your efforts to transform society by force, and the growing minoriities you alienate – because the use of force always alienates people, will eventually be large enough to toss you out of power – and they will make the same mistakes as you and in their turn be displaced.
So long as most people beleive they can impose their will on others by force – this dance will continue forever. Further you should feel lucky. Historically the past failures of the left tend to result in much more totalitarian regimes than Trump.
Two popular conservative Twitter personalities were just outed as Russian trolls:
(And #ShitForBrainsTrump still won’t sign off on the Russia sanctions. Why not?)
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/russia-fake-twitter-facebook-posts-accounts-trump-election-jenna-abrams-20171103.html
Be careful Jay!!! Until you put a muzzle on Twitter and Facebook, there are going to be people manipulating information, posting lies, hiding their real identity and trying to make you believe things that may not be true, Make sure you check out the information that you see on these social sites so you are not blindsided by information like you were by Philly.com.
Please know that just because it is on the internet does not make it true.
You’re right, Ron. It’s a tricky tightrope between censorship and 1st Amendment rights. But we don’t want organized interfearance in our lives by foreign entities, like those Russian Bots, right?
So how do we find fictitiohs accounts on Twitter and Facebook? How do we know Jim Smith is in Iowa and not Boris Spetokov in NYC represnting Russia on Facebook. How does Facebook know if Ron in NC post some meme that is anti candidate B or if it is the Russian in NYC.
Its tough and the decisions made will have lasting impacts for 100 years or more. Just like gun control, the first control on social sites will allow a crack in the Bill of Rights the government will drive a Mack truck through. That is why I am so much a defender of the words in the constitution and so against interpretations based on political positions. That and the fact I have a very low olinion of any politician who is a member of the two party system.
“So how do we find fictitiohs accounts on Twitter and Facebook? How do we know Jim Smith is in Iowa and not Boris Spetokov in NYC represnting Russia on Facebook. ”
I’m guessing the technology is available to social media to verify nation of origin.
I don’t have a problem with Facebook or Twitter or WordPress listing my nation/Homeland or even home State alongside my membership. I don’t see that as intrusive. Do you?
I have a problem with most any form of government censorship. If the companies want to do that, it is fine with me. Someone else can start another site that does not allow that public information and people can determine which ones they will use. However, I did say Boris Spetocov was Russian in NYC, not a foreign country, just like the women you linked to.
So, how do we filter out political interference without the monitoring of all comments for “key” words.
You can’t – because the public expression of a POV – even by a real russian in russia working for the FSB and and pretending to be a 13 yr old from Iowa is not actually interferance.
Why cant someone start a site that does not censor comments and content if Twitter and Facebook do?
There is no reason one can’t.
There is a replacement for youtube called dtube that is monetized using bitcoin.
But it is not very popular yet.
There is a replacement for twitter called gab I beleive.
I think Der Sturmer and many who got banned from Twitter moved there.
I do not know about facebook.
Social media as a whole has been taking hits for handling conservative posts and news quite different from others.
I do nto think we are there, but there is a risk to them of a significant exodous.
It would not take but a few percent to change their politcies.
If the technology exists – PLEASE DO NOT USE IT!!!
This entire line of reasoning is ridiculously dangerous and stupid.
You would have silence Franklin, Madison, Jay, Hamilton and most of our founders.
It is possible to interfere with the speach of others. It is not possible to prevent the speach fo those you do not want, without also preventing that of lots of others.
It is also not your right to do.
We already have far too much biased stupid censorship in social media.
And yes, I do think that Twitter/FB/…. listing anything that I do not choose to allow them to list about me is an intrusion – and invasion of privacy.
Why must I allow people online to know who I am, where I live, or other facts about me ?
Why can;’t you grasp how horribly badly this will go ?
If you did not think Trump was somehow the benefiticary you would be arguing exactly the opposite of what you are now.
Your values and principles are about outcome only.
Dave you know they share info. You can choose to use them or not. It is their system and as long as they let peolle know they do it, then fine.
A request to not go somewhere is not the same as a command.
Regardless, there is a very very serious problem with congress saying – censor yourself or we will censor you.
That is a very improper form of prior restraint.
Dear Dummy.. Facebook and Twitter are non government businesses and have zero obligation to keep info you provide them to use their services private.
If their rules for allowing you access to their services include stipulations that they can publish that info – make it available to whomever they want — that’s up to them.
Same here. If Rick decided You had to use real names to comment, not aliases, and provide accurate zip codes as well, YOU would have the choice of complying or finding another place to funnel your skewed gushes of inconsequential nonsense.
How is any of that unconstitutional? Or abridging your rights?
“Dear Dummy” learn to read.
The problem distinguishing between private and government action is YOURS not mine.
Government may not bar speach a priori, it may not censor speach. It may not threaten to do so.
All of the above is unconstitutional prior restraint.
When congressmen say to social media – censor yourself or we will – that is unconstitutional, immoral and unethical.
With respect to private actors.
What they are free to do and what they are wise to do, are quite different.
Lets assume for the purposes of argument that social media splits.
And we have two competing systems – “free social media”, where anyone can post anything even using a pseudonym, and “stalinist social media” where all must use there real names and provide their locations. and …..
Can you live in a world that is that way ?
Can you live with the possibility on on “free social media” Russia might be able to make posts comparing Clinton to satan ?
Can you live with the fact that people might not be able to tell if some people are russian government trolls ?
If you were given your own sandbox, with safe spaces and crying blankets and all the censorship and rules you want – would you be willing to leave the rest of us alone with whatever freedoms we wanted ?
I would note, that if you are prepared to accept that there can be social media where russian trolls as free to post under pseudonyms, then you have lost the entire Russia social media argument – because in 2016 that was how social media was.
If however you are claiming that a “free social media” can not be permitted, then all you are doing is unconstitutionally bypassing constraints on the federal government by holding a gun to the head of private actors.
Government may not accomplish through threats or manipulation of private actors, what it can not do directly itself.
Why do we care about “fictitious” accounts ?
I have posted here as asmith, jbsay, and dhlii – none of these are my real name – though the last is my initials.
I had FB cancel my account in my real name, claiming I was not who I said I was, even though I provided my drivers license to them – probably because my read name is the same as someone who is famous.
Franklin wrote letters to the editor to his own papers using a wide variety of pseudonyms,
The federalist and antifederalist papers were written using pseudonyms.
We have an incredibly long tradition of political speach using pseudonyms.
The supreme court has upheld the right to speak anonymously.
Not only is it difficult to cull accounts – we should not be doing so.
Finally why do we care who says something ?
This entire argument is a bizarre twist on an appeal to authority.
The left seems to think that arguments are valid because the right persona made them,
they are now arguing they are invalid because the wrong person made them.
Why do I care whether something is posted by John Smith, Boris Spetokov, or Vladimir Putin personally ?
why do I care if Boris lives in Iowa, NYC, or Moscow ?
Why do I care if he is employed by ADM or the FSB ?
Why do I care if what he writes is true or false ?
I am a voter, I can read myself, I can checkout what I read or not as I wish. I can make my decisions on whatever basis I want.
This entire left Russia meme ultimately devolves into a demand to control what people can see, read, and hear prior to an election.
If those on the left do not wish to be compared to communists, they should not channel communist policies.
Dave, you need to ask Jay those questions. My comment was in response to his being upset that some woman in ( forget the state, he shared link) was posting comments under a fake name and she apparently worked for the Russians.
I do not want the government controlling speech, religion, guns, press, social media or having keys to unlock yiur ohone that will also unlock mine. I think the liberals would take all guns and the conservatives would monitor all phones under the name of safety and security if they could.
Like I said, if Twitter or Facebook censors conversations and that is in their user agreement, thhen fine, people can choose to use them or find anotherr site that doesnt because they are private and own the site. The government dies not.
Your correct, my response should have been to Jay.
The rest I agree with.
It is not a tricky tight rope.
The government may not censor speach based on content – at all ever.
It may not do so by proxy.
Prior restraint which is what you are after here had the absolute highest constitutional burden of everything – you just plain can not engage in prior restraint.
This is fundimentally the same argument I make regarding regulation – for the same reason.
A priori constraints on human activity are not only far more damaging than punishment for actual harms, but the actual extent of a priori harms is completely unknown.
You will never know what would have been – had people be able to say or do something that the law prohibited.
Someone else’s speach does nto interfere with your life – not even the speach of Russian Bots.
You are free to not listen.
Why does this matter ?
We have been through this over and over.
Aren’t Russians allowed on the internet ?
Aren’t they allowed to express themselves politically ?
Aren’t people allowed to speak anonymously ?
If you equate “influence” with speak – the argument is over, and you lose.
Russia may have “spoken” in our election. Who cares ? Can’t be stopped.
Wise people would not want to.
Your argument still boils down to:
I did nto get the outcome I wanted
Whatever might have caused that must be evil.
I do not care if you “out” some twitter or facebook account as belonging to hitler.
What I really want is for you to grasp how stupid and harmful this is.
You are arguing for 1984.
It does not matter what Russians may have said – unless you beleive that magic incantations changes peoples votes.
You are ultimately arguing for the power to control not just who speaks but what they say – because ultimately they are inseparable.
What if your “russian trolls” were not russians – they were just ordinary conservatives ?
Would you bar that – even if it was somehow magically their words that tipped the election ?
I don’t know what you’re babbling about.
Do you?
The words are all ordinary english and quite clear.
My argument is not only consistent, but consistent with natural rights, and the US constitution. They are also consistent with what is possible.
If there are actually pseudonymous russians acting as agents for the Kremlin posting about US elections on social media – then we must allow that,
There is no way to prevent it without also infringing all over the place on a plethora of our rights.
Further your argument is rooted in the idiocy that who says something matters more than what is said.
You do not like the results – the outcome of the election. So you are trying to change the conditions of the election to acheive a different result.
Voters are entitled to listen to (or ignore) any expression they wish – including Russia.
I honestly do not understand how you are unable to grasp how bad an outcome you are going to get if you start down this road.
Billionaire Robert Mercer did Trump a huge favor. Will he get a payback?
McClatchy Washington Bureau
MAY 01, 2017 6:00 AM
WASHINGTON
The Internal Revenue Service is demanding a whopping $7 billion or more in back taxes from the world’s most profitable hedge fund, whose boss’s wealth and cyber savvy helped Donald Trump pole-vault into the White House.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article147454324.html
Jay, would you be surprised if he did get a payback? What president has not “paid back” political supporters in the past?
What kind of payback are you content with him getting from the tRUMP Administration?
If you find an actual quid pro quo – then you can bring it to the house and ask for impeachment.
If you wish to reign in even the possibility of quid pro quo’s.
Disempower the federal government. That is the only thing that will work.
I would love to see our politicians caught in corruption – including Trump.
While you can not get at Trumps tax return – you can get at all records of his actions as president. File FOIA requests until you find whatever Quid Pro Quo you are looking for.
“Trump attorney threatens formal challenges to Mueller/DOJ if Russia probe gets into old real-estate deals. politi.co/2iu2xSr @politico “
What’s DouchieDon afraid they’ll find?
Jay, what is Muellers directive? To find what happened with Russian influence into our elections or to find something to impeach the president?
If it is Russian influence, then he should allow the investigation to continue.
If it is prior real estate dealings, then lets reopen Whitewater along with every Trump deal since 1980. What good for the goose is good for the gander.
What if it’s about previous tRUMP dealings with Russian money laundering?
Wouldn’t that be relevant to an investigation of Russian meddling in the election, as it would make Donnie vulnurable to Russian influence in our politics?
The standard for a criminal investigation is not
“What if there was a crime committed”.
BTW Mueller is going to lose on the Money laundering charges.
Money laundering requires that the money is the result of criminal activities.
What Manafort was engaged in was tax evasion, and I would guess that Mueller did nto charge that because in 2014 Manafort was investigated by the IRS and my guess is that he paid fines and settled. So the tax evasion claims are dead.
That leave only the FARA claim – which is very weak.
Manafort does not appear to be a very reputable person.
He has clearly been playing at the dark grey edges of the law.
But Mueller is making his own mistakes and seriously overcharging.
Much of this may not get to a jury, and what little does will not survive appeal.
That does not mean I think Manafort is a good guy. Only that we should follow the law, not make it up.
Building a fake money laundering charge is what we do not want – an out of control and lawless Prosecutor
The U1 deal and his role highlights the contrast.
I can trivially make much the same money laundering charge against the clintons as is being made against manafort – CF received monies, and then paid for food, lodging and travel for the Clintons – that is “money laundering” by Mueller’s definition.
It is also tax evasion.
The Clinton investigation was done through the independent council act – which many agree was unconstitutional.
Regardless the IC had more power than the SC has. Further the IC was structurally an adjunct of Congress not DOJ – that changes many things. Starr had to go to Congress for approval everytime he sought to broaden his investigation.
The SC act requires Mueller to go to Rosenstein.
Rosenstein should resign or be fired he is horribly conflicted, and if Mueller wishes to go beyond the scope he was given – which should be narrowed, then he should have to make a case to the Deputy AG that he has found evidence of a crime as a result of his investigations into what he is supposed to be investigating.
Regardless, everyone seems to entirely get this wrong – the government can not go looking for a crime. If they do not have evidence of a crime to START, they may not investigate.
I can not just say I think Jay and Roby are engaged in sketchy real estate deals I want government to investigate them.
it does not matter.
Nothing Mueller charged re manafort is inside even his broad brief.
You seem to be happy with fishing expeditions. Should we set a US attonery to tear your life apart ? I have no doubt they can find that you have committed a felony – probably without knowing it.
Wishing to keep your private life private is not an admission of guilt.
tRump:
When he ran for office he promised AMERICA TRANSPARENCY TO HIS TAXES!
What happened to that promise? Too much to hide? Russian connections? Mafia connections? Sexual assaults payoffs? Shakey finances? All of the above?
liar liar toupee on fire!
Is there a law on the books requiring presidents to release their taxes. If so, then he needs to release them or face a legal challenge.
If not, then it is his choice to release them or not. Just because he said he would and now he won’t, I guess he lied.
I bet I could find something somewhere in the past where the president lied to the people.
Ron, stop it.
Show me an example where a previous candidate lied about doing something he promised he would, in relation to his business transparency, to prevent egregious conflicts of interest.
If there was a question about the legality of his marriage, and he had a legal way to keep from showing the marriage license after promising to do so, wouldn’t that make his varicity suspect?
He’s hiding something important enough to lie about. Don’t you think you, as a citizen, should know what it is?
I am not prepared to make my Tax return public – are you ?
Of course he is hiding something.
He is hiding his financial affairs – something all of us are entitled to.
I agree with you he lied. Find me a politician that hasn’t.
Regardless, all voters knew on election day he had not made his tax return available, and was unlikely to afterwards.
That was you opportunity to express your concern.
Beyond that you do not have a right to other peoples tax returns.
Not even the presidents.
I know that you beleive you are entitled to know everything that you want about anyone you wish – but your not.
“I am not prepared to make my Tax return public – are you ?”
Don’t you understand how stupid this question is?
It is not a stupid question.
Just saw this, good for a laugh…
Politicians lie – get over it.
Regardless, you did not vote for him.
He made no binding agreement with you.
“He made no binding agreement with you.”
You mean he made no LEGAL binding promise with me or the nation.But he broke a binding of trust, by promising to release his taxes, and failing to do that.
He promised that BEFORE his election, Dumb-Dumb. First he said he would release them BEFORE voting day, and reneged on that. Then he said he would release them if he won. He failed to follow through on both. A DOUBLE LIE. Did that slip your mind? What the hell is wrong with your brain? Why would you rationalize deception as blatant as that?
You really are a sorry sack of Silly-Putty slipshod moral stances. You’re insinuating Lying is ok if it isn’t notorized, and that tRUMP isn’t obligated to tell the truth to those who didn’t vote for him like me. Shylock should be your alias here.
We are not disagreeing with respect to the facts – even though you keep pounding the facts as if there is a disagreement.
Yup, he lied. So what ? It was not a very big lie. It changed no votes.
On election day if getting Trump’s tax return was critical to you – you were free to vote accordingly
With respect to an agreement binding in any form.
You did not vote for him – he had no agreement of any kind with you.
He merely made an offer and then changed his mind.
Regardless, we see the same things. I am just not frothing at the mouth over them.
I thought it was a mistake for Trump to promise his tax return, I did not expect him to provide it. I did not rely on his offer. I have suffered no harm in not gaining what I never had a right to in the first place.
Trump made alot of commitments.
Those commitments were essentially of the form – vote for me and I will do X.
If you did not vote for him, you have no standing to demand that he does X.
Those who voted for Trump appear to be satisfied.
No one cares that you are not.
If Trump does provide his tax return are you voting for him in 2020 ?
If not, then no one cares what you want.
All this crap about Clinton misusing DNC resources is turning out to be just that – CRAP!
“Howard Dean: Clinton-DNC agreement was ‘standard operating procedure’”
“Turns out the memo [former DNC chair] Donna [Brazile] spoke about applied only to the general election,” Dean said. “If so then this memo is standard operating procedure for 15 years.”
The agreement was not necessarily exclusive to the Clinton campaign and allowed the DNC to remain open to signing agreements with other candidates for advising on fundraising, research and staffing.
It was intended only to be used in the general election, although the agreement contains clauses related to other primary candidates, including an allowance for Clinton’s campaign to review mass communications “that features a particular Democratic primary candidate.”
The DNC noted in the memo that communication related to primary debates “will be exclusively controlled by the DNC.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358748-howard-dean-clinton-dnc-agreement-was-standard-operating
MORE SANDERS UNWILLINGNESS TO CHIP IN TO HELP DNC
“The same offer was made to all candidates, Clinton allies have argued in countering Brazile, but only Clinton took advantage of it.
And an email obtained by NBC News, first published by the Washington Post, shows the DNC’s lawyers told the Sanders campaign they could have some influence over how money would be spent to prepare for the general election if they raised enough cash for the party.
“[I]f you’re raising significantly more than the amount to cover the voter file for the DNC, DNC staff would be happy to chat with the Sanders team and come to an understanding about the best way to use those funds to prepare for the general election at the DNC,” Graham Wilson of the firm Perkins Coie wrote.
“The DNC has had discussions like this with the Clinton campaign and is of course willing to do so with all.”
However, Sanders’ joint fundraising agreement with the DNC, signed in November, 2015, which was also obtained by NBC News, does not appear to include a supplemental deal.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/bernie-sanders-camp-fix-was-against-clinton-n817501
Hillary didn’t go out of her way to help Bernie, big surprise!
Did Disingenuous Donnie go out of his way to help any of the other Republicans running for president? Or did he do everything he could to demean and disgrace them? Some like Cruz (beat me whip me insult me and my family) ended up licking his shoes in obeisance. The Republican Anal Party is now in perpetual bend over, spreading its collective cheeks to Trumpty Dumpty’s rule.
Jay;
I disagree that all of this is crap. I think it looks pretty bad, and I think that it is clearly unethical.
But it is not or should not be illegal.
Those of you on the left do not seem to be able to grasp that every bad deed is not a crime. That everything that people can be outraged over is not something government must fix.
You complain because Trump promised to release his taxes.
He did promise.
He did not release them.
That is lying.
It is not a crime.
Voters knew at the time of the election he had not produced his taxes and chose accordingly.
You can be outraged – I doubt Trumpo cares – neither you nor I voted for him anyway.
I think it is unlikely the media will let go of this DNC mess – because the left needs someone to blame for losing and the Russia meme is falling apart.
Ultimately the left will blame Hillary.
When two ex president from your own party knock you this badly, you know you’re at the bottom of the barrel.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358745-george-w-bush-im-worried-that-i-will-be-the-last-republican
Given that the Bush’s are both progressives like Obama why would I care about their concept of what constitutes a republicans.
The Bushes are not hated, but they are not representative of Republicans.
The new Representative Republican:
It would be news to both Bush 41 and Bush 43 that they’re progressives. They’re simply mainstream Republicans from the era before the Tea Party drove the GOP to the far right.
Rick, I might take issue with your comment about the Tea Party taking over the GOP. I, and a number of friends, supported the TP when it first showed up. Fiscal conservatives wanting attention on spending and taxes. Then the social conservatives took over the TP and our support went elsewhere. So now the GOP is led by social conservatives with liberal tax and spend positions. If they were fiscal conservatives, they would not be supporting tax reform that add 1.5 trillion in debt.
Medicare D, Sarbox, NCLB
The Bush’s do reflect a particular strain of Republicanism – you can probably add Romney to that list.
I think they are decent people, but they still start from the premise that government is the answer regardless of the problem.
They are outside the past traditions of Taft or Eisenhower.
They are closer to the tradition of Nixon.
Both parties are currently engaged in internecine warfare.
The GOP is further along as its disruption started with the vaccuum created as Social conservatives diminished in power.
Neo-conns appear to be moving to the democratic party.
I am not sure what will happen to the Bush wing – but if they remain they will be marginalized.
Democrats are having a similar problem but, Democrats have fewer factions and the far left has taken ownership of the party.
The Tea Party did not actually drive the Party right, they were a LEFT shift.
It is just harder to perceive that as they represent the most extreme parts of the GOP moving away from the religious right and social conservatism.
It would be like antifa rejecting left anarchy and adopting democratic socialism.
They would still be pretty far left, but it would be a move right.
Regardless, the demise of social conservatives concurrently disempowered the left wing of the GOP – the people you are calling moderates.
Trump won the last election – not by appealing to people who would have voted for Romney, but by appealing to blue collar democrats.
That worked because neo-conns and Bush republicans do not have much political power today and do not make up a significant portion of republicans.
As with everything there are complexities to this – though the “great sorting” is nearly complete – which is what is making it easier for more “extreme” republicans (and democrats) to get elected – there are still a number of purple states.
If you are going to find Bush republicans – you will find them there – or more rarely as republican governors or senators in blue states.
“So now the GOP is led by social conservatives with liberal tax and spend positions. If they were fiscal conservatives, they would not be supporting tax reform that add 1.5 trillion in debt.”
Dead on!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brazile-i-considered-replacing-clinton-with-biden-as-2016-democratic-nominee/2017/11/04/f0b75418-bf4c-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.3dc15b3a831c
“Brazile alleges that Clinton’s top aides routinely disrespected her…”
Oh, now I get the petulant foot stomping.
My newest WordPress problem:
Images won’t post.
The image uploads ok, but doesn’t appear.
Sigh.
Anyone else commenting via iPad?
Yup, real foot stomping: “Brazile writes that she inherited a national party in disarray, in part because President Obama, Clinton and Wasserman Schultz were “three titanic egos” who had “stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes.”
Donna is not the first to say this: “Brazile writes that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and his lieutenants were so obsessed with voter data and predictive analytics that they “missed the big picture.”
Yup, may have cost the three wing states.
Reminder:
https://townhall.com/columnists/clarkneily/2017/10/30/if-the-law-is-this-complicated-why-shouldnt-ignorance-be-an-excuse-n2401290?utm_content=buffer87e9e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I guess I am an extremist – I do not agree with any of these.
Roger Stone got banned from twitter for using obsenities.
This is what your individual freedom to post and post ad nauseum adds up to, and no, we are not free to skip, ignore, they are like locusts). You clog the discourse just as you probably do at the buffet table and public toilets and highways. Yes, this is a personal insult to you not a wimpy ad hominem:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/high-angle-view-of-cow-dung-in-the-grass-royalty-free-image/56659950
What? dave’s barrage of posts and images haven’t made you just want to run out and convert to his brand of extreme libertarianism yet?
He has 10 000 more such sure-fire one-liner propaganda messages in the pipeline, submit now and you can avoid the further brainwashing sessions!
Thing is, I used to sorta like the idea of libertarianisim. I have heard some libertarians that made a lot of sense on some points. Now I don’t know.
dduck ” I have heard some libertarians that made a lot of sense on some points. Now I don’t know.”
Just like you can not judge all Democrats by using Pelosi as an example or all Republicans by using Cruz as an example, one must realize you can not use Dave as an example of all Libertarians. While Pelosi is almost falling off the scale on the left and Cruz off the scale on the right, Dave is falling off the Libertarian scale from his extreme views of being a Libertarian. Not all Libertarians hold the extreme views that Dave holds on anti government, anti compromise, anti regulation anti etc……
Maybe Libertarians tend to be pains in the ass who invite unneighborly response …
So it is acceptable to you to run onto another’s property tackle them off of a lawn mower and break their ribs because you do not like their views ?
I guess that should not surprise me, you are prepared to use force without justification all the time.
I have no idea what you think “unneighborly” is, but it is never a justification for the use of force.
In fact that is the core of libertarianism – the fact that my views, or anyone else’s offend you, does not permit you to use force against me, or anyone else.
Chill out. It was tounge in cheek facetious.
(I guess obsessives have trouble with nuance)
This is the internet – sarcasm, irony, facetiousness do not communicate well.
You do not judge ideas by the people who hold them.
Much of the darkness in the recent spat with Roby was my following him into that mistake.
ad hominem is a logical fallacy – meaning it says nothing about the truth or falsity of the initial argument. But it is a vile fallacy because it sidetracks the argument from debate over issues to debate over people, and inherently turns into an insult contest.
In the end it leaves everyone covered in shit, and whatever issue was debated is long lost.
Extreme is just an adjective.
John Locke, Ben Franklin, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill,
these are amount the myriads of people who hold views very similar to mine.
If they are “extreme” then I am proud to be among them.
Regardless,
“Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being “pushed to an extreme”, not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
If your ideas, my ideas, Roby’s ideas, do not work when “pushed to the extreme ” then at worst they are false and at best they are improperly defined.
I am a minarchist, not an anarchist. I am not anti-government
Our govenrment should be far smaller than today.
but I will support most any movement towards less government.
I do not oppose compromise, I oppose the idiocy that compromise is a principle rather than a tool. This should be trivially self evident. Should we have compromised with Hitler and permitted him to kill half the jews ?
When we choose to use force to limit freedom to accomplish some good purpose, we have a positive obligation to demonstrate that:
We will accomplish that good purpose
We have chosen the means that least constrains liberty to do so.
Demonstrate to me any a priori constraint aka regulation, that meets those criteria and we can have a more serious discussion concerning regulation.
Worse still one of our core principles – “ignorance of the law is no excuse” has several critical premises:
That the concepts of right and wrong are so universal that we all know that something is wrong, whether we know it is illegal.
That we do not make illegal what is not universally accepted as wrong.
That the breadth of law can not exceed what we can easily know.
If those premises are not met, then barring ignorance of the law as a defence is itself immoral.
Even if I am wrong and some regulation is necescary or atleast good, the more extreme position is that of defending the status quo.
No regulation is far closer to any possible optimum than what we have.
The extreme position is supporting the status quo.
Labeling an argument extreme is just a technique for dismissing it without considering its merits.
In any given set of choices, the best outcome falls wherever it falls.
If that is in the middle – so be it. But no law of man or nature says that all our best solutions must fall in the center. Should they fall at some extreme – that is not a reason to shrink from them.
We should seek our answers where they are.
“A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is””
When I am not getting sucked into Roby’s dark work of ad hominem,
The core of libertarianism is
“the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.
John Stuart Mill.
There are myriads of other expressions of this principle, which is often call the non-aggression principle.
It is Kant’s catagorical imperative
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
If is sometimes called the law of equal freedom
This is Alaxander Hamilton’s expression of that.
“All men have one common original, they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right. No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any power over his fellow creatures more than another, unless they voluntarily vest him with it.”
Every argument I have made regarding one humans ability to impose their will on another by force or through government is consistent with the above.
That is the social contract. That is the basis for government.
That is the organizing principle of libertarianism, of classical liberalism.
If that does not make sense to you – then libertarianism will not.
So the mere fact of my posting anything – even someone else’s words, even pictures annoys you ?
Regardless, still ad hominem, not a valid argument.
“Just like you can not judge all Democrats by using Pelosi as an example or all Republicans by using Cruz as an example, one must realize you can not use Dave as an example of all Libertarians. While Pelosi is almost falling off the scale on the left and Cruz off the scale on the right, Dave is falling off the Libertarian scale from his extreme views of being a Libertarian. Not all Libertarians hold the extreme views that Dave holds on anti government, anti compromise, anti regulation anti etc……”
Ron, you are the one who provides that balance, the one who puts some kind of sensible fiscally conservative socially liberal un-extreme libertarian philosophy in a good light. A sane balanced budget, socially liberal party would have a chance if it does not take those ideas to far left and right.
We all know perfectly well that Dave is a far outlier. He certainly is not doing any positive promotion of Libertarian ideas. But, you are.
“Much of the darkness in the recent spat with Roby was my following him into that mistake.
ad hominem is a logical fallacy – meaning it says nothing about the truth or falsity of the initial argument. But it is a vile fallacy because it sidetracks the argument from debate over issues to debate over people, and inherently turns into an insult contest.
In the end it leaves everyone covered in shit, and whatever issue was debated is long lost.”
With this I absolutely agree. Lets see if both of us can act on this idea.
Both false and ad hominem.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/woman-flips-off-donald-trump-fired_us_59fe0ab4e4b0c9652fffa484
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/59fff0541d00003b007f44cb.jpeg?ops=crop_0_737_1133_628,scalefit_630_noupscale
So ?
Has anyone deprived her of the right to flip off the president ?
Your job is not a right, your freedom of expression is.
Wise people often limit their expression, to preserve things they do not hold by right.
Another of your choice stupid moronic statements.
She’s being PUNISHED for a gesture of political protest, you idiot.
Only a nitwit would see a picayune difference between the government fining her $$$ or her employer FIRING her.
“Another of your choice stupid moronic statements.
She’s being PUNISHED for a gesture of political protest, you idiot.
Only a nitwit would see a picayune difference between the government fining her $$$ or her employer FIRING her.”
Yes, this is about political protest.
No one including government may not use force against you for political expression.
The loss of your job is not force, and it is not the action of government.
Can I bar you from my home because you gave the finger to Trump ? Obama ?
I would hope you understand that I can.
Can I refuse to buy from Chick-a-filet because they contribute to homophobic casuses ?
I would hope that you understand that I can.
Your loss of something you did not have a right to in the first place is not an actual harm.
Her employer owes her for the work she performed, but absent a contract to the contrary they owe her nothing more.
I think it is stupid to fire someone for flipping the bird to the president.
I might protest her employer.
But it is still a legitimate legal consequence.
You do not seem to grasp that all conduct you do not like is not illegal.
That’s it – add more stupidity to your dumbness.
Not an argument
The actual topic of Rick’s post was trump and his detractors. As always, its quickly morphed into a debate about libertarian philosophy. How many of us want TNM to be a perpetual discussion of extreme libertarian thinking to the near exclusion of all else?
No, I am not trying to use force to stop that but I am asking a question that is perfectly valid, and certainly as valid as the perpetual libertarian sales job.
Roby
You are free to take the discussion wherever you want.
It is unusal for any post here to remain narrowly constrained to some topic for long.
Often many topics are addressed.
I am comfortable with that.
Regardless, this blog is not a democracy, and absent Rick intervening,
each of us is free to steer discussions wherever we want.
Anything involving government will inherently provide a platform for expounding on any political ideology.
You can expect that when you propound yours, you will get my “extreme libertarian” efforts to take over the world and leave you the hell alone – in your own life, expecting foolishly the same from you.
while you are asking a valid question.
You are not asking one where the results have consequence.
Jay can ask “home many people want Trump impeached?”
No matter what the results that will not change whether Trump is impeached or whether those who differ are free to express their difference.
You are now offering the fallacy that everything is a democracy.
Get over it. Any involuntary democracy is inherently totalitarian.
Even a blog.
If as a hypothetical example, Rick should agree to the will of the majority here on some point, and impose that by force – that would prove my point that democracy is inherently totalitarian.
“You are now offering the fallacy that everything is a democracy.”
What is the name of the fallacy where someone tries the same thing over and over at high volume for ten years to convince people of an idea and instead of that approach working it drives people away who might otherwise have some interest? What is the name of the fallacy where they simply double down and increase the intensity of the campaign?
If an argument is correct it does not become incorrect by repetition.
If an argument is correct it does not become incorrect if all save one reject it.
This is a blog, there is no “volume”
The truth or falsity of an argument is independent of the effectiveness of the means used to persuade.
In short again you have made no argument
Your response is “I do not like your style”.
I do not care.
SECOND TRY!
Dave,yes extreme is just an adjective. Where I use this concerning your form of Libertarianism comes from your positions on government regulation in areas where corporate misconduct can cause harm to others. Where you seem to believe corporations will do the right thing and if they dont there are legal means for those harmed to right a wrong, I hold the belief that some government regulation is required to significantly reduce actions causing harm before it happens. There are other differences in our beliefs and those can be debated when the time is right.
The important issue is convincing others that the current two party system is not representing the majority of Americans today. And those that have enough support to challenge the two party system need to put America first and stop worrying about the fallout if they dont win and someone else does.
But one thing I have come to accept after 8 months of Trump administration is anyone in business that have run a successful company and become a 1%er is nuts to put themselves in politics. Your reputation will be destroyed by innuendo alone when the press manipulates information to make legal things look shady.
Ron
There is no special reason to distinguish between the acts of individuals and those of individuals in voluntary groups, such as corporations.
Misconduct, is still misconduct.
If some malfeasance on the part of an individual or corporation causes harm to others, at the very least there is a valid tort – and has been for 3-4 centuries.
When Ford did not repair a flaw in their pickup gas tanks because the repairs would have cost more than they expected to lose in wrongful death lawsuits, the Jury awarded several Billion to the victims.
That is one of many legitimate ways we “regulate” misconduct that harms others.
We do not need special laws or regulations.
It is simple, your acts cause actual harm to another, you are responsible.
Further the incentives are right. If you have a problem, you work to reduce the harm you cause, not to comply with some rule. Because the critical rule is cause no harm.
Identify a regulation that is not redundant with torts ?
Whether in torts or elsewhere we have gone insane making things illegal many times over.
We now have “hate crimes” – wasn’t it illegal to kill people before ?
Is it twice as illegal to assault a black person ?
Regardless, show me a regulation that is demonstrably necescary and benefitical and is not already a valid tort ?
No I do not beleive people or corporations always do the right thing.
I have never said anything even close to that.
I do beleive that facts demonstrate that the behavior of people in free exchange is far more rarely corrupt or harmful than in government – it is not even close.
But I am not pretending that all interchange between people is always without harm.
Completely absent regulation we already have many ways to address the harmful conduct that occurs.
I also fully accept that Government is sometimes necescary to reduce harms.
Torts require government and courts.
They are quite similar to regulation.
But they have two important distinctions.
They are after the fact – they only punish actual harms.
They are anti-legalistic, The “bright line” of torts, is “do not harm others’
With regulation it is do not assemble the widget in this way.
Torts only addresses bad outcomes. Everyone knows the rule, and there is only one rule
Do not harm others.
Regulation does not address outcomes – it can’t. It addresses means.
Regulation is do not do X in this way.
Like I said, your Libertarianism is much more Libertarian than mine. I dont want my daughter as one of the plaintiffs in a class action suit against a large corporation that produced a product that caused my grand daughters death and that death could have been avoided with government regulating that product. You keep posting that liability suits are the recourse available for these actions. I am not comfortable with a court settlement in place if a family members life.
I would agree with your hypothetical.
But it is not reality.
As i have noted repeatedly no regulation has ever bent the trend on anything.
Further your hypothetical has a flaw.
If The potential loss of billions of dollars was not enough to motivate Ford to fix a problem in their pickups – why would a regulation do so ?
Would some big corporation who could be bankrupted by a poor choice, and makes it anyway, be dissuaded because that choice might violate some regulation ?
Regulations do not avoid anything – atleast not without avoiding an incredible amount of good along with the bad.
BTW torts is not the ONLY means of addressing any of this.
It is typically the last resort.
McD’s altered the way its rules for suppliers raising chickens for chicken mcnuggests – because of a threatened peta boycott.
J&J completely transformed the way medicines are packaged as a result of the Tylenol poisoning scare.
Changes are made to improve our products and safety all the time that have nothing at all to do with govenrment regulation.
The statistical evidence is that few if any government regulations are actually effective.
For the most part regulations FOLLOW market changes.
Air and water polution peaked during WWII when government did nto give a damn and told industry to do whatever it took to produce more tanks, airplanes, ships.
Pollution had been trending down from that peak for decades before the EPA was formed, and the rate of improvement actually slowed afterwords.
There is no doubt that regulation is incredibly expensive – the low estimates of direct costs are hundreds of billions a year, the high ones are 4 Trillion.
And the indirect costs – the things that never happen as a consequence of regulation are immeasuable.
The most obviously simple example is medicine.
It now costs $3T to get a drug through FDA approval.
That means no one will even try to develop a medicine that does nto have the potential to make $3T in profits.
We have passed laws on two occasions to try to get the FDA to relax standards for rare and orphan diseases. With zero effect.
You do not grasp that there is an actual cost in being too safe – and that cost is not just in dollars – but in lives.
For everyone who dies because of a corporate mistake there are likely many who die because what would have saved them does not come into being, or does so years later.
Ultimately you can not have both.
Ron
I am not wed to democracy or the party system.
As to your observation regarding business and politics.
I would agree – and that is our loss.
While business is not government and those going from business to government need grasp there are important differences.
I would still more trust a self made billionaire to run the county than any politician.
Dave “I would still more trust a self made billionaire to run the county than any politician.”
Me too, but there are too many people like Jay that will jump on any deals over a million dollars and look for anything possiblke to bring them down. Just look at the issue with Wilbur Ross now. They will begin an investigation and he will have to spend huge amounts on legal services to defend against unsustantiated charges and still his reputation is severely damaged.
Roby, this is the point, which you make here: “What is the name of the fallacy where someone tries the same thing over and over at high volume for ten years to convince people of an idea and instead of that approach working it drives people away who might otherwise have some interest? What is the name of the fallacy where they simply double down and increase the intensity of the campaign?” that I should have made instead of being too clever with fatbergers and such. The excessive volume can crowd out others in verbal and written discussions and leads to ad hominems in an attemp to “get through”.
Ha, see dave’s (predictable and repetitious, not mention obtuse) reply above.
So, to ask another question, what is the name of the fallacy that occurs when some person believes that their point of view is so important that it needs to be stated repetitively for years on end in the middle of every conversation about any topic while having no interest in understanding or respect for the contrary opinions of the people he wishes to persuade?
“So, to ask another question, what is the name of the fallacy that occurs when some person believes that their point of view is so important that it needs to be stated repetitively for years on end in the middle of every conversation about any topic while having no interest in understanding or respect for the contrary opinions of the people he wishes to persuade?”
There is no such fallacy.
Belief – on the part of eithr party is irrelevant to the merits of an argument.
Repetition is irrelevant to the merits of an argument.
No opinion is entitled to respect, the merit of an argument is established by facts, logic, reason. Nothing else.
Persuasion is irrelevant to the merit of an argument.
My question was sarcastic. I do not believe there is such a fallacy. My point is that for all your endless sales pitch, you have no idea how to persuade people, but you have considerable expertise in irritating and alienating them. Computers you can program. People in a forum such as this have to be persuaded. That involves understanding them.
“you have no idea how to persuade people”
Have I claimed otherwise ?
I am not interested in sacrificing facts, logic, reason to avoid ruffling your feathers.
I do not have to persuade people not to use force without justification.
That is immoral. It is also one of those actions that actually does justify the use of force in response.
We are not debating how to run our own homes, or our businesses, or who to fall in love with.
We are discussing the use of force by government against others, or atleast I am.
You are the one who thinks that is scope free. You are the one who thinks that if you persuade 3 of 5 you are free to use force against the rest.
I am not seeking to persuade you. If you can not follow facts, logic, reason, I can not reach you. But I am here to oppose you when you seek to use force. Which it pretty much your permanent condition.
One of the reasons the country is so divided today is that you were unable to persuade an awful lot of people – and they said no – screw you. You are the victim’s of your own success.
Regardless, you confuse the rules of public life – those things involving govenrment, and private life – everything else.
Roby: notice I address the party I am responding to, that cuts down on confusion that is caused by egotistical commenters who merely want a megaphone- to address your question. To spout endlessly, I call it volume, to drown out/bury in in plain sight, lengthy remarks that take the tone of condescension, is rude. To not be able to realize that or even slightly realize that rudeness is beyond my ability to understand as I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist. I just know it is silly, or worse, when instead of convincing or even swaying people with your arguments, you alienate them. No one loves a loud drunk or a garrulous politician, except his mother-possibly.
Commenting should be a positive experience when pertinent and accurate information is exchanged to enlighten us on a subject, not the opposite.
dd:
You can call an orange and apple all you want. It does not make it an apple.
If telling you what you do not want to hear is rude – I am extremely rude.
“To not be able to realize that or even slightly realize that rudeness is beyond my ability to understand as I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist. ”
Does this sentence mean anything ?
“I just know it is silly, or worse, when instead of convincing or even swaying people with your arguments, you alienate them. No one loves a loud drunk or a garrulous politician, except his mother-possibly.”
How an argument makes you feel – is your problem.
I do not care who you love.
Are you saying that if a valid argument will alienate people, you should lie ?
“Commenting should be a positive experience when pertinent and accurate information is exchanged to enlighten us on a subject, not the opposite.”
Yes, I know, your feelings and experience are more important than the facts.
Get over yourself. You are not obligated to read anything you do not like.
You are not entitled to a positive experience from others.
IF pertinent and accurate information was all that was needed to “persuade” everyone would be libertarian.
Its Ricks site for a few hours each month, then it becomes dave’s site for the remainder.
Well dduck, no matter how sensible your words may be they will never reach dave. He will return some logical error code to your attempts to reach him as though he were a computer. dave is not interested in what you think or care about. dave is interested exclusively in dave and his crusade and protecting his mind from any ideas that are inconvenient to his beliefs using phony logic error rejection of any idea or data that does not match his beliefs.
You’ve been here perhaps a year (i’ve enjoyed that). I’ve been here for ten and he has been obsessed with correcting my every cough for many years, often rudely. (By now, I’ll admit to succumbing to the obsession of our argument myself.) I have taken Jay’s advice and have decided that I should keep my cool and try to have fun with this.
But its a crappy situation.
The concept of “volume” as you use it is meaningless in the context of blog comments.
As is the concept of “drown out”.
There is no in an attempt to get through justification for ad hominem.
That is like saying I murdered him, because he would not listen to me.
Actually, Roby, I have been here since 2009, but chose to lay low until this last year.
If this was a salad bar buffet, pigs would be thrown out if it was detrimental to the business, and no singing Danny Boy at high volume over and over would not be tolerated at the bar nor would dominating the bartender’s time with endless drivel. I have a right to order my drink without interference, it’s in the Constitution. 🙂
On the internet
THIS IS WHAT SHOUTING LOOKS LIKE!!!
“dh: ob·tuse
əbˈt(y)o͞os,äbˈt(y)o͞os/
adjective
adjective: obtuse
1. annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand.
1. not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull.”
These don’t fit too well. I would say rudely, egotistically obtuse, uncaring of others opinion, without a sense of humor or correctness. But most of all an ineffective communicator.
Ad Hominem: A common logical fallacy used by people who conflate insult with argument.
Conservative Religious Idiots Proliferate:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/conservative-writer-god-was-answering-prayers-of-texas-victims-by-letting-them-get-shot/
Talk about egregious restriction of speech —
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/358960-cnn-fox-cancels-trump-impeachment-ads
Fox is a lrivate company and should be allowed to sell time to whoever they want. That goes with my belief that a baker in Portland should be able to refuse decorating cakes for alternative life styles. And CNN should be able to refuse ads from conservative groups promoting indicting Clinton for Uranium deals if any conservative group had those available.
It is a restriction of speech. it is not a violation of the first amendment or an infringement on rights. That requires the use of force.
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/358906-russian-support-for-trump-on-twitter-started-shortly-after-he-announced-bid
So I have roby arguing that I need to learn how to persuade people, and you are claiming that only some people are allowed to try to persuade people ?
You do not seem to understand. Do not really care how early some Russian company floated memes with Satanic Clinton in a WWC contest with Jesus.
The most potent effect Russia has had on US politics is that marxists have brainwashed our children for several generations.
If we are to be concerned because of Russian influence in our elections, what about our schools ?
If you are going to go Joe MacCarthy – take this to its logical conclusions.
tRUMP the SCHLUMP gets another LUMP.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/358931-legal-scholars-trump-acting-like-a-dictator-by-blocking-twitter
You are floundering in a deep area of law.
Trump can block whoever he wants from his social media accounts – so long as those accounts do not represent official communications channels of the federal government.
This is a new area, and has been addressed once by the courts.
It is not clear what they would find if the issue went to court – which it likely will.
But Trump can solve the problem, by making certain that his social media accounts are not official communications.
He might well pass that test – as he has announced things on social media, that have been ignored by the government.
You can’t help but admire moderate, balanced Conservatives like Jonah.
http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/453418/john-kelly-civil-war-compromise-mistake
Sorry for being AWOL, folks. The comments have been piling up faster than I can keep up with them. Where do I plunge in?
Before I address any individual comments, I’d like to see if I can subdue the personal animosities that have been springing up here. I can understand Roby’s exasperation with Dave’s voluminous and unyielding commentary. Does Roby’s right to be left alone trump (excuse the unfortunate verb) Dave’s right to keep haranguing him? Tough question.
I suppose Roby (and Jay, for that matter) could simply resist the temptation to reply to Dave’s remarks. I know the temptation is strong; think of Trump and his insatiable need to out-tweet his detractors. But at some point you have to consider whether the satisfaction of outdueling your opponent in an argument is worth the stress of banging your head against a brick wall. Ignore the provocation and it will go away.
Look, we’re living in polarized times. Even The New Moderate is polarized. (I suppose that makes sense; unlike the amen corners on the right and left, there’s no groupthink here.) So let’s get used to the idea that we’re going to disagree on issues without making it personal. Disagreement is the start of dialogue, after all.
Of course, it’s not exactly dialogue when some of us (cough, cough) are inclined to post seven consecutive posts of 200 words each. In fact, I’m already running too long here, so excuse me while I try to respond to some of the individual comments above.
Rick thanks for your efforts.
Mozart is beautiful. But if your Mozart LP skips and gets stuck on one phrase while you are unable to get to it for some reason a Mozart 2 second phrase repeated thousands of times turns first into an irritating noise and then into an abomination, and then into a monty python shriek of For Gods sakes shut it off!
In this case the skipping record pursues me around TNM, believes it can show me using some binary computer logic that it is correct and I am incorrect and that if it repeats the phrase 100000000 times I will succumb, all the while telling me that I have no substance, am a moron, have evil morals, on and on. Moreover, it has invented its own rules by which it is free to skip at me but I am committing some sin if I yell back at it. Its a sort of fanatical skipping record. With an overhead cam.
I can either leave TNM (hypothetically, if I weren’t obsessive) or I can fight back. The one subject the skipping record is interested in bored me to tears already years ago but to turn off the dreadful skipping record I have to struggle. I am trying to do it with humor. At times I get pretty sore. Sorry for the noise, I understand its not a pleasant sound.
Roby “I can either leave TNM (hypothetically, if I weren’t obsessive) or I can fight back”
There is a third way. It is the dreaded “C” word. You can compromise and stick around and not fight back. Make a comment, Dave comments, you ignore if it is not something new to add to the debate. In most cases, if what I have to say in response to a comment does not add something new to the discussion, I really try not to comment again. Since i am stuck between Dave and Jay, that’s a hard position to be in and stay silent.
“You can compromise and stick around and not fight back. Make a comment, Dave comments, you ignore if it is not something new to add to the debate. ”
I appreciate the thought. I have had nothing that was new to the debate that dave wants to have since 2009. I believe that his extreme libertarian philosophy (his own description) is terminally naive. That is it, my entire opinion of extreme libertarian philosophy.
He pursues my every cough here and he can always make a comment that is either so absurd or so disgusting that I cannot help myself. I doubt I am going to be able to resist the urge to scratch. I’m a bit obsessive. Maybe more than a bit.
Besides, dave’s routine does not just get under my skin, ask dduck. He has chased a lot of decent thoughtful moderates out of here over the years. There are a lot of lurkers here as well. Why should they join teh conversation in while they know they will become an object for dave to harangue if they do?
dave in the overdrive mode he has been in this year is a killer of any chance TNM will get something bigger going.
What bigger thing do you expect TNM to get going ?
I could post my columns more often; that might curtail the verbose, run-on nature of the comments section here. But my problem is that I don’t want to LIVE politics every day. I write my columns as a kind of cultural imperative — somebody needs to speak up loudly from the middle. (And also because I enjoy the act of writing — but again, not something I want to do every day.)
How to control the volume of posts here? I just remembered that I have censorship rights, but I’m reluctant to use them. I used to have everyone’s comments e-mailed to me, but the sheer volume was flooding my in-box, so I stopped. Life is too short to spend it policing a message board.
I’m open to suggestions, though, because I’d like to see Dave restrain his hyperverbal propensities and leave more openings for others to comment here. As you know, I pretty much give up after a few days, returning only occasionally afterward to see if everyone’s happy.
Yup” “There are a lot of lurkers here as well. Why should they join teh conversation in while they know they will become an object for dave to harangue if they do?
dave in the overdrive mode he has been in this year is a killer of any chance TNM will get something bigger going.
Bigger: I know a few moderates, that I would recommend to this blog if like a good restaurant had a good selection of tasty food, and in the case of TNM a good selection of tasty opinions.. This ain’t it now.
Oh for god’s sake.
I’m pretty sure that there are lurkers who have chosen not to comment here because of of the rude and moronic insults that are hurled around here, mostly directed at Dave.
As Ron says, no one is forced to read anyone else’s posts. And no one is forced to respond to anyone else’s arguments.
Priscilla, Go read the entire conversation Priscilla before you step in it again. If you read the entire exchange between dave and myself and still believe that Dave is the offended party then we can have a Long talk with examples. This is just another example of your very partial vision.
I’ve been called a moron, retarded, evil, lacking any substance, and on and on. That is OK with you? Figures.
I don’t want to have a long talk about who are offended parties, Roby, and it’s not because it’s ok with me that you feel offended, nor is it because of my “partial vision,”…although, I do wear reading glasses these days. It’s because it’s a waste of time. We are all guilty of being occasionally offensive, and we have all taken offense. It’s gone on for years, and there will, no doubt, be continued instances in which it happens. Just like we’ll continue to argue over what the meaning of “moderate” is….
I was actually coming back to clarify that “rude and moronic”was meant to refer specifically to the insults, not the people hurling them. But, alas, I did not clarify quickly enough.
Roby;
“I’ve been called a moron, retarded, evil, lacking any substance, and on and on. That is OK with you? Figures.”
If I have called you any of those – I apologize. But I am pretty damn sure I have not.
I have called ideas that you hold dear retarded, moronic, evil.
I have called actions that you are prepared to take evil.
What I have done – is exactly what you do all the time.
And that is what I am angry with myself about.
I am not angry because I have said things that are wrong.
I am angry that I am becoming too much like you.
Which should clue you in that I have absolute zero interest in your thoughts on how to fix that.
And yes I would suggest you go back and read through posts – particularly your own.
I do not care that much how bad you make yourself look.
But I do care when I start seeing you when I look in the mirror.
“I’ve been called a moron, retarded, evil, lacking any substance, and on and on. That is OK with you? Figures.”
“If I have called you any of those – I apologize. But I am pretty damn sure I have not.
I have called ideas that you hold dear retarded, moronic, evil.
I have called actions that you are prepared to take evil.”
Here was a charming thought: “Equally important, I really do think that your world view is destructive and immoral…” Environmentalists you flat out call evil. Mostly you pussy foot around your insults, e.g. “If you believe in CAGW you are a moron.” (another time you used retarded.) I and others here believe its a serious issue, as you well know. So, just be a man and call someone a moron if that is what you think and stop trying be cute and clever. It ain’t working.
Ha, for a lark I tried using your if–> then argument formula you use to escape blame to give your insults back to you. So, nope, you insisted that I was still guilty of using ad hominems, while you were somehow not. Same formula, different results. It just cute bullshit. Again, Be a man, not a lawyer.
Then there was your gleeful fit of shitting and pissing in the liberal temple.
This is what you appointed yourself to do here at TNM, lo these many years, come and tell us in a Godlike omnipotent voice how wrong we are about everything, how incapable, how left wing (even the Bushes are progressives in your world!). You are begging to get it back. But let someone criticize you and they are not playing by some computer logic rules you have imposed. Its humbug.
“I am not angry because I have said things that are wrong.
I am angry that I am becoming too much like you.”
Well, for someone else that would be a truly pathetic effort at admitting to some part of the fault of harsh rhetoric here. But for you its actually an astonishing leap forward, you are actually looking at your own behavior. Some day a miracle may occur and you will admit that you might have said one thing that was actually wrong and hell will freeze.
You say you have liberal friends (I’ll bet you have some lefty family members too!) and you are much more low key and relaxed with them in real life. Why not here? Lack of consequences?
Think!
Roby;
It is not “pussy footing arround”.
I try to characterize ideas and actions – not individuals.
If you take personal insult because you strongly identify with those ideas and actions – that is perfectly fine by me.
If I said “If you beleive in genocide you are evil” – would you take offence ?
Is that “pussy footing” ?
Nor do I have a problem with targeting groups.
We had a big national melt down because the president refused to say “nazis are evil”.
I have absolutely no problem saying those who think in CAGW is science are stupid.
You are free to “beleive” in it, just as you can beleive in transubstantiation, or reincarnation.
Belief is for religions.
Yes, I incorrectly inverted my attack on CAGW by including “beleif” atleast once.
Sloppy language, typing to fast and ignoring Orwell’s admonition to drop words like “think” “beleive” except where one is litterally refering to thought and religion.
The only scientific theory that I can think of that has broad acceptance where reality deviates by 2.5 std dev from the theoretical predictions is CAGW.
Roby
If you really have these GRE’s then something is seriously wrong here – because I am not being that obtuse.
If you made a real argument followed by a logical fallacy, I would likely be so happy I would ignore the fallacy.
I point out your fallacies – because there is nothing else to your posts.
Further something can be both fallacy and true.
A fallacy is an invalid form of argument, not a false argument.
It could be true that if you take CAGW as science you are stupid.
But it is not valid argument – unless the topic is “are you stupid”.
Roby;
Still not getting it.
There is nothing wrong with harsh rhetoric – again as typical of the left,
You make up crimes, and offending lefties is always a crime – though somehow offending others is not.
The left correctly identifies racism as evil – while incorrectly finding everyone not on the hard left a raving racist.
Everything that offends you is not false.
Everything that insults you is not false.
A liberal is sometone who prizes individual liberty highly.
Roby, you are not a liberal.
I explained many reasons why things are different outside of Blog comments.
Again you can not read.
One of the reasons that things are different is that because when confronted in person left wing nuts back down, because they do not have a moral leg to stand on. ‘
Another is because outside the internet everyone else tends to self censor to avoid confrontation with delusional and obnoxious left wing nuts.
You are used to living in a world where people are too polite to challenge your world view.
That is not going to happen on the web. Get over it.
“I have absolutely no problem saying those who think in CAGW is science are stupid.”
You have stated your low opinion, at times even verging on contempt, for academics, scientists in certain fields, and Ph.Ds. Why should I want to be an exception?
In fact, I’m nothing exceptional, its true. But all the same I have published papers in high quality journals in both genetics and biophysics. I do have inside knowledge of the workings and results of science. My career as a grad student and post doc was decent but unremarkable. I added a few little facts to the study of a few different questions, the workings of developmental regulatory proteins, the structural changes of myosin as it interacts with actin. I did not have the level of fanaticism it takes to live and breath nothing but science. I have many other interests. So, I left the publish or perish world and found a nice niche where I can contribute and still have a life. I am a tiny dust speck in the huge mountain that science is.
The international field of climate science that you have such disrespect for is simply one facet of the mountain of science. It uses the same math, physics, chemistry, and technology as the sciences that put a man on the moon, satellites to the furthest reaches of the solar system, cures cancer, measures the movements of the continents accurately in centimeters, etc. It has taken millions of person years of work by people ranging from talented to brilliant to elevate science to where it is today from the rather pitiful knowledge we had even 100 let alone 200 years ago. To sneer at climate science is comical, it indicates delusions of grandeur. Yes, it pisses me off. It also amuses me. I am a dust speck who at least contributes something to the mountain of science and at least am in the mountain. You are a dust speck who, as far as I know, is outside of the mountain of science and likes to scoff at it and call it stupid, a religion. Climate science is no more a religion than molecular biology or geology. If an intelligent and educated person who should know better believes that they can dismiss any established field of science with a wave of their contemptuous hand then they are a loony. Science is science. Its a system, a culture, a history, and one of the greatest achievements of the human race.
History is not going to go your way on this issue, it will not be many generations before the the denialist culture will get the same treatment as the flat earthers.
Roby;
In the field in which you practiced – and pretty much the rest of reasonable science a 2.5 std dev between a model and reality requires revising your hypothesis.
In 2016 after nearly two decades of claiming otehrwise, we have finally seen two papers published by leading warmists that essentially state “oops” the “hiatus” is real.
Those papers do not really offer an explanation – though they make some of the guesses that skeptics have been arguing for decades – that TCI values are too high and that hypothesized strong positive feedbacks are weak or non-existent.
I say guesses – because there is no buy in to any explanation and no actual recomendation to modify the models, just the naked assertion that strong warming either already has or will resume real soon.
That is your idea of science ?
With regard to the acollades you heap on the rest of science.
I do not doubt that there are very many intelligent people in fields of science.
But scientists – even those doing better than Climate science are not owed “biblical respect” – that should be particularly obvious to anyone familiar with the past several decades of science.
FDA and CDC have both been tied to scandals where key figures at the top of the scientific pyramids actively supressed research and publication of anything that contradicted their pet theories – theories that have subsequently been falsified.
I beleive we are in the midst of the 3rd recent rewrite of the human family tree – much of which is occuring because of Leakey’s fall from prominence. I beleive their is a Lucy like homind that has been found in europe 3.5M years prior to Lucy, which is not supposed to be possible, either in time or location. Nor is that the only example.
Recently a nobel was awarding in Physics for a “new” theory regarding crystallography.
One that has absolutely critical bearing on semiconductors.
I say “new” because the theory is 5 decades old, and has been supressed by the leading lights in that area of physics for that long.
There has been a recent university level effort to validate published scientific papers.
Of thousands that were tested 1/3 of published papers were actually falsified by validation. 1/3 did not produce statistically significant results. Only 1/3 validated.
More than a decade ago a computer program was written to write scientific papers using jargon and grammar rules. About 100 papers were produced and several managed to get through peer review and get published. Subsequently the program escaped into the wild and it is not known how many computer generated meaningless papers have been published after peer review.
The Climategate Emails exposed two major scientific frauds – first that the high priests of warmendom were using their political influence to supress consideration and publication of any paper that deviated from dogma – this even included warmist papers that died without comment if they deviated even slightly from climate dogma.
It was that revelation that slowly drove Dr. Judith Curry into the skeptic camp.
Separately it was also revealed that the peer review process had been corrupted, that submitters were selecting their own reviewers guaranteeing sympathetic reviews, or worse were providing false identities for reviewers and actually reviewing their own papers.
Other studies estimate the current half life of scientific knowledge at about 15 years.
That means of everything that you think you know to be true with respect to science, half of it will be falsified in the next 15 years.
I have many many more examples if you wish.
The bottom line is there is a difference between respect for science, scientists and the scientific process, and religious belief in the results.
Real science is inherently about learning from failure. When science becomes dogmatic and political it is even more prone than other fields such as engineering to bad results.
Some of the most successfull attacks on Warmism have come from engineers, economists and statisticians. Though there are some scientific errors in modern climate science, the worst and most obvious errors are that climate scientists are completely clueless about math – particularly statistics.
If we talk about climate models – the best solar models are correlating to temperature with a statistical significance of about .9 that is incredibly high, and several orders of magnitude better than the statistical significance of CO2 models.
There are several problems with the solar models – the largest of which is that delta TSI is not sufficient to explain the temperature changes – which strongly implies there is another energy transfer mechanism between the Sun and Earth.
Conversely CO2 correlation is extremely poor.
This is compounded because there are several other excellent theories explaining modern warming that are independent of CO2 – cosmic rays and land use being large among these. CERN has verified major aspects of the Cosmic ray Cloud formation thesis and it likely accounts for 15-25% of all warming from 1975-1998. Rodger Pieleke Sr. proposed the land use these decades ago, and its correlation is excellent.
But land use changes are self limiting which eliminates the political impetus to regulate the world.
Presumably as a scientist you have some grasp of mathematics and either remember, or have been refreshed with regard to Stephan-Boltzman, Plank’s law and the Arrhenius equations – all of which are almost certainly interrelated.
All of which have temperature as the log of energy.
Absent positive feedbacks linear increases in CO2 will produce logrithmic increases in temperate – i.e. controlling for everything but CO2, will result in a parabola on its side.
Which is pretty close to what we see from modern historical temperatures.
Warmist claims of exponentially increasing temperature require positive feedbacks on a scale that does nto occur often if at all in nature, because the results would be highly unstable and the planet would have burnt to a crisp or frozen to an iceball, long ago if present. Or they require exponential increases in CO2 – which are not occuring.
Yes I am highly skepitcal of science that both has no good answers to many such questions and where the models do not conform to reality.
I am not the slightest anti-science. I am anti the conversion of science into religion, which has been occuring to varying degrees through science – particularly in the field of climate.
I do not expect perfection from science. I expect lots of failure, mistakes and slow progress towards answers. I expect that scientists will be humble, grasping that failure is the norm.
Yes, millions of man hours have been put in to create the progress we have had in the past century. And the vast majority of that has lead to FAILURE – we learn from failure too, sometimes more. That time is not wasted – except when hubris drives us to hide the failure. And that is an extremely common problem not limited to climate science, though highly exemplified there.
It is possible to respect science and understand that scientific progress involves more failure than success. It is not possible to respect those in science that practice religion, and self worship rather than science. That problem pervades science – and has for as long as science has existed. It is a problem of human nature not science. But it is more common in some areas than others – Climate science being the top of the list.
The consequence is the loss of public faith in science. That is the fault of scientists.
And yes, Climate science is a religion. We are likely on the verge of resolving the problem permanently. It has taken decades but we are beginging to have space based instruments with sufficient precision to establish the energy flows of the planet.
The Climate models attempt to do the impossible – modal a chaos system.
There is no sane reason to believe their results. Further even if that were possible the computing power – something I know alot about, does not and will never exist to model climate at much faster than real time, to the detail needed – if that kind of model is even possible.
But treating the earth as a black box and resolving the energy flows into and out of the black box is possible. The preliminary results of this are what has had Dr. Trendberth running arround like a chicken with his head cut off ranting about “missing heat”
Trendberth hypothesized the missing heat was in the shallow ocean, then the mid ocean. Now it must be int he deep ocean – because it is not elsewhere.
But Trendberth’s ocean hypothesis has a disasterous problem.
We can derive the changes in heat content of the ocean from sea level changes.
Basically the more heat Ocean water contains the greater its volume.
This is the core of the warmist claim that the oceans will rise – because all land ice melting will not significantly raise sea levels. The primary cause of SLR is heat gain in the ocean.
SLR has been near linear for much of the past century.
That means that energy capture has been near linear for much of the past century
Back to Arrenhius and company – linear increases in energy result in logrithmatic increases in temperature. Again falsifying CAGW.
The bottom line is that pretty close to all the observable facts run against the conclusions of the climate models.
I do not know the relative weight of various drivers of climate – land use CO2, Solar energy, cosmic rays, …..
I do know that the earth’s energy gains appear to be close to linear,
which if that trend continues will result in much smaller temperature gains by 2100 than predicted.
An essential element of science is math. Another is logic, and critical thinking
CAGW runs afoul of all.
Roby
Let me try one other argument regarding CAGW.
The entire CAGW thesis is rooted in models.
Climate is unbelievably complex and how the fundimetal science – such as Arenhius plays out as part of a complex system can not be addressed any other way but models.
We have another area of science that humans have much more knowledge of, and much simpler and better developed models that we can not predict – an that is the economy.
Why do you beleive that climate scientists can do better modelling a far more complex system than economosts have in a much longer time frame ?
“History is not going to go your way on this issue, it will not be many generations before the the denialist culture will get the same treatment as the flat earthers”
Actually it has been going pretty strongly my way for about 20 years.
Regardless, I have bet my reputation and integrity on this, and I know it.
I have alot of crow to eat if I am wrong.
I am betting against you and thousands of other scientists.
So far I am winning that bet.
But just to be clear, there are almost no skeptics who claim the earth is not warming. There are almost none that claim CO2 is not a factor.
The fundimental claim of skeptics is that the CAGW predictions of the GCM’s are likely off by a factor of about 4.
That and that we do not currently have the knowledge necescary to accurately predict global temperatures for a century.
So if the “hiatus” continues with weak to no warming over the next several decades – are you going to eat crow ?
I have skin – my reputation, in the game – what about you ?
Are you prepared to bet your reputation on the IPCC projections ?
If not, you tell me what future projection are you prepared to bet your reputation on ?
Dave I do not know why you do not get one simple fact: I am not interested in philosophy, at all. I’d rather listen to gangster rap than philosophy. Its your interest, its not mine. My biggest interest at present outside of music lies in geology, its history, the history of the great extinctions and their hypothetical causes, and the rocks and geological history of Vermont, which I am pleasantly surrounded by where I live.
Philosophy, Bleh!
I am not interested in avoiding logical fallacies, especially because, as you noted just because something is a logical fallacy does not mean its not true. You expect me to enter, for some reason, your world of interests. You have utterly different intellectual tastes and hobbies than I do. Lets see, I can practice my viola, violin or guitar and immerse myself in Bach, the Beatles, or Django Reinhardt or I can torture myself with Kant and Shoeppenflagel. I think I’ll choose the Bach, you can enjoy the Shoeppenflagel.
No one here but you writes their posts obsessing about the rules of logical fallacies. I am no better and no worse than the other posters here about avoiding them. They have no attraction to me. I have my opinions, that is all, nothing more grandiose. I am trying to prove nothing to anyone. And….I am no more trying to force my opinions on you than any other poster here.
If you would understand that I would lose all interest to you and everyone here would draw a sigh of relief.
Roby,
It is irrelevant whether you are interested in philosophy.
Just as it is irrelevant whether I am interested in molecular biology.
I can not pretend that organisms and cells behave however I want them to, merely because I am uninterested.
Philosophy is not merely whimsy. It is the foundations of free will, the rules of human conduct, what is right and wrong, morality, and ultimately government.
Expounding on government ignorant of philosophy is like expounding on human life ignorant of biology.
A logical fallacy is not inherently false.
It is inherently not an argument.
It is worse than claiming that some observation about hair growth has something to do with some observation about urine production. You likely know more about both and maybe there is a link. But my argument presumes there isn’t.
Both statements can be true, or on or the other false or both false.
The fact is they are independent.
The truth of a premise is independent of whether the person offering it is an ass.
The truth of a premise is independent of whether 1000 smart people believe it to be true.
When the premise and your argument are independent of each other – the argument is fallacious.
A logical argument requires dependence – that the conclusion is dependent on the premesis.
You can be uninterested in philosophy, you can be uninterested in logic.
That is fine, but you can not offer meaningful propositions on government without them.
I have already used the musc analogy and it is perfect.
If you are prepared to say I can have my choice in my own life with respect to philosophy and logic – and you can have yours, and we will confine those purely to our own lives – you are free to make whatever mistakes you wish.
But government is about the use of force against others.
Using your music analogy government my saying you are not free to choose Bach,
If you are going to use force to impose your will against others, it is incumbent on you to get many many things right.
That would include facts, logic, reason.
In your own life or in the fully voluntary arrangements you make with others not involved in imposing force on anyone – you can do as you wish.
Be as illogical as you want.
Before you can impose your will by force on others – you are obligated to prove you know what you are doing.
You are demanding that I lose interest in your desire to impose your will on others by force while admittedly not knowing what you are doing.
Do you actually think that is reasonable.
My writing was in error. I wrote: You are a dust speck who, as far as I know, is outside of the mountain of science and likes to scoff at it and call it stupid, a religion.
My point is more accurately: You are a dust speck who, as far as I know, is outside of the mountain of science and likes to scoff at Part of It and call it stupid, a religion.
Not an argument.
“But just to be clear, there are almost no skeptics who claim the earth is not warming. There are almost none that claim CO2 is not a factor.”
That is a more reasonable position than I expected.
“The fundimental claim of skeptics is that the CAGW predictions of the GCM’s are likely off by a factor of about 4.”
That is beyond my competence to judge.
“That and that we do not currently have the knowledge necescary to accurately predict global temperatures for a century.”
That statement is not unreasonable. Predicting climate is a wildly complex problem.
I have always couched my position in probabilities, not certainties. My opinion is that the consensus opinion is more likely to be correct or at least closer to the truth than the skeptic opinions. My opinion is that climate science is a substantial enterprise conducted by people just as talented and using the same basic approaches as any other branch of science. I doubt neither their competence as a group nor their integrity. If my opinion on this makes me stupid in your eyes, then oh well.
Even if the severe scenarios are correct I have no false hope that the human race has options for cutting greenhouse emissions in half or anything like it anytime soon. I encounter plenty of what I call naive hippies who have no clue what is actually necessary to substantially cut human GG emissions.
As well, I am aware that we still are living in an ice age and that a return to a state of global cooling with north American glaciers advancing would be as catastrophic if not more so than a certain amount of warming. Some CO2 increase may not be a bad thing, but it cannot go on with no end in sight either.
I simply hold that the problem should be taken seriously, the scientists involved should be respected and given as much credence as any other branch of science and that we should be working as hard as possible on the technologies that are cleaner greenhouse gas emission wise and lowering our emissions as much as we can.
The hooting and jeering at climate scientists as a group that occurs is as nauseating a tactic as hooting and jeering at Rand Paul for getting his ribs broken. Serious issues deserve serious attitudes.
Roby, do you believe the common man in China and India that are the major contributors to CO2 output growth in the last 10-15 years are having this same discussion? Do you find China and India changing their CO2 discharge at the same rate as North America.
Or do you believe the liberals in America want us biting the bullett
with high cost electric cars that can’t take a family over 300 miles from home or is so small a family if four can not get themselves and all their luggage in for a weeks vacation while China and India are doing much less than we are?
And why is it that the liberals are fired up for renewable energy until a wind farm off the Northeast Coast screws up millionaires views and then renewable energy is not so important?
I dont argue climate change is not. happening, but I want everyone feeling the same pain when changes are made. If XYZ company comes into my area and messes up my view, I want the same treatment for the 1%ers with an ocean view when ABC electric company proposes a wind farm off Marthas Vineyard.
Wind and solar have proven absolutely disasterous accross the globe.
Both have proven far more expensive that expected, and far less reliable.
In the US – even California, and Europe we have found that even where we add wind and solar capacity, we still have to add fosil fuel capacity as Wind and solar are not sufficiently reliable.
The big recent change in the US has been the shift to natural gas for power generation.
NG plants can be turned on and off quickly as needed – coal which is a cheaper fuel takes days to fire up and shut down.
NG plants can scale from very large to very small, making it possible to put generating capacity closer to demand significantly reducing transmission lines and transmission costs.
We have an excellent NG transportation infrastructure which has lower losses than long distance electric lines.
So I will ask you the same question. I knew everything you posted already.
Do you believe the common man in China and India that are the major contributors to CO2 output growth in the last 10-15 years are having this same discussion? Do you find China and India changing their CO2 discharge at the same rate as North America.
My issue with this whole climate change and climate agreement is the fact that we are losing manufacturing to China and India, they have not decreased CO2 output as we have the past 10 years, they have increased over the past 15 years, we have lost jobs to those countries and companies are relocating because doing business in those countries is vastly less costly than it is in America. If the cost of doing business is less expensive and we are all playing by the same regulations, then that is fine. but when we put controls on manufacturing and other countries do not, then the climate is still getting screwed up, but just from a different continent.
I do not think that CO2 is a significant problem – so I do not care what the Common man in China or India think about it.
I think it is highly likely with proper analysis that even if CO2 warms the planet that the net result would be positive.
The US is gaining manufacturing – from China.
Though the entire lose/gain issue is nonsense.
The objective is to produce more value with less human effort.
If we wish to retain an overall higher standard of living than the rest of the world, we should focus on producing those things of the highest value.
Not on making everything in the US.
We should want China to produce those goods that can not be produced providing jobs that pay our standard of living.
We WANT those jobs on the low end to move to China or india.
There is no limit to what can be produced.
There is not reason that because China produces something we can not produce something different of higher value.
As an example we used to produce textiles.
Those jobs moved to japan long ago.
From there they moved to china,
From china to india and bangeledesch.
They are starting to head to africa.
This is why clothing prices are so low.
If you move textile jobs back to the US – you will not increase the number of jobs much – we would highly automate production.
But if you did they would be very low paying jobs, and our cloths would cost a great deal more
Trump’s economic nationalism may be a way to win elections, but it is a very very stupid way to run the world. Both parties know it, neither party is likely to aggressively try to keep jobs in the US.
We do not want to put controls on manufacturing in China or india – it will just drive manufacturing out of China or india to some other place in the 3rd world.
Besides I have already told you regulations are net evil.
China has far far less regulation than the US – though in China you can be jailed because you are out of favor.
Regardless, China’s life expectance has been rising rapidly since Mao’s death and is very close to ours.
There is no evidence that their lack of regulation is casing significant actual harm.
But it is allowing their standard of living to rise more rapidly.
“Capital goes where it’s welcome and stays where it’s well treated”
All our efforts to try to control global capital flows are ludicrously stupid.
Manufacturing will move where it pleases. Rather than trying to errect walls and cattle shoots, we should try to entice it.
The outflow of US manufacturing jobs has abated.
US manufacturing is actually at an all time high.
But we are far more automated than ever and so manufacturing jobs are and will remain low.
The US is the worlds largest and most stable market.
We have the most reliable and cheapest energy in the world
We have the best transportation system in the world
We have the largest and most reliable supply chain in the world
We have the largest high skill workforce in the world.
We have the most reliable access to natural resources in the world.
More agreement than I would have expected.
I would note that the broad strokes I posted on Climate change that you found common ground with are held by 97% of skeptics.
In fact that is partly where the claimed concensus comes from.
James Cook’s work – one of the sources of the 97% claim,
acheived that by classifying the work of Spensor, Christy, Lindzen, Curry, ….
all as part of that 97% – because each of them accepts the same things you found that we have in common.
“I have always couched my position in probabilities, not certainties. ”
Absolutely – and what is the statistical probability that a theory is correct when its predictions are 2.5 std dev away from reality and have been for two decades ?
There is room for debate at the moment regarding the degree of warming in the past 20 years. There is significant disagreement between the satellites, radiosonds, and weather balloons Which all show little or no warming, Some of the land records – such as HadCRUT which show mild warming and some such as GISTEMP which show greater warming. But all are far below model predictions. All show at least a significant decline in the rate of warming since 1998.
Whether the problem is serious is not a scientific question.
The fundimental scientific questions are
how much of warming is attributable to Human CO2,
and what is the probability of specific amounts of warming in the future.
And to a much lessor extent what are the direct physical effects of that warming.
The indirect effects are not a scientific question – they are mostly economic.
Whether warming is good or bad is not a scientific question at all.
It is not even an economic question – thought it can be informed by economics.
Whether we should be working as hard as possible on whatever,
requires answering both the scientific, economic and values questions above with far greater ability that we currently have.
We actually are significantly reducing GHG emissions.
Whether we should is actually an independent question.
If you had asked any scientist – particularly biologists, prior to 1970, they would have said Hell No!
Even today very minor changes in the discount rates that the Obama EPA used to calculate the cost of CO2 can easily produce a large net beneficial result.
You say you are a biologist – there has been a significant greening of the planet as a result of relatively minor increases in CO2. Though many factors have nearly eliminated starvation, this is one of those. Increased CO2 means a better fed people.
I expect that we will shift from Oil to other fuels – natural gas, and electricity particularly.
We will not do so because they reduce GHG’s.
We will not do so because they are cheaper.
We will do so because that delivers more value to us.
We used to burn wood, peat and dung for heat – these are cheap.
We switched to coal – even though the alternatives were cheaper.
and then to oil and gas – even though coal was cheaper,
and then to electricity – even though oil and gas were cheaper.
We did all of these changes without government, without regulation and without fixating on CAGW.
We did them because the next generation fuel was cleaner and more valuable to us.
There is alot of technogly needed to make a practical electric car – and we have solved most though not all those problems.
Regardless, there are a significant number of additional benefits – ones having nothing to do with GHG’s.
I have zero doubt that we are and will continue to work towards the future that people want. We do not need government to get there. In fact government is an impediment.
Carter’s solar subsidies destroyed solar hot water. Despite the fact that it remains viable.
Particularly for heating domestic water.
Anyway, I do not know what our emissions should be – and neither do scientists, and neither do you.
I do know that if they are actually a problem that markets can and will respond rapidly.
Climate scientists as a whole deserve hooting and jeering.
They have been hooting and jeering at other climate scientists who asked them to actually conform to the norms of scientific inquiry.
Most of the top warmist climate scientists are pretty crappy scientists.
The best and brightest tend not to go into climate science.
Apologies to Ron et al. this will be my last post in this contest.
“You are demanding that I lose interest in your desire to impose your will on others by force while admittedly not knowing what you are doing.”
I demanded nothing of the sort. Show me please where I demanded that in my own words and not some implication you make because I, (like the Bushes!) am a so-called progressive. Putting words in someone else’s mouth is certainly a fallacy. If you chose to do that I am going to call you illogical and crazy in advance.
We go round in a circle. Aren’t you tired of it yet? Do you have a strategy or a goal or is this just an endless repetitions loop that we are doomed to run around in forever? There is nothing that distinguishes me from any other poster here about using force (government). I suppose you chose me just because I am obsessive enough to argue with you.
Tell me why I am different from the other Americans who are not extreme libertarians such that I am your target. You are simply purposelessly hounding me with no end in sight and no goal.
I am going to respect the wishes of Ron and dduck and Rick and make this my last post on this debate. It goes nowhere. You are free to take advantage of the fact that I am not going to argue any more with you about this to make all kinds of absurd and provocative arguments to lure me into another round. If so, that is to your dishonour.
When you act or attempt to act through government – you use force.
Government is force.
You and I will have no problems with each other, so long as you do not seek to impose your views on others through government without justifying them first.
And yes, you are making a demand – you are asking to be left alone WHILE advocating for the use of force against others.
On the one hand you want to claim you are exempt from having any understanding of philosophy – understanding the moral consequences of action, on the other you identify as progressive – that is a philosophy.
Is it OK with you to say “I am a marxist, and free to impose marxism by force on others, but not obligated to know anything about marxism” ?
I do not particularly care about the label – marxist, socialist, fascist, progressive – even some flavors of conservative, your argument is that you are free to use government to impose your will on others.
There are few legitimate uses of force – determining those is a philosophical question – whether you care about philosophy or not.
Should we be injecting people with random drugs against their will without having any clue what the effect of those drugs might be ?
You would not permit in biology what you are eager to do in philosophy – or atleast I hope not.
I am not putting words in your mouth – you have already asserted that you are free to accomplish your will over the objections of others through force aka government.
Back away from that – and we have no despite.
You keep trying to elide that.
We go round in circles – but always end up back here. We end up here because that is the core. You shuck and jive and try to duck it, but it still always returns to your wish to use force (government) to impose your will on others.
There are only limited circumstances under which that can be done.
You do not accept that.
That is the only important issue that separates us.
Roby
“I suppose you chose me just because I am obsessive enough to argue with you.”
Pretty close.
Advocate for the use of force to impose your will on others, and you will find me responding. Roby, Jay, Moogie, Ron, Priscilla. Rick.
Once in a blue moon I miss such a post, or it is not all that clear.
Why do I respond to you more – because you make that argument more ?
There are lots of your posts I have ignored,
and some I have agreed with.
It is those that are about the use of force against others typically through government that I am going to respond to.
It has nothing to do with you – only what you advocate.
We are all different – that is one of the practical reasons – as opposed to philosophical reasons that limited government is necessary The breadth of our differences mean our common ground is smaller. Whether we can do so morally, we can legislate practically inside that common ground. That is why social democracy worked better in northern europe and also why it is failing.
”
Whether you beleive it or not, I do not see a post from Roby and say “I need to target him”
I read posts, and respond to the content, not the poster.
On many occasion I have been confused by the content and thought I was responding to someone else. That does not matter much, as I am responding to content.
But I do have two “triggers” – and your very good at pulling them.
The one is mentioned above.
The other is related. It is stepping onto a moral soapbox.
If it makes you feel better, I have had related debates with christian fundamentalists for hours and hours.
There is very little difference between christian fundamentalists and those on the left.
They are both intensely religious. Absolutely sure of the correctness of their beliefs.
Though christian fundamentalists tend to actually know theirs better than those on the left.
I do not try to lure you into anything.
Though I generally enjoy a debate – particularly with a challenging opponent,
You shift to the personal at the drop of a hat.
Even your “last post” – it is all about you.
Why are you the target ?
Own your own views and beliefs.
Particularly if you are asking government to impose them.
You are not a victim because someone disagrees with you.
Nor are you a victim because you do not know what you believe very well.
My first response to Rick, was that I have no sympathy for Trump.
Trump asks for much of the flack he gets, and he is a big dog, and can take it.
Even when he is right, he is not a victim.
Neither are you.
“Or do you believe the liberals in America want us biting the bullett
with high cost electric cars that can’t take a family over 300 miles from home or is so small a family if four can not get themselves and all their luggage in for a weeks vacation while China and India are doing much less than we are?”
No I don’t believe that. You blame too many things on liberals. If its a foggy day was it liberals? One thing that causes a lot of the heat around here (no pun intended) is the blanket blaming of the left or right for things. Seriously, reread your sentence and ask if its a reasonable question or a rhetorical and hyperbolic question that you asked to place the blame on liberals.
Desire to reduce GG emissions is obviously not limited to liberals. If liberals want anything (although they are not a monolithic group) its for the world to work together, because that is the only thing that would actually work. .
Economies at different stages of their development are going to suffer different consequences from reduced energy consumption. So, yes, third world countries are not going to agree to kill their efforts to modernize. Asking for some utterly equal reduction is like asking for a car that goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds and gets 200 mpg. Its just a foolproof reason to say no.
SInce I said above that I find a lot of what I call naive hippies who have no idea what it actually means to meaningfully reduce GG emissions and I also said that I have no illusions about there being an easy cure I am not sure why you are asking me this question. Because I believe that progress needs to be made in reducing GG emissions? Because I’m a liberal (to some tiny degree)?
How would you go about tackling the problem in a meaningful way? Its easy to gripe about liberals.
“but when we put controls on manufacturing and other countries do not, then the climate is still getting screwed up, but just from a different continent.”
You are 100% correct about that, Its something I also realized long ago and it is the reason why I am doubtful that the human race is up to this challenge. Its one of those impossibly tough questions like peace in the middle east. Still the answer is not to just throw up our hands and say, hopeless and when china suffers then I am willing to suffer.
Just imagine that over some period of time the GG levels do reach such a level that the worst case scenario occurs. In 50 years, 100 years, 400 years? Who can say precisely? Does it matter how long it takes? If we don’t cut we will get to any GG level you can name, just at a different rate.
Most of the earths history has been spent in much warmer climates than at present, certainly most of the period that has included vertebrate life has been much warmer with much higher levels of CO2. How will human civilization cope with the climate conditions that the dinosaurs lived under? Will our biology adapt? Its been cooling for most of the cenozoic as mammals became large and dominant. It takes millions of years for evolution, maybe tens of million of years to change the body to live in a different climate. What constitutes a big news story with over 100 degree temps in the west with old people dying and brownouts, etc. when it lasts for a few days may become just the general situation every day, too damned hot to live in a human body without being inside under air conditioning. Can we keep 8 billion people inside under air conditioning all the time? How much energy would that take? Where will it come from? If you cannot imagine a plausible scenario where a much hotter climate does not do serious or even fatal harm to our civilization and cause mass extinctions, you are not trying.
Our descendents are going to wonder WTF was wrong with us.
Roby,2 comments, try to make them short.
1. I have yet to meet a more conservative person who believes we need to put regulations on America when we dont demand the same from the worst polluters. So yes ,I think most liberals support regulations and most conservative do not. The majority middle, I dont think they are paying much attention.
2. What would I do? If America agrees to cut emissions by 25% by 2025 and ,China produces 50% more CO2 than we do, then I want the same impact on China as on America. We reduce by 25% and they reduce by 37.5%. Letting them to continue to peak out by 2030 (15 years from agreement) while we had to start now and reduce by 2025 ( 10 years) is asinine. But a lot of what Obama did was asinine..
Roby;
All I seek to blame on the left, is their repeated efforts to expand government intrusions into our lives.
While they are not alone in doing so – there are several undesirable intrusions from the right I have serious problems with that rarely get discussed here – I am pretty much the only one that raises the ever growing non-partisan police state we live in the increasing militarization of the police, the growing surveillance state, and several other instances of mostly right wing infringement on liberty – though often with the consent of the left.
For the most part the left is driving the expanding regulatory state. The left is driving the expanding entitledment state. The left is driving the expanding redistributive state.
The left is driving increasingly profligate state spending.
And yes, I will blame the left for those things, and for their failure.
“How do we go about tackling problems in a meaningful way ?”
As we have done for centuries – outside of government.
The concept that all problems require society and therefore government to solve them is primarily LEFT – and therefore you get the blame for it.
Yes, the Human race is not up to the challenge of global coordination to solve a problem.
It never has been.
Few human problems are solved by govenrments – those that are involve the legitimate use for force, and the restriction on illegitimate use of force by others.
You keep saying you do not want to discuss philosophy – but everything you wish to do reflects a specific philosophy. What you really want is to pretend that your historicially failed philosophy has been globally adopted to elide any consideration of the fact that it has always failed and resulted in copious bloodshed.
Yes, BTW it actually does matter how long it takes – because as you note “climate changes”. There are myriads of natural cycles far more consequential than a human impact we have not yet quantized and is likely small and may well be played out.
If the Climate sensitivity to CO2 is 0.25C/doubling – probably the most reasonable low.
Only a small portion of warming since 1970 is caused by Humans – which is consistent with Warming since the “little ice age”.
I keep trying to point out that Warming is logarithmic. That means that linear decreases in TCI result in exponential decreases in the rate of warming.
The rate of increase in CO2 has been approximately stable at about 1.5ppm/year since 1950. Current CO2 is almost exactly 400ppm.
If as the IPCC claims the worse case TCI is 4C/doubling that means it will take approx 266 years to see a 4C increase and nearly a millennia for the next doubling.
If conversely TCI is closer to 0.25C – that means it will take 266 years to increase temps by 0.25C and another millenia to get the next 0.25C.
The fact that the models are running hot by 2.5 std dev’s means that the latter is more likely than the former.
Finally at values of 0.25C/doubling CO2 is dwarfed by other factors including natural variation.
We must be extremely careful for projections running out 100’s and 1000’s of years.
They are completely impossible to make.
I am hard pressed to think of a single projection of anything done by government or anyone else going 20 years into the future that has proven accurate.
Change is the constant of the universe – not just climate change.
I am not sure what your remarks regarding energy mean.
Regardless, energy is the most significant factor related to future improvements in standard of living. If you reduce the energy consumption of the third world you condemn it to poverty.
There are fundimental reasons that we should not use government to solve these types of problems – because it can not.
Human behavior and values can change extremely rapidly if necessary.
Major and often disruptive transitions in human circumstances have occured in a few decades – often even a few years over the course of the past 4 centuries.
Contra the left the environmental changes postulated will near certainly occur gradually.
There are no “tipping points”. The Ipcc’s worst projections have the oceans rising a few feet by 2100, the minimums which are still higher than observations are a few inches.
Venice has been sinking for centuries – so has New Orleans.
Conversely more and more of Canada, the US north, and siberia will become available for raising crops.
We constantly ignore that should warming actually occur there are massive positive benefits.
Left wing nut scientists constantly claim that warming will result in mass extinctions – yet historically the greatest biodiversity in earths history has been when temperatures are far warmer than the present.
I do not honestly beleive we are going to see warming any different from what most of us have already experienced in our lifetimes.
But should that occur – we will do fine, we will thrive and prosper, likely more than otherwise, and we will do all of that without government intervention.
There will be winners and losers. But there will be winners and losers no matter what.
What we do not want is govenrment deciding who the winners and losers will be.
Roby
Ireland is at peace.
It has taken almost a millennia to achieve that.
40 years ago I would not have believed that was possible.
There have been myriads of government efforts to bring peace to ireland.
Ultimately the driving factor for peace in ireland was prosperity – not government.
The Mideast looks a disasterous mess.
I would be happy to agree that I do not think governments can do a damn thing about that.
But peace will come to the mideast eventually.
In the meantime we should be doing our best to stay out of the fighting and to protect ourselves from rogue regimes.
But we do not have to kill all our enemies to do so.
The US has spent over a century as a beligerant world superpower, and the evidence of our government having a positive impact on the world is nil.
Roby;
Homo Sapiens came into existance at the tail end of a global ice age, we now populate the entire earth our ability to adapt is far greater than any likely change.
We know nearly nothing about rates of past climate change.
Our records of past temperatures diminish in quality rapidly as you move into the past.
We only have direct readings of temperatures – and only for small parts of the world as far back as 1640.
Past that everything is by proxy. Each proxy covers a different time period and has a different level of granularity. Those for the past thousand years have small granularity.
Those for the past million years have enormous granularity.
If we say that the earth’s temperature was 2C higher a million years ago than today – that value is the average temperature for 100,000 years, There easily could have been multiple ice ages during that period,
We have no reason to beleive that past variation was different than present.
We have evidence to the contrary.
Major volcanic eruptions have significantly and quickly disrupted climate globally for years.
Why is it that left wing nuts always presume that everything vaguely associated with humans is inherently unusual ?
Roby;
I can imagine a disruptive warmer climate.
I can far more easily imagine a disruptive colder climate.
The avg temp in my county is 10C,
100F is 37C – that is a rise of 27C. at 4C per doubling that is almost 7 doublings of CO2
That would require CO2 at 51200ppm – I do not think those levels have ever been reached. Regardless at the current rate of change in CO2 that would take 34000 years
That is about 5 times all human recorded history.
Reduce the TCI to the more likely value of .25C and these numbers become astronomically large.
I am sorry but scientists who “beleive” in this CAGW nonsense are all mathematically challenged.
Please read about Malthus. These “malthusian” projections do not ever happen.
They can not. But it takes a better understanding of statistics, math and feedbacks than most climate scientists have to grasp that.
I noted that predicting the future is impossible. Still we have been doing it forever.
The best predictions of the future have not come from scientists or engineers (or politicians) but from ordinary people – particularly entrepeneurs.
Roby
Our decendents are not going to care about us anymore than we do about out parents generations.
They are going to be too busy fixated on whatever stupid malthusian prediction of the future and doom and gloom is prevelant in their time.
Thank you.
Those on the left have always been incredibly intolerant of other viewpoints.
I am pretty sure I have posted survey data showing that those on the far left censor themselves about 40% of the time because they are afraid of how others will respond, while those on the far right censor themselves 72% of the time.
That alone should tell you why Trump won the election.
I do not like Trump.
But I do like very much that he is in the face of the intolerant obnoxious left.
I value tolerance highly – but I really wish that those on the left like Roby had to live in the same world as most of the rest of us.
I beleive it was Jay laughed at the Lutheran minister who tried to make a religious argument for why god allows evil to exist.
I do not agree with his argument – but I am not holding him up to scorn derision and laughter.
But that is what those on the left do all of the time.
I have made serious mistakes here with Roby in particular.
My mistake is that I have allowed myself to become too much like him.
Roby is completely blind to the fact that not only doesn’t he make arguments, he does very little beyond insult those who disagree with him.
The modern US left has really become much like the soviet and Chinese communists of half a century ago.
Not only is dissent from the right punished – but within the left itself it has been punished.
Many of the modern lights I respect most at the moment were free thinkers on the left who found themselves being threatened with excomunication by the church of progressivism.
And are now calling themselves libertarians.
People like Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, or Johnathan Haidt.
The right has lots of problems and factions and infighting,
but the left is self destructing – and blind to that.
And it is doing so because it has grown so used to weaponizing the threat to label you an apostate, to identify you as a hateful hating hater, and by ever expanding the conformity required for acceptance. this is the path to destruction.
Trump’s election has accelerated this.
While Trump is far from a perfect president, he is also far from our worst.
But he won, and they lost and that is not acceptable.
That could only have happened as a consequence of some evil deed.
Our national discussion – atleast from the left is rooted in this premise that somehow Russian Facebook adds altered the election.
I do not understand why everyone with a brain does not think that is hillariously absurd ?
I also do not understand why the left does not grasp that most trump voters are likely to think it is unbelieveably condescending and insulting.
If you beleive that Russian adds altered the outcome of the election – you are telling Trump voters they were duped by russians.
Roby thinks I am a poor salesman. If you can convince those blue collar democratic Trump voters that they are so stupid they were duped into voting for Trump by stupid Russian adds showing satanic Hillary wrestling Jesus – then you are one hell of a sales person and I take my hat off to you.
Anyway a part of my point is that some of what is going on at TNM is reflective of the nation at large.
A portion of us are so angry over this election that they can not do anything but spew insults. And they are prepared to accept any means to change the results.
After Obama was elected in 2008, there was a tiny fraction on the right who felt the same,
but most of the right settled to forestalling as much as possible the worst of Obama’s policies, with some success.
If that is what the left was up to – we would not be at war.
Dave: I have to agree with you about the intolerant left. (I no longer refer to them as liberals, because they’re anything but.) I find that I can disagree with my conservative friends without incurring their wrath, but I risk expulsion from polite society if I disagree with my progressive friends. (I feel I have to monitor just how much I can get away with in my Facebook pronouncements.) If I attend a party thrown by any of my progressive friends and the other invitees know me, I have to worry that they now regard me as a heretic, if not a villain. One wife of a progressive friend has stopped interacting with me on Facebook. (She hasn’t unfriended me; she simply ignores me.) It’s really as if progressivism has become a religion and I’m risking excommunication for my heterodox ideas.
This has always been an issue – but it has been getting much worse.
I cite Prof. Haidt regularly. He thought of himself as on the left, until he accidentally “triggered” a student in class over something he thought was non-controversial.
This has resulted in his forming heterdox academy and working to fix free expression on campus.
The pew study cited alot recently that shows us more divided that ever does not indicate this on graphs – but the growing gap is because the left is moving further left.
The driving force is the intolerance of the left. And it goes beyond censoring conservatives.
In fact arguably conservatives on campus have more freedom to speak than moderates or those slightly to the left.
Like all past historical left movements – the left is most rigorous in censoring its own members.
The big revalation in ClimateGate was not that the high priest of warmendom were supressing skeptic papers – everyone already knew that.
It is that they were silently supressing other warmists – that did not hew perfictly to dogma.
It is this revelation that drove Judith Curry to the skeptic camp.
One campus left departments are harder on other leftists, than other groups – coalescing the left at the far extreme.
We are also seeing this right now with the democratic party.
No one wants to hear that Hitler was a socialist – but it is absolutely true, and he made it perfectly clear that his hatred of communism was because ideologically they were too close to Nazism. There was only room in the political space for one.
There are many decent people on the left. My wife is part of a litterally flaming UCC church tthat I think is great – and particularly great for her. I do alot to help, but when there I keep my mouth shut or find topics that I can discuss with a progressive that will nor expose that I disagree on most everything with them.
These are good people – just as Roby and Jay are likely good people.
They are doing many good things, But they beleive and attempt to do many things that are immoral and evil, and they do not grasp it.
It the real world face to face there is no possibility I could confront most progressives as I do on the web. I could not remain friends with them and many would resort to violence.
Anyone who thinks lefties are non-violent has never pissed on off.
Not really, Priscilla, the “lurkers” I am thinking of would like a slimmer site not one cluttered with one person’s posts. I am saying this about the logistics of having a conversation with so many long posts that it is hard to keep track and the comments seem to get scattered.
Ever try to have a discussion in a crowded very noisy bar from a distance of 10 feet or more if you can’t overcome the loud juke box and louder patrons.
I do get it, dd12. Over the years, we have developed a long-form commentary, and, although I admire your pithiness, we are not all possessed of such pith.
Not to mention, WordPress makes it difficult to follow a thread, and particularly to respond to a specific person, if the thread is long. I also try to directly address the people to whose comments I’m responding, to try and avoid misunderstandings…but the bar can get very noisy.
Look back at threads in 2009. Nice pithiness there.
My posts have gotten longer and sloppier.
That is because I no longer edit them, or look to shrink them, or organize them.
They are more streams of consciousness and that shows.
That is not how I write professionally.
I have spent 5 hours getting a 2 paragraph email as I want it – pithy and accurate.
Regardless, the approach I have taken with TNM optimizes my time.
And that is my choice.
You get to make your own.
I do not read TNM in my web browser and have not for a long time.
New comments come to me via email, as individual emails.
I reply to those I wish to reply to, and ignore those I do not.
That poses occasional problems – because I am rarely looking at more than two comments in a chain. It also leads to a chain staying off topic once it is shifted.
But it makes managing posts easier for me.
Just my ,02.
Your analogy does not apply.
Read a post, do not read a post.
There is no cost to you rooted in the actions of any other posters.
If instead of my posts, there were 10 other libertarians here – would that alter anything ?
Absolutely, dhii, most would be brief and to the point, with nuances.
The justification of the use of force is rarely very nuanced.
If you want a nuanced discussion with me – pick a topic that is nuanced.
Like poetry, or music, or art.
That would also fit into Roby’s idyl where all views are equal.
We can disagree over poetry and not likely have anyone wrong.
We can debate nuance, because poetry is nuanced.
It is not about force.
dduck: I completely understand your concern about the verbal “noise” here. It’s like going to a class reunion where the DJ is playing high-decibel music for the entire evening and you can’t engage in audible conversations with classmates you haven’t seen for 30 years.
I wish I could think of an easy solution. Dave dominates the proceedings with his libertarian evangelism, but he’s civil and I wouldn’t dream of evicting him. If I had more control over WordPress, I could impose a 100-word limit or a maximum number of posts per day. But I can’t. My only advice is to skim as much as possible and interact with the people you feel like interacting with. (I gave similar advice to Roby.)
Rick;
It is your site, and you can do as you please.
And I am giving serious consideration to some other options.
But I would note – the analogies do not work.
A web site is NOT like a class reunion with a loud DJ.
What one person posts here does not alter what another person must read.
And the media’s support for HRC started before Bill was elected president.
So what ?
dh, do you read your own questions: “If instead of my posts, there were 10 other libertarians here – would that alter anything ?”
I addressed you by name,. a habit which can be learned, BTW, and said this: Absolutely, dhii, most would be brief and to the point, with nuances.”
Your answer went off on a tangent- read it, above.
DO you see why it is impossible to have a coherent discussion with you on ANY subject?
And an answer other than, “it is my way, you can do it your way”, would be a start.
And, Roby, looking forward to your return.
As best as I can tell you are responding to a hypothetical with an altogether different hypothetical, claiming they are the same and that somehow I can not read my own questions.
Why do you presume that 10 other libertarians would be brief and to the point ?
Some would. Some would likely be worse.
It does not even matter if it were 10 other libertarians.
From the perspective of your argument, it could be 10 wordy progressives.
The point is that 100 2000 char posts are still 200 2000 char posts.
If I went away completely and 100 new posters showed up – you would have far more to wade through.
Is anyone following what is going on in Saudi Arabia?
I don’t completely understand it, but it appears that the more moderate, that is the anti Muslim Brotherhood (note that I’m referring to the MB, not Muslims in general) faction of the Saudi royal family is ascendant right now, and intent upon re-aligning with the US in a power shift away from the Iranian-Russian nexus.
I have no clue – between arrests of the royal family and a helicopter crash killing off the crown prince and alot of the top, I have no idea what is going on or who is ascendant.
Add to this that SA has an enormous investment in men and material in war in yemen.
Things could go completely to hell.
“So this much-needed respite from the Middle East madness may be coming to a close. An empowered Iran is getting richer, and it is watching closely how nuclear North Korea fares in its threats to the U.S. and its allies. Hezbollah, the Assad government, and Iran are waging a veritable proxy war against Saudi Arabia”.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453473/middle-east-threat-remains-beware-iranian-syrian-hezbollah-attack-israel
“Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of seven professors Monday in support of the Columbia Knight First Amendment Institute’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s ability to block opponents from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed.”
“Because Trump and his aides have made clear that they consider statements published on @realDonaldTrump to be official statements, the Knight First Amendment Institute argues the president has imposed an unconstitutional restriction on the plaintiffs’ participation in a designated public forum, right to access statements that defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large and right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/358931-legal-scholars-trump-acting-like-a-dictator-by-blocking-twitter
Why should this be any different than any other disagreement between liberals and conservatives? We have been teaching our kids this behavior is fine for 20+ years by our elected officials.
Will be interesting to hear final outcome as to who did what to create the disagreement. From some reports, it appears that Paul lives in a “communist” neighborhood where home owners have control of what others can do with there property and Paul had compost in violation of those rules and growing pumpkins where it was not allowed. Other reports state he was mowing his lawn and not using a grass catcher. While mowing along the adjoining yard, grass and leaves were blowing onto the neighbor’s yard and the neighbor got pissed off.
There is no possible fact pattern consistent with those facts we do know that justifies this.
There are claims this was political – but Boucher’s lawyer deny’s that.
Boucher and Paul are both doctors and had worked together in the past.
Several people who know Paul well claim that he has never mentioned any past conflict with Boucher.
There are all kinds of rumours – some you mentioned, also a property line dispute and something about where kids were playing.
But nothing is actually known at the moment.
In the event Paul may have been doing something he was not allowed to.
Assault is not the remedy.
No assualt is never justifiable, but dont you think the way we are today it leads to more physical confrontations?
You may not think so and maybe in your neck of the woods people are more civil in their approach to differences of opinion. But I believe all the negative stimulus on TV and the internet today lends itself to impacting people to act in irrational ways that they most likely would not in a more civil society.
I agree, Ron. Before the internet, I was a quiet, reasonable, timid person. 😌
I hear that.😀
After making this comment, I heard an interview with a young lady who had been a target of the Texas shooter in high school. It got so bad with his violence she had to drop out of school, the school did not follow up on any of her complaints and the sheriffs departnent all but ignored her.
Could the negativity also be affecting the authorities where they are not taking threats as important as they should take them.
Actual US violent crime rate has been declining for decades.
Though there has been an uptick in major cities in 2016-2017
Perceived crime rate has been increasing.
https://images.dailykos.com/images/182846/large/uotxycqc8u6z0k1zh06lpg-1.png?1449160993
Typical of leftists – celebrating assault.
I don’t get the comment by Wolfram, I don’t think its funny.
If it turns out there was actually a political motive for breaking Pauls ribs etc. that would be despicable. People should not assault politicians and politicians should not assault (see Montana) people.
I would wait until all the facts are in before deciding this had some political cause. Meanwhile, its to me a serious thing that someone got blind side assaulted and seriously injured, whatever the reason. Making jokes about it is gonna backfire. An assault on Paul certainly is not a platform for having a bash at libertarians.
I don’t get people sometimes.
See, we can agree.
The use of force against others must be justified.
Even when government does it.
“Carter Page’s testimony is filled with bombshells — and supports key portions of the Steele dossier…
The House Intelligence Committee on Monday released the full transcript of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page’s testimony before the panel last week, portions of which support details in an explosive collection of memos outlining alleged collusion between the campaign and Moscow during the election.
Page revealed during his testimony that he met with both members of Russia’s presidential administration and with the head of investor relations at the state-owned Russian oil giant Rosneft during his trip to Moscow last July.
He also congratulated members of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team on July 14 for their “excellent work” on the “Ukraine amendment” – a reference to the Trump campaign’s decision to “intervene” to water down a proposed amendment to the GOP’s Ukraine platform.“
tRUMP and his brigade of lying liars once again caught in the net of their lying lies.
http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-congressional-testimony-transcript-steele-dossier-2017-11
In his testimony and as documented by emails from Lewandowski, Page was told BEFORE he went to russia that he was free to do so on his own, but that he did not represent the Trump campaign. Page was invited to speak at Moscow university – much like Bill Clinton was invited to speak at Renaissance Capital.
This is consistent with What the campaign has previously stated, and consistent with what Page has previously stated.
Page has pretty actively been demanding to be allowed to testify because of the scurlous accusations made about him.
It does not matter whether Page met with Putin.
All the rest is nonsense.
I would further note that the Trip was in July, that once again means the Trump/Russia/DNC email meme is down the toilet – so many ways.
I doubt there would be any difficulty finding myriads of people affiliated with Clinton who visited Russia in 2016.
The bottom line is that all you have is a bit more detail on something we already know.
that was nothing before and remains nothing.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that whatever various people might have tried to do on their own the Trump campaign itself was actively trying to thwart contact with Russia.
Page brings back another mention by the Russians of a request that Trump visit Russia – which never happened.
You seem to think that adding just one more instance of inconsequential non-campaign contact with Russia that produced nothing is somehow meaningful.
Dave, the name of the game with the liberal press and Trump is the same as the game was for Obama and the conservative press.. For Obama it was the birther issue for months that was a “nothing burger”. The plan is to keep people that are anti trump activated to keep posting stuff in various sites.
Best if you post something in response to items like this to be restricted to “nothing new”. They know its nothing new, you know its nothing new and most people paying attention know its nothing new. Why waste the time writing out something most people already know?
The birther issue never commanded the attention that the left is getting regarding Trump.
But the comparison is apt.
I personally think the evidence that the birth certificates that have been made public have been altered is reasonably good – not absolutely certain, but still good.
HOWEVER, it is also pretty close to an absolute certainty that Obama was born in Hawaii.
There is just no possible fact pattern consistent with many things we do know that would have him born in Kenya.
The question then becomes what was Obama hiding – which is much like why won’t Trump release tax returns.
In the end both are none of our business.
My guess is that the father listed on the birth certificate is not Barack Obama Sr.
But that is a guess.
Further no matter what Obama is not responsible for something that happened 60 years ago.
Personally – I do not give a damn even if he was born in Kenya.
So the entire Obama meme devolves exactly like the Trump/Russia meme.
There is no possible outcome consistent with what we know to be facts now, that will produce the left’s hoped outcome.
Yeah! JJ
“21st Century Fox Has Held Merger Talks With Disney—Reports”
Unfortunately the deal won’t include Fox News.
That means we won’t be seeing Elmer Fudd and Donald Duck replacing Tucker Carter and Sean Hannity any time soon. (Would we know the difference?)
http://deadline.com/2017/11/21st-century-fox-has-held-merger-talks-with-disney-report-1202202840/
Could it be time for Rick to add a link to the right side of his web site under “Pages” a link called “Pissing Contests”. Maybe Roby, Dave and others that get into 300+ personal attacks could link up there and allow for common sense debate to be on the issues Rick post. I know I have made a few disparaging remarks in the past, but this is getting ridiculous given the amount of shit slinging that has taken place the last two post by Rick.
You are right, of course. Sorry about that.
Ron: We do have a link that serves the purpose of a “pissing contest.” It’s called “Wild Card Debate,” I created it for just this purpose, and we used it for about a month or two before abandoning it. But you’re right — we really need to dust off that link and start using it to reduce the verbal clutter under each of my columns. Believe me, I’m flattered that The New Moderate has been drawing a thousand comments each month, but it makes it difficult to hold a coherent discussion of each post. Let’s have some Wild Card Debates!
Give us instructions on how to get that link to notify readers by email when something is posted to that area. I have mine set to be notified when you post a new article and then I have to post something and click the boxes at the bottom of the comment box to get notified when people comment. Once that is done I see all the comment via e-mail and it links me to the comment when I follow up.
If there is a better way, would like to know.
Good one. The Second Amendment diehards love their semi-automatics the way toddlers love their teddy bears.
Second try:
Rick, I have said th is before, but I repeat. The second amendment states “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”. It does not say “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms holding 10 shots shall not be infringed.”
The preamble to the constitution includes “We the people”. It also did not specify which people. The congress did not pass a law that clarified which people. They passed an amendment making it very clear who were the people and did it in a way that made it hard for future congresses to change what they did.
If congress passes an amendment that specifically identifies what type of weapons we can or can not possess and the people supported this amendment through their states approving that amendment, then I would support that action.
I would not support legislation as that opens the door for the left to drive their agenda through further restricting rights through additional legislation. Its the drip method of infringement and as our country moves further leftand right, sensible actions in the middle is absent.
We outlawed Machine Guns.
That wasn’t unconstitutional.
It won’t be unconstitutional to outlaw semi automatics, or any other class of guns.
As long as we don’t out ALL weapons we are faithful to the 2nd Amendment’s self protection intention.
Jay did we really outlaw machine guns? What is the basic difference between an automatic assault rifle and a machine gun? Could the people in Los Vegas tell the difference or the ones in the Texas church?
You say as long as we don’t outlaw all guns we are following the 2nd amendment. So how many guns banned is OK?
Liberals and progressives are much more gullible thinking government will pass one law and go no further. Libertarians and those with Libertarian leanings understand government will not stop once they get a foot in the door.
So I ask you the same thing as I am asking rick. Why not do it the right way and pass the 28th amendment defining what you and I can own, along with giving people the right to carry nationally instead of 50 different state laws where I might be able to carry in 20 legally, but illegally in 30 others when I am passing though on a vacation. That is why amendments were set up, just for issue like this.
And don’t tell me that it would never pass 2/3rds of the states. If it would never pass, then it IS NOT what the people want nationally and only some from bleeding heart states would want it. If people want it, they will let their state elected officials know and then elect those that would support the amendment. That is the democratic way of government, not the Democrat way!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are Machine Guns illegal?
No, and Yes.
“From 1936 to 1986
The federal government started regulating and keeping records of machine guns back when it passed the National Firearms Act of 1934.
That law mandated strict guidelines for manufacturers and put them in place for owners to register their machine guns.
Then in 1986, the feds imposed the Firearm Owners Protection Act which expanded on the original law.
It also banned possession and transfer of new automatic firearms and parts that fire bullets without stopping once the trigger is depressed.
Critically, legal machine guns must be manufactured before May 19, 1986 — the cutoff date imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives (ATF).
Because of their scarcity, legal machine guns are very expensive, still require the original 1934 Machine Gun Tax stamp of $200 and the owner or trader must undergo extensive background checks and also permit the federal government to conduct searches.
Law enforcement agencies and the military are not subject to the same stringent measures.
Registered machine gun dealers are also permitted to possess samples to sell to military and law enforcement customers.
Federal and state laws
More legislation regarding machine guns exist at the state level and can impose long prison sentences.
In fact, fines of up to $250,000 and prison sentences up to 10 years can be instituted to those in possession of an unregistered machine gun.
Connecticut is a small state of 4 million residents but possesses the greatest share of machine guns nationwide, with 52,965 registered. Their machine gun law details that the parts of a machine gun must be registered with the ATF.
“Connecticut residents may purchase machine guns if they are capable of a ‘full automatic only’ rate of fire. Any select fire weapon is considered an ‘Assault Weapon’ and is prohibited by State Law,” according to their gun laws.
Nevada follows the federal guidelines: machine guns can be possessed if they are registered and manufactured before 1986.
As of April 2017, there were over 11,000 machine guns registered in the same state where Adam Lanza committed one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings when he killed 26 people, including 20 first graders.
But these guns mostly aren’t being handled by the general public.
“[Many are] in the hands of law enforcement, and they have to register too. Those are part of the high number,” Lindsay Nichols, the Federal Policy Director from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun law advocacy organization told ABC News.
Texas falls in second to Connecticut with 36,534 machine guns registered among a population of almost 28 million.
The state has the most federally registered weapons with almost 590,000.
The ATF’s Nationally, according to the 2017 Commencement Report confirmed there were 630,019 machine guns registered nationwide. A spokesperson for the ATF said that the number of machine gun owners nationwide is not known. ”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/machine-gun-laws-us/story?id=50256580
Jay, can you also address the issue about the “28th” amendment?
I’d slightly alter the wording to ‘more strictly’ applies to senators and/or Representatives.
Well this is internet communication for ya. There is no 28th amendment. I said in my previous comment that I would support a 28th amendment that specifically identified what we could or could not bear in the form of arms..
So when you responded with the info on machine guns and did not answer my question concerning your position on that, then I asked what you thought about the “28th” amendment. MY BAD!
So I put people in three categories.
Complete trust in government
Trust but clarify government
Complete distrust of gov’t
I fall in the middle groupband therefore want the roadmap they follow clearly defined.
Ron, I thought you meant this proposed amendment:
“Viral message quotes a proposed 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to wit: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives.”
Description: Viral text / Forwarded email
Circulating since: Nov. 2009
So I will put you in the trust government category since you have twice avoided the question and I suspect you dont want to debate the issue of limiting future gun control by future liberal adminustrations since an amendment would do that where legislation would not.
AR-15’s are not being handled by the “general public” they are being handled by the about 3m – that is about 1% of the population that owns them.
You misunderstand/misuse the meaning of “general public.”
Look it up.
Websters
general public: all the people of an area, country
Assault rifle has no meaning. The definition used in the “assault rifle ban” was “scarry looking weapon” essentially.
Automatic and machine gun essentially means the same thing.
The weapons the left wishes to ban are not automatics.
The AR-15 Receiver can be made at home now, so there really is no way to stop them.
An M-16 Receiver is no more difficult to make than an AR-15 – the guns are very strongly related. But there are no opensource CNC files for an M16 yet.
In the end you just can not control this.
We behave stupidly when we ban things. It just does not work – ever.
An AR-15 can be converted from Semi-Autmatic to full automatic in a few minutes with a mod kit – but once that is done, it is illegal. Bump Stocks are more popular because they are legal. But they also screw badly with the accuracy of the weapon.
BTW pretty much every handgun is “semi-automatic” – they can fire multiple shots – one with each pull of the trigger. That is exactly how an AR-15 works.
We did not outlaw machine guns, we just extremely regulated them.
It is possible to privately own a machine gun in the US.
To my knowledge there is no supreme court precedent regarding the constitutionality fo regulating machine guns.
Those on the left are affraid they would lose if such a case was brought and those on the right are affraid they would lose.
So everybody sticks with the status quo.
Ron: You have to acknowledge that when the Bill of Rights was drafted, “arms” meant muskets, long rifles, pistols and bayonets. The Founding Fathers couldn’t have foreseen the destructive power of semi-automatic assault weapons. Also (although the language is ambiguous), the Second Amendment granted the right to bear arms within the framework of “a well-ordered militia.” I don’t see any order in lone madmen mowing down crowds of innocent people.
Government-imposed regulations on driving (driver’s tests, license renewals, mandatory seat belts, baby seats, airbags, etc.) have saved countless lives over the years. I feel strongly that assault weapons, whose only purpose is to kill as many people in as short a time as possible, should be regulated at least as stringently as our cars.
Rick, and driving and the rules pertaining to driver’s tests, license renewals, mandatory seat belts, baby seats, airbags, etc. is also based on a privileged and not a right. I have no problem making laws when something is a privilege and can be revoked for any reason.
But again, whats the problem with a constitutional amendment that updates the constitution and spells out what we can and can not own? Jay keeps posting stuff that says more than 50% of the people are fine with restrictions to gun ownership. So if they are fine with restrictions, why not make it constitutionally defined what we can and can not own.
I am not gullible enough to think if Pelosi and Shumer ever get a law to ban assault rifles and then someone walks in with a 22 caliber rifle with a Tubular magazine that holds 25 Short, 19 Long or 17 Long Rifle cartridges and kills 7 or 8 people that they might not decide that these rifles should be banned. And then something happens with a handgun and they or their successors decide that one needs to be banned. Finally all guns are banned.
I have no problem determining what Americans can own, but do it the right way, just like congress did with the 14th amendment. Think about it. If congress way back then had passed a law saying people born in the country were citizens, someone like Trump comes along and decides kids born to illegals should not be citizens and he gets congress to pass another law revoking that one and the new one takes citizenship away from this group if born in the USA in the future.. He can’t do that now because congress did it the right way to begin with.
When the bill of rights was drifted “ARMs” meant the best weapons available at the time.
One of the reasons for the success of the continentals was a sufficiently large number of Pennsylvania Rifles.
The pennsylvania rifle was incredibly accurate for its time and had nearly twice the range of anything the british possessed, and it was fairly common among homesteaders and farmers.
Its primary weakness was that its rate of fire was far slower than british muskets.
But war is often about finding the tactics that feature the strength of your weapons while avoiding their weakenesses.
Particularly in new england the continentals were extremely effective at ambushing british from a distance. They would load there weapons, position themselves to fire when the british got within range – fire once and they retreat immediately, reload, setup and do it again. The result was a slow whittling away of british forces with no continental casualties, because the continentals had far better range and accuracy.
Do not kid yourself the Pennsyvania Rifle was the “assualt weapon” of its era.
BTW during the colonial era we had private ownership of cannon (and still do).
We also had privateers – privately owned warships used primarily as commerce raiders.
People value all kinds of things over human lives.
Sometimes they value things over their own lives.
One of the fundimental differences between many libertarians and everyone else is that we grasp that ultimately life has a value, and it is not all that high.
The left and sometimes the right seem to think that a price can not be placed on life.
But we do it all the time.
When you go a bit over (or under) the speed limit, you increase your odds of dying.
You do nit base on your personal preference. You may not littlerally do the math, but you know that you could die, and you know the odds are real but small.
You have assigned a value for your own life.
But when those on the left and right duck the issue – that just means that government ends up deciding the value of a human life.
In 2010 HHS used a value of 225K in determining whether to treat different diseases and illnesses under ObamaCare.
Deciding that government handles placing a value on human life – means that value is low.
So far in South Korea, President Me-Me-Me has talked about:
-HIS stock market heights
-HIS unemployment rate lows
-Women’s U.S. Open being held at HIS Trump property.
And the MSM isn’t giving him a hard time about it. 😏
In the article I am linking, there is a quote from the director of this California regulatory agency. He states ““If the test of the validity of government programs is they act 100 percent perfectly, there would be no government programs. We’d never do anything,” he said. “We can do better, but just because we can’t do everything doesn’t mean we can’t do everything we can.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/07/californias-unique-gun-confiscation-program-in-spotlight-after-texas-church-massacre/
In 2013 there were 20,000 people on the restricted list that officials had not been able to contact. There are people on the list that should not be on the list and it is very difficult to get off. One has to wonder what the ACLU’s position is on this is since they have challenged the no fly list multiple times and won some of them. California has agents going to homes and searching residences for guns. (But trump caught hell when someone commented about agents looking for illegal immigrants by going to homes).
And they say this might have stopped Kelley in Texas had this been available in Texas. Problem is, no one reported him so he may never have been placed on a list. Had he been reported as the law required, he also would have had a harder time securing a gun.
So this activates my Libertarian dislike for government because a program that can not be 100% correct then needs for someone to determine if the program is OK at 90% 80% 50% validity. How many people incorrectly added to the list and their rights taken away is acceptable? Is it OK for the state to search a residence to determine if guns are present if there are no indications that guns are present just because your on a list?
This is a shining example of why gun control will not work. Only the ones following the law will be effected and they are not the problem.
All this demonstrates is the overall failure of government regulation – including gun control.
The TX shooter was stopped by a citizen with a gun.
Many mass shootings are averted that way – but you do not here about them – because the avg number of deaths in potential mass shooting instances where there is broad carry rights, is 2.
In an active shooter incident the police are just not arriving in minutes, and whenever they arrive it will take some time before they assess and deploy.
At Columbine there were 6 SWAT teams present for more than an hour. while killing continued.
There are very very few instances were SWAT teams have actually ended an active shooter incident.
SWAT teams are primarily used for serving search warrants.
The TX incident is unfortunate – but it would have been worse with greater gun control, not better.
With respect to your regulator from California.
He is astute but he actually gets it wrong.
Government can rarely if ever resolve any problem better than the market.
The choice rarely is between bad government regulation and chaos.
This is not just about gun control – all government regulation suffers these problems.
Regulation is incredibly burdensome
There is the cost of what does nto happen because of regulation
There is the cost of compliance,
There is the cost of enforcement
There is the cost because markets do not find their own solutions
And in the end few regulations actually work.
People who “shouldn’t” still get guns.
How #Trumpanzee Fox reacted to yesterday’s elections:
“Sean Hannity, whose Fox show airs at 9 p.m. EST, devoted just six seconds of coverage — six seconds! — to the Virginia and New Jersey results, dismissing them as “not states Donald Trump won.” Hannity carried President Trump’s 34-minute speech to South Korea’s National Assembly live and in full.
“Pundits are calling Tuesday’s results a repudiation of Trump,” wrote Breitbart’s Joel Pollack. “It would be more accurate to point out that, once again, the Republican establishment came up short.” The website’s home-page headline echoed Trump’s late-night effort to distance himself from Gillespie’s loss, branding Gillespie a “Republican swamp thing.”
Throughout the campaign, Breitbart praised Gillespie for incorporating Trumpist messages.”
ALL THE NEWS IT’S FIT TO ignore
Kind of like MSNBC not covering the Clinton scandals.
No, not really.
Scandals = Subjective
Election = Objective
(And don’t forget the FACT that FOX always undercovers tRUMP Scandals)
An awful lot of the Clinton scandals is absolutely objective:
The U1 deal really did happen.
The Clinton Foundation really did receive 140M through their canadian Subsidiary from oligarchs that were part of the deal.
The Russians really did try to Corrupt US businessmen as part of the Deal.
The FBI/DOJ really did open up a large investigation into Russian bribery and corruption related to the U1 deal.
That investigation really did languish for years while the deal proceeded.
CFIUS really was made aware of the bribery and corruption
Congress really was kept in the dark about the bribery and corruption.
Clinton really did know that Benghazi was planned terrorist attack on the night of the attack
and she really did lie about it
Clinton really did violate the memorandum of understanding she and Bill had with Obama regarding their outside activities.
Clinton really did use a private unsecured email server for official US government communications as Sec. State.
She really did send classified information over the internet – which is somethat can not be done except by deliberate act.
Clinton really did send some of that to people who did not have security clearances.
She really did violate Federal records keeping laws.
Government Emails on her private server really were deleted AFTER both congressional subpeonas and a court order to preserve was issued.
The Clinton Foundation really did forward requests for speciai treatment by big donors to top Clinton staffers and those people really did often get special treatment.
All of the above – plus lots and lots more is absolutely objectively true fact.
I really have not listed many many other things that really did happen.
There are a handful of conclusions that are drawn from those facts that are mildly subjective. Such as Clinton really did violate 18cfr793(f) and probably (e).
Intent really is not a requirement for (f).
Others – such as Petreaus, and Deutch really were prosecuted and convicted of less/
But whether that was prosecutable is mildly subjective.
Not a big Fox fan, pretty much never watch it.
That said the harvard media analysis of the first 6 months of the Trump campaign found that Fox coverage of Trump was 51% unfavorable.
That is compared to MSNBC which was 92% unfavorable.
Regardless, Fox is biased – I have no problem with that. I do not particularly think they are pro-trump biased. MSNBC is also biased, as is CNN, NYT, WAPO, ….
Recognize that the media is biased and make your choices accordingly.
You seem to beleive you have some right to a perfectly objective report of the world.
That does not and can not exist, and what you actually want is not unbiased anyway, it is just that your viewpoint is featured.
Jay REALLY???????????????. Are you really going to tell me that MSNBC would cover Hillary or any other democrats questionable activities as closely as they would cover Trumps?
NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!! They all do it depending on their political tilt. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I would also note that the VA election was a heavyweight slugfest between moderates.
The message to Republicans is either that VA is finally tipping Blue – which is inevitable.
Or that moderates can not win as Republicans in VA.
The message to Democrats should be that then need to shift strongly to the center.
There are some other complications. Gillespie studiously avoided Trump.
But he did buy into to a small amount of Bannon’s economic populism – and it did not win for him in VA.
Northam fumbled badly handling the economic populist attack on him, but regardless, no one saw him as a Bernie Sanders democrat regardless, He was a dull, somewhat politically inept centrist democrat not really looking to make any waves.
I am not sure how Virginia Translates to PA or the rust belt.
But VA should be sending a message that Dull Centrist democrats can win in purple states.
“The message to Republicans is either that VA is finally tipping Blue – which is inevitable.”
Like i already said, it tuned purple years ago when Harry Byrd jr and his machine exited the scene. The state, even though conservative, had more conservative leadership and was still controlled by the southern white anti equal rights division of the democrats for many years. Harry Byrd was a democrat until he switched to independent and took his conservative form of democrat with him. Once he left, the state turned red because the state was still leaning right politically. Remember, the Republicans were the civil rights party in the south and the democrats opposed it. Harry Byrd was in that group.
But with the growth of government workers and other growth in the North in the past 30 years, it offset the rural and military votes in the southern regions and then the decline in the military population further eroded the more conservative vote.
I may be wrong and only the future will tell, but Northam appears to be the type of Democrat I could vote for since he is a very moderate democrat, voted for Bush both elections and he claims to be a fiscal conservative and social liberal (kind of like my kind of Libertarian).
Only time will tell what kind of politician he really is. But I can’t see much Hillary or Barrock in him at this time.
Jay, STOP with the liberal crap!!
Virginis election has nothing to do with Trump. Virginia has been trending blue for 20+ years. Since 2002, only 4 years have been a GOP administration. With the growth of governmental workers in Northern Va and the decline in military in southest Va, the state is northern blue and not southern red. Not even purple anymore.
And the same trend is playing out in NC. Strong red to purple with all the northern liberals moving into Charlotte and Raleigh and bringing their liberal policies with them.
Mostly I agree with you.
But Gillespie lost by more than I expected – in an off off year election that is significant.
It is also significant that neither Northam nor Gillespie made Trump and issue.
Both candidates were strong respected Virginia Centrists.
The election did significantly lift the cloud over the democratic party.
A loss or even a 2pt win in VA would have been absolutely disasterous for democrats.
It is hard to say exactly what this means nationwide – for many of the reasons you cite.
The message I would get is that democratic centrists can still win elections.
“The message I would get is that democratic centrists can still win elections.”
Thats because common sense still prevails in some parts of the country, unlike California, New York, Alabama and other states where far wing wackos have taken over the parties.
If Northam is a fiscal conservative and social liberal like he says, he just might be someone who would appeal to the national democrats and appeal to moderates as well in 2020.
Each state is different.
I do not think a moderate democrat can win in California 0r Alabama.
CA is going far left no matter what. AL is going right no matter what.
Atleast today.
VA is a purple state. or maybe now a Blue state – it is hard to tell.
Something like 2/3 of voters in the exit polls wanted confederate statues to remain.
Regardless, it is an increasingly hard win for Republicans.
The states to watch in 2018 are
Missouri – can McCaskill hang on.
West VA – can Manchin hang on.
North Dakota – can Heitkamp hold on.
Indiana, montana.
These are red states with blue senators.
Then there is what happens in swing states.
Blue collar
PA, OH, WI,
Other
FL
The really really big test for Trump will be those blue collar swing states.
If the GOP does not do well in those in 2018 Trump is toast in 2020.
Those states were generally considered Blue – except maybe OH
until recently.
Republicans have lost VA, and Picked up PA, OH, and WI.
If they can hold that is a really big deal.
The VA victory was just big enough to scare Republicans.
But not big enough that Republicans should be partying.
“The VA victory was just big enough to scare Republicans.”
There is difference with Va Governors race and 2018 and 2020. Political analyst can come up with all the statistics they want and they can asked voters if they approve of Trump or not. But look at his map and tell me if there is anything different about Va than the national voting pattern.
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/virginia-general-elections
The governors race is local, Many voters vote based on what the want for their state, not the president. I think that is what is happening in VA.
The biggest difference is southeast virginia and the DC area. I am sending a link on prior governor elections in Va on another comment as two links get moderated.. You can see what I am saying about the change around DC and the military in southeast Va.
Now look at this one and move the cursor to the 97 year when Gilmore won. Fewer military today = fewer GOP voters, more government workers = more democrat votes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/elections/2009/governor-map.html
Now, Ron, don’t get all in a titter; it’s MODERATE Liberal Crap.
A ModerateLiberal beat a ModerateRepublican (from a Trumpian POV).
What’s interesting for future projections of Republican election difficulty ahead was Exit polls…
“But what is unusual about Tuesday night is the extent to which the two races were about Trump. And the stark results cast fresh doubt on the health of Republican majorities in the House and Senate, in addition to gubernatorial races in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump’s approval rating in Virginia was just 40 percent, according to the exit poll. Among the 57 percent of voters who disapproved of Trump’s job performance, Democrat Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie, 87 percent to 11 percent.
The intensity gap strongly favored Northam, too. Nearly half of Virginia voters, 47 percent, strongly disapproved of Trump — and Northam won 95 percent of that vote. In other words, nearly 45 percent of the votes cast on Tuesday were from strong Trump disapprovers who voted for Northam.
Half of Virginia voters said Trump was a reason for their vote — with twice as many saying they were voting to oppose Trump (34 percent) as to support him (17 percent). Northam won 97 percent of voters for whom opposing Trump was a factor.“
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/08/virginia-exit-polls-trump-northam-gillespie-244677
Even more worrisome for Republicans down the road is the age exit demographics results.
For voters 18 to 29 – Nordham Plus 39%
For voters 30 to 49 – Nordham Plus 24%
I’ll link that below
Both Northam and Gillespie were very moderate.
Northern Virginia is just about as Anti-Trump as you can get in the entire country.
These are the swamp people Trump is litterally after.
Yet oddly exit polls say the election was NOT mostly about Trump.
It has been near universally true for my entire life that 18-29 year olds vote democratic – usually hard left.
remember the 50-60 year olds who are voting heavily for Trump today were voting for George McGovern 35 years ago.
I would suggest more carefully looking at the details of the youth demographic.
Their views are extremely unusual.
On the one hand they are the most pro-socialist cohort we have seen in a very long time.
At the same time an extraodrinarily large portion of them are very anti programs like welfare, social security and medicare.
What is mostly true is that this age cohort is badly educated politically and holds a warped and highly self contradictiory set of political values.
That is near certain to change as they age, and I would predict given the odd mix of values and the strength of some of the more unusual ones they will shift right faster than prior generations. This generation also has the largest cohort of libertarains in ages.
These demographics is destiny arguments have been made for decades.
The current political makeup of the country is purportedly demographically impossible.
If you wish to fixate on demographics here are a few that fall strongly republican:
Moving out of your parents house.
Having a job.
Paying taxes,
Owning a home.
Getting married
having kids
Living in the suburbs
Getting older
Rising standard of living.
These are things that happen to every generation.
They even happen to minorities.
Once upon a time Jews, Irish and Italians were going to deliver to democrats a permanent majority.
“A ModerateLiberal beat a ModerateRepublican (from a Trumpian POV).”
I would not call a fiscal conservative/social liberal a moderate liberal. I would call them a moderate right candidate, more Libertarian, than democrat or republican. “Stay out of my wallet and out of my bedroom”.
If that is how he governs, then I would be a Virginia Democrat.
Ed Gillespie was going to be much more social conservative and that would have swung my vote to Northam given the choices.
Yes, Trump is an albatross around the neck of the GOP. And if the house switches to democrat and Pelosi is speaker, what changes? Congress can’t get anything done anyway and they own all three branches now. I think looking at history when we have divided government, we have the best government. They can’t do much to f^&* things up like they did in 2009 with Obamacare.
But if things do play out in 2020 with Warren, Booker or Ellison becoming president, I will be one of the first with my hand out getting all the “free” crap they are going to offer.
Because we all know the government can spend anything it wants and never pay it back.
I do not use the term “liberal” anymore.
Aside from the fact that it means someone who values individual liberty.
I would be hard pressed to identify a modern democrat that I could call a liberal by 60’s or 70’s terms.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2017-election/VA
New Jersey is meaningless.
Virginia is more meaningful.
It should be mildly good news for democrats.
Had the race been closer as was expected – that would be a strong indication that we are significantly overstating the impact of Trump – though VA voters in exit polls close to universally claimed Trump was not a factor.
Complicating this is that Northam did not run an especially good campaign.
The VA results should give Republicans more to worry about that democrats.
It strongly suggests the traditional models – which suggest a 20 seat loss in the house for Republicans in 2018 is correct.
That is not a democratic wave. But it is also not the death of the democratic party.
My personal read of the Tea leaves suggests that is wrong, and that the GOP will do better in 2018 than expected. That VA is not representative of the nation as a whole.
But VA does provide some excellent reasons to question that.
At the same time while VA offers some sunlight in what has been a very cloudy democratic future, it does not portend a wave in 2018 (or 2020), merely more normal patterns.
Yeah, but the New Jersey dude is another Goldman Sacks prodigy. Thought those Democrats wanted to rid the country of Wall Street.
New Jersey is a deep blue state. Christy was an anomally.
I do not even know who ran in NJ – did anyone think a republican was winning ?
Didn’t tRUMP-a-Dump promise to do that too?
You can’t trust either party to be honest.
But now, the Rs are way more deceitful
I think if you list all the lies that Obama or Clinton told to get elected, and compared them to those of Trump, McCain, or Romney, you would find that the “D’s” are far more deceitful.
That is why libertarians and independents often hold their nose and vote R.
And why despite a significant registration advantage most of the country is red.
But you can believe whatever you want.
What I would ask is given that you grasp neither party is to be trusted.
Something I would completely agree with you even if I think the “D’s” are way more deceiptful than the R’s.
Why given that it is crooks all the way down – do you want to increase the power of govenrment ?
Are you some kind of masochist ?
Why is is so hard for those on the left to grasp that we are getting crooks and liars no matter what, we should atleast give them as little power as possible.
“Why given that it is crooks all the way down – do you want to increase the power of govenrment ?”
Another simpleminded simplification.
First, ALL THROUGH HISTORY some politicians have been corrupt, but the majority are not.
Second, I want to assign to politicians limited power, to keep the cogs of civilization meshing: some government is good: some bad. There’s a lot I’d like to circumscribe but there’s a lot that I’m content to see continue. When things get broke, fix them. You need to find a balance. Not ditch it all.
But discussing this with you is a waste of time.
I’d rather throw rotten tomatoes at you:
“First, ALL THROUGH HISTORY some politicians have been corrupt, but the majority are not.”
All politicians corrupt ? Maybe not, depends on how you define corrupt.
Majority not ? Again depends on definitions.
Way too much corruption – does not depend on definitions.
Way too many politicians are corrupt in some form – may not criminally corrupt, but atleast such that they are not the people we really want running our lives.
“Second, I want to assign to politicians limited power, to keep the cogs of civilization meshing: some government is good: some bad. There’s a lot I’d like to circumscribe but there’s a lot that I’m content to see continue. When things get broke, fix them. You need to find a balance. Not ditch it all.”
Again we agree – well except for definitional problems.
The cogs of civilization require some, but very little assistance from government,
Much government assistance is sand in the gears.
Alot here alot there – not particularly specific.
Before we allow government to use force against us. I think it would be very wise to be clear about the specifics regarding when force can and can not be used.
Things get broken all the time. Every broken thing does nto require government to fix it.
Further much of what is “broke” today is govenrment, and it is abysmal at fixing itself.
Not arguing to “ditch it all”
Throwing rotten tomotoes at someone would be something that government is actually justified in punishing.
“Throwing rotten tomotoes at someone would be something that government is actually justified in punishing.”
That eas, as you well know, a metaphorical tomato, as the cartoon illustrates – so I guess you want to have government punish free speech too – or punish us with more of your surplus windiness.
The punishment for real violence should be real – preferably through government.
The punishment for rhetorical violence should be rhetorical.
This seems appropriate
A good peice by Turley.
Be careful what you want.
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/11/08/the-laws-all-being-flat-clinton-supporters-search-for-legal-shelter-after-months-of-lowering-standards-to-target-trump/
A Chinatown Tic Tac Toe Chicken…
HA, Jonah Goldberg, easily my favorite conservative!
Hows that regulation working for yah
Oh! No! Russia! Oops – the FBI!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fbi-blindly-hacked-computers-in-russia-china-and-iran
VIRGINIA AND NEW JERSEY (The Borowitz Report)—Throwing caution to the wind, voters in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday night overturned the political applecart and chose as their new governors two men with no reality-show experience whatsoever.
Republican officials were staggered by the voters’ decision because, historically, reality shows have been a reliable proving ground for the nation’s finest leaders.
Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said that the voters’ risky bet on two men who had never set foot on a reality-show stage showed that the electorate was acting “emotionally and not rationally.”
“You look at the résumés of these two men and you won’t find ‘Survivor,’ you won’t find ‘Big Brother,’ you won’t find ‘The Bachelor,’ ” she said. “What we have are two individuals who are, to put it mildly, unfit for office.”
“This is not normal,” she said.
She gave both winning candidates credit for tapping into the angry voters’ anti-reality-show mood, but she warned, “Once these two have been in office, I think voters will start longing for someone who had at least won an immunity idol or swallowed a live caterpillar.”
😊
Exactly my opinion of populism a la trump.
“Because of the inflation of the American presidency, there often is a countercyclical partisan effect, usually felt in midterm congressional elections. Americans like to complain that Washington never gets anything done, and they have a marked preference for divided governments that help keep Washington from getting anything done. Trump is an unpopular figure, and an obnoxious one. He likes being the center of attention, which means that he is going to be a factor in the mayor’s race in St. Petersburg and the governor’s race in Virginia. If the American electorate continues to have a low opinion of him, then Republicans should calculate that drag into their electoral expectations.
It is often the case that populism has a short shelf life, after which is ceases to be popular. There is a reason for that: Populism is almost always based on a false hope. Populist demagogues such as Trump arise when people are broadly dissatisfied with the national state of affairs and begin to lose confidence in critical institutions. Along comes a charismatic outsider — or someone doing a good impersonation of one — who offers an alternative. Trump-style populism is an almost entirely negative proposition: “I’m not one of Them.” What happens next is in most cases what’s been happening with Trump: The promise of radical change quickly gets mired down in the messy realities of democratic governance. (If you’re lucky, that’s what happens; absent the messy realities of democratic governance, what you end up with is Venezuela.) The “independent” man, the “outsider,” turns out not to have the experience, knowledge, or relationships to get much done. The savior doesn’t deliver the goods.
Trump came into Washington with a roar that quickly diminished to a whimper on Twitter. Gillespie, he tweeted, “did not embrace me or what I stand for.” He may or may not be right in that, but that isn’t how Virginia voters saw it. Republican Scott Taylor, who represents Virginia Beach in the House, said he heard from dissatisfied Democrats and Republicans both that this election was “a referendum on the administration.” Former Republican congressman Tom Davis told the Washington Post: “It’s a huge drag on the ticket. . . . Democrats came out en masse in protest. This was their first chance to mobilize the base. The lesson here is that Republicans have to get their act together.” The promise of radical change quickly gets mired down in the messy realities of democratic governance. Funny choice of words, there. Trump has an act. Republicans are supposed to have something else: an agenda, a platform, principles, a philosophy. For a long time, that philosophy was conservatism: limited government under the Constitution, property rights, free enterprise, the rule of law, moral and social traditionalism, an assertive foreign policy, fiscal sobriety, order. (Imperfectly realized, of course, as conservatives would expect.) Trump offered something else: “winning.””
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453527/virginia-election-results-trump-republicans
Roby ” The promise of radical change quickly gets mired down in the messy realities of democratic governance. ”
This may have been true many moons ago when more of the elected officials actually went to Washington to represent the people. Now many if not most of the elected officials go to Washington to (1), establish a career and (2) perpetuate that career through cozy relationships with the 1%ers in America.
Just look at what happened to Sanders. The democratic process was working fine since most all of his support was coming from average citizens, but the establishment and big money decided beforehand who they wanted to represent them in the White House. The fix was in.
Sorry I can’t buy into your thinking we have a democratic process running the country. It might be better than any other system, but corporate America and the few with all the money predetermine who will be the candidates in most all federal and state elections. You can have one person from a middle class environment with the best ideas for his/her district who offers cheap sensible solutions to make their ideas a reality running against dumbo who inherited a business from his father, has all the connections in the state and the money will flow to dumbo. He will overpower the sensible candidate due to the difference in the amount of money he is able to spend.
And the radical change that gets mired down. That could be due to the special interest money blocking anything other than establishment politics.
“Sorry I can’t buy into your thinking we have a democratic process running the country.”
Well, I don’t think its “my idea.”
As well, I have never ever been any happier with the money–politics connection than the average joe. The trump populist revolution was an exceptional fraud. All the “populists” trump choose for his cabinet are exactly the rich idiots who he was supposedly the antidote to. Meanwhile, his voters notice not and are thrilled. Stupidity is one of those vast impersonal forces I say are behind the events of our public life.
Trump did not run promising to put poor people in control of government.
He ran promising to turn those in washington out.
He explicitly ran promising to put pretty much the people he put into government.
To the extent he has “failed” it is that he has only been able to kill off the top layer or two of the beast.
Further Trump voters knew that the new guys might be just as corrupt as the old – they did not care. New is still getting rid of the old corrupt guys.
Essentially that is the principle behind term limits – the assumption that it takes a while to get good at corruption and getting rid of people every few years prevents them from getting good. Not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.
Further, while Trump made promises – unless you voted for him – he did nto make them to you. You have little justification for being disappointed that you did not get the Trump you want. Politicians respond to those who voted for them – those who did not – not so much.
And no the people Trump brought in are quite different from those of Obama or Clinton.
Trump’s cabinet may be 1%’s, but they are NOT government lifers.
These are people who have already succeeded financial. They are in government to give back. Most of them do not owe anyone.
I find the nonsense about Trump and how somehow he is profiting off his presidency hillarious. Trump is a billionaire. If he spent a million dollars everyday he would still likely die with more money than he has now. Now amount of additional money would have him living better than he does now. The idea that this is about making more money for him just proves how envious and greedy the left is.
I would suggest that if you are constantly assuming greed BEFORE there is evidence, that it is you that has a problem with greed and envy. That is not to say that there are not issues. The press went after DeVos for her private flights as Sec. Ed – until she pointed out that she was rich as shit and was going to fly however she wanted and had paid for it all herself. Price on the other hand ended up resigning for the same private flights – even though his use was no differnet from the average Obama cabinet secretary. Why ? Because price was a politician, not independently wealthy and was stiffing the government for giving him the lifestyle that devos had earned and Obama’s people had taken from the public.
Overall Trump voters are more loyal to him that Clinton voters are to her.
That should concern you headed for 2020.
Anyway, I am not looking to “defend Trump”, there is alot to be unhappy about.
On the other hand with very few exceptions the presidents of my lifetime have been near universally poor, and Trump is at worst no worse, and possibly better than average.
Certainly better than the past 16 years.
You complain that I am this “extremist” libertarian. Yet, I am the one who can cope with the fact that our president is pretty far from my ideal.
We have all these moderates here – who are supposed to be able to take the good with the bad, And yet, so many are ranting because Trump is not a socialist ?
Trump has alot of faults – but extremism is not among them. He is a populist, not an extremist. My disappointments with him are mostly in places he is NOT extreme.
Ron
I posted a video on Public Choice economics – That really means economists examining politics in the same way they examine free market exchanges.
Anyway that directly addresses many of your points.
Politicians have never gone to washington to serve the public good,
They also do not go to serve the 1%. They go to serve their own self interests – as they always have. We idolyze our founders – yet the evidence is their politics were more reprehensible and scurrilous than ours.
Anyway, time, technology and myriads of other factors change the details of the workings of politics and government but they do not change the fundimentals.
We had government caused disasters like the housing crisis back in the early 19th century.
What happened with Sanders has been occuring since the begining of time.
Nor do I have much sympathy for him as either he is incredibly stupid – which I doubt, or he is selling crap he knows does not work in order to get elected.
Regardless, Every appeal he makes was – you will get something from me for free – and someone else will have to pay for it.
Do I care if someone looking to steal and screw people ends up having an election stolen from him and gets screwed ?
Separately we do not want a democratic process running the country.
The tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.
Another reason that I would suggest looking at the video I linked is the “median voter theory” specifically targets the failure of moderates.
While I do not think the influence of the 1% or corporate america is as great as you do, it does not matter if I am wrong. Given that government has power some special interest is going to leverage it. The beleif that absent the 1% or corporations it is going to serve the common good is naive. Even today quite often people get into the 1% by working government. Scandals such as Solyandra or others – are not Buffet or gates corrupting government. They are people from the top 10% or 20% buying government join the 1%.
I would further refer you to the same video regarding “cheap and sensible solutions”.
Government is not structured – and can not be to deliver “cheap sensible solutions”.
The issues with buracracy are not addressed until towards the end.
Regardless take any good or service – if you get it through the free market – those you buy from go to a great deal of trouble to make buying from them as quick and painless as possible. Amazon will deliver recomended books taylored to my prefernces to my kindle, and a single click and I own them and can start reading. I often do not have to look for the book, and when I chose that book – I have it in a second or two. Compare that to paying your property tax or water bill. I must either write a check for each of those, or go through a 3rd party service that charges me extra for the “convenience”.
To pay – even on line I( have to navigate websites that are opaque and misleading.
I have to have my bill infront of my and enter perfectly myriads of magic numbers.
The transaction does not clear immediately and often an online transaction with government still involved multiple mailings. If something goes wrong – I am responsible and I get screwed.
I recently bought a car battery at Autozone. My son put the new battery in and the one terminal was tight so he pounded it on with a mallet and cracked a brand new battery.
I took the battery back to autozone – they had a no questions asked return policy.
I told them what had happened – they did not care, they gave me a new battery.
Monday I was at the country treasureres to pay my water bill for my apartments.
I came into the court house. Discovered I had to walk back to my car – because cell phones are no longer allowed in the court house. Ignoring the fact that I think it should be accept to record government even court procedings, there is the separate issue of there are many many services in the courthouse besides court rooms. So if I want to pay a bill, look up a deed, or any of the myriads of non court functions, I must take my cell phone back to my car. The courthouse is downtown so that means parking 3 blocks away.
So after a six block walk and being xrayed and grouped, I am now to the office to pay my water bill. So they look up my building and the bill is 1200. My quarterly water bill it 200 not 1200, so I tell them there must be a mistake. A clerk who really knows nothing about water service politely and repeatedly tells my that is my problem. That a 1200 water bill can easily occur from a toilet running – I have to do the math, and the bill is opaque as to actual water usage, but I am pretty sure that a single toilet running 24×7 can not generate a 1200 water bill. Besides I have had a water heater fail in the basement and not get detected for a month and had a 3/4″ water line dump water into the basement for several weeks and not run about a 400 water bill. Well I can pay $10 to have the meter read manually – but that is it. I asked what the appeals process is – there is none.
There is no water in my basement – it is bone dry, and no toilets running – I am in the basement of the apartments typically one a week and if water is running continuously – even just a toilet running you can hear it in the drain pipes.
Basically the county has randomly added a $1000 water tax to my bill.
I can waste alot of time fighting this and likely get nowhere. Or I can raise my rents.
What do you think is going to happen ?
Now if this had been autozone, they would be saying – please let me fix your bill.
What can I do to help you ?
When you are dealing with government – you are always wrong. The burden of proof is on you, and it is high. All the clerks and people you deal with treat you as a burden on them
I am incredibly polite in dealing with them – despite my rant above – why ? Because piss of the minor public servants who you interact to pay bills and similar things and guaranteed government is going to screw you. That is not going to happen at home depot or Walmart.
Private businesses can screw you once – maybe. After that you go elsewhere, and they know it.
Anyway even government doing simple common sense things never ends up simple or common sense.
Cross Examining A Robot Republican
well, he was honest.
Roby;
This is a response to Jay’s link – but the link did not work for me.
I am not “targetting” you. The only ad hominem in this post is directed at the congresscritter. The only way you can take that personally is by owning her views.
I add this disclaimer, because you can not seem to be able to distinguish, between rootless personal insults directed at you, and criticizing ideas, or others.
Ideas are not entitled to respect. They must earn it.
The congresscritter doing the questioning is either stupid – I doubt) or dis-ingenuous.
All actual business income ultimately becomes individual income.
You can structure taxes myriads of ways :
You can have all taxes be business and corporate and none be personal
You can have all taxes be individual and none be business and corporate.
The end result is always the same – taxes are always ultimately paid by individuals.
Overall it is preferable to tax individuals directly – as then they know what they are paying in taxes and are better able to decide whether they support tax increases or not.
It is far easier to grow a huge government when people are less aware they are paying for it. When they are deceived into beleiving that the rich are paying for it, or businesses are.
Businesses and the rich do not “pay” taxes, and can not be made to. They pass those taxes on to the rest of us. There is no means of avoiding this, and efforts to attempt to do so are inefficient.
What you do not want is the same stream down to an individual being taxed multiple times.
As to the robot reference – we are talking about law.
We want law that is “robotic”.
The last thing you want is an IRA agent or police office consulting their feelings before deciding whether you have violated the law or not.
The core premise of the questioner is that people should have to pay little or no taxes.
Or that some “special” people should have to pay little or no taxes.
The more deductions you give one person the more someone else must pay.
I have benefited from many deductions – ones that various people are feverishly arguing for right now.
I want the lowest overall tax rates – with as close to the same for everyone, with little of no deductions of any kind for anyone.
The best way to do that is to make eliminate all business taxes of any kind,
There is no such thing as a deduction if there are no taxes.
tax money from business as personal income – when that money is transfered to people – either directly or through perqs.
Every arrangement has potential issues – what I propose requires policing to make sure that individuals do not hide personal expenses in business – such as health insurance, or entertainment, or cars.
Until 1916 the federal government was paid for from tarrifs – which had to be kept low or that would negatively impact the economy, Excise taxes – mostly on alcohol (sales taxes), and head taxes on individuals.
Our founders beleived that each mans fair share of the burden of supporting the state was the same – that the super wealthy like George Washington should have to pay exactly the same amount as the poor. Not the same percentage but the same amount.
Regardless, it is absolutely critical that each of us pay to support government, that we do so as transparently as possible – directly rather than indirectly, and that it is clear that whenever the cost of government increases that we will have to pay more taxes.
The left argues that progressive government is popular – and that popularity – democracy is sufficient to justify it. But progressive government is near universally unpopular, when people know they actually have to pay for it. When politicians game the tax system by pretending that ordinary people are not the ones paying when they tax business or the rich, that is the only way they can get popular support for big government.
In otherwords the premise that people actually support big government requires lying to them.
National Renumeration A$$ociation
Grocery stores make money by providing you with food – that should be prohibited – because they are greedy.
Doctors should be prohibited from making money by providing you medical services – that is greedy.
Your employer should not have to pay you – that is greed on your part.
Sorry Jay
If free people decide to exchange their money for guns, or their guns for money.
That free exchange is how all of our lives are improved.
I do not care whether people are trading
sex,
drugs,
guns
food,
homes
cloths.
So long as the exchange was done freely, it is not your business, my business or the governments.
You do not have the right to tell someone else what they can and can not buy or sell.
Grocery stores that sell products which consistently kills customers get sued and go out of business.
Doctors who kill a lot of patients also get sued, lose their licenses and sometimes get jailed.
Employees who work for low wages do it for survival, not greed. The fact you can’t distinguish that proves once again how out of touch you are with ordinary human life. It’s very Trumpian of you.
Dave, what do you say when one person’s rights conflict with another person’s rights? You defend the rights of those who want to buy and sell assault weapons and ammo, but those rights can interfere with the right of individuals to attend church, or a concert, or school (etc., etc.) without having their lives prematurely terminated.
We have to weigh the consequences. The man with the right to buy the guns can nullify the rights of 10, 20 or 50 people in a single incident. If we banned assault weapons from private ownership, gun lovers could simply buy single-shot weapons. We’ve barely infringed on their rights. On the other hand, if a nutjob equipped with semi-automatics kills 30 people inside of a minute, he’s nullified a much more important right — the right to live — and he’s nullified that right 30 times over.
Weigh the one against the other, and I think it’s obvious that banning certain types of guns is a less serious restriction of rights than allowing 30 people to die sudden, random, violent deaths.
“If we banned assault weapons from private ownership, gun lovers could simply buy single-shot weapons”
Or own double barrel shotguns. And be safe and secure in their homes with those. My British friends say the family shotgun, passed down from fathers and uncles, is sufficient to prevent the paranoia Americans have of being attacked by intruders. Plus they can go out and shoot some geese for dinner if they’re hungry 😋
The purpose of the 2nd amendment is not to defend your home or shoot deer.
It is an open threat to totalitarian government. As noted elsewhere there are far more AR-15’s than M4’s in the military.
The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to make government think twice before breaking down our doors.
Our founders did not keep this secret. They firmly beleived that without a gun in nearly every home the american revolution would not have been possible.
Victory at Yorktown was acheived because Washington over years managed to build a real traditional and formidable army capable of standing toe to toe with the british.
But the time necescary to do that was bought by farmers and homesteaders and ordinary people with guns harrasing the british wherever they were and forcing them to enscounce themselves in big cities. leaving much of the country to the continentals.
“It is an open threat to totalitarian government. As noted elsewhere there are far more AR-15’s than M4’s in the military.”
The purpose was to protect against FOREIGN despots and invasion, because the US didn’t have a standing Army when the Amendment was written. They had no intention of arming the populace to mount Insurrection against our own government, that’s what you’re suggesting now: armed civilians fighting against other American citizens (police, military, national guard, etc). Do you know how STUPID that is?… Apparently not.
Our founders would disagree.
There are littleraly dozens of quotes. These are just a few.
I would particularly note Cheif Justice Story, and Madison in federalist 46 as those are not merely quotes but texts with authority with respect to constitutional interpretation.
The federalist papers as the explanation of the meaning of the constitution given by madison, jay and hamilton to persuade people to ratify it.
“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”
– James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster,
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story,
Jay you may want to do some research or visit one of the historical sites like Williamsburg and ask.
Many in the founding fathers had complete distrust for centralized control and believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. They did live under British control and their oppression, remember?
I constructed a long reply and my computer ate it so maybe the 2nd try will be shorter.
The only right that humans have that I think can ever conflict with another right is the right to initiate violence.
And that is the only right we cede to government through the social contract.
If you come up with another conflict between and two actual rights – we can discuss this further – otherwise you pose a hypothetical and probably impossible question.
To paraphrase Any Rand when you think two rights are in conflict – check your premises. One of the rights in conflict is not a right. Actual contradictions do not exist in nature.
With respect to TX – the right to buy an AR-15 is not the right to kill people with one – or with anything else.
We do not blame pencils for what we write,
We can not blame guns or anything else because we chose to kill people.
I can easily kill 30 people with the stuff in your laundry.
For $20 I can go to autozone and buy everything I need to make a flame thrower.
The anarchist cookbook is readily available and will tell you how to make all kinds of explosives.
According to the Pennsylvania supreme court an uncooked egg can be a “deadly weapon.
Austrailia’s near total gun ban accomplished nothing.
Austraila and New Zealand are near demographically identical.
Both have low rates of violence.
Austrialia banned nearly all fireamarms. New Zealand did not.
There is no differences in the rates of violence and violent death – before or after AU’s law between AU and NZ.
The only change to AU was a significant decrease in mass shootings.
But mass killings did NOT go down – Mass Killings by Arson went up.
Buying a gun does not nullify anyones rights.
Killing people violates their rights.
Killing people with a gun violates their rights,
Killing them with a baseball bat violates their rights.
First “asualt weapons” – aka machine guns are already illegal.
Second you presume could actually ban semi automatics.
The Las Vegas Shooter has actual machine guns despite their being banned.
I can not see how any law stopped him.
There are approximately 2.5M(2010) AR-15’s in the US today, That does not count myriads of other long guns you would call “assualt weapons”.
They are just about the least likely gun to be used in a crime. It is extremely rare to see AR-15’s in a crime.
There are more AR-15’s in the US today than the US millitary has M4’s.
Then there is this. Defense Distributed bundles a CNC machine – even it you put DD out of business CNC machines are readily available, and Open Source CNC programming to build an AR-15 Receiver – that is the part with the serial number that BATF tracks and the most complicated part of the gun. Once you have made your own receiver – and you can made as many as you want, then you can buy without any record all the other parts to complete your own highly customized AR-15. And if you make other parts illegal – there will be CNC codes for them too. You can not actually makes CNC codes illegal – they are covered by the first amendment.
https://ghostgunner.net/
We are entering a new era. This is not just about guns. It is about the governments ability to ban anything.
I think I posted that you can buy a kit to do your own CRISPR experiments in your basement or garage for $140. What is CRISPR ? The technology to do gene splicing.
There is already a large base of inhome researcher experimenting with genetic cures for pet diseases. And they expect results in the next 6-7 months.
Separately we have chemical assemblers – these are sort of 3d printers for drugs – enter a chemical formula and the machine will produce the drug.
They are not yet affordable enough to compete in price with street drugs,
But they are affordable enough to very seriously impeded drug laws.
No drug dealer, you make your own. If you make it just before using, there is only a tiny window you can be prosecuted in.
Nor are these the only developments in process.
Give up banning is highly impractical.
It has never worked for anything.
It did nto work for alcohol.
It did not work for drugs.
Why do you think it will work for guns ?
There is no actual right to live. Only a right not to be killed.
Properly expressed all rights are negative.
You do not have a right to free speach, you have the right not to have government interfere in your speach.
All rights are inherently negative.
You have no right to buy a gun. You have the right not to have government interfere with you buying a gun. You still have to make the money, make the choice, find someone to sell to you.
If you really want to do a deep dive into rights and the philosophy involved.
One placce to start might be Kant’s catagorical imperative.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”
This is a superset of the linbertarian Non-Agression principle or
the principle of equal liberty.
Regardless, there is no credibly philosophy, or religion or government that accepts a right to initiate violence against others.
It is murder that violates the rights of another – not murder with a gun, or in a house, or with a mouse, …
Both parties alive but not at all well.
switching my name as part of a campaign to get all the posts delivered to a new mailbox. Hope it works.
I had a feeling it was you, Roby. Well, that name is a mouthful… I’ll just go with “Vermont” if it’s OK with you.
Is Trump actually stupid ? From someone with a great deal of experience in intelligence testing.
Surely YOU know there are many ways to be stupid…
“Surely YOU know there are many ways to be stupid…”
Sorry, this is long, but it is excellent.
It addresses why government is the way it is, and why it is different from the other things in our lives. And why where possible we do not want to solve problems using governmnet.
New subject.
Tax Reform
Must be one hell of a good bill.
Article on Yahoo News linked to another site says this is one huge tax cut for the rich.
Morning Fox News programs and other conservative sites having mental breakdowns since this is huge. tax increase for Rich in high tax states where the majority of the rich live.
This has to be a good bill for the poor and middle-class since both wings of political pundits dislike the bill.
There is zero chance I will get anything close to what I hope for.
My expectations are small – an improvement over the mess we have.
If we kill SALT – that alone would be great.
There is now talk of killing the individual mandate – and that will apparently save almost 400B. the total cost of PPACA is far beyond that, but why are we even paying 400B for this albatross.
Beyond that – kill as many deductions and subsidies as possible,
move to as few a brackets as possible.
eliminate as many business taxes as possible – all would be prefered.
I really do not want to hear idiocy about this group or that group paying more – it is close to meaningless.
If you reduce corporate and business taxes and reduce upper margin rates,
you will get more growth and that will quickly make up for it.
Would you trade 4% higher taxes for 1% additional increase in income EVERY YEAR ?
If you wouldn’t – then move to cuba, because you are clueless.
An additional 1% growth in about 15 years would equal all the benefits anyone gets from all government programs – that is SS, Medicare, all safetynet programs.
When you trade growth for security you get neither.
Anyway – I am not going to get the above.But we might see some of it.
“Must be one hell of a good bill.”
Is that a snide comment?
“Is that a snide comment?”
Nope. When the left AND the right does not like the same identical bill, then in all likelyhood it is a damn good bill for the middle.
Or ‘When the left AND the right does not like the same identical bill’ the bill is thoroughly defective.
Jay “the bill is thoroughly defective.” Yes if they argues the same thing, but when they argue positions that arepolar opposites, that indicates to me it is politics that make them dislike it and not policy.
The fact that the left and the right do not like something – does not mean anything – beyond that the left and the right do not like it.
Absurdum ad reductio
I think that Ron is generally correct, and that class warfare tactics we see from the left, and purist arguments from the right are largely political. There is really nothing much wrong with the bill, except that, if it passes, it will likely improve the economy, and give almost everyone in the middle class at least a small tax break, or no change at all.
Jay’s “absurdum ad reductio” objection makes no sense here, because there is no absurdity in arguing that purely political objections to proposed legislation are rarely based on the actual merits of a bill. They’re often more like sour grapes objections.
Aparently the current bill ends deductions for new stadiums.
I’m waiting for the Senate/House version. The House blows a big hole in the debt and needs a lot of regulation (enforced) to keep corporate cheaters in check. I think the medical deduction will be back in some form.
If you are wise – you eliminate business taxes completely.
They are all passed down to employees and consumers anyway.
All business profits become personal income for someone at some point.
Either as dividends or as appreciation in the value of stocks, or litterally as income to owners and management.
If a business actually retains and invests profits – that is a good thing.
There is nothing a business can do with profits that does not either greatly benefit us such that it should not be taxed, or become personal income for someone.
Then the only thing you have to concern yourself with is “perqs” and benefits.
And those should be taxed as income to the person receiving them.
Regardless, there is no tax scheme that you can come up with that businesses – particularly big businesses will not be able to circumvent.
And if you are smart you do not want businesses paying lawyers and accountants and lobbyiests to get arround taxes. What you want is for them to be spending their profits in the best way to make more – because that means more jobs, more income, more wealth for all of us.
I do not know the specifics of the house plan, but if it actually needs more regulation then it is defacto a bad plan.
One of the many reasons for lowering taxes and eliminating deductions is to REDUCE regulations.
Referencing the linked video – I do not want teachers thinking about whether they should buy construction paper for their classes because it is or is not tax deductable.
zero deductions of any kind for anyone, and the lowest possible tax rates.
And if tax reform actually increases the deficit over the long run – then reduce government spending which we desparately need to be doing anyway.
I also want the tax code as simple as possible so that people know when government says I am spending $600B on XXXX that people know – that is THEIR money.
It is easy to say “I love ObamaCare” when you think someone else is paying for it.
It is highly unpopular (like -80%) if people think THEY have to pay for it.
The worse tRUMP does, the more likely he is to be nominated again by Republicans in next Prez election. (You have to read through to the end for that assessment)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/gillespie-trump-trumpism-rich-lowry-215806
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Politicians are hypocrites!
Tell me something I do not know.
Both Northam and Gillespie were moderates – not very far apart on the issues that ultimately matter as governor.
Both sought to find the winning combination of tweaks in position and issues to get a majority of voters.
Both had the problem of trying to reach those in the middle without losing voters from their own extreme flank aka party base.
Both made alot of mistakes.
The Northam pickup Truck add was absolutely reprehensible.
Both did some pretty hypocritical things.
Northam ultimately won.
Virginia was fortunate – because neither was a bad choice.
As compared to 2016 presidential election where BOTH were bad choices.
I am not fixated on VA post mortem’s.
I though Gillespi was going to do better, though his odds of winning were slim.
I though Northam had stepped in it repeatedly in the last couple weeks of the election.
But the undecideds went heavily for Northam.
I am sure the pundits will analyze the crap out of this, but my guess is that Gillespi did about the best that was possible. Moving left any further would have lost the republican base and not picked up enough votes from the center.
Moving farther right would have cost more of the center than he could have picked up on the right.
I also think that Norther VA democrats – aka federal government employees were highly energized – because Republicans are after their jobs.
VA might appear to be in play for republicans because the split is so close and the vast majority of the state is red- but it probably is not, there are alot of people in Norther VA and those blue major cities.
I think the margin Northam won by is enough for Republicans more broadly to be concerned and for Democrats to start smiling.
But it is not enough for republicans to be terrified and democrats to be celebrating.
What A Difference A Few Indictments Makes..
“More than twice as many Americans approve as disapprove of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of possible coordination between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds, indicating that the conservative effort to discredit the probe has fallen flat as the case has progressed toward its first public charges.
A 58 percent majority say they approve of Mueller’s handling of the investigation while 28 percent say they disapprove, the Post-ABC poll finds. People’s views depend in large part on their political leanings, but overall, Americans are generally inclined to trust Mueller and the case he has made so far.
Meanwhile, fewer than 4 in 10 Americans say they believe Trump is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, while about half believe he is not.”
https://lawfareblog.com/what-difference-few-indictments-make-public-confidence-mueller-soars
The rule of law is not decided by polls.
BTW there is enormous popular support to investigate Clinton too.
Why should Trump cooperate with Mueller ?
Milltary certainly was very uncoopoerative in the investigations of her ?
I expect that anyone being investigated for anything will decide on their own how to deal with the investigator.
Co-operating is rarely a good idea.
There is an excellent series on Youtube titled something like don’t talk to police.
I am sure Scooter Libby wishes he had been less cooperative.
Martha Stewart, too.
Martha Stewart is a beautiful example.
Stewart desparately tried and failed to “commit” insider trading.
Her mistake/actual crime was her misstatements to investigators.
Jonah gets it right again today, commenting on those rushing to deflect the Judge Moore accusations:
“I am one of those naïve fools who actually believed that the conservatives who often talked the loudest about the supreme importance of character were sincere. The last two years disabused me of that.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/453612/roy-moore-washington-post-allegations-saving-moore-isnt-worth-it
Jay, I was never a Moore supporter . I think he is this years GOP brain fart. Kind of like Delaware, Nevada and Missouri in previous years.
But I have to wonder why this was not brought up years ago when he was rising through the Alabama justice department. Being a pedophile and letting him set on the highest court in the state is unforgivable! Why wait 30 years to mention this? Is it something that can be prosecuted or will this be like Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddk and Kathleen Willey who waited so long few believed them. Why wait until 2weeks before the election where Alabama law does not allow for an individuals name to be added or deleted from the ballot? Could they not come forth before the primary? Or did they know they were going to stay quite until just before the election?
To me this shits got to stop. If someone did something , especially to a child, that was an illegal sexual act, then it needs to come out now and not years down the road when someone runs for office.
Moore will run, he may or may not win, if he doesnt our country will survive, if he does we will witness years of investigation and innuendo but we will survive, the Washington Post will deflect any legal challenge that Moore instigates, it will show the opposition that something that can or can not be proven can be used at the end of a campaign to severely impact the outcome of an election and the worst part, people will just say this is dirty politics and not believe those making claims in the future.
Moore is scum.
I said that long ago.
I am glad Bezos went after him.
Wonder of wonders! We agree!!
I said More was scum long before this recent revelations.
But I expected him to win anyway. Now hopefully he will bow out, be dropped or lose.
I think we are also likely to see Arpiao run in AZ, and he is scum too.
And if he runs he too is likely to win.
So if Bezos wants to find something on him – Now Please !
Can you agree that those who have sex with underage prositiutes are as bad or worse than Moore ?
Sen. Menendez, Bill Clinton ?
Republican, Democrat, I do not care,
Are we all prepared to hold all of our public servants to the same standards ?
Are we prepared to withhold our votes where credible claims of sexual misconduct exist ?
Are we prepared to prosecuted when that misconduct is criminal and the evidence is sufficient ?
Are we prepared to shun the apologists for these people ?
Elsewhere I linked to Andrew MacCarthy’s article regarding the radical difference in the way the Clinton and Trump investigations are being handled.
That is the rule of man, not law. It is something we must end.
Until we hold democrats and republicans accountable in the same way regardless of the issue, and regardless of our own political affiliation. We are lawless.
The evidence against Moore is more than sufficient, that no one should be voting for him or defending him. Whether it would have been sufficient for a criminal conviction.
The evidence against menendez and Clinton is and was stronger – when each was running for election. And yet democrats voted for both.
Dave “Are we all prepared to hold all of our public servants to the same standards ?”
When does this ever happen.
Why not ?
I am tired of the crap pretending Roy Moore is somehow the same as Joseph.
Just as I am tired of seeing Clinton, Menendez and other democrats do worse and no one on the left cares.
Menendez and Clinton were regulars on the “lolita express” – that was not about 30 something in the caribbean. Broderick is as believable as this former 14 year old in Alabama.
Given what we have learned about DOJ investigations during the Obama administration, why would we lete Mueller investigate a traffic ticket ?
After the 2016 election I really felt we should all take a deep breath and let Clinton slink quietly away into ignominy. But no the left has to go batshit crazy on this non-existant Russia crap, so I am sorry, I am ready to investigate the shit out of it all, and throw them all in jail. Clinton, Holder, Lynch, Lerhner, Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, …..
And if you want to throw in as many republicans as you can catch at the same time by the same standards – great.
I have zero faith in or IC – though I have not for a long, long long time.
I do nto uderstand why the left thinks that CIA and NSA are nazi’s when they are supporting the Bushes, but are true patriots when they are doing the lefts bidding,.
They were not so hot before, and no better now.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453632/roy-moore-defenders-disgusting
The NSRC has defunded Moore, it is pretty likely that if elected the Senate will not seat him.
There are still far too many idiots defending him, but most Republicans are not.
Moore should never have been on any ballot.
But democrats have plenty of their own problems.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/juanita-broaddrick-wants-to-be-believed?utm_term=.pdrm8Y523#.bpZKnOEBa
This is the view that will prevail in the election, and in seating Moore. Just like it did over the tRUMP groping story when it first hit the news.
I generally like Horowitz, but in this instance I do not agree.
I would not be horribly unhappy if Moore won and if the Senate refused to seat him and Alabama had to replace him.
I am not sure that the GOP should not openly advocate for specifically that now.
Vote for Moore – to keep the seat in Republican hands and then we will not seat him.
But what will happen, will happen, and I can live with the GOP losing an otherwise safe seat for 6 years because it ran a scumbag.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/juanita-broaddrick-bill-clinton.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=section
We may not have much longer to wait.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/11/09/supreme-court-takes-gun-control-case-decision-will-huge/
A Moderate Republican View of A Disgusting Republican Response