Who's the bigger offender: Conservatives or Liberals?

I'm going to try to encourage the off-topic parts of the discussion in the The God Delusion Debate thread to move here.

--Percy

Responding to marc9000's Message 69 at the The God Delusion Debate thread.

marc9000 writes: Free speech is one of the most basic staples of U.S. society, both when it was founded, and what has led up to what it is today. Now, beginning only in the past few decades, and ramping up drastically in only the past few years, we're seeing an increasing hostility and intolerance towards conservative free speech.

I think you're confusing the views of Trump and his supporters with conservatism. They're not the same thing.

Naturally liberals and conservatives disagree, but no one on either side is trying to infringe upon the other's free speech rights.

What has been "ramping up drastically in only the past few years" is objections to Trump and his supporters' attacks upon democratic institutions.

For months now, Donald Trump has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat.

Gee, why would all these platforms do that? Might it have been for years of lying capped by lying about the 2020 election and inciting insurrection?

This forum's longtime poster Faith, was permanently banned, not for breaking forum rules or vulgar language, but for having an opinion on something that administration deemed "dangerous".

There's nothing about language in the Forum Guidelines, and no moderator action is ever taken for it. Faith's spreading of covid-19 misinformation (e.g., promoting hydroxychloroquine, questioning fatality statistics, etc.) was deemed a threat to life, which this forum could not in good conscience permit to continue.

Rush Limbaugh was widely labeled "the most dangerous man in America" for a long time, and there were several attempts to censure him. Examples like this from recent years go on and on.

Sounds accurate, since Rush Limbaugh's lies were pretty dangerous, e.g., “The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” He died of lung cancer because he believed his own lies about smoking: "Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does." "There’s no … major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke." "I would like a medal for smoking cigars."

But those examples are only liberal attempts against conservative free speech,...

No they aren't liberal efforts against free speech. I think you're confusing criticism with free speech infringement. Rush Limbaugh was free to lie about smoking and covid-19, and other people were free to criticize him for it. It's necessary to mention that Limbaugh shares responsibility for the vaccine reluctance that will prevent the US from reaching herd immunity, because part of that reluctance is the belief promoted by Limbaugh and others that the virus isn't really dangerous.

Most conservatives for example, are more than happy to let Maxine Waters and AOC babble all they want, it exposes who they really are. There were attempts to censure Waters for her obvious incitements of violence, and her racism towards white people, but most would agree that was justified.

None of this has anything to do with attempts to infringe upon free speech. You're saying "free speech infringement" but you're describing criticism, and plenty of criticism flows in both directions. The significant difference is the lies from the liar in chief that are believed and repeated by other Republicans. Most Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that Trump actually won in a landslide, and no one tried to take away anyone's rights to make these claims. Sure, they were criticized. Rightly so. For example, Limbaugh said that Democrats find elections "offensive", but it was Republicans who tried to overturn an election. Even more damning for Republicans, the few cases of illegal voting identified so far have been almost exclusively Republican.

Belief in a stolen election is a now requirement for membership in good standing of the Republican party. Liz Cheney will likely lose her House leadership position to Elise Stefanik for not accepting this lie. Ironically Liz Cheney has voted 82% of the time with conservatives, Elise Stefanik only 52% of the time. In their eagerness that top Republican leadership be pure on the "stolen election" claim they're replacing a staunch conservative with a tepid one.

Limbaugh wasn't alone in spreading lies, of course. Here's a quote from Alex Jones speaking on his show:

quote:

---

Basically, anyone taking these vaccines, all designed to do the same thing, is going to have neurological disorders within one year, most of the people taking the vaccine will be dead within ten...Let me tell you something, you take the mRNA it creates plaque in your brain, gives you Alzheimer's, and I've got the studies, too.

---

No one believing this missive from Mr. Jones has engaged in any critical thinking. For the benefit of those to whom the glaring flaws aren't obvious, Mr. Jones cannot have studies showing what will happen after ten years for a vaccine that has been available for study for no more than a year. We don't know what causes Alzheimer's, and so we also don't know how to cause it. The earliest studies of the vaccines are about a year old now, and no one in the early studies has come down with neurological disorders.

Alex Jones is lying, just as Rush Limbaugh was lying, and just as Donald Trump is lying. Their free speech rights give them the right to lie, and these same rights give other people the right to criticize them for lying.

And this seems to be what upsets you, that conservatives who lie are criticized, and not just by liberals but by any conservatives with a conscience, such as George Conway, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, George Will, sometimes Jeff Flake, sometimes Mitt Romney, sometimes Liz Cheney, sometimes Adam Kinginger, sometimes Lisa Murkowski. The Republican party is attempting to purify itself of these voices.

The list of liberals who are included on Fox News Channel discussions is long,...

Could I see this list?

...while the list of conservatives on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc. is practically non-existent.

I watch the Sunday morning news programs, and on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week conservatives are very well represented. Conservatives appearing recently on these programs are Senator Ron Johnson, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Republican pollster Al Cardenas, Lanhee Chen, Senator Rob Portman, National Review's David French, Senator Tim Scott, Governor Mike DeWine, the list just goes on and on.

I see Rick Santorum is included at CNN, that's about all I can find.

You're not looking very hard, but this is a good opportunity to mention the deplorable media predilection for bothsidesism where they try to represent both sides even when one side is telling the truth ("the election was fair and honest and there's no evidence that it wasn't") and the other side is lying ("we have evidence that we'll reveal in court of widespread voter fraud" and then get to court, never present any evidence, and lose all but one of 60 court cases, including before Trump judges).

None of those networks get anywhere near the way Fox News allows Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat, to have their own one-hour show to do anything they want.

Chris Wallace has been at Fox News since 2003. He does represent an odd man out the last few years now that his network has moved so far to the right and embraced lying and misrepresentation as news, but letting him go would greatly reduce the overall quality of their news staff since he is by far the most honest and respected newsman they have.

marc9000 writes: I understand that this forum is a gathering place for atheists with far left political views... I don’t think there is anybody from the far left here at all. Yes I know, these kinds of obviously dishonest statements are another of the many reasons why there aren't a wider variety of posters here.

This is an odd charge given the number of false and misleading statements you've made in just this post alone. I presume you don't believe a person's religion or lack of it is relevant in politics, so I don't know why you mention atheists. Many here are liberal, but you'd be going out on a limb to describe them as far left. I personally am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.

As you know. Some religious people want to get their propaganda into science lessons because they disagree with the science They don't disagree with the science, they disagree with the atheism.

Science is atheistic in the way plumbing and knitting are atheistic. Religion just isn't relevant.

Meanwhile other religious people are even writing the textbooks for the science courses. Everyone is religious, atheists have been writing the textbooks for science courses for a long time, because atheism controls science.

It doesn't matter how many times you repeat this, it still won't be true.

--Percy

This is a reply to marc9000's Message 93 in the The God Delusion Debate thread.

marc9000 writes: I don't think current creationists recognize defeat so much as that they're just not in the same league as the previous generation of creationists. There were a large number of very active and very effective creationists at the national level twenty years ago. If we were still dealing with the equivalent of Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Andrew Snelling, John Baumgardner, Kent Hovind, Kurt Wise, Walt Brown and so forth in their prime I think things would be very different. Creation is defeated now?

Defeated? No, course not. Maybe you missed part of my exchange with dwise1. I said that creationism made a strategic decision to lobby school boards and recruit teachers instead of building a faux science. Adding to that, I think this decision was forced upon them because their science couldn't withstand even the most superficial scrutiny, their greatest lights were getting on in age, and the current generation of creationists was much less interested in carrying on a doomed public fight with science.

Morris and Dembski are inactive now,...

You might want be sitting down. Ready? Morris is very inactive now. He's dead.

...but their many books live on. Some of them in private hands, some of them still in book stores.

Huh? What are you talking about? I just checked The Genesis Flood, Darwin's Black Box, Darwin on Trial and The Design Inference - they're all still available at Amazon.

Hopefully you don't think the government should seize them.

Hopefully you're not still beating your wife.

You're only reinforcing PaulK's original point. Your posts reflect a lack of knowledge, an inability to tell truth from fiction, a proclivity for conspiracy theories, and a penchant for casting aspersions at things you don't understand.

--Percy

A few recent posts cause me to note a couple patterns.

Because most beliefs are not arrived at by a rational process, destroying the arguments offered in defense of a belief will not cause someone to drop the belief. They'll instead seek new arguments.

When people have strongly held beliefs about things they know little about then presenting and explaining correct information will not persuade them because the same lack of knowledge that allows them to old those beliefs also governs their interpretation of the new information.

--Percy

marc9000 writes: I think you're confusing the views of Trump and his supporters with conservatism. They're not the same thing. I know, this is a game that liberals play. I've seen it all over the place before. I take it you think most posters here are conservative? Proper definitive terms being jacked all around to confuse straightforward discussions isn't something I'm interested in engaging in any longer.

You said, "we're seeing an increasing hostility and intolerance towards conservative free speech." We're not. If you think we are then provide some examples. What I think you can legitimately point to over the past few years is increasing hostility toward the views of Trump. For instance, there's a great deal of hostility right now toward his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. That view is Trumpism, not conservatism.

What has been "ramping up drastically in only the past few years" is objections to Trump and his supporters' attacks upon democratic institutions. All those recent institutions that I described in Message 24?

No democratic institutions were described in Message 24. Trump attacked the American justice system including a number of individual judges, interfered with Justice Department investigations, attacked the electoral college and the integrity of our democratic elections, sought election help from foreign powers, handicapped our health institutions in the midst of a pandemic, politicized the military, used his presidential powers to deflect all oversight and serve partisan ends, divided the nation to serve his own interests, and turned the presidency from an opponent to a proponent of racism. He did not live up to the honor and dignity of the office he held.

There's nothing about language in the Forum Guidelines, and no moderator action is ever taken for it. Faith's spreading of covid-19 misinformation (e.g., promoting hydroxychloroquine, questioning fatality statistics, etc.) was deemed a threat to life, which this forum could not in good conscience permit to continue. But without checking right now, I seem to remember them saying something about being respectful, about attacking the argument, not the person.

Yeah, respectful and focused on arguments and evidence. Sounds just like Faith.

I think there are a lot of liberal claims that could be a threat to life, the destruction of the second amendment,...

Liberals achieved "the destruction of the second amendment"? Wow! How did I not hear about this?

...or as I'm about to make clear to PaulK in the other thread, the implication that most all the products humans need and depend on can easily be manufactured and distributed without fossil fuels, so it would be very cool for the government to meddle in the use of fossil fuels. Very dangerous.

How is it dangerous to set government policy regarding fossil fuels?

Sounds accurate, since Rush Limbaugh's lies were pretty dangerous, e.g., “The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.” He died of lung cancer because he believed his own lies about smoking: "Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does." "There’s no … major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke." "I would like a medal for smoking cigars." He died at age 70, a lot of non-smokers die of lung cancer at an earlier age than that. My mom smoked most of her life, she died at 88. Little opinions about personal choices pale in comparison to the whoppers liberals like AOC say.

You're ignoring the point. Rush Limbaugh's lies caused deaths, including possibly his own.

And surely you're not denying the connection between smoking and lung cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that smoking causes around 30% of all cancer deaths in the US. The CDC estimates that smoking increases the chances of lung cancer by from 15 to 30 times. Smoking cigars, which was Limbaugh's preferred poison, is associated not only with lung cancer but (much more than cigarettes) also with esophageal and nasal cancers.

No they aren't liberal efforts against free speech. I think you're confusing criticism with free speech infringement. Rush Limbaugh was free to lie about smoking and covid-19, and other people were free to criticize him for it. It's necessary to mention that Limbaugh shares responsibility for the vaccine reluctance that will prevent the US from reaching herd immunity, because part of that reluctance is the belief promoted by Limbaugh and others that the virus isn't really dangerous. So Trump slowed the vaccine development because of what Limbaugh said? I think not.

Do you not know what vaccine reluctance is? It has nothing to do with vaccine development. Limbaugh shares responsibility for the surprising degree to which Americans are reluctant to get vaccinated and that might well prevent the country from achieving herd immunity.

In your next paragraph I can only marvel at your ability to pack so much error into so little space. Breaking it down one error at a time:

Did you hear the one the mainstream media told about the Capital police officer being hit and killed by a fire extinguisher, wielded by a typical Trump supporter?

That Sicknick succumbed to injuries sustained during the insurrection came from a statement by the Capitol Police. Reports that the injuries were caused by a fire extinguisher came from anonymous law enforcement sources and were later retracted.

Fox news ran a montage of a LOT of news anchors making that statement.

The media accurately reported information provided by both official and unofficial police sources.

It's now been proven that officer died of natural causes.

Which was also accurately reported.

Some people found out the truth, most did not...

This can be interpreted two ways, neither of which make sense. The actual cause of Sicknick's death, a surprise to everyone and so fairly big news, was very widely reported, so it makes no sense to say that most people did not hear about this.

Or maybe you mean that some people found out that Sicknick died of natural causes before the coroner released his report. This, too, makes no sense.

...the mainstream media paid no price for that lie.

There was no lie. The Capital Police stated that Sicknick died of injuries sustained during the insurrection. That the injuries were caused by a fire extinguisher was provided by anonymous law enforcement sources and was retracted as soon as it was discovered to be unreliable.

But if you want to claim so minor an inaccuracy is a lie, a big lie in fact, then how do you describe the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen? You're using a mote to distract people from a beam.

No investigation of just who made that up out of thin air. Little doubt it was an amateur liberal reporter.

The report came from the New York Times using anonymous law enforcement sources.

Restricting free speech because of accusations of lies is a new thing, it wasn't considered in past U.S. history.

Once again you are confusing criticism of what is said with constraints or impediments on the right to say it. Your accusations of major media malfeasance are a huge exaggeration. That's criticism, not a constraint on your free speech.

None of this has anything to do with attempts to infringe upon free speech. You're saying "free speech infringement" but you're describing criticism, and plenty of criticism flows in both directions. The significant difference is the lies from the liar in chief that are believed and repeated by other Republicans. Most Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that Trump actually won in a landslide, and no one tried to take away anyone's rights to make these claims. Trump's use of the term "landslide" was stupid, typical Trump personality that hurts him,...

If use of the term "landslide" was stupid, then what was Trump's use of the terms "stolen", "rigged", and "fraudulent"? What do you call lying on so massive a scale?

...everyone knows the election was close.

You've bought into a Trump lie - the 2020 presidential election was not close. Biden won the electoral college 306 to 232, the same margin that Trump in 2016 called a "massive landslide" while losing the popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Biden won the 2020 popular vote by 7,052,770 votes. Nothing about the 2020 election was particularly close.

If you want to correctly use the term "close" then apply it to the 2000 presidential election won by George W. Bush over Al Gore 271 to 266 in the electoral college but lost in the popular vote by 543,895 votes. That was close.

Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last four presidential elections and seven of the last eight. That's why they're working so hard on voter suppression efforts.

I'm sure he was frustrated by the mainstream media cover up of the Biden corruption during the Obama presidency.

You're buying into another Trump lie. There was no Biden corruption, not during the Obama presidency or at any other time. Because he could find no corruption Trump tried to concoct some by coercing the Ukrainian President into announcing a sham investigation into Biden corruption. To find true corruption on a scale not seen since perhaps the 2nd Grant administration you need only look to Trump.

No question the Democrat owned news media bought that election for him, combining the Biden corruption with other things.

Repeating a lie over and over again is a Trump hallmark. You've learned well, grasshopper.

Before you say that everyone has the right to watch Fox news, the simple reality is that much of rural America doesn't have access to anything but over-the-air news, and that's what the mainstream media dominates.

Gee, that's funny, because when I drive around rural America, which describes most of my state, I see satellite dishes on almost every house.

Mark, you are both amazing and amazingly consistent. I'm halfway through your post and have yet to find much of anything true. You're able to give voice to obvious outrage but unable to find anything true to support it.

Belief in a stolen election is a now requirement for membership in good standing of the Republican party. Liz Cheney will likely lose her House leadership position to Elise Stefanik for not accepting this lie. Ironically Liz Cheney has voted 82% of the time with conservatives, Elise Stefanik only 52% of the time. In their eagerness that top Republican leadership be pure on the "stolen election" claim they're replacing a staunch conservative with a tepid one. The replacement of Liz Cheney is much more involved than just the belief in a stolen election.

And yet you were unable to articulate a single thing about this "much more involved" claim. Liz Cheney has now been ousted from her role as #3 in the Republican Party power structure in the House because she publicly opposed Trump's lies about a stolen election.

No one believing this missive from Mr. Jones has engaged in any critical thinking. For the benefit of those to whom the glaring flaws aren't obvious, Mr. Jones cannot have studies showing what will happen after ten years for a vaccine that has been available for study for no more than a year. We don't know what causes Alzheimer's, and so we also don't know how to cause it. The earliest studies of the vaccines are about a year old now, and no one in the early studies has come down with neurological disorders. Alex Jones is lying, just as Rush Limbaugh was lying, and just as Donald Trump is lying. Their free speech rights give them the right to lie, and these same rights give other people the right to criticize them for lying. These are political opinions and talking points,...

Boy do you ever have a double standard. When Alex Jones lies about having studies supporting his false claims, it's just a political opinion and a talking point. But when the NYT passes on information from law enforcement sources about a fire extinguisher it's lying so egregious that it deserves an investigation.

You now embark on another few sentences of tightly packed lies:

...like global warming will be completely out of control soon...

If by soon you mean by around 2050, then yes, this is a familiar talking point for all those who accept the evidence of climate change.

...if we don't allow the government takeover of the fossil fuel industry,...

Liberals are not calling for a takeover of the fossil fuel industry. You're making this up.

...like U.S. coasts will be swallowed up by rising oceans,...

US coastlines are already surrendering to rising sea levels. Woodbridge is a New Jersey coastal community just across the water from Staten Island. It's coastal area is low lying, and they've been forced to adopt a purchase program for those who have lost the fight against seawater. From Hurricane Sandy: 5 years later, Sayreville, Woodbridge working Rutgers floodplain restoration plan:

quote:

---

In May 2013, the state home-buyback initiative was set up. Administered through the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Blue Acres Buyout Program allows the state to purchase the properties of willing sellers in disaster-prone areas at pre-flood market values, providing them the resources to move to safer locations.

Under the federally- and state-funded initiative, homes are demolished and the land is permanently preserved as open space for recreation and/or conservation. The goal is to purchase clusters of homes to provide areas that will absorb flood waters, state officials said.

---

like Joe Biden's campaign lie that he had no idea how many millions Hunter Biden raked in from his Ukraine corruption,...

What Hunter Biden corruption? Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company for which he was unqualified and the optics terrible, but that's not corruption, and no corruption has been found. If you think corruption was found then describe it for us. Hunter Biden was probably offered a position on the board because they thought it would provide them an in with then VP Joe Biden. It didn't. Hunter Biden was paid $850,000 over five years for serving on the board, about $170,000/year. There's no millions anywhere, not from the Ukraine and not from China.

...like Joe Biden's recent lie that the southern border is under control, on and on.

Compare that to Republican claims of chaos on the southern border. The problem is worse than Biden's claims and far better than Republican claims.

marc9000 writes: The list of liberals who are included on Fox News Channel discussions is long,... Could I see this list? Donna Brazille Christopher Hahn Juan Williams Jessica Tarlov Marie Harf Chris Wallace Some past ones; Greta Van Susteren Shepard Smith Bob Beckel Alison Camerota

Only Donna Brazille is active in politics. Everyone else you listed is or was a Fox News employee. It may come as a revelation to you, but liberals do work for Fox News and conservatives do work for the New York Times, Washington Post and so forth.

My list of conservatives appearing on the Sunday morning programs of ABC, CBS and NBC included Senators, Congressmen, governors and former governors. Who among equally prominent liberals are appearing on Fox News?

With the possible exception of Beckel, these people are good -they can proclaim the liberal talking points without sputtering with rage.

Could you post a video of any of these current and/or former Fox News hosts advocating for a liberal viewpoint. Or of a liberal sputtering with rage? I'd like to see what these all look like, because otherwise it just sounds like marc9000 typical exaggeration and hyperbole.

Probably a requirement of the job. Makes for good complete information at Fox, unlike CNN, ABC, and all the rest. No conservatives get anywhere near World News Tonight on ABC.

I've never watch ABC's World News Tonight, so I quickly scanned through last night's episode. The format doesn't lend itself to interviews with politicians, it's mostly news reporting that includes Q&A with correspondents at remote locations, but two politicians briefly appeared. They were Republican Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi of California.

I watch the Sunday morning news programs, and on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week conservatives are very well represented. Conservatives appearing recently on these programs are Senator Ron Johnson, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Republican pollster Al Cardenas, Lanhee Chen, Senator Rob Portman, National Review's David French, Senator Tim Scott, Governor Mike DeWine, the list just goes on and on. Is Sunday morning pretty much it? I'm in church on Sunday mornings. The people I listed above could show up at Fox any time during the week.

I doubt Fox News has many liberal politicians on during the week. They of course do appear regularly on Chris Wallace's show.

Chris Wallace has been at Fox News since 2003. He does represent an odd man out the last few years now that his network has moved so far to the right and embraced lying and misrepresentation as news, but letting him go would greatly reduce the overall quality of their news staff since he is by far the most honest and respected newsman they have. Yes, I noticed your praise of him here not long ago. He cuts off and smarts off to conservatives all he can, and with few exceptions, he lets the liberals off with no challenges.

For you the definition of someone behaving badly is someone who disagrees with you.

This is an odd charge given the number of false and misleading statements you've made in just this post alone. I presume you don't believe a person's religion or lack of it is relevant in politics, so I don't know why you mention atheists. Many here are liberal, but you'd be going out on a limb to describe them as far left. I personally am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. So you believe in social spending, but not fiscal spending? Do you believe that borrowing trillions more, for free child care, student loan forgiveness, and most of the rest of Biden's pork, are "infrastructure"?

There's nothing about free child care in the infrastructure bill. It allocates $25 billion for a program to upgrade child care facilities in impoverished regions. $25 billion is 1.25% of $2 trillion, so eliminating it would save little and the attention it is getting is grossly disproportionate, but I agree it's not infrastructure and should not be characterized as such. I have no problem removing it from the bill.

And there's nothing about student loan forgiveness in the infrastructure bill, though I agree it's not infrastructure.

You seem broadly misinformed about what of significance is in the infrastructure bill. Here's the breakdown:

Transportation	$621 billion
Water	$111 billion
Broadband and Power	$200 billion
Housing and Education	$768 billion
Research & Development	$180 billion
Manufacturing & Labor	$400 billion

Science is atheistic in the way plumbing and knitting are atheistic. Religion just isn't relevant. That's the talking point I've seen dozens of times before, and like before, still not true no matter how much its repeated. I'm just glad plumbers didn't have an emotional meltdown with the release of "Darwin's Black Box".

How is it untrue? I don't see religion's involvement or relevance in science, plumbing or knitting. Obviously you see it differently, so please explain.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

marc9000 writes: I'll be back this weekend.

If it's only to offer more fiction and error, why bother? Like much of the Republican party you've realized things can be made up far faster and easier than they can be rebutted and that the rebuttals can be neutralized by simply repeating the made up stuff again. And again. And again, as often as necessary.

The question of who between conservatives and liberals is the biggest offender of truth has a simple and obvious answer: conservatives, particularly conservatives who are also Republicans. Just ask yourself how many Republican Senators and House members will agree that Biden won the election or that the election wasn't unfair, rigged, stolen or fraudulent?

And how many are playing dangerous games of political shenanigans, claiming they're only asking questions because their constituents are asking questions when it was they themselves who told their constituents the election was rigged, causing the questions and at the same time undermining one of most important foundations of our Democracy, faith in the integrity of our elections. About two thirds of Republicans now question the election results.

Giuliani would tell whoever would listen that there was plenty of evidence of election fraud and then in court admit he had no evidence. After being sued by Dominion Voting Systems Sidney Powell defended herself in a court filing by claiming that no reasonable person would have believed her assertions of election fraud. That's why Trump lost 59 of 60 court cases - his claims of a rigged election were false.

Democracies aren't invulnerable. One of the ways they become threatened is when too many people believe the most important thing isn't honest elections but that their guy win.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Minor clarity improvement.

dwise1 writes: ...Dr. Atlas' "herd immunity" strategy...It didn't matter how many people had to die to accomplish that,...

Ah, yes, good old Dr. Atlas. Examining his idea a bit, as of today there have been 584,000 deaths and 32 million cases, meaning that 1.76% of people who caught covid died. Just simplistically doing the math for Dr. Atlas' strategy tells us that over 4 million people would have died, but it would have been far more than that because our medical resources would have been so overwhelmed that millions more would have died who had easily handled medical problems that couldn't be treated because there weren't enough doctors, nurses and hospitals.

These numbers can be taken seriously, but 32 million is just the minimum number of cases - many caught covid asymptomatically and never knew it and so weren't included in the count. This would result in lesser fatality numbers for the Atlas strategy, but not so much less as to not still be horrific.

Trump had virtually nothing to do with vaccine development. Research in COVID vaccines had been worked on for decades, so most of the "warp speed" efforts were in applying that research to this particular virus. All Trump did was to make an announcement, allow some funding for that effort, and then try to take all the credit (including for Pfizer which was not part of "warp speed"). For that matter, if Trump had been aware of that COVID research before the pandemic he would have been most likely killed it like he killed our pandemic preparedness back around 2018.

Oftentimes it seems like Trump is trying to take credit for the very idea of a vaccine, as if everyone's first thought wasn't, "We need a vaccine." In terms of taking credit Trump often seems like an old style Chinese or North Korean communist who took credit for everything, including for many things that never happened.

But since he had already conceded and the election had already been certified for Bush, Bush is what we ended up getting.

And 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I can't buy your arguments in favor of Hunter Biden's qualifications for the Burisma board, plus they read like they were lifted in part out of Wikipedia. My impression of Hunter Biden is that drug addiction and alcoholism caused him to be a fuck-up much of his life, both business and personal.

So how are their decisions and motivations supposed to be an indictment of Hunter Biden or of then-VP Biden in the marc's eyes?

Good question for Marc.

--Percy

marc9000 writes: You said, "we're seeing an increasing hostility and intolerance towards conservative free speech." We're not. If you think we are then provide some examples. There are those who've researched it, and say we are. The Free Speech Alliance

The Free Speech Alliance and it's Media Research Center is right wing. They've been described as "propaganda clothed as critique." They, like you, don't seem to know what free speech is. You have the right to say pretty much whatever you want within reasonable limits (libel, threats, etc.), but everyone else isn't obligated to provide you a platform to speak from.

It's interesting that you think The Free Speech Alliance's opinion of themselves is what we should all believe. Here's your quote from their home page:

quote: In April 2018, the Media Research Center released a groundbreaking report exposing efforts to censor conservatives and silence conservative speech from major online platforms. Our report was so impactful that US Representatives on the House Judiciary Committee cited it four separate times during a July 17, 2018 congressional hearing.

But I could find no evidence of this claim (though I know there are Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who believe this nonsense). Here's a link to the webpage for the House Judiciary Committee hearing for that day: Facebook, Google and Twitter: Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants | U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee . Knock yourself out finding references to the Media Research Center report at that link. Here's a link to the Media Research Center's report (they seem to have generated only this one report): CENSORED! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech

In the past year or so, a well known Cincinnati Reds baseball announcer made a casual comment about a "fag", when he didn't think his mike was hot. He sure lost his job, the gays in the Cincinnati news media had a fit. No such fits used to happen to Robert Byrd, who used the N word publicly more than once.

Why should the Cincinnati Reds organization provide a platform for a gay-hater. Why are you defending even more hate speech by offering the example of Robert Byrd getting away with using the word nigger?

These increased attacks on conservative free speech aren't just very recent (the 2020 election) but have been ramping up during the entire Trump administration. Not only to Trump himself, but to all conservatives.

Not providing a platform for hate speech like you describe, namely calling people fags and niggers, is a good thing. You seem not to even realize how much more obvious you're making the racist and homophobic views of Trump Republicans. You're just digging your hole wider and deeper.

What I think you can legitimately point to over the past few years is increasing hostility toward the views of Trump. For instance, there's a great deal of hostility right now toward his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. That view is Trumpism, not conservatism. There are a lot of conservatives who aren't real confident in the integrity of the 2020 election.

First, you don't really mean true conservatives. The people you're really talking about are Trump supporters who believe the former president's lies that the election was stolen, despite that he lost 59 of 60 court cases. The one court case he won was to allow observers to stand closer.

Are Trump supporters confident in the election of all the down ballot Republicans who won? Have they figured out yet how, other than by magic, votes for down ballot Republicans were unaffected but votes for Trump on the same ballot were changed to Biden? Why would anyone having the power to change votes change them only for the presidential race?

"Stolen" is a harsh word, but these are changing times that our society is still coming to grips with.

I bet you're just hanging on the results of the Maricopa county recount. You probably hope they'll find bamboo content in the ballots while never wondering why the Democrats would print ballots that checked Biden but not other Democratic candidates, and never wondering why the number of ballots very closely agrees with the number of people recorded as checking in to vote at the polls. It must be magic!

The Covid 19 hysteria played no small part in the confusion that was the voting process this time.

Covid-19 hysteria? With nearly 600,000 dead so far, concern about covid-19 is rational, not hysterical. Trump supporters are just inventing reasons why their guy lost because they can't accept that he got fewer votes than the other guy.

The mail-in voting, the early voting, the questions about voter ID, etc.

Trump supporters are only raising questions because their guy lost, not because there's any evidence of problems with mail-in voting, early voting, or voter identification. There have been very few instances of voter fraud uncovered - I heard about only a few, myself, and so far they've all been Republican. Trump supporters believe massive election fraud was committed by Democrats and yet can't find a single instance. But do they think maybe they're wrong? Nope, they just keep looking.

I believe voter fraud is occasionally committed by people from all parts of the political spectrum, but all indications are that it is very rare. The most common way it happens is where a family member has passed away but has their vote cast anyway by another family member. The case of voter fraud reported yesterday was the most interesting I've seen so far. A man murdered his wife, then cast her vote for Trump.

Conservative's lack of confidence in it is really very comparable to the liberal hysteria we heard 4 years ago when it was claimed that Russia interfered with Hillary's victory.

You can't seem to tell the difference between an opinion based on nothing, like that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, and an opinion based on evidence, like that the Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump through social media carried out through their Internet Research Agency. Mueller's report concluded that while there were many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials that they were more fellow travelers than conspirators.

Not as much free speech was silenced that time.

No free speech was silenced then or now. It's all in your head.

No democratic institutions were described in Message 24. No they were not,...

Then why did you respond to my comment about Trump supporters attacks on democratic institutions by saying, "All those recent institutions that I described in Message 24?" You're not making much sense.

...what was described there was today's Democrat party's serious swerve to the left of liberalism, more towards socialism and communism.

Conservatives have been misusing the term socialism for years. It means state ownership of the means of production. No liberals are advocating socialism. Communism is more extreme than socialism, and no liberals are advocating communism, either.

Liberals are advocating social programs, not socialism or communism.

None of my dozen or so frantic opponents has responded to it.

It was a reply to AZPaul3, and I guess he chose not to respond to it. You appear to be spewing a bunch of nonsense in that message, much like here.

Liberals achieved "the destruction of the second amendment"? Wow! How did I not hear about this? They've been trying real hard in the past decade or so, and it's one of their few efforts that haven't gotten much traction.

First you claim liberals destroyed the 2nd amendment, and now you claim their efforts to destroy it have been inconsequential. Inconsistent much?

The more Democrats threaten to take them, statistics show that more and more guns are being sold.

Finally, something true, but only a little bit because you should have been referring to gun control, not the 2nd amendment. There's no significant effort by liberals to repeal the 2nd amendment. Yes, whenever some heinous murder or massacre happens, fears of more gun control spark gun sales.

How is it dangerous to set government policy regarding fossil fuels? The government often doesn't do a good job of predicting unforeseen costs and complications that result from their meddling...etc...

The law of unintended consequences notwithstanding, you sound like you're against government driven improved fuel economy standards as we get deeper and deeper into the climate change crisis.

You're ignoring the point. Rush Limbaugh's lies caused deaths, including possibly his own. Everybody dies. A lot of us like to make our own decisions concerning how we choose to live.

What about those who decided to go maskless or to smoke because of Rush Limbaugh's life-endangering advice? Did they freely make an informed decision balancing risk and reward, or did they take the advice of someone they trusted but who didn't know what he was talking about?

This can be interpreted two ways, neither of which make sense. The actual cause of Sicknick's death, a surprise to everyone and so fairly big news, was very widely reported, so it makes no sense to say that most people did not hear about this. Or maybe you mean that some people found out that Sicknick died of natural causes before the coroner released his report. This, too, makes no sense. What makes sense is that a lot of people heard it trumpeted that he was killed by a Trump supporter with a fire extinguisher, and a lot fewer people heard that he died of natural causes.

You're making stuff up again. Everyone heard Sicknick died from blunt force trauma while trying to hold back Trump supporters trying to enter the Capitol building because that's what the police said. The particular object that caused the blunt force trauma isn't a significant detail, but there was video of a fire extinguisher being thrown at Capitol Police, so of course it was believable.

Until the coroner's report became public no one knew Sicknick actually died of natural causes, so you're also wrong about some people knowing about it beforehand.

And that it was natural causes was such a surprise that it was very widely reported. There probably wasn't a single major news outlet that didn't report this.

But no matter how many spurious complaints you raise about media reporting, the January 6th insurrection incited by Donald Trump still happened. It was not, as one Republican House member recently argued, like a tourist group.

I watch ABC World News Tonight most evenings, no big attention getting correction was made concerning the original false report.

You mean that it wasn't a fire extinguisher? I don't think it makes sense to anyone here that you think the part about the fire extinguisher is significant.

But if you want to claim so minor an inaccuracy is a lie, a big lie in fact, then how do you describe the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen? You're using a mote to distract people from a beam. I believed the reports that conservative poll observers were sometimes denied entrance, and expelled, from polling places at times during the election.

Why do you believe these reports? If they were true don't you think Trump would have lost fewer court cases than the 59 out of 60 that he actually lost?

I live near, and sometimes work in, a medium sized, old U.S. city, where mobs sometimes roam, and I can just imagine which of the two political parties controlled the atmosphere at ALL big mob infested cities in the U.S.

You're living in your own fictional world. To you a mob is probably any protest not sporting Confederate flags.

Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last four presidential elections and seven of the last eight. That's why they're working so hard on voter suppression efforts. They're working hard on voter ID,...

Conservatives were against the idea of government ID cards until they thought they would help them win elections. They think that in places where they control government they can make obtaining ID cards more difficult for those less likely to vote for them. And since that won't always work they're trying to pass laws allowing the legislature to substitute their own slate of electors or overrule their own secretary of state or election certification boards.

...on getting the election process back to traditional methods, not all this new early voting,...

There was no meaningful voter fraud from early voting, so why the concern?

...mail-in voting,...

There was no meaningful voter fraud from absentee or mail-in-voting, so why the concern?

...ballot harvesting,...

Allowing a 3rd party to collect ballots does seem risky, but it's worth noting that the only significant instance of ballot tampering due to ballot harvesting was perpetrated by Republican McCrae Dowless in North Carolina. It forced the election of several local races to be reheld.

...illegals voting etc....

No evidence of illegals voting in any meaningful numbers has emerged, so why the concern?

But yes, Democrats have the numbers, they get them from the clusters of idle people in big cities. The red/blue maps showing where the red and blue voters are make that clear.

"Idle people in big cities"? Marc, you are harboring a great deal of resentment and distrust.

Gee, that's funny, because when I drive around rural America, which describes most of my state, I see satellite dishes on almost every house. Gee that's even funnier, because when most people think of rural America, they're not thinking of New Hampshire hahahaha. They're thinking of Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Montana, Kentucky, South Dakota.

Most of most states is rural, Marc, and satellite dishes are everywhere in rural America. Your claim that rural America can't watch Fox News because it's on cable was wrong.

Mark, you are both amazing and amazingly consistent. I'm halfway through your post and have yet to find much of anything true. You're able to give voice to obvious outrage but unable to find anything true to support it. You say below that you watch Ron Johnson and Tim Scott sometimes on Sunday morning programs. Do you find me to be a lot different than them, and others like them?

No, not at all. You're all pretty much delusional. But they're backing Trump's lies about the 2020 election and about racism because they believe it's necessary to holding on to their current offices. Why are you?

How is it untrue? I don't see religion's involvement or relevance in science, plumbing or knitting. Obviously you see it differently, so please explain. There is ANGER in those who study science,...

Marc, you see negative emotions in everyone who disagrees with you. You can't disagree with anyone without accusing them of being angry or frustrated or sputtering with rage and all the rest. Give it a break.

...this forum alone should make that clear to anybody, partly because they take science far beyond its boundaries, beyond what's testable and falsifiable, and religion gets in its way.

Well, now you're going off-topic, so I'll just say that I think what this forum has made most clear is the vacuity of creationism and intelligent design.

I'm just glad "plumbers" don't have this kind of anger, half of them would be laying around dead, beaten to death with monkey wrenches.

The only person who sounds angry around here (not to mention uninformed and shameless in fabricating arguments) is you. You again made it through an entire post saying almost nothing true.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : No reason given.

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Phat writes: Yes but in defense of Marc, what gives *you* the high ground? And what makes 50% of us wise and 50% of us foolish?

I'm in the middle of something else right now and was just scanning through the thread as a way of taking a break, but I have to reply to this.

Marc is repeating lies and falsehoods, and now we find out after spending considerable time beginning to nail down the specifics of his lies and falsehoods (it's tough because he ignores old ones and adds new ones at a considerable rate) we find that he's just going to abandon discussion. I began by asking him if this was a drive-by and he said no. I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football but tricked again.

--Percy

You are aligned with a very sorry group, not conservatives with whom I share a number of views, but Republicans, most of whom believe lies and either know it and so are actual liars, or don't know it and can't take these critical issues seriously enough to inform themselves about the glaringly obvious. Most Republicans believe absurd lies like that the election was stolen or that the January 6th insurrection was no more than a tourist visit or that they're being silenced or that no one would care about their lying if the damn media would just stop talking about it.

You're a member in good standing of this bunch of liars and ignoramuses. You can't even tell the truth about what you're going to do just hours into the future. You told us just before you're leaving this thread, but here you still are.

You are not getting slaughtered because you're outnumbered. You're getting slaughtered because that's what happens to lies when they run up against reality.

You say you never insult anyone, but you do it all the time by calling people angry or frustrated or sputtering with rage or biased or ganging up on you and so forth, and you do it to avoid addressing the actual evidence and arguments. There is no bigger insult than to ignore what someone says while calling them names and bearing false witness.

Are you staying or going in this thread? If you're staying then commit to staying. See the discussion through while addressing the challenges to what you say, and responding to what other people say with arguments based on what you know is true. If you speak falsely your lies can't hide, but if you speak truthfully then reality will be on your side and you will prevail, no matter how many oppose you.

--Percy

You said, "I'll be gone again for 6 months or a year," but I could use a break from coding, so I'll post a reply anyway.

marc9000 writes: The Free Speech Alliance and it's Media Research Center is right wing. They've been described as "propaganda clothed as critique." They began that way, there's no secret about who they are, they've remained consistent.

Never heard of them, and you offered them as if they were a trusted source. They're not. They probably promote all kinds of fictions, like that the election was rigged, or that Trump won in a landslide, or that Trump bears no responsibility for so many Americans believing the election was rigged or for the January 6th insurrection or for so many Republicans in Congress also promoting these lies.

The NY Times is now described as "chief cheerleader for the left".

You're quoting Trump. The utterer of over 30,000 lies and/or misleading statements during his four years in office is not a reliable source on any subject.

They did not begin that way, and there's still some belief among the public that they're still a legitimate news source. But that belief is fading fast.

Every time you make this claim you're unable to support it. Go ahead, Support your claim and cite some actual New York Times fakery. Or try to support your constantly repeated claims of bias on ABC's World News Tonight.

But I could find no evidence of this claim (though I know there are Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who believe this nonsense). Here's a link to the webpage for the House Judiciary Committee hearing for that day: Facebook, Google and Twitter: Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants | U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee . Knock yourself out finding references to the Media Research Center report at that link. That claim fits what I see going on around me. I don't need to spend hours looking for something you can't find, only to have you dismiss it in 5 seconds. I believe what the MRC says, you believe what the NY Times says. That's where we are.

Choosing who to believe based on what comports best with what you already believe will not serve you well. Go by the evidence from reality. The New York Times is a trusted news source because it works hard at making sure its reporting comports with reality.

Why should the Cincinnati Reds organization provide a platform for a gay-hater. One flippant word in private does not indicate hate. Sheesh.

Oh, sure, Marc, that's just something we all do, flippantly drop fag or nigger or spic into our private conversations. That wouldn't mean we're homophobic or racist at all.

Why are you defending even more hate speech by offering the example of Robert Byrd getting away with using the word nigger? The term is "double standard". Democrats get away with hate speech, Republicans do not. Rashida Tlaib screams "impeach the mo frigga" very intentionally, very publicly, and pays no price at all.

You're drawing a false equivalence between racism and profanity.

Not providing a platform for hate speech like you describe, namely calling people fags and niggers, is a good thing. You seem not to even realize how much more obvious you're making the racist and homophobic views of Trump Republicans. You're just digging your hole wider and deeper. "Racist and homophobic" - I guess no terms have been coined to describe the Trump hate and white people hate that people like Tlaib regularly display. Probably because it's not thought necessary, not taken seriously. But some of us think it's time to start taking it seriously.

Calling attention to racism and its consequences is not hate speech. Complaining about Trump's malevolency is not hate speech. You clearly wish to demonize any of racism and bigotry's victims who have the audacity to call it out for what it is.

First, you don't really mean true conservatives. The people you're really talking about are Trump supporters who believe the former president's lies that the election was stolen, despite that he lost 59 of 60 court cases. The one court case he won was to allow observers to stand closer. I really do mean true conservatives, because close to half of the country liked the job he did as president,...

Trump's average job approval over four years was 41%. When he left office it was 34%. Republicans like Trump a lot, some Independents like him, and very few of everyone else. But the support of Republican politicians is qualified. Most support Trump only because he can deliver so many voters, and to oppose him means to lose elections. If it weren't for Trump's ability to deliver voters then Republicans in Congress wouldn't push the nonsense that the election was rigged or that the January 6th insurrection was actually a lot like a tourist visit or wasn't Trump supporters at all.

The gullibility of Trump lovers to believe these lies is hard to understand. Losing 59 of 60 court cases isn't persuasive to Trump lovers. It should be easy to find fraudulent ballots if Trump's claims of millions of them were true, but only a very few have been found here and there, and they're mostly Republican. Trump lovers are untroubled by this. They don't seem to ponder how these millions of fraudulent ballots disappeared into thin air. It would have taken thousands and thousands of people to create all those fraudulent ballots and somehow get them counted without causing disparities between number of check-ins and number of votes, yet not one of them has been tracked down or come forward and confessed.

Many Trump lovers believe the invaders of the capitol were impersonators of Trump lovers, and they seem unperturbed that every insurrectionist that's been tracked down and arrested is an actual Trump supporter.

...his somewhat childish reactions to the election were a minor detail.

Yeah, minor, except for the parts about fomenting insurrection and sowing distrust in US elections.

His somewhat regrettable behavior about the election were understandable for most of them, his dread of what Biden's handlers were going to do to this country stirred up some understandable panic. The Hamas terrorist group has no fear of the U.S. now, oil prices going up, an out-of-control southern border. Unemployment, inflation, able bodied people doing nothing, it's all happening fast.

So a president who loses a free and fair election is justified in his efforts at overturning it if he fears what his duly elected successor might do? Does that sound like a democracy to you.

Are Trump supporters confident in the election of all the down ballot Republicans who won? Have they figured out yet how, other than by magic, votes for down ballot Republicans were unaffected but votes for Trump on the same ballot were changed to Biden? Why would anyone having the power to change votes change them only for the presidential race? Hahahaha, because the presidential race was high profile, it's where all the attention and corruption was!

The Senate isn't high profile? Seems pretty high profile to me. Since the Democrats took both the presidency *and* the Senate don't you want to accuse them of stealing the Senate elections, too? After all, if Trump won the election in a landslide then the Republicans couldn't possibly have lost the Senate - it's just not possible.

There's no evidence of election corruption, just isolated instances of voter fraud, mostly Republican. You still haven't explained how millions of votes could be stolen in a presidential election. No one has. It isn't possible to just dump in a bunch of fraudulent ballots because then the number of ballots won't match the number of voters. Same for mail-in ballots. You can harvest mail-in ballots out of mailboxes as they're delivered, but doing it for millions of ballots across the country would require an enormous and extremely stealthy workforce, and there would be many complaints by people who didn't receive their mail-in ballot. When you find the corruption you let us know.

Covid-19 hysteria? With nearly 600,000 dead so far, concern about covid-19 is rational, not hysterical. Trump was blamed for it, dances were done by the NY Times to imply that he was somehow responsible for it, or that his actions in dealing with it were inadequate. All lies of course.

Trump was blamed because there were more deaths than there should have been. Trump failed to take the virus seriously by saying things like it was no worse than the flu or that it would be gone by last April or that wearing a mask wasn't that important. He's responsible for the country's response being far less vigorous than it should have been and so is responsible for the number of covid deaths in the US being more than it would have been. US could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump's policies reports a study finding that it could have been as much as 40% less with proper measures. Trump isn't alone in deserving blame for many unnecessary deaths because there are countries that did worse, the UK for example.

Recently, the Colonial pipeline company paid millions in ransom to Russian hackers to restore the operation of their pipeline. No mention of Biden in any of the reports. If that had happened during the Trump administration, do you think his name would be mentioned? Impeachment articles would be drawn up.

I don't see how it makes sense to blame a current president for ransomware attacks, but our government deserves a lot of blame for not taking cyberattacks much more seriously than it does. This incident demonstrates our vulnerability in the event of conflict. Our government should take a much more proactive approach against cyberattacks.

It was a reply to AZPaul3, and I guess he chose not to respond to it. You appear to be spewing a bunch of nonsense in that message, much like here. So you don't believe the Democrat party has changed much in the last 60 years?

Your nonsense wasn't the part about political change. All political parties undergo change over time, both the Democrats and the Republicans. Your nonsense was in arguing that current views are called into question if they differ from views in the past.

Your accusation applies equally to Republicans as Democrats. There seems no argument so fallacious you won't use it.

There's no significant effort by liberals to repeal the 2nd amendment. They could easily make that position official, but they never do.

So because a guy on an Internet discussion board has accused the Democrats of wanting to repeal the 2nd amendment, you think the Democratic party should create an official position about not repealing it? That's absurd.

Neither political party has any official position vis-a-vis not repealing any particular amendment. If you disagree then explain why the Republicans don't have an official position about not repealing the 15th amendment about voting rights?

Just incremental steps, "a step in the right direction" as they describe more and more gun control steps. And the "right direction" is???

The right direction is to interpret the 2nd amendment as originally intended in the context of militias in an era when soldiers provided their own firearms and firearms were muskets. The founding fathers would look in horror upon the carnage wrought by modern weapons and view as an abomination placing such weapons in the hands of private citizens.

Many rank and file Democrats would be happy to see the 2nd amendment repealed, one poll put it at around 20%, but there's no push to make that part of the official party platform.

Most of most states is rural, Marc, and satellite dishes are everywhere in rural America. Your claim that rural America can't watch Fox News because it's on cable was wrong. Wasn't it you 8 or 9 months ago telling me that rural America was getting poorer and poorer because the government wasn't giving them enough free stuff? Now suddenly they can all afford premium television and internet, even though its prices keep going up and up? Biden must be a miracle worker!

This is yet another way you get things wrong. You recall something I said about rural America becoming poorer a while back, but you can't quite remember the details, so you fill in the blanks with nonsense.

In more detail this time, the standard of living of rural America relative to the rest of the country has been in decline for a long time. Its youth seeks better opportunities elsewhere and its population slowly diminishes. Demand drops and businesses and health services withdraw. Employment opportunities decline. Rural dwellers have to travel further today for shopping and medical care than at any time in over half a century.

The government could do a great deal to improve the quality of life of rural Americans who work against their own best interests by voting for the party least committed to helping them. Rural Americans prefer to be self reliant, but they're at the mercy of forces too great to resist, namely the longstanding worldwide move from rural to more urban regions. They can't Improve their circumstances on their own, it just isn't possible. They need the help of government, which could, for example, subsidize rural healthcare so that clinics and hospitals could reopen. Government could provide financial incentives for businesses to locate rurally.

But rural America votes against their own best interests by remaining obstinately Republican with almost a repugnance to government involvement. They believe in self-reliance in the face of insurmountable odds. If they want to save their way of life then they need to recognize that only government has the power to change their plight for the better.

About satellite dishes, rural populations have less wealth than they did, but they're not destitute. I'm sure Fox News is part of any basic package for satellite service.

No, not at all. You're all pretty much delusional. But they're backing Trump's lies about the 2020 election and about racism because they believe it's necessary to holding on to their current offices. Why are you? Because during the Trump administration, we had a southern border that was getting under control.

Trump's idea of border control was far too cruel for a modern nation. We're far too wealthy and compassionate a nation to treat the desperate like that.

We had terrorist groups in the Middle East that were afraid to try him.

You mean Al Queda was so afraid of Trump that they never recruited Mohammad al-Shamrani to kill three service members in Pensacola?

We had low unemployment,...

The pandemic destroyed low unemployment, and it occurred under Trump, not Biden. The unemployment rate has dropped since Biden took office, from 6.3% to 6.1%.

The unemployment rate was 4.8% when Obama lesft office, so during Trump's presidency the unemployment rate rose from 4.8% to 6.3%, but that was due to the pandemic. Unemployment reached its lowest point under Trump in February, 2020, at 3.8%, which is ultralow by historical standards and would traditionally be considered a sign of an economy that was on the verge of overheating and high inflation. But inflation remained in check because low wages kept demand in check

Economists are predicting a booming economy for the rest of 2021, and maybe their right, but it doesn't seem like a sure thing to me. I don't think we can rule out a rocky economic recovery as the pandemic (hopefully) continues to wind down.

It's important to keep in mind that four months is too short a time for a president to have much influence on the economy. I don't think Biden can take credit for the decrease in unemployment.

...low inflation,...

I think we've all been expecting inflation to pick up at some point given the deficits of the Trump tax cuts, the Trump spending increases, the additional spending required by the pandemic, and the decline in tax revenue due to the pandemic's downward pressure on economic activity. Inflation did pick up in April, and if reports of businesses having difficulty recruiting employees have substance then there will be wage inflation followed by price inflation.

But again, four months is too short a period to assign Biden any credit or blame for inflation.

...a promising economy,...

GDP grew by 1.6% during Q1 of this year, a greater rate than Trump's Q4 of last year.

But again, four months is too short a period to assign Biden any credit or blame for the economy.

...it goes on and on.

You did go on and on, but you're characterization of things getting worse under Biden just doesn't hold water. I'm not a fan of Biden, I'm critical of his lack of action on the border and his policies on Israel, but at least he believes in democracy and is at heart a decent human being, unlike Trump.

Marc, you see negative emotions in everyone who disagrees with you. You can't disagree with anyone without accusing them of being angry or frustrated or sputtering with rage and all the rest. Give it a break. The only person who sounds angry around here (not to mention uninformed and shameless in fabricating arguments) is you. You again made it through an entire post saying almost nothing true. What criteria do you use to determine anger? I largely go by name calling...

Have you ever considered the possibility that if someone calls you, say, an idiot it's because you're being an idiot and not because they're angry? I'm not going to call you names, but you certainly deserve it after this parade of lies masquerading as a message.

...I never call names,...

You call people names constantly. Are you operating under the misimpression that "stupid" or "ignorant" are derogatory but "angry" or "sputtering with rage" are complements?

The actual criteria you seem to be applying is that everything you do is good and nice while everything anyone who disagrees with you does is bad and insulting.

...and yet I'm on the receiving end of name calling and insults here all the time. I'm wrong about that right? I'm just like Trump, it doesn't matter what I say, it's automatically wrong because I say it?

What you say isn't automatically wrong. It just seems that way because you so rarely get anything right. You're full of unsupported opinions. You have a constant stream of grievance that you rotate through your messages as if you believed being angry and resentful and willing to make thins up makes you right.

That's what makes this place fun, but it's also a little sad. But to your tremendous relief, I'm now done in this thread, so you and your helpers can have the last word that you crave.

And you are wrong yet again. No one wants you to leave. No one wants to have the last word. Everyone wants you to stay and continue the discussion.

...I'll be gone again for 6 months or a year, just maybe checking in every once in a while for amusement.

No one's amused on this end. Your inconsideration of the time and effort people put into responding to you is very unfunny.

--Percy

You said you were leaving for 6 months to a year. Can't you say anything true?

marc9000 writes: There is no bigger insult than to ignore what someone says while calling them names and bearing false witness. I'm on the receiving end of that more than I practice it, and you know it.

So you finally admit that you dish it out, by name calling and making things up and lies and just blithely ignoring what people say. You say some fairly repugnant things, so it's no surprise that you draw some strong reactions.

Message 706 (DrJones, to me)but I have to say something when I see some sister fucking hillbilly arguing for the prolonging of slavery, Do you believe him, that I was arguing for the prolonging of slavery? But the jokes on him, I don't even have a sister haha, so there.

You argued for not fighting the Civil War. That means the Confederacy would still exist today. You also argued that slavery would have died out naturally and speculated that it wouldn't have taken long. This isn't the place for a history lesson, but it might help you reevaluate your assessment if you consider the number of Confederate dead (258,000, or 5% of their population) as an indication of their determination to hold onto their slaves. Also consider the virulence of southern racism today as another indication.

Just tying up a few more details here, then I promise I'm done in this thread. But the "Is Science Atheism" thread holds a lot of promise for some new questions that I have, as does the climate change thread, though to a lesser extent.

You have more than a few details to tie up in this thread.

--Percy

marc9000 writes: My views represent more of mainstream America than do yours, and that's a fact.

No, that's not a fact. It is sad that far too many Americans share your racist, delusional views and are also anti-democratic when it suits them, but you're not mainstream America.

What did you think of the Ronald Reagan presidency? Let me guess, you weren't born yet. My views pretty much mirror his,...

Nothing you've said reminds me of Reagan.

...and he won really big in 1984,...

And in 1980, too.

...though he didn't have the burdens of having to respond to "Black Lives Matter",...

So to you the concerns of black Americans about their disproportionately high murder rate at the hands of police are a burden?

..."defund the police",...

This slogan has been explained enough times that this can only be considered willful misrepresentation.

...and "Global Warming",...

Most of the world recognizes climate change. You're engaged in denialism. A lot of Republicans don't believe the pandemic is real, either. To too many Republicans it makes more sense to believe that the entire world is in on these frauds than to accept that they are real.

etc. Democrats have invented a lot of new things since 1988.

This is what I mean. The entire world is not colluding with Democrats in America to perpetrate frauds on Trump Republicans. You need to find some sane positions.

--Percy

marc9000 writes: quote: Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill Wednesday granting immunity to drivers who unintentionally injure or kill protesters while attempting to flee and which stiffens penalties for demonstrators who block public roadways, according to the Oklahoma State Legislature. UNINTENTIONALY??? Is that the reason others wouldn't provide links, is that the reason you didn't show any text from the link? Unintentionally injuring or killing while attempting to flee threatening mobs who are blocking roads? A big part of the reason for these types of laws is to discourage mobs from blocking roads! HELLOOOOOOOOOOO!!

There are already laws on the books covering vehicular manslaughter and vehicular homicide that take circumstances into account. Granting immunity from prosecution under certain proscribed circumstances is analogous to the stand your ground laws that have caused murder rates to rise in those states and the qualified immunity that police receive. Courts in Oklahoma will now debate whether a reasonable person would have thought there was a riot or considered their life to be in danger.

It's actually an intimidation law encouraging motorists to drive through protests.

Leading up to this law, how many Oklahomans in cars had been killed by angry mobs?

Now I'm done in this thread.

Making light of your casual relationship with truth is very unfunny.

--Percy

The slogan "defund the police" is attention getting but should be dropped because it's most often taken literally. By the time it's explained what it actually means eyes have glazed over.

I agree about training. Too many articles about police abuse quote them saying things like, "I will light you up." These are the words of adrenaline, not training. And from what I've read, too many training courses send police into fits of paranoia who see themselves marching off to war determined that they're not going to the casualty, the other guy is going to be the casualty. They see the streets filled with potential enemies rather than the public they serve. They have the paranoia of US troops in Vietnam, never knowing which of the innocent looking villagers are actually Vietcong seeking to cut their throats. No wonder so many police interactions with innocent civilians end badly.

Qualified immunity is to blame. Give a respectable force infinite power and within a generation its ranks will be filled with the aggressively empowered prepared to wreak their own brand of justice upon the public. Qualified immunity is an ad hoc legal principle concocted by the court system but eventually blessed by the Supreme-Court, so prosecutorial discretion has no choice but to follow it.

--Percy