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. 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. 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? 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. 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." 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. 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. Could I see this list? 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. 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). 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. 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. Science is atheistic in the way plumbing and knitting are atheistic. Religion just isn't relevant. 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. 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. You might want be sitting down. Ready? Morris is very inactive now. He's dead. 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'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

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. 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. Yeah, respectful and focused on arguments and evidence. Sounds just like Faith. Liberals achieved "the destruction of the second amendment"? Wow! How did I not hear about this? How is it dangerous to set government policy regarding fossil fuels? 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. 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: 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. The media accurately reported information provided by both official and unofficial police sources. Which was also accurately reported. 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. 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. The report came from the New York Times using anonymous law enforcement sources. 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. 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? 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. 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. Repeating a lie over and over again is a Trump hallmark. You've learned well, grasshopper. 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. 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. 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: 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. Liberals are not calling for a takeover of the fossil fuel industry. You're making this up. 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.

---

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. 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. 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? 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. 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 doubt Fox News has many liberal politicians on during the week. They of course do appear regularly on Chris Wallace's show. For you the definition of someone behaving badly is someone who disagrees with you. 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: 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.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

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.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor clarity improvement.

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. 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. 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. Good question for Marc.--Percy

FSAPage | Media Research Center 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: 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 SpeechWhy 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? 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. 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? 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! 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. 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. 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. No free speech was silenced then or now. It's all in your head. 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. 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. 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. First you claim liberals destroyed the 2nd amendment, and now you claim their efforts to destroy it have been inconsequential. Inconsistent much? 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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? You're living in your own fictional world. To you a mob is probably any protest not sporting Confederate flags. 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. There was no meaningful voter fraud from early voting, so why the concern? There was no meaningful voter fraud from absentee or mail-in-voting, so why the concern? 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. No evidence of illegals voting in any meaningful numbers has emerged, so why the concern? "Idle people in big cities"? Marc, you are harboring a great deal of resentment and distrust. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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.--PercyEdited by Percy, : No reason given.

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. You're drawing a false equivalence between racism and profanity. 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. 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. Yeah, minor, except for the parts about fomenting insurrection and sowing distrust in US elections. 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. 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. 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 | US news | The Guardian 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. You mean Al Queda was so afraid of Trump that they never recruited Mohammad al-Shamrani to kill three service members in Pensacola? 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 checkEconomists 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. You have more than a few details to tie up in this thread.--Percy

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. Nothing you've said reminds me of Reagan. And in 1980, too. So to you the concerns of black Americans about their disproportionately high murder rate at the hands of police are a burden? This slogan has been explained enough times that this can only be considered willful misrepresentation. 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. 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

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? 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