The Right Side of the News

Slight quibble. Statistics are the raw data points, the raw numbers. Statistical analysis is deriving meaning from those raw data points.For example, a classic Kent Hovind YEC claim is that at the rate that the sun is losing mass by "burning its fuel" (what he might misunderstand by that is a different matter, but hydrogen fusion (AKA "hydrogen burning") does result in mass loss) then 5 billion years ago the sun would have been incredibly larger as to have engulfed the earth and incredibly more massive (with incredibly greater gravity) that it would have "sucked the earth in". His rate of mass loss, 5 million tons per second, is not far off from the actual calculated rate of 4.2 to 4.6 million tonnes per second. By his numbers, the raw statistic of total mass loss in 5 billion (10⁹) years amounts to 7.8910²³ tonnes. A very impressively large raw statistic, but performing analysis on it (ie, comparing it to the total mass of the sun) reveals that it amounts to only a few hundredths of one percent of the sun's mass that would have had virtually zero effect on the sun's size and would have changed the sun's gravity by only a few hundredths of one percent which would have "sucked the earth in" by about 60,000 miles (compared to the earth's orbit varying by 3 million miles each and every year). Raw statistics don't mean anything until we analyze them (what I call "doing the math", which Hovind admonishes his followers not to do -- see my page on this, DWise1: Kent Hovind's Solar Mass Loss Claim). Which also slows down our responses, because we actually think about what we are writing as opposed to her knee-jerk reactions.The same thing happens in creation/evolution debates. The creationist is free to duck, dodge, move the goal posts, and lie out of his nether orifice while his opponent is hampered by remaining honest and sticking to the facts, many of which end up being outside his area of expertise (thanks to that moving of the goal posts). Again, I offer my page on the subject, Creation / Evolution Debates. We never discussed politics or religion in my family (many years later, my father, described by one of my few girlfriends as an "Archie Bunker", turned out to be basically an atheist, but he never talked about it), but I think they were basically Republican (old-school, not Reaganites and not the current Guardians of Putin). My older sister is 8 years older and her husband about half a decade older than her; being fundamentalists they have undoubtedly been sucked into Trumpism, but at the very least are strongly Republican. I am retired, so they are long retired. About a decade or more ago, my brother-in-law suddenly volunteered to me that, being retired, he had come to realize that the Republicans were not his friends. A few or so years later, he was very surprised to hear that I had voted for Obama -- frankly, I am very proud that it was Obama who signed my military retirement certificate and not some fucking Republican.

Uh, democracy is entirely about population count! Duh?Republican governance is about representation. We should note that in preparing to travel with the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison, a chief architect, packed with him books on Roman history. Our system is basically based on the Roman model.The House is based on representation based on population count. The Senate is based on representation by political unit (AKA "state").The Electoral College is both a compromise and a bulwark (protective wall):

1. The Founders did not trust the common people. They feared that some demagogue con-man could fool the common people into voting him into office. They wanted the Electoral College, a collection of better educated cooler heads, to keep that disaster from happening.
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   In 2016, that bulwark failed utterly.
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2. The compromise was largely between the smaller less populated states and the larger more populated states. The smaller less populated states did not want to join into this Union only to always be outvoted by the larger more populated states. And as slavery grew as an issue, this became increasingly important (eg, the item counting each slave a 3/5 of a person for sake of representation by population).
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   For example, we have UTC, Coordinated Universal Time (temps universel coordonn), a joint US/French endeavor. Do we call it CUT to satisfy the Americans or TUC to satisfy the French? No, we settle for a compromise that satisfies nobody by calling it UTC .
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   Compromises are important and ideally are satisfactory to neither party.

FWIW, the Founders did not have the foresight to see how the US population would shift from rural to urban. That should raise the question of whether the system they had set up was ever intended to handle that contingency.

Uh, Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot-Over?You went to Wikipedia for the definition of red-baiting as your source.You completely misrepresented your source and lied enormously about what it actually said.Now you are calling your own source a "Leftist viewpoint" thus using red-baiting to discredit your own source on what red-baiting is. WTFO???????Here is a clue for you. Truth is based on facts. Your position is completely free of facts.

Facts are facts.So you are admitting that you are unable to deal with facts?Why should we look surprised at that?

Really? Really? You really want to go up against THE FACTS? What kind of complete fool are you?This is what you are "replying" to (Message 5294): That was in reply to your fact-free message, Message 5283: Which was in turn a "reply" to PaulK's [mid=8731180]. At which point we lose track of just what the fuck you are talking about.So then just what the FUCK are you talking about?

And calling it Communisism where it clearly does not exist is also permissible? That is clearly the kind of red-baiting that you are engaging in.Calling you on your evil just means that we are calling out evil.

We have been talking about Cuba. And if you don't know what Castro replaced, then try something truly novel and (dare I say it?) revolutionary: LEARN SOMETHING!Fulgencio Batista, 9th and 12th President of Cuba who ran an extremely corrupt and brutal military dictatorship in Cuba backed by the US government:

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Fulgencio Batista y Zaldvar (/b’tist’/; Spanish: [fulxensjo atista i saldia]; born Rubn Zaldvar; January 16, 1901 — August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and as its U.S.-backed military dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Cspedes y Quesada. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944. After finishing his term he lived in Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Pro Socarrs that preempted the election.

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Back in power, and receiving financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land. As such, Batista's repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts. To quell the growing discontent amongst the populacewhich was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrationsBatista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions. These murders mounted in 1957, as Fidel Castro gained more publicity and influence. Many people were killed, with estimates ranging from hundreds to about 20,000 people killed.

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Catalyzing the resistance to such tactics, for two years (December 1956 — December 1958) Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and other nationalist rebelling elements led an urban and rural-based guerrilla uprising against Batista's government, which culminated in his eventual defeat by rebels under the command of Che Guevara at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Day 1959. Batista immediately fled the island with an amassed personal fortune to the Dominican Republic, where strongman and previous military ally Rafael Trujillo held power. Batista eventually found political asylum in Oliveira Salazar's Portugal, where he first lived on the island of Madeira and then in Estoril, outside Lisbon. He was involved in business activities in Spain and was staying there in Guadalmina near Marbella at the time of his death from a heart attack on August 6, 1973.

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The movie, Godfather II, depicted Mafia activity in Havana, Cuba. That movie also depicted events surrounding Batista's fleeing Cuba in the middle of the night between 31 Dec 1958 and 01 Jan 1959. Batista fled the country because he had lost US government backing:

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On December 11, 1958, U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith visited Batista at his hacienda, Kuquine. There, Smith informed him that the United States could no longer support his government. Batista asked if he could go to his house in Daytona Beach. The ambassador denied the request and suggested that he seek asylum in Spain instead.

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On December 31, 1958, at a New Year's Eve party, Batista told his cabinet and top officials that he was leaving the country. After seven years, Batista knew his presidency was over, and he fled the island in the early morning. At 3:00 a.m. on January 1, 1959, Batista boarded a plane at Camp Columbia with 40 of his supporters and immediate family members and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. A second plane flew out of Havana later in the night, carrying ministers, officers and the Governor of Havana. Batista took along a personal fortune of more than $300 million that he had amassed through graft and payoffs. Critics accused Batista and his supporters of taking as much as $700 million in fine art and cash with them as they fled into exile.

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As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of July 26 Movement waved on cars and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic. On January 8, 1959, Castro and his army rolled victoriously into Havana. Already denied entry to the United States, Batista sought asylum in Mexico, which also refused him. Portugal's leader Antnio Salazar allowed him to settle there on the condition that he completely abstain from politics.

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By the end of Batista's rule possibly as many as 20,000 Cubans had been killed.

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Edited by dwise1, : Added "US-backed" and to the Godfather II reference.

The point is that you knew nothing about the Batista government (which was US-backed and I'm sure Trump would be absolutely in love with). So I did you a favor and provided you with that information so that you could LEARN SOMETHING.Of course, you learned nothing. I would be extremely surprised if you had even read any of that valuable information. You guard your abysmal ignorance so closely, as if your very soul depended on learning nothing. While normals see literacy as something good, you must see it as something evil since it will enable learning which could lead to (gasp!) thinking. And you must fight against that happening!Facts, Faith, facts. Facts are good for you; ignorance and disinformation are bad.Think of facts as dietary fibre for the mind. It keeps the mind healthy and moving. When you restrict yourself to a diet of fact-free right-wingnut swill, then your head fills up with crap that just sits there leaving you in a constant state of mental constipation and cramps that keep you in your perpetual bad mood.Add facts to your diet to start moving that crap out of your head.

Information for the sake of LEARNING SOMETHING!Also for the sake of learning FACTS and thus understanding REALITY. No, that's not what you said! In Message 5326 (my emphasis added): You just lied to me! Yet again!Why do you constantly lie about almost everything and anything you can? What do you possibly think you could accomplish with such obvious, flagrant, easy-to-check lies?All you have accomplished has been to thoroughly discredit yourself and everything you say and support. You have even less credibility than Trump does.

Again with your infernal red-baiting.Though, [voice=movie_trailer_narrator]in a world divided sharply between Trumpian right-wing authoritarians (RWA) and everybody else (normals)[/voice], then Steven Colbert's words ring even truer:

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It is a well-known fact that reality has a definite liberal bias.

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And there is a valid reason for that, offered here in a pseudo-syllogistic format:

1. Reality consists of facts.
2. Right-wing authoritarians (RWA), especially Trumpians, hate facts and avoid them at all cost. Their views are governed by their enlarged and overactive amygdalas, the part of the brain that reacts to strong negative emotions like fear and hate. Since nothing can kill the buzz of a really strong fear/hate rage like facts, RWAs avoid facts like the plague (which I'm sure they think was a Leftist hoax). That way, they can also avoid reality itself (yet another pesky buzz kill).
3. Everybody else, AKA "normals" (though always called "Leftists", "Communists", etc, by RWAs (especially Trumpians)), holds onto reality and onto facts, basing their views as much as they can on facts.
4. The RWA view is that anything that is based on facts and reality is "Leftist".
5. Therefore, according to the RWA view, reality has a definite leftist bias.
6. QED

So then, since snopes.com deals with facts and fact-finding, you would label it as "Leftist". We normals would refer to it as a good source.Edited by dwise1, : Added "(normals)" in the movie_trailer_narrator voicing

Uh. Trump's predecessors left mechanisms in place to deal with such problems as the coronavirus in a timely manner.Trump eliminated those mechanisms, leaving us with no defenses. For that he claims no responsibility.Tools for dealing with the emerging pandemic (eg, the WHO test for who is infected) were rejected by the Trump administration. As a result, we are at least one and at most two months behind. Trump claims that he is not responsible?

"the Left" as you define it are those who work within reality. Your alternative is a fantasy world where the pandemic will somehow magically disappear in another month or so.This pandemic is operating within reality, not your fucking stupid rightwingnut alternate universe.My money will always be on reality, not your stupid bullshit.

SHOW US, YOU FLC!The CDC has worked out protocols for dealing with pandemics. If any protocol had been proposed which would not have been effective, then it would have been eliminated early on.In doing that, their primary concern was how effective those protocols would be in addressing the problem.So then, you FLC, SHOW US that the CDC had rejected proactive measures for monitoring for pandemics and for responding to a potential pandemic.Furthremore, SHOW US that such a determination had NOT been made by a POLITICAL TRUMP APPOINTEE.

Frankly, reality should be the province of everybody. I would really love for that to be the case.But the sad reality (how ironic?) is that your side, the Trumpian RightWingAuthoritarians (RWAs) reject reality most fervently.I truly wish you would not do that, but you keep insisting on rejecting reality despite all our admonitions. So just what the fuck is your problem?

OK, this also borders on the on-going right-wing War Against Science.Did you watch the movie, "The Martian"? Faced with trying to survive on Mars and everything else, the meme that emerged was "Sciencing the shit of this". And indeed (by my understanding), the author of the original story was a programmer who wrote computer simulations to work out what would have worked and what wouldn't.So how do we "science the shit out of the coronavirus"? The basic answer is that this is indeed a question for science to answer.But a fundamental position of the Trump Administration has been a war against science. So now they need science to pull their cookies out of the fire.My prediction is that as soon as science pulls the GOP's cookies out of the fire, they will go right back to trying to kill science.