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@ILikePie5
Wow Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Nikki Haley said that?
Yes, and Israel and Europe, of course and Trump's own Pentagon and CIA and NATO. Bitch move was the general consensus, mostly benefitted Russia and Turkey at US expense in reputation, honor, intelligence.
Interesting
you are right. It is interesting.
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The Charge of the Light Brigade
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
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@ILikePie5
You're right. Please amend that to read "Therefore, Pie and GP are both obviously lying when they say they support Sanders"
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@ILikePie5
-->@oromagi
Last I checked the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) not the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) do not hold any territory.
well then I guess the last you checked was never.
Wikipedia:
"ISIL", "ISIS", and "Daish" redirect here. For other uses, see ISIL (disambiguation), Isis (disambiguation), Daesh (disambiguation), and Daish (surname).The Islamic State (IS; official name since June 2014), at times known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; /ˈaɪsɪl/) or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; /ˈaɪsɪs/) and also referred to by its Arabic-language acronym Daesh (داعش, Dāʿish, IPA: [ˈdaːʕɪʃ]), is an Islamist militant jihadist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows a Salafi jihadist doctrine based on the Sunni branch of Islam.
You’re equating terrorist attacks to Orange Man Bad.
In what way? I mean, not that I wouldn't, just that I don't see that in what I've just written.
Nice one.
Thanks, man!
I didn’t see Trump make that promise.
Lindsey Graham has released a scathing statement in defiance of Donald Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of parts of Syria, saying the move “ensures the reemergence of ISIS” in the region.
“Pray for our Kurdish allies who have been shamelessly abandoned by the Trump Administration,” Mr Graham, a close ally of the president in the US Senate, tweeted in a rare rebuke on Tuesday.
Mr Graham came out in swift opposition to the administration’s plan to remove US troops from northeast Syria, saying it would leave a vacuum that could allow the Islamic State to possibly restore its caliphate while also allowing Turkish troops to begin a massive assault on the Kurds, who the US have considered a strategic ally in its fight against terrorism.
His comments came as Turkish fighter jets began bombing the area of Syria in which the country had long planned to carry out a military offensive, with experts citing the abrupt US pullout for paving the way for the assault to take place.
A spokesperson for the SDF, a Kurdish-majority militia that also encompasses several smaller groups, described Mr Trump’s withdrawal as a “stab in the back”.
The militia has been the US' main ally in fighting Isis in Syria and has lost an estimated 11,000 fighters as it fought to take back strongholds from the militants earlier this year.
Mr Graham described the decision as a “disaster in the making” earlier this week and took to the president’s favourite TV network to air his concerns.
“I hope I’m making myself clear how short-sighted and irresponsible this decision is,” Mr Graham told Fox News. “I like President Trump. I’ve tried to help him. This, to me, is just unnerving to its core.”
Other Republicans and military officials have also expressed concerns the move will lead to potentially catastrophic consequences in the region.
Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who ran against Mr Trump in the 2016 election, said his decision was “a grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria.”
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader who has largely supported the president’s agenda on Capitol Hill, also slammed the decision in a statement.
“As we learned the hard way during the Obama Administration, American interests are best served by American leadership, not by retreat or withdrawal,” he said.
Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who has occasionally spoke out against the president, also called the move a “terribly unwise decision”.
Even Nikki Haley, Mr Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, called the move a “big mistake” on Twitter.
“The Kurds were instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria. Leaving them to die is a big mistake,” she wrote.
Mr Trump has shot down criticism of his decision in a series of tweets posted earlier this week, warning Turkey against attacking the Kurdish forces, which it views as terrorists.
“If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey,” he wrote. “The endless and ridiculous wars are ENDING! We will be focused on the big picture, knowing we can always go back & BLAST!”
omg. did our potus really tweet that out loud? fuck.
Nice job.
thanks!
So we shouldn’t support a NATO ally cause he’s a dictator.
What part of "we still want Turkey to oppose Russia" did you fail to comprehend?
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@ILikePie5
Trump isn’t an establishment puppet like Joe.
No, he's a Russian puppet like David Duke or Alexander Lukashenko or Tucker Carlson.
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@Double_R
Two good examples of Republicans disturbing comfort with obvious lies. The first item on Sander's agenda was a gigantic tax hike. Do we really believe Pie and GP would ever get behind a major tax hike? No, obviously. Therefore, Pie and GP are both obviously lying when they say they support Sanders on policy. The truth is that they support Sander's as a democratic nominee because Sanders is divisive. Republicans have been a minority party for some time and that party is now shrinking at record rates. Republicans only legal hope for sustainable power is to divide the democrats from the progressives. This is why Democrats wanted Trump to win the nomination in 2016, because we assumed he could only lose.
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@ILikePie5
Trump destroyed ISIS.
I think you meant to say "democracy" because ISIS is still around. FOX News just stopped reporting on them.
2 days ago:
4 days ago:
12 days ago:
With Spate of Attacks, ISIS Begins Bloody New Chapter in Afghanistan
#LiesToldLiesBelieved
The USA made a lot of promises to its Kurdish allies which you blithely ignore while claiming "promises kept." I guess Trump forgot to instruct you on this, but Erdogan put his opposition in jail in 2016- 30,000 political opponents, journalists, and college professors who didn't support his authoritarian takeover. We still want Turkey to oppose Russia but the problem with taking advice from dictators is dictators never have your best interest at heart, only their own.
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How do you deal with the fact that all of the people leading the party you defend don’t even believe the ideas they are selling you?
This has been true since at least 1968. Lee Atwater, Reagan's campaign manager put it most succinctly:
Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.
We still see this dynamic today. CRT and BLM are just abstract codes for Republican fear of Black people. Look at recent court arguments of Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, etc. In public, they make all kinds of outrageous claims but in front of a judge they defend themselves by saying "no rational person would believe my outrageous claims." The very lawyers Trump hired to argue fraud in 2020 have testified under oath that they were just making shit up and still Trump requires candidates to claim fraud in 2020 before he'll back them. The Republican Party is not just a house built on lies, it is house that knows full well that it is built on lies, that counts on those lies being believed by the stupid and chooses to lie in exchange for power.
Jun 15, 2016
Ryan: “Russia is trying to turn Ukraine against itself.”
Rodgers: “Yes. And that’s...it’s sophisticated and it’s, uh...”
Ryan: “Maniacal.”
Rodgers: “Yes.”
Ryan: “And guess, guess who’s the only one taking a strong stand up against it? We are.”
Rodgers: “We’re not…we’re not…but, we’re not.”
McCarthy [referring to DNC hacking]:“I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is...The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [opposition] research that they had on Trump.”
Ryan: “The Russians hacked the DNC...
McHenry: “...to get oppo...”
Ryan: “On Trump and like delivered it to...to who?”
McCarthy: “There’s... there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump...Swear to God.”
Ryan: “This is an off the record...No leaks...alright?!. This is how we know we’re a real family here.”
Scalise: “That’s how you know that we’re tight.”
Ryan: “What’s said in the family stays in the family.”
There it is. Ryan doesn't say, 'that's wrong, you're nuts' he says 'don't let it get out.' The day after Russian Intel hacked the DNC, the core GOP leadership knew and believed that Russia and Trump were working together to take the White House and they decided to cover it up. When the National Security Advisor turns out to be a Russian spy, when Mueller reports 170 meets with Russian agents and 11 attempts to cover it up, when Trump threatens to leave Ukraine exposed if Zelensky won't make up some dirt about Hunter Biden, in all these obvious connections and thousands more, the Republican conscious is not shocked because Russian collusion was already well baked in to the GOP agenda, even before Trump was nominated to the presidency. Since Nixon, Republicans and the honest truth parted ways and have not been on speaking terms since.
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there are no safe priests of the party religion
lol. The party religion being: There is no god but Trump and Trump is his messenger
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Let's recall that Dinesh D' Souza pled guilty to felony election fraud and served 8 months. Trump pardoned D' Souza in 2018.
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AP NEWS: GAPING HOLES in the CLAIM of 2K BALLOT 'MULES'
By ALI SWENSON
May 3, 2022
A film debuting in over 270 theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended.
Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that somebody deposited a ballot into a drop box, according to experts.
The movie was produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and uses research from the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws. Neither responded to a request for comment.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: At least 2,000 “mules” were paid to illegally collect ballots and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
THE FACTS: True the Vote didn’t prove this. The finding is based on false assumptions about the precision of cellphone tracking data and the reasons that someone might drop off multiple ballots, according to experts.
“Ballot harvesting” is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.
True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data — the “pings” that track a person’s location based on app activity — in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county’s ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.
If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a “mule” — its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.
The group’s claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she “assumed” to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.
Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.
“You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”
What’s more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes — increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group’s dragnet, Striegel said.
Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit’s office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.
True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose “pattern of life” before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn’t filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don’t follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.
In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.
A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.
For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 — one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.
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CLAIM: In Philadelphia alone, True the Vote identified 1,155 “mules” who illegally collected and dropped off ballots for money.
THE FACTS: No, it didn’t. The group hasn’t offered any evidence of any sort of paid ballot harvesting scheme in Philadelphia. And True the Vote did not get surveillance footage of drop boxes in Philadelphia, so the group based this claim solely on cellphone location data, its researcher Gregg Phillips said in March in testimony to Pennsylvania state senators.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who was there for the group’s testimony in March, told the AP he was confident he was counted as several of the group’s 1,155 anonymous “mules,” even though he didn’t deposit anything into a drop box in that time period.
Street said he based his assessment on the fact that he carries a cellphone, a watch with a cellular connection, a tablet with a cellular connection and a mobile hotspot — four devices whose locations can be tracked by private companies. He also said he typically travels with a staffer who carries two devices, bringing the total on his person to six.
During the 2020 election season, Street said, he brought those devices on trips to nonprofit offices and drop box rallies. He also drove by one drop box up to seven or eight times a day when traveling between his two political offices.
“I did no ballot stuffing, but over the course of time, I literally probably account for hundreds and hundreds of their unique visits, even though I’m a single actor in a single vehicle moving back and forth in my ordinary course of business,” Street said.
City election commission spokesman Nick Custodio said the allegations matched others that had been debunked or disproven after the 2020 election.
“The Trump campaign and others filed an unprecedented litany of cases challenging Philadelphia’s election with dubious and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, all of which were quickly and resoundingly rejected by both state and federal courts,” Custodio said.
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CLAIM: Some of the “mules” True the Vote identified in Georgia were also geolocated at violent antifa riots in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, showing they were violent far left actors.
THE FACTS: Setting aside the fact that the film doesn’t prove these individuals were collecting ballots at all, it also can’t prove their political affiliations.
The anonymized data True the Vote tracked doesn’t explain why someone might have been present at a protest demanding justice for Black deaths at the hands of police officers. The individuals who were tracked there could have been violent rioters, but they also could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area.
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CLAIM: Alleged ballot harvesters were captured on surveillance video wearing gloves because they didn’t want to leave their fingerprints on the ballots.
THE FACTS: This is pure speculation. It ignores far more likely reasons for glove-wearing in the fall and winter of 2020 — cold weather or COVID-19.
True the Vote’s researcher claimed in the movie that voters in Georgia started wearing gloves to prevent their fingerprints from touching ballot envelopes after two women in Yuma, Arizona, were indicted on Dec. 23, 2020 for alleged ballot harvesting in that state’s primary election. But the Arizona indictment didn’t mention anything about fingerprints.
Voting in Georgia’s Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoff election occurred during some of the coldest weeks of the year in the state, and when COVID-19 was surging.
In fact, the AP in 2020 documented multiple examples of COVID-cautious voters wearing latex gloves and other personal protective equipment to vote.
In a similarly speculative allegation, the film claims its supposed “mules” took photographs of ballots before they dropped them into drop boxes in order to get paid. But across the U.S., voters frequently take photos of their ballot envelopes before submitting them.
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CLAIM: If it weren’t for this ballot collection scheme, former President Donald Trump would have had enough votes to win the 2020 election.
THE FACTS: This alleged scheme has not been proven, nor do these researchers have any way of knowing whether any ballots that were collected contained votes for Trump or for Biden.
There’s no evidence a massive ballot harvesting scheme dumped a large amount of votes for one candidate into drop boxes, and if there were, it would likely be caught quickly, according to Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.
“Once you get just a few people involved, people start to reveal the scheme because it unravels pretty quickly,” he said.
Absentee ballots are also verified by signature and tracked closely, often with an option for voters themselves to see where their ballot is at any given time. That process safeguards against anyone who tries to illegally cast extra ballots, according to Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the director of the Elections Research Project.
“It seems impossible in that system for a nefarious actor to dump lots of ballots that were never requested by voters and were never issued by election officials,” Burden said.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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@bmdrocks21
I find this view a bit concerning- that if you aren’t an expert on the matter or directly involved then you believe we shouldn’t have a say in it and not regulate it.
Overgeneralization. Just because I have decided upon this outlook towards on one uniquely sensitive and family-level private and gender-specific policy question does not give you warrant to assume I'd advocate the same approach for other, very different public policy issues. Please be disabused of your presumptions. You assume further that I would not regulate abortions but that is false, I would regulate abortions the same as any other standardized medical procedure. The making of the decision should not be regulated by the state according to the majority will, or any other will except the pregnant mothers, by biological dictate- the same rights afforded any patient seeking heart surgery or knee replacement.
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@thett3
Morality is the foundation of law, so the morality of an action is relevant on what the law should be.
the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.
-John Stuart Mill
You say your opinion is “unwanted” and yet you post on a thread unsolicited about the subject.
Obviously, for folks who read in context, unwanted by mothers and doctors not unwanted by you. You solicited my opinion when you said, "What do you think the limit should be and why?"
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Do you really not feel comfortable to render moral judgement even in an extreme case?
Feelings make bad law. An obstetrician would not perform such a dangerous procedure unless the health of the mother was at risk and only an obstetrician could make such a determination. Government insertion in that determination is bound to be less well informed of the facts on the ground and is unwanted by almost all doctors and mothers when a decision must be made.
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Most people don’t want to ban abortion entirely but also don’t think it should be legal up to the moment of birth.
In fact, most people think abortion should be legal. Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans want to ban abortion entirely, 1 in 20 worldwide.
What do you think the limit should be and why?
I think governments should trust the wisdom and experience of doctors and mothers and stay out of it to the maximum extent possible. I have zero expertise in the matter and so my opinion is worse than unwanted but also probably oversimple and wrongheaded. I suggest we leave the entire question in the hands of obstetricians and their patients.
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Is anybody on this website the least bit surprised that Greyparrot can't tell the difference between Democracy and Authoritarianism? What a well broken slave.
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Oro reminds me of the idiots who sat in bleachers to watch the 1st civil war battle as a spectator sport before the war decimated their homes.
Says the dude who's had me blocked for two years and reports me as a bully to moderation. Greyparrot fancies himself the Robert E. Lee of debate but he's much closer to the Lee Harvey Oswald of debate: sniping patsy
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These pro-coup Republicans are the Vicky White of political parties.
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Poll Questions:
1) Who are the breathing experts in question?
George Floyd and Alexander Kueng
2) Does this paragraph imply that the breathing experts in question are medical professionals?
No
3) Is this a correct use of the term "breathing expert"?
The use is stylistic and the style is sarcastic. The important question is not so much correct/incorrect as effective/ineffective. I think the usage would be far more plain when spoken with a slightly sarcastic "quote marks" kind of tone. The sarcasm is meant to suggest that we are all experts on the simple in and out of breathing and so Chauvin has no grounds for arguing "appropriate levels of physical restraint" when everybody who breathes knows that if your arrestee stops breathing, his life is in immediate peril and all the contingencies for legal restraint are now abandoned for the exigencies of life saving.
Personally, I was confused by the mention of breathing expert until Kueng was also named a breathing expert. Then, matching their ages to their breathing experience, Ragnar's overstatement colors the critique of Chauvin as ignoring the obvious. I don't think Ragnar can prove Chauvin's racist intent when ignoring the two black men's advice any more than Novice can hope to prove an absence of racist intent. If I was Ragnar's editor, I think I would have advised against this whole argument generally and stylistic choice specifically.
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@Athias
If the mother isn't compelled to act in service to her fetus, why should the father be?
Morally, a mother is compelled to care for her fetus but legally no state should be given such intimate authority, therefore mothers are free to abort. Morally, fathers are compelled to care for his partner's fetus but legally no state should have the authority to compel that care. Once a fetus is born and becomes a US citizen, the authority of the State strengthens considerably by Constitutional demand. The same moral compulsions apply to father and mother but now legal compulsion to care for that child kick in as well.
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@SirAnonymous
-->@oromagiIf your standard makes starting a civil war less extreme than passing a ban, your standard is wrong. Quite frankly, even if the Republican party supported banning all the freedoms in the bill of rights, that would still be less extreme than starting a civil war.
I am calculating extremism by distance and speed of a political movement from the political center rather than the tactics used by that movement. The American Revolution was certainly a dramatic separation but I think a good argument can be made that Jefferson and Paine were closer to the contemporary thinking of Locke and Smith and Voltaire and Montesquieu than George III. Wasn't Russia's February Revolution objectively less extreme than the October Revolution or are all civil wars alike in extremity to your thinking? Were the sailors who began the German Revolution really more extreme for wanting an end to war than the Kaiser for wanting to press on? Is Ukraine today necessarily the more extreme faction because they seceded from Russia?
JP Stevens was fond of pointing out he started his Supreme Court career as the most conservative judge on the bench and ended it as the most liberal without ever changing his mind on a major issue. The Republican Party today doesn't just celebrate Confederate secession, they celebrate American's foreign enemies too- NAZI Germany and authoritarian Russia. They reject their core leader of just ten years ago- Bush, Cheney, McCain, Romney are considered traitors to their movement now. Today Republicans are advocating for jail for the young women, not just abortion providers. Alito quotes a 17th Witchhunter in defense of his outlook on abortion. 26 Republican candidates for Secretary of State are pro-coup and believe that Trump secretly won the election.
If Lincoln represented the American center when he said he would preserve slavery if only that kept the Union whole then the ideological distance between Lincoln and Davis was not so great as McCain from Trump, who would embrace any falsehood or foreign dictator for a second chance to install an American Monarchy on a White House Throne.
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@Benjamin
That seem like a bonkers argument to make. Of course countries in the real world are never fully and literally socialist or capitalist.
You call my argument bonkers and then agree with my argument entirely. "Countries in the real world are never fully and literally socialist or capitalist" is the premise which falsifies Ceresto's claim.
That doesn't detract from the fact that the countries ruled by socialist or communist parties did better in almost every measure compared to countries who didn't.
Those are just labels without much ideology or political action behind them. NAZI Germany, the USSR, the PRC all called themselves socialist but never gave their citizens any real decision-making power about or e the means of production. If there's ever been a sincerely Communist state as Marx defined it, I am not aware of it.
Your point about liberty is totally irrelevant to a discussion about PHYSICAL quality of life. I agree there were a lot of authoritarianism in the 20th century, but the socialist regimes were evidentilly better at serving the people than the non-socialist dictatorships.
Did the PRC count the babies drowned or exposed at childbirth out of fear of non-compliance with China's one-child policy, when the Mouth of Yangtze River was fenced off for fear of foreigners noticing that the beaches were white with the bones of newborns? Probably not. As I said, the definition of socialism requires that the people are in charge so there's no such thing as a socialist or capitalist dictatorship. I would agree that some nations demonstrated superior healthcare (Cuba) or education (China) but Western democracies overall were pretty indisputably the nicest places to live in 1981.
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@3RU7AL
-->@oromagiWhat coherent moral theory would deny that a man's first obligation is to his children?the same moral theory that allows a woman to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to termit's the moral theory of voluntarism (anti-coercion) and self-ownership
Moral theory does not allow a woman to choose, freedom from govt. restraint does. Just because I argue that Republicans have no right to make that choice for women does not mean that I think there's a morally coherent justification for choosing abortion. I'm not sure there is but I feel compelled to withhold judgement because that is not a choice I'll ever have to face biologically. I do believe that decision is only the pregnant woman's to make and that if that woman chooses life than the father is obligated morally- he is not burdened with gestation so his choices ended at inception. Our freedom to choose is limited by the harm we might inflict on others and the harm an absent father inflicts on a child outweighs any claim to harm that father might claim. I'm no student for philosophy but I don't think I buy voluntarism by itself as a morally coherent notion.
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@3RU7AL
what is your coherent moral theory supporting this claim ?
What coherent moral theory would deny that a man's first obligation is to his children? If we agree that raising the next generation and improving upon the conditions of the present generation are the principle obligations of any human community, then responsible fatherhood is an obvious priority.
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@SirAnonymous
The Confederate state legislatures who voted to secede from the US would like a word about that.
Well, the Confederacy is correctly seen as more extreme in relation to today's political center than today's GOP but extremity is measured by distance from the contemporary center. By that measure, it was the Republicans and the abolitionist Northern Democrats who were swinging left and shaking things up. Southern legislatures' position on slavery and the rights of States to preserve their traditional economic institutions were well established and considered the moderate position over the prior 75 years. Secession and War were extreme counter-reactions to Lincoln's election, of course, but I'd argue that the Republicans had the more revolutionary politics and stood further from the American political center of the mid 19th century than the Southern Democrats.
"We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists." - Amos Adams Lawrence
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Does anyone want abortion banned in cases of rape?
The Republican Party does. 13 Republican legislatures have trigger laws ready for the SCOTUS decision making it a crime for women not to bear the children of their rapist. None of these legislatures require the rapist to contribute to the financial burdens placed on their rape victims. Ten years ago, you couldn't find a single serious Republican who banned abortion in the case of rape, incest, or peril of mother- now these bans are mainstream.
Here is the present outlook of the Republican Party as expressed in the Ohio legislature last week:
DEM: "If a 13-year-old girl was raped by a serial rapist ... this bill would require this 13-year-old to carry this felon's fetus to term, regardless of any emotional or psychological damage or trauma that may be inflicted upon this 13-year-old girl"
GOP: "It is a shame that it happens, but there's an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she's going to do to help that life be a productive human being,"
Even when woman has zero control over her sex, even when its done by force, the woman and only the woman is made responsible for making that progeny a productive human being. The state has no obligation. The rapist has no obligation. The present day GOP is the most extreme political party to ever control a state legislature.
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@TheUnderdog
-->@oromagiMen and women bear the responsibility for pregnancy equally but as we see here, men seldom acknowledge their equal burden of responsibility.That's a problem. If a female gets an abortion, the male should be punished and if he doesn't want pregnancy, he shouldn't have sex.
The State Legislature in Louisiana advanced a proposal this week that would classify abortion as homicide, going further than anti-abortion measures in other states by making it possible for prosecutors to bring criminal cases against women who end a pregnancy.
None of these Republicans are even considering punishment for the fathers of unwanted pregnancies. Ultimately, the Republican position is not anti-sex, just anti-women.
T-dog views the statement "I have the right to premarital sex and get an abortion from it" as something women say when almost all men would state the former as true but then too many men go silent when the consequences are named.You shouldn't have sex unless you want a kid or have a vasectomy and if you get an abortion, the guy should be punished for impregnating you and being responsible for the kid's death.
Well, gay sex is fine- that never produces unwanted children and is way more fun. The Republican party should require all extra-marital sex to be gay sex.
The fact that women share the overwhelmingly disproportionate burden of responsibility for the consequences of decisions that of a right should burden men in like proportion means that women get to be the primary stakeholder in all decisions made about pregnancy and so requires an explicit protection from government intervention into those decisions that men enjoy by default.Men who don't take care of their kids are deadbeats that have to pay $135,000 of child support over 18 years. The Surrogacy rate is about $25,000 per pregnancy. So deadbeats sacrifice more for their kids than females that are forced to carry the kid to term. Granted, the sacrifice is justified because being deadbeats are among the lowest of the low.
I agree although $625/month is a small price for many fathers of unwanted children to pay. I think they should also be required to either reside with their children as a parent or pay the parents who do reside with their children an additional child minders fee set at minimum wage, at least.
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@Benjamin
- I question any quality of life index that does not consider human freedom a foremost variable. Cereseto ranks how countries fed and educated and doctored themselves (by 1981, using mostly American and Western democratic models of agriculture, medicine, and education). But I personally would rank my physical quality of life quite low if I was not free to decide what crops to grow or things to study or how many children I might raise.
- It looks like the World Bank (and Cereseto by extension) was using some fucked up Reagan Era definitions of SOCIALISM and CAPITALISM where every country in the World must be one or the other and only one or the other but this has never been true.
- CAPITALISM is "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." By definition, CAPITALISM can only exist in those states where the decisions about trade and industry are mostly protected from government interference. No authoritarian govt. can be Capitalist by definition.
- Cereseto places Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran in the Capitalist column but using what definition? Is any part of the Saudi economy protected from state control? No.
- SOCIALISM is "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." By definition, SOCIALISM can only exist in those states where the decisions about trade and industry represent the majority will of the people- by a democratic system. No authoritarian govt. can be Socialist by definition.
- Cereseto places China in the Socialist column but using what definition? Did the people decide how many children they'd like to parent or did Deng Xiaoping make that decision for them?
- All modern democratic nation states are mixture of socialism and capitalism. No private company runs any nation's military. No community votes on the price on gas. It's always a mix between 30-70% of the economy for either.
- By 1981, a good argument can be made that the US was not only the largest Capitalist economy by raw value but also the world's largest Socialist economy.
- Cereseto's division of all the national economies into either entirely socialist or entirely capitalist simply does not reflect how trade and industry are controlled in either democracies or autocracies. All democracies are a mix.
- All autocrats make the decisions about how trade and industry are controlled in their nations. Cereseto's attribution of some to socialist and most to capitalist seem pracitically arbitrary if one does not study who was aligned with the West and who was aligned with Russia and China in 1981.
- I think we can dismiss Cereseto's work as badly distorted by Cold War propaganda and 100% unhelpful to economic decisionmakers today.
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@Jeff_Goldblum
I believe that movies should stay true to the original text or else write their own damn story. I am long past complaining about about the Hollywood's unfaithfulness to my favorite books- I generally agree with Christopher Tolkien's assessment- the LOTR was unfaithful but forgivable. The Hobbit(s) were an abomination. I guess I'm past caring how they fuck up the Silmarillion, although a faithful rendering of that text would not be popular.
To my thinking, at least Tolkien's estate was consulted and compensated. I also think that changes made in the name of improved inclusiveness and diversity are more forgivable- I never imagined Ford Prefect to be a black man but the detail seems less important to that story. Less forgivable is Hollywood's recasting of denizens of EarthSea as white folks when they were written as brown-skinned people with afro-kinky hair. Less forgivable is the removal of Canadian economist Marie St. Jacque as Jason Bourne's wife in the Bourne series or the demotion of Robopsychologist Susan Calvin to Will Smith's girlfriend in I, Robot. Removing strong principle female characters and giving all their intelligence and intuition to male action hero should be a fucking crime.
But deeper reaches of screenplay hell should be reserved for those who rewrite the original author without permission and deepest of all for those who rewrite history. An Asian David Copperfield or a Black Inspector Javert change the context and reality of those characters, their race would have been the dominant fact of their lives in those stories and to depict the residents of 1849 London or 1815 Paris as barely noticing skin color is to give those ultra race segregated times and places a pass they simply don't deserve. My opinions regarding the re-writing of history such as the depiction of William Wallace as the Braveheart at the expense of Scotland's true liberator, Robert the Bruce are well documented on this site.
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wouldn't it be ultimately less painful for the female if she never got pregnant
Well, there's the Feminist argument in a nutshell.
Men and women bear the responsibility for pregnancy equally but as we see here, men seldom acknowledge their equal burden of responsibility. T-dog views the statement "I have the right to premarital sex and get an abortion from it" as something women say when almost all men would state the former as true but then too many men go silent when the consequences are named. Here, T-dog clearly demonstrates the dilemma men inflict upon women. The fact that women share the overwhelmingly disproportionate burden of responsibility for the consequences of decisions that of a right should burden men in like proportion means that women get to be the primary stakeholder in all decisions made about pregnancy and so requires an explicit protection from government intervention into those decisions that men enjoy by default.
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Greyparrot then:
"When you have people wanting to redistribute the wealth from the few productive members and give to the mass of unproductive members like the Germans did with the Jews, Fascism starts to look appealing. The demonization of the white male is the first step. Next will be boxcars loaded with rich white men sent to re-education centers."
Greyparrot now:
How dare they call me an extremist!
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GP last week:
People on the right who would normally be principled are now out for revenge. 2022 midterms isn't going to be pretty at all.And since the left will go down kicking and screaming with the political retaliations, there can be no reconciliation.
the last 6 years have established a precedence that allows for the political retaliation against any political opposition.
None of this will matter after 2022 when Congress declares all Democrats as domestic terrorists and opens up endless investigations, possibly censoring any speech that defies the GOP Congress.
You assume there will be a country left to vote in after they retaliate against the Democrats.
GP this week:
"Heavens to Betsy! They're calling us extremists! How unfair!"
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Has Greyparrot EVER posted an honest quote?
“This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history,”
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Well, I think the carrying capacity of the Earth is closer to 2 billion humans and the timeline is clearly foreshortened but the overall assessment of the planet as overpopulated and unsustainable seems hard to deny.
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@Lemming
Privacy is not considered unlimited, is my point.
All rights are limited by the rights of others, privacy included. We are fools not to demand substantially increased protections from government and corporate interests in our private lives.
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@Lemming
Do we also have right, as Washington did, to treat our slaves as we like?
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments resolved this question, so you should read the US Constitution. (spoiler alert- the answer is no)
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@3RU7AL
Like I said, it is complicated. And most of my opinion comes from non-rational responses to a personal history on the subject.
Still-
- I'm a Liberal and a gay man and therefore believe that the State should stay out of the business of sex and family to the maximum extent possible.
- I believe the same rights to privacy that were implied in the rights granted to property owning patriarchs now apply to all citizens. We have the same sovereign right to live unmonitored and unmolested in our bodies, cars, apartments, etc as Washington did in his plantation home.
- That sovereign right extends to pregnant citizens but does not extend to the unborn. Pregnant women possess exclusive God-given sovereignty over their fetuses. Fathers, family, government and church officials have no say.
- This is a new right, born of suffrage, that exceeded our Founding Father's capacity to recognize but is nonetheless manifest to our modern understanding of women as full fledged humans and therefore citizens.
- New rights require new amendments to the Constitution or else you get assholes like Alito whining about how those rights aren't in there. They aren't and they clearly should be.
- I believe that an Equal Rights Amendment and a Right to Privacy Amendment are newly self-evident truths that enjoy overwhelming support by American citizens and of a right must be codified into our Constitution.
- Supreme Court judgements are a terrible way to make law because that court can only rule what's constitutional and unconstitutional.
- We should respect the wisdom of Federalism, the marketplace of ideas discovered in the evolution of state legislation. The way gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization spread from state over the last 20 years is the model that Madison foresaw. I believe that if we had approached abortion the same way in the early 70's abortion would be legal, cheap, private, and mostly uncontroversial today.
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@TheUnderdog
If you really believe this and you want the GOP to lose in 2022, wouldn't you support repealing Roe V Wade to help the dems.
I do, in fact.
- not that anyone asked before applying their prejudices
- but my stance is a lot more complicated then the political exigencies of the moment
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Wikipedia advises:
RACISM is "the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded."
Encyclopedia Britannica advises:
RACISM is "the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others. The term is also applied to political, economic, or legal institutions and systems that engage in or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of race or otherwise reinforce racial inequalities in wealth and income, education, health care, civil rights, and other areas. Since the late 20th century the notion of biological race has been recognized as a cultural invention, entirely without scientific basis.
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@thett3
-->@oromagiI'm thinking Republicans just lost 2022.I tend to doubt that, the people who care the most about abortion are almost universally democrats at this point and highly likely to vote.
30% of pro-lifers say that they can only vote for a candidate that shares their view on abortion, up from 15% in 2008 and compared to 19% of pro-choicers who would only vote for a candidate who shares their view.
Polls show that Americans support Roe v Wade by about a 2-1 margin but that’s always seemed a little misleading to me…it seemed to be more status quo bias/Americans not actually understanding the decision rather than supporting it. “Pro life” and “pro choice” identifications, which seems like a better way to measure how people feel about abortion, is evenly split and has been for a while…and the parties have had 50 years to sort themselves on this issue, very few people voting Republican don’t understand what they’re getting into on abortion.
But the issue has only been status quo on the right.
In 2007, roughly two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic leaners (63%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Support among Democrats has risen by nearly 20 points since then, and 80% now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Views among Republicans have remained relatively steady during this period.
Like Putin's invasion of Ukraine, I think Republicans badly underestimate how this shock will unify the progressives and the moderates.
Only 40% of Republicans or just over 1 in 10 Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all cases as the Supreme Court stands poised to justify. We are already seeing poor pregnant girls going to jail in Texas, which was almost never true before Roe. In months, we will be seeing cases where the state forces young girls to remain pregnant to death which is an entirely radical new level of state intervention into the private lives of citizens. By the time the election comes, some Republican states will be executing more girls for getting pregnant then men for murder.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It's unfortunate that you believe you are qualified to debate.
I've never made such a claim. I have frequently claimed the opposite on this site.
You aren't even aware that ad populum is a fallacy, and an easy one to prove at that.
Dismissing democracy as a logical fallacy. eeek.
But I do need a motivation.
Not my job.
It's a lot of work, while perhaps not entirely wasted I would not be able to stay interested if I expected you to dismiss the iceberg because you can only see the tip.
You claim your government is illegal but you have trouble staying interested? No wonder you don't read the news. Anyway, that debate is waiting for you:
I did, you complained it wasn't specific enough. Not the same thing as never making it.
You still haven't.
The positive claim you made does not interface with my original point. The USSR could produce a list of officials who signed off on Stalin's election as well.
If the overwhelming majority of People's deputies claimed that Stalin lost while only a handful of Stalin's cronies cried victory, I would call that excellent evidence that Stalin probably lost the election.
That is the claim you must overcome: that voters and election fifty State governments and the Dept of Justice and the majority of Congress and independent international observer all acknowledge that the 2020 Election was free and fair.Humans are fallible, sometimes more so in groups than alone.
platitude, not argument
"experts" I dismiss as I dismiss all appeals to authority
A good way to foster ignorance.
Eye witnesses testimony is a form of evidence, but only the assertions of witnessed events.
that's what eyewitness means.
an enormous number of ballots were added without election judges,
bullshit. It is true that one State election monitor went home for an hour but he was not required to be there by law. An investigator from the Republican Secretary of State's Office and an independent observer were present as well as the Elections Board supervisor. If any absentee ballots had been added then that number would not have matched the receipt numbers. On November 3rd, Fulton County acknowledged receipt of 145000 absentee ballots on Nov 3rd but didn't finish counting those ballots until Nov 5th. If "enormous numbers" of ballots had been added, that would have been caught on tape and changed the receipt numbers claimed on Nov 3rd.
A conspiracy of 2-3 in the counting facility and 5-20 overall could produce a delta of thousands of fraudulent ballots. That is certainly not an intrinsic risk of paper ballots in the information age, the simplest explanation is that this vulnerability was intentionally made.
The simplest explanation is that nothing unusual took place.
Let's recall there have been three audits of these ballots since- 2 hand recounts and on machine recount. All 3 audits confirmed the original count. Counters and supervisors and observers from all 3 audits would have to be in on the conspiracy. Furthermore, the mostly Republican County Election Board and mostly Republican County Commissioners would have to be in on your conspiracy. Also the Republican Secretary of State, Republican Attorney General and Republican Governor all looked into your claim and called it bullshit so they would have to be in on the conspiracy too. Last summer, Georgia Bureau of Investigation detectives were allowed to unseal the ballots for a fourth audit, so add the GBI to your conspiracy. The Chief Judge from a different county, Brian Amero (also a Republican) would have to be in on it too since he ruled last October that the plaintiff had failed to credibly demonstrate any harm or wrongdoing.
It is worth noting that plaintiff in this case is a well-known QAnon conspiracy theorist, having given public lectures on JFK assassination theories, Clinton murder theories, and 9/11 inside job theories for decades. Let's agree that just because the plaintiff has always been a disordered kook doesn't necessarily mean he continues to be a disordered kook, even if distorting the truth is how he makes his living.
Let's recall that the Fulton County officials made national news begging Trump to stop encouraging death threats against their Republican county officials. Let's also note that these Republicans convened a Grand Jury just this week to review felony obstruction of justice charges against Trump.
I think I know so much better than tens of thousands of people on a great number of issues.
ick.
In this case it's tens of thousands who disagree and tens of thousands who agree,
Nope, its more like Fulton County, State of Georgia, Congress, the Trump Administration, the Dept of Justice, the US Judicial system, international observers, and the mainstream media vs. Trump and QAnon.
I can illustrate your misrepresentation using Pence of Trump/Pence.
I said "Pence of Trump/Pence risked his life to certify his own defeat. " That is a fact you can't deny or call misrepresentation.
Pence works like you and that handful of other people who don't want to alienate the conspiracy nuts but don't want to be caught flat out lying either- you keep the details ultra-vague and pray that nobody ever calls on you to present your case.
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I'm thinking Republicans just lost 2022.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
-->@oromagiI don't participate in debates where there is some kind of implication that popular support decides the outcome.
Not a fan of Democracy, got it.
If you wish to debate this a new thread can be made.
You don't need my permission. So far, you've come off as silly hyper-deflecting cynic who can't formulate a cogent refutation. If you think you have a case to make you should make it some time.
PRO TIP: If you are only going to cite the testimony of one witness you should probably learn her name.
Also the intro of your challenge contains the very error in BoP which was my original point in this thread"verified by the preponderance of official US election observers", rejected on that ground even if there was no voting.
FIrst you say "oh I'lll make a claim" but then you don't. When I cite Hitchen's Razor you say then recognize what the original [positive] claim was. I give you the positive claim and you chicken out. That is the claim you must overcome: that voters and election fifty State governments and the Dept of Justice and the majority of Congress and independent international observer all acknowledge that the 2020 Election was free and fair. You say don't accept that judgement but when I ask for reasons you remain decidedly non-specific. I think we've established that you have no sincere problem with the 2020 election.
if you don't make that claim or don't believe that claim is required you are against democracy.
You literally just said "I don't participate in debates where there is some kind of implication that popular support decides the outcome." That is a fair description of democracy. You own words have established that you are against democracy whatever claims you fail to argue.
If you do make that claim then you have the BoP for it.
The overwhelming consensus of many experts and eyewitnesses satisfies most Burdens of Proof including free and fair election. Hell, Pence of Trump/Pence risked his life to certify his own defeat. Now you must explain why you imagine you know so much better than all those tens of thousands of citizens doing their jobs and why you think they are all conspiring to fool you.
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But I guess debate tactics are probably also used on the forums
assuredly so.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
- Can we get the name of this witness? Why didn't she report this to law enforcement at the TCF on the day she witnessed it?
Do you doubt she has a name?
It's pretty clear you are just trolling and don't sincerely believe that Trump won the 2020 Election.
Here's your last chance to prove otherwise:
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It's not a coincidence that only one party understands how humor works. Fear and avoid any man who doesn't understand jokes.
Speaking of which, Trump brainfarted yesterday and endorsed the wrong candidate two days before the primary. Fortunately for his opponent, Trump does do self-correction.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
No I am not being specific because there are too many examples to remember of the top of my head.
Nobody asked you off the top of your head but one would think 20 minutes of googling would have given you some examples to argue.
Hitchen's Razor states "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." The burden of proof lies with claimant. If the claimant is unwilling to to submit evidence for our consideration then the burden is not met and I need not argue further.
Just because I can't name concentration camp guards without looking them up doesn't mean there wasn't a holocaust.
Yes but the Judgement of Nuremburg was not decided without first presenting the evidence.
On top of that many tweets and videos have been removed by censor, and search engines like google intentionally shunt you away from alternatives or archives making it quite the chore to recover all of what I remember.
It's not censorship if the government isn't doing it. When media separates truth from fiction that is called journalism. When media excises rubbish that is called editorship. The First Amendment protects you from the government. Twitter and Google don't owe you shit. Twitter and Google researched their opinion and relied on the experts. So far, all you've given us is statements of faith.
For the purposes of demonstrating that you can't "fact check" anything of relevance on demand (which should be obvious) take this testimony Michigan Election Fraud Hearing Testimony, 12/1/20 3 (bitchute.com)
- So this is a GOP poll watcher. Let's recall their behavior at the TCF center was quite unruly. Let's note that this woman is not under oath or in court. This a Republican testifying to other Republicans without cross-examination or any attempt to secure the poll worker's version of the story. Here is the testimony of a Dem poll watcher on the same day, which states that GOP poll watchers arrived with an agenda to disrupte and confuse. https://www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/first-person-i-was-detroit-poll-challenger-gop-came-make-havoc
- This is the hearing where Giuliani's main witness famously showed up intoxicated.
- Can we get the name of this witness? Why didn't she report this to law enforcement at the TCF on the day she witnessed it?
- For this witnesses' testimony to be true, multiple counting machines must have failed and multiple team of counters would have all had to decide the same way. Many, many false claims about this particular test center have been factually disproved. I assume this is just another member of Giuliani's team hired to make shit up.
Hold yourself to the evidentiary standard you demand of others.
- OK but now I'm forced to think that you didn't already know this, one the top 3 or 4 news stories last week
- I'm arguing with somebody who doesn't keep up with the news?
I'm not interested the assertions of government officials, I do not trust them and their claim that they have "fact checked" something does not constitute an investigation nor prevention.
- Nevertheless, the government has made an evidence based claim. If you want to disprove it, you must challenge the evidence.
A real democracy would have a system which doesn't rely on trust.
Vote counting at TCF was under pretty strict scrutiny and a lot of bad, disruptive behavior by the GOP was documented there. I see no reason to assume the one piece of evidence you've given is likely to be true. A judge has already ruled that most of the claims of fraud made that day stemmed from ignorance of standard vote counting procedures, I can't tell whether this claim was reviewed by that judge.
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President Joe Biden spoke Saturday at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, marking his first appearance at the widely attended Washington event since taking office and the first time a US president has attended the dinner in six years.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Steve, for that introduction. And a special thanks to the 42% of you who actually applauded.
I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have. That’s hard to say after what we just saw.
This is the first time a president attended this dinner in six years. It’s understandable. We had a horrible plague followed by two years of Covid.
Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year. Now, that would really have been a real coup if that occurred. A little tough, huh?
But I’m honored to be here at such an event with so much history.
As already referenced, the very first president to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. I had just been elected to the United States Senate. And I reme – I remember telling him, “Cal, just be yourself. Get up there and speak from the heart. You’re going to be great, kid. You’re going to do it well.”
Of course, Jill is with me tonight. Jilly, how are you, kid? I think – I think she’s doing an incredible job as first lady. The first lady to continue working full-time, and she does as a professor.
She doesn’t pay much attention to the polls, though she did say the other day: Instead of introducing myself as Jill Biden’s husband, maybe I should introduce myself as her roommate.
I’ve attended this dinner many times, but this is my first time as president. And the organizers had – had it hard – made it pretty hard for me tonight. Although the good news is, if all goes well, I have a real shot at replacing James Corden.
It was great having him over at the White House the other day, just as he announced he’s leaving the show. A great performer is going out on top after eight years in the job. Sounds just about right to me.
And it’s tough to follow pros like James and Billy Eichner. Billy, where are you again? Do you – where is he?
Well, Billy, you’re famous for interviewing – your interviewing skills. Billy, you should know what you’re doing, pal. You know it, you know it well. And you should – I think – you should host “Meet the Press.” Maybe they’ll start to watch it again.
I’ve never had – never had to – I’ve never had to open – I’ll never be – I’ll never be invited to “Meet the Press” again. Anyway.
I’ve never had to open before Trevor Noah. Trevor is great. When I was elected, he did a show and he called me “America’s new dad.” Let me tell you something, pal: I’m flattered anybody would call me a “new” anything. You’re my guy.
And, folks, it’s been a tough few years for the country. That’s one reason why it’s great to be here again.
Everyone at the White House is so excited. I told my grandkids and Pete Buttigieg they could stay up late and watch this show tonight.
Tonight – tonight we come here and answer a very important question on everybody’s mind: Why in the hell are we still doing this?
I know there are – I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight because of Covid. Well, we’re here to show the country that we’re getting through this pandemic. Plus, everyone had to prove they were fully vaccinated and boosted.
So, if you’re at home watching this and you’re wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They’re all here, vaccinated and boosted – all of them.
And, look, Fox – Fox News, I’m – I’m really sorry your preferred candidate lost the last election. To make it up to you, I’m happy to give my chief of staff to you all so he can tell Sean Hannity what to say every day.
In fact, Ron Klain is here at the CBS table, which hired Mick Mulvaney. Mick, on CBS? I was stunned. I figured he’d end up on “The Masked Singer” with Rudy.
Amazing hire, guys. Really quite amazing.
Look, I know this is a tough town. I came to office with an ambitious agenda, and I expected it to face stiff opposition in the Senate. I just hoped it would be from Republicans.
But I’m not worried about the midterms. I’m not worried about them. We may end up with more partisan gridlock, but I’m confident we can work it out during my remaining six years in the presidency.
And, folks, I’m not really here to roast the GOP. That’s not my style. Besides, there’s nothing I can say about the GOP that Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape.
And, you know, at the same – at the same time, a lot of people say the Republican Party is too extreme, too divisive, too controlled by one person. They say, “It’s not your father’s Republican Party.”
Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down.” Today’s Republicans say, “Tear down Mickey Mouse’s house.” And pretty soon, they’ll be storming Cinderella’s castle, you can be sure of it.
But Republicans seem to support one fella – some guy named Brandon. He’s having a really good year, and I’m kind of happy for him.
Let me conclude with a serious word.
We live in serious times. We’re coming through a devastating pandemic, and we have to stay vigilant. I know Kamala wanted to be here, for example, and thankfully she’s doing well. You should all know she sends her best.
We’re in a time when what we so long have taken for granted is facing the gravest of threats. And I’m being deadly earnest.
Oversear- [sic] – overseas, the liberal world order that laid the foundation for global peace, stability and prosperity since World War II is genuinely, seriously under assault.
And at home, a poison is running through our democracy of all – all of this taking place with disinformation massively on the rise, where the truth is buried by lies and the lies live on as truth.
What’s clear – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart – that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century. No, I really mean it.
I’ve always believed that good journalism holds up a mirror to ourselves, to reflect on the good, the bad and the true. Tonight, I want to congratulate the awardees and the scholarship winners who carry on that sacred tradition.
We’ve all seen the courage of the Ukrainian people because of the courage of American reporters in this room and your colleagues across the world, who are on the ground, taking their lives in their own hands.
And although it’s not in Ukraine, it’s Russia – Mom, I’d like to meet you and Dad to talk about your son.
We just – we just saw a heartbreaking video: Nine have been killed reporting from Kyiv – struck by a kamikaze drone strike after a shopping mall attack; shot in the neck while decounci- [sic] – while – while documenting Ukrainians fleeing; killed when Russian missiles hit the television tower in a residential neighborhood. One journalist from Radio Liberty just killed days ago.
So many of you telling the stories and taking the photos and recording the videos of what’s happening there, the unvarnished truth shown – showing the – the destruction and the devastation and, yes, the war crimes.
Tonight, we also honor the legacy of two historic reporters, and that is Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne. I’m glad you saw that tonight. I didn’t know you were doing that. These are the first Black women to be White House reporters, who shattered convention to cover a segregated nation.
We honor journalists killed, missing, imprisoned, detained and tortured; covering war, exposing corruption and holding leaders accountable.
We honor members of the press, both national and local, covering a once-in-a-century pandemic where we lost a million Americans, a generation reckoning on race and the existential threat of climate change.
The free press is not the enemy of the people – far from it. At your best, you’re guardians of the truth.
President Kennedy once said, and I quote, “Without debate, without criticism, no administration, no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.”
The First Amendment grants a free press extraordinary protection, but with it comes, as many of you know, a very heavy obligation: to seek the truth as best you can – not to inflame or entertain, but to illuminate and educate.
I know it’s tough. And I’m not being solicitous. The industry is changing significantly.
There’s incredible pressure on you all to deliver heat instead of shed light, because the technology is changing so much, the system is changing. But it matters. No kidding. It matters. The truth matters.
American democracy is not a reality show. It’s not a reality show. It’s reality itself. And the reality is that we are a great country.
Our future is bright. It’s not guaranteed, because democracy is never guaranteed. It has to be earned. It has to be defended. It has to be protected.
As you’ve heard me say many times: There’s not a damn thing this country can’t do when we stand united and do it together. And I know we can do anything we want to do that’s right.
I’ve been around a long time, as has been pointed out many times tonight. But I give you my word as a Biden: I’ve never been more optimistic about America than I am today. I really mean it.
At times of enormous change, it presents enormous opportunities. For despite all the crises, all the partisanship, all the shouting and the showmanship,
I really know this and you know it too: We are a great nation because we’re basically a good people.
And here in America, good journalism, good satire about our leaders, about our society is quintessentially an American thing. It demonstrates the power of our example.
And I, honest to God, believe it reveals our soul – the soul of our nation. And that’s what I’d like to toast tonight, if I may.
(The President offers a toast.)
To the journalists and their families, to the people and their elected representatives, to the United States of America.
And by the way, Madeleine Albright was right: We are the indispensable nation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to turn this over to Trevor now, strap myself into my seat.
And, Trevor, the really good news is: Now you get to roast the President of the United States and, unlike in Moscow, you won’t go to jail.
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- It is my great honor to be speaking tonight at the nation’s most distinguished superspreader event. Did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron dinner? … The second someone offers you a free dinner you all turn into Joe Rogan.
- I’m not doing this just for the attention. All right? I’m a comedian, not Kyrsten Sinema. … By the way, give it up for Kyrsten Sinema. Whoever thought we’d see the day in American politics when a senator could be openly bisexual, but closeted Republican? That’s progress.
- We all saw what happened at the Oscars. I’ve actually been a bit worried about tonight. I’m not going to lie. What if I make a really mean joke about Kellyanne Conway, and her husband rushes up on the stage and thanks me?
- I’ve just got to say, this is so exciting. To be at this swanky party full of Washington’s most powerful people. It’s not as exciting as Madison Cawthorn made it sound, but it’s still very sexy.
- Trump said he won the election, but everyone was just able to look at the numbers and see that he was wrong. That’s why Ron DeSantis is one step ahead — first you ban the math textbooks, then nobody knows how to count the votes. Boom. My man!
- The great chef José Andrés is here tonight. … Whenever there’s a disaster anywhere in the world, chef José is there, which I guess is why he’s sitting at the CNN table tonight.
- The real reason that it’s such an honor to be here tonight is that we all get to be in the same room as the most powerful man in the United States. So let’s give it up for Joe Manchin, everybody.
- Even as first lady, Dr. Biden continued her teaching career. The first time a presidential spouse has done so, ever. Congratulations. Now, you might think it’s because she loves teaching so much, but it’s actually because she’s still paying off her student debt. I’m sorry about that, Jill. I guess you should’ve voted for Bernie.
- I think everyone will agree that it’s actually nice to once again have a president who’s not afraid to come to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and hear jokes about himself. I’ll be honest, if you didn’t come, I totally would have understood because these people have been so hard on you, which I don’t get. I really don’t. And I think ever since you’ve come into office, things are really looking up. You know, gas is up, rent is up, food is up, everything.
- President Biden’s lack of a filter does get him into hot water sometimes. Last month, he caused a huge international incident saying that Vladimir Putin should be removed from power. It was very, very upsetting to Russia until someone explained to them that none of the stuff Biden wants actually gets done.
- What about Maggie Haberman? For four years, it was exclusives on the Russia investigation, corruption, the president doesn’t read his daily briefings, on and on. Now look at her. She spends all day fighting with random people on Twitter like a common POLITICO reporter. You’ve ruined her Mr. President.
- Jen [Psaki], it’s nice that you’re willing to come over here and risk getting Covid for like, what, the 10th time now? Let me ask, how do you keep getting Covid, Jen? Like your boss hooked us all up with free tests. Does he not have your address? What’s going on there?
- I’m really excited because the kings of cable are here. Fox News in the house … I know Fox has a bad reputation — I can even feel you tense up now when I talk about them. They really do crush it. You know, I think they get a bad rap. Because it’s a mixed bag. They actually have really good journalists, it just depends on when you watch. Fox News is sort of like a Waffle House. Yeah, it’s relatively normal in the afternoon, but as soon as the sun goes down, there’s a drunk lady named Jeanine threatening to fight every Mexican who comes in.
- Apparently, Jeff [Zucker] got fired after he tried to keep his workplace relationship secret, which is weird because if he really didn’t want anyone to know about it, he could have just made a show about it on CNN+. … It’s so sad. CNN+, gone but forgotten. You know who I blame? You know who I blame, CNN? John King … your magic wall can predict how every person in the country is going to vote in every county, but it couldn’t give you a heads up that nobody wanted more CNN?
- Please be careful leaving tonight, we all know this administration doesn’t handle evacuations well.
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