Who's the bigger offender: Conservatives or Liberals?

"…there are an awful lot of people out there with a seriously mangled version of scientific concepts. Worse, they use their misunderstanding of basic terms to argue that they have a scientific foundation for their bad ideas." (PZ Myers)

Gee, where did I hear that before? Maybe Message 73, Message 80, et al. in There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose? Where I point out how creationists have created a strawman boogeyman out of their misunderstanding of science and evolution which they call "evolution" and which is what they attack instead of actual science and evolution. While the rank and file don't know any better because of their scientific illiteracy, the professional creationists should know better both because several of them do have scientific training but mainly because they have been corrected repeatedly for many years.

Case in point and funny story. In the preface of his excellent and informative book, The Age of the Earth, G. Brent Dalrymple (PhD Geology) describes the 1975 visit to US Geological Survey at Menlo Park by leading creationists Dr. Henry Morris (PhD Hydraulic Engineering) and Dr. Duane Gish (PhD Biochemistry). In an evening seminar, Gish & Morris presented their "scientific" case for creationism to several hundreds of USGS scientists. That led to lively discussion, most of which was attempts to correct the Gish & Morris' mistakes and misunderstanding of several things, including the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That's what happens when creationists speak to scientists. And Gish & Morris did learn from that experience. They learned to avoid talking with scientists.

 
I need to post a summary of Dr. Eugenie Scott's presentation, What people get wrong – and sometimes right – about evolution (Message 87).

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.

Well done on your detailed calling of BS on marc's mass quantities of BS. A few remarks, though.

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.

Not only is Trumpism not conservativism, but the GOP (AKA "GQP") has purged itself of conservatism. Conservatism has principles and policies, whereas the GOP now has none outside of getting Trump back into the Oval Office so that he can use the office to avoid prosecution and prison.

But rather than lay all the blame at Trump's feet, the GOP ("Greedy Old Pricks") has been devolving into their current form ever since Reagan. Most of what Trump did was to speed it up and to "legitimize" all their worst impulses, making them feel safe to slither out from under their rocks.

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 the middle of the night (it was one of those) I caught a headline that it's only about 15 people on social media who are generating all this vaccine reluctance blarney.

The not-quite-officially-stated Trump strategy as confirmed by memos was to follow Dr. Atlas' "herd immunity" strategy (you remember that former radiologist whom Trump elevated to being his leading expert on COVID). The strategy was to get as many people as possible infected with COVID in order to eventually get 80% of the population immune through natural means (ie, by have had the disease). It didn't matter how many people had to die to accomplish that, nor how many people would survive with disabilities from the disease.

But the worst effect from Dr. Atlas' approach would be what we are seeing in the Third World: the evolution of COVID variants which are more contagious and more lethal. Add to that the high likelihood of those our vaccines being less effective or even completely ineffective against these variants.

In contrast, achieving herd immunity through vaccination inhibits the evolution of those variants. And until we had the vaccine, we needed to mitigate the spread of the virus through well-known public health measures, including masking and social distancing and testing and tracing -- indeed, several countries that used those well-known public health measures (eg, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) got the virus under control with very few casualties.

In contrast, the Trump Administration did practically everything wrong. They did that with complete knowledge of how deadly the virus was and how it spread (as per Trump telling Bob Woodward about it right before the pandemic hit us). Instead of being mere gross incompetence, it seems to have been deliberate almost as if they intended to allow it to do the most damage possible.

marc9000 writes: So Trump slowed the vaccine development because of what Limbaugh said? I think not.

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.

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.

We all saw the videos of the insurrectionist rioters viciously attacking the Capitol policemen, including heavy objects such as fire extinguishers being thrown at their heads -- well, FOX viewers may not have seen that since FOX wouldn't want to expose them to the truth. That Sicknick had not been injured by being struck with a fire extinguisher does not change the fact that other officers had been attacked and injured in that manner.

Now Republicans congressmen are claiming that those vicious rioters were just behaving the same as any group of tourists visiting the Capitol. The sheer gall of those liars!

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.

The 2000 election was even closer than that. Even though the US Supreme Court's decision stopped the Florida count, thus effectively handing the election to Bush, the count did continue. The final results was published after the dust had settled, buried on page six of the local newspaper: Al Gore had won the vote, which means that he had actually won Florida and hence the election. But since he had already conceded and the election had already been certified for Bush, Bush is what we ended up getting.

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.

Yes, the optics were not good, but "unqualified"?

A corporation board brings together members with specialty skills, such that while no individual member is expert in everything, but collectively they enable the board to have expertise in everything that the corporation needs expertise in. For example, if your expertise as a board member is in international law, then why would not having had work experience in drilling gas and petroleum wells, refining gas and petroleum into marketable products, constructing and operating pipelines, etc make you "unqualified" to do your job on the board in international law? Insisting on placing all those extraneous other qualifications on each and every single board member, as marc and his tribe keep doing, is just sheer idiocy and displays either complete ignorance of how things work or denial of reality.

Hunter Biden is a lawyer who has worked as a lobbyist, banker, public administration official, and registered lobbyist-firm attorney. Burisma had been found guilty of and fined for corrupt practices including money laundering and needed to reform its practices to remove corruption and to prevent corruption in the future. They hired consultants for that purpose, including Hunter Biden. Going forward, they needed a board member with expertise in corporate best practices. They hired Hunter Biden for that purpose (and perhaps also for some ulterior motives, but that's not germane to this point).

Whether Hunter Biden was qualified to sit on the board of Burisma has nothing whatsoever to do with oil/gas company experience, but rather with whether he was qualified in his own field of expertise, corporate best practices. If he was qualified in his own field of expertise which the board needed expertise in, then he was qualified to sit on that board.

So far, I have seen none of his critics even begin to address his actual qualifications.

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.

It is reasonable to suspect that was the board's motivation in hiring Hunter Biden. Perhaps also for hiring him as a consultant in the first place. 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?

Phat writes: Honestly I think I may have heard each of them once at most. I pay little attention to most commentators as personalities. I DO like Ben Shapiro. He is articulate and he rankles the ire of the trans genders who claim they get to define their gender. Ben argues that basic biology determines that rather than inner feelings. OK, he could be a little nicer, but I dont see him as beng sexist...simply a realist.

I'm nonbinary, and my understanding of gender is that it's an arbitrary set of societal expectations. I love to increase my knowledge and understanding of the world whenever I get the chance, so I have some questions.

First off, I've never taken basic biology. I have taken general biology, biochemistry, mathematical biology, and a one credit hour senior elective called freestyle biology. Apologies in advance if my experience isn't up to the rigors of your course, Professor Phat.

How, exactly, does one use basic biology to define gender? Is it genetic karyotype? Is it blood concentration of testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone? Is it genital configuration?

If it's genetic karyotype, what about androgen insensitivity syndrome?

If it's blood concentration of sex hormones, what gender is Caster Semenya naturally?

If it's genital configuration, did John Wayne Bobbitt stop being a man for a couple days?

Please, educate me.

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.

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.

Well said!

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

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.

The only part I got from Wikipedia was Hunter Biden's job history. The rest was simple examination of reality.

Also, my argument is not for or against his actual qualifications for the Burisma board. Rather it is against his critics' insistence that he cannot have been qualified solely because he did not have work experience drilling for natural gas.

So I'm not arguing for Hunter Biden's being qualified, but rather against an obviously false reason for his being not qualified. An obviously false reason that ignores how corporate boards are staffed in the real world.

 
Consider an engineering company that designs, manufactures, sells, and installs computerized greenhouse control systems. Do all the employees need to have an extensive background in horticulture in general and in greenhouse operations in particular? Why?

They need a secretary/receptionist for the front office, so do all candidates need to have worked in or run a greenhouse? Of course not!

They need someone to run human resources (HR -- ie, manages the medical and financial benefits for all the other employees and ensures that the company complies with all employment laws, etc). Must the company only consider candidates who had worked in a greenhouse? Why should they?

Assuming an in-house medical staff (likely for a large company, though not for the small company where I worked), is it far more important that that medical staff had extensive experience working in a greenhouse as a grower? Or that they have the necessary medical training and experience? Even if they have experience providing medical services to greenhouse workers, the company is not running a greenhouse of its own, so their greenhouse experience would just go to waste.

They need a manufacturing staff that knows how to build the hardware. Do they need to have extensive greenhouse experience? Why would they? All they need to know is how to construct the hardware including electronics manufacturing, metalwork, etc. They would need to be able to implement the designs that the engineers give them. Would they need to have extensive knowledge of greenhouses from having been greenhouse growers? Why should they?

The supply officer (not sure what a SUPPO is called in the civilian world) needs to know how to work with the vendors in order to get the best prices for the parts that manufacturing needs. Would she (it was a she who was then later replaced by a he) have to have worked in a greenhouse? Why should she? The closest that greenhouse experience might come into play would be in knowing what kind of special properties the parts would need because of the greenhouse environment they'd be used in (eg, metal parts needing to be anodized against corrosion), but then she would be told that by the part specifications given her by engineering.

And would the installation crew need to have had extensive growing experience in greenhouses? Here that would start to be a plus, since it could help to know your way around a greenhouse. But here again, your installation foreman (team chief) would have that knowledge and be directing you. But in that process, you would be learning your way around greenhouses through OJT (on-the-job training). Which is undoubtedly how your installation team chief had gained his knowledge.

Would the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) need to have been recruited from the ranks of greenhouse workers? Why? Money is money, accounting practices are accounting practices, short-term loans are short-term loans, all regardless of the specifics of the company's specialized business.

So much support and specifications come from engineering, so should you only hire engineering staff from the ranks of greenhouse growers? Why? There are several different kinds of engineers. In typical engineering environments, engineers design in accordance with a specification, a document that specifies exactly what the design shall do (my first lesson as a working engineer was in the difference between "shall" and "will" in a specification), what its interface shall be (including a display screen, but also a communications port, etc), etc. An engineer doesn't need to know anything about how greenhouses work, but rather how to follow a specification. Knowledge about greenhouses might help slightly, but is not necessary.

One kind of engineer is the systems engineer who is the one who writes those specifications.. The more a systems engineer knows about greenhouses, the better it can be, but that knowledge is still not absolutely necessary at the lower levels where a higher level systems engineer or the equivalent would be advising the systems engineer in all matters greenhouse.

I was hired as Chief and Sole Software Engineer and Diskette Formatter. No background in greenhouses or horticulture outside of having to mow my lawn. The hardware engineer (EE with mostly analog experience, so I had to advise him on how to read digital electronics data sheets) served as the Chief and Sole Systems Engineer.

In that company, all the knowledge of how greenhouses work came from the company president and chief salesman. Everybody else learned from him.

 
Similarly, a corporate board would consist of members who are experts in their own fields, like the employees in that semi-hypothetical greenhouse controls company. Each member is hired/appointed on the basis of their particular area of expertise and independent of any direct experience with what the company does (eg, drill for natural gas). Of course, they will need to know how their particular expertise applies to the needs of the business of the company, knowledge that they can and should receive from other board and company members. Ideally, knowledge of the business of the company can only be a contributing factor in hiring you, but not in whether you are qualified to do your job.

Burisma needed someone to help guide them away from their historical corrupt practices and money laundering and towards better corporate practices. A lawyer who had consulted them in those matters should logically be a candidate for that position.

 
So was Hunter Biden qualified for that position? We would need to look into his actual work to determine that.

However, to immediately declare him to be unqualified simply because he did not have direct experience in drilling for natural gas is not only not valid, but it's complete bollocks!

That is what I am arguing.

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.

It is far more damning than that!

From what I've been hearing from lawyers on MSNBC and progressive radio (Sirius XM Progressive channel), all barred lawyers (meaning licensed by the Bar to practice lawyering) are officers of the court. Part of that means that they must uphold the law and never lie to the court -- weasel-wording not applying since that's part of the game that the court is party to. You can weasel-word all you want to, but you cannot deliberately lie to the court. If you were to lie to the court, then you would be disbarred and unable to practice as a lawyer. You would have been stripped of your profession and your livelihood.

That should describe the dire consequences for a lawyer of deliberately lying to the court and why any conscious lawyer would avoid doing so at all costs.

Please note that that has nothing to do with how much lawyers are free to lie to the public. Just that they cannot and must not lie to the court.

 
So here we have 60 court cases which the public had been told were about election fraud, but when they actually went to court made no claim of election fraud. Even when questioned directly by the judges whether they were claiming election fraud, the lawyers denied that. Because to do so would be deliberately lying to the court, which would spell the end of their careers as lawyers.

That means that Trump's lawyers themselves knew that Trump's Big Lie is nothing but a lie. Completely unsupported. Sidney Powell's defense of "only an idiot would have ever believed me about election fraud" is just icing on the cake. IOW, even she knew full well that she was deliberately lying and would have lost her law career by doing so in court.

Can you help me out here?:

Percy tried to write but:

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.

looks like something SNAFUed there. It seems you may now have been talking about Al Gore conceding to W leading us to 20 years of war, but the text above that says you were still addressing Trump's phony taking credit. Did some text get dropped there?

trying to help...

Edited by xongsmith, : added question mark at top

Mercury writes: First off, I've never taken basic biology. I have taken general biology, biochemistry, mathematical biology, and a one credit hour senior elective called freestyle biology. Apologies in advance if my experience isn't up to the rigors of your course, Professor Phat.

I am hardly a professor, though I do draw conclusions without hearing both sides. If so I DO apologize. I like Ben Shapiros arguments in that they challenge the other side to think outside their world view.

Ben is likely too authoritarian for your liking.

Please, educate me.

I am no expert and neither is Shapiro. His world view is defensible and his Judaism is in league with traditional, rather than progressive Christianity. For the record, I lean towards traditional Christianity and away from Progressive or Emergent Christianity.

It seems you may now have been talking about Al Gore conceding to W leading us to 20 years of war, but the text above that says you were still addressing Trump's phony taking credit. Did some text get dropped there?

Yes, he was.

Percy was replying to dwise1, who had mentioned the Gore concession in 2000. And yes, it was a little disjointed unless you went back to the earler dwise1 post to get the context.

A bit of unintentional semantic slipperage there, mainly caused by Percy not having edited his quoting of me (which should not be expected of him unless he wanted to go out of his way to make himself perfectly clear).

In Percy's quote blocks, first he quoted himself talking about Trump, then he quotes me talking about Al Gore. Think of when we were graphing sentences in school, pronouns had to have an "antecedent", some reference to whom "he" refers.

And obviously, Percy's "And 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan." was in response to Bush having won instead of Gore.

That intrusive qs block is not an interjection, but rather the start of a completely new line of discussion. Percy did not just interrupt his thought, but he started a new one.

Edited by dwise1, : "unless", not "until". Sorry, Party of One.

Edited by dwise1, : "Think of when ... "

I am no expert and neither is Shapiro. His world view is defensible and his Judaism is in league with traditional, rather than progressive Christianity. For the record, I lean towards traditional Christianity and away from Progressive or Emergent Christianity.

Uh, but when it's a matter of real world scientific discussion, what does any of all that have to do with anything?

Actual biology. Actual physiology. Actual psychology. And also, lagging far behind, actual sociology.

Like most of us (myself included), you like to live in a comfortable binary world where everything is either this or that and there's no in-between. But there is a lot of grey inside any black-and-white world.

There must be many factors that go into forming a gender identity. Including hormone levels (just to keep it simplistic). And there are documented instances of genetic males or females having developed opposite-sex secondary traits.

There's more to it than you or your Ben Shapiro would think.

quote:

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I'll be back this weekend.

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Don’t forget Is science atheism?, started to respond to some of your other assertions.