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All liberals are not kooks and all conservatives are not fascists

HK.227;10697172001.) said:
Well, that's a matter of what came first; the egg or the chicken.
2.) Are you a reasonable person because you gain your infomation from a variety of sources, or do you gather your information from a variety of sources because you are a reasonable person. Have you stayed a reasonable person because you didn't buy into bull****, or didn't you buy into bull**** because you're a reasonable person? Unlike the egg and the chicken game, which is a binary dilemma, I'd say probably a bit of both. (And how did you become a reasonable person in the first place? That's important too.)

3.)Anyway, I think we agree on what is essential.
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1.) agreed thats what its circular for those who are gullible or biased but not for me
2.) none of that makes me reasonable person. Im a reasonable person because i respect facts and logic over feelings and words and i have no issues admitting what i dont know and understand there are many things i dont know. Im just naturally logic based.
3.) ha technically ive done drugs and im still reasonable ;)
 
Xelor said:
1.)Very well. I shall stop responding to you.
2.) Have a good life.
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1.)awesome!!!! a second christmas or early birthday gift depending on how i look at it!!!
2.) i will cause ill still expose your posts when they are factually wrong:2wave:
 
Xelor said:
Red:
That's not so, and even it were, it'd be only occasionally (when encountering editorial content) germane vis-a-vis the specific content one consumes.
  • When it comes to information and information analysis, there are plenty of neutral sources of it, particularly if one seeks information one can rely on in performing one's own analysis and formulating one's own conclusions. Too many folks neither seek nor, should they encounter it, consume such content. (See post 40.)
  • As goes news, one need only consume news content from a news source that adheres to SPJ standards, and there's no death of outlets that do.
    • Of course, one must also be able to tell what content is and isn't news, and that's a task that some folks are just too goddamned dissembling, stupid, ignorant or lazy to do. (Click the link, read the content there and tell me which -- dissemblance, stupidity or ignorance -- beset the writer on whose remarks I commented.)

      A ubiquitous assumption publishers make is that readers/viewers have the ability to accurately distinguish editorial content from news/information and analytical content. High quality journalism content providers indicate when an article is/isn't editorial, but if you read the content linked to in this bullet point, you'll have observed that for some folks, that isn't sufficient. Re: such individuals, there's little to do besides (1) hope stupidity/intellectual torpor isn't congenital and (2) await their expiration.
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At the risk of Goodwin'ing the thread.
Nazi newspapers published plenty of content that lived up to journalistic standards of the time. Do you consider them neutral sources?
The overall narrative presented matters; it is the macro to the micro of the individual content piece.


So while I appreciate your appeal to source integrity, that's not really what I was talking about. (I assume we need not go further into selectively dispensed truth as a tool of manipulation.)
 
AGENT J said:
1.) agreed thats what its circular for those who are gullible or biased but not for me
2.) none of that makes me reasonable person. Im a reasonable person because i respect facts and logic over feelings and words and i have no issues admitting what i dont know and understand there are many things i dont know. Im just naturally logic based.
3.) ha technically ive done drugs and im still reasonable ;)
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Me too. And I did inhale.
 
HK.227 said:
At the risk of Goodwin'ing the thread.
Nazi newspapers published plenty of content that lived up to journalistic standards of the time. Do you consider them neutral sources?
The overall narrative presented matters; it is the macro to the micro of the individual content piece.


So while I appreciate your appeal to source integrity, that's not really what I was talking about. (I assume we need not go further into selectively dispensed truth as a tool of manipulation.)
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Obviously, Nazi state-published content did not come from neutral sources; however, that it didn't has no bearing on the accuracy of the content published in those sources. With regard to the context that gives one cause to mention a given piece of information that information either is or is not (1) factually accurate, (2) representationally faithful, and (3) contextually germane. If the information has those three qualities, it doesn't matter what source publishes it.
 
Xelor said:
Obviously, Nazi state-published content did not come from neutral sources; however, that it didn't has no bearing on the accuracy of the content published in those sources. With regard to the context that gives one cause to mention a given piece of information that information either is or is not (1) factually accurate, (2) representationally faithful, and (3) contextually germane. If the information has those three qualities, it doesn't matter what source publishes it.
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That's right. And wrong.
If a Jewish man happened to murder his wife, the Nazi newspaper could write a completely accurate and NPOV article that lived up to all journalistic ethea. That article could still be used to further an evil and completely false agenda.

Accurate article + suspect newspaper = suspect source of information.
 
Xelor said:
Red:
News, information and trenchant cogent/sound information analysis are not things to agree or disagree with.
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The next time I see some pile of bat-**** crazy in a thread, I'm going to respond with, "If the moon is made up of green cheese, then there are mice on the moon. The moon is made up on green cheese, therefore, there are mice on the moon."
 
HK.227 said:
Me too. And I did inhale.
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I forgot to exhale.

Seriously though, if I see any of the Democratic presidential candidates give a Clinton-like answer to the subject, in an age where legalization isn't really even the liberal/progressive position anymore, I'm going to slam my head into a brick wall.
 
Xelor said:
BTW, TY for making a remark pertinent directly to "Julia's" concluding prayer:

One of the things I pray for is that people with power will get good sense, and people with good sense will get power, and that the rest of us will be blessed with the patience and strength to survive...in the meantime.​

Now I can't say that every Democrat or Republic holder of public office had good sense, but I know that never before have we had the single most powerful public servant on the planet be also a man having no good sense, yet we now do. Furthermore, we've not ever had Congressional Republicans and Democrats bereft of whatever degree of sense it takes to rebuke a POTUS who transgressed the bar of propriety appropriate to holding the land's highest office.

For instance, in 1868, one of the things of which the Senate almost (one vote short) found Johnson guilty was "bringing disgrace and ridicule to the presidency." That is the bar by which a POTUS must be measured. Another article had to do with Johnson's midterm stumping vitriol and rhetorical incontinence. Those are two qualitative, extralegal standards to which Congressional Republicans held a president. In the 1990s, Republicans held a president accountable for lying, which no matter to whom a POTUS lies, attracts "disgrace and ridicule" to the office the man holds, that is, to the presidency. That's what Republicans, people in power, used to have the good sense to do.
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Actually, I think the impeachment of Bill Clinton brought more disgrace on the Republicans in congress than on Bill himself. For whatever reason it was purely partisan vindictiveness on the GOP's part. The Democrats had agreed to censer Bill for his transgressions, but the GOP in my opinion pushed it way too far. I think most Americans thought so too at the time. During Bill's trial in the senate, his approval rating rose from 59% to 65%. Bill is now ranked 18th by the historians among presidents. Your Andrew Johnson is 41.

When it comes to party politics, common sense and good judgement is always the first to go. Congressional members of the presidential party have become more part or members of the administration than congress. The only way we can have any checks and balance is by having divided government. It has reached a point where the opposition party in congress only goal is to stop everything the president does and want whether it might be good for the country.

Trump should have never happened. I place blame for Trump on both major parties for their decisions, actions and choices back in 2016. Both parties forgot America as a whole and only looked inside their own little corner of their own little world to come up with whom they did. The two most disliked candidate by America going back to FDR. Certainly, common sense was totally lost on both parties. But this is where the hyper partisanship and polarization has brought us. I have little hope that it won't continue, that it will only get worse.
 
MrWonka said:
What exactly is preventing that from being the Truth? It happened to Germany. It happened to Rome. It happened to North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Russia...

Why not here? Do you really think the evil that overcame those societies and used faux emergencies to usurp Democracy can't happen here? Are you sure you'd recognize it if it was happening? You don't think there were Germans who said, "Oh come on, Hitler's not evil. He's a little rough around the edges, but he loves Germany and Germans." They thought, "He wants what is best for Germany just like you do, he's just got a different way of going about it."

If you look at the characteristics and the rise to power of every single solitary Tryrant throughout history you will find the similarities between then and what is happening in America today to be staggeringly similar. This is not a drill. Somebody saw those evils coming before they took full control, and someone just like you said they were being hysterical.

We already have thousands of innocent children who have been stolen from their parents, concentrated in camps, and drugged to keep them from crying. We have a president who is declaring a state of emergency where no emergency exists, and he is using that emergency to get around Congress and make decisions without their consent.

Trump is the emergency.


Garbage nonsense. Unlike Trump, Obama didn't create an Emergency just to make himself look heroic by solving it. The Financial Crisis, the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... these problems were handed to President Obama. To be opposed to new leadership at a time like that is irrational and when you look at his opposition and what they were saying and doing it's pretty hard to be agreeing with anything they were saying and doing and not open yourself to legitimate questions about your racism.

You had to do a hell of a lot more than just criticize President Obama to be labeled a racist, but if your criticisms themselves were irrational then there's only so many explanations that can exist.
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I certainly was on this very site for my opposition to the ACA. Also over the Iran deal when I pointed out that the deal was only between Obama and Iran without senate ratification. That any future president could either abide by it or withdraw, revoke it. That the agreement without senate ratification wasn't a deal between the U.S. and Iran, it was just a deal between Obama and Iran.

But Obama is long gone. We have bigger problems. Obama did bypass congress all he could with his pen and his phone as he stated. A lot of his EO's that he bypassed congress by issuing were declared unconstitutional by the SCOTUS. Unlike Bill Clinton who had a very successful presidency after the Democrats lost congress in 1994, Obama failed to adjust to this new situation. Bill adjusted just fine, he moved more toward the center, worked with the GOP congress on several pieces of legislation. He is remembered fondly by most outside of the die hard Republicans.

Polarization and hyper partisanship has come to rule the day today. Differing points of view aren't allowed. Parties change their stances on different issues when the president changes. Border security, building walls and or fences was a bi-partisan effect during both Bush and Obama. Now it isn't. Look at the debt ceiling votes during Bush, almost every Republican voted to raise it, almost every Democrat voted not to. Change president, put Democrat Obama into the White House, both parties do a 180. Now almost ever Democrat is voting to raise it, almost every Republican voting against the raise. Where's the core value? There is none when it comes to the two major parties. It is whatever gives the party a political advantage.
 
HK.227 said:
That's right. And wrong.
If a Jewish man happened to murder his wife, the Nazi newspaper could write a completely accurate and NPOV article that lived up to all journalistic ethea. That article could still be used to further an evil and completely false agenda.

Accurate article + suspect newspaper = suspect source of information.
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Red:
How others, namely editorialists, use a completely accurate and NPOV article has no bearing on the author/publisher of that article. As a reporter of news/information, one's burden is to accurately report the news/information that come to one's attention and/or that one discovers. It is not the reporter, author or publisher's burden to belabor how editorialists may (or may not) cull or contort the accurately reported news, information and representationally faithful analysis one publishes.

For example:

  1. [*=1]In "Postmodernism need not also be post-truth, yet, a la Trump, it is....and that's the problem," I presented a brief expositive analysis and summary of Richard Rorty's book Achieving our Country (AOC). Read the book and what you'll find is my summary is accurate and representationally faithful to the core themes/ideas Rorty presents. I used that summary as a contextual discussion rubric re: a single theme: "Has the intellectual movement that is postmodernism played a role in the rise of post-truth politics?"

    It doesn't matter whether you or I agree with Rorty or how we'd answer the discussion question and support our answer. What matters, in the context of yours and my discourse about journalistic (reporting accuracy) is that my brief depiction of Rorty's themes in AOC fairly presents (given the brevity of my summary relative to the scope of content in the book) the thoughts he expressed.

    • [*=1]Did Rorty consider that I/someone might one day use his prose as a discussion rubric to answer the above noted question? I assure you, he did not.

    [*=1]In "Reconcile this....," I presented eight discrete sets of assertions and bid members to reconcile them in presenting a case that asserts there is, attendant with building a wall on the southern border, a preponderance of pecuniary benefits over pecuniary costs. None of my assertions about what has been found or by others stated is inaccurate.

    Of the research findings others obtained and that I cited, I reviewed the methodology that produced them and determined that there were no material flaws in the methodology. Now you may think I'm wrong about that, and if you do, then show what's materially errant about it and what impact that error has. Whether there be material methodological errors has nothing to do with the source of the information; it has everything to with how the researcher(s) performed their analysis.

    To wit, George Borjas and I have vastly differing normative stances on immigration policy; however, I accept the research methods, findings and analysis he presents in his graduate immigration economics textbooks and his scholarly books that apply his textbook methodologies. On the other hand, much of his editorial content the CIS publishes I don't agree with. That content is stuff he/CIS have culled from his texts for the purpose of arguing for a specific policy approach.

    Sometimes his CIS content is, priciply faithful to his research findings and sometimes it's not. How does that happen? Easy; he's using criteria other than economics for forming his normative stances and, for his CIS writings, he "cherry picks" content that aligns with that non-economic criteria. If one who's knowledgeable about economics (i.e., has a masters or higher level econ degree or comparable experiential learning) speaks to Borjas, he's quite clear that the positive economics of immigration do not militate for the policy stances he advocates. It's only via normative impositions that one can support his stances on the matter; he won't even bother trying to reconcile his normative economics view on immigration policy with his positive economics findings about immigration because they don't reconcile.

    Does Borjas having a different set of objectives and political views than I make him a "suspect source?" No. It just means one must know whether I'm reading his editorial content or his positive content. But you see, I don't care about his reputation; I care about what he can show to be so or highly likely to be so, and his content that has that quality is in his textbooks and scholarly papers.
 
DH Kirkwood said:
The next time I see some pile of bat-**** crazy in a thread, I'm going to respond with, "If the moon is made up of green cheese, then there are mice on the moon. The moon is made up on green cheese, therefore, there are mice on the moon."
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??? - What?
 
Xelor said:
??? - What?
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Your link explaining inductive and deductive reasoning. Down in the homework section of the page, they have examples of valid and invalid deductive arguments. It's there that I found this little nugget of madness. It amused me because it sounded exactly like some of assertions I've seen coming from some of the more . . . interesting members of the forum.
 
AliHajiSheik said:
"In 2016 George H.W. Bush and his wife supported Hillary Clinton"

Well, this is certainly breaking news. Can you support this remarkable statement?
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Not sure you how exactly you missed that. It's not breaking news at all it's very common knowledge.

George Bush Sr calls Trump a 'blowhard' and voted for Clinton - BBC News

Report: George H.W. Bush to Vote for Hillary

Barbara Bush: "I don’t know how women can vote" for Trump - CBS News

Barbara Bush confirms she voted for Hillary Clinton – Women in the World

To my knowledge, there was not a single solitary member of the Bush family that voted for Trump.

Furthermore, Ronald Regan's own son(the conservative one) has said he believes his mother Nancy Reagan would have voted for Hillary as well...

My father would not support this kind of campaign,if this is what the Republican Party wants leave us Reagans out.Nancy would vote for HRC https://twitter.com/mjclaxden/status/782813480780914688

— Michael Reagan (@ReaganWorld) October 3, 2016
 
MrWonka said:
Yeah, see the thing is though, this episode takes place in the '80s. Remember when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were the leaders of the Republican party? In 2016 George H.W. Bush and his wife supported Hillary Clinton, and many people close to the Reagans have said that neither he nor his wife would have supported Trump.

The Republicans of that day and age were younger and far more open to change. They were happy to embrace the future, but now they are mostly older, bitter and fearful of anything new. They see a changing more diverse culture as "National Emergency."

Donald Trump is absolutely 100% a fascist. His most ardent supporters are very clearly and unequivocally white supremacists, misogynists, religious zealots, and gun nuts. Donald Trump could not have won the White House without the support of virtually every single solitary Republican voter's support. The Republican party has no crossed a line into pure unadulterated evil. Making a distinction between moderate Republicans and the vilest among them serves no purpose. It's like differentiating between the Germans who really wanted to kill the Jews and the ones who just wanted the trains to run on time. They're all Nazis now. It's not our responsibility to give them the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof is now on them. If they don't like what's become of their ideology then it's their responsibility to make it clear they don't support Trump with more than just empty words.
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maybe you should check your privilege, man. many people who voted for trump, voted for obama. I think the american people are a lot more nuanced.

It's not our responsibility to give them the benefit of the doubt
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I agree, I guarantee the republican party won't kill jews, and we can prove it after 8 years of trump, and it never happens. Back off on the hyperbole.
 
Perotista said:
I certainly was on this very site for my opposition to the ACA. Also over the Iran deal
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Please. You can't police every random poster on an internet forum. For all you know it was a Russian Troll who said that. From my experience, if someone is calling you a racist there is probably a good reason for it.

Perotista said:
Obama did bypass congress all he could with his pen and his phone as he stated. A lot of his EO's that he bypassed Congress by issuing were declared unconstitutional by the SCOTUS.
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Citation needed.

Perotista said:
Unlike Bill Clinton who had a very successful presidency after the Democrats lost Congress in 1994, Obama failed to adjust to this new situation. Bill adjusted just fine, he moved more toward the center, worked with the GOP congress on several pieces of legislation.
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Nope. Sorry, but it takes two to tango. President Obama did everything he could to get Republicans to help him support an idea. You seem to be forgetting what Mitch McConnell said shortly after President Obama was elected.
The GOP's no-compromise pledge - POLITICO

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
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That's right. Not coming together as a nation to solve our problems. Not fixing our nation's economy or creating jobs. They're only, and I mean the ONLY goal was to obstruct Obama at all costs. They knew that if Obama has a successful Presidency it would obliterate the Republican Party. Their only chance to regain power was to convince the people of this country that he was a bad leader and a failure. They rejected every olive branch he offered because they knew people just like you would be foolish enough to blame Obama for it.

Perotista said:
He is remembered fondly by most outside of the die-hard Republicans.
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Bill Clinton was impeached by Republicans in control of the House and would have been convicted in the Senate if there were more Republicans in it.

Perotista said:
Polarization and hyper-partisanship have come to rule the day today. Differing points of view aren't allowed.
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Sorry, but no. What you are seeing is the actions of Republicans being followed by the only response Democrats can give. Again, you are like a cop walking in on a bar fight that's already in progress. You see two people punching each other and your first instinct is to just break it up, and throw them all in jail because you don't know who started it. But it is incredibly important that you understand who is the aggressor and who is the instigator. If you don't you risk punishing the good guy who was only defending themselves and letting the bad guy go free.

Everything that you're complaining about in Washington today is 100% the fault of Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, Right Wing Media and extremist Republican's. I'm sorry, but that is absolutely the truth and if you don't understand that then you are being manipulated.

Perotista said:
Look at the debt ceiling votes during Bush, almost every Republican voted to raise it, almost every Democrat voted not to. Change president, put Democrat Obama into the White House, both parties do a 180. Now almost every Democrat is voting to raise it, almost every Republican voting against the raise. Where's the core value?
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The key to your misunderstanding is in WHY we were incurring debt. Running a deficit can be an acceptable thing to do at times if you're using the money to invest in things that we desperately need and that will grow our economy in the long term. When you're in a desperate situation like a major financial crisis you have no choice, but to ensure some debt. Bush and Trump's debt was incurred entirely for the purposes of starting unnecessary wars and giving Tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires who didn't need them at all. Furthermore, in a solid economy, you shouldn't be borrowing more money you should be using the good economy to pay down your debts.

There is no hypocrisy whatsoever in the different approaches to debt. It's about understanding that there are good reasons to take on debt and bad reasons. There is a good time to take on debt, and a bad time.
 
MrWonka said:
Not sure you how exactly you missed that. It's not breaking news at all it's very common knowledge.

George Bush Sr calls Trump a 'blowhard' and voted for Clinton - BBC News

Report: George H.W. Bush to Vote for Hillary

Barbara Bush: "I don’t know how women can vote" for Trump - CBS News

Barbara Bush confirms she voted for Hillary Clinton – Women in the World

To my knowledge, there was not a single solitary member of the Bush family that voted for Trump.

Furthermore, Ronald Regan's own son(the conservative one) has said he believes his mother Nancy Reagan would have voted for Hillary as well...

My father would not support this kind of campaign,if this is what the Republican Party wants leave us Reagans out.Nancy would vote for HRC https://twitter.com/mjclaxden/status/782813480780914688

— Michael Reagan (@ReaganWorld) October 3, 2016
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I misread, thought you were referring to George W Bush and his wife.
 
Xelor said:
Elsewhere on the forum I started a thread that asks members to share what was their favorite TV show of the 1980s. A member mentioned Designing Women, and his/her doing so reminded me of one of my favorite segments from the series, one from "The Candidate" episode.

I watched that segment and, in light of all the ranting about religion, racism and Republicans and Democrats pervading political discourse today, I was struck by how still-current "Julia" monologue remains.

So, here it is.



​



As "Julia" says, "All liberals are not kooks any more than all conservatives are not fascists." I think it's high time we elect leaders who ascribe to rather than refute that notion.
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Love me some Julia Sugarbaker. <3 <3 <3
 
Fledermaus said:
It is especially galling to see people cling to the NAZI = Socialist thing.
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Really?
What I mean is, you don't subscribe to the "Hitler was a leftist liberal" theory?
Okay, I admit that I may have underestimated you a bit.
 
ecofarm said:
Semantics. I like those arguments. Sure, nazis were only socialist in the "we'll take your stuff or tell you what to do with it" sense, but there's something to be said of centralized economics.
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No.
Sorry, Adolf Hitler was socialist the way North Korea is "democratic".
In fact, he had all of the actual socialists in his party KILLED on "The Night of the Long Knives" and the entire wing known as the SA (Sturmabteilung) was replaced by the SS.
Adolf Hitler used the word "socialist" as a marketing tag to make it sound attractive to socialist types who, after joining, were reindoctrinated and all traces of their socialism were removed. Those who fought the effort were imprisoned or killed.

A lucky few, like Otto Strasser, escaped the Night of the Long Knives, which took the life of his brother Greger Strasser, and fled in exile. Strasser lived out the rest of WW2 with a 500 thousand dollar bounty on his head, courtesy of Joseph Goebbels.

It's not just "semantics" when the subject being discussed dispatched the murders of the entire left wing of their own party.
National Socialism was white supremacist Aryan right wing fascism.

And "fake history" revisionists like Dinesh D'Souza are engaged in a desperate attempt to separate Trump's burgeoning white supremacist nationalism from the shared history of their counterparts eighty years ago by crafting weapons grade "alternative facts". Such efforts know no contemporary equal and one must search back to scandalized forged works like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to find parity.
The fact that The Protocols is not even based on any reality whatsoever is the only thing that holds it apart from the works of D'Souza.
 
MrWonka said:
One of the great strengths of Liberals is their understanding of nuance and the fact that they understand the world is not black and white
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You just spent the last seven posts illustrating that nuance is lost on you.
 
Mycroft said:
As long as you elect leaders who aren't politicians, you'll be okay.
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Ya...good idea.

While we're at it, let's hire clowns to be doctors, chefs to be astronauts, and pickles to be CEO's.

#MAGA
 
OlNate said:
Ya...good idea.
While we're at it, let's hire clowns to be doctors, chefs to be astronauts, and pickles to be CEO's.
#MAGA
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Oh Nate. Your too nice even when critical!

If we had a clown or a chef as president, we'd be far better off. They went straight to criminal con-artist in bed with our biggest foreign adversary, and fan of authoritarian rulers around the world.

(Your kindness is still an inspiration)
 
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